Honor was surprised and pleased to find how little she minded living
abroad, after all. They had arrived, the boy and herself, in the months
between their secret understanding and their separation, at the amazed
conclusion that it was going to be easier to be apart until that bright
day when they might be entirely and forever together. At the best, three
interminable years stretched bleakly between them and marriage; they had
to mark time as best they could. She liked Florence, she liked the
mountainous _Signorina_, her stepfather's friend, and she liked her
work. If it had not been for Jimsy King she would without doubt have
loved it, but there was room in her simple and single-track
consciousness for only one engrossing and absorbing affection. She wrote
to him every day, bits of her daily living, and mailed a fat letter
every week, and every week or oftener came his happy scrawl from
Stanford. Things went with him there as they had gone at L. A.
High,--something less, naturally, of hero worship and sovereignty, but
a steadily rising tide of triumph. He chronicled these happenings
briefly and without emphasis. "Skipper dear," he would write in his
crude and hybrid hand, "I've made the Freshman team all right and it's a
pretty fair to middling bunch and I guess we'll stack up pretty well
against the Berkeley babes from what I hear, and they made me captain.
It seems kind of natural, and I have three fellows from the L. A.
team,--Burke and Estrada and Finley."
He was madly rushed by the best fraternities and chose naturally the
same one as Carter Van Meter,--one of the best and oldest and most
powerful. He made the baseball team in the spring, and the second fall
the San Francisco papers' sporting pages ran his picture often and
hailed him as the Cardinal's big man. Honor read hungrily every scrap of
print which came to her,--her stepfather taking care that every mention
of Jimsy King reached her. It was in his Sophomore year that he played
the lead in the college play and Honor read the newspapers limp and
limber--"James King in the lead did a remarkable piece of work." "King,
Stanford's football star, surprised his large following by his really
brilliant performance." "Well-known college athlete demonstrates his
ability to act." Honor knew the play and she could shut her eyes and
see him and hear him in the hero's part, and her love and pride warmed
her like a fire.
She had not gone home that first summer. Mildred Lorimer and Carter's
mother managed that, between them, in spite of Stephen's best efforts,
and, that decided, Jimsy King went with his father to visit one of the
uncles at his great _hacienda_ in old Mexico. Mrs. Van Meter and her son
spent his vacation on the Continent and had Honor with them the greater
part of the time. She met their steamer at Naples and Carter could see
the shining gladness of her face long before he could reach her and
speak to her, and he glowed so that his mother's eyes were wet.
"Honor!" He had no words for that first moment, the fluent Carter. He
could only hold both her hands and look at her.
But Honor had words. She gave back the grip of his hands and beamed on
him. "Carter! Carter, _dear_! Oh, but it's wonderful to see you! It's
_next_ best to having Jimsy himself!"
Marcia Van Meter winced with sympathy, but her son managed himself very
commendably. They went to Sorrento first, and stayed a week in a mellow
old hotel above the pink cliffs, and the boy and girl sat in the garden
which looked like a Maxfield Parrish drawing and drove up to the old
monastery at Deserto and wandered through the silk and coral shops and
took the little steamer across to Capri for the day while Mrs. Van Meter
rested from the crossing. She was happier that summer than she had been
since Carter's little-boy days, for she was giving him, in so far as she
might, what he wanted most in all the world, and she saw his courage and
confidence growing daily. She was a little nervous about Roman fever, so
they left Italy for Paris, and then went on to Switzerland, and for the
first few days she was supremely content with her choice,--Carter gained
color and vigor in the sun and snow, and Honor glowed and bloomed, but
she presently saw her mistake. Switzerland was not the place to throw
Honor and Carter together,--Switzerland filled to overflowing with
knickerbockered, hard muscled, mountain climbing men and women; Honor
who should have been climbing with the best of them; who would be, if
Jimsy King were with them; and her son, in the smart incongruities of
his sport clothes ... limping, his proud young head held high.
They found Miss Bruce-Drummond at Zermatt, brown as a berry and hard as
nails with her season's work, and she was heartily glad to see Honor.
"Well, my dear,--fancy finding you here! Your stepfather wrote me you
were studying in Florence and I've been meaning to write you. What luck,
your turning up now! The friend who came on with me has been called
home, and you shall do some climbs with me!"
"Shall I?" Honor wanted to know of her hostess, but it was Carter who
answered.
