her attention was called, however brutally, to the fact that you cannot
see a man, night after night, week after week, as she had been seeing
Tom Daly, without there being at least the possibility of the "deuce to
pay," as Jack had bluntly expressed it, she was willing to acknowledge
the fact to herself at least. She carefully analyzed her own mental
processes for the past few weeks and discovered to her surprise and some
chagrin that she had been ruthlessly cutting out engagements in which
Tom Daly did not figure, and eagerly making those in which he did
figure, that she had deliberately plunged into everything that
interested him, Red Cross work, the new hospital, the needs of some of
his poorer patients; everything, in short, that he cared about heartily.
She even had to admit to herself that she had been a little complacent
and self righteous in her genuine interest and sympathy with these
things because she resented Lois Daly's apathy in the matter and felt
profoundly sorry for Doctor Tom. She discovered that it is not prudent
in the world as it is lived to be too sorry for another woman's husband.
That way danger lies, and a signboard to that effect is in order.
Beyond this, however, Sylvia knew she had little for which to blame
herself. She was not a deliberate coquette. She had acted in all
simplicity and naturalness, but there had been a risk to the experiment
for all that and she was a bit ashamed of her hitherto state of
blindness.
Being a very honest young person, Sylvia sat down, as soon as she had
threshed the whole matter out to the satisfaction of her clear, fair
mind, and wrote a very artistically penitent note to Jack, retracting
some of the unwarrantable things she had said in her wrath and admitting
rather hazily that there was a faint possibility that he might have been
in the right about certain matters, implying that she was magnanimously
willing even to ignore his objectionable rightness if he so desired.
And her note crossed one from Jack, begging her to forgive his "darned
impertinence" and adding that he had behaved like a jackass and a dog in
the manger and Heaven knows how many other kinds of animals, but if she
would be good enough to overlook his misdemeanors he would be eternally
grateful.
And the next evening Sylvia appeared under Jack's escort at the
Honeycutt ball, wearing a marvelous new gown and looking extraordinarily
pretty after her temporary estrangement from Vanity Fair. And from that
time on during all the mad gayeties of Christmas week Jack was
constantly in attendance, obviously the favored knight. Life is mostly
made up of reactions. The pendulum having swung so far to the left,
swings back an equal distance to the right. Sylvia was the kinder to
Jack because of her deflection away from him in an entirely opposite
direction. And he, with the wisdom born of considerable experience of
the feminine sex in general, and Sylvia Arden in particular, made no
comment though he perfectly understood what had happened, but sunned
himself agreeably in his lady's rather uncertain grace and bided his
time.
And the night of the Honeycutt ball for the first time in several weeks
Tom Daly sat and smoked before his own fireside and not once did he
think of the new hospital.
*CHAPTER XII*
*"SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS"*
"Phil? That you, my boy? Come up and take dinner with us to-night,
won't you? I have a proposition to make to you."
Thus the smooth voice of Justin Huntley over the telephone. Justin
Huntley was a famous nerve specialist, a classmate and lifelong friend
of Phil Lorrimer's father, who had kept a friendly eye on the young man
ever since he had come to the city.
Phil accepted the invitation, and later, as he left the Subway and
strolled down Seventy-second Street toward the river, he speculated
vaguely as to what the proposition might be likely to be. Doctor
Huntley was quite capable of initiating any kind of a suggestion, from
proposing a marriage to an heiress to the use of a new serum.
Consequently Phil had little to go upon in his speculations.
It was an agreeable dinner. Dinner at the Huntleys' always was
agreeable, moving by pleasant stages to a perfect end, gastronomically
speaking. There were no other guests to-night and presently, Mrs.
Huntley, a frail tired looking little lady who always seemed to be
deprecating the weight of her silks and the brilliancy of her jewels,
rose and left the two men together.
"Any curiosity about the proposition I baited my hook with to get you
here to-night?" Dr. Huntley surveyed his guest a little quizzically as
he launched the question.
"I didn't need any bait," said Phil. "But I admit the curiosity."
The older man leaned forward and deliberately lit his cigarette from a
candle that stood close at hand.
"You don't smoke?" he remarked irrelevantly.
"No," admitted Phil. "At least, not often. Bad for the operating
table."
