The haste displayed by Mayor Morrison in getting away from the study door
suggested that he was glad to escape and was not fishing for any
invitation to return for further parley.
But when he approached the head of the stairway he moved more slowly. His
demeanor hinted that he would welcome some excuse, outside of politics, to
keep him longer in the Corson mansion. He paused on the stairs and made an
elaborate arrangement of a neck muffler as if he expected to confront
polar temperature outside. He pulled on his gloves, inspected them
critically as if to assure himself that there were no crevices where the
cold could enter. He looked over the banisters. There was nobody in the
reception-hall. He arranged the muffler some more. Step by step, very
slowly, he descended as far as the landing where he had met Lana Corson
joyously the night before. Not expectantly, with visage downcast, he
looked behind him.
Lana was framed in the library door at the head of the stairs.
"I was trying to make up my mind to call to you. But you seemed to be in
so much of a hurry! I suppose you have a great deal to attend to this
morning."
"The principal rush seems to be over. Was it anything--Did you want to
speak to me?"
"Perhaps it isn't of much importance. It did seem to be, for a moment. But
it's something of a family matter. I think, after all, it will be
imprudent to mention it."
He waited for her to go on.
"Probably under the circumstances you'll not be especially interested,"
she ventured.
"The trouble is, I'm afraid I'll show too much interest and seem to be
prying."
"Will you please step up here where I'll not be obliged to shout at you?"
He obeyed so promptly that he fairly scrambled up the stairs.
"You said down there in the hall last evening that my father was angry and
that an angry man says a great deal that he doesn't mean. My father was
very, very angry when he and. I arrived home last night."
"I reckoned he would be."
"In his anger he talked to me very freely about you. The question is,
should I believe anything he said?"
"I--I don't know," he stammered, "You're not going back on your own
statement about an angry man, are you?"
"I don't think it's fair to accept all his statements."
"I'm sorry you still hold that opinion. You see I drew some conclusions of
my own from what my father said to me, and those conclusions urge me to
apologize to you for the Corson family. I'm afraid you didn't find my
father in an apologetic mood this morning."
"Not exactly."
"Doris tells me that I have a New England conscience. I'm not sure. At any
rate, I'm feeling very uncomfortable about something! It may be because
you're misunderstood by our family. Do I seem forward?"
"No! Of course you don't. But you're putting me in a terrible position. I
don't know what to say. I don't want any apologies. They'd make me feel
like a fool--more of a fool than I have been."
"Are you admitting now that you were wrong in the stand you took about the
water-power and--and--well, about everything?"
He had been listening in distress and perplexity, striving to understand
her, groping for the meaning she was hiding behind her quiet manner. But
her question struck fire from the flint of his resolution. "That power
matter is a principle, and I am not wrong in it. As to the means I used
last night, it was brass and blunder and I'm ashamed of acting that way."
"There's no need of going into the matter. I received a great deal of
information from my father--when he was angry. And I woke up early this
morning and began to consider the evidence. I was hard at it when you
drove up in your car. I have been waiting for you to come from your talk
with my father and the Governor. I want to say, Stewart, that when I stood
up last night, like a fool, and lectured you about neglecting your
opportunities in life I was considering you only as the boss of St.
Ronan's mill. But my father told me what you really are. I have always
respected him as a very truthful man, even when he is well worked up by
any subject. I must take his word in this matter, though he didn't realize
just how complimentary he was in your case. And if you can spare me a few
moments, I want you to come into the library."
She walked ahead of him toward the door.
"I think I'll leave the Corson family right out of it, Stewart. I'm a
loyal daughter of this state. I'm home again and I've waked up. Humor me
in a little conceit, won't you? Let me make believe that I'm the state and
listen to me while I tell you what a big, brave, unselfish--"
They were inside the door and he put his arm about her and led her toward
the big screen and broke in on her little speech that she was making
tremulously, apprehensively, with a sob in her voice, trying to hide her
deeper emotions under her mock-dramatics.
"Hush, dear! I don't want to hear any state talk to me! I want to hear
only Lana Corson talk. I didn't understand her last night! Now, bless her
honest, true heart, I do understand her."
Speech, long repressed, was rushing from his mouth. Then he struggled with
words; his excitement choked him. He looked down at her through his tears.
