Chapter VI: Part THREE: The Light (1)

1

The Rev. Needham awoke from his siesta wonderfully refreshed. These benign afternoon snoozes had a peculiar and sometimes quite poignant effect. The minister dimly felt it must have something to do with psychology. For he always awoke feeling so spiritual, so calm and strong. Today, of course, there was particularly traceable cause: he had gone to sleep, one must remember, in a miraculously resolute, yes, a truly masterful, mood. Did we call it Nietzschean? Well, perhaps it really was almost that. At any rate, waking was delicious. There was a largeness, a breadth about life which made one want to square one's shoulders, step out proudly. Before the dresser mirror, in the act of resuming collar and tie, the Rev. Needham actually did square his shoulders a little. He even threw out his chest somewhat. Oh, it is sweet to be master of one's own destiny!

Out on the porch he found his wife, rocking there all by herself and looking a little vacantly off at the shrubs and trees.

"Ah, Anna," he said; then perched himself in a nonchalant, really an almost rakish manner, on the railing, throwing one leg over the other, and folding his arms. He yawned a little audibly, concluding that function with a kind of masterful, contented smacking of the lips--even whistled a few bars of a gay secular tune.

"Did you sleep well, Alf?" Anna Needham spoke calmly, rocked calmly. She still eyed the shrubs and trees in a spirit of almost hypnotized calm.

"I had a magnificent nap," he assured her.

Anna rocked more slowly. "Alf," she hesitated.

"Yes, Anna?"

"Alf, I wonder if I can be getting old ...?"

"Old, Anna?" He was really quite shocked at the suggestion.

"Yes--I don't know. Sometimes...."

"Nonsense!"

"I don't know ..." she continued dreamily.

"But why should you ever think such a thing?"

"Well, lately there've been times when I've felt so kind of still. I don't know, but I thought--I thought it might be...."

"Why, Anna ...!" he cried in vaguely frightened tones.

"I don't know, Alf." Her manner retained its essential dreaminess. "Sometimes when I sit alone rocking, I feel so kind of still...."

The minister laughed, then, with even an attempt at something like boisterousness; but it was plain something of his earlier flamboyancy had vanished. Abruptly, right in the heyday of his most glorious mood, the shortness of life struck him with uncanny force. Life's shortness, and, though he indignantly repudiated the insinuation, its relative futility, after all. Where had one come from in the beginning; just what was it one was up to now; and where was it one would go when the breath of life ceased flowing? Oh, what a piece of work is man! These were the secret inner workings. With a thrill of genuine horror the minister found himself asking what he knew, as a fact, after all these years of preaching it, about the immortality of the soul. It was terrible, _terrible_! Oh, that he should be afflicted with such doubts! And not ten minutes ago the Rev. Needham had squared his shoulders and flashed so grand a defiance at his own reflection....

Curiously enough, this sudden unpleasant sense of renewed insecurity was augmented, at the moment when it was most acute, by the rippling laughter of his approaching sister-in-law. Miss Whitcom and her friend were returning from their tête-à-tête in the bower. The laugh, whatever it might mean to the minister, signified that the lady was not, so easily, to be carried off her feet, and that, however thrillingly she might talk about not being a pioneer any longer, no mere travelling man was to capture her without at least a concluding scramble.

Barrett O'Donnell knew quite well what the laugh signified. But it didn't, for all that, very greatly disturb him. Lord, he'd waited twenty years: he could wait twenty more, if necessary. There is not that hot impetuosity in the affection of souls matured which characterizes youth; not that fever, that restless, exquisite rush of heady devotion. Still, there is perhaps something in being quite sure your love isn't misplaced. Yes, in a way, to be sure may be even better than to possess.

The return of Miss Whitcom and Mr. O'Donnell from one direction fell simultaneously with the return of Louise and Lynndal Barry from another. The porch became a very lively place, all at once, where a few moments before it had been so quiet, with only the minister's wife there, rocking.... Louise was greatly relieved that it should be so. To have returned to a silent and deserted house after what had passed between herself and Lynndal on the beach must have proved next to unbearable. As it was, the frantic difficulty of the situation would be lightened, if only temporarily.

Marjory pounced at once upon the westerner, turning from her ancient suitor with a careless alacrity which seemed saying: "After all, I am free, quite superbly free!" And O'Donnell muttered an "Ah!" scarce audibly; and what he meant by it was this: "I know you'll come back to me. You always have and you always will. We are not _quite_ free, either of us, in one sense of the word." One glorious, indomitable sense of the word.

Marjory wanted to know more about the dam in Arizona, and especially she wanted to get at the other side of this tragic love affair--this bit of high tragedy in humble setting. In art, she thought, tragedy has a way of being generally treated nobly and loftily; but in life, somehow, it often seems almost absurd. Yes, first it was the dam. But she did not really care two straws about the dam. She had got beyond all such things as dams in her pilgrimage.

The Rev. Needham opened up a conversation about the Point with O'Donnell. But he kept eyeing his daughter, who leaned against the railing of the porch, her hands clasped before her. Alfred, despite his calling, was a wretched reader of souls. The look in one's eyes or the line of one's lips meant next to nothing, definitely--if only because these things might mean so bafflingly _much_.... If you actually shed tears, then he would be reasonably sure you must be unhappy. Hearty laughter signified, of course, a state of hilarity. However, the Rev. Needham's spirit, with Milton's, took, really, no middle course. There lay an almost blank chasm between tears and laughter--although, alas, the fact of its being a chasm did not make it any less conducive to prickles in one's suspended heels.

"There's only one thing," O'Donnell was observing, "--only one thing I've got against this place."

"What's that?" asked the minister.

"There are so many signs!"

