Part 2

"Will you have tea?" inquired Felicia.

"Thanks, no." He shook his head with a humorous gesture. "I've taken tea at the Oriole Inn--almost forcible feeding, in fact. It seems they are serving a new kind of sandwich to-day and Sylvia waylaid me and insisted on trying it on the dog so to speak. She and Suzanne and Barbara and Martha and Hope all stood by to watch the effect. I was never so nervous in my life. May I smoke to calm my spirit?"

Felicia nodded assent and sat down, resuming her sewing.

"I am glad to see you still survive," she said, as he lit his cigarette and dropped into a near-by chair.

"Oh, yes, I still survive. It was really an excellent sandwich in its way, though I should hate to have to pass an examination on its contents. It was one of Sylvia's inventions it seems. Tell me, does she have the whole Hill on her hands? First it's a garden party at 'Hester house,' Sylvia at the helm; then it is the Byrd sisters who have to be petted or scolded or braced, or a patient of Doctor Tom's who needs attention, or his babies that have to be story-told to, or Marianna and Donald who have to have her assistance in a dramatic performance of Lord Ullin's Daughter. I heard her shouting 'I'll forgive your Highland Chief' yesterday while the kids eloped in the hammock, amidst high billows, I judge from the way the boat was rocking. To-day it is the Oriole Inn sandwich. She is a most remarkable young person, this Sylvia of yours, with a most insatiable energy."

"She is, indeed," agreed Felicia heartily. "The Hill can hardly get along without Sylvia. We all mope and get selfish and lazy, what she calls 'rutty' when she is away from it. I am so glad she is home for keeps now. The Hill is never quite the same without her."

"But she won't stay on it forever," warned Stephen Kinnard. "She is a live wire--that young lady. She isn't going to be content to settle down on even so lovely a hill as hers. Also she is more than likely to get married."

"I suppose so," sighed Felicia.

"What a lugubrious tone to vouchsafe to the holy state!" he teased.

"It isn't the holy state in itself. It is Sylvia. I hate to have her get grown up and married and settled down. I'd like to keep things just as they are for awhile. The dread of changes seems to grow on me as I get old."

Felicia smiled as she made the statement but there was genuine feeling behind it.

"Would you dread change for yourself?"

"For myself? I don't know. I wasn't thinking especially about myself."

"Do you ever?"

"Not oftener than is agreeable. I am getting to be a very placid, settled sort of person. That is the comfort of being in the thirties. You don't expect so much of life. Now, ten years ago if I had been thinking of submitting designs for a competition I should have been frightfully excited. Now, I think I would almost rather not win, which is fortunate considering how little chance there is of my doing so."

"There is all the chance in the world," objected Stephen. "You need a little of the virus of vanity instilled into you. Felicia, do you remember back there in Paris when old Regnier used to insist you had more talent than any man in his class?"

Felicia tranquilly snipped off her thread and admitted that she remembered.

"And do you remember how he raved when you told him you were going to marry Syd?"

Felicia nodded. She remembered that, too; remembered also, though she did not say so, how she had smiled at the old master's ravings, sure that love would prove no hindrance to her art, sure that she and Sydney would work and achieve fame together. She had not dreaded changes in those days. She had welcomed them, taken risks blithely, unafraid. And there had been risks. Her aunt had raved also, to more purpose than the Master, and in a moment of rage had changed her will, cutting off from inheritance the willful girl who chose to reject the French count her judicious relative had selected for her and insisted on marrying instead a penniless artist. The loss of her inheritance had seemed to Felicia at the time a trifle light as air, quite as irrelevant indeed as the Master's gloomy prediction as to the eternal incompatibility of art and matrimony. All these things she had thrown into the scales with love in the opposite balance and love had weighed immeasurably heaviest.

