Chapter 8

They were all upon the lawn--Rachel, unable to help herself, according to Anthony's intimation, the centre of a group of men who would not give each other a chance--when a stranger appeared upon the edge of the circle of light. He stood watching the scene for a moment--a tall, slender fellow, with a pale face and deep-set eyes. Then he asked somebody to tell Miss Redding that Mr. Huntington would like to speak with her. Rachel, thus summoned, rose, looked about her, caught sight of the stranger, and went swiftly down the lawn. A dozen people, among them all the men who had been the guests of the week, saw the meeting. They observed that the newcomer put out both hands, that his smile was very bright, and that he stood looking down into Miss Redding's face as if at sight of it he had instantly forgotten everything else in the world.

Rachel, leaving him, came back up the lawn to find her hostess. As she passed it became evident to a good many pairs of sharp eyes that her beauty had received a keen accession from the sweeping over her cheeks of a burning blush--so unusual that they could not fail to take note of it.

Juliet came back down the lawn with Rachel, who presented Mr. Huntington; and presently, without a word of leave-taking to any one else, the two went away down the road.

"Now, who under the heavens was that?" grunted Louis Lockwood in Anthony's ear, catching his host around the corner of the house.

"Don't know."

"Brother, perhaps?"

"Hasn't any."

"Relative?"

"Don't know."

"Just a messenger, maybe?"

"Give it up."

"She blushed like anything."

"Did she? Man she is going to marry, probably."

"Oh, that can't be!"

"The lady looks marriageable to me," observed Anthony, strolling away.

He ran into Cathcart.

"Say, who was that fellow, Tony?" began Stevens.

"Don't ask me."

"He looked confoundedly as if he meant to embrace her on the spot."

"So he did," agreed Anthony soothingly. "Don't blame him, do you? He may not have seen her for a month. What condition do you suppose you'd be in if a week should get away from you out of her vicinity?"

"Bother you, Tony--don't you know who he was?"

"Intimate friend, I should judge."

"She turned pink as a carnation."

"Say hollyhock," suggested Anthony, "or peony. Only a vivid colour could do justice to it."

"That's right," groaned Cathcart. "She never looked like that for any of us."

"Never," said Anthony promptly, and got away, chuckling.

"Hold on, there, Robeson, man," said the voice of Dr. Roger Barnes, and Anthony found himself again held up.

"Come on, old Roger boy," said his host pleasantly. "We'll amble down the road a bit and give you a chance to get a grip on yourself. No, I don't know who he is. I'm all worn out assuring Louis and Steve of that. She did turn red, she did look upset--with joy, I infer. That girl has made more havoc in one short week--playing off all the while, too--than Suzanne and Marie have accomplished in the biggest season they ever knew. And I believe, Roger boy, you're about the hardest hit of any of them."

The doctor did not answer. The two had walked away from the house and were marching arm in arm at a good pace down the road.

"She's as poor as a church mouse," suggested Anthony.

There was no reply.

"She has a dead weight of a helpless father and mother."

The doctor put match to a cigar.

"Juliet says her brother died of dissipation in a gambling-house."

Doctor Barnes began to chew hard on a cigar that he had failed to light.

"But she's a mighty sweet girl," said Anthony softly.

"See here, Tony," the doctor burst out.--"Oh, hang it all--"

"I see," said his friend, with a hand on his shoulder. "Go ahead, Roger Barnes--there's nothing in life like it; and the good Lord have mercy on you, for the sort of girl worth caring for doesn't know the meaning of the word."

* * * * *

"All gone, little girl," said Anthony jubilantly, as he turned back into the house the next evening, after watching out of sight the big touring-car of Lockwood's which had carried all his house-party away at once. "They are mighty fine people and I like them all immensely--but--I have enjoyed to the full this speeding the parting guest. And now for my vacation. It begins to-morrow."

"What shall we do?" asked Juliet, allowing him to draw her into his favourite settle corner.

"Go fishing. If you'll put up a jolly little--I mean a jolly big--lunch, and array yourself in unspoilable attire, I'll give you a day's great sport, whether we catch any fish or not. There's one fish you're sure of--he's always on the end of your line: hooked fast, and resigned to his fate. Juliet, are they really all gone?"