It took the Rev. Needham just a moment to comprehend what was meant. "You mean the Assembly notices?"

"I suppose that's what they are. If you'll pardon my saying so, it seems sometimes as though there's a sign on every tree. One says you mustn't peel the birch bark, and the next one announces a lecture on such and such a day."

"I'm afraid they have multiplied the last few seasons," admitted the minister. "We don't seem to notice--so used to them, I suppose. There are picnickers, you know--come from other parts--and we have to look out for the natural beauty or it will be all spoiled. As for the lecture announcements," he concluded, "the--the church, you know, has to keep pace, nowadays. Yes, it--it has to advertise a little!" He spoke almost glibly, and sighed; but quite brightly, indeed almost chirpily.

Miss Whitcom caught the confession. And she hopped down at once off Mr. Barry's fine Arizona dam--which diverted water into a huge reservoir, thus keeping off the Needham wolf--and administered what might vulgarly be termed a knock-out.

"I should say it does have to advertise! Oh, yes, the church must _indeed_ hustle to keep pace! Even so, I hear the attendance is dropping off."

"Marjory?" began her brother-in-law with unhappy and interrogative vehemence. The low bow, alas, would do no good at all here. This woman was unspeakable. She struck him as almost a monster! Not that this was manifest, of course; it was merely the way she struck his invisible soul.

"Oh, gracious, Alfred, I don't mean _your_ attendance. I'm not referring to your particular church. I speak as a sociologist--a biologist!" She laughed. "Yes, I always try to consider these things in the broadest sense. And I don't see why you should look so shocked, for after all I'm only agreeing with you. Don't you see I am? The church _does_ have to advertise. Has to stir up public controversies for the sake of getting itself discussed--always biologically speaking, Alfred. It has to get itself recognized as a social force. That's the word: a social force! It must be a little sensational even, sometimes, to match the growing sensationalism of life. What more natural? An atmosphere of spry colloquialism. Yes, the modern church must compete. Why _not_ introduce the movies into Sunday School--?"

"We haven't yet done any of these things, Marjory," declared the Rev. Needham earnestly, a trifle coolly. He seemed really to insist upon receiving all her shafts personally.

"Some churches do though," volunteered O'Donnell--and laughed a little nervously.

Mrs. Needham had been following the conversation, glancing first at one speaker then at another; now she spoke: "Marjory, how do you ever manage to keep track of everything that's going on here in America?" It was not the first time since her arrival amongst them that Anna's sister had amazed her with a grasp of home affairs--often with flashes of vision which had been closed to her before.

"Oh," replied Marjory with pleasant lightness, "but you see such demonstrations as these exude an influence--it's a little like the wireless. One feels their thrill all around the earth."

"Besides," interposed O'Donnell quite seriously, "you know Tahulamaji's awfully advanced."

"Is it?" asked Mrs. Needham guilelessly, turning towards him.

"Oh, tremendously," he assured her. "As I make it out Queen Tess was one of the most advanced women of her time. I tell you, things move in Tahulamaji!"

Mrs. Needham had not hitherto felt, as she indefinitely put it to herself, very well acquainted with this travelling man friend of her sister's. Suddenly she found herself holding the centre of the stage with him. It amounted to a little thrill.

"I suppose, after all, things aren't so different there--conditions, should I say?"

"Well," hedged O'Donnell, beginning to perceive that he had entered somewhat dangerous waters. He glanced at Miss Whitcom, who merely shrugged her shoulders, which seemed equivalent to an assurance that, having involved himself unnecessarily in her behalf, he might just flounder along, so far as she was concerned, until kingdom come.

"Maybe," suggested the minister's wife with a dart of genuine brilliance, "the churches do all those things in Tahulamaji!" Would it not seem to explain Marjory's being so uncannily well informed?

The Rev. Needham inwardly fidgeted. He felt he ought to be in the forefront of the discussion, defending his cloth. But suddenly he seemed, within, sadly and impotently, to have nothing to say. There were times when he felt he didn't possess a single honest prejudice any more, or hold one single irrefragable opinion. What a fortunate thing for the soul is its kind bulwark of flesh!

Anna's suggestion at length stirred Miss Whitcom, however. "Oh, no," she said quietly, "they don't."

"Still," O'Donnell objected, "you told me the Queen was incorrigibly modern, and you said she adored the movies."

"Oh, we're modern," replied Marjory with an ungodly smirk. "Yes, we're modern enough in Tahulamaji. I may say we're quite in the van of civilization. We're so modern that we _haven't_ any churches. So how _could_ we advertise?"

"No churches, Marjory?" queried her brother-in-law. "But you seem to forget--"

"Well, at least nothing you'd call a church, I'm sure, Alfred--outside of what the foreigners have imported, that is. A few little rude native altars.... That's all. You know, 'when two or three are gathered together'.... It's--well, I've sometimes felt it's the _spirit_ that counts in Tahulamaji, when it comes to matters of religion. Everything's very, very simple. We really haven't time to do it the grand way, even if we knew how."

They hadn't time for church in Tahulamaji! The awful question which now wracked the soul of the minister was: If they hadn't time for church, what _had_ they time for? A dimly terrifying curiosity assailed him. The Rev. Needham had read vague things about the people of the tropics. And a flush overspread his lined, worried face.

Yes, Marjory was an odd sheep, if not a black one. Perhaps she could hardly be called a _black_ one, though there were certainly times when the Rev. Needham saw her as through smoked glasses. Anyway, an odd sheep she certainly was. She did not seem to belong in the herd at all--let alone the family! The rest were all quiet, sensible, orthodox. But about everything Marjory said or did there was something unorthodox, something wickedly theatrical. What a past she had had! Just think of it! Just think, for instance, of spending five whole years of one's life in a place like Tahulamaji! Well, the ways of God were unsearchable. So, it seemed, were the ways of His satanic opponent. The reason she seemed different from themselves must be, fundamentally, that she had had a past. But why had she had a past? Yes, the minister's speculations always must terminate with the knottiest question raised and unanswered. It seemed a part of his destiny.

