Chapter VI: Part 6

For two weeks after that Barb saw nothing of Phil, a fact for which she was exceedingly grateful. The news of Sylvia's engagement had come up from Greendale, and Barb had no wish to see the look which she knew would be in Phil's blue eyes, if he too, had heard, as no doubt he had. Neither had she any desire to say "I told you so," though it was her right. Her warning, though late, had been justified. No one could expect Sylvia Arden to sit down and wait "for a man to get his eyes open like a Maltese kitten." Sylvia had not waited, and Phil's eyes were open at least twenty-four hours too late.

The next time Phil and Barb met was at a public meeting. Miss Murray had been scheduled to speak but at the last moment had succumbed to laryngitis, and Barbara, dismayed and protesting, had been haled into the breach.

It was the first time Barb had ever spoken in public, though she had more than once sat on platforms with her aunt, striving to look dignified and impressive and generally worthy of the "mantle." She was desperately frightened now and when she finally rose to face the audience, which was made up mostly of women of the working-class, her knees shook and her throat felt as if she were trying to swallow the whole Sahara Desert. The upturned faces paralyzed her forces. She wished an earthquake would come and dispose of the audience and bury herself in eternal oblivion. And then suddenly behind those weary-eyed, apathetic faces in the foreground, she saw Phil Lorrimer's friendly, encouraging eyes and some tension within her snapped. She began to talk slowly at first, and then more swiftly, borne along on the current of her own surging thought and emotion. She never knew afterward quite what she said. She seemed to have talked more about happiness than about enfranchisement. Perhaps the women who listened were more interested in happiness than they were in the vote anyway. At all events, they listened respectfully, even eagerly, as Barbara Day painted for them her crystal clear vision of a world where women were to be neither drudges nor toys, but honored co-workers, laboring in joyous self-expression, side by side with men, a world where motherhood should be respected and supported by the nation, where education should be open not to the favored few but to the many, a world where war and brutality and slavery, of soul and body, and all blood guiltiness should be impossible, a world enlightened, free, strong, glad. And this millennium, the women of America were to help to bring about, _must_ help if they were to save themselves and their sisters--so Barbara Day told them. "We have to work together. Whatever we are, the one thing we cannot be is indifferent--you and I--we must be awake--wide awake."

And with that Barb had slipped shyly back into her seat amid the applause which greeted her little speech, terribly frightened again now it was all over and wondering if it had not been intolerably presumptuous in her to have spoken at all, much less present so portentous a plea.

There were other speeches but Barb scarcely heard them. She fell into a revery, in which she carried the vision she had shared with these women on and on until it became almost as the new Jerusalem in its transcendent splendor.

And in her vision she seemed to see why it had been given her to desire and to have no fruition of desire, to know the flare of happiness and to know happiness gone out like a wind blown candle, to understand what it was to be acquainted with heartache and loneliness. For all these things would teach her how other women yearned and suffered and were denied. If she herself had found her heart's desire in a good man's protecting love, in the warm glow of her own hearth fires, with her own children in her arms, would she have desired so poignantly to help these others to find life more abundant? By the measure of what she had lost, had she not gained?

"Happiness left us content with happiness but sorrow bids us rise up and seek something divine," says some one, and Barbara Day had come to understand this with many other things. As the old music teacher had said: "Love is the great Master."

The hint of the "Something divine" was still in Barb's eyes when she took Phil's outstretched hand in the doorway where he waited. He had meant to congratulate her on her speech but somehow the words evaporated before the look on her face as she lifted it to him. He saw she had been in some far, high place where he could not follow and the spell was still upon her.

"How did you know I was here?" she asked presently, as they made their way to the Subway together in silence.

"Your aunt sent me word. I am tremendously grateful. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Barb, you made me understand a whole lot of things."

She flashed him a quick, startled glance. She did not wish him to understand too much. But she need not have feared. Phil was as blind as ever so far as she was concerned.

"You are a wonder, Barbie. I'm a little scared of you all at once. I am afraid I haven't been quite appreciating what an angel I was entertaining--or rather letting entertain me."

"Don't. If you mean that silly speech, you needn't talk. I feel as humble as--that puddle," groping for a simile she happened to let her gaze fall upon a pool which a recent shower had left in the gutter.

Phil smiled.

"There's a star reflected in the puddle," he said gently, then dropped the subject as she obviously desired.

As they stood in the crowded Subway later there was little chance for conversation, but Barb noticed that Phil looked worn and tired, almost haggard. Her heart was very tender for him. It didn't matter how much she was hurt. Barb sensed intuitively that women were meant to be hurt. But that Phil should suffer was all but intolerable. She almost hated Sylvia who had brought that look to his eyes. Alas! What a jumble things were! How changed everything was since that happy September week with Sylvia at Arden Hall! She remembered how Suzanne had rallied Sylvia on her fitness for matrimony and charged herself in jest with having designs on Phil Lorrimer. Funny Suzanne! Poor Suzanne! What was she doing?

It happened at the moment Suzanne was sitting by the fire in Miss Murray's apartment, doing absolutely nothing for the first time in many strenuous weeks. There Barbara and Phil found her a few moments later, to their unbounded astonishment.

