When Leighton had finished laughing, he sat down in a chair and sighed. He was trying to figure out just what horse-power it would have taken to drag him away from Folly at Lewis's age. Where was he going to find the power? For the first time in many years he trembled before a situation. He began to talk casually, trying to lead up to the object of his call. Two things, however, distracted him. One was the puzzling glow of light that bathed Folly and the bed, the other was Folly herself.

Folly was very polite indeed as far as occasional friendly interjections went, but as to genuine attention she was distinctly at fault. She did not look at Leighton while he talked, but held her gaze dreamily on what would have been the sky above her had not three floors of apartments, a roof, and several other things intervened.

Finally Leighton exclaimed in exasperation:

"What are you staring at?"

Folly started as though she had just wakened, and turned her eyes on him.

"You're too far away," she said. "If you really want to talk to me, come over here." She patted the bed at her side.

Leighton crossed over, and sat on the edge of the bed. Something made him look up. His jaw dropped. There was a canopy to Folly's bed. It consisted of one solid sweep of French mirror so limpid that reflection became reality. It was fringed with tiny veiled lights.

Once more Folly's gay ripple of laughter rang out, but it was unaccompanied this time. Leighton's fighting blood was up. He stared at her stolidly.

"Look here," he said, "I do want to talk to you. Put out those cursed little lights!"

"Oh, dear!" gasped Folly as she switched off the lights, "you're such a funny man! You make me laugh. Please don't do it any more."

"I won't try any harder than I have so far," said Leighton, grimly. "This is what I came to say to you. My boy wants to marry you. I don't want him to. I might as well confess that during the last ten minutes I've given up any ideas I had of buying you off. I'm not worth a million."

"You poor dear," said Folly, "don't worry any longer. I don't want to marry Lew. Ask me something else."

"I will," said Leighton. "It's just this. Chuck Lew over. Get rid of him. It will hurt him, I know. I can understand that better now than I did before. But I'd rather hurt him a bit that way than see him on the rack."

"Thanks," said Folly; "but, you see, I can't get rid of him. You can't get rid of something you haven't got." She smiled. "Don't you see? I'll have to get him before I can oblige you."

"Don't bother," said Leighton. "A clever woman like you often gets rid of something she hasn't got. Look here, you don't want to marry Lew, and, what's more, you don't love him. You couldn't marry him if you wanted to. You know it isn't in you to marry any man. But I tell you, Folly, if it really was in you truly to marry Lew, I'd give in and bless you. I wouldn't have yesterday, but I would to-day; because, my dear, you are simply made up of charms. The only thing missing is a soul."

"You talk better than Lew—not so silly," remarked Folly. "But what's the use of all this palaver about marrying? I've told you I don't want to marry him."

"Well, what do you want, then?"

"I want Lew," said Folly, smiling. She sat up, and drew her knees into the circle of her arms. "He's an awfully nice boy. So like you, Marie says. I just want him to have. You know."

"Yes," said Leighton, dryly. "Well, you can't have him."

"Can't have him?" repeated Folly, straightening. "Why not?"

"Because I don't want you to."

"But why?"

"Well," said Leighton, "I don't believe in that sort of thing."

"Oh, oh!" cried Folly, "now you're trying to make me laugh again! By the way, are you Mr. Grapes Leighton?"

"I am," said Leighton, flushing.

Folly called the maid.

"Marie," she said, "bring me my scrap-book—the oldest one."

Leighton moved back to the chair and sat down with a resigned air. Marie brought in a huge scrap-book, and placed it on a bracket tea-tray that swung in over the bed. Folly opened the book and turned the leaves slowly. "Here we are," she said at last, and read, mimicking each speaker to a turn:

"'Counsel:' 'Please, Mrs. Bing, just answer yes or no; did you or did you not meet Mr. Leighton in the corridor at three o'clock in the morning?

"'Mrs. Bing:' 'Well, sir, yes; sir, that is, please your Honor [turning to the judge], I did meet Mr. Leighton in the collidoor, but 'e was eating of a bunch of grapes that innercent you'd ha' knowed at once as 'ee 'adn't been up to no mischief.' [Laughter.]

"Order! Order!" boomed Folly, as she slammed the book.

Leighton shrugged his shoulders.

"That's neither here nor there. You'll find before you get through with life what people with brains have known for several centuries. The son that's worth anything at all is never like his father. Sons grow."

"I don't care anything about that," said Folly, calmly. "I'm going to have Lew because—well, just because I want him."

"And I say you 're not."

"So?" said Folly, her eyes narrowing. Then she smiled and added, "There's only one way you can stop me"

"How's that?" said Leighton.

"By making me want somebody else more."

Leighton looked at her keenly for a moment.

"I shall never do that," he said.

"Somehow," said Folly, still smiling, "you've made a fair start. It isn't you exactly. It's that you are just Lew—the whole of Lew and a lot of things added."

"You are blind," said Leighton; "you don't know the difference between addition and subtraction. Anyway, even if I could do it, I wouldn't. I want to fight fair—fair with Lew, fair with you, if you're fair with me, and fair with myself. But I want to fight, not play. Will you lunch at our place to-morrow?"

"Let's see. To-morrow," said Folly, tapping her lips to hide a tiny yawn. "Well, we can't fight unless we get together, can we? Yes, I'll come."



CHAPTER XXXVIII

Immediately upon leaving Folly, Leighton called on Lady Derl, by appointment. He had already been to Helene with his trouble over Lewis. It was she that had told him to see Folly. "In a case of even the simplest subtraction," Helene had said, "you've got to know what you're trying to subtract from."

As usual, Leighton was shown into Helene's intimate room. He closed the door after him quickly.

"Helene," he said, "where's the key?"

"The key? What key?"

"The key to this door. I want to lock myself in here."

"Poor frightened thing!" laughed Helene. "Turn around and let me look at you. Is your face scratched?"

Leighton pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. He stared at each familiar object in the room as though he were trying to recall a truant mind. Finally his eyes came around to Helene, and with a quick smile and the old toss of the head with which he was wont to throw off a mood, he brought himself back to the present.

"With time and patience," he said, as he sat down, "anybody can get a grip on a personality, but a mighty impersonality is like the Deluge or—or a steam-roller. Do I look flattened out?"

"You do, rather, for you," said Helene. "Tell me about it from the beginning." And Leighton did. It took him half an hour. When he got through, she said, still smiling, "I'd like to meet this Folly person."

"I see I've talked for nothing," said Leighton. "It isn't the Folly person that flattened me out. It's what's around her, outside of her."

"That's what you think," said Helene. "But, still, it's she I'd like to see."

"That's lucky," said Leighton, "because you 're going to."

"When?"

"To-morrow. Lunch."

"What's the idea?"

"The idea is this. I've been looking her up, viewing her cradle and her mother's cradle and that sort of thing. I'd have liked to have viewed her father's as well, but it's a case of cherchez l'homme."

"Well?"

"Well, the young lady's an emanation from sub-Cockneydom. My idea is that that kind can't stand the table and grande-dame test. I'll supply the table, with fixtures, and you're going to be the grande-dame." Leighton's face suddenly became boyishly pleading. "Will you, Helene? It's more than an imposition to ask; it's an impertinence."

For a moment Helene was serious and looked it.

"Glen," she said, "you and I don't have to ask that sort of thing—not with each other. We take it. Of course I'll come. I'll enjoy it. But—do you think she's really raw enough to give herself away?"

"I don't know," said Leighton, gloomily. "I couldn't think of anything else. Lunch begins to look a bit thin for the job. At first I'd thought of one of those green-eyed Barbadian cocktails, followed by that pale-eyed Swiss wine of mine that Ivory calls the Amber Witch with the hidden punch. But I've given them up. You see, I told her I'd play fair if she did."

"Yes, I see," said Helene.

A psychologist would have liked an hour to study the lightning change that came over Folly when, on the following day, she suddenly realized Lady Derl. Folly had blown into the flat like a bit of gay thistledown. For her, to lunch with one man was the stop this side of boredom; but to lunch with two was a delight. If she was allowed to pick the other woman, she could just put up with a partie carree. But she hadn't picked out Lady Derl. Lady Derl was something that had never touched her world except from a box across the footlights on an occasional premiere.

One flash of Folly's eyes took in Lady Derl, and then her long lashes drooped before Lady Derl had time to take in Folly. Folly's whole self drooped. She was still a bit of thistle-down, but its pal, the breeze, was gone. She crossed the room, barely touched Helene's hand, and then fluttered down to stillness on the edge of a big chair.

At lunch Leighton made desperate efforts to start a breeze and failed. Folly said "Yes" and Folly said "No,"—very softly, too,—and that was all. Leighton stepped on Helene's foot several times, but to no avail. Lady Derl was watching Folly. "Could she keep it up? Yes, she could." Lady Derl couldn't talk; she wanted to laugh.

Throughout that interminable lunch, Helene, Leighton, and Lewis saw nothing, thought nothing, but Folly, and, for all any one of them could see, Folly didn't know it. "Oh, you adorable cat!" thought Lady Derl. "Oh, you adorable!" sighed Lewis to himself, and, inwardly, Leighton groaned, "Oh, you you!"

Within twenty minutes of leaving the table, Folly rose from the edge of her chair and crossed to Lady Derl.

