BY THE SILVER YARD-STICK
WITH her days shadowed by anxiety over Ida's illness, the care and
responsibility of Wardo and her sympathy for Betty's disappointment,
Lloyd still found one bright spot, untouched by other people's troubles.
If, like the old sun-dial at Warwick Hall, she had taken for her motto:
"I only mark the hours that shine," those hours when Leland Harcourt
came to teach her Spanish were the ones that would have been numbered.
If she had felt that he regarded it as a bore, or that it cost him the
slightest effort, she would have dropped the study immediately; but when
he made it plain that it was the chief interest of his days, and the one
thing that made his summer in the Valley endurable, she could not help
being flattered by his assertions, and exerted herself all the more to
make the hour a pleasant one.
It was an agreeable sensation to know that she could interest a man who
had known so many interests; that it was she who held him in
Lloydsboro; that every turn of her head, every inflection of her voice,
every phase of her varying moods had a charm for him. It made her tingle
with satisfaction when she realized that she had justified Gay's
confidence in her power, but sometimes after he had gone she felt that
she was not exerting it to the extent she had promised. She wasn't
"keying him up to any higher pitch." She wasn't inspiring him with the
ambition which his family seemed to think was all that was necessary to
make him capable of any achievement. The idea of her influencing him did
not seem as preposterous and ridiculous as it had the first few weeks of
their acquaintance, but somehow it did not seem so necessary. Sometimes
she wondered if the "sweet doing nothing" that Gay said was in his blood
had not affected her also. Maybe that was why she liked his very
indolence, and forgave in him what she would have condemned in any other
chronic idler. Maybe he was influencing _her_.
"But he sha'n't!" she declared to herself when the thought first
startled her, and to prove that he hadn't she seized the first
opportunity which came in her way to take him to task. His signet ring
bore the same crest that was on the silver ladle, and he used it one
morning to seal a note for her. With a significant glance in its
direction she asked saucily, "Senor Tarrypin, when are you going to put
your family motto into actual use? When are you going to begin striving
till you ovahcome--till you do something really worth while in the
world?"
With the question came the quick remembrance of a winter day by the
churchyard stile, and Malcolm's boyish voice protesting earnestly--"I'll
be anything you want me to be, Lloyd." And then like a flash came that
other scene and Phil's pleading voice, "I say it in all humility, Lloyd,
this little bit of turquoise kept me 'true blue.'"
If she had expected any such earnestness in Leland's reply she was soon
disillusioned, for with an amused side-glance at her, as if he found
this serious mood the most diverting of all, he said indifferently:
"Oh--_manana_."
"To-morrow!" she translated quickly. "But to-morrow never comes."
"Then neither need the effort."
"But without the effort--the striving," she persisted, looking down at
the imprint of the tiny dagger on the seal, "there never will be any
crown."
He shrugged his shoulders carelessly. "What's the odds, when one doesn't
care for a crown?"
"You're just plain lazy!" she cried, provoked that her effort to inspire
him had met with such a reception.
He smiled as if she had paid him the greatest of compliments, then sat
up with an air of interest.
"This is a topic we've never struck before," he said lightly. "It's like
coming across an inviting bypath we've never travelled over. Now suppose
you tell me just what is your ideal way for a man to spend his life in
order to get the most out of it."
Lloyd stole a quick glance at him to see if he were in earnest. The
light tone seemed almost mocking, but the half-closed eyes gazing out
across the lawn were serious enough, and she studied her reply a moment,
feeling that maybe her opportunity had come at last.
"I think," she began timidly, "that the man who gets the most out of
life is the one who makes most of himself--who starts out as they did in
the old days to win his spurs and his accolade. Maybe you know the story
of Edryn, the one that gave Warwick Hall its motto."
He nodded, with that slightly amused smile which always disconcerted
her. "Yes, I know. That's Gay's pet war-cry--'Keep tryst.' But go on,
I'd like to hear your version of it."
In the face of such an invitation she found it very hard to proceed, but
after a moment's hesitation she said almost defiantly:
"Oh, I know you'll considah it a bit of school-girl sentiment to look at
life in such a figurative way, but I think it's beautiful:
"'_To duty and to sorrow_,'" she quoted softly, "'_to disappointment and
defeat thou mayst be called. No matter what the tryst there is but one
reply if thou wouldst win thy knighthood!_'"
"But suppose one never hears any call," he asked teasingly. "Never feels
the spirit move him to make any particular exertion."
