wood and stone and steel," they said. "We may crumble and fall but what
we stand for will neither crumble nor fall. For we are the symbol of
man, aspirant, conquering--a spirit which shall not grow cold or calm
while there is anything in life to which to aspire, anything left to
conquer. We are nothing. That we grant you, Moon. But the spirit of
man is everything, yes, even God himself, God passioning, agonizing,
ultimately victorious."
So the vision came to little Barb, and after that she was not afraid of
the city. She had the clew as to what it was all about. It whirred and
rumbled and rushed and screeched like its own busses but it had a method
in its madness. Like the busses, it had a destination. It was going
somewhere whether it knew it or not.
As for Barb's own little life, caught in the whirl of the city's, it was
full and breathless and on the whole incredibly agreeable. She typed
her Aunt's eloquent pro-suffrage pamphlets and articles and listened
with rapt eyes and eager ears to her Aunt's glowing speeches and all the
while in her busy brain the meaning of this, too, was gradually dawning.
At first it had been like a confused, jumbled picture puzzle, but little
by little she was able to put the pieces together into their proper
places. She was beginning to see that though one talked a great deal
about the woman question and listened to a great deal about the woman
question, there was really, after all, no woman question, just the human
question--the human questions.
How could every man and woman and child in America--in the world--be
assured enough to eat and to wear, enough and not too much? How could
each have leisure to play, also just enough, neither too much, nor too
little? How was each to find his own work, neither too much nor too
little, but the right work, the work he could do with all his heart, not
for the payment, though that must be adequate, but for the zest of the
doing itself, that special, personal service which every human being
should be God endowed and man fitted to perform? Above all, how could
every man, woman and child be sure of happiness? Since she had come to
the city happiness had come to seem a very fundamental thing, perhaps
because she herself was so happy, partly also because she was so sorry
for the rest who were not happy. And so few of them seemed to be happy.
They looked complacent, or smug, or well-fed, or blatantly successful,
some of them, but almost none looked happy, and most of them, it seemed
to Barb, looked downright miserable, haunted and hunted, which was very
sad.
Barb herself was happy, as has been said. In her ignorance and
innocence she supposed her happiness had its roots in the fact that she
was young and healthy and busy and useful and interested in her work.
She had no idea that her happiness was at all bound up in the other fact
that few days passed that she did not either see or talk over the
telephone with a certain rather grave but very friendly young doctor
from the near-by clinic, who was also interested in getting at the
secret of the city, especially in trying to pluck out the heart of its
physical miseries, fighting the seemingly futile battle with filth and
disease and ignorance and vice and their sad consequences, attacking the
Augean stables of the city with the energy of a Hercules, though there
was no magic stream to turn to his aid except the magic stream of youth
and courage and determination and faith, which was, after all, a fairly
efficient substitute.
And if sometimes when there was a silence between the two young people
and Barb's heart was almost overbrimming with a wistful, half-conscious
joy in things as they were, she did not know that the grim set to Phil's
mouth and the tired look in his eyes was due to the fact that his
Faraway Princess was looking particularly far off just then and that he
was all but oblivious of the presence of the contented little
Beggar-Maid quite within hailing distance. So much for Fools' Paradises
where Youth lives from preference and for Nature going quietly about her
business in the background!
The city had its way with Suzanne, too, and though she loved it better
than Barb, it treated her less genially. Suzanne worked hard and
hopefully. The click of her typewriter resounded faithfully by night and
day. But, somehow, her plays and stories did not sell. The arrival of
the mails with the persistently returning long envelopes was a daily
agony. She got to know all the hateful platitudinous variations of the
printed slip "Does not necessarily imply lack of merit," "Not exactly
suited to the needs of the magazine," and so on. How she detested the
smug, smooth, complacency of those printed formulae! How she hugged to
her heart the occasional kindly, personal notes of the compassionate
editors who salved the pain of rejection by a brief word or two of
encouragement or advice. But, alas, these favors were as few as they
were precious!
The plays fared no better. The managers smiled unctuously upon her
prettiness when Suzanne bearded them in their dens. Some of them even
patted her on the shoulder and told her her work was "promising," and
advised her by all means to keep at it. But there was always some
thoroughly excellent reason why they could not take the particular play
or sketch she had to offer and she had eventually to retreat from the
dens, one after the other, sore, indignant, but more doggedly determined
than ever to storm the citadel.
