Two days, then three passed. Lynda tried to send for Truedale--tried to
believe that she saw clearly at last, but having decided that she was
ready she was again lost in doubt and plunged into a new struggle.
She neglected her work and grew pale and listless. Brace was worried and
bewildered. He had never seen his sister in like mood and, missing
Conning from the house, he drew, finally, his own conclusions.
One day, it was nearly a week after Truedale's call, Brace came upon his
sister in the workshop over the extension. She was sitting on the
window-ledge looking out into the old garden where a magnolia tree was
in full bloom.
"Heigho, boy!" she said, welcoming him with her eyes. "I've just
discovered that spring is here. I've always been ready for it before.
This year it has taken me by surprise."
Brace came close to her and put his hands on her shoulders.
"What's the matter, girl?" he asked in his quick, blunt way.
The tears came to Lynda's eyes, but she did not shrink.
"Brother," she said slowly, "I--I want to marry Con and--I do not
dare."
Kendall dropped in the nearest chair, and stared blankly at his sister.
"Would you mind being a bit more--well, more explicit?" he faltered.
"I'm going to ask you--some questions, dear. Will you--tell me true?"
"I'll do my best." Kendall passed his hand through his hair; it seemed
to relieve the tension.
"Brace, can a man truly love many times? Perhaps not many--but
twice--truly?"
"Yes--he can!" Brace asserted boldly. "I've been in love a dozen times
myself. I always put it to the coffee-urn test--that settles it."
"Brace, I am in earnest. Do not joke."
"Joke? Good Lord! I tell you, Lyn, I am in _deadly_ earnest--deadlier
than you know. When a man puts his love three hundred and sixty-five
times a year, in fancy, behind his coffee-urn, he gets his bearings."
"You've never grown up, Brace, and I feel as old--as old as both your
grandmothers. I do not mean--puppy-love; I mean the love that cuts deep
in a man's soul. Can it cut twice?"
"If it couldn't, it would be good-bye to the future of the race!" And
now Kendall had the world's weary knowledge in his eyes.
"A woman--cannot understand that, Lyn. She must trust if she loves."
"Yes." The universal language of men struck Lynda like a strange
tongue. Had she been living all her life, she wondered, like a
foreigner--understanding merely by signs? And now that she was
close--was confronting a situation that vitally affected her
future--must she, like other women, trust, trust?
"But what has all this to do with Con?" Kendall's voice roused Lynda
sharply.
"Why--everything," she said in her simple, frank way, "he--he is
offering me a second love, Brace."
For a moment Kendall thought his sister was resorting to sarcasm or
frivolity. But one look at her unsmiling face and shadow-touched eyes
convinced him.
"You hardly are the woman to whom dregs should be offered," he said
slowly, and then, "But Con! Good Lord!"
"Brace, now I am speaking the woman's language, perhaps you may not be
able to understand me, but I know Con is not offering me dregs--I do not
think he has any dregs in his nature; he is offering me the best, the
truest love of his life. I know it! I know it! The love that would bring
my greatest joy and his best good and--yet I am afraid!"
Kendall went over and stood close beside his sister again.
"You know that?" he asked, "and still are afraid? Why?"
The clear eyes looked up pathetically. "Because Con may not know, and I
may not be able to make him know--make him--forget!"
There was a moment's silence. Kendall was never to forget the magnolia
tree in its gorgeous, pink bloom; the droop of his strong, fine sister!
Sharply he recalled the night long ago when Truedale groaned and threw
his letters on the fire.
"Lyn, I hardly dare ask this, knowing you as I do--you are not the sort
to compromise with honour selfishly or idiotically--but, Lyn, the--the
other love, it was not--an evil thing?"
The tears sprang to Lynda's eyes and she flung her arms around her
brother's neck and holding him so whispered:
"No! no! At least I can understand that. It was the--the most beautiful
and tender tragedy. That is the trouble. It was so--wonderful, that I
fear no man can ever quite forget and take the new love without a
backward look. And oh! Brace, I must have--my own! Men cannot always
understand women when they say this. They think, when we say we want our
own lives, that it means lives running counter to theirs. This is not
so. We want, we must choose--but the best of us want the common life
that draws close to the heart of things; we want to go with our men and
along their way. Our way and theirs are the _same_ way, when love is big
enough."
"Lyn--there isn't a man on God's earth worthy of--you!"
"Brace, look at me--answer true. Am I such that a man could really want
me?"
He looked long at her. Bravely he strove to forget the blood tie that
held them. He regarded her from the viewpoint that another man might
have. Then he said:
"Yes. As God hears me, Lyn--yes!"
She dropped her head upon his shoulder and wept as if grief instead of
joy were sweeping over her. Presently she raised her tear-wet face and
said:
"I'm going to marry Con, dear, as soon as he wants me. I hate to say
this, Brace, but it is a little as if Conning had come home to me from
an honourable war--a bit mutilated. I must try to get used to him and I
will! I will!"