"Good-by," she breathed shyly, holding out her hand. "I must go now." Lewis sprang up to accompany her. They could see he was aching to get away somewhere where he could put his arms around her. Leighton crossed to the door and held it open. "Good-by," said Folly to him, holding out her hand. "I've had such a good time."

At the word "such," Leighton winced and flushed. Then he grinned.

"Good-by, Folly," he said. "I hope you'll come again when you're feeling more like yourself."

He closed the door and then rang for Nelton. Nelton came.

"Bring me the iodine," said Leighton, as with his handkerchief he stanched the blood from a bad scratch on his right wrist.

"Heavens! Glen," cried Helene, "how did you get that?

"Didn't you see me jump when she said 'such'?" asked Leighton. Then they sat down, and Helene laughed for a long time, while Leighton tried not to. "Oh," he said at last, "I wish we didn't have to think of Lew!"

"You may ask for my advice now," said Helene, a little breathlessly. "I've got it ready."

"Thank God!" said Leighton. "What is it?"

"It's only a plan to gain time, after all," said Helene; "but that's what you want—time for Lew to get his puppy eyes opened. You can elaborate the idea. I'll just give you the skeleton."

She did, and, soon after, Leighton saw her into a cab. He went back to the flat and waited. He knew that Lewis would not be gone long. He would be too keen to hear his father's and Lady Derl's verdict.

Leighton had just settled down to a book and a second cigar when Lewis came into the room like a breeze that had only a moment to stay.

"Well, Dad," he cried, "what have you got to say now? What has Lady Derl got to say?"

Lewis flung himself into a chair, crossed his arms, and stretched his legs straight out before him. His head hung to one side, and he was so confident of his father's verdict that he was laughing at him out of bright eyes.

Leighton laid his book aside and took his cigar from his mouth. He leaned toward his son, his elbows on his knees.

"Every time I see Miss Delaires," he said slowly, "my opinion of her charms and her accomplishments goes up with a leap."

Lewis nodded, and scarcely refrained from saying, "I told you so."

Leighton's face remained impassive. "She has a much larger repertoire than I thought," he continued; "but there's one role she can't play."

"What's that?" asked Lewis.

"Marriage."

"Why?" asked Lewis, his face setting. Then he blurted out: "I might as Well tell you, she says she doesn't believe in marriage. She's too advanced."

"Too advanced!" exclaimed Leighton. "Why, my dear boy, she hasn't advanced an inch from the time the strongest man with the biggest club had a God-given right to the fairest woman in the tribe and exercised it. That was the time for Folly to marry."

"Go easy, Dad," warned Lewis.

"I'm going to, Boy," said Leighton. "You hear a lot of talk to-day on the shortcomings of marriage as an institution. The socialists and the suffragists and a lot of other near-sighted people have got it into their heads that we've outgrown marriage." Leighton puffed at his cigar. "Once I was invited out to dinner, and had to eat cabbage because there was nothing else. That night I had the most terrible dream of my life. I dreamed that instead of growing up, I was growing down, and that by morning I had grown down so far that, when I tried to put them on, I only reached to the crotch of my trousers. I'll never forget those flapping, empty legs."

Lewis smiled.

"You can smile," went on Leighton. "I can't, even now. That's what's happened to this age. We've outgrown marriage downward. Your near-sighted people talk of contractual agreements, parity of the sexes, and of a lot of other drugged panaceas, with the enthusiasm of a hawker selling tainted bloaters. They don't see that marriage is founded on a rock set deeper than the laws of man. It's a rock upon which their jerry-rigged ships of the married state are bound to strike as long as there's any Old Guard left standing above the surge of leveled humanity."

"And what's the rock?" asked Lewis.

"A woman's devotion," said Leighton, and paused. "Devotion," he went on, "is an act of worship, and of prayer as well as of consecration, only, with a woman, it isn't an act at all. Sometime perhaps H lne will talk to you. If she does, you'll see in her eyes what I'm trying to tell you in words."

"And—Folly?" said Lewis. His own pause astounded him.

"Yes, Folly," said Leighton. "Well, that's what Folly lacks—the key, the rock, the foundation. The only person Folly has a right to marry is herself, and she knows it."

Lewis sighed with disappointment. He had been so sure. Leighton spoke again.

"One thing more. Don't forget that to-day you and I—and H lne, received Folly here as one of us."

Lewis looked up. Leighton rose, and laid one hand on his shoulder.

"Boy," he said, "don't make a mistress out of anything that has touched H lne. You owe that to me."

"I won't, Dad," gulped Lewis. He snatched up his hat and stick and hurried out into the open.



CHAPTER XXXIX

LEIGHTON'S heart ached for his boy as he watched him go, and during the next few weeks Iris pity changed into an active anxiety. In setting that trap—he could call it nothing else—for Lew, he and H lne had put forces into conflict that were not amenable to any light control. Lewis had passed his word. Leighton knew he would never go back on it. On the other hand, for the first time in all her life Folly's primal instinct was being balked by a denial she could comprehend only as having its source in Leighton rather than in Lew.

Folly was being eaten away by desire. She was growing desperate. So were Marie and the masseuse. When a morning came that found Folly with purple shadows under her eyes their despair became terror.

"Madame," cried Marie, "why don't you marry him? You've got to stop it. You've got to stop it. Anyway, all ways, you've got to stop it. It's a-eating of you up. If you're a loving of him that much, why don't cher?"

"Loving of him!" sneered Folly. "I—I hate him. No, no, that's not true. I don't hate Lew, poor dear. It's them I hate. And I won't be beaten." She pounded her doubled knee with her fist. "I don't want to marry him; but if they push me, if they keep on pushing me——"

It can be seen from the above that Lew was beginning to get on Folly's nerves. She had long since begun to get on his. When they were with others it was all right; Folly was her old self. But whenever they were alone, the same wordy battle began and never ended. Lew grew morose, heavy. He avoided his father, but he could do no work; so time hung on his hands, and began to rot away his fiber as only too much time can.

One day H lne sent for Leighton.

"Glen," she said, "we've been playing with something bigger than merely Folly. I saw her to-day, just a flash in Bond Street. I saw her face. If Lew holds out another week, she's going to marry him, and yet, somehow, I don't believe she loves him. Something tells me you weren't wrong when you said she could love nothing but just herself."

Leighton sighed.

"I know I wasn't wrong," he said. "But you are right: she's going to marry him. And I'll have to stand by and see him through. Watch her break him up and throw him off. And I'll have to pick up the pieces and stick them together. One doesn't like to have to do that sort of thing twice. I did it with my own life. I don't want to do it with Lew's. There are such a lot of patched lives. I wanted him—I wanted him—"

H lne crossed the room quickly, and put her arms around Leighton, one hand pressing his head to her.

"Glen," she said softly, "why, Glen!"

Leighton was not sobbing. He was simply quivering from head to toe—quivering so that he could not speak. His teeth chattered. H lne smoothed his brow and his crisp hair, shot with gray. She soothed him.

"H lne," he said at last, "he's my boy."

"Glen," said H lne, "if you love him—love him like that, she can't break him up. Don't be frightened. Go and find him. Send him to me."

Leighton did not have to look for Lew. He had scarcely reached the flat when Lew came rushing in, a transformed Lew, radiant, throbbing with happiness.

"Dad," he cried, "she's said 'Yes.' She's going to marry me. Do you hear, Dad?"

"Yes, I hear," said Leighton, dully. Then he tossed back his head. He would not blur Lew's happy hour. He held out his hand. "I hear," he repeated, "and I'll—I'll see you through."

Lewis gripped the extended hand with all his strength, then he sat down and chatted eagerly for half an hour. He did not see that his father was tired.

"Go and tell H lne," he said when Lewis at last paused. "Telephone her that you want to talk to her."

H lne was on the point of going out. She told Lewis to come and see her at ten the next morning. He went, and as he was standing just off the hall, waiting to be announced, the knocker on the great front door was raised, and fell with a resounding clang. Before the doorman could open, it fell again.

Lewis, startled, looked around. The door opened. A large man in evening dress staggered in. His clothes were in disorder. His high hat had been rubbed the wrong way in spots. But Lewis hardly noticed the clothes. His eyes were fastened on the man's face. It was bloated, pouched, and mottled with purple spots and veins. Fear filled it. Not a sudden fear, but fear that was ingrown, that proclaimed that face its habitual habitation. The man's eyes bulged and stared, yet saw nothing that was. He blundered past the doorman.

Lewis caught a glimpse of a tawdry woman peering out from a hansom at the disappearing man. "Thank Gawd!" he heard her say as the cab drove off.

With one hand on the wall the man guided himself toward the stairs at the end of the hall. On the first step he stumbled and would have fallen had it not been for a quick footman. The man recovered his balance and struck viciously at the servant. Then he clutched the baluster, and stumbled his way up the stairs.

Lewis was frightened. He turned and hurried through the great, silent drawing-rooms, through the somber library, to the little passage to H lne's room. He met the footman who had gone to announce him. He did not stop to hear what he said. He pushed by him and knocked at H lne's door.

"Come in," she cried.

Lewis stood before her. He was excited.

"H lne," he said, "there's a man come in—a horrible man. He pushed by the servants. He's gone upstairs. I think—well, I think he's not himself. Do you want me to do anything?"

H lne was standing. At Lewis's first words she had flushed; then she turned pale, deathly pale, and steadied herself with one hand on the back of a chair. She put the other hand to the side of her head and pressed it there.

