Part 7

"You are quite mistaken," she retorted to the disagreeable little voice. "I haven't been flirting with anybody. Jack and Gus are both good friends and I can't help being nice to them. And Doctor Tom is safe and married, so he doesn't count. But, anyway, I'll be careful after this and I don't want to marry anybody--not anybody."

And down in the near-by city the young violinist who had scored such a success that the papers were already writing up flattering notices about him sat in his room, furiously scribbling poetry, at least that is what he would probably have called it, poetry whose theme was mostly borrowed from another young lover, and had in it a lot about the "desire of the moth for the star" or some such rubbish. Gus was very young yet if he was a master violinist and Love was beginning to teach him other things than how to make his violin sing. But the poetry was not so good as his music and presently he pushed aside his scribblings in disgust and went and stood by the window looking out into the night.

It had been raining and the pavements glistened in the light reflected from the arc-lamps. And suddenly the twinkling lights called up to the boy the memory of a Christmas eve when he had followed Angus McIntosh into a brilliantly lighted room with a wonderful Christmas tree in the center, such a Christmas tree as he had never dreamed of in his wildest dreams. And then he forgot the tree and remembered Sylvia smiling kindly at him, saying, "Christmas Family, here are Mr. McIntosh and Gus Nichols. Isn't it nice they could get here to-night?"

He knew now that the desire of the moth for the star had been born then and there, only it wasn't even a desire, it was just a worship.

And in the Oriole Inn, at the foot of Sylvia's Hill, Hope Williams lay asleep with Stephen Kinnard's four weeks' old letter under her pillow, and a smile on her lips, for she was dreaming she was back in the garden with Stephen sketching her among the wistaria vines. But Stephen Kinnard was having a very amusing and profitable time sketching a wild, little beauty of a half breed on an Arizona desert these days and had all but forgotten such a person as Hope existed. But never once in all his wanderings did he forget to mail a weekly letter to Felicia Emory, who had rejected him "with reasons."

So things go in this piquant world of ours. And there is much truth hidden for the wise in the depths of the "Grecian Urn."

*CHAPTER X*

*THE CITY*

By November Barbara had become so accustomed to the city that she no longer jumped at its noises or shrank physically from its crowds. She learned to ignore the thunder of the El and to regard the Subway as a necessary evil, the traffic policeman a very present help in time of trouble. She even learned to zigzag deftly, alone and unprotected, in and out among the automobiles, and to calculate on the chance that a Fifth Avenue Bus driver would probably prefer not to run her down, other things being equal.

But she never quite made friends with the big, strange city--the Step-Mother city--as some one has called it. Always it seemed to hold her at a distance, perfectly amicable and perfectly impersonal. It seemed to say to her "What are you to me? There are hundreds---yes, thousands, like you in my gigantic household. Can I be expected to care for you each as individuals? Watch the motes dancing in the sunshine. As the motes to you so you to me. Go look at the sands shining on the beach at Coney. As the grains to you so you to me. Let your eyes follow the ripples of my big river. As the ripples to you so you and all the rest of the human eddies which make up my great tide to me."

Yet there were moments when Barb felt as if she had almost surprised the city's secret, caught it unaware, as it were, and half ashamed, slipping into its holy of holies. Once coming over on the ferry from Jersey City she had scanned the great towers and buildings, set with twinkling lights as with many jewels, and beheld the huge bridges, across which an endless stream of traffic passed and repassed, like human life itself in its unending succession. And then she had seemed to see for a moment what the city really meant. Sordid, material, menacing, heartless as it was in many of its aspects did it not after all cherish a big vision? Were not those very towers and bridges the symbol of its restless aspiration?

Suddenly above it all had risen a pale lackadaisical looking moon, slipping quietly from behind a smoke bank to look down at the seething tumultuous life of the great city. To Barb the moon had seemed almost to smile, a world-weary, somewhat cynical smile as one who should say "Go on. Keep it up. Burrow and build, crush and create, scream and scuffle. What will it matter a million years hence? You will have learned by then to be cold and calm like me."