"I'm sure they are."

"Good Mary McKaim--peace be to her ashes, for she never gets any on the toast--has she gone, too?"

"She's packing."

"Rachel safe at home with her presumable fiance?"

"He can't be her fiance, Tony--"

"That's what Lockwood said--but I suppose he can, just the same. Rachel away, do you say?"

"Yes. She didn't come over to-day at all, you know."

"I noticed it--by the gloom on three stalwart men's faces. Well, if everybody's safely out of the way I'm going to commit myself."

"To what, Tony?"

She was laughing, for he had risen, looked all about him with great anxiety, tiptoed to each door and listened at it, and was now come back to stand before her, smiling down at her and holding out his arms.

"To the statement," he said, gathering her close and speaking into her upturned rosy face, "that without doubt this is the dearest home in the world, and that you are the sweetest woman who ever has stood or ever will stand here in it."

XIX.--ALL THE APRIL STARS ARE OUT

It was an April night--balmy with the breath of an exceptionally early spring. All the April stars were out as Anthony came to the door of the little house, and opening it flung himself out upon the porch, drawing great breaths. He looked up into the sky and clasped his arms tightly over his breast.

"O God," he said aloud, "take care of her--"

He went back into the house after a minute, and paced the floor back and forth, back and forth, stopping at each turn to listen at the foot of the stairs; then took up his stride again, his lips set, his eyes dark with anxiety. Over and over he went to the open door to look up at the stars, as if somehow he could bear his ordeal best outdoors.

When half the night had gone Mrs. Dingley came downstairs. Anthony met her at the foot. She smiled reassuringly into his face.

"This is hard for you, dear boy," she said. "But they think by morning----"

"Morning!" he cried.

"Everything is going well----"

"It's only two o'clock. Morning!"

"She says tell you she's going to be very happy soon."

But at that Anthony turned away, where his face could not be seen, and stood by the open door. Mrs. Dingley laid an affectionate hand on his arm.

"Don't worry, Tony," she said gently.

"I can't help it."

"This is new to you. Juliet is young and strong--and full of courage."

"Bless her!"

"In the morning you'll both be very happy."

"I hope so."

"Why, Anthony, dear," said the kindly little woman, "I never knew you to be so faint of heart."

Anthony faced around again. "If my strength could do her any good I'd be a lion for her," he said. "But when all I can do is to wait--and think what I'd do if----"

He was gone suddenly into the night. With a tender smile on her lips Mrs. Dingley went on upon the errand which had brought her downstairs. "It's worth something to a woman to be able to make a man's heart ache like that," she said to herself with a little sigh. Anthony would not have understood, but even in this hour the older woman, in her wisdom, was envying Juliet.

Morning came at last, as mornings do. With the first streaks of the gray dawn Anthony heard a little, high-keyed, strange cry--new to his ears. He leaped up the stairs, four at a time, and paused, breathless, by the closed door of the blue-and-white room. After what seemed to him an interminable time Mrs. Dingley came out. At sight of Anthony her face broke into smiles, and at the same moment tears filled her eyes.

"It's a splendid boy, Tony," she said. "I meant to come to you the first minute, but I waited to be perfectly sure. He didn't breathe well at first."

But Anthony pushed this news aside impatiently. "Juliet?" he questioned eagerly.

"She's all right, you poor man," Mrs. Dingley assured him. "You shall see her presently, just for a minute. The first thing she said was, 'Tell Tony.' Go down now--I'll call you soon."

Anthony stole away downstairs to the outer door again. This time he ran out upon the porch and down the lawn and orchard, in the early half-light, to the willow path by the brook. He dashed along this path to its end and back again, as if he must in some way give expression to his relief from the tension of the night. But he was back and waiting impatiently long before he received his summons to his wife's room.

On his way up he wrung the friendly hand of Dr. Joseph Wilberforce, the best man in the city at times like these, and thanked him in a few uneven words. Then he came to the door of the blue-and-white room.

"Don't be afraid, Tony," said a very sweet, clear voice; "we're ever so well--Anthony Robeson, Junior, and I."

