108E / The GOLDEN ANSWER THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO,, LOOTED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO The GOLDEN ANSWER BY SYLVIA CHATFIELD BATES AUTHOR OF "THE GERANIUM LADY," "ELMIRA COLLEGE STORIES," "THE VINTAGE," ETC. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY IQ2I All right* reserved We were at sea with all our heart's desire: Beauty and friendship and the dream fulfilled, The golden answer to the deeply willed, The purely longed for, hardly tried for thing. MASEFTELD The GOLDEN ANSWER CHAPTER I AMOS FORTUNE'S small white house stood at the head of a lane that dawdled downward between un- kept hedges, and, having begun opposite a brick colonial mansion on the wide street from which the lane branched, ended with abrupt chagrin at the foot of the slope with a grocery store and a saloon. Just as the lane could be claimed by no class of society for if it began in aristocratic respectability it certainly ended in smug not to say convivial democracy so the house was pleasantly nonconforming. It was, for instance, unself conscious and comfortable about having gables in erratic places, and a fanlight over a Gothic bay win- dow, and one chimney with pots while ^he other had been built up on the outside, warm red against the white shingles, and had no pots at all; about having a valuable brass knocker, which belonged to Amos For- tune, on a door that was peeling its paint. For it is not prudent to ask a landlord to paint even a small white house and battered green blinds, when at the slightest disturbance of his delicate immemorial bal- ance he may exact a fief of forty-five dollars a month instead of forty-two-fifty. But a house may smile without fresh paint, especially if it has a honeysuckle vine and a garden. There were white lilac bushes and hollyhocks along the fence, and in the garden masses of heliotrope, phlox, brilliant poppies, and Har- mony's pansies. So, with a loose board in its steps that might easily cause Amos Fortune to break his leg on a dark night, the house beamed, prim but winning, 2 The Golden Answer across the lane at a green field opposite. When one stood by the gate one could see also, aslant, down the chief residence street of Bramford. There were two ways, equal in distance, by which to come from the railroad station to the white house in the lane. Amos Fortune, on his way back and forth from his work in the city, chose almost always the one that took him from the patrician end of the street down the lane to his front gate, instead of the way that led past the low-lying corner with the grocery store and the saloon. Harmony loved to swing on this front gate, which had fortunately been painted green and not white. Amos liked it better green because it frequently came into contact with Harmony's stubby little shoes, which had a habit of wearing out almost as often as the rent was due. Not but that he enjoyed buying shoes for Harmony, and also pale blue chambray dresses and workable little play clothes of stout old-blue stuffs and greens and browns and babyish white things, with plain wide hats to shade her brown curls. Old Johanna, to whom he brought these things to be made, and the saleswomen of whom he earnestly bought them, did not always approve of Harmony's clothes; but a famous artist, who saw her once on the gate, as he wholly by accident had stumbled into the wrong end of the lane and made haste to ascend, had asked to paint her. He had done so, and very kindly gave the first sketch to Amos, who hung it beside his desk in the library of the white house. One afternoon in early summer when the garden was sweet with the last of the white lilacs and the first of the roses, Harmony went out to the green gate to listen for the five-fifty-seven. Amos always came home on that train, and fifteen minutes after its shrill The Golden Answer 3 toot he would come walking down the little hill to the white house, unless he came the other way; then he was late. Indeed, Harmony had never seen him come home the other way. To-day he came so quickly after the whistle that he must have walked fast. He stopped outside the gate on which Harmony swung and lifted her face to his with a finger under her chin, while his other hand held the back of her head curvingly. That was a way he always had, patting her hair. He stood by the gate for a moment or two with his hat off. He was always glad to be home from the "South Sea House." That was what he and Harmony called "the office," for a reason. A young-looking, tall, slight man, he was, swift of motion, and of a compelling presence. When he smiled you noticed his mouth which, somber in repose, changed sensitively and was certainly the only beautiful thing about his thin- featured face. His brilliant brown eyes had an odd way of seeming to come back from a distance to things near at hand. He was always pleasant about it, but you had the feel- ing that you had interrupted something. So that it was not unusual for men, as well as women, to ask: "Who is the person by the name of Fortune?" Now he jumped the little girl down from the gate and skipped her along by his side up the front walk to the steps, which he took at one leap, thereby ignoring the broken board. If he could jump over it, it did not exist a pleasant logic. And they went through the bright little house straight to the kitchen, itself big in an old-fashioned way, where they found their tall, brown, white-haired Johanna in the act of taking bis- cuits out of the oven. "Quick, Harmony!" shouted Amos Fortune, rush- ing around the room. "Shut the windows, Harmony, 4 The Golden Answer before they fly out !" Johanna and Harmony were as charmed as if he did not always do that when Johanna made her feathery light biscuits for their supper. When they were seated at the table with Harmony in her blue chambray just around the corner from Amos nobody opposite him and Johanna had lighted the candles, though the sun still came through the linden trees, and had left them, Amos leaned toward Harmony and she toward him and they both laughed. "What do you s'pose " asked Harmony. "What do you suppose ?" replied Amos. "It's a secret." He nodded solemnly at the child. "Yes; will you have some more jam?" "Please, Amos." She called him that They ate in elaborate silence. Amos Fortune always gave Har- mony all the fun he could. "My secret," he explained, as he poured a glass of milk for her from a blue jug with a broken nose, "is a surprise." "So is mine," flashed Harmony, and being only seven she laughed bubblingly into her milk and it went up her nose and choked her. "Now you see," said Amos, when quiet was restored, "what comes of keeping secrets from me," and smiling he told his, with a touch of gravity. "I have seen," he began, and swallowed twice, though he had finished his supper, "I have seen the Discreet Princess!" "Why," cried Harmony, "that's my secret too !" The tall man from the South Sea House and the little girl sat after supper, as usual, on the side veranda of the white house in the lane. Amos Fortune smoked reflectively, his eyes on the twilight field opposite, and The Golden Answer 5 Harmony sat in his lap until her bed time. The details all came out how each had seen the person whom they chose to call, in private only, the Discreet Prin- cess. Amos had beheld her on the train from the city, had received, indeed, a bow and a faint smile. But Harmony had been more favored. Piecing together her story Amos knew what had happened. That afternoon Harmony was playing in the garden when someone from over the fence in the lane gave a little cough. Leaning on the fence and looking smilingly at the small girl was someone dressed appro- priately in gold and carrying a green parasol. This person had rippling hair several shades darker than her dress; her eyes were sea-gray, shaded by pretty dark brows and lashes; and there was a dim rich red in her cheeks. "Oh," said the person to Harmony, "aren't you the little girl who helped your father help me cross the lake last summer when a thunderstorm was coming up?" "Yes," replied Harmony, looking with gloating admiration at the gold dress and hair. "Only he isn't my father." "Your uncle, then?" "No," said Harmony. The person smiled. "Perhaps he is your big brother?" Harmony shook her head and stated with firmness : "He is Amos." "How strange," the person said, and added that people were not just "Amos" ever ! She had walked into the garden and sat upon one of the broken chairs. ("Which one?" asked Amos of Harmony in the twilight. "The old thing without any back," she told him. The next evening that chair was 6 The Golden Answer brought into the house and architecturally restored.) Sitting on that broken chair she had unfolded interest- ing things to Harmony. She told the astonished little girl that she was having a play for the benefit of some- thing or other ; it was to be an outdoor play and was to have lords and ladies and a fool and fairies in it. She asked Harmony to be in the play! To be sure, Har- mony was rather fat for a fairy but if her father would allow it she would do. No how easy to forget not her father, nor her uncle, nor her brother. Then she laughed, showing an indiscreet dimple, and inquired, while she twirled her parasol : "You don't expect me to call him Amos, do you?" "Well," said Harmony, "I think it would be nice." (Here Harmony was squeezed in the twilight.) Then the gold and gray person the Discreet Prin- cess in point of fact had walked around the small garden and declared it was pretty, had accepted a cluster of lilacs, and gone away with the request that Harmony should ask this unrelated man whether or not she could be a fairy, and come as soon as possible to the big house up the lane, across the street on the corner, to let her know. She had come first to the big house on the corner the summer Harmony was six, and visited the Woman With Rings On Her Fingers ( and bells on her toes?}. But they would never have known anything about her if it had not been for the incident that gave her her name with them. It was the morning of Memorial Day a year ago. Amos had intended to take Harmony up the river in his canoe. They were late in starting because Johanna had a toothache and did not get the sandwiches made. They had gone down the lane and across the field to the makeshift boathouse on the rh cr where Amos kept The Golden Answer 7 his old canoe. And the canoe was not there ! No sign of it was about. He had known the boathouse lock was not good ; he had been going to get a new one as soon as he could afford it. Almost any key would open the door. Apparently some key had opened it, for the door was left ajar and the canoe was gone. Amos was angry and Harmony disappointed. He borrowed an old boat of a farmer, and they went creaking down-stream in search of the vanished canoe. Before he had rowed far a cloud climbed up in the west and the wind began to blow, so that when they came out onto the lake into which the narrow river emptied, they found it roughened. Amos decided to row across to an island in the middle of the lake from which, if they walked about, they could see the entire shore surround- ing the lake. When they came near the island he rowed parallel with it in search of a good landing. Rounding a curve they suddenly came upon someone in a yellow linen dress sitting on the bank scanning the lake. As soon as she saw them she beckoned them to her, and stood watching while they made a clumsy landing. She had deep gold hair and gray eyes under pretty dark brows. Her cheeks showed rich red blood under her skin. "Good morning," she said, smiling, "how fortunate ! You can take me back across the lake. You will, won't you? It is getting rough. I think it would be indis- creet for me to risk it, in a canoe." Amos Fortune stood up in the leaky boat that sloshed his old shoes in its bilge water, and took off his hat. "It wouldn't be much of a risk if you should start now," he explained politely; "it might be if you waited too long. But my little girl and I would be glad to take you in, and tow the canoe." 8 The Golden Answer "Will you?" she exclaimed gratefully. "I never take risks, even little ones." She came down to the water's edge. "Here's the canoe," she added, some- what unnecessarily, for there it certainly was! "We can tie it on behind." She helped Amos Fortune make the small craft fast and then, smiling at him, sat down in the stern beside Harmony, whose eyes were open wide. "Then you prefer the rowboat," he asked her gravely, "rather than to let me paddle?" "Please!" answered this extraordinary person. "I didn't intend to go back so soon, but I think the coast will be clear." She leaned forward with confidential earnest frankness. "I ran away from someone. When I saw you coming I was afraid he had followed. You didn't see anyone, did you?" "No," said Amos. She clasped strong, beautiful fingers on her knees and inspected the man opposite her. He was dressed in his oldest clothes, for the picnic, but he wore the shabby gray suit and faded shirt with careless unself- consciousness, as if they were the most fashionable sports costume. He was an odd contrast to the rather glittering young woman in the stern of the boat, and to fresh-cheeked little Harmony, whose leaf-brown eyes flew back and forth from him to the girl beside her. For he looked, on this bright morning, as if some light, which had flamed, was burning dim. But he pulled energetically on the heavy oars that propelled the boat, an old lumbering dory, and met the gray eyes opposite him with a quiet smile. "I didn't see a soul," he told her ; "and I should have noticed, for I er was looking for someone." So they made their somehow processional course across the roughened lake into the river, and then be- The Golden Answer 9 tween a pageant of color on either shore fields of buttercups blazing in the sun while ahead in the west, with menace in its height, the purple cloud towered. And all this time Amos Fortune faced the stern! If he had not faced it, if he had not been a man with an absurd ardor for beauty, if he had not been shut up for years in the South Sea House, but why con- jecture? At his landing he beached the rowboat. The girl stepped out and stood watching him help Harmony who had kept very still all the way. He seemed to whisper something to the child. Then the girl faced him, and laughed a little. "I took somebody's old canoe," she shared the joke with him. "I had to get away, and the door of this tumbledown boathouse opened after I shook it once or twice. I should think whoever owns that canoe would paint it ! I don't believe he's missed it, do you ?" Amos looked the canoe over. "It's a Peter- borough," he offered. "Is it? Well, it answered. If he had been here and I had asked him nicely, I think he would have loaned it to me. You have been so thoughtful and kind, I'm sure you would have !" "I haven't been kind!" replied Amos, whom not many people thanked, and certainly few with this de- lightful earnestness. "It has been a pleasure. This is such a golden day, and " He stopped in some amazement at his own words and at what he had wanted to say. "But that cloud is bigger!" she exclaimed. "I mustn't risk getting wet. Good-by." "If/* said Amos, stepping forward, "I ever see the man who owns this canoe, I'll explain, and he'll be glad you took it, when you needed it." io The Golden Answer She laughed once more and ran off. "Tell him to paint it," she called back. Then the thunder rolled in the distance, and with the storm rapidly coming nearer Amos had to hurry to get both boats in and Harmony home. From that day they called her the Discreet Princess. The field across the lane was dark now, for the day- light had vanished while Amos Fortune and the child sat on the porch in the garden that breathed the warm scent of lilacs. "Harmony," he said, rousing himself, "my pipe is out. It must be your bed time." "I wish you'd tell me if I am going to be a fairy!'* said Harmony. "Yes, by all means be a fairy. I wonder what the play is. Did she say ?" "No, but it has a fool in it." "Most plays have !" "I'll go and tell her to-morrow ! Isn't it lots of fun, Amos?" He folded her in his arms a moment. "We haven't had a story to-night, have we, Baby ?" he said. "There have been real stories instead. See the moon coming up over there. How golden she is I wonder if your play isn't all about a midsummer night. . . . Here's a story to go to bed with " He laughed softly, this queer man from the South Sea House who could remember yards of beautiful nonsense "Hark, my Puck: 'Once I sat upon a promontory, and heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath that the rude sea grew civil at her song and certain stars shot madly from their spheres to hear the sea maid's music !'"... Chuckling at Harmony's parted lips, he added, "Run along, Mus- tardseed, and find Johanna." The Golden Answer n But Harmony stood still a moment and put her cheek against his sleeve. "I'm wishing," she said. "Wishing what?" He bent over her. "I wish you were my father, or somebody!" Kmos got up suddenly, with a loud scrape of his chair, and lifting Harmony in his arms carried her into the house and upstairs to her own room next his. There he put her to bed himself with deft tenderness. When she reached up her arms to say good night, looking soft and babyish in her nightgown, she asked: "Am I your little girl, if you're only my dearess ?" "Yes," replied Amos Fortune. "You are, Har- mony." CHAPTER II IT was natural that when the question of a fairy dress for Harmony came up, Johanna should bring her to the South Sea House to meet Amos, and that they should go from there to buy it. Harmony had been at one rehearsal of the play in which she was to be a fairy. She returned with a note for Mr. Fortune from Christina Ware. This had hastily, blindly, and with many superfluous lines and scratches set forth the desirability of Harmony's having, at Mr. Fortune's earliest convenience, a fairy costume "of thin material that would melt into a woodland background." Amos was puzzled, not because he did not know how Har- mony ought to look as a fairy, but because he did not know how to go about making her look that way. He bethought him to take such help as the South Sea House offered. At the South Sea House Amos worked to support Harmony and himself, and it was there that he had the clearest, most tantalizing visions of "Avalon." One of the dingiest of smoky buildings near the river, in the shadow of a high dark bridge which lunges in its enormous stride over a maelstrom of shipping, was, and doubtless is to this day, a banking house, where gentlemen from foreign parts deposit their money. The elevated railroad roared by its darkened windows; huge trucks rumbled and clattered in the street; and even from high in the air came the clang of traffic on the Bridge. Only a triangle of sky (above 12 The Golden Answer 13 the Bridge) was visible from one of the less important windows of the old bank, that is, on a clear day. On a foggy morning, or in the early closing in of winter afternoons, the sky vanished completely and there was merely a dim suggestion of the Bridge, a giant ghost leaping into darkness. Near this unimportant window, not even next to it, was Amos Fortune's desk, where he sat over figures every day from nine until five or later, and received at the end of the week an envelope containing a little money. For this dark old building, grimy outside and gloomy within, with its high ceilings lost in shadow and its many green-shaded lights illuminating great open ledgers over which bent sleek heads, mostly gray or bald or both, was Amos's and Harmony's "South Sea House," the hoary American offshoot of an even more ancient and substantial London firm. Amos Fortune's head bent all day over a ledger, too, but it was not gray or bald or sleek. His eyes, when they were raised from the ledger, looked through the dusty window out and up to the Bridge and beyond it to the triangular sky, if it happened to be visible. But though his head bent over figures and his eyes saw only these and dinginess spotted with nimbuses of electricity, there was within his head something far different. Figures first, in office hours of course, but behind them, with them, glowing through them, some- thing so different that if he had suddenly spoken his thoughts aloud all those sleek heads would have been raised in startled alarm. The pen scratching would have ceased he loved to fancy this and out of the embarrassed silence a thin respectable voice would rise and waver: "Take him away ! For goodness sake lock him up!" And then a dreary little man in an alpaca coat would advance out of the gloom and whisper, 14 The Golden Answer "We can't have this, sir, in banking hours ! This has nothing to do with Captain Joel Mayo's mortgage on the Seagull. Has it? I say, has it?" "No!" Amos would reply with appalling loudness. "And you ought to know, you stupid, blind old fool, that you can't mortgage a seagull, or anything named that!" And Amos, not being as yet old or blind or stupid, would look in undaunted young revolt at the blinking face above him, until suddenly he would see its tiredness and whiteness and the bent shoulders below it, and then he would wonder what dim beauties had come swimming before that old man's rows of figures all these years, no rich and flaming visions certainly, but without doubt something comfortable. So, his fancy over, he would make an errand down the aisle to stretch his legs, and in passing would put his hand on some old man's shoulder. For there was once a place an island in the ocean with a castle of lodestone upon it "not far on this side of the terrestial paradise," and the island was called Avalon. That was what Amos called his Book, "Avalon." Into it went all the warm beauty and astonishing dreams and terrible knowledge in his soul, and the ripe wine of living of which he had already drunk. He had to write in odd and stolen moments, late at night or on Sundays, but he had, after years, won a little success. His essays on Prismatic Banking had appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. He was supposed to be the only person who had seen the romance under- neath the columns of figures in a ledger. (Captain Joel Mayo's mortgage of the Seagull had produced the best of the essays.) He published these under the name of Jeremy Pride. If he had not he might have lost his job. As it was their appearance created a The Golden Answer 15 little whirlwind among the withered leaves in the old bank by the river: astonishment, consternation, bewil- dered surprise, but not one smile. They would not have read the essays at all if Hilda Martin had not seen to it that they did so. But books about adolescence seldom interest the adolescent; and essays about old bookkeepers only confuse or bore old bookkeepers, who usually prefer to read about detectives or fashionable clubmen or broncho busters. Only the whimsical side of Amos Fortune's mind had gone into these essays. There was another side, presaged by a powerful short story called "Ripe Corn." And it was when he had thoughts that were to go into his book that you would have said his eyes had been seeing something wonderful. They had seen Avalon. So the long hours when he was chained to a desk in the South Sea House were hours of bitter deprivation, for the house had power not only over his body but over his mind ! Figures in columns ! He had an un- broken spirit and he knew the taste of gall. To keep the heart in him he used to tell Harmony gay stories about the South Sea House and the Firm, who lived there. In the stories this personage often appeared as a fierce jailer who kept people in prison forever and ever. But sometimes, too, for Amos was fair, he was a benevolent old gentleman who owned a trunk full of gold dollars and a barn of muffins and barrels of jam, which he gave to the children of poor men, even those who foolishly thought themselves princes in disguise. In return for these handsome favors one must work for him, of course. But even though he could not write it, except in snatches, the Book was, next to Harmony, the most important thing in this period of his life, the period before the coming of Christina Ware. He lavished 16 The Golden Answer on it and on Harmony all the good in him. He loved it with real passion. While he could cling to it as he did to Harmony's loveliness and innocence he was safe. Amos Fortune did not like to be safe! But there was one thing in which he had learned he must be. There had been a hard, close, lonely fight. He loathed bondage, and discretion. Yet, he must accustom his feet and brain to bondage, his inborn inclinations to discretion. And he had so far won the fight. His brother and his grandfather had not won. They had, indeed, walked rapidly in a place often known disrespectfully as "the Primrose Path." This leads, naturally, in the opposite direction from Avalon. But Amos was finding, lately, with the first agony behind him, that it was almost easy not to walk there, when one loves. This was the importance of the Book and of Harmony. They were not all withered leaves at the South Sea House. Besides Amos and one or two others of the younger men there were a few girls. They were useful at adding machines or typewriters or to indicate to straying women where to endorse checks. It was Hilda Martin who treasured the classic story of the woman who wrote legibly on the back of a check when Hilda told her to endorse it, "I heartily endorse this check." If Hilda were any kind of leaf at all it would have been the slim and graceful birch. She was slender and pale with delicate features framed in soft hair of almost a neutral tint. You would have said, "Oh, it must be brown." Her eyes were large and frank and as near green as any color. She wore green often, for years a loose but well made green tweed suit, and a small green beaver hat in winter, pulled well down. The Golden Answer 17 She had firm sweet lips. You had the feeling that you could not fool Hilda Martin. Amos knew Hilda rather well. That is, having met at the bank they had found they lived in the same suburb and they had many times made the train trip together. She and her mother had advised him about Harmony. Hilda always loved to hear about the child. Once in a long time they would have luncheon together and discuss problems about Harmony. They called these musical problems and sometimes Harmonic moments, and were pleased that they both knew this wasn't very funny but a neat little thing between them. Hilda was the only one in the South Sea House who recognized that Prismatic Banking referred to any special bank, or who suspected that Amos was "Jeremy Pride." When she had charged him with it he was so embarrassed that he gave himself away. After that she took immense delight in knowing an "author," and kept his secret well. And, also, she was the only person anywhere who knew why he whimsically called the bank the South Sea House. In an old brown volume of Lamb's letters at home she had marked this passage: "This dead, everlasting dead desk, how it weighs the spirit of a gentleman down. This dead wood of a desk, instead of your living trees !" Amos had never said anything like that to her. But she had marked it one evening after meeting him on a Sunday morning in the woods, in his old clothes and without a hat, and with happy eyes. He had stopped to talk to her and had said, with his hand on a great oak, "How can they cut them down and make things out of them to sit on and to sit up to?" That was as near as he had come to saying it. Once in a great while Harmony came to the South Sea House. She was kept carefully out of the way of i8 The Golden Answer the white-headed powers, but some of the snuffy little underlings hovered around her smiling freshness and pinched her cheeks with parched old fingers and talked about her brown eyes and bright brown curls. When she came she was brought by Johanna and it was usually a matter of clothes. Amos would quickly eat a sandwich and then go with her and Johanna to a big down-town shop where he bought her things. Once he had asked Hilda to go with them and she had con- sented. When it became a question of the fairy dress he suspected that he could not make a saleswoman with Hottentot puffs over her ears and perhaps prominent teeth he was always flustered by prominent teeth understand. Therefore he took Harmony by the hand and without hesitation led her to Hilda Martin. Hilda was getting her gloves out of her desk and looking into her purse to see how much money she could spare for her lunch. Amos had told Hilda about the play and Harmony's part in it. Now he showed her Christina Ware's note, somewhat proudly. Hilda kissed Harmony, read the note and beamed. "I know just what you ought to have," she told them. Both pairs of brown eyes were appealing to her. "It should look like gray cobwebs with green moss tangled in it." "Exactly," said Amos. "You've hit it just right, Hilda Martin. Come and help us choose it right, will you?" So Hilda went with them out of the gloomy old South Sea House into the sunshine. The Bridge in the air seemed beautiful and daring. The city roared a chant of work. People pressed and milled about them, eagerly seeking air and food. There were no green trees and sweet-smelling turf, but the sky was The Golden Answer 19 blue, and the breeze had the soft breath of summer before the heat comes. Amos and Hilda both felt happy. In the big shop, after they had eaten luncheon, Hilda asked to see brownish-gray filmy things with French names, and mossy bits of velvets, and brown leaves. And they bought a little here and there until Hilda said the dress would be fit for a Titania. Amos was enthusiastic and often consulted the authoritative note. It was later, when they were coming out of the shop, that they saw her, and after that the day was different for them both. She was stepping from a taxicab, assisted by an attentive young man with a cropped mustache and acquisitive eyes. She smiled and nodded and waved her hand to Harmony. Her gray eyes were so warm and soft, to-day, her beauty so rich and golden, that the sun seemed to have blazed out there in the shadow of the tall building. She went into the shop without looking