Part 8

And that was all the explanation that Sylvia extracted on that subject, though she guessed that there was more than Jack admitted behind his rather enigmatic remarks. Jack was incredibly clear-sighted about some things, and it was evident he saw cause to worry about his sister Jeanette, even to the extent of hurrying Sylvia to New York where he himself could not follow unless he turned back the page of the virtuous new leaf of his devotion to business. There was a puzzle behind it somewhere, Sylvia knew. She also knew she was going to be left to discover the exact nature of the puzzle for herself.

So December went its way. Suzanne continued mysteriously "traveling with friends." Barb and Phil kept hard at work in the city and managed to see a good deal of each other in their off hours. Sylvia and Phil had almost ceased to write to each other, though there was no open break in their friendship. It was rather that a wall, intangible but unsurmountable, had risen between them, as perhaps it had, for pride is a mightier barrier than a mountain peak sometimes. Gus went his quiet, successful way on his concert tour, refusing politely but conclusively to be made a lion of, keeping rather to himself in his leisure hours, living on his unspoken dreams and managing to get a great deal of pure happiness out of his star worship. To Sylvia's delight, and almost to Felicia's consternation, the latter's designs for a mural relief, which Stephen Kinnard had fairly bullied her into submitting in a competition, had been accepted and she was hard at work on the actual modeling these brief winter days, though she found time, Felicia fashion, to be an excellent "Home-keeper" and Mother along with the other task.

Early in November Lois Daly had rather astonishingly announced her intention of "doing some writing" as she put it rather vaguely. Lois was always reticent, especially about her literary work, and even her husband asked no questions, realizing it suited her better to be let alone to work out her purpose for herself. She was far too conscientious about her other duties to neglect any of them and it was consequently the long evenings when the children were in bed and the household affairs quiescent that she found most profitable for her new work. This arrangement was admirable in all but two respects. It made Lois' working day an almost impossibly long one and left her a little too weary for restful sleep when she did finally creep into bed. It also curtailed almost to a minimum the moments which she had to spare for her husband's society, which had been all too few even before the advent of this new era. Doctor Tom made no protest as to this. He was always over-sensitive to the sacrifice of her work which Lois had made for him and his, but he did beg her at times not to "bother" so much about the house and the children and himself.

But Lois always shook her head at his pleas and explained quietly that he and the house and the children were her real job and she could not neglect them for the other. And if Tom Daly found it in his heart to wonder sometimes if his wife's "real job" did not include a little closer companionship with himself he never voiced his wondering. He was no "martyr," as he had once long ago protested to Sylvia.

But human relations are never static and while Lois shut herself in her den and wrote feverishly, night after night, her husband, being only human, easily drifted into the habit of finding elsewhere than at his own home the companionship and sympathy which even the strongest and most independent of men half-consciously crave. Arden Hall and Sylvia were close at hand and it was almost inevitable that he should find his way to the two rather often. Sylvia was intensely interested in all his schemes for the hospital and other altruistic visions which made up a very large part of his wide, busy career. Often they talked eagerly for hours, either with or without Felicia's presence. Oftener still Tom Daly would sit and smoke in contented silence while Sylvia played soft music or read aloud out of some magazine stories which let his mind rest instead of wrestle.

It was all the most natural, even inevitable development. The two were old friends. Tom Daly was thirty-eight and happily married. Sylvia Arden was twenty-two questing for experience innocently enough. There was no one to question or warn, or indeed, anything to question or warn against. Yet there sat Nature spinning away at her web all the time and Tom Daly and Sylvia were near to being caught in the mesh, without even knowing there was any mesh. And the danger for Tom Daly as it happened was considerably greater than for Sylvia just because he was a man. Man is the so-called reasoning sex, but, as has been more than once noted, sex is the one subject upon which he will not reason. And so things slipped easily and pleasantly along up to Christmas time.

It was Jack Amidon who involuntarily opened Sylvia's eyes by uttering an unusually sharp protest that she went nowhere any more, either with him or any one else, but just sat in the chimney corner and played Joan to Tom Daly's Darby. "And soon there'll be the deuce to pay whether you know it or not," he had added darkly.

