"Naturally you are, Miss Christmas. I can always count on you every
time. You would give your last red cent if anybody needed it. Thank
Heaven you don't come into the bulk of your property till you are
twenty-five. You would have made ducks and drakes of it before this if
you had it all. I shall tell Gordon to keep his eye on the purse strings
until you get a husband to do it for you. You have such dissipating
tendencies. Don't wrinkle your nose like that. You shall give when the
time is ripe. What I want just now is to wring some money out of the
hides of some of these tough old Greendale sinners who keep their
religion with their prayer books in the family pew and their brotherly
love reduced systematically to lowest terms. The apology for a hospital
we have is a disgrace and they know it or they will before I get through
with 'em. There isn't even a children's ward. Little Allie Wendell died
last week to the tune of Jake Casey's blasphemous D. T. music. Bah!
It's rotten."
"Tom, I do wish you wouldn't shout so. I could hear you clear out in
the kitchen." Thus Lois' silver cool voice from the doorway,
contrasting oddly with her husband's vehement ejaculatoriness which
still filled the little room. "Supper is ready. You'll stay, won't
you, Sylvia? I will be with you as soon as I can get Marjory into
Tessy's hands and see if Junior brushed his teeth. He is so bad these
days. I can't trust him at all."
Sylvia had been about to refuse but Doctor Tom cut her short.
"Of course you will stay. You haven't been here for a dog's age.
Besides, I want to talk to you about the hospital and ask what you think
about--"
"Don't start to talk shop now," ordered Lois from the doorway, with
small Marjory's head bobbing sleepily over her shoulder. "The omelet
will go down."
"It sure will," promised the doctor. "I feel as if almost anything
would go down in me this minute."
"That is the trouble with Tom," smiled Lois to Sylvia. "He doesn't know
the difference between a sublimated souffle and plain hash. It is all
food to him. It is very discouraging."
Doctor Tom shook his head as the door closed upon his wife and daughter.
"If only she wouldn't fuss," he groaned. "Sylvia, I feel like a beast
when I think what a lot this life we are leading takes out of her. If
only she would take it a bit easier. She's such a confounded
perfectionist every blessed thing she does has to be just right. That's
why it uses up so much of her."
It was certainly a "just right" meal to which they sat down a few
moments later. Everything was cold which should have been cold,
everything hot which should have been hot. The table linen was fine and
dazzling white, the silver and glass resplendently bright and clean.
The bowl of yellow chrysanthemums made a perfect centerpiece, under the
pleasantly shaded glow of the suspended lamp. Lois herself was exquisite
in a soft clinging gray gown which she had taken the time to slip into
while she had been upstairs with the children. Not a fold was awry, not
a hair out of place. Serene and low-voiced and deft-motioned, she
served perfect tea in quaint gold-banded cups from a green-dragoned
teapot.
But somehow Sylvia was critical in her judgment to-night. The very
perfectness of it all jarred upon her. She couldn't help wondering if
Lois were after all the consummate artist her husband acclaimed her.
Life was made for happiness and was Lois Daly happy or was she making
her big-hearted, splendid-souled husband happy? Had she even noticed
the tired look in his eyes to-night, the droop to his shoulders? In her
conscientious supervision of Junior's teeth and Marjory's bedtime did
she think or care at all about the Tommy Currys and Allie Wendells of
the world who mattered so gravely to her husband? The two loved each
other devotedly, Sylvia knew, yet she could not help seeing how far
apart they were after five years of wedded life. It gave one food for
thought.
After supper Lois excused herself to do some household auditing.
"You and Tom are going to talk hospital anyway," she added to Sylvia,
"and there is no use of my listening while it is all just an air-castle.
If I had that on my mind on top of the price of potatoes and bacon I
don't know what would happen."
"Stay and rest and we'll call hospital taboo," promised Doctor Tom.
"Never mind the old accounts to-night."
But Lois shook her head, protesting if he ran his business the way he
wanted her to run hers they would soon end in the poorhouse.
"Not that you run your business any too well, Tommy dear," she had
added. "You are a scandalously poor bill collector. Aren't the
Williamsons ever going to pay?"
"Steve Williamson's down with pneumonia. I can't press them now."
"Pneumonia on top of twins! They _are_ unfortunate." And Lois left the
room.
