and all the family of girls who had the luck to be mothered by her
skillful hands and warm heart. All kinds of girls they were, big and
little, pretty and plain, stupid and clever, but all of the workaday
world and all otherwise homeless, united by one common bond, a warm
adoration for Sylvia through whom they felt themselves linked to the
world of their rosiest dreams. Sylvia would no more have omitted them
from her list of guests on this birthday celebration than she would have
omitted the Byrds or Doctor Tom. To be of the Hill was open sesame to
Sylvia's favor, and moreover these girls were every one of them her
personal friends and she wanted them here for their own sakes.
Hope and Martha, too, had come up from the Oriole Inn, the former still
a little inarticulate and somber but happily having lost the old-young,
pinched look about the mouth and the bitterness about the eyes which had
been hers that night in Sylvia's garden when she had charged the owner
so sternly with possessing "Hundreds of roses when Hope hasn't even
one;" a charge which Sylvia had never since been able to forget for
long. It was to her a symbol of the mesh of inequality and injustice of
the world in which she herself was caught and struggled. For Sylvia
wanted to share her roses. She always had wanted to, as Martha had long
since learned. Hope was even sweeter and lovelier at twenty than she
had been at fifteen, still a little frail in appearance though perfectly
well. This summer there was an added grace about her, a sort of
suppressed joyousness, a glow which transformed her rather ethereal
charm into an even more appealing human guise. During the sunny summer
days past when Stephen Kinnard had been using her as the incarnation of
gardens, Hope herself had bloomed from a shy bud of a rose into a
half-blown flower, though perhaps only Martha's keen, devoted eyes saw
what had happened.
Professor Lane and his wife, Sylvia's original "Christmas Mother," were
unfortunately unable to be present, though they sent warm greetings and
hearty congratulations from the Western university to which the
professor had recently been called. With them, too, was Elizabeth, also
of the original famous family, who had come of late to be almost like a
daughter in their childless home.
Gus Nichols was here, however, a slim, dark youth, extremely quiet,
though not in the least awkward; unobtrusive, grave, giving the
impression somehow of banked fires behind those solemn dark eyes of his,
which followed Sylvia Arden wherever she passed. Though Gus was
thoroughly American in dress and manner and articulation, the trail of
his Italian ancestry was upon him. Even after all these years he looked
"different," an odd contrast to the grim conservative old man, Angus
McIntosh, whose adopted son and idol he was. Gus had been studying
abroad for several years, had indeed just returned to America, ready to
start his career on the concert stage. If this profession elected by
the boy were at all a bitter pill for the old Scotchman to swallow he
made no protest about it and had even furthered the lad's ambition. Mr.
McIntosh was not one to indulge in half-way measures and Sylvia had long
since driven home her point that if he was to transform Gus Nichols,
office boy, into Augustus Nichols, his adopted son, he had no right to
change the currents of the boy's being in the process. He quite
understood that if Gus "had to play the music that was in him," he _had_
to. That was the end of it. Angus McIntosh was enough of a
predestinarian to perceive that. At any rate, Sylvia and her Christmas
family had inoculated the fast hardening old man with a certain infusion
of human tolerance and human understanding and he had all the reward for
his kindness that he desired and more in the boy's usually silent but
none the less deep gratitude and devotion.
Other friends there were of Greendale and the near-by city, assembled to
do honor to the young mistress of Arden Hall who had at last come home
to take her place among them no longer a half-fledged school girl, but a
poised and very lovely young woman.
"I suppose you will be marrying her off next," observed Mr. McIntosh
curtly, with bent brows, to Mrs. Emory who chanced to be standing near
by as Sylvia sped past in Jack Amidon's arms.
"Not I," smiled Felicia. "I should be sorry to have her marry for a
year or so yet. One is young such a very short time in this world at
best. I should like to keep her just as she is for awhile if I could."
"You'll have some trouble doing it unless you muzzle that young man, I'm
thinking." The speaker frowned thoughtfully at Jack Amidon's back. "I
suppose that is what most people would call a suitable match, eh?" he
wheeled on Felicia to ask.
"I suppose so," admitted Felicia.
"H-mp!" snorted her companion. "Most people are fools."
Whether fools or not there were plenty of people to note with interest,
pleasure or alarm, according to their several viewpoints, when as the
music ceased Sylvia stepped through the French window into the balcony
beyond, followed by Jack Amidon. Perhaps more than one guest would have
echoed Suzanne's verdict that Sylvia was spoiled indeed if Jack Amidon
were not good enough for her; handsome, debonair, thoroughly charming as
he was. Health, wealth, good looks and good old family on both sides.
