Chapter II: Part 2

In spite of Brown's genial greetings to his guests--he had a special welcoming word for every one--just at first there was a bit of stiffness. The men showed the customary tendency to support one another through the social ordeal by standing in a solid group in a corner of the room, hands behind their backs and an air of great gravity upon their faces, while they spoke, if at all, in low and solemn tones. The women, on the other hand, as ever, did their best to show themselves entirely at ease by addressing, one after another, remarks to their host calculated to prevent his having any doubt as to the sort of weather now prevailing outside or likely to prevail during the days to come.

Brown, having anticipated this period of gloom before the feast should actually begin, had arranged with Mrs. Kelcey that as soon as the last guest had arrived the company should sit down at the table. Mrs. Kelcey, true to her word, gave him the nod without the delay of more than a minute or two, and promptly the company seated itself. Brown, drawing back her chair for Mrs. Murdison, who as his most impressive guest he had placed upon his right, noticed, without seeming to notice, that the little watchmaker did the same for his wife, and with an effect of habit. Speaking of wives, the company being left to seat themselves according to their own notion (Brown having considered the question of dinner cards and discarded it), every man sat down beside his own wife, in some instances being surreptitiously jerked into position by a careful conjugal hand.

Brown, looking about his table with a smile, bent his head. Every eye fell and every ear listened to the words which followed: "_Our Father, we are here in company with Thee and in warm friendliness with one another. We are thankful on this day that we are busy men and women, able to do our work and to be useful in Thy world. Teach us to find in life the joy of living it to please Thee. Amen_."

It was Mrs. Kelcey who broke the hush which followed, by starting from her place to run out into the kitchen and bring on the dinner. From this moment the peculiar fitness of Donald Brown for the duties of host showed itself. That his dinner should be stiff and solemn was not in his intention, if the informality of his own conduct could prevent it. He therefore jumped up from his own place to follow Mrs. Kelcey to the kitchen and bring in the great platter for her, bearing the turkey in a garland of celery leaves, a miracle of luscious-looking brownness.

He had considered the feasibility of serving at least one preliminary course, not so much because it seemed to him impossible to plunge at once into the heartiness of fowl and stuffing as because he wanted to prolong the hour of dining for his guests. But Mrs. Kelcey had promptly vetoed this notion.

"Man, dear," she had said earnestly, "an' why would ye be shpoiling the appetoites of yer company with soup? Tis soup they know only too well--but the turrkey! 'Tis manny a long year since Mrs. Murdison and Andy have tasted the loike of it, an' the same with the ithers. If 'twas chickun, I'll warrant now--we're all glad to make a bit of chickun go furrther with other things--but a grreat turrkey like this wan--Give it to thim sthrait, Misther Brown, an' that's my advoice. Ye can take it or lave it."

Brown had accepted this wise counsel, of course, and now saw the full wisdom of it as he beheld the looks of veiled but hungry--one might almost have said starving--anticipation which fell upon the big turkey as it was borne to its place at the end of the table. "I don't know how an old bachelor is going to make out to carve before such a company," Brown said gaily, brandishing his carving knife. (This was a bit of play-making, for he was a famous carver, having been something of an epicure in days but one year past, and accustomed to demand and receive careful service in his bachelor establishment.) "I wonder if I can manage it. Mr. Benson"--he addressed the old watchmaker--"what do you say to taking my place and helping me out? I'd hate to ruin the bird."

"I say I'll not do it, Mr. Brown," responded old Benson. "Watch-making is my business, and it's watch I'll make now of your carving."

This brave attempt at a witticism brought a fine response, Brown's hearty laugh leading off. And now the ice began to be broken into smaller and smaller bits. Brown's gay spirits, his mirth-provoking observations as he carved the tender fowl, the way in which he appreciated the efforts of his guests to do their part, led them all to forget themselves in greater or less degree. When it came to the actual attacking of the piled-up plates before them, it is true that there ensued considerable significant silence, but it was the silence of approval and enjoyment, not that of failure to be entertained.

If it occurred to Brown to wish himself at some more exalted festival-making with more congenial associates on this Thanksgiving Day, no one would have dreamed it. To all appearances he was with his best friends, and if he did not partake of the toothsome meal before him with such avidity as they, it would have needed a more discerning person to have recognized it than any one who sat at his board--at his boards, it might be put, remembering Tim Lukens's achievement with the sawhorses.

Tim, himself, was present, sober and subdued but happy. How it came about that he had not drunk a drop for several weeks, none but Brown and Mrs. Lukens could have told. Tim's glance was often upon Brown's face--the look in his eyes, now and then, reminded Brown of that in the eyes of his dog Bim when he had earned his master's approval, shy but adoring.

In spite of all there was to eat in that mighty first course of turkey and stuffing and mashed white potatoes and sirup-browned sweet potatoes, and every possible accompaniment of gravy and vegetable and relish, not to mention such coffee as none of them had ever drunk, it all disappeared with astonishing rapidity down the throats of the guests. How, indeed, can one mince and play with his food when he and his wife have not in their lives tasted so many good things all at once, and when both have been prepared for the feast by many weeks and months--and years--of living upon boiled potatoes with a bit of salt pork, or even upon bread and molasses, when times were hard? Brown's neighbours were not of the very poorest, by any means, but all were thriftily accustomed to self-denial, and there is no flavour to any dainty like that of having seldom tasted but of having longed for it all one's life.

