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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/4947-h.zip b/4947-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f4afcac --- /dev/null +++ b/4947-h.zip diff --git a/4947-h/4947-h.htm b/4947-h/4947-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a20c3be --- /dev/null +++ b/4947-h/4947-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,15613 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"> + +<head> + +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" /> + +<title> +The Project Gutenberg E-text of Sisters, by Kathleen Norris +</title> + +<style type="text/css"> +body { color: black; + background: white; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +p {text-indent: 4% } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.t1 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 200%; + text-align: center } + +p.t2 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 150%; + text-align: center } + +p.t3 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 100%; + text-align: center } + +p.t3b {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 100%; + font-weight: bold; + text-align: center } + +p.t4 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 80%; + text-align: center } + +p.t4b {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 80%; + font-weight: bold; + text-align: center } + +p.t5 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 60%; + text-align: center } + +h1 { text-align: center } +h2 { text-align: center } +h3 { text-align: center } +h4 { text-align: center } +h5 { text-align: center } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; } + +p.contents {text-indent: -3%; + margin-left: 5% } + +p.thought {text-indent: 0% ; + letter-spacing: 4em ; + text-align: center } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +p.footnote {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 80%; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +p.transnote {text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +p.intro {font-size: 90% ; + text-indent: -5% ; + margin-left: 5% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +p.quote {text-indent: 4% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +p.finis { font-size: larger ; + text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sisters, by Kathleen Norris + +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: Sisters + +Author: Kathleen Norris + +Posting Date: May 21, 2013 [EBook #4947] +Release Date: January, 2004 +First Posted: April 3, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTERS *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3b"> +THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS +</p> + +<h1> +<br /><br /> +SISTERS +</h1> + +<p class="t3"> +VOLUME X +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TO +<br /> +FRANCES ROSE BENET +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + Dear mother of my mother's child, to you<br /> + The tribute brings not praise from me alone,<br /> + Still clings some grace of hers to what I do,<br /> + And the gift comes in her name, as my own.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap01"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER I +</h3> + +<p> +Cherry Strickland came in the door of the Strickland house, and shut it +behind her, and stood so, with her hands behind her on the knob, and +her slender body leaning forward, and her breath rising and falling on +deep, ecstatic breaths. It was May in California, she was just +eighteen, and for twenty-one minutes she had been engaged to be married. +</p> + +<p> +She hardly knew why, after that last farewell to Martin, she had run so +swiftly up the path, and why she had flashed into the house, and closed +the door with such noiseless haste. There was nothing to run for! But +it was as if she feared that the joy within her might escape into the +moonlight night that was so perfumed with lilacs and the scent of wet +woods. In this new happiness of hers a fear was already mingled, a +sweet fear, truly, and a delicious fear, but she had never feared +anything before in her life. She was afraid now that it was all too +wonderful to be true, that she would awaken in the morning to find it +only a dream, that she would somehow fall short of Martin's +ideal--somehow fail him--somehow turn all this magic of moonshine and +kisses into ashes and heartbreak. +</p> + +<p> +She was a miser with her treasure, already; she wanted to fly with it, +and to hide it away, and to test its reality in secret, alone. She had +come running in from the wonderland down by the gate, just for this, +just to prove to herself that it would not vanish in the +commonplaceness of the shabby hall, would not disappear before the +everyday contact of everyday things. +</p> + +<p> +There was moonlight here, too, falling in clear squares on the stairway +landing, white and mysterious and bewitching, but on the other side of +the hall was wholesome, cheerful lamplight creeping in a warm streak +under the sitting-room door. +</p> + +<p> +Dad was in the sitting room, with the girls. The doctor's house was +full of girls. Anne, his niece, was twenty-four; Alix, Cherry's sister, +three years younger--how staid and unmarried and undesired they seemed +to-night to panting and glowing and glorified eighteen! Anne, with +Alix's erratic help, kept house for her uncle, and was supposed to keep +a sharp eye on Cherry, too. But she hadn't been sharp enough to keep +Martin Lloyd from asking her to marry him, exulted Cherry, as she stood +breathless and laughing in the dark hallway. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry had never had any other home than this shabby brown bungalow, +and she knew every inch of the hall, even without light to see it. She +knew the faded rugs, and the study door that swallowed up her father +every day, and the table where Alix had put a great bowl of buttercups, +and the glass-paned door at the back through which the doctor's girls +had looked out at many a frosty morning, and red sunset, and +sun-steeped summer afternoon. But even the old hall had seemed +transformed to-night, lighted with a beauty quite new, scented with an +immortal sweetness. +</p> + +<p> +Hong came out of the dining room; the varnished buttercups twinkled in +a sudden flood of light. He had come to put a folded tablecloth into +the old wardrobe that did for a sideboard, under the stairs. Cherry, +descending to earth, smiled at him, and crossed the hall to the +sitting-room door. +</p> + +<p> +An older woman might have gone upstairs, to dream alone of her new joy, +but Cherry thought that it would be "fun" to join the family, and "act +as if nothing had happened!" She was only a child, after all. +</p> + +<p> +Consciously or unconsciously, they had all tried to keep her a child, +these three who looked up to smile at her as she came in. One of them, +rosy, gray-headed, magnificent at sixty, was her father, whose +favourite she knew she was. He held out his hand to her without closing +the book that was in the other hand, and drew her to the wide arm of +his chair, where she settled herself with her soft young body resting +against him, her slim ankles crossed, and her cheek dropped against his +thick silver hair. +</p> + +<p> +Alix was reading, and dreamily scratching her ankle as she read; she +was a tall, awkward girl, younger far at twenty-one than Cherry was at +eighteen, pretty in a gipsyish way, untidy as to hair, with round black +eyes, high, thin cheek-bones marked with scarlet, and a wide, humorous +mouth that was somehow droll in its expression even when she was angry +or serious. She was rarely angry; she was unexacting, good-humoured, +preferring animals to people, and unconventional in speech and manner. +Her father and Anne sometimes discussed her anxiously; they confessed +that they were rather fearful for Alix. For Cherry, neither one had +ever had a disquieting thought. +</p> + +<p> +Anne, smiling demurely over her white sewing, was a small, +prettily-made little woman, with silky hair trimly braided, and a +rather pale, small face with charming and regular features. She was not +considered exactly pretty; perhaps the contrast with Cherry's unusual +beauty was rather hard on both the older girls; but she was so +perfectly capable in her little groove, so busy, contented, and +necessary in the doctor's household, that it was rather a habit with +all their friends to praise Anne. Anne had "admirers," too, Cherry +reflected, looking at her to-night, but neither she nor Alix had ever +been engaged--engaged--engaged! +</p> + +<p> +"Aren't you home early?" said Doctor Strickland, rubbing his cheek +against his youngest daughter's cheek in sleepy content. He was never +quite happy unless all three girls were in his sight, but for this girl +he had always felt an especial protecting fondness. It seemed only +yesterday that Cherry, a rosy-cheeked sturdy little girl in a checked +gingham apron, had been trotting off to school; to him it was yesterday +that she had been a squarely-built baby, digging in the garden paths, +and sniffing at the border pinks. He had followed her exquisite +childhood with more than a father's usual devotion, perhaps because she +really had been an exceptionally endearing child, perhaps because she +had been given him, a tiny crying thing in a blanket, to fill the great +gap her mother's going had left in his heart. He had sympathized with +her microscopic cut fingers, he had smiled into her glowing, damp +little face when she stuttered to him long tales of bad doggies and big +'ticks; he had brought her "jacks" and paper-dolls and hair ribbons; he +loved the diminutive femininity of the creature; she was all a woman, +even at three. Alix he proudly called his "boy"; Alix used hair ribbons +to tie up her dogs, and demanded hip boots and an air rifle and got +them, too, and used them, but when he took Alix in his arms she was apt +to bump his nose violently with her hard young head, to break his +glasses, or at best to wriggle herself free. Little Cherry, however, +was 'fraid of dogs, she told her father, and of guns, and she would +curl up in his arms for happy half-hours, with her gold curls sprayed +against his shoulder, and her soft little hand tucked into his own. +</p> + +<p> +"Mr. Lloyd had to take the nine o'clock train," Cherry answered her +father dreamily, "and he and Peter walked home with me!" She did not +add that Peter had left them at his own turning, a quarter of a mile +away. +</p> + +<p> +"I thought he wasn't going to be at Mrs. North's for dinner," Anne +observed quietly, in the silence. She had been informally asked to the +Norths' for dinner that evening herself, and had declined for no other +reason than that attractive Martin Lloyd was presumably not to be there. +</p> + +<p> +"He wasn't," Cherry said. "He thought he had to go to town at six. I +just stopped in to give them Dad's message, and they teased me to stay. +You knew where I was, didn't you--Dad?" she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +"Mrs. North telephoned about six, and said you were there, but she +didn't say that Mr. Lloyd was," Anne said, with a faint hint of +discontent in her tone. +</p> + +<p> +Alix fixed her bright, mischievous eyes upon the two, and suspended her +reading for a moment. Alix's attitude toward the opposite sex was one +of calm contempt, outwardly. But she had made rather an exception of +Martin Lloyd, and had recently had a conversation with him on the +subject of sensible, platonic friendships between men and women. At the +mention of his name she looked up, remembering this talk with a little +thrill. +</p> + +<p> +His name had thrilled Anne, too, although she betrayed no sign of it as +she sat quietly matching silks. In fact, all three of the girls were +quite ready to fall in love with young Lloyd, if two of them had not +actually done so. +</p> + +<p> +He was a newcomer in the little town, a tall, presentable fellow, ready +with laughter, ready with words, and always more than ready for +flirtation. He admitted that he liked to flirt; his gay daring had +quite carried Anne's citadel, and had even gained Alix's grudging +response. Cherry had not been at home when Martin first appeared in +Mill Valley, and the older girls had written her, visiting friends in +Napa, that she must come and meet the new man. +</p> + +<p> +Martin was a mining engineer: he had been employed in a Nevada mine, +but was visiting his cousin in the valley now before going to a new +position in June. In its informal fashion, Mill Valley had entertained +him; he had tramped to the big forest five miles away with the +Stricklands, and there had been a picnic to the mountain-top, everybody +making the hard climb except Peter Joyce, who was a trifle lame, and +perhaps a little lazy as well, and who usually rode an old horse, with +the lunch in saddle-bags at each side. Alix formulated her theories of +platonic friendships on these walks; Anne dreamed a foolish, happy +dream. Girls did marry, men did take wives to themselves, dreamed Anne; +it would be unspeakably sweet, but it would be no miracle! +</p> + +<p> +And Anne, always busy and happy and helpful, was more so than ever, +unpacking the delicious lunch, capably arranging for everybody's +comfort and pleasure, looking up with innocent surprise when Martin +bent over her as she fussed and rearranged baskets. +</p> + +<p> +"I thought YOU were gathering wood!" +</p> + +<p> +"Did you, indeed? Let the other fellows do that. I shan't be here +forever, and I'm privileged." +</p> + +<p> +"Would you like me to give you something else to do?" +</p> + +<p> +"No, ma'am, I'm quite happy, thank you!" +</p> + +<p> +Not much in the words to remember, truly, but the tone and the look +went straight to Anne's close-guarded heart. Every time she looked up +at the mountain, rearing its dark crest above the little valley, they +had come back to her. +</p> + +<p> +That was all several weeks ago, now. It was just after that mountain +picnic that Cherry had come home; on a Sunday, as it chanced, that was +her eighteenth birthday, and on which Martin and his aunt were coming +to dinner. Alix had marked the occasion by wearing a loose velvet gown +in which she fancied herself; Anne had conscientiously decorated the +table, had seen to it that there was ice-cream, and chicken, and all +the accessories that make a Sunday dinner in the country a national +institution. Cherry had done nothing helpful. +</p> + +<p> +On the contrary, she had disgraced herself and infuriated Hong by +deciding to make fudge the last minute. Hong had finally relegated her +to the laundry, and it was from this limbo that Martin, laughing +joyously, extricated her, when, sticky and repentant, she had called +for help. It was Martin who untied the checked brown apron, +disentangling from the strings the silky gold tendrils that were +blowing over Cherry's white neck, and Martin who opened the door for +her sugary fingers, and Martin who watched the flying little figure out +of sight with a prolonged "Whew-w-w!" of utter astonishment. The child +was a beauty. +</p> + +<p> +But if she was beautiful when flushed and cross and sticky, there was +no word for her when she presently came demurely downstairs, her +exquisite little red mouth still pouting, her bright head still +drooping sulkily, but her wonderful eyes glinting mischief, and the +dark, tumbled apron replaced by thin white ruffles that began at +Cherry's shoulders and ended above her ankles. Soft, firm round chin, +straight little nose, blue eyes ringed with babyish shadows; Martin +found them all adorable, as was every inch of the slender, beautifully +made little body, the brown warm hand, the clear, childish forehead, +the square little foot in a shining slipper. +</p> + +<p> +Her eighteenth birthday! He learned that she had just put up her hair, +indeed, after dinner, her father made her tumble it down in a golden +mop again. "Can't lose my last girl, you know," he said to Mrs. North, +Martin's aunt, seriously. Martin had been shown her birthday gifts: +books and a silver belt buckle and a gold pen and stationery and +handkerchiefs. A day or two later she had had another gift; had opened +the tiny Shreve box with a sudden hammering at her heart, with a +presage of delight. She had found a silver-topped candy jar, and the +card of Mr. John Martin Lloyd, and under the name, in tiny letters, the +words "O fudge!" The girls laughed over this nonsense appreciatively, +but there was more than laughter in Cherry's heart. +</p> + +<p> +From that moment the world was changed. Her father, her sister, her +cousin had second place, now. Cherry had put out her innocent little +hand, and had opened the gate, and had passed through it into the +world. That hour was the beginning, and it had led her surely, +steadily, to the other hour to-night when she had been kissed, and had +kissed in return. +</p> + +<p> +Nobody dreamed it, she told herself with innocent exultation, looking +at Alix, sunk into her chair ungracefully, and at Anne, peacefully +sewing. They thought of her as a child--she, who was engaged to be +married! +</p> + +<p> +"So--we walk home with young men?" mused the doctor, smiling. "Look +here, girls, this little Miss Muffet will be cutting you both out with +that young man, if you're not careful!" +</p> + +<p> +Alix, deep in her story, did not hear him, but Anne smiled faintly, and +faintly frowned as she shook her head. She considered Cherry +sufficiently precocious without Uncle Lee's ill-considered tolerance. +Anne had often told him that Cherry was the "pink-and-white type" that +would attract "boys" soon enough without any encouragement from him. +But he persisted in regarding her as nothing more than a captivating +baby! +</p> + +<p> +He would have had them always children, this tender, simple, innocent +Doctor Strickland. He was in many ways a child himself. He had never +made money in his profession; he and his wife and the two tiny girls +had had a hard enough struggle sometimes. Anne and her own father had +joined the family eight years ago, in the same year that the Strickland +Patent Fire Extinguisher, over which the doctor had been puttering for +years, had been sold. It did not sell, as his neighbours believed, for +a million dollars, but for perhaps one tenth of that sum. It was +enough, and more than enough, whatever it was. After Anne's father died +it meant that the doctor could live on in the brown house under the +redwoods, with his girls, reading, fussing with a new invention, +walking, consulting with Anne, laughing at Alix, and spoiling his +youngest-born. +</p> + +<p> +The house was shingled, low, framed in wide porches, smelling within +and without of the sweet woods about it. Here the Stricklands weathered +the cold, damp winters, when the trees dripped and the creeks swelled, +and here they watched the first emerald of spring breaking through the +loam of a thousand autumns; here they hunted for iris and wild lilac in +April, and hung Japanese lanterns through the long, warm summers. It +was a perfect life for the old man; it was only lately that he begun +uneasily to suspect that they would some day want something more, that +they would some day tire of empty forest and blowing mountain ridge, +and go away from the shadow of Mt. Tamalpais, and into the world. +</p> + +<p> +Anne, now--was she beginning to fancy this young Lloyd? Doctor +Strickland was surprised with the fervour with which he repudiated the +thought. Anne had been admired, she must go to her own home some day. +But her uncle hoped that it would be a neighbouring home; this young +engineer, who had drifted already into a dozen different and distant +places, was not the man for staid little Anne. He was twenty-eight +years old, but it was not the discrepancy in years that mattered. The +doctor had himself been twelve years older than his wife. No, it was +something less tangible-- +</p> + +<p> +"What did you want to see Mr. Lloyd about to-morrow, Dad?" Cherry +interrupted his thoughts to ask. +</p> + +<p> +"The rose vine!" her father reminded her. +</p> + +<p> +"You'll never get that back on the roof!" Alix looked up to assure him +discouragingly. "I told you, when you were pruning it," she added +vivaciously, "that you were cutting too deep. No--you knew it all! Now +the first wind brings it down all over the place, and you get exactly +what you deserve!" +</p> + +<p> +Her tone was less harsh than her words; indeed, it was the tone he +loved from her, that of a devoted but long-suffering mother. She came +to Cherry's hassock, and dropped on it, and rested her untidy head +against his knee. +</p> + +<p> +"Anne aided and abetted me!" said the doctor meekly. +</p> + +<p> +"To the extent of handing you your shears!" Anne said promptly. +</p> + +<p> +"No, but really you know, Dad, you were a pig-headed little creature to +do that!" Alix said musically. "You might just as well cut it down at +the roots and plant another double banksia." +</p> + +<p> +"I rather thought that Lloyd might have some idea of a tackle--or a +derrick or something--" submitted her father vaguely. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, if anybody can--" Anne conceded, laughing. "What did he say +about coming over, Cherry?" +</p> + +<p> +But Cherry had not been listening, and the conversation was reviewed +for her benefit. She remarked, between two rending yawns, that Mr. +Lloyd was coming over to-morrow at ten o'clock, and Peter, too-- +</p> + +<p> +"Peter won't be much good!" Alix commented. Cherry looked at her +reproachfully. +</p> + +<p> +"You're awfully mean to Peter, lately!" she protested. Her father gave +her a shrewd look, with his good-night kiss, and immediately afterward +both the younger girls dragged their way up to bed. +</p> + +<p> +Alix and Cherry shared a bare, woody-smelling room tucked away under +brown eaves. The walls were of raw pine, the latticed windows, in +bungalow fashion, opened into the fragrant darkness of the night. The +beds were really bunks, and above her bunk each girl had an extra +berth, for occasional guests. There was scant prettiness in the room, +and yet it was full of purity and charm. The girls sat upon their beds +while they were undressing, and plunged upon their knees on the bare +pine floor and rested their elbows upon the faded patchwork quilts +while they said their prayers. Mill Valley was so healthful a little +mountain village that among her two thousand residents there was only +one doctor, the old man who sat by the fire downstairs, and he had +formally retired from general practice. The girls, like all their +neighbours, were hardy, bred to cold baths, long walks, simple hours, +and simple food. In the soft Western climate they left their bedroom +windows open the year round; they liked to wake to winter damp and fog, +and go downstairs with blue finger-tips and chattering teeth, to warm +themselves with breakfast and the fire. +</p> + +<p> +So Alix said nothing when Cherry went to the window to-night, and knelt +at it, looking out into the redwoods, and breathing the piney air. In +the silence of the little room the girls could hear a swollen creek +rushing; rich, loamy odours drifted in from the forest that had been +soaked with long April rains. Cherry saw a streak of light under the +door of Hong's cabin, a hundred yards away; there was no moon, it was +blackness unbroken under the trees. The season was late, but the girls +felt with a rush of delight that summer was with them at last; the air +was soft and warm, and there was a general sense of being freed from +the winter's wetness and heaviness. +</p> + +<p> +Alix rolled herself in a gray army blanket, and was asleep in some +sixty seconds. But Cherry felt that she was floating in seas of new joy +and utter delight, and that she would never be sleepy again. +</p> + +<p> +Downstairs Anne and the doctor sat staidly on, the man dreaming with a +knotted forehead, the girl sewing. Presently she ran a needle through +her fine white work with seven tiny stitches, folded it, and put her +thimble into a case that hung from her orderly workbag with a long +ribbon. +</p> + +<p> +"Wait a minute, Anne," said the doctor, as she straightened herself to +rise. "This young Lloyd, now--what do YOU think of him?" +</p> + +<p> +She widened demure blue eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"Should you be sorry if I--liked him, Uncle Lee?" she smiled. +</p> + +<p> +The old man rumpled his silver hair restlessly. +</p> + +<p> +"No-o," he said, a little ruefully. "I suppose it'll be some man some +day, my dear. I've been thinking--even little Cherry seems to be +growing up!" +</p> + +<p> +Anne, who modelled her deportment somewhat upon the conduct of Esther +in "Bleak House," came to the hassock at his knee, and sat there, +looking up at him with bright affection and respect. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry's only a child," she assured him, "and Alix will not be ready +to give her heart to any man for years to come! But I'm twenty-four, +Uncle. And sometimes I feel ready to--to try my own wings!" +</p> + +<p> +He smiled at her absently; he was thinking of her mother, an +articulate, academic, resolute woman, of whom he had never been fond. +</p> + +<p> +"That's the way the wind blows, eh?" he asked kindly. +</p> + +<p> +Anne widened her pretty eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"Well--you see how much he's here! You see the flowers and books and +notes. I'm not the sort of girl to wear my heart on my sleeve," Anne, +who was fond of small conservational tags, assured him merrily. "But +there must be some fire where there's so much smoke!" she ended. +</p> + +<p> +"You're not sure, my dear?" he asked, after some thought. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, no!" she answered. "It's just a fancy that persists in coming and +going. You know, Uncle Lee," Anne pursued, confidentially, "I've always +had rather a high ideal of marriage. I've always said that the man I +would marry must be a big man--oh, I don't mean only physically! I mean +morally, mentally--a man among men!" +</p> + +<p> +"And you think young Lloyd--answers that description, eh?" +</p> + +<p> +"I think he does, Uncle Lee," she answered seriously. And immediately +afterward she got to her feet, saying brightly, "Well! we mustn't take +this too gravely--yet. It was only that I wanted to be open and +above-board with you, Uncle, from the beginning. That's the only honest +way." +</p> + +<p> +"That's wise and right!" her uncle answered, in the kindly, absent tone +he had used to them as children, a tone he was apt to use to Anne when +she was in her highest mood, and one she rather resented. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry, now--" he asked, detaining her for a moment. "She--you don't +think that perhaps Peter admires her?" +</p> + +<p> +"PETER!" Anne echoed amazedly, and stood thinking. +</p> + +<p> +Peter was more than thirty years old, thin, scholarly, something of a +solitary, the sweet, dreamy, affectionate neighbour who had shared the +girls' lives for the past ten years. Cherry had bullied Peter since her +babyhood, ruined his piano with sticky fingers, trampled his rose-beds, +coaxed him into asking her father to let her sit up for dinner. For +some reason she could not, or would not, define, Anne liked the idea of +Cherry and Peter falling in love-- +</p> + +<p> +"Somehow one doesn't think of Peter as marrying any one--" she said +slowly, still trying to grasp the thought. "He's so--self-sufficient," +she added, shaking her head. "You--you WOULDN'T like that, Uncle?" +</p> + +<p> +"Peter is a dear fellow," the doctor mused. "But Cherry--why, she's +barely eighteen! He--" The old man hesitated, began again: "I suppose +there's no reason why Peter shouldn't kiss her, in a--brotherly sort of +way?" he submitted doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +"Did he kiss her?" Anne exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know that he did," Cherry's father said hastily. +</p> + +<p> +"But what made you think he did?" the girl persisted. +</p> + +<p> +"Just a fancy," he assured her. "Just an old father's fear that she is +growing up too fast!" +</p> + +<p> +"Because we all, and you especially, spoil her," Anne reminded him, +smiling. "Peter," she added thoughtfully, "has kissed us all, now and +then!" She stooped for a dutiful good-night kiss, and was gone. And as +she went, lightly and swiftly across the hall, up the stairway with her +shoulders erect, and methodically and prettily moved about her brushing +and folding and disrobing, she saw herself engaged to be married, saw +herself veiled and mystical in white, on her Uncle's arm, heard the old +neighbours and friends saying that little Anne Strickland had gone to +her own home, and had won the love of a fine man. +</p> + +<p> +Downstairs, the doctor sat on, thinking, and his face was grave. He was +thinking of little Cherry's goodnight kiss, half an hour ago. She had +rested against his arm, and he had held her there, but what had been +the thoughts behind the blue eyes so near his own? Perhaps Anne was +right--perhaps Anne was right. But he realized with a great rush of +fear that some man had kissed Cherry to-night, had held her against a +tobacco-scented coat, and that the girl was a woman, and an awakened +woman at that. Cherry--kissed a man! Her father's heart winced away +from the thought. +</p> + +<p> +Young Lloyd and Peter had walked home with her. But if Anne was right +in her maidenly suspicions of Lloyd's intentions, then it must have +been Peter who surprised little Cherry with a sudden embrace. Lloyd had +been hurrying for a train, too; the case looked clear for Peter. +</p> + +<p> +And as he came to his conclusions, a certain relief crept into the old +man's heart. Peter was an odd fellow; he was ten years too old for the +child. But Peter was a lover of books and gardens and woods and music, +after all, and Peter's father and this old man musing by the fire had +been "Lee" and "Paul" to each other since boyhood. Peter might give +Cherry a kiss as innocently as a brother; in any case, Peter would wait +for her, would be all consideration and tenderness when he did win her. +</p> + +<p> +"But I think perhaps she might go down to the San Jose school for half +a term," her father reflected. "Six months there did wonders for Alix. +No use precipitating things--the next few years are pretty important +for all the girls. We mustn't let her fancy that the first man who +turns her head with compliments is the right partner for life! Alix, +now--somehow she wasn't like Cherry, at eighteen." +</p> + +<p> +He smiled at a sudden memory of Alix, who was chicken-farming at that +age, and generally unpleasantly redolent of incubators, chopped feed, +and mire. He seemed to remember Alix shouting that if Peter Joyce was +going to LIVE in their house, she would move somewhere else! Cherry was +different. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, he reflected fearfully, was as pretty as her mother had been at +eighteen, with the same rounded chin and apricot cheeks, and the same +shadowed innocent blue eyes with a film of corn-coloured hair blown +across them. She had the strange, the indefinable quality that without +words, almost without glances, draws youth toward youth, draws +admiration and passion, draws life and all its pain. Her father for the +first time to-night formulated in his heart the thought that she might +be happily married-- +</p> + +<p> +Married--nonsense! Why, what did she know of life, of submission and +courage and sacrifice? At the first strain, at the first real test, she +would want to run home to her Daddy again, to "stop playing"--! It +would be years, many years, before the snowy frills, and the pale gold +head, and the firm, brown little hand would be ready for that! +</p> + +<p> +Not many hours after he went slowly up to bed morning began to creep +into the little valley. The redwoods turned gray, and then dark green, +the fog stirred, and a first shaft of bright sunlight struck across a +shoulder of the hills, and pierced the shadows about the brown +bungalow. Alix, at her early bath, heard quail calling, and looked out +to see the last of the fog vanishing at eight o'clock, and to get a wet +rush of fragrance from the Persian lilac, blooming this year for the +first time. At half-past eight she came out into the garden, to find +her father somewhat ruefully studying the tumbled ruins of the yellow +banksia rose. The garden was still wet, but warming fast; she picked a +plume of dark and perfumed heliotrope, and began to fasten it in his +coat lapel while she kissed him. +</p> + +<p> +"We'll never get that back on the roof, my dear boy," Alix said +maternally. +</p> + +<p> +Her father pursed his lips, shook his head doubtfully. The rose, a +short, week ago, had been spreading fan-like branches well toward the +ridge-pole, a story and a half above their heads. But the great wind of +yestereve that had ended the spring and brought in the summer had +dragged it from its place and flung it, a jumble of emerald leaves and +sweet clusters of creamy blossoms, across the path and the steps of the +porch. Alix looked up at the outward curve of the reversed branches, +bent almost to the splitting point in the unfamiliar direction, and +whistled. She tentatively tugged at a loose spray, and stood biting her +thumb. +</p> + +<p> +"Why it should have kept its place for fifteen years and then suddenly +flopped, is a mystery to me!" she observed resentfully. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, the truth is," her father confessed, "you were quite right last +night. When I pruned it, a week ago, I may have undermined it." +</p> + +<p> +"You never will listen to reason!" his daughter remarked absently, her +attention distracted by the setter puppy who came clumsily gambolling +toward her. "Hello, old Bumpydoodles!" she added, with rich affection, +kissing the dog's silky head, and burying both hands in his feathered +collar. "Hello, old Buck!" +</p> + +<p> +"Alexandra, for heaven's sake stop handling that brute!" said Peter +Joyce disgustedly, coming up the path. "I dare say you've not had your +breakfast, either. Go wash your hands! 'Morning, Doctor!" +</p> + +<p> +Father and daughter turned to smile upon him, a tall, lean man, with a +young face and a finely groomed head, and with touches of premature +silver at his temples. He was very much at home here, had been their +closest friend for many years. +</p> + +<p> +He was a bachelor, just entering his thirties, a fastidious, critical, +exacting man by reputation, but showing his best side to the +Stricklands. They had a vague idea that he was rich, according to their +modest standard, but he apparently had no extravagant tastes, and lived +as quietly, or more quietly, than they did. He had a brown cabin, up on +the mountain, where two or three Portuguese boys and an old, fat +Chinese cook managed his affairs, and he sometimes spoke of friends at +the club, or brought two or three men home with him for a visit. But +for the most part he liked solitude, books, music, dogs, and his +fireside. The old doctor's one social enjoyment was in visiting Peter, +and the younger man went to no other place so steadily as he came to +the old house under the redwoods. +</p> + +<p> +The girls accepted him unquestioningly, sometimes resenting his frank +criticism, sometimes grateful for the entertaining he delighted to do +for them, but most often ignoring him, as if he had been an uncle whose +place and standing in the domestic circle was unquestioned, but who did +not really enter into their young plans and lives. He was whimsically, +good-naturedly disapproving of Alexandra, and he frankly did not like +Anne, but he had always been especially indulgent to Cherry, and had +taken the subject of Cherry's schooling and development very seriously. +And Cherry treated him, in return, as if she had been his demure and +mischievous and affectionate daughter. +</p> + +<p> +"'Morning, Peter!" said Doctor Strickland now, smiling at him. "Have +you had yours?" +</p> + +<p> +"My house," said Mr. Joyce fastidiously, "is a well-managed place." +</p> + +<p> +"Of course," Alix said, panting from her welcome to the dog, and +laughing at the newcomer without resentment, "of course it is, for the +President Emeritus of the Maiden Ladies' Guild is running it!" +</p> + +<p> +"Don't be insulting," Peter answered, in the same mood. "Say," he +added, pursing his lips to whistle, as he looked at the rose tree, "did +Tuesday's wind do that?" +</p> + +<p> +"Tuesday's wind and Dad," Alix answered. "Will it go back, Peter?" +</p> + +<p> +"I--I don't know!" he mused, walking slowly about the wreck. "If we had +a lever down here, and some fellow on the roof with a rope, maybe." +</p> + +<p> +"Mr. Lloyd is coming over!" Alix announced. Peter nodded absently, but +the mention of Martin Lloyd reminded him that they had all dined at his +house on the very evening when the mysterious gale had commenced, and +with interest he asked: +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry catch cold coming home Tuesday night?" +</p> + +<p> +"No; she squeezed in between Dad and me, and was as warm as toast!" +Alix answered casually. "How'd you like Mr. Lloyd?" she added. +</p> + +<p> +"Nice fellow!" Peter answered. Alix grinned. She had before this +accused Peter of violent partisanship with his own sex. He criticized +women severely; the Strickland girls had often been angry and resentful +at his comments upon the insincerity, extravagance, and ignorance of +their own sex, but with Peter, all men were worthy of respect, until +otherwise proved. +</p> + +<p> +"He's awfully nice," Alix agreed. +</p> + +<p> +"Who is he?" Peter asked curiously. "Where are his people and all that?" +</p> + +<p> +"His people live in Portland," the girl answered. "He's a mining +engineer, and he's waiting now to be called to El Nido; he's to be at a +mine there. He's lots of fun--when you know him, really!" +</p> + +<p> +"Talking of the new Prince Charming, of course," Anne said, joining +them, and linking an arm in her Uncle's and in Alix's arm. "Don't bring +that puppy in, Alix, please! Breakfast, Uncle Lee. Come and have +another cup of coffee, Peter!" +</p> + +<p> +"Prince Charming, eh?" Peter echoed thoughtfully, as they all turned +toward a delicious drift of the odour of bacon and coffee, and crossed +the porch to the dining room. "I was going down for the mail, but now +I'll have to stay and see this rose matter through! Thanks, Anne, but +I'll watch you." +</p> + +<p> +"Afraid of getting fatter?" Alix speculated, shaking out her napkin. +"You ARE fatter," she added, with a calm conviction. +</p> + +<p> +"Do you always say the thing that will give the most offence?" Peter +asked, annoyed. "Where's Cherry?" he added, glancing about. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry answered the question herself by trailing in in a Japanese +wrapper, and beginning to drink her coffee with bare, slender arms +resting on the table. Nobody protested, the adored youngest was usually +given her way. Alix's indifference to the niceties of her toilet had +been seriously combated, years ago, but Cherry was so young, and so +pretty in any dress or undress, that it was impossible to regard her +little lapses with any gravity. Moreover, the family realized perfectly +that Alix would have clipped her thick hair, and taken to bloomers or +knickerbockers outright, at the slightest encouragement, and would +gladly have breakfasted in a wrapper, or in her petticoats, or while +about the woods with her dogs, whereas nobody could know Cherry and not +know that every weakness of which the feminine heart is capable, for +frills and toilet waters, creams and laces, was dormant under the +childish negligence. +</p> + +<p> +"I heard you all laughing, under the window and it--woke--me--up!" +Cherry said dreamily. +</p> + +<p> +"It seems to me," Anne, who had been eying her uneasily, said lightly, +"that someone I know is getting pretty old to come downstairs in that +rig when strangers are here!" +</p> + +<p> +"It seems to me this is just as decent as lots of things--bathing +suits, for instance!" Cherry returned instantly, gathering the robe +about her, and giving Anne a resentful glance over her blue cup. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter, are you a stranger?" Alix said. "If Peter's a stranger," she +added animatedly, "what is an intimate friend? Peter walks through this +house at all hours; you can't wash your hair or do a little ironing +without having Peter under your feet; he borrows money from me; he +bullies Hong about wasting butter--" +</p> + +<p> +"Also you borrow money from me, my child, don't forget that," Peter +interrupted serenely, peeling an apple. "I don't come to see YOU, Alix." +</p> + +<p> +"I have a rope somewhere--" the doctor ruminated. "Where did I put that +long rope--what did I have it for, in the first place--" +</p> + +<p> +"You had it to guy the apple tree," Alix reminded him. "Don't you +remember you got a regular ship's cable to tie that tree, and it never +worked? The tree that died after all--" +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, yes!" said her father, his attentive face brightening. "Ah, yes! +Now WHERE is that rope?" But even as Alix observed that she had seen it +somewhere, and advanced a tentative guess as to the cellar, his eyes +fell upon Cherry, and went from Cherry's absorbed face--for she was +dreaming over her breakfast--to Peter, and he wondered if Peter HAD +kissed her. +</p> + +<p> +"Come on, let's get at it!" Alix exclaimed with relish. She loved a +struggle of any description, had prepared for this one with sleeves +rolled to the elbows, and had put on heavy shoes and her briefest +skirt. "Come on, Sweetums," she added, to the dog, who had somehow +wormed his way into the dining room, and was beating the floor with an +obsequious tail. She caught his forepaws, and he whipped his beautiful +tail between his legs, and looked about with agonized eyes while she +dragged him through a clumsy dance. "He's the darlingest pup we ever +had!" Alix stated to Cherry, who was departing for the upper regions +and a complete costume. +</p> + +<p> +"He needs a bath," Anne observed coldly, and Peter's abrupt shout of +laughter made Alix flush angrily. +</p> + +<p> +"Bring your cigarette out here, Peter," the old doctor said, crossing +the garden to look in the abandoned greenhouse for his rope. "We're in +no hurry," he said. "We may as well wait until Lloyd comes along; the +fellow's arms are like flails. You---" the old man opened a reluctant +door, peered into a glassed space filled with muddy shelves and empty +flower-pots and spiderwebs. "It's not here," he stated. Then he began +again, "You brought Cherry home last night?" he asked. +</p> + +<p> +"As a matter of fact, I didn't," Peter answered, in his quick, precise +tones. "I came with Lloyd and Cherry as far as the bridge, then I cut +up the hill. Why?" he added sharply. "What's up?" +</p> + +<p> +"Nothing's up," Doctor Strickland said slowly. "But I think that Lloyd +admires--or is beginning to admire--her," he said. +</p> + +<p> +"Who--Cherry!" Peter exclaimed, with distaste and incredulity in his +tone. +</p> + +<p> +"You don't think so?" the doctor, looking at him wistfully, asked +eagerly. +</p> + +<p> +"Why, certainly not!" Peter said quickly. "Certainly not," he added, +frowning, with his eyes narrowed, and his look fixed upon the vista of +woodland. +</p> + +<p> +"I had a fancy that he might have been putting notions into her head," +her father said, anxious to be reassured. +</p> + +<p> +"But--great Scott!" Peter said, his face very red, "she's much younger +than Anne and Alix--" +</p> + +<p> +"It doesn't always go by that," the doctor suggested. +</p> + +<p> +"No, I know it doesn't," Peter answered in his quick, annoyed fashion. +</p> + +<p> +"I should be sorry," Cherry's father admitted. +</p> + +<p> +"Sorry!" Peter echoed impatiently. "But it's quite out of the question, +of course! It's quite out of the question. You mustn't--we mustn't--let +ourselves get scared about the first man that looks at her. She--she +wouldn't consider him for an instant," he suddenly decided in great +satisfaction. "You mustn't forget that she has something to do with it! +Very fastidious, Cherry. She's not like other girls!" +</p> + +<p> +"That's true--that's true!" Doctor Strickland agreed, in great relief. +They turned back toward the garden, in time to meet Alix and several +dogs streaming across the clearing. Over the girl's shoulder was coiled +the great rope; she leaped various logs and small bushes as she came, +and the dogs barked madly and leaped with her. Breathless, she stumbled +and fell into her father's arms, and both men had the same thought, one +that made them smile upon her tomboyishness indulgently: "If this is +twenty-one--eighteen is three long years younger and less responsible!" +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap02"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER II +</h3> + +<p> +Immediately they gathered by the fallen rose vine, all talking and +disputing at once. Alix and the dogs added only noise to the confusion; +the men debated, measured, and doubted; Anne, busy with household +duties, came and went smilingly. About them stretched the forest, +wrapped in the summer morning stillness that is really compounded of a +thousand happy sounds. There was no fog now; warm spokes of sunshine +fell brightly into the dim, glowing heart of the woods; bees and birds +murmured on short journeys; aromatic sweetness drifted on the air. +</p> + +<p> +They had known a thousand such mornings, the doctor and his girls, +still, exquisite, happy, dedicated to some absurd undertaking. They had +built chicken pens, they had dammed or cleared the creek, they had +felled bay-trees, and lopped the lower branches of the redwoods, they +had built roaring bonfires, or painted the porch floor, and many times +they had roasted chops or potatoes at the brick oven, and feasted +royally in the open forest. +</p> + +<p> +A light rope was tied; an experimental tug broke it like a string, +tumbling Alix violently in a sitting position, and precipitating her +father into a loamy bed. Anne, who was bargaining with a Chinese fruit +vendor frankly interested in their undertaking, had called that she +would help them in a second, when behind Alix, who was still sitting on +the ground, another voice offered help. +</p> + +<p> +A young man had come into the doctor's garden; work was stopped for a +few minutes while they welcomed Martin Lloyd. +</p> + +<p> +He was tall and fair, broad, but with not an ounce of extra weight, +with brown eyes always laughing, and a ready friendliness always in +evidence. He was dressed becomingly to-day, in a brown army shirt open +at the throat, and shabby golf trousers that met his thick woollen +stockings at the knee. Anne's heart gave a throb of approval as she +studied him; Alix flushed furiously, scowled a certain boyish approval; +Cherry had not come down. +</p> + +<p> +"Can you help us?" The doctor echoed his question doubtfully. "I don't +know that it can be done!" he admitted. +</p> + +<p> +"This shameless old man has just confessed that he gouged the heart out +of the poor tree a week ago," Alix said, getting to her feet. "That's +the first use he put his birthday knife to! And Anne stood here and +abetted him, as far as I can find out!" +</p> + +<p> +"How you garble things, Alix!" Anne said, giving her hand to Martin. "I +came out here to find my uncle busily pruning and chopping the dead +underwood away, but I had no more to do with it than you had!" +</p> + +<p> +"What's that you're eating--an apricot?" Martin said to Anne, in his +laughing way. "I was going to say that if it was a peach, you are a +cannibal!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, help!" Alix ejaculated, with a look of elaborate scorn. +</p> + +<p> +"No, but where were you last night?" Martin added in a lower tone when +he and Anne could speak unnoticed. The happy colour flooded her face. +</p> + +<p> +"I have to take care of my family SOMETIMES!" she reminded him +demurely. "Wasn't Cherry a good substitute?" +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry's adorable!" he agreed heartily. +</p> + +<p> +"Isn't she sweet?" Anne asked enthusiastically. "She's only a little +girl, really, but she's a little girl who is going to have a lot of +attention some day!" she added, in her most matronly manner. +</p> + +<p> +Martin did not answer, but turning briskly toward the doctor, he +devoted himself to the business in hand. Peter had climbed on an +inverted barrel, to inspect and advise. Alix dashed upstairs for nails +and hammer; the doctor whittled pegs; Martin measured the comparative +strength of ropes and branches with a judicial eye and hand. Anne +flitted about, suggesting, commenting, her pretty little head tipped to +one side. +</p> + +<p> +They were all deep in the first united tug, each person placed +carefully by the doctor, and guys for the rope driven at intervals +decided by Martin, when there was an interruption for Cherry's arrival +on the scene. With characteristic coquetry she did not approach, as the +others had, by means of the front porch and the garden path, but crept +from the study window into a veritable tunnel of green bloom, and came +crawling down it, as sweet and fragrant, as lovely and as fresh, as the +roses themselves. She wore a scant pink gingham that had been a dozen +times to the tub, and was faded and small; it might have been a regal +mantle and diadem without any further enhancing her extraordinary +beauty. Her bright head was hidden by a blue sunbonnet, assumed, she +explained later, because the thorns tangled her hair; but as, laughing +and smothered with roses, she crept into view, the sunbonnet slipped +back, and the lovely, flushed little face, with tendrils of gold +straying across the white forehead, and mischief gleaming in the blue, +blue eyes was framed only in loosened pale gold hair. +</p> + +<p> +Years afterward Alix remembered her so, as Martin Lloyd helped her to +spring free of the branches, and she stood laughing at their surprise +and still clinging to his hand. "The day we raised the rose tree" had a +place of its own in Alix's memory, as a time of carefree fun and +content, a time of perfume and sunshine--perhaps the last time of its +kind that any one of them was to know. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry looked at Martin daringly as she joined the labourers; her whole +being was thrilling to the excitement of his glance; she was hardly +conscious of what she was doing or saying. Under her father's direction +she tied ropes, presently was placed with her arms clasped tightly +about a great sheaf of vines, ready for the united tug. Martin came +close to her, in the general confusion. +</p> + +<p> +"How's my little sweetheart this morning?" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry looked up, her throat contracted, she looked down again, unable +to speak. She had been waiting for his first word; now that it had come +it seemed so far richer and sweeter than her wildest dream. +</p> + +<p> +"How can I see you a minute?" Martin murmured, snapping his big knife +shut. +</p> + +<p> +"I have to walk down for the mail--" stammered Cherry, conscious only +of Martin and herself. +</p> + +<p> +Both Peter and her father were watching her with an uneasiness and +suspicion that had sprung into being full-blown. Both men were asking +themselves what they knew of this strange young man who was suddenly a +part of their intimate little world. +</p> + +<p> +He was simply a man; not unusual in any apparent way. He was ready with +his words, fairly good-looking, clean and muscular, his evident lack of +polish in languages and letters atoned for by his quick wit, and by a +certain boyish artlessness and ingenuousness. He represented himself as +about to receive an excellent salary at the mine at El Nido, two +thousand a year, but also admitted cheerfully that he was always +"broke." He had distinguished himself at college, but had left it after +only two years, upon being offered a promising position. There was +nothing especially to admire in him, nothing especially to blame; under +other circumstances Peter and the doctor might have pronounced him as +one of the least interesting of human specimens. The beauty of +childhood and adolescence were gone, the ripeness given by years and +suffering was wanting; Martin Lloyd was just, as he himself laughingly +remarked, "one of the fellers." +</p> + +<p> +Peter had secretly criticized him because he used the words "'phone" +and "photo" and "'Frisco," but in justice he had to admit to himself +that there was no particular significance to the criticism. He also, in +his secret heart, had a vague, dissatisfied feeling that Lloyd was a +man who held women, as a class, rather in disrespect, and had probably +had his experiences with them, but there was no way of expressing, much +less governing, his conduct toward Martin by so purely speculative a +prejudice. The young man had dined at his house a few nights ago, had +shown an admiration, if not an appreciation, for music, had talked with +sufficient intelligence about political matters, mining, and--what +else? photography, and pullman cars, and the latest wreck off +Bolinas--just the random conversation that was apt to trail through a +country dinner. He had told a Chinese joke well, and essayed an Irish +joke not so successfully. Peter, somewhat appalled, in the sunny +garden, struggling with the banksia, decided that this was not much to +know of a person who might have the audacity to fall in love with an +exquisite and innocent Cherry. After all, she would not be a little +girl forever, some man would want to take that little corn-coloured +head and that delicious little pink-clad person away with him some day, +to be his wife-- +</p> + +<p> +And suddenly Peter was torn by a stab of pure pain, and he stood +puzzled and sick, in the garden bed, wondering what was happening to +him. +</p> + +<p> +"Listen--want a drink?" Alix asked, coming out with a tin dipper that +spilled a glittering sheet of water down on the thirsty nasturtiums. +"Rest a few minutes, Peter. Dad wanted a pole, and Mr. Lloyd has gone +up into the woods to cut one." +</p> + +<p> +"And where's Cherry?" Peter asked, drinking deep. +</p> + +<p> +"She went along--just up in the woods here!" Alix answered. "Dad had to +answer the telephone, but they're going to yell if they need help! +WELL!" and Alix, panting, sat down on a log, "are we going to do it?" +</p> + +<p> +"We ought to go up and help Lloyd," Peter decreed. "Which way did he +go?" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know, darling!" Alix answered, leaning back, crossing her +ankles, and yawning. "But they'll be back before you could get there. +They've been gone five minutes!" +</p> + +<p> +Only five minutes, but they were enough to take Cherry and her lover +out of sight of the house, enough to have him put his arm about her, +and to have her raise her lips confidently, and yet shyly, again to +his. They kissed each other deeply, again and again. The girl was a +little confused and even a little uneasy as he continued the tight grip +on his arm about her, and her upward look found his eyes close to her +own. +</p> + +<p> +Their talk was incoherent. Cherry was still playing, coquetting and +smiling, her words few, and Martin, having her so near, could only +repeat the endearing phrases that attempted to express to her his love +and fervour. +</p> + +<p> +"You darling! Do you know how I love you? You darling--you little +exquisite beauty! Do you love me--do you love me?" Martin murmured, and +Cherry answered breathlessly: +</p> + +<p> +"You know I do--but you know I do!" +</p> + +<p> +Presently he selected the sapling redwood, and brought it down with two +blows of his axe. The girl seated herself beside him, helped him strip +the trunk, their hands constantly touching, the man once or twice +delaying her for one more snatched and laughing kiss. +</p> + +<p> +"But, Martin, you've been engaged before?" Cherry asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Never--on my honour! But yes, I was once, too, years ago. I want to +tell you about that--" +</p> + +<p> +He told her, her grave face bent over the redwood boughs she was +tearing. She nodded, flushed, paled. He had met this girl at his +mother's, do you see? And she was a cute little thing, don't you know? +Her name was Dorothy King, and when he went back to college she had +promised to write, do you see? But she hadn't written for weeks, and +then she had written to say that she was engaged to another man, a man +named--named--he had forgotten the name. But she had married him all +right---- +</p> + +<p> +And Cherry looked up, laughing almost reproachfully. How could he ever +forget her married name! Cherry said that she suspected that Martin +hadn't really cared, and he said no, but he had wanted to tell her +about it all the same, because knowing her had made him want really to +be honest--and to be good-- +</p> + +<p> +Tears stood in his eyes, and she forgave him his admiration for Dorothy +King, and said that she knew he was good. And Martin said that he was +going to make her the happiest wife a man ever had. +</p> + +<p> +Dragging the stripped tree, they ran down the sharp hill to the house +just as Anne came out to announce luncheon. Peter was wandering off in +the woods nearby, but came at Alix's shrill yell of summons, and looked +relieved when he saw Cherry and Martin not even talking to each other. +They had been gone only ten minutes. +</p> + +<p> +Anne, who did not like Peter, had decided not to ask him to stay, but +Peter had calmly taken his usual place, and had annoyed Anne with his +familiar questioning of Hong as to the amount of butter needed in +batter bread. It was a happy meal for everyone, and after it they had +attacked the rose bush again, with aching muscles now, and in the first +real summer heat. It was three o'clock before, with a great crackling, +and the scream of a twisted branch, and a general panting and heaving +on the part of the workers, at last the feathery mass had risen a +foot--two feet--into the air, had stood tottering like a wall of bloom, +and finally, with a downward rush, had settled to its old place on the +roof. Hong was pressed into service now, and with Martin, was on the +roof, grappling with a rope, shouting directions. A shower of tiny +blossoms and torn leaves covered the steps of the office-porch, the +garden beds were trampled deep, the seven labourers breathless and +exhausted. But the rose vine was in place! Alix shouted congratulations +to Martin as he busily roped and tied the recaptured masses in their +old position. Anne had vanished for sandwiches; Peter was being +scientifically bandaged by the doctor. Cherry stood looking up at the +roof; she did little talking; she watched Martin during every second he +spent there. +</p> + +<p> +Her small heart was bursting with excitement. He had found easy +opportunities to talk to her a dozen times under cover of the general +noise. He had said wonderful and thrilling things. +</p> + +<p> +"How is my own girl? Sweetheart, you're the sweetest rose of them all! +Cherry, do you suppose they can see from our faces how happy we are?" +Little sentences that meant nothing when other lips spoke them, but +that his voice made immortal. +</p> + +<p> +Looking up at him, she thought of the glorious days ahead. How they +would all wonder and exclaim; yes, and how the girls would envy her! +Little Cherry, just eighteen, going to be married, and married to a man +that Alix or Anne would have been only too glad to win! A real man, +from the outside world, a man of twenty-eight, ten years older than she +was. And how the letters and presents and gowns and plans would begin +to flutter through the bungalow--she would be married in cafe-au-lait +rajah cloth, as Miss Pinckney in San Francisco was; she would be Mrs. +Lloyd! She could chaperone Alix and Anne-- +</p> + +<p> +There was a rending, slipping noise on the roof, a scream from Martin, +and shouts from the doctor and Peter. With a great sliding and rushing +of the refractory sprays, and with a horrifying stumbling and falling, +down came Martin, caught in a great rope of the creeper, almost at her +feet. +</p> + +<p> +A time of great running and calling ensued. Cherry dropped on her knees +beside him, and had his head on her arm for a moment; then her father +took her place, and Alix, with an astonished look at the younger girl's +wet eyes, drew her sister away. Immediately afterward Martin sat up, +looked bewilderedly about from one face to another, looked at his +scratched wrist and said "Gee!" in a thoughtful tone. Anne, coming out +with sandwiches, joined in the general laugh. +</p> + +<p> +"You scared Cherry out of ten years' growth!" Alix reproached Martin. +</p> + +<p> +"I--I thought he might have hurt himself!" Cherry said, in the softest +of little-girl voices, and with her shy little head hanging. Anne +decided that it was becoming her clear duty to talk to Cherry. +</p> + +<p> +"My dear," she said, later that same afternoon, when by chance she was +alone with her little cousin, "don't you think perhaps it would be a +little more dignified to treat Mr. Lloyd with more formality? He likes +you, dear, of course. But a man wants to respect as well as like a +pretty girl, and I am afraid--Uncle has noticed it!" she interrupted +herself quickly, as Cherry tossed her head scornfully. "He spoke of it +last night, and Alix tells me that you are calling Mr. Lloyd 'Martin!' +Now, dearie, Martin Lloyd is fully ten years---" +</p> + +<p> +"Then Alix is a tattle-tale!" Cherry said childishly. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know about that," Anne said gently, although perhaps it would +have been more generous in her to add that Alix had made the comment +gleefully, and almost admiringly. "But that isn't important. The point +is that you are only a young girl--" +</p> + +<p> +"I wish you would all mind your own royal business for about five +seconds!" Cherry said, rudely and impatiently. She was in her own room, +rummaging on the upper shelf of the closet for a certain hat. She +secured the hat now, and ran unceremoniously away from her admonitor, +to join Alix, Peter, and Martin for the daily ceremony of walking into +the village for the mail. +</p> + +<p> +Anne followed her downstairs sedately, perhaps a little dashed +presently to discover that this dignified proceeding had lost her the +walk. They were all gone. The house was very still, early summer +sweetness was drifting through wide-opened windows and doors; the long +day was slowly declining. In the woods close to the door a really +summery hum of insect life was stirring. Hong, in dull minor gutturals, +jabbered somewhere in the far distance to a friend. Anne peeped into +the deserted living room, softened through all its pleasant shabbiness +into real beauty by the shafts of sunset red that came in through the +casement windows; and was deliberating between various becoming +occupations--for Martin might walk back with the girls--when her uncle +called her. +</p> + +<p> +He was sitting in the little room that was still called his office, but +that was really his study now, and the late afternoon light, through +the replaced rose vine, streamed in on the shabby books and the green +lampshade and the cluttered desk. +</p> + +<p> +"Anne--you weren't there when that young chap tumbled. But I've been +worrying about it a little. There's no question--there's no question +that she--that Cherry--called him by his name. 'Martin,' she called +him." +</p> + +<p> +Anne had crossed to the shadowy doorway; she stood still. +</p> + +<p> +"It can't be!" protested the doctor, uneasily. "Did Alix say anything +to you about it?" +</p> + +<p> +"She said that," Anne admitted, drily. +</p> + +<p> +"You've not noticed anything between him and Cherry?" pursued the +doctor. "A girl might call a man by his name, I suppose--" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't think there has been anything to notice," Anne stated, in a +level tone. +</p> + +<p> +"You don't?" the doctor echoed, in relief, peering at her. She could +meet his look with a smile, but in her heart were the same thoughts +that Cherry had been innocently indulging, under the rose vine an hour +ago, and the dream that had been Heaven to Cherry was Purgatory to +Anne. Cherry married, Cherry receiving cups and presents and gowns, +Cherry, Mrs. Lloyd, with a plain gold ring on her young, childish hand, +Cherry able to patronize and chaperone Alix and Anne--! "I half fancied +that it might be you, Anne," her uncle added, "although I know what a +sensible little head you have!" "I'm afraid I'm a trifle exacting where +men are concerned!" Anne said, understanding perfectly that her pride +was being shielded, but hurt to the heart, nevertheless. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, it must be stopped, if it has begun," decided her uncle. "I +can't permit it--I'd forgotten how the little witch grows!" +</p> + +<p> +"He isn't as eligible for Cherry as for me, then?" Anne asked lightly. +But her smile disarmed the unsuspicious old man, and he answered +honestly: +</p> + +<p> +"You're quite different, Anne. You were older at eighteen than she'll +be at twenty-four; you could hold your own--you could, in a way, make +your own life! She--why, she's only an innocent little girl; she's got +dolls in the attic; we were teasing her about turning up her hair last +week!" +</p> + +<p> +Again Anne was silent. It occurred to her to laugh at the absurdity of +these quick suspicions, but they had already seized upon her with the +curious tenacity of truth; already she had accepted the fact that what +yesterday would have been the unbelievable maximum of humiliation and +hurt was true to-day, and less than the whole bitter truth! +</p> + +<p> +She was not in love with Martin Lloyd; she was not as susceptible as +the much younger Cherry, and she had not had his urging to help her to +a quick surrender. But for the first time in her life she had seen an +absolutely suitable man, a man whose work, position, looks, name, and +character fitted her rather exacting standard, and for the first time +she had let herself think confidently of being wooed and won. It was +all so right, so dignified, so fitting. She had been the light of her +uncle's eyes, and the little capable keeper of his house for years; she +had been reminding her own friends of this frequently during the past +year or two; now she was ready to step into a nest of her own. +</p> + +<p> +Standing there in the doorway, she tasted the last bitter dregs of the +dream. It was all over. Anne was at the age that sets twenty-five years +as the definite boundary of spinsterhood. She would be twenty-five in +August. +</p> + +<p> +Alix came in from her walk glowing, and full of a great discovery. +</p> + +<p> +"Dad," she said eagerly, taking her place at the supper table, "what do +you think! I'll bet you a dollar that man is falling in love with our +Cherry!" +</p> + +<p> +Anne, at the head of the table, looked pained, but there was genuine +apprehension in the doctor's face. +</p> + +<p> +"Where is your sister?" he asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Down there by the gate," Alix answered. "They're gazing soulfully into +each other's eyes, and all that! Peter went home. But CHERRY--with a +beau! Isn't that the ultimate extension of the limit! I'm crazy about +it--I think it's great. An engineer, Dad, and Mrs. North's nephew, and +he has a fine job in a mine somewhere," she summarized +enthusiastically, "you couldn't ask anything better than that, could +you? Could you, Dad? I love weddings! This'll be the third I've been +to!" +</p> + +<p> +"All this seems to have come up very suddenly," the doctor said, +dazedly, rumpling his gray hair with a fine old hand. "I don't imagine +your sister is taking it as seriously as you and Anne seem inclined +to---" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, does Anne think so!" Alix exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +"I think Cherry is one of the fortunate girls destined to drift along +the surface of life," Anne said, "and to accept wifehood quite simply. +I only wish I were that type--" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Nancy, what rot you talk every time you remember you had a year at +college!" Alix said, lightly. "Can't you let the poor kid fall in love +without yapping about types and biology and the cosmic urge---" +</p> + +<p> +"Really, Alix, you use extraordinary language!" Anne remonstrated, +glancing at her uncle with outraged dignity. "And I am not aware that I +spoke of biology or the cosmic urge!" But her tone was not as +impersonal as her words, and she was flushed and even agitated. "Shan't +we begin, Uncle Lee?" she asked, patiently. "If Cherry is just down at +the gate there, she'll only be another minute--" +</p> + +<p> +She was interrupted by Cherry herself. The girl came to the porch door, +and as she hesitated there a minute, with her smiling eyes seeking her +father's face, they saw that by one firm, small hand she drew her lover +beside her. Martin Lloyd's smiling face showed above hers in the +lamplight. +</p> + +<p> +"Dad!" said Cherry, with a childish breath. "Dad! I've brought Martin +to supper!" +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap03"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER III +</h3> + +<p> +The three at the table did not move for perhaps twenty slow seconds. +Doctor Strickland, who had pushed back his chair, and whose hands were +resting on the table before him, stared at them steadily. Anne, with a +quick little hiss of surprise, smiled faintly. Alix, the unstilted, +widened her eyes, and opened her mouth in unaffected astonishment. For +there was no mistaking Cherry's tone. +</p> + +<p> +"Doctor," said Martin, coming in, "this little girl of yours and I have +something to tell you!" The old man looked at him sharply, almost +sternly, looked about at the girls' faces, and was silent. But he +tightened his arm about Cherry, who had fluttered to the arm of his +chair. +</p> + +<p> +"Are you surprised, Daddy?" Cherry laughed, with all a child's innocent +exultation. The next instant Anne and Martin were shaking hands, and +Alix had enveloped Cherry in an enthusiastic embrace. +</p> + +<p> +"Surprised!" exclaimed Alix. "Why, aren't you surprised yourself!" +</p> + +<p> +Her sister flushed exquisitely, and Martin laughed. +</p> + +<p> +"We're just about knocked silly!" he confessed, and all the girls +laughed joyously. +</p> + +<p> +There followed a delighted confusion of talk, when each in turn +remembered what she had noticed, what she had suspected, and what her +first emotion had been at this moment or that. Meanwhile a place was +made for Martin, and biscuits and omelette and honey and tea were put +into brisk circulation. Cherry left her place beside her father, with a +final kiss, and took her own chair, all dimples, flushes, smiles, and +shy confidence. +</p> + +<p> +"And what are your plans?" Anne asked maternally, as she poured tea. +</p> + +<p> +Her uncle, who had been silent during the excitement, mildly interposed: +</p> + +<p> +"I think we needn't go too fast, young people! You've only known each +other a few weeks, after all; you must be pretty sure of yourselves +before taking anything like a decisive step. Plenty of time--plenty of +time. Mr. Lloyd can go back to his mine, and Cherry will wait for him--" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry's wild-rose face coloured, and her whole body drooped. +</p> + +<p> +"But I can be getting ready, and I can tell people, Dad?" she pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +"We'll see," her father promised her, soothingly. He had promised her +thus vaguely when, as an imperative baby years ago, she had wanted the +impossible. But she was not a baby now. +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, now--that won't do!" she pouted. +</p> + +<p> +"You must give me a little time to get used to the idea of losing my +baby, pretty," her father said. "I confess that this thing seems to +have come upon me rather unexpectedly. Mr. Lloyd here and I must have +some talks about his plans--" +</p> + +<p> +"I know exactly how you feel, Doctor," Martin said, sensibly and +sympathetically. "I realize that I should have come to you first, and +asked to pay my respects to your daughter--laugh, why don't you?" he +added to Alix, from whom an abrupt and startling laugh had indeed +escaped in good-natured scorn. +</p> + +<p> +"Nobody does that any more!" the girl said, in self-defence. "It +sounded so old-fashioned!" +</p> + +<p> +"Perhaps nobody does it any more, but I should have done it," Martin +said briskly and seriously. "Except that it all came over me with such +a rush. A week ago Cherry was only a most attractive child, to me. I'd +spoken to my aunt about her and had said that I envied the man that was +some day to win her, and that was all! Then the time came for me to get +back to work--and I found I couldn't go! I couldn't leave her. However, +I expect to be back here some time in the fall, and I thought to myself +that I'd see her then, and perhaps, THEN--And then came last night, +when I began to say good-byes, and--it happened! I know that you all +hardly know me, and I know that Cherry is pretty young to settle down, +but I think I can satisfy you, Doctor, that you give her into safe +hands, and I believe she'll never regret trusting me!" +</p> + +<p> +He had gotten to his feet as he spoke, and was holding the back of his +chair, looking anxiously and eagerly into the old man's eyes. His tone, +in spite of his effort to keep it light, had taken on a depth and +gravity quite new to his hearers, and as Cherry, sitting next him, and +fired through all her girlish being by his eloquence, turned to lay a +small, warm hand on his own, the tears came to his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"Well--" said the doctor, touched himself, and in his gentlest tone, +"well! It had to come, perhaps, I can't promise her to you very soon, +Mr. Lloyd. But if you both are willing to wait, and if time proves this +to be the real feeling, I don't believe you'll find me hard on you!" +</p> + +<p> +"That's all I ask, sir!" Martin said, resuming his seat and his dinner. +And for the rest of the meal harmony and gaiety reigned. +</p> + +<p> +Alix shot an occasional glance at Anne, who was flushed, but as usual +busy and charming over the tea cups. Alix knew that Anne was inwardly +writhing; indeed she felt a sort of emotional shock herself. Yesterday +the mere talk of a lover for any one of them was delightfully thrilling +and vague--to-night Cherry was actually engaged! The older girls' +romantic speculations were flat enough now; Cherry had the actual thing. +</p> + +<p> +There was no jealousy in Alix's heart, as there definitely was in +Anne's, of the man. But Alix felt envious of the superior +experience--why, he would kiss Cherry! No man had ever kissed Alix. +Cherry would be the admired and envied girl among all the girls; +married at eighteen, it was so beautifully flattering and satisfying to +be married young! +</p> + +<p> +She looked at her father's face, a troubled face to-night. He was +watching the lovers regretfully; he did not disguise it. Their quick +plans, the readiness with which they solved the tremendous problems to +come, the light-heartedness with which they were hurrying toward the +future--had he and the older Charity been like that, twenty-five years +ago, when they had had supper at her mother's house, and told the great +news? He remembered himself, an eager, enthusiastic lover--had he +really given better promise then than this handsome young fellow was +giving to-night? He tried to remember the older Charity's mother; what +she had said, what expression her face had worn, and it seemed to him +that he could dimly recall reluctance and pain and gravity in that +long-ago look. +</p> + +<p> +After dinner Cherry and Martin, in all the ecstatic first delight of +recognized love, went out to the wide front porch, where there were +wicker chairs, under the rose vines. Alix alone laughed at them as they +went. Anne, with a storm in her heart, played noisily on the piano, and +the doctor, after giving the doorway where Cherry had disappeared a +wistful look, restlessly took to his armchair and his book, in such +desolation of spirit as he had not known since the dark day of her +mother's death. +</p> + +<p> +The next day Alix and the engaged pair walked up to invite Peter to a +tennis foursome on the old Blithedale court. It was a Saturday, and as +he usually dined with them, or asked them to dine with him on Saturday, +they were not surprised to find him busy with a charcoal burner, under +the trees, compounding a marvellous dish of chicken, tomatoes, cream, +and mushrooms, or to have his first words a caution not to tip things +over if they wanted any dinner. His Chinese cook was hovering about, +but Peter himself was chef. +</p> + +<p> +"Stop your messing one second!" Alix said, catching him by the arm. And +as he straightened up she added, with a little awkward laugh, +"Congratulate these creatures--they--they're going to be married! Why +don't you congratulate them!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter gave one long look at Martin and Cherry, who stood laughing, but +a little confused and self-conscious, too, in the grassy path. With a +shock like death in his heart, he realized that it was all over. Their +protection of her, their suspicions, had come too late. Blind child +that she was, she was committed to this fascinating and mysterious +adventure. +</p> + +<p> +His face grew dark with a sudden rush of blood. "Peter hates to have +any one else know a thing before he does!" Alix explained this later. +But he went to them quickly, and shook hands with Martin, and was +presently reproaching Cherry for her secretiveness in his old, or +almost his old, way. +</p> + +<p> +"Of course nobody's to know--Dad insisted on that!" said Cherry's soft, +proud little voice. +</p> + +<p> +"Did you suspect yesterday, Peter?" Alix asked, tasting the sauce, and +bunching her fingers immediately afterward to send a rapturous kiss +into the air as an indication of its deliciousness. "Yesterday when +they went off after the tree, I mean?" +</p> + +<p> +"I had my own suspicions!" he returned, and Cherry--his little, gay, +lovely Cherry!--laughed happily. He arranged that they were to play the +tennis here on his own courts, and later dine with him, but under his +hospitality and under the golden beauty of the day it was all +pain--pain--pain. It was agony to see her with him, beginning to taste +the rapture of love given and returned; it was agony to have the +conversation return always to Martin and Cherry, to the first love +affair. When they wandered away to the brook, and stood talking, the +girl's head dropped, her cheek flushed, but her face raised quickly now +and then for a flashing look, Peter felt that he could have killed this +newcomer, this thief, this usurper of the place that he himself might +have filled. +</p> + +<p> +"Dad's always said he disapproved of long engagements," Alix commented, +amusedly, "but you ought to hear him now! This thing--he won't even +call it an engagement--it's an understanding, or a preference--is to be +a profound secret, and Cherry's to be twenty-one before any one else +but ourselves knows--" +</p> + +<p> +"Your father is quite right!" Peter said sharply, in his most elderly +manner. They were resting after the first set, and Cherry and Martin, +in the opposite court, were out of hearing. +</p> + +<p> +"When your hair gets tossed back that way," Alix observed innocently, +"lots more gray shows! I think you're turning gray pretty young, Peter, +aren't you? Are you forty yet? You're not forty, are you?" +</p> + +<p> +"I'm thirty-six," Peter answered briefly. "My father was gray at +twenty-seven!" he added, after a pause. +</p> + +<p> +"I have a gray hair," Alix started. "People talk about the first gray +hair--" +</p> + +<p> +Peter did not hear her. There was beginning of a little hope in his +heart. Girls did not always fulfill their first engagements, did not +often do so, in fact. The thing was a secret; it might well come to +nothing, after all. +</p> + +<p> +That was the beginning, and after it, although it was arranged between +them all that nothing should be changed, and that nobody but themselves +should share the secret, somehow life seemed different. Two or three +days after the momentous day of the raising of the rose tree, Martin +Lloyd went to his mine at El Nido, and the interrupted current of life +in the brown bungalow supposedly found its old groove. +</p> + +<p> +But nothing was the same. The doctor, in the first place, was more +silent and thoughtful than the girls had ever seen him before. Anne and +Alix knew that he was not happy about Cherry's plans, if the younger +girl did not. He sighed, sat silently looking off from his book in the +summer evenings, fell into deep musing even at his meals. With Alix +only he talked of the engagement, and she knew from his comments, his +doubtful manner, that he felt it to be a mistake. The ten years' +difference between Cherry and Martin distressed him; he spoke of it +again and again. In June he sent Cherry to a long-planned house-party +at Menlo Park, but the girl came back after the third day. "I didn't +have any fun," she confessed, "I had to tell Olive, about me and +Martin, I mean. The boys there were all KIDS!" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry was changed, too, and not only in the expected and natural ways, +Alix thought. She had always had a generous share of the family +devotion, but she entirely eclipsed the others now. Her daily letter +from Martin, her new prospects, not only increased her importance in +the other girls' eyes, but innocently inflated her own self-confidence. +She received a diamond ring, and although at her father's request she +did not show it for a few weeks, eventually it slipped mysteriously +from the little chamois bag on her neck, and duly appeared on her left +hand. She had promised to keep the engagement "or understanding, or +preference," a profound secret, but this was impossible. First one +intimate friend and then another was allowed to gasp and exclaim over +the news. The time came when Anne decided that it was not "decent" not +to let Martin's aunt know of it, when all these other people knew. +Finally came a dinner to the Norths', when Cherry's health was drunk, +and then the engagement presents began to come in. +</p> + +<p> +"But it's July now," Cherry said, innocently, "and I think we were +pretty smart to keep it a secret so long! Don't you, Dad? And we've +been engaged three months, now, so that it looks as if waiting wasn't +going to change our minds, doesn't it?" +</p> + +<p> +He could not chill her gay confidence; he had always spoiled her. Her +father only looked tenderly into the blue eyes, and tightened his big +arm protectingly about the slender young shoulders. But he was deeply +depressed. There seemed nothing to say. Cherry was of age; she was sure +of herself. She was truly in love with this presentable young man. +Doctor Strickland felt that he did not know Martin--the man to whom he +gave his lovely daughter he would have hoped to know intimately for +years. There was nothing to be said against young Lloyd. It was +only--mused the doctor, aghast--only what was being done in the world +every day. But he was staggered by the bright readiness with which all +of them--Cherry, Martin, the other girls--accepted the stupendous fact +that Cherry was to be married. +</p> + +<p> +She was quite frankly and delightedly discussing trousseau now, too +entirely absorbed in her own happiness to see that the other girls had +lives to live as well as she. Did Anne mind if she divided her share of +the silver from theirs; did Alix think she would ever want any of +Mother's lace? +</p> + +<p> +"I got my cards yesterday," she said one day, "I was passing the shop, +and I thought I might as well! The woman looked at me so queerly; she +said: 'Mrs. John Martin Lloyd. Are these for your mother?' 'No,' I +said, 'they're for me!' I wish you could have seen her look. Martin +says in to-day's letter that he thinks people will say I'm his +daughter, and Alix--he says that you are to come up to visit us, and +we're going to find you a fine husband! Won't it be funny to think of +your visiting ME! Oh, and Anne--did you see what Mrs. Fairfax sent me? +A great big glorious fur coat! She said I would need it up there, and I +guess I will! It's not new, you know; she says it isn't the real +present, but it can be cut down and it will look like new." +</p> + +<p> +And so on and on. The other girls listened, sympathized, and rejoiced, +but it was not always easy. They could not get Cherry to be interested +in any of their plans for week-end house-parties, climbs, or picnics; +indeed, even to themselves their own lives seemed a trifle dull by +contrast. +</p> + +<p> +Anne, as usual, took her part in the summer activities of the village; +she and Alix put on their white gowns and wide hats, and duly descended +to strawberry fetes and church fairs and concerts, and duly laughed +disarmingly when old friends expressed their pleasant suspicions of +Cherry. +</p> + +<p> +But Alix voiced their feelings one summer afternoon when she was +sauntering into the village at her cousin's side, and began for the +first time a faint criticism of Martin. +</p> + +<p> +"What makes Dad mad," Alix opined, "is that Martin had it all arranged +before he asked him! Took advantage of Dad, in a way. I don't think he +would have felt so if they both were kids, but after all, Martin's +twenty-eight--" Her voice fell. "Anne," she began, hesitatingly, +"sometimes when Mrs. North says so gaily that Martin was a TERROR in +college, and kept his whole family worrying, I feel sort of sorry for +Cherry! She doesn't know as much of life as we do," twenty-one-year-old +Alix finished soberly. +</p> + +<p> +"I know!" Anne said quickly, perhaps a little glad to find a point +where Cherry needed sympathy. +</p> + +<p> +"I have a feeling that Dad thinks," Alix pursued, "that it was just +because it was Cherry's first beau-I mean that Cherry waked up +suddenly, don't you know? It was as if she said to herself, 'Why, I'm a +woman! I can get kissed and get married and all the rest of it!'--I'm +expressing this beautifully," stumbled Mix. +</p> + +<p> +"I often wonder Uncle Lee doesn't forbid it!" Anne said. She had never +had even a flitting thought of such a thing before, but she spoke now +as if the engagement had had her heartiest disapproval from the first. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, no--why should he!" Alix remonstrated. "Martin may be the best man +in the world for her. I confess," the girl added frankly, "I can't +stand his aunt. I always used to like Mrs. North, too. But lately, when +she's begun to tell Cherry that he is extravagant, and she must save +his money for him, and that he's often been in love before, but this +time she's sure it is the real thing, and that Martin has his father's +delicate stomach---" +</p> + +<p> +Anne laughed out, in a merry fashion not usual with her of late. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Alix, she DIDN'T!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, yes, she did! And it makes me sort of sick. What does Cherry care +about anybody's delicate stomach!" Alix fell silent, broke out again +abruptly: "Anne--do you suppose she'll have a baby?" +</p> + +<p> +Anne flushed. She considered this remark rather indelicate, and yet she +liked Alix's recognition of her superior knowledge of the subject. +</p> + +<p> +"I think it very likely!" she answered calmly, after a moment's +hesitation. Her first impulse had been to answer, "I think it very +unlikely!" +</p> + +<p> +"She doesn't know anything about babies!" Alix said, somewhat worried. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't, either!" Anne confessed with honesty, her brow troubled. +"I've read things, here and there. I know SOMETHING, of course. But I +don't know much!" +</p> + +<p> +"We've all read Dickens--and the Classic Myths, and things," Alix +submitted. "And of course she went with us the day Dad took us to +Faust! Is that about all there is to it, Nance?" +</p> + +<p> +"Just--about, I guess!" Anne answered briefly. Both girls' faces were +red. They had rarely touched upon these and kindred subjects in their +talks with each other; they had never discussed them with any one else. +Anne liked to fancy herself rather worldly wise; Alix had an +independent brain and tongue. But in their household there was no older +woman to illumine their confused guessing with an occasional word now +and then, even if an unusually wholesome out-of-door life had not +distracted their attention from the problems raised in books, and their +isolation had not protected them from the careless talk of other girls +of their ages. +</p> + +<p> +August brought Martin, and more changes. He was delighted with his work +in the El Nido mine, the "Emmy Younger," and everything he had to say +about it was amusing and interesting. It was still in a rather chaotic +condition, he reported, but the "stuff" was there, and he anticipated a +busy winter. He was to have a cottage, a pretty crude affair, in a few +weeks, right at the mine. +</p> + +<p> +"How does that listen to you?" he asked Cherry. Cherry was sitting +beside him, at the dinner table, on the first night of his arrival. She +was thrilling still to the memory of his greeting kiss, its fresh odour +of shaving soap and witch hazel, and the clean touch of his +smooth-shaven cheek. She gave her father a demure and interrogative +glance. Martin, following it, immediately sobered. +</p> + +<p> +"Just what is your position there?" the doctor asked, pleasantly. +</p> + +<p> +"A little bit of everything now," Martin answered, readily and +respectfully. "Later, of course, I shall have my own special work. At +present I'm doing some of the assaying, and have charge of the +sluice-gang. They want me to make myself generally useful, make +suggestions, take hold in every way!" +</p> + +<p> +"That's the way to get on," the older man said, approvingly. Cherry +looked admiringly, with all her heart in her eyes, at her +husband-to-be; the other girls were impressed, too. Martin brought a +new element, something masculine and modern, to their quiet dinner +table. Dad and Peter were men, to be sure, but they were different. +They were only a little more dear and amusing and real than the men in +Dickens' novels, long familiar and beloved in the household. But Martin +made the girls feel suddenly in touch with real life. +</p> + +<p> +He had kissed Alix and Anne, upon arriving, and they liked it. Both the +older girls, in fact, were so impressed with the brilliancy of Cherry's +prospects, with the extraordinary distinction she possessed in having a +promised husband, with whom to walk about the woods and to talk of the +future, that they could forgive Cherry for being wrapped in a sort of +dream. Her new name, her new state, her new clothes, and home and +position filled her thoughts, and theirs. Martin had not been with them +more than a few hours before the engagement was openly discussed, and +there were constant references to Cherry's marriage. +</p> + +<p> +It was a cool evening, and after dinner they all gathered about the +fire; Martin and Cherry murmuring together in the ingle seat, and the +others only occasionally drawing them into the general conversation. +Peter and the Norths had come in for coffee, Mrs. North giving Cherry a +maternal kiss as she greeted her. Alix thought that she had never seen +her sister look so pretty; Cherry was wearing a new dress, of +golden-brown corduroy velvet, with a deep collar and cuffs of old +embroidery that had belonged to her mother. Her silk stockings were +brown, and her russet slippers finished with square silver buckles. But +it was at the lovely face that Alix looked, the earnest, honest blue +eyes, the peach-bloom of the young cheeks, and the drooping crown of +shining hair. +</p> + +<p> +Somehow, a few days later, wedding plans were in the air, and they were +all taking it for granted that Cherry and Martin were to be married +almost immediately; in October, in fact. The doctor at first persisted +that the event must wait until April, but Martin's reasonable +impatience, and Cherry's plaintive "But why, Daddy?" were too much for +him. Why, indeed? Cherry's mother had been married at eighteen, when +that mother's husband was more than ten years older than Martin Lloyd +was now. +</p> + +<p> +"Would ye let it go on, Peter, eh?" the doctor asked, somewhat +embarrassed, one evening when he and Peter were walking from the train +in the late September twilight. +</p> + +<p> +"Lord, don't ask me!" Peter said, gruffly. "I think she's too young to +marry any one--but the mischief's done now! You can't lock a girl in +her room, and she's the sort of girl that wouldn't be convinced by that +sort of argument if you did!" +</p> + +<p> +"I think I'll talk to her," her father decided. "Anything is better +than having her make a mistake. I think she'll listen to me!" And a day +or two later he called her into the study. It was a quiet autumn +morning, foggy yet warm, with a dewy, woody sweetness in the air. +</p> + +<p> +"Before we decide this thing finally," the doctor said, smiling into +her bright face, "before Martin writes his people that it's settled, I +want to ask you to do something. It's something you won't like to do, +my little girl. I want ye to wait a while--wait a year!" +</p> + +<p> +It was said. He watched the brightness fade from her glowing face, she +lowered her eyes, the line of her mouth grew firm. +</p> + +<p> +"Wait until you're twenty, dear. That's young enough. I've been +planning a full winter for you girls; I wanted to take a house in town, +entertain a little, look up a few friends! You trust me, Cherry. I only +ask you to take a little time--to be sure, dear!" +</p> + +<p> +Silence. She shrugged faintly, blinked the downcast eyes as if tears +stung them. +</p> + +<p> +"I know you don't like Martin, Dad!" she said, tremulously. +</p> + +<p> +"No, no, my darling--you mustn't say that!" he said, in distress. "I +like him very much--I think he's a thoroughly fine fellow! I could +wish--just with an old father's selfishness--that he was a neighbour, +that he didn't plan to take you away entirely. That's natural, before I +give him the thing I hold most precious in the world. And that's just +it, Cherry. Wait a year or two, and perhaps it will be possible to +establish him here near us. You'll have a little money, dear, and +Martin says himself that he would much prefer office work to this +constant changing. Marriage is a great change, anyway. Everything is +different; your point of view, your very personality changes with it. +You'll be lonely, my dear. You'll miss your sister and Anne, and all +the old friends. There are cases where it must be so, of course. But in +your case--" +</p> + +<p> +He stopped, discouraged. She was sitting opposite him at the shabby +writing table, her elbows resting upon it, her full lips pouting with +disappointment. Perhaps the one phrase of her new plans that pleased +Cherry most was that she was to be carried entirely away from the +familiar atmosphere in which she would always be "little Cherry," and +subject to suggestions and criticisms. Now she began slowly to shake +her head. +</p> + +<p> +"Can't take your old father's word for it?" Doctor Strickland asked. +</p> + +<p> +"It isn't that, Dad!" she protested eagerly and affectionately. "I'll +wait--I have waited! I'll wait until Christmas, or April, if you say +so! But it won't make any difference, nothing will. I love him and he +loves me, and we always will. +</p> + +<p> +"You don't know," Cherry went on, with suddenly watering eyes, "you +don't KNOW what this summer of separation has meant to us both! If we +must wait longer, why, we will of course, but it will mean that I'll +never have a happy instant! It will mean that I am just living along +somehow--oh, I won't cry!" she interrupted, smiling with wet lashes, +"I'll try to bear it decently! But sometimes I feel as if I COULDN'T +bear it--" +</p> + +<p> +A rush of tears choked her. She groped for a handkerchief, and felt, as +she had felt so many times, her father's handkerchief pressed into her +hand. The doctor sighed. There was nothing more to be said. +</p> + +<p> +So he gave Cherry a wedding check that made her dance with joy, and +there was no more seriousness. There were gowns, dinners, +theatre-parties, and presents; every day brought its new surprise and +new delight to Cherry. She had her cream-coloured rajah silk, but her +sister and cousin persuaded her to be married in white, and it was +their hands that dressed the first bride when the great day came, and +fastened over her corn-coloured hair her mother's lace veil. +</p> + +<p> +It was a day of soft sweetness, not too brightly summery, but warm and +still under the trees. Until ten o'clock the mountain and the tops of +the redwoods were tangled in scarfs of white fog, then the mellow +sunlight pierced it with sudden spectacular brightening and lifting. +</p> + +<p> +The little brown house was full of flowers and laughter and coming and +going. Anne and Alix, flushed and excited in their bridesmaids' gowns, +were nervous and tired. They had made lists and addressed envelopes, +had decorated the house, had talked to milliners and florists and +caterers and dressmakers, had packed and repacked Cherry's trunk and +boxes. Cherry was tired and excited, too, but had no realization of it; +she was carried along upon a roseate cloud of happiness and excitement. +</p> + +<p> +Martin's mother and stepfather had come down from Portland, and were +friendly, and pleased with everything. +</p> + +<p> +"His mother," Alix told Peter, "is the sort of handsome person who +keeps a boarding-house and marries a rich, adoring old Klondike man." +</p> + +<p> +"Is that what she did?" Peter whispered, amused. +</p> + +<p> +"She's only sixteen years older than Martin is!" Alix confided further. +"She kissed Cherry and said, 'You're just a baby doll, that's what you +are!' And he calls me 'Ma'am,' and Cherry 'Sister!' They've got two +little children, a boy and a girl. Dad likes them both." +</p> + +<p> +"Well, that's good!" Peter approved. "Does Cherry?" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, anything that belongs to Martin is perfect!" Alix answered, in +indulgent scorn, as she abruptly departed to see to some detail +concerning the carriages, the music, or the breakfast. She and Anne +were in a constant state of worry during the morning; their plans for +seating two score of persons were changed twenty times; they conspired +in agitated whispers behind doors and in the pantry. +</p> + +<p> +But the first wedding went well. At twelve o'clock Charity Strickland +became Charity Lloyd, and was kissed and toasted and congratulated +until her lovely little face was burning with colour, and her blue eyes +were bewildered with fatigue. She stood in the drawing-room doorway, +her bouquet with its trailing ribbons in her gloved hands, and as each +one of all the old friends and neighbours made some little pre-arranged +speech of an amusing or emotional nature, she met it with a receptive +word or smile, hardly conscious of what she did or said. Sometimes she +freed her feet from the folds of her lacy train, and sometimes gave +Martin a glance backward and upward over her shoulder, once asking him +to hold her flowers with a smile that several guests afterward remarked +showed that those two couldn't see anything in the world but each other. +</p> + +<p> +At two o'clock there were good-byes. Cherry had changed the wedding +satin for the cream-coloured rajah silk then, and wore the extravagant +hat. It would be many years before she would spend twenty-five dollars +for a hat again, and never again would she see bronzed cocks feathers +against bronzed straw without remembering the clean little +wood-smelling bedroom and the hour in which she had pinned her wedding +hat over her fair hair, and had gone, demure and radiant and confident, +to meet her husband in the old hallway. +</p> + +<p> +She was confusedly kissed, passed from hand to hand, was conscious with +a sort of strange aching at her heart that she was not only far from +saying the usual heart-broken things in farewell, but was actually far +from feeling them. She laughed at Alix's last nonsense, promised to +write--wouldn't say good-bye--would see them all soon--was coming, +Martin--and so a last kiss for darling Dad, and good-bye and so many +thanks and thanks to them all! +</p> + +<p> +She was gone. With her the uncertain autumn sunshine vanished, and a +shadow fell on the forest. The mountain, above the valley, was blotted +out with fog. The brown house seemed dark and empty when the last +guests had loitered away, and the last caterer had gathered up his +possessions and had gone. Hong was prosaically making mutton broth for +dinner; pyramids of sandwiches and little cakes stood on the sideboard. +</p> + +<p> +Up in Cherry's room there was a litter of tissue papers, and pins and +powder were strewn on the bureau. The bed was mashed and disordered by +the weight of guests' hats and wraps that had lain there. A heap of +cards, still attached to ribbons and wires, were gathered on the +book-shelf, to be sent after Cherry and remind her of the donours of +gifts and flowers. +</p> + +<p> +Across the lower bed that had been Cherry's a pale blue Japanese +wrapper had been flung. The girls had seen her wear it a hundred times; +she had slipped into it to change her gown a few hours ago. Anne, +excited and tired, picked it up, stared vaguely at it for a few +minutes, and then knelt down beside the bed, and began to cry. Alix, +the muscles about her mouth twitching, stood watching her. +</p> + +<p> +"Funerals are gay compared to the way a wedding feels!" Alix said +finally. "I've eaten so much candy and wedding-cake and olives and +marrons, and whipped cream and crab salad that my skin feels like the +barrel of a musical box! I'm going to take a walk! Come on, Nancy." +</p> + +<p> +"No, I don't want to!" Anne said, wiping her eyes, and sitting back on +her heels, with a long sigh and sniff. "I've got too much to do!" +</p> + +<p> +Alix descended to find her father and Peter discussing fly-fishing, on +the porch steps. The doctor had changed his unwonted wedding finery for +his shabby old smoking jacket, but Peter still looked unnaturally well +dressed. Alix stepped down to sit between them, and her father's arm +went about her. She snuggled against him in an unusual mood of +tenderness and quiet. +</p> + +<p> +"Be nice to me!" she said, whimsically. "I'm lonely!" +</p> + +<p> +"H'm!" her father said, significantly, tightening his arm. Peter moved +up on the other side and locked his own arm in her free one. And so +they sat, silent, depressed, their shoulders touching, their sombre +eyes fixed upon the shadowy depths of the forest into which an October +fog was softly and noiselessly creeping. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap04"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER IV +</h3> + +<p> +Meanwhile, the hot train sped on, and the drab autumn country flew by +the windows, and still the bride sat wrapped in her dream, smiling, +musing, rousing herself to notice the scenery. The lap of the +cream-coloured gown held magazines and a box of candy, and in the rack +above her head were the new camera and the new umbrella and the new +suitcase. +</p> + +<p> +When Martin asked her if she liked to be a married woman, travelling +with her husband, she smiled and said that it seemed "funny." For the +most part she was silent, pleased and interested, but not quite her +usual unconcerned self. She and Alix, taking this trip, would have been +chattering like magpies. She and Martin had their dinner in the train, +and then she did brighten, trying to pierce with her eyes the darkness +outside, and getting only a lovely reflected face under bronzed cocks +feathers, instead. After dinner they had a long, murmured talk; she +began to droop sleepily now, although even this long day had not paled +her cheeks or visibly tired her. +</p> + +<p> +At ten they stumbled out, cramped and over-heated, and smitten on tired +foreheads with a rush of icy mountain air. +</p> + +<p> +"Is this the pl-l-ace?" yawned Cherry, clinging to his arm. +</p> + +<p> +"This is the place, Baby Girl, El Nido, and not much of a place!" her +husband told her. "That's the Hotel McKinley, over there where the +lights are! We stay there to-night, and drive out to the mine +to-morrow. I'll manage the bags, but don't you stumble!" +</p> + +<p> +She was wide-awake now, looking alertly about her at the dark streets +of the little town. Mud squelched beneath their feet, planks tilted. +Beside Martin Cherry entered the bright, cheerful lobby of a cheap +hotel where men were smoking and spitting. She was beside him at the +desk, and saw him write on the register, "J. M. Lloyd and wife." The +clerk pushed a key across the counter; Martin guided her to a rattling +elevator. +</p> + +<p> +She had a fleeting thought of home; of Dad reading before the fire, of +the little brown room upstairs, with Alix, slender in her thin +nightgown, yawning over her prayers. A rush of reluctance--of +strangeness--of something like terror smote her. She fought the +homesickness down resolutely; everything would seem brighter to-morrow, +when the morning and the sunshine came again. +</p> + +<p> +There was a brown and red carpet in the oblong of the room, and a brown +bureau, and a wide iron bed with a limp spread, and a peeling brown +washstand with a pitcher and basin. The boy lighted a flare of electric +lights which made the chocolate and gold wallpaper look like one +pattern in the light and another in the shadow. A man laughed in the +adjoining room; the voice seemed very near. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry had never been in a hotel of this sort before; she learned later +that El Nido was extremely proud of it, with its rattling elevator and +its dining room on the "American Plan." It seemed to her cheap and +horrible; she did not want to stay in this room, and Martin, tipping +the boy and asking for ice-water, seemed somehow a part of this new +strangeness and crudeness. She began to be afraid that he would think +she was silly, presently, if she said her prayers as usual. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning Martin hired a phaeton, and they drove out to the mine. +It had rained in the night, and there were pools of water on the soft +dirt road, but the sky was high and blue, and the air tingled with +sweetness and freshness after the shower. Cherry had had a good +breakfast, and was wearing a new gown; they stopped another phaeton on +the long, pleasant drive and Martin said to the fat man in it: +</p> + +<p> +"Mr. Bates, I want to make you acquainted with my wife!" +</p> + +<p> +"Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Lloyd!" said the fat man, pleasantly. Martin +told Cherry, when they passed him, that that was the superintendent of +the mine, and seemed pleased at the encounter. And Cherry smiled up at +the blue sky, and felt the warmth and silence of the day saturate her +whole being. Presently Martin put his arm about her, and the bay horse +dawdled along at his own sweet will, while Martin's deep voice told his +wife over and over again how adorable and beautiful she was, and how he +loved her. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry listened happily, and for a little while the old sense of pride +and achievement came back--she was married, she was wearing a plain +gold ring! But after a few days that feeling vanished forever, and +instead it began to seem strange to her that she had ever been anything +else than Martin's wife. The other women at the mine were married; she +was married; and nobody seemed to think the thing remarkable in them, +or in her. She was, to be sure, younger and prettier than any of the +others, but the men she met here were not the sort whose admiration +would have satisfied her innocent ambition to have Martin's friends +flock about her adoringly, and more than that, they knew her to be +newly married, and left the young Lloyds to their presumably desired +isolation. And very soon Cherry found herself a little housewife among +other housewives, much more praised if she made a good shortcake than +because the tilt of her new hat was becoming. +</p> + +<p> +For several days she and Martin laughed incessantly, and praised each +other incessantly, while they experimented with cooking, and ate +delicious gipsy meals. In these days Martin was always late at the +mine, and every evening he came home to find that ducks, or a jar of +honey, or a loaf of cake, had been contributed to Cherry's dinner by +the interested women in the near-by cottages. In all, there were not a +dozen families at the "Emmy Younger," and Cherry was watched with +interest and sympathy during her first efforts at housekeeping. +</p> + +<p> +By midwinter she had settled down to the business of life, buying bacon +and lard and sugar and matches at the store of the mine, cooking and +cleaning, sweeping and making beds. She still kissed Martin good-bye +every morning, and met him with an affectionate rush at the door when +he came home, and they played Five Hundred evening after evening after +dinner, quarrelling for points, and laughing at each other, while rain +sluiced down on the "Emmy Younger," and dripped on the porch. But +sometimes she wondered how it had all come about, wondered what had +become of the violent emotions that had picked her out of the valley +home, and established her here, in this strange place, with this man +she had never seen a year ago. +</p> + +<p> +Of these emotions little was left. She still liked Martin, she told +herself, and she still told him that she loved him. But she knew she +did not love him, and in such an association as theirs there can be no +liking. Her thoughts rarely rested on him; she was either thinking of +the prunes that were soaking, the firewood that was running low, the +towels that a wet breeze was blowing on the line; or she was far away, +drifting in vague realms where feelings entirely strange to this bare +little mining camp, and this hungry, busy, commonplace man, held sway. +Cherry was in the position of a leading lady mysteriously forced into a +minor role; she had never known what she wanted in life, and was +learning now in a hard school. +</p> + +<p> +The first time that she quarrelled with Martin, she cried for an entire +day, with the old childish feeling that somehow her crying mattered, +somehow her abandonment to grief would help to straighten affairs. The +cause of the quarrel was a trifle; her father had sent her a Christmas +check, and she immediately sent to a San Francisco shop for a clock +that had taken her fancy months before. +</p> + +<p> +Martin, who chanced to be pressed for money, although she did not know +it, was thunderstruck upon discovering that she had actually disposed +of fifty dollars so lightly. For several days a shadow hung over their +intercourse, and when the clock came, as large as a banjo, gilded and +quaint, he broke her heart afresh by pretending not to admire it. +</p> + +<p> +But on Christmas Eve he was delayed at the mine, and Cherry, smitten +suddenly with the bitterness of having their first Christmas spoiled in +this way, sat up for him, huddled in her silk wrapper by the air-tight +stove. She was awakened by feeling herself lowered tenderly into bed, +and raised warm arms to clasp his neck, and they kissed each other. The +little house was warm and comfortable, they had a turkey to roast on +the morrow, and ranged on the table were the home boxes, and a stack of +unopened envelopes waiting for Christmas morning. +</p> + +<p> +The next day they laughed at the clock together, and after that peace +reigned for several weeks. But it was inevitable that another quarrel +should come and then another; Cherry was young and undisciplined, +perhaps not more selfish than other girls of her age, but self-centred +and unreasonable. She had to learn self-control, and she hated to +control herself. She had to economize when poverty possessed neither +picturesqueness nor interest. They were always several weeks late in +the payment of domestic bills, and these recurring reminders of money +stringency maddened Cherry. Sometimes she summed it up, with angry +tears, reminding him that she was still wearing her trousseau dresses, +and had no maid, and never went anywhere--! +</p> + +<p> +But she developed steadily. As she grew skilful in managing her little +house, she also grew in the art of managing her husband and herself. +She became clever at avoiding causes of disagreement; she listened, +nodded, agreed, with a boiling heart, and had the satisfaction of +having Martin's viewpoint veer the next day, or the next hour, to meet +her own secret conviction. Martin's opinion, she told herself wearily, +as she swept and cooked and marketed busily, didn't matter anyhow. He +would rage and storm at his superiors, he would threaten and brood, and +then it would all be forgotten, time after time after time. Silent, +absent-minded, looking closely at a burn upon her smooth arm or +pleating her checked apron, Cherry would sit opposite him at his late +lunch. +</p> + +<p> +"I suppose you don't agree with me?" he would interrupt himself to ask +scowlingly. +</p> + +<p> +"Mart--" The innocent blue eyes would be raised vaguely. "I don't know +anything about it, dear. If Mr. Taylor--" +</p> + +<p> +"Well, you know what I tell you, don't you?" +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, dear. But--" +</p> + +<p> +"For God's sake don't call me DEAR when you--" +</p> + +<p> +"Mart!" Her dignity always rose in arms. "Please don't get excited." +</p> + +<p> +"Well!" His tone would be modified, as the appetizing little meal was +dispatched. "But Lord, you do make me so mad, sitting there criticizing +me--I can always tell when you're in sympathy with me--my Lord, I wish +you had to go up against these fellows sometimes--" The grumbling voice +would go on and on; Cherry would pause at the door, carrying out +plates, to have him finish a phrase; would nod sympathizingly as she +set his dessert before him. But her soul was like some living thing +spun into a cocoon, hearing the sounds of life only vaguely, interested +in them not at all. +</p> + +<p> +Martin seemed satisfied, and all their little world accepted her as a +matter of course. Pretty little Mrs. Lloyd went every morning into the +Company Store as the only store at the mine was called, and smiled over +her shopping; she stopped perhaps at the office to speak to her +husband; she met some other woman wheeling a baby up to the cottages, +and they gossiped together. She and her husband dined and played cards +now and then with a neighbour and his wife, and they gave dinners in +return, when the men praised every dish extravagantly, and the woman +laughed at their greedy enthusiasms. Like the other women, she had her +small domestic ambitions; Mrs. Brown wanted a meat-chopper; Mrs. +White's one desire was to have a curly maple bedroom set; Mrs. Lloyd +wanted a standing mahogany lamp for the sitting room. +</p> + +<p> +But under it all Cherry knew that something young and irresponsible and +confident in her had been killed. She never liked to think of the +valley, of the fogs and the spokes of sunlight under the redwood +aisles, of Alix and the dogs and the dreamy evenings by the fire. And +especially she did not like to think of that eighteenth birthday, and +herself thrilling and ecstatic because the strange young man from Mrs. +North's had stared at her, in her sticky apron, with so new and +disturbing a smile in his eyes. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap05"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER V +</h3> + +<p> +So winter passed at the mine, and at the brown house under the shoulder +of Tamalpais. Alix still kept her bedroom windows open, but the rain +tore in, and Anne protested at the ensuing stains on the pantry +ceiling. Creeks rushed swollen and yellow; fog smothered the mountain +peak; the forest floor oozed moisture. Spring came reluctantly; muddy +boots cluttered the doctor's hearth, for he and Alix and Peter tramped +for miles through the woods and over the hills, bringing home trillium +and pungent wild currant blossoms, and filling the house with blooms. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry's wedding, once satisfactorily over, was a cause of great +satisfaction to her sister and cousin. They had stepped back duly, to +give her the centre of the stage; they had admired and congratulated, +had helped her in all hearty generosity. They had listened to her +praises of Martin and his of her, and had given her more than her share +of the household treasures of silver spoons and yellowed old lace. +</p> + +<p> +And now that she was gone they enjoyed their own lives again, and cast +over hers the glamour that novelty and distance never fail to give. +Cherry, married and keeping house and managing affairs, was an object +of romantic interest. The girls surmised that Cherry must be making +friends; that everyone must admire her; that Martin would be rich some +day, without doubt. When her letters came, there was always animated +chatter about the fire. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry wrote regularly, now and then assuring them that she was the +same old Cherry. She described her tiny house right at the mine, +looking down at the rough scaffoldings that covered the mouth of the +tunnels, and the long sheds of the plant, and the bare big building +that was the men's boarding-house. Martin's associates brought her +trout and ducks, she wrote; she and Martin had driven three hundred +miles in the superintendent's car; she was preparing for a card party. +</p> + +<p> +"Think of little old Cherry going off on week-end trips with three +men!" Alix would say proudly. "Think of Cherry giving a card party!" +Anne perhaps would make no comment, but she often felt a pang of envy. +Cherry seemed to have everything. +</p> + +<p> +Alix was working hard with her music this winter, aided and abetted by +Peter, who was tireless in bringing her songs and taking her to +concerts. Suddenly, without warning, there was a newcomer in the +circle, a sleek-headed brown-haired little man known as Justin Little. +</p> + +<p> +He had been introduced at some party to Anne and Alix; he called; he +was presently taking Anne to a lecture. Anne now began to laugh at him +and say that he was "too ridiculous," but she did not allow any one +else to say so. On the contrary, she told Alix at various times that +his mother had been one of the old Maryland Percies, and his +great-grandfather was mentioned in a book by Sir Walter Scott, and that +one had to respect the man, even if one didn't choose to marry him. +</p> + +<p> +"Marry him!" Alix had echoed in simple amazement. Marry him--what was +all this sudden change in the household when a man could no sooner +appear than some girl began to talk of marriage? Alix had always rather +fancied the idea that all girls had an opportunity of capriciously +choosing from a dozen eligible swains, but Cherry had quickly anchored +herself to the first strange man that appeared, and here was Anne +dimpling and looking demure over a small, neat youth just out of law +school. Certainly the little person of Justin Little was a strange +harbour for all Anne's vague dreams of a conquering hero. Stupefied, +Alix watched the affair progress. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't imagine it's serious!" her father said on an April walk. +Peter, tramping beside them, was interested but silent. +</p> + +<p> +"My dear father," the girl protested, "have you listened to them? +They've been contending for weeks that they were just remarkably good +friends--that's why she calls him Frenny!" +</p> + +<p> +"Ah--I see!" the doctor said mildly, as Peter's wild laugh burst forth. +</p> + +<p> +"But now," Alix pursued, "she's told him that as she cannot be what he +wishes, they had better not meet!" +</p> + +<p> +"Poor Anne!" the old doctor commented. +</p> + +<p> +"Poor nothing! She's having the time of her life," her cousin said +unfeelingly. "She told me to-day that she was afraid that she had +checked one of the most brilliant careers at the bar." +</p> + +<p> +"I had no idea of all this!" the doctor confessed, amazed. "I've seen +the young man--noticed him about. Well--well--well! Anne, too." +</p> + +<p> +"You and me next, little sweetums," suggested Peter, dropping down +beside the doctor, who had seated himself, panting, upon a log. +</p> + +<p> +Alix, the dog's silky head under her hand, was resting against the prop +formed by a great tree trunk behind her shoulders, and looking down at +the two men. She grinned. +</p> + +<p> +"Nothingstirring, Puddeny-woodeny!" she answered, blandly. +</p> + +<p> +The old man looked from Peter's smiling, indifferent face to his +daughter's unembarrassed smile; shook his head in puzzled fashion, and +returned to his pocket the big handkerchief with which he had been +wiping his forehead. +</p> + +<p> +"There ye are!" he said, shrugging. "Cherry goes gaily off with a man +she's only known for a few weeks; Anne dresses up this new fellow with +goodness knows what qualities; and you and Alix here, neighbours all +your lives, laugh as if marriage was all a joke!" +</p> + +<p> +"Our marriage would be, darling," Alix assured him. "But, Dad, if you +would like me to marry Peter, by George, I will!" she added, dutifully. +"Peter, consider yourself betrothed! Bucky," she said to the dog, +"dat's oo new Daddy!" +</p> + +<p> +Neither man paid her the slightest attention. Peter scraped a lump of +dried mud from the calf of his high boots, and the doctor musingly +looked back along the rough trail they had climbed. +</p> + +<p> +"I'd have felt safer--I'd feel very safe to have one of my girls in +your care, Peter," the older man said at last, thoughtfully. "I hate to +see them scatter. Well!" +</p> + +<p> +He sighed, smiled, and got to his feet. "That's not in our hands," he +said, cheerfully. +</p> + +<p> +Alix, without moving, sent her glance from his face to Peter's, and +their eyes met. Only a few words, spoken half in earnest, on a spring +morning tramp, and yet they had their place, in her memory and Peter's, +and were to return to them after a time, and influence them more +seriously than either the man, or the grinning girl, or the old man +himself ever dreamed. +</p> + +<p> +The glance lasted only a second, then Alix, who had been carefully +removing burrs from the soft tangle of the dog's tasselled ears, took +the trail again with great, boyish springs of her bloomered legs. +</p> + +<p> +"Father," said she, "am I to understand that you disapprove of my +choice?" +</p> + +<p> +"I hope," her father answered, seriously, "that when you do marry you +will get a man half as good as Peter!" +</p> + +<p> +"Thank you!" Peter said, gravely, more as a rebuke to the incorrigible +Alix than because he was giving the conversation much attention. +</p> + +<p> +Alix had time for no comment, for at this moment she placed her foot +upon an unsubstantial root and slid down upon the two men with such an +unpremeditated rush of heavy boots, wet loam, loosened rocks, and +cascading earth, that the footing of them all was threatened, and it +was only after much shouting, staggering, balancing, and clutching that +they resumed their climb. Peter was then nursing a wrist that had been +wrenched in the confusion, looking away from it only to give the loudly +singing Alix an occasional resentful glance. +</p> + +<p> +"You could omit some of those cries!" he presently observed. +</p> + +<p> +"I thought you liked 'The Lotos Flower'?" Alix called back. +</p> + +<p> +"I just proved that I do," Peter said neatly, and the doctor, and Alix +herself, laughed joyously. +</p> + +<p> +In June came the blissful hour in which Anne, all blushes and smiles, +could come to her uncle with a dutiful message from the respectfully +adoring Justin. Their friendship, said Anne, had ripened into something +deeper. +</p> + +<p> +"Justin wants to have a frank talk with you, Uncle," Anne said, "and of +course I'm not to go until you are sure you can spare me, and unless +you feel that you can trust him utterly!" +</p> + +<p> +"And remember that you aren't losing a daughter, but gaining a son--Oh, +help!" Alix added. Anne gave her a reproachful glance, but found it +impossible to be angry with her. She was too genuinely delighted with +her cousin's happiness and too helpful with all the new plans. Anne's +engagement cups were ranged on the table where Cherry's had stood, and +where Cherry had talked of a coffee-coloured rajah silk Anne discussed +the merits of a "smart but handsome blue tailormade." +</p> + +<p> +The wedding was to be in September, not quite a year after Cherry's +wedding. Alix wrote her sister pages about it, always ending with the +emphatic declaration that Cherry must come down for the wedding. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry read of it with a strange pang. Somehow it robbed her own +marriage of flavour and charm to have Anne so quickly following in her +footsteps. She was homesick. She dreamed continually of the cool, high +valley, the scented aisles of the deep forest, the mountain rearing its +rough summit to the pale blue of summer skies. +</p> + +<p> +June passed; July passed; it was hot at the "Emmy Younger." August came +in on a furnace breath; Cherry felt headachy, languid, and half sick +all the time. She hated housekeeping in this weather; hated the smells +of dry tin sink and wooden floor, of milk bottles and lard tins. Martin +had said that he could not possibly get away, even for the week of +Anne's wedding, but Cherry began to wonder if he would let her go alone. +</p> + +<p> +"If he doesn't, I shall be sick!" she fretted to herself, in a certain +burning noontime, toward the middle of August. Blazing heat had been +pouring over the mine since six o'clock; there seemed to have been no +night. Martin, who had been playing poker the night before, was +sleeping late this morning. He was proud of the little wife who so +generously spared him for an occasional game, and always allowed him to +sleep far into the following morning. Other wives at the mine were not +so amiable where poker was concerned. But Martin, coming home at three +o'clock, dazed with close air and cigar smoke, had awakened his wife to +tell her that he would be "dead" in the morning, and Cherry had +accordingly crept about her own dressing noiselessly, had darkened the +bedroom, and eaten her own breakfast without the clatter of a dish, +putting the coffee aside to be reheated for him when he awakened. Now +she was sitting by the window, panting in the noon heat, and looking +down upon a dazzle of dust and ugliness and smothering hotness. She was +thinking, as it chanced, of the big forest at home, and of a certain +day--just one of their happy days!--only a year ago, when she had lain +for a dreamy hour on the soft forest floor, staring up idly through the +laced fanlike branches, and she thought of her father, with his mild +voice and ready smile; and some emotion, almost like fear, came over +her. For the first time she asked herself, in honest bewilderment, why +she had married. +</p> + +<p> +The heat deepened and strengthened and increased as the burning day +wore on. Martin waked up, hot and headachy, and having further +distressed himself with strong coffee and eggs, departed into the +dusty, motionless furnace of out-of-doors. The far brown hills +shimmered and swam, the "Emmy Younger" looked its barest, its ugliest, +its least attractive self. Cherry moved slowly about the kitchen; her +head ached; it was a day of sickening odours. The ice man had failed +them again, the soup had soured, and after she had thrown it away +Cherry felt as if the grease and the smell of it still clung to her +fingers. +</p> + +<p> +There was a shadow in the doorway; she looked up surprised. For a +minute the tall figure in striped linen and the smiling face under the +flowery hat seemed those of a stranger. Then Cherry cried out, and +laughed, and in another instant was crying in Alix's arms. +</p> + +<p> +Alix cried, too, but it was with a great rush of pity and tenderness +for Cherry. Alix had not young love and novelty to soften the outlines +of the "Emmy Younger," and she felt, as she frankly wrote later, to her +father, "at last convinced that there is a hell!" The heat and bareness +and ugliness of the mine might have been overlooked, but this poor +little house of Cherry's, this wood stove draining white ashes, this +tin sink with its pump, and the bathroom with neither faucets nor +drain, almost bewildered Alix with their discomfort. +</p> + +<p> +Even more bewildering was the change in Cherry. There was a certain +hardening that impressed Alix at once. There was a weary sort of +patience, a disillusioned concession to the drabness of married life. +Alix, after meeting some of the other wives at the mine--there were but +five or six--saw that Cherry had been affected by them. There was +general sighing over the housework, a mild conviction that men were all +selfish and unreasonable. "And I must say," Alix's first letter to her +father admitted, "that the men here are all dogs, except the ones that +are under dogs!" +</p> + +<p> +But she allowed the younger sister to see nothing of this. Indeed, +Cherry so brightened under the stimulus of Alix's companionship that +Martin told her that she was more like her old self than she had been +for months. Joyously she divided her responsibilities with Alix, +explaining the difficulties of marketing and housekeeping, and joyously +Alix assumed them. Her vitality infected the whole household, and, +indeed, the mine as well. She flirted, cooked, entertained, talked +incessantly; she bullied Martin and laughed at him, and it did him good. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps, thought Alix, rather appalled at Cherry's attitude, Cherry had +been too young for wifehood. Sometimes she spoiled and humoured Martin, +and sometimes quarrelled with him childishly, scolding and fretting for +her own way, and angry with conditions over which neither he nor she +had any control. Alix was surprised to see the old pout, and hear the +old phrase of Cherry's indulged girlhood: "I don't think this is any +FUN!" +</p> + +<p> +"Anne isn't one half as clever or as pretty as Cherry, but she'll make +a better wife!" was Alix's conclusion. She gave them spirited accounts +of Anne's affair. "He's a nice little academic fellow," she said of +Justin Little. "If he had a flatiron in each hand he'd probably weigh +close to a hundred pounds! He's a--well, a sort of DAMP-LOOKING youth, +if you know what I mean! I always want to take a crash towel and dry +him off!" +</p> + +<p> +"Fancy Anne with a shrimp like that!" Cherry said, with a proud look at +her own man's fine height. +</p> + +<p> +"Anne was delicious!" Alix further revealed. "They used to take +dignified walks on Sundays. I used to tease her, and she'd get so mad +she'd ask Dad to ask me to be more refined. She said that Mr. Little +was a most unusual man, and it was belittling to his dignity to have me +suppose that a man and a woman couldn't have an intellectual +friendship. This in May, my dear, and after the thing was settled and +Anne had cried, and written notes, and Justin had gone to Dad and asked +where he could buy a second-hand revolver--" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Alexandra Strickland, you're making up!" Cherry went back +naturally to the old nursery phrase. +</p> + +<p> +"Honestly--cross my heart!" Alix assured her. "That's the way they +managed it; they solemnly discussed it and worked it out on paper, and +Justin's mother called on Anne--she's an awful old girl, too, she looks +like a totem pole--and Anne called on his aunts, and then he asked Dad, +'as Anne's male relative,' he said, and it was all settled. And +THEN--THEN Anne became the mushiest thing I ever saw! And not only +mushy, Cherry, but proudly and openly mushy. She'd catch Justin's hand +up, at the table, and say 'Frenny--'" +</p> + +<p> +"'Frenny?'" echoed Cherry, who had laughed until actual tears stood in +her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"That's short for 'friend,' do you see? Because of this platonic +intellectual friendship that started everything, you know. She'd catch +up his hand and say, 'Frenny, show Uncle what an aristocratic hand +you've got.' My dear, she'll keep me awake nights repeating things he's +said to her: 'He's so wonderful, Alix. He's the simplest and at the +same time the cleverest man I ever knew.'" +</p> + +<p> +"He sounds awful to me," Cherry said. +</p> + +<p> +"He's not, really. Only it seems that he belongs to the oldest family +in America, or something, and is the only descendent--" +</p> + +<p> +"Money?" Cherry asked, interestedly. +</p> + +<p> +"No, I don't think money, exactly. At least I know he is getting a +hundred a month in his uncle's law office, and Dad thinks they ought to +wait until they have a little more. She'll have something, you know," +Alix added, after a moment's thought. +</p> + +<p> +"Your cousin?" Martin asked, taking his pipe out of his mouth. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, her father went into the fire-extinguisher thing with Dad," Alix +elucidated, "and evidently she and Justin have had deep, soulful +thoughts about it. Anyway, the other day she said--you know her way, +Cherry--'Tell me, Uncle, frankly and honestly, may Justin and I draw +out my share for that little home that is going to mean so much to +us--'" +</p> + +<p> +"I can hear her!" giggled Cherry. +</p> + +<p> +"Dad immediately said that she COULD, of course," Alix went on. "He's +going to look the whole thing up. He was adorable about it. He said, +'It will do more than build you a little home, my dear!'" +</p> + +<p> +"We'll get a slice of that some time," Cherry said, thoughtfully, +glancing at her husband. "I don't mean when Dad dies either," she +added, in quick affection. "I mean that he might build us a little home +some day in Mill Valley." +</p> + +<p> +"Gee, how he'd love it!" Alix said, enthusiastically. +</p> + +<p> +"I married Cherry for her money," Martin confessed. +</p> + +<p> +"As a matter of fact," Cherry contradicted him, vivaciously, animated +even by the thought of a change and a home, "we have never even spoken +of it before, have we, Mart?" +</p> + +<p> +"I never heard of it before," he admitted, smiling, as he knocked the +ashes from his pipe. "If I leave the 'Emmy Younger' in October, and go +into the Red Creek proposition, I shall be making a good deal myself. +But it's pleasant to know that Cherry will come in for a nest-egg some +day!" +</p> + +<p> +"Mart doesn't care a scrap for money!" Cherry said to her sister, in +the old loyal way. Since Alix's arrival she had somehow liked Martin +better. Perhaps Alix brought to her sister with a whiff of the old +atmosphere, the old content, the old pride, and the old point-of-view. +Presently the visitor boldly suggested that they should both go home +together for the wedding, and Martin, to Cherry's amazement, agreed +good-naturedly. +</p> + +<p> +"But, Mart, how'll you get along?" his wife asked, anxiously. She had +fumed and fussed and puttered and toiled over the care of these four +rooms for so long that it seemed unbelievable that her place might be +vacated even for a day. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, I'll get along fine!" he answered, indifferently. Cherry, with a +great sigh of relief and delight, abandoned the whole problem; milk +bottles, fire wood, groceries, dust, and laundry slipped from her mind +as if they had never been. On the last day of August, in the +cream-coloured silk and the expensive hat again, yet looking, Alix +thought, strangely unlike the bride that had been Cherry, she and her +sister happily departed for cooler regions. Martin took them to the +train, kissed his sister-in-law gaily, and then his wife affectionately, +</p> + +<p> +"Be a good little girl, Babe," he said, "and write me!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, I will--I will!" Cherry looked after him smilingly from the car +window. "He really is an old dear!" she told Alix. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap06"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER VI +</h3> + +<p> +But when at the end of the long day they reached the valley, and when +her father came innocently into the garden and stood staring vaguely at +her for a moment--for her visit, and the day of Alix's return had been +kept a secret--her first act was to burst into tears. She clung to the +fatherly shoulder as if she were a storm-beaten bird safely home again, +and although she immediately laughed at herself, and told the +sympathetically watching Peter and Alix that she didn't know what was +the matter with her, it was only to interrupt the words with fresh +tears. +</p> + +<p> +Tears of joy, she told them, laughing at the moisture in her father's +eyes. Hanging on his arm, she went back into the old sitting room +again, under the banksia rose; went up the brown stairway to the old, +clean, woody-smelling bedroom. Her hat and wraps went into the closet; +she danced and exclaimed and exulted over every familiar detail. +</p> + +<p> +She and Alix ran downstairs before supper, and into the garden, and +Cherry drew deep, refreshing breaths of the cool air and laughed over +every bush and flower. Peter came out to join them, her father came +down, and she kissed him again; she could not be close enough to him. +She had a special joyous word for Hong; she laughed and teased and +questioned Anne, when Anne and Justin came back from an afternoon +concert in the city, with an interest and enthusiasm most gratifying to +both. +</p> + +<p> +After dinner she had her old place on the arm of her father's porch +chair; Alix, with Buck's smooth head in her lap, sat on the porch step +beside Peter, and the lovers murmured from the darkness of the hammock +under the shadow of the rose vine. It was happy talk in the sweet +evening coolness; everybody seemed harmonious and in sympathy to-night. +Alix asked Peter's advice regarding her White Minorcas and respectfully +promised to act upon it, and Cherry showed him a new side, an +affectionate, little sisterly deference and confidence quite different +from her old childish sulkiness and pretty caprice. +</p> + +<p> +"Bedtime!" said her father presently, and she laughed in sheer pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +"Daddy--that sounds so nice again!" +</p> + +<p> +"But you do look fagged and pale, little girl," he told her. "You're to +stay in bed in the morning." +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, I'll be down!" she assured him. But she did not come down in the +morning, none the less. She was tired in soul and body, and glad to let +them spoil her again, glad to rest and sleep in the heavenly peace and +quiet of the old home. +</p> + +<p> +Midsummer heat was upon the little valley, but here under the redwoods +there was always coolness; delicious odours of warm sap and loamy +sweetness drifted into Cherry's darkened room; the morning was fresh +and foggy, and the night before she had smiled drowsily to stir from +first sleep and find her father bending over her, drawing up an extra +blanket in the old way. All night long she slept deeply and sweetly, as +she had slept through all the nights of childhood; it was ten o'clock +when Alix came smiling in with a breakfast tray. Presently she carried +it away, and Cherry, with a deep sigh from the fullness of her content, +turned on her side and drowsed again. +</p> + +<p> +Waking, after a while, she locked her hands under her head, and lay +listening happily to the old and familiar sounds of home. She heard +Hong bargaining in his own minor chatter with a fruit vendor, and Alix +and her father chuckling over some small confidence in the porch. She +heard the subdued clink of dishes, the squawk of a surprised chicken, +and the girls' murmuring voices. +</p> + +<p> +It was Saturday, Cherry remembered, when Peter's voice suddenly sounded +above the others and was hastily hushed for her sake; Peter was always +there at three o'clock on Saturdays. There was another voice, too, +pleasant and crisp and even a trifle fastidious; that must be Justin. +</p> + +<p> +Late in the afternoon, rested, fresh, and her old sweet self in the +white ruffles, she came down to join them. They had settled themselves +under the redwoods, Anne and Justin, Peter and Alix and Buck, the dog, +all jumped up to greet her. Cherry very quietly subsided into a wicker +chair, listened rather than talked, moved her lovely eyes +affectionately from one to another. +</p> + +<p> +Peter hardly moved his eyes from her, although he did not often address +her directly; Justin was quite obviously overcome by the unexpected +beauty of Anne's cousin; Anne herself, with an undefined pang, admitted +in her soul that Cherry was prettier than ever; and even Alix was +affected. With the lovely background of the forest, the shade of her +thin wide hat lightly shadowing her face, with the dew of her long +sleep and recent bath enhancing the childish purity of her skin, and +with her blue eyes full of content, Cherry was a picture of exquisite +youth and grace and charm. It was not the less winning because she +seemed genuinely unconscious of it to-day; perhaps before the girls and +Anne's precise little fledgling lawyer no self-conscious thought of +conquest had entered her head. +</p> + +<p> +The dog had gone to her knee and laid his bronze mane against the white +ruffles, and while she listened and smiled, she idly fondled and petted +him with her childish, ringed hand. +</p> + +<p> +"And the next experience is to be at Red Creek?" Justin asked, +delighted with this addition to the family circle and beaming about +upon everyone. +</p> + +<p> +"Mr. Lloyd is there now," Cherry smiled. "Do you know Red Creek?--I'll +have to call you Justin, since you're going to be my cousin so soon," +she interrupted herself to say shyly. +</p> + +<p> +"No--I--er--I--er--don't!" Justin stammered. +</p> + +<p> +Anne said vivaciously: +</p> + +<p> +"Of course you're to call him Justin! And he's to call you Cherry, +too--those are my orders, Frenny, and don't you dare disobey!" +</p> + +<p> +"But did you get onto the artful and engaging smile Justin gave +Cherry?" Alix giggled later to Peter. She and Peter were in the pantry, +deep in the manufacture of a certain sort of canape. "Why, he was all +in a heap over her!" continued Alix elegantly, as she sampled a small +piece of smeared toast with a severe and wrinkled brow. "Try a little +mustard in it," she suggested, adding confidentially, "You know Cherry +is really too pretty for any use! The rest of us can diet for +complexion or diet for figures, and this hat will be becoming or that +dress will always look well--but Cherry, why, she just knocks us all +galley-west! What's the use of struggling and brushing your hair and +worrying about your clothes, when a girl like Cherry will come along +and sit down and have everybody staring!" +</p> + +<p> +"She is, of course, quite extraordinary!" Peter conceded as he punched +two small holes in the top of a tin of olive oil. The oil welled up +through the holes and he wiped his fingers on a corner of Alix's apron. +</p> + +<p> +"It's just the difference," Alix said, "between being nice looking, +which half the women in the word are, and being a beauty. I remember +that when Cherry was only about ten I used to look at her and think +that there was something rather--well, rather arresting about her face. +It was such an aristocratic little face. I remember her in those old +bluejacket blouses--" +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, I do, too!" Peter said quickly, straightening up from restoring +the vinegar demijohn to an obscure position in a lower cupboard. +"Well--These have to go in the oven now; I'll take them out. Aren't you +going to change for dinner? It's after six now!" +</p> + +<p> +"Since you ask me, I'll see what frock Deshabille has laid out!" Alix +yawned, disappearing in the direction of the sitting room, where he +found her a few minutes later absorbed in a book. +</p> + +<p> +The evening was cooler, with sudden wind and a promise of storm. They +grouped themselves about a fire in the old way; Anne and Justin sitting +close together on the settle, as Martin and Cherry had done a year ago. +Cherry sat next her father with her hand linked in his; neither hand +moved for a long, long time. Alix, sitting on the floor, with her lean +cheeks painted by the fire, played with the dog and rallied Peter about +some love affair, the details of which made him laugh vexedly in spite +of himself. Cherry watched them, a little puzzled at the familiarity of +Peter beside this fire; had he been so entirely one of the family a +year ago? She could almost envy him, feeling herself removed by so long +and strange a twelvemonth. +</p> + +<p> +"Be that as it may, my dear," said Alix, "the fact remains that you +taught this Fenton woman to drive your car, didn't you? And you told +her that she was the best woman driver you ever knew, a better driver +even than Miss Strickland; didn't you?" +</p> + +<p> +"I did not," Peter said, unmovedly smoking and watching the fire. +</p> + +<p> +"Why, Peter, you did! She said you did!" +</p> + +<p> +"Well, then, she said what is not true!" +</p> + +<p> +"She distinctly told me," Alix remarked, "that dear Mr. Joyce had said +that she was the best woman driver he ever saw." +</p> + +<p> +"Well, I may have said something like that," Peter growled, flushing. +Alix laughed exultingly. "I tell you I loathe her!" he added. +</p> + +<p> +"Daddy, we have a lovely home!" Cherry said softly, her eyes moving +from the shabby books and the shabby rugs to Alix's piano shining in +the gloom of the far corner. It was all homelike and pleasant, and +somehow the atmosphere was newly inspiring to her; she had felt that +the talk at dinner, the old eager controversy about books and singers +and politics and science, was--well, not brilliant, perhaps, but worth +while. She was beginning to think Peter extremely clever and only +Alix's quick tongue a match for him, and to feel that her father knew +every book and had seen every worthwhile play in the world. +</p> + +<p> +Martin, whose deep dissatisfaction with conditions at the "Emmy Younger +Mine" Cherry well knew, had entered into a correspondence some months +before relative to a position at another mine that seemed better to +him, and instead of coming down for a day or two at the time of Anne's +wedding, as Cherry had hoped he might, wrote her that the authorities +at the Red Creek plant had "jumped at him," and that he was closing up +all his affairs at the "Emmy Younger" and had arranged to ship all +their household effects direct to the new home. He knew nothing of Red +Creek, except that it was a small inland town in the San Joachim +region, but Cherry's delight at the thought of any alternative for the +"Emmy Younger" was a revelation to Alix. Martin told his wife +generously that he hoped she would stay with her father until the move +was accomplished, and Cherry, with a clear conscience, established +herself in her old room. She wrote constantly to her husband and often +spoke appreciatively of Mart's kindness. +</p> + +<p> +Anne's marriage took place in mid-September. It was a much more formal +and elaborate affair than Cherry's had been, because, as Anne +explained, "Frenny's people have been so generous about giving him up, +you know. After all, he's the last of the Littles; all the others are +Folsoms and Randalls. And I want them to realize that he is marrying a +gentlewoman!" +</p> + +<p> +The older Littles and all the Folsoms and Randalls came to the wedding, +self-respecting, thrifty people who were, for the most part, as Alix +summarized it, "buying little homes on the installment plan in +desirable residential districts of Oakland and Berkeley." There were +bright-faced school teachers, in dark plaid silk waists, and young +matrons in carefully planned colour schemes of brown and gray; and they +all told Alix and Cherry about the family, the members who were +daughters of the Revolution, and the members who belonged to the +Society of the Daughters of Officers of the Civil War. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry and Alix went upstairs after the ceremony as Alix and Anne had +done a year ago, but there was deep relief and amusement in their mood +to-day, and it was with real pleasure in the closer intimacy that the +little group gathered about the fire that night. +</p> + +<p> +After that life went on serenely, and it was only occasionally that the +girls were reminded that Cherry was a married woman with a husband +expecting her shortly to return to him. When she and Alix took part in +the village fairs and bazaars, Alix was still a little thrilled to see +their names in print, "Miss Strickland and her sister Mrs. Lloyd, who +is visiting her," but to Cherry all the romance seemed to have vanished +from her new estate. November passed, and Christmas came, and there was +some talk of Martin's joining them for Christmas. But he did not come; +he was extremely busy at the new mine and comfortable in a village +boarding-house. +</p> + +<p> +It was in early March that Alix spoke to her father about it; spoke in +her casual and vague fashion, but gave him food for serious thought, +nevertheless. +</p> + +<p> +"Dad," said Alix suddenly at the lunch table one day when Cherry +happened to be shopping in the city, "were you and Mother ever +separated when you were married?" +</p> + +<p> +"No--" the doctor, remembering, shook his head. "Your mother never was +happy away from her home!" +</p> + +<p> +"Not even to visit her own family?" persisted Alix. +</p> + +<p> +"Not ever," he answered. "We always planned a long visit in the +East--but she never would go without me. She went to your Uncle +Vincent's house in Palo Alto once, but she came home the next +day--didn't feel comfortable away from home!" +</p> + +<p> +"How long do you suppose Martin will let us have Cherry?" Alix asked. +</p> + +<p> +Her father looked quickly at her and a troubled expression crossed his +face. +</p> + +<p> +"The circumstances seem to make it wise to keep her here until he is +sure that this new position is the right one!" he said. +</p> + +<p> +"If I know anything about Martin," Alix said, "no position is ever +going to be the right one for him. I mean," she added as her father +gave her an alarmed look, "I simply mean that he is that sort of man. +And it seems to me--odd, the way he and Cherry take their marriage! Now +when she got here, five months--six months ago," Alix went on as her +father watched her in close and distressed attention, "Cherry was +always talking about going back to Mart--every time he sent her money +she would say that she ought to keep it for a sudden summons. But she +doesn't do that now. You've been giving her her own allowance right +along, and she has settled down just as she was. A day or two ago +Martin sent her twenty dollars and she has gone into town to spend it +to-day--" +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated, shrugged her shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +"You think she ought to go back?" her father asked. +</p> + +<p> +"No, I don't think so!" Alix answered, eagerly. "I don't think anything +about it. But--but IS that marriage? Is that really for better or for +worse? I mean," she interrupted herself hastily, "as time goes on it +will get harder and harder for her; there will seem to be less and less +reason for going! Mrs. Brown was talking to me about it yesterday, and +she asked in that catty, smiling way she has--" +</p> + +<p> +"Trust the women to gossip!" the doctor said, impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, nobody minds their gossip!" his daughter assured him. "And for +my part I think it's a shame that a girl can't come back home as simply +as that, if she wants to!" she added, boldly. +</p> + +<p> +"Don't talk nonsense!" her father said, mildly. "You think," he added, +reluctantly, "that it wasn't a good thing for her, eh?" +</p> + +<p> +"Well--" Alix began. "She doesn't seem like other married women," she +said, doubtfully. "And the only thing is, will she ever want to go +back, if she isn't rather--rather coerced. Martin is odd, you know; he +has a kind of stolid, stupid pride. He wrote her weeks ago and asked +her to come, and she wrote back that if he would find her a cottage, +she would; she couldn't go to his boarding-house, she hated boarding! +Martin answered that he would, some day, and she said to me, 'Oh, now +he's cross!' Now, mind you," Alix broke off vehemently, "I'd change the +entire institution of marriage, if it was me! I'd end all this--" +</p> + +<p> +"Well, we won't go into that!" her father interrupted her, hastily, for +Alix had aired these views before and he was not in sympathy with them. +"And I guess you're right: the child is a woman now, with a woman's +responsibilities," he added. "And her place is with her husband. +They'll have to solve life together, to learn together. I'll speak to +Cherry!" +</p> + +<p> +Alix, watching him walk away, thought that she had never seen Dad look +old before. She saw the shadow on his kind face all the rest of that +day. +</p> + +<p> +It was only the next morning when he opened the question with Cherry. +</p> + +<p> +It was a brilliant morning, with spring already in the air. Cherry, on +the porch steps, was reading a letter from Martin. Her father sat down +beside her. She had on one of her old gowns, and bathed in soft +sunlight, looked eighteen again. Emerald grass was already filming the +ground about the house; from under the deep rich brown of the forest +flooring spring had thrust a million tiny spears of green. The redwoods +wore plushy plumes of blue new foliage, and a wild lilac at the edge of +the clearing drifted like pale smoke against the dark woods. Everywhere +life was soaking and bursting after heavy rains; the very posts of the +garden fence were sprouting little feathery tips. The air was sweet and +pungent and damp and fresh, the sky high and blue, and across the +granite face of Tamalpais a last scarf of mist was floating. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, what has Martin to say?" asked the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, he doesn't like it much!" Cherry said, making a little face. "He +describes the village as perfectly hopeless. He's moved into the little +house in E Street, and gotten two stoves up." +</p> + +<p> +"And when does he want his girl?" her father pursued. +</p> + +<p> +"He doesn't say," Cherry answered, innocently. "I think he is really +happier to have me here, where he knows I am well off!" she said. "I +know I am," she ended after a moment's thought. +</p> + +<p> +Her father was conscious of a pang; he had not even formed the thought +in his own mind that Cherry was unhappy. He was as trusting and as +innocent as his daughters in many ways; he shrank from the unwelcome +facts of life. His own childhood had been hard and disciplinary, and at +Cherry's age he had been concerned only with realities, with the need +of food and clothes and shelter. That a life could be spoiled simply by +contact with an unsympathetic personality was incomprehensible to him. +The child, he told himself, had a good husband, a home and health, and +undeveloped resources within herself. It was puzzling and painful to +him to realize that there was needed something more--and that that +something was lacking. He felt a sudden anger at Martin; why wasn't +Martin managing this affair! +</p> + +<p> +"Mart doesn't mention any time!" he mused. +</p> + +<p> +"Thanks to you!" Cherry said, dimpling mischievously. "He wrote quite +firmly, just before Christmas," she added, "but I told him that Dad had +been such an angel and liked so much to have me here--" And Cherry's +smile was full of childish triumph. +</p> + +<p> +"My dear," her father said, spurred to sudden courage by a realization +that the matter might easily become serious, "you mustn't abuse his +generosity. Suppose you write that you'll join him--this is +March--suppose you say the first of April?" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry flushed and looked down. Her lips trembled. There was a moment +of unhappy silence. +</p> + +<p> +"Very well, Dad," she said in a low voice. A second later she had +jumped to her feet and vanished in the house. Her father roamed the +woods in wretched misgivings, coming in at lunch time to find her in +her place, smiling, but traces of tears about her lovely eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing more was said for a day or two, and then Cherry read aloud to +the family an affectionate letter in which Martin said that everything +would be ready for her whenever she came now. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap07"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER VII +</h3> + +<p> +The last day of March and of Cherry's visit broke clear and blue, and +with it spring seemed to have come on a rush of perfume and green +beauty. Days had been soft and warm before; this day was hot, and +flushed with colour and splendour. There were iris in the dewy grass +under the oaks, but in the sunshine every trace of winter's damp had +disappeared. Larks whirled up from the fields, and the bridal-wreath +and syringa bushes were mounds of creamy bloom. +</p> + +<p> +Alix and Cherry washed each other's hair in the old fashion, and came +trailing down with towels and combs to the garden. The doctor joined +them in the midst of their tossing and spreading, and sat smoking +peacefully on the porch steps. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, heavens, how I love this sort of weather!" Alix exclaimed, +flinging her brown mane backward, her tall figure slender in a faded +kimono. She sat down crosswise on her chair, locked her arms about its +back, dropped her face on them, and yawned luxuriously. "Dad and +Peter," she went on, suddenly sitting erect, "will get all this nice +clean hair full of cigar smoke to-night, so what's the use, anyway?" +</p> + +<p> +"To-night's the night we go to Peter?" Cherry stated rather than asked. +"Do you remember," she glanced at her father, who was reading his +paper, "do you remember when Dad always used to scold us for being rude +to Peter?" +</p> + +<p> +"Well, I'd rather go to Peter's for dinner than anywhere else I ever +go!" Alix remarked, dreamily. "Seriously, I mean it!" she repeated as +Cherry looked at her in amused surprise. "In the first place, I love +his bungalow--tiny as it is, it has the whole of a little canyon to +itself, and the prettiest view in the valley, I think. And then I love +the messy sitting room, with all the books and music, and I love the +way Peter entertains. I wish," she added, simply, "that I liked Peter +half as well as I do his house!" +</p> + +<p> +"Peter's a dear!" Cherry contended. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, I know he is!" Alix said, quickly. "Peter's always been a dear, of +course. But I mean in a special sense--" finished Alix with an entirely +unembarrassed grin. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, through a glittering cloud of hair, looked at her steadily. +Suddenly she gave an odd laugh. +</p> + +<p> +"Do you know I never thought of Peter like that?" she said. +</p> + +<p> +Alix nodded with a cautious look at her father who was out of hearing. +</p> + +<p> +"No, nor I! We've always taken him rather for granted," she admitted. +"Only I've been rather wishing, lately, that Peter wasn't such an +unflattering, big-brotherish, every-day-neighbour sort of person." +</p> + +<p> +Still Cherry regarded her steadily with an awakening look in her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"Why lately?" she asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Because," said Alix, briskly and unromantically, "I think Peter would +like me to--well, to stop taking him for granted!" +</p> + +<p> +"But Peter's lame--" Cherry submitted, doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +"You can't call a shortness left from a broken leg LAME!" Alix +protested. "Peter isn't brawny, but he's never been ill. And he's not a +child. He's thirty-seven. And I imagine he's awfully lonely. And then I +imagine it would please Dad--" "Dad has always been ridiculously fond +of him," Cherry said, thoughtfully. Peter--possibly in love with Alix! +She had never even suspected it. Peter's attitude toward them all had +been more paternal than anything else. Cherry and her sister could not +remember life without Peter, but he had always been Dad's friend, +rather than theirs. He had rebuked them; he had patiently asked them +not to chatter so; he had criticized their grammar and their clothes +and their friends. +</p> + +<p> +Peter and Alix. Well, there was something rather pleasant in the +thought after all, if Alix didn't mind his ugliness and thinness. +Cherry thought about it all day. She had had no thought of money a year +or two ago; but she was more experienced now. And Peter was rich. +</p> + +<p> +Ordinarily she would have said that she was not going to change for +Peter's dinner; but this afternoon, without mentioning the fact, she +quietly got into one of her prettiest dresses; a dress that had been +made in the long-ago excitement of trousseau days. Peter as a rather +autocratic and critical neighbour was one thing; as a possible +brother-in-law he was another. +</p> + +<p> +She came downstairs to find her father waiting, and they walked away +through the woods together. Alix had already gone up to Peter's house +to play tennis. They walked slowly through the lovely aisles of the +trees, crossing a road or two, climbing steadily upward under great +redwoods. The forest was thinning with oaks and madrone trees, and they +found the sunlight again high on the crest of the ridge before a turn +of the trail brought them in view of Peter's bungalow. It was a shabby +little place, all porch and slope of rough brown roof, set in a +wilderness of wild flowers and overlooking long descending slopes of +hillside that stretched far away to the very bay and marshes at the +ocean mouth. +</p> + +<p> +To-night the spring sunshine streamed across it with broad shadows, the +mountains' rough crest stood against a wide expanse of sunset sky. +Cherry's skirt brushed the gold dust from masses and masses of +buttercups. The tennis was over, but just over; Peter and Alix were +sitting, still panting, on the rail of the wide, open porch, and +shouted as the others came up. +</p> + +<p> +"You missed doubles!" called Alix. "The grandest we ever did! Doubles +with the Thompsons and three sets straight to us--six-two, six-two, and +six-two again! They've gone. Oh, heavens, I never had such tennis. Oh, +Peter, when you stood there at the net and just curved your hand like a +cup"--Alix gave an enthusiastic imitation--"and over she went, and game +and set!" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, sinking white and frilly into a chair, smiled indulgently. The +walk had given her a wild-rose colour, and even Alix was struck with +her extraordinary beauty. Alix had wheeled about on the rail to face +the porch, and Peter had gotten to his feet and was hospitably pushing +basket chairs about. Now he gave Alix a critical look. +</p> + +<p> +"You're disgracefully dirty!" he said, fraternally. +</p> + +<p> +"I know it," she answered, calmly. "Have I time to tub?" +</p> + +<p> +"All the time in the world!" he answered. +</p> + +<p> +"Are any clothes of mine here?" further demanded Alix, rising lazily. +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, there's a blouse. It's in the linen closet; ask Kow for it or get +it yourself when you get your towels. You left it the day you changed +here after we all climbed the mountain. I hope you people are going to +get enough to eat," Peter added, flinging himself into a chair beside +Cherry. +</p> + +<p> +"He's been cooking it since breakfast!" Alix remarked, departing. Peter +laughed guiltily, and Cherry, too. It was only an exaggeration of the +simple truth. He loved to cook, and his meals were famous. +</p> + +<p> +"It's very pleasant to me to have Alix so much at home here," Cherry +said, when Alix was gone, and the doctor wandering happily about the +garden. "I don't know what we'd do if any one ever usurped our places +here!" +</p> + +<p> +She had said it deliberately; the fascination of her recent discovery +was too strong to resist. The man flushed suddenly. For a full minute +he did not speak, and Cherry was surprised to find herself a little +thrilled and even frightened by his silence. +</p> + +<p> +"What put that into your head?" he asked, presently, smoking with his +eyes fixed upon the valley far below. +</p> + +<p> +"Just--being here," she answered. And as he glanced over his shoulder +he met her smile. +</p> + +<p> +"You've been here a thousand times without ever paying me a +compliment!" he reminded her. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry considered this, her brows drawn a trifle together. +</p> + +<p> +"Perhaps," she offered, presently, "it's because there are so many +changes, Peter; my marriage, Anne's--everything different! It just came +to me that it is nice to have this always the same." +</p> + +<p> +"Perhaps Alix will come up here and help keep it so some day," the man +said, deliberately. Cherry's look of elaborate surprise and pleasure +died before his serious glance. She was silent for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +"Why don't you ask her?" she said in a low, thoughtful tone, trembling, +eager to preserve his mood without a false note. +</p> + +<p> +"I have," he answered simply. Cherry's heart jumped with a sudden +unexpected emotion. What was it? Not pleasure, not all surprise--surely +there could be no jealousy mixed with her feeling for Peter's plans? +But she was dazed with the rush of feeling; hurt in some fashion she +could not stop to dissect now. Only this morning she had felt that +Peter was not good enough for Alix; now, suddenly, he began to seem +admirable and dear and unlike everybody else-- +</p> + +<p> +"And she said no?" she stammered in confusion. +</p> + +<p> +"She said no. Or, at least, I intimated that I was a lonely old +affectionate man with this and that to offer, and she intimated that +that wasn't enough. It was all--" he laughed--"It was all extremely +sketchy!" +</p> + +<p> +"Peter, but what does she want?" There was actual sisterly indignation +in Cherry's tone. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Alix is quite right!" he answered, lightly. "I ought to have +said--I ought to explain--that I had told her, only a few days +previously, that I had always loved somebody else!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh-h-h!" Cherry was enlightened. She visualized an affair in the last +years of the old century for Peter. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, and--and she didn't love you?" Cherry asked. +</p> + +<p> +"The lady? She was unfortunately married before I had a chance to ask +her," said Peter. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh-h-h!" Cherry said again, impressed, "and you'll never get over it?" +she asked, timidly. "Peter, I never knew that!" she added as he was +silent. "Does--does Dad know?" +</p> + +<p> +"Nobody knows but Alix, and she only knows the bare facts," he assured +her. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh!" Cherry could think of nothing to add to the sympathetic little +monosyllable. Twilight was reaching even the hilltop, the canyons were +rilling with violet shadows; the sweet, pungent odour of the first dew, +falling on warm dust, crept across the garden. +</p> + +<p> +"Finished with the shower!" shrieked Alix from the warm darkness inside +the doorway. "Hurry up, Peter, something smells utterly grand!" +</p> + +<p> +"That's the chicken thing!" Peter shouted back, springing up to +disappear in the direction of the bathroom. Cherry sat on, silent, +wrapped still in the new spell of the pleasant voice, the strangely +appealing and yet masterful personality. +</p> + +<p> +The dinner straggled as all Peter's dinners did; Alix mixed a +salad-dressing; Peter himself flashed in and out of the tiny, hot +kitchen a hundred times. Kow, in immaculate linen, came back and forth +in leisurely table-setting. Suddenly everything was ready; the crisp, +smoking-hot French loaf, the big, brown jar of bubbling and odorous +chicken, the lettuce curled in its bowl, the long-necked bottles in +their straw cases, and cheeses and crackers and olives and figs and +tiny fish in oil and marrons in fluted paper that were a part of all +Peter's dinners. +</p> + +<p> +After dinner they watched the moon rise, until Alix drifted in to the +piano and Peter followed her, and the others came in, too, to sit +beside the fire. As usual it was midnight before any one thought of +ending one of Peter's evenings. +</p> + +<p> +And all through the pleasant, quiet hours, and when he bundled them up +in his own big loose coats to drive them home, Cherry was thinking of +him in this new light; Peter loving a woman, and denied. The knowledge +seemed to fling a strange glamour about him; she saw new charm in him, +or perhaps, as she told herself, she saw for the first time how +charming he really was. His speech seemed actually the pleasanter for +the stammer at which they had all laughed years ago; the slight limp +lent its own touch of individuality, and the man's blunt criticisms of +books and music, politics and people, were softened by his humour, his +genuine humility, and his eager hospitality. +</p> + +<p> +Next day she took occasion to mention Peter and his affairs to Alix. +Alix turned fiery red, but laughed hardily. +</p> + +<p> +"If he considers that an offer, he can consider it a refusal, I guess," +she said, boyishly embarrassed. "I like him--I'm crazy about him. But I +don't want any party in ringlets and crinolines to come floating from +the dead past over my child's innocent cradle--" +</p> + +<p> +"Alix, you're awful!" Cherry laughed. "You couldn't talk that way if +you loved him!" +</p> + +<p> +"What way?" Alix demanded. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, about his--well, his children!" +</p> + +<p> +"I should think that would be just the proof that I do love him," Alix +persisted idly in her musical, mischievous voice. "I certainly wouldn't +want to talk of the children of a man I DIDN'T--" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Alix, don't!" Cherry protested. "Anyway, you know better." +</p> + +<p> +Alix laughed. +</p> + +<p> +"I suppose I do. I suppose I ought to be a mass of blushes. The truth +is, I like kids, and I don't like husbands--" Alix confessed, with +engaging candour. +</p> + +<p> +"You don't know anything about husbands!" Cherry laughed. +</p> + +<p> +"I know lots of men I'd like to go off with for a few months," Alix +pursued. "But then I'd like to come home again! I don't see why that +isn't perfectly reasonable--" +</p> + +<p> +"Well, it's not!" Cherry declared almost crossly. "That isn't marriage. +You belong where your husband is, and you--you are always glad to be +with him--" +</p> + +<p> +"But suppose you get tired of him, like a job or a boarding-house, or +any of your other friends?" Alix persisted idly. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, you aren't supposed to!" Cherry said, feebly. Alix let her have +the last word; it was only due to her superior experience, she thought +crossly. But half an hour later, lying wakeful, and thinking that she +would miss dear old Cherry to-morrow, she fancied she heard something +like a sob from Cherry's bed, and her whole heart softened with +sympathy for her sister. +</p> + +<p> +They came downstairs together the next day in mid-afternoon, both +hatted and wrapped for the trip, for Peter was to take Cherry as far as +Sausalito in the car, and Martin by a fortunate chance was to meet them +there at the ferryboat for San Francisco. Mill Valley was not more than +an hour's ride from the ferry. Alix was to drive down and return with +Peter. Cherry said good-bye to her father in the porch; she seemed more +of a puzzled child than ever. +</p> + +<p> +"I've had a wonderful visit, Dad--" she began bravely. Suddenly the +tears came. She buried her face against her father's shabby old office +coat and his arms went about her. Alix laughed awkwardly, and Peter +shut his teeth. Anne, who had very properly come over to say good-bye +to her cousin, got in the back seat of the car and Alix took the seat +beside her. +</p> + +<p> +"Take a picture of Peter and me with the suitcases!" she said. "We must +look so domestic!" +</p> + +<p> +"Get in here, Cherry," Peter said, opening the door of the seat beside +his own. "Doctor, we'll be back in about an hour--" +</p> + +<p> +"Without Cherry!" her father said with a rueful smile. +</p> + +<p> +"Without Cherry!" Peter echoed, looking at her gravely. +</p> + +<p> +It was then that Cherry saw in Peter's expression something that she +did not forget for many, many months--never quite forgot. He wore a +rough tramping costume to-day, a Sunday, and he was halfway up the +porch steps, ready to carry bags to the waiting motor car. His eyes +were fixed upon her with something so yearning, so loving, so troubled +in their gaze that a thrill went through Cherry from head to foot. He +instantly averted his look, turned to the car, fumbled with the gears; +they were off. He was to drive them all the way to Sausalito; Alix +commented joyously upon the beauty of the day. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, tied trimly into a hat that was all big daisies, was silent for +a while. But when Alix and Anne commenced an interested conversation in +the back seat, she suddenly said regretfully: +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, I hate to go away this time! I mind it more even than the first +time!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter, edging smoothly about a wide blue puddle, nodded +sympathetically, but did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +"I envy Alix--" Cherry said in idle mischief. She knew that the subject +was not a safe one, but was irresistibly impelled to pursue it. +</p> + +<p> +"Alix?" said Peter, after a silence long enough to make her feel +ashamed of herself. +</p> + +<p> +"Yes. Her young man lives in Mill Valley, right near home!" elucidated +Cherry. +</p> + +<p> +"Am I Alix's young man?" he asked, amused. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, aren't you?" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know. I've never been any one's young man," said Peter. +</p> + +<p> +"Whoever the woman who treated you meanly is--I hate her!" Cherry began +again. "Unless," she added, "unless she was very young, and you never +told her!" +</p> + +<p> +This time he did not answer at all, and they spun along in utter +silence. But when they were nearing Sausalito, Cherry said almost +timidly: +</p> + +<p> +"I think perhaps it would make her happy--and proud, to know that you +admired her, Peter. I don't know who she is, of course, but almost any +woman would feel that. This visit, somehow, has made me feel as if you +and I had really begun a new friendship on our own account, not just +the old friendship. And I shall often think of that talk we had a week +ago, and-think of you, too. N-n-next time you fall in love I hope you +will be luckier!" +</p> + +<p> +Silence. But he gave her his quick, friendly smile. Cherry dared not +speak again. +</p> + +<p> +"Last stop--all out!" Alix exclaimed. "You get tickets, Peter. Hurray, +there's Martin!" +</p> + +<p> +Unexpectedly Martin's big figure came toward them from the ferry gate. +Some ore from the mine had to be assayed in San Francisco, and he had +volunteered to make the trip so that he might meet his wife and bring +her back with him to Red Creek. Time hanging on his hands in the city, +he had crossed the bay for the pleasure of the return trip with Cherry. +He met them beamingly. There was a little confusion of greeting and +good-byes. Alix and Peter watched the others at the railing until the +ferryboat turned. Martin smiled over Anne's head; Cherry, both little +white-gloved hands on the rail, blue eyes and a glint of bright hair +showing under the daisies on her hat, her small figure enveloped in a +big loose coat, looked as if she would like to cry again. +</p> + +<p> +"It must be fun to be married, and go off to strange places with your +beau!" Alix decided. "I'm hungry, Peter; let's go over there and treat +ourselves to fried oysters!" +</p> + +<p> +"Let's go home," he said, unsympathetically. "I'm not hungry." +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, VERY well!" Alix agreed, airily, jumping into the seat beside him. +"Though what has given you a grouch I really am at a loss to imagine!" +she added under her breath. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't hear you!" shouted Peter, who was suddenly rushing the engine. +</p> + +<p> +"You weren't intended to!" she shouted back. And until they were +halfway home, and Alix laughed out in sudden shame and good-nature not +another word was spoken. The bright weather had changed suddenly, and a +wet spring cloud was spreading over the sky. +</p> + +<p> +"Love me, Peter?" Alix asked, suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +"Not always!" he answered, briefly and sincerely. Fog was creeping over +the marshes, the air was full of damp chill. A memory of the +coat-enveloped figure and the blue eyes that smiled wistfully under a +daisied hat was wringing his heart. +</p> + +<p> +"Listen," began Alix again. "Let's stop for Dad, it's going to pour. +And let's go up to your house to eat?" +</p> + +<p> +Silence. +</p> + +<p> +"We can play duets all evening!" Alix added, temptingly. +</p> + +<p> +"Little and Anne coming back?" Peter asked, unwillingly. +</p> + +<p> +"No; they're dining with the Quelquechoses--those bright-faced, +freckled cousins of his," Alix answered. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know that I've got anything up there to eat!" Peter said, +gloomily. +</p> + +<p> +"Ooo--say!" Alix said, brightening suddenly with her incorrigible +childishness of expression. "Kow's got eggs and cream, hasn't he? I'll +make that new thing I was telling you about--it's delicious. Oh, and an +onion--" she broke off in concern. +</p> + +<p> +"He has an onion," Peter admitted. "What dish?" he asked, interested in +spite of himself, as Alix fell into a rapturous reverie. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, you fry a chopped onion," Alix began, "and then you have a lot +of hard-boiled eggs--" In another moment they were deep in culinary +details. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap08"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER VIII +</h3> + +<p> +Martin's work was in the Contra Costa Valley, and he and Cherry had a +small house in Red Creek, the only town of any size near the mine. Red +Creek was in a fruit-farming and dairy region and looked its prettiest +on the spring evening when Cherry saw it first. The locusts were in +leaf and ready to bloom, and the first fruit blossoms were scattered in +snowy whiteness up and down the valley. +</p> + +<p> +Her little house was a cottage with a porch running across the front +where windows looked out from the sitting room and the front bedroom. +Back of these rooms were a dark little bathroom that connected the +front bedroom with another smaller bedroom, a little dining room and a +kitchen. Almost all the houses in Red Creek were duplicates, except in +minor particulars, of this house, but this particular specimen was +older than some of the others and showed signs of hard usage. The +kitchen floor was chipped and stained, and the bathroom basin was +plugged with putty; there were odd bottles partly full of shoe polish +and ink and vinegar, here and there; and on the shelves of the +triangular closet in the dining room were cut and folded pieces of +spotted white paper. +</p> + +<p> +Martin, man-fashion, had merely camped in kitchen and bedroom while +awaiting his wife; but Cherry buttoned on her crisp little apron on the +first morning after her arrival, and attacked the accumulated dishes in +the sink, and the scattered shirts and collars bravely. It was a cold, +raw morning, and she went to and fro briskly, burning rubbish in the +airtight stove in the sitting room, and keeping a good wood fire going +in the kitchen, and feeling housewifely and efficient as she did so. +</p> + +<p> +After a lunch for which she was praised and applauded in something of +the old honeymoon way, she walked to market, passing blocks of other +little houses like her own, with bare dooryards where nipped +chrysanthemums dangled on poles, and where play wagons, puddles of +water, and picking chickens alternated regularly. Other marketing women +looked at Cherry with the quickly averted look that is only given to +beauty; but the men in the shops wrote down the new name and address +with especial zeal and amiability. She remembered the old necessities, +bacon and lard and sugar and matches; she recovered the kitchen clock +from its wrapping of newspaper, and wound it, and set it on the sink +shelf; she was busy with a hundred improvements and cares, and was +almost too tired, when Martin came home to dinner, to sit up and share +it with him. +</p> + +<p> +It was warm in the dining room and Cherry yawned over her dessert, and +rose stiff and aching to return to the kitchen with plates and silver, +glasses and food, to shake the tablecloth, to pile and wash and wipe +and put away the china, to brush the floor and the stove, and do the +last wiping and wringing, and to turn out the gas, and go in to her +chair beside the airtight stove. +</p> + +<p> +Martin handed her half his paper and Cherry took it, realizing with +cheerful indifference that there was a streak of soot on one cuff, and +that her hands were affected by grease and hot water. She read jokes +and recipes and answers to correspondents, and small editorial fillers +as to the number of nutmegs consumed in China yearly, and the name and +circumstances of the oldest living man in England. A new novel was in +her bedroom, but she was too comfortable and too tired to go get it, +and at ten she rose yawning and stumbling, and went to bed. Breakfast +must be on the table at half-past seven, for Martin left for the mine +at eight, and she had had a hard day. +</p> + +<p> +For a few weeks the novelty lasted and Cherry was enthusiastic about +everything. She looked out across her dishpan at green fields and the +beginning of the farms; she saw the lilacs burst into fragrant plumes +on the bare branches of her dooryard trees; spring flushed the whole +world with loveliness, and she was young, and healthy, and too busy to +be homesick. +</p> + +<p> +Martin left the house at eight and was usually at home at five. He +would sometimes come into her kitchen while she finished dinner, and +tell her about the day, and then suggested that they go to the +"pictures" at night. But although Cherry and Alix often had coaxed +their father into this dissipation in Mill Valley, it was different +there, she found. That was a small colony of city people, the theatre +was small, and the films carefully selected. One sat with one's +neighbours and friends. But here in Red Creek the theatre was a +draughty barn, and the farm workers, big men odorous of warm, acid +perspiration, pushed in laughing and noisy; the films were of a +different character, too, and advertised by frightful coloured posters +at the doors. Martin himself did not like them; indeed, he and Cherry +found little to like in either the people or the town. +</p> + +<p> +It was a typical railroad town of California. It was flat, dusty, all +its buildings of wood. There were some two thousand souls in Red Creek; +two or three stores, a bakery from which the crude odour of baking +bread burst every night; saloons, warehouses, a smithy, a butcher shop +open only two days a week, a Chinese laundry from which opium-tainted +steam issued all day and all night; cattle sheds, pepper trees, wheat +barns, and a hotel of raw pine, with a narrow bedroom represented by +every one of the forty narrow windows in its upper stories, and a lower +floor decorated with spittoons. Back of the crowded main street was +another street, beside which Main Street's muddy ugliness was +beautiful. Here was another saloon, and rooms above it, and several +disreputable cottages about which Cherry sometimes saw odd-looking +women. +</p> + +<p> +Not everyone in Red Creek was poor, by any means. It was a district +bursting with prosperity; all summer long wheat and fruit and butter +and beef poured through it out into the world. Down the road a mile or +two, and back toward the far hills, were comfortable ranches where +trees planted fifty years before had grown to mammoth proportions, and +where the women of the family cultivated gardens. Every family had pigs +and cattle and fine horses, and mud-spattered motor cars were familiar +sights in Red Creek's streets. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry used to wonder why anybody who could live elsewhere lived here. +When some of the ranch girls told her that they always did their +shopping in San Francisco, she marvelled that they could reconcile +themselves to come home. +</p> + +<p> +The days went on and on, each bringing its round of dishes, beds, +sweeping, marketing, folding and unfolding tablecloths, going back and +forth between kitchen and dining room. Martin's breakfast was either +promptly served and well cooked, in which case Martin was silently +satisfied, or it was late and a failure, when he was very articulately +disgusted; in either case Cherry was left to clear and wash and plan +for another meal in four hours more. She soaked fruit, beat up cake, +chopped boxes into kindlings, heated a kettle of water and another +kettle of water, dragged sheets from the bed only to replace them, +filled dishes with food only to find them empty and ready to wash again. +</p> + +<p> +"I get sick of it!" she told Martin. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, Lord!" he exclaimed. "Don't you think everybody does? Don't I +get sick of my work? You ought to have the responsibility of it all for +a while!" +</p> + +<p> +His tone was humorously reproving rather than unkind. But such a speech +would fill Cherry's eyes with tears, and cause her to go about the +house all morning with a heavy heart. +</p> + +<p> +She would find herself looking thoughtfully at Martin in these days, +studying him as if he were an utter stranger. It bewildered her to feel +that he actually was no more than that, after two years of marriage. +She not only did not know him, but she had a baffled sense that the +very nearness of their union prevented her from seeing him fairly. She +knew that she did him injustice in her thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +It MUST be injustice, decided Cherry. For Martin seemed to her less +clever, less just, less intelligent, and less generous than the average +man of her acquaintance. And yet he did not seem to impress other +people in the way he impressed her. +</p> + +<p> +He was extraordinarily healthy, and had small sympathy for illness, +weakness, for the unfortunate, and the complaining. He was scrupulously +clean, and Cherry added that to his credit, although the necessity of +seeing that Martin's bath, Martin's shaving water, and Martin's clean +linen were ready complicated her duties somewhat. He was not interested +in the affairs of the day; politics, reforms, world movements generally +found him indifferent, but he would occasionally favour his wife with a +sudden opinion as to China or intensive farming or Lloyd's shipping. +She knew when he did this that he was quoting. He whistled over his +dressing, read the paper at breakfast, and was gone. At noon he rushed +in, always late, devoured his lunch appreciatively, and was gone again. +At night he was usually tired, inclined to quarrel about small matters, +inclined to disapprove of the new positions of the bedroom furniture, +or the way Cherry's hair was dressed. +</p> + +<p> +He loved to play poker and was hospitable to a certain extent. He would +whistle and joke over the preparations for a rarebit after a game, and +would willingly walk five blocks for beer if Cherry had forgotten to +get it. On Sunday he liked to see her prettily gowned; now and then +they motored with his friends from the mine; more often walked, ate a +hearty chicken dinner, and went to a cold supper in the neighbourhood, +with "Five Hundred" to follow. At ten their hostess would flutter into +her kitchen; there would be lemonade and beer and rich layer cake. Then +the men would begin to match poker hands, and the women to discuss +babies in low tones. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry never saw her husband so animated or so interested as when men +he had known before chanced to drift into town, mining men from Nevada +or from El Nido, or men he had known in college. They would discuss +personalities, would shout over recollected good times, would slap each +other on the back and laugh tirelessly. +</p> + +<p> +She thought him an extremely difficult man to live with, and was +angered when her hints to this effect led him to remark that she was +the "limit." They had a serious quarrel one day, when he told her that +she was the most selfish and spoiled woman he had ever known. He called +her attention to the other women of the town, busy, contented women, +sending children off to school, settling babies down for naps in sunny +dooryards, cooking and laughing and hurrying to and fro. +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, and look at them!" Cherry said with ready tears. "Shabby, thin, +tired all the time!" +</p> + +<p> +"The trouble with you is," Martin said, departing, "you've been told +that you're pretty and sweet all your life--and you're SPOILED! You are +pretty, yes--" he added, more mildly. "But, by George, you sulk so +much, and you crab so much, that I'm darned if I see it any more! All I +see is trouble!" +</p> + +<p> +With this he left her. Left her to a burst of angry tears, at first, +when she dropped her lovely little head on the blue gingham of her +apron sleeve and cried bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +The kettle began to sing on the stove, a bee came in and wandered about +the hot kitchen; the grocer knocked, and Cherry let the big lout of a +boy stare at her red eyes uncaring. +</p> + +<p> +Then she went swiftly into the bedroom and began to pack and change. +She'd SHOW Martin Lloyd--she'd SHOW Martin Lloyd! She was going +straight to Dad--she'd take the--take the-- +</p> + +<p> +She frowned. She had missed the nine o'clock train; she must wait for +the train at half-past two. Wait where? Well, she could only wait here. +Very well, she would wait here. She would not get Martin any lunch, and +when he raged she would explain. +</p> + +<p> +She finished her packing and put the house in order. Then, in +unaccustomed mid-morning leisure, she sank into a deep rocker, and +began to read. Quiet and shade and order reigned in the little house. +Outside in the shaded street the children went shouting home again; a +fishman's horn sounded. +</p> + +<p> +Steps came bounding up to Cherry's door; her heart began to beat; a +knock sounded. She got to her feet, puzzled; Martin did not knock. +</p> + +<p> +It was Joe Robinson, his closest friend at the mine. His handsome, +big-featured face was full of concern. +</p> + +<p> +"Say, listen, Mrs. Lloyd; Mart can't get home to dinner," said Joe. "He +don't feel extra well--he was in the engine room and he kinder--he +kinder--" +</p> + +<p> +"Fainted?" Cherry asked, sharply, turning a little pale. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, kinder. Lawson made him lay down," Joe said. "And he's coming +home when the wagon comes down, at three o'clock. He says to tell you +he's fine!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, thank you, Joe!" Cherry said. She shut the door, feeling weak and +frightened. She flew to unpack her bag, hung up her hat and coat, +darkened the bedroom and turned down the bed; waited anxiously for +Mart's return. Mrs. Turner came in with the baby, a gentle, tired +woman, with a face always radiant with joy. Mrs. Turner had seven +children, and had once told Cherry that she had never slept a night +through since the first year of her marriage. She never changed a +baby's gown or rolled a batch of cookies without a deep and genuine +love for the task; she could not unbutton the twisted collar from a +son's small neck without drawing his freckled cheek to her hungry lips +for a kiss, or ask one of her black-headed, bright-eyed daughters to +hang up a dish towel without adding: "You're a darling help to your +mother!" +</p> + +<p> +The Turners lived next door to the Lloyds, in a shabby two-story house, +and though Cherry and her neighbour spoke a different language, they +had grown fond of each other. Cherry had sometimes timidly touched upon +the matter that was always troubling her, with the older woman. But +Mrs. Turner had little to say regarding her feeling for the lean, +silent, somewhat unsuccessful man who was the head of her crowded +household. She seemed to take it for granted that he would sometimes be +unreasonable. +</p> + +<p> +"Papa gets so mad if anything gets burned!" she would say, with her +gentle laugh. And once she added the information that her husband's +mother had been a wonderful manager. "Men are that way!" was her +comment upon the difficulties of other wives. But once, when there was +a wedding near by, Cherry, with others in the church, saw the tears in +Mrs. Turner's eyes as she watched the bride. "Poor little innocent +thing!" she had whispered with a tremulous smile. +</p> + +<p> +She was deeply concerned over the news from Martin, and when Cherry had +met his limp form at the front door, and had whisked him into a cool +bed, and put chopped ice on the aching forehead, and gotten him, +grateful and penitent, off to sleep, her neighbour came over again to +whisper in the kitchen. +</p> + +<p> +"He's all right," Cherry smiled. "He was so glad to get to bed, and so +appreciative!" she added in a motherly tone. +</p> + +<p> +"You look as if you hadn't a thing in the world to do!" the older +housekeeper commented, glancing about the neat, quiet kitchen. +</p> + +<p> +"I believe I like sick nursing!" Cherry smiled back. +</p> + +<p> +For a day or two Martin stayed in bed and Cherry spoiled and petted +him, and was praised and thanked for every step she took. After that +they took a little trip into the mountains near by, and Cherry sent +Alix postcards that made her sister feel almost a pang of envy. +</p> + +<p> +But then the routine began again, and the fearful heat of midsummer +came, too. Red Creek baked in a smother of dusty heat, the trees in the +dry orchards, beside the dry roads, dropped circles of hot shadow on +the clodded, rough earth. Farms dozed under shimmering lines of +dazzling air, and in the village, from ten o'clock until the afternoon +began to wane, there was no stir. Flies buzzed and settled on screen +doors, the creek shrunk away between crumbling rocky banks, the butcher +closed his shop, and milk soured in the bottles. +</p> + +<p> +The Turners, and some other families, always camped together in the +mountains during this season, and they were off when school closed, in +an enviable state of ecstasy and anticipation. Cherry had planned to +join them, but an experimental week-end was enough. The camp was in the +cool woods, truly, but it was disorderly, swarming with children, the +tents were small and hot, the whole settlement laughed and rioted and +surged to and fro in a manner utterly foreign to her. She returned, to +tell Martin that it was "horribly common," and weather the rest of the +summer in Red Creek. +</p> + +<p> +"Mrs. Turner is the only woman that I can stand," said Cherry, "and she +was always cooking, in an awful cooking shed, masses and masses of +macaroni and stewed plums and biscuits--and all of them laughing and +saying, 'Girlie, I guess you've got a hollow leg!' Dearie, I couldn't +eat any more without busting!' And sitting round that plank table--" +</p> + +<p> +Martin shouted with laughter at her, but he sympathized. He had never +cared particularly for the Turners; was perfectly willing to keep the +friendship within bounds. +</p> + +<p> +He sympathized as little with another friendship she made, some months +later, with the wife of a young engineer who had recently come to the +mine. Pauline Runyon was a few years older than her husband, a +handsome, thin, intense woman, who did everything in an entirely +individual way. She took one of the new little bungalows that were +being erected in Red Creek "Park," and furnished it richly and +inappropriately, and established a tea table and a samovar beside the +open fireplace. Cherry began to like better than anything else in the +world the hours she spent with Pauline. She would have liked to go +every day, and every day argued and debated the propriety of doing so, +in her heart. +</p> + +<p> +Not since the days of her engagement to Martin, and then only on a few +occasions, had she felt the thrill that she experienced now, when +Pauline, with her dark eyes and her frilly parasol, wandered in the +kitchen door, to sit laughing and talking for a few minutes, or when +she herself dressed and crossed the village, and went up past the +packing plant and the storage barns to the two small cement gate posts +and the length of rusty chain that marked the entrance to Red Creek +"Park." Then there would be tea, poetry, talk, and the flattery that +Pauline quite deliberately applied to Cherry, and the flattery that +Cherry all unconsciously lavished on her friend in return. +</p> + +<p> +Pauline read Browning, Francis Thompson, and Pater, and introduced +Cherry to new worlds of thought. She talked to Cherry of New York, +which she loved, and of the men and women she had met there. She +sometimes sighed and pushed the bright hair back from Cherry's young +and innocent and discontented little face, and said, tenderly, "On the +stage, my dear--anywhere, everywhere, you would be a furore!" +</p> + +<p> +And thinking, in the quiet evenings--for Martin's work kept him later +and later at the mine--Cherry came to see that her marriage had been a +great mistake. She had not been ready for marriage. She would sit on +the back steps, as the evenings grew cooler, and watch the exquisite +twilight fade, and the sorrow and beauty of life would wring her heart. +</p> + +<p> +Darkness came, the Turner children shrieked, laughed, clattered dishes, +and were silent. Cherry would sit on, her arms wrapped in her apron, +her eyes staring into the young night. In the darkness she could only +see the great shadows that were the Adams' windmill, and the old Brown +barn, and the Cutters' house down the back road. The dry earth seemed +awake at night, stretching itself, under brown sods, for a great breath +of relief in the merciful coolness. Cherry could smell grapes, and +smell the pleasant wetness of the dust where the late watering cart had +passed by, after sunset. The roads were too hot for watering all day +long, and this sweet, wet odour only came with the night. +</p> + +<p> +A dream of ease and adoration and beauty came to her. She did not +visualize any special place, any special gown or hour or person. But +she saw her beauty fittingly environed; she saw cool rooms, darkened +against this blazing midsummer glare; heard ice clinking against glass; +the footsteps of attentive maids; the sound of cultivated voices, of +music and laughter. She had had these dreams before, but they were +becoming habitual now. She was so tired--so sick--so bored with her +real life; it was becoming increasingly harder and harder for her to +live with Martin; to endure and to struggle against the pricks. She was +always in a suppressed state of wanting to break out, to shout at him +brazenly, "I don't care if your coffee is weak! I like it weak! I don't +care if you don't like my hat--I do! Stop talking about yourself!" +</p> + +<p> +Various little mannerisms of his began seriously to annoy her; a rather +grave symptom, had Cherry but known it. He danced his big fingers on +the handle of the sugar spoon at breakfast, sifting the sugar over his +cereal; she had to turn her eyes resolutely away from the sight. He +blew his nose, folded his handkerchief, and then brushed his nose with +it firmly left and right; she hated the little performance that was +never altered. He had a certain mental slowness, would blink at her +politely and patiently when she flashed plans or hopes at him: "I don't +follow you, my dear!" This made her frantic. +</p> + +<p> +She was twenty, undisciplined and exacting. She had no reserves within +herself to which she could turn. Bad things were hopelessly bad with +Cherry, her despairs were the dark and tearful despairs of girlhood, +prematurely transferred to graver matters. +</p> + +<p> +Martin was quite right in some of his contentions; girl-like, she was +spasmodic and unsystematic in her housekeeping; she had times of being +discontented and selfish. She hated economy and the need for careful +managing. +</p> + +<p> +In October Alix chanced to write her a long and unusually gossipy +letter. Alix had a new gown of black grenadine, and she had sung at an +afternoon tea, and had evidently succeeded in her first venture. Also +they had had a mountain climb and enclosed were snapshots Peter had +taken on the trip. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry picked up the little kodak prints; there were four or five of +them. She studied them with a pang at her heart. Alix in a loose rough +coat, with her hair blowing in the wind, and the peaked crest of +Tamalpais behind her--Alix busy with lunch boxes--Alix standing on the +old bridge down by the mill, A wave of homesickness swept over the +younger sister; life tasted bitter. She hated Alix, hated Peter, above +all she hated herself. She wanted to be there, in Mill Valley, free to +play and to dream again-- +</p> + +<p> +A day or two later she told Martin kindly and steadily that she thought +it had all "been a mistake." She told him that she thought the only +dignified thing to do was to part. She liked him, she would always wish +him well, but since the love had gone out of their relationship, surely +it was only honest to end it. +</p> + +<p> +"What's the matter?" Martin demanded. +</p> + +<p> +"Nothing special," Cherry assured him, her eyes suddenly watering. +"Only I'm tired of it all. I'm tired of PRETENDING. I can't argue about +it. But I know it's the wise thing to do." +</p> + +<p> +"You acted this same way before," Martin suggested, after looking back +at his paper for a few seconds. +</p> + +<p> +"I did not!" Cherry said, indignantly. "That is not true." +</p> + +<p> +"You'd go back to your father, I suppose?" Martin said, yawning. +</p> + +<p> +"Until I could get into something," Cherry replied with dignity. A +vague thought of the stage flitted through her mind. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh!" Martin said, politely. "And I suppose you think your father would +agree to this delightful arrangement?" he asked. +</p> + +<p> +"I know he would!" Cherry answered, eagerly. +</p> + +<p> +"All right--you write and ask him!" Martin agreed, good-naturedly. +Cherry was surprised at his attitude, but grateful more than surprised. +</p> + +<p> +"Not cross, Mart?" she asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Not the least in the world!" he answered, lightly. +</p> + +<p> +"Because I truly believe that we'd both be happier--" the woman said, +hesitatingly. Martin did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +The next day she sat down to write her father. The house was still. Red +Creek was awakening in the heavenly October coolness, children +chattered on the way to school, the morning and evening were crisp and +sharp. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry stared out at a field of stubble bathed in soft sunshine. The +hills to-day were only a shade deeper than the pale sky. Along the road +back of the house a lumber wagon rattled, the thin bay horses galloping +joyously in harness. Pink and white cosmos, pallid on clouds of frail, +bushy green, were banked in the shade of the woodshed. +</p> + +<p> +She meditated, with a troubled brow. Her letter was unexpectedly hard +to compose. She could not take a bright and simple tone, asking her +father to rejoice in her home-coming. Somehow the matter persisted in +growing heavy, and the words twisted themselves about into ugly and +selfish sounds. Cherry was young, but even to her youth the phrases, +the "misunderstood" and the "uncongenial," the "friendly parting before +any bitterness creeps in," and the "free to decide our lives in some +happier and wiser way," rang false. Pauline had been divorced, a few +years ago, and the only thing Cherry disliked in her friend was her +cold and resentful references to her first husband. +</p> + +<p> +No, she couldn't be a divorced woman. It was all spoiled, the innocent +past and the future; there was no way out! She gave up the attempt at a +letter, and began to annoy Martin with talk of a visit home again. +</p> + +<p> +"You were there six months ago!" Martin reminded her. +</p> + +<p> +"Eight months ago, Mart." +</p> + +<p> +"What you want to go for?" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, just--just--" Cherry's irrepressible tears angered herself almost +as much as they did Martin. "I think they'd like me to!" she faltered. +</p> + +<p> +"Go if you want to!" he said, but she knew she could not go on that +word. +</p> + +<p> +"That's it," she said at last to herself, in one of her solitary hours. +"I'm married, and this is marriage. For the rest of my life it'll be +Mart and I--Mart and I--in everything! For richer for poorer, for +better for worse-that's marriage. He doesn't beat me, and we have +enough money, and perhaps there are a lot of other women worse off than +I am. But it's--it's funny." +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap09"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER IX +</h3> + +<p> +In January, however, he came home one noon to find her hatted and +wrapped to go. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Mart--it's Daddy!" she said. "He's ill--I've got to see him! He's +awfully ill." +</p> + +<p> +"Telegram?" asked Martin, not particularly pleased, but not +unsympathetic either. +</p> + +<p> +For answer she gave him the yellow paper that was wet with her tears. +"Dad ill," he read. "Don't worry. Come if you can. Alix." +</p> + +<p> +"I'll bet it's a put-up job between you and Alix--" Martin said in +indulgent suspicion. +</p> + +<p> +Her indignant glance sobered him; he hastily arranged money matters, +and that night she got off the train in the dark wetness of the valley, +and was met by a rush of cool and fragrant air. It was too late to see +the mountain, lights were twinkling everywhere in the dark trees. +Cherry got a driver, rattled and jerked up to the house in a surrey, +and jumped out, her heart almost suffocating her. +</p> + +<p> +Alix came flying to the door, the old lamplight and the odour of wood +smoke poured through. There was no need for words; they burst into +tears and clung together. +</p> + +<p> +An hour later Cherry, feeling as if she was not the same woman who +waked in Red Creek this same morning, and got Martin's eggs and coffee +ready, crept into her father's room. Alix had warned her to be quiet, +but at the sight of the majestic old gray head, and the fine old hands +clasped together on the sheet, her self-control forsook her entirely +and she fell to her knees and began to cry again. +</p> + +<p> +The nurse looked at her disapprovingly, but after all it made little +difference. Doctor Strickland roused only once again, and that was many +hours later. Cherry and Alix were still keeping their vigil; Cherry, +worn out, had been dozing; the nurse was resting on a couch in the next +room. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly both daughters were wide awake at the sound of the hoarse yet +familiar voice. Alix fell on her knees and caught the cold and +wandering hand. +</p> + +<p> +"What is it, darling?" The old, half-joking maternal manner was all in +earnest now. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter?" he said, thickly. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter's in China, dear. You remember that Peter was to go around the +world? You remember that, Dad?" +</p> + +<p> +"In the 'Travels with a Donkey,'" he said, rationally. +</p> + +<p> +The girls looked at each other dubiously. +</p> + +<p> +"We all read that together," Alix encouraged him. +</p> + +<p> +"No--" he said, musingly. They thought he slept again, but he presently +added, "Somewhere in Matthew--no, in Mark--Mark is the human one--Mark +was as human as his Master--" +</p> + +<p> +"Shall I read you from Mark?" Alix asked, as his voice sank again. A +shabby old Bible always stood at her father's bedside; she reached for +it, and making a desperate effort to steady her voice, began to read. +The place was marked by an old letter, and opened at the chapter he +seemed to desire, for as she read he seemed to be drinking in the +words. Once they heard him whisper "Wonderful!" Cherry got up on the +bed, and took the splendid dying head in her arms, the murky winter +dawn crept in, and the lamp burned sickly in the daylight. Hong could +be heard stirring. Alix closed the book and extinguished the lamp. +Cherry did not move. +</p> + +<p> +"Charity!" the old man said, presently, in a simple, childish tone. +Later, with bursts of tears, in all the utter desolation of the days +that followed, Cherry loved to remember that his last utterance was her +name. But Alix knew, though she never said it, that it was to another +Charity he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +Subdued, looking younger and thinner in their new black, the sisters +came downstairs, ten days later, for a business talk. Peter had been +named as one executor, but Peter was far away, and it was a pleasant +family friend, a kindly old surgeon of Doctor Strickland's own age, or +near it, and the lawyer, George Sewall, the other executor, who told +them about their affairs. Anne, as co-heiress, was present at this +talk, with Justin sitting close beside her. Martin, too, who had come +down for the funeral, was there. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry was white, headachy, indifferent; she seemed stunned by her +loss; but Alix's extraordinary vitality had already asserted itself, +and she set herself earnestly to understand their somewhat complicated +affairs. +</p> + +<p> +The house went to the daughters; there were books and portraits for +Anne, a box or two in storage for Anne, and Anne was mentioned in the +only will as equally inheriting with Alexandra and Charity. For some +legal reason that the lawyer and Doctor Younger made clear, Anne could +not fully inherit, but her share would be only a trifle less than her +cousins'. +</p> + +<p> +Things had reached this point when Justin Little calmly and confidently +claimed that Anne's share was to be based upon an old loan of Anne's +father to his brother, a loan of three thousand dollars to float Lee +Strickland's invention, with the understanding that Vincent Strickland +be subsequently entitled to one third of the returns. As the patent had +been sold for nearly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, one third +of it, with accumulative interest for ten years, of which no payment +had ever been made Anne, was a large proportion of the entire estate, +and the development of this claim, in Justin Little's assured, woodeny +voice, caused everyone except the indifferent Cherry to look grave. +</p> + +<p> +The estate was not worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars now, by +any means; it had been reduced to little more than two thirds of that +sum, and Anne's bright concern that everyone should be SATISFIED with +what was RIGHT, and her ingenuous pleasure in Justin's cleverness in +thinking of this possibility, were met with noticeable coldness. +</p> + +<p> +If Anne was wrong, and the paper she held in her hand worthless, each +girl would inherit a comfortable little fortune, but if Anne was right, +Cherry and Alix would have only a few thousand dollars apiece, and the +old home. +</p> + +<p> +The business talk was over before any of them realized the enormity of +Anne's contention, and Anne and Justin had departed. But both the old +doctor and the lawyer agreed with Martin that it looked as if Anne was +right, and when the family was alone again, and had had the time to +digest the matter, they felt as if a thunderbolt had fallen across +their lives. +</p> + +<p> +"That Anne could DO it!" Alix said, over and over. Cherry seemed dazed, +spoke not at all, and Martin had said little. +</p> + +<p> +"People will do anything for money!" he observed once drily. He had met +Justin sternly. "I'm not thinking of my wife's share--I didn't marry +her for her money; never knew she had any! But I'm thinking of Alix." +</p> + +<p> +"Yes--we must think of darling Alix!" Anne had said, nervously eager +that there should be no quarrel. "If Uncle Lee intended me to have all +this money, then I suppose I must take it, but I shan't be happy unless +things are arranged so that Alix shall be COMFORTABLE!" +</p> + +<p> +"B-but the worst of it is, Alix!" Cherry stammered, suddenly, on the +day before she and Martin were to return to Red Creek, "I--I counted on +having enough--enough to live my own life! Alix, I can't--I can't go +back!" +</p> + +<p> +"Why, my darling--" Alix exclaimed, as Cherry began to cry in her arms. +"My darling, is it as bad as all that!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Alix," whispered the little sister, trembling, "I CAN'T bear it. +You don't know how I feel. You and Dad were always here; now that's all +gone--you're going to rent the house and try to teach singing--and I've +nothing to look forward to--I've nobody!" +</p> + +<p> +"Listen, dear," Alix soothed her. "If they advise it, and especially if +Peter advises it when he gets back, we'll fight Anne. And then if we +win our fight, I'll always keep the valley house open. And if we don't, +why I'm going to visit you and Martin every year, and perhaps I'll have +a little apartment some day--I don't intend to board always--" +</p> + +<p> +But she was crying, too. Everything seemed changed, cold and strange; +she had suspected that Cherry's was not a successful marriage; she knew +it now, and to resign the adored little sister to the unsympathetic +atmosphere of Red Creek, and to miss all the old life and the old +associations, made her heart ache. +</p> + +<p> +"There's--there's nothing special, Cherry?" she asked after a while. +</p> + +<p> +"With Martin? Oh, no," Cherry answered, her eyes dried, and her packing +going on composedly, although her voice trembled now and then. "No, +it's just that I get bad moods," she said, bravely. "I was pretty young +to marry at all, I guess." +</p> + +<p> +"Martin loves you," Alix suggested timidly. +</p> + +<p> +"He takes me for granted," Cherry said, after a pause. "There doesn't +seem to be anything ALIVE in the feeling between us," she added, +slowly. "If he says something to me, I make an effort to get his point +of view before I answer. If I tell him some plan of mine, I can see +that he thinks it sounds crazy! I don't seem very domestic--that's all. +I--I try. Really, I do! But--" and Cherry seemed to brace herself in +soul and body--"but that's marriage. I'll try again!" +</p> + +<p> +She gave Alix a long kiss in parting, the next day, and clung to her. +</p> + +<p> +"You're the dearest sister a girl ever had, Alix. You're all I have, +now!" +</p> + +<p> +"I'll write you about the case, and wire you if you're needed, and see +you soon!" Alix said, cheerfully. Then she turned and went back into +the empty house, keeping back her tears until the sound of the surrey +had quite died away. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap10"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER X +</h3> + +<p> +Alexandra Strickland, coming down the stairway of the valley house on +an April evening, glanced curiously at the door. Her eyes moved to the +old clock, and a smile tugged involuntarily at the corners of her +mouth. Only eight o'clock, but the day had been so long and so quiet +that she had fancied that the hour was much later, and had wondered who +knocked so late. +</p> + +<p> +She crossed to the door and opened it to darkness and rain, and to a +man in a raincoat, who whipped off a spattered cap and stood smiling in +the light of the lamp she held. Instantly, with a sort of gasp of +surprise and pleasure and some deeper emotion, she set down the lamp, +and held out her hands gropingly and went into his arms. He laughed +joyously as he kissed her, and for a minute they clung together. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter!" she said. "You angel--when did you arrive and what are you +doing, and tell me all about it!" +</p> + +<p> +"But, Alix--you're thin!" Peter said, holding her at arm's length. +"And--and--" He gently touched the black she wore, and fixed puzzled +and troubled eyes upon her face. "Alix--" he asked, apprehensively. +</p> + +<p> +For answer she tried to smile at him, but her lips trembled and her +eyes brimmed. She had led the way into the old sitting room now, and +Peter recognized, with a thrill of real feeling, the shabby rugs and +books and pictures, and the square piano beside which he had watched +Cherry's fat, childish hand on the scales so many times, and Alix +scowling over her songs. +</p> + +<p> +"You heard--about Dad?" Alix faltered now, turning to face him at the +mantel. +</p> + +<p> +"Your father!" Peter said, shocked. +</p> + +<p> +"But hadn't you heard, Peter?" +</p> + +<p> +"My dear--my dearest child, I'm just off the steamer. I got in at six +o'clock. I'd been thinking of you all the time, and I suddenly decided +to cross the bay and come straight on to the valley, before I even went +to the club or got my mail! Tell me--your father--" +</p> + +<p> +She had knelt before the cold hearth, and he knelt beside her, and they +busied themselves with logs and kindling in the old way. A blaze crept +up about the logs and Alix accepted Peter's handkerchief and wiped a +streak of soot from her wrist, quite as if she was a child again, as +she settled herself in her chair. +</p> + +<p> +Peter took the doctor's chair, keeping his concerned and sympathetic +eyes upon her. +</p> + +<p> +"He was well one day," she said, simply, "and the next--the next, he +didn't come downstairs, and Hong waited and waited--and about nine +o'clock I went up--and he had fallen--he had fallen--" +</p> + +<p> +She was in tears again and Peter put his hand out and covered hers and +held it. Their chairs were touching, and as he leaned forward, their +faces might almost have touched, too. +</p> + +<p> +"He must have been going to call someone," said Alix, after a while, +"they said he never suffered at all. This was January, the last day, +and Cherry got here that same night. He knew us both toward morning. +And that--that was all. Cherry was here for two weeks. Martin came and +went--" +</p> + +<p> +"Where is Cherry now?" Peter interrupted. +</p> + +<p> +"Back at Red Creek." Alix wiped her eyes. "She hates it, but Martin had +a good position there. Poor Cherry, it made her ill." +</p> + +<p> +"Anne came?" +</p> + +<p> +"Anne and Justin, of course." Peter could not understand Alix's +expression. She fell silent, still holding his hand and looking at the +fire. +</p> + +<p> +He had not seen her for nearly six months; he had been all around the +world; had found her gay, affectionate letters in London, in Athens, in +Yokohama. But for three months now he had been away from the reach of +mails, roughing it on a friend's hemp plantation in Borneo, and if she +had written, the letter was as yet undelivered. He looked at her with a +great rush of admiration and affection. She was not only a pretty and a +clever woman; but, in her plain black, with this new aspect of gravity +and dignity, and with new notes of pathos and appeal in her exquisite +voice, he realized that she was an extremely charming woman. +</p> + +<p> +More than that, she stood for home, for the dearly familiar and beloved +things for which he had been so surprisingly homesick. His mountain +cabin and the old house in San Francisco on Pacific Avenue; she +belonged to his memories of them both; she was the only woman in the +world that he knew well. +</p> + +<p> +Before he said good-bye to her, he had asked her to marry him. He well +remembered her look of bright and interested surprise. +</p> + +<p> +"D'you mean to tell me you have forgotten your lady love of the +hoop-skirts and ringlets?" she had demanded. +</p> + +<p> +"She never wore ringlets and crinolines!" he had answered. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, bustles and pleats, then?" +</p> + +<p> +"No," Peter had told her, frankly. "I shall always love her, in a way. +But she is married; she never thinks of me. And I like you so much, +Alix; I like our music and cooking and tramps and reading--together. +Isn't that a pretty good basis for marriage?" +</p> + +<p> +"No!" Alix had answered, decidedly. "Perhaps if I were madly in love +with you I should say yes, and trust to little fingers to lead you +gently, and so on--" +</p> + +<p> +He remembered ending the conversation in one of his quick moods of +irritation against her. If she couldn't take anybody or anything +seriously--he had said. +</p> + +<p> +Poor Alix--she was taking life seriously enough to-night, Peter +thought, as he watched her. +</p> + +<p> +"Tell me about Cherry," he said. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry is well, but just a little thin, and heart-broken now, of +course. Martin never seems to stay at any one place very long, so I +keep hoping--" +</p> + +<p> +"Doesn't make good!" Peter said, shaking his head. +</p> + +<p> +"Doesn't seem to! It's partly Cherry, I think," Alix said honestly. +"She was too young, really. She never quite settles down, or takes life +in earnest. But he's got a contract now for three years, and so she +seems to be resigning herself, and she has a maid, I believe." +</p> + +<p> +"She must love him," Peter submitted. Alix looked surprised. +</p> + +<p> +"Why not?" she smiled. "I suppose when you've had ups and downs with a +man, and been rich and poor, and sick and well, and have lived in +half-a-dozen different places, you rather take him for granted!" she +added. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, you think it works that way?" Peter asked, with a keen look. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, don't you think so? Aren't lots of marriages like that?" +</p> + +<p> +"You false alarm. You quitter!" he answered. +</p> + +<p> +Alix laughed, a trifle guiltily. Also she flushed, with a great wave of +splendid young colour that made her face look seventeen again. "Your +father left you--something, Alix?" Peter asked presently, with some +hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +"That," she answered frankly, "is where Anne comes in!" +</p> + +<p> +"Anne?" +</p> + +<p> +"Anne and Justin came straight over," Alix went on, "and they were +really lovely. And they asked me to come to them for a visit--but I +couldn't very well; they live with his mother, you know, Amanda Price +Little, who writes the letters to the Chronicle about educating +children and all that. Doctor Younger and George Sewall were here every +day; you and George were named as executors. I was so mixed up in +policies and deeds and overdue taxes and interest and bonds--" +</p> + +<p> +"Poor old Alix, if I had only been here to help you!" the man said. And +for a moment they looked a little consciously at each other. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, anyway," the girl resumed hastily, "when it came to reading the +will, Anne and Justin sprung a mine under us! It seems that ten years +ago, when the Strickland Patent Fire Extinguisher was put upon the +market, my adorable father didn't have much money--he never did have, +somehow. So Anne's father, my Uncle Vincent, went into it with him to +the extent of about three thousand dollars--" +</p> + +<p> +"Three thousand!" Peter, who had been leaning forward, earnestly +attentive, echoed in relief. +</p> + +<p> +"That was all. Dad had about three hundred. They had to have a +laboratory and some expensive retorts and things, it seems. Dad did all +the work, and put in his three hundred, and Uncle Vincent put in three +thousand--and the funny thing is," Alix broke off to say, musingly, +"Uncle Vincent was perfectly splendid about it; I myself remember him +saying, 'Don't worry, Lee. I'm speculating on my own responsibility, +not yours.'" +</p> + +<p> +"Well?" Peter prompted, as she hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +"Well. They had a written agreement then, giving Uncle Vincent a third +interest in the patent, should it be sold or put on the market--" +</p> + +<p> +"Ha!" Peter ejaculated, struck. +</p> + +<p> +"Which, of course, was only a little while before Uncle Vincent died," +Alix went on, with a grave nod. "The agreement lay in Dad's desk all +these years--fancy how easily he might have burned it many's the time! +But he didn't. George Sewall says that Anne is right." +</p> + +<p> +"But wasn't Anne third heiress anyway, under his will? I know I've +heard--" +</p> + +<p> +"Certainly she was. But a third interest now, in a diminished estate +that began at something less than one hundred and fifty thousand +dollars, is quite different from a third of it ten years ago, plus +compound interest," Alix said, bringing her clear brows together with a +quizzical smile. "They've broken the will." +</p> + +<p> +Peter, in the silence, whistled expressively. +</p> + +<p> +"Gee--rusalem!" he exclaimed. "What does it come to?" +</p> + +<p> +At this Alix looked very sober, gazed down at the fire, and shook her +head. +</p> + +<p> +"All he had!" she answered, briefly. +</p> + +<p> +Peter was silent, looking at her in stupefaction. +</p> + +<p> +"Almost, that is," Alix amended more cheerfully. "As it was--we should +have had more than thirty thousand apiece. As it is, Anne gets it all, +or if not quite all, nearly all." +</p> + +<p> +"Gets!" he echoed, hotly. "How do you mean?" +</p> + +<p> +"It seems to be perfectly just," the girl answered, rather lifelessly. +But immediately she laughed. "Don't look so awful, Peter. In the first +place, Cherry and I still have the house. In the second place, I am +singing at St. Raphael's for five hundred a year, and singing other +places now and then." +</p> + +<p> +"Alix, aren't you corking!" he said, with his pleasantest smile. +</p> + +<p> +"Am I?" she asked, smiling. But immediately the smile melted, and her +lips shook. "Anyway, I'm glad you're home again, Peter!" she added. +</p> + +<p> +"Home again," he answered, half-angrily. "I should hope I am--and high +time, too! Has this--this money been turned over to Anne?" +</p> + +<p> +"Not yet. Nobody gets anything until the estate is cleared--a year or +more from now." +</p> + +<p> +"And do you tell me that she will have the effrontery to take it?" +</p> + +<p> +"Rather! She said to me, 'Isn't it wonderful that Justin saw it at +once, and I never would have seen it!' She was quite sweet and merry +over it--" +</p> + +<p> +"Great Lord! Does she know that it's practically all your father had?" +</p> + +<p> +Alix hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, you see there had been mismanagement, Peter. Dad speculated, and +lost some. And we were a pretty heavy expense for a good many years. I +hated to expose the whole thing, and George--he's been splendid--said +that they probably had a perfectly valid claim, anyway. There are some +things to be thankful for," Alix added, dashing the sudden tears from +her eyes, "and one is that Dad never knew it!" +</p> + +<p> +"I can't tell you how surprised I am at Anne," Peter said. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, we all were!" Alix confessed. "But it's just Anne's odd little +self-centred way," she added. "It was here, and she wanted it. She +belongs heart and soul to the Little family now, and she is quite +triumphant over being of so much help to Justin. They're to build a +house in Berkeley. Anne has it all worked out!" Alix said, with amused +distaste. "Well--I let Hong go, and as soon as I can rent this house, +I'm going to New York." +</p> + +<p> +"Why New York, my dear girl?" +</p> + +<p> +"Because I believe I can make a living there, singing and teaching and +generally struggling with life!" she answered, cheerfully. "Cherry gets +most of the money--they are always somewhat in debt, and I imagine that +the reason she is able to have a nice apartment and a maid now is +because she knows it is coming--and I get the house, and enough money +to keep me going--say, a year, in New York." +</p> + +<p> +"Do you want to go, Alix?" he said, affectionately. +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, I think I do," she answered. But her eyes watered. "I do--in a +way," she added. "That is, I love my singing, and the thought of making +a success is delightful to me. But of course it means that I give up +everything else. I can't have home life, and--and the valley--for +years, four or five anyway, I'll have to give all that up. And I'm +twenty-seven, Peter. And I'd always rather hoped that my music was +going to be a domestic variety--" She stopped, smiling, but he saw the +pain in her eyes. "George Sewall most kindly asked me to mother his +small son--" she resumed, casually. "But although he is the dearest--" +</p> + +<p> +"Sewall did!" Peter exclaimed, rather struck. "Great Scott! his father +is one of the richest men in San Francisco." +</p> + +<p> +"I know it," Alix agreed. "And he is one of the nicest men," she added. +"But of course he'll never really love any one but Ursula. And I +felt--oh, I felt too tired and alone and depressed to enter upon +congratulations and clothes and family dinners with the Sewalls," she +ended, a little drearily. "I wanted--I wanted things in the old way--as +they were--" she said, her voice thickening. +</p> + +<p> +"I know--I know!" Peter said, sympathetically. And for a while there +was silence in the little house, while the rain fell steadily upon the +dark forest without, and soaked branches swished about eaves and +windows. "Can you put me up to-night?" he asked, suddenly. He liked her +frank pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +"Rather! I think Cherry's room was made up fresh last Monday," she told +him. "And to-morrow," she added, with a brightening face, "we'll walk +up to your house, and see what six months of Kow's uninterrupted sway +have done to it!" +</p> + +<p> +"That's just what we'll do!" he agreed, enthusiastically. "And we'll +have some music--" +</p> + +<p> +She had risen, as if for good-nights, and was now beside the old square +piano, where she had placed the lamp. +</p> + +<p> +"I haven't touched it--since--" she said, sadly, sitting on the stool, +and with her eyes still smiling on him, putting back the hinged cover. +And a moment later her hands, with the assurance and ease of the adept, +drifted into one of the songs of the old days. +</p> + +<p> +"Do you remember the day we put the rose tree back, Peter?" she asked. +"When Martin was almost a stranger? And do you remember the day Cherry +and I fell into the Three Wells and you and Dad had to disappear while +we dried our clothing on branches of trees? And do you remember the day +we made biscuits, over by the ocean?" +</p> + +<p> +"I remember all the days," he answered, deeply stirred. +</p> + +<p> +"We didn't see all this, then," Alix mused, still playing softly. "Anne +claiming everything for her husband, you and I here talking of Dad's +death, and Cherry married--" She sighed. +</p> + +<p> +"She's not happy?" he questioned quickly. +</p> + +<p> +Alix shrugged, pursing her lips doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +"She's not unhappy," she told him, with a troubled smile. "It's just +one of those marriages that don't ever get anywhere, and don't ever +stop," she added. "Martin has faults, he's unreasonable, and he makes +enemies. But those aren't the faults for which a woman can leave her +husband. Oh, Peter," she added, laying a smooth warm hand on his, and +looking straight into his eyes with her honest eyes, "don't go away +again! Stay here in the valley for a week or two, and help me get +everything worked out and thought out--I've been so much alone!" +</p> + +<p> +"Dear old Alix!" he said, sitting down on the bench beside her and +putting his arm about her. She dropped her head on his shoulder, and so +they sat, very still, for a long minute. Alix's hand went to her own +shoulder, and her fingers tightened on his, and she breathed deep, +contented breaths, like a child. +</p> + +<p> +"Somebody ought to wire Mrs. Grundy, collect," she said, after awhile. +</p> + +<p> +"We will defy Mrs. Grundy, my dear," Peter said, kissing the top of a +soft brown braid, "by trotting off hand in hand tomorrow and getting +ourselves married. Why, Alix, he gave us his consent years ago--don't +you remember?" +</p> + +<p> +"He DID wish it!" she said, and burst into tears. +</p> + +<p> +"I seem to be doing things in a slightly irregular manner," she said to +him the next day, when they had gotten breakfast together, and were +basking in the sunlight of the upper deck of the ferryboat, on their +way to the city. "I spend the night BEFORE my marriage alone--alone in +a small country house hidden in the woods--with my betrothed, and +propose to buy my trousseau immediately after the ceremony!" +</p> + +<p> +"I feel like saying to you what the dear old French archbishop said to +the small child," Peter smiled, marvelling a little nonetheless at her +untouched serenity. "He was speaking to all the children in some +institution, and came to this little one: 'ET TU ETES NEGRE? AH, +BIEN--BIEN, CONTINUEZ--CONTINUEZ!' It's what makes you yourself, Alix, +doing everything just a little differently." +</p> + +<p> +"Marrying you, far from seeming a radical or momentous thing to do," +she assured him, "seems to me like getting back into key--getting out +of this bad dream of loneliness and change--securing something that I +thought was lost!" +</p> + +<p> +Her voice fell to a dreamy note, and she watched the gulls, wheeling in +the sunshine, with thoughtful, smiling eyes. The man glanced at her +once or twice, in the silence that followed, with something like +hesitation, or compunction, in his look. +</p> + +<p> +"Look here, Alix--let's talk. I want to ask you something. Or, rather, +I want to tell you something--or, rather--" +</p> + +<p> +"CONTINUEZ--CONTINUEZ!" she said, laughing, as he hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +"There's never been anything--anything to tell you--or your father, if +he was here," Peter said, flushed and a trifle awkward, "I'm not that +kind of a man. I was a crippled kid, as you know, all for books and +music and walks and older people. But there HAS been that one +thing--that one woman--" +</p> + +<p> +Flushed, too, she was looking at him with bright, intelligent eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"But I thought she never even knew--" +</p> + +<p> +"No, she never did!" +</p> + +<p> +Alix looked back at the gulls. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, well, then--" she said, indifferently. +</p> + +<p> +"Alix, would you like to know about her?" Peter said bravely. "Her +name--and everything?" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, no, please, I'd much rather not!" she intercepted him hastily, and +after a pause she added, "Our marriage isn't the usual marriage, in +that way. I mean I'm not jealous, and I'm not going to cry my eyes out +because there was another woman--is another woman, who meant more to +you, or might have! I'm going into it with my eyes wide open, Peter. I +know you love me, and I love you, and we both like the same things, and +that's enough." +</p> + +<p> +Three weeks later he remembered the moment, and asked her again. They +were in the valley house now, and a bitter storm was whirling over the +mountain. Peter's little cabin rocked to the gale, but they were warm +and comfortable beside the fire; the room was lamp-lighted, scented by +Alix's sweet single violets, white and purple, spilling themselves from +a glass bowl, and by Peter's pipe, and by the good scent of green bay +burning. The Joyces had had a happy day, had climbed the hills under a +lowering sky, had come home to dry clothes and to cooking, for Kow was +away, and had finally shared an epicurean meal beside the fire. +</p> + +<p> +Peter was wrapped in deep content; the companionship of this normal, +pretty woman, her quick words and quick laugh, her music, her glancing, +bright interest in anything and everything, was the richest experience +of his life. She had said that she would change nothing in his home, +but her clever white fingers had changed everything. There was order +now, there was charming fussing and dusting, there were flowers in +bowls, and books set straight, and there was just the different little +angle to piano and desk and chairs and tables that made the cabin a +home at last. She wanted bricks for a path; he had laughed at her +fervent, "Do give me a whole carload of bricks for Christmas, Peter!" +She wanted bulbs to pot. He had lazily suggested that they open the +town house while carpenters and painters remade the cabin, but she had +protested hotly, "Oh, do let's keep it just as it always was!" +</p> + +<p> +Smiling, he gave her her way. She amused him day after day. He watched +her, marvelling at the miracle that was woman. He heard her in the +kitchen, interrogating the Chinese: "You show me picture your little +boy!" He heard her inveigling Antone, the old Italian labourer, into +confidences. +</p> + +<p> +Tonight he watched her in great satisfaction; he liked to have her here +in his home, one of the pretty Stricklands, Peter Joyce's wife. Nobody +else was here, nobody else belonged here, they were masters of their +own lives. She quite captivated him by her simplicity and frankness; +she washed her masses of brown hair and shook it loose in the sunshine, +and she came in wet more than once, and changed her shoes before the +fire--just as she had years ago, when she was a madcap little girl +running wild through the woods. +</p> + +<p> +They had been talking of Cherry, as they often did. Alix's favourite +topic was her little sister; she had almost a maternal pride and +fondness where Cherry was concerned. Today she had been house-cleaning, +and had brought some treasures downstairs. She had showed Peter +Cherry's old exercise books: "Look, Peter, how she put faces in the +naughts and turned the sevens into little sail-boats! And see the +straggling letters--'Charity Strickland!' I've always hated to destroy +them. She was such a lazy, cunning little scholar!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter, smiling at the old books, had remembered her, a small, square +Cherry, with a film of gold falling over a blazing cheek, and mutinous +blue eyes. Ah--the wonderful eyes were wonderful even then-- +</p> + +<p> +The date gave him a moment's shock. Only eight--only seven years ago +she had been a schoolgirl! Cherry was not yet twenty-three-- +</p> + +<p> +"I wish she had married a little differently," Alix said, thoughtfully. +"Cherry isn't exacting. But she does like pretty gowns and pretty +rooms, and to do things as other girls do!" +</p> + +<p> +"You should have married the mining engineer," he told her. "Red Creek +would have had no terrors for you! +</p> + +<p> +"I should have loved it!" she agreed, carelessly. +</p> + +<p> +A curious expression flashed into her face. She was smiling; but +immediately the smile faded, and she looked back at the fire with +puzzled eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"If I loved a man, Peter, the place and the house and the money +wouldn't matter much!" she answered after awhile, in a slightly +strained voice. +</p> + +<p> +"Perhaps," he suggested, still thinking of Cherry, "that's the trouble!" +</p> + +<p> +She gave him a quick, almost frightened look. +</p> + +<p> +"The--the trouble?" she stammered. And with a little ashamed laugh she +added, "What trouble?" +</p> + +<p> +For a long time he looked at her in silence, at first puzzled, +gradually fitting meaning and interpretation to his words and her own. +Presently their eyes met, and with her little gruff boyish laugh she +came over to the low seat at his knee. +</p> + +<p> +"You see that there is something just a little wrong, then?" she asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Between you and me, Alix?" he questioned in return, his fine hand +tight upon hers, and his affectionate, brotherly look searching her +face. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, don't you, Peter?" she countered. +</p> + +<p> +"I hadn't noticed anything, my dear, except that you are making a +lonely, solitary man a very happy one," he answered, with his grave +smile. +</p> + +<p> +"But that--" she contended, with scarlet cheeks, but bravely "--that +isn't marriage!" +</p> + +<p> +"What ought marriage be?" he smiled, half humouring her, half concerned. +</p> + +<p> +For answer she looked keenly, almost wistfully, into his face. He had +noticed this look more than once of late. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know," she said softly, after awhile, with a little +discouraged shrug of her shoulders. "I always thought that when a man +and a woman liked each other--oh, thoroughly--liked the same things, +had everything in common, that that was enough. And--for the woman I +was a month ago, it would have been enough, Peter!" she added in a +puzzled tone. +</p> + +<p> +"You've changed then, Mrs. Joyce?" +</p> + +<p> +"That's it," she agreed. "I'm not the same woman. I couldn't, as a +girl, estimate what life was going to be as a wife." +</p> + +<p> +"Perhaps no girl can," he suggested, interested now. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, that's just what I'm thinking, Peter!" she smiled, a little +ruefully. And again she gave him the look that was new, that was not +all timid nor wistful nor appealing, yet somehow partook of all three. +"You see, you feel that nothing can change you," she elucidated +further, "and you are perfectly sure of yourself, from your old +standpoint. And then the--well, the mental and spiritual and physical +miracle of marriage DOES change you, and it is as if you had entered +into a contract for a totally strange woman!" +</p> + +<p> +She was so intent, so bright and earnest, as she turned a fire-flushed +face to his, that he felt an odd moisture pricking his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"Alix," he said, affectionately, "where do I fail you?" +</p> + +<p> +For a moment she was silent, her bright eyes fixed on his. Gradually +the serious look on her face lightened, and her customary smile +twitched at the corners of her mouth. +</p> + +<p> +"I married you under a misapprehension," she said. "I thought you had +about three hundred dollars a year! It appears that you have more than +that every month--every week, for all I know--" +</p> + +<p> +"You knew my mother had that old Pacific Avenue place!" he answered +with concern. "I never for one second deceived--" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, you idiot!" Alix laughed. "I don't mind being rich at all, I like +it. I don't want to live in the city, or join women's clubs, and all +that, but I like having my own check-book--truly, I do! As for all the +silver and portraits and rugs and things, why, we may like them some +day." +</p> + +<p> +He was not listening to her; there was a sorry look in his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"You know, Alix," he said, suddenly, "you've made life a different +thing to me. I never had any woman near me before, and to hear your +voice about the house, and your piano, and your laugh--why, it's +wonderful to me. I've been alone here so many years, not knowing really +how much of life I missed, and you've brought it all to me. Why, even +to have Mrs. Florence at the post office ask me for 'Mrs. Joyce,' gives +me a warm, happy sort of feeling! I--" he stroked the smooth hand under +his own; there was real emotion in his voice, "I'd do a good deal to +show you how grateful I am, old girl," he finished. "I wish you could +tell me where I fail, and I'd move heaven and earth to please you!" +</p> + +<p> +"The point is," Alix said, with her mischievous smile, as she twisted +the heavy ring he wore, "do I fail you? I know I don't flush with +delight when you give me a smile, and tremble with fear at your frown! +I know that the smell of my hair doesn't make you turn pale, and the +touch of my hand make you dizzy! There's no fury, fire, and madness--" +</p> + +<p> +She laughed, and he laughed, too, a little reproachfully. +</p> + +<p> +"You never will be serious for more than two minutes, Alexandra, my +child!" he said. +</p> + +<p> +Alix did not answer. She sat staring at the fire for another minute or +two, and her eyes brightened childishly, had he but seen them. But she +did not give another look at him. With a great fling of her arms she +rested her head between two elbows for a second, tousled her hair, and +yawned. +</p> + +<p> +"I'm going to bed!" she announced. "I'm so glad I married a man who is +accustomed to banking the fire and opening windows and putting out +lamps every night. You," she had reached the door of their room now, +and already the silky braids were freed, and tumbled about her +shoulders, "you spoil me, Pete!" she said, between them. "Our marriage +may be different, but it has its good points!" +</p> + +<p> +"Sure you're happy?" he smiled. +</p> + +<p> +The familiar little answer came confidently. He heard her humming as +she undressed in a shaft of moonlight; she was never serious long. +</p> + +<p> +One May day they were picnicking in the big forest. It was a day of +spongy dampness underfoot, sweet and wild with breezes, blue of sky, +and still cold in the shade, if it was heavenly warm in the sun. Alix, +who was hot and panting from the scrambling and slipping downhill, hung +on a bank, with her arm crooked about a sapling oak, for support, her +hat slipped back and hanging childishly about her neck, and her already +brief tramping skirt displaying an even unusual amount of sensibly +booted leg. Below her Peter on the bank of the stream was gathering +firewood. Shafts of sunlight filtered through the arches of the +redwoods high above the creek, and fell here and there upon the busy +currents of the water. Presently sunshine turned the flames of the +brush fire to pink, a dense column of white smoke rose fragrantly +between the dark-brown, furry trunks. +</p> + +<p> +They had been talking doubtfully of the recent developments of what +Justin and Anne Little called with relish the Strickland Will Case. +Peter, who had for several weeks been investigating the matter, with a +deepening conviction that it was a deuced awkward affair, had smiled a +most pleasant smile as Alix enlarged upon the delight of giving the +whole fortune, should they get it, to Cherry. +</p> + +<p> +"For Cherry," she said, still hanging on her bank, "isn't like most +married women. She hates self-denial and economy--Dad always made life +too easy for us, you know. It wasn't even as if she had had my mother's +example before her; she really knew nothing of domestic responsibility!" +</p> + +<p> +"But what about you," Peter asked, smiling, "you seem to take kindly +enough to matrimony!" +</p> + +<p> +"My case is different," Alix said, unembarrassed, getting down to come +stand beside him at the fire. "I married an old man for his money!" +</p> + +<p> +"Do you know," he said, putting his arm about her, "I like you! You'll +no sooner get hold of your money, if you do--than you'll want to turn +it all over to Cherry! You're a devoted sister, do you know it?" +</p> + +<p> +"I'm a devoted wife!" she answered, with an upward glance. But a second +later her mood changed; she was off to try the experiment of crossing +the stream upon the treacherous surface of a fallen tree. He watched +her; her cautiously advancing foot, her hand tightly grasping an +upright branch, her eyes flitting from the water below to the rough +bridge before her. She was completely absorbed. +</p> + +<p> +"You can't do it!" Peter called, annoyed at the senseless risk she took +when she placed her foot tentatively upon the curved side of a log. +"There's no foothold there!" +</p> + +<p> +"Come save me!" she shrieked in the old way, with the old laugh of +terror and delight. He jumped to her rescue, clearing the creek in a +shallow place with two splashing bounds, and catching her before her +laughing cry had fully died away in the silent arches of the forest. +</p> + +<p> +"You maniac!" he scolded, as warm, tumbled, and penitent she half +slipped and half yielded herself to his hold. "Come over here now, and +sit down, and unpack the eats! I can't have my wife drowned before my +eyes--" +</p> + +<p> +The title brought a sudden flood of colour to her face; she meekly +seated herself beside him on a great log, and he locked his arm about +her. +</p> + +<p> +They sat so long in the wet, sweet, sun-warmed forest, hands clasped, +that nesting birds flew boldly about them, unafraid, and two wildcats, +trotting softly in single file, green eyes blinking, passed within a +few inches of them unseeing. +</p> + +<p> +"This," said Peter, after awhile, "is pleasant." +</p> + +<p> +He thought she did not answer, except by a faint tightening of her +fingers. But deep down in her heart she said: +</p> + +<p> +"This--is marriage." +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap11"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XI +</h3> + +<p> +Cherry had a flat now in Red Creek "Park." It differed from an +apartment because it had no elevator, no janitor, no steam heat. These +things were neither known nor needed in the crude mining town; the flat +building itself was considered a rather questionable innovation. It was +a wooden building, three stories high, with bay windows. There were +empty lots each side of it, but the sidewalls were on property +boundaries, and had windows only where the building jutted in, and +there was a small gate, and a narrow cement walk pressing tightly on +one side. Cherry had watched this building going up, and had thought it +everything desirable. She liked the clean kitchen, all fresh white +woodwork, tiles, and nickelplate, and she liked the big closets and the +gas-log. She had worried herself almost sick with fear that she would +not get this wonderful place, and finally paid twenty-five dollars for +the first month's rent with a fast-beating heart. She had the centre +floor. +</p> + +<p> +From her windows she looked down at the "Park." All the other buildings +were wooden bungalows, in many places the sidewalks were wooden, too, +and the centre of the street was deep black dust in summer and churned +black mud in the winter. The little houses gushed electric light, which +was cheap; the street itself was unlighted. +</p> + +<p> +But after the excitement of moving in died away, she hated the place. +She had enough money to hire a maid now, and she had a succession of +slatternly, independent young women in her kitchen, but she found her +freedom strangely flat. She detested the women of Red Creek. Cherry +went to market, to buy prunes and lard and apples and matches again, +but this took little time, and otherwise she had nothing to do. +</p> + +<p> +Now and then a play, straight from "a triumphant year on Broadway" came +to town for one night; then Martin took his wife, and they bowed to +half the men and women in the house, lamenting as they streamed out +into the sharp night air that Red Creek did not see more such +productions. +</p> + +<p> +The effect of these plays was to make Cherry long vaguely for the +stage; she really did not enjoy them for themselves. But they helped +her to visualize Eastern cities, lighted streets, restaurants full of +lights and music, beautiful women fitly gowned. After one of these +performances she would not leave her flat for several days, but would +sit dreaming over the thought of herself in the heroine's role. +</p> + +<p> +One day she had a letter from Alix; it gave her a heartache, she hardly +knew why. She began to dream of her own home, of the warm, sweet little +valley whose breezes were like wine, of Tamalpais wreathed in fog, and +of the ridges where buttercups and poppies powdered a child's shoes +with gold and silver dust. Alix had been ill, and she and Peter had +been away--a few brief weeks--to Honolulu and return. Cherry crushed +the letter in her hand; she knew suddenly that she had always been +jealous of Alix. Alix wrote gaily that she had asked Peter if he did +not want to send Cherry a kiss, and he had said that his face was too +dirty; he was moving geraniums. And for all that day, whenever Cherry +thought of Peter, it was with his hands and even his face spattered +with the dark earth of the mountain garden. The thought gave her a +genuine thrill, and the next day she deliberately thought of him again, +but the thrill was not so keen, and gradually she forgot him. +</p> + +<p> +But the letter stayed in her thoughts, and she began to hunger for +home. Nothing that Red Creek could offer shook her yearning for the +remembered sweetness and beauty of the redwoods, and the great shade of +the mountain. She wanted to spend a whole summer with Alix. +</p> + +<p> +She was athirst for home, for old scenes and old friends and old +emotions. She had only to hint to Alix to receive a love letter +containing a fervent invitation. So it was settled. With a sort of +feverish brevity Cherry completed her arrangements; Martin was to use +his own judgment in the matter of boarding or keeping the flat. Some of +their household goods were stored; Cherry told him that she would come +down in September and manage all the details of settling afresh, but +she knew that her secret hope was that she might never see Red Creek +again. It was all quickly arranged; perhaps he was not sorry to have +her go, although he kissed her good-bye affectionately, and wandered +away from the station in a rather lonely frame of mind when she was +gone. +</p> + +<p> +A friend of his had asked him to dine that same evening, "with a couple +of queens." Martin had realized long ago, as Cherry did, that their +marriage was not an entirely successful one, but he still considered +her the most beautiful woman he had ever known, and had never desired +any other. But to-night he thought he would telephone King and perhaps +dine with him--the girls might be amusing. Anyway, Cherry was happy and +was having her own way, and he had three months in which to try having +his own again. +</p> + +<p> +Alix met her sister at the ferry in San Francisco on a soft May +morning. She was an oddly developed Alix, trim and tall, prettily +gowned and veiled, laughing and crying with joy at seeing Cherry again. +Peter, she explained between kisses, had had to go to Los Angeles three +days ago, had been expected home last night, and was not even aware yet +that Cherry was definitely arriving. +</p> + +<p> +"Of course he knew that you were coming, but not exactly when," Alix +said, as she guided the newcomer along the familiar ferry place on to +the big bay steamer for Mill Valley. Cherry drew back to exclaim, to +marvel, to exult, at all the well-remembered sights and sounds and +smells. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Alix--Market Street!" she exclaimed. "And that smell of leather +tanning, and that smell of bay water and of coffee! And look--that's a +cable-car!" +</p> + +<p> +"We'll come over to San Francisco soon, and you'll see the new hotels," +Alix promised when they were seated on the upper deck, with the blue +waters of the bay moving softly past them. Cherry's happy eyes followed +a wheeling gull; she felt as if the world was suddenly sunshiny and +simple and glorious again. "But now, I thought the best thing was to +get you home," Alix went on, "and get you rested." +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Sis, that's what I want!" Cherry answered Her lip trembled, and +tears came into her eyes. "You don't know how homesick I've been," she +said, feeling it more and more every minute. "I feel as if I'd never +really drawn a full breath since I went away!" +</p> + +<p> +"I can't live in cities," Alix said, simply. "Peter has a house, you +know, in the city," she added, nodding toward the hilly silhouette of +San Francisco, as the boat ploughed steadily past it. "We were there +one winter, and in a way it was pleasant. It was easier, too. But more +than a year ago we came back to the valley, and I think it will be a +long time before we want to leave it again!" +</p> + +<p> +"I can't get used to the idea of you and Peter--married!" Cherry smiled. +</p> + +<p> +"We're well used to it," Alix declared, smiling, too. But a little sigh +stabbed through the smile a second later. Cherry's exquisite eyes grew +sympathetic; she suspected from the letter Alix had written that there +would be no nursery needed in the mountain cabin for awhile, and she +knew that to baby-loving Alix this would be a bitter cross. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, you see I've not seen you since the month Daddy died!" Cherry +reminded her. They fell to talking of their father; drifted to Anne and +Anne's limitations and complacencies. "And is it funny to you to be a +rich man's wife?" Cherry pursued. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter's not rich," Alix answered, laughing. "We have enough, and more +than enough, and if I HAD ambitions about rugs and linen and furs, I +could have them! But unfortunately neither one of us is interested in +those things. I get a few new songs; Peter gets a few new books; we +both get a catalogue and pick out plants, and that's about the extent +of our dissipation! The things I want," Alix finished, "can't be bought +for money!" +</p> + +<p> +"I know!" Cherry said, a warm little hand quickly touching her sister's. +</p> + +<p> +"But to have you here, Cherry dearest!" Alix said, joyfully, "and to +think of what it means to us both! My dear, the walks and talks and +fires and music and dinners--" +</p> + +<p> +"And duets," Cherry said, with her old fresh laugh. "Don't forget 'tu +canta rio sul tuo liuto!' and 'Oh, wert thou in the cauld, cauld +blast!'" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Cherry, how utterly delicious it is!" Alix said, gathering wraps +and bags for the change from the boat to the train that would land them +in twenty minutes at the little station in Mill Valley. +</p> + +<p> +Sausalito, fragrant with acacia and rose blooms, rose steeply into the +bright sunshine beyond the marshes skirting the bay glittering in +light. Cherry's eager eyes missed nothing, and when they left the train +at Mill Valley, and the mountain air enveloped them in a rush of its +clear softness and purity, she was in ecstasies. She welcomed the +waiting red setter as a beloved friend, and leaned from the shabby +motor car, delighted at every landmark. +</p> + +<p> +"Alix--the post office, and the blacksmith's, and how the hill has been +built up, each side of the steps! And is that the Kelley's--and the +O'Shaughnessys'--but look at the size of the trees!" +</p> + +<p> +They came to the woods, by the skeleton of the old Spanish mill, and +she fell silent, and the blue eyes that penetrated the layers upon +layers of soft greenness over her head brimmed with happy tears. The +sweet breath of the forest fell like a cool hand upon her tired +forehead; her heart began to dance in the old, irresponsible way. +</p> + +<p> +Presently, straight ahead, and rising sharply over them, was the +sun-bathed mountain, clear to-day, even soft and kindly in the flood of +early summer sunshine. It was cool in the woods, even though warm light +was pushing its way through the redwoods here and there, but when they +emerged from the trees, and took the winding dirt road that rose to the +hilltop, suddenly the day seemed hot. Alix, driving, threw off her +coat, and Cherry felt the moisture prick her forehead. +</p> + +<p> +She gave an exclamation of delight when they reached the cabin. It was +a picture of peaceful beauty in the summer noon. There were still +buttercups and poppies in the fields, and in the garden thousands of +roses were growing riotously, flinging their long arms up against the +slope of the low brown roof, and hanging in festoons from the low +branches of the oaks. Beyond the house the mountain rose; from the +porch Cherry could look down upon the familiar valley, and the rivers +winding like strips of blue ribbon through the marshes, and the far +bay, and San Francisco beyond. +</p> + +<p> +Inside were shady rooms, bowls of flowers, plain little white curtains +stirring in the summer breeze, peace and simplicity everywhere. Cherry +smiled at the immaculately clad Chinese stirring something in a yellow +bowl in a spotless kitchen whose windows showed manzanita and wild +lilac and madrone trees; smiled at the big, smoked fireplace where +sunlight fell straight on piled logs down the chimney's great mouth; +smiled as she went to and fro on journeys of investigation. But the +smile quivered into tears when she came to her own room, just such a +room as little Charity Strickland had had, only a few years ago, with +white hangings and unpainted wood, fresh air streaming through it, and +redwoods outside. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Alix--I never missed Dad before! But to have him out there, +fussing at something under the trees--to have him call us--'Where are +the girls--I want a girl!'" +</p> + +<p> +"I know--" Alix's own eyes filled. She sat on Cherry's bed while the +younger woman changed her dusty travelling clothes for a worn but +beautiful linen gown, and they said that they would go soon to the +little Sausalito cemetery and see that Dad's favourite heliotrope was +flourishing. +</p> + +<p> +The exquisite day went its peaceful course. Cherry was too tired for +walking, except on a laughing garden-round, when Alix showed her every +separate bush and tree with pride. For the most part she lay in a deep +porch chair, drinking in the beauty and serenity of the June afternoon, +breathing, above the sweet garden odours of lilac and verbena and +mignonette, the piney fragrance of the forest. Alix, coming and going, +watched her affectionately. The little languid arm in its transparent +sleeve, the drooping, beautiful head, the slender, crossed ankles were +always a picture. +</p> + +<p> +"You are like a boat just reaching harbour," Alix said, +sympathetically. "Sails furled, anchor down, just resting." +</p> + +<p> +"I feel like one," Cherry answered, lifting lazy blue eyes. "A month of +this will make me over!" +</p> + +<p> +"A month!" the older sister echoed, indignantly, disappearing +kitchenward on some errand. Presently the supper table was laid at +Cherry's side, bees shot like bullets through the garden, birds settled +for the night. Supper was ready; still there was no haste, no stir, no +apparent effort. +</p> + +<p> +Alix came to her own porch chair for the long twilight. She brought +Cherry a fluffy shawl; they were almost silent, and as the last light +faded from the hills, and the valleys were flooded with violet shadow, +the mountain chill came down, and the stars and the valley lights began +to prick the dark. +</p> + +<p> +The sisters came in blinking, in the old way, and in the old way were +amazed to see that the clock's hands stood at ten. +</p> + +<p> +"And I meant you to go early to bed!" Alix exclaimed, but Cherry with +her good-night kiss answered gratefully: +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, but I feel that I am going to sleep to-night! I've not been +sleeping well--" +</p> + +<p> +"Haven't?" Alix asked, in quick concern. +</p> + +<p> +"Not lately!" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry stumbled into the airy, dark, sweet little bedroom, and somehow +undressed and crept between the cool sheets of the bed that stood near +Alix's on the wide sleeping porch. Her last thought was for the +heavenly redwoods so close to her; she slept, indeed, for almost twelve +unbroken hours. +</p> + +<p> +She came wandering out to the porch at eleven o'clock, the old, +smiling, apologetic Cherry, with her skin dewy from a bath, and her +corn-coloured hair freshly brushed, and her linen gown as pink as the +Perkins rose that was blooming over her head. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Sis, I do feel so deliciously lazy and happy and rested and--and +everything!" said Cherry, as she settled herself at the porch table +where service for one was spread. "Oh, Alix--apricots! You remember +everything," she added, with a look all affectionate appreciation. +Alix, panting from exertions in the garden, dropped, trowel in hand, +upon the upper step, to watch her smilingly. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry, you're prettier than ever!" Alix said, eyeing the white hands +so busy with blue china, and the bright head dappled with shade and +sunshine coming through the green rose vine. +</p> + +<p> +"Am I?" Cherry said, pleased. "I thought myself that I looked nice this +morning," she added, innocently. "But it is really because the air of +this place agrees with me, it makes my skin feel right and my eyes feel +right; it makes me feel normal and smoothed out somehow!" And Cherry +looked down at the green and glitter of the valley, looked up past +solemn files of redwoods at the mountain, cameo-cut this morning +against a cloudless sky, and sighed a great sigh of content that seemed +to go from her heels to the crown of her head. "I have never been +really well and really happy anywhere else!" she declared, out of deep +peace and content. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, there's no place in the world like it!" Alix agreed, rubbing some +dried mud from the back of her hand with the trowel. "Peter and I are +always deciding to try New York, or to try San Francisco, or Southern +California, but somehow we don't! If Martin continues to migrate every +little while, I wish you could have a little house here. Then for part +of the time at least we could be together." +</p> + +<p> +"The old house," Cherry said, dreamily. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, why not?" Alix echoed, eagerly. "It's in pretty bad shape, after +being empty so long, but it would make darling home again! Would Martin +object?" +</p> + +<p> +The old spoiled Cherry, with the pretty petulant frown and shrug of +years ago! "Martin knows what he could do," she drawled, naughtily. +</p> + +<p> +"Martin would be here--some of the time?" Alix asked, a little +anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry filled her coffee cup a second time, gave Kow an appreciative +smile as he put a hot French loaf before her, and said indifferently: +</p> + +<p> +"Martin has a constitutional objection to whatever pleases me, and +would find some objection to any plan that gave me pleasure!" Her tone +was light, but there was a bitter twitch to her lips as she spoke. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Cherry!" Alix said, distressed. +</p> + +<p> +"However, I'm not going to talk about Martin!" the younger sister +decreed, gaily. "I'm too utterly and absolutely happy!" +</p> + +<p> +There was a worried little cloud on Alix's forehead, but it lightened +steadily, as the happy morning wore on, and half an hour later, when +she and Cherry were sailing a frog on a shingle, on the busy little +stream that poured down the hill near the cabin, both were laughing +like children again. +</p> + +<p> +It was here that Peter found Cherry. Alix had met him at the house, +given him a scrutinizing look with her quick kiss, questioned him about +his trip, and reported all well with the house and garden. +</p> + +<p> +"And now come down to the creek," she had said, mischievously. "The +Bateses are here--" +</p> + +<p> +"Not Alice Bates?" he had asked, quickly, and at her apologetic nod he +added disgustedly: "Oh, thunder!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, don't--she'll hear you!" said the beaming Alix, warningly. Peter's +eyes, as he crossed the porch, were gloomy and he said "Thunder!" again +under his breath. +</p> + +<p> +They followed a rough little trail past stumps where nasturtiums and +alyssum mingled with the underbrush, and were in the redwoods, and at +the brookside. Peter saw a slender girl in pink pushing a plank about +with a pole. She turned in surprise to face him. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry!" he said, and as Alix laughed delightedly, he gave his wife a +glance, and said, "You liar!" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry came up to him, and he took both her hands, and after a second +of hesitation kissed her. She freed one hand to put it on his shoulder, +and, standing so, she seriously returned his kiss. For a moment his arm +encircled her waist; he had forgotten how blue her eyes were, with just +a film of corn-coloured hair loosened above them, and what husky, +exquisite, childish notes were in her voice. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry--this is the nicest thing that has happened for a long, long +while!" he said. +</p> + +<p> +"You and Alix are angels to let me come!" Cherry answered, as they +turned, and with laughter and eager, interrupted talking went back to +the house. +</p> + +<p> +"And how do you think your big sister looks?" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Alix is wonderful!" Cherry said. Indeed she had been looking at +Alix with secret surprise and admiration since her arrival. Alix had +always been different from Cherry, but in her own way she was amazing. +Where Cherry had but one expensive waist, but one beautiful gown, but +two or three elaborate sets of filmy lingerie, accumulated slowly and +laundered by herself when she washed her silk stockings, Alix, like a +child, changed her fresh, simple linen every day, jumped from one crisp +tub suit to another, wore untrimmed straw hats that she bought in the +village for fifty cents apiece. Alix apparently never considered the +relation of her clothing to her own personality; she simply chose the +simple colours and styles she liked, and aspired only to be always +fresh and trim. +</p> + +<p> +So with her house. She did not have one or two priceless tablecloths to +be used on occasions with satin underlaid, and crystal and cut-glass; +her china was all used every day, and her table linen cheap and +plentiful and lavish. Meals were always simple and hearty and +delicious; but Alix had not time for fancy touches; hated, as she +frankly admitted, "all that stuffed celery and chopped nut and halved +cherry business! If soup isn't good without whipped cream and sherry in +it, it's pretty poor soup!" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry had laughed at her, even years ago, for her point of view, but +sometimes she had felt it to be almost an advantage. At all events, she +had not been twenty-four hours in Alix's house without perceiving that +her sister was singularly free and unruffled, unlike the women of her +generation. Alix did not put all the time she saved to good use, +although she puttered away in the garden, spent an hour or two each day +at the piano, and was, as she confided to Cherry, writing a novel. But +she was always gay and always fresh, and enjoyed every moment of the +day. +</p> + +<p> +Four years younger, yet Cherry felt older than she. Alix's nature was +uncomplicated by any consciousness of self. Again like a child, she +only wanted people to love each other and be happy, and that the sun +should shine. She was equally content, whether she was helping Peter to +pile wood, tramping in the deluging summer rains, or dreaming over a +book through the long evenings, with her shabby slippers to the fire. +An exquisite spring morning, with wet earth, rising mists, and shafts +of pure, warm sunlight, made her sing like the forest birds all about +her, but even on the coldest and blackest of winter nights, when the +storm made the lamp-light fluctuate alarmingly, and trees creaked over +the cabin, she would look up from the piano to say contentedly: "Well, +I'd rather be here than anywhere else, anyway!" +</p> + +<p> +Naturally, she was unsympathetic. If people were in pain, or cold, or +hungry, Alix could sympathize. But for mental and spiritual troubles +she had small sympathy. +</p> + +<p> +"Almost everybody in the world could live as simply as we do!" she told +Peter. +</p> + +<p> +"It costs us about four thousand a year!" he said. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, it NEEDN'T. We could buy fewer clothes, and keep only one cow, +and let the cook go! We'd be just as happy." +</p> + +<p> +"To some people," Peter had objected, doubtfully, more than once, +"there are other things than clothes and food!" +</p> + +<p> +"What things?" +</p> + +<p> +"Well, various things." +</p> + +<p> +"We have books, flowers, music, all out-of-doors," Alix protested, +briskly. +</p> + +<p> +"Sympathy, my dear--interpretation self-expression!" +</p> + +<p> +"Tommyrot!" she had responded without animosity. He realized with +surprise, not many months after their marriage, that she meant what she +said. If she ate and slept and walked and read with her usual healthy +relish, she needed nothing more. She was the least exacting of wives. +If he was late for a meal, she smiled at him absently, or if, after +they had entertained, he apologetically approached her with some +reference to an unfortunate sentence or circumstances, she would meet +him with a cheerful: +</p> + +<p> +"Angel boy, I never heard you even, or if I did I don't remember +it--even if I had heard it, it's true!" +</p> + +<p> +She was one of the rare women who can take marriage calmly, as a matter +of course; she had done so since the hour that made her his wife. At +her illness she had rebelled; she hated nurses and their fuss, she +said. She was perverse with doctors. In an unbelievably short time her +magnificent constitution had responded; she was well again, at his side +at the steamer rail, as eager for the sights and sounds and smells of +Hawaii as if she had never heard of a sick room. +</p> + +<p> +Her only sentiment was for the babies and small animals. She would +cuddle rabbits or birds against her brown, lean cheek, and hug her +setter enthusiastically. Peter suffered an agony of sympathy whenever +she spoke of a child. +</p> + +<p> +"I'd hate all the preliminary fussing, Pete--we both would! But oh, if +the Lord would send me six or eight of them!" +</p> + +<p> +Then and then only did the bright eyes and the confident voice soften, +and then only was Alix no longer a flat, straight, splendid boy, but a +woman indeed. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap12"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XII +</h3> + +<p> +Cherry, Peter saw at once, was different in every way. Cherry was full +of softness, of ready response to any appeal, of sympathy and +comprehension. She had been misunderstood, unhappy, neglected; she had +developed through suffering a certain timidity that was almost a +shrinking, a certain shy clinging to what was kind and good. +</p> + +<p> +Her happiness here was an hourly delight to both Alix and himself. She +seemed to flower softly; every day of the simple forest life brought +her new interest, new energy, new bloom. She and Alix washed their hair +again, dammed the creek again, tramped and sang duets again. Sometimes +they cooked, often they went into the old senseless spasms of laughter +at nothing, or almost nothing. +</p> + +<p> +One evening, when in the sitting room there was no other light than +that of the fire that a damp July evening made pleasant, about a week +after her arrival, Cherry spoke for the first time of Martin. She had +had a long letter from him that day, ten pages written in a flowing +hand on ten pages of the lined paper of a cheap hotel, with a little +cut of the building standing boldly against a mackerel sky at the top +of each page. He was well, he had some of his dinners at the hotel, but +lived at home; he had been playing a little poker and was luckier than +ever. He was looking into a proposition in Durango, Mexico, and would +let her know how it panned out. The letter ended with the phrases: +"Have a good time, Babe, and write me. Send me a line when you can. I +have been running some with Joe King, but I am not strong for that +crowd." It was signed: "Aff'tly, Mart." +</p> + +<p> +Peter had been playing the piano lazily when the letter was tossed to +Cherry by Alix, who usually drove into the village every morning after +breakfast for marketing and the mail. He had seen Cherry glance through +it, seen the little distasteful movement of the muscles about her nose, +and seen her put it carelessly under a candlestick on the mantel for +later consideration. At luncheon she had referred to it, and now it +evidently had caused her to be thoughtful and a little troubled. An +open book was in her lap; she and Alix had gone through the farce of +saying that they would read without speaking until Peter had finished +some business telephoning; now he had joined them, but still she did +not read and seemed disinclined for talk. +</p> + +<p> +"Mart may go to Mexico!" she said, presently, with a sigh. +</p> + +<p> +"To stay?" Peter asked, quickly. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry shrugged. +</p> + +<p> +"As much as he stays anywhere!" she answered, drily. +</p> + +<p> +"H'm! Does that mean you?" Alix asked. +</p> + +<p> +"I suppose that's the plan," Cherry said, lifelessly. +</p> + +<p> +"It's a rotten country," Peter offered, thoughtfully. "At least I +should think it would be," he added, more moderately, "to select for a +permanent home." +</p> + +<p> +"I always say that a place where the natives are black, or yellow, +isn't fit for white people, or the natives would BE white!" Alix +explained, brightly. +</p> + +<p> +"All mining towns are horrible!" Cherry said with gloomy fervor. +"They're raw, crude, coarse places, and the people in them are just as +bad!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter had a moment of pity for her, so young, so helpless, so tied. +</p> + +<p> +"Perhaps he won't want you until he is sure of staying!" he offered. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Mart always thinks the last thing is the permanent thing!" his +wife answered, wearily. "He says he'll want me to join him about the +middle of August." +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, help!" Alix said, disgustedly. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry was silent a few minutes, and Peter smoked with his eyes on the +fire. Alix glanced from one to the other, sighed, and glanced down at +her magazine. +</p> + +<p> +"If----" Cherry said presently, "If I get my money I'll have enough to +live on, won't I, Peter?" +</p> + +<p> +"You'll have about forty thousand dollars--yes, at five per cent, you +could live on that. Especially if you lived here in the valley," Peter +answered, after some thought. +</p> + +<p> +"Then I want you to know," Cherry went on quietly, with sudden scarlet +in her cheeks, "that I'm going to tell Martin I think we have tried it +long enough!" Peter looked gravely at her, soberly nodded, and resumed +his study of the fire. But Alix spoke in brisk protest. +</p> + +<p> +"TRIED it! You mean tried marriage! But one doesn't try marriage! It's +a fact. It's like the colour of your eyes." +</p> + +<p> +"As a matter of fact, it isn't anything of the kind," Cherry said, +mildly. +</p> + +<p> +"Lloyd has given you cause, eh?" Peter took his pipe out of his mouth +long enough to ask, briefly. +</p> + +<p> +"Not--not in the way you mean--" she answered, glad to be discussing +the topic. +</p> + +<p> +"H'm," Peter muttered. It was almost as if he were disappointed. +</p> + +<p> +"But, Peter," Cherry went on hesitatingly, appealingly, "it is no more +a marriage than if we both had--had done everything and anything! He +doesn't--oh, love!" Cherry interrupted herself scornfully on the word. +"Of COURSE he doesn't love me," she said. "But it isn't only that, it's +that we differ in every way about everything! His friends, his ideas, +his feelings about things--I can't tell you how we jar and jar on each +other! No," said Cherry, beginning to cry a little, "he hasn't been +unfaithful; I almost wish he had--" +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry!" Alix protested, with affectionate reproach. +</p> + +<p> +"Alix," the little sister pleaded, eagerly, "you don't know what it +is--you don't know what it is! Always meeting people I don't like, +always living in places I hate, always feeling that my own self is +being smothered and lost and shrunk, always listening to Mart +complaining and criticizing people---" +</p> + +<p> +"Don't appeal to Alix!" Peter said. "She doesn't care what she does or +where she lives. She fraternized with every old maid school teacher on +the steamer, and a booze-fiend, and a woman whose husband was a native +of Borneo; and she would pick out the filthiest lairs in Honolulu and +ask me if it wouldn't be fun to live there!" +</p> + +<p> +They all laughed; then Peter added, seriously: +</p> + +<p> +"I'll go this far, Cherry. Lloyd married you too young." +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, far too young!" she agreed, quickly. "The thing I--I can't think +of," she said, "is how young I was--only a little girl. I knew nothing; +I wasn't ready to be anybody's wife!" +</p> + +<p> +Something in the poignant sorrow of her tone went straight to their +hearts, and for the first time Peter had an idea of the real suffering +she had borne. Alix's mouth was rather firmly shut, her eyes a little +narrowed, her face rather sad, as she looked into the fire. +</p> + +<p> +"If I had a child, even, or if Martin needed me," Cherry said, "then it +might be different! But I'm only a burden to him----" +</p> + +<p> +"His letter doesn't sound as if he thought of you as a burden," Alix +suggested, mildly. +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, well, the minute I leave him he has a different tone," Cherry +explained, and Peter said, with a glance almost of surprise at his wife: +</p> + +<p> +"It's an awfully difficult position for a woman of any pride, dear!" +</p> + +<p> +Alix, kneeling to adjust the fire, as she was constantly tempted to do, +met his look, and laid a soot-streaked hand on his knee. +</p> + +<p> +"Pete, dearest, of course it is! But--" and Alix looked doubtfully from +one to the other--"but divorce is a hateful thing!" she added, shaking +her head, "it--it never seems to me justifiable!" +</p> + +<p> +"Divorce is an institution," Peter said. "You may not like it any more +than you like prisons or mad-houses; it has its uses." +</p> + +<p> +"People get divorces every day!" Cherry added. "Isn't divorce better +than living along in marriage--without love?" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, love!" Alix said, scornfully. "Love is just another name for +passion and selfishness and laziness, half the time!" +</p> + +<p> +"You can say that, because yours is one of the happy marriages," Cherry +said. "It might be very different--if Peter weren't Peter!" +</p> + +<p> +As she said his name she sent him her trusting smile, her blue eyes +shone with affection, and the exquisite curve of her mouth deepened. +Peter smiled back, and looked away in a little confusion. +</p> + +<p> +"I can't imagine the circumstances under which I shouldn't love you and +Peter!" Alix summarized it, triumphantly. +</p> + +<p> +"And Martin?" Peter asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, well, I didn't marry Martin!" his wife reminded him quickly. "I +didn't promise to love and honour Martin in sickness and health, for +richer for poorer, for better for worse--by George!" Alix interrupted +herself, in her boyish way, "those are terrific words, you know. And a +promise is a promise!" +</p> + +<p> +"And even for infidelity, you don't believe people ought to separate?" +Cherry asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Nonsense!" Peter said. +</p> + +<p> +"But you said--that Martin never--" +</p> + +<p> +"No, I'm not speaking of Martin now!" +</p> + +<p> +"Well, wouldn't that come under 'worser'?" Alix asked. +</p> + +<p> +"But, my child," Peter expostulated kindly, "my dear benighted +wife--there is such a thing as a soul--a mind--a personality! To be +tied to a--well, to a coarsening influence day after day is living +death! It is worse than any bodily discomfort--" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't see it!" Alix persisted. "I think there's a lot of nonsense +talked about the fammy oncompreezy--but it seems to me that if you have +a home and meals and books and friends and the country to walk in, +you--" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Heavens, Alix, you don't know what you're talking about!" Cherry +interrupted her, impatiently. "Let Peter here go off with some chorus +girl, and see how long you--" +</p> + +<p> +"It's all very well in books," Alix interrupted her sister in turn. +"But in real life I don't believe a woman ever bothers to think whether +her husband ever murmurs her name in dreams or not. I know I take Peter +as much for granted as I do Tamalpais; if he ever leaped from the +track, and stole or got drunk or wandered off after some petticoat, I'd +FIX him! I'd be furious, but I don't see myself leaving him." +</p> + +<p> +Peter's brief shout of laughter rang out. +</p> + +<p> +"The awful thing about that female is that it is true," he told Cherry. +"If I ever stray from the path of virtue, she'll scare me to death." +</p> + +<p> +"Sometimes I think your marriage is as--as queer as my own," Cherry +said, looking from one to the other. +</p> + +<p> + Nothing more was said for several days upon the subject of a<br /> +possible divorce. The weather continued perfect, and the little +house-party on the mountaintop was complete in itself. Cherry often +went into the village with Alix, to be sure; once they all went to a +charity affair at Blithedale; sometimes a few women drove up the +winding road in the afternoon, and there were ginger-ale and cookies on +the porch; but most of the time the two sisters were alone, with Peter +joining them in the afternoons. +</p> + +<p> +One afternoon Peter crossed the porch, tired and hot, and found +everything apparently deserted. He dropped into a chair, and was still +breathless from the rapid climb up-hill, when stray notes from the +piano reached his ears; a chord, a carefully played bit of bass; then a +chord again. Then slowly, but with dainty accuracy and even feeling, +Cherry began to play a strange little study of Schumann. Peter knew +that it was Cherry, because Alix's touch was always firm and sure; more +than that, he himself had played this same bit no longer ago than last +night, and he remembered now that Cherry had asked him just what it was. +</p> + +<p> +He experienced a sudden and pleasing emotion; he did not stop to +analyze it. But he had been ruffled in spirit a moment before; Alix had +known he was to come on this train, and had not met him with the car, +and while he really did not mind the walk up, he disliked the feeling +that they had entirely forgotten him. +</p> + +<p> +The car was gone from its usual stand under a live oak, but everybody +had not forgotten him nevertheless. Cherry was deliberately recalling +the mood and moment that also recalled him. And as the notes came +slowly, but precisely, from the cool, darkened living room, with its +fragrant masses of sweet peas and fluted Martha Washington geraniums, +Peter felt contented and serene. He looked up at the rise of Tamalpais, +only half a tone darker than the pale blue sky to-day; he looked off at +the range toward the ocean, where shimmers of heat were quivering +upward; and then he settled himself back luxuriously in his great +wicker chair and shut his eyes. Still the plaintive air came, as +caressing as a touch. +</p> + +<p> +Presently there was silence; then Cherry tried another little study, +and finished it, and the hot summer stillness reigned again. The valley +swam under a haze of pure heat; a buzzard hung motionless over the +cabin, and the dry air was sweet with resinous scent of pines and +manzanita and even of tarweed. +</p> + +<p> +With a sense that he had been dozing, if only for a few minutes, Peter +opened his eyes. Framed in the cabin doorway, poised like a butterfly +against the dark background of the room, stood Cherry. He knew that she +had been standing so for some time, for a full minute, perhaps more. +</p> + +<p> +She was looking straight at him; one hand was hanging at her side, the +other laid over her heart, as if she had involuntarily put it there +when she saw him. Her corn-coloured hair was a little loosened; she was +not smiling. She wore something limp and transparent, of white, he +thought, or pale, pale blue, like the sky, with faint stripes making +her figure look more slender even than it was. +</p> + +<p> +They looked at each other in a silence that grew more and more awkward +by great plunges. Peter had time to wish that he had kept his eyes +shut, to wish that he had smiled when he first saw her--he could not +have forced himself to smile now--to wonder how they were ever to +speak--where they were rushing--rushing--rushing--before she turned +noiselessly and vanished into the dim room. +</p> + +<p> +Peter lay there, and his heart pounded. For a few minutes his senses +whirled so madly that he felt suffocated. He dared not sit up, he dared +not stir; from head to foot thrilling waves of surprise, and even a +little of terror, went over him. +</p> + +<p> +Never in his life had he experienced this sort of feeling before. He +knew that he hated it, even while his whole spirit sang and soared in +the new ecstasy. A moment ago he had been a tired man, fretted because +his wife forgot to meet him; now there was something new in the world. +And rapidly all the world became only a background, only a setting, for +this extraordinary sensation. He sat up, after awhile, looked at the +familiar porch, with the potted flowers, and Alix's boxes, where +bachelor's-buttons, marguerites, and geraniums had been alternated to +make a touch of patriotic colour on July Fourth. The hills beyond still +swam in the hot sunlight, the mountain rose into the blue, but the +light that changes all life lay over them for Peter. +</p> + +<p> +He said to himself that it was awkward--he did not know how he could +enter that door and talk to Cherry. And yet he knew that that meeting +of Cherry, that the common exchange of words and glances, that the +daily trifling encounters with Cherry were all poignantly significant +now. Or if he did not fully sense all this yet he felt thrilled to the +soul with the knowledge that she was there, back in the shadowy house +somewhere, with the pale striped gown and the disordered corn-coloured +hair, and that somehow they must meet, somehow they must talk together. +</p> + +<p> +He felt no impulse toward hurry. He might sit on this porch another +hour, might saunter off toward the creek. It mattered nothing; the hour +was steadily approaching when she must reappear. +</p> + +<p> +Alix drove in, full of animated apologies. She managed the car far +better than he, and no thought of an accident had troubled him. But she +explained that she had been to get eggs for a setting hen, and Antone +had stopped her and told her that the new calf had been prematurely +born, out on the hills, and had "been gone for die," and so she had +driven over to Juanita, and gotten the calf. +</p> + +<p> +And there the calf was, two days old, and as pretty as only a baby deer +or a baby Jersey can be, roped by his woodeny little legs, and laid +stiffly in the tonneau, with utter terror in his liquid dark eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"Die, nothing!" Alix said, emphatically, as she tenderly lifted the +calf out of the car. "I'm going to take him up to the barn; you run +tell Kow that Missy wants warm milk. Then you come on, Pete--and tell +me what you think!" +</p> + +<p> +"Here--" Peter said, authoritatively, shouting the message, and taking +the calf from her arms; they were laughing as they entered the dry, hot +darkness of the stable. Alix's riding horse put a Roman nose +reproachfully over the bitten barrier of his box-stall. +</p> + +<p> +"We've got company for you, Creep-mouse!" Peter, panting from his heavy +burden, announced. "Poor little feller!" he said to the calf. +</p> + +<p> +"He's all right." Alix, rustling straw, said, confidently. "You know he +must be a twin," she said to Peter, "for that brute of a mother of his +was contentedly wandering up to the ridge, where the breeze is, and she +certainly had another little calf cavorting about her--oh, thanks, +Cherry! Here's the milk, Peter. See if the poor little beast will suck +your fingers!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter took the brimming blue bowl from Cherry's fingers. She had come +like a shadow into the barn, her eyes were on the tipped surface of the +milk. She lowered it carefully into his hold, and he felt the cool +softness of her yielding fingers; he did not meet her eyes, partly +because he gave her face only one glance. They all knelt about the +calf, who after a few feeble struggles to escape altogether resigned +himself, and lay looking at them with terrified eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"He's too weak to stand on his legs, perhaps I should have had the +mother brought in," Alix said, anxiously. "But he's a beautiful little +thing, the prettiest she's ever had, except that he's so thin! Isn't he +cute, Cherry?" +</p> + +<p> +"He's--darling!" Cherry's voice, with its young cadences always ready +to escape from the riper tones of womanhood, echoed oddly under the +low, shingled roof of the barn. And again life seemed full of surprise +and thrill to Peter. He wanted to say something to her; could think of +nothing, and so was unusually silent throughout the ceremonies of +getting the calf to suck Alix's fingers, getting him tied in a manner +that should hold him without danger of strangulation, and bedding him +comfortably on sacks and straw. Cherry was silent, too, but Alix talked +briskly, and the necessity for constant effort and movement filled all +possible gaps. +</p> + +<p> +The evening was warm, one of the two or three warm evenings that marked +the height of summer even in the high valley. While the three sat on +the wide, unroofed porch, loitering over their coffee, a great, +yellow-red moon rose slowly over the hill, and floated silently above +them. Presently its light flooded the landscape, and strange and +romantic vistas appeared between the redwoods aisles, and the tops of +the forest trees far below them showed in a brilliant gray light, soft +and furry. The whole world seemed to be lifted and swimming in vaporous +brightness. There was not a breath of air in the garden; roses and +wallflowers stood erect in a sort of luminous enchantment. Moonlight +sank through the low twisted branches of the near-by oaks and fell +tangled with black and lacy shade through the porch rose vine. +</p> + +<p> +Alix sat on the porch rail, every line of crisp skirt and braided head +revealed as if by daylight, but Cherry's pale striped gown was only a +glimmer in the deepest shade of the vine. Peter, smoking, sat where he +could not but see her; they had hardly looked at each other directly +since the long, strange look of this afternoon; they had exchanged +hardly a word. +</p> + +<p> +A black cat crept across the grass, her body dragging stealthily on +crouched legs, boldly silhouetted in the moonshine, invisible in the +shade. Alix defeated her hunting plans by flinging a well-aimed pebble +into the shrubbery ahead of her. The cat, dissembling, lay down in the +dry grass, cleaned a paw, and coquetted with her tail. +</p> + +<p> +"Town to-morrow, Pete?" Alix said, after a silence during which she had +locked her arms behind her head, stared straight above her at the path +the moon was making through faint stars, and yawned. "I've got to go in +to a meeting of the hospital board." +</p> + +<p> +"I didn't know you were on it," Cherry said. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter's mother was, and hence I am," Alix said, virtuously. Cherry +felt an old little prick of jealousy. Alix was strangely indifferent to +the position she held. +</p> + +<p> +"I go in to have luncheon with Mary" Cherry said. "I wish we could all +lunch together!" +</p> + +<p> +"I'll blow you girls to a meal at Frank's--" Peter began, and +interrupted himself, "Oh, but you can't, Cherry!" +</p> + +<p> +"And our meeting is at twelve; we'll have lunch at the hospital," Alix +added. "Wouldn't you think we'd have enough of each other, we three?" +she said, amusedly, beginning, in the reprehensible manner of girlhood, +to roll the black scarf that had been knotted about her rolled +bluejacket's collar, and to remove the pins from her hair. "But I hate +to be in town and not see you both! Good-night, beloveds. I'm dead. +Don't sit out here mooning with Pete all night, Cerise!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter said to himself that now Cherry would go, too, but as the screen +door banged lightly after Alix, and the dull glimmer of Cherry's +striped gown did not move in the soft shadow, a sudden reluctance and +distaste seized him. He had been subconsciously aware of her all +afternoon; he had known a delicious warmth and stir at his heart that +he had not analyzed, if indeed it could be analyzed. Now suddenly he +did not want the beauty and bloom and charm of that feeling touched. +His heart began to beat heavily again, and he knew that he must stop +the unavailing game now. +</p> + +<p> +But he had not reckoned on Cherry. She twisted in her chair, and he +heard a child's long, happy sigh. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, so am I tired, too!" she breathed, reluctantly. "I hate to leave +it--but I've been almost asleep for half an hour! You can have all the +moonlight there is, Peter." Her white figure fluttered toward the door. +"Good-night!" she said, drooping her little head to choke a yawn. A +moment later he heard her laughing with Alix. +</p> + +<p> +"You fool--you fool--you fool!" Peter said to himself, and he felt an +emotion like shame, a little real compunction that he could so utterly +misread her innocence. He felt it not only wrong in him, but somehow +staining and hurtful to her. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap13"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XIII +</h3> + +<p> +Again Peter reckoned without Cherry. It was only the next day, when he +was entering the Palace court for his lunch, that he experienced a +sudden and violent emotion. His thoughts were, at the moment, far from +Cherry, and he had fancied himself in a hurry. But every other feeling +but excitement was obliterated at the sight of a slender, girlishly +made woman, in a pongee gown, and a limp brown hat covered with +poppies, waiting in the lounge. +</p> + +<p> +Peter went toward her, and the colour rushed into Cherry's face. Half a +dozen women had been furtively studying her, and one of them now said +to a man, "Yes, she really is--extraordinarily pretty." But Cherry and +Peter saw and heard them not. It was the first time they had +accidentally encountered each other, and it had a special place of its +own in the history of their lives. +</p> + +<p> +The surprise of it kept them laughing, hands clasped, for a minute; +then Cherry said: +</p> + +<p> +"I was to lunch here with Mary Cameron. But she's full twenty minutes +late!" +</p> + +<p> +"Lunch with me," Peter substituted, promptly. +</p> + +<p> +"She'll probably be along--" Cherry said, vaguely, looking at a clock. +"You hate her, don't you?" she added, looking up from under the poppies +at Peter. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't like her," he admitted, with a boy's grimace. +</p> + +<p> +"Then suppose we don't lunch here?" Cherry suggested, innocently. Peter +laughed joyously, and tucking her little gloved hand under his arm, led +her away. They went to Solari's, and had a window table, and nodded, as +they discussed their lunch, at half a dozen friends who chanced to be +lunching there, too. But it was a thrilling adventure, none the less, +and after the other tables were empty, and when the long room was +still, they talked on, trifling with cheese and crackers, Peter +watching her as he smoked, Cherry's head bent over her plate. +</p> + +<p> +She had said that she wanted to tell him "all about it," and Peter, +with quick knowledge that she meant the unhappiness of her marriage, +nodded a grave permission. +</p> + +<p> +"I've made a failure of it!" Cherry said, sadly. "I know I ought to +struggle on, but I can't. Just a few days of it, just a few weeks of it +make me--make me a different woman! I get nervous, I get hysterical, I +don't sleep! I have no individuality, Peter, I have no personality! As +for my dignity--my privacy--" +</p> + +<p> +Her face was scarlet, and for a moment she stopped speaking. +</p> + +<p> +"Just tell me an alternative!" she said, after awhile. "It CAN'T be +that there is no other life for me than going back. Peter, I'm only +twenty-four!" +</p> + +<p> +"I know you are," he said, with a brief nod. +</p> + +<p> +"Why, everyone has some alternative," Cherry pleaded. "It can't be that +marriage is the only--the only irrevocable thing! If you had a partner +that you couldn't go on with, you could come to SOME agreement! You +could make a sacrifice, but somehow you could end the association! +Peter," she said, earnestly, "when I think of marketing again--six +chops and soup-meat and butter and baking powder--I feel sick! When I +think of unpacking the things I've washed and dusted for five +years--the glass berry bowl that somebody gave us, and the eleven +silver tea-spoons--I can't bear it!" +</p> + +<p> +"You don't love him!" Peter said. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't hate him," she answered quickly. "Indeed I don't. And it isn't +just the place and the life, Peter! I could be happy in two +rooms--somewhere--anywhere--But not--with HIM. Oh, Peter, if I hadn't +done it--if I hadn't done it!" And Cherry knotted her fingers together, +and her voice thickened and stopped. +</p> + +<p> +Her beauty, as she pushed her plate aside and leaned toward him, was so +startling that Peter, a lighted match half-raised to a fresh cigarette, +put the match down aimlessly, and looked thoughtfully at the cigarette, +and laid that down, too, without the faintest consciousness of what he +was doing. The day was warm, and there was a little dampness on her +white forehead, where the gold hair clung to the brim of the drooping +hat. Her marvellous blue eyes were ringed with soft violet shadows, as +if a sooty finger had set them under the dark brown arch of the brows. +The soft curve of her chin, the babyish shortness of her upper lip, and +the crimson sweetness of the little earnest mouth had never seemed more +lovely than they were to-day. She was youth incarnate, palpitating, +flushed, unspoiled. +</p> + +<p> +For a moment she looked down at the table, and the colour flooded her +face, then she looked him straight in the eyes and smiled. "Well! +Perhaps it will all work out right, Peter," she said, with the +childish, questioning look that so wrung his heart. She immediately +gathered her possessions together to go, but when they stepped into +sunshiny Geary Street it was three o'clock, and Peter suggested that +they walk down to the boat. +</p> + +<p> +To them both the hour was memorable, and the street and park and the +tops of tall buildings, flooded with the sunlight of a summer +afternoon, were Paradise. Cherry only knew that she felt strangely +thrilled and yet at peace; Peter's heart was bursting with love of the +world, love of this romantic city, with its flower market blazing in +the sun, and with the ferry clock tower standing high above the vista +of Market Street. He seemed floating rather than walking, and when, at +crossings, he could help Cherry for a few steps, felicity swelled in +his soul almost like pain. +</p> + +<p> +They met Alix on the boat, but she did not ask any embarrassing +questions; she sat between them on the upper deck, blinking contentedly +at the blue satin bay, her eyes following the wheeling gulls or the +passage of ships, her mind evidently concerned only with the idle +pleasantness of the moment. And always, for Peter, there was the same +joyous sense of something new--something significant--something +ecstatic in life. +</p> + +<p> +From that hour he was never quite at ease in Cherry's company, and +avoided being alone with her even for an instant, although her presence +always caused him the new and tingling delight. He read her honest blue +eyes truly, and knew that although, like himself, she was conscious of +the new sweetness and brightness of life, she had never entertained for +an instant the flitting thought that it was Peter's feeling for her +that made it so. She thought perhaps that it was the old childish +happiness that she had known in the valley, the freedom and leisure and +irresponsibility of the old days. +</p> + +<p> +One day she made Alix and Peter laugh by reciting for them long +passages from "Paolo and Francesca." They were walking, and had stopped +to rest and get breath on a steep climb. Cherry's tender voice, +half-amusedly and half-seriously repeating the passionate lines, +lingered in Peter's mind like a sort of faint incense for hours. +</p> + +<p> +"It's lovely," said Cherry in the garden that night, when he spoke to +her about it, "but it's not Shakespere, of course," she surprised him +by adding. Cherry had developed, he thought, she had cared nothing for +Shakespere years ago. Immediately she began the immortal phrases: +</p> + +<p> + 'Tis but the name that is mine enemy,<br /> + Thou art thyself, though, not a Montague ...<br /> + ... And for that name which is no part of thee<br /> + Take all myself!<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Peter's heart began to thump again. They were alone in the garden; it +was dark to-night, warm and starry. +</p> + +<p> +"Now that you and I are brother and sister," Cherry said, after a +silence, "tell me--it went across my mind once, and then I didn't think +of it for years. But tell me, was it me with whom you were--you fancied +you were in love, all those years ago?" +</p> + +<p> +She looked innocently up at him in the gloom, and laughed. Peter did +not speak for a few seconds. +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, it was always you!" he said then, briefly. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry laughed again, a little amused and exultant laugh. But +immediately she stopped laughing, and said, vexedly: +</p> + +<p> +"I was a fool to ask you that! I don't know why I did. Just sheer +egotism--and I hate women who dwell on their own foolish old love +affairs, too!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter, as ashamed as she of the moment's weakness, laughed, too. +</p> + +<p> +"You could hardly call it that!" he objected, mildly. +</p> + +<p> +"You could hardly call it anything!" she agreed, in relief. "Does Alix +know?" she asked, quickly. +</p> + +<p> +"There wasn't much to tell," he reminded her, as they went back to the +house through the ranks of wet wallflowers and roses. +</p> + +<p> +"Nothing!" she said again, quickly. +</p> + +<p> +And when they entered the house he was strangely disturbed to see a +look of something like shame, something confused and embarrassed on her +usually frank little face, and to realize that she was conscientiously +avoiding his eyes. After she and Alix had gone to bed he got down the +little red volume that was marked "Romeo and Juliet," and found the +score of lines that she had quoted, and marvelled that the same words +could seem on the printed page so bare, and sound so rich and full in +Cherry's voice out under the stars. +</p> + +<p> +The next day she talked in a troubled, uncertain way of going back to +Red Creek and he knew why. But Alix was so aghast at the idea, and +Peter, who was closing Doctor Strickland's estate, was so careful to +depart early in the mornings, and return only late at night, that the +little alarm, if it was that, died away. Martin's plans were uncertain, +and Cherry might be needed as a witness in the Will Case, if Anne's +claims were proved unjustified, so that neither Peter nor Cherry could +find a logical argument with which to combat Alix's protests against +any change. +</p> + +<p> +The next time that Cherry went into town, Alix did not go, and Peter, +sitting on the deck of the early boat with her, asked her again to have +luncheon with him. Immediately a cloud fell on her face, and he saw her +breast rise quickly. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter," she asked him, childishly, looking straight into his eyes, +"why didn't we tell Alix about that?" +</p> + +<p> +Peter tried to laugh and felt himself begin to tremble again. +</p> + +<p> +"About what?" he stammered. +</p> + +<p> +"About our having been three hours at lunch last week?" +</p> + +<p> +"Why--I don't know!" Peter said, smiling nervously. +</p> + +<p> +She was silent, and they parted without any further reference to +meeting for lunch. But every time he was summoned to the telephone +Peter felt a thrill of expectation, and at noon his office swam +suddenly before his eyes when the lovely voice was really addressing +him. She was at the ferry, Cherry said; she had finished shopping, and +was going home. +</p> + +<p> +"That's fine!" Peter said, quite as he would have said it a month ago. +But he was shaking as he went back to his work. +</p> + +<p> +That night, when Alix had gone to bed, he entered the sitting room +suddenly to find Cherry hunting for a book. She had dropped on one +knee, the better to reach a low shelf, and was wholly absorbed in the +volume she had chanced to open. +</p> + +<p> +When she heard the door open she turned, and immediately became very +pale. She did not speak as Peter came to stand beside her. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry--" he said in a whisper, his face close to hers. Neither spoke +again for awhile. Cherry was breathing hard, Peter was conscious only +of a wild whirling of brain and senses. +</p> + +<p> +They remained so, their eyes fixed, their breath coming as if they had +been running, for endless seconds. +</p> + +<p> +"You remember the question you asked me this morning?" Peter said. "Do +you remember? Do you remember?" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, her cold fingers still holding the place in the book she had +been reading, went blindly to the fireplace. +</p> + +<p> +"What?" she said, in the merest breath. "What?" +</p> + +<p> +"Because," Peter said, following her, a sort of heady madness making +him only conscious of that need to hear from her own lips that she +knew, "because I didn't answer that question honestly!" +</p> + +<p> +It mattered not what he said, or what he was trying to express; both +were enveloped in the flame of their new relationship; surprise and +terror were eclipsing even the strange joy of their discovery. +</p> + +<p> +"I must go home--I must go back to Mart to-morrow!" Cherry said, in a +whispered undertone, as if half to herself. "I must go home to Mart +to-morrow! I--let's not--let's not talk!" she broke off in quick +interruption, as he would have spoken. "Let's--I'd rather not! I--where +IS my book? What was I doing? Peter--Peter--" +</p> + +<p> +"Just a minute!" Peter protested, thickly. "Cherry--I want to speak to +you--will you wait a minute?" +</p> + +<p> +She was halfway to the door; now she paused, and looked back at him +with frightened eyes. Peter did not speak at once; there was a moment +of absolute silence. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap14"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XIV +</h3> + +<p> +And in that moment Alix came in. She had said good-night half an hour +before; she was in her wrapper, and her hair fell over one shoulder in +a rumpled braid. Cherry, sick with fright, faced her in a sort of +horror, unable to realize, at the moment, that there was nothing +betraying in her attitude or Peter's, and nothing in her sister's +unsuspicious soul to give significance to what she saw in any case. +Peter, more quickly recovering self-control, went toward his wife. +</p> + +<p> +Alix saw neither clearly, her eyes were full of tears, and she had a +paper in her hand. +</p> + +<p> +"Pete!" she said. "Cherry! Look at this! Look at this!" +</p> + +<p> +She held the paper out to them, but it was rather at her that they +looked, as all three gathered near the hearth again. +</p> + +<p> +"I happened to finish my novel," Alix said, "and I reached for Dad's +old Bible--it's been there on the shelf near my bed ever since I was +married, and I've even read it, too! But look what was in it--there all +this time!" +</p> + +<p> +"What is it?" Cherry asked, as Peter, in a sudden and violent revulsion +of feeling, took the paper and bent toward the lamp to read it. +</p> + +<p> +"By George!" he said, suddenly, his eyes still running over the +half-sheet. "By George, this is wonderful!" +</p> + +<p> +"It's Uncle Vincent's receipt to Dad for that three thousand that is +making all the trouble!" Alix exulted to the still bewildered Cherry. +"It's been there all this time--and Cherry," she added, in a voice rich +with love and memory, "THAT'S what he meant by saying it was in +Matthew, don't you remember? Doesn't it mean that, Pete? Isn't it +perfectly clear?" +</p> + +<p> +"It means only about fifty thousand for you and Cherry," Peter +answered. "Yes sir, by George--it's perfectly clear! He paid it +back--every cent of it, and got his receipt! H'm--this puts rather a +crimp in Little's plans--I'll see him to-morrow. This calls off his +suit--" +</p> + +<p> +"REALLY, Pete!" Alix asked, with dancing eyes. "And it means that you +can keep the old house, Cerise," she exclaimed, triumphantly, "and we +can be together part of the year anyway! Oh, come on, everybody, and +sit down, and let's talk and talk about it! Let me see it again--'in +recognition of all claims against the patent extinguisher +aforementioned'--sit down, Pete, it's only ten o'clock! Let's talk. +Aren't you simply WILD with joy, Cherry?" +</p> + +<p> +But she told Peter later that she had been surprised at Cherry's +quietness; Cherry had looked pale and abstracted, and had not seemed +half enthusiastic enough. +</p> + +<p> +"Though very probably," mused Alix, "it brought back Dad's death, and +saddened her in that way, and more than that, I know she is worried all +the time about feeling as she does toward Martin, and perhaps he'll +feel that she ought to put this into some horrible mining scheme! +Cherry is not mercenary, I'll say that for her." +</p> + +<p> +"What will you do with all yours?" Peter asked. +</p> + +<p> +"I wish we three could go about the world together," Alix answered. +"I'd love to see Japan and India--I'd like to see burning-ghats on the +sacred Gunga!" she added, cheerfully. "But I don't know--money doesn't +buy you much!" she yawned. "Perhaps I'll go to some Old Ladies' Home, +and give each of the old girls one hundred dollars a quarter--wouldn't +they have fun, buying scarfs and wool and caps?" +</p> + +<p> +"Their families would immediately remove them, for the revenue," Peter +suggested. He was grinning at her; he felt suddenly the wholesomeness +and safety of her absurdity and originality. He liked the +characteristic earnestness with which, in the very act of snapping off +her bedroom light, before going out to the sleeping-porch, she widened +her eyes at him, and frowned in concentrated thought. +</p> + +<p> +"Then I'll give them fifty dollars a quarter!" she decided. "Just +enough to buy them some little things, you know, brass tea-kettles, +flannel underwear, whatever they wanted! Presents--they must always +want to be making Christmas presents." And she yawned again. "Shut your +door, Pete, if you read," she said. "The light shines against the +trees, and it's right in my eyes!" But ten minutes later he heard her +call through the door, "Or I could give it on condition that they +stayed in the home and didn't let their families get it!" and grinned +again over his book. +</p> + +<p> +After that there was silence, and gradually the little sounds of the +summer night made themselves heard again. Alix's light was out. Cherry +came, trailing her thin wrapper, to the porch bed opposite her sister's +bed and slipped into it with only a brief good-night. But Peter read on +deep into the first hours of the morning. +</p> + +<p> +Kow Yu, flinging the striped blue tablecloth over the porch table the +next day at the noon hour, and clinking knives and forks, was +questioned by his master. +</p> + +<p> +"You go catchem 'nother plate, Kow!" Peter said. +</p> + +<p> +"Missy no come!" Kow answered, unruffled. "Him say no can come!" +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry!" Peter shouted. "Did Alix say she wasn't coming to lunch?" +</p> + +<p> +"N-n-not to me!" Cherry answered from the garden. She came up to the +porch, with her hands full of short-stemmed roses. +</p> + +<p> +"Him go flend house," Kow elucidated. "Fiend heap sick!" +</p> + +<p> +"Mrs. Garvin?" Cherry questioned. "Did she stay at Mrs. Garvin's for +lunch? Perhaps it's the Garvin baby," she added to Peter. "She said she +was going to stop in!" +</p> + +<p> +"I'll find out!" Peter was conscious that everything was beginning to +tremble and thrill again, as he went to the telephone. "Why, yes," he +said, coming back to the porch, "the baby arrived just before she got +there, and they were all upset. She's in her glory, of course. Says +that she'll be home to supper, even if she goes back!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh!" Cherry said, in a small voice. She sat down at the table, and +shook out her napkin. Peter sat down, too, and, as usual, served. Kow +came and went, and a silence deepened and spread and grew more and more +terrible every instant. +</p> + +<p> +It was a Sunday, foggy and overcast, but not cold. The vines about the +porch were covered with tiny beads of moisture; among the bushes in the +garden little scarfs and veils of fog were caught, and from far across +the ridge the droning warning of the fog horn penetrated, at regular, +brief intervals. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry," Peter said, suddenly, when the silent meal was almost over, +"will you talk about it?" +</p> + +<p> +"Talk--?" she faltered. Her voice thickened and stopped. "Oh, I would +rather not!" she whispered, with a frightened glance about. +</p> + +<p> +"Listen, Cherry!" he said, following her to the wide porch rail, and +standing behind her as she sat down upon it. "I'm sorry! I'm just as +sorry as I can be. But I can't help it, Cherry. And I would like--I do +think it would be wiser, just to--to look the matter squarely in the +face, and--and perhaps discuss it for a few minutes, and then END it." +</p> + +<p> +She gave him a fleeting glance over her shoulder, but she did not go +away. Peter sat down behind her on the rail, and she turned to face +him, although her troubled eyes were still averted. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry," he said then, "I'm as surprised as you are--I can't tell you +when it--it all happened! But it--" Peter folded his arms across his +chest, and with a grimly squared jaw looked off into the misty +distance--"it is there," he finished. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Cherry whispered, on a breath of utter distress. +"I'm so sorry! Oh, Peter, we never should have let it happen--our +caring for each other!--we never should have allowed ourselves to +think--to dream--of such a thing! Oh, Peter, I'm so sick about it," +Cherry added, incoherently, with filling eyes. "I'm just sick about it! +I know--I know that Alix would never have permitted herself to--I know +she wouldn't!" +</p> + +<p> +He was close to her, and now he laid his hand over hers. +</p> + +<p> +"I care--" he said, quite involuntarily, "I have always cared for you! +I know it's madness--I know it's too late--but I love every hair of +your beautiful head! Cherry--Cherry--!" +</p> + +<p> +They had both gotten to their feet, and now she essayed to pass him, +her face white, her cheeks blazing. He stopped her, and held her close +in his arms, and after a few seconds he felt her resisting muscles +relax, and they kissed each other. +</p> + +<p> +For a full dizzy minute they clung together, arms locked, hearts +beating madly and close, and lips meeting again and again. Breathless, +Cherry wrenched herself free, and turned to drop into a chair, and +breathless, Peter stood looking down upon her. About them was the +silence of the dripping garden; all the sounds of the world came +muffled and dull through the thick mist. +</p> + +<p> +Then Peter knelt down beside her chair, and gathered her hands together +in his own, and she rested her forehead on his, and spent and silent, +leaned against his shoulder. And so they remained, not speaking, for a +long while. Kow clinked dishes somewhere in a faraway kitchen, and the +fog-horn boomed and was still-boomed and was still. But here on the +porch there was no sound. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry, tell me that you care for me a little?" Peter said after +awhile, and he felt as if he met a new Cherry, among all the strange +new Cherries that the past bewildering week had shown him, when she +answered passionately: +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Peter--Peter--if I did not!" +</p> + +<p> +He tightened his fingers about her own, but did not answer, and it was +presently Cherry who broke the brooding, misty silence again. +</p> + +<p> +"What shall we do?" she asked, in a small, tired voice. +</p> + +<p> +Peter abruptly got to his feet, took a chair three feet away, and with +a quick gesture of his hand and toss of his head, flung back his hair. +</p> + +<p> +"There is only one thing to do, of course!" he said, decidedly, in a +voice almost unrecognizably grim. "We mustn't see each other--we +mustn't see each other! Now--now I must think how best to manage that!" +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes, heavy with pain, were raised to meet his, and she saw his +mouth weaken with a sudden misgiving, and she saw him try to steady it, +and look down. +</p> + +<p> +"I can--I shall tell Alix that this new business needs me in town for +two or three nights," he said, forcing himself to quiet speech, but +with one fine hand propping his forehead as if it ached. "I'll stay at +the club." +</p> + +<p> +"And as soon as I can go," Cherry added, feverishly, "I shall join +Martin. I suppose Alix would think it was perfectly idiotic for me to +go now, just when the whole thing can be closed up so quickly, and +Martin, too--" her voice trailed away vaguely. She fell silent, her +eyes absent and full of pain. Suddenly they widened, as if some pang +had suddenly shaken her into consciousness again. "Well, I'll go back," +she began again, bravely, "I'll leave you power--what do they call +it?--power to act for me. I can do that, can't I? I'll wire Martin +to-morrow--this is Sunday, and I'll go on Wednesday!" And as she looked +off across the green spaces of fog-wreathed hills and valleys, they +seemed to turn suddenly glaring and ugly to her, and she felt a great +weariness and heartsickness with life. +</p> + +<p> +Peter sprang over the porch rail, and vanished, walking with swift +energy up the trail that led toward the mountain. Cherry knew that he +would walk himself tired; she longed to walk, too, to plunge on and on +through the foggy depths of the hills, striding, stumbling, getting +breathless and weary in body, while somehow--somehow!--this confusion +and exhaustion cleared away from mind and soul. And yet beyond the +horror and shame and regret she felt something was thrilling, exulting, +and singing for joy. +</p> + +<p> +For the rest of that day she lived in a sort of daze of emotion, +sometimes she seemed to be living two lives, side by side. In the one +was her old happy relationship with Alix, and even with Peter, the old +joking and talking, and gathering for meals, the old hours in the +garden or beside the fire, and in the other was the confused and +troubled and ecstatic consciousness of the new relationship between +Peter and herself, the knowledge that he did not merely admire her, did +not merely feel for her an unusual affection, but that he was consumed +by a burning adoration of her slightest motion, the turn of her wrist, +the smile she gave Kow at breakfast time, the motion she made when she +stooped to tie her shoe, or raised her arm to break an apple from the +low, dusty branches. The glory of being so loved enveloped her like a +great shining garment, and her cheeks glowed softly rosy, and there was +a new and liquid softness, a sort of shining glitter, in her blue eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Peter was quiet that evening, and was gone the next morning when the +sisters came out to breakfast. His absence was a real relief to Cherry, +who felt curiously tired and spent after a wakeful night, and looked +pale. Alix, busy with a new venture in duck raising, noticed nothing, +and Cherry could lie idly in the hammock all morning, sometimes +frowning, and shutting her eyes at some sudden thought, otherwise +smiling and dreaming vaguely, and always hearing Peter's voice, in +words so charged with new magic that the mere recollection of them +almost suffocated her with emotion. +</p> + +<p> +He had left a message to the effect that he would not be at home that +night, and at four o'clock telephoned confirming the message. Alix +chanced to answer the telephone, and Cherry, who was in her room, heard +Peter's name, and stood still, listening with a shock of +disappointment. She did not want him to come home, she was hardly +conscious of any desire or dread; her only thought was that he was +there--now--at the telephone, and in a moment Alix would have hung up +the receiver, and she, Cherry, would not have spoken to him, would not +have heard his voice! +</p> + +<p> +But at eight o'clock that evening, when she and Alix were sitting on +the porch, when the last ebbing pink of the sunset had faded, and great +spiders had ventured forth into the dusk and the dews, there was a +sudden hail at the gate, and Cherry knew that it was he! A flood of +utter, irrational happiness rose in her heart; she had been racked with +hunger for the sound of that voice; she had been restless and +unsatisfied, almost feverish with longing and doubt; now peace came +again, and content. +</p> + +<p> +He came up to them, his glance resolutely averted from Cherry, +explaining that he was lonesome, assuring them that everything went +well, and making them laugh with an account of Justin Little's +reception of the new turn of affairs. Alix asked a hundred questions; +laughed and rejoiced. +</p> + +<p> +"To-morrow let's go down and see the old house," suggested Alix, "I +guess it's in pretty bad shape, for we couldn't rent it. At least Pete +and I didn't think it was worth while to do all the plastering and +painting they wanted! But we'll do it now, Cherry; we'll fix it all up, +and then every summer, and perhaps some winters--at least if Mart isn't +too far away--you can live there. Did you see Anne, Peter?" she asked, +suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +"No, just Justin. He seemed absolutely dumbfounded," Peter said. "He +looked at the paper, read it, laughed, and said--in that little +nervous, smiling way of his--that he felt it to be by no means +conclusive--" +</p> + +<p> +"I can hear him!" giggled Alix. +</p> + +<p> +"And I guess both you girls will have to come in in a day or two," +Peter continued. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry's going in to the dentist to-morrow," said Alix. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, so I am!" Cherry said, in a rather strained voice. +</p> + +<p> +She did not look at Peter, nor did he at her, but they felt each +other's thoughts like a spoken word. +</p> + +<p> +"Had you forgotten?" Alix asked. "I may go with you," she added, +carelessly. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, do come!" Cherry said, eagerly. "I--I hate so going alone!" +</p> + +<p> +"I've not a thing in the world to do in town, but I'll browse along +those old book stores in Third Street," Alix mused. +</p> + +<p> +But in the morning she had changed her mind. She was a trifle late to +breakfast, and Cherry and Peter had a chance minute or two alone. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry," he said then, "I'm going to lunch at the St. Francis. Will +you meet me there?" +</p> + +<p> +"No, I can't!" Cherry whispered, unhappily. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, I'll be there," Peter said, in a dull, steady voice. They did +not look at each other as Cherry began, with trembling white ringers, +to strip the black fine skin from a fig. +</p> + +<p> +A moment later Alix joined them. She had come in from her ducks, and +ate but a hasty and indifferent breakfast so that she might the sooner +begin to prepare their meal. The ducks had been regaled of late on the +minced remains of all the family meals, Alix spending an additional +half-hour at the table while she cut fruit-rinds, cold biscuits, and +vegetables into small pieces, for her gluttonous pensioners. +</p> + +<p> +"Wait for the ten o'clock train, Pete, and go in with Cherry!" said +Alix, holding a small piece of omelet close to the nose of the +importunate Buck. "Go on, be a sport!--DON'T YOU DARE," she added, to +the dog, who rolled restless and entreating eyes, banged his tail on +the floor, and allowed a faint, disconsolate whimper to escape him. "I +don't think I'll go in," she explained, "for I have about a week's work +here to do. Those Italian boys are coming up to thin the lettuce, and +Kow is going to put up the peaches, and if you both are gone I can have +a regular orgy of housekeeping--really, I'd rather. Here, take it--the +dear old Buckboy--well, did he get so mad he couldn't see out of his +eyes!" she added, affectionately, to Buck, as the omelet disappeared +with one snap of his jaws. She folded his two fringed ears into his +eyes, and laid her face against his shining head. "Well, this isn't +feeding the ducks!" she finished, jumping up. "Come see them, Pietro, +they're too darling!" +</p> + +<p> +"They're extremely dirty and messy," Peter complained, following with +Cherry nevertheless, to see her scatter her chopped food carelessly on +the surface of the little pond, the struggling bodies of the ducklings, +and the bobbing downy heads alike. With quacking and wriggling and +dabbling, the meal was eaten, and Alix, scraping the bowls for last +fragments, and blinking in a flood of sunlight, laughed exultantly at +the exhibition. +</p> + +<p> +Peter left them there, without one word or look for Cherry, who went +back to the house with her sister in a most agitated and wretched state +of mind. She had the telephone in her hand, to cancel the engagement +with her dentist, when Alix suddenly consented to accompany her into +town; "and at lunch-time we'll take a chance on the St. Francis, Sis," +Alix said, innocently, "for Peter almost always lunches there!" +</p> + +<p> +Feeling that the question was settled, yet restless and unsatisfied +still, Cherry dressed for town; they climbed into the car; Alix's firm +hands, in yellow chamois gloves, sparched at the wheel; the die was +cast. +</p> + +<p> +Yet at the station another change of plan occurred, for as Alix brought +the car to the platform Anne came toward them from the arriving train, +a gloved and demure and smiling Anne, anxious, she explained, to talk +over this newest development, and "whether it proved to be of any value +or not," to try to find out what Uncle Lee had really WANTED for them +all, and then agree to do that in a friendly manner, out of court. Alix +turned from the wheel, to face Cherry in the back seat, and Anne leaned +on the door of the tonneau. +</p> + +<p> +"My first feeling, when Frenny told me," said Anne, chatting pleasantly +in the shade, "was one of such RELIEF! For I hadn't wanted all that +money one bit," she confessed, gaily. "I only wanted to do what was +FAIR. Only two or three nights ago I said to Frenny that it really +belonged to us all, and last night we talked and talked about it, and +the result was that I said that I must see the girls--we three are the +only ones concerned, after all, and"--Anne's old half-merry and +half-pouting manner was unchanged--"what we decide is what really +matters!" she finished. +</p> + +<p> +"Why, there is no question that it's Daddy's handwriting," Cherry said, +with what, for her, was sharpness, "and it seems to me--it seems to me +Anne--" she added, hesitatingly. +</p> + +<p> +"That you have a nerve!" Alix finished, not with any particular venom. +"That document throws the case out of court," she said, flatly. "Peter +is confident of that!" +</p> + +<p> +Anne's pale face flushed a trifle, and her eyes narrowed. +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, but it doesn't throw the WILL out of court," she said quickly. +</p> + +<p> +"You proposed to break the Will!" Alix reminded her, getting angry. +</p> + +<p> +"I know I did, but it might be valid, after all, and under that Will I +inherit only a fifth less than you and Cherry!" Anne answered, also +with feeling. "That's just what I came over to talk about," she added, +still smiling. "Isn't it better," and all friendliness and appeal were +in her voice, "isn't it better to do it all in a kindly manner, than to +fight about it? Why, we can easily settle it among ourselves," she +assured them, sensibly. +</p> + +<p> +Alix shrugged, and looked down at the wheel of her car with a doubtful +shake of her head. Cherry, now standing beside it on the platform, was +flushed and uncomfortable. There was an awkward pause. +</p> + +<p> +"Board?" shouted a trainman, with a rising inflection. The sisters +looked at each other in a panic of haste. +</p> + +<p> +"I can't leave this car here." Alix exclaimed. "I've got to park her +and lock her and everything! Run get on board, Cherry, I don't have to +go in anyway--you've got a date!" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry's heart leaped, sank coldly, and leaped again, as with a swift +nod of parting she hurried for her train. The other two women watched +her with forced interest as she climbed on board, and as the train +slipped noiselessly out of sight. It curved among the redwoods, and was +gone before either spoke again. Then, as her eyes met Anne's friendly, +questioning smile, Alix said awkwardly: +</p> + +<p> +"I think the only thing to do is for you and Justin to take this up +with Peter, Anne. I mean--I mean that you were the ones who proposed to +bring it into court in the first place, and--and I don't understand +much about it!" +</p> + +<p> +"Alix, don't let's talk in a cold, hard, legal way," Anne pleaded. She +had gotten into the back seat, and was leaning on the front seat in an +informal sort of way. "Let's just try to get each other's point of +view!" she suggested. "The idea is that Uncle Lee wanted all his girls +to inherit alike--" +</p> + +<p> +"That idea didn't seem to impress you much a week ago!" Alix said, glad +to feel herself getting angry. +</p> + +<p> +"My dear, I was going to divide it to the last PENNY!" Anne assured +her, widening her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Alix was silent, but the silence shouted her unbelief. +</p> + +<p> +"Truly, I was," Anne went on. "This--this discovery only complicates +matters. Why, the last thing in the world that dear Uncle Lee would +wish would be to have us drag the family name into a law-suit--" +</p> + +<p> +"You and Justin began it!" Alix reminded her, goaded into reluctant +speech. +</p> + +<p> +"I beg your pardon!" It was a favourite phrase of Anne's. "But it was +Peter who said he would fight!" +</p> + +<p> +"Well, because you made the claim!" Alix, hating herself for being +betrayed into argument, said hotly. "But I won't talk about it, Anne," +she added, firmly, "and as far as coming to any agreement with me is +concerned, you might just as well have gone back on the train with +Cherry. I hate to talk this way--but we all think you acted very--well, +very meanly!" Alix finished rather flatly. +</p> + +<p> +"Perhaps it's just as well to understand each other!" Anne said, with +hot cheeks. They exchanged a few more sentences, wasted words and angry +ones, and then Anne walked over to a seat in the shade, to wait for +another train, and Alix, with her heart beating hard and her colour +high, drove at mad speed back to the mountain cabin. +</p> + +<p> +"I didn't ask her to lunch--I don't care!" Alix said to herself, in +agitation. "She and Justin know they're beaten--they're just trying to +patch it up before it's too late--I don't care--I won't have her think +she can get away with any such scheme--!" +</p> + +<p> +And so muttering and scolding, Alix got back to her dog and her +barnyard, and soothed herself with great hosing and cleaning of the +duck-pond, and much skimming and tasting of Kow's preserves. After all, +she had grudged this perfect summer day to the city, and she was always +happiest here, in the solitude of the high mountain. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap15"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XV +</h3> + +<p> +Meanwhile, Cherry, in the sick flutter of spirits that had become +familiar to her of late, kept her dentist appointment, and at noon +looked at a flushed and lovely vision of herself in the dentist's +mirror. +</p> + +<p> +"Doctor has given me red lips!" said Cherry, trembling, and trying to +smile to the nurse in attendance. +</p> + +<p> +"I guess the good Lord gave you your looks," Miss Maloney said +generously. "You're the youngest-looking--to be married!" she added. "I +said to my sister last week, 'That lady has been married nearly six +years!' 'What!' she said, 'That little girl of eighteen--!'" +</p> + +<p> +"Why--why don't you come and have lunch with me, at the 'Pheasant'?" +Cherry said, suddenly, pushing up the golden hair under her hat. +</p> + +<p> +"I'd love it," Miss Maloney said, appreciatively, "but Doctor has a one +o'clock appointment after this one, and I shan't get a bite until +nearly three. I've got crackers here--" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry went out into the blazing street; it was one of the hot +noontides of the year. At two o'clock a wild wind would spring up, and +send papers and dust flying, but just now the heat was dry and clear +and still. +</p> + +<p> +She was carrying a parasol, and she opened it now and walked slowly +toward Geary Street. She could go and have a cup of tea and a salad at +the Pheasant--she could go to the Pheasant-- +</p> + +<p> +But she made not the slightest effort to go there. Beyond saying the +words, she had no intention of doing so. She could not even frame in +her thoughts the utter blankness of the feeling that swept over her at +missing an opportunity to see Peter. She turned and went slowly up past +the big shop windows that reflected the burning Plaza, and so came to +the cool, great doorway of the St. Francis. Inside was tempered light +and much noiseless coming and going, meeting and parting. Chinese boys +in plum colour and pale blue went about with dustpans gathering fallen +cigar and cigarette ashes; a pleasant traffic in magazines and +cigarettes and candy and flowers was incessant, back in the dim wide +passageways. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry drifted into the big, deep-carpeted waiting-room; there were +other women there, sunk into the big leather chairs, watching the +doors, and glancing at the clock. The high windows gave directly upon +Powell Street, where cable-cars were grating to and fro, and where +motor-horns honked, but all noises were filtered here to a sort of +monotone, and the effect of the room was of silence. When a man came +hastily in the door one woman rose, there was a significant smile, a +murmured greeting, before the two vanished. +</p> + +<p> +In a luxurious chair Cherry waited. Peter certainly would not come in +until half-past twelve, perhaps not then. Long before that time she +might decide to go away; meanwhile, this was a pleasant and restful +place to be. It was cool in here, and the murmuring and waiting women +left in the air the delicate scents of perfumes and of the flowers they +wore. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly, with a spring of her heart against her ribs, she saw Peter's +dark head with its touches of iron gray. Groomed and brushed +scrupulously as always, with the little limp, yet as always dignified +and erect, he came to stand before her, and she stood up, and their +hands met. Flushed and a little confused, she followed him to an +inconspicuous table in a corner of the dining room. Then the dreamlike +unreality and beauty of their hours together began again. Cherry felt +adjusted, untrammelled, at ease; she felt that all the uncomfortable +sensations of the past two hours were absurd, forgotten. +</p> + +<p> +"Did you expect me to meet you?" she smiled. For answer he looked at +her thoughtfully a minute before his own face lighted with a bright +smile. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't think I thought of your not being there," he confessed. "I was +simply moving all morning toward the instant of meeting. I had a mental +picture of you, always before my eyes, and when you stood up there, it +was just my picture come real!" +</p> + +<p> +"If THIS is real!" she said, musingly. "Sometimes my thoughts get +so--so mixed," she added, "that I feel as if Alix and the valley--and +Martin especially--were all a dream, and this the true thing." +</p> + +<p> +"I know how you feel!" Peter answered. He watched her, almost with +anxiety, for a moment, then turned his attention to the bill of fare. +But Cherry was not hungry, and she paid small attention to the order, +or to the food when it came. +</p> + +<p> +Presently they were talking again, in that hunger for self-analysis +that is a part of new love. They thrilled at every word, Cherry raising +her eyes, shining with eagerness, to his, or Peter watching the little +down-dropped face in an agony of adoration. An hour passed, two hours, +after awhile they were walking, still with that strange sense of +oneness and of solitude, and still as easily as if they had been +floating, to the ferry. +</p> + +<p> +Alix met them in Mill Valley with vivid accounts of the day; she had +been pondering the brief talk with Anne, and was anxious to have +Peter's view of it. Peter was of the opinion that Anne's conduct +indicated very clearly that she and Justin realized that their case was +lost. +</p> + +<p> +"Then you're fixed for life, Cherry," was Alix's first remark. "Oh, +say!" she added, in a burst. "Let's go down to the old house to-morrow, +will you? Let's see what it needs, and how much would have to be done +to make it fit to live in!" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry flushed, staring steadily at her sister, and Peter, too, was +confused, but Alix saw nothing. The next day she carried her point, and +took them with her down to the old house. It had stood empty since her +marriage, for winter storms had gone hard with it, and the small rent +it would have brought them through the summer months was not enough to +warrant the expense of putting it in order. It looked neglected and +shabby; it was almost buried in the dry over-growth of the untended +garden. There was a drift of colourless leaves on the porch, the steps +were deep in the dropped needles of the redwoods, the paths were quite +lost to sight under a fine wash of winter mud, and the roses and lilacs +were grown woody and wild. +</p> + +<p> +Alix was suddenly silent, and Cherry was pale and fighting tears, as +they crossed the porch, and fitted the key in the door. Inside the +house the air was close and stale, odorous of dry pine walls and of +unaired rooms. Peter flung up a window, the girls walked aimlessly +about, through the familiar yet shockingly strange chairs and table +that were all coated thickly with dust. Somehow this dust gave Cherry a +desolate sensation, it covered everything alike: the spectacle case and +the newspaper that still lay on her father's desk; the cups and glasses +that remained, face downward at the sink, from some last meal. Her +hands and Alix's were speedily coated with it, too; they felt sad and +unnatural here, in the house where they had spent so many years. +</p> + +<p> +"It needs everything!" Alix said, after a first quick tour of +inspection, eyeing a great weather streak on the raw plaster of the +dining-room wall. "It needs air, cleaning, straightening, +flowers---Gosh, how it does need people!" +</p> + +<p> +"I--I can't bear it!" Cherry said softly, in a sick undertone. +</p> + +<p> +Alix, who was rapidly recovering her equilibrium, sprang upstairs +without hearing her, but Cherry did not follow. She went to the open +front doorway and stood there, leaning against the sill, and gazing +sadly out at the shabby, tangled garden that had sheltered all the +safety and joy and innocence of her little girl days. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter," she said, as he came to stand beside her, "I'm so unhappy!" +</p> + +<p> +"I'm sorry!" he said, simply. +</p> + +<p> +"I can't--I can't ever be here!" Cherry half-whispered. "At least I +can't until some day--years from now--years from now!--when you and I +have forgotten---" +</p> + +<p> +"I never shall forget," he said. And after awhile he added, "Shall you?" +</p> + +<p> +"No," she whispered, her eyes brimming until the dry and dusty green of +the garden swam before her. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry, will you end it?" he asked her, huskily. +</p> + +<p> +She gave him a startled look. +</p> + +<p> +"End it?" she faltered. +</p> + +<p> +"Will you--do you think you are brave enough to give everything else up +for me?" he asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter!" said Cherry, hardly above a breath. +</p> + +<p> +"Will you go away with me?" Peter went on, feverishly. "That's the only +way, now. That's the only way--now. Will you go away?" +</p> + +<p> +"Go away!" Cherry's face was ashen as she moved her tragic and +beautiful eyes to his. "Go away where?" +</p> + +<p> +"Anywhere!" Peter answered, confusedly. "Anywhere!" He did not meet her +look, his own went furtively about the garden. Immediately he seemed to +regain self-control. "I'm talking like a fool!" he said, quickly. "I +don't know what I'm saying half the time! I'm sorry--I'm sorry, Cherry. +Don't mind me. Say that you'll forgive me for what I said!" +</p> + +<p> +He had taken her hands, and they were looking distressedly and soberly +at each other when an unexpected noise made them step quickly apart. +Cherry's heart beat madly with terror, and Peter flushed deeply. +</p> + +<p> +It was Martin Lloyd's aunt, Mrs. North, their old neighbour, who came +about the corner of the house, and approached them smilingly. How much +had she seen? Cherry asked herself, in a panic. What were they +doing?--what were they saying as she appeared?--how much had their +attitude betrayed them? +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. North was the same loud-laughing, cheerful woman as of old. She +had moved to Portland to be near Martin's mother, some years before, +and was delighted with the chance that had brought her back to the +valley on the very day that brought the Strickland girls back to the +old house. +</p> + +<p> +She kissed Cherry, and was full of queries for Martin. +</p> + +<p> +"Durango? Belle told me something about his going there," she said. +"Isn't he the wandering Ayrab? And ain't you the good-natured little +wife to follow him about everywhere? How long you been here, Cherry?" +</p> + +<p> +"I've been with Alix and Peter for--for several weeks," Cherry said, +uneasily. Her eyes met Peter's, and he conveyed reassurance to her with +a look. +</p> + +<p> +"When you going back, dear?" Mrs. North asked, with so shrewd a glance +from Cherry's exquisite rosy face to Peter's that he felt a fresh pang +of suspicion. She HAD seen something---- +</p> + +<p> +"Why, I've been rather--rather kept here by the--the law-suit, haven't +I, Peter?" Cherry explained. "But I expect to go as soon as it's all +settled! Here's Alix," she said, gladly, as Alix came downstairs with +an old kodak album in her hands. +</p> + +<p> +"Look, Cherry--I'd forgotten this!" Alix said, in deep amusement, +holding out the book. But she immediately put it aside to greet the old +friend. +</p> + +<p> +"I'll bet you three are having real good times!" Mrs. North said, with +a curious look from one to the other. +</p> + +<p> +"You know what I hope," Alix told her, "is that Cherry and Martin will +always keep the old place open now. They could get a Chinese boy for +very little to keep it in order, and then, you see, with all Martin's +moving about, she'd always have headquarters here. And I don't believe +Cherry'll ever love another place as she does the valley--will you, +Sis?" Alix ended, eagerly. Cherry met the arm her sister linked around +her, half-way, and gave her a troubled smile. +</p> + +<p> +And yet a few moments later, when some quest took Peter suddenly from +the group, she watched the shabby corduroy suit, the laced high boots, +and the black head touched with gray, disappear in the direction of the +kitchen with a tearing pain at her heart, and the words the other women +were saying hummed without meaning in her ears. +</p> + +<p> +"When you three girls got started, you all went off together!" Mrs. +North commented. "I used to say I thought you girls never would +marry--you never seemed to take much interest in the men!" +</p> + +<p> +"I never thought we'd marry!" Alix agreed, pleasantly. "Did you, +Kirschwasser?" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't think I ever thought about it--much," Cherry said, rousing +herself from a musing mood. +</p> + +<p> +"According to age," Alix pursued, in one of her absurdly argumentative +moments, "Anne should have married Peter, Cherry, Justin, and I, +Martin. But the truth is, we didn't seem to give the matter sufficient +thought!" +</p> + +<p> +"Girls never do; it isn't expected!" Mrs. North said, with her +indulgent laugh, as they followed Peter into the empty kitchen which +smelled of dry woods and drains. Dust was thick on Hong's range, and +one of his old white aprons was flung limply across a chair. Cherry's +eyes were thoughtful, filled with a look of pain. It was true; girls +didn't think anything about it, it wasn't expected of them. And yet, in +these very rooms, her father had urged her to consider; consideration +simply wasn't in that feather-brained little head of hers in those +days. Words seemed to have no meaning, or were transmuted into +different meanings by Martin Lloyd's voice. Her father had asked her to +wait, wait until she was nineteen! Nineteen had seemed old then. She +had felt that at nineteen she would have merely delayed the great joy +of life for nothing; at nineteen she would be only so much older, so +much more desperately bent upon this marriage. +</p> + +<p> +And Peter was there then, was coming and going, advising and teasing +her--so near, so accessible, loving her even then, had she but known +it! That engagement might as easily--and how much more wisely!--have +been with Peter; the presents, the gowns, the wedding would have been +the same, to her childish egotism; the rest how different! The rest +would have been light instead of darkness, joy instead of pain, dignity +and development and increasing content instead of all the months of +restless criticism and doubt and disillusionment. The very scene here, +with Mrs. North and Alix, might easily have been, with Cherry as the +wife of Peter, Cherry as her sister's hostess, in the mountain cabin-- +</p> + +<p> +At the thought her heart suffocated her. She stood dazedly looking out +of the old kitchen window, and her senses swam in a sudden spasm of +pain. +</p> + +<p> +And Alix? Well, Alix might have been Mrs. Lloyd. Martin had told her +more than once that he had "a crush on Alix, right off the bat!" And +Alix had liked him, too--any girl would like any man under the same +circumstances of age and environment. Alix would have made Martin a +better wife; she would have loved the mining towns, the muddy railroad +stations, and the odd women. She would have had her dogs, perhaps a +child or two now. Anyway, ran Cherry's thoughts, she would have had the +old home now, and that, to Alix, would have meant a very triumph of +joy. She would have come to stay with Peter and Cherry while it was put +in order; she would have revelled in cows and ducks and dogs here. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry, child, come and lend us a hand!" Peter said. They were trying +to push aside the ice-box that blocked the unlocked kitchen door. +Cherry went to them at once; the little word "child" danced in her +heart all day, and warmed it when she was lying wakeful and restless +deep into the summer night. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap16"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XVI +</h3> + +<p> +"You and I must go away!" said Peter. "I can't stand it. I love you. I +love you so dearly, Cherry. I can't think of anything else any more. +It's like a fever--it's like a sickness. I'm never happy, any more, +unless my arms are about you. Will you let me take you somewhere, where +we can be happy together?" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry turned her confident, childish face toward him; her lashes +glittered, but she smiled. +</p> + +<p> +"I love you, Peter!" she said. And the words, sounding softly through +the silence of the garden, died away on the warm night air like music. +</p> + +<p> +It was night, the third night of the harvest moon. Through the branches +of the oak tree under which they were sitting blots of silver were +falling; between them the shadows were inky black. The grass was a +sheen of pearly light, the little cabin was like an enchanted dwelling, +wreathed with flowers, and steeped in moonshine. Toward the ocean, over +the moon-flooded ridge, a great fold of creamy fog was silently +pushing, and Cherry had a scarf of creamy lace caught about her +shoulders. Her coil of corn-coloured hair was loosened; she and Peter +had been moving geranium slips all afternoon, and at supper-time, when +a telephone message from Alix had advised them that she was obliged to +stay in town to dine with an exacting old family friend, they had +parted only to bathe and change, before sitting down for dinner in the +sunset beauty of the porch. +</p> + +<p> +It had been a memorable meal, an hour always to have its place in their +hearts. In the two weeks since the day at the old house they had not +chanced to be often alone, and to-night, for the first time, Cherry +admitted that she could fight no longer. A few days before she had +again gone to the dentist, and again had waited for Peter at the great +hotel. But on this occasion he had not known of her engagement in town, +and had lunched elsewhere, so that Cherry had waited, growing weary, +headachy, and heartsick as the slow moments went their way. Peter, +happening to telephone to Alix, at about two o'clock, had learned that +Cherry was in the city, and hanging up the receiver, had sat wrapped in +agitated thought for a few minutes before rushing to the hotel on the +desperate hazard of finding her there. +</p> + +<p> +The sight of the little patient figure, the irradiation of her face, as +they met, the ecstasy of delight with which their hands were joined, +and the flood of joy in their hearts, as he took her to tea, was +illuminating to them both. Cherry had spent two long hours waiting only +for the sight of that eager, limping, straight-shouldered form, and +Peter had experienced enough anguish as he sped to find her to tear the +last deception away. +</p> + +<p> +To-night they talked as lovers, his arm about the soft little clinging +figure, her small, firm fingers tight in his own. He had squared about +on the great log that was their seat so that his ardent eyes were +closer to her; the world held nothing but themselves. It was eight +o'clock. +</p> + +<p> +"So this is the thing that was waiting for us all these years, Cherry, +ever since the time you and Alix used to dam my brook and climb my oak +trees!" +</p> + +<p> +"I never dreamed of it!" Cherry said, with wonder in her tone. +</p> + +<p> +"If we had dreamed of it--" Peter began, and stopped. +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, if we had, it would all be different," Cherry said, with a look of +pain. "That's the one thing I can't bear to think of!" +</p> + +<p> +"What is?" he asked, watching the lovely face that was only dimly +visible in the moonlight. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, that it all might have been so simple--so easy and right!" the +girl answered. "That we might have been so happy instead of so sad--" +</p> + +<p> +"It makes you sad, dear?" +</p> + +<p> +"Peter, how could it make me anything else? Why, what can come of it?" +Cherry asked, sorrowfully. "I cannot stay on here, now. I cannot--" She +freed herself from his arms, and walked away from him restlessly +through the moonshine, twisting her arms above her head. "I cannot go +back to Martin!" he heard her whisper, in an agony. "I can't leave +you--I can't leave you!" +</p> + +<p> +"Shall we go away?" Peter asked, simply, when she stopped at the great +stone that Alix, for the view it commanded, had christened Sunrise +Rock. Cherry dropped down upon it, facing away from him across the soft +green luminous light of the valley. +</p> + +<p> +"Go where?" she asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Go anywhere!" he answered. "We have money enough; we can leave Alix +rich--she will still have her cabin and her dogs and the life she +loves. But there are other tiny places, Cherry; there are little cabins +in Hawaii, there are Canadian villages--Cherry, there are thousands of +places in the south of France where we might live for years and never +be questioned, and never be annoyed." +</p> + +<p> +"France!" she whispered, and the downcast face he was watching so +eagerly was thoughtful. "How could we go," she breathed. "You first, +and then I? To meet somewhere?" +</p> + +<p> +"We would have to go together," he decided, swiftly. "Everyone must +know, dear; you realize that?" +</p> + +<p> +Wide-eyed, she was staring at him as if spellbound by some new hope; +now she shrugged her shoulders in careless disdain. +</p> + +<p> +"That isn't of any consequence!" +</p> + +<p> +"You don't feel it so!" He sat down beside her, and again they locked +hands. +</p> + +<p> +"Not that part," she answered, simply. "I mind--Alix," she added, +thoughtfully. +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, I mind Alix!" he admitted. +</p> + +<p> +"But the injury is done to Alix now," Cherry said, slowly. "Now it is +too late to go back! You and I couldn't--we couldn't deceive Alix here, +Peter," Cherry added, and as she turned to him he saw her thin white +blouse move suddenly with the quick rising of her heart. "That--that +would be too horrible! But I could take this love of ours away, leave +everything else behind, simply--simply recognize," stammered Cherry, +her lips beginning to tremble, "that it is bigger than ourselves, that +we can't help it, Peter. I'd fight it if I could," she added, +piteously, "I'd go away if I didn't know that no power on earth could +keep me from coming back!" +</p> + +<p> +She buried her head on his shoulder, and he put his arm about her, and +there was utter silence over the great brooding mountain, and in the +valley brimming with soft moonshine, and in the garden. +</p> + +<p> +"I believe that even Alix will understand," Peter said after awhile. +"She loves you and me better than any one else in the world; she is not +only everything that is generous, but she isn't selfish, she is the +busiest and the most sensible person I ever knew. I know--of course I +know it's rotten," he broke off in sudden despair, "but what I'm trying +to say is that Alix, of all people I know, is the one that will make +the least fuss about it--" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry was staring raptly before her; now she grasped his hand and said +breathlessly: +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Peter, are we talking about it? Are we talking about our going +away, and belonging to each other?" +</p> + +<p> +"What else?" he said, quick tears in his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, but I've been so unhappy, I've been so starved!" she whispered. "I +thought I wanted people--cities--I thought I wanted to go on the stage. +But it was only you that I wanted. Oh, Peter, what a life it will be! +The littlest cottage, the simplest life, and perhaps a beach or woods +to walk in--and always talking, reading, always together. I never want +to come back; I never want to see any one; I never want anything but +that." +</p> + +<p> +"France it must be, I think," he said, "for then we can go about--no +one will know us---" +</p> + +<p> +"But we will meet people we know in the trains, going," Cherry said, +suddenly. "I know what I am doing," she added, "but that would be so +hard, to have them identify us, perhaps come up to us, whisper and +point!" +</p> + +<p> +"But why not go by sea?" he mused, "why not to Japan and through India, +and so on to France?" +</p> + +<p> +"No!" she said quickly. "On a long sea-trip someone would surely know +us--isn't there some way we can get away, disappear as if we had never +been?" +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry!" he said, kneeling before her in the wet grass. "You know what +it means!" +</p> + +<p> +"It means you!" she answered, after a silence. She had laid her hands +softly about his neck, and her shining eyes were close to his. +</p> + +<p> +"And you trust me?" he whispered. "You know that when I am free and you +are free--" +</p> + +<p> +She put her fingers over his mouth. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter! Haven't I known you ever since I was little enough to sit in +your lap and have you read 'Lady Jane' to me? It's so beautiful--it's +so wonderful--to love this way," she said, in her innocent, little-girl +voice, "that it seems to me the only thing in the world! I'd come to +you, Peter, if it meant shame and death and horror. It doesn't mean +that, it only means a man and a woman settling down somewhere in the +south of France, a big quiet man who limps a little, and a little +yellow-headed woman in blue smocks and silly-looking hats--" +</p> + +<p> +"It means life, of course!" he interrupted her. "The hour that makes +you mine, Cherry, will be the exquisite hour of my whole life!" +</p> + +<p> +They were silent for a while, and below them the white moonlight +deepened and brightened and swam like an enchantment. +</p> + +<p> +"If you will face it," Peter said, presently, "I will give every +instant of my life to you!" +</p> + +<p> +"I know you will," she said, dreamily. +</p> + +<p> +"There will be no coming back, Cherry." +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, I know that!" +</p> + +<p> +"There can't ever be--there mustn't be--you've thought of that?" he +said, uncertainly. In the curious, unreal light that flooded the world, +he saw her turn, and caught the gleam of her surprised eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"You mean children--a child?" she said, surprisedly. "Why not, Peter?" +she added, tightening her fingers, "what could be more wonderful than +that we should have a child? Can you imagine a happier environment for +a child than that little sunshiny, woodsy beach cottage; can't you see +the little figure--the two or three little figures!--scampering ahead +of us through the country roads, or around the fire? Oh, I can," said +Cherry, her extraordinary voice rich and sweet with longing, "I can! +That would be motherhood, Peter, that wouldn't be like having a baby +whose father one didn't--one COULDN'T love, marriage or no marriage!" +</p> + +<p> +And as he watched, amazed at the change that love had brought to quiet, +little inarticulate Cherry, she added, earnestly: +</p> + +<p> +"I've been thinking how BITTER it was, Peter, to have the greatest +thing in life come to us this way, but just lately--just this last hour +it's come to me that it is right--it's best!--to have it so. We give +all the world up, and we get only each other, and yet how little it +seems to give, and how much to get! Why, every hour of it, every minute +will hold more joy than we've ever known! I couldn't," she said, +suddenly grave, "I couldn't take you from any one who loved you as I +do; I couldn't hurt any one, to be happy. But Alix will forgive us; +you'll see she will!" +</p> + +<p> +"Alix--I know her!--will only be sorry for me," Cherry mused. "She'll +only think me mad to disgrace the good name of Strickland; she'll think +we're both crazy. Perhaps she'll plunge into the orphanage work, or +perhaps she'll go on here, gardening, playing with Buck, raising +ducks--she says herself that she has never known what love means--says +it really meaning it, yet as if the whole subject was a joke--a +weakness!" +</p> + +<p> +"I believe she will forgive us, for she is the most generous woman in +the world," Peter said, slowly. "Anyway--we can't stop now! We can't +stop now! It will take me only a few days now to close everything up, +to arrange matters so that she shall have plenty of money, and so that +I can carry on the affairs of my mother's estate at long range. Spencer +will attend to the rents, mail me quarterly checks; the whole thing is +simple. And I will let you know--" +</p> + +<p> +"It all seems so unreal!" Cherry said, with her heart beginning to +hammer with excitement. "It doesn't seem as if it was you and me, +Peter. I shall not need a trunk; I shall buy new things--it will be a +new life---" "There is the steamer line that goes to Los Angeles," +Peter mused. "Yes--I believe that is the solution," he added, with a +brightening face. "Nobody you know goes there on it; it leaves daily at +eleven, and gets into Los Angeles the following morning. From there---" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know ANYBODY there!" Cherry said, eagerly. +</p> + +<p> +"You wouldn't see anybody anyway. From there we can get a drawing-room +to New Orleans; that's only a day and a half more; and we can keep to +ourselves if by any unlucky chance there should be any one we know on +the train--" +</p> + +<p> +"Which isn't likely!" +</p> + +<p> +"Which isn't likely! Then at New Orleans we go either to the Zone, or +to South America, or to any one of the thousand places--New York, if we +like, by water. By that time we will be lost as completely as if we had +dropped into the sea. I'll see about reservations--the thing is, you're +too pretty to go quite unnoticed!" he added, ruefully. +</p> + +<p> +He saw a smile flicker on her face in the moonlight, but when she +spoke, it was with almost tearful gravity: +</p> + +<p> +"You arrange it, Peter, and somehow I'll go. I'll write Alix--I'll tell +her that where she's sane, I'm mad, and where she's strong, I'm weak! +And we'll weather it, dear, and we'll find ourselves somewhere, alone, +with all the golden, beautiful future before us. But, Peter, until this +part of it's over we mustn't be alone again--you mustn't kiss me again! +Will you promise me?" +</p> + +<p> +As stirred as she was, he gathered her little fingers together, and +kissed them. +</p> + +<p> +"I'll promise anything!" +</p> + +<p> +"I'll make it up to you," Cherry said, with a sort of feverish +weariness. "I'm all confused and frightened now; I only want it +somehow--somehow, to be over! I want you to take me away somewhere," +she whispered, with the hands he was clasping resting on his breast, +and her flowerlike face raised to his, "take me somewhere, and take +care of me! I only want you!" +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry, my darling--my dearest!" Peter said. "I will take care of you. +Only trust me for a few days more, and we will be away from it all. And +now you put it all out of your mind, and run in and go to bed. You're +exhausted, and if Alix gets the eight o'clock train she will be here in +a few minutes. I'll wander down the road a little way, and meet the car +if she drives it up." +</p> + +<p> +"Good-night!" she breathed, and he saw the white gown flicker against +the soft light on the lawn, and saw the black shadow creeping by it, +before she mounted the porch steps, and was gone. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap17"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XVII +</h3> + +<p> +Swept along by a passionate excitement that seemed actually to consume +her, Cherry lived through the next three days. Alix noticed her mood, +and asked her more than once what caused it. Cherry would press a hot +cheek to hers, smile with eyes full of pain, and flutter away. She was +well, she was quite all right, only she--she was afraid Martin would +summon her soon--and she didn't want to go to him--! +</p> + +<p> +Alix was puzzled, watching her sister with anxious eyes. The cleaning +and refurnishing of the old home was proceeding rapidly, and Alix +feared that the constant memory of the old times would be too much for +Cherry. She tried to induce her to rest, to spend this morning or that +afternoon in the hammock, but Cherry gently but irresistibly refused. +Her one hope was to be busy, to tire her brain and body before night. +</p> + +<p> +Suspecting something gravely amiss, Alix tried to win her confidence +regarding Martin. But briefly, quickly, and with a sort of affectionate +and apologetic impatience, Cherry refused to discuss him. +</p> + +<p> +"I shall not go back to him!" she said, breathing hard, and with the +air of being more absorbed in what she was doing than what she was +saying. She and Alix were dusting the books in their father's old +library, and arranging them on the shelves, on a quiet September +morning. +</p> + +<p> +"But, Cherry, dear, you were saying yesterday that you dreaded his +sending for you!" Alix said, in a troubled surprise. +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, I know I was!" Cherry admitted, quickly. +</p> + +<p> +"But did you mean that you are really going to leave him?" the older +sister questioned. And as Cherry was silent she repeated: "Are you +going to leave him, dear?" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know what I'm going to do!" Cherry half sobbed. +</p> + +<p> +"But, dearest--dearest, you're only twenty-four; don't you think you +might feel better about it as time goes on?" Alix urged. "Now that the +money is all yours, Cherry, and you can have this nice home to come to +now and then, isn't it different?" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, an old volume in her hand, was looking at her steadily. +</p> + +<p> +"You don't understand, Sis!" she said. +</p> + +<p> +"I understand that you don't love Martin," Alix said, perplexed. "But +can't people who don't love each other live together in peace?" she +added, with a half smile. +</p> + +<p> +"N-n-not as man and wife!" Cherry stammered. +</p> + +<p> +Alix sat back on her heels, in the ungraceful fashion of her girlhood, +and shrugged her shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +"Think of the people who are worrying themselves sick over bills, or +sick wives, or children to bring up!" she suggested, hopefully. "My +Lord, if you have enough money, and food, and are young, and well--!" +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, but, Alix," Cherry argued, eagerly, "I'm NOT well when I'm +unhappy. My heart is like lead all the time; I can't seem to breathe! +People--isn't it possible that people are different about that?" she +asked, timidly. +</p> + +<p> +"I suppose they are!" Alix conceded, thoughtfully. "Anyway, look at all +the fusses in history," she added, carelessly, "of GRANDE PASSIONS, and +murders, and elopements, and the fate of nations--resting on just the +fact that a man and woman hated each other too much, or loved each +other too much! There must be something in it that I don't understand. +But what I DO understand," she added, after a moment, when Cherry, +choked with emotion, was silent, "is that Dad would die of grief if he +knew you were unhappy, that your life was all broken up in +disappointment and bitterness!" +</p> + +<p> +"But is that my fault!" Cherry exclaimed, with sudden tears. +</p> + +<p> +Alix, after watching her for a troubled minute, went to her, and put +her arm about her. "Don't cry, Cherry!" she pleaded, sorrowfully. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, regaining self-control, resumed her work silently, with an +occasional, sudden sigh. Alix, clapping the heavy covers of a +leatherbound volume in Buck's inquisitive nose, presently laughed gaily +as he sneezed and pawed. +</p> + +<p> +She had opened the subject with reluctance; now she realized that they +had again reached a blank wall. +</p> + +<p> +Three days after their talk in the moonlit garden Peter found chance to +speak alone to Cherry. +</p> + +<p> +"Are you ready?" he asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Quite!" she said, raising blue eyes to his. +</p> + +<p> +"What about your suitcase?" +</p> + +<p> +"I took it into San Francisco yesterday; Alix went in early, and I +followed at noon. It's checked in the ferry building, waiting." +</p> + +<p> +"It's to-morrow then, Cherry!" he said. +</p> + +<p> +"To-morrow!" He saw the colour ebb from her face as she echoed him. +This was already late afternoon; perhaps her thoughts raced ahead to +to-morrow afternoon at this time when they two would be leaning on the +rail of the little steamer, gazing out over the smooth, boundless blue +of the Pacific, and alone in the world. +</p> + +<p> +"To-morrow you will be mine!" he said. +</p> + +<p> +"That's all I think of," she answered. And now the colour came up in a +splendid wave of flame, and the face that she turned toward his was +radiant with proud surrender. +</p> + +<p> +He told her the number of the dock; they discussed trains. +</p> + +<p> +"We sail at eleven," said Peter, "but I shall be there shortly after +ten. I'll have the baggage on board, everything ready; you only have to +cross the gangplank. You have your baggage check; give it to me." +</p> + +<p> +They were waiting in the car while Alix marketed; Cherry opened her +purse and gave him the punched cardboard. +</p> + +<p> +"I'll tell Alix that I have a last dentist appointment at half-past +ten," she said. "If she goes in with me, we'll go to the very door. But +she says she can't come in to-morrow, anyway. I'll write her to-night, +and drop the letter on the way to the boat." +</p> + +<p> +"Better wait until we are in Los Angeles," he said, pondering. "I'm +writing, too, of course. I'm simply saying that it is one of the big +things that come into people's lives and that one can't combat. Perhaps +some day--but I can't look forward; I can't tell what the future holds. +I only know that we belong to each other, and that life might as well +be ended as love!" +</p> + +<p> +"To-morrow, then!" was Cherry's only answer. "I'm glad it's so soon." +</p> + +<p> +"Good-bye!" said Cherry, leaning over the side of the car to kiss her +sister. Alix received the kiss, smiled, and stretched in the sun. +</p> + +<p> +"Heavenly day to waste in the city!" said Alix. +</p> + +<p> +"I know!" Cherry said, nervously. She had been so strangely nervous and +distracted in manner all morning that Alix had more than once asked her +if there was anything wrong. Now she questioned her again. +</p> + +<p> +"You mustn't mind me!" Cherry said, with a laugh. "I'm desperately +unhappy," she said, her eyes watering. "And sometimes I think of +desperate remedies, that's all." +</p> + +<p> +"I'd do anything in the world to help you, Cerise!" Alix said, +sympathetically. +</p> + +<p> +"I know you would, Sis! I believe," Cherry said, trembling, "that +there's nothing you wouldn't give me!" +</p> + +<p> +"That's easily said," Alix answered, carelessly, "for I don't get fond +of things, as you do! My dear, I'd go off with Martin to Mexico in a +minute. I mean it! I don't care a whoop where I live, if only people +are happy. I'd work my hands to the bone for you--as a matter of fact, +I do work 'em to the bone," she added, laughing, as she looked at the +hands that were stained and rough from gardening. +</p> + +<p> +"How about Buck?" Cherry said, as the dog leaped to his place on the +front seat, and licked his mistress's ear. +</p> + +<p> +Alix embraced him lovingly. +</p> + +<p> +"Well--if he wanted to go with you!" she conceded, unwillingly. "But he +wouldn't!" she added, quickly. Cherry, going to the train, gave her an +April smile, and as she took her seat and the train drew on its way, it +seemed to her suddenly that she might indeed meet Peter, but it would +only be to tell him that what they had planned was impossible. +</p> + +<p> +But on the deck of the Sausalito steamer, dreaming in the sunshine of +the soft, lazy autumn day, her heart turned sick with longing once +more. Alix was forgotten, everything was forgotten except Peter. His +voice, his tall figure, erect, yet moving with the little limp she knew +so well, came to her thoughts. She thought of herself on the other +steamer, only an hour from now, safe in his care, Martin forgotten, and +all the perplexities and disappointments of the old life forgotten, in +the flood of new security and joy. Los Angeles--New Orleans--France--it +mattered not where they wandered, they might well lose the world, and +the world them, from to-day on. +</p> + +<p> +"So that is to be my life--one of the blamed and ignored women?" Cherry +mused, leaning on the rail, and watching the plunge of the receding +water. "Like the heroines of half the books--only it always seemed so +bold and so frightful in books! But to me it just seems the most +natural thing in all the world. I love Peter, and he loves me, and the +earth is big enough to hide us, and that's all there is to it. Anyway, +right or wrong, I can't help it," she finished, rejoicing to find +herself suddenly serene and confident, as the boat made the slip, and +the passengers streamed downstairs and so across the ferry place and +into the city. +</p> + +<p> +It was twenty minutes past ten, a warm, sweet morning, with great +hurrying back and forth at the ferry, women climbing to the open seats +of the cable-cars, pinning on their violets or roses as they climbed. +In the air was the pleasant mingling of the scents of roasting coffee, +salt bay-water, and softening tar in the paving, that is native only to +San Francisco. Cars clanged about the circle, hummed their way up into +the long vista of Market Street, disturbing great flights of gulls that +were picking dropped oats from the very feet of feeding horses. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry sped through it all, beside herself now with excitement and +strain, only anxious to have the great hands of the clock drop more +speedily from minute to minute, and so round out the terrible hour that +joined the old life to the new. She was hurrying blindly toward the +docks of the Los Angeles Line, absorbed in her one whirling thought, +when somebody touched her arm, and a voice, terrifyingly unexpected and +yet familiar, addressed her, and a hand was laid on her arm. +</p> + +<p> +In utter confusion she looked up. It was Martin who had stopped her. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap18"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XVIII +</h3> + +<p> +For a few dreadful seconds a sort of vertigo seized Cherry and she was +unable to collect her thoughts or to speak even the most casual words +of greeting. She had been so full of her extraordinary errand that she +was bewildered and sick at its interruption, her heart thundered, her +throat was choked, and her knees shook beneath her. Where was she--what +was known--how much had she betrayed--Her thoughts jumbled together in +a tangle of horrified questioning. +</p> + +<p> +Gasping, trying to smile, she looked up at him, while the ferry place +whirled about her, and pulses drummed in her ears. She had +automatically given him her hand; now he kissed her. +</p> + +<p> +"Hello, Cherry, where you going?" for the third time. +</p> + +<p> +"I came into town to shop," she faltered. +</p> + +<p> +"You what?" She had not really been intelligible, and she felt it, with +a pang of fright. He must not suspect--the steamer was there, only a +short block away; Peter might pass them; a chance word might be +fatal--he must not suspect-- +</p> + +<p> +"I'm shopping!" she said distinctly, with dry lips. And she managed to +smile. +</p> + +<p> +"Well," Martin said, smiling in turn, "surprised to see me?" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Martin--" said her fluttered voice. Even in the utter panic of +heart and soul she knew that for safety's sake she must find his vanity. +</p> + +<p> +"I'm going to tell you something that will surprise you," he said. "I'm +through with the Red Creek people!" +</p> + +<p> +"Martin!" Cherry enunciated, almost voicelessly. +</p> + +<p> +"You remember I wrote you that they fired Mason, and that I was doing +his work and mine, too?" +</p> + +<p> +"I--I remember!" Cherry, seized by deadly nausea and chill, looked from +a flower vendor to a newsboy, looked at the cars, the people--she must +not faint. She must not faint. +</p> + +<p> +"Well--but where are you going? Home?" +</p> + +<p> +"I was going to the dentist a minute, but it's not important." They had +turned and were walking across to the ferry. She knew that there was no +way in which she might escape him. "What did you say?" she said. +</p> + +<p> +"I asked you when the next boat left for Mill Valley?" +</p> + +<p> +"We can--go--find out." Cherry's thoughts were spinning. She must warn +Peter somehow. It was twenty minutes of eleven by the ferry clock. +Twenty minutes of eleven. In twenty minutes the boat would sail. She +thought desperately of the women's waiting-room upstairs; she might +plead the necessity of telephoning from it. But it had but one door, +and Martin would wait at that door. The glow of meeting had already +faded from his face, but he was loitering by her side, quite as a +matter of course. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly she realized that her only hope of warning Peter was to send a +messenger. But if Martin should chance to connect her neighbourhood +with the boat, when he met her, and her sending of a message to Peter +here-- +</p> + +<p> +"I think there's a boat at eleven something," she said, collectedly. +"Suppose you go and find out?" +</p> + +<p> +She glanced toward the entrance of the Sausalito waiting-room, a +hundred yards away, and a mad hope leaped in her heart. If he turned +his back on her-- +</p> + +<p> +"What are you going to do?" he asked, somewhat surprised. +</p> + +<p> +"I ought to telephone Alix!" Her despair lent her wit. If he went to +the ticket office, and she into a telephone booth, she might escape him +yet! While he dawdled here, minutes were flying, and Peter was watching +every car and every passer-by, torn with the same agony that was +tearing her. "If you'll go find out the exact time and get tickets," +she said, "I'll telephone Alix." +</p> + +<p> +"Tickets?" he echoed, with all Martin's old, maddening slowness. +"Haven't you got a return ticket?" +</p> + +<p> +"I have mileage!" she blundered. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, then I'll use your mileage!" Martin said. "Telephone," he added, +nodding toward a row of booths, "no hurry; we've got piles of time!" +</p> + +<p> +She remembered that he liked a masculine assumption of easiness where +all trains, tickets, railroad connections, and transit business of any +sort were concerned. He liked to loiter elaborately while other people +were running, liked to pull out his big watch and assure her that they +had all the time in the world. She tried to call a number, left the +booth, paid a staring girl, and rejoined him. +</p> + +<p> +"Busy!" she reported. +</p> + +<p> +"I was just thinking," Martin said, "that we might stay in town and go +to the Orpheum; how about it? Do we have to have Peter and Alix?" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry flushed, angered again, in the well-remembered way, under all +her fright and stir. Her voice had its old bored note. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, Martin, I've been their guest for two months!" +</p> + +<p> +"I'd just as soon have them!" Martin conceded, indifferently. +</p> + +<p> +But the diverted thought had helped Cherry, irritation had nerved her, +and the reminder of Martin's old, trying stupidities had lessened her +fear of him. +</p> + +<p> +"I've got to send a telegram-for Alix," she said. +</p> + +<p> +"What about?" he asked, less curious than ill-bred. +</p> + +<p> +"Good-bye to some people who are sailing!" Cherry answered, calmly. +"Only don't mention it to Alix, because I promised it would go +earlier!" she added. +</p> + +<p> +"I saw the office back here," he told her. They went to it together, +and he was within five feet of her while she scribbled her note. +</p> + +<p> +"Martin met me. Nothing wrong. We are returning to Mill Valley. C. L." +She glanced at her husband; he was standing in the doorway of the +little office, smoking. Quickly she addressed the envelope. "DON'T READ +THAT NAME OUT LOUD," she said, softly but very slowly and distinctly, +to the girl at the desk. She put a gold piece down on the note. "Keep +the change, and for God's sake get that to the Harvard, sailing from +Dock 67, before eleven!" she said. +</p> + +<p> +The girl, who had been pencilling a large "10:46" on the envelope, +looked up in surprise; but rose immediately to the occasion. Cherry's +beauty, her agonized eyes and voice, were enough to awaken her sense of +the dramatic. A sharp rap of the clerk's pencil summoned a boy. +</p> + +<p> +"George, there's a dollar in that for you if you deliver it before +eleven to the Harvard!" said she. The boy seized it, stuck it in his +hat, and fled. +</p> + +<p> +"And now for the boat!" Cherry said, rejoining Martin, and speaking in +almost her natural voice. They went back to the Sausalito ferry +entrance again, and this time telephoned Alix in real earnest, and +presently found themselves on the upper deck of the boat, bound for the +valley. +</p> + +<p> +Until now, and in occasional rushes of terror still, she had been +absorbed in the hideous necessity of deceiving, of covering her own +traces, of anticipating and closing possible avenues of betrayal. But +now Cherry began to breathe more easily, and to feel rising about her, +like a tide, the half-forgotten consciousness of her relationship with +this man in the boldly-checked suit who was sitting beside her. She had +thought to escape the necessity of telling him that she was not willing +to return to him; she had been wrapped in dreams so great and so +wonderful that the thought of his anger and resentment had been as +nothing to her. But she had all that to face now. +</p> + +<p> +She had it to face immediately, too. She knew that every hour of +postponement would cost her fresh humiliations and difficulties. He did +not love her, but he was quietly taking her for granted again, and +until she could summon courage to speak to him with utter frankness and +finality, he would of course claim his position as her husband. +</p> + +<p> +The thought threw her into a nervous agitation almost as frightful as +that of meeting him had been, and again she felt the dizzy faintness +and sickness of that moment. +</p> + +<p> +The trip from San Francisco to Sausalito occupies exactly half an hour; +after that there was a train trip of twenty minutes. Cherry knew that +what was done must be done in that time. In Mill Valley Alix would meet +them, perhaps willing to take any cue that Cherry gave her, as to their +relationship, but of course anxious to have that relationship as +pleasant and normal and friendly as possible. +</p> + +<p> +Her head was still rocking from the shock of the experiences of the +last hour and the last fortnight. Even had she met Peter it might have +been to yield with a sort of collapse to mental and physical +exhaustion. But to be forced to make a fresh effort now, one of the +crucial and fearful struggles of a lifetime, to present her case to +Martin now, and force him to her viewpoint, was almost impossible. +</p> + +<p> +Yet Cherry knew that it must be done, and as the boat slipped smoothly +past the island that roughly marked the halfway point, she gathered all +her forces for the trial. +</p> + +<p> +Martin was meanwhile energetically presenting to her the arguments that +had convinced him that he must give up the Mexico position. She vaguely +appreciated that someone named Murry was a traitor, and that the "whole +bunch" were "rubes," but her mind was busy with its own problem all the +while, and the one distinct impression she had from Martin was the +appalling one that he did not dream that she had decided to sever their +union completely and finally. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, how's the valley? Bore you to death?" he interrupted the flow of +his own topic to ask carelessly. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, no, Martin!" she quivered. "I--I love it there! I always loved it!" +</p> + +<p> +"Alix is a fine girl--she's a nice girl," Martin conceded. "But I can't +go Peter! He may be all right, all that lah-di-dah and Omar Khayyam and +Browning stuff may be all right, but I don't get it!" And he yawned +contentedly in the sunshine. +</p> + +<p> +After a few seconds he gave Cherry an oblique glance, expecting her +resentment. But she was thinking too deeply even to have heard him. Her +mind was working as desperately as a caged animal, her thoughts +circling frantically, trying windows, walls, and doors in the prison in +which she found herself, mad for escape. +</p> + +<p> +She blamed herself bitterly now for allowing him, in the surprise and +fear she felt, in the shock of their unexpected meeting, to arrange +this domestic and apparently reconciled return to the valley house. Had +she known beforehand that they were to meet she would have steeled +herself to suggest to him coldly that they lunch somewhere, and talk. +She could imagine now the quiet significance with which she would have +stressed the phrase, "Martin, I want to talk to you." +</p> + +<p> +Better still, she would have anticipated that meeting with a letter +that would have warned him that his position as a husband was changed. +But it was too late now! Too late for anything but a bald and brave and +cruel half-hour that should, at any cost, sunder them. +</p> + +<p> +Quick upon the thought came another: what should she and Peter plan +now? For to suppose that their lives were to be guided back into the +old hateful channel by this mere mischance was preposterous. Within a +few days their interrupted trip must be resumed, perhaps +to-morrow--perhaps this very night they would manage it successfully. +Alix was unsuspicious, Martin utterly unconcerned, and perhaps it would +be even easier to do now, than when Alix must at once communicate with +Martin, and perhaps bring him away from his work, to adjust life to the +new conditions. +</p> + +<p> +But meanwhile, until she could see Peter alone, there was Martin to +deal with, Martin who was leaning forward, vaingloriously reciting to +her long speeches he had made to this superior or that. +</p> + +<p> +"Martin," she said, impetuously interrupting him, "I've got to talk to +you! I've meant to write it--so many times, I've had it in my mind ever +since I left Red Creek!" +</p> + +<p> +"Shoot!" Martin said, with his favourite look of indulgent amusement. +</p> + +<p> +But she knew the little twitch to his lips that was neither indulgent +nor amused. +</p> + +<p> +"There are marriages that without any fault on either side are a +mistake," Cherry began, "any contributory fault, I mean--" +</p> + +<p> +"Talk United States!" Martin growled, smiling, but on guard. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, I think our marriage was one of those!" Cherry said. +</p> + +<p> +"What have you got to kick about?" Martin asked, after a pause. +</p> + +<p> +"I'm not kicking!" Cherry answered, with quick resentment. "But I wish +I had words to make you realize how I feel about it!" +</p> + +<p> +Martin looked gloomily up at her, and shrugged. +</p> + +<p> +"This is a sweet welcome from your wife!" he observed. But as she +regarded him with troubled and earnest eyes, perhaps her half-forgotten +beauty made an unexpected appeal to him, for he turned toward her and +eyed her with a large tolerance. "What's the matter, Cherry?" he asked. +"It doesn't seem to me that you've got much to kick about. Haven't I +always taken pretty good care of you? Didn't I take the house and move +the things in; didn't I leave you a whole month, while I ate at that +rotten boarding-house, when your father died; haven't I let you +have--how long is it?--seven weeks, by George, with your sister?" +</p> + +<p> +It poured out too readily to be unpremeditated; Cherry recognized the +tones of his old arraigning voice. He had brooded over his grievances. +He felt himself ill-treated. +</p> + +<p> +"Now you come in for this money," he began. But she interrupted him +hotly: +</p> + +<p> +"Martin, you know that is not true!" +</p> + +<p> +"Isn't it true that the instant you can take care of yourself you begin +to talk about not being happy, and so on!" he asked, without any +particular feeling. "You bet you do! Why, I never cared anything about +that money, you never heard me speak of it. I always felt that by the +time the lawyers and the heirs and the witnesses got through, there +wouldn't be much left of it, anyway!" +</p> + +<p> +Too rich in her new position of the woman beloved by Peter to quarrel +with Martin in the old unhappy fashion, Cherry laid an appealing hand +on his arm. +</p> + +<p> +"I'm sorry to meet you with this sort of thing," she said, simply, "I +blame myself now for not writing you just how I've come to feel about +it! But I just want it SAID before we meet Alix--" +</p> + +<p> +"Have what said?" he asked, surlily. +</p> + +<p> +"Have it understood," she pursued, patiently, "that we must make some +arrangement for the future--things can't be as they were!" +</p> + +<p> +"You've had it all your way ever since we were married," he began. "Now +you blame me--" +</p> + +<p> +"I DON'T blame you, Martin!" +</p> + +<p> +"Well, what do you want a divorce for, then?" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't even say anything about a divorce," Cherry said, fighting for +time only. "But I can't go back!" she added, with a sudden force and +conviction that reached him at last. +</p> + +<p> +"Why can't you?" +</p> + +<p> +"Because you don't love me, Martin, and--you know it!--I don't love +you!" +</p> + +<p> +"Well, but you can't expect the way we felt when we got married to last +forever," he said, clumsily. "Do you suppose other men and women talk +this way when the--the novelty has worn off?" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know how they talk. I only know how I feel!" Cherry said, +chilled by the old generalization. +</p> + +<p> +Martin, who had stretched his legs to their length, crossed them at the +ankles, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets, staring at the +racing blue water with sombre eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"What do you want?" he asked, heavily. "I want to live my own life!" +Cherry answered, after a silence during which her tortured spirit +seemed to coin the hackneyed phrase. +</p> + +<p> +"That stuff!" Martin sneered, under his breath. "Well, all right, I +don't care, get your divorce!" he agreed, carelessly. "But I'll have +something to say about that, too," he warned her. "You can drag the +whole thing up before the courts if you want to--only remember, if you +don't like it much, YOU DID IT. It never occurred to me even to think +of such a thing! I've done my share in this business; you never asked +me for anything I could give you that you didn't get; you've never been +tied down to housework like other women; you're not raising a family of +kids--go ahead, tell every shop-girl in San Francisco all about it, in +the papers, and see how much sympathy you get!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, you BEAST!" Cherry said, between her teeth, furious tears in her +eyes. The water swam in a blur of blue before her as they rose to go +downstairs at Sausalito. The boat had made the slip, and the few +passengers, at this quiet noontime, were drifting off. +</p> + +<p> +Martin glanced at her with impatience. Her tears never failed to anger +him. +</p> + +<p> +"Don't cry, for God's sake!" he said, nervously glancing about for +possible onlookers. "What do you want me to do? For the Lord's sake +don't make a scene until you and I have a chance to talk this over +quietly--" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry's thoughts were with Peter. In her soul she felt as if his arm +was about her, as if she were pouring out to him the whole troubled +story, sure that he would rescue and console her. She had wiped her +eyes, and somewhat recovered calm, but she trusted herself only to +shrug her shoulder as she preceded Mart to the train. +</p> + +<p> +There was time for not another word, for Alix suddenly took possession +of them. She had had time to bring the car all the six miles to +Sausalito, and meant to drive them direct to the valley from there. +</p> + +<p> +She greeted Martin affectionately, although even while she did so her +eyes went with a quick, worried look to Cherry. They had been +quarrelling, of course--it was too bad, Alix thought, but her own +course was clear. Until she could take her cue from them, she must +treat them both with cheerful unconsciousness of the storm. She invited +Martin to share the driver's seat with her, pushing the resentful Buck +into the tonneau with Cherry. +</p> + +<p> +Alix, in the months that she had not seen him, had had time to develop +a certain generous sympathy for Martin, but as she took the car swiftly +through the warm, sweet summer day, she began to realize afresh just +how serious Cherry's problem was. It was not merely that Martin chewed +a toothpick as he talked to her, and took out a pen-knife to trim a +finger-nail; it was not that he was somewhat vain, stupid, and +opinionated, for the minor social deficiencies might have been remedied +in a larger nature by an affectionate word, and there were times, Alix +felt, when the best of men are insistent upon perverse and perverted +views, and unashamed or unconscious of their limitations. Martin had +coarsened in the six years since they had first known him. There had +been something unspoiled, vigorous, and fresh about him then that was +gone now. Alix sensed that his associates in the mining towns in which +he had lived had been men and women of a low type. The defiling +influence had left its mark. Missing entertainment in his home, he had +sought it elsewhere. +</p> + +<p> +But besides these things Martin had a certain complacency, an assurance +that would have been inexcusable even in great genius, a mental +arrogance that nothing in his life in the least degree warranted. He +made no slight effort to adapt himself to the atmosphere in which he +found his wife and her sister, interested himself for not one moment in +their concerns, put out no feelers toward the mood that might have made +him an agreeable addition to their group. He conceded nothing; he was +Martin Lloyd, mining engineer, philosopher, man of the world, and it +was for them to listen to him, admire him, and praise and tease and +flatter him in all he did. Humility and shyness were never a part of +Martin's nature, but to-day he was galled by his talk with Cherry, and +less inclined even than usual to abase himself. +</p> + +<p> +"Does Peter let you drive the car on these mountain roads?" he demanded +of Alix. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, yes, indeed. I love to run the car!" she said, with a swift, +smiling glance. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, you want to keep your eyes on the road," he warned her. "There's +nothing worries me like having a lady at the wheel," he went on, +good-naturedly, "that's the time I say my prayers!" +</p> + +<p> +"Plenty of women running cars now, Martin!" Alix said, cheerfully, +wishing that Martin didn't always and infallibly nettle her. +</p> + +<p> +"But it's no business for a woman," he assured her, in a suddenly +serious and confidential undertone. "No business for them! They haven't +the strength, in the first place, and they haven't--well, they're too +nervous, in the second. Mouse cross the road," said Martin, sucking in +deep breaths as he lighted a cigar, "and--whee! Over she goes into a +ditch. No," he said, kindly, "I'm a great friend of all the ladies, but +I think they make a mistake when they think they're men." +</p> + +<p> +"Only one accident in ten is with a woman driver," Alix argued. +</p> + +<p> +"That may be true, too," Martin conceded, largely. She knew that he was +drawing his words merely to cover any impression of being caught +unprepared. "That may be true, too. But don't you believe that half the +cases of women's accidents get into the courts," he added, knowingly. +"You bet your life they don't! You bet your sweet life they don't. Oh, +no--pretty girl smiles at the policeman--" He smoked a few seconds in +triumphant silence. "Why, you knew that, didn't you?" he asked, in +kindly patronage. +</p> + +<p> +"I suppose so!" Alix said, briefly, after swallowing a more spirited +answer with a gulp. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, sure!" Martin agreed, in great content. +</p> + +<p> +They reached the valley, and Martin was magnanimous about the delayed +lunch. Anything would do for him, he said, he was taking a couple of +days' holiday, and everything went. Kow was chopping wood after lunch, +and he sauntered out to the block with suggestions; Alix, laying a fire +for the evening, simply because she liked to do that sort of work, was +favoured with directions. Finally Martin pushed her aside. +</p> + +<p> +"Here, let me do that," he said. "You'd have a fine fire here, at that +rate!" +</p> + +<p> +Later he went down to the old house with them, to spend there an hour +that was trying to both women. It was almost in order now; Cherry had +pleased her simple fancy in the matter of hangings and papering, and +the effect was fresh and good. The kitchen smelled cleanly of white +paint, and the other rooms wore almost their old, hospitable aspect. +</p> + +<p> +"Girls going to rent this?" Martin asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Unless you and Cherry come live here," Alix said, boldly. He smiled +tolerantly. +</p> + +<p> +"Why should we?" +</p> + +<p> +"Well, why shouldn't you?" +</p> + +<p> +"Loafing, eh?" +</p> + +<p> +"No, not loafing. But you could transfer your work to San Francisco, +couldn't you?" Martin smiled a deep, wise, long-enduring smile. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, you'd get me a job, I suppose?" he asked. "I love the way you +women try to run things," he added, "but I guess I'll paddle my own +canoe for awhile longer!" +</p> + +<p> +"There is no earthly reason why you shouldn't live here," Alix said, +pleasantly. +</p> + +<p> +"There is no earthly reason why we should!" Martin returned. He was +annoyed by a suspicion that Alix and Cherry had arranged between them +to make this plan the alternative to a divorce. "To tell you the honest +truth, I don't like Mill Valley!" +</p> + +<p> +Alix tasted despair. Small hope of preserving this particular +relationship. He was, as Cherry had said, "impossible." +</p> + +<p> +"Well, we must try to make you like Mill Valley better!" she said, with +resolute good-nature. "Of course, it means a lot to Cherry and to me to +be near each other!" +</p> + +<p> +"That may be true, too," Martin agreed, taking the front seat again for +the drive home. He told Cherry later that he liked Alix, and Alix was +interested enough in keeping him happy to deliberately play upon his +easily touched self-confidence. She humoured him, laughed at his jokes, +asked him the questions that he was able to answer, and loved to answer. +</p> + +<p> +She was surprised at Cherry's passivity and silence, but Cherry was +wrapped in a sick and nervous dream, unable either to interpret the +present or face the future with any courage. Before luncheon he had +followed her into her room, and had put his arm about her. But she had +quietly shaken him off, with the nervous murmur: "Please--no, don't +kiss me, Martin!" +</p> + +<p> +Stung, Martin had immediately dropped his arm, had shrugged his +shoulders indifferently, and laughed scornfully. Now he remarked to +Alix, with some bravado: +</p> + +<p> +"You girls still sleeping out?" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, always--we all do!" Alix had answered, readily. "Peter has an +extra bunk on his porch, Cherry and I have my porch. But you can be out +or in, as you choose!" +</p> + +<p> +Martin ventured an answer that made Cherry's eyes glint angrily, and +brought a quick, embarrassed flush to Alix's face. Alix did not enjoy a +certain type of joking, and she did not concede Martin even the ghost +of a smile. He immediately sobered, and remarked that he himself liked +to be indoors at night. His suitcase was accordingly taken into the +pleasant little wood-smelling room next to Peter's, where the autumn +sunlight, scented with the dry sweetness of mountain shrubs, was +streaming. +</p> + +<p> +He began to play solitaire, on the porch table, at five, and Kow had to +disturb him to set it for dinner at seven. Alix was watering the +garden, Cherry was dressing. It was an exquisite hour of long shadows +and brilliant lights; bees from Alix's hives went to and fro, and the +air was full and fragrant, as if a golden powder had been scattered +through it. +</p> + +<p> +Kow had put a tureen of soup on the table, and Alix had returned with +damp, clean hands and trimly brushed hair, for supper, when Peter came +up through the garden. Cherry had rambled off in the direction of the +barn a few moments before, but Martin had followed her and brought her +back, remarking that she had had no idea of the time, and was idly +watching Antone milking. She slipped into her place after they were all +eating, and hardly raised her eyes throughout the meal. If Alix +addressed her she fluttered the white lids as if it were an absolute +agony to look up; to Peter she did not speak at all. But to Martin she +sent an occasional answer, and when the conversation lagged, as it was +apt to do in this company, she nervously filled it with random remarks +infinitely less reassuring than silence. +</p> + +<p> +"How long do we stay here?" Martin cautiously asked his wife, when +after dinner, Peter could be heard in the kitchen, interrogating Kow, +and when the drip and splash of Alix's hose was sounding steadily from +the other end of the garden. +</p> + +<p> +"Stay here?" she echoed, at a loss. +</p> + +<p> +"Yes," he answered, decidedly. "I can stand a little of it, but I don't +think much of this sort of life! I thought maybe we could all go into +town for dinner and the theatre to-morrow or Saturday. But on Monday +we'll have to beat it." +</p> + +<p> +"Monday!" Cherry's heart bounded. +</p> + +<p> +"My idea was, you to come up with me," Martin continued, "we'll see the +folks in Portland--" +</p> + +<p> +"Martin, isn't it a mistake to go on pretending--" she began bitterly. +But Peter's voice, in the drawing room, interrupted her. "I'll let you +know--we'll talk about it!" she had time to say, hurriedly, before he +came out to them. He flung himself into a chair. Martin at once opened +a general conversation, in which Alix, still diligently watering, was +presently near enough to take part. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap19"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XIX +</h3> + +<p> +The evening dragged. Alix had suggested bridge, but Martin did not play +bridge. So she presently scattered anagrams over the table, reminding +Peter of some of their battles with word-making in the long winter +nights, and they had a half-hearted game, in which Martin showed no +interest at all, and Peter deliberately missed chances to score. +</p> + +<p> +Alix glanced furtively at her wrist-watch; it was twenty minutes of +ten. As Martin flung himself into a chair beside the fire, and lighted +one of his strong cigars, she went to the piano, and began to ramble +through various songs, hoping that somebody would start to sing, or +suggest a favourite, or in some way help to lighten the dreadful +heaviness of the atmosphere. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry and Peter, left at the table, did not speak to each other; Peter +leaned back in his chair, with a cigarette; Cherry dreamily pushed to +and fro the little wooden block letters. +</p> + +<p> +But presently her heart gave a great plunge, and although she did not +alter her different attitude, or raise her eyes, her white hand moved +with directed impulse, and Peter's casual glance fell upon the word +"Alone." +</p> + +<p> +When he laid his finished cigarette in the tray, it was to finger the +letters himself, in turn, and Cherry realized with a great thrill of +relief that he was answering her. Carelessly, and obliterating one word +before he began another, he formed the question: "My office to-morrow?" +</p> + +<p> +"Martin always with me," Cherry spelled back. She did not glance at +Peter, but at Martin, who was watching the fire, and at Alix, whose +back was toward the room. +</p> + +<p> +"Come on, have another game!" Peter asked, generally, while he spelled +quickly: "Will arrange sailing first possible day." +</p> + +<p> +Alix, humming along with her song, said: "Wait a few minutes!" and +Martin glanced up to say, "No, I'm no good at that thing!" +</p> + +<p> +Then Cherry and Peter were unobserved again, and she spelled "Mart goes +Monday. Plans to take me." +</p> + +<p> +Peter had reached for a magazine; he whirled through the pages, and +yawned. Then he began to play with the anagrams again. +</p> + +<p> +"Can you get away without him?" he spelled. +</p> + +<p> +"How?" Cherry instantly asked. And as Peter's hands went on building a +little bridge of wooden letters, she went on: "Alix to train, Martin +with me to city, impossible." +</p> + +<p> +"Give him the slip," Peter spelled. And after a pause he added, "Life +or death." +</p> + +<p> +"Difficult to evade," Cherry spelled, wiping the words away one by one. +</p> + +<p> +"Must wait--" Peter began. Alix, ending her song on a crash of chords, +came to the table, interrupting him. Cherry was now lazily reading a +magazine; Peter had built a little pen of tiny blocks. +</p> + +<p> +"I'll go you!" Alix said, with spirit. But the game was rather a +languid one, nevertheless, and when it was over they gathered yawning +about the mantel, ready to disperse for the night. +</p> + +<p> +"And to-morrow night we dine in town and go to the Orpheum?" Alix +asked, for the plan had been suggested at dinner-time. +</p> + +<p> +"I'll blow you girls to any show you like," Martin offered. He took out +his big watch--Cherry remembered just how smoothly this watch always +seemed to slip in and out of his pocket--and smiled at them. "Ten +o'clock," he grinned. "I'll set up awhile longer, and have a look at +the evening papers." +</p> + +<p> +"Well--" Peter conceded. Cherry was shocked by the sudden chill and +sternness of his face. Immediately, remarking that he was tired, he +went to his room. Cherry, with only a general good-night, also +disappeared, to find Alix arranging beds and pillows on their sleeping +porch. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Alix--I'm so worried--I'm so sick with worry!" Cherry whispered. +Alix, sitting still in the circle of light thrown from the reading lamp +light, over her bed, nodded, with a stricken face. "He won't listen to +me," said Cherry. "He won't hear of a divorce!" +</p> + +<p> +"I know!" Alix said, distressedly. +</p> + +<p> +"But what shall I do--I can't go with him!" Cherry protested. +</p> + +<p> +Alix was silent. +</p> + +<p> +"What shall I do?" Cherry pleaded again. +</p> + +<p> +"Why, I don't see what else you CAN do, but go with him!" Alix said, in +a troubled voice. "I should think that no man would want his wife, +knowing that she didn't want to be with him! And I should think that to +leave you here, with enough money to live on, and your own old home, +would suit him better than to drag you--" She sighed. "But if it +doesn't," she finished, "of course it doesn't alter your obligation, in +a way. You ARE his wife. 'For better or worse, for richer or poorer, +till death---'" +</p> + +<p> +It was said so kindly, with Alix's simple and embarrassed fashion of +giving advice, that poor Cherry could not resent it. She could only bow +her head desolately upon her knees, as she sat, child-fashion, in her +bed, and cry. +</p> + +<p> +"A nice mess I've made of my life!" she sobbed. "I've made a nice mess +of it! I wish--oh, my God, how I wish I was dead!" +</p> + +<p> +"My own life has been so darned easy," Alix mused, in a cautious +undertone, sitting, fully dressed, on the side of her own bed, and +studying her sister with pitying eyes. "I've often wondered if I could +buck up and get through with it if some of that sort of thing had come +to me! I don't know, of course, but it seems to me that I'd say: 'Who +loses his life shall gain it!' and I'd stand anything--people and +places I hated, loneliness and poverty--the whole bag of tricks! I +think I would. I mean I'd read the Bible and Shakespere, and enjoy my +meals, and have a garden--" Her voice sank. "I know it's terribly hard +for you, Cherry!" she ended, suddenly pitiful. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry had stopped crying, dried her eyes, and had reached resolutely +for the book that was waiting on the little shelf above the porch bed. +</p> + +<p> +"You're bigger than I am," she said, quietly. "Or else I'm so made that +I suffer more! I wish I could face the music. But I can't do anything. +Of course, just--just loathing some things about a man isn't valid +cause for divorce, I know that. But I'd rather live with a man that +drank, and stole, and beat me--I'd rather he should disgrace me before +the whole world, and drag me to prison with him, than to feel as I +feel! I would, Alix. I tell you--" Her voice was rising, but suddenly +she interrupted herself, and spoke in a lifeless and apologetic tone: +"I'm sorry," she said. "One knows of unhappy marriages, everywhere, +without quite fancying just what a horrible tragedy an unhappy marriage +is! Don't mind me, Alix. The Mill Valley Zeus will have an item in it +this week that Mr. and Mrs. Martin Lloyd have gone to visit relatives +in Portland, Oregon, and nobody'll know but what we're the happiest +couple in the world--and perhaps we are!" +</p> + +<p> +Alix laughed uncomfortably. She was conscious, as she went out to speak +to Kow about breakfast, and to give a final glance at fires and lights, +that this was one of the times when girls needed a wise mother, or a +father, who could decide, blame, and advise. +</p> + +<p> +Coming back from the kitchen, with a pitcher of hot water, she saw +Martin, in a welter of evening papers, staring at the last pink ashes +of the wood fire. Upon seeing her he got up, and with a cautious glance +toward the bedroom doors he said: +</p> + +<p> +"Look here a minute! Can they hear us?" Alix set down her pitcher of +water, and came to stand beside him. +</p> + +<p> +"Hear us--Peter and Cherry? No, Cherry's out on our porch, and Peter's +porch is even farther away. Why?" +</p> + +<p> +"Take a look, will you?" he said. "I want to speak to you!" +</p> + +<p> +Alix, mystified, duly went to glance at Cherry, reading now in a little +funnel of yellow light, and then crossed to enter Peter's room. His +porch was dark, but she could see the outline of the tall figure lying +across the bed. +</p> + +<p> +"Asleep?" she asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Nope!" he answered. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, don't go to sleep without pulling a rug over you!" she +commanded. "Good-night, Pete!" +</p> + +<p> +"Good-night, old girl!" Something in the tone touched her, with a vague +hint of unhappiness, but she did not stop to analyze it. She went back +through his room, and through the little passage, and rejoined Martin. +The freedom of Peter's apartment Alix had always taken as naturally as +she did the freedom of her father's. +</p> + +<p> +"Can't hear us, eh?" Martin asked, when again she stood beside him. +</p> + +<p> +"Positively not!" she answered. +</p> + +<p> +"Look here," he said, abruptly. "What brought me up here is this. Who's +making love to Cherry?" +</p> + +<p> +Indignant, and with rising colour, she stared at him. +</p> + +<p> +"Who--WHAT!" +</p> + +<p> +"She's having a nice little quiet flirtation with somebody," Martin +said, with a significant and warning smile. "Who is it?" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know who's been talking to you about Cherry, Martin," Alix +said, sharply, "but you know you can't repeat that sort of rotten +scandal to me!" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't mean any harm--I don't mean any harm!" he assured her, with a +quick attempt to quiet the storm he had raised. "Don't get mad--don't +get mad! But I happen to know that there's some attraction that's +keeping Cherry here, and I came up to look over the ground for myself, +do you see?" +</p> + +<p> +His look, which was almost a leer, seemed to imply that Alix was in the +secret, a party to Cherry's foolishness, and did imply very distinctly +that Martin felt himself to be more than a match for all their cunning. +The woman was silent, looking straight into his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"Come on, now, put me on!" he said. +</p> + +<p> +Alix made an effort at self-control. +</p> + +<p> +"Martin, you're mistaken!" she said, quietly. "You have no right to +listen to any one who tells you such things, and if it wasn't that +you're Cherry's husband, I wouldn't listen to you! But you'll have to +take my word for it that it's a lie. We three have lived up here +without seeing any one-ANY ONE! Cherry has hardly spoken to a man, +except Peter and Antone and Kow, since she came!" +</p> + +<p> +"Who's this George Sewall?" he asked, shrewdly. "The lawyer! Oh, +heavens, Martin! Why, George was a beau of mine; he's a widower of +fifty, and has just announced his engagement to the trained nurse that +took care of his boy!" +</p> + +<p> +"H'm!" Martin commented. +</p> + +<p> +"If any one mentioned Cherry's name in connection with George," Alix +said, firmly, "that was a perfectly malicious slander--" +</p> + +<p> +"Sewall's wasn't mentioned!" Martin said, hastily. +</p> + +<p> +"Whose name WAS mentioned, then?" Alix pursued, hotly. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, nobody's name was mentioned." Martin took a great many creased +and rubbed papers from his vest pockets, and shifted them over. +Finally, with a fat, deliberate hand he selected one, and put the +others away. +</p> + +<p> +"This is from my mother," he said. "My aunt, Mrs. North--" +</p> + +<p> +"We saw her here, a week or two ago!" Alix said as he paused. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, she was in Portland, and saw the folks," said Martin. "And my +mother writes me this--" And after a few seconds of searching, he read +from the letter: "Bessie North saw Cherry and Mrs. Joyce in Mill +Valley, and if I was you I would not let Cherry stay away too long. A +wife's place is with her husband, especially when she is as pretty as +Cherry, and if Bessie is right, somebody else thinks she is pretty, +too, and you know it doesn't take much to start people talking. It +isn't like she had a couple of children to keep her busy. Why don't you +bring her up here and leave her with Papa and me while you look over +the Mexican proposition?" +</p> + +<p> +"That's all of that," said Martin, folding the letter. He eyed Alix +keenly. "Well, what do you think?" he asked, triumphantly. +</p> + +<p> +"I think that's a mean, wicked thing to say!" she said, indignantly. +"No, Martin," she said, silencing him, as he would have interrupted +her, "I know she is beautiful and young, and I know--because she's told +me--that you and she feel that your marriage is a mistake, but if you +think--" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, she said that, did she?" +</p> + +<p> +"Don't use that tone!" Alix commanded him quickly. "She didn't blame +you or herself, except in that she didn't listen to my father, who +thought she was too young to marry any one! But if you want to lose +her, Martin," Alix said, with heat, "just let her suspect all this +petty suspicion and scandal! Cherry's proud--" +</p> + +<p> +"Now, look here," he said, with his air of assurance, "I'm proud, too. +And if I don't choose to stand before the world as a divorced man--" +</p> + +<p> +"Nobody's talking of divorce!" Alix hushed him. "But no woman would +stand having other women spy and suspect--" +</p> + +<p> +"How about this Sewall!" he muttered. "By George, she had SOMETHING on +her mind when she met me to-day. She was fussed, all right, and it +wasn't all the surprise of seeing me, either. First she wanted to +telephone you--then she fussed over your message--" +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry gets fluttered very easily!" Alix reminded him. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, she was fussed all right this morning. She said not to mention +it to Alix, because she had promised that it should go on time. I +thought maybe she meant that you wanted her to go herself; no, she +said, a note would do--" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know what you're talking about!" Alix said, puzzled. +</p> + +<p> +"Your note!" Martin explained. +</p> + +<p> +"What note! I didn't write any note. Cherry telephoned--" +</p> + +<p> +"No," he said, patiently and perfunctorily, "you +wanted--Cherry--to-say--good-bye--to--those--people--who--were--sailing! +That was all. She wrote it; it got there in time, I guess. Anyway, I +heard the girl say to rush it to the boat!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh!" Alix said. "Oh--" she added. Her tone betrayed nothing, but she +was thoroughly at sea. "Did I ask Cherry to say good-bye to any one?" +she asked herself, going back to the beginning of the long day. +Instinct warned her that nothing would be gained by sharing her +perplexity with Martin. "I give you my word that she hasn't been five +minutes alone with any one but Peter and me!" she said, frankly, +looking into Martin's eyes. "Now, are you satisfied?" +</p> + +<p> +"Sure, I'm satisfied!" he answered. "She didn't go into town to lunch +with any one?" he asked. +</p> + +<p> +"No!" Alix said, scornfully. "She always lunches with us! You don't +deserve her, to talk so about her, Martin!" she said. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, I'm not anybody's fool, you know!" he assured her. "All right, +I'll take your say-so for it." He yawned, "Trouble with Cherry is, she +hasn't enough to do!" he finished, sapiently. +</p> + +<p> +"I'm a poor person with whom to discuss Cherry!" Alix hinted, with an +unsmiling nod for good-night. +</p> + +<p> +And she looked at Cherry's corn-coloured head, ten minutes later, with +a thrill of maternal protectiveness. Cherry was evidently asleep, +buried deep under the blue army blankets. But Alix did not get to sleep +that night. +</p> + +<p> +She did not even undress. For it was while sitting on the side of her +bed, ready to begin the process, that through her excited and indignant +and whirling thoughts the first suspicion shot like a touch of flame. +</p> + +<p> +"How dares Martin--how dares he!" her thoughts had run. And then +suddenly she had said: "Why, she has seen no one but Peter--she has +seen no one but Peter! +</p> + +<p> +"I'll tell Peter all this when Martin has gone," Alix decided. "He'll +be furious--he adores Cherry--he'll be furious--he thinks that there is +no one like Cherry--" +</p> + +<p> +The words she had said came back to her, and she said them again, +half-aloud, with a look of pain and almost of fear suddenly coming into +her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter adores Cherry--" +</p> + +<p> +And then she knew. Even while the sick suspicion formed itself, vague +and menacing and horrible, in her heart, she knew the truth of it. And +though for hours she was to weigh it and measure it, to remember and +question and compare all the days and hours that she and Peter and +Cherry had been together; from the moment the thought was born she knew +that it was to be with her as an accepted fact for all time to come. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap20"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XX +</h3> + +<p> +For a few seconds Alix felt ill, dazed, and shocked almost beyond +enduring. She sat immovable, her eyes fixed, her body held rigid, as a +body might be in the second before it fell after a bullet had cleanly +pierced the heart. +</p> + +<p> +Then she put her hand to her throat, and looked with a sort of terror +at the silent figure of Cherry. Nobody must know--that was Alix's first +clear thought. She was breathing hard, her breast rising and falling +painfully, and the blood in her temples began to pound; her mouth was +dry. +</p> + +<p> +With a blind instinct for solitude she went quickly and silently from +the sleeping porch, and into the warm sitting room. The lamps were all +extinguished, but the fire was still burning, low and pink, where the +hearts of the logs had fallen apart to show the flame. +</p> + +<p> +For a few minutes Alix stood, with one foot on the chain that linked +the old brass fire dogs, her elbow on the mantel, and her cheek resting +against her arm. +</p> + +<p> +"No," she whispered, almost audibly, "no--it can't be that! It can't be +Cherry and Peter--Oh, my God! Oh, my God, it has been that, all the +time, THAT, all the time--and I never knew it--I never dreamed it!" +</p> + +<p> +The end of a log blazed up with a sudden bright flame, and in the light +it cast about the quiet room Alix glanced nervously behind her. Silence +and shadow held the place; the bedroom doors were shut. The fugitive +red warmth picked out the backs of books--Alix knew them all, had +browsed over those shabby rows during a hundred winter nights--touched +the green shaded lamps, and the roses that were dropping their petals +from the crystal bowl, and the polished legs of the old mahogany table. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing moved, nothing stirred. Everything in the little mountain cabin +was at rest except the woman who stood, with aching heart and feverish +mind, resting her arm on the level of the low mantel, and staring with +desolate eyes into the fading heart of the fire. +</p> + +<p> +"It's Peter and Cherry! They have come to care for each other--they +have come to care for each other," she said to herself, her thoughts +rushing and tumbling in mad confusion as she tested and tried the new +fear. "It must be so. But it CAN'T be so!" Alix interrupted herself in +terror, "for what shall we do--what shall we do! Cherry in love with +Peter. But Peter is my husband--he is MY husband--" And in a spasm of +pain she shut her eyes, and flung her head as if suffocating. The +beating of her heart frightened her. "I shall be sick if I go on this +way!" she reminded herself. "And then they will know. They mustn't +know. But Peter--" she whispered suddenly. "Peter, who has always been +so good to me--so generous to me--and it was Cherry all the time! While +we were up here, reading and talking, and--" her lips trembled, "--and +cooking," she told herself, "he was thinking of Cherry--he was always +thinking of Cherry! Even those years ago, when we used to tease him +about the lady with the crinolines and ringlets, it was she. But why +didn't he ask her instead of me?" wondered Alix, and with an aching +head, and a frowning brow, she began to piece it all together. +</p> + +<p> +The terrible truth rose triumphant from all her memories. Sometimes for +a second hope would flood her with almost painful joy, but inevitably +the truth shut down upon her again, and hope died, and she realized +afresh that sorrow, stronger than before, was waiting to seize upon her +again. +</p> + +<p> +Sorrow and fear and pain, these wrestled with her spirit, that spirit +that had never known them before. She had grieved for her father a few +years ago; she would always miss him and need him--perhaps never more +than to-night. But that was natural loss, softened by everything that +love and loyalty and faith could give her, and this was a living +anguish, which wrung and twisted her heart more terribly with every +instant of its realization. +</p> + +<p> +"Well--I can't stand it in here!" Alix said, suddenly. The walls, the +peaceful room, seemed to smother and stifle her. She crossed to the +door, and opened it, and slipped noiselessly out into the night, +catching a coat from the rack as she passed. +</p> + +<p> +The night was wrapped in an ocean fog, there was no moon and no stars, +but the air was soft and warm. The garden was so black that Alix, +familiar with every inch of it as she was, groped her way confusedly +between the wet bushes and shrubs. Roses drenched her with fog and dew, +a wall-flower springing erect as she passed by sent a wave of velvety +perfume into her face. +</p> + +<p> +When she gained the woods she made better progress, for under the great +shafts of the redwoods there was little growth, and the ground was +unencumbered and almost as smooth as a floor. With no goal in view, +Alix climbed upward, walking rapidly, breathing hard, and frequently +speaking aloud, as some poignant thought smote her, or standing still, +too sick with pain, under an unexpected rush of emotion, to move. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes some small woodland animal scrambled noisily through the dry +brush, in escape, and now and then an owl, perhaps a mile away, broke +the silence with a mournful and muffled cry. Tiny squeaks and sleepy +chirps from birds and chipmunks recognized the disturbance of a +stranger's passage through the wood, and once the ugly snarling of +wild-cats, always alert in the night, sounded suddenly near, and then +died as suddenly away. +</p> + +<p> +Of these things Alix heard nothing. In a trance of feverish dread she +went on and on, trying to escape from the conviction that grew +momentarily more and more clear. +</p> + +<p> +"He would have told me about it--why didn't I let him!" ran Alix's +thoughts. "I thought of some older woman, I don't know why--anyway, I +didn't care so much then. But I care now! Peter, I care now! I can't +give you up, even to Cherry. It is nonsense to talk of giving him up," +Alix told herself, sitting down in the inky dark, on a log against +which her wild walk had suddenly brought her, "for we are all married +people, and we all love each other. But oh, I am so sorry! I am so +sorry, Peter," she whispered, as if she were speaking to him. "You +couldn't help it, I know that. She is so pretty and so sweet, +Cherry--and she turns to you as if you were her big brother!" +</p> + +<p> +She sat motionless, her hands clasped, and raised so that her cheek was +pressed against them. For awhile she seemed to have no thoughts; she +was merely vaguely aware that the hands she had plunged into the +pockets of one of Peter's old coats were scented with tobacco now, and +so reminded her of him. She pressed them hard against her face, as if +to ease the pain of her forehead. +</p> + +<p> +But the thoughts, exactly like a pain, began to creep back. With +choking bitterness it was upon her again, and she got to her feet and +went on. +</p> + +<p> +"What am I thinking about--it's absurd! Can't people like each other, +in this world, just because they happen to be married! Peter would be +the first to laugh at me. And is it fair to Cherry even to think that +she would-- +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, but it's true!" the honester impulse interrupted, mercilessly. "It +is true. Whether it's right or wrong, or sensible or absurd, they DO +love each other; that's what has changed them both." +</p> + +<p> +And she began to remember a hundred--a thousand--trifles, that made it +all hideously clear. Words, glances, moods subtler than either, came +back to her. Cherry's confusion of late, when the question of her +return to Martin was raised, her indifference to her inheritance, her +restless talk during one hour of immediate departure, and during the +next of an apparently termless visit; all these were significant now. +</p> + +<p> +"I am desperately unhappy!" Cherry had said. And immediately after +that, Alix recalled wretchedly, had come a brief and apparently aimless +talk about Alix's rights, and her eagerness to share them with her +sister. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry had been in misery, of course. Alix knew her too well not to +know with what suffering she would admit that the one desire of her +heart was for something to which Alix had the higher, if not the +stronger, claim. +</p> + +<p> +"Poor Cherry!" the older sister said aloud, standing still for a +moment, and pressing both hands over her hot eyes. "Poor little old +Cherry--life hasn't been very kind to her! She and Peter must be so +sorry and ashamed about this! And Dad would be so sorry; of all things +he wanted most that Cherry should be happy! Perhaps," thought Alix, "he +realized that she was that sort of a nature, she must love and be +loved, or she cannot live! But why did he let her marry Martin, and why +wasn't he here to keep me from marrying Peter? What a mess--mess--mess +we've made of it all!" +</p> + +<p> +As she used the term, she realized that Cherry had used it, too, this +same evening, and fresh conviction was added to the great weight of +conviction in her heart. +</p> + +<p> +"She was thinking of that," Alix told herself, "and it has been in +Peter's mind all these weeks. Oh, Peter--Peter--Peter!" she moaned, +writhing as the cry escaped her. "Why couldn't it have been me, why +couldn't it have been me! Why couldn't you have loved me that way? I +know I am not so pretty as Cherry," Alix went on, resuming her restless +walk, "and I know that those things don't seem to mean as much to me as +to most women! But, Peter," she said softly, aloud, "no wife ever loved +a man more than I love you, my dear!" She remembered some of his +half-laughing, half-fretful reproaches, when he had told her that she +loved him much as she loved Buck, and that, in these respects, she was +no more than a healthy child. "I may be a child," said Alix, feeling +that a dry flame was consuming her heart, "but a child can love! My +dear--my dear-- +</p> + +<p> +"I wish I could cry," she said suddenly, finding herself sitting on a +log where low oaks met the forest and the open meadows, and where they +had often paused in mountain climbs to look far across the panorama of +hills and valley below. "But now we must face this thing sensibly. What +is to be done? They must not know that I know, and in some way we must +get out of this tangle. Even if Peter were free, Cherry would not be +free," she decided, "and so the only thing to do is to help them, until +it dies away." +</p> + +<p> +No suspicion of the truth stabbed her, although she remembered Martin +and his strange tale of a message and wondered about it a little in her +thoughts. To whom had Cherry been sending that telegram if not to +Peter? And if to Peter, why had she not simply telephoned? Because she +had known that Peter was not in his office, because she had been going +to meet him somewhere. But where? Well, at the boat. Martin had heard +her tell the boy that he must catch that boat. +</p> + +<p> +Alix did not guess the truth. But she guessed enough to make her feel +frightened and sick. She could not suppose that Cherry and Peter had +planned to go away on that boat together, because at most her thoughts +would have grasped the idea of one or two days' absence only, and they +had given her no warning of that. But until this instant the thought of +the passionate desire that enveloped them had not reached her; she had +imagined Cherry's feeling for Peter to be something only a little +stronger than her own. +</p> + +<p> +Now she thought of Cherry's beauty, her fragrance and softness, the +shine in her blue eyes and the light on her corn-coloured hair, and +knew that life for them all, of late, had been mined with frightful +danger. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry would be disgraced, and Martin--Martin would kill her, if he +found her out! ... Oh, my little sister! She would be town talk; she is +so reckless, she would do anything--she would be a public scandal, and +the papers would have her pictures--Dad's little yellow-headed Charity! +Oh, Dad," she said, looking up into the dark, "tell me what to do! I +need you so! Won't you somehow tell me what to do!" +</p> + +<p> +Silence and darkness. But even in the gloom Alix could tell that fog +was lifting, and a sudden sweep of breeze, like a tired breath, went +over the tops of the redwoods. +</p> + +<p> +Steadily came the change. The darkness, by imperceptible degrees, +lifted. The world grew gray as if with moonshine, trees and bushes +began to stand out dimly from the mass of shadows. On the road below +her Alix heard a wagon rattle, the mud-spattered wagon from the +Portuguese dairy upon the ridge; and past her, leaving a dark wake of +brushed dewdrops on the pearled grass, a cottontail fled silently. +</p> + +<p> +She noted with surprise that she could see the grass now, although it +had been invisible a few moments ago. She could see it, and presently +its brownness showed, and the rich, solid green of the oaks lifted from +the dull twilight that had enveloped the world. +</p> + +<p> +"Light!" Alix whispered, awestruck And a few moments later she added, +"Dawn!" +</p> + +<p> +It was dawn indeed that was creeping into the valley, and as it +brightened and deepened and warmed momentarily, Alix felt some of the +peace and glory of it swelling in her tired heart. The sky grew pale, +grew white, gradually turned to blue, and the little clouds drifting +across it vanished, lost in a swimming vapour of pink and pearl. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly a first shaft of sunlight struck across the mountain ridge, +and lay bright on the hilltop opposite, the fog that still clung to the +peak of the mountain was steadily ascending into the brilliant air, dew +sparkled, and the hoary, lichened limbs of the sprawling oaks glistened +in the light. The sun came up, and Alix felt the blessed warmth against +her chilled and cramped shoulders, and stretched her arms out to +welcome the flood of brightness and new courage after the darkness and +doubts of the night. +</p> + +<p> +She was still sitting on the log, dreamily watching the expanding +beauty of the new day, when there was a crashing in the underbrush +behind her, and wild with joy, and with twigs and dried brown grasses +on his wet coat, Buck came bounding out of the forest, and leaped upon +her. +</p> + +<p> +"Bucky!" she faltered, as he stood beside her, his quick tongue +flashing ecstatically, close to her face, every splendid muscle of his +body wriggling with eager affection. "Did you miss me, old fellow? Did +you come to find me?" +</p> + +<p> +She had not cried during the long vigil of the night, when a storm had +raged in her heart, and had left her weak and sick with dread. But +there was peace now, and Alix locked her arms about the dog's +shoulders, and laid her face against his satiny head, and cried. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap21"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XXI +</h3> + +<p> +When Cherry came out to breakfast, a few hours later, she found Alix +already at the porch table. Alix looked pale, but fresh and trim; she +had evidently just tubbed, and she wore one of the plain, wide-striped +ginghams that were extremely becoming to her rather boyish type. +</p> + +<p> +She looked up, and nodded at Cherry composedly. Cherry always kissed +her sister in the morning, but she did not to-day. She felt troubled +and ashamed, and instinctively avoided the little caress. +</p> + +<p> +"No men?" she asked, sharing her grapefruit with her mail. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter had to go to San Rafael with Mr. Thomas in his car, to do +something about the case," Alix explained. "I drove them down, and at +the last minute Martin decided to go. So I marketed, and got the mail, +and came back, and the understanding is that we are to meet them at the +St. Francis for dinner, at six, and go to the Orpheum." +</p> + +<p> +"Is it almost ten?" Cherry said sleepily, gazing in surprise at the +clock that was visible through the open door. "I'm terribly ashamed! +And when did you get up, and silently make your bed, and hang up your +things?" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, early!" Alix answered, noncommittally. "I had a bath, and this is +my second breakfast!" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, who was reading a letter, did not hear her. Now she made some +inarticulate sound that made Alix look at her in quick concern. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry, what is it?" she exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +For answer Cherry tossed her the letter, written on a thick sheet of +lavender paper, which diffused a strong odour of scent. +</p> + +<p> +"Read that!" she said, briefly. And with a desperate air she dropped +her head on the table, and knotted her hands high above it. +</p> + +<p> +Fearfully, Alix picked up the perfumed sheet, and read, in a coarse and +sprawling, yet unmistakably feminine handwriting, the following words: +</p> + +<p> +DEAR MRS. LLOYD: Perhaps you would not feel so pleased with yourself if +you knew the real reason why your husband left Red Creek? It was +because of a quarrel he had with Hatty Woods. +</p> + +<p> +If you don't believe it you had better ask him about some of the +parties he had with Joe King's crowd, and where they were on the night +of August 28th, and if he knows anybody named Hatty Woods, and see what +he says. Ask him if he ever heard of Bopps' Hotel and when he was in +Sacramento last. If he denies it, you can show him this letter. +</p> + +<p> +There was no signature. +</p> + +<p> +Alix, who had read it first with a bewildered and suspicious look, read +it again, and flushed deeply at the sordid shame of it. She laid it +down, and looked in stunned conviction at her sister. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, who was breathing hard, raised her head, rested her chin on her +hands, elbows on the table, and stared at Alix defiantly. +</p> + +<p> +"There!" she said, almost with triumph. "There! Now, is that so easy? +Now, am I to just smile and agree and say 'Certainly, Martin,' 'Of +course, Martin dear!' Now you see--now you see! Now, am I to bear +THAT," she rushed on, her words suddenly violent. "And go on with +him--as his wife--when a common woman like that--" +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry, dear!" Alix said, distressedly. +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, well, you can't realize it; nobody but the woman to whom it +happens can!" Cherry interrupted her, covering her face with her hands. +"But let him say what he pleases now," she added, passionately, "let +him do what he pleases--I'll follow my own course from to-day on!" +</p> + +<p> +Alix, watching her fearfully, was amazed at the change in her. Cherry's +eyes were blazing, her cheeks pale. Her voice was dry and feverish, and +there was a sort of frenzy in her manner that Alix had never seen +before. To bring sunny little Cherry to this--to change the radiant, +innocent child that had been Cherry into this bitter and disillusioned +woman--Alix felt as if the whole world were going mad, and as if life +would never be sane and serene again for any one of them. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry, do you believe it?" she asked. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, roused from a moment of brooding silence, shrugged her +shoulders impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, of course I believe it!" she answered. +</p> + +<p> +"But, darling, we don't even know who wrote it. We have only this +woman's word for it--" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, LOOK at it--LOOK at it, Alix!" Cherry burst forth. "Do DECENT men +have letters like that sent to their wives? Is it probable that a good +man would do anything to rouse some busybody woman to write such a +letter about him?" +</p> + +<p> +"Well, but who is she, and what do you suppose she wrote it for?" Alix +wondered. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, I don't know. She got mad at him, perhaps. Or perhaps she is a +champion of this Woods woman. They had some quarrel--how do _I_ know? +But you can see that she is mad, and this is the way she gets even!" +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry, at least do Martin the justice to ask him about it!" Alix +pleaded, really frightened now. +</p> + +<p> +Her sister seemed not to hear her. She stopped her angry pacing, and +sat down at the table, and the misery in her beautiful eyes made Alix's +heart sink. +</p> + +<p> +"And that," Cherry said in a whisper, "is my husband!" +</p> + +<p> +She paused, staring down at the table, one hand supporting her +forehead, the other wandering idly among the breakfast things. Her look +was sombre and far away. Alix, standing, watched her distressedly, +through a long minute of silence. +</p> + +<p> +"Well!" Cherry said lifelessly, looking up at her sister with dulled +eyes. "What now? It's still 'for better or worse,' I suppose?" +</p> + +<p> +Alix sat down, and for a moment covered her face with a tight-pressed +hand. When she took it away, there was new serenity and resolution in +her tired face. +</p> + +<p> +"No," she said, with a great sigh, "I think perhaps you're right! He +hasn't--he should have no claim on you now!" +</p> + +<p> +"Alix," Cherry demanded, "would you forgive him?" +</p> + +<p> +"Perhaps I wouldn't," Alix said, after thought. +</p> + +<p> +"PERHAPS you wouldn't!" Cherry echoed, incredulously. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, I'm not very good," Alix said, hesitatingly. "But a vow is a +vow, you know. If it was limited, then my--my fulfillment of it would +be limited, I suppose. Of course," she added, honestly, "I'm talking +for myself only!" +</p> + +<p> +"And you would quietly forgive and forget!" demanded the little sister, +in bitter scorn. +</p> + +<p> +"I say I HOPE I would!" Alix corrected her. "Even if this IS true"--she +added, with a glance at the lavender letter--"still, I suppose the rule +of forgiving seventy times seven times--" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry interrupted her with a burst of bitter and rebellious weeping. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, my God, what shall I do!" she sobbed, with her bright head dropped +on her arm. Alix saw Kow come to the door, look at them speculatively, +and disappear, and thought in her shaken soul that things in a +household were demoralized indeed when pretense before the servants was +no longer maintained. +</p> + +<p> +"Don't cry, Cherry, Cherry!" she said, her own tears brimming over. She +came to kneel beside her sister, and they locked their arms about each +other, and their wet cheeks touched. "Don't cry, dear!" she said, +tenderly. "It'll all come straight, somehow, and we'll wonder why we +took it so hard!" +</p> + +<p> +"The thing that breaks--my--heart!" sobbed Cherry, clinging tight, "is +that it is all my fault!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, no; it's not, Cherry. You were too young. And it's only one of so +many thousands of unhappy marriages!" Alix argued, soothingly. "Now +listen to me, Sis," she began briskly, as soon as Cherry had somewhat +regained her composure. "We'll ascertain about this letter; that's only +fair. If Martin denies it--" +</p> + +<p> +"Of course he'll deny it!" Cherry interrupted, from the bitter +knowledge she had of him. +</p> + +<p> +Alix again felt daunted for a second by the sheer ugliness and +sordidness of the matter, but she returned to the charge bravely. +</p> + +<p> +"Suppose we get Peter to ask him," she suggested suddenly. "Peter has a +wonderful way of getting the truth out of people! Poor Cherry, the very +mention of his name makes her wince," Alix thought, watching her sister +sorrowfully. "If Martin can convince Peter that it is not true, then +that makes all the difference in the world," she added, aloud. "Then +you tell Martin frankly that you have the old house ready to live in, +and you want to live there. He--" +</p> + +<p> +"He'll never agree to that!" Cherry said, shaking her head. "But if +this is true?" she asked, again indicating the letter. +</p> + +<p> +"Then tell him that unless he agrees absolutely to a separation," Alix +said, "that you will get a divorce!" +</p> + +<p> +"And live here, alone, under that sort of a cloud?" Cherry said, with +watering eyes. "Oh, well!" she said, rising, and going toward the door. +"It's horrible--horrible--horrible--whatever I do! What is your +idea--that we should dine, and go to the Orpheum tonight as if nothing +had happened, and let all this wait until you can ask Peter to +cross-examine Martin?" +</p> + +<p> +"I wonder if Martin would tell ME?" Alix mused. +</p> + +<p> +"He'd tell you sooner than Peter!" Cherry prophesied. +</p> + +<p> +"Why couldn't I pretend that I opened that letter by mistake," Alix +said, thoughtfully, "and frighten him into admitting it, if it's true!" +</p> + +<p> +"You could," Cherry admitted, lifelessly. "But you may be sure it is +true enough!" she added. +</p> + +<p> +"Then leave it to me!" Alix said. "And don't feel too sad, Cherry. +You're young, and life may take a turn that changes everything for you. +You always have Peter--Peter and me, back of you!" +</p> + +<p> +"Alix, you're the best sister a girl ever had!" Cherry said, +passionately, putting her hand on Alix's shoulder. "I wish I were as +big as you are! And he's made me so wretched," whispered Cherry, with +trembling lips, "that sometimes I've been sick of life! But I will +investigate this letter, and if it's not true, I'll try again, Alix! +I'll go away with him, if he wants me to, or I'll live here--and study +French--and go to lectures with you--" +</p> + +<p> +"You darling!" Alix said, with an aching heart. And they smiled through +tears as they kissed each other. +</p> + +<p> +That night it was simply managed that Martin should be next to Alix, in +the loge at the theatre, and she began to question him seriously at +once. All through the strange, unnatural day that followed her night of +vigil she had been planning what she should say to him, but she and +Cherry had not spoken of the subject again. Cherry had dressed herself +with her usual dainty care, and now, with the violets Alix had given +her spraying in a great purple bunch at her breast, and her blue eyes +ringed and thoughtful under her soft little feathered hat, she was so +arrestingly lovely that Alix was well aware of the admiring glances +from all sides to which she was so superbly indifferent. +</p> + +<p> +"Martin," Alix began, "I read a letter intended for Cherry this +morning. I--I open all the mail!" +</p> + +<p> +She had to repeat it twice before he realized that there was something +behind her earnest and significant tone. Then she saw him stop twisting +his program, and veer about toward her. She murmured a question. +</p> + +<p> +"Do I what?" he asked, in an undertone instantly lowered. +</p> + +<p> +"Do you know a girl named Hatty Woods?" Alix repeated, cautiously. +</p> + +<p> +All hope died when she saw his face. He shot her a quick, suspicious +look, and his big mouth trembled with a scornful and contemptuous smile +and he looked away indifferently. Then he faced her, on guard. +</p> + +<p> +"What about her?" he asked, almost inaudibly. +</p> + +<p> +"Somebody wrote this letter about her," Alix stated, quietly. +</p> + +<p> +"Who wrote you about her? What'd she say?" he demanded quickly. +</p> + +<p> +"Just--I'll let you see it," she said. "I don't know who wrote it--it +wasn't signed. Do you--do you know her? Do you know Hatty Woods?" +</p> + +<p> +Martin smiled again, a superior yet ugly smile. It was the look of a +man approached in his own realm, threatened in his infallible fastness. +</p> + +<p> +"The less you have to do with girls like Hatty, the better!" he told +her. "You've got plenty to do without mixing up with her!" +</p> + +<p> +"She said--" Alix began. "The letter said--" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, sure, I know what she'd say!" Martin conceded, furious at Alix's +interference, trembling with anger and resentment, and only anxious to +close the conversation. "I know all about her and her kind. I think I +know who wrote that letter, too. I guess Joe King's wife knows +something about it. They're all alike! You give it to me to-morrow and +I'll manage it. There won't be any more!" +</p> + +<p> +"Martin," Alix whispered, gravely, "if you have given Cherry any +cause--" Her voice fell, and there was a silence. +</p> + +<p> +"There are a great many things in life that you don't understand, my +dear sister-in-law," Martin said reluctantly, nettled, but still +maintaining his air of lofty superiority, "a man's life is not a +woman's--isn't intended to be! If this woman says she has anything on +me--" +</p> + +<p> +"She said that you went to a place called Bopps' Hotel in Sacramento--" +Alix began, but he interrupted her. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, she did, did she?" he said, furiously, yet always in a cautious +undertone. "Well, now, I'll tell you something! She's going to have a +nice time proving that, and you can tell your sister--if this is a +frame-up, that I'll fight Hatty Woods and fifty Hatty Woods! I--" +</p> + +<p> +"Martin--for Heaven's sake!" Alix warned him, as she pressed her +violets against her face. +</p> + +<p> +"Well," he said, surlily, "now you know how I feel about it!" +</p> + +<p> +"Martin," Alix pleaded, feeling that her last hope was sinking away +from her, "can you deny her story?" +</p> + +<p> +He was silent, while a beaming young Jewess in an outrageous gown took +an encore for her song and dance. Then he turned again toward Alix with +the smile she had learned to hate. +</p> + +<p> +"You get Cherry to deny that she's never lost a chance to beat it away +from home ever since she was married," he said. "You get her to deny +that she has said over and over again that she never wanted children, +that her marriage was a mistake! You ask her to show you the letters +I've written her, asking her to come back, and then I'll show you the +answers I got!" +</p> + +<p> +"Mart," Alix said, sharply, "there's no use in your taking that tone +with me! I'm simply sick over the whole affair. I would do anything in +the world--I would put my hand in the fire to straighten it out!" +</p> + +<p> +She paused, arrested by some sudden thought. +</p> + +<p> +"I tell you I would put my hand in the fire to help," she said again, +in quieter tones. "But taking that attitude will do no good! If this +poor girl, this Hatty--" +</p> + +<p> +"I tell you to leave Hatty OUT of it!" Martin said. "The best thing you +can do is to let the whole thing alone!" +</p> + +<p> +But she saw that he was both nervous and apprehensive, and she knew +that the inference she and Cherry had drawn from the letter was a true +one. +</p> + +<p> +"Does Cherry know anything of this?" Martin presently muttered. +</p> + +<p> +"Do you want her to?" Alix asked, pointedly. +</p> + +<p> +He shrugged his shoulders with a great assumption of indifference. +</p> + +<p> +"If she wants to have it all dragged to light, why, she can go ahead!" +he remarked, carelessly. "I've left Red Creek, and--as I tell +you!--that woman will never write another letter, for I know the way to +shut her up, and I intend to do it. But if you and Cherry want the +whole thing aired in public, why, go ahead! I'm not stopping you!" +</p> + +<p> +"At least I think you ought to let Cherry lead her own life after +this!" Alix countered with spirit. +</p> + +<p> +"Live in your old house, eh?" he asked, resentfully, as he flipped the +pages of his program with a big thumb and stared at it with unseeing +eyes. "What does she want to live there for?" +</p> + +<p> +"The fact remains that she DOES," Alix persisted. +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, and have just as good a time as if she never had been married at +all!" he said. +</p> + +<p> +"You KNOW--" +</p> + +<p> +Alix was beginning the denial that she had given him so confidently +last night, but she interrupted herself, and stopped short. The +conviction rushed upon her in an overwhelming wave that she had no +right to repeat that denial now that the last dreadful twenty-four +hours had changed the whole situation, and that she herself had better +reason to suspect Cherry than either Martin or his gossiping aunt. She +sat sick and silent, unable to speak again, thinking only that it was +Peter that Mrs. Lloyd had seen with Cherry that day, and that there +must have been something in their attitude that revealed their secret +even to her first casual look. +</p> + +<p> +The vaudeville show whirled and crashed and rattled on its way. Martin +applauded heartily but involuntarily; Alix applauded mechanically. +Their conversation was closed. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, Cherry and Peter had their first opportunity to speak to +each other alone. It occurred to neither of them that it was strange to +find this chance in the rustling darkness of the big vaudeville house, +with several thousand of persons pressing all about them. To both the +thirst for speech was a burning necessity, and it was with an almost +dizzy sense of relief that Cherry turned to him with her first words. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter, I don't dare say much! Can you hear me?" +</p> + +<p> +"Perfectly!" he answered, looking at his folded program. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter, I've been thinking--about our plan, I mean! Martin plans to go +on Monday. But something has happened since I saw you this morning, +something that makes a difference! I had a letter, a letter from some +woman connecting his name with another woman, a Hatty Woods--she's +notorious in Red Creek--and this Joe King crowd that he went with--I +don't know who wrote the letter, or why she wrote," she said, hastily, +as Peter interpolated a question. "And I don't care! I haven't spoken +to Martin about it. But I've been thinking about it all day. And of +course it makes a difference to us--to you and me. As far as Martin +goes, I am free now; what is justice to Martin, and kindness to Martin, +will never count with me any more!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter wasted no words. His face was thoughtful. +</p> + +<p> +"He goes Monday," he said. "We can go Sunday." +</p> + +<p> +"Does the boat sail Sunday?" +</p> + +<p> +"I am sure of it. This is Thursday night. Your suitcase I checked again +yesterday. Was it only yesterday?" +</p> + +<p> +"That's all!" +</p> + +<p> +"We would have been on the train to-night, Cherry, flying toward New +Orleans!" +</p> + +<p> +Her small hand gripped his in the darkness. +</p> + +<p> +"If we only were!" he heard her breathe. +</p> + +<p> +He turned to her, so exquisite in her distress. Her breast was rising +and falling quickly. +</p> + +<p> +"Patience, sweetheart!" he said. "Patience for only a few days more! +To-morrow I'll make the arrangements. Sunday is only two days off." +</p> + +<p> +"Sunday will be day after day after to-morrow," she said whimsically. +</p> + +<p> +"Is Sunday the best day?" he questioned, thoughtfully. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, much the best!" Cherry said, her whole face glowing suddenly. "You +see, it's already arranged that I come in to the Olivers' Saturday +night, and help them get ready for their tea on Sunday. Alix is to stay +in the valley, and play the organ Sunday morning, and come in with +Martin at ten." +</p> + +<p> +"I suppose I'll have to come when they do!" he mused. +</p> + +<p> +"But isn't there that breakfast at the club on Sunday?" Cherry asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Porter's breakfast--yes. But I'm not going to that," Peter said, +stupidly. +</p> + +<p> +"Couldn't you say that you were?" she supplied, simply. +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, by George!" he agreed, brightening. "That fixes me! But now how +about you?" +</p> + +<p> +"Why, I am at the Olivers'!" she reminded him. "All I have to do is +walk out of the house at ten!" +</p> + +<p> +Their eyes met in a wild rush of triumph and hope. +</p> + +<p> +"This time we shall do it!" Peter said. "Your suitcase I'll have. You +have money?" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, plenty!" +</p> + +<p> +"Martin thinks you go with him Monday, eh?" +</p> + +<p> +"I hardly know what he thinks!" she answered, with a fluttered air. +"I've hardly known what I was doing or saying! He was to go to-morrow, +you know. But I told him that I wanted to get the whole house in +perfect order, in case Alix should ever find a tenant. We've worked +like beavers there!" +</p> + +<p> +"I know you have!" He smiled down at her, Peter's kind and radiant +smile. "After day after day after to-morrow," he said, "I shall see to +it that you never work too hard again!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Peter--you'll never be sorry?" she whispered. +</p> + +<p> +"Sorry! My dearest child, when you give your beauty and your youth to a +man almost twice your age, who has loved you all your life--do you +think there is much chance of it?" +</p> + +<p> +"Why SHOULDN'T it be one of the happy--marriages?" said Cherry after a +silence. +</p> + +<p> +"It will," he answered, confidently. "My dearest girl, I know something +of life and its disappointments and disillusionments! And I tell you +that I know that every hour you and I have together is going to be more +wonderful than the hour before! I tell you that as the weeks become +months, and the months become years, and the beauty and miracle of it +go on and on, we will think that what we feel for each other now is +only the shadow--the dream!" +</p> + +<p> +"But the beginning will be wonderful enough!" Cherry mused. "You and I, +breakfasting together, walking together, talking together, always just +we two! But, Peter," she said, suddenly, "one of us might die!" +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, THAT," he conceded, soberly, "that! It's all I'm afraid of, now!" +</p> + +<p> +"I am terribly afraid of it!" said Cherry, beginning to tremble. "If +you should die now, before Sunday! I never thought of it before--" +</p> + +<p> +"You mustn't think of it now, and I won't!" he said, quickly. "Why, we +have only two days to wait--!" +</p> + +<p> +"Only two!" she echoed, nervously. "I promised him to-night that I +would write to his mother about our coming--" +</p> + +<p> +"You talk as if you meant to go with Martin!" he said, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +"I know I do, sometimes, and that's one of the things that worries me!" +she answered, quickly. "So many things have happened, and I get so +confused, thinking," she went on, "that I am all mixed most of the +time! I arrange one thing as if I were going to do what Martin thinks I +am--go with him to Portland, I mean--at another time I'll get into long +talks with Alix of what divorces would mean, and all the time I am +straining toward you--and escape from it all! It worries and frightens +and puzzles me so," she confided, raising her lovely eyes to him, "that +I am almost afraid to speak at all for fear of betraying myself!" +</p> + +<p> +"Don't speak at all then!" he answered, smiling whimsically. +</p> + +<p> +"Shall I just let him think I am quietly going away with him on +Monday?" she asked, after a silence in which she was deeply thinking. +</p> + +<p> +"Does he know you had that letter?" Peter said. +</p> + +<p> +"No; Alix is going to speak to him about it." Cherry outlined the talk +that she and her sister had had at breakfast. +</p> + +<p> +"Then I shouldn't bring up the question at all," Peter decided, +quickly. "It would only mean an ugly and unnecessary scene. If you were +going to be here, it would be very different. Even then you might have +to face a terrible publicity and unpleasantness. But as it is, it's +much wiser to let him continue to think that you don't know anything +about it, and to let Alix think that you are ignoring the whole thing!" +</p> + +<p> +"Until Sunday!" she whispered. +</p> + +<p> +"Until Sunday." Peter glanced at Martin and Alix, who were talking +together absorbedly, in low tones. "My little sweetheart, I'll make all +this misery up to you!" he whispered. Her little hand was locked in his +for the rest of the evening. +</p> + +<p> +The vaudeville performance ended, and they went out into the cool +night, decided against a supper, found the car where Alix had parked it +in a quiet side street, and made their way to the ferry, and so home +under the dark low arch of a starless and moonless sky. Cherry shared +the driver's seat with her sister to-night; they spoke occasionally on +the long drive; everybody was weary and silent. Alix, racing between +Sausalito's low hills and the dark, odorous marshes, wondered if in the +packed theatre any other four hearts had borne the burden that these +four were bearing. +</p> + +<p> +The car flew on its way; the men, in the back seat, occasionally +exchanged brief, indifferent remarks. Cherry, staring straight ahead of +her, neither moved nor spoke, and Alix, at the wheel, watching the road +and the lights keenly, and listening to the complicated breathing of +the machinery, resumed again the endless chain of thought. +Peter--Cherry--Martin--Dad--the few people with whom her life concerned +wheeled in unceasing confusion through her brain, and always it was +herself, Alix, who would have died for them, who must somehow find the +solution. +</p> + +<p> +Morning came, a crystal autumn morning, and life went on. Peter and +Martin went away before Cherry came out to the porch, to find her +breakfast waiting, and Alix, in striped blue linen, cutting food for +the ducks. The peaceful day went by, and if there was any change at the +cabin it was a change for the better. Alix, who had been silent and +troubled for a little while, was more serene now, as usual concerned +for the comfort of her household, and as usual busy all day long with +her poultry and pigeons, her bee-keeping, stable, and dogs. Peter was +his courteous, gentle, interested self, more like the old Peter, who +had always been occupied with his music and his books, than like the +passionately metamorphosed Peter who had been so changed by love for +Cherry. Martin, satisfied with the general respects and consideration +with which he found himself surrounded, accepted life placidly enough; +perhaps he had been disturbed by the advent of the letter, perhaps he +was willing to let the question of an adjustment between Cherry and +himself rest. If she had been innocently indiscreet, he had also +yielded to temptation, not so innocently, and although Martin was not a +man to consider the question of morals between the sexes as evenly +balanced, still he had winced very uncomfortably under Alix's +cross-examination, and was not anxious to reopen the subject. "Let +by-gones be by-gones!" Martin said to himself, contentedly, as he ate, +slept, and smoked his endless cigars, chatted with Peter, followed Alix +about the farmyard, and expressed an occasional opinion that was +considerately received by the others. It amused him to help get the +house ready for a tenant, and from the fact that Cherry talked no more +of living there, and made no comment upon his frequent reference to +their departure on Monday, he deduced that she had come to her senses. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, too, was less unhappy than she had been. By avoiding Peter, by +refraining even in words and looks from the companionship for which she +so hungered by devoting herself to Alix, she managed to hold her +feelings tightly in leash. It cost her dear, for sometimes the thought +of what she was about to do swept her with a feeling of agony and +faintness hard to conceal, and the need for perpetual watchfulness was +exhausting to body and spirit. But even though Alix found that the +knowledge of the secret they shared without ever mentioning stood +between them like a screen, the sisters, busy about the house, had +wonderful hours together. +</p> + +<p> +Saturday came, a perfect day that filled the little valley to the brim +with golden sunshine. The mountain swam in a pale haze of gray-blue, +the sky was soft, unclouded, faintly azure. In the forest about the old +Strickland house not a breath of air stirred. Alix, driving alone to +the mountain cabin, stared in the morning freshness at the blue +overhead and said aloud, "Oh, what a day of gold!" +</p> + +<p> +The dog, sitting beside her on the front seat, flapped his tail in +answer to her voice, and she laughed at him. But the laugh was quickly +followed by a sharp sigh. +</p> + +<p> +"Saturday," she mused, "and Martin expects Cherry to go with him on +Monday! Expects her to go back with him to a life of misery for her, +existence with a man she hates! Oh, Cherry--my little sister!--there +can be no happiness for you there! And Peter! Peter is left behind to +me, who cannot comfort him, or still the ache that is tearing his +heart! My two loved ones, and what can I do to help them!" +</p> + +<p> +Driving slowly, on the noiseless pine-needles, she looked up at the +great, brown shafts of the trees through which the roadway wound like a +shelf. Streaks of sunlight filtered through them; the September air was +soft and sweet. The forest was like an old friend to Alix, and the time +she spent in it was always her quietest time. The tempered light, the +air scented with piney sweetness, the delicate summer humming of tiny +forest voices, the brief snap of twigs, and the rustling of tiny bodies +in the underbrush, these made the world in which she was most at home. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, why can't we always be like children, just happy to be free!" she +mused, as she left the forest and came in sight of the cabin. "How +happy we used to be, playing in these woods and going home tired and +hungry to Dad and supper! Buck," she said aloud, "a dog is happier than +a man, and perhaps"--and Alix smiled her whimsical smile, as the car +moved under the last oaks and was brought to a standstill close to the +house--"perhaps a tree is the happiest of all!" +</p> + +<p> +She had come up to the cabin to do the usual last little daily fussing +among the ducks and chickens and to bring Peter, if Peter had not gone +into town, back with her to Cherry's house. They had all dined in the +old Strickland house the night before, and because of a sudden rainfall +had decided to spend the night there, too. The Chinese boy who had been +helping the sisters with their housecleaning had been persuaded to cook +the dinner and get breakfast, and the evening about the old fireplace +had been almost too poignantly sweet. Martin, who had been mixing +cocktails, liked the role of host, and to the other three every inch of +the house was full of happy memories, softened and saddened by all that +had happened since the old days, by all that they knew and felt now, +and accompanied by the softly dripping rain on the roof and eaves as by +a plaintive obbligato. +</p> + +<p> +But suddenly, at about ten o'clock, Peter had surprised them all by +getting to his feet. He was going up to the cabin, he said--must go, in +fact. +</p> + +<p> +"In all the rain!" they had protested. +</p> + +<p> +"In all the rain," he answered, shaking himself into his coat; he liked +rain. He would rather walk, please, he told Alix, when she offered to +drive him up in the car. Bewildered and a little apprehensive, she let +him go. To Cherry, who seemed to feel suddenly sad and uneasy, Alix +laughed about it, but she was secretly worried herself, and immediately +after breakfast the next morning decided to run up to the cabin in the +car and assure herself that everything was right there. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, who had not slept and who was pale, had come out to the car, +her distracted manner increasing Alix's sense that something was +gravely amiss. The sisters had loitered at the car a moment in the +exquisite morning freshness. +</p> + +<p> +"Remember the day the rose vine came down and you crawled through it?" +Alix had asked, looking back at the house. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, don't!" Cherry had protested faintly. +</p> + +<p> +"Why not?" her sister had asked, tenderly reproachful. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, because it makes me so sad to think how happy we were!" Cherry had +answered, making an effort to speak lightly. "It's such a glorious +morning," she had added, "I wish I were going to drive up with you." +</p> + +<p> +"Why don't you?" Alix had said, eagerly. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh--too much to do here!" Cherry had answered, vaguely. She had looked +at her sister as if she would like to speak, smiled uncertainly, and +had gone back to the house. Alix had started on her trip with a heavy +heart, but the half-hour's run soothed her in spite of herself, and now +she reached the cabin in a much more cheerful mood. +</p> + +<p> +Peter was nowhere about, and as she plunged into the work of house and +farmyard she supposed, without giving the matter a conscious thought, +that he had gone to the city. +</p> + +<p> +"Mis' Peter not go train," Kow announced, presently. +</p> + +<p> +All Alix's vague suspicions awakened. +</p> + +<p> +"Not go train?" she asked, with a premonitory pang. +</p> + +<p> +Kow made a large gesture, as indicating affairs disorganized. +</p> + +<p> +"Him no go to bed," he further stated. +</p> + +<p> +Alix stopped the busy chopping that she was carrying on at the end of +the kitchen table, and looked at the Chinese boy fearfully. +</p> + +<p> +"Mr. Peter not go to bed?" she echoed with a sick heart. +</p> + +<p> +"No sleep!" Kow announced, positively. And pleased with her tense +interest, he added, "Boss come late. He walkin' on porch." +</p> + +<p> +"He came in late and walked on the porch!" Alix echoed in a low tone, +as if to herself. "And you say he didn't sleep, Kow?" +</p> + +<p> +"Bed all same daytime," the boy said. And with the artless laugh of his +race he added, "_I_ go sleep." +</p> + +<p> +"You slept, of course," Alix answered, absently. "Where Mr. Peter go +now?" she asked. "He have some coffee?" +</p> + +<p> +"No eat," the boy answered. He indicated the direction of the creek, +and after a while Alix, with an icy heart, went to the bridge and the +pool where Peter had first found Cherry only a few weeks ago. +</p> + +<p> +He was standing, staring vaguely at the low and lisping stream, and +Alix felt a great pang of pity when she saw him. He came to her +smiling, but as Cherry had smiled, with a wan and ghastly face. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter, you're not well?" Alix said. "I think--I am a little upset," he +answered. They walked back to the house together. Alix ordered him to +take a hot bath, and made him drink some coffee, when, refreshed and +grateful, he came out to the porch half an hour later. They shared the +little meal that was her luncheon and his breakfast. +</p> + +<p> +"And now we've got to go down and get the others, for they're coming up +here for dinner," Alix said. "Do you--do you feel up to tennis?" she +asked, anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +"Sure I do!" Peter answered with an effort. +</p> + +<p> +"Don't have to, you know," she assured him, feeling a great desolation +sweep her. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, I'd like it. It's a wonderful day," he answered, politely. +</p> + +<p> +He followed her to the car and got in the front seat beside her. +</p> + +<p> +"You're awfully good to me," he said, briefly, when they were going +down the long grade. +</p> + +<p> +Alix did not answer immediately, and he thought that she had not heard. +She ran the big machine through the valley, where the dry, glaring heat +of the day burned mercilessly, stopped at the post-office, and still in +silence began the climb toward the old house. The roads were all narrow +here, but she could have followed them in the dark, he knew, and he +understood that it was not her driving that made her face so thoughtful +and kept her eyes from meeting his. +</p> + +<p> +On one side of the shelf-like mountain road rose the sharp hillside, +clothed in close-packed, straight-rising redwoods; on the other the +ground fell away so precipitously to the tiny thread of creek below +that they looked down upon the water through the top branches of the +trees. Years ago, when he had first entrusted her with the car, Peter +had been somewhat concerned for Alix's safely, but now he was secretly +proud of her sureness of touch and of the generosity and +self-confidence that prompted her to give the inner right of way to +every lumbering express van or surrey that she met, and risk the more +dangerous passing herself. +</p> + +<p> +"You say I'm good to you, Pete," she surprised him by saying suddenly. +"I hope I am. For you've been very good to me, my dear. There's only +one thing in life now that I haven't got, and want. And that, you +can't, unfortunately, get for me." +</p> + +<p> +He had flushed darkly, and he spoke with a little effort. +</p> + +<p> +"I'd like to try!" +</p> + +<p> +She ignored the invitation for a few minutes, and for an instant of +panic he thought he saw her lip tremble. But when she turned to him, it +was with her usual smile. +</p> + +<p> +"It's only that I would like to have you--and--and Martin--and Cherry, +as happy as I am!" she said, quickly. And a second later the mood was +gone as she turned the car in at the home gate and exclaimed, "There's +Cherry now!" +</p> + +<p> +There was Cherry; Peter's heart gave a leap at the sight of her. Just a +woman's slender figure, half obscured by blowing lines of fresh, dry +linen, just white arms, where the snowy frill of her gown fell back, +and blue eyes under bright, loose, corn-coloured hair, but Peter could +see nothing else in all the world. +</p> + +<p> +"Martin's somewhere about," Cherry said, as Peter joined her, and Alix +stopped the car within conversational range. "I was passing these, and +I thought I'd help the boy get his clothes in." +</p> + +<p> +"Here, let me do that," Peter exclaimed. Alix remarking that she would +turn the car so that she might later start on the grade, disappeared, +and the two were alone with their arms full of the stiff and fragrant +cleanness of the linen in the sweetness of the afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +"Just--just fold them roughly," stammered Cherry, hardly conscious of +what she was saying, "and put them in the basket--" +</p> + +<p> +Peter did not hear the words. But he heard the wonderful voice; he saw +the red sweetness of the mouth, saw the quick glances of the averted +eyes, the white neck with its film of gold hair blowing across it. +</p> + +<p> +He murmured something inarticulate in reply, trying to control the +great wave of happiness and emotion that rose over him. They were +together again, after what a night--and what a day!--and that was all +that mattered. They spoke confusedly, in brief monosyllables, and were +silent, their hands touching on the line, their eyes meeting only +furtively and briefly. +</p> + +<p> +"Can you walk up to the cabin with me?" Peter asked. "I want so much to +speak to you. Everything's all arranged for tomorrow. I've got tickets +and reservations. Your suitcase is checked in the Oakland ferry +waiting-room. All you have to think of is yourself. Now, in case of +missing the boat again--which isn't conceivable, but we must be ready +for anything!--I shall go straight to the club. You must telephone me +there. Just go off to-night quietly, get as much sleep as you can, and +keep your wits about you." +</p> + +<p> +"Tell me our plans again," Cherry faltered. +</p> + +<p> +"It's perfectly simple," he said, giving her anxious face a concerned +glance. "You are going to the Olivers'. I go in, in the morning, +presumably for the Porter breakfast, but really to get your suitcase +and my own and get to the boat. I shall be there at half-past ten. You +get there well before eleven--you won't see me. But go straight on +board, and ask for Mrs. Joyce's cabin. Wait for me there!" +</p> + +<p> +"But--but suppose you don't come!" +</p> + +<p> +"I'll be there before you. It is better for us not to meet upstairs. +But to be sure, I'll telephone you at Minna Oliver's at about nine +o'clock tomorrow morning. I'll just tell you that I'm on my way and +that everything is all right! Have you your heavy coat?" +</p> + +<p> +"I will have," she answered. "I've not got much in the suitcase," she +added with an enchanting flush. +</p> + +<p> +"You shall buy more in New Orleans on Tuesday," he promised her. "I've +made no plans beyond that." +</p> + +<p> +"A hat?" Cherry asked, with uplifted, silky lashes giving a childish +look to her blue eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Peter, tightening his fingers on hers, gave a great, joyous laugh of +utter surprise and adoration, as, leaning toward her, he caught her +bashful murmur. +</p> + +<p> +"You need that?" he whispered. +</p> + +<p> +"Well--MOST" she answered, seriously. +</p> + +<p> +"Do you realize," he asked, "that you are the most delicious child that +ever lived?" +</p> + +<p> +"No, I don't know that," she said, drooping her head, suddenly +self-conscious. +</p> + +<p> +"Do you realize that by this time tomorrow we shall be out at sea," he +added, "leaning on the rail--watching the Pacific race by--and +belonging to each other forever and ever?" +</p> + +<p> +The picture flooded her face with happy colour. "It's tomorrow at +last!" she said, wonderingly, as they walked slowly toward the house. +"I thought it would never be. It's only a few hours more now." +</p> + +<p> +"How will you feel when it's TO-DAY?" he asked. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Peter, I shall be so glad when it's all over, and when the letters +are written, and when we've been together for a year," she answered, +fervently. "I know it will be all as we have planned, but--but if it +were over!" +</p> + +<p> +They had reached the side door now, and were mounting the three steps +together. +</p> + +<p> +"Be patient until tomorrow," he whispered. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh," she said softly, "I shan't breathe until tomorrow." +</p> + +<p> +Leaning across her to push back the light screen door, he found himself +face to face with Alix. In the dark entryway Peter and Cherry had not +seen her, had not heard her move. Peter cursed his carelessness; he +could not remember, in the utter confusion of the moment, just what he +and Cherry had said, but if it was of a betraying nature, they had +betrayed themselves. One chance in a hundred that she had not heard! +</p> + +<p> +Yet, if she was acting, she was acting superbly. Cherry had turned +scarlet and had given him an open glance of consternation, but Alix did +not seem to see it. She addressed Peter, but when he found himself +physically unable to answer, she continued the conversation with no +apparent consciousness of his stumbling effort to appear natural. +</p> + +<p> +"There you are! Are we going to have any tennis? It's after two o'clock +now." +</p> + +<p> +"Two seventeen," Martin said, following her out of the house and +slipping his big watch back into his pocket. They all gathered in one +of the reclaimed garden paths, assuming a deep interest in the time. +</p> + +<p> +"I had no idea it was so late," Peter said. +</p> + +<p> +"I knew it was getting on," Cherry added, utterly at random. +</p> + +<p> +"Go in and tell the boy we won't be back until tomorrow," Martin +suggested to his wife. "Unless you told him, Alix?" he added, turning +toward her. +</p> + +<p> +"I beg your pardon?" Her face was very pale, and she started as if from +deep thought as she spoke. +</p> + +<p> +"You could all come down here to sleep," Cherry said, "and have +breakfast here!" +</p> + +<p> +"I have to go into town rather early tomorrow," Peter remarked. +"Porter's giving a breakfast at the Bohemian Club." +</p> + +<p> +"Why not walk up to the cabin?" Cherry suggested in a shaking voice. +</p> + +<p> +"I have to take the car up. You three walk! Come on, anybody who wants +to ride!" Alix said. +</p> + +<p> +"They can walk," Martin said, getting into the front seat. "Me for the +little old bus!" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry came out of the house with her hat on, and Buck leaped before +her into the back seat. Alix watched her as she stepped up on the +running board, and saw the colour flicker in her beautiful face. +</p> + +<p> +"I thought you were going to walk?" Peter said, nervously. He had +sauntered up to them with an air of indifference. +</p> + +<p> +"Shall I?" faltered Cherry. She looked at Alix, who had not yet climbed +into the car and was pulling on her driving gloves. Alix, toward whose +face the dog was making eager springs, did not appear interested, so +Cherry turned to Martin. "Walk with us, Mart?" she said. +</p> + +<p> +"Nix," Martin said, comfortably, not stirring. +</p> + +<p> +"I'll be home before you, Pete, and wait for you," Alix said. She +looked at him irresolutely, as if she would have added more, but +evidently decided against it and spoke again only in reference to the +dog. "Keep Buck with you, will you, Pete?" she said. "He's getting too +lazy. No, sir!" she reproached the animal affectionately. "You shall +not ride! Well, the dear old Bucky-boy, does he want to come along?" +</p> + +<p> +And she knelt down and put her arms about the animal, and laid her +brown cheek against his head. +</p> + +<p> +"You old fool!" she said, shaking him gently to and fro. "You've got to +stay with Peter. Old Buck--!" Suddenly she was on her feet and had +sprung into her place. +</p> + +<p> +"Hold him, Pete!" she said. "Goodbye, Sis dear! All right, Martin?" +</p> + +<p> +The engine raced; the car slipped smoothly into gear and vanished. +Peter and Cherry stood looking at each other. +</p> + +<p> +"Give them a good start, or Buck will catch them," Peter said, his body +swaying with the frantic jumping of the straining dog. But to himself +he said, with a sense of shock: "Alix knows!" +</p> + +<p> +Buck was off like a rocket when he finally set him free; his feathery +tail disappeared between the columns of the redwoods. Without speaking, +Cherry and Peter started after him. +</p> + +<p> +"And now that we are alone together," Cherry said, after a few minutes, +"there seems to be nothing to say! We've said it all." +</p> + +<p> +"Nothing to say!" Peter echoed. "Alix knows," he said in his heart. +</p> + +<p> +"Whatever we do, it all seems so--wrong!" Cherry said with watering +eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"Whatever we do is wrong," he agreed, soberly. +</p> + +<p> +"But we go?" she said on a fluttering breath. +</p> + +<p> +"We MUST go!" Peter answered. And again, like the ominous fall of a +heavy bell-tongue, the words formed in his heart: "Alix knows. Alix +knows." +</p> + +<p> +He thought of the afternoon, only a few weeks ago, when Cherry's beauty +had made so sudden and so irresistible an appeal to him, and of the +innocent delight of their luncheons together, when she had first +confided in him, and of the days of secret and intense joy that her +mere nearness and the knowledge that he would see her had afforded him. +It had all seemed so fresh, so natural, so entirely their own affair, +until the tragic day of Martin's reappearance and the hour of agonized +waiting at the boat for the Cherry who did not come. There had been no +joyous self-confidence in that hour, none in the distressed hour at the +Orpheum, and the hour just past, when Cherry's rarely displayed passion +had wrenched from him his last vestige of doubt. +</p> + +<p> +But this was the culminating unhappiness, that he should know, from +Alix's brave and gentle and generous look as they parted, that Alix +knew. He had, in the wild rush and hurry of his thoughts, no time now +to analyze what their love must mean to her, but it hurt him to see on +her happy face those lines of sternness and gravity, to see her bright +and honest eyes shadowed with that new look of pain. +</p> + +<p> +It was too late now to undo it; he and Cherry must carry their +desperate plan to a conclusion now, must disappear--and forget. They +had tried, all this last dreadful week, they had both tried, to +extinguish the flames, and they had failed. But to Peter there was no +comforting thought anywhere. Wrong would be done to Martin, to Alix, to +Cherry--and more than even these, wrong to himself, to the ideal of +himself that had been his for so many years, to the real Peter Joyce. +</p> + +<p> +"If I had it all to do over again, I should not come here," Cherry +began, breathlessly. +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, if we had it all to do over again!" Looking back half a dozen +years, how simple it all seemed! How uncomplicated life was, in those +old days when the doctor and his girls had teased him, and consulted +him, and made him one of themselves. "What a web, Cherry!" he said, +sadly. "If Anne hadn't made her claim, you would not have been kept +here all these weeks; if the financial question hadn't been raised, you +must have stayed in Red Creek, simply because you couldn't well have +done anything else." +</p> + +<p> +"And if I had been with Martin, this horrible business of that girl's +letter wouldn't have happened," she added, bravely. "Oh, yes--that's +quite true!" she interrupted him, as he interpolated a bitter protest. +"Mart has no particular principle about it, but he never would have got +in with that crowd if I had been there. So that once more," she ended, +sadly, "I can say that I have made a mess of things. Listen, that's +Buck!" she interrupted herself, as the dog's loud and violent barking +reached them from beyond a turn in the twisting road. "He didn't catch +them, then." +</p> + +<p> +The next instant a woman came up the road, running, and making a queer, +whimpering noise that Cherry never forgot. She was a stranger to them, +but she ran toward them, making the odd, gasping noise with much dry +mouthing, and with wild eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Horror was in her aspect, and horror was the emotion that the first +glimpse of her awakened vaguely in their hearts, but as she saw them +she suddenly found voice for so hideous a scream that Cherry's knees +failed her, and Peter sprang forward with a shout. +</p> + +<p> +He gripped the woman's arm, and her frantic eyes were turned to him. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, my God!" she cried in a hoarse, cawing voice. "My God! They're +over the bank--they're over the bank!" +</p> + +<p> +"Who?" Peter shouted, his heart turning to ashes. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, the car--the automobile!" the woman mouthed. "Oh, my God--I saw it +go! I saw it fall! Oh, God, save them-oh, God, take them, don't let +them suffer that way!" +</p> + +<p> +They were all running now, running with desperate speed down the long +road, about the curves, on and on toward the frantic noise of the dog's +barking, and toward another noise, the sound of a human voice twisted +and wild with agony. +</p> + +<p> +The strange woman was crying out wildly; Cherry was sobbing a prayer. +Peter, without knowing that he spoke at all, was repeating over and +over again the words: "Not Alix-my God!--it cannot be--she has never +had an accident before-not Alix!" +</p> + +<p> +A last curve, and they knew. Over one of the sharpest and ugliest of +the descending precipices, crashing down through the saplings and +underbrush and striking the trunks of a score of trees on its way, the +heavy car had fallen like a boulder. And Peter saw that it was Alix's +car, and with a great cry he sprang over the bank and, slipping and +stumbling, followed its mad course down almost to the dry creek-bed in +the canyon, and fell on his knees beside the huddled figure that, erect +and strong, in its striped blue gingham, had been Alix only a few short +minutes ago. +</p> + +<p> +She had been flung clear of the car, and although almost every bone in +her body was broken, by some miracle the face, except for a deep cut +where the brown hair met the tanned forehead, was untouched. And as he +caught her in his arms and bent over her with the bitterness of death +stopping his own heart, a soft, thick braid loosened and fell like the +touch of her hand upon his own, and it seemed to him that in the +tranquil face and in the very look of the closed and fast-shadowing +eyelids he caught a glimpse of Alix's old smile. +</p> + +<p> +Peter forgot everything else in the world. He held her close to him and +put his face against her face, and perhaps she had never so truly been +his own as in this moment of their parting, when the quiet autumn +woodland, shot with long shafts from the sinking sun, rang with his +bitter cry: +</p> + +<p> +"No, Alix--not dead! My wife--my wife!" +</p> + +<p> +There were other men and women gathering fast now, and the whole little +valley was beginning to ring with the tragedy. After a while some +sympathetic man touched Peter on the arm to say that Mrs. Lloyd had +fainted, and that if he would please tell them what to do about the +other man--he was not yet dead-- +</p> + +<p> +Peter roused himself, and with help from half a dozen hands on all +sides he carried Alix up to the road and laid her upon a motor robe +that some kindly spectator had spread in the deep dust. AH about he +heard the quick, horrified breathing and muttering of the shocked and +sympathetic neighbours who had gathered, but to him there was a brassy +light in the world and a hideous taste of inky bitterness in the very +air he breathed, and he recognized nobody. +</p> + +<p> +Presently he was conscious that a small, slight woman with disorderly +fair hair and with her face streaked with dust and tears was standing +beside him, and looking down at her, he saw that it was Cherry. +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, Cherry?" he said, moistening his dry lips. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter," she said, "they say Martin's living--he was screaming--" She +grew deathly pale, and faintness swept over her, but she mastered it. +"He was caught by that tree," she said. "And he is living. Will you +tell them--tell one of these men--that if he will help me, we can drive +him home. If you'll tell him that, then I'll get a doctor--" +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, I will," Peter said, not stirring. His eyes had the look of a +sleep-walker; he nodded slowly and gravely at her, like a very old man. +"You--" he said to a man who had stopped his car near by and who was +pressing sympathetically close. "Will you--?" +</p> + +<p> +"If you'll sit in the back seat, dear, and just rest his poor head," a +woman said to Cherry. Peter saw that they were lifting Martin's big, +senseless form in tender hands and carrying it through the little +group. There was a shudder as Martin moaned deeply. Peter went and sat +on the low bank by Alix again, and lifted one of her limp hands, and +held it. Ah, if in God's mercy and goodness she might moan, he thought, +that one slight ray of hope would flood all the world with light for +him again! But she did not stir. +</p> + +<p> +"Gone?" said Cherry's heartrending voice, a mere whisper, beside him. +</p> + +<p> +He turned upon her lifeless eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"Gone," he echoed. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Alix--my darling! My own big sister!" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry sobbed, falling to her knees and passionately kissing the +peaceful face. "Oh, Alix, dearest!" +</p> + +<p> +The women about broke into tears. Peter pressed his hand close against +his aching eyeballs, wishing that he might cry. +</p> + +<p> +"She drove here," he heard a man's voice saying in the silence, "and +she must have lost control of her car for a minute. Then--do you +see?--the wheel slipped on the bank. Once it got this far, no power in +God's earth--" +</p> + +<p> +"No power in God's earth!" another man's voice said in solemn +confirmation. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter," Cherry said, "will you come to me as soon as you can? I shall +need you." +</p> + +<p> +"As soon as I can," he answered, absently. +</p> + +<p> +The car drove away, and he heard Martin moan again as it moved. +</p> + +<p> +"Joyce," said a man's kind voice close beside him. He recognized the +voice rather than the distressed face of an old friend and neighbour. +"Joyce, my dear fellow," he urged, affectionately, "tell us what we may +do, and we'll see to it. Pull yourself together, my dear old chap. Now, +shall I telephone for an--an ambulance? You must help us just a little +here, and then we'll spare you everything else." +</p> + +<p> +"Thank you, Fred," Peter answered after a moment, during which he +looked seriously and studiously at his friend, as if ascertaining +through unseen mists and barriers the identity of the speaker. "Thank +you," he said. "Will you help me take--my wife--home?" +</p> + +<p> +"You wish it that way?" the other man said, anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +"Please," Peter answered, simply. And instantly there was moving and +clearing in the crowd, a murmuring of whispered directions. +</p> + +<p> +After a while they were at the mountain cabin, and Kow, with tears +running down his yellow face, was helping them. Then Peter and his +friend were walking up over the familiar trails, he hardly knew where, +in the late twilight, and then they went into the old living room, and +Alix was lying there, splendid, sweet, untouched, with her brave, brown +forehead shadowed softly by her brown hair, and her lashes resting upon +her cheeks, and her fingers clasped about the stems of three great, +creamy roses. +</p> + +<p> +There were other flowers all about, and there were women in the room. +White draperies fell with sweeping lines from the merciful veiling of +the crushed figure, and Alix might have been only asleep, and dreaming +some heroic dream that lent that secret pride and joy to her mouth and +filled those closed eyes with a triumph they had never known in life. +</p> + +<p> +Peter stood and looked down at her, and the men and women drew back. +But although the muscles of his mouth twitched, he did not weep. He +looked long at her, while an utter silence filled the room, and while +twilight deepened into dark over the cabin and over the mountain above +it. +</p> + +<p> +Something cold touched his hand, and he heard the dog whimper. Without +turning his head or moving his eyes from Alix's face, he pressed his +fingers on the silky head; his breast rose on one agonized breath, but +he controlled it. Buck was as still as his master, sensing, in +unfailing dog-fashion, that something was wrong. +</p> + +<p> +"So that was your way out, Alix?" Peter said in the depth of his soul. +"That was your solution for us all? You would go out of life, away from +the sunshine and the trees and the hills that you loved, so that Cherry +and I should be saved? I was blind not to see it. I have been blind +from the very beginning." +</p> + +<p> +Silence. The room was filling with shadows. On the mantel was a deep +bowl of roses that he remembered watching her cut--was it yesterday or +centuries ago? +</p> + +<p> +"I was wrong," he said. "But I think you would be sorry to have me +face--what I am facing now. You were always so forgiving, Alix; you +would be the first to be sorry." +</p> + +<p> +He put his hand over the tigerish pain that was beginning to reach his +heart. His throat felt thick and choked, and still he did not cry. +</p> + +<p> +"An hour ago," he said, "if it had been that the least thought of what +this meant to you might have reached me an hour ago, it would not have +been too late. Alix, one look into your eyes an hour ago might have +saved us all! Fred," Peter said aloud, with a bitter groan, clinching +tight the hands of the old friend who had crept in to stand beside him +"Fred, she was here, in all her health and joy and strength only today. +And now--" +</p> + +<p> +"I know--old man--" the other man muttered. He looked anxiously at +Peter's terrible face. In the silence the dog whimpered faintly. But +when Peter, after an endless five minutes, turned away, it was to speak +to his friend in an almost normal voice. +</p> + +<p> +"I must go down and see Cherry, Fred. She took her husband to the old +house; they were living there." +</p> + +<p> +"Helen will stay here," the man assured him, quickly. "I'll drive you +down and come back here. We thought perhaps a few of us could come here +to-morrow afternoon, Peter," he added timidly, with his reddened eyes +filling again, "and talk of her a little, and pray for her a little, +and then take her to--to rest beside the old doctor--" +</p> + +<p> +"I hadn't thought about that," Peter answered, still with the air of +finding it hard to link words to thought. "But that is the way she +would like it. Thank you--and thank Helen for me--" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Peter, to do anything--" the woman faltered. "She came to us, you +know, when the baby was so ill--day after day--my own sister couldn't +have been more to us!" +</p> + +<p> +"Did she?" Peter asked, staring at the speaker steadily. "That was like +her." +</p> + +<p> +He went out of the house and got into a waiting car, and they drove +down the mountain. Alix had driven him over this road day before +yesterday--yesterday--no, it was today, he remembered. +</p> + +<p> +"Thank God I don't feel it yet as I shall feel it, Thompson!" he said, +quietly. The man who was driving gave him an anxious glance. +</p> + +<p> +"You must take each day as it comes," he answered, simply. +</p> + +<p> +Peter nodded, folded his arms across his chest, and stared into the +early dark. There was no other way to go than past the very spot where +the horror had occurred, but Thompson told his wife later that poor +Joyce had not seemed to know it when they passed it. Nor did he give +any evidence of emotion when they reached the old Strickland house and +entered the old hallway where Cherry had come flying in, a few short +years ago, with Martin's first kiss upon her lips. +</p> + +<p> +Two doctors, summoned from San Francisco, were here, and two nurses. +Martin had been laid upon a hastily moved bed in the old study, to be +spared the narrow stairs. The room was metamorphosed, the whole house +moved about it as about a pivot, and there was no thought but for the +man who lay, sometimes moaning and sometimes ominously still, waiting +for death. +</p> + +<p> +"He cannot live!" whispered Cherry, ghastly of face, and with the utter +chaos of her soul and brain expressed by her tumbled frock and the +carelessly pushed back and knotted masses of her hair. "His arm is +broken, Peter, and his leg crushed--they don't dare touch him! And the +surgeon says the spine, too--and you see his head! Oh, God! it is so +terrible," she said in agony, through shut teeth, knotting her hands +together, "it is too terrible that he is breathing NOW, that life is +there NOW, and that they cannot hold it!" +</p> + +<p> +She led Peter into the sitting room, where the doctors were waiting. +The nurses came and went; the lamps had been lighted. Both the +physicians rose as Peter came in, and he knew that they had been told +that this was the man whose wife had been killed that day. Their manner +expressed the sympathy they did not voice. Peter sat down with them. +</p> + +<p> +"Is there any hope?" he asked, when Cherry had gone away on one of the +restless, unnecessary journeys with which she was filling the endless +hours. One man shook his head, and in the silence they heard Martin +groan. +</p> + +<p> +"It is possible he may weather it, of course," the older man said, +doubtfully. "He is coming out of that first stupor, and we may be able +to tell better in a short time. The fact that he is living at all +indicates a tremendous vitality." +</p> + +<p> +Thoughtfully and gravely they exchanged technical phrases. Cherry's +Chinese boy brought in a tray, and both the other men ate and drank. +Peter nodded a negative without a change of expression, but presently +he roused himself to replenish the fire. The clock ticked and ticked in +the stillness. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry came to the door to say "Doctor!" on a burst of tears. The +physicians departed at once to the study, and Peter was immediately +summoned to assist them in handling the big frame of the patient. +Martin was thoroughly conscious now; his face chalk white. Cherry, +agonized, knelt beside the bed, her frightened eyes moving from face to +face. +</p> + +<p> +There was a brief consultation, then Cherry and Peter were banished. +</p> + +<p> +"Don't worry, dear," said one of the nurses, coming out of the +sick-room. "It's just that Doctor Henry thinks he would be more +comfortable if we could get the arm and leg set! You see, now that he's +conscious and is running just a little temperature--" +</p> + +<p> +"Much fever?" Cherry asked, sharply. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, nothing at all, dear!" the nurse hastened to say. "The only thing +is, that setting the arm and leg will ease the pain and save his +strength." She bustled off for basins, bandages, and hot water. In the +silence Martin's groans occasionally broke. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, her eyes on the study door, stood biting her fingers in frenzy. +When from the sound of Martin's voice she realized that he was being +hurt, she looked at Peter in agony. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, why do they do that--why do they do that? Torturing him for +nothing!" he heard her whisper. "Go in and--go in and do something!" +she urged, incoherently. +</p> + +<p> +But the sounds had stopped, and there was a blessed interval of +silence. The clock on the mantel sounded eight in swift, silvery +strokes, and presently a sympathetic nurse came silently in with a tray +holding two cups of hot soup. Cherry shut her eyes and shook her head. +</p> + +<p> +"Please, Cherry--you need it!" Peter pleaded, carrying her a smoking +cup. She protested again with a gesture, looked wearily into his eyes, +and drank the soup docilely, like a child. +</p> + +<p> +"You, too, Peter!" she said, suddenly rousing herself. Peter gulped +down his own cupful, waved away the sandwiches that were on the tray, +and took the chair opposite the one in which Cherry was sitting. +</p> + +<p> +The clock presently struck the half-hour, but neither spoke. Cherry's +pallor, her air of fatigue and bewilderment, and the familiar setting +of the old environment made her seem a child again. Peter watched her +with a confused sense that the whole frightful day had been a dream. +Once she looked up and met his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"He can't live," she said in a whisper. +</p> + +<p> +"Perhaps not," Peter answered very low. Cherry returned to her sombre +musing. +</p> + +<p> +"We didn't see this end to it, did we?" she said with a pitiful smile +after a long while. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, no--NO!" Peter said, shutting his eyes, and with a faint, negative +movement of his head. +</p> + +<p> +"We wouldn't have had this happen--" Cherry began. Her lips trembled, +her whole face wrinkled, and she put her hand across her eyes and +pressed it there with a gesture of forlornness and sorrow that wrenched +Peter's heart. Her tears began to fall fast. +</p> + +<p> +"Poor Cherry--if I could spare you all this!" he said, knotting his +fingers and feeling for the first time the prick of bitter tears +against his eyelids. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, there is nothing you can do," she said faintly and wearily after a +while. And she whispered, as if to herself, "Nothing--nothing--nothing!" +</p> + +<p> +Then there was silence again. The lamps burned softly; the fire sucked +and flickered; a chilling air, full of autumn sadness, began to creep +from the corners of the room. Peter's eyes moved over the backs of the +old books, Dickens and Thackeray and the "Household Book of Verse," +moved to the faded photograph of Cherry's mother on the mantel, a +beautiful woman in the big sleeves of the late nineties. +</p> + +<p> +The doctors came back; there was a little stir and rearrangement as +they seated themselves. +</p> + +<p> +"Any change?" Cherry asked, cautiously. +</p> + +<p> +"No change." Both men shook their heads. +</p> + +<p> +"Any--any hope?" she faltered. +</p> + +<p> +The physicians exchanged glances. No word was spoken, but the look in +their faces, the faint narrowing of eyes and compressing of lips, gave +her her answer. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap23"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XXIII +</h3> + +<p> +It was all strange and bewildering, thought Peter. It was not like +anything he had ever connected in his thoughts with Alix, yet it was +all for her. +</p> + +<p> +The day was warm and still, and the little church was packed with +flowers, and packed with people. Women were crying, and men were +crying, too, rather to his dazed surprise. The organ was straining +through the warm, fragrant air, and the old clergyman, whose venerable, +leonine head, in its crown of snowy hair, Peter could see clearly, +spoke in a voice that was thickened with tears. Strangers, or almost +strangers, had been touching Peter's hand respectfully, timidly, had +been praising Alix. She had been "good" to this one, "good" to that +one, they told him; she had always been so "interested," and so "happy." +</p> + +<p> +Her coffin was buried in flowers, many of them the plain flowers she +loved, the gillies and stock and verbena, and even the sweet, sober +wall-flowers that were somehow like herself. But it was the roses that +scented the whole world for Alix to-day, and fresh creamy buds had been +placed between the waxen fingers. And still that radiant look of +triumphant love lingered on her quiet face, and still the faint ghost +of a smile touched the once kindly and merry mouth. +</p> + +<p> +They said good-bye to her at the church, the villagers and old friends +who had loved her, and Peter and two or three men alone followed her +down along the winding road that led to the old cemetery. Cherry was +hanging over the bedside of her husband, who still miraculously +lingered through hours of pain, but as Peter, responsive to a touch on +his arm, crossed the church porch to blindly enter the waiting +motor-car, he saw, erect and grave, on the front seat, in his decent +holiday black, and with his felt hat held in his hands, Kow, claiming +his right to stand beside the grave of the mistress he had loved and +served so faithfully. The sight of him, in his clumsy black, instead of +the usual crisp white, and with a sad and tear-stained face shook Peter +strangely, but he did not show a sign of pain. +</p> + +<p> +The twisted low branches of oak trees threw shadows on the grave when +they finally reached it, and sheep were cropping the watered grass of +the graveyard. It was silent and peaceful here, on the very top of the +world, not a sound intruded, and nothing stirred but the shadow of a +flying bird, and the slowly moving, rounded woolly backs of the sheep. +</p> + +<p> +The soft autumn sky, the drift of snowy clouds across the blue, the +clear shadows on brown grass under the oaks, all these were familiar. +But Peter still looked dazedly at his black cuff and at the turned +earth next to the doctor's headstone, telling himself again that this +was for Alix. How often he had seen her sitting there, with her bright +face sobered and sweet, as she talked lovingly, eagerly, of her father! +They had often come here, Peter the more willingly because she was so +sensible and happy about it; she would pack lunch, button herself into +one of the crisp blue ginghams, chatter on the road in her usual +fashion. And if, for a few moments, the train of memory fired by the +sight of the old doctor's grave became too poignant, and tears came, +she always scolded herself with that mixture of childish and maternal +impatience that was so characteristic of her, and that Peter had seen +her use to this very father years ago! +</p> + +<p> +He remembered her, a tall, awkward girl, with a volume of Dickens +slipping from her lap as she sat on a hassock by the fire, teasing her +father, scolding and reproaching him. Blazing red on high cheek-bones, +untidy black hair, quick tongue and ready laugh; that was the Alix of +the old days, when he had criticized and patronized her, and told her +that she should be more like Anne and little Cherry! +</p> + +<p> +He remembered being delegated, one day, to take her into town to the +dentist, and that upon discovering that the dentist was not in his +office, he had taken her to the circus instead. She had been about +thirteen, and had eaten too many peanuts, he thought, and had lost a +petticoat in full sight of the grand-stand. But how grateful and happy +she had been! +</p> + +<p> +"Dear little old blue petticoat!" he said. "Dear little old madcap +Alix--!" +</p> + +<p> +There was silence, the silence of inanition, about him. He came to +himself with a start. He was up on the hills, in the cemetery--this was +Alix's grave, newly covered with wilting masses of flowers, and he was +keeping everybody waiting. He murmured an apology; the waiting men were +all kindness and sympathy. +</p> + +<p> +He got back into the motor-car; Kow got in; the man who drove them +quickly toward the valley talked easily and steadily to Peter, +attempting to interest him in the affairs of some water company in San +Francisco. When they got to the valley a city train was arriving, and +Peter saw people looking at him furtively and sorrowfully. He +remembered the many, many times Alix had waited for him at the trains; +he glanced toward the big madrone under which she always parked her +car. She was usually deep in a book as he crossed from the train, but +she would fling it into the back seat, and make room for him beside +her. The dog would bound into the tonneau, Alix would hand her husband +his mail, the car would start with a great plunge toward the +mountain--toward the cool garden high up on the ridge-- +</p> + +<p> +"She never had an accident, Fred," he said, simply. +</p> + +<p> +"Alix?" The other man nodded gravely, but there was a worried look in +his eyes. He did not like Peter's quiet tone. "It may be that her +steering-gear broke," he said. "I don't believe it was her fault. Never +will! No, it was just one of those things--" He emptied his lungs with +a great breath of nervousness and sympathy. "Now, we want you +to-night--" he began, pleadingly. +</p> + +<p> +"No--no--no!" Peter said, quickly. "I had better go to her sister. Poor +Lloyd is dying, and she is on the verge of a collapse. The nurse said +this morning that they could not get her to undress or to leave the +room. Poor girl--poor Cherry! I had better go there, Fred. She will +need me!" +</p> + +<p> +"No chance for him?" the driving man asked, turning his car. +</p> + +<p> +"No--it's only a matter of time!" +</p> + +<p> +"She came in for the old doctor's money, didn't she?" +</p> + +<p> +"Yes--all of it, now. And my wife had some property--some I had given +her; that will go to the sister now. She will be well fixed," Peter +said, in a dull tone. "That would have pleased Alix." +</p> + +<p> +"She's a beautiful woman, and young still," said the other man, after +awhile. Peter did not hear him. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry looked small and pathetic in her fresh black, and her face was +marked by secret incessant weeping. But the nurses and doctors could +not say enough for her self-control; she was always composed, always +quietly helpful and calm when they saw her, and she was always busy. +From early morning, when she slipped into the sick-room, to stand +looking at the unconscious Martin with a troubled, intent expression +that the nurses came to know well, until night, she moved untiringly +about the quiet, shaded house. She supervised the Chinese boy, saw that +the nurses had their hours for rest and exercise, telephoned, dusted, +and arranged the rooms, saw callers sweetly and patiently, filled vases +with flowers. +</p> + +<p> +Every day she had several vigils in the sick-room, and every day at +least one long talk with the doctors. Peter would find her deep in +letters and documents, or find her--who had loved to be idle, a few +weeks ago--busily sewing. Sometimes she gave him a long list of things +to do for her in the village and the city, and every day she wrote +notes--Cherry, who had always hated to write notes!--to thank the +friends who had sent in flowers, soups, and jellies, and custards for +the patient. Every afternoon and evening had its callers; she and Peter +were rarely alone. +</p> + +<p> +Martin was utterly unconscious of the life that flowed on about him; +sometimes he seemed to recognize Cherry, and would stare with painful +intentness into her face, but after a few seconds his gaze would wander +to the strange nurses, and the room that he had never known, and with a +puzzled sigh he would close his eyes again, and drift back into his own +strange world of pain, fever, and unconsciousness. +</p> + +<p> +Almost every day there was the sudden summons and panic in the old +house, Peter going toward the sick-room with a thick beating at his +heart, Cherry entering, white-faced and with terrified eyes, doctors +and nurses gathering noiselessly near for the last scene in the drama +of Martin's suffering. But the release did not come. +</p> + +<p> +There would be murmuring among the doctors and nurses; the pulse was +gaining, not losing; the apparently fatal, final symptoms were proving +neither fatal nor final. The tension would relax; a doctor would go, a +nurse slip from the room; Cherry, looking anxiously from one face to +another, would breathe more easily. It was inevitable, she knew that +now--but it was not to be this minute, it was not to be this hour! +</p> + +<p> +"My dear--my dear!" Peter said to her, one day, when spent and shaken +she came stumbling from Martin's bedside, and stood dazedly looking +from the window into the soaking October forest, like a person stunned +from a blow. "My poor little Cherry! If I could spare you this!" +</p> + +<p> +"Nobody can spare me now!" she whispered. And very simply and quietly +she added, "If I have been a fool--if I have been a selfish, wicked +girl, all my life, I am punished!" She was clinging to the unpainted +wood that framed the window, her hand above her head, and her face +resting against her arm. "I am punished!" she added. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry!" he protested, heartsick to see her so. +</p> + +<p> +"Was it wrong for us to love each other, Peter?" she asked, in a low +tone. "I suppose it was! I suppose it was! But it never seemed as if--" +she shut her eyes and shivered--"as if--THIS--would come of it!" she +whispered. +</p> + +<p> +"This!" he echoed, aghast. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, I think this is punishment," Cherry continued, in the same +lifeless, weary tone. +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence. The rain dripped and dripped from the redwoods, +the room in which they stood was in twilight, even at noon. Peter could +think of nothing to say. +</p> + +<p> +About two weeks after the accident there was a change in the tone of +the physicians who had been giving almost all their time to Martin's +case. There was no visible change in Martin, but that fact in itself +was so surprising that it was construed into a definite hope that he +would live. +</p> + +<p> +Not as he had lived, they warned his wife. It would be but a restricted +life; tied to his couch, or permitted, at best, to move about within a +small boundary on crutches. +</p> + +<p> +"Martin!" his wife exclaimed piteously, when this was first discussed. +"He has always been so strong--so independent! He would rather--he +would infinitely rather be dead!" But her mind was busy grasping the +possibilities, too. "He won't suffer too much?" she asked, fearfully. +</p> + +<p> +They hastened to assure her that the chance of his even partial +recovery was still slight, but that in case of his convalescence Martin +need not necessarily suffer. +</p> + +<p> +Another day or two went by, in the silent, rainwrapped house under the +trees; days of quiet footsteps, and whispering, and the lisping of wood +fires. Then Martin suddenly was conscious, knew his wife, languidly +smiled at her, thanked the doctors for occasional ease from pain. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter--I'm sorry. It's terrible for you--terrible!" he said, in his +new, hoarse, gentle voice, when he first saw Peter. They marvelled +among themselves that he knew that Alix was gone. But to Cherry, in one +of the long hours that she spent, sitting beside him, and holding his +big, weak, strangely white hand, he explained, one day. "I knew she was +killed," he said, out of a silence. "I thought we both were!" +</p> + +<p> +"How did she ever happen to do it?" Cherry said. "She was always so +sure of herself--even when she drove fast!" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know," he answered. "It was all like a flash, of course! I +never watched her drive--I had such confidence in her!" +</p> + +<p> +His interest dropped; she saw that the tide of pain was slowly rising +again, glanced at the clock. It was two; he might not have relief until +four. In his own eyes she saw reflected the apprehension of her own. +</p> + +<p> +"You might ask Peter to play some of that--that rambly stuff he was +playing yesterday?" he suggested. Cherry, only too happy to have him +want anything, to have him helped by anything, flew to find Peter. Busy +with one of the trays that were really beginning to interest and please +the invalid now, she told herself that the house was a different place, +now that one nurse was gone, the doctors coming only for brief calls, +and the dear, familiar sound of the old piano echoing throughout the +rooms. +</p> + +<p> +Martin came from the fiery furnace changed in soul and body. It was a +thin, gentle, strangely patient man who was propped in bed for his +Thanksgiving dinner, and whose pain-worn face turned with an +appreciative smile to the decorations and the gifts that made his room +cheerful. His thick beard had grown; for weeks they had not dared +disturb him to cut it, and as he recovered, Cherry found it so becoming +that she had persuaded him to let it remain. He wore a blue-and-gray +wrapper that was his wife's gift; the sling was gone, but his hands +were oddly thin and white. +</p> + +<p> +The big room, once the study, and still shaded by the old banksia rose, +had been turned into as luxurious a bedroom as Cherry could make it. +The signs of extreme illness gradually were banished, and all sorts of +invalid comforts took their place; daylight and lamplight were alike +tempered for Martin; there were pillows, screens; there was a noiseless +deep chair always waiting for Cherry at his side. As his unconscious +and feverish times lessened, and he was able feebly to request this +small delicacy or that, Cherry rejoiced to gratify him; her voice had +something of its old content as she would say: "He loved the oysters, +Peter!" or "Doctor said he might have wine jelly!" +</p> + +<p> +The heavy cloud lightened slowly but steadily; Martin had a long talk, +dreaded by Cherry from the first hours of the accident, with his +physicians. He bore the ultimatum with unexpected fortitude. +</p> + +<p> +"Let me get this straight," he said, slowly. "The arm is O. K. and the +leg, but the back--" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, kneeling beside him, her hands on his, drew a wincing breath. +Martin reassured her with an indulgent nod. +</p> + +<p> +"I've known it right along!" he told her. He looked at the doctors. +"It's no go?" +</p> + +<p> +"I don't see why I should deceive you, my dear boy," said the younger +doctor, who had grown very fond of him. "You can still beat me at +bridge, you know, you can read and write, and come to the table, after +awhile; you have your devoted wife to keep finding new things for you +to do! Next summer now--a chair out in the garden--" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry was fearfully watching her husband's face. +</p> + +<p> +"We'll all do what we can to make it easy, Mart!" she whispered, in +tears. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her with a whimsical smile. +</p> + +<p> +"Mind very much taking care of a helpless man all your life?" he asked, +with a hint of his old confident manner. +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, Mart, I mind only for you!" she said. Peter, standing behind the +doctors, slipped from the room unnoticed. +</p> + +<p> +Late that evening, when Martin was asleep, Cherry came noiselessly from +the sick-room, to find Peter alone in the dimly lighted sitting room. +The fire had burned low, and he was sitting before it, sunk into his +chair, and leaning forward, fingers loosely locked, and sombre eyes +fixed on the dull pink glow of the logs. He looked tired, Cherry +thought, and was so buried in thought that she at first attempted to go +quietly through the room without rousing him. But he glanced at her, +feeling rather than hearing her presence, and called her. +</p> + +<p> +"Come over here, will you, Cherry? I want to speak to you." +</p> + +<p> +Something in his voice fluttered her for a second; she had not heard +the echo of the old mood for a long time. She came, with an inquiring +and yet not wholly unconscious look, to the fireside, and he stood up +to greet her. +</p> + +<p> +"Tired?" he asked, in an unnatural voice. +</p> + +<p> +"I--I was just going to bed," she answered, hesitatingly. But she sat +down, nevertheless; sank comfortably into the chair opposite his own, +and stretched her little feet, crossed at the ankle, before her, as if +she were indeed tired. "I don't know what should make me--always--so +weary!" she said, smiling. "I don't do a thing, really, all day!" +</p> + +<p> +Utterly relaxed, her small figure in its plain black gown, with the +childish white she always wore at collar and wrist, looked like the +figure of a child. Her golden hair shone with a dull gleam in the dim +light; there was a glint of firelight in her dropped lashes. +</p> + +<p> +"Perhaps it's the nervous strain," Peter suggested. "Of course, you +would feel that." There was a silence in which neither moved. Cherry +did not even raise her eyelids, and Peter, standing with one arm on the +mantel, looked down at her steadily. "Cherry," he said, suddenly, "are +you and I going to talk to each other like that?" +</p> + +<p> +A flood of colour rose in Cherry's pale face, and she gave him one +appealing glance. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't--I don't think I know what you mean, Peter!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, yes; you do!" he said. He knelt down beside her chair, and +gathered her cold hands into one of his own. "What are you and I going +to do?" he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him in terror. +</p> + +<p> +"But all that is changed!" she said, quickly, fearfully. +</p> + +<p> +"Why is it changed?" he countered. "I love you--I have always loved +you, since the days long ago, in this very house! I can't stop it now. +And you love me, Cherry!" +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, I shall always love you," she answered, agitatedly, after a pause +in which she looked at him with troubled eyes. "I shall always love +you, and always dream of the time when we--we thought we might belong +to each other, Peter. But--but--you must see that we cannot--cannot +think of all that now," she added with difficulty. "I couldn't fail +Martin now, when he needs me so!" +</p> + +<p> +"He needs you now," Peter conceded, "and I don't ask you to do anything +that must distress him now. But in a few months, when his mother comes +down for a visit, what then?" +</p> + +<p> +Cherry's exquisite eyes were fixed on his. +</p> + +<p> +"Well, what then?" she whispered. +</p> + +<p> +"Then you must tell them honestly that you care for me," he said. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry was trembling violently. +</p> + +<p> +"But how could I!" she protested. "Tell him that I am going away, +deserting him when he most needs me!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter had grown very pale. +</p> + +<p> +"But--" he stammered, his face close to hers--"but you cannot mean that +this is the end?" +</p> + +<p> +She moved her lips as if she was about to speak; looked at him blankly. +Then suddenly tears came, and she wrenched her hands free from his, and +laid her arms about his neck. Her wet cheek was pressed to his own, and +he put his arms tightly about the little shaken figure. +</p> + +<p> +"Peter!" she whispered, desolately. And after a time, when the violence +of her sobs was lessened, and she was breathing more quietly, she said +again: "Peter!" +</p> + +<p> +He took out his handkerchief, and dried her eyes, and she remained, +resting against him like a spent bird, her blue eyes fixed mournfully +on the fire, her hands, which had slipped to his breast, gathered in +his own, and her bright head on his shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +"We can never dream that dream again," she said. +</p> + +<p> +"We shall dream it again," he corrected her. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry did not answer for a long while. Then she gently disengaged +herself from his arms, and sat erect. Her tears were ended now, and her +voice firmer and surer. +</p> + +<p> +"No; never again!" she told him. "I've been thinking about it, all +these days, and I've come to see what is right, as I never did before. +Alix never knew about us, Peter--and that's been the one thing for +which I could be thankful in all this time! But Alix had only one hope +for me, and that was that somehow Martin and I would come to be--well, +to be nearer to each other, and that somehow he and I would make a +success of our marriage, would spare--well, let's say the family name, +from all the disgrace and publicity of a divorce--" +</p> + +<p> +"And you feel that this has drawn you and Martin nearer together?" +Peter asked, in a simple, expressionless voice, as she paused. +</p> + +<p> +"Well--he needs me now." +</p> + +<p> +"But, Cherry, my child--" Peter expostulated. "You cannot sacrifice all +your life to the fancy that no one else can take your place with him--" +</p> + +<p> +"That," she said, steadily, "is just what I must do!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter looked at her for a few seconds without speaking. "You don't love +him," he said. +</p> + +<p> +"No," she admitted, gravely. "I don't love him--not in the way you +mean." +</p> + +<p> +"He is nothing to you," Peter argued. "As a matter of fact, it never +was what a marriage should be. It was always--always--a mistake." +</p> + +<p> +"Yes," she conceded, sadly, "it was always a mistake!" +</p> + +<p> +"Then there is nothing to bind you to him!" Peter added. +</p> + +<p> +"No--and there isn't Alix to distress now!" she agreed, thoughtfully. +"And yet," she went on, suddenly, "I do this more for Alix than for any +one!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter looked at her in silence, looked back at the last flicker of the +fire. +</p> + +<p> +"You will change your mind after awhile!" he said. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry rose from the chair, and stood with dropped head and troubled +eyes, looking down at the flame. +</p> + +<p> +"No, I shall never change my mind!" she said, in a low tone that was +still strangely firm and final for her. "I have thought about it, about +the sacrifices I shall have to make, and about what my life will be as +the years go on! And I know that I never will change. This is as much +my life as it would be my life if you and I were alone in that little +French village somewhere. There would be no going back then, no +thinking of what might have been; there is no going back now. This is +my life, that's all! For five or ten or twenty or thirty years I shall +always be where Martin is, caring for him, amusing him, making a life +for him." And Cherry raised her glorious blue eyes in which there was a +pure and an uplifted look that Peter had never seen there before. "It +is what Dad and Alix would have wished," she finished, solemnly, "and I +do it for them!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter did not answer; and after a moment she went quietly and quickly +from the room, with the new air of quiet responsibility that she had +worn ever since the accident. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap24"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XXIV +</h3> + +<p> +Peter saw, with a sort of stupefaction, that life was satisfying her +now as life had never satisfied restless, exacting little Cherry +before. Not that she knew it; she was absolutely unconscious of the +truth, and he realized that she would have been genuinely shocked by +it. But there was a busy energy about her now, an absorbed and +contented concentration upon the duties of the day, a cheerfulness, a +philosophy, that were new. +</p> + +<p> +There had been touched by all this terrible time unexpected deeps of +maternal tenderness in childish little Cherry; there had been +unsuspected qualities of domesticity and sacrifice. A new Cherry had +been born, a Cherry always beautiful, always resourceful, always +admired. Busy with Martin's trays, out in the garden searching for shy +violets, conferring with the Chinese boy, pouring tea for afternoon +callers, Cherry was newly adequate and newly happy. +</p> + +<p> +She spent much of her free time by her husband's side, amusing him as +skillfully as a mother. What was she doing? Why, she was simply basting +fresh cuffs into her afternoon gown. He was getting so popular that she +had to be ready for callers every day. Would he like her to keep George +Sewall for dinner, then they could play dominoes again? Would he like +the table with the picture puzzle? He would like just to talk? Very +well; they would talk. +</p> + +<p> +Martin's day was so filled and divided with small pleasures that it was +apt to amaze him by passing too quickly. He had special breakfasts, he +had his paper, his hair was brushed and his bed remade a dozen times a +day. Cherry shared her mail, which was always heavy now, with him; she +flitted into the sick-room every few minutes with small messages or +gifts. With her bare, bright head, her busy white hands, her voice all +motherly amusement and sympathy and sweetness, she had never seemed so +much a wife. She had the pleasantest laugh in the world, and she often +laughed. The sick-room was kept with exquisite simplicity, with such +freshness, bareness, and order as made it a place of delight. One day +Cherry brought home a great Vikory bowl of silvery glass, and a dozen +drifting goldfish, and Martin never tired of watching them idly while +he listened to her reading. +</p> + +<p> +"Cherry," Peter said, on a wet January day, when he came upon her in +the dining room, contentedly arranging a fragrant mass of wet violets, +"I think Martin's out of the woods now. I believe I'll be moving along!" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, but we want you always, Peter!" she said, innocently regretful. +</p> + +<p> +The ghost of a pained smile flitted across his face. +</p> + +<p> +"Thank you," he said, gently. "But I think I will go," he added, +mildly. She made no further protest. +</p> + +<p> +"But where?" she asked, sympathetically. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't know. I shall take Buck--start off" toward the big mountains. +"I'll write you now and then, of course! I'm going home, first!" +</p> + +<p> +"Of course!" she answered. "But you won't stay in that lonely cabin all +alone," she added, almost timidly. +</p> + +<p> +"No, I shan't be there long!" he assured her, briefly. "Everything's +finished up now. I'm leaving Kow in charge, of course. I'll be back one +of these days!" +</p> + +<p> +"Just now," Cherry mused, sadly, "perhaps it is best--for you--to get +away! Now that Martin is so much better," she added, in a little burst. +"I do feel so sorry for you, Peter! I know how you feel. I shall miss +her always, of course," said Cherry, "but I have him." +</p> + +<p> +"I try not to think of her," Peter said, flinging up his head. +</p> + +<p> +"When you do," Cherry said, earnestly, giving him more of her attention +than had been usual, of late, "Here is something to think, Peter. It's +this: we have so much to be thankful for, because she never--knew! It +was madness," Cherry went on, eagerly, "sheer madness--that is clear +now. I don't try to explain it, because it's all been washed away by +the frightful thing that happened. I'm different now; you're +different--I don't know how we ever thought we could-- +</p> + +<p> +"But I forget all that," she went on, after a moment of shamed thought. +"I don't let myself think of it any more! I was unhappy, I was +overwrought; there's no explanation for what I felt and said but that! +And, Peter, you know that if I was false in thought to Martin, he had +been unkind to me, and he had--" she paused, interrupted herself. "But +men are different, I suppose," she mused. There was a silence during +which she looked at him anxiously, but the expression on his face did +not alter, and he did not speak. +</p> + +<p> +"And what I think we ought to be thankful for," she resumed, "is that +Alix would rather--she would rather have it this way. She told me that +she would be heartbroken if there had been any actual separation +between me and Martin, and how much worse that would have been--what we +planned, I mean. She was spared that, and we were spared--I see it +now--what would have ruined both our lives. We were brought to our +senses, and the awakening only came a little sooner than it would have +come anyway!" +</p> + +<p> +Peter had walked to the window, and was looking out at the shabby +winter trees that were dripping rain, and at the beaten garden, where +the drenched chrysanthemums had been bowed to the soaked earth. A wet +wind swished through the low, fanlike branches of the redwoods; the +creek was rushing high and noisily. +</p> + +<p> +"Here, in Dad's home," Cherry said, coming to stand beside him, "I see +how wicked and how mad I was. In another twenty-four hours it would +have been too late--you don't know how often I wake up in the night and +shiver, thinking that! And as it is, I am here in the dear old house; +and Martin--well, you can see that even Martin's life is going to be +far happier than it ever was! Yesterday Mrs. Porter spoke to me about +getting him a player-piano when he is stronger, you know. Doctor Young +comes in to play cribbage with him--it's amazing how the day fills +itself! It's such a joy to me," she added, with the radiant look she +often wore when her husband's comfort was under consideration, "to feel +that we need never worry about the money end of things--there's enough +for what we need forever!" +</p> + +<p> +"You must never worry about money," he told her. "And if ever you need +it--if it is a question of a long trip, or of more operations--if there +is any chance--" +</p> + +<p> +"I shall remember that I have a big brother!" she said. +</p> + +<p> +The room was scented by the sweet, damp flowers, and by the good odour +of lazily burning logs; yet to Peter there was chill and desolateness +in the air. Cherry took up the glass bowl in both careful hands, and +went away in the direction of the study, but he stood at the window for +a long time staring dully out at the battered chrysanthemums and the +swishing branches, and the steadily falling rain. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap25"></a></p> +<h3> +CHAPTER XXV +</h3> + +<p> +A few days later, on a day of uncertain sunshine and showers, Peter +left them. Martin was the sorrier of the two to see him go, for it +seemed to Martin that the tragedy had united Cherry and himself in a +peculiar manner, had rounded and secured their relationship, and had +made for them a new life that had no place for Peter. With a sort of +affectionate pity for the older man he would have been glad to have him +stay longer, to play the old piano, work in the old garden, and share +their talks of Alix and of all the old days. But to Cherry Peter's +going was a relief; it burned one more bridge behind her. It confirmed +her in the path she had chosen; it was to her spirit like the cap that +marks the accepted student nurse, or like the black coif that replaces +the postulant's white veil of probation. +</p> + +<p> +He had been in the downstairs bedroom, talking with Martin, for perhaps +an hour; he had drawn them a rough sketch of the little addition to the +house that Cherry meant some day to build next to the study, and he and +Martin had been discussing the details. Cherry had left them there, and +was sweeping the wet, dun-coloured leaves from the old porch, in a pale +shaft of sunshine, and thinking that there must be a wide railing here +next summer for Martin's books, and a gay awning to be drawn or furled +as Martin fancied, when a sudden step in the doorway behind her made +her look up. +</p> + +<p> +Peter had come out of the house, with Buck curving beside him. He wore +his old corduroy clothes and his shabby cap, but there was something in +his aspect that made her ask: +</p> + +<p> +"Not going?" +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, I'm going now!" he said. +</p> + +<p> +She rested her broom against the thick trunk of the old banksia, and +rubbed her two hands together, and came to the top of the steps to say +good-bye. And standing there, under the rose tree, she linked her arm +about it, looking up through the branches, where the shabby foliage of +last year lingered. +</p> + +<p> +"How fast it's grown since that terrific pruning we gave it all that +long time ago!" she said. +</p> + +<p> +"Little more than six years ago, Cherry!" he reminded her. +</p> + +<p> +"Only six years--" She was obviously amazed. +</p> + +<p> +"It doesn't seem possible that all this has happened in six years!" she +exclaimed. "Those were wonderful old days, with Anne and Alix scolding +you, and Dad here, looking out for us all," she mused, tenderly. "We'll +never be so happy again." +</p> + +<p> +He did not answer. He had her hand now for farewells, and perhaps, with +the thought of those short six years had come also the thought that +this slender figure in the housewifely blue linen, this exquisite +little head, so trim and demure despite all its rebel tendrils of gold, +this lovely face, still the face of a child, with a child's trusting, +uplifted eyes, might have been his. The old home might have been their +home, and perhaps--who knows, there might have been a new Cherry and a +new Peter beginning to look eagerly out at life through the screen of +the old rose vine. +</p> + +<p> +Too late now. A single instant of those lost years might have bought +him all this, but there was no going back. He put his arm about her, +and kissed her forehead, and said: "God bless you, Cherry!" +</p> + +<p> +"God bless you, dear!" she answered, gravely. She watched the tall +figure, with its little limp, and with the dog leaping and circling +about it in ecstasy, until the redwoods closed around, him. Then she +took up the broom again, and slowly and thoughtfully crossed the old +porch, and shut the door. +</p> + +<p> +Peter, walking with long strides, and with a furrowed brow and absent +eyes, crossed the village, and climbed once more the old trail that led +up to the cabin. His great boots made simple work of the muddy roads, +his hands were thrust deep into the pockets of his shabby old coat, and +his cap pulled low. The rain had stopped, but every branch that hung +down over his path, or stretched an arm to stop him, was charged with +water; the creeks were swollen and yellow, and raced along between +crumbling banks with a fresh rushing sound that mingled with the +creaking of wet boughs and the wild spring chant of the wind high up in +the tops of the redwoods. +</p> + +<p> +Coming out of the forest, on the ridge, where the dim road ran under +the scattered oaks, he saw the last of the battle of the dying storm +raging over the valley below. Great masses of cloud were in travail; +when the sun was hidden, the world was wrapped in shade and chill; when +it burst forth, every wet tree and spear glistened and twinkled in the +flood of warmth and light, the dried brown grass sparkled with jewels, +and the great roadside rain pools flashed back the azure of the sky. +The mountain was partly obscured by rapidly shifting masses of mist; +the air was pungent and seemed to hum with a thousand tiny, electric +voices. +</p> + +<p> +Already there was new grass showing a timid film of emerald under the +brown growth of last year. While Peter climbed, the good earth giving +soddenly under his feet, and grasses tangling in the clasps of his +walking shoes, the sunlight conquered, the sky cleared, and the last of +the storm drifted and spread and vanished in a bath of dazzling blue. +Birds began to circle in brief flights; cloud shadows fell clear-cut on +the west, dark flank of the mountain; and in the saturated marshy +spots, where a scummy green growth already was spread over the crystal +pools of the little hillside springs, frogs were exultant. +</p> + +<p> +The roof of the little cabin and the outbuildings smoked up into the +pure warm air; the Jersey, placidly awaiting her hour, looked at him +with soft, great eyes; and Alix's chickens picked and squawked on the +steaming mound near the stable. Kow was hanging out the blue +glass-towels, everything--everything was as he had found it a hundred, +a thousand, happy times! +</p> + +<p> +Peter spoke to the Chinese and went into the cabin. It was dusted, +orderly, complete; he and Alix might have left it yesterday. Kow had +seen him coming, he thought, and had had time to light the fire, which +was blazing freshly up to the chimney's great throat. He sat down, +staring at the flames. +</p> + +<p> +Buck pushed open the swinging door between the pantry and the sitting +room, and came in, a question in his bright eyes, his great plumy tail +beating the floor as he lay down at Peter's side. Presently the dog +laid his nose on Peter's knee and poured forth a faint sound that was +not quite a whine, not quite a sigh, and rose restlessly, and went to +the closed door of Alix's room, and pawed it, his eager nose to the +threshold. +</p> + +<p> +"Not here, old fellow!" Peter said, stroking the silky head under his +hand. +</p> + +<p> +He had not been in this room since the day of her death. It struck him +as strangely changed, strangely and heartrendingly familiar. The +windows were closed, as Alix had never had them closed, winter or +summer, rain or sunshine. Her books stood in their old order, her +student's Shakespere, and some of her girlhood's books, "Little Women," +and "Uncle Max." In the closet, which exhaled a damp and woody smell, +were one or two of the boyish-looking hats he had so often seen her +crush carelessly over her dark hair, and the big belted coat that was +as plain as his own, and the big boots she wore when she tramped about +the poultry yard, still spattered with pale, dry mud. Her father's worn +little Bible lay on the table, and beside it another book "Duck Raising +for the Market," with the marks of muddy and mealy hands still +lingering on its cover. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly, evoked by these silent witnesses to her busy and happy life, +the whole woman seemed to stand beside Peter, the tall, eager, vital +woman who had been at home here, who had ruled the cabin with a +splendid and vital personality. He seemed to feel her near him again, +to see the interested eyes, the high cheek-bones touched with scarlet, +the wisp of hair that would fall across her face sometimes when she was +deep in baking, or preserving, or poultry-farming, and that she would +brush away with the back of an impatient hand, only to have it slip +loose again. +</p> + +<p> +One of her kitchen aprons, caught in the current of air from the opened +door, blew about on its hook. He remembered her, on many a wintry day, +buttoned into just such a crisp apron, radiantly busy and brisk in her +kitchen, stirring and chopping, moving constantly between stove and +table. With strong hands still showing traces of flour she would come +to sit beside him at the piano, to play a duet with her characteristic +dash and finish, only to jump up in sudden compunction, with an +exclamation: "Oh, my ducks--I'd forgotten them! Oh, the poor little +wretches!" +</p> + +<p> +And she would be gone, leaving a streak of wet, fresh air through the +warm house from the open door, and he would perhaps glance from a +window to see her, roughly coated and booted, ploughing about her duck +yard, delving into barrels of grain, turning on faucets, wielding a +stubby old broom. +</p> + +<p> +She loved her life, he mused, with a bitter heartache, as he stood here +in her empty room. Sometimes he had marvelled at the complete and +unquestioning joy she had brought to it. Books, puzzles, music, and +fires sufficed her in the few hours that she ever spent in her own +drawing room. For the rest she had the kitchen and the farmyard, and +the world out of doors, the oaks and the grass, the great stretches of +dim forest, the muddy trails, the blowing airs on the crest of the +ridge that made her shout and stagger in their wild onslaught. Peter +reminded himself that never in their years together had he heard her +complain about anything, or seem to feel bored or at a loss. +</p> + +<p> +"We've always thought of Cherry as the child!" he thought. "But it was +she, Alix, who was the real child. She never grew up. She never entered +into the time of moods and self-analysis and jealousies and desires! +She would have played and picnicked all her life----" +</p> + +<p> +His heart pressed like a dull pain in his chest. Dully, quietly, he +went out to the fire again, and dully and quietly moved through the +day. Her books and music might stand as they were, her potted ferns and +her scattered small possessions--the sewing-basket that she always +handled with a boy's awkwardness, and the camera she used so +well--should keep their places. But he went to her desk, thinking in +this long, solitary evening, to destroy various papers that she might +wish destroyed before the cabin was deserted. And here he found her +letter. +</p> + +<p> +He found it only after he had somewhat explored the different small +drawers and pigeonholes of the desk, drawers and pigeonholes which +were, to his surprise, all in astonishing order for Alix. Everything +was marked, tied, pocketed; her accounts were balanced, and if she had +anywhere left private papers, they were at least nowhere to be found. +</p> + +<p> +Seeing in all this a dread confirmation of his first suspicion of her +death, Peter nevertheless experienced a shock when he found her letter. +It had been placed in an empty drawer, face up, and was sealed, and +addressed simply with his name. +</p> + +<p> +He sat holding it in his hand, and moments passed before he could open +it. +</p> + +<p> +So it had been true, then, the fear that he had tried all these weeks +to crush? He had been weighing, measuring, remembering, until his very +soul was sick with the uncertainty. His mind had been a confused web of +memories, of this casual word and that look, of what she had possibly +heard, had probably seen, had suspected--known-- +</p> + +<p> +Now he would know. He tore open the envelope, and the dozen written +lines were before his eyes. The letter was dated, a most unusual thing +for Alix to do, and "Saturday, one o'clock" was written under the date. +It was the day of her death. +</p> + +<p> +He read: +</p> + +<p> +PETER DEAR, Don't feel too badly if I find a stupid way out. I've been +thinking for several days about it. You've done so much for me, and +after you, of course there's no one but Cherry. She could be free now, +he couldn't prevent it. When I saw your face a few minutes ago I knew +we couldn't fight it. Remember, this is our secret. And always remember +that I want you to be happy because I love you so! +</p> + +<p> +It was unsigned. +</p> + +<p> +Peter sat staring at it for awhile without moving, without the stir of +a changing expression on his face. Then he folded it up, and put it in +the pocket of his coat, and went out to the backyard, where Kow was +feeding the chickens. The wet, dark day was ending brilliantly in a +wash of red sunset light that sent long shadows from the young fruit +trees, and touched every twig with a dull glow. +</p> + +<p> +"Kow," Peter said, after an effort to speak that was unsuccessful. The +Chinese boy looked at him solicitously; for Peter's face was ashen, and +about his mouth were drawn lines. "Kow," he said, "I go now!" +</p> + +<p> +"Go now other house?" Kow nodded, glancing down toward the valley. +</p> + +<p> +But Peter jerked his head instead toward the bare ridge. +</p> + +<p> +"No, I go now--not come back!" he said, briefly. "To-night--maybe +Bolinas--to-morrow, Inverness. I don't know. By and by the big +mountains, Kow--by and by I forget!" +</p> + +<p> +Tears glittered in the Chinese boy's eyes, but he smiled with a great +air of cheer. +</p> + +<p> +"I keep house!" he promised. +</p> + +<p> +The dog came fawning and springing from the stables, and Peter whistled +to him. +</p> + +<p> +"Come on, Buck! We're going now!" +</p> + +<p> +He opened the farmyard gate where her hand had so often rested, crossed +the muddy corral, opened another gate, and struck off across the +darkening world toward the ridge. The last sunlight lingered on crest +and treetop, tangled itself redly in the uppermost branches of a few +tall redwoods, and was gone. Twilight--a long twilight that had in it +some hint of spring--lay softly over the valley; the mountain loomed +high in the clear shadow. +</p> + +<p> +Gaining the top of the first ridge, he paused and looked back. Lights +were beginning to prick forth in the brown houses of the valley, buried +in their trees. The busy little mountain train, descending, puffed +forth smoke and steam. Far away, the silver ribbons of the canals wound +through the marsh, and beyond the bay, the Oakland shore lay like a +chain of gems in the pale twilight. +</p> + +<p> +Peter looked at the cabin, the little brown house that he had built +almost fifteen years ago. He remembered that it was in the beginning a +sort of experiment; his mother and he were too much alone in their big +city house, and she had suggested, with rare wisdom, that as he did not +care for society, and as his travels always meant great loneliness For +her, he should have a little eyrie of his own, to which he might +retreat whenever the fancy touched him. +</p> + +<p> +She liked Del Monte and Tahoe, herself, but she had come to Mill Valley +now and then in the days of his first wild delight in its freedom and +beauty, silk-gowned and white-gloved and very much disliking dust. She +had sent him plants, roses, and fruit trees, and she had told him one +day that he had a neighbour in the valley who was an old friend of +hers, a Doctor Strickland, a widower, with children. +</p> + +<p> +He remembered sauntering up the opposite canyon to duly call upon this +inventor-physician one day, and his delight upon finding a well-read, +music-loving, philosophic, erratic man, who had at once recognized a +kindred spirit, and who had made the younger man warmly welcome. +</p> + +<p> +Presently, on the first call, an enchanting little girl In a shabby +smock had come in, a little girl all dimples, demureness, and untouched +babyish beauty. She had said that "Anne wath mad wiv her, and that +Alix--" she managed to lisp the name, "wath up in the madrone!" +</p> + +<p> +A somewhat older child, named Alix, a freckled, leggy little person +with enormous front teeth, had proved the claim by falling out of the +madrone, and had received no sympathy for a bump, but a--to him--rather +surprising censure. He had yet to realize that nothing ever hurt Alix, +but that she always ruined her clothes, and frequently hurt other +persons and other things. He found her a spirited, enthusiastic little +person, extremely articulate, and quite unselfconscious, and she had +entertained him with an excited account of a sex feud that was being +pushed with some violence at her school, and had used expressions that +rather shocked Peter. A quiet third girl--a niece, he gathered--had +joined the group, a girl with braids and clean hands, who elucidated: +</p> + +<p> +"Alix and I don't like our teacher!" +</p> + +<p> +"She's a sneak and a skunk," Alix had frankly contributed. Cherry, now +quietly established in her father's lap, had smiled with mischievous +enjoyment; nobody else, to Peter's surprise, had paid this +extraordinary remark the slightest attention. He remembered that he had +fancied only the smallest of these children, and had been glad when +they all went out of the room. +</p> + +<p> +But after that Alix used often to amuse him, and he always felt more at +home with her than with the other two. She had only been a gawky and +thin fifteen or sixteen when she began to assert herself in his +kitchen, dictate to Kow, and waste good butter and eggs on experiments. +He had secretly rather admired her quick tongue and her daring, he +liked her to ride his horses, and was amazed at the speed with which +she grasped the controlling principles of the motor-car. He had seen +her move plants, treat sick chickens, sew up the gashed head of a horse +with her own fingers, while Cherry, lovely, round-eyed, immaculate in +white ruffles, watched her with fear and admiration. +</p> + +<p> +Looking down at the cabin, the years slipped past him like a flying +film, and it was the present again, and Alix--Alix was gone. +</p> + +<p> +He roused himself, spoke to the dog, and they went on their way again. +Mud squelched beneath Peter's boots in the roadway; the dog sprang +lightly from clump to clump of dried grass. But when they left the +road, and cut straight across the rise of the hillside, the ground was +firmer, and the two figures moved swiftly through the dark night. The +early stars came out, and showed them, silhouetted against the sky +above Alix's beloved Tamalpais, the man's erect form with its slight +limp, the dog following faithfully, his plumy tail and feathered ruff +showing a dull lustre in the starlight. +</p> + +<p> +Cherry, with her violet eyes and corn-coloured hair, Cherry, with her +little hands gathered in his, and her heart beating against his heart, +and Alix, his chum, his companion, his comrade on so many night walks +under the stars--he had lost them both. But it was Alix who was closest +to his thoughts to-night, Alix, the thought of whom was gradually +gripping his heart and soul with a new pain. +</p> + +<p> +Alix was his own; Cherry had never been his own. It was for him to +comfort Cherry, it had always been his mission to comfort Cherry, since +the days of her broken dolls and cut fingers. But Alix was his own +comforter, and Alix might have been laughing and stumbling and +chattering beside him here, in the dark, wet woods, full of a child's +happy satisfaction in the moment and confidence in the morrow. +</p> + +<p> +"Alix, my wife!" he said softly, aloud. "I loved Cherry--always. But +you were mine--you were mine. We belonged to each other--for better and +for worse--and I have let you go!" +</p> + +<p> +He went on and on and on. They were plunging down hill now, under the +trees. He would see a light after awhile, and sleep for a few hours, +and have a hunter's breakfast, and be gone again. And he knew that for +weeks--for months--perhaps for years, he would wander so, through the +great mountains, with their snow and their forests, over the seas, in +strange cities and stranger solitudes. Always alone, always moving, +always remembering. That would be his life. And some day--some day +perhaps he would come back to the valley she had loved-- +</p> + +<p> +But even now he recoiled in distaste from that hour. To see the +familiar faces, to come up to the cabin again, to touch the music and +the books-- +</p> + +<p> +Worse, to find Cherry a little older, happy and busy in her life of +sacrifice, not needing him, not very much wanting the reminder of the +old tragic times-- +</p> + +<p> +An owl cried in the woods; the mournful sound floated and drifted away +into utter silence. Some small animal, meeting the death its brief life +had evaded a hundred times, screamed shrilly, and was silent. Great +branches, stirred by the night wind, moved high above his head, and +when there was utter silence, Peter could hear the steady, soft rush of +the ocean, dulled here to the sound of gigantic, quiet breathing. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly she seemed again to be beside him. He seemed to see the dark, +animated face, the slender, tall girl wrapped in her big, rough coat. +He seemed to hear her vibrating voice, with that new, tender note in it +that he had noticed when she last spoke to him. +</p> + +<p> +"I'll go home ahead of you, Peter, and wait for you there!" +</p> + +<p> +Tears suddenly flooded his eyes, and he put his hand over them, and +pressed it there, standing still, while the wave of tender and poignant +and exquisite memories broke over him. +</p> + +<p> +"We'll go on, Buck," he whispered, looking up through the trees at a +strip of dark sky spangled with cold stars. "We'll go on. She's--she's +waiting for us somewhere, old fellow!" +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +THE END +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sisters, by Kathleen Norris + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTERS *** + +***** This file should be named 4947-h.htm or 4947-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/9/4/4947/ + +Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines. + + +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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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: Sisters + +Author: Kathleen Norris + +Posting Date: May 21, 2013 [EBook #4947] +Release Date: January, 2004 +First Posted: April 3, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTERS *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + + + +THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS + +SISTERS + +VOLUME X + + + + +TO + +FRANCES ROSE BENET + + Dear mother of my mother's child, to you + The tribute brings not praise from me alone, + Still clings some grace of hers to what I do, + And the gift comes in her name, as my own. + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +Cherry Strickland came in the door of the Strickland house, and shut it +behind her, and stood so, with her hands behind her on the knob, and +her slender body leaning forward, and her breath rising and falling on +deep, ecstatic breaths. It was May in California, she was just +eighteen, and for twenty-one minutes she had been engaged to be married. + +She hardly knew why, after that last farewell to Martin, she had run so +swiftly up the path, and why she had flashed into the house, and closed +the door with such noiseless haste. There was nothing to run for! But +it was as if she feared that the joy within her might escape into the +moonlight night that was so perfumed with lilacs and the scent of wet +woods. In this new happiness of hers a fear was already mingled, a +sweet fear, truly, and a delicious fear, but she had never feared +anything before in her life. She was afraid now that it was all too +wonderful to be true, that she would awaken in the morning to find it +only a dream, that she would somehow fall short of Martin's +ideal--somehow fail him--somehow turn all this magic of moonshine and +kisses into ashes and heartbreak. + +She was a miser with her treasure, already; she wanted to fly with it, +and to hide it away, and to test its reality in secret, alone. She had +come running in from the wonderland down by the gate, just for this, +just to prove to herself that it would not vanish in the +commonplaceness of the shabby hall, would not disappear before the +everyday contact of everyday things. + +There was moonlight here, too, falling in clear squares on the stairway +landing, white and mysterious and bewitching, but on the other side of +the hall was wholesome, cheerful lamplight creeping in a warm streak +under the sitting-room door. + +Dad was in the sitting room, with the girls. The doctor's house was +full of girls. Anne, his niece, was twenty-four; Alix, Cherry's sister, +three years younger--how staid and unmarried and undesired they seemed +to-night to panting and glowing and glorified eighteen! Anne, with +Alix's erratic help, kept house for her uncle, and was supposed to keep +a sharp eye on Cherry, too. But she hadn't been sharp enough to keep +Martin Lloyd from asking her to marry him, exulted Cherry, as she stood +breathless and laughing in the dark hallway. + +Cherry had never had any other home than this shabby brown bungalow, +and she knew every inch of the hall, even without light to see it. She +knew the faded rugs, and the study door that swallowed up her father +every day, and the table where Alix had put a great bowl of buttercups, +and the glass-paned door at the back through which the doctor's girls +had looked out at many a frosty morning, and red sunset, and +sun-steeped summer afternoon. But even the old hall had seemed +transformed to-night, lighted with a beauty quite new, scented with an +immortal sweetness. + +Hong came out of the dining room; the varnished buttercups twinkled in +a sudden flood of light. He had come to put a folded tablecloth into +the old wardrobe that did for a sideboard, under the stairs. Cherry, +descending to earth, smiled at him, and crossed the hall to the +sitting-room door. + +An older woman might have gone upstairs, to dream alone of her new joy, +but Cherry thought that it would be "fun" to join the family, and "act +as if nothing had happened!" She was only a child, after all. + +Consciously or unconsciously, they had all tried to keep her a child, +these three who looked up to smile at her as she came in. One of them, +rosy, gray-headed, magnificent at sixty, was her father, whose +favourite she knew she was. He held out his hand to her without closing +the book that was in the other hand, and drew her to the wide arm of +his chair, where she settled herself with her soft young body resting +against him, her slim ankles crossed, and her cheek dropped against his +thick silver hair. + +Alix was reading, and dreamily scratching her ankle as she read; she +was a tall, awkward girl, younger far at twenty-one than Cherry was at +eighteen, pretty in a gipsyish way, untidy as to hair, with round black +eyes, high, thin cheek-bones marked with scarlet, and a wide, humorous +mouth that was somehow droll in its expression even when she was angry +or serious. She was rarely angry; she was unexacting, good-humoured, +preferring animals to people, and unconventional in speech and manner. +Her father and Anne sometimes discussed her anxiously; they confessed +that they were rather fearful for Alix. For Cherry, neither one had +ever had a disquieting thought. + +Anne, smiling demurely over her white sewing, was a small, +prettily-made little woman, with silky hair trimly braided, and a +rather pale, small face with charming and regular features. She was not +considered exactly pretty; perhaps the contrast with Cherry's unusual +beauty was rather hard on both the older girls; but she was so +perfectly capable in her little groove, so busy, contented, and +necessary in the doctor's household, that it was rather a habit with +all their friends to praise Anne. Anne had "admirers," too, Cherry +reflected, looking at her to-night, but neither she nor Alix had ever +been engaged--engaged--engaged! + +"Aren't you home early?" said Doctor Strickland, rubbing his cheek +against his youngest daughter's cheek in sleepy content. He was never +quite happy unless all three girls were in his sight, but for this girl +he had always felt an especial protecting fondness. It seemed only +yesterday that Cherry, a rosy-cheeked sturdy little girl in a checked +gingham apron, had been trotting off to school; to him it was yesterday +that she had been a squarely-built baby, digging in the garden paths, +and sniffing at the border pinks. He had followed her exquisite +childhood with more than a father's usual devotion, perhaps because she +really had been an exceptionally endearing child, perhaps because she +had been given him, a tiny crying thing in a blanket, to fill the great +gap her mother's going had left in his heart. He had sympathized with +her microscopic cut fingers, he had smiled into her glowing, damp +little face when she stuttered to him long tales of bad doggies and big +'ticks; he had brought her "jacks" and paper-dolls and hair ribbons; he +loved the diminutive femininity of the creature; she was all a woman, +even at three. Alix he proudly called his "boy"; Alix used hair ribbons +to tie up her dogs, and demanded hip boots and an air rifle and got +them, too, and used them, but when he took Alix in his arms she was apt +to bump his nose violently with her hard young head, to break his +glasses, or at best to wriggle herself free. Little Cherry, however, +was 'fraid of dogs, she told her father, and of guns, and she would +curl up in his arms for happy half-hours, with her gold curls sprayed +against his shoulder, and her soft little hand tucked into his own. + +"Mr. Lloyd had to take the nine o'clock train," Cherry answered her +father dreamily, "and he and Peter walked home with me!" She did not +add that Peter had left them at his own turning, a quarter of a mile +away. + +"I thought he wasn't going to be at Mrs. North's for dinner," Anne +observed quietly, in the silence. She had been informally asked to the +Norths' for dinner that evening herself, and had declined for no other +reason than that attractive Martin Lloyd was presumably not to be there. + +"He wasn't," Cherry said. "He thought he had to go to town at six. I +just stopped in to give them Dad's message, and they teased me to stay. +You knew where I was, didn't you--Dad?" she murmured. + +"Mrs. North telephoned about six, and said you were there, but she +didn't say that Mr. Lloyd was," Anne said, with a faint hint of +discontent in her tone. + +Alix fixed her bright, mischievous eyes upon the two, and suspended her +reading for a moment. Alix's attitude toward the opposite sex was one +of calm contempt, outwardly. But she had made rather an exception of +Martin Lloyd, and had recently had a conversation with him on the +subject of sensible, platonic friendships between men and women. At the +mention of his name she looked up, remembering this talk with a little +thrill. + +His name had thrilled Anne, too, although she betrayed no sign of it as +she sat quietly matching silks. In fact, all three of the girls were +quite ready to fall in love with young Lloyd, if two of them had not +actually done so. + +He was a newcomer in the little town, a tall, presentable fellow, ready +with laughter, ready with words, and always more than ready for +flirtation. He admitted that he liked to flirt; his gay daring had +quite carried Anne's citadel, and had even gained Alix's grudging +response. Cherry had not been at home when Martin first appeared in +Mill Valley, and the older girls had written her, visiting friends in +Napa, that she must come and meet the new man. + +Martin was a mining engineer: he had been employed in a Nevada mine, +but was visiting his cousin in the valley now before going to a new +position in June. In its informal fashion, Mill Valley had entertained +him; he had tramped to the big forest five miles away with the +Stricklands, and there had been a picnic to the mountain-top, everybody +making the hard climb except Peter Joyce, who was a trifle lame, and +perhaps a little lazy as well, and who usually rode an old horse, with +the lunch in saddle-bags at each side. Alix formulated her theories of +platonic friendships on these walks; Anne dreamed a foolish, happy +dream. Girls did marry, men did take wives to themselves, dreamed Anne; +it would be unspeakably sweet, but it would be no miracle! + +And Anne, always busy and happy and helpful, was more so than ever, +unpacking the delicious lunch, capably arranging for everybody's +comfort and pleasure, looking up with innocent surprise when Martin +bent over her as she fussed and rearranged baskets. + +"I thought YOU were gathering wood!" + +"Did you, indeed? Let the other fellows do that. I shan't be here +forever, and I'm privileged." + +"Would you like me to give you something else to do?" + +"No, ma'am, I'm quite happy, thank you!" + +Not much in the words to remember, truly, but the tone and the look +went straight to Anne's close-guarded heart. Every time she looked up +at the mountain, rearing its dark crest above the little valley, they +had come back to her. + +That was all several weeks ago, now. It was just after that mountain +picnic that Cherry had come home; on a Sunday, as it chanced, that was +her eighteenth birthday, and on which Martin and his aunt were coming +to dinner. Alix had marked the occasion by wearing a loose velvet gown +in which she fancied herself; Anne had conscientiously decorated the +table, had seen to it that there was ice-cream, and chicken, and all +the accessories that make a Sunday dinner in the country a national +institution. Cherry had done nothing helpful. + +On the contrary, she had disgraced herself and infuriated Hong by +deciding to make fudge the last minute. Hong had finally relegated her +to the laundry, and it was from this limbo that Martin, laughing +joyously, extricated her, when, sticky and repentant, she had called +for help. It was Martin who untied the checked brown apron, +disentangling from the strings the silky gold tendrils that were +blowing over Cherry's white neck, and Martin who opened the door for +her sugary fingers, and Martin who watched the flying little figure out +of sight with a prolonged "Whew-w-w!" of utter astonishment. The child +was a beauty. + +But if she was beautiful when flushed and cross and sticky, there was +no word for her when she presently came demurely downstairs, her +exquisite little red mouth still pouting, her bright head still +drooping sulkily, but her wonderful eyes glinting mischief, and the +dark, tumbled apron replaced by thin white ruffles that began at +Cherry's shoulders and ended above her ankles. Soft, firm round chin, +straight little nose, blue eyes ringed with babyish shadows; Martin +found them all adorable, as was every inch of the slender, beautifully +made little body, the brown warm hand, the clear, childish forehead, +the square little foot in a shining slipper. + +Her eighteenth birthday! He learned that she had just put up her hair, +indeed, after dinner, her father made her tumble it down in a golden +mop again. "Can't lose my last girl, you know," he said to Mrs. North, +Martin's aunt, seriously. Martin had been shown her birthday gifts: +books and a silver belt buckle and a gold pen and stationery and +handkerchiefs. A day or two later she had had another gift; had opened +the tiny Shreve box with a sudden hammering at her heart, with a +presage of delight. She had found a silver-topped candy jar, and the +card of Mr. John Martin Lloyd, and under the name, in tiny letters, the +words "O fudge!" The girls laughed over this nonsense appreciatively, +but there was more than laughter in Cherry's heart. + +From that moment the world was changed. Her father, her sister, her +cousin had second place, now. Cherry had put out her innocent little +hand, and had opened the gate, and had passed through it into the +world. That hour was the beginning, and it had led her surely, +steadily, to the other hour to-night when she had been kissed, and had +kissed in return. + +Nobody dreamed it, she told herself with innocent exultation, looking +at Alix, sunk into her chair ungracefully, and at Anne, peacefully +sewing. They thought of her as a child--she, who was engaged to be +married! + +"So--we walk home with young men?" mused the doctor, smiling. "Look +here, girls, this little Miss Muffet will be cutting you both out with +that young man, if you're not careful!" + +Alix, deep in her story, did not hear him, but Anne smiled faintly, and +faintly frowned as she shook her head. She considered Cherry +sufficiently precocious without Uncle Lee's ill-considered tolerance. +Anne had often told him that Cherry was the "pink-and-white type" that +would attract "boys" soon enough without any encouragement from him. +But he persisted in regarding her as nothing more than a captivating +baby! + +He would have had them always children, this tender, simple, innocent +Doctor Strickland. He was in many ways a child himself. He had never +made money in his profession; he and his wife and the two tiny girls +had had a hard enough struggle sometimes. Anne and her own father had +joined the family eight years ago, in the same year that the Strickland +Patent Fire Extinguisher, over which the doctor had been puttering for +years, had been sold. It did not sell, as his neighbours believed, for +a million dollars, but for perhaps one tenth of that sum. It was +enough, and more than enough, whatever it was. After Anne's father died +it meant that the doctor could live on in the brown house under the +redwoods, with his girls, reading, fussing with a new invention, +walking, consulting with Anne, laughing at Alix, and spoiling his +youngest-born. + +The house was shingled, low, framed in wide porches, smelling within +and without of the sweet woods about it. Here the Stricklands weathered +the cold, damp winters, when the trees dripped and the creeks swelled, +and here they watched the first emerald of spring breaking through the +loam of a thousand autumns; here they hunted for iris and wild lilac in +April, and hung Japanese lanterns through the long, warm summers. It +was a perfect life for the old man; it was only lately that he begun +uneasily to suspect that they would some day want something more, that +they would some day tire of empty forest and blowing mountain ridge, +and go away from the shadow of Mt. Tamalpais, and into the world. + +Anne, now--was she beginning to fancy this young Lloyd? Doctor +Strickland was surprised with the fervour with which he repudiated the +thought. Anne had been admired, she must go to her own home some day. +But her uncle hoped that it would be a neighbouring home; this young +engineer, who had drifted already into a dozen different and distant +places, was not the man for staid little Anne. He was twenty-eight +years old, but it was not the discrepancy in years that mattered. The +doctor had himself been twelve years older than his wife. No, it was +something less tangible-- + +"What did you want to see Mr. Lloyd about to-morrow, Dad?" Cherry +interrupted his thoughts to ask. + +"The rose vine!" her father reminded her. + +"You'll never get that back on the roof!" Alix looked up to assure him +discouragingly. "I told you, when you were pruning it," she added +vivaciously, "that you were cutting too deep. No--you knew it all! Now +the first wind brings it down all over the place, and you get exactly +what you deserve!" + +Her tone was less harsh than her words; indeed, it was the tone he +loved from her, that of a devoted but long-suffering mother. She came +to Cherry's hassock, and dropped on it, and rested her untidy head +against his knee. + +"Anne aided and abetted me!" said the doctor meekly. + +"To the extent of handing you your shears!" Anne said promptly. + +"No, but really you know, Dad, you were a pig-headed little creature to +do that!" Alix said musically. "You might just as well cut it down at +the roots and plant another double banksia." + +"I rather thought that Lloyd might have some idea of a tackle--or a +derrick or something--" submitted her father vaguely. + +"Well, if anybody can--" Anne conceded, laughing. "What did he say +about coming over, Cherry?" + +But Cherry had not been listening, and the conversation was reviewed +for her benefit. She remarked, between two rending yawns, that Mr. +Lloyd was coming over to-morrow at ten o'clock, and Peter, too-- + +"Peter won't be much good!" Alix commented. Cherry looked at her +reproachfully. + +"You're awfully mean to Peter, lately!" she protested. Her father gave +her a shrewd look, with his good-night kiss, and immediately afterward +both the younger girls dragged their way up to bed. + +Alix and Cherry shared a bare, woody-smelling room tucked away under +brown eaves. The walls were of raw pine, the latticed windows, in +bungalow fashion, opened into the fragrant darkness of the night. The +beds were really bunks, and above her bunk each girl had an extra +berth, for occasional guests. There was scant prettiness in the room, +and yet it was full of purity and charm. The girls sat upon their beds +while they were undressing, and plunged upon their knees on the bare +pine floor and rested their elbows upon the faded patchwork quilts +while they said their prayers. Mill Valley was so healthful a little +mountain village that among her two thousand residents there was only +one doctor, the old man who sat by the fire downstairs, and he had +formally retired from general practice. The girls, like all their +neighbours, were hardy, bred to cold baths, long walks, simple hours, +and simple food. In the soft Western climate they left their bedroom +windows open the year round; they liked to wake to winter damp and fog, +and go downstairs with blue finger-tips and chattering teeth, to warm +themselves with breakfast and the fire. + +So Alix said nothing when Cherry went to the window to-night, and knelt +at it, looking out into the redwoods, and breathing the piney air. In +the silence of the little room the girls could hear a swollen creek +rushing; rich, loamy odours drifted in from the forest that had been +soaked with long April rains. Cherry saw a streak of light under the +door of Hong's cabin, a hundred yards away; there was no moon, it was +blackness unbroken under the trees. The season was late, but the girls +felt with a rush of delight that summer was with them at last; the air +was soft and warm, and there was a general sense of being freed from +the winter's wetness and heaviness. + +Alix rolled herself in a gray army blanket, and was asleep in some +sixty seconds. But Cherry felt that she was floating in seas of new joy +and utter delight, and that she would never be sleepy again. + +Downstairs Anne and the doctor sat staidly on, the man dreaming with a +knotted forehead, the girl sewing. Presently she ran a needle through +her fine white work with seven tiny stitches, folded it, and put her +thimble into a case that hung from her orderly workbag with a long +ribbon. + +"Wait a minute, Anne," said the doctor, as she straightened herself to +rise. "This young Lloyd, now--what do YOU think of him?" + +She widened demure blue eyes. + +"Should you be sorry if I--liked him, Uncle Lee?" she smiled. + +The old man rumpled his silver hair restlessly. + +"No-o," he said, a little ruefully. "I suppose it'll be some man some +day, my dear. I've been thinking--even little Cherry seems to be +growing up!" + +Anne, who modelled her deportment somewhat upon the conduct of Esther +in "Bleak House," came to the hassock at his knee, and sat there, +looking up at him with bright affection and respect. + +"Cherry's only a child," she assured him, "and Alix will not be ready +to give her heart to any man for years to come! But I'm twenty-four, +Uncle. And sometimes I feel ready to--to try my own wings!" + +He smiled at her absently; he was thinking of her mother, an +articulate, academic, resolute woman, of whom he had never been fond. + +"That's the way the wind blows, eh?" he asked kindly. + +Anne widened her pretty eyes. + +"Well--you see how much he's here! You see the flowers and books and +notes. I'm not the sort of girl to wear my heart on my sleeve," Anne, +who was fond of small conservational tags, assured him merrily. "But +there must be some fire where there's so much smoke!" she ended. + +"You're not sure, my dear?" he asked, after some thought. + +"Oh, no!" she answered. "It's just a fancy that persists in coming and +going. You know, Uncle Lee," Anne pursued, confidentially, "I've always +had rather a high ideal of marriage. I've always said that the man I +would marry must be a big man--oh, I don't mean only physically! I mean +morally, mentally--a man among men!" + +"And you think young Lloyd--answers that description, eh?" + +"I think he does, Uncle Lee," she answered seriously. And immediately +afterward she got to her feet, saying brightly, "Well! we mustn't take +this too gravely--yet. It was only that I wanted to be open and +above-board with you, Uncle, from the beginning. That's the only honest +way." + +"That's wise and right!" her uncle answered, in the kindly, absent tone +he had used to them as children, a tone he was apt to use to Anne when +she was in her highest mood, and one she rather resented. + +"Cherry, now--" he asked, detaining her for a moment. "She--you don't +think that perhaps Peter admires her?" + +"PETER!" Anne echoed amazedly, and stood thinking. + +Peter was more than thirty years old, thin, scholarly, something of a +solitary, the sweet, dreamy, affectionate neighbour who had shared the +girls' lives for the past ten years. Cherry had bullied Peter since her +babyhood, ruined his piano with sticky fingers, trampled his rose-beds, +coaxed him into asking her father to let her sit up for dinner. For +some reason she could not, or would not, define, Anne liked the idea of +Cherry and Peter falling in love-- + +"Somehow one doesn't think of Peter as marrying any one--" she said +slowly, still trying to grasp the thought. "He's so--self-sufficient," +she added, shaking her head. "You--you WOULDN'T like that, Uncle?" + +"Peter is a dear fellow," the doctor mused. "But Cherry--why, she's +barely eighteen! He--" The old man hesitated, began again: "I suppose +there's no reason why Peter shouldn't kiss her, in a--brotherly sort of +way?" he submitted doubtfully. + +"Did he kiss her?" Anne exclaimed. + +"I don't know that he did," Cherry's father said hastily. + +"But what made you think he did?" the girl persisted. + +"Just a fancy," he assured her. "Just an old father's fear that she is +growing up too fast!" + +"Because we all, and you especially, spoil her," Anne reminded him, +smiling. "Peter," she added thoughtfully, "has kissed us all, now and +then!" She stooped for a dutiful good-night kiss, and was gone. And as +she went, lightly and swiftly across the hall, up the stairway with her +shoulders erect, and methodically and prettily moved about her brushing +and folding and disrobing, she saw herself engaged to be married, saw +herself veiled and mystical in white, on her Uncle's arm, heard the old +neighbours and friends saying that little Anne Strickland had gone to +her own home, and had won the love of a fine man. + +Downstairs, the doctor sat on, thinking, and his face was grave. He was +thinking of little Cherry's goodnight kiss, half an hour ago. She had +rested against his arm, and he had held her there, but what had been +the thoughts behind the blue eyes so near his own? Perhaps Anne was +right--perhaps Anne was right. But he realized with a great rush of +fear that some man had kissed Cherry to-night, had held her against a +tobacco-scented coat, and that the girl was a woman, and an awakened +woman at that. Cherry--kissed a man! Her father's heart winced away +from the thought. + +Young Lloyd and Peter had walked home with her. But if Anne was right +in her maidenly suspicions of Lloyd's intentions, then it must have +been Peter who surprised little Cherry with a sudden embrace. Lloyd had +been hurrying for a train, too; the case looked clear for Peter. + +And as he came to his conclusions, a certain relief crept into the old +man's heart. Peter was an odd fellow; he was ten years too old for the +child. But Peter was a lover of books and gardens and woods and music, +after all, and Peter's father and this old man musing by the fire had +been "Lee" and "Paul" to each other since boyhood. Peter might give +Cherry a kiss as innocently as a brother; in any case, Peter would wait +for her, would be all consideration and tenderness when he did win her. + +"But I think perhaps she might go down to the San Jose school for half +a term," her father reflected. "Six months there did wonders for Alix. +No use precipitating things--the next few years are pretty important +for all the girls. We mustn't let her fancy that the first man who +turns her head with compliments is the right partner for life! Alix, +now--somehow she wasn't like Cherry, at eighteen." + +He smiled at a sudden memory of Alix, who was chicken-farming at that +age, and generally unpleasantly redolent of incubators, chopped feed, +and mire. He seemed to remember Alix shouting that if Peter Joyce was +going to LIVE in their house, she would move somewhere else! Cherry was +different. + +Cherry, he reflected fearfully, was as pretty as her mother had been at +eighteen, with the same rounded chin and apricot cheeks, and the same +shadowed innocent blue eyes with a film of corn-coloured hair blown +across them. She had the strange, the indefinable quality that without +words, almost without glances, draws youth toward youth, draws +admiration and passion, draws life and all its pain. Her father for the +first time to-night formulated in his heart the thought that she might +be happily married-- + +Married--nonsense! Why, what did she know of life, of submission and +courage and sacrifice? At the first strain, at the first real test, she +would want to run home to her Daddy again, to "stop playing"--! It +would be years, many years, before the snowy frills, and the pale gold +head, and the firm, brown little hand would be ready for that! + +Not many hours after he went slowly up to bed morning began to creep +into the little valley. The redwoods turned gray, and then dark green, +the fog stirred, and a first shaft of bright sunlight struck across a +shoulder of the hills, and pierced the shadows about the brown +bungalow. Alix, at her early bath, heard quail calling, and looked out +to see the last of the fog vanishing at eight o'clock, and to get a wet +rush of fragrance from the Persian lilac, blooming this year for the +first time. At half-past eight she came out into the garden, to find +her father somewhat ruefully studying the tumbled ruins of the yellow +banksia rose. The garden was still wet, but warming fast; she picked a +plume of dark and perfumed heliotrope, and began to fasten it in his +coat lapel while she kissed him. + +"We'll never get that back on the roof, my dear boy," Alix said +maternally. + +Her father pursed his lips, shook his head doubtfully. The rose, a +short, week ago, had been spreading fan-like branches well toward the +ridge-pole, a story and a half above their heads. But the great wind of +yestereve that had ended the spring and brought in the summer had +dragged it from its place and flung it, a jumble of emerald leaves and +sweet clusters of creamy blossoms, across the path and the steps of the +porch. Alix looked up at the outward curve of the reversed branches, +bent almost to the splitting point in the unfamiliar direction, and +whistled. She tentatively tugged at a loose spray, and stood biting her +thumb. + +"Why it should have kept its place for fifteen years and then suddenly +flopped, is a mystery to me!" she observed resentfully. + +"Well, the truth is," her father confessed, "you were quite right last +night. When I pruned it, a week ago, I may have undermined it." + +"You never will listen to reason!" his daughter remarked absently, her +attention distracted by the setter puppy who came clumsily gambolling +toward her. "Hello, old Bumpydoodles!" she added, with rich affection, +kissing the dog's silky head, and burying both hands in his feathered +collar. "Hello, old Buck!" + +"Alexandra, for heaven's sake stop handling that brute!" said Peter +Joyce disgustedly, coming up the path. "I dare say you've not had your +breakfast, either. Go wash your hands! 'Morning, Doctor!" + +Father and daughter turned to smile upon him, a tall, lean man, with a +young face and a finely groomed head, and with touches of premature +silver at his temples. He was very much at home here, had been their +closest friend for many years. + +He was a bachelor, just entering his thirties, a fastidious, critical, +exacting man by reputation, but showing his best side to the +Stricklands. They had a vague idea that he was rich, according to their +modest standard, but he apparently had no extravagant tastes, and lived +as quietly, or more quietly, than they did. He had a brown cabin, up on +the mountain, where two or three Portuguese boys and an old, fat +Chinese cook managed his affairs, and he sometimes spoke of friends at +the club, or brought two or three men home with him for a visit. But +for the most part he liked solitude, books, music, dogs, and his +fireside. The old doctor's one social enjoyment was in visiting Peter, +and the younger man went to no other place so steadily as he came to +the old house under the redwoods. + +The girls accepted him unquestioningly, sometimes resenting his frank +criticism, sometimes grateful for the entertaining he delighted to do +for them, but most often ignoring him, as if he had been an uncle whose +place and standing in the domestic circle was unquestioned, but who did +not really enter into their young plans and lives. He was whimsically, +good-naturedly disapproving of Alexandra, and he frankly did not like +Anne, but he had always been especially indulgent to Cherry, and had +taken the subject of Cherry's schooling and development very seriously. +And Cherry treated him, in return, as if she had been his demure and +mischievous and affectionate daughter. + +"'Morning, Peter!" said Doctor Strickland now, smiling at him. "Have +you had yours?" + +"My house," said Mr. Joyce fastidiously, "is a well-managed place." + +"Of course," Alix said, panting from her welcome to the dog, and +laughing at the newcomer without resentment, "of course it is, for the +President Emeritus of the Maiden Ladies' Guild is running it!" + +"Don't be insulting," Peter answered, in the same mood. "Say," he +added, pursing his lips to whistle, as he looked at the rose tree, "did +Tuesday's wind do that?" + +"Tuesday's wind and Dad," Alix answered. "Will it go back, Peter?" + +"I--I don't know!" he mused, walking slowly about the wreck. "If we had +a lever down here, and some fellow on the roof with a rope, maybe." + +"Mr. Lloyd is coming over!" Alix announced. Peter nodded absently, but +the mention of Martin Lloyd reminded him that they had all dined at his +house on the very evening when the mysterious gale had commenced, and +with interest he asked: + +"Cherry catch cold coming home Tuesday night?" + +"No; she squeezed in between Dad and me, and was as warm as toast!" +Alix answered casually. "How'd you like Mr. Lloyd?" she added. + +"Nice fellow!" Peter answered. Alix grinned. She had before this +accused Peter of violent partisanship with his own sex. He criticized +women severely; the Strickland girls had often been angry and resentful +at his comments upon the insincerity, extravagance, and ignorance of +their own sex, but with Peter, all men were worthy of respect, until +otherwise proved. + +"He's awfully nice," Alix agreed. + +"Who is he?" Peter asked curiously. "Where are his people and all that?" + +"His people live in Portland," the girl answered. "He's a mining +engineer, and he's waiting now to be called to El Nido; he's to be at a +mine there. He's lots of fun--when you know him, really!" + +"Talking of the new Prince Charming, of course," Anne said, joining +them, and linking an arm in her Uncle's and in Alix's arm. "Don't bring +that puppy in, Alix, please! Breakfast, Uncle Lee. Come and have +another cup of coffee, Peter!" + +"Prince Charming, eh?" Peter echoed thoughtfully, as they all turned +toward a delicious drift of the odour of bacon and coffee, and crossed +the porch to the dining room. "I was going down for the mail, but now +I'll have to stay and see this rose matter through! Thanks, Anne, but +I'll watch you." + +"Afraid of getting fatter?" Alix speculated, shaking out her napkin. +"You ARE fatter," she added, with a calm conviction. + +"Do you always say the thing that will give the most offence?" Peter +asked, annoyed. "Where's Cherry?" he added, glancing about. + +Cherry answered the question herself by trailing in in a Japanese +wrapper, and beginning to drink her coffee with bare, slender arms +resting on the table. Nobody protested, the adored youngest was usually +given her way. Alix's indifference to the niceties of her toilet had +been seriously combated, years ago, but Cherry was so young, and so +pretty in any dress or undress, that it was impossible to regard her +little lapses with any gravity. Moreover, the family realized perfectly +that Alix would have clipped her thick hair, and taken to bloomers or +knickerbockers outright, at the slightest encouragement, and would +gladly have breakfasted in a wrapper, or in her petticoats, or while +about the woods with her dogs, whereas nobody could know Cherry and not +know that every weakness of which the feminine heart is capable, for +frills and toilet waters, creams and laces, was dormant under the +childish negligence. + +"I heard you all laughing, under the window and it--woke--me--up!" +Cherry said dreamily. + +"It seems to me," Anne, who had been eying her uneasily, said lightly, +"that someone I know is getting pretty old to come downstairs in that +rig when strangers are here!" + +"It seems to me this is just as decent as lots of things--bathing +suits, for instance!" Cherry returned instantly, gathering the robe +about her, and giving Anne a resentful glance over her blue cup. + +"Peter, are you a stranger?" Alix said. "If Peter's a stranger," she +added animatedly, "what is an intimate friend? Peter walks through this +house at all hours; you can't wash your hair or do a little ironing +without having Peter under your feet; he borrows money from me; he +bullies Hong about wasting butter--" + +"Also you borrow money from me, my child, don't forget that," Peter +interrupted serenely, peeling an apple. "I don't come to see YOU, Alix." + +"I have a rope somewhere--" the doctor ruminated. "Where did I put that +long rope--what did I have it for, in the first place--" + +"You had it to guy the apple tree," Alix reminded him. "Don't you +remember you got a regular ship's cable to tie that tree, and it never +worked? The tree that died after all--" + +"Ah, yes!" said her father, his attentive face brightening. "Ah, yes! +Now WHERE is that rope?" But even as Alix observed that she had seen it +somewhere, and advanced a tentative guess as to the cellar, his eyes +fell upon Cherry, and went from Cherry's absorbed face--for she was +dreaming over her breakfast--to Peter, and he wondered if Peter HAD +kissed her. + +"Come on, let's get at it!" Alix exclaimed with relish. She loved a +struggle of any description, had prepared for this one with sleeves +rolled to the elbows, and had put on heavy shoes and her briefest +skirt. "Come on, Sweetums," she added, to the dog, who had somehow +wormed his way into the dining room, and was beating the floor with an +obsequious tail. She caught his forepaws, and he whipped his beautiful +tail between his legs, and looked about with agonized eyes while she +dragged him through a clumsy dance. "He's the darlingest pup we ever +had!" Alix stated to Cherry, who was departing for the upper regions +and a complete costume. + +"He needs a bath," Anne observed coldly, and Peter's abrupt shout of +laughter made Alix flush angrily. + +"Bring your cigarette out here, Peter," the old doctor said, crossing +the garden to look in the abandoned greenhouse for his rope. "We're in +no hurry," he said. "We may as well wait until Lloyd comes along; the +fellow's arms are like flails. You---" the old man opened a reluctant +door, peered into a glassed space filled with muddy shelves and empty +flower-pots and spiderwebs. "It's not here," he stated. Then he began +again, "You brought Cherry home last night?" he asked. + +"As a matter of fact, I didn't," Peter answered, in his quick, precise +tones. "I came with Lloyd and Cherry as far as the bridge, then I cut +up the hill. Why?" he added sharply. "What's up?" + +"Nothing's up," Doctor Strickland said slowly. "But I think that Lloyd +admires--or is beginning to admire--her," he said. + +"Who--Cherry!" Peter exclaimed, with distaste and incredulity in his +tone. + +"You don't think so?" the doctor, looking at him wistfully, asked +eagerly. + +"Why, certainly not!" Peter said quickly. "Certainly not," he added, +frowning, with his eyes narrowed, and his look fixed upon the vista of +woodland. + +"I had a fancy that he might have been putting notions into her head," +her father said, anxious to be reassured. + +"But--great Scott!" Peter said, his face very red, "she's much younger +than Anne and Alix--" + +"It doesn't always go by that," the doctor suggested. + +"No, I know it doesn't," Peter answered in his quick, annoyed fashion. + +"I should be sorry," Cherry's father admitted. + +"Sorry!" Peter echoed impatiently. "But it's quite out of the question, +of course! It's quite out of the question. You mustn't--we mustn't--let +ourselves get scared about the first man that looks at her. She--she +wouldn't consider him for an instant," he suddenly decided in great +satisfaction. "You mustn't forget that she has something to do with it! +Very fastidious, Cherry. She's not like other girls!" + +"That's true--that's true!" Doctor Strickland agreed, in great relief. +They turned back toward the garden, in time to meet Alix and several +dogs streaming across the clearing. Over the girl's shoulder was coiled +the great rope; she leaped various logs and small bushes as she came, +and the dogs barked madly and leaped with her. Breathless, she stumbled +and fell into her father's arms, and both men had the same thought, one +that made them smile upon her tomboyishness indulgently: "If this is +twenty-one--eighteen is three long years younger and less responsible!