In the meanwhile Aunt Sarah's little legacy dwindled until it became a
mere shadow of itself. It had never been very portly at the best of
times, and living in the Village is deceptively expensive. By the first
of December Suzanne moved, taking with her her "Factory re-built," which
skipped a few letters for variety's sake now and then, but was, on the
whole, very dependable. Certainly it could be depended upon to turn out
manuscript which would return with automatic precision after the
briefest allotment of days. Suzanne informed Barb about this time over
the telephone that it was incomparably more picturesque to be living
over a fruit vender's shop in the Alley than it was to inhabit a mere
studio. It gave you loads of "copy." Miss Murray looked meditative
when her niece reported this new viewpoint on Suzanne's part and
suggested that that young lady be invited to take supper with them at an
early date, to which Barbara joyfully acquiesced. She felt that she had
seen too little of Suzanne of late. Suzanne accepted and Barb looked at
her very critically and accused her of working herself to death and
getting great dark circles under her eyes.
But Suzanne only shrugged and asserted that work agreed with her and
sent up her plate for more salad, apologizing for her appetite on the
score of having been so busy at lunch time she had forgotten to eat any.
"Oh, you genii!" laughed Barb reproachfully, but Miss Josephine Murray
vouchsafed her guest a keen scrutiny which Suzanne perceiving,
straightway rattled off a lot of voluble enthusiasm about the delights
of the "Dutch Oven" and other Bohemian eating-places.
Later, Phil Lorrimer dropped in and took the girls to a show. He, too,
looked rather hard at Suzanne later when they were having innocuous
sandwiches and beer at a little German restaurant. Phil and Barb
escorted Suzanne home to her alley but she would not let them come in,
protesting that it was too late and she didn't want to ruin her
reputation with Giovanni and Pepita downstairs, who were very proper
people.
On the Bus Phil turned to Barb to ask a rather odd question.
"Roger Minot been in town lately?"
"I don't think so. Suzanne wouldn't let him see her if he did come.
Why?"
"I just wondered. Suzanne is looking a little peaked, don't you think?"
"Dreadful," sighed Barb. "Suzanne is such a fiend for work. She owned
up to forgetting to eat any luncheon to-day she was so interested in
what she was doing. I'm afraid she forgets rather often."
"Shouldn't wonder," agreed Phil. He had seen more than one young man
and young woman, too, for that matter, who had developed that convenient
kind of memory about food in the city when pockets were empty. He
shrewdly suspected that Suzanne was "up against it" in his own parlance.
He had made a fair diagnosis of her case in the garish lights of the
German restaurant. "Overwork, underfeeding, devilish desperation.
Something sure to snap soon." Thus he summed the matter up mentally,
for he had not thought it necessary to alarm Barb about her friend's
situation, since she was so obviously unsuspecting. He knew Suzanne
would brook no help nor pity. "Proud as Lucifer, of course," he
thought. But he made up his mind to keep his eye on Suzanne, as he put
it.
To that end he made his way to the Village a few evenings later, found
from Giovanni that Suzanne was out and discovered her, for himself
shortly, sitting in a bench on the Square, looking pinched and blue
about the lips. Phil Lorrimer was a very direct person and usually went
straight for any goal he had in sight. He finally succeeded in wringing
the truth out of Suzanne. She had not sold a story since she came to
New York or "landed" a play. Her money was all but gone and she had
been living on one meal a day for a week past.
"And the worst of it is, I'm a rotten failure. That's what I can't
stand." And Suzanne had clenched her fist in her shabby little glove
and set her white teeth together sharply. "I won't give up. I tell you
I won't. I won't go home and I won't ask 'em for a cent. I won't let
'em say, 'I told you so.' I won't. I won't. Phil Lorrimer, if you
dare to hint one word of what I've told you to-night to Rog--er--to my
people, I'll borrow a stiletto of Giovanni and ram it clean through you.
What did you ever make me tell you for, anyway? You hadn't any business
to. I hate you!" And with an ejaculation somewhere between a snarl and
a sob, Suzanne had turned and fled away from him into the night.
But it had not taken Phil's long legs many seconds to be up with her
again.
