Chapter 2

On the days when his imagination was "no good" he had the face of one who is worried over something important that has been lost and that can not be found. And, indeed, the gift was of tremendous importance to him, and he knew it. It was the weapon with which he must fight off insanity; the tongs with which he must snatch from the fires of experience whatever bright fragments of life were not yet consumed.

Now this imagination of the Poor Boy's was not a servant that came and went at command, but a master. He could not say to himself, "now I will lie back upon the wings of my imagination and fly a pleasant hour"--or rather he could say just that if he liked, but nothing would happen. It was he who served; he was an abode in which his imagination might lodge whenever it so pleased, and whence it might also fare forth. In the old days it had found lodgment in the Poor Boy's head decidedly comfortable, and had made long stays; but since society had wreaked its vengeance upon him, it seemed as if his head, as a dwelling-place, had lost its comforts and advantages.

His imagination was not of the kind which makes for literature or music. It could not, in other words, shake itself clear of experience, and journey into the unknown and the untried. It was not creative, but it was of a quality so intense and vivid as to wage, sometimes, successful disputes with the tangible and the real. Its action was a kind of dreaming of dreams, whose direction and outcome lay within the option of the dreamer.

Old Martha found him one day sitting on the kitchen steps with his feet in the first snow of the winter. But the Poor Boy was really at Palm Beach with a car-load of his friends, and he was not at all cold, he thanked her, but hot--positively hot.

Notwithstanding, she ordered a change of shoes and socks, and listened at his door half a dozen times that night for sounds of incipient cold.

The old woman's mirror told her that she was getting thin, that the work she had undertaken was too hard for her, and sometimes when the men drove in from the village with supplies (and the Poor Boy hid himself) she blarneyed them into lending a hand here and there. For a good joke sweetened with a little base flattery she got coals carried now and then, or heavy pieces of furniture moved when she was house-cleaning; but to the Poor Boy's constant appeals that she bring into the house a permanent helper she turned a deaf ear. As a matter of fact, having lived the best part of her life for the Poor Boy, she proposed, if possible, to die for him.

But when ("on top of the thinness," as he put it) she caught a heavy cold, he took the matter in dispute wholly out of her jurisdiction.

The cold having run its course and gone its way, he appeared to her one morning dressed for the winter woods. He had on moccasins and many thicknesses of woolens; he carried a knapsack and a light axe. He laid these on the kitchen table, and went into the cellar, where his long skis had passed the summer. He brought them, turning the corner of the cellar stairs with difficulty, back to the kitchen, and began to examine the straps with which they are adjusted to the feet. He asked for a little oil with which to dress the leather. She brought him oil in a saucer.

He dressed the straps of his skis and talked, more to himself than to her.

"Killing is bad, but in case I do actually run out of food I'd better take a rifle. I suppose the sleeping-bag will keep me warm, still I'd take along an extra blanket if it weren't so heavy. I'm not as fit as I used to be. Seems to me this compass acted queerly the last time I used it. Didn't I tell you once, Martha, about getting lost up here because a compass played me tricks? There were people to find me that time--but what's the odds? I can't get lost twice on my own acres. And what's the odds if I do?--"

Old Martha couldn't stand it any longer.

"Is it for fun you're scaring me out of my wits, young man?"

"_Scaring_ you, Martha?" His face was innocent of any guile.

"Where do you think you're going, and when do you think you're comin' back--and me all alone in the house?"

Now his eyes gleamed way down in their brown depths with a spark apiece of malice.

"I don't know where I'm going," he said, "but I know that I'm not coming back until a little bird tells me that you have hired some one to help you with the housework."

She was furious.

"Faith, then," she said, "you'll not come back till Doom's Day."

He concluded his preparations in silence, and carried his skis outdoors to put them on.

"I say, Martha," he called, "hand me my pack and things, will you?"

"I will not."

He laughed, and managed, with more laughter and some peril, to come up the steps and into the kitchen on his skis.

He adjusted the pack to his shoulder, put on his mittens, and took up his rifle and his axe. Malice still gleamed in his eyes.

He went out as he had entered, but with more difficulty and peril. He crossed the kitchen-yard with long, easy strides.