When the second course had come and gone--it was composed entirely of pies, but of such pies!--Brown surprised Mrs. Kelcey by going to a cupboard and bringing out a final treat unsuspected by her. A great basket of fruit, oranges and bananas and grapes, flanked by a big bowl of nuts cunningly set with clusters of raisins, made them all exclaim. Happily, they had reached the exclaiming stage, no longer afraid of their host or of one another.

"It's reckless with his money he is, Patsy," whispered Mrs. Kelcey to her husband. "It'll take a power of it to pay for all o' thim, an' fruit so dear."

"Whist, he knows what he's about," returned Patrick Kelcey, uninclined to remonstrate with any man for giving him that unaccustomed and delightful feeling that his vest buttons must be surreptitiously unloosed or he would burst them off. He helped himself lavishly as he spoke.

By and by, when all had regretfully declined so much as another raisin--"Now we must have some music!" cried Brown. "Tim, did you bring your fiddle?"

Tim Lukens nodded. Carpentry was Tim's vocation, but fiddling was his avocation and dear delight. He was presently fiddling away, while the company sat about, completely relaxed in spirit, and Mrs. Kelcey and Mrs. Murdison hustled the table clear of dishes, refusing sternly Brown's eager offer to help them. And now came the best time of all. Tim played all the old tunes, and when he struck into "Kate Kearney" the company was electrified to hear a rich and vibrant voice take up the words of the song and sing them through to the end.

Sitting carelessly on his pine-bottomed chair--it was one from the Kelcey house--one hand in his pocket, his heavy hair tossed back and his lips smiling, Brown's splendid tones rang through the room and held his listeners enthralled. Never had they heard singing like that. They could have no possible notion of the quality of the voice to which they listened, but they enjoyed its music so thoroughly that the moment the song was ended they were eager for another. So he sang them another and still another, while the warm blood rolled in under his dark skin, enriching his thin cheek till it looked no longer thin. He was giving himself up to the task of pleasing his friends, with thorough enjoyment of his own. After "Kate Kearney" he sang "Annie Laurie," making Andy Murdison's warm Scottish heart under his stiff Scottish manner beat throbbingly in sympathy. So the hours passed, it never occurring to the company to go home as long as it was having the time of its life, until the sudden discovery of a row of boys' faces peering eagerly in from the darkness of the late afternoon reminded Mrs. Kelcey that she had a family at home.

"The saints be prraised, 'tis afther darrk," said she, rising precipitately, "and the bhoys promised the lavin's of the table!"

They all followed her, suddenly grown shy again as they murmured their thanks. Their host's cheery parting words eased them over this ordeal, however, and each one left with the comfortable feeling that he had said the right thing.

Two minutes later the house was again invaded, this time by those who felt entirely at home there. With a whoop of joy the boys of the neighbourhood took possession, and as they did so a curious thing happened: Donald Brown himself became a boy among them.

But this was not the only curious thing which happened.

The sixteen guests at the dinner, in spite of the generous supplies, had not left many "lavin's." The great turkey had little remaining now upon his bones and nothing at all inside of him; the potatoes and vegetables had been entirely consumed; of the pies there remained a solitary wedge. But Brown, smiling broadly, attended to these difficulties. He had the air of a commissary who knew of unlimited supplies.

"Tom," he commanded, "pick three boys and go down cellar with them, and into the little storeroom at the right."

Tom, grinning, made a lightning-like selection of assistants, and dove down the steep and narrow stairway from the kitchen.

"Burke and Jimpsey, explore the cupboard opening from my bedroom, and bring out whatever you find there that looks good to eat."

Before the words were out of his mouth Burke and Jimpsey had disappeared.

"Tub and Jiggers, look under my bed, and haul out a long box you'll find there."

The two fell over each other to do his bidding. In less time than it takes to tell it, the emissaries were returning with their spoils. A whole cooked turkey, only slightly inferior in size to the original one, appeared to the accompaniment of howls of joy. It was cold, to be sure, but what boy would mind that--and to the critical palate is not cold turkey even more delicious than hot? There were piles and piles of sandwiches with the most delectable filling, there were pies and more pies, and there were fruit and cake and candy. Brown had not feared lest these later guests suspect him of too long a purse; he had ordered without stint, and his orders had been filled by a distant firm of caterers and sent by express.

Now there were girls in the neighbourhood as well as boys. By a mysterious invitation they had been summoned to the home of one of their number, a small cripple, and were there at the very moment rejoicing in all manner of festivities. Nobody knew how it had happened, nor where the good things came from, except the little girl who was their hostess, and wild horses could not have dragged the wonderful secret from her. Brown himself, making merry with his boys, remembered the girls with a comfortable feeling at his heart that for once, at least, a goodly number of people, young and old, were happier than they had ever been before in their lives on Thanksgiving Day.

As for his own immediate entertaining the revel now began--no lesser word describes it. If, before the departure of his dinner guests, Brown had experienced a slight feeling of fatigue, it disappeared with the pleasure of seeing his present company disport themselves. They were not in the least afraid of him--how should they be, when he had spent months in the winning of their confidence and affection by every clever wile known to the genuine boy lover? That they respected him was plainly shown by the fact that, ill trained at home as most of them had been, with him they never overstepped certain bounds. At the lifting of a finger he could command their attention, though the moment before their boisterousness had known no limits.