"Then it's yoah own fault!" cried Lloyd. "It's just as it says in the
legend. '_Only those will hear who wake at dawn to listen in high
places, and only those will heed who keep the compass needle of their
soul true to the North star of a great ambition!_'"
"Pretty strenuous work, isn't that, for an August day?" he answered.
"And that's all very well for poets and priests and young idealists to
dream of, but when all's said and done, what's the good? What's the
use?"
Clasping his hands behind his head he leaned back in his chair and began
reciting in a dreamy way, as if he were chanting the rhythmical lines, a
poem called "Drifting." It was like an incantation, and Lloyd sat
listening as if he were weaving some spell around her:
"'My soul to-day
Is far away
Sailing the Vesuvian Bay.
My winged boat,
A bird afloat,
Swims round the purple peaks remote.
* * * * *
"'I heed not if
My rippling skiff
Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff;
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies,
Under the walls of Paradise.'"
As he went musically on, verse after verse, Lloyd sat listening, wholly
under the spell of his voice, yet with a baffled impotent sense of being
carried along by a current in exactly the opposite direction from the
one in which she had started to go.
"'No more, no more
The worldly shore
Upbraids me with its wild uproar--'"
It was a Lotus land of irresponsibility and ease and personal
gratification that he was revealing to her as his ideal of life. He
hadn't openly made fun of her enthusiasm and zeal, but he had chilled
her ardour and silenced her, and left her with the feeling that her
knights with their struggles after accolades and ambitions and all those
things were silly folk who made much ado about nothing. It made her
cross.
In the silence that followed there was a shriek from Wardo, somewhere
back near the servants' quarters, and then such a lusty crying that
Lloyd sprang up frightened, and ran to the rescue. She was
conscience-smitten for having left him so long to the care of Enoch,
Cindy's little grandson, whom she had bribed to amuse him for an hour.
It was only because his constant presence and interruptions seemed to
bore Leland that she had done it. Wardo did make tyrannical demands on
her attention, she had to admit, dearly as she loved the child. But when
she found him crying from a bee-sting, and his poor little lip swollen
out of all resemblance to a Cupid's bow she felt a twinge of resentment
towards Leland. If she hadn't sent Wardo away from her, she thought
reproachfully, he wouldn't have been stung, and she wouldn't have sent
him if Leland had acted nicer about having him around. He had actually
muttered in Mom Beck's hearing that it was "a beastly bore always having
that kid poking in."
She had resented it at the time Mom Beck repeated it, but excused it on
the ground that he was not used to children, and that Wardo's persistent
questions and demands did tax one's patience dreadfully sometimes. But
now as he clung to her, sobbing and screaming, she thought
reproachfully, "He might at least have come around to find out what was
the mattah, when he knows how devoted I am to the poah little thing,
even if he didn't take any interest in him himself. I'll keep Wardo with
me all the time aftah this, even if it does bo'ah him."
Leading him back to the porch she took him in her lap and quieted him
with the promise of a wonderful box of paints which he should have next
day, with which to colour all the pretty pictures in all the magazines.
And she quite ignored Leland for awhile to punish him, not knowing that
he understood her pique and was amused at it, and that he was enjoying
the picture she made rocking back and forth in the low chair, with
Wardo's golden curls pressed against her shoulder, and the dimpled arms
clinging around her neck.
Next day she forgot the paints until it was too late for her to get
them, and Betty who was going over to The Beeches and past the store,
offered to take Wardo and let him have the pleasure of buying them
himself. After they had gone she went down to the porch to wait for
Leland. It was almost lesson time. Yesterday's feeling of resentment had
entirely passed, and she looked down the avenue expectantly from her
seat behind the vines. Any moment he might turn in at the gate. The
thought gave her a pleasant thrill of anticipation. As the moments
slipped by she opened her book and began repeating the verses marked for
her to memorize.
Presently she looked up to see a small coloured boy wandering up the
avenue as if he had no particular destination in view and no great
desire to arrive anywhere. She supposed he was the bearer of a message
to the cook, but instead of going around the house he came towards her
with a note in his hand. It was from Leland she saw at the first glance,
and written in Spanish at the second.
