NOVEL
umv.
CALIF. IJ. LOS
HOME
This, he suddenly perceived, was war
HOME
A NOVEL
ILLUSTRATED BY
REGINALD B. BIRCH
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1914
Copyright, 1914, by
THE CENTUBY Co.
Published, January, 1914
HOMK
2125571
" Seer, in thine eyes is wisdom and in
thy silvered beard. How shall I give
that which hath been given ? "
"My son, I read the riddle: How
shalt thou paint the picture and give
the eyes to see? This is the answer.
Hold thy heart in thy hand and let thy
words keep time to the beat of memory.
Thus shall the written page be pos-
sessed of an enduring spirit and a per-
vading light."
HOME
CHAPTER I
ON" an Indian summer afternoon of not very long
ago Red Hill drowsed through the fleeting hours
as though not only time but mills, machinery and rail-
ways were made for slaves. Hemmed in by the breath-
ing silences of scattered woods, open fields and the far
reaches of misty space, it seemed to forget that the
traveler, studying New England at the opening of the
twentieth century through the windows of a hurrying
train, might sigh for a vanished ideal and concede the
universal triumph of a commercial age.
For such a one Red Hill held locked a message, and
the key to the lock was the message itself : " Turn
your back on the paralleled rivers and railroads and
plunge into the byways that lead into the eternal hills
and you will find the world that was and still is."
Let such a traveler but follow a lane that leads up
through willow and elderberry, sassafras, laurel, wild
cherry and twining clematis ; a lane aligned with slender
wood-maples, hickory and mountain-ash and flanked
where it gains the open with scattered juniper and oak,
and he will come out at last on the scenes of a coun-
try's childhood.
At right angles to the lane, a broad way, cutting the
3
4 HOME
f
length of the hill, and losing itself in a dip at each end
toward the valleys and the new world. The broad way
is shaded by one of two trees the domed maple or the
stately elm. At the summit of its rise stands an old
church whose green shutters blend with the caressing
foliage of primeval trees. Its white walls and tower-
ing steeple dominate the scene. White, too, are the
scattered houses that gleam from behind the verdure
of unbroken lawns and shrubbery, white all but one,
whose time-stained brick glows blood-red against the
black-green of clinging ivy.
Not all these homes are alive. Here a charred beam
tells the story of a fire, there a mound of trailing vines
tenderly hides from view the shame of a ruin, and
there again stands a tribute to the power of the new
age a house whose shutters are closed and barred;
white now only in patches, its scaling walls have taken
on the dull gray of neglected pine.
For generations these houses have sent out men, for
generations they have taken them back. Their cup-
boards guard trophies from the seven seas paid for
with the Yankee nutmeg, swords wrought from plow-
shares and christened with the blood of the oppressor,
a long line of collegiate sheepskins, and last, but by
no means least, recipes whose faded ink and brittle
paper sum the essence of ages of culinary wisdom.
Some of these clustered homes live the year round
at full swing but the life of some is cut down in the
winter to a minimum only to spring up afresh in
summer like the new stalk from a treasured bulb. Of
such was the little kingdom of Eed Hill.
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Ked Hill was very still on this Indian summer after-
noon as though it were in hiding from the railroads,
mills and highways of an age of hurry. Upon its long,
level crest it bore but three centers of life and a sym-
bol: Maple House, The Firs and Elm House, half
hidden from the road by their distinctive trees but as
alive as the warm eyes of a veiled woman; and the
church.
The church was but a symbol a mere shell.
Within, it presented the appearance of a lumber room
in disuse, a playground for rats and a haven for dust.
But without, all was as it had ever been; for the old
church was still beloved. Its fresh white walls and
green shutters and the aspiring steeple, towering into
the blue, denied neglect and robbed abandonment of
its sting.
In the shadow of its walls lay an old graveyard whose
overgrown soil had long been undisturbed. Along the
single road which cut the crest of the Hill from north
to south were ruins of houses that once had sheltered
the scattered congregation. But the ruins were hard
to find for they too were overgrown by juniper,
clematis and a crowding thicket of mountain-ash.
On these evidences of death and encroachment the
old church seemed to turn its back as if by right of
its fresh walls and unbroken steeple it were still linked
to life. Through its small-paned windows it seemed
to gaze contentedly across the road at the three houses,
widely separated, that half faced it in a diminishing
perspective. The three houses looked towards the
sunrise; the church towards its decline.
6 HOME
The supper call had sounded and the children's an-
swering cries had ceased. Along the ribbon of the
single road scurried an overladen donkey. Three
lengths of legs bobbed at varying angles from her fat
sides. Behind her hurried a nurse, aghast for the
hundredth time at the donkey's agility, never demon-
strated except at the evening hour.
Halfway between Maple House and The Firs stood
two bare-legged boys working their toes into the im-
palpable dust of the roadway and rubbing the grit into
their ankles in a final orgy of dirt before the evening
wash. They called derisively to the donkey load of
children, bound to bed with the setting sun.
On the veranda of Elm House an old man in shirt
sleeves sat whittling on to a mat, especially laid at his
feet. Beside the fluted pillars of the high portico he
looked very small. The big, still house and the tall
elms that crowded the lawn seemed to brood over him
as though they knew that he was not only small but
young merely one of the many generations of Eltons
they had mothered and sheltered through the long
years that make light of a single life.
From the barn behind the house came the slam of the
oat-bin and a sudden chorus of eager whinnies. The
whinnies were answered from the roadway. The old
man looked up. A wagonette appeared over the brow
of Eed Hill. It was drawn by two lean, well-con-
ditioned bays whose long, quick stride reached out for
stables and oats. The wagonette was crowded. The
old man answered cries and waving hands and his eyes
followed the bays down the road and twinkled as they
HOME 7
saw the wagonette swerve and plow through the grass,
surrendering the right of way to the fat donkey.
At The Firs, home of the Lansings even before the
Eltons had come to Elm House, the veranda was
vacant; but a big chair was still slowly rocking. Be-
side it lay a pile of snowy sewing, hastily dropped.
An overturned work-basket disgorged a tangled med-
ley of skeins, needles, pins and scraps. A fugitive
thimble described a wide circle and brought up against
one of the veranda posts. From the distant kitchen
came the smell of something burning.
At Elm House and The Firs there was life and
peace but down the road at Maple House, home of the
Waynes, life reigned alone on this autumn evening.
With the arrival of the wagonette and its load, all was
commotion. A stable-hand ran out to take charge of
the bays. Excited children left their supper and in-
sisted on being kissed all around by the newcomers.
Youth called to age and age laughed back. A hostess
with quiet eyes dispensed welcome, playfully affection-
ate to returning members of the family, seriously cordial
to the stranger within the gates. Then she slipped
away to speak a word to the kitchen and to glance over
the great table in the dining-room, for to-night Eltons,
Lansings and Waynes were to dine at a single board.
They gathered twenty strong, a sturdy lot. From
old Captain Wayne to little Clematis McAlpin, pro-
moted for a night from the children's table, they bore
the stamp of fighters, veterans and veterans to be.
Life had marked the faces of the men and time had
mellowed the faces of the women. In the cheeks of
8 HOME
the young color glowed and in their eyes a fire burned.
Life challenged them. Their spirits were eager to
take up the gage.
On Red Hill the mountain-ash thicket that gave the
place its name, was in its full glory. Its carmine
flame called defiance at the disappearing sun. The old
white church caught the fiery light of the sun in the
small panes of its windows and sent back a message
too, across the valleys and over the hills, but there was
no defiance in it only a cry to the world that the
old church still stood.
Night fell on the Hill. The stars came out and
with them a glow of light and warmth lit up the win-
dows of Maple House, Elm House and The Firs. A
smell of hot biscuit lingered in the still air. The soft
voices of women hushing children to sleep came like
the breath of life from the quiet houses.
Here a song, sifting softly through the rustle of
many trees, there the crying, quickly hushed, of a
frightened, wakened baby, and far up the road, the
trailing whistle of a boy signaling good-night, passed
into the silence. Lastly the moon burst over the ridge
of East Mountain and in the path of its soft light the
old church stole back into the picture.
CHAPTER II
AJTUMN" passed and winter, then on a day in
early spring Alan Wayne was summoned to
Red Hill. Snow still hung in the crevices of East
Mountain. On the Hill the ashes, after the total
eclipse of winter, were meekly donning pale green.
The elms of Elm House too were but faintly outlined
in verdure and stood like empty sherry glasses wait-
ing for warm wine. Further down the road the
maples stretched out bare, black limbs whose budding
tufts of leaves served only to emphasize the nakedness
of the trees. Only the firs, in a phalanx, scoffed at
the general spring cleaning and looked old and sullen
in consequence.
The colts, driven by Alan Wayne, flashed over the
brim of Red Hill on to the level top. Coachman Joe's
jaw was hanging in awe and so had hung since Mr.
Alan had taken the reins. For the first time in their
five years of equal life the colts had felt the cut of a
whip, not in anger but as a reproof for breaking.
Coachman Joe had braced himself for the bolt, his
hands itching to snatch the reins. But there had been
no bolting, only a sudden settling down to business.
For the first time in their lives the colts were being
pushed, steadily, evenly, almost but never quite
to the breaking point. Twice in the long drive Joe
9
10 HOME
gathered up his jaw and turned his head, preparing
spoken tribute to a master hand. But there was no
speaking to Mr. Alan's face. At that moment Joe was
a part of the seat to Mr. Alan and, being a coachman
of long standing in the family, he knew it.
" Could n't of got here quicker if he 'd let 'em bolt,"
said he, in subsequent description to the stable-hand
and the cook. He snatched up a pail of water and
poured it steadily on the ground. " Jest like that.
He knew what was in the colts the minute he laid hands
on 'em and when he pulls 'em up at the barn door there
was n't a drop left in their buckets, was there, Ar-
thur?"
" Nary a drop," said Arthur, stable-hand.
" And his face," continued the coachman. " Most
times Mr. Alan has no eyes to speak of, but to-day and
that time Miss Nance stuck him with the hatpin
'member, cook? his eyes spread like a fire and eat
up his face. This is a black day for the Hill. Some-
thin 's going to happen. You mark me."
In truth Mr. Alan Wayne had been summoned in
no equivocal terms and, for all his haste, it was with
nervous step he approached the house.
There was no den, no sanctuary beyond a bedroom,
for any one at Maple House. No one brought work
to Red Hill save such work as fitted into swinging
hammocks and leafy bowers. Library opened into
living-room and hall, hall into drawing-room and
drawing-room into the cool shadows and high lights
of half -hidden mahogany and china closets. And here
and there and everywhere doors opened out on to the
HOME 11
Hill. A place where summer breezes entered freely
and played, sure of a way out. Hence it was that
Maple House as a whole became a tomb on that mem-
orable spring morning when the colts first felt a mas-
ter hand a tomb where Wayne history was to be
made and buried as it had been before.
Maple House sheltered a mixed brood. J. Y.
Wayne, seconded by Mrs. J. Y., was the head of the
family. Their daughter, Nance Sterling, and her
babies represented the direct line, but the orphans, Alan
Wayne and Clematis McAlpin, were on an equal foot-
ing as children of the house. Alan was the only child
of J. Y. 's dead brother. Clematis was also of Wayne
blood but so intricately removed that her exact rela-
tion to the rest of the tribe was never figured out twice
to the same conclusion. Old Captain Wayne, retired
from the regular army, was an uncle in a different de-
gree to every generation of Waynes. He was the only
man on Red Hill who dared call for a whisky and
soda when he wanted it.
When Alan reached the house Mrs. J. Y. was in her
garden across the road, surveying winter's ruin, and
Nance with her children had borne the Captain off to
the farm to see that oft-repeated wonder and always
welcome forerunner of plenty, the quite new calf.
Clematis McAlpin, shy and long-limbed, just at the
awkward age when woman misses being either boy or
girl, had disappeared. Where, nobody knew. She
might be bird's-nesting in the swamp or crying over
the " Idylls of the King " in the barn loft. Certainly
she was not in the house. J. Y. Wayne had seen to
12 HOME
that. Stern and rugged of face he sat in the library
alone and waited for Alan. He heard a distant screen-
door open and slam. Steps echoed through the lonely
house. Alan came and stood before him.
Alan was a man. Without being tall, he looked
tall. His shoulders were not broad till you noticed
the slimness of his hips. His neck looked too thin till
you saw the strong set of his small head. In a word
he had the perfect proportion that looks frail and is
strong. As he stood before his uncle, his eyes grew
dull. They were slightly blood-shot in the corners
and with their dullness the clear-cut lines of his face
seemed to take on a perceptible blur.
J. Y. began to speak. He spoke for a long quarter
of an hour and then summed up all he had said in a
few words. " I 've been no uncle to you, Alan, I 've
been a father. I 've tried to win you but you were not
to be won. I 've tried to hold you but it takes more
than a Wayne to hold a Wayne. You have taken the
bit with a vengeance. You have left such a wreckage
behind you that we can trace your life back to the
cradle by your failures, all the greater for your many
successes. You 're the first Wayne that ever missed
his college degree. I never asked what they expelled
you for and I don't want to know. It must have been
bad, bad, for the old school is lenient, and proud of
men that stand as high as you stood in your classes
and on the field. Money I won't talk of money,
for you thought it was your own."
For the first time Alan spoke. "What do you
mean, sir?" With the words his slight form
HOME 13
straightened, his eyes blazed, there was a slight quiver-
ing of the thin nostrils and his features came out clear
and strong.
J. Y. dropped his eyes. " I may have been wrong,
Alan," he said slowly, " but I 've been your banker
without telling you. Your father didn't leave much.
It saw you through Junior year."
Alan placed his hands on the desk between them and
leaned forward. " How much have I spent since then
in the last three years ? "
J. Y. kept his eyes down. " You know, more or
less, Alan. We won't talk about that. I was try-
ing to hold you. But to-day I give it up. I 've got one
more thing to tell you, though, and there are mighty
few people that know it. The Hill's battles have never
entered the field of gossip. Seven years before you were
born, my father your grandfather turned me
out. It was from this room. He said I had started
the name of Wayne on the road to shame and that I
could go with it. He gave me five hundred dollars.
I took it and went. I sank low with the name but in
the end I brought it back and to-day it stands high
on both sides of the water. I 'm not a happy man,
as you know, for all that. You see, though I brought
the name back in the end, I never saw your grand-
father again and he never knew.
" Here are five hundred dollars. It 's the last
money you '11 ever have from me but whatever you do,
whatever happens, remember this: Red Hill does not
belong to a Lansing nor to a Wayne nor to an Elton.
It is the eternal mother of us all. Broken or mended,.
14 HOME
Lansings and Waynes have come back to the Hill
through generations. City of refuge or harbor of
peace, it 's all one to the Hill. Remember that."
He laid the crisp notes on the desk. Alan half
turned toward the door but stepped back again. His
eyes and face were dull once more. He picked up
the bills and slowly counted them. " I shall return
the money, sir," he said and walked out.
He went to the stables and ordered the pony and
cart for the afternoon train. As he came out he saw
Nance, the children and the Captain coming slowly
up Long Lane from the farm. He dodged back into
the barn through the orchard and across the lawn.
Mrs. J. Y. stood in the garden directing the relaying
of flower-beds. Alan made a circuit. As he stepped
into the road, swift steps came towards him. He
wheeled and faced Clem coming at full run. He
turned his back on her and started away. The swift
steps stopped so suddenly that he looked around.
Clem was standing stock-still, one awkward lanky leg
half crooked as though it were still running. Her
skirts were absurdly short. Her little fists, brown and
scratched, pressed her sides. Her dark hair hung in
a tangled mat over a thin, pointed face. Her eyes
were large and shadowy. Two tears had started from
them and were crawling down soiled cheeks. She was
quivering all over like a woman struck.
Alan swung around and strode up to her. He put
one arm about her thin form and drew her to him.
"Don't cry, Clem," he said, "don't cry. I didn't
mean to hurt you."
HOME 15
For one moment she clung to him and buried her
face against his coat. Then she looked up and smiled
through wet eyes. " Alan, I 'm so glad you 've come ! "
Alan caught her hand and together they walked
down the road to the old church. The great door was
locked. Alan loosened the fastening of a shutter,
sprang in through the window and drew Clem after
him. They climbed to the belfry. From the belfry
one saw the whole world with Red Hill as its center.
Alan was disappointed. The Hill was still half naked
almost bleak. Maple House and Elm House shone
brazenly white through budding trees. They looked as
if they had crawled closer to the road during the win-
ter. The Firs, with its black border of last year's
foliage, looked funereal. Alan turned from the scene
but Clem's little hand drew him, back.
Clematis McAlpin had happened between genera-
tions. Alan, Nance, Gerry Lansing and their friends
had been too old for her and Nance's children were
too young. There were Elton children of about her
age but for years they had been abroad. Consequently
Clem had grown to fifteen in a sort of loneliness not
uncommon with single children who can just remember
the good times the half-generation; before them used
to have by reason of their numbers. This loneliness
had given her in certain ways a precocious develop-
ment while it left her subdued and shy even when
among her familiars. But she was shy without fear
and her shyness itself had a flower-like sweetness that
made a bold appeal.
" Is n't it wonderful, Alan ? " she said. " Tester-
16 HOME
day it was cold and it rained and the Hill was black,
black, like The Firs. To-day all the trees ar-3 fuzzy
with green and it's warm. Yesterday was so lonely
and to-day you are here."
Alan looked down at the child with glowing eyes.
" And do you know, this summer Gerry Lansing
and Mrs. Gerry are coming. I've never seen her since
that day they were married. Do you think it 's all
right for me to call her Mrs. Gerry like everybody
does?"
Alan considered the point gravely. 'Yes, I think
that 's the best thing you could call her."
" Perhaps when I 'm really grown up I can call her
Alix. I think Alix is such a pretty name, don't you \ "
Clem flashed a look at Alan and he nodded; then,
with an impulsive movement she drew close to him in
the half-wheedling way of woman about to ask a favor.
" Alan, they let me ride old Dubbs when he is n't plow-
ing. The old donkey she 's so fat now she can
hardly carry the babies. Some day when you 're not
in a great hurry will you let me ride with you ? "
Alan turned away briskly and started down the
ladder. " Some day, perhaps, Clem," he muttered.
" Not this summer. Come on." When they had left
the church he drew out his watch and started. " Run
along and play, Clem." He left her and hurried to
the barn.
Joe was waiting. " Have we time for the long road,
Joe ? " asked Alan, as he climbed into the cart.
" Oh, yes, sir, especially if you drive, Mr. Alan."
" I don't want to drive. Let him go and jump in."
HOME 17
The coachman gave the pony his head, climbed in
and took the reins. The cart swung out and down the
lane.
"Alan! Alan!"
Alan recognized Clem's voice and turned. She was
racing across a corner of the pasture. Her short
skirts flounced madly above her ungainly legs. She
tried to take the low stone wall in her stride. Her
foot caught in a vine and she pitched headlong into
the weeds and grass at the roadside.
Alan leaped from the cart and picked her up,
quivering, sobbing and breathless. "Alan," she
gasped, " you 're not going away ? "
Alan half shook her as he drew her thin body close
to him. " Clem," he said, " you must n't. Do you
hear? You mustn't. Do you think I want to go
away ? "
Clem stifled her sobs and looked up at him with a
sudden gravity in her elfish face. She threw her bare
arms around his neck. " Good-by, Alan."
He stooped and kissed her.
CHAPTER III
IF Alix Deering had not barked her pretty shins
against the centerboard in Gerry Lansing's sailing
boat on West Lake it is possible that she would in the
end have married Alan Wayne instead of Gerry Lan-
sing.
When two years before Alan's dismissal Nance had
brought Alix, an old school friend, to Eed Hill for a
fortnight, everybody had thought what a splendid match
Alix and Alan would make. But it happened that
Alan was very much taken up at the time with memory
and anticipation of a certain soubrette and before he
awoke to Alix's wealth of charms the incident of the
shins robbed him of opportunity.
Gerry, dressed only in a bathing suit, his boat run-
ning free before a brisk breeze, had swerved to graze
The Point, where half of Eed Hill was encamped,
when he caught sight of a figure lying prone on the
outermost flat rock. He took it to be Nance.
" Jump ! " he yelled as the boat neared the rock.
The figure started, scrambled to its feet and sprang.
It was Alix, still half asleep, that landed on the slightly
canted floor of the boat. Her shins brought up with a
thwack against the centerboard and she fell in a heap
at Gerry's feet. Her face went white and strained,
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HOME 19
for a second she bit her lip and then, " I must cry,"
she gasped, and cried.
Gerry was big, strong and placid. Action came
slowly to him but when it came it was sure. He threw
one knee over the tiller and gathered Alix into his arms.
She lay like a hurt child, sobbing against his shoulder.
" Poor little girl," he said, " I know how it hurts. Cry
now because in a minute it will all be over. It will,
dear. Shins are like that." And then, before she
could master her sobs and take in the unconscious humor
of his comfort, the boat struck with a crash on Hidden
Kock.
The nearest Gerry had ever come to drowning was
when he had fallen asleep lying on his back in the
middle of West Lake. Even with a frightened girl
clinging to him it gave him no shock to find himself
in the water a quarter of a mile from shore. But with
Alix it was different. She gasped and in consequence
gulped down a large mouthful of the Lake. Then she
broke into hysterical laughter and swallowed some more.
Gerry held her up and deliberately slapped her across
the mouth. In a flash anger sobered her. Her eyes
blazed. " You coward," she whispered.
Gerry's face was white and stern. " Put one hand
on my shoulder and kick with your feet," he said.
" I '11 tow you to shore."
" Put me on Hidden Rock," said Alix; " I prefer to
wait for a boat."
" It will take an hour for a boat to get here," an-
swered Gerry. " I 'm going to tow you in. If you say
another word I shall slap you again."
20 HOME
In a dead silence they plowed slowly to shore and
when Gerry found bottom he stood up, took Alix into
his arms and strode well up the bank before he set
her down.
During the long swim she had had time to think but
not to forgive. She stamped her sodden feet, shook out
her skirts and then looked Gerry up and down. Gerry
with his crisp light hair; blue eyes, wide apart and
well open; and six feet of well-proportioned bulk, was
good to look at but Alix's angry eyes did not admit it.
They measured him scornfully but it was not the look
that hurt him so much as the way she turned from him
with a little shrug of dismissal and started along the
shore for camp.
Gerry reached out and caught hold of her arm. She
swung around, her face quite white. " I see," she said
in a low voice. " You want it now."
Gerry held her with his eyes. " Yes," he answered,
" I want it now."
" Why did you yell at me to jump into your horrible
boat ? "
" I took you for Nance."
" You took me for Nance," repeated Alix with a
mimicry and in a tone that left no doubt as to the
fact that she was in a nasty temper.
" And why" she went on, her eyes blazing and her
slight figure trembling, " did you strike me slap me
across the face ? "
" Because I love you," replied Gerry steadily.
" Oh ! " gasped Alix. Her gray-slate eyes went wide
open in unfeigned amazement and suddenly the "tense-
HOME 21
ness that is the essence of attack went out of her body.
Instead of a self-possessed and very angry young woman
she became her natural self a girl fluttering before
her first really thrilling situation.
There was something so childlike in her sudden tran-
sition that Gerry was moved out of himself. For once
he was not slow. He caught hold of her and drew
her towards him.
But Alix was not to be plucked like a ripe plum.
She freed herself gently but firmly and stood facing
him. Then she smiled and with the smile she gained
the upper hand. Gerry suddenly became awkward and
painfully conscious of his bare arms and legs. He felt
exceptionally naked.
" When did it begin ? " murmured Alix.
" What ? " said Gerry.
" It," said Alix. " When how long have you
loved me ? "
Gerry's face turned a deep red but he raised his eyes
steadily to hers. " It began," he said simply, " when
I took you in my arms and you laid your face against
my shoulder and cried like like a little kid."
" Oh ! " said Alix again and blushed in her turn.
She had lost the upper hand and knew it. Gerry's
arms went around her and this time she raised her face
and let him kiss her.
" Now," she said as they started for the camp, " I
suppose I must call you Gerry."
" Yes/' said Gerry solemnly. " And I shall call you
Little Miss Oh ! "
So casual an engagement might easily have come to
22 HOME
a casual end but Gerry Lansing was quietly tenacious.
Once moved he stayed moved. No woman had ever
stirred him before; he did not imagine that any other
woman would ever stir him again.
To Alix, once the shock of finding herself engaged
was passed, came full realization and a certain amount
of level-headed calculation. She knew herself to be
high-strung, nervous and impulsive, a combination that
led people to consider her flighty. On the day of the
wreck Gerry had shown himself to be a man full grown.
He had mastered her; she thought he could hold her.
Then came calculation. Alix was out of the West.
All that money could do for her in the way of education
and culture had been done but no one knew better than
she that her culture was a mere veneer in comparison
with the ingrained flower of the Lansings' family oak.
Here was a man she could love and with him he brought
her the old homestead on Red Hill and an older brown
stone front in New York whose position was as awkward
as it was socially unassailable. Alix reflected that if
there was a fool to the bargain it was not she.
All Red Hill and a few Deerings gathered for the
wedding and many were the remarks passed on Gerry's
handsome bulk and Alix's scintillating beauty but the
only saying that went down in history came from Alan
Wayne when Nance, just a little troubled over the
combination of Gerry and Alix, asked him what he
thought of it.
Alan's eyes narrowed and his thin lips curved into
a smile as he gave his verdict : " Andromeda, consenting,
chained to the rock."
CHAPTER IV
TO the surprise of his friends Alan Wayne gave up
debauch and found himself employment by the
time the spring that saw his dismissal from Maple House
had ripened into summer. He was full of preparation
for his departure for Africa when a summons from old
Captain Wayne reached him.
With equal horror of putting up at hotels or relatives*
houses, the Captain upon his arrival in town had gone
straight to his club and forthwith become the sensation
of the club's windows. Old members felt young when
they caught sight of him as though they had come
suddenly on a vanished landmark restored. Passing
gamins gazed on his short-cropped gray hair, staring
eyes, flaring collar, black string tie and flowing broad-
cloth and remarked, " Gee, look at de old spoit in de
winder ! "
Alan heard the remark as he entered the club and
smiled.
" How do you do, sir ? "
"Huh!" grunted the Captain. "Sit down." He
ordered a drink for his guest and another for himself.
He glared at the waiter. He glared at a callow youth
who had come up and was looking with speculative eye
at a neighboring chair. The waiter retired almost pre-
cipitously. The youth followed.
23
24 HOME
" In my time," remarked the Captain, " a club was
for privacy. Now it's a haven for bell-boys and a
playground for whippersiiappers."
" They Ve made me a member, sir."
" Have, eh ! " growled the Captain and glared at his
nephew. Alan took inspection coolly, a faint smile on
his thin face. The Captain turned away his bulging
eyes, crossed and uncrossed his legs and finally spoke.
" I was just going to say when you interrupted," he be-
gan, " that engineering is a dirty job. ~Not, however,"
he continued, after a pause, " dirtier than most. It 's
a profession but not a career."
" Oh, I don't know," said Alan. " They 've got a
few in the Army and they seem to be doing pretty
well."
" Huh, the Army ! " said the Captain. He sub-
sided, and made a new start. " What 's your appoint-
ment ? "
" It does n't amount to an appointment. Just a job
as assistant to Walton, the engineer the contractors are
sending ou.t. We 're going to put up a bridge some-
where in Africa."
" That 's it. I knew it," said the Captain. " Going
away. Want any money ? "
The question came like solid shot out of a four-
pounder. Alan started, colored and smiled, all at the
same time.
" No thanks, sir," he replied, " I Ve got all I need."
The Captain hitched his chair forward, placed his
hands on his knees, leaned forward and glared out on
the Avenue. " The Lansings," he began, like a boy
HOME 25
reciting a piece, " are devils for drink, the Waynes for
women. Don't you ever let 'em worry you about drink.
Nowadays the doctors call us non-alcoholic. In my
time it was just plain strong heads for wine. I say,
don't worry about drink. There 's a safety valve in
every Wayne's gullet.
" But women, Alan ! " The Captain slued around
his bulging eyes. " You look out for them. As your
greatgrandfather used to say, ' To women, only perish-
able goods sweets, flowers and kisses.' And you take
it from me, kisses aren't always the cheapest. They
say God made everything down to little apples and
Jersey lightning. But when he made women the devil
helped." The Captain's nervousness dropped from
him as he deliberately drew out his watch and fob.
" Good thing he did too," he added, as a pleasing after-
thought. He leaned back in his chair. A complacent
look came over his face.
Alan got up to say good-by. The Captain rose too
and clasped the hand Alan held out. " One more
thing," he said. " Don't forget there 's always a
Wayne to back a Wayne for good or bad." There was
a suspicion of moisture in his eye as he hurried his
guest off.
Back in his rooms Alan found letters awaiting him.
He read them and tore them up all but one. It was
from Clem. " Dear Alan," she wrote, " Nance says
you are going very far away. I am sorry. It has been
raining here very much. In the hollows all the bridges
are under water. I have invented a new game. It is
called ' steamboat.' I play it on old Dubbs. We go
26 HOME
down into the valley and I make him go through the
water around the bridges. He puffs just like a steam-
boat and when he gets out he smokes all over. He is
too fat. I hope you will come back very soon.
Clem."
That evening Clem was thrown into a transport by
receiving her first telegram. It read, " You must not
play steamboat again, it is dangerous. Alan." She
tucked it in her bosom and rushed over to The Firs to
show it to Gerry.
Gerry and Alix were spending the summer at The
Firs where Mrs. Lansing, Gerry's widowed mother,
was still nominally the hostess. They had been married
two years but people still spoke of Alix as Gerry's bride
and in so doing stamped her with her own seal. To
strangers they carried the air of a couple about to be
married at the rational close of a long engagement.
No children or thought of children had come to turn the
channel of life for Alix. On Gerry, marriage sat as
an added habit. It was beginning to look as though he
and Alix drifted together not because they were carried
by the same currents but because they were tied.
Where duller minds would have dubbed Gerry the
Ox, Alan had named him the Rock, and Alan was right.
Gerry had a dignity beyond mere bulk. He had all
the powers of resistance, none of articulation. Where
a pin-prick would start an ox it took an upheaval to
move Gerry. An upheaval was on the way but Gerry
did not know it. It was yet afar off.
To the Lansings marriage had always been one of the
regular functions of a regulated life part of the gen-
HOME 27
eral scheme of things. Gerry was slowly realizing
that his marriage with Alix was far from a mere func-
tion, had little to do with a regular life and was foreign
to what he had always considered the general scheme
of things. Alix had developed, quite naturally, into a
social butterfly. Gerry did not picture her as chain
lightning playing on a rock as Alan would have done,
but he did, in a vague way, feel that bits of his impas-
sive self were being chipped away.
Red Hill bored Alix and she showed it. The first
summer after the marriage they had spent abroad.
Now Alix's thoughts and talk turned constantly toward
Europe. She even suggested a flying trip for the fall
but Gerry refused to be dragged so far from golf and
his club. He stuck doggedly to Red Hill till the leaves
began to turn and then consented to move back to town.
On their last night at The Firs Mrs. Lansing, who
was complimentary Aunt Jane to Waynes and Eltons,
entertained Red Hill as a whole to dinner. With the
arrival of dessert to Alix's surprise Nance said, " Port
all around, please, Aunt Jane."
Lansings, Waynes and Eltons were heavy drinkers in
town but it was a tradition, as Alix knew, that on Red
Hill they dropped it all but the old Captain. It was
as though, amid the scenes of their childhood, they be-
came children and just as a Frenchman of the old school
will not light a cigarette in the presence of his father
so they would not take a drink for drink's sake on Red
Hill.
So Alix looked on interestedly as the old butler set
glasses and started the port. When it had gone the
28 HOME
round Nance stood up and with her hands on the table's
edge, leaned towards them all. For a Wayne, she was
very fair. As they looked at her the color swept up
over her bare neck. Its wave reached her temples and
seemed to stir the clustering tendrils of her hair. Her
eyes were grave and bright with moisture. Her lips
were tremulous. " We drink to Alan," she said, " to-
day is Alan's birthday."
She sat down. They all raised their glasses. Little
Clem had no wina She put a thin hand on Gerry's
arm.
" Please, Gerry, please ! "
Gerry held down his glass. Clematis dipped in the
tip of her little finger and as they all drank, gravely
carried the drop of wine to her lips.
CHAPTER V
AS Judge Healey, gray-haired but erect, walked up
the Avenue his keen glance fell on Gerry Lan-
sing standing across the street before an art dealer's
window. Gerry's eyes were fastened on a picture that
he had long had in mind for a certain nook in the
library of the town house.
It was the second anniversary of his wedding and
though it was already late in the afternoon Gerry had
not yet chosen his gift for Alix. He turned from the
picture with a last long look and a shrug and passed
on to a palatial jeweler's further up the street.
For many years Judge Healey had been foster-
father to Red Hill in general and to Gerry in particular.
With almost womanly intuition he read what was in
Gerry's mind before the picture and acting on impulse
the Judge crossed the street and bought it.
While the Judge was still in the picture shop Gerry
came out of the jeweler's and started briskly for home.
He had purchased a pendant of brilliants, extravagant
for his purse but yet saved to good taste by a simple
originality in design.
He waited until the dinner hour and then slipped his
gift into Alix's hand as they walked down the stairs to-
gether. She stopped beneath the hall light. " I can't
wait dear, I simply can't." She snapped open the case.
29
30 HOME
" Oh ! " she gasped. " How dear ! How perfectly
dear ! You old sweetheart ! " She threw her arms
around his neck and kissed him twice. Then she flew
away to the drawing-room in search of Mrs. Lansing
and the Judge, the sole guests to the little anniversary
dinner. Gerry straightened his tie and followed.
Alix's tongue was rippling her whole hody was rip-
pling with excitement and pleasure. She dangled
her treasure before their eyes. She laid it against her
warm neck nd ran to a mirror. The light in her eyes
matched the light in the stones. The Judge took the
jewel and laid it in the palm of his strong hand. It
looked in danger of being crushed. " A beautiful
thing, Gerry," he said, " and well chosen. Some poet
jeweler dreamed that twining design and set the stones
while the dew was still on the grass."
After dinner the four gathered in the library but they
were hardly seated when Alix sprang up. Her glance
had followed Gerry's startled gaze. He was staring at
the coveted picture he had been looking at in the gallery
that afternoon. It hung in the niche in which his
thoughts had placed it. Alix took her stand before it.
She glanced inquiringly at the others. Mrs. Lansing
nodded at the Judge. Alix turned back to the picture
and gravity stole into her face. Then she faced the
Judge with a smile.
" We live," she said, " in a Philistine age, don't we ?
But I 've never let my Philistinism drive pictures from
their right place in the heart. Pictures in art galleries
" she shrugged her pretty shoulders "I have not
been trained up to them. To me, they are mounted
HOME 31
butterflies in a museum, cut flowers crowded at the
florist's. But this picture and that nook they have
waited for each other. You see the picture nestling
down for a long rest and it seems a small thing and
then it catches your eye and holds it and you see that
it is a little door that opens on a wide world. It has
slipped into the room and become a part of life."
A strange stillness followed on Alix's words. To the
Judge and to Gerry it was as though the picture had
opened a window to her mind. Then she closed the
window. " Come, Gerry," she said, turning. " Make
your bow to the Judge and bark."
Gerry was excited though he did not show it. " You
have dressed my thoughts in words I can't equal," he
said and strolled out on to the little veranda at the back
of the house. He wanted to be alone for a moment and
think over this flash of light that had followed a dark
day. For the first time in a long while Alix had
revealed herself. He did not begrudge the Judge his
triumph. He knew instinctively that coming from him
instead of from the Judge the picture would not have
struck that intimate spark.
The next day Gerry gave his consent to Alix's plan
for a flying trip abroad but with a reservation. The
reservation was that she should join some party and
leave him behind.
Judge Healey heard of this arrangement only when it
was on the point of being put into effect. In fact
he was only just in time at the steamer to wave good-
by to Alix. Leaning over the rail, with her high color,
moist red lips and big excited eyes making play under
32 HOME
a golden crown of hair and over a huge armful of roses,
Alix presented a picture not easily forgotten.
The Judge turned to Gerry. " She ought not to be
going without you, my boy."
" Oh, it 's all right," said Gerry lightly. " She 's
well chaperoned. It 's a big party, you know."
But during the weeks that followed the Judge saw
it was not all right. Gerry had less and less time for
golf and more and more for whiskys and sodas. The
Judge was troubled and felt a sort of relief when from
far away Alan Wayne cropped into his affairs and gave
him something else to think about.
When Angus McDale of McDale & McDale called
without appointment the Judge knew at once that he
was going to hear something about Alan.
" Lucky to find you in," puffed McDale. " It is n't
business exactly or I 'd have 'phoned. I was just pass-
ing by."
" Well, what is it ? " asked the Judge, offering his
visitor a fresh cigar.
" It 's this. That boy, Alan Wayne sort of pro-
tege of yours, is n't he ? "
" Yes in a way yes," said the Judge slowly,
frowning. " What has Alan done now ? "
" It 's like this," said McDale. " Six months ago we
sent Mr. Wayne out on contract as assistant to Walton.
Walton no sooner got on the ground than he fell sick.
He put Wayne in charge and then he died. Now this
is the point. Mr. Wayne seems to have promoted him-
self to Walton's pay. He had the cheek to draw his
own as well. He won't be here for weeks but his ac-
HOME 33
counts came in to-day. I want to know if you see any
reason why we should n't have that money back, to say
the least."
The Judge's face cleared. " Did n't he tell you why
he drew Walton's pay ? "
" Not a word. Said he 'd explain accounts when
he got here but that sort of thing takes a lot of explain-
ing."
" Well," said the Judge, " I can tell you. Walton's
pay went to his widow through ma I Ve been doing
some puzzling on this case already. !N"ow will you tell
me how Alan got the money without drawing on you ? "
" Oh, there was plenty of money lying around. The
job cost ten per cent, less than Walton's estimate. If
he 'd come back we 'd have hauled him over the coals
for that blunder. There was the usual reserve for work
in inaccessible regions and then the people we did the
job for paid ten days' bonus for finishing that much
ahead of contract time."
The Judge mused. " Was the job satisfactory to the
people out there ? " he asked.
" Yes, it was-," said McDale bluntly. " Most satis-
factory. But there was a funny thing there too. They
wrote that while they did not approve of Mr. Wayne's
time-saving methods, the finished work had their ab-
solute acceptance."
The Judge was silent for a moment. " You want
my advice ? "
" Yes, not for our own sake but for Wayne's."
" Well," said the Judge, " I 'm going to give it to
you for your sake. When you stumble across a boy
34 HOME
that can cut ten per cent, off the working and time
estimates of an old hand like Walton, you bind him to
you with a long contract at any salary he wants. And
just one thing more: when Alan Wayne steals a cent
from you or fifty thousand dollars you; come to me and
I '11 pay it."
McDale's eyes narrowed and he puffed nervously at
his cigar. He got up to take his leave. " Judge," he
said, " your head is on right and your heart's in the
right place, as well. I begin to see that widow business.
Wayne sized us up for a hard-headed firm when it comes
to paying out what we don't have to and we are. It
was n't law but he was right. Walton's work was done
just as if he 'd been alive. Even a Scotchman can see
that. You need n't worry. A man tliat you '11 back
for fifty thousand is good enough for McDale &
McDale."
CHAPTEE VI
IT was Alix that discovered Alan as the Elenic
steamed slowly down the Solent. He was already
comfortably established in his chair with a small pile
of fiction beside him.
She paused before she approached him. Alan had
always interested her. Perhaps it was because he had
kept himself at a distance but then he had a way of
keeping his distance from almost everybody. Alix had
thought of him heretofore as a modern exquisite subject
to atavic fits that, in times past, had led him into more
than one barbarous escapade. It was the flare of daring
in these shameful outbursts that had saved him from
a suspicion of effeminacy. Now in London she had by
chance heard things of him that forced her to a readjust-
ment of her estimate. In six months Alan had turned
himself into a mystery.
" Well," she said, coming up behind him, " how are
you?"
Alan turned his head slowly and then threw off his
rugs and sprang to his feet.
" The sky is clear," he said, " where did you drop
from ? " His eyes measured her. She was ravishing
in a fur toque and coat which had yet to receive their
baptism of import duty.
" Oh," said Alix, " my presence is humdrum. Just
35
36 HOME
the usual returning from six weeks abroad. But you!
You come from the haunts of wild beasts and from all
accounts you have been one."
" Been one ! From all accounts ! " exclaimed Alan,
a puzzled frown on his face. " Just what do you
mean ? "
They started walking. " I mean that even in Africa
one can't hide from Piccadilly. In Piccadilly you are
already known. Not as Mr. Alan Wayne, a New York
social satellite, but as a whirlwind in shirt sleeves. Ten
Percent Wayne, in short." She looked at him with
teasing archness. She could see that he was worried.
" Satellite is rather rough," remarked Alan. " I
never was that."
" All bachelors are satellites in the nature of things
satellites to other men's wives."
" Have you a vacancy ? " said Alan.
The turn of the talk put Alix in her element. She
had never been an ingenue. She had been born with
an intuitive defense. Finesse was her motto and
artificiality was her foil. It had never been struck from
her hands. On the other hand Alan knew that every
woman who accepts battle can be reached even if not
conquered. It is the approaches to her heart that a
woman must defend. Once those are passed, the citadel
turns traitor.
They both knew they were embarking upon a danger-
ous game, but Alix had played it often. No pretty
woman takes her European degree without ample oc-
casion for practice and Alix had been through the
European mill. 'She threw out her daintily shod feet
HOME 37
as she walked. She was full of life. She felt like
skipping. The light of battle danced merrily in her
eyes. She made no other reply.
" I met lots of people we both know," she said, at
last.
" Which one of them passed on the news that I had
taken to the ways of a wild beast ? "
" Oh, that was the Honorable Percy. I only caught
a few words. He was telling about a man known as
Ten Percent Wayne and the only time he 'd ever seen
the shirt-sleeve policy work with natives. When I
learned it was Africa, I linked up with you at once
and screamed and he turned to me and said, l You
know Mr. Wayne?' And I said I had thought I did
but I found I only knew him tire a quatre epingles and
would n't he draw his picture over again. But just then
Lady Merle signaled the retreat, and when the men came
out somebody else snaffled Collingeford before I got
a chance."
" Oh, Collingeford," said Alan. " I remember."
He frowned and was silent.
" Alan," said Alix after a moment, " let me warn
you. I see a new tendency in you but before it goes any
farther than a tendency let me tell you that a thought-
ful man is a most awful bore. When I caught sight of
you I thought, ' What a delightful little party,' but if
you 're going to be pensive there are others "
Alan glanced at her. " Alix," he said, mimicking
her tone, " I see in you the makings of an altogether
charming woman. I 'm not speaking of the painstak-
ing veneer I suppose you need that in your walk of
38 HOME
life but what 's under it. There may be others, as
you say. Pretty women have taken to wearing men for
bangles. But don't you make a mistake. I 'm not a '
bangle. I 've just come from the unclothed world of
real things. To me a man is just a man and, what 's
more, a woman is just a woman."
" How un-American," said Alix.
" It 's more than that," said Alan, " it 's pre- Ameri-
can."
Alix was thoughtful in her turn. Alan caught her
by the arm and turned her toward the west. A yawl
was just crossing the disk of the disappearing sun.
Alix felt a thrill at his touch. " It 's a sweet little pic-
ture, is n't it ? " she said. " But you must n't touch
me, Alan. It can't be good for us."
" So you feel it too," said Alan, and took his hand
from her arm.
During the voyage they were much together, not in
dark corners but waging their battle in the open two
swimmers that fought each other, forgetting to fight the
tide that was bearing them out to sea. Alan was not
a philanderer to snatch an unrequited kiss. To him a
kiss was the seal on surrender. But to Alix the game
was its own goal. As she had always played it, nobody
had ever really won anything. However, it did not
take her long to appreciate that in Alan she had an
opponent who was constantly getting under her guard
and making her feel things, things that were alarm-
ing in themselves like the jump of one's heart into the
throat or the intoxication that goes with hot, racing
blood.
HOME 39
Alan's power over women was in voice and words.
If he had been hideous it would have been the same.
With his tongue he carried Alix away and gave her
that sense of isolation which lulls a woman into laxity.
One night as they sat side by side, a single great rug
across their knees, Alan laid his hand under cover on
hers. A quiver went through Alix's body. Her closed
hand stirred nervously but she did not really draw it
away. " Alan," she said, " I 've told you not to !
Please don't. It 's common this sort of thing."
Alan tightened his grip. " You say it 's common,"
he said, " because you 've never thought it out. Light-
ning was common till somebody thought it out. I sit
beside you without touching you and we are in two
worlds. I grip your hand like this and the abyss
between us is closed. While I hold you nothing can
come between."
Alix's hand opened and settled into his. Alan went
on. " Words talk to the mind but through my hand my
body talks to yours in a language that was old before
words were born. If I am full of dreams of you and a
desert island, I don't have to tell you about it because
you are with me. The things I want, you want. There
are no other things in life, for while I hold you our
world is one and it is all ours. Nothing else can reach
us."
" For a while they sat silent, then Alix recovered her-
self. " After all," she said, " we 're not on a desert
island but on a ship with eyes in every corner."
Alan leaned toward her. " But if we were, Alix ! If
we were on a desert island you and I "
40 HOME
For a moment Alix looked into his burning eyes. She
felt that there was fire in her own eyes, too, a fire she
could not altogether control. She disengaged herself
and sprang up. Alan rose slowly and stood beside her.
He did not look at her parted lips and hot cheeks;
he had suddenly become languid. " That 's it," he
drawled, " eyes in every corner. I wonder how many
morals would stand without other people's eyes to prop
them up ? "
Alix left him. She felt baffled, as though she had
tried desperately to get a grip on Alan and her hand
had slipped. She felt vaguely that it was essential to
her to get a grip on him. She had never played the loa-
ing side before and she was troubled.
But with the frank light of morning her troubles
melted into nothing and she summoned Alan to her side
whenever the whim came to her. Alix's party looked
on, amused. " It 's all right," said a good-natured
matron, " they 're cousins."
" So he 's a cousin, is he ? " remarked a discarded
bangle, and added cynically, " what a point d'appui ! "
Premonition does not come to a woman without cause.
Towards the end of the voyage Alix faced, wide-eyed,
the revelation that the stakes of the game she and Alan
had played were body and soul. " Alan," she said one
night with drooping head, " I 've had enough. I don't
want to play any more. I want to quit." She lifted
tear-filled eyes to him. The foil of artificiality had been
knocked from her hand. She was all woman and de-
fenseless.
Alan felt a trembling in all his limbs. " I want to
HOME 41
quit, too, Alix," he said in his low vibrating voice, " but
I 'm afraid we can't. You see, I 'm beaten, too. While
I was just in love with your body we were safe enough,
but now I 'm in love with you. It 's the kind of love a
man can pray for in vain. No head in it ; nothing but
heart. Honor and dishonor become mere names.
Nothing matters to me but you."
Tears crawled slowly down Alix's cheeks. She stood
with her elbows on the rail and faced the ocean so no
one might see. Her hands were locked. In her mind
her own thoughts were running. Somehow she could
understand Alan without listening. If only Gerry had
done this thing to her, she was thinking, the pitiless
wracking misery would have been joy at white heat.
She was unmasked at last but Gerry had not un-
masked her. Not once since the day of the wreck and
their engagement had Gerry unmasked himself.
Alan was standing with his side to the rail, his eyes
leaving her face only to keep track of the promenaders
so that no officious friend should take her by surprise.
He went on talking. " Our judgment is calling to us to
quit but it is calling from days ago," he said. " We
would n't listen then and it 's only the echo we hear now.
We can try to quit if you like, but when I am alone I
shall call for you, and when you are alone you will call
for me. We will always be alone except when we are
near each other. We can't break the tension, Alix. It
will break us in the end."
The slow tears were still crawling down Alix's cheeks.
In all her life she had never suffered so before. She
felt that each tear paid the price of all her levity.
42 HOME
" Alan," she said with a quick glance at him, " did
you know when we began that it was going to be like
this?"
" No," he answered. " I have trifled with many
women and I was ready to trifle with you. No one had
ever driven you and I wanted to drive you. I thought
I had divorced passion and love. I thought perhaps
you had too. But love is here. I am not driving you.
We are being driven."
CHAPTEE VII
ALIX and Alan were in the grip of a fever that is
hard to break save through satiety and ruin.
They were still held apart by generations of sound tra-
dition but against this bulwark the full flood of modern
life as they lived it was directed. In Alan there was a
counter-strain, a tradition of passion that predisposed
him to accept the easy tenets of the growing sensual cult.
As he found it more and more difficult to turn hia
thoughts away from Alix, he strove to regain the clear-
headedness that only a year before had held him back
from definite moral surrender.
It was only a year ago that the table talk one night
had turned on what was Society's religion and he had
said, " Society has no religion nowadays ; it has given up
religion for a corrosive philosophy of non-ethics."
He had seen clearly then but not clearly enough to
save himself. He had played with the corrosive philos-
ophy until he had divorced flesh from the soul and now
it was playing with him. He found himself powerless
in the grip of his desire for Alix.
With her, things had not gone so far. From the
security of the untempted she had watched her chosen
world play with fire and only now when temptation
assailed her, did she realize the weakness that lies in
43
44 HOME
every woman once her outposts have fallen and her bare
heart becomes engaged in the battle.
Lovers in possession of each other can hide their hap-
piness from a hurried world but it is hard to dissemble
the longing look and the reckless craving for bodily near-
ness to one's heart's desire when it is yet unattained.
Not many days had passed after their return when
Alan's constant attendance upon Gerry's wife became
the absorbing center of interest to their part of town
life. People said little enough. Their eyes were
too wide open watching the headlong rush towards
catastrophe.
One early morning Nance sent for Alan. He found
her alone. She had been crying. He came to her where
she stood by the fire and she turned and put her arms
around his neck. She tried to smile but her lips
twitched. " Alan," she said, " I want you to go away."
Alan was touched. He caught her wrists and took
her arms from around his neck. " You must n't do that
sort of thing to me, Nance. I 'm not fit for it." He
made her sit down on a great sofa before the fire and sat
down beside her. " You remind me to-day of the most
beautiful thing I ever heard said of you by a spiteful
friend."
"What was it?" said Nance, turning her troubled
eyes to him.
" She said, ' She is only beautiful in her own home.'
I never understood it before. It 's a great thing to be
beautiful in one's own home."
" Oh, Alan," said Nance, catching his hand and hold-
ing it against her breast, " it is a great thing. It 's the
HOME 45
greatest thing in life. That 's why I sent for you
because you are wrecking forever your chance of being
beautiful in your own home. And worse than that, you
are wrecking Alix's chance. Of course you are blind.
Of course you are mad. I understand, Alan, but I
want to hold you close to my heart until you see until
the fever is cooled. You and Alix cannot do this thing.