"The bit poem, lassie! You remember it. The poem you recited, and when I
sent you the big basket o' posies! All the time since yesterday it has
been running in my head. I sat alone in the State House last night and all
I could remember was, 'But I will marry my own first love!' I tried to say
it out like a man, believing that God has meant you for me. But I couldn't
think I'd be forgiven!"
Lana took his hand between her palms and stopped him at the edge of the
screen. She quoted, meeting his adoring eyes with full understanding:
"And I think, in the lives of most women and men,
There's a moment when all would go smooth and even--"
She drew him gently with her when she stepped backward.
She had heard the Senator's voice in the corridor; he was escorting
Governor North.
On the panels of the screen were embroidered some particularly grotesque
Japanese countenances. Those pictured personages seemed to be making up
faces at the dignitaries who passed the open door.
"But I must go to your father, sweetheart," Stewart insisted. "I'd best do
it this morning and have it all over with."
This declaration as to duty and deference was not made while Senator
Corson was passing the door; nor was it made with anything like the
promptitude the Senator might have expected in a matter which was so
vitally concerned with a father's interests. In fact it was a long, long
time before Stewart had anything to say on that subject. If Senator Corson
had been listening again on the other side of the screen, he, no doubt,
would have been mightily offended by a delay which seemed to make the
father an afterthought in the whole business.
If he had been eavesdropping he would not have heard much, anyway, of an
informing nature. He would have heard two voices, tenderly low and
incoherent, interrupting eagerly, breaking in on each other to explain and
protest and plead. If Stewart's protracted neglect of the interests of a
father would have availed to rouse resentment, Lana's reply to Stewart's
rueful declaration more surely would have exasperated the Senator; she
emphatically commanded Stewart to say not one word on the subject to her
father.
"Why, Stewart Morrison, for twenty-four hours you have been taking away my
breath by doing the unexpected! You have been grand. Now are you going to
spoil everything by dropping right back into the conventional, every-day
way of doing things? You shall not! You shall not spoil my new worship of
a hero!"
"Well, I won't seem much like a hero if I act as though I'm afraid of your
father!"
She raised her voice in amazed query. "For mercy's sake, haven't you been
proving that you're not afraid of him?" Once more, jubilantly, teasingly,
wrought upon by the revived spirit of the intimacy of the old days, she
assumed a playful pose with him, but this time her sincerity of soul was
behind the situation. "Don't you realize, sir, that the calendar of the
Hon. Jodrey Wadsworth Corson, on this day and date, is crowded with
strictly new business? He is due at the State House very soon. Do you
think he can afford to be bothered with unfinished business?"
He worshiped her with silence and a smile.
"Yes, Mister Mayor of Marion, unfinished business--yours and mine! Our
business of the old days. But the honorable Senator is perfectly well
aware that the business aforesaid is on the calendar. He had been
supposing that we had forgotten it. I see a big question in your eyes,
Stewart dear! Well, now that you're a party to the action and interested
in the matter to be presented, I'll say that after Senator Corson had done
his talking to me last evening, or very early this morning, to be more
exact, I called on my family grit of which he's so proud and I did a
little talking to Senator Corson. And he knows that the business is
unfinished--he knows it will be brought duly to his attention--and he'll
be in a better frame of mind after his present petulance has worn off."
"Petulance!" Morrison was rather skeptical.
"Exactly! He's just as much of a big child as most men are when another
big child tries to take away a plaything. Oh, he was furious, Stewart! But
let me tell you something for your comfort. He dwelt most savagely on the
fact that you had grabbed in single-handed and beaten a Governor and a
United States Senator at their own game! Wonderful, isn't it--admission
like that? He has always patronized you as a countryman who knew how to
make good cloth and who didn't amount to anything else in the world. Why,
in a few days he'll be admitting that he admires you and respects you!"
She paused. After a few moments she went on, her tones low and thrilling.
"I've been trying to explain myself to you, Stewart. You know, now, that I
have always loved you. I have told you so in a way that leaves no doubts
in a man such as you are. You have forgiven me for being simply human and
silly before I woke up to understand you. And you don't misunderstand me
any more, do you?" she pleaded, wistfully. "Last night I saw--your big
_self_!"
