more the Byrd sisters came to depend on her, especially as Julietta was
now away getting acquainted with her grandson, Gloria's boy, recently
arrived upon this planet. The girls at "Hester house," and Hope and
Martha, also came in for a generous share of her attention. The old
buoyant, radiant Sylvia seemed to have come back to them, ready to cheer
and comfort and command at need. Never was her genius for happiness
more in demand or more in evidence than it was that February. It seemed
as if everything had been awry and sad and bad while she had been away
in the city and that now she was home it must all just naturally
straighten itself out.
She took up her music again with rigorous hours of practice. She
fulfilled her long made threat of learning to cook, much to Aunt Mandy's
pride and delight in her role as chief professor of the culinary arts.
She went in, seriously, this time, into Red Cross work, organizing a
unit which she kept sternly to its task of rolling bandages and all the
rest of the necessary if rather prosaic labor. She also got under way a
class in first aid instruction under the tuition of a young doctor whom
Tom Daly had recommended, too busy himself to take on any new duties.
Doctor Tom and Sylvia saw a great deal of each other off and on but
always in the comfortable, wholesome, brother and sister relation which
their November interlude had interrupted but not destroyed. Sylvia was
often at the cottage playing with the babies whom she adored and kept
out of Lois' way as often as possible so that the latter might have time
for the typing of her book which was almost ready for the publisher's
hands. Marianna and Donald, too, came in for a large share of Sylvia's
time. For them she spun rare tales old and new and rendered Kim and the
Water Babies, the Immortal Alice and other beloved favorites of the
realms of gold until she knew them nearly by heart. With the children
Sylvia was happiest of all. Living in their world she almost forgot her
own, which in spite of her boasted contentment did not wholly satisfy
her. She had learned that the busier she was, the better life seemed,
leaving fewer crannies and nooks for doubts and wonders to seep in.
Of course there was plenty of gayety both in Greendale and in the
near-by city, but she steadily refused to go in for an excess of this
kind of thing, though here, too, she and Jack came near to dissension.
It must be admitted Jack was scarcely so assiduous a devotee of business
now that he felt his assiduity no longer essential to the winning of his
liege lady. He was ready now to enjoy the fruits of his labor and have
a thoroughly frivolous holiday with Sylvia as mistress of the revels.
But just as he wanted to cut loose Sylvia wanted to go sedately. He
complained that he saw infinitely less of her now he was engaged to her
than he had when he was not, and resented somewhat sharply the thousand
and one claims and duties which Sylvia acknowledged. Yet the two never
really quarreled. Jack was too sunny-tempered and Sylvia too tactful,
and on the whole they were very happy together, Sylvia, oddly enough,
happier than Jack.
Meanwhile the war went on overseas and men began to shake their heads
and prophesy that we would be in it soon. But that was still nineteen
hundred and fifteen and we kept out. About this time came a letter from
Hilda, the first in many months. The chief item told simply and with
scarcely any comment was that Bertram had been killed early in October.
"I can hardly realize it or feel it," wrote Hilda. "It is getting to be
an old story over here. Women see their lovers and their sons and their
husbands go and they don't come back, or if they do, they come maimed
and crippled, only the shadow of the men that went forth. In the
meanwhile we try to heal as many as we can, though it is discouraging to
heal them and send them back to be killed outright perhaps next time."
The letter and its sad news had haunted Sylvia for a long time. What a
strange romance Hilda's had been--so brief it must almost have seemed a
dream! She had known Bertram only a few weeks in August. By the first
of September they had become engaged. A week later he had gone to the
front. In October he had been overtaken by death. And that was the end.
What a waste there was to it all!
Half consciously all that month Sylvia expected to hear that Barb and
Phil were engaged. She had long since made up her mind that that
particular consummation was natural, even desirable. She, herself, was
far too sane a person to spend many moments prying among ashes to see if
any sparks remained. Nor would she permit herself to regret that which
had perhaps never been more than moonshine and dream stuff. She was
able to persuade herself quite easily that since she was able to be so
placidly happy without Phil she had never needed him overmuch. That
miracle moment on Lover's Leap and that other music intoxicated moment
in December came to seem to her mere magic casements through which she
had looked for the briefest interval of time into another world,
essentially unreal, fantastic, a sort of mirage of the soul. And
mirages were not in Sylvia's line, so she did not often let herself
remember those irrevocable moments.
