feminist for once and succumb to the eternal masculine superiority of
brawn and muscle."
And in spite of herself, Barb felt oddly content to let herself lie
passive in his arms, so much so that she closed her eyes and said never
a word. At the top of the ascent, which had been short though somewhat
steep, Phil put down his burden, and the rest crowded around the two,
full of excitement, anxiety and questions. But Phil exercised his
doctor's prerogatives and ordered them to let Barb alone and make a
speedy start for home. These orders were meekly obeyed, though they
managed little by little to get the information of how the accident had
occurred. It had been simple enough. The rock on which Barb had been
standing had been "crumbly" as she had said, and before she had had time
to realize what had happened she had slipped with the shelving stone and
soil and had only by the greatest of good fortune managed to snatch at
the ash in her descent and thus save herself from the disastrous fall
into the turbulent rock-filled bed of the river. It had been obviously
a sufficiently narrow escape to make them all rather silent and sober as
they packed up the remains of the feast and made their way to the road
just beyond the glade where the car waited.
"Want to have a try at the wheel, old man?" asked Jack, laying an
affectionate hand on Phil's shoulder when they were ready to start.
"She's a bird."
"Why, yes." Phil's frank face lit up with pleasure. "Sure you don't
mind, Jackie Horner?"
"Not a bit. Glad to have a rest," acquiesced Jack cheerfully. "Pile
in, Sylvia. Phil's waiting."
Sylvia's eyes flashed quick inquiry at Jack as he helped her into the
seat beside the driver. He met her gaze imperturbably but she was not
deceived by his noncommittal expression. Well she knew that the owner
of the "bird" suffered the tortures of the damned when any hand beside
his own was on the wheel. Well she knew also that he was deliberately
giving Phil a chance to do more than run his car. It was so precisely
like Jack, impulsively selfish one minute, impulsively generous the
next. Through the white star-lit wonder of the night the car sped, while
its occupants sat almost silent, wrapped in an incommunicable garment of
dreams. Later, after they had taken leave of the girls, Jack and Roger
went with Phil to the station at Baltimore. But Roger stayed in the car
while Jack went to the train with Phil. Just as the train pulled in
Jack stirred himself to say what was on his mind.
"Phil! Forgive the impertinence, old man, but I've got to know. If she
has decided for you, I'll clear out. You're the better man--always
were."
Phil Lorrimer drew a long breath and set his lips rather as he used to
set them before a tackle in the field.
"You needn't clear out, so far as I am concerned. I haven't asked
Sylvia to marry me. How can I? I've only just finished paying my
college debts and she is worth something like a million. Is thy servant
a fool?" he added a little bitterly.
"Yes," said Jack Amidon. "The biggest kind of fool. Do you suppose the
money matters a hang to her?"
"Well, it matters to me," curtly. "Train's under way. 'By." And with
a hasty but warm pressure of the hand which went out to meet his, Phil
boarded the moving train, leaving Jack staring after.
"Confound the fellow!" he muttered. "Hanged if I know whether to be mad
or glad he's such an idiot. How did he dare not ask Sylvia when her
eyes looked like that? Gee! Perhaps he didn't see."
But Phil Lorrimer had seen, and all that night he stared sleeplessly out
at the stars and the twinkling lights of villages and cities, love and
pride battling within him. Once or twice he made up his mind feverishly
to telegraph Sylvia the first thing in the morning. Then he would
decide it would be better to write her a letter, tell her exactly how it
all was and ask if she cared enough to wait for him until he had
something worth while to offer her. And all the time he knew he would
do nothing of the kind. He would fight on grimly by himself, and if in
the meantime somebody else--Jack or another--slipped in ahead, well,
that would mean she was not for him, if he knew Sylvia. And so on and
so on and so on. But never in all his reasonings did it occur to him
that the money was as nothing between him and Sylvia Arden, neither of
advantage or disadvantage, simply a zero. Jack Amidon knew it and had
generously endeavored to tell his rival. Sylvia knew it and her eyes
had also tried to tell him that night in the sunset. But poor Phil,
blind as the clearest sighted man sometimes becomes when a woman is
involved, saw Sylvia's money as a huge, hateful, insurmountable,
mountain peak behind which stood Sylvia herself, only to be reached by
accumulating another pile of gold from which he could make the leap to
her.
