Chapter VII: Part THREE: The Light (2)

It was just as he reached the door that the Rev. Needham overheard the all but blood-curdling remark.

"You must realize," Miss Whitcom was saying to his daughter's fiancé, "that it's much too hot there to wear any clothes!"

It being patently too late to turn back, the clergyman came on; somehow reached a chair. He sat down quickly and began rocking. He rocked helplessly, yet withal in a faintly ominous way--perhaps, deeper still, with a movement of guilty curiosity: for after all he was but human, poor man.

The sun had just dipped, and the sky and the sea were alive with the fire of this august departure. A wraith-like distribution of cloud still received direct beams and glowed like a bit of magic dream-stuff; but the lower world had to rest content now with reflected glory--a sheen of softening brightness which would grow steadily thicker and thicker, like quandary in the clergyman's breast, till at length the light was all gone and darkness had settled across the sea and the sand. Ah, peaceful eventide! Good-bye, sweet day! But the heart of the minister was all full of horrid little quick jerks and a settling mugginess.

The conversation his appearance had served to interrupt did not continue as it had evidently begun. Yet even at its worst it appeared to have constituted merely a laughing digression from the major theme, which had to do with the perfectly proper topic of dry-farming. No one would think of calling the topic of dry-farming improper. But the tenor of the talk which succeeded the minister's arrival in their midst did not, for all its unimpeachable correctness, serve to diminish the poignancy of that awful phrase: too hot to wear any clothes!

"Mr. Barry," she explained to her brother-in-law, "has been telling me a lot of interesting things about the sorghums."

Alfred Needham cleared his throat--just as he always did, for instance, before ascending the pulpit on Sunday--and nodded. But he was not thinking about the sorghums--just as sometimes, it is to be feared, in the very act of coming out of the vestry, and with the eyes of the congregation upon him, he failed to keep his mind entirely on the sermon he was about to deliver.

"It seems they've made enormous strides since my day," she went on. "Mr. Barry, how many varieties did you say are now possible?"

"Well," he replied solemnly, his eyes large with helpless unhappiness, "the sorghums now include common or sweet sorghum, milo maize, Kaffir corn--and of course broom corn. These have become standard crops, and we're introducing them more and more into the southern district." He rocked a trifle self-consciously. All three rocked a moment in silence.

"There's considerably less rainfall down there," commented the Rev. Needham.

The statement had been carefully equipped with earmarks of the interrogative, so that, should it happen to prove incorrect, refutation would take the form of a simple answer to an ingenuous and perfectly natural question. The Rev. Needham found it urgent to keep his inflections always slightly interrogative. There was even a sly, sneaking hint of the useful question mark throughout the reverend man's theology. Ghastly as the thing must sound spoken right out, it is really doubtful whether the Rev. Needham would be caught altogether napping were the entire Bible suddenly to be proved spurious! Of course when Barry admitted that there _was_ less rainfall in the southern part, then the minister rocked with subtly renewed purpose, slapping the arms of his chair exactly as an acknowledged authority on rainfall might be expected to do. But of course it was all ever so much subtler than this makes it appear. It was infinitely more delicate than any mere I-told-you-so attitude.

"You know," continued Barry, who felt an unpleasant thickness in his throat, "the sorghums have to be able to withstand a great deal of drought. They roll up their leaves and seem to sleep for months at a time; and when the rain comes again they revive quickly and make rapid strides."

Inside the cottage sat Louise. She was huddled miserably over a book. She was not reading the book, though it chanced to be a very absorbing historical novel. It is hard to conceive of a young lady's not reading such a work with avidity and even breathlessness, under the circumstances. But to be perfectly accurate, Louise hadn't even opened the historical novel. It simply lay in her lap, and she was huddled over it. Her eyes were dry. She was utterly miserable. And just outside, in the full, fresh sweetness of diminishing dayshine, sat the man who had come all this way to put a ring on her finger. He was sitting out there in the romantic richness of the tinted evening, and he was talking about the sorghums!

Oh, a wise plant is the sorghum. When there is a drought it rolls up its leaves and waits till it is time for the refreshment of another rain. The sorghum knows well how to plan and bide its time. The _sorghum_ would not give itself too easily....

Out on the rustic bench which her dear father had so laboriously constructed sat Hilda. She was listening for steps in the sand. She would know whose steps they were when they drew close. It was growing quite dusky underneath the trees. The stars would soon be appearing. There had been a slight breeze all the afternoon, but it had died away; and on the beach the tiny waves were whispering that it had passed that way and was now still. The trees stood very quiet, but occasionally a squirrel would whisk by overhead. The squirrels, however, were turning in for the night now, and soon there would be no stir left save only the night stir of the woods. Far off sounded at intervals the shouts of young children--children younger than Hilda, and unfettered as yet by any sweet obligation of sitting very breathless, listening for steps in the sand.

"How lovely everything is!" thought Hilda.

When she saw Leslie she ran out to meet him--no mooning pretense at not having heard.

"Oh, Les, why don't you light it?"

He carried a Japanese lantern and was swinging it about in a very reckless way.

"Shall I?" he asked. "Now?"

"Oh, yes! It isn't quite dark yet, but it will be so much fun!"

"The candle's pretty short, Hilda. Do you think it will last?"

"Let me see." They bent their heads eagerly over the paper lantern.

"It isn't very long, is it Les? I guess we'd better put in a new one. There are lots of them at the cottage."

And before he could protest she was flying off.