If the earlier guests had been surprisingly rapid in their consumption of the dinner, these later ones were startlingly so. Like grain before a flock of hungry birds, like ice beneath a bonfire, the viands, lavishly provided though they had been, melted away in almost the twinkling of an eye. And it was precisely as the last enormous mouthful of cherry pie vanished down Jiggers Quigg's happy throat that the unexpected happened.

IX

BROWN'S UNBIDDEN GUESTS

The front door, opening directly into the living-room, with its long table, and its flashing fire lighting the eager faces round it--nobody had thought of or bothered to make any other light in that room--was flung open by a fur-gloved hand, and a large figure appeared in the doorway. A ruddy face looked in upon the scene. This face possessed a pair of keen gray eyes, a distinguished nose, and a determined mouth beneath a close-trimmed moustache with flecks of gray in it.

Brown sprang up. "Doctor Brainard!" he cried joyfully, and came forward with outstretched hand.

The unexpected guest advanced. Behind him appeared others. To the dazed and gazing boys these people might have come from Greenland, so enveloped were they in defences against the cold. Motor coats of rich fur, furry hats and caps, floating silken veils, muffs, rugs--wherever they came from they could not have minded coming, sharp as was the November air outside, as the boys, who had been hanging about the house since the first approach of twilight, well knew.

Dr. Bruce Brainard was followed by two men and three women. In the flickering firelight Brown was obliged to come close to each, as in smiling silence they approached him, before he could make sure whom the furs and scarfs enshrouded. "Sue!" he exclaimed, discovering his sister. "And Hugh Breckenridge! This is great, brother-in-law! Mrs. Brainard--can it be Mrs. Brainard? How kind of you! You must have known how I've been wanting to see you. Webb Atchison, is that you, looming behind there? How are you, old fellow? But--this lady in the veil--"

He bent closer as he took the gloved hand outstretched, but all he could make out in the traitorous light was a pair of dark eyes, and lips that must be laughing behind the heavy silken veil.

"Do I know her?" he asked, looking round upon the others, who were watching him.

"You have met her," Hugh Breckenridge assured him.

"Several times," added Webb Atchison.

"But not of late," said Brown, "or else I--"

"Once to have seen her," declared Doctor Brainard, "means never to forget."

"You put me in a hard place," Brown objected, trying in vain to distinguish outlines through the veil. "She isn't going to lift it? Must I guess?"

"Of course you must guess, Don," cried his sister.

"How can he?" laughed Breckenridge. "He knows so many fair beings of about that height, and furs and veils are disguising things. Without them, of course, though she wore a mask, he would have no difficulty."

"Will you speak one word?" asked Brown of the unknown.

She shook her head.

"Then--forgive me, but I'm puzzled," said he, laying light but determined hold upon the veil. "I can't imagine at all who--would honour me--"

He gently lifted the veil. The others saw his expression change as the drawn folds revealed a face whose dark-eyed beauty was vividly enhanced by the fire-glow upon cheeks which the November frost had stung into a wonder colour. There was a general laugh of appreciation.

"Never would have thought it, eh?" chuckled Webb Atchison, a fine and prosperous figure of a bachelor past his first youth but not yet arrived at middle age, and with the look of one who does what he pleases with other people. "Well, it wasn't her plan, I assure you. She was horror-stricken when she learned where we were bound."

"Donald Brown in his bachelor apartment in the Worthington was one person, this queer fellow living in a roadside cabin is quite another," suggested Dr. Bruce Brainard quizzically. "Still, I'll warrant Miss Forrest will confess to a bit of curiosity, when she found she was in for it."

"Were you curious?" asked Donald Brown. He was still looking steadily down into the lifted face of the person before him. Into his own face had come a look as of one who has been taken unawares at a vulnerable point, but who has instantly rallied his forces to stand out the attack.

"They were all curious," answered Miss Forrest, and the sound of her voice was different from that of the other voices. If, as Doctor Brainard had jestingly but truthfully said, one who had seen her would not forget her, a similar statement might with equal truth be made of the hearing of her voice. The one word Brown had asked from her lips could certainly have revealed her to him--and would have done so while he had a memory.

"To see if we know how to keep Thanksgiving here?" Brown inquired of the group, though his eyes came back again to Helena Forrest's face.

"To see if you had anything to be thankful for," cried Sue Breckenridge. "Well, Don, now that we are here, are you going to invite us to stay? Or--is your present company--"

Brown wheeled and went over to the boys, who were staring, open-eyed and motionless.

"You'll help me out, fellows, won't you?" he said in a low tone--and they felt him still one of them, for the tone was the old one of comradeship. "You see, I have nowhere to ask my guests to sit down. If each of you will take what you can at a time, and carry everything out into the kitchen, and then take out the table, I'll be much obliged. You are coming again soon, you know; but for to-night, you see, I must call it off. Tom, you'll see to taking off the tablecloth, will you? Fold it up any sort of way, but don't let the crumbs get out. All right?"

There was a tumultuous pushing back of chairs. In short order it was all accomplished. The guests stood at one side, looking at the boys as curiously as the boys had looked at them, while the dishes disappeared as fast as many hands could carry them. The big bowl of geraniums was removed by Brown himself, who set it carefully upon his reading-table at the side of the room, and the tablecloth was painstakingly manipulated by Tom Kelcey so that hardly a crumb fell upon the floor. There was one crash of crockery in the kitchen, followed by a smothered howl from the boy who in his agitation had done the deed, but this was the only accident.

