Barbie. You are right, too. Sylvia and I are likely to play with this
thing called Feminism, but you'll fight for it to the last trench like
the wee bit heroine you are. Oh, there's Mr. Amidon's car. There is
Mr. Amidon and Dr. Lorrimer and--Sylvia, _who_ is the third man?"
"If my eyes do not deceive me the third man is Roger Minot. Did you
know he was imminent?"
"I did not. Moreover, I am extremely displeased with him for
appearing," frowned Suzanne. "I told him distinctly I didn't want to
see him again unless I sent for him."
"Well, you will have to look the other way then," observed Sylvia. "He
is in plain sight."
So indeed it proved, for three minutes later, Roger Minot, a tall young
man with hazel eyes and a firm chin, was shaking hands with the
assembled group and explaining with considerable explicitness that he
had happened to be in Baltimore on business and had also happened to
call up Jack Amidon by telephone, who, in turn, had happened to be
taking Sylvia and her guests on an excursion and had been kind enough to
include himself in the invitation.
At all of which elaborate eloquence Suzanne had shrugged her displeasure
and pointedly turned her back on the young barrister and devoted herself
to the doctor. So much "happening" in the face of her expressed command
deserved punishment and Suzanne was a firm disciplinarian where her
lovers were concerned, especially the unfortunate Roger.
"Sylvia, you will have to sit with me to show me the way," ordered Jack
in his usual "magerful" way, taking things into his own hands. "All
aboard, everybody? Sure Madame Felicia won't go?" He turned to Sylvia
to inquire.
"No, she said not. Felicia is not exceedingly devoted to picnics, and I
suspect she has had more than enough of them this summer. Ready?"
Sylvia turned back to her guests to ask and in a moment they were off
down the hill.
The rich, vivid-hued Maryland fields and meadows lay indeed, "fair as
the garden of the Lord" as the car sped out of Greendale beyond to the
open country, along the smooth, hard, white pike. The afternoon shadows
fell cool and long, and already there was a faint autumnal hint of
crispness in the air and a mellow, misty gold to the sunshine. The
mountains were outlined, palely blue, against the deeper azure of the
cloudless September skies. Here and there a buzzard sailed and dipped
above some wooded slope or a blue jay screamed and flashed out of an oak
thicket.
Amidst the chatter of the rest Barbara fell silent and gave herself
blissfully to the serene beauty of the outdoor world so utterly remote
from that other world of din and traffic, of strenuous toil and keen
competition in which she was to merge her own existence on the morrow.
She was profoundly grateful for this last opportunity to feel the benign
presence of Nature in field and sky and mountain. Her quick eye took in
every patch of purple aster bloom, every scarlet glory of sumach and
warm bronze hue of oaks. Even the corn shocks spreading their brown
skirts as if indulging in some quaint minuet stamped themselves upon her
inner vision to be remembered long after. She did not wish to talk,
scarcely even to think. She desired only to feel--to let the
benediction of the jewel-tinted day possess her spirit.
Suzanne, less susceptible to the mood of tranquillity, was bubbling over
with gayety, her attention centering chiefly on Phil Lorrimer sitting in
the seat opposite her. She chose to ignore Roger Minot's steady hazel
eyes. He need not think his coming made any difference to her. Whether
he came or went was a matter of supreme indifference. He might just as
well have stayed in his grim little, trim little, office in Norton, Pa.,
as to have pursued a will-o'-the-wisp to Arden Hall so far as Suzanne
was concerned. Some women were made unhappy by men. Suzanne had a
cousin to whom this had befallen and had long since determined none
should have power to hurt her. She meant to guard well the citadel
which was Suzanne Morrison. If there were any casualties in the attempt
to scale the walls the responsibility would not be on her head. Let men
look to themselves. Suzanne had small compassion. Though she thoroughly
enjoyed the stimulus of the society of the other sex and dearly loved to
clash swords with them she wished nothing at their hands. She meant to
show the world that a woman could stand alone, strive and conquer alone,
fail if need be, alone, sufficient unto herself unto the end. There
should be no doll's house for her, no more confining limits than life
itself, wide as ether and deep as the sea, for her abiding place.
On the driver's seat were Jack and Sylvia, the latter a little silent.
Though she had made no protest against her companion's rather
high-handed disposition of herself it had not wholly pleased Sylvia.