"Well, aren't you going to greet the returning prodigal?" asked Suzanne, getting up.

Whereupon Barb recovered sufficiently to throw her arms around her friend with a series of little rapturous, inarticulate, affectionate gurgles such as women occasionally indulge in.

When she had finished it was Phil's turn, and though his greeting was more decorous, it was no less hearty.

"Where have I been? I know that is what you are bursting to ask. Sit down all and let me tell you. Dearly beloved, I have been on the road. No, not selling petticoats like the immortal Emma, but in the chorus of 'The Prettiest Princess,' and it's been worth a fortune to me."

"In the chorus! Oh, Suzanne! What did your father and mother say?"

"They haven't said anything up to present speaking, for the very good reason that they don't know what I've been up to. I told them I was traveling. I was. Gee! How I've traveled! I also told them I had been visiting Aunt Selina in Salt Lake City. I did visit Aunt Selina. I spent a week with her while the 'Prettiest Princess' and her retinue delighted the enthusiastic Mormon gentlemen. For Heaven's sake, don't stare so, Barb! I assure you both my virtue and my looks are unimpaired. You can see the latter for yourself."

Suzanne whirled round to the mirror as if to assure herself that her statement was true. Certainly the others could see for themselves that Suzanne had never looked prettier in her life.

Little by little the story came out, delivered with much glee and gusto by the irrepressible Suzanne. That night Phil had found her in the Square she had come to the end of her resources and knew something had to be done at once if she were going to avoid an ignominious return to Norton, Pa., or the sacrifice of her pride to ask for an advance of money. A manager had refused her latest play that day but even as he had done so he had offered her a place in the third company of the musical comedy he was just starting on the road. Suzanne had asked for a night to consider and she had been considering when Phil had interrupted her meditations. In his society, too, she had decided to take the offer. The next day she had become a member of the third company and the next was "on the road."

"Why did you come home? Show bust?"

"Indeed, no. The 'Prettiest Princess' goes on as cheerfully as may be lacking its most charming first row right chorus girl."

"Fired?" still further inquired Phil.

"Nope. Resigned. Came into a fortune and flew back to the Great White Way instanter."

"What kind of a fortune? Anybody died?"

"Thank goodness no. On the contrary. An editor came to life. I've sold a series of stories to the Ultra Urban, two hundred plunks per. 'Melissa on the Road' is the general title, Melissa being, of course, Suzanne, thinly disguised. I thought I might as well make copy out of myself and I did. I've given things so close to the way they really were that every one will swear they are fiction of the most romancy order."

"Are they coming out under your own name?" Barb found breath to ask.

"No. I thought they might begin to appear before I had a chance to explain things, so it seemed better to break the shock, as it were. They are anonymous, which will make them more spicy."

"Good for you!" chuckled Phil. "I'll bet they are spicy all right."

"But the best isn't told. I've written a play--a real play that is going to make the managers sit up on their haunches and beg prettily. And I've got a Star in my crown--I mean in my circle of friends--who wants to play the lead. What do you think of that? Let Broadway stop, look, and listen. Suzanne is coming, Hurray! Hurray!" she chanted. "I'll cause more of a sensation than my predecessor at the bath. Now, tell me the news."

*CHAPTER XIX*

*OH, SUZANNE!*

It was not until Phil had gone and Barb and Suzanne were reduced to the intimate kimono and pigtail state that Barb got the full force of the stream of Suzanne's confidences.

"When I think what a fool I was only just last September I could weep, if only it weren't so killingly funny." Suzanne sat up in bed to announce. "I thought because I had a pretty knack of juggling words and a little mother wit I could just walk right in and conquer the literary and dramatic world as easy as anything. The trouble with college is it gives you an over-dose of fine spun theories about life and doesn't teach you a thing about being up against the real article. Maybe it couldn't. I guess we all have to knock that lesson out of the bed rock itself with a chisel or a pick axe. I've tried both ways. I don't know all there is to know yet by a long shot but I know a whole heap more than I did, which is something to be thankful for." And the speaker thumped the pillow with her doubled fist rather as she had thumped Sylvia's hammock cushions the preceding September.

Barb, listening, sighed a little as she wondered if this knowledge of life were as desirable as Suzanne seemed to think. It left one a little tired, she thought, this knowing things.

"I don't know whether you ever guessed," Suzanne rattled on, "how near I was to the end of my rope last November. Phil knew, but he kept my secret, like the good dear he is. By the way, what is the matter with Phil? He looks awfully seedy and sober. Don't know but you do, too, come to think of it. City got on your nerves?"

Suzanne's keen eyes sought her friend's face with an intentness that made the latter turn under pretense of switching off the light.

"Nothing the matter with me," she said cheerfully. "With Phil, of course, it is Sylvia."

"H'm, I suppose so. He certainly looked as jolly as a tombstone when we were talking about her engagement a while ago. Well, why didn't he go in and get her himself? He could have last September easily enough. Anybody could have seen that with half an eye. Gets me why he didn't clinch it that night at Lover's Leap."

Barb made no reply. Even with Suzanne she could not discuss Phil's mischance, especially as Suzanne would be sure to say it served him right. Barb was very pitiful for Phil. She did not want to hear anybody say sharp things about him.