Brown turned again to his guests.

"Now," said he, "will you make yourselves at home? It's a cold night out. Let's have off the furs and sit by the fire. Mrs. Brainard, allow me to help you out of that coat. This is the happiest sort of a surprise for me!"

X

BROWN'S ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

Donald Brown stood at the end of his hearth, his elbow resting on the chimney-piece, his eyes, narrowed a little between the lashes, intently regarding these latest guests of his. He was in the shadow, they were in the strong light of the fire. A great lump of cannel coal, recently laid upon the red-hot embers and half-burned logs of the afternoon fire, had just broken apart with a great hissing and crackling of the pitchy richness of its inner formation, and the resultant glow of rosy light which enveloped the figures before the hearth, against the duller background of the room, otherwise unillumined, made them stand out like figures in a cleverly lighted tableau.

They were much more interesting to Brown, however, than anything he had ever seen in the set and artificial radiance of the calcium light. He knew well every face there, and yet, after his year's exile and in contrast to the faces at which he had been lately looking, they formed a more engrossing study than any he had known for many months.

In the centre of the circle, in Brown's old red-cushioned rocker and most comfortable chair, sat Mrs. Brainard, the exquisitely sophisticated wife of the distinguished specialist close by. Her graceful head, with its slight and becoming touches of gray at the temples, rested like a fine cameo against the warm hue of the cushion. Her brilliant eyes reflected the dancing firelight; her shapely hands, jewelled like Mrs. Breckenridge's, but after an even more rare and perfectly chosen fashion, lay in her silken lap. As his glance fell upon these hands some whimsical thought brought to Brown's mind Mrs. Kelcey's red, work-roughened ones. He wondered if by any chance the two hands would ever meet, and whether Mrs. Brainard's would shrink from the contact, or meet it as that of a sister, "under the skin."

Near her his sister Sue's dainty elegance of person showed like a flower against the big figure of Doctor Brainard, who sat at her elbow. Brainard himself, with his splendid head and erect carriage, was always an imposing personage; he had never seemed more so than now, with the face of Patrick Kelcey, Andrew Murdison, and James Benson, the little watchmaker, in the background of Brown's mind with which to contrast it. Beyond Mrs. Brainard lounged Hugh Breckenridge--as nearly as one could be said to lounge--in a plain, cane-seated chair without arms.

At one side of the group was Webb Atchison, the rich bachelor of the party where all were possessed of wealth in plenty. Next Atchison sat Miss Helena Forrest, the one member of the company who had not known where she was going until well upon her way there. Upon her the glance of the man standing by the chimney-piece fell least often, yet there was no person present of whom he was so unremittingly conscious. It may be said that from the moment that he had lifted her veil in his puzzled search for her identity, he had been conscious of little else.

There was not a single movement of Miss Forrest's hands--and she had certain little delightful, highly characteristic ways of helping out her speech with slight yet significant motions--but had its place in Brown's memory. She was not a frequent talker, she did not speak one word to Sue Breckenridge's fifty; but when she did speak, in her voice of slow music, people listened. And yet one never thought of her, Brown remembered, as a silent person; the effect of her presence in any circle was that of a personality of the active, not the passive, sort. The eyes of one speaking must, involuntarily, be drawn to her because she was listening, if I may coin a phrase, vividly. As for her looks--she possessed that indescribable charm which is not wholly a matter of beautiful features, but lies rather in such details as the lift of the eyebrow, the curve of the lip, the droop of the hair upon the brow. She was dressed much more simply than either of the older women present, yet with the simplicity, it must be admitted, of the artist. She seemed somehow to make their goodly showing fade before her own, as a crimson flower draws from the colour of one of delicate blue.

Well, take them separately or as a group, they were an absorbing study to the man who had seen so little of their kind for so long past, yet knew that kind by the wontedness of his lifetime. He seemed to himself somehow to be viewing them all, for the first time, from a vantage point he had never before occupied. Every word they said in their pleasantly modulated, well-bred voices, with the familiar accent of the educated environment from which they came, and from which he came--it was his accent, too, but somehow it sounded a bit foreign to him tonight--struck upon his ear with a new meaning. Each gesture they made, personal and familiar to him as they were, struck Brown now with its special individuality.

"It's not fair, Don," said Sue Breckenridge suddenly, "for you to stand over there in the shadow and watch us, without our being able to see your face at all."

"You don't realize," declared Brown, in answer to this assertion and the general assenting, laugh which followed it, backed by Atchison's. "Hear, hear!" "that the group you all make in the light of my fire is a picture far ahead of anything in Atchison's collection. I should be an unappreciative host indeed if I didn't make the most of it."

"What an artful speech!" laughed Mrs. Brainard, lifting fine eyes in an attempt to make out the shadowy face above her. "It's well calculated to distract our attention from the fact that you are not changing your position by so much as the moving of an arm. We came to see you, man, not to show ourselves to you."

"We came to cheer his loneliness," put in Hugh Breckenridge with a peculiar, cynical-sounding little laugh for which he was famous. "And we find him up to his neck in boys. Jove! How do you stand their dirty hands, Don? That's what would get me, no matter how good my intentions were."