around, followed by her com- panion. Amos, with his hat off, stood looking after her. His cheeks, usually colorless, had flushed red like a boy's. Hilda, grasping the bundle of gray "cob- webs," which she carried for its safety, looked at Amos keenly. It was a strange long moment before he turned back to her, and then she had bent down to straighten Harmony's hat CHAPTER III HARMONY went regularly to the rehearsals at the big house on the corner. Johanna took her and brought her home. Amos wanted to call for her, but just because he wanted to so much he would not. He even came from the train the back way, which led up the lane from its less respectable end, in order to avoid walking past the big house where the Discreet Princess was staying. If he went directly past it would be queer not to stop for Harmony. So he continued coming home by the back way. Strangely it was a very small thing that stopped him : On the third night of his appearance from the dis- reputable end of the lane where the convivial saloon disgraced the corner, he saw stern old Johanna, who loved them both, looking at him closely, anxiously. He had been singing a funny song. He stopped sing- ing at her look as if she had struck the song from his lips, and flushed. Dropping into a chair he opened his arms for Harmony, but Johanna quickly called her into the kitchen. After sitting alone for a few minutes he followed Harmony. Johanna was frightened when she saw his face for he turned a cold look upon her. He took the little girl by the hand and led her back to his chair by the window, where he held her in his lap until the supper was ready. If he had shown Johanna that she had misunderstood his motive in coming from the disreputable end of the lane, she had also opened his eyes. The next night he came from the train by the usual way, which led by the house of Christina's aunt. 20 The Golden Answer 21 It happened just as Amos, with his uncanny knowl- edge, knew that it would if he did not keep out of her way. As he passed the garden of the big house he saw children coming through the white gate. Within, on the lawn, there was a bright group girls in light dresses and gay colored sweaters, young men in flannels, and little children with curls. He saw Har- mony first, and someone in a yellow sweater standing with her arm around the child. Just then, while he was gazing over the heads of the group of children at the gate to those on the lawn Harmony saw him. She gave a little shriek of welcome, and Christina Ware smilingly beckoned to him. So he turned in at her gate for the first time. He felt office worn and dusty as he walked toward her, but he bore himself well during the difficult performance of approaching people who watch one's advance. Christina held out her hand to him and looked straight into his eyes. He had wondered whether she would ignore or acknowledge their meeting on the river. She was wholly equal to the situation. "I always take what I want," she laughed. "This time it's your little girl." Then she introduced him rather casually to several people standing near, and Amos found himself greeted with a pleasantness as casual. One of the young men was he of the short mustache and exploring eyes whom he had seen alight with Miss Ware from a taxicab not long since. His name was Philip Dana. He seemed to Amos to be nervous and not especially happy. He moved about a great deal, smoking rapidly, and looked at Christina. She avoided his eyes but seemed con- scious of him. Immediately, with much talk about nothing of in- terest to an outsider, they all moved toward a pretty 22 The Golden Answer pergola where there were wicker chairs and pink chintz cushions, making an outdoor sitting-room of a rose-bricked passage between lawn and garden. To Amos this was a restful close to a tedious, gritty day at the South Sea House. The wide green lawns with peaceful trees, the fragrant, many-colored garden under the late sunlight, the quiet seclusion and air of genial intimacy among these people who were all old friends, welcomed him. He found himself sitting next to Dana and accepting a light from his cigarette. "You're not in this play," Dana said suddenly to Amos under cover of the general talk and fixing his queer black eyes upon him. For an instant Amos saw straight into their restless depths. "No," he answered, lowering his own eyes for fear of seeing more. "I have the part of the Fool," went on Dana. "Christina seeks to honor me." "But really to play the Fool is a difficult art." Dana laughed. "She does me too much honor. I shall bungle it." He gave Christina a long, silent scrutiny, smiling strangely to himself. "Have you known Miss Ware long? I haven't seen you here before, have I ?" "Not very long," Amos answered. "I thought so," Dana smoked in another silence; then he leaned to Amos, grinning satirically. "I'm a daring man," he said. "You'll see!" Amos thought he certainly was a disagreeable one. Christina Ware, the rich color deepening in her cheeks, was talking with animation to two girls in smart white frocks and a red-haired young man who wore large tortoise-shell spectacles and was afflicted with a stammer. Amos wondered what even a discreet The Golden Answer 23 princess could do with him in a play. The young man's name was Toynbee. It developed that he was a herald. Philip Dana leaned toward Miss Ware. "Isn't the rehearsal over ?" he asked. "But you're going to stay and have some tea !" She said it with a tiny shade of haste, a hint of the im- promptu. And she spoke first to Dana, although in a second she had turned to include the others. Amos would not have stayed himself if others be- sides Dana had not. Since they were to be there he saw no reason why he could not be, too. He could not make his Discreet Princess out with this man who was to play the Fool, and he wished to try to make her out. He sat back in his comfortable chair and talked with the younger Miss Willard, the plump, pretty one, about a musical comedy he had not heard, and was aware of those two for Dana had crossed to Christina's side while he also watched over Harmony's cambric tea. And he had a strange, sure feeling, underneath all this commonplace exterior, of the onward swing of events. His Discreet Princess was beautiful beyond his re- membrance of her. She had tea served in the pergola and poured it her- self into green cups while she talked to Dana, smiling lightly up at him. He was scowling. "The poor Fool wanted to be the Hero," Amos heard her say. Behind the light exterior of their talk was something far more serious, of which Amos was conscious, though he heard no more. He was so afraid he would hear more that he talked with a surprising loudness that caused Nora Willard, as long as she knew him, to consider him a little deaf. Amos always wondered, later, why she raised her voice when addressing him. 24 The Golden Answer Dana was saying to Christina Ware: "Why did you refuse to see me last night?" "How terribly stern all at once !" she laughed. "You can't even be the Fool if you scowl so. You must have nice smily lines around your mouth." "Why wouldn't you let me come last night?" he repeated. "I gave you a very good reason." This time it was Dana who laughed. "My dear girl, don't you suppose I am beginning to know you ?" "I hope so. Lots of people think I'm worth know- ing! And even you, you solemn creature, have spent some time in studying me." "Your tactics aren't at all original. Shall I tell you why you wouldn't let me see you last night?" "If you like. It might be interesting." "Because at that point you thought the game re- quired retreat. In order to make me more eager !" "And have you been, to-day, just a little eager, Philip?" His dark face flushed. "I won't be I won't be made a fool of !" "But, you see, for policy's sake, and the hospital, Charles Brent simply has to be the Hero !" Dana impolitely swore under his breath, and Chris- tina, still smiling, began to grow a little white and the banter of her replies to show strain. He controlled his own voice and became again satirical: "You don't seem to realize that this lovely-nymph- fleeing-through-the-forest-with-Apollo-in-pursuit-busi- ness is worn thin. May I suggest that, though it may be the way to win some men, it is an excellent way to lose others ?" "Apollo? Dear me, you make the name practically synonymous with 'man' ! I wonder if it ever occurred The Golden Answer 25 to any man that it is just possible the nymph wanted to escape?" He leaned closer. "The trick is too old. I know how to turn it myself, Christina." Suddenly it seemed as if she could not help raising startled eyes to his face. "What do you mean?" Dana's reply was inaudible, but Christina somewhat thinly laughed. Then, just as Amos was telling the plump Miss Willard that he had not been to the Follies, there was a crash of breaking china on the rose-brick pavement, and Christina Ware, very pale, stared at a broken green cup from which crept an amber stream of tea, while Dana recited an apology as if it were a line in the play, and wheeling on his heel walked off across the lawn and out through the front gate. Toynbee knelt to gather the fragments while Amos sopped up the tea with his handkerchief. In doing so he wiped several yellow drops from a small, white-shod foot. Looking up he met her eyes. And Christina Ware knew, with a queer beat of her heart, that this man understood what had happened. For he had given her an encouraging smile. "Other foot," he commanded gayly. She stuck it out and he wiped that too, with a few extra pats and flourishes. "Now," he said, rising above her, "I'm going to give you tea myself. If I'm ever out of a job I can apply for one as your butler. Perhaps you'll give me a character if I do this right." He stood protectingly between her and four curious Willard eyes while she silently accepted what he gave her. Then, uninvited, he sat down beside her. You would not have known that he saw her hands shaking 26 The Golden Answer enough to drop a teacup. His mind had shot straight to the truth: that to the sovereign Miss Ware, who disposed of her subjects as captiously as she pleased, this moody, handsome, restless man who had just left so rudely, was Achilles's heel. "Miss Christina Ware," he began, with a twinkle in his eyes, "did you ever find out who owned that canoe last summer?" She breathed her relief. "It was yours." "Yes, and I want you to know I've painted it." She laughed a little, recovering herself rapidly. "You took it beautifully." "No it was you who took it beautifully !" As he watched her, still pale, gentler than he had seen her before, glad to be helped back to self-posses- sion, a slow, warm tide of tenderness flooded up into his heart, not unlike what he felt for Harmony. The Willard girls rose to go, accompanied by Toyn- bee, inarticulate over the honor of being a herald. And it fell out that it was not Mr. Philip Dana who lingered intimately beside Christina's tea table, but Mr. Amos Fortune and the child Harmony. Christina was amazed to find that she wanted him to stay. No one had ever wiped her shoes before, except a colored porter or a compatriot of Petrarch. She had enjoyed it. She wondered where this man of the shabby canoe and the small house, also peeling paint, got his rare manner and his tactfulness. She was curious, too, about the little girl with the brown eyes. His own eyes were brown. When the others had gone, she asked him to sit down. He did so silently, almost solemnly. "Harmony has told me about the dress," said Chris- tina, letting her eyes rest on the child, who sat properly The Golden Answer 27 with her back against a pink cushion. "Gray cobwebs and moss that is like fairy raiment." "It was not my idea," disclaimed Amos. "Whose, then?" "You suggested it and it was carried out by a girl who works with me at the South Sea House." "The South Sea House! What on earth is that? What do you do there? Is the girl by chance a a South Sea Islander?" Amos raised his eyes to hers. "It's just an old bank. I named it that." "Oh," Christina hesitated. "I suppose it must be warm there." He smiled. Why should she get the point ? Every- body did not read Charles Lamb. It was sweet of her to think about its being hot. "Hilda Martin is a nice girl," he added. "She often helps me out with Harmony." An odd look leaped into the eyes of Christina Ware. The only reason Eve did not have that look was be- cause she was the only woman in the world. That Christina was unconscious of it only goes to prove its antiquity. "That is lovely of her," she answered sweetly. And then she swiftly descended with her question, without preface. "Mr. Fortune I'm curious. Is Harmony your little girl? She has such an odd, delightful name for you." Amos looked across at Harmony, and Christina thought she had never seen eyes look quite like that before. He answered her slowly. "Yes, she's mine, in a way. I have given her my name, the name of Fortune. She is the child of of a friend, who is dead. She has no mother." 28 The Golden Answer He told her this so earnestly, as if to impress it upon her, that Christina smiled at him, quickly, beautifully. It was her most disarming smile, and she knew it. It was a kind she did not use often. At that moment when he had turned back to her she had felt that he needed someone's best smile. So she gave him hers. But why couldn't the man say whether he was or had been married? "Harmony is a dear," she said gently. "Isn't she?" His eagerness glowed. Then he added, with grave eyes on the child, "If I should ever marry it would be better for her. I can't take her mother's place." "She's a very well brought up little girl," brightly congratulated Miss Ware. "Don't worry about that." "It must be so," he smiled, rising to leave her, "Hilda Martin says so, too." Entirely mistress of herself now, she put her hand in his there was a delicate bond of gratitude between them. She asked him to come again. And she kissed Harmony. As director of the play Christina was strict. She had a fine for every possible misdemeanor. There was a five-cent fine for each prompting; if you were late you paid ten cents; absence cost a quarter. The matter of these fines had far-reaching results. One afternoon Harmony, to her great distress, was ten minutes late. Johanna had let her sleep too long. Amos believed in the babyish habit of naps, which Harmony energetically disbelieved in, though she slept sweetly and soundly for two hours every afternoon. Then, that day, Johanna had to finish ironing a fresh dress; Harmony was undoubtedly late. When the The Golden Answer 29 rehearsal was over, before the others dispersed, she ran quickly home for her fine money. In a little iron elephant named Jumbo she had horded seven pennies. Jumbo stood on her own small dressing table which had dotted Swiss ruffles secured with brass tacks in even rows, neatly hammered there by Amos. In her hurry to extract the seven pennies from Jumbo's hollow iron vitals Harmony bent several of Johanna's hair pins. Penny by penny, Jumbo yielded until at last there were seven. The fine was ten pennies. Harmony knew there should be three more, but she intended to ask the Dis- creet Princess to trust her for those until next time. Harmony wanted to get the whole transaction over before Amos arrived. He gave her ten cents a week as an allowance. Of course he would give her the three pennies now or the whole dime. But she had the feminine desire to finance this wholly personal business without explanation to masculine authority. So she ran back to the big house on the corner with her seven pennies in her hand. Harmony walked through the garden, observing that everyone had gone home from the rehearsal. Evi- dently there was to be no tea party to-day. She would look first for the Discreet Princess in the pergola, where she sat quite often now beside Amos while he talked with Miss Ware, where he had wiped the pretty shoes with his handkerchief. She walked along the garden paths in her little blue chambray dress, with puckers called smocking that Hilda had advised, and held the seven pennies tight in her small, moist palm. Poor Jumbo so empty on the dressing table! She took the long way through the garden because she liked to imagine herself Alice, and always hoped that around the next corner the Mock Turtle would bow to her and 3O The Golden Answer commence to cry. That was the reason that she now approached the pergola from the back way through the hollyhocks. And she found Christina there as she had expected. Mr. Philip Dana was there, too, talking to her in his most charming voice and looking his handsomest. Amos had taught Harmony never to interrupt. So she stood among the hollyhocks squeez- ing the pennies, and waited for an opportunity to give them to Miss Ware. They did not see her, but Har- mony thought nothing of that, being only seven. Christina's eyes had a glint of excitement, though her face had somehow stiffened. "It seems to me very strange," she said slowly to Philip Dana, "that you care so little about the success of this undertaking of mine that you would go and leave me now, three days before the performance, without anyone for the Fool's part. Don't you care whether you spoil the play or not?" "Oh, it won't be spoiled," answered Dana, smiling into her eyes. "You can get someone else." "No one could learn the part in two days. If you go I shall give up the play, and the hospital will lose the money I practically pledged." "I'll write them a check. Don't be argumentative, Christina, you're not so pretty when you argue. It isn't your style." "And it isn't my style to ask a reason for a dis- courtesy, but this time I'm going to." The Discreet Princess was growing a little white; the stiffness of her face was breaking into unlovely lines. "I've told you, my dear Christina, I've had a letter that calls me away. It's imperative." "But you have neglected to tell me where you are going, if you go." The Golden Answer 31 "To Narragansett." "Then Edith is back." "I believe so." "Edith is so pretty, in spite of her teeth, it is strange she hasn't married again before this." "She is rather particular." "I should have said energetic was a better word." "And I'm beginning to think she loved poor Carl- ton," added Dana. "So dearly that he had to kill himself. . . . And that hasn't weakened her energy. Do give my love to Edith when you see her. . . . And don't worry in the least about the play. I'll give it up. I can get a good check for the hospital from one of my friends." "Now you are talking reasonably you always could see a point quickly, Christina. What was it that plump fairy called you the other day the Discreet Princess ? May I be so un-American as to kiss your hand in farewell, Princess?" Christina laughed ; she had an unusually pretty and musical laugh. "Certainly, why not?" She gave him her hand. "Did Harmony call me that? . . . After this absurd ceremony I believe the book says 'Exit Fool!'" "So it does. Good-by, Christina !" Dana being a daring man took his tall, good- looking self off, while Christina stood quietly in the pergola. Half way down the path he turned. "Oh, Christina," he called, "I shouldn't give up the play if I were youget that fellow, the fairy's father, for your Fool. Ten to one he'll fall for it." "Thank you, but I shouldn't think of asking him," Christina answered. She watched Dana go down the path and out the gate. 32 The Golden Answer She was unconscious of the little figure at her side until Harmony touched her dress. "Excuse me," said Harmony, looking up into the angry gray eyes, her brown ones troubled. "Amos never lets me interrupt. I came to bring you my fine." "Your what?" asked Christina vaguely. "My fine," explained Harmony with patience. "I was late. Here are seven pennies out of Jumbo. I will bring you three next week. Seven and three make ten." "Oh yes, you were late. Thank you." She took the seven warm pennies and put them into a box on the wicker table. "I'll bring three more next week," repeated Har- mony. "You needn't do that. There isn't going to be any play." At that Harmony's brown eyes began slowly to fill with tears. "My my fairy dress," she mourned. "Yes," said Christina slowly, turning to go into the house, "there will be no fairy raiment now." When Harmony came home down the lane, looking very small in her short blue dress with her brown curls bobbing under her hat as she walked, Amos was wait- ing on the veranda for her. He smiled and held out his hand to the child he called his. "Well, Peaseblossom?" He was happier than usual to-night to have the soft, small form nestle within his arm. He had the power, which is surely one of the qualities of genius, of feeling in perfect freshness the miracle of a familiar thing. It often came upon him unexpectedly, this sense of the miracle of Harmony, as of other little growing things. No petals were more fragrant and fresh than her The Golden Answer 33 cheeks, no autumn leaves browner than her eyes. Her plump body, which he had often seen in naked silken loveliness, might have been a baby dryad except that nothing could be lovelier than a perfect human baby. "What's the matter, dear?" he added. Harmony told him. She omitted nothing, not Jumbo, or the pennies, or the conversation in the per- gola, which, without understanding, she reported well enough to set him thinking. He looked perplexed over the pennies which Christina had taken and put into her box, and grave over Edith's teeth. These seemed to be especially vivid in Harmony's memory. He asked himself why in the world was this a matter for his perplexity or his gravity. Why should he, whose future was all laid out for him like a navigator's course, even to the far off harbor, trouble his mind over the social difficulties of a girl who was nothing to him? Why, when he had already seen things he did not like about her a bit of arrogance, selfishness, a touch of cowardice did she seem to him so lovely? Busy, tired, often worried, why should he try to help her ? Dana had said he was a daring man there was more than one way of being daring ! He told Harmony not to feel bad about her fairy dress, that after supper he would do something about it. When Amos said that about a situation, older people than Harmony cheered up. He usually did something about it, efficaciously. After supper he sat down at his blackened old desk, beside which the painting of Harmony hung, and wrote a short letter. The desk was a Hepple- white secretary that had belonged to his grandfather, the one of the Primrose Path, whom he had no reason to love. He had banished the portrait of him, told Johanna to throw it away or sell it to someone in need 34 The Golden Answer of an ancestor, because he was tired of meeting the flashing eyes and facing the sneer that lurked in the corner of the elder Amos Fortune's handsome mouth, a sneer for the luckless younger Amos Fortune. The adventurous, reckless face of the portrait was charming, but to Amos it was horrible. He was not the only one who had suffered since this man had gone gayly as he pleased. He could not, however, chop up the Hepplewhite desk, because the elder Amos had built a secret cabinet for his wine in it and written his love letters upon it, so he sat down and himself wrote a polite note to Christina Ware. As he did so he had a strong feeling of starting on a swift journey, as distinctly setting out for a des- tination, as when one goes aboard a ship that plows on her charted course, or while on a train, inexorably, to meet an old love. ("My dear Amos," you would have said to him as he stooped earnestly over his Hepplewhite desk, "if something dramatic happened to us every time we have the sense of destiny, life would be too dynamic for endurance.") He wrote this note on stationery far too fine for his means, his one fastidious extravagance. Dear Miss Ware: Harmony has come home with the news that you are about to give up the play you have worked so hard over. That is too bad ! I feel bound in honor to tell you that through her obedience to my command never to interrupt, she has heard and repeated to me your reason for giving up the undertaking. That is, she has told me that Mr. Dana has found it impossible to continue with the rehearsals. Harmony is disappointed because she was in love with her fairy activities, in- The Golden Answer 35 eluding the dress which you suggested. Partly on this account, but chiefly because I know you must be dis- appointed yourself over the failure of your picturesque and lovely plan, I am about to do a bold thing. Once, long ago, when I was in college, I played the Fool's part. (More than once!) I mean I did literally play this Fool's part. And since I have a queer, absurd memory for poetry that makes all I have read haunt me forever, I can recall most of the lines now. Do you want me to help you out ? No doubt others would be much better in the acting, but I think I could do this for you with a minimum of labor over the words. I should like to do it for you ! Faithfully yours, Amos Fortune. He added a postscript, but, being the younger Amos and not the elder, ran his hands through his hair and tore up the rapidly written addition to his letter. Then he walked sedately to the corner with the dignified part of it, posted it, locked up the house, and went to bed with shining eyes. CHAPTER IV IT was the morning of the day of the play when the strange-looking letter arrived at the white house in the lane. Harmony laid it at Amos's breakfast plate, look- ing curiously at the cheap paper and queer, straggling hand, that seemed to have miscalculated the distance on the envelope, and, having begun very large, ended in a cramped corner with a blot. She was pouring over the address with her finger on the blot when Amos came into the dining room. "Look," she said, "what a funny way to make an 'F' !" He stopped suddenly with an exclamation when he saw the child standing over that dingy letter, which looked out of place on their white cloth. He seemed about to snatch it from her. But instead he took it away gently, and put it, unopened, into his pocket. "Yes, Harmony," he said, "but you know some people make an T" that way." "Oh, I see," replied Harmony. "I have to know how to make an 'F' very well, don't I, because it begins my name?" "Yes. Now eat your orange !" "What," said Harmony, after some reflection, at- tacking her oatmeal, "does the name of Fortune mean ?" "I don't believe I understand you," Amos replied. He was looking grave and abstracted. "Well," continued Harmony, "Hilda's name is the name of a bird, and so is old Mr. Lark's, and Johanna's 36 The Golden Answer 37 name means a nice color, and the grocery boy is named Fish. What does our name mean?" Amos was silent. "Do you understand me now?" inquired Harmony. "Oh, yes !" he hastened. "It doesn't mean anything of that sort, dear. Something different. I'm afraid it might make a long story!" "Will you ever tell it to me?" "Probably not," answered Amos with some grim- ness. He hurried through his breakfast and rose to go, coming around the table to kiss Harmony. She had chatted on happily and he had made mechanical answers. Now she lifted her little face, all early morning purity of rosy skin and brown eyes. The sun streamed in upon her and upon the simple, immaculate table. "'Bye," she said, kissing him on the mouth. "Going to read your letter on the train?" "Yes," Amos replied, reflecting that Harmony never missed anything ! During these weeks of Harmony's rehearsals and the last two days when he himself had been part of the friendly rivalry and gayety which made the outdoor play like one big house party, Amos had met many people in the town whom he had never known before. He had until now lived in Bramford without being of it, having come there because Harmony must have space to play in and because he himself needed space. The friend of Christina Ware's whom he liked best was Charles Mo watt Brent, the rich young man who was putting up the money for the play, which was for the benefit of the hospital, and was himself cast for the part of hero. "C M.," as his friends called him, did many good things with his money. It was he who 38 The Golden Answer supported the Children's Home, the Old Ladies' Home, and the Hospital. A few people knew that he had en- dowed a Refuge for Girls in New York. Amos had heard of the Refuge and he liked that best of all. Also, during the rehearsals, Charles Mowatt Brent and Har- mony fell in love, which was another reason for liking him. C. M. was a large blond man who would some day look even more like a grand opera tenor than at present. He kept down a tendency to stoutness by exercises which he took, as he often said, upon arising and going to bed. In fact he liked to tell everybody about these exercises and talked of them so realistically that you felt you had actually seen C. M. standing plump and satiny, vigorously kicking with a pointed toe, whirling his clubs around his head, breathing deep with an exalted and triumphant look. Naturally he was glowing and hearty. And his large laugh and friendly blue eyes were pledges of faith. What had drawn C. M. and Harmony together was his difficulty in remembering his lines. The big man was ashamed of his weakness and often asked the little girl with the companionable brown eyes to hear him say them just before he went on. After the first week he was fined every day for forgetting. Harmony thought this was a disgrace as well as an extravagance, and once, on a day when Christina had been severe, she had come to his rescue. It was during the scene when the fairies surrounded the Hero. Poor C. M. opened his mouth and no words came. Looking wild, he opened it wider, with no results, when the small, brown-eyed fairy in the corner suddenly leaned toward him and shrilled: "How now, friendly elves, what do you here?" Charles Brent blushed, repeated the words, laughed The Golden Answer 39 with delighted roars at the fairy's embarrassment, and was her friend forever. Amos liked Philip Dana, who had so daringly van- ished, the least. But he had recognized in him a dis- agreeable charm. He knew that charm had held Christina, and that Dana knew it ! For once the Dis- creet Princess had fumbled. Christina's play was to be out of doors in the evening. The date had been set because