"Bad! It's the devil. You have a deal of sense, young man. How would
you like to be my partner?" The question was put as casually as if he
were offering a fellow traveler, caught in the rain, a share of his
umbrella, but his shrewd eyes took full account of the face of the young
man. Phil flushed and his mouth opened slightly. It was a proposition
to make any ambitious young man drop his jaw. Justin Huntley had one of
the largest and most remunerative practices in the city. It was a
dazzling prospect to open suddenly before the eyes of a small-salaried
worker in a free clinic. It meant success, money--Sylvia, something to
offer her, at last.
"Well?"
"It is a wonderful chance," said Phil steadily, "but I should like to
think it over, if you don't mind."
"Eh?" It was Dr. Huntley's jaw that dropped this time. He had scarcely
expected a young man in Phil Lorrimer's position to need to think over
an offer such as he had just made. Most young men would have jumped at
it quickly as a trout leaps at a shining fly lest the fascinating thing
disappear from view before it could be apprehended. "What did you say?"
"I said I should have to think it over," repeated Phil. "Your kind of
practice isn't the kind I am interested in, to speak frankly."
"Interested! Good Lord! Who expects to be interested in anything
nowadays? A lot of damn women with nothing on earth the matter with
them except fool notions, and having nothing on earth or in Heaven to
occupy themselves with, dyspeptics, neurasthenics, hypochondriacs, dope
fiends, gentlemen drunkards and worse! That is my kind of practice,
boy. Pah! Interesting! Of course, they aren't interesting. They are
fools. But they pay. Lord, how they pay! They wouldn't be sick if they
didn't have so much money. You would open your eyes if you saw my
books. But I've had 'most enough of 'em. I want somebody to take the
brunt of their damn foolnesses off of me. That is what I want a partner
for. Some day I'll be telling 'em what I really think of 'em and it
wouldn't do--it wouldn't do. I've got to have an understudy. You've a
close mouth and a good head and you'd like the money. Don't tell me you
wouldn't like it," querulously. "Everybody wants money these days. The
whole world's after it."
"Oh, I want it all right," said Phil Lorrimer honestly. "I happen to
want it like the devil just at present. But I am not sure I want
it--that bad. That is what I have to think over."
He took a hasty swallow of water from the glass beside his plate, then
rose and made a few quick, nervous turns, up and down the room. Finally
he came to a halt opposite his host.
"I don't know whether I can make you understand, Dr. Huntley, but it is
like this," he said. "I have a drop or so of missionary blood in me.
My father is in China now. My mother would be, if she could stand the
climate. My sister is teaching in a missionary school in Turkey. I
chose the kind of work I am doing here in New York partly because it
interested me, but I believe it was a little bit too because of the
missionary strain. Anyway, it seems to me a worth-while job. But this
thing you are offering me-- Pardon me if I sound rude. I don't mean to
disparage your work. It is fine--some of it, but well, the truth of it
is, it doesn't look to me to measure up to what we are doing in the
clinic and what some other doctors and surgeons are doing in other
places. The finest man I know--doing the finest work I know--is in
Greendale, a little place just outside Baltimore. He has always been a
sort of standard for me--he and my father. If I went in with you, it
would be not because my heart was in it, but because the money was in
it, and wanted the money worse than I wanted to hang onto my dreams.
That is about the whole story."
Justin Huntley smoked in silence during this, for Phil, rather long
speech. Phil was not much given to eloquence.
"Well," he said. "Even so. Put it as baldly as that, if you like. It
is up to you. A man can't afford to sentimentalize much in this day and
generation. Let me remind you, the money is not to be despised. It
buys a good deal."
Phil's eyes were lowered. Well he knew, or thought he knew, what it
could buy for him. Not Sylvia, of course, Sylvia could not be bought,
but the right to go in and try to win her against Jack, against the
world, yes, against even his own ideals. The last thought crowded in, an
unbidden guest. Suddenly he loathed his father's friend, loathed his
smug success, his cynical sureness that he himself could be bought. For
it was buying, and Phil knew it. If he took this offer, he sold out, to
the highest bidder, his own high ideals. Was it worth it? Was even
Sylvia worth it? Had he the right to win her that way? Could he do it?
"Don't give your final answer to-night." Justin Huntley's bland voice
interrupted the boy's reflections. "There is no hurry. Take a week.
Two--three--if you like."
Phil pulled himself together.
"Thank you. I will, if you don't object--a few days, anyway. Please
don't think I am ungrateful, or don't appreciate the compliment you have
paid me--or rather the kindness, for, of course, I know I'm not
experienced enough to be much of a partner at present. I--"
But Huntley waved the words aside.
