Part 5

Suddenly a single sharp cry broke the silence of the dusk and then ceased. They all sprang to their feet in alarm, but it was Phil Lorrimer's quick eye that first discovered what had happened. Below them, and somewhat at the right of the outcropping ledge on which they stood, hung Barbara, clinging to a slender sapling whose trunk bent, it seemed almost to snapping beneath her slight weight. Sylvia saw, too, almost at the same instant.

"There she is!" Her finger pointed. "Oh, Phil!"

But Phil had not waited for his embassy. He was already speeding down the steep bank on his way to the scene of the accident.

"Hold on," he called cheerfully. "I'm coming. Can I reach you from above?"

"No." Barb's voice sounded faraway but steady as Phil's own. "Don't try. It's all crumbly."

"Hang tight then. I'll be there in a minute."

In what appeared to be an endless stretch of time to everybody, but which was in reality an astonishingly brief interval, Phil's tall form appeared on the river bank precisely beneath the tiny figure suspended as it seemed in midair, but still clinging pluckily to the stout ash sapling which held her weight gallantly. The distance between Phil and the girl was perhaps ten feet, though it looked much more in the gulfing darkness to them both.

"All right. Let go. I'll catch you."

A shudder shook Barb's whole body. That slim, tough little ash-tree seemed all that kept her from the greedy swirl of the black river. Her hands were grooved and cut with clinging and her arms ached until it seemed as if she could not bear the pain, but for all that she felt as if the one thing she could not do was to release her hold and slip into the darkness. But there below loomed Phil Lorrimer's comforting size and strength and Barb's courage grew as she looked down into his uplifted face.

"Come on, Barbie, I'm right here." He had never called her anything but Miss Day before, not even Barbara. Barbie was Sylvia's name, as it had once been her mother's in the dear long ago. Somehow it seemed right and natural and sweet that Phil should use it now. Suddenly she became the trusting, obedient little girl Barbie again and without a quiver of dread and with a heart at peace and full of faith she let go her hold on the ash and went down, down, down into space--a surprisingly long journey it seemed, though she felt perfectly comfortable taking it. She had even time to notice that a star had come out and was smiling at her friendlily out of the dusk over a sycamore-tree. She knew somehow or rather that Phil would not fail her. Most people felt that about Phil Lorrimer. More than one of his patients had been willing and unafraid to go down the dark valley if he would stand by and help them on the way.

Certainly he did not fail Barbara. Though the shock of the impact of even her "fairy" figure made him sway and stagger a little, he caught her as deftly as he had been wont in his college days to catch a dazzling outfielder. In a second he had deposited her gently on the soft moss on the river bank. Whereupon Barb gave a quick breath of a sob then laughed a little rippling gurgle of a laugh, though there were tears in her eyes.

"D-don't mi-nd me," she begged. "I'm just being g-glad I let go."

"All safe!" Phil's big voice boomed out of the darkness to the relief of the anxious waiters above on the cliff. "All right, little lady? Seeing as you wouldn't walk down, suppose we say you shan't walk up." And Barb was swept like a sudden victim to a bird of prey into his arms.

"Oh, don't," she begged. "Please put me down. I can walk perfectly well. I'm dreadfully heavy."

"So are thistledown and dewdrops," he laughed. "Please forget you are a feminist for once and succumb to the eternal masculine superiority of brawn and muscle."

And in spite of herself, Barb felt oddly content to let herself lie passive in his arms, so much so that she closed her eyes and said never a word. At the top of the ascent, which had been short though somewhat steep, Phil put down his burden, and the rest crowded around the two, full of excitement, anxiety and questions. But Phil exercised his doctor's prerogatives and ordered them to let Barb alone and make a speedy start for home. These orders were meekly obeyed, though they managed little by little to get the information of how the accident had occurred. It had been simple enough. The rock on which Barb had been standing had been "crumbly" as she had said, and before she had had time to realize what had happened she had slipped with the shelving stone and soil and had only by the greatest of good fortune managed to snatch at the ash in her descent and thus save herself from the disastrous fall into the turbulent rock-filled bed of the river. It had been obviously a sufficiently narrow escape to make them all rather silent and sober as they packed up the remains of the feast and made their way to the road just beyond the glade where the car waited.