And meanwhile, there stood Louise and Lynndal, not six feet apart, yet never meeting each other's look; never speaking. How unpremeditated and tragic! He had come all the way from Arizona, and now they had nothing to say to each other. Louise, leaning wretchedly against the railing, seemed, just now, able to realize nothing clearly. The episode on the beach had confused her. She felt herself baffled.

As for Barry's state of mind, that, also, was considerably cloudy. It had happened--the inconceivable, the impossible--and it was now over. Yet was it really over? In just a swift moment like this had _all_ his dreams been broken? It seemed incredible: he could not believe it. He tried to reassure himself, endeavoured to keep hope alight. Something wise and still, deep in his heart, counseled patience. It might be she was only confused: it seemed strange to her, having suddenly a reality like this in place of her dreams. Louise was a dreamer--he knew that. And what might be going on inside her wayward little head, who could guess? So far Barry had only distinguished himself as a wizard of the burning sands. He was a man who could make deserts bloom like the rose. Yet who could say but perhaps he knew a little, too, about the subtler bloom of a woman's heart? Patience, he argued within himself. It might be she was only puzzled, and that she still loved him in spite of the thing that had happened. He would be patient a little while. If it turned out at last that there was no hope, why, then he would go back to the desert again. That was all.

2

It was nearly five o'clock when Leslie and Hilda emerged from the woods with their supply of roasting sticks. They had gone about their task in the most leisurely fashion, mutually animated by a curious half complacent acceptance of each other's presence. Merely being together had become such a complete yet informal delight that neither of them stopped to analyse it at all. And yet, if their hands chanced to brush, or, as happened once when a bee threatened, she laid her hand a little clutchingly on his shoulder, the emotion quickened. They hadn't much to say to each other, although a good deal of talk, such as it was, passed between them. Neither could remember afterward anything that was said. And all they had intrinsically to show for their afternoon was an armful of roasting sticks.

"Where shall we keep them until it's time?" asked Hilda, as they tramped through the sand and up to the screened porch.

He gazed dreamily off to sea.

"Les?" she repeated, quaintly drawling.

"Hm?"

"What shall we do with the sticks? Leave them here? Or do you want to take them down where the fire's going to be?"

"Oh," he said at last, "I don't care." And he let himself down slowly on to the steps. "I feel so dreamy I can hardly move. Did you ever feel like that, Hilda?"

"Yes, many times," she replied, sitting down one step above him and clasping her knees. Her canvas hat was tossed aside, and the hair on her forehead was a little damp. There ensued a long, drowsy silence. At length she said: "I hope we cut enough, Les."

He was still gazing off across the sea, which the declining sun was making flash in a splendid and quite dazzling way. It was merely a warm, hypnotic stare, and he really saw nothing at all; yet he was faintly conscious of things--above all, he was conscious of a feeling of simple young happiness.

"Les?"

"Hm?"

"You do think we cut enough, don't you?"

"Sure, I guess so."

"It would be so funny," she laughed, "if there didn't happen to be enough to go round and some had to just sit and watch the others eat!"

"Most of them do that anyway, don't they?" he murmured. "I mean they sit there and watch you work like a slave, and then swallow everything that's poked in front of their mouths. I guess all roasts are alike."

"Well, anyhow, _we_ won't feed any of the lazybones tonight, Les. We'll eat our own! I'll feed you, and you feed me. Will you?"

He glanced up at her and smiled. Then he slid down a step and lay back, resting his head against the step on which she sat, a little to one side.

"You look quite different upside down," he volunteered.

"How, Les?"

"Oh--I don't know. Your eyes look so funny!"

"Yours do, too!"

He thrust a sun-browned arm over his eyes and crossed his legs. It was she who now gazed off over the blazing waves. Not exactly a classic tableau. You would never mistake them for Romeo and Juliet. And yet our little ubiquitous friend Eros viewed the picture not without a smouldering, an incipient satisfaction.

Louise came out of the living room door on to the porch. She could see Hilda's head and shoulders, and she crossed over to the screen door at the top of the flight. Hilda looked round quickly.

"Oh, hello, Lou!"

Louise nodded, and made motions of salutation with her lips. There was no sound, however. She cleared her throat--tried to smile.

Leslie drew himself hurriedly into a more dignified posture. "Hello," he smiled, rising a trifle uneasily.

"Just see how many we got!" cried Hilda, jumping up and gathering the roasting sticks in her arms.

Louise stood there looking down through the screen door. "You certainly got enough!" she exclaimed, a little shrilly--the result of her trying so desperately to be perfectly natural.

"Well," Hilda went on, "you see I kept finding little trees so straight we simply couldn't pass them by. And Leslie just kept cutting. See how sharp they are?"

Leslie, as though availing himself of the invitation (regardless of its not having been exactly addressed to him) placed a finger on one of the smoothly whittled points and withdrew it with a small, oddly juvenile howl of mock distress. The wounded finger went into his mouth. Leslie was certainly _not_ at his ease.

Suddenly Hilda ran up close to her sister and asked, in a very low voice: "Have you been crying?"

Louise's heart jumped. "Why, no," she replied.

"It must be the sun in your eyes," said Hilda.

"Yes, it must be." And she turned away from them and sat in the same chair her mother had occupied when she had demanded of Alfred if he thought she might be growing old. Louise rocked slowly, just as her mother had rocked. Yet her thoughts rushed madly to and fro. There was a battle of ghosts in her heart.