"It's not kindness--nothing but selfishness. I happen to want you.
Come on in if you will. Anyway think it over. The madame is alone.
Shall we go to her?"
Phil fancied there was an odd, wistful inquiry in Mrs. Huntley's pale
eyes as she turned to meet the men as they entered the room. It was
almost as if she were making some kind of plea. Whether she wanted him
to accept or refuse her husband's offer was not at all clear to Phil.
He made his adieus as early as he politely could on the score of a
previous engagement and passed out into the night trying to adjust as
best he could the confused bundle of thoughts and emotions he carried.
"Wonder if old Mephisto had any qualms," muttered Justin Huntley as the
door had closed upon the tall young doctor.
"Did you speak, dear?" inquired his wife. "I didn't understand."
"No, I didn't say anything--worth repeating."
"How like Philip is to his father, isn't he?"
"Very like," somewhat dryly. "Did you say there was a girl?"
"A girl?" Mrs. Huntley always dealt in mild interrogatives as if to
disclaim the responsibility of assertion. "Oh, yes. His mother told us
he was devoted to Sylvia Arden--wasn't it? That lovely young girl we
met once--in Baltimore, I think? She is a great heiress, isn't she?"
"H-mm. Maybe he will be back, after all," remarked her husband
irrelevantly.
Phil's restlessness gave him no peace, and though the engagement had
been fiction he decided to run around and see Barb a few moments before
he turned in for the night. He had gotten in the habit of using Barb as
an anaesthetic of late, though he had no idea he was doing it. To-night
he found her alone, curled up like a sleepy kitten before the fire. She
rose with a happy little exclamation of surprise as Phil came in.
For once the flood gates of his reserve were down for Phil. In five
minutes he had poured out the whole story of his evening's experience,
omitting nothing except the mention of Sylvia. In fact, he, hardly
thought it necessary to mention Sylvia. She so fully possessed his own
mind he had no conception that Barbara did not fully understand how
inextricably Sylvia was woven in with the whole matter.
"But Phil," wondered Barb, "it isn't the kind of work you like, is it?
I can't imagine you dealing with that kind of patients exclusively."
Barb's eyes blinked and crinkled, Barb-like, as she made the statement.
"Nor I. I should be all too likely to tell 'em to go plum to thunder."
He grinned a little as he made the admission.
"Then why? Phil, it can't be the money that appeals to you?" Barb's
voice was startled, incredulous.
Phil had been on his feet, marching to and fro in the little room, as
was his custom when excited. But suddenly he dropped into a chair before
the hearth.
"Listen, Barbie. Listen hard," he said. "Suppose a chap wanted to
marry a girl and he didn't have any money, at least not as much as he
thought he ought to have, not to look like a fool and a knave, asking
for her, and then suppose that, right out of a clear sky, the chap saw a
chance to make a big income, perfectly respectably, if not, well, we'll
say exhilaratingly, wouldn't he just naturally grab at the chance?"
Phil was not looking at Barb. He was staring into the gas log with all
his might, but in any case it didn't matter much. Wherever he looked
Phil saw only Sylvia that night. Barb's cheeks were pink and her breath
came a little more quickly than usual. She couldn't help wondering if
Phil could hear the "Blop! Blop! Blop!" her heart was making. It
seemed as if he must hear, it was such a queer, loud sound, but he did
not appear to notice. He did not even turn toward her.
"He might grab, but I think he would put his hand down quick again as
soon as he realized the girl wouldn't want him--that way. She wouldn't
want to be bought at a price--like that." Barb managed to keep her
voice steady in spite of the queer thing her heart was doing.
"Maybe not," said Phil. "Somehow I thought that is what you would say,
Barbie. Thank you." And suddenly Phil was on his feet. "'Night, Barb.
I've got to telephone a man before it gets any later."
And before Barb caught her breath he was gone. It did not matter any
more now how her heart behaved, but somehow, oddly enough it stopped
"blopping" and seemed suddenly to be very, very tired and heavy, as if
it were going to sink straight down into her stomach which, of course,
was no place for a heart to be located.
Yet it was all perfectly natural and like Phil not to have said anything
more at the moment. He had to get the taint of barter off his hands
before he came to her. "Suppose a chap wanted to marry a girl."
"Suppose a chap wanted to marry a girl." The clock on the mantel seemed
to be ticking out the words very distinctly. And suddenly Barb felt
very happy and contented and curled up in her chair again like a kitten.