But the bridges and towers had mocked the moon and defied it. "We are wood and stone and steel," they said. "We may crumble and fall but what we stand for will neither crumble nor fall. For we are the symbol of man, aspirant, conquering--a spirit which shall not grow cold or calm while there is anything in life to which to aspire, anything left to conquer. We are nothing. That we grant you, Moon. But the spirit of man is everything, yes, even God himself, God passioning, agonizing, ultimately victorious."

So the vision came to little Barb, and after that she was not afraid of the city. She had the clew as to what it was all about. It whirred and rumbled and rushed and screeched like its own busses but it had a method in its madness. Like the busses, it had a destination. It was going somewhere whether it knew it or not.

As for Barb's own little life, caught in the whirl of the city's, it was full and breathless and on the whole incredibly agreeable. She typed her Aunt's eloquent pro-suffrage pamphlets and articles and listened with rapt eyes and eager ears to her Aunt's glowing speeches and all the while in her busy brain the meaning of this, too, was gradually dawning. At first it had been like a confused, jumbled picture puzzle, but little by little she was able to put the pieces together into their proper places. She was beginning to see that though one talked a great deal about the woman question and listened to a great deal about the woman question, there was really, after all, no woman question, just the human question--the human questions.

How could every man and woman and child in America--in the world--be assured enough to eat and to wear, enough and not too much? How could each have leisure to play, also just enough, neither too much, nor too little? How was each to find his own work, neither too much nor too little, but the right work, the work he could do with all his heart, not for the payment, though that must be adequate, but for the zest of the doing itself, that special, personal service which every human being should be God endowed and man fitted to perform? Above all, how could every man, woman and child be sure of happiness? Since she had come to the city happiness had come to seem a very fundamental thing, perhaps because she herself was so happy, partly also because she was so sorry for the rest who were not happy. And so few of them seemed to be happy. They looked complacent, or smug, or well-fed, or blatantly successful, some of them, but almost none looked happy, and most of them, it seemed to Barb, looked downright miserable, haunted and hunted, which was very sad.

Barb herself was happy, as has been said. In her ignorance and innocence she supposed her happiness had its roots in the fact that she was young and healthy and busy and useful and interested in her work. She had no idea that her happiness was at all bound up in the other fact that few days passed that she did not either see or talk over the telephone with a certain rather grave but very friendly young doctor from the near-by clinic, who was also interested in getting at the secret of the city, especially in trying to pluck out the heart of its physical miseries, fighting the seemingly futile battle with filth and disease and ignorance and vice and their sad consequences, attacking the Augean stables of the city with the energy of a Hercules, though there was no magic stream to turn to his aid except the magic stream of youth and courage and determination and faith, which was, after all, a fairly efficient substitute.

And if sometimes when there was a silence between the two young people and Barb's heart was almost overbrimming with a wistful, half-conscious joy in things as they were, she did not know that the grim set to Phil's mouth and the tired look in his eyes was due to the fact that his Faraway Princess was looking particularly far off just then and that he was all but oblivious of the presence of the contented little Beggar-Maid quite within hailing distance. So much for Fools' Paradises where Youth lives from preference and for Nature going quietly about her business in the background!

The city had its way with Suzanne, too, and though she loved it better than Barb, it treated her less genially. Suzanne worked hard and hopefully. The click of her typewriter resounded faithfully by night and day. But, somehow, her plays and stories did not sell. The arrival of the mails with the persistently returning long envelopes was a daily agony. She got to know all the hateful platitudinous variations of the printed slip "Does not necessarily imply lack of merit," "Not exactly suited to the needs of the magazine," and so on. How she detested the smug, smooth, complacency of those printed formulae! How she hugged to her heart the occasional kindly, personal notes of the compassionate editors who salved the pain of rejection by a brief word or two of encouragement or advice. But, alas, these favors were as few as they were precious!