"Lana, it was a wonderful night--more wonderful than I realized till now!"
After a time they became aware of a stir below-stairs and they came out
from behind the screen where the Japanese faces grinned knowingly.
"Please obey me, Stewart; you must! It's really my trial of you to see if
you're obedient when I know it's for your own good. Go down and wait for
me." She left him in the corridor and ran away.
He marched down the stairs with as much self-possession as he could
command.
Below him he saw Senator Corson, Mrs. Stanton, Silas Daunt, and the
banker's son. All were garbed for outdoors and the Senator was inquiring
of Mrs. Stanton why Lana was not ready.
From the landing down to the hall Stewart found the ordeal an exacting
one. Those below surveyed him with an open astonishment that was more
disconcerting than hostility; he was in a mood to fight for himself and
his own; but to deal in mere polite explanations, after Lana's imperious
command to keep silent on an important matter, was beyond any sagacity he
possessed in that period of abashed wonder what to say or do.
It was his thought that Miss Corson, in her efforts to avoid an anticlimax
of conventional procedure, was making a rather too severe test of him in
forcing him to endure the unusual.
He did manage to say, "Good morning!" and smiled at them in a deprecatory
way.
Coventry Daunt amiably responded as a spokesman for the group; but he had
waited deferentially for his elders to make some response.
The Senator held a packet of telegrams in his hand. After Stewart had
halted in the hall, putting on the best face he could and evincing a
determination to stick the thing out, Senator Corson walked over and
offered to give the mayor the telegrams. "They're beginning to arrive from
Washington, sir. Better read 'em. They'll afford you a great deal of joy,
I'm sure."
Stewart shook his head, declining to receive the missives. He wanted to
tell the Senator that more joy right at that moment would overtask the
Morrison capacity.
"I wish I were younger and more of an opportunist," Corson avowed. "In
these guessing times among the booms, here is gas enough to inflate a
pretty good-sized presidential balloon." He waved the papers.
The Senator's tone was still rather ironical, but Stewart was seeking for
straws to buoy his new hopes; whether he was so recently away from Lana's
dark eyes that the encouragement in them lingered with him, he was not
sure. He felt, however, that the Senator's eyes did seem a little less
hard than the polished ebony they had resembled.
An awkward silence ensued. The Senator stood in front of the caller and
queried uncompromisingly with those eyes.
The caller, having been enjoined from babbling about the business that had
been transacted behind the screen in the library, had no excuse to offer
for hanging around there. "I--I suppose you're going to the State House,"
he suggested, after he decided that the weather called for no comments.
"We are! We are waiting for my daughter," stated Corson, with a severity
which indicated that he was determined, then and there, to rebuke the
cause of her delay.
"I'm so sorry you have waited!" Lana called to them from the landing, and
came hurrying down, fastening the clasp of her furs.
She went to Mrs. Stanton, her face expressing apologetic distress. "It's
so comforting, Doris, to know that you and I don't need to bother with all
these guest and hostess niceties. You'll understand--because you're a dear
friend! Father will make the doors of the Capitol fly open for his
party--and you'll be looked after wonderfully." She bestowed her gracious
glances on the others of the Daunt family, "I know you'll all forgive me
if I don't come along."
She did not allow her amazed father to embarrass the situation by the
outburst that he threatened. She fled past him, patting his arm with a
swift caress. "I'm going with Stewart--over to Jeanie Mac Dougal
Morrison's house. It's really dreadfully important. You know why, father.
I'll tell you all about it later. Come, Stewart! We must hurry!"
Young Mr. Daunt was near the door. He opened it for her. When Stewart
passed, following the girl closely, the volunteer door-tender qualified as
a good sport. He whispered, "Good luck, old man!"
When Coventry closed the door he gave his sister a prolonged and pregnant
stare of actual triumph.
It was only a look, but he put into it more significance than sufficed for
Doris's perspicacity.
He had confided to his sister, the evening before, his hopeful reliance on
a girl's heart.
But the Lana Corson who came down the stairs, who confronted them, who had
fearlessly chosen her mate before their hostile eyes, was a woman.
And Coventry's gaze told his sister boastingly that he had made good in
one respect--he had called the turn in his estimate of a woman.