"Go on about yourself," she suggested, getting into bed. "Do you mean you were really hard up, last November?"

"Hard up!" chuckled Suzanne. "My dear, I was not merely badly bent. I was broke. That night I was up here to supper I was as hungry as a wolf. I hadn't been eating much of anything for days."

"Oh, Suzanne! And you never told me!"

"Naturally not. I had made my own bed and I intended to lie on it even if it was a bit rocky. Of course they would have sent me money from home, or Sylvia or any of you would have lent me some. But I wouldn't ask anybody. I set myself to work out my own salvation and I meant to finish up the job."

"You are a wonder, Suzanne! But wasn't the show work dreadful?"

"Not so dreadful as you might think. You have to work like everything, and there is a good deal naturally that you have to shut your eyes and ears to, but it was Life with a capital letter, which was what I was looking for. Heaven knows I got it! Sometimes more than I bargained for." There was a catch in Suzanne's voice which made Barb come a little nearer and put out her hand until it touched her friend's.

"Barbie!" Suzanne's voice was lowered.

"Yes."

"Did you ever think goodness was a sort of relative thing? That some girls are good just negatively because they never have any temptation or opportunity to be anything else?"

"Yes," said Barbara again.

"You don't know what you are really like inside until you suddenly come up against the sharp edges of things. Do you remember when Sylvia said she wanted to get acquainted with herself and I said I knew all about myself. Well, I didn't, that's all. I found out."

"Suzanne!" Barb's voice had a motherly croon to it.

"Don't be scared. I'm all right. I did get scorched a little, and I know fire now when I see it. Who do you suppose came to my rescue when I was singeing?" And Suzanne mentioned the name of a "Star" all America knows and loves--a Star of the first magnitude.

"There was a big snow storm and we were blocked for a day this side of Kansas City. Her company happened to be on the same train ours was. I dug her Chow out of a snow bank for her and we got acquainted. I guess she saw where I was drifting. Anyway, she pulled me back just in season. Never mind who the man was. He doesn't count any more. He never counted very much. I was just dizzy with life. It all frothed and bubbled and sparkled like champagne, and I was a little drunk with it all maybe. She made me see things. She'd been there. She knew."

Barb nestled closer, but did not speak. Did she not understand? Had life not frothed and bubbled and sparkled for her, too? Did she not know how nearly anything could happen when you felt like that? Especially if the man cared or pretended to care. It had been at once her own safety and torture that in her case the man had not cared.

"I saw her again at Denver," continued Suzanne, "and she told me the kind of a play she wanted. And Barb, just like a flash of lightning it came so quick, I knew I was going to try to write a play for her and I did. And she's seen it and she likes it and she wants me to take it to ----. He's her manager--just as soon as I can and tell him she liked it. And I'm going to, to-morrow. Oh, Barbie! If he should like it. But he won't. I mustn't think he's going to. I'd die if I were sure, I'd be so happy."

And to-morrow Suzanne had taken the play to the great manager and had sent in the Star's card bearing the magic caption, "Introducing Miss Morrison." The caption had worked like a charm, swung open doors and fore-shortened delays. It was an incredibly brief space of time before Suzanne found herself in the most inner of all the offices with a pair of shrewd kindly eyes fixed inquiringly upon her.

The manager had glanced over her manuscript with a swift apprising gaze, then glanced over Suzanne in something of the same manner.

"I'll read this, this afternoon," he promised. "I have the greatest confidence in the judgment of that lady," with a nod at the card which lay among the litter on his desk. "If she says this is good, I have no doubt it is. At any rate, we will hope for the best. Lord knows we are looking for something good. I'll telephone you to-morrow if you will leave me your number and address. By the way--" he frowned a little. "Haven't I seen you before somewhere, Miss Morrison?"

Suzanne twinkled.

"I've brought you three plays--all impossible," she said.

"Indeed! Let us hope this one--" he glanced at the manuscript--"will be at least--probable."

"It is more than that," said Suzanne. "It is a dead sure thing. Read it. You will see." And with that parting shot Suzanne withdrew, leaving the manager grinning at her effrontery.

But the next day when the great manager sought to communicate with Suzanne over the telephone, Suzanne, white and silent, was packing to take the next train for Norton, Pa.

A telegram had been sent to Salt Lake City in her aunt's care and followed her back to New York. The telegram had said: "Mother very sick. Come home at once."

"It is Mr. ----" said Miss Murray from the telephone. "Will you speak to him, Suzanne?"

"No," said Suzanne curtly. "Tell him I'm out of town. Tell him anything. I don't care."

Thus did the Nemesis of Suzanne's joyous tilting with the universe overtake her. At the moment when victory seemed well within her hands life had struck back. Like the star of the seer's vision, the star of her ambition fell burning into the waters.

"_And the name of the star is called wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood and many died of the waters because they were made bitter._"

At the station in Norton, Roger Minot waited with his car to meet Suzanne--a crushed anguished Suzanne, her pertness and her prettiness equally in eclipse. She could only put out her hand to him with a little moan and gasp "Mother?"

"She is holding her own. There is hope--at least a little," he told her. "When did you start?"

"From New York?"

"From Salt Lake City?"

