Chapter XX

Feeling that she had been working too hard, being in much distress about Harry West, and in some for herself, and learning that Wilmot Allen was to be of the party, Barbara told Blizzard, at the end of his sitting on Friday, that he need not come Saturday, as she was going to spend the week-end with the Bruces at Meadowbrook.

"I'm dog-tired," she said, "and that's the same as being discouraged. We both need a rest. Things have been at a stand-still nearly all the week."

"I think you are right about yourself," said Blizzard, "but won't your gay friends keep you up till all hours?"

"They will _not_" said Barbara, "and it won't be gay. During a falling market there are never more than two happy people at the largest Long Island house-party. The men will sit by themselves and drink very solemnly. The women will sit by themselves and yawn till ten o'clock. It will be very boring and very restful."

"Speaking of falling markets, is my friend Mr. Allen to be among those present? I understand that he has been very hard hit."

"I don't know about that," said Barbara. "He often is. Yes, he is to be among those present, and I'm really going just to have a chance to talk to him."

"_With_ him or _to_ him?" asked Blizzard with one of his sudden, dazzling smiles.

"_To_ him," said Barbara, also smiling, "I, too, have listened to tales out of school, and since he is my oldest friend, and probably my best, he must be straightened out."

"A little absence from New York, perhaps," suggested Blizzard, and watched her face closely.

"Do you think so? It doesn't seem to me necessary to run away in order to straighten out."

"Mr. Allen," said Blizzard, "should swear off stock-gambling, and marry a rich girl."

"He's not that kind," said Barbara simply. And this swift, loyal statement did not please the beggar, since it argued more to his mind of the faith that goes with love than of that appertaining to friendship. He felt a sharp stab of jealousy, and had some ado to keep the pain of it from showing in his face.

"Well," he said, "if anybody can help him, you can. And if you can't, send him to me. Oh, we've had dealings before now. I was even of real service to him once."

"If that is true," Barbara thought, "it's rather rotten of Wilmot to keep running this poor soul down."

Blizzard left with obvious reluctance. Two whole days without a sight of Miss Ferris seemed a very long time to him. "I shall miss these morning loafings."

"Is that what you call posing?"

"What else? You loaf now. Good luck to the tired eye and hand."

"Thank you," said Barbara. "Next week we'll see if we can't really get somewhere."

"We shall try," said Blizzard. He turned at the door. "I want to play for you some time," he said. "May I?"

"Why, yes--of course."

"At my place," he said. "I have a new piano in; it's very good. You see, I pound four or five of them to pieces in the course of a year. I thought perhaps you'd bring two or three or more of your friends who like music, I know _you_ do. I'll give you supper. Your friends might think it was a good slumming spree to come to a concert at my house. And I particularly want to play for you. I go for weeks without playing, and then the wish comes."

She longed to ask him how he worked the pedals, and had to bite the question back.

He laughed, reading her mind. "If you come," he said, "I will try to make you forget what I am--even what I look like. I should like you to know what I might have been--what I still might be." He went out abruptly and closed the door after him.

Barbara mused for a minute and then rang for Bubbles. "I'm going out of town for over Sunday," she said. "What will you do?"

"Me and Harry," said he, "is going down to the sea swimming."

"Please give Harry my best wishes, Bubbles."

The great eyes held hers for a minute and were turned away. He was sharp enough to know that through one of his idols the other had been hurt. And he found the knowledge sorrowful and heavy.

"I'll do that," he said solemnly.

That afternoon Wilmot Allen drove Barbara down to Meadowbrook. He had borrowed a sixty-horse-power runabout for the occasion, but displayed no anxiety to put the machine through its higher paces. "I've had a rough week," he said, "and my nerves are shaky. Do you mind if we take our time?"

"No," said Barbara, "my nerves are shaky, too. And I want to talk to you without having the words blown out of my mouth and scattered all over Long Island."

He bowed over the steering-wheel, and said: "It's good to know that you _want_ to talk to me. Is it to be about you, about me--or us?"

Barbara leaned luxuriously against the scientifically placed cushion, all her muscles relaxed. "You," she said, "are to play several parts, Wilmot."

"And always one," he answered softly.

"Not now," she said, "please. First you are to play priest, and listen to confession. Then you are to confess, or I am to do it for you, and receive penance."

"While I'm priest," he said, "do I impose any penance on you?"

"I'll listen to suggestions," said she, "that point toward absolution."

"I am now clothed In my priestly outfit," said Wilmot; "you have entered the confessional. I listen."

Very simply, without preamble, she plunged into her affair with Harry West. And Wilmot listened, his head bent forward over the steering-wheel. It was not pleasant for him to learn that she had thought herself seriously in love with another man, and was not now in the least sure of her feelings toward him.