Of course Sylvia had flared out in quick anger at his implications.

"What do you mean, Jack Amidon, by saying such horrid things?" she had stormed. "It is perfectly ridiculous. Doctor Tom is years and years older than I am. He is just like a brother."

Jack had seen the brother dodge worked before and said so somewhat caustically, whereupon Sylvia lost what little temper she had left, and having delivered a volley of violent wrath upon her guest's imprudent head, shot out of the room, leaving him to enjoy the hospitality of the Hall in solitude or beat a retreat as pleased him best.

Meanwhile, upstairs in her own room, Sylvia threw herself on the bed, and, first of all, woman fashion, relieved her feelings by indulging in a good old-fashioned "weep," her anger dissipating with her tears. Presently she sat up and began to take stock of the situation and herself, and found to her consternation that things as they actually were, were about as safe as a child with a box of matches in a haymow.

She was a perfectly clear-eyed and sophisticated young woman and when her attention was called, however brutally, to the fact that you cannot see a man, night after night, week after week, as she had been seeing Tom Daly, without there being at least the possibility of the "deuce to pay," as Jack had bluntly expressed it, she was willing to acknowledge the fact to herself at least. She carefully analyzed her own mental processes for the past few weeks and discovered to her surprise and some chagrin that she had been ruthlessly cutting out engagements in which Tom Daly did not figure, and eagerly making those in which he did figure, that she had deliberately plunged into everything that interested him, Red Cross work, the new hospital, the needs of some of his poorer patients; everything, in short, that he cared about heartily. She even had to admit to herself that she had been a little complacent and self righteous in her genuine interest and sympathy with these things because she resented Lois Daly's apathy in the matter and felt profoundly sorry for Doctor Tom. She discovered that it is not prudent in the world as it is lived to be too sorry for another woman's husband. That way danger lies, and a signboard to that effect is in order. Beyond this, however, Sylvia knew she had little for which to blame herself. She was not a deliberate coquette. She had acted in all simplicity and naturalness, but there had been a risk to the experiment for all that and she was a bit ashamed of her hitherto state of blindness.

Being a very honest young person, Sylvia sat down, as soon as she had threshed the whole matter out to the satisfaction of her clear, fair mind, and wrote a very artistically penitent note to Jack, retracting some of the unwarrantable things she had said in her wrath and admitting rather hazily that there was a faint possibility that he might have been in the right about certain matters, implying that she was magnanimously willing even to ignore his objectionable rightness if he so desired.

And her note crossed one from Jack, begging her to forgive his "darned impertinence" and adding that he had behaved like a jackass and a dog in the manger and Heaven knows how many other kinds of animals, but if she would be good enough to overlook his misdemeanors he would be eternally grateful.

And the next evening Sylvia appeared under Jack's escort at the Honeycutt ball, wearing a marvelous new gown and looking extraordinarily pretty after her temporary estrangement from Vanity Fair. And from that time on during all the mad gayeties of Christmas week Jack was constantly in attendance, obviously the favored knight. Life is mostly made up of reactions. The pendulum having swung so far to the left, swings back an equal distance to the right. Sylvia was the kinder to Jack because of her deflection away from him in an entirely opposite direction. And he, with the wisdom born of considerable experience of the feminine sex in general, and Sylvia Arden in particular, made no comment though he perfectly understood what had happened, but sunned himself agreeably in his lady's rather uncertain grace and bided his time.

And the night of the Honeycutt ball for the first time in several weeks Tom Daly sat and smoked before his own fireside and not once did he think of the new hospital.

*CHAPTER XII*

*"SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS"*

"Phil? That you, my boy? Come up and take dinner with us to-night, won't you? I have a proposition to make to you."

Thus the smooth voice of Justin Huntley over the telephone. Justin Huntley was a famous nerve specialist, a classmate and lifelong friend of Phil Lorrimer's father, who had kept a friendly eye on the young man ever since he had come to the city.