"Want to have a try at the wheel, old man?" asked Jack, laying an affectionate hand on Phil's shoulder when they were ready to start. "She's a bird."

"Why, yes." Phil's frank face lit up with pleasure. "Sure you don't mind, Jackie Horner?"

"Not a bit. Glad to have a rest," acquiesced Jack cheerfully. "Pile in, Sylvia. Phil's waiting."

Sylvia's eyes flashed quick inquiry at Jack as he helped her into the seat beside the driver. He met her gaze imperturbably but she was not deceived by his noncommittal expression. Well she knew that the owner of the "bird" suffered the tortures of the damned when any hand beside his own was on the wheel. Well she knew also that he was deliberately giving Phil a chance to do more than run his car. It was so precisely like Jack, impulsively selfish one minute, impulsively generous the next. Through the white star-lit wonder of the night the car sped, while its occupants sat almost silent, wrapped in an incommunicable garment of dreams. Later, after they had taken leave of the girls, Jack and Roger went with Phil to the station at Baltimore. But Roger stayed in the car while Jack went to the train with Phil. Just as the train pulled in Jack stirred himself to say what was on his mind.

"Phil! Forgive the impertinence, old man, but I've got to know. If she has decided for you, I'll clear out. You're the better man--always were."

Phil Lorrimer drew a long breath and set his lips rather as he used to set them before a tackle in the field.

"You needn't clear out, so far as I am concerned. I haven't asked Sylvia to marry me. How can I? I've only just finished paying my college debts and she is worth something like a million. Is thy servant a fool?" he added a little bitterly.

"Yes," said Jack Amidon. "The biggest kind of fool. Do you suppose the money matters a hang to her?"

"Well, it matters to me," curtly. "Train's under way. 'By." And with a hasty but warm pressure of the hand which went out to meet his, Phil boarded the moving train, leaving Jack staring after.

"Confound the fellow!" he muttered. "Hanged if I know whether to be mad or glad he's such an idiot. How did he dare not ask Sylvia when her eyes looked like that? Gee! Perhaps he didn't see."

But Phil Lorrimer had seen, and all that night he stared sleeplessly out at the stars and the twinkling lights of villages and cities, love and pride battling within him. Once or twice he made up his mind feverishly to telegraph Sylvia the first thing in the morning. Then he would decide it would be better to write her a letter, tell her exactly how it all was and ask if she cared enough to wait for him until he had something worth while to offer her. And all the time he knew he would do nothing of the kind. He would fight on grimly by himself, and if in the meantime somebody else--Jack or another--slipped in ahead, well, that would mean she was not for him, if he knew Sylvia. And so on and so on and so on. But never in all his reasonings did it occur to him that the money was as nothing between him and Sylvia Arden, neither of advantage or disadvantage, simply a zero. Jack Amidon knew it and had generously endeavored to tell his rival. Sylvia knew it and her eyes had also tried to tell him that night in the sunset. But poor Phil, blind as the clearest sighted man sometimes becomes when a woman is involved, saw Sylvia's money as a huge, hateful, insurmountable, mountain peak behind which stood Sylvia herself, only to be reached by accumulating another pile of gold from which he could make the leap to her.

And in all that long wakeful night he never once thought of little Barbara Day. He was too used to saving people, one way or another, to think much about this latest exploit in the salvation line; and, besides, his mind was full of other things.

But Barbara dreamed of Phil and heard his deep voice calling out of the darkness, "Come on, Barbie. I'm right here." And all through her dreams the star over the sycamore-tree kept smiling at her friendlily but its smile was oddly mixed up with Phil Lorrimer's.

*CHAPTER VII*

*OCTOBER DEVELOPMENTS*

A deeper bronze to the oaks and a more vivid scarlet to the sumach. A sharper tang to the air, mornings. Hilltops veiled in amethyst and golden haze on the meadows, afternoons. At sundown, ghost-like wraiths of mists rising up from the river valley. Now and then a clanging wedge of wild geese speeding southward through the night. October!