"I cried almost all night," she said; "it didn't seem as if I could bear it."

"How about the next night, Barbs?"

"Oh, I slept," she said, "or thought about work."

"And he told you that you mustn't see each other anymore?"

"Yes."

"I think he was right, Barbs. I don't believe you really love him, dear. If you did you would have cried for many nights and days--felt like it, I mean, all the time. Men attract you--they drop out for some reason or other--and so on. I know pretty well."

"That's just what he said," said Barbara, "and it's true, Wilmot. I'm almost sure now that I don't really love him. And that's ugly enough. But it's worse to think that he really loves me, and that it's my fault."

Wilmot Allen did not make the mistake of saying that it was not her fault. "It just shows, Barbs dear," he said, "that it's time to pull up. You've got more darned temperament than anybody I ever saw. It's a great weapon, but you've got to learn to control it, and not swing it wild and hurt people."

"That's what he said."

"Well, he seems to be a sensible fellow, and a fine fellow, and to have thought of you rather than himself. You told him you'd marry him if he asked you? Now, Barbs, listen to me. That was a fool thing to say."

"I know it"

"Do you realize how lucky you are to have said it to West instead of to some other fellow who happened to be on the make? You've come through your young life almost entirely by good luck, not by good management. You've run up against honorable men, instead of rotters. That's the answer."

"I should think, feeling this way, you'd hate and despise me."

His hand left the steering-wheel and gave hers a swift pat.

"Well, it's over," she said, "and I wanted you to know. I'm going to pull back in my shell and be very dignified and honorable. If anybody wants to get hurt through me, they've got to hurt themselves."

"You'll not try to see West any more?"

"No," she said rather wearily, "that's over. And it's for the best. I've had a good lesson. No man ought ever to take me seriously until I've told him every day for a year that I love him. Maybe two years."

"Just tell me _once_--" he began

"Don't," she said, "please. Now you confess."

"Well, Barbs," he said, "this week-end is a sort of good-by. I'm in very deep, and I'm going to a new place to live a new life."

"Well!" she exclaimed, "you're not running away?"

"Only from temptation," he said. "I have spoken to all my creditors but one, and they have behaved decently and kindly. Wherever I go I take my obligations with me, and, God willing, they shall all be paid."

"Oh," she said, "I think a man ought to make good in the midst of his temptations."

"Might just as well say that you ought to finish your bust of Blizzard with one hand tied behind your back, since it's a constant temptation to you to use both. You ought also to be blindfolded and to work in the dark, since you are constantly tempted to look at your model and see what you are doing."

"I shall miss you," she said simply, "like everything. Why--"

"Why what?"

"It fills the future with blanks that can't be filled in."

"That may or may not be, Barbs. If they can't be filled in, you will write to me, and I will come back."

"But I don't mean--"

"I don't believe you know what you mean. But you aren't Barbs now; you are my confessor. I confess to you, then, that I am in pretty much the same boat with Harry West. I am going away, partly, to get over you--if I can. Love is a fire. Feed it, and it grows. Let it alone, and it dies. Confessor, there is a certain girl--one Barbara Ferris, I love her with all my heart and soul and have so done for many years. Since this leads to happiness for neither of us, I am going to cut her out of my life."

"Wilmot! Are you speaking seriously? You're not going to write to me? I'll have no news of you? Not know how you are getting on? Not know if you are sick or well?"

"The first night," said Wilmot, "you cried. The second you slept and thought about work."

"But you are my oldest friend and my best. Whatever we are to each other, we are that--best friends. We have our roots so deep in the happenings of years and years that we can't be moved--and get away with it."

"We shall see," said Wilmot almost solemnly. "It isn't going to be easy for me, either. But time will soon show. If after a year we find that we cannot do without each other's friendship--why, then we must see each other again. That's all there is to it."

"At least you'll write?"

He shook his head.

"But I will."

"No, Barbs. The sight of your writing would be too much fuel for the fire."

She was silent for a quarter of a mile. She did not enjoy the idea of being deliberately cut out of Wilmot Allen's life and heart "Suppose," she said, "that at the end of the year the fire is still burning bright?"

He slowed the car down so that he could turn and look at her. His face looked very strong and stern. "In that case," he said, "I will come back and marry you,"

"And supposing that meanwhile, in a fit of loneliness and mistaken zeal, I shall have married some one else?"

"If I feel about you as I do now," said Allen, "I will take you away from him."

Once more the car began to run swiftly, so swiftly that Wilmot could not take his eyes from the road to look at Barbara's face. If he had, he would have seen in her eyes an extraordinary look of trouble and tenderness.