Anthony Robeson, Senior, walked across the room in a dim, gray fog which obscured nearly everything except the sight of a pair of eyes which were shining upon him brightly enough to penetrate any fog. At the bedside he dropped upon his knees.

"I suppose I'm an awful chump," he murmured, "but nothing ever broke me up so in all my life."

Juliet laughed. It was not a sentimental greeting, but she understood all it meant. "But I'm so happy, dear," she said.

"Are you? Somehow I can't seem to be--yet. I'm too badly scared."

"He's such a beautiful big boy."

"I suppose I shall be devoted to him some time, but all I can think of now is to make sure I've got you."

The pleasant-faced nurse in her white cap came softly in and glanced at Tony meaningly.

"If you'll come in here you may see your son, Mr. Robeson," she said, and went out again.

Anthony bent over his wife. "_Little mother_," he whispered, with a kiss, and obediently went.

Across the hall he stood looking dazedly down at the round, warm bundle the nurse laid in his arms.

"My son," he said; "how odd that sounds."

Then he hastily gave the bundle back to the nurse and got away downstairs, wiping the perspiration from his brow.

"Never dreamed it was going to knock me over like this," he was saying to himself. "I can't look at her; I can't look at him; I feel like a big boy who has seen a little fellow take his thrashing for him."

And in this humble--albeit most sincerely thankful--frame of mind he absently drank his breakfast coffee, and never realised that in her confusion of spirit good Mary McKaim, who was here again in time of need, had brewed him instead a powerful cup of tea.

XX.--A PRIOR CLAIM

"Come up, come up--you're just the people we want," cried Anthony heartily from his own porch. "Thought you'd be getting out to see us some of these fine August nights. Sit down--Juliet will be out in a minute."

"Baby asleep?" asked Judith Carey, as she and Wayne settled comfortably into two of the deep bamboo chairs with which the porch was furnished.

"To be sure he's asleep at this hour," Anthony assured her proudly; "been asleep for two hours. Regular as a clock, that youngster. Nurse trained him right at the beginning, and Juliet has kept it up. Four months old now, and sleeps from six at night till four in the morning without waking. How's that?"

"I suppose it's remarkable," agreed Wayne meekly, "but I don't know anything about it. He might sleep twenty-three hours out of twenty-four--I shouldn't understand whether to call him a prodigy or an idiot."

"Why, yes, you would," Judith interposed with spirit. "Think of that baby on the floor above us. They're walking the floor half the night with her."

"Girl babies may be different," Carey suggested diffidently, at which Anthony shouted. "I don't care--all the girls I ever knew wanted to sit up nights," Carey insisted with a feeble grin.

Juliet came out, welcoming her friends with the cordiality for which she was famous. "It's so hot in town," she condoled with them. "You should get out into our delicious air oftener. Somehow, with our breezes we don't mind the heat."

"It's heaven here, anyhow," sighed Carey, stretching back in his chair with a long breath. Judith looked sober.

"You say it's heaven," commented Anthony, staring hard at his friend, "and you profess to admire everything we do, and eat, and say, but you continue to pay good money every week for a lot of extremely dubious comforts--from my point of view."

"It's one of the very best places in that part of the city," protested Judith.

Anthony eyed her keenly. "Yes; if that's what you're paying for you've got it, I admit. If it's a consolation to you to know that the address you give when you go shopping is one that you're not ashamed of--why, you're all right. But I reckon Juliet here doesn't blush when she orders things sent home to the country."

"Oh, Juliet--" began Judith; "she doesn't need an address to make all the salespeople pay her their most respectful attention. She----"

"I understand," said Anthony. "That sweetly imperious way of hers when she shops--I remember it the first time I ever went shopping with her----"

Juliet gave him a laughing glance. "If I remember," she said, "it wasn't I who did all the dictating on that historic expedition when we furnished this house."

"We've got to go shopping again," Anthony informed them. "We're planning to put a little wing on the house, opening from under the stairs in the living-room, for a nursery and a den."

"Going to put the two together?" asked a new voice from the dimness of the lawn.

"Oh--hullo, Roger Barnes, M.D., F.R.C.S.--come up. No, I think we'll have a partition between. But I want a room below stairs for Tony, Junior, so his mother won't wear herself out carrying him up and down. That youngster weighs seventeen pounds and a fraction already."