of a full moon. Amos coming from town early, knew that the night would be one of incomparable midsummer beauty. He was glad. The play itself did not seem to him important, but it would be important if Harmony were disappointed, also Christina Ware. An old florist of Amos Fortune's recommendation, Truebee Lark by name, had transformed the lawn of the Hoyle house into a bower. His trailing ivies, his blossoming shrubs, tall feathery ferns and shining palms made a fit rendezvous for fairies. This Arcadian spot began to be haunted early in the evening by extraordinary characters. First of all, Charles Brent, very early, very breathless, so pink that he needed only to have his eyebrows darkened, and fitting somewhat creakingly into his tight costume, which showed his muscles to excellent advantage. Then the Willard girls, gorgeous in court costumes, anxious over their lines, and insistent as to entirely too much rouge because they "felt dreadfully pale." Young Toynbee in grass-green and carrying a long lance, in- articulate and frozen with horror because he had been told at the last minute that he had to say four words. They were : "My lord the Queen !" Other distraught lords and meticulous ladies turned out by the same costumer from New York. And a cloud of fairies, a gray-green cloud, shot with a shaft of moonlight here 4O The Golden Answer and there when a slim child stepped out in glistening silver. Amos Fortune threaded his way through this varie- gated throng, dressed in motley. One leg was blue, the other yellow. Upon his head, above his jingling cap, nodded a red cockscomb. He carried a gay rattling bauble, and fastened to a rear point of his yellow-lined blue tunic was a sheep's bell, clanking. He was fresh from the make-up man, and the vivid color, the accen- tuated brows and jocose lines were becoming to his thin face. He was humming to himself and now and then falling unconsciously into a light dance step. And he looked over the heads of most people in search of someone. With the Fool's costume he had put on youth. He felt an absurd lightness in his heels, and a heady joy in his brain an exhilarated delight in warm air and color, gay voices, and a purple sky where hung the round moon. He was not Amos Fortune who lived down a crooked lane, certainly not Amos Fortune of the South Sea House, not even "J erem y Pride"; he was a man who lived a thousand years ago and a thousand years hence, who dared and reveled and loved in lands of flame and turquoise and saw all things as they are, and became the author of "Avalon." He came upon Christina Ware standing by a thicket of Lombardy poplars banked with ferns. The dark trees shot up mysteriously into the moonlight, as if they guarded the secrets of the Villa d'Este. Chris- tina wore a dress of white organdie, simply made, to suit her many duties. Her hair, gold-banded above it, was silhouetted against the dark green of the poplars. Her eyes shone with excitement. She had seen Amos coming to her, and had been startled. When he stopped before her she said: The Golden Answer 41 "Oh, I didn't know you would look like that!" "Isn't it right?" "Of course." "Then what do you mean?" he demanded. "Nothing." She smiled at him. She did not know what she meant, in terms of allusion, being astonish- ingly and correctly ignorant, but she had caught some- thing like a hint of the reincarnation of all kingly jesters, divine sport of vapid princes forever. Yet "It's nearly time to begin," was all she said. "You're not worrying, are you, about my part?" he asked. "Don't. I sha'n't forget. I shall know what to do. All the poetry in the world is running off my tongue to-night! I'm conscious of everything, from the flowers in that bridal wreath to the points of the stars and your eyelashes. Didn't you ever feel like that more than alive, almost omniscient?" Christina shook her head. "It's a little dangerous," he laughed, "unless it's benignant. It means to-night that I can either be a fool or ... do yards of 'Avalon' !" "What is 'Avalon' ?" asked Christina, looking up at the red cock's comb. "Some day you'll know," he told her, and believed it. Christina brought her eyes to meet his, while a soft breath of midsummer wind stirred her white dress and caused the high tops of the poplars to signal secretly. "You sound very metaphorical and prophetic!" she told him. "I'm not used to your language." "You mustn't mind me to-night," he smiled sincere apology. "Your motley has affected my head as well as my heels. I'm likely to say anything ! I should like to dance a mile down a moonlit road, but I should want a 'companion of a mile'." 42 The Golden Answer "A mile would be too far!" said Christina hastily. She turned from him and with a little wave of her hand vanished behind the poplar. Amos looked up at its top, solemnly sentinel against the stars. " 'A com- panion of a mile' !" he laughed. Everyone said that it was a good play. Charles Mowatt Brent did not forget his part, although there were some who said they heard him prompted. The fact was that he paused only for effect, and knew per- fectly well what was coming next: but the prompter, aware of his weakness, became panicky and gave him his lines. C. M. was injured at the suspicion indicated. Young Toynbee was an indefatigable herald. He managed to get out two words of his four. His only other mistake went unnoticed, though it sent a cold chill down Christina's spine for fear the audience would laugh. In helping lay the rural board for a feast in the forest he moved all the tree stumps up to the table, uprooting them with ease. But everyone said that the fairies and the Fool made the play. The fairies were riotous, for Amos in his scenes with them, took them by surprise and set them into bubbling spontaneous laughter and involuntary caperings some of them were very little but always brought them back to the play in time, so that they made no mistakes. Their small sparkling faces turned to him like flowers, as he made his gay sallies amongst them in the forest, with a delicious tinkling of morrice bells, and rattling and clanking. There was something rare, baffling, tender, and eloquent about his mirth that night that made sophisticated people laugh and sigh with pleasure, and ask who in the world he was. Christina knew that he had not only saved her play but made it significant, and she found herself wonder- ing, too, who in the world he was, who made her laugh The Golden Answer 43 with all this wild fooling and forget the smart left by Philip Dana. It seemed as if he must be something to her. Forgetting Philip Dana made her kinder, made her show an indiscreet dimple. When she went to Amos Fortune after the per- formance to thank him, she had to show her gratitude. But she did more. She was sincere, and kind, and asked him, specially, to come to the house for a little celebration now that the work and worry were over. Amos thanked her and went to find Harmony to take her too. He wanted Harmony, as long as she over- stepped bedtime rules at all, to have every joy there was in this enchanted night. She could sleep all the next day. They went together, still as Fool and fairy, into the big Hoyle house, to find Christina and her aunt, and say with everyone else how fortunate the hospital was to have this money taken in for the play. All the other characters were there, in costume too. It was gay and softly lighted and warm in the big rooms. They met the Woman With Rings on Her Fingers. Christina presented them with a queer challenge in her eyes. The challenge meant that she knew Mrs. Hoyle would say to the next comer: "Dear me, who has Christina bowled over now? The child is un- scrupulous." Christina's aunt was stiff in the back and held her head high to avoid a calamity resulting from a middle-aged double chin. She smiled with her gums and had small, sharp, gray eyes. Many rings were on her fingers. They had given her her name with Amos and Harmony (but she did not tinkle in the least when she walked). Amos and Harmony had the place of honor, beside Christina on a davenport under a rosy light. The glow was becoming to Christina; her eyes were soft under 44 The Golden Answer the pretty dark brows. Amos sat still, sunk back in the big davenport, so that his bells scarcely jingled. About them people passed and laughed and called gay non- sense, but they were alone. Christina turned to him, almost intimately, smiling. "Do you still want to dance a mile down a lane ?" "No," said Amos. He had seen something a moment before that, un- reasonably, had frightened him something that was coming in a moment, was almost there. He would not have been frightened if it had happened on any other night but this exhilarated one. For there was an old score wiped out, an old enemy he counted vanquished, who only attacked now unexpectedly from the rear. He was holding Harmony's hand so tightly that her fingers were red. "All the dance is out of me now," he added. "Not if you had a companion of a mile?" "Well, that might make a difference," he smiled at her, still rigid. She wondered why he was slowly losing all his color, except the spots of rouge high on his cheeks. She turned to take one of the glasses a servant was offering on a small tray. "You make me feel," she said, "almost as if I could dance with you. Don't you think we ought to drink to that mile? Miles are so short that they ought to be gay!" He turned slowly, as if with an effort, and stretched out a hand toward the tray ; the bells that adorned the Fool's long pointed wrist band were all jingling now! He took the glass, held it until the man had passed on, and then set it untouched on a little table beside the davenport. He thought he saw the elder Amos For- tune's sneer. The Golden Answer 45 "You drink to it," he said in a low voice, "it will bring better luck!" Then before Christina, in her astonishment, knew what had happened, with a jingle and a clank of the sheep's bell, he was standing up before her. She had time to wonder that he should all at once look aloof and wistful, and to feel that she wished he were not dressed like that why should it hurt her to have him dressed as a fool? before he was saying: "You have been very kind, but I must go home with my little girl." Then he was gone, with Harmony. She heard the sheep's bell in the little conservatory and knew that he had taken the shortest way out of the house. Johanna, who had come home from the play when the audience dispersed, was waiting up to put Har- mony to bed. Amos kissed the child good-night quietly. She asked him if he were tired, and why, and he said yes, very tired, because the Fool's part was a hard one. But when she had gone to bed and to sleep and Johanna had climbed the back stairs, he continued walking up and down the library. He had taken off the motley and put on an old shabby brown dressing gown. Also he had washed off the paint, which had left his face looking so white and drawn as to make even Harmony comment on it. He smoked rapidly one cigarette after another, and finally, with a queer smile on his lips, and a sparkle in his eyes, sat down before the secretary that had belonged to his hard- drinking, hard-living grandfather. Out of an inner drawer he drew a crimson portfolio full of closely written sheets of paper, and turning to the part where the sheets were blank began to write fast. He also wrote steadily. The sparkle in his eyes changed to a pleasant glow. They looked tired but no longer 46 The Golden Answer haunted. The remedy had begun its work. The color crept into his face again. After an hour, with a great sigh of relief he stretched out his arms, covered his eyes with his hands for a while, then settled down again and wrote, more slowly now, but with care and intense interest. He wrote all night. When the dawn came creeping into the lane feebly, like the ghost of an old, old woman, it found Amos Fortune with the crimson book of Avalon closed on the secretary, standing by the window watching the light come. As the field opposite the house became faintly pink he turned away from the window to go upstairs. But he remembered something. When he had changed his clothes the night before he had locked the letter that had come that morning into a drawer of the desk. He took it out now, and sitting down be- fore the desk again, he studied it carefully, leaning his forehead on his hand. Then he consulted his check book, where the numbers never on any account went above three figures. And finally he wrote a check for fifty dollars and enclosed it in the following note: "My dear Kit: "Here is the best I can do except salute you! Never mind about paying back. "Amos." Then he carried both letters upstairs, going very quietly in the gray light. He stopped at Har- mony's room and listened to her breathing. For a moment he leaned his face against the wall outside her door, and then, going into his own room, threw him- self across his bed and slept in exhaustion. ' CHAPTER V MR. TRUEBEE LARK'S cottage stood at the farthest end of the back street of the town of Bramford, so that it really was not in town at all, except by law upon which depend taxes. The cottage crowned a low hill. Falling away from it on either side were meadows that became, in the lowlands, marshes, beautiful beyond one's common thought of marshes, and inhabited by birds at all seasons of the year. Hilda Martin loved to walk the winding path that led to Truebee Lark's house. She knew well all the changes that came upon the marshes. In the spring they were yellow with cowslips, pink with wild azalea, white with dogwood. In the autumn they burned crimson with tangled sumac; brown rushes and silver reeds bent to the last warm winds. From depths where still water stood, always the color of the sky, came soft, clear calls, drowsy or eager. Above the marshes the cottage seemed to brood a silvery structure upon which Mr. Lark had trained vines. At its back was a greenhouse where he worked, raising flowers to sell. Mr. Truebee Lark himself was small and silvery. He had a pale eager face with a beak nose, bright eyes, and white hair frequently tossed about, more like the mop of a schoolboy who had rebelled against the bar- ber than the well-brushed hair of an old man. His mouth was gentle, as if whatever experiences had lined his face in the course of a long life had never really touched the still places at the bottom of his soul and troubled them. He usually wore an old gray suit 47 48 The Golden Answer stained with mold and his hands were gray with dried earth shriveled hands, capable of gently patting motions. On the Saturday afternoon after Amos had acted in Christina Ware's play, Hilda walked out to Mr. Lark's greenhouse to buy her mother six roses for Sunday. She had the pretty daughterly habit of buying flowers for her mother, not old ladyish plants that would bloom a month, but cut flowers of perishable beauty, such as a lover might give. She knew that in her mother's girlhood there had been a succession of frilled bouquets, and she liked to plan so that her old age was not without the homage of flowers. It some- times occurred to Hilda that it would be pleasant if someone should send flowers to her. She liked pretty things, and fun. She managed to have both. But sometimes she was startled to discover, on taking an inventory of her pleasures, that she paid for them all out of her own shabby purse. At such times she felt that it would be immeasurably thrilling if someone were to spend thought, time, and money on giving her pleasure. She knew that it was done! But it was unimaginable, applied personally. She felt that it would be miraculous if someone should send her rare lavish flowers that cost more than he could afford. Not often Hilda respected money because she earned it but once or twice. She had earned money ever since she was seventeen, when her father's illness had made his employment spasmodic. They had moved about a great deal from one city to another because he was always, after a period of enforced idleness, finding a job he thought he would be able to stand and then, after a few months, having to give it up. He had been an engineer who had helped to build bridges among the mountains and The Golden Answer 49 been permanently weakened by exposure, which is a form of injury for which, unfortunately, damages are not paid. So Hilda, when he grew worse, had left school, taken a business course, and gone to work. The engineer had finally built out of pain and patience his last bridge across the last deep purple valley. Hilda had been glad for him. She believed with sim- plicity that he had found beyond the valley a high place, even above his mountains. As she took the path through the marshes on her way to Truebee Lark's she was thinking of him and another man who had spoken of the fine daring of the Bridge that flung itself across the river above the South Sea House. She found Truebee potting prim- roses in the workshop, out of which the greenhouse opened. He was glad to see her, for they were friends. "You must have been having pretty thoughts," he told her, his hands never ceasing their deft patting motions, his eyes beaming at her over crooked spec- tacles with rims of blackened steel. "Last month I had some tulips just the color of your cheeks, my dear, and they had green dresses like yours." "My thoughts were quite usual," evaded Hilda, smiling. "I was wondering how much I could spend on Mother this week. Have you the red roses you thought would be just coming along? "Wait till you see them! They'll hearten her up. Come and look." He led the way into the greenhouse, where the warm perfume-laden air was tropically heavy. It seemed to have drawn the bloom all out of Truebee Lark, trans- muting it into his flowers and causing them to flourish in lavish color and fragrance, being what he could not appear to be, but was. This transmutation had left him white and frail looking but content to tend the 50 The Golden Answer blossoms of his spirit Such a thought flashed through Hilda's mind as she watched his passing down the aisles of his greenhouse, which was like walking up a rainbow. "There they are !" he exhibited proudly. A corner of the greenhouse was devoted to a lusty and fragrant red rose, which now was bursting into glowing buds. Truebee glowed too, worshiping them. "Father used to bring her red roses, whenever he could," said Hilda gravely. "I'll take six, Mr. Lark. She'll like them." "Of course she will," said the florist, cutting eight long-stemmed buds. "How is Miss Lark?" Hilda asked, pretending not to see that there were eight roses, knowing from ex- perience how embarrassed he would be. "Zinnia is well," said Truebee, "but just as sot. She don't change much. I've concluded she never will come out here and live with me. It ain't hardly decent for twins to live apart, no more than for man and wife, but she's got that notion in her head about ships' bells and she certainly is sot. I can't get it out." "And of course," Hilda laughed, "you couldn't leave the marshes, Mr. Lark, or your flowers, and go to live with her!" Mr. Lark shook his head with some sadness. "I've got to have flowers and she's got to have ship's bells and the like that's the size of it, my dear twin or no twin." The little man went on pottering about, his eyes darting among the tall plants, seeing to a root here and a leaf there. Then he wheeled around at Hilda, who stood smiling absently at the riot of color, holding her red roses. Truebee thought, and rightly, that she The Golden Answer 51 looked very sweet in her thin green dress with its cool, crisp white collar and cuffs. A dark green hat with a white lawn bow drooped its brim over her hair. "There is Zinnia," Truebee said earnestly, as if Zinnia were present to be exhibited as an awful ex- ample, "getting more and more sot and queer because she lives alone not to mention me! Of course she could live with me but she don't like the place I live in, hates the bugs and grasshoppers, et cetera. But if she had a husband she'd live where he did, and that's all there would be to it. She ought to have got married, but she didn't. She had false standards, Zinnia had, but that's neither here nor there. It's done with now. I look around and I see plenty of young ladies making the same mistake Zinnia did. I ain't asking the reason. But I'm saying it don't pay. The day comes when you're old, and then if your heart ain't taken up with little children it's too sot on things, like Zinnia's and mine." Hilda put her hand on Mr. Lark's old gray sleeve. "See these sweet peas," he went on, breaking off a few crisp stems topped with the palest pink blossoms, "they always make me think of babies just the color, ain't they, of their curled up hands and feet and their cheeks after a nap?" "Yes," Hilda whispered. "I want you to marry and have some babies, my dear," dared Truebee Lark suddenly. The greenhouse was silent; the sweet breath of it enfolded Hilda deliciously while she gave herself up for an instant to an exquisite thought. In that throb- bing silence she could feel, almost hear, the plants grow with a soft rush and humming that meant unfolding life. "If I were to marry," she lifted her eyes to the old 52 The Golden Answer man's and began again, "if I were to marry a poor man I should have to keep on working there's Mother but if I loved a man I should want to work for him." Then her face flamed because of the unasked thought. She looked up and saw Amos Fortune standing in the doorway of the greenhouse. He was unusually alert and smiling and he looked very tall under the low glass roof. "Hello, Hilda Martin," he said, advancing toward her down the little wooden walk between the carna- tions and the sweet peas. It seemed to her as if he were coming a long way. "I'm glad you're here. I came right out, Mr. Lark, since the shop was empty." "I guess you know the way," said Truebee. "Now, what can I do for you, Mr. Fortune? Don't tell me it's Sweetheart Roses for the little girl, because I ain't got them to-day." But it was not Sweetheart Roses; Amos seemed in no hurry to reveal his errand. And Truebee Lark rushed at another subject, happily agitated. "I guess you know, Mr. Fortune, that I know who it was sent me all the business for that amatoor theatrical play, and I guess you know I'm grateful. It was the biggest order I ever had. They always send to New York when it's a real swell party." Amos frowned in a way that ought to have been terrifying and put his hand over Truebee's mouth. "You didn't know I had gone into the theatrical business, did you?" he asked the little man. "It all began with a fairy dress for Harmony, and there's no knowing where it will end. But Miss Martin didn't even come to see the flowers, much less Harmony and me in a real play." The Golden Answer 53 "But I did " protested Hilda. "We'll talk about it on the way home. Shall we walk back together?" "Yes," she answered in a low voice. "I was just going." Amos followed Truebee Lark to the corner where the roses were, whither he had trotted. "Mr. Lark " he looked earnest and shy, Hilda saw, "I want some flowers to carry back myself. Something golden." "Roses?" asked Truebee. "I think so ; yes, I should say roses. . . . Oh, those ! That's just it that's the color a wonderful color." Truebee remarked with enormous satisfaction: "The very thing, if I may say so." He cut a great sheaf of gorgeous blossoms, golden with rosy hearts, and packed them in a long box. "There," he nodded over the knotting of the cord, and, with what he thought was daring, vulgar finesse, winked one black eye at Amos. "Any lady," he spoke loudly, "would be pleased with that box of treasure. Talk about Spanish gold!" After he had paid for the golden roses Amos took the box under his arm, and with complete unselfcon- sciousness turned back to Hilda, who had both heard and seen. "Shall we go now? Let me take your box too. We'll walk along the marsh road," he said. They did walk along the marsh road, and the late summer afternoon was as golden as the imprisoned roses. Hilda was intensely conscious of both. She liked to walk beside Amos, though she did not very often because he was tall and took long steps, and though his clothes were old they had originally been very good. Hilda considered him distinguished 54 The Golden Answer looking! She thought, also, that he had a fine head, which was true, and never forgot to be proud because she knew the inside of it so well, even better than the outside. Never for one moment did she forget that this man, this simple, hard-working, lovable man, was Jeremy Pride, who could write all manner of whim- sical, funny, lovable things that no one else on earth would think of. They walked slowly through the sun-baked marshes, stopping to identify bird voices. Two red-winged blackbirds were calling to each other in rich cadence, and over by a thicket of birches a wood thrush piped lyrically. Once an oriole winged in black and gold silence across their path. Trudging by his side, or, when the path was narrow, behind him, so that he could help her when they came to rough or steep places, Hilda wondered of what he was thinking. Presently, when he had stopped to point out a goldfinch, he looked down at her with gravity in his eyes. "It's a shame that you are shut away from all this," he said. "You ought to be free. Everyone ought to be free." "Yes," Hilda felt her heart lift because he cared that she was not free. They came to the brook that ran at the bottom of a green glen, clearly murmuring over the pebbly bottom. Here Hilda took Amos's offered hand and let him pull her strongly up the farther bank. It was a long, muscular hand, with square-tipped fingers, like one she had once seen modeled in plaster; but the plaster was stark beauty beside this warm, living hand that helped her. She had never taken it before. They did not shake hands in the South Sea House. All at once she knew that nothing would ever be quite the same, after she had taken it. The Golden Answer 55 They stood looking back over the marsh. "You have not told me," said Hilda slowly, "what you said you would how you happened to be in the play." So then she heard the simple, seemingly unimportant story of his part in the play for charity. In the last few days he had been so rushed he had not had time to stop and tell her, and she had not seen Harmony. However, she had been at the play, for Harmony's sake. Neither she nor her mother would have missed seeing the child a fairy. She had kept out of Amos's way and he had not known she was there. Now she heard how it had come about that Amos, too, acted. "I see. You offered to help her. That was kind." "I wish you knew her. Anyone would want to help her." "I have seen Miss Ware. She's beautiful." "And what about the play ? I haven't asked you yet. Don't you think you should have rushed up to me at the South Sea House and told me Harmony was the prettiest fairy and I the most foolish Fool?" Hilda laughed. "I suppose I should have. Perhaps I was afraid to. You see, I was never sure before that you were like that." "A very ambiguous compliment. You ought to have been sure," his eyes twinkled, "because you know 'Jeremy Pride.' Only a God's fool would commit the crimes of Jeremy. Hilda Martin, how has it come about that we know each other so well ? You guessed Jeremy, though I would have told you. You under- stand other things. We don't see each other often. How has it happened?" Hilda looked down at the brook. "I don't know," she said. "I think I know." 56 It seemed as if he were not going on at all. Hilda waited for him to tell that reason. The brook ran joyfully. When he did not speak, was not going on apparently, she took her courage and held it up, and asked what seemed to her a bold, crude question. But for both their sakes she had to ask it. "Why?" asked Hilda, and smiled. He brought his eyes back from gazing far over the marsh. And she suddenly knew that in the pause he had thought about something else. He smiled in re- turn. "Because you are such a comforting little thing," he said. Hilda turned away. ... As they left the marsh behind them she thought she could smell the hidden golden roses. At her door she paused, hesitated, and seeing her mother beckoning at the window, asked him in. Amos had been in Hilda's house before. It was a small brown house on a side street, but, small as it was, they let two rooms to help pay the rent. Hilda led him now into the parlor, telling him gently to leave his box in the hall. The room was flooded with western sunlight and was itself gay. Hilda had hung bright chintz at the windows and there were several cushions of the same stuff on the old lounge, at the foot of which was folded a worn dark-red rug that used to cover the engineer when he lay getting rested between jobs. There were some shabby books, steel engravings, and in the center of the room an oval table whose hard marble top was covered with a crimson cloth. A lovely old faded flowered carpet was on the floor. This threw back the yellow sunlight cheerfully. Mrs. Martin sat by one window. She was plump and gray-haired and had apparently once been very The Golden Answer 57 pretty. Now her face was beginning to change from the wrinkles of middle age to those of old age. Hilda was not like her mother. She was an uncanny replica of a portrait of her father which stood on the book- case. Mrs. Martin liked Amos and usually gave him doughnuts. She was the kind of comfortable person who was always saying that indigestible things would not hurt anybody. They were made of good material and fried in good fat, or baked in a quick oven, so that you could eat all you wanted. This afternoon she fed him ginger cookies and gave him a little bag of them for Harmony. Hilda, after taking her box of unopened roses into the kitchen, sat quietly on the couch, and with a queer expression watched her mother. Mrs. Martin was born to fuss over a man, and there never yet had been one who did not like it. Amos sat by the open window and munched the ginger cookies and entered into a dis- cussion of Harmony's petticoats. Hilda, in the corner, curled up with her hand against her father's old rug and looked at Amos. It was as if she had never seen him before, in spite of the years in the South Sea House, and as if she were never to see him