"And you haven't seen Aunt Sally since; you have made no effort to make it right with her!"
"As to that, Hallie, I haven't had a chance to see her; she's only been home two days and I've been away myself since. Now that I'm in her house I shall explain it all to her before I leave."
"But you haven't explained to me why you did it! It seems to me that I have a right to know how you came to do such a thing."
"Well, then, the fact is that newspapers these days are not cheap and the 'Courier' cost a lot of money. I've been pretty well tied up in telephone and other investments of late; and I have never taken advantage of my ownership of the Bassett Bank to use its money except within my reasonable credit as it would be estimated by any one else. Your own funds I have kept invested conservatively in gilt-edged securities wholly removed from speculative influences. I knew that if I didn't get the newspaper Thatcher would, so I made every possible turn to go in with him. I was fifty thousand dollars shy of what I needed to pay for my half, and after I had raked up all the money I could safely, I asked Aunt Sally if she would lend me that sum with all my stock as security."
"Fifty thousand dollars, Morton! You borrowed that much money of her!"
Her satisfaction in learning that Mrs. Owen commanded so large a sum was crushed beneath his stupendous error in having gone to her for money at all.
"Oh, she didn't lend it to me, after all, Hallie; she refused to do so; but she allowed me to buy enough shares for her to make up my quota. Thatcher and I bought at eighty cents on the dollar and she paid the same. She has her shares and it's a good investment, and she knows it. If she hadn't insisted on having the shares in her own name, Thatcher would never have known it."
He turned uneasily in his chair, and she was keenly alert at this sign of discomfiture, and not above taking advantage of it.
"So without her you are at Thatcher's mercy, are you? I haven't spoken to her about this and she hasn't said anything to me; but Marian with her usual heedlessness mentioned it, and it was clear that Aunt Sally was very angry."
"What did she say?" asked Bassett anxiously.
"She didn't say anything, but she shut her jaw tight and changed the subject. It was what she didn't say! You'd better think well before you broach the subject to her."
"I've been thinking about it. If I take her stock at par she ought to be satisfied. I'll pay more if it's necessary. And of course I'll make every effort to restore good feeling. I think I understand her. I'll take care of this, but you must stay out of it, and tell Marian to keep quiet.
"Well, Aunt Sally and Thatcher are friends. He rather amuses her, with his horse-racing, and drinking and gambling. That kind of thing doesn't seem so bad to her. She's so used to dealing with men that she makes allowances for them."
"Then," he said quickly, with a smile, eager to escape through any loophole, "maybe she will make some allowances for me! For the purpose of allaying her anger we'll assume that I'm as wicked as Thatcher."
"Well," she answered, gathering her strength for a final assault, "it doesn't look as simple as that to me. Your first mistake was in getting her into any of your businesses and the second was in making it possible for Thatcher to annoy her by all this ugly publicity of a lawsuit. And what do you think has happened on top of all this—that girl is here—here under this very roof!"
"That girl—what girl?"
His opacity incensed her; she had been brooding over her aunt's renewed interest in Sylvia Garrison all day and his dull ignorance was the last straw upon nerves screwed to the breaking-point. She sat up in bed and drew her dressing-gown about her as though it were the vesture of despair.
"That Garrison girl! She's not only back here, but from all appearances she's going to stay! Aunt Sally's infatuated with her. When the girl's grandfather died, Aunt Sally did everything for her—went over to Montgomery to take charge of the funeral, and then went back to Wellesley to see the girl graduate. And now she's giving up her plan of going to Waupegan for the summer to stay here in all the heat with a girl who hasn't the slightest claim on her. When the Keltons visited Waupegan four years ago I saw this coming. I wanted Marian to go to college and tried to get you interested in the plan because that was what first caught Aunt Sally's fancy—Sylvia's cleverness, and this college idea. But you wouldn't do anything about Marian, and now she's thrown away her chances, and here's this stranger graduating with honors and Aunt Sally going down there to see it! Aunt Sally's going to make a companion of her, and you can't tell what will happen! I'd like to know what you can say to your children when all Aunt Sally's money, that should rightly go to them, goes to a girl she's picked up out of nowhere. This is what your politics has got us into, Morton Bassett!"
The soberness to which this brought him at last satisfied her. She had freely expressed the anxiety caused by Sylvia's first appearance on the domestic horizon, but for a year or two, in his wife's absences in pursuit of health, he had heard little of her apprehensions. Marian's own disinclination for a college career had, from the beginning, seemed to him to interpose an insurmountable barrier to parental guidance in that direction. His wife's attitude in these new circumstances of the return of her aunt's protégée struck him as wholly unjustified and unreasonable.
"You're not quite yourself when you talk that way, Hallie. Professor Kelton was one of Aunt Sally's oldest friends; old people have a habit of going back to the friends of their youth; there's nothing strange in it. And this being true, nothing could have been more natural than for Aunt Sally to help the girl in her trouble, even to the extent of seeing her graduated. It was just like Aunt Sally," he continued, warming to his subject, "who's one of the stanchest friends anybody could have. Aunt Sally's devoted to you and your children; it's ungenerous to her to assume that a young woman she hardly knows is supplanting you or Marian. This newspaper notoriety I'm getting has troubled you and I'm sorry for it; but I can't let you entertain this delusion that your aunt's kindness to the granddaughter of one of her old friends means that Aunt Sally has ceased to care for you, or lost her regard for Marian and Blackford. If you think of it seriously for a moment you'll see how foolish it is to harbor any jealousy of Miss Garrison. Come! Cheer up and forget it. If Aunt Sally got an inkling of this you may be sure that would displease her. You say the girl is here in the house?"
"She's not only here, but she's here to stay! She's going to intrench herself here!"
She sent him to the chiffonier to find a fresh handkerchief. He watched her helplessly for a moment as she dried her eyes. Then he took her hands and bent over her.
"Won't you try to see things a little brighter? It's all just because you got too tired yesterday. You oughtn't to have gone to the convention; and I didn't know you were going or I should have forbidden it."
"Well, Marian wanted to go; and we were coming to town anyhow. And besides, Aunt Sally had taken it into her head to go, too. She wanted this Garrison girl to see a political convention; I suppose that was the real reason."
He laughed, gazing down into her tearful face, in which resentment lingered waveringly, as in the faces of children persuaded against their will and parting reluctantly with the solace of tears.
"You must get up for dinner, Hallie. Your doctors have always insisted that you needed variety and change; and to-morrow we'll take you up to the lake out of this heat. We have a good deal to be grateful for, after all, Hallie. You haven't any right to feel disappointed in Marian: she's the nicest girl in the state, and the prettiest girl you'll find anywhere. We ought to be glad she's so high-spirited and handsome and clever. College never was for her; she certainly was never for college! I talked that over with Miss Waring a number of times. And I don't believe Aunt Sally thinks less of Marian because she isn't a better scholar. Only a small per cent of women go to college, and I'm not sure it's a good thing. I'm even a little doubtful about sending Blackford to college; this education business is overdone, and the sooner a boy gets into harness the better."