"Those hands were every pair scrubbed to a finish, to-day, in honour of Thanksgiving. Do you think we have no manners here?" retorted Brown.

"That wasn't the dinner party you wrote me of when you refused to come to mine, was it, Don?" questioned his sister.

"No. This was an after-dinner party, partaking of the 'lavin's,'" Brown explained. "The real one was over an hour before."

"Do tell us about it. Did you enjoy it? Won't you describe your guests?" Mrs. Brainard spoke eagerly.

"With pleasure. The Kelceys are my next-door neighbours on the left. Mrs. Kelcey is pure gold--in the rough. Her husband is not quite her equal, but he knows it and strives to be worthy of her. The Murdisons, on the other side, are--Scotch granite--splendid building material. Old Mr. Benson, the watchmaker, is--well, he's full-jewelled. The others I perhaps can't characterize quite so easily, but among them I find several uncut gems of the semi-precious varieties. Of course there's considerable commonplace material--if you can ever call the stuff of which human beings are made commonplace, which I doubt. There's more or less copper and brass, with a good bit of clay--as there is in all of us. And a deal of a more spiritual element which can't be measured or described, but which makes them all worth knowing."

He had spoken in a thoughtful tone, as if he took Mrs. Brainard's question seriously and meant to answer it in the same way. A moment's silence followed. Then Doctor Brainard said slowly:

"I suppose you don't find those priceless elements among the people of your abandoned parish. Down there we're all copper and clay, eh?"

"If you had been clay I might have done more with you," was the quick retort.

"And you can do things with these people, can you? Dig out the rough gold, polish the uncut diamonds, build temples of the granite--and perhaps mold even the clay into works of art?"

The answer to the ironic question was grave enough, and it came with a quietness which spoke more eloquently than fervid tones would have done of the feeling behind it.

"No, Doctor, I can't hope to do those things. I'm not wise enough. But the things these people are going to do to me, if I'll let them, are worth coming for."

"They've done some of them already," murmured Mrs. Brainard. But nobody heard her except Sue Breckenridge, who cried out:

"And you're not a bit homesick, Don, while you're living like this?"

"If you people won't come up here very often and make me remember what being with you is like, I shall get on pretty well," said Brown's voice from the shadow.

"Then we'll come as often as we can," cried Sue triumphantly.

"No, you won't--not if you want to help me. My reputation as an indigent bachelor out of a job won't stand many onslaughts of company dressed as you are. If you want to come to see me you must come disguised. I'm afraid I'm under suspicion already."

"Explain to them that we're the clay, they the uncut diamonds. That will let you out," advised Doctor Brainard grimly.

"Ah, but you don't look the part," said Brown, laughing. "You look like what you are, a big jewel of a fellow, as my friend Mrs. Kelcey would say. To tell the truth, you all seem like jewels to me to-night--and such polished ones you dazzle my eyes. Hugh, I'd forgotten what a well-cut coat looked like. I remember now."

"You seem pretty well dressed yourself," remarked Atchison, peering up into the shadow. "According to Mrs. Breckenridge, you go about dressed in monk's cloth, and a shabby variety at that. This doesn't look like it."

"He was wearing a dreadful, old shiny serge suit when I saw him a fortnight ago," said Sue. "And such a scarf-pin! Don, are you wearing that same scarf-pin to-night? Do show it to them."

"Does choosing to live by himself make a man a fair target for all the quips and arrows of his friends?" Brown queried, at the same time withdrawing obediently the little silver pin from his cravat and giving it into Atchison's outstretched hand. "Be just to that pin, Webb. It was given me by a special friend of mine."

"How will you exchange?" Atchison inquired gravely, touching his own neckwear as he examined the pin. A rare and costly example of the jeweller's art reposed there, as might have been expected.

"I'll not exchange, thank you."

"Neither will I," declared Atchison, leaning back with a laugh and passing the pin on down the line.

Hugh Breckenridge gave the obviously cheap and commonplace little article one careless glance, and handed it to Miss Forrest. She examined it soberly, as if seeking to find its peculiar value in its owner's eyes. Then she looked at Brown.

"This has a story, I am sure, or you wouldn't care so much for it," she said. "Are we worthy to hear it, Mr. Brown?"

His eyes met hers, though as he stood she could barely make out that fact.

"I should like you to hear it."

"Come out of the darkness, Don, please!" begged his sister again.

The others echoed the wish, and Brown, yielding against his will--somehow he had never wanted more to remain in the shadow--took a chair at one end of the hearth, where he was in full view of them all. "It was given me," said Brown, speaking in a tone which instantly arrested even Hugh Breckenridge's careless attention, though why it did so he could not have said, "by a man whose son was wearing it when he stood on a plank between two windows, ten stories up in the air, and passed fifteen girls over it to safety. Then--the plank burned through at one end. He had known it would."

There fell a hush upon the little group. Mrs. Brainard put out her hand and touched Brown's shoulder caressingly.

"No wonder you wouldn't exchange it, Don," she said, very gently.

"Was the father at your dinner, Don?" Doctor Brainard asked, after a minute.

"Yes, Doctor."

"So you wore it to please him," commented Sue.

"He wore it," said Helena Forrest, "as a man might wear the Victoria Cross."

"Ah, but I didn't earn it," denied Brown, without looking up.