Sylvia dropped her eyes quickly. Intuitively she knew she didn't want
to look at Doctor Tom just then. He made no comment upon his wife's
parting speech but settled down in the big armchair with a tired grunt.
"Mind if I smoke?"
"Of course not."
"All right, here goes." He took one or two long comforting puffs at his
pipe. "Let's side-track the hospital for the present. Might as well
since it's only an air-castle, as Lois says. I'm a bit frazzled
to-night. Can't seem to get the Curry baby off my chest. Suppose you
play something instead. Nothing too classic--just agreeable and
anaesthetic."
Sylvia went to the piano and sat down. Her fingers drifted into a
nocturne. Save for the soft music and the crackling of the logs on the
hearth there was no sound in the room. Tom Daly sat staring into the
leaping flames and smoked stolidly. It would have made an appropriate
picture for a woman's magazine cover. The gracious, comfortable room,
the tired man, basking in home peace and contentment after the labor and
stress of the day; the young girl at the piano, with healing and
sympathy, wordless but no less apparent in her finger tips. Only in a
woman's magazine the musician would no doubt have been the man's wife.
Life is sometimes oddly different from magazine covers.
It was nearly an hour before Lois returned to the living-room. She
paused a moment on the threshold.
"Oh, so you aren't building hospitals after all? Forgive me for being
such a bad hostess, Sylvia. Was that Brahms?"
Sylvia shook her head with a smile.
"I don't know what it was," she admitted. "Something I heard in my
dreams maybe. Did I put you to sleep Doctor Tom?"
"No, just soothed the savage in me. I feel fairly pacific at the
moment. Don't stop."
"Ah, but I must. Felicia will think I am lost." She rose as she spoke
and Doctor Tom rose too. "Don't come," she protested. "It is too absurd
when it's only such a step."
"It's a step I intend to take," he grinned. "If you must go, I'm at
your service."
"I wish you wouldn't," objected Sylvia, but she let him wrap her long
moss green cloak about her and in a moment they were out in the keen
November air under the stars. Neither said anything until they were at
the steps of the Hall. Then suddenly Doctor Tom spoke.
"Sylvia, how did you know I had the blue devils to-night?" he demanded.
"Did you?" parried Sylvia. There was something different about Doctor
Tom to-night; a queer, tense something in his voice she wasn't used to.
"You know I did. You played to 'em--charmed 'em, as I said."
"I'm glad," said Sylvia. "Glad I charmed them, I mean. You need a
rest, Doctor Tom. You are going a pace that would kill any man who
wasn't as strong as an ox."
He laughed a little grimly.
"Well, Miss Nestor, any more sage advice to offer your grandfather?
Just how am I going to shunt the world I happen to have on my shoulders
at present?"
"Just drop it off. You could if you had to. Why don't you and Lois go
on a vacation? Felicia and I will look after the babies."
"Thanks, Miss Christmas. That is like you and mighty kind, but do you
see Lois letting anybody--the angel Gabriel himself--look after the
babies for her?"
"She might," dubiously.
"And again she mightn't. But, aside from Lois, I have too many life and
death jobs on hand at present to quit. A doctor's no business to get
nerves. He ought to leave that to his patients. Anyway, it isn't the
work that is getting me just now, it is the damnable futility of it all.
The Curry baby is a symbol. I'm pouring water in a sieve, Sylvia, and
that's the devil's truth."
"It isn't. You aren't," denied Sylvia quickly. "You are doing miracles
every day of your life and everybody knows it. Doctor Tom, I never
heard you talk like that before. Don't. It makes me feel as if
everything were tottering on its foundations."
"Sometimes I think they are with that infernal senseless war going on
over there after all our peace prating. Sylvia, what's it all for?
Where are we going? What's the use?"
"Everything's the use. Maybe we can't see behind all the agony and
blundering but there must be something there even if we can't see it.
Why, Doctor Tom, there must be." Sylvia's eyes were earnest, her face
uplifted to the stars lit with the fine fires of youth's faith. Tom
Daly shook himself like one coming out of a trance. He was suddenly
ashamed that he, the strong man, had been outdistanced in courage by the
slim girl before him.
"Right you are," he said heartily. "There _must_ be. It's the only way
to look at it. Thank you, Sylvia. I won't bleat again. If only--"
But what was to have followed that sharp wrung "if only" Sylvia never
knew for suddenly Tom Daly crushed both her hands in a vicelike grip and
then turned and fled with a gruff "good night" down the path.