Her deep sigh implied that he might do as he liked with his son, now that she had so completely failed with her daughter.
"Aunt Sally is very much interested in Mr. Harwood. She has put Sylvia's affairs in his hands. Could it be possible—"
He groped for her unexpressed meaning, and seeing that he had not grasped it she clarified it to his masculine intelligence.
"If there are two persons she is interested in, and they understand each other, it's all so much more formidable." And then, seeing that this also was too subtle, she put it flatly: "What if Harwood should marry Sylvia!"
"Well, that is borrowing trouble!" he cried impatiently. "Aunt Sally is interested in a great many young people. She is very fond of Allen Thatcher. And Allen seems to find Marian's society agreeable, more so, I fancy, than Harwood does;—why not speculate along that line? It's as plausible as the other."
"Oh, that boy! That's something we must guard against, Morton; that is quite impossible."
"I dare say it is," he replied. "But not more unlikely than that Harwood will marry this Sylvia who worries you so unnecessarily."
"Marian is going to marry somebody, some day, and that's on my mind a great deal. You have got to give more thought to family matters. It's right for Marian to marry, and I think a girl of her tastes should settle early, but we must guard her from mistakes. I've had that on my conscience several years."
"Of course, Hallie; and I've not been unmindful of it."
"And if Aunt Sally is interested in young Harwood and you think well of him yourself—but of course I don't favor him for Marian. I should like Marian to marry into a family of some standing."
"Well, we'll see to it that she does; we want our daughter to be happy—we must do the best we can for our children," he concluded largely.
She promised to appear at the dinner table, and he went down with some idea of seeing Mrs. Owen at once, to assure her of his honorable intentions toward her in the "Courier" matter; he wanted to relieve his own fears as well as his wife's as to the mischief that had been wrought by Thatcher's suit.
In the hall below he met Sylvia, just back from her first day at the normal school. The maid had admitted her, and she was slipping her parasol into the rack as he came downstairs. She heard his step and turned toward him, a slender, dark young woman in black. In the dim hall she did not at once recognize him, and he spoke first.
"Good-afternoon, Miss Garrison! I am Mr. Bassett; I believe I introduced myself to you at Waupegan—and that seems a long time ago."
"I remember very well, Mr. Bassett," Sylvia replied, and they shook hands. "You found me in my dream corner by the lake and walked to Mrs. Owen's with me. I remember our meeting perfectly."
He stood with his hand on the newel regarding her intently. She was entirely at ease, a young woman without awkwardness or embarrassment. She had disposed of their previous meeting lightly, as though such fortuitous incidents had not been lacking in her life. Her mourning hat cast a shadow upon her face, but he had been conscious of the friendliness of her smile. Her dark eyes had inspected him swiftly; he was vaguely aware of a feeling that he wanted to impress her favorably.
"The maid said Mrs. Owen and Marian are still out. I hope Mrs. Bassett is better. I wonder if I can do anything for her."
"No, thank you; she's quite comfortable and will be down for dinner."
"I'm glad to hear that; suppose we find seats here."
She walked before him into the parlor and threw back the curtains the better to admit the air. He watched her attentively, noting the ease and grace of her movements, and took the chair she indicated.
"It's very nice to see Mrs. Bassett and Marian again; they were so good to me that summer at Waupegan; I have carried the pleasantest memories of that visit ever since. It seems a long time ago and it is nearly four years, isn't it."
"Four this summer, I think. I remember, because I had been to Colorado, and that whole year was pretty full for me. But all these years have been busy ones for you, too, I hear. Your grandfather's death must have been a great shock to you. I knew him only by reputation, but it was a reputation to be proud of."
"Yes; Grandfather Kelton had been everything to me."
"It was too bad he couldn't have lived to see you through college; he must have taken a great interest in your work there, through his own training and scholarship."
"It was what he wanted me to do, and I wish he could have known how I value it. He was the best of men, the kindest and noblest; and he was a wonderful scholar. He had the habit of thoroughness."
"That, I suppose, was partly due to the discipline of the Navy. I fancy that a man trained in habits of exactness gets into the way of keeping his mind ship-shape—no loose ends around anywhere."
She smiled at this, and regarded him with rather more attention, as though his remark had given her a new impression of him which her eyes wished to verify.
"They tell me you expect to teach in the city schools; that has always seemed to me the hardest kind of work. I should think you would prefer a college position;—there would be less drudgery, and better social opportunities."
"Every one warns me that it's hard work, but I don't believe it can be so terrible. Somebody has to do it. Of course college positions are more dignified and likely to be better paid."
He started to speak and hesitated.
"Well," she laughed. "You were going to add your warning, weren't you! I'm used to them."
"No; nothing of the sort; I was going to take the liberty of saying that if you cared to have me I should be glad to see whether our state university might not have something for you. I have friends and acquaintances who could help there."
"Oh, you are very kind! It is very good of you to offer to do that; but—"
A slight embarrassment was manifest in the quick opening and closing of her eyes, a slight turning of the head, but she smiled pleasantly, happily. He liked her way of smiling, and smiled himself. He found it agreeable to be talking to this young woman with the fine, candid eyes, whose manner was so assured—without assurance! She smoothed the black gloves in her lap quietly; they were capable hands; her whole appearance and manner somehow betokened competence.
"The fact is, Mr. Bassett, that I have declined one or two college positions. My own college offered to take me in; and I believe there were one or two other chances. But it is kind of you to offer to help me."
She had minimized the importance of the offers she had declined so that he might not feel the meagreness of his proffered help; and he liked her way of doing it; but it was incredible that a young woman should decline an advantageous and promising position to accept a minor one. In the world he knew there were many hands on all the rounds of all the available ladders.
"Of course," he hastened to say, "I knew you were efficient; that's why I thought the public schools were not quite—not quite—worthy of your talents!"
Some explanation seemed necessary, and Sylvia hesitated for a moment.
"Do I really have to be serious, Mr. Bassett? So many people—the girls at college and some of my instructors and Mrs. Owen even—have assured me that I am not quite right in my mind; but I will make short work of my reasons. Please believe that I really don't mean to take myself too seriously. I want to teach in the public schools merely to continue my education; there are things to learn there that I want to know. So, you see, after all, it's neither important nor interesting; it's only—only my woman's insatiable curiosity!"
He smiled, but he frowned too; it annoyed him not to comprehend her. School-teaching could only be a matter of necessity; her plea of curiosity must cover something deeper that she withheld.