again. . . . She looked at every inch of him, his feet dusty; his long legs ; his broad, thin shoulders. She looked at his brown hair and at his brown eyes, now all interest and animation. His face seemed the most familiar thing in the world. She wondered what she was going to do about it. His voice and her mother's went on by the window, conveying no meaning. The next thing she knew he was rising to go, and her mother was saying: "Hilda dear, we need some cold boiled ham for 58 The Golden Answer supper. Can't you run around to Bliss's and get it?" And Amos said: "I'll stop and get some, too." And she was walking up the street with him again. . . . Then suddenly, swooping down on them, was a large blond man, inclined to a hard stoutness and with a good-natured, rosy face, who hailed Amos, saying the lost was found, and asking him where he had been since the play. And Amos presented to her Charles Mowatt Brent, whom she knew by reputation. C. M.'s face became a shade pinker as he swept off his hat and took her hand. "Delighted, Miss Martin," he said heartily, and then, getting another look at the delicate, colorless face under the green hat, "perfectly delighted simply happy, you know ! Now, don't tell me you are going off somewhere where I can't follow." "We are going to the grocery store, Mr. Brent," said Hilda demurely to the rich young man, "to buy cold boiled ham for supper. Would you like to come too?" "Would I!" exclaimed C. M. with fervor; "it's my favorite diet, Miss Martin." So all three went into the shabby corner store, and C. M. gave his opinion of the hams presented for their selection, but neither Hilda nor Amos bought of his choice, which was stuck with cloves and altogether too expensive. "Most interesting," said Charles Mowatt Brent, watching slices fall from the carving machine. "This is a new one on me." Amos laughed, looked at his watch, and, saying he had to hurry, left them there. And Hilda, who had a sane sense of humor, laughed too, and nodded good-by The Golden Answer 59 to him and his long box of roses. You simply cannot be tragic in a corner grocery! You wait till after- ward. Life is like that. C. M. carried her parcel for her along the golden street of early evening. So it happened that she left the house with Amos and his roses, and returned with this gay stout man who had tucked under his arm a more prosaic package, a whole-hearted, kindly man, who presently began to tell her about some wonderful exercises. "I stand on one foot, and thrust the other out at right angles toes pointed ; it works, Miss Martin !" At her door "Some day/* asked C. M. anxiously, "when it's not meal time, may I come in?" "Yes," Hilda told him gravely. "Simply happy !" said Charles Mowatt Brent. SEVERAL weeks later Hilda Martin and her mother sat on the porch of their old brown house after supper. Mrs. Martin was knitting a sweater but Hilda idled, her book in her lap. It was too dark to read, and not dark enough to go into the house and light the lamp. Besides, the evening was too stiflingly warm for a lamp, especially one that stood on a crimson cloth. And Hilda did not feel like reading. Almost all fiction was a love story. Poems were worse ; they infuriated her. She sought sanctuary in Bryce's "American Common- wealth," which was ponderous after a day's work. Being filled with a poison now scientifically recognized and labeled with the familiar word Fatigue, she could not bear up under the beauty of the poetry ; she had no energy with which to attack the "Commonwealth." Hilda was tired because she had not had a vacation in forty-nine weeks. After another six days of im- prisonment in the South Sea House she and her mother were going away for her two weeks' vacation. They went to a quiet farm in Vermont. Hilda loved the ocean, but after forty-nine weeks of roaring back and forth in a tube under the river she could not bear the sea because it made such a noise ! One year when they had gone to it they had been obliged to fly to the hills after the first week because the roar of the breakers reminded Hilda of the subway. As she sat on the porch beside her mother, and set her teeth in determination not to ask the dear thing to move off a squeaking board or else stop rocking, she saw, instead of the electric-lighted, shabby suburban 60 The Golden Answer 61 street, a green, Vermont hillside. There was a walk over that hill that she had once dared to dream of showing Amos Fortune. She knew he would like it. He would stride away over the hill with his head flung back and Hilda would love trying to keep up with him. How he would laugh when they came out suddenly on top of a toy town and almost bumped their noses on the spire of the church steeple. . . . The "American Commonwealth" fell to the floor, and when Hilda rose from picking it up she saw a familiar figure coming down the street. It was Mr. Truebee Lark, who got his small body as lightly over the ground as if it were a flower on a stem bending in the sultry air. He came up the Martins' steps, removing his sun- scorched straw hat from his white head. "Good evening to you, Mrs. Martin," said Truebee. "Such a hot night and Zinnia still keeping to the city ! I often wonder how she stands it. And little Miss Hilda here, going back and forth, back and forth." "Now," smiled Hilda, glad to see the pale little man, who carried a large box, "look at us sitting on this nice porch on a quiet street, quite the pampered upper classes." "I do wish," remarked Mrs. Martin, hitching her chair off the squeaking board at last, "that what breeze there is was from the other direction. Don't you notice the Dump to-night, Hilda?" "Mother! We don't speak of the Dump before company ; we pretend it isn't there ! And you know it has been investigated and declared harmless and in- evitable." "A harmless, necessary rat," remarked Truebee, fanning himself. "I saw one!" "One ! There are hundreds in it," said Hilda. "Well, for my part," declared Mrs. Martin crisply, 62 The Golden Answer "I don't see how anything that smells so can be harm- less, and I don't think it's necessary, either; there's always the ocean, and there's fire. The Lord gave us both." "Perhaps, sometime," said Hilda, "the Dump will be all burned away!" She and Amos both thought symbolically of the great desert of ashes and worse, just outside the town. To most people it was just "The Dump." Truebee Lark bent over the box he had brought and placed shyly on the floor. After much fumbling he succeeded in opening it. "I've had such good luck with my roses," he said, "that I wanted you and Miss Hilda should share it. Now here are some I know Miss Hilda will specially like ; and I had no order for 'em, so I just cut a lot and brought 'em along. Maybe they aren't much of a luxury now-a-days to you, my dear," he turned to Hilda, smiling. "I've sold quite a lot lately to a cer- tain person no need to mention names I guess but I argued you couldn't have too many. There ! Look at that! My, my! Ain't they beauties ?" He shook out a great sheaf of golden yellow roses and held them up in the light of the street lamp. The cool fragrance of them seemed to leap out and envelop the three hot and tired human beings with a healing touch and a promise that, no matter what weariness and tragedy must come, there is Beauty, an eternal comforter. Hilda took the yellow roses in her arms. She could not tell Truebee Lark that they were worse than poetry ! The little man looked at her, and Mrs. Martin beamed. "What a blessed relief to have such a sweet fra- The Golden Answer 63 grance, right here on our porch, and so unexpected! Run in, Hilda dear, and get the big glass jar Father liked to have the flowers in. He was a great hand for flowers, as you know, Mr. Lark." "Well, now, I think that was nice," said Mr. Lark placidly. Returning with the jar of water Hilda arranged the roses in it on the small porch table. "You haven't been out to my place," continued Truebee, watching the girl's hands at work among the leaves, "since that day you and Mr. Fortune was there." The hands paused. "Why, no, I haven't been." "It will be a great thing for him, going into this here new company that's been talked up lately," de- clared Truebee. "I'm glad to see a young man like him get on. To my way of thinking, banking never did seem to fit him very well. Now real estate has land in it." Hilda was silent, but Mrs. Martin was not. "What's all this? Hilda, why didn't you tell me? You've never said a word what company? What land in it? Well, I never!" "The Atlantic Seaboard Realty Company, I believe they're calling it," said Truebee. "Where did you hear that Mr. Fortune is going to leave the South the bank ?" asked Hilda gently. "Two of the directors of the new company was out to my place the other day getting flowers for their wives violets and lilies. Let me see, I think it was lilies and I heard them talking about our mutual friend. I just listened while I cut their flowers." "Then it can't be a a secret any more," Hilda said, stooping to smell the roses. "You know, Mother, he's been wanting to leave for some time." 64 The Golden Answer "I declare ! Why don't you tell me things ?" "I couldn't tell you this," replied Hilda, too proud not to be frank, "because I didn't know it." After many exclamations of surprise that he should have been the bearer of news about the man they all admired, and prognostications, on Mr. Lark's part, of Amos Fortune's future success, the little man went home, walking up the street slowly so as not to get heated. Hilda said she thought she would go to bed, and went immediately up to her room, the one that was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter to rent. She kissed her mother good-night and asked her to put the roses down cellar. An hour later Mrs. Martin creaked slowly up the stairs. She tiptoed to her daughter's door and paused timidly. "Hello," called Hilda. "Do you think you can go to sleep, dear?" the older woman asked. "Let Mother drape the curtains back." "That's fine, thank you. Just think, a week from to- night Mother we'll be up among the hills." "Yes, Dearie. I thought I heard you talking to yourself. Do you think you ought to?" "I was just saying Father's poem." Mrs. Martin sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. "Say it over again." She lay slim and straight in bed and looked at the low ceiling, while she repeated in a thin voice that gathered courage: " 'Beyond the path of the outmost sun, through utter darkness hurled, The Golden Answer 65 Farther than ever comet flared or vagrant Stardust swirled, Live such as fought, and sailed, and ruled, and loved, and made our world. And ofttimes cometh our wise Lord God, master of every trade, And tells them tales of his daily toil, of Edens newly made, And they rise to their feet as he passes by, gentlemen unafraid.' " There was silence between the two women. "Now, you'd better go to sleep," said the mother. "Yes, I will," promised Hilda. Before she left for her vacation Amos invited Hilda to lunch with him at Fraunce's Tavern in Broad Street. He had taken her to the famous old hostelry once before and Hilda loved it, especially the long, and beautiful room upstairs where General Washington gave his farewell dinner to his officers. What ghosts walked there on moonless nights and marveled at the young republic! To-day she and Amos ate an un- usually extravagant and gay luncheon in the smoky dining room. She felt that he had brought her there for a purpose, but he was uncommunicative over the meal, only insisting that she should eat substantial food, and telling her a story about Captain Joel Mayo, who had been in the South Sea House that morning. After luncheon they went upstairs to the Washing- ton room and sat together in one of the wide window seats. They were the only persons in the room. "I may not see Captain Joel again," he said, turning to look at her. "I am going to leave the South Sea House." 66 The Golden Answer; "Why?" asked Hilda. He smiled down at her. "Well, Hilda Martin, I'll tell you. Once upon a time several things happened to me that killed off my am- bition. They should not have killed it, but they did. Just one thing didn't die. That's cropped out lately, and you know the result, just a little success and all sorts of joy. I don't really think I'm fit for much else. So it has always seemed as if the South Sea House, by which I mean whatever gives us bread and butter, might as well be one thing as another. But now something has has happened to make me ambitious in another way. I want to succeed as other men suc- ceed, financially. I threw away a lot of money once that I'd like now ! Well, I've been looking around, and I've got a job with the new Atlantic Seaboard Realty Company. I sha'n't get rich at once in it, but there's a good chance for the man who makes good and also puts up some money. You don't think I'm too old to begin again, do you?" "Of course not," said Hilda gently. "But what about the thing that didn't die?" "That," replied Amos, looking quickly out of the window, "will have to be worked in somehow, as usual." "Do you want to tell me what has happened, to make you ambitious?" Hilda asked after a moment. He got up and walked over to the fireplace, where he stood gazing at the bronze inscription above it long enough to read it all, but his eyes did not move from side to side. Then he came back to the window and looked down at her. In her pale green dress on the humid day, she was cool and fresh. The same green hat with its ever crisp organdie bow shaded her face. "I don't believe I can tell even you yet," he said The Golden Answer 67 slowly. "You've been such a good pal, I'd like to. But I'll tell you one thing : you are the only person who could appreciate it." "I hope you'll get whatever you want," Hilda answered. "And I'm glad you want things badly again. It's much more healthy. But I wish you would promise me something. Will you?" "If I can." "Don't let Jeremy Pride die. Or that other I know you're writing. Keep that, whatever happens." "Yes, I can promise that." "Don't forget. And now," Hilda smiled up at him, "we'll be awfully late if we don't get back to the South Sea House. When do you leave ?" "In two weeks. I'll be gone when you come back from your vacation." The next day he took her bag to the train, and saw her off for the Vermont hills. She walked much alone on the hills, where no sound rose to affront the sky deeply blue for all those fourteen precious days. She grew brown and sun- burned, and her eyes became steady, deep and clear. And she came back to the city, her boyish slenderness hardened, her head up, and the corners of her mouth curving humorously. The Saturday before she returned Amos had left the South Sea House forever. His old desk was to stand unoccupied for a week, until someone else was found willing to bend over it all day. It was always harder to fill such positions in the summer, and no one had as yet been securely attached. On the night of her first day of work after her vaca- tion Hilda stayed at the bank late trying to make up, while she felt energetic, some of the work that had accumulated in her absence. (That was the worst of 68 The Golden Answer a "vacation.") When she had at last made an im- pression upon the mass of work, she prepared to go. Remembering how careless Amos often was about little things she went over and sat down at his desk to be sure that he had cleared it of all personal belongings. The corners of her mouth curved more deeply at the thought that she still felt she must look out for him ! Well ! this one more time. Glancing through the desk she found it almost bare, just a paper or two, blank, and some dust. She wiped the desk carefully with a cloth, and threw away the bits of paper. She held her head high and hummed. In the far corner of a pigeonhole was a crumpled fragment of a letter which she carefully poked out. She glanced at it before throwing it away and sat frozen in her chair. She had only wished to make sure that nothing personal should go into the waste basket, not to spy on him not to change the world! But in that brief glance Hilda read all of the few words scrawled on the scrap of grayish paper. Though the writing was crude and blotted the words were fearfully legible. " to blame. I wouldn't ask for money if it wasn't for Harmony. "Yours, Kit." Before the abandoned desk that had yielded up in two blotted lines so violently significant a communica- tion Hilda sat motionless, though bent as if in fear. She looked down at her clasped hands and wondered why they strained so tightly. What could have hap- pened to the world the decent, wholesome world, where friends were trusted and love was given and truth was passed? The Golden Answer 69 As she sat there, all unbidden the clear eyes of Amos Fortune rose before her. She saw them laugh- ing, thoughtful, troubled, fearless. She saw, too, for a moment with marvelous lifelikeness their occasional sudden veiling, as of a curtain drawn, which had always puzzled her, and then a queer, worried, almost shamed look she had once surprised in them. Harmony's eyes were that same brook brown. And their quaint thoughtfulness Alone in the big, stifling, empty office, with the elevated railway trains roaring by outside where the Bridge leaped over the turmoil of the river, Hilda remembered everything he had ever said to her about Harmony. She was the child of a friend who was dead. He had found her accidentally and taken her to bring up, because he considered it his duty to keep her away from her mother's family. Harmony had not, even from before her birth, had a square deal, he said. He was trying to make it up to her. Harmony's brown curls were touched with gold. (Hilda had seen his hair in the sunlight.) Harmony's mouth already had a precocious, tender whimsicality and a growing adverturesomeness, almost comical in her small face, but familiar. Amos Fortune's had that same buccaneering curve when he meant to go out and take what he wanted, and did. Harmony's nose both bold and sensitive; her chin developing a sweet re- liance. Harmony looked enough like Amos Fortune to be his child ! It would be like him such a spiritual para- dox would be exactly like him to find her and take care of her. What had he done? "And what was he about to do? Hilda covered her face with her hands, numb from 70 The Golden Answer their long clasping of each other, and leaning forward on Amos Fortune's desk began to cry. She could not remember when she had cried so. Not, certainly, since she had been a young girl. Then it was because she had lost something, she could not now remember what, but it was rare, it was to her without price. When finally the tears stopped, her head became clearer and she was a little ashamed. She could think. She walked to the window and looked out and up. The sun, low and ruddy, was casting long beams across the Bridge. They fell on something toward the far end of it, which glistened, and dazzled the eyes. The Bridge seemed to lead across to that. She saw him, now, as he had helped her, imper- sonally, over the stepping stones of that brook that gurgled through the marshes. His eyes had been not only clear and true, but kind. That was it just kind eyes, when he had said, "It's a shame that you are shut away from all this. You ought to be free everyone should be free." He had said about that shining Bridge out there: "Isn't it fine and daring? It's the Bridge Across. Everybody builds one to the other side, across the 'tumult and the shouting,' and the great running tides. And it's the craftsmanship that counts the symmetry and strength and permanence." Could a man whose eyes were impersonally kind, even bitterly concerned for someone else's comfort, for the joy of a girl whom he did not love, a man who wanted everyone free to have beauty in his life, be false ? Could a man who knew how hard it was to build a strong and perfect Bridge deliberately destroy, not build? She had never before known what pain was. But out of this anguish at last came something bigger than The Golden Answer 71 the pain, like a tall winged figure of victory, and the name of the winged thing was Faith. Relief and happiness flooded Hilda's heart. She could not yet understand what the scrawled words meant ; but she believed in him. She believed in him ! CHAPTER VII "ON the way from our town to the South Sea House Hilda and I have to pass the Dump. It lies just beyond a salt stream that creeps up into the brick- pink marshlands from the Sound. The Dump is an enormous deposit of refuse of all kinds, that spreads out in high dust-gray ridges for a quarter of a mile along the railroad tracks. Here lie the multiplied relics of human existence in their final stages before dis- solution, and the strange part is that they have prob- ably lasted longer than those who used them. Baby carriages, bird cages, umbrellas, old mattresses, cradles, broken bottles, the shoes from tired feet that have either found rest or learned to walk in different ways, ashes from flaming fires long burned out. Where are the babies who slept in those broken cradles? Have they grown up out of their chubby fairness and found the world a hard, lonely place ? Or are they men who conquer, unafraid and happy? Perhaps they have fluttered out, as the birds have fluttered from the cages. That old umbrella no doubt sheltered lovers, or, even more divine, was shared in charity with an outcast one drenching night. Who made merry over the shattered bottles, and lay dying on the beds? Were the hands that warmed at these thousand fires ministering or destructive? Out of golden life here lies the dross, and rats tunnel through it, or creep, gray and horrid, along the ridges at nightfall. And in this last state of dis- 72 The Golden Answer 73 integrating ugliness the dross finds its way to the sea, as the lives it was part of found, or will find, their way to the Sea in the end. "Some day I'll write an epic of the Dump in prose ! "If there weren't too many things in the world there would not be so many in the Dump-! Sometimes I think there are too many people. They have bred until they swarm, and are harmful to each other. One can see them any day from a high building in the city, crawling and writhing and struggling on the face of the earth. There are so many that to live they must enter into bondage. Instead of enjoying the gorgeous heritage of the earth they must sell themselves, in some fashion, or starve. Some, in exchange for food or shelter, are chained to desks, some to machines, others to counters, in dangerous lofts, in dark basements, in places too hot or places too cold, places to which they, perforce, hideously travel swirling miles, in stolid, lurching masses, suffering and patient, or rendered ugly by the indignities of promiscuous contact, packed together and roaring through tunnels under the earth. Their time, which is their life, is not their own, except time to sleep and feed, or nervously steal from their rest period cheap gayety. Compared with this mole life of millions, work on the land in sunshine and fresh rain is sweet labor. But the land will not support them all. "(What hurts, in this ugly confusion, is the lack of beauty and dignity. This hideous thing, this milling of masses until they are ugly, is not 'Art/ And God, the Creator, is the great Artist also. "Sometimes in the quiet of the night, if the wind is from the south, in summer, the smell of the Dump creeps into our respectable quarter of the town. And I lie in bed thinking of many things, and remember it 74 The Golden Answer decaying there, and the rats in it. I think of the things I have seen in my life. And at that moment I do not love life. The odor, slight though it is, smothers me. I feel the hot breath of millions sighing before a new day. "But the moon rides free in high heaven. . . . Space is there. Ordered beauty is there, eternal and divine harmony. If I can relate myself to that, can do a little to bring beauty into this confusion. ... If I can teach Harmony to do it. ... "One can never be free and escape the Dump and have the fullness of life, but by daring. . . . There were gentlemen adventurers of old. Some had failed many times. They set their faces west. They took up the beautiful hazard. . . . Beautiful, indeed ! What is that about 'new prows to the old Hesperides?' I must get out my old green book," CHAPTER VIII THE summer advanced in splendor. All the Sundays were fair. And on one of these Miss Ware invited Amos Fortune to motor with her. Harmony was going, anyway, to spend the day with Hilda, who had started the custom of an occasional holiday or Sunday visit a year ago, so that Amos would have freedom to be Jeremy Pride without neglecting Harmony. Now this same custom left him free to motor with Christina Ware. When he reached the Hoyle house he found that they two only were to go, in the powerful car which Miss Ware drove with swift skill. He sat beside her with a sense of companionship, and they began a flight to the sea. Christina was crisp and beautiful in her long tan motoring coat, covering a glimpse of yellow, and her close little yellow hat. Her gray eyes looked steadily down the road while her powerful, silent engine ate the miles ; her dim color was heightened by the summer wind. You would have said that her eyes saw delight- ful, tender wonders, but perhaps they saw only the road. . . . However, when she turned now ind then to Amos Fortune, who was inclined to be silent, her lips softened. A tiny, puzzled line showed above her nose. As for Amos, he sat relaxed, with his hat off, his fingers loosely interlaced, and allowed himself to be borne seaward. His eyes often sought the tops of the trees under which they flew, or sometimes a high 75 76 The Golden Answer white cloud that never came any nearer, despite their speed. This was the first time they had been alone together since the night of the play, when he had asked her to be his companion of a mile, and later so abruptly left her. He had thought since, with stale weariness, that he owed her an explanation of that rude leave-taking. But on reflection it had seemed to him to be so clear that any mention of it would be in bad taste. She must have understood and been disgusted. But what- ever she had thought, she had invited him to go with her to the sea. He could not interpret this invitation, unless it was a natural reaction after the going of Philip Dana, and her desire not to be alone with her aunt, or with the Willard girls. That brought him face to face with the fact that she did not mind being alone with him ! He knew that this was the truth. He gave her profile a long look. She turned, and they smiled into each other's eyes. That happened twice, and each time after the involuntary smile, a queer alarm leaped into Christina's eyes. She grasped her steering wheel nervously. Her eyes stared down the road with a plain question in them: "Where am I going to-day?" In the early afternoon, having passed a dozen resorts with glimpses of gay groups of summer colonists, they came to a shabby village which had been left to itself, unsought and unspoiled. Elms met over its one long street. Old houses, under heavy loads of wistaria and woodbine, fell into comfortable dilapidation in the quiet air. One road led from the shady street across open sandy plains toward an indigo sea. Christina took this and presently, on a rise of ground which overlooked the sand dunes, jagged and dauntless, she stopped the car before several small, scattered buildings. The Golden Answer 77 Amos saw that one was a life-saving station, one a tiny church, and one, the nearest and coziest, a gray- shingled cottage under a glowing rambler and with an inn sign swinging in the salt breeze which read, "The Sign of St. Elmo's Fire." Amos turned to the girl beside him. She gave him a questioning glance, almost shy. "I didn't expect such luck as this," he said, adding piously, "may God forgive me! ... Why did you bring me here?" "Because I thought you would like it," Christina answered. "Do;y0Mlikeit?" "I haven't had a chance to know," she said. "Once we took this road by mistake. Everybody was angry because we thought it led to the Sea Lion Inn, and as you see, it doesn't. I started to-day for the Sea Lion, and then I remembered this place so different and I thought I would bring you here." Amos helped her out of the car, and stood looking down at her a moment. "I don't know," he said, "when I have had so pretty a compliment." She looked away. "It was not meant for a compli- ment. ... I wanted to please you." They saw an old Portuguese couple bowing in the doorway of the tiny inn, and entered. The room where they ate faced the sea. The win- dows were open and white curtains flapped in the breeze. The Portuguese fisherman, who had lost a leg in a wreck, he told them, and wore a polished wooden one in its place, served them with fresh fish in inimitable sauce, and crusty bread, and lentil salad. Then they were left alone in the scrubbed, bare room, with the drone of surf coming up to them from 78 The Golden Answer behind the dunes, and the flashing blue expanse of water unfolding its ancient beauty in a miracle of per- petuity ever new. Christina talked lightly at first, as she had on the drive down, except during their intimate silences. But presently she fell silent again, and restless. Also, that alarm lurked in her eyes. She leaned her elbows on the table and stared across at Amos Fortune. "I am going to tell you," she said. "I think you know, but I'm going to have the satisfaction of telling you myself. ... I got from Philip Dana just what I've given to others to men myself. And I most awfully gave myself away, as men have done to me, to my enjoyment. I don't know why it is that I am sure you have understood seen through the whole thing; but you have, haven't you ? And that is why you have been so kind to me! I can't understand that; but I have seen it is so." Amos looked at the white hands making folds in the coarse tablecloth. He knew that the revelation of his own weakness was the cause of her revelation, and that she did not realize it. But he must save her pride, as his had not always been saved for him. His instinct to protect her again leaped up to protect her from her own words, even from himself. So