Part 6

"Not especially. In fact I don't believe I could write now if I tried. I've lost the knack as well as the impulse. You have no idea how much such things are a matter of mere habit." Lois' voice had an even flow suggesting cool, shady, translucent waters. Sometimes her friend's serenity irritated Sylvia. It did now.

"Well, I think that is all wrong," she announced decidedly. "You oughtn't to have let it go."

"Just how could I have helped it? You may recall I have been moderately busy these last few years. I haven't had much time to entertain literary angels."

"Oh, I know," acknowledged Sylvia penitently, curling one of Marjory's ringlets around her finger as she spoke. "You couldn't, of course, with the house and the babies and the little mother's death and everything. But couldn't you begin again now?"

"Why should I? Tom doesn't need an author in his household. He needs a housekeeper and a nurse and a seamstress and a wife." There was a faintly satirical twist to Lois' lips as she made the statement. "Of the four he needs the wife least, of course. He is too busy to enjoy my society. This hospital project is the last straw."

Sylvia looked thoughtful. Somehow there did seem to be something wrong somewhere. Doctor Tom too occupied to see anything of his beautiful, brilliant wife; she, in turn, too much immersed in household and maternal cares either to cultivate her own particular gift or pay much attention to the things her husband was so vitally interested in! These two had started out so well. They were both so fine, so thoroughly devoted at heart to each other. What was the trouble? Was marriage always a compromise like this? Sylvia did not like to think so. Somewhere there must have been something which could have been done differently. Woman-like she was a bit inclined to blame the other woman. If only Lois had cared a little more for the things Doctor Tom cared for, the things which to Sylvia seemed so splendid, his profession, his tireless service to the community, his dreams for its progress and betterment! Lois rolled up the stockings she had just finished mending and rose.

"Do you mind staying a few minutes with Marjory, Sylvia? It is cook's night out and I have to see about supper."

Sylvia assented willingly and Lois departed. Even as the door closed behind her, Sylvia heard Doctor Tom's step in the hall and his cheerful voice as he greeted his wife.

"Got in earlier than I expected. Come on back and enjoy the twilight with me," she heard him inviting.

Lois' answer was inaudible but in a moment Doctor Tom entered the living-room alone.

"Hello, here's my best daughter and my star neighbor! Come on, Cherub, and let your old Dad toss you up to the moon."

Marjory leaped with a happy little crow out of Sylvia's arms and Sylvia rose to the higher level of a chair while she smiled at the baby's gurgling delight as her father tossed her "up to the moon." Presently the doctor seated himself before the fire with his small daughter still in his arms. As he settled back with a tired sigh Sylvia saw with sudden quick compunction that Doctor Tom looked old--too old for his years. Some of his characteristic buoyancy had gone out of him.

"How is the Curry baby?" she asked.

He shook his head sadly.

"Died early this morning," he said.

"Oh!" Sylvia's exclamation was pitiful. "Can I do anything?"

"Go down and see the mother. She is like a stone. Can't even cry. Maybe the baby's better off. The father is drunk half the time and there isn't any too much to eat. But if I could have had Jimmy in a decent hospital I could have saved him. Everything was against him down there, poor little chap!" And Tom Daly's big hand closed over little Marjory's dimpled one as if somehow to keep her safe from the grim enemy that had pursued Jimmy Curry, an enemy who had altogether too many allies down in the unsanitary tenement district where the baby had wearily breathed his little life in and out again in one short year. Then the doctor's fist came down with a resounding thump on the arm of the chair. "I tell you, Sylvia, we have got to get that hospital and get it quick. We're wasting human life too fast at this rate."

"Will money help? You know I'm ready to give to the hospital any time--any amount you want."

Doctor Tom smiled his old wide-mouthed friendly grin.