Once in her desultory reading she came across a little poem called
"Remembrance," one stanza of which particularly haunted her.
_Not unto the forest--not unto the forest, O my lover!_
_Take me from the silence of the forest!_
I will love you by the light and the beat of drums at night
And echoing of laughter in my ears,
_But here in the forest_
I am still, remembering a forgotten, useless thing,
And my eyelids are locked down for fear of tears--
_There is memory in the forest._
She had gone to a dance with Jack that night and every now and then the
music had taken words.
I will love you by the light and the beat of drums at night
And echoing of laughter in my ears.
But, afterward, in her own room, she had sat a long time by the window
looking out into the white night where snows lay on her rose bushes.
And perhaps she remembered a "forgotten useless thing" and her eyelids,
too, were "locked down for fear of tears." And a new fear awakened in
Sylvia's heart that night, a fear of Love. She, too, needed to be
delivered from the memory of the forest.
*CHAPTER XXI*
*A CHAPTER OF REVELATIONS*
February passed and March came in, rough and blustering, with "noise of
wind and of many waters" blowing its silver trumpets to life long
dormant under winter snows. There came a few warm days and the crocuses
began to run gay little races through the grass in Sylvia's garden and
the jocund company of daffodils appeared. One morning a bluebird
flashed out in the magnolia and the cardinals called "Pretty! Pretty!
Pretty!" ecstatically all day long.
But then came frost and the frivolous crocuses in their parti-colored
gowns lay flat and desolate like little dead dreams. The daffodils
blackened and their stalks snapped, brittle as icicles. The bluebird
disappeared, nobody knew where, and the cardinal's joy was muted. And
it was all a symbol of life as it was in the world that spring of
nineteen hundred and fifteen. Men had dreamed of peace and good will,
of strong nations hailing each other with a "God speed" across the
waters, a world of quickened life and promise and progress. And
suddenly, out of a clear sky, as it seemed, had come blackening,
devastating war. Men who had smiled like friendly gods snarled and
hissed and rolled each other in the dust like brute beasts. Hymns of
hate replaced the song of the morning stars, and the Prince of Peace was
again crucified.
And still America looked on, dismayed, awed, shaking herself like a
great dog, but not yet ready to leap at the throat of the enemy of
democracy, not yet ready to believe such an enemy could really live and
move and have his mighty being in this day and generation of
enlightenment. Not yet was Beowulf dedicated to Heorot's cause, not yet
did he fully realize the hatefulness of Grendel, who bore God's wrath.
Aloof from it all, America's great pulse beat on almost steadily. Men
and women loved and sinned and suffered and bartered and sacrificed as
they had been doing from the beginning, more or less unmindful of the
whirlwind sowing not so far off, with only an ocean between it and
themselves. And what is an ocean nowadays?
In the stuffy little town of Norton, Pa., Suzanne took a deep draught of
life that March; a deeper draught, indeed, than New York, or for that
matter all the cities of America could have held to her lips. Day by
day, as she sat by her mother's bed, she learned lessons no college
could have taught her. Suzanne's spirit had been "stabb'd broad awake."
She saw the Suzanne of the past, blind, arrogant, selfish, deeming
herself wise and self-sufficient, yet really knowing neither life nor
herself. Here in the quiet room where the angels of life and death
wrestled she saw things very clearly and was made humble.
But it was willed that she be spared the last drops of the cup of sorrow
and remorse. In those early March days her mother drifted back slowly
from the Hinterland. It was almost as if Suzanne's need and Suzanne's
prayer and Suzanne's love had brought her back. Little by little, as
the mother grew better, she and her daughter came into the grace of
mutual understanding and sympathy and forgiveness, knowing at last the
whole story of Suzanne's light-hearted vagabondage. Mrs. Morrison was
able to smile and sigh over "Melissa on the Road," the first installment
of which appeared in the April issue of the magazine whose editor had
"come to life" in season to recognize a live human document when it came
into his hands.
As for the play, Suzanne received a letter in March from the great
manager informing her he had kept in touch with her affairs through Miss
Murray, congratulating her on her mother's recovery and begging for an
interview at her earliest convenience. His confidence in the Star's
judgment had, it seemed, been justified. The play was as good as
Suzanne had promised, so he admitted.