What more could be desired? Who but a canny old Scotchman would have
"H-mped" in the face of such a very obviously appropriate combination?
Yet Sylvia herself was still to be reckoned with; Sylvia who wore her
heart on her sleeve as little now as in the old St. Anne days, Sylvia,
who wanted to learn to live as broad and deep and quick as she could.
*CHAPTER IV*
*THE WAYS OF A MAID*
"You look mighty sweet and cool and moonshiny!"
Jack stooped to draw Sylvia's scarf about her bare shoulders with the
protecting chivalrous touch which was characteristic of him. His
ancestors had been cavaliers and none of them all knew better than he
the art of little, tender, intimate, endearing ways which women--even
new women--love. The ardently adoring expression in his eyes was also
characteristic. Jack Amidon's eyes were accustomed to looking adoring.
He could no more help making love to a pretty girl than he could have
been rude to an ugly one. It was constitutional. To do him justice,
however, this time the adoration came from rather deep. There had been
girls and girls in his life but never but one Sylvia.
"Ah, but it's good to have you home for good and all." And he let his
hands rest for a moment on her shoulders as he spoke and permitted the
ardentness of his eyes to deepen.
But Sylvia slipped away from his hands and his too eloquent gaze. She
turned to rest her hands on the railing and look down at the fountain
which flashed and gurgled pleasantly below in the moonlight. Perhaps
she knew that all the summer day playing had been leading up to this
night, that a serious question was likely to "Boo" at her at any minute
unless she could keep it at a safe distance, which as Jack's eyes just
now betrayed was not going to be so easy.
"I am not sure I _am_ home--for good and all," she said, still with her
eyes on the fountain. "I have to find something to do. Just being
'out' isn't going to satisfy me. I have to be in something or rather.
I am looking for a Cause," she turned back to him with a smile to add.
Jack dropped on the railing by her side and bent his handsome head until
it was very near the girl's.
"Won't I do--for a Cause?" he asked, unconsciously echoing Suzanne.
Sylvia smiled.
"Scarcely. I am afraid you are more like an effect."
"An effect!"
"You are a fearful example of what I don't want to be and what I am
bound to be if I don't watch out."
"What?"
Sylvia paused for a word, then, "A derelict," she pronounced.
Jack's head went up quickly, his self-complacency shattered for the
moment. Sylvia's word had stung.
"Do I honestly remind you of anything so--dilapidated, not to say
rotten?" he asked.
Sylvia caught the hurt sound in his voice and looked up, taking in at a
glance his wholesome, young vigor, his essential cleanness and fineness.
Excellent things these in themselves as the girl knew, though she asked
for more.
"No," she admitted. "It wasn't a good figure after all. You are more
like a freshly rigged, beautifully appointed yacht, without a rudder or
a pilot, going nowhere--anywhere."
Jack settled back on the railing with a shrug.
"Same old Sylvia! You always did hit straight from the shoulder. What
do you want me to do? There is more money in the family now than is good
for us. What's the infernal use of my scrapping and scrambling for
more? I'm a nincompoop at the business anyway."
"Then for goodness' sake find one you aren't a nincompoop at," retorted
Sylvia.
"Easier said than done, young woman."
"Oh, I know," relented his mentor. "I haven't any right to preach till
I find my own job."
"You! Girls don't need a job. Their job is to look pretty and get
married."
Sylvia frowned at that.
"Heretic! That's not twentieth-century lingo. You are positively
mediaeval. I shall set Barb on you."
Jack smiled.
"Barb knows it's true just as well as I do for all her theories. She
would marry the right man in a minute if he turned up and forget the
suffrage stuff. She's by all odds the most domestic of the three of
you."
Sylvia looked thoughtful. She remembered Barb's opinion about the
"loveliness" of having babies and wondered. For all his inconsequence
Jack had a somewhat startling habit at times of getting beneath the
surface of things. She suspected he had hit upon a truth now but would
not give him the satisfaction of acknowledging the fact. Therefore she
said nothing, and her silence gave her companion the opening he had been
waiting for. He had not brought Sylvia out in the moonlight to talk
"twentieth-century lingo."
"You didn't wear my orchids," he observed irrelevantly, at least
irrelevantly to everything except his ardent eyes. From the beginning
his eyes had been talking a language older than that of feminism.
"I didn't wear anybody's flowers. I had too many."