And in all that long wakeful night he never once thought of little
Barbara Day. He was too used to saving people, one way or another, to
think much about this latest exploit in the salvation line; and,
besides, his mind was full of other things.
But Barbara dreamed of Phil and heard his deep voice calling out of the
darkness, "Come on, Barbie. I'm right here." And all through her
dreams the star over the sycamore-tree kept smiling at her friendlily
but its smile was oddly mixed up with Phil Lorrimer's.
*CHAPTER VII*
*OCTOBER DEVELOPMENTS*
A deeper bronze to the oaks and a more vivid scarlet to the sumach. A
sharper tang to the air, mornings. Hilltops veiled in amethyst and
golden haze on the meadows, afternoons. At sundown, ghost-like wraiths
of mists rising up from the river valley. Now and then a clanging wedge
of wild geese speeding southward through the night. October!
It must be admitted that in spite of Sylvia's "vicious contentedness"
she did feel the Hall a little too peaceful and quiet after her friends
had gone, and she settled back into the very life she had chosen for
herself. The summer had been brimful of guests and gayeties, with
people coming and going all the time and always some new delightful
project or enthralling interest afoot, a true Forest of Arden atmosphere
of sunshine and happiness and blithe irresponsibility.
Even the sharp and sudden thunder crash, heard from overseas in that
fateful early August, the din of great nations rushing to arms, came
only vaguely to Sylvia's happy Hill as to most of America. Slow to
waken, the country had not at once sensed the significance of what was
happening. Humane and peaceful itself, it had not taken in the hideous
reality of a desolated and ravaged Belgium, the inspiriting vision of a
risen and consecrated France beating the enemy back from Paris, of the
fearful and relentless grip of the great dog of war upon the stricken
nations. To Sylvia, as to others, it all seemed impossible, incredible,
not to be apprehended in terms of actuality. These things just couldn't
be, that was all. There must be some mistake somewhere. But there was
no mistake. People kept coming in on every steamer with harrowing tales
of well-substantiated horror. The things they had seen made the heart
sick and the blood run cold. It was war indeed. However horrible,
these things were possible, had happened.
Perhaps the first vital realization came to Sylvia as it came to nearly
every one in this country through individual testimony of friends. Even
in September, rumor reached her that John Armstrong's money had helped
to establish and support a field hospital "somewhere in France," that
his wife and her sister Hilda were regular Red Cross nurses. And in
October had come a letter from Hilda herself, describing simply but with
the fearful graphicness of the bare truth, the horrors, the miracles,
the splendid thrills, the supreme satisfaction of the work she and
Constance had undertaken. John was driving a relief Ambulance near the
battle line. Bertram was at the front somewhere. Bertram, it appeared,
was the young Englishman to whom the writer had very recently become
engaged after a romantically brief acquaintance. Of course it was
horrible, Hilda admitted, having him there, but then she wouldn't want
him not to want to be there.
All this Sylvia read with absorbed interest and straightway dispatched a
generous check to John Armstrong. But giving money being altogether
insufficient to express her abounding sympathy she also learned to knit,
to Jack's huge delectation and much raillery, and resolutely set herself
to making sponges and rather eccentric looking hose, though this
process, too, scarcely satisfied her when she thought of what her friend
was doing over in France. In fact, it satisfied her so little that she
very speedily abandoned it entirely wherein she was rather like a good
many other American women. "A thousand shall fall at thy right hand but
it shall not come nigh thee" seemed to be America's motto in those days.
Perhaps the thing which came nearest, that autumn, to offering Sylvia an
outlet for her restless energy was her music. She was an excellent
accompanist and she and Gus Nichols spent much time together previous to
his departure for the concert tour which was to begin early in November.
And while Sylvia was intent on her own dreams and quandaries, weaving
much she scarcely understood herself into the music, she had not the
slightest perception that these hours she gave the young violinist meant
anything more to him than to herself, an agreeable mutual expression in
a loved art. "Music is Love in search of a word" and if the boy's violin
struggled more than once to tell her what his lips would never have
ventured on, Sylvia, with her mind on other things, did not hear.