Aunt Marjie came out breezily, accompanied by Mr. O'Donnell, who was about to take his departure. The parent Needhams stood side by side in the cottage doorway, hospitably bowing, but seeming to realize, with a kind of fineness, that they should come no further, and that the very last rites must be performed by the lady for whose sake he had been asked.

Mr. O'Donnell extended a hand of farewell to Louise, who rose.

"Oh, are you going?" she asked.

"Yes--simply have to. They'll decide at the Elmbrook that I'm lost, strayed, or stolen and will have a search party out!"

"Good-bye, Mr. O'Donnell," said Hilda, prettily holding out her hand. She was deliciously unspoiled.

He held her hand a moment, looked from her over to Leslie, then at the bunch of sharpened sticks. And he brazenly winked at Miss Whitcom, who, glancing discreetly in the direction of her elder niece, remarked that there was likely to be a gorgeous sunset.

O'Donnell and Leslie shook hands. "See you again tonight?" asked the boy politely.

"Yes, indeed!" Mrs. Needham called out. "He's coming over to the roast."

"You'll have a devil--I mean, it's very dark in the woods," said Leslie. He was quite horrified at the slip, and hurried on, expressing quick generosity by way of gaining cover--a generosity more generous, no doubt, than he had at first contemplated. "You'd better let me come and light you through."

O'Donnell patted the lad's shoulder in a very kindly manner, just as he might pat an obliging bellhop in one of the hotels on his route, who volunteered to get him up for a five o'clock train.

"Oh, no," he said. "Don't you bother."

"No bother at all," replied Leslie, suddenly seeming to grow quite enthusiastic over the idea of lighting Mr. O'Donnell through from Crystalia. His eye encountered Hilda's. It was finally agreed, and O'Donnell departed, in the very best sort of spirits.

When he had disappeared, the Rev. and Mrs. Needham strolled out on to the porch. The Rev. Needham was slowly gaining back his ruffled poise. He and O'Donnell had been smoking some more of the good cigars, and Marjory hadn't ventured anything so very revolutionary since the remark about not having time for church. He slipped an arm, just a tiny bit stiffly, about his wife's waist. He didn't exactly cuddle her; still, thus fortified, he looked across at his sister-in-law with an inner mild defiance.

"Well, I must run along," said Leslie, drawing a deep and very leisurely breath.

"Do you _have_ to go so soon?" Hilda stepped down toward him.

He nodded, thrust his hands into his pockets, drew them out again, was painfully conscious that Louise was sitting up there on the porch.

Hilda came down another step and stood close to him. "It's awfully early, Les." Then a brilliant idea sent her unexpectedly scurrying up the steps and on to the porch. She whispered something in her mother's ear, upon which Mrs. Needham looked somewhat startled and shook her head. She and Eliza had planned so carefully. Leslie seemed almost like one of the family; but what if there shouldn't be enough?

Hilda tossed it off gallantly. She tripped back down the steps and said she would go with Leslie as far as the choke-cherry tree.

"Good-bye," said Leslie politely to the porch.

"Good-bye, Leslie," said the Rev. and Mrs. Needham in unison.

And it never occurred to them as odd that their younger should be accompanying Leslie as far as the choke-cherry tree. Oh, the incredible blindness of parents! Oh, what strangers one's children really are, after all! And yet, how could it be otherwise? Quaint souls--perhaps they did not even remember, now Lynndal had come, that it was to the choke-cherry tree their elder had been wont to go....

Louise called out: "'Bye, Les." She was rocking more vigorously. Her hands were clasped behind her head and her cheeks were flushed. There was a curious wild look in her eyes. Aunt Marjie thought her actually handsome just then.

At the choke-cherry tree Leslie and Hilda indulged in a very desultory leave-taking. Yet their talk was utterly devoid of anything either poetic or romantic.

"You'll get your shoe all full of sand, Les." He was scuffing it mechanically back and forth in the dust of the roadway.

"I don't care."

"I hate to have sand in my shoes."

But he laughed: "I don't know what it is _not_ to."

Then he patted the bark of the choke-cherry tree and ran his palm up and down it, as though he were a lumberman and knew all about trees. And he gazed up at the tiny ripening berries. Suddenly he stopped patting the trunk and turned, leaning his back against it. He stood there, confused a little, tapping first one heel and then the other against a projecting root; for his exploring hand, as it chanced, had encountered a certain recently carved set of initials within a rude heart. All that was so long ago!

"What shall we do about the sticks?" asked Hilda. "Shall we have papa carry them down to the fire?"

"No, I'll carry them down. I'll come over and get them."

"But you're going to light Mr. O'Donnell through from Crystalia," she reminded him--then waited breathlessly.

He didn't disappoint her. "_Please_ come along--won't you?"

"You mean when you go to light him?"

"Yes."

"You really want me to?"

He nodded.

A man was approaching them. He came round a bend in the road. It was Lynndal Barry.

"I've been for a little stroll," he explained. "These woods are certainly wonderful!"

"Yes, we like them," replied Hilda, in a very polite but at the same time very friendly tone. She was just a tiny bit afraid of the man who had come so far to marry her sister--not because Mr. Barry was the kind of man who spreads about him an aura of awe, but because Hilda knew there was something the matter. Yes, something seemed to be wrong. But Hilda did not guess _how_ wrong.

"Were you going back to the cottage?" she asked.

"Yes, I thought I would."

"Then I'll walk back with you, if you don't mind."

"Well, good-bye," said Leslie.

"Good-bye, Les. You'll come for me?"

"Yes."

"What time?"

"Whenever you say."

"Right after dinner?"

"All right."