On the screened porch she found the entire household assembled. Mrs. Needham had completed her session with Eliza and was now pleasantly rocking. Ah, there was a rhythm in her rocking--especially of late years. It was the sort of rhythm the vers librists have so entirely broken away from. It was a rocking which rarely went slower or faster. Perhaps it was the Homeric hexameter. Or it was stately blank verse, with maybe the quaint rhyming couplets of Crabbe and Cowper. No one could ever think of mistaking it for Edgar Lee Masters!

Louise had come out also. Hilda, as she flew by and on into the cottage, saw her sister sitting beside Lynndal Barry on a rocking settee. There was, as a matter of fact, not a single stationary piece of furniture on the porch. To Anna Needham, rocking was pleasant and even actually profitable. To her husband--well, to the Rev. Needham it seemed a kind of muscular necessity. And the girls had always been used to it. So all the chairs rocked.

Aunt Marjie sighed briefly as Hilda ran by. Boy-crazy. Well, life wasn't made for waiting and working alone. Somehow, this sea air--these lustrous, still nights--were stealing away her resistance. Yes, O'Donnell was a kind of mountain. And yet, curiously enough, he was only a travelling man, too, just as he had always been. Yes, he travelled for Babbit & Babbit. But she would go home to him at last. She would put her head on his shoulder, if he would let her, just like a silly young thing. Suddenly she saw her life as a restless confusion of ambitions and beginnings. Oh, to have spent it so! To have waited as long as this! To have been so afraid of giving herself too easily....

Hilda came running out again. She clutched a new candle in her hand. Her eyes were quite wonderful.

"Where are you going?" asked Mrs. Needham, appearing a little bewildered by this cyclonic going and coming.

"He's out there; we're going to start now!"

There was just sufficient coherence to bring Miss Whitcom to her feet. Always impulsive, she stepped to the screen door and thence down on to the path.

"Hilda!"

"Yes, Aunt Marjie?"

"You're going to light O'Donnell through to the Point?"

"Yes, Aunt Marjie."

"Well, be sure you don't lose yourselves!" No, even Marjory, with her amazing retrospect of brass, did not quite dare to say: "Don't lose _him_!" And yet, so far as her heart was concerned, it really amounted to that.

The last thing Hilda heard, as she sped off, was the patient voice of Lynndal Barry. The minister had asked him another question about the sorghums.

"Yes," Barry was saying, "there are about as many varieties of Kaffir corn and milo maize as of the saccharine sorghums. Only a few have been tested in the South: red Kaffir corn, black hulled white Kaffir, standard milo maize, and dwarf milo maize. But we intend--"

Hilda, skipping with happiness, heard no more.

6

The procession through the forest of Betsey was a very romantic affair. First came Hilda and Leslie, the latter carrying the lighted Japanese lantern swung over his shoulder. And behind them walked Mr. O'Donnell, like some great monarch; and he must indeed, just then, have felt himself at least the king of all travelling men. What would his colleagues of the grip think if they could see him now? Had any of them, for all their store of timetables and their samples and routes and customers, ever marched through so royal a forest, on such a night, lighted by young love and a gay paper lantern?

Over the hills and through the valleys of Betsey! It was a wonderful lark. Of course it wouldn't last. Real larks never did. He would go back to his grim bag of samples, and she would go back to her beloved Tahulamaji. There would be thousands of miles between them once more, and life would settle back into the uneventful dog-trot which had become the established gait. But tonight! Tonight he was parading the forest of Betsey like a very king, and his way was lighted by a bright paper lantern which danced at the end of a bough.

"Now," he thought slyly, "if I were a poet...." However, being no poet, but only a travelling man in the employ of Babbit & Babbit, our friend simply walked along, like the plain mortal he was; and was content, if with a sigh, things should be as they were. "Ah, this is fine!" he would exclaim in his quiet way. And Hilda, for all her heart was so richly moved, would merely reply: "Yes, we like it."

It had been agreed upon that O'Donnell should be led directly to the scene of the Assembly Roast instead of being brought all the way round to Beachcrest first. The Needhams, Miss Whitcom, and Barry were to walk up the beach, when it was time.

It was at length about as dark as it ever gets in moonlight season. The moon had not yet risen, but would be coming up soon. The Rev. Needham suggested that it was time to start.

Miss Whitcom was on her feet at once. There followed quite a little flurry about wraps. The Rev. Needham and Barry strolled on ahead down to the beach. They walked slowly, and the ladies were to overtake them. Both men were smoking cigars, the ministerial supply seeming happily inexhaustible. If one's faith might be as inexhaustible!

Being a little ill at ease, they talked of obvious things: the broadness of the beach just here, the firmness of the sand, its pleasant crunch under the feet.

"We tried to have a board walk down from the cottage," observed the Rev. Needham, "but every winter the sand drifted all over it and buried it, so we had to give up the idea." He was wondering nervously whether Barry would seize this occasion to ask for his daughter's hand.

"You really don't need a walk," replied his guest. "It's an agreeable change from the city this way."

"Yes--yes, it's a change."

There was a short, awkward pause. Then Barry remarked. "You've got an ideal location here."

And the minister answered: "Yes, we like it."

They trudged on a little way in silence.

"There certainly are a lot of stars out tonight," commented Barry, transferring his gaze rather abruptly from the sands to the heavens.

"Um--yes. Yes, there are a great many. And there will be a full moon, later on."

"Yes, I know. The moon was wonderful last night on the lake. I sat out on deck a long time."