She could read enough of it to understand that he was not coming that
morning, but for the rest of it she had to turn to her lexicon for help
in translating. After some time and with much difficulty she managed to
make out the reason. He had gone to Louisville for the day quite
unexpectedly with his brother--a matter of business. He was sorry not to
be able to keep his engagement with her. Only dire necessity kept him
away, and he would be with her in the evening. Until then adieu. She had
to turn to her lexicon again for that next word, and having found it
wondered how he had dared to put it in--that caressing little name, that
word of endearment which he would not have presumed to use in English.
It made the colour flame up in her face.
But he was not coming. She let the note fall to her lap with an
exclamation of disappointment. Then wide eyed and surprised she sat up
straight, suddenly aware how deep that disappointment was; suddenly
realizing what she had never known till this moment, how large a place
Leland Harcourt had grown to hold in her thoughts. Everywhere she turned
she could see his face with that quick flashing smile she loved to bring
to it. She could see that impetuous toss of the head, the eager gesture
of his long slender hand, the easy grace of his manner that gave him
his distinguished, patrician air.
"Why, I'm like Hildegarde!" she whispered wonderingly. "'His eyes are so
blue they fill all my dreams!' Only Mistah Harcourt's are dark."
Now if Lloyd had never heard the story of the Three Weavers, never been
a member of the Order of Hildegarde, never made the promise to her
father about the silver yard-stick, her reverie in the hammock that
morning might have led to a very different result. But because she had
promised, and because she must keep tryst no matter how hard it was to
do, she faced the matter squarely.
"He wouldn't have put that word in the note if he wasn't beginning to
care for me," she admitted, "and it wouldn't make me have that queah
little sawt of half-way glad feeling if I wasn't beginning to care for
him."
The hammock swung faster. She was thinking of a day on the seashore
years before, when she had been playing out on the rocks. And while she
built her little castles the tide came creeping in, creeping so quietly
that she did not know it was there until all the sand between her and
safety was covered and a fisherman had to wade in and carry her out.
Although she did not put the comparison into words, that was what she
felt was happening now, and much as she liked him and loved to be with
him and missed him when he did not come, she felt that his influence
over her was creeping up like a tide that would surely drown her ability
to keep her promise to her father.
"He _does_ influence me," she admitted to herself. "I might as well be
honest about it. Sometimes he can almost make me believe that black is
white. How do I know but what I might grow to be like poah mistaken
Hertha? He was only a page, but she called him prince in her thought
until she really believed him one."
Then as yesterday's conversation came back to her she sprang from the
hammock saying to herself, "And he isn't even a knight, or he wouldn't
have made fun of my poah little attempt to make him listen to the King's
call. I'll not think about him a minute longah. It would only be
squandahing the golden thread that Clotho left me."
Running up the stairs she got her hat and started to follow Betty. But
all the way up and all the way down and all the way that she went
towards The Beeches that little word at the end of the letter--that
sweet caressing bird-note of a name, sang itself over and over to her.
He had called her that, and to-night he was coming.
She did not go all the way to The Beeches, for she met Betty on the way
back, Wardo proudly bearing his box of paints, and Betty re-reading a
letter which she had found in the office. It was from Madam Chartley.
There was a vacancy in Warwick Hall itself and she was to fill it; was
to be her beloved Miss Chilton's assistant in the English classes. Her
happiness was as great over this news as her disappointment had been
over the return of her manuscript. As Madam Chartley wanted her at the
school by the first of September there were only two weeks in which to
make her preparations to leave.
Although Lloyd had heard the matter discussed she never fully believed
that Betty was going away from Locust until she had the letter in her
own hands and read Madam Chartley's expression of pleasure at the
prospect of having Betty with her permanently. It swept away all thought
of her own affairs, for Betty had grown as dear to her as a sister in
the years they had been together. She followed her mournfully into the
white and gold room, offering to help her with her preparations, and
pouring out her regret and her disapproval of Betty's plans. It wasn't
necessary at all she insisted for Betty to leave them, and Locust
wouldn't be the same place with her gone.
Wardo required less attention than usual that afternoon, for charmed
with his new paints, he sat at a low table in Betty's room while the
girls sewed and talked, and coloured the pictures in every magazine he
could lay his hands on. It was sunset when Lloyd noticed how long he had
been bending over the table, and persuaded him to lay aside his brush
till next day.