"That's it," she said; "he's—he's not himself." Then she faced Lewis. "Lew, that's my—that's Lord Derl that you saw."

"H lne!" cried Lew, putting out quick hands toward her. "Oh, I'm sorry—I'm sorry I said that!"

His contrition was so deep, so true, that H lne smiled, to put him at his ease.

"It's all right, Lew; it's all right that you saw," she said evenly. "Come here. Sit down here. Now, what have you got to tell me?"

Lewis was still frowning.

"It seemed," he said, "such a big thing. Now, somehow, it doesn't seem so big. I just wanted to tell you that Folly has come around at last. We're going to be married."

For a long moment there was silence, then H lne said: "You love her, Lew? You're sure you love her?"

Lewis nodded his head vehemently.

"And you're sure she loves you?" asked H lne.

"Yes," said Lewis, not so positively. "In her way she does. She says she's wanted me from the first day she saw me."

H lne sat down. She held one knee in her locked hands. Her face was half turned from Lewis. She was staring out through the narrow, Gothic panes of the broad window. Her face was still pale and set. Lewis's eyes swept over her. Her beauty struck him as never before. Something had been added to it. H lne seemed to him a girl, a frail girl. How could he ever have thought this Woman worldly! Her fragrance reached him. It was a fragrance that had no weight, but it bound him—bound him hand and foot in its gossamer web. He felt that he ought to struggle, but that he did not wish to. He waited for H lne to speak.

"Love," she said at last, "is a terrible thing. Young people don't know what a terrible thing it is. We talk about the word 'love' being so abused. We think we abuse it, but it's love that abuses itself. There are so many kinds of love, and every big family is bound to include a certain number of rotters. Love isn't terrible through the things we do to it; it's terrible for the things it does to us."

H lne paused.

"I'm glad you saw what you did to-day because it will make it easier for you to understand. Tour father loves me, and I love him. It's not the love of youth. It's the love of sanity. The love of sanity is a fine, stalwart love, but it hasn't the unnamable sweetness or the ineffaceable bitterness of the love of youth. Years ago your father wanted to take me away from—from what you saw. There did not seem to be any reason why we should not go. He and I—we're not wedded to any place or to any time. We have a World that's ours alone. We could take it with us wherever we went."

"H lne," whispered Lewis, "why didn't you go?"

"H lne unlocked her hands, put them on the lounge at her sides, and stayed herself on them. She stared at the floor.

"We didn't go," she said, "because of the terrible things that love—bitter love—had done to us."

She turned luminous eyes toward Lewis.

"You say you love Folly; you think she loves you. Lew, perhaps, she is your pal to-day. Will she be your pal always? You know what a pal is. You've told me about that little girl Natalie. A pal is one who can't do wrong, who can't go wrong, who can't grow wrong. Your pal is you—your blood, your body, your soul. Is Folly your blood, your body, your soul? If she is, she'll grow finer and finer and you will, too, and years and time and place will fade away before the greatest battle-cry the world has ever known—'We're partners.'"

H lne turned her eyes away.

"But if you're not really pals for always, the one that doesn't care will grow coarse. If it's Folly, her past will seize upon her. She'll run from your condemning eyes, but you—you can't run from your own soul.

"Lew, I know. I'm awake. Every woman has a right to an awakening, but most of them by good fortune miss it. There's one in ten that doesn't. I didn't. The tenth woman—that's what I'm coming to, and whether it's the tenth woman or the tenth man, it's all the same in bitter love."

H lne's eyes took on the far-away look that blots out the present world, and clothes a distant vision in flesh and blood.

"You saw what you saw to-day," she went on in a voice so low that Lewis leaned forward to catch her words. "Remember that, and then listen. The love that comes to youth is like the dawn of day. There is no resplendent dawn without a sun, nor does the flower of a woman's soul open to a lesser light. The tenth woman," she repeated, "the one woman. To her awakening comes with a man, not through him. He is part of the dawn of life, and though clouds may later hide his shining face, her heart remembers forever the glory of the morning."

The tears welled from her eyes unheeded. Lewis leaped forward with a cry.

"H lne! H lne!"

She held him off.

"Don't touch me!" she gasped. "I only wanted you to see the whole burden of love. Now go, dear. Please go. I'm—I'm very tired."



CHAPTER XL

Lewis, walking rapidly toward the flat, was thinking over all that Lady Derl had said and was trying to bring Folly into line with his thoughts. He had never pictured Folly old. He tried now and failed. Folly and youth were inseparable; Folly was youth. Then he gave up thinking of Folly. That moment did not belong to her. As once before, the fragrance and the memory of H lne clung to him, held him.

He passed slowly into the room where Leighton sat. He felt a dread lest his father ask him what it was H lne had said. But he wronged his father. Leighton merely glanced up, flashed a look into the eyes of his son. He saw and knew the light that was there for the light that lingers in the eyes of him who comes from looking upon holy inner places.

For an hour neither spoke, then Leighton said:

"Going out to lunch to-day?"

"No," said Lewis; "I've told Nelton I'd be in."

"About this marriage," said Leighton, smiling. "Let's look on it as a settled thing that there's going to be a marriage. Have you thought about the date and ways and means?"

Lewis flushed.

"Don't misunderstand me," said Leighton. "I might as well tell you that I've decided to divide my income equally between us, marriage or no marriage."

"Dad!" cried Lewis, half protesting.

"There, there," said Leighton, "you're not getting from me what you think. What I mean is that I'm not making any sacrifice. I've lived on half my income for some time. You'll need a lump-sum of money besides. Your grandmother left you a big house in Albany. It won't bring much, but I think you'd better sell it. It's on the wrong side of the town now."

"I'll do whatever you say, Dad," said Lewis.

"I suggest that you fix your marriage for six months from now," went on Leighton. "That will give us time to go over and untangle certain affairs, including the house, on the other side. It isn't altogether on account of the house I want to take you over."

Lewis had winced at six months. Now he looked questioningly at his father.

"Keep your eyes open as you go through life," continued Leighton, "and you'll see that marriage is a great divisor. All the sums of friendship and relation are cut in two by marriage. You and I, we've been friends, and before I surrender you I think it's only just that I should take you over and introduce you to your inheritance."

"My inheritance?" asked Lewis.

"Yes," said Leighton, "your country."

"You might think," continued Leighton, "that I'm an expatriate. Externally I have been, but never in the heart. I've been waiting—waiting for our country to catch up to me. Under certain conditions a man has the right to pick out the stage of civilization best adapted to his needs. There are two ways of doing that: either go to it or make it come to you. If you're not tied, it's easier to go to it, because sometimes it takes more than a generation to make it come to you."

"So you've gone to it," said Lewis.

Leighton nodded.

"Nations and individuals travel like the hands of a clock. You can't always live in the midday of your life, but you can in the midday of a nation. When you get an educated taste, you prefer pheasants, bananas, Stilton, and nations when they're at one o'clock. The best flavor—I'm not talking about emotions—the best flavor of anything, including life, comes with one o'clock."

"What time is it over there now?" asked Leighton.

"About eleven," said Leighton, "top wave of success. Now, these are the earmarks of success: a meticulous morality in trifles, ingrowing eyes, crudity, enthusiasm, and a majority."

"Heavens!" cried Lewis, "you told me once you were afraid I was going to be successful. Am I earmarked like that?"

"You will be," said Leighton, "the minute you're driven to sculpturing for the populace—for what it will bring. That's why I'm giving you your own income now, because, when you're married, you're going to be pretty hard pressed. I don't want you to be able to justify the sale of your soul.

"I had an uncle once—he's dead now—that had an only son named Will. Uncle Jim was a hard worker. He had a paper-mill, and he was worth a lot of money. His son Will wasn't a worker. He didn't own the paper-mill, but he never let you forget he was going to. He failed his way through school, but he couldn't quite fail through college. Every time he failed at anything, he used to say: 'It doesn't matter. Dad will give me a start in life, won't you, Dad?' And his father would say, 'I certainly will.'

"Well, one morning a little after Will had been flunked out of college, he was standing on the lawn whittling. I happened to be looking out of the window. I saw Uncle Jim crawling across the grass under cover of a rhododendron bush to a position just behind Will. He was carrying under one arm an enormous fire-cracker, with the fuse lit. He rolled it out on the grass behind Will, and when it went off, Will went, too. He landed seventeen feet from the hole the cracker made.

"When he'd turned around, but before he could get his jaw up, my uncle said: 'Will, I've always promised I'd give you a start in life. Well, I've given it to you—a damn good start, too, judging by the length of that jump. Now you git! Not a word. You just git!'

"Will didn't go very far away. He went to the rival town across the river. He hadn't learned anything about making paper, but a New England Leighton is just naturally born knowing how to make paper. In fifteen years Will didn't have much soul left, but he had enough money to buy his father out and make him sign an agreement to retire. They were both as pleased as Punch. To the day of his death the old man would say, 'I certainly gave you a start in life, Will,' and Will would answer with a grin, 'Dad, you certainly did.'

"The moral of that yarn is that we Leightons have proved over and over that we could play the game of success when we thought it was worth while. Will's generation and mine, generally speaking, thought it was worth while. But your generation—the best of it—isn't going to think so. That's why I'm giving you enough money so that you won't have to think about it all the time."