"Naturally you are, Miss Christmas. I can always count on you every time. You would give your last red cent if anybody needed it. Thank Heaven you don't come into the bulk of your property till you are twenty-five. You would have made ducks and drakes of it before this if you had it all. I shall tell Gordon to keep his eye on the purse strings until you get a husband to do it for you. You have such dissipating tendencies. Don't wrinkle your nose like that. You shall give when the time is ripe. What I want just now is to wring some money out of the hides of some of these tough old Greendale sinners who keep their religion with their prayer books in the family pew and their brotherly love reduced systematically to lowest terms. The apology for a hospital we have is a disgrace and they know it or they will before I get through with 'em. There isn't even a children's ward. Little Allie Wendell died last week to the tune of Jake Casey's blasphemous D. T. music. Bah! It's rotten."

"Tom, I do wish you wouldn't shout so. I could hear you clear out in the kitchen." Thus Lois' silver cool voice from the doorway, contrasting oddly with her husband's vehement ejaculatoriness which still filled the little room. "Supper is ready. You'll stay, won't you, Sylvia? I will be with you as soon as I can get Marjory into Tessy's hands and see if Junior brushed his teeth. He is so bad these days. I can't trust him at all."

Sylvia had been about to refuse but Doctor Tom cut her short.

"Of course you will stay. You haven't been here for a dog's age. Besides, I want to talk to you about the hospital and ask what you think about--"

"Don't start to talk shop now," ordered Lois from the doorway, with small Marjory's head bobbing sleepily over her shoulder. "The omelet will go down."

"It sure will," promised the doctor. "I feel as if almost anything would go down in me this minute."

"That is the trouble with Tom," smiled Lois to Sylvia. "He doesn't know the difference between a sublimated souffle and plain hash. It is all food to him. It is very discouraging."

Doctor Tom shook his head as the door closed upon his wife and daughter.

"If only she wouldn't fuss," he groaned. "Sylvia, I feel like a beast when I think what a lot this life we are leading takes out of her. If only she would take it a bit easier. She's such a confounded perfectionist every blessed thing she does has to be just right. That's why it uses up so much of her."

It was certainly a "just right" meal to which they sat down a few moments later. Everything was cold which should have been cold, everything hot which should have been hot. The table linen was fine and dazzling white, the silver and glass resplendently bright and clean. The bowl of yellow chrysanthemums made a perfect centerpiece, under the pleasantly shaded glow of the suspended lamp. Lois herself was exquisite in a soft clinging gray gown which she had taken the time to slip into while she had been upstairs with the children. Not a fold was awry, not a hair out of place. Serene and low-voiced and deft-motioned, she served perfect tea in quaint gold-banded cups from a green-dragoned teapot.

But somehow Sylvia was critical in her judgment to-night. The very perfectness of it all jarred upon her. She couldn't help wondering if Lois were after all the consummate artist her husband acclaimed her. Life was made for happiness and was Lois Daly happy or was she making her big-hearted, splendid-souled husband happy? Had she even noticed the tired look in his eyes to-night, the droop to his shoulders? In her conscientious supervision of Junior's teeth and Marjory's bedtime did she think or care at all about the Tommy Currys and Allie Wendells of the world who mattered so gravely to her husband? The two loved each other devotedly, Sylvia knew, yet she could not help seeing how far apart they were after five years of wedded life. It gave one food for thought.

After supper Lois excused herself to do some household auditing.

"You and Tom are going to talk hospital anyway," she added to Sylvia, "and there is no use of my listening while it is all just an air-castle. If I had that on my mind on top of the price of potatoes and bacon I don't know what would happen."

"Stay and rest and we'll call hospital taboo," promised Doctor Tom. "Never mind the old accounts to-night."

But Lois shook her head, protesting if he ran his business the way he wanted her to run hers they would soon end in the poorhouse.

"Not that you run your business any too well, Tommy dear," she had added. "You are a scandalously poor bill collector. Aren't the Williamsons ever going to pay?"

"Steve Williamson's down with pneumonia. I can't press them now."

"Pneumonia on top of twins! They _are_ unfortunate." And Lois left the room.

Sylvia dropped her eyes quickly. Intuitively she knew she didn't want to look at Doctor Tom just then. He made no comment upon his wife's parting speech but settled down in the big armchair with a tired grunt.

"Mind if I smoke?"

"Of course not."