It must be admitted that in spite of Sylvia's "vicious contentedness" she did feel the Hall a little too peaceful and quiet after her friends had gone, and she settled back into the very life she had chosen for herself. The summer had been brimful of guests and gayeties, with people coming and going all the time and always some new delightful project or enthralling interest afoot, a true Forest of Arden atmosphere of sunshine and happiness and blithe irresponsibility.

Even the sharp and sudden thunder crash, heard from overseas in that fateful early August, the din of great nations rushing to arms, came only vaguely to Sylvia's happy Hill as to most of America. Slow to waken, the country had not at once sensed the significance of what was happening. Humane and peaceful itself, it had not taken in the hideous reality of a desolated and ravaged Belgium, the inspiriting vision of a risen and consecrated France beating the enemy back from Paris, of the fearful and relentless grip of the great dog of war upon the stricken nations. To Sylvia, as to others, it all seemed impossible, incredible, not to be apprehended in terms of actuality. These things just couldn't be, that was all. There must be some mistake somewhere. But there was no mistake. People kept coming in on every steamer with harrowing tales of well-substantiated horror. The things they had seen made the heart sick and the blood run cold. It was war indeed. However horrible, these things were possible, had happened.

Perhaps the first vital realization came to Sylvia as it came to nearly every one in this country through individual testimony of friends. Even in September, rumor reached her that John Armstrong's money had helped to establish and support a field hospital "somewhere in France," that his wife and her sister Hilda were regular Red Cross nurses. And in October had come a letter from Hilda herself, describing simply but with the fearful graphicness of the bare truth, the horrors, the miracles, the splendid thrills, the supreme satisfaction of the work she and Constance had undertaken. John was driving a relief Ambulance near the battle line. Bertram was at the front somewhere. Bertram, it appeared, was the young Englishman to whom the writer had very recently become engaged after a romantically brief acquaintance. Of course it was horrible, Hilda admitted, having him there, but then she wouldn't want him not to want to be there.

All this Sylvia read with absorbed interest and straightway dispatched a generous check to John Armstrong. But giving money being altogether insufficient to express her abounding sympathy she also learned to knit, to Jack's huge delectation and much raillery, and resolutely set herself to making sponges and rather eccentric looking hose, though this process, too, scarcely satisfied her when she thought of what her friend was doing over in France. In fact, it satisfied her so little that she very speedily abandoned it entirely wherein she was rather like a good many other American women. "A thousand shall fall at thy right hand but it shall not come nigh thee" seemed to be America's motto in those days.

Perhaps the thing which came nearest, that autumn, to offering Sylvia an outlet for her restless energy was her music. She was an excellent accompanist and she and Gus Nichols spent much time together previous to his departure for the concert tour which was to begin early in November. And while Sylvia was intent on her own dreams and quandaries, weaving much she scarcely understood herself into the music, she had not the slightest perception that these hours she gave the young violinist meant anything more to him than to herself, an agreeable mutual expression in a loved art. "Music is Love in search of a word" and if the boy's violin struggled more than once to tell her what his lips would never have ventured on, Sylvia, with her mind on other things, did not hear.

Long enthusiastic letters came frequently from Suzanne, ensconced, according to schedule, in a dingy studio in the Square where one is not encumbered with needless luxuries like steam heat and bath tubs and electricity, where one steeps in "Atmosphere," and pays far more than he can afford for the privilege of living very uncomfortably but artistically. Her letters reeked of Bohemia, of "Polly's" and "Bruno's Garret," of the delicious glamour and picturesqueness of the inimitable Village, of the thrill and stimulus of the whole marvelous city of which the Village was a unique part.