"I know," she continued, "if I may say it, ever so much from books; but I have only the faintest notions of life. Now, isn't that terribly muggy? People—and their conditions and circumstances—can only be learned by going to the original sources."
This was not illuminative. She had only added to his befuddlement and he bent forward, soliciting some more lucid statement of her position.
"I had hoped to go ahead and never have to explain, for I fear that in explaining I seem to be appraising myself too high; but you won't believe that of me, will you? If I took one of these college positions and proved efficient, and had good luck, I should keep on knowing all the rest of my life about the same sort of people, for the girls who go to college are from the more fortunate classes. There are exceptions, but they are drawn largely from homes that have some cultivation, some sort of background. The experiences of teachers in such institutions are likely to cramp. It's all right later on, but at first, it seems to me better to experiment in the wider circle. Now—" and she broke off with a light laugh, eager that he should understand.
"It's not, then, your own advantage you consult; the self-denial appeals to you; it's rather like—like a nun's vocation. You think the service is higher!"
"Oh, it would be if I could render service! Please don't think I feel that the world is waiting for me to set it right; I don't believe it's so wrong! All I mean to say is that I don't understand a lot of things, and that the knowledge I lack isn't something we can dig out of a library, but that we must go to life for it. There's a good deal to learn in a city like this that's still in the making. I might have gone to New York, but there are too many elements there; it's all too big for me. Here you can see nearly as many kinds of people, and you can get closer to them. You can see how they earn their living, and you can even follow them to church on Sunday and see what they get out of that!"
"I'm afraid," he replied, after deliberating a moment, "that you are going to make yourself uncomfortable; you are cutting out a programme of unhappiness."
"Why shouldn't I make myself uncomfortable for a little while? I have never known anything but comfort."
"But that's your blessing; no matter how much you want to do it you can't remove all the unhappiness in the world—not even by dividing with the less fortunate. I've never been able to follow that philosophy."
"Maybe," she said, "you have never tried it!" She was seeking neither to convince him nor to accomplish his discomfiture and to this end was maintaining her share of the dialogue to the accompaniment of a smile of amity.
"Maybe I never have," he replied slowly. "I didn't have your advantage of seeing a place to begin."
"But you have the advantage of every one; you have the thing that I can never hope to have, that I don't ask for: you have the power in your hands to do everything!"
His quick, direct glance expressed curiosity as to whether she were appealing to his vanity or implying a sincere belief in his power.
"Power is too large a word to apply to me, Miss Garrison. I have had a good deal of experience in politics, and in politics you can't do all you like."
"I didn't question that: men of the finest intentions seem to fail, and they will probably go on failing. I know that from books; you know it of course from actual dealings with the men who find their way to responsible places, and who very often fail to accomplish the things we expect of them."
"The aims of most of the reformers are futile from the beginning. Legislatures can pass laws; they pass far too many; but they can't make ideal conditions out of those laws. I've seen it tried."
"Yesterday, when you were able to make that convention do exactly what you wanted it to, without even being there to watch it, it must have been because of some ideal you were working for. You thought you were serving some good purpose; it wasn't just spite or to show your power. It couldn't have been that!"
"I did it," he said doggedly, as though to destroy with a single blunt thrust her tower of illusions—"I did it to smash a man named Thatcher. There wasn't any ideal nonsense about it."
He frowned, surprised and displeased that he had spoken so roughly. He rarely let go of himself in that fashion. He expected her to take advantage of his admission to point a moral; but she said instantly:—
"Then, you did it beautifully! There was a certain perfection about it; it was, oh, immensely funny!"
She laughed, tossing her head lightly, a laugh of real enjoyment, and he was surprised to find himself laughing with her. It seemed that the Thatcher incident was not only funny, but that its full humorous value had not until that moment been wholly realized by either of them.
She rose quickly. One of her gloves fell to the floor and he picked it up. The act of restoring it brought them close together, and their talk had, he felt, justified another searching glance into her face. She nodded her thanks, smiling again, and moved toward the door. He admired the tact which had caused her to close the discussion at precisely the safe moment. He was a master of the art of closing interviews, and she had placed the period at the end of the right sentence; it was where he would have placed it himself. She had laughed!—and the novelty of being laughed at was refreshing. He and Thatcher had laughed in secret at the confusion of their common enemies in old times; but most men feared him, and he had the reputation of being a mirthless person. He had rarely discussed politics with women; he had an idea that a woman's politics, when she had any, partook of the nature of her religion, and that it was something quite emotional, tending toward hysteria. He experienced a sense of guilt at the relief he found in Sylvia's laughter, remembering that scarcely half an hour earlier he had been at pains to justify himself before his wife for the very act which had struck this girl as funny. He had met Mrs. Bassett's accusations with evasion and dissimulation, and he had accomplished an escape that was not, in retrospect, wholly creditable. He hated scenes and tiresome debates as he hated people who cringed and sidled before him.
His manner of dealing with Thatcher had been born of a diabolical humor which he rarely exercised, but which afforded him a delicious satisfaction. It was the sort of revenge one reserved for a foe capable of appreciating its humor and malignity. The answer of laughter was one to which he was unused, and he was amazed to find that it had effected an understanding of some vague and intangible kind between him and Sylvia Garrison. She might not approve of him, he had no idea that she did; but she had struck a chord whose vibrations pleased and tantalized. She was provocative and, to a degree, mystifying, and the abrupt termination of their talk seemed to leave the way open to other interviews. He thought of many things he might have said to her at the moment; but her period was not to be changed to comma or semicolon; she was satisfied with the punctuation and had, so to speak, run away with the pencil! She had tossed his political aims and strifes into the air with a bewildering dismissal, and he stood like a child whose toy balloon has slipped away, half-pleased at its flight, half-mourning its loss.
She picked up some books she had left on a stand in the hall. He stood with his hands in his pockets, watching her ascent, hearing the swish of her skirts on the stairs: but she did not look back. She was humming softly to herself as she passed out of sight.
CHAPTER XXI
A SHORT HORSE SOON CURRIED
Sylvia sat beside Bassett at dinner that night, and it was on the whole a cheerful party. Mrs. Bassett was restored to tranquillity, and before her aunt she always strove to hide her ills, from a feeling that that lady, who enjoyed perfect health, and carried on the most prodigious undertakings, had little patience with her less fortunate sisters whom the doctors never fully discharge. Mrs. Owen had returned so late that Bassett was unable to dispose of the lawsuit before dinner; she had greeted her niece's husband with her usual cordiality. She always called him Morton, and she was Aunt Sally to him as to many hundreds of her fellow citizens. She discussed crops, markets, rumors of foreign wars, prospective changes in the President's Cabinet, the price of ice, and the automobile invasion. Talk at Sally Owen's table was always likely to be spirited. Bassett's anxiety as to his relations with her passed; he had never felt more comfortable in her house.