"So long."

"So long, Hilda."

He departed, scuffing foolishly and happily in the sand.

"We were cutting sticks for the roast," explained Hilda as she walked back beside Lynndal toward Beachcrest.

"It will be jolly," he remarked. "You know, I've never been to one of these beach roasts in my life."

"You never have?"

"No. And I've looked forward to the beach roasts ever since--well, ever since I knew I was going to be up here this summer."

"You see, you came just in time!"

"Yes, didn't I?"

"The mid-summer Assembly Roast is the biggest roast of all."

"I'm in luck," he murmured.

And so they chatted together until Beachcrest was reached.

3

On the porch, where Miss Whitcom had been regaling her relations with, it must be admitted, a rather sensational account of how the inhabitants of Tahulamaji had formerly been cannibals, the absence of Lynndal Barry was noticed.

"Where is he?" asked the Rev. Needham, with a quick inward flash of nervousness.

Louise was assailed by a great longing to come out, wildly and fully, with some superb flow of words which should ease the burden of her heart. It seemed urgent, in fact, that she explain his absence. Aunt Marjie braced herself for an expected scene. But just then the missing man put in an appearance. Hilda preceded him up the steps. Instead of crying out that her heart was breaking, Louise felt suddenly an insane desire to laugh. Hilda was leading Lynndal back, as though to compensate for leading Leslie off!

"Well, well," began the Rev. Needham, with all the hospitable bluffness he could summon. "We were talking about you!"

"--Wondering where you were," continued Mrs. Needham.

"--Fearing you might have embarked for the wicked city of Beulah," Marjory gaily carried it on, "where young men are not safe, and the song of the siren never dies away!"

The Rev. Needham looked startled, then rather grim, then again just vaguely uneasy. Barry explained that he had been strolling in the woods.

"No danger of getting lost, at any rate," declared Miss Whitcom, "since the church advertises so efficiently!"

There promised to be a rather pained silence; but Mrs. Needham rose, smoothed down the front of her skirt, and announced that she must go and dress for dinner.

"Ah, yes," lamented her sister cheerfully, "one must dress, even in the wilderness."

"Oh, we don't really make anything of it, Marjie. Only it sort of rests you--to make a change."

"Dress! Isn't it absurd? Yet how we dote on it! In this respect we aren't, after all, civilized to any dangerous degree. Why, in Tahulamaji--"

"Marjie, there isn't a bit of use of your changing. You look lovely."

"Thanks," replied her sister. "Still, one must."

"We all do just as we please up here in the woods, you know."

"Ah, but the men, the men," whispered Miss Whitcom with delicious vulgarity behind her hand. "And after all, we must have some regard for the conventions." Her tone was just a little pointed.

"Yes, Marjie, I suppose, in a way...." Anna admitted.

"And then--there's the church," Miss Whitcom persisted, almost brutally whimsical.

"The church?"

"Since it tries so very hard to keep abreast of the times--one might say, _à la mode_!"

The sisters went into the cottage. Louise rose.

"I must dress too," she announced, crossing quickly to the door.

"I like that gown ever so much," said Lynndal.

She turned and cast him a rueful glance. "Thank you. But I really must change." She smiled faintly. The high colour had faded, and her eyes had lost their look of splendid wildness.

"Wait for me!" cried Hilda, making a tomboy dive for the door, and capturing her sister's waist, hanging on her affectionately as they went in together.

"At any rate, we don't have to dress," laughed the Rev. Needham quite jovially.

"You're sure? I'd begun to get rather scared. You see I didn't bring out anything...."

The minister laughed again. "No, the men up here are more sensible."

"What did Miss Whitcom mean," asked Barry after a short pause, "when she spoke the way she did about the church?"

"The church, Barry?"

"Something about it being _à la mode_."

"Oh, I--the fact is, Barry, I don't quite know myself. I'm sure she didn't mean anything in particular. That is, you see Marjory has a kind of playful way of speaking.... You have to know her well to understand her."

"She seems like a very jolly sort."

"Yes, yes. She's ever so jolly. Sometimes I feel.... Well, of course, every one has their times of being jollier than at other times, don't they?" There seemed something here appealing, a little pathetic, even--as though Alfred Needham, if he only _could_ one day get his heels down, would turn out really very jolly himself.

The conversation was growing thin, a little vague. It was a relief to have the talk drift into other and more concrete channels.

"Well," remarked Barry, "just before I left for the East we got the final engineering report on the new San Pedro reservoir. It looks pretty good to me."

"Something to open up a whole new area?"

"Yes, that's it. By building another dam--" And he explained the rather technical proposition.

"A good deal like the Santa Cruz, isn't it?" asked the minister.

"Yes, a good deal like that. You can be pretty sure of the water near the source, but of course the farther downstream you go, the less dependable the flow is. Sometimes there will be floods, and then again sometimes the bed will go entirely dry."

"Yes, yes," said the Rev. Needham meditatively, and almost as though in these fluxes of the Arizona rivers he recognized a subtle resemblance to life's fluxes which kept him ever hopping. "Let's see," he continued, "do I own anything just there, in the San Pedro valley?"

"You certainly do," replied Barry, and he drew a map out of his pocket, spread it on his knee, hitched his chair a little closer, and traced the Needham holdings with his pencil. "This strip in Cochise County--that little triangular patch there where Pinal and Pima join.... It ought to add quite a bit to your income, when the deal is really swung."

The Rev. Needham sighed appreciatively. "I wouldn't have any of these opportunities if it weren't for you being right there on the spot to look out for things."

"Oh, I do what I can," said Barry quietly. He folded up the map and put it away. "You see I'm very much interested in Arizona--new settlers coming all the time--new homes under way...." His eyes were dimly wistful. "Pretty soon we'll he getting another man in Congress...."