"Of course! Don't bother about us,--we'll amuse ourselves well enough
while you're hiking,--won't we, Mater?" He was charming about it and yet
Honor felt his keen displeasure.
"Yes, do go, dear," said Mrs. Van Meter, quickly. "Make the most of it,
for I think we'll be moving on in a very few days. I--I haven't said
anything about it because you and Carter have been so happy here, but
the altitude troubles me.... I've been really very wretched."
"Oh," said Honor penitently, "we'll go down right away, Mrs. Van
Meter,--_to-day_! Why didn't you tell us?"
"It hasn't been serious," said Carter's mother, conscientiously, "it's
just that I know I will be more comfortable at sea level." It was
entirely true; she would be more comfortable at sea level or anywhere
else, so long as she took Carter out of that picture and framed him
suitably again. "But we needn't hurry so madly, dear. Suppose we go on
Friday? That will give you a day with your friend." She sent Carter for
her cloak and Honor and the Englishwoman strolled to the end of the
veranda.
"I don't believe we ought to wait even a day, if she feels the altitude
so," said Honor, troubled. "She's really very frail."
"I expect she can stick it a day," said Miss Bruce-Drummond, calmly.
"She looks fit enough. But--I say--where's the other one? Where's your
boy?"
The warm and happy color flooded the girl's face. "Jimsy is in Mexico
with his father, visiting their relatives there on a big ranch."
"You haven't thrown him over, have you?"
"Thrown Jimsy over? Thrown--" she stopped and drew a long breath. "I
could just as easily throw _myself_ over. Why, we--_belong_! We're part
of each other. I just--can't think of myself without thinking of
Jimsy--or of Jimsy without thinking of me." She said it quite simply and
steadily and smiled when she finished.
"I see," said the novelist. "Yes. I see. But you're both frightfully
young, aren't you? I expect your people will make you wait a long time,
won't they?"
"Well," said Honor, earnestly, "we're going to try our very best to
wait three years,--three from the time when we found out we were in love
with each other, you know,--two years longer now. Then we'll be
twenty-one." She spoke as if every one should be satisfied then, if they
dragged out separate existences until they had attained that hoary age,
and Miss Bruce-Drummond, hard on forty-one, grinned with entire good
nature.
"And I daresay they'll keep you over here all the while,--not let you go
home for holidays, for fear you might lose your heads and bolt for
Gretna Green?"
"Mercy, no!" Her eyes widened, startled. "I shall go home for all summer
next year! I meant to go this year, but Muzzie thought I ought to stay,
to be with Carter and Mrs. Van Meter, when they'd made such lovely plans
for me,--and it was really all right, this time, because Jimsy ought to
be with his father on the Mexican trip." Her smooth brow registered a
fleeting worry over James King the elder. "But next summer it'll be
home, and Catalina Island, and Jimsy!"
But it wasn't home for her next summer, after all. Mildred Lorimer
decided that she wanted three months on the Continent with her husband
and her daughter.
"Right," said Stephen Lorimer, amiably, "so long as we take the boy
along."
"You mean Rodney?" she wanted to know, not looking at him. (Rodney was
the youngest Lorimer.)
"I mean Jimsy King, naturally, as you quite well know, Sapphira," he
answered, pulling her down beside him on the couch and making her face
him.
"Stephen, I don't think Mr. King can afford to send him."
"Then we'll take him."
"Jimsy wouldn't let us. He is very proud,--I admire it in him."
"Do you, my dear? Then, can't you manage to admire some of his other
nice young virtues and graces?"
"I do, Stephen. I give the boy credit for all he is, but----"
"But you don't intend to let him marry your daughter if by the hookiest
hook and crookedest crook you can prevent it. I observed your Star
Chamber sessions with Mrs. Van Meter last year; I saw you wave her and
her son hopefully away; I observed, smiling with intense internal glee,
that you welcomed them back with deep if skillfully dissembled
disappointment. Top Step, God love her, sat tight. Don't you know your
own child yet, Mildred? Don't you know the well and favorably known
chemical action of absence on young and juicy hearts? Don't you
know"--he broke off to stare at her, flushed and a little breathless as
she always was in discussions and unbelievably youthful and beautiful
still, and finished in quite another key--"that you're getting
positively lovelier with each ridiculous birthday--and your aged and
infirm spouse more and more besottedly in love with you?"