Only the most temerarious ever ventured to ask a forecast of Mrs. Owen's plans. Marian, who had found a school friend with an automobile and had enjoyed a run into the country, did not share the common fear of her great-aunt. Mrs. Owen liked Marian's straightforward ways even when they approached rashness. It had occurred to her sometimes that there was a good deal of Singleton in Marian; she, Sally Owen, was a Singleton herself, and admired the traits of that side of her family. Marian amused her now by plunging into a description of a new flat she had passed that afternoon which would provide admirably a winter home for the Bassetts. Mrs. Bassett shuddered, expecting her aunt to sound a warning against the extravagance of maintaining two homes; but Mrs. Owen rallied promptly to her grandniece's support.
"If you've got tired of my house, you couldn't do better than to take an apartment in the Verona. I saw the plans before they began it, and it's first-class and up-to-date. My house is open to you and always has been, but I notice you go to the hotel about half the time. You'd better try a flat for a winter, Hallie, and let Marian see how we do things in town."
Instantly Mrs. Bassett was alert. This could only be covert notice that Sylvia was to be installed in the Delaware Street house. Marian was engaging her father in debate upon the merits of her plan, fortified by Mrs. Owen's unexpected approval. Mrs. Bassett raised her eyes to Sylvia. Sylvia, in one of the white gowns with which she relieved her mourning, tranquilly unconscious of the dark terror she awakened in Mrs. Bassett, seemed to be sympathetically interested in the Bassetts' transfer to the capital.
Sylvia was guilty of the deplorable sin of making herself agreeable to every one. She had paused on the way to her room before dinner to proffer assistance to Mrs. Bassett. With a light, soothing touch she had brushed the invalid's hair and dressed it; and she had produced a new kind of salts that proved delightfully refreshing. Since coming to the table Mrs. Bassett had several times detected her husband in an exchange of smiles with the young woman, and Marian and the usurper got on famously.
Mrs. Bassett had observed that Sylvia's appetite was excellent, and this had weakened her belief in the girl's genius; there was a good deal of Early-Victorian superstition touching women in Hallie Bassett! But Mrs. Owen was speaking.
"I suppose I'd see less of you all if you moved to town. Marian used to run off from Miss Waring's to cheer me up, mostly when her lessons were bad, wasn't it, Marian?"
"I love this house, Aunt Sally, but you can't have us all on your hands all the time."
"Well," Mrs. Owen remarked, glancing round the table quizzically, "I might do worse. But even Sylvia scorns me; she's going to move out to-morrow."
Mrs. Bassett with difficulty concealed her immeasurable relief. Mrs. Owen left explanations to Sylvia, who promptly supplied them.
"That sounds as though I were about to take leave without settling my bill, doesn't it? But I thought it wise not to let it get too big; I'm going to move to Elizabeth House."
"Elizabeth House! Why, Sylvia!" cried Marian.
Mrs. Bassett smothered a sigh of satisfaction. If Aunt Sally was transferring her protégée to the home she had established for working girls (and it was inconceivable that the removal could be upon Sylvia's own initiative), the Bassett prospects brightened at once. Aunt Sally was, in her way, an aristocrat; she was rich and her eccentricities were due largely to her kindness of heart; but Mrs. Bassett was satisfied now that she was not a woman to harbor in her home a girl who labored in a public school-house. Not only did Mrs. Bassett's confidence in her aunt rise, but she felt a thrill of admiration for Sylvia, who was unmistakably a girl who knew her place, and her place as a wage-earner was not in the home of one of the richest women in the state, but in a house provided through that lady's beneficence for the shelter of young women occupied in earning a livelihood.
"It's very nice there," Sylvia was saying. "I stopped on my way home this afternoon and found that they could give me a room. It's all arranged."
"But it's only for office girls and department store clerks and dressmakers, Sylvia. I should think you would hate it. Why, my manicure lives there!"
Marian desisted, warned by her mother, who wished no jarring note to mar her satisfaction in the situation.
"That manicure girl is a circus," said Mrs. Owen, quite oblivious of the undercurrent of her niece's thoughts. "When they had a vaudeville show last winter she did the best stunts of any of 'em. You didn't mention those Jewesses that I had such a row to get in? Smart girls. One of 'em is the fastest typewriter in town; she's a credit to Jerusalem, that girl. And a born banker. They've started a savings club and Miriam runs it. They won't lose any money." Mrs. Owen chuckled; and the rest laughed. There was no question of Mrs. Owen's pride in Elizabeth House. "Did you see any plumbers around the place?" she demanded of Sylvia. "I've been a month trying to get another bathroom put in on the third floor, and plumbers do try the soul."
"That's all done," replied Sylvia. "The matron told me to tell you so."
"I'm about due to go over there and look over the linen," remarked Mrs. Owen, with an air of making a memorandum of a duty neglected.
"Well, I guess it's comfortable enough," said Marian. "But I should think you could do better than that, Sylvia. You'll have to eat at the same table with some typewriter pounder. With all your education I should think it would bore you."
"Sylvia will have to learn about it for herself, Marian," said Mrs. Bassett. "I've always understood that the executive board is very careful not to admit girls whose character isn't above reproach."
Mrs. Owen turned the key of her old-fashioned coffee urn sharply upon the cup she was filling and looked her niece in the eye.
"Oh, we're careful, Hallie; we're careful; but I tell 'em not to be too careful!"
"Well, of course the aim is to protect girls," Mrs. Bassett replied, conscious of a disconcerting acidity in her aunt's remark.
"I'm not afraid of contamination," observed Sylvia.
"Of course not that," rejoined Mrs. Bassett hastily. "I think it's fine that with your culture you will go and live in such a place; it shows a beautiful spirit of self-sacrifice."
"Oh, please don't say that! I'm going there just because I want to go!" And then, smiling to ease the moment's tension, "I expect to have the best of times at Elizabeth House."
"Sylvia"—remarked Mrs. Owen, drawling the name a trifle more than usual—"Sylvia can do what she pleases anywhere."
"I think," said Bassett, who had not before entered into the discussion, "that Aunt Sally has struck the right word there. In these days a girl can do as she likes; and we haven't any business to discuss Miss Garrison's right to live at Elizabeth House."
"Of course, Sylvia, we didn't mean to seem to criticize you. You know that," said Mrs. Bassett, flushing.
"You are my friends," said Sylvia, glancing round the table, "and if there's criticizing to be done, you have the first right."
"If Sylvia is to be criticized,—and I don't understand that any one has tried it," remarked Mrs. Owen,—"I want the first chance at her myself." And with the snapping of her spectacle case they rose from the table.