Barb, too, wrote often, though with less abandon of rejoicement in her new way of life. It was all "interesting." Aunt Jo was "wonderful." The Metropolitan was "magnificent." People were "kind." But there was a faint panic-stricken note beneath it all, at first, which made Sylvia wonder if poor Barbara were a little submerged by the very seething whirlpool which was such supreme delight to Suzanne. It was as if both were on a "Merry-Go-Round," and Suzanne kept clapping her hands and crying "Faster! Faster!" while Barb's timid "pansy" eyes begged in silence for a safer, less mad rate of revolution.

Aside from her aunt, of whom Barb could never say enough, the person most frequently mentioned in her letters was Philip Lorrimer. "Dr. Lorrimer is so good to me." "Dr. Lorrimer took me to a roof garden last night." "Phil and I rode over on the ferry to Staten Island to cool off last evening." "Phil just came in and sends greetings. He is going to take me to a Socialist meeting soon." "Aunt Jo likes Phil so much," and so forth.

And though Sylvia made no comment on this new development it gave her cause for reflection. Sylvia was more than ever "at sea" these days. That sunset moment on Lover's Leap had been an illuminating moment for her and she guessed it had been one for Phil also. Though she told herself later she must have been mistaken, she knew in her heart she had not been so. The look in Phil's eyes as they had met hers that moment was unmistakable, more eloquent than volumes of speech. She had felt the same thing vibrating in his voice when later he had bidden her "Good night" and "Good-by" and stepped into Jack's car, something which met a quick leap of response in herself. Sylvia was very woman and she knew what had happened, though she did not know whether the thing was going to be permanent or not.

All that next day and the next and for a week beyond she watched the mails, pretending to herself, feminine wise, that she was doing nothing of the sort. And, finally, when on the tenth day a brotherly, brief, impersonal, not to say casual, note came from New York in Phil's big sprawling hand, she felt as if a shower of icy water had been hurled at her. Not that she wanted Phil to ask her to marry him, not that she was at all sure she would have said yes if he had asked her. She was by no means certain it would not be Jack to whom she would surrender when the time came for surrender. At least so she told herself to save her pride. Certainly she was far from ready to marry any man that Fall, sincerely desirous as she was to belong to herself awhile as she had told Jack. Nevertheless Phil's very discretion angered and hurt her. Every now and then she was tortured by an agonizing fear that in the strange exhilaration of that moment in the forest she might have betrayed to him more than she had been in any degree willing to admit to herself. Consequently, Philip Lorrimer, M.D., got very few and very brief letters from Arden Hall those golden autumn days.

Neither is it strange that out of favor with his "Faraway Princess" Phil turned to sympathetic little Barbara in his few idle hours. Not that he took Barb into his confidence. Indeed there were no confidences to make. To no one in the world would he have admitted that Sylvia's apparent indifference hurt. Sylvia had the right to ignore him if she chose. The Queen could do no wrong. Nor was there anything to say about the rumors which reached him frequently that Sylvia and Jack were often together, and that an engagement was obviously to be expected if not already secretly in existence. That, too, he had counted on as a possibility when he had told Jack there was no reason for him to "clear out." Phil Lorrimer was man enough to want the lady of his heart to be free in her choice. Had he been in Jack's position he would have entered the race and run, neck and neck, beside his rival and abided the end whatever it was. But he was handicapped, or so he believed, by his poverty, so he set his teeth and stood out of the way leaving Jack a clear road. If Jack could win--well, it meant Sylvia cared, that was all. Phil's philosophy was a very simple one.

In the meantime there was work. And Phil was the kind to be able to assuage nearly every mortal ill in work. In the strenuous demands of the day-time hours at the hospital he had little chance to brood over any personal woes and when night came on he took what consolation he could, man fashion, from another woman's obvious pleasure in his society, never once suspecting he was playing with edged tools any more than Barb herself did. Of the physiological action of the heart Phil Lorrimer knew a great deal but of the more subtle manifestations of that organ he knew astonishingly little.

Only Miss Josephine Murray kept her keen eyes wide open. "Babes in the wood!" she thought sometimes. "Heavens! What a fearful thing it is to be young!" And then seeing the soft flush on Barb's cheeks when she came in from an excursion with the young doctor, and the starry shine in her eyes, Miss Murray would add grimly to herself, "Fearful but divine! It's a million years since I had the gift of looking like that."