"You said you had a good trip across, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes--perfectly smooth."

Another silence--an ominous desperate silence.

"Well," quoth the Rev. Needham, turning around and peering back, "I wonder if they're not coming?"

"I think I see them coming now across the sand," remarked Barry.

"Yes--yes, I believe I do, too," the other agreed.

"That's Louise in the white dress."

"Yes, that's Louise."

It wasn't long before the ladies overtook them. The tension was at once both relieved and heightened. Anna Needham claimed her husband's arm, Louise walked beside Barry, and Miss Whitcom walked alone with her thoughts. However, the groups were not isolated. Yes, there was safety in numbers. Single encounters began to be desperately unpleasant.

What was the matter? In Anna's day, young folks had been given, she remembered, to wandering significantly off by themselves on such rare nights as this. But Louise and Lynndal kept close. Anna was troubled about this--even whispered about it to her husband as they walked along. Alfred started and began to talk about something else. They ought to face this thing. They ought to face it squarely and with courage. But Alfred couldn't. He told himself they must be only imagining things.

They passed the lighthouse, so shadowy and gaunt itself, yet with so beaming an eye! Adjoining the tower was the keeper's residence. There were lights in some of the rooms. A child was calling. A dog was sniffing about. He was quite used to resorters, and did not even bark as the party approached and passed the premises. Louise stooped to pat the dog's head. Barry said: "Hello, sir!" The dog wagged his tail slowly, but did not follow them away from the house. He had learned all life's lessons in puppyhood. He would never stray. What a grand thing, never to stray!

When they were rounding the final curve of the Point separating them from the rendezvous, Mrs. Needham cried: "Oh, look--they're lighting it already!"

The cone-shaped pile was visible, and fire was leaping all about the base. Flame shot up quickly to the very peak, and thence on up, higher and higher, toward the stars.

There was quite a crowd assembled about the fire when the people from Beachcrest arrived. O'Donnell and his delightful escort arrived from another direction at almost the same moment. Then they all sat around in the sand, and kept jumping up to introduce and be introduced. Naturally the Needhams knew everybody on the Point; and it was always quite a thing to have guests. Here were the Goodmans, smiling hosts to the entire assembly. Had they not started the thing long ago when their married life was in its springtime? Ah, the Goodmans! Miss Whitcom remarked afterward that she felt as though she were shaking hands with royalty. "It honestly reminded me," she said, "of my first meeting with Queen Tess!"

In the excitement, of course the roasting sticks had been forgotten, and of course Hilda insisted upon running all the way back with Leslie to Beachcrest after them. By the time the sticks were there, the fire had flared itself into a condition inviting the approach of wienies and marshmallows. A ring of resorters hovered round the fire with sticks held hopefully out and faces shielded by an arm. Naturally there were some mishaps. Some one, by deftly turning and turning, would coax a marshmallow to the point of the most golden perfection, only to have it plump dismally down in the sand at last. Then there would be a chorus of sympathy and disappointment from a group of sitters, each of whom had perhaps more or less hoped to be favoured with the delicious smoking confection. Or else it would be a frankfurter that plumped. But there never was a roast without tragedies.

And everywhere romped the children. Sometimes they would throw themselves on to their stomachs and begin ambitiously digging in the sand toward water. Then they would leap and chase each other, or they would go about thrusting fallen faggots back into the fiery heart of the blaze.

The provision baskets stood hospitably open. In one might be discovered a wealth of cool, slippery frankfurters; in another heaps of split and buttered buns; in still another dill pickles, a pot of mustard. And of course there were always marshmallows. Some preferred marshmallows to frankfurters and some preferred frankfurters to marshmallows. But the majority ate ravenously of both alike, displaying little or no preference.

The eastern sky grew lighter and lighter. The trees stood out mysterious and very black against it.

"Look, look!" cried the children.

For the moon was rising now.

The young boys grew restive. Their stomachs were simply closed to the incursion of any more refreshment; it was a pity, no doubt, but full was full. The boys began enlarging their area of prowess. There was a great sand bluff inland a short way, where a rift in the hills cut a deep, barren gash across the face of the forest. The boys crept far up the bluff and then leapt out, down and down.

The east was luminous, and the great moon crept higher and higher. When the boys leapt, their bodies were silhouetted against her bright disc. They would appear out of the shadow of nothing, poise a moment, leap into space, disappear.

"Well," observed Barry, in some surprise, "I see you've brought a book along."

She had really forgotten the book was in her lap, as she sat huddled over it so miserably in the cottage living room after dinner. When she had gone out on to the porch afterward she had carried it with her automatically, and so had brought it all the way to the roast without thinking. Louise had a grimly whimsical feeling that she couldn't get away from the book. "If I'd only thrown it into the harbour this morning!" she thought. But to him she merely replied, a manufactured gaiety edging the words without lightening them: "Oh, yes--it's a book I picked up by chance." She handled it carelessly, and her quick glance shot to a distant group. Leslie was lying stretched out in the sand, his chin in his hands. He was looking up at Hilda, who appeared to be recounting something of great interest. Louise felt her face go hot with jealousy. "I--I don't know much about it," she went on, flapping the cover of the book listlessly back and forth. "It was recommended to me by some one who had read it."

"What is the name?" Barry asked politely.

She held the book up in the firelight, flaunting it in the face of the man who had come so far with his love and his brave little ring. It was the darkest hour of her pilotless groping.