"I'm grateful, Dad," said Lewis. "It's easier to breathe that way."

Leighton nodded. "Sometimes," He continued, "I feel guilty, as though it were cowardly not to have lived where I was put. But—have you ever seen a straw, caught on a snag, try to stop a river? To your sentimentalist that straw looks heroic; to anybody that knows the difference between bathos and pathos it simply looks silly. The river of life is bigger than that of any nation. We can't stop it, but we can swell it by going with it. Did you ever see a mule drink against the current?"

"No," said Lewis, his eyes lighting with memory of a thing that he knew.

"Did you ever see free cattle face a gale?"

"No," said Lewis again.

"Out of the mouths of the dumb come words of wisdom," said Leighton. "Go with life, Boy. Don't get stranded on a snag. You'll only look silly. I'm glad you've traveled around a bit, because the wider the range of your legs the wider your range of vision, and, let me tell you, you'll need a mighty broad field of sight to take in America and the Americans.

"Your country and mine is a national paradox. It's the only country where you can't buy little things for money. For instance, you can't buy four seats that somebody else has a right to from a railway conductor for sixty-two and a half cents. There isn't any price at which you can get an American to say, 'Yes, sir, thank you, sir,' every time he does anything for you."

"Lunch is served, sir, thank you, sir," announced the impassive Nelton from the doorway.

Lewis smiled, and then laughed at his father's face.

"Nelton," said Leighton, "did you hear what I was saying?"

"I did, sir, thank——"

"Yes, yes," broke in Leighton, "we know. Well, Nelton, your pay is raised. Ten per cent."

"Yes, sir," said Nelton, unmoved. "Thank you, sir."

"As I was saying," continued Leighton to Lewis, "a country where money can't buy little things. A leveled country where there's less under dog than anywhere else on the face of the earth. A people that's more communal and less socialistic than any other commonwealth. A happy nation, my boy—a happy nation of discontented units. Do you get that? Of discontented units."

"Yes, I think I do," said Lewis.

"You don't, but you will in time," said Leighton.



CHAPTER XLI

WHEN Lewis burst upon Folly with the news that his father had given not only consent to the marriage, but half his income to smooth the way to it, Folly frowned. What was the game? she wondered. But the first thing she asked was:

"And how much is that?"

Lewis stammered, and said really he didn't know, which made Folly laugh. Then he told her about the six months and the trip to America. Whereupon Folly nodded her head and said:

"Oh, that's it, is it? Well, your governor is willing to pay pretty thick for six months of you. All I want to know is, Will you come back to me?"

"Come back to you, Folly?" cried Lewis, "Of course I'll come back to you. Why, that's just what I'm going for. To sell the house and fix things so I can come back to you."

At the same hour Leighton was saying good-by to H lne. He had not really come to say good-by. He had come to thank her for her sacrifice, for the things he knew she had said to Lew. He did not try to thank her in words. A boyish glance, an awkward movement, a laugh that broke—these things said more to H lne than words.

"So you've got six months' grace," said H lne, when Leighton had told her how things stood. "Glen, do you remember this: 'All erotic love is a progression. There is no amatory affection that can stand the strain of a separation of six months in conjunction with six thousand miles. All the standard tales of grande passion and absence are—'"

"'Legendary hypotheses based on a neurotic foundation,'" finished Leighton. "Yes, I remember that theory of mine. I'm building on it."

"I thought you were," said H lne. "Don't build too confidently. Lew has a strain of constancy in him. It's quite unconscious, but it's there. Just add my theory to yours."

"What's your theory?" asked Leighton.

"My theory," said H lne, "is that little girl Natalie. I don't suppose she's little now."

Leighton frowned.

"Do you know where Natalie is living? She's there." His brow clouded with thoughts of the scene of his bitter love.

H lne understood.

"I know. I thought so," she said.

"I'll send Lewis to her."

"No, Glen," said H lne softly, "you'll take him to her."

When all was ready for the start, Nelton appeared before Leighton.

"Please, sir," he said, "I've taken the liberty of packing my bags, too, thank, you, sir. I thought, sir, since you're both going, the flat might be locked up."

"Well," said Leighton, "I suppose it might for once. Where are you off to?"

"Why, with you, sir. If you don't mind, sir, I'd like to see this America."

Leighton smiled.

"Come along, by all means, Nelton," he said. "Go ahead with the baggage, and see that Master Lewis and I get a compartment to ourselves. Here's half a crown."

Leighton and Lewis were not traveling with the rush of the traffic. It was too early in the year. While the boat was not crowded, it was by no means deserted. It had just that number of passengers on board which an old traveler would like to stipulate for on buying his ticket; enough to keep the saloons from hollow echoes, and not enough to block even a single deck.

"Are these all Americans?" asked Lewis on their third day out.

Leighton glanced rapidly up and down the deck.

"No," he said, "there's hardly a typical American in the lot. Wrong time of year. You see there are more men than women. That's a sure sign this isn't an American pleasure-boat. There are a good many English on board, the traveling kind. They're going over to 'do' America before the heat comes on. What Americans you see are tainted."

"What's a tainted American?" asked Lewis.

"I'm a tainted American, and you are," said Leighton. "A tainted American is one who has lived so long abroad that he goes to America on business."



CHAPTER XLII

The house that Aunt Jed had left to Natalie stood on the lip of a vast basin. From its veranda one looked down into a peaceful cup of life. The variegated green of the valley proclaimed to the wandering eye,

"All sorts are here that all the earth yields! Variety without end."

There was a patchwork of fields bordered with gray stone walls, of stray bits of pasture, of fallow meadow and glint of running water, of woodland, orchard, and the habitations of man made still by distance.

Aunt Jed's house was not on the highway. The highway was miles off, and cut the far side of the basin in a long, straight slant. On that gash of white one could see occasional tiny motor-cars hurrying up and down like toys on a taut string. Only one motor, a pioneer car, had struggled up the road that led past Natalie's door, and immediately after, that detour had been marked as impassable on all the best maps.

In fact, the road up to Aunt Jed's looked more like a river-bed than a road. It had a gully and many "thank-you-ma'ams." It was plentifully sown with pebbles as big as your head and hard as flint, which gave tit for tat to every wheel that struck them. Every time Mrs. Leighton ventured in Natalie's cart—and it was seldom indeed except to go to church—she would say, "We really must have this road fixed."

But Natalie would only laugh and say,

"Not a bit of it. I like it that way."

Natalie had bought for a song a little mare named Gipsy. Nobody, man or woman, could drive Gip; she just went. Whoever rode, held on and prayed for her to stop. Gip hated that road down into the valley. If she could have gone from top to bottom in one jump, she would have done it. As it was, she did the next best thing. What made you love Gip was that she came up the hill almost as fast as she went down.

Soon after Gip became Natalie's, she awoke to find herself famous from an attempt to pass over and through a stalled motor-car. After that the farmers used to keep an eye out for her, especially on Sundays, and give her the whole road when they saw her coming. Ann Leighton said it was undignified to go to church like that, to which Natalie replied:

"Think what it's doing for your color, Mother. Besides, think of church. You must admit that church here has gone a bit tough. I really couldn't stand it except sandwiched between two slices of Gip."

Aunt Jed's house—nobody ever called it anything else—was typical of the old New England style, except that a broad veranda had been added to the length of the front by the generation that had outraged custom and reduced the best parlor and the front door to everyday uses. This must have happened many years before Natalie's advent, for a monster climbing rose of hardy disposition had more than half covered the veranda before she came.

The house itself was of clapboards painted white, and stood four square; its small-paned windows, flanked with green shutters, blinking toward the west. It had a very prim air, said to have been absorbed from Aunt Jed, and seemed to be eternally trying to draw back its skirts from contact with the interloping veranda and the rose-tree, which, toward the end of the flowering season, certainly gave it a mussed appearance. At such times, if the great front door was left open on a warm day, the house took on a look of open-mouthed horror, which immediately relapsed to primness once the door was closed.

Natalie was the discoverer of this evidence of personality. Sitting under the two giant elms that were the sole ornament of the soft old lawn, she suddenly caught the look on the face of the house, and called out:

"Mother, come here! Come quickly!" as though the look couldn't possibly last through Mrs. Leighton's leisurely approach.

"What is it, dear?" asked Mrs. Leighton.

"Why, the house!" said Natalie. "Look at it. It's horrified at something. I think it must be the mess the roses have made. Can't you see what it's saying? It's saying, 'Well, I never!'"

Mrs. Leighton laughed.

"It does look sort of funny," she said.

Just then old mammy put her gray head out of the door to hear what the talk was about. She wore glasses, as becoming to her age, but peered over them when she wanted to see anything.

"What youans larffin' abeout?" she demanded.

"We're laughing at the house," cried Natalie. "It's got its mouth open and the funniest look on its face. Come and see."

"Mo' nonsense," grunted mammy and slammed the door.

Then it was that the house seemed to withdraw suddenly into the primness of virginal white paint.

"That's what it wanted," cried Natalie, excitedly—"just to get its mouth shut. O Mother, isn't it an old dear?"

Stub Hollow had looked upon the new arrivals at Aunt Jed's as summer people until they began to frequent Stub Hollow's first and only Presbyterian church. Natalie, who like all people of charm, was many years younger inside than she was out, immediately perceived that the introduction of mammy in her best Sunday turban into that congregation would do a great deal toward destroying its comatose atmosphere. Like many another New England village church, Stub Hollow's needed a jar and needed it badly. But it wasn't the church that got the jar.