It is n't as though her people and ours were of the froth
of the nation. You and she started life with nothing
but Puritan to build on. You may have built just play-
houses of sand, but deep down the old rock foundation
must endure. You must take your stand on that."
Her eyes had been fixed in the fire but now she
turned them to his face. Alan sat with head hanging
forward, his gaze and thoughts far beyond the confines
of the room. Then he shook himself and got up to go.
" I wish we could, Nance," he said gravely and then
added half to himself, half to her, " I '11 try."
For some days Alan had been prepared to go away
and take Alix with him, should she consent. Upon his
arrival he had had an interview with McDale & McDale
in the course of which that firm opened its eyes and its
pocket wider than it ever had before.
" You are out for money, Mr. Wayne," had been the
feeble remonstrance of the senior member.
" Just money," replied Alan. " If you owed as
much as I do you would be out for it too. Of course,
you 're not. What do you want ? You Ve got my
guarantee. Ten per cent, under office estimates for
work and time."
When Alan left McDale & McDale's offices he had
46 HOME
contracted more or less on his own terms and McDale,
Junior, said to the Senior. " He 's only twenty-six -
a boy. How did he beat us ? "
" By beating Walton's record first," replied McDale,
Senior, " and how he did that time will show."
As he walked slowly back from Nance's, Alan was
thinking that after all there was no reason why he
should not cut and run no reason except Alix.
He reached his rooms. As he crossed the threshold
a premonition seized him. He felt as if some one were
there. He glanced hurriedly about. The rooms were
still in the disorder in which he had left them and they
were empty. Then he saw that he had stepped on a
note that had been dropped through the letter-slip. He
picked it up. A thrill went through him as he recog-
nized Alix's handwriting. There was no stamp. It
must have been delivered by hand. He tore it open
and read : " You said that a moment's notice was all
you asked. I will take the Montreal Express with you
to-day."
Alan's blood turned to liquid fire. The note conjured
before him a vision of Alix. He crushed it and held it
to his lips and laughed not jeeringly but in pure, un-
controlled excitement.
It was not a coincidence that Gerry had sought out
Alix at the very hour that Nance was summoning Alan.
Gerry and Nance were driven by the same forewarning
of catastrophe. Gerry had felt it first but he had been
slow to believe, slower to act. He had no precedent for
this sort of thing. His whole being was in revolt against
HOME 47
the situation in which he found himself. It was after
a sleepless night a most unheard of thing with him
that he decided he could let things go no longer. He
went to Alix's room, knocked and entered.
Alix was up, though the hour was early for her.
Fresh from her bath she sat in a sheen of blue dressing-
gown before the mirror doing her own hair. Gerry
glanced around him and into the bathroom looking for
the maid.
" Good-morning," said Alix. " She 's not here.
Did you want to see her ? "
Gerry winced at the levity. He wondered how Alix
could play the game she was playing and be gay. Alix
finished doing her hair. " There," she said with a final
pat and turned to face Gerry.
He was standing beside an open window. He could
feel the cold air on his hands. He felt like putting his
head out into it. His head was hot. " Alix," he said
suddenly without looking at her, " I want you to drop
Alan."
"But I don't want to drop Alan," replied Alix
lightly.
Gerry whirled around at her tone. His nostrils were
quivering. To his amazement his hands fairly itched to
clutch her beautiful throat. He could hardly control his
voice. " Stop playing, Alix," he gulped. " There 's
never been a divorcee among the Lansings nor a wife-
beater and one is as near this room as the other right
now."
Gerry regretted the words as soon as he had said them
but Alix was not angry. She looked at him through
narrowed eyes. She speculated on the sensation of be-
ing once again roughly handled by this rock of a man.
Only once before had she seen Gerry angry and the
sight had fascinated her then as it did now. There was
something tremendous and impressive in his anger and
struggle for control. A great torrent held back by a
great strong dam. She almost wished it would break
through. She could almost find it in her to throw her-
self on the flood and let it carry her whither it would.
She said nothing.
Gerry bit his lips and turned from her. " And Alan,
of all men," he went on. At the words the current of
her thoughts was changed. She found herself suddenly
on the defensive. " Do you think you are the first
woman he has played with and betrayed ? " Gerry's
lip was curved to a sneer. " A philanderer. A man
who surrounds himself with tarnished reputations."
A dull glow came into Alix's cheeks. " Philanderers
are of many breeds," she said. " There are those who
have the wit to philander with woman and those who
can only rise to a whisky or a golf club. Whatever else
Alan may be he is not a time-server."
Once aroused Alix had taken up the gauntlet with no
uncertain hand. Her first words carried the war into
the enemy's camp and they were barbed.
" What do you mean ? " said Gerry dully. He had
not anticipated a defense.
" I mean what you might have deduced with an effort.
What are you but a philanderer in little things where
Alan is in great ? What have you ever done to hold me
or any other woman? I respected you once for what
HOME 49
you were going to be. That has died. Did you think
I was going to make you into a man ? "
Gerry stood, breathing hard, a great despondency in
his heart. Alix went on pitilessly. " What have you
become ? A monumental time-server on the world and
you are surprised that a worker reaches the prize that
you can not attain ! e All things come to him who
waits/ That 's a trite saying. But how about this ?
There are lots of things that come to him who only
waits that he could do without. The trouble with you
is that you have built your life altogether on traditions.
It is a tradition that your women are faithful, so you
need not exert yourself to holding yours ! It is a tra-
dition that you can do no wrong, so you need not exert
yourself to doing anything at all ! You are playing
with ghosts, Gerry. Your party was over a generation
ago"
Alix had calmed down. There was still time for
Gerry to choke her to good effect. The hour could yet
be his. But he did not know it. Smarting under the
lash of Alix's tongue he made a final and disastrous
false step.
" You try to humiliate me by placing me back to back
with Alan ? " he said, with his new-born sneer. Alix
appraised it with calm eyes and found it rather attrac-
tive. " Well, let me tell you that Alan is so small a
man that if I dropped out of the world to-day, he 'd sail
for Africa to-morrow and think for the rest of his life
of his escape from you as a close shave."
Alix sprang to her feet. She was trembling. Gerry
felt a throb of exultation. It was his turn to wound.
50 HOME
" What do you mean ? " said Alix very quietly, but
it was the quiet of suppressed passion at white heat.
" I mean that Alan is the kind of man who finds other
men's wives an economy. He would take everything
you have that 's worth taking, but not you."
A.lix's eyes blazed at him from her white face.
" Please go away," she said. He started to speak.
" Please go away," she repeated. Her lips were quiver-
ing and her face twitched in a way that was terrifying
to Gerry. He hurried out repeating to himself over and
over, " You have made Alix cry. You have made Alix
cry."
Alix toyed with the silver on her dressing-table until
he had gone and then she swept across the room to her
little writing-desk and wrote the note that Alan had
found half an hour later in his rooms.
CHAPTER VIII
GERRY stood in the hall outside Alix's room for a
moment hoping to hear a sob, a cry, anything for
an excuse to go back. Instead he heard the scratch of
a pen but he was too troubled to deduce anything from
that. He went slowly down the stairs and out into the
street. The biting winter air braced him. He started
to walk rapidly. At the end of an hour he found him-
self standing on a deserted pier. He took off his hat
and let the wind cool his head. " I have been a brute,"
he said to himself. " I have made a woman cry,
Alix ! " He turned and walked slowly back to the
Avenue and into his club but he still felt uneasy. A
waiter brought a whisky and soda and put it at his
elbow. Gerry turned on him. " Who told you to bring
that ? " Then he felt ashamed of his petulance. " It 's
all right, George," he said, more genially than he had
spoken for many a day, "but I don't want it. Take
it away."
He sat for a long time and at last came to a resolution.
Alix loved roses. He would send her enough to bank
her room and he would follow them home. He went
up the Avenue to his florist's and stood outside trying
to decide whether it should be one mass of blood red or
a color scheme. Suddenly the plate glass caught a re-
flection and threw it in his face. Gerry turned. A
51
52 HOME
four-wheeler was passing. He could not see the occu-
pant but on top was a large, familiar trunk marked with
a yellow girdle. On the trunk was a familiar label.
He stared at it and the label stared back at him and
finally danced before his mazed eyes as the cab dis-
appeared into the traffic.
Gerry stood for a long while, stunned. He saw a
lady bow to him from a carriage and afterwards he
remembered that he had not bowed back. Somebody
ran into him. He looked back at the flowers massed in
the window, remembered that he did not need them now,
and drew slowly away. Two men hailed him from the
other side of the street. Gerry braced himself, nodded
to them and hailed a passing hansom. From the direc-
tion Alix's cab had taken he knew the station she was
bound for. As he arrived on the platform they were
giving the last call for the Montreal Express. He
caught sight of Alix hurrying through the gates and
followed. As she reached the first Pullman, somebody
rapped on the window of the drawing-room. Gerry saw
Alan's face pressed against the pane. He watched Alix
stop, turn and climb the steps of the car and then he
wheeled and hurried from the station.
Where could he go? Not to his club and Alan's.
His face would betray the scandal with which the club
would be buzzing to-morrow. Not to his big comfort-
able house. It would be too gloomy. Even in dis-
accord, Alix had imparted to its somber oak and deep
shadows the glow of buoyant life. When she was there
one felt as though there were flowers in the house.
Gerry was seized with a great desire to hide from his
HOME 53
world, his mother, himself. He pictured the scare-heads
in the papers. That the name of Lansing should be
found in that galley! It was too much. He could
not face it.
He bought a morning paper full of shipping news and,
getting into a taxi, gave the address of his bank. On
the way he studied the sailings' column. He found what
he wanted. The Gunter due to sail that afternoon for
Brazil, Pernambuco the first stop.
At the bank Gerry drew out the balance of his current
account. It amounted to something over two thousand
dollars. He took most of it in Bank of England notes.
Then he started home to pack but before he reached the
house a vision of the servants, flurried after helping
their mistress off, commiserating him to each other,
pitying him to his face perhaps, or in the case of the
old butler, suppressing a great emotion, was too much
for him. He drove instead to a big department store
and in an hour had bought a complete outfit. He
lunched at one of the quiet restaurants that divide down
town from up. The people about him were voluble in
French and Spanish. Already he felt as if his exile
had begun.
The Gunter was to sail at three from Brooklyn.
Gerry crossed by the ferry. He did not get out of his
cab. Over his baggage, piled outside and in, he caught
a glimpse of the suspension bridge. Years and years
ago his father had led him across that bridge when it
was the eighth wonder of the world. Gerry gave a great
sigh at the memory. He had not invaded Brooklyn
since. As the cab threaded the interminable and reek-
54 HOME
ing length of Furman Street he looked out and felt
himself upon an alien shore.
He had avoided buying a ticket. As the Gunier
warped out, the purser came to him. " I understand
you have no ticket."
" 'No," said Gerry, drawing a roll of bills. " How
much is the passage to Pernambuco ? "
The purser fidgeted. " This is irregular, sir."
" Is it ? " said Gerry, indifferently.
" I have no ticket forms," said the purser, weaken-
ing.
" I don't want a ticket," said Gerry. " I want a good
room and three square meals a day."
Long, quiet days on a quiet sea are a master sedative
to a troubled mind. Gerry had a great deal to think
through. He sat by the hour with hands loosely clasped,
his eyes far out on the ocean, tracing the course of his
married life and measuring the grounds for Alix's
arraignment. Gerry was just and generous to others'
faults but not to his own. He had forgotten the sting
of Alix's words and, to his growing amazement, saw in
himself their justification. A time-server he certainly
had been. But he reviewed the lives of many other
men in his own leisurely class and decided that he
was not without company. After all, what was there in
America for such men to do except make more money ?
For the first time he was struck by the narrowness
of American life. There was only one line of effort.
The whole people thronged a single causeway. They
made a provincial demand that all should dress alike,
look alike, think alike. They pressed on in a body to
HOME 55
the single goal of wealth and when they got there they
were lost.
Individualists were rare and unwelcome. Boys
stoned Chinamen because they were different; they
followed a turbaned Asiatic, strayed to an unfriendly
shore, with jeers; an astounded Briton, faultlessly
dressed, found his spats the sensation of a street. Each
of these incidents Gerry had witnessed with amusement
and dismissed without a thought. ISTow they became so
many weather-vanes all pointing the same way. How
was it Alan had summed up the history of America?
" Men, machinery, machines ! "
With the thought of Alan his brow puckered. Here
he felt no impulse to indulgence. Some day he would
meet Alan and when he did he would break him. The
scorn he had expressed to Alix for Alan and Alan's
nature was without understanding but it was genuine.
He knew there were such men and he ascribed all their
acts to a debasement beyond regeneration and none to
temperament. From moral laxity there was no appeal
beyond the sin itself.
The landfall of Pernambuco awoke him from reveries
and introspection. He did not look upon this palm-
strewn coast as a land of new beginnings he sought
merely a Lethean shore.
The ship crawled in from an oily sea to the long strip
of harbor behind the reef. Above, the sun blazed from
a bowl of unbroken blue; on land, the multicolored
houses spread like a rainbow under a dark cloud of
brown-tiled roofs. Giant plane trees cast blots of shade
on the cobbled esplanade of the boat quay. In their
56 HOME
shelter a negress squatted behind her basin of cous-cous
and another before a tray of fried fish. Around them
lounged a ragged crew, boatmen, stevedores and riffraff,
black, brown and white. Beyond the trees was a line
of high stuccoed houses, each painted a different color,
all weather-stained, and some with rusted balconies that
threatened to topple on to the passer-by. One bore the
legend, " Hotel d'Europe." There Gerry installed him-
self.
CHAPTEE IX
BETWEEN" the hour of writing her note to Alan
and the moment when she stepped on the train
Alix had had no time to think. She was still driven by
the impulse of anger that Gerry's words had aroused.
She did not reflect that the wound was only to her
pride.
Alan held open the door of the drawing-room. She
passed in and he closed it. She did not feel as though
she were in a train. On the little table stood a vase.
It held a single, perfect rose. Under the vase was a
curious doily, strayed from Alan's collection of exotic
things. A cushion lay tossed on the green sofa, not a
new cushion but one that had been broken in to com-
forting. Alix took in every detail of the arrangement
of the tiny room with her first breath. What fore-
thought, what a note of rest with which to meet a
troubled and hurried heart! But how insidious to
frame an ignoble flight in such a homelike setting ! She
felt a slight revolt at the travesty.
Alan was standing with blazing eyes and working
face like an eager hound in leash. Alix threw back
her veil and looked at him. With a quick stride for-
ward he caught her to him and kissed her mouth until
she gasped for breath. With a flash she remembered his
own words, " If ever I kiss you I shall bring your soul
57
58 HOME
out between your lips." To Alix's amazement she did
not feel an answering fire. Her body was being lashed
with a living flame and her body was cold. In that
instant this seemed a terrible thing. She had sold her
birthright for a price and the price was turning to dead
leaves. She made an effort to kiss Alan back but with
the effort shame came over her. There was so much
in Alan's kiss. The kiss had brought her soul out be-
tween her lips. Her soul stood naked before her and
one's naked soul is an ugly thing. The kiss disrobed
her, too, and from that last bourne of shame Alix sud-
denly revolted.
Gasping, she pushed Alan from her. Their eyes met.
His were burning, hers were frightened. She moved
slowly backward to the door and with her hand behind
her opened the latch. Alan did not move. He knew
that if he could not hold her with his eyes he could not
hold her at all. The train started. Alix passed
through the door and rushed to the platform. The
porter was about to drop the trap on the steps. Alix
slipped by him. With all her force she pushed open the
door and jumped. The train was moving very slowly
but Alix reeled and would have fallen had it not been
for a passing baggageman. He caught her and, still
in his arms, Alix looked back. Alan's white face was
at the window. He looked steadily at her.
" Ye almost wint with him, Miss," said the baggage-
man, with a full brogue and a twinkling eye.
" How did you know ? " said Alix, dazed.
At the strange question the baggageman's long upper
lip drew down to gravity. " Where d' ye think I was
HOME 59
whin ye stipt off the thrain into me arms ? " he asked
solemnly.
Alix had released herself and his quaint question
brought her to her senses. She looked at him. He was
a mass of burly kindliness surmounted by a shock of
gray hair. " There, there," she said conciliatingly, " it
was a foolish question. Will you get me a cab? I
don't want a porter."
" ]STo fear, Miss," said the baggageman. " I '11 hand
ye over to no naygur. If they says anything to me I '11
tell 'em we 're friends." The smile was back in his
face and the twinkle in his eye. He started off, his
gray head cocked to one side.
" That 's right," said Alix as she followed his lead
to a cab. She got in and then shook hands with her
escort. He looked at the dollar bill her grasp left be-
hind.
" That was n't called for, Miss. It was enough for
me to have saved ye from a fall."
" You did n't save me," said Alix with a bewildering
smile. " I saved myself."
She left him scratching his head over this fresh
enigma.
Alix was tired and hungry when she got back home
but excitement kept her up. She felt that she stood
on the threshold of new effort and a new life. After all,
she thought, it was she that had made her dear old Gerry
into a time-server. She could have made him into any-
thing else if she had tried. She longed to tell him so.
Perhaps he would catch her and crush her in his arms
as Alan had done. She laughed at herself for wanting
60 HOME
him to. She rang for the butler. " Where 's your
master, John ? "
" I don't know, ma'am. Mr. Gerry has n't come
back since he went out this morning." To John, Mr.
Lansing was a person who had been dead for some time.
His present overlords were Mr. and Mrs. Gerry and Mrs.
Lansing when she was in town.
" Telephone to the club and if he is there tell him
I want to see him," said Alix and turned to her welcome
tea. The sandwiches seemed unusually small to her
ravenous appetite.
Gerry was not at the club. Alix dressed resplend-
ently for dinner. Never had she dressed for any other
man with the care that she dressed for Gerry that night.
But Gerry did not come. At half-past nine Alix ordered
the table cleared. " I '11 not dine to-night," she said to
John. " When your master comes, show him in here."
She sat on in the library listening for Gerry's step in
the hall.
From time to time John came into the room to re-
plenish the fire. On one of these occasions Alix told
him he might go to bed but an hour later he returned
and stood in the door. Alix looked very small, curled
up in a great leathern chair by the fire.
" It 's after one o'clock, ma'am," said John. " Mr.
Gerry won't be coming in to-night." Alix made no
answer. John held his ground. " It ? s time for you to
go to bed, ma'am. Shall I call the maid ? "
It was a long time since John had taken any apparent
interest in his mistress. Alix had avoided him. She
had felt that the old servant disapproved of her. More
HOME 61
than once she had thought of discharging him but he
had never given her grounds that would justify her be-
fore Gerry. ]$Fow he was ordering her to bed and in-
stead of being angry she was soothed. She wondered
how she could ever have thought of discharging him.
He seemed strong and restful, more like part of the
old house than a servant. Alix got up. " Wo, don't
call the maid. I won't need her," she said. Then she
added, " Good-night, John," as she passed out.
John held wide the door and bowed with a deference
that was a touch more sincere than usual. He answered,
" Good-night," as if he meant it.
Alix was exhausted but it was long before she fell
asleep. She cried softly. She wanted to be comforted.
She had dressed so beautifully she had been so beauti-
ful and Gerry had not come home. As she cried, her
disappointment grew into a great trouble.
She awoke early from a feverish sleep. Immediately
a sense of weight assailed her. She rang and learned
that Gerry had not yet come home. Then his words
of yesterday suddenly came to her. " If I dropped out
of the world to-day " Alix stared wide-eyed at the
ceiling. Why had she remembered those words ? She
lay for a long time thinking. Her breakfast was
brought to her but she did not touch it. It was almost
noon in the cloudy Sunday morning when she roused
herself from apathy. She sprang from the bed. She
summoned Judge Healey with a note and Mrs. Lansing
with a telegram. The telegram was carefully worded,
" Please come and stay for a while. Gerry is away."
The Judge found Alix radiating the freshness of a
beautiful woman careful of her person, but it was the
freshness of a pale flower. Alix was grave and her
gravity had a sweetness that made the Judge's heart
bound. He felt an awakening in her that he had long
watched for. She told him all the story of the day be-
fore in a steady monotone that omitted nothing and
gave the facts only their own weight.
When she had finished the Judge patted her hand.
" You would make a splendid witness, my dear," he
said. " ISTow, what you want is for me to find Gerry
and bring him back, is n't it ? "
" Yes," said Alix, " if you can."
" Nonsense ! Of course I can. Men don't drop out
of the world so easily nowadays. But I still want to
know a thing or two. Are you sure Gerry knew noth-
ing of your er excursion to the station?"
Alix shook her head. " From the time he left my
room and the house he has not been back."
" Has he been to the club ? "
Alix colored faintly. " I see," said the Judge
quickly. " I '11 ask there. I '11 go now." He went
off and all that day he sought in vain for a trace of
Gerry. He went to all his haunts in the city he had
telephoned to those outside. At night he returned to
Alix but it was Mrs. Lansing that received him in the
library.
The Judge was tired and his buoyancy had deserted
him. He told her of his failure. Mrs. Lansing was
thoughtful but not greatly troubled. " Gerry," she said,
" has a level head. He may have gone away but that
is all. He can take care of himself." She went to
HOME 63
tell Alix that there was no news. When she came back
the Judge turned to her. " Well," he asked, " what
did she say ? "
" Nothing, except that she wanted to know if you had
tried the bank."
The Judge struck his fist into his left hand. " Never
thought of it," he said. "That child has a head!"
He went to the telephone. From the president of the
bank he traced the manager, from the manager, the
cashier. Yes, Gerry had been at the bank on Saturday.
The cashier remembered it because Mr. Lansing had
drawn a certain account in full. He would not say how
much.
" There," said the Judge with a sigh of relief, " that 's
something. It takes a steady nerve to draw a bank ac-
count in full. You must take the news upstairs. I 'm
off. I '11 follow up the clue to-morrow."
There was a new look of content mingled with the
worry in Mrs. Lansing's face that made the Judge say
as he held out his hand in farewell, " Things better ? "
Mrs. Lansing understood him. " Yes," she answered,
and added, " we have been crying together."
Mrs. Lansing and Alix had never given themselves to
each other. There had been no warfare between them
but equally there had never been understanding. To
Mrs. Lansing's inherent calm, Alix's scintillation had
been repellent and Alix before Gerry's mother had felt
much the same restraint as before Gerry's old butler.
There had been strength in Mrs. Lansing's calm.
She had been waiting and now the waiting was over.
Alix had given herself tearful and almost wordless into
64 HOME
arms that were more than ready and had then poured
out her heart in a broken tale that would have con-
founded any court of justice but which between women
was clearer than logic.
At the end Mrs. Lansing said nothing. Instead she
petted Alix, carried her off to bed and kept her there
for three days. In her waking hours Alix added spas-
modic bits to her confession sage reflections after
the event, dreamy " I wonders " that speculated in the
past and in the measure of her emotions.
Mrs. Lansing sat and listened and sewed. Her soft
brown hair just touched with gray, her calm face with
its half-hidden strength, her steady eyes, turned now on
Alix, now on her work, brought peace into the room
and held it there in spite of the disquieting lack of news
of Gerry.
When she spoke at last it was to say half-shyly, " You
are stronger than I had thought. I believe every woman
at the actual moment of surrender feels an impulse of
shame and fear. During that moment desire lets go of
her. It 's the last chance that fate holds out. The
women who fail to take the chance, it seems to me they
fail through weakness of spirit and not of flesh.
" More women are ruined by circumstance than by
desire. Women decide to burn their bridges behind
them and then they think they Ve burned them. All
the circumstances were against you. There was n't a
loophole in the net. Fate gave you your moment and
you tore your way out."
On the fourth day Alix got up but on the fifth
HOME 65
she stayed in bed. Mrs. Lansing found her pale and
frightened. She had been crying.
" Alix," she whispered, kneeling beside the bed,
" what is it ? "
Alix told her amid sobs. " Oh, my dear," said Mrs.
Lansing, throwing her arms around her, " don't cry.
Don't worry. The strength will come with the need.
In the end you '11 be glad. So will Gerry. So will all
of us."
" It is n't that," said Alix, faintly. " Oh, it is n't
that. I 'm just thinking and thinking how terrible it
would have been if I had run away really run away.
I keep imagining how awful it would have been. It is
nightmare."
" Call it a nightmare if you like, sweetheart, but
just remember that you are awake."
" Yes," said Alix softly. " I am awake now.
Mother, I want to go to Red Hill. I know it 's early
but I want to go now. I want to watch the Hill come
to life and dress up for the summer. , It will amuse me.
It 's long since I have watched for the first buds and the
first swallows. I won't mind the melting snow and the
mud. It 's so long since I Ve seen clean country mud.
I want to smell it."
" You don't know how bleak the Hill can be before
the spring comes," objected Mrs. Lansing.
" Will it be any bleaker with me there than when
you were alone ? " asked Alix.
Mrs. Lansing came over to her and kissed her. " No,
dear," she said.
CHAPTEK X
IN the squalid Hotel d'Europe Gerry occupied a large
room that overlooked the quay. Even if there had
been a better hotel in town he would not have moved.
Here he looked out on a scene of never-ceasing move-
ment and color. The setting changed with the varying
light. The false rains of the midsummer season came
up in black horses of cloud driven by a furious
wind. They passed with a whirl and a veritable clatter
of heavy drops hurled against the earth in a splendid
volley. The long strip of the quay emptied at the
first v, T et shot. The tatterdemalion crowd invaded every
doorway and nook of shelter with screams and laughter.
Then the sun again, and back came the throng to the
fresh-washed quay.
At night, life was still there. Boatmen slept face
down on the stones. Long, lugger-rigged craft crawled
heavily by on the outward tide. Smaller boats, their
lateen rigging creaking with every puff of air, slipped
by them, frailer but more eager to face the dangers of
the seas crashing beyond the reef. Last and most
wonderful of all came the fleet of tiny catamarans,
five long poles pinned together and a centerboard.
Above, a boomless sail towering to a point. On such
flimsy contraptions did the little brown fishermen head
for the deep sea, far out of sight of land, full of an
66
HOME 67
unquestioning faith in the landward hreeze at night
to bring them home.
They did not love work, these men, but they loved the
long loafing after a good haul. As on the sea so on land.
Throughout the great, filthy, stuccoed city to its wide-
spread, muddy skirts, where mud-walled, grass-thatched
houses dotted a hundred twining valleys, nobody worked
for a competence. They worked for their daily bread
and when that was assured they turned with light hearts
to cigarettes and the juice of the cane time-servers
who denied the very existence of their overload.
Gerry was not lonely. He wandered interested
through all the straggling city. Its bridges ; its twisted
lines of bright-colored houses ; its stenches ; its ludicrous
street-cars drawn by jack-rabbit mules or puffy minia-
ture steam-engines; its wonderful suburbs where great,
many-windowed houses raised their tiled roofs above
long blank walls, glass-crested and overhung with riot-
ing hibiscus, climbing fuchsia and blazing bougainvillea
and, looming above all, the cool black domes of giant
mango trees, these things gave him a thousand new
and delicate sensations. He was a discoverer, a Martian
come to earth, and he forgot to look back.
When he was too lazy to go to the city he sat in the
precarious balcony of his room and watched the city
come to him. The long quay with its huge plane trees
was the little maelstrom of the city's life. It was not
the market but, nevertheless, here one could buy any-
thing from a gaited saddle horse to a queen ant dressed
up as a doll. Piles of fruit dotted the shade. Golden
pineapples lay in a pool of their own juice. The giant
68 HOME
manga rosa, largest, most beautiful and most tasteless of
mangoes, nestled in banana leaves twisted to form a
basket, its cheeks of glowing pink turned up to catch
the eye of the ignorant or the devotee of beauty without
worth. Lesser mangoes were heaped in pyramids on
the bare stones. Around these gathered connoisseurs,
barefooted, bareheaded and with no more clothes than
the law demands but each provided with a long pointed
knife, deftly handled. Land of the Knife, the more
temperate sections of the South had named this sister
state. Lion of the North they called themselves and
cheerfully supported a prison island where four hundred
of their fellows were in durance for murder.
Threading through piles of fruit and the trays of
vendors of a dozen forms of mandioc came a cow with
her calf tied to her tail. A shrewd Portuguese attended
her. Customers got their milk fresh but it was mostly
foam. A drove of turkeys in charge of a man with a
whip passed by. Chickens in wicker baskets slung at
the ends of a pole ; parrots in hundreds, sure bait for the
sailor's morey; trays of stuffed humming-birds; jars of
dried green beetles; marmosets, monkeys, macaws,
toucans, snakes, a captive racoon, each in turn held
Gerry for its allotted time.
The better classes, Brazilians dressed as though they
had stepped off the boulevards of Paris and linen-clad
merchants of half-a-dozen nations, did not interest him.
They were merely familiar background to the things
that were new.
Gerry missed his club but for that he found a substi-
tute. Cluny's, next door to the hotel, was a strange hall
HOME 69
of convivial pleasure. A massive square door, whose
masonry centuries had hardened and blackened to stone,
gave on to a long hallway that ended in a wider dungeon.
Here stood a bar and half-a-dozen teak tables. The
floor was all of stone flags.
The clientele had the cleavage of oil and water. One
section stood to their drink at the bar, had it and went
out. The other sat to their glasses at the tables and sat
late. Among these was a pale thin man of about
Gerry's age with a mouth slightly twisted to humor until
toward evening drink loosened it to mere weakness.
One afternoon he nodded to Gerry and Gerry left the
bar for the tables. After that they sat together. The
man was an American the American Consul. Gerry
liked him, pitied him, and forgot to pity himself. One
night he invited the Consul to his room. They sat in
the balcony, a bottle of whisky and a syphon between
them. Gerry started to put his glass on the rail.
" Don't do it," said the Consul with his twisted smile,
" it might carry away." He went on more seriously.
" It 's rotten. The whole place is rotten. There 's a
blight on the men and the women and on the children.
God!"
Gerry put down his glass untouched. "Why don't
you go home ? "
The Consul took a long drink, eyed the empty glass
and spoke into it. " I used to think just like that.
' Why don't you go home ? ' I used to think I could go
home that it was just a question of buying a ticket
and climbing aboard a liner. But " he broke off and
glanced at Gerry as he refilled his glass.
70 HOME
" But what ? " said Gerry.
" Well," said the Consul, " 1 'm just drunk enough to
tell you. I 'm only proud in the mornings before I 'm
thoroughly waked up. I used to drive a pen for a
Western daily at twenty-five dollars a week. It was
good pay and I married on it. I and the girl, we lived
like the corn-fed hogs of our native state. Life was
one sunshine and when the baby came we joined hands
and said good-by to sorrow forever. Then her people
got busy and landed me this job. The pay was three
thousand and if you want to see how big three thousand
dollars a year can look, just go and stand behind any old
kind of plow in Kansas. I jumped at it. We sold
out our little outfit and raked up just enough to see me
out here. The girl and the kid went to visit her people.
I was to save up out of the first quarter's pay and send
for them. That was three years ago."
He stopped, plunged in thought. Gerry said nothing
but lit a long cigar. The Consul went on. " The price
of a lunch here would give me three squares at home
and I could support the family for a month on the
price of a suit of clothes. But even so, I could have
sent the money if I had been somebody's clerk. Some-
how, we don't realize at home what position means
abroad. Little humdrum necessities, food and clothing,
the few drinks of the evening after the day's work with
which every man in the tropics braces mind and body
and no harm done, these commonplace things and the
decency in appearances that any official must keep up,
they made that big three thousand look like a snowball
in summer. Try ? I did try. But I could n't run to
HOME 71
a dozen suits of whites and twice as many shirts. I got
to wearing a collar for two days as well. And let me
tell you that when you 're among the clean in the tropics,
that 's the beginning of the end.
" They could n't understand it at home. First came
surprise, then scolding, then just plain pleading. That
did for me. I left my place at the bar in Cluny's and
took a seat at the tables. I Ve sat there for two years
and nobody ever takes my chair. They call it the Amer-
ican Consulate.
" I Ve still got to tell you the worst. Just to speak
English here makes you a member of a clan. The
people I 'd made friends with, and some that I had n't,
took up a purse for me. Enough to cover my ticket and
a tidy sum besides. They 'd done it before. Irish,
Scotch, English or American, it was all one to them.
They gave an ex-friend the last chance of home. They
might have known that with me, if I was far enough
gone to take the money, I was too far gone to save.
I took it and I went to my room and blubbered."
He stopped again. There was a long silence ; then he
went on. " And so I took the money. The steamer
sailed without me. In three days the money was gone."
" You paid it back ? " said Gerry. His face was red
with shame. He felt as if he had helped to steal from
that relief fund.
" Yes, I paid it back," said the Consul, " and they Ve
put it in the bank. It ? s ticketed for the next American
that needs the last chance of home. Those fellows
they saw me sweat blood to pay, and so they did that."
" Do you see that steamer out there ? " said Gerry.
72 HOME
" Well, she 's bound for home. I want to give you the
chance that comes after the last chance. I want you
to let me send you home."
The Consul looked around. His pendulous lip
twisted into a smile. " So you took all that talk for the
preamble to a touch ! "
" No, I did n't," said Gerry indignantly.
" Well, well, never mind," said the Consul.
" There 's nothing left to go back to and there 's noth-
ing left to go back. That little account in the bank and
what it may do for some poor devil is the only monu-
ment I '11 ever build."
The whisky bottle was almost empty but Gerry's
glass was still untouched. The Consul pointed at it.
" You can still leave it alone ? I don't know where you
come from, or what you 're loafing in this haven of time-
servers for, but 1 7 m going to give you a bit of advice.
You take that steamer yourself."
Gerry colored. " I can't," he stammered. " There 's
nothing left for me either to go home to." He said
nothing more. The Consul had suddenly turned
drowsy.
CHAPTEE XI
ALMOST a month had passed since Gerry landed on
his Lethean shore, and it had served him well.
But that night on the balcony woke him up. The world
seemed to have time-servers in small regard. First
Alix and now this consul chap. Gerry began to think
of his mother. He strolled over to the cable station.
The offices were undergoing repairs. The ground floor
was unfurnished save for a table and one chair. In
the chair sat a chocolate-colored employee with a long
bamboo on the floor beside him. Gerry's curiosity was
aroused. He went in and wrote his message to his
mother just a few words telling her he was all right.
The chocolate gentleman folded the message, slipped it
into the split end of the bamboo and stuck it up through
a hole in the ceiling to the floor above. Gerry smiled
and then laughed at the gravity with which his smile was
received. The man looked at him in astonishment.
These English were all mad and discourteous. What
was there to laugh at in a man at work ?
Gerry went out and rambled over the city. Night
came on. He was restless. He wished he had not sent
the message. It was forming itself into a link. He
dined badly at a restaurant and then wandered back to
the quay. Arriving steamers were posted on a black-
board under a street lamp. The mail from New York
73
74 HOME
was due tomorrow. The Consul's papers would be full
of the latest New York society scandal his scandal.
He went to his room and sat on the balcony watching
the varied craft preparing to drift out on the tide. Sud-
denly he got up and went down to the quay.
A long, raking craft was taking on its meager provi-
sions. Gerry engaged its captain in a pantomime parley.
The boat was bound for Penedo to take on cotton.
Gerry decided to go to Penedo. Two of the crew went
back with him to get his baggage. The hotel was closed.
Gerry was the only guest and he had his key. He had
paid his weekly bill that day, so there was no need to
wake any one up. In half an hour he and his belong-
ings were stowed on the deck of the Josephina and she
was drifting slowly down to the bar.
Four days later they were off the mouth of the San
Francisco. They doubled in and tacked their way up
to Penedo. There was no life in Penedo. It was
desolate and lonely compared with the Hotel d'Europe
and the lively quay ; so when a funny little stern-wheeler
started up the river on its weekly trip to Piranhas, Gerry
went with it.
Piranhas was a town of mud plastered against a bar-
ren cliff. It made no pretense to being alive. Here
a dead man could live in peace with his surroundings.
From fifteen miles up the river came the rumble of the
mighty Paulo Affonso Falls, singing a perpetual
requiem. Gerry established himself in a hovel of an
inn that even in this far retreat did not dare call itself
hotel.
The only industry in Piranhas was the washing of
HOME 75
clothes and the women did that. Fish were caught in
great quantities but fishing was not an industry. Here,
too, man fished only when he was hungry.
Gerry chartered a ponderous canoe. At first he had
a man to paddle him up and down and sometimes across
the wide half-mile of water. But before long he
learned to handle the thing himself. The heavy work
soon trimmed his splendid muscles into shape. He sup-
plied the hostelry with a variety of fish.
One morning he woke earlier than usual. The wave
of life was running high in his veins. He sprang up
and, still in his pajamas, hurried out for his morning
swim. The break of day was gloriously chilly. A cool
breeze, hurrying up from the sea, was steadily banking
up the mist that hung over the river. Gerry sprang into
his canoe and pushed off. He drove its heavy length
up stream, not in the teeth of the current, for no man
could do that, but skirting the shore, seizing on the help
of every eddy and keeping an eye out for the green
swirling mound that meant a pinnacle of rock just short
of the surface. He went further up the river than ever
before. His muscles were keyed to the struggle. He
passed the last jutting bend that the best boatmen on the
river could master and found himself in a bay protected
by a spit of sand, rock-tipped and foam-tossed where it
reached the river's channel. From this point the river
was a chaos of jagged rocks that fought the mighty tide
hurled from the falls still miles above.
Gerry ran the canoe upon the shore and stripped. He
stepped on to the spit of sand. In that moment just
to live was enough. He stretched his arms out and,
76 HOME
looking down, watched the fine texture of his body turn
to goose-flesh. Then the sun broke out and helped the
wind clear the last bank of mist from the river. Gerry's
body took on a rosy glow. He had never seen it like
that before and as he looked a sharp cry broke on his
astonished ears.
Almost at the end of the tongue of sand stood a girl.
A white cotton robe was at her feet. Her hair was blow-
ing around her slim shoulders. Over one of them she
gazed, startled, at Gerry. He drew back horribly con-
fused and mumbling apologies that she could not have
understood even if she could have heard them. Then
she plunged with a clean long dive into the river. But
before she plunged she laughed. Gerry heard the laugh.
With an answering cry he hurled himself into the water
and swam as he had never swum before.
The girl had further to go across the little bay, but
she could beat Gerry swimming and she did. Only she
failed to use her head and, when she found bottom,
started to wade. Wading is slow work in water waist
high. Gerry stuck to his long powerful stroke. As the
girl reached the bank the strong fingers of his right hand
closed on her bare ankle.
CHAPTEE XII
GERRY'S cablegram to his mother was forwarded
to Red Hill on the very day that the Judge had
gone up to tell them that no trace could be found of the
missing man. The Judge was more down-hearted than
ever over Gerry's disappearance and when he found the
two women radiating happiness and excitement his
heart sank lower stilL
" I have-n't any good news," he said ruefully before
he alighted.
" Tease him," said Alix in a low tone to Mrs. Lan-
sing.
But Mrs. Lansing had found new lines in the Judge's
tired face and she whispered back, " I can't." She put
the cablegram in the Judge's hand.
" What 's this ? " he said and read it. Then he gave
a war-whoop, caught Alix around the waist and kissed
her.
The Firs were gay that night gay with the joy of
happy people happily planning. In a month, say at the
most, two months, Gerry could be here. Spring would
have come. The Hill would be decked out in full
regalia of leaf and blossom. It would be in full com-
mission to meet him. They looked at Alix and Alix
seemed to look at herself. He would come into his own
as never before.
The Judge undertook the cabling. He cabled Gerry
77
78 HOME
and the message was reported undelivered. Then he
cabled the American Consul. There followed a long
series of messages ; first quick and hopeful, then lagging
but not doubtful, then a wearying silence of weeks, end-
ing with the inevitable blow. Gerry had been traced
to the San Francisco river. The envoy sent on his track
by the Judge's orders had reached Piranhas to find the
little town in apathetic wonder over the discovery of
Gerry's canoe stranded three miles down the river. The
paddle was still in the canoe and a suit of pajamas.
No further trace of Gerry had been found. His body
had not been recovered. The people said it was not un-
usual. He had undoubtedly been attacked by tiger fish.
In that case his bones would have been stripped of flesh.
It was impossible to drag the great river.
The Judge hid in his heart the harrowing details. To
Mrs. Lansing he told the central fact. She was struck
dumb with grief and then she thought of Alix. Almost
hastily they decided that it was not a time to tell Alix
and during long months they put her off with false news
of the search. They carried it further and further into
the wilds of the subcontinent. The country was so vast,
there was no telling when the messenger would finally
come up with Gerry.
Alix bore the strain with wonderful patience. The
truth was that her thoughts were not on Gerry. Some-
thing greater than Gerry was claiming all her faith,
all her strength of body and soul. She did not talk.
She was holding that final communion with her inner-
most self with which a woman dedicates her body to
pain and sacrifice. Alix was not afraid. In those days
HOME ?9
the spirit of the race her race of pioneers shone
from her steady eyes and even put courage in those about
her.
Only when the ordeal was over and an heir to the
house of Lansing had raised his lusty voice in apparent
rage at having been born to so small a kingdom, did the
frail Alix of other days come back. As she lay, pale
and thin, but with the glorious light of supreme achieve-
ment in her eyes, Mrs. Lansing went on her knees beside
the bed and sobbed, " Oh, Alix, I love you so, I love
you so ! "
Alix smiled. Slowly she reached one hand over and
placed it in Mrs. Lansing's. " You are crying because
you are a granny now," she said, softly, playfully.
Then came the day when Alix was strong strong
enough. Mrs. Lansing told her in a choked voice what
they knew and what every one believed. She cried
softly in Alix's arms.
" Poor Mother ! " said Alix, her lips against the wet
cheek. " How strong you 've been ! How you hid it
from me ! What a burden to carry in your heart, and
smile. But listen, dear Mummy. You are all wrong.
Perhaps I would not have known it if you had told me
then but I know it now. Gerry is not dead.
There is no river that can drown Gerry."
" My dear," said Mrs. Lansing, frightened, " you
must not think that. It 's always the best swimmers
that risk the most."
" It is n't that he can swim," said Alix. Her eyes
turned slowly till they rested on her son. Her bosom
swelled at the memory of the travail the terrible tra-
80 HOME
vail that she had borne, not for the child alone, nor for
Gerry alone, but for them both. " Swimming has noth-
ing to do with it. Somehow I know that Gerry is all
right, somewhere on this little world. Only, dear," and
here her voice faltered and her eyes shone with tears,
" this little world seems mighty big when hearts are far
apart."
Alix clung to her belief. So strong was her faith that
Mrs. Lansing became infected, but the Judge held out
against them. " My heart is with you," he said, at the
end of months, " but my head won't turn. A naked
man even in South America would have caused remark.
Why should n't he have come back for his clothes, for his
money ? After all, he was n't a fugitive from justice.
He was a man wandering over the earth in pursuit of
a mere whim and a whim does n't last forever."
Alix interrupted him. " Judge, I have never been
angry with you. We all owe you too much. But if you
ever say ' was ' about Gerry again " She stopped
and bit her lip but her eyes spoke for her.
" My dear girl," said the Judge and only his color
showed that he was hurt, " don't be angry with me. It
shall be as you say. I Ve only been trying to save you
from years of weary waiting. If you have the courage
to wait for sorrow, I shall wait too."
Alix kissed him. " There," she said, " I 'm sorry I
was rough."
" You ! rough ! " laughed the Judge. Then he
jumped up. " I 'm forgetting my duties. I have a
guest of my very own over at Maple House and I must
go to him."
HOME 81
A few weeks before, the Hon. Percy Collingeford had
looked up the Judge. It was as much a pleasure to the
young man as a duty he owed to his father, whose
friend the Judge had been for many years.
Collingeford was no stranger to America but he knew
far more about dodging arroyos in New Mexico on a
cow pony than he did about dodging the open trenches
and debris of Fifth Avenue on the trail of a tea-party.
He was an Englishman, a younger son with enough
money to put him above the remittance class, and he
was possessed of far more intelligence than he had been
born with, for, from his youth up, he had sought out
experience in many places. He came back from the
Klondike with more money than, he needed for his
passage but only a few kindred spirits knew that he had
made it hammering the piano in The Fallen Star of
Hope. He had the English gentleman's common creed :
ride straight, shoot straight, tub often and talk the
King's English. That creed fulfilled, nothing else
seemed to worry him.
He was dining with the Judge at the club one night
when the name of Wayne Alan Wayne floated over
occasionally from a neighboring table. Later as they
sat over their coffee and cigars Collingeford said ab-
ruptly, " I know a chap named Wayne."
"So?" said the Judge.
" Heard those people mention Alan Wayne," ex-
plained Collingeford. " I wondered if it was the same
one Ten Percent Wayne of Africa."
" That 's the one," said the Judge and watched Col-
lingeford's face.
82 HOME
" Hum," said Collingeford. " When I saw Wayne lie
was in shirt sleeves and a battered sun helmet. There
are some men that won't shake hands with him, but
I 'm not one of them."
It was then that the Judge decided to take Collinge-
ford to Maple House for over Sunday.
CHAPTER XIII
GERRY LANSING was sitting alone in the shade
of a bush, his knees gathered in his arms and his
head bowed down. Great quivering sighs that were
almost sobs were shaking his strong body. In one ter-
rific swirl life had wrenched him from the moorings of
generations, tossed him high and dropped him, broken.
He had after all been only a weakling, waiting to fall
at the first temptation. It seemed as if it could not be
true. The sun had only just risen. The mist still hung
in the air in wisps. It was still early morning the
morning that he had found so glorious the morning
in which just to live had seemed enough. But it was
true. Between the moment when he had plunged from
the sandspit and the moment when he and the girl had
stood on the river bank and laughed together to see
the canoe, worked adrift by the eddy, swirl out into the
river and away, eons had passed. In that laughing
moment he had stood primeval man in a primeval world.
With the drops of water from the river he had flicked
off the bonds it had taken centuries to forge. And now
the storm was past, the elation over, and his truant
conscience returned to stand dismayed before the devas-
tation of so short a lapse.
The girl, dressed in a homespun cotton robe belted at
the waist, came back down a half-hidden path, shyly
83
84: HOME
at first and then with awe to see him weeping. She
tossed him a cotton jumper and trousers and then drew
back and waited for him in the path. He picked up
the garments and looked at them. They were such
simple clothes as he had seen laborers wearing. He rose
slowly to his feet, dressed and followed the girl.
She led him along the path through the brush and out
into a little valley made up of abandoned cane and rice
bottoms. In the center was a slight elevation, too low to
be called a hill, and on it was an old plantation house,
white stucco once, now sadly weather-streaked, its tiles
green-black with the moss of years.
She pointed to the house and then to herself and
smiled. He understood the pantomime and nodded.
When they reached the house a withered and wrinkled
little woman came out to the arched veranda to meet
them. She looked Gerry over shrewdly and then held
out her hand. He shook it listlessly. They walked
through a long dividing hall. On each side were large
rooms, empty, save one where a big bed, a wash-stand,
and an old bureau with mildewed glass, were grouped
like an oasis in a desert. They reached the kitchen. It
was evidently the living-room of the house. A ham-
mock cut off one corner. Chairs were drawn up to
a rough, uncovered table. A stove was built into
the masonry and a cavernous oven gaped from the
massive wall.
At the stove was an old negress, making coffee with
shaky deliberation. On the floor sat an old darky clad
only from his waist down in such trousers as Gerry was
wearing, except that they were soiled and tattered. He
HOME 85
looked up and fastened his eyes on Gerry and then
struggled to his feet. Dim recollections of some bygone
white master brought a gleam into his bleary eyes. He
raised his hand in the national gesture of child to parent,
slave to master. " Blessing, Master, blessing." Gerry
had learned the meaning of the quaint custom. " God
bless thee," he answered in badly jumbled Portuguese.
The girl and the wrinkled little woman looked at him,
surprised, and then smiled at each other as women smile
at the first steps of a child.
They made him sit down at the table and placed be-
fore him crisp rusks of mandioc flour and steaming
coffee whose splendid aroma triumphed over the sordid-
ness of the scene and through the nostrils reached the
palate with anticipatory touch. It was sweetened with
dark, pungent syrup and was served black in a capacious
bowl, as though one could not drink too deeply of the
elixir of life.
Gerry ate ravenously and sipped the coffee, at first
sparingly, then greedily. The old negress fluttered
nervously about the stove, nursing its inadequate fire of
charcoal. Her eyes were big with wonder at the
capacity of the white master. The old negro had sunk
back to his seat on the floor. The two white women
stood and watched Gerry. The more he ate the more
they urged.
Gerry set down the empty bowl with a sigh. The
rusks had been delicious. Before the coffee the name
of nectar dwindled to impotency. Its elixir rioted in
his veins. At the sigh the girl had deftly rolled a cig-
arette in a bit of corn husk, scraped thin as paper.
86 HOME
Now she slipped it into his fingers. The old negress
picked up a live coal and, passing it from shaky hand
to shaky hand, deposited it on his plate. Gerry lit the
cigarette. With the first long contented whiff he smiled.
The smile brought stinging recollection. With a frown
he threw away the cigarette and rose from the table.
" The brute is fed and laughs," he said aloud and strode
from the room. The girl and the little wrinkled woman
looked at each other in dismay. They seemed to sense
the unintelligible words. The old darky crawled across
the floor and possessed himself of the cigarette.
Gerry went to seat himself on the steps of the veranda.
Before him stretched the fallow valley, beyond it
gleamed the black line of the rushing river. To the
right were the ruins of a sugar mill and stables. To
the left the debris that once had been slaves' quarters.
The fields still bore the hummocks, in rough alignment,
that told the story of past years fruitful in cane. All
was waste, all was ruin.
The girl slipped to a seat beside him. She rolled a
fresh cigarette and then shyly laid a small brown hand
on his arm. Gerry looked at her. Her big brown eyes
were sorrowful and pleading. She held out the cigarette
with a little shrug that deprecated the smallness of the
offering.
Gerry felt a twinge of remorse. He patted the hand
that lay on his arm, smiled, and took the cigarette. The
girl's face lit up. She called and again the negress
brought fire. This time Gerry smoked gravely. The
girl sat on beside him. Her hand lay in his.
So they sat until the sun passed the zenith and, slip-
HOME 87
ping over the eaves, fell like fire on their bare feet.
Gerry stood up, pointed to himself and then down the
river to the town. The girl shook her head. She made
him understand that he was cut off from the town by
an impassable tributary to the great river that he
would have to make a long detour inland. Then she
swept her hand from the sun to the horizon to show
him that the day was too far gone for the journey.
He was not much concerned. An apathy seized him
at the thought of going back. He felt as though shame
had left some visible scar on his countenance that men
must see and read. As he stood, thoughtful and de-
tached, the girl grasped his arm with both her hands and
drew his attention to her. Then she gave one sweep of
her arm that embraced all the ruin of house and mill
and fields. She pointed to herself. He understood:
these things were hers. Then she folded her hands and
with a gesture of surrender laid them in his.