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Immediately they gathered by the fallen rose vine, all talking and +disputing at once. Alix and the dogs added only noise to the confusion; +the men debated, measured, and doubted; Anne, busy with household +duties, came and went smilingly. About them stretched the forest, +wrapped in the summer morning stillness that is really compounded of a +thousand happy sounds. There was no fog now; warm spokes of sunshine +fell brightly into the dim, glowing heart of the woods; bees and birds +murmured on short journeys; aromatic sweetness drifted on the air. + +They had known a thousand such mornings, the doctor and his girls, +still, exquisite, happy, dedicated to some absurd undertaking. They had +built chicken pens, they had dammed or cleared the creek, they had +felled bay-trees, and lopped the lower branches of the redwoods, they +had built roaring bonfires, or painted the porch floor, and many times +they had roasted chops or potatoes at the brick oven, and feasted +royally in the open forest. + +A light rope was tied; an experimental tug broke it like a string, +tumbling Alix violently in a sitting position, and precipitating her +father into a loamy bed. Anne, who was bargaining with a Chinese fruit +vendor frankly interested in their undertaking, had called that she +would help them in a second, when behind Alix, who was still sitting on +the ground, another voice offered help. + +A young man had come into the doctor's garden; work was stopped for a +few minutes while they welcomed Martin Lloyd. + +He was tall and fair, broad, but with not an ounce of extra weight, +with brown eyes always laughing, and a ready friendliness always in +evidence. He was dressed becomingly to-day, in a brown army shirt open +at the throat, and shabby golf trousers that met his thick woollen +stockings at the knee. Anne's heart gave a throb of approval as she +studied him; Alix flushed furiously, scowled a certain boyish approval; +Cherry had not come down. + +"Can you help us?" The doctor echoed his question doubtfully. "I don't +know that it can be done!" he admitted. + +"This shameless old man has just confessed that he gouged the heart out +of the poor tree a week ago," Alix said, getting to her feet. "That's +the first use he put his birthday knife to! And Anne stood here and +abetted him, as far as I can find out!" + +"How you garble things, Alix!" Anne said, giving her hand to Martin. "I +came out here to find my uncle busily pruning and chopping the dead +underwood away, but I had no more to do with it than you had!" + +"What's that you're eating--an apricot?" Martin said to Anne, in his +laughing way. "I was going to say that if it was a peach, you are a +cannibal!" + +"Oh, help!" Alix ejaculated, with a look of elaborate scorn. + +"No, but where were you last night?" Martin added in a lower tone when +he and Anne could speak unnoticed. The happy colour flooded her face. + +"I have to take care of my family SOMETIMES!" she reminded him +demurely. "Wasn't Cherry a good substitute?" + +"Cherry's adorable!" he agreed heartily. + +"Isn't she sweet?" Anne asked enthusiastically. "She's only a little +girl, really, but she's a little girl who is going to have a lot of +attention some day!" she added, in her most matronly manner. + +Martin did not answer, but turning briskly toward the doctor, he +devoted himself to the business in hand. Peter had climbed on an +inverted barrel, to inspect and advise. Alix dashed upstairs for nails +and hammer; the doctor whittled pegs; Martin measured the comparative +strength of ropes and branches with a judicial eye and hand. Anne +flitted about, suggesting, commenting, her pretty little head tipped to +one side. + +They were all deep in the first united tug, each person placed +carefully by the doctor, and guys for the rope driven at intervals +decided by Martin, when there was an interruption for Cherry's arrival +on the scene. With characteristic coquetry she did not approach, as the +others had, by means of the front porch and the garden path, but crept +from the study window into a veritable tunnel of green bloom, and came +crawling down it, as sweet and fragrant, as lovely and as fresh, as the +roses themselves. She wore a scant pink gingham that had been a dozen +times to the tub, and was faded and small; it might have been a regal +mantle and diadem without any further enhancing her extraordinary +beauty. Her bright head was hidden by a blue sunbonnet, assumed, she +explained later, because the thorns tangled her hair; but as, laughing +and smothered with roses, she crept into view, the sunbonnet slipped +back, and the lovely, flushed little face, with tendrils of gold +straying across the white forehead, and mischief gleaming in the blue, +blue eyes was framed only in loosened pale gold hair. + +Years afterward Alix remembered her so, as Martin Lloyd helped her to +spring free of the branches, and she stood laughing at their surprise +and still clinging to his hand. "The day we raised the rose tree" had a +place of its own in Alix's memory, as a time of carefree fun and +content, a time of perfume and sunshine--perhaps the last time of its +kind that any one of them was to know. + +Cherry looked at Martin daringly as she joined the labourers; her whole +being was thrilling to the excitement of his glance; she was hardly +conscious of what she was doing or saying. Under her father's direction +she tied ropes, presently was placed with her arms clasped tightly +about a great sheaf of vines, ready for the united tug. Martin came +close to her, in the general confusion. + +"How's my little sweetheart this morning?" + +Cherry looked up, her throat contracted, she looked down again, unable +to speak. She had been waiting for his first word; now that it had come +it seemed so far richer and sweeter than her wildest dream. + +"How can I see you a minute?" Martin murmured, snapping his big knife +shut. + +"I have to walk down for the mail--" stammered Cherry, conscious only +of Martin and herself. + +Both Peter and her father were watching her with an uneasiness and +suspicion that had sprung into being full-blown. Both men were asking +themselves what they knew of this strange young man who was suddenly a +part of their intimate little world. + +He was simply a man; not unusual in any apparent way. He was ready with +his words, fairly good-looking, clean and muscular, his evident lack of +polish in languages and letters atoned for by his quick wit, and by a +certain boyish artlessness and ingenuousness. He represented himself as +about to receive an excellent salary at the mine at El Nido, two +thousand a year, but also admitted cheerfully that he was always +"broke." He had distinguished himself at college, but had left it after +only two years, upon being offered a promising position. There was +nothing especially to admire in him, nothing especially to blame; under +other circumstances Peter and the doctor might have pronounced him as +one of the least interesting of human specimens. The beauty of +childhood and adolescence were gone, the ripeness given by years and +suffering was wanting; Martin Lloyd was just, as he himself laughingly +remarked, "one of the fellers." + +Peter had secretly criticized him because he used the words "'phone" +and "photo" and "'Frisco," but in justice he had to admit to himself +that there was no particular significance to the criticism. He also, in +his secret heart, had a vague, dissatisfied feeling that Lloyd was a +man who held women, as a class, rather in disrespect, and had probably +had his experiences with them, but there was no way of expressing, much +less governing, his conduct toward Martin by so purely speculative a +prejudice. The young man had dined at his house a few nights ago, had +shown an admiration, if not an appreciation, for music, had talked with +sufficient intelligence about political matters, mining, and--what +else? photography, and pullman cars, and the latest wreck off +Bolinas--just the random conversation that was apt to trail through a +country dinner. He had told a Chinese joke well, and essayed an Irish +joke not so successfully. Peter, somewhat appalled, in the sunny +garden, struggling with the banksia, decided that this was not much to +know of a person who might have the audacity to fall in love with an +exquisite and innocent Cherry. After all, she would not be a little +girl forever, some man would want to take that little corn-coloured +head and that delicious little pink-clad person away with him some day, +to be his wife-- + +And suddenly Peter was torn by a stab of pure pain, and he stood +puzzled and sick, in the garden bed, wondering what was happening to +him. + +"Listen--want a drink?" Alix asked, coming out with a tin dipper that +spilled a glittering sheet of water down on the thirsty nasturtiums. +"Rest a few minutes, Peter. Dad wanted a pole, and Mr. Lloyd has gone +up into the woods to cut one." + +"And where's Cherry?" Peter asked, drinking deep. + +"She went along--just up in the woods here!" Alix answered. "Dad had to +answer the telephone, but they're going to yell if they need help! +WELL!" and Alix, panting, sat down on a log, "are we going to do it?" + +"We ought to go up and help Lloyd," Peter decreed. "Which way did he +go?" + +"I don't know, darling!" Alix answered, leaning back, crossing her +ankles, and yawning. "But they'll be back before you could get there. +They've been gone five minutes!" + +Only five minutes, but they were enough to take Cherry and her lover +out of sight of the house, enough to have him put his arm about her, +and to have her raise her lips confidently, and yet shyly, again to +his. They kissed each other deeply, again and again. The girl was a +little confused and even a little uneasy as he continued the tight grip +on his arm about her, and her upward look found his eyes close to her +own. + +Their talk was incoherent. Cherry was still playing, coquetting and +smiling, her words few, and Martin, having her so near, could only +repeat the endearing phrases that attempted to express to her his love +and fervour. + +"You darling! Do you know how I love you? You darling--you little +exquisite beauty! Do you love me--do you love me?" Martin murmured, and +Cherry answered breathlessly: + +"You know I do--but you know I do!" + +Presently he selected the sapling redwood, and brought it down with two +blows of his axe. The girl seated herself beside him, helped him strip +the trunk, their hands constantly touching, the man once or twice +delaying her for one more snatched and laughing kiss. + +"But, Martin, you've been engaged before?" Cherry asked. + +"Never--on my honour! But yes, I was once, too, years ago. I want to +tell you about that--" + +He told her, her grave face bent over the redwood boughs she was +tearing. She nodded, flushed, paled. He had met this girl at his +mother's, do you see? And she was a cute little thing, don't you know? +Her name was Dorothy King, and when he went back to college she had +promised to write, do you see? But she hadn't written for weeks, and +then she had written to say that she was engaged to another man, a man +named--named--he had forgotten the name. But she had married him all +right---- + +And Cherry looked up, laughing almost reproachfully. How could he ever +forget her married name! Cherry said that she suspected that Martin +hadn't really cared, and he said no, but he had wanted to tell her +about it all the same, because knowing her had made him want really to +be honest--and to be good-- + +Tears stood in his eyes, and she forgave him his admiration for Dorothy +King, and said that she knew he was good. And Martin said that he was +going to make her the happiest wife a man ever had. + +Dragging the stripped tree, they ran down the sharp hill to the house +just as Anne came out to announce luncheon. Peter was wandering off in +the woods nearby, but came at Alix's shrill yell of summons, and looked +relieved when he saw Cherry and Martin not even talking to each other. +They had been gone only ten minutes. + +Anne, who did not like Peter, had decided not to ask him to stay, but +Peter had calmly taken his usual place, and had annoyed Anne with his +familiar questioning of Hong as to the amount of butter needed in +batter bread. It was a happy meal for everyone, and after it they had +attacked the rose bush again, with aching muscles now, and in the first +real summer heat. It was three o'clock before, with a great crackling, +and the scream of a twisted branch, and a general panting and heaving +on the part of the workers, at last the feathery mass had risen a +foot--two feet--into the air, had stood tottering like a wall of bloom, +and finally, with a downward rush, had settled to its old place on the +roof. Hong was pressed into service now, and with Martin, was on the +roof, grappling with a rope, shouting directions. A shower of tiny +blossoms and torn leaves covered the steps of the office-porch, the +garden beds were trampled deep, the seven labourers breathless and +exhausted. But the rose vine was in place! Alix shouted congratulations +to Martin as he busily roped and tied the recaptured masses in their +old position. Anne had vanished for sandwiches; Peter was being +scientifically bandaged by the doctor. Cherry stood looking up at the +roof; she did little talking; she watched Martin during every second he +spent there. + +Her small heart was bursting with excitement. He had found easy +opportunities to talk to her a dozen times under cover of the general +noise. He had said wonderful and thrilling things. + +"How is my own girl? Sweetheart, you're the sweetest rose of them all! +Cherry, do you suppose they can see from our faces how happy we are?" +Little sentences that meant nothing when other lips spoke them, but +that his voice made immortal. + +Looking up at him, she thought of the glorious days ahead. How they +would all wonder and exclaim; yes, and how the girls would envy her! +Little Cherry, just eighteen, going to be married, and married to a man +that Alix or Anne would have been only too glad to win! A real man, +from the outside world, a man of twenty-eight, ten years older than she +was. And how the letters and presents and gowns and plans would begin +to flutter through the bungalow--she would be married in cafe-au-lait +rajah cloth, as Miss Pinckney in San Francisco was; she would be Mrs. +Lloyd! She could chaperone Alix and Anne-- + +There was a rending, slipping noise on the roof, a scream from Martin, +and shouts from the doctor and Peter. With a great sliding and rushing +of the refractory sprays, and with a horrifying stumbling and falling, +down came Martin, caught in a great rope of the creeper, almost at her +feet. + +A time of great running and calling ensued. Cherry dropped on her knees +beside him, and had his head on her arm for a moment; then her father +took her place, and Alix, with an astonished look at the younger girl's +wet eyes, drew her sister away. Immediately afterward Martin sat up, +looked bewilderedly about from one face to another, looked at his +scratched wrist and said "Gee!" in a thoughtful tone. Anne, coming out +with sandwiches, joined in the general laugh. + +"You scared Cherry out of ten years' growth!" Alix reproached Martin. + +"I--I thought he might have hurt himself!" Cherry said, in the softest +of little-girl voices, and with her shy little head hanging. Anne +decided that it was becoming her clear duty to talk to Cherry. + +"My dear," she said, later that same afternoon, when by chance she was +alone with her little cousin, "don't you think perhaps it would be a +little more dignified to treat Mr. Lloyd with more formality? He likes +you, dear, of course. But a man wants to respect as well as like a +pretty girl, and I am afraid--Uncle has noticed it!" she interrupted +herself quickly, as Cherry tossed her head scornfully. "He spoke of it +last night, and Alix tells me that you are calling Mr. Lloyd 'Martin!' +Now, dearie, Martin Lloyd is fully ten years---" + +"Then Alix is a tattle-tale!" Cherry said childishly. + +"I don't know about that," Anne said gently, although perhaps it would +have been more generous in her to add that Alix had made the comment +gleefully, and almost admiringly. "But that isn't important. The point +is that you are only a young girl--" + +"I wish you would all mind your own royal business for about five +seconds!" Cherry said, rudely and impatiently. She was in her own room, +rummaging on the upper shelf of the closet for a certain hat. She +secured the hat now, and ran unceremoniously away from her admonitor, +to join Alix, Peter, and Martin for the daily ceremony of walking into +the village for the mail. + +Anne followed her downstairs sedately, perhaps a little dashed +presently to discover that this dignified proceeding had lost her the +walk. They were all gone. The house was very still, early summer +sweetness was drifting through wide-opened windows and doors; the long +day was slowly declining. In the woods close to the door a really +summery hum of insect life was stirring. Hong, in dull minor gutturals, +jabbered somewhere in the far distance to a friend. Anne peeped into +the deserted living room, softened through all its pleasant shabbiness +into real beauty by the shafts of sunset red that came in through the +casement windows; and was deliberating between various becoming +occupations--for Martin might walk back with the girls--when her uncle +called her. + +He was sitting in the little room that was still called his office, but +that was really his study now, and the late afternoon light, through +the replaced rose vine, streamed in on the shabby books and the green +lampshade and the cluttered desk. + +"Anne--you weren't there when that young chap tumbled. But I've been +worrying about it a little. There's no question--there's no question +that she--that Cherry--called him by his name. 'Martin,' she called +him." + +Anne had crossed to the shadowy doorway; she stood still. + +"It can't be!" protested the doctor, uneasily. "Did Alix say anything +to you about it?" + +"She said that," Anne admitted, drily. + +"You've not noticed anything between him and Cherry?" pursued the +doctor. "A girl might call a man by his name, I suppose--" + +"I don't think there has been anything to notice," Anne stated, in a +level tone. + +"You don't?" the doctor echoed, in relief, peering at her. She could +meet his look with a smile, but in her heart were the same thoughts +that Cherry had been innocently indulging, under the rose vine an hour +ago, and the dream that had been Heaven to Cherry was Purgatory to +Anne. Cherry married, Cherry receiving cups and presents and gowns, +Cherry, Mrs. Lloyd, with a plain gold ring on her young, childish hand, +Cherry able to patronize and chaperone Alix and Anne--! "I half fancied +that it might be you, Anne," her uncle added, "although I know what a +sensible little head you have!" "I'm afraid I'm a trifle exacting where +men are concerned!" Anne said, understanding perfectly that her pride +was being shielded, but hurt to the heart, nevertheless. + +"Well, it must be stopped, if it has begun," decided her uncle. "I +can't permit it--I'd forgotten how the little witch grows!" + +"He isn't as eligible for Cherry as for me, then?" Anne asked lightly. +But her smile disarmed the unsuspicious old man, and he answered +honestly: + +"You're quite different, Anne. You were older at eighteen than she'll +be at twenty-four; you could hold your own--you could, in a way, make +your own life! She--why, she's only an innocent little girl; she's got +dolls in the attic; we were teasing her about turning up her hair last +week!" + +Again Anne was silent. It occurred to her to laugh at the absurdity of +these quick suspicions, but they had already seized upon her with the +curious tenacity of truth; already she had accepted the fact that what +yesterday would have been the unbelievable maximum of humiliation and +hurt was true to-day, and less than the whole bitter truth! + +She was not in love with Martin Lloyd; she was not as susceptible as +the much younger Cherry, and she had not had his urging to help her to +a quick surrender. But for the first time in her life she had seen an +absolutely suitable man, a man whose work, position, looks, name, and +character fitted her rather exacting standard, and for the first time +she had let herself think confidently of being wooed and won. It was +all so right, so dignified, so fitting. She had been the light of her +uncle's eyes, and the little capable keeper of his house for years; she +had been reminding her own friends of this frequently during the past +year or two; now she was ready to step into a nest of her own. + +Standing there in the doorway, she tasted the last bitter dregs of the +dream. It was all over. Anne was at the age that sets twenty-five years +as the definite boundary of spinsterhood. She would be twenty-five in +August. + +Alix came in from her walk glowing, and full of a great discovery. + +"Dad," she said eagerly, taking her place at the supper table, "what do +you think! I'll bet you a dollar that man is falling in love with our +Cherry!" + +Anne, at the head of the table, looked pained, but there was genuine +apprehension in the doctor's face. + +"Where is your sister?" he asked. + +"Down there by the gate," Alix answered. "They're gazing soulfully into +each other's eyes, and all that! Peter went home. But CHERRY--with a +beau! Isn't that the ultimate extension of the limit! I'm crazy about +it--I think it's great. An engineer, Dad, and Mrs. North's nephew, and +he has a fine job in a mine somewhere," she summarized +enthusiastically, "you couldn't ask anything better than that, could +you? Could you, Dad? I love weddings! This'll be the third I've been +to!" + +"All this seems to have come up very suddenly," the doctor said, +dazedly, rumpling his gray hair with a fine old hand. "I don't imagine +your sister is taking it as seriously as you and Anne seem inclined +to---" + +"Oh, does Anne think so!" Alix exclaimed. + +"I think Cherry is one of the fortunate girls destined to drift along +the surface of life," Anne said, "and to accept wifehood quite simply. +I only wish I were that type--" + +"Oh, Nancy, what rot you talk every time you remember you had a year at +college!" Alix said, lightly. "Can't you let the poor kid fall in love +without yapping about types and biology and the cosmic urge---" + +"Really, Alix, you use extraordinary language!" Anne remonstrated, +glancing at her uncle with outraged dignity. "And I am not aware that I +spoke of biology or the cosmic urge!" But her tone was not as +impersonal as her words, and she was flushed and even agitated. "Shan't +we begin, Uncle Lee?" she asked, patiently. "If Cherry is just down at +the gate there, she'll only be another minute--" + +She was interrupted by Cherry herself. The girl came to the porch door, +and as she hesitated there a minute, with her smiling eyes seeking her +father's face, they saw that by one firm, small hand she drew her lover +beside her. Martin Lloyd's smiling face showed above hers in the +lamplight. + +"Dad!" said Cherry, with a childish breath. "Dad! I've brought Martin +to supper!" + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +The three at the table did not move for perhaps twenty slow seconds. +Doctor Strickland, who had pushed back his chair, and whose hands were +resting on the table before him, stared at them steadily. Anne, with a +quick little hiss of surprise, smiled faintly. Alix, the unstilted, +widened her eyes, and opened her mouth in unaffected astonishment. For +there was no mistaking Cherry's tone. + +"Doctor," said Martin, coming in, "this little girl of yours and I have +something to tell you!" The old man looked at him sharply, almost +sternly, looked about at the girls' faces, and was silent. But he +tightened his arm about Cherry, who had fluttered to the arm of his +chair. + +"Are you surprised, Daddy?" Cherry laughed, with all a child's innocent +exultation. The next instant Anne and Martin were shaking hands, and +Alix had enveloped Cherry in an enthusiastic embrace. + +"Surprised!" exclaimed Alix. "Why, aren't you surprised yourself!" + +Her sister flushed exquisitely, and Martin laughed. + +"We're just about knocked silly!" he confessed, and all the girls +laughed joyously. + +There followed a delighted confusion of talk, when each in turn +remembered what she had noticed, what she had suspected, and what her +first emotion had been at this moment or that. Meanwhile a place was +made for Martin, and biscuits and omelette and honey and tea were put +into brisk circulation. Cherry left her place beside her father, with a +final kiss, and took her own chair, all dimples, flushes, smiles, and +shy confidence. + +"And what are your plans?" Anne asked maternally, as she poured tea. + +Her uncle, who had been silent during the excitement, mildly interposed: + +"I think we needn't go too fast, young people! You've only known each +other a few weeks, after all; you must be pretty sure of yourselves +before taking anything like a decisive step. Plenty of time--plenty of +time. Mr. Lloyd can go back to his mine, and Cherry will wait for him--" + +Cherry's wild-rose face coloured, and her whole body drooped. + +"But I can be getting ready, and I can tell people, Dad?" she pleaded. + +"We'll see," her father promised her, soothingly. He had promised her +thus vaguely when, as an imperative baby years ago, she had wanted the +impossible. But she was not a baby now. + +"Ah, now--that won't do!" she pouted. + +"You must give me a little time to get used to the idea of losing my +baby, pretty," her father said. "I confess that this thing seems to +have come upon me rather unexpectedly. Mr. Lloyd here and I must have +some talks about his plans--" + +"I know exactly how you feel, Doctor," Martin said, sensibly and +sympathetically. "I realize that I should have come to you first, and +asked to pay my respects to your daughter--laugh, why don't you?" he +added to Alix, from whom an abrupt and startling laugh had indeed +escaped in good-natured scorn. + +"Nobody does that any more!" the girl said, in self-defence. "It +sounded so old-fashioned!" + +"Perhaps nobody does it any more, but I should have done it," Martin +said briskly and seriously. "Except that it all came over me with such +a rush. A week ago Cherry was only a most attractive child, to me. I'd +spoken to my aunt about her and had said that I envied the man that was +some day to win her, and that was all! Then the time came for me to get +back to work--and I found I couldn't go! I couldn't leave her. However, +I expect to be back here some time in the fall, and I thought to myself +that I'd see her then, and perhaps, THEN--And then came last night, +when I began to say good-byes, and--it happened! I know that you all +hardly know me, and I know that Cherry is pretty young to settle down, +but I think I can satisfy you, Doctor, that you give her into safe +hands, and I believe she'll never regret trusting me!" + +He had gotten to his feet as he spoke, and was holding the back of his +chair, looking anxiously and eagerly into the old man's eyes. His tone, +in spite of his effort to keep it light, had taken on a depth and +gravity quite new to his hearers, and as Cherry, sitting next him, and +fired through all her girlish being by his eloquence, turned to lay a +small, warm hand on his own, the tears came to his eyes. + +"Well--" said the doctor, touched himself, and in his gentlest tone, +"well! It had to come, perhaps, I can't promise her to you very soon, +Mr. Lloyd. But if you both are willing to wait, and if time proves this +to be the real feeling, I don't believe you'll find me hard on you!" + +"That's all I ask, sir!" Martin said, resuming his seat and his dinner. +And for the rest of the meal harmony and gaiety reigned. + +Alix shot an occasional glance at Anne, who was flushed, but as usual +busy and charming over the tea cups. Alix knew that Anne was inwardly +writhing; indeed she felt a sort of emotional shock herself. Yesterday +the mere talk of a lover for any one of them was delightfully thrilling +and vague--to-night Cherry was actually engaged! The older girls' +romantic speculations were flat enough now; Cherry had the actual thing. + +There was no jealousy in Alix's heart, as there definitely was in +Anne's, of the man. But Alix felt envious of the superior +experience--why, he would kiss Cherry! No man had ever kissed Alix. +Cherry would be the admired and envied girl among all the girls; +married at eighteen, it was so beautifully flattering and satisfying to +be married young! + +She looked at her father's face, a troubled face to-night. He was +watching the lovers regretfully; he did not disguise it. Their quick +plans, the readiness with which they solved the tremendous problems to +come, the light-heartedness with which they were hurrying toward the +future--had he and the older Charity been like that, twenty-five years +ago, when they had had supper at her mother's house, and told the great +news? He remembered himself, an eager, enthusiastic lover--had he +really given better promise then than this handsome young fellow was +giving to-night? He tried to remember the older Charity's mother; what +she had said, what expression her face had worn, and it seemed to him +that he could dimly recall reluctance and pain and gravity in that +long-ago look. + +After dinner Cherry and Martin, in all the ecstatic first delight of +recognized love, went out to the wide front porch, where there were +wicker chairs, under the rose vines. Alix alone laughed at them as they +went. Anne, with a storm in her heart, played noisily on the piano, and +the doctor, after giving the doorway where Cherry had disappeared a +wistful look, restlessly took to his armchair and his book, in such +desolation of spirit as he had not known since the dark day of her +mother's death. + +The next day Alix and the engaged pair walked up to invite Peter to a +tennis foursome on the old Blithedale court. It was a Saturday, and as +he usually dined with them, or asked them to dine with him on Saturday, +they were not surprised to find him busy with a charcoal burner, under +the trees, compounding a marvellous dish of chicken, tomatoes, cream, +and mushrooms, or to have his first words a caution not to tip things +over if they wanted any dinner. His Chinese cook was hovering about, +but Peter himself was chef. + +"Stop your messing one second!" Alix said, catching him by the arm. And +as he straightened up she added, with a little awkward laugh, +"Congratulate these creatures--they--they're going to be married! Why +don't you congratulate them!" + +Peter gave one long look at Martin and Cherry, who stood laughing, but +a little confused and self-conscious, too, in the grassy path. With a +shock like death in his heart, he realized that it was all over. Their +protection of her, their suspicions, had come too late. Blind child +that she was, she was committed to this fascinating and mysterious +adventure. + +His face grew dark with a sudden rush of blood. "Peter hates to have +any one else know a thing before he does!" Alix explained this later. +But he went to them quickly, and shook hands with Martin, and was +presently reproaching Cherry for her secretiveness in his old, or +almost his old, way. + +"Of course nobody's to know--Dad insisted on that!" said Cherry's soft, +proud little voice. + +"Did you suspect yesterday, Peter?" Alix asked, tasting the sauce, and +bunching her fingers immediately afterward to send a rapturous kiss +into the air as an indication of its deliciousness. "Yesterday when +they went off after the tree, I mean?" + +"I had my own suspicions!" he returned, and Cherry--his little, gay, +lovely Cherry!--laughed happily. He arranged that they were to play the +tennis here on his own courts, and later dine with him, but under his +hospitality and under the golden beauty of the day it was all +pain--pain--pain. It was agony to see her with him, beginning to taste +the rapture of love given and returned; it was agony to have the +conversation return always to Martin and Cherry, to the first love +affair. When they wandered away to the brook, and stood talking, the +girl's head dropped, her cheek flushed, but her face raised quickly now +and then for a flashing look, Peter felt that he could have killed this +newcomer, this thief, this usurper of the place that he himself might +have filled. + +"Dad's always said he disapproved of long engagements," Alix commented, +amusedly, "but you ought to hear him now! This thing--he won't even +call it an engagement--it's an understanding, or a preference--is to be +a profound secret, and Cherry's to be twenty-one before any one else +but ourselves knows--" + +"Your father is quite right!" Peter said sharply, in his most elderly +manner. They were resting after the first set, and Cherry and Martin, +in the opposite court, were out of hearing. + +"When your hair gets tossed back that way," Alix observed innocently, +"lots more gray shows! I think you're turning gray pretty young, Peter, +aren't you? Are you forty yet? You're not forty, are you?" + +"I'm thirty-six," Peter answered briefly. "My father was gray at +twenty-seven!" he added, after a pause. + +"I have a gray hair," Alix started. "People talk about the first gray +hair--" + +Peter did not hear her. There was beginning of a little hope in his +heart. Girls did not always fulfill their first engagements, did not +often do so, in fact. The thing was a secret; it might well come to +nothing, after all. + +That was the beginning, and after it, although it was arranged between +them all that nothing should be changed, and that nobody but themselves +should share the secret, somehow life seemed different. Two or three +days after the momentous day of the raising of the rose tree, Martin +Lloyd went to his mine at El Nido, and the interrupted current of life +in the brown bungalow supposedly found its old groove. + +But nothing was the same. The doctor, in the first place, was more +silent and thoughtful than the girls had ever seen him before. Anne and +Alix knew that he was not happy about Cherry's plans, if the younger +girl did not. He sighed, sat silently looking off from his book in the +summer evenings, fell into deep musing even at his meals. With Alix +only he talked of the engagement, and she knew from his comments, his +doubtful manner, that he felt it to be a mistake. The ten years' +difference between Cherry and Martin distressed him; he spoke of it +again and again. In June he sent Cherry to a long-planned house-party +at Menlo Park, but the girl came back after the third day. "I didn't +have any fun," she confessed, "I had to tell Olive, about me and +Martin, I mean. The boys there were all KIDS!" + +Cherry was changed, too, and not only in the expected and natural ways, +Alix thought. She had always had a generous share of the family +devotion, but she entirely eclipsed the others now. Her daily letter +from Martin, her new prospects, not only increased her importance in +the other girls' eyes, but innocently inflated her own self-confidence. +She received a diamond ring, and although at her father's request she +did not show it for a few weeks, eventually it slipped mysteriously +from the little chamois bag on her neck, and duly appeared on her left +hand. She had promised to keep the engagement "or understanding, or +preference," a profound secret, but this was impossible. First one +intimate friend and then another was allowed to gasp and exclaim over +the news. The time came when Anne decided that it was not "decent" not +to let Martin's aunt know of it, when all these other people knew. +Finally came a dinner to the Norths', when Cherry's health was drunk, +and then the engagement presents began to come in. + +"But it's July now," Cherry said, innocently, "and I think we were +pretty smart to keep it a secret so long! Don't you, Dad? And we've +been engaged three months, now, so that it looks as if waiting wasn't +going to change our minds, doesn't it?" + +He could not chill her gay confidence; he had always spoiled her. Her +father only looked tenderly into the blue eyes, and tightened his big +arm protectingly about the slender young shoulders. But he was deeply +depressed. There seemed nothing to say. Cherry was of age; she was sure +of herself. She was truly in love with this presentable young man. +Doctor Strickland felt that he did not know Martin--the man to whom he +gave his lovely daughter he would have hoped to know intimately for +years. There was nothing to be said against young Lloyd. It was +only--mused the doctor, aghast--only what was being done in the world +every day. But he was staggered by the bright readiness with which all +of them--Cherry, Martin, the other girls--accepted the stupendous fact +that Cherry was to be married. + +She was quite frankly and delightedly discussing trousseau now, too +entirely absorbed in her own happiness to see that the other girls had +lives to live as well as she. Did Anne mind if she divided her share of +the silver from theirs; did Alix think she would ever want any of +Mother's lace? + +"I got my cards yesterday," she said one day, "I was passing the shop, +and I thought I might as well! The woman looked at me so queerly; she +said: 'Mrs. John Martin Lloyd. Are these for your mother?' 'No,' I +said, 'they're for me!' I wish you could have seen her look. Martin +says in to-day's letter that he thinks people will say I'm his +daughter, and Alix--he says that you are to come up to visit us, and +we're going to find you a fine husband! Won't it be funny to think of +your visiting ME! Oh, and Anne--did you see what Mrs. Fairfax sent me? +A great big glorious fur coat! She said I would need it up there, and I +guess I will! It's not new, you know; she says it isn't the real +present, but it can be cut down and it will look like new." + +And so on and on. The other girls listened, sympathized, and rejoiced, +but it was not always easy. They could not get Cherry to be interested +in any of their plans for week-end house-parties, climbs, or picnics; +indeed, even to themselves their own lives seemed a trifle dull by +contrast. + +Anne, as usual, took her part in the summer activities of the village; +she and Alix put on their white gowns and wide hats, and duly descended +to strawberry fetes and church fairs and concerts, and duly laughed +disarmingly when old friends expressed their pleasant suspicions of +Cherry. + +But Alix voiced their feelings one summer afternoon when she was +sauntering into the village at her cousin's side, and began for the +first time a faint criticism of Martin. + +"What makes Dad mad," Alix opined, "is that Martin had it all arranged +before he asked him! Took advantage of Dad, in a way. I don't think he +would have felt so if they both were kids, but after all, Martin's +twenty-eight--" Her voice fell. "Anne," she began, hesitatingly, +"sometimes when Mrs. North says so gaily that Martin was a TERROR in +college, and kept his whole family worrying, I feel sort of sorry for +Cherry! She doesn't know as much of life as we do," twenty-one-year-old +Alix finished soberly. + +"I know!" Anne said quickly, perhaps a little glad to find a point +where Cherry needed sympathy. + +"I have a feeling that Dad thinks," Alix pursued, "that it was just +because it was Cherry's first beau-I mean that Cherry waked up +suddenly, don't you know? It was as if she said to herself, 'Why, I'm a +woman! I can get kissed and get married and all the rest of it!'--I'm +expressing this beautifully," stumbled Mix. + +"I often wonder Uncle Lee doesn't forbid it!" Anne said. She had never +had even a flitting thought of such a thing before, but she spoke now +as if the engagement had had her heartiest disapproval from the first. + +"Oh, no--why should he!" Alix remonstrated. "Martin may be the best man +in the world for her. I confess," the girl added frankly, "I can't +stand his aunt. I always used to like Mrs. North, too. But lately, when +she's begun to tell Cherry that he is extravagant, and she must save +his money for him, and that he's often been in love before, but this +time she's sure it is the real thing, and that Martin has his father's +delicate stomach---" + +Anne laughed out, in a merry fashion not usual with her of late. + +"Oh, Alix, she DIDN'T!" + +"Oh, yes, she did! And it makes me sort of sick. What does Cherry care +about anybody's delicate stomach!" Alix fell silent, broke out again +abruptly: "Anne--do you suppose she'll have a baby?" + +Anne flushed. She considered this remark rather indelicate, and yet she +liked Alix's recognition of her superior knowledge of the subject. + +"I think it very likely!" she answered calmly, after a moment's +hesitation. Her first impulse had been to answer, "I think it very +unlikely!" + +"She doesn't know anything about babies!" Alix said, somewhat worried. + +"I don't, either!" Anne confessed with honesty, her brow troubled. +"I've read things, here and there. I know SOMETHING, of course. But I +don't know much!" + +"We've all read Dickens--and the Classic Myths, and things," Alix +submitted. "And of course she went with us the day Dad took us to +Faust! Is that about all there is to it, Nance?" + +"Just--about, I guess!" Anne answered briefly. Both girls' faces were +red. They had rarely touched upon these and kindred subjects in their +talks with each other; they had never discussed them with any one else. +Anne liked to fancy herself rather worldly wise; Alix had an +independent brain and tongue. But in their household there was no older +woman to illumine their confused guessing with an occasional word now +and then, even if an unusually wholesome out-of-door life had not +distracted their attention from the problems raised in books, and their +isolation had not protected them from the careless talk of other girls +of their ages. + +August brought Martin, and more changes. He was delighted with his work +in the El Nido mine, the "Emmy Younger," and everything he had to say +about it was amusing and interesting. It was still in a rather chaotic +condition, he reported, but the "stuff" was there, and he anticipated a +busy winter. He was to have a cottage, a pretty crude affair, in a few +weeks, right at the mine. + +"How does that listen to you?" he asked Cherry. Cherry was sitting +beside him, at the dinner table, on the first night of his arrival. She +was thrilling still to the memory of his greeting kiss, its fresh odour +of shaving soap and witch hazel, and the clean touch of his +smooth-shaven cheek. She gave her father a demure and interrogative +glance. Martin, following it, immediately sobered. + +"Just what is your position there?" the doctor asked, pleasantly. + +"A little bit of everything now," Martin answered, readily and +respectfully. "Later, of course, I shall have my own special work. At +present I'm doing some of the assaying, and have charge of the +sluice-gang. They want me to make myself generally useful, make +suggestions, take hold in every way!" + +"That's the way to get on," the older man said, approvingly. Cherry +looked admiringly, with all her heart in her eyes, at her +husband-to-be; the other girls were impressed, too. Martin brought a +new element, something masculine and modern, to their quiet dinner +table. Dad and Peter were men, to be sure, but they were different. +They were only a little more dear and amusing and real than the men in +Dickens' novels, long familiar and beloved in the household. But Martin +made the girls feel suddenly in touch with real life. + +He had kissed Alix and Anne, upon arriving, and they liked it. Both the +older girls, in fact, were so impressed with the brilliancy of Cherry's +prospects, with the extraordinary distinction she possessed in having a +promised husband, with whom to walk about the woods and to talk of the +future, that they could forgive Cherry for being wrapped in a sort of +dream. Her new name, her new state, her new clothes, and home and +position filled her thoughts, and theirs. Martin had not been with them +more than a few hours before the engagement was openly discussed, and +there were constant references to Cherry's marriage. + +It was a cool evening, and after dinner they all gathered about the +fire; Martin and Cherry murmuring together in the ingle seat, and the +others only occasionally drawing them into the general conversation. +Peter and the Norths had come in for coffee, Mrs. North giving Cherry a +maternal kiss as she greeted her. Alix thought that she had never seen +her sister look so pretty; Cherry was wearing a new dress, of +golden-brown corduroy velvet, with a deep collar and cuffs of old +embroidery that had belonged to her mother. Her silk stockings were +brown, and her russet slippers finished with square silver buckles. But +it was at the lovely face that Alix looked, the earnest, honest blue +eyes, the peach-bloom of the young cheeks, and the drooping crown of +shining hair. + +Somehow, a few days later, wedding plans were in the air, and they were +all taking it for granted that Cherry and Martin were to be married +almost immediately; in October, in fact. The doctor at first persisted +that the event must wait until April, but Martin's reasonable +impatience, and Cherry's plaintive "But why, Daddy?" were too much for +him. Why, indeed? Cherry's mother had been married at eighteen, when +that mother's husband was more than ten years older than Martin Lloyd +was now. + +"Would ye let it go on, Peter, eh?" the doctor asked, somewhat +embarrassed, one evening when he and Peter were walking from the train +in the late September twilight. + +"Lord, don't ask me!" Peter said, gruffly. "I think she's too young to +marry any one--but the mischief's done now! You can't lock a girl in +her room, and she's the sort of girl that wouldn't be convinced by that +sort of argument if you did!" + +"I think I'll talk to her," her father decided. "Anything is better +than having her make a mistake. I think she'll listen to me!" And a day +or two later he called her into the study. It was a quiet autumn +morning, foggy yet warm, with a dewy, woody sweetness in the air. + +"Before we decide this thing finally," the doctor said, smiling into +her bright face, "before Martin writes his people that it's settled, I +want to ask you to do something. It's something you won't like to do, +my little girl. I want ye to wait a while--wait a year!" + +It was said. He watched the brightness fade from her glowing face, she +lowered her eyes, the line of her mouth grew firm. + +"Wait until you're twenty, dear. That's young enough. I've been +planning a full winter for you girls; I wanted to take a house in town, +entertain a little, look up a few friends! You trust me, Cherry. I only +ask you to take a little time--to be sure, dear!" + +Silence. She shrugged faintly, blinked the downcast eyes as if tears +stung them. + +"I know you don't like Martin, Dad!" she said, tremulously. + +"No, no, my darling--you mustn't say that!" he said, in distress. "I +like him very much--I think he's a thoroughly fine fellow! I could +wish--just with an old father's selfishness--that he was a neighbour, +that he didn't plan to take you away entirely. That's natural, before I +give him the thing I hold most precious in the world. And that's just +it, Cherry. Wait a year or two, and perhaps it will be possible to +establish him here near us. You'll have a little money, dear, and +Martin says himself that he would much prefer office work to this +constant changing. Marriage is a great change, anyway. Everything is +different; your point of view, your very personality changes with it. +You'll be lonely, my dear. You'll miss your sister and Anne, and all +the old friends. There are cases where it must be so, of course. But in +your case--" + +He stopped, discouraged. She was sitting opposite him at the shabby +writing table, her elbows resting upon it, her full lips pouting with +disappointment. Perhaps the one phrase of her new plans that pleased +Cherry most was that she was to be carried entirely away from the +familiar atmosphere in which she would always be "little Cherry," and +subject to suggestions and criticisms. Now she began slowly to shake +her head. + +"Can't take your old father's word for it?" Doctor Strickland asked. + +"It isn't that, Dad!" she protested eagerly and affectionately. "I'll +wait--I have waited! I'll wait until Christmas, or April, if you say +so! But it won't make any difference, nothing will. I love him and he +loves me, and we always will. + +"You don't know," Cherry went on, with suddenly watering eyes, "you +don't KNOW what this summer of separation has meant to us both! If we +must wait longer, why, we will of course, but it will mean that I'll +never have a happy instant! It will mean that I am just living along +somehow--oh, I won't cry!" she interrupted, smiling with wet lashes, +"I'll try to bear it decently! But sometimes I feel as if I COULDN'T +bear it--" + +A rush of tears choked her. She groped for a handkerchief, and felt, as +she had felt so many times, her father's handkerchief pressed into her +hand. The doctor sighed. There was nothing more to be said. + +So he gave Cherry a wedding check that made her dance with joy, and +there was no more seriousness. There were gowns, dinners, +theatre-parties, and presents; every day brought its new surprise and +new delight to Cherry. She had her cream-coloured rajah silk, but her +sister and cousin persuaded her to be married in white, and it was +their hands that dressed the first bride when the great day came, and +fastened over her corn-coloured hair her mother's lace veil. + +It was a day of soft sweetness, not too brightly summery, but warm and +still under the trees. Until ten o'clock the mountain and the tops of +the redwoods were tangled in scarfs of white fog, then the mellow +sunlight pierced it with sudden spectacular brightening and lifting. + +The little brown house was full of flowers and laughter and coming and +going. Anne and Alix, flushed and excited in their bridesmaids' gowns, +were nervous and tired. They had made lists and addressed envelopes, +had decorated the house, had talked to milliners and florists and +caterers and dressmakers, had packed and repacked Cherry's trunk and +boxes. Cherry was tired and excited, too, but had no realization of it; +she was carried along upon a roseate cloud of happiness and excitement. + +Martin's mother and stepfather had come down from Portland, and were +friendly, and pleased with everything. + +"His mother," Alix told Peter, "is the sort of handsome person who +keeps a boarding-house and marries a rich, adoring old Klondike man." + +"Is that what she did?" Peter whispered, amused. + +"She's only sixteen years older than Martin is!" Alix confided further. +"She kissed Cherry and said, 'You're just a baby doll, that's what you +are!' And he calls me 'Ma'am,' and Cherry 'Sister!' They've got two +little children, a boy and a girl. Dad likes them both." + +"Well, that's good!" Peter approved. "Does Cherry?" + +"Oh, anything that belongs to Martin is perfect!" Alix answered, in +indulgent scorn, as she abruptly departed to see to some detail +concerning the carriages, the music, or the breakfast. She and Anne +were in a constant state of worry during the morning; their plans for +seating two score of persons were changed twenty times; they conspired +in agitated whispers behind doors and in the pantry. + +But the first wedding went well. At twelve o'clock Charity Strickland +became Charity Lloyd, and was kissed and toasted and congratulated +until her lovely little face was burning with colour, and her blue eyes +were bewildered with fatigue. She stood in the drawing-room doorway, +her bouquet with its trailing ribbons in her gloved hands, and as each +one of all the old friends and neighbours made some little pre-arranged +speech of an amusing or emotional nature, she met it with a receptive +word or smile, hardly conscious of what she did or said. Sometimes she +freed her feet from the folds of her lacy train, and sometimes gave +Martin a glance backward and upward over her shoulder, once asking him +to hold her flowers with a smile that several guests afterward remarked +showed that those two couldn't see anything in the world but each other. + +At two o'clock there were good-byes. Cherry had changed the wedding +satin for the cream-coloured rajah silk then, and wore the extravagant +hat. It would be many years before she would spend twenty-five dollars +for a hat again, and never again would she see bronzed cocks feathers +against bronzed straw without remembering the clean little +wood-smelling bedroom and the hour in which she had pinned her wedding +hat over her fair hair, and had gone, demure and radiant and confident, +to meet her husband in the old hallway. + +She was confusedly kissed, passed from hand to hand, was conscious with +a sort of strange aching at her heart that she was not only far from +saying the usual heart-broken things in farewell, but was actually far +from feeling them. She laughed at Alix's last nonsense, promised to +write--wouldn't say good-bye--would see them all soon--was coming, +Martin--and so a last kiss for darling Dad, and good-bye and so many +thanks and thanks to them all! + +She was gone. With her the uncertain autumn sunshine vanished, and a +shadow fell on the forest. The mountain, above the valley, was blotted +out with fog. The brown house seemed dark and empty when the last +guests had loitered away, and the last caterer had gathered up his +possessions and had gone. Hong was prosaically making mutton broth for +dinner; pyramids of sandwiches and little cakes stood on the sideboard. + +Up in Cherry's room there was a litter of tissue papers, and pins and +powder were strewn on the bureau. The bed was mashed and disordered by +the weight of guests' hats and wraps that had lain there. A heap of +cards, still attached to ribbons and wires, were gathered on the +book-shelf, to be sent after Cherry and remind her of the donours of +gifts and flowers. + +Across the lower bed that had been Cherry's a pale blue Japanese +wrapper had been flung. The girls had seen her wear it a hundred times; +she had slipped into it to change her gown a few hours ago. Anne, +excited and tired, picked it up, stared vaguely at it for a few +minutes, and then knelt down beside the bed, and began to cry. Alix, +the muscles about her mouth twitching, stood watching her. + +"Funerals are gay compared to the way a wedding feels!" Alix said +finally. "I've eaten so much candy and wedding-cake and olives and +marrons, and whipped cream and crab salad that my skin feels like the +barrel of a musical box! I'm going to take a walk! Come on, Nancy." + +"No, I don't want to!" Anne said, wiping her eyes, and sitting back on +her heels, with a long sigh and sniff. "I've got too much to do!" + +Alix descended to find her father and Peter discussing fly-fishing, on +the porch steps. The doctor had changed his unwonted wedding finery for +his shabby old smoking jacket, but Peter still looked unnaturally well +dressed. Alix stepped down to sit between them, and her father's arm +went about her. She snuggled against him in an unusual mood of +tenderness and quiet. + +"Be nice to me!" she said, whimsically. "I'm lonely!" + +"H'm!" her father said, significantly, tightening his arm. Peter moved +up on the other side and locked his own arm in her free one. And so +they sat, silent, depressed, their shoulders touching, their sombre +eyes fixed upon the shadowy depths of the forest into which an October +fog was softly and noiselessly creeping. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Meanwhile, the hot train sped on, and the drab autumn country flew by +the windows, and still the bride sat wrapped in her dream, smiling, +musing, rousing herself to notice the scenery. The lap of the +cream-coloured gown held magazines and a box of candy, and in the rack +above her head were the new camera and the new umbrella and the new +suitcase. + +When Martin asked her if she liked to be a married woman, travelling +with her husband, she smiled and said that it seemed "funny." For the +most part she was silent, pleased and interested, but not quite her +usual unconcerned self. She and Alix, taking this trip, would have been +chattering like magpies. She and Martin had their dinner in the train, +and then she did brighten, trying to pierce with her eyes the darkness +outside, and getting only a lovely reflected face under bronzed cocks +feathers, instead. After dinner they had a long, murmured talk; she +began to droop sleepily now, although even this long day had not paled +her cheeks or visibly tired her. + +At ten they stumbled out, cramped and over-heated, and smitten on tired +foreheads with a rush of icy mountain air. + +"Is this the pl-l-ace?" yawned Cherry, clinging to his arm. + +"This is the place, Baby Girl, El Nido, and not much of a place!" her +husband told her. "That's the Hotel McKinley, over there where the +lights are! We stay there to-night, and drive out to the mine +to-morrow. I'll manage the bags, but don't you stumble!" + +She was wide-awake now, looking alertly about her at the dark streets +of the little town. Mud squelched beneath their feet, planks tilted. +Beside Martin Cherry entered the bright, cheerful lobby of a cheap +hotel where men were smoking and spitting. She was beside him at the +desk, and saw him write on the register, "J. M. Lloyd and wife." The +clerk pushed a key across the counter; Martin guided her to a rattling +elevator. + +She had a fleeting thought of home; of Dad reading before the fire, of +the little brown room upstairs, with Alix, slender in her thin +nightgown, yawning over her prayers. A rush of reluctance--of +strangeness--of something like terror smote her. She fought the +homesickness down resolutely; everything would seem brighter to-morrow, +when the morning and the sunshine came again. + +There was a brown and red carpet in the oblong of the room, and a brown +bureau, and a wide iron bed with a limp spread, and a peeling brown +washstand with a pitcher and basin. The boy lighted a flare of electric +lights which made the chocolate and gold wallpaper look like one +pattern in the light and another in the shadow. A man laughed in the +adjoining room; the voice seemed very near. + +Cherry had never been in a hotel of this sort before; she learned later +that El Nido was extremely proud of it, with its rattling elevator and +its dining room on the "American Plan." It seemed to her cheap and +horrible; she did not want to stay in this room, and Martin, tipping +the boy and asking for ice-water, seemed somehow a part of this new +strangeness and crudeness. She began to be afraid that he would think +she was silly, presently, if she said her prayers as usual. + +In the morning Martin hired a phaeton, and they drove out to the mine. +It had rained in the night, and there were pools of water on the soft +dirt road, but the sky was high and blue, and the air tingled with +sweetness and freshness after the shower. Cherry had had a good +breakfast, and was wearing a new gown; they stopped another phaeton on +the long, pleasant drive and Martin said to the fat man in it: + +"Mr. Bates, I want to make you acquainted with my wife!" + +"Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Lloyd!" said the fat man, pleasantly. Martin +told Cherry, when they passed him, that that was the superintendent of +the mine, and seemed pleased at the encounter. And Cherry smiled up at +the blue sky, and felt the warmth and silence of the day saturate her +whole being. Presently Martin put his arm about her, and the bay horse +dawdled along at his own sweet will, while Martin's deep voice told his +wife over and over again how adorable and beautiful she was, and how he +loved her. + +Cherry listened happily, and for a little while the old sense of pride +and achievement came back--she was married, she was wearing a plain +gold ring! But after a few days that feeling vanished forever, and +instead it began to seem strange to her that she had ever been anything +else than Martin's wife. The other women at the mine were married; she +was married; and nobody seemed to think the thing remarkable in them, +or in her. She was, to be sure, younger and prettier than any of the +others, but the men she met here were not the sort whose admiration +would have satisfied her innocent ambition to have Martin's friends +flock about her adoringly, and more than that, they knew her to be +newly married, and left the young Lloyds to their presumably desired +isolation. And very soon Cherry found herself a little housewife among +other housewives, much more praised if she made a good shortcake than +because the tilt of her new hat was becoming. + +For several days she and Martin laughed incessantly, and praised each +other incessantly, while they experimented with cooking, and ate +delicious gipsy meals. In these days Martin was always late at the +mine, and every evening he came home to find that ducks, or a jar of +honey, or a loaf of cake, had been contributed to Cherry's dinner by +the interested women in the near-by cottages. In all, there were not a +dozen families at the "Emmy Younger," and Cherry was watched with +interest and sympathy during her first efforts at housekeeping. + +By midwinter she had settled down to the business of life, buying bacon +and lard and sugar and matches at the store of the mine, cooking and +cleaning, sweeping and making beds. She still kissed Martin good-bye +every morning, and met him with an affectionate rush at the door when +he came home, and they played Five Hundred evening after evening after +dinner, quarrelling for points, and laughing at each other, while rain +sluiced down on the "Emmy Younger," and dripped on the porch. But +sometimes she wondered how it had all come about, wondered what had +become of the violent emotions that had picked her out of the valley +home, and established her here, in this strange place, with this man +she had never seen a year ago. + +Of these emotions little was left. She still liked Martin, she told +herself, and she still told him that she loved him. But she knew she +did not love him, and in such an association as theirs there can be no +liking. Her thoughts rarely rested on him; she was either thinking of +the prunes that were soaking, the firewood that was running low, the +towels that a wet breeze was blowing on the line; or she was far away, +drifting in vague realms where feelings entirely strange to this bare +little mining camp, and this hungry, busy, commonplace man, held sway. +Cherry was in the position of a leading lady mysteriously forced into a +minor role; she had never known what she wanted in life, and was +learning now in a hard school. + +The first time that she quarrelled with Martin, she cried for an entire +day, with the old childish feeling that somehow her crying mattered, +somehow her abandonment to grief would help to straighten affairs. The +cause of the quarrel was a trifle; her father had sent her a Christmas +check, and she immediately sent to a San Francisco shop for a clock +that had taken her fancy months before. + +Martin, who chanced to be pressed for money, although she did not know +it, was thunderstruck upon discovering that she had actually disposed +of fifty dollars so lightly. For several days a shadow hung over their +intercourse, and when the clock came, as large as a banjo, gilded and +quaint, he broke her heart afresh by pretending not to admire it. + +But on Christmas Eve he was delayed at the mine, and Cherry, smitten +suddenly with the bitterness of having their first Christmas spoiled in +this way, sat up for him, huddled in her silk wrapper by the air-tight +stove. She was awakened by feeling herself lowered tenderly into bed, +and raised warm arms to clasp his neck, and they kissed each other. The +little house was warm and comfortable, they had a turkey to roast on +the morrow, and ranged on the table were the home boxes, and a stack of +unopened envelopes waiting for Christmas morning. + +The next day they laughed at the clock together, and after that peace +reigned for several weeks. But it was inevitable that another quarrel +should come and then another; Cherry was young and undisciplined, +perhaps not more selfish than other girls of her age, but self-centred +and unreasonable. She had to learn self-control, and she hated to +control herself. She had to economize when poverty possessed neither +picturesqueness nor interest. They were always several weeks late in +the payment of domestic bills, and these recurring reminders of money +stringency maddened Cherry. Sometimes she summed it up, with angry +tears, reminding him that she was still wearing her trousseau dresses, +and had no maid, and never went anywhere--! + +But she developed steadily. As she grew skilful in managing her little +house, she also grew in the art of managing her husband and herself. +She became clever at avoiding causes of disagreement; she listened, +nodded, agreed, with a boiling heart, and had the satisfaction of +having Martin's viewpoint veer the next day, or the next hour, to meet +her own secret conviction. Martin's opinion, she told herself wearily, +as she swept and cooked and marketed busily, didn't matter anyhow. He +would rage and storm at his superiors, he would threaten and brood, and +then it would all be forgotten, time after time after time. Silent, +absent-minded, looking closely at a burn upon her smooth arm or +pleating her checked apron, Cherry would sit opposite him at his late +lunch. + +"I suppose you don't agree with me?" he would interrupt himself to ask +scowlingly. + +"Mart--" The innocent blue eyes would be raised vaguely. "I don't know +anything about it, dear. If Mr. Taylor--" + +"Well, you know what I tell you, don't you?" + +"Yes, dear. But--" + +"For God's sake don't call me DEAR when you--" + +"Mart!" Her dignity always rose in arms. "Please don't get excited." + +"Well!" His tone would be modified, as the appetizing little meal was +dispatched. "But Lord, you do make me so mad, sitting there criticizing +me--I can always tell when you're in sympathy with me--my Lord, I wish +you had to go up against these fellows sometimes--" The grumbling voice +would go on and on; Cherry would pause at the door, carrying out +plates, to have him finish a phrase; would nod sympathizingly as she +set his dessert before him. But her soul was like some living thing +spun into a cocoon, hearing the sounds of life only vaguely, interested +in them not at all. + +Martin seemed satisfied, and all their little world accepted her as a +matter of course. Pretty little Mrs. Lloyd went every morning into the +Company Store as the only store at the mine was called, and smiled over +her shopping; she stopped perhaps at the office to speak to her +husband; she met some other woman wheeling a baby up to the cottages, +and they gossiped together. She and her husband dined and played cards +now and then with a neighbour and his wife, and they gave dinners in +return, when the men praised every dish extravagantly, and the woman +laughed at their greedy enthusiasms. Like the other women, she had her +small domestic ambitions; Mrs. Brown wanted a meat-chopper; Mrs. +White's one desire was to have a curly maple bedroom set; Mrs. Lloyd +wanted a standing mahogany lamp for the sitting room. + +But under it all Cherry knew that something young and irresponsible and +confident in her had been killed. She never liked to think of the +valley, of the fogs and the spokes of sunlight under the redwood +aisles, of Alix and the dogs and the dreamy evenings by the fire. And +especially she did not like to think of that eighteenth birthday, and +herself thrilling and ecstatic because the strange young man from Mrs. +North's had stared at her, in her sticky apron, with so new and +disturbing a smile in his eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +So winter passed at the mine, and at the brown house under the shoulder +of Tamalpais. Alix still kept her bedroom windows open, but the rain +tore in, and Anne protested at the ensuing stains on the pantry +ceiling. Creeks rushed swollen and yellow; fog smothered the mountain +peak; the forest floor oozed moisture. Spring came reluctantly; muddy +boots cluttered the doctor's hearth, for he and Alix and Peter tramped +for miles through the woods and over the hills, bringing home trillium +and pungent wild currant blossoms, and filling the house with blooms. + +Cherry's wedding, once satisfactorily over, was a cause of great +satisfaction to her sister and cousin. They had stepped back duly, to +give her the centre of the stage; they had admired and congratulated, +had helped her in all hearty generosity. They had listened to her +praises of Martin and his of her, and had given her more than her share +of the household treasures of silver spoons and yellowed old lace. + +And now that she was gone they enjoyed their own lives again, and cast +over hers the glamour that novelty and distance never fail to give. +Cherry, married and keeping house and managing affairs, was an object +of romantic interest. The girls surmised that Cherry must be making +friends; that everyone must admire her; that Martin would be rich some +day, without doubt. When her letters came, there was always animated +chatter about the fire. + +Cherry wrote regularly, now and then assuring them that she was the +same old Cherry. She described her tiny house right at the mine, +looking down at the rough scaffoldings that covered the mouth of the +tunnels, and the long sheds of the plant, and the bare big building +that was the men's boarding-house. Martin's associates brought her +trout and ducks, she wrote; she and Martin had driven three hundred +miles in the superintendent's car; she was preparing for a card party. + +"Think of little old Cherry going off on week-end trips with three +men!" Alix would say proudly. "Think of Cherry giving a card party!" +Anne perhaps would make no comment, but she often felt a pang of envy. +Cherry seemed to have everything. + +Alix was working hard with her music this winter, aided and abetted by +Peter, who was tireless in bringing her songs and taking her to +concerts. Suddenly, without warning, there was a newcomer in the +circle, a sleek-headed brown-haired little man known as Justin Little. + +He had been introduced at some party to Anne and Alix; he called; he +was presently taking Anne to a lecture. Anne now began to laugh at him +and say that he was "too ridiculous," but she did not allow any one +else to say so. On the contrary, she told Alix at various times that +his mother had been one of the old Maryland Percies, and his +great-grandfather was mentioned in a book by Sir Walter Scott, and that +one had to respect the man, even if one didn't choose to marry him. + +"Marry him!" Alix had echoed in simple amazement. Marry him--what was +all this sudden change in the household when a man could no sooner +appear than some girl began to talk of marriage? Alix had always rather +fancied the idea that all girls had an opportunity of capriciously +choosing from a dozen eligible swains, but Cherry had quickly anchored +herself to the first strange man that appeared, and here was Anne +dimpling and looking demure over a small, neat youth just out of law +school. Certainly the little person of Justin Little was a strange +harbour for all Anne's vague dreams of a conquering hero. Stupefied, +Alix watched the affair progress. + +"I don't imagine it's serious!" her father said on an April walk. +Peter, tramping beside them, was interested but silent. + +"My dear father," the girl protested, "have you listened to them? +They've been contending for weeks that they were just remarkably good +friends--that's why she calls him Frenny!" + +"Ah--I see!" the doctor said mildly, as Peter's wild laugh burst forth. + +"But now," Alix pursued, "she's told him that as she cannot be what he +wishes, they had better not meet!" + +"Poor Anne!" the old doctor commented. + +"Poor nothing! She's having the time of her life," her cousin said +unfeelingly. "She told me to-day that she was afraid that she had +checked one of the most brilliant careers at the bar." + +"I had no idea of all this!" the doctor confessed, amazed. "I've seen +the young man--noticed him about. Well--well--well! Anne, too." + +"You and me next, little sweetums," suggested Peter, dropping down +beside the doctor, who had seated himself, panting, upon a log. + +Alix, the dog's silky head under her hand, was resting against the prop +formed by a great tree trunk behind her shoulders, and looking down at +the two men. She grinned. + +"Nothingstirring, Puddeny-woodeny!" she answered, blandly. + +The old man looked from Peter's smiling, indifferent face to his +daughter's unembarrassed smile; shook his head in puzzled fashion, and +returned to his pocket the big handkerchief with which he had been +wiping his forehead. + +"There ye are!" he said, shrugging. "Cherry goes gaily off with a man +she's only known for a few weeks; Anne dresses up this new fellow with +goodness knows what qualities; and you and Alix here, neighbours all +your lives, laugh as if marriage was all a joke!" + +"Our marriage would be, darling," Alix assured him. "But, Dad, if you +would like me to marry Peter, by George, I will!" she added, dutifully. +"Peter, consider yourself betrothed! Bucky," she said to the dog, +"dat's oo new Daddy!" + +Neither man paid her the slightest attention. Peter scraped a lump of +dried mud from the calf of his high boots, and the doctor musingly +looked back along the rough trail they had climbed. + +"I'd have felt safer--I'd feel very safe to have one of my girls in +your care, Peter," the older man said at last, thoughtfully. "I hate to +see them scatter. Well!" + +He sighed, smiled, and got to his feet. "That's not in our hands," he +said, cheerfully. + +Alix, without moving, sent her glance from his face to Peter's, and +their eyes met. Only a few words, spoken half in earnest, on a spring +morning tramp, and yet they had their place, in her memory and Peter's, +and were to return to them after a time, and influence them more +seriously than either the man, or the grinning girl, or the old man +himself ever dreamed. + +The glance lasted only a second, then Alix, who had been carefully +removing burrs from the soft tangle of the dog's tasselled ears, took +the trail again with great, boyish springs of her bloomered legs. + +"Father," said she, "am I to understand that you disapprove of my +choice?" + +"I hope," her father answered, seriously, "that when you do marry you +will get a man half as good as Peter!" + +"Thank you!" Peter said, gravely, more as a rebuke to the incorrigible +Alix than because he was giving the conversation much attention. + +Alix had time for no comment, for at this moment she placed her foot +upon an unsubstantial root and slid down upon the two men with such an +unpremeditated rush of heavy boots, wet loam, loosened rocks, and +cascading earth, that the footing of them all was threatened, and it +was only after much shouting, staggering, balancing, and clutching that +they resumed their climb. Peter was then nursing a wrist that had been +wrenched in the confusion, looking away from it only to give the loudly +singing Alix an occasional resentful glance. + +"You could omit some of those cries!" he presently observed. + +"I thought you liked 'The Lotos Flower'?" Alix called back. + +"I just proved that I do," Peter said neatly, and the doctor, and Alix +herself, laughed joyously. + +In June came the blissful hour in which Anne, all blushes and smiles, +could come to her uncle with a dutiful message from the respectfully +adoring Justin. Their friendship, said Anne, had ripened into something +deeper. + +"Justin wants to have a frank talk with you, Uncle," Anne said, "and of +course I'm not to go until you are sure you can spare me, and unless +you feel that you can trust him utterly!" + +"And remember that you aren't losing a daughter, but gaining a son--Oh, +help!" Alix added. Anne gave her a reproachful glance, but found it +impossible to be angry with her. She was too genuinely delighted with +her cousin's happiness and too helpful with all the new plans. Anne's +engagement cups were ranged on the table where Cherry's had stood, and +where Cherry had talked of a coffee-coloured rajah silk Anne discussed +the merits of a "smart but handsome blue tailormade." + +The wedding was to be in September, not quite a year after Cherry's +wedding. Alix wrote her sister pages about it, always ending with the +emphatic declaration that Cherry must come down for the wedding. + +Cherry read of it with a strange pang. Somehow it robbed her own +marriage of flavour and charm to have Anne so quickly following in her +footsteps. She was homesick. She dreamed continually of the cool, high +valley, the scented aisles of the deep forest, the mountain rearing its +rough summit to the pale blue of summer skies. + +June passed; July passed; it was hot at the "Emmy Younger." August came +in on a furnace breath; Cherry felt headachy, languid, and half sick +all the time. She hated housekeeping in this weather; hated the smells +of dry tin sink and wooden floor, of milk bottles and lard tins. Martin +had said that he could not possibly get away, even for the week of +Anne's wedding, but Cherry began to wonder if he would let her go alone. + +"If he doesn't, I shall be sick!" she fretted to herself, in a certain +burning noontime, toward the middle of August. Blazing heat had been +pouring over the mine since six o'clock; there seemed to have been no +night. Martin, who had been playing poker the night before, was +sleeping late this morning. He was proud of the little wife who so +generously spared him for an occasional game, and always allowed him to +sleep far into the following morning. Other wives at the mine were not +so amiable where poker was concerned. But Martin, coming home at three +o'clock, dazed with close air and cigar smoke, had awakened his wife to +tell her that he would be "dead" in the morning, and Cherry had +accordingly crept about her own dressing noiselessly, had darkened the +bedroom, and eaten her own breakfast without the clatter of a dish, +putting the coffee aside to be reheated for him when he awakened. Now +she was sitting by the window, panting in the noon heat, and looking +down upon a dazzle of dust and ugliness and smothering hotness. She was +thinking, as it chanced, of the big forest at home, and of a certain +day--just one of their happy days!--only a year ago, when she had lain +for a dreamy hour on the soft forest floor, staring up idly through the +laced fanlike branches, and she thought of her father, with his mild +voice and ready smile; and some emotion, almost like fear, came over +her. For the first time she asked herself, in honest bewilderment, why +she had married. + +The heat deepened and strengthened and increased as the burning day +wore on. Martin waked up, hot and headachy, and having further +distressed himself with strong coffee and eggs, departed into the +dusty, motionless furnace of out-of-doors. The far brown hills +shimmered and swam, the "Emmy Younger" looked its barest, its ugliest, +its least attractive self. Cherry moved slowly about the kitchen; her +head ached; it was a day of sickening odours. The ice man had failed +them again, the soup had soured, and after she had thrown it away +Cherry felt as if the grease and the smell of it still clung to her +fingers. + +There was a shadow in the doorway; she looked up surprised. For a +minute the tall figure in striped linen and the smiling face under the +flowery hat seemed those of a stranger. Then Cherry cried out, and +laughed, and in another instant was crying in Alix's arms. + +Alix cried, too, but it was with a great rush of pity and tenderness +for Cherry. Alix had not young love and novelty to soften the outlines +of the "Emmy Younger," and she felt, as she frankly wrote later, to her +father, "at last convinced that there is a hell!" The heat and bareness +and ugliness of the mine might have been overlooked, but this poor +little house of Cherry's, this wood stove draining white ashes, this +tin sink with its pump, and the bathroom with neither faucets nor +drain, almost bewildered Alix with their discomfort. + +Even more bewildering was the change in Cherry. There was a certain +hardening that impressed Alix at once. There was a weary sort of +patience, a disillusioned concession to the drabness of married life. +Alix, after meeting some of the other wives at the mine--there were but +five or six--saw that Cherry had been affected by them. There was +general sighing over the housework, a mild conviction that men were all +selfish and unreasonable. "And I must say," Alix's first letter to her +father admitted, "that the men here are all dogs, except the ones that +are under dogs!" + +But she allowed the younger sister to see nothing of this. Indeed, +Cherry so brightened under the stimulus of Alix's companionship that +Martin told her that she was more like her old self than she had been +for months. Joyously she divided her responsibilities with Alix, +explaining the difficulties of marketing and housekeeping, and joyously +Alix assumed them. Her vitality infected the whole household, and, +indeed, the mine as well. She flirted, cooked, entertained, talked +incessantly; she bullied Martin and laughed at him, and it did him good. + +Perhaps, thought Alix, rather appalled at Cherry's attitude, Cherry had +been too young for wifehood. Sometimes she spoiled and humoured Martin, +and sometimes quarrelled with him childishly, scolding and fretting for +her own way, and angry with conditions over which neither he nor she +had any control. Alix was surprised to see the old pout, and hear the +old phrase of Cherry's indulged girlhood: "I don't think this is any +FUN!" + +"Anne isn't one half as clever or as pretty as Cherry, but she'll make +a better wife!" was Alix's conclusion. She gave them spirited accounts +of Anne's affair. "He's a nice little academic fellow," she said of +Justin Little. "If he had a flatiron in each hand he'd probably weigh +close to a hundred pounds! He's a--well, a sort of DAMP-LOOKING youth, +if you know what I mean! I always want to take a crash towel and dry +him off!" + +"Fancy Anne with a shrimp like that!" Cherry said, with a proud look at +her own man's fine height. + +"Anne was delicious!" Alix further revealed. "They used to take +dignified walks on Sundays. I used to tease her, and she'd get so mad +she'd ask Dad to ask me to be more refined. She said that Mr. Little +was a most unusual man, and it was belittling to his dignity to have me +suppose that a man and a woman couldn't have an intellectual +friendship. This in May, my dear, and after the thing was settled and +Anne had cried, and written notes, and Justin had gone to Dad and asked +where he could buy a second-hand revolver--" + +"Oh, Alexandra Strickland, you're making up!" Cherry went back +naturally to the old nursery phrase. + +"Honestly--cross my heart!" Alix assured her. "That's the way they +managed it; they solemnly discussed it and worked it out on paper, and +Justin's mother called on Anne--she's an awful old girl, too, she looks +like a totem pole--and Anne called on his aunts, and then he asked Dad, +'as Anne's male relative,' he said, and it was all settled. And +THEN--THEN Anne became the mushiest thing I ever saw! And not only +mushy, Cherry, but proudly and openly mushy. She'd catch Justin's hand +up, at the table, and say 'Frenny--'" + +"'Frenny?'" echoed Cherry, who had laughed until actual tears stood in +her eyes. + +"That's short for 'friend,' do you see? Because of this platonic +intellectual friendship that started everything, you know. She'd catch +up his hand and say, 'Frenny, show Uncle what an aristocratic hand +you've got.' My dear, she'll keep me awake nights repeating things he's +said to her: 'He's so wonderful, Alix. He's the simplest and at the +same time the cleverest man I ever knew.'" + +"He sounds awful to me," Cherry said. + +"He's not, really. Only it seems that he belongs to the oldest family +in America, or something, and is the only descendent--" + +"Money?" Cherry asked, interestedly. + +"No, I don't think money, exactly. At least I know he is getting a +hundred a month in his uncle's law office, and Dad thinks they ought to +wait until they have a little more. She'll have something, you know," +Alix added, after a moment's thought. + +"Your cousin?" Martin asked, taking his pipe out of his mouth. + +"Well, her father went into the fire-extinguisher thing with Dad," Alix +elucidated, "and evidently she and Justin have had deep, soulful +thoughts about it. Anyway, the other day she said--you know her way, +Cherry--'Tell me, Uncle, frankly and honestly, may Justin and I draw +out my share for that little home that is going to mean so much to +us--'" + +"I can hear her!" giggled Cherry. + +"Dad immediately said that she COULD, of course," Alix went on. "He's +going to look the whole thing up. He was adorable about it. He said, +'It will do more than build you a little home, my dear!'" + +"We'll get a slice of that some time," Cherry said, thoughtfully, +glancing at her husband. "I don't mean when Dad dies either," she +added, in quick affection. "I mean that he might build us a little home +some day in Mill Valley." + +"Gee, how he'd love it!" Alix said, enthusiastically. + +"I married Cherry for her money," Martin confessed. + +"As a matter of fact," Cherry contradicted him, vivaciously, animated +even by the thought of a change and a home, "we have never even spoken +of it before, have we, Mart?" + +"I never heard of it before," he admitted, smiling, as he knocked the +ashes from his pipe. "If I leave the 'Emmy Younger' in October, and go +into the Red Creek proposition, I shall be making a good deal myself. +But it's pleasant to know that Cherry will come in for a nest-egg some +day!" + +"Mart doesn't care a scrap for money!" Cherry said to her sister, in +the old loyal way. Since Alix's arrival she had somehow liked Martin +better. Perhaps Alix brought to her sister with a whiff of the old +atmosphere, the old content, the old pride, and the old point-of-view. +Presently the visitor boldly suggested that they should both go home +together for the wedding, and Martin, to Cherry's amazement, agreed +good-naturedly. + +"But, Mart, how'll you get along?" his wife asked, anxiously. She had +fumed and fussed and puttered and toiled over the care of these four +rooms for so long that it seemed unbelievable that her place might be +vacated even for a day. + +"Oh, I'll get along fine!" he answered, indifferently. Cherry, with a +great sigh of relief and delight, abandoned the whole problem; milk +bottles, fire wood, groceries, dust, and laundry slipped from her mind +as if they had never been. On the last day of August, in the +cream-coloured silk and the expensive hat again, yet looking, Alix +thought, strangely unlike the bride that had been Cherry, she and her +sister happily departed for cooler regions. Martin took them to the +train, kissed his sister-in-law gaily, and then his wife affectionately, + +"Be a good little girl, Babe," he said, "and write me!" + +"Oh, I will--I will!" Cherry looked after him smilingly from the car +window. "He really is an old dear!" she told Alix. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +But when at the end of the long day they reached the valley, and when +her father came innocently into the garden and stood staring vaguely at +her for a moment--for her visit, and the day of Alix's return had been +kept a secret--her first act was to burst into tears. She clung to the +fatherly shoulder as if she were a storm-beaten bird safely home again, +and although she immediately laughed at herself, and told the +sympathetically watching Peter and Alix that she didn't know what was +the matter with her, it was only to interrupt the words with fresh +tears. + +Tears of joy, she told them, laughing at the moisture in her father's +eyes. Hanging on his arm, she went back into the old sitting room +again, under the banksia rose; went up the brown stairway to the old, +clean, woody-smelling bedroom. Her hat and wraps went into the closet; +she danced and exclaimed and exulted over every familiar detail. + +She and Alix ran downstairs before supper, and into the garden, and +Cherry drew deep, refreshing breaths of the cool air and laughed over +every bush and flower. Peter came out to join them, her father came +down, and she kissed him again; she could not be close enough to him. +She had a special joyous word for Hong; she laughed and teased and +questioned Anne, when Anne and Justin came back from an afternoon +concert in the city, with an interest and enthusiasm most gratifying to +both. + +After dinner she had her old place on the arm of her father's porch +chair; Alix, with Buck's smooth head in her lap, sat on the porch step +beside Peter, and the lovers murmured from the darkness of the hammock +under the shadow of the rose vine. It was happy talk in the sweet +evening coolness; everybody seemed harmonious and in sympathy to-night. +Alix asked Peter's advice regarding her White Minorcas and respectfully +promised to act upon it, and Cherry showed him a new side, an +affectionate, little sisterly deference and confidence quite different +from her old childish sulkiness and pretty caprice. + +"Bedtime!" said her father presently, and she laughed in sheer pleasure. + +"Daddy--that sounds so nice again!" + +"But you do look fagged and pale, little girl," he told her. "You're to +stay in bed in the morning." + +"Oh, I'll be down!" she assured him. But she did not come down in the +morning, none the less. She was tired in soul and body, and glad to let +them spoil her again, glad to rest and sleep in the heavenly peace and +quiet of the old home. + +Midsummer heat was upon the little valley, but here under the redwoods +there was always coolness; delicious odours of warm sap and loamy +sweetness drifted into Cherry's darkened room; the morning was fresh +and foggy, and the night before she had smiled drowsily to stir from +first sleep and find her father bending over her, drawing up an extra +blanket in the old way. All night long she slept deeply and sweetly, as +she had slept through all the nights of childhood; it was ten o'clock +when Alix came smiling in with a breakfast tray. Presently she carried +it away, and Cherry, with a deep sigh from the fullness of her content, +turned on her side and drowsed again. + +Waking, after a while, she locked her hands under her head, and lay +listening happily to the old and familiar sounds of home. She heard +Hong bargaining in his own minor chatter with a fruit vendor, and Alix +and her father chuckling over some small confidence in the porch. She +heard the subdued clink of dishes, the squawk of a surprised chicken, +and the girls' murmuring voices. + +It was Saturday, Cherry remembered, when Peter's voice suddenly sounded +above the others and was hastily hushed for her sake; Peter was always +there at three o'clock on Saturdays. There was another voice, too, +pleasant and crisp and even a trifle fastidious; that must be Justin. + +Late in the afternoon, rested, fresh, and her old sweet self in the +white ruffles, she came down to join them. They had settled themselves +under the redwoods, Anne and Justin, Peter and Alix and Buck, the dog, +all jumped up to greet her. Cherry very quietly subsided into a wicker +chair, listened rather than talked, moved her lovely eyes +affectionately from one to another. + +Peter hardly moved his eyes from her, although he did not often address +her directly; Justin was quite obviously overcome by the unexpected +beauty of Anne's cousin; Anne herself, with an undefined pang, admitted +in her soul that Cherry was prettier than ever; and even Alix was +affected. With the lovely background of the forest, the shade of her +thin wide hat lightly shadowing her face, with the dew of her long +sleep and recent bath enhancing the childish purity of her skin, and +with her blue eyes full of content, Cherry was a picture of exquisite +youth and grace and charm. It was not the less winning because she +seemed genuinely unconscious of it to-day; perhaps before the girls and +Anne's precise little fledgling lawyer no self-conscious thought of +conquest had entered her head. + +The dog had gone to her knee and laid his bronze mane against the white +ruffles, and while she listened and smiled, she idly fondled and petted +him with her childish, ringed hand. + +"And the next experience is to be at Red Creek?" Justin asked, +delighted with this addition to the family circle and beaming about +upon everyone. + +"Mr. Lloyd is there now," Cherry smiled. "Do you know Red Creek?--I'll +have to call you Justin, since you're going to be my cousin so soon," +she interrupted herself to say shyly. + +"No--I--er--I--er--don't!" Justin stammered. + +Anne said vivaciously: + +"Of course you're to call him Justin! And he's to call you Cherry, +too--those are my orders, Frenny, and don't you dare disobey!" + +"But did you get onto the artful and engaging smile Justin gave +Cherry?" Alix giggled later to Peter. She and Peter were in the pantry, +deep in the manufacture of a certain sort of canape. "Why, he was all +in a heap over her!" continued Alix elegantly, as she sampled a small +piece of smeared toast with a severe and wrinkled brow. "Try a little +mustard in it," she suggested, adding confidentially, "You know Cherry +is really too pretty for any use! The rest of us can diet for +complexion or diet for figures, and this hat will be becoming or that +dress will always look well--but Cherry, why, she just knocks us all +galley-west! What's the use of struggling and brushing your hair and +worrying about your clothes, when a girl like Cherry will come along +and sit down and have everybody staring!" + +"She is, of course, quite extraordinary!" Peter conceded as he punched +two small holes in the top of a tin of olive oil. The oil welled up +through the holes and he wiped his fingers on a corner of Alix's apron. + +"It's just the difference," Alix said, "between being nice looking, +which half the women in the word are, and being a beauty. I remember +that when Cherry was only about ten I used to look at her and think +that there was something rather--well, rather arresting about her face. +It was such an aristocratic little face. I remember her in those old +bluejacket blouses--" + +"Yes, I do, too!" Peter said quickly, straightening up from restoring +the vinegar demijohn to an obscure position in a lower cupboard. +"Well--These have to go in the oven now; I'll take them out. Aren't you +going to change for dinner? It's after six now!" + +"Since you ask me, I'll see what frock Deshabille has laid out!" Alix +yawned, disappearing in the direction of the sitting room, where he +found her a few minutes later absorbed in a book. + +The evening was cooler, with sudden wind and a promise of storm. They +grouped themselves about a fire in the old way; Anne and Justin sitting +close together on the settle, as Martin and Cherry had done a year ago. +Cherry sat next her father with her hand linked in his; neither hand +moved for a long, long time. Alix, sitting on the floor, with her lean +cheeks painted by the fire, played with the dog and rallied Peter about +some love affair, the details of which made him laugh vexedly in spite +of himself. Cherry watched them, a little puzzled at the familiarity of +Peter beside this fire; had he been so entirely one of the family a +year ago? She could almost envy him, feeling herself removed by so long +and strange a twelvemonth. + +"Be that as it may, my dear," said Alix, "the fact remains that you +taught this Fenton woman to drive your car, didn't you? And you told +her that she was the best woman driver you ever knew, a better driver +even than Miss Strickland; didn't you?" + +"I did not," Peter said, unmovedly smoking and watching the fire. + +"Why, Peter, you did! She said you did!" + +"Well, then, she said what is not true!" + +"She distinctly told me," Alix remarked, "that dear Mr. Joyce had said +that she was the best woman driver he ever saw." + +"Well, I may have said something like that," Peter growled, flushing. +Alix laughed exultingly. "I tell you I loathe her!" he added. + +"Daddy, we have a lovely home!" Cherry said softly, her eyes moving +from the shabby books and the shabby rugs to Alix's piano shining in +the gloom of the far corner. It was all homelike and pleasant, and +somehow the atmosphere was newly inspiring to her; she had felt that +the talk at dinner, the old eager controversy about books and singers +and politics and science, was--well, not brilliant, perhaps, but worth +while. She was beginning to think Peter extremely clever and only +Alix's quick tongue a match for him, and to feel that her father knew +every book and had seen every worthwhile play in the world. + +Martin, whose deep dissatisfaction with conditions at the "Emmy Younger +Mine" Cherry well knew, had entered into a correspondence some months +before relative to a position at another mine that seemed better to +him, and instead of coming down for a day or two at the time of Anne's +wedding, as Cherry had hoped he might, wrote her that the authorities +at the Red Creek plant had "jumped at him," and that he was closing up +all his affairs at the "Emmy Younger" and had arranged to ship all +their household effects direct to the new home. He knew nothing of Red +Creek, except that it was a small inland town in the San Joachim +region, but Cherry's delight at the thought of any alternative for the +"Emmy Younger" was a revelation to Alix. Martin told his wife +generously that he hoped she would stay with her father until the move +was accomplished, and Cherry, with a clear conscience, established +herself in her old room. She wrote constantly to her husband and often +spoke appreciatively of Mart's kindness. + +Anne's marriage took place in mid-September. It was a much more formal +and elaborate affair than Cherry's had been, because, as Anne +explained, "Frenny's people have been so generous about giving him up, +you know. After all, he's the last of the Littles; all the others are +Folsoms and Randalls. And I want them to realize that he is marrying a +gentlewoman!" + +The older Littles and all the Folsoms and Randalls came to the wedding, +self-respecting, thrifty people who were, for the most part, as Alix +summarized it, "buying little homes on the installment plan in +desirable residential districts of Oakland and Berkeley." There were +bright-faced school teachers, in dark plaid silk waists, and young +matrons in carefully planned colour schemes of brown and gray; and they +all told Alix and Cherry about the family, the members who were +daughters of the Revolution, and the members who belonged to the +Society of the Daughters of Officers of the Civil War. + +Cherry and Alix went upstairs after the ceremony as Alix and Anne had +done a year ago, but there was deep relief and amusement in their mood +to-day, and it was with real pleasure in the closer intimacy that the +little group gathered about the fire that night. + +After that life went on serenely, and it was only occasionally that the +girls were reminded that Cherry was a married woman with a husband +expecting her shortly to return to him. When she and Alix took part in +the village fairs and bazaars, Alix was still a little thrilled to see +their names in print, "Miss Strickland and her sister Mrs. Lloyd, who +is visiting her," but to Cherry all the romance seemed to have vanished +from her new estate. November passed, and Christmas came, and there was +some talk of Martin's joining them for Christmas. But he did not come; +he was extremely busy at the new mine and comfortable in a village +boarding-house. + +It was in early March that Alix spoke to her father about it; spoke in +her casual and vague fashion, but gave him food for serious thought, +nevertheless. + +"Dad," said Alix suddenly at the lunch table one day when Cherry +happened to be shopping in the city, "were you and Mother ever +separated when you were married?" + +"No--" the doctor, remembering, shook his head. "Your mother never was +happy away from her home!" + +"Not even to visit her own family?" persisted Alix. + +"Not ever," he answered. "We always planned a long visit in the +East--but she never would go without me. She went to your Uncle +Vincent's house in Palo Alto once, but she came home the next +day--didn't feel comfortable away from home!" + +"How long do you suppose Martin will let us have Cherry?" Alix asked. + +Her father looked quickly at her and a troubled expression crossed his +face. + +"The circumstances seem to make it wise to keep her here until he is +sure that this new position is the right one!" he said. + +"If I know anything about Martin," Alix said, "no position is ever +going to be the right one for him. I mean," she added as her father +gave her an alarmed look, "I simply mean that he is that sort of man. +And it seems to me--odd, the way he and Cherry take their marriage! Now +when she got here, five months--six months ago," Alix went on as her +father watched her in close and distressed attention, "Cherry was +always talking about going back to Mart--every time he sent her money +she would say that she ought to keep it for a sudden summons. But she +doesn't do that now. You've been giving her her own allowance right +along, and she has settled down just as she was. A day or two ago +Martin sent her twenty dollars and she has gone into town to spend it +to-day--" + +She hesitated, shrugged her shoulders. + +"You think she ought to go back?" her father asked. + +"No, I don't think so!" Alix answered, eagerly. "I don't think anything +about it. But--but IS that marriage? Is that really for better or for +worse? I mean," she interrupted herself hastily, "as time goes on it +will get harder and harder for her; there will seem to be less and less +reason for going! Mrs. Brown was talking to me about it yesterday, and +she asked in that catty, smiling way she has--" + +"Trust the women to gossip!" the doctor said, impatiently. + +"Well, nobody minds their gossip!" his daughter assured him. "And for +my part I think it's a shame that a girl can't come back home as simply +as that, if she wants to!" she added, boldly. + +"Don't talk nonsense!" her father said, mildly. "You think," he added, +reluctantly, "that it wasn't a good thing for her, eh?" + +"Well--" Alix began. "She doesn't seem like other married women," she +said, doubtfully. "And the only thing is, will she ever want to go +back, if she isn't rather--rather coerced. Martin is odd, you know; he +has a kind of stolid, stupid pride. He wrote her weeks ago and asked +her to come, and she wrote back that if he would find her a cottage, +she would; she couldn't go to his boarding-house, she hated boarding! +Martin answered that he would, some day, and she said to me, 'Oh, now +he's cross!' Now, mind you," Alix broke off vehemently, "I'd change the +entire institution of marriage, if it was me! I'd end all this--" + +"Well, we won't go into that!" her father interrupted her, hastily, for +Alix had aired these views before and he was not in sympathy with them. +"And I guess you're right: the child is a woman now, with a woman's +responsibilities," he added. "And her place is with her husband. +They'll have to solve life together, to learn together. I'll speak to +Cherry!" + +Alix, watching him walk away, thought that she had never seen Dad look +old before. She saw the shadow on his kind face all the rest of that +day. + +It was only the next morning when he opened the question with Cherry. + +It was a brilliant morning, with spring already in the air. Cherry, on +the porch steps, was reading a letter from Martin. Her father sat down +beside her. She had on one of her old gowns, and bathed in soft +sunlight, looked eighteen again. Emerald grass was already filming the +ground about the house; from under the deep rich brown of the forest +flooring spring had thrust a million tiny spears of green. The redwoods +wore plushy plumes of blue new foliage, and a wild lilac at the edge of +the clearing drifted like pale smoke against the dark woods. Everywhere +life was soaking and bursting after heavy rains; the very posts of the +garden fence were sprouting little feathery tips. The air was sweet and +pungent and damp and fresh, the sky high and blue, and across the +granite face of Tamalpais a last scarf of mist was floating. + +"Well, what has Martin to say?" asked the doctor. + +"Oh, he doesn't like it much!" Cherry said, making a little face. "He +describes the village as perfectly hopeless. He's moved into the little +house in E Street, and gotten two stoves up." + +"And when does he want his girl?" her father pursued. + +"He doesn't say," Cherry answered, innocently. "I think he is really +happier to have me here, where he knows I am well off!" she said. "I +know I am," she ended after a moment's thought. + +Her father was conscious of a pang; he had not even formed the thought +in his own mind that Cherry was unhappy. He was as trusting and as +innocent as his daughters in many ways; he shrank from the unwelcome +facts of life. His own childhood had been hard and disciplinary, and at +Cherry's age he had been concerned only with realities, with the need +of food and clothes and shelter. That a life could be spoiled simply by +contact with an unsympathetic personality was incomprehensible to him. +The child, he told himself, had a good husband, a home and health, and +undeveloped resources within herself. It was puzzling and painful to +him to realize that there was needed something more--and that that +something was lacking. He felt a sudden anger at Martin; why wasn't +Martin managing this affair! + +"Mart doesn't mention any time!" he mused. + +"Thanks to you!" Cherry said, dimpling mischievously. "He wrote quite +firmly, just before Christmas," she added, "but I told him that Dad had +been such an angel and liked so much to have me here--" And Cherry's +smile was full of childish triumph. + +"My dear," her father said, spurred to sudden courage by a realization +that the matter might easily become serious, "you mustn't abuse his +generosity. Suppose you write that you'll join him--this is +March--suppose you say the first of April?" + +Cherry flushed and looked down. Her lips trembled. There was a moment +of unhappy silence. + +"Very well, Dad," she said in a low voice. A second later she had +jumped to her feet and vanished in the house. Her father roamed the +woods in wretched misgivings, coming in at lunch time to find her in +her place, smiling, but traces of tears about her lovely eyes. + +Nothing more was said for a day or two, and then Cherry read aloud to +the family an affectionate letter in which Martin said that everything +would be ready for her whenever she came now. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +The last day of March and of Cherry's visit broke clear and blue, and +with it spring seemed to have come on a rush of perfume and green +beauty. Days had been soft and warm before; this day was hot, and +flushed with colour and splendour. There were iris in the dewy grass +under the oaks, but in the sunshine every trace of winter's damp had +disappeared. Larks whirled up from the fields, and the bridal-wreath +and syringa bushes were mounds of creamy bloom. + +Alix and Cherry washed each other's hair in the old fashion, and came +trailing down with towels and combs to the garden. The doctor joined +them in the midst of their tossing and spreading, and sat smoking +peacefully on the porch steps. + +"Oh, heavens, how I love this sort of weather!" Alix exclaimed, +flinging her brown mane backward, her tall figure slender in a faded +kimono. She sat down crosswise on her chair, locked her arms about its +back, dropped her face on them, and yawned luxuriously. "Dad and +Peter," she went on, suddenly sitting erect, "will get all this nice +clean hair full of cigar smoke to-night, so what's the use, anyway?" + +"To-night's the night we go to Peter?" Cherry stated rather than asked. +"Do you remember," she glanced at her father, who was reading his +paper, "do you remember when Dad always used to scold us for being rude +to Peter?" + +"Well, I'd rather go to Peter's for dinner than anywhere else I ever +go!" Alix remarked, dreamily. "Seriously, I mean it!" she repeated as +Cherry looked at her in amused surprise. "In the first place, I love +his bungalow--tiny as it is, it has the whole of a little canyon to +itself, and the prettiest view in the valley, I think. And then I love +the messy sitting room, with all the books and music, and I love the +way Peter entertains. I wish," she added, simply, "that I liked Peter +half as well as I do his house!" + +"Peter's a dear!" Cherry contended. + +"Oh, I know he is!" Alix said, quickly. "Peter's always been a dear, of +course. But I mean in a special sense--" finished Alix with an entirely +unembarrassed grin. + +Cherry, through a glittering cloud of hair, looked at her steadily. +Suddenly she gave an odd laugh. + +"Do you know I never thought of Peter like that?" she said. + +Alix nodded with a cautious look at her father who was out of hearing. + +"No, nor I! We've always taken him rather for granted," she admitted. +"Only I've been rather wishing, lately, that Peter wasn't such an +unflattering, big-brotherish, every-day-neighbour sort of person." + +Still Cherry regarded her steadily with an awakening look in her eyes. + +"Why lately?" she asked. + +"Because," said Alix, briskly and unromantically, "I think Peter would +like me to--well, to stop taking him for granted!" + +"But Peter's lame--" Cherry submitted, doubtfully. + +"You can't call a shortness left from a broken leg LAME!" Alix +protested. "Peter isn't brawny, but he's never been ill. And he's not a +child. He's thirty-seven. And I imagine he's awfully lonely. And then I +imagine it would please Dad--" "Dad has always been ridiculously fond +of him," Cherry said, thoughtfully. Peter--possibly in love with Alix! +She had never even suspected it. Peter's attitude toward them all had +been more paternal than anything else. Cherry and her sister could not +remember life without Peter, but he had always been Dad's friend, +rather than theirs. He had rebuked them; he had patiently asked them +not to chatter so; he had criticized their grammar and their clothes +and their friends. + +Peter and Alix. Well, there was something rather pleasant in the +thought after all, if Alix didn't mind his ugliness and thinness. +Cherry thought about it all day. She had had no thought of money a year +or two ago; but she was more experienced now. And Peter was rich. + +Ordinarily she would have said that she was not going to change for +Peter's dinner; but this afternoon, without mentioning the fact, she +quietly got into one of her prettiest dresses; a dress that had been +made in the long-ago excitement of trousseau days. Peter as a rather +autocratic and critical neighbour was one thing; as a possible +brother-in-law he was another. + +She came downstairs to find her father waiting, and they walked away +through the woods together. Alix had already gone up to Peter's house +to play tennis. They walked slowly through the lovely aisles of the +trees, crossing a road or two, climbing steadily upward under great +redwoods. The forest was thinning with oaks and madrone trees, and they +found the sunlight again high on the crest of the ridge before a turn +of the trail brought them in view of Peter's bungalow. It was a shabby +little place, all porch and slope of rough brown roof, set in a +wilderness of wild flowers and overlooking long descending slopes of +hillside that stretched far away to the very bay and marshes at the +ocean mouth. + +To-night the spring sunshine streamed across it with broad shadows, the +mountains' rough crest stood against a wide expanse of sunset sky. +Cherry's skirt brushed the gold dust from masses and masses of +buttercups. The tennis was over, but just over; Peter and Alix were +sitting, still panting, on the rail of the wide, open porch, and +shouted as the others came up. + +"You missed doubles!" called Alix. "The grandest we ever did! Doubles +with the Thompsons and three sets straight to us--six-two, six-two, and +six-two again! They've gone. Oh, heavens, I never had such tennis. Oh, +Peter, when you stood there at the net and just curved your hand like a +cup"--Alix gave an enthusiastic imitation--"and over she went, and game +and set!" + +Cherry, sinking white and frilly into a chair, smiled indulgently. The +walk had given her a wild-rose colour, and even Alix was struck with +her extraordinary beauty. Alix had wheeled about on the rail to face +the porch, and Peter had gotten to his feet and was hospitably pushing +basket chairs about. Now he gave Alix a critical look. + +"You're disgracefully dirty!" he said, fraternally. + +"I know it," she answered, calmly. "Have I time to tub?" + +"All the time in the world!" he answered. + +"Are any clothes of mine here?" further demanded Alix, rising lazily. + +"Yes, there's a blouse. It's in the linen closet; ask Kow for it or get +it yourself when you get your towels. You left it the day you changed +here after we all climbed the mountain. I hope you people are going to +get enough to eat," Peter added, flinging himself into a chair beside +Cherry. + +"He's been cooking it since breakfast!" Alix remarked, departing. Peter +laughed guiltily, and Cherry, too. It was only an exaggeration of the +simple truth. He loved to cook, and his meals were famous. + +"It's very pleasant to me to have Alix so much at home here," Cherry +said, when Alix was gone, and the doctor wandering happily about the +garden. "I don't know what we'd do if any one ever usurped our places +here!" + +She had said it deliberately; the fascination of her recent discovery +was too strong to resist. The man flushed suddenly. For a full minute +he did not speak, and Cherry was surprised to find herself a little +thrilled and even frightened by his silence. + +"What put that into your head?" he asked, presently, smoking with his +eyes fixed upon the valley far below. + +"Just--being here," she answered. And as he glanced over his shoulder +he met her smile. + +"You've been here a thousand times without ever paying me a +compliment!" he reminded her. + +Cherry considered this, her brows drawn a trifle together. + +"Perhaps," she offered, presently, "it's because there are so many +changes, Peter; my marriage, Anne's--everything different! It just came +to me that it is nice to have this always the same." + +"Perhaps Alix will come up here and help keep it so some day," the man +said, deliberately. Cherry's look of elaborate surprise and pleasure +died before his serious glance. She was silent for a moment. + +"Why don't you ask her?" she said in a low, thoughtful tone, trembling, +eager to preserve his mood without a false note. + +"I have," he answered simply. Cherry's heart jumped with a sudden +unexpected emotion. What was it? Not pleasure, not all surprise--surely +there could be no jealousy mixed with her feeling for Peter's plans? +But she was dazed with the rush of feeling; hurt in some fashion she +could not stop to dissect now. Only this morning she had felt that +Peter was not good enough for Alix; now, suddenly, he began to seem +admirable and dear and unlike everybody else-- + +"And she said no?" she stammered in confusion. + +"She said no. Or, at least, I intimated that I was a lonely old +affectionate man with this and that to offer, and she intimated that +that wasn't enough. It was all--" he laughed--"It was all extremely +sketchy!" + +"Peter, but what does she want?" There was actual sisterly indignation +in Cherry's tone. + +"Oh, Alix is quite right!" he answered, lightly. "I ought to have +said--I ought to explain--that I had told her, only a few days +previously, that I had always loved somebody else!" + +"Oh-h-h!" Cherry was enlightened. She visualized an affair in the last +years of the old century for Peter. + +"Oh, and--and she didn't love you?" Cherry asked. + +"The lady? She was unfortunately married before I had a chance to ask +her," said Peter. + +"Oh-h-h!" Cherry said again, impressed, "and you'll never get over it?" +she asked, timidly. "Peter, I never knew that!" she added as he was +silent. "Does--does Dad know?" + +"Nobody knows but Alix, and she only knows the bare facts," he assured +her. + +"Oh!" Cherry could think of nothing to add to the sympathetic little +monosyllable. Twilight was reaching even the hilltop, the canyons were +rilling with violet shadows; the sweet, pungent odour of the first dew, +falling on warm dust, crept across the garden. + +"Finished with the shower!" shrieked Alix from the warm darkness inside +the doorway. "Hurry up, Peter, something smells utterly grand!" + +"That's the chicken thing!" Peter shouted back, springing up to +disappear in the direction of the bathroom. Cherry sat on, silent, +wrapped still in the new spell of the pleasant voice, the strangely +appealing and yet masterful personality. + +The dinner straggled as all Peter's dinners did; Alix mixed a +salad-dressing; Peter himself flashed in and out of the tiny, hot +kitchen a hundred times. Kow, in immaculate linen, came back and forth +in leisurely table-setting. Suddenly everything was ready; the crisp, +smoking-hot French loaf, the big, brown jar of bubbling and odorous +chicken, the lettuce curled in its bowl, the long-necked bottles in +their straw cases, and cheeses and crackers and olives and figs and +tiny fish in oil and marrons in fluted paper that were a part of all +Peter's dinners. + +After dinner they watched the moon rise, until Alix drifted in to the +piano and Peter followed her, and the others came in, too, to sit +beside the fire. As usual it was midnight before any one thought of +ending one of Peter's evenings. + +And all through the pleasant, quiet hours, and when he bundled them up +in his own big loose coats to drive them home, Cherry was thinking of +him in this new light; Peter loving a woman, and denied. The knowledge +seemed to fling a strange glamour about him; she saw new charm in him, +or perhaps, as she told herself, she saw for the first time how +charming he really was. His speech seemed actually the pleasanter for +the stammer at which they had all laughed years ago; the slight limp +lent its own touch of individuality, and the man's blunt criticisms of +books and music, politics and people, were softened by his humour, his +genuine humility, and his eager hospitality. + +Next day she took occasion to mention Peter and his affairs to Alix. +Alix turned fiery red, but laughed hardily. + +"If he considers that an offer, he can consider it a refusal, I guess," +she said, boyishly embarrassed. "I like him--I'm crazy about him. But I +don't want any party in ringlets and crinolines to come floating from +the dead past over my child's innocent cradle--" + +"Alix, you're awful!" Cherry laughed. "You couldn't talk that way if +you loved him!" + +"What way?" Alix demanded. + +"Oh, about his--well, his children!" + +"I should think that would be just the proof that I do love him," Alix +persisted idly in her musical, mischievous voice. "I certainly wouldn't +want to talk of the children of a man I DIDN'T--" + +"Oh, Alix, don't!" Cherry protested. "Anyway, you know better." + +Alix laughed. + +"I suppose I do. I suppose I ought to be a mass of blushes. The truth +is, I like kids, and I don't like husbands--" Alix confessed, with +engaging candour. + +"You don't know anything about husbands!" Cherry laughed. + +"I know lots of men I'd like to go off with for a few months," Alix +pursued. "But then I'd like to come home again! I don't see why that +isn't perfectly reasonable--" + +"Well, it's not!" Cherry declared almost crossly. "That isn't marriage. +You belong where your husband is, and you--you are always glad to be +with him--" + +"But suppose you get tired of him, like a job or a boarding-house, or +any of your other friends?" Alix persisted idly. + +"Well, you aren't supposed to!" Cherry said, feebly. Alix let her have +the last word; it was only due to her superior experience, she thought +crossly. But half an hour later, lying wakeful, and thinking that she +would miss dear old Cherry to-morrow, she fancied she heard something +like a sob from Cherry's bed, and her whole heart softened with +sympathy for her sister. + +They came downstairs together the next day in mid-afternoon, both +hatted and wrapped for the trip, for Peter was to take Cherry as far as +Sausalito in the car, and Martin by a fortunate chance was to meet them +there at the ferryboat for San Francisco. Mill Valley was not more than +an hour's ride from the ferry. Alix was to drive down and return with +Peter. Cherry said good-bye to her father in the porch; she seemed more +of a puzzled child than ever. + +"I've had a wonderful visit, Dad--" she began bravely. Suddenly the +tears came. She buried her face against her father's shabby old office +coat and his arms went about her. Alix laughed awkwardly, and Peter +shut his teeth. Anne, who had very properly come over to say good-bye +to her cousin, got in the back seat of the car and Alix took the seat +beside her. + +"Take a picture of Peter and me with the suitcases!" she said. "We must +look so domestic!" + +"Get in here, Cherry," Peter said, opening the door of the seat beside +his own. "Doctor, we'll be back in about an hour--" + +"Without Cherry!" her father said with a rueful smile. + +"Without Cherry!" Peter echoed, looking at her gravely. + +It was then that Cherry saw in Peter's expression something that she +did not forget for many, many months--never quite forgot. He wore a +rough tramping costume to-day, a Sunday, and he was halfway up the +porch steps, ready to carry bags to the waiting motor car. His eyes +were fixed upon her with something so yearning, so loving, so troubled +in their gaze that a thrill went through Cherry from head to foot. He +instantly averted his look, turned to the car, fumbled with the gears; +they were off. He was to drive them all the way to Sausalito; Alix +commented joyously upon the beauty of the day. + +Cherry, tied trimly into a hat that was all big daisies, was silent for +a while. But when Alix and Anne commenced an interested conversation in +the back seat, she suddenly said regretfully: + +"Oh, I hate to go away this time! I mind it more even than the first +time!" + +Peter, edging smoothly about a wide blue puddle, nodded +sympathetically, but did not answer. + +"I envy Alix--" Cherry said in idle mischief. She knew that the subject +was not a safe one, but was irresistibly impelled to pursue it. + +"Alix?" said Peter, after a silence long enough to make her feel +ashamed of herself. + +"Yes. Her young man lives in Mill Valley, right near home!" elucidated +Cherry. + +"Am I Alix's young man?" he asked, amused. + +"Well, aren't you?" + +"I don't know. I've never been any one's young man," said Peter. + +"Whoever the woman who treated you meanly is--I hate her!" Cherry began +again. "Unless," she added, "unless she was very young, and you never +told her!" + +This time he did not answer at all, and they spun along in utter +silence. But when they were nearing Sausalito, Cherry said almost +timidly: + +"I think perhaps it would make her happy--and proud, to know that you +admired her, Peter. I don't know who she is, of course, but almost any +woman would feel that. This visit, somehow, has made me feel as if you +and I had really begun a new friendship on our own account, not just +the old friendship. And I shall often think of that talk we had a week +ago, and-think of you, too. N-n-next time you fall in love I hope you +will be luckier!" + +Silence. But he gave her his quick, friendly smile. Cherry dared not +speak again. + +"Last stop--all out!" Alix exclaimed. "You get tickets, Peter. Hurray, +there's Martin!" + +Unexpectedly Martin's big figure came toward them from the ferry gate. +Some ore from the mine had to be assayed in San Francisco, and he had +volunteered to make the trip so that he might meet his wife and bring +her back with him to Red Creek. Time hanging on his hands in the city, +he had crossed the bay for the pleasure of the return trip with Cherry. +He met them beamingly. There was a little confusion of greeting and +good-byes. Alix and Peter watched the others at the railing until the +ferryboat turned. Martin smiled over Anne's head; Cherry, both little +white-gloved hands on the rail, blue eyes and a glint of bright hair +showing under the daisies on her hat, her small figure enveloped in a +big loose coat, looked as if she would like to cry again. + +"It must be fun to be married, and go off to strange places with your +beau!" Alix decided. "I'm hungry, Peter; let's go over there and treat +ourselves to fried oysters!" + +"Let's go home," he said, unsympathetically. "I'm not hungry." + +"Oh, VERY well!" Alix agreed, airily, jumping into the seat beside him. +"Though what has given you a grouch I really am at a loss to imagine!" +she added under her breath. + +"I don't hear you!" shouted Peter, who was suddenly rushing the engine. + +"You weren't intended to!" she shouted back. And until they were +halfway home, and Alix laughed out in sudden shame and good-nature not +another word was spoken. The bright weather had changed suddenly, and a +wet spring cloud was spreading over the sky. + +"Love me, Peter?" Alix asked, suddenly. + +"Not always!" he answered, briefly and sincerely. Fog was creeping over +the marshes, the air was full of damp chill. A memory of the +coat-enveloped figure and the blue eyes that smiled wistfully under a +daisied hat was wringing his heart. + +"Listen," began Alix again. "Let's stop for Dad, it's going to pour. +And let's go up to your house to eat?" + +Silence. + +"We can play duets all evening!" Alix added, temptingly. + +"Little and Anne coming back?" Peter asked, unwillingly. + +"No; they're dining with the Quelquechoses--those bright-faced, +freckled cousins of his," Alix answered. + +"I don't know that I've got anything up there to eat!" Peter said, +gloomily. + +"Ooo--say!" Alix said, brightening suddenly with her incorrigible +childishness of expression. "Kow's got eggs and cream, hasn't he? I'll +make that new thing I was telling you about--it's delicious. Oh, and an +onion--" she broke off in concern. + +"He has an onion," Peter admitted. "What dish?" he asked, interested in +spite of himself, as Alix fell into a rapturous reverie. + +"Well, you fry a chopped onion," Alix began, "and then you have a lot +of hard-boiled eggs--" In another moment they were deep in culinary +details. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Martin's work was in the Contra Costa Valley, and he and Cherry had a +small house in Red Creek, the only town of any size near the mine. Red +Creek was in a fruit-farming and dairy region and looked its prettiest +on the spring evening when Cherry saw it first. The locusts were in +leaf and ready to bloom, and the first fruit blossoms were scattered in +snowy whiteness up and down the valley. + +Her little house was a cottage with a porch running across the front +where windows looked out from the sitting room and the front bedroom. +Back of these rooms were a dark little bathroom that connected the +front bedroom with another smaller bedroom, a little dining room and a +kitchen. Almost all the houses in Red Creek were duplicates, except in +minor particulars, of this house, but this particular specimen was +older than some of the others and showed signs of hard usage. The +kitchen floor was chipped and stained, and the bathroom basin was +plugged with putty; there were odd bottles partly full of shoe polish +and ink and vinegar, here and there; and on the shelves of the +triangular closet in the dining room were cut and folded pieces of +spotted white paper. + +Martin, man-fashion, had merely camped in kitchen and bedroom while +awaiting his wife; but Cherry buttoned on her crisp little apron on the +first morning after her arrival, and attacked the accumulated dishes in +the sink, and the scattered shirts and collars bravely. It was a cold, +raw morning, and she went to and fro briskly, burning rubbish in the +airtight stove in the sitting room, and keeping a good wood fire going +in the kitchen, and feeling housewifely and efficient as she did so. + +After a lunch for which she was praised and applauded in something of +the old honeymoon way, she walked to market, passing blocks of other +little houses like her own, with bare dooryards where nipped +chrysanthemums dangled on poles, and where play wagons, puddles of +water, and picking chickens alternated regularly. Other marketing women +looked at Cherry with the quickly averted look that is only given to +beauty; but the men in the shops wrote down the new name and address +with especial zeal and amiability. She remembered the old necessities, +bacon and lard and sugar and matches; she recovered the kitchen clock +from its wrapping of newspaper, and wound it, and set it on the sink +shelf; she was busy with a hundred improvements and cares, and was +almost too tired, when Martin came home to dinner, to sit up and share +it with him. + +It was warm in the dining room and Cherry yawned over her dessert, and +rose stiff and aching to return to the kitchen with plates and silver, +glasses and food, to shake the tablecloth, to pile and wash and wipe +and put away the china, to brush the floor and the stove, and do the +last wiping and wringing, and to turn out the gas, and go in to her +chair beside the airtight stove. + +Martin handed her half his paper and Cherry took it, realizing with +cheerful indifference that there was a streak of soot on one cuff, and +that her hands were affected by grease and hot water. She read jokes +and recipes and answers to correspondents, and small editorial fillers +as to the number of nutmegs consumed in China yearly, and the name and +circumstances of the oldest living man in England. A new novel was in +her bedroom, but she was too comfortable and too tired to go get it, +and at ten she rose yawning and stumbling, and went to bed. Breakfast +must be on the table at half-past seven, for Martin left for the mine +at eight, and she had had a hard day. + +For a few weeks the novelty lasted and Cherry was enthusiastic about +everything. She looked out across her dishpan at green fields and the +beginning of the farms; she saw the lilacs burst into fragrant plumes +on the bare branches of her dooryard trees; spring flushed the whole +world with loveliness, and she was young, and healthy, and too busy to +be homesick. + +Martin left the house at eight and was usually at home at five. He +would sometimes come into her kitchen while she finished dinner, and +tell her about the day, and then suggested that they go to the +"pictures" at night. But although Cherry and Alix often had coaxed +their father into this dissipation in Mill Valley, it was different +there, she found. That was a small colony of city people, the theatre +was small, and the films carefully selected. One sat with one's +neighbours and friends. But here in Red Creek the theatre was a +draughty barn, and the farm workers, big men odorous of warm, acid +perspiration, pushed in laughing and noisy; the films were of a +different character, too, and advertised by frightful coloured posters +at the doors. Martin himself did not like them; indeed, he and Cherry +found little to like in either the people or the town. + +It was a typical railroad town of California. It was flat, dusty, all +its buildings of wood. There were some two thousand souls in Red Creek; +two or three stores, a bakery from which the crude odour of baking +bread burst every night; saloons, warehouses, a smithy, a butcher shop +open only two days a week, a Chinese laundry from which opium-tainted +steam issued all day and all night; cattle sheds, pepper trees, wheat +barns, and a hotel of raw pine, with a narrow bedroom represented by +every one of the forty narrow windows in its upper stories, and a lower +floor decorated with spittoons. Back of the crowded main street was +another street, beside which Main Street's muddy ugliness was +beautiful. Here was another saloon, and rooms above it, and several +disreputable cottages about which Cherry sometimes saw odd-looking +women. + +Not everyone in Red Creek was poor, by any means. It was a district +bursting with prosperity; all summer long wheat and fruit and butter +and beef poured through it out into the world. Down the road a mile or +two, and back toward the far hills, were comfortable ranches where +trees planted fifty years before had grown to mammoth proportions, and +where the women of the family cultivated gardens. Every family had pigs +and cattle and fine horses, and mud-spattered motor cars were familiar +sights in Red Creek's streets. + +Cherry used to wonder why anybody who could live elsewhere lived here. +When some of the ranch girls told her that they always did their +shopping in San Francisco, she marvelled that they could reconcile +themselves to come home. + +The days went on and on, each bringing its round of dishes, beds, +sweeping, marketing, folding and unfolding tablecloths, going back and +forth between kitchen and dining room. Martin's breakfast was either +promptly served and well cooked, in which case Martin was silently +satisfied, or it was late and a failure, when he was very articulately +disgusted; in either case Cherry was left to clear and wash and plan +for another meal in four hours more. She soaked fruit, beat up cake, +chopped boxes into kindlings, heated a kettle of water and another +kettle of water, dragged sheets from the bed only to replace them, +filled dishes with food only to find them empty and ready to wash again. + +"I get sick of it!" she told Martin. + +"Well, Lord!" he exclaimed. "Don't you think everybody does? Don't I +get sick of my work? You ought to have the responsibility of it all for +a while!" + +His tone was humorously reproving rather than unkind. But such a speech +would fill Cherry's eyes with tears, and cause her to go about the +house all morning with a heavy heart. + +She would find herself looking thoughtfully at Martin in these days, +studying him as if he were an utter stranger. It bewildered her to feel +that he actually was no more than that, after two years of marriage. +She not only did not know him, but she had a baffled sense that the +very nearness of their union prevented her from seeing him fairly. She +knew that she did him injustice in her thoughts. + +It MUST be injustice, decided Cherry. For Martin seemed to her less +clever, less just, less intelligent, and less generous than the average +man of her acquaintance. And yet he did not seem to impress other +people in the way he impressed her. + +He was extraordinarily healthy, and had small sympathy for illness, +weakness, for the unfortunate, and the complaining. He was scrupulously +clean, and Cherry added that to his credit, although the necessity of +seeing that Martin's bath, Martin's shaving water, and Martin's clean +linen were ready complicated her duties somewhat. He was not interested +in the affairs of the day; politics, reforms, world movements generally +found him indifferent, but he would occasionally favour his wife with a +sudden opinion as to China or intensive farming or Lloyd's shipping. +She knew when he did this that he was quoting. He whistled over his +dressing, read the paper at breakfast, and was gone. At noon he rushed +in, always late, devoured his lunch appreciatively, and was gone again. +At night he was usually tired, inclined to quarrel about small matters, +inclined to disapprove of the new positions of the bedroom furniture, +or the way Cherry's hair was dressed. + +He loved to play poker and was hospitable to a certain extent. He would +whistle and joke over the preparations for a rarebit after a game, and +would willingly walk five blocks for beer if Cherry had forgotten to +get it. On Sunday he liked to see her prettily gowned; now and then +they motored with his friends from the mine; more often walked, ate a +hearty chicken dinner, and went to a cold supper in the neighbourhood, +with "Five Hundred" to follow. At ten their hostess would flutter into +her kitchen; there would be lemonade and beer and rich layer cake. Then +the men would begin to match poker hands, and the women to discuss +babies in low tones. + +Cherry never saw her husband so animated or so interested as when men +he had known before chanced to drift into town, mining men from Nevada +or from El Nido, or men he had known in college. They would discuss +personalities, would shout over recollected good times, would slap each +other on the back and laugh tirelessly. + +She thought him an extremely difficult man to live with, and was +angered when her hints to this effect led him to remark that she was +the "limit." They had a serious quarrel one day, when he told her that +she was the most selfish and spoiled woman he had ever known. He called +her attention to the other women of the town, busy, contented women, +sending children off to school, settling babies down for naps in sunny +dooryards, cooking and laughing and hurrying to and fro. + +"Yes, and look at them!" Cherry said with ready tears. "Shabby, thin, +tired all the time!" + +"The trouble with you is," Martin said, departing, "you've been told +that you're pretty and sweet all your life--and you're SPOILED! You are +pretty, yes--" he added, more mildly. "But, by George, you sulk so +much, and you crab so much, that I'm darned if I see it any more! All I +see is trouble!" + +With this he left her. Left her to a burst of angry tears, at first, +when she dropped her lovely little head on the blue gingham of her +apron sleeve and cried bitterly. + +The kettle began to sing on the stove, a bee came in and wandered about +the hot kitchen; the grocer knocked, and Cherry let the big lout of a +boy stare at her red eyes uncaring. + +Then she went swiftly into the bedroom and began to pack and change. +She'd SHOW Martin Lloyd--she'd SHOW Martin Lloyd! She was going +straight to Dad--she'd take the--take the-- + +She frowned. She had missed the nine o'clock train; she must wait for +the train at half-past two. Wait where? Well, she could only wait here. +Very well, she would wait here. She would not get Martin any lunch, and +when he raged she would explain. + +She finished her packing and put the house in order. Then, in +unaccustomed mid-morning leisure, she sank into a deep rocker, and +began to read. Quiet and shade and order reigned in the little house. +Outside in the shaded street the children went shouting home again; a +fishman's horn sounded. + +Steps came bounding up to Cherry's door; her heart began to beat; a +knock sounded. She got to her feet, puzzled; Martin did not knock. + +It was Joe Robinson, his closest friend at the mine. His handsome, +big-featured face was full of concern. + +"Say, listen, Mrs. Lloyd; Mart can't get home to dinner," said Joe. "He +don't feel extra well--he was in the engine room and he kinder--he +kinder--" + +"Fainted?" Cherry asked, sharply, turning a little pale. + +"Well, kinder. Lawson made him lay down," Joe said. "And he's coming +home when the wagon comes down, at three o'clock. He says to tell you +he's fine!" + +"Oh, thank you, Joe!" Cherry said. She shut the door, feeling weak and +frightened. She flew to unpack her bag, hung up her hat and coat, +darkened the bedroom and turned down the bed; waited anxiously for +Mart's return. Mrs. Turner came in with the baby, a gentle, tired +woman, with a face always radiant with joy. Mrs. Turner had seven +children, and had once told Cherry that she had never slept a night +through since the first year of her marriage. She never changed a +baby's gown or rolled a batch of cookies without a deep and genuine +love for the task; she could not unbutton the twisted collar from a +son's small neck without drawing his freckled cheek to her hungry lips +for a kiss, or ask one of her black-headed, bright-eyed daughters to +hang up a dish towel without adding: "You're a darling help to your +mother!" + +The Turners lived next door to the Lloyds, in a shabby two-story house, +and though Cherry and her neighbour spoke a different language, they +had grown fond of each other. Cherry had sometimes timidly touched upon +the matter that was always troubling her, with the older woman. But +Mrs. Turner had little to say regarding her feeling for the lean, +silent, somewhat unsuccessful man who was the head of her crowded +household. She seemed to take it for granted that he would sometimes be +unreasonable. + +"Papa gets so mad if anything gets burned!" she would say, with her +gentle laugh. And once she added the information that her husband's +mother had been a wonderful manager. "Men are that way!" was her +comment upon the difficulties of other wives. But once, when there was +a wedding near by, Cherry, with others in the church, saw the tears in +Mrs. Turner's eyes as she watched the bride. "Poor little innocent +thing!" she had whispered with a tremulous smile. + +She was deeply concerned over the news from Martin, and when Cherry had +met his limp form at the front door, and had whisked him into a cool +bed, and put chopped ice on the aching forehead, and gotten him, +grateful and penitent, off to sleep, her neighbour came over again to +whisper in the kitchen. + +"He's all right," Cherry smiled. "He was so glad to get to bed, and so +appreciative!" she added in a motherly tone. + +"You look as if you hadn't a thing in the world to do!" the older +housekeeper commented, glancing about the neat, quiet kitchen. + +"I believe I like sick nursing!" Cherry smiled back. + +For a day or two Martin stayed in bed and Cherry spoiled and petted +him, and was praised and thanked for every step she took. After that +they took a little trip into the mountains near by, and Cherry sent +Alix postcards that made her sister feel almost a pang of envy. + +But then the routine began again, and the fearful heat of midsummer +came, too. Red Creek baked in a smother of dusty heat, the trees in the +dry orchards, beside the dry roads, dropped circles of hot shadow on +the clodded, rough earth. Farms dozed under shimmering lines of +dazzling air, and in the village, from ten o'clock until the afternoon +began to wane, there was no stir. Flies buzzed and settled on screen +doors, the creek shrunk away between crumbling rocky banks, the butcher +closed his shop, and milk soured in the bottles. + +The Turners, and some other families, always camped together in the +mountains during this season, and they were off when school closed, in +an enviable state of ecstasy and anticipation. Cherry had planned to +join them, but an experimental week-end was enough. The camp was in the +cool woods, truly, but it was disorderly, swarming with children, the +tents were small and hot, the whole settlement laughed and rioted and +surged to and fro in a manner utterly foreign to her. She returned, to +tell Martin that it was "horribly common," and weather the rest of the +summer in Red Creek. + +"Mrs. Turner is the only woman that I can stand," said Cherry, "and she +was always cooking, in an awful cooking shed, masses and masses of +macaroni and stewed plums and biscuits--and all of them laughing and +saying, 'Girlie, I guess you've got a hollow leg!' Dearie, I couldn't +eat any more without busting!' And sitting round that plank table--" + +Martin shouted with laughter at her, but he sympathized. He had never +cared particularly for the Turners; was perfectly willing to keep the +friendship within bounds. + +He sympathized as little with another friendship she made, some months +later, with the wife of a young engineer who had recently come to the +mine. Pauline Runyon was a few years older than her husband, a +handsome, thin, intense woman, who did everything in an entirely +individual way. She took one of the new little bungalows that were +being erected in Red Creek "Park," and furnished it richly and +inappropriately, and established a tea table and a samovar beside the +open fireplace. Cherry began to like better than anything else in the +world the hours she spent with Pauline. She would have liked to go +every day, and every day argued and debated the propriety of doing so, +in her heart. + +Not since the days of her engagement to Martin, and then only on a few +occasions, had she felt the thrill that she experienced now, when +Pauline, with her dark eyes and her frilly parasol, wandered in the +kitchen door, to sit laughing and talking for a few minutes, or when +she herself dressed and crossed the village, and went up past the +packing plant and the storage barns to the two small cement gate posts +and the length of rusty chain that marked the entrance to Red Creek +"Park." Then there would be tea, poetry, talk, and the flattery that +Pauline quite deliberately applied to Cherry, and the flattery that +Cherry all unconsciously lavished on her friend in return. + +Pauline read Browning, Francis Thompson, and Pater, and introduced +Cherry to new worlds of thought. She talked to Cherry of New York, +which she loved, and of the men and women she had met there. She +sometimes sighed and pushed the bright hair back from Cherry's young +and innocent and discontented little face, and said, tenderly, "On the +stage, my dear--anywhere, everywhere, you would be a furore!" + +And thinking, in the quiet evenings--for Martin's work kept him later +and later at the mine--Cherry came to see that her marriage had been a +great mistake. She had not been ready for marriage. She would sit on +the back steps, as the evenings grew cooler, and watch the exquisite +twilight fade, and the sorrow and beauty of life would wring her heart. + +Darkness came, the Turner children shrieked, laughed, clattered dishes, +and were silent. Cherry would sit on, her arms wrapped in her apron, +her eyes staring into the young night. In the darkness she could only +see the great shadows that were the Adams' windmill, and the old Brown +barn, and the Cutters' house down the back road. The dry earth seemed +awake at night, stretching itself, under brown sods, for a great breath +of relief in the merciful coolness. Cherry could smell grapes, and +smell the pleasant wetness of the dust where the late watering cart had +passed by, after sunset. The roads were too hot for watering all day +long, and this sweet, wet odour only came with the night. + +A dream of ease and adoration and beauty came to her. She did not +visualize any special place, any special gown or hour or person. But +she saw her beauty fittingly environed; she saw cool rooms, darkened +against this blazing midsummer glare; heard ice clinking against glass; +the footsteps of attentive maids; the sound of cultivated voices, of +music and laughter. She had had these dreams before, but they were +becoming habitual now. She was so tired--so sick--so bored with her +real life; it was becoming increasingly harder and harder for her to +live with Martin; to endure and to struggle against the pricks. She was +always in a suppressed state of wanting to break out, to shout at him +brazenly, "I don't care if your coffee is weak! I like it weak! I don't +care if you don't like my hat--I do! Stop talking about yourself!" + +Various little mannerisms of his began seriously to annoy her; a rather +grave symptom, had Cherry but known it. He danced his big fingers on +the handle of the sugar spoon at breakfast, sifting the sugar over his +cereal; she had to turn her eyes resolutely away from the sight. He +blew his nose, folded his handkerchief, and then brushed his nose with +it firmly left and right; she hated the little performance that was +never altered. He had a certain mental slowness, would blink at her +politely and patiently when she flashed plans or hopes at him: "I don't +follow you, my dear!" This made her frantic. + +She was twenty, undisciplined and exacting. She had no reserves within +herself to which she could turn. Bad things were hopelessly bad with +Cherry, her despairs were the dark and tearful despairs of girlhood, +prematurely transferred to graver matters. + +Martin was quite right in some of his contentions; girl-like, she was +spasmodic and unsystematic in her housekeeping; she had times of being +discontented and selfish. She hated economy and the need for careful +managing. + +In October Alix chanced to write her a long and unusually gossipy +letter. Alix had a new gown of black grenadine, and she had sung at an +afternoon tea, and had evidently succeeded in her first venture. Also +they had had a mountain climb and enclosed were snapshots Peter had +taken on the trip. + +Cherry picked up the little kodak prints; there were four or five of +them. She studied them with a pang at her heart. Alix in a loose rough +coat, with her hair blowing in the wind, and the peaked crest of +Tamalpais behind her--Alix busy with lunch boxes--Alix standing on the +old bridge down by the mill, A wave of homesickness swept over the +younger sister; life tasted bitter. She hated Alix, hated Peter, above +all she hated herself. She wanted to be there, in Mill Valley, free to +play and to dream again-- + +A day or two later she told Martin kindly and steadily that she thought +it had all "been a mistake." She told him that she thought the only +dignified thing to do was to part. She liked him, she would always wish +him well, but since the love had gone out of their relationship, surely +it was only honest to end it. + +"What's the matter?" Martin demanded. + +"Nothing special," Cherry assured him, her eyes suddenly watering. +"Only I'm tired of it all. I'm tired of PRETENDING. I can't argue about +it. But I know it's the wise thing to do." + +"You acted this same way before," Martin suggested, after looking back +at his paper for a few seconds. + +"I did not!" Cherry said, indignantly. "That is not true." + +"You'd go back to your father, I suppose?" Martin said, yawning. + +"Until I could get into something," Cherry replied with dignity. A +vague thought of the stage flitted through her mind. + +"Oh!" Martin said, politely. "And I suppose you think your father would +agree to this delightful arrangement?" he asked. + +"I know he would!" Cherry answered, eagerly. + +"All right--you write and ask him!" Martin agreed, good-naturedly. +Cherry was surprised at his attitude, but grateful more than surprised. + +"Not cross, Mart?" she asked. + +"Not the least in the world!" he answered, lightly. + +"Because I truly believe that we'd both be happier--" the woman said, +hesitatingly. Martin did not answer. + +The next day she sat down to write her father. The house was still. Red +Creek was awakening in the heavenly October coolness, children +chattered on the way to school, the morning and evening were crisp and +sharp. + +Cherry stared out at a field of stubble bathed in soft sunshine. The +hills to-day were only a shade deeper than the pale sky. Along the road +back of the house a lumber wagon rattled, the thin bay horses galloping +joyously in harness. Pink and white cosmos, pallid on clouds of frail, +bushy green, were banked in the shade of the woodshed. + +She meditated, with a troubled brow. Her letter was unexpectedly hard +to compose. She could not take a bright and simple tone, asking her +father to rejoice in her home-coming. Somehow the matter persisted in +growing heavy, and the words twisted themselves about into ugly and +selfish sounds. Cherry was young, but even to her youth the phrases, +the "misunderstood" and the "uncongenial," the "friendly parting before +any bitterness creeps in," and the "free to decide our lives in some +happier and wiser way," rang false. Pauline had been divorced, a few +years ago, and the only thing Cherry disliked in her friend was her +cold and resentful references to her first husband. + +No, she couldn't be a divorced woman. It was all spoiled, the innocent +past and the future; there was no way out! She gave up the attempt at a +letter, and began to annoy Martin with talk of a visit home again. + +"You were there six months ago!" Martin reminded her. + +"Eight months ago, Mart." + +"What you want to go for?" + +"Oh, just--just--" Cherry's irrepressible tears angered herself almost +as much as they did Martin. "I think they'd like me to!" she faltered. + +"Go if you want to!" he said, but she knew she could not go on that +word. + +"That's it," she said at last to herself, in one of her solitary hours. +"I'm married, and this is marriage. For the rest of my life it'll be +Mart and I--Mart and I--in everything! For richer for poorer, for +better for worse-that's marriage. He doesn't beat me, and we have +enough money, and perhaps there are a lot of other women worse off than +I am. But it's--it's funny." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +In January, however, he came home one noon to find her hatted and +wrapped to go. + +"Oh, Mart--it's Daddy!" she said. "He's ill--I've got to see him! He's +awfully ill." + +"Telegram?" asked Martin, not particularly pleased, but not +unsympathetic either. + +For answer she gave him the yellow paper that was wet with her tears. +"Dad ill," he read. "Don't worry. Come if you can. Alix." + +"I'll bet it's a put-up job between you and Alix--" Martin said in +indulgent suspicion. + +Her indignant glance sobered him; he hastily arranged money matters, +and that night she got off the train in the dark wetness of the valley, +and was met by a rush of cool and fragrant air. It was too late to see +the mountain, lights were twinkling everywhere in the dark trees. +Cherry got a driver, rattled and jerked up to the house in a surrey, +and jumped out, her heart almost suffocating her. + +Alix came flying to the door, the old lamplight and the odour of wood +smoke poured through. There was no need for words; they burst into +tears and clung together. + +An hour later Cherry, feeling as if she was not the same woman who +waked in Red Creek this same morning, and got Martin's eggs and coffee +ready, crept into her father's room. Alix had warned her to be quiet, +but at the sight of the majestic old gray head, and the fine old hands +clasped together on the sheet, her self-control forsook her entirely +and she fell to her knees and began to cry again. + +The nurse looked at her disapprovingly, but after all it made little +difference. Doctor Strickland roused only once again, and that was many +hours later. Cherry and Alix were still keeping their vigil; Cherry, +worn out, had been dozing; the nurse was resting on a couch in the next +room. + +Suddenly both daughters were wide awake at the sound of the hoarse yet +familiar voice. Alix fell on her knees and caught the cold and +wandering hand. + +"What is it, darling?" The old, half-joking maternal manner was all in +earnest now. + +"Peter?" he said, thickly. + +"Peter's in China, dear. You remember that Peter was to go around the +world? You remember that, Dad?" + +"In the 'Travels with a Donkey,'" he said, rationally. + +The girls looked at each other dubiously. + +"We all read that together," Alix encouraged him. + +"No--" he said, musingly. They thought he slept again, but he presently +added, "Somewhere in Matthew--no, in Mark--Mark is the human one--Mark +was as human as his Master--" + +"Shall I read you from Mark?" Alix asked, as his voice sank again. A +shabby old Bible always stood at her father's bedside; she reached for +it, and making a desperate effort to steady her voice, began to read. +The place was marked by an old letter, and opened at the chapter he +seemed to desire, for as she read he seemed to be drinking in the +words. Once they heard him whisper "Wonderful!" Cherry got up on the +bed, and took the splendid dying head in her arms, the murky winter +dawn crept in, and the lamp burned sickly in the daylight. Hong could +be heard stirring. Alix closed the book and extinguished the lamp. +Cherry did not move. + +"Charity!" the old man said, presently, in a simple, childish tone. +Later, with bursts of tears, in all the utter desolation of the days +that followed, Cherry loved to remember that his last utterance was her +name. But Alix knew, though she never said it, that it was to another +Charity he spoke. + +Subdued, looking younger and thinner in their new black, the sisters +came downstairs, ten days later, for a business talk. Peter had been +named as one executor, but Peter was far away, and it was a pleasant +family friend, a kindly old surgeon of Doctor Strickland's own age, or +near it, and the lawyer, George Sewall, the other executor, who told +them about their affairs. Anne, as co-heiress, was present at this +talk, with Justin sitting close beside her. Martin, too, who had come +down for the funeral, was there. + +Cherry was white, headachy, indifferent; she seemed stunned by her +loss; but Alix's extraordinary vitality had already asserted itself, +and she set herself earnestly to understand their somewhat complicated +affairs. + +The house went to the daughters; there were books and portraits for +Anne, a box or two in storage for Anne, and Anne was mentioned in the +only will as equally inheriting with Alexandra and Charity. For some +legal reason that the lawyer and Doctor Younger made clear, Anne could +not fully inherit, but her share would be only a trifle less than her +cousins'. + +Things had reached this point when Justin Little calmly and confidently +claimed that Anne's share was to be based upon an old loan of Anne's +father to his brother, a loan of three thousand dollars to float Lee +Strickland's invention, with the understanding that Vincent Strickland +be subsequently entitled to one third of the returns. As the patent had +been sold for nearly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, one third +of it, with accumulative interest for ten years, of which no payment +had ever been made Anne, was a large proportion of the entire estate, +and the development of this claim, in Justin Little's assured, woodeny +voice, caused everyone except the indifferent Cherry to look grave. + +The estate was not worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars now, by +any means; it had been reduced to little more than two thirds of that +sum, and Anne's bright concern that everyone should be SATISFIED with +what was RIGHT, and her ingenuous pleasure in Justin's cleverness in +thinking of this possibility, were met with noticeable coldness. + +If Anne was wrong, and the paper she held in her hand worthless, each +girl would inherit a comfortable little fortune, but if Anne was right, +Cherry and Alix would have only a few thousand dollars apiece, and the +old home. + +The business talk was over before any of them realized the enormity of +Anne's contention, and Anne and Justin had departed. But both the old +doctor and the lawyer agreed with Martin that it looked as if Anne was +right, and when the family was alone again, and had had the time to +digest the matter, they felt as if a thunderbolt had fallen across +their lives. + +"That Anne could DO it!" Alix said, over and over. Cherry seemed dazed, +spoke not at all, and Martin had said little. + +"People will do anything for money!" he observed once drily. He had met +Justin sternly. "I'm not thinking of my wife's share--I didn't marry +her for her money; never knew she had any! But I'm thinking of Alix." + +"Yes--we must think of darling Alix!" Anne had said, nervously eager +that there should be no quarrel. "If Uncle Lee intended me to have all +this money, then I suppose I must take it, but I shan't be happy unless +things are arranged so that Alix shall be COMFORTABLE!" + +"B-but the worst of it is, Alix!" Cherry stammered, suddenly, on the +day before she and Martin were to return to Red Creek, "I--I counted on +having enough--enough to live my own life! Alix, I can't--I can't go +back!" + +"Why, my darling--" Alix exclaimed, as Cherry began to cry in her arms. +"My darling, is it as bad as all that!" + +"Oh, Alix," whispered the little sister, trembling, "I CAN'T bear it. +You don't know how I feel. You and Dad were always here; now that's all +gone--you're going to rent the house and try to teach singing--and I've +nothing to look forward to--I've nobody!" + +"Listen, dear," Alix soothed her. "If they advise it, and especially if +Peter advises it when he gets back, we'll fight Anne. And then if we +win our fight, I'll always keep the valley house open. And if we don't, +why I'm going to visit you and Martin every year, and perhaps I'll have +a little apartment some day--I don't intend to board always--" + +But she was crying, too. Everything seemed changed, cold and strange; +she had suspected that Cherry's was not a successful marriage; she knew +it now, and to resign the adored little sister to the unsympathetic +atmosphere of Red Creek, and to miss all the old life and the old +associations, made her heart ache. + +"There's--there's nothing special, Cherry?" she asked after a while. + +"With Martin? Oh, no," Cherry answered, her eyes dried, and her packing +going on composedly, although her voice trembled now and then. "No, +it's just that I get bad moods," she said, bravely. "I was pretty young +to marry at all, I guess." + +"Martin loves you," Alix suggested timidly. + +"He takes me for granted," Cherry said, after a pause. "There doesn't +seem to be anything ALIVE in the feeling between us," she added, +slowly. "If he says something to me, I make an effort to get his point +of view before I answer. If I tell him some plan of mine, I can see +that he thinks it sounds crazy! I don't seem very domestic--that's all. +I--I try. Really, I do! But--" and Cherry seemed to brace herself in +soul and body--"but that's marriage. I'll try again!" + +She gave Alix a long kiss in parting, the next day, and clung to her. + +"You're the dearest sister a girl ever had, Alix. You're all I have, +now!" + +"I'll write you about the case, and wire you if you're needed, and see +you soon!" Alix said, cheerfully. Then she turned and went back into +the empty house, keeping back her tears until the sound of the surrey +had quite died away. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Alexandra Strickland, coming down the stairway of the valley house on +an April evening, glanced curiously at the door. Her eyes moved to the +old clock, and a smile tugged involuntarily at the corners of her +mouth. Only eight o'clock, but the day had been so long and so quiet +that she had fancied that the hour was much later, and had wondered who +knocked so late. + +She crossed to the door and opened it to darkness and rain, and to a +man in a raincoat, who whipped off a spattered cap and stood smiling in +the light of the lamp she held. Instantly, with a sort of gasp of +surprise and pleasure and some deeper emotion, she set down the lamp, +and held out her hands gropingly and went into his arms. He laughed +joyously as he kissed her, and for a minute they clung together. + +"Peter!" she said. "You angel--when did you arrive and what are you +doing, and tell me all about it!" + +"But, Alix--you're thin!" Peter said, holding her at arm's length. +"And--and--" He gently touched the black she wore, and fixed puzzled +and troubled eyes upon her face. "Alix--" he asked, apprehensively. + +For answer she tried to smile at him, but her lips trembled and her +eyes brimmed. She had led the way into the old sitting room now, and +Peter recognized, with a thrill of real feeling, the shabby rugs and +books and pictures, and the square piano beside which he had watched +Cherry's fat, childish hand on the scales so many times, and Alix +scowling over her songs. + +"You heard--about Dad?" Alix faltered now, turning to face him at the +mantel. + +"Your father!" Peter said, shocked. + +"But hadn't you heard, Peter?" + +"My dear--my dearest child, I'm just off the steamer. I got in at six +o'clock. I'd been thinking of you all the time, and I suddenly decided +to cross the bay and come straight on to the valley, before I even went +to the club or got my mail! Tell me--your father--" + +She had knelt before the cold hearth, and he knelt beside her, and they +busied themselves with logs and kindling in the old way. A blaze crept +up about the logs and Alix accepted Peter's handkerchief and wiped a +streak of soot from her wrist, quite as if she was a child again, as +she settled herself in her chair. + +Peter took the doctor's chair, keeping his concerned and sympathetic +eyes upon her. + +"He was well one day," she said, simply, "and the next--the next, he +didn't come downstairs, and Hong waited and waited--and about nine +o'clock I went up--and he had fallen--he had fallen--" + +She was in tears again and Peter put his hand out and covered hers and +held it. Their chairs were touching, and as he leaned forward, their +faces might almost have touched, too. + +"He must have been going to call someone," said Alix, after a while, +"they said he never suffered at all. This was January, the last day, +and Cherry got here that same night. He knew us both toward morning. +And that--that was all. Cherry was here for two weeks. Martin came and +went--" + +"Where is Cherry now?" Peter interrupted. + +"Back at Red Creek." Alix wiped her eyes. "She hates it, but Martin had +a good position there. Poor Cherry, it made her ill." + +"Anne came?" + +"Anne and Justin, of course." Peter could not understand Alix's +expression. She fell silent, still holding his hand and looking at the +fire. + +He had not seen her for nearly six months; he had been all around the +world; had found her gay, affectionate letters in London, in Athens, in +Yokohama. But for three months now he had been away from the reach of +mails, roughing it on a friend's hemp plantation in Borneo, and if she +had written, the letter was as yet undelivered. He looked at her with a +great rush of admiration and affection. She was not only a pretty and a +clever woman; but, in her plain black, with this new aspect of gravity +and dignity, and with new notes of pathos and appeal in her exquisite +voice, he realized that she was an extremely charming woman. + +More than that, she stood for home, for the dearly familiar and beloved +things for which he had been so surprisingly homesick. His mountain +cabin and the old house in San Francisco on Pacific Avenue; she +belonged to his memories of them both; she was the only woman in the +world that he knew well. + +Before he said good-bye to her, he had asked her to marry him. He well +remembered her look of bright and interested surprise. + +"D'you mean to tell me you have forgotten your lady love of the +hoop-skirts and ringlets?" she had demanded. + +"She never wore ringlets and crinolines!" he had answered. + +"Well, bustles and pleats, then?" + +"No," Peter had told her, frankly. "I shall always love her, in a way. +But she is married; she never thinks of me. And I like you so much, +Alix; I like our music and cooking and tramps and reading--together. +Isn't that a pretty good basis for marriage?" + +"No!" Alix had answered, decidedly. "Perhaps if I were madly in love +with you I should say yes, and trust to little fingers to lead you +gently, and so on--" + +He remembered ending the conversation in one of his quick moods of +irritation against her. If she couldn't take anybody or anything +seriously--he had said. + +Poor Alix--she was taking life seriously enough to-night, Peter +thought, as he watched her. + +"Tell me about Cherry," he said. + +"Cherry is well, but just a little thin, and heart-broken now, of +course. Martin never seems to stay at any one place very long, so I +keep hoping--" + +"Doesn't make good!" Peter said, shaking his head. + +"Doesn't seem to! It's partly Cherry, I think," Alix said honestly. +"She was too young, really. She never quite settles down, or takes life +in earnest. But he's got a contract now for three years, and so she +seems to be resigning herself, and she has a maid, I believe." + +"She must love him," Peter submitted. Alix looked surprised. + +"Why not?" she smiled. "I suppose when you've had ups and downs with a +man, and been rich and poor, and sick and well, and have lived in +half-a-dozen different places, you rather take him for granted!" she +added. + +"Oh, you think it works that way?" Peter asked, with a keen look. + +"Well, don't you think so? Aren't lots of marriages like that?" + +"You false alarm. You quitter!" he answered. + +Alix laughed, a trifle guiltily. Also she flushed, with a great wave of +splendid young colour that made her face look seventeen again. "Your +father left you--something, Alix?" Peter asked presently, with some +hesitation. + +"That," she answered frankly, "is where Anne comes in!" + +"Anne?" + +"Anne and Justin came straight over," Alix went on, "and they were +really lovely. And they asked me to come to them for a visit--but I +couldn't very well; they live with his mother, you know, Amanda Price +Little, who writes the letters to the Chronicle about educating +children and all that. Doctor Younger and George Sewall were here every +day; you and George were named as executors. I was so mixed up in +policies and deeds and overdue taxes and interest and bonds--" + +"Poor old Alix, if I had only been here to help you!" the man said. And +for a moment they looked a little consciously at each other. + +"Well, anyway," the girl resumed hastily, "when it came to reading the +will, Anne and Justin sprung a mine under us! It seems that ten years +ago, when the Strickland Patent Fire Extinguisher was put upon the +market, my adorable father didn't have much money--he never did have, +somehow. So Anne's father, my Uncle Vincent, went into it with him to +the extent of about three thousand dollars--" + +"Three thousand!" Peter, who had been leaning forward, earnestly +attentive, echoed in relief. + +"That was all. Dad had about three hundred. They had to have a +laboratory and some expensive retorts and things, it seems. Dad did all +the work, and put in his three hundred, and Uncle Vincent put in three +thousand--and the funny thing is," Alix broke off to say, musingly, +"Uncle Vincent was perfectly splendid about it; I myself remember him +saying, 'Don't worry, Lee. I'm speculating on my own responsibility, +not yours.'" + +"Well?" Peter prompted, as she hesitated. + +"Well. They had a written agreement then, giving Uncle Vincent a third +interest in the patent, should it be sold or put on the market--" + +"Ha!" Peter ejaculated, struck. + +"Which, of course, was only a little while before Uncle Vincent died," +Alix went on, with a grave nod. "The agreement lay in Dad's desk all +these years--fancy how easily he might have burned it many's the time! +But he didn't. George Sewall says that Anne is right." + +"But wasn't Anne third heiress anyway, under his will? I know I've +heard--" + +"Certainly she was. But a third interest now, in a diminished estate +that began at something less than one hundred and fifty thousand +dollars, is quite different from a third of it ten years ago, plus +compound interest," Alix said, bringing her clear brows together with a +quizzical smile. "They've broken the will." + +Peter, in the silence, whistled expressively. + +"Gee--rusalem!" he exclaimed. "What does it come to?" + +At this Alix looked very sober, gazed down at the fire, and shook her +head. + +"All he had!" she answered, briefly. + +Peter was silent, looking at her in stupefaction. + +"Almost, that is," Alix amended more cheerfully. "As it was--we should +have had more than thirty thousand apiece. As it is, Anne gets it all, +or if not quite all, nearly all." + +"Gets!" he echoed, hotly. "How do you mean?" + +"It seems to be perfectly just," the girl answered, rather lifelessly. +But immediately she laughed. "Don't look so awful, Peter. In the first +place, Cherry and I still have the house. In the second place, I am +singing at St. Raphael's for five hundred a year, and singing other +places now and then." + +"Alix, aren't you corking!" he said, with his pleasantest smile. + +"Am I?" she asked, smiling. But immediately the smile melted, and her +lips shook. "Anyway, I'm glad you're home again, Peter!" she added. + +"Home again," he answered, half-angrily. "I should hope I am--and high +time, too! Has this--this money been turned over to Anne?" + +"Not yet. Nobody gets anything until the estate is cleared--a year or +more from now." + +"And do you tell me that she will have the effrontery to take it?" + +"Rather! She said to me, 'Isn't it wonderful that Justin saw it at +once, and I never would have seen it!' She was quite sweet and merry +over it--" + +"Great Lord! Does she know that it's practically all your father had?" + +Alix hesitated. + +"Well, you see there had been mismanagement, Peter. Dad speculated, and +lost some. And we were a pretty heavy expense for a good many years. I +hated to expose the whole thing, and George--he's been splendid--said +that they probably had a perfectly valid claim, anyway. There are some +things to be thankful for," Alix added, dashing the sudden tears from +her eyes, "and one is that Dad never knew it!" + +"I can't tell you how surprised I am at Anne," Peter said. + +"Well, we all were!" Alix confessed. "But it's just Anne's odd little +self-centred way," she added. "It was here, and she wanted it. She +belongs heart and soul to the Little family now, and she is quite +triumphant over being of so much help to Justin. They're to build a +house in Berkeley. Anne has it all worked out!" Alix said, with amused +distaste. "Well--I let Hong go, and as soon as I can rent this house, +I'm going to New York." + +"Why New York, my dear girl?" + +"Because I believe I can make a living there, singing and teaching and +generally struggling with life!" she answered, cheerfully. "Cherry gets +most of the money--they are always somewhat in debt, and I imagine that +the reason she is able to have a nice apartment and a maid now is +because she knows it is coming--and I get the house, and enough money +to keep me going--say, a year, in New York." + +"Do you want to go, Alix?" he said, affectionately. + +"Yes, I think I do," she answered. But her eyes watered. "I do--in a +way," she added. "That is, I love my singing, and the thought of making +a success is delightful to me. But of course it means that I give up +everything else. I can't have home life, and--and the valley--for +years, four or five anyway, I'll have to give all that up. And I'm +twenty-seven, Peter. And I'd always rather hoped that my music was +going to be a domestic variety--" She stopped, smiling, but he saw the +pain in her eyes. "George Sewall most kindly asked me to mother his +small son--" she resumed, casually. "But although he is the dearest--" + +"Sewall did!" Peter exclaimed, rather struck. "Great Scott! his father +is one of the richest men in San Francisco." + +"I know it," Alix agreed. "And he is one of the nicest men," she added. +"But of course he'll never really love any one but Ursula. And I +felt--oh, I felt too tired and alone and depressed to enter upon +congratulations and clothes and family dinners with the Sewalls," she +ended, a little drearily. "I wanted--I wanted things in the old way--as +they were--" she said, her voice thickening. + +"I know--I know!" Peter said, sympathetically. And for a while there +was silence in the little house, while the rain fell steadily upon the +dark forest without, and soaked branches swished about eaves and +windows. "Can you put me up to-night?" he asked, suddenly. He liked her +frank pleasure. + +"Rather! I think Cherry's room was made up fresh last Monday," she told +him. "And to-morrow," she added, with a brightening face, "we'll walk +up to your house, and see what six months of Kow's uninterrupted sway +have done to it!" + +"That's just what we'll do!" he agreed, enthusiastically. "And we'll +have some music--" + +She had risen, as if for good-nights, and was now beside the old square +piano, where she had placed the lamp. + +"I haven't touched it--since--" she said, sadly, sitting on the stool, +and with her eyes still smiling on him, putting back the hinged cover. +And a moment later her hands, with the assurance and ease of the adept, +drifted into one of the songs of the old days. + +"Do you remember the day we put the rose tree back, Peter?" she asked. +"When Martin was almost a stranger? And do you remember the day Cherry +and I fell into the Three Wells and you and Dad had to disappear while +we dried our clothing on branches of trees? And do you remember the day +we made biscuits, over by the ocean?" + +"I remember all the days," he answered, deeply stirred. + +"We didn't see all this, then," Alix mused, still playing softly. "Anne +claiming everything for her husband, you and I here talking of Dad's +death, and Cherry married--" She sighed. + +"She's not happy?" he questioned quickly. + +Alix shrugged, pursing her lips doubtfully. + +"She's not unhappy," she told him, with a troubled smile. "It's just +one of those marriages that don't ever get anywhere, and don't ever +stop," she added. "Martin has faults, he's unreasonable, and he makes +enemies. But those aren't the faults for which a woman can leave her +husband. Oh, Peter," she added, laying a smooth warm hand on his, and +looking straight into his eyes with her honest eyes, "don't go away +again! Stay here in the valley for a week or two, and help me get +everything worked out and thought out--I've been so much alone!" + +"Dear old Alix!" he said, sitting down on the bench beside her and +putting his arm about her. She dropped her head on his shoulder, and so +they sat, very still, for a long minute. Alix's hand went to her own +shoulder, and her fingers tightened on his, and she breathed deep, +contented breaths, like a child. + +"Somebody ought to wire Mrs. Grundy, collect," she said, after awhile. + +"We will defy Mrs. Grundy, my dear," Peter said, kissing the top of a +soft brown braid, "by trotting off hand in hand tomorrow and getting +ourselves married. Why, Alix, he gave us his consent years ago--don't +you remember?" + +"He DID wish it!" she said, and burst into tears. + +"I seem to be doing things in a slightly irregular manner," she said to +him the next day, when they had gotten breakfast together, and were +basking in the sunlight of the upper deck of the ferryboat, on their +way to the city. "I spend the night BEFORE my marriage alone--alone in +a small country house hidden in the woods--with my betrothed, and +propose to buy my trousseau immediately after the ceremony!" + +"I feel like saying to you what the dear old French archbishop said to +the small child," Peter smiled, marvelling a little nonetheless at her +untouched serenity. "He was speaking to all the children in some +institution, and came to this little one: 'ET TU ETES NEGRE? AH, +BIEN--BIEN, CONTINUEZ--CONTINUEZ!' It's what makes you yourself, Alix, +doing everything just a little differently." + +"Marrying you, far from seeming a radical or momentous thing to do," +she assured him, "seems to me like getting back into key--getting out +of this bad dream of loneliness and change--securing something that I +thought was lost!" + +Her voice fell to a dreamy note, and she watched the gulls, wheeling in +the sunshine, with thoughtful, smiling eyes. The man glanced at her +once or twice, in the silence that followed, with something like +hesitation, or compunction, in his look. + +"Look here, Alix--let's talk. I want to ask you something. Or, rather, +I want to tell you something--or, rather--" + +"CONTINUEZ--CONTINUEZ!" she said, laughing, as he hesitated. + +"There's never been anything--anything to tell you--or your father, if +he was here," Peter said, flushed and a trifle awkward, "I'm not that +kind of a man. I was a crippled kid, as you know, all for books and +music and walks and older people. But there HAS been that one +thing--that one woman--" + +Flushed, too, she was looking at him with bright, intelligent eyes. + +"But I thought she never even knew--" + +"No, she never did!" + +Alix looked back at the gulls. + +"Oh, well, then--" she said, indifferently. + +"Alix, would you like to know about her?" Peter said bravely. "Her +name--and everything?" + +"Oh, no, please, I'd much rather not!" she intercepted him hastily, and +after a pause she added, "Our marriage isn't the usual marriage, in +that way. I mean I'm not jealous, and I'm not going to cry my eyes out +because there was another woman--is another woman, who meant more to +you, or might have! I'm going into it with my eyes wide open, Peter. I +know you love me, and I love you, and we both like the same things, and +that's enough." + +Three weeks later he remembered the moment, and asked her again. They +were in the valley house now, and a bitter storm was whirling over the +mountain. Peter's little cabin rocked to the gale, but they were warm +and comfortable beside the fire; the room was lamp-lighted, scented by +Alix's sweet single violets, white and purple, spilling themselves from +a glass bowl, and by Peter's pipe, and by the good scent of green bay +burning. The Joyces had had a happy day, had climbed the hills under a +lowering sky, had come home to dry clothes and to cooking, for Kow was +away, and had finally shared an epicurean meal beside the fire. + +Peter was wrapped in deep content; the companionship of this normal, +pretty woman, her quick words and quick laugh, her music, her glancing, +bright interest in anything and everything, was the richest experience +of his life. She had said that she would change nothing in his home, +but her clever white fingers had changed everything. There was order +now, there was charming fussing and dusting, there were flowers in +bowls, and books set straight, and there was just the different little +angle to piano and desk and chairs and tables that made the cabin a +home at last. She wanted bricks for a path; he had laughed at her +fervent, "Do give me a whole carload of bricks for Christmas, Peter!" +She wanted bulbs to pot. He had lazily suggested that they open the +town house while carpenters and painters remade the cabin, but she had +protested hotly, "Oh, do let's keep it just as it always was!" + +Smiling, he gave her her way. She amused him day after day. He watched +her, marvelling at the miracle that was woman. He heard her in the +kitchen, interrogating the Chinese: "You show me picture your little +boy!" He heard her inveigling Antone, the old Italian labourer, into +confidences. + +Tonight he watched her in great satisfaction; he liked to have her here +in his home, one of the pretty Stricklands, Peter Joyce's wife. Nobody +else was here, nobody else belonged here, they were masters of their +own lives. She quite captivated him by her simplicity and frankness; +she washed her masses of brown hair and shook it loose in the sunshine, +and she came in wet more than once, and changed her shoes before the +fire--just as she had years ago, when she was a madcap little girl +running wild through the woods. + +They had been talking of Cherry, as they often did. Alix's favourite +topic was her little sister; she had almost a maternal pride and +fondness where Cherry was concerned. Today she had been house-cleaning, +and had brought some treasures downstairs. She had showed Peter +Cherry's old exercise books: "Look, Peter, how she put faces in the +naughts and turned the sevens into little sail-boats! And see the +straggling letters--'Charity Strickland!' I've always hated to destroy +them. She was such a lazy, cunning little scholar!" + +Peter, smiling at the old books, had remembered her, a small, square +Cherry, with a film of gold falling over a blazing cheek, and mutinous +blue eyes. Ah--the wonderful eyes were wonderful even then-- + +The date gave him a moment's shock. Only eight--only seven years ago +she had been a schoolgirl! Cherry was not yet twenty-three-- + +"I wish she had married a little differently," Alix said, thoughtfully. +"Cherry isn't exacting. But she does like pretty gowns and pretty +rooms, and to do things as other girls do!" + +"You should have married the mining engineer," he told her. "Red Creek +would have had no terrors for you! + +"I should have loved it!" she agreed, carelessly. + +A curious expression flashed into her face. She was smiling; but +immediately the smile faded, and she looked back at the fire with +puzzled eyes. + +"If I loved a man, Peter, the place and the house and the money +wouldn't matter much!" she answered after awhile, in a slightly +strained voice. + +"Perhaps," he suggested, still thinking of Cherry, "that's the trouble!" + +She gave him a quick, almost frightened look. + +"The--the trouble?" she stammered. And with a little ashamed laugh she +added, "What trouble?" + +For a long time he looked at her in silence, at first puzzled, +gradually fitting meaning and interpretation to his words and her own. +Presently their eyes met, and with her little gruff boyish laugh she +came over to the low seat at his knee. + +"You see that there is something just a little wrong, then?" she asked. + +"Between you and me, Alix?" he questioned in return, his fine hand +tight upon hers, and his affectionate, brotherly look searching her +face. + +"Well, don't you, Peter?" she countered. + +"I hadn't noticed anything, my dear, except that you are making a +lonely, solitary man a very happy one," he answered, with his grave +smile. + +"But that--" she contended, with scarlet cheeks, but bravely "--that +isn't marriage!" + +"What ought marriage be?" he smiled, half humouring her, half concerned. + +For answer she looked keenly, almost wistfully, into his face. He had +noticed this look more than once of late. + +"I don't know," she said softly, after awhile, with a little +discouraged shrug of her shoulders. "I always thought that when a man +and a woman liked each other--oh, thoroughly--liked the same things, +had everything in common, that that was enough. And--for the woman I +was a month ago, it would have been enough, Peter!" she added in a +puzzled tone. + +"You've changed then, Mrs. Joyce?" + +"That's it," she agreed. "I'm not the same woman. I couldn't, as a +girl, estimate what life was going to be as a wife." + +"Perhaps no girl can," he suggested, interested now. + +"Well, that's just what I'm thinking, Peter!" she smiled, a little +ruefully. And again she gave him the look that was new, that was not +all timid nor wistful nor appealing, yet somehow partook of all three. +"You see, you feel that nothing can change you," she elucidated +further, "and you are perfectly sure of yourself, from your old +standpoint. And then the--well, the mental and spiritual and physical +miracle of marriage DOES change you, and it is as if you had entered +into a contract for a totally strange woman!" + +She was so intent, so bright and earnest, as she turned a fire-flushed +face to his, that he felt an odd moisture pricking his eyes. + +"Alix," he said, affectionately, "where do I fail you?" + +For a moment she was silent, her bright eyes fixed on his. Gradually +the serious look on her face lightened, and her customary smile +twitched at the corners of her mouth. + +"I married you under a misapprehension," she said. "I thought you had +about three hundred dollars a year! It appears that you have more than +that every month--every week, for all I know--" + +"You knew my mother had that old Pacific Avenue place!" he answered +with concern. "I never for one second deceived--" + +"Oh, you idiot!" Alix laughed. "I don't mind being rich at all, I like +it. I don't want to live in the city, or join women's clubs, and all +that, but I like having my own check-book--truly, I do! As for all the +silver and portraits and rugs and things, why, we may like them some +day." + +He was not listening to her; there was a sorry look in his eyes. + +"You know, Alix," he said, suddenly, "you've made life a different +thing to me. I never had any woman near me before, and to hear your +voice about the house, and your piano, and your laugh--why, it's +wonderful to me. I've been alone here so many years, not knowing really +how much of life I missed, and you've brought it all to me. Why, even +to have Mrs. Florence at the post office ask me for 'Mrs. Joyce,' gives +me a warm, happy sort of feeling! I--" he stroked the smooth hand under +his own; there was real emotion in his voice, "I'd do a good deal to +show you how grateful I am, old girl," he finished. "I wish you could +tell me where I fail, and I'd move heaven and earth to please you!" + +"The point is," Alix said, with her mischievous smile, as she twisted +the heavy ring he wore, "do I fail you? I know I don't flush with +delight when you give me a smile, and tremble with fear at your frown! +I know that the smell of my hair doesn't make you turn pale, and the +touch of my hand make you dizzy! There's no fury, fire, and madness--" + +She laughed, and he laughed, too, a little reproachfully. + +"You never will be serious for more than two minutes, Alexandra, my +child!" he said. + +Alix did not answer. She sat staring at the fire for another minute or +two, and her eyes brightened childishly, had he but seen them. But she +did not give another look at him. With a great fling of her arms she +rested her head between two elbows for a second, tousled her hair, and +yawned. + +"I'm going to bed!" she announced. "I'm so glad I married a man who is +accustomed to banking the fire and opening windows and putting out +lamps every night. You," she had reached the door of their room now, +and already the silky braids were freed, and tumbled about her +shoulders, "you spoil me, Pete!" she said, between them. "Our marriage +may be different, but it has its good points!" + +"Sure you're happy?" he smiled. + +The familiar little answer came confidently. He heard her humming as +she undressed in a shaft of moonlight; she was never serious long. + +One May day they were picnicking in the big forest. It was a day of +spongy dampness underfoot, sweet and wild with breezes, blue of sky, +and still cold in the shade, if it was heavenly warm in the sun. Alix, +who was hot and panting from the scrambling and slipping downhill, hung +on a bank, with her arm crooked about a sapling oak, for support, her +hat slipped back and hanging childishly about her neck, and her already +brief tramping skirt displaying an even unusual amount of sensibly +booted leg. Below her Peter on the bank of the stream was gathering +firewood. Shafts of sunlight filtered through the arches of the +redwoods high above the creek, and fell here and there upon the busy +currents of the water. Presently sunshine turned the flames of the +brush fire to pink, a dense column of white smoke rose fragrantly +between the dark-brown, furry trunks. + +They had been talking doubtfully of the recent developments of what +Justin and Anne Little called with relish the Strickland Will Case. +Peter, who had for several weeks been investigating the matter, with a +deepening conviction that it was a deuced awkward affair, had smiled a +most pleasant smile as Alix enlarged upon the delight of giving the +whole fortune, should they get it, to Cherry. + +"For Cherry," she said, still hanging on her bank, "isn't like most +married women. She hates self-denial and economy--Dad always made life +too easy for us, you know. It wasn't even as if she had had my mother's +example before her; she really knew nothing of domestic responsibility!" + +"But what about you," Peter asked, smiling, "you seem to take kindly +enough to matrimony!" + +"My case is different," Alix said, unembarrassed, getting down to come +stand beside him at the fire. "I married an old man for his money!" + +"Do you know," he said, putting his arm about her, "I like you! You'll +no sooner get hold of your money, if you do--than you'll want to turn +it all over to Cherry! You're a devoted sister, do you know it?" + +"I'm a devoted wife!" she answered, with an upward glance. But a second +later her mood changed; she was off to try the experiment of crossing +the stream upon the treacherous surface of a fallen tree. He watched +her; her cautiously advancing foot, her hand tightly grasping an +upright branch, her eyes flitting from the water below to the rough +bridge before her. She was completely absorbed. + +"You can't do it!" Peter called, annoyed at the senseless risk she took +when she placed her foot tentatively upon the curved side of a log. +"There's no foothold there!" + +"Come save me!" she shrieked in the old way, with the old laugh of +terror and delight. He jumped to her rescue, clearing the creek in a +shallow place with two splashing bounds, and catching her before her +laughing cry had fully died away in the silent arches of the forest. + +"You maniac!" he scolded, as warm, tumbled, and penitent she half +slipped and half yielded herself to his hold. "Come over here now, and +sit down, and unpack the eats! I can't have my wife drowned before my +eyes--" + +The title brought a sudden flood of colour to her face; she meekly +seated herself beside him on a great log, and he locked his arm about +her. + +They sat so long in the wet, sweet, sun-warmed forest, hands clasped, +that nesting birds flew boldly about them, unafraid, and two wildcats, +trotting softly in single file, green eyes blinking, passed within a +few inches of them unseeing. + +"This," said Peter, after awhile, "is pleasant." + +He thought she did not answer, except by a faint tightening of her +fingers. But deep down in her heart she said: + +"This--is marriage." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Cherry had a flat now in Red Creek "Park." It differed from an +apartment because it had no elevator, no janitor, no steam heat. These +things were neither known nor needed in the crude mining town; the flat +building itself was considered a rather questionable innovation. It was +a wooden building, three stories high, with bay windows. There were +empty lots each side of it, but the sidewalls were on property +boundaries, and had windows only where the building jutted in, and +there was a small gate, and a narrow cement walk pressing tightly on +one side. Cherry had watched this building going up, and had thought it +everything desirable. She liked the clean kitchen, all fresh white +woodwork, tiles, and nickelplate, and she liked the big closets and the +gas-log. She had worried herself almost sick with fear that she would +not get this wonderful place, and finally paid twenty-five dollars for +the first month's rent with a fast-beating heart. She had the centre +floor. + +From her windows she looked down at the "Park." All the other buildings +were wooden bungalows, in many places the sidewalks were wooden, too, +and the centre of the street was deep black dust in summer and churned +black mud in the winter. The little houses gushed electric light, which +was cheap; the street itself was unlighted. + +But after the excitement of moving in died away, she hated the place. +She had enough money to hire a maid now, and she had a succession of +slatternly, independent young women in her kitchen, but she found her +freedom strangely flat. She detested the women of Red Creek. Cherry +went to market, to buy prunes and lard and apples and matches again, +but this took little time, and otherwise she had nothing to do. + +Now and then a play, straight from "a triumphant year on Broadway" came +to town for one night; then Martin took his wife, and they bowed to +half the men and women in the house, lamenting as they streamed out +into the sharp night air that Red Creek did not see more such +productions. + +The effect of these plays was to make Cherry long vaguely for the +stage; she really did not enjoy them for themselves. But they helped +her to visualize Eastern cities, lighted streets, restaurants full of +lights and music, beautiful women fitly gowned. After one of these +performances she would not leave her flat for several days, but would +sit dreaming over the thought of herself in the heroine's role. + +One day she had a letter from Alix; it gave her a heartache, she hardly +knew why. She began to dream of her own home, of the warm, sweet little +valley whose breezes were like wine, of Tamalpais wreathed in fog, and +of the ridges where buttercups and poppies powdered a child's shoes +with gold and silver dust. Alix had been ill, and she and Peter had +been away--a few brief weeks--to Honolulu and return. Cherry crushed +the letter in her hand; she knew suddenly that she had always been +jealous of Alix. Alix wrote gaily that she had asked Peter if he did +not want to send Cherry a kiss, and he had said that his face was too +dirty; he was moving geraniums. And for all that day, whenever Cherry +thought of Peter, it was with his hands and even his face spattered +with the dark earth of the mountain garden. The thought gave her a +genuine thrill, and the next day she deliberately thought of him again, +but the thrill was not so keen, and gradually she forgot him. + +But the letter stayed in her thoughts, and she began to hunger for +home. Nothing that Red Creek could offer shook her yearning for the +remembered sweetness and beauty of the redwoods, and the great shade of +the mountain. She wanted to spend a whole summer with Alix. + +She was athirst for home, for old scenes and old friends and old +emotions. She had only to hint to Alix to receive a love letter +containing a fervent invitation. So it was settled. With a sort of +feverish brevity Cherry completed her arrangements; Martin was to use +his own judgment in the matter of boarding or keeping the flat. Some of +their household goods were stored; Cherry told him that she would come +down in September and manage all the details of settling afresh, but +she knew that her secret hope was that she might never see Red Creek +again. It was all quickly arranged; perhaps he was not sorry to have +her go, although he kissed her good-bye affectionately, and wandered +away from the station in a rather lonely frame of mind when she was +gone. + +A friend of his had asked him to dine that same evening, "with a couple +of queens." Martin had realized long ago, as Cherry did, that their +marriage was not an entirely successful one, but he still considered +her the most beautiful woman he had ever known, and had never desired +any other. But to-night he thought he would telephone King and perhaps +dine with him--the girls might be amusing. Anyway, Cherry was happy and +was having her own way, and he had three months in which to try having +his own again. + +Alix met her sister at the ferry in San Francisco on a soft May +morning. She was an oddly developed Alix, trim and tall, prettily +gowned and veiled, laughing and crying with joy at seeing Cherry again. +Peter, she explained between kisses, had had to go to Los Angeles three +days ago, had been expected home last night, and was not even aware yet +that Cherry was definitely arriving. + +"Of course he knew that you were coming, but not exactly when," Alix +said, as she guided the newcomer along the familiar ferry place on to +the big bay steamer for Mill Valley. Cherry drew back to exclaim, to +marvel, to exult, at all the well-remembered sights and sounds and +smells. + +"Oh, Alix--Market Street!" she exclaimed. "And that smell of leather +tanning, and that smell of bay water and of coffee! And look--that's a +cable-car!" + +"We'll come over to San Francisco soon, and you'll see the new hotels," +Alix promised when they were seated on the upper deck, with the blue +waters of the bay moving softly past them. Cherry's happy eyes followed +a wheeling gull; she felt as if the world was suddenly sunshiny and +simple and glorious again. "But now, I thought the best thing was to +get you home," Alix went on, "and get you rested." + +"Oh, Sis, that's what I want!" Cherry answered Her lip trembled, and +tears came into her eyes. "You don't know how homesick I've been," she +said, feeling it more and more every minute. "I feel as if I'd never +really drawn a full breath since I went away!" + +"I can't live in cities," Alix said, simply. "Peter has a house, you +know, in the city," she added, nodding toward the hilly silhouette of +San Francisco, as the boat ploughed steadily past it. "We were there +one winter, and in a way it was pleasant. It was easier, too. But more +than a year ago we came back to the valley, and I think it will be a +long time before we want to leave it again!" + +"I can't get used to the idea of you and Peter--married!" Cherry smiled. + +"We're well used to it," Alix declared, smiling, too. But a little sigh +stabbed through the smile a second later. Cherry's exquisite eyes grew +sympathetic; she suspected from the letter Alix had written that there +would be no nursery needed in the mountain cabin for awhile, and she +knew that to baby-loving Alix this would be a bitter cross. + +"Well, you see I've not seen you since the month Daddy died!" Cherry +reminded her. They fell to talking of their father; drifted to Anne and +Anne's limitations and complacencies. "And is it funny to you to be a +rich man's wife?" Cherry pursued. + +"Peter's not rich," Alix answered, laughing. "We have enough, and more +than enough, and if I HAD ambitions about rugs and linen and furs, I +could have them! But unfortunately neither one of us is interested in +those things. I get a few new songs; Peter gets a few new books; we +both get a catalogue and pick out plants, and that's about the extent +of our dissipation! The things I want," Alix finished, "can't be bought +for money!" + +"I know!" Cherry said, a warm little hand quickly touching her sister's. + +"But to have you here, Cherry dearest!" Alix said, joyfully, "and to +think of what it means to us both! My dear, the walks and talks and +fires and music and dinners--" + +"And duets," Cherry said, with her old fresh laugh. "Don't forget 'tu +canta rio sul tuo liuto!' and 'Oh, wert thou in the cauld, cauld +blast!'" + +"Oh, Cherry, how utterly delicious it is!" Alix said, gathering wraps +and bags for the change from the boat to the train that would land them +in twenty minutes at the little station in Mill Valley. + +Sausalito, fragrant with acacia and rose blooms, rose steeply into the +bright sunshine beyond the marshes skirting the bay glittering in +light. Cherry's eager eyes missed nothing, and when they left the train +at Mill Valley, and the mountain air enveloped them in a rush of its +clear softness and purity, she was in ecstasies. She welcomed the +waiting red setter as a beloved friend, and leaned from the shabby +motor car, delighted at every landmark. + +"Alix--the post office, and the blacksmith's, and how the hill has been +built up, each side of the steps! And is that the Kelley's--and the +O'Shaughnessys'--but look at the size of the trees!" + +They came to the woods, by the skeleton of the old Spanish mill, and +she fell silent, and the blue eyes that penetrated the layers upon +layers of soft greenness over her head brimmed with happy tears. The +sweet breath of the forest fell like a cool hand upon her tired +forehead; her heart began to dance in the old, irresponsible way. + +Presently, straight ahead, and rising sharply over them, was the +sun-bathed mountain, clear to-day, even soft and kindly in the flood of +early summer sunshine. It was cool in the woods, even though warm light +was pushing its way through the redwoods here and there, but when they +emerged from the trees, and took the winding dirt road that rose to the +hilltop, suddenly the day seemed hot. Alix, driving, threw off her +coat, and Cherry felt the moisture prick her forehead. + +She gave an exclamation of delight when they reached the cabin. It was +a picture of peaceful beauty in the summer noon. There were still +buttercups and poppies in the fields, and in the garden thousands of +roses were growing riotously, flinging their long arms up against the +slope of the low brown roof, and hanging in festoons from the low +branches of the oaks. Beyond the house the mountain rose; from the +porch Cherry could look down upon the familiar valley, and the rivers +winding like strips of blue ribbon through the marshes, and the far +bay, and San Francisco beyond. + +Inside were shady rooms, bowls of flowers, plain little white curtains +stirring in the summer breeze, peace and simplicity everywhere. Cherry +smiled at the immaculately clad Chinese stirring something in a yellow +bowl in a spotless kitchen whose windows showed manzanita and wild +lilac and madrone trees; smiled at the big, smoked fireplace where +sunlight fell straight on piled logs down the chimney's great mouth; +smiled as she went to and fro on journeys of investigation. But the +smile quivered into tears when she came to her own room, just such a +room as little Charity Strickland had had, only a few years ago, with +white hangings and unpainted wood, fresh air streaming through it, and +redwoods outside. + +"Oh, Alix--I never missed Dad before! But to have him out there, +fussing at something under the trees--to have him call us--'Where are +the girls--I want a girl!'" + +"I know--" Alix's own eyes filled. She sat on Cherry's bed while the +younger woman changed her dusty travelling clothes for a worn but +beautiful linen gown, and they said that they would go soon to the +little Sausalito cemetery and see that Dad's favourite heliotrope was +flourishing. + +The exquisite day went its peaceful course. Cherry was too tired for +walking, except on a laughing garden-round, when Alix showed her every +separate bush and tree with pride. For the most part she lay in a deep +porch chair, drinking in the beauty and serenity of the June afternoon, +breathing, above the sweet garden odours of lilac and verbena and +mignonette, the piney fragrance of the forest. Alix, coming and going, +watched her affectionately. The little languid arm in its transparent +sleeve, the drooping, beautiful head, the slender, crossed ankles were +always a picture. + +"You are like a boat just reaching harbour," Alix said, +sympathetically. "Sails furled, anchor down, just resting." + +"I feel like one," Cherry answered, lifting lazy blue eyes. "A month of +this will make me over!" + +"A month!" the older sister echoed, indignantly, disappearing +kitchenward on some errand. Presently the supper table was laid at +Cherry's side, bees shot like bullets through the garden, birds settled +for the night. Supper was ready; still there was no haste, no stir, no +apparent effort. + +Alix came to her own porch chair for the long twilight. She brought +Cherry a fluffy shawl; they were almost silent, and as the last light +faded from the hills, and the valleys were flooded with violet shadow, +the mountain chill came down, and the stars and the valley lights began +to prick the dark. + +The sisters came in blinking, in the old way, and in the old way were +amazed to see that the clock's hands stood at ten. + +"And I meant you to go early to bed!" Alix exclaimed, but Cherry with +her good-night kiss answered gratefully: + +"Ah, but I feel that I am going to sleep to-night! I've not been +sleeping well--" + +"Haven't?" Alix asked, in quick concern. + +"Not lately!" + +Cherry stumbled into the airy, dark, sweet little bedroom, and somehow +undressed and crept between the cool sheets of the bed that stood near +Alix's on the wide sleeping porch. Her last thought was for the +heavenly redwoods so close to her; she slept, indeed, for almost twelve +unbroken hours. + +She came wandering out to the porch at eleven o'clock, the old, +smiling, apologetic Cherry, with her skin dewy from a bath, and her +corn-coloured hair freshly brushed, and her linen gown as pink as the +Perkins rose that was blooming over her head. + +"Oh, Sis, I do feel so deliciously lazy and happy and rested and--and +everything!" said Cherry, as she settled herself at the porch table +where service for one was spread. "Oh, Alix--apricots! You remember +everything," she added, with a look all affectionate appreciation. +Alix, panting from exertions in the garden, dropped, trowel in hand, +upon the upper step, to watch her smilingly. + +"Cherry, you're prettier than ever!" Alix said, eyeing the white hands +so busy with blue china, and the bright head dappled with shade and +sunshine coming through the green rose vine. + +"Am I?" Cherry said, pleased. "I thought myself that I looked nice this +morning," she added, innocently. "But it is really because the air of +this place agrees with me, it makes my skin feel right and my eyes feel +right; it makes me feel normal and smoothed out somehow!" And Cherry +looked down at the green and glitter of the valley, looked up past +solemn files of redwoods at the mountain, cameo-cut this morning +against a cloudless sky, and sighed a great sigh of content that seemed +to go from her heels to the crown of her head. "I have never been +really well and really happy anywhere else!" she declared, out of deep +peace and content. + +"Oh, there's no place in the world like it!" Alix agreed, rubbing some +dried mud from the back of her hand with the trowel. "Peter and I are +always deciding to try New York, or to try San Francisco, or Southern +California, but somehow we don't! If Martin continues to migrate every +little while, I wish you could have a little house here. Then for part +of the time at least we could be together." + +"The old house," Cherry said, dreamily. + +"Well, why not?" Alix echoed, eagerly. "It's in pretty bad shape, after +being empty so long, but it would make darling home again! Would Martin +object?" + +The old spoiled Cherry, with the pretty petulant frown and shrug of +years ago! "Martin knows what he could do," she drawled, naughtily. + +"Martin would be here--some of the time?" Alix asked, a little +anxiously. + +Cherry filled her coffee cup a second time, gave Kow an appreciative +smile as he put a hot French loaf before her, and said indifferently: + +"Martin has a constitutional objection to whatever pleases me, and +would find some objection to any plan that gave me pleasure!" Her tone +was light, but there was a bitter twitch to her lips as she spoke. + +"Oh, Cherry!" Alix said, distressed. + +"However, I'm not going to talk about Martin!" the younger sister +decreed, gaily. "I'm too utterly and absolutely happy!" + +There was a worried little cloud on Alix's forehead, but it lightened +steadily, as the happy morning wore on, and half an hour later, when +she and Cherry were sailing a frog on a shingle, on the busy little +stream that poured down the hill near the cabin, both were laughing +like children again. + +It was here that Peter found Cherry. Alix had met him at the house, +given him a scrutinizing look with her quick kiss, questioned him about +his trip, and reported all well with the house and garden. + +"And now come down to the creek," she had said, mischievously. "The +Bateses are here--" + +"Not Alice Bates?" he had asked, quickly, and at her apologetic nod he +added disgustedly: "Oh, thunder!" + +"Oh, don't--she'll hear you!" said the beaming Alix, warningly. Peter's +eyes, as he crossed the porch, were gloomy and he said "Thunder!" again +under his breath. + +They followed a rough little trail past stumps where nasturtiums and +alyssum mingled with the underbrush, and were in the redwoods, and at +the brookside. Peter saw a slender girl in pink pushing a plank about +with a pole. She turned in surprise to face him. + +"Cherry!" he said, and as Alix laughed delightedly, he gave his wife a +glance, and said, "You liar!" + +Cherry came up to him, and he took both her hands, and after a second +of hesitation kissed her. She freed one hand to put it on his shoulder, +and, standing so, she seriously returned his kiss. For a moment his arm +encircled her waist; he had forgotten how blue her eyes were, with just +a film of corn-coloured hair loosened above them, and what husky, +exquisite, childish notes were in her voice. + +"Cherry--this is the nicest thing that has happened for a long, long +while!" he said. + +"You and Alix are angels to let me come!" Cherry answered, as they +turned, and with laughter and eager, interrupted talking went back to +the house. + +"And how do you think your big sister looks?" + +"Oh, Alix is wonderful!" Cherry said. Indeed she had been looking at +Alix with secret surprise and admiration since her arrival. Alix had +always been different from Cherry, but in her own way she was amazing. +Where Cherry had but one expensive waist, but one beautiful gown, but +two or three elaborate sets of filmy lingerie, accumulated slowly and +laundered by herself when she washed her silk stockings, Alix, like a +child, changed her fresh, simple linen every day, jumped from one crisp +tub suit to another, wore untrimmed straw hats that she bought in the +village for fifty cents apiece. Alix apparently never considered the +relation of her clothing to her own personality; she simply chose the +simple colours and styles she liked, and aspired only to be always +fresh and trim. + +So with her house. She did not have one or two priceless tablecloths to +be used on occasions with satin underlaid, and crystal and cut-glass; +her china was all used every day, and her table linen cheap and +plentiful and lavish. Meals were always simple and hearty and +delicious; but Alix had not time for fancy touches; hated, as she +frankly admitted, "all that stuffed celery and chopped nut and halved +cherry business! If soup isn't good without whipped cream and sherry in +it, it's pretty poor soup!" + +Cherry had laughed at her, even years ago, for her point of view, but +sometimes she had felt it to be almost an advantage. At all events, she +had not been twenty-four hours in Alix's house without perceiving that +her sister was singularly free and unruffled, unlike the women of her +generation. Alix did not put all the time she saved to good use, +although she puttered away in the garden, spent an hour or two each day +at the piano, and was, as she confided to Cherry, writing a novel. But +she was always gay and always fresh, and enjoyed every moment of the +day. + +Four years younger, yet Cherry felt older than she. Alix's nature was +uncomplicated by any consciousness of self. Again like a child, she +only wanted people to love each other and be happy, and that the sun +should shine. She was equally content, whether she was helping Peter to +pile wood, tramping in the deluging summer rains, or dreaming over a +book through the long evenings, with her shabby slippers to the fire. +An exquisite spring morning, with wet earth, rising mists, and shafts +of pure, warm sunlight, made her sing like the forest birds all about +her, but even on the coldest and blackest of winter nights, when the +storm made the lamp-light fluctuate alarmingly, and trees creaked over +the cabin, she would look up from the piano to say contentedly: "Well, +I'd rather be here than anywhere else, anyway!" + +Naturally, she was unsympathetic. If people were in pain, or cold, or +hungry, Alix could sympathize. But for mental and spiritual troubles +she had small sympathy. + +"Almost everybody in the world could live as simply as we do!" she told +Peter. + +"It costs us about four thousand a year!" he said. + +"Well, it NEEDN'T. We could buy fewer clothes, and keep only one cow, +and let the cook go! We'd be just as happy." + +"To some people," Peter had objected, doubtfully, more than once, +"there are other things than clothes and food!" + +"What things?" + +"Well, various things." + +"We have books, flowers, music, all out-of-doors," Alix protested, +briskly. + +"Sympathy, my dear--interpretation self-expression!" + +"Tommyrot!" she had responded without animosity. He realized with +surprise, not many months after their marriage, that she meant what she +said. If she ate and slept and walked and read with her usual healthy +relish, she needed nothing more. She was the least exacting of wives. +If he was late for a meal, she smiled at him absently, or if, after +they had entertained, he apologetically approached her with some +reference to an unfortunate sentence or circumstances, she would meet +him with a cheerful: + +"Angel boy, I never heard you even, or if I did I don't remember +it--even if I had heard it, it's true!" + +She was one of the rare women who can take marriage calmly, as a matter +of course; she had done so since the hour that made her his wife. At +her illness she had rebelled; she hated nurses and their fuss, she +said. She was perverse with doctors. In an unbelievably short time her +magnificent constitution had responded; she was well again, at his side +at the steamer rail, as eager for the sights and sounds and smells of +Hawaii as if she had never heard of a sick room. + +Her only sentiment was for the babies and small animals. She would +cuddle rabbits or birds against her brown, lean cheek, and hug her +setter enthusiastically. Peter suffered an agony of sympathy whenever +she spoke of a child. + +"I'd hate all the preliminary fussing, Pete--we both would! But oh, if +the Lord would send me six or eight of them!" + +Then and then only did the bright eyes and the confident voice soften, +and then only was Alix no longer a flat, straight, splendid boy, but a +woman indeed. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Cherry, Peter saw at once, was different in every way. Cherry was full +of softness, of ready response to any appeal, of sympathy and +comprehension. She had been misunderstood, unhappy, neglected; she had +developed through suffering a certain timidity that was almost a +shrinking, a certain shy clinging to what was kind and good. + +Her happiness here was an hourly delight to both Alix and himself. She +seemed to flower softly; every day of the simple forest life brought +her new interest, new energy, new bloom. She and Alix washed their hair +again, dammed the creek again, tramped and sang duets again. Sometimes +they cooked, often they went into the old senseless spasms of laughter +at nothing, or almost nothing. + +One evening, when in the sitting room there was no other light than +that of the fire that a damp July evening made pleasant, about a week +after her arrival, Cherry spoke for the first time of Martin. She had +had a long letter from him that day, ten pages written in a flowing +hand on ten pages of the lined paper of a cheap hotel, with a little +cut of the building standing boldly against a mackerel sky at the top +of each page. He was well, he had some of his dinners at the hotel, but +lived at home; he had been playing a little poker and was luckier than +ever. He was looking into a proposition in Durango, Mexico, and would +let her know how it panned out. The letter ended with the phrases: +"Have a good time, Babe, and write me. Send me a line when you can. I +have been running some with Joe King, but I am not strong for that +crowd." It was signed: "Aff'tly, Mart." + +Peter had been playing the piano lazily when the letter was tossed to +Cherry by Alix, who usually drove into the village every morning after +breakfast for marketing and the mail. He had seen Cherry glance through +it, seen the little distasteful movement of the muscles about her nose, +and seen her put it carelessly under a candlestick on the mantel for +later consideration. At luncheon she had referred to it, and now it +evidently had caused her to be thoughtful and a little troubled. An +open book was in her lap; she and Alix had gone through the farce of +saying that they would read without speaking until Peter had finished +some business telephoning; now he had joined them, but still she did +not read and seemed disinclined for talk. + +"Mart may go to Mexico!" she said, presently, with a sigh. + +"To stay?" Peter asked, quickly. + +Cherry shrugged. + +"As much as he stays anywhere!" she answered, drily. + +"H'm! Does that mean you?" Alix asked. + +"I suppose that's the plan," Cherry said, lifelessly. + +"It's a rotten country," Peter offered, thoughtfully. "At least I +should think it would be," he added, more moderately, "to select for a +permanent home." + +"I always say that a place where the natives are black, or yellow, +isn't fit for white people, or the natives would BE white!" Alix +explained, brightly. + +"All mining towns are horrible!" Cherry said with gloomy fervor. +"They're raw, crude, coarse places, and the people in them are just as +bad!" + +Peter had a moment of pity for her, so young, so helpless, so tied. + +"Perhaps he won't want you until he is sure of staying!" he offered. + +"Oh, Mart always thinks the last thing is the permanent thing!" his +wife answered, wearily. "He says he'll want me to join him about the +middle of August." + +"Oh, help!" Alix said, disgustedly. + +Cherry was silent a few minutes, and Peter smoked with his eyes on the +fire. Alix glanced from one to the other, sighed, and glanced down at +her magazine. + +"If----" Cherry said presently, "If I get my money I'll have enough to +live on, won't I, Peter?" + +"You'll have about forty thousand dollars--yes, at five per cent, you +could live on that. Especially if you lived here in the valley," Peter +answered, after some thought. + +"Then I want you to know," Cherry went on quietly, with sudden scarlet +in her cheeks, "that I'm going to tell Martin I think we have tried it +long enough!" Peter looked gravely at her, soberly nodded, and resumed +his study of the fire. But Alix spoke in brisk protest. + +"TRIED it! You mean tried marriage! But one doesn't try marriage! It's +a fact. It's like the colour of your eyes." + +"As a matter of fact, it isn't anything of the kind," Cherry said, +mildly. + +"Lloyd has given you cause, eh?" Peter took his pipe out of his mouth +long enough to ask, briefly. + +"Not--not in the way you mean--" she answered, glad to be discussing +the topic. + +"H'm," Peter muttered. It was almost as if he were disappointed. + +"But, Peter," Cherry went on hesitatingly, appealingly, "it is no more +a marriage than if we both had--had done everything and anything! He +doesn't--oh, love!" Cherry interrupted herself scornfully on the word. +"Of COURSE he doesn't love me," she said. "But it isn't only that, it's +that we differ in every way about everything! His friends, his ideas, +his feelings about things--I can't tell you how we jar and jar on each +other! No," said Cherry, beginning to cry a little, "he hasn't been +unfaithful; I almost wish he had--" + +"Cherry!" Alix protested, with affectionate reproach. + +"Alix," the little sister pleaded, eagerly, "you don't know what it +is--you don't know what it is! Always meeting people I don't like, +always living in places I hate, always feeling that my own self is +being smothered and lost and shrunk, always listening to Mart +complaining and criticizing people---" + +"Don't appeal to Alix!" Peter said. "She doesn't care what she does or +where she lives. She fraternized with every old maid school teacher on +the steamer, and a booze-fiend, and a woman whose husband was a native +of Borneo; and she would pick out the filthiest lairs in Honolulu and +ask me if it wouldn't be fun to live there!" + +They all laughed; then Peter added, seriously: + +"I'll go this far, Cherry. Lloyd married you too young." + +"Oh, far too young!" she agreed, quickly. "The thing I--I can't think +of," she said, "is how young I was--only a little girl. I knew nothing; +I wasn't ready to be anybody's wife!" + +Something in the poignant sorrow of her tone went straight to their +hearts, and for the first time Peter had an idea of the real suffering +she had borne. Alix's mouth was rather firmly shut, her eyes a little +narrowed, her face rather sad, as she looked into the fire. + +"If I had a child, even, or if Martin needed me," Cherry said, "then it +might be different! But I'm only a burden to him----" + +"His letter doesn't sound as if he thought of you as a burden," Alix +suggested, mildly. + +"Ah, well, the minute I leave him he has a different tone," Cherry +explained, and Peter said, with a glance almost of surprise at his wife: + +"It's an awfully difficult position for a woman of any pride, dear!" + +Alix, kneeling to adjust the fire, as she was constantly tempted to do, +met his look, and laid a soot-streaked hand on his knee. + +"Pete, dearest, of course it is! But--" and Alix looked doubtfully from +one to the other--"but divorce is a hateful thing!" she added, shaking +her head, "it--it never seems to me justifiable!" + +"Divorce is an institution," Peter said. "You may not like it any more +than you like prisons or mad-houses; it has its uses." + +"People get divorces every day!" Cherry added. "Isn't divorce better +than living along in marriage--without love?" + +"Oh, love!" Alix said, scornfully. "Love is just another name for +passion and selfishness and laziness, half the time!" + +"You can say that, because yours is one of the happy marriages," Cherry +said. "It might be very different--if Peter weren't Peter!" + +As she said his name she sent him her trusting smile, her blue eyes +shone with affection, and the exquisite curve of her mouth deepened. +Peter smiled back, and looked away in a little confusion. + +"I can't imagine the circumstances under which I shouldn't love you and +Peter!" Alix summarized it, triumphantly. + +"And Martin?" Peter asked. + +"Ah, well, I didn't marry Martin!" his wife reminded him quickly. "I +didn't promise to love and honour Martin in sickness and health, for +richer for poorer, for better for worse--by George!" Alix interrupted +herself, in her boyish way, "those are terrific words, you know. And a +promise is a promise!" + +"And even for infidelity, you don't believe people ought to separate?" +Cherry asked. + +"Nonsense!" Peter said. + +"But you said--that Martin never--" + +"No, I'm not speaking of Martin now!" + +"Well, wouldn't that come under 'worser'?" Alix asked. + +"But, my child," Peter expostulated kindly, "my dear benighted +wife--there is such a thing as a soul--a mind--a personality! To be +tied to a--well, to a coarsening influence day after day is living +death! It is worse than any bodily discomfort--" + +"I don't see it!" Alix persisted. "I think there's a lot of nonsense +talked about the fammy oncompreezy--but it seems to me that if you have +a home and meals and books and friends and the country to walk in, +you--" + +"Oh, Heavens, Alix, you don't know what you're talking about!" Cherry +interrupted her, impatiently. "Let Peter here go off with some chorus +girl, and see how long you--" + +"It's all very well in books," Alix interrupted her sister in turn. +"But in real life I don't believe a woman ever bothers to think whether +her husband ever murmurs her name in dreams or not. I know I take Peter +as much for granted as I do Tamalpais; if he ever leaped from the +track, and stole or got drunk or wandered off after some petticoat, I'd +FIX him! I'd be furious, but I don't see myself leaving him." + +Peter's brief shout of laughter rang out. + +"The awful thing about that female is that it is true," he told Cherry. +"If I ever stray from the path of virtue, she'll scare me to death." + +"Sometimes I think your marriage is as--as queer as my own," Cherry +said, looking from one to the other. + + Nothing more was said for several days upon the subject of a +possible divorce. The weather continued perfect, and the little +house-party on the mountaintop was complete in itself. Cherry often +went into the village with Alix, to be sure; once they all went to a +charity affair at Blithedale; sometimes a few women drove up the +winding road in the afternoon, and there were ginger-ale and cookies on +the porch; but most of the time the two sisters were alone, with Peter +joining them in the afternoons. + +One afternoon Peter crossed the porch, tired and hot, and found +everything apparently deserted. He dropped into a chair, and was still +breathless from the rapid climb up-hill, when stray notes from the +piano reached his ears; a chord, a carefully played bit of bass; then a +chord again. Then slowly, but with dainty accuracy and even feeling, +Cherry began to play a strange little study of Schumann. Peter knew +that it was Cherry, because Alix's touch was always firm and sure; more +than that, he himself had played this same bit no longer ago than last +night, and he remembered now that Cherry had asked him just what it was. + +He experienced a sudden and pleasing emotion; he did not stop to +analyze it. But he had been ruffled in spirit a moment before; Alix had +known he was to come on this train, and had not met him with the car, +and while he really did not mind the walk up, he disliked the feeling +that they had entirely forgotten him. + +The car was gone from its usual stand under a live oak, but everybody +had not forgotten him nevertheless. Cherry was deliberately recalling +the mood and moment that also recalled him. And as the notes came +slowly, but precisely, from the cool, darkened living room, with its +fragrant masses of sweet peas and fluted Martha Washington geraniums, +Peter felt contented and serene. He looked up at the rise of Tamalpais, +only half a tone darker than the pale blue sky to-day; he looked off at +the range toward the ocean, where shimmers of heat were quivering +upward; and then he settled himself back luxuriously in his great +wicker chair and shut his eyes. Still the plaintive air came, as +caressing as a touch. + +Presently there was silence; then Cherry tried another little study, +and finished it, and the hot summer stillness reigned again. The valley +swam under a haze of pure heat; a buzzard hung motionless over the +cabin, and the dry air was sweet with resinous scent of pines and +manzanita and even of tarweed. + +With a sense that he had been dozing, if only for a few minutes, Peter +opened his eyes. Framed in the cabin doorway, poised like a butterfly +against the dark background of the room, stood Cherry. He knew that she +had been standing so for some time, for a full minute, perhaps more. + +She was looking straight at him; one hand was hanging at her side, the +other laid over her heart, as if she had involuntarily put it there +when she saw him. Her corn-coloured hair was a little loosened; she was +not smiling. She wore something limp and transparent, of white, he +thought, or pale, pale blue, like the sky, with faint stripes making +her figure look more slender even than it was. + +They looked at each other in a silence that grew more and more awkward +by great plunges. Peter had time to wish that he had kept his eyes +shut, to wish that he had smiled when he first saw her--he could not +have forced himself to smile now--to wonder how they were ever to +speak--where they were rushing--rushing--rushing--before she turned +noiselessly and vanished into the dim room. + +Peter lay there, and his heart pounded. For a few minutes his senses +whirled so madly that he felt suffocated. He dared not sit up, he dared +not stir; from head to foot thrilling waves of surprise, and even a +little of terror, went over him. + +Never in his life had he experienced this sort of feeling before. He +knew that he hated it, even while his whole spirit sang and soared in +the new ecstasy. A moment ago he had been a tired man, fretted because +his wife forgot to meet him; now there was something new in the world. +And rapidly all the world became only a background, only a setting, for +this extraordinary sensation. He sat up, after awhile, looked at the +familiar porch, with the potted flowers, and Alix's boxes, where +bachelor's-buttons, marguerites, and geraniums had been alternated to +make a touch of patriotic colour on July Fourth. The hills beyond still +swam in the hot sunlight, the mountain rose into the blue, but the +light that changes all life lay over them for Peter. + +He said to himself that it was awkward--he did not know how he could +enter that door and talk to Cherry. And yet he knew that that meeting +of Cherry, that the common exchange of words and glances, that the +daily trifling encounters with Cherry were all poignantly significant +now. Or if he did not fully sense all this yet he felt thrilled to the +soul with the knowledge that she was there, back in the shadowy house +somewhere, with the pale striped gown and the disordered corn-coloured +hair, and that somehow they must meet, somehow they must talk together. + +He felt no impulse toward hurry. He might sit on this porch another +hour, might saunter off toward the creek. It mattered nothing; the hour +was steadily approaching when she must reappear. + +Alix drove in, full of animated apologies. She managed the car far +better than he, and no thought of an accident had troubled him. But she +explained that she had been to get eggs for a setting hen, and Antone +had stopped her and told her that the new calf had been prematurely +born, out on the hills, and had "been gone for die," and so she had +driven over to Juanita, and gotten the calf. + +And there the calf was, two days old, and as pretty as only a baby deer +or a baby Jersey can be, roped by his woodeny little legs, and laid +stiffly in the tonneau, with utter terror in his liquid dark eyes. + +"Die, nothing!" Alix said, emphatically, as she tenderly lifted the +calf out of the car. "I'm going to take him up to the barn; you run +tell Kow that Missy wants warm milk. Then you come on, Pete--and tell +me what you think!" + +"Here--" Peter said, authoritatively, shouting the message, and taking +the calf from her arms; they were laughing as they entered the dry, hot +darkness of the stable. Alix's riding horse put a Roman nose +reproachfully over the bitten barrier of his box-stall. + +"We've got company for you, Creep-mouse!" Peter, panting from his heavy +burden, announced. "Poor little feller!" he said to the calf. + +"He's all right." Alix, rustling straw, said, confidently. "You know he +must be a twin," she said to Peter, "for that brute of a mother of his +was contentedly wandering up to the ridge, where the breeze is, and she +certainly had another little calf cavorting about her--oh, thanks, +Cherry! Here's the milk, Peter. See if the poor little beast will suck +your fingers!" + +Peter took the brimming blue bowl from Cherry's fingers. She had come +like a shadow into the barn, her eyes were on the tipped surface of the +milk. She lowered it carefully into his hold, and he felt the cool +softness of her yielding fingers; he did not meet her eyes, partly +because he gave her face only one glance. They all knelt about the +calf, who after a few feeble struggles to escape altogether resigned +himself, and lay looking at them with terrified eyes. + +"He's too weak to stand on his legs, perhaps I should have had the +mother brought in," Alix said, anxiously. "But he's a beautiful little +thing, the prettiest she's ever had, except that he's so thin! Isn't he +cute, Cherry?" + +"He's--darling!" Cherry's voice, with its young cadences always ready +to escape from the riper tones of womanhood, echoed oddly under the +low, shingled roof of the barn. And again life seemed full of surprise +and thrill to Peter. He wanted to say something to her; could think of +nothing, and so was unusually silent throughout the ceremonies of +getting the calf to suck Alix's fingers, getting him tied in a manner +that should hold him without danger of strangulation, and bedding him +comfortably on sacks and straw. Cherry was silent, too, but Alix talked +briskly, and the necessity for constant effort and movement filled all +possible gaps. + +The evening was warm, one of the two or three warm evenings that marked +the height of summer even in the high valley. While the three sat on +the wide, unroofed porch, loitering over their coffee, a great, +yellow-red moon rose slowly over the hill, and floated silently above +them. Presently its light flooded the landscape, and strange and +romantic vistas appeared between the redwoods aisles, and the tops of +the forest trees far below them showed in a brilliant gray light, soft +and furry. The whole world seemed to be lifted and swimming in vaporous +brightness. There was not a breath of air in the garden; roses and +wallflowers stood erect in a sort of luminous enchantment. Moonlight +sank through the low twisted branches of the near-by oaks and fell +tangled with black and lacy shade through the porch rose vine. + +Alix sat on the porch rail, every line of crisp skirt and braided head +revealed as if by daylight, but Cherry's pale striped gown was only a +glimmer in the deepest shade of the vine. Peter, smoking, sat where he +could not but see her; they had hardly looked at each other directly +since the long, strange look of this afternoon; they had exchanged +hardly a word. + +A black cat crept across the grass, her body dragging stealthily on +crouched legs, boldly silhouetted in the moonshine, invisible in the +shade. Alix defeated her hunting plans by flinging a well-aimed pebble +into the shrubbery ahead of her. The cat, dissembling, lay down in the +dry grass, cleaned a paw, and coquetted with her tail. + +"Town to-morrow, Pete?" Alix said, after a silence during which she had +locked her arms behind her head, stared straight above her at the path +the moon was making through faint stars, and yawned. "I've got to go in +to a meeting of the hospital board." + +"I didn't know you were on it," Cherry said. + +"Peter's mother was, and hence I am," Alix said, virtuously. Cherry +felt an old little prick of jealousy. Alix was strangely indifferent to +the position she held. + +"I go in to have luncheon with Mary" Cherry said. "I wish we could all +lunch together!" + +"I'll blow you girls to a meal at Frank's--" Peter began, and +interrupted himself, "Oh, but you can't, Cherry!" + +"And our meeting is at twelve; we'll have lunch at the hospital," Alix +added. "Wouldn't you think we'd have enough of each other, we three?" +she said, amusedly, beginning, in the reprehensible manner of girlhood, +to roll the black scarf that had been knotted about her rolled +bluejacket's collar, and to remove the pins from her hair. "But I hate +to be in town and not see you both! Good-night, beloveds. I'm dead. +Don't sit out here mooning with Pete all night, Cerise!" + +Peter said to himself that now Cherry would go, too, but as the screen +door banged lightly after Alix, and the dull glimmer of Cherry's +striped gown did not move in the soft shadow, a sudden reluctance and +distaste seized him. He had been subconsciously aware of her all +afternoon; he had known a delicious warmth and stir at his heart that +he had not analyzed, if indeed it could be analyzed. Now suddenly he +did not want the beauty and bloom and charm of that feeling touched. +His heart began to beat heavily again, and he knew that he must stop +the unavailing game now. + +But he had not reckoned on Cherry. She twisted in her chair, and he +heard a child's long, happy sigh. + +"Oh, so am I tired, too!" she breathed, reluctantly. "I hate to leave +it--but I've been almost asleep for half an hour! You can have all the +moonlight there is, Peter." Her white figure fluttered toward the door. +"Good-night!" she said, drooping her little head to choke a yawn. A +moment later he heard her laughing with Alix. + +"You fool--you fool--you fool!" Peter said to himself, and he felt an +emotion like shame, a little real compunction that he could so utterly +misread her innocence. He felt it not only wrong in him, but somehow +staining and hurtful to her. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Again Peter reckoned without Cherry. It was only the next day, when he +was entering the Palace court for his lunch, that he experienced a +sudden and violent emotion. His thoughts were, at the moment, far from +Cherry, and he had fancied himself in a hurry. But every other feeling +but excitement was obliterated at the sight of a slender, girlishly +made woman, in a pongee gown, and a limp brown hat covered with +poppies, waiting in the lounge. + +Peter went toward her, and the colour rushed into Cherry's face. Half a +dozen women had been furtively studying her, and one of them now said +to a man, "Yes, she really is--extraordinarily pretty." But Cherry and +Peter saw and heard them not. It was the first time they had +accidentally encountered each other, and it had a special place of its +own in the history of their lives. + +The surprise of it kept them laughing, hands clasped, for a minute; +then Cherry said: + +"I was to lunch here with Mary Cameron. But she's full twenty minutes +late!" + +"Lunch with me," Peter substituted, promptly. + +"She'll probably be along--" Cherry said, vaguely, looking at a clock. +"You hate her, don't you?" she added, looking up from under the poppies +at Peter. + +"I don't like her," he admitted, with a boy's grimace. + +"Then suppose we don't lunch here?" Cherry suggested, innocently. Peter +laughed joyously, and tucking her little gloved hand under his arm, led +her away. They went to Solari's, and had a window table, and nodded, as +they discussed their lunch, at half a dozen friends who chanced to be +lunching there, too. But it was a thrilling adventure, none the less, +and after the other tables were empty, and when the long room was +still, they talked on, trifling with cheese and crackers, Peter +watching her as he smoked, Cherry's head bent over her plate. + +She had said that she wanted to tell him "all about it," and Peter, +with quick knowledge that she meant the unhappiness of her marriage, +nodded a grave permission. + +"I've made a failure of it!" Cherry said, sadly. "I know I ought to +struggle on, but I can't. Just a few days of it, just a few weeks of it +make me--make me a different woman! I get nervous, I get hysterical, I +don't sleep! I have no individuality, Peter, I have no personality! As +for my dignity--my privacy--" + +Her face was scarlet, and for a moment she stopped speaking. + +"Just tell me an alternative!" she said, after awhile. "It CAN'T be +that there is no other life for me than going back. Peter, I'm only +twenty-four!" + +"I know you are," he said, with a brief nod. + +"Why, everyone has some alternative," Cherry pleaded. "It can't be that +marriage is the only--the only irrevocable thing! If you had a partner +that you couldn't go on with, you could come to SOME agreement! You +could make a sacrifice, but somehow you could end the association! +Peter," she said, earnestly, "when I think of marketing again--six +chops and soup-meat and butter and baking powder--I feel sick! When I +think of unpacking the things I've washed and dusted for five +years--the glass berry bowl that somebody gave us, and the eleven +silver tea-spoons--I can't bear it!" + +"You don't love him!" Peter said. + +"I don't hate him," she answered quickly. "Indeed I don't. And it isn't +just the place and the life, Peter! I could be happy in two +rooms--somewhere--anywhere--But not--with HIM. Oh, Peter, if I hadn't +done it--if I hadn't done it!" And Cherry knotted her fingers together, +and her voice thickened and stopped. + +Her beauty, as she pushed her plate aside and leaned toward him, was so +startling that Peter, a lighted match half-raised to a fresh cigarette, +put the match down aimlessly, and looked thoughtfully at the cigarette, +and laid that down, too, without the faintest consciousness of what he +was doing. The day was warm, and there was a little dampness on her +white forehead, where the gold hair clung to the brim of the drooping +hat. Her marvellous blue eyes were ringed with soft violet shadows, as +if a sooty finger had set them under the dark brown arch of the brows. +The soft curve of her chin, the babyish shortness of her upper lip, and +the crimson sweetness of the little earnest mouth had never seemed more +lovely than they were to-day. She was youth incarnate, palpitating, +flushed, unspoiled. + +For a moment she looked down at the table, and the colour flooded her +face, then she looked him straight in the eyes and smiled. "Well! +Perhaps it will all work out right, Peter," she said, with the +childish, questioning look that so wrung his heart. She immediately +gathered her possessions together to go, but when they stepped into +sunshiny Geary Street it was three o'clock, and Peter suggested that +they walk down to the boat. + +To them both the hour was memorable, and the street and park and the +tops of tall buildings, flooded with the sunlight of a summer +afternoon, were Paradise. Cherry only knew that she felt strangely +thrilled and yet at peace; Peter's heart was bursting with love of the +world, love of this romantic city, with its flower market blazing in +the sun, and with the ferry clock tower standing high above the vista +of Market Street. He seemed floating rather than walking, and when, at +crossings, he could help Cherry for a few steps, felicity swelled in +his soul almost like pain. + +They met Alix on the boat, but she did not ask any embarrassing +questions; she sat between them on the upper deck, blinking contentedly +at the blue satin bay, her eyes following the wheeling gulls or the +passage of ships, her mind evidently concerned only with the idle +pleasantness of the moment. And always, for Peter, there was the same +joyous sense of something new--something significant--something +ecstatic in life. + +From that hour he was never quite at ease in Cherry's company, and +avoided being alone with her even for an instant, although her presence +always caused him the new and tingling delight. He read her honest blue +eyes truly, and knew that although, like himself, she was conscious of +the new sweetness and brightness of life, she had never entertained for +an instant the flitting thought that it was Peter's feeling for her +that made it so. She thought perhaps that it was the old childish +happiness that she had known in the valley, the freedom and leisure and +irresponsibility of the old days. + +One day she made Alix and Peter laugh by reciting for them long +passages from "Paolo and Francesca." They were walking, and had stopped +to rest and get breath on a steep climb. Cherry's tender voice, +half-amusedly and half-seriously repeating the passionate lines, +lingered in Peter's mind like a sort of faint incense for hours. + +"It's lovely," said Cherry in the garden that night, when he spoke to +her about it, "but it's not Shakespere, of course," she surprised him +by adding. Cherry had developed, he thought, she had cared nothing for +Shakespere years ago. Immediately she began the immortal phrases: + + 'Tis but the name that is mine enemy, + Thou art thyself, though, not a Montague ... + ... And for that name which is no part of thee + Take all myself! + +Peter's heart began to thump again. They were alone in the garden; it +was dark to-night, warm and starry. + +"Now that you and I are brother and sister," Cherry said, after a +silence, "tell me--it went across my mind once, and then I didn't think +of it for years. But tell me, was it me with whom you were--you fancied +you were in love, all those years ago?" + +She looked innocently up at him in the gloom, and laughed. Peter did +not speak for a few seconds. + +"Yes, it was always you!" he said then, briefly. + +Cherry laughed again, a little amused and exultant laugh. But +immediately she stopped laughing, and said, vexedly: + +"I was a fool to ask you that! I don't know why I did. Just sheer +egotism--and I hate women who dwell on their own foolish old love +affairs, too!" + +Peter, as ashamed as she of the moment's weakness, laughed, too. + +"You could hardly call it that!" he objected, mildly. + +"You could hardly call it anything!" she agreed, in relief. "Does Alix +know?" she asked, quickly. + +"There wasn't much to tell," he reminded her, as they went back to the +house through the ranks of wet wallflowers and roses. + +"Nothing!" she said again, quickly. + +And when they entered the house he was strangely disturbed to see a +look of something like shame, something confused and embarrassed on her +usually frank little face, and to realize that she was conscientiously +avoiding his eyes. After she and Alix had gone to bed he got down the +little red volume that was marked "Romeo and Juliet," and found the +score of lines that she had quoted, and marvelled that the same words +could seem on the printed page so bare, and sound so rich and full in +Cherry's voice out under the stars. + +The next day she talked in a troubled, uncertain way of going back to +Red Creek and he knew why. But Alix was so aghast at the idea, and +Peter, who was closing Doctor Strickland's estate, was so careful to +depart early in the mornings, and return only late at night, that the +little alarm, if it was that, died away. Martin's plans were uncertain, +and Cherry might be needed as a witness in the Will Case, if Anne's +claims were proved unjustified, so that neither Peter nor Cherry could +find a logical argument with which to combat Alix's protests against +any change. + +The next time that Cherry went into town, Alix did not go, and Peter, +sitting on the deck of the early boat with her, asked her again to have +luncheon with him. Immediately a cloud fell on her face, and he saw her +breast rise quickly. + +"Peter," she asked him, childishly, looking straight into his eyes, +"why didn't we tell Alix about that?" + +Peter tried to laugh and felt himself begin to tremble again. + +"About what?" he stammered. + +"About our having been three hours at lunch last week?" + +"Why--I don't know!" Peter said, smiling nervously. + +She was silent, and they parted without any further reference to +meeting for lunch. But every time he was summoned to the telephone +Peter felt a thrill of expectation, and at noon his office swam +suddenly before his eyes when the lovely voice was really addressing +him. She was at the ferry, Cherry said; she had finished shopping, and +was going home. + +"That's fine!" Peter said, quite as he would have said it a month ago. +But he was shaking as he went back to his work. + +That night, when Alix had gone to bed, he entered the sitting room +suddenly to find Cherry hunting for a book. She had dropped on one +knee, the better to reach a low shelf, and was wholly absorbed in the +volume she had chanced to open. + +When she heard the door open she turned, and immediately became very +pale. She did not speak as Peter came to stand beside her. + +"Cherry--" he said in a whisper, his face close to hers. Neither spoke +again for awhile. Cherry was breathing hard, Peter was conscious only +of a wild whirling of brain and senses. + +They remained so, their eyes fixed, their breath coming as if they had +been running, for endless seconds. + +"You remember the question you asked me this morning?" Peter said. "Do +you remember? Do you remember?" + +Cherry, her cold fingers still holding the place in the book she had +been reading, went blindly to the fireplace. + +"What?" she said, in the merest breath. "What?" + +"Because," Peter said, following her, a sort of heady madness making +him only conscious of that need to hear from her own lips that she +knew, "because I didn't answer that question honestly!" + +It mattered not what he said, or what he was trying to express; both +were enveloped in the flame of their new relationship; surprise and +terror were eclipsing even the strange joy of their discovery. + +"I must go home--I must go back to Mart to-morrow!" Cherry said, in a +whispered undertone, as if half to herself. "I must go home to Mart +to-morrow! I--let's not--let's not talk!" she broke off in quick +interruption, as he would have spoken. "Let's--I'd rather not! I--where +IS my book? What was I doing? Peter--Peter--" + +"Just a minute!" Peter protested, thickly. "Cherry--I want to speak to +you--will you wait a minute?" + +She was halfway to the door; now she paused, and looked back at him +with frightened eyes. Peter did not speak at once; there was a moment +of absolute silence. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +And in that moment Alix came in. She had said good-night half an hour +before; she was in her wrapper, and her hair fell over one shoulder in +a rumpled braid. Cherry, sick with fright, faced her in a sort of +horror, unable to realize, at the moment, that there was nothing +betraying in her attitude or Peter's, and nothing in her sister's +unsuspicious soul to give significance to what she saw in any case. +Peter, more quickly recovering self-control, went toward his wife. + +Alix saw neither clearly, her eyes were full of tears, and she had a +paper in her hand. + +"Pete!" she said. "Cherry! Look at this! Look at this!" + +She held the paper out to them, but it was rather at her that they +looked, as all three gathered near the hearth again. + +"I happened to finish my novel," Alix said, "and I reached for Dad's +old Bible--it's been there on the shelf near my bed ever since I was +married, and I've even read it, too! But look what was in it--there all +this time!" + +"What is it?" Cherry asked, as Peter, in a sudden and violent revulsion +of feeling, took the paper and bent toward the lamp to read it. + +"By George!" he said, suddenly, his eyes still running over the +half-sheet. "By George, this is wonderful!" + +"It's Uncle Vincent's receipt to Dad for that three thousand that is +making all the trouble!" Alix exulted to the still bewildered Cherry. +"It's been there all this time--and Cherry," she added, in a voice rich +with love and memory, "THAT'S what he meant by saying it was in +Matthew, don't you remember? Doesn't it mean that, Pete? Isn't it +perfectly clear?" + +"It means only about fifty thousand for you and Cherry," Peter +answered. "Yes sir, by George--it's perfectly clear! He paid it +back--every cent of it, and got his receipt! H'm--this puts rather a +crimp in Little's plans--I'll see him to-morrow. This calls off his +suit--" + +"REALLY, Pete!" Alix asked, with dancing eyes. "And it means that you +can keep the old house, Cerise," she exclaimed, triumphantly, "and we +can be together part of the year anyway! Oh, come on, everybody, and +sit down, and let's talk and talk about it! Let me see it again--'in +recognition of all claims against the patent extinguisher +aforementioned'--sit down, Pete, it's only ten o'clock! Let's talk. +Aren't you simply WILD with joy, Cherry?" + +But she told Peter later that she had been surprised at Cherry's +quietness; Cherry had looked pale and abstracted, and had not seemed +half enthusiastic enough. + +"Though very probably," mused Alix, "it brought back Dad's death, and +saddened her in that way, and more than that, I know she is worried all +the time about feeling as she does toward Martin, and perhaps he'll +feel that she ought to put this into some horrible mining scheme! +Cherry is not mercenary, I'll say that for her." + +"What will you do with all yours?" Peter asked. + +"I wish we three could go about the world together," Alix answered. +"I'd love to see Japan and India--I'd like to see burning-ghats on the +sacred Gunga!" she added, cheerfully. "But I don't know--money doesn't +buy you much!" she yawned. "Perhaps I'll go to some Old Ladies' Home, +and give each of the old girls one hundred dollars a quarter--wouldn't +they have fun, buying scarfs and wool and caps?" + +"Their families would immediately remove them, for the revenue," Peter +suggested. He was grinning at her; he felt suddenly the wholesomeness +and safety of her absurdity and originality. He liked the +characteristic earnestness with which, in the very act of snapping off +her bedroom light, before going out to the sleeping-porch, she widened +her eyes at him, and frowned in concentrated thought. + +"Then I'll give them fifty dollars a quarter!" she decided. "Just +enough to buy them some little things, you know, brass tea-kettles, +flannel underwear, whatever they wanted! Presents--they must always +want to be making Christmas presents." And she yawned again. "Shut your +door, Pete, if you read," she said. "The light shines against the +trees, and it's right in my eyes!" But ten minutes later he heard her +call through the door, "Or I could give it on condition that they +stayed in the home and didn't let their families get it!" and grinned +again over his book. + +After that there was silence, and gradually the little sounds of the +summer night made themselves heard again. Alix's light was out. Cherry +came, trailing her thin wrapper, to the porch bed opposite her sister's +bed and slipped into it with only a brief good-night. But Peter read on +deep into the first hours of the morning. + +Kow Yu, flinging the striped blue tablecloth over the porch table the +next day at the noon hour, and clinking knives and forks, was +questioned by his master. + +"You go catchem 'nother plate, Kow!" Peter said. + +"Missy no come!" Kow answered, unruffled. "Him say no can come!" + +"Cherry!" Peter shouted. "Did Alix say she wasn't coming to lunch?" + +"N-n-not to me!" Cherry answered from the garden. She came up to the +porch, with her hands full of short-stemmed roses. + +"Him go flend house," Kow elucidated. "Fiend heap sick!" + +"Mrs. Garvin?" Cherry questioned. "Did she stay at Mrs. Garvin's for +lunch? Perhaps it's the Garvin baby," she added to Peter. "She said she +was going to stop in!" + +"I'll find out!" Peter was conscious that everything was beginning to +tremble and thrill again, as he went to the telephone. "Why, yes," he +said, coming back to the porch, "the baby arrived just before she got +there, and they were all upset. She's in her glory, of course. Says +that she'll be home to supper, even if she goes back!" + +"Oh!" Cherry said, in a small voice. She sat down at the table, and +shook out her napkin. Peter sat down, too, and, as usual, served. Kow +came and went, and a silence deepened and spread and grew more and more +terrible every instant. + +It was a Sunday, foggy and overcast, but not cold. The vines about the +porch were covered with tiny beads of moisture; among the bushes in the +garden little scarfs and veils of fog were caught, and from far across +the ridge the droning warning of the fog horn penetrated, at regular, +brief intervals. + +"Cherry," Peter said, suddenly, when the silent meal was almost over, +"will you talk about it?" + +"Talk--?" she faltered. Her voice thickened and stopped. "Oh, I would +rather not!" she whispered, with a frightened glance about. + +"Listen, Cherry!" he said, following her to the wide porch rail, and +standing behind her as she sat down upon it. "I'm sorry! I'm just as +sorry as I can be. But I can't help it, Cherry. And I would like--I do +think it would be wiser, just to--to look the matter squarely in the +face, and--and perhaps discuss it for a few minutes, and then END it." + +She gave him a fleeting glance over her shoulder, but she did not go +away. Peter sat down behind her on the rail, and she turned to face +him, although her troubled eyes were still averted. + +"Cherry," he said then, "I'm as surprised as you are--I can't tell you +when it--it all happened! But it--" Peter folded his arms across his +chest, and with a grimly squared jaw looked off into the misty +distance--"it is there," he finished. + +"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Cherry whispered, on a breath of utter distress. +"I'm so sorry! Oh, Peter, we never should have let it happen--our +caring for each other!--we never should have allowed ourselves to +think--to dream--of such a thing! Oh, Peter, I'm so sick about it," +Cherry added, incoherently, with filling eyes. "I'm just sick about it! +I know--I know that Alix would never have permitted herself to--I know +she wouldn't!" + +He was close to her, and now he laid his hand over hers. + +"I care--" he said, quite involuntarily, "I have always cared for you! +I know it's madness--I know it's too late--but I love every hair of +your beautiful head! Cherry--Cherry--!" + +They had both gotten to their feet, and now she essayed to pass him, +her face white, her cheeks blazing. He stopped her, and held her close +in his arms, and after a few seconds he felt her resisting muscles +relax, and they kissed each other. + +For a full dizzy minute they clung together, arms locked, hearts +beating madly and close, and lips meeting again and again. Breathless, +Cherry wrenched herself free, and turned to drop into a chair, and +breathless, Peter stood looking down upon her. About them was the +silence of the dripping garden; all the sounds of the world came +muffled and dull through the thick mist. + +Then Peter knelt down beside her chair, and gathered her hands together +in his own, and she rested her forehead on his, and spent and silent, +leaned against his shoulder. And so they remained, not speaking, for a +long while. Kow clinked dishes somewhere in a faraway kitchen, and the +fog-horn boomed and was still-boomed and was still. But here on the +porch there was no sound. + +"Cherry, tell me that you care for me a little?" Peter said after +awhile, and he felt as if he met a new Cherry, among all the strange +new Cherries that the past bewildering week had shown him, when she +answered passionately: + +"Oh, Peter--Peter--if I did not!" + +He tightened his fingers about her own, but did not answer, and it was +presently Cherry who broke the brooding, misty silence again. + +"What shall we do?" she asked, in a small, tired voice. + +Peter abruptly got to his feet, took a chair three feet away, and with +a quick gesture of his hand and toss of his head, flung back his hair. + +"There is only one thing to do, of course!" he said, decidedly, in a +voice almost unrecognizably grim. "We mustn't see each other--we +mustn't see each other! Now--now I must think how best to manage that!" + +Her eyes, heavy with pain, were raised to meet his, and she saw his +mouth weaken with a sudden misgiving, and she saw him try to steady it, +and look down. + +"I can--I shall tell Alix that this new business needs me in town for +two or three nights," he said, forcing himself to quiet speech, but +with one fine hand propping his forehead as if it ached. "I'll stay at +the club." + +"And as soon as I can go," Cherry added, feverishly, "I shall join +Martin. I suppose Alix would think it was perfectly idiotic for me to +go now, just when the whole thing can be closed up so quickly, and +Martin, too--" her voice trailed away vaguely. She fell silent, her +eyes absent and full of pain. Suddenly they widened, as if some pang +had suddenly shaken her into consciousness again. "Well, I'll go back," +she began again, bravely, "I'll leave you power--what do they call +it?--power to act for me. I can do that, can't I? I'll wire Martin +to-morrow--this is Sunday, and I'll go on Wednesday!" And as she looked +off across the green spaces of fog-wreathed hills and valleys, they +seemed to turn suddenly glaring and ugly to her, and she felt a great +weariness and heartsickness with life. + +Peter sprang over the porch rail, and vanished, walking with swift +energy up the trail that led toward the mountain. Cherry knew that he +would walk himself tired; she longed to walk, too, to plunge on and on +through the foggy depths of the hills, striding, stumbling, getting +breathless and weary in body, while somehow--somehow!--this confusion +and exhaustion cleared away from mind and soul. And yet beyond the +horror and shame and regret she felt something was thrilling, exulting, +and singing for joy. + +For the rest of that day she lived in a sort of daze of emotion, +sometimes she seemed to be living two lives, side by side. In the one +was her old happy relationship with Alix, and even with Peter, the old +joking and talking, and gathering for meals, the old hours in the +garden or beside the fire, and in the other was the confused and +troubled and ecstatic consciousness of the new relationship between +Peter and herself, the knowledge that he did not merely admire her, did +not merely feel for her an unusual affection, but that he was consumed +by a burning adoration of her slightest motion, the turn of her wrist, +the smile she gave Kow at breakfast time, the motion she made when she +stooped to tie her shoe, or raised her arm to break an apple from the +low, dusty branches. The glory of being so loved enveloped her like a +great shining garment, and her cheeks glowed softly rosy, and there was +a new and liquid softness, a sort of shining glitter, in her blue eyes. + +Peter was quiet that evening, and was gone the next morning when the +sisters came out to breakfast. His absence was a real relief to Cherry, +who felt curiously tired and spent after a wakeful night, and looked +pale. Alix, busy with a new venture in duck raising, noticed nothing, +and Cherry could lie idly in the hammock all morning, sometimes +frowning, and shutting her eyes at some sudden thought, otherwise +smiling and dreaming vaguely, and always hearing Peter's voice, in +words so charged with new magic that the mere recollection of them +almost suffocated her with emotion. + +He had left a message to the effect that he would not be at home that +night, and at four o'clock telephoned confirming the message. Alix +chanced to answer the telephone, and Cherry, who was in her room, heard +Peter's name, and stood still, listening with a shock of +disappointment. She did not want him to come home, she was hardly +conscious of any desire or dread; her only thought was that he was +there--now--at the telephone, and in a moment Alix would have hung up +the receiver, and she, Cherry, would not have spoken to him, would not +have heard his voice! + +But at eight o'clock that evening, when she and Alix were sitting on +the porch, when the last ebbing pink of the sunset had faded, and great +spiders had ventured forth into the dusk and the dews, there was a +sudden hail at the gate, and Cherry knew that it was he! A flood of +utter, irrational happiness rose in her heart; she had been racked with +hunger for the sound of that voice; she had been restless and +unsatisfied, almost feverish with longing and doubt; now peace came +again, and content. + +He came up to them, his glance resolutely averted from Cherry, +explaining that he was lonesome, assuring them that everything went +well, and making them laugh with an account of Justin Little's +reception of the new turn of affairs. Alix asked a hundred questions; +laughed and rejoiced. + +"To-morrow let's go down and see the old house," suggested Alix, "I +guess it's in pretty bad shape, for we couldn't rent it. At least Pete +and I didn't think it was worth while to do all the plastering and +painting they wanted! But we'll do it now, Cherry; we'll fix it all up, +and then every summer, and perhaps some winters--at least if Mart isn't +too far away--you can live there. Did you see Anne, Peter?" she asked, +suddenly. + +"No, just Justin. He seemed absolutely dumbfounded," Peter said. "He +looked at the paper, read it, laughed, and said--in that little +nervous, smiling way of his--that he felt it to be by no means +conclusive--" + +"I can hear him!" giggled Alix. + +"And I guess both you girls will have to come in in a day or two," +Peter continued. + +"Cherry's going in to the dentist to-morrow," said Alix. + +"Oh, so I am!" Cherry said, in a rather strained voice. + +She did not look at Peter, nor did he at her, but they felt each +other's thoughts like a spoken word. + +"Had you forgotten?" Alix asked. "I may go with you," she added, +carelessly. + +"Oh, do come!" Cherry said, eagerly. "I--I hate so going alone!" + +"I've not a thing in the world to do in town, but I'll browse along +those old book stores in Third Street," Alix mused. + +But in the morning she had changed her mind. She was a trifle late to +breakfast, and Cherry and Peter had a chance minute or two alone. + +"Cherry," he said then, "I'm going to lunch at the St. Francis. Will +you meet me there?" + +"No, I can't!" Cherry whispered, unhappily. + +"Well, I'll be there," Peter said, in a dull, steady voice. They did +not look at each other as Cherry began, with trembling white ringers, +to strip the black fine skin from a fig. + +A moment later Alix joined them. She had come in from her ducks, and +ate but a hasty and indifferent breakfast so that she might the sooner +begin to prepare their meal. The ducks had been regaled of late on the +minced remains of all the family meals, Alix spending an additional +half-hour at the table while she cut fruit-rinds, cold biscuits, and +vegetables into small pieces, for her gluttonous pensioners. + +"Wait for the ten o'clock train, Pete, and go in with Cherry!" said +Alix, holding a small piece of omelet close to the nose of the +importunate Buck. "Go on, be a sport!--DON'T YOU DARE," she added, to +the dog, who rolled restless and entreating eyes, banged his tail on +the floor, and allowed a faint, disconsolate whimper to escape him. "I +don't think I'll go in," she explained, "for I have about a week's work +here to do. Those Italian boys are coming up to thin the lettuce, and +Kow is going to put up the peaches, and if you both are gone I can have +a regular orgy of housekeeping--really, I'd rather. Here, take it--the +dear old Buckboy--well, did he get so mad he couldn't see out of his +eyes!" she added, affectionately, to Buck, as the omelet disappeared +with one snap of his jaws. She folded his two fringed ears into his +eyes, and laid her face against his shining head. "Well, this isn't +feeding the ducks!" she finished, jumping up. "Come see them, Pietro, +they're too darling!" + +"They're extremely dirty and messy," Peter complained, following with +Cherry nevertheless, to see her scatter her chopped food carelessly on +the surface of the little pond, the struggling bodies of the ducklings, +and the bobbing downy heads alike. With quacking and wriggling and +dabbling, the meal was eaten, and Alix, scraping the bowls for last +fragments, and blinking in a flood of sunlight, laughed exultantly at +the exhibition. + +Peter left them there, without one word or look for Cherry, who went +back to the house with her sister in a most agitated and wretched state +of mind. She had the telephone in her hand, to cancel the engagement +with her dentist, when Alix suddenly consented to accompany her into +town; "and at lunch-time we'll take a chance on the St. Francis, Sis," +Alix said, innocently, "for Peter almost always lunches there!" + +Feeling that the question was settled, yet restless and unsatisfied +still, Cherry dressed for town; they climbed into the car; Alix's firm +hands, in yellow chamois gloves, sparched at the wheel; the die was +cast. + +Yet at the station another change of plan occurred, for as Alix brought +the car to the platform Anne came toward them from the arriving train, +a gloved and demure and smiling Anne, anxious, she explained, to talk +over this newest development, and "whether it proved to be of any value +or not," to try to find out what Uncle Lee had really WANTED for them +all, and then agree to do that in a friendly manner, out of court. Alix +turned from the wheel, to face Cherry in the back seat, and Anne leaned +on the door of the tonneau. + +"My first feeling, when Frenny told me," said Anne, chatting pleasantly +in the shade, "was one of such RELIEF! For I hadn't wanted all that +money one bit," she confessed, gaily. "I only wanted to do what was +FAIR. Only two or three nights ago I said to Frenny that it really +belonged to us all, and last night we talked and talked about it, and +the result was that I said that I must see the girls--we three are the +only ones concerned, after all, and"--Anne's old half-merry and +half-pouting manner was unchanged--"what we decide is what really +matters!" she finished. + +"Why, there is no question that it's Daddy's handwriting," Cherry said, +with what, for her, was sharpness, "and it seems to me--it seems to me +Anne--" she added, hesitatingly. + +"That you have a nerve!" Alix finished, not with any particular venom. +"That document throws the case out of court," she said, flatly. "Peter +is confident of that!" + +Anne's pale face flushed a trifle, and her eyes narrowed. + +"Yes, but it doesn't throw the WILL out of court," she said quickly. + +"You proposed to break the Will!" Alix reminded her, getting angry. + +"I know I did, but it might be valid, after all, and under that Will I +inherit only a fifth less than you and Cherry!" Anne answered, also +with feeling. "That's just what I came over to talk about," she added, +still smiling. "Isn't it better," and all friendliness and appeal were +in her voice, "isn't it better to do it all in a kindly manner, than to +fight about it? Why, we can easily settle it among ourselves," she +assured them, sensibly. + +Alix shrugged, and looked down at the wheel of her car with a doubtful +shake of her head. Cherry, now standing beside it on the platform, was +flushed and uncomfortable. There was an awkward pause. + +"Board?" shouted a trainman, with a rising inflection. The sisters +looked at each other in a panic of haste. + +"I can't leave this car here." Alix exclaimed. "I've got to park her +and lock her and everything! Run get on board, Cherry, I don't have to +go in anyway--you've got a date!" + +Cherry's heart leaped, sank coldly, and leaped again, as with a swift +nod of parting she hurried for her train. The other two women watched +her with forced interest as she climbed on board, and as the train +slipped noiselessly out of sight. It curved among the redwoods, and was +gone before either spoke again. Then, as her eyes met Anne's friendly, +questioning smile, Alix said awkwardly: + +"I think the only thing to do is for you and Justin to take this up +with Peter, Anne. I mean--I mean that you were the ones who proposed to +bring it into court in the first place, and--and I don't understand +much about it!" + +"Alix, don't let's talk in a cold, hard, legal way," Anne pleaded. She +had gotten into the back seat, and was leaning on the front seat in an +informal sort of way. "Let's just try to get each other's point of +view!" she suggested. "The idea is that Uncle Lee wanted all his girls +to inherit alike--" + +"That idea didn't seem to impress you much a week ago!" Alix said, glad +to feel herself getting angry. + +"My dear, I was going to divide it to the last PENNY!" Anne assured +her, widening her eyes. + +Alix was silent, but the silence shouted her unbelief. + +"Truly, I was," Anne went on. "This--this discovery only complicates +matters. Why, the last thing in the world that dear Uncle Lee would +wish would be to have us drag the family name into a law-suit--" + +"You and Justin began it!" Alix reminded her, goaded into reluctant +speech. + +"I beg your pardon!" It was a favourite phrase of Anne's. "But it was +Peter who said he would fight!" + +"Well, because you made the claim!" Alix, hating herself for being +betrayed into argument, said hotly. "But I won't talk about it, Anne," +she added, firmly, "and as far as coming to any agreement with me is +concerned, you might just as well have gone back on the train with +Cherry. I hate to talk this way--but we all think you acted very--well, +very meanly!" Alix finished rather flatly. + +"Perhaps it's just as well to understand each other!" Anne said, with +hot cheeks. They exchanged a few more sentences, wasted words and angry +ones, and then Anne walked over to a seat in the shade, to wait for +another train, and Alix, with her heart beating hard and her colour +high, drove at mad speed back to the mountain cabin. + +"I didn't ask her to lunch--I don't care!" Alix said to herself, in +agitation. "She and Justin know they're beaten--they're just trying to +patch it up before it's too late--I don't care--I won't have her think +she can get away with any such scheme--!" + +And so muttering and scolding, Alix got back to her dog and her +barnyard, and soothed herself with great hosing and cleaning of the +duck-pond, and much skimming and tasting of Kow's preserves. After all, +she had grudged this perfect summer day to the city, and she was always +happiest here, in the solitude of the high mountain. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +Meanwhile, Cherry, in the sick flutter of spirits that had become +familiar to her of late, kept her dentist appointment, and at noon +looked at a flushed and lovely vision of herself in the dentist's +mirror. + +"Doctor has given me red lips!" said Cherry, trembling, and trying to +smile to the nurse in attendance. + +"I guess the good Lord gave you your looks," Miss Maloney said +generously. "You're the youngest-looking--to be married!" she added. "I +said to my sister last week, 'That lady has been married nearly six +years!' 'What!' she said, 'That little girl of eighteen--!'" + +"Why--why don't you come and have lunch with me, at the 'Pheasant'?" +Cherry said, suddenly, pushing up the golden hair under her hat. + +"I'd love it," Miss Maloney said, appreciatively, "but Doctor has a one +o'clock appointment after this one, and I shan't get a bite until +nearly three. I've got crackers here--" + +Cherry went out into the blazing street; it was one of the hot +noontides of the year. At two o'clock a wild wind would spring up, and +send papers and dust flying, but just now the heat was dry and clear +and still. + +She was carrying a parasol, and she opened it now and walked slowly +toward Geary Street. She could go and have a cup of tea and a salad at +the Pheasant--she could go to the Pheasant-- + +But she made not the slightest effort to go there. Beyond saying the +words, she had no intention of doing so. She could not even frame in +her thoughts the utter blankness of the feeling that swept over her at +missing an opportunity to see Peter. She turned and went slowly up past +the big shop windows that reflected the burning Plaza, and so came to +the cool, great doorway of the St. Francis. Inside was tempered light +and much noiseless coming and going, meeting and parting. Chinese boys +in plum colour and pale blue went about with dustpans gathering fallen +cigar and cigarette ashes; a pleasant traffic in magazines and +cigarettes and candy and flowers was incessant, back in the dim wide +passageways. + +Cherry drifted into the big, deep-carpeted waiting-room; there were +other women there, sunk into the big leather chairs, watching the +doors, and glancing at the clock. The high windows gave directly upon +Powell Street, where cable-cars were grating to and fro, and where +motor-horns honked, but all noises were filtered here to a sort of +monotone, and the effect of the room was of silence. When a man came +hastily in the door one woman rose, there was a significant smile, a +murmured greeting, before the two vanished. + +In a luxurious chair Cherry waited. Peter certainly would not come in +until half-past twelve, perhaps not then. Long before that time she +might decide to go away; meanwhile, this was a pleasant and restful +place to be. It was cool in here, and the murmuring and waiting women +left in the air the delicate scents of perfumes and of the flowers they +wore. + +Suddenly, with a spring of her heart against her ribs, she saw Peter's +dark head with its touches of iron gray. Groomed and brushed +scrupulously as always, with the little limp, yet as always dignified +and erect, he came to stand before her, and she stood up, and their +hands met. Flushed and a little confused, she followed him to an +inconspicuous table in a corner of the dining room. Then the dreamlike +unreality and beauty of their hours together began again. Cherry felt +adjusted, untrammelled, at ease; she felt that all the uncomfortable +sensations of the past two hours were absurd, forgotten. + +"Did you expect me to meet you?" she smiled. For answer he looked at +her thoughtfully a minute before his own face lighted with a bright +smile. + +"I don't think I thought of your not being there," he confessed. "I was +simply moving all morning toward the instant of meeting. I had a mental +picture of you, always before my eyes, and when you stood up there, it +was just my picture come real!" + +"If THIS is real!" she said, musingly. "Sometimes my thoughts get +so--so mixed," she added, "that I feel as if Alix and the valley--and +Martin especially--were all a dream, and this the true thing." + +"I know how you feel!" Peter answered. He watched her, almost with +anxiety, for a moment, then turned his attention to the bill of fare. +But Cherry was not hungry, and she paid small attention to the order, +or to the food when it came. + +Presently they were talking again, in that hunger for self-analysis +that is a part of new love. They thrilled at every word, Cherry raising +her eyes, shining with eagerness, to his, or Peter watching the little +down-dropped face in an agony of adoration. An hour passed, two hours, +after awhile they were walking, still with that strange sense of +oneness and of solitude, and still as easily as if they had been +floating, to the ferry. + +Alix met them in Mill Valley with vivid accounts of the day; she had +been pondering the brief talk with Anne, and was anxious to have +Peter's view of it. Peter was of the opinion that Anne's conduct +indicated very clearly that she and Justin realized that their case was +lost. + +"Then you're fixed for life, Cherry," was Alix's first remark. "Oh, +say!" she added, in a burst. "Let's go down to the old house to-morrow, +will you? Let's see what it needs, and how much would have to be done +to make it fit to live in!" + +Cherry flushed, staring steadily at her sister, and Peter, too, was +confused, but Alix saw nothing. The next day she carried her point, and +took them with her down to the old house. It had stood empty since her +marriage, for winter storms had gone hard with it, and the small rent +it would have brought them through the summer months was not enough to +warrant the expense of putting it in order. It looked neglected and +shabby; it was almost buried in the dry over-growth of the untended +garden. There was a drift of colourless leaves on the porch, the steps +were deep in the dropped needles of the redwoods, the paths were quite +lost to sight under a fine wash of winter mud, and the roses and lilacs +were grown woody and wild. + +Alix was suddenly silent, and Cherry was pale and fighting tears, as +they crossed the porch, and fitted the key in the door. Inside the +house the air was close and stale, odorous of dry pine walls and of +unaired rooms. Peter flung up a window, the girls walked aimlessly +about, through the familiar yet shockingly strange chairs and table +that were all coated thickly with dust. Somehow this dust gave Cherry a +desolate sensation, it covered everything alike: the spectacle case and +the newspaper that still lay on her father's desk; the cups and glasses +that remained, face downward at the sink, from some last meal. Her +hands and Alix's were speedily coated with it, too; they felt sad and +unnatural here, in the house where they had spent so many years. + +"It needs everything!" Alix said, after a first quick tour of +inspection, eyeing a great weather streak on the raw plaster of the +dining-room wall. "It needs air, cleaning, straightening, +flowers---Gosh, how it does need people!" + +"I--I can't bear it!" Cherry said softly, in a sick undertone. + +Alix, who was rapidly recovering her equilibrium, sprang upstairs +without hearing her, but Cherry did not follow. She went to the open +front doorway and stood there, leaning against the sill, and gazing +sadly out at the shabby, tangled garden that had sheltered all the +safety and joy and innocence of her little girl days. + +"Peter," she said, as he came to stand beside her, "I'm so unhappy!" + +"I'm sorry!" he said, simply. + +"I can't--I can't ever be here!" Cherry half-whispered. "At least I +can't until some day--years from now--years from now!--when you and I +have forgotten---" + +"I never shall forget," he said. And after awhile he added, "Shall you?" + +"No," she whispered, her eyes brimming until the dry and dusty green of +the garden swam before her. + +"Cherry, will you end it?" he asked her, huskily. + +She gave him a startled look. + +"End it?" she faltered. + +"Will you--do you think you are brave enough to give everything else up +for me?" he asked. + +"Peter!" said Cherry, hardly above a breath. + +"Will you go away with me?" Peter went on, feverishly. "That's the only +way, now. That's the only way--now. Will you go away?" + +"Go away!" Cherry's face was ashen as she moved her tragic and +beautiful eyes to his. "Go away where?" + +"Anywhere!" Peter answered, confusedly. "Anywhere!" He did not meet her +look, his own went furtively about the garden. Immediately he seemed to +regain self-control. "I'm talking like a fool!" he said, quickly. "I +don't know what I'm saying half the time! I'm sorry--I'm sorry, Cherry. +Don't mind me. Say that you'll forgive me for what I said!" + +He had taken her hands, and they were looking distressedly and soberly +at each other when an unexpected noise made them step quickly apart. +Cherry's heart beat madly with terror, and Peter flushed deeply. + +It was Martin Lloyd's aunt, Mrs. North, their old neighbour, who came +about the corner of the house, and approached them smilingly. How much +had she seen? Cherry asked herself, in a panic. What were they +doing?--what were they saying as she appeared?--how much had their +attitude betrayed them? + +Mrs. North was the same loud-laughing, cheerful woman as of old. She +had moved to Portland to be near Martin's mother, some years before, +and was delighted with the chance that had brought her back to the +valley on the very day that brought the Strickland girls back to the +old house. + +She kissed Cherry, and was full of queries for Martin. + +"Durango? Belle told me something about his going there," she said. +"Isn't he the wandering Ayrab? And ain't you the good-natured little +wife to follow him about everywhere? How long you been here, Cherry?" + +"I've been with Alix and Peter for--for several weeks," Cherry said, +uneasily. Her eyes met Peter's, and he conveyed reassurance to her with +a look. + +"When you going back, dear?" Mrs. North asked, with so shrewd a glance +from Cherry's exquisite rosy face to Peter's that he felt a fresh pang +of suspicion. She HAD seen something---- + +"Why, I've been rather--rather kept here by the--the law-suit, haven't +I, Peter?" Cherry explained. "But I expect to go as soon as it's all +settled! Here's Alix," she said, gladly, as Alix came downstairs with +an old kodak album in her hands. + +"Look, Cherry--I'd forgotten this!" Alix said, in deep amusement, +holding out the book. But she immediately put it aside to greet the old +friend. + +"I'll bet you three are having real good times!" Mrs. North said, with +a curious look from one to the other. + +"You know what I hope," Alix told her, "is that Cherry and Martin will +always keep the old place open now. They could get a Chinese boy for +very little to keep it in order, and then, you see, with all Martin's +moving about, she'd always have headquarters here. And I don't believe +Cherry'll ever love another place as she does the valley--will you, +Sis?" Alix ended, eagerly. Cherry met the arm her sister linked around +her, half-way, and gave her a troubled smile. + +And yet a few moments later, when some quest took Peter suddenly from +the group, she watched the shabby corduroy suit, the laced high boots, +and the black head touched with gray, disappear in the direction of the +kitchen with a tearing pain at her heart, and the words the other women +were saying hummed without meaning in her ears. + +"When you three girls got started, you all went off together!" Mrs. +North commented. "I used to say I thought you girls never would +marry--you never seemed to take much interest in the men!" + +"I never thought we'd marry!" Alix agreed, pleasantly. "Did you, +Kirschwasser?" + +"I don't think I ever thought about it--much," Cherry said, rousing +herself from a musing mood. + +"According to age," Alix pursued, in one of her absurdly argumentative +moments, "Anne should have married Peter, Cherry, Justin, and I, +Martin. But the truth is, we didn't seem to give the matter sufficient +thought!" + +"Girls never do; it isn't expected!" Mrs. North said, with her +indulgent laugh, as they followed Peter into the empty kitchen which +smelled of dry woods and drains. Dust was thick on Hong's range, and +one of his old white aprons was flung limply across a chair. Cherry's +eyes were thoughtful, filled with a look of pain. It was true; girls +didn't think anything about it, it wasn't expected of them. And yet, in +these very rooms, her father had urged her to consider; consideration +simply wasn't in that feather-brained little head of hers in those +days. Words seemed to have no meaning, or were transmuted into +different meanings by Martin Lloyd's voice. Her father had asked her to +wait, wait until she was nineteen! Nineteen had seemed old then. She +had felt that at nineteen she would have merely delayed the great joy +of life for nothing; at nineteen she would be only so much older, so +much more desperately bent upon this marriage. + +And Peter was there then, was coming and going, advising and teasing +her--so near, so accessible, loving her even then, had she but known +it! That engagement might as easily--and how much more wisely!--have +been with Peter; the presents, the gowns, the wedding would have been +the same, to her childish egotism; the rest how different! The rest +would have been light instead of darkness, joy instead of pain, dignity +and development and increasing content instead of all the months of +restless criticism and doubt and disillusionment. The very scene here, +with Mrs. North and Alix, might easily have been, with Cherry as the +wife of Peter, Cherry as her sister's hostess, in the mountain cabin-- + +At the thought her heart suffocated her. She stood dazedly looking out +of the old kitchen window, and her senses swam in a sudden spasm of +pain. + +And Alix? Well, Alix might have been Mrs. Lloyd. Martin had told her +more than once that he had "a crush on Alix, right off the bat!" And +Alix had liked him, too--any girl would like any man under the same +circumstances of age and environment. Alix would have made Martin a +better wife; she would have loved the mining towns, the muddy railroad +stations, and the odd women. She would have had her dogs, perhaps a +child or two now. Anyway, ran Cherry's thoughts, she would have had the +old home now, and that, to Alix, would have meant a very triumph of +joy. She would have come to stay with Peter and Cherry while it was put +in order; she would have revelled in cows and ducks and dogs here. + +"Cherry, child, come and lend us a hand!" Peter said. They were trying +to push aside the ice-box that blocked the unlocked kitchen door. +Cherry went to them at once; the little word "child" danced in her +heart all day, and warmed it when she was lying wakeful and restless +deep into the summer night. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +"You and I must go away!" said Peter. "I can't stand it. I love you. I +love you so dearly, Cherry. I can't think of anything else any more. +It's like a fever--it's like a sickness. I'm never happy, any more, +unless my arms are about you. Will you let me take you somewhere, where +we can be happy together?" + +Cherry turned her confident, childish face toward him; her lashes +glittered, but she smiled. + +"I love you, Peter!" she said. And the words, sounding softly through +the silence of the garden, died away on the warm night air like music. + +It was night, the third night of the harvest moon. Through the branches +of the oak tree under which they were sitting blots of silver were +falling; between them the shadows were inky black. The grass was a +sheen of pearly light, the little cabin was like an enchanted dwelling, +wreathed with flowers, and steeped in moonshine. Toward the ocean, over +the moon-flooded ridge, a great fold of creamy fog was silently +pushing, and Cherry had a scarf of creamy lace caught about her +shoulders. Her coil of corn-coloured hair was loosened; she and Peter +had been moving geranium slips all afternoon, and at supper-time, when +a telephone message from Alix had advised them that she was obliged to +stay in town to dine with an exacting old family friend, they had +parted only to bathe and change, before sitting down for dinner in the +sunset beauty of the porch. + +It had been a memorable meal, an hour always to have its place in their +hearts. In the two weeks since the day at the old house they had not +chanced to be often alone, and to-night, for the first time, Cherry +admitted that she could fight no longer. A few days before she had +again gone to the dentist, and again had waited for Peter at the great +hotel. But on this occasion he had not known of her engagement in town, +and had lunched elsewhere, so that Cherry had waited, growing weary, +headachy, and heartsick as the slow moments went their way. Peter, +happening to telephone to Alix, at about two o'clock, had learned that +Cherry was in the city, and hanging up the receiver, had sat wrapped in +agitated thought for a few minutes before rushing to the hotel on the +desperate hazard of finding her there. + +The sight of the little patient figure, the irradiation of her face, as +they met, the ecstasy of delight with which their hands were joined, +and the flood of joy in their hearts, as he took her to tea, was +illuminating to them both. Cherry had spent two long hours waiting only +for the sight of that eager, limping, straight-shouldered form, and +Peter had experienced enough anguish as he sped to find her to tear the +last deception away. + +To-night they talked as lovers, his arm about the soft little clinging +figure, her small, firm fingers tight in his own. He had squared about +on the great log that was their seat so that his ardent eyes were +closer to her; the world held nothing but themselves. It was eight +o'clock. + +"So this is the thing that was waiting for us all these years, Cherry, +ever since the time you and Alix used to dam my brook and climb my oak +trees!" + +"I never dreamed of it!" Cherry said, with wonder in her tone. + +"If we had dreamed of it--" Peter began, and stopped. + +"Ah, if we had, it would all be different," Cherry said, with a look of +pain. "That's the one thing I can't bear to think of!" + +"What is?" he asked, watching the lovely face that was only dimly +visible in the moonlight. + +"Oh, that it all might have been so simple--so easy and right!" the +girl answered. "That we might have been so happy instead of so sad--" + +"It makes you sad, dear?" + +"Peter, how could it make me anything else? Why, what can come of it?" +Cherry asked, sorrowfully. "I cannot stay on here, now. I cannot--" She +freed herself from his arms, and walked away from him restlessly +through the moonshine, twisting her arms above her head. "I cannot go +back to Martin!" he heard her whisper, in an agony. "I can't leave +you--I can't leave you!" + +"Shall we go away?" Peter asked, simply, when she stopped at the great +stone that Alix, for the view it commanded, had christened Sunrise +Rock. Cherry dropped down upon it, facing away from him across the soft +green luminous light of the valley. + +"Go where?" she asked. + +"Go anywhere!" he answered. "We have money enough; we can leave Alix +rich--she will still have her cabin and her dogs and the life she +loves. But there are other tiny places, Cherry; there are little cabins +in Hawaii, there are Canadian villages--Cherry, there are thousands of +places in the south of France where we might live for years and never +be questioned, and never be annoyed." + +"France!" she whispered, and the downcast face he was watching so +eagerly was thoughtful. "How could we go," she breathed. "You first, +and then I? To meet somewhere?" + +"We would have to go together," he decided, swiftly. "Everyone must +know, dear; you realize that?" + +Wide-eyed, she was staring at him as if spellbound by some new hope; +now she shrugged her shoulders in careless disdain. + +"That isn't of any consequence!" + +"You don't feel it so!" He sat down beside her, and again they locked +hands. + +"Not that part," she answered, simply. "I mind--Alix," she added, +thoughtfully. + +"Yes, I mind Alix!" he admitted. + +"But the injury is done to Alix now," Cherry said, slowly. "Now it is +too late to go back! You and I couldn't--we couldn't deceive Alix here, +Peter," Cherry added, and as she turned to him he saw her thin white +blouse move suddenly with the quick rising of her heart. "That--that +would be too horrible! But I could take this love of ours away, leave +everything else behind, simply--simply recognize," stammered Cherry, +her lips beginning to tremble, "that it is bigger than ourselves, that +we can't help it, Peter. I'd fight it if I could," she added, +piteously, "I'd go away if I didn't know that no power on earth could +keep me from coming back!" + +She buried her head on his shoulder, and he put his arm about her, and +there was utter silence over the great brooding mountain, and in the +valley brimming with soft moonshine, and in the garden. + +"I believe that even Alix will understand," Peter said after awhile. +"She loves you and me better than any one else in the world; she is not +only everything that is generous, but she isn't selfish, she is the +busiest and the most sensible person I ever knew. I know--of course I +know it's rotten," he broke off in sudden despair, "but what I'm trying +to say is that Alix, of all people I know, is the one that will make +the least fuss about it--" + +Cherry was staring raptly before her; now she grasped his hand and said +breathlessly: + +"Oh, Peter, are we talking about it? Are we talking about our going +away, and belonging to each other?" + +"What else?" he said, quick tears in his eyes. + +"Oh, but I've been so unhappy, I've been so starved!" she whispered. "I +thought I wanted people--cities--I thought I wanted to go on the stage. +But it was only you that I wanted. Oh, Peter, what a life it will be! +The littlest cottage, the simplest life, and perhaps a beach or woods +to walk in--and always talking, reading, always together. I never want +to come back; I never want to see any one; I never want anything but +that." + +"France it must be, I think," he said, "for then we can go about--no +one will know us---" + +"But we will meet people we know in the trains, going," Cherry said, +suddenly. "I know what I am doing," she added, "but that would be so +hard, to have them identify us, perhaps come up to us, whisper and +point!" + +"But why not go by sea?" he mused, "why not to Japan and through India, +and so on to France?" + +"No!" she said quickly. "On a long sea-trip someone would surely know +us--isn't there some way we can get away, disappear as if we had never +been?" + +"Cherry!" he said, kneeling before her in the wet grass. "You know what +it means!" + +"It means you!" she answered, after a silence. She had laid her hands +softly about his neck, and her shining eyes were close to his. + +"And you trust me?" he whispered. "You know that when I am free and you +are free--" + +She put her fingers over his mouth. + +"Peter! Haven't I known you ever since I was little enough to sit in +your lap and have you read 'Lady Jane' to me? It's so beautiful--it's +so wonderful--to love this way," she said, in her innocent, little-girl +voice, "that it seems to me the only thing in the world! I'd come to +you, Peter, if it meant shame and death and horror. It doesn't mean +that, it only means a man and a woman settling down somewhere in the +south of France, a big quiet man who limps a little, and a little +yellow-headed woman in blue smocks and silly-looking hats--" + +"It means life, of course!" he interrupted her. "The hour that makes +you mine, Cherry, will be the exquisite hour of my whole life!" + +They were silent for a while, and below them the white moonlight +deepened and brightened and swam like an enchantment. + +"If you will face it," Peter said, presently, "I will give every +instant of my life to you!" + +"I know you will," she said, dreamily. + +"There will be no coming back, Cherry." + +"Oh, I know that!" + +"There can't ever be--there mustn't be--you've thought of that?" he +said, uncertainly. In the curious, unreal light that flooded the world, +he saw her turn, and caught the gleam of her surprised eyes. + +"You mean children--a child?" she said, surprisedly. "Why not, Peter?" +she added, tightening her fingers, "what could be more wonderful than +that we should have a child? Can you imagine a happier environment for +a child than that little sunshiny, woodsy beach cottage; can't you see +the little figure--the two or three little figures!--scampering ahead +of us through the country roads, or around the fire? Oh, I can," said +Cherry, her extraordinary voice rich and sweet with longing, "I can! +That would be motherhood, Peter, that wouldn't be like having a baby +whose father one didn't--one COULDN'T love, marriage or no marriage!" + +And as he watched, amazed at the change that love had brought to quiet, +little inarticulate Cherry, she added, earnestly: + +"I've been thinking how BITTER it was, Peter, to have the greatest +thing in life come to us this way, but just lately--just this last hour +it's come to me that it is right--it's best!--to have it so. We give +all the world up, and we get only each other, and yet how little it +seems to give, and how much to get! Why, every hour of it, every minute +will hold more joy than we've ever known! I couldn't," she said, +suddenly grave, "I couldn't take you from any one who loved you as I +do; I couldn't hurt any one, to be happy. But Alix will forgive us; +you'll see she will!" + +"Alix--I know her!--will only be sorry for me," Cherry mused. "She'll +only think me mad to disgrace the good name of Strickland; she'll think +we're both crazy. Perhaps she'll plunge into the orphanage work, or +perhaps she'll go on here, gardening, playing with Buck, raising +ducks--she says herself that she has never known what love means--says +it really meaning it, yet as if the whole subject was a joke--a +weakness!" + +"I believe she will forgive us, for she is the most generous woman in +the world," Peter said, slowly. "Anyway--we can't stop now! We can't +stop now! It will take me only a few days now to close everything up, +to arrange matters so that she shall have plenty of money, and so that +I can carry on the affairs of my mother's estate at long range. Spencer +will attend to the rents, mail me quarterly checks; the whole thing is +simple. And I will let you know--" + +"It all seems so unreal!" Cherry said, with her heart beginning to +hammer with excitement. "It doesn't seem as if it was you and me, +Peter. I shall not need a trunk; I shall buy new things--it will be a +new life---" "There is the steamer line that goes to Los Angeles," +Peter mused. "Yes--I believe that is the solution," he added, with a +brightening face. "Nobody you know goes there on it; it leaves daily at +eleven, and gets into Los Angeles the following morning. From there---" + +"I don't know ANYBODY there!" Cherry said, eagerly. + +"You wouldn't see anybody anyway. From there we can get a drawing-room +to New Orleans; that's only a day and a half more; and we can keep to +ourselves if by any unlucky chance there should be any one we know on +the train--" + +"Which isn't likely!" + +"Which isn't likely! Then at New Orleans we go either to the Zone, or +to South America, or to any one of the thousand places--New York, if we +like, by water. By that time we will be lost as completely as if we had +dropped into the sea. I'll see about reservations--the thing is, you're +too pretty to go quite unnoticed!" he added, ruefully. + +He saw a smile flicker on her face in the moonlight, but when she +spoke, it was with almost tearful gravity: + +"You arrange it, Peter, and somehow I'll go. I'll write Alix--I'll tell +her that where she's sane, I'm mad, and where she's strong, I'm weak! +And we'll weather it, dear, and we'll find ourselves somewhere, alone, +with all the golden, beautiful future before us. But, Peter, until this +part of it's over we mustn't be alone again--you mustn't kiss me again! +Will you promise me?" + +As stirred as she was, he gathered her little fingers together, and +kissed them. + +"I'll promise anything!" + +"I'll make it up to you," Cherry said, with a sort of feverish +weariness. "I'm all confused and frightened now; I only want it +somehow--somehow, to be over! I want you to take me away somewhere," +she whispered, with the hands he was clasping resting on his breast, +and her flowerlike face raised to his, "take me somewhere, and take +care of me! I only want you!" + +"Cherry, my darling--my dearest!" Peter said. "I will take care of you. +Only trust me for a few days more, and we will be away from it all. And +now you put it all out of your mind, and run in and go to bed. You're +exhausted, and if Alix gets the eight o'clock train she will be here in +a few minutes. I'll wander down the road a little way, and meet the car +if she drives it up." + +"Good-night!" she breathed, and he saw the white gown flicker against +the soft light on the lawn, and saw the black shadow creeping by it, +before she mounted the porch steps, and was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +Swept along by a passionate excitement that seemed actually to consume +her, Cherry lived through the next three days. Alix noticed her mood, +and asked her more than once what caused it. Cherry would press a hot +cheek to hers, smile with eyes full of pain, and flutter away. She was +well, she was quite all right, only she--she was afraid Martin would +summon her soon--and she didn't want to go to him--! + +Alix was puzzled, watching her sister with anxious eyes. The cleaning +and refurnishing of the old home was proceeding rapidly, and Alix +feared that the constant memory of the old times would be too much for +Cherry. She tried to induce her to rest, to spend this morning or that +afternoon in the hammock, but Cherry gently but irresistibly refused. +Her one hope was to be busy, to tire her brain and body before night. + +Suspecting something gravely amiss, Alix tried to win her confidence +regarding Martin. But briefly, quickly, and with a sort of affectionate +and apologetic impatience, Cherry refused to discuss him. + +"I shall not go back to him!" she said, breathing hard, and with the +air of being more absorbed in what she was doing than what she was +saying. She and Alix were dusting the books in their father's old +library, and arranging them on the shelves, on a quiet September +morning. + +"But, Cherry, dear, you were saying yesterday that you dreaded his +sending for you!" Alix said, in a troubled surprise. + +"Yes, I know I was!" Cherry admitted, quickly. + +"But did you mean that you are really going to leave him?" the older +sister questioned. And as Cherry was silent she repeated: "Are you +going to leave him, dear?" + +"I don't know what I'm going to do!" Cherry half sobbed. + +"But, dearest--dearest, you're only twenty-four; don't you think you +might feel better about it as time goes on?" Alix urged. "Now that the +money is all yours, Cherry, and you can have this nice home to come to +now and then, isn't it different?" + +Cherry, an old volume in her hand, was looking at her steadily. + +"You don't understand, Sis!" she said. + +"I understand that you don't love Martin," Alix said, perplexed. "But +can't people who don't love each other live together in peace?" she +added, with a half smile. + +"N-n-not as man and wife!" Cherry stammered. + +Alix sat back on her heels, in the ungraceful fashion of her girlhood, +and shrugged her shoulders. + +"Think of the people who are worrying themselves sick over bills, or +sick wives, or children to bring up!" she suggested, hopefully. "My +Lord, if you have enough money, and food, and are young, and well--!" + +"Yes, but, Alix," Cherry argued, eagerly, "I'm NOT well when I'm +unhappy. My heart is like lead all the time; I can't seem to breathe! +People--isn't it possible that people are different about that?" she +asked, timidly. + +"I suppose they are!" Alix conceded, thoughtfully. "Anyway, look at all +the fusses in history," she added, carelessly, "of GRANDE PASSIONS, and +murders, and elopements, and the fate of nations--resting on just the +fact that a man and woman hated each other too much, or loved each +other too much! There must be something in it that I don't understand. +But what I DO understand," she added, after a moment, when Cherry, +choked with emotion, was silent, "is that Dad would die of grief if he +knew you were unhappy, that your life was all broken up in +disappointment and bitterness!" + +"But is that my fault!" Cherry exclaimed, with sudden tears. + +Alix, after watching her for a troubled minute, went to her, and put +her arm about her. "Don't cry, Cherry!" she pleaded, sorrowfully. + +Cherry, regaining self-control, resumed her work silently, with an +occasional, sudden sigh. Alix, clapping the heavy covers of a +leatherbound volume in Buck's inquisitive nose, presently laughed gaily +as he sneezed and pawed. + +She had opened the subject with reluctance; now she realized that they +had again reached a blank wall. + +Three days after their talk in the moonlit garden Peter found chance to +speak alone to Cherry. + +"Are you ready?" he asked. + +"Quite!" she said, raising blue eyes to his. + +"What about your suitcase?" + +"I took it into San Francisco yesterday; Alix went in early, and I +followed at noon. It's checked in the ferry building, waiting." + +"It's to-morrow then, Cherry!" he said. + +"To-morrow!" He saw the colour ebb from her face as she echoed him. +This was already late afternoon; perhaps her thoughts raced ahead to +to-morrow afternoon at this time when they two would be leaning on the +rail of the little steamer, gazing out over the smooth, boundless blue +of the Pacific, and alone in the world. + +"To-morrow you will be mine!" he said. + +"That's all I think of," she answered. And now the colour came up in a +splendid wave of flame, and the face that she turned toward his was +radiant with proud surrender. + +He told her the number of the dock; they discussed trains. + +"We sail at eleven," said Peter, "but I shall be there shortly after +ten. I'll have the baggage on board, everything ready; you only have to +cross the gangplank. You have your baggage check; give it to me." + +They were waiting in the car while Alix marketed; Cherry opened her +purse and gave him the punched cardboard. + +"I'll tell Alix that I have a last dentist appointment at half-past +ten," she said. "If she goes in with me, we'll go to the very door. But +she says she can't come in to-morrow, anyway. I'll write her to-night, +and drop the letter on the way to the boat." + +"Better wait until we are in Los Angeles," he said, pondering. "I'm +writing, too, of course. I'm simply saying that it is one of the big +things that come into people's lives and that one can't combat. Perhaps +some day--but I can't look forward; I can't tell what the future holds. +I only know that we belong to each other, and that life might as well +be ended as love!" + +"To-morrow, then!" was Cherry's only answer. "I'm glad it's so soon." + +"Good-bye!" said Cherry, leaning over the side of the car to kiss her +sister. Alix received the kiss, smiled, and stretched in the sun. + +"Heavenly day to waste in the city!" said Alix. + +"I know!" Cherry said, nervously. She had been so strangely nervous and +distracted in manner all morning that Alix had more than once asked her +if there was anything wrong. Now she questioned her again. + +"You mustn't mind me!" Cherry said, with a laugh. "I'm desperately +unhappy," she said, her eyes watering. "And sometimes I think of +desperate remedies, that's all." + +"I'd do anything in the world to help you, Cerise!" Alix said, +sympathetically. + +"I know you would, Sis! I believe," Cherry said, trembling, "that +there's nothing you wouldn't give me!" + +"That's easily said," Alix answered, carelessly, "for I don't get fond +of things, as you do! My dear, I'd go off with Martin to Mexico in a +minute. I mean it! I don't care a whoop where I live, if only people +are happy. I'd work my hands to the bone for you--as a matter of fact, +I do work 'em to the bone," she added, laughing, as she looked at the +hands that were stained and rough from gardening. + +"How about Buck?" Cherry said, as the dog leaped to his place on the +front seat, and licked his mistress's ear. + +Alix embraced him lovingly. + +"Well--if he wanted to go with you!" she conceded, unwillingly. "But he +wouldn't!" she added, quickly. Cherry, going to the train, gave her an +April smile, and as she took her seat and the train drew on its way, it +seemed to her suddenly that she might indeed meet Peter, but it would +only be to tell him that what they had planned was impossible. + +But on the deck of the Sausalito steamer, dreaming in the sunshine of +the soft, lazy autumn day, her heart turned sick with longing once +more. Alix was forgotten, everything was forgotten except Peter. His +voice, his tall figure, erect, yet moving with the little limp she knew +so well, came to her thoughts. She thought of herself on the other +steamer, only an hour from now, safe in his care, Martin forgotten, and +all the perplexities and disappointments of the old life forgotten, in +the flood of new security and joy. Los Angeles--New Orleans--France--it +mattered not where they wandered, they might well lose the world, and +the world them, from to-day on. + +"So that is to be my life--one of the blamed and ignored women?" Cherry +mused, leaning on the rail, and watching the plunge of the receding +water. "Like the heroines of half the books--only it always seemed so +bold and so frightful in books! But to me it just seems the most +natural thing in all the world. I love Peter, and he loves me, and the +earth is big enough to hide us, and that's all there is to it. Anyway, +right or wrong, I can't help it," she finished, rejoicing to find +herself suddenly serene and confident, as the boat made the slip, and +the passengers streamed downstairs and so across the ferry place and +into the city. + +It was twenty minutes past ten, a warm, sweet morning, with great +hurrying back and forth at the ferry, women climbing to the open seats +of the cable-cars, pinning on their violets or roses as they climbed. +In the air was the pleasant mingling of the scents of roasting coffee, +salt bay-water, and softening tar in the paving, that is native only to +San Francisco. Cars clanged about the circle, hummed their way up into +the long vista of Market Street, disturbing great flights of gulls that +were picking dropped oats from the very feet of feeding horses. + +Cherry sped through it all, beside herself now with excitement and +strain, only anxious to have the great hands of the clock drop more +speedily from minute to minute, and so round out the terrible hour that +joined the old life to the new. She was hurrying blindly toward the +docks of the Los Angeles Line, absorbed in her one whirling thought, +when somebody touched her arm, and a voice, terrifyingly unexpected and +yet familiar, addressed her, and a hand was laid on her arm. + +In utter confusion she looked up. It was Martin who had stopped her. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +For a few dreadful seconds a sort of vertigo seized Cherry and she was +unable to collect her thoughts or to speak even the most casual words +of greeting. She had been so full of her extraordinary errand that she +was bewildered and sick at its interruption, her heart thundered, her +throat was choked, and her knees shook beneath her. Where was she--what +was known--how much had she betrayed--Her thoughts jumbled together in +a tangle of horrified questioning. + +Gasping, trying to smile, she looked up at him, while the ferry place +whirled about her, and pulses drummed in her ears. She had +automatically given him her hand; now he kissed her. + +"Hello, Cherry, where you going?" for the third time. + +"I came into town to shop," she faltered. + +"You what?" She had not really been intelligible, and she felt it, with +a pang of fright. He must not suspect--the steamer was there, only a +short block away; Peter might pass them; a chance word might be +fatal--he must not suspect-- + +"I'm shopping!" she said distinctly, with dry lips. And she managed to +smile. + +"Well," Martin said, smiling in turn, "surprised to see me?" + +"Oh, Martin--" said her fluttered voice. Even in the utter panic of +heart and soul she knew that for safety's sake she must find his vanity. + +"I'm going to tell you something that will surprise you," he said. "I'm +through with the Red Creek people!" + +"Martin!" Cherry enunciated, almost voicelessly. + +"You remember I wrote you that they fired Mason, and that I was doing +his work and mine, too?" + +"I--I remember!" Cherry, seized by deadly nausea and chill, looked from +a flower vendor to a newsboy, looked at the cars, the people--she must +not faint. She must not faint. + +"Well--but where are you going? Home?" + +"I was going to the dentist a minute, but it's not important." They had +turned and were walking across to the ferry. She knew that there was no +way in which she might escape him. "What did you say?" she said. + +"I asked you when the next boat left for Mill Valley?" + +"We can--go--find out." Cherry's thoughts were spinning. She must warn +Peter somehow. It was twenty minutes of eleven by the ferry clock. +Twenty minutes of eleven. In twenty minutes the boat would sail. She +thought desperately of the women's waiting-room upstairs; she might +plead the necessity of telephoning from it. But it had but one door, +and Martin would wait at that door. The glow of meeting had already +faded from his face, but he was loitering by her side, quite as a +matter of course. + +Suddenly she realized that her only hope of warning Peter was to send a +messenger. But if Martin should chance to connect her neighbourhood +with the boat, when he met her, and her sending of a message to Peter +here-- + +"I think there's a boat at eleven something," she said, collectedly. +"Suppose you go and find out?" + +She glanced toward the entrance of the Sausalito waiting-room, a +hundred yards away, and a mad hope leaped in her heart. If he turned +his back on her-- + +"What are you going to do?" he asked, somewhat surprised. + +"I ought to telephone Alix!" Her despair lent her wit. If he went to +the ticket office, and she into a telephone booth, she might escape him +yet! While he dawdled here, minutes were flying, and Peter was watching +every car and every passer-by, torn with the same agony that was +tearing her. "If you'll go find out the exact time and get tickets," +she said, "I'll telephone Alix." + +"Tickets?" he echoed, with all Martin's old, maddening slowness. +"Haven't you got a return ticket?" + +"I have mileage!" she blundered. + +"Oh, then I'll use your mileage!" Martin said. "Telephone," he added, +nodding toward a row of booths, "no hurry; we've got piles of time!" + +She remembered that he liked a masculine assumption of easiness where +all trains, tickets, railroad connections, and transit business of any +sort were concerned. He liked to loiter elaborately while other people +were running, liked to pull out his big watch and assure her that they +had all the time in the world. She tried to call a number, left the +booth, paid a staring girl, and rejoined him. + +"Busy!" she reported. + +"I was just thinking," Martin said, "that we might stay in town and go +to the Orpheum; how about it? Do we have to have Peter and Alix?" + +Cherry flushed, angered again, in the well-remembered way, under all +her fright and stir. Her voice had its old bored note. + +"Well, Martin, I've been their guest for two months!" + +"I'd just as soon have them!" Martin conceded, indifferently. + +But the diverted thought had helped Cherry, irritation had nerved her, +and the reminder of Martin's old, trying stupidities had lessened her +fear of him. + +"I've got to send a telegram-for Alix," she said. + +"What about?" he asked, less curious than ill-bred. + +"Good-bye to some people who are sailing!" Cherry answered, calmly. +"Only don't mention it to Alix, because I promised it would go +earlier!" she added. + +"I saw the office back here," he told her. They went to it together, +and he was within five feet of her while she scribbled her note. + +"Martin met me. Nothing wrong. We are returning to Mill Valley. C. L." +She glanced at her husband; he was standing in the doorway of the +little office, smoking. Quickly she addressed the envelope. "DON'T READ +THAT NAME OUT LOUD," she said, softly but very slowly and distinctly, +to the girl at the desk. She put a gold piece down on the note. "Keep +the change, and for God's sake get that to the Harvard, sailing from +Dock 67, before eleven!" she said. + +The girl, who had been pencilling a large "10:46" on the envelope, +looked up in surprise; but rose immediately to the occasion. Cherry's +beauty, her agonized eyes and voice, were enough to awaken her sense of +the dramatic. A sharp rap of the clerk's pencil summoned a boy. + +"George, there's a dollar in that for you if you deliver it before +eleven to the Harvard!" said she. The boy seized it, stuck it in his +hat, and fled. + +"And now for the boat!" Cherry said, rejoining Martin, and speaking in +almost her natural voice. They went back to the Sausalito ferry +entrance again, and this time telephoned Alix in real earnest, and +presently found themselves on the upper deck of the boat, bound for the +valley. + +Until now, and in occasional rushes of terror still, she had been +absorbed in the hideous necessity of deceiving, of covering her own +traces, of anticipating and closing possible avenues of betrayal. But +now Cherry began to breathe more easily, and to feel rising about her, +like a tide, the half-forgotten consciousness of her relationship with +this man in the boldly-checked suit who was sitting beside her. She had +thought to escape the necessity of telling him that she was not willing +to return to him; she had been wrapped in dreams so great and so +wonderful that the thought of his anger and resentment had been as +nothing to her. But she had all that to face now. + +She had it to face immediately, too. She knew that every hour of +postponement would cost her fresh humiliations and difficulties. He did +not love her, but he was quietly taking her for granted again, and +until she could summon courage to speak to him with utter frankness and +finality, he would of course claim his position as her husband. + +The thought threw her into a nervous agitation almost as frightful as +that of meeting him had been, and again she felt the dizzy faintness +and sickness of that moment. + +The trip from San Francisco to Sausalito occupies exactly half an hour; +after that there was a train trip of twenty minutes. Cherry knew that +what was done must be done in that time. In Mill Valley Alix would meet +them, perhaps willing to take any cue that Cherry gave her, as to their +relationship, but of course anxious to have that relationship as +pleasant and normal and friendly as possible. + +Her head was still rocking from the shock of the experiences of the +last hour and the last fortnight. Even had she met Peter it might have +been to yield with a sort of collapse to mental and physical +exhaustion. But to be forced to make a fresh effort now, one of the +crucial and fearful struggles of a lifetime, to present her case to +Martin now, and force him to her viewpoint, was almost impossible. + +Yet Cherry knew that it must be done, and as the boat slipped smoothly +past the island that roughly marked the halfway point, she gathered all +her forces for the trial. + +Martin was meanwhile energetically presenting to her the arguments that +had convinced him that he must give up the Mexico position. She vaguely +appreciated that someone named Murry was a traitor, and that the "whole +bunch" were "rubes," but her mind was busy with its own problem all the +while, and the one distinct impression she had from Martin was the +appalling one that he did not dream that she had decided to sever their +union completely and finally. + +"Well, how's the valley? Bore you to death?" he interrupted the flow of +his own topic to ask carelessly. + +"Oh, no, Martin!" she quivered. "I--I love it there! I always loved it!" + +"Alix is a fine girl--she's a nice girl," Martin conceded. "But I can't +go Peter! He may be all right, all that lah-di-dah and Omar Khayyam and +Browning stuff may be all right, but I don't get it!" And he yawned +contentedly in the sunshine. + +After a few seconds he gave Cherry an oblique glance, expecting her +resentment. But she was thinking too deeply even to have heard him. Her +mind was working as desperately as a caged animal, her thoughts +circling frantically, trying windows, walls, and doors in the prison in +which she found herself, mad for escape. + +She blamed herself bitterly now for allowing him, in the surprise and +fear she felt, in the shock of their unexpected meeting, to arrange +this domestic and apparently reconciled return to the valley house. Had +she known beforehand that they were to meet she would have steeled +herself to suggest to him coldly that they lunch somewhere, and talk. +She could imagine now the quiet significance with which she would have +stressed the phrase, "Martin, I want to talk to you." + +Better still, she would have anticipated that meeting with a letter +that would have warned him that his position as a husband was changed. +But it was too late now! Too late for anything but a bald and brave and +cruel half-hour that should, at any cost, sunder them. + +Quick upon the thought came another: what should she and Peter plan +now? For to suppose that their lives were to be guided back into the +old hateful channel by this mere mischance was preposterous. Within a +few days their interrupted trip must be resumed, perhaps +to-morrow--perhaps this very night they would manage it successfully. +Alix was unsuspicious, Martin utterly unconcerned, and perhaps it would +be even easier to do now, than when Alix must at once communicate with +Martin, and perhaps bring him away from his work, to adjust life to the +new conditions. + +But meanwhile, until she could see Peter alone, there was Martin to +deal with, Martin who was leaning forward, vaingloriously reciting to +her long speeches he had made to this superior or that. + +"Martin," she said, impetuously interrupting him, "I've got to talk to +you! I've meant to write it--so many times, I've had it in my mind ever +since I left Red Creek!" + +"Shoot!" Martin said, with his favourite look of indulgent amusement. + +But she knew the little twitch to his lips that was neither indulgent +nor amused. + +"There are marriages that without any fault on either side are a +mistake," Cherry began, "any contributory fault, I mean--" + +"Talk United States!" Martin growled, smiling, but on guard. + +"Well, I think our marriage was one of those!" Cherry said. + +"What have you got to kick about?" Martin asked, after a pause. + +"I'm not kicking!" Cherry answered, with quick resentment. "But I wish +I had words to make you realize how I feel about it!" + +Martin looked gloomily up at her, and shrugged. + +"This is a sweet welcome from your wife!" he observed. But as she +regarded him with troubled and earnest eyes, perhaps her half-forgotten +beauty made an unexpected appeal to him, for he turned toward her and +eyed her with a large tolerance. "What's the matter, Cherry?" he asked. +"It doesn't seem to me that you've got much to kick about. Haven't I +always taken pretty good care of you? Didn't I take the house and move +the things in; didn't I leave you a whole month, while I ate at that +rotten boarding-house, when your father died; haven't I let you +have--how long is it?--seven weeks, by George, with your sister?" + +It poured out too readily to be unpremeditated; Cherry recognized the +tones of his old arraigning voice. He had brooded over his grievances. +He felt himself ill-treated. + +"Now you come in for this money," he began. But she interrupted him +hotly: + +"Martin, you know that is not true!" + +"Isn't it true that the instant you can take care of yourself you begin +to talk about not being happy, and so on!" he asked, without any +particular feeling. "You bet you do! Why, I never cared anything about +that money, you never heard me speak of it. I always felt that by the +time the lawyers and the heirs and the witnesses got through, there +wouldn't be much left of it, anyway!" + +Too rich in her new position of the woman beloved by Peter to quarrel +with Martin in the old unhappy fashion, Cherry laid an appealing hand +on his arm. + +"I'm sorry to meet you with this sort of thing," she said, simply, "I +blame myself now for not writing you just how I've come to feel about +it! But I just want it SAID before we meet Alix--" + +"Have what said?" he asked, surlily. + +"Have it understood," she pursued, patiently, "that we must make some +arrangement for the future--things can't be as they were!" + +"You've had it all your way ever since we were married," he began. "Now +you blame me--" + +"I DON'T blame you, Martin!" + +"Well, what do you want a divorce for, then?" + +"I don't even say anything about a divorce," Cherry said, fighting for +time only. "But I can't go back!" she added, with a sudden force and +conviction that reached him at last. + +"Why can't you?" + +"Because you don't love me, Martin, and--you know it!--I don't love +you!" + +"Well, but you can't expect the way we felt when we got married to last +forever," he said, clumsily. "Do you suppose other men and women talk +this way when the--the novelty has worn off?" + +"I don't know how they talk. I only know how I feel!" Cherry said, +chilled by the old generalization. + +Martin, who had stretched his legs to their length, crossed them at the +ankles, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets, staring at the +racing blue water with sombre eyes. + +"What do you want?" he asked, heavily. "I want to live my own life!" +Cherry answered, after a silence during which her tortured spirit +seemed to coin the hackneyed phrase. + +"That stuff!" Martin sneered, under his breath. "Well, all right, I +don't care, get your divorce!" he agreed, carelessly. "But I'll have +something to say about that, too," he warned her. "You can drag the +whole thing up before the courts if you want to--only remember, if you +don't like it much, YOU DID IT. It never occurred to me even to think +of such a thing! I've done my share in this business; you never asked +me for anything I could give you that you didn't get; you've never been +tied down to housework like other women; you're not raising a family of +kids--go ahead, tell every shop-girl in San Francisco all about it, in +the papers, and see how much sympathy you get!" + +"Oh, you BEAST!" Cherry said, between her teeth, furious tears in her +eyes. The water swam in a blur of blue before her as they rose to go +downstairs at Sausalito. The boat had made the slip, and the few +passengers, at this quiet noontime, were drifting off. + +Martin glanced at her with impatience. Her tears never failed to anger +him. + +"Don't cry, for God's sake!" he said, nervously glancing about for +possible onlookers. "What do you want me to do? For the Lord's sake +don't make a scene until you and I have a chance to talk this over +quietly--" + +Cherry's thoughts were with Peter. In her soul she felt as if his arm +was about her, as if she were pouring out to him the whole troubled +story, sure that he would rescue and console her. She had wiped her +eyes, and somewhat recovered calm, but she trusted herself only to +shrug her shoulder as she preceded Mart to the train. + +There was time for not another word, for Alix suddenly took possession +of them. She had had time to bring the car all the six miles to +Sausalito, and meant to drive them direct to the valley from there. + +She greeted Martin affectionately, although even while she did so her +eyes went with a quick, worried look to Cherry. They had been +quarrelling, of course--it was too bad, Alix thought, but her own +course was clear. Until she could take her cue from them, she must +treat them both with cheerful unconsciousness of the storm. She invited +Martin to share the driver's seat with her, pushing the resentful Buck +into the tonneau with Cherry. + +Alix, in the months that she had not seen him, had had time to develop +a certain generous sympathy for Martin, but as she took the car swiftly +through the warm, sweet summer day, she began to realize afresh just +how serious Cherry's problem was. It was not merely that Martin chewed +a toothpick as he talked to her, and took out a pen-knife to trim a +finger-nail; it was not that he was somewhat vain, stupid, and +opinionated, for the minor social deficiencies might have been remedied +in a larger nature by an affectionate word, and there were times, Alix +felt, when the best of men are insistent upon perverse and perverted +views, and unashamed or unconscious of their limitations. Martin had +coarsened in the six years since they had first known him. There had +been something unspoiled, vigorous, and fresh about him then that was +gone now. Alix sensed that his associates in the mining towns in which +he had lived had been men and women of a low type. The defiling +influence had left its mark. Missing entertainment in his home, he had +sought it elsewhere. + +But besides these things Martin had a certain complacency, an assurance +that would have been inexcusable even in great genius, a mental +arrogance that nothing in his life in the least degree warranted. He +made no slight effort to adapt himself to the atmosphere in which he +found his wife and her sister, interested himself for not one moment in +their concerns, put out no feelers toward the mood that might have made +him an agreeable addition to their group. He conceded nothing; he was +Martin Lloyd, mining engineer, philosopher, man of the world, and it +was for them to listen to him, admire him, and praise and tease and +flatter him in all he did. Humility and shyness were never a part of +Martin's nature, but to-day he was galled by his talk with Cherry, and +less inclined even than usual to abase himself. + +"Does Peter let you drive the car on these mountain roads?" he demanded +of Alix. + +"Oh, yes, indeed. I love to run the car!" she said, with a swift, +smiling glance. + +"Well, you want to keep your eyes on the road," he warned her. "There's +nothing worries me like having a lady at the wheel," he went on, +good-naturedly, "that's the time I say my prayers!" + +"Plenty of women running cars now, Martin!" Alix said, cheerfully, +wishing that Martin didn't always and infallibly nettle her. + +"But it's no business for a woman," he assured her, in a suddenly +serious and confidential undertone. "No business for them! They haven't +the strength, in the first place, and they haven't--well, they're too +nervous, in the second. Mouse cross the road," said Martin, sucking in +deep breaths as he lighted a cigar, "and--whee! Over she goes into a +ditch. No," he said, kindly, "I'm a great friend of all the ladies, but +I think they make a mistake when they think they're men." + +"Only one accident in ten is with a woman driver," Alix argued. + +"That may be true, too," Martin conceded, largely. She knew that he was +drawing his words merely to cover any impression of being caught +unprepared. "That may be true, too. But don't you believe that half the +cases of women's accidents get into the courts," he added, knowingly. +"You bet your life they don't! You bet your sweet life they don't. Oh, +no--pretty girl smiles at the policeman--" He smoked a few seconds in +triumphant silence. "Why, you knew that, didn't you?" he asked, in +kindly patronage. + +"I suppose so!" Alix said, briefly, after swallowing a more spirited +answer with a gulp. + +"Oh, sure!" Martin agreed, in great content. + +They reached the valley, and Martin was magnanimous about the delayed +lunch. Anything would do for him, he said, he was taking a couple of +days' holiday, and everything went. Kow was chopping wood after lunch, +and he sauntered out to the block with suggestions; Alix, laying a fire +for the evening, simply because she liked to do that sort of work, was +favoured with directions. Finally Martin pushed her aside. + +"Here, let me do that," he said. "You'd have a fine fire here, at that +rate!" + +Later he went down to the old house with them, to spend there an hour +that was trying to both women. It was almost in order now; Cherry had +pleased her simple fancy in the matter of hangings and papering, and +the effect was fresh and good. The kitchen smelled cleanly of white +paint, and the other rooms wore almost their old, hospitable aspect. + +"Girls going to rent this?" Martin asked. + +"Unless you and Cherry come live here," Alix said, boldly. He smiled +tolerantly. + +"Why should we?" + +"Well, why shouldn't you?" + +"Loafing, eh?" + +"No, not loafing. But you could transfer your work to San Francisco, +couldn't you?" Martin smiled a deep, wise, long-enduring smile. + +"Oh, you'd get me a job, I suppose?" he asked. "I love the way you +women try to run things," he added, "but I guess I'll paddle my own +canoe for awhile longer!" + +"There is no earthly reason why you shouldn't live here," Alix said, +pleasantly. + +"There is no earthly reason why we should!" Martin returned. He was +annoyed by a suspicion that Alix and Cherry had arranged between them +to make this plan the alternative to a divorce. "To tell you the honest +truth, I don't like Mill Valley!" + +Alix tasted despair. Small hope of preserving this particular +relationship. He was, as Cherry had said, "impossible." + +"Well, we must try to make you like Mill Valley better!" she said, with +resolute good-nature. "Of course, it means a lot to Cherry and to me to +be near each other!" + +"That may be true, too," Martin agreed, taking the front seat again for +the drive home. He told Cherry later that he liked Alix, and Alix was +interested enough in keeping him happy to deliberately play upon his +easily touched self-confidence. She humoured him, laughed at his jokes, +asked him the questions that he was able to answer, and loved to answer. + +She was surprised at Cherry's passivity and silence, but Cherry was +wrapped in a sick and nervous dream, unable either to interpret the +present or face the future with any courage. Before luncheon he had +followed her into her room, and had put his arm about her. But she had +quietly shaken him off, with the nervous murmur: "Please--no, don't +kiss me, Martin!" + +Stung, Martin had immediately dropped his arm, had shrugged his +shoulders indifferently, and laughed scornfully. Now he remarked to +Alix, with some bravado: + +"You girls still sleeping out?" + +"Oh, always--we all do!" Alix had answered, readily. "Peter has an +extra bunk on his porch, Cherry and I have my porch. But you can be out +or in, as you choose!" + +Martin ventured an answer that made Cherry's eyes glint angrily, and +brought a quick, embarrassed flush to Alix's face. Alix did not enjoy a +certain type of joking, and she did not concede Martin even the ghost +of a smile. He immediately sobered, and remarked that he himself liked +to be indoors at night. His suitcase was accordingly taken into the +pleasant little wood-smelling room next to Peter's, where the autumn +sunlight, scented with the dry sweetness of mountain shrubs, was +streaming. + +He began to play solitaire, on the porch table, at five, and Kow had to +disturb him to set it for dinner at seven. Alix was watering the +garden, Cherry was dressing. It was an exquisite hour of long shadows +and brilliant lights; bees from Alix's hives went to and fro, and the +air was full and fragrant, as if a golden powder had been scattered +through it. + +Kow had put a tureen of soup on the table, and Alix had returned with +damp, clean hands and trimly brushed hair, for supper, when Peter came +up through the garden. Cherry had rambled off in the direction of the +barn a few moments before, but Martin had followed her and brought her +back, remarking that she had had no idea of the time, and was idly +watching Antone milking. She slipped into her place after they were all +eating, and hardly raised her eyes throughout the meal. If Alix +addressed her she fluttered the white lids as if it were an absolute +agony to look up; to Peter she did not speak at all. But to Martin she +sent an occasional answer, and when the conversation lagged, as it was +apt to do in this company, she nervously filled it with random remarks +infinitely less reassuring than silence. + +"How long do we stay here?" Martin cautiously asked his wife, when +after dinner, Peter could be heard in the kitchen, interrogating Kow, +and when the drip and splash of Alix's hose was sounding steadily from +the other end of the garden. + +"Stay here?" she echoed, at a loss. + +"Yes," he answered, decidedly. "I can stand a little of it, but I don't +think much of this sort of life! I thought maybe we could all go into +town for dinner and the theatre to-morrow or Saturday. But on Monday +we'll have to beat it." + +"Monday!" Cherry's heart bounded. + +"My idea was, you to come up with me," Martin continued, "we'll see the +folks in Portland--" + +"Martin, isn't it a mistake to go on pretending--" she began bitterly. +But Peter's voice, in the drawing room, interrupted her. "I'll let you +know--we'll talk about it!" she had time to say, hurriedly, before he +came out to them. He flung himself into a chair. Martin at once opened +a general conversation, in which Alix, still diligently watering, was +presently near enough to take part. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +The evening dragged. Alix had suggested bridge, but Martin did not play +bridge. So she presently scattered anagrams over the table, reminding +Peter of some of their battles with word-making in the long winter +nights, and they had a half-hearted game, in which Martin showed no +interest at all, and Peter deliberately missed chances to score. + +Alix glanced furtively at her wrist-watch; it was twenty minutes of +ten. As Martin flung himself into a chair beside the fire, and lighted +one of his strong cigars, she went to the piano, and began to ramble +through various songs, hoping that somebody would start to sing, or +suggest a favourite, or in some way help to lighten the dreadful +heaviness of the atmosphere. + +Cherry and Peter, left at the table, did not speak to each other; Peter +leaned back in his chair, with a cigarette; Cherry dreamily pushed to +and fro the little wooden block letters. + +But presently her heart gave a great plunge, and although she did not +alter her different attitude, or raise her eyes, her white hand moved +with directed impulse, and Peter's casual glance fell upon the word +"Alone." + +When he laid his finished cigarette in the tray, it was to finger the +letters himself, in turn, and Cherry realized with a great thrill of +relief that he was answering her. Carelessly, and obliterating one word +before he began another, he formed the question: "My office to-morrow?" + +"Martin always with me," Cherry spelled back. She did not glance at +Peter, but at Martin, who was watching the fire, and at Alix, whose +back was toward the room. + +"Come on, have another game!" Peter asked, generally, while he spelled +quickly: "Will arrange sailing first possible day." + +Alix, humming along with her song, said: "Wait a few minutes!" and +Martin glanced up to say, "No, I'm no good at that thing!" + +Then Cherry and Peter were unobserved again, and she spelled "Mart goes +Monday. Plans to take me." + +Peter had reached for a magazine; he whirled through the pages, and +yawned. Then he began to play with the anagrams again. + +"Can you get away without him?" he spelled. + +"How?" Cherry instantly asked. And as Peter's hands went on building a +little bridge of wooden letters, she went on: "Alix to train, Martin +with me to city, impossible." + +"Give him the slip," Peter spelled. And after a pause he added, "Life +or death." + +"Difficult to evade," Cherry spelled, wiping the words away one by one. + +"Must wait--" Peter began. Alix, ending her song on a crash of chords, +came to the table, interrupting him. Cherry was now lazily reading a +magazine; Peter had built a little pen of tiny blocks. + +"I'll go you!" Alix said, with spirit. But the game was rather a +languid one, nevertheless, and when it was over they gathered yawning +about the mantel, ready to disperse for the night. + +"And to-morrow night we dine in town and go to the Orpheum?" Alix +asked, for the plan had been suggested at dinner-time. + +"I'll blow you girls to any show you like," Martin offered. He took out +his big watch--Cherry remembered just how smoothly this watch always +seemed to slip in and out of his pocket--and smiled at them. "Ten +o'clock," he grinned. "I'll set up awhile longer, and have a look at +the evening papers." + +"Well--" Peter conceded. Cherry was shocked by the sudden chill and +sternness of his face. Immediately, remarking that he was tired, he +went to his room. Cherry, with only a general good-night, also +disappeared, to find Alix arranging beds and pillows on their sleeping +porch. + +"Oh, Alix--I'm so worried--I'm so sick with worry!" Cherry whispered. +Alix, sitting still in the circle of light thrown from the reading lamp +light, over her bed, nodded, with a stricken face. "He won't listen to +me," said Cherry. "He won't hear of a divorce!" + +"I know!" Alix said, distressedly. + +"But what shall I do--I can't go with him!" Cherry protested. + +Alix was silent. + +"What shall I do?" Cherry pleaded again. + +"Why, I don't see what else you CAN do, but go with him!" Alix said, in +a troubled voice. "I should think that no man would want his wife, +knowing that she didn't want to be with him! And I should think that to +leave you here, with enough money to live on, and your own old home, +would suit him better than to drag you--" She sighed. "But if it +doesn't," she finished, "of course it doesn't alter your obligation, in +a way. You ARE his wife. 'For better or worse, for richer or poorer, +till death---'" + +It was said so kindly, with Alix's simple and embarrassed fashion of +giving advice, that poor Cherry could not resent it. She could only bow +her head desolately upon her knees, as she sat, child-fashion, in her +bed, and cry. + +"A nice mess I've made of my life!" she sobbed. "I've made a nice mess +of it! I wish--oh, my God, how I wish I was dead!" + +"My own life has been so darned easy," Alix mused, in a cautious +undertone, sitting, fully dressed, on the side of her own bed, and +studying her sister with pitying eyes. "I've often wondered if I could +buck up and get through with it if some of that sort of thing had come +to me! I don't know, of course, but it seems to me that I'd say: 'Who +loses his life shall gain it!' and I'd stand anything--people and +places I hated, loneliness and poverty--the whole bag of tricks! I +think I would. I mean I'd read the Bible and Shakespere, and enjoy my +meals, and have a garden--" Her voice sank. "I know it's terribly hard +for you, Cherry!" she ended, suddenly pitiful. + +Cherry had stopped crying, dried her eyes, and had reached resolutely +for the book that was waiting on the little shelf above the porch bed. + +"You're bigger than I am," she said, quietly. "Or else I'm so made that +I suffer more! I wish I could face the music. But I can't do anything. +Of course, just--just loathing some things about a man isn't valid +cause for divorce, I know that. But I'd rather live with a man that +drank, and stole, and beat me--I'd rather he should disgrace me before +the whole world, and drag me to prison with him, than to feel as I +feel! I would, Alix. I tell you--" Her voice was rising, but suddenly +she interrupted herself, and spoke in a lifeless and apologetic tone: +"I'm sorry," she said. "One knows of unhappy marriages, everywhere, +without quite fancying just what a horrible tragedy an unhappy marriage +is! Don't mind me, Alix. The Mill Valley Zeus will have an item in it +this week that Mr. and Mrs. Martin Lloyd have gone to visit relatives +in Portland, Oregon, and nobody'll know but what we're the happiest +couple in the world--and perhaps we are!" + +Alix laughed uncomfortably. She was conscious, as she went out to speak +to Kow about breakfast, and to give a final glance at fires and lights, +that this was one of the times when girls needed a wise mother, or a +father, who could decide, blame, and advise. + +Coming back from the kitchen, with a pitcher of hot water, she saw +Martin, in a welter of evening papers, staring at the last pink ashes +of the wood fire. Upon seeing her he got up, and with a cautious glance +toward the bedroom doors he said: + +"Look here a minute! Can they hear us?" Alix set down her pitcher of +water, and came to stand beside him. + +"Hear us--Peter and Cherry? No, Cherry's out on our porch, and Peter's +porch is even farther away. Why?" + +"Take a look, will you?" he said. "I want to speak to you!" + +Alix, mystified, duly went to glance at Cherry, reading now in a little +funnel of yellow light, and then crossed to enter Peter's room. His +porch was dark, but she could see the outline of the tall figure lying +across the bed. + +"Asleep?" she asked. + +"Nope!" he answered. + +"Well, don't go to sleep without pulling a rug over you!" she +commanded. "Good-night, Pete!" + +"Good-night, old girl!" Something in the tone touched her, with a vague +hint of unhappiness, but she did not stop to analyze it. She went back +through his room, and through the little passage, and rejoined Martin. +The freedom of Peter's apartment Alix had always taken as naturally as +she did the freedom of her father's. + +"Can't hear us, eh?" Martin asked, when again she stood beside him. + +"Positively not!" she answered. + +"Look here," he said, abruptly. "What brought me up here is this. Who's +making love to Cherry?" + +Indignant, and with rising colour, she stared at him. + +"Who--WHAT!" + +"She's having a nice little quiet flirtation with somebody," Martin +said, with a significant and warning smile. "Who is it?" + +"I don't know who's been talking to you about Cherry, Martin," Alix +said, sharply, "but you know you can't repeat that sort of rotten +scandal to me!" + +"I don't mean any harm--I don't mean any harm!" he assured her, with a +quick attempt to quiet the storm he had raised. "Don't get mad--don't +get mad! But I happen to know that there's some attraction that's +keeping Cherry here, and I came up to look over the ground for myself, +do you see?" + +His look, which was almost a leer, seemed to imply that Alix was in the +secret, a party to Cherry's foolishness, and did imply very distinctly +that Martin felt himself to be more than a match for all their cunning. +The woman was silent, looking straight into his eyes. + +"Come on, now, put me on!" he said. + +Alix made an effort at self-control. + +"Martin, you're mistaken!" she said, quietly. "You have no right to +listen to any one who tells you such things, and if it wasn't that +you're Cherry's husband, I wouldn't listen to you! But you'll have to +take my word for it that it's a lie. We three have lived up here +without seeing any one-ANY ONE! Cherry has hardly spoken to a man, +except Peter and Antone and Kow, since she came!" + +"Who's this George Sewall?" he asked, shrewdly. "The lawyer! Oh, +heavens, Martin! Why, George was a beau of mine; he's a widower of +fifty, and has just announced his engagement to the trained nurse that +took care of his boy!" + +"H'm!" Martin commented. + +"If any one mentioned Cherry's name in connection with George," Alix +said, firmly, "that was a perfectly malicious slander--" + +"Sewall's wasn't mentioned!" Martin said, hastily. + +"Whose name WAS mentioned, then?" Alix pursued, hotly. + +"Well, nobody's name was mentioned." Martin took a great many creased +and rubbed papers from his vest pockets, and shifted them over. +Finally, with a fat, deliberate hand he selected one, and put the +others away. + +"This is from my mother," he said. "My aunt, Mrs. North--" + +"We saw her here, a week or two ago!" Alix said as he paused. + +"Well, she was in Portland, and saw the folks," said Martin. "And my +mother writes me this--" And after a few seconds of searching, he read +from the letter: "Bessie North saw Cherry and Mrs. Joyce in Mill +Valley, and if I was you I would not let Cherry stay away too long. A +wife's place is with her husband, especially when she is as pretty as +Cherry, and if Bessie is right, somebody else thinks she is pretty, +too, and you know it doesn't take much to start people talking. It +isn't like she had a couple of children to keep her busy. Why don't you +bring her up here and leave her with Papa and me while you look over +the Mexican proposition?" + +"That's all of that," said Martin, folding the letter. He eyed Alix +keenly. "Well, what do you think?" he asked, triumphantly. + +"I think that's a mean, wicked thing to say!" she said, indignantly. +"No, Martin," she said, silencing him, as he would have interrupted +her, "I know she is beautiful and young, and I know--because she's told +me--that you and she feel that your marriage is a mistake, but if you +think--" + +"Oh, she said that, did she?" + +"Don't use that tone!" Alix commanded him quickly. "She didn't blame +you or herself, except in that she didn't listen to my father, who +thought she was too young to marry any one! But if you want to lose +her, Martin," Alix said, with heat, "just let her suspect all this +petty suspicion and scandal! Cherry's proud--" + +"Now, look here," he said, with his air of assurance, "I'm proud, too. +And if I don't choose to stand before the world as a divorced man--" + +"Nobody's talking of divorce!" Alix hushed him. "But no woman would +stand having other women spy and suspect--" + +"How about this Sewall!" he muttered. "By George, she had SOMETHING on +her mind when she met me to-day. She was fussed, all right, and it +wasn't all the surprise of seeing me, either. First she wanted to +telephone you--then she fussed over your message--" + +"Cherry gets fluttered very easily!" Alix reminded him. + +"Well, she was fussed all right this morning. She said not to mention +it to Alix, because she had promised that it should go on time. I +thought maybe she meant that you wanted her to go herself; no, she +said, a note would do--" + +"I don't know what you're talking about!" Alix said, puzzled. + +"Your note!" Martin explained. + +"What note! I didn't write any note. Cherry telephoned--" + +"No," he said, patiently and perfunctorily, "you +wanted--Cherry--to-say--good-bye--to--those--people--who--were--sailing! +That was all. She wrote it; it got there in time, I guess. Anyway, I +heard the girl say to rush it to the boat!" + +"Oh!" Alix said. "Oh--" she added. Her tone betrayed nothing, but she +was thoroughly at sea. "Did I ask Cherry to say good-bye to any one?" +she asked herself, going back to the beginning of the long day. +Instinct warned her that nothing would be gained by sharing her +perplexity with Martin. "I give you my word that she hasn't been five +minutes alone with any one but Peter and me!" she said, frankly, +looking into Martin's eyes. "Now, are you satisfied?" + +"Sure, I'm satisfied!" he answered. "She didn't go into town to lunch +with any one?" he asked. + +"No!" Alix said, scornfully. "She always lunches with us! You don't +deserve her, to talk so about her, Martin!" she said. + +"Well, I'm not anybody's fool, you know!" he assured her. "All right, +I'll take your say-so for it." He yawned, "Trouble with Cherry is, she +hasn't enough to do!" he finished, sapiently. + +"I'm a poor person with whom to discuss Cherry!" Alix hinted, with an +unsmiling nod for good-night. + +And she looked at Cherry's corn-coloured head, ten minutes later, with +a thrill of maternal protectiveness. Cherry was evidently asleep, +buried deep under the blue army blankets. But Alix did not get to sleep +that night. + +She did not even undress. For it was while sitting on the side of her +bed, ready to begin the process, that through her excited and indignant +and whirling thoughts the first suspicion shot like a touch of flame. + +"How dares Martin--how dares he!" her thoughts had run. And then +suddenly she had said: "Why, she has seen no one but Peter--she has +seen no one but Peter! + +"I'll tell Peter all this when Martin has gone," Alix decided. "He'll +be furious--he adores Cherry--he'll be furious--he thinks that there is +no one like Cherry--" + +The words she had said came back to her, and she said them again, +half-aloud, with a look of pain and almost of fear suddenly coming into +her eyes. + +"Peter adores Cherry--" + +And then she knew. Even while the sick suspicion formed itself, vague +and menacing and horrible, in her heart, she knew the truth of it. And +though for hours she was to weigh it and measure it, to remember and +question and compare all the days and hours that she and Peter and +Cherry had been together; from the moment the thought was born she knew +that it was to be with her as an accepted fact for all time to come. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +For a few seconds Alix felt ill, dazed, and shocked almost beyond +enduring. She sat immovable, her eyes fixed, her body held rigid, as a +body might be in the second before it fell after a bullet had cleanly +pierced the heart. + +Then she put her hand to her throat, and looked with a sort of terror +at the silent figure of Cherry. Nobody must know--that was Alix's first +clear thought. She was breathing hard, her breast rising and falling +painfully, and the blood in her temples began to pound; her mouth was +dry. + +With a blind instinct for solitude she went quickly and silently from +the sleeping porch, and into the warm sitting room. The lamps were all +extinguished, but the fire was still burning, low and pink, where the +hearts of the logs had fallen apart to show the flame. + +For a few minutes Alix stood, with one foot on the chain that linked +the old brass fire dogs, her elbow on the mantel, and her cheek resting +against her arm. + +"No," she whispered, almost audibly, "no--it can't be that! It can't be +Cherry and Peter--Oh, my God! Oh, my God, it has been that, all the +time, THAT, all the time--and I never knew it--I never dreamed it!" + +The end of a log blazed up with a sudden bright flame, and in the light +it cast about the quiet room Alix glanced nervously behind her. Silence +and shadow held the place; the bedroom doors were shut. The fugitive +red warmth picked out the backs of books--Alix knew them all, had +browsed over those shabby rows during a hundred winter nights--touched +the green shaded lamps, and the roses that were dropping their petals +from the crystal bowl, and the polished legs of the old mahogany table. + +Nothing moved, nothing stirred. Everything in the little mountain cabin +was at rest except the woman who stood, with aching heart and feverish +mind, resting her arm on the level of the low mantel, and staring with +desolate eyes into the fading heart of the fire. + +"It's Peter and Cherry! They have come to care for each other--they +have come to care for each other," she said to herself, her thoughts +rushing and tumbling in mad confusion as she tested and tried the new +fear. "It must be so. But it CAN'T be so!" Alix interrupted herself in +terror, "for what shall we do--what shall we do! Cherry in love with +Peter. But Peter is my husband--he is MY husband--" And in a spasm of +pain she shut her eyes, and flung her head as if suffocating. The +beating of her heart frightened her. "I shall be sick if I go on this +way!" she reminded herself. "And then they will know. They mustn't +know. But Peter--" she whispered suddenly. "Peter, who has always been +so good to me--so generous to me--and it was Cherry all the time! While +we were up here, reading and talking, and--" her lips trembled, "--and +cooking," she told herself, "he was thinking of Cherry--he was always +thinking of Cherry! Even those years ago, when we used to tease him +about the lady with the crinolines and ringlets, it was she. But why +didn't he ask her instead of me?" wondered Alix, and with an aching +head, and a frowning brow, she began to piece it all together. + +The terrible truth rose triumphant from all her memories. Sometimes for +a second hope would flood her with almost painful joy, but inevitably +the truth shut down upon her again, and hope died, and she realized +afresh that sorrow, stronger than before, was waiting to seize upon her +again. + +Sorrow and fear and pain, these wrestled with her spirit, that spirit +that had never known them before. She had grieved for her father a few +years ago; she would always miss him and need him--perhaps never more +than to-night. But that was natural loss, softened by everything that +love and loyalty and faith could give her, and this was a living +anguish, which wrung and twisted her heart more terribly with every +instant of its realization. + +"Well--I can't stand it in here!" Alix said, suddenly. The walls, the +peaceful room, seemed to smother and stifle her. She crossed to the +door, and opened it, and slipped noiselessly out into the night, +catching a coat from the rack as she passed. + +The night was wrapped in an ocean fog, there was no moon and no stars, +but the air was soft and warm. The garden was so black that Alix, +familiar with every inch of it as she was, groped her way confusedly +between the wet bushes and shrubs. Roses drenched her with fog and dew, +a wall-flower springing erect as she passed by sent a wave of velvety +perfume into her face. + +When she gained the woods she made better progress, for under the great +shafts of the redwoods there was little growth, and the ground was +unencumbered and almost as smooth as a floor. With no goal in view, +Alix climbed upward, walking rapidly, breathing hard, and frequently +speaking aloud, as some poignant thought smote her, or standing still, +too sick with pain, under an unexpected rush of emotion, to move. + +Sometimes some small woodland animal scrambled noisily through the dry +brush, in escape, and now and then an owl, perhaps a mile away, broke +the silence with a mournful and muffled cry. Tiny squeaks and sleepy +chirps from birds and chipmunks recognized the disturbance of a +stranger's passage through the wood, and once the ugly snarling of +wild-cats, always alert in the night, sounded suddenly near, and then +died as suddenly away. + +Of these things Alix heard nothing. In a trance of feverish dread she +went on and on, trying to escape from the conviction that grew +momentarily more and more clear. + +"He would have told me about it--why didn't I let him!" ran Alix's +thoughts. "I thought of some older woman, I don't know why--anyway, I +didn't care so much then. But I care now! Peter, I care now! I can't +give you up, even to Cherry. It is nonsense to talk of giving him up," +Alix told herself, sitting down in the inky dark, on a log against +which her wild walk had suddenly brought her, "for we are all married +people, and we all love each other. But oh, I am so sorry! I am so +sorry, Peter," she whispered, as if she were speaking to him. "You +couldn't help it, I know that. She is so pretty and so sweet, +Cherry--and she turns to you as if you were her big brother!" + +She sat motionless, her hands clasped, and raised so that her cheek was +pressed against them. For awhile she seemed to have no thoughts; she +was merely vaguely aware that the hands she had plunged into the +pockets of one of Peter's old coats were scented with tobacco now, and +so reminded her of him. She pressed them hard against her face, as if +to ease the pain of her forehead. + +But the thoughts, exactly like a pain, began to creep back. With +choking bitterness it was upon her again, and she got to her feet and +went on. + +"What am I thinking about--it's absurd! Can't people like each other, +in this world, just because they happen to be married! Peter would be +the first to laugh at me. And is it fair to Cherry even to think that +she would-- + +"Oh, but it's true!" the honester impulse interrupted, mercilessly. "It +is true. Whether it's right or wrong, or sensible or absurd, they DO +love each other; that's what has changed them both." + +And she began to remember a hundred--a thousand--trifles, that made it +all hideously clear. Words, glances, moods subtler than either, came +back to her. Cherry's confusion of late, when the question of her +return to Martin was raised, her indifference to her inheritance, her +restless talk during one hour of immediate departure, and during the +next of an apparently termless visit; all these were significant now. + +"I am desperately unhappy!" Cherry had said. And immediately after +that, Alix recalled wretchedly, had come a brief and apparently aimless +talk about Alix's rights, and her eagerness to share them with her +sister. + +Cherry had been in misery, of course. Alix knew her too well not to +know with what suffering she would admit that the one desire of her +heart was for something to which Alix had the higher, if not the +stronger, claim. + +"Poor Cherry!" the older sister said aloud, standing still for a +moment, and pressing both hands over her hot eyes. "Poor little old +Cherry--life hasn't been very kind to her! She and Peter must be so +sorry and ashamed about this! And Dad would be so sorry; of all things +he wanted most that Cherry should be happy! Perhaps," thought Alix, "he +realized that she was that sort of a nature, she must love and be +loved, or she cannot live! But why did he let her marry Martin, and why +wasn't he here to keep me from marrying Peter? What a mess--mess--mess +we've made of it all!" + +As she used the term, she realized that Cherry had used it, too, this +same evening, and fresh conviction was added to the great weight of +conviction in her heart. + +"She was thinking of that," Alix told herself, "and it has been in +Peter's mind all these weeks. Oh, Peter--Peter--Peter!" she moaned, +writhing as the cry escaped her. "Why couldn't it have been me, why +couldn't it have been me! Why couldn't you have loved me that way? I +know I am not so pretty as Cherry," Alix went on, resuming her restless +walk, "and I know that those things don't seem to mean as much to me as +to most women! But, Peter," she said softly, aloud, "no wife ever loved +a man more than I love you, my dear!" She remembered some of his +half-laughing, half-fretful reproaches, when he had told her that she +loved him much as she loved Buck, and that, in these respects, she was +no more than a healthy child. "I may be a child," said Alix, feeling +that a dry flame was consuming her heart, "but a child can love! My +dear--my dear-- + +"I wish I could cry," she said suddenly, finding herself sitting on a +log where low oaks met the forest and the open meadows, and where they +had often paused in mountain climbs to look far across the panorama of +hills and valley below. "But now we must face this thing sensibly. What +is to be done? They must not know that I know, and in some way we must +get out of this tangle. Even if Peter were free, Cherry would not be +free," she decided, "and so the only thing to do is to help them, until +it dies away." + +No suspicion of the truth stabbed her, although she remembered Martin +and his strange tale of a message and wondered about it a little in her +thoughts. To whom had Cherry been sending that telegram if not to +Peter? And if to Peter, why had she not simply telephoned? Because she +had known that Peter was not in his office, because she had been going +to meet him somewhere. But where? Well, at the boat. Martin had heard +her tell the boy that he must catch that boat. + +Alix did not guess the truth. But she guessed enough to make her feel +frightened and sick. She could not suppose that Cherry and Peter had +planned to go away on that boat together, because at most her thoughts +would have grasped the idea of one or two days' absence only, and they +had given her no warning of that. But until this instant the thought of +the passionate desire that enveloped them had not reached her; she had +imagined Cherry's feeling for Peter to be something only a little +stronger than her own. + +Now she thought of Cherry's beauty, her fragrance and softness, the +shine in her blue eyes and the light on her corn-coloured hair, and +knew that life for them all, of late, had been mined with frightful +danger. + +"Cherry would be disgraced, and Martin--Martin would kill her, if he +found her out! ... Oh, my little sister! She would be town talk; she is +so reckless, she would do anything--she would be a public scandal, and +the papers would have her pictures--Dad's little yellow-headed Charity! +Oh, Dad," she said, looking up into the dark, "tell me what to do! I +need you so! Won't you somehow tell me what to do!" + +Silence and darkness. But even in the gloom Alix could tell that fog +was lifting, and a sudden sweep of breeze, like a tired breath, went +over the tops of the redwoods. + +Steadily came the change. The darkness, by imperceptible degrees, +lifted. The world grew gray as if with moonshine, trees and bushes +began to stand out dimly from the mass of shadows. On the road below +her Alix heard a wagon rattle, the mud-spattered wagon from the +Portuguese dairy upon the ridge; and past her, leaving a dark wake of +brushed dewdrops on the pearled grass, a cottontail fled silently. + +She noted with surprise that she could see the grass now, although it +had been invisible a few moments ago. She could see it, and presently +its brownness showed, and the rich, solid green of the oaks lifted from +the dull twilight that had enveloped the world. + +"Light!" Alix whispered, awestruck And a few moments later she added, +"Dawn!" + +It was dawn indeed that was creeping into the valley, and as it +brightened and deepened and warmed momentarily, Alix felt some of the +peace and glory of it swelling in her tired heart. The sky grew pale, +grew white, gradually turned to blue, and the little clouds drifting +across it vanished, lost in a swimming vapour of pink and pearl. + +Suddenly a first shaft of sunlight struck across the mountain ridge, +and lay bright on the hilltop opposite, the fog that still clung to the +peak of the mountain was steadily ascending into the brilliant air, dew +sparkled, and the hoary, lichened limbs of the sprawling oaks glistened +in the light. The sun came up, and Alix felt the blessed warmth against +her chilled and cramped shoulders, and stretched her arms out to +welcome the flood of brightness and new courage after the darkness and +doubts of the night. + +She was still sitting on the log, dreamily watching the expanding +beauty of the new day, when there was a crashing in the underbrush +behind her, and wild with joy, and with twigs and dried brown grasses +on his wet coat, Buck came bounding out of the forest, and leaped upon +her. + +"Bucky!" she faltered, as he stood beside her, his quick tongue +flashing ecstatically, close to her face, every splendid muscle of his +body wriggling with eager affection. "Did you miss me, old fellow? Did +you come to find me?" + +She had not cried during the long vigil of the night, when a storm had +raged in her heart, and had left her weak and sick with dread. But +there was peace now, and Alix locked her arms about the dog's +shoulders, and laid her face against his satiny head, and cried. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +When Cherry came out to breakfast, a few hours later, she found Alix +already at the porch table. Alix looked pale, but fresh and trim; she +had evidently just tubbed, and she wore one of the plain, wide-striped +ginghams that were extremely becoming to her rather boyish type. + +She looked up, and nodded at Cherry composedly. Cherry always kissed +her sister in the morning, but she did not to-day. She felt troubled +and ashamed, and instinctively avoided the little caress. + +"No men?" she asked, sharing her grapefruit with her mail. + +"Peter had to go to San Rafael with Mr. Thomas in his car, to do +something about the case," Alix explained. "I drove them down, and at +the last minute Martin decided to go. So I marketed, and got the mail, +and came back, and the understanding is that we are to meet them at the +St. Francis for dinner, at six, and go to the Orpheum." + +"Is it almost ten?" Cherry said sleepily, gazing in surprise at the +clock that was visible through the open door. "I'm terribly ashamed! +And when did you get up, and silently make your bed, and hang up your +things?" + +"Oh, early!" Alix answered, noncommittally. "I had a bath, and this is +my second breakfast!" + +Cherry, who was reading a letter, did not hear her. Now she made some +inarticulate sound that made Alix look at her in quick concern. + +"Cherry, what is it?" she exclaimed. + +For answer Cherry tossed her the letter, written on a thick sheet of +lavender paper, which diffused a strong odour of scent. + +"Read that!" she said, briefly. And with a desperate air she dropped +her head on the table, and knotted her hands high above it. + +Fearfully, Alix picked up the perfumed sheet, and read, in a coarse and +sprawling, yet unmistakably feminine handwriting, the following words: + +DEAR MRS. LLOYD: Perhaps you would not feel so pleased with yourself if +you knew the real reason why your husband left Red Creek? It was +because of a quarrel he had with Hatty Woods. + +If you don't believe it you had better ask him about some of the +parties he had with Joe King's crowd, and where they were on the night +of August 28th, and if he knows anybody named Hatty Woods, and see what +he says. Ask him if he ever heard of Bopps' Hotel and when he was in +Sacramento last. If he denies it, you can show him this letter. + +There was no signature. + +Alix, who had read it first with a bewildered and suspicious look, read +it again, and flushed deeply at the sordid shame of it. She laid it +down, and looked in stunned conviction at her sister. + +Cherry, who was breathing hard, raised her head, rested her chin on her +hands, elbows on the table, and stared at Alix defiantly. + +"There!" she said, almost with triumph. "There! Now, is that so easy? +Now, am I to just smile and agree and say 'Certainly, Martin,' 'Of +course, Martin dear!' Now you see--now you see! Now, am I to bear +THAT," she rushed on, her words suddenly violent. "And go on with +him--as his wife--when a common woman like that--" + +"Cherry, dear!" Alix said, distressedly. + +"Ah, well, you can't realize it; nobody but the woman to whom it +happens can!" Cherry interrupted her, covering her face with her hands. +"But let him say what he pleases now," she added, passionately, "let +him do what he pleases--I'll follow my own course from to-day on!" + +Alix, watching her fearfully, was amazed at the change in her. Cherry's +eyes were blazing, her cheeks pale. Her voice was dry and feverish, and +there was a sort of frenzy in her manner that Alix had never seen +before. To bring sunny little Cherry to this--to change the radiant, +innocent child that had been Cherry into this bitter and disillusioned +woman--Alix felt as if the whole world were going mad, and as if life +would never be sane and serene again for any one of them. + +"Cherry, do you believe it?" she asked. + +Cherry, roused from a moment of brooding silence, shrugged her +shoulders impatiently. + +"Oh, of course I believe it!" she answered. + +"But, darling, we don't even know who wrote it. We have only this +woman's word for it--" + +"Oh, LOOK at it--LOOK at it, Alix!" Cherry burst forth. "Do DECENT men +have letters like that sent to their wives? Is it probable that a good +man would do anything to rouse some busybody woman to write such a +letter about him?" + +"Well, but who is she, and what do you suppose she wrote it for?" Alix +wondered. + +"Oh, I don't know. She got mad at him, perhaps. Or perhaps she is a +champion of this Woods woman. They had some quarrel--how do _I_ know? +But you can see that she is mad, and this is the way she gets even!" + +"Cherry, at least do Martin the justice to ask him about it!" Alix +pleaded, really frightened now. + +Her sister seemed not to hear her. She stopped her angry pacing, and +sat down at the table, and the misery in her beautiful eyes made Alix's +heart sink. + +"And that," Cherry said in a whisper, "is my husband!" + +She paused, staring down at the table, one hand supporting her +forehead, the other wandering idly among the breakfast things. Her look +was sombre and far away. Alix, standing, watched her distressedly, +through a long minute of silence. + +"Well!" Cherry said lifelessly, looking up at her sister with dulled +eyes. "What now? It's still 'for better or worse,' I suppose?" + +Alix sat down, and for a moment covered her face with a tight-pressed +hand. When she took it away, there was new serenity and resolution in +her tired face. + +"No," she said, with a great sigh, "I think perhaps you're right! He +hasn't--he should have no claim on you now!" + +"Alix," Cherry demanded, "would you forgive him?" + +"Perhaps I wouldn't," Alix said, after thought. + +"PERHAPS you wouldn't!" Cherry echoed, incredulously. + +"Well, I'm not very good," Alix said, hesitatingly. "But a vow is a +vow, you know. If it was limited, then my--my fulfillment of it would +be limited, I suppose. Of course," she added, honestly, "I'm talking +for myself only!" + +"And you would quietly forgive and forget!" demanded the little sister, +in bitter scorn. + +"I say I HOPE I would!" Alix corrected her. "Even if this IS true"--she +added, with a glance at the lavender letter--"still, I suppose the rule +of forgiving seventy times seven times--" + +Cherry interrupted her with a burst of bitter and rebellious weeping. + +"Oh, my God, what shall I do!" she sobbed, with her bright head dropped +on her arm. Alix saw Kow come to the door, look at them speculatively, +and disappear, and thought in her shaken soul that things in a +household were demoralized indeed when pretense before the servants was +no longer maintained. + +"Don't cry, Cherry, Cherry!" she said, her own tears brimming over. She +came to kneel beside her sister, and they locked their arms about each +other, and their wet cheeks touched. "Don't cry, dear!" she said, +tenderly. "It'll all come straight, somehow, and we'll wonder why we +took it so hard!" + +"The thing that breaks--my--heart!" sobbed Cherry, clinging tight, "is +that it is all my fault!" + +"Oh, no; it's not, Cherry. You were too young. And it's only one of so +many thousands of unhappy marriages!" Alix argued, soothingly. "Now +listen to me, Sis," she began briskly, as soon as Cherry had somewhat +regained her composure. "We'll ascertain about this letter; that's only +fair. If Martin denies it--" + +"Of course he'll deny it!" Cherry interrupted, from the bitter +knowledge she had of him. + +Alix again felt daunted for a second by the sheer ugliness and +sordidness of the matter, but she returned to the charge bravely. + +"Suppose we get Peter to ask him," she suggested suddenly. "Peter has a +wonderful way of getting the truth out of people! Poor Cherry, the very +mention of his name makes her wince," Alix thought, watching her sister +sorrowfully. "If Martin can convince Peter that it is not true, then +that makes all the difference in the world," she added, aloud. "Then +you tell Martin frankly that you have the old house ready to live in, +and you want to live there. He--" + +"He'll never agree to that!" Cherry said, shaking her head. "But if +this is true?" she asked, again indicating the letter. + +"Then tell him that unless he agrees absolutely to a separation," Alix +said, "that you will get a divorce!" + +"And live here, alone, under that sort of a cloud?" Cherry said, with +watering eyes. "Oh, well!" she said, rising, and going toward the door. +"It's horrible--horrible--horrible--whatever I do! What is your +idea--that we should dine, and go to the Orpheum tonight as if nothing +had happened, and let all this wait until you can ask Peter to +cross-examine Martin?" + +"I wonder if Martin would tell ME?" Alix mused. + +"He'd tell you sooner than Peter!" Cherry prophesied. + +"Why couldn't I pretend that I opened that letter by mistake," Alix +said, thoughtfully, "and frighten him into admitting it, if it's true!" + +"You could," Cherry admitted, lifelessly. "But you may be sure it is +true enough!" she added. + +"Then leave it to me!" Alix said. "And don't feel too sad, Cherry. +You're young, and life may take a turn that changes everything for you. +You always have Peter--Peter and me, back of you!" + +"Alix, you're the best sister a girl ever had!" Cherry said, +passionately, putting her hand on Alix's shoulder. "I wish I were as +big as you are! And he's made me so wretched," whispered Cherry, with +trembling lips, "that sometimes I've been sick of life! But I will +investigate this letter, and if it's not true, I'll try again, Alix! +I'll go away with him, if he wants me to, or I'll live here--and study +French--and go to lectures with you--" + +"You darling!" Alix said, with an aching heart. And they smiled through +tears as they kissed each other. + +That night it was simply managed that Martin should be next to Alix, in +the loge at the theatre, and she began to question him seriously at +once. All through the strange, unnatural day that followed her night of +vigil she had been planning what she should say to him, but she and +Cherry had not spoken of the subject again. Cherry had dressed herself +with her usual dainty care, and now, with the violets Alix had given +her spraying in a great purple bunch at her breast, and her blue eyes +ringed and thoughtful under her soft little feathered hat, she was so +arrestingly lovely that Alix was well aware of the admiring glances +from all sides to which she was so superbly indifferent. + +"Martin," Alix began, "I read a letter intended for Cherry this +morning. I--I open all the mail!" + +She had to repeat it twice before he realized that there was something +behind her earnest and significant tone. Then she saw him stop twisting +his program, and veer about toward her. She murmured a question. + +"Do I what?" he asked, in an undertone instantly lowered. + +"Do you know a girl named Hatty Woods?" Alix repeated, cautiously. + +All hope died when she saw his face. He shot her a quick, suspicious +look, and his big mouth trembled with a scornful and contemptuous smile +and he looked away indifferently. Then he faced her, on guard. + +"What about her?" he asked, almost inaudibly. + +"Somebody wrote this letter about her," Alix stated, quietly. + +"Who wrote you about her? What'd she say?" he demanded quickly. + +"Just--I'll let you see it," she said. "I don't know who wrote it--it +wasn't signed. Do you--do you know her? Do you know Hatty Woods?" + +Martin smiled again, a superior yet ugly smile. It was the look of a +man approached in his own realm, threatened in his infallible fastness. + +"The less you have to do with girls like Hatty, the better!" he told +her. "You've got plenty to do without mixing up with her!" + +"She said--" Alix began. "The letter said--" + +"Oh, sure, I know what she'd say!" Martin conceded, furious at Alix's +interference, trembling with anger and resentment, and only anxious to +close the conversation. "I know all about her and her kind. I think I +know who wrote that letter, too. I guess Joe King's wife knows +something about it. They're all alike! You give it to me to-morrow and +I'll manage it. There won't be any more!" + +"Martin," Alix whispered, gravely, "if you have given Cherry any +cause--" Her voice fell, and there was a silence. + +"There are a great many things in life that you don't understand, my +dear sister-in-law," Martin said reluctantly, nettled, but still +maintaining his air of lofty superiority, "a man's life is not a +woman's--isn't intended to be! If this woman says she has anything on +me--" + +"She said that you went to a place called Bopps' Hotel in Sacramento--" +Alix began, but he interrupted her. + +"Oh, she did, did she?" he said, furiously, yet always in a cautious +undertone. "Well, now, I'll tell you something! She's going to have a +nice time proving that, and you can tell your sister--if this is a +frame-up, that I'll fight Hatty Woods and fifty Hatty Woods! I--" + +"Martin--for Heaven's sake!" Alix warned him, as she pressed her +violets against her face. + +"Well," he said, surlily, "now you know how I feel about it!" + +"Martin," Alix pleaded, feeling that her last hope was sinking away +from her, "can you deny her story?" + +He was silent, while a beaming young Jewess in an outrageous gown took +an encore for her song and dance. Then he turned again toward Alix with +the smile she had learned to hate. + +"You get Cherry to deny that she's never lost a chance to beat it away +from home ever since she was married," he said. "You get her to deny +that she has said over and over again that she never wanted children, +that her marriage was a mistake! You ask her to show you the letters +I've written her, asking her to come back, and then I'll show you the +answers I got!" + +"Mart," Alix said, sharply, "there's no use in your taking that tone +with me! I'm simply sick over the whole affair. I would do anything in +the world--I would put my hand in the fire to straighten it out!" + +She paused, arrested by some sudden thought. + +"I tell you I would put my hand in the fire to help," she said again, +in quieter tones. "But taking that attitude will do no good! If this +poor girl, this Hatty--" + +"I tell you to leave Hatty OUT of it!" Martin said. "The best thing you +can do is to let the whole thing alone!" + +But she saw that he was both nervous and apprehensive, and she knew +that the inference she and Cherry had drawn from the letter was a true +one. + +"Does Cherry know anything of this?" Martin presently muttered. + +"Do you want her to?" Alix asked, pointedly. + +He shrugged his shoulders with a great assumption of indifference. + +"If she wants to have it all dragged to light, why, she can go ahead!" +he remarked, carelessly. "I've left Red Creek, and--as I tell +you!--that woman will never write another letter, for I know the way to +shut her up, and I intend to do it. But if you and Cherry want the +whole thing aired in public, why, go ahead! I'm not stopping you!" + +"At least I think you ought to let Cherry lead her own life after +this!" Alix countered with spirit. + +"Live in your old house, eh?" he asked, resentfully, as he flipped the +pages of his program with a big thumb and stared at it with unseeing +eyes. "What does she want to live there for?" + +"The fact remains that she DOES," Alix persisted. + +"Yes, and have just as good a time as if she never had been married at +all!" he said. + +"You KNOW--" + +Alix was beginning the denial that she had given him so confidently +last night, but she interrupted herself, and stopped short. The +conviction rushed upon her in an overwhelming wave that she had no +right to repeat that denial now that the last dreadful twenty-four +hours had changed the whole situation, and that she herself had better +reason to suspect Cherry than either Martin or his gossiping aunt. She +sat sick and silent, unable to speak again, thinking only that it was +Peter that Mrs. Lloyd had seen with Cherry that day, and that there +must have been something in their attitude that revealed their secret +even to her first casual look. + +The vaudeville show whirled and crashed and rattled on its way. Martin +applauded heartily but involuntarily; Alix applauded mechanically. +Their conversation was closed. + +Meanwhile, Cherry and Peter had their first opportunity to speak to +each other alone. It occurred to neither of them that it was strange to +find this chance in the rustling darkness of the big vaudeville house, +with several thousand of persons pressing all about them. To both the +thirst for speech was a burning necessity, and it was with an almost +dizzy sense of relief that Cherry turned to him with her first words. + +"Peter, I don't dare say much! Can you hear me?" + +"Perfectly!" he answered, looking at his folded program. + +"Peter, I've been thinking--about our plan, I mean! Martin plans to go +on Monday. But something has happened since I saw you this morning, +something that makes a difference! I had a letter, a letter from some +woman connecting his name with another woman, a Hatty Woods--she's +notorious in Red Creek--and this Joe King crowd that he went with--I +don't know who wrote the letter, or why she wrote," she said, hastily, +as Peter interpolated a question. "And I don't care! I haven't spoken +to Martin about it. But I've been thinking about it all day. And of +course it makes a difference to us--to you and me. As far as Martin +goes, I am free now; what is justice to Martin, and kindness to Martin, +will never count with me any more!" + +Peter wasted no words. His face was thoughtful. + +"He goes Monday," he said. "We can go Sunday." + +"Does the boat sail Sunday?" + +"I am sure of it. This is Thursday night. Your suitcase I checked again +yesterday. Was it only yesterday?" + +"That's all!" + +"We would have been on the train to-night, Cherry, flying toward New +Orleans!" + +Her small hand gripped his in the darkness. + +"If we only were!" he heard her breathe. + +He turned to her, so exquisite in her distress. Her breast was rising +and falling quickly. + +"Patience, sweetheart!" he said. "Patience for only a few days more! +To-morrow I'll make the arrangements. Sunday is only two days off." + +"Sunday will be day after day after to-morrow," she said whimsically. + +"Is Sunday the best day?" he questioned, thoughtfully. + +"Oh, much the best!" Cherry said, her whole face glowing suddenly. "You +see, it's already arranged that I come in to the Olivers' Saturday +night, and help them get ready for their tea on Sunday. Alix is to stay +in the valley, and play the organ Sunday morning, and come in with +Martin at ten." + +"I suppose I'll have to come when they do!" he mused. + +"But isn't there that breakfast at the club on Sunday?" Cherry asked. + +"Porter's breakfast--yes. But I'm not going to that," Peter said, +stupidly. + +"Couldn't you say that you were?" she supplied, simply. + +"Yes, by George!" he agreed, brightening. "That fixes me! But now how +about you?" + +"Why, I am at the Olivers'!" she reminded him. "All I have to do is +walk out of the house at ten!" + +Their eyes met in a wild rush of triumph and hope. + +"This time we shall do it!" Peter said. "Your suitcase I'll have. You +have money?" + +"Oh, plenty!" + +"Martin thinks you go with him Monday, eh?" + +"I hardly know what he thinks!" she answered, with a fluttered air. +"I've hardly known what I was doing or saying! He was to go to-morrow, +you know. But I told him that I wanted to get the whole house in +perfect order, in case Alix should ever find a tenant. We've worked +like beavers there!" + +"I know you have!" He smiled down at her, Peter's kind and radiant +smile. "After day after day after to-morrow," he said, "I shall see to +it that you never work too hard again!" + +"Oh, Peter--you'll never be sorry?" she whispered. + +"Sorry! My dearest child, when you give your beauty and your youth to a +man almost twice your age, who has loved you all your life--do you +think there is much chance of it?" + +"Why SHOULDN'T it be one of the happy--marriages?" said Cherry after a +silence. + +"It will," he answered, confidently. "My dearest girl, I know something +of life and its disappointments and disillusionments! And I tell you +that I know that every hour you and I have together is going to be more +wonderful than the hour before! I tell you that as the weeks become +months, and the months become years, and the beauty and miracle of it +go on and on, we will think that what we feel for each other now is +only the shadow--the dream!" + +"But the beginning will be wonderful enough!" Cherry mused. "You and I, +breakfasting together, walking together, talking together, always just +we two! But, Peter," she said, suddenly, "one of us might die!" + +"Ah, THAT," he conceded, soberly, "that! It's all I'm afraid of, now!" + +"I am terribly afraid of it!" said Cherry, beginning to tremble. "If +you should die now, before Sunday! I never thought of it before--" + +"You mustn't think of it now, and I won't!" he said, quickly. "Why, we +have only two days to wait--!" + +"Only two!" she echoed, nervously. "I promised him to-night that I +would write to his mother about our coming--" + +"You talk as if you meant to go with Martin!" he said, smiling. + +"I know I do, sometimes, and that's one of the things that worries me!" +she answered, quickly. "So many things have happened, and I get so +confused, thinking," she went on, "that I am all mixed most of the +time! I arrange one thing as if I were going to do what Martin thinks I +am--go with him to Portland, I mean--at another time I'll get into long +talks with Alix of what divorces would mean, and all the time I am +straining toward you--and escape from it all! It worries and frightens +and puzzles me so," she confided, raising her lovely eyes to him, "that +I am almost afraid to speak at all for fear of betraying myself!" + +"Don't speak at all then!" he answered, smiling whimsically. + +"Shall I just let him think I am quietly going away with him on +Monday?" she asked, after a silence in which she was deeply thinking. + +"Does he know you had that letter?" Peter said. + +"No; Alix is going to speak to him about it." Cherry outlined the talk +that she and her sister had had at breakfast. + +"Then I shouldn't bring up the question at all," Peter decided, +quickly. "It would only mean an ugly and unnecessary scene. If you were +going to be here, it would be very different. Even then you might have +to face a terrible publicity and unpleasantness. But as it is, it's +much wiser to let him continue to think that you don't know anything +about it, and to let Alix think that you are ignoring the whole thing!" + +"Until Sunday!" she whispered. + +"Until Sunday." Peter glanced at Martin and Alix, who were talking +together absorbedly, in low tones. "My little sweetheart, I'll make all +this misery up to you!" he whispered. Her little hand was locked in his +for the rest of the evening. + +The vaudeville performance ended, and they went out into the cool +night, decided against a supper, found the car where Alix had parked it +in a quiet side street, and made their way to the ferry, and so home +under the dark low arch of a starless and moonless sky. Cherry shared +the driver's seat with her sister to-night; they spoke occasionally on +the long drive; everybody was weary and silent. Alix, racing between +Sausalito's low hills and the dark, odorous marshes, wondered if in the +packed theatre any other four hearts had borne the burden that these +four were bearing. + +The car flew on its way; the men, in the back seat, occasionally +exchanged brief, indifferent remarks. Cherry, staring straight ahead of +her, neither moved nor spoke, and Alix, at the wheel, watching the road +and the lights keenly, and listening to the complicated breathing of +the machinery, resumed again the endless chain of thought. +Peter--Cherry--Martin--Dad--the few people with whom her life concerned +wheeled in unceasing confusion through her brain, and always it was +herself, Alix, who would have died for them, who must somehow find the +solution. + +Morning came, a crystal autumn morning, and life went on. Peter and +Martin went away before Cherry came out to the porch, to find her +breakfast waiting, and Alix, in striped blue linen, cutting food for +the ducks. The peaceful day went by, and if there was any change at the +cabin it was a change for the better. Alix, who had been silent and +troubled for a little while, was more serene now, as usual concerned +for the comfort of her household, and as usual busy all day long with +her poultry and pigeons, her bee-keeping, stable, and dogs. Peter was +his courteous, gentle, interested self, more like the old Peter, who +had always been occupied with his music and his books, than like the +passionately metamorphosed Peter who had been so changed by love for +Cherry. Martin, satisfied with the general respects and consideration +with which he found himself surrounded, accepted life placidly enough; +perhaps he had been disturbed by the advent of the letter, perhaps he +was willing to let the question of an adjustment between Cherry and +himself rest. If she had been innocently indiscreet, he had also +yielded to temptation, not so innocently, and although Martin was not a +man to consider the question of morals between the sexes as evenly +balanced, still he had winced very uncomfortably under Alix's +cross-examination, and was not anxious to reopen the subject. "Let +by-gones be by-gones!" Martin said to himself, contentedly, as he ate, +slept, and smoked his endless cigars, chatted with Peter, followed Alix +about the farmyard, and expressed an occasional opinion that was +considerately received by the others. It amused him to help get the +house ready for a tenant, and from the fact that Cherry talked no more +of living there, and made no comment upon his frequent reference to +their departure on Monday, he deduced that she had come to her senses. + +Cherry, too, was less unhappy than she had been. By avoiding Peter, by +refraining even in words and looks from the companionship for which she +so hungered by devoting herself to Alix, she managed to hold her +feelings tightly in leash. It cost her dear, for sometimes the thought +of what she was about to do swept her with a feeling of agony and +faintness hard to conceal, and the need for perpetual watchfulness was +exhausting to body and spirit. But even though Alix found that the +knowledge of the secret they shared without ever mentioning stood +between them like a screen, the sisters, busy about the house, had +wonderful hours together. + +Saturday came, a perfect day that filled the little valley to the brim +with golden sunshine. The mountain swam in a pale haze of gray-blue, +the sky was soft, unclouded, faintly azure. In the forest about the old +Strickland house not a breath of air stirred. Alix, driving alone to +the mountain cabin, stared in the morning freshness at the blue +overhead and said aloud, "Oh, what a day of gold!" + +The dog, sitting beside her on the front seat, flapped his tail in +answer to her voice, and she laughed at him. But the laugh was quickly +followed by a sharp sigh. + +"Saturday," she mused, "and Martin expects Cherry to go with him on +Monday! Expects her to go back with him to a life of misery for her, +existence with a man she hates! Oh, Cherry--my little sister!--there +can be no happiness for you there! And Peter! Peter is left behind to +me, who cannot comfort him, or still the ache that is tearing his +heart! My two loved ones, and what can I do to help them!" + +Driving slowly, on the noiseless pine-needles, she looked up at the +great, brown shafts of the trees through which the roadway wound like a +shelf. Streaks of sunlight filtered through them; the September air was +soft and sweet. The forest was like an old friend to Alix, and the time +she spent in it was always her quietest time. The tempered light, the +air scented with piney sweetness, the delicate summer humming of tiny +forest voices, the brief snap of twigs, and the rustling of tiny bodies +in the underbrush, these made the world in which she was most at home. + +"Oh, why can't we always be like children, just happy to be free!" she +mused, as she left the forest and came in sight of the cabin. "How +happy we used to be, playing in these woods and going home tired and +hungry to Dad and supper! Buck," she said aloud, "a dog is happier than +a man, and perhaps"--and Alix smiled her whimsical smile, as the car +moved under the last oaks and was brought to a standstill close to the +house--"perhaps a tree is the happiest of all!" + +She had come up to the cabin to do the usual last little daily fussing +among the ducks and chickens and to bring Peter, if Peter had not gone +into town, back with her to Cherry's house. They had all dined in the +old Strickland house the night before, and because of a sudden rainfall +had decided to spend the night there, too. The Chinese boy who had been +helping the sisters with their housecleaning had been persuaded to cook +the dinner and get breakfast, and the evening about the old fireplace +had been almost too poignantly sweet. Martin, who had been mixing +cocktails, liked the role of host, and to the other three every inch of +the house was full of happy memories, softened and saddened by all that +had happened since the old days, by all that they knew and felt now, +and accompanied by the softly dripping rain on the roof and eaves as by +a plaintive obbligato. + +But suddenly, at about ten o'clock, Peter had surprised them all by +getting to his feet. He was going up to the cabin, he said--must go, in +fact. + +"In all the rain!" they had protested. + +"In all the rain," he answered, shaking himself into his coat; he liked +rain. He would rather walk, please, he told Alix, when she offered to +drive him up in the car. Bewildered and a little apprehensive, she let +him go. To Cherry, who seemed to feel suddenly sad and uneasy, Alix +laughed about it, but she was secretly worried herself, and immediately +after breakfast the next morning decided to run up to the cabin in the +car and assure herself that everything was right there. + +Cherry, who had not slept and who was pale, had come out to the car, +her distracted manner increasing Alix's sense that something was +gravely amiss. The sisters had loitered at the car a moment in the +exquisite morning freshness. + +"Remember the day the rose vine came down and you crawled through it?" +Alix had asked, looking back at the house. + +"Oh, don't!" Cherry had protested faintly. + +"Why not?" her sister had asked, tenderly reproachful. + +"Oh, because it makes me so sad to think how happy we were!" Cherry had +answered, making an effort to speak lightly. "It's such a glorious +morning," she had added, "I wish I were going to drive up with you." + +"Why don't you?" Alix had said, eagerly. + +"Oh--too much to do here!" Cherry had answered, vaguely. She had looked +at her sister as if she would like to speak, smiled uncertainly, and +had gone back to the house. Alix had started on her trip with a heavy +heart, but the half-hour's run soothed her in spite of herself, and now +she reached the cabin in a much more cheerful mood. + +Peter was nowhere about, and as she plunged into the work of house and +farmyard she supposed, without giving the matter a conscious thought, +that he had gone to the city. + +"Mis' Peter not go train," Kow announced, presently. + +All Alix's vague suspicions awakened. + +"Not go train?" she asked, with a premonitory pang. + +Kow made a large gesture, as indicating affairs disorganized. + +"Him no go to bed," he further stated. + +Alix stopped the busy chopping that she was carrying on at the end of +the kitchen table, and looked at the Chinese boy fearfully. + +"Mr. Peter not go to bed?" she echoed with a sick heart. + +"No sleep!" Kow announced, positively. And pleased with her tense +interest, he added, "Boss come late. He walkin' on porch." + +"He came in late and walked on the porch!" Alix echoed in a low tone, +as if to herself. "And you say he didn't sleep, Kow?" + +"Bed all same daytime," the boy said. And with the artless laugh of his +race he added, "_I_ go sleep." + +"You slept, of course," Alix answered, absently. "Where Mr. Peter go +now?" she asked. "He have some coffee?" + +"No eat," the boy answered. He indicated the direction of the creek, +and after a while Alix, with an icy heart, went to the bridge and the +pool where Peter had first found Cherry only a few weeks ago. + +He was standing, staring vaguely at the low and lisping stream, and +Alix felt a great pang of pity when she saw him. He came to her +smiling, but as Cherry had smiled, with a wan and ghastly face. + +"Peter, you're not well?" Alix said. "I think--I am a little upset," he +answered. They walked back to the house together. Alix ordered him to +take a hot bath, and made him drink some coffee, when, refreshed and +grateful, he came out to the porch half an hour later. They shared the +little meal that was her luncheon and his breakfast. + +"And now we've got to go down and get the others, for they're coming up +here for dinner," Alix said. "Do you--do you feel up to tennis?" she +asked, anxiously. + +"Sure I do!" Peter answered with an effort. + +"Don't have to, you know," she assured him, feeling a great desolation +sweep her. + +"Oh, I'd like it. It's a wonderful day," he answered, politely. + +He followed her to the car and got in the front seat beside her. + +"You're awfully good to me," he said, briefly, when they were going +down the long grade. + +Alix did not answer immediately, and he thought that she had not heard. +She ran the big machine through the valley, where the dry, glaring heat +of the day burned mercilessly, stopped at the post-office, and still in +silence began the climb toward the old house. The roads were all narrow +here, but she could have followed them in the dark, he knew, and he +understood that it was not her driving that made her face so thoughtful +and kept her eyes from meeting his. + +On one side of the shelf-like mountain road rose the sharp hillside, +clothed in close-packed, straight-rising redwoods; on the other the +ground fell away so precipitously to the tiny thread of creek below +that they looked down upon the water through the top branches of the +trees. Years ago, when he had first entrusted her with the car, Peter +had been somewhat concerned for Alix's safely, but now he was secretly +proud of her sureness of touch and of the generosity and +self-confidence that prompted her to give the inner right of way to +every lumbering express van or surrey that she met, and risk the more +dangerous passing herself. + +"You say I'm good to you, Pete," she surprised him by saying suddenly. +"I hope I am. For you've been very good to me, my dear. There's only +one thing in life now that I haven't got, and want. And that, you +can't, unfortunately, get for me." + +He had flushed darkly, and he spoke with a little effort. + +"I'd like to try!" + +She ignored the invitation for a few minutes, and for an instant of +panic he thought he saw her lip tremble. But when she turned to him, it +was with her usual smile. + +"It's only that I would like to have you--and--and Martin--and Cherry, +as happy as I am!" she said, quickly. And a second later the mood was +gone as she turned the car in at the home gate and exclaimed, "There's +Cherry now!" + +There was Cherry; Peter's heart gave a leap at the sight of her. Just a +woman's slender figure, half obscured by blowing lines of fresh, dry +linen, just white arms, where the snowy frill of her gown fell back, +and blue eyes under bright, loose, corn-coloured hair, but Peter could +see nothing else in all the world. + +"Martin's somewhere about," Cherry said, as Peter joined her, and Alix +stopped the car within conversational range. "I was passing these, and +I thought I'd help the boy get his clothes in." + +"Here, let me do that," Peter exclaimed. Alix remarking that she would +turn the car so that she might later start on the grade, disappeared, +and the two were alone with their arms full of the stiff and fragrant +cleanness of the linen in the sweetness of the afternoon. + +"Just--just fold them roughly," stammered Cherry, hardly conscious of +what she was saying, "and put them in the basket--" + +Peter did not hear the words. But he heard the wonderful voice; he saw +the red sweetness of the mouth, saw the quick glances of the averted +eyes, the white neck with its film of gold hair blowing across it. + +He murmured something inarticulate in reply, trying to control the +great wave of happiness and emotion that rose over him. They were +together again, after what a night--and what a day!