Here her aunt found her a half hour later.
"Asleep, Kiddie?" she asked, and Barbara looked up with a shy, radiant
little smile.
"No, just dreaming," she said.
*CHAPTER XIII*
*INTO HAVEN*
Christmas was over, and Sylvia had hardly breathed for a week so
engrossed had she been in all kinds of festivities. Even now she was
preparing to depart on the morrow for an even gayer round, on the long
promised visit to Jeanette Latham, Jack's sister. Perhaps it was to
keep the "Booing" questions at a distance that Sylvia chose to fly from
one mad whirl to another that winter.
"I almost wish you weren't going to New York, just now, Sylvia. You
look tired to death and your nerves are 'jumpy,' as Doctor Tom says."
Thus Felicia addressed Sylvia at breakfast the morning of the
twenty-sixth, after the children had scampered off to the delights of
yesterday's new harvest of toys.
"It is nothing but the day-after feeling," said Sylvia. "I've danced
until morning for four nights running. I'll be all right as soon as I
can get some sleep."
"I don't know," Felicia looked dubious. "If you were seventeen instead
of twenty-two, I believe I should order you to stay at home."
"Isn't it lucky, I'm not?" smiled Sylvia. "Felicia, dear, you never did
really boss me in all the years you might have done it. Are you going
to begin now?"
"I am afraid it wouldn't be much use at this late date," sighed Felicia.
"Sometimes I wonder why you aren't more spoiled than you are.
Seriously, child, you have gotten a little of your shining splendor
rubbed off. Anything the matter?"
"Nothing in the world, except maybe I wish I knew whether I were going
to marry Jack or not. It is a little distracting not to know. You don't
happen to possess any inside information on the subject, do you?"
Sylvia's smile was whimsical but her eyes were tired. It was true. She
had lost a little of her "shining splendor," as Felicia described it, in
the past few weeks.
"I do not. But I should on the whole say you were not going to marry
him. You have seen too much of him lately. You need to get away and
get a perspective."
"Well, who wanted to order me to stay away from New York, just now?"
"I retract. Go ahead with my blessing. I hope you will meet a hundred
young men and let Jack Amidon get put in his place."
"That is just it. What _is_ his place?"
"Sylvia!" Felicia's tone was faintly exasperated. "You are no more in
love with Jack Amidon than I am. Some day you will wake up and find it
out."
"Will I? Sometimes, Felicia, I have a horrible suspicion I am just a
taster--like tea tasters, you know. Only I like to go round tasting
experience. I never thought I was a bit of a flirt until lately. But
I'm just finding out there are ways and ways of flirting, having
'adventures in personality' as Suzanne calls it. Jack says my 'Damnable
sympathetic ways' are vicious. Maybe they are. I think I must be a
sort of chameleon--all things to all men, you know. I shouldn't wonder
if I couldn't really love anybody--_grand style_."
"You goose! When the right man comes along you will know the
difference."
"I wonder." And suddenly Sylvia remembered how she had felt that night
on Lover's Leap, when she and Philip Lorrimer had been the only two
individuals in a whole spacious, shining universe. It seemed now as if
she had heard a kind of Hallelujah chorus, or was it that the silence
had been a strange kind of music itself?
And then on the heels of this blinding sweet memory had come another,
bringing with it a bitter taste, a memory of those long days after Phil
had gone back to the city and she had watched the mails and pretended to
ignore them.
And then she remembered Gus and Jack and Doctor Tom. Had they all been
just understudies for somebody else she really wanted in her heart of
hearts? How many other understudies would there be? And would she
marry one of them sooner or later?
"Women are rather like cats, after all, aren't they, Felicia? They will
pat their mice and keep putting their paws on them, even if they don't
want to eat them."
Felicia laughed.
"What a traveler you are! Have you been half round the world since you
spoke last? Shall we ask Tom and Lois over to dinner to-night? We
haven't seen either of them for an age."
"Yes," said Sylvia. "You telephone, Felicia. I have to pack."
Sylvia had seen practically nothing of Doctor Tom for the past few
weeks. Never once in that time had she been alone with him. Twice
Doctor Tom had been over when she was in, which was not often during
those full holiday evenings, and she had taken pains to be sure Felicia
was present on those two occasions. Once he had called to her to come
for a drive but she had had a genuine engagement with Jack to plead.