"Look at the pretty red sunset," she urged, trying to interest him in
something else. "It's as red as a cherry."
He looked at it solemnly, considering her comparison. "No, it's wed as
the blood of a thousand dwagons," he answered.
Lloyd looked at him in astonishment. "What do you know about dragons,
child?"
"Betty telled me, when I painted one wif my paints, here in this book."
He began turning the leaves of one of the magazines. "Dwagons is the
stwongest fings there is," he added with a knowing wag of his head,
feeling that she needed enlightenment. "But my fahvah could fight
one--He's so stwong. My fahvah could fight anyfing."
"Always the same old story," said Lloyd in a low tone to Betty. "Isn't
it dreadful? Always harping on the perfection of his hero. Seems to me
it would have been bettah if she had not tried to keep the truth from
him. The disillusionment is going to be feahful some of these days. It
will shake his belief in everything."
As she rocked back and forth with his warm little body nestled against
her, she thought how differently Ida would have chosen could she have
known that this precious little soul was to be given into her keeping.
If somebody had only gone to her with old Hildgardmar's
warning--"Remember that in the right weaving of this web depends not
only thy own happiness but the happiness of _all those who come after
thee,_" it might have made a world of difference. But nobody had opened
her eyes to the enormity of the responsibility she was assuming, and
now, maybe despite all her careful training and frantic efforts to make
her little son what she would have him be, she might not be able to turn
his life out of the channel of his inherited tastes and appetites.
It must be _awful_ she thought, hugging him closer, to love a child with
the passionate devotion that Ida loved this one, and have it grow up
into a worthless vagabond like Ned Bannan. Then a stray wonder crossed
her mind if Leland Harcourt's mother would have been disappointed in him
if she could have lived to see him wasting his splendid talents and
opportunities; just drifting along in an aimless, thistledown sort of
existence when he might be such a power for good if he would only exert
himself.
"He doesn't measuah up to the third notch at all," she admitted with a
feeling of regret.
Just then there was a long distance call for her at the telephone, and
hastily putting Wardo down she went to answer it.
"It's from Mistah Harcourt," she called carelessly, in answer to her
mother's inquiry from the next room. "He was coming ovah to-night but
something detained him in Louisville, and he called me up to tell me not
to expect him."
She hoped that she had kept the flutter out of her voice that the sound
of his voice brought into her pulses. For at the close of this
commonplace message was the request that she make no engagement with any
one else for the next night. He had something to tell her, and
then--there was that same word with which he had closed his note--that
soft musical name, seeming twice as personal and significant because of
the tone in which he said it. She felt that he must be conscious of the
quick blush it brought to her face as she hastily hung up the receiver.
That night for the first time that summer Lloyd was alone with her
father and mother. Betty had Madam Chartley's letter to answer, and the
old Colonel had gone out to dinner. The three sat on the broad
white-pillared porch in the moonlight, Lloyd on the step at her father's
feet, her arm on his knee. Ever since the telephone message her thoughts
had been in a tumult. It was useless for her to pretend that she didn't
know why Leland wanted to see her alone, and what it was he was coming
to tell her. She was glad and sorry and half frightened and altogether
confused. "He isn't the prince at all," she kept saying to herself as if
it were a charm that would help her ward off his approach and keep her
true to her Hildegarde promise.
And yet--his wooing was the kind one reads of in books. She would be
sorry to have _that_ come to an end. It was so delightful to have some
one write poems to her and sing songs in such a way that every tone and
glance dedicated them to her alone. If one could only go on that way
through all the summers, being adored in that fashion, knowing she was
crowned queen in somebody's heart, how delightful it would be. But she
didn't want things to come to a crisis when she would have to make grave
decisions and solemn promises. She didn't want to go one step farther
than this borderland of romance where they lingered now. What she wanted
was just to go on building her little castles as she had done that day
on the sea-shore, and yet be assured that the tide wouldn't come
creeping up any farther. It was just far enough now to be interesting.
She wished they would begin to talk about things like that, but she
shrank from bringing up such a subject herself. After awhile she
broached one almost akin.
"Mothah," she asked, breaking a long comfortable silence that had fallen
on them, "do you think that Lucy is happy?"