Phil accepted the invitation, and later, as he left the Subway and strolled down Seventy-second Street toward the river, he speculated vaguely as to what the proposition might be likely to be. Doctor Huntley was quite capable of initiating any kind of a suggestion, from proposing a marriage to an heiress to the use of a new serum. Consequently Phil had little to go upon in his speculations.

It was an agreeable dinner. Dinner at the Huntleys' always was agreeable, moving by pleasant stages to a perfect end, gastronomically speaking. There were no other guests to-night and presently, Mrs. Huntley, a frail tired looking little lady who always seemed to be deprecating the weight of her silks and the brilliancy of her jewels, rose and left the two men together.

"Any curiosity about the proposition I baited my hook with to get you here to-night?" Dr. Huntley surveyed his guest a little quizzically as he launched the question.

"I didn't need any bait," said Phil. "But I admit the curiosity."

The older man leaned forward and deliberately lit his cigarette from a candle that stood close at hand.

"You don't smoke?" he remarked irrelevantly.

"No," admitted Phil. "At least, not often. Bad for the operating table."

"Bad! It's the devil. You have a deal of sense, young man. How would you like to be my partner?" The question was put as casually as if he were offering a fellow traveler, caught in the rain, a share of his umbrella, but his shrewd eyes took full account of the face of the young man. Phil flushed and his mouth opened slightly. It was a proposition to make any ambitious young man drop his jaw. Justin Huntley had one of the largest and most remunerative practices in the city. It was a dazzling prospect to open suddenly before the eyes of a small-salaried worker in a free clinic. It meant success, money--Sylvia, something to offer her, at last.

"Well?"

"It is a wonderful chance," said Phil steadily, "but I should like to think it over, if you don't mind."

"Eh?" It was Dr. Huntley's jaw that dropped this time. He had scarcely expected a young man in Phil Lorrimer's position to need to think over an offer such as he had just made. Most young men would have jumped at it quickly as a trout leaps at a shining fly lest the fascinating thing disappear from view before it could be apprehended. "What did you say?"

"I said I should have to think it over," repeated Phil. "Your kind of practice isn't the kind I am interested in, to speak frankly."

"Interested! Good Lord! Who expects to be interested in anything nowadays? A lot of damn women with nothing on earth the matter with them except fool notions, and having nothing on earth or in Heaven to occupy themselves with, dyspeptics, neurasthenics, hypochondriacs, dope fiends, gentlemen drunkards and worse! That is my kind of practice, boy. Pah! Interesting! Of course, they aren't interesting. They are fools. But they pay. Lord, how they pay! They wouldn't be sick if they didn't have so much money. You would open your eyes if you saw my books. But I've had 'most enough of 'em. I want somebody to take the brunt of their damn foolnesses off of me. That is what I want a partner for. Some day I'll be telling 'em what I really think of 'em and it wouldn't do--it wouldn't do. I've got to have an understudy. You've a close mouth and a good head and you'd like the money. Don't tell me you wouldn't like it," querulously. "Everybody wants money these days. The whole world's after it."

"Oh, I want it all right," said Phil Lorrimer honestly. "I happen to want it like the devil just at present. But I am not sure I want it--that bad. That is what I have to think over."

He took a hasty swallow of water from the glass beside his plate, then rose and made a few quick, nervous turns, up and down the room. Finally he came to a halt opposite his host.

"I don't know whether I can make you understand, Dr. Huntley, but it is like this," he said. "I have a drop or so of missionary blood in me. My father is in China now. My mother would be, if she could stand the climate. My sister is teaching in a missionary school in Turkey. I chose the kind of work I am doing here in New York partly because it interested me, but I believe it was a little bit too because of the missionary strain. Anyway, it seems to me a worth-while job. But this thing you are offering me-- Pardon me if I sound rude. I don't mean to disparage your work. It is fine--some of it, but well, the truth of it is, it doesn't look to me to measure up to what we are doing in the clinic and what some other doctors and surgeons are doing in other places. The finest man I know--doing the finest work I know--is in Greendale, a little place just outside Baltimore. He has always been a sort of standard for me--he and my father. If I went in with you, it would be not because my heart was in it, but because the money was in it, and wanted the money worse than I wanted to hang onto my dreams. That is about the whole story."