They had barely settled themselves in the parlor when Harwood and Allen arrived in Allen's motor. Dan had expected his friend to resent his part in the convention, and he had sought Allen at Lüders's shop to satisfy himself that their personal relations had not been disturbed. He had found Allen, at the end of a day's work, perched upon a bench discoursing to the workmen on the Great Experiment. Allen had, it seemed, watched the convention from an obscure corner of the gallery. He pronounced Dan's speech "immense"; "perfectly bully"; he was extravagant in his praise of it. His father's success in naming the ticket had seemed to him a great triumph. Allen viewed the whole matter with a kind of detachment, as a spectator whose interest is wholly impersonal. He thought there would be a great fight between the combatants; his dad hadn't finished yet, he declared, sententiously. The incidents of the convention had convinced him that the Great Experiment was progressing according to some predestined formula. He and Harwood had dined together at the University Club and he was quite in the humor to call on the Bassetts at Mrs. Owen's; and the coming of Sylvia, as to whom Mrs. Owen had piqued his curiosity, was not to be overlooked.
He cleared the air by brushing away the convention with a word, addressed daringly to Bassett:—
"Papa's come back from fishing! My papa is digging bait," and they all laughed.
"Miss Garrison, you must be the greatest of girls, for you have my own ideas! Our invincible young orator here has been telling me so!"
"That was a grand speech; many happy returns of the day!" was Marian's greeting to Dan.
"You certainly have a great voice, Daniel," remarked Mrs. Owen, "and you had your nerve with you."
"You were effective from the first moment, Mr. Harwood. You ought to consider going on the lecture platform," said Mrs. Bassett.
"Oh, Dan hasn't come to that yet; its only defeated statesmen who spout in the Chautauquas," Bassett remarked.
Harwood was in fine fettle. Many men had expressed their approval of him; at the club he had enjoyed the chaffing of the young gentlemen with whom he ate luncheon daily, and whose tolerance of the universe was tinged with a certain cynicism. They liked Harwood; they knew he was a "smart" fellow; and because they liked and admired him they rallied him freely. The president of a manufacturing company had called at the Boordman Building to retain him in a damage suit; a tribute to his growing fame. Dan was a victim of that error to which young men yield in exultant moments, when, after a first brush with the pickets, they are confident of making their own terms with life. Dan's attitude toward the world was receptive; here in the Bassett domestic circle he felt no shame at being a Bassett man. All but Sylvia had spoken to him of his part in the convention, and she turned to him now after a passage with Allen that had left the young man radiant.
"You have a devoted admirer in Mr. Thatcher. He must be a difficult friend to satisfy," said Sylvia.
"Then do you think I don't satisfy him?"
"Oh, perfectly! He's a combination of optimist and fatalist, I judge. He thinks nothing matters much, for everything is coming out all right in the end."
"Then where do you place me in his scheme of things?"
"That depends, doesn't it," she replied carelessly, "on whether you are the master of the ship or only a prisoner under the hatches."
He reddened, and she added nothing to relieve his embarrassment.
"You think, then—?" And he stopped, uneasy under her gaze.
"Some of the time I don't think; I just wonder. And that's very different, isn't it?"
He realized now how much he had counted on the kind things he had expected her to say. He had plainly lost ground with her since their talk on the Madison campus, and he wanted to justify himself, to convince her of his rectitude, and of her failure to understand his part in the convention, but the time and place were unpropitious.
Allen was calling attention to the moonlight and proposing an automobile flight into the country. His car would hold them all, and he announced himself the safest of chauffeurs. Mrs. Owen declined, on the double plea that she had business to attend to and did not ride in motor cars even to please Allen Thatcher; Bassett also excused himself; so the rest set off presently under Mrs. Bassett's chaperonage.
"Are you going downtown, Morton?" asked Mrs. Owen, as they watched the motor roll away.
"No; I'd like to see you on a business matter, Aunt Sally, if you can give me a few minutes."
"Certainly, Morton; come right in."
She flashed on the lights in her office where Thomas A. Hendricks still gazed benevolently at Maud S. breaking her record.
"I owe you an apology, Aunt Sally," Bassett began at once. "I'm sorry I got you into a lawsuit, but things moved so fast that I didn't have a chance to pull you out of the way. Thatcher and I have agreed to disagree, as you doubtless know."
Mrs. Owen drew her spectacle case from her pocket (there were pockets and deep ones in all her gowns), wiped her glasses and put them on.
"You and Edward do seem to be having a little trouble. When I got home I found that summons the sheriff left here. Let me see; it was away back in '82 that I was sued the last time. Agent for a cornplanter sued me for a machine I never ordered and it wasn't worth a farthing anyhow. That was on my Greene County place. Just for that I had him arrested for trespass for going on the farm to take away the machine. He paid the costs all right, and I hope he learned better manners."
This reminiscence, recalled with evident enjoyment, was not wholly encouraging. It seemed darkly possible that she had cited a precedent applicable to every case where she was haled before a court. The chairs in Mrs. Owen's office were decidedly uncomfortable; Bassett crossed and recrossed his legs, and pressed his hand nervously to his pocket to make sure of his check-book; for he was prepared to pay his wife's aunt for her shares in the "Courier" newspaper to facilitate her elimination as a co-defendant in the suit at bar.
"It was contemptible of Thatcher to drag you into this, for he knew you took those shares merely to help me out. I'm sorry it has turned out this way, but I'm anxious to make it right with you, and I'm ready to buy your shares—at your own price, of course."
She chose a letter from the afternoon's mail, and opened it with a horn-handled paper-cutter, crumpling the envelope and dropping it over her shoulder into a big waste-paper basket. She was not apparently overcome by his magnanimity.
"Well, well," she said, glancing over the letter; "that man I've got at Waupegan is turning out better than I expected when I put him there; or else he's the greatest living liar. You never can tell about these people. Well, well!—Oh, yes, Morton; about that lawsuit. I saw Edward this afternoon and had a little talk with him about it."
"You saw Thatcher about the suit!"
"I most certainly did, Morton. I had him go down to the bank to talk to me."
"I'm sorry you took the trouble to do that. If you'd told me—"
"Oh, I'm not afraid of Edward Thatcher. If a man brings a lawsuit against me, the sooner I see him the better. I sent word to Edward and he was waiting at the bank when I got there."
"I'd given Thatcher credit for being above dragging a woman who had always been his friend into a lawsuit. He certainly owed you an apology."
"I didn't see it just that way, Morton, and he didn't apologize. I wouldn't have let him!"
She looked at him over her glasses disconcertingly, and he could think of no reply. It was possible that Thatcher had bought her stock or that she had made him bid for it. She had a reputation for driving hard bargains, and he judged from her manner that her conference with Thatcher, whatever its nature, had not been unsatisfactory. He recalled with exasperation his wife's displeasure over this whole affair; it was incumbent upon him not only to reëstablish himself with Mrs. Owen, but to do it in a way to satisfy Mrs. Bassett.