Leslie's laugh rang. The little group took it up. Then Leslie himself appeared to become the centre of interest. He began telling a story which involved a great many gestures. At one stage he even jumped up and turned a cartwheel, and one of the girls in the crowd exclaimed: "Can't you just see it?"

"Oh, what shall I do?" thought Louise, fighting her tears.

The moon climbed slowly up the sky, and the young boys, one after another, with loud shrieks of joy, silhouetted themselves darkly against her gleaming face.

And then the speech making began.

The Rev. Goodman led off. He had something in the nature of a set speech for the occasion, which varied surprisingly little from year to year. It bade the guests welcome, always in the same felicitous terms, and contained the same allusions to the salubriousness of the climate, the unmatchable beauty of their Point. Alluding to God's Great Out-of-Doors, the Rev. Goodman would invariably employ the same grand gesture.

"And now," he concluded, "I am sure, dear friends, we feel a gratitude in our hearts to the Father of All Goodness, who has guided our footsteps," et cetera, et cetera. "And may we all bow our heads with the Rev. Needham, and join him in prayer."

The Rev. Goodman sat down and the Rev. Needham scrambled to his feet. He closed his eyes very tight and prayed quite loud--as though defying Marjory to prevail against him here. It was the next thing to being right in the pulpit! But he felt her gazing at him in that shrewd way of hers which seemed saying: "Alfred, have you really got truth in your heart?" What did Marjory mean by looking at him that way? What right had she to question his faith and to speak of truth?

It was really a very good prayer, though perhaps just a little more earnest than the occasion actually required. When the prayer was finished, he sat down. (Naturally there was no applause.) All the other speakers would be applauded, but no applause lightened the sitting down of the Rev. Needham. However, there was a general stir in the camp, just as there is in church when backs, wearied with the Sabbath bending, straighten cheerfully for another seven days of sin.

And then the Rev. Goodman, who was the official toastmaster, jumped up and told a humorous story, which every one had heard before; after which he turned to the Rev. Blake and asked him to recite _The House By the Side of the Road_, a very great favourite at the Point. Then the congregation sang that cheering and beautiful hymn, _Rock of Ages_, under cover of which most of the boys escaped and ran violent races up and down the beach. Then the host told another moderately humorous story, in which he very cleverly incorporated something about the brother clergyman upon whom he meant to call for the next selection. This clergyman (who hailed from Dubuque, Iowa), not to be outdone, scored heavily by telling a humorous story he had learnt off from _The Ladies' Home Journal_, but which in the telling he so miraculously manipulated that the Rev. Goodman became its hero! There always was a vast amount of pleasant playfulness at these Assembly Roasts. Later on the congregation, sitting, sang that sublimely joyous hymn called _Jesus, Lover of My Soul_. Since there was no judicious organist at hand to speed things up, the singing was inclined to sag, and one half of the camp finished a little bit behind the other. But this was a very small matter indeed, because, as every one knows, it is the spirit that counts most, especially at such times. Innumerable other speakers, many of them purely secular, were called upon. And Mrs. Goodman, who was quite an elocutionist, read a little story which only the innermost circle could hear. And Miss Whitcom nudged her friend. They slipped away and strolled along the beach together.

"I thought I'd rescue you, Barrett," she said.

"But I was immensely enjoying myself," he smilingly protested.

"Yes, I shouldn't wonder--especially the singing! You know, I was so desperately afraid they might call upon me--just as a curiosity, you know--and how I should have shocked them!"

"You think so?"

"Why, of course. I never open my mouth without shocking somebody or other. I don't really set out to do it. I simply don't seem able to help myself."

"You don't shock me."

"Perhaps not--any more."

"But you know you never really did."

"Never?"

"No. At worst you only opened my eyes."

"Well, Barrett," she said, after a short silence, "I think I've always rather felt that: that you understood, deep down--that you weren't quite shockable, in fact."

"Yes," he said meditatively. They strolled along, saying nothing more for a little time.

At length she asked: "Do you remember the time we swam for the Allenhurst medal?"

"Of course I do," he nodded.

"You remember how even we were--how we outdistanced all the others?"

He smiled queerly. "They hadn't a chance!"

"Right-O, Barrett. We knew how to stroke in those days! Well," she continued after a moment, "and you haven't forgotten how I won the race--and why?"

"A sudden cramp--I thought I was done for!"

"Oh, no, my friend." They were both smiling. "Time has played tricks with your memory. It wasn't a cramp. Now think, think _hard_. You went lazy at the finish. And so how could I help pulling in ahead in spite of myself?"

"Marjory, I--"

"Be not forsworn, my friend. Let's agree that you went lazy at the finish. After all these years, can't we? It was a singular thing," she went on, half gravely and half smilingly. "You know I was just at the age.... Well, it had a most singular effect upon me. Yes, I may say it altered the whole course of my life, Barrett." She laughed softly.

"Great heavens, Marjory, you don't honestly mean ...!"

"Well, you see, I was one of the first of the 'new' women, and I just simply rebelled. That was all. You haven't forgotten how I sent the medal back to you?"

He looked quite serious. "I know," he said softly. "I was stupid about it for a long time. There didn't seem to be any sense in your sending it back. In fact...." He hesitated.

"Do let's be perfectly frank!" she invited, with another short laugh.

"Well, I thought it a wilful and childish attitude to take. I didn't want them to say I'd beaten a woman. We were still living on the fringe of chivalry, you know, when it was more important to walk on the proper side of a woman and tip your hat to her at a certain angle than to give her the vote. I was brought up in a delightful Victorian atmosphere, where it wasn't considered the thing even to beat a woman at tennis, if you could decently help it."