For one thing, she thought it assumed too much on the basis of that half
promise of last night. She did not desire that Phil or indeed any of
the party should infer that she and Jack must necessarily pair off like
a couple of Noah's ark animals; moreover she considered it extremely
thoughtless, not to say selfish, of Jack to leave Phil to the society of
a group of almost strangers when his time in Greendale was so limited;
for Phil was taking the midnight train back to New York having allowed
himself little more than twenty-four hours for a holiday.
"Too bad everybody has to go away," Jack was saying. "May I come over
often and help cheer your lonely hours?" His voice was lowered and his
head bent toward Sylvia in an intimate fashion.
"No." The negative was sufficiently decisive to make the driver send a
sharp glance at his companion.
"Why not?"
"Several why nots. One is because you said last night you were going to
work in earnest. You can't do that and keep flying out to Greendale
every other day the way you have been doing all summer. Besides, I
expect to be busy myself."
"You! May I ask what you are going to do that is so almighty
important?"
"You may ask but I am not likely to inform you if you take that tone."
Jack whistled softly.
"Gee! Am I in as bad as all that?"
"As all what? Did I sound cross?" Sylvia smiled relentingly. "Well,
maybe I was. I hate the lordly male attitude you assume at times. Your
tone bristled with it just then."
"Did it?" he chuckled. "Sorry. Honest, I didn't mean to patronize your
ladyship. So far from feeling lordly in your presence you usually make
me feel infernally infinitesimal, not to say atomic. I have a fearful
and wonderful respect for your serene high mightiness. I truly did want
to know what you were going to do."
"I am going to get to work on my music for one thing. I've promised to
practice with Gus. Then I am going to learn to cook."
"In the name of heaven why?"
"Because I want to, chiefly. Also I think everybody--male and
female--ought to know how."
Jack groaned.
"Thence to dressmaking and millinery, I suppose?"
"Hardly. I haven't the slightest interest in sewing, though I could do
it on a pinch I believe. I know I couldn't trim a hat--at least not one
I would wear. But cooking is different. I believe I could get up quite
a passion for it. Hilda used to. She claimed it was just as much an
art to create a perfect salad as to write a sonnet."
"I'd vote for the salad personally. By the way, where is Hilda? Heard
lately?"
"No, and I'm worried. One hears such horrid stories of what is
happening over there. I don't know whether she and the Armstrongs can't
get back or don't want to."
"Most likely the latter. Johnny Armstrong is darned likely to do what
he wants. He is just the boy not to want to get back to safe and sane
America. He is much more apt to be down in a trench or up in a 'plane
by this time."
"I know. He's a wonder--one of the finest men I know. Just to think he
was my gardener once! Wasn't it funny?"
"He got mighty good pay for that piece of masquerading. Constance is a
shade too much on the grand duchess order for my taste but she suits him
down to the ground. Only wish Isabel had drawn a man like John instead
of the rotter she took a fancy to marry." For a moment Jack's serene
brow looked thundery. "Queer world!" he muttered. "Sometimes I think
we Amidons are doomed to go amuck one way or another. Jeanette's not
much better off. Guess we're all sort of rudderless as you say,
excepting Dad. He knows where he is going all right."
"You had better get on to his ship then," suggested Sylvia a little
dryly.
"I am going to. You needn't think I didn't mean what I said last night.
I did mean it, every word. If sticking to a job is going to mean
getting what I want, I'll stick tighter than a stamp."
There was a ring of determination in his voice which startled Sylvia a
little, it sounded so alarmingly conclusive.
"Jack! I didn't promise," she protested.
"Oh, I know. I'm not such a cad as to throw it up at you if even the
sticking isn't enough. But if it's the one chance I'm too good a
gambler not to take it--or to kick if I fail in the end." And Jack's
lips came together with a firmness which avouched the sincerity of his
statement.