Long enthusiastic letters came frequently from Suzanne, ensconced,
according to schedule, in a dingy studio in the Square where one is not
encumbered with needless luxuries like steam heat and bath tubs and
electricity, where one steeps in "Atmosphere," and pays far more than he
can afford for the privilege of living very uncomfortably but
artistically. Her letters reeked of Bohemia, of "Polly's" and "Bruno's
Garret," of the delicious glamour and picturesqueness of the inimitable
Village, of the thrill and stimulus of the whole marvelous city of which
the Village was a unique part.
Barb, too, wrote often, though with less abandon of rejoicement in her
new way of life. It was all "interesting." Aunt Jo was "wonderful."
The Metropolitan was "magnificent." People were "kind." But there was
a faint panic-stricken note beneath it all, at first, which made Sylvia
wonder if poor Barbara were a little submerged by the very seething
whirlpool which was such supreme delight to Suzanne. It was as if both
were on a "Merry-Go-Round," and Suzanne kept clapping her hands and
crying "Faster! Faster!" while Barb's timid "pansy" eyes begged in
silence for a safer, less mad rate of revolution.
Aside from her aunt, of whom Barb could never say enough, the person
most frequently mentioned in her letters was Philip Lorrimer. "Dr.
Lorrimer is so good to me." "Dr. Lorrimer took me to a roof garden last
night." "Phil and I rode over on the ferry to Staten Island to cool off
last evening." "Phil just came in and sends greetings. He is going to
take me to a Socialist meeting soon." "Aunt Jo likes Phil so much," and
so forth.
And though Sylvia made no comment on this new development it gave her
cause for reflection. Sylvia was more than ever "at sea" these days.
That sunset moment on Lover's Leap had been an illuminating moment for
her and she guessed it had been one for Phil also. Though she told
herself later she must have been mistaken, she knew in her heart she had
not been so. The look in Phil's eyes as they had met hers that moment
was unmistakable, more eloquent than volumes of speech. She had felt the
same thing vibrating in his voice when later he had bidden her "Good
night" and "Good-by" and stepped into Jack's car, something which met a
quick leap of response in herself. Sylvia was very woman and she knew
what had happened, though she did not know whether the thing was going
to be permanent or not.
All that next day and the next and for a week beyond she watched the
mails, pretending to herself, feminine wise, that she was doing nothing
of the sort. And, finally, when on the tenth day a brotherly, brief,
impersonal, not to say casual, note came from New York in Phil's big
sprawling hand, she felt as if a shower of icy water had been hurled at
her. Not that she wanted Phil to ask her to marry him, not that she was
at all sure she would have said yes if he had asked her. She was by no
means certain it would not be Jack to whom she would surrender when the
time came for surrender. At least so she told herself to save her pride.
Certainly she was far from ready to marry any man that Fall, sincerely
desirous as she was to belong to herself awhile as she had told Jack.
Nevertheless Phil's very discretion angered and hurt her. Every now and
then she was tortured by an agonizing fear that in the strange
exhilaration of that moment in the forest she might have betrayed to him
more than she had been in any degree willing to admit to herself.
Consequently, Philip Lorrimer, M.D., got very few and very brief letters
from Arden Hall those golden autumn days.
Neither is it strange that out of favor with his "Faraway Princess" Phil
turned to sympathetic little Barbara in his few idle hours. Not that he
took Barb into his confidence. Indeed there were no confidences to
make. To no one in the world would he have admitted that Sylvia's
apparent indifference hurt. Sylvia had the right to ignore him if she
chose. The Queen could do no wrong. Nor was there anything to say
about the rumors which reached him frequently that Sylvia and Jack were
often together, and that an engagement was obviously to be expected if
not already secretly in existence. That, too, he had counted on as a
possibility when he had told Jack there was no reason for him to "clear
out." Phil Lorrimer was man enough to want the lady of his heart to be
free in her choice. Had he been in Jack's position he would have entered
the race and run, neck and neck, beside his rival and abided the end
whatever it was. But he was handicapped, or so he believed, by his
poverty, so he set his teeth and stood out of the way leaving Jack a
clear road. If Jack could win--well, it meant Sylvia cared, that was
all. Phil's philosophy was a very simple one.