"I'm not so sure of that," Mrs. Brainard declared. "You must have done something to make the father feel you worthy to wear a thing he valued so much."

"He fancied," said Brown--"he and the mother--that there was a slight resemblance between my looks and those of the son. And they have a finer memorial of him than anything he wore; they have one end of the burned plank. The father has cut the date on it, with his son's name, and it hangs over the chimney-piece."

"What a tragic thing!" cried Sue, shuddering. "I don't see how they can keep it. Do tell us something else, Don. Doesn't anything amusing ever happen here? Oh--what became of the baby?"

Brown rose suddenly to his feet. "I'm forgetting my hospitality," said he. "I'm going to make you all some coffee. The baby, Sue, is at Mrs. Kelcey's, next door. Having only six of her own, she could easily make room for the seventh."

"Tell us about the baby," demanded Webb Atchison. "Has Don gone into the nursery business, with all the rest?"

Sue began to tell the story, describing the night on which she made her first visit to her brother. Brown disappeared into the kitchen and soon returned, bringing with him, as was his entertaining custom, the materials for brewing his coffee upon the hob.

"You remember," he said, as he came, "the way this room was cleared for your reception?"

"By an avalanche of boys, who swept everything, hurly-burly, into outer darkness," supplied Breckenridge.

"You can guess, perhaps, what the kitchen must be looking like, can't you?"

"Indescribable," murmured Sue. "You're not going to invite us to put it in order for you, are you, Don?--and wash all those dreadful, gaudy plates and cups?"

"Just take a look out there, will you?"

Sue shook her head, but Mrs. Brainard went to the door, followed by Atchison and Miss Forrest. They looked out upon a low-ceiled, lamp-lighted room, in absolute order, in which was not a trace of the late festival-making except the piles of clean dishes upon the table, under which lay Bim, nose on paws, alert eyes on the strangers.

"Magic?" queried Mrs. Brainard. "Surely those noisy boys couldn't accomplish such a miracle?"

"Never. Though I suspect they were put to work by a good general, for the borrowed chairs are gone and so are several other bulky articles. There's no difficulty in guessing who did the deed," said Brown, busy with his coffee-making.

He served his guests presently with a beverage which made Atchison exclaim: "The old chap certainly knows how to make the best stuff I ever drank. When I tasted this brew first I invited myself to come out and stay a week with him, but he wouldn't have me."

"You're too polished an article for his hand; he wants his work-stuff raw," Doctor Brainard said again. Evidently this point rankled. Brown looked up.

"I'll challenge you to stay and have it out with me, Doctor," said he.

"Thank you, I came for no other purpose," retorted the doctor coolly. "These people brought me up to have a look at you, and I'm not going back till morning."

"That's great!" Brown's face showed his pleasure.

XI

BROWN'S PRESENT WORLD

When Miss Forrest returned from her survey of the kitchen she had come straight to the corner of the hearth where Brown stood, and had taken the chair beside the one he had lately occupied. He was therefore beside her when he sat down to drink his coffee with his guests. At a moment when Webb Atchison and Sue Breckenridge were engaged in a bit of controversy over the relative merits of varying methods of coffee making, Helena Forrest turned to Brown, who had been looking into the fire without speaking.

"I hope you don't really mind our coming up here to-night," she said.

"Mind it? If I did, I couldn't blame you, for you came against your will," he answered--and his eyes were no longer upon the fire.

"Without my consent, but not, perhaps, against my will."

He regarded her intently. She met his look without turning aside.

"You felt a curiosity to see the hermit in his cell," was his explanation of the matter.

She nodded. "Of course. Who wouldn't, after such reports as Mrs. Breckenridge brought back?"

"And now that you have seen him--you are consumed with pity?"

"No. If I am consumed with anything it is with envy."

His low laugh spoke his disbelief. She read it in the sound and in the way his gaze left her face and went back to the fire.

"You don't think I mean that," said she.

"Hardly."

"Why not?"

"It is--inconceivable."

"Why?"

Her face, turned toward him, invited him to look at it again, but he did not--just then.

"Because you are--Helena Forrest," he answered.

"And what is she, please, in your opinion?"

"An inhabitant of another world than that I live in."

"A world of which you have an even poorer opinion than you used to have when you lived in it yourself!"

He smiled. "Anyhow, I am no longer in it. Nor ever shall go back."

A startled look passed over her face. "You don't mean that you intend to stay here--forever?"

"Not quite that. But I mean to do this sort of work, rather than the sort I began with. To do it I must live much as I am living now, where ever that may be. Now--what about the envy of me you profess?"

He turned, still smiling, at the little sound he caught from her half-closed lips.

"Are you happy in such a decision?" she murmured.

"Do I look like an unhappy man?"

She shook her head. "That's what I have been noticing about you ever since I came. You did look unhappy when you went away. Now, you don't. And it is the look on your face which gives me the sense of envy."

Brown gave one quick glance at the rest of the party. "Do you mean to say," he questioned, very low, "that you are not happy?"

"Does that seem so strange?"

"It might very naturally seem so, to one who knows what you have to make you the happiest of the happy."

"You yourself didn't find happiness among similar surroundings," she said, looking at him intently.

"Similar?" The thought seemed to amuse him.

"Well, weren't they similar? At any rate we were in the same world, and you say now we are not."

"We are so far apart," said he evenly, "that we can only signal to each other. And even then--neither is familiar with the other's code!"