Upon the introduction of Gip into the family circle, it was conceded that there was no longer any reason why mammy should resign the benefits of communal worship. Consequently, with many a grunt,—for good food and better air had well nigh doubled her proportions,—mammy climbed from the veranda to the back seat of the cart and filled it. For a moment it seemed doubtful whether mammy or Gip would hold the ground, but Gip finally won out by clawing rapidly at the pebbly road and getting the advantage of the down grade.

Neither Natalie nor Mrs. Leighton ever knew just where it was they lost mammy, but it couldn't have been far from the gate; for just as they were dipping into the wood half-way down the hill, Mrs. Leighton happened to glance back, missed mammy, and saw her stocky form waddling across the lawn toward the back of the house. Mrs. Leighton was also young inside. She said nothing.

When finally they drew up, with the assistance of three broad-shouldered swains, at the church, Natalie looked back and gasped,

"Mammy! Mother, where's mammy?"

"You don't suppose she could have got off to pick flowers, do you?" asked Mrs. Leighton, softly.

"Why, Mother!" cried Natalie. "Do you know that mammy may be killed? We'll have to go straight back."

"No, we won't," said Mrs. Leighton, flushing at her levity before the very portals of the church. "She's all right. I looked back, and saw her crossing the lawn."

"Even so," said Natalie, severely, "I'm surprised at you." Then she laughed.

Church seemed very long that day, but at last they were out in the sunshine again and Gip was given her full head. No sooner had Zeke, the hired man, seized the bit than Natalie sprang from the cart and rushed to the kitchen. She found mammy going placidly about her business.

"Doan' yo' talk to me, chile," she burst out at sight of Natalie. "Doan' yo' dast talk to me!"

Natalie threw her arms about her.

"You poor mammy," she murmured. "Aren't you hurt?"

"Hurt!" snorted mammy. "Yo' mammy mought 'a' been killed ef she didn' carry her cushions along wif 'er pu'sson."



CHAPTER XLIII

Six miles away from Aunt Jed's, on the top of a hill overlooking the Housatonic Valley, stood the Leighton homestead, a fine old-fashioned house, now unoccupied save for a care-taking farmer and his wife, who farmed the Leighton acres on shares. The homestead belonged to Lewis's father, and in the natural course of events was destined to become Lewis's property.

Great was the excitement at Homestead Farm when a telegram arrived announcing the imminent arrival of owner and son.

"Land sakes! William," gasped Mrs. Tuck, "in two days! You'll hev to send 'em a telegram tellin' 'em it can't be done nohow. I told you my conscience was a-prickin' me over the spring cleanin'. Seems like Providence was a-jostlin' my elbow all these days, and I was jest too ornery to pay heed."

"In two days, it says," repeated William; "and we can't send no telegram because there ain't no address."

Tuck and his wife had no children. They occupied the kitchen for a living-room and the big bedroom over it at night. The main part of the house was shut up. The hired hands occupied rooms in the barn that had once been the quarters of a numerous stable force, for the Leightons had always gone in for horses, as two or three long-standing trotting records at neighboring county fairs gave evidence.

Mrs. Tuck was not long in facing the inevitable. First of all she commandeered all the labor on the farm; then she sent a call for aid to a couple of neighbors. Within an hour all the green shutters had swung wide on their creaking hinges, and the window-sashes were up. Out of the open windows poured some dust and a great deal of commotion. Before night the big house was spick and span from garret to cellar.

"Does seem to me," said Mrs. Tuck, as she placed a very scrappy supper before William, "like dust is as human as guinea pigs. Where you say it can't get in, it jest breeds."

"Now you sit down and take it easy, Mrs. Tuck," said William, who had married late in life and never got on familiar terms with his wife. "I reckon them men-folks ain't so took with reddin' up as you think they be."

"Oh, I know," said the tired, but by no means exhausted, Mrs. Tuck, "I ain't forgettin' their innards, ef thet's what you're thinkin' of. You just tell Silas to kill four broilers, an' I'll clean 'em to-night. Thet'll give me a start, and to-morow I c'n do a few dozen pies. I hev got some mince-meat, thank goodness! an' you c'n get me in some of them early apples in the morning. Seems like I'm not going to sleep a wink for thinkin'."

Lewis and Leighton did not motor from New York to the Homestead Farm, as ten years later they might have done. Motors, while common, were still in that stage of development which made them a frequent source of revenue to the farmer with a stout team of horses. Consequently it was by train that they arrived at Leighton's home station—a station that had grown out of all recognition since last he had seen it.

However, he himself had not grown out of recognition. A lank figure of a man, red-cheeked, white-bearded, slouch-hatted, and in his shirt-sleeves, stepped forward and held out a horny hand.

"Well, Glen, how be ye? Sure am glad to see ye back."

"Me, too," said Leighton, grinning and flushing with pleasure. "Come here, Lew. Shake hands with Mr. Tuck."

"Well, I swan!" chuckled William as he crushed Lewis's knuckles. "Guess you don't recollec' ridin' on my knee, young feller?"

"No, I don't," said Lewis, and smiled into the old man's moist blue eyes.

"And who he this?" asked William, turning toward Nelton.

"That? Oh, that's Nelton," said Lewis.

"Glad to meet ye, Mr. Nelton. Put it thar!" said William, holding out a vast hand.

For an instant Nelton paused, then, with set teeth and the air of one who comes to grips with an electric battery, he laid his fingers in Mr. Tuck's grasp. "Huh!" remarked William, "ye ain't got much grip. Wait tell we've stuffed ye with buttermilk 'n' pies 'n' victuals 'n' things."

Nelton said not a word, but cast an agonized look at Leighton, who came to his aid.

"Now, William, what have you brought down?"

"Well, Glen, there's me an' the kerryall for the folks, an' Silas here with the spring-wagon for the trunks."

"Good," said Leighton. "Here, Silas, take these checks and look after Mr. Nelton. Lew and I will go in the carryall."

"Fancy your governor a-pullin' of my leg!" murmured Nelton, presumably to Lewis, but apparently to space. "Why don't 'e tell this old josser as I'm a menial, and be done with it."

Old William started, stared at Nelton, then at Leighton. He walked off toward the carryall, scratching his head.

"What is it?" he asked Lewis, in a loud whisper.

"That's dad's valet," said Lewis, grinning.

"Valley, is it?" said William, glancing over one shoulder. "Nice, lush bit o' green, to look at him. What does he do?"

"Looks after dad. Waits on him, helps him dress, and packs his bags for him."

William stopped in his tracks and turned on Leighton.

"Glen," he said, "I don't know ez you c'n stand to ride in the old kerryall. I ain't brought no sofy pillows, ner even a fire-screen to keep the sun from sp'ilin' yer complexion."

Leighton smiled, but said nothing. They had reached the carryall, an old hickory structure sadly in need of paint. Hitched to it were two rangy bays. The harness was a piece of ingenious patchwork, fitted with hames instead of collars. Leighton stepped into the back seat, and Lewis followed. William unhitched the horses and climbed into the cramped front seat. When he had settled down, his knees seemed to be peering over the dash-board. "Gid ap!" he cried, and the bays started off slowly across the bridge.

The road to the homestead followed down the river for three miles before it took to the hills. No sooner had the carryall made the turn into the River Road than the bays sprang forward so suddenly that Lewis's hat flew off backward, and for a moment he thought his head had followed.

"Heh!" he called, "I've lost my hat!"

"Never mind your hat, Son," shouted William. "Silas'll pick it up."

The bays evidently thought he was shouting at them. They let their enormous stride out another link. The carryall plowed through the dust, rattled over pebbles, and, where the road ran damp under overhanging trees, shot four streams of mud from its flying wheels. Old William chewed steadily at the cud of tobacco he had kept tucked in his cheek during the interview at the station. His long arms were stretched full length along the taut reins. If he had only had hand-holds on them, he would have been quite content. As it was, he was grinning.

"Gee, Dad!" gasped Lewis, "d'you know those horses are still trotting!"

Leighton leaned forward.

"Got a match, William?" he shouted above the creak and rattle of the carryall.

"Heh?" yelled William.

The bays let out another link.

"Got a match?" repeated Leighton. "I want to smoke."

William waved his beard at his left-hand pocket.

As they struck a bit of quiet, soft road, Leighton called:

"Why don't you let 'em out? You've gone and left your whip at home. How are we going to get up the hill?"

The grin faded from Old William's face. "Gid ap!" he roared, and then the bays showed what they could really do in the way of hurrying for the doctor. The old carryall leaped a thank-you-ma'am clean. When it struck, the hickory wheels bent to the storm, but did not break. Instead, they shot their load into the air. A low-hanging branch swooped down and swept the canopy, supports and all, off the carryall. William never looked back.

Lewis clung to the back of the front seat.

"D-d-dad," he stuttered, "p-please don't say anything more to him! D-d'you know they're still trotting?"

At last the bays swung off upon the steep Hill Road, and slowed down to a fast, pulling walk. Old William dropped the reins on the dash-board, made a telling shot with tobacco juice at a sunflower three yards off, and turned to have a chat.

"Glen," he said, "I reckon, after all, there's times when you c'n do without sofy pillows."