"All right, here goes." He took one or two long comforting puffs at his pipe. "Let's side-track the hospital for the present. Might as well since it's only an air-castle, as Lois says. I'm a bit frazzled to-night. Can't seem to get the Curry baby off my chest. Suppose you play something instead. Nothing too classic--just agreeable and anaesthetic."

Sylvia went to the piano and sat down. Her fingers drifted into a nocturne. Save for the soft music and the crackling of the logs on the hearth there was no sound in the room. Tom Daly sat staring into the leaping flames and smoked stolidly. It would have made an appropriate picture for a woman's magazine cover. The gracious, comfortable room, the tired man, basking in home peace and contentment after the labor and stress of the day; the young girl at the piano, with healing and sympathy, wordless but no less apparent in her finger tips. Only in a woman's magazine the musician would no doubt have been the man's wife. Life is sometimes oddly different from magazine covers.

It was nearly an hour before Lois returned to the living-room. She paused a moment on the threshold.

"Oh, so you aren't building hospitals after all? Forgive me for being such a bad hostess, Sylvia. Was that Brahms?"

Sylvia shook her head with a smile.

"I don't know what it was," she admitted. "Something I heard in my dreams maybe. Did I put you to sleep Doctor Tom?"

"No, just soothed the savage in me. I feel fairly pacific at the moment. Don't stop."

"Ah, but I must. Felicia will think I am lost." She rose as she spoke and Doctor Tom rose too. "Don't come," she protested. "It is too absurd when it's only such a step."

"It's a step I intend to take," he grinned. "If you must go, I'm at your service."

"I wish you wouldn't," objected Sylvia, but she let him wrap her long moss green cloak about her and in a moment they were out in the keen November air under the stars. Neither said anything until they were at the steps of the Hall. Then suddenly Doctor Tom spoke.

"Sylvia, how did you know I had the blue devils to-night?" he demanded.

"Did you?" parried Sylvia. There was something different about Doctor Tom to-night; a queer, tense something in his voice she wasn't used to.

"You know I did. You played to 'em--charmed 'em, as I said."

"I'm glad," said Sylvia. "Glad I charmed them, I mean. You need a rest, Doctor Tom. You are going a pace that would kill any man who wasn't as strong as an ox."

He laughed a little grimly.

"Well, Miss Nestor, any more sage advice to offer your grandfather? Just how am I going to shunt the world I happen to have on my shoulders at present?"

"Just drop it off. You could if you had to. Why don't you and Lois go on a vacation? Felicia and I will look after the babies."

"Thanks, Miss Christmas. That is like you and mighty kind, but do you see Lois letting anybody--the angel Gabriel himself--look after the babies for her?"

"She might," dubiously.

"And again she mightn't. But, aside from Lois, I have too many life and death jobs on hand at present to quit. A doctor's no business to get nerves. He ought to leave that to his patients. Anyway, it isn't the work that is getting me just now, it is the damnable futility of it all. The Curry baby is a symbol. I'm pouring water in a sieve, Sylvia, and that's the devil's truth."

"It isn't. You aren't," denied Sylvia quickly. "You are doing miracles every day of your life and everybody knows it. Doctor Tom, I never heard you talk like that before. Don't. It makes me feel as if everything were tottering on its foundations."

"Sometimes I think they are with that infernal senseless war going on over there after all our peace prating. Sylvia, what's it all for? Where are we going? What's the use?"

"Everything's the use. Maybe we can't see behind all the agony and blundering but there must be something there even if we can't see it. Why, Doctor Tom, there must be." Sylvia's eyes were earnest, her face uplifted to the stars lit with the fine fires of youth's faith. Tom Daly shook himself like one coming out of a trance. He was suddenly ashamed that he, the strong man, had been outdistanced in courage by the slim girl before him.

"Right you are," he said heartily. "There _must_ be. It's the only way to look at it. Thank you, Sylvia. I won't bleat again. If only--" But what was to have followed that sharp wrung "if only" Sylvia never knew for suddenly Tom Daly crushed both her hands in a vicelike grip and then turned and fled with a gruff "good night" down the path.

In his own yard close by he met his wife placidly draping a blanket over a rhododendron bush.