he said, while he was glad, and his eyes showed it: "Now, don't call me kind ! It sounds like an adver- tisement for a reliable old dog: Must be kind with children, and a good protector for ladies." Christina gave in and laughed. "Well, I've told you," she said. "You are a strange man ! Have things your own way." So he did have things his own way. He took her down on the deserted beach and they walked together out where the sand was hard. Amos gathered delicate The Golden Answer 79 pink sea moss to take home to Harmony; Johanna would make it into blancmange, he told Christina, and smiled at her astonishment. They sat on the sand together and listened to the long thunder of the surf. A liner in the distance plowed swiftly eastward. She looked so near one imagined the beat of the great engines. When they came back to the sign of St. Elmo's Fire they saw a few persons going into the gray church. "Let's go in, too," said Amos. "If it's a funeral we can come out again." But it was not a funeral ; it was a wedding. As Amos Fortune and Christina slipped into a back seat the church with its rose-decked altar became even quieter than the road had been. The faint rustle of skirts settled, the hum of a bumblebee in the vines about the open windows, and the fitful swell of surf borne on the light, sweet wind were the only sounds. "Shall we stay ?" he bent to ask her ; and she nodded. There was no music at this country wedding. In a moment a slender girl in white and a big young man took their places in silence before the altar; a white- haired minister faced them with a book. And while the bees and the surf droned he put to them gentle, solemn questions. "Wilt thou love her and comfort her, honor and keep her? . . ." "Wilt thou love, honor and keep him in sickness and in health?" "I take thee, to have and to hold" . . . Amos Fortune listened to their shy answers. A vast beauty brooded over the plain scene, which was an in- finitesimal part of the miracle of life perpetuated by love. The girl and the boy did not know the parts they took in the miracle play ; they only knew their moment 8o The Golden Answer was high. He felt their lives with sudden abundant understanding. Flashingly he saw the girl's babyhood and slim childhood until this supreme moment; and the young man's life, also, up through stout uncon- scious boyhood, the struggle of the half child, half man, to strong, young, steady ripeness when love came and astonished him. If they did not, he, Amos For- tune, poignantly knew their relation to the miracle play. To him this was the first wedding, this was all marriage, and on the ceremonial chant of the breakers breathed the Voice of Eden. He felt Christina beside him, close, and beautiful. While the minister prayed over those now man and wife, he took up the silk scarf she had laid aside and put it around her shoulders. Although she did not need it, and he had draped it awkwardly over her motor coat, she left it there. On a rainy evening in that same summer of splen- dor Amos sat on his narrow veranda after Harmony had gone to bed. The fragrance of the wet garden and of the dark field across the road rose about him. He was lonely. He never yet had sought Christina Ware without a pretext. If he went to her this night it would be because he must go. Against the dark background of the rain he could see her questioning eyes with all the gamut of their inscrutable defiance, their touch of cool calculation, their trusting appeal, their raillery, their strange fear, and one flickering moment of confes- sion. . . . He hurried up the muddy lane, and found her at home. Christina did not know it, but he was tired out. He had worked late under pressure, on horrible figures The Golden Answer 81 that would not go straight, and had lost his usual train, coming home with a crowd, which had obliged him to stand all the way. When he reached home Johanna had a long tale of defective drain pipes and a plumber who could not come until morning, so that he had spent a dreadful hour in the cellar underneath the kitchen sink. But he mended the drain ! Not knowing any of this, Christina wondered at his silence. For he merely presented himself. She saw the outer things that his shoes were muddy and his coat wrinkled from having been wet and dried un- pressed. Her eyes grew troubled, not because of what these things indicated for him but because they did not repel her. She could not imagine why she bothered with this compelling person of the name of Fortune, but once she had begun bothering with him she went right on! She made him splashed from his muddy lane comfortable and welcome in the Hoyle drawing- room, her worry being that she was glad to see him. And when he seemed disinclined to talk she went to the piano. To Amos, who had heard little music lately, and had come to her from his unlovely struggle, this moment held the beauty he had desired. He sat in an arm chair and watched Christina's head bent over her slim hands on the keys. She played for him, wisely, music with pictures in it, a swaying water lily, a stormy scene in a mountain king's hall, a dance of rustics on the green. Finally she drifted into something all clear, swift arpeggios that shimmered on and on under her pliant fingers, and the lightness of it seemed to bear him up. . . . Christina broke off sharply. She came and stood before him, and a hot surge of anger rushed through her. For he was asleep ! The person of the name of 82 Fortune slept in her presence! He sat not ungrace- fully in the too comfortable chair, with his hands loosely clasped before him and his head bowed. His shoulders sagged and his brilliant eyes were closed, while his breathing was that of deep, quiet sleep. She was about to speak her anger, but something stopped her. Christina never knew what it was. It seemed to be outside herself. She stood before him, breathless, while the rain poured outside. The feeling that so rushed through her and shocked her silent was of swift gentleness, and something more moving, un- namable, powerful. . . . The memory of this moment was to come to her later, when she was to watch him sleeping, but never again, until that later time, was the mud on his shoes or the tired line beneath his closed eyes to be of consequence. . . . Now, seeing both with quick, unnatural clarity, she was unbelievably shaken. Her anger slid away, and to her astonishment she bent and laid her hand on his. He started awake, horrified. For an instant he saw her eyes full of softness, and for that instant he clung to her hand. Then he sprang up, and she was laughing at him. He begged her forgiveness with such earnest- ness that she gave it. And when he asked her to play something loud and brilliant she dashed into the "Hun- garian Rhapsody." Her eyes were troubled again, and a little hard, when he left her to go down the lane. After all, it was not Christina's fault that she was not the woman to see at once that he was tired to whom it would occur to bring him a hot drink and send him home to bed. But he clung to her hand just the same. That is ever the strange part ! CHAPTER IX As Christina Ware dressed for the dinner Mrs. Hoyle was giving before the family went away for the summer she smiled at herself in the mirror. The reflected girl smiled back happily but also with un- easiness. She was startled at what she saw there. She slipped her white arms into the new rosy-yellow even- ing gown the idea for which had been suggested by the yellow roses with reddish hearts repeatedly sent her by Amos Fortune and surveyed the result. Then she chose a long, filmy black scarf to carry. The black scarf was the stroke of an artist, for Christina knew the value of her dark brows under her brown-gold hair, and the black flecks in her gray eyes also of the black lashes ! Her cheeks were slowly flushing to-night, for which circumstance she was grateful. It was the cause of the flush, secretly admitted, for Christina never fooled herself if she could help it, that disturbed her, just as her own happy eyes disturbed her. For Mrs. Hoyle had invited Amos Fortune to dinner at Chris- tina's request. "Certainly, my dear, if you want him," she had acquiesced; "but if he comes you've got to treat him decently." "Oh, I'll treat him decently !" Christina had replied in an odd tone. Mrs. Hoyle gave the girl a sharp glance. "I've known you since you were a baby, and you're my own sister's child, but I don't believe I understand you, Christina. I'm in love, myself, with this Fortune man, whom you want at your party ; but when I first 83 84 The Golden Answer met him I didn't think you'd even be polite to him. He isn't your sort, or my sort, either, for that matter. He's he's what is it about him that's different ?" Christina ignored the comparison of herself and Amos Fortune. It interested her that her aunt should confess she did not understand her. We all like to be considered inscrutable. "Don't they say, Aunt Bertha, that to understand another person takes, well love, like a mother's, or God's, or a a good man's ?" she asked slowly. "I'm fond of you, my dear, but I'm neither your mother nor a good man! And certainly I never thought to hear you mention the love of God. Who's next on the list? I wish you'd let me write for Philip Dana." Christina powdered her nose as she remembered that characteristic reply of her aunt. She had never been able to talk with her about anything that mattered much. However, to tell the truth, she seldom had the desire to. If her mother had lived what a gay, warm-hearted girl her picture showed ! or her father, who had been a kind, silent man, would it have been different, she sometimes wondered. She wondered that again, in a fleeting moment, to-night, as she drew the black scarf over her arm, and knew that Amos Fortune would think her beautiful. Though she was ready early she went down late, and greeted him with casual sweetness under the eyes of all the others. She liked his being there, and after his strong handclasp, felt comfortable and lighthearted. It is safe to say that the president of the new Atlantic Seaboard Realty Company, one Mr. Coxe, never knew why she turned upon him such a dazzling smile after she had greeted Amos Fortune, but always thought that he had made a sudden conquest, and paid cheer- The Golden Answer 85 fully for his wife's new yellow gown, bought the fol- lowing week. (But it shaded to lemon, not rose!) Christina's new lightness of heart shone through her smile upon more than one guest It was only with Amos that she was careful. Mrs. Hoyle placed him opposite Christina at dinner, feeling that by not seating them together she washed her hands of responsibility. Christina had, at her right, the new Mr. Coxe, who wore on his bony Roman nose English eyeglasses depending from a black ribbon. Charles Brent was on her left. Her aunt had the treasurer of the new company, who looked, Amos had said to Christina the week before, when she had brought about their meeting, exactly like a figure eight with legs; and on her other side Dr. Allen, the confidant of most persons present except the newcomers. The others were Mrs. Coxe, Nora Willard and young Toynbee. The wives of the other men had gone shoreward. There was grace and fragrance about the scene, if not brilliance. Yellow lilies and velvety heliotrope were the decorations, and the shades of the silver candlesticks were yellow. The round table filled rela- tively a small space in the room. A slight breeze stirred the filmy window curtains. It was scented with heliotrope from the garden. Christina, while she gave Mr. Coxe's booming tones proper attention, and threw a remark now and then to C. M., watched Amos Fortune and listened for his voice in the conversation. He was bending a courteous ear to Mrs. Coxe at first, and later he told a funny story to little Nora Willard, the point of which Chris- tina missed because Mr. Coxe insisted on giving her a tip on the stock market. ( She thought, in parenthesis, that it was extremely bad taste for him to try to adver- 86 The Golden Answer tise his own company at a dinner party.) She was feeling an absurd responsibility for Amos Fortune, though she tried to shake it off, asking herself if she expected him to eat with his knife. It was really the opposite of that sort of responsibility; he seemed to her, suddenly and strangely, above the others ; but she thought he might not talk much here. And when he took his part in the conversation, becoming general as it soon did under the whipping up of one or two of Mrs. Hoyle's crisp sentences, she had a little glow of relieved pride in him. Dr. Allen had referred gravely to the business de- pression, signs of which were in the air. Mr. Hoyle admitted that there was cause for apprehension. "But even if there should be a tightness of money next winter probably no one here would be affected," said Mr. Coxe, removing his glasses, without which he looked less wise. To see him without them was like going behind the scenes at a theatre. "In the last five years we've been busy all over America making money. Everybody has made money, except the fools, and everybody will have enough tucked away somewhere to tide himself and his family over. Always, of course, excepting the fools. I am most optimistic." Amos Fortune leaned forward, smiling. "Then your definition of a fool, Mr. Coxe, is any man who doesn't make money?" "Possibly I'd qualify that. Any American who has not made money in the last ten years is a fool," de- clared Mr. Coxe. "For my part," said Amos quietly, "I am a bit sensitive over the eternal association of the word dollar with the name of American. Most of us prefer something else to dollars ; and I think you can judge a man not by his business in life but by his hobby." The Golden Answer 87 "But think of the swift pace and competition in American business," said the doctor. "Would it exist if we weren't money-loving? What started it? They take business more leisurely abroad." "The tremendous energy of being young and the genius of a few pioneers. And once started, there you have the scramble. No one can slow down unless all do. It's like the detestable crowd in the subway: if you don't push forward with it you don't get the train." "There is always the next train," said Charles Brent, comfortably. "And the same crowd duplicated," Amos replied, "until after the rush hour which takes you out of the realm of business entirely and so isn't in the discus- sion." "Well, there isn't anything practical that can be done about it, is there?" asked Mrs. Hoyle briskly. "I don't know," Amos Fortune replied slowly. "We might all agree to be fools at least some of the time. But we don't agree, and so we keep each other in a kind of slavery, in which we sell ourselves to the high- est bidder, and some of us have no time, others no strength, and finally no desire, to become intimately acquainted with the beauty of the earth we inhabit for a minute or two of eternity. Of course, I'm not the only one who thinks so." "I haven't heard it before," said Christina. "And because you haven't heard it before, Miss Ware," Mr. Coxe seemed to be slowly swelling up with a quality of wisdom one knew he must have patented and receive a royalty on, "you are here in a com- fortable home, eating an excellent dinner, drinking choice wine, wearing a charming gown, not worrying about the future. For the same reason, you have 88 The Golden Answer traveled and seen no doubt at least some of the beauties of the earth." "Yes," faltered Christina, "but I I don't think that's the point exactly." "The point is," marched on Mr. Coxe with heavy thundering, "that you have never tried living with any of these irresponsible people whom Fortune and I seem to agree to call fools. If you should try it you wouldn't like it, Miss Ware. You couldn't stand it log" Christina raised her eyes to reply, and found Amos Fortune looking straight at her. He smiled. "It isn't quite just," he said calmly, "to use Miss Ware as a horrible example. We're all enjoying the immunity of our respective degrees of prosperity. I said we should all have to agree to be 'fools' in order to be 'fools' successfully. In the meantime, somebody must compromise, and gamble with his favorite dream." "Call them hobbies !" interrupted Mrs. Hoyle. "I'm afraid of serious names for things; they make me nervous. And let's compare 'em. Mr. Fortune says we can be judged by our hobbies. Well, mine I've concluded is buying dictionaries. What do you make of that ?" She leaned forward on the table, her sharp bright eyes fixed on Amos. "At first one would say," Amos reflected, "that you must be interested in philology ; but I should like to risk the guess that you can't bear to turn away a book agent. Aha! I got it right. Especially the old man with an invalid wife, or the young one putting himself through college?" "Other people are so clever at getting rid of them," complained Mrs. Hoyle. "I have a shelf containing nothing but dictionaries of 'Facts.' One old lady with The Golden Answer 89 a terrible crape bonnet on a hot day I remember said they were so handy when she wished to write letters of condolence. Not the crape bonnets! The dictionaries ! Now speak up, Benton Hoyle, and admit your carpenter bench." She nodded briskly at her husband, a gray-haired, tired, rather blank-looking man, with an irritable under lip and self -centered eyes. "No one wants to hear about that junk shop, Bertha," he mumbled. "I had a brother," said Amos Fortune, turning to his host, "who always had a tool chest and a carpenter's table in our big old attic. Great place on rainy days ! He made a little model of an airplane, I remember, and once it flew across the meadow. It smashed itself on a tree, and he never could make the others go." "Did he really?" exclaimed Benton Hoyle eagerly, coming to life, his face flushing. "By George ! I made one, too, but it wouldn't fly!" "Well, he never made another, you know," Amos said gently. "And what was your brother's business?" inquired the doctor. "Just by way of making the point," he added, "if we're to judge him and our friend Hoyle by the airplanes and not by that." "He died a month after leaving college," answered Amos briefly. In the little silence that followed that statement the doctor turned smiling to Charles Mowatt Brent. "We all know C. M.'s four hobbies," he said. "Let's embarrass him with them! I should judge the hos- pital came first." "No, it's the Old Ladies' Home I'm one of the directors a compliment I don't appreciate," remarked Mrs. Hoyle. QO The Golden Answer "Hear! Hear!" pleaded C. M. "You can't make anything of that, Fortune. Just a a pastime, I assure you." "Like the airplane," smiled Amos. "Well, he flies highest for the orphan asylum," added Christina, turning on the crimson gentleman. C. M. grinned at her miserably, but with a look at the back of his eyes that made her sorry she had spoken just then. It was the first time the look had made her sorry, which fact is interesting because it was the last time she ever saw it there. Mr. Coxe became animated. "And what is Mr. Brent's fourth hobby?" he inquired. No one answered until little Nora Willard explained serenely: "It's a Refuge for Girls over in the West Forties. They say it's perfectly lovely, but Mother won't let me visit there. It's all fixed up with chintz and canary birds. What would that indicate, Mr. Fortune?" "Oh, say," burst out C. M. almost savagely, "per- sonalities are odious! I didn't think it of you, Mrs. Hoyle. It's someone else's turn, anyhow." Christina leaned forward to speak to Amos Fortune, who was sitting with his eyes on his plate. He had not answered Nora Willard. "Have you a hobby?" she asked, without calling him by name. He lifted an abstracted glance, but spoke with ironic lightness: "The theory breaks down, because at present mine is business." After dinner Christina saw Amos only twice before he came to bid her good-night. They had no talk to- gether. And she could not understand. At one of these times she and Mr. Coxe came upon Amos and C. M. smoking in the pergola. The Golden Answer 91 "I like that little Martin girl you introduced me to," she heard C. M. say to Amos, as she slowly ap- proached, followed by Mr. Coxe. "Went to see her the other night that hot Monday took her and her mother for a ride." "You'll find," said Amos Fortune quietly, "that there aren't many like her." Both men turned, as Christina stood there in the moonlight with the black scarf over her arm. Mr. Coxe was at her elbow. She had seen their faces soften when they spoke of Hilda, and then both stiffened into a peculiar self-defensive blankness as they turned to her. It was only for a moment. She would not, once, have noticed it. In an instant C. M. was his jolly self again, his need for armor over forever, had Christina known. But Amos did not change. And it came about that it was C. M. and not Amos with whom she walked down into the garden, and Mr. Coxe who stayed talking with Amos Fortune. Christina was glad, anyway, that the men liked him. Mr. Coxe laid up no hard feeling over their difference of opinion, it seemed. When she returned to the pergola after vainly trying to get C. M. to talk about this outsider, Hilda Martin, Mr. Coxe and Amos were deep in a business talk and most evidently did not care to be interrupted. "Boom- ing his own company again," thought Christina with scorn. She listened a moment to his rounded periods upon the subject of its soundness, and as she and C. M. walked away she heard Amos answer eagerly : "I'll do it it's a chance I can't afford to miss. You'll get a check to-morrow." Her heart quickened a little. She had not known he had any money to invest. At last he came to say good-night to her with quiet 92 The Golden Answer friendliness. That sweet, strange well-being pervaded her again, as impossible of control and involuntary, as unreasoned as the coursing of blood in the veins, to be followed by flatness and the thought of Hilda Martin, whom there were not many like. For he went off in a matter of fact way with C. M. She loved his friendli- ness, which she could count on, somehow she knew, in any need, but she had been allowed glimpses of some- thing else. When the guests had all gone home, and left the house still, wrapped around by the quiet night, Chris- tina, avoiding a talk with Mrs. Hoyle, went out of doors, down into the garden, where roses were faint white spots and fragrant heliotrope became black velvet in the unearthly whiteness. She felt as if she had never seen the garden before, or the moon and stars, or the tall poplars waving plumily in the night sky. She had never before seen the beauty of the earth! It was as if, too, she had never felt anything before, and her mind quivered with new sense impres- sions. Unrest and misery laid hold on her, also sur- prise and rage at herself. Surely the Discreet Princess was becoming indiscreet During all these weeks she had been smarting from the desertion of Philip Dana, and wildly striking out for something else, some amusement. And what had she got? Amusement certainly! She drew the black scarf around her throat and fled down a path to the far end of the garden, a quiet spot, beyond which was a wandering, lonely lane. Leaning against the old fence that here edged the garden she covered her face with her hands as if the unspoken words pursued her to look her in the eyes and demand an answer. And behind them in a shadowy cluster, waiting to surge forward to attack her were the ranks The Golden Answer 93 of fear. What if he did not love her ! And if he did what! A slight wind stirred the leaves, causing a soft smell of grass to arise, and with it floated to her the fragrance of tobacco. She lifted her head and stood motionless. Another figure, in the shadow of a silvery beech, was leaning against the fence, on the outside. A rusty gate was between them. When she looked up the figure moved forward. She saw that it was Amos Fortune, and was flooded with joy. "Don't be frightened," he said quickly. "It's I. Is anything the matter?" Christina looked up at him and trembled. "I don't know." He put his hand on the gate. "May I come in?" She nodded. But the gate was fastened with a rusty padlock. "Oh it's locked!" whispered Christina vaguely. She saw him put his foot on the rail and leap over and come to her. . . . "What are locks ?" he was laughing. The breeze floated the filmy black scarf about her and the sweetness of heliotrope stole out. She lifted her hands to her lips to steady them. Standing close, he gathered up the long scarf and crushed his face into its folds. And then, when he raised his brilliant eyes to hers she saw. . . . She felt his arms holding her, and abandoned everything but the beauty of the earth. CHAPTER X IN the old days, before the coming of the Discreet Princess, Amos and Harmony often spent the even- nings, before her bedtime, over books. When the child was very little she had been an adorable baby Amos had made himself familiar with Tom, the son of a piper, with Daffy-down-dilly, the Queen of Hearts, and many other delightful people. In those days how near they seemed sometimes! every night the tiny thing would drag her "Old Mudder Goose" from the bottom shelf by the fireplace and put it invitingly into his lap. Later, when she was learning to read, for he taught her himself before she went to school, she would read aloud to him while he lay on the old sofa before the fire, grinning over the sound of the small delicious voice spelling out "Red Hooding," as she called the child who visited her grandmother so dis- astrously. Before long she was able to manage grown- up books, so that when Amos came home with two's and seven's and eight's dancing before his eyes she could read to him the books he loved. After she had tried it which he first let her do for fun she was allowed to continue the custom, for there were two separate joys in hearing Harmony read : her delicious interpretations, and the books themselves, which she never spoiled. These books were, although Harmony did not know it, characteristically and amazingly catholic. The small house was crammed with books that had come down to Amos Fortune, as well as with those of his 94 The Golden Answer 95 own selection. For all that, and in spite of "Jeremy Pride," one could not call him a bookish man. He loved action better than the dream of action. And there is a kind of golden, Elizabethan adventure of the soul that transcends mere earthbound buccaneering. After the return of the Discreet Princess into their lives there was, indeed, more action, less dreaming and reading. More hours of money getting, and more of golden living, caused the quiet evenings to dwindle when Amos and Harmony turned the years back and spent time lavishly on small delights, as it used to be spent not wasted when there was more of it than there is now. So there came the evening that was the night before a great day. On this evening Amos had been told that he could not go to Christina not for long; he had stolen a few remembered moments. Then he had sub- mitted with quiet amusement, even rich content. There would be so many days to come ! And on this evening he and Harmony returned involuntarily to old custom. He stretched himself on the wide and faded sofa the chintzes, thanks to Johanna, though faded were always exquisitely fresh; and Harmony sat down on her four-legged "cricket," her favorite seat. This was their first fire of the year. The smoky coolness of autumn was in the air. "Peaseblossom," said Amos, patting her brown, plump hand that lay beside him, "get a book and read to me." "What do you think you would like to-night, !#mos?" she inquired. He half shut his eyes at the fire. "A book about voyaging, I think, my dear. A! book about those who went to seek adventure and their life's happiness. There's one," he pointed, "that old, fat, 96 The Golden Answer green thing on the bottom shelf sea green!" he laughed. Harmony pulled the book of voyages from its shelf and opened it on the lap of her short brown dress. Bending her head over the pages so that her curls hung forward she read in her high voice that had never ceased to be delicious. She pointed to the words with one forefinger, while Amos stroked her other hand and smiled at the ceiling. It was all as it used to be. " 'If Paradise/ " read the little voice, emphasizing certain words with prodigious wisdom, " 'were really on the surface of this world, is there not many a man, among those who are so keen to learn and search out everything, that would not let himself be deterred from reaching it ? When we see that there are men who will not be deterred from penetrating to the ends of the earth in search of silk, and all for the sake of filthy lucre, how can we believe that they would be deterred from going to get a sight of Paradise!" " "How can we indeed !" Amos murmured. Harmony's voice went on ; the small fire leaped and snapped ; the light glowed and flickered. " 'There are great indications/ " continued Harmony in a meticulous and conversational tone, " 'of this being the terrestrial Paradise, for its site coincides with the opinion of the holy and wise theologians whom I have mentioned; and moreover, the other evidences agree with the supposition, for I have never either read or heard of fresh water coming in so large a quantity, in close conjunction with the water of the sea; and if the water of which I speak does not proceed from the Earthly Paradise, it appears to be still more marvelous, for I do not believe that there is any river in the world so large or so deep. 1 ' "Harmony," interrupted Amos, "there is no other The Golden Answer 97 , river so large and deep ! For as long as men seek far, for fair things, the world is a beautiful and adventur- ous place." "Yes, Amos," replied Harmony, placid and happy, and herself staring with brilliant brown eyes at the flames. She read on, through the evening, here and there in the fat, sea-green volume, words from the quills of many gentlemen adventurers, who had, in truth some of them not sought fair things, but had most of them gone most hazardously to seek Cathay. Now the tale was of "divers very rich countries, both civil and others . . . where there is to be found great abundance of gold, silver, precious stones, cloth of gold, silks, all manner of spices. . . . and other kinds of merchandise of an inestimable price," such as ladies of great beauty were wont to receive from the adven- turers ; and now it was of less gorgeous things, trouble, and disastrous voyages. " 'The frigate was near cast away', 5 ' Harmony pro- nounced pleasantly, " 'oppressed by waves, yet at that time recovered. ... So it is, fortune favors some to live at home to their further punishment; 'tis want of judgment.' ' Amos ceased to smile. "That's not so pretty, is it, Mustardseed? Better skip to the end of the book. There ought to be some- thing of 'Gloriana' in all this ! It was for her so much was risked. "My dear little girl," he added tenderly, as Harmony turned the pages with diligence, "do you know how much I love you?" "Yes," said Harmony. "And do you know how happy you've made me ?" "Uh-um," Harmony repeated. 