"And I am not different from just anybody?" There was a caressing,
proprietary note in his voice. "Sylvia, sweetheart, you _know_ I am."
Sylvia faced him and the issue then, aware that she could fend no
longer.
"Of course you are different, Jack. I've known you so much longer than
the rest, but--I am afraid you are not different in the way you want me
to say it. Please, Jack, don't spoil what we have by asking too much."
Impulsively she put out her hand and let it rest on his. "Can't we keep
on being--just friends?" She pleaded after the immemorial fashion of
woman.
"I'm afraid not. You see, I don't want to be just friends. I want a
whole lot more as it happens. I know I'm not much good, but I could be
with you at the helm. You could do anything with me. You always could.
Oh, Sylvia, wouldn't you try it? Couldn't you?" He stooped and lifted
her hand to his lips. "Sylvia, isn't there any hope?" he implored, all
his boy's heart in his eyes.
Sylvia couldn't help being stirred deeply. When one is loved it is not
so hard to believe one loves in return and the call of youth and life is
strong. But for both their sakes she steadied herself knowing the time
was not ripe for yielding, if, indeed, it ever would be. This was one
of the things among others that she was at sea about. She was not yet
sure she knew herself, as she had told her friends.
"I am afraid there isn't--much," she said gently, apropos of his word
_hope_.
His hand clinched.
"Sylvia, is there any one else?"
She shook her head hastily, but her eyes fell beneath his penetrating
gaze.
"It isn't--Sylvia, it isn't Phil?"
Sylvia's head went up and there was a flash in her brown eyes, a deeper
flush on her cheeks.
"It is nobody. Jack, you haven't any right to ask that," she rebuked
him hotly.
"Sorry," he apologized. "Consider it unasked." "So it is old Phil," he
thought.
"I don't want to marry anybody--not for a long, long time," Sylvia went
on swiftly. "Anyway, I couldn't marry anybody who was just a boy. I've
got to marry a _man_." In her confusion Sylvia hit hard again; harder
perhaps than she really meant.
Jack rose and made one or two quick turns tip and down the balcony.
Then he came to a halt before Sylvia.
"Maybe I deserve that," he said soberly. "No doubt I do. See here,
Sylvia, if I can show you I am a man, will it help any?"
Sylvia hesitated. It would help a great deal and she knew it. And yet
could she promise anything while she was still so uncertain of herself?
Had she any right to hold out any hope?
"Sweetheart, wouldn't there be any chance for me?" he pleaded.
"I don't know," said Sylvia honestly. "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm all in a
muddle myself. I do care a lot. How could I help it? You are always
so dear and nice to me, and you are so twisted up with so many of the
happiest times I've ever had I couldn't help caring. But it isn't
enough at present, and I am not at all sure it ever could be enough of
the right kind. We are awfully good playmates, but there is more ahead
for both of us than play. At least I hope there is. Anyway, I don't
want to belong to anybody but myself for awhile."
"I'll wait. I'll work like the devil. I'll do anything if you'll only
say there is the slightest shadow of a chance."
Sylvia couldn't help smiling at the boyishness of his protestations,
earnest as they were and touching in their unwonted humility. She shook
her head.
"That is all there is--just a shadow of a chance. I'm sorry it isn't
more. Truly I am. And don't--please, don't--hope too much," she
begged.
"I'll hope all there is," he retorted grimly.
"Well, here you are! My word! Your partners are tearing their hair and
rushing round like mad dogs. Pretty way for a hostess to behave,
vanishing like the original Cheshire puss! Amidon, your life isn't
worth a nickle if you go in there." Thus challenged a blond young
medical student from the near-by University suddenly appearing in the
window, blithely unconscious that he had interrupted anything more than
a moonlight interlude.
"Then I'll stay out," announced Jack coolly as Sylvia rose with
apologies and followed her captor.
Left alone, Jack lit a cigarette and strode to and fro in the little
balcony thinking as hard as perhaps he had ever thought in his
twenty-six rather heedless happy-go-lucky years. If ever a man takes
square account of himself it is at the moment when he desires with all
his heart and soul to win a woman. As young men go, Jack Amidon was as
clean and fine as most, considerably more so than might have been
expected, in fact, considering his easy-going temperament and unlimited
income. But being merely negatively decent was not enough to offer
Sylvia Arden. Not even shrewd old Angus McIntosh knew that better than
Jack himself.
"Man indeed!" he muttered in the course of his march. "I suppose if I
had studied like sin and turned into a saw bones like old Phil she would
have had some use for me." The thought of Phil Lorrimer sent his
thoughts on a different tangent. For with that uncanny perceptive power
which Sylvia herself granted him he knew far better than Sylvia knew
that if it had been Phil instead of himself who had been besieging the
Princess of the hill top that evening for the boon of her hand and heart
a different answer might have been forthcoming. Phil, at least,
fulfilled the initial requirement. He was a man, every inch of him.
Jack vouchsafed him that just as he had admitted the other lad deserved
Sylvia's favor even at his own expense back in the days of the Christmas
family.
It was odd how history repeated itself. Just as in that old time,
Sylvia had set himself a task to "mend his fences" as she had
whimsically expressed it, so she was again bidding him gird on his armor
if he would win her respect without which her love was an impossibility.
As if it were yesterday Jack remembered that night among the snow-laden
pines, out under the stars, when Sylvia had gravely and simply without
any preaching, Sylvia fashion, turned him aside from paths already
beginning to be dangerous to safer, cleaner ways. Come to think of it,
it had always been Sylvia who had pointed him starward, Sylvia only who
believed in him enough to swear him into knighthood. Now that they were
no longer boy and girl it was the prize of her love which would send him
into the fray. Already he had experienced his accolade.
"Poor old Lorry!" he thought. "Why didn't he cut his blooming
operations and come down here and speak for himself to-night? Thank the
Lord he didn't though or yours truly would be ditched and done for. I
never had a show with Lorry in the foreground. Well, here's to the
breach. Sylvia will never forgive me if I omit to dance with one of her
precious orphans."
So it happened that a few moments later shy little Mary Lane watching
the dancers with longing eyes from a corner caught her breath with
astonishment and delight as Jack Amidon stood before her, his eyes
smiling encouragement and friendliness, his lips begging the boon of a
dance quite as earnestly as if she had been one of the belles of the
ball. So it happened also that Sylvia, being whirled past the two,
smiled happy gratitude at Jack over her partner's shoulder, and he knew
that his careless kindness to her little guest had scored him a high
mark in her favor.
"Jack is such a dear," thought Sylvia. "He is a real knight. I wonder
if I am all wrong to try to turn him into a plain workaday person. He
is so thoroughly delightful as he is. When men get too much absorbed in
their work you can't count on them for the little things, and, after
all, the little things mean a whole lot."
Possibly this sage conclusion had some vague connection with the fact
that a certain very much "absorbed in work" young doctor way off in a
distant city had permitted Sylvia's birthday to come and almost go with
no word or sign. If so certainly Sylvia would have been the last to
admit the connection even to herself.
"Please, Miss Sylvia, there's some one downstairs in the hall asking for
you," whispered a maid in Sylvia's ears as her partner brought her to a
chair. "He didn't give any name."
Sylvia excused herself and slipped away wondering as to the identity of
her late arriving guest. At the foot of the stairs was an
extraordinarily tall, blond young man, with the bluest and friendliest
of eyes and the biggest, most crushing hand grip in the world.
"Why, Phil!" gasped Sylvia. "I had no idea you could come." This as
soon as she was able to regain her wits and the possession of her hands.
"Nor I. As a matter of fact, I couldn't. I just did," grinned Phil
Lorrimer, cheerfully. "Here I am, B. and O. grime and all. May I come
to the party just as I am without one plea?"
"You surely may. I'm so glad." And Sylvia's face corroborated her
words.
"Here's a nosegay for you," and Phil's fingers fumbled with the string
on the box he had deposited in a convenient chair while he had used both
hands greeting Sylvia. In a moment a charming bouquet of cream yellow
roses, shell pink at the heart, was disclosed.
"How lovely!" Sylvia buried her face in the nosegay. "I just have to
wear them. Oh, dear, I haven't a pin."
"Here you are!" And the young doctor solemnly produced the needful
article.
"Trust you!" laughed Sylvia. "There, aren't they perfect? Come on,
quick. Let's not waste the music."
"Ditto my sentiments. Is this my dance?"
"It's Doctor Tom's, but he won't care. Hurry."
And in a moment the onlookers had something new to think of as Sylvia's
white and silverness flashed back into the ballroom with a tall figure
in plain traveling clothes by her side.
"Another country heard from," grunted Angus McIntosh as he watched the
two swing into step.