It was eloquent. There was no mistaking her mean-
ing. Gerry was touched. He held both her clasped
hands in one of his and put his arm around her
shoulders. She fixed her eyes on his face for the answer.
Once more Gerry's eyes wandered over all that ruin.
After all, he thought, why not ? Why not bury his own
ruin here in company? But she read no decision in
his face though she watched it long. What she saw
was debate and for the time it satisfied her.
Gerry all that afternoon was very silent and thought-
ful silent because there was no one he could talk to,
thoughtful because the idea the girl had put into his
head was taking shape, aided by a long chain of circum-
88 HOME
stances. He looked back over his covered trail. If he
had been some shrewd fugitive from justice he could not
have planned it better. His sudden flight without visit-
ing his home, his failure to buy a ticket, the subornation
of the purser with its assurance of silence as to his
presence or destination, all that had been wiped out by
his cablegram to his mother. But then fate had stepped
in again and once more blotted out the trail. Gerry
pictured the finding of the canoe and paddle with his
pajamas miles away from the spot where he had left
them. Supposing there were any search for him from
home, and there was no reason to believe there would
be since he had cabled reassurance to his mother, it
would come up against a blank wall with the tracing
of the canoe, the pajamas and the paddle. They formed
a clue which could lead to but one conclusion.
His mother would have understood his flight from the
disgrace that undoubtedly had flaunted itself in every
one of his familiar haunts. Secure in the retreat of
Red Hill she had probably truly pictured him fleeing
from the memory of Alix and the fall of the name of
Lansing. Then there was the cablegram to reassure her.
In all probability there had been no search, but even if
there were, it must in the end come up against this new
obliteration of the trail ! The fact recurred again and
again in his thoughts. In the terrible hour after the
scene of Alix's surrender to Alan he had longed to hide
from his world, from his mother and from himself.
Some genius had heard his wish. The old Gerry Lan-
sing was dead. Even from himself the old Gerry
Lansing had been torn away in a chariot of fire. Pas-
HOME 89
sion had swirled its flame about him and left ruin,
ashes.
In the cool of the evening he looked about him. The
tiny world into which he had fallen was penurious but
self-contained. Such fabrics as there were, were home-
spun from the bolls of a scraggy patch of cotton bushes.
The beans of castor plants, those giant weeds that haunt
all scenes of ruin in the subcontinent, supplied oil for
feeble lights at night. A little oil in a clay dish with
a twisted wick of cotton giving forth more smoke than
light seemed to fix him in his setting of prehistoric man.
The rice, gathered from an enduring bottom, cultivated
by no effort aside from the impassive rise and fall of
the river, formed with mandioc, the backbone of the
household's sustenance. From the outcrops of the
abandoned cane fields, with the assistance of an antedi-
luvian hand-mill and an equally antiquated iron pot,
they made the black syrup that served for sugar. Salt,
slightly alkaline, was plentiful. A few cows and their
progeny lived in the open and lived well, for, even un-
tilled, the lands of the valley were rich. An occasional
member of the herd was carried off to market by the
old darky. The proceeds bought the very few contribu-
tions of civilization necessary to the upkeep of the lenten
life.
Gerry decided. He looked at the girl and she ran
to him. He put his arms around her and gazed with a
sort of numbed emotion into her great dark eyes. Those
eyes were wells of simplicity, love, fidelity, but below
all that there were depths of unmeasured and unmeasur-
ing passion that gave all and demanded all.
CHAPTER XIV
COLLINGEFOKD gave a sigh of relief when he
saw what manner of place was Maple House.
As they gathered around the great table for dinner
he was the only stranger and he did not feel it. Nance
was there with the faint smile of a mother that has
just put her children to bed. Charley Stirling, teasing
Clematis, tried to forget that Monday and the city were
coming together. Mrs. J. Y., with Collingeford on her
right and the Judge on her left, held quiet sway over
the table and nodded reassuringly at the old Captain
who was making gestures with his eyes to the effect that
a whisky and soda should be immediately offered to the
guest. J. Y., pretty gray by now, sat thoughtful, but
kindly, at the other end of the table. Clem was beside
him.
It was not until the men were sitting alone after the
glass of port, in which all had drunk Collingeford's wel-
come to that house, that the Judge said casually, " Col-
lingeford saw Alan in Africa."
" Eh ! What ? " said the Captain aroused to sudden
interest. " What 's that about Alan ? "
" I ran across Alan Wayne in Africa," said Collinge-
ford, smiling. " Do you want me to tell you about
it?"
90
HOME 91
ISTance called Charley Stirling out. " You shirker,"
she said, " come and sit with me in the hammock."
" Collingeford was just going to tell about meeting
Alan in Africa," said Charley indignantly. And then
ISTance said " Oh ! " and wanted to send him back but
he would n't go.
" Yes," grunted the Captain in reply to Collingeford's
question and J. Y. nodded as he caught the young man's
eye. " Wish you would," he said and leaned forward,
his elbows on the table.
Collingeford was one of those men who are sensitive
to men. His vocabulary did not run to piffle but he
loved an understanding ear. He looked at the Judge's
keen but restful face, at the Captain's glaring eyes, which
somehow had assumed a kindly glint, at J. Y.'s rugged
figure, suddenly grown tense, and he knew that Alan
Wayne was near to the hearts of these three. He
fingered his wine glass. " If I was one of those men,"
he began, looking at nobody, " who dislike Ten Percent
Wayne I would n't tell you about him. But I 'm not.
It took me only two hours to get over hating him and
those two hours were spent in a broiling sun at the
wrong end of a half -finished bridge.
" Prince Bodsky and I were on shikari. We were
headed home after a long and unsuccessful shoot in new
country and we were as sore and tired and bored with
the life of the wild as two old-timers ever get. On the
day I 'm telling you about we were trekking up a river
gorge to a crossing. After lunch and the long rest we
still had ten miles to go to cross and it did n't help
things to know that once over we had to come straight
92 HOME
back on the other side. During the first hour's march
in the afternoon we heard the strangest sound that ever
those wilds gave forth. It was like hammering on steel
but we refused to believe our ears until a sudden curve
brought us bang up against the indisputable fact of a
girder-bridge in the throes of construction. Before the
thought of the sacrilege to the game country before
we could see in this noisy monstrosity the root of our
recent bad luck came the glad thought that we did n't
have to do ten miles up that gorge and ten back. We
would have whooped except that men don't whoop in
Africa it scares the game.
" I said the bridge was in the throes of construction.
It was just that. Its two long girders, reaching from
brink to brink, with their spidery trusses hanging under-
neath, fairly swarmed with sweating figures, and the
figures were black. It was that that brought us to a
full stop and just when our eyes were fixed with the
intensity of discovery, one of the workers looked up, saw
us, relaxed and gave the loud grunt which stands in
Landin for ' Just look at that ! ' in English.
" The babbling and hammering around him ceased,
but while he still stared at us, we saw a veritable appari-
tion. A white man, hung between heaven and the
depths of the gorge, was racing along the top of the
slippery girder. His helmet blew off, hung poised, and
then plunged in long tacking sweeps. The man was
dressed in a cotton shirt, white trousers and thick woolen
socks. ISTo boots. Of course, I didn't notice all that
till afterwards. In his hand he carried a sjambok.
Suddenly the staring darky seemed to feel him coming
HOME 93
but, before he could turn, the sjambok quirt came down
with the clinging sting of hide on flesh. We saw the
blood spurt. The negro toppled without a cry. He
fell inside, caught on a truss, clung, and finally with a
struggle drew himself up on to a stringer. A shout of
laughter went up from his fellows. Bodsky and I had
heard it often the laugh of the African for his brother
in pain. And then they fell to work again. The black
with the blood trickling off his back rested long enough
to get his breath and then climbed back to his place on
the girder. He was grinning. Don't ask me to explain
it. Men have died trying to explain Africa.
" The white man had stopped and half turned. He
stood, a little straddling, on the girder, and switched
the sjambok to and fro. His eyes were blazing. From
his lips dropped a patter of all the vile words in Lan-
din, Swahili and half-a-dozen other dialects, the words
that a white man learns first if he listens to natives.
The jargon seemed to incite the blacks. They worked
as clumsily as ever but harder. They started to sing, as
the African does when he 's getting up a special burst of
speed. Then the white man walked off the girder on
our side, out of the way. ' Now 's our time,' I whis-
pered to Bodsky. He shook his head slowly from side
to side but I was already under way. I walked up to
the white man and. asked him if he could let us across.
He glanced around as if he had n't seen our outfit till
that moment and then he looked me square in the eyes.
' We knock off at six,' he said, and that was all.
" I turned back. I 'd been angry before but never
as angry as that. Bodsky was already getting up the
94 HOME
fly of a tent. ' I saw it coming,' he said with his quiet
little laugh that you never hear when there 's anything
to laugh at. ' Look here, Bodsky,' I said, ' let 's walk
to the old crossing.' And he answered, ' My dear chap,
I 'm going to sit right here. I would n't miss this for
a shot at elephant. That man is Ten Percent
Wayne.'
" ' Where 'd you meet him ? ' I asked.
" t Never met him/ said Bodsky, ' but I Ve heard of
him.' So had I. We sat down together under the fly
on a couple of loads and propped two whiskies-and-
warm-water on another load in front of us and watched
Wayne while Wayne watched his men.
" { Suppose we offer him a drink,' I said and ran the
sweat off my eyebrows with my finger.
" Bodsky looked at me pityingly. t So you want to
get burned again. Does that man look to you as though
he was thinking about a drink ? Well, let me tell you
he is n't. Every bit of him is thinking about that bridge
every minute. God ! I have n't seen men driven like
that since I was a boy. Once more there 's something
new in Africa ! And I Ve never seen a man drive him-
self like that, anywhere.' All the Mongolian and Tatar
that is said to lurk in every Russian seemed to be leak-
ing out of Bodsky's narrowed eyes.
"We sat there and drank and smoked and sweated,
and I sulked. Every once in a while Bodsky would
say something. First it was : ' Those boys are from
the South. Must have brought them with him.' Then
it was : ' He knows something about the sun. He keeps
his head in the shade-spot from that lonely palm.' And
HOME 95
finally : ' Collingef ord, I never despised your intellect
before. What are you sulking for? Can't you see
what 's up ? Can't you understand that if a man will
stand for two hours shifting an inch at a time with
the shade rather than disturb half-a-dozen niggers at
work to go and get a helmet he is n't going to call those
niggers off to let a couple of loafers like us crawl across
his girders? What you and I are staring at is just
plain common garden Work with a capital W, stark
naked and ugly, but by God, it 's great.'
" And right there I saw the light. To us two the
mystery of Ten Percent Wayne was revealed. He could
drive men. He could make bricks without straw.
While work was on, nothing else mattered. Eight and
wrong were measured by the needs of that bridge and
death was too good for the shirker. And with the
light I forgot the brute in the man tearing along the
dizzy height of the girder to lash a loafer and only
remembered that he had risked his life to avenge just
one moment stolen from the day's work."
The stem of Collingeford's wine glass snapped be-
tween his fingers. " I 'm sorry," he said, laying the
pieces aside. He smiled a little nervously on the three
tense faces before him. " I don't tell that story often.
It goes too deep. Not everybody understands. Some
people call Wayne no better than a murderer ; but I 'm
not one of them. And Bodsky says there have been a
lot of murderers he 'd like to take to his club."
" J. Y., there 's somebody listening at the door," said
the Captain. " Been there some time."
J. Y. swung around and threw open the door. He
96 HOME
sprang forward and caught Clem in the act of flight.
He brought her back into the room and sat down, holding
her upright beside him. J. Y. was proud and for a
moment Collingeford's presence galled him. "What
were you doing, Clem ? " he asked.
Clematis was in that degree of embarrassment and
disarray which makes lovely youth a shade more lovely.
Her brown hair was tumbled about her face and down
her back. Her cheeks were flushed and her thin white
neck seemed to tremble above the deep red of her slightly
yoked frock. Her lips were moist and parted in excite-
ment. She was sixteen and beautiful beyond the reach
of hackneyed phrases. The four men fixed their eyes
upon her, and she dropped hers. " I was eavesdrop-
ping," she said in a voice that was very low but clear.
" Why, Clem ! " said J. Y. gravely.
Clem looked around on the four men. She did not
seem afraid. Unconsciously they waited for her to go
on, and she did. " Mr. Collingeford was telling about
Alan. I haard Charley say he was going to. I shall
always eavesdrop when any one tells about Alan."
For a second her auditors were stunned by the audac-
ity. Collingeford's face was the first to light up and
his hand came down on the table with a bang. " Bully
for you, young 'un ! " he cried and his clear laugh could
be heard on the lawn. Before it was over, the Judge
joined in, the Captain grunted his merriest grunt and
J. Y. patted Clem's shoulder and smiled.
Clem was of the salt of the earth among womankind
the kind that waits to weep till the battle is over and
then becomes a thousand times more dear in her weak-
HOME 97
ness. Her big eyes had been welling with tears and now
they jumped the barrier just as Nance rushed in and
cried, " What are you all laughing at ? " Then she
caught sight of Clem. From her she looked around on
the men. " You four big hulking brutes/' she said.
" Come to me, Clem, you darling. What have they been
doing to you ? There, there, don't cry. Men are silly
things. What if they did laugh at you ? "
Clem was sobbing on Nance's shoulder. " It is n't
that," she gasped. " I don't mind that ! But
Mr. Collingeford ca-called me a ' young one.' '
The three gray-heads kept their faces with difficulty.
Collingeford leaped to his feet. " My dear young lady
Miss Clematis " he stammered, " my word, now !
I did n't mean it. Swear I did n't. I '11 do anything
if you '11 only stop crying. Do stop and listen to me.
I '11 grovel."
It took him an hour to make his peace.
CHAPTER XV
MANY they were who drank at the fountain of hos-
pitality in Maple House and to all, quiet Mrs.
J. Y. held out the measured cup of welcome with im-
partial hand. But once in a while one came who made
the rare appeal to the heart. Such a one was Collinge-
ford. For all his wanderings, his roughing, and his
occasional regression to city drawing-rooms and ultra-
country houses, Collingeford fitted into the Hill he
belonged.
On Sunday night they were gathered on the lawn, all
but Clem who sat at the piano beside an open window
and poured her girl's voice out over the rippling keys.
Her voice was thin and clear like a mountain brook
hurrying o TT er pebbles and like the brook it held the
promise of coming fullness.
Collingeford sat by Mrs. J. Y., a little apart from the
others. They had not talked. Mrs. J. Y. broke a long
silence when she said, in a full low voice that somehow
seemed related to Clem's thin trill. " We are very quiet
here."
Collingeford looked thoughtfully at his glowing cigar-
end. " The best parts of life are quiet," he answered.
"Do you really like it?" said Mrs. J. Y., almost
shyly. " Englishmen of your class generally fall to the
lot of our landed and chateauxed."
98
HOME 99
" My dear Mrs. Wayne," said Collingeford, " I 've
been sitting here in a really troubled silence trying to
think out how to ask you to make it a week for me in-
stead of a week-end."
Mrs. J. Y.'s laugh was happy but low. It did not
disturb the others. Collingeford went on. " I know
America pretty well for an Englishman. I thought I
had done the whole country, from Albuquerque to New-
port. But you are right. When we 're not roughing
it out West, we visiting Englishmen are pretty apt to be
rubbing up against the gilded high-lights of the landed
and the chateauxed. This " Collingeford waved his
cigar to embrace the whole of Red Hill " is something
new to me and old. It 's the sort of thing English-
men think of when they are far from home. I have
never seen it before in America."
" And yet," said Mrs. J. Y., " there are thousands
of quiet homes in America just like it in spirit. In
spite of all our divorces all our national linen-wash-
ing in public our homes are to-day what they always
have been, the backbone of the country. The social
world is in turmoil everywhere and America is in the
throes no less than England. Our backbone is under
a strain and some think it is breaking, but I don't."
She turned her soft eyes on Collingeford and smiled.
" There," she added, " I have been polemic but one
seldom has the chance to spread the good fame of one's
country. I am glad you can give us a week instead of
a week-end."
Collingeford heard some one speak of Mrs. Lansing
and he said to Mrs. J. Y., " I know a Mrs. Lansing
100 HOME
a beautiful and scintillating young person the sort of
effervescence that flies over to Europe and becomes the
dismay of our smart women and the fate of many men."
Mrs. J. Y. for a second was puzzled. " That is n't
Mrs. Lansing it 's Mrs. Gerry you 're thinking of.
Mrs. Lansing is her mother-in-law. They live next
door."
The next morning, with Clem as cicerone, Collinge-
ford went over to The Firs to pay his respects to Alix.
They found her under the trees.
" How do you do ? " said Alix. " The Honorable
Percy, is n't it ? "
" What a memory you have for trifles," said Collinge-
ford, laughing. " May I sit down ? "
" Do," said Alix. She was perched in the middle of
a garden seat. On each side of her were piled various
stuffs and all the paraphernalia of the sewing circle.
Collingeford sat down before her and stared. Clem
had gone off in search of game more to her taste. Alix
seemed to him very small. He felt the change in her
before he could fix in what it lay. She seemed still and
restful in spite of her flying fingers. Spiritually still.
Her eyes, glancing at him between stitches, were amused
and grave at the same time.
" Doll's clothes ? " said Collingeford, waving at a
beribboned morsel.
" No," said Alix.
Collingeford stared a little longer and then he broke
out with, " Look here, what have you done with her ?
Over there, the young Mrs. Lansing spice, deviltry,
scintillation and wit blinding. Over here, Mrs.
HOME 101
Gerry demure and industrious. Don't tell me you
have gone in for the Quaker pose, but please tell me
which is the poseuse; you now or the other one."
Alix laughed. " I 'm just me now, minus the devil-
try and all that. Come, I '11 show you what I 've done
with it."
They threaded the trees and came upon a mighty
bower, half sun, half shade, where in the midst of a
nurse and Clem and many toys a baby was enthroned
on a rug. " There you are," said Alix. " There 's
my spice, deviltry, scintillation and wit all done into
one roily-poly."
" Well, I 'm blowed," said Collingeford, advancing
cautiously on the young monarch. " Do you want me
to to feel him or say anything about his looks ? I '11
have to think a minute if you do."
" Booby," said Alix, " come away."
But Collingeford seemed fascinated. He squatted
on the rug and poked the monarch's ribs. Nurse,
mother and Clem flew to the rescue, but to their amaze-
ment the monarch did not bellow. He appropriated
Collingeford's finger. " I wonder if he 'd mind if I
called him a ' young 'un/ " soliloquized the attacking
giant. Then he pulled the baby's leg. " When he
grows up tell him I was the first man to pull his leg.
My word, he has n't a bone in his body, not even a
tooth."
" Silly," said Clem, " of course not."
" What are you staring at him that way for ? " said
Alix. "Can a baby make you think ? A penny for
them."
102 HOME
" I was just thinking," said Collingeford gravely,
" that a baby is positively the only thing I 've never
eaten."
A horrified silence greeted this remark. The nurse
was the first to recover. She strode forward, gathered
up the baby and marched away. Alix and Clem fixed
their eyes on Collingeford. He slowly withered and
drew back.
Then the Judge and Mrs. Lansing came out to them.
Collingeford was introduced. Mrs. Lansing turned to
Alix. " Have you asked Mr. Collingeford to stay to
lulich ? The Judge has asked himself."
" No, Mother," said Alix. " I 'm afraid we could n't
give the Hon. Percy anything new to eat. He says "
" My dear Mrs. Lansing," interrupted Collingeford,
" it's all a mistake. I positively loathe eating new
things, no matter how delicious and rosy and blue-eyed
they look."
" Are you speaking of cabbages ?' " inquired the Judge.
" No, babies," said Clem. " He wanted to eat the
baby."
Mrs. Lansing laughed. " I don't blame him," she
said. " I Ve often wanted to eat him myself."
Collingeford spent a good deal of his week at The
Firs. Clem went to see the baby daily as a matter
of course and he went along, as he said himself, as
another matter of course. Clem talked to the baby,
Collingeford to Alix. He said to her one day, " I Ve
read in books about babies doing this sort of thing to
gad-abouts '
" Gad-abouts," interrupted Alix, " is just, but cruel."
HOME 103
"Well, butterflies," compromised Collingeford.
" But I never believed it really happened."
" Oh," said Alix, " it was n't the baby. Not alto-
gether. You see, Mr. Collingeford, Gerry Lansing
I 'm Mrs. Gerry disappeared over a year ago be-
fore the baby came. He thought I didn't love him.
I might as well tell you all about it. I believe in tell-
ing things. Mystery is always more dangerous than
truth; it gives such a lead to imagination."
So she told him and Collingeford listened, interested.
At the end he said nothing. Alix looked at his thought-
ful face. " What do you think ? Is n't there a chance ?
Don't you think he 's possibly probably alive ? "
The Judge was not there to hear the meek appeal of
faith for comfort. Collingeford met Alix' eyes frankly.
" If I were you," he said, " I would probably believe as
you do. I 've met too many dead men in Piccadilly
looking uncommonly well ever to say that a man is dead
because he 's disappeared. Then there 's the other side
of it. Bodsky says a man is never dead while there 's
anybody left that loves him."
" The Judge told me about Bodsky. He 's the man
that said there had been lots of murderers he 'd like to
take to his club. He must be worth while. I 'd like
to talk to him."
" I don't suppose," said Collingeford absently, " that
Bodsky has talked to a woman since he killed his mis-
tress."
Alix started and looked up from her work. " Don't
you think you had better come back and bring the
talk back with you ? "
104: HOME
It was Collingeford's turn to start. " I beg your
pardon," he said. " You are right, I was in another
world. Only you must n't get a wrong impression.
Everybody says it was an accident except Bodsky.
He has never said anything."
CHAPTER XVI
ALAN WAYNE had been away for a year. He
had not returned from Montreal but had gone on
from there to work in South America and, later, to
Africa.
He had been in town for several days when he met
the Judge one afternoon in November on the Avenue.
" Judge," he said without preamble, " what 's this I
hear about Gerry disappearing."
" It 's true," said the Judge and added grimly,
" he disappeared the day you went to Montreal."
Alan colored and his face turned grave. " I am
sorry," he said. " I did n't know it."
" Sorry for what ? " asked the Judge, but Alan re-
fused the opening and the Judge hardly regretted it.
They were not in tune and he felt it. His heart was
heavy over Alan for his own sake. He had broken
what the Judge had long reverenced as a charmed
circle. He had exiled himself from that which should
have been dearer to him than his heart's desire. The
Judge wondered if he realized it. " You 're not going
out to Eed Hill ? " he asked, trying to make the ques-
tion casual.
Alan glanced at him sharply. What was the Judge
after ? " No," he said after a pause, " I shall not break
the communal coma of Eed Hill for some time. I 'm
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106 HOME
off again. McDale & McDale have loaned me to Ellin-
son's. I 've become a sort of poolibah on construction
in Africa. They get a premium for lending me."
Alan's speech habitually drawled except for an oc-
casional retort that came like the crack of a whip. The
Judge looked him over curiously. Alan's dress was al-
most too refined. His person was as well cared for as
a woman's. Every detail about him was a studied
negation of work, utility, service. The Judge thought
of Collingeford's story and wondered.
They walked in silence for some time and then Alan
took his leave. The Judge followed his erect figure
with solemn eyes. Alan had deteriorated. One can-
not be the fly in the amber of more than one woman's
memory without clouding one's own soul, and a clouded
soul has its peculiar circumambiency which the clean
can feel. The Judge felt it in Alan and winced.
If Alan did not go to the Hill, the Hill, in certain
measure, came to Alan. The next afternoon found the
Captain once more established in his chair in a window
at the club with Alan beside him. The Captain had
not changed. His hair was in the same state of white
insurgency, his eyes bulged in the same old way, and he
still puffed when he talked. His garb was identical and
awakened the usual interest in the passing gamin.
" You '11 never grow old, sir," said Alan.
" Old I " said the Captain. " Huh, I grew old be-
fore you were born." The Captain spoke with pride.
He straightened his bullet head and poised a tot of
whisky with a steady hand. " What did I tell you ? "
he said into space.
HOME 107
" How 's that, sir ? "
" What did I tell you," repeated the Captain swing-
ing around his eyes, " about women ? "
Alan flushed angrily. He had no retort for the old
man. He sat sullenly silent.
The Captain colored too. " That 's right," he said
with a surprising touch of choler. " Sulk. Every
badly broken colt sulks at the grip of the bit. What
you need, young man, is a touch of the whip and you 're
going to get it."
And then the old man revealed a surprising knowl-
edge of words that could lash. At first Alan was in-
different, then amazed, and finally recognized himself
beaten at his own game. He came out of that inter-
view thoroughly chastened and with an altogether new
respect for the old Captain. No one knew better than
Alan that it took a special brand of courage to whip
him with words but the Captain had not stopped to
stuff his own ears with cotton wool before engaging the
enemy. He had risked all in one liquid, stinging, over-
whelming volley and he had won.
The Captain's code was peculiar, to say the least, and
held the passionate pilgrim in ample regard but, as he
pointed out to Alan, it was a code of honor. It played
a game within rules. He further remarked that the
hawk was a bird of evil repute but personally he pre-
ferred him to the eagle that fouls its own nest. There
were other pregnant phrases that hung in Alan's mind
for some time and half awakened him to a realization
of where he stood. Many a man, propped up by the
sustaining atmosphere of a narrow world, has passed
108 HOME
merciless judgment on such sins as Alan's metal, un-
proved, sitting in judgment over the bar that twists in
the flame. But the Captain was not one of the world's
confident army of the untested. He had roamed the
high seas of pleasure as well as the ocean wave. Alan
would have struck back at a saint but he took chastise-
ment from the old sinner with good grace.
Alan left the Captain and presented himself at the
downtown offices of J. Y. Wayne & Co. They were
expecting him and he was shown in to his uncle im-
mediately, to the exasperation of several pompous, wait-
ing clients. It was the first time that uncle and nephew
had been face to face since their memorable interview
at Maple House.
J. Y. Wayne was aging. He had lived hard and
showed it, but there was no weakness in his age and he
met Alan without compromise. He nodded toward a
chair but did not offer his hand. When he spoke his
voice was low and modulated to the tone of business.
" I wanted to see you to tell you that you have over-
paid your account with me. The balance has been put
to your credit. You can see the cashier about that.
I want to tell you, too, that I have made too much
money myself to admire a surprising capacity in that
direction in any one else.
" Don't think that I don't appreciate the significance
of your wiping out a debt which you incurred unwit-
tingly. I can see that you had to do it because a Wayne
must carry his head high in his own eyes. But " and
here J. Y. 's eyes left his nephew's expressionless face
and looked vaguely into the shadows of the room. His
HOME 109
voice took a lower key. " With all your sacrifice to
pride you have failed in pride. You have not been
proud in the things that count."
J. Y. 's voice fell still lower. His words hung and
dropped in the silence of the room like the far-away
throb of a great bell on a still night. " Yesterday Clem
was crying because you had not come to the house. I
try to think, Alan, that it 's because Clem is there that
you have not come. If I could think that " J. Y.'s
eyes came slowly back to Alan's face. A dull red was
burning there. J. Y. went on, " Shame is a precious
thing to a man. Different creeds different circum-
stances carry us to various lengths. Ethics are elastic
to-day as never before but, as long as shame holds a bit
of ground in a man's battlefield, he can win back to any
height."
Eor a long minute there was silence, then on a com-
mon impulse they both arose. Alan's eyes were wide
open and moist. He held out his hand and J. Y.
gripped it. It was their whole farewell.
Back in his rooms Alan sat down and wrote to Clem ;
" Dear Clem : We are all two people. Uncle J.
Y. cut his other half off about thirty years ago and
left it behind. The Judge has his other half locked
up in a closet. He has never let it out at all. And
so on, with every one of us. This sounds very funny
to you now but some day when you are grown up you
will catch your other self looking at you and then you
will understand what I mean. I am two people too.
The half of me that knows you and loves you and Red
Hill and that you love has been away longer than the
110 HOME
rest of me. He only got back twenty minutes ago, and
it is too late for him to come and see you because he
and the rest of me are off to-morrow on another trip.
But he wants you to know that he is awfully sorry to
have missed you. Next time I shall bring him with
me, I hope, and I '11 send him to you the day we arrive."
CHAPTER XVII
THERE is no stronger proof of man's evolution
than his adaptability, his power of attainment
through the material at hand, however elementary.
From the very beginning, the necessities of his new
life called to Gerry's dormant instincts. For the first
week he would not hear. The past loosens its tendrils
slowly. He was listless and loafed restlessly about the
house. The two darkies worked for his well-being, the
two white women waited on him hand and foot. At
first it was lulling ; then it was wearying. He began to
wander from the house.
But the week had not been altogether lost. He had
gathered desultory but primitive information. Occa-
sional reoccuring words began to be more than mere
sounds. The girl's name was Margarita. The
wrinkled little woman was her aunt, Dona Maria. The
two darkies were lingering relics of slave days. They
had been born here. They had gone with emancipation,
but they had come back. The name of the plantation
was Fazenda Flores. To them it was the world. They
had wandered out of it hand in hand with liberty but
they had come back because freedom was here. They
needed some one to serve. Margarita had long been
an orphan. The place was hers and had once been rich.
But before her day water had become scarce. The place
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112 HOME
was uncared for and had fallen into its present ruin.
It was well, she said, for if she had been rich suitors
would have searched her out long since. She was
eighteen. She had been a woman for years !
These things, some of them distinct, some only half-
formed impressions, ran in Gerry's head as he wandered
over the fazenda. It had once been rich, why was it
not rich now? Fertility sprang to his view on every
side save one. This was the gentle slope away from the
river and behind the house. Even here he discovered
hummocks in alignment, vague traces of the careful
tilling of another time. He climbed the slope till he
came to a depression running parallel to the river. It
made a line and beyond that line was desert untamed.
Cactus and thorn dotted its barren soil. Gerry fol-
lowed the depression down to its end, then turned back
and followed it up. It wandered among rocks and
hillocks to a natural cleft in the banks of the great
river.
The cleft was long and straight and at its end he
saw the turmoil of the rushing current. The water
surged up the cleft to the gentle slope of sand at his
feet in an eternal come and go. What a place for a
bath, he thought, and then found Margarita panting
beside him. She had followed him. She had been
running. She held one hand to her heart and with the
other clutched his arm. When she had got her breath
she motioned him to stand still. Then she picked up a
large stone and, running down the hard sand bank be-
hind a receding wave, dropped it and ran back. The
water rushed after her, picked up the stone, played with
HOME 113
it, and then the terrific undertow carried it whirling
down the cleft and away. Gerry smiled and nodded
his thanks and comprehension.
He climbed a point of rock and gazed around him.
Far down to the left gleamed the old plantation house
in the midst of its waste lands. His eye followed the
long depression and he began to understand many
things. The ruin was a young ruin like himself. In
itself it contained the seeds of rejuvenescence. It had
been robbed of its talisman and its talisman was water.
Tons of water flowed past it and left it thirsting for
drops. Irrigation is coeval with the birth of civiliza-
tion. It had been here in this depression, lived, and
passed away before he and the girl were born. He
tried to explain to her what once had been, but she
shrugged her shoulders. She was not interested; she
did not understand. Together they walked back to the
house. Gerry was silent and thoughtful. He saw a
vision of what Fazenda Flores had once been, what
work could make it again.
The following day he rooted out two rusty spades
from the debris in the old mill, fitted new handles to
them and took the old darky, Bonifacio by name, off
with him to the depression. They began the long task
of digging out the silt of years. Day after day, week
after week, they clung to the monotonous work. The
darky worked like an automaton. Work in itself to
him was nothing beyond the path to food and rest at
night. Labor made no demands on courage it had
no end, no goal. But Gerry's labor was dignified by
conscious effort. His eyes were not in the ditch but
114 HOME
on the vision he had seen of what Fazenda Flores might
be. He had fixed his errant soul on a goal. The es-
sence of slavery is older than any bonds wrought by man.
The white man and the black in the ditch were its
parable. The dignity and the shame of labor were
side by side, paradoxically yoked to the same task.
Margarita and her aunt looked on and smiled and
joy began to settle on the girl. During Gerry's first
restless week she had steeled herself each night to the
thought that she would wake to find him gone. But
now he was taking root. It amused him to dig. Well,
let him dig. There was no end to digging.
Gerry occasionally varied the work of digging with
making some knick-knack for the house. The twisted
limbs of trees became benches to supplant the rickety
chairs, clumsily patched and totally inadequate to his
weight. In the same way he made the massive frame
of a bed and Bonifacio remembered an art and filled
in the frame with plaited thongs. Work inspires emu-
lation. The women got out their store of cloth. They
made clothes for Gerry and 'fitted out the new bed.
Pillows and mattress were stuffed with dry bur-mari-
golds that faintly scented the whole room. With each
achievement the somber house seemed to take a step
toward gaiety. Ruin and dilapidation put forth green
shoots. The gaiety was reflected in the household.
They were united in achievement. Quiet smiles were
their reward to each other and sometimes a burst of
wonder as when Gerry found some old bottles and with
the aid of a bit of string cut them into serviceable mugs.
Margarita was happy. Her cup was full. All the
HOME 115
dreams of her girlhood were fulfilled in Gerry. A
silent and strange lover, but a man such a man as
she had dreamed of but never seen. To herself she
sang the old songs he should have sung to her and then
laughed as he nodded mild approval.
One evening he sat on a bench on the veranda, fitting
a handle into a dipper made of a cocoanut-shell. Mar-
garita sat on the steps at his feet. She stayed herself
on her hands and leaning back gazed on the starry sky
and sang:
Brunette, Brunette,
Thy sparkling eyes,
To grace a world,
Have robbed the skies.
They are two stars,
That shine and see.
Brunette, Brunette,
Have pity on me!
Her young voice bubbled up from a full heart. It
was joy bubbling from a well of happiness.
Brunette, Brunette,
Those dreaming eyes,
Your eyes, Brunette,
They are my skies.
They are my sins,
Such eyes as they,
I look and sin,
And then I pray!
She leaned back further and further until she sank
against his knees. He stooped over her. She threw up
her arms around his neck, locked her hands and drew
him down. He kissed her lips and sighed.
" Ah, do not sigh," she wailed. " Laugh ! Laugh
but once ! "
CHAPTEE XVIII
GEEEY did not grudge the months of toil in the
ditch. As he worked he thought and planned.
This ditch was the very real foundation for the attain-
ment of his vision. Deep and strong and carefully
graded it must be before he cleared the sand barrier
to the river's surge. The ditch was slow of growth
but there was something about it which held his faith.
It was rugged and elemental. It was the ugly source
of a coming resurrection.
When it was all but done he took Margarita and
showed her his handiwork. He pointed out the little
sluiceways, each with its primitive gate, a heavy log
hinged on a thole-pin with a prop to hold it up and a
stone to weight it when down. On the Fazenda side
were innumerable little trenches that stretched down
into the valley.
But not until he led her to the cleft in the river
gorge and showed her that half an hour's work on the
sand barrier would let the river into the great ditch
did she understand. And then she caught his arm and
burst into violent protest and pleading. " IsTo, no,"
she cried, " you shall not do it. You shall not let in
the river. The river is terrible. You must not play
with it. It does not understand. You think it will
do as you wish but it will not. Oh, if vou must, please,
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HOME 117
please play with it below the rapids. There it is kinder.
It lets one bathe. It lets one wash clothes."
Gerry got over his astonishment and laughed. Then
he soothed her. Already the simpler phrases of her
tongue came easily from his lips. He told her that she
was foolish and a little coward. She must watch and
see how tame the river would be. As he talked a
strange figure approached on the other side of the
ditch.
" Father Mathias," said Margarita, " it is Father
Mathias. He will help me dissuade you."
Gerry looked with awe on the spectacle presented by
the newcomer. An old man, rubicund of face, his flat,
wide-brimmed hat pushed well back on his gray head,
was ambling towards them on a mule. A long cassock,
half unbuttoned and looped about his waist, was sup-
plemented by black trousers and flaring riding boots.
Over his head for protection against the sun he held
an enormous white cotton umbrella lined with green.
The mule stopped abruptly on the very brink of the
ditch. The old priest shot off and rolled down the bank
to the bottom. The mule stood still, his fore legs
slightly straddled; his pose was one of mild surprise.
Before Gerry could jump into the ditch the priest
had scrambled to his feet.
" Blessing, Father," said Margarita, gravely.
" God bless thee, daughter," replied the priest calmly,
" but not this accursed ditch. My hands are soiled,
nay, worse, scratched ! " With the help of Gerry's
strong grip he climbed to the top of the bank on which
they stood. He smiled on them benignantly. " A
118 HOME
strange welcome to the old Father, children. What
devil dug this pit for rectitude ? "
" Oh, Father," cried Margarita, " curse the ditch if
you will, but do not call my man a devil. Look at
him. Is he not good to see ? I found him at the river.
He is mine."
Gerry smiled at the girl then at the priest. The
priest smiled back. " Thou didst find him at the river,
thou daughter of Pharaoh ! " cried the priest, a twinkle
in his eye. " A fine babe. May he grow to be a leader
of his people."
Together they walked down to the house. Bonifacio
was despatched to fetch the mule and then Margarita
drew the old priest into a vacant room. Over her
shoulder she said to Gerry, " I am going to confess."
Gerry flushed and nodded. He wished that he could
subject his own conscience to so simple a rite. He
walked about nervously, wondering what the priest
would have to say to him when he came out. But when
Margarita and Father Mathias finally emerged they
were already talking of other things. The household
gathered in the kitchen and there the old Father retailed
the gossip of a vast country-side.
It was almost a year since he had visited this off-
shoot of his parish and he had much to tell. The
Father was a connoisseur in gossip for women. He
touched lightly on tragedies and moral slips in his com-
munity but dwelt at length on funerals, births, mar-
riages, where rain had fallen and where it had not,
the success or failure of each of the great church fetes
and all kindred subjects. This was the link, mused
HOME 119
Gerry, that joined Fazenda Elores to the world and the
world to Fazenda Flores.
The next morning Gerry was up early. He was ex-
cited. From this day the ditch, the parched slope, the
valley would know thirst no more. With the long dry
season even the green bottoms had begun to wilt. He
called Bonifacio and as they started off Father Mathias
and Margarita joined them.
" You will not let him do it, Father ? " the girl was
saying. " The ditch is accursed. You yourself have
cursed it."
" That was but a playful anathema," said the priest,
smiling at the recollection of his introduction to the
ditch. " Stay thou here, child. Perhaps I shall find
that to solemnly bless in your man's ditch."
The girl went slowly back to the house and the priest
walked on with Gerry. " Irrigation," he began, " is des-
tined to be the salvation of all this country. Water,
we have in plenty ; but it rushes by in great rivers leav-
ing the overhanging land thirsty. I picture all these
barren cliffs leaning over, longing for a drink. Where
else can you see cactus overhanging torrents and cattle
starving to death on a river bank ? "
Gerry was surprised. " So you bless my ditch ? " he
asked with a smile.
" Yes," replied the priest. He had dropped the
" thou " that the church accords her children only. He
talked like one man of the world to another. " Your
ditch, I can bless." Gerry had led him to the point
of rock from which he had first conceived his vision.
" You have not been a slave to haste," continued the
120 HOME
priest. " The curse of my people is that they toil to
avoid work but you have worked to avoid toil."
" It is true," said Gerry, " though I had never
thought it out. I am striving to make nature do the
toiling. Man, toiling alone, has always been a pigmy."
Under his direction Bonifacio was digging a great
hole just at the back of the sand-bank. Gerry meas-
ured its capacity and finally called the old darky out.
He jumped down on to the sand-bank himself and dug
a small trench to the water. The river surged through
it gently. Gerry climbed out. With each pulse of the
come-and-go a wave rushed through the little trench,
widening it and occasionally carrying away a block of
the sand-bank into the hole. Gradually, then in rapid
progression, the barrier was leveled. The hole filled
with water that rose till it began to trickle down the
long length of the ditch. They followed the tiny
stream. Soon it came in rushing surges. Hours
passed. Bonifacio slept, but Gerry and the priest had
forgotten time. The ditch filled. The water started
to flow back into the river. Along all its length the
ditch held. Gerry heaved a great sigh. The priest
gave him his hand.
" Wonderfully graded," he said. " You are a born
engineer."
Gerry started opening the sluice gates, the lowest
first. The water gurgled out into the main trench and
from there was distributed. At first the thirsty soil swal-
lowed it greedily but gradually the rills stretched further
and further down into the valley. Under the blazing
sun they looked like streams of molten silver and gold.
HOME 121
Margarita came running up to them from the house.
She looked reproachfully at Father Mathias. Gerry
put his arm around her and made her face the valley.
The priest stretched out his arms and blessed the water.
Then he looked at the girl and smiled. She smiled
back at him but trouble was still in her eyes.
Gerry left them to start on the work of fitting the
ponderous sluice-gate of hewn logs that he had pre-
pared for the mouth of the great ditch. It was a
triumph of ingenuity. He never could have evolved
it without the aid of a giant ironwood wormscrew taken
from the wreck of a cotton press. The screw was so
heavy that he and Bonifacio could hardly carry it.
At the end of three days the great gate was installed.
He and Bonifacio toiled like sailors at a capstan.
They drove the heavy barrier down into the sand with
a last turn of the screw and shut out the river. Mar-
garita came and saw and was pleased.
CHAPTEE XIX
UNDER the broad dome of a mango tree on the
banks of an unnamed African river Alan
Wayne had pitched his camp. The Selwyn tent and
the projecting veranda fly were faded and stained.
The bobbinet mosquito curtains were creamed with age
and service. Two camp chairs and a collapsible table,
battered but strong, were placed before the tent. Over
one of the chairs hung a towel. On the ground squatted
a take-down bath tub, half filled with water. In the
deep shadow of the tree the pale green rot-proof can-
vas of the tent, the fly, the chairs and bath tub, gleamed
almost white.
On the farther side of the great trunk of the tree
was the master's kitchen, three stones and a half-circle
of forked sticks driven into the ground. On the sticks
hung a few pots and pans, a saddle of buck, bits of fat
and a disreputable looking coffee-bag. Between the
stones was a bed of coals. Before them crouched a red-
fezzed Zanzibar!.
From under a second tree, fifty yards away, came
the dull, rhythmic pounding of wooden pestles in
wooden mortars. The eye could just distinguish the
glistening naked torsos of three blacks in motion.
They were singing a barbarous chantey. At the pauses
their arms went up and the pestles came down together
122
HOME 123
with a thud. The blacks were pounding the kaffir corn
for the men's evening meal.
Down the river and almost out of sight a black,
spidery construction reached out over the water
Alan's latest bridge. Men swarmed on it.
Six o'clock and there came the trill of a whistle.
Suddenly the bridge was cleared. A babble of voices
arose. There was a crackling of twigs, a shuffling of
feet, here and there a high, excited cry, and then the
men poured into camp. A din of talk, held in check
for hours, arose. Glistening black bodies danced to
jerky, fantastic steps. Songs, shouts and impatient
cries to the cooks swelled the medley of sound.
Through the camp stole the acrid odor of toiling Africa.
Behind the men marched the foreman, McDougal;
behind him came Alan. At sight of him the Zanzibar!
sprang into action. He poured a tin of hot water into
the bath tub and laid out an old flannel suit. Beside
the suit he placed clean underwear, fresh socks and,
on the ground, a pair of slippers.
Alan stripped, bathed and dressed. The Zanzibar!
handed him a cup of hot tea. By the time the tea was
drunk the table was freshly laid and Alan sat down
to a steaming bowl of broth, and dinner.
After dinner McDougal joined him for a smoke. For
a full half hour they sat wordless. Darkness fell and
brought out the lights of their fitfully glowing pipes.
From the men's camp came a subdued chatter. The
men were feeding. As they finished they lit fires a
fire for every little group. The smell of the wood fires
triumphed over every other odor.
124 HOME
McDougal had met Alan first in a bare room at an
African seaport. The room was furnished with a chair
and a table. At the table sat Alan, busy with final
estimates and plans for supplies for his little army.
The interview was short. McDougal had asked for a
job and Alan had answered, " Get out." McDougal
had repeated his request and the rest of the story he
told the next morning before the Resident Magistrate
in the chair and Alan in the dock.
" Aweel, your honor, it was this way : I went into
Mr. Wayne's office and asked him for worruk and he
said, ' Get out.' I asked him again and he said, ' I '11
give you two to get out One Two,' and with that
he cooms on to the table and flying through the air. I
had joost considered that it was best I should let him
hit me first aince that I might break him with justice
when he struck me face with both fists, and his knee in
the pit of me stummick. And that 's all, your honor,
savin' the Kaffir that I woke up to find watering me
and a rose bush, turrn by turrn aboot."
" I suppose," said the Magistrate, covering his twitch-
ing mouth with his hand, " that was the Kaffir I signed
a hospital pass for last night."
" It may weel be," replied McDougal dreamily, " It
may weel be."
" Well, McDougal, I think this is a matter that can
be settled out of court "
McDougal held up a vast hand in interruption.
" Begging your pardon, your honor, there '11 be nae
settling of this matter out of coort between Mr. Wayne
and mysel'. Aince is enough."
HOME 125
Justice and the prisoner in the dock surrendered to
laughter. McDougal stood grave and unperturbed.
"What I meant," said the Magistrate when he re-
covered, " is that Mr. Wayne will probably give you a
job and call it all square."
" That 's it," said Alan.
" I asked Mr. Wayne for worruk and if it 's worruk
he is giving me I '11 nae be denying it is a fair answer,"
replied McDougal, and forthwith became Ten Percent
Wayne's gang-boss and understudy in the art of driving
men with both fists and a knee.
McDougal knocked out his third pipe. " The Deil
of a country is this," he said ; " in the seas of it a life-
preserver holds you up handy for sharks and in the
rivers does swimming save your life ? Nae. It gives
you a meal to the crocs."
They had lost a black that day. He had slipped
from the bridge into the water. He had started to swim
to shore and then suddenly disappeared in a swirl.
Conversationally, McDougal limited himself to a sen-
tence a day in which he summed up the one event that
had struck him as worthy of notice. Having delivered
himself of his observation for the night he lit his pipe
once more and relapsed into silence.
McDougal's was a companionable silence. Alan
could feel him sitting there in the dark, raw-boned and
dour but ready at the word of command.
It was after eight when Alan called for a light and
drew from a worn letter case the correspondence that a
runner from the coast had brought in that day. He
glanced over official communications, blue prints and
126 HOME
business letters and stuffed them back into the leather
case. One fat letter, note-paper size, remained.
" McDougal," said Alan, " hush up the camp tell
'em it 's nine o'clock."
McDougal arose and picking up a big stick strode
over towards the men. The stick was so big that he
had never had to use it. At the mere sight of it the
men desisted from clamor, dance and horse-play.
Alan drew the fat letter from its envelope and for
the second time read, " Dear Alan : As you see, this
is from New York. We came down yesterday. All
summer I have been watching for my second self because
I 'm just about grown up now outside, I mean,
inside is different somehow and three days before we
left I really caught her looking at me while I was sit-
ting on the old stone bench down by the pond.
" I jumped up and ran after her all the way down
Long Lane and up the Low Road to where the red
cow broke her leg that time and there I lost her. I
did n't find her again and had to come away without
her and now I feel so queer sort of half-y, just like
you.
" Somehow I can't blame her. She did n't want to
leave the Hill in the Gorgeous Month so she just stayed
behind. Do you remember
This is the gorgeous month when leafy fires
Mount to the gods in myriad summer pyres . . . ?
" A few hours ago when I was doing my mile on the
Avenue I almost got run down and Mam'selle gave me
an awful scolding for being so absent-minded. It was
HOME 127
a true word. I was just that absent-minded be-
cause my mind was off chasing that other half. I
could see her so plainly! She had on the cinnamon
linen with the white collar and tabs but I forget
you don't know it. She was bare-headed and her feet
and skirt were wet because it had been drizzling before
the sun came out in an evening salute to the flaming
trees. I saw her tumble down jumping the stone wall
in the bushes at the foot of old Bald Head and then
some one picked her up, helped her over and together
they climbed to the top. It was your other half. Have
you missed him? I liked the way he treated mine.
Just like a boy. Somehow he 's younger than you and
sometimes he laughs right out.
" Then I saw her get home, change her things and
shall I tell you ? fish out the old doll yes
Bessy. I left her telling Bessy one of those stories
you used to call Tales of the Very Real Things That
Are Not. Remember? And then I came back and
there I was on the Avenue with people staring at me
more than they ever have before. I suppose it was
because I was out of breath with chasing in my mind.
Good-by, Alan. Clem."
Alan sat in the circle of light from the hanging lamp
and stared into the darkness. From the river came
the sound of sucking mud, then a heavy tread. A
monster hippo blundered through the bushes in search
of food. On the other side of the tree trunk the Zan-
zibari was snoring. The fires were burning out at the
men's camp. Once more the odor of their bodies hung
in the air.
128 HOME
Alan arose and dragged his chair to the outer edge of
the mango tree. He sat down and with hands locked
and elbows on knees gave himself up to memory. He
forgot the sounds and smells of Africa, the black-green
of over-hanging leaves, the black shadows of the swirl-
ing river, the black-bronze of the men about him. For
an hour he tore himself away from the black world to
wander over the beloved hills in New England where
summer dies in a burst of light.
Red Hill, crowned with mountain-ash, called to his
spirit as a torch in the night to a lost wanderer. The
thirty months that had passed since last he saw its
budding promise were swept away. He imagined those
very budding leaves at the end of their course, the pale
amber of the elms, the deep note of the steadfast firs,
the flaunting fire of the brave maples.
Maple House arose before him, its lawn carpeted with
dry leaves. From the leaves floated an incense, dusty,
pungent. The cool shadows of the great, rambling
house beckoned to him. Here is peace, here is rest,
they seemed to cry. The memory of home gripped him,
held him and soothed him. His head nodded and he
slept only to awake with a start, for he had dreamed
that he had lost the way back forever.
CHAPTER XX
ONE day as Gerry was pottering about a log bridge
he had thrown over his ditch, a shadow fell across
his path and he looked up to find Father Mathias, mule,
umbrella and all, looming over him.
" I am on the way back," said the priest, " and I
have stopped to have a chat with you."
" Won't you come down to the house ? " said Gerry.
" Margarita will give you a warm welcome."
" And you ? " said the priest, smiling.
" I ? " said Gerry. " I am but a wayfarer. I can
only welcome you to my ditch."
" What, again ? " said the priest as he slid cum-
brously off his passive mule. With cassock still looped
up about his waist he came to meet Gerry. " Let us
sit down on this log," said the priest, " and you can
listen to the water while I listen to you."
They made a strange picture sitting side by side on
the twisted log. Gerry was looking more and more like
a Greek god. His hair, close cropped by Margarita,
seemed to have bronzed with his skin. The cotton
jumper and trousers had molded themselves to his limbs.
His body was trimmed down to perfect lines.