The plays fared no better. The managers smiled unctuously upon her prettiness when Suzanne bearded them in their dens. Some of them even patted her on the shoulder and told her her work was "promising," and advised her by all means to keep at it. But there was always some thoroughly excellent reason why they could not take the particular play or sketch she had to offer and she had eventually to retreat from the dens, one after the other, sore, indignant, but more doggedly determined than ever to storm the citadel.

In the meanwhile Aunt Sarah's little legacy dwindled until it became a mere shadow of itself. It had never been very portly at the best of times, and living in the Village is deceptively expensive. By the first of December Suzanne moved, taking with her her "Factory re-built," which skipped a few letters for variety's sake now and then, but was, on the whole, very dependable. Certainly it could be depended upon to turn out manuscript which would return with automatic precision after the briefest allotment of days. Suzanne informed Barb about this time over the telephone that it was incomparably more picturesque to be living over a fruit vender's shop in the Alley than it was to inhabit a mere studio. It gave you loads of "copy." Miss Murray looked meditative when her niece reported this new viewpoint on Suzanne's part and suggested that that young lady be invited to take supper with them at an early date, to which Barbara joyfully acquiesced. She felt that she had seen too little of Suzanne of late. Suzanne accepted and Barb looked at her very critically and accused her of working herself to death and getting great dark circles under her eyes.

But Suzanne only shrugged and asserted that work agreed with her and sent up her plate for more salad, apologizing for her appetite on the score of having been so busy at lunch time she had forgotten to eat any.

"Oh, you genii!" laughed Barb reproachfully, but Miss Josephine Murray vouchsafed her guest a keen scrutiny which Suzanne perceiving, straightway rattled off a lot of voluble enthusiasm about the delights of the "Dutch Oven" and other Bohemian eating-places.

Later, Phil Lorrimer dropped in and took the girls to a show. He, too, looked rather hard at Suzanne later when they were having innocuous sandwiches and beer at a little German restaurant. Phil and Barb escorted Suzanne home to her alley but she would not let them come in, protesting that it was too late and she didn't want to ruin her reputation with Giovanni and Pepita downstairs, who were very proper people.

On the Bus Phil turned to Barb to ask a rather odd question.

"Roger Minot been in town lately?"

"I don't think so. Suzanne wouldn't let him see her if he did come. Why?"

"I just wondered. Suzanne is looking a little peaked, don't you think?"

"Dreadful," sighed Barb. "Suzanne is such a fiend for work. She owned up to forgetting to eat any luncheon to-day she was so interested in what she was doing. I'm afraid she forgets rather often."

"Shouldn't wonder," agreed Phil. He had seen more than one young man and young woman, too, for that matter, who had developed that convenient kind of memory about food in the city when pockets were empty. He shrewdly suspected that Suzanne was "up against it" in his own parlance. He had made a fair diagnosis of her case in the garish lights of the German restaurant. "Overwork, underfeeding, devilish desperation. Something sure to snap soon." Thus he summed the matter up mentally, for he had not thought it necessary to alarm Barb about her friend's situation, since she was so obviously unsuspecting. He knew Suzanne would brook no help nor pity. "Proud as Lucifer, of course," he thought. But he made up his mind to keep his eye on Suzanne, as he put it.

To that end he made his way to the Village a few evenings later, found from Giovanni that Suzanne was out and discovered her, for himself shortly, sitting in a bench on the Square, looking pinched and blue about the lips. Phil Lorrimer was a very direct person and usually went straight for any goal he had in sight. He finally succeeded in wringing the truth out of Suzanne. She had not sold a story since she came to New York or "landed" a play. Her money was all but gone and she had been living on one meal a day for a week past.