"You needn't worry about that lawsuit, Morton; there ain't going to be any lawsuit."
She gave this time to "soak in," as she would have expressed it, and then concluded:—
"It's all off; I persuaded Edward to drop the suit. The case will be dismissed in the morning."
"Dismissed? How dismissed, Aunt Sally?"
"Just dismissed; that's all there is of it. I went to see Fitch, too, and gave him a piece of my mind. He wrote me a letter I found here saying that in my absence he'd taken the liberty of entering an appearance for me, along with you, in the case. I told him I'd attend to my own lawsuits, and that he could just scratch his appearance off the docket."
The presumption of her lawyer seemed to obscure all other issues for the moment. Morton Bassett was annoyed to be kept waiting for an explanation that was clearly due him as her co-defendant; he controlled his irritation with difficulty. Her imprudence in having approached his enemy filled him with forebodings; there was no telling what compromises she might have negotiated with Edward G. Thatcher.
"I suppose you shamed him out of it?" he suggested.
"Shamed him? I scared him out of it! He owns a lot of property in this town that's rented for unlawful purposes, and I told him I'd prosecute him; that, and a few other things. He offered to buy me out at a good price, but he didn't get very far with that. It was a good figure, though," she added reflectively.
His spirits rose at this proof of her loyalty and he hastened to manifest his appreciation. His wife's fears would be dispelled by this evidence of her aunt's good will toward the family.
"I rather imagined that he'd be glad to quit if he saw an easy way out, and I guess you gave it to him. Now about your stock, Aunt Sally. I don't want you to be brought into my troubles with Thatcher any further. I appreciate your help so far, and I'm able now to pay for your shares. I don't doubt that Ed offered you a generous price to get a controlling interest. I'll write a check for any sum you name, and you'll have my gratitude besides."
He drew out his check-book and laid it on the table, with a feeling that money, which according to tradition is a talkative commodity, might now conclude the conversation. Mrs. Owen saw the check-book—looked at it over her glasses, apparently without emotion.
"I'm not going to sell those shares, Morton; not to you or anybody else."
"But as a matter of maintaining my own dignity—"
"Your own dignity is something I want to speak to you about, Morton. I've been watching you ever since you married Hallie, and wondering just where you'd bump. You and Edward Thatcher have been pretty thick and you've had a lot of fun out of politics. This row you've got into with him was bound to come. I know Edward better—just a little better than I know you. He's not a beautiful character, but he's not as bad as they make out. But you've given him a hard rub the wrong way and he's going to get even with you. He's mighty bitter—bitterer than it's healthy for one man to be against another. If it hadn't been for this newspaper fuss I shouldn't ever have said a word to you about it; but I advise you to straighten things up with Edward. You'd better do it for your own good—for Hallie and the children. You've insulted him and held him up to the whole state of Indiana as a fool. You needn't think he doesn't know just where you gripped that convention tight, and just where you let him have it to play with. He's got more money than you have, and he's going to spend it to give you some of your own medicine or worse, if he can. He's like a mule that lays for the nigger that put burrs under his collar. You're that particular nigger just now. You've made a mistake, Morton."
"But Aunt Sally—I didn't—"
"About that newspaper, Morton," she continued, ignoring him. "I've decided that I'll just hang on to my stock. You've built up the 'Courier' better than I expected, and that last statement showed it to be doing fine. I don't know any place right now where I can do as well with the money. You see I've got about all the farms I can handle at my age, and it will be some fun to have a hand in running a newspaper. I want you to tell 'em down at the 'Courier' office—what's his name? Atwill? Well, you tell him I want this 'Stop, Look, Listen' business stopped. If you can't think of anything smarter to do than that, you 'd better quit. You had no business to turn a newspaper against a man who owns half of it without giving him a chance to get off the track. You whistled, Morton, after you had pitched him and his side-bar buggy into the ditch and killed his horse."
"But who had put him on the track? I hadn't! He'd been running over the state for two years, to my knowledge, trying to undermine me. I was only giving him in broad daylight what he was giving me in the dark. You don't understand this, Aunt Sally; he's been playing on your feelings."
"Morton Bassett, there ain't a man on earth that can play on my feelings. I didn't let him jump on you; and I don't intend to let you abuse him. I've told you to stop nagging him, but I haven't any idea you'll do it. That's your business. If you want a big bump, you go on and get it. About this newspaper, I'm going to keep my shares, and I've told Edward that you wouldn't use the paper as a club on him while I was interested in it. You can print all the politics you want, but it must be clean politics, straight out from the shoulder."
He had lapsed into sullen silence, too stunned to interrupt the placid flow of her speech. She had not only meddled in his affairs in a fashion that would afford comfort to his enemy, but she was now dictating terms—this old woman whose mild tone was in itself maddening. The fear of incurring his wife's wrath alone checked an outburst of indignation. In all his life no one had ever warned him to his face that he was pursuing a course that led to destruction. He had always enjoyed her capriciousness, her whimsical humor, but there was certainly nothing for him to smile at in this interview. She had so plied the lash that it cut to the quick. His pride and self-confidence were deeply wounded;—his wife's elderly aunt did not believe in his omnipotence! This was a shock in itself; but what fantastic nonsense was she uttering now?
"Since I bought that stock, Morton, I've been reading the 'Courier' clean through every day, and there are some things about that paper I don't like. I guess you and Edward Thatcher ain't so particularly religious, and when you took hold of it you cut out that religious page they used to print every Sunday. You better tell Atwill to start that up again. I notice, too, that the 'Courier' sneaks in little stingers at the Jews occasionally—they may just get in by mistake, but you ought to have a rule at the office against printing stories as old as the hills about Jews burning down their clothing-stores to get the insurance. I've known a few Gentiles that did that. The only man I know that I'd lend money to without security is a Jew. Let's not jump on people just to hurt their feelings. And besides, we don't any of us know much more these days than old Moses knew. And that fellow who writes the little two-line pieces under the regular editorials—he's too smart, and he ain't always as funny as he thinks he is. There's no use in popping bird-shot at things if they ain't right, and that fellow's always trying to hurt somebody's feelings without doing anybody any good."
She opened a drawer of her desk and drew out a memorandum to refresh her memory.
"You've got a whole page and on Sundays two pages about baseball and automobiles, and the horse is getting crowded down into a corner. We"—he was not unmindful of the plural—"we must print more horse news. You tell Atwill to send his young man that does the 'Horse and Track' around to see me occasionally and I'll be glad to help him get some horse news that is news. I wouldn't want to have you bounce a young man who's doing the best he can, but it doesn't do a newspaper any good to speak of Dan Patch as a trotting-horse or give the record of my two-year-old filly Penelope O as 2:09-1/4 when she made a clean 2:09. You've got to print facts in a newspaper if you want people to respect it. How about that, Morton?"