When he moved one could see muscles rippling as though
work were play. His eyes were deep and clear. They
had forgotten the look of whisky. On his feet were
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130 HOME
rawhide sandals. Like a native he had learned to keep
them on with the aid of a leather button held between
his toes. His feet were white. His face like his body
was alive. He held his big palm-leaf hat in his hands,
for he was under the shade of the priest's great cotton
umbrella.
Father Mathias, too, had taken off his hat and laid it
carefully on his pudgy knees. With a vast red bandana
handkerchief he mopped his gray head, his glistening
tonsure and his fat jowls. About him there was noth-
ing in training except his eyes. They gleamed and
flashed from a passive mask; they swept Gerry from
head to toe. " Flesh is not thy burden, my son."
Gerry knew himself in the presence of a father con-
fessor. He began to tell his story dreamily. In that
blaze of tropical light, perched beside his own handi-
work; a f rocked priest at his side; a mule, with head
and ears pendent, before him ; and down in the valley,
the plantation house, Margarita, the river, it was hard
to picture Alix. He seemed to be in the free swing-
ing orbit of another sphere. He told a lucid story but
as he spoke he seemed to see himself and Alix dimin-
ished by a greater perspective than mere time flies
buzzing under glass. Vaguely he felt that he must still
love Alix were Alix of his life. But she was not. She
belonged to a mechanism of life the whirring of whose
tiny wheels drowned out the low tones of elemental
things which, once heard, left no place in a man's heart
for lesser sounds. Gerry did not picture himself as
entranced by the simple life, but he felt subconsciously
that while once Nature's music had seemed but the shrill-
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ing of cicada?, matching the acute note of an artificial
whirl, now it sang to him in the deep tones of a resonant
organ sang with him for he felt that he was of
the music, that his body was a vibrating, naked cord in
a monster harp.
The priest did not watch him as he talked, but, when
he had finished, turned and seemed to drill him with"
his piercing eyes. " It is well," he said. " Life has
buffeted you that later you may buffet Life. But it is
not with that distant future that I would meddle. To
me you are only a sudden factor in the life of one
of the most innocent of my flock. Some people have
an exaggerated idea of innocence. Not I. Margarita
is innocent to me. She has married you in her heart.
Some day you will go away Gerry shook his head
in denial but the priest resumed, " some day you will go
away and it will kill her. But in the meantime you
make her live a life of sin. Why do you ? Why not
marry her ? "
Gerry looked around in surprise. " Marry her !
Have n't I just told you that I am married ? "
The priest shrugged his shoulders. " All that, my
son, is locked in the confessional. Why make a moun-
tain of a distant molehill ? Need your two worlds ever
clash ? You lose nothing. You give peace to the girl
who is ready to renounce the rights and privileges of
Mother Church rather than say a word that might
frighten you away. She made me swear that I would
never breathe to you of marriage." Gerry smiled but
the priest continued calmly, " the girl is all I am think-
ing of the girl and the children."
132 HOME
" Children ! " exclaimed Gerry. Years with Alix
had relegated children to a state of remote contingency.
It was the priest's turn to smile. " Yes," he said,
" children. They happen, somehow."
Gerry did not smile. He was trying to picture him-
self in relation to children.
" It would not be fair," continued Father Mathias,
" to the children. This place is Margarita's. It was
worth nothing without your ditch. It will soon be
worth a great deal. Say you died say you left her
with children they could not inherit. After all, it
is a small thing for you to do. You and I will know
the marriage is illegal, but it is big odds that the law
will never know it."
" Where are your morals, Father ? " said Gerry, smil-
ing. " Do you counsel me to live a lie ? "
The priest snapped his fat fingers. " In the balance
against peace of mind, lies are feathers. Besides, we
all live a lie anyway. Our ambition should be to live
a big, kindly lie and not a mean, self-centered one. The
ideal, the absolute in anything, is fleshless bloodless
We speak as man to man, eh ? Well, when years have
spread out life behind you, you will look back and see
this lesson; happiness contains content, but happiness
is the enemy of content. They who pursue the greater
may lose all ; they who pursue the lesser sometimes ob-
tain the whole. Behold my major and my minor prem-
ise and the conclusion is : The part is greater than the
whole ! Thus it is with life, my son. The part is al-
ways greater than the whole and a small lie may help
on a great truth."
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Gerry smiled at the Jesuitry. It appealed to him.
It fitted in with the inverted order of things. He rose
and held out his hand. " If children come," he said,
" I will marry her."
The priest scramhled to his feet, his face wreathed
in smiles. The slanted umbrella framed him in a
gigantic aureole. " One more indiscretion," he said,
" and this time the confessional is not the source, that
is, not directly. My son, you had better marry her
straight away."
By the time all he inferred had reached Gerry's brain
Father Mathias had climbed his mule and was off to
the house. Gerry followed him slowly. He did not
feel as though he were about to pay a price. The
marriage brought thus suddenly to his contemplation
would be no meaningless or unlawful form to him. He
would make it a solemn consecration to fatherhood.
When he reached the house, Margarita, standing pant-
ing and frightened beside the priest, one hand on her
breast, the other held out as though groping, studied his
face for a long moment and then hurled herself into his
arms. He held her close and laughed. His laughter
was low, strong like himself, reassuring. Margarita
was quivering and sobbing. He had never heard her
weep before. Suddenly she stopped and raised her eyes
to his. His laughter ceased. Their looks intermingled
and held. Each made to the other an unspoken promise.
The next morning the priest left them again. He
held his weight almost jauntily on the ambling mule.
His wide-brimmed, clerical hat was pushed back to the
verge of a fall and the great umbrella was slanted to
134 HOME
meet the level rays of the rising sun. Priest and mule
combined to give the impression of a sea-going tub
rigged in rakish, joyous lines. The priest was jubilant.
He had married the lovers and carried with him the
documents for registry. Gerry walked beside the mule
as far as the bridge. There the tub turned laboriously
and its convoy with it. The two men looked over the
valley and smiled. The valley smiled back. Already
it was robed in a wide-spread flush of green. The priest
nodded slowly. " It is good," he said. " Farewell, my
son," and he turned to sail ponderously out into the
barren lands of cactus and thorn.
Gerry watched him out of sight and then turned to
his work of tilling the soil. He cut the best of the
cane and Bonifacio planted the joints at a slant with
knowing hand. He sorted the bolls of cotton. The
women studied the fiber and when it was long, silky and
tough they picked out the seeds with care and hoarded
them, for their time was not yet. One duty urged an-
other. The days passed rapidly.
One morning Gerry looked up from his labor to find
a mounted figure just behind him. An elderly man of
florid face sat a restive stallion of Arab strain. The
stranger's note was opulence. From his Panama hat,
thin and light as paper, to his silver spurs and the
silver-mounted harness of his horse, wealth marked him.
He was dressed in white linen and his flaring, glossy rid-
ing-boots of embroidered Russian leather stood out from
the white clothes and the whiter sheep's fleece that
served as saddle cloth, with telling effect. In his hands
was a silver-mounted rawhide quirt. His face was
HOME 135
grave, his eyes blue and kindly. As Gerry looked at
him he spoke, " I 'm Lieber from up the river. Father
Mathias told me about you."
Gerry started at the familiar English and frowned.
At the frown the stranger's eyes shifted. " I did n't
come down here to bother you," he went on hastily.
" Father Mathias told me about the green grass and I
could n't keep away. I 've got cattle and horses up my
way and they 're dying starving. I came down to
make a deal. I 've picked out a hundred and twenty
head with blood in 'em horses and cattle. If you '11
take 'em and feed 'em through to the rains I '11 give you
ten out of the hundred. Some are too far gone to save,
I 'm afraid."
Gerry looked at his tiny plantations which showed
up meanly in the great expanse of waste pasture.
" I 'm sorry," he said, " but I 'm afraid I can't. You
see, I can't afford to fence."
Lieber looked around and nodded. " That 's all
right," he said, " I 've got a lot of old wire that 's no
use to me and a lot of loafers to tear it down and put it
up. I '11 fence as much pasture as you say and throw
in the fencing on the deal."
" That 's mighty fair," said Gerry; " I '11 take you."
He dropped his. hoe. "Won't you come down to the
house and have a bite to eat ? " He turned and Lieber
started to follow. " By the way," said Gerry over his
shoulder, " you 're not a German, are you ? "
Lieber stopped his horse. His eyes wavered. " No,"
he said shortly, " I 'm not. I 'm an American. After
all, I don't think I ought to waste any time. Hours
136 HOME
tell with starving stock. I '11 just get back in a hurry,
if you don't mind. My men and the wire will be here
just that much sooner."
Gerry frowned again but this time at himself. He
felt that he had stepped on another man's corns while
defending his own. " All right, Mr. Lieber," he said.
" The sooner the better. I '11 do all I can to help."
The next morning the men came accompanied by ox-
carts loaded with fencing, posts and all. Lieber was
with them. He sat his horse through the hot hours and
drove his men steadily. Gerry threw himself into the
work as foreman. The fence grew with amazing rapid-
ity. From the bridge they carried it in a straight line
past the house to the river. It cut off a vast triangle
whose two other sides were held by the ditch and the
river. By night the work was almost done. Gerry was
tired and happy, but he sighed. How many weeks of
toil would not he and Bonifacio have had to put in to
accomplish that fence ! Money assumed a new aspect in
his thoughts. What could he not do if he had money
to buy material and to pay labor ? How he could make
a little money grow! He thought of the bank account
at home that must be piling up in his name. But some-
how the thought of that money was not tantalizing.
That solution had nothing to do with his present prob-
lem of life. That money seemed unrelated to himself
now unrelated to effort. It did not belong in the
scheme of things.
Lieber stayed the night with them and Gerry studied
and imitated the older man's impersonality. Lieber
kept his eyes on his plate or in the vague distance while
HOME 137
the women attended them and as soon as the business
of eating was over he retired to the room that had been
allotted to him.
He was up early in the morning and away to meet the
coming herd. First came the horses, neighing and
quickening their weak trot at the smell of grass. Far
away and like a distorted echo sounded the lowing of
the slower cattle. The little herd of Fazenda Flores
caught the moaning cry and lifted lazy heads. One or
two lowed back.
The horses were rounded up at the bridge to await the
cattle. They stretched thin necks toward the calling
grass and moved restlessly about with quick turns of
eager heads and low impatient whinnies. Lieber sat
his stable-fed stallion stolidly, but his eyes grew moist
as he looked over the bony lot of horses. " They must
wait for the cattle," he said to Gerry. " A fair start
and no favor. God, if you could have seen them three
months ago ! "
The cattle came up in a rapid shamble that carried
them slowly for they were staggering in short, quick
steps. Their heads hung almost to the ground. They
had no shame. They moaned pitifully continually.
Gerry opened the wire gap. The horses gave an
anticipatory whirl and then dashed through. They for-
got their weakness. They galloped down the slope,
spurning beneath their feet the food they had longed
for. They did not stop till they reached the rich bot-
toms. Lieber smiled affectionately. " There 's spirit
for you," he said.
The cattle followed but the men had to beat the first
138 HOME
through away from the gap. They had stopped to eat
and had blocked the way. At last they were all in and
the gap closed. One or two stood with straddled feet
and continued to low, their lips just brushing the lush
grass. " Poor beasts," said Lieber, the smile gone from
his face, " they are too weak to eat."
He and Gerry went back to the house for breakfast.
The herders sat and smoked. They had had coffee; it
would see them through half the day. Before Lieber
left, the horses were herded once more and with much
trouble driven out upon the desert. Lieber turned to
Gerry. " Don't let them back in until to-morrow,
please," he said. " If you do, they '11 founder."
" What about the cattle ? " asked Gerry.
" The cattle are all right. They have n't enough
spirit left to kill themselves eating. They '11 begin ly-
ing down pretty soon. Good-by, and remember, you '11
get a warm welcome up at Lieber' s whenever you feel
like riding over."
" Thanks," said Gerry. " Good-by."
He watched Lieber ride away on the road the priest
had taken. Pazenda Flores, his isolated refuge, was
beginning to link itself to a world, Man, like a vine,
has tendrils. To climb he must reach them out and
cling.
CHAPTER XXI
THE horses picked up rapidly, the cattle more
slowly. Two calves, added to the herd over
night, aroused memories of the home farm in Gerry's
breast. Every morning he stood by the pasture fence
and gazed with a thrill on the new life in the scene. A
fluttering corn husk or the wave of a hand was enough
to start the horses careering over the fields. Life had
sprung up in them anew. They played at being afraid.
They leaped mere hummocks as though they were walls.
Heads and tails held high, they breasted the morning
breeze in a vigorous, resounding trot. Here and there
heels were flung high. The trot echoed in a rapid cres-
cendo that broke and was lost in a wild clatter of hoofs,
beating out the music of a mad gallop. The cattle,
all but a few that still hovered between life and death,
now stood sturdily on four legs. They lifted their
heads slowly and gazed mild-eyed at the romping horses.
Resurrection was becoming a familiar miracle to
Gerry a sort of staccato accompaniment to life.
Like himself, like Fazenda Flores, all these had been
plunged in young ruin. He began to see the line be-
tween ruin and death. Ruin is fruitful. It holds a
seed. He could see it in Fazenda Flores, in the horses
and cattle, and give it a name but he had not visualized
it in himself. He had no time and no inclination now
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140 HOME
for introspection. Without analysis he felt that he was
at one with the world into which he had fallen. It
held him as though to an allotted place.
The reward of those long months of preparation was
at hand. Once every spade thrust had seemed but the
precursor to barren effort. Now every stroke of the hoe
seemed to bring forth a fresh green leaf. Life fell into
an entrancing monotone. It became an endless chain
that forged its own links and lengthened out into an end-
less perspective. Days passed. The arrival of Lieber's
foreman to see how the stock was progressing was an
event. He brought with him an old saddle and bridle
- a gift from Lieber to Gerry. " He says," the fore-
man remarked with a leer, on making the presentation,
" you can ride anything you can catch."
Gerry felt the foreman needed putting in place. He
went into the house and reappeared carrying something
in his hat. He climbed the fence and called. The
horses raised their heads and looked. Some were lazy
after watering but the others trotted over toward him.
They stopped a few yards off and scrutinized him as
though to divine his intentions. Then they approached
cautiously, with tense legs, ready to whirl and bolt.
A greedy colt refused to play the game of fear to a
finish. He strode forward and was rewarded with a
large lump of sugar. The sugar was coarse and black,
first cousin to virgin molasses, but it was redolent. The
horses crowded around Gerry. They pawed at him.
He had to beat them back. They made a bold assault
on the empty but odorous .hat. Gerry laughed and
cleared the fence to get away from them. "I think
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your master must be mistaken," he said with a smile to
the foreman. " Some of these colts can never have
been backed."
The foreman looked his admiration. He began to
take Gerry seriously; it was man to man now. He
pointed out the horses that were broken to saddle and
named their gaits and mettle. Then his shrewd eyes
looked around for further details to add to his report
to his master. He noted that a few, a very few, of the
cattle were still lying down when they should have been
on their feet and eating. These were herded into a
corner of their own and old Bonifacio was tending them.
Beside each was a pile of fresh cut grass. As they ate
they nosed it away, but Bonifacio made the rounds and
with his foot pushed back the fodder, keeping it in easy
reach.
The foreman's eyes caught on the two new-born calves.
They had been taken from their weak mothers and were
in a rough pen by themselves. The foreman did not
have to count the stock to see that none was missing.
He was cattle bred. A gap in the herd or the bunch of
horses would have flown at the seventh sense of the stock-
man the moment he laid eyes on the field. Instead there
were these two calves. " Master," he said to Gerry,
" you have made up your mind not to lose a head. You
would save even these little ones, born before their
time!"
Gerry nodded gravely. He had worked hard to save
all. He winced at the mere thought of death at
Fazenda Flores even down to these least weaklings. He
himself had fed them patiently from a warm bottle. In
142 HOME
trouble and valuable time they had cost him an acre of
cotton. But an acre of cotton was a small price to pay
for life.
A grip of the hand and the foreman was off
in a cloud of dust. At the bridge he pulled his horse
down to the shambling fox trot that spares beast and
man but eats steadily into a long journey. A bearer of
good tidings rides slowly.
Gerry turned to his work but a cry from the house
arrested him. He listened. The cry was followed by
a moan. He dropped his field tools and ran to the
house. All was commotion. The day of days had
come to Margarita with the appalling suddenness of an
event too long expected. She called for Gerry. He
went to her. She looked a mere child in the big rough
bed he had made with his own hands. Suffering had
struck the light from her face. She was frightened
and clung to him.
Joana, the old negress, and Dona Maria made
methodical haste about the room. At the second cry
from Margarita Gerry lost his head. These women
were hard, they were iron. They paid no attention.
" Something must be done. Something must be done,"
he said aloud in English. The aunt and the negress
worked on in silent preparation of the preparations of
many days. Margarita screamed. They paid no heed.
Her frenzied grip bit into Gerry's hand. " We must
have a doctor," he shouted in their own tongue to the
women. " Do you hear ? We must have a doctor ! "
Cold sweat was gathering on his brow. He too was
frightened.
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Dona Maria glanced at him. " A doctor ? " she cried
impatiently. " What for ? The girl is not ill."
" Not ill ! Not ill ! " roared Gerry.
Dona Maria picked up two towels and tied them to the
bed's head. She tore Margarita's hands from Gerry's ;
then she twisted the towels into ropes and gripped the
girl's hands on them. " Hold on to those," she com-
manded. " Towels have some sense." Then she
clawed Gerry out of his seat by the bed and hustled him
out of the room out of the house. The door slammed
behind him. He heard the great bar drop. He was
locked out.
Gerry paced angrily up and down the veranda.
Calm came back to him. He saw that he had been a
fool. He stopped and sat down on the steps of the
veranda. Here, before he had made his benches, she
had often sat beside him, caressed him, sung to him.
How cold he had been. How little he had done for
her and now she was doing this for him ! He remem-
bered that as she had worked on baby clothes she had
said she wished she had some blue ribbon. They had
all laughed at her, but she had nodded her girl's head
gravely and said, " Yes, I wish I had some blue ribbon
a little roll of blue ribbon." What a brute he had
been to laugh!
The cries ceased but the door did not open. Gerry
still waited. He knew he was waiting and that the
women in the house were waiting. It was terrible to
wait more terrible than the cries. Then she called
to him, " Geree ! Geree ! " He leaped up and pounded
on the door but nobody came. Yesterday they had all
144 HOME
been servile to him ; to-day he was nothing. He shouted,
" I am here 1 I shall always be here." She did not
call again. He paced up and down the veranda saying
to himself, " A little roll of blue ribbon a little roll
of blue ribbon I " He stumbled on the saddle that
Lieber had sent him. It held his eye. He picked up
the bridle and ran down to the pasture. He caught the
oldest and gentlest of the horses, opened a gap in the
fence and led him out. Then he called Bonifacio.
" Listen," he said, " you must take the fattest of the
steers the red one with the blazed face you must
drive him into the town and sell him."
The darky demurred. " It is too late for market,
master."
" It does not matter. You must do as I say," said
Gerry angrily. " You must sell the steer. If you can
not sell him you must give him for blue ribbon. Do
you understand ? You must bring back blue ribbon for
your mistress. She says she must have a little roll of
blue ribbon."
The darky acquiesced. Together they saddled the old
horse and Bonifacio, armed with a long bamboo to prod
the fat steer, mounted and cut out his charge from the
herd. Gerry accompanied him to the bridge. " You
understand, blue ribbon. A roll of blue ribbon," he
shouted.
The old darky nodded gravely and repeated, " Yes,
master, a roll of blue ribbon. The mistress wishes a
roll of blue ribbon. I '11 not forget."
The steer looked back from the desert to the green
of the pasture and lowed. The darky prodded him
HOME 145
with his stick. The steer lowed again and then
shambled off down the trail. Horse and rider followed
slowly. Gerry watched them until they were a mere
patch of dust in the distance; then he hurried back to
the house and sat down to wait again.
Night came and with it horror. The ordeal was on
in earnest now. Gerry stopped his ears with his fingers
and sat doggedly on. Hours passed and Bonifacio re-
turned. He laid a little package and some money beside
his master. He unsaddled the old horse and turned
him into the pasture; then he came back, sat down at
Gerry's feet and slept. Gerry looked with wonder on
his nodding head. He took his fingers from his ears.
On the instant a high, unearthly shriek seemed to rend
itself through flesh through walls and then tore on
swift wings into the vast silence that stretched away into
the" night. The ear could trace the eye could almost
follow the terrifying flight of this demon of sound as
it hurtled out over the valley, over the still trees and the
black water, until it crashed against the far banks of
the river and died. Gerry dropped his face in his
hands and sobbed. A low moaning was coming from
the house and then a new, strange sound a sound that
struck straight at the heart the first wail of the first
born. The moaning caught on that cry, stumbled and
recovered into a thin, weak laugh. Pain had passed and
with the child was born laughter.
Gerry sat stunned. It seemed incredible. That
shriek and then moaning and laughter in one weak
breath ! Was pain such pain so short lived ?
The echo of the terrible shriek still rang in his ears.
146 HOME
Then the door opened and Dona Maria came bustling
out. " Come in," she cried ; " thou art the father of
a man child."
Gerry went in and knelt beside the bed. Margarita
looked at him and smiled faintly, proudly. He laid
the little roll of blue ribbon in her weak hand. She
turned her head slowly and looked down. She saw the
glint of blue and understood. She turned her eyes,
swimming black pools in a white, drawn face, to Gerry.
To sacrifice she added adoration.
CHAPTEE XXII
THE calm which had settled on Alix's life puzzled
her. She wondered if she was beginning to miss
Gerry less. And then she remembered that she could
never have really missed him because she had never
really known him. Collingeford had brought a fresh
note into existence. She felt that at the end of his week
on the Hill he had fled from her fled from falling
in love with her. She knew that he would come back.
How should she meet him?
She was still debating the point when Collingeford
arrived in the city. Upon arrival he called on Mrs. J.
Y. and then on Nance and then, of course, on Alix. As
she came into the room he felt a strange fluttering in
his throat. It stopped his words of greeting. He stut-
tered and stared. He had never felt so glad at the sight
of any one.
" What are you looking so dismayed about ? " cried
Alix with a smile and holding out her hand. " Has a
short year changed me so much ? Am I so thin or so
fat?"
Collingeford recovered himself. " Neither too thin
nor too fat. It is perfection, not imperfection, that dis-
mays a man. You call it a short year ? " he added
gravely. " It 's been an eternity not a year ! "
But Alix was not to be diverted from her tone of
147
148 HOME
badinage. She looked him over critically. "Well,"
she said, " I congratulate you. I did n't know before
that bronze could bronze. What a lot of health you
carry about with you."
Collingeford smiled. " Clem said I looked as though
I had been living on babies."
" Clem ! " said Alix. " Well, I never knew that
young lady to stoop to flattery before. Anyway, she 's
wrong. You 're not pink enough."
" Pink ! " snorted Collingeford. " I should hope
not."
They sat and stared at each other. Each found the
other good to look upon. Seen alone, Collingeford's
tall, tense figure or the fragile quality of Alix's pale
beauty, would have seemed hard to match. Seen to-
gether, they were wonderfully in tone. Alix grew grave
under inspection, Collingeford nervous. " There is no
news ? " he asked.
" None," said Alix and a far-away look came into her
eyes as if her mind were off, thousands of miles, intent
on a search of its own.
Collingeford broke the spell. He jumped up and
said he had come for just one thing to take her out
for a walk. It was one of those nippy early winter
afternoons cut out to fit. a walk. Alix must put on her
things. She did and together they walked the long
length of the Avenue and out into the park.
By that time they had decided it was quite a warm
afternoon after all almost warm enough to sit down.
They tried it. Collingeford sat half turned on the
bench and devoured Alix with his eyes.
HOME 149
A full-blooded, clean young man in the presence of
beauty is not a reasonable being. Collingeford was try-
ing to be reasonable and was failing utterly in spite
of the fact that he did not say a word. And just as he
was going to say a word Alix gave him a full, measur-
ing look and said, almost hastily, " It is too cold, after
all. Quite chilly. It was our walking so fast deceived
us." She rose and started tentatively toward the gate.
" Come on, Honorable Percy," she said playfully.
Collingeford caught up with her and said moodily,
" If you call me Honorable Percy again I shall dub
you Honest Alix."
They were walking down the Avenue. " Honest Alix
is n't half bad," he continued thoughtfully. " The race
has got into the habit of yoking the word honest to our
attitude toward other people's pennies but it 's a good
old word that stands for trustworthy, sincere, truthful
and all the other adjectives that fit straight riding."
" Speaking of riding, Mr. Collingeford, you 're riding
for a fall." Alix glanced at him meaningly.
" How did you know ? " he stammered and then went
on rather sullenly, " Anyway, you 're wrong. I 'm not.
But I was just going to." He prodded viciously at the
cracks in the pavement with his stick.
"Don't," said Alix. "Don't do that, I mean.
You '11 break your stick and it 's the one I like."
Collingeford turned a flushed face to her. " Look
here, Alix," he said, " you are honest and sincere and all
those things I said. Don't let 's hedge not just now.
If your bad luck does n't let up if you learn anything
anything you don't want to know I can't say it
150 HOME
right out would you d' you think you ever
would"
Alix did not smile. He was too much in earnest and
she liked him too much was too much at one with
him not to feel what he was going through. " I like
your Honest Alix/' she said, after a pause, " and I 'm
going to let her do the talking for a moment. If I
learned absolutely that that Gerry can never come
back to me, there is no man that I would turn to quicker
than to you." Collingeford gave her a grateful look
and the flush under his tan deepened. " Don't mis-
understand me," she went on. " I like you a whole lot,
but I have never thought of marrying any one but Gerry.
I 'd like to marry Gerry. I 've never married him yet.
Not really."
They walked on for some time in silence. Collinge-
ford's thoughts had raced away southwards and Alix's
followed them unerringly. " Don't make one horrible
mistake, Percy," she said when she was sure. " Don't
imagine that I could ever love the bearer of ill tidings."
Collingeford flushed, this time with shame. " No, of
course not," he stammered.
" You see, or can't you see ? " she went on, " that
all this new life of mine I 've hung on to a single hook
of faith. If the hook breaks and sometimes it seems
as if it must be wearing pretty thin this new me
must tumble. I have spun about myself a silky dark-
ness and I have waited to break into light for Gerry. I
could not break out from this probation for any other
man. I do not mean that a woman can love but once
not necessarily. But I do think that one's life must
HOME 151
spring from a new chrysalis to meet a new love fairly.
Second loves at first sight have a tang of the bargain
counter and the ready made. Love is not a chance
tenant. He must build or grow into a new home."
They walked on in a full silence. Collingeford's
shoulders drooped. For the first time in his life he felt
old. " You are right you are always right," he said
at last. " I shall go away somewhere where it 's
easy to sweat."
" Somewhere where it 's easy to sweat ! " exclaimed
Alix. " What an ugly thought."
" It 's only Bbdsky," said Collingeford reminiscently.
" Bodsky says you can drown any woman's memory in
sweat. Good old Bod! I wonder where I shall find
him."
" Oh," said Alix, " if it 's Bodsky's, one must n't
quarrel with it simply because it is ugly. But "
" But what ? " said Collingeford.
" I was going to say, ( But what naked language ! '
Perhaps it is one of those truths one shrinks from be-
cause it starts in by slapping one's face. Anyway, even
if it is a truth, it 's horrid. It hurts a woman to be for-
gotten."
Collingeford smiled. " Just so," he said and stopped
before an up-town ticket agency. " Do you mind ? "
he asked, with a wave of his hand. They went in and
he bought a passage for England. He was to sail the
following afternoon. He looked so glum over it that
Alix consented to lunch with him and see him off.
He came for her the next day a little late but, when
she saw his face, she felt a shock and forgot to chide
152 HOME
him. Her eyes mirrored the trouble in his but some-
how she felt that it was not the parting from her that
had turned him pale in a night. He helped her into the
waiting cab and then sank back into his corner.
Alix laid her gloved hand on his knee. " What is
it ? " she asked.
Collingeford's face twitched. He fixed his eyes
through the cab window on nothing. " Bodsky," he
said, " is dead. He has been dead for months."
" Oh," cried Alix, " I 'm sorry. I 'm sorry for you."
She did not try to say any more. She had put all her
heart into those few words.
Collingeford drew out his pocket-book and took from
it a soiled sheet of paper a leaf torn from a field
note-book. He held it out to her with trembling hand.
" I would n't show it to any one else. Trouble has
made you great-hearted. When you said you. were sorry
you felt it so that the words just choked out. I need
to tell you all about it. I must talk talk a whole
lot. Sometimes a man must talk or blubber. Read
it."
Alix puzzled over the slip of paper. " What 's the
name of the place ? I can't make it out."
" It 's a little hole on the borders of Thibet. That
paper 's been handed along for five months. The en-
velope it came in was in tatters."
" Dear Old Pal," read Alix, " Do you remember
what I used to tell you ? When a man has seen all the
world he must go home or die. When we last parted I
had three places left to see, but they have n't lasted me
as long as I thought they would. I have sent you my
HOME 153
battery. The bores are a bit too big for the new powder
and you can't use the guns, I know, but you '11 have a
home, old man, and you can give them a place in a rack.
They will make a little room as wide as the ends of the
earth. I did n't kill her. I made her kill herself.
Bodsky."
Alix was puzzled again but then she remembered.
" So he did n't kill her, after all," she said.
" Kill her ! Kill what ? " said Collingeford. " Oh,
yes. I remember. As if that mattered."
" It matters. It does matter," cried Alix, outraged.
" Forgive me," said Collingeford. " I had forgotten
that you never knew Bodsky. You said yesterday that
Bodsky used naked language. You were right. Bod-
sky undressed things. Just as some people see red
and some blue, Bodsky saw things naked. He could
look through a black robe of rumor spangled with lies
and see truth naked. He was naked himself naked
and unashamed. It 's hard for me to make you see be-
cause you did not know him. Bodsky was one of those
men who could have accomplished anything only he
didn't. He sifted life through a big mesh. All the
non-essentials the trivialities fell through. An
act with Bodsky was a volition, measured, weighed, and
then hurled. That 's why if you knew him you knew
that in his hands a crime was not a crime. That 's
why I know that he is dead. He never used a stale
cartridge his gun never missed fire."
Alix mused. " I can't see him I can't quite see
him. A man who can accomplish anything and does n't
seems wrong a waste."
154 HOME
" You can't see," said Collingeford, " because you are
facing my point of view. You must turn around.
Bodsky used, to say that all humanity had a soul, but
it took a tragedy to make a man. His tragedy was that
life cut him out from the herd. He was n't a creator,
he was a creation. Generations, races, eons, created
Bodsky and left him standing like a scarred crag. He
had but one mission to see and understand. Have
you ever sat in the desert on a moonlit night and looked
at the Sphinx ? It holds you it holds your eyes in
a vice. You wonder why. I '11 tell you. It knows.
That 's the way it was with Bodsky. He only towered
knew understood. If that is nothing, Bodsky was
nothing."
They were silent. Presently Collingeford helped her
out and together they passed through the rich foyer, the
latticed palm room, and up the steps into the latest cry in
dining-rooms. A little table in the far corner had been
reserved for them. As they crossed the crowded room
a hush fell over the tables. Some looked and were
silent because Alix was beautiful and daintily gowned
and Collingeford all that a man should be, but
those who knew looked because Alix was Alix and Col-
lingeford was Collingeford. These soon fell to whisper-
ing, predicting a match. Alix bowed abstractedly here
and there as she followed the head waiter to her seat.
They sat down, each half facing the room. Alix
caught her breath. " Whining the old air ? " asked Col-
lingeford.
" No," answered Alix. " Only sighing. I feel so
out of it and that always makes one sigh whether one
HOME 155
wants to be in it or not. I know it all so well that
this amounts to a disillusion. Time and absence have
turned into a binocular and I 'm looking through the
wrong end. I see things clear but tiny. There 's
little Mrs. Deathe, pronounced Deet, and she isn't a
day older. But now I see that she was born as old as
she '11 ever be."
" Good/' said Collingeford.
" And with her is Mrs. Remmer. She 's gone in for
the little diamond veil brooches. They ruin the effect
of a simply stunning hat but, as always, she has rushed
at the newest, expensive fad. I didn't know why be-
fore, but somehow I can tell you now. She is the shop-
ping instinct incorporated. To spend money is her only
sensation. The lines of worry are in her face because
she has bought all and still craves to spend."
Alix paused. " Go on," said Collingeford.
" There are only a few men in the room, but almost
all of these women have husbands. The husbands are
in two tenses past and future. There must be a
present but it is nebulous. I did n't know before but
I know now that in time these women will go back or for-
ward to their husbands. Some day they will get dizzy
and fall and the shock will wake them up. I used to be
patronizing to divorce, like all these, but divorce has
taken on a new face all of a sudden. I see that it is
a great antidote to its own evil. While we laugh and
play with it, it is herding us on to a sane adjustment.
We are tearing down the fence of the pasture and rush-
ing out to scatter over fields that are free and barren.
By and by we '11 come back tired and hungry and thirsty
156 HOME
and we '11 see that the pasture 's the thing green and
fresh and sustaining and the fence, nothing."
" You see, you understand, you are prophetic," said
Oollingeford, smiling.
" But I do not tower like your Bodsky," said Alix and
then bit her tongue at the slip.
A shadow seemed to fall on them. The room's high,
delicate paneling and the painted oval of the ceiling
seemed to hover over a suddenly darkened emptiness.
The hum and chatter of the throng became little and
far away. Collingeford and Alix felt as though they
sat alone and yet not alone. Collingeford nodded as
though Alix had spoken. " Yes," he said, " Bodsky has
come back to us. Don't regret it. I don't know how
it is with you but I feel that we two are alone with
him and that it 's worth while. He 's come on us like
a cloud.
" But I like clouds," he continued, " big black clouds.
If it were not for them you could n't see the lightning
or hear the thunder. They make lightning and thunder
the arm and the voice of the gods. Bodsky was n't
divine; he couldn't create and he knew it and felt it.
But he could echo the roar and reflect the light. I re-
member a duffer making a careless remark about a
woman's travail. Bodsky looked him over and said,
' Some day you will see and hear and know and the
memory of that remark will bring you on to your knees.
But this much I can tell you now, young man. I would
rather have been the man who produced the first wooden
spoon than Alexander the Great. From a spoon to a
baby is a long step up. That 's why we have made a
HOME 157
shrine for mothers. Generally speaking, women are
despicable. But a mother has passed through cruci-
fixion to transfiguration.' I think it was about the
longest speech he ever made. To him that was one of
the things too big to drop through the mesh of his sieve
of life unnoticed.
" Bodsky was elemental. He was an element. He
could not produce but he could make fertile the lives of
lesser men. I was the duffer that made the careless
remark. That was the first time he ever spoke to me.
I 've sat at his feet ever since. I did n't know I was
doing it but I can see it now. And the result is this:
Bodsky could n't go home. But I can and I 'm going
home before I 've seen the whole world. Only only
I wish I could take you with me."
" There, there," said Alix, playfully, but her eyes
were soft. " We must go now or you will miss your
ship."
AS Alix and Gollingeford left the dining-room she
said, " They were n't all butterflies after all. I
saw a man and a woman."
" Not really ! " said Collingeford. -" Who ? "
" Alan Wayne and Dora Tennel."
At Alan's name Collingeford's face lit up with inter-
est. " Ten Percent Wayne, eh ? Yes, you 're right.
He's a man. And Dora Tennel, ex-Lady Braeme.
Yes, she 's a woman too, in a way."
" Has she a tarnished reputation ? "
Collingeford stopped short in his stride and looked
keenly at Alix. " My dear lady," he said, " that is a
question one does not put to a man. However, it
does n't embarrass me to answer it in this case. She has
not. What on earth put it into your head ? "
"I don't know," said Alix. "Oh, yes I do. I
remember. Some one told me once that Alan sur-
rounded himself with tarnished reputations."
Each followed the train of his own thoughts until they
reached the pier. Alix did not get out of the cab. She
leaned from the window and said good-by. Collinge*-
ford held her hand and her eyes long, then he turned
away and hurried into the elevator.
When Alix got home she sat down and wrote a note
to Alan just a line to tell him that she was ready
and wished to see him. He came the following after-
158
HOME 159
/
noon. At first he was a little awkward, straining just
the least too much not to betray his nervousness. But
the sight of Alix put him at his ease. Once it had been
with a fine art that she had pampered the ill-at-ease
into well-being but as Alan crossed the room and stood
before her he knew that art had been banished and that
a new Alix, simple and secure in the unassailable at-
mosphere that guards true women, held out her hand to
him from beyond an invisible barrier. She had become a
true woman true in the sense of honor and she was
tempered as steel, but soft with the softness of mother-
hood. About her there was the peace of an inner shrine.
She drew him into it unhesitatingly and he suddenly
felt unclean just as he had felt unworthy on that other
day when he had recoiled from Nance's loving arms
around his neck.
" You 're not looking very well, Alan," said Alix
when he was seated.
" No, I 'm not on the top of the wave just now,"
replied Alan. " Touch of river fever. It 's like
memory a hard thing to shake."
" I 'm not trying to shake mine," said Alix calmly.
" My memories have made me."
" No wonder you don't quarrel with them," said Alan
in frank admiration.
" Life," said Alix, " is beginning to pay dividends
not much, just a competence. Enough to live on."
She smiled faintly.
" It is well," said Alan, " to be satisfied with sanity
if you can only keep sane. You could and did. You
decided to stick to the legitimate and you have your
160 HOME
steady and lasting reward. The other pays in a
lump. It's easy to lose a whole nugget."
" Alan, when are you going to come back to the legiti-
mate? Don't you ever tire of life as a variety show?
Wouldn't you rather have one real steady star in life
than a whole lot of tarnished tinsel ones ? "
Alan jumped to his feet, stuck his hands in his coat
pockets and started walking up and down the somber
room. They were in the library. " A steady star," he
repeated. " What a find that would be ! I 've raised
many a star on my horizon, Alix, but the longer I look
at 'em the more they twinkle back. It 's easier to down
conscience than to down blood."
" In the end," said Alix, " a man must down blood
or it downs him downs him irretrievably. Blood un-
checked is just common beast."
"Do you think I don't know it?" flashed Alan.
" Each day I find an old haunt denied to me. I am ill
at ease. My world has left yours behind. There is a
pale. Behind it lies Red Hill. Do you know I have n't
been to the Hill for three years ? Behind it lies Nance,
the faithfullest, most trusting foster-sister a waster ever
had. And now you. You lie behind it and toy with
my soul through the bars."
Alix sprang to her feet and laid strong, nervous hands
on Alan's shoulders. She shook him and turned him so
that he faced the light. Alan did not laugh. There
was fire in Alix's eyes. "You little thing," she said
tensely, "not to see that the bars are down."
He turned under her hands and she let him go. He
stood looking out of the window at the bare trees.
HOME 161
watched him. " Alan, you can come to the Hill to-
night. They we are all going to be together here.
It 's Clem's birthday. If you can feel the pale, that 's
enough for me. I want you to be with us."
" Alix, believe me or not, it 's because I feel the pale
that I won't come. If there 's a ship sailing for the
ends of the earth before night it shall carry me. This
big city is n't big enough to hold all the Hill and leave
me room to wander outside."
" Then why why "
" I '11 tell you. The last time I saw J. Y., he said to
me among other things, ' Yesterday Clem was crying
because you had not come to the house. I try to
think, Alan, that it is because Clem is there that you
have not come.' Those were his very words. The rest
passed but that stuck. It stuck because it was the
truth and" I had been blind to it. What did you say a
little while ago ? Blood unchecked is just common beast.
Well, there it is in a nutshell. I bear the mark of the
beast. Do you think I want Clem to see it ? "
Alan's hands were locked behind him. He turned
from the window. " Alix, I can't see Clem yet. She
is expecting me. I told her that the better half of me
would look her up as soon as I got back. But what if
somebody that does n't know my better half at all should
see me riding walking with Clem ? I can't risk that.
Do you understand ? "
" But oh, Alan," said Alix. " If you could only see
Clem now. She 's glorious. Why it 's three years,
three years since you saw her. You used to think me
beautiful "
162 HOME
" Used ! " protested Alan, casting a valuing glance at
Alix's pale beauty.
" Well," conceded Alix, " you think me beautiful.
Beside Clem with her heaps of brown hair and deep
blue eyes, I am nothing. I am worse I am a doll.
And she was born with a strange wisdom and strength of
her own. The world has never reached her will
never reach her. She 's made her own world and she 's
made it right. And yet the wisdom in her deep eyes,
Alan. She knows she knows it all and you know
that she knows, only, faith sits enthroned."
" Faith sits enthroned," repeated Alan ; " that 's why
I can't come to-night." He looked around for his hat
and stick.
" By the way," said Alix, " why J. Y. and why Mrs.
J. Y. ? I Ve always wondered."
" I don't know," said Alan. " I Ve always wondered
too, I suppose. But here 's the Judge. He can tell
you."
" Tell what ? " asked the Judge as he walked in and
took Alix' outstretched hand.
" Why there 's no Mr. Wayne and Mrs. Wayne
only J. Y.'s."
"And you don't know, Alan?" asked the Judge.
" Well, I '11 tell you. Mr. Wayne and Mrs. Wayne -
they were Alan's father and his young wife. Their
life was a hot flame that suddenly smothered itself in
the clouds of its own smoke. The memory of the clouds
passed with them but the flame the flame burns on in
the hearts of all who knew them. It will burn on.
HOME 163
That 's why J. Y. is J. Y. and that 's why it will always
be J. Y. and Mrs. J. Y. to the Hill."
Alan said good-by in a hurried low voice and started
for the door but the Judge called to him : " Just a
moment, Alan, I 'm coming with you." Then he turned
to Alix. " I just dropped in to tell you I am delighted
to be able to come to-night."
" I am glad," said Alix. " Perhaps you could per-
suade Alan to come too if you think "
" If I think what ? " The Judge eyed her steadily.
" If you think he is ready," finished Alix.
The Judge found Alan waiting for him on the steps
as he hurried out. " What are you doing for the rest
of the afternoon ? " he asked.
" I 'm sailing for South America if there 's a con-
nection."
The Judge looked up surprised. " I did n't know you
had anything urgent on." They walked on in silence
for some minutes, then the Judge said, hesitatingly,
" Alan, you 're rushed, of course, but if you could if
you can do one thing and put it down to my account.
Just drop in and see J. Y. for a minute. Somehow I
feel that you can't see J. Y. the way he really is, the
way I can. That 's natural, too, I suppose. But if you
knew him, Alan, the way I do, you 'd know it 's an honor
for any man to shake hands with J. Y. Wayne. And
to have J. Y. Wayne want to shake hands with you is
a thing that comes to most men as a reward.
" Have you ever figured it out that there 's only one
man in a million that knows when to refuse to shake
164 HOME
hands and has the courage to back his judgment ? You
hear flippant people saying every day that they would n't
shake hands with such a one but when it comes to the
showdown their arms suddenly limber. J. Y. is one in
a million. He has a rare thing an untainted hand.
There is a tale on 'Change to the effect that a firm was
saved from a smash because J. Y. walked up to its head
and shook hands with him on the floor."
" I don't know," said Alan, " that J. Y. wants to
shake hands with me." He spoke almost questioningly.
" You know, Judge, there have been days when he
would n't."
" I don't know that he wants to, either, my boy. But
I do know this. He's a busy man, but there 's never
a day that he 's too rushed to think of you."
Alan stopped and held out his hand. " I am much
obliged to you," he said. " I 'm sorry I did n't think
of it myself. I 'm off to his office now, as soon as I 've
telephoned Swithson."
A few minutes later found Alan explaining to a new
office boy that he wished to speak to the head of the
firm. The boy judged himself in possession of a green
one and grinned. " Certainly," he said. " You wish
to speak to Mr. Wayne. Are you in a hurry ? "
Alan was offering to start the boy with his foot when
the head clerk, passing through the hall, caught sight
of him and hurried up. " Mr. Wayne is just going,
sir. Shall I stop him ? "
" Please," said Alan and followed the clerk. The of-
fice boy fell to stamping letters with unwonted diligence.
J. Y. received his nephew with outstretched hand.
HOME 165
His rugged face was lit up with the rare smile that came
to it seldom, for it was the far-flung ripple the visible
expression of a deep commotion.
" I just dropped in, sir," said Alan, " to say good-by.
I 'm off again to South America. Africa seems to be
taking a year off."
" When are you leaving ? " asked J. Y.
" This evening," said Alan. " The boat 's already
pulled out but I '11 catch her at Quarantine. She 'a
waiting for her papers."
They sat and looked at each other for a moment and
then J. Y. arose and held out his hand again. " If
that 's the case," he said, " I won't keep you. Good-by
and good luck."
" Good-by, sir," said Alan.
As he reached the door J. Y. spoke again. " Alan,"
he said, " I 'm glad you dropped in."
" I am too, sir," said Alan. As he went out he for-
got to deliver a word he had prepared for the office boy.
J. Y. had said he was glad he had dropped in. There
was nothing in the words to brood over, but J. Y. could
make a simple phrase say a world of things and Alan
was thoughtful almost depressed as he hurried off.
He was just leaving the sedate old office building,
sandwiched in between modern towers of Babel, when
a cab drew up at the curb. The door opened and a girl
stepped out. She suddenly stood still. Alan's eyes
were drawn to her and found hers fixed on him. He
drew a quivering breath. " But, oh ! Alan, if you could
only see Clem now ! " Alix had said and had tried to
tell him of the beauty of Clem. Now Clem stood be-
166 HOME
fore him. How weak were words ! How futile to try
to convey the essence of Clem's beauty in words! He
stepped towards her hesitatingly. She saw his hesita-
tion and a cloud came over the light in her face. Her
moist lips trembled. Their hands met.
" Alan ! " she said and he answered, " Clem ! "
And so they stood, his eyes fixed in hers that were
blue and deep. He felt his soul sinking, sinking into
those cooling pools. He did not wish ever to speak
again ever to think again.
And then Clem laughed. Her eyes wrinkled up.
There was a gleam of even teeth. The wind blew her
furs about her and lit the color in her cheeks. " How
solemn we are after three years ! " she cried. " Three
years, Alan. Are n't you ashamed ? "
Alan felt a sense of sudden insulation as though
she had deliberately cut the current that had flowed so
strongly between them. He rebelled for once against
flippancy. Unknowingly he tried to bring his and
Bodsky's world of naked things into the city. He
failed to answer to Clem's mood because he would not
believe in it. " I am going away," he stammered
weakly and waved at an approaching four-wheeler,
piled high with traveling kit and convoyed by his hur-
ried but never flurried servant.
But Clem stuck to her guns. " Really ? " she said
with a glance at the loaded cab and with arching eye-
brows. Then her smile burst again. " You can't ex-
pect me to be surprised, can you ? We seem to have a
habit of meeting when you are on the point of going
HOME 167
away. There. You must be in a hurry. Good-by,"
and she held out a gloved hand.
Alan's spirit was ever ready for war and this, he sud-
denly perceived, was war. He braced himself and
smiled too. " Twice hardly amounts to a habit," he
drawled. He had never drawled to Clem before but
then Clem had never before taken up the social rapier
with him. " Besides," he went on, " there 's a differ-
ence. Last time you ran after me."
Clem's smile trembled, steadied itself and then fought
bravely back. " Yes," she said, " yes." And then her
eyes wavered and wandered. She dropped his hand.
" Good-by," she said again, the faintest catch in her
voice, and hurried away to seek <J. Y.
Alan stood and watched her. What shoulders she
had and what a swing to them. Slim of hip and foot
and ankle it was the body of a boy a boy god. A
body, a life, a soul of promise, of treasures garnered
and enshrined. Alan cast his mind back over his own
life. He felt a sinking within him. " For a mess of
pottage," he muttered and then his servant touched his
arm anxiously and held out his watch, face up.
" You '11 never make it, Mr. Wayne."
Alan turned on him but not angrily. '" Perhaps not,
Swithson, and perhaps yes. You may go back to the
flat. I '11 get along all right." And with that he
hurled himself at the cab. " Double fare if you make
the Battery in ten minutes," he shouted to the driver
and then settled back in the seat to ponder.
CHAPTEE XXIV
AT last the rains came to the valley and Fazenda
Flores. Gerry spent long hours beside his sluice-
gate watching for a rise in the river, but it did not
come. The torrent of rain was local and he remem-
bered that Lieber had told him that the floods the
great floods came from hundreds of miles up the
river and generally under a brazen sky. Night, black
night, had fallen with the rain and he was just turning
to seek shelter from the unbroken downpour when a
voice raised in song reached his ears. He waited.
The voice drew nearer. In a nasal tone, which some-
how sounded familiar though it was unknown to him,
it was chanting a long string of doggerel ending in an
unvarying refrain. Finally Gerry could make out the
long-drawn tail-end of the song : " comin' down the
drawr."
English! American! Cowboy music! The im-
pressions came in rapid succession. Gerry strove to
pierce the darkness. He could hear the near-by splash
of careful mules, picking their way through puddles
with finicking little steps. He felt a shadow in the
darkness and could just see above it a blur of yellow.
Behind it, more shadows. On an impulse he did not
stop to measure, he shouted in English, " Hallo, there! "
The doggerel was choked off in mid-flight. The yel-
168
HOME 169
low blur came to a sudden stop and the nasal voice
rang out in quick staccato, " Speak again, stranger, and
speak quick ! "
" It 's all right," Gerry laughed back. " Where are
you bound for ? "
" I 'm headed down the drawr lookin' for a chalk
line where I c'n dry my feet. What do you know ? "
" Can you see the water in the ditch at your right ? "
" Yasser, I can. I c'n see you, too."
" Well," shouted back Gerry, " your eyes beat mine.
Follow the ditch until you come to a bridge. I '11 meet
you there."
Gerry found the little cavalcade waiting for him, six
pack-mules, a native driver and, towering above them,
a great lanky figure in a yellow oil-skin slicker topped
by a broad-brimmed Stetson. Gerry looked over the
outfit as carefully as the darkness would allow and then
said tentatively, " There 's a house down there in the
valley."
" Is the' ? " drawled the stranger spitting deliber-
ately into the ditch. " Well," he volunteered after a
further pause, " my name 's Jake Kemp. The rest of
this outfit is six mules packin' orchids and the greaser
packin' the mules."
" That 's all right," said Gerry, " I guess we can put
you up."
He led the way and the pack-train splashed along
after him. The mules were soon relieved of their bur-
dens and turned into the pasture. Bonifacio took the
native muleteer away to his quarters and Gerry and
the stranger passed through the house to the kitchen.
170 HOME
A patriarchal hospitality came naturally to the in-
mates of Fazenda Flores. It was a tradition not only
on that plantation but throughout a vast hinterland,
where life was rude and death sudden, to be gentle to
the stranger, to feed him and his beast and to speed
him on in the early morning. There was but one rule
to the stranger: He must keep his eyes to the front.