But Martha was running after him, bareheaded. She lost a carpet slipper in the deep snow.

"Only come back, darlint"--she fought against tears--"and I'll fill the house with helpers from attic to cellar."

"One," said the Poor Boy judicially, "will do. The nearest employment bureau will be in Quebec. Isn't there somebody in the village?"

"In the village! In Quebec!"

Her indignation was tremendous.

"This side of New York there's not a gentleman's servant to be had," said she, "and but few there. I'll have to go meself."

"Couldn't you write?"

"Full well you know that I can only make me mark, and never the twicet alike."

"Well," said the Poor Boy, "the change will do you good, and I'll camp out in the house instead of in the woods till you come back. It will be easier, and ever so much safer."

The next day, looking very grand in her furs and feathers, old Martha started for New York. As the man from the village drove her through the woods to the little railroad station the tears froze on her veil.

VI

Old Martha was longer in New York than she had intended to be. There were plenty of servants out of work on the lists of the various employment agencies which she visited. But Martha's requirements were such as the average servant can not meet or will not face, and candidates for the place and wages she offered asked questions and were not satisfied with her answers.

"And where is the house?"

"Canada."

"Is it a city?"

"It's country."

"Are there neighbors?"

"No."

"What manner of man is the master?"

"A fine, kind man."

"Married?"

"Single."

"An old man?"

"A young man. But you'll not see the master."

"Me work for a man I don't see?"

"He don't see nobody but me."

"What ails him?"

"Nothing. 'Tis his way. He's shy o' people."

"There'll be no company, then?"

"None."

"What men will there be to help about the place?"

"The men that drive in from the village with supplies."

"How far off is the village?"

"Twelve miles. When they can't drive they come in on snow-shoes."

"Hum!"

"What more can I tell you?"

"You've told enough. I would not touch the place with a pole, not for twice the wages. I'd rather be dead than twelve miles from everywhere and never a man in the house."

Girls who seemed able and willing wouldn't go, two were willing to try the place for a month, but Martha did not like their faces or their voices. She was in despair, until one day, far from any employment agency, a chance meeting settled the matter.

"Why, Martha!"

"If it isn't Miss Joy!"

And for a moment old Martha was dazed, for except in the pursuit of sport, tennis or golf, Miss Joceylin Grey was not the sort of girl who is met walking. And here she was crossing Madison Square on the long diagonal, in shoes that had not been blacked that day, and furthermore she was not headed for the avenue but away from it, and dusk was descending upon the city. And furthermore the color that had been her chiefest glory in the old Palm Beach and Newport days was all gone, and she looked very thin and delicate, and tired and discouraged. And where, oh where, were the gardenias that she always wore during the time of year when they are rarest and most expensive? Where even were the child's gloves, old Martha asked herself, her sables? Her pearls?

"Why, Miss Joy," she exclaimed, "you look as if your father had lost every cint he had in the world."

The girl flushed uneasily, but her eyes did not fall from the old woman's.

"Everybody knows that, Martha. Where _have_ you been?"

"Stone deaf," said Martha, "among me own sorrows. But you're all in black."

"I lost my father, too."

Old Martha made a soft, crooning sound of pity.

"So," and Miss Joy tried to speak bravely. "I live all alone now, and--"

"Have ye no money?"

"Not a penny, Martha. I had a job as a reporter until they asked me to do things that I wouldn't do."

"And when did you lose this job?"

"Day before yesterday."

"And now?"

"Oh, something will turn up."

"Meaning that nothing has."

"Not yet." She was beginning to shiver with the cold. "Good-by, Martha, it's good to see you again, and I could stand here talking till all hours if it wasn't for the wind."

She had given both her hands to Martha, but this one would not let them go. Her fine, gentle, old face became set and obstinate.

"When did you eat last?"

The girl smiled wanly and shivered.

She felt her arm being drawn through Martha's. She felt herself pulled rapidly toward the avenue.

Martha, satisfied with the face of a passing taxicab's driver, whistled with sudden, piercing shrillness.

"Where are you taking me?"

Old Martha's eyes became humorous. It was pleasant to her to play fairy godmother to a millionaire's daughter.