"Why, William," said Leighton, still pale with fright, "If I'd had a pillow, I'd have gone fast asleep." Then he smiled. "Some of the old stock?"

William nodded.

"I don't mind tellin' you I ain't drove like thet sence the day me'n you—"

"Never mind since when, William," broke in Leighton, sharply. "How's Mrs. Tuck?"



CHAPTER XLIV

"Is that the house?" asked Lewis, as they mounted the brow of the hill.

Leighton nodded.

Across a wide expanse of green that was hardly smooth enough to be called a lawn gleamed the stately homestead. It was of deep-red brick, trimmed with white. It stood amid a grove of giant sugar-maples. The maples blended with the green shutters of the house, and made it seem part and parcel of the grove. Upon its front no veranda had dared encroach, but at one side could be seen a vine-covered stoop that might have been called a veranda had it not been dwarfed to insignificance by the size of the house. The front door, which alone in that country-side boasted two leaves, was wide open, and on the steps leading up to it, resplendent in fresh gingham, stood Mrs. Tuck.

With some difficulty William persuaded the bays to turn into the long-unused drive that swept up to the front door. Leighton sprang out.

"Hallo, Mrs. Tuck!" he cried. "How are you?"

"How do you do? I'm very pleased to see you back, Mr. Leighton," said Mrs. Tuck, who read the best ten-cent literature and could talk "real perlite" for five minutes at a stretch. "Come right along in. You'll find all the rooms redded up—I mean—"

"Yes, yes," laughed Leighton, "I know what you mean all right. I haven't even forgotten the smell of hot mince pies. Lew, don't you notice a sort of culinary incense——'

"Land sakes! them pies is a-burnin'!" shrieked Mrs. Tuck as she turned and ran.

William offered to show the way to the bedrooms, but Leighton refused.

"No," he said, "we'll come around and help you put up the team. No use washing up till we get our things."

Silas, with the spring-wagon, duly appeared. On top of the baggage, legs in air, was the discarded canopy of the carryall. Beside Silas sat Nelton. He was trembling all over. In his lap he held Lewis's hat. His bulging eyes were fastened on it.

"There they be," grunted Silas. "Told you they was all right. William be a keerful driver."

Nelton raised his eyes slowly. They lit, with wonder.

"Mr. Leighton," he cried, "Master Lewis, are you safe?'

"Quite safe, Nelton," said Leighton. "Why?"

Nelton mutely held out Lew's hat and jerked his head back at the wrecked canopy.

"Oh, yes," said Leighton, nodding; "we dropped those. Thank you for picking them up. Take the bags up-stairs."

"Lew," said Leighton, as they were washing, "did you use to have dinner at night at Nadir or supper?"

"Supper," said Lewis.

"Well," said Leighton, "that's what you'll get today—at six o'clock, and don't you be frightened when you see it. It has been said of the Scotch that the most wonderful thing about them is that they can live on oats. The mystery of the brawn and muscle of New England is no less wrapped up in pies. But don't hesitate. Pitch in. There's something about this air that turns a nightly mixture of mince-pies, pumpkin-pies, custard-pies, lemon-pies, and apple-pies, with cheese, into a substance as heavenly light as fresh-fallen manna. It is a tradition, wisely fostered by the farmers, that the only thing that can bring nightmare and the colic to a stomach in New England are green apples and stolen melons."

Lewis was in good appetite, as was Leighton. They ate heartily of many things besides pies, went to bed at nine, and would have slept the round of the clock had not a great gong—a bit of steel rail hung on a wire—and all the multitudinous noises of farm headquarters broken out in one simultaneous chorus at half-past five in a glorious morning.

Noisy geese and noisier cocks, whinnying horses and lowing cattle, the rattle of milk-tins, the squeak of the well-boom, the clank of mowing-machines, the swish of a passing brush-harrow, and, finally, the clamoring gong, were too much for Nelton. Lewis, on his way to look for a bath, caught him stuffing what he called "cotton an' wool" into his ears.

"Tork about the streets of Lunnon, Master Lewis," he said. "I calls this country life deafenin'."

Lewis had wanted to telegraph to Natalie, but Leighton had stopped him.

"You've waited too long for that," he had said. "You have apparently neglected Natalie and Mrs. Leighton. When people think they've been neglected, never give them a chance to think up what they're going to say to you. Just fall on them."

As soon as they had breakfasted, Leighton took Lewis to the top of the hill at the back of the homestead. It was a high hill. It commanded a long stretch of the Housatonic Valley to the east, and toward the west and north it overlooked two ridges, with the dips between, before the eye came up against the barrier of the Berkshire range.

Lewis drew a long breath of the cold, morning air.

"It's beautiful, Dad," he said.

"Beautiful!" repeated Leighton, his eyes sweeping slowly and wistfully across the scene. "Boy, God has made no lovelier land."

Then he turned to the west and pointed across to the second ridge. "Do you see that gleam of white that stands quite alone?"

"Yes, I think I see what you mean," said Lewis. "'Way down, just below it, you can see the tip of a church steeple."

"So you can," said Leighton. "Well, that gleam of white is Aunt Jed's. Make for it. That's where you'll find Natalie."

"Is it?" said Lewis, straightening, and with a flush of excitement in his cheeks. "Aren't you coming, too?"

"No," said Leighton; "not to-day. We won't expect you back before supper. Tell Mrs. Leighton that I'll be over soon to see her and thank her."

Lewis started off with an eager stride, only to learn that Aunt Jed's was farther away than it looked. He found a road and followed it through the valley and up the first ridge, then seeing that the road meandered off to the right into a village, he struck off across the fields straight for the distant house.

He had passed through the moist bottoms and come upon a tract of rock-strewn pasture land when he saw before him the figure of a girl. Her back was to him. A great, rough straw hat hid her head. She wore a white blouse and a close-fitting blue skirt. She was tall and supple, but she walked slowly, with her eyes on the ground. In one hand she carried a little tin pail.

Lewis came up behind her.

"What are you looking for?" he asked.

The girl started and turned. Lewis stepped forward. They stood and stared at each other. The little tin pail slipped from the girl's hand.

"Strawberries," she stammered. "I was looking for strawberries." Then she added so low that he scarcely heard her, "Lew?"

"Nat!" cried Lewis. "It is Nat!"

Natalie swayed toward him. He caught her by the arms. She looked at him and tried to smile, but instead she crumpled into a heap on a rock and cried—cried as though her heart would break.

Lewis sat down beside her and put one arm around her.

"Why, Nat, aren't you glad to see me? Nat, don't cry! Aren't you glad I've come?"

Natalie nodded her head hard, but did not try to speak. Not till she had quite finished crying did she look up. Then her tear-stained face broke into a radiant smile.

"That's—that's why I'm crying," she gasped; "because I'm so glad."

So there they sat together and talked about what? About strawberries. Lewis said that he had walked miles across the fields, and seen heaps of blossoms but no berries. He didn't think the wild ones had berries. Which, Natalie said, was nonsense. Of course they had berries, only it was too early. She had found three that were pinkish. She pointed to them where they had rolled from the little tin pail. Lewis picked one up and examined it.

"You're right," he said gravely, "it's a strawberry."

Then silence fell upon them—a long silence, and at the end Lewis said:

"Nat, do you remember at Nadir the guavas—when, you'd come out to where I was with the goats?"

Natalie nodded, a starry look in her far-away eyes.

"Nat," said Lew, "tell me about it—about Nadir—about—about everything. About how you went back to Consolation Cottage."

Natalie flashed a look at him.

"How did you know we had been back to Consolation Cottage?"

"Why, I went there," said Lewis. "It isn't three months since I went there."

"Did you, Lew?" said Natalie, her face brightening. "Did you go just to look for us?"

"Of course," said Lewis. "Now tell me."

"No," said Natalie, with a shake of her head, "you first."



CHAPTER XLV

In the innocence of that first hour Lewis told Natalie all. He even told her of Folly, as though Folly, like all else, was something they could share between them. Natalie did not wince. There are blows that just sting—the sharp, quick blows that make us cry out, and then wonder why we cried, so quickly does the pain pass. They are nothing beside the blows that slowly fall and crush and keep their pain back till the overwhelming last.

People wonder at the cruel punishment a battered man can take and never cry out, at the calm that fills the moment of life after the mortal wound, and at the steady, quiet gaze of big game stricken unto death. They do not know that when the blood of man or beast is up, when the heart thunders fast in conflict or in the chase, there is no pain. A man can get so excited over some trifle that a bullet will plow through his flesh without his noticing it. Pain comes afterward. Pain is always an awakening.

Natalie was excited at the sudden presence of Lew and at the wonder of his tale. In that galaxy of words that painted to her a climbing fairy movement of growth and achievement the single fact of Folly shot through her and away, but the wound stayed. For the moment she did not know that she was stricken, nor did Lewis guess. And so it happened that that whole day passed like a flash of happy light.

Natalie, in her wisdom, had gone ahead to warn Mrs. Leighton and mammy of Lewis's coming. Even so, when the two women took him into their long embrace, he knew by the throbbing of their hearts how deeply joy can shake foundations that have stood firm against the heaviest shocks of grief.

Gip and the cart, with Natalie at the helm, whisked Lewis back to the homestead. What memories of galloping ponies and a far, wide world that ride awakened they did not speak in words, but the light that was in their faces when at the homestead gate they said good night was the light that shines for children walking hand in hand in the morning land of faith.