"I haven't been in Salt Lake City for days. I got to New York yesterday. I didn't know. I didn't know. Oh, Roger, it's dreadful! I've been so selfish--so everything that is horrid."

Roger Minot looked straight ahead of him and said nothing. Perhaps he knew it was for the good of Suzanne's soul to taste the whole acrid cup of her remorse.

But as they neared the parsonage his heart was smitten with pity. Suzanne looked so wan and grief-stricken and subdued, so utterly unlike the Suzanne he knew, all sparkles and ripples and laughter, like a little shallow stream running along through sunshine. The hand which was not busy at the wheel closed over Suzanne's.

"Don't give up, little girl. Maybe it will come out right, after all. Anyway, remember I'm right here if you need me."

Suzanne uttered a sound which was a little bit like a sob. When, indeed, had Roger not been right there when she needed him? though she had treated him as the very dust beneath her feet. Dear Roger! And with an impulse of penitent tenderness she gave back the pressure of his hand.

And then in a moment they were at home, where the chairs still stood stiff and angular against the wall, though up there in a quiet room above the hand that had put them in their places lay very still and white. Suzanne's mother was very sick indeed. It was she, after all, and not her willful little daughter that had pulled the family out of its comfortable rut and cast a sad spell of differentness upon the household. Suzanne had stayed away but sickness had come in and another darker guest waited outside the door, his shadow already on the threshold. Poor Suzanne! The waters were made bitter, indeed, at the falling of her star.

*CHAPTER XX*

*SYLVIA AND LIFE*

In the meanwhile Sylvia, home at Arden Hall again, slipped back very easily and naturally into the old ways and almost as easily and naturally into the new one of being engaged.

"It is really quite a comfortable state," she told Felicia. "You don't have to wonder about every new man you meet when you are all satisfactorily accounted for and checked off yourself. You can even enjoy flirting more," she added wickedly with a Sylvia twinkle, "since everybody knows you don't mean anything by it. Anyway, I'm so used to having Jack around that it isn't much different being engaged to him from not being engaged to him. I am afraid I am a hopelessly unromantic person, Felicia. I always supposed when people got engaged it was a fearsome, sublimated sort of experience like being on top of an Alp or something of the sort. But I don't feel any different from what I did before, except for the comfortable settled feeling I have already mentioned. And I'm not going to get married for a long time. I am going to make the most of the privileges and immunities of my present blissful state."

But as was perhaps natural Jack did not share his fiancee's leisurely attitude. In fact the two came more than once near to quarreling on the subject of the date of their marriage. But Sylvia's will was stronger and Sylvia would not be married for another year. That was a flat and unequivocable dictum and Jack had to put up with it as best he could. He dared not hurry his perverse lady love for it must be confessed he sometimes experienced doubts whether he had won her at all, so slight seemed the bond between them. The very tranquillizing effect of the engagement upon Sylvia was disturbing to Jack. That she could take so placidly what was the biggest thing in the universe to him was alarming and a little exasperating. Sometimes he would accuse her of not caring for him at all and then she would still further disconcert him by looking very directly and questioningly at him as if she, too, had some doubts on the subject.

Sylvia knew she had floated into the engagement from the crest of one wave of emotion to another. Her estrangement from Phil Lorrimer, her disillusionment about Jeanette's married life, the panic-stricken horror and shame with which her own affair with Porter Robinson had filled her, her generally overwrought, hysterical, nervous condition had all contributed to throw her into Jack's arms that night. He had seemed an oasis on a desert, a spar to the drowning. She had awakened soon enough to the realization that it was by no means a grand passion, a life and death affair, this placid, even affection she felt for Jack. She loved him sufficiently. She knew she could be fairly happy with him and make him happy, perhaps could even let her affection deepen into something approaching a great love in due time. They were ideal comrades already, and Sylvia had a theory that comradeship was a better basis than stormy passion for happy wedlock. Yet perhaps down in her heart there was a fear that something was lacking in it all, something that kept her stubbornly insistent on postponing the wedding for a year. Impulsively she had yielded the first redoubt. She intended to be sure of herself before she surrendered the fortress for good and all. She meant to do it in the end without reservation, for better for worse. There should be no shilly-shallying like Jeanette's in her life. That she was determined upon.

Part of the steadying effect of her engagement expressed itself in a sincere desire to stop the unsatisfactory flitting from flower to flower process, sipping honey here and there, into which she had drifted during the restless winter months past. She had had enough tasting of experience and honestly sought serious employment for her energies.

Luckily there was always plenty to occupy her on the Hill. More and more the Byrd sisters came to depend on her, especially as Julietta was now away getting acquainted with her grandson, Gloria's boy, recently arrived upon this planet. The girls at "Hester house," and Hope and Martha, also came in for a generous share of her attention. The old buoyant, radiant Sylvia seemed to have come back to them, ready to cheer and comfort and command at need. Never was her genius for happiness more in demand or more in evidence than it was that February. It seemed as if everything had been awry and sad and bad while she had been away in the city and that now she was home it must all just naturally straighten itself out.