"And the worst of it is, I'm a rotten failure. That's what I can't stand." And Suzanne had clenched her fist in her shabby little glove and set her white teeth together sharply. "I won't give up. I tell you I won't. I won't go home and I won't ask 'em for a cent. I won't let 'em say, 'I told you so.' I won't. I won't. Phil Lorrimer, if you dare to hint one word of what I've told you to-night to Rog--er--to my people, I'll borrow a stiletto of Giovanni and ram it clean through you. What did you ever make me tell you for, anyway? You hadn't any business to. I hate you!" And with an ejaculation somewhere between a snarl and a sob, Suzanne had turned and fled away from him into the night.

But it had not taken Phil's long legs many seconds to be up with her again.

"See here, Suzanne," he urged. "Don't take it like that. My knowing doesn't count. Doctors and priests are dumb as the grave. I won't peach, but do let me help you over the bad spot. I haven't much myself, as you know, but I'd be glad to ease you along a bit if you'll let me, man to man."

Suzanne smiled an April smile at him.

"Man to man, you are a darling, Phil Lorrimer. I'd let you help me if I'd let any one but I won't. My pride's all I have left, and I'm going to hang on to that like grim death. Don't you worry. I know what I can do and I'm going to do it."

"What?" Phil was somewhat dubious about the sudden flush on Suzanne's cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes.

She shook her head, mischief written in every line of her thin, pretty, piquant face.

"'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till you applaud the deed,'"

she quoted gayly. "It is much better you shouldn't know. I'm not even going to tell Barb. She will only be informed that I am out of town with friends. My esteemed parents and dear Roger will hear the same. Your job is to sit tight and know nothing. You won't be responsible. Your skirts--I mean your coat-tails---will be entirely clear."

"Suzanne, I've half a mind to telegraph your father this minute--or Roger. Maybe it would be better to summon Roger." He eyed her sternly.

Suzanne giggled wickedly.

"You will do nothing of the sort, dear Dumb as the Grave. I have your sacred oath not to peach."

"Let me off, Suzanne," he begged. "Honest, I'm worried about you. You look wild."

But Suzanne only laughed again, and assured him she was saner than the statue of Liberty.

"Let you off nothing, dear sir," she added for good measure. "But please don't fret. I assure you I am not going to do a thing either desperate or immoral. I'm going on a lark, that is all. You can't down Suzanne. Like Ivory Soap--it floats. Here we are at my alley. My fruit stand's just beyond. Shake hands like a good boy and wish me luck. Don't frown like that. It spoils your leonine beauty. Good night--and good-by." And, before he could speak, Suzanne had darted into her own doorway leaving Phil staring rather ruefully after her.

"Now what in time or eternity is she up to?" he pondered. "She isn't the kind to play the fool to any great extent. Got too much head and too little heart. I may as well let her gang her own gait. She's bound to anyway. Poor old Roger! She is certainly leading him a trail. Wouldn't he curse me for letting her make a getaway like this if he knew? Out of town with friends!" he muttered as he descended into the depths of the subway. "I'd like to see the friends. And if I were Rod Minot, I would too, or know the reason why."

Thus satisfactorily can one young man sum up the whole duty of another in a recreant courtship though remaining as helpless and inefficient as a new-born infant in the management of his own.

*CHAPTER XI*

*MARGINS*

"Hello, Jack! I had no idea you were home." Sylvia, rosy and blown from a spin behind Doctor Tom's frolicsome black mare, entered the living-room at Arden Hall, bringing with her a whiff of fresh outdoor air. She threw down her muff and held out a welcoming hand to her guest who had been waiting her return.

"Bad penny, you know." Jack captured both hands instead of the one vouchsafed as he spoke. "Can't leave business very long, you see." His eyes twinkled mischievously as he looked down at Sylvia, making shameless bid for her favor. Sylvia laughed, but she withdrew her hands and shook her head at him.

"You are a dreadful fraud, Jack. You don't really care such a lot about the business all at once. You know you don't."

"Not a tinker's dam," he shrugged. "Whatever that may be."

"Then why--" began Sylvia and stopped.

"There is only one why, young lady, and you know it."