Natalie could not eat that night. She slipped away early to bed—to the little, old-fashioned bed that had been Aunt Jed's. It, too, was a four-poster; but so pompous a name overweighted its daintiness. So light were its trimmings in white, so snowy the mounds of its pillows and the narrow reach of its counterpane, that it seemed more like a nesting-place for untainted dreams than the sensible, stocky little bed it was.

Natalie went to bed and to sleep, but scarcely had the last gleam faded from the western sky when she awoke. A sudden terror seized her. The pillow beneath her cheek was wet. Upon her heart a great weight pressed down and down. For a moment she rebelled. She had gone to sleep in the lap of her happiest day. How could she wake to grief? A single word tapped at her brain: Folly, Folly. And then she knew—she knew the wound her happy day had left; and wide-eyed, fighting for breath, her arms outstretched, she felt the slow birth of the pain that lives and lives and grows with life.

Natalie cried easily for happiness, and so the tears that she could spare to grief were few. Not for nothing had she been born to the note of joy. Through all her life, so troubled, so thinly spread with pleasures, she had clung to her inheritance. Often had her mind questioned her heart: "What is there in this empty day? Why do you laugh? Why do you sing?" And ever her heart had answered, "I laugh and sing because, if not to-day, then to-morrow, the full day cometh."

But to-night her inheritance seemed a little and a cruel thing. Wide-eyed she prayed for the tears that would not come. Dry were her eyes, dry was her throat, and dry the pressing weight upon her heart. Hours passed, and then she put forth her strength. She slipped from the bed and walked with groping hands toward the open window. In the semi-darkness she moved like a tall, pale light. Down her back and across her bosom her hair fell like a caressing shadow. Her white feet made no sound.

She reached the window and knelt, her arms folded upon the low sill. She tossed the hair from before her face and looked out upon the still night. How far were the stars to-night—as cold and far as on that night of long ago when she had stood on the top of the highest hill and called to the desert for Lew!

She stayed at the window for a long time, and found meager comfort at last in the thought that Lewis could not have guessed. How could he have guessed what she herself had not known? She arose and went back to bed. Then she lay thinking and planning a course that should keep not only Lewis but also Mrs. Leighton and mammy blind to the wound she bore. And while she was in the midst of planning, sleep came and made good its ancient right to lock hands with tired youth.

Leighton was crestfallen to see in what high spirits Lew had come back from his first day with Natalie. He lost faith at once in H lne's cure. Then, as they went to bed, he clutched at a straw.

"Lew," he asked, "did you tell your pal everything?"

"Everything I could think of in the time," said Lewis, smiling. "One day isn't much when you've got half of two lives to go over. Of course there were things we forgot. We'll have them to tell to-morrow."

"Was Folly one of the things you forgot?"

"No," answered Lewis and paused, a puzzled look on his brow. He was wondering why he had remembered Folly. To-night she seemed very far away. Then he threw back his head and looked at his father. "Why did you ask that?"

Leighton did not answer for a moment. Finally he said:

"Because it's the one thing you hadn't a right to keep to yourself. I'm glad you saw that. Always start square with a woman. If you do,—afterward,—she'll forgive you anything."

Lewis went to bed with the puzzled look still on his face. It was not because he had seen anything that he had told of Folly. He had told of her simply as a part of chronology—something that couldn't be skipped without leaving a gap. Now he wondered, if he had had time to think, would he have told? He had scarcely put the question to himself when sleep blotted out thought.

On the next day Leighton had the bays hitched to what was left of the carryall, and with Silas and Lewis drove over to Aunt Jed's to pay his respects to Mrs. Leighton. Natalie and Lew went off for a ramble in the hills. Mammy bustled about her kitchen dreaming out a dream of an early dinner for the company, and murmuring instructions to Ephy, a pale little slip of a woman whom the household, seeking to help, had installed as helper. Mrs. Leighton stayed with Leighton out under the elms. They talked little, but they said much.

It was still early in the day when Leighton said:

"I shall call you Ann. You must call me Glen."

"Of course," answered Mrs. Leighton, and then wondered why it was "of course." "I suppose," she said aloud, "it's 'of course' because of Lew. I feel as though I were sitting here years ahead, talking to Lew when his head will be turning gray."

"Don't!" cried Leighton. "Don't say that! Lew travels a different road."

Mrs. Leighton looked up, surprised at his tone.

"Perhaps you don't see what we can see. Perhaps you don't know what you have done for Lew."

"I have done nothing for Lew," said Leighton, quickly. "If anything has been done for Lew, it was done in the years when I was far from him in body, in mind, and in spirit. Lew would have been himself without me. It is doubtful whether he would have been himself without you. I—I don't forget that."



CHAPTER XLVI

At four o'clock Leighton sent for Silas.

"Take the team home, Silas," he said. "We're going to walk. Come along, Lew."

"It's awfully early, Dad," said Lew, with a protesting glance at the high sun.

"The next to the last thing a man learns in social finesse," said Leighton, "and the very last rule that reaches the brain of woman, is to say good-by while it's still a shock to one's hosts."

"And it's still a shock to-day," said Mrs. Leighton, smiling. "But you mustn't quarrel with what your father's said, Lew," she added. "He's given you the key to the heart of 'Come again!'"

"As if Lew would ever need that!" cried Natalie.

Soon after leaving the house, Leighton struck off to the right and up. His step was not springy. His head hung low on his breast, and his fingers gripped nervously at the light stick he carried. He did not speak, and Lewis knew enough not to break that silence. They crossed a field, Leighton walking slightly ahead. He did not have to look up to lead the way.

Presently they came into a lane. It dipped off to the left, into the valley. It was bordered by low, gray stone walls. On its right hung a thick wood of second-growth trees—a New England wood, various beyond the variety of any other forest on earth. It breathed a mingled essence of faint odors. The fronds of the trees reached over and embowered the lane.

On the left the view was open to the valley by reason of a pasture. The low stone wall was topped by a snaky fence of split rails. They were so old, so gray, that they, too, seemed of stone. Beyond them sloped the meager pasture-land; brown, almost barren even in the youth of the year. It was strewn with flat, outcropping rocks. Here and there rose a mighty oak. A splotch of green marked a spring. Below the spring one saw the pale blush of laurel in early June.

Leighton stopped and prodded the road with his stick. Lewis looked down. He saw that his father's hand was trembling. His eyes wandered to a big stone that peeped from the loam in the very track of any passing wheel. The stone was covered with moss—old moss. It was a long time since wheels had passed that way.

Leighton walked on a few steps, and then paused again, his eyes fixed on a spot at the right of the lane where the old wall had tumbled and brought with it a tangled mass of fox-grape vine. He left the roadway and sat on the lower wall, his back against a rail. He motioned to Lewis to sit down too.

"I have brought you here," said Leighton and stopped. His voice had been so low that Lewis had understood not a word. "I have brought you here," said Leighton again, and this time clearly, "to tell you about your mother."

Lewis restrained himself from looking at his father's face.

"Your mother's name," went on Leighton, "was Jeanette O'Reilly. She was a milk-maid. That is, she didn't have to milk the cows, but she took charge of the milk when it came into the creamery and did to and with it all the things that women do with milk. I only knew your mother when she was seventeen. No one seemed to know where Jeanette came from. Perhaps Aunt Jed knew. I think she did, but she never told. I never asked. To me Jeanette came straight from the hand of God.

"I have known many beautiful women, but since Jeanette, the beauty of women has not spoken to the soul of me. There is a beauty—and it was hers—that cries out, just as a still and glorious morning cries out, to the open windows of the soul. To me Jeanette was all sighing, sobbing beauty. Beauty did not rest upon her; it glowed through her. She alone was the prism through which my eyes could look upon the Promised Land. I knew it, and so—I told my father.

"I was only a boy, not yet of age. My father never hesitated. All the power that law and tradition allowed he brought to bear. He forbade me to visit Aunt Jed's or to see Jeanette again. He gave me to understand that the years held no hope for me—that on the day I broke his command I would cut myself off from him and home. To clinch things, he sent me away to college a month early, and put me under a tutor.

"There is a love that forgets all else—that forgets honor. I forged a letter to the authorities and signed my father's name to it. It told them to send me back at once—that my mother was ill. I came back to these hills, but not home. Far back in the woods here William Tuck had a hut. He was a wood-cutter. He lived alone. He owed nothing to any man. Many a time we had shot and fished together. I came back to William.

"This lane doesn't lead to Aunt Jed's. This land never belonged to her. Here we used to meet, Jeanette and I. You see the mass of fox-grape over yonder? In that day the wall hadn't tumbled. It stood straight and firm. The fox-grape sprang from it and climbed in a great veil over the young trees. Behind that wall, in the cool dusk of the grapevine, we used to sit and laugh inside when a rare buggy or a wagon went by."

Leighton drew a long breath.

"I used to lie with my head in Jeanette's lap because it was the only way I could see her eyes. Her lashes were so long that when she raised them it was like the slow flutter of the wings of a butterfly at rest. She did not raise them often. She kept them down—almost against the soft round of her cheek—because—because, she said, she could dream better that way.

"How shall I tell you about her hair? I used to reach up and pull at it until it tumbled. And then, because Jeanette's hair never laughed except when it was the playmate of light, I used to drag her to her feet, across the wall, across the lane, down there to the flat rock just above the spring.