"Barry, do you suppose later on you'll be getting into politics?"

"Politics?" He laughed it away a little, yet at the same time clung to it, too. "Oh--you never can tell." As a matter of fact, as Louise could have told her father, the spring of a secret ambition had been touched. "Just now there's too much to do, developing--opening up the country.... There are plans in the air for another big power plant near Yuma. By the way, I can get you some shares there, if you like. As for politics...."

The Rev. Needham folded his arms with quiet pride. This was a man after his very heart. Perhaps he would be a Representative at Washington some day. Perhaps he would be Governor some day. And in the meantime, here he was, coming right into the family! No, the Rev. Needham could not have been any prouder of a son.

Upstairs all the ladies were in the midst of their toilettes. "O, world! O, life! O, time!"

"Are you girls putting on low neck?" demanded Miss Whitcom in her shrill way.

"Lou is," replied Hilda. "She always dresses when there's anything to go to, but I never do." She sighed. "Just think, Aunt Marjie, I haven't got a single low neck!"

"Cheer up, little one!" the aunt called over the three-quarters partition. "Your time's coming. I don't see--achu!--what you do about sunburn up here! _Achu!_"

She was deluging her neck and face with powder. Fortunately they were only going to a roast, and there wouldn't be much light, especially after the fire began to die down. Then she started slightly and frowned. Why on earth should one be concerned about a little sunburn? And yet--there was a thrill in the question, too. Miss Whitcom admitted she never would have been so concerned in the old days. These were new days. After all, Barrett seemed the only reality there was left. Yet there had seemed so many realities to begin with.

"Louise, what's the matter?" whispered Hilda, as she slipped a fresh jumper over her head and began tying its lace.

"What makes you think there's anything the matter?" asked her sister thickly.

"I know there is! You don't act like yourself at all. Is it--is there something about you and Mr. Barry?"

Louise's throat ached. She did not start, nor did she flush and cry out: "How did you guess?" Her throat ached; it ached cruelly.

"Lou, dear--_tell_ me what's the matter!" implored Hilda, throwing her arms around her sister, and laying her cheek against the other's shoulder a moment.

"I--I can't," faltered Louise.

"Yes, you can. I knew there was something!"

Louise shook her head wretchedly.

"Doesn't he seem the same?"

"Don't, Hilda!" She wriggled nervously.

"Louise!"

"I--I...." She pushed herself free of an embrace which possessed, just now, no comfort. "Please don't say anything more. You mustn't."

"Well, I won't, Lou dear. Only it makes me feel bad to see you look this way. And I know there's _something_ the matter."

"No, there isn't," replied Louise woodenly.

Hilda discovered, far in an unfrequented corner of her own little special chest of drawers which had been moved in out of Aunt Marjie's way, a fine new scarf. It was a scarf she had never worn before. Indeed, she had forgotten all about it. Now she remembered it had been put away carefully, with the understanding that it was to be brought out for some very special occasion. Her heart told her the golden hour had come. Her heart was so full of news that it began singing.

"We're going to light Mr. O'Donnell through to the roast!"

"Who?" asked Louise. She spoke impulsively, as all the Needhams were in the habit of speaking. Had she thought a moment she would not have asked.

Hilda told her, with a thrill of most abundant happiness. She hugged her happiness; she did not know what it cost her sister.

Louise braced herself. The evening had to be got through somehow. But after tonight--then what? Her father would be expecting Lynndal to come to him to talk it over. And how terrible! Would it, perhaps--her thoughts were flying helter-skelter--would it perhaps make some fatal difference in the Western business? Would Lynndal continue to look after the interests, just as before? Could any one reasonably expect the relations all around to remain _quite_ what they had been?

Remorse stole dully over her. She had come between her father and his friend. Could he forgive her? And could her father? Why had she done such a thing? But _was_ it final? All those letters.... At length he was here ... had come so far ... and what had she done? In the morning she had gone to meet her lover. It had seemed fine and romantic. She had told Leslie they must be only friends now. It had all appeared quite easy and rather delightful. Then Lynndal had come, and ... and then what? What was it that had happened? It had seemed to her that she could not give herself up....

If only she could have a sudden change of heart! One read of such things, now and then. If only she could rush joyously down to him, where he sat talking with her father, and tell him she _did_ love him! But after all, she could only go on dressing, miserably dressing.

"Do I look all right, Lou?" asked Hilda, much as Louise had put the same question to her at dawn.

Her sister told the plain truth in a syllable. Yes. She certainly did. Of course a jumper, even with so fine a new sash under its collar, wasn't quite as nice as low neck. But Hilda was undeniably charming. Louise felt a sudden elemental pang of jealousy.

Hilda's heart was in a great flutter. She liked Leslie ever so well. She didn't know any other boy she liked so well as Leslie. Have a care, little Hilda. Ah, have a care! Your age protects you. But later, when you have substituted loving for liking, things will be different. When Louise was your age she let Harold Gates kiss her a great many times. She let him put his arm around her, and when he had to leave her on account of the girl he had brought along with him to the picnic, she did not care--very much. Or at least she did not care very _long_. But now see, Hilda. Your sister has become a woman. She has learned to love, and play quite fearlessly with love. But love is a terrible thing, and your sister is not very wise.

Have a care, Hilda! As you value what is precious and fine in life--beware! Oh, Hilda, beware, when the heart has matured, that you do not reap a whirlwind of ghosts....

4

At dinner Miss Whitcom was treated to an entrancing account of the Assembly Roast, viewed as an institution.

"Of course," explained the Rev. Needham, "in the largest sense it's a religious function--a kind of general get-together, before the lecture season opens." It seemed a now more cautious way of reiterating that the church must advertise.