"Ah, yes!" cried Marjory. "Just think of it! But gradually you grew wiser, Barrett--you and the world."

"Yes," he muttered, "I and the world."

"You came to see...."

"Yes, I came at last to see that you can't go lazy at the finish any more. I told you, and I meant it, that at last I've capitulated--capitulated at every point."

They walked on a little way in the moonlight, close to the waves. All at once a bold thrill of tenderness came on him. He drew the woman into his arms. She responded slowly. Afterward she professed to be not quite sure whether they had kissed.

But there was a witness. Oh, yes--there was a witness who could emphatically and joyfully testify that they did kiss, and that they kissed more than once. The witness, of course, was our ubiquitous little pagan god, who had abandoned at least a half dozen most promising cases at the roast to chase for a moment down the beach after this pair of obdurate mortals who had held off for twenty years.

7

At about ten o'clock the Rev. Needham took out his watch and thought it was time he and his little party set their faces homeward. Mrs. Needham had been talking gentle gossip with Mrs. Blake and the wife of the minister from Dubuque; but she got up at once and obediently took her husband's arm.

"We go to bed early at Beachcrest," she explained. They went to bed early in town, for that matter, though the full truth went uncommunicated.

"Where are the girls?" demanded the Rev. Needham, looking anxiously round.

Louise came up hurriedly, followed by Barry. "Are you starting home now, papa?" she asked, with what sounded strangely like eagerness.

"Well, we thought we'd just be starting along. It's--it's not late yet, you know. We'll just slip on ahead and get the cottage lighted."

"I think we'll go along now too."

"Oh, I wouldn't hurry. The fire's quite good yet."

"Lynndal is tired," she insisted. "He didn't sleep more than a couple of hours on the boat." And she gave him a very complex glance in which there was something whisperingly like an element of tenderness.

"Well," capitulated Mrs. Needham.

But Louise was only one daughter. Where was Hilda?

Where indeed? Where _was_ she?

Anxious eyes explored the assembled company. Most of the young people had mysteriously made off, some this way and some that, but all alike into the friendly embrace of the darkness which lay so thick beyond the glow of the fire. Where was Hilda?

"I think I saw her with the lad--is it Leslie?" said Lynndal Barry.

"Oh--Leslie," repeated Mrs. Needham.

"You didn't notice which way they went?" asked the minister.

"No, I'm afraid I didn't."

Then Louise came to the rescue. She pointed miserably, yet also with a faint, new fact-facing grimness, toward the lake.

"They haven't taken out the _canoe_ ...!" Alfred Needham was horror struck.

"It's perfectly calm, papa," Louise reminded him dryly.

Then, indeed, they saw the canoe, on the moonlit water. Both Leslie and Hilda were paddling. But they were not exactly paddling toward the shore.

"She knows it's not allowed, out like this at all hours of the night!" cried the minister.

But his wife reassured him in her gentle way. "Alf, I wouldn't worry. Leslie will look out for her."

Louise lowered her head. Then she moved almost imperceptibly closer to Lynndal. At length the homeward march was begun. But the Rev. Needham stopped again suddenly, looking at his wife in a helpless way.

"Anna, _where's your sister_?"

"Dear me!" cried Anna Needham. "We were starting right off without her!"

"Is that Miss Whitcom?" asked Barry.

"Who?"

"Where?"

"The lady just ahead, coming this way."

It was true. There was a lady approaching along the beach. But she was with a man, and the man....

"Alf!" whispered Anna, gripping her husband's arm.

"Well?"

"Oh--_look_!"

"What is it, Anna?"

She murmured in almost an ecstasy: "Why, he's got his arm right round her waist!"

The awful intelligence that this was indeed Marjory, and that a man had his arm around her waist, smote the minister's consciousness with peculiar and climactic force.

Hilda and Leslie took their own good time about coming in off the lake. It was so wonderful out there in the moonlight.

"I've had a perfectly grand time!" she told him, her voice thrilling richly with conviction. She knew she had had a grand time, and whatever might be the sequel when she faced her parents, the grandness would never, never diminish.

They ascended the slight sand elevation and reached the steps leading up to the porch. Moonlight patched and patterned the steps. They did not go any farther.

Hilda sat down, drawing her knees and chin together, while Leslie whistled softly.

"Will your father be mad?" he asked.

"Oh, no!" the girl exclaimed, with the full and emphatic authority of one who is gravely in doubt. "Why?" she added. "It isn't late, is it?"

Leslie pulled out his watch. "N-o-o. Only twenty after eleven."

"Twenty _after_ eleven? Twenty after _eleven_! Oh, my goodness! I didn't have any idea it was so late. It seemed as though we were only out there a couple of minutes!"

"It did to me, too," admitted Leslie.

The lateness of the hour, however, appeared to exert no immediate influence upon either his recognition of the wisdom of departure or hers of withdrawal to bed. Leslie swung back and forth, clinging to a slender birch tree which grew quite close to the cottage. Its silver leaves crashed gently together, as though a breeze were thrusting its way through.

"I could simply sit out here all night!" Hilda declared.

Leslie admitted he could too. Presently he did sit down. He sat down beside Hilda, but, as before, one step below her. It was certainly a lovely night. His head somehow found her knee; then Eros could hardly contain himself! Hilda ran her fingers very lightly through his hair. They did not bother to talk much.

At length he asked: "Shall we go out after raspberries tomorrow? Would you like to?"