She did not melt because she was tremendously in earnest. She was
pledged in her deepest heart to break up what she felt was Honor's silly
sentimentality--sentimentality with a dark and sinister background of
mortgages and young widows and Wild Kings and shabby, down-at-the-heel
houses and lawns.
"Woman," said Stephen Lorimer, "did you hear what I said? It was a
rather neat speech, I thought. However, as you did not give it the rapt
attention it merited I will now repeat it, with appropriate gestures."
He caught her in his arms as youthfully as Jimsy might have done with
Honor, and told her again, between kisses. "You lovely, silly, stubborn
thing, kiss your wise husband once more in a manner expressive of your
admiration for his unfailing sapience, and he will then, with surprising
agility for one of his years, lope across the intervening lawn and tell
James King that his son goes to Europe with us in June." He grinned back
at her from the door. "You'll do your little worst to prevent it, my
dear, that I know, but Jimsy King goes with us!"
Honor and Jimsy wrote each other rapturously on receipt of the news, but
they were not fluent or expressive, either of them, and they could only
underline and put in a reckless number of exclamation points. "_Gee_,"
wrote Jimsy King, "isn't it immense? Skipper, I can't tell you how I
feel--but, by golly, I can _show_ you when I get there!"
And Honor, reading that line, grew rosily pink to the roots of her
honey-colored hair and flung herself into an hour of practice with such
fire and fervor that the _Signorina_ came and beamed in the doorway.
"So," she nodded. "News? Good or bad?"
"Good," said Honor, swinging round on the piano stool. "The best in the
world!"
"So? Well, it does not greatly matter which, my small one. It does not
signify so much whether one feels joy or grief, so long as one feels. To
feel ... that is to live, and to live is to sing!"
Honor sprang up and ran to her and put her arm as far around her as it
would go. She was a delicious person to hug, the _Signorina_, warm and
soft and smelling faintly of rare and costly scents.
"_So?_" said the great singer again. "It is of some comfort, then, to
embrace so much of fatness, when your arms ache to feel muscles and hard
flesh? There, there, my good small one," she patted her with a puffy and
jeweled hand, "I jest, but I rejoice. It is all good for the voice,
this."
"_Signorina_," said Honor, honestly, "I've told you and told you, but
you don't seem to believe me, that I'm only studying to fill up the time
until they'll let me marry Jimsy. I love it, of course, and I'll always
keep it up, as much as I can without neglecting more important things,
but----"
"Mother of our Lord," said the Italian, lifting her hands to heaven,
"'more important things' says this babe with the voice of gold, who, by
the grace of God and my training might one day wake the world!"
"More important to _me_," said Honor, firmly. "I know it must seem silly
to you, _Signorina_, dear, but if you were in love----"
"Mothers of all the holy saints," said the fat woman, lifting her hands
again, "when have I not been in love? Have I not had three husbands
already, and another even now dawning on the horizon, not to
mention--but there, that is not for pink young ears. I will say this to
you, small one. Every woman should marry. Every artist _must_ marry. Run
home, then, in another year, and wed the young savage, and have done
with it. Stay a year with him--two if you like--until there is an infant
savage. Then you shall come back and give yourself in earnest to the
business of singing."
But Honor, scarlet-cheeked, shook her head. "I can't imagine coming back
from--from _that_, _Signorina_!" Her eyes envisaged it and the happy
color rose and rose in her face. "But I've got a good lesson for you
to-day! Shall I begin?"
"Begin, then, my good small one," said her teacher indulgently, "and for
the rest, we shall see what we shall see!"
Honor flung herself into her work as never before, and counted the weeks
and days and hours until the time when Jimsy should come to her, and
Jimsy, finishing up a sound, triumphant Sophomore year, saw everything
through a hazy front drop of his Skipper on the pier at Naples.
But Jimsy King did not go abroad with Mr. and Mrs. Lorimer, after all,
and Honor did not see him through the whole dragging summer. Stephen
Lorimer, sick with disappointment for his stepdaughter, would have
found relief in fixing the blame on his wife, for her lovely and
complacent face mirrored her satisfaction at the turn of events, but he
could hardly hold her responsible. James King was taken suddenly,
alarmingly ill with pneumonia two days before they left Los Angeles to
catch their steamer at New York, and it was manifestly impossible for
his son to leave him. The doctors gave scant hope of his recovery.
Therefore, it was Carter Van Meter who took Jimsy's ticket off his hands
and Jimsy's place in the party and the summer plans, leaving his happy
mother to spend three flutteringly hopeful months alone.