"No, not entirely--that is just at present," Mrs. Sherman answered
slowly, as if considering. "She's hardly adjusted herself yet to the new
order of things, but she will in time because she's such a yielding
little soul, and is really devoted to her husband. For instance, when he
insisted she gave up her church to please him and joined his. It meant a
great struggle and a sacrifice on her part, and he is not at all devout,
doesn't attend services more than twice a year; so it couldn't have
made such a vital difference to him where she went. Then at home her
father always placed a certain amount in the bank every month to his
wife's credit, so there never was any unpleasantness about money
matters. While Jameson is very wealthy and lavishes luxuries and
beautiful clothes on her, he reserves the pleasure of buying and
spending entirely to himself. Treats her like a child in their financial
arrangements, and doles out little allowances as if she couldn't be
trusted to spend it intelligently. She's so sensitive that she'd rather
go without than ask him for a cent, and it often puts her in an
embarrassing position to be without."
"In other words," put in Papa Jack, "he's thoroughly inconsiderate and
selfish, although I imagine he'd be mightily amazed if any one applied
that term to him since he is so lavish in giving things in his own way."
"Yes, he is," was the answer. "I've noticed it in a dozen little ways.
It's always _his_ wishes and _his_ tastes that have to be consulted,
never Lucy's. Yet aside from that trait he is a thoroughly fine man, and
because she respects him and looks up to him and is such a sweet
yielding little creature, he'll come in time to be the centre of her
universe, and she'll revolve around him like a loyal little planet. But
a girl of a different temperament wouldn't. If she were impetuous and
highstrung like you for instance," she added with a smile at Lloyd, "she
would see the injustice of it and resent it so bitterly that there would
be continual friction and jar. With your temperament you couldn't live
peaceably with anybody like that."
"I know I couldn't," admitted Lloyd frankly, "especially if he showed
any jealousy. Mistah Jameson is jealous of every friend Lucy evah had at
the Post. He doesn't like it a bit when she refers to the good times she
used to have with the boys there, even when they were just ordinary
friends. Half a dozen times I've seen the tears come to her eyes at some
inconsiderate thing he'd say, and I'd think if I were Lucy I couldn't
sit there and take it like a martyr. I'd have to jump up and shake him
till his teeth rattled."
"What a cat and dog time you would have," laughed Mrs. Sherman. "Worse
than little Mary Ware's nightmare that she had after Eugenia's wedding."
"By the way," exclaimed Mr. Sherman, slapping his pockets to find a
letter he had placed in one of them, "I knew there was something I
intended to tell you. Jack Ware is on his way here now."
Then in answer to the surprise and the questions that greeted his
announcement he explained, "I suggested making him assistant manager of
the mines and the Company wants to have a look at him, and put him
through a sort of examination. He's so young they rather doubt my
judgment in the matter. But they'll find out when they see him. We
telegraphed him to come, and he left Arizona several days ago. He'll be
here only a day and night probably."
Lloyd left her seat on the step and took a chair beside her father,
sitting straight and alert in her interest. It was hard to realize that
Jack Ware was grown. He was only fourteen when she had known him on the
desert. "Oh, will you evah forget," she laughed, "the way he looked when
we surprised him at the washtub, all tied up in an apron, helping Joyce
with the family washing?"
"His readiness to pitch in to whatever is to be done is his chief
characteristic," was the answer. "That is what makes him so valuable at
the mines. Patient and reliable and strong, he is one of the finest
young fellows of my acquaintance. He'll be one of the big men of the
West some day, for young as he is, he is into everything that makes for
the welfare and development of the territory he lives in."
All the rest of the evening was spent in recalling that visit to Ware's
Wigwam, and when Lloyd went up to bed, although Leland Harcourt's name
had not been mentioned, she felt that her doubts and unspoken questions
about him had been answered. She must not listen any more to that little
name, that caressing little name that left such a thrill in its wake.
"Wise old Hildgardmar," said Mrs. Sherman in a playful tone after Lloyd
had left them. "I don't suppose when you sent for Jack that it entered
your head you were giving her the very safeguard of contrast that I
hoped she might have, but you will be doing it all the same."
"No, I didn't," he confessed, "but I think you are magnifying the
interest she has in Harcourt. She never mentioned his name all evening."
"But she talked all around him," answered Mrs. Sherman, "and I think she
came to the conclusion before she went up-stairs that he does not
measure up to your standards, and is almost sure that he does not even
meet hers."