She felt silly enough placing any sort of a barrier between herself and
Doctor Tom but she was afraid for her own part it would be some time
before she could meet him quite naturally again. Sometimes she wished
Jack had kept his "darned impertinence" to himself and other times she
owned it was safer this way. Better that children should not play with
matches at all, since matches did sometimes ignite. At any rate, she
did not mean to see her neighbor alone again until after she got back
from New York.
But Fate ruled otherwise. That very afternoon, after her breakfast
table philosophizing, she had gone downtown to attend to a few last
errands and the delicious, crisp frostiness of the day tempted her to
walk instead of having the car out. She had hardly finished her tasks
and started homeward when she heard Doctor Tom's familiar whistle, and,
turning, saw him reigning in black Bess by the curb.
"Game for a spin?" he asked. "I have to go a few miles out in the
country and was looking for company."
His tone was so natural that Sylvia herself lost her self-consciousness
and was so thankful for the loss that she was very gay and talkative.
If only he needn't find out that it had not been accidental that he had
seen so little of herself of late all would be well.
"Seems to me you are turning into a regular society Miss after all," he
teased. "Bet you've been cutting Red Cross and everything else since
this dance mania set in."
"I am afraid I have. I've been an awful backslider in pretty much
everything lately," she told him soberly.
He flashed one of his quick, shrewd glances at her.
"What's this, Miss Christmas? Your own special season here and you in
the dumps without even a solitary star sparkle?"
"You are as bad as Felicia," said Sylvia a little crossly. "Do you all
expect me to grin like a Cheshire cat every minute?"
He chuckled.
"Sylvia touchy! What next? Indigestion or bad conscience?"
"Neither--well, maybe a bit of the latter," admitted Sylvia. "Anyway, I
am not at all pleased with myself lately. I'm getting to be a selfish
pig, and that's the ungarnished truth."
"Indeed! I hadn't noticed it. The McGuires had a powerful good dinner
yesterday and--"
"Do hush. It is nothing to send dinners to McGuire's. It doesn't cost
me anything--not even much thought. You needn't try to smooth it over.
I know. I haven't been thinking about a single soul in the world lately
except Sylvia Arden. I set Jack to work and I've just diddled round
myself doing next to nothing. I haven't even learned to cook as I said
I was going to, and since Gus went I haven't practiced and--"
"And since three weeks ago Thursday you haven't even played me a psalm
tune," he jested.
Then suddenly he stared. For out of the corner of his eye he perceived
that Sylvia was unmistakably blushing, blushing, of course, the more
hotly because she was so furiously angry at herself for so doing.
"So it isn't my imagination. There has been some kind of fool talk
somewhere. Confound me for an idiot! Poor kid! We'll settle that."
So thought Tom Daly. Then aloud, "See here, Sylvia, may I say a little
speech? You needn't look at me. I was a manger dog all right, a few
weeks ago, without meaning to be. I had no business to be keeping the
young chaps away from you. I didn't even see I was doing it. I was
down and out for a while, and you, bless your kind heart, saw it and
came to the rescue, like the Christmas girl you are. I shan't forget
what you did for me. If you pulled me out of a rut--and you did--maybe
we both came somewhere near being pulled into a bigger one. So far as I
know, no man is ever old enough to be sure he's passed the fool limit,
and maybe I was nearer the edge than I knew. Anyway, you were a trump
as usual. The blame, if there is any, is mine. All right, little
sister?" Then, at last, he turned to face Sylvia.
And suddenly and disconcertingly her eyes filled with tears. She was
very tired and her nerves were unstrung by too much gayety and mental
uneasiness.
"Of course it is all right. There never was anything much wrong,
only--well, I thought I was beginning to plume myself and get complacent
because I was the only one who patted you and smoothed your fur the
right way and maybe I'd better stop before--Doctor Tom, I hate things to
be as they are."
"Meaning?"
"Lots of things, but mostly why can't people--men and women--just be
friends and not have anything else snarled up with it?"
"They can." Tom Daly's steady voice was like oil to the troubled waters
of Sylvia's soul.
Nor did she guess that it cost him something of an effort to throw
precisely the right amount of big-brotherness into his words. As he
admitted, no man could safely boast that he had passed the fool limit,
but he could and would be man enough himself to be sure no girl like
Sylvia was going to be bothered by the folly.
"_We_ can anyway," he smiled down at Sylvia to add in the old friendly
way, a friendliness whose very familiarity was steadying.
She smiled back mistily.