Jake Kemp had evidently learned the brief code. He
ate ravenously, poured down coffee with the recklessness
of a man that draws on a limitless power to sleep,
and made his few remarks to Gerry and to Gerry
alone.
Gerry was feeling a strange elation that he strove
in vain to account for. This was an American but be-
yond that they had nothing in common. New York
and Texas are connected only by fiction. Perhaps it
was just curiosity. Curiosity invaded him. What was
a Texas cowboy doing on the road past Fazenda Flores
with a mule train of orchids? As an opener he de-
clared himself. " My name 's Gerry Lansing," he said.
" I 've settled down here."
" So ? " said Kemp, as he drew from his vest pockets
the makings of a cigarette. Gerry had seen the yellow
papers and the little bags of flaked tobacco. They
struck convincingly the note of the West. Kemp him-
self was gotten up in the same key* Stetson hat, shirt
sleeves, unbuttoned vest, collarless shirt, high-heeled
boots and the yellow slicker tossed on the floor, all were
in strict keeping with type. " Eeckon you 're f'm the
States," drawled Kemp as he accomplished the cigar-
ette.
HOME 171
" Yes," said Gerry and added, with an idea to estab-
lishing a link, " like you."
" Naw," said Kemp, " I ain't f m the States."
Gerry looked incredulous. " Are n't you an Amer-
ican ? "
" Sure am," replied Kemp, unperturbed. " But I 'm
fm Texas leastways I was f 'm Texas. Our folks
wagoned over to New Mexico when I was a yearling."
Gerry had been West more than once. He slowly
recollected that Easterners came into Texas and the
Territories " from the States " and were considered
but once removed from foreigners.
" Reckon you 're f'm Noo Yawk," was Kemp's next
deliberate contribution to the conversation.
" You 're right," said Gerry. " How did you guess
it?"
" I b'en thar," said Kemp.
With that, talk lagged. Gerry instinctively avoided
the question direct and Kemp vouchsafed nothing more.
Not till Gerry came upon him hitching up his loads
early next morning did he speak again and then he said
with a glint in his eye that was almost a smile, " I
guess them 's the first orchids that ever traveled to
ma'ket under a diamond hitch."
Here was an opening but it came too late. Gerry
did not try to follow it up. Once more in the saddle
Kemp seemed to acquire a sudden new ease of body
and mind. He hung by one knee and a stirrup and
leaned over toward Gerry. " Stranger," he said, " I 'm
much obliged to ye. It 's a long way f'm the Alamo to
ISToo Yawk, but the hull country 's under one fence."
172 HOME
He waved his hand and was gone after his pack-train,
lifting his mule with his goose-necked spurs into a pro-
testing canter. Gerry followed him with his eyes. He
felt a sense of loss and failure. Kemp had been like
a breath of air laden with some long-forgotten scent that
defies memory to give it a name.
For days Gerry's mind kept going back to his lodger
for a night. This stranger had broken the quiet flow
of life. He had gone, but the commotion he had caused
lingered on. Two weeks after his passing, as evening
was settling on Fazenda Flores, the echo of a mule's
mincing steps on the bridge made Gerry look up from
his work. Kemp was riding towards him. It was as
though he came in answer to Gerry's constant thoughts.
Gerry hurried forward to meet him.
" Howdy," said Kemp and paused on that to measure
his welcome. He was satisfied and urged his tired mule
on towards the house. Gerry walked beside him and
learned that the shipment of orchids had just caught
the steamer at the coast. Kemp unsaddled his mule
and tossed the harness and slicker upon the veranda.
Gerry opened the gap into the pasture and the mule
nosed its cautious way through to water and the grass.
As Gerry was closing the gap Kemp came up and
stood beside him. He cast a knowing eye over the
fat stock. " You done a good job for Lieber," he re-
marked.
Gerry nodded a little sadly. " Yes," he said, " the
contract's filled. Lieber 's sending for the stock day
after to-morrow."
As they sat on the veranda that night smoking end-
HOME 173
less cigarettes, Kemp turned to his host. " D 'ye mind
if I stay over a day with you ? Truth is, I want to
he'p drive that stock up to Lieber's. I want to he'p
whistle a bunch o' steers along once more and smell
the dust an' the leakin' udders, an' I should n't wonder
if I let out a yell or so, corralin' 'em at the other end."
Gerry nodded understandingly. " Why did you
leave it ? " he ventured and then regretted and mur-
mured, " Never mind."
But Kemp was not offended. " Naw," he said, " I
hain't killed my man not lately nor anything
like that. I left it," he went on reminiscently, " be-
cause I could n't he'p it. I got to dreamin' nights of
pu'ple cities."
" Purple what ? " exclaimed Gerry.
Kemp took a cigarette from his mouth and almost
smiled. " Never did hear of The Pu'ple City, I
reckon ? "
Gerry shook his head. Kemp drew a well-worn wal-
let from the capacious inner pocket of his vest and took
out a ragged clipping. One could read in the glaring
moonlight and Gerry glanced through the printed lines.
Then he read them through again.
THE PUEPLE CITY.
As I sat munching mangoes,
On the purple city's walls,
I heard the catfish calling,
To the crawfish in the crawls.
I saw the paper sunbeams,
Sprouting from the painted sun;
I saw the sun was sullen,
For the day had but begun.
174 HOME
Of dusty desert sky-road,
Ten thousand miles and more,
Stretched out before the morning,
And the sun sat in the door.
He sweated seas of sunshine,
As he started up the sky,
And he drowned the purple city,
In a tear-drop from his eye.
No more shall purple pansies
Look up at purple pinks,
Nor purple roses rival,
The cheeks of purple minx.
Alas! for purple city,
And its purple-peopled halls!
Alas! for me and mangoes,
On the purple city's walls!
Gerry looked upon his guest with new wonder as he
handed back the clipping. Kemp put it away care-
fully, rolled a fresh cigarette, and blew a thick puff
of smoke out into the moonlight. " Can't say it 's
po'try and I can't say it ain't. All I know is it roped
me. I know that writer feller never munched no
mangoes, 'cause mangoes don't munch. I know he never
sat on no wall an' heerd catfish callin' cause catfish
don't call. But he seen it all, stranger, jest the way he
writ it down an' I b'en dreamin' pu'ple cities ever sence
I read his screed."
" Did you start right out to look for them ? " asked
Gerry gravely.
" Naw," said Kemp, " I did n't have nothin' to go
on. But one day a drummer feller thet I was stagin'
across the White Mountains give me A plant magazine,
and it had an article on commercial orchids with pic-
HOME 175
tures in colors. They was mostly kinder pu'plish an'
I reckon it was that what got me started. It was the
foreman pointin' out my mount to me an' I did n't lose
no time. I drapped my rope on him an' I 've been
ridin' him ever sence."
" Found any purple cities ? "
" Not rightly. I seen 'em more'n once. But
I guess pu'ple cities is always yon side the mountain.
You can't jest ride up an' put your brand on 'em.
They 're born mavericks and they die mavericks. An'
I say, good luck to 'em." Kemp rose, tossed away his
cigarette end and stood leaning with crooked elbow and
knee against a veranda pillar. His keen aquiline fea-
tures and deep-set eyes were lit up by the moonlight
and seemed scarcely to belong to his great, loose-jointed
frame. He was loose- jointed but like a flail strong
and tough. " There 's one thing about the pu'ple
cities," he added, "the daylight always beats you to
'em jest like in the po'm." He turned and went off
to bed.
Gerry sat on in the moonlight seized by a strange
sadness the sadness the spirit feels under the troubled
hovering of the unattainable and the mirage. Life had
queer turns. Why should a cowboy start out to look
for purple cities ? It was grotesque on the face of it
but, beneath the face of it, it was not grotesque.
Margarita stole out to seat herself beside him. She
slipped her hand into his. She was worried. She was
always worried when Gerry's thoughts were far away.
" The Man," she said, for thus she had christened her
baby boy from the day of his birth, " the Man sleeps.
176 HOME
He cried for thee and them didst not come. So he
slept, for he is a man."
Gerry's thoughts came back to his little kingdom.
He sighed and then he smiled a smile of content. " It
is late then, my flower ? " He put his arm around her.
" Let us go to bed, for to-morrow there is work."
" To-morrow there is always work," said Margarita.
" I am not afraid of work, Geree. The end of work
never comes. It is the things that end that make me
afraid." She, too, had felt the fluttering wings of the
unattainable. Unknowingly she stood beneath the
shadow of the stranger's purple city's walls.
The next day Kemp tried honestly to help Gerry with
the tilling of the soil but the effort was still-born.
Kemp had almost forgotten how to walk and his high-
heeled boots fell foul of every hummock. " Look'y
here, Mr. Lansing," he said after half an hour's toil,
" ain't there no colts bad uns you want backed
nor calves to brand ? This here' diggin' wakes up the
rheumatiz in my j'ints."
" What about milking the cows ? " suggested Gerry.
Kemp actually blushed. He cast a quick glance at
Gerry to see if this was some weak witticism to be
promptly resented but was reassured by the surprise
in Gerry's face. " Stranger," he said, " I ain't
never touched no cow with my hands. If you want
I should rope 'em an' hog-tie 'em, I 'm your man
but some missus will have to take the milk away f'm
'em."
Gerry threw back his head and laughed but his laugh
was stopped short by the glint in Kemp's eye. " That 's
HOME 177
all right, Kemp," he said. " The missus is milking
them, right now. What 's the matter with you just
taking a holiday? You've done a hard ride and it
won't hurt you to have a loaf."
Kemp wandered off to the house with solemn face.
When Gerry came in to the midday meal, he found
him with a saddle propped on the arm of a bench giving
the delighted swaddled heir to Fazenda Mores his first
lesson in equitation.
That night they sat again on the veranda steps but
Kemp was not talkative. He whittled a stick until
it disappeared in a final curly shaving and then im-
mediately started on a fresh one.
" Known Lieber long ? " asked Gerry at last.
" Goin' on two years," replied Kemp.
" Does he live off his stock ? "
Kemp looked up. " Have n't you ever b'en up to
Lieber's?"
" No," said Gerry, " it 's two years since I came
here and I 've never been off the place. Lieber 's been
down here a couple of times."
Kemp grunted but asked no further question.
" Lieber," he said, " c'tainly don't live offen his stock
- he plays with it. Lieber is the goatskin king. Ships
'em by the thousand bales. If you or any other man in
these parts was to sell a goatskin away f'm Lieber, you 'd
be boycotted. Lieber on this range is God you 're
fer him or you 're ag'in' him an' there ain't be'n any
one ag'in' him for some spell now."
" Oh," said Gerry.
" As fer knowin' him," continued Kemp, " everybody
178 HOME
on this round-up knows Lieber but there ain't anybody
knows why he is. Lieber holds questions and small-
pox about alike. He ain't thar when they happen."
CHAPTER XXV
LIEBER, accompanied by two herders, came early
for his stock. He greeted Kemp warmly.
" Going my way ? " he asked.
" I b'en loafin' around here with that in mind,"
drawled Kemp. " I '11 take a hand if you '11 allow me
a mount."
" You can take your pick," said Lieber, " that is,
after Mr. Lansing has had his."
The three of them walked into the pasture. Lieber
looked at the stock with kindling eyes. He turned to
Gerry and held out his hand. " Shake," he said, and
Gerry did. " What do you say to the first five of the
horses out and the last ten of the cattle for your share ? "
Gerry flushed. " That 's more than fair," he said.
" You know the best of the horses will lead the bunch
and the fattest of the cattle will lag behind. You see,
they 're all strong now."
" That 's just it," said Lieber. " They 're all strong
now and if you had n't taken 'em over they 'd have been
mostly dead by now. I 'm satisfied more than sat-
isfied and if you are too, why it 's all right."
The herders were sent to the upper gap to head in
the first five out. Kemp, who had seized one of the
saddled horses and was already mounted, cut horses
out from cattle and with a whoop carried them towards
179
180 'HOME
the lower gap. A beautiful iron-gray gelding broke
away from the bunch and trotted up to Gerry to nose
at his pockets. Five horses sprang through the gap and
Lieber headed back the rest. He turned to Gerry with
a smile but the light had gone out of Gerry's face. He
stood, with head hanging, his arm across the arched
neck of the iron-gray. Lieber strode over to him, his
silver spurs jingling. He laid a big hand on Gerry's
shoulder. The gelding sprang back with a snort.
"That's all right, boy," said Lieber. "I wouldn't
give the roan out yonder for two of him. Will you
trade even ? "
" You can have the lot for this one," said Gerry with
a laugh.
" No," said Lieber gravely, " just the roan."
Kemp had gone off to round up his mule. He came
up from the river driving it before him. At every
jump he caught the mule a flick with his rope and the
mule kicked and squealed but came on with long, stiff-
legged strides. " Hi-yi ! " yelled Kemp and snatched
off his hat to beat his mount while he kept the rope-
end flickering over the mule.
Gerry and Lieber laughed. Kemp was like a mummy
come to sudden life. " Do you know what ? " said
Gerry, " I think I '11 come along with you." He led
the iron-gray out by his forelock and old Bonifacio
hurried to help bridle and saddle him. Lieber mounted
his stallion and turned the horses as they came out.
Kemp suddenly sobered down to business. When
Lieber had thrown back the last ten of the cattle, Kemp
came out and closed the gap behind him.
HOME 181
" I think I '11 go ahead with the horses," said Lieber.
" You go and take yo' men with you," said Kemp.
" I could drive this fat bunch from here to Kansas with
nary a hand to spell me."
" Well, you '11 have Mr. Lansing to help you," said
Lieber and rode on to where his men were holding the
horses in a milling, kicking mass. They passed over
the bridge and away in a moving pillar of dust, for the
desert had swallowed the first rains and was already cry-
ing for more. The cattle strung out and followed
slowly in their trail. With whistle and yell Kemp
urged on the laggards until he had the whole string well
in hand. He kept them all traveling, slowly but
steadily, and with never a word to Gerry. Toward
evening his eye caught the glint of the sun on the white
pillars and walls of a distant house* The house was
in the midst of the desert. Beyond it loomed a single
big joa tree. " Lieber's," said Kemp and Gerry
nodded.
Gerry had expected a surprise of some sort when
at last he arrived at Lieber's but the things he saw
there, stranger than anything he could have imagined,
left him calm and unmoved as though some prescience
had prepared him. The house was built on the usual
solid lines of plantation headquarters. Great, rough-
hewn beams ; towering rafters, built to carry the heavy
tiles and to bear their burden for generations ; unceiled,
vast rooms with calcimined walls; all these were not
outside Gerry's experience in the new land. The
strangeness came with the rugs and the linen, the etch-
ings and the furniture, and last and most significant,
182 HOME
the shelves and shelves of books and the tables piled
with magazines in three languages. ' Everything bore
the stamp of quality, everything had the distinction of
a choice.
Gerry did not let his curiosity carry him beyond a
rapid glance around the great living-room where they
found Lieber, bathed and freshly dressed, superintend-
ing the making of ice in the latest ingenious contrivance
for the pampering of the pioneer. The three men
gathered about the curious machine and watched its
jerky sway and swash. At one end was a great demi-
john of acid, at the other a vacuum carafe, half filled
with water. Their throats were parched and as the
ice began to form and solidify they maintained a
silence that was almost ceremonial.
Ice to them was a sort of national emblem. It
carried them back. Varied memories accompanied each
stage of its formation memories of frost and the blaz-
ing woods, of cool long drinks and half-forgotten revel-
ries. Lieber broke the silence, offering a choice of wine
or whisky, but Gerry shook his head at both and Kemp,
after a lingering look at the squat bottle, followed suit.
Lieber half filled three glasses with the ice and added
filtered water. They drank and filled again. Ice
water in the desert ! It made them smile on each other
as though they had found some undiscovered elixir.
" Ice water in the desert," thought Gerry and the phrase
seemed to him more than words it seemed to paint
Lieber dimly, but as the mind saw him.
The veranda at Lieber's was like that of Fazenda
Elores only much bigger. It looked out upon a wide
HOME 183
stretch of desert but away at the rim of the desert one
could feel the river. The roar of the falls mumbled
in the ear. It came from so far away that one had
to strain one's ears to actually define it. After supper
they gathered on the veranda. They sat in rude, raw-
hide chairs which were comfortably strong and tilted
them back to the national angle. Lieber and Gerry
smoked corn-husk cigarettes but Kemp stuck to his yel-
low papers. Gerry did not want to talk. He sat where
he could watch the strange pair whose companion he
was for a night. Into the souls of Lieber and Kemp
the long silences of solitude had entered and become at
home. They were patient of silence. Speech had its
restricted uses. They still had their hats on. Lieber's
was pushed back, Kemp's was drawn forward. Kemp
was whittling. Kemp's words of farewell came back
to Gerry, " It 's a long trail from the Alamo to New
York but the whole country 's under one fence."
Texan, Pennsylvania Dutchman and New Yorker might
be social poles but to-night they seemed strangely near
to each other.
Lieber stopped plying a toothpick and broke the si-
lence. " Did you find this tenderfoot any help to you,
Kemp ? "
Gerry had noticed from the first a certain hesitancy
in Lieber's speech and a slight accent that was not so
much foreign as colloquial. Lieber's talk was the talk
of a man self-educated in culture. The books back
there in the big living-room explained it. He had
learned to talk from books.
Kemp closed up his knife deliberately, stuck his
184 HOME"
hands in his pockets and stretched out his legs. His
chair was tilted back in defiance of the laws of gravita-
tion. " Consider'ble time ago now I used ter sling the
name of tende'foot around pretty free," he remarked in
his low drawl, " but a little shrimp f 'm the States, beg-
gin' your pa' don, Mr. Lansing, come out to Coaltown
some years back and taught me 'nd some others that
the 's some tende'foots born west of the Mississip'."
Kemp paused to give comment a chance to shut him
up but Lieber and Gerry sat like relics of a stone age.
Kemp went on. " This young feller was a lunger 'nd
thin so you c'ld look through him and even in health he
c'ldn't a b'en bigger than a minute. He was so in-
signif'c'nt that nobody took notice on him, even to frame
up a badger fight. He jest natu'ally was n't wo'th the
trouble. The' was only one thing he c'ld do. He c'ld
ride and Sam Burler said he c'ld n't rightly do that.
Sam explained that the bosses thought he was only a
fly and never done no more'n whisk the' tails to get
him off.
" Well, one afternoon the' was ten of us sittin' on
the gallery of The Lone Star, some waitin' fo' some-
body to set 'em up and some fo' the poker game to sta't,
when along comes this here shrimp on Crossbreed, the
pride qua'terbred race-hoss of the hull range.. The'
was n't man ner woman in the township that would n't
a-backed Crossbreed to beat the sun to daylight and
Crossbreed knowed his dooty he brought the money
back every time. Well, 's I say, along comes the Shrimp
a-ridin' in f m the Gap, lookin' kin' o' white around
the gills. We'd seen the hoss whu'l with him some
HOME 185
ways down the road 'nd he 'd only saved himse'f by the
ho'n, 'nd pullin' leather gene'ally.
" * Well, young feller,' says Sam Burler, ' 'ol' Cross-
breed 's some playful to-day. You b'en holdin' him in
consider'ble I s'pose 'nd he 's gettin' onpatient.'
" ' Holdin' him in ! ' says the Shrimp. ' He don't
need no holdin' in, 'nd the only thing he's ever onpa-
tient about is his feed ! '
" At them words we all rared up. All on us knowed
that when Crossbreed was a bit playful he c'ld side-
step over a house x absent-minded like. Sam Burler
looked the Shrimp over kind o' evil 'nd says, ' I s'pose
you seen lots o' hosses that c'ld beat him.'
" ' Yes,' says the Shrimp, ( I have 'nd what 's more I
got twenty dollars in my pocket that says that with two
hund'ed ya'ds sta't I c'n beat him to the Gap on my ol'
cayuse.'
" Well, strangers, there ain't no tende'foot anywheres
too insignif Vnt to rob. We all dug out money or bor-
rowed it and sure enough the Shrimp he took us fo' two
dollars each. They picked on me to ride Crossbreed.
The' was the usual conditions bareback and stockin'
feet 'nd a quirt but no spurs.
"Well, the' ain't much mo' to tell. Sam Burler
paced off the Shrimp's sta't and placed him 'nd then
Shorty Doolittle let off a shotgun and we was away.
Ol' Crossbreed was sure hungry. He chawed up that
road like it was carrots in spring and befo' the Shrimp
'nd his sleepy cayuse was half way to the Gap we passed
'em an' then somethin' happened so terr'ble sudden that
I 'm wonderin' about it yet. All I know is that one
186 HOME
minute I was facin' the same way as Crossbreed an' the
nex' I was in the air facin' his tail. I landed in the
ditch about the time he got back to the boys that was too
ho'ified to stop him an' when I looked up I seen the
Shrimp beatin' his cayuse past me. An' jest then my
eyes an' nose opened. I made out to discover the ca'cass
of Sam Burler's ol' gray that me an' Sam had dragged
into that ditch three days befo'. I don't have to tell
you that no boss with blood in him will pass a ca'cass.
" It took the Shrimp conside'able time to get even
his old cayuse past it, an' it took him some longer to
ride to the Gap an' back than it did me to get to The
Lone Star 'nd I was walkin' slow with some limp.
When he finally did get back he was lookin' jest a shade
meeker'n his old cayuse, an' he got a solemn welcome.
Sam Burler ma'ched in behind the bar an' we followed
him. He handed over fo'ty dollars to the Shrimp an'
he says, says Sam, ' Gent'men, I reckon the drinks is
on all on us but the house sets 'em up.' An' that
Shrimp says he was n't drinkin' but he 'd have a two-
bits segar if Sam did n't mind. The 's tende'foots 'nd
tende'foots."
There was a broad grin on Gerry's face when Kemp's
low monotone faded out altogether and a smile in Lie-
ber's blue eyes but neither said a word. From the cor-
ral came the grunts and sighs of cattle bedding down.
Horses stamped in the stables. Over the great ware-
houses where Lieber stored and sorted his goatskins the
moon crept into view. From the men's quarters came
the throb of a guitar accompanying a wailing, plaintive
HOME 187
voice. There was the smell of living things in the air.
Through it all and so interwoven with life that its
solemn undernote was forgotten, sounded the distant,
incessant boom of the falls.
CHAPTEE XXVI
THE next morning Gerry was up early, nervous
after his first night's absence from Fazenda
Elores. Kemp watched him saddle his horse. " That
ain't one of the five," he remarked.
" No," said Gerry. " I traded the roan for the iron-
gray. Do you think I was done ? "
" I ain't sayin'," said Kemp cautiously. " I don't
want you should think I was teachin' you, Mr. Lansing,
but that hoss ain't no iron-gray. There ain't no such
color for a hoss as I ever heern tell on. That hoss is
a blue an' he's a true blue."
" All right, Kemp," said Gerry, smiling. " You 've
named him true blue and True Blue he is from this
day."
Lieber came out in pajamas and called them for
coffee. When they were seated he proposed to Kemp
that he make his headquarters at the ranch for a while.
The advantages were evident. It was a congregating
point for the natives from miles round. Goatskins
came into Lieber's from hundreds of miles up country.
They came singly, in donkey loads or in whole pack-
trains. Sometimes they passed directly into his hands
from the producer ; sometimes they ran through a chain
of transfers, from hand to hand. All news centered
at and radiated from Lieber's. The same men that
188
HOME 180
brought in goatskins would be glad to add orchids to
their stock in trade.
Kemp grunted his thanks. He had waited two years
for this offer. The realization of the obligation Lieber
was putting him under embarrassed him. He began
to talk. " These greasers," he said, " take a lot o'
teachin' sometimes, an' sometimes they don't. P'r in-
stance, you can tell 'em that Cattleyas are wo'th money
and that the rest o' their parasites ain't, 'nd after they
seen you throw Bu'lin'tonias an' Oncidiums an' Mil-
tonias into the discard fo' three months steady, they
begin to sober down to jest Cattleyas 'nd realize that
it 's no use holdin' a four-flush against a workin'
pair."
At the scientific names dropping so incongruously
from Kemp's lips, Gerry stopped eating and looked up.
Lieber's face wore the smile of one who had heard it
before but is quite willing to hear it all over again.
" But," continued Kemp, " yo' c'n pull till you 're
blin' an' you can't head 'em around to see that onless
a Cattleya has eight leaves, it 's too young to be packed
an' no good to the market besides bein' a victim to race
suicide.
" As to their bringin' in Bu'lin'tonias an' Oncidiums
an' Miltonias, I never get onpatient o' that. How
c'n a greaser ever learn that a Miltonia Spectabilis
Moreliana that looks like pigeon's blood in a pu'ple
shadow ain't a commercial proposition, while the Cat-
tleyas is ? When he 's in the woods an' a smell straight
f'm heaven draps its rope on him an' he looks up an'
sees a droopin' spike o' snow, how you goin' to teach
190 HOME
him that a Bu'lin'tonia Fragrans ain't just as good busi-
ness as a Labiata ?
" Time was when orchids was an ambition ; now
they 's jest a business. If God-a'mighty had n't a scat-
tered 'em through the ends o' the earth an' given 'em
wings to fly an' claws to hold on half way up to heav'n
the 'd be an orchid trust right now an' orchids would
be classed on the ma'ket with bananas. Last time I was
hum I seen a bunch o' Cattleyas in O'Riley's window in
El Paso. Seemed like a bit o' po'try had jumped the
fence 'nd landed in D'Hiley's heart. In my mind's eye
I seen him impo'ting them plants an' nursin' 'em an'
turnin' out early in the mo'nin's, watchin' fo' 'em to
bloom. I went in an' had a talk. Well, gent'men, the'
wasn't no po'try in O'Eiley's orchids. It had been
strained out with a separator. Them plants was growed
by a nursery back East and shipped out to O'Riley by
fast freight when they was in bud at so much per plant.
When the blooms was used up, he shipped the plants
back an' got a fresh lot. He put a price of two fifty
a bloom on the flowers an' when he found they was sellin'
he put it up to five dollars. He said them flowers was
wo'th more'n a column o' advertisin' space in the El
Paso Blizzard an' cost a dern sight less.
" In Eurup, it 's some different. They 's collectors
hankerin' after new varieties an' houses that keeps men
lookin' for 'em but in America, you ma'k me, if an
orchid don't make up well on the missus' bodice or on
the table, it ain't business ; an' they 's a few million chil-
dren growin' up to the idea that if it ain't a Cattleya
it ain't an orchid.
HOME 191
" When I come out the fust time the house told me
I c'ld shove in a few samples of the varieties outside the
reg'lar line ; they 'd come in handy for flower shows
'nd an occasional collector. An' I did. I shoved 'em
in plenty. An' the house wrote me they was n't runnin'
a curiosity shop an' that Americans was n't buyin' gold
bricks so 's to exhaust the stock they had on hand an'
if I did n't mind would I please confine myse'f to com-
mercial orchids. Commercial orchids. That 's my
mount an' I 'm ridin' him steady but I can't he'p think-
in' that they 's many a missus back hum, an' man too,
that would catch the' breath to see the blood pu'ple of
a Miltonia lookin' up from its green leaves or to smell
the smell of the Bu'lin'tonia a smell that can talk an'
say things that a man can't."
Kemp came to himself, blushed and hurried out as
if on urgent business. Lieber looked at Gerry's thought-
ful face and smiled. " Who 'd have thought he 'd ever
talk that way in daylight ? " he said.
" I think," replied Gerry, " it was your offering to
let him make this place his headquarters. It rattled
him and started him off. I could see he was grateful."
" Perhaps that was it," said Lieber. " He 's a queer
one. He never asked me. It just occurred to me to
suggest it because I 'm getting to enjoy having Kemp
around. Look at last night."
Gerry nodded. His eyes fell on the clock and he
got up with a start. The sun was at its highest when
he reached Fazenda Flores. He caught sight of Father
Mathias' great white umbrella on the bridge and urged
True Blue into a final gallop. But Father Mathias was
192 HOME
not under his umbrella. Instead, Gerry found Mar-
garita and her toddling son. " Thou hast been away
a long time," said Margarita reproachfully. " The
priest is at the house and I took his umbrella that I and
the Man might watch for thee in the sun."
Gerry jumped off his horse and kissed her. Then
he picked up his son and set him in the saddle. Mar-
garita screamed. True Blue arched his neck and looked
cautiously around at his featherweight burden. The
young horse stood very still while Margarita fought past
Gerry's arm and dragged the Man from his perilous
perch to her bosom. And manlike the Man protested
with a bad-tempered, whole-lunged wail that rent the
air and brought Dona Maria and the priest to the corner
of the house to peer at them with eyes shaded under
cupped hands.
A few days later the- rains came in earnest. Un-
ceasing torrents that drew a continual hum from the tiles
of the roof, sought out cracks, forgotten during the long
dry season, and dripped in to remind the cozy house-
hold that outside the whole world was wet.
Gerry spent two days in the wet closing his sluice-
gate and shoring it from the inside against eventualities.
Then he repaired to the house and after lavishing his
enforced idleness on his son for a day or two, began to
work feverishly on further knick-knacks for the house.
Occasionally he sallied out and climbed the slippery
roof to mend a leak, Margarita, frightened, taking her
stand in the rain to guard over him with disconcerting
cries and warnings. When, occasionally, there hap-
pened to be a truce to the downpour, he hurried out with
HOME 193
Bonifacio to battle against prolific weeds that sprang to
weird heights in a night.
The rains passed. Gerry contracted with Lieber for
labor to be paid for in produce. Fazenda Flores blos-
somed and bore fruit. People began to come in from
afar to barter for produce and a buyer appeared and
took over the whole of the little cotton crop. Gerry
poured money into Margarita's lap more money than
she had ever seen and sent her under escort of Dona
Maria and Bonifacio and the Man to purchase all of
comfort and furbelows that the tiny market of Piranhas
could supply.
They were to be gone two days and Gerry left the
Fazenda in charge of his foreman to go and spend the
time with Lieber and Kemp. He found Kemp in a
sort of controlled elation over the greatest shipment of
commercial orchids the trade had ever known. Just
after Gerry's arrival two men appeared bearing a mon-
ster plant of over two hundred leaves strung, like the
grape cluster of Eschol, on a pole.
Kemp's deep-set eyes seemed to grow out of his head
as he made out their burden. " Hi-yi ! " he yelled and
rushed off to the corral where he threw himself on to
an astonished heifer. For one second she squatted and
then went mad. With yell and flogging hat Kemp
poured oil on the fire of her frenzy. She bucked and
twisted and all but somersaulted in her efforts to rid her-
self of the demon on her back. On the veranda, Lieber
and Gerry held their sides and roared at the most
grotesque fine riding they had ever seen. Finally, with
a desperate lunge, the heifer breasted the corral fence.
194 HOME
It caught her middle and she teetered over. Kemp
turned a handspring from her back and landed on his
feet. The heifer scrambled free from the fence and
tore, wild-eyed, out into the desert. Laughter rang
from every side. Three herders threw themselves on
to their horses and rode, shouting, after the heifer.
Kemp straightened out his hat, put it on, and walked
sedately over to the veranda. There was only a faint
glint in his eye as he bought the monster plant to
crown the monster shipment.
CHAPTER XXVII
ON Red Hill it was raining, not in a downpour but
in vast veils of mist that swayed to the breeze,
caressing the hills and hiding the valleys. It had been
raining for three days.
After lunch Clem had gone to her room and then
had come down again and wandered from window to
window, tapping the panes, and with her forefinger
tracing the course of the drops of water hurrying down
outside.
She went to the veranda at the back of Maple House
and searched the west in vain for a gleam of sunlight,
then she came in again and sat down before her little
writing-table in the corner of the library. She dropped
the lid. On the blotter lay an opened letter. She had
read it before. She picked it up and read it again.
" I do not write," it ran, " to the Clem I met the other
day as I stepped out from J. Y.'s building. I do not
know her and she doesn't know me. I am afraid of
her, not for what she is but for what she can steal from
me. I write to the little Clem the Clem of the days
that won't come back the Clem that has stood at my
knee and clapped her hands and wept at the same time
over the fate of a Very Real Dragon That Was Not.
Dear Little Clem, what bewildering company you are
keeping! What has become of those lanky legs, those
195
196 HOME
thin bare arms and those flouncy short skirts that were
so very much out of the way ? You have abandoned
them. How could you when you knew I loved them
just so ! And you are hiding in the vision of flesh and
furs and broadcloth that put me to rout in front of J.
Y.'s. that tied my tongue and twisted it so that when
it got loose it said the things that were furthest from my
heart. I know you are there because the eyes that
looked out at me before they crinkled up were your very
own.
"Clem, it 's hard for me to spread my heart on paper.
Warm words get chilled in the tub of ink and belie
themselves. There is only one way and that is just to
tell you that in spite of how things may look and seem
my heart is warm. Without understanding you can
forgive a warm heart, can't you ?
" I told you I 'd bring back my other self and send
him to you. I failed. Not because I did n't have him
with me but because I wanted to send him to you with-
out the rest of me and could n't.
" I can't tell you why I could n't. You must under-
stand it without telling. I can only say that even to-
day men are tested by fire. It's a fire one can't
smother it would only smolder on. One must let it
burn out. It burns out the half of a man and some
men don't know which half is going to be burned out
until it 's all over. It is that way with me. My soul
is a furnace. I could n't bring it too near for fear it
would scorch you. There, I have written too much.
If you find that the words are cold when they get to
you, warm them at the fire of your child heart. Alan."
HOME 197
The Clem that read this letter looked very much a
woman. She was nineteen, her hair was coiled up at
the back of her neck, and her frock when she stood up
almost hid her slim ankles. Alan's letter troubled her
and made her feel even older than she was. It brought
to her white forehead a tiny frown. Clem was as
tanned as a long summer could brown her but above her
brows the skin was quite white because she had such
a lot of hair that there was always some of it breaking
loose to shade her forehead.
Suddenly the frown vanished. Clem's full lips
opened in a little smile and a glow stole into the tan
of her cheeks. She jumped up and ran to the old pier
glass in the parlor, otherwise known as the Seldom
Room, so rarely was it invaded.
Clem pulled down her hair and shook it out. Then
she took a bright red ribbon from a whisk broom hang-
ing on the wall and gathering her hair at the back of
her neck, tied it with a bow. With the instinct of a
woman she looked for pins and found them. She
turned up her skirts in a broad pleat and pinned them.
She had to do it several times over to get the tucks
just right and the hang just so. She shook her head to
tumble her hair and turned for a last look in the glass.
She was a little girl once more. Her eyes laughed back
at her. They were half light, half shadow. They
seemed to understand her.
Clem ran back to the library. A shaft of sunlight
struck across Alan's open letter. She snatched up the
letter and tucked it in her bosom. Then she followed
the shaft of sunlight on to the back veranda.
198 HOME
For a moment she stood poised before sinking to a
seat on a bench. She crossed her knees and smiled
at her slim, well-shaped legs. It was so long since she
had consciously seen them that they were almost
strangers. Then she forgot them, braced her hands on
the bench at each side of her, threw back her head,
filled her lungs with the keen air and felt her heart begin
to pulse with the pulse of the living Hill.
Her eyes grew large and dreamy. In their depths
were swirling clouds, chased by a growing light. Her
eyes mirrored the world of Red Hill after rain. Clem's
head slowly dropped until her chin rested on her bosom.
She locked her hands about her knees. Then, with a
last look about her, she rose slowly, slipped in and sat
down at her desk.
" Dear Alan," she wrote, " this is not a letter about
you and me but just only about Red Hill. We 've had
a Northeaster not a blusterer, but one of those sleepy
ones that rains and rains like a baby crying because
it 's lonely. And now the third day and the storm are
over and the sun has come out. You know what that
means, Alan. Eed Hill is n't exactly laughing but it
is smiling with that sweet first smile that comes to
babies and hills while their cheeks are still wet with
tears.
" The maples are still dripping, mostly at the edges,
like big umbrellas. The firs look as if they had taken
their bath in black paint and are busy making every-
thing else in sight look white. The elms are waving
their plumes at the vanishing plumes of mist as though
they wanted to be polite but are n't very sorry to say
HOME 199
good-by. The sun, I am sorry to say, looks as if he had
been drinking too much. He 's very red and he 's wear-
ing a great spiked halo of rain shafts tipped at an ab-
surd, rakish angle. He does n't seem a bit ashamed and
the smile on his face looks as if he meant to make a
night of it somewhere out of sight.
" Outdoors there 's quite a nip in the air that makes
you feel as though with the rest of the world you had
just stepped out of a cold bath. But inside, Maple
House is cozy and warm and I know that when presently
I curl up on the lounge I shall feel like a chick nestling
against its mama hen where the feathers are downiest.
" Maple House is very lonely just now because there
are n't any other chicks about. Nance has taken her
lot back to town because Charlie Sterling says they are
quite full of health and he 's fuller of loneliness. As
for grown-ups, Uncle J. Y. is in town a great deal this
summer on account of other people's money and the old
Captain never gets out of bed since he had a stroke.
He says there's nothing the matter with him; it 's the
modern whisky that has lost its tone.
" So I 'm mostly alone with Aunty, and Maple House
seems almost too big to fit. But it is n't a bit too big
when I stop to think because I know that the old house
does n't stand for any one of us alone, it has to keep
a nook for every one of its scattered brood.
" That 's the dear thing about Maple House it is
always waiting. And that 's what makes it Home.
Sometimes in the lonely nights I wake up into a dream
and the old house is ringing with the sounds of the
children of a hundred years at play. They laugh and
200 HOME
sometimes they cry but there is one that never laughs
or cries. He is a chubby little boy with awfully staring
eyes for a baby and he carries a wooden sword and a
paper drum. It 's the old Captain, I 'm sure, and once
you have seen him as a chubby soldier of three you '11
begin to know the secret of Maple House that it 's
waiting for us to come back young or old. And if you
are very, very still for a very long time you can hear the
old house breathe, and then you know that in every
closet and in every corner it has hidden away a beat-
ing heart. It never loses one.
" Dear Alan, when I started to write this letter I
was quite a little girl now I find I 'm quite grown
up. I 'm sorry. But it only goes to prove that you are
wrong, and that it takes more than a half to make up
one's self. Clem."
CHAPTEE XVIII
THAT dry season saw the beginning of a drought
that will long hold the blackest page in the annals
of the San Francisco basin. It seemed but days after
the rains when the sparse grass and new-leafed bushes of
the wilderness began to shrivel up. Day after day the
sun leaped brazen, from the horizon to the sky, his
first level rays searching out the scant, stored moisture
of wilting foliage, and the very sap of the hardy brush.
While the cattle were still fat they became weak and
turned to cactus for nourishment. They broke down
the sickly branches with their horns and rubbed them in
the sand to free them of the worst of the thorns.
Herders rode the rounds on weakening horses and dis-
mounted time and again to pull out spines from the
snouts of passive, panting cows. Bulls died of broken
pride. They would not subject themselves to the pain
of eating cactus. The river the great river was
no longer great. It grumbled with a weak voice from
deep down in the gorge. Gerry watched its falling level
with anxious eye and one day sent an urgent call to
Lieber for help.
Laeber came. He brought with him an army, every
man bearing with him the tool that had come soonest to
his hand. Spades were few and hoes ; the bright shares
of a pick or two caught the light like lances. Most of
201
202 HOME
the men depended on the heavy sheath knives they
carried at their sides. They looked like an army of
sanscullottes as they swarmed into the ditch and began
to dig. In two days they had sunk it to the required
level. When they finished Gerry rode back with them
to help bring down Lieber's weakening stock.
Kemp had stayed in sole possession at Lieber's.
Digging was not in his line, so he had volunteered to
hold the fort against the return of the garrison. He
welcomed Lieber and Gerry to a supper of his own
making in approved cowboy style: sour-dough biscuits
made by a master hand, steaks cut from a freshly killed
calf and fried before toughness set in, a pile of creamy
mashed spuds. There was a homeliness about the meal
that made them eat in silence. They felt as though for
years they had been worshiping false culinary gods.
The pile of steaks, the heaped potatoes, the hot biscuit,
were exotics, strayed into a land of pepper sauces and
garlic. The supper seemed to the three men to take
on a personality and to be ill at ease, but it was they
that were ill at ease for the supper reminded them that
they were exiles.
The silence on the veranda that night was even longer
than usual. Gerry's mind went back to a French book
that he had bought in desperation at Pernambuco. He
had ploughed through half of it and with a catch in his
thoughts he remembered that it lay open on the table
when he left his little room in Piranhas on the morning
of mornings that had broken life in two. Some of
its phrases, conned over and over again in his struggle
with the half-forgotten idiom, came back to him. " La
HOME 203
parole est du temps, le silence de I'tiernite." He
smiled to himself at the twisted meaning the long silence
of his companions gave to the words.
Then the smile left his face. He remembered the
argument. The instinct we all have for superhuman
truths tells us that it is dangerous to be silent with
those we would keep at a distance, for words pass and
are forgotten between men, but silence active silence
is forever ineffaceable. True life the moments of
life that leave a trace is made up of silence. Not
passive silence ; that is but another name for sleep. But
the active silence that breaks down barriers, pierces
walls, and turns the life of every day into a life where
all is intense, where there is no ban nothing for-
bidden where laughter dare not enter, where subjec-
tion is submerged and where all all, is remembered.
Gerry felt that this active silence had come upon
them. These men were being borne into the silent
sphere of his own soul. He felt restless afraid. He
decided to speak. He was on the point of speaking
when Lieber let down his chair softly, clasped his hands
and broke the silence.
"Last night I dreamed I heard the blast of a
steamer's horn and when I woke up the cold sweat was
on my forehead because I know that there is no desert,
no wilderness, so far from the things you would forget
that dreams cannot follow you to it."
He stopped and silence fell upon them again. Lieber
stared straight in front of him, out into the night. His
face worked as though he were struggling to keep his
lips closed. When he began to speak again, the words
204 HOME
were scarcely audible. " I don't know why I want to
tell you two about why I am here, unless it is that as
we sat here so quiet I felt that you knew it all that
you knew all that I know and that I was on the point
of knowing all that you have known. The little lies
of life suddenly became big and hateful and I saw in
my life a monster lie that the silence was exposing.
" There are lots of men with the beginning of my
story. It 's common and takes little telling. I was
born in Pennsylvania. We were mighty poor farmers
but I got all the schooling there was within walking
distance of home. My old man saw to that. When
I was still a boy our little bank took me in. It was n't
doing much business then but a couple of years later
the region struck oil and the bank's business soared by
leaps and bounds. It turned into as good a spouter as
any of the wells. The family that ran it became rich
and went to higher jobs or out altogether. The staff
was shoved up and about the time I was of age I was
handling more money than I 'd ever known was in the
world. The amount I stole was an even thirty thousand
and I got away with it. It was easier to do thirty
years ago than it is to-day. I got away with it and then
it got away with me. It lasted me a year and four
months and I saw the end of it up the coast at Pernam-
buco.
" I date my birth from the day I spent the last dollar
and woke up. I worked. Nothing was too small or
too big for me to handle. I got something to risk and
then I risked it. I risked it again and again. After
ten years I could draw my check for thirty thousand plus
HOME 205
interest and I did. I sent the check to the little bank
back home. I waited two months for the answer and
then it came; my check torn across and a short letter
saying that the loss had already been met by a bankers'
surety association. I wrote the association a dozen
letters and some of them took some writing. In the
last I offered fourfold the theft. There had been
plenty of Bible in my bringing-up. They wrote back
that it was no use that I could keep on climbing in
price but it was their business to jail me for fifteen
years the first chance they got and they 'd do it the
minute I set foot where they could grab me.
" That letter frightened me. I began to realize that
what I 'd been working for was n't money, or honor, or
rehabilitation but just the right to go back the right
to go back home.
" Nobody had been harder on me than my old man.
For years nobody in the house was allowed to say my
name and if he saw a letter from me he threw it in the
fire, opened or unopened. But somehow it got to him
that I had offered to pay fourfold and that I 'd been
refused and that turned him. It was the fourfold that
did it the divine and sacred measure of justice. He
started to fight for me as hard as he'd ever fought
against. And then he died and my old mother died.
Letters stopped. My brothers and sisters were coming
up in the world. They could n't afford to own a thief
much less fight for him. So the letters stopped.
" I spent money then. I built me a house in Per-
nambuco that was a wonder palace and I started in to
forget. But when you've been remembering with all
206 HOME
your might, the color of the paper on the walls of home,
the lay of the wood-pile, of the sheds and the tumbling
barn and stables, the holes in the fence, the friendly
limbs of apple trees and the smell of hay ; when you 've
been coddling bare memories of simple things like those
for fifteen years, you can't turn around on your inside
self and forget.
" There 's a flag the sight of which makes my heart
come up into my throat and tears to my eyes. You
think I mean the Stars and Stripes, but I don't. I
mean the Blue Peter that flies at the halliards of big
ships and says to everybody that takes the trouble to
look, ' We sail to-day.' Over the tops of the houses I Ve
seen that flag blinking in the heavens like a bit of deep
blue sea married to a white cloud and to me it always
said, ' We sail for home to-day.' I 'd shut my eyes or
close the blinds but what was the use of that ? Night
and day I could hear the bellow of the great horns
a blast for good-by and another for a challenge to the
sea as the big boats headed out for home.
" I could n't stand it. I came up here. And now,
last night, I dreamed that I heard it in my sleep up
here. Gentlemen, a man without a country is in a bad
way but a man without a home even if it 's a hovel
well we all know the old song." He paused to
master his voice. Then in a whisper that they just
caught he added, " Home is the anchor of a man's soul.
I want to go Home."
Lieber stopped talking. The revealing silence had
done its work. It had brought them close so close
that he had spoken lest they take his soul by assault.
HOME 207
He left them and went to his own room. They saw he
was an old man, beyond the years he had disclosed.
They did not speak. They were nervous. Kemp
made a cigarette, puffed at it once or twice and then
threw it away, to roll another a moment later. His
thoughts were winging away to the fork of Big and
Little Creek where a three-room shack stood in the
shadow of the White Mountains of New Mexico. He
had thought it small, miserable, cramped. But out here
in the wilderness, thousands and thousands of miles
away, it came back to his vision, glorified.
The purling, gentle waters, fringed near the moun-
tains with tall, still pines, banked down the valley with
friendly cottonwoods, seemed another element from the
sullen river rumbling across the night from its cruel
gorge. The billowing range, stretching away from
Little Creek till it met the sky, crested with twisted
junipers and evergreen cedars, with its famous gramma-
grass undulating under cool breezes from the snow-
capped mountains, seemed to call to his lungs with soft,
breathing noises. And the Mountain the Mountain
that winter and summer had kept its white, dazzling
summit before him, leading him back from the far
round-up and the trail to the little shack in its shadow.
A swelling came into his throat. He tried to cough
it up. But as long as he thought of the Mountain, the
thickness stuck in his throat. He took from his pocket
a treasured cake of tobacco and with strong teeth tore
off a generous portion. Then he rose and walked off
to the corral.
Gerry sat on alone. Thoughts were troubling him,
208 HOME
too. What was he doing here ? Who was this Marga-
rita that had twined herself into his life ? Was it his
life? And her little boy black-haired, black-eyed,
olive-tinted he was his boy, too. He was Gerry Lan-
sing's son. 'No, not that not Gerry Lansing's.
Gerry Lansing belonged to a time that was far away, to
a hill where white houses with green blinds peered out
from the darkness of domed maples, from the long
shadows of up-pointing firs and from the eaves of flar-
ing elms, the wine-cups of heaven.
Gerry felt his spirit flying away to wander in cool
lanes where birch and sassafras and rioting laurel
burned incense under a kindly sun and slender wood-
maples bent under the breeze against sturdy hickory
and ash. It led him to look back upon the glory of the
mountain-ash in autumn and of the turning of the
leaves. A sigh came quivering through all his body
and escaped from his trembling lips. " I am alone,"
he breathed to himself.
Never had he been alone before never like that.
For the first time in over two years he thought of his
mother, of the Judge who had been a father to him, of
all the Hill, of Alix, and then, of Alan. Where were
Alix and Alan ? Suddenly the vision of Margarita and
her boy pushed in between him and memory. He
sprang to his feet. His manhood rose within him and
battled with her and the child against memory. He
started off into the wilderness. His sandals shot spurts
of sand and dust into the air behind him at every step.
He smelt the dust. Above him, the myriad stars shone
HOME 209
dry and far, far up in the heavens. Heaven was
farther from the world to-night than ever before.
Gerry came back at dawn. The herders were mount-
ing to round up the stock. Gerry saddled his horse
and went with them.
CHAPTER XXIX
DEEP in South America, on the ragged fringe of
the outskirts of progress, Alan Wayne was push-
ing a long bridge across a dried-up watercourse. He
was sick, tired, disgusted. Over and over again he had
grumbled to McDougal that it was a job for a mason
and McDougal had patiently answered, " I 'm the
mason, Mr. Wayne. Do you lie bye a wee and gie the
fever a chance to get out of the body." But Alan
stuck jealously to his job. Ten Percent Wayne might
retire on his laurels but he could never be beaten.
Every third day the fever in his bones seized his
body in a grip that could not be denied, shook it till it
rattled and cast it down limp, cold and hot, teeth chatter-
ing and then clenched, and then chattering again. But
on the days between Alan made up for the lapse. He
became a devil hanging on the backs of his men and
driving them to superhuman efforts. Terror held them.
They were Italians, far from home. A wilderness
stretched between them and the sea. The sea itself
was none of theirs; it was but an added barrier. A
madman had them in thrall. Terror drove them. It
was a race to finish the bridge before he killed them.
" I am going to be sick," he had told them in cold, rapid
words, " I am going to be sick but before I 'm finished
the bridge is finished or ." He smiled and made a
210
HOME -211
gesture with his hand to show how he would brush
them all off into the dry gorge. His smile terrified
more than the raised hand.
The giant gang-boss, McDougal, stood by and nodded
solemn confirmation. When Alan was ill by day, Mc-
Dougal left him and drove the men in his stead but
when the hour for knocking off came with the sudden
eclipse of the sun by the horizon, he hurried to Alan's
tent, fished him out from some corner on the floor,
wrapped him in blankets, dosed him with quinine,
tempted him with poor, weak broths and nursed him,
unprotesting, through the night.
McDougal had followed Alan into strange lands and
strange places and seen him in many a deep hole, and
through it all Alan had been the same a purring
dynamo at work. He had been the same until this
damned trip into the Brazilian wilderness and here a
change had come over him. There were times when he
talked and what he said was, " !No more trips for me,
McDougal. I 'm a consulting engineer from this on."
McDougal had heard more than one man talk like that
under fever and he frowned, trying to remember one of
them that had ever come back.
Alan was inured to river fever. He had fought it
often and when he saw the fetid pools of stagnant
water in the dried-up water course he knew he would
have to fight it again. Somehow, some night, a mos-
quito was bound to get at him, and the fever would
begin. He doubled his preventive dose of quinine but
he could not double his spirits for the battle. He came
to the field with a gnawing at those sources of health,
212 HOME
a calm mind and sure sleep. Sleep did not come as of
old after the day's work. Instead he tossed and twisted
on his narrow cot and finally would turn on the electric
torch to read two letters over and over again.
