II

Joan was thankful when lunch was over, and murmured "Amen" to grace

with a fervor that would have surprised an unimaginative and

unobservant person. Like all the meals in that pompous dining-room, it

was a form of torture to a young thing bubbling with health and high

spirits, who was not supposed to speak unless directly addressed and

was obliged to hold herself in check while her grandparents progressed

slowly and deliberately through a menu of medically thought-out dishes.

Both the old people were on a rigid diet, and mostly the conversation

between them consisted of grumbles at having to dally with baby-food

and reminiscences of the admirable dinners of the past. An aged butler

and a footman in the sere and yellow only added to the general Rip van

Winklism, and the presence of two very old dogs, one the grandfather's

Airedale and the other Mrs. Ludlow's Irish terrier, with a white nose

and rusty gray coat, did nothing to dispel the depression. The six

full-length portraits in oils that hung on the walls represented men

and women whose years, if added together, would have made a staggering

grand total. Even the furniture was Colonial.

But when Joan had put on her hat, sweater and a pair of thick-soled

country boots, and having taken care to see that no one was about, slid

down the banisters into the hall on her way out for her usual lonely

walk, she slipped into the garden with a queer sense of excitement, an

odd and unaccountable premonition that something was going to happen.

This queer thing had come to her in the middle of lunch and had made

her heart suddenly begin to race. If she had been given to self

analysis, which she was not, she might have told herself that she had

received a wireless message from some one as lonely as herself, who had

sent out the S.O.S. call in the hope of its being picked up and

answered. As it was, it stirred her blood and made her restless and

intensely eager to get into the open, to feel the sun and smell the

sweetness in the air and listen to the cheery note of the birds.

It was with something of the excited interest which must have stirred

Robinson Crusoe on seeing the foot-prints on the sand of what he had

conceived to be a desert island that she ran up the hill, through the

awakened woods whose thick carpet of brown leaves was alight with the

green heads of young ferns, and out to the clearing from which she had

so often gazed wist fully in the direction of the great city away in

the distance.

She was surprised to find that she was alone as usual, bitterly

disappointed to see no other sign of life than her friends the rabbits

and the squirrels--the latter of which ambled toward her in the

expectation of peanuts. She had no sort of concrete idea of what she

had expected to find: nor had she any kind of explanation of the wave

of sympathy that had come to her as clearly as though it had been sent

over an electric wire. All she knew was that she was out of breath for

no apparent reason, and on the verge of tears at seeing no one there to

meet her. Once before, on her sixth birth day, the same call had been

sent to her when she was playing alone with her dolls in the

semitropical garden of a hired house in Florida, and she had started up

and toddled round to the front and found a large-eyed little girl

peering through the gate. It was the beginning of a close and blessed

friendship.

This time, it seemed, the call had been meant for some other lonely

soul, and so she stood and looked with blurred eyes over the wide

valley that lay unrolled at her feet and, asked herself what she had

ever done to deserve to be left out of all the joy of life. From

somewhere near by the baying of hounds came, and from a farm to her

left the crowing of a cock; and then a twig snapped behind her, and she

turned eagerly.

"Oh, hello," said the boy.

"Oh, hello," she said.

He was not the hero of her dreams, by a long way. His hair didn't curl;

his nose was not particularly straight; nor were his eyes large and

magnetic. He was not something over six feet two; nor was he dressed in

wonderful clothes into which he might have been poured in liquid form.

He was a cheery, square-shouldered, good-natured looking fellow with

laughter in his gray eyes and a little quizzical smile playing round a

good firm mouth. He looked like a man who ought to have been in the

navy and who, instead, gave the impression of having been born among

horses. His small, dark head was bare; his skin had already caught the

sun, and as he stood in his brown sweater with his hands thrust into

the pockets of his riding breeches, he seemed to her to be just exactly

like the brother that she ought to have had if she had had any luck at

all, and she held out a friendly hand with a comfortable feeling of

absolute security.

With some self-consciousness he took it and bowed with a nice touch of

deference. He tried to hide the catch in his breath and the admiration

in his eyes. "I'm glad it's spring," he said, not knowing quite what he

was saying.

"So am I," said Joan. "Just look at those violets and the way the

leaves are bursting."

"I know. Great, isn't it? Are you going anywhere?"

"No. I've nowhere to go."

"Same here. Let's go together."

And they both laughed, and the squirrel that had come to meet Joan

darted off with a sour look. He had anticipated a fat meal of peanuts.

He was out of it now, he saw, and muttered whatever was the squirrel

equivalent for a swear-word.