Justin Huntley smoked in silence during this, for Phil, rather long speech. Phil was not much given to eloquence.

"Well," he said. "Even so. Put it as baldly as that, if you like. It is up to you. A man can't afford to sentimentalize much in this day and generation. Let me remind you, the money is not to be despised. It buys a good deal."

Phil's eyes were lowered. Well he knew, or thought he knew, what it could buy for him. Not Sylvia, of course, Sylvia could not be bought, but the right to go in and try to win her against Jack, against the world, yes, against even his own ideals. The last thought crowded in, an unbidden guest. Suddenly he loathed his father's friend, loathed his smug success, his cynical sureness that he himself could be bought. For it was buying, and Phil knew it. If he took this offer, he sold out, to the highest bidder, his own high ideals. Was it worth it? Was even Sylvia worth it? Had he the right to win her that way? Could he do it?

"Don't give your final answer to-night." Justin Huntley's bland voice interrupted the boy's reflections. "There is no hurry. Take a week. Two--three--if you like."

Phil pulled himself together.

"Thank you. I will, if you don't object--a few days, anyway. Please don't think I am ungrateful, or don't appreciate the compliment you have paid me--or rather the kindness, for, of course, I know I'm not experienced enough to be much of a partner at present. I--"

But Huntley waved the words aside.

"It's not kindness--nothing but selfishness. I happen to want you. Come on in if you will. Anyway think it over. The madame is alone. Shall we go to her?"

Phil fancied there was an odd, wistful inquiry in Mrs. Huntley's pale eyes as she turned to meet the men as they entered the room. It was almost as if she were making some kind of plea. Whether she wanted him to accept or refuse her husband's offer was not at all clear to Phil. He made his adieus as early as he politely could on the score of a previous engagement and passed out into the night trying to adjust as best he could the confused bundle of thoughts and emotions he carried.

"Wonder if old Mephisto had any qualms," muttered Justin Huntley as the door had closed upon the tall young doctor.

"Did you speak, dear?" inquired his wife. "I didn't understand."

"No, I didn't say anything--worth repeating."

"How like Philip is to his father, isn't he?"

"Very like," somewhat dryly. "Did you say there was a girl?"

"A girl?" Mrs. Huntley always dealt in mild interrogatives as if to disclaim the responsibility of assertion. "Oh, yes. His mother told us he was devoted to Sylvia Arden--wasn't it? That lovely young girl we met once--in Baltimore, I think? She is a great heiress, isn't she?"

"H-mm. Maybe he will be back, after all," remarked her husband irrelevantly.

Phil's restlessness gave him no peace, and though the engagement had been fiction he decided to run around and see Barb a few moments before he turned in for the night. He had gotten in the habit of using Barb as an anaesthetic of late, though he had no idea he was doing it. To-night he found her alone, curled up like a sleepy kitten before the fire. She rose with a happy little exclamation of surprise as Phil came in.

For once the flood gates of his reserve were down for Phil. In five minutes he had poured out the whole story of his evening's experience, omitting nothing except the mention of Sylvia. In fact, he, hardly thought it necessary to mention Sylvia. She so fully possessed his own mind he had no conception that Barbara did not fully understand how inextricably Sylvia was woven in with the whole matter.

"But Phil," wondered Barb, "it isn't the kind of work you like, is it? I can't imagine you dealing with that kind of patients exclusively." Barb's eyes blinked and crinkled, Barb-like, as she made the statement.

"Nor I. I should be all too likely to tell 'em to go plum to thunder." He grinned a little as he made the admission.

"Then why? Phil, it can't be the money that appeals to you?" Barb's voice was startled, incredulous.

Phil had been on his feet, marching to and fro in the little room, as was his custom when excited. But suddenly he dropped into a chair before the hearth.