One he read with a curl of the lip. It was from a
pretty woman that had fluttered into his life and out.
He had forgotten her and now she had come back to
buzz words in his buzzing ears. She said, " It costs a
woman to learn that happiness is not really tangible.
Between being fortunate and happy a gulf is fixed. I
was fortunate just not miserable and stood on the
brink of the gulf. Happiness brushed me with its
wings. I reached out to catch it and the gulf took me.
How long will it be before I climb back to the height
that seemed not so very high when I possessed it ? I
don't know ... I do not hate you, only myself.
You have known many women but you have not known
me. That is the bitter part. You do not know what
I gave you. One thing I ask you and the words as I
write are blurred with tears like my eyes if ever a
foolish woman, honest and true as I was, offers you the
same sacrifice, do not take it. I have suffered for all
the women you will meet."
" Fool," said Alan to himself, " fool not to see that
I turned her wish-washy weakness into strength and
loosed a dumb tongue."
And then he drew out the other letter and the curl
in his lip straightened out to a line of sweetness and the
light in his eyes turned to a fiery, blind adoration. The
letter had been sent to him, sealed, by J. Y., who had
accompanied it with a note. The letter began, " To
HOME 213
my boy at Thirty," and ended, "With undying love,
your friend and Mother." In life he could not remem-
ber his mother but he saw her now in three pages of
laboring words traced by a dying hand. In herself,
dying at thirty, she had seen her boy revealed. She had
had no strength no time left for slow approaches.
With the first words of her letter she laid a cooling hand
on his burning soul. She spoke the all-seeing wisdom of
death. She held him close to her heart and fed him
with her life's blood. All that she had been, all that
she had learned, all that she foresaw, was crowded into
those three pages. They were brittle with age, the ink
yellow and faded in words that no eyes but his and
hers had ever seen. They gripped his soul and held
it steady. Without this letter he would have torn up
the other. But the other had come as a complement
and he kept it because it helped him to see himself.
As Alan weakened, the bridge approached completion.
Batches of men, as special work was finished, were
despatched to the coast. With each batch McDougal
strove to send his master but Alan was too weak to go
though he did not say so. He had realized it with
terror and then with calm. " ISTo, McDougal, not this
time," he would say, and finally, " I think I might just
as well stay on till they send up to take over. It 's
unprofessional to chuck it before. It won't be long
now." And McDougal had cursed low rolling oaths
and taken it out on the men.
Alan seemed to have become childish in his weakness.
He spent what strength he had left in cutting words
into a board ripped from a kerosene box. When he had
214 HOME
finished he called McDougal and showed him his handi-
work. " McDougal," he said, " if anything should hap-
pen to keep me here permanently just cut these words
into some big rock and lay me under it. Be careful
you get them just so. The French are mighty par-
ticular about the way we use their lingo and while it
was n't a Frenchman that wrote this bit I guess he 'd
be just as particular."
" Aweel, sir," said McDougal, stifling his rage within
him, " I '11 do as you wish." He took the board and
looked at it. The words meant nothing to him but the
scene meant much. He went out and concluded his
agreement with twelve quiet, lowering men gathered
from the country side. They were pioneers without
knowing it. They and their fathers and their fathers'
fathers had held these far depths of the world against
wild beasts and drought and flood since, centuries ago,
the Jesuits swept through the subcontinent and left a
trail of settlers behind them. They were proud, nar-
row, independent. They were uninventive, unimagina-
tive. No man among them had ever thought to lie.
They did not steal though they were robbed whenever
they invaded civilization with their wares.
From them McDougal had learned that due east,
halfway to the sea, was a place called Lieber's and that
this Lieber was known as the Americano and had fame
as a curador of fevers. Four men could carry a
sick man to Lieber's in a hammock in four days.
Twelve men could do it in two, and quicker than that
a hundred men could not go. For the price of three
steers each two-year olds they would undertake
HOME 215
to deliver the sick man at Lieber's in two days. Mc-
Dongal pondered. It was a chance. If he sent Alan
to the rail-head there wouldn't be even a chance.
There was no one who could help at the rail-head, nor
along the thin line, nor even at the coast.
" In two days," said he despairingly, " the master
will be dead."
They gathered at the door of Alan's tent and looked
in at him as he lay half comatose. " No," said the
oldest of them, " he will be dead in seven days' time."
As McDougal picked him up and laid him gently in
a hammock, Alan came to. The hammock was padded
with pillows and blankets and strung on a stout bamboo
pole with two men at each end supporting it.
" What are you doing with me ? " he asked angrily
and sank back into the pillows. From there his eyes
glared up at McDougal.
" I 'm sending ye home," said McDougal gently but
firmly.
Alan smiled a twisted smile. " Sending me home,"
he repeated and added resignedly, " Oh, all right."
Then he started up. " Bring matches," he said.
McDougal took matches from his pocket. Alan drew
two letters from inside his coat. " Burn them." He
held them out and watched jealously as McDougal
opened out the sheets with averted eyes and set fire
to the thin paper. The filmy cinders blew hither and
thither under the light breeze. The men under the
pole moved nervously, anxious to be off. Their eight
companions wheeled their flea-bitten ponies and headed
for the trail. "No, you don't," shouted McDougal
216 HOME
and explained with many gestures that they were to ride
behind on account of the dust.
" We know, master," answered one quietly, " we
would but start."
McDougal held out an awkward hand in farewell.
" You 're ready, Mr. Wayne ? "
" Yes," said Alan between chattering teeth, and then
cried, " No, I want the board my epitaph thing, you
know."
McDougal dived into the tent and brought out the
board with the roughly cut words that he could not
read but somehow began to understand. He slipped it
into the hammock behind the cushions and then just
touched Alan's hand and gave the word to the men.
They started off in a shambling, rapid trot. The horse-
men fell in behind. A cloud of dust cut them off from
McDougal's gaze. He turned and fell upon his labor-
ing squad with a rolling flood of curses. To them the
words were Greek, but nevertheless, their blood curdled
and they worked as only Wayne had taught them.
CHAPTEE XXX
LIEBEE, with Gerry and Kemp, sat in the shade
of the veranda, smoking after the midday meal.
The stock had been corralled but, on Kemp's advice, the
start for Fazenda Flores was to be made half-way
through the afternoon. There was to be a great moon
that night and the drive would be robbed of the perils
of darkness to cattle as well as of the horrible heat.
The three were silent, half somnolent, when a pass-
ing herder grunted and pointed westward with his chin.
Lieber stood up and looked. A pillar of dust was com-
ing across the desert. He could see men riding and
something else. He took his field-glasses from a peg
and looked again. " Funeral, or a sick man," he said
and sat down to wait. Kemp started whittling to keep
himself awake. Since the hour of Lieber's confession
he had hardly spoken.
When the cavalcade came within easy view Gerry
stood up and watched. He could not hide his curiosity
like Lieber and Kemp. In front of the horses came
four men bearing a sagging hammock on a pole. They
were running in quick, springy steps that made the
hammock sway gently from side to side. The pace
they kept up under the burden was marvelous. They
were followed closely by eight horsemen. At the first
signs of faltering among the bearers, four of the riders
217
218 HOME
would throw themselves off their ponies and run under
the pole. The change of relay was made without a stop,
without a pause. The freed ponies stood with hanging
heads and straddled legs. Even from a distance one
could see that the burdened men had run the wiry
little beasts off their feet. They were all in, but the
men were still erect keen. With a final spurt the
cortege drew up before the veranda. Lieber stood up.
" Dead or dying ? " he asked.
" Master, we do not know," answered the oldest of
the men, their leader.
" Fever or smallpox ? " asked Lieber.
" Fever."
With a look of relief Lieber went down the steps
to the hammock. A sheet had been thrown over the pole
to keep off the worst of the sun. He pulled it off. A
ghastly sight met his eyes, but he did not shrink.
" Bring him up here," he said, springing up the steps
and sweeping a saddle harness and some old magazines
off a great rawhide settle on the veranda.
They laid the sick man on the settle and Lieber
started to strip him with gentle, deft hands. Kemp
strode forward and helped but Gerry stood by, power-
less to move. He had recognized Alan, the man he
had sworn to break if ever he met him. Somebody else
had broken Alan, terribly, pitilessly. Gerry's eyes
shrank from the sight. A lump came into his throat.
Alan was dead. Alan with whom he had wandered
barefoot through those quiet lanes of home, with whom
he had fished and swum, and once had fought. What
a little fury Alan had been in that boys' battle ! It had
HOME 219
not been fought to a finish. On one impulse they had
stopped and looked at each other and turned away,
ashamed to shake hands.
Lieber, once heavy, florid and clumsy, was trans-
formed. He worked quickly with sure hands. The
body lay stripped on the settle. Under it still lay the
hammock and dusty blankets. The pillows and a
board had been tossed on the floor. Lieber examined
his patient minutely, without haste. The spleen was
frightfully distended and pushed out across the abdo-
men. He could feel its hard, unyielding margins.
The feet were swollen. The face was yellow with the
sickly gray-yellow of molded straw. Coma had set in.
Lieber dragged a great medicine chest out from his
room. With alcohol he rapidly washed out the dust-
filled nostrils of the stricken man and bathed the face
and then the limbs and body. Then he took out a
hypodermic syringe and a graduated glass. In the
glass he dissolved a powder and with steady hands added
measured drops of a liquid of faint amber hue.
Gerry found his tongue. " What is it ? " he asked.
" Quinine and arsenic," said Lieber shortly.
" Arsenic ? Is n't that dangerous ? " said Gerry.
Lieber glanced at him. "It will probably kill
him."
"Then why why " protested Gerry. A great
desire to protect what was left of Alan had come over
him.
"Why?" said Lieber dryly, "I'll tell you, Mr.
Lansing. Because it is less cowardly to kill a man than
to let him die."
220 HOME
He mixed the solution in the syringe and then, grasp-
ing Alan's thin arm, he pressed it until the veins came
out in a swelling network. " Hold his arm like that,"
he commanded Kemp. Kemp clutched the arm. The
bones seemed to bend to the grip. Lieber chose a
swollen vein and pierced it with the needle. He
forced the dose into the blood. " There," he said with
a smile to Gerry, " that 'a what 's known as an intra-
venous administration of quinine and arsenic. If an-
other paroxysm hits him he 's done for but we '11 know
all about that in forty-eight hours' time." (
He went into the house and brought out clean sheets,
soft woolen blankets, pillows, and pillow-slips. Kemp
had never seen such linen; Gerry had almost forgotten
the feel of it. Gerry came to life. With one hand
under Alan's shoulders and another under his hips, he
lifted him as though he were an empty shell, while Kemp
and Lieber drew out the dust-caked blankets and ham-
mock and spread first a cane mat over the settle and
then a blanket and, on top of that, a sheet. The touch
of Alan's dry, crackling skin seemed to Gerry to be
burning his hands. " It is as though there were fire
in him," he said to Lieber.
Lieber looked at his patient with an all-seeing eye.
He paused before covering him up. " That 's it," he
said. " There 's fire in him the worst kind and
he 's been playing with it, just tickling it with stale
quinine." His eye ran rapidly over the thin body. " I
said the dose I gave him would probably kill him but
I 've changed my mind. I 'm betting the other way,
now I really look at him. There 's no flesh on him,
HOME 221
but he does n't look like a skeleton. Why ? Because of
the sinews and bones of him they 're perfect. Look
at the way the sinews hold his neck and the way the
neck carries the sinews. Look at the flat bulge of his
ribs and the breadth of his shoulders over the hips.
That means heart and lungs and vitals. That man's
been a fighter and, unless I 'm a bigger fool than I was
yesterday, he 's a fighter yet."
" Cover him up, for God's sake," said Gerry.
Lieber dropped the sheet and went off to the kitchen.
Gerry and Kemp covered the stripped body and tucked
many blankets over it. Lieber came back and took off
half the blankets. " Must n't tire him with weight,"
he explained. " If he 's going to sweat, he '11 sweat all
right. Malaria malignant fever is the tiredest
disease in the world. When they get too tired to
breathe, that 's the end." He took hold of Alan's
wrist. " To feel his pulse, you 'd say he was dead
now."
" 'Bout time we was startin'," remarked Kemp with
his eyes toward the declining sun.
Gerry's first impulse was to say he would stay but
he suddenly remembered Margarita. How far away
from life she seemed! Alan and Margarita could not
crowd into one day or even into one world it was
against the order of things. But facts do not stand on
the order of their coming, they simply come and against
the protest of man's will they present his fate;
against the cry of the troubled and displaced soul they
voice the eternal j'y suis, j'y reste of inanimate things.
One cannot go around a fact. One must either break
222 HOME
one's head against it or swallow it and let it take its
course through the mental gorge.
Gerry longed to stay by Alan's side and through his
returning consciousness, as through a magnifying glass,
gaze upon the world he had forsworn the heritage
he had abandoned. But the fact of Margarita and her
boy suddenly declared itself demanded digestion
and Gerry turned his back on Alan. He mounted and
with the silent Kemp reversed the drive they had made
together months before.
Lieber did not go with them. When he had seen
them off, he busied himself giving orders for the tidying
up of the veranda, the feeding of Alan's convoy, beast
and man, and the preparation of a room for the self-
invited guest. From the pile of dusty pillows a servant
was picking up, fell a board. Lieber glanced down at
it. Words were cut roughly but clearly into its surface.
They spoke to him. They held his eyes. He stooped
laboriously and picked up the board. He took it into
his private room, propped it up against some books on
the table and sat before it with his face dropped in his
hands. To his closed eyes the words seemed no longer
carved in wood. Against the inward darkness of his
brain they shone out in points of light. He could not
shut them out. " Qui de nous n'a pas eu so, terre
promise, son jour d'extase, ei sa fin en exilf "
At sundown Lieber came out to his patient. He had
him moved, settle and all, into a room whose windows
opened upon the veranda. Lieber sat beside him and
nursed him through the long hot night. To the deft-
ness of his hand had been added tenderness and into his
HOME 223
face a new determination had come a resolve to win
Alan's battle for him whatever the odds.
Gerry did not sleep that night. He lay on the little
extra bed he had made upon his son's arrival and,
propping himself on his elbow, gazed around him. The
moon shone through great cracks in the warped shutters
and filled the vast room with a glow that, as his eyes
dilated, became a revealing light. In one corner was
an iron wash-stand with its vessels of coarse enameled
metal, a recent purchase. In another corner stood a
grotesque clothes-rack. It looked like a young pine
with irregular branches and top lopped off. On the
stubs or pegs, hung his clothes and Margarita's and, on
the lowest peg of all, the Lilliputian garments of the
Man. The floor was bare and rolling, for the boards,
rough-hewn from hard-wood giants of the forest, had
warped steadily through many years. In its center
stood the great rustic bed that Gerry had made from the
twisted limbs of trees and Bonifacio had plaited with
thongs. By raising himself to the full length of his
arm Gerry could see Margarita lying uncovered on the
coarse, yellowish homespun. On her bare brown arm
lay the black head of her son.
Gerry shuddered at the nearness the familiarity
of everything. The seams of elementary life stood
out brutally. For the first time he saw them. From
the touch of the coarse homespun that covered him, his
mind went back to the feel of Lieber's fine linen and
from that it poised on Alan and then flew back to Alix
Alix who, seen through the years, became doubly
ethereal and flower-like. Where was Alix ? What had
224 HOME
Alan done with her? He must ask him. That, at
least, he must know. But before he could ask he
must decide about Margarita and steel himself to his
purpose. He thought of the long still days at Fazenda
Flores before Alan had come to Lieber's the struggle
and the reward that had been his and the firmness in
him, the steadfastness that had led Alan to name him
The Rock, rose up in defense of Margarita and her
son.
Gerry was up early. As he was saddling True Blue,
Margarita came on to the veranda. " Where art thou
going ? " she asked.
Gerry looked up. He was a little pale from the
wakeful night and there were slight shadows under his
eyes. " I am going to Lieber's. There is a sick man
there he is dying and I must help. He is my fellow-
countryman."
Margarita's eyes searched his face. Her bosom rose
and fell rapidly. " Do not go," she said, and Gerry
started at the passion in her voice.
He looked at her and smiled. " I must see this man
before he dies," he said, half to himself.
" Ah," said Margarita, beating with her little brown
fist on the veranda pillar, " I know. I know. It is
not death that calls thee. Why should one turn from
things that live to fondle death? It is the stranger
thou wouldst see."
Gerry dropped the reins of his horse and, hurrying
up the steps, took Margarita in his arms, " And why
not, my beloved ? Why does thy heart beat so ? It is
HOME 225
not a woman I go to see, but a man. Shall I not talk
with a man that is at death's door 2 "
" Let him but die," pleaded Margarita ; " let him but
die and thou shalt go and bury him. See, the day is
beautiful. There is a cloud. Perhaps it will rain.
Come, my Geree, let us go down to the river and swim.
We will take the Man. He shall sit on the bank and the
river will play with his bare toes. He will laugh."
Gerry smiled but shook his head. " To-morrow, my
beloved, to-morrow we shall play with the Man and the
river."
Margarita's arms fell to her sides in pathetic sur-
render. She watched Gerry mount and ride slowly up
the slope to the bridge where Kemp awaited him. Then
she went back to the veranda steps, sat down and wept
with her face hidden in her hands. She did not know
why she wept but she knew she wept for things that
were going to be. The Man came toddling out to her,
fell on her shoulders, dragged her hands from her face
and crowed with delight. It was an old game, played
often before, except that this time when the game was
over his little fists were wet.
CHAPTEE XXXI
ALAN was struggling back from coma. He was
passing through what Lieber termed to himself
a stage of reflex cerebral phenomena. He muttered,
he talked, but the words were rendered unintelligible by
his thick dry tongue. Lieber listened. When his
patient could speak clearly, he would give him broth
even if he had to rouse him. But before Alan could
speak clearly, he awoke. Lieber found his sunken eyes,
the pupils appearing almost concave, fixed on him with
a seeing gaze. It was like resurrection. A spirit had
come down upon the body. Eye to eye, mouth to mouth,
heart to heart, it had given sight, breath, life.
The eyes closed. Lieber hurried away. From the
kitchen he brought a bowl of broth. It was steaming
and filled the room with an odor of rich essence. It
was in itself a concentration of life. Lieber held Alan's
unwilling head on his left arm and with a small spoon
carried drops of the broth to his dry lips. At first
Alan scarcely swallowed them. They stayed in his
mouth or trickled unaided down his throat. But
gradually his tongue softened. He could feel the con-
traction of his throat giving way to the oils of the broth.
He tried to reach a weak hand towards the bowl.
Lieber smiled and fed him with a larger spoon. The
bowl was emptied. Alan sank back into the pillows.
226
HOME 227
His eyes wandered wistfully over the bare walls, the
high tiling of the strange room. "<I would have,
great gods ! but one short hour of native air let
me but die at home,' ' he murmured and Lieber
heard.
The words clutched at his own heart but he answered
cheerfully, " You shall, my boy, you shall die at home
if you like, but you 're going to have years to think it
over. Sleep, that 's the word. And sleep it is," he
added to himself as Alan's eyes closed and his chest
began to rise and fall in healthy breathing. Lieber
held his wrist. The pulse was taking on strength.
Alan was still sleeping when Gerry arrived. Lieber
looked up, surprised. " You 've come all the way back
from Fazenda Flores ? "
Gerry nodded. " How is he ? Has he come to,
yet?"
" Yes," said Lieber in a low, modulated tone. " He
came to, all right. But the fight 's not over yet. Fever
goes and comes, you know. If another paroxysm seizes
him, he '11 not have the strength to pull through. It 's
a question of hours now."
" You 've been up all night," said Gerry. " Go and
lie down for a while. I '11 call you if anything
happens."
Lieber rose reluctantly. "Don't fail to call me,"
he said. " I '11 leave my door open."
Gerry sat down in a chair beside the settle. He
had not known how tired he was himself. Soon he
drowsed. His head fell forward on his chest. Sleep
came to him and then a great trouble came to his sleep.
228 HOME
He roused himself from a nightmare and, suddenly
wide awake, found Alan's eyes fixed on his face.
" You," murmured Alan.
Gerry did not answer. His face became a mask. It
seemed to him that only Alan's eyes were alive, and to
Alan that Gerry had projected his spirit to his bedside
to watch him die.
Alan tried to smile in defiance. " Can't you speak ? "
he whispered hoarsely.
Gerry leaned forward. The question he had to ask
was stronger than he. It forced its way through his
lips. " Alan, what did you do with her ? Tell me that
and I '11 go away."
A troubled look came into Alan's thin face. He
frowned. " Do with her ? Do with whom ? "
" Alan," said Gerry, his suppressed voice trembling,
" you know. With Alix."
" Oh," said Alan, still struggling on the verge of
consciousness. " I remember. I did nothing with her.
She would n't go with me."
" Alan," groaned Gerry. " I saw you. I saw you
and Alix on the train."
The frown was gone from Alan's forehead. He felt
sleep coming back to him and he was glad. " Yes," he
said, " she was on the train with me. I remember.
She jumped off. A baggageman caught her." He
dropped off to sleep again.
Lieber stepped catlike across the floor. He caught
Gerry by one ear and with the other hand over his
mouth, led him out of the room. Gerry went tamely.
When they were on the veranda Lieber looked at him.
HOME 229
" So," he said, his blue eyes blazing, " you only want to
kill him."
" No," said Gerry, dazed, " not now."
" Mr. Lansing," said Lieber, " you get out of here.
We '11 settle this business some other time."
Gerry's lip trembled. " You 're right, Lieber," he
said. " You 're right, only you don't know it all. That
chap in there we were boys together. He ran away
with my wife. That 's why " Gerry suddenly
stopped. Alix had not run away. She had jumped off
the train. Where was she then ? What had she done
through the years he had been away? Why had she
jumped off the train ? He struck his hand to his head
and stumbled off the veranda.
Lieber's anger died in him, but he turned and went
back to Alan.
Two hours later he came out again to find Gerry
crouched on the veranda. The spirit had gone out of
him but he turned on Lieber with a determination in
his tired eyes. " You told me to get out and I have n't.
There are things I 've got to know. I '11 wait."
" I spoke in haste, Mr. Lansing," said Lieber. " I
want you should forgive me. You are all in, too.
Come with me."
He led him into his own room, made him lie down,
and closed the shutters. Gerry threw himself across
the bed, arms outstretched, face down. Lieber slipped
out and noiselessly shut the door. Gerry lay exhausted.
He could not think any more. A great weight lay on
his brain. The ten minutes' doze in the chair at Alan's
bedside had not been rest, but a nightmare. Presently
230 HOME
he fell into sleep, a deep sleep that was all unconscious-
ness.
It was almost night when he awoke and with the
awakening, the weight settled back on his brain, only
now he had the strength to think in spite of it. He
got up and went out in search of Lieber. Lieber heard
him and came out into the hall. Gerry nodded towards
Alan's room. " It 's all right, Mr. Lansing. He must
have a solid mind. Your talk did n't excite him
did n't even disturb his sleep. He 's on the road up
weak, a baby, but he 's started life again. He 's asked
for you twice. Seems to have something he 's got to
get off his chest to you. You 'd better go in."
Gerry sat down once more beside Alan. The ques-
tions he must ask crowded to his lips but he forced them
back. He tested his strength with resolutions and held
them. It was his way of reassuring himself. He
wanted to feel his firmness rising in him to meet the
struggle he felt must come when Alan spoke.
Alan knew he was there. He saw him through half-
closed eyes but, more than that, he felt him. His
brows puckered in a frown. It was still hard to use
words. " Gerry, last night I wanted to tell you more
only I could n't. I had to sleep. Alix did n't go with
me. She only came to the train. When I kissed her
she woke up and found she was n't carnal after all.
She went back home. You did n't turn up. You never
turned up. They traced you to a river, an empty canoe
pajamas you know." He stopped and sighed as
though his task were over.
The veins on Gerry's forehead stood out in knots.
HOME 231
His chin rested on his clenched hands, his elbows on
his knees. "Alan," he said, "where is Alix now?
What has she done ? "
Alan opened his eyes and looked at him. " She is
waiting. She has always waited for you to come back.
She would not' believe you were dead, because of the
boy."
" The boy ! " groaned Gerry. " What boy ? "
" Yours," said Alan. " He is a great boy. There is
a new Alix since he came. She is as far from me and
what she was as the stars. She is a steady star. But
it 's all right now. You '11 go back to her."
" I can't," whispered Gerry hoarsely, more to him-
self than to Alan. " I 've got a wife here. I Ve got
a child here. To me he is my first-born."
Alan's eyes opened, this time in wonder. A twisted
smile came to his lips. " You ! " he said. " You ! "
and then the smile changed to a faint disgust. He
turned his head on the pillow away from Gerry and
slept.
The next morning found Gerry still at Lieber*s. He
knew he must go back to Fazenda Flores in the end
but just now his soul was too raw. He hung around
waiting for Alan to wake up. There was only one
way to soothe the pain of his wound and that was to
add vinegar to it. He wanted to hear more and tell
more. It seemed a terrible affront that Alan Alan
of all people should sit in judgment over him. Alan
awoke at last to a ravenous appetite and a desire for
the open. They moved him, settle and all, out upon
232 HOME
the veranda. " What a murderous day ! " he said, his
eyes turning, blinded from the blaze of sun, to rest in
the shady nooks of the veranda.
Outside, the heavenly bowl of blue was virgin of
clouds. It stretched and domed in a sphered eternity
of emptiness. Through its depressing void the sun
swam slowly, pitilessly, as though it were loth to mark
the passing minutes. The whole earth baked. Strong
trees wilted and turned up the wrong sides of their
leaves on the sea of heat like dying fish turning up
their white bellies at the last gasp. Not a breath of
air stirred. Heat rose from the ground in an un-
broken, visible wave. " My God," said Alan, gazing
with wistful, far-seeing eyes beyond the familiar, re-
pellent scene, " ' a homeward fever parches up my
tongue.' ' There was such an agony of longing in the
words that Gerry was frightened. He looked ques-
tioningly at Lieber.
" No," said Lieber, " he 's not dying. He was dy-
ing, but he 's changed his mind. He 's going to go
home instead."
" I believe he 's right, Gerry," said Alan with a faint
smile. " But I did n't change my mind. He did it
for me. He 's in line for a life-saving medal. Lie-
ber 's all right." He stopped, tired out.
Lieber began to talk to Gerry. " How 's the water
in the ditch, Mr. Lansing ? "
" Mighty low," said Gerry. He spoke almost ab-
sent-mindedly. For the first time in months the ditch
was far from his thoughts.
" It 's hard luck," said Lieber. " The river 's never
HOME 233
been so low before not in the memory of man. We
do not hear the falls any more. The river is asleep.
Do you want me to send my men down again ? "
" It 's no use," said Gerry. " I don't dare deepen
the ditch any more. It ? s way below the normal level
now."
Alan stirred. " What 's that about a ditch ? "
In unhurried phrases and a low voice Lieber told
him the history of Fazenda Flores since Gerry's ad-
vent and of the great part the ditch had played in bring-
ing resurrection to the abandoned plantation and life
to the neighboring stock.
Alan cast a curious glance at Gerry. " Dangerous
business," he said, " fooling with the normal level in
flood country."
Lieber nodded and went on. He told his tale well.
He had seen more than Gerry could have put into
words. Gerry listened for a while but he soon wearied.
What had all that to do with him now ? He wandered
off and started to saddle True Blue. He must get
away from Alan. Alan was drawing him but he was
bound in chains. He must remember that. Then,
too, what Alan had said about fooling with the normal
level worried him. He must go back and station a
guard at the great sluice-gate.
A sudden puff of air, then a breeze, then a gale,
swept down on Lieber's from the southwest. The wind
was hot, a furnace blast from the torrid wilderness.
It carried with it swirls of dust, light dry sticks, and
finally, small pebbles that hurtled along the ground.
Gerry and his horse sought shelter by the house.
234 HOME
Herders came running out from their quarters and
gathered in front of the veranda. The wind suddenly
turned cold, dropped and ceased. The dust settled.
The sun blazed as before. There was not a cloud in
the sky. The herders all looked at Lieber. They did
not talk. They were waiting.
Lieber shrugged his shoulders. " Somewhere," he
said with a wave of his hand to the southwest, " there
has been rain and hail and that sort of thing. Tem-
perature fell and drove the hot air off the desert." He
told the men but they did not go away. They stood
around, their eyes sweeping the horizon to the south-
west. At last one of them grunted. His eyes were
fixed on a distant pillar of dust. It came towards
them. Lieber used his field-glasses. Without taking
them from his eyes he spoke. " It 's a man, riding.
Looks like he 's riding for life. Something is up.
He 's riding to kill his horse."
As the man approached, a dull rumbling filled the
ears of the watchers. So gradual was its crescendo that
they did not notice it. The rider spurred and beat
his horse to a final effort. They could see he was
shouting. He drew nearer and they heard him,
" Mood ! Flood ! " Then they noticed the rumbling.
It became a roar. Far away on the horizon rose a
white, advancing mist. The rider rolled off his stag-
gering horse. " The flood," he gasped. " Never be-
fore has there been such a flood."
Before the words were out of his mouth there was
a frenzied rattle of hoofs and Gerry on True Blue tore
off in a mad gallop down the trail towards Fazenda
HOME 235
Flores. Almost at his heels followed the first mounted
of the herders, riding all they knew to cut across to
Piranhas ahead of the wall of water.
Lieber's eyes followed Gerry's flight. Then he
turned them on Alan. " That hollow down there," he
said, " will be turned into a rushing river in half an
hour perhaps less. We 're just safe here, and that 's
all. You see Mr. Lansing ? He 's the spot furthest
down the trail. I 'm thinking we '11 never see him
again."
A faint flush came into Alan's cheeks. It was a
flush of pride pride in Gerry. Gerry had not hesi-
tated. He had not ridden off like a laggard. Even
now they could see that he was riding for life rid-
ing with all his might for the lives that shackled him.
CHAPTEK XXXII
GERRY had never ridden a horse to death before.
When True Blue first staggered he put spurs
to him and laid on his quirt right and left.
The roar of the river was so loud that he could not
tell if he had really heaten the flood or not, though he
could see just before him the long, snaky ridge of the
main ditch banks. He must get on.
But True Blue only came to a staggering stop un-
der the quirt. With his forefeet he still marked time
as though with them he would drag his heavy body and
master one step nearer home. From his loins back he
was paralyzed.
With a last desperate effort he straddled his fore
legs but he could not brace himself against the back-
ward sag of dead weight. Gerry felt him sinking be-
neath him and suddenly found himself standing over
his prostrate horse. Of True Blue, his forefeet out-
stretched, his head and breast still held high, there was
left only a great spirit chained to a fallen and dying
body.
A cry escaped Gerry's lips a cry of horror at what
he had done. Then he remembered why he had done
it and ran not for the sluice-gate but for the bridge.
As he reached it the roar became deafening. There
was a splintering, crackling sound that, measured by
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HOME 237
the great commotion, seemed like the tinkle of a tiny
bell. But there was something in the sound that
called to his brain. He cast a glance over his shoulder.
The monster beams of his sluice-gate, hurled, splintered
into the air, were still hanging against the blue sky.
Under them surged an angry white wall of racing
water. Even as he started to run down the long slope
to the house Gerry thought with a great relief that if
the gate had been closed it would have gone even so,
like match-wood.
Below him Fazenda Elores lay peaceful, still, under
the blazing sun. The cotton was a little wilted but
high and strong, the cane stunted but alive. Only in
the pasture bottoms the stock had gathered in frightened
clumps. Their instinct had told them that danger
hovered near. Suddenly from the quiet house burst
Margarita carrying her son on one arm. She had seen
Gerry from a window. While the others watched the
rising river, and now this terrifying torrent bursting
down upon them from above, she had slipped out to
run to him.
The house at Fazenda Flores stood on a domed
mound. Behind the mound was a slight hollow before
the steady rise to the bridge began. Gerry caught sight
of Margarita as she ran down towards this hollow.
Terrified, he cast a glance at the descending flood and
his eye measured its pace against hers. " Go back !
he shouted with all the strength of his lungs and waved
his arms. It was as though he had not spoken.
Through the din and roar of the flood the sound of the
words scarcely reached his own ears.
238 HOME
At the very bottom of the hollow Margarita felt that
she was stepping in water. She took her eyes from
Gerry who she thought was beckoning to her and
looked down. A hurrying rivulet whose swift flow
carried it before the churning crest of the flood, tugged
at her ankles. She looked up toward the thundering
wall of oncoming water and knew that she was lost.
She stopped and fixed her eyes on Gerry who was
plunging down the slope in a mad effort to reach her.
She called to him but she knew he could not hear her.
With arms stretched to their highest she held up the
Man. The Man was not frightened. His black eyes
were fixed on his running father. Margarita could
feel him gurgling with joy in the new game. Then
suddenly he cried out. It was a wail of fright. The
wail was cut short. Broken in two, it rang terribly
in her ears as she went down.
The water had felled Margarita and the Man.
Gerry saw them flung down against the ground and
then high on the crest of the wave. They became sud-
denly a twirling, sodden mass, inanimate save for the
fling of a loose limb into clearer view against the blue
sky or the uncoiling of long black hair on the seething
water.
Gerry reached the torrent. Margarita and the Man
had already been whirled far towards the great river.
He plunged into the flood. The water was thick with
earth, sticks, up-rooted plants and debris of every sort.
Conflicting, swirling currents tugged at heavy stones,
rolled them along and sometimes even tossed one to
the surface.
HOME 239
Gerry's struggling body was hurled hither and
thither. A stray current shot him to the surface but,
before he could take breath, other currents sucked him
down and dragged him along the rough surface of the
crumbling soil. He felt as though he were being torn
limb from limb.
Then suddenly he was cast into an eddy that in com-
parison with the maelstrom, was almost peaceful. For
an instant he felt like one who awakes from a terrible
dream, but with the sigh that trembled to his lips came
realization.
From head to toe he was battered and bruised. His
cotton clothes were in tatters. His chest heaved in
great, spasmodic gasps. Breath whistled through his
wracked lungs. His eyes protruded. His head ached
till it seemed on the verge of bursting. But to his mind
pierced a thought sharper than pain the thought of
Margarita and the Man. With clenched teeth he
struck out for the current.
Far^ far away rose a dusty line of mist. It marked
the head of the flood the meeting of water with the
accumulated dust of rainless months. Gerry recognized
the meaning of that line. Somewhere there in the
turmoil of the first rush of the mad flood were Mar-
garita and the Man what was left of them. The
distance dismayed him, but he swam on. Then he felt
the fast approaching end of endurance. A sob choked
him.
It was only minutes till his arms refused to answer
to his will. They moved so weakly that more than
once his gasping mouth sank below the water. He
240 HOME
swallowed great gulps of the turgid flood. Then an
up-rooted tree brushed by him. He clutched its
branches.
When all else in the world has passed from a man's
brain there remains the life instinct the will to fight
for the last minute of his allotted being. The life in-
stinct was all that still lived in Gerry. It urged him
to a last effort. He dragged his body upon the tree
where the branches forked from the main trunk. Ut-
terly exhausted he sank into their embrace. They held
him as though in a cradle.
The rush of the waters began to slacken. They
stretched out over the valley and crept up its sides.
They did not flow so much now as rise. The valley
became a moving sea. On its flowing surface beasts,
fowls and reptiles struggled, mad-eyed, for life. Here
and there a floated carcass, brought down from far
up the river, blundered blindly through the living and
brought screams of terror from the swimming horses,
and gasping lows from the struggling cattle.
From the middle of the sea rose the old plantation
house still high and dry on its mound. It seemed very
tiny a toy house on a lonely islet.
A great, open, white umbrella lined with green
sailed gaily along. It caught in the branches of
Gerry's tree. Up-rooted cotton bushes floated by, and
cane, snapped off, sometimes torn up in whole hills,
banked up against the tree and formed a vast, unstable
island toward which swam the deluded stock.
From the mouth of the cleft in the river gorge is-
sued a thundering cataract. It had burst through the
HOME 241
walls of the ditch and even unseated a section of the
rocky crag against which the sluice-gate had been but-
tressed. The ditch was gone. It could never be again,
for the water was tearing the channel of the cleft
deeper and deeper. The turbid flood devoured the silt
of the valley, accumulated since man was, and carried
it, seething, out towards the river. The valley would
be left naked, stripped of the source of life.
Gerry's tree had crawled away from the main cur-
rent. In a vast eddy it approached the mound where-
on squatted the old plantation house. Dona Maria
stood at the edge of the waters. Her two hands were
clenched and held above her gray head. Thin wisps
of hair hung about her face. Her face was distorted.
She was cursing Gerry, cursing the day of his birth,
the day of his coming, the day he had opened his ditch.
She swept her arms over the terrible scene and called
down the curse of all the ruin and death on his head.
But Gerry was beyond hearing. In all the world there
was none to hear the old woman. She stood alone;
about her the silent waters, above her the blazing blue
sky.
The tree shot out of the eddy. The current, the
main current from the cleft, caught it squarely and
swept it away. It suddenly shook its long trail of riff-
raff and turning and turning, more and more swiftly,
swam out on to the churning bosom of the great river.
The valley had disappeared. Squatting on the very
level of the far-flung waters, the old house still stood.
The bright sun struck a glint of light from its white
walls and gave rich colors to its moss-grown tiles. The
242 HOME
roof was crowded with fowl and a strange medley of
heavy flying birds, glad of a perch on which to rest.
Dona Maria went into the house. She closed the great
board shutters. The house looked as if it had closed
its eyes in a last renunciation.
Gerry's tree floated down the river. It swung
slowly along near the north shore. Just below it were
houses. They were perched on the cliff. Below them
were more houses and under these the tiled roofs of
still other houses just topped the flood. The houses
were what was left of Piranhas.
From the shore canoes in search of loot began to
shoot out on to the quietening waters. One of them
happened upon Gerry's tree and then upon Gerry.
Gerry's eyes opened and then closed again. He
scarcely felt the arms that lifted him. They carried
him to the old inn, the miserable little inn he had left
behind on that glorious morning of so long ago.
CHAPTER XXXIII
A SHARP attack of fever followed Gerry's expo-
sure and immersion. The old woman of the inn
knew no medicaments, but she knew fever. She piled
blankets on Gerry and let him sweat it out. On the
third day nature, assisted by his magnificent physique,
finally routed the attack. Gerry began to feel hungry.
He called the old woman and ordered food. For once
food in Piranhas was plentiful. Mandioc, sweet po-
tatoes, pumpkins, as well as fowl, marooned on trees
and wreckage, had stocked the town as it had never
been stocked before. Gerry ate heartily.
Then he began to think. The nightmare was all
true. From his window he looked out on the slowly
receding waters of the greatest flood the San Francisco
had ever seen. Fazenda Flores was no more. With
it three years of his life had been wiped out. Out-
wardly he was back where he had begun. But in-
wardly he was eons away from the starting-point of
three years ago. Alix had waited for him but he had
not waited for her. He had given himself to Mar-
garita and to Margarita's son. Margarita and the Man
were dead but the fact of his gift of himself remained.
What had he but the shell, the husk of himself, to take
back to Alix ?
He called the old woman. He asked her if she re-
243
244 HOME
membered him. She peered at him. " No, master,"
she said, " I do not remember you. You are like the
foreigner who was drowned, but he is dead."
Gerry shook his head. " Not dead," he said, " only
disappeared."
" You are not he," said the old woman. " He could
not talk words that one could understand."
Gerry nodded gravely. He felt as though words
could never make him smile again. " I have learned,"
he said. " Now tell me what became of the things I
left here ? " He went through the list.
The old woman checked off each item and then
shrugged her shoulders. She led him to a little dark
room whose only light came from the interstices of the
tiled roof. As his pupils expanded he began to make
out one after another of the bags that had made up his
traveling kit.
" There is a letter," she said, and went off to fetch
it. Gerry dragged the bags out into the light. Their
locks were all sealed with the seal of the American
Consulate at Pernambuco. He started knocking off
the brittle wax. The old woman came back with the
letter and handed it to him. He tore it open. It
was a note from the consul saying that by order of
Gerry's wife his things had been sealed and left at
the inn, and telling him where to find the keys. The
room, he learned from the old woman had been paid
for regularly, at first by the month, then by the year.
She felt no resentment at his return, only resignation.
" You are the only guest I Ve had since you went
away," she said quaintly and with a sigh.
HOME 245
"Fear nothing," said Gerry kindly. "You have
been faithful. You may consider the room engaged
by me for the next ten years."
He carried his bags into the room overlooking the
river and then lay down. He was too tired after the
fever to open them. He knew that the opening of those
dust-covered bags with their rusted metal fittings was
going to be another ordeal.
The next day Gerry sat before his unpacked bags.
He had turned out all their contents. On the bed,
the floor, the table and the chairs was piled such an
array of linen and shoes and suits of various cut and
weight as he had once deemed the minimum with which
a man could decently travel. Now they seemed to him
wasteful and futile. The clothes did not carry his
mind back as he had expected. The starch in the
linen had gone yellow. He had always hated yellow
collars. The suits struck him as belonging to some
one else all except one. One sturdy suit of tweed
had a cut that was different from the others. Of all
the clothes it alone seemed to have a personal note
the note he had expected to find in the bags and had
shrunk from.
Then he remembered. This suit had been made by
his own tailor. He had worn it during a flying visit
to Eed Hill. He had had it on the day he left New
York. He had worn it that morning in Alix' room.
Red Hill came back to him, Alix stood before him.
Through the suit he saw her room, the shimmering blue
of her dressing-gown, her crown of hair and her thin
fingers busy with it. He felt again the nip of the
246 HOME
clear air as it had streamed in through the open win-
dow.
How calm Alix had been " under his arraignment.
How curious had been her eyes as he raved at her.
Would she have been calm and curious like that if
she had really loved Alan ? He remembered the
shameful things he had said before he could lash her
into an answering temper. He heard again the scratch-
ing of a pen as he had heard it that morning, stand-
ing in the hall outside her door. How blind he had
been ! She had been writing to Alan writing to him
in the white heat of anger. He had driven her to it
with his shameful words. He had left her no other
answer. And after all, she had waited! Gerry put
his hands to his forehead. It was wet with cold sweat.
He got up and went out.
The worst of the flood was over. Gerry engaged a
search party. All day long they sought for Mar-
garita and her child. Towards night they found them,
the little boy tight clasped in his mother's arms. Gerry
laid them tenderly in the canoe and in silence the party
crawled back up the river to Piranhas. No one looked
curiously at the burden they carried up through the
main street. Eyes were tired of the familiar sight.
The hour of weeping, the allotted tears, were long since
spent. They buried them that night. Gerry went
back to his room. He could not eat. He sat for a
long time looking out on the starry river. Then un-
consciously he picked up the old tweed suit and hung
it carefully on a chair. The rest of his scattered things
he swept unceremoniously upon the floor and threw
HOME 247
himself full length on the bed. He was exhausted and
slept.
He was up early the next morning. He made the old
woman bring water and bathed in his room. "It is
wise," she said. " For many days there will be poison
in the river." Gerry did not answer. He closed the
door and went through his ablutions and toilet with
great care. His beard he had always kept close-
clipped. Now he shaved it off. The tan of his face
looked like a mask above the fresh white of his newly
shaved jowls and chin. He picked out the best of his
linen and dressed. Lastly, he put on the old tweed
suit. It fell naturally to the lines of his body all ex-
cept the waistband of the trousers. He drew the back
strap as close as it would go. Still the trousers were
a little loose at the waist. At first he was puzzled,
then he understood. He looked at himself in the
broken glass with a gorgeous but sadly tarnished frame
that hung on the wall. His shoulders seemed to carry
the coat better than before. He could hear Jones &
Jones say, " A splendid fit, sir. You can't pick it up
anywhere."
Gerry turned from the glass with a sigh. He was
restless. The heavy tweeds seemed to bind his limbs
and chest, but he would not take them off. He sat at
the window and watched the little stern-wheeler splash
up to the bank. Luckily for her, she had been three
days late in starting up the river; else that trip would
have been her last. Gerry tried to exert himself to
the trouble of packing and getting on board but he
felt listless. Why should he hurry back? Alix had
248 HOME
waited, was waiting, but not for him. He had not
waited for her. He must go back and tell her, of
course, but what then?
A cavalcade came down the street. At its nead was
carried a litter and on the litter lay Alan. He had
refused to ride in a hammock again. Behind him rode
Lieber and Kemp. Gerry drew back from the win-
dow and watched them make their way down to the
little stern-wheeler. She had brought little freight,
there was none for her to take away. By three o'clock
she gave a long shriek of warning and half an hour
later she warped out into the river and chugged away
down stream. At the last moment, Gerry had sent
down to Alan a note addressed to Alix.
Lieber turned from watching the boat out of sight.
It was bearing Alan away with Kemp installed as nurse
as far as the coast. Lieber stumped heavily up the
street, leading his horse. From his window Gerry
called to him. Lieber took the reins from his arm
and handed them to a boy. He climbed to Gerry's
room and sat down on the bed. Gerry had never seen
him look so tired.
" So," said Lieber, " you escaped."
Gerry nodded gravely. Lieber looked at him with
dull eyes. " We passed Fazenda Flores. The house
still stands. It's on a little island." Gerry nodded
again. Lieber shrugged a shoulder impatiently.
" Why are n't you up there ? "
Gerry braced himself and told him. In a dispas-
sionate tone he told him the history of those terrible
moments of destruction and death. " I am not there,"
HOME 249
he finished, "because there is nothing left. Three
years all my life here have been wiped out.
Margarita she knew from the beginning. From the
beginning she hated the ditch. I have been a curse.
I have brought ruin." Gerry stared before him. His
face was white and drawn.
Lieber shook his head judicially. " !Nb, it would
have been the same except that without you there would
have been nothing to sweep away. Margarita would
still be alive. There would have been no boy." He
paused. " Somehow," he went on, " I don't believe
Margarita would have chosen to have things different.
She got her jour d'exidse and died before it was over.
I I don't think we need be sorry for her. Why
did n't you go away on the boat ? "
" I don't know," said Gerry. " I tried to, but I
could n't. I just buried her and the boy last night. I
could n't run away like that as though it were all over.
Of course, I know it is all over but when one falls an
endless depth in sleep and suddenly wakes in a cold
sweat it takes time for the mind to catch its balance.
It's that way with me. I've fallen from a height.
I 've waked to a cold sweat. I must take time to get
the balance of life and get it right. You can't hurry
over these transitions, because somehow it would n't be
decent."
Lieber nodded. "You don't feel like riding back
with me ? " he asked hesitatingly.
Gerry shook his head. "No," he said. "I can't
do that. I'm just going to sit here and wait for a
while and then I 'm going home. There 's something
250 HOME
I 've got to straighten out. After that, I don't know.
But there 's something I wish you 'd do for me, Lieber,
and that is to look after old Dona Maria and those two
old darkies at Fazenda Flores. They won't last long,
any of them, and I don't want them to lack for any-
thing. I '11 square up with you."
Lieber nodded listlessly. " I '11 look out for them."
The next morning early, Gerry saw him off. There
was a wistful look in the old man's eyes as from the
top of the cliff he turned and gazed down the river.
" Lieber," said Gerry, " you can count on me to do
what I can for you when I get home. Do you under-
stand ? "
Lieber flushed. Their eyes met. He took Gerry's
outstretched hand and gripped it hard. Then he rode
away without a word.
Lieber threw his horse into a rapid rack that was
faster than a gallop. It was a killing pace but he
knew the mettle of his mount. Late in the afternoon
he came to the confines of his ranch. The broad-eaved
house in the distance looked very still and deserted.
Beyond it loomed the solitary joa tree. Something
had happened to the joa tree during the two days he
had been away. It had become a beacon. He re-
membered the giant Bougainvillea vine that covered
the tree. The Bougainvillea had bloomed into a tower
of mauve flame. It stood out in daring contrast to
somber desert and brown-tiled roofs. Its single, de-
fiant and blaring note struck an answering chord in
Lieber's heart. He took courage of that brave burst
of color, so jarring in a garden, but in the desert, a
HOME 251
thing of glory. Lieber passed into the loneliness of
his deserted house with a firm step.
Gerry spent many days at Piranhas as he had
planned, in thought. He went over his life in a pains-
taking retrospection. His mind lingered long on the
last three years, their fullness, their even upward trend.
Could a man live three such years and lose them ? In
a ghastly half hour the flood had wiped out the tan-
gible results of three years of labor. But what about
the intangible? He had sinned against Alix and
against her faith but had he sinned against himself?
He felt infinitely older than the first Gerry Lansing
but would he change this thinking age for his unthink-
ing youth ? What if he had learned three years ago
that Alix had saved herself and his name? Would
it have meant loss or gain to him to-day? Something
within him cried, " Loss ! Loss ! " but he dared not
take courage from the inward cry. He could not know,
he reasoned, until he had seen Alix.
Until he had seen Alix. That thought haunted him.
It drove him. He must see Alix. He must start by
the very next boat but when the next boat came some
gnawing fear of unreadiness held him back. His fear
was greater than the compelling thought of Alix.
Twice, three times, the little stern-wheeler drove her
nose into the mud bank at Piranhas, called her hoarse
warning and departed. From some distant cliff Gerry
saw her come and go or, miles away, walking himself
tired across the desert, heard her throaty siren cry and
did not heed it.
CHAPTEK XXXIV
IT was with some misgivings that Kemp left Alan
at the coast. Alan was still very weak. Kemp
stood, more incongruous than ever, against the rail of
the little coaster bound for Pernambuco and eyed Alan
whom he had made comfortable in a camp bed on the
deck.
" It seems to me, Mr. Wayne," he said, " that there
mought be business waitin' fer me at Pernambuco thet
I do'n know nothin' about. I 've got a hunch I 'd best
go along of you and see."
Alan smiled. " I know what your hunch is, Kemp,
and it 's a wrong one. I 'm all right. Weak, but I '11
make it. Don't worry."
Kemp was standing in angles. His hands were
thrust in his trouser-pockets but even so his elbows
were crooked. One foot was raised on a rail. He
was coatless as usual. His unbuttoned vest stuck out
behind. His Stetson hat was pulled well down over
his eyes. His eyes had taken on the far-away and
slightly luminous look that always came into them when
he was about to speak from the heart.
" Mr. Wayne/' he said, " I 've tol' you some things
about Lieber an' you 've seen some more. You know
how he stands. Lieber 's livin' in Hell, like the rich
greaser in the Bible with his tongue stuck out beggin'
252
HOME 253
for one drop of water, only Lieber hain't got his tongue
stuck out he 's bitin' it."
Kemp paused and Alan nodded.
" I was thinkin'," Kemp continued, " thet perhaps
you 'n Mr. Lansing with yo' folks he'pin' mought chuck
him that drop o' water when you get back to Heaven,
meanin' Noo Yawk." Kemp brought his eyes slowly
around and rested them on Alan.