There had followed a few years of idyllic happiness. Though with the coming of the babies the art she loved had been temporarily suspended; both she and her husband promised themselves eagerly that it was only a suspension, that she would go back to it again as soon as Marianna and Brother were just a little older. But before Marianna and Brother were much older Felicia was left alone with a "big heartache to carry round inside her and two children to provide immediate bread and butter for," as Suzanne had put it. And so the old dreams had been thrust out of sight, and the young woman whom the Master pronounced to have possessed more talent than twenty talented young men, fell to earning a living for herself and her little folk by painting place cards and Christmas greetings and calendars and such like small ilk. All this drifted in retrospect through Felicia Emory's mind as she bent over her sewing, and something in the droop of her mouth touched Stephen as he perceived it. Impulsively he threw away his cigarette and leaned forward letting his hand touch hers.

"Felicia, forgive me! I didn't mean to hurt you."

"You didn't. It just came back to me for a moment how fearfully young and happy and ignorant I was in those days. But with all the wisdom I've garnered since, if I had it to do over again, I suppose I should travel precisely the same road. Isn't it queer, Stephen? Don't you feel that way about the past, too?"

"No, my road was too devilish rough. I'd like it different."

Felicia looked up, surprised both at his words and the unusual passion in his voice.

"Do you suppose I have ever forgotten I didn't get what I wanted? Felicia, I loved you before Syd ever saw you."

"I know. I'm sorry. I was always sorry. You know that, Stephen."

"You needn't be. Loving you made a man of me, though it did make the road rough. Things had come my way rather too easily up to that time. Syd was the better man. I always owned that."

"You were fine, Stephen. I've never forgotten how fine. And Sydney cared more for you than for any one else in the world--barring us." She smiled a little and her eyes strayed out to the magnolia tree beneath whose generous shade Marianna and Donald were laboriously engaged in the construction of a kite with much chatter and argument.

"Felicia."

"Yes?"

"Are you so afraid of change you wouldn't risk beginning over again--with me?"

Felicia's sewing dropped in her lap and her blue eyes opened wide with surprise and consternation as she looked up to meet his dark, eager eyes.

"Stephen!"

"Well? Is it so impossible to conceive? Haven't you guessed I was going to ask it sooner or later?"

"No. Oh, Stephen, I wish you hadn't."

"Why? I don't expect the same kind of love you gave Syd. You couldn't give it, of course. That is past. But you are too young to have life stop altogether for you--too young and too lovely. Other men will ask it if I don't, and I--well, I want to get in ahead." He laughed boyishly, but his eyes, which were grave enough, never left her face. "Is there any reason you couldn't say yes?" he asked.

"I am afraid there are many. One of them--rather two of them--are out under the tree at present."

His gaze followed her gesture.

"Are they really a reason? I love the kiddies and they like me. Surely it would be no injustice nor detriment to them. Why should it?"

"Not to them--rather to you--to any man I married. They are a very piece of me. They are me. If there ever came to be a decision between them and--well, call the man you--I should decide for them. Is that fair to you? Would you risk it?"

"Willingly. Why should there be any decision or division? What do you think I am? If I marry you I marry them too. I am crazy over children. I've always wanted them."

"Exactly," said Felicia quietly. "That would be part of the injustice to you. I don't want children. Marianna and Donald are enough."

"So they would be for me. Felicia, can't you understand, I want nothing except what you want--what will make you happy? Is there any other reason?"

"Yes, she is coming up the Hill now."

He turned quickly and saw Sylvia, with her friends on either side, just going up the path which led to the door of the Byrd sisters preparatory to an afternoon call.

"What nonsense!" He turned back to Felicia to protest. "Sylvia would be the last to stand in the way of your happiness."

"Oh, I know that. But listen, Stephen. You accused me of not understanding a moment ago. Now it is you who do not understand. Do you know what Sylvia has been to me all these years? No, you couldn't possibly know. No man could. Six years ago I was weary almost unto death, and discouraged with a weight of hopelessness which was beginning to make even the children seem a burden. That Christmas was the blackest time of all the months since Sydney went. I tell you honestly it didn't seem as if I could go on with it all. I was too near the breaking point. And then straight out of the delightful good fairyland where she lives came Sylvia begging me to be her Christmas sister and bring the babies to round out her magic Christmas circle. I believe it was Sylvia's smile and Sylvia's pleading eyes that began to heal the hurt in me then and there. I have had lonely moments since, of course, and some black ones, too, but they have never been so bad since that Christmas. Do you wonder that next to my own children I care more for Sylvia and her happiness than for anything else in the world?"

