Part 10

"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 Dürer 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.

"It's enough," said Carey, with the suppressed sigh which usually accompanied any allusion of his to Anthony's environment. "Dens are too stuffy, as a rule. Fellows try to see how much useless lumber they can accumulate in altogether inadequate space."

"But you ought to have a couch," said Judith.

"Oh, yes, I'm going to have a couch," assented Anthony, laughing across her head at Juliet. "A gem of a couch—we're making it ourselves. You're not to see it till it's done. It'll be no brickbat couch, either—it'll be a flowery bed of ease—or, if not flowery, invitingly covered with some stunning stuff Juliet has fished out of a neighbour's attic."

"Now, come and see the nursery," Juliet proposed, and the party crowded through the door into the living-room, around to the one by its side which opened into an attractive room behind the den, all air and sunshine.

"I refuse to suggest," said Cathcart instantly, "the decorations for this place."

"That's good," remarked Anthony cheerfully. "So much verbiage out of the way."

"It'll be pink and white, I suppose," said Judith. "Pink is the colour for boys, I'm told."

Behind all their backs Anthony glanced at his wife, affection and amusement in his face. She read the look and smiled back. It was no part of their plan to let the boy grow up alone. And as a mother she seemed to him far more beautiful than she had ever been.

"We are going to have a little paper with nursery-rhyme pictures all over it," explained Juliet. "There are all sorts of softly harmonising colours in it. And just a matting on the floor with a rug to play on, his white crib, and some gay little curtains at the windows."

"Have you made the partition double-thick, old man?" asked Lockwood. "This den-nursery combination strikes me as a little dubious."

"It's no use explaining to a fiendish old bachelor," said Anthony, leading the way out of the place, "that I'd think I was missing a good deal if I should get so far away that I couldn't hear little Tony laugh—or cry. Julie, where's the boy? May I bring him down?"

He disappeared upstairs, whence sounds of hilarity were at once heard. Presently he reappeared on the stairs, bearing aloft upon his shoulder a rosy cherub of a baby, smiling and waving a chubby fist at the company. The beauty in his face was an exquisite mixture of that belonging to both father and mother. Anthony and his son together made a picture worth seeing.

Once more Wayne Carey smothered a sigh. But Judith hardened her heart. Since Baby Anthony had come Wayne had been difficult to manage.

Lockwood stayed after the others had gone. Sitting smoking before the fire with Anthony after Juliet had left them alone he brought the conversation around to a point which Anthony had expected.

"What do you hear of that man Huntington?" he asked, as indifferently as a man is ever able to ask a question which means much to him.

"Huntington? Why, the last was that he was improving a little, I believe. Arizona is a great place for that sort of thing."

"Good deal of a sacrifice for her people to go with her way out there."

"She couldn't leave them behind. Father half-blind—mother a cripple. I understand that Arizona air is bracing them, too."

"The fellow's own mother was one of the party, wasn't she?"

"I believe so. He's all she has."

"I don't see, with all those people to chaperon her, why she couldn't have gone along with him without marrying him," observed Lockwood in a gruff tone.

Anthony smiled. "That would have been a Tantalus draught indeed," he remarked. "I imagine poor Huntington will need all the concessions he can get if he keeps on breathing even Arizona air."

"Anthony," said Lockwood, after a silence of some minutes, during which he had puffed away with his eyes intent on the fire, "do you fancy Rachel Redding cared enough for that man to immolate herself like that?"

"Looks very much like it."

"I know it looks like it; but if I read that girl right she was the sort to stick to anything she'd said she'd do, if it took the breath out of her body. How long had she known him—any idea?"

"A good while, I believe."

"I thought so. Early engagement, you see—ought never to have stood."

"If you'd been Huntington you'd probably have had the unreasonable notion that it should."

"She's a magnificent girl," said Lockwood, blowing a great volume of smoke into the air with head elevated and half-shut eyes. "She made those two who were here with her last summer seem like thirty cents beside her. Nice girls, too—fine girls—elegant dressers; I don't know what the matter was. Neither did they." He chuckled a little. "They couldn't believe their own eyes when they saw three of us going daft over a girl they wouldn't have staked a copper on in a free-for-all with themselves. They took it gamely, I'll say that for them. Marie won't have me back."

"I don't blame her."

"Neither do I. Haven't got to the want-to-be-taken-back stage—sometimes think I never shall. One experience like that spoils a man for the average girl. The truth is, Tony, the most of them—er—overdo the meet-you-half-way act. I want a girl to keep me guessing till the last minute."

"Tell that to the girl," advised Anthony.

"I wish I could. Yet there were a good many times when I thought if Rachel Redding would just look my way I shouldn't take it ill of her. I wonder if she'd have been like that if she hadn't been engaged to another fellow."

"Probably." Anthony got up and stretched himself. He was growing weary of other men's confidences.

"You're right she would. She's built that way. Yet when you get to fancying what she'd be if she just let herself go and show she cared—"

"Look here, my young friend," said Anthony, "I advise you to go home and go to bed. Sitting here dreaming over Mrs. Alexander Huntington isn't good for you. What you want to be doing is to forget her. Huntington's going to get well, and they're going to live happily ever after, and you fellows out here can look up other girls. Plenty of 'em. Only, for the love of heaven, see if you can avoid all setting your affections on the same girl next time. It's too rough on your friends!"