98 The Golden Answer "I couldn't love you any more or any less !" "I'm very glad of it," said Harmony, with a bright smile. Amos gave a short laugh and shaded his eyes from the fire, turning away from the child. After fluttering many leaves she went on, anxious to please him. "Here's a place to begin. It's in the back of the book." "Very well just one more. What have you chosen?" he said after a silence. The brown curls hung forward again over the open pages. Amos Fortune still shaded his eyes. He did not look at her. " 'When we once come in sight of the port of death, to which all winds drive us, and when by letting fall that fatal anchor which can never be weighed again, the navigation of this life takes end ; then it is, I say, that our own cogitations (those sad and severe cogita- tions, formerly beaten from us by our health and felicity) return again and pay us to the uttermost for all the pleasing passages of our lives past.' ' "Harmony!" cried Amos. He reached out his hand quickly and drew her to him, crushing her rosy cheek against his own. "You darling ! Come and kiss me !" She wound her slim arms around his neck, and kissed his ear. "I choose you for mine !" she said. Harmony could make the most satisfactory speeches. Then the fat, sea-green volume was put back on its shelf, not to be taken down again for many a month. Long afterward Amos remembered their manner of spending that last evening before the great day. CHAPTER XI THE night when Christina Fortune, once known as the Discreet Princess, but now surely undeserving of the name, went to live in the small, nonconforming house in the lane of contrasts, with one of those per- sons against whom the thundering Mr. Coxe had warned her, was a windy, rainy, raw example of the worst autumn can do in the North Temperate zone, not at all the sort of evening one would select upon which to return from a wedding journey. Amos and Christina did not select it. They would have stayed happily in the mountains, but there were exactions exercised by the New Firm as well as by the old, murky South Sea House. Amos had to come back to earn that new salary which was to make all things possible. Christina was, perhaps, more willing to return than Amos, because she was more practical. She had a lively interest in his success with the Atlantic Seaboard Realty Company, for upon that had depended her consent to this strange sudden marriage of hers. They had had two talks on this subject, one before the mar- riage and one after. In them she had revealed an odd combination of practicality, and a lack of personal responsibility in his success or failure. She expected him to succeed ; but that was his affair. "You know, dear," he told her as they sat under the rose-colored lamp, on the davenport where he had talked with her in his Fool's motley, and so suddenly disappeared, bells and all, "I'm as poor as Job. ... Do you suppose he ever did have a turkey?" 99 ioo The Golden Answer "Why why, I don't know," she stammered in amazement, and then laughed. "I'll look that reference up sometime. Sounds in- teresting, doesn't it? More like a darky story than the Bible. I knew an old slave, once, called Uncle Job " "Amos!" "Yes, dear." "What were you going to say?" "Oh, yes. . . . Well, I'm as poor as Job's turkey, Christina." "I don't believe you really are," she looked at him speculatively. "You don't seem poor." "I know you mean that for a compliment, so accept my thanks, Princess." "Haven't you any money? I thought " "What did you think?" "I've heard that you have gone into Mr. Coxe's new company, as a stockholder, and with a salaried position besides." "That's true. I have. But I haven't so very many shares of stock, though I put in all the money I could scrape together. It seems like a very good thing." "Yes, Uncle Benton thinks so, and he likes Mr. Coxe, though he hasn't known him long." "Your uncle is a successful business man, carpenter shop and all." "You will have the dividends, and your salary. Is that good ?" "It's better than the South Sea House." She let a pause fall there, and he knew, uncom- fortably, that she expected to know the figure. She ought to know ; he expected to tell her ; but he hated to read the rather eager question in her eyes, and to see them disappointed at the low figure he mentioned. The Golden Answer 101 "But it will increase," he hastened. "It would have to," she stated clearly. "I have a little of my own, but " "We will count that out, Christina," he replied as clearly. "Oh, why? If I want to use it for extra clothes, for instance ? Don't be foolish." "But it must be 'extra'." He suddenly reflected that Christina was the sort of woman with whom one could not imagine putting things on a business basis. A man might easily marry Hilda Martin and agree to go fifty-fifty with no loss of self-respect. But not Christina. "It is small to begin on, but with the stock going up and your salary increasing, we sha'n't be poor long. I expect a lot of you, Amos." "Darling, I've already given you all I have." And when they talked of worldly things again, toward the end of the wedding journey, she said: "Yes, it's terrible to leave, but aren't you eager to begin to make your fortune? Don't you want to start work for my new house ?" "All yours?" "Ours," she whispered delightfully. "But, really, Christina," he said, after appropriately silencing the whisper, "I like the small house. I'd hate to leave it." "We sha'n't be moving right away." Her voice was a trifle dry, and it was half an hour -before he rose above the sudden feeling of flatness its tone had caused. The small house, with all its lamps and candles lighted and the fire blazing on the library hearth, shone like a clear, warm heart ready to take them in. Its shabby places seemed to have vanished. The charming 102 The Golden Answer old chintz curtains were immaculate. The sofa before the fireplace, covered with the same delightful, small- figured pattern of chintz, seemed no longer dilapi- dated, but had become a softly colored seat for two. The mahogany secretary gleamed its richest tones, and told no secrets, no histories of defeat, compromise, or struggle. The one thin Eastern rug was speckless, and had absorbed all color into its depth of blue and rose and gold. When Amos Fortune brought Christina, beautiful and glowing, too, into his house, and taking her damp coat from her shoulders saw her raise her arms and remove her hat and stand there at home, he felt that this was a miracle done in a latter day. It could not be that he was to keep her! But there she stood, very real, very wifelike, before his fire, with the light of it on her hair, smiling at him, much at home. Harmony welcomed them, with old Johanna in the background. Harmony, in her prettiest white dress, was flushed and shy ; Johanna gray and starched but smiling. Harmony, amazed, too, that the Discreet Princess was here at home, smiled into Christina's eyes. "I'm glad Amos brought you," she whispered. "I wanted him to." "You're a welcome sight, ma'am," said Johanna. "I've a bite and sup on the back of the stove." Christina was at her best that evening of their return. If it is true that the human soul is most nearly perfect when it gives and dares most, that may be the reason. For she had, from her aunt's and her own point of view, gone madly and blindly to this marriage with a man who, though probably better born this was a suspicion unmentioned between her and Mrs. Hoyle was not their "sort," who was poor, and had made only the merest start in the world represented by The Golden Answer 103 her uncle and Mr. Coxe and, more vaguely, "Wall Street." He had, moreover, queer, lovable, quixotic ways of doing things, such as bringing up little girls left orphaned by his friends, and of writing something or other, mostly in the middle of the night. It can with truth be claimed that Christina had been venture- some. And perhaps that was the reason for her great beauty on one other night here to be recorded. She had loved and dared. No more can be said of the daughters of the prophets or of the sons of God. She sat on the chintz sofa leaning forward with her hands clasped they were strong, white hands, capable but unused the fire illuminating her softened face, her black-flecked gray eyes tender, the dim rose in her cheeks. "I have brought you home," said Amos. "But I had to come !" she returned. "Up to the last I didn't dream I'd do it. I thought we were both mad." "What do you think now?" "I don't understand and I don't care ! I want to be with you, whatever happens." "Nothing can happen. I have taken you." "You don't know me very well," said Christina slowly. "I can't always be like this. I don't stay on the heights." "No one does. That's in the school psychologies. That's why there's no such thing as a long lyric ! But you can have a series of lyrics. Don't you know yet it's all of you I love? And at all times that you are you? . . . But there will be times when you won't love me! I am afraid, darling, I don't know much about making a woman happy. It's a long time since I have even talked to a woman, except Johanna and Hilda Martin." IO4 The Golden Answer "You have never told me," Christina said, taking his hand, the long, fine hand Hilda had touched only once, "about your mother, or whether you have a sister. You have never told me really anything at all about your family. I don't know much about you, either." "I've told you one thing," he answered in a low voice. "You know, at least, about the horrible old boy who owned that secretary. Grandfather Amos For- tune the devil rest his soul! And the pity of my only brother. ... I worship you for not minding that." "Which is all over now and probably exaggerated, anyway." He kissed her passionately. "I never knew my mother or father," he said, gently answering her question after a moment, looking down at her hand in his, "and I never had a sister. Perhaps it is just as well. My brother died at twenty- two." "You have been lonely." Christina's voice shook with the depths of her regret for the years when she had not been with him. "Yes, sometimes." "But you are never going to be lonely again. Amos keep me here always, like this !" He took her in his arms again, and laughed exultantly. "Darling Gloriana! You funny girl. A wife usually comes to stay." They had forgotten the wildness of the wet night. But as they sat and talked before the fire the rain began to dash on the windows of the warm room and a bough of the copper beech thrashed against the side of the house. The wind raged down the lane, which they could hear flowing with a river of flood The Golden Answer 105 water, and whined around the chimney. Occasionally drops of water hissed on the red coals of their pro- tected fire. They sat with their arms around each other. Chris- tina, since his laughing protest, was sunk in indolent content. But Amos had turned grave. "Christina," he said finally, after having listened to the storm in silence for some time, "try to understand what I mean, even though I don't speak very clearly! I have told you something about the part of my life before I knew you and it was most of it disagreeable. If I have left anything untold and I have it is because, of several injustices and wrongs, there is none that can be set right by being made known now even to you! There is none that doesn't involve other people besides ourselves; and that is why I have not told you quite everything. This way is fairer to you, and to others and I even think to me ! ... Will you try to trust me?" "Yes," answered Christina, laying her cheek against his arm. "I won't be Elsa! If I should question you, you might vanish with a swan !" Later they went around their house to lock it for the night. Johanna was in her little room over the kitchen; Harmony in hers over the porch, next to Amos's. One by one they tried the windows and doors and put out the rosy-yellow lights and banked the fires their fires that gleamed rose-yellow, too, like Christina, Amos thought. She moved beside him softly, subdued and happy. They came last into the kitchen, which Johanna had left spotlessly white and yellow, and they laughed together over shaking down the stove once more im- proving on Johanna's fire. Amos said he knew all about how to regulate dampers and shovel coal, and io6 The Golden Answer Christina marveled and said she could never learn, so it was lucky that they had Johanna. "It's easy," he mocked at her. "You see that pipe goes up the chimney, and this damper follows the line of its own handle right across the pipe. Be logical, my girl ! Do you want the draft from the chimney or do you not? You do not; turn the damper so. And you shut the lower door. Don't look so puzzled ; you won't have to do it !" "I never could," Christina laughed. "And horrors ! there's the furnace ! Does it work the same ?" He laughed back at her. "The general theory is the same, with variations, according to the direction of the wind, the atmospheric pressure, and the temperature of the day. Dismiss the furnace from your mind ; that's my job." "Not Johanna's?" "Furnace coal is heavy," said Amos. "And Johanna's hair is white." "Oh." Christina, after a pause, looked at the floor. "How clean it is she must scrub it every day." "Probably heaven bless Johanna !" Christina sparkled. "You have found one woman who will scrub floors for you, if I don't know about stoves. I'll soon be jealous of my husband whom every woman loves !" "You may well be jealous of Johanna I'm in love with her, and so is Harmony, and you will be." Christina walked to the white curtained cupboard and looked at the rows of yellow and blue cups Johanna's kitchen ware; other rows of yellow bowls of graded sizes, little fat pitchers, round blue plates, all shining. The Golden Answer 107 "I hope Johanna will stay!" she said. "They are very pretty, but I shouldn't like to wash them." "No," said Amos, "it doesn't go with you, not with Gloriana. Now if I had been a woman I should have been just plain Jane. It's an awful confession but I believe I should rather have liked to polish blue plates and yellow bowls and set them on white shelves." "You ridiculous man! You plain Jane! You who are are Well, I'm in love with you !" The rain had slackened a little and the wind was dying. They could hear the flood water still running down the lane. The night was not so wild, but there was, just outside their door, a dripping desolation. Beyond the bright kitchen that enclosed their happiness what miseries might not the wind toss about in the darkness, what homelessness and degradation, what lost sad state ? "You need never wash nasty yellow bowls; I sup- pose you refer to cake bowls I've been known to lick them!" Amos whispered into his wife's ear. There was a heavy step on the path outside the kitchen door, and then slowly it sounded on the veranda, twice. They lifted their heads to listen. "Who can it be?" whispered Christina. "Awful night to be out!" said Amos. Then while they listened, the person who had taken the step knocked on the kitchen door. "Don't go !" Christina clutched at him. She was not afraid of what might be outside. She feared the in- terruption. "Certainly I shall go," Amos answered. "Then I'll go too." They opened the door together. The light from the kitchen shone out onto the black, gleaming porch, io8 The Golden Answer revealing the figure of a wet and shabby man whose vague blue eyes blinked in the sudden illumination that streamed upon him, a man who had not shaved his gray beard for at least a week, whose shoulders hunched and whose feet, if one accidentally glanced at them, were quite unspeakable ; surely not a man to be feared. He cleared his throat and took something wet, pre- sumably his hat, from his head, too humbly. "Saw the light," said he, too thickly. "Could y' give a poor man the price of a meal, say ?" The water dripped from his short buttoned coat, and a sudden dash of rain fell behind him, while the flood ran gushing down the lane to the less respectable, the wholly unrespectable, end of it. The man stood looking into the yellow and white kitchen. He was not a savory or romantic tramp. He was a somewhat fur- tive, wholly disheartening object Christina's reaction, after being startled, was rapid. It took the form common enough of irritation. "No !" she said sharply as Amos drew in his breath to speak. "Go away, at once! Go to the Salvation Army." And she shut the door in the object's face. She and Amos looked at each other before the closed door, the echo of whose slam it had almost been that seemed forever in dying away. They heard the man, after a too abject pause, shuffle off the veranda, and begin to slop down the path. Still their eyes held. She said finally: "Begging around at doors like that -suppose I'd been here alone ! there's the City Mis- sion, and and the Salvation Army to help people who are worthy." Amos smiled at last. She thought it had taken him a long time. The Golden Answer 109 "I don't believe he was worthy at all," he conceded with some humor. "But I was thinking maybe he was married once!" "What?" she gasped. "Go upstairs, Christina," ordered Amos. "I'm going after him." After one look into her husband's eyes, Christina, to her own astonishment, obeyed him. At the door she turned back. "He'll drip all over the clean floor, and Johanna's hair is white," she emphasized with indolent amuse- ment. "Go away," smiled Amos. She turned, and he ran out into the rain. The object completely ruined Johanna's floor, and washed, horribly, in the woodshed sink. He gulped much coffee, and ate nothing, and went off without the price of a meal, but with blue eyes less vague, though dumb and puzzled. He had in his pocket the address of the Salvation Army, and in his dim brain directions as to how to find the way there. He slopped down Amos Fortune's path up the hill, against the flood. Amos washed his own hands and face and brushed his clothes before going upstairs. This done, he went up to his room, which Christina had found alone, and to the chair where she sat by the window, and bent over her. He looked into her clear eyes puzzled and worried, yet sweet saying: "He's gone now, dear." CHAPTER XII WHEN the suburban train pulled in at the Bramford station Saturday afternoon a month after their return, Amos, through the crowd, saw Christina waiting for him on the platform. She wore a gray Jersey sport suit, a yellow scarf, and a fluffy gray beaver hat pulled down over her rippling hair, heavy walking shoes and gray gauntlet gloves. She was not the only woman on the platform but she was by far the most beautiful, and the only one dressed for a part. Amos saw that she was going to walk with him into the country. He watched her dark eyes search for him among the returning husbands, and change when she saw him. They had changed like that when she saw him at their wedding. He often thought of their look then, as he did of the wedding itself in the small village church on a sparkling autumn afternoon. All of it that was real was Christina's grave gray eyes beneath her lovely brows, under her veil, their long, curious, detached look. He remembered the enigma of them often. It seemed, sometimes, to sym- bolize the enigma of the female, questioning him solemnly from behind the veil of its long shadowy past of alternating slavery and power, or merely the enigma of one woman whose contradictions might drive a man to distraction. When he joined Christina on the platform she slipped her hand through his arm. "We're going for a country walk," she told him. "You had your lunch in town, didn't you?" "Yes. Where's Harmony?" no The Golden Answer in "She has a cold. Remember how she sneezed at breakfast? Johanna is doctoring her, and she's read- ing by the fire. Now, don't worry! Shall we walk out the lake road, my good-looking-husband-who-is- getting-a-scowl ?" Amos smiled. "It's the lake road. Did those bot- tomless trousseau trunks yield that charming costume ? Christina, you forgot no possible scene we might play in. Those clothes sprang full armed from the brain of somebody for the meeting and subjection of a com- muting husband Saturday noon in the autumn coun- try." "Subjection! Excellent. I think I remember your ripping out one or two orders not long since." They took the main street that led to the lake road. Other people had seized upon this as possibly the last pleasant Saturday of the fall and were setting out in automobiles or on foot. Christina and Amos nodded or waved to their friends. But they preferred the lonely walk to the crowded country club, which Amos had joined. "Whom do you suppose I saw on the street this morning?" she asked him demurely, as they swung along. When he could not guess she told him: "Our tramp! He was all spruced up, and shaved, and perfectly sober. Even his shoes were shined. And he was delivering parcels for Bennett & Briggs. What do you think of that?" "Why, I'm glad," said Amos, finding himself mys- teriously embarrassed. She walked in silence, and then confessed charm- ingly: "I was sorry about that, dear. I shouldn't have done what I did. And yet, it seems queer." She lifted her eyes to his. "After all, we both sent him to the same place, where he got help/' H2 The Golden Answer "How do you know we sent him to the same place?" "I I stopped him this morning and asked him. Yes, I did. Had quite a talk in the public square ! He was awfully Heepish," she laughed. "I have a swap for you. He said you were a 'lovely gentleman.' ' "Let us hope he'll keep his shoes shined," returned Amos, grimly. Amos was to remember this afternoon. The day was one of the last of Indian summer, when the fields, already brown, were hung with a purple veil and tinted with yellow and scarlet. And the graceful presence by his side was like a new, hitherto unknown color, decorative and gay. He thought of the time when he had told her, half in earnest, that he wanted a com- panion of a mile, and never dreamed that she would walk these miles with him, so sweetly. They took the marsh path where he had walked with Hilda Martin. The brown velvety rushes, the shining pale green reeds, the burning sumac were celebrants in the pageant of the passing of the year. As if he were the master of the pageant they found Truebee Lark walking the marsh path. He uncovered his silvery head when he saw Christina with Amos Fortune. Amos stopped him. "Mr. Lark," he said, "you have grown yellow roses for her, so you must know her. This is my wife." Truebee had been gazing at them like some surprised bird with its feathers ruffled. Now he looked up into Christina's face, for he was shorter than she. His old cheeks creased into a reluctant smile, his black eyes grew keen. "It's a pleasant work to adorn young beauty. Most of my flowers live for that, and I bring them into life. Are you very happy, my dear ?" "Yes," murmured Christina, astonished. The Golden Answer 113 "Let me tell you something," went on the old man, still more astonishingly. "Beware of decisive moments that seem unimportant." He took Amos Fortune's hand. "I hope it will be worth it. ... Give my love to Harmony." He left them standing in silence. But when he had gone a few steps farther along the marsh path he turned. "My sister Zinnia," he called back, "wants to rent the top floor of her miserable city house it's really the attic. If you know a poor man, or a woman for that matter, Zinnia would be glad to er enter into negotiations with him or her." Amos promised to be on the lookout for such a per- son, and the little man walked on, his head still absently uncovered, toward a vale of crimson sumac. Christina rubbed her cheek, into which more color had sprung. "I don't like that old man! I thought you said he was delightful. I think he's odious." "He certainly was eccentric to-day," Amos looked troubled. "He is usually so gentle !" "Have you the least idea what he was talking about ? It had a 'Beware the Ides of March !' effect." "No, my pretty -wife -who -is -learning-to-scowl," Amos laughed. But Truebee's ill-chosen and inscrutable small talk did not darken the day. When they reached the brook, that carried on its crystal surface many leaves, shining wet, bearing them away in a tiny, brave armada, down the long waterway of the wood toward the wide river and the wider sea, they stopped, while Amos pointed out to Christina the stones that made the easiest cross- ing. This was the brook at whose stepping stones he 114 The Golden Answer had given Hilda Martin his hand; but he did not remember. At the left of the crossing was a deep, still pool made by the backwater of an eddy. He caught sight of Christina's reflection in it, gray like the water, with a flash of gold ; he could even see the dim crimson in her cheeks. He stopped and looked at the woman in the water, and then brought out rich words from his prodigious memory: " 'She was within all nature everywhere, The breath I breathed, the brook, the flower, the grass, Were her, her word, her beauty, all she was.' ' She turned sweet eyes to him. "Do I seem like that to you, Amos ?" "Yes." "But just my looks?" "You! apart from what you do, I sometimes think. That's the mystery." "Yes," said Christina slowly. And they stood look- ing at each other. A bright leaf from a maple red as cinnabar above her head fluttered down, caught in her soft hat brim and floated to the ground. "I am glad you feel that way. It makes me safe, and happy. Amos dear, they say it isn't a good thing to be sure of anyone, but I hope you won't change just on principle! You see, I feel sure of you! Perhaps you ought not to let me. I feel as if, if the sky were falling, you would hold up a little piece with one hand and draw me under it, too, with the other. Do you think you ought to let me be so sure ?" 