Stephen shook his head soberly, trying his best to understand since she desired it.

"After the Christmas family scattered I came to be what Sylvia calls her homekeeper and that I have been for over five years now. You can see a little what it has meant to me to have a home like Arden Hall for the children to grow up in instead of a cramped city apartment with no outdoors except public parks to play in. It has made all the difference in the world to them and to me, body, mind and soul. I couldn't have been half a mother to them the way I was working and living. And all of this we owe to Sylvia."

"But you have rendered good measure. You have given her a home no less than she has given you one. It has been a fair exchange."

"I know. It has meant almost as much to Sylvia as it has to me. It has given us both what we wanted most. I don't pretend it hasn't been give and take. It has. But this one year is the one of all the six since I've known Sylvia that she needs me most. I wouldn't fail her now for anything."

"And they say women have no sex loyalty," muttered Stephen Kinnard. "See here, Felicia, do you realize you have as good as accepted me?"

"Accepted you! I have been refusing you with reasons for fifteen minutes." Felicia's serene voice was a bit ruffled and there was a flush in her cheeks.

"You've been giving reasons, I grant you, but not refusal. Look at me, Felicia. If there weren't any Marianna and Donald and Sylvia in the world wouldn't you say this minute, 'Stephen, I'll marry you just as soon as you can get the license'? No quibble now. Honest."

Felicia laughed softly and her flush deepened.

"If there weren't any Marianna and Donald and Sylvia in the world I should be so desperately lonesome I should tell the first man that asked me I would marry him as soon as he could get the license, but seeing that there are Marianna and Donald and Sylvia, not only in the world but on this very Hill, I am not in the least lonesome and quite satisfied with my mothering-sistering job, thank you."

"Then it is really no?"

The mirth died out of her eyes at the gravity of his tone.

"Yes, Stephen. I am sorry, but it is really no. Aside from Sylvia and the children there would always be Sydney. You are too fine to be a second best, Stephen, dear. Do go and find somebody who is fresher and younger and less--tired than I am."

At her words there rose to both their minds a vision of Hope Williams' dainty, wild rose beauty and wistful "dryad" eyes. Stephen had been sketching her only that morning in the Oriole Inn garden and every line of her exquisite, fragile, flower-like face and lithe, graceful young body was in his head still. And Felicia had more than once surprised an unforgettable expression in Hope's eyes when the artist had come suddenly into the girl's presence. Hope was young, younger than Sylvia, and Stephen Kinnard was forty. But he was of the eternally young type of man, brimming over with that inexplicable, irresistible thing we call charm, and his years abroad had stamped him with a picturesque, foreign quality which was sure to appeal to the romantic fancy of youth. One ardent gaze from those strange, gold-flecked eyes of his had no doubt been enough to set many a maid dreaming ere this, and he had been kind to Hope, perhaps more than kind for all Felicia knew.

But already the vision of Hope had vanished from Stephen's mind. He saw only the mature grace and loveliness of the woman who had long ago been the one fixed star of his errant youth and to whom he now brought the homage of ripened manhood.

"I don't want anybody in the smallest particular different from yourself, sweet Lady Love. Don't worry though," as he saw her troubled eyes. "I am not going to pester you. I shall take myself off to-morrow but I shall come back and some day I shall surprise you in a lonely hour and you will say, 'Stephen, do hurry and get the license.'"

Seeing his whimsical, reassuring smile, Felicia smiled back, half relieved, and indeed not quite knowing how much of it all had been in earnest; glad, at all events, to have him slip back so easily into the familiar channels of friendliness.

And just then the girls, having finished their call, came gayly chattering up the walk, demanding of Stephen whether he had suffered any ill effects from the experimental sandwich he had so manfully encountered. And amidst the general confusion of talk and laughter Stephen rose to take his departure, giving no hint of finality about his leave taking, except a slightly lengthened clasp of Felicia's hand and a steady gaze into her blue eyes. Consequently the girls, at least, were considerably surprised the next day to receive three boxes of sweet peas each with Stephen Kinnard's card, rose pink for Suzanne, shell pink for Barb, delicate lavendar for Sylvia. Sylvia's box also contained a charming little note thanking the girl for her summer's hospitality and regretting that the writer was called out of town without opportunity for formal farewells. For Felicia had come violets, but no word at all, not even a card.

"H-m-m," murmured the astute Suzanne, when the girls were alone, "Called out of town, indeed! Needn't tell me. Your Felicia didn't have such a becoming extra bloom yesterday for nothing. You are safe for the present, Sylvia. She evidently dismissed him."

Down the Hill, at the Oriole Inn, Hope and Martha Williams reigned in the absence of the young proprietor who since her grandmother's death had been traveling in Europe with the Armstrongs, her sister Constance and her husband, Sylvia's erstwhile gardener. And to the Oriole Inn also came flowers, dainty, half-open, pink rosebuds nestled in maidenhair fern. Came also a brotherly affectionate note of thanks and adieu from the artist.

"The sketches are bound to be a success," he wrote, "for you are the very spirit of Southern gardens, the veriest rose of them all." So he had put it, poet fashion, and Hope, with fluttering pink and white in her cheeks, ran off to enjoy her treasures in happy solitude, leaving her sister Martha stolidly measuring lengths for the new dining-room curtains. No one had ever sent roses to Martha in all her life. Nor had any one ever written poet lines about her or to her. She was not that kind, as she would herself have explained. But it was not that that brought a wry twist to her lips and a worried look to her eyes as she bent over her work.

"Why couldn't he a been a little meaner to her?" she demanded of the curtains. "'Twould have been a whole lot kinder than being kind."

In which theory she unconsciously paraphrased the words of a person she had never heard of, another perturbed guardian of another flower-like maid, the Lily Maid of Astolat. Of Launcelots and Elaines there are a plenty in this somewhat uneconomical world.

*CHAPTER III*

*TWENTY-TWO*

"Please, Felicia. Look at me. Am I all right?"

Mrs. Emory turned from her mirror before which she had been adjusting a last hairpin in her blond hair and smiled at the radiant vision which hovered on her threshold. But before she had time to render verdict the vision ceased to be stationary and became before her eyes a vivid, ecstatic flash and whirl of white chiffon and silver.

"Bless us, child!" laughed Felicia. "You are as bad as Marianna. How can I tell anything about you when you are spinning like a Dervish? You look as if you might float out the window any minute and join the moon sprites."

Sylvia laughed, too, and came to a halt, though one silver slipper paused tip toe as if it scorned prosaic levels and held itself ready for further airy revolutions.

"And leave my birthday party! Not much! The moon sprites shan't get me to-night. Honest, Felicia, I just can't keep still. I'm too alive."

The chiffons and silver began to shimmer and quiver again in testimony and Felicia smiled understandingly. But even as she smiled she felt a sharp little pang--the pang of chastened maturity for exuberant youth. A vagrant bit of verse flashed through her mind.

"Pity that ever the jubilant springs should fail at their flow And that youth so utterly knowing it not should one day know."

Yes, that was the pity. Here was Sylvia Arden, glad, and young, and free, smiling into the future with fearless eyes, challenging experience. Must she too, one day know? At any rate, the hour of too much knowing was as yet afar off. At twenty-two Sylvia was still very close to the jubilant springs. But even as she reached this comforting conclusion Felicia saw the girl's eyes grow sober.

"Felicia, sometimes I think it's a dreadful thing to grow up. Life is so fearfully complex somehow. All sorts of questions jump out and 'Boo' at you from behind every tree."

"What kind of questions?"