"But you see," contributed Mrs. Needham, "it was started by the Goodmans. He's a clergyman from Cleveland."

"It's their anniversary," added Hilda.

Thus, piecemeal, the momentous facts came out.

"Anniversary?"

"Yes, Aunt Marjie."

"Let's see--how many is it this year?" asked Mrs. Needham turning to her husband.

"Twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, I think," he replied.

"Oh, Alf, do you think the Goodmans have been married that long?"

"You know," declared Miss Whitcom, "all this is interesting but terribly mysterious. Thanks, Anna, I've had the pickles. I'm mystified by these Goodmans from Cleveland. So I understand the Midsummer Roast is in the nature of an anniversary party also?"

"Well, yes," replied Anna Needham. "It was started, I guess, more than twenty years ago, even before we began coming up here. There were only a few families at first. Alf, were the Goodmans the first to begin coming up?"

"Unless it was Blakes," he suggested.

"But didn't the Blakes begin coming because the Goodmans did, Alf?"

"Well, maybe so. Marjory, can't I help you to a little more of the lamb?"

"No, no," protested his sister-in-law. "I'm doing famously."

"Alf, Marjie will have some more potatoes, I'm sure."

"No. Doing _fam_ously. Never mind my plate, but do let's get it straight about the Goodmans. Thanks, Hilda, I will have another biscuit. It all sounds terribly romantic!"

"Yes, it is," Hilda boldly assured her. "They always kiss right before everybody on their anniversary. And in the morning--"

"Hilda!" cautioned her father, rather sternly.

The girl endeavoured to conceal her confusion by addressing herself very elaborately to the spreading of a biscuit.

"Oh, now, Alfred," remonstrated his sister-in-law, "you're worse than a war censor! Since it's quite apparent the whole Point knows about the kissing--Anna, _may_ I trouble you for another glass of water?--why shouldn't I be admitted to so very large a secret? There's surely room for one more, and you may pledge me to profound secrecy if you like. I'm dying to know what it is they do in the morning!"

Hilda was gaining back her nerve. "They run away and have breakfast together at the hotel! That's what they do, Aunt Marjie!"

"Oh, how charming!"

"Yes, Aunt Marjie, they've done it every year since they were married!"

"They have? Well, now, I call that pure romance! How coy! How it must carry them back! I think I'd really like to know the Goodmans. There isn't such a great deal of pure romance available nowadays. People are too self-conscious."

"You'll meet them tonight," was the hope Mrs. Needham held out. And then, while her husband began carving fresh slices of lamb, and since the subject of the Midsummer Roast seemed about exhausted, Anna went chattily on: "Marjie, I must say I like Mr. O'Donnell real well."

"Speaking of pure romance?" her sister sparklingly interpolated. "Yes," she continued, "Barrett's a good chap. Used to be a bit egregious, you know, in the old days. But he's mellowed wonderfully. I--I'll let you in on a tremendous secret," she added, with mock breathlessness, and addressing herself to Alfred behind her hand. "If he should happen to ask me again--I'm only saying _if_, you understand...." She finished eloquently in pantomime.

The Rev. Needham dropped his fork, but quickly recovered it and went on eating. He had just told himself that no matter what new monstrosity his sister-in-law might enunciate, he would magnificently let it pass. He would not appear to notice it. He was a clergyman. There was a certain dignity to be preserved in spite of everything. But good heavens, she had said it behind her hand!

"Oh-h-h!" said Hilda. She giggled.

"Barrett _is_ an old peach," continued Miss Whitcom quite brazenly. "He's stood by me through everything!"

The Rev. Needham nearly dropped his fork again. That awful word. Everything! And she could be so damnably cool about it! Was he narrow or old-fashioned to feel the way he did? Yet would not feeling any other way be simply debauching oneself? Ah, if, instead of his changing his own point of view, she might somehow drop off into a deep, painless slumber.... And never wake....

"Well, then," said Anna, who had kept perfectly her head, and was also rather thrilled, "I hope he will, Marjie."

Marjory looked dreamily off through the open window. A few birches caught the evening light mistily, and were dyed a delicate pink all along their slim white trunks. Would he? Ah, of course! And yet.... Well--hm?... If not, why.... She mentally tossed her head. But what she told herself was not quite so haughty: "In that case I could hardly blame anybody but myself...."

By this time it might be said that the edge, at least, of hunger was taken off. All had eaten quite heartily, except Louise. But even Louise, though she dimly felt this was not as it should be, had found it possible to do at least a little nibbling. Of course it would be out of the question to expect her to eat like the rest. It was another case of Richard. Probably she would not eat just like the rest for a good while to come. Still, she would manage to keep going. One always did that in real life.

The Rev. Needham, however, was at length coming definitely to notice things. Louise, some more of the lamb? No? Surely more of the creamed carrots? But you're so fond of them! Ah, yes. There were sharp and anxious glances in the direction of this baffling elder daughter. She wasn't eating right. And when any of the Needhams didn't eat right, you could be very sure there was something wrong with the heart.

But now, anxious paternal orbs, let your troubled gaze shift to another plate--the next plate nearer your own. Oh, man of God, what cheer? Barry, another slice? Ah, but never you mind that--no one stops at a second helping here! No more potatoes, either? Tz, tz! Oh, reverend sir, what a load to fetch back to your expectant flock in the fall! Oh, if anything should happen now--now, just as life was becoming so kind! Oh, now--and those prickles in the heels occurring with less and less frequency, even despite the upsetting presence of Marjory! To have something go wrong--at his time of life.... To find the world running all to sixes and sevens....