"I thought there might be a frost to-night," she observed, and her tone had all the clear crispness of frost in it as she spoke. Tom Daly was only human. It was scarcely strange that he could not help contrasting his wife's voice with that other eager, vibrant, younger, warmer voice he had just heard, passionately asserting faith in that something behind all the miseries and misunderstandings of things without which life were indeed scarcely to be endured.

There was a world war on. Little Jimmy Curry lay dead unnecessarily. Tom Daly's nerves and courage and endurance were strained all but to the breaking point. And his wife Lois thought there might be a frost. But long after Tom Daly had fallen into the heavy sleep of complete physical exhaustion Lois lay wide-eyed and sleepless, staring into the darkness.

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE MOTH AND THE STAR*

The audience settled itself into place, rattling its programs, prepared idly to be either amused or bored as the opportunity presented itself, mildly curious as to the personality and talent of the young violinist "heard for the first time in this country."

"They say he used to be old man McIntosh's office boy. He certainly struck it soft. Old man's worth near a million they say and this darned Dago'll get it all I suppose. Some folks just naturally nab the luck." Thus a young reporter to his neighbor.

"I don't know about that. I can't imagine old McIntosh standing for this fiddling business. He's a husky old Puritan."

"Well, he did stand for it to the tune of quite a pretty price, I understand. The chap's had four years of Berlin and Dresden and the rest of it. Some mixture! Italian birth, American start, Scotch bringing up, German polish. Whew! Wonder what he's like with all that in him. Talk about your melting pots!"

"There's old McIntosh in the box now. No, the left. Ugly old snoozer, ain't he? But brains. Gee! He's shrewd as they make 'em. Hello! Who's the dame? Pretty easy to look at it, ain't she?"

"That's Miss Arden--lives on a high mucky muck hill out in Greendale. She's something to old McIntosh. Niece maybe. I forget."

"No, she isn't. Old man used to be bookkeeper for her father's firm. I remember. My dad knew 'em. Arden and Daly--big cotton concern. Arden died young. Daly lost his money in some railroad slump and croaked too. Son's a doctor--making the wires hum out in Greendale about a hospital or something. So that's Miss Arden. Engaged to young Amidon, isn't she?"

"I reckon. Shut up. There he comes. Gee! He's nothing but a kid."

It must be admitted that Gus, appearing on the program as Gustavus Niccolini, did look very much indeed like a "kid" as he came across the stage and made a shy, stiff little bow to the audience. Angus McIntosh fidgeted in his chair and cleared his throat irritably. "Fool to let him try," he thought. "How do I know whether he can play or not? What if he can't?" A cold perspiration stood out on the old man's forehead. What if the boy made a failure of the thing? What if the audience smiled, hissed? Audiences did behave like that sometimes. Why hadn't he told the boy, short-off, long ago, he shouldn't try it? Thus he worked himself into a perfect passion of apprehension. But in the midst of his perturbation Sylvia's hand rested on his knee and Sylvia's eyes smiled reassurance.

"It's all right, Daddy McIntosh," she whispered. "Just you wait till they hear him."

In a moment they did hear him and the great hall was hushed to respectful silence. The audience had the grace to recognize a master touch when they heard it. Angus McIntosh was justified. The boy whom he had plucked out of a den of squalor and vice was an artist, and the grim old man who had had a hand in the creation had been something of an artist at the job himself. As for Sylvia, who was behind it all, she hardly breathed until the music ceased. She listened rapt while the voice of the violin sang and soared, now rapturous, now tender, now triumphant, now dying away like the note of a wild bird in the night. She had known before that Gus could play, but this--why this was a thing born of Heaven to which she listened reverently. Finally the last note came and quivered into silence. There was an instant's hush then the applause thundered. The boy lifted his head quietly, but with a certain grave pride, and his eyes sought the box where Angus McIntosh and Sylvia sat. Then suddenly his face was lit with a light which was not a smile but an enveloping radiance which seemed to say, "This is yours. I give it to you. I am glad it is worth giving." Then he bowed to the audience and the applause redoubled.