Accordingly, one day, when her mother was able to spare her, Suzanne
went up to New York to sign contracts and discuss royalties with a
glibness which scarcely betrayed her recent complete inexperience of
such pleasing commodities. The play was to be tried out in early
September and if it was successful would be given a chance on Broadway
later.
"Of course, that is on the knees of the gods," the manager had warned.
"You can't tell what the public will do. The public is a spoiled child.
The thing may go. It may not. The whole thing's a devilish lottery,
you understand."
Oh, yes, Suzanne understood. All life was pretty much of a devilish
lottery she thought, but that made it more rather than less interesting.
Long ago she had taken for her motto, "Believe and venture, as for
pledges the gods give none." It was enough for her at the time that the
play was to be given a trial. More would have slain her with joy she
thought.
Of course she ran straight to Barb with this bucketful of delightful
certainties and enchanting possibilities. And Barb was as happy as
Suzanne over it all. She was an artist at rejoicing with those that
rejoice as well as mourning with those that mourned. Sometimes she
seemed to herself to be nothing at all but an agglomeration of
sympathies for the rest of the world. Her own selfhood seemed drowned
in the sea of humanity. She was not unhappy. Indeed she was quietly,
humbly content. To some women to love itself is the main thing. In
such the waters of affection returning back to their springs, fill them
indeed full of refreshment. There was no bitterness in Barb. Gladly and
freely she had broken her alabaster box of precious ointment not
counting the cost, nor deeming the performance any sort of waste, rather
a privilege.
As for the Cause, her dedication to it held no more scruples. Suzanne
had been right in her prophecy. She was "white hot" in her faith, in her
mission, the whiter-hot, perhaps, because she had managed to get
"martyrized" along the way.
In March Lois Daly's book was accepted by the publishers, with hearty
congratulations on her return to the field of literature after her
sojourn elsewhere. The terms of her contract were generous and Lois
smiled, well pleased. She took the letter at once to her husband, and
when he had expressed his delight and pride in her success she had
explained why she had done the thing.
"I didn't want to write a bit, Tom," she said. "I dreaded to go into it
again. Of course when I once got in it I loved it just as I always
have. It is exhilarating--soul-possessing. But I was happy without it,
perfectly happy. I don't know whether you understand that, Tom. I was
afraid sometimes it worried you that I had given it up. It needn't
have. You and the home and the children were enough to fill every
need."
"Then why did you do it?" He surveyed her, puzzled. It occurred to him
as no doubt it occurs to many wise men at times how little he knew his
wife. Do men ever really know their wives? Tom Daly thought of that
little episode with Sylvia and wondered if it had had anything to do
with sending Lois back to her writing.
"Why? Because I wanted to make some money--quite a lot of money--and
that was the only way I knew of doing it--my only wage earning asset,"
she smiled.
But Tom still looked bewildered. Just why should Lois have suddenly
acquired her zeal for money? She had never been luxurious in her
tastes, turning always preferably to simplicity of living, as those of
the aristocracy of brains usually do. Therefore he awaited
enlightenment. It was twilight and they were sitting together in the
dusk, but he could see her eyes shining with a sort of wistful
tenderness as they lifted themselves to his.
"You don't ask why I wanted the money? Is it because you know that I
wanted it to give to you?" She pushed the publisher's letter across the
table to him. "It is yours, dear,--my gift to the hospital. I haven't
been able to show I cared for what you were working for. Perhaps I
haven't really cared, though I think I have learned a little about it
this winter, while I've been working myself. I've had a little light--a
crack of it, anyway." She smiled at him in the grayness. "But I've
always cared for you, Tom, even when maybe I haven't shown it, and I
want to give this--piece of me to your hospital because I do love you
and your big vision. Will you take it? It isn't much, but it comes
straight from my heart."
"Not much!" cried Tom Daly. "Lois, it is everything."
And in a moment his arms were around her and there was nothing else in
all the world but they two, mystically one in the fullness of their love
each for the other.
So Spring brought with it quickened life and love to Tom Daly and Lois
as it had done to Suzanne Morrison and her mother.
Spring, too, brought back Gus Nichols from his concert tour, a little
thinner and tired looking as if the fire of his music had burned rather
deep but with a new poise and dignity and manhood, along with his old
boyish charm.