'Til risk it!" Her eyes fell and, stooping, she picked up the ver- milion leaf and put it in the buttonhole of his coat. The Golden Answer 115 "Do you think there is really a mystery ? You think love isn't plain?" "What do you think?" "I think jye both are going to learn a great deal. Now, shall we cross this brook ?" He led the way and she kept close behind his foot- steps on the stones. He drew her up the farther bank, and when they stood together he kissed her. She laughed slightly, and shut her eyes for an instant to clear a mist in them. Then she took his hand and let him lead her through the wood. CHAPTER XIII AT five o'clock one fall afternoon, not long after the return of Amos Fortune and Christina, Hilda Martin was getting ready to leave the South Sea House. She still called the old bank that, privately. Many little incidents had happened there since Amos's leaving, that he could easily have turned into more Prismatic Banking papers had he known about them. She had thought of keeping notes herself, which she would perhaps some day turn over to him. For to her astonishment her desire to be of some con- crete help to him, and of course to Harmony, had not automatically ceased with the date of his wedding. But the notes as yet were nothing more than scraps of paper scrawled over with a few penciled lines and crammed into her pocketbook. For example: "Captain Joel Mayo's own son, Ethan, has fore- closed the mortgage on the Seagull. Ethan Mayo has taken her himself beyond the Arctic Circle and Captain Joel says a Danish woman with pounds of frowsy yellow hair is with him. Captain Joel has gone to the Sailors' Home, where he has a room about eight feet square with nothing in it but a cot, one chair, and a photograph of the Seagull. All he says is that Ethan was such a neat little boy, he doesn't see how he can stand that hair!" Hilda smiled as she pulled out that scrap of soiled paper, unfolded it to see what it was, and stuffed it back into her purse again. "Amos could write that quite perfectly some day I'll give it to him," she 1 16 The Golden Answer 117 thought, and then remembered that since she never saw him any more it might be that such a simple thing as that would be impossible! She pulled on her gloves, threw a glance at the patch of sky visible above the Bridge to see what the weather was, and emerged, with a crowd of dusty and blinking fellow creatures, into the blue light of the fall afternoon and the turmoil of the streets under the giant Bridge. To Hilda the Bridge meant her father and other "gentlemen unafraid" men who won in battles of all sorts. Now she looked up at it once, darted across the street before a team of brewery horses, cut behind a taxicab, and made for the opposite curbing. What she actually had in mind at the moment when the big siren horn shrieked in her ear was the time Amos probably got home from the office of the New Firm, and where he took the subway. . . . Besides the deafening siren she heard several people shout, including, from the curbstone, rusty little Mr. Dibbon of the Bank, whose voice she had scarcely ever heard above a whisper. She wondered if there were an accident, and swung around to the right just in time to clasp the radiator of a big, deadly-quiet motor car and dance backward with it a few steps to keep from falling under it. Then she and the car stopped, and she found herself laughing shakily up into the white face of the man leaning over the wheel as if he would hold the car back with the strength of his hands. The man was Charles Mo watt Brent. "Good God!" shouted C. M. above the uproar, "is that your usual method of crossing the street, Miss Martin?" He got out of the car and came to where she stood ; he felt of both her arms as if to see if any bones were n8 The Golden Answer broken. She shook her head silently all at once with- out any reason, voiceless. A crowd began to gather, and the big car was block- ing traffic. A very large policeman was hurrying toward them with wrath in his eye. He seemed to be biting back profanity as he gesticulated, for all he said was, with crushing sarcasm, "Here, you guy, take the lady around the corner to apologize ! And be damned quick about it. This ain't no park bench." "Get in," said C. M. to Hilda in a low tone, knowing better than to talk back to the law. "I was looking for you, though not with murderous intentions." Under the eyes of the crowd, which was glutton- ously interested in this turn of events and too free with an interchange of winks, he helped her into the great throbbing car. Hilda saw old Mr. Dibbon walk away with a worried look, and some of the girls from the bank give her envious, some shocked, glances. She sighed (wishing that the world were higher-minded) as she settled down beside Charles Brent and was wrapped in his rug by his large, strong hands. And then, having a sense of humor, she laughed. The laugh delighted Mr. Brent. When he had, in obedience to the traffic ordinance, whisked her around the corner, he slowed down again. "You game little thing!" he exclaimed. "I was all ready to offer you my hankey. Sure you're not going to cry?" "Perfectly sure!" she promised, "and, anyhow, I have a clean handkerchief, folded small, in each coat pocket." He continued to be delighted, and his eyes peered ahead down the street with an expression pleasant to see. "I'll bet you have, and your hat's the kind that won't The Golden Answer 119 blow off. Now, isn't it? I'll bet you won't have to clutch it and duck your head." "This one," said Hilda, amused, "happens to be that kind." "Of course I know," C. M. explained, "that all girls have hats to motor in; it's when you pick them up unprepared that they clutch and duck. "I thought I'd never find your place," he continued, as Hilda only smiled. "Got Fortune to give me the address. You forgot to tell me when I asked you the other day. But I took the wrong turn two blocks below. I was looking around for numbers, that was how I happened not to see you." "And I," said Hilda, "had been looking up at the Bridge, so I didn't see you. Sometimes it makes one rather dizzy !" "Look here," he turned to her, "if it affects you that way don't do it any more ! Why, there at the crowded crossing you might, you might . . . Promise me you won't do it any more !" "It would be rather ridiculous," said Hilda, in a quiet 'sensible* voice, "for me to promise you never, never to look at the Bridge again, wouldn't it? I shouldn't keep the promise, anyway." "You know the sort of promise I mean," said C. M. "Don't look at it when it would be dangerous." "I'll think about that, Mr. Brent," Hilda smiled strangely. . . . "Where are we going?" "I'm going to take you the long way home. This air will do you good. Great air. Crisp. Not too cold. I've got an extra coat for you, though. Here, you put it on. Yes, you do need it. I know. You put it on. Here, here, that's the wrong armhole. Now there you are! Button it under your chin. Just as soon as I can I'll let her out. This old car can go! I2O The Golden Answer The car could go, though at first its powers were demonstrated only in spurts as they wound, twisted, and dodged from east to west. C. M. preferred ap- parently to go up the west side, for he crossed to lower Greenwich village and they swept up Greenwich Ave- nue and Seventh Avenue and even farther west. There, Hilda accidentally caught sight of Miss Zinnia Lark's house on Jane Street, over near the river, a fat-looking red brick house with a dilapidated door. As they passed it, from a neighboring pier, the voice of an un- seen ship musically drowsed four bells. Hilda smiled at the thought of Miss Lark sitting down alone to supper at that summons, punctually content. No doubt she and Truebee were wise in their independence. Farther uptown C. M. still kept to the west to avoid traffic in the dingy and tawdry forties, another house detached itself from the unending rows and sprang forward into Hilda's view. This was a "re- constructed" five-story brick house, with window boxes, frilled white curtains and a beautiful white doorway that might have been in Salem. Such beauty and cleanliness were rare in that region. With a sudden thought Hilda leaned forward and peered in the fading light at plain gold letters on that door. "The House of Hope" she read. She glanced at the big plain man beside her, into whose cheeks the wind had whipped a fresh color. "That's the house I've heard about/* she thought. "That's the 'Refuge.' How nice of him to have such a beautiful door!" Then she shrank back, shivered at a memory of a dingy bit of paper and tried to think of something else. Charles Brent turned to her: "Are you cold?" "A little." The Golden Answer 121 He stopped the car and finding a blue muffler folded it around her shoulders, crossed it in front and tied it in the back. "Now you look like a little boy," he laughed. "Do you know, Miss Martin, you are the queerest sort of combination girl. You give a man the feeling that you need to be taken care of, and at the same time he knows that you can take care of yourself extraor- dinarily well!" "I hope I've learned how," she answered. "I'd be awfully stupid if I hadn't by this time." She was thinking as they left the house with the white door far behind: "He's a good man." At last they crossed over and sped through the Park, a Corot park of dusky distances, feathery green, changed quickly into night shadows. And finally they turned again and came out on the Drive by the edge of the deep turquoise river, which was studded with orange lights and above which an autumn crescent moon was setting. A battleship brooded at anchor in midstream and twinkled conversation to a foreign trader. Hilda, leaning back, warm and rested, was swept up the river not too fast for enjoyment. And she ex- perienced some of the cheering possibilities of material comfort and luxury. She had been depressed, perhaps still was, but this depression was easier to bear, more possible to throw off, in a comfortable car while gliding through the crisp autumn evening than while standing in a swaying subway train, jammed to the doors. She smiled somewhat bitterly at the ancient story of the beggar who replied to the rich man's statement that he too had many troubles: "Yep, boss, but I ain't got nothin' else!" 122 The Golden Answer So the silent car took her the long way home. On the steps of the brown house on the side street, Hilda, as she gave Mr. Brent her hand, had an impulse and acted on it. A strange expression in his eyes when he looked down at her gave her the impulse. She remembered that he lived with two elder sisters, one a widow and one unmarried, who, if rumor were true, quarreled with violence and stupidity, especially at meals. To put it more correctly, they lived with him, having, because of old feuds and rancors been "cut off" in their father's will. The widowed lady, Mrs. Ash- mun, had a small life insurance which was the cause of the envy of her younger sister. Both resented C. M.'s charitable hobbies, though he provided amply for his sisters, and, being much younger, could reason- ably be supposed to outlive them, so that they could not expect to inherit his fortune, however diminished by charity. Now it flashed over Hilda that this kind man would enjoy a meal with two women who loved each other. With perfect unselfconsciousness she asked him in. "Come in and stay to supper with us. I think Mother will have hot biscuits." C. M. beamed until the corners of his eyes crinkled. "That's awfully kind awfully kind," he kept re- peating. "May I really?" Mrs. Martin did have hot biscuits, with honey, also a mysterious but succulent meat pie known to econom- ical housekeepers as "Toad in the Hole," besides salad for which Hilda made the French dressing. There were coffee and cookies for dessert. C. M., who had met Mrs. Martin before, appeared to be bursting with happiness. They had agreed not to tell Hilda's mother about the collision between the big car and the small girl, so nothing agitated Mrs. The Golden Answer 123 Martin's maternal cheeriness. She trotted back and forth in her plain black dress with white lawn collar and cuffs and a big white apron, smiling, completely undisturbed and unimpressed by the unheralded advent of a rich young man to supper. The only change made in their routine was when Hilda put candles on the table, and she sometimes did that when they were alone. C. M. sat in the "front room," out of which the dining-room opened by a wide curtained arch, and watched their preparations, later being allowed to help. After Hilda had run upstairs to wash her hands and face, she set the table. "I'm so glad we've got Toad in the Hole," she called to her mother in the kitchen. "I'm hungry after my ride. And, you blessed little lamb-pie, you've got extra gravy." "I hope Mr. Trent is hungry, too," came Mrs. Mar- tin's voice from beyond. "There's plenty of every- thing. Run down-cellar and bring up some of my sweet pickle, pussy." "Brent, Mother." Hilda threw a smile at C. M. "He looks wolfish to me. It's woe to the Toad. Did you ever have one?" she asked him. C. M. looked startled. "Er no. But frogs' legs. I know those." "Not to be compared, my dear sir!" She made him come out and light the candles and draw up the chairs. They were "Golden Oak" chairs, and battered ; the sideboard of the same wood showed the marks of many movings; the carpet on the floor was "rag" and not of the most artistic design; there was a picture over Mrs. Martin's work table of Christ Before Pilate, with one corner of the frame chipped off. But under the soft glow of the candles and from a yellow lamp standing in a corner, the room with the 124 The Golden Answer fresh white tablecloth and pink flowered plates was full of a grace that Charles Brent's home lacked. They all talked together after supper while Mrs. Martin sewed on a new dress for Hilda. She showed it to Mr. Brent. It was dark green serge with a jaunty little rolling collar of green satin. "It's very pretty," he said, feeling of the cloth be- tween his thumb and ringer. "Is it warm enough for winter?" Hilda laughed, but she liked him for saying that. He left at ten o'clock, after Mrs. Martin had thought she concealed a yawn. When Hilda saw that the little lady was not, after the American habit, going to leave them alone together, she knew that her mother under- stood her even more delicately and beautifully than she had ever dreamed. (If she had left them alone that would have acknowledged something which, just now, was unthinkable. ) But at the door Charles Brent startled her. Hilda had shut the front-room door to keep the draught from Mrs. Martin, who caught cold easily. C. M. bulked large in the tiny hall, which, because of the lodgers' muddy boots, had linoleum on the floor and smelt slightly of that article. He looked, somehow, plainer than ever. But she saw that when he smiled his features all seemed to crease together in lines that were heartwarming. He caught her hand and spoke shyly : "I've had a great time, great, really. You don't know what a a great time I've had !" It did not irritate her that he could think of no other word. Then his smile left him and she saw the face of the man who had leaned over the steering wheel. "My dear child what if I couldn't have stopped! The Golden Answer 125 What if some day somebody can't stop in time! Will you be very careful?" "Yes, I will be," she promised. And then it was that Charles Brent startled her. He lifted her hand to his cheek and held it there a moment before noisily bolting out of the street door. CHAPTER XIV. IN the passing of their first winter together there were for Amos and Christina days of readjustment. As Christina had said, they both had much to learn. However, contrary to well-worn expecta- tion and to the prophecy of Christina's friends, Harmony did not prove to be a special problem between them. She went right on growing in her busy, exact little way from plump seven to slimmer eight, adoring Amos and accepting Christina as a good fortune stepped out of a fairy book. At first she loved her shyly, and later with a warm, kittenlike, instinctive gravitation to her, because she was a woman of the age to be her mother. "Will it be like having a mother?" she had asked Amos. "I hope so," he had told her. "Would you like that?" "Oh, very much. Most children seem to have them," said Harmony. She was becoming a thoughtful little thing with a reflective, reserved look in her brown eyes to balance the increasing length of her legs. There was some- thing irresistibly exquisite and also pathetic about this emergence from babyhood into childhood. "If Christina had come to live with us a long time ago before I was born would she have been my mother and would you have been my father?" she asked him. "I don't know how to answer that, darling," said 126 The Golden Answer 127 A n mos, holding her close, "I'm not wise enough. But I think perhaps God would have let it be so." "Don't you suppose God could arrange it now?" "I'm afraid not." "But you told me He could do anything !" "Did ir "Yes." She looked precociously thoughtful, saw the issue, and turned to him with faith. "I wish you would explain that to me." "God willed," said Amos, wildly hoping not to go astray too far, "because He can will anything, that men and women and children should have the freedom to choose what they want to do; and after they have chosen, the results of their acts go right on happening in a logical way ; and God does not will to change those results, because then we shouldn't know how to choose another time, and neither would our children or our friends. The only thing that can change those results, if they are sad and tragic, and need to be changed, is the good choices later of the same people, or of other people. That helps straighten out things a bit some- times, though not always. And good choices are the spirit of God in people coming out. But it's their own affair whether they let it come out or not. Do you understand ?" Harmony put the tip of her finger between her eyebrows in a way she had when she did her arith- metic or learned her spelling lesson. She used to put it in her mouth, and this was a substitute. "I think so." She was silent, her brain busy. Then: "Then you didn't choose to be my father?" Her eyes were hurt. "You've a good little head, dear," said Amos sadly ; "that's a logical conclusion. But don't you see, in one of those later choices I did decide you should be my 128 The Golden Answer child. Haven't you been mine ever since you could remember?" She sat up straight on his knee and a smile lighted her little face. She flung out her arms wide and then clasped them around his neck, laughing. "Oh, I see, I see! Isn't it perfectly heavenly? I am your own !" Christina accepted Harmony as simply as Harmony accepted her. She petted the child and saw to her wel- fare as she would have done if she had found a kitten or a puppy one of Amos Fortune's household. Chris- tina was a woman who would passionately love her own child, but was only picturesquely fond of and amused at other people's children. She left the in- timate care of Harmony to Johanna, merely seeing to it meticulously that Amos's wishes in regard to her were carried out. She was pleased that Harmony loved her. The withholding of admiration or love from Christina bewildered, irritated and hurt her. She did not think very much about the peculiarity of her husband's hav- ing, alone, brought up a child, the daughter of a friend whom he never named. He was so different from anyone else she had known before, and her loving and marrying him were such a dramatic departure from her whole plan of life that when she accepted him at all she accepted all of him at first. The readjustments grew rather out of the fact that each had adopted a new way of living and had to become used to it. For Amos, instead of the irksome but steady grind at the South Sea House with every spare moment devoted, without question, to writing and to Harmony, a settled order in which poverty was a thing accepted with dignity and immediately forgot- ten, there began a regime in which he must become accustomed to a new business, must be very much The Golden Answer 129 aware of the amount of money coming in and going out of his own purse, and in which his spare time was cut into far smaller fractions time for Christina, time for her friends and their entertaining, for Harmony, for writing, business plans and financial problems. Christina's readjustment was from a life of no respon- sibility, alternating between the homes of an indulgent grandmother and an indifferent aunt, a life in which there had been a succession of young men, who were looked upon as fair game if they chose to risk the snare. It was not an unhealthy life because so much of it was spent out of doors, but imagination and work had no part in it. It was a concrete existence. There were no abstractions, no give and take of finer things, no close distinctions of thought. She did not always understand what Amos was talking about. That fact was one source of his impression on her mind. Her attitude toward money, also, was foreign to his. He was indifferent to it constitutionally, equally sur- prised by its presence or absence. She took money for granted and liked to spend it, yet respected it enough to guard carefully the source of supply. She watched little rather than important expenditures. Where money was concerned there was an incongruous touch of unloveliness in Christina. It was this importance she attached to money that caused her to be so shaken by what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Hoyle in the middle of the winter. One afternoon Amos had come from the city on an early train, by Christina's request, since they were entertaining guests for dinner. Yet when he reached home he found that she was not there. "She has been up at Uncle Bells's all the afternoon," said Harmony. Uncle Bells was what they privately called the husband of the Woman with Rings on Her 130 The Golden Answer Fingers. "I thought she would be back long ago, and Johanna and I have some tea ready for her, because dinner will be so late. You drink some, Amos. The kettle has been lighted so long it will go out and we'll have to put more alcohol in. See Johanna's teeny biscuits all buttered, and they're getting cold !" Amos drank the tea gratefully. He had had a tiresome day, and wished his guests would all be stricken with slight illnesses and be obliged to stay at home. He thought they probably would have indiges- tion anyway if they came, for Johanna's genius for cooking, combined with Christina's ideas of a good menu, would lure anyone to destruction. A vague un- easiness, emanating from a fleeting thought of the grocery bill, settled on him, so he drank three cups of tea, strong, to drive it away, and timed himself to a half-hour's rest on the sofa before the fire. "Mrs. Sweeny has just been here," went on Har- mony, sitting down on the rug by him. "She has been up at Aunt Bells's ironing, and she came down to tell Johanna that Mamie, that's one of the maids, said Aunt Bells had been crying all the afternoon and Uncle Bells is swearing, and Christina is with them." "Well, if that's the case, Harmony, we'll hear all about it when Christina comes home. Don't ever be rude to Johanna, but when she and Sweeny women gossip to you, tell them I've told you not to listen. I forbid it." "Why they just tell me what's happening," said Harmony. "What do you mean gossip ?" "Repeating other people's affairs and guessing at an explanation. It turns into malicious lying." "Oh, Amos, Johanna wouldn't ever tell lies." "Not intentionally." The Golden Answer 131 "Well, anyway, what do you suppose Aunt Bells is crying about? I'll tell you what I think " "Harmony, for the love of heavenly Artemis, don't grow up !" Harmony looked into his eyes, found them smiling, giggled a little, took his hand, and said : " 'Heavenly Artemis' it sounds just like poetry." "Can you make up a line for me ?" Up went the finger to the meeting of her eyebrows. Then from the background of fairy tale and mythol- ogy that was Amos's gift to her sprang out the fresh, childish image that was her own. "Heavenly Artemis hid herself in a birch tree," said Harmony, triumphant. "Now you do one!" "Oh ah well how's this : Smiling Artemis, safe from the west wind's greeting " "Isn't this fun? Wait! Now it's my turn." Solemn pause. . . . "And the wind said, 'I love you, little white tree.' ' With shrills of laughter Harmony put her head down on his arm. "Was that really poetry, Amos?" "You embarrass me, Peaseblossom. I will withhold from you the cruel truth." "It isn't cruel or you wouldn't look at me that way !" At this moment Christina came in. She came bringing a cold, fresh breath from the outer air, and with snowflakes still clinging to her. She did not greet either of them, but slipped silently out of her coat with Amos's aid. Her face looked wor- ried and her hands moved nervously as she slipped her rings back and forth on her fingers. Instead of going immediately upstairs to dress though she never could have too long a time for that she threw herself into 132 The Golden Answer Amos's chair by the lamp and stared at nothing. He bent over her and took her hand, anxious by this time ; but she drew it away, irritably. "Don't !" she said, in a tone that shocked them both. "What is it? Something has happened." Christina put her hands up to her forehead and pushed her hair back wearily. "I should say something had happened," she an- swered, after a silence in which both Amos and Har- mony waited. "I suppose I might as well tell you now. Uncle Benton has lost money, a lot of his own and most of Aunt Bertha's with it. As far as I can see, it's just vanished, fallen into a bottomless pit. Two companies he was in have failed. It seems this is a hard winter. I'm sure I didn't know it was so hard. Everybody seems to get along. ... I think it was stupid of Uncle Benton to let his companies fail. Why didn't he put more money into them so they wouldn't fail, or do something?" After her first words, Amos's face had cleared. "Thank goodness, it's only money ! I thought some- body might be terribly ill." She gave him a queer look across the table, where she sat with the lamplight on her tumbled hair. A line was upright between her eyebrows. Her eyes in that glance were as if she were taking the measure of a stranger. "Only money?" she inquired in a clear, cool voice. "It's bad to lose it, very bad," he said gravely, "of course. But they might be going to lose each other. Uncle Benton has looked ill lately. Poor man, I'm sorry. But he has your aunt to help him through. They make fun of each other, but I have often thought that they are still in love." The Golden Answer 133 Christina continued to look irritated } she was tired from the strain of the afternoon. They were in no state, either of them, to talk together about anything unpleasant or vital. Her voice sounded harsh as she said sharply: "You are singularly unsympathetic where my rela- tives are concerned." "Christina! Just now you blamed your uncle for his misfortune. Have I done that?" "At least I'm not casual ! I hate people who say it might have been worse. Anybody might die, naturally. That's beside the point. I should think, if you were going to try to write books, you would make an attempt at being logical. Uncle Benton was careless ; he must have been, to lose so much. And some of it didn't belong to him. I mean it was Aunt Bertha's. If he had been a little more careless supposing he had lost mine!" Amos suddenly walked to the fire and stood looking at it. Then he said in a dry tone: "To my illogical literary mind it sounds as if you were saying, 'It might have been worse.' " She passed that by. "Oh, I haven't much, but I should hate to lose what little I have under the circumstances." He turned quickly and looked at her, but she sat with her chin in her hand and did not notice. He drew a deep breath, shaking back his shoulders as if to be rid of an annoying cloak, and walked over to the window. He stood looking oiit at the now fast falling snow, which floated down in the oval of light under the street lamp. It crossed his mind that he ought to shovel the path before the dinner guests came. But chiefly he was thinking: What would she have done if this had happened to me ? 134 The Golden Answer He turned around at last toward Christina, though he still stood unmoved, so to speak, by the window. "My dear, is there anything that you need I mean that you want that you haven't the money to get out of your half this month ? Within reason of course ; because I can manage " After a moment of silence, in which she sat motion- less, still with her chin on her palm and her bright hair falling over her tired face, she slowly looked around at him. Their eyes met and held across the room. He had looked stern when he asked the question, but at the end of their long investigating glance he smiled a little. Suddenly and surprisingly she burst into tears. Taught by an obscure instinct he let her cry without going to comfort her. He turned back to watching the snow deepen on the path and front steps. But Har- mony, who had all this time been wide-eyed on the sofa, ran to her. "Don't cry, Christina," she begged. "Amos will bring you something to-morrow night. I know he will." In a whisper, "Sh-sh now I'll ask him to." Christina laughed hysterically. "No, I don't want him to bring me anything. Run away and get Johanna to give you your supper. I must dress." Harmony drew back, puzzled. Amos said from the window, "Go now, Harmony. Johanna will be busy later. Come and kiss me first." "Of course," said Harmony. She hopped in a little running skip over to him and kissed him with a squeeze of his hand and a whisper which did not sound in the least disrespectful, only frank and natural. Harmony's italics might have been considered unfortunate, if not understood. The Golden Answer 135 "What is the matter with her ?" she asked. "She's only tired out," Amos answered in a low voice. "Aunt Bells has been weeping on her shoulder. Say good-night to her quietly, like a good baby." "Good-night, Christina," said Harmony sedately as she walked by. "Good-night, Harmony." Harmony put her head back through the door and added, "Dearie!" After a time Christina rose, wiping her eyes. She went over and stood beside Amos, peering out of the window too. "YouM better shovel the walk before dinner," she said. "I suppose so," he replied. CHAPTER XV HE did go out and shovel the walk, hurriedly, and was glad of the necessity. He would have liked to loiter over the task, the air was so cool and clear, the snow so beautifully light and sparkling as he threw it to one side. It was dry enough to be almost like crystal dust. He felt the need of things. But there was no time for such a remedy now. He was obliged to plunge from a scene that had left him quivering, to the perfunctory entertainment of guests. He shook the snow from his clothes and shoes and went quickly up through the neat, pretty little house only one of millions of neat, pretty little houses, it all at once occurred to him to the room across from Harmony's, which he had taken for his dressing room. As he hurried into his dinner clothes he wondered whom Christina had invited. She usually at least mentioned the names of the guests who made such a difference in the grocery bill, but this time she had failed to inform him. It was only when he stood in the library which also was the drawing room of the small house talking with Charles Brent, whom he liked increasingly, and with Nora Willard, persistently a "flapper," whose name he thought should be "Modestine," that he dis- covered who were his two chief dinner guests. A slender, bony woman with sandy hair, disfiguringly prominent teeth, and very beautiful hazel eyes, came forward to greet Christina. She was followed by a stony-faced, tall, dark man with a restless manner and 136 The Golden Answer handsome features, no other than "the daring man," who had refused the part of the Fool Philip Dana. Edith's "energy" had been rewarded. She had mar- ried him after all. Christina had chosen to wear that evening a gown in which she looked her best. It was of golden chiffon over brown satin. Above it rose her smoothly rippling brown-gold head with its white forehead and delicate dark brows. She carried a black fan. In certain cos- tumes Christina, whose health was perfect, seemed at- tractively fragile. This aspect gave her an exquisite distinction. Beside her, now, the sandy woman in her smart black gown looked utterly undistinguished, though of a forceful presence. "Dear Edith," said Christina, kissing the ugly mouth beneath the lovely eyes, "it is so nice to have you here. This is Mrs. Dana, Amos. You and Mr. Dana have met before." "Hello, Fortune," said Philip Dana, shaking hands with his silent host. "Met some friends of yours the other day, at a club in Chicago. They sent a message to you, but, by George, I've forgotten it. Ha ! ha ! Not surprising, eh ? Ha ! ha !" His laugh infuriated Amos. What was he doing back in town? When he left, that, supposedly, was the end of him. Certainly Amos had never reckoned on a recrudescence. What possessed Christina to ask him to their house? A feeling of depression settled around his heart, heavily. They went out to dinner before Amos inquired the names of his friends who remembered him. At the table Dana inquired unexpectedly : "How's the little brown-haired, brown-eyed girl?" One knew that he was not fond of children. "I re- member her very well, and I'm reminded of her now 138 The Golden Answer perhaps by the sight of Mrs. Fortune's becoming domesticity. Do you make a cruel stepmother, Chris- tina?" He looked with a sparkle of laughter from Amos to Christina. "Harmony's growing tall, thanks," said Amos. "I even remember her name for you," rattled on Dana. "She called you, am I right? the Discreet Prin- cess." No one answered until Charles Brent said, "That's a fact. I heard her call Christina that at the play. Say, you missed a lot, Dana, by hoofing it off when you did. It was a darned good play, and we made quite a bunch of money." "Who took my part?" asked Dana. "Mr. Fortune did," said Nora Willard, "and he made a perfectly lovely Fool." "He did it better than you could have done it, Philip," smiled Christina. Mrs. Dana turned to Amos. "How clever of you ! And did you have to learn all those words, and I suppose to dance a clog or some- thing, right at the last minute?" Ajmos came back from preoccupation with an effort. "Why, yes, but, you know 'He that has a little, tiny wit, With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain, Must make content with his fortunes fit, For the rain it raineth every day.' " Mrs. Dana put up a lorgnette and looked at him. Her lovely eyes were magnified by it. "Good gracious !" was all she said. Amos, repenting, privately justified himself by the The Golden Answer 139 recollection that prominent teeth always made him nervous. "I don't go in for that sort of thing," remarked Dana, with smooth politeness. "By the way, Fortune, don't ask me who your old pals were because I remem- ber only one name that's Harry Boyce. He had a lot to say about the good old times. Very entertaining. Knew your brother, too." "I dare say," replied Amos. He met Philip Dana's eyes squarely, and read in them the fact that Boyce had spoken with a loosened tongue. Later in the evening Amos went upstairs and into Harmony's room to make sure that she had not thrown the bedclothes off. As he came out of her door he met Charles Brent, who had come up after cigarettes left in his overcoat pocket. "Oh, say, Fortune," said C. M. "Take me in to see the little tyke." The two men stepped back into Harmony's room and Amos turned up the light. Harmony lay with her brown curls tossed around her face and one hand tucked under her cheek. C. M. stood at the foot of the bed looking at her. "Great little institutions, aren't they ?" he said. "I'd like one of ray own." Amos said nothing. While Charles Brent was looking at Harmony, with a thoughtful smile, he went over to the window to throw it open wider. Johanna could not be converted to a wide-open window at night. As he stood a moment looking down into the snowy garden, which sparkled frostily, he saw two figures on the small un- covered side porch, one a woman's with a cloak thrown around her. And a familiar man's voice rose, saying: 140 The Golden Answer "You didn't expect me back." "No," came Christina's reply. "I was astounded when I heard of this marriage. Do you expect to be happy?" "Don't you wish me happiness?" "I came to do that !" Then Christina's laugh rippled up and they stepped back into the house. Amos slowly raised the window ten inches more and turned around to Charles Brent. He was care- fully pushing a curl out of Harmony's eyes. "It would be great to have one that belonged to you," C. M. repeated. Amos snapped off the light. "Come on downstairs," he said, harshly, "we'll waken her." CHAPTER XVI A WEEK later, at about four o'clock on Saturday afternoon, Amos met Charles Mowatt Brent on the street as he was returning from a quick walk out to the frozen marsh and back and Brent was coming up the street on his way, somewhat laggingly, homeward. "Hello, there," called out C. M. "Where you steamin' to so fast? That's no way to walk, man. Head up, chin in, then you'll recognize your friends." "Hello," laughed Amos. " I was thinking." "Guilty of it myself sometimes. Nice afternoon. Where's Christina?" "In town at a matinee." "I never could go to a theater when it's daylight outdoors, but women seem to lap it up," observed Mr. Brent. "I'll turn around and walk back with you." They fell into step together at a more leisurely pace. The winter dusk was just closing in. The wide lawns and fields of the old town that had awakened one morning, ten years ago, to find itself a suburb, lay under a pale lavender covering of snow. The sky was deepest turquoise. In some of the houses lights were beginning to shine as the two men crunched along the frozen paths. Amos at once had the feeling that Charles Brent wanted to say something to him, and did not know how to begin. He rambled off at first into a descrip- tion of Hilda Martin's birthday party, which Amos had heard all about from Harmony. 