"I was confident I'd get some statistics if I came out," said the doctor, settling himself near Juliet--with a purpose, as she instantly recognised. "It seemed to me I couldn't wait longer to learn how much he had gained since I met Tony day before yesterday. It was seventeen without the fraction then."

"That's right--guy me," returned Anthony comfortably. "I don't mind--I've the boy."

* * * * *

"I want a talk with you," said the doctor softly to Juliet, as the others fell to discussing the project of the enlarged house. "I've got to have it, too--or go off my head."

Juliet nodded, understanding him. Presently she rose. "I have an errand to do," she said. "Will you walk over to the Evanstons' with me, Roger?"

"Now, tell me," began the doctor the instant they were off, "is she going to persist in this awful sacrifice?"

"Poor Rachel," breathed Juliet. "So many lovers--and so unhappy."

"Is she unhappy?" begged the doctor. "Is she? If I only were sure of it----"

"What girl wouldn't be unhappy--to be making even one man out of two as miserable as you?"

"But you know what I mean. Is she going to marry Huntington out of love as well as pity--or only pity?"

"Roger"--Juliet stood still in the road, regarding him in the dim light with kind eyes--"if I knew I wouldn't tell you. That's Rachel's secret. But I don't know. She's as loyal as a magnet, and as reserved as--you would want her to be if you were Mr. Huntington."

"She's everything she ought to be. I'm a dastard for saying it, but I could forgive her for being disloyal enough to him to show me just a corner of her heart. Even if she loves him it's what I called it--an awful sacrifice--a man dying with consumption. If she doesn't--except as the friend of her early girlhood, when she didn't know men or her own heart--Juliet, it's impious."

"Roger, dear, keep hold of yourself," Juliet replied. "You're too strong and fine to want to come between her and her own decision--if she has made it."

"If you were a man," said he hotly, "would you let a woman marry you--dying?"

"Yes," answered Juliet stoutly, "if she insisted."

"Women are capable of saying anything in an argument," he growled. "I say it's outrageous to let her do it. She doesn't love him--she does love me," he blurted.

Juliet turned to him anxiously. "Roger, do you know what you are saying?"

"Yes, I do. I've got to tell somebody, and there's nobody but you--you perfect woman. If ever a man knew a thing without its being put into words I know that. It was only a look, weeks ago, but I'm as sure of it as I am of myself. I've had nothing but coolness from her since, but that's in self-defense. And the thought that, loving me, she's going to give herself to him--a wreck--do you wonder it's driving me mad?"

"You ought not to have told me this," said Juliet, tears in her voice. "If Rachel is doing this it's because she's sure she ought----"

"Of course she is. And that's why I tell you. You have more influence with her than any one. Can't you show her that duty, the most urgent in the world, never requires a thing like that? Let her be his friend to the last--the sort of friend she knows how to be, with a warm hand in his cold one. But never his----"

The doctor grew choky with his vehemence, and stopped short. Juliet was silent, full of distress. She thought of the two men--Huntington, a frail ghost, in the grip of a deadly illness, yet fighting it desperately, and desperately clinging to the girl he loved: a clever fellow, educated as a mining engineer, successful, even beginning to be distinguished in his work until his health gave out; Barnes, the embodiment of strength, standing high in his profession, life and the world before him, a fit mate for the girl who deserved the best there could be for her--Juliet thought of them both and found her heart aching for them--and for Rachel Redding.

They were slowly approaching the brown house at the foot of the hill, the errand at the Evanstons' forgotten, when suddenly a familiar figure in white came toward them from the doorway. The doctor started at sight of it, and Juliet grew breathless all at once.

"I thought it was you two," said Rachel. "This rising moon struck you full just now, and I could see you plainly. I've wanted to see you both--and this is my last chance. I am going away to-morrow."

There was an instant's silence, while Roger Barnes tried to choose which of all the things he wanted to say to her should come first. Juliet broke the stillness.

"Walk back up the road with us, dear," she said, "and tell us how and where you go."

"I have but a minute to spare," said Rachel. "Let me say good-bye to you both here----"

"No, by heaven, you shall not," burst out the doctor in a suppressed voice of fire which startled Juliet. "You owe me ten minutes, in place of the last letter you haven't answered. There are a score of them, you know--but the last has to be answered somehow."