In his own yard close by he met his wife placidly draping a blanket over
a rhododendron bush.
"I thought there might be a frost to-night," she observed, and her tone
had all the clear crispness of frost in it as she spoke. Tom Daly was
only human. It was scarcely strange that he could not help contrasting
his wife's voice with that other eager, vibrant, younger, warmer voice
he had just heard, passionately asserting faith in that something behind
all the miseries and misunderstandings of things without which life were
indeed scarcely to be endured.
There was a world war on. Little Jimmy Curry lay dead unnecessarily.
Tom Daly's nerves and courage and endurance were strained all but to the
breaking point. And his wife Lois thought there might be a frost. But
long after Tom Daly had fallen into the heavy sleep of complete physical
exhaustion Lois lay wide-eyed and sleepless, staring into the darkness.
*CHAPTER IX*
*THE MOTH AND THE STAR*
The audience settled itself into place, rattling its programs, prepared
idly to be either amused or bored as the opportunity presented itself,
mildly curious as to the personality and talent of the young violinist
"heard for the first time in this country."
"They say he used to be old man McIntosh's office boy. He certainly
struck it soft. Old man's worth near a million they say and this darned
Dago'll get it all I suppose. Some folks just naturally nab the luck."
Thus a young reporter to his neighbor.
"I don't know about that. I can't imagine old McIntosh standing for
this fiddling business. He's a husky old Puritan."
"Well, he did stand for it to the tune of quite a pretty price, I
understand. The chap's had four years of Berlin and Dresden and the
rest of it. Some mixture! Italian birth, American start, Scotch
bringing up, German polish. Whew! Wonder what he's like with all that
in him. Talk about your melting pots!"
"There's old McIntosh in the box now. No, the left. Ugly old snoozer,
ain't he? But brains. Gee! He's shrewd as they make 'em. Hello! Who's
the dame? Pretty easy to look at it, ain't she?"
"That's Miss Arden--lives on a high mucky muck hill out in Greendale.
She's something to old McIntosh. Niece maybe. I forget."
"No, she isn't. Old man used to be bookkeeper for her father's firm. I
remember. My dad knew 'em. Arden and Daly--big cotton concern. Arden
died young. Daly lost his money in some railroad slump and croaked too.
Son's a doctor--making the wires hum out in Greendale about a hospital
or something. So that's Miss Arden. Engaged to young Amidon, isn't
she?"
"I reckon. Shut up. There he comes. Gee! He's nothing but a kid."
It must be admitted that Gus, appearing on the program as Gustavus
Niccolini, did look very much indeed like a "kid" as he came across the
stage and made a shy, stiff little bow to the audience. Angus McIntosh
fidgeted in his chair and cleared his throat irritably. "Fool to let
him try," he thought. "How do I know whether he can play or not? What
if he can't?" A cold perspiration stood out on the old man's forehead.
What if the boy made a failure of the thing? What if the audience
smiled, hissed? Audiences did behave like that sometimes. Why hadn't
he told the boy, short-off, long ago, he shouldn't try it? Thus he
worked himself into a perfect passion of apprehension. But in the midst
of his perturbation Sylvia's hand rested on his knee and Sylvia's eyes
smiled reassurance.
"It's all right, Daddy McIntosh," she whispered. "Just you wait till
they hear him."
In a moment they did hear him and the great hall was hushed to
respectful silence. The audience had the grace to recognize a master
touch when they heard it. Angus McIntosh was justified. The boy whom
he had plucked out of a den of squalor and vice was an artist, and the
grim old man who had had a hand in the creation had been something of an
artist at the job himself. As for Sylvia, who was behind it all, she
hardly breathed until the music ceased. She listened rapt while the
voice of the violin sang and soared, now rapturous, now tender, now
triumphant, now dying away like the note of a wild bird in the night.
She had known before that Gus could play, but this--why this was a thing
born of Heaven to which she listened reverently. Finally the last note
came and quivered into silence. There was an instant's hush then the
applause thundered. The boy lifted his head quietly, but with a certain
grave pride, and his eyes sought the box where Angus McIntosh and Sylvia
sat. Then suddenly his face was lit with a light which was not a smile
but an enveloping radiance which seemed to say, "This is yours. I give
it to you. I am glad it is worth giving." Then he bowed to the
audience and the applause redoubled.