Oh, it must be a wild and overwhelming fancy, nothing more than that! Barry (he rambled wildly in his mind) for mercy's sake more carrots? And aloud: "Just a few more, Barry?" _Good!_ No, no, one hasn't heaped them up. One only wants to be sure. And if there is no absolute assurance in this hard world, one so beset can be forgiven for taking refuge behind appearances--even behind appearances of one's own manufacture, in an extremity like this! Yes, by hook or by crook one must contrive to keep the best foot foremost!

Barry, as a matter of fact, was doing pretty well and feeling pretty wretched. He had got through the afternoon coolly enough on a kind of momentum generated partly by the decision that he had simply been a fool to dream such dreams, and partly by that hopeful, wise, desperate little word of counsel, that fine word, patience. But here, all at once, was a pang of reaction. All the old, warm, wistful love came rushing back. The ancient dreams of home and wife and children returned to taunt and torture him. Only last night, on the deck of the steamer, with the moon so soft on the sea--ah, only last night.... How he had let himself go! How he had even pictured things: the fireplace here, perhaps the piano there.... And how his cigar had gone out, and he hadn't noticed. But now he was sitting beside her at her father's table, and he did not know whether she loved him or not. And in his pocket was a box with a ring inside it--a ring for which there might never be any use.

Mrs. Needham noticed, too. But Louise had already explained that she had a headache. The mother did not suspect that there was anything necessarily portentous in the air, and her heart beat placidly enough. Her life seemed settling and settling. The current grew more and more tranquil. She had times of feeling so kind of still.

Later the talk centred in Arizona.

Barry glanced at Louise, and found her, as it happened, gazing sadly, quizzically, and with some abstraction at him. He looked away at once, trembling a little; and he carried on the theme:

"Of course Arizona strikes people in different ways. Some find the flatness and the sand depressing."

"Is it sand all over?" asked Hilda.

"Oh, dear no!" replied Miss Whitcom, with a vehemence which served to remind them all that she had been a pioneer in the cactus candy business and knew what she was talking about.

Even the Rev. Needham contributed something to his younger daughter's enlightenment. "There are lots of trees along the irrigation ditches. Barry, what kind of trees are they? I never can seem to remember."

"Cottonwood, mostly," he answered. "The foliage is a very delicate green."

"Oh, it must be lovely!" sighed Hilda, who romantically saw herself walking along beside Leslie beneath an everlasting row of the most beautiful trees anybody could possibly imagine. "How I should love to go out there!"

"Yes," mused Miss Whitcom, "and we mustn't forget the broad fields of alfalfa--so dark--the very greenest green in all the world."

Barry nodded slowly. "Yes, the river valleys are always quite fertile. Then comes the great Arizona desert, with cacti and mesquite and greenwood and sage. And beyond all that"--he had begun a little monotonously, but came at length to speak in a rather rapt way--"beyond all that, the dim blue of the distance, the lonely peaks of the mountains...."

"Grand old mountains!" added Miss Whitcom.

And it was odd, and no doubt sentimental, but the mountains all at once reminded her somehow of O'Donnell. Yes, O'Donnell was something like a mountain. Her heart quickened a little.

"Oh, I know I should just love it!" cried Hilda. And then she asked, in her almost breathless manner: "Are there any birds in Arizona?"

"Birds?" repeated Barry, a little abstractedly. "Birds? Oh, yes--all through the irrigated districts. There are orchards, you know. It's a fine sight to see them in full bloom. And the trees are alive with birds--meadow larks and mocking birds, mostly. And there are blackbirds, too. They sing in a wonderful chorus. And almost everywhere you'll hear the little Mexican doves."

"Oh, I remember the doves!" cried Louise suddenly, forgetting her wretchedness.

He looked at her wistfully and solemnly. "Some people say the doves have the sweetest song of all. There's a very plaintive note--you remember?"

"Yes," she whispered thickly, avoiding his eyes.

The breath of Fate seemed faintly to animate her having remembered the little Mexican doves. "I think," he said, "they have the saddest song of any of the birds."

5

A remark, dreadful yet tantalizing in the vistas it opened up, was overheard by the Rev. Needham as he was coming out on to the screened porch. It was a remark which set on foot an increasingly turbulent desire to know, unequivocally and without expurgation, just what had been the nature of his sister-in-law's life on the distracting island of Tahulamaji.

Mrs. Needham had retired to the kitchen for a final fling with Eliza about breakfast, leaving the minister alone in the living room with his daughter. Miss Whitcom and Mr. Barry had passed out on to the porch, and Louise had dropped down in a nice shadowy corner with a book--just as young ladies naturally and invariably do after dinner, when the light is beginning to fail, and their lover is waiting for them outside.

The Rev. Needham, whose suspicions had already been rather alarmingly roused, now felt sure not all was well. Why should Louise behave like this if all were well? And even Barry--Barry wasn't, of course, one of those romantic fellows who would always be sighing and rolling their eyes; but there were subtler manifestations.... They had gone walking together in the afternoon--thank God! There was that much to cling to. Yes, thank heaven they had done that much anyway!

But the Rev. Needham was so full of perplexity that he hardly knew what to do next. He told himself, in desperation, that everything _must_, in reality, be all right--rather much as his daughter had assured herself on the train that all must work out for the best: her best. He knew, as a matter of fact, that this was not quite honest persuasion. But it helped. Oh, it was a very present help. To tell the truth, it sufficed to carry him quickly out of his daughter's presence. In his heart, the minister knew that the issue ought to be faced at once. Yes, he ought to call Louise over on to his knee, just as in the old days, before any of the unhappy love troubles began, and ask her to tell him what had gone wrong. But he didn't call her over. Instead he began humming in a perfectly unconcerned manner, and strolled outside.