"Oh, Les--that would be lots of fun!"

"All right."

"Shall we take a lunch so we won't have to hurry?"

"Good idea."

"What time will you come, Les?"

"What time do you want me?"

"Oh--I don't know."

"Right after breakfast?"

"Oh, yes!" Her answer to this question held no slightest inflection of doubt.

"What time do you have breakfast?"

"Never later than eight o'clock, and it only takes me a minute to eat!"

Leslie appeared to have forgotten all about going back to the city, after all....

There was another warm silence. The boy had no idea of starting for his own cottage, nor had Hilda any idea of going to bed. It didn't, for some strange reason, occur to either that the parent Needhams might be waiting up in there, and that the minister, harassed over dim prospects of ruin perceived in the relationship of his daughter and the man who handled the Western interests, was attaining an attitude of really appalling austerity. No, they didn't bother their spoony young heads about any of these things, until all at once the cottage door opened, letting out upon them a flood of light from the living room.

"Hello, papa!" cried Hilda, guiltily and very affectionately. She jumped up.

The Rev. Needham did not say much out on the porch; but when Leslie had crept off, after hurriedly squeezing the girl's hand, and Hilda had been marshalled within, the law was laid down with unusual vigour. Mrs. Needham took it all rather more quietly, primarily because she did not share, in its full poignancy, her husband's alarm over Louise. Of course she was concerned. But the poise of climax was beginning to assert itself. No doubt tomorrow, if a reign of chaos really did set in, Mrs. Needham would rule over the turmoil like a very judge. She would become dominant, as when she went to rescue her daughter from the Potomac. It was perhaps her only complex.

Hilda had just been sent up to bed, rather subdued, but in her heart immensely radiant, when Marjory arrived home. O'Donnell wanted to hang around awhile, but she wouldn't let him. No, she positively refused to linger any longer in the moonlight. She reproved herself a little. She reproved him a little, too. They had already been quite romantic enough for one night. And she hustled him off with a lack of ceremony which went with her years and her temperament. All the same, he managed to steal a glancing kiss. And Eros--who I forgot to say had remained in hiding out there--Eros told himself that this was infinitely better for his purposes than a mere handshake!

When he had gone, she sat down on the steps alone, for a moment. It was so wonderful--life was--and the night. She watched the moon declining over a just-troubled sea. Then abruptly she became conscious of voices in the cottage living room.

"Now, your sister!"

"Well, Alf?"

"_She's still out!_"

"Oh, Marjory knows the way."

"But at such an hour!"

"It's only a quarter to twelve, Alf."

"I know how the Point will be talking tomorrow!"

"Alf, I--"

"Oh--I've nothing to say. No, Anna, I realize she's your sister. But I must tell you what I think." And he was back once more on the topic that so turbulently absorbed him. "I think Marjory has been led into an unfortunate way of living. She's always run so free and never cared what people thought or said. I really don't know how the Point is going to take her." And after a moment's pause, during which the minister could be heard pacing up and down: "Anna, what do we know about the nature of her life in Tahulamaji? Has she told you anything definitely about that? No. But she's hinted...." He paced on, and presently added: "Now here she is, just back; and the very first thing she does is walk all over with a man's arm round her!"

Miss Whitcom abandoned the wonderful night. When she entered, her sister smiled and brightened generally. But her brother-in-law seemed rather taken off his feet.

Marjory wanted to make the minister feel perfectly at home, so she sat down and began rocking cosily.

"How snug you're fixed here!" she murmured. "How happy you ought to be, Alfred, in your little nest! Ah, it's fine to be in the bosom of a family again. You know, I feel somehow as though I'd come back from an absence of nearly a lifetime. It's a curious feeling, to come back like this. Like a sort of prodigal, Alfred--just fancy! But I _did_ have to go away," she pleaded earnestly. "In the beginning, it was quite necessary! You see there were such a lot of things I wanted to find out, and I felt from the very first--Anna, you remember how I used to talk to you about life, and all that?--well, I somehow felt I shouldn't find out anything just sitting in the front parlour with a family album spread open on my lap. You see, it wasn't what the others were like that I wanted to be like, and it wasn't what all the others had done that I wanted to do in the world. So I broke away. Yes, the prodigal left, to roam far and wide. Now that we're chatting here all snug, I may tell you, Alfred, that it's been pretty interesting and pretty broadening."

"Marjie, dear--"

"Now, Anna, _don't_ let's go up to bed just yet. Not _just_ yet. It is so cosy down here, and I'm much too excited to sleep. Just a little while. I--I want to visit with Alfred a little about my life in Tahulamaji." The atmosphere in the living room grew subtly electric. The minister sat rigid. But the speaker went on in a cheery, simple way: "Just think, just think! When you would be sitting down in your nice house in Ohio, there I was...." She interrupted herself with a laugh. "It does sound rather dreadful, now doesn't it? You in Ohio and me.... Fancy my going way off there alone--for you know the Tahulamajians were once cannibals!--all by myself, and--and _living_! Gracious, how extraordinary it does sound!"

She rocked with folded arms and peeped at her brother-in-law out of the wicked corners of her eyes.

"But it's such fun," she went on, a little solemnly, "keeping your personal life all ship-shape--all ship-shape, Alfred--and yet really feeling, as you go along, that you're not missing a single thing that's worth while. No, not a single blessed thing, Alfred. When I went to Tahulamaji I hadn't an awfully clear notion of what I was going to do there. You see I thought I'd just have a look-around, as we say. Oh, Alfred," she chatted, "such a lovely spot! So warm and tropical, with music at night over the water.... Alfred, how you would love it there!"