She took up her music again with rigorous hours of practice. She fulfilled her long made threat of learning to cook, much to Aunt Mandy's pride and delight in her role as chief professor of the culinary arts. She went in, seriously, this time, into Red Cross work, organizing a unit which she kept sternly to its task of rolling bandages and all the rest of the necessary if rather prosaic labor. She also got under way a class in first aid instruction under the tuition of a young doctor whom Tom Daly had recommended, too busy himself to take on any new duties.

Doctor Tom and Sylvia saw a great deal of each other off and on but always in the comfortable, wholesome, brother and sister relation which their November interlude had interrupted but not destroyed. Sylvia was often at the cottage playing with the babies whom she adored and kept out of Lois' way as often as possible so that the latter might have time for the typing of her book which was almost ready for the publisher's hands. Marianna and Donald, too, came in for a large share of Sylvia's time. For them she spun rare tales old and new and rendered Kim and the Water Babies, the Immortal Alice and other beloved favorites of the realms of gold until she knew them nearly by heart. With the children Sylvia was happiest of all. Living in their world she almost forgot her own, which in spite of her boasted contentment did not wholly satisfy her. She had learned that the busier she was, the better life seemed, leaving fewer crannies and nooks for doubts and wonders to seep in.

Of course there was plenty of gayety both in Greendale and in the near-by city, but she steadily refused to go in for an excess of this kind of thing, though here, too, she and Jack came near to dissension. It must be admitted Jack was scarcely so assiduous a devotee of business now that he felt his assiduity no longer essential to the winning of his liege lady. He was ready now to enjoy the fruits of his labor and have a thoroughly frivolous holiday with Sylvia as mistress of the revels. But just as he wanted to cut loose Sylvia wanted to go sedately. He complained that he saw infinitely less of her now he was engaged to her than he had when he was not, and resented somewhat sharply the thousand and one claims and duties which Sylvia acknowledged. Yet the two never really quarreled. Jack was too sunny-tempered and Sylvia too tactful, and on the whole they were very happy together, Sylvia, oddly enough, happier than Jack.

Meanwhile the war went on overseas and men began to shake their heads and prophesy that we would be in it soon. But that was still nineteen hundred and fifteen and we kept out. About this time came a letter from Hilda, the first in many months. The chief item told simply and with scarcely any comment was that Bertram had been killed early in October. "I can hardly realize it or feel it," wrote Hilda. "It is getting to be an old story over here. Women see their lovers and their sons and their husbands go and they don't come back, or if they do, they come maimed and crippled, only the shadow of the men that went forth. In the meanwhile we try to heal as many as we can, though it is discouraging to heal them and send them back to be killed outright perhaps next time."

The letter and its sad news had haunted Sylvia for a long time. What a strange romance Hilda's had been--so brief it must almost have seemed a dream! She had known Bertram only a few weeks in August. By the first of September they had become engaged. A week later he had gone to the front. In October he had been overtaken by death. And that was the end. What a waste there was to it all!

Half consciously all that month Sylvia expected to hear that Barb and Phil were engaged. She had long since made up her mind that that particular consummation was natural, even desirable. She, herself, was far too sane a person to spend many moments prying among ashes to see if any sparks remained. Nor would she permit herself to regret that which had perhaps never been more than moonshine and dream stuff. She was able to persuade herself quite easily that since she was able to be so placidly happy without Phil she had never needed him overmuch. That miracle moment on Lover's Leap and that other music intoxicated moment in December came to seem to her mere magic casements through which she had looked for the briefest interval of time into another world, essentially unreal, fantastic, a sort of mirage of the soul. And mirages were not in Sylvia's line, so she did not often let herself remember those irrevocable moments.

Once in her desultory reading she came across a little poem called "Remembrance," one stanza of which particularly haunted her.

_Not unto the forest--not unto the forest, O my lover!_
_Take me from the silence of the forest!_
I will love you by the light and the beat of drums at night
And echoing of laughter in my ears,
_But here in the forest_
I am still, remembering a forgotten, useless thing,
And my eyelids are locked down for fear of tears--
_There is memory in the forest._

She had gone to a dance with Jack that night and every now and then the music had taken words.

I will love you by the light and the beat of drums at night
And echoing of laughter in my ears.

But, afterward, in her own room, she had sat a long time by the window looking out into the white night where snows lay on her rose bushes. And perhaps she remembered a "forgotten useless thing" and her eyelids, too, were "locked down for fear of tears." And a new fear awakened in Sylvia's heart that night, a fear of Love. She, too, needed to be delivered from the memory of the forest.

*CHAPTER XXI*

*A CHAPTER OF REVELATIONS*

February passed and March came in, rough and blustering, with "noise of wind and of many waters" blowing its silver trumpets to life long dormant under winter snows. There came a few warm days and the crocuses began to run gay little races through the grass in Sylvia's garden and the jocund company of daffodils appeared. One morning a bluebird flashed out in the magnolia and the cardinals called "Pretty! Pretty! Pretty!" ecstatically all day long.