"Listen, Barbie. Listen hard," he said. "Suppose a chap wanted to marry a girl and he didn't have any money, at least not as much as he thought he ought to have, not to look like a fool and a knave, asking for her, and then suppose that, right out of a clear sky, the chap saw a chance to make a big income, perfectly respectably, if not, well, we'll say exhilaratingly, wouldn't he just naturally grab at the chance?"

Phil was not looking at Barb. He was staring into the gas log with all his might, but in any case it didn't matter much. Wherever he looked Phil saw only Sylvia that night. Barb's cheeks were pink and her breath came a little more quickly than usual. She couldn't help wondering if Phil could hear the "Blop! Blop! Blop!" her heart was making. It seemed as if he must hear, it was such a queer, loud sound, but he did not appear to notice. He did not even turn toward her.

"He might grab, but I think he would put his hand down quick again as soon as he realized the girl wouldn't want him--that way. She wouldn't want to be bought at a price--like that." Barb managed to keep her voice steady in spite of the queer thing her heart was doing.

"Maybe not," said Phil. "Somehow I thought that is what you would say, Barbie. Thank you." And suddenly Phil was on his feet. "'Night, Barb. I've got to telephone a man before it gets any later."

And before Barb caught her breath he was gone. It did not matter any more now how her heart behaved, but somehow, oddly enough it stopped "blopping" and seemed suddenly to be very, very tired and heavy, as if it were going to sink straight down into her stomach which, of course, was no place for a heart to be located.

Yet it was all perfectly natural and like Phil not to have said anything more at the moment. He had to get the taint of barter off his hands before he came to her. "Suppose a chap wanted to marry a girl." "Suppose a chap wanted to marry a girl." The clock on the mantel seemed to be ticking out the words very distinctly. And suddenly Barb felt very happy and contented and curled up in her chair again like a kitten. Here her aunt found her a half hour later.

"Asleep, Kiddie?" she asked, and Barbara looked up with a shy, radiant little smile.

"No, just dreaming," she said.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*INTO HAVEN*

Christmas was over, and Sylvia had hardly breathed for a week so engrossed had she been in all kinds of festivities. Even now she was preparing to depart on the morrow for an even gayer round, on the long promised visit to Jeanette Latham, Jack's sister. Perhaps it was to keep the "Booing" questions at a distance that Sylvia chose to fly from one mad whirl to another that winter.

"I almost wish you weren't going to New York, just now, Sylvia. You look tired to death and your nerves are 'jumpy,' as Doctor Tom says."

Thus Felicia addressed Sylvia at breakfast the morning of the twenty-sixth, after the children had scampered off to the delights of yesterday's new harvest of toys.

"It is nothing but the day-after feeling," said Sylvia. "I've danced until morning for four nights running. I'll be all right as soon as I can get some sleep."

"I don't know," Felicia looked dubious. "If you were seventeen instead of twenty-two, I believe I should order you to stay at home."

"Isn't it lucky, I'm not?" smiled Sylvia. "Felicia, dear, you never did really boss me in all the years you might have done it. Are you going to begin now?"

"I am afraid it wouldn't be much use at this late date," sighed Felicia. "Sometimes I wonder why you aren't more spoiled than you are. Seriously, child, you have gotten a little of your shining splendor rubbed off. Anything the matter?"

"Nothing in the world, except maybe I wish I knew whether I were going to marry Jack or not. It is a little distracting not to know. You don't happen to possess any inside information on the subject, do you?" Sylvia's smile was whimsical but her eyes were tired. It was true. She had lost a little of her "shining splendor," as Felicia described it, in the past few weeks.

"I do not. But I should on the whole say you were not going to marry him. You have seen too much of him lately. You need to get away and get a perspective."

"Well, who wanted to order me to stay away from New York, just now?"

"I retract. Go ahead with my blessing. I hope you will meet a hundred young men and let Jack Amidon get put in his place."

"That is just it. What _is_ his place?"

"Sylvia!" Felicia's tone was faintly exasperated. "You are no more in love with Jack Amidon than I am. Some day you will wake up and find it out."