XXII.—ROGER BARNES PROVES INVALUABLE

Time went swinging on, and by and by it came to be Tony Robeson, Junior's, second Christmas day. He rode down to breakfast on his father's shoulder, crowing loudly on a gorgeous brown and scarlet rooster, which he had found on his Christmas tree the evening before. He had been put to bed immediately thereafter and had gone to sleep with the rooster in his arms. The fowl had a charmingly realistic crow, operated by a pneumatic device upon which the baby had promptly learned to blow. He performed upon it uninterruptedly throughout breakfast.

"See here, my son," said Anthony, hurriedly finishing his coffee, "let's see if you can't appreciate some of your less voiceful toys. Here's a rabbit with fine soft ears for you to pull. There's a train of cars. Let me wind it for you. Your Grandfather Marcy must have expended several good dollars on that—you want to show up an interest in it when he comes out to see you to-day. And here's Auntie Dingley's pickaninny boy-doll—well, I don't blame you for failing to embrace that. Auntie Dingley was born in Massachusetts."

The boy cast an indifferently polite eye on these gifts as their charms were exhibited to him, and clasped the brown and scarlet rooster to his breast. There were moments, half hours even, when he became sufficiently diverted from his fowl to cease from making it crow, but at intervals throughout the day the family were given to understand once for all that it is not the most expensive and ornate toys which can be relied upon to please a twenty-months-old infant. Even the automobile presented by Dr. Roger Barnes, and warranted to go three times around the room without stopping, was a tame affair to the recipient compared with the rooster's shrill salute.

"Remember, Tony," Juliet had said, a month before Christmas, "you are not to give me any expensive personal gift this year. I care for nothing half so much as for making the home complete. If—if—you cared to give me something toward the bathroom fund—"

"All right," said Anthony promptly, for he had learned by this time to know his wife well. The bathroom fund was dear to her heart. The small room at the front of the house upstairs, which had been left unfurnished, had been temporarily fitted up as a bathroom by sundry ingenious devices in the way of a tin bath and a hot and cold water connection, but a full equipment of the best sort was to be put in as soon as practicable, and there was a growing fund therefor.

On Christmas morning, nevertheless, in addition to a generous addition to the fund, Juliet found beside her plate an exceedingly "personal gift" in the shape of a little pearl-and-turquoise brooch of rare design, bearing the stamp of a superior maker.

"Must I scold you?" she asked, smiling up at him as he stood beside her, watching her face flush with pleasure.

"Kiss me, instead," he answered promptly. "And don't expect me to give up making you now and then a real present, even though it has to be a small one. It's too much fun."

Beside his own plate he found her gift, a set of histories he had long wanted. It was a beautiful edition, and he would have looked reproachfully at the giver if she had not forestalled him by running around the table to say softly in his ear, both arms about his neck: "Just at Christmas time, dearest, let me have my way."

The day was a happy one. Mr. Horatio Marcy and Mrs. Dingley arrived on the morning train and stayed until evening. At the Christmas dinner Judith and Wayne Carey and Dr. Roger Barnes were the additional guests, and Mary McKaim was in the kitchen. Dinner over, everybody sat about the fireplace talking, when Juliet came in to carry little Tony off to bed.

"Five minutes more," begged Dr. Barnes, on whose knee the child sat, a willing captive to the arts of his entertainer. His eyes, bright with the excitement of this great day, were fixed upon the doctor's face.

"And so"—Barnes continued the story he had begun—"the rooster climbed right up the man's leg"—the toy obeyed his command and scaled the eminence from the floor where it had been hiding behind a Noah's ark—"and perched on his knee, and cried"—the rooster crowed lustily and little Tony laughed ecstatically. "Then the rooster flew up on the man's shoulder and flapped his wings, and all at once he fell right over backwards and tumbled on his head on the floor.—Got to go to bed, Tony? Shall the rooster go too? All right. May I carry him up for you, Juliet? Anthony's deep in that discussion. Get on my back, old man—that's the way!"

Everybody looked after the two as the doctor mounted the stairs.

"That rooster has captivated the child more than all the mechanical toys he has had to-day," said Mrs. Dingley.

"What a handsome fellow he is," said Carey, his eyes following little Tony till he disappeared. "I never saw a healthier, happier child. How sturdy he is on his legs—have you noticed? He's saying a good many words, too. It was as good as a play to see him imitate that rooster."

Juliet's father and Mrs. Dingley left on an early evening train, and only the three younger guests remained when Juliet came downstairs after putting her boy to bed. She set about gathering up the toys scattered over the floor, and Barnes helped her. In the midst of this labour, during which they all made merry with some of the more elaborate mechanical affairs, Juliet suddenly said "What's that?" and went to the bottom of the stairs.

"Let me go," offered Anthony. "He's probably too excited to get to sleep easily after all this dissipation.—Hullo!—he's crowing with the rooster yet."

But Juliet went up, and he followed her, saying from the landing to his guests, "Excuse me for a little. I'll get the boy quiet, and let his mother come down. I've a fine talent for that sort of thing. That rooster will have to be given some soothing syrup—he's too lively a fowl."

"I never saw a man fonder of his youngster than Tony," Carey observed.

"The child is a particularly fine specimen," the doctor said. "I think I never saw a more ideal development than he shows."

He began to tell an incident in which little Tony had been involved, when he was interrupted.

"Barnes!"—called Anthony's voice from the top of the stairs. "Come up here, please."

There was something in the imperative quality of this summons which made the doctor run up the stairs, two at a time. Judith and Wayne listened. The rooster could still be heard crowing, faintly but distinctly.

"Perhaps he's grown too excited over it," Judith suggested. "They ought to take it away."

Carey went to the bottom of the stairs and listened. There were rapid movements overhead. The doctor's voice could be heard giving directions through which sounded the steady crowing of the toy. "Hold him so—now move him that way as I thump—now the other—"