In the meantime there was work. And Phil was the kind to be able to
assuage nearly every mortal ill in work. In the strenuous demands of
the day-time hours at the hospital he had little chance to brood over
any personal woes and when night came on he took what consolation he
could, man fashion, from another woman's obvious pleasure in his
society, never once suspecting he was playing with edged tools any more
than Barb herself did. Of the physiological action of the heart Phil
Lorrimer knew a great deal but of the more subtle manifestations of that
organ he knew astonishingly little.
Only Miss Josephine Murray kept her keen eyes wide open. "Babes in the
wood!" she thought sometimes. "Heavens! What a fearful thing it is to
be young!" And then seeing the soft flush on Barb's cheeks when she
came in from an excursion with the young doctor, and the starry shine in
her eyes, Miss Murray would add grimly to herself, "Fearful but divine!
It's a million years since I had the gift of looking like that."
And sometimes she would ask her niece questions about young Dr.
Lorrimer, and Barb would chatter on innocently about him, how he was an
old, old friend of Sylvia's, so old, they were almost like brother and
sister, though she and Suzanne used sometimes to think maybe Sylvia
would marry him some time, but now everybody said it would be Jack
Amidon. And once Barb had told the story of how she had slipped over
the edge of the cliff and hung to the little ash-tree until Phil had
called to her to let go and she had obeyed and gone down, down into
space, not one tiny bit afraid for she had felt just as sure as sure
that Phil Lorrimer would catch her just as he promised.
"He's the kind of person you just have to have faith in. You know he
wouldn't fail you, no matter what happened," she had finished. And Aunt
Jo had "H-med" meditatively and risen to switch on the electric light
and sit down to her letters. But Barb had lingered before the gas log,
watching its scintillating colors and lights and dreaming little vague
pleasant dreams. Perhaps the Barb who didn't dare let herself look at
the real Barb took a shy peep that night.
As for Jack Amidon, he was extraordinarily on his good behavior that
autumn. His father was grimly pleased to find him prompt and assiduous
at his office desk, a rather unexpected departure from his career of the
past two years when he had fulfilled the obligations of his nominal post
chiefly by absent treatment. Possibly the sudden change of heart on the
part of his rather erratic son reminded the old man of a similar abrupt
right-about-face some six years ago when the same delinquent had
announced himself blandly as being "on the water wagon" after a rather
strenuous course of wild oat sowing. Perhaps, too, Jackson Amidon
shrewdly suspected that now as then the impetus to the reform could be
traced to a vigorous-willed, clear-eyed young lady who tolerated no
weaklings among her retinue.
"The boy's taken a new turn," he thought. "He'll come out all right in
the end. He's sound as a nut inside for all his vagaries. And if that
little girl on the Hill can make him come to, it will be one of the best
jobs she ever landed." And he added also to himself that if the day
ever came when he should welcome Sylvia Arden as his third daughter
there would be little left to wish for in the time he had left. And
then his eyes had grown sober, for his own daughters, those of his own
flesh and blood, had never been of much comfort to him, dearly as he
loved them. Over in Europe, Isabel was already threatening stormily to
get a divorce from the titled rascal she had insisted on marrying in
spite of her father's judgment and protestations. And there was
Jeanette, beautiful, willful Jeanette, whose frocks were the last cry
from Paris and whose cars and horses and houses and entertainments were
all the most daring and expensive America could produce! He, himself,
had given her all the money her little hands could hold or spend and
Francis Latham had gone on with the prodigious task but neither one of
them had been able to give her happiness. That was all too evident.
Perhaps if there had been children it would have been different. And at
this point in his reflections the old man always broke off with a sigh,
for he knew that the moment when Jack should bring Sylvia home for a
bride could only yield precedence in satisfaction to that other
hoped-for moment when he should see his grandson, Jackson Amidon, the
third. Then, indeed, the curtain might go down when it pleased.
These dreams of Jackson Amidon's did not look so all improbable that
October. Jack was distinctly "on the job" as he would have expressed
it, doing his level best to make a man of himself, since that was what
Sylvia demanded, and sunning himself happily in her favor during their
mutual leisure hours. Very good comrades the two were. Youth turns to
youth as a morning glory to the sun and the Goddess of Propinquity is a
lady of much influence. Certainly it was not strange that people
prophesied that an engagement would soon be announced. Possibly it was
not strange either, that Jack and Sylvia themselves believed such a
denouement entirely probable in course of time.