And sometimes she would ask her niece questions about young Dr. Lorrimer, and Barb would chatter on innocently about him, how he was an old, old friend of Sylvia's, so old, they were almost like brother and sister, though she and Suzanne used sometimes to think maybe Sylvia would marry him some time, but now everybody said it would be Jack Amidon. And once Barb had told the story of how she had slipped over the edge of the cliff and hung to the little ash-tree until Phil had called to her to let go and she had obeyed and gone down, down into space, not one tiny bit afraid for she had felt just as sure as sure that Phil Lorrimer would catch her just as he promised.

"He's the kind of person you just have to have faith in. You know he wouldn't fail you, no matter what happened," she had finished. And Aunt Jo had "H-med" meditatively and risen to switch on the electric light and sit down to her letters. But Barb had lingered before the gas log, watching its scintillating colors and lights and dreaming little vague pleasant dreams. Perhaps the Barb who didn't dare let herself look at the real Barb took a shy peep that night.

As for Jack Amidon, he was extraordinarily on his good behavior that autumn. His father was grimly pleased to find him prompt and assiduous at his office desk, a rather unexpected departure from his career of the past two years when he had fulfilled the obligations of his nominal post chiefly by absent treatment. Possibly the sudden change of heart on the part of his rather erratic son reminded the old man of a similar abrupt right-about-face some six years ago when the same delinquent had announced himself blandly as being "on the water wagon" after a rather strenuous course of wild oat sowing. Perhaps, too, Jackson Amidon shrewdly suspected that now as then the impetus to the reform could be traced to a vigorous-willed, clear-eyed young lady who tolerated no weaklings among her retinue.

"The boy's taken a new turn," he thought. "He'll come out all right in the end. He's sound as a nut inside for all his vagaries. And if that little girl on the Hill can make him come to, it will be one of the best jobs she ever landed." And he added also to himself that if the day ever came when he should welcome Sylvia Arden as his third daughter there would be little left to wish for in the time he had left. And then his eyes had grown sober, for his own daughters, those of his own flesh and blood, had never been of much comfort to him, dearly as he loved them. Over in Europe, Isabel was already threatening stormily to get a divorce from the titled rascal she had insisted on marrying in spite of her father's judgment and protestations. And there was Jeanette, beautiful, willful Jeanette, whose frocks were the last cry from Paris and whose cars and horses and houses and entertainments were all the most daring and expensive America could produce! He, himself, had given her all the money her little hands could hold or spend and Francis Latham had gone on with the prodigious task but neither one of them had been able to give her happiness. That was all too evident. Perhaps if there had been children it would have been different. And at this point in his reflections the old man always broke off with a sigh, for he knew that the moment when Jack should bring Sylvia home for a bride could only yield precedence in satisfaction to that other hoped-for moment when he should see his grandson, Jackson Amidon, the third. Then, indeed, the curtain might go down when it pleased.

These dreams of Jackson Amidon's did not look so all improbable that October. Jack was distinctly "on the job" as he would have expressed it, doing his level best to make a man of himself, since that was what Sylvia demanded, and sunning himself happily in her favor during their mutual leisure hours. Very good comrades the two were. Youth turns to youth as a morning glory to the sun and the Goddess of Propinquity is a lady of much influence. Certainly it was not strange that people prophesied that an engagement would soon be announced. Possibly it was not strange either, that Jack and Sylvia themselves believed such a denouement entirely probable in course of time.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*FIRE AND FROST*

"Lois, aren't you ever going to write any more?" Sylvia on the rug before the fire with wee Marjory in her arms looked up over that young person's bobbing silver curls to ask the question.

Lois Daly sitting by the window to catch the last bit of daylight, ran her hand into a small stocking to investigate the number of casualties before she answered.

"Maybe. When the kiddies are grown up."

"But don't you mind not doing it now? Don't you want to do it dreadfully sometimes?"