Kendall held her to him close. "Lyn, I never knew until this moment how
much I have to humbly thank God for. Oh! if men only could see ahead,
young fellows I mean, they would not come to a woman--mutilated. I
haven't much to offer, heaven knows, but--well, Lyn, I can offer a clear
record to some woman--some day!"
All that day Lynda thought of the future. Sitting in her workshop with
the toy-like emblems of her craft at hand she thought and thought. It
seemed to her, struggling alone, that men and women, after all, walked
through life--largely apart. They had built bridges with love and
necessity and over them they crossed to touch each other for a space,
but oh! how she longed for a common highway where she and Con could walk
always together! She wanted this so much, so much!
At five o'clock she telephoned to Truedale. She knew he generally went
to his apartment at that hour.
"I--I want to see you, Con," she said.
"Yes, Lyn. Where?"
She felt the answer meant much, so she paused.
"After dinner, Con, and come right up to--to my workshop."
"I will be there--early."
Lynda was never more her merry old self than she was at dinner; but she
was genuinely relieved when Brace told her he was going out.
"What are you going to do, Lyn?" he asked.
"Why--go up to my workshop. I've neglected things horribly, lately."
"I thought that night work was taboo?"
"I rarely work at night, Brace. And you--where are you going?"
"Up to Morrell's."
Lynda raised her eyebrows.
"Mrs. Morrell's sister has come from the West, Lyn. She's very
interesting. She's _voted_, and it hasn't hurt her."
"Why should it? And"--Lynda came around the table and paused as she was
about to go out of the room "I wonder if she could pass the coffee-urn
test, on a pinch?"
Kendall coloured vividly. "I've been thinking more of my end of the
table since I saw her than I ever have before in my life. It isn't all
coffee-urn, Lyn."
"Indeed it isn't! I must see this little womanly Lochinvar at once. Is
she pretty--pretty as Mrs. John?"
"Why--I don't know. I haven't thought. She's so different from--every
one. She's little but makes you think big. She's always saying things
you remember afterward, but she doesn't talk much. She's--she's got
light hair and blue eyes!" This triumphantly.
"And I hope she--dresses well?" This with a twinkle, for Kendall was
keen about the details of a woman's dress.
"She must, or I would have noticed." Then, upon reflection, "or perhaps
I wouldn't."
"Well, good-night, Brace, and--give Mrs. John my love. Poor dear! she
came up to ask me yesterday if I could make a small room _look_
spacious! You see, John likes to have everything cluttered--close to his
touch. She wants him to have his way and at the same time she wants to
breathe, too. Her West is in her blood."
"What are you going to do about it, Lyn?" Kendall lighted a cigar and
laughed.
"Oh, I managed to give a prairie-like suggestion of openness to her
living-room plan and I told her to make John reach for a few things. It
would do him good and save her soul alive."
"And she--what did she say to that?"
"Oh, she laughed. She has such a pretty laugh. Good-night, brother."
And then Lynda went upstairs to her quiet, dim room. It was a warmish
night, with a moon that shone through the open space in the rear. The
lot had not been built upon and the white path that had seemed to lure
old William Truedale away from life now stretched before Lynda Kendall,
leading into life. Whatever doubts and fears she had known were put
away. In her soft thin dress, standing by the open window, she was the
gladdest creature one could wish to see. And so Truedale found her. He
knew that only one reason had caused Lynda to meet him as she was now
doing. It was--surrender! Across the moon-lighted room he went to her
with opened arms, and when she came to meet him and lifted her face he
kissed her reverently.
"I wonder if you have thought?" he whispered.
"I have done nothing else in the ages since I last saw you, Con."
"And you are not--afraid? You, who should have the best the world has to
offer?"
"I am not afraid; and I--have the best--the very best."
Again Truedale kissed her.
"And when--may I come home--to stay?" he asked presently, knowing full
well that the old home must be theirs.
Lynda looked up and smiled radiantly. "I had hoped," she said, "that I
might have the honour of declining the little apartment. I'm so glad,
Con, dear, that you want to come home to stay and will not have to
be--forced here!" And at that moment Lynda had no thought of the money.
Bigger, deeper things held her.
"And--our wedding day, Lyn? Surely it may be soon."
"Let me see. Of course I'm a woman, Con, and therefore I must think of
clothes. And I would like--oh! very much--to be married in a certain
little church across the river. I found it once on a tramp. There are
vines running wild over it--pink roses. And roses come in early June,
Con."
"But, dearest, this is only--March."
"I must have--the roses, Con."
And so it was decided.
Late that night, in the stillness of the five little rooms of the big
apartment, Truedale thought of his past and his future.
How splendid Lynda had been. Not a word of all that he had told her, and
yet full well he realized how she had battled with it! She had accepted
it and him! And for such love and faith his life would be only too
short to prove his learning of his hard lesson. The man he now was
sternly confronted the man he had once been, and then Truedale renounced
the former forever--renounced him with pity, not with scorn. His only
chance of being worthy of the love that had come into his life now, was
to look upon the past as a stepping stone. Unless it could be that, it
would be a bottomless pit.