"There we would sit, side by side, and every once in a while look fearfully around, so public seemed that open space. But all we ever saw for our pains was a squirrel or perhaps a woodchuck looking around fearfully, too. Jeanette would sit with her hands braced behind her, her tumbled hair splashing down over her shoulders and down her back. The setting sun would come skipping over the hills and play in her hair, and Jeanette's hair would laugh—laugh out loud. And I—I would bury my face in it, as you bury your face in flowers, and wonder at the unshed tears that smarted in my eyes."

Leighton stopped to sigh. It was a quivering sigh that made Lewis want to put out his hand and touch his father, but he was afraid to move. Leighton went on.

"Look well about you, boy. No wheel has jarred this silence for many a year—not since I bought the land you see and closed the road. Man seldom comes here now,—only children in the fall of the year when the chestnuts are ripe. Jeanette liked children. She was never anything but a child herself. Look well about you, I say, for these still woods and fields, with God's free air blowing over them,—they were your cradle, the cradle of your being.

"It was Jeanette that made me go back to college when college opened, but months later it was William that sent for me when Jeanette was too weak to stop him. The term was almost over. Through all the winter I had never mentioned Jeanette to the folks at home, hoping that my father would let me come home for the summer and wander these hills unwatched. Now William wrote. I couldn't make out each individual word, but the sum of what he tried to tell flew to my heart.

"Jeanette had disappeared from Aunt Jed's three months before. They had not found her, for they had watched for her only where I was. She had gone to William's little house. She had been hidden away there. While she was well enough, she had not let him send for me. There was panic in William's letter, for he wrote that he would meet the first train by which I could come, and every other train thereafter.

"You heard William say the other day that he had never driven like that since—and there I stopped him. It was since the day I came back to Jeanette he was going to say. We didn't mind the horses breaking that day. Where the going was good, they ran because they felt like it; where it was bad, they ran because I made them. I asked William if he had a doctor, and he said he had. He had done more than that: he had married Mrs. Tuck to look after Jeanette.

"We stopped in the village for the parson. I was going to blurt out the truth to him, but William was wiser. He told him that some one was dying. So we got the old man between us, and I drove while William held him. He would have jumped out. He thought we were mad."



CHAPTER XLVII

Leighton paused as he thought grimly over that ride. Then he went on:

"The last thing my father paid for out of his own pocket on my account was that team of horses from the livery stable. They got to William's all right, but they were broken—broken past repair. Poor beasts! Even so we were only just in time. The old parson married me to Jeanette. I would have killed him if he had hesitated. I didn't have to tell him so; he saw it.

"For one blessed moment Jeanette forgot pain and locked her arms about my neck. Then they pushed me out, and William and the parson with me. Mrs. Tuck and the doctor stayed in there. You were born." Leighton gripped his hands hard on his stick. "What—what was it the old Woman—the fortune-teller—said?"

"'Child of love art thou,'" repeated Lewis, in a voice lower than his father's. "'At thy birth was thy mother rent asunder, for thou wert conceived too near the heart.'"

Leighton trembled as though with the ague. He nodded his head, already low sunk upon his breast.

"It was that—just that," he whispered. "They called us in, the old preacher and me. Jeanette stayed just for a moment, her hand in mine, her eyes in mine, and then—she was gone. The old parson cried like a child. I wondered why he cried. Suddenly I knew, and my curses rose above his prayers. I sprang for William's rifle in the corner, and before they could stop me, I shot you.

"Boy, I shot to kill; but the best shot at a hundred yards will miss every time at a hundred inches. The bullet just grazed your shoulder, and at the sting of it you began to gasp and presently to cry. Tears afterward the doctor told me you would never have lived to draw a single breath if it hadn't been for that shot. The shock of it was what started your heart, your lungs. They had tried slapping, and it hadn't done any good."

Leighton paused again, before he went on in a dull voice.

"After that I can tell you what happened only from hearsay. Aunt Jed came and took you and what was left of Jeanette, your mother. Sometime you must stop in the churchyard down yonder under the steeple and look for a little slab that tells nothing—nothing except that Jeanette died a wife before the law and—and much beloved before God.

"They kept me at William's for days until I was in my right mind. The day they took me home was the day father paid for the horses—the day he died. I don't know if he would have forgiven me if he had lived. I never saw him again alive, after he knew. I've often wondered. I would give a lot to know, even to-day, that he would have forgiven. But life is like that. Death strikes and leaves us blind—blind to some vital spring of love, could we but find it and touch it."

Lewis was young. Just to hear the burden that had lain so long upon his father's heart was too much for him. Not for nothing had Leighton lived beside his boy. There, under the still trees, their souls reached out and touched. Lewis dropped his head and arms upon his father's knees and sobbed. He felt as though his whole heart was welling up in tears.

Leighton's hand fell caressingly upon him. He did not speak until his boy had finished crying, then he said:

"I've told you all this because you alone in all the world have a right to know, a right to know your full inheritance—the inheritance of a child of love."

Leighton paused.

"I never saw you again," he went on, "until that day when we met down there at the ends of the earth. Aunt Jed had sent you down there to hide you from me. Before she died she told me where you were and sent me to you. She needn't have told me to go after you.

"As you go on and meet a wider world, you will hear strange things of your father. Believe them all, and then, if you can, still remember. Don't waste love. That's a prayer and a charge. I've wasted a lot of life and self, but never a jot of love. Now go, boy. Tell them I've stayed behind for supper."

Lewis did not hurry. When he reached the homestead, it was already late. Mrs. Tuck had kept their supper hot for them. When she saw Lewis come in alone, she rushed up to him with eager questions of his father. Lewis looked with new eyes upon her kindly anxious face.

"It's all right," he said. "Dad stayed behind. He doesn't want any supper."

Mrs. Tuck looked shrewdly at him, and then turned away.

"It ain't never all right," she said half to herself, "when a man full-grown don't want his supper."

Lewis saw nothing more of his father that night. He tried to keep awake, but it was long after sleep had conquered him that Leighton came in. And during the days that followed he saw less and less of his father. Early in the morning Leighton would be up. He would eat, and then wander about the place listlessly with his cigar. His head hanging, he would wander farther and farther from the house until, almost without volition, he would suddenly strike off in a straight line across the hills.

Lewis would have noticed the desertion more had it not been for Natalie. Natalie claimed and held all his days. Together they walked and drove till Lewis had learned all the highways and byways that Natalie had long since discovered. She liked the byways best, and twice she drove through crowding brush to the foot of the lane that was barred.

"I've often come here," she said, "and I've even tried to pull those bars down, but they're solider than they look. I'm not strong enough. Will you help me some day? I want to follow that dear old mossy lane to its end, if it has one. It looks as if it led straight into the land of dreams."

"It probably does," said Lewis. "I'll never help you pull down those bars, because, if you've got any heart, you can look at them and see that whoever put them up owns that land of dreams, and there's no land of dreams with room for more than two people, and they must be holding hands."

"You've made me not want to go in there," said Natalie as she turned Gip around. "How could you see it like that? You're not a woman."

Lewis did not answer, but when, two days later, they were out after strawberries, and Natalie led him through a wood in the valley to the foot of the pasture with the oaks and the spring, Lewis stopped her.

"Don't let's go up there, Nan," he said. "That's part of somebody else's land of dreams. Dad's tip there somewhere, I'm sure."

Natalie looked at him, and he saw in her eyes that she knew all that he had not told in words.



CHAPTER XLVIII

Leighton and Lewis made two business trips away from the homestead, and on both occasions, as soon as affairs permitted, hurried back with equal eagerness. Leighton tried to read significance into the fact that Lewis was not chafing at his absence from Folly, but he could not because Lewis wrote to Folly every week, and seemed to revel in telling her everything. Folly's answers were few and far between.

Leighton would have given much to see one of Folly's letters. He wondered if her maid wrote them for her. He used to watch Lewis reading them. They were invariably short—mere notes. Lewis would read each one several times to make it seem like a letter. He seemed to feel that his father would like to see one of the letters, and one day, to keep himself from calling himself coward, he impulsively handed one over.

Leighton read the scant three pages slowly. It was as though Folly had reached across the sea to scratch him again, for the note was well written in a bold, round hand. It was short because Folly combined the wisdom of the serpent with the voice of a dove. She knew the limits of her shibboleth of culture, and never passed them. She said only the things she had learned to write correctly. They were few.

The few weeks at the homestead had changed Leighton. A single mood held him—a mood that he never threw off with a toss of his head. He seemed to have lost his philosophy of cheerfulness at the word of command. Lewis was too absorbed in his long days with Natalie to notice it, but Nelton took it upon himself to open his eyes.

"Larst month," he said, "you and the governor was brothers. Now persons don't have to ask me is he your father. It's written in his fyce. It's this country life as has done it. Noisy, I calls it. No rest."

Lewis felt penitent. He suggested to Leighton a day together, a tramp and a picnic, but Leighton shook his head.

"I don't want to have to talk," he said bluntly.

"Dad," said Lewis, "let's go away."

Leighton started as though the words were something he had too long waited for.

"Go away?" he repeated. How often had he said, "To go away is the sovereign cure." "Yes," he went on, "I believe you are right. I think it's high time—past time—for me to clear. Will you come or stay?"