"To me suite in the St. Savior," said she. "To a hot tub, dearie, and a hot dinner, and a warm bed."

In Martha's sitting-room were flowers. She could afford them. On the bureau in her bedroom was a large photograph of the Poor Boy, in an eighteen-carat gold frame, very plain and smart.

While Martha was undoing the hooks of her dress Miss Joy stood in front of the bureau and looked at this photograph.

"Poor Boy," she said presently.

"What's that?" said Martha.

"What's become of him, Martha?"

Martha told her.

"It was all so wicked," said the girl.

"Wicked," said Martha, "was no name for it. All his friends to believe he'd do a thing like that! I could skin them alive, the lot of them!"

"I was one of his friends, Martha."

"I make no war on women," said Martha.

"I say I was one of his friends--but I never believed he did it--I mean how could he, and why should he?"

"Perhaps you wrote to tell him you believed in him!"

"I wish I had," said the girl, "but I thought everybody would, and then you know we had a sort of a misunderstanding; and I was going to, and then my father's troubles got so bad that he couldn't hide them from me, and we used to talk them over all night sometimes, and I couldn't think about anybody else's troubles.--Is he up there all alone?"

"There's the last hook. And now I'll draw a tub."

Miss Joy undressed herself to the music of water roaring under high pressure into a deep porcelain tub. She was no longer hungry, for she had had a glass of milk on arriving at the hotel, but she was very tired and a little dizzy in her head.

As is the custom with girls who have been brought up with maids to dress and undress them, she flung her clothes upon a chair in a disorderly heap, and was no more embarrassed at being naked before Martha than if Martha had been a piece of furniture.

"Come and talk to me, Martha," she said, "while I soak."

So Martha sat by the tub as by a bedside, and Miss Joy with a sigh of comfort lay at length in the hot water and they talked.

"Is he up there all alone?"

"He is now. The housework was too heavy for one old woman. He sent me to New York to find a helper. But the wages don't make up for the loneliness in the young biddy's mind--in what she is plazed to call her mind--and I'm five days lookin' about and nothing done."

"Wages?" sighed Miss Joy. "They sound good to me."

"To think of wages sounding good to you, Miss Joy!"

"But they do. I'd do almost anything for money."

"Ye would not, Miss Joy."

"You don't know me."

"I know well that you could 'a' had Mr. Ludlow for the taking, and him nearly as rich as me Poor Boy."

"So I could," said Miss Joy, "and perhaps I shall marry him after all."

"What!" exclaimed Martha. "Marry that old devil! Tell me ye'd sooner starve--or--get out of me tub, and take yourself off!"

Old Martha rose hurriedly with a squeak of dismay, and rushed to close the door between the bedroom and the sitting-room. She returned breathing fast.

"They were knocking with the dinner," she explained, "and all the doors open! Ye've soaked long enough, deary. Come out."

"Not until you say that you know I wouldn't marry Mr. Ludlow to save me from drowning."

"Full well I know it," said Martha heartily. "Come out."

The girl came out of the tub reluctantly, and presently, swathed in Martha's best lavender dressing-gown (she had bought it that morning), was lifting a spoonful of clear green-turtle soup to her lips.

"Martha!"

"Miss Joy!"

"I see champagne."

"'Tis not only to look at, Miss Joy."

"It's wonderful," said Miss Joy, "starving--I meet you--champagne--and to-morrow--"

Her sudden high spirits suddenly fell.

"Oh, Martha, from the top of even a small tree to the ground is a cruel, hard fall!"

"We were speakin' of wages, Miss Joy. And of a certain young lady willin' to do almost anything for money. Will ye come back to the woods with me to help with the housework?"

"Oh, but Martha--it wouldn't do. It isn't as if I'd never known him--but we were such good friends--and it would all be too uncomfortable and embarrassing."

"Ye'd never see _him_, Miss Joy."

"Never see him!"