Sylvia frowned and jabbing out her hatpins a little irritably, tossed her black velvet toque on the table. She had already removed her coat and furs and stood, trim and tailored, in her simple blue serge dress; a simplicity which was exceedingly becoming and likewise extremely expensive as Jack's approving gaze, sweeping the lithe young curves of her figure, knew very well.

"I wish you wouldn't, Jack."

"Wouldn't what?" blandly.

"Wouldn't work--just because I want you to. It is so horribly like a bribe."

"It is a bribe."

"Then I don't like it. I told you I didn't promise anything."

"And I told you I didn't expect anything. You can't blame a fellow for putting all the eggs he can find into his basket."

"Put all the eggs you like into the basket, only don't blame me if they get smashed. Sometimes, Jack, I think you don't really want to marry me at all--you just want the fun of pursuing me."

"Maybe so," agreed Jack so amicably that Sylvia lifted her eyebrows at him. "I was brought up never to contradict a lady."

Sylvia laughed at that and sat down, running her hand over her hair, to brush back its turbulent ripple, a gesture Jack loved because it was so interwoven with his mental pictures of her.

"Let's not discuss ourselves," she added. "Tell me the news. Did you see Barb and Suzanne?"

"I saw Barb. Suzanne has fled the coop."

"What?"

"The report is she is out of town, traveling with friends. Barb looks worried and Phil looks wise but neither has much to say."

"Does Phil know where she is?"

"He says not, but he knows something, or I miss my guess. Not that the old oyster would open up his shell a fraction of an inch even to oblige yours truly. I pried like a good one but to no purpose. Talk about your professional secrecy! Phil's got it down to the finish. The old chap is different somehow, older and solemn as a fish. Horrible example of what work will do to a fellow!" he grinned.

Sylvia stooped to pick up the tongs and stir the fire, which was smoldering a little sulkily on the hearth. Out of the tail of his eye Jack watched her.

"He and Barb seem to be remarkably good pals," he continued. "The Aunt orders him about like a member of the family. Don't wonder he obeys. That woman is a general. I wouldn't be surprised if she took the vote away from the men and gave it to the women any day, if she took the notion. Lucky she and Napoleon didn't hitch their wagons to the same star in the same generation. The star would have dragged Aunt Josephine and ditched the emperor, that's certain."

"Do stop talking nonsense, Jack, and tell me more about Suzanne."

Sylvia's voice had a faint edge of sharpness to it as if a little of the grim December wind outside had gotten into it.

"I don't know any more. I've told you all that is generally published. Even Norton, Pa., gropes in middle darkness. She didn't even write to Roger it seems. He is in bad. Had the temerity to propose to her again just after she had emerged with a bundle of manuscripts from a manager's office, which wasn't a tactful moment, I gather. She consigned him to the devil or some feminine equivalent thereof, apparently. Pa and Ma knows she's traveling. Had cards from Buffalo and Cleveland, I understand. Pa's excited and Ma's took to her bed. Looks as if they feared the worst."

"Jack!"

"Sorry. I was only joking, of course. Trust Suzanne to take care of herself. She is all right. Roger is having a fit or two though, and no wonder."

"Serves him right. Why didn't he go and marry her and not let her go off on a tangent like that?"

"Why, indeed?" murmured Jack. "It is so hanged easy to marry a girl when she won't have you! Give me the good old cave days. You could knock your bride down with a club if she objected. Then, when she came to, she would get up and grin at her noble master and string some red berries round her neck, or stick a ring in her nose, to enhance her charms, and everything would be entirely agreeable."

"Jack, you are perfectly horrid to-day. I wish you had stayed in New York. How is Jeanette?" Sylvia changed the subject severely.

"Going the pace, as usual. Good Lord, Sylvia, what do you suppose a woman wants to live the kind of life she's elected for? I like a good time myself. It's a family trait. But she goes as if all the devils of Hell were loose and after her. Maybe they are, after a fashion. See here, Sylvia, aren't you going up to see her soon?"

"After Christmas. Why?"

"Nothing especial. I thought a dose of you might be good for her, that is all."