But then came frost and the frivolous crocuses in their parti-colored gowns lay flat and desolate like little dead dreams. The daffodils blackened and their stalks snapped, brittle as icicles. The bluebird disappeared, nobody knew where, and the cardinal's joy was muted. And it was all a symbol of life as it was in the world that spring of nineteen hundred and fifteen. Men had dreamed of peace and good will, of strong nations hailing each other with a "God speed" across the waters, a world of quickened life and promise and progress. And suddenly, out of a clear sky, as it seemed, had come blackening, devastating war. Men who had smiled like friendly gods snarled and hissed and rolled each other in the dust like brute beasts. Hymns of hate replaced the song of the morning stars, and the Prince of Peace was again crucified.

And still America looked on, dismayed, awed, shaking herself like a great dog, but not yet ready to leap at the throat of the enemy of democracy, not yet ready to believe such an enemy could really live and move and have his mighty being in this day and generation of enlightenment. Not yet was Beowulf dedicated to Heorot's cause, not yet did he fully realize the hatefulness of Grendel, who bore God's wrath. Aloof from it all, America's great pulse beat on almost steadily. Men and women loved and sinned and suffered and bartered and sacrificed as they had been doing from the beginning, more or less unmindful of the whirlwind sowing not so far off, with only an ocean between it and themselves. And what is an ocean nowadays?

In the stuffy little town of Norton, Pa., Suzanne took a deep draught of life that March; a deeper draught, indeed, than New York, or for that matter all the cities of America could have held to her lips. Day by day, as she sat by her mother's bed, she learned lessons no college could have taught her. Suzanne's spirit had been "stabb'd broad awake." She saw the Suzanne of the past, blind, arrogant, selfish, deeming herself wise and self-sufficient, yet really knowing neither life nor herself. Here in the quiet room where the angels of life and death wrestled she saw things very clearly and was made humble.

But it was willed that she be spared the last drops of the cup of sorrow and remorse. In those early March days her mother drifted back slowly from the Hinterland. It was almost as if Suzanne's need and Suzanne's prayer and Suzanne's love had brought her back. Little by little, as the mother grew better, she and her daughter came into the grace of mutual understanding and sympathy and forgiveness, knowing at last the whole story of Suzanne's light-hearted vagabondage. Mrs. Morrison was able to smile and sigh over "Melissa on the Road," the first installment of which appeared in the April issue of the magazine whose editor had "come to life" in season to recognize a live human document when it came into his hands.

As for the play, Suzanne received a letter in March from the great manager informing her he had kept in touch with her affairs through Miss Murray, congratulating her on her mother's recovery and begging for an interview at her earliest convenience. His confidence in the Star's judgment had, it seemed, been justified. The play was as good as Suzanne had promised, so he admitted.

Accordingly, one day, when her mother was able to spare her, Suzanne went up to New York to sign contracts and discuss royalties with a glibness which scarcely betrayed her recent complete inexperience of such pleasing commodities. The play was to be tried out in early September and if it was successful would be given a chance on Broadway later.

"Of course, that is on the knees of the gods," the manager had warned. "You can't tell what the public will do. The public is a spoiled child. The thing may go. It may not. The whole thing's a devilish lottery, you understand."

Oh, yes, Suzanne understood. All life was pretty much of a devilish lottery she thought, but that made it more rather than less interesting. Long ago she had taken for her motto, "Believe and venture, as for pledges the gods give none." It was enough for her at the time that the play was to be given a trial. More would have slain her with joy she thought.

Of course she ran straight to Barb with this bucketful of delightful certainties and enchanting possibilities. And Barb was as happy as Suzanne over it all. She was an artist at rejoicing with those that rejoice as well as mourning with those that mourned. Sometimes she seemed to herself to be nothing at all but an agglomeration of sympathies for the rest of the world. Her own selfhood seemed drowned in the sea of humanity. She was not unhappy. Indeed she was quietly, humbly content. To some women to love itself is the main thing. In such the waters of affection returning back to their springs, fill them indeed full of refreshment. There was no bitterness in Barb. Gladly and freely she had broken her alabaster box of precious ointment not counting the cost, nor deeming the performance any sort of waste, rather a privilege.

As for the Cause, her dedication to it held no more scruples. Suzanne had been right in her prophecy. She was "white hot" in her faith, in her mission, the whiter-hot, perhaps, because she had managed to get "martyrized" along the way.

In March Lois Daly's book was accepted by the publishers, with hearty congratulations on her return to the field of literature after her sojourn elsewhere. The terms of her contract were generous and Lois smiled, well pleased. She took the letter at once to her husband, and when he had expressed his delight and pride in her success she had explained why she had done the thing.

"I didn't want to write a bit, Tom," she said. "I dreaded to go into it again. Of course when I once got in it I loved it just as I always have. It is exhilarating--soul-possessing. But I was happy without it, perfectly happy. I don't know whether you understand that, Tom. I was afraid sometimes it worried you that I had given it up. It needn't have. You and the home and the children were enough to fill every need."

"Then why did you do it?" He surveyed her, puzzled. It occurred to him as no doubt it occurs to many wise men at times how little he knew his wife. Do men ever really know their wives? Tom Daly thought of that little episode with Sylvia and wondered if it had had anything to do with sending Lois back to her writing.

"Why? Because I wanted to make some money--quite a lot of money--and that was the only way I knew of doing it--my only wage earning asset," she smiled.