"See here, Suzanne," he urged. "Don't take it like that. My knowing
doesn't count. Doctors and priests are dumb as the grave. I won't
peach, but do let me help you over the bad spot. I haven't much myself,
as you know, but I'd be glad to ease you along a bit if you'll let me,
man to man."
Suzanne smiled an April smile at him.
"Man to man, you are a darling, Phil Lorrimer. I'd let you help me if
I'd let any one but I won't. My pride's all I have left, and I'm going
to hang on to that like grim death. Don't you worry. I know what I can
do and I'm going to do it."
"What?" Phil was somewhat dubious about the sudden flush on Suzanne's
cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes.
She shook her head, mischief written in every line of her thin, pretty,
piquant face.
"'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till you applaud the deed,'"
she quoted gayly. "It is much better you shouldn't know. I'm not even
going to tell Barb. She will only be informed that I am out of town
with friends. My esteemed parents and dear Roger will hear the same.
Your job is to sit tight and know nothing. You won't be responsible.
Your skirts--I mean your coat-tails---will be entirely clear."
"Suzanne, I've half a mind to telegraph your father this minute--or
Roger. Maybe it would be better to summon Roger." He eyed her sternly.
Suzanne giggled wickedly.
"You will do nothing of the sort, dear Dumb as the Grave. I have your
sacred oath not to peach."
"Let me off, Suzanne," he begged. "Honest, I'm worried about you. You
look wild."
But Suzanne only laughed again, and assured him she was saner than the
statue of Liberty.
"Let you off nothing, dear sir," she added for good measure. "But
please don't fret. I assure you I am not going to do a thing either
desperate or immoral. I'm going on a lark, that is all. You can't down
Suzanne. Like Ivory Soap--it floats. Here we are at my alley. My fruit
stand's just beyond. Shake hands like a good boy and wish me luck.
Don't frown like that. It spoils your leonine beauty. Good night--and
good-by." And, before he could speak, Suzanne had darted into her own
doorway leaving Phil staring rather ruefully after her.
"Now what in time or eternity is she up to?" he pondered. "She isn't
the kind to play the fool to any great extent. Got too much head and
too little heart. I may as well let her gang her own gait. She's bound
to anyway. Poor old Roger! She is certainly leading him a trail.
Wouldn't he curse me for letting her make a getaway like this if he
knew? Out of town with friends!" he muttered as he descended into the
depths of the subway. "I'd like to see the friends. And if I were Rod
Minot, I would too, or know the reason why."
Thus satisfactorily can one young man sum up the whole duty of another
in a recreant courtship though remaining as helpless and inefficient as
a new-born infant in the management of his own.
*CHAPTER XI*
*MARGINS*
"Hello, Jack! I had no idea you were home." Sylvia, rosy and blown
from a spin behind Doctor Tom's frolicsome black mare, entered the
living-room at Arden Hall, bringing with her a whiff of fresh outdoor
air. She threw down her muff and held out a welcoming hand to her guest
who had been waiting her return.
"Bad penny, you know." Jack captured both hands instead of the one
vouchsafed as he spoke. "Can't leave business very long, you see." His
eyes twinkled mischievously as he looked down at Sylvia, making
shameless bid for her favor. Sylvia laughed, but she withdrew her hands
and shook her head at him.
"You are a dreadful fraud, Jack. You don't really care such a lot about
the business all at once. You know you don't."
"Not a tinker's dam," he shrugged. "Whatever that may be."
"Then why--" began Sylvia and stopped.
"There is only one why, young lady, and you know it."
Sylvia frowned and jabbing out her hatpins a little irritably, tossed
her black velvet toque on the table. She had already removed her coat
and furs and stood, trim and tailored, in her simple blue serge dress; a
simplicity which was exceedingly becoming and likewise extremely
expensive as Jack's approving gaze, sweeping the lithe young curves of
her figure, knew very well.
"I wish you wouldn't, Jack."
"Wouldn't what?" blandly.
"Wouldn't work--just because I want you to. It is so horribly like a
bribe."
"It is a bribe."
"Then I don't like it. I told you I didn't promise anything."
"And I told you I didn't expect anything. You can't blame a fellow for
putting all the eggs he can find into his basket."
"Put all the eggs you like into the basket, only don't blame me if they
get smashed. Sometimes, Jack, I think you don't really want to marry me
at all--you just want the fun of pursuing me."