Angus McIntosh never knew much about the rest of that program. He knew
it went on and the applause went on, that the boy went through the
varied and difficult performance with ease and serenity and simplicity,
but what he was playing the old man never knew. It might have been
"Yankee Doodle" or the "Cam'el's are Coming" for all he heard. He only
knew the thing was beautiful. All the remnants of still lingering
prejudices floated off into some dim cavern where such limbo is stored
or annihilated. There was a place in the world it seemed for sheer
beauty. Maybe it had a spiritual essence all its own. Anyway, this
music of the boy's seemed oddly connected in his mind with the psalms
and other fine old religious poetry with which his mother had filled his
mind long ago. He was humbly glad that he had had a share in letting
loose this thing upon the world. He remembered always that it was
Sylvia who had really opened the door.
Beauty--Kindness--Happiness--Love--all these things had been slipping
almost beyond his grasp that December nearly six years ago when Sylvia
and her Christmas family had brought them back. It was Sylvia who had
given the boy to him, Sylvia, who had given his music to the world by
making himself who had been blind see.
The concert was over and Herr Bernsdorf, Gus' old music teacher, had
rushed up to the box and was pumping Mr. McIntosh's hand up and down
violently with inarticulate croonings and mutterings of delight and
congratulation. "Haf I not told you that the boy was a genius? Haf I
not said it hundertmal? I knew. I, who was his master, I knew. They
haf done well by him over there, they haf done well. But somebody else,
she haf done more? Is it you, mein Fraulein?" He turned his flashing
little black eyes on Sylvia as he asked the question.
"I! Oh, no. I have done nothing," disclaimed Sylvia.
"No? Maybe it is another, in Berlin or Dresden or elsewhere. I know
not. I only know the boy haf learned to play like that from luf. Luf
haf taught him. Only luf learns to play like that. Ach! Do I not
know?"
And then Gus himself stepped into the box, having gently but firmly
slipped away from the crowd which would have waylaid him.
"Did you like it, Daddy McIntosh?" he asked playfully, and the old man
coughed and sputtered and could not speak. But Gus was satisfied. Even
as he grasped his sponsor's hand the boy's eyes went beyond to Sylvia,
who had purposely stepped back. Though his lips said nothing, his eyes
asked her too, "Did you like it, Sylvia?" and said again what they had
proclaimed from the stage. "It is yours. I give it to you."
And a little shiver went over Sylvia as she read the boy's eyes, and
suddenly she felt very sad and humble and a little ashamed because she
had been so blind. She knew he was asking nothing, probably never would
ask anything, but she also knew he was giving something very precious,
something for which she had nothing to give in exchange. Mr. McIntosh,
absorbed in his emotions, did not understand, but the old music teacher
did.
"I haf said it," he thought triumphantly. "I haf had right. It was
luf--luf and no other who have learned the boy to play like that. I haf
heard it from his fingers and now I haf seen it in his eyes. And by and
by he will play efen better, for luf will also learn him pain, and pain
he is the great master. He it is who learn the masters themselves. Haf
I not seen it?"
Only for a moment Gus had let his eyes betray him, so brief an interval
indeed that Sylvia thought afterward she must have imagined it so
naturally did she and the young man find themselves chatting over the
details of the concert.
But later, after she was home in Greendale and curled comfortably in
bed, that eloquent look from those dark eyes came back and would not let
her sleep.
"Oh, dear," she thought. "Who would ever have thought it of Gus, of all
people? I thought he was just wrapped up in his music. Why won't they
stay friends? It is so discouraging and uncomfortable. There is no end
to the trouble it makes when they begin to want to be lovers. Jack is
likely to come any minute and tell me what a good boy he is and demand
the plums out of the Christmas pie. I don't want to marry any of them.
I don't. I don't. So there."
But even as she snuggled down among the pillows she heard a wee distinct
little voice inside her somewhere say something quite different.
"Oh, yes, you do," it said. "You want to marry Phil, by and by, way off
in the future, a thousand years from now. Only he doesn't want to marry
you, and that is what makes you so restless and discontented and horrid.
That's why you've been flirting with Jack and--yes, Gus, too, in a
demure, artistic sort of way, not thinking it would do any harm to
anybody. And even Doctor Tom looked funny at you the other night.