"You're right, Aunt Sally. I'll speak to Atwill about his horse news."
He began to wonder whether she were not amusing herself at his expense; but she gave him no reason for doubting her seriousness. They might have been partners from the beginning of time from her businesslike manner of criticizing the paper. She had not only flatly refused to sell her shares, but she was taking advantage of the opportunity (for which she seemed to be prepared) to tell him how the "Courier" should be conducted!
"About farming, Morton," she continued deliberately, "the 'Courier' has fun every now and then over the poor but honest farmer, and prints pictures of him when he comes to town for the State Fair that make him look like a scarecrow. Farming, Morton, is a profession, nowadays, and those poor yaps Eggleston wrote about in 'The Hoosier Schoolmaster' were all dead and buried before you were born. Farmers are up and coming I can tell you, and I wouldn't lose their business by poking fun at 'em. That Saturday column of farm news, by the way, is a fraud—all stolen out of the 'Western Farmers' Weekly' and no credit. They must keep that column in cold storage to run it the way they do. They're usually about a season behind time—telling how to plant corn along in August and planting winter wheat about Christmas. Our farm editor must have been raised on a New York roof-garden. Another thing I want to speak of is the space they give to farmers' and stockmen's societies when they meet here. The last time the Hoosier State Mulefoot Hog Association met right here in town at the Horticultural Society's room at the State House—all the notice they got in the 'Courier' was five lines in 'Minor Mention.' The same day the State Bankers' Association filled three columns, and most of that was a speech by Tom Adams on currency reform. You might tell that funny editorial man to give Adams a poke now and then, and stop throwing chestnuts about gold bricks and green goods at farmers. And he needn't show the bad state of his liver by sarcastically speaking of farmers as honest husbandmen either; a farmer is a farmer, unless, for lack of God's grace, he's a fool! I guess the folks are coming now. I hope Allen won't knock down the house with that threshing-machine of his. That's all this time. Let me see—you'd better tell your editor to call on me now and then. What did you say his name was, Morton?"
"Atwill—Arthur P."
"Is he a son of that Ebenezer Atwill who used to be a professor in Asbury College?"
"I'm afraid not, Aunt Sally; I don't think he ever heard of Ebenezer," replied Bassett, with all the irony he dared.
CHAPTER XXII
THE GRAY SISTERHOOD
Elizabeth House was hospitable to male visitors, and Dan found Sylvia there often on the warm, still summer evenings, when the young women of the household filled the veranda and overflowed upon the steps. Sylvia's choice of a boarding-house had puzzled Dan a good deal, but there were a good many things about Sylvia that baffled him. For example, this preparation for teaching in a public school when she might have had an assistant professorship in a college seemed a sad waste of energy and opportunity. She was going to school to her inferiors, he maintained, submitting to instruction as meekly as though she were not qualified to enlighten her teachers in any branch of knowledge. It was preposterous that she should deliberately elect to spend the hottest of summers in learning to combine the principles of Pestalozzi with the methods of Dewey and Kendall.
The acquaintance of Sylvia and Allen prospered from the start. She was not only a new girl in town, and one capable of debating the questions that interested him, but he was charmed with Elizabeth House, which was the kind of thing, he declared, that he had always stood for. The democracy of the veranda, the good humor and ready give and take of the young women delighted him. They liked him and openly called him "our beau." He established himself on excellent terms with the matron to the end that he might fill his automobile with her charges frequently and take them for runs into the country. When Dan grumbled over Sylvia's absurd immolation on the altar of education, Allen pronounced her the grandest girl in the world and the glory of the Great Experiment.
Sylvia was intent these days upon fitting herself as quickly as possible for teaching, becoming a part of the established system and avoiding none of the processes by which teachers are created. Her fellow students, most of whom were younger than she, were practically all the green fruitage of high schools, but she asked no immunities or privileges by reason of her college training; she yielded herself submissively to the "system," and established herself among the other novices on a footing of good comradeship. During the hot, vexatious days she met them with unfailing good cheer. The inspiring example of her college teachers, and not least the belief she had absorbed on the Madison campus in her girlhood, that teaching is a high calling, eased the way for her at times when—as occasionally happened—she failed to appreciate the beauty of the "system."
The superintendent of schools, dropping into the Normal after hours, caught Sylvia in the act of demonstrating a problem in geometry on the blackboard for the benefit of a fellow student who had not yet abandoned the hope of entering the state university that fall. The superintendent had been in quest of a teacher of mathematics for the Manual Training School, and on appealing to the Wellesley authorities they had sent him Sylvia's name. Sylvia, the chalk still in her fingers, met his humorous reproaches smilingly. She had made him appear ridiculous in the eyes of her alma mater, he said. Sylvia declined his offer and smiled. The superintendent was not used to smiles like that in his corps. And this confident young woman seemed to know what she was about. He went away mystified, and meeting John Ware related his experience. Ware laughed and slapped his knee. "You let that girl alone," the minister said. "She has her finger on Time's wrist. Physician of the golden age. Remember Matthew Arnold's lines on Goethe? Good poem. Sylvia wants to know 'the causes of things.' Watch her. Great nature."
At seven o'clock on a morning of September, Sylvia left Elizabeth House to begin her novitiate as a teacher. Allen had declared his intention of sending his automobile for her every morning, an offer that was promptly declined. However, on that bright morning when the young world turned schoolward, Harwood lay in wait for her.
"This must never happen again, sir! And of course you may not carry my books—they're the symbol of my profession. Seventeen thousand young persons about like me are on the way to school this morning right here in Indiana. It would be frightfully embarrassing to the educational system if young gentlemen were allowed to carry the implements of our trade."
"You can't get rid of me now: I never get up as early as this unless I'm catching a train."
"So much the worse for you, then!"
"There will be mornings when you won't think it so much fun. It rains and snows in Indiana sometimes."
He still resented the idea of her sacrifice, as he called it, in the cause of education. They were now so well acquainted that they were not always careful to be polite in their talk; but he had an uneasy feeling that she didn't wholly approve of him. All summer, when they had discussed politics, she had avoided touching upon his personal interests and activities. His alliance with Bassett, emphasized in the state convention, was a subject she clearly avoided. This morning, as he kept time to her quick step, he craved her interest and sympathy. Her plain gray suit and simple cloth hat could not disguise her charm or grace. It seemed to him that she was putting herself a little further away from him, that she was approaching the business of life with a determination, a spirit, a zest, that dwarfed to insignificance his own preoccupation with far less important matters. She turned to glance back at a group of children they had passed audibly speculating as to the character of teacher the day held in store for them.