"Oh!" she exclaimed, and a strange expression showed in her eyes. "What a hard, hard thing for you to say! It doesn't sound like you."

"Hard?" he questioned, with a contraction of the brows. "It is substantially what you yourself once said. If it was true then, it must be true now."

Moved by some impulse the two looked at each other searchingly, Donald Brown's face grave but tense, Helena Forrest's full of a proud pain. Clearly they were not understanding each other's code now--so much was evident.

At this instant, without warning, the outer door flew open. Mrs. Kelcey, her round red face disordered, her breath coming short, stood upon the threshold and spoke pantingly, without regard to the company assembled:

"Mr. Brown, sor! The baby's dyin--the sthranger child. It was took all of a suddint. Would ye moind comin' to say a bit of a prayer over him? Father McCarty's away, or I wouldn't ask it."

She was gone with the words. With the first sentence Brown had sprung to his feet. As Mary Kelcey vanished he turned to Doctor Brainard.

"Come, Doctor," he said, with a beckoning hand. "While I say the bit of a prayer you try what you can do to keep the baby here!"

The eminent physician rose rather slowly to his feet. "It's probably no use," he demurred. "The woman knows."

"The Lord knows, too," declared Brown, with a propelling hand on his friend's arm: "knows that you're here to give the child a chance. Come! Hurry!"

The two went out. Doctor Brainard would have stayed for his hat and overcoat, but Brown would brook no delay.

Left behind, the party by the fire looked at one another with faces sobered. Hugh Breckenridge consulted his watch.

"It's time we were off," he declared. "The Doctor's going to stay anyway, and it's no use waiting for Don to come back."

"That's right," agreed Webb Atchison. "I came up here once before, about six months ago, and I saw then enough of the way things went here to know that he lives at the beck and call of every man, woman, and child in this district--and they call him, too. He'd just finished sobering up a drunkard that night, or scant attention I'd have had. Well, I'll walk down to the hotel and send back Rogers and the car. Be ready in ten minutes?"

They said they would be ready. But in Brown's little bedroom, donning furry wraps, Helena Forrest spoke in Sue Breckenridge's ear:

"I can't bear to go till we know how it comes out."

Sue stared at her. "You don't mean to say you care? Why--it's just a forlorn little foundling--better dead than alive. I saw it when I was here two weeks ago. It has nothing to live for, dear. Don't think of it again."

"But he cared--your brother cared," said Helena Forrest.

"Oh, Don cares about everything. I never saw such a soft heart. Of course I think it's lovely of him, though I don't understand how he can be so absorbed in such a class of people."

Miss Forrest went to the one window of the room. She lifted the plain shade which covered it and looked out into the night.

Ten yards away she saw a brightly lighted, uncurtained window, beyond which were figures, plainly discernible. The figures were moving, one bringing a pail, another stooping--the scene was not one of still waiting but of tense action. She caught a glimpse of Doctor Brainard's tall form bending above something at one side, then she saw Brown himself cross the room in haste.

Mrs. Brainard and Sue went back to the outer room to stand before the fire with the purpose of accumulating all the bodily heat possible before the long, cold drive. Miss Forrest, unheeding them, remained by the window in the unlighted bedroom. Minutes passed. Hugh Breckenridge had fallen to examining the larger room's eighteenth century features--he was something of a connoisseur in antiques.

Helena, turning from the window for a moment, scanned the shadowy room in which she stood. It was very scantily furnished with the bare essentials. Upon the plain chest of drawers which held Brown's bachelor belongings stood a few simply framed photographs; an old set of hanging bookshelves was crammed full of books, with more overflowing upon the floor.

Suddenly, as she stood there, an outer door banged; swift footsteps crossed the floor. Helena turned to see Donald Brown himself rushing into the room. He ran to the chest of drawers, pulled one open, searched a minute, withdrew something, and was hurrying out of the room again, when he caught sight of the figure at the window. Involuntarily he halted for an instant.

"Can you save it?" Helena cried, under her breath.

"I don't know--Brainard's got his coat off. Pray for us, will you?"

He was gone again.

Beside the narrow bed on which he lay every night, there dropped upon its knees a figure in sumptuous furs; a face such as men vow themselves ready to die for was pressed into the hard little pillow. Helena Forrest breathed a prayer of beseeching for a life she had never seen, and when she had done lifted eyes wet with tears.

As Hugh Breckenridge, protesting at the lateness of the hour, marshalled his friends into the great car at the door, Doctor Brainard came out of Mrs. Kelcey's house and ran across to the curb.

"Don wants me to tell you that the baby's pulled through. It's gone off to sleep with his finger in its fist, and he won't leave it. He says 'good-night' to you."

"Was it the prayer or the potion that saved it, Doctor?" questioned Breckenridge in his caustic tone.

"I don't know," said the doctor--and there was something new and gentle in his voice. "It was very nearly beyond potions--I'm inclined to think it was the prayer." An hour afterward, Doctor Brainard, sitting wide-awake and thoughtful before Brown's fire, was aware of the quiet entrance of the younger man. He looked up, and a radiant smile met him.

"Still doing well, I see, Don."

Brown nodded. He sank down into the chair opposite the doctor and ran his hand through his hair. In spite of the brightness of his face the gesture betrayed weariness.