Sylvia watching the landscape flit by looked thoughtful. It suddenly
occurred to her that her companion had spoken the literal truth. Jack
Amidon was first and last a good gambler, ready to play high stakes, to
win or lose like a gentleman, without vainglory or bitterness. If she
had said yes to his impassioned plea last night Sylvia could not help
wondering if a little of the ardor of his love might not have abated in
spite of himself. Wasn't it the chase itself he loved? If so, he was
only his father's own son. Jackson Amidon, Senior, went on quietly
bagging his millions, not because he cared a snap of his fingers for the
money but because the exhilaration of achieving it in the face of
obstacles was the breath of life to him. Like the biblical war horses he
metaphorically trumpeted "Ha Ha!" in the battle hour. With father and
son the game itself was the thing. The nature of the stake did not
matter so much. With one it was Power, with the other Love, as it
happened, but with both the zest lay, not in the end, but in the
pursuit. Of course Sylvia did not reason all this out clearly, but
vaguely she sensed the truth which the boy's words had revealed. Many
months later the revelation recurred to her and she wondered if Jack,
too, had understood himself as clearly as for a moment she had
understood him. She thought it possible with his keen power of
intuition, he had always understood. Perhaps he had.
So through the deepening autumnal twilight sped Youth with its visions
and its questionings, Youth unproved, pressing forward toward some
unknown mark in challenging mood, knowing little of the eternal mystery
of Life and less of that even more baffling mystery, the mystery of
Self.
*CHAPTER VI*
*OF MISSIONS, AND OMISSIONS*
"H-mm!" Suzanne meditatively surveyed the depleted feast. "Thermos
bottles! Silver spoons! Sophisticated salads! Is this your notion of
roughing it, Mr. Jack Amidon? Of all Sybaritical picnics!"
"Same old bugs! Same old sticks in the lemonade!" retorted Jack,
leaning forward to extract a leaf from Sylvia's cup with the prong of a
salad fork. "The good old times aren't utterly gone."
"Oh, but think of the bacon bats of yesteryear!" mourned Suzanne. "The
fingers I've burned! The clothes I've spoiled! The smudges wherewith
I've smudged my nose! I begin to feel fatally reminiscent. Give me
some more lemonade, I pine to drown my grief."
"And I pine to see the sunset from Lover's Leap." And Sylvia sprang up
hastily, perceiving that the sun was already glinting flame and gold
through the trees. "Come on everybody or it will be too late." The
others rose to follow her lead. Phil fell into step beside Sylvia,
leaving Jack to Barbara's society, as Suzanne and Roger had at last
struck up a conversation, albeit a rather non-amicable one and strayed
off together.
"Are you sure your name isn't Pease Blossom or Mustard Seed? I could
swear you were a fairy. Are you really a Militant? Would you resist
forcible feeding? Here, let me test you with a pickle."
But Barb only laughed and accepted the pickle.
"I'm nothing militant to-night. I'm at peace with the whole world."
"Even the menacing male?" teased Jack.
"The menacing male is a spoiled baby, biting off his own nose. Mr.
Amidon, it would serve you right if I delivered a suffrage lecture here
and now. I don't believe you know a thing about the movement,"
severely.
"Heaven forbid!" he ejaculated piously.
"You will sing a different tune before many years. You'll have it
forcibly fed to you unless you take to it of your own accord as babies
take to their thumbs."
"I believe I could bear to have even Suffrage rammed into me at your
hands, Mademoiselle Mustard Seed, especially if you would make pansy
eyes at me while you did it," he added audaciously. "What are you going
to do with those eyes of yours anyway? They are altogether too
expressive to be wasted on a Cause."
Barb frowned.
"You wouldn't wear a last year's hat. Why do you use last century
methods with women? They hate compliments."
"Do they? I wonder." And his wonder was genuine. He honestly
reflected a moment. Sylvia did hate compliments he knew. But then he
never offered her any. He never even flirted with Sylvia, though she
was about the only pretty girl of his acquaintance of whom as much could
be said. He had been perfectly willing to play the game a deux with
this demurely charming, pansy-eyed, little suffragist however. But he
was evidently not going to be permitted to have his will. Were Barbara
Day and Sylvia and the sharp-tongued Suzanne really a new breed of
womankind? Were his own sisters and the dozens of other girls of their
kind with whom he had played and danced and flirted for the past five or
six years really an older type, soon to be as extinct as the Dodo? Only
for a moment, however, he wondered. Jack was not much given to serious
thinking. He took life and the feminine sex on the whole rather as he
found them. He was always genially ready to "play up" to both. He was
now. It was rather agreeable he thought to watch Barb's eyes shine and
the color surge in her cheeks, so he laid the match to the tow chiefly
from an artistic impulse to see the flame.
"Tell me," he urged. "What is this thing you girls are up to? What is
it you are going to New York to do?"
Barb shot him a shrewd rather indignant glance. Then she laughed.
"You don't really care, but, just to punish you, I'm going to tell you.
You deserve it."
And then she did tell him, a little reservedly at first, but soon losing
both her resentment and her shyness she forgot herself entirely and
warmed to her loved theme, betraying something of the dream of her Aunt
Josephine, of herself, of all women who think and feel and are forever
disenchanted with any Pisgah heights they themselves might have the luck
to attain, so long as the great weary horde of the "dispossessed" wait
without the gates, scarcely even knowing in the apathy of their misery
that there is a Promised Land. And her listener did not scoff even to
himself at the revelation he was vouchsafed. He had the grace to
recognize with suitable humility that he unworthy had been permitted a
brief glimpse into a holy of holies. And irreverence was not one of
Jack's failings, for all his habitual levity of mood.
In the meanwhile, not far ahead, Roger and Suzanne were quarreling
hotly. At least Suzanne was quarreling. Roger never quarreled, which
was perhaps one of his most glaring defects in Suzanne's eyes.
"I told you not to come and you came," was the burden of Suzanne's
complaint.
"I didn't come to see you. I didn't even know you were in Greendale
until Jack told me. And when I knew, how could I resist a chance to see
you, especially as it will be months before I can see you again? Be
reasonable, Suzanne. Why are you so angry at me for coming?"
Suzanne shot him an exasperated and somewhat malicious glance.
Unfortunately, Mr. Minot was a lawyer and not a clairvoyant and
therefore was totally without means of knowing that the chief reason for
Suzanne's anger was the fact that she had been so foolishly glad to see
him. For every quickened beat of her pulse in his near presence poor
Roger had to pay with a lash of her tongue. Angry, indeed, was Suzanne
at Roger Minot for disobeying her royal mandates, but angrier still was
she at Suzanne Morrison for being automatically glad of his nearness.
Scant wonder the young lawyer had a very bad quarter of an hour as he
mounted the pine-needled slope toward the sunset.
Phil and Sylvia had less to say than either of the other couples,
strange to say, though it had seemed to both beforehand they would have
volumes. The hush of the forest and the hour seemed to have cast a spell
upon them, or was it an even more potent enchantment that held them fast
bound in silence? They had seen so little of each other during this
brief visit of Phil's. Last night had been too full and joyous and
excited for much conversation, even had Sylvia's responsibilities as
hostess left her much time for her latest arrived guest. Those few
moments on the stairs had been practically--indeed, the only ones--they
had enjoyed alone, and this morning Phil had given to his mother while
Sylvia and her guests slept away the hours up at the Hall. Both had
felt a little aggrieved and cheated at the way circumstances had
curtailed the pleasure of their being together for the first time since
the June Commencement at college. Yet now that the awaited moment had
come at last neither seemed to have anything particular to do with it.
It was strange, and both felt slightly embarrassed by the strangeness,
suddenly grown shy, after all their years of friendship.
"Oh!" Sylvia uttered the exclamation as she stepped out upon the great
ledge of rock from which she could see the sun's gold rim just dipping
behind the crest of the topmost purple peak leaving a sea of tulip
colors in its wake.
For a moment neither spoke again. A mood of complete serenity was upon
them that forbade speech, a sense of nearness, each to the other, and to
some high other Presence which might have been God or Nature or Love or
a mystic commingling of all three. Were the three, indeed, a new
Trinity, perfect and indivisible? There was a crackling among the
bushes behind, the sound of voices. The others were near. The
enchanted moment passed. Sylvia sighed, and, turning, met Phil's eyes
and her own drooped before what she saw there. No word was spoken, nor
needed, yet something unforgettable had been communicated. Sylvia's
heart was beating a little more quickly than usual and there was dew and
star shine in her eyes as she smiled at Jack and Barbara, a shine which
was lost on neither of the two new arrivals, though later it suited both
to pretend they had never seen it. For the moment Barbara's only
feeling was a quick compunction lest they had interrupted something
which they had no right to share. As for her companion, sharp fear and
half resentful jealousy went through him like keen-bladed knives. Had
he lost just at the moment when he seemed to have gained something
almost tangible? And then Suzanne and Roger reached the rock also,
arriving rather dilatorily by another path, having arrived also
apparently at a state of something faintly resembling truce, for Suzanne
was wearing a spray of vivid scarlet berries which Roger had risked
thorns and a possible broken neck to acquire. The risk had been worth
it, it seemed, for Roger was looking happier than at any moment since
Suzanne had first snubbed him several hours ago on Sylvia's piazza.