He shifted uneasily, and she went on: "What I did, though--what my life in Tahulamaji really turned out to be--wasn't after all very poetic, or even essentially tropical, when it comes to that. Yes, I've often thought I might have chosen a more harmonious vocation. But one must grasp what one can and be content. The fact is, Alfred, I went into the drygoods business."

"Drygoods!" cried her sister.

"Yes--just think of that--and after all the really exciting things I've done in my life! But that's exactly what I did, Anna. Yes, that's what my life was in Tahulamaji. And you've simply no idea how the thing took! The natives, you see, were just beginning to wear clothes--regular clothes, I mean, dear brother. And in a few months I had an establishment--an _establishment_, I tell you, with departments and counters and clerks.... It was perfectly beautiful to see them skipping about, and the little cash boxes running on their tracks overhead...."

"Marjie, _really_?"

"Yes, indeed. Of course that came just a little later on, after electricity had been introduced. The arrangement was somewhat crude, but it worked. Anna, you've no idea the things you can do if you really set your heart on them! Yes, in time we even had cash boxes overhead, and there was I, up in the cage where all the cash boxes went to, making change and keeping the books! That's what makes me laugh so, when I think of it: you living in your nice house in Ohio, and me up in the little cage with the cash coming in by trolley!"

"Marjory, Marjory!"

"The third year I had a dressmaker over from San Francisco, and the business trebled at once. The poor dears had been trying to make their own clothes, but of course they didn't know much about styles. I had a circulating library of pattern books, but it was a great day, I tell you, when the dressmaker arrived! They closed the schools, and a reception was held. Even the Queen came down the line! I have a manager now," she concluded, "running the business. I said I simply had to get off for a rest. Alfred," she soared to her climax, "your sister has worked herself weary and rich. How much will the new parish house cost?"

The Rev. Needham gasped. This is really not an exaggeration. He gasped--and it was, this time, no merely inner gasping, either. Marjory--the new parish house ...!

"Why, Marjory!" he cried, his heart deeply touched. There sounded again here that former note of appeal or even pathos.

Nevertheless, long afterward, when the fine new parish house was all finished, and the church could hold its own a little while longer in a world which was changing so rapidly, a grim spectre stalked between the minister and her magnificent donation. It was the spectre of the Bishop whose bed she had seen made up. Did Marjory think _he_ would sleep on two mattresses, like the Bishop? And buy an upper for his golf sticks?

Miss Whitcom had risen to bid them good night. The indignant cottage lamp had begun to sputter and fail. It had never before been kept burning so late. But she lingered long enough to give them the full benefit of one of her delightful and so characteristic shafts of bluntness.

"O'Donnell," she said, "has stood by all these years. Think of it! Think of its taking so long as that to be sure! Of course it wasn't that I ever cared two straws for anybody else. O'Donnell's never had any active competition, except from my overwhelming notions about being free to work out my life. Well, I've had my freedom, and I've worked it out. And now--well, he's asked me again--tonight. But what do you think? I haven't given him a definite answer yet--not _yet_! I'm going over to the Elmbrook Inn as soon as the sun's up, though. I guess I'll stand down under his window and call out to him softly. And when he comes to the window, I'll say: 'Barrett, I've had my fling!' Alfred--you don't think I could find my way through tonight ...?"

"Marjory! Of course not! Tomorrow, if you must...."

But she chattered gaily and unquenchably on. "I don't know how it's all going to turn out, I'm sure--about our future, I mean. You see, if he'll come along to Tahulamaji, I'll sell him a half interest in the business, and we could let the manager go. But I doubt if he'll do it. It's so far, and then, you see, he's been with the Babbits so long. I can fancy one's growing very much attached to the Babbits!"

"And if he doesn't want to go to Tahulamaji?" asked her sister.

"If he doesn't? If he doesn't? Well, then I'll have to follow _his_ lead."

The Rev. Needham had a sudden flash of wholly disorganizing inspiration. "Marjory, you don't mean Babbit & Babbit?"

But it was just exactly what she did mean! "Yes, in that case I'll travel for Babbit & Babbit. Must be doing something, I can tell you, with all these parish houses to be built! And it won't be my first job on the road, by any manner of means, either!"

Then she kissed her sister affectionately on the mouth and her brother-in-law affectionately on the cheek. And then the cottage lamp went out.

8

When Hilda went up to bed she thought Louise already asleep, for she lay there with her eyes closed. Hilda undressed as stealthily as possible, and crept in beside her sister. At first she felt so excited that it seemed to her she must surely lie awake all night. But as a matter of fact, her eyes drooped at once, and in five minutes she was asleep.

Then it was that Louise stirred and opened her eyes. They were very wide and very full of perplexity. She had not been sleeping, but had feigned sleep because she dreaded the ordeal of talking. She wanted to be alone, and she wanted to think--all night. A feverish zeal was upon her.

Barry was abed too. His light had gone out and his room was quite silent. Was he asleep? She wondered. Or was he, too, lying there in the dark with eyes wide open, thinking?

The walk back from the roast had been a very silent one. The day had been crowded with emotion, and during the journey back to Beachcrest the tenseness had seemed, curiously, to be eased a little. At least there seemed a tacit understanding that, whatever the further developments might be, tomorrow must do. Tomorrow, tomorrow! Tonight all was hazed and half drowned in unshed, groping tears. Even emotion itself, through sheer, blessed weariness, was subtly obscured. So the walk had been silent, while somehow both had felt as though the air had cleared a little. It was easier to breathe.