Mr. McIntosh was as happy as a child with a new toy at having the boy
back, or rather as a child with an old toy, beloved and rediscovered.
It was pleasant to see the two together, old man and lad, so different
racially and temperamentally, yet so bound together by the ties of
affection.
"Best job you ever did in your life, Sylvia Arden," Mr. McIntosh had
observed one Sunday when he and Gus were taking dinner at the Hall.
"Best job you ever did, when you persuaded me to adopt the boy. I can
see you now, impertinent little witch that you were, sitting up and
giving me advice like a grandmother. But it was good advice. I grant
you that. You knew what you were talking about and talked to some
purpose. See here, Sylvia--" The old man lowered his voice a little,
though the others--Gus and Felicia and Doctor Daly--were engaged in
conversation and could not hear, "do you think there is anything the
matter with the lad? He doesn't look just happy to me. You don't think
there can be a girl or any nonsense like that?"
Romance had always seemed more or less nonsense to Angus McIntosh,
probably would unto the end, though years and affection had somewhat
tempered his aversion for sentiment.
Sylvia looked up a little startled, remembering suddenly what she had
almost forgotten--that unspoken thing she had read in the boy's eyes
that night after his first concert. Gus, too, looked up at the moment,
and as their gaze met Sylvia saw that the boy's had the fire and dew of
a Galahad in them, the look of one who sees the Grail afar off. Her own
eyes fell. She could not bear that shining, reverent look. It blinded
her, shook her, quickened her, filled her with humility and compassion
and envy. She perceived that Gus had found this thing which she herself
seemed forever seeking with vain quest. In giving he had gained, in
losing he had found.
"Well?" challenged Angus McIntosh at her side.
Sylvia shook her head.
"No, Gus looks to me--very happy," she said.
"I'm glad you think so." The old man's tone was relieved, as if a
burden had been lifted from his mind. He had the greatest respect for
Sylvia's judgment and understanding. "Glad you think so. He seems all
right, but I wasn't sure. Thought I'd see what you thought, that's
all."
Later Sylvia played accompaniments for her guest's violin. And if his
eyes had not already conveyed the truth to her, his violin would have
done so. Sylvia could hardly keep the tears out of her eyes as she
played. Not that the music was sad. It was jubilant, at times almost
triumphant. It throbbed and welled and exulted. It disdained pity as a
crowned monarch might have disclaimed it. It proclaimed itself
inviolate, consecrate, perfected. "I rejoice! I conquer! I love!" it
sang.
As Sylvia rose from the piano she almost feared to meet the gaze of the
listeners. She thought they must all have heard the message of the
violin as she had heard it. But no one seemed to have done so. They had
felt the power and the beauty of the thing, but its soul had been
concealed from them all except Sylvia herself.
And then Sylvia saw that Jack was in the room. He had come in while they
had been playing and stood silent, waiting until the violin ceased. She
went to him, her eyes still full of the music, and noticed that he was a
little white and very grave, with something of his boyishness stricken
out of him.
"I didn't know you were back from New York," she said, though that
wasn't at all what she seemed to care about saying. The ordinary,
conventional words rise to our lips when the real things hide unsaid.
"Let's get out of here a moment," he whispered, under cover of greeting,
"I've something to tell you."
Sylvia stepped out into the hall and he followed.
"Sylvia, there's been an accident. Phil's hurt--dying, maybe."
He put out his arm quickly, for Sylvia swayed toward him with eyes that
told him what perhaps he had known in his heart all the time.
*CHAPTER XXII*
*UNTO THE FOREST*
Sylvia did not faint. Indeed it seemed to her as if she had never in
all her life been so quick in every fiber as she was at the moment she
heard Jack's voice saying those fearful illuminating words,
"Phil--dying, they think." It was as if a great clean wave swept over
her leaving her purged of misunderstanding and doubt and weakness and
compromise. With one blinding flash of light she saw clear. She drew
away from Jack's arms.
"Tell me about it. No, I am all right. Tell me."
There was little to tell. A crowded street, a heedless chauffeur, a
toddling Italian baby escaped from its mother's fruit stand. These were
the details. There was nothing unusual about them. Such accidents
happen daily in great cities. One scarcely hears of them they are so
frequent of occurrence. The wonder is there are not more of them when
human life teems so thick and is held so cheap. But, unfortunately,
clear-witted, quick-moving, strong-limbed young ex-football heroes are
not always at hand as in this case. The baby was happily unhurt, but
Phil Lorrimer lay in the hospital at the point of death.