--and that was all +that mattered. They spoke confusedly, in brief monosyllables, and were +silent, their hands touching on the line, their eyes meeting only +furtively and briefly. + +"Can you walk up to the cabin with me?" Peter asked. "I want so much to +speak to you. Everything's all arranged for tomorrow. I've got tickets +and reservations. Your suitcase is checked in the Oakland ferry +waiting-room. All you have to think of is yourself. Now, in case of +missing the boat again--which isn't conceivable, but we must be ready +for anything!--I shall go straight to the club. You must telephone me +there. Just go off to-night quietly, get as much sleep as you can, and +keep your wits about you." + +"Tell me our plans again," Cherry faltered. + +"It's perfectly simple," he said, giving her anxious face a concerned +glance. "You are going to the Olivers'. I go in, in the morning, +presumably for the Porter breakfast, but really to get your suitcase +and my own and get to the boat. I shall be there at half-past ten. You +get there well before eleven--you won't see me. But go straight on +board, and ask for Mrs. Joyce's cabin. Wait for me there!" + +"But--but suppose you don't come!" + +"I'll be there before you. It is better for us not to meet upstairs. +But to be sure, I'll telephone you at Minna Oliver's at about nine +o'clock tomorrow morning. I'll just tell you that I'm on my way and +that everything is all right! Have you your heavy coat?" + +"I will have," she answered. "I've not got much in the suitcase," she +added with an enchanting flush. + +"You shall buy more in New Orleans on Tuesday," he promised her. "I've +made no plans beyond that." + +"A hat?" Cherry asked, with uplifted, silky lashes giving a childish +look to her blue eyes. + +Peter, tightening his fingers on hers, gave a great, joyous laugh of +utter surprise and adoration, as, leaning toward her, he caught her +bashful murmur. + +"You need that?" he whispered. + +"Well--MOST" she answered, seriously. + +"Do you realize," he asked, "that you are the most delicious child that +ever lived?" + +"No, I don't know that," she said, drooping her head, suddenly +self-conscious. + +"Do you realize that by this time tomorrow we shall be out at sea," he +added, "leaning on the rail--watching the Pacific race by--and +belonging to each other forever and ever?" + +The picture flooded her face with happy colour. "It's tomorrow at +last!" she said, wonderingly, as they walked slowly toward the house. +"I thought it would never be. It's only a few hours more now." + +"How will you feel when it's TO-DAY?" he asked. + +"Oh, Peter, I shall be so glad when it's all over, and when the letters +are written, and when we've been together for a year," she answered, +fervently. "I know it will be all as we have planned, but--but if it +were over!" + +They had reached the side door now, and were mounting the three steps +together. + +"Be patient until tomorrow," he whispered. + +"Oh," she said softly, "I shan't breathe until tomorrow." + +Leaning across her to push back the light screen door, he found himself +face to face with Alix. In the dark entryway Peter and Cherry had not +seen her, had not heard her move. Peter cursed his carelessness; he +could not remember, in the utter confusion of the moment, just what he +and Cherry had said, but if it was of a betraying nature, they had +betrayed themselves. One chance in a hundred that she had not heard! + +Yet, if she was acting, she was acting superbly. Cherry had turned +scarlet and had given him an open glance of consternation, but Alix did +not seem to see it. She addressed Peter, but when he found himself +physically unable to answer, she continued the conversation with no +apparent consciousness of his stumbling effort to appear natural. + +"There you are! Are we going to have any tennis? It's after two o'clock +now." + +"Two seventeen," Martin said, following her out of the house and +slipping his big watch back into his pocket. They all gathered in one +of the reclaimed garden paths, assuming a deep interest in the time. + +"I had no idea it was so late," Peter said. + +"I knew it was getting on," Cherry added, utterly at random. + +"Go in and tell the boy we won't be back until tomorrow," Martin +suggested to his wife. "Unless you told him, Alix?" he added, turning +toward her. + +"I beg your pardon?" Her face was very pale, and she started as if from +deep thought as she spoke. + +"You could all come down here to sleep," Cherry said, "and have +breakfast here!" + +"I have to go into town rather early tomorrow," Peter remarked. +"Porter's giving a breakfast at the Bohemian Club." + +"Why not walk up to the cabin?" Cherry suggested in a shaking voice. + +"I have to take the car up. You three walk! Come on, anybody who wants +to ride!" Alix said. + +"They can walk," Martin said, getting into the front seat. "Me for the +little old bus!" + +Cherry came out of the house with her hat on, and Buck leaped before +her into the back seat. Alix watched her as she stepped up on the +running board, and saw the colour flicker in her beautiful face. + +"I thought you were going to walk?" Peter said, nervously. He had +sauntered up to them with an air of indifference. + +"Shall I?" faltered Cherry. She looked at Alix, who had not yet climbed +into the car and was pulling on her driving gloves. Alix, toward whose +face the dog was making eager springs, did not appear interested, so +Cherry turned to Martin. "Walk with us, Mart?" she said. + +"Nix," Martin said, comfortably, not stirring. + +"I'll be home before you, Pete, and wait for you," Alix said. She +looked at him irresolutely, as if she would have added more, but +evidently decided against it and spoke again only in reference to the +dog. "Keep Buck with you, will you, Pete?" she said. "He's getting too +lazy. No, sir!" she reproached the animal affectionately. "You shall +not ride! Well, the dear old Bucky-boy, does he want to come along?" + +And she knelt down and put her arms about the animal, and laid her +brown cheek against his head. + +"You old fool!" she said, shaking him gently to and fro. "You've got to +stay with Peter. Old Buck--!" Suddenly she was on her feet and had +sprung into her place. + +"Hold him, Pete!" she said. "Goodbye, Sis dear! All right, Martin?" + +The engine raced; the car slipped smoothly into gear and vanished. +Peter and Cherry stood looking at each other. + +"Give them a good start, or Buck will catch them," Peter said, his body +swaying with the frantic jumping of the straining dog. But to himself +he said, with a sense of shock: "Alix knows!" + +Buck was off like a rocket when he finally set him free; his feathery +tail disappeared between the columns of the redwoods. Without speaking, +Cherry and Peter started after him. + +"And now that we are alone together," Cherry said, after a few minutes, +"there seems to be nothing to say! We've said it all." + +"Nothing to say!" Peter echoed. "Alix knows," he said in his heart. + +"Whatever we do, it all seems so--wrong!" Cherry said with watering +eyes. + +"Whatever we do is wrong," he agreed, soberly. + +"But we go?" she said on a fluttering breath. + +"We MUST go!" Peter answered. And again, like the ominous fall of a +heavy bell-tongue, the words formed in his heart: "Alix knows. Alix +knows." + +He thought of the afternoon, only a few weeks ago, when Cherry's beauty +had made so sudden and so irresistible an appeal to him, and of the +innocent delight of their luncheons together, when she had first +confided in him, and of the days of secret and intense joy that her +mere nearness and the knowledge that he would see her had afforded him. +It had all seemed so fresh, so natural, so entirely their own affair, +until the tragic day of Martin's reappearance and the hour of agonized +waiting at the boat for the Cherry who did not come. There had been no +joyous self-confidence in that hour, none in the distressed hour at the +Orpheum, and the hour just past, when Cherry's rarely displayed passion +had wrenched from him his last vestige of doubt. + +But this was the culminating unhappiness, that he should know, from +Alix's brave and gentle and generous look as they parted, that Alix +knew. He had, in the wild rush and hurry of his thoughts, no time now +to analyze what their love must mean to her, but it hurt him to see on +her happy face those lines of sternness and gravity, to see her bright +and honest eyes shadowed with that new look of pain. + +It was too late now to undo it; he and Cherry must carry their +desperate plan to a conclusion now, must disappear--and forget. They +had tried, all this last dreadful week, they had both tried, to +extinguish the flames, and they had failed. But to Peter there was no +comforting thought anywhere. Wrong would be done to Martin, to Alix, to +Cherry--and more than even these, wrong to himself, to the ideal of +himself that had been his for so many years, to the real Peter Joyce. + +"If I had it all to do over again, I should not come here," Cherry +began, breathlessly. + +"Ah, if we had it all to do over again!" Looking back half a dozen +years, how simple it all seemed! How uncomplicated life was, in those +old days when the doctor and his girls had teased him, and consulted +him, and made him one of themselves. "What a web, Cherry!" he said, +sadly. "If Anne hadn't made her claim, you would not have been kept +here all these weeks; if the financial question hadn't been raised, you +must have stayed in Red Creek, simply because you couldn't well have +done anything else." + +"And if I had been with Martin, this horrible business of that girl's +letter wouldn't have happened," she added, bravely. "Oh, yes--that's +quite true!" she interrupted him, as he interpolated a bitter protest. +"Mart has no particular principle about it, but he never would have got +in with that crowd if I had been there. So that once more," she ended, +sadly, "I can say that I have made a mess of things. Listen, that's +Buck!" she interrupted herself, as the dog's loud and violent barking +reached them from beyond a turn in the twisting road. "He didn't catch +them, then." + +The next instant a woman came up the road, running, and making a queer, +whimpering noise that Cherry never forgot. She was a stranger to them, +but she ran toward them, making the odd, gasping noise with much dry +mouthing, and with wild eyes. + +Horror was in her aspect, and horror was the emotion that the first +glimpse of her awakened vaguely in their hearts, but as she saw them +she suddenly found voice for so hideous a scream that Cherry's knees +failed her, and Peter sprang forward with a shout. + +He gripped the woman's arm, and her frantic eyes were turned to him. + +"Oh, my God!" she cried in a hoarse, cawing voice. "My God! They're +over the bank--they're over the bank!" + +"Who?" Peter shouted, his heart turning to ashes. + +"Oh, the car--the automobile!" the woman mouthed. "Oh, my God--I saw it +go! I saw it fall! Oh, God, save them-oh, God, take them, don't let +them suffer that way!" + +They were all running now, running with desperate speed down the long +road, about the curves, on and on toward the frantic noise of the dog's +barking, and toward another noise, the sound of a human voice twisted +and wild with agony. + +The strange woman was crying out wildly; Cherry was sobbing a prayer. +Peter, without knowing that he spoke at all, was repeating over and +over again the words: "Not Alix-my God!--it cannot be--she has never +had an accident before-not Alix!" + +A last curve, and they knew. Over one of the sharpest and ugliest of +the descending precipices, crashing down through the saplings and +underbrush and striking the trunks of a score of trees on its way, the +heavy car had fallen like a boulder. And Peter saw that it was Alix's +car, and with a great cry he sprang over the bank and, slipping and +stumbling, followed its mad course down almost to the dry creek-bed in +the canyon, and fell on his knees beside the huddled figure that, erect +and strong, in its striped blue gingham, had been Alix only a few short +minutes ago. + +She had been flung clear of the car, and although almost every bone in +her body was broken, by some miracle the face, except for a deep cut +where the brown hair met the tanned forehead, was untouched. And as he +caught her in his arms and bent over her with the bitterness of death +stopping his own heart, a soft, thick braid loosened and fell like the +touch of her hand upon his own, and it seemed to him that in the +tranquil face and in the very look of the closed and fast-shadowing +eyelids he caught a glimpse of Alix's old smile. + +Peter forgot everything else in the world. He held her close to him and +put his face against her face, and perhaps she had never so truly been +his own as in this moment of their parting, when the quiet autumn +woodland, shot with long shafts from the sinking sun, rang with his +bitter cry: + +"No, Alix--not dead! My wife--my wife!" + +There were other men and women gathering fast now, and the whole little +valley was beginning to ring with the tragedy. After a while some +sympathetic man touched Peter on the arm to say that Mrs. Lloyd had +fainted, and that if he would please tell them what to do about the +other man--he was not yet dead-- + +Peter roused himself, and with help from half a dozen hands on all +sides he carried Alix up to the road and laid her upon a motor robe +that some kindly spectator had spread in the deep dust. AH about he +heard the quick, horrified breathing and muttering of the shocked and +sympathetic neighbours who had gathered, but to him there was a brassy +light in the world and a hideous taste of inky bitterness in the very +air he breathed, and he recognized nobody. + +Presently he was conscious that a small, slight woman with disorderly +fair hair and with her face streaked with dust and tears was standing +beside him, and looking down at her, he saw that it was Cherry. + +"Yes, Cherry?" he said, moistening his dry lips. + +"Peter," she said, "they say Martin's living--he was screaming--" She +grew deathly pale, and faintness swept over her, but she mastered it. +"He was caught by that tree," she said. "And he is living. Will you +tell them--tell one of these men--that if he will help me, we can drive +him home. If you'll tell him that, then I'll get a doctor--" + +"Yes, I will," Peter said, not stirring. His eyes had the look of a +sleep-walker; he nodded slowly and gravely at her, like a very old man. +"You--" he said to a man who had stopped his car near by and who was +pressing sympathetically close. "Will you--?" + +"If you'll sit in the back seat, dear, and just rest his poor head," a +woman said to Cherry. Peter saw that they were lifting Martin's big, +senseless form in tender hands and carrying it through the little +group. There was a shudder as Martin moaned deeply. Peter went and sat +on the low bank by Alix again, and lifted one of her limp hands, and +held it. Ah, if in God's mercy and goodness she might moan, he thought, +that one slight ray of hope would flood all the world with light for +him again! But she did not stir. + +"Gone?" said Cherry's heartrending voice, a mere whisper, beside him. + +He turned upon her lifeless eyes. + +"Gone," he echoed. + +"Oh, Alix--my darling! My own big sister!" + +Cherry sobbed, falling to her knees and passionately kissing the +peaceful face. "Oh, Alix, dearest!" + +The women about broke into tears. Peter pressed his hand close against +his aching eyeballs, wishing that he might cry. + +"She drove here," he heard a man's voice saying in the silence, "and +she must have lost control of her car for a minute. Then--do you +see?--the wheel slipped on the bank. Once it got this far, no power in +God's earth--" + +"No power in God's earth!" another man's voice said in solemn +confirmation. + +"Peter," Cherry said, "will you come to me as soon as you can? I shall +need you." + +"As soon as I can," he answered, absently. + +The car drove away, and he heard Martin moan again as it moved. + +"Joyce," said a man's kind voice close beside him. He recognized the +voice rather than the distressed face of an old friend and neighbour. +"Joyce, my dear fellow," he urged, affectionately, "tell us what we may +do, and we'll see to it. Pull yourself together, my dear old chap. Now, +shall I telephone for an--an ambulance? You must help us just a little +here, and then we'll spare you everything else." + +"Thank you, Fred," Peter answered after a moment, during which he +looked seriously and studiously at his friend, as if ascertaining +through unseen mists and barriers the identity of the speaker. "Thank +you," he said. "Will you help me take--my wife--home?" + +"You wish it that way?" the other man said, anxiously. + +"Please," Peter answered, simply. And instantly there was moving and +clearing in the crowd, a murmuring of whispered directions. + +After a while they were at the mountain cabin, and Kow, with tears +running down his yellow face, was helping them. Then Peter and his +friend were walking up over the familiar trails, he hardly knew where, +in the late twilight, and then they went into the old living room, and +Alix was lying there, splendid, sweet, untouched, with her brave, brown +forehead shadowed softly by her brown hair, and her lashes resting upon +her cheeks, and her fingers clasped about the stems of three great, +creamy roses. + +There were other flowers all about, and there were women in the room. +White draperies fell with sweeping lines from the merciful veiling of +the crushed figure, and Alix might have been only asleep, and dreaming +some heroic dream that lent that secret pride and joy to her mouth and +filled those closed eyes with a triumph they had never known in life. + +Peter stood and looked down at her, and the men and women drew back. +But although the muscles of his mouth twitched, he did not weep. He +looked long at her, while an utter silence filled the room, and while +twilight deepened into dark over the cabin and over the mountain above +it. + +Something cold touched his hand, and he heard the dog whimper. Without +turning his head or moving his eyes from Alix's face, he pressed his +fingers on the silky head; his breast rose on one agonized breath, but +he controlled it. Buck was as still as his master, sensing, in +unfailing dog-fashion, that something was wrong. + +"So that was your way out, Alix?" Peter said in the depth of his soul. +"That was your solution for us all? You would go out of life, away from +the sunshine and the trees and the hills that you loved, so that Cherry +and I should be saved? I was blind not to see it. I have been blind +from the very beginning." + +Silence. The room was filling with shadows. On the mantel was a deep +bowl of roses that he remembered watching her cut--was it yesterday or +centuries ago? + +"I was wrong," he said. "But I think you would be sorry to have me +face--what I am facing now. You were always so forgiving, Alix; you +would be the first to be sorry." + +He put his hand over the tigerish pain that was beginning to reach his +heart. His throat felt thick and choked, and still he did not cry. + +"An hour ago," he said, "if it had been that the least thought of what +this meant to you might have reached me an hour ago, it would not have +been too late. Alix, one look into your eyes an hour ago might have +saved us all! Fred," Peter said aloud, with a bitter groan, clinching +tight the hands of the old friend who had crept in to stand beside him +"Fred, she was here, in all her health and joy and strength only today. +And now--" + +"I know--old man--" the other man muttered. He looked anxiously at +Peter's terrible face. In the silence the dog whimpered faintly. But +when Peter, after an endless five minutes, turned away, it was to speak +to his friend in an almost normal voice. + +"I must go down and see Cherry, Fred. She took her husband to the old +house; they were living there." + +"Helen will stay here," the man assured him, quickly. "I'll drive you +down and come back here. We thought perhaps a few of us could come here +to-morrow afternoon, Peter," he added timidly, with his reddened eyes +filling again, "and talk of her a little, and pray for her a little, +and then take her to--to rest beside the old doctor--" + +"I hadn't thought about that," Peter answered, still with the air of +finding it hard to link words to thought. "But that is the way she +would like it. Thank you--and thank Helen for me--" + +"Oh, Peter, to do anything--" the woman faltered. "She came to us, you +know, when the baby was so ill--day after day--my own sister couldn't +have been more to us!" + +"Did she?" Peter asked, staring at the speaker steadily. "That was like +her." + +He went out of the house and got into a waiting car, and they drove +down the mountain. Alix had driven him over this road day before +yesterday--yesterday--no, it was today, he remembered. + +"Thank God I don't feel it yet as I shall feel it, Thompson!" he said, +quietly. The man who was driving gave him an anxious glance. + +"You must take each day as it comes," he answered, simply. + +Peter nodded, folded his arms across his chest, and stared into the +early dark. There was no other way to go than past the very spot where +the horror had occurred, but Thompson told his wife later that poor +Joyce had not seemed to know it when they passed it. Nor did he give +any evidence of emotion when they reached the old Strickland house and +entered the old hallway where Cherry had come flying in, a few short +years ago, with Martin's first kiss upon her lips. + +Two doctors, summoned from San Francisco, were here, and two nurses. +Martin had been laid upon a hastily moved bed in the old study, to be +spared the narrow stairs. The room was metamorphosed, the whole house +moved about it as about a pivot, and there was no thought but for the +man who lay, sometimes moaning and sometimes ominously still, waiting +for death. + +"He cannot live!" whispered Cherry, ghastly of face, and with the utter +chaos of her soul and brain expressed by her tumbled frock and the +carelessly pushed back and knotted masses of her hair. "His arm is +broken, Peter, and his leg crushed--they don't dare touch him! And the +surgeon says the spine, too--and you see his head! Oh, God! it is so +terrible," she said in agony, through shut teeth, knotting her hands +together, "it is too terrible that he is breathing NOW, that life is +there NOW, and that they cannot hold it!" + +She led Peter into the sitting room, where the doctors were waiting. +The nurses came and went; the lamps had been lighted. Both the +physicians rose as Peter came in, and he knew that they had been told +that this was the man whose wife had been killed that day. Their manner +expressed the sympathy they did not voice. Peter sat down with them. + +"Is there any hope?" he asked, when Cherry had gone away on one of the +restless, unnecessary journeys with which she was filling the endless +hours. One man shook his head, and in the silence they heard Martin +groan. + +"It is possible he may weather it, of course," the older man said, +doubtfully. "He is coming out of that first stupor, and we may be able +to tell better in a short time. The fact that he is living at all +indicates a tremendous vitality." + +Thoughtfully and gravely they exchanged technical phrases. Cherry's +Chinese boy brought in a tray, and both the other men ate and drank. +Peter nodded a negative without a change of expression, but presently +he roused himself to replenish the fire. The clock ticked and ticked in +the stillness. + +Cherry came to the door to say "Doctor!" on a burst of tears. The +physicians departed at once to the study, and Peter was immediately +summoned to assist them in handling the big frame of the patient. +Martin was thoroughly conscious now; his face chalk white. Cherry, +agonized, knelt beside the bed, her frightened eyes moving from face to +face. + +There was a brief consultation, then Cherry and Peter were banished. + +"Don't worry, dear," said one of the nurses, coming out of the +sick-room. "It's just that Doctor Henry thinks he would be more +comfortable if we could get the arm and leg set! You see, now that he's +conscious and is running just a little temperature--" + +"Much fever?" Cherry asked, sharply. + +"Oh, nothing at all, dear!" the nurse hastened to say. "The only thing +is, that setting the arm and leg will ease the pain and save his +strength." She bustled off for basins, bandages, and hot water. In the +silence Martin's groans occasionally broke. + +Cherry, her eyes on the study door, stood biting her fingers in frenzy. +When from the sound of Martin's voice she realized that he was being +hurt, she looked at Peter in agony. + +"Oh, why do they do that--why do they do that? Torturing him for +nothing!" he heard her whisper. "Go in and--go in and do something!" +she urged, incoherently. + +But the sounds had stopped, and there was a blessed interval of +silence. The clock on the mantel sounded eight in swift, silvery +strokes, and presently a sympathetic nurse came silently in with a tray +holding two cups of hot soup. Cherry shut her eyes and shook her head. + +"Please, Cherry--you need it!" Peter pleaded, carrying her a smoking +cup. She protested again with a gesture, looked wearily into his eyes, +and drank the soup docilely, like a child. + +"You, too, Peter!" she said, suddenly rousing herself. Peter gulped +down his own cupful, waved away the sandwiches that were on the tray, +and took the chair opposite the one in which Cherry was sitting. + +The clock presently struck the half-hour, but neither spoke. Cherry's +pallor, her air of fatigue and bewilderment, and the familiar setting +of the old environment made her seem a child again. Peter watched her +with a confused sense that the whole frightful day had been a dream. +Once she looked up and met his eyes. + +"He can't live," she said in a whisper. + +"Perhaps not," Peter answered very low. Cherry returned to her sombre +musing. + +"We didn't see this end to it, did we?" she said with a pitiful smile +after a long while. + +"Oh, no--NO!" Peter said, shutting his eyes, and with a faint, negative +movement of his head. + +"We wouldn't have had this happen--" Cherry began. Her lips trembled, +her whole face wrinkled, and she put her hand across her eyes and +pressed it there with a gesture of forlornness and sorrow that wrenched +Peter's heart. Her tears began to fall fast. + +"Poor Cherry--if I could spare you all this!" he said, knotting his +fingers and feeling for the first time the prick of bitter tears +against his eyelids. + +"Oh, there is nothing you can do," she said faintly and wearily after a +while. And she whispered, as if to herself, "Nothing--nothing--nothing!" + +Then there was silence again. The lamps burned softly; the fire sucked +and flickered; a chilling air, full of autumn sadness, began to creep +from the corners of the room. Peter's eyes moved over the backs of the +old books, Dickens and Thackeray and the "Household Book of Verse," +moved to the faded photograph of Cherry's mother on the mantel, a +beautiful woman in the big sleeves of the late nineties. + +The doctors came back; there was a little stir and rearrangement as +they seated themselves. + +"Any change?" Cherry asked, cautiously. + +"No change." Both men shook their heads. + +"Any--any hope?" she faltered. + +The physicians exchanged glances. No word was spoken, but the look in +their faces, the faint narrowing of eyes and compressing of lips, gave +her her answer. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +It was all strange and bewildering, thought Peter. It was not like +anything he had ever connected in his thoughts with Alix, yet it was +all for her. + +The day was warm and still, and the little church was packed with +flowers, and packed with people. Women were crying, and men were +crying, too, rather to his dazed surprise. The organ was straining +through the warm, fragrant air, and the old clergyman, whose venerable, +leonine head, in its crown of snowy hair, Peter could see clearly, +spoke in a voice that was thickened with tears. Strangers, or almost +strangers, had been touching Peter's hand respectfully, timidly, had +been praising Alix. She had been "good" to this one, "good" to that +one, they told him; she had always been so "interested," and so "happy." + +Her coffin was buried in flowers, many of them the plain flowers she +loved, the gillies and stock and verbena, and even the sweet, sober +wall-flowers that were somehow like herself. But it was the roses that +scented the whole world for Alix to-day, and fresh creamy buds had been +placed between the waxen fingers. And still that radiant look of +triumphant love lingered on her quiet face, and still the faint ghost +of a smile touched the once kindly and merry mouth. + +They said good-bye to her at the church, the villagers and old friends +who had loved her, and Peter and two or three men alone followed her +down along the winding road that led to the old cemetery. Cherry was +hanging over the bedside of her husband, who still miraculously +lingered through hours of pain, but as Peter, responsive to a touch on +his arm, crossed the church porch to blindly enter the waiting +motor-car, he saw, erect and grave, on the front seat, in his decent +holiday black, and with his felt hat held in his hands, Kow, claiming +his right to stand beside the grave of the mistress he had loved and +served so faithfully. The sight of him, in his clumsy black, instead of +the usual crisp white, and with a sad and tear-stained face shook Peter +strangely, but he did not show a sign of pain. + +The twisted low branches of oak trees threw shadows on the grave when +they finally reached it, and sheep were cropping the watered grass of +the graveyard. It was silent and peaceful here, on the very top of the +world, not a sound intruded, and nothing stirred but the shadow of a +flying bird, and the slowly moving, rounded woolly backs of the sheep. + +The soft autumn sky, the drift of snowy clouds across the blue, the +clear shadows on brown grass under the oaks, all these were familiar. +But Peter still looked dazedly at his black cuff and at the turned +earth next to the doctor's headstone, telling himself again that this +was for Alix. How often he had seen her sitting there, with her bright +face sobered and sweet, as she talked lovingly, eagerly, of her father! +They had often come here, Peter the more willingly because she was so +sensible and happy about it; she would pack lunch, button herself into +one of the crisp blue ginghams, chatter on the road in her usual +fashion. And if, for a few moments, the train of memory fired by the +sight of the old doctor's grave became too poignant, and tears came, +she always scolded herself with that mixture of childish and maternal +impatience that was so characteristic of her, and that Peter had seen +her use to this very father years ago! + +He remembered her, a tall, awkward girl, with a volume of Dickens +slipping from her lap as she sat on a hassock by the fire, teasing her +father, scolding and reproaching him. Blazing red on high cheek-bones, +untidy black hair, quick tongue and ready laugh; that was the Alix of +the old days, when he had criticized and patronized her, and told her +that she should be more like Anne and little Cherry! + +He remembered being delegated, one day, to take her into town to the +dentist, and that upon discovering that the dentist was not in his +office, he had taken her to the circus instead. She had been about +thirteen, and had eaten too many peanuts, he thought, and had lost a +petticoat in full sight of the grand-stand. But how grateful and happy +she had been! + +"Dear little old blue petticoat!" he said. "Dear little old madcap +Alix--!" + +There was silence, the silence of inanition, about him. He came to +himself with a start. He was up on the hills, in the cemetery--this was +Alix's grave, newly covered with wilting masses of flowers, and he was +keeping everybody waiting. He murmured an apology; the waiting men were +all kindness and sympathy. + +He got back into the motor-car; Kow got in; the man who drove them +quickly toward the valley talked easily and steadily to Peter, +attempting to interest him in the affairs of some water company in San +Francisco. When they got to the valley a city train was arriving, and +Peter saw people looking at him furtively and sorrowfully. He +remembered the many, many times Alix had waited for him at the trains; +he glanced toward the big madrone under which she always parked her +car. She was usually deep in a book as he crossed from the train, but +she would fling it into the back seat, and make room for him beside +her. The dog would bound into the tonneau, Alix would hand her husband +his mail, the car would start with a great plunge toward the +mountain--toward the cool garden high up on the ridge-- + +"She never had an accident, Fred," he said, simply. + +"Alix?" The other man nodded gravely, but there was a worried look in +his eyes. He did not like Peter's quiet tone. "It may be that her +steering-gear broke," he said. "I don't believe it was her fault. Never +will! No, it was just one of those things--" He emptied his lungs with +a great breath of nervousness and sympathy. "Now, we want you +to-night--" he began, pleadingly. + +"No--no--no!" Peter said, quickly. "I had better go to her sister. Poor +Lloyd is dying, and she is on the verge of a collapse. The nurse said +this morning that they could not get her to undress or to leave the +room. Poor girl--poor Cherry! I had better go there, Fred. She will +need me!" + +"No chance for him?" the driving man asked, turning his car. + +"No--it's only a matter of time!" + +"She came in for the old doctor's money, didn't she?" + +"Yes--all of it, now. And my wife had some property--some I had given +her; that will go to the sister now. She will be well fixed," Peter +said, in a dull tone. "That would have pleased Alix." + +"She's a beautiful woman, and young still," said the other man, after +awhile. Peter did not hear him. + +Cherry looked small and pathetic in her fresh black, and her face was +marked by secret incessant weeping. But the nurses and doctors could +not say enough for her self-control; she was always composed, always +quietly helpful and calm when they saw her, and she was always busy. +From early morning, when she slipped into the sick-room, to stand +looking at the unconscious Martin with a troubled, intent expression +that the nurses came to know well, until night, she moved untiringly +about the quiet, shaded house. She supervised the Chinese boy, saw that +the nurses had their hours for rest and exercise, telephoned, dusted, +and arranged the rooms, saw callers sweetly and patiently, filled vases +with flowers. + +Every day she had several vigils in the sick-room, and every day at +least one long talk with the doctors. Peter would find her deep in +letters and documents, or find her--who had loved to be idle, a few +weeks ago--busily sewing. Sometimes she gave him a long list of things +to do for her in the village and the city, and every day she wrote +notes--Cherry, who had always hated to write notes!--to thank the +friends who had sent in flowers, soups, and jellies, and custards for +the patient. Every afternoon and evening had its callers; she and Peter +were rarely alone. + +Martin was utterly unconscious of the life that flowed on about him; +sometimes he seemed to recognize Cherry, and would stare with painful +intentness into her face, but after a few seconds his gaze would wander +to the strange nurses, and the room that he had never known, and with a +puzzled sigh he would close his eyes again, and drift back into his own +strange world of pain, fever, and unconsciousness. + +Almost every day there was the sudden summons and panic in the old +house, Peter going toward the sick-room with a thick beating at his +heart, Cherry entering, white-faced and with terrified eyes, doctors +and nurses gathering noiselessly near for the last scene in the drama +of Martin's suffering. But the release did not come. + +There would be murmuring among the doctors and nurses; the pulse was +gaining, not losing; the apparently fatal, final symptoms were proving +neither fatal nor final. The tension would relax; a doctor would go, a +nurse slip from the room; Cherry, looking anxiously from one face to +another, would breathe more easily. It was inevitable, she knew that +now--but it was not to be this minute, it was not to be this hour! + +"My dear--my dear!" Peter said to her, one day, when spent and shaken +she came stumbling from Martin's bedside, and stood dazedly looking +from the window into the soaking October forest, like a person stunned +from a blow. "My poor little Cherry! If I could spare you this!" + +"Nobody can spare me now!" she whispered. And very simply and quietly +she added, "If I have been a fool--if I have been a selfish, wicked +girl, all my life, I am punished!" She was clinging to the unpainted +wood that framed the window, her hand above her head, and her face +resting against her arm. "I am punished!" she added. + +"Cherry!" he protested, heartsick to see her so. + +"Was it wrong for us to love each other, Peter?" she asked, in a low +tone. "I suppose it was! I suppose it was! But it never seemed as if--" +she shut her eyes and shivered--"as if--THIS--would come of it!" she +whispered. + +"This!" he echoed, aghast. + +"Oh, I think this is punishment," Cherry continued, in the same +lifeless, weary tone. + +There was a silence. The rain dripped and dripped from the redwoods, +the room in which they stood was in twilight, even at noon. Peter could +think of nothing to say. + +About two weeks after the accident there was a change in the tone of +the physicians who had been giving almost all their time to Martin's +case. There was no visible change in Martin, but that fact in itself +was so surprising that it was construed into a definite hope that he +would live. + +Not as he had lived, they warned his wife. It would be but a restricted +life; tied to his couch, or permitted, at best, to move about within a +small boundary on crutches. + +"Martin!" his wife exclaimed piteously, when this was first discussed. +"He has always been so strong--so independent! He would rather--he +would infinitely rather be dead!" But her mind was busy grasping the +possibilities, too. "He won't suffer too much?" she asked, fearfully. + +They hastened to assure her that the chance of his even partial +recovery was still slight, but that in case of his convalescence Martin +need not necessarily suffer. + +Another day or two went by, in the silent, rainwrapped house under the +trees; days of quiet footsteps, and whispering, and the lisping of wood +fires. Then Martin suddenly was conscious, knew his wife, languidly +smiled at her, thanked the doctors for occasional ease from pain. + +"Peter--I'm sorry. It's terrible for you--terrible!" he said, in his +new, hoarse, gentle voice, when he first saw Peter. They marvelled +among themselves that he knew that Alix was gone. But to Cherry, in one +of the long hours that she spent, sitting beside him, and holding his +big, weak, strangely white hand, he explained, one day. "I knew she was +killed," he said, out of a silence. "I thought we both were!" + +"How did she ever happen to do it?" Cherry said. "She was always so +sure of herself--even when she drove fast!" + +"I don't know," he answered. "It was all like a flash, of course! I +never watched her drive--I had such confidence in her!" + +His interest dropped; she saw that the tide of pain was slowly rising +again, glanced at the clock. It was two; he might not have relief until +four. In his own eyes she saw reflected the apprehension of her own. + +"You might ask Peter to play some of that--that rambly stuff he was +playing yesterday?" he suggested. Cherry, only too happy to have him +want anything, to have him helped by anything, flew to find Peter. Busy +with one of the trays that were really beginning to interest and please +the invalid now, she told herself that the house was a different place, +now that one nurse was gone, the doctors coming only for brief calls, +and the dear, familiar sound of the old piano echoing throughout the +rooms. + +Martin came from the fiery furnace changed in soul and body. It was a +thin, gentle, strangely patient man who was propped in bed for his +Thanksgiving dinner, and whose pain-worn face turned with an +appreciative smile to the decorations and the gifts that made his room +cheerful. His thick beard had grown; for weeks they had not dared +disturb him to cut it, and as he recovered, Cherry found it so becoming +that she had persuaded him to let it remain. He wore a blue-and-gray +wrapper that was his wife's gift; the sling was gone, but his hands +were oddly thin and white. + +The big room, once the study, and still shaded by the old banksia rose, +had been turned into as luxurious a bedroom as Cherry could make it. +The signs of extreme illness gradually were banished, and all sorts of +invalid comforts took their place; daylight and lamplight were alike +tempered for Martin; there were pillows, screens; there was a noiseless +deep chair always waiting for Cherry at his side. As his unconscious +and feverish times lessened, and he was able feebly to request this +small delicacy or that, Cherry rejoiced to gratify him; her voice had +something of its old content as she would say: "He loved the oysters, +Peter!" or "Doctor said he might have wine jelly!" + +The heavy cloud lightened slowly but steadily; Martin had a long talk, +dreaded by Cherry from the first hours of the accident, with his +physicians. He bore the ultimatum with unexpected fortitude. + +"Let me get this straight," he said, slowly. "The arm is O. K. and the +leg, but the back--" + +Cherry, kneeling beside him, her hands on his, drew a wincing breath. +Martin reassured her with an indulgent nod. + +"I've known it right along!" he told her. He looked at the doctors. +"It's no go?" + +"I don't see why I should deceive you, my dear boy," said the younger +doctor, who had grown very fond of him. "You can still beat me at +bridge, you know, you can read and write, and come to the table, after +awhile; you have your devoted wife to keep finding new things for you +to do! Next summer now--a chair out in the garden--" + +Cherry was fearfully watching her husband's face. + +"We'll all do what we can to make it easy, Mart!" she whispered, in +tears. + +He looked at her with a whimsical smile. + +"Mind very much taking care of a helpless man all your life?" he asked, +with a hint of his old confident manner. + +"Oh, Mart, I mind only for you!" she said. Peter, standing behind the +doctors, slipped from the room unnoticed. + +Late that evening, when Martin was asleep, Cherry came noiselessly from +the sick-room, to find Peter alone in the dimly lighted sitting room. +The fire had burned low, and he was sitting before it, sunk into his +chair, and leaning forward, fingers loosely locked, and sombre eyes +fixed on the dull pink glow of the logs. He looked tired, Cherry +thought, and was so buried in thought that she at first attempted to go +quietly through the room without rousing him. But he glanced at her, +feeling rather than hearing her presence, and called her. + +"Come over here, will you, Cherry? I want to speak to you." + +Something in his voice fluttered her for a second; she had not heard +the echo of the old mood for a long time. She came, with an inquiring +and yet not wholly unconscious look, to the fireside, and he stood up +to greet her. + +"Tired?" he asked, in an unnatural voice. + +"I--I was just going to bed," she answered, hesitatingly. But she sat +down, nevertheless; sank comfortably into the chair opposite his own, +and stretched her little feet, crossed at the ankle, before her, as if +she were indeed tired. "I don't know what should make me--always--so +weary!" she said, smiling. "I don't do a thing, really, all day!" + +Utterly relaxed, her small figure in its plain black gown, with the +childish white she always wore at collar and wrist, looked like the +figure of a child. Her golden hair shone with a dull gleam in the dim +light; there was a glint of firelight in her dropped lashes. + +"Perhaps it's the nervous strain," Peter suggested. "Of course, you +would feel that." There was a silence in which neither moved. Cherry +did not even raise her eyelids, and Peter, standing with one arm on the +mantel, looked down at her steadily. "Cherry," he said, suddenly, "are +you and I going to talk to each other like that?" + +A flood of colour rose in Cherry's pale face, and she gave him one +appealing glance. + +"I don't--I don't think I know what you mean, Peter!" + +"Oh, yes; you do!" he said. He knelt down beside her chair, and +gathered her cold hands into one of his own. "What are you and I going +to do?" he asked. + +She looked at him in terror. + +"But all that is changed!" she said, quickly, fearfully. + +"Why is it changed?" he countered. "I love you--I have always loved +you, since the days long ago, in this very house! I can't stop it now. +And you love me, Cherry!" + +"Yes, I shall always love you," she answered, agitatedly, after a pause +in which she looked at him with troubled eyes. "I shall always love +you, and always dream of the time when we--we thought we might belong +to each other, Peter. But--but--you must see that we cannot--cannot +think of all that now," she added with difficulty. "I couldn't fail +Martin now, when he needs me so!" + +"He needs you now," Peter conceded, "and I don't ask you to do anything +that must distress him now. But in a few months, when his mother comes +down for a visit, what then?" + +Cherry's exquisite eyes were fixed on his. + +"Well, what then?" she whispered. + +"Then you must tell them honestly that you care for me," he said. + +Cherry was trembling violently. + +"But how could I!" she protested. "Tell him that I am going away, +deserting him when he most needs me!" + +Peter had grown very pale. + +"But--" he stammered, his face close to hers--"but you cannot mean that +this is the end?" + +She moved her lips as if she was about to speak; looked at him blankly. +Then suddenly tears came, and she wrenched her hands free from his, and +laid her arms about his neck. Her wet cheek was pressed to his own, and +he put his arms tightly about the little shaken figure. + +"Peter!" she whispered, desolately. And after a time, when the violence +of her sobs was lessened, and she was breathing more quietly, she said +again: "Peter!" + +He took out his handkerchief, and dried her eyes, and she remained, +resting against him like a spent bird, her blue eyes fixed mournfully +on the fire, her hands, which had slipped to his breast, gathered in +his own, and her bright head on his shoulder. + +"We can never dream that dream again," she said. + +"We shall dream it again," he corrected her. + +Cherry did not answer for a long while. Then she gently disengaged +herself from his arms, and sat erect. Her tears were ended now, and her +voice firmer and surer. + +"No; never again!" she told him. "I've been thinking about it, all +these days, and I've come to see what is right, as I never did before. +Alix never knew about us, Peter--and that's been the one thing for +which I could be thankful in all this time! But Alix had only one hope +for me, and that was that somehow Martin and I would come to be--well, +to be nearer to each other, and that somehow he and I would make a +success of our marriage, would spare--well, let's say the family name, +from all the disgrace and publicity of a divorce--" + +"And you feel that this has drawn you and Martin nearer together?" +Peter asked, in a simple, expressionless voice, as she paused. + +"Well--he needs me now." + +"But, Cherry, my child--" Peter expostulated. "You cannot sacrifice all +your life to the fancy that no one else can take your place with him--" + +"That," she said, steadily, "is just what I must do!" + +Peter looked at her for a few seconds without speaking. "You don't love +him," he said. + +"No," she admitted, gravely. "I don't love him--not in the way you +mean." + +"He is nothing to you," Peter argued. "As a matter of fact, it never +was what a marriage should be. It was always--always--a mistake." + +"Yes," she conceded, sadly, "it was always a mistake!" + +"Then there is nothing to bind you to him!" Peter added. + +"No--and there isn't Alix to distress now!" she agreed, thoughtfully. +"And yet," she went on, suddenly, "I do this more for Alix than for any +one!" + +Peter looked at her in silence, looked back at the last flicker of the +fire. + +"You will change your mind after awhile!" he said. + +Cherry rose from the chair, and stood with dropped head and troubled +eyes, looking down at the flame. + +"No, I shall never change my mind!" she said, in a low tone that was +still strangely firm and final for her. "I have thought about it, about +the sacrifices I shall have to make, and about what my life will be as +the years go on! And I know that I never will change. This is as much +my life as it would be my life if you and I were alone in that little +French village somewhere. There would be no going back then, no +thinking of what might have been; there is no going back now. This is +my life, that's all! For five or ten or twenty or thirty years I shall +always be where Martin is, caring for him, amusing him, making a life +for him." And Cherry raised her glorious blue eyes in which there was a +pure and an uplifted look that Peter had never seen there before. "It +is what Dad and Alix would have wished," she finished, solemnly, "and I +do it for them!" + +Peter did not answer; and after a moment she went quietly and quickly +from the room, with the new air of quiet responsibility that she had +worn ever since the accident. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +Peter saw, with a sort of stupefaction, that life was satisfying her +now as life had never satisfied restless, exacting little Cherry +before. Not that she knew it; she was absolutely unconscious of the +truth, and he realized that she would have been genuinely shocked by +it. But there was a busy energy about her now, an absorbed and +contented concentration upon the duties of the day, a cheerfulness, a +philosophy, that were new. + +There had been touched by all this terrible time unexpected deeps of +maternal tenderness in childish little Cherry; there had been +unsuspected qualities of domesticity and sacrifice. A new Cherry had +been born, a Cherry always beautiful, always resourceful, always +admired. Busy with Martin's trays, out in the garden searching for shy +violets, conferring with the Chinese boy, pouring tea for afternoon +callers, Cherry was newly adequate and newly happy. + +She spent much of her free time by her husband's side, amusing him as +skillfully as a mother. What was she doing? Why, she was simply basting +fresh cuffs into her afternoon gown. He was getting so popular that she +had to be ready for callers every day. Would he like her to keep George +Sewall for dinner, then they could play dominoes again? Would he like +the table with the picture puzzle? He would like just to talk? Very +well; they would talk. + +Martin's day was so filled and divided with small pleasures that it was +apt to amaze him by passing too quickly. He had special breakfasts, he +had his paper, his hair was brushed and his bed remade a dozen times a +day. Cherry shared her mail, which was always heavy now, with him; she +flitted into the sick-room every few minutes with small messages or +gifts. With her bare, bright head, her busy white hands, her voice all +motherly amusement and sympathy and sweetness, she had never seemed so +much a wife. She had the pleasantest laugh in the world, and she often +laughed. The sick-room was kept with exquisite simplicity, with such +freshness, bareness, and order as made it a place of delight. One day +Cherry brought home a great Vikory bowl of silvery glass, and a dozen +drifting goldfish, and Martin never tired of watching them idly while +he listened to her reading. + +"Cherry," Peter said, on a wet January day, when he came upon her in +the dining room, contentedly arranging a fragrant mass of wet violets, +"I think Martin's out of the woods now. I believe I'll be moving along!" + +"Oh, but we want you always, Peter!" she said, innocently regretful. + +The ghost of a pained smile flitted across his face. + +"Thank you," he said, gently. "But I think I will go," he added, +mildly. She made no further protest. + +"But where?" she asked, sympathetically. + +"I don't know. I shall take Buck--start off" toward the big mountains. +"I'll write you now and then, of course! I'm going home, first!" + +"Of course!" she answered. "But you won't stay in that lonely cabin all +alone," she added, almost timidly. + +"No, I shan't be there long!" he assured her, briefly. "Everything's +finished up now. I'm leaving Kow in charge, of course. I'll be back one +of these days!" + +"Just now," Cherry mused, sadly, "perhaps it is best--for you--to get +away! Now that Martin is so much better," she added, in a little burst. +"I do feel so sorry for you, Peter! I know how you feel. I shall miss +her always, of course," said Cherry, "but I have him." + +"I try not to think of her," Peter said, flinging up his head. + +"When you do," Cherry said, earnestly, giving him more of her attention +than had been usual, of late, "Here is something to think, Peter. It's +this: we have so much to be thankful for, because she never--knew! It +was madness," Cherry went on, eagerly, "sheer madness--that is clear +now. I don't try to explain it, because it's all been washed away by +the frightful thing that happened. I'm different now; you're +different--I don't know how we ever thought we could-- + +"But I forget all that," she went on, after a moment of shamed thought. +"I don't let myself think of it any more! I was unhappy, I was +overwrought; there's no explanation for what I felt and said but that! +And, Peter, you know that if I was false in thought to Martin, he had +been unkind to me, and he had--" she paused, interrupted herself. "But +men are different, I suppose," she mused. There was a silence during +which she looked at him anxiously, but the expression on his face did +not alter, and he did not speak. + +"And what I think we ought to be thankful for," she resumed, "is that +Alix would rather--she would rather have it this way. She told me that +she would be heartbroken if there had been any actual separation +between me and Martin, and how much worse that would have been--what we +planned, I mean. She was spared that, and we were spared--I see it +now--what would have ruined both our lives. We were brought to our +senses, and the awakening only came a little sooner than it would have +come anyway!" + +Peter had walked to the window, and was looking out at the shabby +winter trees that were dripping rain, and at the beaten garden, where +the drenched chrysanthemums had been bowed to the soaked earth. A wet +wind swished through the low, fanlike branches of the redwoods; the +creek was rushing high and noisily. + +"Here, in Dad's home," Cherry said, coming to stand beside him, "I see +how wicked and how mad I was. In another twenty-four hours it would +have been too late--you don't know how often I wake up in the night and +shiver, thinking that! And as it is, I am here in the dear old house; +and Martin--well, you can see that even Martin's life is going to be +far happier than it ever was! Yesterday Mrs. Porter spoke to me about +getting him a player-piano when he is stronger, you know. Doctor Young +comes in to play cribbage with him--it's amazing how the day fills +itself! It's such a joy to me," she added, with the radiant look she +often wore when her husband's comfort was under consideration, "to feel +that we need never worry about the money end of things--there's enough +for what we need forever!" + +"You must never worry about money," he told her. "And if ever you need +it--if it is a question of a long trip, or of more operations--if there +is any chance--" + +"I shall remember that I have a big brother!" she said. + +The room was scented by the sweet, damp flowers, and by the good odour +of lazily burning logs; yet to Peter there was chill and desolateness +in the air. Cherry took up the glass bowl in both careful hands, and +went away in the direction of the study, but he stood at the window for +a long time staring dully out at the battered chrysanthemums and the +swishing branches, and the steadily falling rain. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +A few days later, on a day of uncertain sunshine and showers, Peter +left them. Martin was the sorrier of the two to see him go, for it +seemed to Martin that the tragedy had united Cherry and himself in a +peculiar manner, had rounded and secured their relationship, and had +made for them a new life that had no place for Peter. With a sort of +affectionate pity for the older man he would have been glad to have him +stay longer, to play the old piano, work in the old garden, and share +their talks of Alix and of all the old days. But to Cherry Peter's +going was a relief; it burned one more bridge behind her. It confirmed +her in the path she had chosen; it was to her spirit like the cap that +marks the accepted student nurse, or like the black coif that replaces +the postulant's white veil of probation. + +He had been in the downstairs bedroom, talking with Martin, for perhaps +an hour; he had drawn them a rough sketch of the little addition to the +house that Cherry meant some day to build next to the study, and he and +Martin had been discussing the details. Cherry had left them there, and +was sweeping the wet, dun-coloured leaves from the old porch, in a pale +shaft of sunshine, and thinking that there must be a wide railing here +next summer for Martin's books, and a gay awning to be drawn or furled +as Martin fancied, when a sudden step in the doorway behind her made +her look up. + +Peter had come out of the house, with Buck curving beside him. He wore +his old corduroy clothes and his shabby cap, but there was something in +his aspect that made her ask: + +"Not going?" + +"Yes, I'm going now!" he said. + +She rested her broom against the thick trunk of the old banksia, and +rubbed her two hands together, and came to the top of the steps to say +good-bye. And standing there, under the rose tree, she linked her arm +about it, looking up through the branches, where the shabby foliage of +last year lingered. + +"How fast it's grown since that terrific pruning we gave it all that +long time ago!" she said. + +"Little more than six years ago, Cherry!" he reminded her. + +"Only six years--" She was obviously amazed. + +"It doesn't seem possible that all this has happened in six years!" she +exclaimed. "Those were wonderful old days, with Anne and Alix scolding +you, and Dad here, looking out for us all," she mused, tenderly. "We'll +never be so happy again." + +He did not answer. He had her hand now for farewells, and perhaps, with +the thought of those short six years had come also the thought that +this slender figure in the housewifely blue linen, this exquisite +little head, so trim and demure despite all its rebel tendrils of gold, +this lovely face, still the face of a child, with a child's trusting, +uplifted eyes, might have been his. The old home might have been their +home, and perhaps--who knows, there might have been a new Cherry and a +new Peter beginning to look eagerly out at life through the screen of +the old rose vine. + +Too late now. A single instant of those lost years might have bought +him all this, but there was no going back. He put his arm about her, +and kissed her forehead, and said: "God bless you, Cherry!" + +"God bless you, dear!" she answered, gravely. She watched the tall +figure, with its little limp, and with the dog leaping and circling +about it in ecstasy, until the redwoods closed around, him. Then she +took up the broom again, and slowly and thoughtfully crossed the old +porch, and shut the door. + +Peter, walking with long strides, and with a furrowed brow and absent +eyes, crossed the village, and climbed once more the old trail that led +up to the cabin. His great boots made simple work of the muddy roads, +his hands were thrust deep into the pockets of his shabby old coat, and +his cap pulled low. The rain had stopped, but every branch that hung +down over his path, or stretched an arm to stop him, was charged with +water; the creeks were swollen and yellow, and raced along between +crumbling banks with a fresh rushing sound that mingled with the +creaking of wet boughs and the wild spring chant of the wind high up in +the tops of the redwoods. + +Coming out of the forest, on the ridge, where the dim road ran under +the scattered oaks, he saw the last of the battle of the dying storm +raging over the valley below. Great masses of cloud were in travail; +when the sun was hidden, the world was wrapped in shade and chill; when +it burst forth, every wet tree and spear glistened and twinkled in the +flood of warmth and light, the dried brown grass sparkled with jewels, +and the great roadside rain pools flashed back the azure of the sky. +The mountain was partly obscured by rapidly shifting masses of mist; +the air was pungent and seemed to hum with a thousand tiny, electric +voices. + +Already there was new grass showing a timid film of emerald under the +brown growth of last year. While Peter climbed, the good earth giving +soddenly under his feet, and grasses tangling in the clasps of his +walking shoes, the sunlight conquered, the sky cleared, and the last of +the storm drifted and spread and vanished in a bath of dazzling blue. +Birds began to circle in brief flights; cloud shadows fell clear-cut on +the west, dark flank of the mountain; and in the saturated marshy +spots, where a scummy green growth already was spread over the crystal +pools of the little hillside springs, frogs were exultant. + +The roof of the little cabin and the outbuildings smoked up into the +pure warm air; the Jersey, placidly awaiting her hour, looked at him +with soft, great eyes; and Alix's chickens picked and squawked on the +steaming mound near the stable. Kow was hanging out the blue +glass-towels, everything--everything was as he had found it a hundred, +a thousand, happy times! + +Peter spoke to the Chinese and went into the cabin. It was dusted, +orderly, complete; he and Alix might have left it yesterday. Kow had +seen him coming, he thought, and had had time to light the fire, which +was blazing freshly up to the chimney's great throat. He sat down, +staring at the flames. + +Buck pushed open the swinging door between the pantry and the sitting +room, and came in, a question in his bright eyes, his great plumy tail +beating the floor as he lay down at Peter's side. Presently the dog +laid his nose on Peter's knee and poured forth a faint sound that was +not quite a whine, not quite a sigh, and rose restlessly, and went to +the closed door of Alix's room, and pawed it, his eager nose to the +threshold. + +"Not here, old fellow!" Peter said, stroking the silky head under his +hand. + +He had not been in this room since the day of her death. It struck him +as strangely changed, strangely and heartrendingly familiar. The +windows were closed, as Alix had never had them closed, winter or +summer, rain or sunshine. Her books stood in their old order, her +student's Shakespere, and some of her girlhood's books, "Little Women," +and "Uncle Max." In the closet, which exhaled a damp and woody smell, +were one or two of the boyish-looking hats he had so often seen her +crush carelessly over her dark hair, and the big belted coat that was +as plain as his own, and the big boots she wore when she tramped about +the poultry yard, still spattered with pale, dry mud. Her father's worn +little Bible lay on the table, and beside it another book "Duck Raising +for the Market," with the marks of muddy and mealy hands still +lingering on its cover. + +Suddenly, evoked by these silent witnesses to her busy and happy life, +the whole woman seemed to stand beside Peter, the tall, eager, vital +woman who had been at home here, who had ruled the cabin with a +splendid and vital personality. He seemed to feel her near him again, +to see the interested eyes, the high cheek-bones touched with scarlet, +the wisp of hair that would fall across her face sometimes when she was +deep in baking, or preserving, or poultry-farming, and that she would +brush away with the back of an impatient hand, only to have it slip +loose again. + +One of her kitchen aprons, caught in the current of air from the opened +door, blew about on its hook. He remembered her, on many a wintry day, +buttoned into just such a crisp apron, radiantly busy and brisk in her +kitchen, stirring and chopping, moving constantly between stove and +table. With strong hands still showing traces of flour she would come +to sit beside him at the piano, to play a duet with her characteristic +dash and finish, only to jump up in sudden compunction, with an +exclamation: "Oh, my ducks--I'd forgotten them! Oh, the poor little +wretches!" + +And she would be gone, leaving a streak of wet, fresh air through the +warm house from the open door, and he would perhaps glance from a +window to see her, roughly coated and booted, ploughing about her duck +yard, delving into barrels of grain, turning on faucets, wielding a +stubby old broom. + +She loved her life, he mused, with a bitter heartache, as he stood here +in her empty room. Sometimes he had marvelled at the complete and +unquestioning joy she had brought to it. Books, puzzles, music, and +fires sufficed her in the few hours that she ever spent in her own +drawing room. For the rest she had the kitchen and the farmyard, and +the world out of doors, the oaks and the grass, the great stretches of +dim forest, the muddy trails, the blowing airs on the crest of the +ridge that made her shout and stagger in their wild onslaught. Peter +reminded himself that never in their years together had he heard her +complain about anything, or seem to feel bored or at a loss. + +"We've always thought of Cherry as the child!" he thought. "But it was +she, Alix, who was the real child. She never grew up. She never entered +into the time of moods and self-analysis and jealousies and desires! +She would have played and picnicked all her life----" + +His heart pressed like a dull pain in his chest. Dully, quietly, he +went out to the fire again, and dully and quietly moved through the +day. Her books and music might stand as they were, her potted ferns and +her scattered small possessions--the sewing-basket that she always +handled with a boy's awkwardness, and the camera she used so +well--should keep their places. But he went to her desk, thinking in +this long, solitary evening, to destroy various papers that she might +wish destroyed before the cabin was deserted. And here he found her +letter. + +He found it only after he had somewhat explored the different small +drawers and pigeonholes of the desk, drawers and pigeonholes which +were, to his surprise, all in astonishing order for Alix. Everything +was marked, tied, pocketed; her accounts were balanced, and if she had +anywhere left private papers, they were at least nowhere to be found. + +Seeing in all this a dread confirmation of his first suspicion of her +death, Peter nevertheless experienced a shock when he found her letter. +It had been placed in an empty drawer, face up, and was sealed, and +addressed simply with his name. + +He sat holding it in his hand, and moments passed before he could open +it. + +So it had been true, then, the fear that he had tried all these weeks +to crush? He had been weighing, measuring, remembering, until his very +soul was sick with the uncertainty. His mind had been a confused web of +memories, of this casual word and that look, of what she had possibly +heard, had probably seen, had suspected--known-- + +Now he would know. He tore open the envelope, and the dozen written +lines were before his eyes. The letter was dated, a most unusual thing +for Alix to do, and "Saturday, one o'clock" was written under the date. +It was the day of her death. + +He read: + +PETER DEAR, Don't feel too badly if I find a stupid way out. I've been +thinking for several days about it. You've done so much for me, and +after you, of course there's no one but Cherry. She could be free now, +he couldn't prevent it. When I saw your face a few minutes ago I knew +we couldn't fight it. Remember, this is our secret. And always remember +that I want you to be happy because I love you so! + +It was unsigned. + +Peter sat staring at it for awhile without moving, without the stir of +a changing expression on his face. Then he folded it up, and put it in +the pocket of his coat, and went out to the backyard, where Kow was +feeding the chickens. The wet, dark day was ending brilliantly in a +wash of red sunset light that sent long shadows from the young fruit +trees, and touched every twig with a dull glow. + +"Kow," Peter said, after an effort to speak that was unsuccessful. The +Chinese boy looked at him solicitously; for Peter's face was ashen, and +about his mouth were drawn lines. "Kow," he said, "I go now!" + +"Go now other house?" Kow nodded, glancing down toward the valley. + +But Peter jerked his head instead toward the bare ridge. + +"No, I go now--not come back!" he said, briefly. "To-night--maybe +Bolinas--to-morrow, Inverness. I don't know. By and by the big +mountains, Kow--by and by I forget!" + +Tears glittered in the Chinese boy's eyes, but he smiled with a great +air of cheer. + +"I keep house!" he promised. + +The dog came fawning and springing from the stables, and Peter whistled +to him. + +"Come on, Buck! We're going now!" + +He opened the farmyard gate where her hand had so often rested, crossed +the muddy corral, opened another gate, and struck off across the +darkening world toward the ridge. The last sunlight lingered on crest +and treetop, tangled itself redly in the uppermost branches of a few +tall redwoods, and was gone. Twilight--a long twilight that had in it +some hint of spring--lay softly over the valley; the mountain loomed +high in the clear shadow. + +Gaining the top of the first ridge, he paused and looked back. Lights +were beginning to prick forth in the brown houses of the valley, buried +in their trees. The busy little mountain train, descending, puffed +forth smoke and steam. Far away, the silver ribbons of the canals wound +through the marsh, and beyond the bay, the Oakland shore lay like a +chain of gems in the pale twilight. + +Peter looked at the cabin, the little brown house that he had built +almost fifteen years ago. He remembered that it was in the beginning a +sort of experiment; his mother and he were too much alone in their big +city house, and she had suggested, with rare wisdom, that as he did not +care for society, and as his travels always meant great loneliness For +her, he should have a little eyrie of his own, to which he might +retreat whenever the fancy touched him. + +She liked Del Monte and Tahoe, herself, but she had come to Mill Valley +now and then in the days of his first wild delight in its freedom and +beauty, silk-gowned and white-gloved and very much disliking dust. She +had sent him plants, roses, and fruit trees, and she had told him one +day that he had a neighbour in the valley who was an old friend of +hers, a Doctor Strickland, a widower, with children. + +He remembered sauntering up the opposite canyon to duly call upon this +inventor-physician one day, and his delight upon finding a well-read, +music-loving, philosophic, erratic man, who had at once recognized a +kindred spirit, and who had made the younger man warmly welcome. + +Presently, on the first call, an enchanting little girl In a shabby +smock had come in, a little girl all dimples, demureness, and untouched +babyish beauty. She had said that "Anne wath mad wiv her, and that +Alix--" she managed to lisp the name, "wath up in the madrone!" + +A somewhat older child, named Alix, a freckled, leggy little person +with enormous front teeth, had proved the claim by falling out of the +madrone, and had received no sympathy for a bump, but a--to him--rather +surprising censure. He had yet to realize that nothing ever hurt Alix, +but that she always ruined her clothes, and frequently hurt other +persons and other things. He found her a spirited, enthusiastic little +person, extremely articulate, and quite unselfconscious, and she had +entertained him with an excited account of a sex feud that was being +pushed with some violence at her school, and had used expressions that +rather shocked Peter. A quiet third girl--a niece, he gathered--had +joined the group, a girl with braids and clean hands, who elucidated: + +"Alix and I don't like our teacher!" + +"She's a sneak and a skunk," Alix had frankly contributed. Cherry, now +quietly established in her father's lap, had smiled with mischievous +enjoyment; nobody else, to Peter's surprise, had paid this +extraordinary remark the slightest attention. He remembered that he had +fancied only the smallest of these children, and had been glad when +they all went out of the room. + +But after that Alix used often to amuse him, and he always felt more at +home with her than with the other two. She had only been a gawky and +thin fifteen or sixteen when she began to assert herself in his +kitchen, dictate to Kow, and waste good butter and eggs on experiments. +He had secretly rather admired her quick tongue and her daring, he +liked her to ride his horses, and was amazed at the speed with which +she grasped the controlling principles of the motor-car. He had seen +her move plants, treat sick chickens, sew up the gashed head of a horse +with her own fingers, while Cherry, lovely, round-eyed, immaculate in +white ruffles, watched her with fear and admiration. + +Looking down at the cabin, the years slipped past him like a flying +film, and it was the present again, and Alix--Alix was gone. + +He roused himself, spoke to the dog, and they went on their way again. +Mud squelched beneath Peter's boots in the roadway; the dog sprang +lightly from clump to clump of dried grass. But when they left the +road, and cut straight across the rise of the hillside, the ground was +firmer, and the two figures moved swiftly through the dark night. The +early stars came out, and showed them, silhouetted against the sky +above Alix's beloved Tamalpais, the man's erect form with its slight +limp, the dog following faithfully, his plumy tail and feathered ruff +showing a dull lustre in the starlight. + +Cherry, with her violet eyes and corn-coloured hair, Cherry, with her +little hands gathered in his, and her heart beating against his heart, +and Alix, his chum, his companion, his comrade on so many night walks +under the stars--he had lost them both. But it was Alix who was closest +to his thoughts to-night, Alix, the thought of whom was gradually +gripping his heart and soul with a new pain. + +Alix was his own; Cherry had never been his own. It was for him to +comfort Cherry, it had always been his mission to comfort Cherry, since +the days of her broken dolls and cut fingers. But Alix was his own +comforter, and Alix might have been laughing and stumbling and +chattering beside him here, in the dark, wet woods, full of a child's +happy satisfaction in the moment and confidence in the morrow. + +"Alix, my wife!" he said softly, aloud. "I loved Cherry--always. But +you were mine--you were mine. We belonged to each other--for better and +for worse--and I have let you go!" + +He went on and on and on. They were plunging down hill now, under the +trees. He would see a light after awhile, and sleep for a few hours, +and have a hunter's breakfast, and be gone again. And he knew that for +weeks--for months--perhaps for years, he would wander so, through the +great mountains, with their snow and their forests, over the seas, in +strange cities and stranger solitudes. Always alone, always moving, +always remembering. That would be his life. And some day--some day +perhaps he would come back to the valley she had loved-- + +But even now he recoiled in distaste from that hour. To see the +familiar faces, to come up to the cabin again, to touch the music and +the books-- + +Worse, to find Cherry a little older, happy and busy in her life of +sacrifice, not needing him, not very much wanting the reminder of the +old tragic times-- + +An owl cried in the woods; the mournful sound floated and drifted away +into utter silence. Some small animal, meeting the death its brief life +had evaded a hundred times, screamed shrilly, and was silent. Great +branches, stirred by the night wind, moved high above his head, and +when there was utter silence, Peter could hear the steady, soft rush of +the ocean, dulled here to the sound of gigantic, quiet breathing. + +Suddenly she seemed again to be beside him. He seemed to see the dark, +animated face, the slender, tall girl wrapped in her big, rough coat. +He seemed to hear her vibrating voice, with that new, tender note in it +that he had noticed when she last spoke to him. + +"I'll go home ahead of you, Peter, and wait for you there!" + +Tears suddenly flooded his eyes, and he put his hand over them, and +pressed it there, standing still, while the wave of tender and poignant +and exquisite memories broke over him. + +"We'll go on, Buck," he whispered, looking up through the trees at a +strip of dark sky spangled with cold stars. "We'll go on. She's--she's +waiting for us somewhere, old fellow!" + + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sisters, by Kathleen Norris + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTERS *** + +***** This file should be named 4947.txt or 4947.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/9/4/4947/ + +Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines. + + +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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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Sisters + +Author: Kathleen Norris + +Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4947] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on April 3, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTERS *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + +THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS + +SISTERS + +VOLUME X + + + + +TO + +FRANCES ROSE BENET + + Dear mother of my mother's child, to you + The tribute brings not praise from me alone, + Still clings some grace of hers to what I do, + And the gift comes in her name, as my own. + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +Cherry Strickland came in the door of the Strickland house, and +shut it behind her, and stood so, with her hands behind her on the +knob, and her slender body leaning forward, and her breath rising +and falling on deep, ecstatic breaths. It was May in California, +she was just eighteen, and for twenty-one minutes she had been +engaged to be married. + +She hardly knew why, after that last farewell to Martin, she had +run so swiftly up the path, and why she had flashed into the +house, and closed the door with such noiseless haste. There was +nothing to run for! But it was as if she feared that the joy +within her might escape into the moonlight night that was so +perfumed with lilacs and the scent of wet woods. In this new +happiness of hers a fear was already mingled, a sweet fear, truly, +and a delicious fear, but she had never feared anything before in +her life. She was afraid now that it was all too wonderful to be +true, that she would awaken in the morning to find it only a +dream, that she would somehow fall short of Martin's ideal-- +somehow fail him--somehow turn all this magic of moonshine and +kisses into ashes and heartbreak. + +She was a miser with her treasure, already; she wanted to fly with +it, and to hide it away, and to test its reality in secret, alone. +She had come running in from the wonderland down by the gate, just +for this, just to prove to herself that it would not vanish in the +commonplaceness of the shabby hall, would not disappear before the +everyday contact of everyday things. + +There was moonlight here, too, falling in clear squares on the +stairway landing, white and mysterious and bewitching, but on the +other side of the hall was wholesome, cheerful lamplight creeping +in a warm streak under the sitting-room door. + +Dad was in the sitting room, with the girls. The doctor's house +was full of girls. Anne, his niece, was twenty-four; Alix, +Cherry's sister, three years younger--how staid and unmarried and +undesired they seemed to-night to panting and glowing and +glorified eighteen! Anne, with Alix's erratic help, kept house for +her uncle, and was supposed to keep a sharp eye on Cherry, too. +But she hadn't been sharp enough to keep Martin Lloyd from asking +her to marry him, exulted Cherry, as she stood breathless and +laughing in the dark hallway. + +Cherry had never had any other home than this shabby brown +bungalow, and she knew every inch of the hall, even without light +to see it. She knew the faded rugs, and the study door that +swallowed up her father every day, and the table where Alix had +put a great bowl of buttercups, and the glass-paned door at the +back through which the doctor's girls had looked out at many a +frosty morning, and red sunset, and sun-steeped summer afternoon. +But even the old hall had seemed transformed to-night, lighted +with a beauty quite new, scented with an immortal sweetness. + +Hong came out of the dining room; the varnished buttercups +twinkled in a sudden flood of light. He had come to put a folded +tablecloth into the old wardrobe that did for a sideboard, under +the stairs. Cherry, descending to earth, smiled at him, and +crossed the hall to the sitting-room door. + +An older woman might have gone upstairs, to dream alone of her new +joy, but Cherry thought that it would be "fun" to join the family, +and "act as if nothing had happened!" She was only a child, after +all. + +Consciously or unconsciously, they had all tried to keep her a +child, these three who looked up to smile at her as she came in. +One of them, rosy, gray-headed, magnificent at sixty, was her +father, whose favourite she knew she was. He held out his hand to +her without closing the book that was in the other hand, and drew +her to the wide arm of his chair, where she settled herself with +her soft young body resting against him, her slim ankles crossed, +and her cheek dropped against his thick silver hair. + +Alix was reading, and dreamily scratching her ankle as she read; +she was a tall, awkward girl, younger far at twenty-one than +Cherry was at eighteen, pretty in a gipsyish way, untidy as to +hair, with round black eyes, high, thin cheek-bones marked with +scarlet, and a wide, humorous mouth that was somehow droll in its +expression even when she was angry or serious. She was rarely +angry; she was unexacting, good-humoured, preferring animals to +people, and unconventional in speech and manner. Her father and +Anne sometimes discussed her anxiously; they confessed that they +were rather fearful for Alix. For Cherry, neither one had ever had +a disquieting thought. + +Anne, smiling demurely over her white sewing, was a small, +prettily-made little woman, with silky hair trimly braided, and a +rather pale, small face with charming and regular features. She +was not considered exactly pretty; perhaps the contrast with +Cherry's unusual beauty was rather hard on both the older girls; +but she was so perfectly capable in her little groove, so busy, +contented, and necessary in the doctor's household, that it was +rather a habit with all their friends to praise Anne. Anne had +"admirers," too, Cherry reflected, looking at her to-night, but +neither she nor Alix had ever been engaged--engaged--engaged! + +"Aren't you home early?" said Doctor Strickland, rubbing his cheek +against his youngest daughter's cheek in sleepy content. He was +never quite happy unless all three girls were in his sight, but +for this girl he had always felt an especial protecting fondness. +It seemed only yesterday that Cherry, a rosy-cheeked sturdy little +girl in a checked gingham apron, had been trotting off to school; +to him it was yesterday that she had been a squarely-built baby, +digging in the garden paths, and sniffing at the border pinks. He +had followed her exquisite childhood with more than a father's +usual devotion, perhaps because she really had been an +exceptionally endearing child, perhaps because she had been given +him, a tiny crying thing in a blanket, to fill the great gap her +mother's going had left in his heart. He had sympathized with her +microscopic cut fingers, he had smiled into her glowing, damp +little face when she stuttered to him long tales of bad doggies +and big 'ticks; he had brought her "jacks" and paper-dolls and +hair ribbons; he loved the diminutive femininity of the creature; +she was all a woman, even at three. Alix he proudly called his +"boy"; Alix used hair ribbons to tie up her dogs, and demanded hip +boots and an air rifle and got them, too, and used them, but when +he took Alix in his arms she was apt to bump his nose violently +with her hard young head, to break his glasses, or at best to +wriggle herself free. Little Cherry, however, was 'fraid of dogs, +she told her father, and of guns, and she would curl up in his +arms for happy half-hours, with her gold curls sprayed against his +shoulder, and her soft little hand tucked into his own. + +"Mr. Lloyd had to take the nine o'clock train," Cherry answered +her father dreamily, "and he and Peter walked home with me!" She +did not add that Peter had left them at his own turning, a quarter +of a mile away. + +"I thought he wasn't going to be at Mrs. North's for dinner," Anne +observed quietly, in the silence. She had been informally asked to +the Norths' for dinner that evening herself, and had declined for +no other reason than that attractive Martin Lloyd was presumably +not to be there. + +"He wasn't," Cherry said. "He thought he had to go to town at six. +I just stopped in to give them Dad's message, and they teased me +to stay. You knew where I was, didn't you--Dad?" she murmured. + +"Mrs. North telephoned about six, and said you were there, but she +didn't say that Mr. Lloyd was," Anne said, with a faint hint of +discontent in her tone. + +Alix fixed her bright, mischievous eyes upon the two, and +suspended her reading for a moment. Alix's attitude toward the +opposite sex was one of calm contempt, outwardly. But she had made +rather an exception of Martin Lloyd, and had recently had a +conversation with him on the subject of sensible, platonic +friendships between men and women. At the mention of his name she +looked up, remembering this talk with a little thrill. + +His name had thrilled Anne, too, although she betrayed no sign of +it as she sat quietly matching silks. In fact, all three of the +girls were quite ready to fall in love with young Lloyd, if two of +them had not actually done so. + +He was a newcomer in the little town, a tall, presentable fellow, +ready with laughter, ready with words, and always more than ready +for flirtation. He admitted that he liked to flirt; his gay daring +had quite carried Anne's citadel, and had even gained Alix's +grudging response. Cherry had not been at home when Martin first +appeared in Mill Valley, and the older girls had written her, +visiting friends in Napa, that she must come and meet the new man. + +Martin was a mining engineer: he had been employed in a Nevada +mine, but was visiting his cousin in the valley now before going +to a new position in June. In its informal fashion, Mill Valley +had entertained him; he had tramped to the big forest five miles +away with the Stricklands, and there had been a picnic to the +mountain-top, everybody making the hard climb except Peter Joyce, +who was a trifle lame, and perhaps a little lazy as well, and who +usually rode an old horse, with the lunch in saddle-bags at each +side. Alix formulated her theories of platonic friendships on +these walks; Anne dreamed a foolish, happy dream. Girls did marry, +men did take wives to themselves, dreamed Anne; it would be +unspeakably sweet, but it would be no miracle! + +And Anne, always busy and happy and helpful, was more so than +ever, unpacking the delicious lunch, capably arranging for +everybody's comfort and pleasure, looking up with innocent +surprise when Martin bent over her as she fussed and rearranged +baskets. + +"I thought YOU were gathering wood!" + +"Did you, indeed? Let the other fellows do that. I shan't be here +forever, and I'm privileged." + +"Would you like me to give you something else to do?" + +"No, ma'am, I'm quite happy, thank you!" + +Not much in the words to remember, truly, but the tone and the +look went straight to Anne's close-guarded heart. Every time she +looked up at the mountain, rearing its dark crest above the little +valley, they had come back to her. + +That was all several weeks ago, now. It was just after that +mountain picnic that Cherry had come home; on a Sunday, as it +chanced, that was her eighteenth birthday, and on which Martin and +his aunt were coming to dinner. Alix had marked the occasion by +wearing a loose velvet gown in which she fancied herself; Anne had +conscientiously decorated the table, had seen to it that there was +ice-cream, and chicken, and all the accessories that make a Sunday +dinner in the country a national institution. Cherry had done +nothing helpful. + +On the contrary, she had disgraced herself and infuriated Hong by +deciding to make fudge the last minute. Hong had finally relegated +her to the laundry, and it was from this limbo that Martin, +laughing joyously, extricated her, when, sticky and repentant, she +had called for help. It was Martin who untied the checked brown +apron, disentangling from the strings the silky gold tendrils that +were blowing over Cherry's white neck, and Martin who opened the +door for her sugary fingers, and Martin who watched the flying +little figure out of sight with a prolonged "Whew-w-w!" of utter +astonishment. The child was a beauty. + +But if she was beautiful when flushed and cross and sticky, there +was no word for her when she presently came demurely downstairs, +her exquisite little red mouth still pouting, her bright head +still drooping sulkily, but her wonderful eyes glinting mischief, +and the dark, tumbled apron replaced by thin white ruffles that +began at Cherry's shoulders and ended above her ankles. Soft, firm +round chin, straight little nose, blue eyes ringed with babyish +shadows; Martin found them all adorable, as was every inch of the +slender, beautifully made little body, the brown warm hand, the +clear, childish forehead, the square little foot in a shining +slipper. + +Her eighteenth birthday! He learned that she had just put up her +hair, indeed, after dinner, her father made her tumble it down in +a golden mop again. "Can't lose my last girl, you know," he said +to Mrs. North, Martin's aunt, seriously. Martin had been shown her +birthday gifts: books and a silver belt buckle and a gold pen and +stationery and handkerchiefs. A day or two later she had had +another gift; had opened the tiny Shreve box with a sudden +hammering at her heart, with a presage of delight. She had found a +silver-topped candy jar, and the card of Mr. John Martin Lloyd, +and under the name, in tiny letters, the words "O fudge!" The +girls laughed over this nonsense appreciatively, but there was +more than laughter in Cherry's heart. + +From that moment the world was changed. Her father, her sister, +her cousin had second place, now. Cherry had put out her innocent +little hand, and had opened the gate, and had passed through it +into the world. That hour was the beginning, and it had led her +surely, steadily, to the other hour to-night when she had been +kissed, and had kissed in return. + +Nobody dreamed it, she told herself with innocent exultation, +looking at Alix, sunk into her chair ungracefully, and at Anne, +peacefully sewing. They thought of her as a child--she, who was +engaged to be married! + +"So--we walk home with young men?" mused the doctor, smiling. +"Look here, girls, this little Miss Muffet will be cutting you +both out with that young man, if you're not careful!" + +Alix, deep in her story, did not hear him, but Anne smiled +faintly, and faintly frowned as she shook her head. She considered +Cherry sufficiently precocious without Uncle Lee's ill-considered +tolerance. Anne had often told him that Cherry was the "pink-and- +white type" that would attract "boys" soon enough without any +encouragement from him. But he persisted in regarding her as +nothing more than a captivating baby! + +He would have had them always children, this tender, simple, +innocent Doctor Strickland. He was in many ways a child himself. +He had never made money in his profession; he and his wife and the +two tiny girls had had a hard enough struggle sometimes. Anne and +her own father had joined the family eight years ago, in the same +year that the Strickland Patent Fire Extinguisher, over which the +doctor had been puttering for years, had been sold. It did not +sell, as his neighbours believed, for a million dollars, but for +perhaps one tenth of that sum. It was enough, and more than +enough, whatever it was. After Anne's father died it meant that +the doctor could live on in the brown house under the redwoods, +with his girls, reading, fussing with a new invention, walking, +consulting with Anne, laughing at Alix, and spoiling his youngest- +born. + +The house was shingled, low, framed in wide porches, smelling +within and without of the sweet woods about it. Here the +Stricklands weathered the cold, damp winters, when the trees +dripped and the creeks swelled, and here they watched the first +emerald of spring breaking through the loam of a thousand autumns; +here they hunted for iris and wild lilac in April, and hung +Japanese lanterns through the long, warm summers. It was a perfect +life for the old man; it was only lately that he begun uneasily to +suspect that they would some day want something more, that they +would some day tire of empty forest and blowing mountain ridge, +and go away from the shadow of Mt. Tamalpais, and into the world. + +Anne, now--was she beginning to fancy this young Lloyd? Doctor +Strickland was surprised with the fervour with which he repudiated +the thought. Anne had been admired, she must go to her own home +some day. But her uncle hoped that it would be a neighbouring +home; this young engineer, who had drifted already into a dozen +different and distant places, was not the man for staid little +Anne. He was twenty-eight years old, but it was not the +discrepancy in years that mattered. The doctor had himself been +twelve years older than his wife. No, it was something less +tangible-- + +"What did you want to see Mr. Lloyd about to-morrow, Dad?" Cherry +interrupted his thoughts to ask. + +"The rose vine!" her father reminded her. + +"You'll never get that back on the roof!" Alix looked up to assure +him discouragingly. "I told you, when you were pruning it," she +added vivaciously, "that you were cutting too deep. No--you knew +it all! Now the first wind brings it down all over the place, and +you get exactly what you deserve!" + +Her tone was less harsh than her words; indeed, it was the tone he +loved from her, that of a devoted but long-suffering mother. She +came to Cherry's hassock, and dropped on it, and rested her untidy +head against his knee. + +"Anne aided and abetted me!" said the doctor meekly. + +"To the extent of handing you your shears!" Anne said promptly. + +"No, but really you know, Dad, you were a pig-headed little +creature to do that!" Alix said musically. "You might just as well +cut it down at the roots and plant another double banksia." + +"I rather thought that Lloyd might have some idea of a tackle--or +a derrick or something--" submitted her father vaguely. + +"Well, if anybody can--" Anne conceded, laughing. "What did he say +about coming over, Cherry?" + +But Cherry had not been listening, and the conversation was +reviewed for her benefit. She remarked, between two rending yawns, +that Mr. Lloyd was coming over to-morrow at ten o'clock, and +Peter, too-- + +"Peter won't be much good!" Alix commented. Cherry looked at her +reproachfully. + +"You're awfully mean to Peter, lately!" she protested. Her father +gave her a shrewd look, with his good-night kiss, and immediately +afterward both the younger girls dragged their way up to bed. + +Alix and Cherry shared a bare, woody-smelling room tucked away +under brown eaves. The walls were of raw pine, the latticed +windows, in bungalow fashion, opened into the fragrant darkness of +the night. The beds were really bunks, and above her bunk each +girl had an extra berth, for occasional guests. There was scant +prettiness in the room, and yet it was full of purity and charm. +The girls sat upon their beds while they were undressing, and +plunged upon their knees on the bare pine floor and rested their +elbows upon the faded patchwork quilts while they said their +prayers. Mill Valley was so healthful a little mountain village +that among her two thousand residents there was only one doctor, +the old man who sat by the fire downstairs, and he had formally +retired from general practice. The girls, like all their +neighbours, were hardy, bred to cold baths, long walks, simple +hours, and simple food. In the soft Western climate they left +their bedroom windows open the year round; they liked to wake to +winter damp and fog, and go downstairs with blue finger-tips and +chattering teeth, to warm themselves with breakfast and the fire. + +So Alix said nothing when Cherry went to the window to-night, and +knelt at it, looking out into the redwoods, and breathing the +piney air. In the silence of the little room the girls could hear +a swollen creek rushing; rich, loamy odours drifted in from the +forest that had been soaked with long April rains. Cherry saw a +streak of light under the door of Hong's cabin, a hundred yards +away; there was no moon, it was blackness unbroken under the +trees. The season was late, but the girls felt with a rush of +delight that summer was with them at last; the air was soft and +warm, and there was a general sense of being freed from the +winter's wetness and heaviness. + +Alix rolled herself in a gray army blanket, and was asleep in some +sixty seconds. But Cherry felt that she was floating in seas of +new joy and utter delight, and that she would never be sleepy +again. + +Downstairs Anne and the doctor sat staidly on, the man dreaming +with a knotted forehead, the girl sewing. Presently she ran a +needle through her fine white work with seven tiny stitches, +folded it, and put her thimble into a case that hung from her +orderly workbag with a long ribbon. + +"Wait a minute, Anne," said the doctor, as she straightened +herself to rise. "This young Lloyd, now--what do YOU think of +him?" + +She widened demure blue eyes. + +"Should you be sorry if I--liked him, Uncle Lee?" she smiled. + +The old man rumpled his silver hair restlessly. + +"No-o," he said, a little ruefully. "I suppose it'll be some man +some day, my dear. I've been thinking--even little Cherry seems to +be growing up!" + +Anne, who modelled her deportment somewhat upon the conduct of +Esther in "Bleak House," came to the hassock at his knee, and sat +there, looking up at him with bright affection and respect. + +"Cherry's only a child," she assured him, "and Alix will not be +ready to give her heart to any man for years to come! But I'm +twenty-four, Uncle. And sometimes I feel ready to--to try my own +wings!" + +He smiled at her absently; he was thinking of her mother, an +articulate, academic, resolute woman, of whom he had never been +fond. + +"That's the way the wind blows, eh?" he asked kindly. + +Anne widened her pretty eyes. + +"Well--you see how much he's here! You see the flowers and books +and notes. I'm not the sort of girl to wear my heart on my +sleeve," Anne, who was fond of small conservational tags, assured +him merrily. "But there must be some fire where there's so much +smoke!" she ended. + +"You're not sure, my dear?" he asked, after some thought. + +"Oh, no!" she answered. "It's just a fancy that persists in coming +and going. You know, Uncle Lee," Anne pursued, confidentially, +"I've always had rather a high ideal of marriage. I've always said +that the man I would marry must be a big man--oh, I don't mean +only physically! I mean morally, mentally--a man among men!" + +"And you think young Lloyd--answers that description, eh?" + +"I think he does, Uncle Lee," she answered seriously. And +immediately afterward she got to her feet, saying brightly, "Well! +we mustn't take this too gravely--yet. It was only that I wanted +to be open and above-board with you, Uncle, from the beginning. +That's the only honest way." + +"That's wise and right!" her uncle answered, in the kindly, absent +tone he had used to them as children, a tone he was apt to use to +Anne when she was in her highest mood, and one she rather +resented. + +"Cherry, now--" he asked, detaining her for a moment. "She--you +don't think that perhaps Peter admires her?" + +"PETER!" Anne echoed amazedly, and stood thinking. + +Peter was more than thirty years old, thin, scholarly, something +of a solitary, the sweet, dreamy, affectionate neighbour who had +shared the girls' lives for the past ten years. Cherry had bullied +Peter since her babyhood, ruined his piano with sticky fingers, +trampled his rose-beds, coaxed him into asking her father to let +her sit up for dinner. For some reason she could not, or would +not, define, Anne liked the idea of Cherry and Peter falling in +love-- + +"Somehow one doesn't think of Peter as marrying any one--" she +said slowly, still trying to grasp the thought. "He's so--self- +sufficient," she added, shaking her head. "You--you WOULDN'T like +that, Uncle?" + +"Peter is a dear fellow," the doctor mused. "But Cherry--why, +she's barely eighteen! He--" The old man hesitated, began again: +"I suppose there's no reason why Peter shouldn't kiss her, in a-- +brotherly sort of way?" he submitted doubtfully. + +"Did he kiss her?" Anne exclaimed. + +"I don't know that he did," Cherry's father said hastily. + +"But what made you think he did?" the girl persisted. + +"Just a fancy," he assured her. "Just an old father's fear that +she is growing up too fast!" + +"Because we all, and you especially, spoil her," Anne reminded +him, smiling. "Peter," she added thoughtfully, "has kissed us all, +now and then!" She stooped for a dutiful good-night kiss, and was +gone. And as she went, lightly and swiftly across the hall, up the +stairway with her shoulders erect, and methodically and prettily +moved about her brushing and folding and disrobing, she saw +herself engaged to be married, saw herself veiled and mystical in +white, on her Uncle's arm, heard the old neighbours and friends +saying that little Anne Strickland had gone to her own home, and +had won the love of a fine man. + +Downstairs, the doctor sat on, thinking, and his face was grave. +He was thinking of little Cherry's goodnight kiss, half an hour +ago. She had rested against his arm, and he had held her there, +but what had been the thoughts behind the blue eyes so near his +own? Perhaps Anne was right--perhaps Anne was right. But he +realized with a great rush of fear that some man had kissed Cherry +to-night, had held her against a tobacco-scented coat, and that +the girl was a woman, and an awakened woman at that. Cherry-- +kissed a man! Her father's heart winced away from the thought. + +Young Lloyd and Peter had walked home with her. But if Anne was +right in her maidenly suspicions of Lloyd's intentions, then it +must have been Peter who surprised little Cherry with a sudden +embrace. Lloyd had been hurrying for a train, too; the case looked +clear for Peter. + +And as he came to his conclusions, a certain relief crept into the +old man's heart. Peter was an odd fellow; he was ten years too old +for the child. But Peter was a lover of books and gardens and +woods and music, after all, and Peter's father and this old man +musing by the fire had been "Lee" and "Paul" to each other since +boyhood. Peter might give Cherry a kiss as innocently as a +brother; in any case, Peter would wait for her, would be all +consideration and tenderness when he did win her. + +"But I think perhaps she might go down to the San Jose school for +half a term," her father reflected. "Six months there did wonders +for Alix. No use precipitating things--the next few years are +pretty important for all the girls. We mustn't let her fancy that +the first man who turns her head with compliments is the right +partner for life! Alix, now--somehow she wasn't like Cherry, at +eighteen." + +He smiled at a sudden memory of Alix, who was chicken-farming at +that age, and generally unpleasantly redolent of incubators, +chopped feed, and mire. He seemed to remember Alix shouting that +if Peter Joyce was going to LIVE in their house, she would move +somewhere else! Cherry was different. + +Cherry, he reflected fearfully, was as pretty as her mother had +been at eighteen, with the same rounded chin and apricot cheeks, +and the same shadowed innocent blue eyes with a film of corn- +coloured hair blown across them. She had the strange, the +indefinable quality that without words, almost without glances, +draws youth toward youth, draws admiration and passion, draws life +and all its pain. Her father for the first time to-night +formulated in his heart the thought that she might be happily +married-- + +Married--nonsense! Why, what did she know of life, of submission +and courage and sacrifice? At the first strain, at the first real +test, she would want to run home to her Daddy again, to "stop +playing"--! It would be years, many years, before the snowy +frills, and the pale gold head, and the firm, brown little hand +would be ready for that! + +Not many hours after he went slowly up to bed morning began to +creep into the little valley. The redwoods turned gray, and then +dark green, the fog stirred, and a first shaft of bright sunlight +struck across a shoulder of the hills, and pierced the shadows +about the brown bungalow. Alix, at her early bath, heard quail +calling, and looked out to see the last of the fog vanishing at +eight o'clock, and to get a wet rush of fragrance from the Persian +lilac, blooming this year for the first time. At half-past eight +she came out into the garden, to find her father somewhat ruefully +studying the tumbled ruins of the yellow banksia rose. The garden +was still wet, but warming fast; she picked a plume of dark and +perfumed heliotrope, and began to fasten it in his coat lapel +while she kissed him. + +"We'll never get that back on the roof, my dear boy," Alix said +maternally. + +Her father pursed his lips, shook his head doubtfully. The rose, a +short, week ago, had been spreading fan-like branches well toward +the ridge-pole, a story and a half above their heads. But the +great wind of yestereve that had ended the spring and brought in +the summer had dragged it from its place and flung it, a jumble of +emerald leaves and sweet clusters of creamy blossoms, across the +path and the steps of the porch. Alix looked up at the outward +curve of the reversed branches, bent almost to the splitting point +in the unfamiliar direction, and whistled. She tentatively tugged +at a loose spray, and stood biting her thumb. + +"Why it should have kept its place for fifteen years and then +suddenly flopped, is a mystery to me!" she observed resentfully. + +"Well, the truth is," her father confessed, "you were quite right +last night. When I pruned it, a week ago, I may have undermined +it." + +"You never will listen to reason!" his daughter remarked absently, +her attention distracted by the setter puppy who came clumsily +gambolling toward her. "Hello, old Bumpydoodles!" she added, with +rich affection, kissing the dog's silky head, and burying both +hands in his feathered collar. "Hello, old Buck!" + +"Alexandra, for heaven's sake stop handling that brute!" said +Peter Joyce disgustedly, coming up the path. "I dare say you've +not had your breakfast, either. Go wash your hands! 'Morning, +Doctor!" + +Father and daughter turned to smile upon him, a tall, lean man, +with a young face and a finely groomed head, and with touches of +premature silver at his temples. He was very much at home here, +had been their closest friend for many years. + +He was a bachelor, just entering his thirties, a fastidious, +critical, exacting man by reputation, but showing his best side to +the Stricklands. They had a vague idea that he was rich, according +to their modest standard, but he apparently had no extravagant +tastes, and lived as quietly, or more quietly, than they did. He +had a brown cabin, up on the mountain, where two or three +Portuguese boys and an old, fat Chinese cook managed his affairs, +and he sometimes spoke of friends at the club, or brought two or +three men home with him for a visit. But for the most part he +liked solitude, books, music, dogs, and his fireside. The old +doctor's one social enjoyment was in visiting Peter, and the +younger man went to no other place so steadily as he came to the +old house under the redwoods. + +The girls accepted him unquestioningly, sometimes resenting his +frank criticism, sometimes grateful for the entertaining he +delighted to do for them, but most often ignoring him, as if he +had been an uncle whose place and standing in the domestic circle +was unquestioned, but who did not really enter into their young +plans and lives. He was whimsically, good-naturedly disapproving +of Alexandra, and he frankly did not like Anne, but he had always +been especially indulgent to Cherry, and had taken the subject of +Cherry's schooling and development very seriously. And Cherry +treated him, in return, as if she had been his demure and +mischievous and affectionate daughter. + +"'Morning, Peter!" said Doctor Strickland now, smiling at him. +"Have you had yours?" + +"My house," said Mr. Joyce fastidiously, "is a well-managed +place." + +"Of course," Alix said, panting from her welcome to the dog, and +laughing at the newcomer without resentment, "of course it is, for +the President Emeritus of the Maiden Ladies' Guild is running it!" + +"Don't be insulting," Peter answered, in the same mood. "Say," he +added, pursing his lips to whistle, as he looked at the rose tree, +"did Tuesday's wind do that?" + +"Tuesday's wind and Dad," Alix answered. "Will it go back, Peter?" + +"I--I don't know!" he mused, walking slowly about the wreck. "If +we had a lever down here, and some fellow on the roof with a rope, +maybe." + +"Mr. Lloyd is coming over!" Alix announced. Peter nodded absently, +but the mention of Martin Lloyd reminded him that they had all +dined at his house on the very evening when the mysterious gale +had commenced, and with interest he asked: + +"Cherry catch cold coming home Tuesday night?" + +"No; she squeezed in between Dad and me, and was as warm as +toast!" Alix answered casually. "How'd you like Mr. Lloyd?" she +added. + +"Nice fellow!" Peter answered. Alix grinned. She had before this +accused Peter of violent partisanship with his own sex. He +criticized women severely; the Strickland girls had often been +angry and resentful at his comments upon the insincerity, +extravagance, and ignorance of their own sex, but with Peter, all +men were worthy of respect, until otherwise proved. + +"He's awfully nice," Alix agreed. + +"Who is he?" Peter asked curiously. "Where are his people and all +that?" + +"His people live in Portland," the girl answered. "He's a mining +engineer, and he's waiting now to be called to El Nido; he's to be +at a mine there. He's lots of fun--when you know him, really!" + +"Talking of the new Prince Charming, of course," Anne said, +joining them, and linking an arm in her Uncle's and in Alix's arm. +"Don't bring that puppy in, Alix, please! Breakfast, Uncle Lee. +Come and have another cup of coffee, Peter!" + +"Prince Charming, eh?" Peter echoed thoughtfully, as they all +turned toward a delicious drift of the odour of bacon and coffee, +and crossed the porch to the dining room. "I was going down for +the mail, but now I'll have to stay and see this rose matter +through! Thanks, Anne, but I'll watch you." + +"Afraid of getting fatter?" Alix speculated, shaking out her +napkin. "You ARE fatter," she added, with a calm conviction. + +"Do you always say the thing that will give the most offence?" +Peter asked, annoyed. "Where's Cherry?" he added, glancing about. + +Cherry answered the question herself by trailing in in a Japanese +wrapper, and beginning to drink her coffee with bare, slender arms +resting on the table. Nobody protested, the adored youngest was +usually given her way. Alix's indifference to the niceties of her +toilet had been seriously combated, years ago, but Cherry was so +young, and so pretty in any dress or undress, that it was +impossible to regard her little lapses with any gravity. Moreover, +the family realized perfectly that Alix would have clipped her +thick hair, and taken to bloomers or knickerbockers outright, at +the slightest encouragement, and would gladly have breakfasted in +a wrapper, or in her petticoats, or while about the woods with her +dogs, whereas nobody could know Cherry and not know that every +weakness of which the feminine heart is capable, for frills and +toilet waters, creams and laces, was dormant under the childish +negligence. + +"I heard you all laughing, under the window and it--woke--me--up!" +Cherry said dreamily. + +"It seems to me," Anne, who had been eying her uneasily, said +lightly, "that someone I know is getting pretty old to come +downstairs in that rig when strangers are here!" + +"It seems to me this is just as decent as lots of things--bathing +suits, for instance!" Cherry returned instantly, gathering the +robe about her, and giving Anne a resentful glance over her blue +cup. + +"Peter, are you a stranger?" Alix said. "If Peter's a stranger," +she added animatedly, "what is an intimate friend? Peter walks +through this house at all hours; you can't wash your hair or do a +little ironing without having Peter under your feet; he borrows +money from me; he bullies Hong about wasting butter--" + +"Also you borrow money from me, my child, don't forget that," +Peter interrupted serenely, peeling an apple. "I don't come to see +YOU, Alix." + +"I have a rope somewhere--" the doctor ruminated. "Where did I put +that long rope--what did I have it for, in the first place--" + +"You had it to guy the apple tree," Alix reminded him. "Don't you +remember you got a regular ship's cable to tie that tree, and it +never worked? The tree that died after all--" + +"Ah, yes!" said her father, his attentive face brightening. "Ah, +yes! Now WHERE is that rope?" But even as Alix observed that she +had seen it somewhere, and advanced a tentative guess as to the +cellar, his eyes fell upon Cherry, and went from Cherry's absorbed +face--for she was dreaming over her breakfast--to Peter, and he +wondered if Peter HAD kissed her. + +"Come on, let's get at it!" Alix exclaimed with relish. She loved +a struggle of any description, had prepared for this one with +sleeves rolled to the elbows, and had put on heavy shoes and her +briefest skirt. "Come on, Sweetums," she added, to the dog, who +had somehow wormed his way into the dining room, and was beating +the floor with an obsequious tail. She caught his forepaws, and he +whipped his beautiful tail between his legs, and looked about with +agonized eyes while she dragged him through a clumsy dance. "He's +the darlingest pup we ever had!" Alix stated to Cherry, who was +departing for the upper regions and a complete costume. + +"He needs a bath," Anne observed coldly, and Peter's abrupt shout +of laughter made Alix flush angrily. + +"Bring your cigarette out here, Peter," the old doctor said, +crossing the garden to look in the abandoned greenhouse for his +rope. "We're in no hurry," he said. "We may as well wait until +Lloyd comes along; the fellow's arms are like flails. You---" the +old man opened a reluctant door, peered into a glassed space +filled with muddy shelves and empty flower-pots and spiderwebs. +"It's not here," he stated. Then he began again, "You brought +Cherry home last night?" he asked. + +"As a matter of fact, I didn't," Peter answered, in his quick, +precise tones. "I came with Lloyd and Cherry as far as the bridge, +then I cut up the hill. Why?" he added sharply. "What's up?" + +"Nothing's up," Doctor Strickland said slowly. "But I think that +Lloyd admires--or is beginning to admire--her," he said. + +"Who--Cherry!" Peter exclaimed, with distaste and incredulity in +his tone. + +"You don't think so?" the doctor, looking at him wistfully, asked +eagerly. + +"Why, certainly not!" Peter said quickly. "Certainly not," he +added, frowning, with his eyes narrowed, and his look fixed upon +the vista of woodland. + +"I had a fancy that he might have been putting notions into her +head," her father said, anxious to be reassured. + +"But--great Scott!" Peter said, his face very red, "she's much +younger than Anne and Alix--" + +"It doesn't always go by that," the doctor suggested. + +"No, I know it doesn't," Peter answered in his quick, annoyed +fashion. + +"I should be sorry," Cherry's father admitted. + +"Sorry!" Peter echoed impatiently. "But it's quite out of the +question, of course! It's quite out of the question. You mustn't-- +we mustn't--let ourselves get scared about the first man that +looks at her. She--she wouldn't consider him for an instant," he +suddenly decided in great satisfaction. "You mustn't forget that +she has something to do with it! Very fastidious, Cherry. She's +not like other girls!" + +"That's true--that's true!" Doctor Strickland agreed, in great +relief. They turned back toward the garden, in time to meet Alix +and several dogs streaming across the clearing. Over the girl's +shoulder was coiled the great rope; she leaped various logs and +small bushes as she came, and the dogs barked madly and leaped +with her. Breathless, she stumbled and fell into her father's +arms, and both men had the same thought, one that made them smile +upon her tomboyishness indulgently: "If this is twenty-one-- +eighteen is three long years younger and less responsible!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Immediately they gathered by the fallen rose vine, all talking and +disputing at once. Alix and the dogs added only noise to the +confusion; the men debated, measured, and doubted; Anne, busy with +household duties, came and went smilingly. About them stretched +the forest, wrapped in the summer morning stillness that is really +compounded of a thousand happy sounds. There was no fog now; warm +spokes of sunshine fell brightly into the dim, glowing heart of +the woods; bees and birds murmured on short journeys; aromatic +sweetness drifted on the air. + +They had known a thousand such mornings, the doctor and his girls, +still, exquisite, happy, dedicated to some absurd undertaking. +They had built chicken pens, they had dammed or cleared the creek, +they had felled bay-trees, and lopped the lower branches of the +redwoods, they had built roaring bonfires, or painted the porch +floor, and many times they had roasted chops or potatoes at the +brick oven, and feasted royally in the open forest. + +A light rope was tied; an experimental tug broke it like a string, +tumbling Alix violently in a sitting position, and precipitating +her father into a loamy bed. Anne, who was bargaining with a +Chinese fruit vendor frankly interested in their undertaking, had +called that she would help them in a second, when behind Alix, who +was still sitting on the ground, another voice offered help. + +A young man had come into the doctor's garden; work was stopped +for a few minutes while they welcomed Martin Lloyd. + +He was tall and fair, broad, but with not an ounce of extra +weight, with brown eyes always laughing, and a ready friendliness +always in evidence. He was dressed becomingly to-day, in a brown +army shirt open at the throat, and shabby golf trousers that met +his thick woollen stockings at the knee. Anne's heart gave a throb +of approval as she studied him; Alix flushed furiously, scowled a +certain boyish approval; Cherry had not come down. + +"Can you help us?" The doctor echoed his question doubtfully. "I +don't know that it can be done!" he admitted. + +"This shameless old man has just confessed that he gouged the +heart out of the poor tree a week ago," Alix said, getting to her +feet. "That's the first use he put his birthday knife to! And Anne +stood here and abetted him, as far as I can find out!" + +"How you garble things, Alix!" Anne said, giving her hand to +Martin. "I came out here to find my uncle busily pruning and +chopping the dead underwood away, but I had no more to do with it +than you had!" + +"What's that you're eating--an apricot?" Martin said to Anne, in +his laughing way. "I was going to say that if it was a peach, you +are a cannibal!" + +"Oh, help!" Alix ejaculated, with a look of elaborate scorn. + +"No, but where were you last night?" Martin added in a lower tone +when he and Anne could speak unnoticed. The happy colour flooded +her face. + +"I have to take care of my family SOMETIMES!" she reminded him +demurely. "Wasn't Cherry a good substitute?" + +"Cherry's adorable!" he agreed heartily. + +"Isn't she sweet?" Anne asked enthusiastically. "She's only a +little girl, really, but she's a little girl who is going to have +a lot of attention some day!" she added, in her most matronly +manner. + +Martin did not answer, but turning briskly toward the doctor, he +devoted himself to the business in hand. Peter had climbed on an +inverted barrel, to inspect and advise. Alix dashed upstairs for +nails and hammer; the doctor whittled pegs; Martin measured the +comparative strength of ropes and branches with a judicial eye and +hand. Anne flitted about, suggesting, commenting, her pretty +little head tipped to one side. + +They were all deep in the first united tug, each person placed +carefully by the doctor, and guys for the rope driven at intervals +decided by Martin, when there was an interruption for Cherry's +arrival on the scene. With characteristic coquetry she did not +approach, as the others had, by means of the front porch and the +garden path, but crept from the study window into a veritable +tunnel of green bloom, and came crawling down it, as sweet and +fragrant, as lovely and as fresh, as the roses themselves. She +wore a scant pink gingham that had been a dozen times to the tub, +and was faded and small; it might have been a regal mantle and +diadem without any further enhancing her extraordinary beauty. Her +bright head was hidden by a blue sunbonnet, assumed, she explained +later, because the thorns tangled her hair; but as, laughing and +smothered with roses, she crept into view, the sunbonnet slipped +back, and the lovely, flushed little face, with tendrils of gold +straying across the white forehead, and mischief gleaming in the +blue, blue eyes was framed only in loosened pale gold hair. + +Years afterward Alix remembered her so, as Martin Lloyd helped her +to spring free of the branches, and she stood laughing at their +surprise and still clinging to his hand. "The day we raised the +rose tree" had a place of its own in Alix's memory, as a time of +carefree fun and content, a time of perfume and sunshine--perhaps +the last time of its kind that any one of them was to know. + +Cherry looked at Martin daringly as she joined the labourers; her +whole being was thrilling to the excitement of his glance; she was +hardly conscious of what she was doing or saying. Under her +father's direction she tied ropes, presently was placed with her +arms clasped tightly about a great sheaf of vines, ready for the +united tug. Martin came close to her, in the general confusion. + +"How's my little sweetheart this morning?" + +Cherry looked up, her throat contracted, she looked down again, +unable to speak. She had been waiting for his first word; now that +it had come it seemed so far richer and sweeter than her wildest +dream. + +"How can I see you a minute?" Martin murmured, snapping his big +knife shut. + +"I have to walk down for the mail--" stammered Cherry, conscious +only of Martin and herself. + +Both Peter and her father were watching her with an uneasiness and +suspicion that had sprung into being full-blown. Both men were +asking themselves what they knew of this strange young man who was +suddenly a part of their intimate little world. + +He was simply a man; not unusual in any apparent way. He was ready +with his words, fairly good-looking, clean and muscular, his +evident lack of polish in languages and letters atoned for by his +quick wit, and by a certain boyish artlessness and ingenuousness. +He represented himself as about to receive an excellent salary at +the mine at El Nido, two thousand a year, but also admitted +cheerfully that he was always "broke." He had distinguished +himself at college, but had left it after only two years, upon +being offered a promising position. There was nothing especially +to admire in him, nothing especially to blame; under other +circumstances Peter and the doctor might have pronounced him as +one of the least interesting of human specimens. The beauty of +childhood and adolescence were gone, the ripeness given by years +and suffering was wanting; Martin Lloyd was just, as he himself +laughingly remarked, "one of the fellers." + +Peter had secretly criticized him because he used the words +"'phone" and "photo" and "'Frisco," but in justice he had to admit +to himself that there was no particular significance to the +criticism. He also, in his secret heart, had a vague, dissatisfied +feeling that Lloyd was a man who held women, as a class, rather in +disrespect, and had probably had his experiences with them, but +there was no way of expressing, much less governing, his conduct +toward Martin by so purely speculative a prejudice. The young man +had dined at his house a few nights ago, had shown an admiration, +if not an appreciation, for music, had talked with sufficient +intelligence about political matters, mining, and--what else? +photography, and pullman cars, and the latest wreck off Bolinas-- +just the random conversation that was apt to trail through a +country dinner. He had told a Chinese joke well, and essayed an +Irish joke not so successfully. Peter, somewhat appalled, in the +sunny garden, struggling with the banksia, decided that this was +not much to know of a person who might have the audacity to fall +in love with an exquisite and innocent Cherry. After all, she +would not be a little girl forever, some man would want to take +that little corn-coloured head and that delicious little pink-clad +person away with him some day, to be his wife-- + +And suddenly Peter was torn by a stab of pure pain, and he stood +puzzled and sick, in the garden bed, wondering what was happening +to him. + +"Listen--want a drink?" Alix asked, coming out with a tin dipper +that spilled a glittering sheet of water down on the thirsty +nasturtiums. "Rest a few minutes, Peter. Dad wanted a pole, and +Mr. Lloyd has gone up into the woods to cut one." + +"And where's Cherry?" Peter asked, drinking deep. + +"She went along--just up in the woods here!" Alix answered. "Dad +had to answer the telephone, but they're going to yell if they +need help! WELL!" and Alix, panting, sat down on a log, "are we +going to do it?" + +"We ought to go up and help Lloyd," Peter decreed. "Which way did +he go?" + +"I don't know, darling!" Alix answered, leaning back, crossing her +ankles, and yawning. "But they'll be back before you could get +there. They've been gone five minutes!" + +Only five minutes, but they were enough to take Cherry and her +lover out of sight of the house, enough to have him put his arm +about her, and to have her raise her lips confidently, and yet +shyly, again to his. They kissed each other deeply, again and +again. The girl was a little confused and even a little uneasy as +he continued the tight grip on his arm about her, and her upward +look found his eyes close to her own. + +Their talk was incoherent. Cherry was still playing, coquetting +and smiling, her words few, and Martin, having her so near, could +only repeat the endearing phrases that attempted to express to her +his love and fervour. + +"You darling! Do you know how I love you? You darling--you little +exquisite beauty! Do you love me--do you love me?" Martin +murmured, and Cherry answered breathlessly: + +"You know I do--but you know I do!" + +Presently he selected the sapling redwood, and brought it down +with two blows of his axe. The girl seated herself beside him, +helped him strip the trunk, their hands constantly touching, the +man once or twice delaying her for one more snatched and laughing +kiss. + +"But, Martin, you've been engaged before?" Cherry asked. + +"Never--on my honour! But yes, I was once, too, years ago. I want +to tell you about that--" + +He told her, her grave face bent over the redwood boughs she was +tearing. She nodded, flushed, paled. He had met this girl at his +mother's, do you see? And she was a cute little thing, don't you +know? Her name was Dorothy King, and when he went back to college +she had promised to write, do you see? But she hadn't written for +weeks, and then she had written to say that she was engaged to +another man, a man named--named--he had forgotten the name. But +she had married him all right--- + +And Cherry looked up, laughing almost reproachfully. How could he +ever forget her married name! Cherry said that she suspected that +Martin hadn't really cared, and he said no, but he had wanted to +tell her about it all the same, because knowing her had made him +want really to be honest--and to be good-- + +Tears stood in his eyes, and she forgave him his admiration for +Dorothy King, and said that she knew he was good. And Martin said +that he was going to make her the happiest wife a man ever had. + +Dragging the stripped tree, they ran down the sharp hill to the +house just as Anne came out to announce luncheon. Peter was +wandering off in the woods nearby, but came at Alix's shrill yell +of summons, and looked relieved when he saw Cherry and Martin not +even talking to each other. They had been gone only ten minutes. + +Anne, who did not like Peter, had decided not to ask him to stay, +but Peter had calmly taken his usual place, and had annoyed Anne +with his familiar questioning of Hong as to the amount of butter +needed in batter bread. It was a happy meal for everyone, and +after it they had attacked the rose bush again, with aching +muscles now, and in the first real summer heat. It was three +o'clock before, with a great crackling, and the scream of a +twisted branch, and a general panting and heaving on the part of +the workers, at last the feathery mass had risen a foot--two feet- +-into the air, had stood tottering like a wall of bloom, and +finally, with a downward rush, had settled to its old place on the +roof. Hong was pressed into service now, and with Martin, was on +the roof, grappling with a rope, shouting directions. A shower of +tiny blossoms and torn leaves covered the steps of the office- +porch, the garden beds were trampled deep, the seven labourers +breathless and exhausted. But the rose vine was in place! Alix +shouted congratulations to Martin as he busily roped and tied the +recaptured masses in their old position. Anne had vanished for +sandwiches; Peter was being scientifically bandaged by the doctor. +Cherry stood looking up at the roof; she did little talking; she +watched Martin during every second he spent there. + +Her small heart was bursting with excitement. He had found easy +opportunities to talk to her a dozen times under cover of the +general noise. He had said wonderful and thrilling things. + +"How is my own girl? Sweetheart, you're the sweetest rose of them +all! Cherry, do you suppose they can see from our faces how happy +we are?" Little sentences that meant nothing when other lips spoke +them, but that his voice made immortal. + +Looking up at him, she thought of the glorious days ahead. How +they would all wonder and exclaim; yes, and how the girls would +envy her! Little Cherry, just eighteen, going to be married, and +married to a man that Alix or Anne would have been only too glad +to win! A real man, from the outside world, a man of twenty-eight, +ten years older than she was. And how the letters and presents and +gowns and plans would begin to flutter through the bungalow--she +would be married in cafe-au-lait rajah cloth, as Miss Pinckney in +San Francisco was; she would be Mrs. Lloyd! She could chaperone +Alix and Anne-- + +There was a rending, slipping noise on the roof, a scream from +Martin, and shouts from the doctor and Peter. With a great sliding +and rushing of the refractory sprays, and with a horrifying +stumbling and falling, down came Martin, caught in a great rope of +the creeper, almost at her feet. + +A time of great running and calling ensued. Cherry dropped on her +knees beside him, and had his head on her arm for a moment; then +her father took her place, and Alix, with an astonished look at +the younger girl's wet eyes, drew her sister away. Immediately +afterward Martin sat up, looked bewilderedly about from one face +to another, looked at his scratched wrist and said "Gee!" in a +thoughtful tone. Anne, coming out with sandwiches, joined in the +general laugh. + +"You scared Cherry out of ten years' growth!" Alix reproached +Martin. + +"I--I thought he might have hurt himself!" Cherry said, in the +softest of little-girl voices, and with her shy little head +hanging. Anne decided that it was becoming her clear duty to talk +to Cherry. + +"My dear," she said, later that same afternoon, when by chance she +was alone with her little cousin, "don't you think perhaps it +would be a little more dignified to treat Mr. Lloyd with more +formality? He likes you, dear, of course. But a man wants to +respect as well as like a pretty girl, and I am afraid--Uncle has +noticed it!" she interrupted herself quickly, as Cherry tossed her +head scornfully. "He spoke of it last night, and Alix tells me +that you are calling Mr. Lloyd 'Martin!' Now, dearie, Martin Lloyd +is fully ten years---" + +"Then Alix is a tattle-tale!" Cherry said childishly. + +"I don't know about that," Anne said gently, although perhaps it +would have been more generous in her to add that Alix had made the +comment gleefully, and almost admiringly. "But that isn't +important. The point is that you are only a young girl--" + +"I wish you would all mind your own royal business for about five +seconds!" Cherry said, rudely and impatiently. She was in her own +room, rummaging on the upper shelf of the closet for a certain +hat. She secured the hat now, and ran unceremoniously away from +her admonitor, to join Alix, Peter, and Martin for the daily +ceremony of walking into the village for the mail. + +Anne followed her downstairs sedately, perhaps a little dashed +presently to discover that this dignified proceeding had lost her +the walk. They were all gone. The house was very still, early +summer sweetness was drifting through wide-opened windows and +doors; the long day was slowly declining. In the woods close to +the door a really summery hum of insect life was stirring. Hong, +in dull minor gutturals, jabbered somewhere in the far distance to +a friend. Anne peeped into the deserted living room, softened +through all its pleasant shabbiness into real beauty by the shafts +of sunset red that came in through the casement windows; and was +deliberating between various becoming occupations--for Martin +might walk back with the girls--when her uncle called her. + +He was sitting in the little room that was still called his +office, but that was really his study now, and the late afternoon +light, through the replaced rose vine, streamed in on the shabby +books and the green lampshade and the cluttered desk. + +"Anne--you weren't there when that young chap tumbled. But I've +been worrying about it a little. There's no question--there's no +question that she--that Cherry--called him by his name. 'Martin,' +she called him." + +Anne had crossed to the shadowy doorway; she stood still. + +"It can't be!" protested the doctor, uneasily. "Did Alix say +anything to you about it?" + +"She said that," Anne admitted, drily. + +"You've not noticed anything between him and Cherry?" pursued the +doctor. "A girl might call a man by his name, I suppose--" + +"I don't think there has been anything to notice," Anne stated, in +a level tone. + +"You don't?" the doctor echoed, in relief, peering at her. She +could meet his look with a smile, but in her heart were the same +thoughts that Cherry had been innocently indulging, under the rose +vine an hour ago, and the dream that had been Heaven to Cherry was +Purgatory to Anne. Cherry married, Cherry receiving cups and +presents and gowns, Cherry, Mrs. Lloyd, with a plain gold ring on +her young, childish hand, Cherry able to patronize and chaperone +Alix and Anne--! "I half fancied that it might be you, Anne," her +uncle added, "although I know what a sensible little head you +have!" "I'm afraid I'm a trifle exacting where men are concerned!" +Anne said, understanding perfectly that her pride was being +shielded, but hurt to the heart, nevertheless. + +"Well, it must be stopped, if it has begun," decided her uncle. "I +can't permit it--I'd forgotten how the little witch grows!" + +"He isn't as eligible for Cherry as for me, then?" Anne asked +lightly. But her smile disarmed the unsuspicious old man, and he +answered honestly: + +"You're quite different, Anne. You were older at eighteen than +she'll be at twenty-four; you could hold your own--you could, in a +way, make your own life! She--why, she's only an innocent little +girl; she's got dolls in the attic; we were teasing her about +turning up her hair last week!" + +Again Anne was silent. It occurred to her to laugh at the +absurdity of these quick suspicions, but they had already seized +upon her with the curious tenacity of truth; already she had +accepted the fact that what yesterday would have been the +unbelievable maximum of humiliation and hurt was true to-day, and +less than the whole bitter truth! + +She was not in love with Martin Lloyd; she was not as susceptible +as the much younger Cherry, and she had not had his urging to help +her to a quick surrender. But for the first time in her life she +had seen an absolutely suitable man, a man whose work, position, +looks, name, and character fitted her rather exacting standard, +and for the first time she had let herself think confidently of +being wooed and won. It was all so right, so dignified, so +fitting. She had been the light of her uncle's eyes, and the +little capable keeper of his house for years; she had been +reminding her own friends of this frequently during the past year +or two; now she was ready to step into a nest of her own. + +Standing there in the doorway, she tasted the last bitter dregs of +the dream. It was all over. Anne was at the age that sets twenty- +five years as the definite boundary of spinsterhood. She would be +twenty-five in August. + +Alix came in from her walk glowing, and full of a great discovery. + +"Dad," she said eagerly, taking her place at the supper table, +"what do you think! I'll bet you a dollar that man is falling in +love with our Cherry!" + +Anne, at the head of the table, looked pained, but there was +genuine apprehension in the doctor's face. + +"Where is your sister?" he asked. + +"Down there by the gate," Alix answered. "They're gazing soulfully +into each other's eyes, and all that! Peter went home. But CHERRY- +-with a beau! Isn't that the ultimate extension of the limit! I'm +crazy about it--I think it's great. An engineer, Dad, and Mrs. +North's nephew, and he has a fine job in a mine somewhere," she +summarized enthusiastically, "you couldn't ask anything better +than that, could you? Could you, Dad? I love weddings! This'll be +the third I've been to!" + +"All this seems to have come up very suddenly," the doctor said, +dazedly, rumpling his gray hair with a fine old hand. "I don't +imagine your sister is taking it as seriously as you and Anne seem +inclined to---" + +"Oh, does Anne think so!" Alix exclaimed. + +"I think Cherry is one of the fortunate girls destined to drift +along the surface of life," Anne said, "and to accept wifehood +quite simply. I only wish I were that type--" + +"Oh, Nancy, what rot you talk every time you remember you had a +year at college!" Alix said, lightly. "Can't you let the poor kid +fall in love without yapping about types and biology and the +cosmic urge---" + +"Really, Alix, you use extraordinary language!" Anne remonstrated, +glancing at her uncle with outraged dignity. "And I am not aware +that I spoke of biology or the cosmic urge!" But her tone was not +as impersonal as her words, and she was flushed and even agitated. +"Shan't we begin, Uncle Lee?" she asked, patiently. "If Cherry is +just down at the gate there, she'll only be another minute--" + +She was interrupted by Cherry herself. The girl came to the porch +door, and as she hesitated there a minute, with her smiling eyes +seeking her father's face, they saw that by one firm, small hand +she drew her lover beside her. Martin Lloyd's smiling face showed +above hers in the lamplight. + +"Dad!" said Cherry, with a childish breath. "Dad! I've brought +Martin to supper!" + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +The three at the table did not move for perhaps twenty slow +seconds. Doctor Strickland, who had pushed back his chair, and +whose hands were resting on the table before him, stared at them +steadily. Anne, with a quick little hiss of surprise, smiled +faintly. Alix, the unstilted, widened her eyes, and opened her +mouth in unaffected astonishment. For there was no mistaking +Cherry's tone. + +"Doctor," said Martin, coming in, "this little girl of yours and I +have something to tell you!" The old man looked at him sharply, +almost sternly, looked about at the girls' faces, and was silent. +But he tightened his arm about Cherry, who had fluttered to the +arm of his chair. + +"Are you surprised, Daddy?" Cherry laughed, with all a child's +innocent exultation. The next instant Anne and Martin were shaking +hands, and Alix had enveloped Cherry in an enthusiastic embrace. + +"Surprised!" exclaimed Alix. "Why, aren't you surprised yourself!" + +Her sister flushed exquisitely, and Martin laughed. + +"We're just about knocked silly!" he confessed, and all the girls +laughed joyously. + +There followed a delighted confusion of talk, when each in turn +remembered what she had noticed, what she had suspected, and what +her first emotion had been at this moment or that. Meanwhile a +place was made for Martin, and biscuits and omelette and honey and +tea were put into brisk circulation. Cherry left her place beside +her father, with a final kiss, and took her own chair, all +dimples, flushes, smiles, and shy confidence. + +"And what are your plans?" Anne asked maternally, as she poured +tea. + +Her uncle, who had been silent during the excitement, mildly +interposed: + +"I think we needn't go too fast, young people! You've only known +each other a few weeks, after all; you must be pretty sure of +yourselves before taking anything like a decisive step. Plenty of +time--plenty of time. Mr. Lloyd can go back to his mine, and +Cherry will wait for him--" + +Cherry's wild-rose face coloured, and her whole body drooped. + +"But I can be getting ready, and I can tell people, Dad?" she +pleaded. + +"We'll see," her father promised her, soothingly. He had promised +her thus vaguely when, as an imperative baby years ago, she had +wanted the impossible. But she was not a baby now. + +"Ah, now--that won't do!" she pouted. + +"You must give me a little time to get used to the idea of losing +my baby, pretty," her father said. "I confess that this thing +seems to have come upon me rather unexpectedly. Mr. Lloyd here and +I must have some talks about his plans--" + +"I know exactly how you feel, Doctor," Martin said, sensibly and +sympathetically. "I realize that I should have come to you first, +and asked to pay my respects to your daughter--laugh, why don't +you?" he added to Alix, from whom an abrupt and startling laugh +had indeed escaped in good-natured scorn. + +"Nobody does that any more!" the girl said, in self-defence. "It +sounded so old-fashioned!" + +"Perhaps nobody does it any more, but I should have done it," +Martin said briskly and seriously. "Except that it all came over +me with such a rush. A week ago Cherry was only a most attractive +child, to me. I'd spoken to my aunt about her and had said that I +envied the man that was some day to win her, and that was all! +Then the time came for me to get back to work--and I found I +couldn't go! I couldn't leave her. However, I expect to be back +here some time in the fall, and I thought to myself that I'd see +her then, and perhaps, THEN--And then came last night, when I +began to say good-byes, and--it happened! I know that you all +hardly know me, and I know that Cherry is pretty young to settle +down, but I think I can satisfy you, Doctor, that you give her +into safe hands, and I believe she'll never regret trusting me!" + +He had gotten to his feet as he spoke, and was holding the back of +his chair, looking anxiously and eagerly into the old man's eyes. +His tone, in spite of his effort to keep it light, had taken on a +depth and gravity quite new to his hearers, and as Cherry, sitting +next him, and fired through all her girlish being by his +eloquence, turned to lay a small, warm hand on his own, the tears +came to his eyes. + +"Well--" said the doctor, touched himself, and in his gentlest +tone, "well! It had to come, perhaps, I can't promise her to you +very soon, Mr. Lloyd. But if you both are willing to wait, and if +time proves this to be the real feeling, I don't believe you'll +find me hard on you!" + +"That's all I ask, sir!" Martin said, resuming his seat and his +dinner. And for the rest of the meal harmony and gaiety reigned. + +Alix shot an occasional glance at Anne, who was flushed, but as +usual busy and charming over the tea cups. Alix knew that Anne was +inwardly writhing; indeed she felt a sort of emotional shock +herself. Yesterday the mere talk of a lover for any one of them +was delightfully thrilling and vague--to-night Cherry was actually +engaged! The older girls' romantic speculations were flat enough +now; Cherry had the actual thing. + +There was no jealousy in Alix's heart, as there definitely was in +Anne's, of the man. But Alix felt envious of the superior +experience--why, he would kiss Cherry! No man had ever kissed +Alix. Cherry would be the admired and envied girl among all the +girls; married at eighteen, it was so beautifully flattering and +satisfying to be married young! + +She looked at her father's face, a troubled face to-night. He was +watching the lovers regretfully; he did not disguise it. Their +quick plans, the readiness with which they solved the tremendous +problems to come, the light-heartedness with which they were +hurrying toward the future--had he and the older Charity been like +that, twenty-five years ago, when they had had supper at her +mother's house, and told the great news? He remembered himself, an +eager, enthusiastic lover--had he really given better promise then +than this handsome young fellow was giving to-night? He tried to +remember the older Charity's mother; what she had said, what +expression her face had worn, and it seemed to him that he could +dimly recall reluctance and pain and gravity in that long-ago +look. + +After dinner Cherry and Martin, in all the ecstatic first delight +of recognized love, went out to the wide front porch, where there +were wicker chairs, under the rose vines. Alix alone laughed at +them as they went. Anne, with a storm in her heart, played noisily +on the piano, and the doctor, after giving the doorway where +Cherry had disappeared a wistful look, restlessly took to his +armchair and his book, in such desolation of spirit as he had not +known since the dark day of her mother's death. + +The next day Alix and the engaged pair walked up to invite Peter +to a tennis foursome on the old Blithedale court. It was a +Saturday, and as he usually dined with them, or asked them to dine +with him on Saturday, they were not surprised to find him busy +with a charcoal burner, under the trees, compounding a marvellous +dish of chicken, tomatoes, cream, and mushrooms, or to have his +first words a caution not to tip things over if they wanted any +dinner. His Chinese cook was hovering about, but Peter himself was +chef. + +"Stop your messing one second!" Alix said, catching him by the +arm. And as he straightened up she added, with a little awkward +laugh, "Congratulate these creatures--they--they're going to be +married! Why don't you congratulate them!" + +Peter gave one long look at Martin and Cherry, who stood laughing, +but a little confused and self-conscious, too, in the grassy path. +With a shock like death in his heart, he realized that it was all +over. Their protection of her, their suspicions, had come too +late. Blind child that she was, she was committed to this +fascinating and mysterious adventure. + +His face grew dark with a sudden rush of blood. "Peter hates to +have any one else know a thing before he does!" Alix explained +this later. But he went to them quickly, and shook hands with +Martin, and was presently reproaching Cherry for her secretiveness +in his old, or almost his old, way. + +"Of course nobody's to know--Dad insisted on that!" said Cherry's +soft, proud little voice. + +"Did you suspect yesterday, Peter?" Alix asked, tasting the sauce, +and bunching her fingers immediately afterward to send a rapturous +kiss into the air as an indication of its deliciousness. +"Yesterday when they went off after the tree, I mean?" + +"I had my own suspicions!" he returned, and Cherry--his little, +gay, lovely Cherry!--laughed happily. He arranged that they were +to play the tennis here on his own courts, and later dine with +him, but under his hospitality and under the golden beauty of the +day it was all pain--pain--pain. It was agony to see her with him, +beginning to taste the rapture of love given and returned; it was +agony to have the conversation return always to Martin and Cherry, +to the first love affair. When they wandered away to the brook, +and stood talking, the girl's head dropped, her cheek flushed, but +her face raised quickly now and then for a flashing look, Peter +felt that he could have killed this newcomer, this thief, this +usurper of the place that he himself might have filled. + +"Dad's always said he disapproved of long engagements," Alix +commented, amusedly, "but you ought to hear him now! This thing-- +he won't even call it an engagement--it's an understanding, or a +preference--is to be a profound secret, and Cherry's to be twenty- +one before any one else but ourselves knows--" + +"Your father is quite right!" Peter said sharply, in his most +elderly manner. They were resting after the first set, and Cherry +and Martin, in the opposite court, were out of hearing. + +"When your hair gets tossed back that way," Alix observed +innocently, "lots more gray shows! I think you're turning gray +pretty young, Peter, aren't you? Are you forty yet? You're not +forty, are you?" + +"I'm thirty-six," Peter answered briefly. "My father was gray at +twenty-seven!" he added, after a pause. + +"I have a gray hair," Alix started. "People talk about the first +gray hair--" + +Peter did not hear her. There was beginning of a little hope in +his heart. Girls did not always fulfill their first engagements, +did not often do so, in fact. The thing was a secret; it might +well come to nothing, after all. + +That was the beginning, and after it, although it was arranged +between them all that nothing should be changed, and that nobody +but themselves should share the secret, somehow life seemed +different. Two or three days after the momentous day of the +raising of the rose tree, Martin Lloyd went to his mine at El +Nido, and the interrupted current of life in the brown bungalow +supposedly found its old groove. + +But nothing was the same. The doctor, in the first place, was more +silent and thoughtful than the girls had ever seen him before. +Anne and Alix knew that he was not happy about Cherry's plans, if +the younger girl did not. He sighed, sat silently looking off from +his book in the summer evenings, fell into deep musing even at his +meals. With Alix only he talked of the engagement, and she knew +from his comments, his doubtful manner, that he felt it to be a +mistake. The ten years' difference between Cherry and Martin +distressed him; he spoke of it again and again. In June he sent +Cherry to a long-planned house-party at Menlo Park, but the girl +came back after the third day. "I didn't have any fun," she +confessed, "I had to tell Olive, about me and Martin, I mean. The +boys there were all KIDS!" + +Cherry was changed, too, and not only in the expected and natural +ways, Alix thought. She had always had a generous share of the +family devotion, but she entirely eclipsed the others now. Her +daily letter from Martin, her new prospects, not only increased +her importance in the other girls' eyes, but innocently inflated +her own self-confidence. She received a diamond ring, and although +at her father's request she did not show it for a few weeks, +eventually it slipped mysteriously from the little chamois bag on +her neck, and duly appeared on her left hand. She had promised to +keep the engagement "or understanding, or preference," a profound +secret, but this was impossible. First one intimate friend and +then another was allowed to gasp and exclaim over the news. The +time came when Anne decided that it was not "decent" not to let +Martin's aunt know of it, when all these other people knew. +Finally came a dinner to the Norths', when Cherry's health was +drunk, and then the engagement presents began to come in. + +"But it's July now," Cherry said, innocently, "and I think we were +pretty smart to keep it a secret so long! Don't you, Dad? And +we've been engaged three months, now, so that it looks as if +waiting wasn't going to change our minds, doesn't it?" + +He could not chill her gay confidence; he had always spoiled her. +Her father only looked tenderly into the blue eyes, and tightened +his big arm protectingly about the slender young shoulders. But he +was deeply depressed. There seemed nothing to say. Cherry was of +age; she was sure of herself. She was truly in love with this +presentable young man. Doctor Strickland felt that he did not know +Martin--the man to whom he gave his lovely daughter he would have +hoped to know intimately for years. There was nothing to be said +against young Lloyd. It was only--mused the doctor, aghast--only +what was being done in the world every day. But he was staggered +by the bright readiness with which all of them--Cherry, Martin, +the other girls--accepted the stupendous fact that Cherry was to +be married. + +She was quite frankly and delightedly discussing trousseau now, +too entirely absorbed in her own happiness to see that the other +girls had lives to live as well as she. Did Anne mind if she +divided her share of the silver from theirs; did Alix think she +would ever want any of Mother's lace? + +"I got my cards yesterday," she said one day, "I was passing the +shop, and I thought I might as well! The woman looked at me so +queerly; she said: 'Mrs. John Martin Lloyd. Are these for your +mother?' 'No,' I said, 'they're for me!' I wish you could have +seen her look. Martin says in to-day's letter that he thinks +people will say I'm his daughter, and Alix--he says that you are +to come up to visit us, and we're going to find you a fine +husband! Won't it be funny to think of your visiting ME! Oh, and +Anne--did you see what Mrs. Fairfax sent me? A great big glorious +fur coat! She said I would need it up there, and I guess I will! +It's not new, you know; she says it isn't the real present, but it +can be cut down and it will look like new." + +And so on and on. The other girls listened, sympathized, and +rejoiced, but it was not always easy. They could not get Cherry to +be interested in any of their plans for week-end house-parties, +climbs, or picnics; indeed, even to themselves their own lives +seemed a trifle dull by contrast. + +Anne, as usual, took her part in the summer activities of the +village; she and Alix put on their white gowns and wide hats, and +duly descended to strawberry fetes and church fairs and concerts, +and duly laughed disarmingly when old friends expressed their +pleasant suspicions of Cherry. + +But Alix voiced their feelings one summer afternoon when she was +sauntering into the village at her cousin's side, and began for +the first time a faint criticism of Martin. + +"What makes Dad mad," Alix opined, "is that Martin had it all +arranged before he asked him! Took advantage of Dad, in a way. I +don't think he would have felt so if they both were kids, but +after all, Martin's twenty-eight--" Her voice fell. "Anne," she +began, hesitatingly, "sometimes when Mrs. North says so gaily that +Martin was a TERROR in college, and kept his whole family +worrying, I feel sort of sorry for Cherry! She doesn't know as +much of life as we do," twenty-one-year-old Alix finished soberly. + +"I know!" Anne said quickly, perhaps a little glad to find a point +where Cherry needed sympathy. + +"I have a feeling that Dad thinks," Alix pursued, "that it was +just because it was Cherry's first beau-I mean that Cherry waked +up suddenly, don't you know? It was as if she said to herself, +'Why, I'm a woman! I can get kissed and get married and all the +rest of it!'--I'm expressing this beautifully," stumbled Mix. + +"I often wonder Uncle Lee doesn't forbid it!" Anne said. She had +never had even a flitting thought of such a thing before, but she +spoke now as if the engagement had had her heartiest disapproval +from the first. + +"Oh, no--why should he!" Alix remonstrated. "Martin may be the +best man in the world for her. I confess," the girl added frankly, +"I can't stand his aunt. I always used to like Mrs. North, too. +But lately, when she's begun to tell Cherry that he is +extravagant, and she must save his money for him, and that he's +often been in love before, but this time she's sure it is the real +thing, and that Martin has his father's delicate stomach---" + +Anne laughed out, in a merry fashion not usual with her of late. + +"Oh, Alix, she DIDN'T!" + +"Oh, yes, she did! And it makes me sort of sick. What does Cherry +care about anybody's delicate stomach!" Alix fell silent, broke +out again abruptly: "Anne--do you suppose she'll have a baby?" + +Anne flushed. She considered this remark rather indelicate, and +yet she liked Alix's recognition of her superior knowledge of the +subject. + +"I think it very likely!" she answered calmly, after a moment's +hesitation. Her first impulse had been to answer, "I think it very +unlikely!" + +"She doesn't know anything about babies!" Alix said, somewhat +worried. + +"I don't, either!" Anne confessed with honesty, her brow troubled. +"I've read things, here and there. I know SOMETHING, of course. +But I don't know much!" + +"We've all read Dickens--and the Classic Myths, and things," Alix +submitted. "And of course she went with us the day Dad took us to +Faust! Is that about all there is to it, Nance?" + +"Just--about, I guess!" Anne answered briefly. Both girls' faces +were red. They had rarely touched upon these and kindred subjects +in their talks with each other; they had never discussed them with +any one else. Anne liked to fancy herself rather worldly wise; +Alix had an independent brain and tongue. But in their household +there was no older woman to illumine their confused guessing with +an occasional word now and then, even if an unusually wholesome +out-of-door life had not distracted their attention from the +problems raised in books, and their isolation had not protected +them from the careless talk of other girls of their ages. + +August brought Martin, and more changes. He was delighted with his +work in the El Nido mine, the "Emmy Younger," and everything he +had to say about it was amusing and interesting. It was still in a +rather chaotic condition, he reported, but the "stuff" was there, +and he anticipated a busy winter. He was to have a cottage, a +pretty crude affair, in a few weeks, right at the mine. + +"How does that listen to you?" he asked Cherry. Cherry was sitting +beside him, at the dinner table, on the first night of his +arrival. She was thrilling still to the memory of his greeting +kiss, its fresh odour of shaving soap and witch hazel, and the +clean touch of his smooth-shaven cheek. She gave her father a +demure and interrogative glance. Martin, following it, immediately +sobered. + +"Just what is your position there?" the doctor asked, pleasantly. + +"A little bit of everything now," Martin answered, readily and +respectfully. "Later, of course, I shall have my own special work. +At present I'm doing some of the assaying, and have charge of the +sluice-gang. They want me to make myself generally useful, make +suggestions, take hold in every way!" + +"That's the way to get on," the older man said, approvingly. +Cherry looked admiringly, with all her heart in her eyes, at her +husband-to-be; the other girls were impressed, too. Martin brought +a new element, something masculine and modern, to their quiet +dinner table. Dad and Peter were men, to be sure, but they were +different. They were only a little more dear and amusing and real +than the men in Dickens' novels, long familiar and beloved in the +household. But Martin made the girls feel suddenly in touch with +real life. + +He had kissed Alix and Anne, upon arriving, and they liked it. +Both the older girls, in fact, were so impressed with the +brilliancy of Cherry's prospects, with the extraordinary +distinction she possessed in having a promised husband, with whom +to walk about the woods and to talk of the future, that they could +forgive Cherry for being wrapped in a sort of dream. Her new name, +her new state, her new clothes, and home and position filled her +thoughts, and theirs. Martin had not been with them more than a +few hours before the engagement was openly discussed, and there +were constant references to Cherry's marriage. + +It was a cool evening, and after dinner they all gathered about +the fire; Martin and Cherry murmuring together in the ingle seat, +and the others only occasionally drawing them into the general +conversation. Peter and the Norths had come in for coffee, Mrs. +North giving Cherry a maternal kiss as she greeted her. Alix +thought that she had never seen her sister look so pretty; Cherry +was wearing a new dress, of golden-brown corduroy velvet, with a +deep collar and cuffs of old embroidery that had belonged to her +mother. Her silk stockings were brown, and her russet slippers +finished with square silver buckles. But it was at the lovely face +that Alix looked, the earnest, honest blue eyes, the peach-bloom +of the young cheeks, and the drooping crown of shining hair. + +Somehow, a few days later, wedding plans were in the air, and they +were all taking it for granted that Cherry and Martin were to be +married almost immediately; in October, in fact. The doctor at +first persisted that the event must wait until April, but Martin's +reasonable impatience, and Cherry's plaintive "But why, Daddy?" +were too much for him. Why, indeed? Cherry's mother had been +married at eighteen, when that mother's husband was more than ten +years older than Martin Lloyd was now. + +"Would ye let it go on, Peter, eh?" the doctor asked, somewhat +embarrassed, one evening when he and Peter were walking from the +train in the late September twilight. + +"Lord, don't ask me!" Peter said, gruffly. "I think she's too +young to marry any one--but the mischief's done now! You can't +lock a girl in her room, and she's the sort of girl that wouldn't +be convinced by that sort of argument if you did!" + +"I think I'll talk to her," her father decided. "Anything is +better than having her make a mistake. I think she'll listen to +me!" And a day or two later he called her into the study. It was a +quiet autumn morning, foggy yet warm, with a dewy, woody sweetness +in the air. + +"Before we decide this thing finally," the doctor said, smiling +into her bright face, "before Martin writes his people that it's +settled, I want to ask you to do something. It's something you +won't like to do, my little girl. I want ye to wait a while--wait +a year!" + +It was said. He watched the brightness fade from her glowing face, +she lowered her eyes, the line of her mouth grew firm. + +"Wait until you're twenty, dear. That's young enough. I've been +planning a full winter for you girls; I wanted to take a house in +town, entertain a little, look up a few friends! You trust me, +Cherry. I only ask you to take a little time--to be sure, dear!" + +Silence. She shrugged faintly, blinked the downcast eyes as if +tears stung them. + +"I know you don't like Martin, Dad!" she said, tremulously. + +"No, no, my darling--you mustn't say that!" he said, in distress. +"I like him very much--I think he's a thoroughly fine fellow! I +could wish--just with an old father's selfishness--that he was a +neighbour, that he didn't plan to take you away entirely. That's +natural, before I give him the thing I hold most precious in the +world. And that's just it, Cherry. Wait a year or two, and perhaps +it will be possible to establish him here near us. You'll have a +little money, dear, and Martin says himself that he would much +prefer office work to this constant changing. Marriage is a great +change, anyway. Everything is different; your point of view, your +very personality changes with it. You'll be lonely, my dear. +You'll miss your sister and Anne, and all the old friends. There +are cases where it must be so, of course. But in your case--" + +He stopped, discouraged. She was sitting opposite him at the +shabby writing table, her elbows resting upon it, her full lips +pouting with disappointment. Perhaps the one phrase of her new +plans that pleased Cherry most was that she was to be carried +entirely away from the familiar atmosphere in which she would +always be "little Cherry," and subject to suggestions and +criticisms. Now she began slowly to shake her head. + +"Can't take your old father's word for it?" Doctor Strickland +asked. + +"It isn't that, Dad!" she protested eagerly and affectionately. +"I'll wait--I have waited! I'll wait until Christmas, or April, if +you say so! But it won't make any difference, nothing will. I love +him and he loves me, and we always will. + +"You don't know," Cherry went on, with suddenly watering eyes, +"you don't KNOW what this summer of separation has meant to us +both! If we must wait longer, why, we will of course, but it will +mean that I'll never have a happy instant! It will mean that I am +just living along somehow--oh, I won't cry!" she interrupted, +smiling with wet lashes, "I'll try to bear it decently! But +sometimes I feel as if I COULDN'T bear it--" + +A rush of tears choked her. She groped for a handkerchief, and +felt, as she had felt so many times, her father's handkerchief +pressed into her hand. The doctor sighed. There was nothing more +to be said. + +So he gave Cherry a wedding check that made her dance with joy, +and there was no more seriousness. There were gowns, dinners, +theatre-parties, and presents; every day brought its new surprise +and new delight to Cherry. She had her cream-coloured rajah silk, +but her sister and cousin persuaded her to be married in white, +and it was their hands that dressed the first bride when the great +day came, and fastened over her corn-coloured hair her mother's +lace veil. + +It was a day of soft sweetness, not too brightly summery, but warm +and still under the trees. Until ten o'clock the mountain and the +tops of the redwoods were tangled in scarfs of white fog, then the +mellow sunlight pierced it with sudden spectacular brightening and +lifting. + +The little brown house was full of flowers and laughter and coming +and going. Anne and Alix, flushed and excited in their +bridesmaids' gowns, were nervous and tired. They had made lists +and addressed envelopes, had decorated the house, had talked to +milliners and florists and caterers and dressmakers, had packed +and repacked Cherry's trunk and boxes. Cherry was tired and +excited, too, but had no realization of it; she was carried along +upon a roseate cloud of happiness and excitement. + +Martin's mother and stepfather had come down from Portland, and +were friendly, and pleased with everything. + +"His mother," Alix told Peter, "is the sort of handsome person who +keeps a boarding-house and marries a rich, adoring old Klondike +man." + +"Is that what she did?" Peter whispered, amused. + +"She's only sixteen years older than Martin is!" Alix confided +further. "She kissed Cherry and said, 'You're just a baby doll, +that's what you are!' And he calls me 'Ma'am,' and Cherry +'Sister!' They've got two little children, a boy and a girl. Dad +likes them both." + +"Well, that's good!" Peter approved. "Does Cherry?" + +"Oh, anything that belongs to Martin is perfect!" Alix answered, +in indulgent scorn, as she abruptly departed to see to some detail +concerning the carriages, the music, or the breakfast. She and +Anne were in a constant state of worry during the morning; their +plans for seating two score of persons were changed twenty times; +they conspired in agitated whispers behind doors and in the +pantry. + +But the first wedding went well. At twelve o'clock Charity +Strickland became Charity Lloyd, and was kissed and toasted and +congratulated until her lovely little face was burning with +colour, and her blue eyes were bewildered with fatigue. She stood +in the drawing-room doorway, her bouquet with its trailing ribbons +in her gloved hands, and as each one of all the old friends and +neighbours made some little pre-arranged speech of an amusing or +emotional nature, she met it with a receptive word or smile, +hardly conscious of what she did or said. Sometimes she freed her +feet from the folds of her lacy train, and sometimes gave Martin a +glance backward and upward over her shoulder, once asking him to +hold her flowers with a smile that several guests afterward +remarked showed that those two couldn't see anything in the world +but each other. + +At two o'clock there were good-byes. Cherry had changed the +wedding satin for the cream-coloured rajah silk then, and wore the +extravagant hat. It would be many years before she would spend +twenty-five dollars for a hat again, and never again would she see +bronzed cocks feathers against bronzed straw without remembering +the clean little wood-smelling bedroom and the hour in which she +had pinned her wedding hat over her fair hair, and had gone, +demure and radiant and confident, to meet her husband in the old +hallway. + +She was confusedly kissed, passed from hand to hand, was conscious +with a sort of strange aching at her heart that she was not only +far from saying the usual heart-broken things in farewell, but was +actually far from feeling them. She laughed at Alix's last +nonsense, promised to write--wouldn't say good-bye--would see them +all soon--was coming, Martin--and so a last kiss for darling Dad, +and good-bye and so many thanks and thanks to them all! + +She was gone. With her the uncertain autumn sunshine vanished, and +a shadow fell on the forest. The mountain, above the valley, was +blotted out with fog. The brown house seemed dark and empty when +the last guests had loitered away, and the last caterer had +gathered up his possessions and had gone. Hong was prosaically +making mutton broth for dinner; pyramids of sandwiches and little +cakes stood on the sideboard. + +Up in Cherry's room there was a litter of tissue papers, and pins +and powder were strewn on the bureau. The bed was mashed and +disordered by the weight of guests' hats and wraps that had lain +there. A heap of cards, still attached to ribbons and wires, were +gathered on the book-shelf, to be sent after Cherry and remind her +of the donours of gifts and flowers. + +Across the lower bed that had been Cherry's a pale blue Japanese +wrapper had been flung. The girls had seen her wear it a hundred +times; she had slipped into it to change her gown a few hours ago. +Anne, excited and tired, picked it up, stared vaguely at it for a +few minutes, and then knelt down beside the bed, and began to cry. +Alix, the muscles about her mouth twitching, stood watching her. + +"Funerals are gay compared to the way a wedding feels!" Alix said +finally. "I've eaten so much candy and wedding-cake and olives and +marrons, and whipped cream and crab salad that my skin feels like +the barrel of a musical box! I'm going to take a walk! Come on, +Nancy." + +"No, I don't want to!" Anne said, wiping her eyes, and sitting +back on her heels, with a long sigh and sniff. "I've got too much +to do!" + +Alix descended to find her father and Peter discussing fly- +fishing, on the porch steps. The doctor had changed his unwonted +wedding finery for his shabby old smoking jacket, but Peter still +looked unnaturally well dressed. Alix stepped down to sit between +them, and her father's arm went about her. She snuggled against +him in an unusual mood of tenderness and quiet. + +"Be nice to me!" she said, whimsically. "I'm lonely!" + +"H'm!" her father said, significantly, tightening his arm. Peter +moved up on the other side and locked his own arm in her free one. +And so they sat, silent, depressed, their shoulders touching, +their sombre eyes fixed upon the shadowy depths of the forest into +which an October fog was softly and noiselessly creeping. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Meanwhile, the hot train sped on, and the drab autumn country flew +by the windows, and still the bride sat wrapped in her dream, +smiling, musing, rousing herself to notice the scenery. The lap of +the cream-coloured gown held magazines and a box of candy, and in +the rack above her head were the new camera and the new umbrella +and the new suitcase. + +When Martin asked her if she liked to be a married woman, +travelling with her husband, she smiled and said that it seemed +"funny." For the most part she was silent, pleased and interested, +but not quite her usual unconcerned self. She and Alix, taking +this trip, would have been chattering like magpies. She and Martin +had their dinner in the train, and then she did brighten, trying +to pierce with her eyes the darkness outside, and getting only a +lovely reflected face under bronzed cocks feathers, instead. After +dinner they had a long, murmured talk; she began to droop sleepily +now, although even this long day had not paled her cheeks or +visibly tired her. + +At ten they stumbled out, cramped and over-heated, and smitten on +tired foreheads with a rush of icy mountain air. + +"Is this the pl-l-ace?" yawned Cherry, clinging to his arm. + +"This is the place, Baby Girl, El Nido, and not much of a place!" +her husband told her. "That's the Hotel McKinley, over there where +the lights are! We stay there to-night, and drive out to the mine +to-morrow. I'll manage the bags, but don't you stumble!" + +She was wide-awake now, looking alertly about her at the dark +streets of the little town. Mud squelched beneath their feet, +planks tilted. Beside Martin Cherry entered the bright, cheerful +lobby of a cheap hotel where men were smoking and spitting. She +was beside him at the desk, and saw him write on the register, "J. +M. Lloyd and wife." The clerk pushed a key across the counter; +Martin guided her to a rattling elevator. + +She had a fleeting thought of home; of Dad reading before the +fire, of the little brown room upstairs, with Alix, slender in her +thin nightgown, yawning over her prayers. A rush of reluctance--of +strangeness--of something like terror smote her. She fought the +homesickness down resolutely; everything would seem brighter to- +morrow, when the morning and the sunshine came again. + +There was a brown and red carpet in the oblong of the room, and a +brown bureau, and a wide iron bed with a limp spread, and a +peeling brown washstand with a pitcher and basin. The boy lighted +a flare of electric lights which made the chocolate and gold +wallpaper look like one pattern in the light and another in the +shadow. A man laughed in the adjoining room; the voice seemed very +near. + +Cherry had never been in a hotel of this sort before; she learned +later that El Nido was extremely proud of it, with its rattling +elevator and its dining room on the "American Plan." It seemed to +her cheap and horrible; she did not want to stay in this room, and +Martin, tipping the boy and asking for ice-water, seemed somehow a +part of this new strangeness and crudeness. She began to be afraid +that he would think she was silly, presently, if she said her +prayers as usual. + +In the morning Martin hired a phaeton, and they drove out to the +mine. It had rained in the night, and there were pools of water on +the soft dirt road, but the sky was high and blue, and the air +tingled with sweetness and freshness after the shower. Cherry had +had a good breakfast, and was wearing a new gown; they stopped +another phaeton on the long, pleasant drive and Martin said to the +fat man in it: + +"Mr. Bates, I want to make you acquainted with my wife!" + +"Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Lloyd!" said the fat man, pleasantly. +Martin told Cherry, when they passed him, that that was the +superintendent of the mine, and seemed pleased at the encounter. +And Cherry smiled up at the blue sky, and felt the warmth and +silence of the day saturate her whole being. Presently Martin put +his arm about her, and the bay horse dawdled along at his own +sweet will, while Martin's deep voice told his wife over and over +again how adorable and beautiful she was, and how he loved her. + +Cherry listened happily, and for a little while the old sense of +pride and achievement came back--she was married, she was wearing +a plain gold ring! But after a few days that feeling vanished +forever, and instead it began to seem strange to her that she had +ever been anything else than Martin's wife. The other women at the +mine were married; she was married; and nobody seemed to think the +thing remarkable in them, or in her. She was, to be sure, younger +and prettier than any of the others, but the men she met here were +not the sort whose admiration would have satisfied her innocent +ambition to have Martin's friends flock about her adoringly, and +more than that, they knew her to be newly married, and left the +young Lloyds to their presumably desired isolation. And very soon +Cherry found herself a little housewife among other housewives, +much more praised if she made a good shortcake than because the +tilt of her new hat was becoming. + +For several days she and Martin laughed incessantly, and praised +each other incessantly, while they experimented with cooking, and +ate delicious gipsy meals. In these days Martin was always late at +the mine, and every evening he came home to find that ducks, or a +jar of honey, or a loaf of cake, had been contributed to Cherry's +dinner by the interested women in the near-by cottages. In all, +there were not a dozen families at the "Emmy Younger," and Cherry +was watched with interest and sympathy during her first efforts at +housekeeping. + +By midwinter she had settled down to the business of life, buying +bacon and lard and sugar and matches at the store of the mine, +cooking and cleaning, sweeping and making beds. She still kissed +Martin good-bye every morning, and met him with an affectionate +rush at the door when he came home, and they played Five Hundred +evening after evening after dinner, quarrelling for points, and +laughing at each other, while rain sluiced down on the "Emmy +Younger," and dripped on the porch. But sometimes she wondered how +it had all come about, wondered what had become of the violent +emotions that had picked her out of the valley home, and +established her here, in this strange place, with this man she had +never seen a year ago. + +Of these emotions little was left. She still liked Martin, she +told herself, and she still told him that she loved him. But she +knew she did not love him, and in such an association as theirs +there can be no liking. Her thoughts rarely rested on him; she was +either thinking of the prunes that were soaking, the firewood that +was running low, the towels that a wet breeze was blowing on the +line; or she was far away, drifting in vague realms where feelings +entirely strange to this bare little mining camp, and this hungry, +busy, commonplace man, held sway. Cherry was in the position of a +leading lady mysteriously forced into a minor role; she had never +known what she wanted in life, and was learning now in a hard +school. + +The first time that she quarrelled with Martin, she cried for an +entire day, with the old childish feeling that somehow her crying +mattered, somehow her abandonment to grief would help to +straighten affairs. The cause of the quarrel was a trifle; her +father had sent her a Christmas check, and she immediately sent to +a San Francisco shop for a clock that had taken her fancy months +before. + +Martin, who chanced to be pressed for money, although she did not +know it, was thunderstruck upon discovering that she had actually +disposed of fifty dollars so lightly. For several days a shadow +hung over their intercourse, and when the clock came, as large as +a banjo, gilded and quaint, he broke her heart afresh by +pretending not to admire it. + +But on Christmas Eve he was delayed at the mine, and Cherry, +smitten suddenly with the bitterness of having their first +Christmas spoiled in this way, sat up for him, huddled in her silk +wrapper by the air-tight stove. She was awakened by feeling +herself lowered tenderly into bed, and raised warm arms to clasp +his neck, and they kissed each other. The little house was warm +and comfortable, they had a turkey to roast on the morrow, and +ranged on the table were the home boxes, and a stack of unopened +envelopes waiting for Christmas morning. + +The next day they laughed at the clock together, and after that +peace reigned for several weeks. But it was inevitable that +another quarrel should come and then another; Cherry was young and +undisciplined, perhaps not more selfish than other girls of her +age, but self-centred and unreasonable. She had to learn self- +control, and she hated to control herself. She had to economize +when poverty possessed neither picturesqueness nor interest. They +were always several weeks late in the payment of domestic bills, +and these recurring reminders of money stringency maddened Cherry. +Sometimes she summed it up, with angry tears, reminding him that +she was still wearing her trousseau dresses, and had no maid, and +never went anywhere--! + +But she developed steadily. As she grew skilful in managing her +little house, she also grew in the art of managing her husband and +herself. She became clever at avoiding causes of disagreement; she +listened, nodded, agreed, with a boiling heart, and had the +satisfaction of having Martin's viewpoint veer the next day, or +the next hour, to meet her own secret conviction. Martin's +opinion, she told herself wearily, as she swept and cooked and +marketed busily, didn't matter anyhow. He would rage and storm at +his superiors, he would threaten and brood, and then it would all +be forgotten, time after time after time. Silent, absent-minded, +looking closely at a burn upon her smooth arm or pleating her +checked apron, Cherry would sit opposite him at his late lunch. + +"I suppose you don't agree with me?" he would interrupt himself to +ask scowlingly. + +"Mart--" The innocent blue eyes would be raised vaguely. "I don't +know anything about it, dear. If Mr. Taylor--" + +"Well, you know what I tell you, don't you?" + +"Yes, dear. But--" + +"For God's sake don't call me DEAR when you--" + +"Mart!" Her dignity always rose in arms. "Please don't get +excited." + +"Well!" His tone would be modified, as the appetizing little meal +was dispatched. "But Lord, you do make me so mad, sitting there +criticizing me--I can always tell when you're in sympathy with me- +-my Lord, I wish you had to go up against these fellows sometimes- +-" The grumbling voice would go on and on; Cherry would pause at +the door, carrying out plates, to have him finish a phrase; would +nod sympathizingly as she set his dessert before him. But her soul +was like some living thing spun into a cocoon, hearing the sounds +of life only vaguely, interested in them not at all. + +Martin seemed satisfied, and all their little world accepted her +as a matter of course. Pretty little Mrs. Lloyd went every morning +into the Company Store as the only store at the mine was called, +and smiled over her shopping; she stopped perhaps at the office to +speak to her husband; she met some other woman wheeling a baby up +to the cottages, and they gossiped together. She and her husband +dined and played cards now and then with a neighbour and his wife, +and they gave dinners in return, when the men praised every dish +extravagantly, and the woman laughed at their greedy enthusiasms. +Like the other women, she had her small domestic ambitions; Mrs. +Brown wanted a meat-chopper; Mrs. White's one desire was to have a +curly maple bedroom set; Mrs. Lloyd wanted a standing mahogany +lamp for the sitting room. + +But under it all Cherry knew that something young and +irresponsible and confident in her had been killed. She never +liked to think of the valley, of the fogs and the spokes of +sunlight under the redwood aisles, of Alix and the dogs and the +dreamy evenings by the fire. And especially she did not like to +think of that eighteenth birthday, and herself thrilling and +ecstatic because the strange young man from Mrs. North's had +stared at her, in her sticky apron, with so new and disturbing a +smile in his eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +So winter passed at the mine, and at the brown house under the +shoulder of Tamalpais. Alix still kept her bedroom windows open, +but the rain tore in, and Anne protested at the ensuing stains on +the pantry ceiling. Creeks rushed swollen and yellow; fog +smothered the mountain peak; the forest floor oozed moisture. +Spring came reluctantly; muddy boots cluttered the doctor's +hearth, for he and Alix and Peter tramped for miles through the +woods and over the hills, bringing home trillium and pungent wild +currant blossoms, and filling the house with blooms. + +Cherry's wedding, once satisfactorily over, was a cause of great +satisfaction to her sister and cousin. They had stepped back duly, +to give her the centre of the stage; they had admired and +congratulated, had helped her in all hearty generosity. They had +listened to her praises of Martin and his of her, and had given +her more than her share of the household treasures of silver +spoons and yellowed old lace. + +And now that she was gone they enjoyed their own lives again, and +cast over hers the glamour that novelty and distance never fail to +give. Cherry, married and keeping house and managing affairs, was +an object of romantic interest. The girls surmised that Cherry +must be making friends; that everyone must admire her; that Martin +would be rich some day, without doubt. When her letters came, +there was always animated chatter about the fire. + +Cherry wrote regularly, now and then assuring them that she was +the same old Cherry. She described her tiny house right at the +mine, looking down at the rough scaffoldings that covered the +mouth of the tunnels, and the long sheds of the plant, and the +bare big building that was the men's boarding-house. Martin's +associates brought her trout and ducks, she wrote; she and Martin +had driven three hundred miles in the superintendent's car; she +was preparing for a card party. + +"Think of little old Cherry going off on week-end trips with three +men!" Alix would say proudly. "Think of Cherry giving a card +party!" Anne perhaps would make no comment, but she often felt a +pang of envy. Cherry seemed to have everything. + +Alix was working hard with her music this winter, aided and +abetted by Peter, who was tireless in bringing her songs and +taking her to concerts. Suddenly, without warning, there was a +newcomer in the circle, a sleek-headed brown-haired little man +known as Justin Little. + +He had been introduced at some party to Anne and Alix; he called; +he was presently taking Anne to a lecture. Anne now began to laugh +at him and say that he was "too ridiculous," but she did not allow +any one else to say so. On the contrary, she told Alix at various +times that his mother had been one of the old Maryland Percies, +and his great-grandfather was mentioned in a book by Sir Walter +Scott, and that one had to respect the man, even if one didn't +choose to marry him. + +"Marry him!" Alix had echoed in simple amazement. Marry him--what +was all this sudden change in the household when a man could no +sooner appear than some girl began to talk of marriage? Alix had +always rather fancied the idea that all girls had an opportunity +of capriciously choosing from a dozen eligible swains, but Cherry +had quickly anchored herself to the first strange man that +appeared, and here was Anne dimpling and looking demure over a +small, neat youth just out of law school. Certainly the little +person of Justin Little was a strange harbour for all Anne's vague +dreams of a conquering hero. Stupefied, Alix watched the affair +progress. + +"I don't imagine it's serious!" her father said on an April walk. +Peter, tramping beside them, was interested but silent. + +"My dear father," the girl protested, "have you listened to them? +They've been contending for weeks that they were just remarkably +good friends--that's why she calls him Frenny!" + +"Ah--I see!" the doctor said mildly, as Peter's wild laugh burst +forth. + +"But now," Alix pursued, "she's told him that as she cannot be +what he wishes, they had better not meet!" + +"Poor Anne!" the old doctor commented. + +"Poor nothing! She's having the time of her life," her cousin said +unfeelingly. "She told me to-day that she was afraid that she had +checked one of the most brilliant careers at the bar." + +"I had no idea of all this!" the doctor confessed, amazed. "I've +seen the young man--noticed him about. Well--well--well! Anne, +too." + +"You and me next, little sweetums," suggested Peter, dropping down +beside the doctor, who had seated himself, panting, upon a log. + +Alix, the dog's silky head under her hand, was resting against the +prop formed by a great tree trunk behind her shoulders, and +looking down at the two men. She grinned. + +"Nothingstirring, Puddeny-woodeny!" she answered, blandly. + +The old man looked from Peter's smiling, indifferent face to his +daughter's unembarrassed smile; shook his head in puzzled fashion, +and returned to his pocket the big handkerchief with which he had +been wiping his forehead. + +"There ye are!" he said, shrugging. "Cherry goes gaily off with a +man she's only known for a few weeks; Anne dresses up this new +fellow with goodness knows what qualities; and you and Alix here, +neighbours all your lives, laugh as if marriage was all a joke!" + +"Our marriage would be, darling," Alix assured him. "But, Dad, if +you would like me to marry Peter, by George, I will!" she added, +dutifully. "Peter, consider yourself betrothed! Bucky," she said +to the dog, "dat's oo new Daddy!" + +Neither man paid her the slightest attention. Peter scraped a lump +of dried mud from the calf of his high boots, and the doctor +musingly looked back along the rough trail they had climbed. + +"I'd have felt safer--I'd feel very safe to have one of my girls +in your care, Peter," the older man said at last, thoughtfully. "I +hate to see them scatter. Well!" + +He sighed, smiled, and got to his feet. "That's not in our hands," +he said, cheerfully. + +Alix, without moving, sent her glance from his face to Peter's, +and their eyes met. Only a few words, spoken half in earnest, on a +spring morning tramp, and yet they had their place, in her memory +and Peter's, and were to return to them after a time, and +influence them more seriously than either the man, or the grinning +girl, or the old man himself ever dreamed. + +The glance lasted only a second, then Alix, who had been carefully +removing burrs from the soft tangle of the dog's tasselled ears, +took the trail again with great, boyish springs of her bloomered +legs. + +"Father," said she, "am I to understand that you disapprove of my +choice?" + +"I hope," her father answered, seriously, "that when you do marry +you will get a man half as good as Peter!" + +"Thank you!" Peter said, gravely, more as a rebuke to the +incorrigible Alix than because he was giving the conversation much +attention. + +Alix had time for no comment, for at this moment she placed her +foot upon an unsubstantial root and slid down upon the two men +with such an unpremeditated rush of heavy boots, wet loam, +loosened rocks, and cascading earth, that the footing of them all +was threatened, and it was only after much shouting, staggering, +balancing, and clutching that they resumed their climb. Peter was +then nursing a wrist that had been wrenched in the confusion, +looking away from it only to give the loudly singing Alix an +occasional resentful glance. + +"You could omit some of those cries!" he presently observed. + +"I thought you liked 'The Lotos Flower'?" Alix called back. + +"I just proved that I do," Peter said neatly, and the doctor, and +Alix herself, laughed joyously. + +In June came the blissful hour in which Anne, all blushes and +smiles, could come to her uncle with a dutiful message from the +respectfully adoring Justin. Their friendship, said Anne, had +ripened into something deeper. + +"Justin wants to have a frank talk with you, Uncle," Anne said, +"and of course I'm not to go until you are sure you can spare me, +and unless you feel that you can trust him utterly!" + +"And remember that you aren't losing a daughter, but gaining a +son--Oh, help!" Alix added. Anne gave her a reproachful glance, +but found it impossible to be angry with her. She was too +genuinely delighted with her cousin's happiness and too helpful +with all the new plans. Anne's engagement cups were ranged on the +table where Cherry's had stood, and where Cherry had talked of a +coffee-coloured rajah silk Anne discussed the merits of a "smart +but handsome blue tailormade." + +The wedding was to be in September, not quite a year after +Cherry's wedding. Alix wrote her sister pages about it, always +ending with the emphatic declaration that Cherry must come down +for the wedding. + +Cherry read of it with a strange pang. Somehow it robbed her own +marriage of flavour and charm to have Anne so quickly following in +her footsteps. She was homesick. She dreamed continually of the +cool, high valley, the scented aisles of the deep forest, the +mountain rearing its rough summit to the pale blue of summer +skies. + +June passed; July passed; it was hot at the "Emmy Younger." August +came in on a furnace breath; Cherry felt headachy, languid, and +half sick all the time. She hated housekeeping in this weather; +hated the smells of dry tin sink and wooden floor, of milk bottles +and lard tins. Martin had said that he could not possibly get +away, even for the week of Anne's wedding, but Cherry began to +wonder if he would let her go alone. + +"If he doesn't, I shall be sick!" she fretted to herself, in a +certain burning noontime, toward the middle of August. Blazing +heat had been pouring over the mine since six o'clock; there +seemed to have been no night. Martin, who had been playing poker +the night before, was sleeping late this morning. He was proud of +the little wife who so generously spared him for an occasional +game, and always allowed him to sleep far into the following +morning. Other wives at the mine were not so amiable where poker +was concerned. But Martin, coming home at three o'clock, dazed +with close air and cigar smoke, had awakened his wife to tell her +that he would be "dead" in the morning, and Cherry had accordingly +crept about her own dressing noiselessly, had darkened the +bedroom, and eaten her own breakfast without the clatter of a +dish, putting the coffee aside to be reheated for him when he +awakened. Now she was sitting by the window, panting in the noon +heat, and looking down upon a dazzle of dust and ugliness and +smothering hotness. She was thinking, as it chanced, of the big +forest at home, and of a certain day--just one of their happy +days!--only a year ago, when she had lain for a dreamy hour on the +soft forest floor, staring up idly through the laced fanlike +branches, and she thought of her father, with his mild voice and +ready smile; and some emotion, almost like fear, came over her. +For the first time she asked herself, in honest bewilderment, why +she had married. + +The heat deepened and strengthened and increased as the burning +day wore on. Martin waked up, hot and headachy, and having further +distressed himself with strong coffee and eggs, departed into the +dusty, motionless furnace of out-of-doors. The far brown hills +shimmered and swam, the "Emmy Younger" looked its barest, its +ugliest, its least attractive self. Cherry moved slowly about the +kitchen; her head ached; it was a day of sickening odours. The ice +man had failed them again, the soup had soured, and after she had +thrown it away Cherry felt as if the grease and the smell of it +still clung to her fingers. + +There was a shadow in the doorway; she looked up surprised. For a +minute the tall figure in striped linen and the smiling face under +the flowery hat seemed those of a stranger. Then Cherry cried out, +and laughed, and in another instant was crying in Alix's arms. + +Alix cried, too, but it was with a great rush of pity and +tenderness for Cherry. Alix had not young love and novelty to +soften the outlines of the "Emmy Younger," and she felt, as she +frankly wrote later, to her father, "at last convinced that there +is a hell!" The heat and bareness and ugliness of the mine might +have been overlooked, but this poor little house of Cherry's, this +wood stove draining white ashes, this tin sink with its pump, and +the bathroom with neither faucets nor drain, almost bewildered +Alix with their discomfort. + +Even more bewildering was the change in Cherry. There was a +certain hardening that impressed Alix at once. There was a weary +sort of patience, a disillusioned concession to the drabness of +married life. Alix, after meeting some of the other wives at the +mine--there were but five or six--saw that Cherry had been +affected by them. There was general sighing over the housework, a +mild conviction that men were all selfish and unreasonable. "And I +must say," Alix's first letter to her father admitted, "that the +men here are all dogs, except the ones that are under dogs!" + +But she allowed the younger sister to see nothing of this. Indeed, +Cherry so brightened under the stimulus of Alix's companionship +that Martin told her that she was more like her old self than she +had been for months. Joyously she divided her responsibilities +with Alix, explaining the difficulties of marketing and +housekeeping, and joyously Alix assumed them. Her vitality +infected the whole household, and, indeed, the mine as well. She +flirted, cooked, entertained, talked incessantly; she bullied +Martin and laughed at him, and it did him good. + +Perhaps, thought Alix, rather appalled at Cherry's attitude, +Cherry had been too young for wifehood. Sometimes she spoiled and +humoured Martin, and sometimes quarrelled with him childishly, +scolding and fretting for her own way, and angry with conditions +over which neither he nor she had any control. Alix was surprised +to see the old pout, and hear the old phrase of Cherry's indulged +girlhood: "I don't think this is any FUN!" + +"Anne isn't one half as clever or as pretty as Cherry, but she'll +make a better wife!" was Alix's conclusion. She gave them spirited +accounts of Anne's affair. "He's a nice little academic fellow," +she said of Justin Little. "If he had a flatiron in each hand he'd +probably weigh close to a hundred pounds! He's a--well, a sort of +DAMP-LOOKING youth, if you know what I mean! I always want to take +a crash towel and dry him off!" + +"Fancy Anne with a shrimp like that!" Cherry said, with a proud +look at her own man's fine height. + +"Anne was delicious!" Alix further revealed. "They used to take +dignified walks on Sundays. I used to tease her, and she'd get so +mad she'd ask Dad to ask me to be more refined. She said that Mr. +Little was a most unusual man, and it was belittling to his +dignity to have me suppose that a man and a woman couldn't have an +intellectual friendship. This in May, my dear, and after the thing +was settled and Anne had cried, and written notes, and Justin had +gone to Dad and asked where he could buy a second-hand revolver--" + +"Oh, Alexandra Strickland, you're making up!" Cherry went back +naturally to the old nursery phrase. + +"Honestly--cross my heart!" Alix assured her. "That's the way they +managed it; they solemnly discussed it and worked it out on paper, +and Justin's mother called on Anne--she's an awful old girl, too, +she looks like a totem pole--and Anne called on his aunts, and +then he asked Dad, 'as Anne's male relative,' he said, and it was +all settled. And THEN--THEN Anne became the mushiest thing I ever +saw! And not only mushy, Cherry, but proudly and openly mushy. +She'd catch Justin's hand up, at the table, and say 'Frenny--'" + +"'Frenny?'" echoed Cherry, who had laughed until actual tears +stood in her eyes. + +"That's short for 'friend,' do you see? Because of this platonic +intellectual friendship that started everything, you know. She'd +catch up his hand and say, 'Frenny, show Uncle what an +aristocratic hand you've got.' My dear, she'll keep me awake +nights repeating things he's said to her: 'He's so wonderful, +Alix. He's the simplest and at the same time the cleverest man I +ever knew.'" + +"He sounds awful to me," Cherry said. + +"He's not, really. Only it seems that he belongs to the oldest +family in America, or something, and is the only descendent--" + +"Money?" Cherry asked, interestedly. + +"No, I don't think money, exactly. At least I know he is getting a +hundred a month in his uncle's law office, and Dad thinks they +ought to wait until they have a little more. She'll have +something, you know," Alix added, after a moment's thought. + +"Your cousin?" Martin asked, taking his pipe out of his mouth. + +"Well, her father went into the fire-extinguisher thing with Dad," +Alix elucidated, "and evidently she and Justin have had deep, +soulful thoughts about it. Anyway, the other day she said--you +know her way, Cherry--'Tell me, Uncle, frankly and honestly, may +Justin and I draw out my share for that little home that is going +to mean so much to us--'" + +"I can hear her!" giggled Cherry. + +"Dad immediately said that she COULD, of course," Alix went on. +"He's going to look the whole thing up. He was adorable about it. +He said, 'It will do more than build you a little home, my dear!'" + +"We'll get a slice of that some time," Cherry said, thoughtfully, +glancing at her husband. "I don't mean when Dad dies either," she +added, in quick affection. "I mean that he might build us a little +home some day in Mill Valley." + +"Gee, how he'd love it!" Alix said, enthusiastically. + +"I married Cherry for her money," Martin confessed. + +"As a matter of fact," Cherry contradicted him, vivaciously, +animated even by the thought of a change and a home, "we have +never even spoken of it before, have we, Mart?" + +"I never heard of it before," he admitted, smiling, as he knocked +the ashes from his pipe. "If I leave the 'Emmy Younger' in +October, and go into the Red Creek proposition, I shall be making +a good deal myself. But it's pleasant to know that Cherry will +come in for a nest-egg some day!" + +"Mart doesn't care a scrap for money!" Cherry said to her sister, +in the old loyal way. Since Alix's arrival she had somehow liked +Martin better. Perhaps Alix brought to her sister with a whiff of +the old atmosphere, the old content, the old pride, and the old +point-of-view. Presently the visitor boldly suggested that they +should both go home together for the wedding, and Martin, to +Cherry's amazement, agreed good-naturedly. + +"But, Mart, how'll you get along?" his wife asked, anxiously. She +had fumed and fussed and puttered and toiled over the care of +these four rooms for so long that it seemed unbelievable that her +place might be vacated even for a day. + +"Oh, I'll get along fine!" he answered, indifferently. Cherry, +with a great sigh of relief and delight, abandoned the whole +problem; milk bottles, fire wood, groceries, dust, and laundry +slipped from her mind as if they had never been. On the last day +of August, in the cream-coloured silk and the expensive hat again, +yet looking, Alix thought, strangely unlike the bride that had +been Cherry, she and her sister happily departed for cooler +regions. Martin took them to the train, kissed his sister-in-law +gaily, and then his wife affectionately, + +"Be a good little girl, Babe," he said, "and write me!" + +"Oh, I will--I will!" Cherry looked after him smilingly from the +car window. "He really is an old dear!" she told Alix. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +But when at the end of the long day they reached the valley, and +when her father came innocently into the garden and stood staring +vaguely at her for a moment--for her visit, and the day of Alix's +return had been kept a secret--her first act was to burst into +tears. She clung to the fatherly shoulder as if she were a storm- +beaten bird safely home again, and although she immediately +laughed at herself, and told the sympathetically watching Peter +and Alix that she didn't know what was the matter with her, it was +only to interrupt the words with fresh tears. + +Tears of joy, she told them, laughing at the moisture in her +father's eyes. Hanging on his arm, she went back into the old +sitting room again, under the banksia rose; went up the brown +stairway to the old, clean, woody-smelling bedroom. Her hat and +wraps went into the closet; she danced and exclaimed and exulted +over every familiar detail. + +She and Alix ran downstairs before supper, and into the garden, +and Cherry drew deep, refreshing breaths of the cool air and +laughed over every bush and flower. Peter came out to join them, +her father came down, and she kissed him again; she could not be +close enough to him. She had a special joyous word for Hong; she +laughed and teased and questioned Anne, when Anne and Justin came +back from an afternoon concert in the city, with an interest and +enthusiasm most gratifying to both. + +After dinner she had her old place on the arm of her father's +porch chair; Alix, with Buck's smooth head in her lap, sat on the +porch step beside Peter, and the lovers murmured from the darkness +of the hammock under the shadow of the rose vine. It was happy +talk in the sweet evening coolness; everybody seemed harmonious +and in sympathy to-night. Alix asked Peter's advice regarding her +White Minorcas and respectfully promised to act upon it, and +Cherry showed him a new side, an affectionate, little sisterly +deference and confidence quite different from her old childish +sulkiness and pretty caprice. + +"Bedtime!" said her father presently, and she laughed in sheer +pleasure. + +"Daddy--that sounds so nice again!" + +"But you do look fagged and pale, little girl," he told her. +"You're to stay in bed in the morning." + +"Oh, I'll be down!" she assured him. But she did not come down in +the morning, none the less. She was tired in soul and body, and +glad to let them spoil her again, glad to rest and sleep in the +heavenly peace and quiet of the old home. + +Midsummer heat was upon the little valley, but here under the +redwoods there was always coolness; delicious odours of warm sap +and loamy sweetness drifted into Cherry's darkened room; the +morning was fresh and foggy, and the night before she had smiled +drowsily to stir from first sleep and find her father bending over +her, drawing up an extra blanket in the old way. All night long +she slept deeply and sweetly, as she had slept through all the +nights of childhood; it was ten o'clock when Alix came smiling in +with a breakfast tray. Presently she carried it away, and Cherry, +with a deep sigh from the fullness of her content, turned on her +side and drowsed again. + +Waking, after a while, she locked her hands under her head, and +lay listening happily to the old and familiar sounds of home. She +heard Hong bargaining in his own minor chatter with a fruit +vendor, and Alix and her father chuckling over some small +confidence in the porch. She heard the subdued clink of dishes, +the squawk of a surprised chicken, and the girls' murmuring +voices. + +It was Saturday, Cherry remembered, when Peter's voice suddenly +sounded above the others and was hastily hushed for her sake; +Peter was always there at three o'clock on Saturdays. There was +another voice, too, pleasant and crisp and even a trifle +fastidious; that must be Justin. + +Late in the afternoon, rested, fresh, and her old sweet self in +the white ruffles, she came down to join them. They had settled +themselves under the redwoods, Anne and Justin, Peter and Alix and +Buck, the dog, all jumped up to greet her. Cherry very quietly +subsided into a wicker chair, listened rather than talked, moved +her lovely eyes affectionately from one to another. + +Peter hardly moved his eyes from her, although he did not often +address her directly; Justin was quite obviously overcome by the +unexpected beauty of Anne's cousin; Anne herself, with an +undefined pang, admitted in her soul that Cherry was prettier than +ever; and even Alix was affected. With the lovely background of +the forest, the shade of her thin wide hat lightly shadowing her +face, with the dew of her long sleep and recent bath enhancing the +childish purity of her skin, and with her blue eyes full of +content, Cherry was a picture of exquisite youth and grace and +charm. It was not the less winning because she seemed genuinely +unconscious of it to-day; perhaps before the girls and Anne's +precise little fledgling lawyer no self-conscious thought of +conquest had entered her head. + +The dog had gone to her knee and laid his bronze mane against the +white ruffles, and while she listened and smiled, she idly fondled +and petted him with her childish, ringed hand. + +"And the next experience is to be at Red Creek?" Justin asked, +delighted with this addition to the family circle and beaming +about upon everyone. + +"Mr. Lloyd is there now," Cherry smiled. "Do you know Red Creek?-- +I'll have to call you Justin, since you're going to be my cousin +so soon," she interrupted herself to say shyly. + +"No--I--er--I--er--don't!" Justin stammered. + +Anne said vivaciously: + +"Of course you're to call him Justin! And he's to call you Cherry, +too--those are my orders, Frenny, and don't you dare disobey!" + +"But did you get onto the artful and engaging smile Justin gave +Cherry?" Alix giggled later to Peter. She and Peter were in the +pantry, deep in the manufacture of a certain sort of canape. "Why, +he was all in a heap over her!" continued Alix elegantly, as she +sampled a small piece of smeared toast with a severe and wrinkled +brow. "Try a little mustard in it," she suggested, adding +confidentially, "You know Cherry is really too pretty for any use! +The rest of us can diet for complexion or diet for figures, and +this hat will be becoming or that dress will always look well--but +Cherry, why, she just knocks us all galley-west! What's the use of +struggling and brushing your hair and worrying about your clothes, +when a girl like Cherry will come along and sit down and have +everybody staring!" + +"She is, of course, quite extraordinary!" Peter conceded as he +punched two small holes in the top of a tin of olive oil. The oil +welled up through the holes and he wiped his fingers on a corner +of Alix's apron. + +"It's just the difference," Alix said, "between being nice +looking, which half the women in the word are, and being a beauty. +I remember that when Cherry was only about ten I used to look at +her and think that there was something rather--well, rather +arresting about her face. It was such an aristocratic little face. +I remember her in those old bluejacket blouses--" + +"Yes, I do, too!" Peter said quickly, straightening up from +restoring the vinegar demijohn to an obscure position in a lower +cupboard. "Well--These have to go in the oven now; I'll take them +out. Aren't you going to change for dinner? It's after six now!" + +"Since you ask me, I'll see what frock Deshabille has laid out!" +Alix yawned, disappearing in the direction of the sitting room, +where he found her a few minutes later absorbed in a book. + +The evening was cooler, with sudden wind and a promise of storm. +They grouped themselves about a fire in the old way; Anne and +Justin sitting close together on the settle, as Martin and Cherry +had done a year ago. Cherry sat next her father with her hand +linked in his; neither hand moved for a long, long time. Alix, +sitting on the floor, with her lean cheeks painted by the fire, +played with the dog and rallied Peter about some love affair, the +details of which made him laugh vexedly in spite of himself. +Cherry watched them, a little puzzled at the familiarity of Peter +beside this fire; had he been so entirely one of the family a year +ago? She could almost envy him, feeling herself removed by so long +and strange a twelvemonth. + +"Be that as it may, my dear," said Alix, "the fact remains that +you taught this Fenton woman to drive your car, didn't you? And +you told her that she was the best woman driver you ever knew, a +better driver even than Miss Strickland; didn't you?" + +"I did not," Peter said, unmovedly smoking and watching the fire. + +"Why, Peter, you did! She said you did!" + +"Well, then, she said what is not true!" + +"She distinctly told me," Alix remarked, "that dear Mr. Joyce had +said that she was the best woman driver he ever saw." + +"Well, I may have said something like that," Peter growled, +flushing. Alix laughed exultingly. "I tell you I loathe her!" he +added. + +"Daddy, we have a lovely home!" Cherry said softly, her eyes +moving from the shabby books and the shabby rugs to Alix's piano +shining in the gloom of the far corner. It was all homelike and +pleasant, and somehow the atmosphere was newly inspiring to her; +she had felt that the talk at dinner, the old eager controversy +about books and singers and politics and science, was--well, not +brilliant, perhaps, but worth while. She was beginning to think +Peter extremely clever and only Alix's quick tongue a match for +him, and to feel that her father knew every book and had seen +every worthwhile play in the world. + +Martin, whose deep dissatisfaction with conditions at the "Emmy +Younger Mine" Cherry well knew, had entered into a correspondence +some months before relative to a position at another mine that +seemed better to him, and instead of coming down for a day or two +at the time of Anne's wedding, as Cherry had hoped he might, wrote +her that the authorities at the Red Creek plant had "jumped at +him," and that he was closing up all his affairs at the "Emmy +Younger" and had arranged to ship all their household effects +direct to the new home. He knew nothing of Red Creek, except that +it was a small inland town in the San Joachim region, but Cherry's +delight at the thought of any alternative for the "Emmy Younger" +was a revelation to Alix. Martin told his wife generously that he +hoped she would stay with her father until the move was +accomplished, and Cherry, with a clear conscience, established +herself in her old room. She wrote constantly to her husband and +often spoke appreciatively of Mart's kindness. + +Anne's marriage took place in mid-September. It was a much more +formal and elaborate affair than Cherry's had been, because, as +Anne explained, "Frenny's people have been so generous about +giving him up, you know. After all, he's the last of the Littles; +all the others are Folsoms and Randalls. And I want them to +realize that he is marrying a gentlewoman!" + +The older Littles and all the Folsoms and Randalls came to the +wedding, self-respecting, thrifty people who were, for the most +part, as Alix summarized it, "buying little homes on the +installment plan in desirable residential districts of Oakland and +Berkeley." There were bright-faced school teachers, in dark plaid +silk waists, and young matrons in carefully planned colour schemes +of brown and gray; and they all told Alix and Cherry about the +family, the members who were daughters of the Revolution, and the +members who belonged to the Society of the Daughters of Officers +of the Civil War. + +Cherry and Alix went upstairs after the ceremony as Alix and Anne +had done a year ago, but there was deep relief and amusement in +their mood to-day, and it was with real pleasure in the closer +intimacy that the little group gathered about the fire that night. + +After that life went on serenely, and it was only occasionally +that the girls were reminded that Cherry was a married woman with +a husband expecting her shortly to return to him. When she and +Alix took part in the village fairs and bazaars, Alix was still a +little thrilled to see their names in print, "Miss Strickland and +her sister Mrs. Lloyd, who is visiting her," but to Cherry all the +romance seemed to have vanished from her new estate. November +passed, and Christmas came, and there was some talk of Martin's +joining them for Christmas. But he did not come; he was extremely +busy at the new mine and comfortable in a village boarding-house. + +It was in early March that Alix spoke to her father about it; +spoke in her casual and vague fashion, but gave him food for +serious thought, nevertheless. + +"Dad," said Alix suddenly at the lunch table one day when Cherry +happened to be shopping in the city, "were you and Mother ever +separated when you were married?" + +"No--" the doctor, remembering, shook his head. "Your mother never +was happy away from her home!" + +"Not even to visit her own family?" persisted Alix. + +"Not ever," he answered. "We always planned a long visit in the +East--but she never would go without me. She went to your Uncle +Vincent's house in Palo Alto once, but she came home the next day- +-didn't feel comfortable away from home!" + +"How long do you suppose Martin will let us have Cherry?" Alix +asked. + +Her father looked quickly at her and a troubled expression crossed +his face. + +"The circumstances seem to make it wise to keep her here until he +is sure that this new position is the right one!" he said. + +"If I know anything about Martin," Alix said, "no position is ever +going to be the right one for him. I mean," she added as her +father gave her an alarmed look, "I simply mean that he is that +sort of man. And it seems to me--odd, the way he and Cherry take +their marriage! Now when she got here, five months--six months +ago," Alix went on as her father watched her in close and +distressed attention, "Cherry was always talking about going back +to Mart--every time he sent her money she would say that she ought +to keep it for a sudden summons. But she doesn't do that now. +You've been giving her her own allowance right along, and she has +settled down just as she was. A day or two ago Martin sent her +twenty dollars and she has gone into town to spend it to-day--" + +She hesitated, shrugged her shoulders. + +"You think she ought to go back?" her father asked. + +"No, I don't think so!" Alix answered, eagerly. "I don't think +anything about it. But--but IS that marriage? Is that really for +better or for worse? I mean," she interrupted herself hastily, "as +time goes on it will get harder and harder for her; there will +seem to be less and less reason for going! Mrs. Brown was talking +to me about it yesterday, and she asked in that catty, smiling way +she has--" + +"Trust the women to gossip!" the doctor said, impatiently. + +"Well, nobody minds their gossip!" his daughter assured him. "And +for my part I think it's a shame that a girl can't come back home +as simply as that, if she wants to!" she added, boldly. + +"Don't talk nonsense!" her father said, mildly. "You think," he +added, reluctantly, "that it wasn't a good thing for her, eh?" + +"Well--" Alix began. "She doesn't seem like other married women," +she said, doubtfully. "And the only thing is, will she ever want +to go back, if she isn't rather--rather coerced. Martin is odd, +you know; he has a kind of stolid, stupid pride. He wrote her +weeks ago and asked her to come, and she wrote back that if he +would find her a cottage, she would; she couldn't go to his +boarding-house, she hated boarding! Martin answered that he would, +some day, and she said to me, 'Oh, now he's cross!' Now, mind +you," Alix broke off vehemently, "I'd change the entire +institution of marriage, if it was me! I'd end all this--" + +"Well, we won't go into that!" her father interrupted her, +hastily, for Alix had aired these views before and he was not in +sympathy with them. "And I guess you're right: the child is a +woman now, with a woman's responsibilities," he added. "And her +place is with her husband. They'll have to solve life together, to +learn together. I'll speak to Cherry!" + +Alix, watching him walk away, thought that she had never seen Dad +look old before. She saw the shadow on his kind face all the rest +of that day. + +It was only the next morning when he opened the question with +Cherry. + +It was a brilliant morning, with spring already in the air. +Cherry, on the porch steps, was reading a letter from Martin. Her +father sat down beside her. She had on one of her old gowns, and +bathed in soft sunlight, looked eighteen again. Emerald grass was +already filming the ground about the house; from under the deep +rich brown of the forest flooring spring had thrust a million tiny +spears of green. The redwoods wore plushy plumes of blue new +foliage, and a wild lilac at the edge of the clearing drifted like +pale smoke against the dark woods. Everywhere life was soaking and +bursting after heavy rains; the very posts of the garden fence +were sprouting little feathery tips. The air was sweet and pungent +and damp and fresh, the sky high and blue, and across the granite +face of Tamalpais a last scarf of mist was floating. + +"Well, what has Martin to say?" asked the doctor. + +"Oh, he doesn't like it much!" Cherry said, making a little face. +"He describes the village as perfectly hopeless. He's moved into +the little house in E Street, and gotten two stoves up." + +"And when does he want his girl?" her father pursued. + +"He doesn't say," Cherry answered, innocently. "I think he is +really happier to have me here, where he knows I am well off!" she +said. "I know I am," she ended after a moment's thought. + +Her father was conscious of a pang; he had not even formed the +thought in his own mind that Cherry was unhappy. He was as +trusting and as innocent as his daughters in many ways; he shrank +from the unwelcome facts of life. His own childhood had been hard +and disciplinary, and at Cherry's age he had been concerned only +with realities, with the need of food and clothes and shelter. +That a life could be spoiled simply by contact with an +unsympathetic personality was incomprehensible to him. The child, +he told himself, had a good husband, a home and health, and +undeveloped resources within herself. It was puzzling and painful +to him to realize that there was needed something more--and that +that something was lacking. He felt a sudden anger at Martin; why +wasn't Martin managing this affair! + +"Mart doesn't mention any time!" he mused. + +"Thanks to you!" Cherry said, dimpling mischievously. "He wrote +quite firmly, just before Christmas," she added, "but I told him +that Dad had been such an angel and liked so much to have me here- +-" And Cherry's smile was full of childish triumph. + +"My dear," her father said, spurred to sudden courage by a +realization that the matter might easily become serious, "you +mustn't abuse his generosity. Suppose you write that you'll join +him--this is March--suppose you say the first of April?" + +Cherry flushed and looked down. Her lips trembled. There was a +moment of unhappy silence. + +"Very well, Dad," she said in a low voice. A second later she had +jumped to her feet and vanished in the house. Her father roamed +the woods in wretched misgivings, coming in at lunch time to find +her in her place, smiling, but traces of tears about her lovely +eyes. + +Nothing more was said for a day or two, and then Cherry read aloud +to the family an affectionate letter in which Martin said that +everything would be ready for her whenever she came now. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +The last day of March and of Cherry's visit broke clear and blue, +and with it spring seemed to have come on a rush of perfume and +green beauty. Days had been soft and warm before; this day was +hot, and flushed with colour and splendour. There were iris in the +dewy grass under the oaks, but in the sunshine every trace of +winter's damp had disappeared. Larks whirled up from the fields, +and the bridal-wreath and syringa bushes were mounds of creamy +bloom. + +Alix and Cherry washed each other's hair in the old fashion, and +came trailing down with towels and combs to the garden. The doctor +joined them in the midst of their tossing and spreading, and sat +smoking peacefully on the porch steps. + +"Oh, heavens, how I love this sort of weather!" Alix exclaimed, +flinging her brown mane backward, her tall figure slender in a +faded kimono. She sat down crosswise on her chair, locked her arms +about its back, dropped her face on them, and yawned luxuriously. +"Dad and Peter," she went on, suddenly sitting erect, "will get +all this nice clean hair full of cigar smoke to-night, so what's +the use, anyway?" + +"To-night's the night we go to Peter?" Cherry stated rather than +asked. "Do you remember," she glanced at her father, who was +reading his paper, "do you remember when Dad always used to scold +us for being rude to Peter?" + +"Well, I'd rather go to Peter's for dinner than anywhere else I +ever go!" Alix remarked, dreamily. "Seriously, I mean it!" she +repeated as Cherry looked at her in amused surprise. "In the first +place, I love his bungalow--tiny as it is, it has the whole of a +little canyon to itself, and the prettiest view in the valley, I +think. And then I love the messy sitting room, with all the books +and music, and I love the way Peter entertains. I wish," she +added, simply, "that I liked Peter half as well as I do his +house!" + +"Peter's a dear!" Cherry contended. + +"Oh, I know he is!" Alix said, quickly. "Peter's always been a +dear, of course. But I mean in a special sense--" finished Alix +with an entirely unembarrassed grin. + +Cherry, through a glittering cloud of hair, looked at her +steadily. Suddenly she gave an odd laugh. + +"Do you know I never thought of Peter like that?" she said. + +Alix nodded with a cautious look at her father who was out of +hearing. + +"No, nor I! We've always taken him rather for granted," she +admitted. "Only I've been rather wishing, lately, that Peter +wasn't such an unflattering, big-brotherish, every-day-neighbour +sort of person." + +Still Cherry regarded her steadily with an awakening look in her +eyes. + +"Why lately?" she asked. + +"Because," said Alix, briskly and unromantically, "I think Peter +would like me to--well, to stop taking him for granted!" + +"But Peter's lame--" Cherry submitted, doubtfully. + +"You can't call a shortness left from a broken leg LAME!" Alix +protested. "Peter isn't brawny, but he's never been ill. And he's +not a child. He's thirty-seven. And I imagine he's awfully lonely. +And then I imagine it would please Dad--" "Dad has always been +ridiculously fond of him," Cherry said, thoughtfully. Peter-- +possibly in love with Alix! She had never even suspected it. +Peter's attitude toward them all had been more paternal than +anything else. Cherry and her sister could not remember life +without Peter, but he had always been Dad's friend, rather than +theirs. He had rebuked them; he had patiently asked them not to +chatter so; he had criticized their grammar and their clothes and +their friends. + +Peter and Alix. Well, there was something rather pleasant in the +thought after all, if Alix didn't mind his ugliness and thinness. +Cherry thought about it all day. She had had no thought of money a +year or two ago; but she was more experienced now. And Peter was +rich. + +Ordinarily she would have said that she was not going to change +for Peter's dinner; but this afternoon, without mentioning the +fact, she quietly got into one of her prettiest dresses; a dress +that had been made in the long-ago excitement of trousseau days. +Peter as a rather autocratic and critical neighbour was one thing; +as a possible brother-in-law he was another. + +She came downstairs to find her father waiting, and they walked +away through the woods together. Alix had already gone up to +Peter's house to play tennis. They walked slowly through the +lovely aisles of the trees, crossing a road or two, climbing +steadily upward under great redwoods. The forest was thinning with +oaks and madrone trees, and they found the sunlight again high on +the crest of the ridge before a turn of the trail brought them in +view of Peter's bungalow. It was a shabby little place, all porch +and slope of rough brown roof, set in a wilderness of wild flowers +and overlooking long descending slopes of hillside that stretched +far away to the very bay and marshes at the ocean mouth. + +To-night the spring sunshine streamed across it with broad +shadows, the mountains' rough crest stood against a wide expanse +of sunset sky. Cherry's skirt brushed the gold dust from masses +and masses of buttercups. The tennis was over, but just over; +Peter and Alix were sitting, still panting, on the rail of the +wide, open porch, and shouted as the others came up. + +"You missed doubles!" called Alix. "The grandest we ever did! +Doubles with the Thompsons and three sets straight to us--six-two, +six-two, and six-two again! They've gone. Oh, heavens, I never had +such tennis. Oh, Peter, when you stood there at the net and just +curved your hand like a cup"--Alix gave an enthusiastic imitation- +-"and over she went, and game and set!" + +Cherry, sinking white and frilly into a chair, smiled indulgently. +The walk had given her a wild-rose colour, and even Alix was +struck with her extraordinary beauty. Alix had wheeled about on +the rail to face the porch, and Peter had gotten to his feet and +was hospitably pushing basket chairs about. Now he gave Alix a +critical look. + +"You're disgracefully dirty!" he said, fraternally. + +"I know it," she answered, calmly. "Have I time to tub?" + +"All the time in the world!" he answered. + +"Are any clothes of mine here?" further demanded Alix, rising +lazily. + +"Yes, there's a blouse. It's in the linen closet; ask Kow for it +or get it yourself when you get your towels. You left it the day +you changed here after we all climbed the mountain. I hope you +people are going to get enough to eat," Peter added, flinging +himself into a chair beside Cherry. + +"He's been cooking it since breakfast!" Alix remarked, departing. +Peter laughed guiltily, and Cherry, too. It was only an +exaggeration of the simple truth. He loved to cook, and his meals +were famous. + +"It's very pleasant to me to have Alix so much at home here," +Cherry said, when Alix was gone, and the doctor wandering happily +about the garden. "I don't know what we'd do if any one ever +usurped our places here!" + +She had said it deliberately; the fascination of her recent +discovery was too strong to resist. The man flushed suddenly. For +a full minute he did not speak, and Cherry was surprised to find +herself a little thrilled and even frightened by his silence. + +"What put that into your head?" he asked, presently, smoking with +his eyes fixed upon the valley far below. + +"Just--being here," she answered. And as he glanced over his +shoulder he met her smile. + +"You've been here a thousand times without ever paying me a +compliment!" he reminded her. + +Cherry considered this, her brows drawn a trifle together. + +"Perhaps," she offered, presently, "it's because there are so many +changes, Peter; my marriage, Anne's--everything different! It just +came to me that it is nice to have this always the same." + +"Perhaps Alix will come up here and help keep it so some day," the +man said, deliberately. Cherry's look of elaborate surprise and +pleasure died before his serious glance. She was silent for a +moment. + +"Why don't you ask her?" she said in a low, thoughtful tone, +trembling, eager to preserve his mood without a false note. + +"I have," he answered simply. Cherry's heart jumped with a sudden +unexpected emotion. What was it? Not pleasure, not all surprise-- +surely there could be no jealousy mixed with her feeling for +Peter's plans? But she was dazed with the rush of feeling; hurt in +some fashion she could not stop to dissect now. Only this morning +she had felt that Peter was not good enough for Alix; now, +suddenly, he began to seem admirable and dear and unlike everybody +else-- + +"And she said no?" she stammered in confusion. + +"She said no. Or, at least, I intimated that I was a lonely old +affectionate man with this and that to offer, and she intimated +that that wasn't enough. It was all--" he laughed--"It was all +extremely sketchy!" + +"Peter, but what does she want?" There was actual sisterly +indignation in Cherry's tone. + +"Oh, Alix is quite right!" he answered, lightly. "I ought to have +said--I ought to explain--that I had told her, only a few days +previously, that I had always loved somebody else!" + +"Oh-h-h!" Cherry was enlightened. She visualized an affair in the +last years of the old century for Peter. + +"Oh, and--and she didn't love you?" Cherry asked. + +"The lady? She was unfortunately married before I had a chance to +ask her," said Peter. + +"Oh-h-h!" Cherry said again, impressed, "and you'll never get over +it?" she asked, timidly. "Peter, I never knew that!" she added as +he was silent. "Does--does Dad know?" + +"Nobody knows but Alix, and she only knows the bare facts," he +assured her. + +"Oh!" Cherry could think of nothing to add to the sympathetic +little monosyllable. Twilight was reaching even the hilltop, the +canyons were rilling with violet shadows; the sweet, pungent odour +of the first dew, falling on warm dust, crept across the garden. + +"Finished with the shower!" shrieked Alix from the warm darkness +inside the doorway. "Hurry up, Peter, something smells utterly +grand!" + +"That's the chicken thing!" Peter shouted back, springing up to +disappear in the direction of the bathroom. Cherry sat on, silent, +wrapped still in the new spell of the pleasant voice, the +strangely appealing and yet masterful personality. + +The dinner straggled as all Peter's dinners did; Alix mixed a +salad-dressing; Peter himself flashed in and out of the tiny, hot +kitchen a hundred times. Kow, in immaculate linen, came back and +forth in leisurely table-setting. Suddenly everything was ready; +the crisp, smoking-hot French loaf, the big, brown jar of bubbling +and odorous chicken, the lettuce curled in its bowl, the long- +necked bottles in their straw cases, and cheeses and crackers and +olives and figs and tiny fish in oil and marrons in fluted paper +that were a part of all Peter's dinners. + +After dinner they watched the moon rise, until Alix drifted in to +the piano and Peter followed her, and the others came in, too, to +sit beside the fire. As usual it was midnight before any one +thought of ending one of Peter's evenings. + +And all through the pleasant, quiet hours, and when he bundled +them up in his own big loose coats to drive them home, Cherry was +thinking of him in this new light; Peter loving a woman, and +denied. The knowledge seemed to fling a strange glamour about him; +she saw new charm in him, or perhaps, as she told herself, she saw +for the first time how charming he really was. His speech seemed +actually the pleasanter for the stammer at which they had all +laughed years ago; the slight limp lent its own touch of +individuality, and the man's blunt criticisms of books and music, +politics and people, were softened by his humour, his genuine +humility, and his eager hospitality. + +Next day she took occasion to mention Peter and his affairs to +Alix. Alix turned fiery red, but laughed hardily. + +"If he considers that an offer, he can consider it a refusal, I +guess," she said, boyishly embarrassed. "I like him--I'm crazy +about him. But I don't want any party in ringlets and crinolines +to come floating from the dead past over my child's innocent +cradle--" + +"Alix, you're awful!" Cherry laughed. "You couldn't talk that way +if you loved him!" + +"What way?" Alix demanded. + +"Oh, about his--well, his children!" + +"I should think that would be just the proof that I do love him," +Alix persisted idly in her musical, mischievous voice. "I +certainly wouldn't want to talk of the children of a man I DIDN'T- +-" + +"Oh, Alix, don't!" Cherry protested. "Anyway, you know better." + +Alix laughed. + +"I suppose I do. I suppose I ought to be a mass of blushes. The +truth is, I like kids, and I don't like husbands--" Alix +confessed, with engaging candour. + +"You don't know anything about husbands!" Cherry laughed. + +"I know lots of men I'd like to go off with for a few months," +Alix pursued. "But then I'd like to come home again! I don't see +why that isn't perfectly reasonable--" + +"Well, it's not!" Cherry declared almost crossly. "That isn't +marriage. You belong where your husband is, and you--you are +always glad to be with him--" + +"But suppose you get tired of him, like a job or a boarding-house, +or any of your other friends?" Alix persisted idly. + +"Well, you aren't supposed to!" Cherry said, feebly. Alix let her +have the last word; it was only due to her superior experience, +she thought crossly. But half an hour later, lying wakeful, and +thinking that she would miss dear old Cherry to-morrow, she +fancied she heard something like a sob from Cherry's bed, and her +whole heart softened with sympathy for her sister. + +They came downstairs together the next day in mid-afternoon, both +hatted and wrapped for the trip, for Peter was to take Cherry as +far as Sausalito in the car, and Martin by a fortunate chance was +to meet them there at the ferryboat for San Francisco. Mill Valley +was not more than an hour's ride from the ferry. Alix was to drive +down and return with Peter. Cherry said good-bye to her father in +the porch; she seemed more of a puzzled child than ever. + +"I've had a wonderful visit, Dad--" she began bravely. Suddenly +the tears came. She buried her face against her father's shabby +old office coat and his arms went about her. Alix laughed +awkwardly, and Peter shut his teeth. Anne, who had very properly +come over to say good-bye to her cousin, got in the back seat of +the car and Alix took the seat beside her. + +"Take a picture of Peter and me with the suitcases!" she said. "We +must look so domestic!" + +"Get in here, Cherry," Peter said, opening the door of the seat +beside his own. "Doctor, we'll be back in about an hour--" + +"Without Cherry!" her father said with a rueful smile. + +"Without Cherry!" Peter echoed, looking at her gravely. + +It was then that Cherry saw in Peter's expression something that +she did not forget for many, many months--never quite forgot. He +wore a rough tramping costume to-day, a Sunday, and he was halfway +up the porch steps, ready to carry bags to the waiting motor car. +His eyes were fixed upon her with something so yearning, so +loving, so troubled in their gaze that a thrill went through +Cherry from head to foot. He instantly averted his look, turned to +the car, fumbled with the gears; they were off. He was to drive +them all the way to Sausalito; Alix commented joyously upon the +beauty of the day. + +Cherry, tied trimly into a hat that was all big daisies, was +silent for a while. But when Alix and Anne commenced an interested +conversation in the back seat, she suddenly said regretfully: + +"Oh, I hate to go away this time! I mind it more even than the +first time!" + +Peter, edging smoothly about a wide blue puddle, nodded +sympathetically, but did not answer. + +"I envy Alix--" Cherry said in idle mischief. She knew that the +subject was not a safe one, but was irresistibly impelled to +pursue it. + +"Alix?" said Peter, after a silence long enough to make her feel +ashamed of herself. + +"Yes. Her young man lives in Mill Valley, right near home!" +elucidated Cherry. + +"Am I Alix's young man?" he asked, amused. + +"Well, aren't you?" + +"I don't know. I've never been any one's young man," said Peter. + +"Whoever the woman who treated you meanly is--I hate her!" Cherry +began again. "Unless," she added, "unless she was very young, and +you never told her!" + +This time he did not answer at all, and they spun along in utter +silence. But when they were nearing Sausalito, Cherry said almost +timidly: + +"I think perhaps it would make her happy--and proud, to know that +you admired her, Peter. I don't know who she is, of course, but +almost any woman would feel that. This visit, somehow, has made me +feel as if you and I had really begun a new friendship on our own +account, not just the old friendship. And I shall often think of +that talk we had a week ago, and-think of you, too. N-n-next time +you fall in love I hope you will be luckier!" + +Silence. But he gave her his quick, friendly smile. Cherry dared +not speak again. + +"Last stop--all out!" Alix exclaimed. "You get tickets, Peter. +Hurray, there's Martin!" + +Unexpectedly Martin's big figure came toward them from the ferry +gate. Some ore from the mine had to be assayed in San Francisco, +and he had volunteered to make the trip so that he might meet his +wife and bring her back with him to Red Creek. Time hanging on his +hands in the city, he had crossed the bay for the pleasure of the +return trip with Cherry. He met them beamingly. There was a little +confusion of greeting and good-byes. Alix and Peter watched the +others at the railing until the ferryboat turned. Martin smiled +over Anne's head; Cherry, both little white-gloved hands on the +rail, blue eyes and a glint of bright hair showing under the +daisies on her hat, her small figure enveloped in a big loose +coat, looked as if she would like to cry again. + +"It must be fun to be married, and go off to strange places with +your beau!" Alix decided. "I'm hungry, Peter; let's go over there +and treat ourselves to fried oysters!" + +"Let's go home," he said, unsympathetically. "I'm not hungry." + +"Oh, VERY well!" Alix agreed, airily, jumping into the seat beside +him. "Though what has given you a grouch I really am at a loss to +imagine!" she added under her breath. + +"I don't hear you!" shouted Peter, who was suddenly rushing the +engine. + +"You weren't intended to!" she shouted back. And until they were +halfway home, and Alix laughed out in sudden shame and good-nature +not another word was spoken. The bright weather had changed +suddenly, and a wet spring cloud was spreading over the sky. + +"Love me, Peter?" Alix asked, suddenly. + +"Not always!" he answered, briefly and sincerely. Fog was creeping +over the marshes, the air was full of damp chill. A memory of the +coat-enveloped figure and the blue eyes that smiled wistfully +under a daisied hat was wringing his heart. + +"Listen," began Alix again. "Let's stop for Dad, it's going to +pour. And let's go up to your house to eat?" + +Silence. + +"We can play duets all evening!" Alix added, temptingly. + +"Little and Anne coming back?" Peter asked, unwillingly. + +"No; they're dining with the Quelquechoses--those bright-faced, +freckled cousins of his," Alix answered. + +"I don't know that I've got anything up there to eat!" Peter said, +gloomily. + +"Ooo--say!" Alix said, brightening suddenly with her incorrigible +childishness of expression. "Kow's got eggs and cream, hasn't he? +I'll make that new thing I was telling you about--it's delicious. +Oh, and an onion--" she broke off in concern. + +"He has an onion," Peter admitted. "What dish?" he asked, +interested in spite of himself, as Alix fell into a rapturous +reverie. + +"Well, you fry a chopped onion," Alix began, "and then you have a +lot of hard-boiled eggs--" In another moment they were deep in +culinary details. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Martin's work was in the Contra Costa Valley, and he and Cherry +had a small house in Red Creek, the only town of any size near the +mine. Red Creek was in a fruit-farming and dairy region and looked +its prettiest on the spring evening when Cherry saw it first. The +locusts were in leaf and ready to bloom, and the first fruit +blossoms were scattered in snowy whiteness up and down the valley. + +Her little house was a cottage with a porch running across the +front where windows looked out from the sitting room and the front +bedroom. Back of these rooms were a dark little bathroom that +connected the front bedroom with another smaller bedroom, a little +dining room and a kitchen. Almost all the houses in Red Creek were +duplicates, except in minor particulars, of this house, but this +particular specimen was older than some of the others and showed +signs of hard usage. The kitchen floor was chipped and stained, +and the bathroom basin was plugged with putty; there were odd +bottles partly full of shoe polish and ink and vinegar, here and +there; and on the shelves of the triangular closet in the dining +room were cut and folded pieces of spotted white paper. + +Martin, man-fashion, had merely camped in kitchen and bedroom +while awaiting his wife; but Cherry buttoned on her crisp little +apron on the first morning after her arrival, and attacked the +accumulated dishes in the sink, and the scattered shirts and +collars bravely. It was a cold, raw morning, and she went to and +fro briskly, burning rubbish in the airtight stove in the sitting +room, and keeping a good wood fire going in the kitchen, and +feeling housewifely and efficient as she did so. + +After a lunch for which she was praised and applauded in something +of the old honeymoon way, she walked to market, passing blocks of +other little houses like her own, with bare dooryards where nipped +chrysanthemums dangled on poles, and where play wagons, puddles of +water, and picking chickens alternated regularly. Other marketing +women looked at Cherry with the quickly averted look that is only +given to beauty; but the men in the shops wrote down the new name +and address with especial zeal and amiability. She remembered the +old necessities, bacon and lard and sugar and matches; she +recovered the kitchen clock from its wrapping of newspaper, and +wound it, and set it on the sink shelf; she was busy with a +hundred improvements and cares, and was almost too tired, when +Martin came home to dinner, to sit up and share it with him. + +It was warm in the dining room and Cherry yawned over her dessert, +and rose stiff and aching to return to the kitchen with plates and +silver, glasses and food, to shake the tablecloth, to pile and +wash and wipe and put away the china, to brush the floor and the +stove, and do the last wiping and wringing, and to turn out the +gas, and go in to her chair beside the airtight stove. + +Martin handed her half his paper and Cherry took it, realizing +with cheerful indifference that there was a streak of soot on one +cuff, and that her hands were affected by grease and hot water. +She read jokes and recipes and answers to correspondents, and +small editorial fillers as to the number of nutmegs consumed in +China yearly, and the name and circumstances of the oldest living +man in England. A new novel was in her bedroom, but she was too +comfortable and too tired to go get it, and at ten she rose +yawning and stumbling, and went to bed. Breakfast must be on the +table at half-past seven, for Martin left for the mine at eight, +and she had had a hard day. + +For a few weeks the novelty lasted and Cherry was enthusiastic +about everything. She looked out across her dishpan at green +fields and the beginning of the farms; she saw the lilacs burst +into fragrant plumes on the bare branches of her dooryard trees; +spring flushed the whole world with loveliness, and she was young, +and healthy, and too busy to be homesick. + +Martin left the house at eight and was usually at home at five. He +would sometimes come into her kitchen while she finished dinner, +and tell her about the day, and then suggested that they go to the +"pictures" at night. But although Cherry and Alix often had coaxed +their father into this dissipation in Mill Valley, it was +different there, she found. That was a small colony of city +people, the theatre was small, and the films carefully selected. +One sat with one's neighbours and friends. But here in Red Creek +the theatre was a draughty barn, and the farm workers, big men +odorous of warm, acid perspiration, pushed in laughing and noisy; +the films were of a different character, too, and advertised by +frightful coloured posters at the doors. Martin himself did not +like them; indeed, he and Cherry found little to like in either +the people or the town. + +It was a typical railroad town of California. It was flat, dusty, +all its buildings of wood. There were some two thousand souls in +Red Creek; two or three stores, a bakery from which the crude +odour of baking bread burst every night; saloons, warehouses, a +smithy, a butcher shop open only two days a week, a Chinese +laundry from which opium-tainted steam issued all day and all +night; cattle sheds, pepper trees, wheat barns, and a hotel of raw +pine, with a narrow bedroom represented by every one of the forty +narrow windows in its upper stories, and a lower floor decorated +with spittoons. Back of the crowded main street was another +street, beside which Main Street's muddy ugliness was beautiful. +Here was another saloon, and rooms above it, and several +disreputable cottages about which Cherry sometimes saw odd-looking +women. + +Not everyone in Red Creek was poor, by any means. It was a +district bursting with prosperity; all summer long wheat and fruit +and butter and beef poured through it out into the world. Down the +road a mile or two, and back toward the far hills, were +comfortable ranches where trees planted fifty years before had +grown to mammoth proportions, and where the women of the family +cultivated gardens. Every family had pigs and cattle and fine +horses, and mud-spattered motor cars were familiar sights in Red +Creek's streets. + +Cherry used to wonder why anybody who could live elsewhere lived +here. When some of the ranch girls told her that they always did +their shopping in San Francisco, she marvelled that they could +reconcile themselves to come home. + +The days went on and on, each bringing its round of dishes, beds, +sweeping, marketing, folding and unfolding tablecloths, going back +and forth between kitchen and dining room. Martin's breakfast was +either promptly served and well cooked, in which case Martin was +silently satisfied, or it was late and a failure, when he was very +articulately disgusted; in either case Cherry was left to clear +and wash and plan for another meal in four hours more. She soaked +fruit, beat up cake, chopped boxes into kindlings, heated a kettle +of water and another kettle of water, dragged sheets from the bed +only to replace them, filled dishes with food only to find them +empty and ready to wash again. + +"I get sick of it!" she told Martin. + +"Well, Lord!" he exclaimed. "Don't you think everybody does? Don't +I get sick of my work? You ought to have the responsibility of it +all for a while!" + +His tone was humorously reproving rather than unkind. But such a +speech would fill Cherry's eyes with tears, and cause her to go +about the house all morning with a heavy heart. + +She would find herself looking thoughtfully at Martin in these +days, studying him as if he were an utter stranger. It bewildered +her to feel that he actually was no more than that, after two +years of marriage. She not only did not know him, but she had a +baffled sense that the very nearness of their union prevented her +from seeing him fairly. She knew that she did him injustice in her +thoughts. + +It MUST be injustice, decided Cherry. For Martin seemed to her +less clever, less just, less intelligent, and less generous than +the average man of her acquaintance. And yet he did not seem to +impress other people in the way he impressed her. + +He was extraordinarily healthy, and had small sympathy for +illness, weakness, for the unfortunate, and the complaining. He +was scrupulously clean, and Cherry added that to his credit, +although the necessity of seeing that Martin's bath, Martin's +shaving water, and Martin's clean linen were ready complicated her +duties somewhat. He was not interested in the affairs of the day; +politics, reforms, world movements generally found him +indifferent, but he would occasionally favour his wife with a +sudden opinion as to China or intensive farming or Lloyd's +shipping. She knew when he did this that he was quoting. He +whistled over his dressing, read the paper at breakfast, and was +gone. At noon he rushed in, always late, devoured his lunch +appreciatively, and was gone again. At night he was usually tired, +inclined to quarrel about small matters, inclined to disapprove of +the new positions of the bedroom furniture, or the way Cherry's +hair was dressed. + +He loved to play poker and was hospitable to a certain extent. He +would whistle and joke over the preparations for a rarebit after a +game, and would willingly walk five blocks for beer if Cherry had +forgotten to get it. On Sunday he liked to see her prettily +gowned; now and then they motored with his friends from the mine; +more often walked, ate a hearty chicken dinner, and went to a cold +supper in the neighbourhood, with "Five Hundred" to follow. At ten +their hostess would flutter into her kitchen; there would be +lemonade and beer and rich layer cake. Then the men would begin to +match poker hands, and the women to discuss babies in low tones. + +Cherry never saw her husband so animated or so interested as when +men he had known before chanced to drift into town, mining men +from Nevada or from El Nido, or men he had known in college. They +would discuss personalities, would shout over recollected good +times, would slap each other on the back and laugh tirelessly. + +She thought him an extremely difficult man to live with, and was +angered when her hints to this effect led him to remark that she +was the "limit." They had a serious quarrel one day, when he told +her that she was the most selfish and spoiled woman he had ever +known. He called her attention to the other women of the town, +busy, contented women, sending children off to school, settling +babies down for naps in sunny dooryards, cooking and laughing and +hurrying to and fro. + +"Yes, and look at them!" Cherry said with ready tears. "Shabby, +thin, tired all the time!" + +"The trouble with you is," Martin said, departing, "you've been +told that you're pretty and sweet all your life--and you're +SPOILED! You are pretty, yes--" he added, more mildly. "But, by +George, you sulk so much, and you crab so much, that I'm darned if +I see it any more! All I see is trouble!" + +With this he left her. Left her to a burst of angry tears, at +first, when she dropped her lovely little head on the blue gingham +of her apron sleeve and cried bitterly. + +The kettle began to sing on the stove, a bee came in and wandered +about the hot kitchen; the grocer knocked, and Cherry let the big +lout of a boy stare at her red eyes uncaring. + +Then she went swiftly into the bedroom and began to pack and +change. She'd SHOW Martin Lloyd--she'd SHOW Martin Lloyd! She was +going straight to Dad--she'd take the--take the-- + +She frowned. She had missed the nine o'clock train; she must wait +for the train at half-past two. Wait where? Well, she could only +wait here. Very well, she would wait here. She would not get +Martin any lunch, and when he raged she would explain. + +She finished her packing and put the house in order. Then, in +unaccustomed mid-morning leisure, she sank into a deep rocker, and +began to read. Quiet and shade and order reigned in the little +house. Outside in the shaded street the children went shouting +home again; a fishman's horn sounded. + +Steps came bounding up to Cherry's door; her heart began to beat; +a knock sounded. She got to her feet, puzzled; Martin did not +knock. + +It was Joe Robinson, his closest friend at the mine. His handsome, +big-featured face was full of concern. + +"Say, listen, Mrs. Lloyd; Mart can't get home to dinner," said +Joe. "He don't feel extra well--he was in the engine room and he +kinder--he kinder--" + +"Fainted?" Cherry asked, sharply, turning a little pale. + +"Well, kinder. Lawson made him lay down," Joe said. "And he's +coming home when the wagon comes down, at three o'clock. He says +to tell you he's fine!" + +"Oh, thank you, Joe!" Cherry said. She shut the door, feeling weak +and frightened. She flew to unpack her bag, hung up her hat and +coat, darkened the bedroom and turned down the bed; waited +anxiously for Mart's return. Mrs. Turner came in with the baby, a +gentle, tired woman, with a face always radiant with joy. Mrs. +Turner had seven children, and had once told Cherry that she had +never slept a night through since the first year of her marriage. +She never changed a baby's gown or rolled a batch of cookies +without a deep and genuine love for the task; she could not +unbutton the twisted collar from a son's small neck without +drawing his freckled cheek to her hungry lips for a kiss, or ask +one of her black-headed, bright-eyed daughters to hang up a dish +towel without adding: "You're a darling help to your mother!" + +The Turners lived next door to the Lloyds, in a shabby two-story +house, and though Cherry and her neighbour spoke a different +language, they had grown fond of each other. Cherry had sometimes +timidly touched upon the matter that was always troubling her, +with the older woman. But Mrs. Turner had little to say regarding +her feeling for the lean, silent, somewhat unsuccessful man who +was the head of her crowded household. She seemed to take it for +granted that he would sometimes be unreasonable. + +"Papa gets so mad if anything gets burned!" she would say, with +her gentle laugh. And once she added the information that her +husband's mother had been a wonderful manager. "Men are that way!" +was her comment upon the difficulties of other wives. But once, +when there was a wedding near by, Cherry, with others in the +church, saw the tears in Mrs. Turner's eyes as she watched the +bride. "Poor little innocent thing!" she had whispered with a +tremulous smile. + +She was deeply concerned over the news from Martin, and when +Cherry had met his limp form at the front door, and had whisked +him into a cool bed, and put chopped ice on the aching forehead, +and gotten him, grateful and penitent, off to sleep, her neighbour +came over again to whisper in the kitchen. + +"He's all right," Cherry smiled. "He was so glad to get to bed, +and so appreciative!" she added in a motherly tone. + +"You look as if you hadn't a thing in the world to do!" the older +housekeeper commented, glancing about the neat, quiet kitchen. + +"I believe I like sick nursing!" Cherry smiled back. + +For a day or two Martin stayed in bed and Cherry spoiled and +petted him, and was praised and thanked for every step she took. +After that they took a little trip into the mountains near by, and +Cherry sent Alix postcards that made her sister feel almost a pang +of envy. + +But then the routine began again, and the fearful heat of +midsummer came, too. Red Creek baked in a smother of dusty heat, +the trees in the dry orchards, beside the dry roads, dropped +circles of hot shadow on the clodded, rough earth. Farms dozed +under shimmering lines of dazzling air, and in the village, from +ten o'clock until the afternoon began to wane, there was no stir. +Flies buzzed and settled on screen doors, the creek shrunk away +between crumbling rocky banks, the butcher closed his shop, and +milk soured in the bottles. + +The Turners, and some other families, always camped together in +the mountains during this season, and they were off when school +closed, in an enviable state of ecstasy and anticipation. Cherry +had planned to join them, but an experimental week-end was enough. +The camp was in the cool woods, truly, but it was disorderly, +swarming with children, the tents were small and hot, the whole +settlement laughed and rioted and surged to and fro in a manner +utterly foreign to her. She returned, to tell Martin that it was +"horribly common," and weather the rest of the summer in Red +Creek. + +"Mrs. Turner is the only woman that I can stand," said Cherry, +"and she was always cooking, in an awful cooking shed, masses and +masses of macaroni and stewed plums and biscuits--and all of them +laughing and saying, 'Girlie, I guess you've got a hollow leg!' +Dearie, I couldn't eat any more without busting!' And sitting +round that plank table--" + +Martin shouted with laughter at her, but he sympathized. He had +never cared particularly for the Turners; was perfectly willing to +keep the friendship within bounds. + +He sympathized as little with another friendship she made, some +months later, with the wife of a young engineer who had recently +come to the mine. Pauline Runyon was a few years older than her +husband, a handsome, thin, intense woman, who did everything in an +entirely individual way. She took one of the new little bungalows +that were being erected in Red Creek "Park," and furnished it +richly and inappropriately, and established a tea table and a +samovar beside the open fireplace. Cherry began to like better +than anything else in the world the hours she spent with Pauline. +She would have liked to go every day, and every day argued and +debated the propriety of doing so, in her heart. + +Not since the days of her engagement to Martin, and then only on a +few occasions, had she felt the thrill that she experienced now, +when Pauline, with her dark eyes and her frilly parasol, wandered +in the kitchen door, to sit laughing and talking for a few +minutes, or when she herself dressed and crossed the village, and +went up past the packing plant and the storage barns to the two +small cement gate posts and the length of rusty chain that marked +the entrance to Red Creek "Park." Then there would be tea, poetry, +talk, and the flattery that Pauline quite deliberately applied to +Cherry, and the flattery that Cherry all unconsciously lavished on +her friend in return. + +Pauline read Browning, Francis Thompson, and Pater, and introduced +Cherry to new worlds of thought. She talked to Cherry of New York, +which she loved, and of the men and women she had met there. She +sometimes sighed and pushed the bright hair back from Cherry's +young and innocent and discontented little face, and said, +tenderly, "On the stage, my dear--anywhere, everywhere, you would +be a furore!" + +And thinking, in the quiet evenings--for Martin's work kept him +later and later at the mine--Cherry came to see that her marriage +had been a great mistake. She had not been ready for marriage. She +would sit on the back steps, as the evenings grew cooler, and +watch the exquisite twilight fade, and the sorrow and beauty of +life would wring her heart. + +Darkness came, the Turner children shrieked, laughed, clattered +dishes, and were silent. Cherry would sit on, her arms wrapped in +her apron, her eyes staring into the young night. In the darkness +she could only see the great shadows that were the Adams' +windmill, and the old Brown barn, and the Cutters' house down the +back road. The dry earth seemed awake at night, stretching itself, +under brown sods, for a great breath of relief in the merciful +coolness. Cherry could smell grapes, and smell the pleasant +wetness of the dust where the late watering cart had passed by, +after sunset. The roads were too hot for watering all day long, +and this sweet, wet odour only came with the night. + +A dream of ease and adoration and beauty came to her. She did not +visualize any special place, any special gown or hour or person. +But she saw her beauty fittingly environed; she saw cool rooms, +darkened against this blazing midsummer glare; heard ice clinking +against glass; the footsteps of attentive maids; the sound of +cultivated voices, of music and laughter. She had had these dreams +before, but they were becoming habitual now. She was so tired--so +sick--so bored with her real life; it was becoming increasingly +harder and harder for her to live with Martin; to endure and to +struggle against the pricks. She was always in a suppressed state +of wanting to break out, to shout at him brazenly, "I don't care +if your coffee is weak! I like it weak! I don't care if you don't +like my hat--I do! Stop talking about yourself!" + +Various little mannerisms of his began seriously to annoy her; a +rather grave symptom, had Cherry but known it. He danced his big +fingers on the handle of the sugar spoon at breakfast, sifting the +sugar over his cereal; she had to turn her eyes resolutely away +from the sight. He blew his nose, folded his handkerchief, and +then brushed his nose with it firmly left and right; she hated the +little performance that was never altered. He had a certain mental +slowness, would blink at her politely and patiently when she +flashed plans or hopes at him: "I don't follow you, my dear!" This +made her frantic. + +She was twenty, undisciplined and exacting. She had no reserves +within herself to which she could turn. Bad things were hopelessly +bad with Cherry, her despairs were the dark and tearful despairs +of girlhood, prematurely transferred to graver matters. + +Martin was quite right in some of his contentions; girl-like, she +was spasmodic and unsystematic in her housekeeping; she had times +of being discontented and selfish. She hated economy and the need +for careful managing. + +In October Alix chanced to write her a long and unusually gossipy +letter. Alix had a new gown of black grenadine, and she had sung +at an afternoon tea, and had evidently succeeded in her first +venture. Also they had had a mountain climb and enclosed were +snapshots Peter had taken on the trip. + +Cherry picked up the little kodak prints; there were four or five +of them. She studied them with a pang at her heart. Alix in a +loose rough coat, with her hair blowing in the wind, and the +peaked crest of Tamalpais behind her--Alix busy with lunch boxes-- +Alix standing on the old bridge down by the mill, A wave of +homesickness swept over the younger sister; life tasted bitter. +She hated Alix, hated Peter, above all she hated herself. She +wanted to be there, in Mill Valley, free to play and to dream +again-- + +A day or two later she told Martin kindly and steadily that she +thought it had all "been a mistake." She told him that she thought +the only dignified thing to do was to part. She liked him, she +would always wish him well, but since the love had gone out of +their relationship, surely it was only honest to end it. + +"What's the matter?" Martin demanded. + +"Nothing special," Cherry assured him, her eyes suddenly watering. +"Only I'm tired of it all. I'm tired of PRETENDING. I can't argue +about it. But I know it's the wise thing to do." + +"You acted this same way before," Martin suggested, after looking +back at his paper for a few seconds. + +"I did not!" Cherry said, indignantly. "That is not true." + +"You'd go back to your father, I suppose?" Martin said, yawning. + +"Until I could get into something," Cherry replied with dignity. A +vague thought of the stage flitted through her mind. + +"Oh!" Martin said, politely. "And I suppose you think your father +would agree to this delightful arrangement?" he asked. + +"I know he would!" Cherry answered, eagerly. + +"All right--you write and ask him!" Martin agreed, good-naturedly. +Cherry was surprised at his attitude, but grateful more than +surprised. + +"Not cross, Mart?" she asked. + +"Not the least in the world!" he answered, lightly. + +"Because I truly believe that we'd both be happier--" the woman +said, hesitatingly. Martin did not answer. + +The next day she sat down to write her father. The house was +still. Red Creek was awakening in the heavenly October coolness, +children chattered on the way to school, the morning and evening +were crisp and sharp. + +Cherry stared out at a field of stubble bathed in soft sunshine. +The hills to-day were only a shade deeper than the pale sky. Along +the road back of the house a lumber wagon rattled, the thin bay +horses galloping joyously in harness. Pink and white cosmos, +pallid on clouds of frail, bushy green, were banked in the shade +of the woodshed. + +She meditated, with a troubled brow. Her letter was unexpectedly +hard to compose. She could not take a bright and simple tone, +asking her father to rejoice in her home-coming. Somehow the +matter persisted in growing heavy, and the words twisted +themselves about into ugly and selfish sounds. Cherry was young, +but even to her youth the phrases, the "misunderstood" and the +"uncongenial," the "friendly parting before any bitterness creeps +in," and the "free to decide our lives in some happier and wiser +way," rang false. Pauline had been divorced, a few years ago, and +the only thing Cherry disliked in her friend was her cold and +resentful references to her first husband. + +No, she couldn't be a divorced woman. It was all spoiled, the +innocent past and the future; there was no way out! She gave up +the attempt at a letter, and began to annoy Martin with talk of a +visit home again. + +"You were there six months ago!" Martin reminded her. + +"Eight months ago, Mart." + +"What you want to go for?" + +"Oh, just--just--" Cherry's irrepressible tears angered herself +almost as much as they did Martin. "I think they'd like me to!" +she faltered. + +"Go if you want to!" he said, but she knew she could not go on +that word. + +"That's it," she said at last to herself, in one of her solitary +hours. "I'm married, and this is marriage. For the rest of my life +it'll be Mart and I--Mart and I--in everything! For richer for +poorer, for better for worse-that's marriage. He doesn't beat me, +and we have enough money, and perhaps there are a lot of other +women worse off than I am. But it's--it's funny." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +In January, however, he came home one noon to find her hatted and +wrapped to go. + +"Oh, Mart--it's Daddy!" she said. "He's ill--I've got to see him! +He's awfully ill." + +"Telegram?" asked Martin, not particularly pleased, but not +unsympathetic either. + +For answer she gave him the yellow paper that was wet with her +tears. "Dad ill," he read. "Don't worry. Come if you can. Alix." + +"I'll bet it's a put-up job between you and Alix--" Martin said in +indulgent suspicion. + +Her indignant glance sobered him; he hastily arranged money +matters, and that night she got off the train in the dark wetness +of the valley, and was met by a rush of cool and fragrant air. It +was too late to see the mountain, lights were twinkling everywhere +in the dark trees. Cherry got a driver, rattled and jerked up to +the house in a surrey, and jumped out, her heart almost +suffocating her. + +Alix came flying to the door, the old lamplight and the odour of +wood smoke poured through. There was no need for words; they burst +into tears and clung together. + +An hour later Cherry, feeling as if she was not the same woman who +waked in Red Creek this same morning, and got Martin's eggs and +coffee ready, crept into her father's room. Alix had warned her to +be quiet, but at the sight of the majestic old gray head, and the +fine old hands clasped together on the sheet, her self-control +forsook her entirely and she fell to her knees and began to cry +again. + +The nurse looked at her disapprovingly, but after all it made +little difference. Doctor Strickland roused only once again, and +that was many hours later. Cherry and Alix were still keeping +their vigil; Cherry, worn out, had been dozing; the nurse was +resting on a couch in the next room. + +Suddenly both daughters were wide awake at the sound of the hoarse +yet familiar voice. Alix fell on her knees and caught the cold and +wandering hand. + +"What is it, darling?" The old, half-joking maternal manner was +all in earnest now. + +"Peter?" he said, thickly. + +"Peter's in China, dear. You remember that Peter was to go around +the world? You remember that, Dad?" + +"In the 'Travels with a Donkey,'" he said, rationally. + +The girls looked at each other dubiously. + +"We all read that together," Alix encouraged him. + +"No--" he said, musingly. They thought he slept again, but he +presently added, "Somewhere in Matthew--no, in Mark--Mark is the +human one--Mark was as human as his Master--" + +"Shall I read you from Mark?" Alix asked, as his voice sank again. +A shabby old Bible always stood at her father's bedside; she +reached for it, and making a desperate effort to steady her voice, +began to read. The place was marked by an old letter, and opened +at the chapter he seemed to desire, for as she read he seemed to +be drinking in the words. Once they heard him whisper "Wonderful!" +Cherry got up on the bed, and took the splendid dying head in her +arms, the murky winter dawn crept in, and the lamp burned sickly +in the daylight. Hong could be heard stirring. Alix closed the +book and extinguished the lamp. Cherry did not move. + +"Charity!" the old man said, presently, in a simple, childish +tone. Later, with bursts of tears, in all the utter desolation of +the days that followed, Cherry loved to remember that his last +utterance was her name. But Alix knew, though she never said it, +that it was to another Charity he spoke. + +Subdued, looking younger and thinner in their new black, the +sisters came downstairs, ten days later, for a business talk. +Peter had been named as one executor, but Peter was far away, and +it was a pleasant family friend, a kindly old surgeon of Doctor +Strickland's own age, or near it, and the lawyer, George Sewall, +the other executor, who told them about their affairs. Anne, as +co-heiress, was present at this talk, with Justin sitting close +beside her. Martin, too, who had come down for the funeral, was +there. + +Cherry was white, headachy, indifferent; she seemed stunned by her +loss; but Alix's extraordinary vitality had already asserted +itself, and she set herself earnestly to understand their somewhat +complicated affairs. + +The house went to the daughters; there were books and portraits +for Anne, a box or two in storage for Anne, and Anne was mentioned +in the only will as equally inheriting with Alexandra and Charity. +For some legal reason that the lawyer and Doctor Younger made +clear, Anne could not fully inherit, but her share would be only a +trifle less than her cousins'. + +Things had reached this point when Justin Little calmly and +confidently claimed that Anne's share was to be based upon an old +loan of Anne's father to his brother, a loan of three thousand +dollars to float Lee Strickland's invention, with the +understanding that Vincent Strickland be subsequently entitled to +one third of the returns. As the patent had been sold for nearly +one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, one third of it, with +accumulative interest for ten years, of which no payment had ever +been made Anne, was a large proportion of the entire estate, and +the development of this claim, in Justin Little's assured, woodeny +voice, caused everyone except the indifferent Cherry to look +grave. + +The estate was not worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars +now, by any means; it had been reduced to little more than two +thirds of that sum, and Anne's bright concern that everyone should +be SATISFIED with what was RIGHT, and her ingenuous pleasure in +Justin's cleverness in thinking of this possibility, were met with +noticeable coldness. + +If Anne was wrong, and the paper she held in her hand worthless, +each girl would inherit a comfortable little fortune, but if Anne +was right, Cherry and Alix would have only a few thousand dollars +apiece, and the old home. + +The business talk was over before any of them realized the +enormity of Anne's contention, and Anne and Justin had departed. +But both the old doctor and the lawyer agreed with Martin that it +looked as if Anne was right, and when the family was alone again, +and had had the time to digest the matter, they felt as if a +thunderbolt had fallen across their lives. + +"That Anne could DO it!" Alix said, over and over. Cherry seemed +dazed, spoke not at all, and Martin had said little. + +"People will do anything for money!" he observed once drily. He +had met Justin sternly. "I'm not thinking of my wife's share--I +didn't marry her for her money; never knew she had any! But I'm +thinking of Alix." + +"Yes--we must think of darling Alix!" Anne had said, nervously +eager that there should be no quarrel. "If Uncle Lee intended me +to have all this money, then I suppose I must take it, but I +shan't be happy unless things are arranged so that Alix shall be +COMFORTABLE!" + +"B-but the worst of it is, Alix!" Cherry stammered, suddenly, on +the day before she and Martin were to return to Red Creek, "I--I +counted on having enough--enough to live my own life! Alix, I +can't--I can't go back!" + +"Why, my darling--" Alix exclaimed, as Cherry began to cry in her +arms. "My darling, is it as bad as all that!" + +"Oh, Alix," whispered the little sister, trembling, "I CAN'T bear +it. You don't know how I feel. You and Dad were always here; now +that's all gone--you're going to rent the house and try to teach +singing--and I've nothing to look forward to--I've nobody!" + +"Listen, dear," Alix soothed her. "If they advise it, and +especially if Peter advises it when he gets back, we'll fight +Anne. And then if we win our fight, I'll always keep the valley +house open. And if we don't, why I'm going to visit you and Martin +every year, and perhaps I'll have a little apartment some day--I +don't intend to board always--" + +But she was crying, too. Everything seemed changed, cold and +strange; she had suspected that Cherry's was not a successful +marriage; she knew it now, and to resign the adored little sister +to the unsympathetic atmosphere of Red Creek, and to miss all the +old life and the old associations, made her heart ache. + +"There's--there's nothing special, Cherry?" she asked after a +while. + +"With Martin? Oh, no," Cherry answered, her eyes dried, and her +packing going on composedly, although her voice trembled now and +then. "No, it's just that I get bad moods," she said, bravely. "I +was pretty young to marry at all, I guess." + +"Martin loves you," Alix suggested timidly. + +"He takes me for granted," Cherry said, after a pause. "There +doesn't seem to be anything ALIVE in the feeling between us," she +added, slowly. "If he says something to me, I make an effort to +get his point of view before I answer. If I tell him some plan of +mine, I can see that he thinks it sounds crazy! I don't seem very +domestic--that's all. I--I try. Really, I do! But--" and Cherry +seemed to brace herself in soul and body--"but that's marriage. +I'll try again!" + +She gave Alix a long kiss in parting, the next day, and clung to +her. + +"You're the dearest sister a girl ever had, Alix. You're all I +have, now!" + +"I'll write you about the case, and wire you if you're needed, and +see you soon!" Alix said, cheerfully. Then she turned and went +back into the empty house, keeping back her tears until the sound +of the surrey had quite died away. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Alexandra Strickland, coming down the stairway of the valley house +on an April evening, glanced curiously at the door. Her eyes moved +to the old clock, and a smile tugged involuntarily at the corners +of her mouth. Only eight o'clock, but the day had been so long and +so quiet that she had fancied that the hour was much later, and +had wondered who knocked so late. + +She crossed to the door and opened it to darkness and rain, and to +a man in a raincoat, who whipped off a spattered cap and stood +smiling in the light of the lamp she held. Instantly, with a sort +of gasp of surprise and pleasure and some deeper emotion, she set +down the lamp, and held out her hands gropingly and went into his +arms. He laughed joyously as he kissed her, and for a minute they +clung together. + +"Peter!" she said. "You angel--when did you arrive and what are +you doing, and tell me all about it!" + +"But, Alix--you're thin!" Peter said, holding her at arm's length. +"And--and--" He gently touched the black she wore, and fixed +puzzled and troubled eyes upon her face. "Alix--" he asked, +apprehensively. + +For answer she tried to smile at him, but her lips trembled and +her eyes brimmed. She had led the way into the old sitting room +now, and Peter recognized, with a thrill of real feeling, the +shabby rugs and books and pictures, and the square piano beside +which he had watched Cherry's fat, childish hand on the scales so +many times, and Alix scowling over her songs. + +"You heard--about Dad?" Alix faltered now, turning to face him at +the mantel. + +"Your father!" Peter said, shocked. + +"But hadn't you heard, Peter?" + +"My dear--my dearest child, I'm just off the steamer. I got in at +six o'clock. I'd been thinking of you all the time, and I suddenly +decided to cross the bay and come straight on to the valley, +before I even went to the club or got my mail! Tell me--your +father--" + +She had knelt before the cold hearth, and he knelt beside her, and +they busied themselves with logs and kindling in the old way. A +blaze crept up about the logs and Alix accepted Peter's +handkerchief and wiped a streak of soot from her wrist, quite as +if she was a child again, as she settled herself in her chair. + +Peter took the doctor's chair, keeping his concerned and +sympathetic eyes upon her. + +"He was well one day," she said, simply, "and the next--the next, +he didn't come downstairs, and Hong waited and waited--and about +nine o'clock I went up--and he had fallen--he had fallen--" + +She was in tears again and Peter put his hand out and covered hers +and held it. Their chairs were touching, and as he leaned forward, +their faces might almost have touched, too. + +"He must have been going to call someone," said Alix, after a +while, "they said he never suffered at all. This was January, the +last day, and Cherry got here that same night. He knew us both +toward morning. And that--that was all. Cherry was here for two +weeks. Martin came and went--" + +"Where is Cherry now?" Peter interrupted. + +"Back at Red Creek." Alix wiped her eyes. "She hates it, but +Martin had a good position there. Poor Cherry, it made her ill." + +"Anne came?" + +"Anne and Justin, of course." Peter could not understand Alix's +expression. She fell silent, still holding his hand and looking at +the fire. + +He had not seen her for nearly six months; he had been all around +the world; had found her gay, affectionate letters in London, in +Athens, in Yokohama. But for three months now he had been away +from the reach of mails, roughing it on a friend's hemp plantation +in Borneo, and if she had written, the letter was as yet +undelivered. He looked at her with a great rush of admiration and +affection. She was not only a pretty and a clever woman; but, in +her plain black, with this new aspect of gravity and dignity, and +with new notes of pathos and appeal in her exquisite voice, he +realized that she was an extremely charming woman. + +More than that, she stood for home, for the dearly familiar and +beloved things for which he had been so surprisingly homesick. His +mountain cabin and the old house in San Francisco on Pacific +Avenue; she belonged to his memories of them both; she was the +only woman in the world that he knew well. + +Before he said good-bye to her, he had asked her to marry him. He +well remembered her look of bright and interested surprise. + +"D'you mean to tell me you have forgotten your lady love of the +hoop-skirts and ringlets?" she had demanded. + +"She never wore ringlets and crinolines!" he had answered. + +"Well, bustles and pleats, then?" + +"No," Peter had told her, frankly. "I shall always love her, in a +way. But she is married; she never thinks of me. And I like you so +much, Alix; I like our music and cooking and tramps and reading-- +together. Isn't that a pretty good basis for marriage?" + +"No!" Alix had answered, decidedly. "Perhaps if I were madly in +love with you I should say yes, and trust to little fingers to +lead you gently, and so on--" + +He remembered ending the conversation in one of his quick moods of +irritation against her. If she couldn't take anybody or anything +seriously--he had said. + +Poor Alix--she was taking life seriously enough to-night, Peter +thought, as he watched her. + +"Tell me about Cherry," he said. + +"Cherry is well, but just a little thin, and heart-broken now, of +course. Martin never seems to stay at any one place very long, so +I keep hoping--" + +"Doesn't make good!" Peter said, shaking his head. + +"Doesn't seem to! It's partly Cherry, I think," Alix said +honestly. "She was too young, really. She never quite settles +down, or takes life in earnest. But he's got a contract now for +three years, and so she seems to be resigning herself, and she has +a maid, I believe." + +"She must love him," Peter submitted. Alix looked surprised. + +"Why not?" she smiled. "I suppose when you've had ups and downs +with a man, and been rich and poor, and sick and well, and have +lived in half-a-dozen different places, you rather take him for +granted!" she added. + +"Oh, you think it works that way?" Peter asked, with a keen look. + +"Well, don't you think so? Aren't lots of marriages like that?" + +"You false alarm. You quitter!" he answered. + +Alix laughed, a trifle guiltily. Also she flushed, with a great +wave of splendid young colour that made her face look seventeen +again. "Your father left you--something, Alix?" Peter asked +presently, with some hesitation. + +"That," she answered frankly, "is where Anne comes in!" + +"Anne?" + +"Anne and Justin came straight over," Alix went on, "and they were +really lovely. And they asked me to come to them for a visit--but +I couldn't very well; they live with his mother, you know, Amanda +Price Little, who writes the letters to the Chronicle about +educating children and all that. Doctor Younger and George Sewall +were here every day; you and George were named as executors. I was +so mixed up in policies and deeds and overdue taxes and interest +and bonds--" + +"Poor old Alix, if I had only been here to help you!" the man +said. And for a moment they looked a little consciously at each +other. + +"Well, anyway," the girl resumed hastily, "when it came to reading +the will, Anne and Justin sprung a mine under us! It seems that +ten years ago, when the Strickland Patent Fire Extinguisher was +put upon the market, my adorable father didn't have much money--he +never did have, somehow. So Anne's father, my Uncle Vincent, went +into it with him to the extent of about three thousand dollars--" + +"Three thousand!" Peter, who had been leaning forward, earnestly +attentive, echoed in relief. + +"That was all. Dad had about three hundred. They had to have a +laboratory and some expensive retorts and things, it seems. Dad +did all the work, and put in his three hundred, and Uncle Vincent +put in three thousand--and the funny thing is," Alix broke off to +say, musingly, "Uncle Vincent was perfectly splendid about it; I +myself remember him saying, 'Don't worry, Lee. I'm speculating on +my own responsibility, not yours.'" + +"Well?" Peter prompted, as she hesitated. + +"Well. They had a written agreement then, giving Uncle Vincent a +third interest in the patent, should it be sold or put on the +market--" + +"Ha!" Peter ejaculated, struck. + +"Which, of course, was only a little while before Uncle Vincent +died," Alix went on, with a grave nod. "The agreement lay in Dad's +desk all these years--fancy how easily he might have burned it +many's the time! But he didn't. George Sewall says that Anne is +right." + +"But wasn't Anne third heiress anyway, under his will? I know I've +heard--" + +"Certainly she was. But a third interest now, in a diminished +estate that began at something less than one hundred and fifty +thousand dollars, is quite different from a third of it ten years +ago, plus compound interest," Alix said, bringing her clear brows +together with a quizzical smile. "They've broken the will." + +Peter, in the silence, whistled expressively. + +"Gee--rusalem!" he exclaimed. "What does it come to?" + +At this Alix looked very sober, gazed down at the fire, and shook +her head. + +"All he had!" she answered, briefly. + +Peter was silent, looking at her in stupefaction. + +"Almost, that is," Alix amended more cheerfully. "As it was--we +should have had more than thirty thousand apiece. As it is, Anne +gets it all, or if not quite all, nearly all." + +"Gets!" he echoed, hotly. "How do you mean?" + +"It seems to be perfectly just," the girl answered, rather +lifelessly. But immediately she laughed. "Don't look so awful, +Peter. In the first place, Cherry and I still have the house. In +the second place, I am singing at St. Raphael's for five hundred a +year, and singing other places now and then." + +"Alix, aren't you corking!" he said, with his pleasantest smile. + +"Am I?" she asked, smiling. But immediately the smile melted, and +her lips shook. "Anyway, I'm glad you're home again, Peter!" she +added. + +"Home again," he answered, half-angrily. "I should hope I am--and +high time, too! Has this--this money been turned over to Anne?" + +"Not yet. Nobody gets anything until the estate is cleared--a year +or more from now." + +"And do you tell me that she will have the effrontery to take it?" + +"Rather! She said to me, 'Isn't it wonderful that Justin saw it at +once, and I never would have seen it!' She was quite sweet and +merry over it--" + +"Great Lord! Does she know that it's practically all your father +had?" + +Alix hesitated. + +"Well, you see there had been mismanagement, Peter. Dad +speculated, and lost some. And we were a pretty heavy expense for +a good many years. I hated to expose the whole thing, and George-- +he's been splendid--said that they probably had a perfectly valid +claim, anyway. There are some things to be thankful for," Alix +added, dashing the sudden tears from her eyes, "and one is that +Dad never knew it!" + +"I can't tell you how surprised I am at Anne," Peter said. + +"Well, we all were!" Alix confessed. "But it's just Anne's odd +little self-centred way," she added. "It was here, and she wanted +it. She belongs heart and soul to the Little family now, and she +is quite triumphant over being of so much help to Justin. They're +to build a house in Berkeley. Anne has it all worked out!" Alix +said, with amused distaste. "Well--I let Hong go, and as soon as I +can rent this house, I'm going to New York." + +"Why New York, my dear girl?" + +"Because I believe I can make a living there, singing and teaching +and generally struggling with life!" she answered, cheerfully. +"Cherry gets most of the money--they are always somewhat in debt, +and I imagine that the reason she is able to have a nice apartment +and a maid now is because she knows it is coming--and I get the +house, and enough money to keep me going--say, a year, in New +York." + +"Do you want to go, Alix?" he said, affectionately. + +"Yes, I think I do," she answered. But her eyes watered. "I do--in +a way," she added. "That is, I love my singing, and the thought of +making a success is delightful to me. But of course it means that +I give up everything else. I can't have home life, and--and the +valley--for years, four or five anyway, I'll have to give all that +up. And I'm twenty-seven, Peter. And I'd always rather hoped that +my music was going to be a domestic variety--"She stopped, +smiling, but he saw the pain in her eyes. "George Sewall most +kindly asked me to mother his small son--" she resumed, casually. +"But although he is the dearest--" + +"Sewall did!" Peter exclaimed, rather struck. "Great Scott! his +father is one of the richest men in San Francisco." + +"I know it," Alix agreed. "And he is one of the nicest men," she +added. "But of course he'll never really love any one but Ursula. +And I felt--oh, I felt too tired and alone and depressed to enter +upon congratulations and clothes and family dinners with the +Sewalls," she ended, a little drearily. "I wanted--I wanted things +in the old way--as they were--" she said, her voice thickening. + +"I know--I know!" Peter said, sympathetically. And for a while +there was silence in the little house, while the rain fell +steadily upon the dark forest without, and soaked branches swished +about eaves and windows. "Can you put me up to-night?" he asked, +suddenly. He liked her frank pleasure. + +"Rather! I think Cherry's room was made up fresh last Monday," she +told him. "And to-morrow," she added, with a brightening face, +"we'll walk up to your house, and see what six months of Kow's +uninterrupted sway have done to it!" + +"That's just what we'll do!" he agreed, enthusiastically. "And +we'll have some music--" + +She had risen, as if for good-nights, and was now beside the old +square piano, where she had placed the lamp. + +"I haven't touched it--since--" she said, sadly, sitting on the +stool, and with her eyes still smiling on him, putting back the +hinged cover. And a moment later her hands, with the assurance and +ease of the adept, drifted into one of the songs of the old days. + +"Do you remember the day we put the rose tree back, Peter?" she +asked. "When Martin was almost a stranger? And do you remember the +day Cherry and I fell into the Three Wells and you and Dad had to +disappear while we dried our clothing on branches of trees? And do +you remember the day we made biscuits, over by the ocean?" + +"I remember all the days," he answered, deeply stirred. + +"We didn't see all this, then," Alix mused, still playing softly. +"Anne claiming everything for her husband, you and I here talking +of Dad's death, and Cherry married--" She sighed. + +"She's not happy?" he questioned quickly. + +Alix shrugged, pursing her lips doubtfully. + +"She's not unhappy," she told him, with a troubled smile. "It's +just one of those marriages that don't ever get anywhere, and +don't ever stop," she added. "Martin has faults, he's +unreasonable, and he makes enemies. But those aren't the faults +for which a woman can leave her husband. Oh, Peter," she added, +laying a smooth warm hand on his, and looking straight into his +eyes with her honest eyes, "don't go away again! Stay here in the +valley for a week or two, and help me get everything worked out +and thought out--I've been so much alone!" + +"Dear old Alix!" he said, sitting down on the bench beside her and +putting his arm about her. She dropped her head on his shoulder, +and so they sat, very still, for a long minute. Alix's hand went +to her own shoulder, and her fingers tightened on his, and she +breathed deep, contented breaths, like a child. + +"Somebody ought to wire Mrs. Grundy, collect," she said, after +awhile. + +"We will defy Mrs. Grundy, my dear," Peter said, kissing the top +of a soft brown braid, "by trotting off hand in hand tomorrow and +getting ourselves married. Why, Alix, he gave us his consent years +ago--don't you remember?" + +"He DID wish it!" she said, and burst into tears. + +"I seem to be doing things in a slightly irregular manner," she +said to him the next day, when they had gotten breakfast together, +and were basking in the sunlight of the upper deck of the +ferryboat, on their way to the city. "I spend the night BEFORE my +marriage alone--alone in a small country house hidden in the +woods--with my betrothed, and propose to buy my trousseau +immediately after the ceremony!" + +"I feel like saying to you what the dear old French archbishop +said to the small child," Peter smiled, marvelling a little +nonetheless at her untouched serenity. "He was speaking to all the +children in some institution, and came to this little one: 'ET TU +ETES NEGRE? AH, BIEN--BIEN, CONTINUEZ--CONTINUEZ!' It's what makes +you yourself, Alix, doing everything just a little differently." + +"Marrying you, far from seeming a radical or momentous thing to +do," she assured him, "seems to me like getting back into key-- +getting out of this bad dream of loneliness and change--securing +something that I thought was lost!" + +Her voice fell to a dreamy note, and she watched the gulls, +wheeling in the sunshine, with thoughtful, smiling eyes. The man +glanced at her once or twice, in the silence that followed, with +something like hesitation, or compunction, in his look. + +"Look here, Alix--let's talk. I want to ask you something. Or, +rather, I want to tell you something--or, rather--" + +"CONTINUEZ--CONTINUEZ!" she said, laughing, as he hesitated. + +"There's never been anything--anything to tell you--or your +father, if he was here," Peter said, flushed and a trifle awkward, +"I'm not that kind of a man. I was a crippled kid, as you know, +all for books and music and walks and older people. But there HAS +been that one thing--that one woman--" + +Flushed, too, she was looking at him with bright, intelligent +eyes. + +"But I thought she never even knew--" + +"No, she never did!" + +Alix looked back at the gulls. + +"Oh, well, then--" she said, indifferently. + +"Alix, would you like to know about her?" Peter said bravely. "Her +name--and everything?" + +"Oh, no, please, I'd much rather not!" she intercepted him +hastily, and after a pause she added, "Our marriage isn't the +usual marriage, in that way. I mean I'm not jealous, and I'm not +going to cry my eyes out because there was another woman--is +another woman, who meant more to you, or might have! I'm going +into it with my eyes wide open, Peter. I know you love me, and I +love you, and we both like the same things, and that's enough." + +Three weeks later he remembered the moment, and asked her again. +They were in the valley house now, and a bitter storm was whirling +over the mountain. Peter's little cabin rocked to the gale, but +they were warm and comfortable beside the fire; the room was lamp- +lighted, scented by Alix's sweet single violets, white and purple, +spilling themselves from a glass bowl, and by Peter's pipe, and by +the good scent of green bay burning. The Joyces had had a happy +day, had climbed the hills under a lowering sky, had come home to +dry clothes and to cooking, for Kow was away, and had finally +shared an epicurean meal beside the fire. + +Peter was wrapped in deep content; the companionship of this +normal, pretty woman, her quick words and quick laugh, her music, +her glancing, bright interest in anything and everything, was the +richest experience of his life. She had said that she would change +nothing in his home, but her clever white fingers had changed +everything. There was order now, there was charming fussing and +dusting, there were flowers in bowls, and books set straight, and +there was just the different little angle to piano and desk and +chairs and tables that made the cabin a home at last. She wanted +bricks for a path; he had laughed at her fervent, "Do give me a +whole carload of bricks for Christmas, Peter!" She wanted bulbs to +pot. He had lazily suggested that they open the town house while +carpenters and painters remade the cabin, but she had protested +hotly, "Oh, do let's keep it just as it always was!" + +Smiling, he gave her her way. She amused him day after day. He +watched her, marvelling at the miracle that was woman. He heard +her in the kitchen, interrogating the Chinese: "You show me +picture your little boy!" He heard her inveigling Antone, the old +Italian labourer, into confidences. + +Tonight he watched her in great satisfaction; he liked to have her +here in his home, one of the pretty Stricklands, Peter Joyce's +wife. Nobody else was here, nobody else belonged here, they were +masters of their own lives. She quite captivated him by her +simplicity and frankness; she washed her masses of brown hair and +shook it loose in the sunshine, and she came in wet more than +once, and changed her shoes before the fire--just as she had years +ago, when she was a madcap little girl running wild through the +woods. + +They had been talking of Cherry, as they often did. Alix's +favourite topic was her little sister; she had almost a maternal +pride and fondness where Cherry was concerned. Today she had been +house-cleaning, and had brought some treasures downstairs. She had +showed Peter Cherry's old exercise books: "Look, Peter, how she +put faces in the naughts and turned the sevens into little sail- +boats! And see the straggling letters--'Charity Strickland!' I've +always hated to destroy them. She was such a lazy, cunning little +scholar!" + +Peter, smiling at the old books, had remembered her, a small, +square Cherry, with a film of gold falling over a blazing cheek, +and mutinous blue eyes. Ah--the wonderful eyes were wonderful even +then-- + +The date gave him a moment's shock. Only eight--only seven years +ago she had been a schoolgirl! Cherry was not yet twenty-three-- + +"I wish she had married a little differently," Alix said, +thoughtfully. "Cherry isn't exacting. But she does like pretty +gowns and pretty rooms, and to do things as other girls do!" + +"You should have married the mining engineer," he told her. "Red +Creek would have had no terrors for you! + +"I should have loved it!" she agreed, carelessly. + +A curious expression flashed into her face. She was smiling; but +immediately the smile faded, and she looked back at the fire with +puzzled eyes. + +"If I loved a man, Peter, the place and the house and the money +wouldn't matter much!" she answered after awhile, in a slightly +strained voice. + +"Perhaps," he suggested, still thinking of Cherry, "that's the +trouble!" + +She gave him a quick, almost frightened look. + +"The--the trouble?" she stammered. And with a little ashamed laugh +she added, "What trouble?" + +For a long time he looked at her in silence, at first puzzled, +gradually fitting meaning and interpretation to his words and her +own. Presently their eyes met, and with her little gruff boyish +laugh she came over to the low seat at his knee. + +"You see that there is something just a little wrong, then?" she +asked. + +"Between you and me, Alix?" he questioned in return, his fine hand +tight upon hers, and his affectionate, brotherly look searching +her face. + +"Well, don't you, Peter?" she countered. + +"I hadn't noticed anything, my dear, except that you are making a +lonely, solitary man a very happy one," he answered, with his +grave smile. + +"But that--" she contended, with scarlet cheeks, but bravely "-- +that isn't marriage!" + +"What ought marriage be?" he smiled, half humouring her, half +concerned. + +For answer she looked keenly, almost wistfully, into his face. He +had noticed this look more than once of late. + +"I don't know," she said softly, after awhile, with a little +discouraged shrug of her shoulders. "I always thought that when a +man and a woman liked each other--oh, thoroughly--liked the same +things, had everything in common, that that was enough. And--for +the woman I was a month ago, it would have been enough, Peter!" +she added in a puzzled tone. + +"You've changed then, Mrs. Joyce?" + +"That's it," she agreed. "I'm not the same woman. I couldn't, as a +girl, estimate what life was going to be as a wife." + +"Perhaps no girl can," he suggested, interested now. + +"Well, that's just what I'm thinking, Peter!" she smiled, a little +ruefully. And again she gave him the look that was new, that was +not all timid nor wistful nor appealing, yet somehow partook of +all three. "You see, you feel that nothing can change you," she +elucidated further, "and you are perfectly sure of yourself, from +your old standpoint. And then the--well, the mental and spiritual +and physical miracle of marriage DOES change you, and it is as if +you had entered into a contract for a totally strange woman!" + +She was so intent, so bright and earnest, as she turned a fire- +flushed face to his, that he felt an odd moisture pricking his +eyes. + +"Alix," he said, affectionately, "where do I fail you?" + +For a moment she was silent, her bright eyes fixed on his. +Gradually the serious look on her face lightened, and her +customary smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. + +"I married you under a misapprehension," she said. "I thought you +had about three hundred dollars a year! It appears that you have +more than that every month--every week, for all I know--" + +"You knew my mother had that old Pacific Avenue place!" he +answered with concern. "I never for one second deceived--" + +"Oh, you idiot!" Alix laughed. "I don't mind being rich at all, I +like it. I don't want to live in the city, or join women's clubs, +and all that, but I like having my own check-book--truly, I do! As +for all the silver and portraits and rugs and things, why, we may +like them some day." + +He was not listening to her; there was a sorry look in his eyes. + +"You know, Alix," he said, suddenly, "you've made life a different +thing to me. I never had any woman near me before, and to hear +your voice about the house, and your piano, and your laugh--why, +it's wonderful to me. I've been alone here so many years, not +knowing really how much of life I missed, and you've brought it +all to me. Why, even to have Mrs. Florence at the post office ask +me for 'Mrs. Joyce,' gives me a warm, happy sort of feeling! I--" +he stroked the smooth hand under his own; there was real emotion +in his voice, "I'd do a good deal to show you how grateful I am, +old girl," he finished. "I wish you could tell me where I fail, +and I'd move heaven and earth to please you!" + +"The point is," Alix said, with her mischievous smile, as she +twisted the heavy ring he wore, "do I fail you? I know I don't +flush with delight when you give me a smile, and tremble with fear +at your frown! I know that the smell of my hair doesn't make you +turn pale, and the touch of my hand make you dizzy! There's no +fury, fire, and madness--" + +She laughed, and he laughed, too, a little reproachfully. + +"You never will be serious for more than two minutes, Alexandra, +my child!" he said. + +Alix did not answer. She sat staring at the fire for another +minute or two, and her eyes brightened childishly, had he but seen +them. But she did not give another look at him. With a great fling +of her arms she rested her head between two elbows for a second, +tousled her hair, and yawned. + +"I'm going to bed!" she announced. "I'm so glad I married a man +who is accustomed to banking the fire and opening windows and +putting out lamps every night. You," she had reached the door of +their room now, and already the silky braids were freed, and +tumbled about her shoulders, "you spoil me, Pete!" she said, +between them. "Our marriage may be different, but it has its good +points!" + +"Sure you're happy?" he smiled. + +The familiar little answer came confidently. He heard her humming +as she undressed in a shaft of moonlight; she was never serious +long. + +One May day they were picnicking in the big forest. It was a day +of spongy dampness underfoot, sweet and wild with breezes, blue of +sky, and still cold in the shade, if it was heavenly warm in the +sun. Alix, who was hot and panting from the scrambling and +slipping downhill, hung on a bank, with her arm crooked about a +sapling oak, for support, her hat slipped back and hanging +childishly about her neck, and her already brief tramping skirt +displaying an even unusual amount of sensibly booted leg. Below +her Peter on the bank of the stream was gathering firewood. Shafts +of sunlight filtered through the arches of the redwoods high above +the creek, and fell here and there upon the busy currents of the +water. Presently sunshine turned the flames of the brush fire to +pink, a dense column of white smoke rose fragrantly between the +dark-brown, furry trunks. + +They had been talking doubtfully of the recent developments of +what Justin and Anne Little called with relish the Strickland Will +Case. Peter, who had for several weeks been investigating the +matter, with a deepening conviction that it was a deuced awkward +affair, had smiled a most pleasant smile as Alix enlarged upon the +delight of giving the whole fortune, should they get it, to +Cherry. + +"For Cherry," she said, still hanging on her bank, "isn't like +most married women. She hates self-denial and economy--Dad always +made life too easy for us, you know. It wasn't even as if she had +had my mother's example before her; she really knew nothing of +domestic responsibility!" + +"But what about you," Peter asked, smiling, "you seem to take +kindly enough to matrimony!" + +"My case is different," Alix said, unembarrassed, getting down to +come stand beside him at the fire. "I married an old man for his +money!" + +"Do you know," he said, putting his arm about her, "I like you! +You'll no sooner get hold of your money, if you do--than you'll +want to turn it all over to Cherry! You're a devoted sister, do +you know it?" + +"I'm a devoted wife!" she answered, with an upward glance. But a +second later her mood changed; she was off to try the experiment +of crossing the stream upon the treacherous surface of a fallen +tree. He watched her; her cautiously advancing foot, her hand +tightly grasping an upright branch, her eyes flitting from the +water below to the rough bridge before her. She was completely +absorbed. + +"You can't do it!" Peter called, annoyed at the senseless risk she +took when she placed her foot tentatively upon the curved side of +a log. "There's no foothold there!" + +"Come save me!" she shrieked in the old way, with the old laugh of +terror and delight. He jumped to her rescue, clearing the creek in +a shallow place with two splashing bounds, and catching her before +her laughing cry had fully died away in the silent arches of the +forest. + +"You maniac!" he scolded, as warm, tumbled, and penitent she half +slipped and half yielded herself to his hold. "Come over here now, +and sit down, and unpack the eats! I can't have my wife drowned +before my eyes--" + +The title brought a sudden flood of colour to her face; she meekly +seated herself beside him on a great log, and he locked his arm +about her. + +They sat so long in the wet, sweet, sun-warmed forest, hands +clasped, that nesting birds flew boldly about them, unafraid, and +two wildcats, trotting softly in single file, green eyes blinking, +passed within a few inches of them unseeing. + +"This," said Peter, after awhile, "is pleasant." + +He thought she did not answer, except by a faint tightening of her +fingers. But deep down in her heart she said: + +"This--is marriage." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Cherry had a flat now in Red Creek "Park." It differed from an +apartment because it had no elevator, no janitor, no steam heat. +These things were neither known nor needed in the crude mining +town; the flat building itself was considered a rather +questionable innovation. It was a wooden building, three stories +high, with bay windows. There were empty lots each side of it, but +the sidewalls were on property boundaries, and had windows only +where the building jutted in, and there was a small gate, and a +narrow cement walk pressing tightly on one side. Cherry had +watched this building going up, and had thought it everything +desirable. She liked the clean kitchen, all fresh white woodwork, +tiles, and nickelplate, and she liked the big closets and the gas- +log. She had worried herself almost sick with fear that she would +not get this wonderful place, and finally paid twenty-five dollars +for the first month's rent with a fast-beating heart. She had the +centre floor. + +From her windows she looked down at the "Park." All the other +buildings were wooden bungalows, in many places the sidewalks were +wooden, too, and the centre of the street was deep black dust in +summer and churned black mud in the winter. The little houses +gushed electric light, which was cheap; the street itself was +unlighted. + +But after the excitement of moving in died away, she hated the +place. She had enough money to hire a maid now, and she had a +succession of slatternly, independent young women in her kitchen, +but she found her freedom strangely flat. She detested the women +of Red Creek. Cherry went to market, to buy prunes and lard and +apples and matches again, but this took little time, and otherwise +she had nothing to do. + +Now and then a play, straight from "a triumphant year on Broadway" +came to town for one night; then Martin took his wife, and they +bowed to half the men and women in the house, lamenting as they +streamed out into the sharp night air that Red Creek did not see +more such productions. + +The effect of these plays was to make Cherry long vaguely for the +stage; she really did not enjoy them for themselves. But they +helped her to visualize Eastern cities, lighted streets, +restaurants full of lights and music, beautiful women fitly +gowned. After one of these performances she would not leave her +flat for several days, but would sit dreaming over the thought of +herself in the heroine's role. + +One day she had a letter from Alix; it gave her a heartache, she +hardly knew why. She began to dream of her own home, of the warm, +sweet little valley whose breezes were like wine, of Tamalpais +wreathed in fog, and of the ridges where buttercups and poppies +powdered a child's shoes with gold and silver dust. Alix had been +ill, and she and Peter had been away--a few brief weeks--to +Honolulu and return. Cherry crushed the letter in her hand; she +knew suddenly that she had always been jealous of Alix. Alix wrote +gaily that she had asked Peter if he did not want to send Cherry a +kiss, and he had said that his face was too dirty; he was moving +geraniums. And for all that day, whenever Cherry thought of Peter, +it was with his hands and even his face spattered with the dark +earth of the mountain garden. The thought gave her a genuine +thrill, and the next day she deliberately thought of him again, +but the thrill was not so keen, and gradually she forgot him. + +But the letter stayed in her thoughts, and she began to hunger for +home. Nothing that Red Creek could offer shook her yearning for +the remembered sweetness and beauty of the redwoods, and the great +shade of the mountain. She wanted to spend a whole summer with +Alix. + +She was athirst for home, for old scenes and old friends and old +emotions. She had only to hint to Alix to receive a love letter +containing a fervent invitation. So it was settled. With a sort of +feverish brevity Cherry completed her arrangements; Martin was to +use his own judgment in the matter of boarding or keeping the +flat. Some of their household goods were stored; Cherry told him +that she would come down in September and manage all the details +of settling afresh, but she knew that her secret hope was that she +might never see Red Creek again. It was all quickly arranged; +perhaps he was not sorry to have her go, although he kissed her +good-bye affectionately, and wandered away from the station in a +rather lonely frame of mind when she was gone. + +A friend of his had asked him to dine that same evening, "with a +couple of queens." Martin had realized long ago, as Cherry did, +that their marriage was not an entirely successful one, but he +still considered her the most beautiful woman he had ever known, +and had never desired any other. But to-night he thought he would +telephone King and perhaps dine with him--the girls might be +amusing. Anyway, Cherry was happy and was having her own way, and +he had three months in which to try having his own again. + +Alix met her sister at the ferry in San Francisco on a soft May +morning. She was an oddly developed Alix, trim and tall, prettily +gowned and veiled, laughing and crying with joy at seeing Cherry +again. Peter, she explained between kisses, had had to go to Los +Angeles three days ago, had been expected home last night, and was +not even aware yet that Cherry was definitely arriving. + +"Of course he knew that you were coming, but not exactly when," +Alix said, as she guided the newcomer along the familiar ferry +place on to the big bay steamer for Mill Valley. Cherry drew back +to exclaim, to marvel, to exult, at all the well-remembered sights +and sounds and smells. + +"Oh, Alix--Market Street!" she exclaimed. "And that smell of +leather tanning, and that smell of bay water and of coffee! And +look--that's a cable-car!" + +"We'll come over to San Francisco soon, and you'll see the new +hotels," Alix promised when they were seated on the upper deck, +with the blue waters of the bay moving softly past them. Cherry's +happy eyes followed a wheeling gull; she felt as if the world was +suddenly sunshiny and simple and glorious again. "But now, I +thought the best thing was to get you home," Alix went on, "and +get you rested." + +"Oh, Sis, that's what I want!" Cherry answered Her lip trembled, +and tears came into her eyes. "You don't know how homesick I've +been," she said, feeling it more and more every minute. "I feel as +if I'd never really drawn a full breath since I went away!" + +"I can't live in cities," Alix said, simply. "Peter has a house, +you know, in the city," she added, nodding toward the hilly +silhouette of San Francisco, as the boat ploughed steadily past +it. "We were there one winter, and in a way it was pleasant. It +was easier, too. But more than a year ago we came back to the +valley, and I think it will be a long time before we want to leave +it again!" + +"I can't get used to the idea of you and Peter--married!" Cherry +smiled. + +"We're well used to it," Alix declared, smiling, too. But a little +sigh stabbed through the smile a second later. Cherry's exquisite +eyes grew sympathetic; she suspected from the letter Alix had +written that there would be no nursery needed in the mountain +cabin for awhile, and she knew that to baby-loving Alix this would +be a bitter cross. + +"Well, you see I've not seen you since the month Daddy died!" +Cherry reminded her. They fell to talking of their father; drifted +to Anne and Anne's limitations and complacencies. "And is it funny +to you to be a rich man's wife?" Cherry pursued. + +"Peter's not rich," Alix answered, laughing. "We have enough, and +more than enough, and if I HAD ambitions about rugs and linen and +furs, I could have them! But unfortunately neither one of us is +interested in those things. I get a few new songs; Peter gets a +few new books; we both get a catalogue and pick out plants, and +that's about the extent of our dissipation! The things I want," +Alix finished, "can't be bought for money!" + +"I know!" Cherry said, a warm little hand quickly touching her +sister's. + +"But to have you here, Cherry dearest!" Alix said, joyfully, "and +to think of what it means to us both! My dear, the walks and talks +and fires and music and dinners--" + +"And duets," Cherry said, with her old fresh laugh. "Don't forget +'tu canta rio sul tuo liuto!' and 'Oh, wert thou in the cauld, +cauld blast!'" + +"Oh, Cherry, how utterly delicious it is!" Alix said, gathering +wraps and bags for the change from the boat to the train that +would land them in twenty minutes at the little station in Mill +Valley. + +Sausalito, fragrant with acacia and rose blooms, rose steeply into +the bright sunshine beyond the marshes skirting the bay glittering +in light. Cherry's eager eyes missed nothing, and when they left +the train at Mill Valley, and the mountain air enveloped them in a +rush of its clear softness and purity, she was in ecstasies. She +welcomed the waiting red setter as a beloved friend, and leaned +from the shabby motor car, delighted at every landmark. + +"Alix--the post office, and the blacksmith's, and how the hill has +been built up, each side of the steps! And is that the Kelley's-- +and the O'Shaughnessys'--but look at the size of the trees!" + +They came to the woods, by the skeleton of the old Spanish mill, +and she fell silent, and the blue eyes that penetrated the layers +upon layers of soft greenness over her head brimmed with happy +tears. The sweet breath of the forest fell like a cool hand upon +her tired forehead; her heart began to dance in the old, +irresponsible way. + +Presently, straight ahead, and rising sharply over them, was the +sun-bathed mountain, clear to-day, even soft and kindly in the +flood of early summer sunshine. It was cool in the woods, even +though warm light was pushing its way through the redwoods here +and there, but when they emerged from the trees, and took the +winding dirt road that rose to the hilltop, suddenly the day +seemed hot. Alix, driving, threw off her coat, and Cherry felt the +moisture prick her forehead. + +She gave an exclamation of delight when they reached the cabin. It +was a picture of peaceful beauty in the summer noon. There were +still buttercups and poppies in the fields, and in the garden +thousands of roses were growing riotously, flinging their long +arms up against the slope of the low brown roof, and hanging in +festoons from the low branches of the oaks. Beyond the house the +mountain rose; from the porch Cherry could look down upon the +familiar valley, and the rivers winding like strips of blue ribbon +through the marshes, and the far bay, and San Francisco beyond. + +Inside were shady rooms, bowls of flowers, plain little white +curtains stirring in the summer breeze, peace and simplicity +everywhere. Cherry smiled at the immaculately clad Chinese +stirring something in a yellow bowl in a spotless kitchen whose +windows showed manzanita and wild lilac and madrone trees; smiled +at the big, smoked fireplace where sunlight fell straight on piled +logs down the chimney's great mouth; smiled as she went to and fro +on journeys of investigation. But the smile quivered into tears +when she came to her own room, just such a room as little Charity +Strickland had had, only a few years ago, with white hangings and +unpainted wood, fresh air streaming through it, and redwoods +outside. + +"Oh, Alix--I never missed Dad before! But to have him out there, +fussing at something under the trees--to have him call us--'Where +are the girls--I want a girl!'" + +"I know--" Alix's own eyes filled. She sat on Cherry's bed while +the younger woman changed her dusty travelling clothes for a worn +but beautiful linen gown, and they said that they would go soon to +the little Sausalito cemetery and see that Dad's favourite +heliotrope was flourishing. + +The exquisite day went its peaceful course. Cherry was too tired +for walking, except on a laughing garden-round, when Alix showed +her every separate bush and tree with pride. For the most part she +lay in a deep porch chair, drinking in the beauty and serenity of +the June afternoon, breathing, above the sweet garden odours of +lilac and verbena and mignonette, the piney fragrance of the +forest. Alix, coming and going, watched her affectionately. The +little languid arm in its transparent sleeve, the drooping, +beautiful head, the slender, crossed ankles were always a picture. + +"You are like a boat just reaching harbour," Alix said, +sympathetically. "Sails furled, anchor down, just resting." + +"I feel like one," Cherry answered, lifting lazy blue eyes. "A +month of this will make me over!" + +"A month!" the older sister echoed, indignantly, disappearing +kitchenward on some errand. Presently the supper table was laid at +Cherry's side, bees shot like bullets through the garden, birds +settled for the night. Supper was ready; still there was no haste, +no stir, no apparent effort. + +Alix came to her own porch chair for the long twilight. She +brought Cherry a fluffy shawl; they were almost silent, and as the +last light faded from the hills, and the valleys were flooded with +violet shadow, the mountain chill came down, and the stars and the +valley lights began to prick the dark. + +The sisters came in blinking, in the old way, and in the old way +were amazed to see that the clock's hands stood at ten. + +"And I meant you to go early to bed!" Alix exclaimed, but Cherry +with her good-night kiss answered gratefully: + +"Ah, but I feel that I am going to sleep to-night! I've not been +sleeping well--" + +"Haven't?" Alix asked, in quick concern. + +"Not lately!" + +Cherry stumbled into the airy, dark, sweet little bedroom, and +somehow undressed and crept between the cool sheets of the bed +that stood near Alix's on the wide sleeping porch. Her last +thought was for the heavenly redwoods so close to her; she slept, +indeed, for almost twelve unbroken hours. + +She came wandering out to the porch at eleven o'clock, the old, +smiling, apologetic Cherry, with her skin dewy from a bath, and +her corn-coloured hair freshly brushed, and her linen gown as pink +as the Perkins rose that was blooming over her head. + +"Oh, Sis, I do feel so deliciously lazy and happy and rested and-- +and everything!" said Cherry, as she settled herself at the porch +table where service for one was spread. "Oh, Alix--apricots! You +remember everything," she added, with a look all affectionate +appreciation. Alix, panting from exertions in the garden, dropped, +trowel in hand, upon the upper step, to watch her smilingly. + +"Cherry, you're prettier than ever!" Alix said, eyeing the white +hands so busy with blue china, and the bright head dappled with +shade and sunshine coming through the green rose vine. + +"Am I?" Cherry said, pleased. "I thought myself that I looked nice +this morning," she added, innocently. "But it is really because +the air of this place agrees with me, it makes my skin feel right +and my eyes feel right; it makes me feel normal and smoothed out +somehow!" And Cherry looked down at the green and glitter of the +valley, looked up past solemn files of redwoods at the mountain, +cameo-cut this morning against a cloudless sky, and sighed a great +sigh of content that seemed to go from her heels to the crown of +her head. "I have never been really well and really happy anywhere +else!" she declared, out of deep peace and content. + +"Oh, there's no place in the world like it!" Alix agreed, rubbing +some dried mud from the back of her hand with the trowel. "Peter +and I are always deciding to try New York, or to try San +Francisco, or Southern California, but somehow we don't! If Martin +continues to migrate every little while, I wish you could have a +little house here. Then for part of the time at least we could be +together." + +"The old house," Cherry said, dreamily. + +"Well, why not?" Alix echoed, eagerly. "It's in pretty bad shape, +after being empty so long, but it would make darling home again! +Would Martin object?" + +The old spoiled Cherry, with the pretty petulant frown and shrug +of years ago! "Martin knows what he could do," she drawled, +naughtily. + +"Martin would be here--some of the time?" Alix asked, a little +anxiously. + +Cherry filled her coffee cup a second time, gave Kow an +appreciative smile as he put a hot French loaf before her, and +said indifferently: + +"Martin has a constitutional objection to whatever pleases me, and +would find some objection to any plan that gave me pleasure!" Her +tone was light, but there was a bitter twitch to her lips as she +spoke. + +"Oh, Cherry!" Alix said, distressed. + +"However, I'm not going to talk about Martin!" the younger sister +decreed, gaily. "I'm too utterly and absolutely happy!" + +There was a worried little cloud on Alix's forehead, but it +lightened steadily, as the happy morning wore on, and half an hour +later, when she and Cherry were sailing a frog on a shingle, on +the busy little stream that poured down the hill near the cabin, +both were laughing like children again. + +It was here that Peter found Cherry. Alix had met him at the +house, given him a scrutinizing look with her quick kiss, +questioned him about his trip, and reported all well with the +house and garden. + +"And now come down to the creek," she had said, mischievously. +"The Bateses are here--" + +"Not Alice Bates?" he had asked, quickly, and at her apologetic +nod he added disgustedly: "Oh, thunder!" + +"Oh, don't--she'll hear you!" said the beaming Alix, warningly. +Peter's eyes, as he crossed the porch, were gloomy and he said +"Thunder!" again under his breath. + +They followed a rough little trail past stumps where nasturtiums +and alyssum mingled with the underbrush, and were in the redwoods, +and at the brookside. Peter saw a slender girl in pink pushing a +plank about with a pole. She turned in surprise to face him. + +"Cherry!" he said, and as Alix laughed delightedly, he gave his +wife a glance, and said, "You liar!" + +Cherry came up to him, and he took both her hands, and after a +second of hesitation kissed her. She freed one hand to put it on +his shoulder, and, standing so, she seriously returned his kiss. +For a moment his arm encircled her waist; he had forgotten how +blue her eyes were, with just a film of corn-coloured hair +loosened above them, and what husky, exquisite, childish notes +were in her voice. + +"Cherry--this is the nicest thing that has happened for a long, +long while!" he said. + +"You and Alix are angels to let me come!" Cherry answered, as they +turned, and with laughter and eager, interrupted talking went back +to the house. + +"And how do you think your big sister looks?" + +"Oh, Alix is wonderful!" Cherry said. Indeed she had been looking +at Alix with secret surprise and admiration since her arrival. +Alix had always been different from Cherry, but in her own way she +was amazing. Where Cherry had but one expensive waist, but one +beautiful gown, but two or three elaborate sets of filmy lingerie, +accumulated slowly and laundered by herself when she washed her +silk stockings, Alix, like a child, changed her fresh, simple +linen every day, jumped from one crisp tub suit to another, wore +untrimmed straw hats that she bought in the village for fifty +cents apiece. Alix apparently never considered the relation of her +clothing to her own personality; she simply chose the simple +colours and styles she liked, and aspired only to be always fresh +and trim. + +So with her house. She did not have one or two priceless +tablecloths to be used on occasions with satin underlaid, and +crystal and cut-glass; her china was all used every day, and her +table linen cheap and plentiful and lavish. Meals were always +simple and hearty and delicious; but Alix had not time for fancy +touches; hated, as she frankly admitted, "all that stuffed celery +and chopped nut and halved cherry business! If soup isn't good +without whipped cream and sherry in it, it's pretty poor soup!" + +Cherry had laughed at her, even years ago, for her point of view, +but sometimes she had felt it to be almost an advantage. At all +events, she had not been twenty-four hours in Alix's house without +perceiving that her sister was singularly free and unruffled, +unlike the women of her generation. Alix did not put all the time +she saved to good use, although she puttered away in the garden, +spent an hour or two each day at the piano, and was, as she +confided to Cherry, writing a novel. But she was always gay and +always fresh, and enjoyed every moment of the day. + +Four years younger, yet Cherry felt older than she. Alix's nature +was uncomplicated by any consciousness of self. Again like a +child, she only wanted people to love each other and be happy, and +that the sun should shine. She was equally content, whether she +was helping Peter to pile wood, tramping in the deluging summer +rains, or dreaming over a book through the long evenings, with her +shabby slippers to the fire. An exquisite spring morning, with wet +earth, rising mists, and shafts of pure, warm sunlight, made her +sing like the forest birds all about her, but even on the coldest +and blackest of winter nights, when the storm made the lamp-light +fluctuate alarmingly, and trees creaked over the cabin, she would +look up from the piano to say contentedly: "Well, I'd rather be +here than anywhere else, anyway!" + +Naturally, she was unsympathetic. If people were in pain, or cold, +or hungry, Alix could sympathize. But for mental and spiritual +troubles she had small sympathy. + +"Almost everybody in the world could live as simply as we do!" she +told Peter. + +"It costs us about four thousand a year!" he said. + +"Well, it NEEDN'T. We could buy fewer clothes, and keep only one +cow, and let the cook go! We'd be just as happy." + +"To some people," Peter had objected, doubtfully, more than once, +"there are other things than clothes and food!" + +"What things?" + +"Well, various things." + +"We have books, flowers, music, all out-of-doors," Alix protested, +briskly. + +"Sympathy, my dear--interpretation self-expression!" + +"Tommyrot!" she had responded without animosity. He realized with +surprise, not many months after their marriage, that she meant +what she said. If she ate and slept and walked and read with her +usual healthy relish, she needed nothing more. She was the least +exacting of wives. If he was late for a meal, she smiled at him +absently, or if, after they had entertained, he apologetically +approached her with some reference to an unfortunate sentence or +circumstances, she would meet him with a cheerful: + +"Angel boy, I never heard you even, or if I did I don't remember +it--even if I had heard it, it's true!" + +She was one of the rare women who can take marriage calmly, as a +matter of course; she had done so since the hour that made her his +wife. At her illness she had rebelled; she hated nurses and their +fuss, she said. She was perverse with doctors. In an unbelievably +short time her magnificent constitution had responded; she was +well again, at his side at the steamer rail, as eager for the +sights and sounds and smells of Hawaii as if she had never heard +of a sick room. + +Her only sentiment was for the babies and small animals. She would +cuddle rabbits or birds against her brown, lean cheek, and hug her +setter enthusiastically. Peter suffered an agony of sympathy +whenever she spoke of a child. + +"I'd hate all the preliminary fussing, Pete--we both would! But +oh, if the Lord would send me six or eight of them!" + +Then and then only did the bright eyes and the confident voice +soften, and then only was Alix no longer a flat, straight, +splendid boy, but a woman indeed. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Cherry, Peter saw at once, was different in every way. Cherry was +full of softness, of ready response to any appeal, of sympathy and +comprehension. She had been misunderstood, unhappy, neglected; she +had developed through suffering a certain timidity that was almost +a shrinking, a certain shy clinging to what was kind and good. + +Her happiness here was an hourly delight to both Alix and himself. +She seemed to flower softly; every day of the simple forest life +brought her new interest, new energy, new bloom. She and Alix +washed their hair again, dammed the creek again, tramped and sang +duets again. Sometimes they cooked, often they went into the old +senseless spasms of laughter at nothing, or almost nothing. + +One evening, when in the sitting room there was no other light +than that of the fire that a damp July evening made pleasant, +about a week after her arrival, Cherry spoke for the first time of +Martin. She had had a long letter from him that day, ten pages +written in a flowing hand on ten pages of the lined paper of a +cheap hotel, with a little cut of the building standing boldly +against a mackerel sky at the top of each page. He was well, he +had some of his dinners at the hotel, but lived at home; he had +been playing a little poker and was luckier than ever. He was +looking into a proposition in Durango, Mexico, and would let her +know how it panned out. The letter ended with the phrases: "Have a +good time, Babe, and write me. Send me a line when you can. I have +been running some with Joe King, but I am not strong for that +crowd." It was signed: "Aff'tly, Mart." + +Peter had been playing the piano lazily when the letter was tossed +to Cherry by Alix, who usually drove into the village every +morning after breakfast for marketing and the mail. He had seen +Cherry glance through it, seen the little distasteful movement of +the muscles about her nose, and seen her put it carelessly under a +candlestick on the mantel for later consideration. At luncheon she +had referred to it, and now it evidently had caused her to be +thoughtful and a little troubled. An open book was in her lap; she +and Alix had gone through the farce of saying that they would read +without speaking until Peter had finished some business +telephoning; now he had joined them, but still she did not read +and seemed disinclined for talk. + +"Mart may go to Mexico!" she said, presently, with a sigh. + +"To stay?" Peter asked, quickly. + +Cherry shrugged. + +"As much as he stays anywhere!" she answered, drily. + +"H'm! Does that mean you?" Alix asked. + +"I suppose that's the plan," Cherry said, lifelessly. + +"It's a rotten country," Peter offered, thoughtfully. "At least I +should think it would be," he added, more moderately, "to select +for a permanent home." + +"I always say that a place where the natives are black, or yellow, +isn't fit for white people, or the natives would BE white!" Alix +explained, brightly. + +"All mining towns are horrible!" Cherry said with gloomy fervor. +"They're raw, crude, coarse places, and the people in them are +just as bad!" + +Peter had a moment of pity for her, so young, so helpless, so +tied. + +"Perhaps he won't want you until he is sure of staying!" he +offered. + +"Oh, Mart always thinks the last thing is the permanent thing!" +his wife answered, wearily. "He says he'll want me to join him +about the middle of August." + +"Oh, help!" Alix said, disgustedly. + +Cherry was silent a few minutes, and Peter smoked with his eyes on +the fire. Alix glanced from one to the other, sighed, and glanced +down at her magazine. + +"If----" Cherry said presently, "If I get my money I'll have +enough to live on, won't I, Peter?" + +"You'll have about forty thousand dollars--yes, at five per cent, +you could live on that. Especially if you lived here in the +valley," Peter answered, after some thought. + +"Then I want you to know," Cherry went on quietly, with sudden +scarlet in her cheeks, "that I'm going to tell Martin I think we +have tried it long enough!" Peter looked gravely at her, soberly +nodded, and resumed his study of the fire. But Alix spoke in brisk +protest. + +"TRIED it! You mean tried marriage! But one doesn't try marriage! +It's a fact. It's like the colour of your eyes." + +"As a matter of fact, it isn't anything of the kind," Cherry said, +mildly. + +"Lloyd has given you cause, eh?" Peter took his pipe out of his +mouth long enough to ask, briefly. + +"Not--not in the way you mean--" she answered, glad to be +discussing the topic. + +"H'm," Peter muttered. It was almost as if he were disappointed. + +"But, Peter," Cherry went on hesitatingly, appealingly, "it is no +more a marriage than if we both had--had done everything and +anything! He doesn't--oh, love!" Cherry interrupted herself +scornfully on the word. "Of COURSE he doesn't love me," she said. +"But it isn't only that, it's that we differ in every way about +everything! His friends, his ideas, his feelings about things--I +can't tell you how we jar and jar on each other! No," said Cherry, +beginning to cry a little, "he hasn't been unfaithful; I almost +wish he had--" + +"Cherry!" Alix protested, with affectionate reproach. + +"Alix," the little sister pleaded, eagerly, "you don't know what +it is--you don't know what it is! Always meeting people I don't +like, always living in places I hate, always feeling that my own +self is being smothered and lost and shrunk, always listening to +Mart complaining and criticizing people---" + +"Don't appeal to Alix!" Peter said. "She doesn't care what she +does or where she lives. She fraternized with every old maid +school teacher on the steamer, and a booze-fiend, and a woman +whose husband was a native of Borneo; and she would pick out the +filthiest lairs in Honolulu and ask me if it wouldn't be fun to +live there!" + +They all laughed; then Peter added, seriously: + +"I'll go this far, Cherry. Lloyd married you too young." + +"Oh, far too young!" she agreed, quickly. "The thing I--I can't +think of," she said, "is how young I was--only a little girl. I +knew nothing; I wasn't ready to be anybody's wife!" + +Something in the poignant sorrow of her tone went straight to +their hearts, and for the first time Peter had an idea of the real +suffering she had borne. Alix's mouth was rather firmly shut, her +eyes a little narrowed, her face rather sad, as she looked into +the fire. + +"If I had a child, even, or if Martin needed me," Cherry said, +"then it might be different! But I'm only a burden to him----" + +"His letter doesn't sound as if he thought of you as a burden," +Alix suggested, mildly. + +"Ah, well, the minute I leave him he has a different tone," Cherry +explained, and Peter said, with a glance almost of surprise at his +wife: + +"It's an awfully difficult position for a woman of any pride, +dear!" + +Alix, kneeling to adjust the fire, as she was constantly tempted +to do, met his look, and laid a soot-streaked hand on his knee. + +"Pete, dearest, of course it is! But--" and Alix looked doubtfully +from one to the other--"but divorce is a hateful thing!" she +added, shaking her head, "it--it never seems to me justifiable!" + +"Divorce is an institution," Peter said. "You may not like it any +more than you like prisons or mad-houses; it has its uses." + +"People get divorces every day!" Cherry added. "Isn't divorce +better than living along in marriage--without love?" + +"Oh, love!" Alix said, scornfully. "Love is just another name for +passion and selfishness and laziness, half the time!" + +"You can say that, because yours is one of the happy marriages," +Cherry said. "It might be very different--if Peter weren't Peter!" + +As she said his name she sent him her trusting smile, her blue +eyes shone with affection, and the exquisite curve of her mouth +deepened. Peter smiled back, and looked away in a little +confusion. + +"I can't imagine the circumstances under which I shouldn't love +you and Peter!" Alix summarized it, triumphantly. + +"And Martin?" Peter asked. + +"Ah, well, I didn't marry Martin!" his wife reminded him quickly. +"I didn't promise to love and honour Martin in sickness and +health, for richer for poorer, for better for worse--by George!" +Alix interrupted herself, in her boyish way, "those are terrific +words, you know. And a promise is a promise!" + +"And even for infidelity, you don't believe people ought to +separate?" Cherry asked. + +"Nonsense!" Peter said. + +"But you said--that Martin never--" + +"No, I'm not speaking of Martin now!" + +"Well, wouldn't that come under 'worser'?" Alix asked. + +"But, my child," Peter expostulated kindly, "my dear benighted +wife--there is such a thing as a soul--a mind--a personality! To +be tied to a--well, to a coarsening influence day after day is +living death! It is worse than any bodily discomfort--" + +"I don't see it!" Alix persisted. "I think there's a lot of +nonsense talked about the fammy oncompreezy--but it seems to me +that if you have a home and meals and books and friends and the +country to walk in, you--" + +"Oh, Heavens, Alix, you don't know what you're talking about!" +Cherry interrupted her, impatiently. "Let Peter here go off with +some chorus girl, and see how long you--" + +"It's all very well in books," Alix interrupted her sister in +turn. "But in real life I don't believe a woman ever bothers to +think whether her husband ever murmurs her name in dreams or not. +I know I take Peter as much for granted as I do Tamalpais; if he +ever leaped from the track, and stole or got drunk or wandered off +after some petticoat, I'd FIX him! I'd be furious, but I don't see +myself leaving him." + +Peter's brief shout of laughter rang out. + +"The awful thing about that female is that it is true," he told +Cherry. "If I ever stray from the path of virtue, she'll scare me +to death." + +"Sometimes I think your marriage is as--as queer as my own," +Cherry said, looking from one to the other. + + Nothing more was said for several days upon the subject of a +possible divorce. The weather continued perfect, and the little +house-party on the mountaintop was complete in itself. Cherry +often went into the village with Alix, to be sure; once they all +went to a charity affair at Blithedale; sometimes a few women +drove up the winding road in the afternoon, and there were ginger- +ale and cookies on the porch; but most of the time the two sisters +were alone, with Peter joining them in the afternoons. + +One afternoon Peter crossed the porch, tired and hot, and found +everything apparently deserted. He dropped into a chair, and was +still breathless from the rapid climb up-hill, when stray notes +from the piano reached his ears; a chord, a carefully played bit +of bass; then a chord again. Then slowly, but with dainty accuracy +and even feeling, Cherry began to play a strange little study of +Schumann. Peter knew that it was Cherry, because Alix's touch was +always firm and sure; more than that, he himself had played this +same bit no longer ago than last night, and he remembered now that +Cherry had asked him just what it was. + +He experienced a sudden and pleasing emotion; he did not stop to +analyze it. But he had been ruffled in spirit a moment before; +Alix had known he was to come on this train, and had not met him +with the car, and while he really did not mind the walk up, he +disliked the feeling that they had entirely forgotten him. + +The car was gone from its usual stand under a live oak, but +everybody had not forgotten him nevertheless. Cherry was +deliberately recalling the mood and moment that also recalled him. +And as the notes came slowly, but precisely, from the cool, +darkened living room, with its fragrant masses of sweet peas and +fluted Martha Washington geraniums, Peter felt contented and +serene. He looked up at the rise of Tamalpais, only half a tone +darker than the pale blue sky to-day; he looked off at the range +toward the ocean, where shimmers of heat were quivering upward; +and then he settled himself back luxuriously in his great wicker +chair and shut his eyes. Still the plaintive air came, as +caressing as a touch. + +Presently there was silence; then Cherry tried another little +study, and finished it, and the hot summer stillness reigned +again. The valley swam under a haze of pure heat; a buzzard hung +motionless over the cabin, and the dry air was sweet with resinous +scent of pines and manzanita and even of tarweed. + +With a sense that he had been dozing, if only for a few minutes, +Peter opened his eyes. Framed in the cabin doorway, poised like a +butterfly against the dark background of the room, stood Cherry. +He knew that she had been standing so for some time, for a full +minute, perhaps more. + +She was looking straight at him; one hand was hanging at her side, +the other laid over her heart, as if she had involuntarily put it +there when she saw him. Her corn-coloured hair was a little +loosened; she was not smiling. She wore something limp and +transparent, of white, he thought, or pale, pale blue, like the +sky, with faint stripes making her figure look more slender even +than it was. + +They looked at each other in a silence that grew more and more +awkward by great plunges. Peter had time to wish that he had kept +his eyes shut, to wish that he had smiled when he first saw her-- +he could not have forced himself to smile now--to wonder how they +were ever to speak--where they were rushing--rushing--rushing-- +before she turned noiselessly and vanished into the dim room. + +Peter lay there, and his heart pounded. For a few minutes his +senses whirled so madly that he felt suffocated. He dared not sit +up, he dared not stir; from head to foot thrilling waves of +surprise, and even a little of terror, went over him. + +Never in his life had he experienced this sort of feeling before. +He knew that he hated it, even while his whole spirit sang and +soared in the new ecstasy. A moment ago he had been a tired man, +fretted because his wife forgot to meet him; now there was +something new in the world. And rapidly all the world became only +a background, only a setting, for this extraordinary sensation. He +sat up, after awhile, looked at the familiar porch, with the +potted flowers, and Alix's boxes, where bachelor's-buttons, +marguerites, and geraniums had been alternated to make a touch of +patriotic colour on July Fourth. The hills beyond still swam in +the hot sunlight, the mountain rose into the blue, but the light +that changes all life lay over them for Peter. + +He said to himself that it was awkward--he did not know how he +could enter that door and talk to Cherry. And yet he knew that +that meeting of Cherry, that the common exchange of words and +glances, that the daily trifling encounters with Cherry were all +poignantly significant now. Or if he did not fully sense all this +yet he felt thrilled to the soul with the knowledge that she was +there, back in the shadowy house somewhere, with the pale striped +gown and the disordered corn-coloured hair, and that somehow they +must meet, somehow they must talk together. + +He felt no impulse toward hurry. He might sit on this porch +another hour, might saunter off toward the creek. It mattered +nothing; the hour was steadily approaching when she must reappear. + +Alix drove in, full of animated apologies. She managed the car far +better than he, and no thought of an accident had troubled him. +But she explained that she had been to get eggs for a setting hen, +and Antone had stopped her and told her that the new calf had been +prematurely born, out on the hills, and had "been gone for die," +and so she had driven over to Juanita, and gotten the calf. + +And there the calf was, two days old, and as pretty as only a baby +deer or a baby Jersey can be, roped by his woodeny little legs, +and laid stiffly in the tonneau, with utter terror in his liquid +dark eyes. + +"Die, nothing!" Alix said, emphatically, as she tenderly lifted +the calf out of the car. "I'm going to take him up to the barn; +you run tell Kow that Missy wants warm milk. Then you come on, +Pete--and tell me what you think!" + +"Here--" Peter said, authoritatively, shouting the message, and +taking the calf from her arms; they were laughing as they entered +the dry, hot darkness of the stable. Alix's riding horse put a +Roman nose reproachfully over the bitten barrier of his box-stall. + +"We've got company for you, Creep-mouse!" Peter, panting from his +heavy burden, announced. "Poor little feller!" he said to the +calf. + +"He's all right." Alix, rustling straw, said, confidently. "You +know he must be a twin," she said to Peter, "for that brute of a +mother of his was contentedly wandering up to the ridge, where the +breeze is, and she certainly had another little calf cavorting +about her--oh, thanks, Cherry! Here's the milk, Peter. See if the +poor little beast will suck your fingers!" + +Peter took the brimming blue bowl from Cherry's fingers. She had +come like a shadow into the barn, her eyes were on the tipped +surface of the milk. She lowered it carefully into his hold, and +he felt the cool softness of her yielding fingers; he did not meet +her eyes, partly because he gave her face only one glance. They +all knelt about the calf, who after a few feeble struggles to +escape altogether resigned himself, and lay looking at them with +terrified eyes. + +"He's too weak to stand on his legs, perhaps I should have had the +mother brought in," Alix said, anxiously. "But he's a beautiful +little thing, the prettiest she's ever had, except that he's so +thin! Isn't he cute, Cherry?" + +"He's--darling!" Cherry's voice, with its young cadences always +ready to escape from the riper tones of womanhood, echoed oddly +under the low, shingled roof of the barn. And again life seemed +full of surprise and thrill to Peter. He wanted to say something +to her; could think of nothing, and so was unusually silent +throughout the ceremonies of getting the calf to suck Alix's +fingers, getting him tied in a manner that should hold him without +danger of strangulation, and bedding him comfortably on sacks and +straw. Cherry was silent, too, but Alix talked briskly, and the +necessity for constant effort and movement filled all possible +gaps. + +The evening was warm, one of the two or three warm evenings that +marked the height of summer even in the high valley. While the +three sat on the wide, unroofed porch, loitering over their +coffee, a great, yellow-red moon rose slowly over the hill, and +floated silently above them. Presently its light flooded the +landscape, and strange and romantic vistas appeared between the +redwoods aisles, and the tops of the forest trees far below them +showed in a brilliant gray light, soft and furry. The whole world +seemed to be lifted and swimming in vaporous brightness. There was +not a breath of air in the garden; roses and wallflowers stood +erect in a sort of luminous enchantment. Moonlight sank through +the low twisted branches of the near-by oaks and fell tangled with +black and lacy shade through the porch rose vine. + +Alix sat on the porch rail, every line of crisp skirt and braided +head revealed as if by daylight, but Cherry's pale striped gown +was only a glimmer in the deepest shade of the vine. Peter, +smoking, sat where he could not but see her; they had hardly +looked at each other directly since the long, strange look of this +afternoon; they had exchanged hardly a word. + +A black cat crept across the grass, her body dragging stealthily +on crouched legs, boldly silhouetted in the moonshine, invisible +in the shade. Alix defeated her hunting plans by flinging a well- +aimed pebble into the shrubbery ahead of her. The cat, +dissembling, lay down in the dry grass, cleaned a paw, and +coquetted with her tail. + +"Town to-morrow, Pete?" Alix said, after a silence during which +she had locked her arms behind her head, stared straight above her +at the path the moon was making through faint stars, and yawned. +"I've got to go in to a meeting of the hospital board." + +"I didn't know you were on it," Cherry said. + +"Peter's mother was, and hence I am," Alix said, virtuously. +Cherry felt an old little prick of jealousy. Alix was strangely +indifferent to the position she held. + +"I go in to have luncheon with Mary" Cherry said. "I wish we could +all lunch together!" + +"I'll blow you girls to a meal at Frank's--" Peter began, and +interrupted himself, "Oh, but you can't, Cherry!" + +"And our meeting is at twelve; we'll have lunch at the hospital," +Alix added. "Wouldn't you think we'd have enough of each other, we +three?" she said, amusedly, beginning, in the reprehensible manner +of girlhood, to roll the black scarf that had been knotted about +her rolled bluejacket's collar, and to remove the pins from her +hair. "But I hate to be in town and not see you both! Good-night, +beloveds. I'm dead. Don't sit out here mooning with Pete all +night, Cerise!" + +Peter said to himself that now Cherry would go, too, but as the +screen door banged lightly after Alix, and the dull glimmer of +Cherry's striped gown did not move in the soft shadow, a sudden +reluctance and distaste seized him. He had been subconsciously +aware of her all afternoon; he had known a delicious warmth and +stir at his heart that he had not analyzed, if indeed it could be +analyzed. Now suddenly he did not want the beauty and bloom and +charm of that feeling touched. His heart began to beat heavily +again, and he knew that he must stop the unavailing game now. + +But he had not reckoned on Cherry. She twisted in her chair, and +he heard a child's long, happy sigh. + +"Oh, so am I tired, too!" she breathed, reluctantly. "I hate to +leave it--but I've been almost asleep for half an hour! You can +have all the moonlight there is, Peter." Her white figure +fluttered toward the door. "Good-night!" she said, drooping her +little head to choke a yawn. A moment later he heard her laughing +with Alix. + +"You fool--you fool--you fool!" Peter said to himself, and he felt +an emotion like shame, a little real compunction that he could so +utterly misread her innocence. He felt it not only wrong in him, +but somehow staining and hurtful to her. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Again Peter reckoned without Cherry. It was only the next day, +when he was entering the Palace court for his lunch, that he +experienced a sudden and violent emotion. His thoughts were, at +the moment, far from Cherry, and he had fancied himself in a +hurry. But every other feeling but excitement was obliterated at +the sight of a slender, girlishly made woman, in a pongee gown, +and a limp brown hat covered with poppies, waiting in the lounge. + +Peter went toward her, and the colour rushed into Cherry's face. +Half a dozen women had been furtively studying her, and one of +them now said to a man, "Yes, she really is--extraordinarily +pretty." But Cherry and Peter saw and heard them not. It was the +first time they had accidentally encountered each other, and it +had a special place of its own in the history of their lives. + +The surprise of it kept them laughing, hands clasped, for a +minute; then Cherry said: + +"I was to lunch here with Mary Cameron. But she's full twenty +minutes late!" + +"Lunch with me," Peter substituted, promptly. + +"She'll probably be along--" Cherry said, vaguely, looking at a +clock. "You hate her, don't you?" she added, looking up from under +the poppies at Peter. + +"I don't like her," he admitted, with a boy's grimace. + +"Then suppose we don't lunch here?" Cherry suggested, innocently. +Peter laughed joyously, and tucking her little gloved hand under +his arm, led her away. They went to Solari's, and had a window +table, and nodded, as they discussed their lunch, at half a dozen +friends who chanced to be lunching there, too. But it was a +thrilling adventure, none the less, and after the other tables +were empty, and when the long room was still, they talked on, +trifling with cheese and crackers, Peter watching her as he +smoked, Cherry's head bent over her plate. + +She had said that she wanted to tell him "all about it," and +Peter, with quick knowledge that she meant the unhappiness of her +marriage, nodded a grave permission. + +"I've made a failure of it!" Cherry said, sadly. "I know I ought +to struggle on, but I can't. Just a few days of it, just a few +weeks of it make me--make me a different woman! I get nervous, I +get hysterical, I don't sleep! I have no individuality, Peter, I +have no personality! As for my dignity--my privacy--" + +Her face was scarlet, and for a moment she stopped speaking. + +"Just tell me an alternative!" she said, after awhile. "It CAN'T +be that there is no other life for me than going back. Peter, I'm +only twenty-four!" + +"I know you are," he said, with a brief nod. + +"Why, everyone has some alternative," Cherry pleaded. "It can't be +that marriage is the only--the only irrevocable thing! If you had +a partner that you couldn't go on with, you could come to SOME +agreement! You could make a sacrifice, but somehow you could end +the association! Peter," she said, earnestly, "when I think of +marketing again--six chops and soup-meat and butter and baking +powder--I feel sick! When I think of unpacking the things I've +washed and dusted for five years--the glass berry bowl that +somebody gave us, and the eleven silver tea-spoons--I can't bear +it!" + +"You don't love him!" Peter said. + +"I don't hate him," she answered quickly. "Indeed I don't. And it +isn't just the place and the life, Peter! I could be happy in two +rooms--somewhere--anywhere--But not--with HIM. Oh, Peter, if I +hadn't done it--if I hadn't done it!" And Cherry knotted her +fingers together, and her voice thickened and stopped. + +Her beauty, as she pushed her plate aside and leaned toward him, +was so startling that Peter, a lighted match half-raised to a +fresh cigarette, put the match down aimlessly, and looked +thoughtfully at the cigarette, and laid that down, too, without +the faintest consciousness of what he was doing. The day was warm, +and there was a little dampness on her white forehead, where the +gold hair clung to the brim of the drooping hat. Her marvellous +blue eyes were ringed with soft violet shadows, as if a sooty +finger had set them under the dark brown arch of the brows. The +soft curve of her chin, the babyish shortness of her upper lip, +and the crimson sweetness of the little earnest mouth had never +seemed more lovely than they were to-day. She was youth incarnate, +palpitating, flushed, unspoiled. + +For a moment she looked down at the table, and the colour flooded +her face, then she looked him straight in the eyes and smiled. +"Well! Perhaps it will all work out right, Peter," she said, with +the childish, questioning look that so wrung his heart. She +immediately gathered her possessions together to go, but when they +stepped into sunshiny Geary Street it was three o'clock, and Peter +suggested that they walk down to the boat. + +To them both the hour was memorable, and the street and park and +the tops of tall buildings, flooded with the sunlight of a summer +afternoon, were Paradise. Cherry only knew that she felt strangely +thrilled and yet at peace; Peter's heart was bursting with love of +the world, love of this romantic city, with its flower market +blazing in the sun, and with the ferry clock tower standing high +above the vista of Market Street. He seemed floating rather than +walking, and when, at crossings, he could help Cherry for a few +steps, felicity swelled in his soul almost like pain. + +They met Alix on the boat, but she did not ask any embarrassing +questions; she sat between them on the upper deck, blinking +contentedly at the blue satin bay, her eyes following the wheeling +gulls or the passage of ships, her mind evidently concerned only +with the idle pleasantness of the moment. And always, for Peter, +there was the same joyous sense of something new--something +significant--something ecstatic in life. + +From that hour he was never quite at ease in Cherry's company, and +avoided being alone with her even for an instant, although her +presence always caused him the new and tingling delight. He read +her honest blue eyes truly, and knew that although, like himself, +she was conscious of the new sweetness and brightness of life, she +had never entertained for an instant the flitting thought that it +was Peter's feeling for her that made it so. She thought perhaps +that it was the old childish happiness that she had known in the +valley, the freedom and leisure and irresponsibility of the old +days. + +One day she made Alix and Peter laugh by reciting for them long +passages from "Paolo and Francesca." They were walking, and had +stopped to rest and get breath on a steep climb. Cherry's tender +voice, half-amusedly and half-seriously repeating the passionate +lines, lingered in Peter's mind like a sort of faint incense for +hours. + +"It's lovely," said Cherry in the garden that night, when he spoke +to her about it, "but it's not Shakespere, of course," she +surprised him by adding. Cherry had developed, he thought, she had +cared nothing for Shakespere years ago. Immediately she began the +immortal phrases: + + 'Tis but the name that is mine enemy, + Thou art thyself, though, not a Montague ... + ... And for that name which is no part of thee + Take all myself! + +Peter's heart began to thump again. They were alone in the garden; +it was dark to-night, warm and starry. + +"Now that you and I are brother and sister," Cherry said, after a +silence, "tell me--it went across my mind once, and then I didn't +think of it for years. But tell me, was it me with whom you were-- +you fancied you were in love, all those years ago?" + +She looked innocently up at him in the gloom, and laughed. Peter +did not speak for a few seconds. + +"Yes, it was always you!" he said then, briefly. + +Cherry laughed again, a little amused and exultant laugh. But +immediately she stopped laughing, and said, vexedly: + +"I was a fool to ask you that! I don't know why I did. Just sheer +egotism--and I hate women who dwell on their own foolish old love +affairs, too!" + +Peter, as ashamed as she of the moment's weakness, laughed, too. + +"You could hardly call it that!" he objected, mildly. + +"You could hardly call it anything!" she agreed, in relief. "Does +Alix know?" she asked, quickly. + +"There wasn't much to tell," he reminded her, as they went back to +the house through the ranks of wet wallflowers and roses. + +"Nothing!" she said again, quickly. + +And when they entered the house he was strangely disturbed to see +a look of something like shame, something confused and embarrassed +on her usually frank little face, and to realize that she was +conscientiously avoiding his eyes. After she and Alix had gone to +bed he got down the little red volume that was marked "Romeo and +Juliet," and found the score of lines that she had quoted, and +marvelled that the same words could seem on the printed page so +bare, and sound so rich and full in Cherry's voice out under the +stars. + +The next day she talked in a troubled, uncertain way of going back +to Red Creek and he knew why. But Alix was so aghast at the idea, +and Peter, who was closing Doctor Strickland's estate, was so +careful to depart early in the mornings, and return only late at +night, that the little alarm, if it was that, died away. Martin's +plans were uncertain, and Cherry might be needed as a witness in +the Will Case, if Anne's claims were proved unjustified, so that +neither Peter nor Cherry could find a logical argument with which +to combat Alix's protests against any change. + +The next time that Cherry went into town, Alix did not go, and +Peter, sitting on the deck of the early boat with her, asked her +again to have luncheon with him. Immediately a cloud fell on her +face, and he saw her breast rise quickly. + +"Peter," she asked him, childishly, looking straight into his +eyes, "why didn't we tell Alix about that?" + +Peter tried to laugh and felt himself begin to tremble again. + +"About what?" he stammered. + +"About our having been three hours at lunch last week?" + +"Why--I don't know!" Peter said, smiling nervously. + +She was silent, and they parted without any further reference to +meeting for lunch. But every time he was summoned to the telephone +Peter felt a thrill of expectation, and at noon his office swam +suddenly before his eyes when the lovely voice was really +addressing him. She was at the ferry, Cherry said; she had +finished shopping, and was going home. + +"That's fine!" Peter said, quite as he would have said it a month +ago. But he was shaking as he went back to his work. + +That night, when Alix had gone to bed, he entered the sitting room +suddenly to find Cherry hunting for a book. She had dropped on one +knee, the better to reach a low shelf, and was wholly absorbed in +the volume she had chanced to open. + +When she heard the door open she turned, and immediately became +very pale. She did not speak as Peter came to stand beside her. + +"Cherry--" he said in a whisper, his face close to hers. Neither +spoke again for awhile. Cherry was breathing hard, Peter was +conscious only of a wild whirling of brain and senses. + +They remained so, their eyes fixed, their breath coming as if they +had been running, for endless seconds. + +"You remember the question you asked me this morning?" Peter said. +"Do you remember? Do you remember?" + +Cherry, her cold fingers still holding the place in the book she +had been reading, went blindly to the fireplace. + +"What?" she said, in the merest breath. "What?" + +"Because," Peter said, following her, a sort of heady madness +making him only conscious of that need to hear from her own lips +that she knew, "because I didn't answer that question honestly!" + +It mattered not what he said, or what he was trying to express; +both were enveloped in the flame of their new relationship; +surprise and terror were eclipsing even the strange joy of their +discovery. + +"I must go home--I must go back to Mart to-morrow!" Cherry said, +in a whispered undertone, as if half to herself. "I must go home +to Mart to-morrow! I--let's not--let's not talk!" she broke off in +quick interruption, as he would have spoken. "Let's--I'd rather +not! I--where IS my book? What was I doing? Peter--Peter--" + +"Just a minute!" Peter protested, thickly. "Cherry--I want to +speak to you--will you wait a minute?" + +She was halfway to the door; now she paused, and looked back at +him with frightened eyes. Peter did not speak at once; there was a +moment of absolute silence. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +And in that moment Alix came in. She had said good-night half an +hour before; she was in her wrapper, and her hair fell over one +shoulder in a rumpled braid. Cherry, sick with fright, faced her +in a sort of horror, unable to realize, at the moment, that there +was nothing betraying in her attitude or Peter's, and nothing in +her sister's unsuspicious soul to give significance to what she +saw in any case. Peter, more quickly recovering self-control, went +toward his wife. + +Alix saw neither clearly, her eyes were full of tears, and she had +a paper in her hand. + +"Pete!" she said. "Cherry! Look at this! Look at this!" + +She held the paper out to them, but it was rather at her that they +looked, as all three gathered near the hearth again. + +"I happened to finish my novel," Alix said, "and I reached for +Dad's old Bible--it's been there on the shelf near my bed ever +since I was married, and I've even read it, too! But look what was +in it--there all this time!" + +"What is it?" Cherry asked, as Peter, in a sudden and violent +revulsion of feeling, took the paper and bent toward the lamp to +read it. + +"By George!" he said, suddenly, his eyes still running over the +half-sheet. "By George, this is wonderful!" + +"It's Uncle Vincent's receipt to Dad for that three thousand that +is making all the trouble!" Alix exulted to the still bewildered +Cherry. "It's been there all this time--and Cherry," she added, in +a voice rich with love and memory, "THAT'S what he meant by saying +it was in Matthew, don't you remember? Doesn't it mean that, Pete? +Isn't it perfectly clear?" + +"It means only about fifty thousand for you and Cherry," Peter +answered. "Yes sir, by George--it's perfectly clear! He paid it +back--every cent of it, and got his receipt! H'm--this puts rather +a crimp in Little's plans--I'll see him to-morrow. This calls off +his suit--" + +"REALLY, Pete!" Alix asked, with dancing eyes. "And it means that +you can keep the old house, Cerise," she exclaimed, triumphantly, +"and we can be together part of the year anyway! Oh, come on, +everybody, and sit down, and let's talk and talk about it! Let me +see it again--'in recognition of all claims against the patent +extinguisher aforementioned'--sit down, Pete, it's only ten +o'clock! Let's talk. Aren't you simply WILD with joy, Cherry?" + +But she told Peter later that she had been surprised at Cherry's +quietness; Cherry had looked pale and abstracted, and had not +seemed half enthusiastic enough. + +"Though very probably," mused Alix, "it brought back Dad's death, +and saddened her in that way, and more than that, I know she is +worried all the time about feeling as she does toward Martin, and +perhaps he'll feel that she ought to put this into some horrible +mining scheme! Cherry is not mercenary, I'll say that for her." + +"What will you do with all yours?" Peter asked. + +"I wish we three could go about the world together," Alix +answered. "I'd love to see Japan and India--I'd like to see +burning-ghats on the sacred Gunga!" she added, cheerfully. "But I +don't know--money doesn't buy you much!" she yawned. "Perhaps I'll +go to some Old Ladies' Home, and give each of the old girls one +hundred dollars a quarter--wouldn't they have fun, buying scarfs +and wool and caps?" + +"Their families would immediately remove them, for the revenue," +Peter suggested. He was grinning at her; he felt suddenly the +wholesomeness and safety of her absurdity and originality. He +liked the characteristic earnestness with which, in the very act +of snapping off her bedroom light, before going out to the +sleeping-porch, she widened her eyes at him, and frowned in +concentrated thought. + +"Then I'll give them fifty dollars a quarter!" she decided. "Just +enough to buy them some little things, you know, brass tea- +kettles, flannel underwear, whatever they wanted! Presents--they +must always want to be making Christmas presents." And she yawned +again. "Shut your door, Pete, if you read," she said. "The light +shines against the trees, and it's right in my eyes!" But ten +minutes later he heard her call through the door, "Or I could give +it on condition that they stayed in the home and didn't let their +families get it!" and grinned again over his book. + +After that there was silence, and gradually the little sounds of +the summer night made themselves heard again. Alix's light was +out. Cherry came, trailing her thin wrapper, to the porch bed +opposite her sister's bed and slipped into it with only a brief +good-night. But Peter read on deep into the first hours of the +morning. + +Kow Yu, flinging the striped blue tablecloth over the porch table +the next day at the noon hour, and clinking knives and forks, was +questioned by his master. + +"You go catchem 'nother plate, Kow!" Peter said. + +"Missy no come!" Kow answered, unruffled. "Him say no can come!" + +"Cherry!" Peter shouted. "Did Alix say she wasn't coming to +lunch?" + +"N-n-not to me!" Cherry answered from the garden. She came up to +the porch, with her hands full of short-stemmed roses. + +"Him go flend house," Kow elucidated. "Fiend heap sick!" + +"Mrs. Garvin?" Cherry questioned. "Did she stay at Mrs. Garvin's +for lunch? Perhaps it's the Garvin baby," she added to Peter. "She +said she was going to stop in!" + +"I'll find out!" Peter was conscious that everything was beginning +to tremble and thrill again, as he went to the telephone. "Why, +yes," he said, coming back to the porch, "the baby arrived just +before she got there, and they were all upset. She's in her glory, +of course. Says that she'll be home to supper, even if she goes +back!" + +"Oh!" Cherry said, in a small voice. She sat down at the table, +and shook out her napkin. Peter sat down, too, and, as usual, +served. Kow came and went, and a silence deepened and spread and +grew more and more terrible every instant. + +It was a Sunday, foggy and overcast, but not cold. The vines about +the porch were covered with tiny beads of moisture; among the +bushes in the garden little scarfs and veils of fog were caught, +and from far across the ridge the droning warning of the fog horn +penetrated, at regular, brief intervals. + +"Cherry," Peter said, suddenly, when the silent meal was almost +over, "will you talk about it?" + +"Talk--?" she faltered. Her voice thickened and stopped. "Oh, I +would rather not!" she whispered, with a frightened glance about. + +"Listen, Cherry!" he said, following her to the wide porch rail, +and standing behind her as she sat down upon it. "I'm sorry! I'm +just as sorry as I can be. But I can't help it, Cherry. And I +would like--I do think it would be wiser, just to--to look the +matter squarely in the face, and--and perhaps discuss it for a few +minutes, and then END it." + +She gave him a fleeting glance over her shoulder, but she did not +go away. Peter sat down behind her on the rail, and she turned to +face him, although her troubled eyes were still averted. + +"Cherry," he said then, "I'm as surprised as you are--I can't tell +you when it--it all happened! But it--" Peter folded his arms +across his chest, and with a grimly squared jaw looked off into +the misty distance--"it is there," he finished. + +"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Cherry whispered, on a breath of utter +distress. "I'm so sorry! Oh, Peter, we never should have let it +happen--our caring for each other!--we never should have allowed +ourselves to think--to dream--of such a thing! Oh, Peter, I'm so +sick about it," Cherry added, incoherently, with filling eyes. +"I'm just sick about it! I know--I know that Alix would never have +permitted herself to--I know she wouldn't!" + +He was close to her, and now he laid his hand over hers. + +"I care--" he said, quite involuntarily, "I have always cared for +you! I know it's madness--I know it's too late--but I love every +hair of your beautiful head! Cherry--Cherry--!" + +They had both gotten to their feet, and now she essayed to pass +him, her face white, her cheeks blazing. He stopped her, and held +her close in his arms, and after a few seconds he felt her +resisting muscles relax, and they kissed each other. + +For a full dizzy minute they clung together, arms locked, hearts +beating madly and close, and lips meeting again and again. +Breathless, Cherry wrenched herself free, and turned to drop into +a chair, and breathless, Peter stood looking down upon her. About +them was the silence of the dripping garden; all the sounds of the +world came muffled and dull through the thick mist. + +Then Peter knelt down beside her chair, and gathered her hands +together in his own, and she rested her forehead on his, and spent +and silent, leaned against his shoulder. And so they remained, not +speaking, for a long while. Kow clinked dishes somewhere in a +faraway kitchen, and the fog-horn boomed and was still-boomed and +was still. But here on the porch there was no sound. + +"Cherry, tell me that you care for me a little?" Peter said after +awhile, and he felt as if he met a new Cherry, among all the +strange new Cherries that the past bewildering week had shown him, +when she answered passionately: + +"Oh, Peter--Peter--if I did not!" + +He tightened his fingers about her own, but did not answer, and it +was presently Cherry who broke the brooding, misty silence again. + +"What shall we do?" she asked, in a small, tired voice. + +Peter abruptly got to his feet, took a chair three feet away, and +with a quick gesture of his hand and toss of his head, flung back +his hair. + +"There is only one thing to do, of course!" he said, decidedly, in +a voice almost unrecognizably grim. "We mustn't see each other--we +mustn't see each other! Now--now I must think how best to manage +that!" + +Her eyes, heavy with pain, were raised to meet his, and she saw +his mouth weaken with a sudden misgiving, and she saw him try to +steady it, and look down. + +"I can--I shall tell Alix that this new business needs me in town +for two or three nights," he said, forcing himself to quiet +speech, but with one fine hand propping his forehead as if it +ached. "I'll stay at the club." + +"And as soon as I can go," Cherry added, feverishly, "I shall join +Martin. I suppose Alix would think it was perfectly idiotic for me +to go now, just when the whole thing can be closed up so quickly, +and Martin, too--" her voice trailed away vaguely. She fell +silent, her eyes absent and full of pain. Suddenly they widened, +as if some pang had suddenly shaken her into consciousness again. +"Well, I'll go back," she began again, bravely, "I'll leave you +power--what do they call it?--power to act for me. I can do that, +can't I? I'll wire Martin to-morrow--this is Sunday, and I'll go +on Wednesday!" And as she looked off across the green spaces of +fog-wreathed hills and valleys, they seemed to turn suddenly +glaring and ugly to her, and she felt a great weariness and +heartsickness with life. + +Peter sprang over the porch rail, and vanished, walking with swift +energy up the trail that led toward the mountain. Cherry knew that +he would walk himself tired; she longed to walk, too, to plunge on +and on through the foggy depths of the hills, striding, stumbling, +getting breathless and weary in body, while somehow--somehow!-- +this confusion and exhaustion cleared away from mind and soul. And +yet beyond the horror and shame and regret she felt something was +thrilling, exulting, and singing for joy. + +For the rest of that day she lived in a sort of daze of emotion, +sometimes she seemed to be living two lives, side by side. In the +one was her old happy relationship with Alix, and even with Peter, +the old joking and talking, and gathering for meals, the old hours +in the garden or beside the fire, and in the other was the +confused and troubled and ecstatic consciousness of the new +relationship between Peter and herself, the knowledge that he did +not merely admire her, did not merely feel for her an unusual +affection, but that he was consumed by a burning adoration of her +slightest motion, the turn of her wrist, the smile she gave Kow at +breakfast time, the motion she made when she stooped to tie her +shoe, or raised her arm to break an apple from the low, dusty +branches. The glory of being so loved enveloped her like a great +shining garment, and her cheeks glowed softly rosy, and there was +a new and liquid softness, a sort of shining glitter, in her blue +eyes. + +Peter was quiet that evening, and was gone the next morning when +the sisters came out to breakfast. His absence was a real relief +to Cherry, who felt curiously tired and spent after a wakeful +night, and looked pale. Alix, busy with a new venture in duck +raising, noticed nothing, and Cherry could lie idly in the hammock +all morning, sometimes frowning, and shutting her eyes at some +sudden thought, otherwise smiling and dreaming vaguely, and always +hearing Peter's voice, in words so charged with new magic that the +mere recollection of them almost suffocated her with emotion. + +He had left a message to the effect that he would not be at home +that night, and at four o'clock telephoned confirming the message. +Alix chanced to answer the telephone, and Cherry, who was in her +room, heard Peter's name, and stood still, listening with a shock +of disappointment. She did not want him to come home, she was +hardly conscious of any desire or dread; her only thought was that +he was there--now--at the telephone, and in a moment Alix would +have hung up the receiver, and she, Cherry, would not have spoken +to him, would not have heard his voice! + +But at eight o'clock that evening, when she and Alix were sitting +on the porch, when the last ebbing pink of the sunset had faded, +and great spiders had ventured forth into the dusk and the dews, +there was a sudden hail at the gate, and Cherry knew that it was +he! A flood of utter, irrational happiness rose in her heart; she +had been racked with hunger for the sound of that voice; she had +been restless and unsatisfied, almost feverish with longing and +doubt; now peace came again, and content. + +He came up to them, his glance resolutely averted from Cherry, +explaining that he was lonesome, assuring them that everything +went well, and making them laugh with an account of Justin +Little's reception of the new turn of affairs. Alix asked a +hundred questions; laughed and rejoiced. + +"To-morrow let's go down and see the old house," suggested Alix, +"I guess it's in pretty bad shape, for we couldn't rent it. At +least Pete and I didn't think it was worth while to do all the +plastering and painting they wanted! But we'll do it now, Cherry; +we'll fix it all up, and then every summer, and perhaps some +winters--at least if Mart isn't too far away--you can live there. +Did you see Anne, Peter?" she asked, suddenly. + +"No, just Justin. He seemed absolutely dumbfounded," Peter said. +"He looked at the paper, read it, laughed, and said--in that +little nervous, smiling way of his--that he felt it to be by no +means conclusive--" + +"I can hear him!" giggled Alix. + +"And I guess both you girls will have to come in in a day or two," +Peter continued. + +"Cherry's going in to the dentist to-morrow," said Alix. + +"Oh, so I am!" Cherry said, in a rather strained voice. + +She did not look at Peter, nor did he at her, but they felt each +other's thoughts like a spoken word. + +"Had you forgotten?" Alix asked. "I may go with you," she added, +carelessly. + +"Oh, do come!" Cherry said, eagerly. "I--I hate so going alone!" + +"I've not a thing in the world to do in town, but I'll browse +along those old book stores in Third Street," Alix mused. + +But in the morning she had changed her mind. She was a trifle late +to breakfast, and Cherry and Peter had a chance minute or two +alone. + +"Cherry," he said then, "I'm going to lunch at the St. Francis. +Will you meet me there?" + +"No, I can't!" Cherry whispered, unhappily. + +"Well, I'll be there," Peter said, in a dull, steady voice. They +did not look at each other as Cherry began, with trembling white +ringers, to strip the black fine skin from a fig. + +A moment later Alix joined them. She had come in from her ducks, +and ate but a hasty and indifferent breakfast so that she might +the sooner begin to prepare their meal. The ducks had been regaled +of late on the minced remains of all the family meals, Alix +spending an additional half-hour at the table while she cut fruit- +rinds, cold biscuits, and vegetables into small pieces, for her +gluttonous pensioners. + +"Wait for the ten o'clock train, Pete, and go in with Cherry!" +said Alix, holding a small piece of omelet close to the nose of +the importunate Buck. "Go on, be a sport!--DON'T YOU DARE," she +added, to the dog, who rolled restless and entreating eyes, banged +his tail on the floor, and allowed a faint, disconsolate whimper +to escape him. "I don't think I'll go in," she explained, "for I +have about a week's work here to do. Those Italian boys are coming +up to thin the lettuce, and Kow is going to put up the peaches, +and if you both are gone I can have a regular orgy of +housekeeping--really, I'd rather. Here, take it--the dear old +Buckboy--well, did he get so mad he couldn't see out of his eyes!" +she added, affectionately, to Buck, as the omelet disappeared with +one snap of his jaws. She folded his two fringed ears into his +eyes, and laid her face against his shining head. "Well, this +isn't feeding the ducks!" she finished, jumping up. "Come see +them, Pietro, they're too darling!" + +"They're extremely dirty and messy," Peter complained, following +with Cherry nevertheless, to see her scatter her chopped food +carelessly on the surface of the little pond, the struggling +bodies of the ducklings, and the bobbing downy heads alike. With +quacking and wriggling and dabbling, the meal was eaten, and Alix, +scraping the bowls for last fragments, and blinking in a flood of +sunlight, laughed exultantly at the exhibition. + +Peter left them there, without one word or look for Cherry, who +went back to the house with her sister in a most agitated and +wretched state of mind. She had the telephone in her hand, to +cancel the engagement with her dentist, when Alix suddenly +consented to accompany her into town; "and at lunch-time we'll +take a chance on the St. Francis, Sis," Alix said, innocently, +"for Peter almost always lunches there!" + +Feeling that the question was settled, yet restless and +unsatisfied still, Cherry dressed for town; they climbed into the +car; Alix's firm hands, in yellow chamois gloves, sparched at the +wheel; the die was cast. + +Yet at the station another change of plan occurred, for as Alix +brought the car to the platform Anne came toward them from the +arriving train, a gloved and demure and smiling Anne, anxious, she +explained, to talk over this newest development, and "whether it +proved to be of any value or not," to try to find out what Uncle +Lee had really WANTED for them all, and then agree to do that in a +friendly manner, out of court. Alix turned from the wheel, to face +Cherry in the back seat, and Anne leaned on the door of the +tonneau. + +"My first feeling, when Frenny told me," said Anne, chatting +pleasantly in the shade, "was one of such RELIEF! For I hadn't +wanted all that money one bit," she confessed, gaily. "I only +wanted to do what was FAIR. Only two or three nights ago I said to +Frenny that it really belonged to us all, and last night we talked +and talked about it, and the result was that I said that I must +see the girls--we three are the only ones concerned, after all, +and"--Anne's old half-merry and half-pouting manner was unchanged- +-"what we decide is what really matters!" she finished. + +"Why, there is no question that it's Daddy's handwriting," Cherry +said, with what, for her, was sharpness, "and it seems to me--it +seems to me Anne--" she added, hesitatingly. + +"That you have a nerve!" Alix finished, not with any particular +venom. "That document throws the case out of court," she said, +flatly. "Peter is confident of that!" + +Anne's pale face flushed a trifle, and her eyes narrowed. + +"Yes, but it doesn't throw the WILL out of court," she said +quickly. + +"You proposed to break the Will!" Alix reminded her, getting +angry. + +"I know I did, but it might be valid, after all, and under that +Will I inherit only a fifth less than you and Cherry!" Anne +answered, also with feeling. "That's just what I came over to talk +about," she added, still smiling. "Isn't it better," and all +friendliness and appeal were in her voice, "isn't it better to do +it all in a kindly manner, than to fight about it? Why, we can +easily settle it among ourselves," she assured them, sensibly. + +Alix shrugged, and looked down at the wheel of her car with a +doubtful shake of her head. Cherry, now standing beside it on the +platform, was flushed and uncomfortable. There was an awkward +pause. + +"Board?" shouted a trainman, with a rising inflection. The sisters +looked at each other in a panic of haste. + +"I can't leave this car here." Alix exclaimed. "I've got to park +her and lock her and everything! Run get on board, Cherry, I don't +have to go in anyway--you've got a date!" + +Cherry's heart leaped, sank coldly, and leaped again, as with a +swift nod of parting she hurried for her train. The other two +women watched her with forced interest as she climbed on board, +and as the train slipped noiselessly out of sight. It curved among +the redwoods, and was gone before either spoke again. Then, as her +eyes met Anne's friendly, questioning smile, Alix said awkwardly: + +"I think the only thing to do is for you and Justin to take this +up with Peter, Anne. I mean--I mean that you were the ones who +proposed to bring it into court in the first place, and--and I +don't understand much about it!" + +"Alix, don't let's talk in a cold, hard, legal way," Anne pleaded. +She had gotten into the back seat, and was leaning on the front +seat in an informal sort of way. "Let's just try to get each +other's point of view!" she suggested. "The idea is that Uncle Lee +wanted all his girls to inherit alike--" + +"That idea didn't seem to impress you much a week ago!" Alix said, +glad to feel herself getting angry. + +"My dear, I was going to divide it to the last PENNY!" Anne +assured her, widening her eyes. + +Alix was silent, but the silence shouted her unbelief. + +"Truly, I was," Anne went on. "This--this discovery only +complicates matters. Why, the last thing in the world that dear +Uncle Lee would wish would be to have us drag the family name into +a law-suit--" + +"You and Justin began it!" Alix reminded her, goaded into +reluctant speech. + +"I beg your pardon!" It was a favourite phrase of Anne's. "But it +was Peter who said he would fight!" + +"Well, because you made the claim!" Alix, hating herself for being +betrayed into argument, said hotly. "But I won't talk about it, +Anne," she added, firmly, "and as far as coming to any agreement +with me is concerned, you might just as well have gone back on the +train with Cherry. I hate to talk this way--but we all think you +acted very--well, very meanly!" Alix finished rather flatly. + +"Perhaps it's just as well to understand each other!" Anne said, +with hot cheeks. They exchanged a few more sentences, wasted words +and angry ones, and then Anne walked over to a seat in the shade, +to wait for another train, and Alix, with her heart beating hard +and her colour high, drove at mad speed back to the mountain +cabin. + +"I didn't ask her to lunch--I don't care!" Alix said to herself, +in agitation. "She and Justin know they're beaten--they're just +trying to patch it up before it's too late--I don't care--I won't +have her think she can get away with any such scheme--!" + +And so muttering and scolding, Alix got back to her dog and her +barnyard, and soothed herself with great hosing and cleaning of +the duck-pond, and much skimming and tasting of Kow's preserves. +After all, she had grudged this perfect summer day to the city, +and she was always happiest here, in the solitude of the high +mountain. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +Meanwhile, Cherry, in the sick flutter of spirits that had become +familiar to her of late, kept her dentist appointment, and at noon +looked at a flushed and lovely vision of herself in the dentist's +mirror. + +"Doctor has given me red lips!" said Cherry, trembling, and trying +to smile to the nurse in attendance. + +"I guess the good Lord gave you your looks," Miss Maloney said +generously. "You're the youngest-looking--to be married!" she +added. "I said to my sister last week, 'That lady has been married +nearly six years!' 'What!' she said, 'That little girl of +eighteen--!'" + +"Why--why don't you come and have lunch with me, at the +'Pheasant'?" Cherry said, suddenly, pushing up the golden hair +under her hat. + +"I'd love it," Miss Maloney said, appreciatively, "but Doctor has +a one o'clock appointment after this one, and I shan't get a bite +until nearly three. I've got crackers here--" + +Cherry went out into the blazing street; it was one of the hot +noontides of the year. At two o'clock a wild wind would spring up, +and send papers and dust flying, but just now the heat was dry and +clear and still. + +She was carrying a parasol, and she opened it now and walked +slowly toward Geary Street. She could go and have a cup of tea and +a salad at the Pheasant--she could go to the Pheasant-- + +But she made not the slightest effort to go there. Beyond saying +the words, she had no intention of doing so. She could not even +frame in her thoughts the utter blankness of the feeling that +swept over her at missing an opportunity to see Peter. She turned +and went slowly up past the big shop windows that reflected the +burning Plaza, and so came to the cool, great doorway of the St. +Francis. Inside was tempered light and much noiseless coming and +going, meeting and parting. Chinese boys in plum colour and pale +blue went about with dustpans gathering fallen cigar and cigarette +ashes; a pleasant traffic in magazines and cigarettes and candy +and flowers was incessant, back in the dim wide passageways. + +Cherry drifted into the big, deep-carpeted waiting-room; there +were other women there, sunk into the big leather chairs, watching +the doors, and glancing at the clock. The high windows gave +directly upon Powell Street, where cable-cars were grating to and +fro, and where motor-horns honked, but all noises were filtered +here to a sort of monotone, and the effect of the room was of +silence. When a man came hastily in the door one woman rose, there +was a significant smile, a murmured greeting, before the two +vanished. + +In a luxurious chair Cherry waited. Peter certainly would not come +in until half-past twelve, perhaps not then. Long before that time +she might decide to go away; meanwhile, this was a pleasant and +restful place to be. It was cool in here, and the murmuring and +waiting women left in the air the delicate scents of perfumes and +of the flowers they wore. + +Suddenly, with a spring of her heart against her ribs, she saw +Peter's dark head with its touches of iron gray. Groomed and +brushed scrupulously as always, with the little limp, yet as +always dignified and erect, he came to stand before her, and she +stood up, and their hands met. Flushed and a little confused, she +followed him to an inconspicuous table in a corner of the dining +room. Then the dreamlike unreality and beauty of their hours +together began again. Cherry felt adjusted, untrammelled, at ease; +she felt that all the uncomfortable sensations of the past two +hours were absurd, forgotten. + +"Did you expect me to meet you?" she smiled. For answer he looked +at her thoughtfully a minute before his own face lighted with a +bright smile. + +"I don't think I thought of your not being there," he confessed. +"I was simply moving all morning toward the instant of meeting. I +had a mental picture of you, always before my eyes, and when you +stood up there, it was just my picture come real!" + +"If THIS is real!" she said, musingly. "Sometimes my thoughts get +so--so mixed," she added, "that I feel as if Alix and the valley-- +and Martin especially--were all a dream, and this the true thing." + +"I know how you feel!" Peter answered. He watched her, almost with +anxiety, for a moment, then turned his attention to the bill of +fare. But Cherry was not hungry, and she paid small attention to +the order, or to the food when it came. + +Presently they were talking again, in that hunger for self- +analysis that is a part of new love. They thrilled at every word, +Cherry raising her eyes, shining with eagerness, to his, or Peter +watching the little down-dropped face in an agony of adoration. An +hour passed, two hours, after awhile they were walking, still with +that strange sense of oneness and of solitude, and still as easily +as if they had been floating, to the ferry. + +Alix met them in Mill Valley with vivid accounts of the day; she +had been pondering the brief talk with Anne, and was anxious to +have Peter's view of it. Peter was of the opinion that Anne's +conduct indicated very clearly that she and Justin realized that +their case was lost. + +"Then you're fixed for life, Cherry," was Alix's first remark. +"Oh, say!" she added, in a burst. "Let's go down to the old house +to-morrow, will you? Let's see what it needs, and how much would +have to be done to make it fit to live in!" + +Cherry flushed, staring steadily at her sister, and Peter, too, +was confused, but Alix saw nothing. The next day she carried her +point, and took them with her down to the old house. It had stood +empty since her marriage, for winter storms had gone hard with it, +and the small rent it would have brought them through the summer +months was not enough to warrant the expense of putting it in +order. It looked neglected and shabby; it was almost buried in the +dry over-growth of the untended garden. There was a drift of +colourless leaves on the porch, the steps were deep in the dropped +needles of the redwoods, the paths were quite lost to sight under +a fine wash of winter mud, and the roses and lilacs were grown +woody and wild. + +Alix was suddenly silent, and Cherry was pale and fighting tears, +as they crossed the porch, and fitted the key in the door. Inside +the house the air was close and stale, odorous of dry pine walls +and of unaired rooms. Peter flung up a window, the girls walked +aimlessly about, through the familiar yet shockingly strange +chairs and table that were all coated thickly with dust. Somehow +this dust gave Cherry a desolate sensation, it covered everything +alike: the spectacle case and the newspaper that still lay on her +father's desk; the cups and glasses that remained, face downward +at the sink, from some last meal. Her hands and Alix's were +speedily coated with it, too; they felt sad and unnatural here, in +the house where they had spent so many years. + +"It needs everything!" Alix said, after a first quick tour of +inspection, eyeing a great weather streak on the raw plaster of +the dining-room wall. "It needs air, cleaning, straightening, +flowers---Gosh, how it does need people!" + +"I--I can't bear it!" Cherry said softly, in a sick undertone. + +Alix, who was rapidly recovering her equilibrium, sprang upstairs +without hearing her, but Cherry did not follow. She went to the +open front doorway and stood there, leaning against the sill, and +gazing sadly out at the shabby, tangled garden that had sheltered +all the safety and joy and innocence of her little girl days. + +"Peter," she said, as he came to stand beside her, "I'm so +unhappy!" + +"I'm sorry!" he said, simply. + +"I can't--I can't ever be here!" Cherry half-whispered. "At least +I can't until some day--years from now--years from now!--when you +and I have forgotten---" + +"I never shall forget," he said. And after awhile he added, "Shall +you?" + +"No," she whispered, her eyes brimming until the dry and dusty +green of the garden swam before her. + +"Cherry, will you end it?" he asked her, huskily. + +She gave him a startled look. + +"End it?" she faltered. + +"Will you--do you think you are brave enough to give everything +else up for me?" he asked. + +"Peter!" said Cherry, hardly above a breath. + +"Will you go away with me?" Peter went on, feverishly. "That's the +only way, now. That's the only way--now. Will you go away?" + +"Go away!" Cherry's face was ashen as she moved her tragic and +beautiful eyes to his. "Go away where?" + +"Anywhere!" Peter answered, confusedly. "Anywhere!" He did not +meet her look, his own went furtively about the garden. +Immediately he seemed to regain self-control. "I'm talking like a +fool!" he said, quickly. "I don't know what I'm saying half the +time! I'm sorry--I'm sorry, Cherry. Don't mind me. Say that you'll +forgive me for what I said!" + +He had taken her hands, and they were looking distressedly and +soberly at each other when an unexpected noise made them step +quickly apart. Cherry's heart beat madly with terror, and Peter +flushed deeply. + +It was Martin Lloyd's aunt, Mrs. North, their old neighbour, who +came about the corner of the house, and approached them smilingly. +How much had she seen? Cherry asked herself, in a panic. What were +they doing?--what were they saying as she appeared?--how much had +their attitude betrayed them? + +Mrs. North was the same loud-laughing, cheerful woman as of old. +She had moved to Portland to be near Martin's mother, some years +before, and was delighted with the chance that had brought her +back to the valley on the very day that brought the Strickland +girls back to the old house. + +She kissed Cherry, and was full of queries for Martin. + +"Durango? Belle told me something about his going there," she +said. "Isn't he the wandering Ayrab? And ain't you the good- +natured little wife to follow him about everywhere? How long you +been here, Cherry?" + +"I've been with Alix and Peter for--for several weeks," Cherry +said, uneasily. Her eyes met Peter's, and he conveyed reassurance +to her with a look. + +"When you going back, dear?" Mrs. North asked, with so shrewd a +glance from Cherry's exquisite rosy face to Peter's that he felt a +fresh pang of suspicion. She HAD seen something--- + +"Why, I've been rather--rather kept here by the--the law-suit, +haven't I, Peter?" Cherry explained. "But I expect to go as soon +as it's all settled! Here's Alix," she said, gladly, as Alix came +downstairs with an old kodak album in her hands. + +"Look, Cherry--I'd forgotten this!" Alix said, in deep amusement, +holding out the book. But she immediately put it aside to greet +the old friend. + +"I'll bet you three are having real good times!" Mrs. North said, +with a curious look from one to the other. + +"You know what I hope," Alix told her, "is that Cherry and Martin +will always keep the old place open now. They could get a Chinese +boy for very little to keep it in order, and then, you see, with +all Martin's moving about, she'd always have headquarters here. +And I don't believe Cherry'll ever love another place as she does +the valley--will you, Sis?" Alix ended, eagerly. Cherry met the +arm her sister linked around her, half-way, and gave her a +troubled smile. + +And yet a few moments later, when some quest took Peter suddenly +from the group, she watched the shabby corduroy suit, the laced +high boots, and the black head touched with gray, disappear in the +direction of the kitchen with a tearing pain at her heart, and the +words the other women were saying hummed without meaning in her +ears. + +"When you three girls got started, you all went off together!" +Mrs. North commented. "I used to say I thought you girls never +would marry--you never seemed to take much interest in the men!" + +"I never thought we'd marry!" Alix agreed, pleasantly. "Did you, +Kirschwasser?" + +"I don't think I ever thought about it--much," Cherry said, +rousing herself from a musing mood. + +"According to age," Alix pursued, in one of her absurdly +argumentative moments, "Anne should have married Peter, Cherry, +Justin, and I, Martin. But the truth is, we didn't seem to give +the matter sufficient thought!" + +"Girls never do; it isn't expected!" Mrs. North said, with her +indulgent laugh, as they followed Peter into the empty kitchen +which smelled of dry woods and drains. Dust was thick on Hong's +range, and one of his old white aprons was flung limply across a +chair. Cherry's eyes were thoughtful, filled with a look of pain. +It was true; girls didn't think anything about it, it wasn't +expected of them. And yet, in these very rooms, her father had +urged her to consider; consideration simply wasn't in that +feather-brained little head of hers in those days. Words seemed to +have no meaning, or were transmuted into different meanings by +Martin Lloyd's voice. Her father had asked her to wait, wait until +she was nineteen! Nineteen had seemed old then. She had felt that +at nineteen she would have merely delayed the great joy of life +for nothing; at nineteen she would be only so much older, so much +more desperately bent upon this marriage. + +And Peter was there then, was coming and going, advising and +teasing her--so near, so accessible, loving her even then, had she +but known it! That engagement might as easily--and how much more +wisely!--have been with Peter; the presents, the gowns, the +wedding would have been the same, to her childish egotism; the +rest how different! The rest would have been light instead of +darkness, joy instead of pain, dignity and development and +increasing content instead of all the months of restless criticism +and doubt and disillusionment. The very scene here, with Mrs. +North and Alix, might easily have been, with Cherry as the wife of +Peter, Cherry as her sister's hostess, in the mountain cabin-- + +At the thought her heart suffocated her. She stood dazedly looking +out of the old kitchen window, and her senses swam in a sudden +spasm of pain. + +And Alix? Well, Alix might have been Mrs. Lloyd. Martin had told +her more than once that he had "a crush on Alix, right off the +bat!" And Alix had liked him, too--any girl would like any man +under the same circumstances of age and environment. Alix would +have made Martin a better wife; she would have loved the mining +towns, the muddy railroad stations, and the odd women. She would +have had her dogs, perhaps a child or two now. Anyway, ran +Cherry's thoughts, she would have had the old home now, and that, +to Alix, would have meant a very triumph of joy. She would have +come to stay with Peter and Cherry while it was put in order; she +would have revelled in cows and ducks and dogs here. + +"Cherry, child, come and lend us a hand!" Peter said. They were +trying to push aside the ice-box that blocked the unlocked kitchen +door. Cherry went to them at once; the little word "child" danced +in her heart all day, and warmed it when she was lying wakeful and +restless deep into the summer night. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +"You and I must go away!" said Peter. "I can't stand it. I love +you. I love you so dearly, Cherry. I can't think of anything else +any more. It's like a fever--it's like a sickness. I'm never +happy, any more, unless my arms are about you. Will you let me +take you somewhere, where we can be happy together?" + +Cherry turned her confident, childish face toward him; her lashes +glittered, but she smiled. + +"I love you, Peter!" she said. And the words, sounding softly +through the silence of the garden, died away on the warm night air +like music. + +It was night, the third night of the harvest moon. Through the +branches of the oak tree under which they were sitting blots of +silver were falling; between them the shadows were inky black. The +grass was a sheen of pearly light, the little cabin was like an +enchanted dwelling, wreathed with flowers, and steeped in +moonshine. Toward the ocean, over the moon-flooded ridge, a great +fold of creamy fog was silently pushing, and Cherry had a scarf of +creamy lace caught about her shoulders. Her coil of corn-coloured +hair was loosened; she and Peter had been moving geranium slips +all afternoon, and at supper-time, when a telephone message from +Alix had advised them that she was obliged to stay in town to dine +with an exacting old family friend, they had parted only to bathe +and change, before sitting down for dinner in the sunset beauty of +the porch. + +It had been a memorable meal, an hour always to have its place in +their hearts. In the two weeks since the day at the old house they +had not chanced to be often alone, and to-night, for the first +time, Cherry admitted that she could fight no longer. A few days +before she had again gone to the dentist, and again had waited for +Peter at the great hotel. But on this occasion he had not known of +her engagement in town, and had lunched elsewhere, so that Cherry +had waited, growing weary, headachy, and heartsick as the slow +moments went their way. Peter, happening to telephone to Alix, at +about two o'clock, had learned that Cherry was in the city, and +hanging up the receiver, had sat wrapped in agitated thought for a +few minutes before rushing to the hotel on the desperate hazard of +finding her there. + +The sight of the little patient figure, the irradiation of her +face, as they met, the ecstasy of delight with which their hands +were joined, and the flood of joy in their hearts, as he took her +to tea, was illuminating to them both. Cherry had spent two long +hours waiting only for the sight of that eager, limping, straight- +shouldered form, and Peter had experienced enough anguish as he +sped to find her to tear the last deception away. + +To-night they talked as lovers, his arm about the soft little +clinging figure, her small, firm fingers tight in his own. He had +squared about on the great log that was their seat so that his +ardent eyes were closer to her; the world held nothing but +themselves. It was eight o'clock. + +"So this is the thing that was waiting for us all these years, +Cherry, ever since the time you and Alix used to dam my brook and +climb my oak trees!" + +"I never dreamed of it!" Cherry said, with wonder in her tone. + +"If we had dreamed of it--" Peter began, and stopped. + +"Ah, if we had, it would all be different," Cherry said, with a +look of pain. "That's the one thing I can't bear to think of!" + +"What is?" he asked, watching the lovely face that was only dimly +visible in the moonlight. + +"Oh, that it all might have been so simple--so easy and right!" +the girl answered. "That we might have been so happy instead of so +sad--" + +"It makes you sad, dear?" + +"Peter, how could it make me anything else? Why, what can come of +it?" Cherry asked, sorrowfully. "I cannot stay on here, now. I +cannot--" She freed herself from his arms, and walked away from +him restlessly through the moonshine, twisting her arms above her +head. "I cannot go back to Martin!" he heard her whisper, in an +agony. "I can't leave you--I can't leave you!" + +"Shall we go away?" Peter asked, simply, when she stopped at the +great stone that Alix, for the view it commanded, had christened +Sunrise Rock. Cherry dropped down upon it, facing away from him +across the soft green luminous light of the valley. + +"Go where?" she asked. + +"Go anywhere!" he answered. "We have money enough; we can leave +Alix rich--she will still have her cabin and her dogs and the life +she loves. But there are other tiny places, Cherry; there are +little cabins in Hawaii, there are Canadian villages--Cherry, +there are thousands of places in the south of France where we +might live for years and never be questioned, and never be +annoyed." + +"France!" she whispered, and the downcast face he was watching so +eagerly was thoughtful. "How could we go," she breathed. "You +first, and then I? To meet somewhere?" + +"We would have to go together," he decided, swiftly. "Everyone +must know, dear; you realize that?" + +Wide-eyed, she was staring at him as if spellbound by some new +hope; now she shrugged her shoulders in careless disdain. + +"That isn't of any consequence!" + +"You don't feel it so!" He sat down beside her, and again they +locked hands. + +"Not that part," she answered, simply. "I mind--Alix," she added, +thoughtfully. + +"Yes, I mind Alix!" he admitted. + +"But the injury is done to Alix now," Cherry said, slowly. "Now it +is too late to go back! You and I couldn't--we couldn't deceive +Alix here, Peter," Cherry added, and as she turned to him he saw +her thin white blouse move suddenly with the quick rising of her +heart. "That--that would be too horrible! But I could take this +love of ours away, leave everything else behind, simply--simply +recognize," stammered Cherry, her lips beginning to tremble, "that +it is bigger than ourselves, that we can't help it, Peter. I'd +fight it if I could," she added, piteously, "I'd go away if I +didn't know that no power on earth could keep me from coming +back!" + +She buried her head on his shoulder, and he put his arm about her, +and there was utter silence over the great brooding mountain, and +in the valley brimming with soft moonshine, and in the garden. + +"I believe that even Alix will understand," Peter said after +awhile. "She loves you and me better than any one else in the +world; she is not only everything that is generous, but she isn't +selfish, she is the busiest and the most sensible person I ever +knew. I know--of course I know it's rotten," he broke off in +sudden despair, "but what I'm trying to say is that Alix, of all +people I know, is the one that will make the least fuss about it-- +" + +Cherry was staring raptly before her; now she grasped his hand and +said breathlessly: + +"Oh, Peter, are we talking about it? Are we talking about our +going away, and belonging to each other?" + +"What else?" he said, quick tears in his eyes. + +"Oh, but I've been so unhappy, I've been so starved!" she +whispered. "I thought I wanted people--cities--I thought I wanted +to go on the stage. But it was only you that I wanted. Oh, Peter, +what a life it will be! The littlest cottage, the simplest life, +and perhaps a beach or woods to walk in--and always talking, +reading, always together. I never want to come back; I never want +to see any one; I never want anything but that." + +"France it must be, I think," he said, "for then we can go about-- +no one will know us---" + +"But we will meet people we know in the trains, going," Cherry +said, suddenly. "I know what I am doing," she added, "but that +would be so hard, to have them identify us, perhaps come up to us, +whisper and point!" + +"But why not go by sea?" he mused, "why not to Japan and through +India, and so on to France?" + +"No!" she said quickly. "On a long sea-trip someone would surely +know us--isn't there some way we can get away, disappear as if we +had never been?" + +"Cherry!" he said, kneeling before her in the wet grass. "You know +what it means!" + +"It means you!" she answered, after a silence. She had laid her +hands softly about his neck, and her shining eyes were close to +his. + +"And you trust me?" he whispered. "You know that when I am free +and you are free--" + +She put her fingers over his mouth. + +"Peter! Haven't I known you ever since I was little enough to sit +in your lap and have you read 'Lady Jane' to me? It's so +beautiful--it's so wonderful--to love this way," she said, in her +innocent, little-girl voice, "that it seems to me the only thing +in the world! I'd come to you, Peter, if it meant shame and death +and horror. It doesn't mean that, it only means a man and a woman +settling down somewhere in the south of France, a big quiet man +who limps a little, and a little yellow-headed woman in blue +smocks and silly-looking hats--" + +"It means life, of course!" he interrupted her. "The hour that +makes you mine, Cherry, will be the exquisite hour of my whole +life!" + +They were silent for a while, and below them the white moonlight +deepened and brightened and swam like an enchantment. + +"If you will face it," Peter said, presently, "I will give every +instant of my life to you!" + +"I know you will," she said, dreamily. + +"There will be no coming back, Cherry." + +"Oh, I know that!" + +"There can't ever be--there mustn't be--you've thought of that?" +he said, uncertainly. In the curious, unreal light that flooded +the world, he saw her turn, and caught the gleam of her surprised +eyes. + +"You mean children--a child?" she said, surprisedly. "Why not, +Peter?" she added, tightening her fingers, "what could be more +wonderful than that we should have a child? Can you imagine a +happier environment for a child than that little sunshiny, woodsy +beach cottage; can't you see the little figure--the two or three +little figures!--scampering ahead of us through the country roads, +or around the fire? Oh, I can," said Cherry, her extraordinary +voice rich and sweet with longing, "I can! That would be +motherhood, Peter, that wouldn't be like having a baby whose +father one didn't--one COULDN'T love, marriage or no marriage!" + +And as he watched, amazed at the change that love had brought to +quiet, little inarticulate Cherry, she added, earnestly: + +"I've been thinking how BITTER it was, Peter, to have the greatest +thing in life come to us this way, but just lately--just this last +hour it's come to me that it is right--it's best!--to have it so. +We give all the world up, and we get only each other, and yet how +little it seems to give, and how much to get! Why, every hour of +it, every minute will hold more joy than we've ever known! I +couldn't," she said, suddenly grave, "I couldn't take you from any +one who loved you as I do; I couldn't hurt any one, to be happy. +But Alix will forgive us; you'll see she will!" + +"Alix--I know her!--will only be sorry for me," Cherry mused. +"She'll only think me mad to disgrace the good name of Strickland; +she'll think we're both crazy. Perhaps she'll plunge into the +orphanage work, or perhaps she'll go on here, gardening, playing +with Buck, raising ducks--she says herself that she has never +known what love means--says it really meaning it, yet as if the +whole subject was a joke--a weakness!" + +"I believe she will forgive us, for she is the most generous woman +in the world," Peter said, slowly. "Anyway--we can't stop now! We +can't stop now! It will take me only a few days now to close +everything up, to arrange matters so that she shall have plenty of +money, and so that I can carry on the affairs of my mother's +estate at long range. Spencer will attend to the rents, mail me +quarterly checks; the whole thing is simple. And I will let you +know--" + +"It all seems so unreal!" Cherry said, with her heart beginning to +hammer with excitement. "It doesn't seem as if it was you and me, +Peter. I shall not need a trunk; I shall buy new things--it will +be a new life---" "There is the steamer line that goes to Los +Angeles," Peter mused. "Yes--I believe that is the solution," he +added, with a brightening face. "Nobody you know goes there on it; +it leaves daily at eleven, and gets into Los Angeles the following +morning. From there---" + +"I don't know ANYBODY there!" Cherry said, eagerly. + +"You wouldn't see anybody anyway. From there we can get a drawing- +room to New Orleans; that's only a day and a half more; and we can +keep to ourselves if by any unlucky chance there should be any one +we know on the train--" + +"Which isn't likely!" + +"Which isn't likely! Then at New Orleans we go either to the Zone, +or to South America, or to any one of the thousand places--New +York, if we like, by water. By that time we will be lost as +completely as if we had dropped into the sea. I'll see about +reservations--the thing is, you're too pretty to go quite +unnoticed!" he added, ruefully. + +He saw a smile flicker on her face in the moonlight, but when she +spoke, it was with almost tearful gravity: + +"You arrange it, Peter, and somehow I'll go. I'll write Alix--I'll +tell her that where she's sane, I'm mad, and where she's strong, +I'm weak! And we'll weather it, dear, and we'll find ourselves +somewhere, alone, with all the golden, beautiful future before us. +But, Peter, until this part of it's over we mustn't be alone +again--you mustn't kiss me again! Will you promise me?" + +As stirred as she was, he gathered her little fingers together, +and kissed them. + +"I'll promise anything!" + +"I'll make it up to you," Cherry said, with a sort of feverish +weariness. "I'm all confused and frightened now; I only want it +somehow--somehow, to be over! I want you to take me away +somewhere," she whispered, with the hands he was clasping resting +on his breast, and her flowerlike face raised to his, "take me +somewhere, and take care of me! I only want you!" + +"Cherry, my darling--my dearest!" Peter said. "I will take care of +you. Only trust me for a few days more, and we will be away from +it all. And now you put it all out of your mind, and run in and go +to bed. You're exhausted, and if Alix gets the eight o'clock train +she will be here in a few minutes. I'll wander down the road a +little way, and meet the car if she drives it up." + +"Good-night!" she breathed, and he saw the white gown flicker +against the soft light on the lawn, and saw the black shadow +creeping by it, before she mounted the porch steps, and was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +Swept along by a passionate excitement that seemed actually to +consume her, Cherry lived through the next three days. Alix +noticed her mood, and asked her more than once what caused it. +Cherry would press a hot cheek to hers, smile with eyes full of +pain, and flutter away. She was well, she was quite all right, +only she--she was afraid Martin would summon her soon--and she +didn't want to go to him--! + +Alix was puzzled, watching her sister with anxious eyes. The +cleaning and refurnishing of the old home was proceeding rapidly, +and Alix feared that the constant memory of the old times would be +too much for Cherry. She tried to induce her to rest, to spend +this morning or that afternoon in the hammock, but Cherry gently +but irresistibly refused. Her one hope was to be busy, to tire her +brain and body before night. + +Suspecting something gravely amiss, Alix tried to win her +confidence regarding Martin. But briefly, quickly, and with a sort +of affectionate and apologetic impatience, Cherry refused to +discuss him. + +"I shall not go back to him!" she said, breathing hard, and with +the air of being more absorbed in what she was doing than what she +was saying. She and Alix were dusting the books in their father's +old library, and arranging them on the shelves, on a quiet +September morning. + +"But, Cherry, dear, you were saying yesterday that you dreaded his +sending for you!" Alix said, in a troubled surprise. + +"Yes, I know I was!" Cherry admitted, quickly. + +"But did you mean that you are really going to leave him?" the +older sister questioned. And as Cherry was silent she repeated: +"Are you going to leave him, dear?" + +"I don't know what I'm going to do!" Cherry half sobbed. + +"But, dearest--dearest, you're only twenty-four; don't you think +you might feel better about it as time goes on?" Alix urged. "Now +that the money is all yours, Cherry, and you can have this nice +home to come to now and then, isn't it different?" + +Cherry, an old volume in her hand, was looking at her steadily. + +"You don't understand, Sis!" she said. + +"I understand that you don't love Martin," Alix said, perplexed. +"But can't people who don't love each other live together in +peace?" she added, with a half smile. + +"N-n-not as man and wife!" Cherry stammered. + +Alix sat back on her heels, in the ungraceful fashion of her +girlhood, and shrugged her shoulders. + +"Think of the people who are worrying themselves sick over bills, +or sick wives, or children to bring up!" she suggested, hopefully. +"My Lord, if you have enough money, and food, and are young, and +well--!" + +"Yes, but, Alix," Cherry argued, eagerly, "I'm NOT well when I'm +unhappy. My heart is like lead all the time; I can't seem to +breathe! People--isn't it possible that people are different about +that?" she asked, timidly. + +"I suppose they are!" Alix conceded, thoughtfully. "Anyway, look +at all the fusses in history," she added, carelessly, "of GRANDE +PASSIONS, and murders, and elopements, and the fate of nations-- +resting on just the fact that a man and woman hated each other too +much, or loved each other too much! There must be something in it +that I don't understand. But what I DO understand," she added, +after a moment, when Cherry, choked with emotion, was silent, "is +that Dad would die of grief if he knew you were unhappy, that your +life was all broken up in disappointment and bitterness!" + +"But is that my fault!" Cherry exclaimed, with sudden tears. + +Alix, after watching her for a troubled minute, went to her, and +put her arm about her. "Don't cry, Cherry!" she pleaded, +sorrowfully. + +Cherry, regaining self-control, resumed her work silently, with an +occasional, sudden sigh. Alix, clapping the heavy covers of a +leatherbound volume in Buck's inquisitive nose, presently laughed +gaily as he sneezed and pawed. + +She had opened the subject with reluctance; now she realized that +they had again reached a blank wall. + +Three days after their talk in the moonlit garden Peter found +chance to speak alone to Cherry. + +"Are you ready?" he asked. + +"Quite!" she said, raising blue eyes to his. + +"What about your suitcase?" + +"I took it into San Francisco yesterday; Alix went in early, and I +followed at noon. It's checked in the ferry building, waiting." + +"It's to-morrow then, Cherry!" he said. + +"To-morrow!" He saw the colour ebb from her face as she echoed +him. This was already late afternoon; perhaps her thoughts raced +ahead to to-morrow afternoon at this time when they two would be +leaning on the rail of the little steamer, gazing out over the +smooth, boundless blue of the Pacific, and alone in the world. + +"To-morrow you will be mine!" he said. + +"That's all I think of," she answered. And now the colour came up +in a splendid wave of flame, and the face that she turned toward +his was radiant with proud surrender. + +He told her the number of the dock; they discussed trains. + +"We sail at eleven," said Peter, "but I shall be there shortly +after ten. I'll have the baggage on board, everything ready; you +only have to cross the gangplank. You have your baggage check; +give it to me." + +They were waiting in the car while Alix marketed; Cherry opened +her purse and gave him the punched cardboard. + +"I'll tell Alix that I have a last dentist appointment at half- +past ten," she said. "If she goes in with me, we'll go to the very +door. But she says she can't come in to-morrow, anyway. I'll write +her to-night, and drop the letter on the way to the boat." + +"Better wait until we are in Los Angeles," he said, pondering. +"I'm writing, too, of course. I'm simply saying that it is one of +the big things that come into people's lives and that one can't +combat. Perhaps some day--but I can't look forward; I can't tell +what the future holds. I only know that we belong to each other, +and that life might as well be ended as love!" + +"To-morrow, then!" was Cherry's only answer. "I'm glad it's so +soon." + +"Good-bye!" said Cherry, leaning over the side of the car to kiss +her sister. Alix received the kiss, smiled, and stretched in the +sun. + +"Heavenly day to waste in the city!" said Alix. + +"I know!" Cherry said, nervously. She had been so strangely +nervous and distracted in manner all morning that Alix had more +than once asked her if there was anything wrong. Now she +questioned her again. + +"You mustn't mind me!" Cherry said, with a laugh. "I'm desperately +unhappy," she said, her eyes watering. "And sometimes I think of +desperate remedies, that's all." + +"I'd do anything in the world to help you, Cerise!" Alix said, +sympathetically. + +"I know you would, Sis! I believe," Cherry said, trembling, "that +there's nothing you wouldn't give me!" + +"That's easily said," Alix answered, carelessly, "for I don't get +fond of things, as you do! My dear, I'd go off with Martin to +Mexico in a minute. I mean it! I don't care a whoop where I live, +if only people are happy. I'd work my hands to the bone for you-- +as a matter of fact, I do work 'em to the bone," she added, +laughing, as she looked at the hands that were stained and rough +from gardening. + +"How about Buck?" Cherry said, as the dog leaped to his place on +the front seat, and licked his mistress's ear. + +Alix embraced him lovingly. + +"Well--if he wanted to go with you!" she conceded, unwillingly. +"But he wouldn't!" she added, quickly. Cherry, going to the train, +gave her an April smile, and as she took her seat and the train +drew on its way, it seemed to her suddenly that she might indeed +meet Peter, but it would only be to tell him that what they had +planned was impossible. + +But on the deck of the Sausalito steamer, dreaming in the sunshine +of the soft, lazy autumn day, her heart turned sick with longing +once more. Alix was forgotten, everything was forgotten except +Peter. His voice, his tall figure, erect, yet moving with the +little limp she knew so well, came to her thoughts. She thought of +herself on the other steamer, only an hour from now, safe in his +care, Martin forgotten, and all the perplexities and +disappointments of the old life forgotten, in the flood of new +security and joy. Los Angeles--New Orleans--France--it mattered +not where they wandered, they might well lose the world, and the +world them, from to-day on. + +"So that is to be my life--one of the blamed and ignored women?" +Cherry mused, leaning on the rail, and watching the plunge of the +receding water. "Like the heroines of half the books--only it +always seemed so bold and so frightful in books! But to me it just +seems the most natural thing in all the world. I love Peter, and +he loves me, and the earth is big enough to hide us, and that's +all there is to it. Anyway, right or wrong, I can't help it," she +finished, rejoicing to find herself suddenly serene and confident, +as the boat made the slip, and the passengers streamed downstairs +and so across the ferry place and into the city. + +It was twenty minutes past ten, a warm, sweet morning, with great +hurrying back and forth at the ferry, women climbing to the open +seats of the cable-cars, pinning on their violets or roses as they +climbed. In the air was the pleasant mingling of the scents of +roasting coffee, salt bay-water, and softening tar in the paving, +that is native only to San Francisco. Cars clanged about the +circle, hummed their way up into the long vista of Market Street, +disturbing great flights of gulls that were picking dropped oats +from the very feet of feeding horses. + +Cherry sped through it all, beside herself now with excitement and +strain, only anxious to have the great hands of the clock drop +more speedily from minute to minute, and so round out the terrible +hour that joined the old life to the new. She was hurrying blindly +toward the docks of the Los Angeles Line, absorbed in her one +whirling thought, when somebody touched her arm, and a voice, +terrifyingly unexpected and yet familiar, addressed her, and a +hand was laid on her arm. + +In utter confusion she looked up. It was Martin who had stopped +her. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +For a few dreadful seconds a sort of vertigo seized Cherry and she +was unable to collect her thoughts or to speak even the most +casual words of greeting. She had been so full of her +extraordinary errand that she was bewildered and sick at its +interruption, her heart thundered, her throat was choked, and her +knees shook beneath her. Where was she--what was known--how much +had she betrayed--Her thoughts jumbled together in a tangle of +horrified questioning. + +Gasping, trying to smile, she looked up at him, while the ferry +place whirled about her, and pulses drummed in her ears. She had +automatically given him her hand; now he kissed her. + +"Hello, Cherry, where you going?" for the third time. + +"I came into town to shop," she faltered. + +"You what?" She had not really been intelligible, and she felt it, +with a pang of fright. He must not suspect--the steamer was there, +only a short block away; Peter might pass them; a chance word +might be fatal--he must not suspect-- + +"I'm shopping!" she said distinctly, with dry lips. And she +managed to smile. + +"Well," Martin said, smiling in turn, "surprised to see me?" + +"Oh, Martin--" said her fluttered voice. Even in the utter panic +of heart and soul she knew that for safety's sake she must find +his vanity. + +"I'm going to tell you something that will surprise you," he said. +"I'm through with the Red Creek people!" + +"Martin!" Cherry enunciated, almost voicelessly. + +"You remember I wrote you that they fired Mason, and that I was +doing his work and mine, too?" + +"I--I remember!" Cherry, seized by deadly nausea and chill, looked +from a flower vendor to a newsboy, looked at the cars, the people- +-she must not faint. She must not faint. + +"Well--but where are you going? Home?" + +"I was going to the dentist a minute, but it's not important." +They had turned and were walking across to the ferry. She knew +that there was no way in which she might escape him. "What did you +say?" she said. + +"I asked you when the next boat left for Mill Valley?" + +"We can--go--find out." Cherry's thoughts were spinning. She must +warn Peter somehow. It was twenty minutes of eleven by the ferry +clock. Twenty minutes of eleven. In twenty minutes the boat would +sail. She thought desperately of the women's waiting-room +upstairs; she might plead the necessity of telephoning from it. +But it had but one door, and Martin would wait at that door. The +glow of meeting had already faded from his face, but he was +loitering by her side, quite as a matter of course. + +Suddenly she realized that her only hope of warning Peter was to +send a messenger. But if Martin should chance to connect her +neighbourhood with the boat, when he met her, and her sending of a +message to Peter here-- + +"I think there's a boat at eleven something," she said, +collectedly. "Suppose you go and find out?" + +She glanced toward the entrance of the Sausalito waiting-room, a +hundred yards away, and a mad hope leaped in her heart. If he +turned his back on her-- + +"What are you going to do?" he asked, somewhat surprised. + +"I ought to telephone Alix!" Her despair lent her wit. If he went +to the ticket office, and she into a telephone booth, she might +escape him yet! While he dawdled here, minutes were flying, and +Peter was watching every car and every passer-by, torn with the +same agony that was tearing her. "If you'll go find out the exact +time and get tickets," she said, "I'll telephone Alix." + +"Tickets?" he echoed, with all Martin's old, maddening slowness. +"Haven't you got a return ticket?" + +"I have mileage!" she blundered. + +"Oh, then I'll use your mileage!" Martin said. "Telephone," he +added, nodding toward a row of booths, "no hurry; we've got piles +of time!" + +She remembered that he liked a masculine assumption of easiness +where all trains, tickets, railroad connections, and transit +business of any sort were concerned. He liked to loiter +elaborately while other people were running, liked to pull out his +big watch and assure her that they had all the time in the world. +She tried to call a number, left the booth, paid a staring girl, +and rejoined him. + +"Busy!" she reported. + +"I was just thinking," Martin said, "that we might stay in town +and go to the Orpheum; how about it? Do we have to have Peter and +Alix?" + +Cherry flushed, angered again, in the well-remembered way, under +all her fright and stir. Her voice had its old bored note. + +"Well, Martin, I've been their guest for two months!" + +"I'd just as soon have them!" Martin conceded, indifferently. + +But the diverted thought had helped Cherry, irritation had nerved +her, and the reminder of Martin's old, trying stupidities had +lessened her fear of him. + +"I've got to send a telegram-for Alix," she said. + +"What about?" he asked, less curious than ill-bred. + +"Good-bye to some people who are sailing!" Cherry answered, +calmly. "Only don't mention it to Alix, because I promised it +would go earlier!" she added. + +"I saw the office back here," he told her. They went to it +together, and he was within five feet of her while she scribbled +her note. + +"Martin met me. Nothing wrong. We are returning to Mill Valley. C. +L." She glanced at her husband; he was standing in the doorway of +the little office, smoking. Quickly she addressed the envelope. +"DON'T READ THAT NAME OUT LOUD," she said, softly but very slowly +and distinctly, to the girl at the desk. She put a gold piece down +on the note. "Keep the change, and for God's sake get that to the +Harvard, sailing from Dock 67, before eleven!" she said. + +The girl, who had been pencilling a large "10:46" on the envelope, +looked up in surprise; but rose immediately to the occasion. +Cherry's beauty, her agonized eyes and voice, were enough to +awaken her sense of the dramatic. A sharp rap of the clerk's +pencil summoned a boy. + +"George, there's a dollar in that for you if you deliver it before +eleven to the Harvard!" said she. The boy seized it, stuck it in +his hat, and fled. + +"And now for the boat!" Cherry said, rejoining Martin, and +speaking in almost her natural voice. They went back to the +Sausalito ferry entrance again, and this time telephoned Alix in +real earnest, and presently found themselves on the upper deck of +the boat, bound for the valley. + +Until now, and in occasional rushes of terror still, she had been +absorbed in the hideous necessity of deceiving, of covering her +own traces, of anticipating and closing possible avenues of +betrayal. But now Cherry began to breathe more easily, and to feel +rising about her, like a tide, the half-forgotten consciousness of +her relationship with this man in the boldly-checked suit who was +sitting beside her. She had thought to escape the necessity of +telling him that she was not willing to return to him; she had +been wrapped in dreams so great and so wonderful that the thought +of his anger and resentment had been as nothing to her. But she +had all that to face now. + +She had it to face immediately, too. She knew that every hour of +postponement would cost her fresh humiliations and difficulties. +He did not love her, but he was quietly taking her for granted +again, and until she could summon courage to speak to him with +utter frankness and finality, he would of course claim his +position as her husband. + +The thought threw her into a nervous agitation almost as frightful +as that of meeting him had been, and again she felt the dizzy +faintness and sickness of that moment. + +The trip from San Francisco to Sausalito occupies exactly half an +hour; after that there was a train trip of twenty minutes. Cherry +knew that what was done must be done in that time. In Mill Valley +Alix would meet them, perhaps willing to take any cue that Cherry +gave her, as to their relationship, but of course anxious to have +that relationship as pleasant and normal and friendly as possible. + +Her head was still rocking from the shock of the experiences of +the last hour and the last fortnight. Even had she met Peter it +might have been to yield with a sort of collapse to mental and +physical exhaustion. But to be forced to make a fresh effort now, +one of the crucial and fearful struggles of a lifetime, to present +her case to Martin now, and force him to her viewpoint, was almost +impossible. + +Yet Cherry knew that it must be done, and as the boat slipped +smoothly past the island that roughly marked the halfway point, +she gathered all her forces for the trial. + +Martin was meanwhile energetically presenting to her the arguments +that had convinced him that he must give up the Mexico position. +She vaguely appreciated that someone named Murry was a traitor, +and that the "whole bunch" were "rubes," but her mind was busy +with its own problem all the while, and the one distinct +impression she had from Martin was the appalling one that he did +not dream that she had decided to sever their union completely and +finally. + +"Well, how's the valley? Bore you to death?" he interrupted the +flow of his own topic to ask carelessly. + +"Oh, no, Martin!" she quivered. "I--I love it there! I always +loved it!" + +"Alix is a fine girl--she's a nice girl," Martin conceded. "But I +can't go Peter! He may be all right, all that lah-di-dah and Omar +Khayyam and Browning stuff may be all right, but I don't get it!" +And he yawned contentedly in the sunshine. + +After a few seconds he gave Cherry an oblique glance, expecting +her resentment. But she was thinking too deeply even to have heard +him. Her mind was working as desperately as a caged animal, her +thoughts circling frantically, trying windows, walls, and doors in +the prison in which she found herself, mad for escape. + +She blamed herself bitterly now for allowing him, in the surprise +and fear she felt, in the shock of their unexpected meeting, to +arrange this domestic and apparently reconciled return to the +valley house. Had she known beforehand that they were to meet she +would have steeled herself to suggest to him coldly that they +lunch somewhere, and talk. She could imagine now the quiet +significance with which she would have stressed the phrase, +"Martin, I want to talk to you." + +Better still, she would have anticipated that meeting with a +letter that would have warned him that his position as a husband +was changed. But it was too late now! Too late for anything but a +bald and brave and cruel half-hour that should, at any cost, +sunder them. + +Quick upon the thought came another: what should she and Peter +plan now? For to suppose that their lives were to be guided back +into the old hateful channel by this mere mischance was +preposterous. Within a few days their interrupted trip must be +resumed, perhaps to-morrow--perhaps this very night they would +manage it successfully. Alix was unsuspicious, Martin utterly +unconcerned, and perhaps it would be even easier to do now, than +when Alix must at once communicate with Martin, and perhaps bring +him away from his work, to adjust life to the new conditions. + +But meanwhile, until she could see Peter alone, there was Martin +to deal with, Martin who was leaning forward, vaingloriously +reciting to her long speeches he had made to this superior or +that. + +"Martin," she said, impetuously interrupting him, "I've got to +talk to you! I've meant to write it--so many times, I've had it in +my mind ever since I left Red Creek!" + +"Shoot!" Martin said, with his favourite look of indulgent +amusement. + +But she knew the little twitch to his lips that was neither +indulgent nor amused. + +"There are marriages that without any fault on either side are a +mistake," Cherry began, "any contributory fault, I mean--" + +"Talk United States!" Martin growled, smiling, but on guard. + +"Well, I think our marriage was one of those!" Cherry said. + +"What have you got to kick about?" Martin asked, after a pause. + +"I'm not kicking!" Cherry answered, with quick resentment. "But I +wish I had words to make you realize how I feel about it!" + +Martin looked gloomily up at her, and shrugged. + +"This is a sweet welcome from your wife!" he observed. But as she +regarded him with troubled and earnest eyes, perhaps her half- +forgotten beauty made an unexpected appeal to him, for he turned +toward her and eyed her with a large tolerance. "What's the +matter, Cherry?" he asked. "It doesn't seem to me that you've got +much to kick about. Haven't I always taken pretty good care of +you? Didn't I take the house and move the things in; didn't I +leave you a whole month, while I ate at that rotten boarding- +house, when your father died; haven't I let you have--how long is +it?--seven weeks, by George, with your sister?" + +It poured out too readily to be unpremeditated; Cherry recognized +the tones of his old arraigning voice. He had brooded over his +grievances. He felt himself ill-treated. + +"Now you come in for this money," he began. But she interrupted +him hotly: + +"Martin, you know that is not true!" + +"Isn't it true that the instant you can take care of yourself you +begin to talk about not being happy, and so on!" he asked, without +any particular feeling. "You bet you do! Why, I never cared +anything about that money, you never heard me speak of it. I +always felt that by the time the lawyers and the heirs and the +witnesses got through, there wouldn't be much left of it, anyway!" + +Too rich in her new position of the woman beloved by Peter to +quarrel with Martin in the old unhappy fashion, Cherry laid an +appealing hand on his arm. + +"I'm sorry to meet you with this sort of thing," she said, simply, +"I blame myself now for not writing you just how I've come to feel +about it! But I just want it SAID before we meet Alix--" + +"Have what said?" he asked, surlily. + +"Have it understood," she pursued, patiently, "that we must make +some arrangement for the future--things can't be as they were!" + +"You've had it all your way ever since we were married," he began. +"Now you blame me--" + +"I DON'T blame you, Martin!" + +"Well, what do you want a divorce for, then?" + +"I don't even say anything about a divorce," Cherry said, fighting +for time only. "But I can't go back!" she added, with a sudden +force and conviction that reached him at last. + +"Why can't you?" + +"Because you don't love me, Martin, and--you know it!--I don't +love you!" + +"Well, but you can't expect the way we felt when we got married to +last forever," he said, clumsily. "Do you suppose other men and +women talk this way when the--the novelty has worn off?" + +"I don't know how they talk. I only know how I feel!" Cherry said, +chilled by the old generalization. + +Martin, who had stretched his legs to their length, crossed them +at the ankles, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets, staring +at the racing blue water with sombre eyes. + +"What do you want?" he asked, heavily. "I want to live my own +life!" Cherry answered, after a silence during which her tortured +spirit seemed to coin the hackneyed phrase. + +"That stuff!" Martin sneered, under his breath. "Well, all right, +I don't care, get your divorce!" he agreed, carelessly. "But I'll +have something to say about that, too," he warned her. "You can +drag the whole thing up before the courts if you want to--only +remember, if you don't like it much, YOU DID IT. It never occurred +to me even to think of such a thing! I've done my share in this +business; you never asked me for anything I could give you that +you didn't get; you've never been tied down to housework like +other women; you're not raising a family of kids--go ahead, tell +every shop-girl in San Francisco all about it, in the papers, and +see how much sympathy you get!" + +"Oh, you BEAST!" Cherry said, between her teeth, furious tears in +her eyes. The water swam in a blur of blue before her as they rose +to go downstairs at Sausalito. The boat had made the slip, and the +few passengers, at this quiet noontime, were drifting off. + +Martin glanced at her with impatience. Her tears never failed to +anger him. + +"Don't cry, for God's sake!" he said, nervously glancing about for +possible onlookers. "What do you want me to do? For the Lord's +sake don't make a scene until you and I have a chance to talk this +over quietly--" + +Cherry's thoughts were with Peter. In her soul she felt as if his +arm was about her, as if she were pouring out to him the whole +troubled story, sure that he would rescue and console her. She had +wiped her eyes, and somewhat recovered calm, but she trusted +herself only to shrug her shoulder as she preceded Mart to the +train. + +There was time for not another word, for Alix suddenly took +possession of them. She had had time to bring the car all the six +miles to Sausalito, and meant to drive them direct to the valley +from there. + +She greeted Martin affectionately, although even while she did so +her eyes went with a quick, worried look to Cherry. They had been +quarrelling, of course--it was too bad, Alix thought, but her own +course was clear. Until she could take her cue from them, she must +treat them both with cheerful unconsciousness of the storm. She +invited Martin to share the driver's seat with her, pushing the +resentful Buck into the tonneau with Cherry. + +Alix, in the months that she had not seen him, had had time to +develop a certain generous sympathy for Martin, but as she took +the car swiftly through the warm, sweet summer day, she began to +realize afresh just how serious Cherry's problem was. It was not +merely that Martin chewed a toothpick as he talked to her, and +took out a pen-knife to trim a finger-nail; it was not that he was +somewhat vain, stupid, and opinionated, for the minor social +deficiencies might have been remedied in a larger nature by an +affectionate word, and there were times, Alix felt, when the best +of men are insistent upon perverse and perverted views, and +unashamed or unconscious of their limitations. Martin had +coarsened in the six years since they had first known him. There +had been something unspoiled, vigorous, and fresh about him then +that was gone now. Alix sensed that his associates in the mining +towns in which he had lived had been men and women of a low type. +The defiling influence had left its mark. Missing entertainment in +his home, he had sought it elsewhere. + +But besides these things Martin had a certain complacency, an +assurance that would have been inexcusable even in great genius, a +mental arrogance that nothing in his life in the least degree +warranted. He made no slight effort to adapt himself to the +atmosphere in which he found his wife and her sister, interested +himself for not one moment in their concerns, put out no feelers +toward the mood that might have made him an agreeable addition to +their group. He conceded nothing; he was Martin Lloyd, mining +engineer, philosopher, man of the world, and it was for them to +listen to him, admire him, and praise and tease and flatter him in +all he did. Humility and shyness were never a part of Martin's +nature, but to-day he was galled by his talk with Cherry, and less +inclined even than usual to abase himself. + +"Does Peter let you drive the car on these mountain roads?" he +demanded of Alix. + +"Oh, yes, indeed. I love to run the car!" she said, with a swift, +smiling glance. + +"Well, you want to keep your eyes on the road," he warned her. +"There's nothing worries me like having a lady at the wheel," he +went on, good-naturedly, "that's the time I say my prayers!" + +"Plenty of women running cars now, Martin!" Alix said, cheerfully, +wishing that Martin didn't always and infallibly nettle her. + +"But it's no business for a woman," he assured her, in a suddenly +serious and confidential undertone. "No business for them! They +haven't the strength, in the first place, and they haven't--well, +they're too nervous, in the second. Mouse cross the road," said +Martin, sucking in deep breaths as he lighted a cigar, "and--whee! +Over she goes into a ditch. No," he said, kindly, "I'm a great +friend of all the ladies, but I think they make a mistake when +they think they're men." + +"Only one accident in ten is with a woman driver," Alix argued. + +"That may be true, too," Martin conceded, largely. She knew that +he was drawing his words merely to cover any impression of being +caught unprepared. "That may be true, too. But don't you believe +that half the cases of women's accidents get into the courts," he +added, knowingly. "You bet your life they don't! You bet your +sweet life they don't. Oh, no--pretty girl smiles at the +policeman--" He smoked a few seconds in triumphant silence. "Why, +you knew that, didn't you?" he asked, in kindly patronage. + +"I suppose so!" Alix said, briefly, after swallowing a more +spirited answer with a gulp. + +"Oh, sure!" Martin agreed, in great content. + +They reached the valley, and Martin was magnanimous about the +delayed lunch. Anything would do for him, he said, he was taking a +couple of days' holiday, and everything went. Kow was chopping +wood after lunch, and he sauntered out to the block with +suggestions; Alix, laying a fire for the evening, simply because +she liked to do that sort of work, was favoured with directions. +Finally Martin pushed her aside. + +"Here, let me do that," he said. "You'd have a fine fire here, at +that rate!" + +Later he went down to the old house with them, to spend there an +hour that was trying to both women. It was almost in order now; +Cherry had pleased her simple fancy in the matter of hangings and +papering, and the effect was fresh and good. The kitchen smelled +cleanly of white paint, and the other rooms wore almost their old, +hospitable aspect. + +"Girls going to rent this?" Martin asked. + +"Unless you and Cherry come live here," Alix said, boldly. He +smiled tolerantly. + +"Why should we?" + +"Well, why shouldn't you?" + +"Loafing, eh?" + +"No, not loafing. But you could transfer your work to San +Francisco, couldn't you?" Martin smiled a deep, wise, long- +enduring smile. + +"Oh, you'd get me a job, I suppose?" he asked. "I love the way you +women try to run things," he added, "but I guess I'll paddle my +own canoe for awhile longer!" + +"There is no earthly reason why you shouldn't live here," Alix +said, pleasantly. + +"There is no earthly reason why we should!" Martin returned. He +was annoyed by a suspicion that Alix and Cherry had arranged +between them to make this plan the alternative to a divorce. "To +tell you the honest truth, I don't like Mill Valley!" + +Alix tasted despair. Small hope of preserving this particular +relationship. He was, as Cherry had said, "impossible." + +"Well, we must try to make you like Mill Valley better!" she said, +with resolute good-nature. "Of course, it means a lot to Cherry +and to me to be near each other!" + +"That may be true, too," Martin agreed, taking the front seat +again for the drive home. He told Cherry later that he liked Alix, +and Alix was interested enough in keeping him happy to +deliberately play upon his easily touched self-confidence. She +humoured him, laughed at his jokes, asked him the questions that +he was able to answer, and loved to answer. + +She was surprised at Cherry's passivity and silence, but Cherry +was wrapped in a sick and nervous dream, unable either to +interpret the present or face the future with any courage. Before +luncheon he had followed her into her room, and had put his arm +about her. But she had quietly shaken him off, with the nervous +murmur: "Please--no, don't kiss me, Martin!" + +Stung, Martin had immediately dropped his arm, had shrugged his +shoulders indifferently, and laughed scornfully. Now he remarked +to Alix, with some bravado: + +"You girls still sleeping out?" + +"Oh, always--we all do!" Alix had answered, readily. "Peter has an +extra bunk on his porch, Cherry and I have my porch. But you can +be out or in, as you choose!" + +Martin ventured an answer that made Cherry's eyes glint angrily, +and brought a quick, embarrassed flush to Alix's face. Alix did +not enjoy a certain type of joking, and she did not concede Martin +even the ghost of a smile. He immediately sobered, and remarked +that he himself liked to be indoors at night. His suitcase was +accordingly taken into the pleasant little wood-smelling room next +to Peter's, where the autumn sunlight, scented with the dry +sweetness of mountain shrubs, was streaming. + +He began to play solitaire, on the porch table, at five, and Kow +had to disturb him to set it for dinner at seven. Alix was +watering the garden, Cherry was dressing. It was an exquisite hour +of long shadows and brilliant lights; bees from Alix's hives went +to and fro, and the air was full and fragrant, as if a golden +powder had been scattered through it. + +Kow had put a tureen of soup on the table, and Alix had returned +with damp, clean hands and trimly brushed hair, for supper, when +Peter came up through the garden. Cherry had rambled off in the +direction of the barn a few moments before, but Martin had +followed her and brought her back, remarking that she had had no +idea of the time, and was idly watching Antone milking. She +slipped into her place after they were all eating, and hardly +raised her eyes throughout the meal. If Alix addressed her she +fluttered the white lids as if it were an absolute agony to look +up; to Peter she did not speak at all. But to Martin she sent an +occasional answer, and when the conversation lagged, as it was apt +to do in this company, she nervously filled it with random remarks +infinitely less reassuring than silence. + +"How long do we stay here?" Martin cautiously asked his wife, when +after dinner, Peter could be heard in the kitchen, interrogating +Kow, and when the drip and splash of Alix's hose was sounding +steadily from the other end of the garden. + +"Stay here?" she echoed, at a loss. + +"Yes," he answered, decidedly. "I can stand a little of it, but I +don't think much of this sort of life! I thought maybe we could +all go into town for dinner and the theatre to-morrow or Saturday. +But on Monday we'll have to beat it." + +"Monday!" Cherry's heart bounded. + +"My idea was, you to come up with me," Martin continued, "we'll +see the folks in Portland--" + +"Martin, isn't it a mistake to go on pretending--" she began +bitterly. But Peter's voice, in the drawing room, interrupted her. +"I'll let you know--we'll talk about it!" she had time to say, +hurriedly, before he came out to them. He flung himself into a +chair. Martin at once opened a general conversation, in which +Alix, still diligently watering, was presently near enough to take +part. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +The evening dragged. Alix had suggested bridge, but Martin did not +play bridge. So she presently scattered anagrams over the table, +reminding Peter of some of their battles with word-making in the +long winter nights, and they had a half-hearted game, in which +Martin showed no interest at all, and Peter deliberately missed +chances to score. + +Alix glanced furtively at her wrist-watch; it was twenty minutes +of ten. As Martin flung himself into a chair beside the fire, and +lighted one of his strong cigars, she went to the piano, and began +to ramble through various songs, hoping that somebody would start +to sing, or suggest a favourite, or in some way help to lighten +the dreadful heaviness of the atmosphere. + +Cherry and Peter, left at the table, did not speak to each other; +Peter leaned back in his chair, with a cigarette; Cherry dreamily +pushed to and fro the little wooden block letters. + +But presently her heart gave a great plunge, and although she did +not alter her different attitude, or raise her eyes, her white +hand moved with directed impulse, and Peter's casual glance fell +upon the word "Alone." + +When he laid his finished cigarette in the tray, it was to finger +the letters himself, in turn, and Cherry realized with a great +thrill of relief that he was answering her. Carelessly, and +obliterating one word before he began another, he formed the +question: "My office to-morrow?" + +"Martin always with me," Cherry spelled back. She did not glance +at Peter, but at Martin, who was watching the fire, and at Alix, +whose back was toward the room. + +"Come on, have another game!" Peter asked, generally, while he +spelled quickly: "Will arrange sailing first possible day." + +Alix, humming along with her song, said: "Wait a few minutes!" and +Martin glanced up to say, "No, I'm no good at that thing!" + +Then Cherry and Peter were unobserved again, and she spelled "Mart +goes Monday. Plans to take me." + +Peter had reached for a magazine; he whirled through the pages, +and yawned. Then he began to play with the anagrams again. + +"Can you get away without him?" he spelled. + +"How?" Cherry instantly asked. And as Peter's hands went on +building a little bridge of wooden letters, she went on: "Alix to +train, Martin with me to city, impossible." + +"Give him the slip," Peter spelled. And after a pause he added, +"Life or death." + +"Difficult to evade," Cherry spelled, wiping the words away one by +one. + +"Must wait--" Peter began. Alix, ending her song on a crash of +chords, came to the table, interrupting him. Cherry was now lazily +reading a magazine; Peter had built a little pen of tiny blocks. + +"I'll go you!" Alix said, with spirit. But the game was rather a +languid one, nevertheless, and when it was over they gathered +yawning about the mantel, ready to disperse for the night. + +"And to-morrow night we dine in town and go to the Orpheum?" Alix +asked, for the plan had been suggested at dinner-time. + +"I'll blow you girls to any show you like," Martin offered. He +took out his big watch--Cherry remembered just how smoothly this +watch always seemed to slip in and out of his pocket--and smiled +at them. "Ten o'clock," he grinned. "I'll set up awhile longer, +and have a look at the evening papers." + +"Well--" Peter conceded. Cherry was shocked by the sudden chill +and sternness of his face. Immediately, remarking that he was +tired, he went to his room. Cherry, with only a general good- +night, also disappeared, to find Alix arranging beds and pillows +on their sleeping porch. + +"Oh, Alix--I'm so worried--I'm so sick with worry!" Cherry +whispered. Alix, sitting still in the circle of light thrown from +the reading lamp light, over her bed, nodded, with a stricken +face. "He won't listen to me," said Cherry. "He won't hear of a +divorce!" + +"I know!" Alix said, distressedly. + +"But what shall I do--I can't go with him!" Cherry protested. + +Alix was silent. + +"What shall I do?" Cherry pleaded again. + +"Why, I don't see what else you CAN do, but go with him!" Alix +said, in a troubled voice. "I should think that no man would want +his wife, knowing that she didn't want to be with him! And I +should think that to leave you here, with enough money to live on, +and your own old home, would suit him better than to drag you--" +She sighed. "But if it doesn't," she finished, "of course it +doesn't alter your obligation, in a way. You ARE his wife. 'For +better or worse, for richer or poorer, till death---'" + +It was said so kindly, with Alix's simple and embarrassed fashion +of giving advice, that poor Cherry could not resent it. She could +only bow her head desolately upon her knees, as she sat, child- +fashion, in her bed, and cry. + +"A nice mess I've made of my life!" she sobbed. "I've made a nice +mess of it! I wish--oh, my God, how I wish I was dead!" + +"My own life has been so darned easy," Alix mused, in a cautious +undertone, sitting, fully dressed, on the side of her own bed, and +studying her sister with pitying eyes. "I've often wondered if I +could buck up and get through with it if some of that sort of +thing had come to me! I don't know, of course, but it seems to me +that I'd say: 'Who loses his life shall gain it!' and I'd stand +anything--people and places I hated, loneliness and poverty--the +whole bag of tricks! I think I would. I mean I'd read the Bible +and Shakespere, and enjoy my meals, and have a garden--" Her voice +sank. "I know it's terribly hard for you, Cherry!" she ended, +suddenly pitiful. + +Cherry had stopped crying, dried her eyes, and had reached +resolutely for the book that was waiting on the little shelf above +the porch bed. + +"You're bigger than I am," she said, quietly. "Or else I'm so made +that I suffer more! I wish I could face the music. But I can't do +anything. Of course, just--just loathing some things about a man +isn't valid cause for divorce, I know that. But I'd rather live +with a man that drank, and stole, and beat me--I'd rather he +should disgrace me before the whole world, and drag me to prison +with him, than to feel as I feel! I would, Alix. I tell you--" Her +voice was rising, but suddenly she interrupted herself, and spoke +in a lifeless and apologetic tone: "I'm sorry," she said. "One +knows of unhappy marriages, everywhere, without quite fancying +just what a horrible tragedy an unhappy marriage is! Don't mind +me, Alix. The Mill Valley Zeus will have an item in it this week +that Mr. and Mrs. Martin Lloyd have gone to visit relatives in +Portland, Oregon, and nobody'll know but what we're the happiest +couple in the world--and perhaps we are!" + +Alix laughed uncomfortably. She was conscious, as she went out to +speak to Kow about breakfast, and to give a final glance at fires +and lights, that this was one of the times when girls needed a +wise mother, or a father, who could decide, blame, and advise. + +Coming back from the kitchen, with a pitcher of hot water, she saw +Martin, in a welter of evening papers, staring at the last pink +ashes of the wood fire. Upon seeing her he got up, and with a +cautious glance toward the bedroom doors he said: + +"Look here a minute! Can they hear us?" Alix set down her pitcher +of water, and came to stand beside him. + +"Hear us--Peter and Cherry? No, Cherry's out on our porch, and +Peter's porch is even farther away. Why?" + +"Take a look, will you?" he said. "I want to speak to you!" + +Alix, mystified, duly went to glance at Cherry, reading now in a +little funnel of yellow light, and then crossed to enter Peter's +room. His porch was dark, but she could see the outline of the +tall figure lying across the bed. + +"Asleep?" she asked. + +"Nope!" he answered. + +"Well, don't go to sleep without pulling a rug over you!" she +commanded. "Good-night, Pete!" + +"Good-night, old girl!" Something in the tone touched her, with a +vague hint of unhappiness, but she did not stop to analyze it. She +went back through his room, and through the little passage, and +rejoined Martin. The freedom of Peter's apartment Alix had always +taken as naturally as she did the freedom of her father's. + +"Can't hear us, eh?" Martin asked, when again she stood beside +him. + +"Positively not!" she answered. + +"Look here," he said, abruptly. "What brought me up here is this. +Who's making love to Cherry?" + +Indignant, and with rising colour, she stared at him. + +"Who--WHAT!" + +"She's having a nice little quiet flirtation with somebody," +Martin said, with a significant and warning smile. "Who is it?" + +"I don't know who's been talking to you about Cherry, Martin," +Alix said, sharply, "but you know you can't repeat that sort of +rotten scandal to me!" + +"I don't mean any harm--I don't mean any harm!" he assured her, +with a quick attempt to quiet the storm he had raised. "Don't get +mad--don't get mad! But I happen to know that there's some +attraction that's keeping Cherry here, and I came up to look over +the ground for myself, do you see?" + +His look, which was almost a leer, seemed to imply that Alix was +in the secret, a party to Cherry's foolishness, and did imply very +distinctly that Martin felt himself to be more than a match for +all their cunning. The woman was silent, looking straight into his +eyes. + +"Come on, now, put me on!" he said. + +Alix made an effort at self-control. + +"Martin, you're mistaken!" she said, quietly. "You have no right +to listen to any one who tells you such things, and if it wasn't +that you're Cherry's husband, I wouldn't listen to you! But you'll +have to take my word for it that it's a lie. We three have lived +up here without seeing any one-ANY ONE! Cherry has hardly spoken +to a man, except Peter and Antone and Kow, since she came!" + +"Who's this George Sewall?" he asked, shrewdly. "The lawyer! Oh, +heavens, Martin! Why, George was a beau of mine; he's a widower of +fifty, and has just announced his engagement to the trained nurse +that took care of his boy!" + +"H'm!" Martin commented. + +"If any one mentioned Cherry's name in connection with George," +Alix said, firmly, "that was a perfectly malicious slander--" + +"Sewall's wasn't mentioned!" Martin said, hastily. + +"Whose name WAS mentioned, then?" Alix pursued, hotly. + +"Well, nobody's name was mentioned." Martin took a great many +creased and rubbed papers from his vest pockets, and shifted them +over. Finally, with a fat, deliberate hand he selected one, and +put the others away. + +"This is from my mother," he said. "My aunt, Mrs. North--" + +"We saw her here, a week or two ago!" Alix said as he paused. + +"Well, she was in Portland, and saw the folks," said Martin. "And +my mother writes me this--" And after a few seconds of searching, +he read from the letter: "Bessie North saw Cherry and Mrs. Joyce +in Mill Valley, and if I was you I would not let Cherry stay away +too long. A wife's place is with her husband, especially when she +is as pretty as Cherry, and if Bessie is right, somebody else +thinks she is pretty, too, and you know it doesn't take much to +start people talking. It isn't like she had a couple of children +to keep her busy. Why don't you bring her up here and leave her +with Papa and me while you look over the Mexican proposition?" + +"That's all of that," said Martin, folding the letter. He eyed +Alix keenly. "Well, what do you think?" he asked, triumphantly. + +"I think that's a mean, wicked thing to say!" she said, +indignantly. "No, Martin," she said, silencing him, as he would +have interrupted her, "I know she is beautiful and young, and I +know--because she's told me--that you and she feel that your +marriage is a mistake, but if you think--" + +"Oh, she said that, did she?" + +"Don't use that tone!" Alix commanded him quickly. "She didn't +blame you or herself, except in that she didn't listen to my +father, who thought she was too young to marry any one! But if you +want to lose her, Martin," Alix said, with heat, "just let her +suspect all this petty suspicion and scandal! Cherry's proud--" + +"Now, look here," he said, with his air of assurance, "I'm proud, +too. And if I don't choose to stand before the world as a divorced +man--" + +"Nobody's talking of divorce!" Alix hushed him. "But no woman +would stand having other women spy and suspect--" + +"How about this Sewall!" he muttered. "By George, she had +SOMETHING on her mind when she met me to-day. She was fussed, all +right, and it wasn't all the surprise of seeing me, either. First +she wanted to telephone you--then she fussed over your message--" + +"Cherry gets fluttered very easily!" Alix reminded him. + +"Well, she was fussed all right this morning. She said not to +mention it to Alix, because she had promised that it should go on +time. I thought maybe she meant that you wanted her to go herself; +no, she said, a note would do--" + +"I don't know what you're talking about!" Alix said, puzzled. + +"Your note!" Martin explained. + +"What note! I didn't write any note. Cherry telephoned--" + +"No," he said, patiently and perfunctorily, "you wanted--Cherry-- +to-say--good-bye--to--those--people--who--were--sailing! That was +all. She wrote it; it got there in time, I guess. Anyway, I heard +the girl say to rush it to the boat!" + +"Oh!" Alix said. "Oh--" she added. Her tone betrayed nothing, but +she was thoroughly at sea. "Did I ask Cherry to say good-bye to +any one?" she asked herself, going back to the beginning of the +long day. Instinct warned her that nothing would be gained by +sharing her perplexity with Martin. "I give you my word that she +hasn't been five minutes alone with any one but Peter and me!" she +said, frankly, looking into Martin's eyes. "Now, are you +satisfied?" + +"Sure, I'm satisfied!" he answered. "She didn't go into town to +lunch with any one?" he asked. + +"No!" Alix said, scornfully. "She always lunches with us! You +don't deserve her, to talk so about her, Martin!" she said. + +"Well, I'm not anybody's fool, you know!" he assured her. "All +right, I'll take your say-so for it. He yawned, "Trouble with +Cherry is, she hasn't enough to do!" he finished, sapiently. + +"I'm a poor person with whom to discuss Cherry!" Alix hinted, with +an unsmiling nod for good-night. + +And she looked at Cherry's corn-coloured head, ten minutes later, +with a thrill of maternal protectiveness. Cherry was evidently +asleep, buried deep under the blue army blankets. But Alix did not +get to sleep that night. + +She did not even undress. For it was while sitting on the side of +her bed, ready to begin the process, that through her excited and +indignant and whirling thoughts the first suspicion shot like a +touch of flame. + +"How dares Martin--how dares he!" her thoughts had run. And then +suddenly she had said: "Why, she has seen no one but Peter--she +has seen no one but Peter! + +"I'll tell Peter all this when Martin has gone," Alix decided. +"He'll be furious--he adores Cherry--he'll be furious--he thinks +that there is no one like Cherry--" + +The words she had said came back to her, and she said them again, +half-aloud, with a look of pain and almost of fear suddenly coming +into her eyes. + +"Peter adores Cherry--" + +And then she knew. Even while the sick suspicion formed itself, +vague and menacing and horrible, in her heart, she knew the truth +of it. And though for hours she was to weigh it and measure it, to +remember and question and compare all the days and hours that she +and Peter and Cherry had been together; from the moment the +thought was born she knew that it was to be with her as an +accepted fact for all time to come. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +For a few seconds Alix felt ill, dazed, and shocked almost beyond +enduring. She sat immovable, her eyes fixed, her body held rigid, +as a body might be in the second before it fell after a bullet had +cleanly pierced the heart. + +Then she put her hand to her throat, and looked with a sort of +terror at the silent figure of Cherry. Nobody must know--that was +Alix's first clear thought. She was breathing hard, her breast +rising and falling painfully, and the blood in her temples began +to pound; her mouth was dry. + +With a blind instinct for solitude she went quickly and silently +from the sleeping porch, and into the warm sitting room. The lamps +were all extinguished, but the fire was still burning, low and +pink, where the hearts of the logs had fallen apart to show the +flame. + +For a few minutes Alix stood, with one foot on the chain that +linked the old brass fire dogs, her elbow on the mantel, and her +cheek resting against her arm. + +"No," she whispered, almost audibly, "no--it can't be that! It +can't be Cherry and Peter--Oh, my God! Oh, my God, it has been +that, all the time, THAT, all the time--and I never knew it--I +never dreamed it!" + +The end of a log blazed up with a sudden bright flame, and in the +light it cast about the quiet room Alix glanced nervously behind +her. Silence and shadow held the place; the bedroom doors were +shut. The fugitive red warmth picked out the backs of books--Alix +knew them all, had browsed over those shabby rows during a hundred +winter nights--touched the green shaded lamps, and the roses that +were dropping their petals from the crystal bowl, and the polished +legs of the old mahogany table. + +Nothing moved, nothing stirred. Everything in the little mountain +cabin was at rest except the woman who stood, with aching heart +and feverish mind, resting her arm on the level of the low mantel, +and staring with desolate eyes into the fading heart of the fire. + +"It's Peter and Cherry! They have come to care for each other-- +they have come to care for each other," she said to herself, her +thoughts rushing and tumbling in mad confusion as she tested and +tried the new fear. "It must be so. But it CAN'T be so!" Alix +interrupted herself in terror, "for what shall we do--what shall +we do! Cherry in love with Peter. But Peter is my husband--he is +MY husband--" And in a spasm of pain she shut her eyes, and flung +her head as if suffocating. The beating of her heart frightened +her. "I shall be sick if I go on this way!" she reminded herself. +"And then they will know. They mustn't know. But Peter--" she +whispered suddenly. "Peter, who has always been so good to me--so +generous to me--and it was Cherry all the time! While we were up +here, reading and talking, and--" her lips trembled, "--and +cooking," she told herself, "he was thinking of Cherry--he was +always thinking of Cherry! Even those years ago, when we used to +tease him about the lady with the crinolines and ringlets, it was +she. But why didn't he ask her instead of me?" wondered Alix, and +with an aching head, and a frowning brow, she began to piece it +all together. + +The terrible truth rose triumphant from all her memories. +Sometimes for a second hope would flood her with almost painful +joy, but inevitably the truth shut down upon her again, and hope +died, and she realized afresh that sorrow, stronger than before, +was waiting to seize upon her again. + +Sorrow and fear and pain, these wrestled with her spirit, that +spirit that had never known them before. She had grieved for her +father a few years ago; she would always miss him and need him-- +perhaps never more than to-night. But that was natural loss, +softened by everything that love and loyalty and faith could give +her, and this was a living anguish, which wrung and twisted her +heart more terribly with every instant of its realization. + +"Well--I can't stand it in here!" Alix said, suddenly. The walls, +the peaceful room, seemed to smother and stifle her. She crossed +to the door, and opened it, and slipped noiselessly out into the +night, catching a coat from the rack as she passed. + +The night was wrapped in an ocean fog, there was no moon and no +stars, but the air was soft and warm. The garden was so black that +Alix, familiar with every inch of it as she was, groped her way +confusedly between the wet bushes and shrubs. Roses drenched her +with fog and dew, a wall-flower springing erect as she passed by +sent a wave of velvety perfume into her face. + +When she gained the woods she made better progress, for under the +great shafts of the redwoods there was little growth, and the +ground was unencumbered and almost as smooth as a floor. With no +goal in view, Alix climbed upward, walking rapidly, breathing +hard, and frequently speaking aloud, as some poignant thought +smote her, or standing still, too sick with pain, under an +unexpected rush of emotion, to move. + +Sometimes some small woodland animal scrambled noisily through the +dry brush, in escape, and now and then an owl, perhaps a mile +away, broke the silence with a mournful and muffled cry. Tiny +squeaks and sleepy chirps from birds and chipmunks recognized the +disturbance of a stranger's passage through the wood, and once the +ugly snarling of wild-cats, always alert in the night, sounded +suddenly near, and then died as suddenly away. + +Of these things Alix heard nothing. In a trance of feverish dread +she went on and on, trying to escape from the conviction that grew +momentarily more and more clear. + +"He would have told me about it--why didn't I let him!" ran Alix's +thoughts. "I thought of some older woman, I don't know why-- +anyway, I didn't care so much then. But I care now! Peter, I care +now! I can't give you up, even to Cherry. It is nonsense to talk +of giving him up," Alix told herself, sitting down in the inky +dark, on a log against which her wild walk had suddenly brought +her, "for we are all married people, and we all love each other. +But oh, I am so sorry! I am so sorry, Peter," she whispered, as if +she were speaking to him. "You couldn't help it, I know that. She +is so pretty and so sweet, Cherry--and she turns to you as if you +were her big brother!" + +She sat motionless, her hands clasped, and raised so that her +cheek was pressed against them. For awhile she seemed to have no +thoughts; she was merely vaguely aware that the hands she had +plunged into the pockets of one of Peter's old coats were scented +with tobacco now, and so reminded her of him. She pressed them +hard against her face, as if to ease the pain of her forehead. + +But the thoughts, exactly like a pain, began to creep back. With +choking bitterness it was upon her again, and she got to her feet +and went on. + +"What am I thinking about--it's absurd! Can't people like each +other, in this world, just because they happen to be married! +Peter would be the first to laugh at me. And is it fair to Cherry +even to think that she would-- + +"Oh, but it's true!" the honester impulse interrupted, +mercilessly. "It is true. Whether it's right or wrong, or sensible +or absurd, they DO love each other; that's what has changed them +both." + +And she began to remember a hundred--a thousand--trifles, that +made it all hideously clear. Words, glances, moods subtler than +either, came back to her. Cherry's confusion of late, when the +question of her return to Martin was raised, her indifference to +her inheritance, her restless talk during one hour of immediate +departure, and during the next of an apparently termless visit; +all these were significant now. + +"I am desperately unhappy!" Cherry had said. And immediately after +that, Alix recalled wretchedly, had come a brief and apparently +aimless talk about Alix's rights, and her eagerness to share them +with her sister. + +Cherry had been in misery, of course. Alix knew her too well not +to know with what suffering she would admit that the one desire of +her heart was for something to which Alix had the higher, if not +the stronger, claim. + +"Poor Cherry!" the older sister said aloud, standing still for a +moment, and pressing both hands over her hot eyes. "Poor little +old Cherry--life hasn't been very kind to her! She and Peter must +be so sorry and ashamed about this! And Dad would be so sorry; of +all things he wanted most that Cherry should be happy! Perhaps," +thought Alix, "he realized that she was that sort of a nature, she +must love and be loved, or she cannot live! But why did he let her +marry Martin, and why wasn't he here to keep me from marrying +Peter? What a mess--mess--mess we've made of it all!" + +As she used the term, she realized that Cherry had used it, too, +this same evening, and fresh conviction was added to the great +weight of conviction in her heart. + +"She was thinking of that," Alix told herself, "and it has been in +Peter's mind all these weeks. Oh, Peter--Peter--Peter!" she +moaned, writhing as the cry escaped her. "Why couldn't it have +been me, why couldn't it have been me! Why couldn't you have loved +me that way? I know I am not so pretty as Cherry," Alix went on, +resuming her restless walk, "and I know that those things don't +seem to mean as much to me as to most women! But, Peter," she said +softly, aloud, "no wife ever loved a man more than I love you, my +dear!" She remembered some of his half-laughing, half-fretful +reproaches, when he had told her that she loved him much as she +loved Buck, and that, in these respects, she was no more than a +healthy child. "I may be a child," said Alix, feeling that a dry +flame was consuming her heart, "but a child can love! My dear--my +dear-- + +"I wish I could cry," she said suddenly, finding herself sitting +on a log where low oaks met the forest and the open meadows, and +where they had often paused in mountain climbs to look far across +the panorama of hills and valley below. "But now we must face this +thing sensibly. What is to be done? They must not know that I +know, and in some way we must get out of this tangle. Even if +Peter were free, Cherry would not be free," she decided, "and so +the only thing to do is to help them, until it dies away." + +No suspicion of the truth stabbed her, although she remembered +Martin and his strange tale of a message and wondered about it a +little in her thoughts. To whom had Cherry been sending that +telegram if not to Peter? And if to Peter, why had she not simply +telephoned? Because she had known that Peter was not in his +office, because she had been going to meet him somewhere. But +where? Well, at the boat. Martin had heard her tell the boy that +he must catch that boat. + +Alix did not guess the truth. But she guessed enough to make her +feel frightened and sick. She could not suppose that Cherry and +Peter had planned to go away on that boat together, because at +most her thoughts would have grasped the idea of one or two days' +absence only, and they had given her no warning of that. But until +this instant the thought of the passionate desire that enveloped +them had not reached her; she had imagined Cherry's feeling for +Peter to be something only a little stronger than her own. + +Now she thought of Cherry's beauty, her fragrance and softness, +the shine in her blue eyes and the light on her corn-coloured +hair, and knew that life for them all, of late, had been mined +with frightful danger. + +"Cherry would be disgraced, and Martin--Martin would kill her, if +he found her out! ... Oh, my little sister! She would be town +talk; she is so reckless, she would do anything--she would be a +public scandal, and the papers would have her pictures--Dad's +little yellow-headed Charity! Oh, Dad," she said, looking up into +the dark, "tell me what to do! I need you so! Won't you somehow +tell me what to do!" + +Silence and darkness. But even in the gloom Alix could tell that +fog was lifting, and a sudden sweep of breeze, like a tired +breath, went over the tops of the redwoods. + +Steadily came the change. The darkness, by imperceptible degrees, +lifted. The world grew gray as if with moonshine, trees and bushes +began to stand out dimly from the mass of shadows. On the road +below her Alix heard a wagon rattle, the mud-spattered wagon from +the Portuguese dairy upon the ridge; and past her, leaving a dark +wake of brushed dewdrops on the pearled grass, a cottontail fled +silently. + +She noted with surprise that she could see the grass now, although +it had been invisible a few moments ago. She could see it, and +presently its brownness showed, and the rich, solid green of the +oaks lifted from the dull twilight that had enveloped the world. + +"Light!" Alix whispered, awestruck And a few moments later she +added, "Dawn!" + +It was dawn indeed that was creeping into the valley, and as it +brightened and deepened and warmed momentarily, Alix felt some of +the peace and glory of it swelling in her tired heart. The sky +grew pale, grew white, gradually turned to blue, and the little +clouds drifting across it vanished, lost in a swimming vapour of +pink and pearl. + +Suddenly a first shaft of sunlight struck across the mountain +ridge, and lay bright on the hilltop opposite, the fog that still +clung to the peak of the mountain was steadily ascending into the +brilliant air, dew sparkled, and the hoary, lichened limbs of the +sprawling oaks glistened in the light. The sun came up, and Alix +felt the blessed warmth against her chilled and cramped shoulders, +and stretched her arms out to welcome the flood of brightness and +new courage after the darkness and doubts of the night. + +She was still sitting on the log, dreamily watching the expanding +beauty of the new day, when there was a crashing in the underbrush +behind her, and wild with joy, and with twigs and dried brown +grasses on his wet coat, Buck came bounding out of the forest, and +leaped upon her. + +"Bucky!" she faltered, as he stood beside her, his quick tongue +flashing ecstatically, close to her face, every splendid muscle of +his body wriggling with eager affection. "Did you miss me, old +fellow? Did you come to find me?" + +She had not cried during the long vigil of the night, when a storm +had raged in her heart, and had left her weak and sick with dread. +But there was peace now, and Alix locked her arms about the dog's +shoulders, and laid her face against his satiny head, and cried. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +When Cherry came out to breakfast, a few hours later, she found +Alix already at the porch table. Alix looked pale, but fresh and +trim; she had evidently just tubbed, and she wore one of the +plain, wide-striped ginghams that were extremely becoming to her +rather boyish type. + +She looked up, and nodded at Cherry composedly. Cherry always +kissed her sister in the morning, but she did not to-day. She felt +troubled and ashamed, and instinctively avoided the little caress. + +"No men?" she asked, sharing her grapefruit with her mail. + +"Peter had to go to San Rafael with Mr. Thomas in his car, to do +something about the case," Alix explained. "I drove them down, and +at the last minute Martin decided to go. So I marketed, and got +the mail, and came back, and the understanding is that we are to +meet them at the St. Francis for dinner, at six, and go to the +Orpheum." + +"Is it almost ten?" Cherry said sleepily, gazing in surprise at +the clock that was visible through the open door. "I'm terribly +ashamed! And when did you get up, and silently make your bed, and +hang up your things?" + +"Oh, early!" Alix answered, noncommittally. "I had a bath, and +this is my second breakfast!" + +Cherry, who was reading a letter, did not hear her. Now she made +some inarticulate sound that made Alix look at her in quick +concern. + +"Cherry, what is it?" she exclaimed. + +For answer Cherry tossed her the letter, written on a thick sheet +of lavender paper, which diffused a strong odour of scent. + +"Read that!" she said, briefly. And with a desperate air she +dropped her head on the table, and knotted her hands high above +it. + +Fearfully, Alix picked up the perfumed sheet, and read, in a +coarse and sprawling, yet unmistakably feminine handwriting, the +following words: + +DEAR MRS. LLOYD: Perhaps you would not feel so pleased with +yourself if you knew the real reason why your husband left Red +Creek? It was because of a quarrel he had with Hatty Woods. + +If you don't believe it you had better ask him about some of the +parties he had with Joe King's crowd, and where they were on the +night of August 28th, and if he knows anybody named Hatty Woods, +and see what he says. Ask him if he ever heard of Bopps' Hotel and +when he was in Sacramento last. If he denies it, you can show him +this letter. + +There was no signature. + +Alix, who had read it first with a bewildered and suspicious look, +read it again, and flushed deeply at the sordid shame of it. She +laid it down, and looked in stunned conviction at her sister. + +Cherry, who was breathing hard, raised her head, rested her chin +on her hands, elbows on the table, and stared at Alix defiantly. + +"There!" she said, almost with triumph. "There! Now, is that so +easy? Now, am I to just smile and agree and say 'Certainly, +Martin,' 'Of course, Martin dear!' Now you see--now you see! Now, +am I to bear THAT," she rushed on, her words suddenly violent. +"And go on with him--as his wife--when a common woman like that--" + +"Cherry, dear!" Alix said, distressedly. + +"Ah, well, you can't realize it; nobody but the woman to whom it +happens can!" Cherry interrupted her, covering her face with her +hands. "But let him say what he pleases now," she added, +passionately, "let him do what he pleases--I'll follow my own +course from to-day on!" + +Alix, watching her fearfully, was amazed at the change in her. +Cherry's eyes were blazing, her cheeks pale. Her voice was dry and +feverish, and there was a sort of frenzy in her manner that Alix +had never seen before. To bring sunny little Cherry to this--to +change the radiant, innocent child that had been Cherry into this +bitter and disillusioned woman--Alix felt as if the whole world +were going mad, and as if life would never be sane and serene +again for any one of them. + +"Cherry, do you believe it?" she asked. + +Cherry, roused from a moment of brooding silence, shrugged her +shoulders impatiently. + +"Oh, of course I believe it!" she answered. + +"But, darling, we don't even know who wrote it. We have only this +woman's word for it--" + +"Oh, LOOK at it--LOOK at it, Alix!" Cherry burst forth. "Do DECENT +men have letters like that sent to their wives? Is it probable +that a good man would do anything to rouse some busybody woman to +write such a letter about him?" + +"Well, but who is she, and what do you suppose she wrote it for?" +Alix wondered. + +"Oh, I don't know. She got mad at him, perhaps. Or perhaps she is +a champion of this Woods woman. They had some quarrel--how do _I_ +know? But you can see that she is mad, and this is the way she +gets even!" + +"Cherry, at least do Martin the justice to ask him about it!" Alix +pleaded, really frightened now. + +Her sister seemed not to hear her. She stopped her angry pacing, +and sat down at the table, and the misery in her beautiful eyes +made Alix's heart sink. + +"And that," Cherry said in a whisper, "is my husband!" + +She paused, staring down at the table, one hand supporting her +forehead, the other wandering idly among the breakfast things. Her +look was sombre and far away. Alix, standing, watched her +distressedly, through a long minute of silence. + +"Well!" Cherry said lifelessly, looking up at her sister with +dulled eyes. "What now? It's still 'for better or worse,' I +suppose?" + +Alix sat down, and for a moment covered her face with a tight- +pressed hand. When she took it away, there was new serenity and +resolution in her tired face. + +"No," she said, with a great sigh, "I think perhaps you're right! +He hasn't--he should have no claim on you now!" + +"Alix," Cherry demanded, "would you forgive him?" + +"Perhaps I wouldn't," Alix said, after thought. + +"PERHAPS you wouldn't!" Cherry echoed, incredulously. + +"Well, I'm not very good," Alix said, hesitatingly. "But a vow is +a vow, you know. If it was limited, then my--my fulfillment of it +would be limited, I suppose. Of course," she added, honestly, "I'm +talking for myself only!" + +"And you would quietly forgive and forget!" demanded the little +sister, in bitter scorn. + +"I say I HOPE I would!" Alix corrected her. "Even if this IS +true"--she added, with a glance at the lavender letter--"still, I +suppose the rule of forgiving seventy times seven times--" + +Cherry interrupted her with a burst of bitter and rebellious +weeping. + +"Oh, my God, what shall I do!" she sobbed, with her bright head +dropped on her arm. Alix saw Kow come to the door, look at them +speculatively, and disappear, and thought in her shaken soul that +things in a household were demoralized indeed when pretense before +the servants was no longer maintained. + +"Don't cry, Cherry, Cherry!" she said, her own tears brimming +over. She came to kneel beside her sister, and they locked their +arms about each other, and their wet cheeks touched. "Don't cry, +dear!" she said, tenderly. "It'll all come straight, somehow, and +we'll wonder why we took it so hard!" + +"The thing that breaks--my--heart!" sobbed Cherry, clinging tight, +"is that it is all my fault!" + +"Oh, no; it's not, Cherry. You were too young. And it's only one +of so many thousands of unhappy marriages!" Alix argued, +soothingly. "Now listen to me, Sis," she began briskly, as soon as +Cherry had somewhat regained her composure. "We'll ascertain about +this letter; that's only fair. If Martin denies it--" + +"Of course he'll deny it!" Cherry interrupted, from the bitter +knowledge she had of him. + +Alix again felt daunted for a second by the sheer ugliness and +sordidness of the matter, but she returned to the charge bravely. + +"Suppose we get Peter to ask him," she suggested suddenly. "Peter +has a wonderful way of getting the truth out of people! Poor +Cherry, the very mention of his name makes her wince," Alix +thought, watching her sister sorrowfully. "If Martin can convince +Peter that it is not true, then that makes all the difference in +the world," she added, aloud. "Then you tell Martin frankly that +you have the old house ready to live in, and you want to live +there. He--" + +"He'll never agree to that!" Cherry said, shaking her head. "But +if this is true?" she asked, again indicating the letter. + +"Then tell him that unless he agrees absolutely to a separation," +Alix said, "that you will get a divorce!" + +"And live here, alone, under that sort of a cloud?" Cherry said, +with watering eyes. "Oh, well!" she said, rising, and going toward +the door. "It's horrible--horrible--horrible--whatever I do! What +is your idea--that we should dine, and go to the Orpheum tonight +as if nothing had happened, and let all this wait until you can +ask Peter to cross-examine Martin?" + +"I wonder if Martin would tell ME?" Alix mused. + +"He'd tell you sooner than Peter!" Cherry prophesied. + +"Why couldn't I pretend that I opened that letter by mistake," +Alix said, thoughtfully, "and frighten him into admitting it, if +it's true!" + +"You could," Cherry admitted, lifelessly. "But you may be sure it +is true enough!" she added. + +"Then leave it to me!" Alix said. "And don't feel too sad, Cherry. +You're young, and life may take a turn that changes everything for +you. You always have Peter--Peter and me, back of you!" + +"Alix, you're the best sister a girl ever had!" Cherry said, +passionately, putting her hand on Alix's shoulder. "I wish I were +as big as you are! And he's made me so wretched," whispered +Cherry, with trembling lips, "that sometimes I've been sick of +life! But I will investigate this letter, and if it's not true, +I'll try again, Alix! I'll go away with him, if he wants me to, or +I'll live here--and study French--and go to lectures with you--" + +"You darling!" Alix said, with an aching heart. And they smiled +through tears as they kissed each other. + +That night it was simply managed that Martin should be next to +Alix, in the loge at the theatre, and she began to question him +seriously at once. All through the strange, unnatural day that +followed her night of vigil she had been planning what she should +say to him, but she and Cherry had not spoken of the subject +again. Cherry had dressed herself with her usual dainty care, and +now, with the violets Alix had given her spraying in a great +purple bunch at her breast, and her blue eyes ringed and +thoughtful under her soft little feathered hat, she was so +arrestingly lovely that Alix was well aware of the admiring +glances from all sides to which she was so superbly indifferent. + +"Martin," Alix began, "I read a letter intended for Cherry this +morning. I--I open all the mail!" + +She had to repeat it twice before he realized that there was +something behind her earnest and significant tone. Then she saw +him stop twisting his program, and veer about toward her. She +murmured a question. + +"Do I what?" he asked, in an undertone instantly lowered. + +"Do you know a girl named Hatty Woods?" Alix repeated, cautiously. + +All hope died when she saw his face. He shot her a quick, +suspicious look, and his big mouth trembled with a scornful and +contemptuous smile and he looked away indifferently. Then he faced +her, on guard. + +"What about her?" he asked, almost inaudibly. + +"Somebody wrote this letter about her," Alix stated, quietly. + +"Who wrote you about her? What'd she say?" he demanded quickly. + +"Just--I'll let you see it," she said. "I don't know who wrote it- +-it wasn't signed. Do you--do you know her? Do you know Hatty +Woods?" + +Martin smiled again, a superior yet ugly smile. It was the look of +a man approached in his own realm, threatened in his infallible +fastness. + +"The less you have to do with girls like Hatty, the better!" he +told her. "You've got plenty to do without mixing up with her!" + +"She said--" Alix began. "The letter said--" + +"Oh, sure, I know what she'd say!" Martin conceded, furious at +Alix's interference, trembling with anger and resentment, and only +anxious to close the conversation. "I know all about her and her +kind. I think I know who wrote that letter, too. I guess Joe +King's wife knows something about it. They're all alike! You give +it to me to-morrow and I'll manage it. There won't be any more!" + +"Martin," Alix whispered, gravely, "if you have given Cherry any +cause--" Her voice fell, and there was a silence. + +"There are a great many things in life that you don't understand, +my dear sister-in-law," Martin said reluctantly, nettled, but +still maintaining his air of lofty superiority, "a man's life is +not a woman's--isn't intended to be! If this woman says she has +anything on me--" + +"She said that you went to a place called Bopps' Hotel in +Sacramento--" Alix began, but he interrupted her. + +"Oh, she did, did she?" he said, furiously, yet always in a +cautious undertone. "Well, now, I'll tell you something! She's +going to have a nice time proving that, and you can tell your +sister--if this is a frame-up, that I'll fight Hatty Woods and +fifty Hatty Woods! I--" + +"Martin--for Heaven's sake!" Alix warned him, as she pressed her +violets against her face. + +"Well," he said, surlily, "now you know how I feel about it!" + +"Martin," Alix pleaded, feeling that her last hope was sinking +away from her, "can you deny her story?" + +He was silent, while a beaming young Jewess in an outrageous gown +took an encore for her song and dance. Then he turned again toward +Alix with the smile she had learned to hate. + +"You get Cherry to deny that she's never lost a chance to beat it +away from home ever since she was married," he said. "You get her +to deny that she has said over and over again that she never +wanted children, that her marriage was a mistake! You ask her to +show you the letters I've written her, asking her to come back, +and then I'll show you the answers I got!" + +"Mart," Alix said, sharply, "there's no use in your taking that +tone with me! I'm simply sick over the whole affair. I would do +anything in the world--I would put my hand in the fire to +straighten it out!" + +She paused, arrested by some sudden thought. + +"I tell you I would put my hand in the fire to help," she said +again, in quieter tones. "But taking that attitude will do no +good! If this poor girl, this Hatty--" + +"I tell you to leave Hatty OUT of it!" Martin said. "The best +thing you can do is to let the whole thing alone!" + +But she saw that he was both nervous and apprehensive, and she +knew that the inference she and Cherry had drawn from the letter +was a true one. + +"Does Cherry know anything of this?" Martin presently muttered. + +"Do you want her to?" Alix asked, pointedly. + +He shrugged his shoulders with a great assumption of indifference. + +"If she wants to have it all dragged to light, why, she can go +ahead!" he remarked, carelessly. "I've left Red Creek, and--as I +tell you!--that woman will never write another letter, for I know +the way to shut her up, and I intend to do it. But if you and +Cherry want the whole thing aired in public, why, go ahead! I'm +not stopping you!" + +"At least I think you ought to let Cherry lead her own life after +this!" Alix countered with spirit. + +"Live in your old house, eh?" he asked, resentfully, as he flipped +the pages of his program with a big thumb and stared at it with +unseeing eyes. "What does she want to live there for?" + +"The fact remains that she DOES," Alix persisted. + +"Yes, and have just as good a time as if she never had been +married at all!" he said. + +"You KNOW--" + +Alix was beginning the denial that she had given him so +confidently last night, but she interrupted herself, and stopped +short. The conviction rushed upon her in an overwhelming wave that +she had no right to repeat that denial now that the last dreadful +twenty-four hours had changed the whole situation, and that she +herself had better reason to suspect Cherry than either Martin or +his gossiping aunt. She sat sick and silent, unable to speak +again, thinking only that it was Peter that Mrs. Lloyd had seen +with Cherry that day, and that there must have been something in +their attitude that revealed their secret even to her first casual +look. + +The vaudeville show whirled and crashed and rattled on its way. +Martin applauded heartily but involuntarily; Alix applauded +mechanically. Their conversation was closed. + +Meanwhile, Cherry and Peter had their first opportunity to speak +to each other alone. It occurred to neither of them that it was +strange to find this chance in the rustling darkness of the big +vaudeville house, with several thousand of persons pressing all +about them. To both the thirst for speech was a burning necessity, +and it was with an almost dizzy sense of relief that Cherry turned +to him with her first words. + +"Peter, I don't dare say much! Can you hear me?" + +"Perfectly!" he answered, looking at his folded program. + +"Peter, I've been thinking--about our plan, I mean! Martin plans +to go on Monday. But something has happened since I saw you this +morning, something that makes a difference! I had a letter, a +letter from some woman connecting his name with another woman, a +Hatty Woods--she's notorious in Red Creek--and this Joe King crowd +that he went with--I don't know who wrote the letter, or why she +wrote," she said, hastily, as Peter interpolated a question. "And +I don't care! I haven't spoken to Martin about it. But I've been +thinking about it all day. And of course it makes a difference to +us--to you and me. As far as Martin goes, I am free now; what is +justice to Martin, and kindness to Martin, will never count with +me any more!" + +Peter wasted no words. His face was thoughtful. + +"He goes Monday," he said. "We can go Sunday." + +"Does the boat sail Sunday?" + +"I am sure of it. This is Thursday night. Your suitcase I checked +again yesterday. Was it only yesterday?" + +"That's all!" + +"We would have been on the train to-night, Cherry, flying toward +New Orleans!" + +Her small hand gripped his in the darkness. + +"If we only were!" he heard her breathe. + +He turned to her, so exquisite in her distress. Her breast was +rising and falling quickly. + +"Patience, sweetheart!" he said. "Patience for only a few days +more! To-morrow I'll make the arrangements. Sunday is only two +days off." + +"Sunday will be day after day after to-morrow," she said +whimsically. + +"Is Sunday the best day?" he questioned, thoughtfully. + +"Oh, much the best!" Cherry said, her whole face glowing suddenly. +"You see, it's already arranged that I come in to the Olivers' +Saturday night, and help them get ready for their tea on Sunday. +Alix is to stay in the valley, and play the organ Sunday morning, +and come in with Martin at ten." + +"I suppose I'll have to come when they do!" he mused. + +"But isn't there that breakfast at the club on Sunday?" Cherry +asked. + +"Porter's breakfast--yes. But I'm not going to that," Peter said, +stupidly. + +"Couldn't you say that you were?" she supplied, simply. + +"Yes, by George!" he agreed, brightening. "That fixes me! But now +how about you?" + +"Why, I am at the Olivers'!" she reminded him. "All I have to do +is walk out of the house at ten!" + +Their eyes met in a wild rush of triumph and hope. + +"This time we shall do it!" Peter said. "Your suitcase I'll have. +You have money?" + +"Oh, plenty!" + +"Martin thinks you go with him Monday, eh?" + +"I hardly know what he thinks!" she answered, with a fluttered +air. "I've hardly known what I was doing or saying! He was to go +to-morrow, you know. But I told him that I wanted to get the whole +house in perfect order, in case Alix should ever find a tenant. +We've worked like beavers there!" + +"I know you have!" He smiled down at her, Peter's kind and radiant +smile. "After day after day after to-morrow," he said, "I shall +see to it that you never work too hard again!" + +"Oh, Peter--you'll never be sorry?" she whispered. + +"Sorry! My dearest child, when you give your beauty and your youth +to a man almost twice your age, who has loved you all your life-- +do you think there is much chance of it?" + +"Why SHOULDN'T it be one of the happy--marriages?" said Cherry +after a silence. + +"It will," he answered, confidently. "My dearest girl, I know +something of life and its disappointments and disillusionments! +And I tell you that I know that every hour you and I have together +is going to be more wonderful than the hour before! I tell you +that as the weeks become months, and the months become years, and +the beauty and miracle of it go on and on, we will think that what +we feel for each other now is only the shadow--the dream!" + +"But the beginning will be wonderful enough!" Cherry mused. "You +and I, breakfasting together, walking together, talking together, +always just we two! But, Peter," she said, suddenly, "one of us +might die!" + +"Ah, THAT," he conceded, soberly, "that! It's all I'm afraid of, +now!" + +"I am terribly afraid of it!" said Cherry, beginning to tremble. +"If you should die now, before Sunday! I never thought of it +before--" + +"You mustn't think of it now, and I won't!" he said, quickly. +"Why, we have only two days to wait--!" + +"Only two!" she echoed, nervously. "I promised him to-night that I +would write to his mother about our coming--" + +"You talk as if you meant to go with Martin!" he said, smiling. + +"I know I do, sometimes, and that's one of the things that worries +me!" she answered, quickly. "So many things have happened, and I +get so confused, thinking," she went on, "that I am all mixed most +of the time! I arrange one thing as if I were going to do what +Martin thinks I am--go with him to Portland, I mean--at another +time I'll get into long talks with Alix of what divorces would +mean, and all the time I am straining toward you--and escape from +it all! It worries and frightens and puzzles me so," she confided, +raising her lovely eyes to him, "that I am almost afraid to speak +at all for fear of betraying myself!" + +"Don't speak at all then!" he answered, smiling whimsically. + +"Shall I just let him think I am quietly going away with him on +Monday?" she asked, after a silence in which she was deeply +thinking. + +"Does he know you had that letter?" Peter said. + +"No; Alix is going to speak to him about it." Cherry outlined the +talk that she and her sister had had at breakfast. + +"Then I shouldn't bring up the question at all," Peter decided, +quickly. "It would only mean an ugly and unnecessary scene. If you +were going to be here, it would be very different. Even then you +might have to face a terrible publicity and unpleasantness. But as +it is, it's much wiser to let him continue to think that you don't +know anything about it, and to let Alix think that you are +ignoring the whole thing!" + +"Until Sunday!" she whispered. + +"Until Sunday." Peter glanced at Martin and Alix, who were talking +together absorbedly, in low tones. "My little sweetheart, I'll +make all this misery up to you!" he whispered. Her little hand was +locked in his for the rest of the evening. + +The vaudeville performance ended, and they went out into the cool +night, decided against a supper, found the car where Alix had +parked it in a quiet side street, and made their way to the ferry, +and so home under the dark low arch of a starless and moonless +sky. Cherry shared the driver's seat with her sister to-night; +they spoke occasionally on the long drive; everybody was weary and +silent. Alix, racing between Sausalito's low hills and the dark, +odorous marshes, wondered if in the packed theatre any other four +hearts had borne the burden that these four were bearing. + +The car flew on its way; the men, in the back seat, occasionally +exchanged brief, indifferent remarks. Cherry, staring straight +ahead of her, neither moved nor spoke, and Alix, at the wheel, +watching the road and the lights keenly, and listening to the +complicated breathing of the machinery, resumed again the endless +chain of thought. Peter--Cherry--Martin--Dad--the few people with +whom her life concerned wheeled in unceasing confusion through her +brain, and always it was herself, Alix, who would have died for +them, who must somehow find the solution. + +Morning came, a crystal autumn morning, and life went on. Peter +and Martin went away before Cherry came out to the porch, to find +her breakfast waiting, and Alix, in striped blue linen, cutting +food for the ducks. The peaceful day went by, and if there was any +change at the cabin it was a change for the better. Alix, who had +been silent and troubled for a little while, was more serene now, +as usual concerned for the comfort of her household, and as usual +busy all day long with her poultry and pigeons, her bee-keeping, +stable, and dogs. Peter was his courteous, gentle, interested +self, more like the old Peter, who had always been occupied with +his music and his books, than like the passionately metamorphosed +Peter who had been so changed by love for Cherry. Martin, +satisfied with the general respects and consideration with which +he found himself surrounded, accepted life placidly enough; +perhaps he had been disturbed by the advent of the letter, perhaps +he was willing to let the question of an adjustment between Cherry +and himself rest. If she had been innocently indiscreet, he had +also yielded to temptation, not so innocently, and although Martin +was not a man to consider the question of morals between the sexes +as evenly balanced, still he had winced very uncomfortably under +Alix's cross-examination, and was not anxious to reopen the +subject. "Let by-gones be by-gones!" Martin said to himself, +contentedly, as he ate, slept, and smoked his endless cigars, +chatted with Peter, followed Alix about the farmyard, and +expressed an occasional opinion that was considerately received by +the others. It amused him to help get the house ready for a +tenant, and from the fact that Cherry talked no more of living +there, and made no comment upon his frequent reference to their +departure on Monday, he deduced that she had come to her senses. + +Cherry, too, was less unhappy than she had been. By avoiding +Peter, by refraining even in words and looks from the +companionship for which she so hungered by devoting herself to +Alix, she managed to hold her feelings tightly in leash. It cost +her dear, for sometimes the thought of what she was about to do +swept her with a feeling of agony and faintness hard to conceal, +and the need for perpetual watchfulness was exhausting to body and +spirit. But even though Alix found that the knowledge of the +secret they shared without ever mentioning stood between them like +a screen, the sisters, busy about the house, had wonderful hours +together. + +Saturday came, a perfect day that filled the little valley to the +brim with golden sunshine. The mountain swam in a pale haze of +gray-blue, the sky was soft, unclouded, faintly azure. In the +forest about the old Strickland house not a breath of air stirred. +Alix, driving alone to the mountain cabin, stared in the morning +freshness at the blue overhead and said aloud, "Oh, what a day of +gold!" + +The dog, sitting beside her on the front seat, flapped his tail in +answer to her voice, and she laughed at him. But the laugh was +quickly followed by a sharp sigh. + +"Saturday," she mused, "and Martin expects Cherry to go with him +on Monday! Expects her to go back with him to a life of misery for +her, existence with a man she hates! Oh, Cherry--my little +sister!--there can be no happiness for you there! And Peter! Peter +is left behind to me, who cannot comfort him, or still the ache +that is tearing his heart! My two loved ones, and what can I do to +help them!" + +Driving slowly, on the noiseless pine-needles, she looked up at +the great, brown shafts of the trees through which the roadway +wound like a shelf. Streaks of sunlight filtered through them; the +September air was soft and sweet. The forest was like an old +friend to Alix, and the time she spent in it was always her +quietest time. The tempered light, the air scented with piney +sweetness, the delicate summer humming of tiny forest voices, the +brief snap of twigs, and the rustling of tiny bodies in the +underbrush, these made the world in which she was most at home. + +"Oh, why can't we always be like children, just happy to be free!" +she mused, as she left the forest and came in sight of the cabin. +"How happy we used to be, playing in these woods and going home +tired and hungry to Dad and supper! Buck," she said aloud, "a dog +is happier than a man, and perhaps"--and Alix smiled her whimsical +smile, as the car moved under the last oaks and was brought to a +standstill close to the house--"perhaps a tree is the happiest of +all!" + +She had come up to the cabin to do the usual last little daily +fussing among the ducks and chickens and to bring Peter, if Peter +had not gone into town, back with her to Cherry's house. They had +all dined in the old Strickland house the night before, and +because of a sudden rainfall had decided to spend the night there, +too. The Chinese boy who had been helping the sisters with their +housecleaning had been persuaded to cook the dinner and get +breakfast, and the evening about the old fireplace had been almost +too poignantly sweet. Martin, who had been mixing cocktails, liked +the role of host, and to the other three every inch of the house +was full of happy memories, softened and saddened by all that had +happened since the old days, by all that they knew and felt now, +and accompanied by the softly dripping rain on the roof and eaves +as by a plaintive obbligato. + +But suddenly, at about ten o'clock, Peter had surprised them all +by getting to his feet. He was going up to the cabin, he said-- +must go, in fact. + +"In all the rain!" they had protested. + +"In all the rain," he answered, shaking himself into his coat; he +liked rain. He would rather walk, please, he told Alix, when she +offered to drive him up in the car. Bewildered and a little +apprehensive, she let him go. To Cherry, who seemed to feel +suddenly sad and uneasy, Alix laughed about it, but she was +secretly worried herself, and immediately after breakfast the next +morning decided to run up to the cabin in the car and assure +herself that everything was right there. + +Cherry, who had not slept and who was pale, had come out to the +car, her distracted manner increasing Alix's sense that something +was gravely amiss. The sisters had loitered at the car a moment in +the exquisite morning freshness. + +"Remember the day the rose vine came down and you crawled through +it?" Alix had asked, looking back at the house. + +"Oh, don't!" Cherry had protested faintly. + +"Why not?" her sister had asked, tenderly reproachful. + +"Oh, because it makes me so sad to think how happy we were!" +Cherry had answered, making an effort to speak lightly. "It's such +a glorious morning," she had added, "I wish I were going to drive +up with you." + +"Why don't you?" Alix had said, eagerly. + +"Oh--too much to do here!" Cherry had answered, vaguely. She had +looked at her sister as if she would like to speak, smiled +uncertainly, and had gone back to the house. Alix had started on +her trip with a heavy heart, but the half-hour's run soothed her +in spite of herself, and now she reached the cabin in a much more +cheerful mood. + +Peter was nowhere about, and as she plunged into the work of house +and farmyard she supposed, without giving the matter a conscious +thought, that he had gone to the city. + +"Mis' Peter not go train," Kow announced, presently. + +All Alix's vague suspicions awakened. + +"Not go train?" she asked, with a premonitory pang. + +Kow made a large gesture, as indicating affairs disorganized. + +"Him no go to bed," he further stated. + +Alix stopped the busy chopping that she was carrying on at the end +of the kitchen table, and looked at the Chinese boy fearfully. + +"Mr. Peter not go to bed?" she echoed with a sick heart. + +"No sleep!" Kow announced, positively. And pleased with her tense +interest, he added, "Boss come late. He walkin' on porch." + +"He came in late and walked on the porch!" Alix echoed in a low +tone, as if to herself. "And you say he didn't sleep, Kow?" + +"Bed all same daytime," the boy said. And with the artless laugh +of his race he added, "_I_ go sleep." + +"You slept, of course," Alix answered, absently. "Where Mr. Peter +go now?" she asked. "He have some coffee?" + +"No eat," the boy answered. He indicated the direction of the +creek, and after a while Alix, with an icy heart, went to the +bridge and the pool where Peter had first found Cherry only a few +weeks ago. + +He was standing, staring vaguely at the low and lisping stream, +and Alix felt a great pang of pity when she saw him. He came to +her smiling, but as Cherry had smiled, with a wan and ghastly +face. + +"Peter, you're not well?" Alix said. "I think--I am a little +upset," he answered. They walked back to the house together. Alix +ordered him to take a hot bath, and made him drink some coffee, +when, refreshed and grateful, he came out to the porch half an +hour later. They shared the little meal that was her luncheon and +his breakfast. + +"And now we've got to go down and get the others, for they're +coming up here for dinner," Alix said. "Do you--do you feel up to +tennis?" she asked, anxiously. + +"Sure I do!" Peter answered with an effort. + +"Don't have to, you know," she assured him, feeling a great +desolation sweep her. + +"Oh, I'd like it. It's a wonderful day," he answered, politely. + +He followed her to the car and got in the front seat beside her. + +"You're awfully good to me," he said, briefly, when they were +going down the long grade. + +Alix did not answer immediately, and he thought that she had not +heard. She ran the big machine through the valley, where the dry, +glaring heat of the day burned mercilessly, stopped at the post- +office, and still in silence began the climb toward the old house. +The roads were all narrow here, but she could have followed them +in the dark, he knew, and he understood that it was not her +driving that made her face so thoughtful and kept her eyes from +meeting his. + +On one side of the shelf-like mountain road rose the sharp +hillside, clothed in close-packed, straight-rising redwoods; on +the other the ground fell away so precipitously to the tiny thread +of creek below that they looked down upon the water through the +top branches of the trees. Years ago, when he had first entrusted +her with the car, Peter had been somewhat concerned for Alix's +safely, but now he was secretly proud of her sureness of touch and +of the generosity and self-confidence that prompted her to give +the inner right of way to every lumbering express van or surrey +that she met, and risk the more dangerous passing herself. + +"You say I'm good to you, Pete," she surprised him by saying +suddenly. "I hope I am. For you've been very good to me, my dear. +There's only one thing in life now that I haven't got, and want. +And that, you can't, unfortunately, get for me." + +He had flushed darkly, and he spoke with a little effort. + +"I'd like to try!" + +She ignored the invitation for a few minutes, and for an instant +of panic he thought he saw her lip tremble. But when she turned to +him, it was with her usual smile. + +"It's only that I would like to have you--and--and Martin--and +Cherry, as happy as I am!" she said, quickly. And a second later +the mood was gone as she turned the car in at the home gate and +exclaimed, "There's Cherry now!" + +There was Cherry; Peter's heart gave a leap at the sight of her. +Just a woman's slender figure, half obscured by blowing lines of +fresh, dry linen, just white arms, where the snowy frill of her +gown fell back, and blue eyes under bright, loose, corn-coloured +hair, but Peter could see nothing else in all the world. + +"Martin's somewhere about," Cherry said, as Peter joined her, and +Alix stopped the car within conversational range. "I was passing +these, and I thought I'd help the boy get his clothes in." + +"Here, let me do that," Peter exclaimed. Alix remarking that she +would turn the car so that she might later start on the grade, +disappeared, and the two were alone with their arms full of the +stiff and fragrant cleanness of the linen in the sweetness of the +afternoon. + +"Just--just fold them roughly," stammered Cherry, hardly conscious +of what she was saying, "and put them in the basket--" + +Peter did not hear the words. But he heard the wonderful voice; he +saw the red sweetness of the mouth, saw the quick glances of the +averted eyes, the white neck with its film of gold hair blowing +across it. + +He murmured something inarticulate in reply, trying to control the +great wave of happiness and emotion that rose over him. They were +together again, after what a night--and what a day!--and that was +all that mattered. They spoke confusedly, in brief monosyllables, +and were silent, their hands touching on the line, their eyes +meeting only furtively and briefly. + +"Can you walk up to the cabin with me?" Peter asked. "I want so +much to speak to you. Everything's all arranged for tomorrow. I've +got tickets and reservations. Your suitcase is checked in the +Oakland ferry waiting-room. All you have to think of is yourself. +Now, in case of missing the boat again--which isn't conceivable, +but we must be ready for anything!--I shall go straight to the +club. You must telephone me there. Just go off to-night quietly, +get as much sleep as you can, and keep your wits about you." + +"Tell me our plans again," Cherry faltered. + +"It's perfectly simple," he said, giving her anxious face a +concerned glance. "You are going to the Olivers'. I go in, in the +morning, presumably for the Porter breakfast, but really to get +your suitcase and my own and get to the boat. I shall be there at +half-past ten. You get there well before eleven--you won't see me. +But go straight on board, and ask for Mrs. Joyce's cabin. Wait for +me there!" + +"But--but suppose you don't come!" + +"I'll be there before you. It is better for us not to meet +upstairs. But to be sure, I'll telephone you at Minna Oliver's at +about nine o'clock tomorrow morning. I'll just tell you that I'm +on my way and that everything is all right! Have you your heavy +coat?" + +"I will have," she answered. "I've not got much in the suitcase," +she added with an enchanting flush. + +"You shall buy more in New Orleans on Tuesday," he promised her. +"I've made no plans beyond that." + +"A hat?" Cherry asked, with uplifted, silky lashes giving a +childish look to her blue eyes. + +Peter, tightening his fingers on hers, gave a great, joyous laugh +of utter surprise and adoration, as, leaning toward her, he caught +her bashful murmur. + +"You need that?" he whispered. + +"Well--MOST" she answered, seriously. + +"Do you realize," he asked, "that you are the most delicious child +that ever lived?" + +"No, I don't know that," she said, drooping her head, suddenly +self-conscious. + +"Do you realize that by this time tomorrow we shall be out at +sea," he added, "leaning on the rail--watching the Pacific race +by--and belonging to each other forever and ever?" + +The picture flooded her face with happy colour. "It's tomorrow at +last!" she said, wonderingly, as they walked slowly toward the +house. "I thought it would never be. It's only a few hours more +now." + +"How will you feel when it's TO-DAY?" he asked. + +"Oh, Peter, I shall be so glad when it's all over, and when the +letters are written, and when we've been together for a year," she +answered, fervently. "I know it will be all as we have planned, +but--but if it were over!" + +They had reached the side door now, and were mounting the three +steps together. + +"Be patient until tomorrow," he whispered. + +"Oh," she said softly, "I shan't breathe until tomorrow." + +Leaning across her to push back the light screen door, he found +himself face to face with Alix. In the dark entryway Peter and +Cherry had not seen her, had not heard her move. Peter cursed his +carelessness; he could not remember, in the utter confusion of the +moment, just what he and Cherry had said, but if it was of a +betraying nature, they had betrayed themselves. One chance in a +hundred that she had not heard! + +Yet, if she was acting, she was acting superbly. Cherry had turned +scarlet and had given him an open glance of consternation, but +Alix did not seem to see it. She addressed Peter, but when he +found himself physically unable to answer, she continued the +conversation with no apparent consciousness of his stumbling +effort to appear natural. + +"There you are! Are we going to have any tennis? It's after two +o'clock now." + +"Two seventeen," Martin said, following her out of the house and +slipping his big watch back into his pocket. They all gathered in +one of the reclaimed garden paths, assuming a deep interest in the +time. + +"I had no idea it was so late," Peter said. + +"I knew it was getting on," Cherry added, utterly at random. + +"Go in and tell the boy we won't be back until tomorrow," Martin +suggested to his wife. "Unless you told him, Alix?" he added, +turning toward her. + +"I beg your pardon?" Her face was very pale, and she started as if +from deep thought as she spoke. + +"You could all come down here to sleep," Cherry said, "and have +breakfast here!" + +"I have to go into town rather early tomorrow," Peter remarked. +"Porter's giving a breakfast at the Bohemian Club." + +"Why not walk up to the cabin?" Cherry suggested in a shaking +voice. + +"I have to take the car up. You three walk! Come on, anybody who +wants to ride!" Alix said. + +"They can walk," Martin said, getting into the front seat. "Me for +the little old bus!" + +Cherry came out of the house with her hat on, and Buck leaped +before her into the back seat. Alix watched her as she stepped up +on the running board, and saw the colour flicker in her beautiful +face. + +"I thought you were going to walk?" Peter said, nervously. He had +sauntered up to them with an air of indifference. + +"Shall I?" faltered Cherry. She looked at Alix, who had not yet +climbed into the car and was pulling on her driving gloves. Alix, +toward whose face the dog was making eager springs, did not appear +interested, so Cherry turned to Martin. "Walk with us, Mart?" she +said. + +"Nix," Martin said, comfortably, not stirring. + +"I'll be home before you, Pete, and wait for you," Alix said. She +looked at him irresolutely, as if she would have added more, but +evidently decided against it and spoke again only in reference to +the dog. "Keep Buck with you, will you, Pete?" she said. "He's +getting too lazy. No, sir!" she reproached the animal +affectionately. "You shall not ride! Well, the dear old Bucky-boy, +does he want to come along?" + +And she knelt down and put her arms about the animal, and laid her +brown cheek against his head. + +"You old fool!" she said, shaking him gently to and fro. "You've +got to stay with Peter. Old Buck--!" Suddenly she was on her feet +and had sprung into her place. + +"Hold him, Pete!" she said. "Goodbye, Sis dear! All right, +Martin?" + +The engine raced; the car slipped smoothly into gear and vanished. +Peter and Cherry stood looking at each other. + +"Give them a good start, or Buck will catch them," Peter said, his +body swaying with the frantic jumping of the straining dog. But to +himself he said, with a sense of shock: "Alix knows!" + +Buck was off like a rocket when he finally set him free; his +feathery tail disappeared between the columns of the redwoods. +Without speaking, Cherry and Peter started after him. + +"And now that we are alone together," Cherry said, after a few +minutes, "there seems to be nothing to say! We've said it all." + +"Nothing to say!" Peter echoed. "Alix knows," he said in his +heart. + +"Whatever we do, it all seems so--wrong!" Cherry said with +watering eyes. + +"Whatever we do is wrong," he agreed, soberly. + +"But we go?" she said on a fluttering breath. + +"We MUST go!" Peter answered. And again, like the ominous fall of +a heavy bell-tongue, the words formed in his heart: "Alix knows. +Alix knows." + +He thought of the afternoon, only a few weeks ago, when Cherry's +beauty had made so sudden and so irresistible an appeal to him, +and of the innocent delight of their luncheons together, when she +had first confided in him, and of the days of secret and intense +joy that her mere nearness and the knowledge that he would see her +had afforded him. It had all seemed so fresh, so natural, so +entirely their own affair, until the tragic day of Martin's +reappearance and the hour of agonized waiting at the boat for the +Cherry who did not come. There had been no joyous self-confidence +in that hour, none in the distressed hour at the Orpheum, and the +hour just past, when Cherry's rarely displayed passion had +wrenched from him his last vestige of doubt. + +But this was the culminating unhappiness, that he should know, +from Alix's brave and gentle and generous look as they parted, +that Alix knew. He had, in the wild rush and hurry of his +thoughts, no time now to analyze what their love must mean to her, +but it hurt him to see on her happy face those lines of sternness +and gravity, to see her bright and honest eyes shadowed with that +new look of pain. + +It was too late now to undo it; he and Cherry must carry their +desperate plan to a conclusion now, must disappear--and forget. +They had tried, all this last dreadful week, they had both tried, +to extinguish the flames, and they had failed. But to Peter there +was no comforting thought anywhere. Wrong would be done to Martin, +to Alix, to Cherry--and more than even these, wrong to himself, to +the ideal of himself that had been his for so many years, to the +real Peter Joyce. + +"If I had it all to do over again, I should not come here," Cherry +began, breathlessly. + +"Ah, if we had it all to do over again!" Looking back half a dozen +years, how simple it all seemed! How uncomplicated life was, in +those old days when the doctor and his girls had teased him, and +consulted him, and made him one of themselves. "What a web, +Cherry!" he said, sadly. "If Anne hadn't made her claim, you would +not have been kept here all these weeks; if the financial question +hadn't been raised, you must have stayed in Red Creek, simply +because you couldn't well have done anything else." + +"And if I had been with Martin, this horrible business of that +girl's letter wouldn't have happened," she added, bravely. "Oh, +yes--that's quite true!" she interrupted him, as he interpolated a +bitter protest. "Mart has no particular principle about it, but he +never would have got in with that crowd if I had been there. So +that once more," she ended, sadly, "I can say that I have made a +mess of things. Listen, that's Buck!" she interrupted herself, as +the dog's loud and violent barking reached them from beyond a turn +in the twisting road. "He didn't catch them, then." + +The next instant a woman came up the road, running, and making a +queer, whimpering noise that Cherry never forgot. She was a +stranger to them, but she ran toward them, making the odd, gasping +noise with much dry mouthing, and with wild eyes. + +Horror was in her aspect, and horror was the emotion that the +first glimpse of her awakened vaguely in their hearts, but as she +saw them she suddenly found voice for so hideous a scream that +Cherry's knees failed her, and Peter sprang forward with a shout. + +He gripped the woman's arm, and her frantic eyes were turned to +him. + +"Oh, my God!" she cried in a hoarse, cawing voice. "My God! +They're over the bank--they're over the bank!" + +"Who?" Peter shouted, his heart turning to ashes. + +"Oh, the car--the automobile!" the woman mouthed. "Oh, my God--I +saw it go! I saw it fall! Oh, God, save them-oh, God, take them, +don't let them suffer that way!" + +They were all running now, running with desperate speed down the +long road, about the curves, on and on toward the frantic noise of +the dog's barking, and toward another noise, the sound of a human +voice twisted and wild with agony. + +The strange woman was crying out wildly; Cherry was sobbing a +prayer. Peter, without knowing that he spoke at all, was repeating +over and over again the words: "Not Alix-my God!--it cannot be-- +she has never had an accident before-not Alix!" + +A last curve, and they knew. Over one of the sharpest and ugliest +of the descending precipices, crashing down through the saplings +and underbrush and striking the trunks of a score of trees on its +way, the heavy car had fallen like a boulder. And Peter saw that +it was Alix's car, and with a great cry he sprang over the bank +and, slipping and stumbling, followed its mad course down almost +to the dry creek-bed in the canyon, and fell on his knees beside +the huddled figure that, erect and strong, in its striped blue +gingham, had been Alix only a few short minutes ago. + +She had been flung clear of the car, and although almost every +bone in her body was broken, by some miracle the face, except for +a deep cut where the brown hair met the tanned forehead, was +untouched. And as he caught her in his arms and bent over her with +the bitterness of death stopping his own heart, a soft, thick +braid loosened and fell like the touch of her hand upon his own, +and it seemed to him that in the tranquil face and in the very +look of the closed and fast-shadowing eyelids he caught a glimpse +of Alix's old smile. + +Peter forgot everything else in the world. He held her close to +him and put his face against her face, and perhaps she had never +so truly been his own as in this moment of their parting, when the +quiet autumn woodland, shot with long shafts from the sinking sun, +rang with his bitter cry: + +"No, Alix--not dead! My wife--my wife!" + +There were other men and women gathering fast now, and the whole +little valley was beginning to ring with the tragedy. After a +while some sympathetic man touched Peter on the arm to say that +Mrs. Lloyd had fainted, and that if he would please tell them what +to do about the other man--he was not yet dead-- + +Peter roused himself, and with help from half a dozen hands on all +sides he carried Alix up to the road and laid her upon a motor +robe that some kindly spectator had spread in the deep dust. AH +about he heard the quick, horrified breathing and muttering of the +shocked and sympathetic neighbours who had gathered, but to him +there was a brassy light in the world and a hideous taste of inky +bitterness in the very air he breathed, and he recognized nobody. + +Presently he was conscious that a small, slight woman with +disorderly fair hair and with her face streaked with dust and +tears was standing beside him, and looking down at her, he saw +that it was Cherry. + +"Yes, Cherry?" he said, moistening his dry lips. + +"Peter," she said, "they say Martin's living--he was screaming--" +She grew deathly pale, and faintness swept over her, but she +mastered it. "He was caught by that tree," she said. "And he is +living. Will you tell them--tell one of these men--that if he will +help me, we can drive him home. If you'll tell him that, then I'll +get a doctor--" + +"Yes, I will," Peter said, not stirring. His eyes had the look of +a sleep-walker; he nodded slowly and gravely at her, like a very +old man. "You--" he said to a man who had stopped his car near by +and who was pressing sympathetically close. "Will you--?" + +"If you'll sit in the back seat, dear, and just rest his poor +head," a woman said to Cherry. Peter saw that they were lifting +Martin's big, senseless form in tender hands and carrying it +through the little group. There was a shudder as Martin moaned +deeply. Peter went and sat on the low bank by Alix again, and +lifted one of her limp hands, and held it. Ah, if in God's mercy +and goodness she might moan, he thought, that one slight ray of +hope would flood all the world with light for him again! But she +did not stir. + +"Gone?" said Cherry's heartrending voice, a mere whisper, beside +him. + +He turned upon her lifeless eyes. + +"Gone," he echoed. + +"Oh, Alix--my darling! My own big sister!" + +Cherry sobbed, falling to her knees and passionately kissing the +peaceful face. "Oh, Alix, dearest!" + +The women about broke into tears. Peter pressed his hand close +against his aching eyeballs, wishing that he might cry. + +"She drove here," he heard a man's voice saying in the silence, +"and she must have lost control of her car for a minute. Then--do +you see?--the wheel slipped on the bank. Once it got this far, no +power in God's earth--" + +"No power in God's earth!" another man's voice said in solemn +confirmation. + +"Peter," Cherry said, "will you come to me as soon as you can? I +shall need you." + +"As soon as I can," he answered, absently. + +The car drove away, and he heard Martin moan again as it moved. + +"Joyce," said a man's kind voice close beside him. He recognized +the voice rather than the distressed face of an old friend and +neighbour. "Joyce, my dear fellow," he urged, affectionately, +"tell us what we may do, and we'll see to it. Pull yourself +together, my dear old chap. Now, shall I telephone for an--an +ambulance? You must help us just a little here, and then we'll +spare you everything else." + +"Thank you, Fred," Peter answered after a moment, during which he +looked seriously and studiously at his friend, as if ascertaining +through unseen mists and barriers the identity of the speaker. +"Thank you," he said. "Will you help me take--my wife--home?" + +"You wish it that way?" the other man said, anxiously. + +"Please," Peter answered, simply. And instantly there was moving +and clearing in the crowd, a murmuring of whispered directions. + +After a while they were at the mountain cabin, and Kow, with tears +running down his yellow face, was helping them. Then Peter and his +friend were walking up over the familiar trails, he hardly knew +where, in the late twilight, and then they went into the old +living room, and Alix was lying there, splendid, sweet, untouched, +with her brave, brown forehead shadowed softly by her brown hair, +and her lashes resting upon her cheeks, and her fingers clasped +about the stems of three great, creamy roses. + +There were other flowers all about, and there were women in the +room. White draperies fell with sweeping lines from the merciful +veiling of the crushed figure, and Alix might have been only +asleep, and dreaming some heroic dream that lent that secret pride +and joy to her mouth and filled those closed eyes with a triumph +they had never known in life. + +Peter stood and looked down at her, and the men and women drew +back. But although the muscles of his mouth twitched, he did not +weep. He looked long at her, while an utter silence filled the +room, and while twilight deepened into dark over the cabin and +over the mountain above it. + +Something cold touched his hand, and he heard the dog whimper. +Without turning his head or moving his eyes from Alix's face, he +pressed his fingers on the silky head; his breast rose on one +agonized breath, but he controlled it. Buck was as still as his +master, sensing, in unfailing dog-fashion, that something was +wrong. + +"So that was your way out, Alix?" Peter said in the depth of his +soul. "That was your solution for us all? You would go out of +life, away from the sunshine and the trees and the hills that you +loved, so that Cherry and I should be saved? I was blind not to +see it. I have been blind from the very beginning." + +Silence. The room was filling with shadows. On the mantel was a +deep bowl of roses that he remembered watching her cut--was it +yesterday or centuries ago? + +"I was wrong," he said. "But I think you would be sorry to have me +face--what I am facing now. You were always so forgiving, Alix; +you would be the first to be sorry." + +He put his hand over the tigerish pain that was beginning to reach +his heart. His throat felt thick and choked, and still he did not +cry. + +"An hour ago," he said, "if it had been that the least thought of +what this meant to you might have reached me an hour ago, it would +not have been too late. Alix, one look into your eyes an hour ago +might have saved us all! Fred," Peter said aloud, with a bitter +groan, clinching tight the hands of the old friend who had crept +in to stand beside him "Fred, she was here, in all her health and +joy and strength only today. And now--" + +"I know--old man--" the other man muttered. He looked anxiously at +Peter's terrible face. In the silence the dog whimpered faintly. +But when Peter, after an endless five minutes, turned away, it was +to speak to his friend in an almost normal voice. + +"I must go down and see Cherry, Fred. She took her husband to the +old house; they were living there." + +"Helen will stay here," the man assured him, quickly. "I'll drive +you down and come back here. We thought perhaps a few of us could +come here to-morrow afternoon, Peter," he added timidly, with his +reddened eyes filling again, "and talk of her a little, and pray +for her a little, and then take her to--to rest beside the old +doctor--" + +"I hadn't thought about that," Peter answered, still with the air +of finding it hard to link words to thought. "But that is the way +she would like it. Thank you--and thank Helen for me--" + +"Oh, Peter, to do anything--" the woman faltered. "She came to us, +you know, when the baby was so ill--day after day--my own sister +couldn't have been more to us!" + +"Did she?" Peter asked, staring at the speaker steadily. "That was +like her." + +He went out of the house and got into a waiting car, and they +drove down the mountain. Alix had driven him over this road day +before yesterday--yesterday--no, it was today, he remembered. + +"Thank God I don't feel it yet as I shall feel it, Thompson!" he +said, quietly. The man who was driving gave him an anxious glance. + +"You must take each day as it comes," he answered, simply. + +Peter nodded, folded his arms across his chest, and stared into +the early dark. There was no other way to go than past the very +spot where the horror had occurred, but Thompson told his wife +later that poor Joyce had not seemed to know it when they passed +it. Nor did he give any evidence of emotion when they reached the +old Strickland house and entered the old hallway where Cherry had +come flying in, a few short years ago, with Martin's first kiss +upon her lips. + +Two doctors, summoned from San Francisco, were here, and two +nurses. Martin had been laid upon a hastily moved bed in the old +study, to be spared the narrow stairs. The room was metamorphosed, +the whole house moved about it as about a pivot, and there was no +thought but for the man who lay, sometimes moaning and sometimes +ominously still, waiting for death. + +"He cannot live!" whispered Cherry, ghastly of face, and with the +utter chaos of her soul and brain expressed by her tumbled frock +and the carelessly pushed back and knotted masses of her hair. +"His arm is broken, Peter, and his leg crushed--they don't dare +touch him! And the surgeon says the spine, too--and you see his +head! Oh, God! it is so terrible," she said in agony, through shut +teeth, knotting her hands together, "it is too terrible that he is +breathing NOW, that life is there NOW, and that they cannot hold +it!" + +She led Peter into the sitting room, where the doctors were +waiting. The nurses came and went; the lamps had been lighted. +Both the physicians rose as Peter came in, and he knew that they +had been told that this was the man whose wife had been killed +that day. Their manner expressed the sympathy they did not voice. +Peter sat down with them. + +"Is there any hope?" he asked, when Cherry had gone away on one of +the restless, unnecessary journeys with which she was filling the +endless hours. One man shook his head, and in the silence they +heard Martin groan. + +"It is possible he may weather it, of course," the older man said, +doubtfully. "He is coming out of that first stupor, and we may be +able to tell better in a short time. The fact that he is living at +all indicates a tremendous vitality." + +Thoughtfully and gravely they exchanged technical phrases. +Cherry's Chinese boy brought in a tray, and both the other men ate +and drank. Peter nodded a negative without a change of expression, +but presently he roused himself to replenish the fire. The clock +ticked and ticked in the stillness. + +Cherry came to the door to say "Doctor!" on a burst of tears. The +physicians departed at once to the study, and Peter was +immediately summoned to assist them in handling the big frame of +the patient. Martin was thoroughly conscious now; his face chalk +white. Cherry, agonized, knelt beside the bed, her frightened eyes +moving from face to face. + +There was a brief consultation, then Cherry and Peter were +banished. + +"Don't worry, dear," said one of the nurses, coming out of the +sick-room. "It's just that Doctor Henry thinks he would be more +comfortable if we could get the arm and leg set! You see, now that +he's conscious and is running just a little temperature--" + +"Much fever?" Cherry asked, sharply. + +"Oh, nothing at all, dear!" the nurse hastened to say. "The only +thing is, that setting the arm and leg will ease the pain and save +his strength." She bustled off for basins, bandages, and hot +water. In the silence Martin's groans occasionally broke. + +Cherry, her eyes on the study door, stood biting her fingers in +frenzy. When from the sound of Martin's voice she realized that he +was being hurt, she looked at Peter in agony. + +"Oh, why do they do that--why do they do that? Torturing him for +nothing!" he heard her whisper. "Go in and--go in and do +something!" she urged, incoherently. + +But the sounds had stopped, and there was a blessed interval of +silence. The clock on the mantel sounded eight in swift, silvery +strokes, and presently a sympathetic nurse came silently in with a +tray holding two cups of hot soup. Cherry shut her eyes and shook +her head. + +"Please, Cherry--you need it!" Peter pleaded, carrying her a +smoking cup. She protested again with a gesture, looked wearily +into his eyes, and drank the soup docilely, like a child. + +"You, too, Peter!" she said, suddenly rousing herself. Peter +gulped down his own cupful, waved away the sandwiches that were on +the tray, and took the chair opposite the one in which Cherry was +sitting. + +The clock presently struck the half-hour, but neither spoke. +Cherry's pallor, her air of fatigue and bewilderment, and the +familiar setting of the old environment made her seem a child +again. Peter watched her with a confused sense that the whole +frightful day had been a dream. Once she looked up and met his +eyes. + +"He can't live," she said in a whisper. + +"Perhaps not," Peter answered very low. Cherry returned to her +sombre musing. + +"We didn't see this end to it, did we?" she said with a pitiful +smile after a long while. + +"Oh, no--NO!" Peter said, shutting his eyes, and with a faint, +negative movement of his head. + +"We wouldn't have had this happen--" Cherry began. Her lips +trembled, her whole face wrinkled, and she put her hand across her +eyes and pressed it there with a gesture of forlornness and sorrow +that wrenched Peter's heart. Her tears began to fall fast. + +"Poor Cherry--if I could spare you all this!" he said, knotting +his fingers and feeling for the first time the prick of bitter +tears against his eyelids. + +"Oh, there is nothing you can do," she said faintly and wearily +after a while. And she whispered, as if to herself, "Nothing-- +nothing--nothing!" + +Then there was silence again. The lamps burned softly; the fire +sucked and flickered; a chilling air, full of autumn sadness, +began to creep from the corners of the room. Peter's eyes moved +over the backs of the old books, Dickens and Thackeray and the +"Household Book of Verse," moved to the faded photograph of +Cherry's mother on the mantel, a beautiful woman in the big +sleeves of the late nineties. + +The doctors came back; there was a little stir and rearrangement +as they seated themselves. + +"Any change?" Cherry asked, cautiously. + +"No change." Both men shook their heads. + +"Any--any hope?" she faltered. + +The physicians exchanged glances. No word was spoken, but the look +in their faces, the faint narrowing of eyes and compressing of +lips, gave her her answer. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +It was all strange and bewildering, thought Peter. It was not like +anything he had ever connected in his thoughts with Alix, yet it +was all for her. + +The day was warm and still, and the little church was packed with +flowers, and packed with people. Women were crying, and men were +crying, too, rather to his dazed surprise. The organ was straining +through the warm, fragrant air, and the old clergyman, whose +venerable, leonine head, in its crown of snowy hair, Peter could +see clearly, spoke in a voice that was thickened with tears. +Strangers, or almost strangers, had been touching Peter's hand +respectfully, timidly, had been praising Alix. She had been "good" +to this one, "good" to that one, they told him; she had always +been so "interested," and so "happy." + +Her coffin was buried in flowers, many of them the plain flowers +she loved, the gillies and stock and verbena, and even the sweet, +sober wall-flowers that were somehow like herself. But it was the +roses that scented the whole world for Alix to-day, and fresh +creamy buds had been placed between the waxen fingers. And still +that radiant look of triumphant love lingered on her quiet face, +and still the faint ghost of a smile touched the once kindly and +merry mouth. + +They said good-bye to her at the church, the villagers and old +friends who had loved her, and Peter and two or three men alone +followed her down along the winding road that led to the old +cemetery. Cherry was hanging over the bedside of her husband, who +still miraculously lingered through hours of pain, but as Peter, +responsive to a touch on his arm, crossed the church porch to +blindly enter the waiting motor-car, he saw, erect and grave, on +the front seat, in his decent holiday black, and with his felt hat +held in his hands, Kow, claiming his right to stand beside the +grave of the mistress he had loved and served so faithfully. The +sight of him, in his clumsy black, instead of the usual crisp +white, and with a sad and tear-stained face shook Peter strangely, +but he did not show a sign of pain. + +The twisted low branches of oak trees threw shadows on the grave +when they finally reached it, and sheep were cropping the watered +grass of the graveyard. It was silent and peaceful here, on the +very top of the world, not a sound intruded, and nothing stirred +but the shadow of a flying bird, and the slowly moving, rounded +woolly backs of the sheep. + +The soft autumn sky, the drift of snowy clouds across the blue, +the clear shadows on brown grass under the oaks, all these were +familiar. But Peter still looked dazedly at his black cuff and at +the turned earth next to the doctor's headstone, telling himself +again that this was for Alix. How often he had seen her sitting +there, with her bright face sobered and sweet, as she talked +lovingly, eagerly, of her father! They had often come here, Peter +the more willingly because she was so sensible and happy about it; +she would pack lunch, button herself into one of the crisp blue +ginghams, chatter on the road in her usual fashion. And if, for a +few moments, the train of memory fired by the sight of the old +doctor's grave became too poignant, and tears came, she always +scolded herself with that mixture of childish and maternal +impatience that was so characteristic of her, and that Peter had +seen her use to this very father years ago! + +He remembered her, a tall, awkward girl, with a volume of Dickens +slipping from her lap as she sat on a hassock by the fire, teasing +her father, scolding and reproaching him. Blazing red on high +cheek-bones, untidy black hair, quick tongue and ready laugh; that +was the Alix of the old days, when he had criticized and +patronized her, and told her that she should be more like Anne and +little Cherry! + +He remembered being delegated, one day, to take her into town to +the dentist, and that upon discovering that the dentist was not in +his office, he had taken her to the circus instead. She had been +about thirteen, and had eaten too many peanuts, he thought, and +had lost a petticoat in full sight of the grand-stand. But how +grateful and happy she had been! + +"Dear little old blue petticoat!" he said. "Dear little old madcap +Alix--!" + +There was silence, the silence of inanition, about him. He came to +himself with a start. He was up on the hills, in the cemetery-- +this was Alix's grave, newly covered with wilting masses of +flowers, and he was keeping everybody waiting. He murmured an +apology; the waiting men were all kindness and sympathy. + +He got back into the motor-car; Kow got in; the man who drove them +quickly toward the valley talked easily and steadily to Peter, +attempting to interest him in the affairs of some water company in +San Francisco. When they got to the valley a city train was +arriving, and Peter saw people looking at him furtively and +sorrowfully. He remembered the many, many times Alix had waited +for him at the trains; he glanced toward the big madrone under +which she always parked her car. She was usually deep in a book as +he crossed from the train, but she would fling it into the back +seat, and make room for him beside her. The dog would bound into +the tonneau, Alix would hand her husband his mail, the car would +start with a great plunge toward the mountain--toward the cool +garden high up on the ridge-- + +"She never had an accident, Fred," he said, simply. + +"Alix?" The other man nodded gravely, but there was a worried look +in his eyes. He did not like Peter's quiet tone. "It may be that +her steering-gear broke," he said. "I don't believe it was her +fault. Never will! No, it was just one of those things--" He +emptied his lungs with a great breath of nervousness and sympathy. +"Now, we want you to-night--" he began, pleadingly. + +"No--no--no!" Peter said, quickly. "I had better go to her sister. +Poor Lloyd is dying, and she is on the verge of a collapse. The +nurse said this morning that they could not get her to undress or +to leave the room. Poor girl--poor Cherry! I had better go there, +Fred. She will need me!" + +"No chance for him?" the driving man asked, turning his car. + +"No--it's only a matter of time!" + +"She came in for the old doctor's money, didn't she?" + +"Yes--all of it, now. And my wife had some property--some I had +given her; that will go to the sister now. She will be well +fixed," Peter said, in a dull tone. "That would have pleased +Alix." + +"She's a beautiful woman, and young still," said the other man, +after awhile. Peter did not hear him. + +Cherry looked small and pathetic in her fresh black, and her face +was marked by secret incessant weeping. But the nurses and doctors +could not say enough for her self-control; she was always +composed, always quietly helpful and calm when they saw her, and +she was always busy. From early morning, when she slipped into the +sick-room, to stand looking at the unconscious Martin with a +troubled, intent expression that the nurses came to know well, +until night, she moved untiringly about the quiet, shaded house. +She supervised the Chinese boy, saw that the nurses had their +hours for rest and exercise, telephoned, dusted, and arranged the +rooms, saw callers sweetly and patiently, filled vases with +flowers. + +Every day she had several vigils in the sick-room, and every day +at least one long talk with the doctors. Peter would find her deep +in letters and documents, or find her--who had loved to be idle, a +few weeks ago--busily sewing. Sometimes she gave him a long list +of things to do for her in the village and the city, and every day +she wrote notes--Cherry, who had always hated to write notes!--to +thank the friends who had sent in flowers, soups, and jellies, and +custards for the patient. Every afternoon and evening had its +callers; she and Peter were rarely alone. + +Martin was utterly unconscious of the life that flowed on about +him; sometimes he seemed to recognize Cherry, and would stare with +painful intentness into her face, but after a few seconds his gaze +would wander to the strange nurses, and the room that he had never +known, and with a puzzled sigh he would close his eyes again, and +drift back into his own strange world of pain, fever, and +unconsciousness. + +Almost every day there was the sudden summons and panic in the old +house, Peter going toward the sick-room with a thick beating at +his heart, Cherry entering, white-faced and with terrified eyes, +doctors and nurses gathering noiselessly near for the last scene +in the drama of Martin's suffering. But the release did not come. + +There would be murmuring among the doctors and nurses; the pulse +was gaining, not losing; the apparently fatal, final symptoms were +proving neither fatal nor final. The tension would relax; a doctor +would go, a nurse slip from the room; Cherry, looking anxiously +from one face to another, would breathe more easily. It was +inevitable, she knew that now--but it was not to be this minute, +it was not to be this hour! + +"My dear--my dear!" Peter said to her, one day, when spent and +shaken she came stumbling from Martin's bedside, and stood dazedly +looking from the window into the soaking October forest, like a +person stunned from a blow. "My poor little Cherry! If I could +spare you this!" + +"Nobody can spare me now!" she whispered. And very simply and +quietly she added, "If I have been a fool--if I have been a +selfish, wicked girl, all my life, I am punished!" She was +clinging to the unpainted wood that framed the window, her hand +above her head, and her face resting against her arm. "I am +punished!" she added. + +"Cherry!" he protested, heartsick to see her so. + +"Was it wrong for us to love each other, Peter?" she asked, in a +low tone. "I suppose it was! I suppose it was! But it never seemed +as if--" she shut her eyes and shivered--"as if--THIS--would come +of it!" she whispered. + +"This!" he echoed, aghast. + +"Oh, I think this is punishment," Cherry continued, in the same +lifeless, weary tone. + +There was a silence. The rain dripped and dripped from the +redwoods, the room in which they stood was in twilight, even at +noon. Peter could think of nothing to say. + +About two weeks after the accident there was a change in the tone +of the physicians who had been giving almost all their time to +Martin's case. There was no visible change in Martin, but that +fact in itself was so surprising that it was construed into a +definite hope that he would live. + +Not as he had lived, they warned his wife. It would be but a +restricted life; tied to his couch, or permitted, at best, to move +about within a small boundary on crutches. + +"Martin!" his wife exclaimed piteously, when this was first +discussed. "He has always been so strong--so independent! He would +rather--he would infinitely rather be dead!" But her mind was busy +grasping the possibilities, too. "He won't suffer too much?" she +asked, fearfully. + +They hastened to assure her that the chance of his even partial +recovery was still slight, but that in case of his convalescence +Martin need not necessarily suffer. + +Another day or two went by, in the silent, rainwrapped house under +the trees; days of quiet footsteps, and whispering, and the +lisping of wood fires. Then Martin suddenly was conscious, knew +his wife, languidly smiled at her, thanked the doctors for +occasional ease from pain. + +"Peter--I'm sorry. It's terrible for you--terrible!" he said, in +his new, hoarse, gentle voice, when he first saw Peter. They +marvelled among themselves that he knew that Alix was gone. But to +Cherry, in one of the long hours that she spent, sitting beside +him, and holding his big, weak, strangely white hand, he +explained, one day. "I knew she was killed," he said, out of a +silence. "I thought we both were!" + +"How did she ever happen to do it?" Cherry said. "She was always +so sure of herself--even when she drove fast!" + +"I don't know," he answered. "It was all like a flash, of course! +I never watched her drive--I had such confidence in her!" + +His interest dropped; she saw that the tide of pain was slowly +rising again, glanced at the clock. It was two; he might not have +relief until four. In his own eyes she saw reflected the +apprehension of her own. + +"You might ask Peter to play some of that--that rambly stuff he +was playing yesterday?" he suggested. Cherry, only too happy to +have him want anything, to have him helped by anything, flew to +find Peter. Busy with one of the trays that were really beginning +to interest and please the invalid now, she told herself that the +house was a different place, now that one nurse was gone, the +doctors coming only for brief calls, and the dear, familiar sound +of the old piano echoing throughout the rooms. + +Martin came from the fiery furnace changed in soul and body. It +was a thin, gentle, strangely patient man who was propped in bed +for his Thanksgiving dinner, and whose pain-worn face turned with +an appreciative smile to the decorations and the gifts that made +his room cheerful. His thick beard had grown; for weeks they had +not dared disturb him to cut it, and as he recovered, Cherry found +it so becoming that she had persuaded him to let it remain. He +wore a blue-and-gray wrapper that was his wife's gift; the sling +was gone, but his hands were oddly thin and white. + +The big room, once the study, and still shaded by the old banksia +rose, had been turned into as luxurious a bedroom as Cherry could +make it. The signs of extreme illness gradually were banished, and +all sorts of invalid comforts took their place; daylight and +lamplight were alike tempered for Martin; there were pillows, +screens; there was a noiseless deep chair always waiting for +Cherry at his side. As his unconscious and feverish times +lessened, and he was able feebly to request this small delicacy or +that, Cherry rejoiced to gratify him; her voice had something of +its old content as she would say: "He loved the oysters, Peter!" +or "Doctor said he might have wine jelly!" + +The heavy cloud lightened slowly but steadily; Martin had a long +talk, dreaded by Cherry from the first hours of the accident, with +his physicians. He bore the ultimatum with unexpected fortitude. + +"Let me get this straight," he said, slowly. "The arm is O. K. and +the leg, but the back--" + +Cherry, kneeling beside him, her hands on his, drew a wincing +breath. Martin reassured her with an indulgent nod. + +"I've known it right along!" he told her. He looked at the +doctors. "It's no go?" + +"I don't see why I should deceive you, my dear boy," said the +younger doctor, who had grown very fond of him. "You can still +beat me at bridge, you know, you can read and write, and come to +the table, after awhile; you have your devoted wife to keep +finding new things for you to do! Next summer now--a chair out in +the garden--" + +Cherry was fearfully watching her husband's face. + +"We'll all do what we can to make it easy, Mart!" she whispered, +in tears. + +He looked at her with a whimsical smile. + +"Mind very much taking care of a helpless man all your life?" he +asked, with a hint of his old confident manner. + +"Oh, Mart, I mind only for you!" she said. Peter, standing behind +the doctors, slipped from the room unnoticed. + +Late that evening, when Martin was asleep, Cherry came noiselessly +from the sick-room, to find Peter alone in the dimly lighted +sitting room. The fire had burned low, and he was sitting before +it, sunk into his chair, and leaning forward, fingers loosely +locked, and sombre eyes fixed on the dull pink glow of the logs. +He looked tired, Cherry thought, and was so buried in thought that +she at first attempted to go quietly through the room without +rousing him. But he glanced at her, feeling rather than hearing +her presence, and called her. + +"Come over here, will you, Cherry? I want to speak to you." + +Something in his voice fluttered her for a second; she had not +heard the echo of the old mood for a long time. She came, with an +inquiring and yet not wholly unconscious look, to the fireside, +and he stood up to greet her. + +"Tired?" he asked, in an unnatural voice. + +"I--I was just going to bed," she answered, hesitatingly. But she +sat down, nevertheless; sank comfortably into the chair opposite +his own, and stretched her little feet, crossed at the ankle, +before her, as if she were indeed tired. "I don't know what should +make me--always--so weary!" she said, smiling. "I don't do a +thing, really, all day!" + +Utterly relaxed, her small figure in its plain black gown, with +the childish white she always wore at collar and wrist, looked +like the figure of a child. Her golden hair shone with a dull +gleam in the dim light; there was a glint of firelight in her +dropped lashes. + +"Perhaps it's the nervous strain," Peter suggested. "Of course, +you would feel that." There was a silence in which neither moved. +Cherry did not even raise her eyelids, and Peter, standing with +one arm on the mantel, looked down at her steadily. "Cherry," he +said, suddenly, "are you and I going to talk to each other like +that?" + +A flood of colour rose in Cherry's pale face, and she gave him one +appealing glance. + +"I don't--I don't think I know what you mean, Peter!" + +"Oh, yes; you do!" he said. He knelt down beside her chair, and +gathered her cold hands into one of his own. "What are you and I +going to do?" he asked. + +She looked at him in terror. + +"But all that is changed!" she said, quickly, fearfully. + +"Why is it changed?" he countered. "I love you--I have always +loved you, since the days long ago, in this very house! I can't +stop it now. And you love me, Cherry!" + +"Yes, I shall always love you," she answered, agitatedly, after a +pause in which she looked at him with troubled eyes. "I shall +always love you, and always dream of the time when we--we thought +we might belong to each other, Peter. But--but--you must see that +we cannot--cannot think of all that now," she added with +difficulty. "I couldn't fail Martin now, when he needs me so!" + +"He needs you now," Peter conceded, "and I don't ask you to do +anything that must distress him now. But in a few months, when his +mother comes down for a visit, what then?" + +Cherry's exquisite eyes were fixed on his. + +"Well, what then?" she whispered. + +"Then you must tell them honestly that you care for me," he said. + +Cherry was trembling violently. + +"But how could I!" she protested. "Tell him that I am going away, +deserting him when he most needs me!" + +Peter had grown very pale. + +"But--" he stammered, his face close to hers--"but you cannot mean +that this is the end?" + +She moved her lips as if she was about to speak; looked at him +blankly. Then suddenly tears came, and she wrenched her hands free +from his, and laid her arms about his neck. Her wet cheek was +pressed to his own, and he put his arms tightly about the little +shaken figure. + +"Peter!" she whispered, desolately. And after a time, when the +violence of her sobs was lessened, and she was breathing more +quietly, she said again: "Peter!" + +He took out his handkerchief, and dried her eyes, and she +remained, resting against him like a spent bird, her blue eyes +fixed mournfully on the fire, her hands, which had slipped to his +breast, gathered in his own, and her bright head on his shoulder. + +"We can never dream that dream again," she said. + +"We shall dream it again," he corrected her. + +Cherry did not answer for a long while. Then she gently disengaged +herself from his arms, and sat erect. Her tears were ended now, +and her voice firmer and surer. + +"No; never again!" she told him. "I've been thinking about it, all +these days, and I've come to see what is right, as I never did +before. Alix never knew about us, Peter--and that's been the one +thing for which I could be thankful in all this time! But Alix had +only one hope for me, and that was that somehow Martin and I would +come to be--well, to be nearer to each other, and that somehow he +and I would make a success of our marriage, would spare--well, +let's say the family name, from all the disgrace and publicity of +a divorce--" + +"And you feel that this has drawn you and Martin nearer together?" +Peter asked, in a simple, expressionless voice, as she paused. + +"Well--he needs me now." + +"But, Cherry, my child--" Peter expostulated. "You cannot +sacrifice all your life to the fancy that no one else can take +your place with him--" + +"That," she said, steadily, "is just what I must do!" + +Peter looked at her for a few seconds without speaking. "You don't +love him," he said. + +"No," she admitted, gravely. "I don't love him--not in the way you +mean." + +"He is nothing to you," Peter argued. "As a matter of fact, it +never was what a marriage should be. It was always--always--a +mistake." + +"Yes," she conceded, sadly, "it was always a mistake!" + +"Then there is nothing to bind you to him!" Peter added. + +"No--and there isn't Alix to distress now!" she agreed, +thoughtfully. "And yet," she went on, suddenly, "I do this more +for Alix than for any one!" + +Peter looked at her in silence, looked back at the last flicker of +the fire. + +"You will change your mind after awhile!" he said. + +Cherry rose from the chair, and stood with dropped head and +troubled eyes, looking down at the flame. + +"No, I shall never change my mind!" she said, in a low tone that +was still strangely firm and final for her. "I have thought about +it, about the sacrifices I shall have to make, and about what my +life will be as the years go on! And I know that I never will +change. This is as much my life as it would be my life if you and +I were alone in that little French village somewhere. There would +be no going back then, no thinking of what might have been; there +is no going back now. This is my life, that's all! For five or ten +or twenty or thirty years I shall always be where Martin is, +caring for him, amusing him, making a life for him." And Cherry +raised her glorious blue eyes in which there was a pure and an +uplifted look that Peter had never seen there before. "It is what +Dad and Alix would have wished," she finished, solemnly, "and I do +it for them!" + +Peter did not answer; and after a moment she went quietly and +quickly from the room, with the new air of quiet responsibility +that she had worn ever since the accident. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +Peter saw, with a sort of stupefaction, that life was satisfying +her now as life had never satisfied restless, exacting little +Cherry before. Not that she knew it; she was absolutely +unconscious of the truth, and he realized that she would have been +genuinely shocked by it. But there was a busy energy about her +now, an absorbed and contented concentration upon the duties of +the day, a cheerfulness, a philosophy, that were new. + +There had been touched by all this terrible time unexpected deeps +of maternal tenderness in childish little Cherry; there had been +unsuspected qualities of domesticity and sacrifice. A new Cherry +had been born, a Cherry always beautiful, always resourceful, +always admired. Busy with Martin's trays, out in the garden +searching for shy violets, conferring with the Chinese boy, +pouring tea for afternoon callers, Cherry was newly adequate and +newly happy. + +She spent much of her free time by her husband's side, amusing him +as skillfully as a mother. What was she doing? Why, she was simply +basting fresh cuffs into her afternoon gown. He was getting so +popular that she had to be ready for callers every day. Would he +like her to keep George Sewall for dinner, then they could play +dominoes again? Would he like the table with the picture puzzle? +He would like just to talk? Very well; they would talk. + +Martin's day was so filled and divided with small pleasures that +it was apt to amaze him by passing too quickly. He had special +breakfasts, he had his paper, his hair was brushed and his bed +remade a dozen times a day. Cherry shared her mail, which was +always heavy now, with him; she flitted into the sick-room every +few minutes with small messages or gifts. With her bare, bright +head, her busy white hands, her voice all motherly amusement and +sympathy and sweetness, she had never seemed so much a wife. She +had the pleasantest laugh in the world, and she often laughed. The +sick-room was kept with exquisite simplicity, with such freshness, +bareness, and order as made it a place of delight. One day Cherry +brought home a great Vikory bowl of silvery glass, and a dozen +drifting goldfish, and Martin never tired of watching them idly +while he listened to her reading. + +"Cherry," Peter said, on a wet January day, when he came upon her +in the dining room, contentedly arranging a fragrant mass of wet +violets, "I think Martin's out of the woods now. I believe I'll be +moving along!" + +"Oh, but we want you always, Peter!" she said, innocently +regretful. + +The ghost of a pained smile flitted across his face. + +"Thank you," he said, gently. "But I think I will go," he added, +mildly. She made no further protest. + +"But where?" she asked, sympathetically. + +"I don't know. I shall take Buck--start off" toward the big +mountains. I'll write you now and then, of course! I'm going home, +first!" + +"Of course!" she answered. "But you won't stay in that lonely +cabin all alone," she added, almost timidly. + +"No, I shan't be there long!" he assured her, briefly. +"Everything's finished up now. I'm leaving Kow in charge, of +course. I'll be back one of these days!" + +"Just now," Cherry mused, sadly, "perhaps it is best--for you--to +get away! Now that Martin is so much better," she added, in a +little burst. "I do feel so sorry for you, Peter! I know how you +feel. I shall miss her always, of course," said Cherry, "but I +have him." + +"I try not to think of her," Peter said, flinging up his head. + +"When you do," Cherry said, earnestly, giving him more of her +attention than had been usual, of late, "Here is something to +think, Peter. It's this: we have so much to be thankful for, +because she never--knew! It was madness," Cherry went on, eagerly, +"sheer madness--that is clear now. I don't try to explain it, +because it's all been washed away by the frightful thing that +happened. I'm different now; you're different--I don't know how we +ever thought we could-- + +"But I forget all that," she went on, after a moment of shamed +thought. "I don't let myself think of it any more! I was unhappy, +I was overwrought; there's no explanation for what I felt and said +but that! And, Peter, you know that if I was false in thought to +Martin, he had been unkind to me, and he had--" she paused, +interrupted herself. "But men are different, I suppose," she +mused. There was a silence during which she looked at him +anxiously, but the expression on his face did not alter, and he +did not speak. + +"And what I think we ought to be thankful for," she resumed, "is +that Alix would rather--she would rather have it this way. She +told me that she would be heartbroken if there had been any actual +separation between me and Martin, and how much worse that would +have been--what we planned, I mean. She was spared that, and we +were spared--I see it now--what would have ruined both our lives. +We were brought to our senses, and the awakening only came a +little sooner than it would have come anyway!" + +Peter had walked to the window, and was looking out at the shabby +winter trees that were dripping rain, and at the beaten garden, +where the drenched chrysanthemums had been bowed to the soaked +earth. A wet wind swished through the low, fanlike branches of the +redwoods; the creek was rushing high and noisily. + +"Here, in Dad's home," Cherry said, coming to stand beside him, "I +see how wicked and how mad I was. In another twenty-four hours it +would have been too late--you don't know how often I wake up in +the night and shiver, thinking that! And as it is, I am here in +the dear old house; and Martin--well, you can see that even +Martin's life is going to be far happier than it ever was! +Yesterday Mrs. Porter spoke to me about getting him a player-piano +when he is stronger, you know. Doctor Young comes in to play +cribbage with him--it's amazing how the day fills itself! It's +such a joy to me," she added, with the radiant look she often wore +when her husband's comfort was under consideration, "to feel that +we need never worry about the money end of things--there's enough +for what we need forever!" + +"You must never worry about money," he told her. "And if ever you +need it--if it is a question of a long trip, or of more +operations--if there is any chance--" + +"I shall remember that I have a big brother!" she said. + +The room was scented by the sweet, damp flowers, and by the good +odour of lazily burning logs; yet to Peter there was chill and +desolateness in the air. Cherry took up the glass bowl in both +careful hands, and went away in the direction of the study, but he +stood at the window for a long time staring dully out at the +battered chrysanthemums and the swishing branches, and the +steadily falling rain. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +A few days later, on a day of uncertain sunshine and showers, +Peter left them. Martin was the sorrier of the two to see him go, +for it seemed to Martin that the tragedy had united Cherry and +himself in a peculiar manner, had rounded and secured their +relationship, and had made for them a new life that had no place +for Peter. With a sort of affectionate pity for the older man he +would have been glad to have him stay longer, to play the old +piano, work in the old garden, and share their talks of Alix and +of all the old days. But to Cherry Peter's going was a relief; it +burned one more bridge behind her. It confirmed her in the path +she had chosen; it was to her spirit like the cap that marks the +accepted student nurse, or like the black coif that replaces the +postulant's white veil of probation. + +He had been in the downstairs bedroom, talking with Martin, for +perhaps an hour; he had drawn them a rough sketch of the little +addition to the house that Cherry meant some day to build next to +the study, and he and Martin had been discussing the details. +Cherry had left them there, and was sweeping the wet, dun-coloured +leaves from the old porch, in a pale shaft of sunshine, and +thinking that there must be a wide railing here next summer for +Martin's books, and a gay awning to be drawn or furled as Martin +fancied, when a sudden step in the doorway behind her made her +look up. + +Peter had come out of the house, with Buck curving beside him. He +wore his old corduroy clothes and his shabby cap, but there was +something in his aspect that made her ask: + +"Not going?" + +"Yes, I'm going now!" he said. + +She rested her broom against the thick trunk of the old banksia, +and rubbed her two hands together, and came to the top of the +steps to say good-bye. And standing there, under the rose tree, +she linked her arm about it, looking up through the branches, +where the shabby foliage of last year lingered. + +"How fast it's grown since that terrific pruning we gave it all +that long time ago!" she said. + +"Little more than six years ago, Cherry!" he reminded her. + +"Only six years--" She was obviously amazed. + +"It doesn't seem possible that all this has happened in six +years!" she exclaimed. "Those were wonderful old days, with Anne +and Alix scolding you, and Dad here, looking out for us all," she +mused, tenderly. "We'll never be so happy again." + +He did not answer. He had her hand now for farewells, and perhaps, +with the thought of those short six years had come also the +thought that this slender figure in the housewifely blue linen, +this exquisite little head, so trim and demure despite all its +rebel tendrils of gold, this lovely face, still the face of a +child, with a child's trusting, uplifted eyes, might have been +his. The old home might have been their home, and perhaps--who +knows, there might have been a new Cherry and a new Peter +beginning to look eagerly out at life through the screen of the +old rose vine. + +Too late now. A single instant of those lost years might have +bought him all this, but there was no going back. He put his arm +about her, and kissed her forehead, and said: "God bless you, +Cherry!" + +"God bless you, dear!" she answered, gravely. She watched the tall +figure, with its little limp, and with the dog leaping and +circling about it in ecstasy, until the redwoods closed around, +him. Then she took up the broom again, and slowly and thoughtfully +crossed the old porch, and shut the door. + +Peter, walking with long strides, and with a furrowed brow and +absent eyes, crossed the village, and climbed once more the old +trail that led up to the cabin. His great boots made simple work +of the muddy roads, his hands were thrust deep into the pockets of +his shabby old coat, and his cap pulled low. The rain had stopped, +but every branch that hung down over his path, or stretched an arm +to stop him, was charged with water; the creeks were swollen and +yellow, and raced along between crumbling banks with a fresh +rushing sound that mingled with the creaking of wet boughs and the +wild spring chant of the wind high up in the tops of the redwoods. + +Coming out of the forest, on the ridge, where the dim road ran +under the scattered oaks, he saw the last of the battle of the +dying storm raging over the valley below. Great masses of cloud +were in travail; when the sun was hidden, the world was wrapped in +shade and chill; when it burst forth, every wet tree and spear +glistened and twinkled in the flood of warmth and light, the dried +brown grass sparkled with jewels, and the great roadside rain +pools flashed back the azure of the sky. The mountain was partly +obscured by rapidly shifting masses of mist; the air was pungent +and seemed to hum with a thousand tiny, electric voices. + +Already there was new grass showing a timid film of emerald under +the brown growth of last year. While Peter climbed, the good earth +giving soddenly under his feet, and grasses tangling in the clasps +of his walking shoes, the sunlight conquered, the sky cleared, and +the last of the storm drifted and spread and vanished in a bath of +dazzling blue. Birds began to circle in brief flights; cloud +shadows fell clear-cut on the west, dark flank of the mountain; +and in the saturated marshy spots, where a scummy green growth +already was spread over the crystal pools of the little hillside +springs, frogs were exultant. + +The roof of the little cabin and the outbuildings smoked up into +the pure warm air; the Jersey, placidly awaiting her hour, looked +at him with soft, great eyes; and Alix's chickens picked and +squawked on the steaming mound near the stable. Kow was hanging +out the blue glass-towels, everything--everything was as he had +found it a hundred, a thousand, happy times! + +Peter spoke to the Chinese and went into the cabin. It was dusted, +orderly, complete; he and Alix might have left it yesterday. Kow +had seen him coming, he thought, and had had time to light the +fire, which was blazing freshly up to the chimney's great throat. +He sat down, staring at the flames. + +Buck pushed open the swinging door between the pantry and the +sitting room, and came in, a question in his bright eyes, his +great plumy tail beating the floor as he lay down at Peter's side. +Presently the dog laid his nose on Peter's knee and poured forth a +faint sound that was not quite a whine, not quite a sigh, and rose +restlessly, and went to the closed door of Alix's room, and pawed +it, his eager nose to the threshold. + +"Not here, old fellow!" Peter said, stroking the silky head under +his hand. + +He had not been in this room since the day of her death. It struck +him as strangely changed, strangely and heartrendingly familiar. +The windows were closed, as Alix had never had them closed, winter +or summer, rain or sunshine. Her books stood in their old order, +her student's Shakespere, and some of her girlhood's books, +"Little Women," and "Uncle Max." In the closet, which exhaled a +damp and woody smell, were one or two of the boyish-looking hats +he had so often seen her crush carelessly over her dark hair, and +the big belted coat that was as plain as his own, and the big +boots she wore when she tramped about the poultry yard, still +spattered with pale, dry mud. Her father's worn little Bible lay +on the table, and beside it another book "Duck Raising for the +Market," with the marks of muddy and mealy hands still lingering +on its cover. + +Suddenly, evoked by these silent witnesses to her busy and happy +life, the whole woman seemed to stand beside Peter, the tall, +eager, vital woman who had been at home here, who had ruled the +cabin with a splendid and vital personality. He seemed to feel her +near him again, to see the interested eyes, the high cheek-bones +touched with scarlet, the wisp of hair that would fall across her +face sometimes when she was deep in baking, or preserving, or +poultry-farming, and that she would brush away with the back of an +impatient hand, only to have it slip loose again. + +One of her kitchen aprons, caught in the current of air from the +opened door, blew about on its hook. He remembered her, on many a +wintry day, buttoned into just such a crisp apron, radiantly busy +and brisk in her kitchen, stirring and chopping, moving constantly +between stove and table. With strong hands still showing traces of +flour she would come to sit beside him at the piano, to play a +duet with her characteristic dash and finish, only to jump up in +sudden compunction, with an exclamation: "Oh, my ducks--I'd +forgotten them! Oh, the poor little wretches!" + +And she would be gone, leaving a streak of wet, fresh air through +the warm house from the open door, and he would perhaps glance +from a window to see her, roughly coated and booted, ploughing +about her duck yard, delving into barrels of grain, turning on +faucets, wielding a stubby old broom. + +She loved her life, he mused, with a bitter heartache, as he stood +here in her empty room. Sometimes he had marvelled at the complete +and unquestioning joy she had brought to it. Books, puzzles, +music, and fires sufficed her in the few hours that she ever spent +in her own drawing room. For the rest she had the kitchen and the +farmyard, and the world out of doors, the oaks and the grass, the +great stretches of dim forest, the muddy trails, the blowing airs +on the crest of the ridge that made her shout and stagger in their +wild onslaught. Peter reminded himself that never in their years +together had he heard her complain about anything, or seem to feel +bored or at a loss. + +"We've always thought of Cherry as the child!" he thought. "But it +was she, Alix, who was the real child. She never grew up. She +never entered into the time of moods and self-analysis and +jealousies and desires! She would have played and picnicked all +her life----" + +His heart pressed like a dull pain in his chest. Dully, quietly, +he went out to the fire again, and dully and quietly moved through +the day. Her books and music might stand as they were, her potted +ferns and her scattered small possessions--the sewing-basket that +she always handled with a boy's awkwardness, and the camera she +used so well--should keep their places. But he went to her desk, +thinking in this long, solitary evening, to destroy various papers +that she might wish destroyed before the cabin was deserted. And +here he found her letter. + +He found it only after he had somewhat explored the different +small drawers and pigeonholes of the desk, drawers and pigeonholes +which were, to his surprise, all in astonishing order for Alix. +Everything was marked, tied, pocketed; her accounts were balanced, +and if she had anywhere left private papers, they were at least +nowhere to be found. + +Seeing in all this a dread confirmation of his first suspicion of +her death, Peter nevertheless experienced a shock when he found +her letter. It had been placed in an empty drawer, face up, and +was sealed, and addressed simply with his name. + +He sat holding it in his hand, and moments passed before he could +open it. + +So it had been true, then, the fear that he had tried all these +weeks to crush? He had been weighing, measuring, remembering, +until his very soul was sick with the uncertainty. His mind had +been a confused web of memories, of this casual word and that +look, of what she had possibly heard, had probably seen, had +suspected--known-- + +Now he would know. He tore open the envelope, and the dozen +written lines were before his eyes. The letter was dated, a most +unusual thing for Alix to do, and "Saturday, one o'clock" was +written under the date. It was the day of her death. + +He read: + +PETER DEAR, Don't feel too badly if I find a stupid way out. I've +been thinking for several days about it. You've done so much for +me, and after you, of course there's no one but Cherry. She could +be free now, he couldn't prevent it. When I saw your face a few +minutes ago I knew we couldn't fight it. Remember, this is our +secret. And always remember that I want you to be happy because I +love you so! + +It was unsigned. + +Peter sat staring at it for awhile without moving, without the +stir of a changing expression on his face. Then he folded it up, +and put it in the pocket of his coat, and went out to the +backyard, where Kow was feeding the chickens. The wet, dark day +was ending brilliantly in a wash of red sunset light that sent +long shadows from the young fruit trees, and touched every twig +with a dull glow. + +"Kow," Peter said, after an effort to speak that was unsuccessful. +The Chinese boy looked at him solicitously; for Peter's face was +ashen, and about his mouth were drawn lines. "Kow," he said, "I go +now!" + +"Go now other house?" Kow nodded, glancing down toward the valley. + +But Peter jerked his head instead toward the bare ridge. + +"No, I go now--not come back!" he said, briefly. "To-night--maybe +Bolinas--to-morrow, Inverness. I don't know. By and by the big +mountains, Kow--by and by I forget!" + +Tears glittered in the Chinese boy's eyes, but he smiled with a +great air of cheer. + +"I keep house!" he promised. + +The dog came fawning and springing from the stables, and Peter +whistled to him. + +"Come on, Buck! We're going now!" + +He opened the farmyard gate where her hand had so often rested, +crossed the muddy corral, opened another gate, and struck off +across the darkening world toward the ridge. The last sunlight +lingered on crest and treetop, tangled itself redly in the +uppermost branches of a few tall redwoods, and was gone. Twilight- +-a long twilight that had in it some hint of spring--lay softly +over the valley; the mountain loomed high in the clear shadow. + +Gaining the top of the first ridge, he paused and looked back. +Lights were beginning to prick forth in the brown houses of the +valley, buried in their trees. The busy little mountain train, +descending, puffed forth smoke and steam. Far away, the silver +ribbons of the canals wound through the marsh, and beyond the bay, +the Oakland shore lay like a chain of gems in the pale twilight. + +Peter looked at the cabin, the little brown house that he had +built almost fifteen years ago. He remembered that it was in the +beginning a sort of experiment; his mother and he were too much +alone in their big city house, and she had suggested, with rare +wisdom, that as he did not care for society, and as his travels +always meant great loneliness For her, he should have a little +eyrie of his own, to which he might retreat whenever the fancy +touched him. + +She liked Del Monte and Tahoe, herself, but she had come to Mill +Valley now and then in the days of his first wild delight in its +freedom and beauty, silk-gowned and white-gloved and very much +disliking dust. She had sent him plants, roses, and fruit trees, +and she had told him one day that he had a neighbour in the valley +who was an old friend of hers, a Doctor Strickland, a widower, +with children. + +He remembered sauntering up the opposite canyon to duly call upon +this inventor-physician one day, and his delight upon finding a +well-read, music-loving, philosophic, erratic man, who had at once +recognized a kindred spirit, and who had made the younger man +warmly welcome. + +Presently, on the first call, an enchanting little girl In a +shabby smock had come in, a little girl all dimples, demureness, +and untouched babyish beauty. She had said that "Anne wath mad wiv +her, and that Alix--" she managed to lisp the name, "wath up in +the madrone!" + +A somewhat older child, named Alix, a freckled, leggy little +person with enormous front teeth, had proved the claim by falling +out of the madrone, and had received no sympathy for a bump, but +a--to him--rather surprising censure. He had yet to realize that +nothing ever hurt Alix, but that she always ruined her clothes, +and frequently hurt other persons and other things. He found her a +spirited, enthusiastic little person, extremely articulate, and +quite unselfconscious, and she had entertained him with an excited +account of a sex feud that was being pushed with some violence at +her school, and had used expressions that rather shocked Peter. A +quiet third girl--a niece, he gathered--had joined the group, a +girl with braids and clean hands, who elucidated: + +"Alix and I don't like our teacher!" + +"She's a sneak and a skunk," Alix had frankly contributed. Cherry, +now quietly established in her father's lap, had smiled with +mischievous enjoyment; nobody else, to Peter's surprise, had paid +this extraordinary remark the slightest attention. He remembered +that he had fancied only the smallest of these children, and had +been glad when they all went out of the room. + +But after that Alix used often to amuse him, and he always felt +more at home with her than with the other two. She had only been a +gawky and thin fifteen or sixteen when she began to assert herself +in his kitchen, dictate to Kow, and waste good butter and eggs on +experiments. He had secretly rather admired her quick tongue and +her daring, he liked her to ride his horses, and was amazed at the +speed with which she grasped the controlling principles of the +motor-car. He had seen her move plants, treat sick chickens, sew +up the gashed head of a horse with her own fingers, while Cherry, +lovely, round-eyed, immaculate in white ruffles, watched her with +fear and admiration. + +Looking down at the cabin, the years slipped past him like a +flying film, and it was the present again, and Alix--Alix was +gone. + +He roused himself, spoke to the dog, and they went on their way +again. Mud squelched beneath Peter's boots in the roadway; the dog +sprang lightly from clump to clump of dried grass. But when they +left the road, and cut straight across the rise of the hillside, +the ground was firmer, and the two figures moved swiftly through +the dark night. The early stars came out, and showed them, +silhouetted against the sky above Alix's beloved Tamalpais, the +man's erect form with its slight limp, the dog following +faithfully, his plumy tail and feathered ruff showing a dull +lustre in the starlight. + +Cherry, with her violet eyes and corn-coloured hair, Cherry, with +her little hands gathered in his, and her heart beating against +his heart, and Alix, his chum, his companion, his comrade on so +many night walks under the stars--he had lost them both. But it +was Alix who was closest to his thoughts to-night, Alix, the +thought of whom was gradually gripping his heart and soul with a +new pain. + +Alix was his own; Cherry had never been his own. It was for him to +comfort Cherry, it had always been his mission to comfort Cherry, +since the days of her broken dolls and cut fingers. But Alix was +his own comforter, and Alix might have been laughing and stumbling +and chattering beside him here, in the dark, wet woods, full of a +child's happy satisfaction in the moment and confidence in the +morrow. + +"Alix, my wife!" he said softly, aloud. "I loved Cherry--always. +But you were mine--you were mine. We belonged to each other--for +better and for worse--and I have let you go!" + +He went on and on and on. They were plunging down hill now, under +the trees. He would see a light after awhile, and sleep for a few +hours, and have a hunter's breakfast, and be gone again. And he +knew that for weeks--for months--perhaps for years, he would +wander so, through the great mountains, with their snow and their +forests, over the seas, in strange cities and stranger solitudes. +Always alone, always moving, always remembering. That would be his +life. And some day--some day perhaps he would come back to the +valley she had loved-- + +But even now he recoiled in distaste from that hour. To see the +familiar faces, to come up to the cabin again, to touch the music +and the books-- + +Worse, to find Cherry a little older, happy and busy in her life +of sacrifice, not needing him, not very much wanting the reminder +of the old tragic times-- + +An owl cried in the woods; the mournful sound floated and drifted +away into utter silence. Some small animal, meeting the death its +brief life had evaded a hundred times, screamed shrilly, and was +silent. Great branches, stirred by the night wind, moved high +above his head, and when there was utter silence, Peter could hear +the steady, soft rush of the ocean, dulled here to the sound of +gigantic, quiet breathing. + +Suddenly she seemed again to be beside him. He seemed to see the +dark, animated face, the slender, tall girl wrapped in her big, +rough coat. He seemed to hear her vibrating voice, with that new, +tender note in it that he had noticed when she last spoke to him. + +"I'll go home ahead of you, Peter, and wait for you there!" + +Tears suddenly flooded his eyes, and he put his hand over them, +and pressed it there, standing still, while the wave of tender and +poignant and exquisite memories broke over him. + +"We'll go on, Buck," he whispered, looking up through the trees at +a strip of dark sky spangled with cold stars. "We'll go on. She's-- +she's waiting for us somewhere, old fellow!" + + + +THE END + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sisters, by Kathleen Norris + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTERS *** + +This file should be named sstrn10.txt or sstrn10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, sstrn11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, sstrn10a.txt + +Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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