And--but then it is all Phil's fault--so you needn't worry."
And then Sylvia put her hands over her ears, for she didn't want to hear
any more of that kind of talk.
"You are quite mistaken," she retorted to the disagreeable little voice.
"I haven't been flirting with anybody. Jack and Gus are both good
friends and I can't help being nice to them. And Doctor Tom is safe and
married, so he doesn't count. But, anyway, I'll be careful after this
and I don't want to marry anybody--not anybody."
And down in the near-by city the young violinist who had scored such a
success that the papers were already writing up flattering notices about
him sat in his room, furiously scribbling poetry, at least that is what
he would probably have called it, poetry whose theme was mostly borrowed
from another young lover, and had in it a lot about the "desire of the
moth for the star" or some such rubbish. Gus was very young yet if he
was a master violinist and Love was beginning to teach him other things
than how to make his violin sing. But the poetry was not so good as his
music and presently he pushed aside his scribblings in disgust and went
and stood by the window looking out into the night.
It had been raining and the pavements glistened in the light reflected
from the arc-lamps. And suddenly the twinkling lights called up to the
boy the memory of a Christmas eve when he had followed Angus McIntosh
into a brilliantly lighted room with a wonderful Christmas tree in the
center, such a Christmas tree as he had never dreamed of in his wildest
dreams. And then he forgot the tree and remembered Sylvia smiling
kindly at him, saying, "Christmas Family, here are Mr. McIntosh and Gus
Nichols. Isn't it nice they could get here to-night?"
He knew now that the desire of the moth for the star had been born then
and there, only it wasn't even a desire, it was just a worship.
And in the Oriole Inn, at the foot of Sylvia's Hill, Hope Williams lay
asleep with Stephen Kinnard's four weeks' old letter under her pillow,
and a smile on her lips, for she was dreaming she was back in the garden
with Stephen sketching her among the wistaria vines. But Stephen
Kinnard was having a very amusing and profitable time sketching a wild,
little beauty of a half breed on an Arizona desert these days and had
all but forgotten such a person as Hope existed. But never once in all
his wanderings did he forget to mail a weekly letter to Felicia Emory,
who had rejected him "with reasons."
So things go in this piquant world of ours. And there is much truth
hidden for the wise in the depths of the "Grecian Urn."
*CHAPTER X*
*THE CITY*
By November Barbara had become so accustomed to the city that she no
longer jumped at its noises or shrank physically from its crowds. She
learned to ignore the thunder of the El and to regard the Subway as a
necessary evil, the traffic policeman a very present help in time of
trouble. She even learned to zigzag deftly, alone and unprotected, in
and out among the automobiles, and to calculate on the chance that a
Fifth Avenue Bus driver would probably prefer not to run her down, other
things being equal.
But she never quite made friends with the big, strange city--the
Step-Mother city--as some one has called it. Always it seemed to hold
her at a distance, perfectly amicable and perfectly impersonal. It
seemed to say to her "What are you to me? There are hundreds---yes,
thousands, like you in my gigantic household. Can I be expected to care
for you each as individuals? Watch the motes dancing in the sunshine.
As the motes to you so you to me. Go look at the sands shining on the
beach at Coney. As the grains to you so you to me. Let your eyes
follow the ripples of my big river. As the ripples to you so you and
all the rest of the human eddies which make up my great tide to me."
Yet there were moments when Barb felt as if she had almost surprised the
city's secret, caught it unaware, as it were, and half ashamed, slipping
into its holy of holies. Once coming over on the ferry from Jersey City
she had scanned the great towers and buildings, set with twinkling
lights as with many jewels, and beheld the huge bridges, across which an
endless stream of traffic passed and repassed, like human life itself in
its unending succession. And then she had seemed to see for a moment
what the city really meant. Sordid, material, menacing, heartless as it
was in many of its aspects did it not after all cherish a big vision?
Were not those very towers and bridges the symbol of its restless
aspiration?
Suddenly above it all had risen a pale lackadaisical looking moon,
slipping quietly from behind a smoke bank to look down at the seething
tumultuous life of the great city. To Barb the moon had seemed almost
to smile, a world-weary, somewhat cynical smile as one who should say
"Go on. Keep it up. Burrow and build, crush and create, scream and
scuffle. What will it matter a million years hence? You will have
learned by then to be cold and calm like me."