" Kemp," said Alan, " don't you worry. If J. Y.
Wayne & Co. have n't gone to smash or the world other-
wise come to an end you can be sure Lieber will get
his water in a full bucket."
Kemp nodded and with a " S'long and good luck,"
disappeared down the gangway.
At Pernambuco Alan found an accumulation of mail
awaiting him and a liner bound for home. The liner
was too big to get into the little harbor behind the reef.
She rode the swell a mile out from shore.
Alan lost no time in making his transfer. From the
tender he was winched up to the deck in a passenger
basket. As he left the wicker coop he smiled at him-
self in disgust. Ten Percent Wayne had often jumped
for a gangway from the top of a flying sea; never be-
fore had he gone on board as cargo. But the smile
suddenly left his face. He reeled and put out one hand
toward a rail. Somebody caught his arm and led him
to a long chair. He sank into it and shivered.
It was a girl that had helped him. As soon as she
saw he was not going to faint she left him, to come
back presently with the doctor and a room steward.
They took charge of him.
254 HOME
Day after day Alan lay in his cabin, listless, before
he thought of his batch of letters. They were still in
the pocket of his coat. He asked the steward to hand
them to him, looked through them, picked out one
and laid the rest aside. The one he picked out was
Clem's.
With her own peculiar wisdom Clem had written not
about him or herself, but about Red Hill. Alan read
and then dropped the letter to his lap. His hands fell
clenched at his sides. His eyes, grown large, stared
out down the long vista of the mind. Walls faded away
and the sounds of a great ship at sea were suddenly
dumb. To his ears came instead the caroling of birds
in evening song after rain, to his eyes a vision of Red
Hill dripping light from its myriad leaves and to his
heart the protecting, brooding shelter of Maple House
of home.
It cleanses a man's soul to have been at death's door.
Sickness, more than love, leads a man up. Alan was
feeling cleansed like a little child so that it seemed
a quite natural thing that the girl who had taken charge
of him on his arrival on board should knock at his door
and then walk in. She drew out a camp-stool and sat
down beside him.
She was very small and very young, not in years
but with what Alan termed to himself acquired youth.
Her near-sighted eyes peered out through big glasses.
They seemed to see only when they made a special
effort and yet they seemed to give out light.
" You are better ? " she asked and smiled.
Alan caught his breath at that smile. " Yes," he
HOME 255
said, " I am much better to-day. I have had a letter
from home."
" You must get up now and come up on deck," said
the girl. " I '11 wait for you outside." Her voice had
a peculiar modulation. It attracted and soothed the
ear.
Alan frowned and then smiled. " All right," he
said, " wait for me." He dressed laboriously. His
hands seemed weighted.
On deck she had his chair ready for him beside her
own. She tucked his rug about him and then sat down.
" Don't talk ever, unless you want to," she said. " Si-
lent people are best."
"Why?" asked Alan.
" They are springs. Their souls bubble."
" And the people that chatter ? " asked Alan.
" They are geysers," said the girl and smiled.
Alan was entertained almost amused. " What do
you do when a geyser spouts ? " he asked.
" What do you do ? " replied the girl. " I run."
" I 'm afraid I have n't run always," said Alan.
" I generally try to clap a tin hat on them."
" You must be strong to do that. I 'm not very
strong."
Alan glanced over her frail body. " What are you ? "
he asked.
" I'm a missionary. At least, I was a missionary.
I 've had to give it up. One needs so much to be a
missionary."
" I never thought of it that way," said Alan. " I
always thought that it was the people that were unfit
256 HOME
for almost anything else that turned to missionarying
as a last resort."
" Oh, no! " said the girl, sitting up very straight in
her chair and fixing her eyes on his face. " How
wrong you are! Missionarying, as you call it, is just
another name for giving, and how can one give a great
deal unless one has a great deal to give strength and
youth and vitality ? "
" And you have given all ? " asked Alan.
The girl's eyes filled.
" No, you have n't given all," went on Alan quickly.
" You are still giving. I must not borrow your last
mite. But your voice is like a nurse's hand."
When Alan went to bed he could not sleep. For a
while the little missionary girl held his thoughts. He
was filled with wonder, not at her, but at himself. For
once in his life he had not been flippant before grave
things.
From the girl his thoughts turned to Alix. He
could have cabled to her about Gerry from Pernambuco
but he had not done so. The note that he was carry-
ing for Gerry was light only a half sheet probably.
The lightness of it told Alan that the things Gerry had
to say to his wife could not be put on paper. Alan had
almost cabled. Now he was glad he had not done so.
" Alix," he said to himself, " is n't waiting, she 's trust-
ing. A cable would have lengthened waiting by a
month."
Then, without volition, his mind wandered from Alix
and raced ahead to the goal of his journey. What was
the goal of his journey ? Whither was he bound ? He
HOME 257
reached for Clem's letter and held it in folded hands.
He had no need to read it again. The words were noth-
ing ; the picture was all. It stretched before his mind,
a living canvass.
Once when Alan was wandering with an Englishman
in the hills above Granada, a faint odor had brought
them to a sudden halt. It was the Englishman who
made the surprising discovery first. " Blackberries, by
Jove ! " he had exclaimed. " Good old blackberries."
And then they two had stood together, yet half a world
apart, and stared long at the berry-laden bush. What
vision of a tangled, high-walled garden burst upon the
Englishman Alan never knew but to himself had come
a memory of East Mountain in autumn, so clear, so
poignant, that it had brought his throbbing heart into
his throat.
It was so now with Clem's letter. The words were
but a hurried daub but they touched his eyes with a
magic wand. The daub became a scene, a picture, a
world his world.
Eed Hill was spread out before him, a texture where
the threads and colors of life were blended into a car-
pet soft but enduring. Men walked and little children
played on it. Alan closed his eyes and sighed. What
had he been doing with life ? Making sacking ? Sack-
ing was commercial. It paid in cash. It was the na-
tional industry. But what could one do with sacking
on Red Hill ?
Then, almost suddenly, the full spirit of Clem's let-
ter seized him. One did not take gifts to Red Hill.
To every one of its children Red Hill was the source of
258 HOME
all gifts the source of life. On that thought he
slept.
When he was back once more in his rooms, before
Swithson had had time to open a bag, Alan redirected
Gerry's note to Alix to Eed Hill and sent Swithson out
to post it. He did not try to temper the shock of the
note with a covering letter. He was too weak and
tired. Besides, he felt that the note carried its own
antidote to joy.
CHAPTEE XXXV
THE next morning a message came by hand to
Alan's rooms. Alix had come to town and
wished to see him at once. Would he please come
around? He replied that he was too ill. Half an
hour later Swithson answered a ring at the door and
Alix slipped quickly past him into Alan's sitting-room.
There was a flush of anger in her cheeks but Alan was
pleased to see no trace of tears in her eyes. A woman's
crying always touched him on the raw and seldom
awakened his pity.
At sight of him Alix forgot her concern for herself.
" Why, Alan ! " she cried, " what is the matter ? "
Alan laughed. There was a pleasant note in his
laugh she had never heard before. " I 'm all right,
Alix. Don't make any mistake. I 'm a resurrection
in the bud. Doing fine. I don't have to ask how you
are. You 're well. You 're looking just as well as
a little slip like you can ever look. Sit down, do."
Alix' thoughts went back to herself and immediately
the flame burned again in her cheeks. She pulled
Gerry's crumpled note from her glove and tossed it
open on the table before Alan. He read the two or
three lines in which Gerry told her he would arrive
shortly. The brief note was intentionally colorless.
"Well? "he asked.
259
260 HOME
Alix turned flashing eyes on him. " Well ? Is that
all you have to say ? Alan, it is not well. I 've come
here because you must tell me somebody must tell me
now all the things that that note hides behind its
wonderfully blank, weazened, little, hypocritical face."
Alan's eyes gleamed with amusement at the rippling
words. Alix was certainly well. Then suddenly she
collapsed into a chair. " Three years ! " she gasped.
Her hands went up to hold her head and she began to
cry in a way Alan had never heard a woman cry before.
The gasping sobs racked his nerves. He felt as though
the sobs were tearing their way up from his own breast.
He gripped the arms of the chair in which he sat. His
body telephoned to his brain that he was going to faint
and at such astounding news Ten Percent Wayne woke
up and took charge. " Alix ! " the word snapped out
like the crack of a whip. " You stop crying or I '11
slap you, and when I slap I slap hard."
Alix choked, swallowed and looked at him, outraged
and unbelieving. Alan's eyes were blazing. " You
listen to me," he commanded, " listen to every word I
say. You 've gone through a lot in three years but just
fasten your mind on to this : so has Gerry. That note
is colorless because Gerry made it colorless. It does n't
tell anything, because Gerry is n't a coward and because
there are things he must tell you face to face to get
your answer clear in his own mind. I 'm making you
curious with every word. All right, be curious. But
you can be sure of one thing ; if Gerry had wanted me
to tell you his story he 'd have asked me to, but he
did n't. He did n't even ask me not to. He was stand-
HOME 261
ing in deep waters but he had his head and shoulders
out. He was n't asking for my, or anybody else's hand
to help him up the bank. He did n't ask me not to
meddle because he knew I was man enough to see where
he stood without words. He trusted me." Alan's voice
trailed off weakly. He closed his eyes.
" But, Alan," said Alix, " I must know something.
Is he well ? Is he "
Alan held up his hand. " Just one thing and then
I 'm going to sleep. I never thought the old Eock
would ever loom so big."
Alix watched him doze off. She felt strangely com-
forted by the crumb he had tossed her. She went back
in her mind to a dinner of long ago when she had de-
fended Gerry's placid weight against Alan. She sat on
for half an. hour busy with varying thoughts. She
looked curiously around Alan's sitting-room. How
strange that she should be here and yet how natural.
How safe she felt. She wondered if it was all because
of the defenses she had raised up in herself or whether
any woman would feel safe with the new and weakened
Alan. She slipped out without waking him and sent
a cable to Pernambuco. By night she had an answer.
Gerry had not yet sailed !
Days passed. She went out only for exercise. Her
mind was busy with wondering. The Judge called
regularly. He had put off going to Red Hill. He
wanted Alix to feel that a friend was at hand and, be-
sides, he had Alan on his hands. Alan was worrying
him in a new way. Something had gone out of him.
Sometimes he seemed to the Judge a mere shell a
262 HOME
blown egg, robbed of the seed of life. The Judge talked
of him often to Alix but she could not fasten her mind
on Alan. " Take him to the Hill," was her listless
advice.
" I 've tried," said the Judge, " and he says he 's not
ready not strong enough. I told him that 's what he
ought to go for to get strong and he said a funny
thing. l There 's a kind of strength we must generate
or borrow. I did n't borrow, so now I 'm generating.
It takes time.' And then he dropped off to sleep. Be-
fore, he used to run you through with his tongue when
he wanted to stop a conversation. Now he just goes to
sleep. It 's just as effective and almost as original."
One afternoon the Judge came in with a smile on his
face. " Alan is better," he announced.
" Is n't he better every day ? " asked Alix.
" ~Not like this," said the Judge. " You know
Fleureur ? Of course you don't. You would n't.
Can't imagine how he ever got into the club, but he did.
Well, it 's a long time since Mr. Fleureur has been asked
to cut in at bridge at the club or anywhere else. Yester-
day he came in and saw Alan for the first time since his
return. ' Hallo, Wayne,' he said, ' back again and do-
ing the heavy swell as ever only not quite so heavy inside
the clothes now, eh ? ' Alan is getting touchy over being
a weakling. That 's a good sign too, by the way. He
looked sideways out of his sleepy eyes at Fleureur and
you bet everybody listened." The Judge paused at thus
forgetting himself ; then he went on. " Alan said, ' Do
clothes matter such a lot? Somehow it seems to me it
does n't make any difference how much a man waxes
HOME 263
his mustache as long as he does n't wax his finger
nails.' "
Alix' face lit up. "Oh, that is Alan." The
Judge's eyes twinkled. "Yes," he said, "and then
Alan went off to sleep like a shot and Eleureur remem-
bered an engagement. The whole club's cheered up.
The club did n't know what was the matter with itself
but it knows now. It was missing Alan after he had
come back."
Alan had written to Mrs. J. Y. that he was planning
to motor from town to Eed Hill. Clem, as Mrs. J. Y.'s
deputy, had answered his letter, promising him a warm,
and long welcome at Maple House. She gave him a
way-bill. " It 's the simplest way-bill in the world,"
she wrote, " out of town and along the Sound till you
come to The River, then up the valley till the bald top
of East Mountain signals you from the left. Climb the
mountain and from there the old church will lead you
home."
" The old church will lead you home," Alan repeated
to himself as he let his relaxed body lounge across the
tonneau and trusted to cushions and springs to take up
the bumps. His thoughts raced ahead of him to Red
Hill. In memory he plodded over dusty roads and
through mossy lanes, swam, fished and loafed, wept and
laughed. He was going back to the cradle of all his
emotions.
The wind and the motion of the car made him sleepy.
He dozed. He awoke to see East Mountain looming in
the distance. Steadily the car drew into its lee. Alan
sighted a climbing road and called directions to the
264 HOME
driver. From the bare top of the mountain he made
out the old church, a white speck on a far-away hill.
He stood up and traced the course they were to follow.
He was filled with a strange excitement. " Never mind
the bumps open her up," he ordered and sat down
and closed his eyes.
The car shot down into the valley, rattled across one
bridge and then another, sped along the Low Road, over-
shot the embowered mouth of Long Lane, protested with
the grinding of changing gears, backed, turned, and then
lurched forward again and up. Long Lane was as cool
as memory and as balmy with the twining odors of birch
and sassafras and laurel as childhood's recollection.
Alan drew a long, full breath and then the car ran out
on to the top of Red Hill, swerved to the right and
turned in under the low hanging limbs of the maples.
It was early afternoon. The old homestead was very
still. As the car drew up at the curb a girl rose from a
deep chair on the veranda and stepped forward. Alan
caught his breath and stared. He felt himself a little
boy. Nance, a mere rosebud of a girl, stood before him
and smiled at his bewildered face. " You 're Uncle
Alan, are n't you ? " The soft voice sustained illusion
but the words brought him to himself made him feel
suddenly older by a generation. Then he smiled back
at her and chaffed, " You have been busy since I saw
you last. Have I the honor of presenting myself to
Miss Sterling ? "
" The same," replied the girl, laughing, " and your
niece."
" Come. That 's enough. Don't rub it in. Besides,
H O M E 205
you're only niece by courtesy. By the family tree
we 're cousins."
" All right. I '11 be a cousin to you if you like it
better," remarked Nance, Junior, demurely.
Alan had sprung out. He caught her hands and
kissed her. Her fresh mouth brushed his cheek.
" Yes, I like it better," he said. " It 's some fun kiss-
ing a cousin."
Nance, Junior, snatched away her hands and dashed
into the house. " Mother, Clem, he 's here. Unc
Cousin Alan 's come."
From upstairs came a sullen but feeble roar, as
though a bull had bellowed and only echo had come
forth. From a hammock under the trees, J. Y. tumbled
his stiffening limbs and with a quick shake of his broad
shoulders strode across the lawn. There was a patter
of women's feet. Clem burst out of the house, caught
both of Alan's hands and shook them. Her lips opened
but she said nothing. Her eyes and her heart were full
of welcome. Alan felt them speaking for her. Then
came Mrs. J. Y. and J. Y. and Nance, the mother of
four. There arose a babel of hearty greetings but
through them all could be heard the rumble of the echo-
like bellowing.
" Ssh ! " said Alan, holding up his hand. " What 's
that noise ? "
Clem laughed. " It 's the Captain," she said.
" Listen."
In the silence the rumbling became vociferation.
" Bring him up here. Bring him up here. Bring him
up here, dammit."
266 HOME
" You 'd better go quickly," remarked Nance, Junior.
" He 's begun to swear and Mother does n't like us to
hear it."
Alan hurried into the house and up to the Captain's
room. The grown-ups followed but stopped below and
waited. Nance, Junior, remained to direct the chauf-
feur to the barn.
" Excuse me, miss," said that worthy, " but Mr.
Wayne has n't had a bite to eat since seven this morn-
ing. You might not think to ask him, you see, so I
thought I 'd tell you."
" I see," replied the young lady and added with
ready wit and a smile, " just find the kitchen and tell
the cook."
Alan found the Captain propped on many pillows.
His bulging eyes had the same old glare, his close-
cropped hair still made an effort, though feeble, to in-
surgency, but his corpulence was gone. He had col-
lapsed at last and was bedridden after his severe stroke.
" Huh ! " was his greeting.
Alan sat down beside the bed. " How do you do,
sir?"
" Do ? I do all right. It 's the liquor in this
country that 's gone off, sir. Corked whisky. That 's
all that 's left. I '11 show you, Alan." And he roared,
after a preliminary puff, " Two whiskies."
Mrs. Wayne appeared. " Now, Captain," she said
softly. " What 's this. Two at a time ? You 're get-
ting better."
The Captain subsided. " One for Alan," he grunted.
The drinks came. Alan welcomed his. He was
HOME 267
tired and faint after the long journey. The Captain
gazed on his own glass defiantly but ordered the maid to
set it on the table at his side. Alan waited long for
him to take it up and then he saw that the Captain had
fallen asleep. Alan sipped his drink. The Captain
was right, it was flavorless. But Alan remembered that
he had thrown away his last cigarette for the same
reason. He sighed.
CHAPTER XXXVI
IN spite of the Judge Alix was feeling very lonely,
abandoned, unloved. She sat on the little veranda
at the back of the town house and day-dreamed. Across
her knee lay the morning paper. A word caught her
eye. Elenic. Half unconsciously she read : " Among
the arrivals by the Elenic . . . Hon. Percy Col-
lingeford."
Collingef ord ! She started to her feet and then with
what seemed a perceptible click her mind repeated,
"Elenic." She sat down again. The hand that held
the paper was trembling. She sat for a long time look-
ing at her hand. The telephone bell rang but she did
not hear it. Old John came and stood beside her.
" Mr. Collingeford telephones to know if you are in
town."
A frightened gleam showed in Alix' eyes. It passed
and a flame of color came into her pale cheeks. " Yes,"
she said, " I am at home. Tell him I will see him at
any time to-day."
Collingeford lost no time. When he arrived Alix
was still sitting on the veranda. She received him
there. He came upon her with a rush like a fresh
breeze. " What luck ! " he cried. " Really in town on
a hot summer's day ? Which is it ? Frocks or the
dentist ? "
268
HOME 269
Alix rose and held out her hand. A faint smile came
to her face, lingered a moment and passed. " I am
glad you have come," she said and then paused. Her
eyes wavered. Was she glad he had come ?
Collingeford caught her mood. " Just what do you
mean by that ? " he asked gravely.
Alix' eyes came back to his face. "I I don't
know," she stammered.
They sat down. Collingeford dropped his hat and
stick and leaned forward. A dull color burned in his
cheeks. " Alix," he said, " has has anything hap-
pened ? "
" No," said Alix, " not what you mean. Gerry is
alive. He has written. He says he is coming back
sometime."
Collingeford sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing.
" -Sometime ! Did he really write that ? Some-
time ? "
There was a petulant look about Alix' mouth that be-
longed to an Alix of long ago. She tried to shake it
off with her mood. " No," she said dully, after a pause.
" He did n't write just that but it amounts to the same
thing. He wrote but he has not come."
Collingeford paced up and down the little veranda,
his arms crossed and one hand pulling nervously at his
mustache. He came to a stop before Alix and stood
looking down at her, his eyes eager but questioning.
" Well ? " he said.
Alix made a little gesture of despair with her two
hands. "I I don't know," she repeated. Then,
quite quietly, she began to cry.
270 HOME
Collingeford caugLt her hands and drew her to her
feet. He put his arms around her. She laid her head
against his shoulder and sobbed. Collingeford's heart
was beating furiously. His arms trembled. He longed
to strain her to him but he only held her firmly and
patted her back. Some instinct told him that this was
not the moment of possession.
When Alix could talk he knew that his instinct was
true. " Oh," she said, " what a little beast I am ! Un-
fair to you, unfair to myself."
She disengaged herself and sat down. With a tiny
square of cambric she dabbed at her eyes.
" Here," said Collingeford, and held out a big fresh
handkerchief.
Alix took it and used it solemnly. Then its bulk
struck a sudden "note of humor. She laughed and Col-
lingeford smiled. As she gave back the handkerchief
she pressed Collingeford's hand. " I have been a little
beast."
" No" said Collingeford gravely, " you have been un-
speakably lovable."
" It would have been that if I loved you. But I
don't. That 's why I Ve been a beast. To make you
think"
Collingeford interrupted her. " You made me think
nothing. Somehow I knew. I knew it was just lone-
liness running over from a full heart."
Alix nodded. " How wonderful of you to under-
stand," she said. " Lonely. Yes. I Ve been terribly
lonely. Never before so lonely."
"You shall not be lonely any more," said Collinge-
HOME 271
ford. " Every day I '11 come and talk to you, take you
out anything. I 'm yours."
Alix shook her head from side to side. Her eyes
refused him.
" Alix," cried Collingeford, hurt, " don't you want
me even for a friend ? "
" Don't mistake what I 'm going to say, will you ? "
said Alix.
Collingeford shook his head.
" Gerry is coming back," went on Alix, " but I
don't know what he is bringing back. Perhaps it is
something he can't share with me; perhaps it is some-
thing I do not want. When you went away I had only
faith; now I have only doubt. Such a big doubt.
That 's why I said to you, * I don't know.' And while
I don't know I will not have you even for a friend."
Alix flushed and fixed her eyes on Collingeford's face.
" Do you understand ? "
Collingeford's eyes were glowing. "Yes," he said,
" I think I do. You mean that perhaps later on
you will send for me."
" Perhaps only perhaps," whispered Alix.
Collingeford picked up his hat and stick. He took
Alix's hand and held it long. She would not look up.
He stooped and kissed her fingers.
" I shall be waiting," he said.
CHAPTEE XXXVII
THE peripatetic, pathogenic agent of malarial
fevers possesses the prime attribute of a bad
penny it comes back. Alan had often fatted himself
to receive the prodigal and he was not now at a loss
to account for the sudden lassitude, the deadened palate
and the truant sense of smell that had come upon him.
He turned to Mrs. J. Y. " I 'm afraid I '11 have to lie
down. I hate to be a nuisance but I Ve got a touch of
fever." To the initiated " a touch of fever " means
anything from a slight indisposition to a knock-out blow
delivered below the belt. It is the sole phrase of con-
fession recognized by the malarial cult. Happily for
Alan, the expression on this occasion was no euphemism.
He was suffering from a touch of fever and nothing
more, brought on by too continued exertion. He was
shown to his room, his old room with its old-fashioned,
many-paned windows, its enormous closet and, under
recent coatings of white enamel paint, the many marks
with which in boyhood he and his forebears had branded
the ancient wood-work.
A flutter and then a sigh of disappointment went
through Maple House at Alan's immediate eclipse.
The children foresaw an order for silence or a veto on
the afternoon's excursion to the lake. J. Y. became
restless and wandered noiselessly about from room to
272
HOME 273
room. Clem sat in the great window and dreamed and
listened for Alan's bell. She would not go to the lake.
The children were solemnly grave and then giggling by
fits and starts.
The Eltons had come back from abroad. Prom Elm
House Cousin Frances Elton, commonly known as Tom,
ghort for torn-boy, came racing across the lawn waving
towel and bathing clothes and in a high treble giving a
creditable imitation of an Indian war-whoop. At Tom's
cry the children stampeded on to the veranda with sib-
ilant cries of, " Sshsh ! " Mrs. J. Y. looked at Nance
and Nance smiled resignedly. They put away their
work, ordered the wagonette and the colts colts no
longer, alas, save in name and departed with a wagon-
load of suppressed youth. From Long Lane floated
back peals of young laughter, breaking bounds as the
overhanging trees hid the Hill from view.
Clem sat on the vast window-seat and toyed with a
book. J. Y. came and dropped down beside her.
" Well, Clem, he 's come back."
Clem nodded. " Are you sure he does n't want any-
thing, Uncle John? He hasn't had a thing to eat
since seven o'clock this morning."
Alan's bell tinkled. Clem started to her feet and
then sat down again. " You 'd better go." But when
J. Y. strode off she followed.
" Why is the house so quiet ? Is it on account of the
Captain ? " asked Alan.
" Bless you, no. The Captain sleeps for a week at
a time. The children have gone over to the lake."
" I just wanted to tell you that I like their noises
274 HOME
they 're new. There 's nothing really the matter
with me except that I 've got to take things in turn, and
lying still and sweating comes first. After that, per-
haps to-morrow, I 'm going to eat. The penultimate
act on my list is a cigarette and the ultimate is to get
up in the old belfry and yell." He turned over and
sank his head into the pillows.
" All right, my boy," said J. Y., smiling. " There 's
only Clem and myself here and we '11 go and try to
make noises like the children." He came out of the
door in time to catch sight of Clem's skirt as it whisked
around the corner of the hall. He followed and found
her already seated at the piano. Her fingers wandered
over the keys and then her soft, full voice broke out in
one old song after another. She was happy because
she felt that singing she was with Alan.
Alan stirred in his bed and listened. He determined
that to-morrow he must be well. Robbed of this after-
noon, he was being robbed of half of life. He cursed
the fever and then, as he felt how near Clem's voice
brought her to him, he blessed it.
At night when all the rest of the household had gone
to bed, J. Y. softly opened Alan's door and looked in.
Alan was awake and nodded. J. Y. came in and pot-
tered about the room. He rolled a bit of paper into
an ampler shade and further veiled the night lamp.
The lines in J. Y.'s rugged face were softened to lines
of sweetness. He asked if there were nothing he could
do and then turned to leave the room. With his hand
on the door, he paused and smiled down on Alan. " My
> J ou have been far, far away."
HOME 275
" Far away," replied Alan drowsily, " but I have
come back."
The bracing air of Red Hill and a long night's sleep
enabled Alan to keep his word with himself. He was
up and out on the day following his arrival but he still
felt delightfully lazy and pitifully weak. Clem took
charge of him. First she tried to settle him in a ham-
mock with many pillows but Alan shrank from the
hammock. They spread rugs instead in a nook under
the trees and Alan stretched himself out amid a riot of
many colored cushions while Clem sat close by in a low
rocking chair and talked and read and talked.
Talking or reading, Clem was a source of unvarying
delight to Alan. Was it possible that one could live
twenty years in an old world, rub elbows with life for
twenty years, and remain so fresh, so untainted? His
own life rose up before him and mocked at him. Was
it possible that one could live thirty years in this same
world and be so old? He shrugged a shoulder petu-
lantly. He would not think he refused to think
while he was so weak.
When Clem talked, it was like a child dreaming aloud :
when she was silent, one felt the presence of womanhood,
wise with the unconscious accumulations of generations
and unabashed. When Clem talked, Alan was at ease
but when she was silent, he was moved troubled. A
scarred man may play with a child and no harm to
either. He can detach himself from his past as from
the child and at a safe moral distance turn to watch its
unconscious gambols. But with a woman it is different.
Womanhood is a force ; its mission to embrace, to sacri-
276 HOME
fice. It is unreasoning. Like fundamental man it de-
mands a god and worships the god that comes to its
need. Alan felt this force hovering in Clem's silences
and was troubled.
The subjectivity of a sick man disarms woman; she
knows she is safe and abandons her weapons of attack
and defense as long as the invalid is taken up with the
state of his insides. Clem was unaffected, even tender,
with Alan as long as he was weak but as his strength
returned to him she withdrew, one by one and gently,
the intimate attentions a woman accords to babes and
the related helpless. But there was nothing absolute in
her withdrawal ; it was more a temptation than a denial,
born of woman's innate desire to be pursued. While
Alan was merely convalescent it contained a suppressed
gaiety, half demure, half mischievous, but when his
full strength came back and he failed to pursue, the
gaiety arrested itself, turned into a questioning wistful-
ness and ended in the secret shame and blushes of the
repulsed and undesired.
Clem saw Alan build a barrier against her, a barrier
of little things each insignificant in itself but each lend-
ing and borrowing the strength of accumulation. Alan
spent hours with the old Captain, walked, rode and
talked with J. Y. and the Judge. Between them, J. Y.
and the Judge had fixed up Lieber's affair and Alan had
cabled.
In the midst of women Alan seemed to be able to for-
get woman to forget her intentionally. There was
nothing pointed in his avoidance. He kept his distance
from Alix and Nance and Jane Elton in the same
HOME 277
measure as from Clem. There was thus none of the
single avoidance of the shy swain who lavishes attentions
on all but her whom he would most dearly sue. Clem,
least vain of beautiful women, sat long hours before her
glass. Never before had the charms it revealed been
questioned, never had she been forced to close in the
ranks and call up the reserves and now she felt at a loss,
unaccustomed to the ready moves of the coquette.
Clem dropped her face in her hands and cried.
CHAPTER XXXVin
CLEM'S was not the only troubled heart on the
Hill. At The Firs Mrs. Lansing moved rest-
lessly from room to room and stopped often to read and
re-read a crumpled note Gerry's note to Alix.
Alix was still in town. Mrs. Lansing had written
to her and then wired. Alix replied telling her not to
come, that she wished to he alone. For hours at a time
Mrs. Lansing replaced the nurse at Gerry, Junior's,
side. He helped her. She felt that he could help Alix.
She was almost glad when he developed some trifling
ailment becoming to his years. She wired again and
this time Alix came, frightened. Alix was like a wilted
flower but she braced herself until Gerry, Junior, recov-
ered into his healthy self. Then she drooped once more
and refused to be comforted.
If it had not been for Alan, Alix's trouble would
have cast a gloom over the rest of Red Hill, but it was
known that Alan had sought out Mrs. Lansing and told
her that not even he knew just how Gerry's battle stood,
but that he did know that there was a battle and that
Gerry would surely come back as soon as he had fought
his way clear.
So the Hill in general went almost untroubled on its
way trying to forget that it was still awaiting a ful-
filment and even Alix began to glean a little comfort
278
HOME 279
from the thought that hope was but deferred. Her
heart was sick, her faith weak, but hope still lived.
She clung through the long days to Gerry, Junior, and
waited.
At Maple House the beating of young hearts
amounted to a din but it was suddenly stilled by a day
of drenching rain. After the very tame excitement of
seeing J. Y. and the Judge off for the city, gloom settled
in the faces of the children. Cousin Tom, in rubber
boots and coat, came down the road from Elm House
to find company for misery. The barn was requisi-
tioned and became the scene of a subdued frolic but it
afforded meager diversion. The hay was not in yet,
the empty lofts were dreary. In the afternoon Mrs.
J. Y. was besieged to surrender the house and finally
did. Alan had gone to his room and closed the door.
The Captain was plunged in invulnerable slumber.
Somebody rapped at Alan's door and he called,
" Come in." The door opened and revealed Nance,
Junior. Behind her was a giggling, whispering throng.
The spirit of fun danced in Nance's eyes. Her cheeks
were flushed and her golden head was in disarray.
" Oh, Cousin Alan," she cried, " Grandma 's given us
leave for Hide and Seek and we 're all going to play
except Mother and Grandma and the Captain. Please
come too, Cousin Alan."
Prom behind her came a modified echo, " Pleath do,
Couthin Alan." Alan smiled and laid down his book.
" All right," he laughed.
Maple House was a rambling abode that had grown
and spread like the giant maples that sheltered it. In
280 HOME
what age the Captain had demanded a wing or some by-
gone Nance a nursery for her children, was chronicled
in the annals of the house itself, to he revealed only to
the searching, architectural eye. The key to the ram-
bling structure lay in the thick-walled dining-room, the
parlor, one bedroom and the kitchen.
From the nucleus of these four rooms Maple House
had grown, imposed and superimposed, until it over-
flowed the arbitrary bourne of kitchens and front doors
and like some mounded vine rippled off on all sides, in
vast living-room, sunny nurseries and a broken fringe
of broad verandas. There were nooks that were satis-
fied and held back from further encroachment and
there were outstanding corners that jutted boldly out
over the sloping lawns and threatened a further
raid.
Inside, the paths of daily life ran clearly enough
through the maze but on their flanks hung many a
somber den for ambush or retreat. Cavernous closets,
shadowy corners, lumbered attics, and- half-forgotten
interstices of discarded space opened dark gorges to the
intrepid, and threatened the nervous and unwary with
what they might bring forth. The gods of childhood's
games themselves could not have builded a better scene
for that most palpitating of sports, Hide and Seek on a
rainy day.
Alan soon entered into the spirit of the game. He
found himself recollecting things about Maple House
that he had more than half forgotten ; strange by-ways
under the roof; a vacant chamber, turned into a trunk
room because one by one it had been robbed of its
HOME 281
windows ; and lastly the Little Attic that had heen, as it
were, left behind a wall.
Through this dreamland of a hundred children flitted
the brood of the day, marshaled rather breathlessly by
Clem and Alan. Anxious whispers, the scurrying of
lightly shod feet, then a sudden silence but for the flute-
like counting of some juvenile It, were followed by
sudden screams and a wild race for the goal. Maple
House had never countenanced the effete and diluted
sport of I Spy; it was all for Hide and Seek where
you had to hold your man when found or beat him to
the goal.
Great was the excitement when the Littlest It of all
caught Cousin Alan by a tackle around the ankle that
spoke a volume of promise for the Littlest It's academic
career and brought a glow of achievement to his perspir-
ing face. Alan was placed at the newel at the foot of the
great staircase and duly admonished in treble voices not
to look. The treble voices rained excited instructions
on him, carried away by youth's confidence in its ability
to teach its grandmother how to suck eggs. Alan started
to count slowly in sonorous tones. With a last shriek
and the patter of many feet the trebles faded away into
silence.
Alan crept stealthily up the stairs. Out of the corner
of his eye he caught sight of the twitching jumpers of
the Littlest who was too fat to quite fit the retreat he
had chosen. But Alan did not quite see until it was too
late. The Littlest exploded the vast breath he had been
holding in and plunged headlong down the stairs. As
he rolled by the newel he stuck out a sturdy arm and
282 HOME
held fast. He shouted a pean of victory and once more
palpitating silence fell on the house.
Alan wondered if he could find the way to the Little
Attic. He hurried along the twisted halls, up a tiny
flight of steps, turned, dived through a low, narrow
tunnel and threw open the long-forgotten door. It was
as though he had suddenly opened a portal on his own
childhood. A great pensioned rocking chair held the
middle of the floor as within his ken it always had held
it. Ancient garments hung from pegs on the walls and
from hooks on the rafters. A box or two and more dis-
abled furniture littered the floor. The whole was
faintly lit up by the light from a little dormer window.
Nothing stirred. Alan drew a long breath. He was
not disappointed. No one had thought to come here
but himself.
Suddenly a bit of the pendent wardrobe was flung
aside and an apparition dashed for the door. Alan
sprang in front of it, threw his arms around it, held it
tight. It struggled, laughed, ceased to struggle, and
looked up as Alan looked down. Clem's face was very
near to his. Her body, still throbbing with excitement,
was in his arms. Alan felt such a rioting surge in his
blood as he had never known before. He wanted to kiss
Clem. He felt that he must kiss her, that there was
not strength enough left in him to do anything else.
Then his eyes met hers and he forgot himself and re-
membered Clem. His soul cried, " Sacrilege," and he
dropped his arms from about her and stepped back.
Clem stood before him, dazed. She was in her stock-
inged feet. In each hand she held a little slipper. Her
HOME 283
eyes were big and full of the soft reproach of the
mortally wounded. Alan felt ashamed and looked
away. He had to break the silence. " Well, you 're
caught," he said lamely.
Clem dropped one slipper, threw up her hand and
brushed the disordered hair from her forehead. " Yes,
I 'm caught," she said and her lip trembled on the
words.
CHAPTEE XXXIX
O!N"E day in midsummer Alan, to his disgust, was
summoned peremptorily by McDale & McDale.
Half an hour's consultation was all they required and
Alan was pleased to find as he left their offices that he
still had plenty of time to catch the early train back to
Red Hill. There were only two afternoon trains for
that difficult goal.
As he strolled up the Avenue he was arrested by the
sight of a tall figure standing on the curb watching the
swirl of the traffic. The figure was dressed in a heavy
whipcord suit and a Stetson hat, uncompromisingly
domed in the very form in which it had been blocked
by the makers. A street gamin yelled, " Hi I fellers,
look what 's got away from Buffalo Bill I " Kemp
gazed sad-eyed but unmoved over his drooping mus-
taches, doubtless mourning the passing of the shooting
iron and the consequent unanswerable affronts of a
fostered civilization.
Alan elbowed his way across the stream of pedestrians
and clutched him by the arm. Kemp whirled around
as if to meet attack but smiled when he saw Alan's
faca " I was jest calculatin' on roundin' you up," he
drawled.
" Where did you come from ? Where are you off
284
HOME 285
to ? " cried Alan and without waiting for an answer he
hailed a cab, hustled Kemp into it, and ordered it to
his club. He forgot his early train.
In the club lobby Kemp surrendered his hat
reluctantly to the ready attendant and followed Alan
across soft carpets to a quiet corner where two enormous
chairs seemed to be making confidences to each other.
One could imagine them aggrieved at being interrupted
and sat upon.
" Well, Kemp," said Alan, " I 'm glad to see you.
What 's yours ? "
" Rye 'nd a chaser," said Kemp.
" Same for me, waiter," ordered Alan. " Now,
Kemp, tell me all about it."
" I jest blowed in from Lieber's, Mr. Wayne, and
I 'm headed West."
" How 's Lieber and where 's Gerry ? Did Lieber
get my cable ? "
Kemp looked sadly out through the window.
" Lieber 's dead."
"Dead? Lieber dead?"
Kemp nodded. " I found him with everything fixed
for kickin' the bucket. He knew what was the matter
but he did n't tell me what it was. Said it had been
comin' on him for some while an' thet the' wa'n't no
he'p for it. But he got your cable, Mr. Wayne, and he
wanted I should tell you that what you done wa'n't
wasted. He said there wa'n't nothin' thet could he'p
him through the way that cable did. He said it was the
passpo't he 'd been waitin' for an' thet you wa'n't to
think it come too late because he reckoned he was
286 HOME
goin' to use it. Said it kinder cleared his trail for
him. Them was all the things he said I should tell
you."
Kemp stopped talking and downed his drink. Alan
sat silent and thoughtful. Lieber was gone and made
a gap in his life that he never knew had been filled. He
wanted to know more. He turned to Kemp. " Well ? "
" You remember the joa tree at Lieber's, Mr. Wayne ?
One o' the lonesomest trees on earth, I reckon, except
when the Booganviller comes out an' then it 's a happy
mountain o' red pu'ple that kind o' lights up the hull
desert."
Alan nodded.
" Well, then, you remember the big boulder of gray-
wacke under the tree. That 's Lieber's headstone. He
had a mason up from the coast and he made us carry
him out under the tree to watch the man work. He
give him a model cut into a boa'd to copy f m. I 'm
some reader but them words beat me every time. I
corralled 'em on a bit o' paper though, an' here they
be."
Kemp drew a slip of paper from the same old wallet
that housed " The Purple City." He handed it to Alan.
" Wish you 'd put me on," he said. " All I know is it
ain't American an' it ain't Mex."
The words on the slip looked as if they had been
printed by a child with painstaking care. Alan stared
as he saw them. " Qui de nous n'a pas eu sa terre
promise, son jour d'extase, et sa fin en exil?" he read
slowly to himself and then, with his eyes far away,
translated for Kemp, " ' Who of us has not had his
HOME 287
promised land, his day of ecstasy, and his end in
exile ? > "
Kemp nodded and held out his hand for the slip of
paper. He put it back in his wallet and said, " I sup-
pose the feller thet wrote that was thinkin' mostly of a
man's mind but when it comes to facts them words don't
fit Lieber. He got more exile than was comin' to him ;
it et up the ecstasy an' most of the promised land. But
I don' know. They 's lots of folks that needs to worry
more'n Lieber over crossin' the divide."
They sat thoughtful for some time and then Alan
remembered Red Hill. "Where are you staying,
Kemp ? "
" Astor House."
Alan looked at his watch. " Come on," he said.
" We 've got to hustle. We 've just got time to rush
down and get your bag."
" What for ? " drawled Kemp.
" I was bound for our place out in the country when
I found you. We Ve got just forty minutes to catch
the train. You 're coming with me."
A wary look came into Kemp's eyes. " Your folks
out there, Mr. Wayne ? " he asked.
" Yes," said Alan and then added, " Kemp, do you
take me for a man that would steer you up against a
game you don't hold cards in ? "
" No," said Kemp, " I don't," and then found himself
hatted and hurried into a taxi before he could further
protest.
If Alan had any qualms about introducing Kemp to
Red Hill they were soon allayed. Kemp was duly pre-
288 HOME
sented on the lawn at Maple House. To everything in
petticoats he took off his hat and said " ma'am " but be-
fore the men he stood hatted and vouchsafed a short
" Howdy ! " accompanied by a handshake where it was
invited.
Strange to Kemp must have seemed the group of
which he found himself the center. At a tea-table
under the biggest maple sat Mrs. J. Y. She called
Kemp and motioned to a chair beside her. Kemp let
his lanky frame down slowly on the fragile structure,
took off his domed hat and laid it on the grass at his
side. For an instant Mrs. J. Y. fixed her soft, myopic
gaze on him and then looked away. Clem brought him
a cup of tea and a biscuit. Kemp held the cup and
saucer in the hollow of his hand and looked dubiously
at their contents. " Would you like something else,
Mr. Kemp ? " asked Mrs. J. Y. softly. " Some other
drink, I mean ? "
Kemp's quick eye roved over the group. He saw that
nobody was taking anything but tea and at the same
time he noted gratefully that nobody was watching
him. The Judge and J. Y. were talking to each other.
Nance, Junior, and Cousin Tom were kneeling before
Gerry, Junior, stolen for a short hour from Alix. That
dwarf Moloch, arrayed in starchy white that stuck out
like a ballet skirt above his sturdy fat legs, was gravely
devouring a sacrifice of cake. Charlie Sterling lay full
length on the ground while his brood, with shrill cries
at his frequent eruptions, buried and reburied him with
sofa pillows. Nance, Alan and Clem sipped tea and
cheered on the children's efforts.
HOME 289
Kemp turned a twinkling eye on Mrs. J. Y. " I
ain't sayin', ma'am, thet this mixture is my usual
bev'rage but a man don't expect to have his usual handed
down f 'm a pulpit and likewise I see no call for folks
turnin' their front lawns into a bar."
Kemp could feel a scene; his strange nature was
moved at finding itself rubbing elbows with such a group
and when Kemp was moved he always talked to hide
his emotion. Mrs. J. Y.'s kindly eyes led him on, made
him feel weirdly akin to these quiet, contented men and
women and clean-frocked, rosy-cheeked children frolick-
ing against the peaceful setting of shady trees, old lawns
and the rambling house that staidly watched them like
some motherly hen, wings out-spread, ever ready to
brood and shelter.
Kemp's eyes left Mrs. J. Y.'s face and swept over
the scene again. " Speakin' of bars," he went on in his
soft drawl, " I don't think a missus ever has no call
to handle drinks over an' above what goes in 'nd out of
a milk-pail, which is n't drink in a manner o' speakin'.
I can't rightly rec'llect that I ever seen a missus leanin'
over either side of a bar in this country but I 've strayed
some from the home fence an' you may be su'prised,
Mis' Wayne, to know thet they 's lands where no one
ain't never heered tell on a barman an' where barmaids
is some commoner'n the milkin' brand."
" Yes ? " said Mrs. J. Y. encouragingly.
" Sho' thing," replied Kemp ; " I seen 'em. I won't
forget the fust time because I was consid'able embar-
rassed. ! missed a steamer in Noo Yawk an' the firm
was in a hurry so they sent me acrost to S'uthampton
290 HOME
an' while I was waitin' for the Brazil boat a feller I 'd
picked up on boa'd showed me around some. Well, it
wa'n't long before he corralled me, quite willing in a
bar. I pulled off my hat and he says, ' Why d'you take
off yo' hat?' and I says, 'Why don't you take off
yourn ? Don't you see they 's a lady hea' ? ' Then he
bust out laughin' and everybody that was nea' enough
to hea' bust out laughin' an' the missus behind the bar
laughed too though somehow it did n't sound as if she
laughed because she could n't he'p it."
Kemp paused to blush over the memory. He did not
notice that the Judge and J. Y. had drawn quietly
nearer and that the rest of the group of grown-ups were
intent on his words. " They 's times," he continued,
" when it 's fittin' that a man should be without shootin'
irons an' that was one of 'em. I can't rightly say what
would have happened but guessin's easy. When he was
through laughin' the feller that was showin' me around
slapped me on the back and sez, ' That ain't no lady ;
it's a barmaid.' An' then they all laughed some mo'
and the missus just kind o' laughed an' I mought 'a'
been dreamin' but I thought I seen a look in her eyes
thet says she was n't laughin' inside at all. Ever sence
then I 've been of opinion that a missus has no call to
handle drinks an' I ce'tainly hope I '11 never see one
a-doin' of it under the home fence."
Kemp stayed at Maple House for a week. Before he
left he was known throughout the country side. His
lanky figure, drooping mustaches, domed hat and the
way he held out the reins in front of him when he rode
marked him from the start and when the youth of the
HOME 291
surrounding farms learned that he was a genuine cow-
boy that had ridden everything with four legs, they
worshiped from afar and gloried in casual approaches.
Just before he went away Kemp took it upon himself
to call on Alix. Alan led him to where she sat on the
lawn among the trees at The Firs and left him. Alix
looked up in wonder at his tall, lank form. Kemp held
his hat in his hands and twisted it nervously.
" Mis' Lansing," he said, " I want you should let me
say a few words to ye. I seen Mister Lansing 'bout
five weeks ago."
Alix sprang to her feet, her pale cheeks aflame.
" Yes ? " she said. " When when is he coming ? "
She sank down again and buried her face in her hands.
The shame of putting that question to a stranger over-
whelmed her.
Kemp sat down near her. " Sho, Mis' Lansing," he
said, " don' you take it hard that you 're getting word of
Mr. Lansing through me. Him an' me an' Lieber 's
ben 'most pardners."
Tenderness had crept into Kemp's drawl. Alix
looked up. " Please," she said, " tell me all about him
all about these years."
Kemp hesitated before he spoke. " I ain't got the
words ner the right to tell you all about them three
years, Mis' Lansing, an' I can't tell you all about Mr.
Lansing 'cause the biggest part o' some men don' meet
the eye it 's inside on 'em. Thet 's the way it is with
Mr. Lansing. I c'n tell you, though, thet Mr. Lansing
is well an' strong strong enough to swing a steer by
the tail.
HOME
" That 's what I know. Now I '11 tell ye some o'
my thoughts. Mr. Lansing wan't horn to he a maverick.
Eight now, I 'm willin' to wager, he 's headed fer home
and the corral hut he ain't comin' on the run he 's
hrowsin' and chewin' his cud.
" When I seen him five weeks ago I thought on hog-
tyin' him an' bringin' him along, 'cause Mr. Wayne had
tol' me about you an' the two-year-old. But it come to
me that a woman of sperit one of ourn would n't
want her man should be brougJit in. She 'd sooner he 'd
hog-tie hisseff."
Alix' head hung in thought. Her hands were
clasped in her lap. As Kemp's last words sank in, the
first smile of many days came to her lips.
Kemp rose and said good-by. With his hat pulled
well over his brows and his hands in his pockets, he
slouched toward the gate.
Alix jumped up and followed him. She laid her
thin, light hand on his arm. " Thank you," she said,
a little breathlessly. Kemp's deep-set eyes twinkled
down on her. He held out his big, rough hand and
Alix gripped it.
" Not good-by," she said.
CHAPTER XL
MAPLE HOUSE was riding the crest of a happy
wave. In a body it advanced on the lake to pic-
nic and supper by moonlight and in a body it returned ;
the little ones excited and wakeful, the grown-ups tired
and reminiscent. Days followed that were filled with
laziness and nights that rang with song. The cup of
life was filled to the brim with little things. Sudden
peals of unreasoning laughter, shrieks of children at
play, a rumble of the piano followed by a rollicking
college song, ready smiles on happy faces, broke like
commas into the page of life, and turned monotony into
living phrases. But beneath the gaiety ran the inevi-
table undertone. When joy paused to take breath it
found Alan half aloof and Clem wistful behind her un-
varying sweetness.
One evening Alan found himself alone with Nance.
She had frankly cornered him, then as openly led him
off down the road towards Elm House.
" Alan," she said, " you Ve turned into a great fool
or a great coward. Which is it ? "
Alan glanced at her. " What do you mean ? " he
stammered.
" You know what I mean. Clem. You 're breaking
her heart."
293
294 HOME
She felt Alan's arm stiffen. For a moment he was
silent, then he said : " Don't worry, Nance. You 're
wrong, of course, but any way, no harm is going to
come to Clem through me. I 'm going away. I 've
meant to go for ever so long but somehow I could n't.
Something seemed to hold me. I tried to think it was
just the Hill and that it would be all right for me to
stay on until the general break-up. But you have
wakened me up and the proof that I 'm not quite a
coward yet is that I 'm going to get up and run."
They came to the entrance to The Elms but ISTance
led him on down the road. " Run ? Why are you go-
ing to run ? Alan, don't you love her ? "
A tremor went through Alan's body. " I don't
know," he said, " whether I love her or not. If I ever
loved any one before, then I don't love her, for the thing
that has come over me is new newer than anything
that has ever happened to me. I would rather see her
come down from her room in the morning than to have
watched the birth of Aphrodite and yet I would rather
see myself damned, once and for all, than touch the
hem of her frock."
"Why?"
" Because it is not for me. Once Alix called her
glorious. I don't know whether that was a bit of hyper-
bole on her part or not but to me she is just that. There
is a glory about Clem the glory of pure light. Do
you think I dare to walk into it ? Me, with my scarred
life, my blemished soul and the moral rags that only
half hide the two ? That would be cowardly. I 'm
not coward enough for that."
HOME 295
Nance sighed. " I 'm disappointed in you. I
thought that if ever man lived that knew a little about
women it must be you. I won't say any of the things
I was going to say. Instead, I just tell you that you
don't know women."
They walked back in silence. Nance went into the
house but Alan said good-night and started thought-
fully down the road. His step quickened and walking
rapidly, he passed over the moonlit brow of the hill and
down, down into the shadows of the valley. Hard is
the battle that has to be won twice but when in the
s.mall hours of the morning Alan returned and crept
noiselessly to his room he felt that he had won, that he
had put the final seal on the renunciation Nance's words
had well-nigh recalled. Still wakeful, Alan started
packing. He left out his riding kit.
That day awoke to clouds that lowered and hung
about waiting for the fateful hour of seven when they
might with due respect to atmospheric tradition start
in with an all day rain, but long before the hour struck
Alan had foraged for a biscuit and a glass of milk and
was mounted and away for a last ride.