But Tom still looked bewildered. Just why should Lois have suddenly acquired her zeal for money? She had never been luxurious in her tastes, turning always preferably to simplicity of living, as those of the aristocracy of brains usually do. Therefore he awaited enlightenment. It was twilight and they were sitting together in the dusk, but he could see her eyes shining with a sort of wistful tenderness as they lifted themselves to his.

"You don't ask why I wanted the money? Is it because you know that I wanted it to give to you?" She pushed the publisher's letter across the table to him. "It is yours, dear,--my gift to the hospital. I haven't been able to show I cared for what you were working for. Perhaps I haven't really cared, though I think I have learned a little about it this winter, while I've been working myself. I've had a little light--a crack of it, anyway." She smiled at him in the grayness. "But I've always cared for you, Tom, even when maybe I haven't shown it, and I want to give this--piece of me to your hospital because I do love you and your big vision. Will you take it? It isn't much, but it comes straight from my heart."

"Not much!" cried Tom Daly. "Lois, it is everything."

And in a moment his arms were around her and there was nothing else in all the world but they two, mystically one in the fullness of their love each for the other.

So Spring brought with it quickened life and love to Tom Daly and Lois as it had done to Suzanne Morrison and her mother.

Spring, too, brought back Gus Nichols from his concert tour, a little thinner and tired looking as if the fire of his music had burned rather deep but with a new poise and dignity and manhood, along with his old boyish charm.

Mr. McIntosh was as happy as a child with a new toy at having the boy back, or rather as a child with an old toy, beloved and rediscovered. It was pleasant to see the two together, old man and lad, so different racially and temperamentally, yet so bound together by the ties of affection.

"Best job you ever did in your life, Sylvia Arden," Mr. McIntosh had observed one Sunday when he and Gus were taking dinner at the Hall. "Best job you ever did, when you persuaded me to adopt the boy. I can see you now, impertinent little witch that you were, sitting up and giving me advice like a grandmother. But it was good advice. I grant you that. You knew what you were talking about and talked to some purpose. See here, Sylvia--" The old man lowered his voice a little, though the others--Gus and Felicia and Doctor Daly--were engaged in conversation and could not hear, "do you think there is anything the matter with the lad? He doesn't look just happy to me. You don't think there can be a girl or any nonsense like that?"

Romance had always seemed more or less nonsense to Angus McIntosh, probably would unto the end, though years and affection had somewhat tempered his aversion for sentiment.

Sylvia looked up a little startled, remembering suddenly what she had almost forgotten--that unspoken thing she had read in the boy's eyes that night after his first concert. Gus, too, looked up at the moment, and as their gaze met Sylvia saw that the boy's had the fire and dew of a Galahad in them, the look of one who sees the Grail afar off. Her own eyes fell. She could not bear that shining, reverent look. It blinded her, shook her, quickened her, filled her with humility and compassion and envy. She perceived that Gus had found this thing which she herself seemed forever seeking with vain quest. In giving he had gained, in losing he had found.

"Well?" challenged Angus McIntosh at her side.

Sylvia shook her head.

"No, Gus looks to me--very happy," she said.

"I'm glad you think so." The old man's tone was relieved, as if a burden had been lifted from his mind. He had the greatest respect for Sylvia's judgment and understanding. "Glad you think so. He seems all right, but I wasn't sure. Thought I'd see what you thought, that's all."

Later Sylvia played accompaniments for her guest's violin. And if his eyes had not already conveyed the truth to her, his violin would have done so. Sylvia could hardly keep the tears out of her eyes as she played. Not that the music was sad. It was jubilant, at times almost triumphant. It throbbed and welled and exulted. It disdained pity as a crowned monarch might have disclaimed it. It proclaimed itself inviolate, consecrate, perfected. "I rejoice! I conquer! I love!" it sang.

As Sylvia rose from the piano she almost feared to meet the gaze of the listeners. She thought they must all have heard the message of the violin as she had heard it. But no one seemed to have done so. They had felt the power and the beauty of the thing, but its soul had been concealed from them all except Sylvia herself.

And then Sylvia saw that Jack was in the room. He had come in while they had been playing and stood silent, waiting until the violin ceased. She went to him, her eyes still full of the music, and noticed that he was a little white and very grave, with something of his boyishness stricken out of him.

"I didn't know you were back from New York," she said, though that wasn't at all what she seemed to care about saying. The ordinary, conventional words rise to our lips when the real things hide unsaid.

"Let's get out of here a moment," he whispered, under cover of greeting, "I've something to tell you."

Sylvia stepped out into the hall and he followed.

"Sylvia, there's been an accident. Phil's hurt--dying, maybe."

He put out his arm quickly, for Sylvia swayed toward him with eyes that told him what perhaps he had known in his heart all the time.

*CHAPTER XXII*

*UNTO THE FOREST*

Sylvia did not faint. Indeed it seemed to her as if she had never in all her life been so quick in every fiber as she was at the moment she heard Jack's voice saying those fearful illuminating words, "Phil--dying, they think." It was as if a great clean wave swept over her leaving her purged of misunderstanding and doubt and weakness and compromise. With one blinding flash of light she saw clear. She drew away from Jack's arms.

"Tell me about it. No, I am all right. Tell me."

