CHAPTER XIX

SPRING

"What are _you_ doing here?" Stuyvesant asked of Annette. Considerable surprise was in his face and voice.

"Oh," answered Annette, "I have been telling Cecilia Madden that I was a pig. I asked her to forgive me. I feel much better!"

They had met on the long drive that ran on the inland side of the Sound house, toward the main road.

"I'm stopping at a house up the road for Sunday," explained Annette. "Cecilia wanted to motor me back, but I needed air. Indigestion and conscience are so much alike. You want to breathe deeply after the easing of both."

"Yes," agreed K. Stuyvesant absently. "How could you ever dislike her, Annette?"

"She came into school," said Annette, "the rawest little person you ever saw. I felt the injustice of her having money, while I, who knew so well how to use it, had to scrimp and save. I saw her with everything in the world that would have put me into heaven and she was miserably unhappy. It was my first taste of injustice. I hated it. I never was a resigned person, you know, Stuyv."

"How did the girls treat her?" asked Stuyvesant. He was becoming gruff.

"We put her through a refined form of hell," answered Annette, "the cruelties of which were only possible for the feminine mind to evolve. Stuyv, _do_ look what you're doing! The gardener will be grateful to you!"

Stuyvesant had been switching a cane viciously. He had taken off many heads of a particularly dressed-up variety of tulip.

"I'll be darned!" he said, looking at them with surprise. "Couldn't you see how dear and all that kind of thing she was?" he queried farther. "I don't see how even a set of simpering, half-witted, idiotic, jealous girls could _help_ seeing----"

"So you're in love with her?" interrupted Annette.

Stuyvesant looked on his cousin with surprise. Then he answered. "Of course," he said, "but how'd you know?"

Annette laughed. After her laughter she slipped a hand through his arm. "Stuyvesant," she said, "your soul and mine are cut from a different pattern. It was always hard for me to understand you, but something has happened lately which has made me larger, much decenter. Stuyvesant, I want a long talk--a heart-to-heart effect. Will you walk back with me?"

"Of course," he answered.

"You'll be glad to know," she went on, "that after Cecilia had pneumonia she was quite the idol of the school. There was one of those complete shifts so characteristic of our American youth, and every one liked her but me. She used to try to make me like her with the most transparent little appeals. Heavens, I was a devil! She sent me violets at one time when I had a cold, and I gave them to the maid, and then spoke loudly before her of unwelcome attentions and social climbers."

Stuyvesant was walking in jerks. His arm beneath Annette's was rigid.

"She's forgiven me," said Annette, smiling.

He relaxed. "I am a darn fool!" he said, "but honestly----!" He stopped and shook his head.

"Doesn't she care for you?" asked Annette; "turned you down?"

"I haven't asked her. She's shown very plainly what she thinks of me."

"Rubbish!" said Annette shortly. "No man in love is a judge of anything! He only knows that she has blue eyes, or he can't just remember, maybe they're brown, but anyway they're beautiful!" Annette's cousin grinned sheepishly.

"What colour are they?" asked Annette.

"I don't know, but I guess they're brown. I know they're unusual, now aren't they, Annette?"

Annette giggled. "Very ordinary," she answered, "and they happen to be blue."

"They're not ordinary. You know they aren't! It doesn't make any difference to me, of course. I'm not in love with her looks, but they're _not_ ordinary!"

"It is not like you," said the girl, "to give up anything you want in that half-hearted way. I don't quite understand, Stuyvesant."

"I----" he began, then stopped.

"Well?" questioned Annette.

"I didn't give it up without being sure. Her friend Marjory, well, she made me see a few things." He was staring moodily ahead. A car whizzed by, leaving a trail of dust. "Damn!" said Stuyvesant. Annette laughed. "You see now if I asked her," he continued, "I'd lose my chance of seeing her. I don't suppose you or any one else could know what that means to me!"

"You might not lose it. I don't trust the green-eyed lady. I never have."

"But she's Cecilia's best friend," objected Stuyvesant, "and why would she do anything to hurt her?"

"I used to think you posed," she answered despairingly. "Now I imagine it is only feeble-mindedness. Take my advice, Stuyvesant: _Ask_ her! The other course is so spineless."

"You don't know what I'd lose!"

"You wouldn't lose it!"

"I wouldn't?" he repeated. "Excuse me, Annette, but really you don't know what you're talking about. I do. I know too well." His voice had become bitter. She looked at him and saw that in the year past he had changed greatly.