"Maybe so," agreed Jack so amicably that Sylvia lifted her eyebrows at
him. "I was brought up never to contradict a lady."
Sylvia laughed at that and sat down, running her hand over her hair, to
brush back its turbulent ripple, a gesture Jack loved because it was so
interwoven with his mental pictures of her.
"Let's not discuss ourselves," she added. "Tell me the news. Did you
see Barb and Suzanne?"
"I saw Barb. Suzanne has fled the coop."
"What?"
"The report is she is out of town, traveling with friends. Barb looks
worried and Phil looks wise but neither has much to say."
"Does Phil know where she is?"
"He says not, but he knows something, or I miss my guess. Not that the
old oyster would open up his shell a fraction of an inch even to oblige
yours truly. I pried like a good one but to no purpose. Talk about
your professional secrecy! Phil's got it down to the finish. The old
chap is different somehow, older and solemn as a fish. Horrible example
of what work will do to a fellow!" he grinned.
Sylvia stooped to pick up the tongs and stir the fire, which was
smoldering a little sulkily on the hearth. Out of the tail of his eye
Jack watched her.
"He and Barb seem to be remarkably good pals," he continued. "The Aunt
orders him about like a member of the family. Don't wonder he obeys.
That woman is a general. I wouldn't be surprised if she took the vote
away from the men and gave it to the women any day, if she took the
notion. Lucky she and Napoleon didn't hitch their wagons to the same
star in the same generation. The star would have dragged Aunt Josephine
and ditched the emperor, that's certain."
"Do stop talking nonsense, Jack, and tell me more about Suzanne."
Sylvia's voice had a faint edge of sharpness to it as if a little of the
grim December wind outside had gotten into it.
"I don't know any more. I've told you all that is generally published.
Even Norton, Pa., gropes in middle darkness. She didn't even write to
Roger it seems. He is in bad. Had the temerity to propose to her again
just after she had emerged with a bundle of manuscripts from a manager's
office, which wasn't a tactful moment, I gather. She consigned him to
the devil or some feminine equivalent thereof, apparently. Pa and Ma
knows she's traveling. Had cards from Buffalo and Cleveland, I
understand. Pa's excited and Ma's took to her bed. Looks as if they
feared the worst."
"Jack!"
"Sorry. I was only joking, of course. Trust Suzanne to take care of
herself. She is all right. Roger is having a fit or two though, and no
wonder."
"Serves him right. Why didn't he go and marry her and not let her go
off on a tangent like that?"
"Why, indeed?" murmured Jack. "It is so hanged easy to marry a girl
when she won't have you! Give me the good old cave days. You could
knock your bride down with a club if she objected. Then, when she came
to, she would get up and grin at her noble master and string some red
berries round her neck, or stick a ring in her nose, to enhance her
charms, and everything would be entirely agreeable."
"Jack, you are perfectly horrid to-day. I wish you had stayed in New
York. How is Jeanette?" Sylvia changed the subject severely.
"Going the pace, as usual. Good Lord, Sylvia, what do you suppose a
woman wants to live the kind of life she's elected for? I like a good
time myself. It's a family trait. But she goes as if all the devils of
Hell were loose and after her. Maybe they are, after a fashion. See
here, Sylvia, aren't you going up to see her soon?"
"After Christmas. Why?"
"Nothing especial. I thought a dose of you might be good for her, that
is all."
And that was all the explanation that Sylvia extracted on that subject,
though she guessed that there was more than Jack admitted behind his
rather enigmatic remarks. Jack was incredibly clear-sighted about some
things, and it was evident he saw cause to worry about his sister
Jeanette, even to the extent of hurrying Sylvia to New York where he
himself could not follow unless he turned back the page of the virtuous
new leaf of his devotion to business. There was a puzzle behind it
somewhere, Sylvia knew. She also knew she was going to be left to
discover the exact nature of the puzzle for herself.