"Don't you think they're worth working for?" Sylvia asked.
Dan shrugged his shoulders.
"I suppose more lives are ground up in the school-teaching machine than in any other way. Go on! The girl who taught me my alphabet in the little red school-house in Harrison County earned her salary, I can tell you. She was seventeen and wore a pink dress."
"I'm sorry you don't approve of me or my clothes. Now Allen approves of me: I like Allen."
"His approval is important, I dare say."
"Yes, very. It's nice to be approved of. It helps some."
"And I suppose there ought to be a certain reciprocity in approval and disapproval?"
"Oh, there's bound to be!"
Their eyes met and they laughed lightheartedly.
"I'm going to tell you something," said Dan. "On the reciprocal theory I can't expect anything, but I'm lonesome and have no friends anyhow, so I'll give you a chance to say something withering and edged with a fine scorn."
"Good! I'll promise not to disappoint you."
"I'm going to be put on the legislature ticket to-day—to fill a vacancy. I suppose you'll pray earnestly for my defeat."
"Why should I waste prayers on that? Besides, Allen solemnly declares that the people are to be trusted. It's not for me to set my prayers against the will of the pee-pull."
"If you had a vote," he persisted, "you wouldn't vote for me?"
"I should have to know what you want to go to the legislature for before committing myself. What are you doing it for?"
"To do all the mischief I can, of course; to support all the worst measures that come up; to jump when the boss's whip cracks!"
She refused to meet him on this ground. He saw that any expectation he might have that she would urge him to pledge himself to noble endeavor and high achievements as a state legislator were doomed to disappointment. He was taken aback by the tone of her retort.
"I hope you will do all those things. You could do nothing better calculated to help your chances."
"Chances?"
"Your chances—and we don't any of us have too many of coming to some good sometime."
"I believe you are really serious; but I don't understand you."
"Then I shall be explicit. Just this, then, to play the ungrateful part of the frank friend. The sooner you get your fingers burnt, the sooner you will let the fire alone. I suppose Mr. Bassett has given the word that you are graciously to be permitted to sit in his legislature. He could hardly do less for you than that, after he sent you into the arena last June to prod the sick lion for his entertainment."
They were waiting at a corner for a break in the street traffic, and he turned toward her guardedly.
"You put it pretty low," he mumbled.
"The thing itself is not so bad. From what I have heard and read about Mr. Bassett, I don't think he is really an evil person. He probably didn't start with any sort of ideals of public life: you did. I read in an essay the other night that the appeal of the highest should be always to the lowest. But you're not appealing to anybody; you're just following the band wagon to the centre of the track. Stop, Look, Listen! You've come far enough with me now. The walls of my prison house loom before me. Good-morning!"
"Good-morning and good luck!"
That night Sylvia wrote a letter to one of her classmates in Boston. "I'm a school-teacher," she said,—"a member of the gray sisterhood of American nuns. All over this astonishing country my sisters of this honorable order rise up in the morning, even as you and I, to teach the young idea how to shoot. I look with veneration upon those of our sisterhood who have grown old in the classroom. I can see myself reduced to a bundle of nerves, irascible, worthless, ready for the scrap-pile at, we will say, forty-two—only twenty years ahead of me! My work looks so easy and I like it so much that I went in fright to the dictionary to look up the definition of teacher. I find that I'm one who teaches or instructs. Think of it—I! That definition should be revised to read, 'Teacher: one who, conveying certain information to others, reads in fifty faces unanswerable questions as to the riddle of existence.' 'School: a place where the presumably wise are convinced of their own folly.' Note well, my friend: I am a gray sister, in a gray serge suit that fits, with white cuffs and collar, and with chalk on my fingers. Oh, it's not what I'm required to teach, but what I'm going to learn that worries me!"
Lüders's shop was not far from Sylvia's school and Allen devised many excuses for waylaying her. His machine being forbidden, he hung about until she appeared and trudged homeward with her. Often he came in a glow from the cabinetmaker's and submitted for her judgment the questions that had been debated that day at the shop. There was something sweet and wistful and charming in his boyishness; and she was surprised, as Harwood had been from the first, by the intelligence he evinced in political and social questions. He demanded absolute answers to problems that were perplexing wise men all over the world.
"If I could answer that," she would say to him, "I should be entitled to a monument more enduring than brass. The comfort and happiness of mankind isn't to be won in a day: we mustn't pull up the old tree till we've got a new one planted and growing."
"The Great Experiment will turn out all right yet! Some fellow we never heard of will give the lever a jerk some day, and there will be a rumble and a flash and it will run perfectly," he asserted.
The state campaign got under way in October, and Harwood was often discussed in relation to it. Allen always praised Dan extravagantly, and was ever alert to defend him against her criticisms.
"My dad will run the roller over Bassett, but Dan will be smart enough to get from under. It's the greatest show on earth—continuous vaudeville—this politics! Dan's all right. He's got more brains than Bassett. One of these days Dan will take a flop and land clean over in the Thatcher camp. It's only a matter of time. Gratitude and considerations like that are holding him back. But I'm not a partisan—not even on dad's side. I'm the philosopher who sits on the fence and keeps the score by innings."
It seemed to her, in those days and afterward, that Allen symbolized the unknown quantity in all the problems that absorbed him. His idealism was not a thing of the air, but a flowering from old and vigorous roots. His politics was a kind of religion, and it did not prove upon analysis to be either so fantastical or so fanatical as she had believed at first. As the days shortened, he would prolong their walk until the shops and factories discharged their employees upon the streets. The fine thing about the people was, he said, the fact that they were content to go on from day to day, doing the things they did, when the restraints upon them were so light,—it proved the enduring worth of the Great Experiment. Then they would plunge into the thick of the crowd and cross the Monument plaza, where he never failed to pay a tribute in his own fashion to the men the gray shaft commemorated. In these walks they spoke French, which he employed more readily than she: in his high moods it seemed to express him better than English. It amused him to apply new names to the thoroughfares they traversed. For example, he gayly renamed Monument Place the Place de la Concorde, assuring her that the southward vista in the Rue de la Méridienne, disclosing the lamp-bestarred terrace of the new Federal Building, and the electric torches of the Monument beyond, was highly reminiscent of Paris. Sylvia was able to dramatize for herself, from the abundant material he artlessly supplied, the life he had led abroad during his long exile: as a youngster he had enjoyed untrammeled freedom of the streets of Paris and Berlin, and he showed a curiously developed sympathy for the lives of the poor and unfortunate that had been born of those early experiences. He was a great resource to her, and she enjoyed him as she would have enjoyed a girl comrade. He confessed his admiration for Marian in the frankest fashion. She was adorable; the greatest girl in the world.
"Ah, sometime," he would say, "who knows!"