Perhaps in the whole room there was no one who had more cause for a
sudden reaction of feeling than Jack Amidon, whose quick eye took in
even at the length of the hall that Sylvia was at last wearing
somebody's flowers. But it was with apparent nonchalance and entire
good will that he came to offer Phil Lorrimer a cordial greeting a few
moments later, though even as he chatted with the other young man it did
not escape him that there was an added radiance to Sylvia's
"moonshininess," as if she had tasted some magic draught of youth and
joy during those few moments in which she had been out of the room. As
has been observed, Jack Amidon was a rather unexpectedly perspicuous
person at times.
*CHAPTER V*
*SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON*
"Oh, me! Just think! By to-morrow afternoon at this time we'll all be
scattered to the four winds," sighed Barbara. "Don't you hate to have
things get different?"
"Can't say I do. The differenter the better so far as I am concerned as
I have hitherto remarked," put in Suzanne. "I hate staying still,
physically, mentally, or morally. I'm ready for new pricks every
minute. I feel like saying to life every morning 'Come on. Do your
worst. I'm ready. Give me anything--everything--except stagnation.'"
"You don't look as if you were going to stagnate just this minute,"
laughed Sylvia, surveying her friend, who, indeed, from the tip of her
impatiently tapping shoe to the crown of her rebellious blue-black, wavy
hair, appeared sufficiently dynamic for any purpose.
"I don't intend to. That is why I am transferring my spiritual and
bodily allegiance from Norton, Pa., to New York City. I'd rather live
on a crust in that blessed city of enchantment than fare on nectar and
ambrosia elsewhere. I wish you would change your mind and come along,
Sylvia. I know you are going to be discontented here or even contented,
which is worse. Arden Hall is a perfect dream of a place, and I've
loved every minute of this week with you, but it would swamp me with its
placidity if I settled down in it, and that's the truth."
"Oh, Suzanne!" Thus Barb, always sensitive to the possibility that some
one's feelings might be going to be hurt.
"Don't mind her, Barb. I know what she means precisely, and it is all
more or less true. Arden Hall is placid and remote. I have to find a
way to link it somehow with big moving things outside--below--or the
very thing Suzanne threatens me with will happen."
"You'll find a way," prophesied Barb earnestly.
"Of course she'll find it," seconded Suzanne. "If there is anybody on
this green earth capable of squeezing the traditional camel through the
needle's eye it is the young person I see before me. Isn't it time our
cavaliers arrived? I begin to pine for action already."
"Jack said he would be here at four sharp. We are going to take you to
the most heavenly spot, right over the river with the whole Ridge for a
background. Some day when you are being compressed to a wafer in the
Subway in your precious old city you will remember it and be willing to
give your second-most-becoming hat for a magic carpet to take you back."
"I shouldn't wonder," murmured Barb. "I believe Suzanne would rather
hear the roar of the El than the wind in the pines though. She is the
most urban person I ever knew."
Suzanne laughed at this arraignment.
"It isn't the music of the El, _per se_ that I delight in. That's
nearer like the thing it rhymes with. But it's a symbol. It means
hurrying human beings, the rush and stir of things. I love crowds."
"And I detest them," groaned Barb. "I'm afraid of New York in spite of
all its wonderfulness. It is so big and hard and impersonal. If it
weren't for being with Aunt Jo I know it would scare me to bits to live
there."
"You poor babe!" Sylvia smiled sympathetically at the speaker. "It is
unthinkable that a little shrinking infant like you should be dedicated
to a great screaming cause. You ought to live in a cozy cottage, in a
friendly little village, where everybody knows everybody and grow
pansies."
"And babies," added Suzanne, an addition which brought a quick flush to
Barb's cheeks and made her put out her hand with a deprecating gesture.
"You'll never be able to stand the pace. Better wire your Aunt
Josephine you have decided to bury the mantle."
"For mercy's sake, what do you two think I am? I guess I don't have to
be packed away in rose petals and pink cotton." There was a strain of
indignation in Barb's voice. "I don't belong in the sheltered woman
class, and I wouldn't stay in it if I did. How long do you suppose I'd
have any peace in my cozy cottage, in my friendly little village,
remembering all the other women who don't live in cozy friendly places
but have to work in horrid, noisy, sweaty factories or worse? What
pleasure would I get out of my pansies--and babies--so long as I knew
there was a child in the world who wasn't free to chase butterflies in
the sunshine? You two think I am just playing at this woman game. I'm
not. Sylvia can act Lady Bountiful from the top of her Hill and you can
write about woman, Suzanne, but I'm going to fight for her, so there!"