"Oh, all kinds!" Sylvia dropped down on the low window seat, like a bird suddenly alighting, and clasped her hands around her knees in reckless disregard of her billowing chiffons. "I'm a little afflicted with socialism and that is a sad disease for a person who has as much money as I have. But that isn't all. I am so at sea about so many things, and there are so many strings pulling in all directions. Suzanne thinks New York is the only place in the world to really live in and she wants me to come and live with her and study or do something. She doesn't think it matters much what, so long as I breathe New York, and Barb is nearly as bad. They are both full of up-to-date notions and they think I'm just going to slip behind if I stay here and maybe I shall. I can see pretty easily how I could. Everybody here expects me to do the regular coming out performance, teas and dinners and balls and the rest, with maybe a little discreet charity work thrown in, and possibly a paper on art or ethics for the literary club. You know what Greendale is. The Gordons want me to go to Japan with them and Hilda wants me to join her in Berlin, or did before the war. Goodness knows where she is now. I haven't heard since July. And--well, there are other things."

Felicia quite understood that Jack Amidon might possibly be another string pulling the girl. It was no secret from the Hill, and certainly not from the wise-eyed "Big Sister," that that devoted, persistent and "magerful" young man had every intention of storming Sylvia's hill top and carrying off its princess if such a feat were humanly possible.

"And you don't want to do any of these things?"

Sylvia smiled dubiously.

"Oh, yes, a little of me wants to do all those things. But the most of me wants to stay right here at Arden Hall and do nothing particular. I'd like a kind of year o' grace I think. I don't seem to have any especial ambitions nor desires except to learn to live as broad and deep and quick as I can." She shifted her position slightly and looked out into the night where her beloved rose garden lay in magical moonlight and shadow and a faint sigh escaped her, born of the very beauty, poignant almost as pain, so quick was her response to it. Suddenly she turned back and her eyes smiled at Felicia.

"Life's funny, isn't it?" she said, springing up. "Felicia, what ever in the world should I do without you?" She eyed a little sternly the bunch of violets Felicia was wearing, a fresh bunch which had arrived that day. "Felicia, Mr. Kinnard isn't--you aren't--?"

Felicia laughed.

"Your observations lack a certain finished coherence but I assure you I am not, nor is he--at least, not seriously."

"I'm so glad!" sighed Sylvia. "I know I'm a pig but I should simply hate Stephen Kinnard if I thought he were going to carry you off, and I should hate to hate him he is so exceedingly nice. I wish he could have stayed for the party to-night. Oh me! We ought to be downstairs this blessed minute. _Am_ I all right, Felicia? You never did tell me." And Sylvia whirled around to the mirror for a last critical survey. Felicia, whose eyes also sought the reflected figure in the glass, thought she had never seen the girl lovelier than she was to-night in all her shimmering bravery of white and silver. But there was always something more than mere prettiness about Sylvia, something which seemed to shine from within out. She was so exquisitely alive like the fire in the heart of an opal or a jet of pure flame.

"Aren't you coming, Syl?" Suzanne's voice called from the hall as she knocked and entered almost simultaneously, followed by Barbara.

"'The feast is set, The guests are met. May'st hear the merry din.'"

she chanted gayly, looking more impishly charming even than usual in her beruffled corn yellow taffeta, which set off her sparkling brunette beauty to perfection. "Do come down quick and get the hand shaking over so we can begin to dance. It is a shame to waste a moment of that heavenly music. And here's Barb just dying to get to cracking the hearts of the Greendale swains. Look at her. Behold my handiwork. She even let me apply the faintest soupcon of Nature's sweet reenforcer. Madame Delphine's Parisian Bloom. Isn't she adorable? Barbie, my child, revolve for the ladies."

"Oh, Suzanne!" The roses in Barb's cheeks needed no further reenforcement at the moment. "Do please rub it off. It's dreadful. Does it show, Sylvia? She would do it."

"Nothing shows except that you're the cunningest mite I ever laid eyes on," approved Sylvia. "Felicia, do look at her. Doesn't she look precisely like one of Marianna's dolls? In that darling white baby dress and blue sash to match her eyes, would you ever suspect her of being a Summa cum Laude and a frightfully new woman?"

"You all look new enough when it comes to that," laughed Felicia. "You haven't a notion how young you really are. Now, shoo, every one of you. I'll follow as soon as I have rounded up Donald and Marianna."