They had stood together a moment on the porch.

"Goodnight," she said huskily.

"Goodnight, Louise," he returned gravely, giving her hand just a frank, brief pressure.

She wanted to throw herself at his feet. The impulse to do something splendid and expiating swept over her almost irresistibly. She wanted to implore his forgiveness--would that set their lives in order? If this were to be the end, she felt there ought to be something at least vaguely stupendous about it.

"Louise, dear--what is it?" he asked, quite tenderly and calmly, yet with an intensity, too, which seemed like a hot, reproachful breath against one's very soul.

She swayed a little, almost as though she might be about to fall in a faint. He touched her arm gently.

The opportunity passed. "It's nothing," she murmured. "I'm tired, that's all--so tired!" And she did not throw herself at his feet, or do anything splendid at all.

It was true, she was very tired. She expected to drop at once into a merciful drugged sleep. It had been like that after the affair with Richard. But now, lo! she found herself more wide awake, it seemed, than she had ever been. The weariness seemed all slipping from her, and her mind grew quite vibrant, as with a slowly dawning purpose.

Ah, tomorrow!

Would the situation be as tragic then? Could it be otherwise than tragic? But perhaps--perhaps they would see things more clearly....

"Yes," she thought, "I'll go to sleep now and let tomorrow bring what it must."

Mañana, mañana!

But this was not to be. She closed her eyes. She tried to turn into a snug and sleepy position. But she could not woo sleep; and every effort merely sharpened her senses. Again she found herself lying in the dark with wide eyes, and went on thinking, thinking.

What was the meaning of this strange commotion? Phantoms--of the past--presaging phantoms endlessly to follow.... At dawn she had gone out blithely enough to welcome her lover. He had come. And then.... But even before his coming, that curious battle had set in. Not his hat or the twist of his profile.... Phantoms. Phantoms rising up in her heart like some sinister cloud of retribution. And their single adversary: "You are mine, all mine...."

Now, in this sombre hour shunned by sleep, the conflict achieved an effect of climax: she felt it to be that, obscurely yet with a desperate poignancy--felt that an issue precious in the scheme of her unfolding destiny faced decision. Legions of spent loves went by in marshalled battle trim. With an inward cry she watched them as they passed. Perfume still lingering in the house, though with the guest departed. Ghosts of a many-vizaged passion, homing at length, for the fulfilment of a barter Faust-like in its essence.

How lavish she had always been: how free! Shambles, now the glamour was gone stale. A monstrous cheapening--a heart flung out to-let in a public street. Yes, how easily and extravagantly she had spent herself--a profligate spending, for what the moment could return. Here, at last, was a love that demanded: "You must be mine, all mine--you must belong to me forever!" Curious, that of them all--of all the voices that had spoken of love before--it should be Lynndal's which, in fancy, thus first framed a so momentous contract!

He had been always so modest; in the beginning, to be loved in return had figured for him as a too, too generous conjecture. Gradually, however, there had been a return. Their lives had drawn together. The fact that this love had, from almost the very beginning, been challenged to the bridging of such distance began to assume for Louise a new and arresting significance. There had been something in it, in its very fibre, rising above any mere convenience of contact: a phenomenon unique, it struck her, in the long and turbulent history of her heart interests. Those letters.... "That was just it," she had groped when confronted by Aunt Marjie. Romancing appeared to have carried her far, how far! Mirage. And yet, behind the mirage a something deeper lurked. She sensed this now; but all the weary day she had sensed it also, dimly. Lynndal. Hitherto, the man himself had barely figured. Yet ever he had been there, too. He had come from far in the west to put a ring on her finger, and had found her in a panic of goblin doubt. That fancied voice in the shriek of steam: "Mine--mine!" Then the kiss which exposed her dilemma. But _behind_ these things--the man; the man himself. And what was this that seemed for so long, in a fine and utter silence, to have been building? Sanctuary!...

Her mind, as she lay here in the dark, became indeed a battleground for this ultimate climax of struggle. An unimagined realm they made of it. Her heart beat faster and her cheeks grew hot. To-let, in a public street. "Richard! I have done what he would have done--what he did! I am no better--no better!" She writhed, and the bitterness did not leave her--carried her instead to a yet more awful conclusion: "I am no better than a--than a--" The terrible word scorched across her heart, leaving a scar behind. Sobs shook her body, and the tears were bitter tears of hopelessness and regret.

But then, slowly, the bitterness eased a little; and, full of amazement, she felt a shy presence of freshness stealing mysteriously in, as from some empire where struggle is no citizen. A strange and beautiful sense of disentanglement. In the previous moment of unwithheld relentless purgatory, she had caught the rhythm of that something--that something behind the mirage! So that, in time, as she lay relaxed, with tears undried on her face, it came to her that just one fact remained, of all the febrile facts which, out of a long inglorious past, had attained the immortality of ghost-hood. Just one--one "living" fact: Lynndal!

Until today he had but filled a niche--but carried on the pattern of the many; now, however, the power to stem this ruinous tide revealed itself as at hand, just waiting to be seized--the courage to give herself completely, and to achieve a love as steadfast and unchanging as his had proved to be.

The night wore on. The moon grew sleepy and drooped in the starry western sky. But Louise did not sleep. There was high drama in her heart, and she could not sleep till it was all played out.