Alan rode with the ease of one born to the saddle.
There was nothing of the cowboy in his get-up. He
used a mere patch of a hunting saddle, fitted like a glove
to his horse's back, and rode on the snaffle with a light
hand. The curb rein, that last refuge of a poor horse-
man, hung loose and forgotten. Alan himself was
dressed in well-worn whipcord breeches, short coat, soft
hat, and close-fitting boots adorned with rowelless spurs.
Tor his health Eed Hill had done wonders. His body
296 HOME
was trim, supple, and as vibrant as the young horse
under it.
But Alan's thoughts were far from saddles and saddle
gear as he walked the restive animal down the dipping
slope of Long Lane and with his riding crop steadily
discouraged the early morning flies, intent on settling
down to the business of life on his mount's arched neck
and quivering quarters. He was thinking of Clem.
Where could he go to get away from Clem? Not to-
morrow, not sometime, but to-day. Where could he go
to-day ? Once the world had seemed to him a fenceless
pasture where it was good to wander, where every un-
discovered glade promised fresh morsels to an unwearied
palate but now in his mind the whole world had shrunk
to the proportions of Red Hill. Where Clem was, there
was the whole world. Already he felt the yearning
with which his heart must henceforth turn to its sole
desire.
He crossed the valley and, as his horse breasted the
opposing hill, he thought he heard an echoing hoofbeat
behind him. He turned and with one hand resting on
the horse's quarter gazed back through the gray light
but Long Lane was veiled from view by overhanging
trees. As he lifted his hand, its impress, clearly de-
fined as an image, caught his eye. How strange. He
had ridden a thousand times and he had never noted
such a thing before. It was simple when reduced to
physical terms. The horse was warm and moist, the
hair cool and dry. His hand pressed the hair down
into the moisture. But when he had reasoned out the
why and wherefore and ticketed the phenomenon, the
HOME 297
impress still stared back at him. To his mood it seemed
an emblem of isolation, a thing cut off, discarded, use-
less. With a smile of rebuke at his fancies he touched
the horse with his crop and gave him his head. The
horse sprang forward, cleared the top of the hill and
the rhythmic clatter of his hoofs as he dashed along
the pebble-strewn road seemed to cleave the still morn-
ing in two.
CHAPTER XLI
ALAN did not draw rein until he reached the top of
the bluff dividing the valley from West Lake.
Then for a moment he sat and stared down the long
slope. There was a smell of moisture in the air. The
valley, the whole world, was expecting, waiting for rain,
and even as he stared the rain came in a fine, veil-like
mist that steadied the tones of earth and sky to one even
shade of endless gray. Out of the gray came the click
of iron on pebble. Alan recognized the quick, springy
tread of a climbing horse. He turned and faced Clem.
He felt the slow color rising in his cheeks and his hands
trembled.
They did not smile at each other; they even forgot
to say good-morning. Alan licked his thin lips. They
were as dry as ever they had been with fever.
" Where 's your hat ? " he asked.
A flicker of amusement showed in Clem's eyes. She
was quite calm and she could see that Alan was not,
that he was biting his tongue at the feeble words he had
saddled on a heavy moment. " Hats are for sunny
days," she said. " I like rain on my head. Have you
anything special to do ? Don't let me bother you."
" No," stammered Alan, " nothing that can't be put
off."
298
HOME 299
" Do you remember," Clem went on, " years ago I
asked you to take me for a ride, and you said not then
but sometime ? I 've never had my ride with you. I
want it now."
Her eyes were fixed on his and held him. " I am
ready," he said through dry lips.
She turned her horse and he followed. They rode in
silence at a walk and then at a trot. Clem turned into
a wood-road. Her horse broke into a gallop. She
flicked him with her whip and his gathered limbs sud-
denly stretched out for a free run. The going was soft.
Alan had fallen behind. Clots of mossy loam struck
him in the face. Swaying branches showered drops of
water on him. He lost his hat. Then his lips tight-
ened, his eyes flashed and he began to ride. He was
himself again.
He urged his horse forward but he could not get on
even terms ; Clem held the middle of the narrow track.
Suddenly they burst into the broad Low Eoad. With a
terrific clatter of flying stones and slipping, scrambling
hoofs they made the turn. Alan rode at last on Clem's
quarter. " Clem," he cried, " stop ! It is n't fair to
the horses."
But Clem only laughed. Her slim body swayed to
the bends of the road; her shoulders were braced; she
leaned slightly back, steadying her horse with a taut
rein. Alan tried to draw even but every time he urged
his horse into a spurt Clem's spurted too. Alan grew
angry. He watched Clem's whip but it never moved.
He settled into the saddle and rode blindly. His horse
must catch up or he would kill him. He was gaining.
300 HOME
A moment more at the same pace and he could reach
Clem's reins below her horse's neck. Then Clem
swerved again into a half hidden wood-road and Alan's
horse plunged through the brush, broke out, and fol-
lowed, a poor second.
Alan's face and hands were badly scratched but he
rode on doggedly. It never occurred to him to give up
the chase. In the end he would catch up ; he knew that,
but what puzzled him was what he should do to Clem
when he caught her. Any one else, man or woman, he
would give a taste of their own riding whip for their
own good but not Clem. Alan suddenly knew that there
was something in Clem that a man could not break.
The wood-road made a gradual ascent that the willing
horses took at a steady, hard gallop. They left the
tree-line of the valley below them, scurried across an
ancient clearing, pushed through brush and branches,
and burst out on to the long, bald back of East Mountain.
Then came another clear run over crisp sod dangerously
interspersed with wet, slippery stones and hindering
boulders.
At the highest point in all the country-side Clem
suddenly drew rein and slipped from her horse before
Alan could reach her. She stood with one arm across
the saddle-horn and waited for him.
Alan threw himself from his horse and rushed up to
her. His hands were itching to grip her shoulders and
shake her but he held them at his side. " What did you
do it for ? " he asked with blazing eyes.
Clem looked him over coolly. " Ever run after any
one before, Alan ? "
HOME 301
" What ? " stuttered Alan. He felt foundations slip-
ping from under him. Here was a person who could
look Ten Percent Wayne at his best in the eye and
never turn a mental hair.
" How do you like it ? " continued Clem in an even,
firm voice. Then she turned her square back to the
saddle and faced him fairly. " I '11 tell you what I did
it for. All my life I 've been running after you. Last
night I heard you packing. I knew what you were do-
ing you were getting ready to go away. Before you
went I wanted you to run after me just once. A
sort of consolation prize to pride."
Alan's face hardened. " Stop, Clem. You can't
talk like that to me and you can't talk like that to your-
self." He looked at Clem and the blood surged into
his neck and face. At that moment Clem was beautiful
to him beyond the wildest dreams of fair women. She
was dressed in a close-fitting long coat that buttoned
down the front. Her riding skirt, of the same dark
stuff, she had hitched up at one side to a silver hook.
From under the raised skirt peeped a straight riding
boot and on the heel of the boot was a tiny, right-an-
gle spur. Alan's quick eyes hung on that spur; it ex-
plained the lead Clem had held through the headlong
ride.
Clem's right arm was still hooked over the double
horn of her saddle and her left hand holding a slim
riding whip hung at her side. To the velvet lapels of
her coat clung little drops of rain. Her hair was
braided and firmly tied in a double fold at the back of
her neck, but short strands had escaped from durance
302 HOME
and played about her head. Her head, like the velvet
lapels, was dusted with little silvery drops of water and
little drops of water perched on her long, up-turned
lashes. Her cheeks were flushed, her bosom agitated,
her lips tremulous. Only her eyes were steady.
Alan took off his coat and threw it over a rock,
" Will you please sit down ? I must talk to you."
Clem strode to another rock and sat down. " You
are absurd. Your coat is as wet as the stones. Put it
on." Alan hesitated. " Put your coat on."
Alan obeyed ; then he sat down before her but turned
his eyes away and gazed rather vacantly over the whole
wet world. " If ever two people have known each
other without words, Clem, it 's you and me. Never
mind the grammar. Even unshackled words are a
dribbling outlet for a full heart and my heart 's as full
to-day with things I Ve never said to you as the clouds
are with rain.
" Nature, taken by and large, is a funny outfit and
the funniest things in it are the ones that make you want
to cry. The world sees a good man, clean and straight,
married to a faithless woman and laughs. Men see a
pure girl give her all to a cad and they say, i It 's al-
ways the rotters that get the pick,' and they laugh too.
But down in the bottom of our hearts we know that
these things are things for tears."
" Yes, Alan," said Clem as he paused. She was no
longer imperious, only attentive with chin in hands and
elbows on knees.
"You know me," went on Alan, "but there are
things about me that you do not know things below
HOME 303
you that you have no understanding for, thank God.
I don't even know how to picture them to you."
" Yes, Alan," said Clem softly.
Alan picked a bit of huckleberry bush and twisted
it nervously in his hands. " First of all I 've got to
tell you what I thought you knew, that what there is of
me is yours over and over again and then I 've got to
tell you why you can't have it." A light came into
Clem's eyes, trembled, flickered and then settled to a
steady flame.
" You 've seen people smile every one has a smile
of sorts," went on Alan. " Did you ever think that a
smile had body and soul ? To me it has. It starts out
in life like a virgin with a body to keep pure and a
soul to guard unstained. There are smiles that illu-
mine a face, that shine with essential purity, that glorify.
Nobody has to tell you that they have never pandered
to a ribald jest or added cruelty to denial. They are
live smiles and they are rare among women and rarer
among men. For one such you '11 find a thousand liv-
ing faces with dead smiles smiles that have scattered
their essence like rain on the just and the unjust, that
have rolled in filth and wasted their substance on the
second best. You'll find them flickering out in the
faces of young men and at the last gasp in the faces
of lost women whose eyes hold the shadows of unfor-
gotten sins."
"Well?" said Clem.
Alan sighed. " Between the lines of my words you
must read for yourself. My smile is dead I killed
it long ago. Yours is alive alive. You have kept it
304 HOME
pure, guarded its flame and you shall hold it high like
a beacon. You are ready to give all and you have all
to give. I have nothing but the empty shell. I have
kept nothing. I have gained the whole world and
lost it. The little strength left to the pinions of my
soul could carry me up to clutch your beacon and drag
it down, but Clem dearest of all women I love
you too much for that. You 've got to trust me. The
things I know that you do not know shove the duty of
denial on to my shoulders. I could give you an empty
shell but I won't."
Alan had not looked at Clem. He had talked like
one rehearsing a lesson, with his eyes far away in the
gray world. He dropped the bit of bush, and his hands,
locked about his knees, gripped each other till the
knuckles and fingers showed white against the tan of his
thin wrists. When he stopped speaking Clem turned
curious eyes upon him. " Is that all ? " she asked.
Alan sprang up and faced her. " All ? All ? " he
cried. " Is n't it enough ? "
Clem rose to her feet. In her uplifted right hand
she held her agate-headed riding whip. Alan's eyes
fastened on it as she meant them to do. Then with a
full, free swing she flung it from her. The whip,
weighted by the agate head, described a long curve
through the air and plunged into the brush far down
the mountain side. " That," said Clem, her eyes flash-
ing into his, " for the beacon. I kept it for you. It
was too good for you; you would not take it, so there
it goes." Her lip trembled and she snapped her fin-
gers. " It is not worth that to me,"
HOME 305
" Clem ! " cried Alan, protesting.
" Don't speak," said Clem ; " you have said what you
had to say. Now listen to me. You are blind, Alan,
or worse than that, asleep. I 'm not a thin-legged elf
with skirts bobbing above my knees any more. You
can't make me swallow my protests to-day with, Clem,
you must n't this and you must n't that. There 's one
thing you Ve closed your eyes on long enough. I 'm
a woman, Alan, bone, spirit and a great deal of flesh.
I love you and you say you love me."
Alan started forward but Clem held him off with a
gesture. " What do you think I love in you ? The
things you have spent? The things you have thrown
away? Has a woman ever fallen in love with a man
because he was perfect ? " Clem made a desponding
gesture with both hands as though she sought words
that would not come. " Some men clap a wife on to
themselves," she went on, " as you clap a lid on to a
hot fire. If the fire grows cold quick enough the lid
cracks. Some just let the fire burn out and take
the dross with it. A woman knows that there is always
something left in the man she loves. And even if she
did not know it, it would be the same. She would
rather give all for nothing than never give at all."
Clem's voice fell into a lower key. "The things
you know that I do not know ! What a child you are
among men. A half-witted woman is born with more
knowledge than the wisest of you ever attains and the
first thing she learns is that life laughs at knowledge."
Clem stopped speaking and her eyes that had wan-
dered came back to Alan's face. She drew a quiver-
306 HOME
ing breath. Her face had been pale but now the sud-
den color surged up over her throat and into her cheeks.
She put up her hands to her forehead. " Oh," she
gasped, " you have driven me too far. I am a mean
thing in my own eyes as I am in yours."
At first Alan had stood stunned by the words in
which she had poured out her overburdened heart but
as she went on pitilessly laying bare her subjection a
flame lit up his eyes and fired his blood. Xow he
sprang forward and dragged her hands from her face.
" Mean, Clem ? Mean in my eyes ? " Then his tongue
failed him. He sank to the wet grass at her feet,
took her knees in his arms and hid his hot face in
her skirt. " My God, my God," he cried. " / am
mean but what there is of me has knelt to you by night
and worshiped you by day. When you were little you
were in my heart and you have grown up in it. When
you were little there was room there for other things
but now that you have grown up you have filled it
all of it every nook and cranny."
A tremor went through Clem's body. She rested the
fingers of one hand on Alan's head and tried to turn
up his face. But he held it close to her knees. " If
you want me, Clem, if you want me, then there must be
things left things I have never could never give
to any one else. But I am ashamed to pour them into
your lap I must pour them at your feet."
" No," said Clem gravely, " I do not want you to
pour things at my feet. It 's got to be eye to eye or
nothing, and if there 's any man left in "
" Clem," broke in Alan, " there is enough man left
HOME 307
in me if you '11 only give me time. Time to groom
him. You can understand that, Clem? You know
what grooming and a clean stable will do for a shaggy
horse ? "
Clem nodded. " How much time do you want ? "
Alan hesitated. " A year," he said. " I '11 make
a year do it."
" You can have six months," replied Clem and ad-
ded with a smile, " That 's ten per cent under office
estimates."
Then forgetful of hours and meals and the little
things in life that do not count when human souls
mount to the banquet of the gods, they sat side by side
and hand in hand on a big rock and stared with unsee-
ing eyes at the gray world. "With you beside me,"
said Alan, " all skies are blue and filled with the light
of a single, steady star."
Clem did not answer, but in her eyes content and
knowledge, tenderness and strength, pleasure and pain
played with each other like the lights and dappled
shadows under a swaying bough.
CHAPTER XLII
WHEN Clem and Alan reached home long after
the lunch hour, they found the Hill athrill
with news. Alix had received a cable and had left at
once for town. She had gone alone. That could mean
but one thing Gerry was at last coming back.
It was from Barbados that Gerry had cabled. Ever
since he had written his short note to Alix, through
long doubting weeks at Piranhas and longer days of
questioning and hesitation on board the slow freighter
that was bearing him home, Gerry had been fighting
himself. Only Lieber's sudden death and his burial,
to which Gerry had ridden post-haste, had come in be-
tween as a solemn truce.
On the freighter he had had time enough and to
spare to think. He had spent hours going over the
same ground time and time again. Eor days he sat
in his chair on the short bridge-deck, staring out to sea,
making over and over the circle of his life from the
time he had left home. He remembered sitting thus
on the way out. He remembered the turmoil his mind
had been in and the apathy that had followed, the
long rest at Pernambuco, the trip down the coast and
up the river, the glorious misty morning at Piranhas,
Margarita, catastrophe, awakening. What did that
308
HOME 309
awakening stand for? Again he thought, if he could
choose would he wish to he hack as he was before
as he was on the way out? A voice within him said
" No."
In those days when once more his thoughts demanded
to be seen in their relation to Alix, that steady voice
within him was his only comfort. The flood at
Fazenda Flores had swept away all that his hands had
done but the things that Fazenda Flores had done for
him could not be swept away by any material force.
They stood and feared nothing except Alix.
Wherever his mind turned, it came back to Alix and
found in her an impasse. Alix assumed more and
more the portentous attributes of one unattached, sit-
ting in judgment over his acts. His memory of her
frailty, of her flower-like detachment from the bones
the skeleton of life, her artificiality, made her
seem ludicrously incongruous in the role of judge. He
could not picture her, much less estimate the sentence
she would pass. His thoughts led him daily up to
that impasse and left him. Then came the doubt and
the question why should he lead himself bodily to
the impasse at all ?
He was still fighting this point when he reached Bar-
bados but there an incident befell which brought a new
light to his mind and then a new peace to his soul.
He had gone ashore at Bridgetown simply because
his whole body, perfectly attuned by three years of long
hours of toil, was crying out for more exercise than the
narrow decks of the freighter could afford.
When the little group of passengers reached shore,
310 HOME
with the exception of Gerry and an old returning Bar-
badian, they all turned in the same direction as if by
a common impulse.
The Barbadian glanced at Gerry and jerked his head
at the disappearing group. " Men of the world in the
big sense," he said.
" What do you mean ? " asked Gerry.
" Son," said the old Barbadian, who was very tanned
and whose kindly eyes blinked through thick glasses,
" when a chap tells you he 's a man of the world you
ask him if he ever had a drink at the Ice House. You
don't have to say ' in Bridgetown.' ' Ever have a
drink at the Ice House ? ' Just like that ; and if he
says, ' No/ you know he meant he was a town rounder
when he said he was a man of the world."
Gerry smiled and fell naturally in step with the
Barbadian as he moved slowly on.
" Yes," said the old man. " It 's a sure test. The
man that has n't crooked his elbow at the big, round,
deal table in that old ramshackle drink-house, can't say
he's really traveled. Long lost brothers and friends
have met there and when men that roam the high seas
want news of some pal that 's disappeared down the
highway of the world they drop in at the old Ice House
and ask what road he took. It ? s the halfway house to
all the seven seas."
" Have you lost any one ? " asked Gerry.
" No, I 'm not thirsty for drink just now," said the
Barbadian with a smile. " And you ? " /
" Nor I," said Gerry, laughing. " I 'm out to
stretch my legs."
HOME 311
"You can't do that here," replied the old man.
" You don't know our sun. Come with me." He
hailed a ramshackle victoria.
Gerry hesitated. " You must have a home you want
to go to and friends to see. Don't worry about me.
I '11 be careful about the sun."
" Boy," said the Barbadian, " I Ve got a home and
I 'm going to see it but there 's no reason why you
should n't come along. As for friends the ones I
left here won't get up to meet any one till the last
trump sounds. Come along. You are the only com-
pany and I 'm the only host in our party."
They climbed into the rickety cab and the Bar-
badian gave directions to the driver. The driver
answered in the soft guttural of the West Indian
black.
Slowly they crawled through the crooked streets of
the town. Gerry leaned back and gazed at the freak-
ish buildings. They were all of frame work. Some
swelled at the top and Gerry wondered why they did
not topple over; some swelled at the bottom and he
wondered why these did not cave in.
The Barbadian watched his face. "Funny town,
eh?"
Gerry nodded.
Presently they found themselves on a country road.
It was so smooth that the weighted carriage pushed the
old horses along at an unwonted pace. Little houses
hundreds of them that looked like big hen-coops lined
the road. Suddenly the carriage came to a halt. One
of the little houses was trying to straddle the road.
312 HOME
From around it came screams and cries. " Now, then,
yo' Gladys, when ah say heft, yo' heft."
The driver poured out an angry torrent of words
that tried their best to be harsh and failed. From
around the obstructing house came an old darky. When
his eyes fell on the Barbadian he rushed forward.
" Lor, Misteh Malcolm, when did yo' get back ? "
" Just now, Charles," said the Barbadian. " What 's
the matter here ? "
The darky's eyes rolled. " Mattah, Misteh Mal-
colm ? Why that ole Gunnel Stewaat he 's jes' so
natcherly parsonmonious that he requires me to pay
rent fo' havin' ma house on his Ian' so I says to ole
Mammy, we '11 jes' move this here residence on to a
gentleman's Ian', and Misteh Malcolm me 'n mammy 'n
the chile are jes' a-movin' it on to yo' ole cane fiel'."
The Barbadian laughed a little dryly and shrugged
his shoulders. The driver got down, protesting, and
helped the family carry the house across the road.
Then the cab went on and soon turned up an avenue
under a fiery canopy of acacia flamboyante.
As they progressed, thick twining growths spangled
with brilliant blooms, walled in the avenue. The air
grew cool but heavy with scents and the full-flavored
spice of a tropical garden under a blazing sun.
The air made Gerry dreamy. He woke with a start
when the Barbadian said to the cabman, " This will do.
You needn't drive in. Wait here."
The cab stopped. Just ahead was the ruin of a great
gate. The two pillars still stood but they were almost
entirely hidden by vines. To one of them clung the
HOME 313
rusted vestige of a gate. Beyond the pillars there was
a winding way. Once it had been a broad continuation
of the avenue, now it was but a tunnel through the
densely crowding foliage. Along the center of the
tunnel was a narrow path. Even it was overgrown.
The Barbadian led Gerry down the path.
They came out under a grove of mighty trees whose
dense shade had kept down the undergrowth and beyond
the trees Gerry saw a vast, irregular mound of vines
with which mingled giant geraniums, climbing fuch-
sias, honeysuckle and rose. Then he spied a broad
flight of marble steps ; at one end of them an old moss-
grown urn, at the other, its fallen, broken counterpart.
Above the mound rose the roof of a house ; through the
vines, as the two drew nearer, appeared shuttered win-
dows and a door, veiled with creepers.
The Barbadian went up the steps and tore the
creepers away from the door. Then he drew from his
pocket an enormous key. With a rasp the lock turned
and the door opened, letting a bar of light into a wide,
cool hall.
Gerry followed the Barbadian through the hall to a
broad veranda at the back of the house. A large liv-
ing-room faced on to the veranda. The Barbadian en-
tered it, opened the French door-windows and, dusting
off two lounge chairs, invited Gerry to sit down.
Gerry looked around curiously. The living-room
was comfortably furnished. There were one or two
excellent rugs on the waxed floor; a great couch, set
into a bow-window; lace curtains, creamy with age;
a wonderfully carved escritoire in rosewood; a side-
314 HOME
board, round table and chairs of mahogany that was
almost as dull and black as ebony. Over all lay a coat
of dust.
The Barbadian walked to the round table and with
his finger wrote in the dust, then he sat down in a
worn and comfortable chair, a companion to Gerry's.
He fell into so deep a reverie that Gerry thought he
was asleep.
Gerry got up and walked around the room. His eye
fell on the table. He saw what the Barbadian had
written; simply the date of the day. But above the
freshly written date showed another, filmed over with
dust, and above that another almost obliterated. Gerry
leaned over the table. He could see that a long suc-
cession of dates had been written into the thick-laid
dust. Beginning with the fresh numerals staring up
at him they reached back and back through the years
till they faded away into a dim past.
Gerry tiptoed out on to the veranda. Before him
was a ruined lawn ; in its center a cracked, dry, marble
fountain. Off to one side was a giant plane tree.
From one of its limbs hung two frayed ropes. Against
its trunk leaned a weather-beaten swing-board. Under
the ropes, a wisp of path still showed, beaten hard in
a bygone day by the feet of children. Beyond the lawn
stretched wide hummocky cane-fields. They were
abandoned save for little patches of cane here and there,
bunched up against little hen-coop houses.
" Got a home, boy ? "
Gerry turned and found the Barbadian standing be-
side him. " A home ! " he answered, his thoughts fly-
HOME 315
ing to Bed Hill, " I should think I have and it 's a
li " Gerry caught himself but not in time.
The Barbadian nodded slowly. " I know," he said,
"you were going to say it's a live one. Well, as to
that, don't you make a mistake. This home is alive
too just exactly as alive as I am, for I 'm the last
of the Barbados Malcolms.
" Home," he went on, " is n't altogether a matter of
cash, comfort and cool drinks. Sometimes it's just a
gathering place for memories.
" There was a time when we whites stood fifteen to
one over the blacks on this island. Now the tables are
turned. A chap that only takes a drink every time he
sees a white man would have to go to a mass meeting
to get drunk.
" Lately they 've been sending out scientific commis-
sions from England to sit like coroners on this mound
in the sea. They say they 're going to bring tjie
corpse back to life. I 've been offered a big price for
this old place but I 'm not selling."
Gerry looked at the Barbadian's rather shabby
clothes. " Why don't you sell if you don't want to
work the place? It's worth money. I know enough
to tell you that."
The Barbadian rested one hand high on the thick
trunk of a wistaria. A slow smile drew the corners
of his mouth. "Worth money?" he echoed. "My
boy, not every man kills the thing that he loves best.
This is my home. You read those dates written in
dust and still you thought my home was dead. But
it is n't dead. I have n't killed the thing that I love
316 HOME
best. You can get cash, comfort and cool drinks al-
most anywhere, but I have remembered that memories
travel only beaten paths."
Even as Gerry picked his way back to the waiting
cab he felt Red Hill reaching out for him, drawing him.
And during the long, slow drive to the quay he learned
that he had passed the crossroads that had given so
long a pause to his troubled soul. The Barbadian had
opened his eyes. Doubt left him. There was but one
road the road back and it was open. He wrote his
cable to Alix with a firm hand.
The freighter reached quarantine after a quiet voy-
age twelve hours ahead of time and just at sundown.
A tug hurried down the bay to tell them their berth
was not ready. The freighter was forced to anchor
at the mouth of the Narrows. Gerry watched the lights
spring out from the shadowy shores. They beckoned
him to familiar scenes. Staten Island had been to his
boyhood an undiscovered land and the scene of his first
wanderings. Bayshore he knew through constant pass-
ing by. In the sky beyond it, hung the glow of the
summer city, here and there pierced with the brighter
flame of some grotesque monstrosity.
Up the bay the dark waters forked into two bands
that lost themselves in a sea and sky of twinkling lights.
He could just determine the sweeping arch of Brooklyn
Bridge and the presence of more than one new tower
of Babel that broke the ever-changing skyline of his
native city and made him feel, by that much, forgotten
and an alien. But from all the myriad lesser lights
his eyes turned gratefully to the high-held torch of
HOME 31Y
Liberty. Beneath it, the familiar, tilted diadem, the
shadowy folds draping the up-standing pose, the
strength and steadfastness and the titanic grandeur of
the statue, carried their message to him as never be-
fore. It became to him what its creator had con-
ceived, an emblem, and the myriad little waves of the
bay, rushing to fling themselves at the feet of the God-
dess, became a multitude, eager for attainment, ready
for sacrifice.
CHAPTER XLIII
IT was ten o'clock on a morning in early autumn
when Gerry finally got free of the freighter and
took the ferry for the other side of the river. He had
left all his baggage to be delivered at the house later.
The morning was clear but sultry. In the city the
apathy of summer days had settled down. People
glanced at Gerry's heavy tweeds and antiquated hat
but they did not smile, for Gerry himself was such a
sight as makes men forget clothes. The tan of his
lean face, the swing of his big, unpadded shoulders,
his clear eyes, carried the thoughts of passers-by away
from clothes and city things. They seemed to catch
a breath of spicy winds from the worn garments that
clung to the stranger's virile body and in his eyes they
saw a mirage of far-away places.
As Gerry reached his own house, he was outwardly
calm, even deliberate, but inwardly he was fighting
down a turmoil of emotions. What was he to find in
Alix? Had he anything to give in exchange? Had
he too much ? He climbed the steps slowly. His hand
trembled as he reached out to raise the heavy bronze
knocker. Before his fingers could seize it, the door
swung softly inward. Old John bowed before him.
For a moment Gerry stood dazed. The naturalness of
that open door, of the old butler, of the cool shadows
318
HOME 319
in the old familiar hall, struck straight at his heart
with the shrewd poignancy of simple things. Old
John raised a smiling face to greet him but down one
wrinkled cheek crawled a surprised tear.
Gerry held out his hand. " How do you do, John ? "
"I am very well to-day, sir," said John. "Mrs.
Gerry is in the library. She told me to telephone to
the club and if you were there to say she wished to
see you."
Gerry was puzzled. Why should Alix think he
would go to the club? He handed the butler his old
hat and strode to the library door. The door was
closed. He knocked. Somebody said, " Come in."
The words were so low he hardly heard them. He
opened the door, stepped inside and closed it behind
him.
Alix, dressed in a filmy blue and white house-gown,
stood in the middle of the room. With one hand up-
raised, the other outstretched, she seemed to be poised,
equally ready for advance or flight. Her eyes passed
swiftly over Gerry's face, swept searching down to his
feet and back again to his face. For weeks she had
been wondering. Terrible things had come to her
mind. Alan and Gerry, with his heartless note, had
conspired to mystify, to terrify her. All the joy she
had looked forward to in Gerry's home-coming had
turned into a bitter pain. They had not known on the
Hill how she was suffering. Only Kemp had seemed
to understand a little and had brought his drop of com-
fort to her.
As her eyes searched Gerry the sense of impending
320 HOME
calamity left her. He was well, well as she had never
seen him before. Except for that he seemed almost
weirdly familiar, as though only a good night's sleep
lay between him and the morning of three years ago
when he had bullied her until she had fought back and
overwhelmed him.
A hundred little differences went to make up this
solitary change. The flush of too many drinks had
given way to a deep healthy glow, the eyes were deep
and grave instead of deep and vacant, the broad
shoulders that had taken to hanging were braced in
unconscious strength. Every line in the body that she
had seen start on the road to grossness had been fined
down. The body was no longer a mere abode for a
lingering spirit. It had become a mechanism, tuned
to expression in action. It was not the body of a time-
server. Alan's sole word of comfort came back to
her. " I never thought the old Rock would ever loom
so big." What force had done this thing to Gerry?
She felt a pang, half envy, half remorse. If she had
been wise, less than that, if she had been merely sage,
could she not have saved Gerry to himself and spared
her faith the test of the three long years lost out of
their youth ?
Gerry stood erect by the door, one hand still holding
the knob. Why was he waiting? Alix's raised hand
went slowly out to him in welcome but he did not
move. She smiled at him but his eyes remained stead-
fast and grave. A lump rose in Alix's throat and then,
as pride came to her aid, a flare of color showed in her
cheeks. Her lips opened. What could she say to hurt
HOME 321
him enough, to pay him back for this added, unjust
rebuff? She knew so little about this new Gerry.
How could she wound him?
And then he spoke. "Will you please sit down?
There are things I must tell you."
Gerry had blundered on magic words. There is no
moment so emotionally tense that a true woman will
not drop the immediate issue to sit down and listen
to the untold things she has wanted to hear. Alix was
a true woman. The flare died out of her cheeks. She
sank into a chair beside the dully shining mahogany
table and with a nod of her golden head motioned Gerry
to a seat opposite her. She watched the easy swing of
his body as he moved across the room. Gerry's mind
was in sore conflict, but a body in perfect health has a
way of taking care of itself.
Gerry sat down and gripped the edge of the table
with outstretched hands. He looked steadily into Alix'
eyes. The moment he had foreseen had come. Alix
sat in judgment. She planted her bare elbows on the
table, laid one hand, palm down on the other and on
them both rested her cheek. Her head with its heavy
crown of hair was thus to one side but also tilted
slightly forward. That slight forward tilt gave
strength to the pose and intensity. A curious, measur-
ing look came into Alix's eyes. She was silent and she
was waiting.
Gerry dropped his eyes to the table and began to
talk. "The things I have got to tell you," he said,
"begin with that day our last day. T went out
and walked for hours and realized that I had been
322 HOME
rough and unjust and to blame. I came over to the
Avenue and was standing looking at some flowers when
you passed. I saw you in the plate-glass of the win-
dow. I turned around to make sure. I recognized
your trunk. I followed you to the station. I saw
Alan signal to you. I saw you get into the train."
Gerry stopped. His premise was finished and he
found that he had no tongue to tell the things he had
thought the long argument of the soul. He realized
that all that must be left out. He must confine him-
self to mere physical facts, let them troop up in the
order in which they had come upon him and file naked
before Alix. She must dress them as she saw fit, as
her sympathies and her justice directed. He would
give her but the ground-work, plain simple words such
as he could command, telling the events that had come
upon him and how he had met them.
Of the trip out he had nothing to say but of Pernam-
buco he told her in detail. Somehow it seemed the
least he could do for the filthy and beautiful city that
had given him an unquestioning asylum. He told her
of the quay, the Lingueta, with its line of tall, stained
houses, its vast plane trees and its cobbled esplanade,
the stage where the city's life was in perpetual review.
His words came slowly but they left nothing out. Un-
consciously he created an atmosphere. A light of in-
terest burned in Alix's eyes. She saw the changing
scene. It charmed her to restfulness as it had Gerry.
She smelt the stacks of pineapples, the heaped-up
mangoes, the frying fish, and through his eyes she saw
the blue skies dotted with white, still clouds and
HOME 323
glimpsed the secret, high-walled gardens with their
flaring hibiscus, trailing fuchsias, fantastic garden
cockscombs and dark-domed mango and jack trees. She
sat with Gerry beside the wreck of a consul and, later,
on the long slim coasting craft she listened with him
to the creak of straining masts and stays and to the
lap of hurrying waters. She followed him up the San
Francisco, felt his impatience with Penedo, took the
little stern-wheeler and learned the fascination of a river
with endless, undiscovered turns. They came to
Piranhas. Here she felt herself on familiar ground.
Letters from the consul's envoy had made this place
hers. Unconsciously she nodded as Gerry described
the tiers of houses, the twisted, climbing streets, the
miserable little inn.
Gerry told of the happy days of ponderous canoeing
and of the unvarying strings of fish. He lingered over
those days. Thus far he had brought Alix with him.
He felt it. Now he came to the morning when he
must leave her behind. He told her of the glorious
break of that day, of the sun fighting through swirling
mists. She saw him standing stripped on the sandspit.
She saw the canoe nosing heavily against the shore and
his pajamas tossed carelessly across a thwart. She
knew that she had come to the moment of revelation.
She breathed softly lest she should lose a word for Gerry
was speaking very low. Then he showed her Mar-
garita, Margarita as he had first seen her, kissing and
kissed by dawn.
A hard light came into Alix's eyes. Gerry felt him-
self suddenly alone. He went doggedly on. He told
324 HOME
of the chase and the capture, of how he and the girl
had seen the canoe drift out into the clutch of the eddy
and swirl out into the river and away. He told her
of how they laughed and Alix shrank. Gerry paused,
his brow puckered. He wished he could tell in words
the battle of his spirit, the utter ruin of his downfall.
He could not and instead he sighed.
There was something in that sigh so eloquent of de-
feated expression that it succeeded where words might
have failed. It called to Alix with the strong call of
helpless things. It drew back her mind to Gerry.
With him and the girl she threaded the path to Fazenda
Flores. Its ruin sprang upon her through his eyes.
With him she discovered the traces of an ancient ditch,
with him and the old darky she dug along that line
through long, hot months. She met Father Mathias
and found no flaw in his logic, she grew to know Lieber
as the tale went on and finally to love him because of all
things Lieber seemed to need love somebody else's
love most. She amused herself with Kemp and his
drawl. She tried to keep her thoughts away from Mar-
garita and at the coming of Margarita's boy, she winced.
As he finished telling of the coming of the Man,
Gerry stopped short. The thought came to him with
tremendous force that Alix too had gone through that
for him. The impulse to get up and throw himself be-
fore her and on his knees to thank her almost tore him
from his seat but he fought it down. He hurried on
with his story. He told of the coming of Alan and of
the revelation he had brought. And then in a choked
voice and only because he had set himself to tell the
HOME 325
whole truth he pictured the flood, the death of True
Blue, and the overwhelming by the waters before his
very eyes of Margarita and the Man. Then he arose
and with hands braced on the table leaned towards
Alix. " I have told you all this so that perhaps you
may understand what I am going to tell you now. If
the flood had not come if Margarita and the Man
had lived I would not have come back."
Alix sat very still and studied Gerry's face. He
had finished the task he had set himself to do and he
was suddenly very tired. His eyes dropped as though
from their own weight and then he raised them again
to her inscrutable face.
" Well ? " he asked after a long pause.
" Well ? " replied Alix.
Gerry's stalwart figure drooped. " It is quite just,"
he said, " after all that, that you should not want me.
I have spent the last weeks making myself ready for
that. You waited for me ; I did n't wait for you. If
you do not want me, I will go away."
Alix rose slowly to her feet. She looked very slim
and tall in her clinging gown. To Gerry she looked
very cold. " Before you go," she said, " there is just
one thing. I wish you would kiss me once."
Gerry's body straightened and stiffened. He stared
at her grave face with wondering eyes. Then he felt
a strange tingling ripple through his blood and before
he knew what he did he had swept her from her feet,
crushed her to him, brushed the crown of hair back from
her brow and kissed her eyes, her mouth, her throat.
He was rough with her. He was bruising her body,
326 HOME
her lips, but Alix clung to him and laughed. Then
suddenly all her slim body relaxed and slipped through
his arms to a little white heap on the floor. She began
to sob. Gerry stooped down, picked her up tenderly
and laid her on the great leathern couch. He knelt be-
side her. On one arm he pillowed her head, with the
other hand he sought hers. " Please, Alix," he begged,
" please don't cry."
" I 'm not crying," sobbed Alix, " I 'm laughing."
Gerry smiled and waited. Soon Alix became quiet.
Her eyes closed. She drew a long, quivering breath
and then she opened her eyes again and her lips broke
into the old dear smile, the smile of an opening flower.
" I am tired tired," she said, " but I believe I 'm al-
most hungrier than I am tired."
" I 'm glad you said it first," replied Gerry giving
serious thought to the fact that he was faint with
hunger himself. " Ever since some funny Johnny
wrote, 'Eeed the brute,' we men have been shy about
echoing our stomachs. It 's four o'clock. Hours after
lunch time."
" Really ? " said Alix, nestling down closer to his arm
and letting her smiling eyes wander over him. " How
well this suit fits you. There 's something about it
It is n't, is it ? "
Gerry nodded. " Same old suit. By the way, when
I came in John said you told him to telephone to the
club and say you wished to see me. What made you
think I would go to the club first ? "
Alix looked puzzled. " I did n't. I did n't think
you would go to the club and I did n't tell John to
HOME 327
telephone." She paused, still puzzling, then her face
cleared. " Why poor old John he 's getting very
old, you know, Gerry. That was three years ago I
told him to telephone the day you never came back.
It must have been the suit. He saw you standing there
in the same suit and three years became as one day
to the old fellow."
Gerry sighed. " Alix, do you want those three years
to become as a day to us ? "
Alix shook her head slowly from side to side. " No,
dear, I don't. They have given me given us both
far more than they took away." She put her bare
arms around his neck, drew him down and kissed him.
" You do not know yet all that they have given you.
You think you have come back and found me, a fritter-
ing butterfly in a great empty house. But you 've
found only my abandoned cocoon. I 'm not here at
all. I 've packed myself into the dearest little bundle
of pink fat, yellow curls and chubby legs, and left the
bundle on Red Hill."
Gerry nodded but he was grave and silent. Not in
a day nor a month could he altogether forget the Man.
GERRY had always been quiet but during the long
drive from the station to The Firs, his silence
amounted to a penetrating stillness. Alix felt it but
it did not depress her; she knew herself to be in the
presence of a communion. Gerry was devoting the
hour of his return to the scenes of his boyhood to a
silent consecration. These cool valleys and hollows;
the Low Road, with its purling accompaniment of hid-
den waters; the embowered still nave of Long Lane,
were as the ancestral halls of the Lansings. It was
right that he should do homage to the memories they
evoked.
To his mother Gerry made no explanations. He
knew that to her it was enough that her boy had come
back. When Mrs. Lansing released him, Alix caught
his hand and led him up to the nursery. Together
they looked down upon their sleeping child.
Gerry, Junior, was fat to the verge of a split. His
curly tow head was tousled and on his brow a slight
perspiration testified to the labor of sound sleep. His
arms were outstretched. His legs had kinks at the
knees, they were so chubby. His petulant little mouth
was half open, disclosing tiny teeth.
" Is n't he a beauty ? " asked Alix a little loudly,
wishing he would awaken.
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HOME 329
Gerry nodded. With his eyes still on the child he
put his arm around Alix and drew her to him. What
Margarita had done for him, Alix had done. As he
felt her frail body quivering in his embrace, as he
looked back and measured the sacrifice by what the aw-
ful night of the coming of the Man had taught him,
he was overwhelmed by a new humility. He turned
Alix's face up to his. His lips moved in an effort to
thank her but words failed him. Alix understood.
She lifted her arms around his neck and drew his head
down. He held her body very close as he kissed her,
softly, adoringly. Alix hid her face against his
shoulder for a moment and then threw back her head
and shook the tears from her eyelashes. She smiled
through wet eyes. " I am afraid he 's not quite per-
fect inside. Such a temper, Gerry. I 'm afraid
he '11 grow up into a man about town and awfully wild."
She turned grave eyes on Gerry, Junior, and her brows
puckered. " What do you think ? "
Gerry smiled. " From the looks of him I predict
he gets his letter in Freshman year center on the
football team."
"Yes, perhaps," said Alix thoughtfully. "Every-
body calls him Fatty already."
It was from Alan that Gerry learned that Kemp was
still in town closing up his connection with the orchid
firm. Gerry wired him, begging him to come to The
Firs for a few days before he went West. Alix had
told of Kemp's word of comfort.
After the first excitement of getting home was over
Gerry found himself restless with the same restlessness
330 HOME
that had attacked him during the days at Piranhas.
He tried for a solution in the same way. Day after
day, long before the rest of the Hill was awake, he was
off for a ten mile walk.
At first it was with head dropped and eyes on the
ground that he plowed his way through a dew-soaked
world, but there came a time when he walked with head
thrown back, full lungs and level eyes.
Then Kemp arrived. Gerry tried to get him to join
him in his walks but Kemp shook his head sadly.
" Ef yo' can't let me have a hoss, Mr. Lansing," he
said, " I '11 ride the cow."
Gerry laughed. They saddled the horses themselves
and started out. On the top of old Bald Head Gerry
dismounted and sat down on a rock. Kemp followed
suit.
" Kemp," said Gerry, " I want to thank you for the
things you said to my wife Alix."
Kemp flushed and waved a deprecating hand.
" You saw things straight," went on Gerry, " and I
want to thank you, too, for letting me hog-tie myself."
" I ain't curious about that, Mr. Lansing," said
Kemp, " so much 's about what you 're goin' to do when
yo' untie yo'seff."
"Well," said Gerry, "I've thought that out too.
For a while it used to break my heart to think about
Fazenda Flores but it came to me the other day that
what there is of me that amounts to anything is just
Eazenda Mores.
"When a man learns to eat work just like he does
food because he 's hungry for it, there 's bound to be
HOME 331
a place for him anywhere. It has struck me there are
a lot of fields around here, some of them mine, that are
about ready for resurrection, and resurrection is my
job.
" I don't know exactly how I 'm going to start but it
may be planting potatoes. You can begin a resurrec-
tion with any one of a number of simple things. It
does n't matter much which one you pick on as long as
you start right down at the bottom and spread your-
self in the subsoil of things. Everything that grows
starts down deep except your orchids and they are
parasites "
" Easy on orchids," interjected Kemp.
" Sorry, Kemp. Orchids are ornamental but ex-
cepting your favorites they 're not even beautiful.
Look at a Cypripedium Vexillarium "
" Hybrid," grunted Kemp.
" A man in his D. T.'s could n't beat it for gorgeous
horror," finished Gerry. " But that 's neither here nor
there. What I 'm driving at is this. If I had never
been tossed over the home fence I would have lived and
died an ornamental citizen with the girth of a beer bar-
rel. But now my eyes are a bit open and I can see
that the simple things of life are the big things.
Growth from the roots is the strength of a man and of
his people. I 've come home in more senses than one.
I 'm going to send down my roots right here."
Kemp had been whittling. When Gerry had finished
he pocketed his knife and gazed thoughtfully down the
valley. "It seems to me, Mr. Lansing, that you 'nd
me have been travelin' diff'rent trails but come together
332 HOME
at the same gap. You remember ' The Pu'ple City ' ? "
Gerry nodded.
" Wai, seems to me thet 'ceptin' in a man's own mind
the' ain't no pu'ple cities. What a man 's got to find
ain't pu'ple cities but the power to see one when he 's
got it. You had yourn right here in this valley an' yon
side on Red Hill. You growed up in it but you never
seen it not till you learned how. What you been
sayin' about the simple things of life the things thet
is at the bottom has he'ped my seein' parts a power-
ful lot. I knowed before I come to Red Hill that I
was goin' out West to stay but I did n't rightly know
why. Now ef you ask me what I know I can tell you
I know consid'able.
" Out in Noo Mexico they 's a ranch in the fork of
Big and Little Creek that 's the greenest patch in the
shadow of White Mountain. It 's mine and it 's got a
three-room shack on it that could grow if need was. I
know a girl that 's been holdin' a four-flush against an
orchid's weak pair till she 's jest about sick of the game,
but she 's drawed and filled on the last hand though
she hain't had a chanst to look at her cards yet.
" For some while the 's been a pu'ple light hangin*
over Big and Little Creek an' I reckon I '11 be able to
see it plainer an' plainer the nigher I get to it an' if
the girl will he'p me I reckon that in a small way we '11
soon be growin' a pu'ple city that will feed from yo'
hand. Ef ever you feel the need of some bran' new
air, Mr. Lansing, you come out to Big and Little.
There won't be much besides air but it '11 be fresh made
on White Mountain an' you can smell it comin' down
HOME 333
through the pines an' see it playin' with the leaves on
the cottonwoods an' plowin' through the tops of the
sorghum."
They sat for some time in silence then Gerry said,
" I 've been calling you ' Kemp ' since I first saw you
but you still hang on to the ' mister ' when you talk to
me. Cut it out, Kemp."
Kemp flushed slightly. " Some things is fittin' an*
some ain't," he said, " an' we can't always rightly say
why. Some folks is governed by conscience but most
by pride. It 's goin' to be ' Kemp ' and ' Mister Lan-
sing ' to the end of the chapter, Mr. Lansing, an' no
friendship lost either. Shake."
They shook hands solemnly, mounted and started
back to Eed Hill. Gerry had found the key to Kemp's
strength. It was the key to all strength. Kemp be-
longed on the Hill, and with the people of true blood
anywhere, not only because he was himself always but
because he defended what he could hold and no more.
He was a definition for independence.
CHAPTEK XLV
IT was late afternoon of a day in the Gorgeous
Month. A shower had fallen on Red Hill and after
it had come the sun. Wisps of mare's-tail cloud hur-
ried across the clean-washed heavens as though they
were ashamed to be caught in their ragged clothes under
a blue sky. Downy-topped masses of cumulus poked
drowsy heads over the horizon and watched them run.
Out of the dome of heaven filtered a single trill of song.
The Hill was very still but presently from far away
on the West Lake Road came the whinny of a horse ; a
little later, a little nearer, a peal of laughter; then
the sound of wheels and chattering voices. A wagon-
ette, two spring wagons and a pony cart burst from
Long Lane and wheeled right and left. They were
full of grown-ups turned young for a day and youths
that thought they would be young forever.
The wagonette, swinging down the road toward
Maple House, suddenly swerved and plowed through the
tall grass. Alan and Clem on the end seats were al-
most thrown out. Alan looked back at the road and
stared. A fat donkey had claimed the right of way
and held it. Several lengths of legs stuck out from
her bulging sides. Behind her hurried a panting nurse.
Alan turned to Clem. " Do donkeys never die ? "
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HOME 335
" Oh ! I hope not," said Clem gravely. " You
change them. We changed ours while you were away."
" So she has been changed," said Alan. " Well,
that 's something."
" Silly," said Clem, " you 've been seeing that donkey
every day for weeks."
" No" said Alan, " this is the first time I Ve really
seen her."
The sun took a last long look at Red Hill and dropped
out of sight. Then, as though he would come back and
look again, he sent up a broad afterglow that climbed
and climbed till the tip of the very clouds that peeped
over East Mountain were tinged with the rosy light.
From an open up-stairs window came Clem's soft
voice. " Yes, dears, pink night-caps. Those big
sleepy clouds are putting them on because they are just
glad to go to bed."
" I wanta pink night-cap."
" Why, darling, night-caps are only for white-headed
people and white-headed clouds. Just wait until you 're
white-headed. Now climb into bed and I '11 tell "
Beyond the mountain-ash thicket a love-sick Bob-
White kept saying " Good-night Good-night," to his
mate. She answered sleepily.
From Maple House, The Firs, and far down the
road, from Elm House warm lights flashed out and
settled down into a steady glow. A burst of young
voices swept into the night and died away, followed
into the silence by soft laughter. From The Firs came
the last angry wail of the fat young god, choked off
in mid-flight by the soft hand of sleep. Then the scur-
336 HOME
rying of many feet along the dusty road, silence, and
last of all, the trailing whistle of a boy signaling good-
night sound saying good-by to a happy day.
Hours passed before the moon popped into the sky,
hurrying just at first as though she knew she were
forty minutes late again. One by one lights went out.
Other lights gleamed from upper windows; then they,
in turn, went out. Red Hill had gone to bed.
From Maple House Alan slipped out to smoke a last
cigar. He hesitated a moment and then strode through
the long grass laden with seed and just decking itself
with dewy jewels for the night. He crossed to the old
church. The door was open. He entered and climbed
the crumbling stairs to the belfry. He jumped into
one of the arches and sat down, his legs dangling.
His eyes wandered slowly over the familiar scene.
From behind their trees Maple House, The Firs and
Elm House blinked up at him dreamily. Before them
ran the ribbon of road, white under moonlight, dipping
at each end into the wide world. Up and down the
road before The Firs, paced two figures Gerry and
Alix. Gerry's arm was around her. Long black shad-
ows, all pointing to the west, like fallen silhouettes cut
the moonlight. Above them, the autumn-painted trees
gave out a golden echo of light.
Alan drew a great, quivering breath. " My boy, you
have been far, far away," J. Y. had said and he had
answered, " Yes, but I have come back." But it was
only now, to-night, that he had really come back.
Alan's wandering eyes settled on Maple House.
HOME 337
" Even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her
wings," he whispered.
And then the peace of home descended upon him.
On his scarred spirit he felt the touch of the healing
hands of home. Its sweetness and its power, its love
everlasting demanding love forever, knocked at his wak-
ing heart and found the door open. Far, far had he
wandered in the world of mind and the world of men,
but in the end he had come back like a Wayne to the
eternal mother of the Waynes. To-night he knew that
his drifting soul had dropped anchor at last.
" Seer, Behold the picture."
" My son, there is that which bounds
and is unbounded, that measures and is
unmeasured, that limits apparition and
delimits occultation, that divides but is
undivided. Thou hast stood on the
place where thy heart is and drawn
a circle."
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