"And now about you?" he said in a changed way. "Are you still set on this working business? I hope you aren't. I honestly want to help. It worries me like thunder!"

"You're a dear!" responded Annette, "and that is quite a tale. Can't we sit on this wall? Whose is it? ... The Maddens own all this? Heavens!"

She perched on the wall and he lit a cigarette. "No, not now," she answered as he held out the case. "The small Saint Cecilia doesn't, does she? Well, she couldn't. She might revert to the cob pipe." It was a flash of the old Annette. Stuyvesant looked unpleasant.

"My tale--" said Annette. "You know mamma is a worshipper of the long-haired. Any one who can create _anything_--futurist painters, pianists, the inventor of a new cocktail. You know her, Stuyv."

"Yes," admitted Stuyvesant.

"Well, what with their bleeding and papa's insane investments, he never provided properly for us, Stuyv. Mamma used to go to him and really cry! It was pathetic! And all he would say was that he had no money."

"He hadn't," answered Annette's cousin.

"I'd expect you to sympathise," she said. "You men always do, but that isn't my story. When he died his affairs were in such fearful shape that mamma and I were terribly pinched. She never liked you, Stuyv, or she might have asked your advice. As it was, she invested in lovely nut groves in southern California. The promoters quite misrepresented them; they didn't pay at all or declare dividends or whatever they do. In fact they assessed the owners of the common stock for irrigation or something like that. I don't just understand business. About that time I met Dicky Fanshawe, who doesn't do anything original--only works--fearfully poor. I fell in love with him, but mamma saw me as the mistress of some gilt and pink salon, with a long-haired genius as a husband, and was simply devilish about Dicky. You know her, Stuyv."

"Yes," answered Stuyvesant. "I do."

"Then you know the Altshine failure took us in too."

"Yes," he answered. "I know. Why were you so stiff-necked about my help, Annette? I have enough to help you all you need, and I want to. You know it."

"Mamma has never liked you," said Annette, "but when the crash came, well, she was willing to live on you. For the same reason I was not. I know you disapprove of me. My ideals are not many, but under the circumstances----!"

"You make me feel an awful dub!" said Stuyvesant. "I haven't any right to disapprove of you or be lofty."

"But you do. Well, mamma saw me retrieving the family fortune in some romantic and bohemian manner. I was to create something, a book, or be a decorator for the smart, a reader of East Indian poems. She had splendid ideas, but the fact is, I've found, you have to have a hint of something inside to do anything successfully outside. I hadn't it.

"I descended to a social secretary and chaperoning that horrid woman's nasty little white pups, and from that mamma has consented to my marrying Dicky. He only has ten thousand a year, and I'm going to marry him on that! I love him terribly! Isn't it splendidly romantic?"

"Um," grunted Stuyvesant. "Annette," he said, "I want you to let me provide for your mother. You will? ... No, don't thank me. It irritates me. Oh, please!" After his last plea she stopped her effusive thanks and pressed his arm. Suddenly she laughed.

"What are you laughing at?" asked Stuyvesant.

"Cecilia advocated pink for the poor," Annette explained, "and I never understood how they felt until my terrible employer asked me not to wear frills. She said they weren't suitable for my position! It's all so relative, isn't it? Cecilia saw the panorama. I saw only my corner."

Annette slipped from the wall. "Must go," she said. "Dicky's coming out at eight. You want me to be happy?"

"Of course," said Stuyvesant. Annette's face changed. "Stuyv," she said, "it's everything when you find the one who fits your heart and mind.... _Ask_ her. Please, Stuyv. I can't believe she doesn't care."

"You're awfully good," he answered huskily. "Lord, Annette! If you were right----!"

Annette stepped near him. For the first time since the nursery days she kissed him. "Stay here," she ordered, "and think it out. Bye!" With a wave she left. At the first turn in the road she looked back. Her cousin was still sitting on the wall, and he was staring intently at the cigarette between his fingers. Annette had seen that it had gone out before she started.

"Poor boy!" she said. "Poor boy!" and then she thought of Dicky, who had turned her hard little heart softer to all the world. She forgot the "poor boy" who sat alone on the wall. She forgot money and things, the two which had mattered most to her, and once had been her life. With a new look on her face, she dreamed of a future--a future at which she once would have laughed.

Hers was the spirit that puts glory into the face of the tired mother in the overcrowded flat; beauty into the face of the tawdry little girl who sits on a park bench with her "gentleman friend"; youth into age, waiting for soft and endless night; a little touch of God, a hint of something larger, veiled for eyes too young; the proof intangible, sublime.