Instead of keeping a luncheon engagement with his friend, Jack Amidon
had been called upon to take charge of a grave situation. Finally,
there being nothing left to do, he had come back to Greendale to tell
Mrs. Lorrimer--Mrs. Lorrimer and Sylvia.
"I thought it would be better to tell his mother myself," he said to
Sylvia. "Telegrams knock you out so. She is a wonder, though. Not a
whimper. She's going up on the five o'clock from Baltimore. I'm taking
her in, in the car."
"I am going, too," said Sylvia.
For a moment the two stared at each other, then Jack understood and
acquiesced.
"All right. That is for you to say," he responded quietly. "Go and get
ready. I'll tell the rest."
Even in her distress, Sylvia smiled wanly at Jack. It was so like him to
understand, to spare her, to see at a flash the helpful, kindly thing to
do. Jack was always so "dear." She tried to express her gratitude but
he cut her short by stooping to kiss her, not on the lips as usual, but
on the forehead.
"Don't bother about me, sweetheart. I don't count," and he strode away
from her toward the living-room where he had promised to "tell the
rest."
Sylvia ran up the stairs to her own room, dazed and dry-eyed, with a
strange lightness about her, as if she had suddenly shed her body and
become all spirit. In a few moments Felicia joined her, quiet, helpful,
unquestioning. There was never any need of explaining things to
Felicia. She did not ask why Sylvia, engaged to one man, should be
rushing with anguish-stricken eyes to the sick-bed of another. Perhaps
she understood that better than she had understood the engagement in the
first place.
It was a strange journey--first, the swift almost silent automobile ride
to the city; Jack's stern, white face as he kissed her good-by so unlike
the sunny lover she was used to, whom she had loved "by the light and
beat of drums," a look so different it had haunted her all the way to
New York; beside her the quiet countenance and grief-filled eyes of
Phil's mother. Feeling scarcely worthy to dwell in the sanctuary of her
own grief, Sylvia's heart went out to the older woman in her silent
agony. Perhaps never in her life before had the girl realized what it
meant to be a mother--how mothers gave and gave and gave, and suffered
and suffered and suffered, and loved and loved and loved, unto the end.
What was going on in the mind and heart of the other woman she could
only conjecture. Dimly she perceived that the mother loved the son for
the baby he had been, the boy and youth he had been, the man he was, the
man he was to be--all in one. How could she bear it? Sylvia wondered.
Then the vision widened. How could all those women over in Europe bear
it? To give up their sons--the very fruit of their bodies, those for
whom they had undergone the agonies of death! It was horrible. Phil
was only one, and he had offered life for life. That was natural. But
those other strong young men, over there--they were giving life for more
death. That was the unthinkable, hideous part of it. The sorrows of
all the world seemed pressing down upon her, crystallized, made real by
her own poignant, personal grief. Phil became the mangled young life of
the world.
Suddenly Sylvia felt she could bear it no longer alone. She put out her
hand and let it rest upon the hand of Phil's mother. Mrs. Lorrimer
turned with a faint little smile.
"Pray, Sylvia, pray," she said softly. "Try to help me say 'Thy will be
done.' I am trying to say it. But it is hard--so very hard."
"I can't," Sylvia's young voice flung back, hard, almost fierce, in its
hurt. "I can only keep saying, 'Don't take him. Don't take him. I
can't bear it.'"
But Mrs. Lorrimer shook her head and pressed the girl's hand.
"We can bear anything, Sylvia--anything. We are never asked to bear too
much."
"I am," cried Sylvia passionately. "I can't bear his dying--without
knowing. He must know."
"He will know, dear."
Sylvia took comfort from the quiet assurance. She believed Mrs. Lorrimer
meant she felt sure that Phil was still living, would live. She did not
know the mother meant that her son might already be where there could be
no misunderstanding, no longer any seeing as through a glass darkly, but
face to face with infinite realities. Alice Lorrimer was not young like
Sylvia. She knew from sad experience how many paths of human life lead
straight to the Garden of Gethsemane.'
Presently Sylvia spoke again.