The boy and girl took the path that ran round the outskirts of the

wood, swung into step and chimed into the cantata of spring with talk

and laughter.

There had been rather a long silence.

Joan was sitting with her back against the trunk of a fallen tree, with

her hands clasped round her knees. She had tossed her hat aside, and

the sunlight made her thick brown hair gleam like copper. They had come

out at another aerie on the hill, from which a great stretch of open

country could be seen. Her eyes were turned as usual in the direction

of New York, but there was an expression of contentment in them that

would have startled all the old people and things at home.

Martin Gray was lying full stretch on the turf with his elbows up and

his chin on his left fist. He had eyes for nothing but the vivid girl

whom he had found so unexpectedly and who was the most alive thing that

he had ever seen.

During this walk their chatter had been of everything under the sun

except themselves. Both were so frankly and unaffectedly glad to be

able to talk at all that they broke into each other's laughing and

childish comments on obvious things and forgot themselves in the

pleasure of meeting. But now the time had come for mutual confidences,

and both, in the inevitable young way, felt the desire to paint the

picture of their own particular grievance against life which should

make them out to be the two genuine martyrs of the century. It was now

a question of which of them got the first look-in. The silence was

deliberate and came out of the fine sense of sportsmanship that

belonged to each. Although bursting to pour out her troubles, Joan

wanted to be fair and give Martin the first turn, and Martin, equally

keen to prove himself the champion of badly treated men, held himself

in, in order that Joan, being a woman, should step into the limelight.

It was, of course, the male member of the duet who began. A man's ego

is naturally more aggressive than a woman's.

"Do you know," said Martin, arranging himself in a more comfortable

attitude, "that it's over two months since I spoke to any one of about

my own age?"

Joan settled herself to listen. With the uncanny intuition that makes

women so disconcerting, she realized that she had missed her chance and

must let the boy have his head.

Not until he had unburdened his soul would she be able, she knew, to

focus his complete attention upon herself.

"Tell me about it," she said.

He gave her a grateful look. "You know the house with the kennels over

there--the hounds don't let you miss it. I've been wandering about the

place without seeing anybody since Father died."

"Oh, then, you're Martin Gray!"

"Yes."

"I was awfully sorry about your father."

"Thanks." The boy's mouth trembled a little, and he worked his thumb

into the soft earth. "He was one of the very best, and it was not

right. He was too young and too much missed. I don't understand it. He

had twenty-five years to his credit, and I wanted to show him what I

was going to do. It's all a puzzle to me. There's something frightfully

wrong about it all, and it's been worrying me awfully."

Joan couldn't find anything to say. Years before, when she was four

years old, Death had come to her house and taken her own father away,

and she had a dim remembrance of dark rooms and of her mother crying as

though she had been very badly hurt. It was a vague figure now, and the

boy's queer way of talking about it so personally made the conventional

expressions that she had heard seem out of place. It was the little

shake in his voice that touched her.

"He had just bought a couple of new hunters and was going to run the

hunt this fall. I wanted him to live forever. He died in New York, and

I came here to try and get used to being without him. I thought I

should stay all alone for the rest of my life, but--this morning when I

was moping about, everything looked so young and busy that I got a sort

of longing to be young and busy again myself. I don't know how to

explain it, but everything shouted at me to get up and shake myself

together, and on the almanac in Father's room I read a thing that

seemed to be a sort of message from him."

"Did you? What was it?"

"'We count it death to falter, not to die.' It was under to-day's date,

and it was the first thing I saw when I went to the desk where Father

used to sit, and it was his voice that read it to me. It was very

wonderful and queer. It sort of made me ashamed of the way I was taking

it, and I went out to begin again,--that's how it seemed to me,--and I

woke everybody up and set things going and saw that the horses were all

right, and then I climbed over the wall, and as I walked away, out

again for the first time after all those bad weeks, I wanted to find

some one young to talk to. I don't know how it was, but I went straight

up the hill and wasn't a bit surprised when I saw you standing there."

"That's funny," said Joan.

"Funny--how?"

"I don't know. But if you hadn't found me after the feeling that came

to me at lunch--"

"Well?"

"Well, I'm sure I should have turned bitter and never believed any more

in fairies and all that. I don't think I mean fairies, and I can't

explain what 'all that' stands for, but I know I should have been

warped if I hadn't turned round and seen you."

And she laughed and set him laughing, and the reason of their having

met was waved aside. The fact remained that there they were--youth with

youth, and that was good enough.