So December went its way. Suzanne continued mysteriously "traveling
with friends." Barb and Phil kept hard at work in the city and managed
to see a good deal of each other in their off hours. Sylvia and Phil
had almost ceased to write to each other, though there was no open break
in their friendship. It was rather that a wall, intangible but
unsurmountable, had risen between them, as perhaps it had, for pride is
a mightier barrier than a mountain peak sometimes. Gus went his quiet,
successful way on his concert tour, refusing politely but conclusively
to be made a lion of, keeping rather to himself in his leisure hours,
living on his unspoken dreams and managing to get a great deal of pure
happiness out of his star worship. To Sylvia's delight, and almost to
Felicia's consternation, the latter's designs for a mural relief, which
Stephen Kinnard had fairly bullied her into submitting in a competition,
had been accepted and she was hard at work on the actual modeling these
brief winter days, though she found time, Felicia fashion, to be an
excellent "Home-keeper" and Mother along with the other task.
Early in November Lois Daly had rather astonishingly announced her
intention of "doing some writing" as she put it rather vaguely. Lois
was always reticent, especially about her literary work, and even her
husband asked no questions, realizing it suited her better to be let
alone to work out her purpose for herself. She was far too
conscientious about her other duties to neglect any of them and it was
consequently the long evenings when the children were in bed and the
household affairs quiescent that she found most profitable for her new
work. This arrangement was admirable in all but two respects. It made
Lois' working day an almost impossibly long one and left her a little
too weary for restful sleep when she did finally creep into bed. It
also curtailed almost to a minimum the moments which she had to spare
for her husband's society, which had been all too few even before the
advent of this new era. Doctor Tom made no protest as to this. He was
always over-sensitive to the sacrifice of her work which Lois had made
for him and his, but he did beg her at times not to "bother" so much
about the house and the children and himself.
But Lois always shook her head at his pleas and explained quietly that
he and the house and the children were her real job and she could not
neglect them for the other. And if Tom Daly found it in his heart to
wonder sometimes if his wife's "real job" did not include a little
closer companionship with himself he never voiced his wondering. He was
no "martyr," as he had once long ago protested to Sylvia.
But human relations are never static and while Lois shut herself in her
den and wrote feverishly, night after night, her husband, being only
human, easily drifted into the habit of finding elsewhere than at his
own home the companionship and sympathy which even the strongest and
most independent of men half-consciously crave. Arden Hall and Sylvia
were close at hand and it was almost inevitable that he should find his
way to the two rather often. Sylvia was intensely interested in all his
schemes for the hospital and other altruistic visions which made up a
very large part of his wide, busy career. Often they talked eagerly for
hours, either with or without Felicia's presence. Oftener still Tom
Daly would sit and smoke in contented silence while Sylvia played soft
music or read aloud out of some magazine stories which let his mind rest
instead of wrestle.
It was all the most natural, even inevitable development. The two were
old friends. Tom Daly was thirty-eight and happily married. Sylvia
Arden was twenty-two questing for experience innocently enough. There
was no one to question or warn, or indeed, anything to question or warn
against. Yet there sat Nature spinning away at her web all the time and
Tom Daly and Sylvia were near to being caught in the mesh, without even
knowing there was any mesh. And the danger for Tom Daly as it happened
was considerably greater than for Sylvia just because he was a man. Man
is the so-called reasoning sex, but, as has been more than once noted,
sex is the one subject upon which he will not reason. And so things
slipped easily and pleasantly along up to Christmas time.
It was Jack Amidon who involuntarily opened Sylvia's eyes by uttering an
unusually sharp protest that she went nowhere any more, either with him
or any one else, but just sat in the chimney corner and played Joan to
Tom Daly's Darby. "And soon there'll be the deuce to pay whether you
know it or not," he had added darkly.
Of course Sylvia had flared out in quick anger at his implications.
"What do you mean, Jack Amidon, by saying such horrid things?" she had
stormed. "It is perfectly ridiculous. Doctor Tom is years and years
older than I am. He is just like a brother."
Jack had seen the brother dodge worked before and said so somewhat
caustically, whereupon Sylvia lost what little temper she had left, and
having delivered a volley of violent wrath upon her guest's imprudent
head, shot out of the room, leaving him to enjoy the hospitality of the
Hall in solitude or beat a retreat as pleased him best.
Meanwhile, upstairs in her own room, Sylvia threw herself on the bed,
and, first of all, woman fashion, relieved her feelings by indulging in
a good old-fashioned "weep," her anger dissipating with her tears.
Presently she sat up and began to take stock of the situation and
herself, and found to her consternation that things as they actually
were, were about as safe as a child with a box of matches in a haymow.