"He will look no one in the face but me. The faces that he loved are nightmares to him now--all but old Martha's. No, Miss Joy--ye might, peepin' from behind curtains, set eyes on me Poor Boy, but as for you, he'd not know if you was man or woman, old or young, unless I told him. He has his rules; when the men come in from the village he disappears like a ghost. When they have gone he comes back. There'd be hours for housework, when he'd be out of the way, and that there was a born lady helping old Martha out and kapin' the poor woman company--he'd never know--never at all."

"Hum," said Miss Joy to the bubbles in her glass of champagne.

"The life," said Martha, "will bring back the color to your cheeks, the flesh to your bones, the courage to your heart."

"Am I so dreadfully thin?"

"If I was that thin," said Martha, "I'd hate to have me best friends see me without me clothes. But ye've the makin's of a Vanus, and that's more than ever I had."

Miss Joy laughed aloud.

Then, after a silence, and very seriously: "You're sure he'd never know that I was in the house?"

"Not unless I told him."

"But you wouldn't tell him?"

"Not if he hitched wild horses to me sacret and lashed them."

Another thoughtful silence.

"There's just one thing, Martha," said Miss Joy, "that I _won't_ do."

Martha flung up her hands in a gesture of despair.

"That's what they all say!" she cried. "That's how they all get out o' comin'. Well, what is it that ye won't do?"

Miss Joy hated to say. She was a little ashamed. She had enjoyed the reputation of being a good sport, a girl whom it was hard to dare. But she had her weakness. "I won't," she said, "I won't--I can't--bring myself to touch a live lobster."

Old Martha's face became extremely grave. She leaned forward. She was all confidence.

"Deary," she said, "nor more can I."

The two women exploded into laughter, loud and prolonged.

"Well," said Miss Joy at last, and she was still laughing, "it's a sporting proposition.... When do we start?"

"Ye must have warm clothes first."

"I have no money, Martha."

"Do ye remember a house ye took one winter, while your poor father was tearin' out the innerds of his own?"

"On Park Avenue and--"

"The same," said Martha. "The northwest corner. Ye were my tenants that winter.... Yes, deary, I am a rich old woman. And, between you and me, your poor father wanted that house the worst way, and me agents stuck him good and plenty. There's a balance comin' to ye, Miss Joy. 'Tis what they call conscience money, and 'twill buy ye warm clothes, and maybe a bit jool to go at your throat."

"Martha--Martha, what makes you so good to me?"

"Have ye not said ye never believed that me Poor Boy did what they said he did?"

"Is that the only reason?"

"There's another," said Martha. "For in all the world, next to his, ye've the swatest face and way with yez."

The old woman's emotions rose, and her brogue became heavier and heavier upon her, until her words lost all semblance of meaning. And Miss Joy, warm and well fed, leaned back in her deep chair and listened and tried to understand, and looked into Martha's face with eyes that were dark and misty with tenderness.

And she slept that night and late into the next morning, without stirring. And when she waked there was already a little flicker of color in her pale face.

VII

"Well, Martha," said the Poor Boy, when he had kissed her and welcomed her back, "did you find some one to help you?"

"She's a plain old thing," said Martha, "but honest and with good references. Would ye care to see her for yourself?"

"Good God, no," said the Poor Boy. "As long as I live I don't want to see any one but you. Tell her, will you? See that she understands. Tell her--gently, so as not to hurt her feelings, but firmly, that she has only to show herself to be dismissed. The day I see her--she goes."

"She'll not thank you," said old Martha. "Ye may safely leave that to me."

"And if she isn't a real help to you, Martha, she goes. Another thing, I'd rather she didn't talk very loud or sing, if she can help it. I don't want to know that she's here."

To Martha's discerning and suspicious eyes the Poor Boy seemed nervous, ill at ease, and eager to be off somewhere. He was dressed for deep snow-going, and kept swinging his mittens by the wrists and beating them together. He stood much on one foot and much on the other.

"What's vexing you?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said. "I've found something off here," he waved toward the valley, "that amuses me--just a silly game, Martha, that goes on in my head. The minute I get out of sight of the house it begins. It's done it every day since you left."

"What kind of a game will that be?"

"It's just making believe," he said with a certain embarrassment, "pretending things--and it makes me forget other things. I'll be back by dark."

He literally bolted, and could be heard saying sharp things to the straps of his skis, which had become stiffened with the cold.

Old Martha stood for a while staring at the door which he had closed behind him. She wondered if by any possible chance his mind was beginning to go. To relieve her own she hurried back to Joy in the kitchen, and began a conversation that had not flagged by tea-time.

The Poor Boy had found a long diagonal by which he could descend from the top of the cliff to the bottom in one swift silent slide. More than half-way down there was a dangerous turn, but he had learned to ski at St. Moritz when he was little, and never thought of the danger at all. The chief thing, turn or no turn, was to get to the bottom of the cliff as quickly as possible. Everything that was bitter and tragic in his life ended there, in an open glade among towering white pines.

The day that Martha had left for New York, the Poor Boy, standing very lonely on the top of the cliff and looking out over the valley, had been struck with a whimsical thought.

"If I had the power," he thought, "I'd settle this region with innocent people who have been accused of crimes."

At this suggestion the component parts of his nature began a discussion.

_Reason:_ How would you know they were innocent?

_Truthfulness:_ They'd tell me. And I'd know.

_Snobbishness:_ Very few people in your station of life are accused of crime.

_Cynicism:_ And very few of them are innocent.

_Snobbishness:_ You wouldn't care to associate with people of lower station than yourself.

_Affection:_ I love Martha better than anybody in the world.

_Reason:_ Think of something more sensible.

_Love of Detail:_ I wonder how we could dispose of sewage without polluting lakes and streams? I must send for books on the disposal of sewage.

_Love of the Beautiful:_ I should like to settle the whole valley without changing the look of it--from here.

_Eyes_ (roving from one group of screening trees to the next): It can be done. Put your village on the east side of the big lake, back of the hardwood ridge. Do you remember Placid Brook? That will flow through the main street. It will be kept clean and well stocked with trout, so that the old men can fish from the bridges. Above the village there shall be a path along the brook, all in the shade. Can't you see the girls and boys walking, two and two?

_Love of Detail:_ All the houses in the village must be white. Who is going to make the laws?

_Ego:_ I am. Because I own the valley. And put up the money.

_Modesty:_ But there will be lots of men wiser than I am. And they will help.

_Sudden Impulse:_ The women shall have votes.

_Childishness:_ The men shan't.

_Reason:_ Now I wonder. It's never been tried, and maybe it's what the world is waiting for and striving for.

_Touch of Genius and Prophecy:_ It shall be tried. It is what the world needs. No votes for men. No men on juries....

_Memory:_ (Things too recent and poignant for utterance.)

_Vague Idea Gathered at School:_ Am I going to stand for being taxed without representation?

_Sense of Justice:_ No.

_Self-confidence:_ But if I can't influence some woman's vote I may as well drown myself.

_Reason:_ Some men have no influence over anybody. _They_ won't stand for taxation without representation.

The Poor Boy (as a whole) gives up with reluctance the idea of a government of the ladies, by the ladies, and for the ladies.

_Wish to Do the Next Best Thing:_ Let it be a government by commission--a commission of three. A man and a woman--and--

_Touch of Genius:_ The children must be represented. They shall elect a child.

_Sense of the Ridiculous:_ Upon a platform of "Baseball in the streets--longer vacations, and more of them."

_Reason:_ The child must not be related to the other members of the commission. We are against affairs of state being influenced by a slipper.

_Sense of Decency, Good Form, Breeding, etc.:_ Candidates shall not vote for themselves; nor stump the valley proclaiming at the top of their lungs that they alone can keep the country from going to the dogs.

_Fondness for an Occasional Glass of Champagne:_ How about liquor?

_Self-control:_ If _everybody_ else will do without it, _I_ will.

_Human Nature:_ We must encourage early marriages.

_Ego:_ Of course, you exempt yourself.

_Whole System of Nerves and Circulation:_ I do not!

_Fastidiousness:_ She must be so and so and so (but he only succeeded in conjuring up a vague shadow of a girl).

Beginning like this (or something like it), deliberately, and thinking up things as he went along, the Poor Boy's imagination suddenly stepped in and took such a terrific grip of the situation that little by little the idea of a model settlement became as real as the most vivid and logical dream.