Barb, standing apart, watching the whole pageant from the outside, felt
oddly cold and lonely all of a sudden. There seemed to be so much love
in the world somehow and yet so little left over, as it were. And
Sylvia and Suzanne--did they know? Did they even begin to know how
precious love was? How one needed it in this great lonely world? She
walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the river whose rapid
current whirled fiercely, down below her. She remembered Sylvia's story
of how the rock was named. There are so many Lover's Leaps in the world
and their stories are all somewhat the same story. An Indian girl and
her lover had been forbidden to marry because they belonged to hostile
tribes and here they had gladly taken the consecrated leap together,
hand in hand, into space and eternity, one in death as they could never
have been in life.
What a strange thing love was! So Barb meditated. Was it something to
be avoided as Suzanne insisted because it demanded too high toll? The
others had seated themselves on the rock to watch the shifting panorama
of color in the western skies, but Barb wandered off by herself, still
pondering about that strange thing love. And the others scarcely
noticed her going, which was in its way a symbol.
Suddenly a single sharp cry broke the silence of the dusk and then
ceased. They all sprang to their feet in alarm, but it was Phil
Lorrimer's quick eye that first discovered what had happened. Below
them, and somewhat at the right of the outcropping ledge on which they
stood, hung Barbara, clinging to a slender sapling whose trunk bent, it
seemed almost to snapping beneath her slight weight. Sylvia saw, too,
almost at the same instant.
"There she is!" Her finger pointed. "Oh, Phil!"
But Phil had not waited for his embassy. He was already speeding down
the steep bank on his way to the scene of the accident.
"Hold on," he called cheerfully. "I'm coming. Can I reach you from
above?"
"No." Barb's voice sounded faraway but steady as Phil's own. "Don't
try. It's all crumbly."
"Hang tight then. I'll be there in a minute."
In what appeared to be an endless stretch of time to everybody, but
which was in reality an astonishingly brief interval, Phil's tall form
appeared on the river bank precisely beneath the tiny figure suspended
as it seemed in midair, but still clinging pluckily to the stout ash
sapling which held her weight gallantly. The distance between Phil and
the girl was perhaps ten feet, though it looked much more in the gulfing
darkness to them both.
"All right. Let go. I'll catch you."
A shudder shook Barb's whole body. That slim, tough little ash-tree
seemed all that kept her from the greedy swirl of the black river. Her
hands were grooved and cut with clinging and her arms ached until it
seemed as if she could not bear the pain, but for all that she felt as
if the one thing she could not do was to release her hold and slip into
the darkness. But there below loomed Phil Lorrimer's comforting size
and strength and Barb's courage grew as she looked down into his
uplifted face.
"Come on, Barbie, I'm right here." He had never called her anything but
Miss Day before, not even Barbara. Barbie was Sylvia's name, as it had
once been her mother's in the dear long ago. Somehow it seemed right and
natural and sweet that Phil should use it now. Suddenly she became the
trusting, obedient little girl Barbie again and without a quiver of
dread and with a heart at peace and full of faith she let go her hold on
the ash and went down, down, down into space--a surprisingly long
journey it seemed, though she felt perfectly comfortable taking it. She
had even time to notice that a star had come out and was smiling at her
friendlily out of the dusk over a sycamore-tree. She knew somehow or
rather that Phil would not fail her. Most people felt that about Phil
Lorrimer. More than one of his patients had been willing and unafraid
to go down the dark valley if he would stand by and help them on the
way.
Certainly he did not fail Barbara. Though the shock of the impact of
even her "fairy" figure made him sway and stagger a little, he caught
her as deftly as he had been wont in his college days to catch a
dazzling outfielder. In a second he had deposited her gently on the
soft moss on the river bank. Whereupon Barb gave a quick breath of a
sob then laughed a little rippling gurgle of a laugh, though there were
tears in her eyes.
"D-don't mi-nd me," she begged. "I'm just being g-glad I let go."
"All safe!" Phil's big voice boomed out of the darkness to the relief
of the anxious waiters above on the cliff. "All right, little lady?
Seeing as you wouldn't walk down, suppose we say you shan't walk up."
And Barb was swept like a sudden victim to a bird of prey into his arms.
"Oh, don't," she begged. "Please put me down. I can walk perfectly
well. I'm dreadfully heavy."