Rachel hesitated. "Very well," she said at length, "but only with Mrs. Robeson."

"Can't you trust me?" He was angry now.

"Yes--but not myself," she answered, so low he barely caught the words. He seized her hand.

"Then trust me for us both," he said, so instantly gentle and tender that Juliet found it possible to say what a moment before she had thought unwise enough: "Go with him, Ray, dear. I think it is his right."

So presently she found herself crossing her own lawn alone, while the two who had just left her went slowly on up the road together. Her heart was beating hard and painfully, for she loved them both, and foresaw for them only the hardest interview of their lives.

* * * * *

At the end of half an hour Rachel Redding stood again upon her own porch, and Roger Barnes looked up at her from the walk below with heavy eyes.

"At least," he said, "you have done what I never would have believed even you could do--convinced me against my will that you are right. You love him--he worships you. There is a promise of life for him in Arizona--with you. I can't forbid the bans. But I shall always believe, what you dare not dispute, that if I had come first--you----"

She held out her hand. "That you must not say," she said. "But there is one thing you may say--that you are my best friend, whom I can count on----"

"As long as there is life left in me," he answered fervently. He wrung her hand in both his, looked long and steadily up into her face as if his eyes could never leave the lovely outlines showing clear in the light from the windows, then turned away and strode off toward the station without a look behind.

XXI.--EVERYBODY GIVES ADVICE

"I should do it in brown leather," said Cathcart decidedly, looking about him.

He stood in the centre of Anthony's den. The carpenters had gone, the plasterers had finished their work, and the floor had just been swept up.

"You're all right as far as you go," observed Anthony, who stood at his elbow, "but you don't go far enough. If you want me to hang these walls with brown leather you'll have to put up the money. I may be sufficiently prosperous to afford the addition to my house, but I haven't reached the stage of covering the walls with cloth-of-gold."

"Burlap would be the thing, Tony," Judith suggested.

Anthony was surrounded by people--the room was half full of them, elbowing each other about.

"Paint the walls," advised Lockwood.

"There are imitation-leather papers," said Cathcart, with the air of one condescending to lower a high standard for the sake of those who could not live up to it.

"I suppose so," admitted Anthony, "at four dollars a roll. I saw a simple thing on that order that struck me the other day at Heminways'. I thought it might be about forty cents a roll. It was a dollar a square yard. I told them I would think it over. I haven't got through thinking it over yet."

"You want a plate-rail," said Wayne Carey.

"What for?"

"Why, to put plates, and steins, and things on."

"Haven't a plate--or a stein. Baby has a silver mug. Would that do?"

Cathcart smiled in a superior way. "You had a lot of mighty fine stuff in your Yale days," he remarked. "Pity you let it all go."

"I shouldn't have cared for that truck now," Anthony declared easily, though he deceived nobody by it. Most of them remembered, if Cathcart had forgotten, how the college boy had sacrificed all his treasures at a blow when the news of his family's misfortunes had come. It had yielded little enough, after all, to throw into the abyss of their sudden poverty, but the act had proved the spirit of the elder son of the house.

"You certainly will want plenty of rugs and hangings of the right sort," Cathcart pursued.

Anthony looked at him good-humouredly. "I can see that you have got to be suppressed," he said, with a hand on Stevens's collar. "I can tell you in a breath just what's going into this room at present. The floor is to have a matting, one of those heavy, cloth-like mattings. Auntie Dingley has presented me with one fine old Persian rug from the Marcy library, which she insists is out of key with the rest of the stuff. I'm glad it is--it'll furnish the key to my decorations. Then I've a splendid old desk I picked up in a place where they temporarily forgot themselves in setting a price on it. That's going by the window. I've a little Duerer engraving, and a few good foreign photographs Juliet has put under glass for me. For the rest I have--what I like best--clear space, pipe-and-hearth room, the bamboo chairs off the porch with some winter cushions in, my books--and that."

He pointed to the windows, outside which lay a long country vista stretching away over fields and river to the woods in the distance, turning rich autumn tints now under the late October frosts.