There was little to tell. A crowded street, a heedless chauffeur, a toddling Italian baby escaped from its mother's fruit stand. These were the details. There was nothing unusual about them. Such accidents happen daily in great cities. One scarcely hears of them they are so frequent of occurrence. The wonder is there are not more of them when human life teems so thick and is held so cheap. But, unfortunately, clear-witted, quick-moving, strong-limbed young ex-football heroes are not always at hand as in this case. The baby was happily unhurt, but Phil Lorrimer lay in the hospital at the point of death.

Instead of keeping a luncheon engagement with his friend, Jack Amidon had been called upon to take charge of a grave situation. Finally, there being nothing left to do, he had come back to Greendale to tell Mrs. Lorrimer--Mrs. Lorrimer and Sylvia.

"I thought it would be better to tell his mother myself," he said to Sylvia. "Telegrams knock you out so. She is a wonder, though. Not a whimper. She's going up on the five o'clock from Baltimore. I'm taking her in, in the car."

"I am going, too," said Sylvia.

For a moment the two stared at each other, then Jack understood and acquiesced.

"All right. That is for you to say," he responded quietly. "Go and get ready. I'll tell the rest."

Even in her distress, Sylvia smiled wanly at Jack. It was so like him to understand, to spare her, to see at a flash the helpful, kindly thing to do. Jack was always so "dear." She tried to express her gratitude but he cut her short by stooping to kiss her, not on the lips as usual, but on the forehead.

"Don't bother about me, sweetheart. I don't count," and he strode away from her toward the living-room where he had promised to "tell the rest."

Sylvia ran up the stairs to her own room, dazed and dry-eyed, with a strange lightness about her, as if she had suddenly shed her body and become all spirit. In a few moments Felicia joined her, quiet, helpful, unquestioning. There was never any need of explaining things to Felicia. She did not ask why Sylvia, engaged to one man, should be rushing with anguish-stricken eyes to the sick-bed of another. Perhaps she understood that better than she had understood the engagement in the first place.

It was a strange journey--first, the swift almost silent automobile ride to the city; Jack's stern, white face as he kissed her good-by so unlike the sunny lover she was used to, whom she had loved "by the light and beat of drums," a look so different it had haunted her all the way to New York; beside her the quiet countenance and grief-filled eyes of Phil's mother. Feeling scarcely worthy to dwell in the sanctuary of her own grief, Sylvia's heart went out to the older woman in her silent agony. Perhaps never in her life before had the girl realized what it meant to be a mother--how mothers gave and gave and gave, and suffered and suffered and suffered, and loved and loved and loved, unto the end. What was going on in the mind and heart of the other woman she could only conjecture. Dimly she perceived that the mother loved the son for the baby he had been, the boy and youth he had been, the man he was, the man he was to be--all in one. How could she bear it? Sylvia wondered.

Then the vision widened. How could all those women over in Europe bear it? To give up their sons--the very fruit of their bodies, those for whom they had undergone the agonies of death! It was horrible. Phil was only one, and he had offered life for life. That was natural. But those other strong young men, over there--they were giving life for more death. That was the unthinkable, hideous part of it. The sorrows of all the world seemed pressing down upon her, crystallized, made real by her own poignant, personal grief. Phil became the mangled young life of the world.

Suddenly Sylvia felt she could bear it no longer alone. She put out her hand and let it rest upon the hand of Phil's mother. Mrs. Lorrimer turned with a faint little smile.

"Pray, Sylvia, pray," she said softly. "Try to help me say 'Thy will be done.' I am trying to say it. But it is hard--so very hard."

"I can't," Sylvia's young voice flung back, hard, almost fierce, in its hurt. "I can only keep saying, 'Don't take him. Don't take him. I can't bear it.'"

But Mrs. Lorrimer shook her head and pressed the girl's hand.

"We can bear anything, Sylvia--anything. We are never asked to bear too much."

"I am," cried Sylvia passionately. "I can't bear his dying--without knowing. He must know."

"He will know, dear."

Sylvia took comfort from the quiet assurance. She believed Mrs. Lorrimer meant she felt sure that Phil was still living, would live. She did not know the mother meant that her son might already be where there could be no misunderstanding, no longer any seeing as through a glass darkly, but face to face with infinite realities. Alice Lorrimer was not young like Sylvia. She knew from sad experience how many paths of human life lead straight to the Garden of Gethsemane.'

Presently Sylvia spoke again.

"Mrs. Lorrimer, how do you suppose I could have been so blind--not to know--I cared--this way?" Sylvia's phrases came out in quick, uneven gasps, as if every word hurt. "I didn't know--I never knew until Jack told me just now--about Phil. I didn't know," she moaned.

"Maybe Phil was blind too, dear. I think he was. He put an unreal thing ahead of a real one, I am afraid, just because he cared so much. You needn't look surprised, child. Mothers know so much more than any one ever tells them. Of course I don't know what happened in New York, but I have always suspected my boy hurt you, and it was the hurt which made you shut your eyes so tight."

"It was something like that," admitted Sylvia. "It is so horribly easy to get all muddled and twisted up in life."

"It is," agreed Mrs. Lorrimer. "Sometimes it takes a great grief to remove the bandages from our eyes."