*CHAPTER VIII*
*FIRE AND FROST*
"Lois, aren't you ever going to write any more?" Sylvia on the rug
before the fire with wee Marjory in her arms looked up over that young
person's bobbing silver curls to ask the question.
Lois Daly sitting by the window to catch the last bit of daylight, ran
her hand into a small stocking to investigate the number of casualties
before she answered.
"Maybe. When the kiddies are grown up."
"But don't you mind not doing it now? Don't you want to do it
dreadfully sometimes?"
"Not especially. In fact I don't believe I could write now if I tried.
I've lost the knack as well as the impulse. You have no idea how much
such things are a matter of mere habit." Lois' voice had an even flow
suggesting cool, shady, translucent waters. Sometimes her friend's
serenity irritated Sylvia. It did now.
"Well, I think that is all wrong," she announced decidedly. "You
oughtn't to have let it go."
"Just how could I have helped it? You may recall I have been moderately
busy these last few years. I haven't had much time to entertain
literary angels."
"Oh, I know," acknowledged Sylvia penitently, curling one of Marjory's
ringlets around her finger as she spoke. "You couldn't, of course, with
the house and the babies and the little mother's death and everything.
But couldn't you begin again now?"
"Why should I? Tom doesn't need an author in his household. He needs a
housekeeper and a nurse and a seamstress and a wife." There was a
faintly satirical twist to Lois' lips as she made the statement. "Of
the four he needs the wife least, of course. He is too busy to enjoy my
society. This hospital project is the last straw."
Sylvia looked thoughtful. Somehow there did seem to be something wrong
somewhere. Doctor Tom too occupied to see anything of his beautiful,
brilliant wife; she, in turn, too much immersed in household and
maternal cares either to cultivate her own particular gift or pay much
attention to the things her husband was so vitally interested in! These
two had started out so well. They were both so fine, so thoroughly
devoted at heart to each other. What was the trouble? Was marriage
always a compromise like this? Sylvia did not like to think so.
Somewhere there must have been something which could have been done
differently. Woman-like she was a bit inclined to blame the other woman.
If only Lois had cared a little more for the things Doctor Tom cared
for, the things which to Sylvia seemed so splendid, his profession, his
tireless service to the community, his dreams for its progress and
betterment! Lois rolled up the stockings she had just finished mending
and rose.
"Do you mind staying a few minutes with Marjory, Sylvia? It is cook's
night out and I have to see about supper."
Sylvia assented willingly and Lois departed. Even as the door closed
behind her, Sylvia heard Doctor Tom's step in the hall and his cheerful
voice as he greeted his wife.
"Got in earlier than I expected. Come on back and enjoy the twilight
with me," she heard him inviting.
Lois' answer was inaudible but in a moment Doctor Tom entered the
living-room alone.
"Hello, here's my best daughter and my star neighbor! Come on, Cherub,
and let your old Dad toss you up to the moon."
Marjory leaped with a happy little crow out of Sylvia's arms and Sylvia
rose to the higher level of a chair while she smiled at the baby's
gurgling delight as her father tossed her "up to the moon." Presently
the doctor seated himself before the fire with his small daughter still
in his arms. As he settled back with a tired sigh Sylvia saw with
sudden quick compunction that Doctor Tom looked old--too old for his
years. Some of his characteristic buoyancy had gone out of him.
"How is the Curry baby?" she asked.
He shook his head sadly.
"Died early this morning," he said.
"Oh!" Sylvia's exclamation was pitiful. "Can I do anything?"
"Go down and see the mother. She is like a stone. Can't even cry.
Maybe the baby's better off. The father is drunk half the time and
there isn't any too much to eat. But if I could have had Jimmy in a
decent hospital I could have saved him. Everything was against him down
there, poor little chap!" And Tom Daly's big hand closed over little
Marjory's dimpled one as if somehow to keep her safe from the grim enemy
that had pursued Jimmy Curry, an enemy who had altogether too many
allies down in the unsanitary tenement district where the baby had
wearily breathed his little life in and out again in one short year.
Then the doctor's fist came down with a resounding thump on the arm of
the chair. "I tell you, Sylvia, we have got to get that hospital and
get it quick. We're wasting human life too fast at this rate."
"Will money help? You know I'm ready to give to the hospital any
time--any amount you want."