Doctor Brainard got up. He went over to the corner where his overcoat hung upon a peg in the wall, and took from a pocket a small instrument composed mostly of tubes. He inserted certain earpieces in his ears and returned to the fire.

"Sit up and let me get at you," he commanded.

Brown glanced round, saw the doctor's grotesque appearance with the stethoscope in position, and shook his head. "That's not fair. I was up rather early, and it's been a fairly full day--and night. Take me in the morning."

"I'll take you right now, when you're tired enough to show up whatever's there. Coat off, please."

He made his examination painstakingly, omitting no detail of his inquiry into the state of both heart and lungs.

"What would you say if I told you you were in a bad way?" he asked.

Brown smiled. "I shouldn't believe you. I know you too well. You can't disguise the fact that you find nothing new, and the old things improved. I know I'm stronger than I was a year ago. Why shouldn't I be--with nothing to do but take care of myself?"

The doctor whistled. "How do you make that out, that 'nothing to do?'"

"With the demands of a great parish off my shoulders the little I do here is child's play."

"After I left you with the baby," said the doctor, "Mrs. Kelcey followed me into the other room and told me a few things. In your old parish you had your sleep o' nights. In your new one I should say you spend the sleeping hours in activity."

"In my old parish," said Brown, studying the fire with an odd twist at the corners of his lips, "I lay awake nights worrying over my problems. Here, I'm asleep the minute my head touches the pillow. Isn't that a gain?"

"Too weary to do anything else, I suppose. Well, I shall have to admit that you are improved--surprisingly so. You are practically well. But what I can't understand is how a man of your calibre, your tastes, your fineness of make-up, can stand consorting with these people. Be honest, now. After such a visit as you've had to-night with the old friends, don't you feel a bit like giving in and coming back to us?"

Brown lifted his head. "Doctor," said he, slowly, and with a peculiar emphasis which made his friend study his face closely, "if the Devil wanted to put temptation in my way, just as I have decided on my future course, he did it by sending you and the others down here to-night. If I could have jumped into that car with the rest of you, and by that one act put myself back in the old place, I would have done it--but for one thing. And that's the sure knowledge that soft living makes me soft. I love the good things of this life so that they unfit me for real service. Do you know what was the matter with my heart when I came away? I do. It was high living. It was sitting with my legs under the mahogany of my millionaire parishioners' tables, driving in their limousines, drinking afternoon tea with their wives, letting them send me to Europe whenever I looked a bit pale. Soft! I was a down pillow, a lump of putty. I, who was supposed to be a fighter for the Lord!"

"Nonsense, man!" cried the doctor, now thoroughly aroused. "You were the hardest worker in the city. Your organizations--your charities--"

"My organizations, my charities!" The words came in a tone of contempt. "They were all in fine working order when I came to them. They continued to work, with no help from me. They are working quite as well now in my absence as they did in my presence. St. Timothy's is a great, strong society of the rich, and the man they engage to preach to them on Sundays has mighty little to do that any figurehead couldn't do as well. Down here--well, there is something to do which won't get done unless I do it. And if this neighbourhood, or any other similar one, needs me, there's no question that still more do I need the neighbourhood."

"In other words," said the doctor, "Mrs. Kelcey can do more for you than Bruce Brainard?"

The look which met his frown was comprehending. "Doctor," said Brown, "every man knows his own weakness. I like the society of Bruce Brainard so well that when I'm in it I can forget all the pain and sorrow in the world. When I'm with Mrs. Kelcey I have to remember the hurt, and the grind, and the hardness of life--and it's good for me. It helps me, as St. Paul said, to '_keep under my body and bring it into subjection_.'"

"That's monkish doctrine."

"No, it's St. Paul's, I tell you. Remember the rest of it?--_'lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway_!'"

"You! A castaway!" The doctor laughed.

Brown nodded, rising. "You can see a long way into a man's body, Doctor, but not so far into his soul. There's been a pretty rotten place in mine.... Come, shall we go to bed? It's almost two."

The doctor assented, and Brown went into his bedroom to make it ready for his guest. Closing the drawers he had opened in such haste two hours before, his eye was caught by something unfamiliar. Against one of the framed photographs which stood upon the top of the chest leaned a new picture, unframed. By the light of the small lamp he had brought into the room he examined it. As the face before him was presented to his gaze he stopped breathing for the space of several thudding heartbeats.

Out of the veiling brown mists of the picture looked a pair of eyes at which one glance had long been of more moment to him than the chance to look long and steadily into other eyes. The exquisite lines of a face which, having seen, men did not forget, were there before him, in his possession. It was the face of the woman, young and rich with beauty and with worldly wealth, who had, three years before, refused to marry Donald Brown.

"How did this come here? Did Sue leave it? Or did _you_?" He questioned the photograph in his mind, staring at it with eager eyes. "Wasn't it enough for you to come here to-night, to make me realize how far apart we are? You like to play with men's hearts--so they say. Don't you think it's a bit cruel to play with mine--now?"

But he looked and looked at the enchanting face. And even as he looked Doctor Brainard called out from the other room:

"By the way, Don, I suppose you've noticed that Atchison seems to be getting on with his suit. Everybody thinks it's either an engagement or likely to be one soon. Pretty fine match, eh?"

It was a full minute before the answer came. When it did it sounded a little as if the speaker had his head in the clothespress which opened from the small bedroom, albeit the tone was gay enough: