II

The next afternoon Niel found Captain Forrester in the bushy little plot

he called his rose garden, seated in a stout hickory chair that could be

left out in all weather, his two canes beside him. His attention was

fixed upon a red block of Colorado sandstone, set on a granite boulder

in the middle of the gravel space around which the roses grew. He showed

Niel that this was a sun-dial, and explained it with great pride. Last

summer, he said, he sat out here a great deal, with a square board

mounted on a post, and marked the length of the shadows by his watch.

His friend, Cyrus Dalzell, on one of his visits, took this board away,

had the diagram exactly copied on sandstone, and sent it to him, with

the column-like boulder that formed its base.

"I think it's likely Mr. Dalzell hunted around among the mountains a

good many mornings before he found a natural formation like that," said

the Captain. "A pillar, such as they had in Bible times. It's from the

Garden of the Gods. Mr. Dalzell has his summer home up there."

The Captain sat with the soles of his boots together, his legs bowed

out. Everything about him seemed to have grown heavier and weaker. His

face was fatter and smoother; as if the features were running into each

other, as when a wax face melts in the heat. An old Panama hat, burned

yellow by the sun, shaded his eyes. His brown hands lay on his knees,

the fingers well apart, nerveless. His moustache was the same straw

colour; Niel remarked to him that it had grown no grayer. The Captain

touched his cheek with his palm. "Mrs. Forrester shaved me for awhile.

She did it very nicely, but I didn't like to have her do it. Now I use

one of these safety razors. I can manage, if I take my time. The barber

comes over once a week. Mrs. Forrester is expecting you, Niel. She's

down in the grove. She goes down there to rest in the hammock."

Niel went round the house to the gate that gave into the grove. From the

top of the hill he could see the hammock slung between two cottonwoods,

in the low glade at the farther end, where he had fallen the time he

broke his arm. The slender white figure was still, and as he hurried

across the grass he saw that a white garden hat lay over her face. He

approached quietly and was just wondering if she were asleep, when he

heard a soft, delighted laugh, and with a quick movement she threw off

the lace hat through which she had been watching him. He stepped forward

and caught her suspended figure, hammock and all, in his arms. How light

and alive she was! like a bird caught in a net. If only he could rescue

her and carry her off like this,--off the earth of sad, inevitable

periods, away from age, weariness, adverse fortune!

She showed no impatience to be released, but lay laughing up at him with

that gleam of something elegantly wild, something fantastic and

tantalizing,--seemingly so artless, really the most finished artifice!

She put her hand under his chin as if he were still a boy.

"And how handsome he's grown! Isn't the old Judge proud of you! He

called me up last night and began sputtering, 'It's only fair to warn

you, Ma'm, that I've a very handsome boy over here.' As if I hadn't

known you would be! And now you're a man, and have seen the world! Well,

what have you found in it?"

"Nothing so nice as you, Mrs. Forrester."

"Nonsense! You have sweethearts?"

"Perhaps."

"Are they pretty?"

"Why they? Isn't one enough?"

"One is too many. I want you to have half a dozen,--and still save the

best for us! One would take everything. If you had her, you would not

have come home at all. I wonder if you know how we've looked for you?"

She took his hand and turned a seal ring about on his little finger

absently. "Every night for weeks, when the lights of the train came

swinging in down below the meadows, I've said to myself, 'Niel is coming

home; there's that to look forward to.'"

She caught herself as she always did when she found that she was telling

too much, and finished in a playful tone. "So, you see, you mean a great

deal to all of us. Did you find Mr. Forrester?"

"Oh, yes! I had to stop and look at his sun-dial."

She raised herself on her elbow and lowered her voice. "Niel, can you

understand it? He isn't childish, as some people say, but he will sit

and watch that thing hour after hour. How can anybody like to see time

visibly devoured? We are all used to seeing clocks go round, but why

does he want to see that shadow creep on that stone? Has he changed

much? No? I'm glad you feel so. Now tell me about the Adamses and what

George is like."

Niel dropped on the turf and sat with his back against a tree trunk,

answering her rapid questions and watching her while he talked. Of

course, she was older. In the brilliant sun of the afternoon one saw

that her skin was no longer like white lilacs,--it had the ivory tint of

gardenias that have just begun to fade. The coil of blue-black hair

seemed more than ever too heavy for her head. There were

lines,--something strained about the corners of her mouth that used not

to be there. But the astonishing thing was how these changes could

vanish in a moment, be utterly wiped out in a flash of personality, and

one forgot everything about her except herself.

"And tell me, Niel, do women really smoke after dinner now with the men,

nice women? I shouldn't like it. It's all very well for actresses, but

women can't be attractive if they do everything that men do."

"I think just now it's the fashion for women to make themselves

comfortable, before anything else."

Mrs. Forrester glanced at him as if he had said something shocking. "Ah,

that's just it! The two things don't go together. Athletics and going to

college and smoking after dinner--Do you like it? Don't men like women

to be different from themselves? They used to."

Niel laughed. Yes, that was certainly the idea of Mrs. Forrester's

generation.

"Uncle Judge says you don't come to see him any more as you used to,

Mrs. Forrester. He misses it."

"My dear boy, I haven't been over to the town for six weeks. I'm always

too tired. We have no horse now, and when I do go I have to walk. That

house! Nothing is ever done there unless I do it, and nothing ever moves

unless I move it. That's why I come down here in the afternoon,--to get

where I can't see the house. I can't keep it up as it should be kept,

I'm not strong enough. Oh, yes, Ben helps me; he sweeps and beats the

rugs and washes windows, but that doesn't get a house very far." Mrs.

Forrester sat up suddenly and pinned on her white hat. "We went all the

way to Chicago, Niel, to buy that walnut furniture, couldn't find

anything at home big and heavy enough. If I'd known that one day I'd

have to push it about, I would have been more easily satisfied!" She

rose and shook out her rumpled skirts.

They started toward the house, going slowly up the long, grassy

undulation between the trees.

"Don't you miss the marsh?" Niel asked suddenly.

She glanced away evasively. "Not much. I would never have time to go

there, and we need the money it pays us. And you haven't time to play

any more either, Niel. You must hurry and become a successful man. Your

uncle is terribly involved. He has been so careless that he's not much

better off than we are. Money is a very important thing. Realize that in

the beginning; face it, and don't be ridiculous in the end, like so many

of us." They stopped by the gate at the top of the hill and looked back

at the green alleys and the sharp shadows, at the quivering fans of

light that seemed to push the trees farther apart and made Elysian

fields underneath them. Mrs. Forrester put her white hand, with all its

rings, on Niel's arm.

"Do you really find a kind of pleasure in coming back to us? That's very

unusual, I think. At your age I wanted to be with the young and gay.

It's nice for us, though." She looked at him with her rarest smile, one

he had seldom seen on her face, but always remembered,--a smile without

archness, without gaiety, full of affection and wistfully sad. And the

same thing was in her voice when she spoke those quiet words,--the

sudden quietness of deep feeling. She turned quickly away. They went

through the gate and around the house to where the Captain sat watching

the sunset glory on his roses. His wife touched his shoulder.

"Will you go in, now, Mr. Forrester, or shall I bring your coat?"

"I'll go in. Isn't Niel going to stay for dinner?"

"Not this time. He'll come soon, and we'll have a real dinner for him.

Will you wait for Mr. Forrester, Niel? I must hurry in and start the

fire."

Niel tarried behind and accompanied the Captain's slow progress toward

the front of the house. He leaned upon two canes, lifting his feet

slowly and putting them down firmly and carefully. He looked like an old

tree walking.

Once up the steps and into the parlour, he sank into his big chair and

panted heavily. The first whiff of a fresh cigar seemed to restore him.

"Can I trouble you to mail some letters for me, Niel, as you go by the

post-office?" He produced them from the breast pocket of his summer

coat. "Let me see whether Mrs. Forrester has anything to go." Rising,

the Captain went into the little hall. There, by the front door, on a

table under the hatrack, was a scantily draped figure, an Arab or

Egyptian slave girl, holding in her hands a large flat shell from the

California coast. Niel remembered noticing that figure the first time he

was ever in the house, when Dr. Dennison carried him out through this

hallway with his arm in splints. In the days when the Forresters had

servants and were sending over to the town several times a day, the

letters for the post were always left in this shell. The Captain found

one now, and handed it to Niel. It was addressed to Mr. Francis Bosworth

Ellinger, Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

For some reason Niel felt embarrassed and tried to slip the letter

quickly into his pocket. The Captain, his two canes in one hand,

prevented him. He took the pale blue envelope again, and held it out at

arm's length, regarding it.

"Mrs. Forrester is a fine penman; have you ever noticed? Always was. If

she made me a list of articles to get at the store, I never had to hide

it. It was like copper plate. That's exceptional in a woman, Niel."

Niel remembered her hand well enough, he had never seen another in the

least like it; long, thin, angular letters, curiously delicate and

curiously bold, looped and laced with strokes fine as a hair and

perfectly distinct. Her script looked as if it had been done at a high

pitch of speed, the pen driven by a perfectly confident dexterity.

"Oh, yes, Captain! I'm never able to take any letters for Mrs. Forrester

without looking at them. No one could forget her writing."

"Yes. It's very exceptional." The Captain gave him the envelope, and

with his canes went slowly toward his big chair.

Niel had often wondered just how much the Captain knew. Now, as he went

down the hill, he felt sure that he knew everything; more than anyone

else; all there was to know about Marian Forrester.