Angus McIntosh never knew much about the rest of that program. He knew it went on and the applause went on, that the boy went through the varied and difficult performance with ease and serenity and simplicity, but what he was playing the old man never knew. It might have been "Yankee Doodle" or the "Cam'el's are Coming" for all he heard. He only knew the thing was beautiful. All the remnants of still lingering prejudices floated off into some dim cavern where such limbo is stored or annihilated. There was a place in the world it seemed for sheer beauty. Maybe it had a spiritual essence all its own. Anyway, this music of the boy's seemed oddly connected in his mind with the psalms and other fine old religious poetry with which his mother had filled his mind long ago. He was humbly glad that he had had a share in letting loose this thing upon the world. He remembered always that it was Sylvia who had really opened the door. Beauty--Kindness--Happiness--Love--all these things had been slipping almost beyond his grasp that December nearly six years ago when Sylvia and her Christmas family had brought them back. It was Sylvia who had given the boy to him, Sylvia, who had given his music to the world by making himself who had been blind see.

The concert was over and Herr Bernsdorf, Gus' old music teacher, had rushed up to the box and was pumping Mr. McIntosh's hand up and down violently with inarticulate croonings and mutterings of delight and congratulation. "Haf I not told you that the boy was a genius? Haf I not said it hundertmal? I knew. I, who was his master, I knew. They haf done well by him over there, they haf done well. But somebody else, she haf done more? Is it you, mein Fraulein?" He turned his flashing little black eyes on Sylvia as he asked the question.

"I! Oh, no. I have done nothing," disclaimed Sylvia.

"No? Maybe it is another, in Berlin or Dresden or elsewhere. I know not. I only know the boy haf learned to play like that from luf. Luf haf taught him. Only luf learns to play like that. Ach! Do I not know?"

And then Gus himself stepped into the box, having gently but firmly slipped away from the crowd which would have waylaid him.

"Did you like it, Daddy McIntosh?" he asked playfully, and the old man coughed and sputtered and could not speak. But Gus was satisfied. Even as he grasped his sponsor's hand the boy's eyes went beyond to Sylvia, who had purposely stepped back. Though his lips said nothing, his eyes asked her too, "Did you like it, Sylvia?" and said again what they had proclaimed from the stage. "It is yours. I give it to you."

And a little shiver went over Sylvia as she read the boy's eyes, and suddenly she felt very sad and humble and a little ashamed because she had been so blind. She knew he was asking nothing, probably never would ask anything, but she also knew he was giving something very precious, something for which she had nothing to give in exchange. Mr. McIntosh, absorbed in his emotions, did not understand, but the old music teacher did.

"I haf said it," he thought triumphantly. "I haf had right. It was luf--luf and no other who have learned the boy to play like that. I haf heard it from his fingers and now I haf seen it in his eyes. And by and by he will play efen better, for luf will also learn him pain, and pain he is the great master. He it is who learn the masters themselves. Haf I not seen it?"

Only for a moment Gus had let his eyes betray him, so brief an interval indeed that Sylvia thought afterward she must have imagined it so naturally did she and the young man find themselves chatting over the details of the concert.

But later, after she was home in Greendale and curled comfortably in bed, that eloquent look from those dark eyes came back and would not let her sleep.

"Oh, dear," she thought. "Who would ever have thought it of Gus, of all people? I thought he was just wrapped up in his music. Why won't they stay friends? It is so discouraging and uncomfortable. There is no end to the trouble it makes when they begin to want to be lovers. Jack is likely to come any minute and tell me what a good boy he is and demand the plums out of the Christmas pie. I don't want to marry any of them. I don't. I don't. So there."

But even as she snuggled down among the pillows she heard a wee distinct little voice inside her somewhere say something quite different.

"Oh, yes, you do," it said. "You want to marry Phil, by and by, way off in the future, a thousand years from now. Only he doesn't want to marry you, and that is what makes you so restless and discontented and horrid. That's why you've been flirting with Jack and--yes, Gus, too, in a demure, artistic sort of way, not thinking it would do any harm to anybody. And even Doctor Tom looked funny at you the other night. And--but then it is all Phil's fault--so you needn't worry."

And then Sylvia put her hands over her ears, for she didn't want to hear any more of that kind of talk.