141 142 The Golden Answer "Nice little girl, Harmony," he said absently. "Miss Martin is very fond of her." "So is Christina," answered Amos. .When they reached the Hoyle house C. M. seemed to see his opportunity. There was only one light in the front hall in the large brick pile, the windows of which reflected the somewhat sickly color of the snow. At least, seen on these lawns and in this garden, which had been only last summer gay, the pallid sheet of snow, before so beautiful, seemed sickly. In the midst of the garden, almost hiding the pergola from view the pergola of many memories stood an enormous new sign, yellow, with large black letters, that read : FOR SALE "That's a shame," said Charles Brent, jerking his head toward the big house. "Can't understand how it happened to Benton Hoyle. Just a run of bad luck one damn thing after another, you know. I under- stand they're going to move away." "Yes," said Amos gravely. "They own a smaller house in Boston and they're going to live in it and economize until the period of depression is over." "That so? Well, it's a wise plan, I guess, Chris- tina'll miss them." "Yes." Brent cleared his throat, hesitated, and turned down the lane with Amos. At the gate Amos asked him in. "No; thanks: can't to-day. Say see here, Fortune, do you like your new job, with the A. S. Realty?" "I like it well enough; why?" Amos answered, .stiffening a little in spite of himself. "Well, it might not be a bad plan to go back to the The Golden Answer 143 company you were with before, while the going's good, so to speak." "I think you had better tell me why you advise that," said Amos quietly, after a pause. "Can't go into detail because I've given my word. But, by George ! I can't stand by and keep my mouth shut altogether, either. You and and Christina are friends of mine. ... I have reason to know that the A. S. Realty is is pretty damned shaky. Hope for the best and all that, but if I were you I'd get out now." There was another pause. The light had faded again. The snow was no longer lavender, but ashen gray ; the sky a midnight blue with frosty, glittering stars. Amos spoke quietly this time, too. "But the difficulty is that I have put all the money I have in the world in the A. S. Realty Company. I can't desert my post at this time. And I can't honor- ably sell my shares, even if anyone would buy them. Though that doesn't mean we're actually insolvent now. We may pull through." C. M. gave a long, low whistle. "I hope so," he said. There was another silence. Then he added, "I didn't know about your stock. No, you can't sell now ; but look here, there are others who aren't so scrupulous." "What do you mean?" "I know that some of the men are unloading right and left this minute, selling to small Western and Southern buyers. Nothing seems so solid and glitter- ing as an investment in a distant utility or realty. To a school teacher in a midland state or a minister in Mississippi the ringing sound of the words Atlantic Seaboard Realty you can get, can't you?" "But that's against the law !" 144 The Golden Answer "Only if it can be proved that the seller is a director of the company and knows the company is actually insolvent at the time !" "I don't believe we are going to fail," repeated Amos slowly, swinging the green gate back and forth so that it creaked with a dismal sound. "But the chances are all for it; and if we should fail, and these men have done as you say, by God, jail is too good for them, whoever they are." "I agree with you," said Charles Brent "And," went on Amos, "lacking a more suitable place and a better advocate I should do my best to put them there." "Better go slow," advised C. M. "And say, look here. I'm sorry I spoke. I thought it was just a matter of changing berths. Didn't know you were in so deep. Moral, don't butt in I never know enough not to." "Nonsense! Of course I'm grateful." Charles Brent snorted and dug his stick into the snow. He seemed to want to say something else and not to know how. Finally he merely added to the snort, "Well, good-night." "Come on in and see Harmony," said Amos. "Sorry, not this time." The big man looked at his watch. "My sisters expect me home early." Without another word he was off up the lane, his footsteps creaking in the snow and his stick occasion- ally striking out from right to left. Amos stood watching him out of sight. He went into the house slowly. First he looked into the living room and saw Harmony playing paper dolls with another little girl, whose yellow curls in the fire- light were a pretty foil for her brown ones. This little girl, whose name was, to Amos's delight, Bennie, wore The Golden Answer 145 a short blue smock that reached to her knees. Har- mony wore a short yellow smock. They looked up at him with their absorbed eyes and did not come out of their parts. "Our ladies are at the theater," half chanted Har- mony, in an aside to Amos. "You are the hero of the play coming out to bow before the curtain." Amos bowed. "They are clapping you. Oh, Mrs. Smith, don't you think the play is nice ? Such an interesting actor." "Oh, Mrs. Brown, isn't he handsome ?" contributed Bennie. Amos threw kisses to them and backed into the hall again, still bowing. As he went upstairs he heard their bubbling laughter. "I just love him, don't you?" inquired Bennie. He went into his room and shut the door. Sitting down by the window he tried to think, but he had gone over everything so many times lately that he knew there was no use starting again. Charles Brent's advice was good but he could not take it. Everything would have gone all right if the abnormal financial depression had not swooped down and caught him in its talons. No! It had not quite caught him. There was a chance of saving the company vet. If he only had more in the bank instead of so many shares in Atlantic Seaboard Realty ! He must manage to save a little more each week. Even a few dollars weekly counted. He took out a notebook and began to figure. If he could save so much more, beginning to-morrow, there would be less danger, if the crash should come. And please heaven it would not come. As he sat figuring, through the methodical symbols something seemed to start and glow. A psychologist might have said, prosaically, that this phenomenon was 146 The Golden Answer induced by the action of holding the pencil in the fingers and making marks with it. But all the after- noon he had been rilled with a pleasurable excitement, a low emotional chant of the spirit going on as a thrill- ing undertone to trivial acts. He knew the explanation of it, or rather he recognized this as a moment to be captured. It was what had made him turn back early from the frozen marsh. It was what is tritely known as "inspiration," a word he detested. It was quite possible to create artistically in other moods, of course. In fact it was well to do so. Hours of sweating labor were indispensable in their turn, days when the reluctant author must flog himself to his desk and chain his leg to it. But this was different. This was sent out of the blue. And it was the best of all healing. He went to the little table and snapped on the light, smiling. For months he had not done a line of "Avalon." And now he had a new idea for it. It had risen like a pure, frosty breath from the desolate marsh, almost as intangible as a breath. Heaven knew where it had come from! But it was there. It had floated over the violet reaches of snow. It had gone before him and made the whole world beautiful. It had all but vanished during the walk with Charles Brent and the worrisome talk. But as soon as he was alone again, pencil in hand, it had come stealing shyly back and would not be banished. It was about "Har- mony" not the child but the idea. Just how to put it together and make it tangible and likable for there is no use in any idea under heaven unless somebody likes to read it he did not yet know. He leaned his head on his hand to think it out. And the telephone bell rang at his elbow. He jumped, and took down the receiver. The Golden Answer 147 Christina's voice came to him rather faintly, and then very near. "Is that you, Amos? I'm telephoning from the Waldorf. We've just had tea." "Oh, Christina, was the play good?" "Perfectly charming. . , . You know I came in with Edith Dana." "No, I didn't know." "I thought I told you that was the plan. She has just telephoned to Philip. He's coming in, and we're going to have dinner, and then do something else, per- haps dance. We want you to come. You can just make the 6.30 and have time to dress." There was a long pause. "Are you there?" came Christina's voice somewhat sharply. "Yes, I'm here." "I said you can catch the 6.30 nicely. Johanna will stay in with Harmony. She told me she would if if you decided to come in and join me." He remembered the figures in his notebook and grasped firmly his resolution. "Christina, I don't know what to say. I ought not to come, dear." "You ought not to?" "There are reasons, Christina, you know." "Reasons why you shouldn't please me?" "Yes, in just that way." There was another pause. "Are you coming?" "I'm horribly sorry. But I can't. Wouldn't you be willing to take the 6. 10 home ? Dinner will be ready and then I can explain." "No." Pause again. "I want to stay, so I think I'll just stay." 148 The Golden Answer Amos waited. But without good-by the connection was severed. More than a mere electrical connection was severed. The gorgeous idea floated away, leaving a trace, of course, but a mere bald fact that seemed stale and un- attractive, the glamour all gone. Amos suddenly discovered that he was very tired. He turned out the light and lay down on the cot bed in the corner. Christina's face smiled at him from the blackness, lovely and perverse. He lay there in the dark a long time. He was startled out of a troubled doze by Harmony standing beside him. She had turned on the light and was laughing down at him. "Dinner's ready," said she, "and Christina won't be here. Mayn't I ask Bennie to stay? We'll telephone her mother." "How do you know that Christina won't be here, Harmony?" he asked. "Because she said so. She told Johanna before she went. May I call up Bennie's mother now ?" "Yes," said Amos absently. The two little girls giggled a good deal during the dinner. Harmony sat in Christina's chair, and Bennie in Harmony's old place. Amos thought how much like spring flowers they were in their pale blue and pale yellow dresses. He said very little himself, to Bennie's obvious disappointment. "You aren't always funny, are you ?" she remarked, looking at him critically across her plate. After dinner, according to her mother's instructions, he bundled the plump Bennie into her coat and hat and leggings and took her home. Harmony went along, too, and they left Bennie at her door, receiving enthu- siastic good-night kisses from her. The Golden Answer 149 "But I like you," said Bennie at his ear, "when you aren't funny." Children are angelically comforting. Harmony, according to her custom, went to bed early. And then Amos sat down before the old secretary in his library, determined to recapture the idea that the telephone bell had jangled away. It did not come easily ; the elation was all gone ; but he was determined to work it out, if not one way, in another. This was about the difference, he thought, between Pegasus and a canal horse, but he went stubbornly at the work. In the full swing of his toil the whistle of the 11.35 train contracted his heart. Fifteen minutes later there were voices outside and Christina came in alone and went straight upstairs. Still he continued to write. If the "inspiration" had been shattered like a glass dome, the slow and laborious working out of the idea should not also be sacrificed unnecessarily. The house was still, only an occasional creaking of a board upstairs. Amos sat and smoked, put down a careful sentence, rubbed his forehead, put down another, puffed at his pipe, read over a paragraph, be- came more interested, was, indeed, for the hour, calmly and solidly happy. He had not forgotten Christina he merely put aside the problem she had presented until his work was done. But at last he rose, put out the lights and walked slowly upstairs. He saw her then in her doorway. She wore a green kimono that folded about her like the sheath of a flower. From it her white neck rose, and her slim hands held the green silk about her. She was smiling. He suddenly felt tired and dim beside her brightness. The pages of "Avalon" were dusty un- reality, unworthy of effort. 150 The Golden Answer "Haven't you done about enough?" said Christina. "You spoiled our party. Three is an awkward number Edith thought." But the harshness of her words was softened because she smiled, He went into her room with her. CHAPTER XVII CHRISTINA curled up in the big chair she had had covered with chintz of a jonquil pattern. "Now," said she, "I didn't take the 6.10 home, but perhaps we can have the explanation just the same." Amos stopped, necktie in hand. "I didn't come in to have dinner with you and the Danas because I couldn't afford it. Oh, I wanted to- to work, too; but I would have left that, to-night, to please you. The plain fact is money is tight this winter, especially with me." "I thought," remarked Christina slowly, "that you made arrangements before you asked me to marry you, so that you would not be so poor as you were, when I met you." "Why do you add 'when I met you* in just that tone?" demanded Amos instead of answering. "I have been hearing," said Christina, jabbing at a chintz jonquil with her finger, "that you used to have money. Why didn't you tell me that, when you told me the other things that I when you told me the other things?" He knew in a flash of insight that she was going to say "When you told me the things that I don't care so much about." "Christina, on my honor, I forgot it. We never had a great deal, and my brother and I did foolish things with it, until it was gone." "It would have come in handy now." "Yes," agreed Amos gravely. 152 The Golden Answer He lighted a cigarette and began to walk up and down the room. "Now about those 'arrangements' I made before I asked you to marry me. I want you to understand the situation clearly, because, the fact is, luck has turned against me I suppose it's bitter to say again and we must be careful for a while. I've got to ask you, Christina, to cooperate." She raised her eyes and asked, "How?" "I don't mean I want any money of yours," he said with haste, averting his own eyes nervously. "Of course. "To tell you briefly and definitely," he went on after a moment, "the company in which you know I am heavily invested heavily for me is toppling. We may save it or it may go over. Probably it will go. If it goes there go not only my job but my savings. I believe that poor men speak of their capital as their 'savings.' You can, without much mental strain, see the advisability of my saving a little something out of my salary this winter, to tide us over if the worst happens. The truth of the matter is I have only a few hundreds to my name." "Well," said Christina, ignoring his plea for co- operation, and jabbing another jonquil with another ringer, "why don't you sell your stock, and start fresh? It's low, but people will buy it for that very reason. You would lose something, but not the full amount." He sat down suddenly. She looked very sweet and gentle in her jonquil chair. A man might have staked his honor upon her unwillingness to hurt a living thing, or upon her lack of any wrong intention whatsoever. And he would not have been far from right. "And what," inquired Amos, "would become of the The Golden Answer 153 persons who, having bought my stock, found it worth- less?" "I'm sure we can't be expected to keep track of everybody," she replied, yawning. After a silence she said, "I was unjust to poor Uncle Benton. He looked after me very well. Aunt Bertha told me yesterday that he saved almost all of my little bit of money for me by selling my stock before one of those precious companies of his went to the wall. So you see it can't be very bad to do it." "What company was it?" asked Amos in a strained voice. She looked up, her eyes opening with surprised recollection. "Why it was the Atlantic Seaboard Realty." Amos carefully put out his cigarette. "Uncle Benton is a better manager than I," he said dryly. "But," she comforted with a sweet, excusing voice, "he is a much older man." Amos laughed. Then he leaned toward her, his hands clasped between his knees. "You don't care let's be perfectly clear about all this, my dear, you don't care any more than that pretty yawn of yours if small people in Tennessee and Iowa and Montana lose this money instead of you and me are virtually tricked into losing it?" "Oh, of course it isn't pleasant. ..." "No, not very pleasant. . . . Do you know Miss Mary Louise Burchard, of Bay St. Louis?" he asked suddenly, to Christina's astonishment. "She gives music lessons and is forty-six years old. She has saved $500 ; no more, because her mother was sick and died, and her father was sick and died, and she had to buy a new piano for her business and she's alone 154 The Golden Answer and not very well and lots of other reasons. She has bought $500 worth of your stock because it was low and the interest was high. What if she loses it?" "How in the world do you know her?" She gave him an uneasy glance. Then she rose and gathered her green silk kimono around her. She seemed to wish to shake off something; her beautiful eyes had the strangest look in their depths of all the strange looks Amos had seen there. "You're making it up! This is what it means to marry a writer," she joked airily. "Your imagination is working overtime, my dear. Let's go to bed !" Later, Amos remembered that she had not said she would "cooperate," or make any agreement about try- ing to save money. In fact, just before he turned out the light and opened the windows she changed the sub- ject. "The Danas are going back to Boston to stay," she said, twisting her braid around her finger. "Philip's work will keep him there at least a year.'* "Is that so?" "It will be nice for Aunt Bertha and Uncle Benton." "I dare say," "It will make it pleasant for me when I visit there in the spring." "I didn't know you were going." "I always visit Aunt Bertha in the spring! Why should her living in Boston and my living here make any difference?" "I don't know that it need to. Now I think of it. you always have come in the spring." "Then that's settled," said Christina, practically. CHAPTER XVIII REMEMBERING the winter afterward, each could say that, in spite of readjustments and some disagree- ments, they were happy then. The Hoyles, after the original shock of their first disaster, moved away from Bramford, sufficiently recovered to salvage enough of their fortune so that Mr. Hoyle, though in truth ex- tremely short of cash, did not need to contemplate working for his bread or even his butter. The Danas also, after a few months, went back to Boston, but not before Christina had spent a great deal more time and money in their company. Amos and she never discussed her friendship with the Danas, nor the subject of Christina's investments, again. But both topics lay between them, like a nar- row strip of forbidden territory across which their hands could not quite meet. During the winter, too, a cause for happiness he had begun to write on his book again, but had been obliged to put it away indefinitely, until, at least, the tangled affairs of the Atlantic Seaboard Realty Com- pany were unwound. In the month when he was writing Christina seemed to grow in sympathy for the work that at first she only humorously tolerated. One holiday morning, in February, she came into his small upstairs study at the beginning of a glorious free morning, glorious because free for his own work. She was affectionately amused that he should sit up here covering sheets of white paper with small writing and rubbing the back of his head, when he might be walk- 155 156 The Golden Answer ing in the country with her or talking with other men at his club. "If you expect your hair ever to lie flat in the back again you'll have to stop writing," she told him, "or shave it. It's only half an inch long now. I shouldn't like it any shorter." He grinned. "Run along and play with Harmony. Some day, when this is finished, you'll be glad you did." "Why? Do you think it might be a best seller?" "Heaven forbid! No that's literary snobbishness. Lots of them are darned good. Bless the gentle readers' hearts, they usually spot a good thing when it comes out. The only trouble is, they spot the other kind, too often! . . . No, Christina, this humble effort will fall between those poles, I fancy. But I can tell you it's gods' play to write it. If it were only as good as it feels!" She looked down at the paper a little wistfully, but with a touch of wonder. "Are you really going on and and write a book?" She said "write-a-book" as if it were a verb that could be conjugated, from "I write-a-book, you write- a-book, he writes-a-book" to a blithe "I have-written-a- book" and a criminally hasty "I shall-write-a-book." He put his arm around her slim waist as she stood beside him. "Christina, dear, there's one dark mystery about your husband that you don't yet know." "Heavens! What?" she laughed, but half in earnest. It was true that Amos never had told her about his whimsical essays in The Atlantic Monthly, though something had recently happened to make him long yet The Golden Answer 157 hesitate anew to tell her. The strange fact was that he could love her as he had never expected to love any living thing, and yet recognize that there was ground on which they would never meet witness the territory across which hands would not stretch. Knowing this, nevertheless he dreaded to have that difference made apparent. Seeing her conception of his ambition to write-a-book, he had never dared reveal that he had already written one counted good by a few. He had not told her that he was that Jeremy Pride whose papers had received praise from one or two discrim- inating corners. Now, he opened a lower drawer of his desk and taking out a small brown volume handed it to her. It was called "Prismatic Banking, a Fantasy, being the Suppressed and Romantic Meditations of Jeremy Pride." The old-fashioned, unpopular title, the name, meant nothing to her. She puckered her brows questioningly. "I wrote it," said Amos. "You have-written-a-book !" exclaimed Christina, still conjugating. He nodded guiltily. "They have just brought it out collected from the magazine, you know. Perhaps you saw the essays. . . . But no, probably everybody skipped them. And no one will read this. It entirely lacks er pep." "Do you mean to tell me," said his wife slowly, "that men real editors have printed what you've written and paid for it?" He winced. "Oh, they haven't paid much. And this won't sell. I had no advance royalties, and if after six months I get a check for two hundred dollars it will be more than I expect. I sha'n't get rich writing." 158 The Golden Answer "And now," she was both wondering and specu- lative, "you are doing another!" "This," said Amos, with a sudden lift of his head and shining in his eyes as he stared ahead at the wall paper, "is quite different." She stood looking at him for a long moment. She was faintly puzzled, still more faintly smiling. Finally, she reached out her hand and touched his head gently with a caressing motion, as if he had been a little boy. "So this," she repeated, even timidly, "is different!" Then she went quickly out of the room and shut the door. After that she never interrupted his holiday work to tell him that a plumber would have to come to-morrow. But soon something else interrupted it the Atlantic Seaboard Realty Company. "Prismatic Banking" was put on sale, had several good reviews, and dropped out of sight. It was a bad year for books. But Amos achieved the dignity of the New York Public Library, and one college put him in a modern essay course. He insisted on keeping secret his identity, so that he had no local fame. Then by and by, as always seems to happen with reliable routine, spring came. With it came an event the significance and the result of which were different from anything Amos or Christina Fortune had ever dreamed of. In the city spring came with a cobalt-blue sky, and white, windy clouds drifting far above white towers. Around the city streamed its two blue rivers, sparkling. Bridges, like fairy-tale giants of some fabled age of splendor, dared to leap one river, cream- ing to the bows of far-bound ships. The other river rolled untrammeled to its gulf. And in the harbor The Golden Answer 159 many mighty tides rose and received and bore away the white-bowed traffickers to the blue ocean. The streets of the city were tides of color. Flashing automobiles, brightly appareled women, shop windows in rich rivalry, and above these, against the sky, whip- ping flags of blue and red and white, all went rioting in the spring wind, an orgy of gayety. On the most crowded corners dark-eyed men from warm lands offered arbutus and violets and golden jonquils; while flower shops in long blocks, in the wholesale florist districts, gave themselves to brilliance. There one passed between window rows of tulips, pink and red, of daffodils and forget-me-nots, spraying Forsythia, sober mignonette, pale primroses and Freesias, starlike narcissus, lilacs, and always violets, more violets, for sale. And in the parks red tulips unattainable ! A new current of life flowed back into the city, into the thronging thoroughfares, the sweeping, shining drives, the quaint old streets of red brick houses in the sun, even into darker Downtown, where spring comes also, and is made vocal in merry hurdy-gurdies and young laughter. Something sang in the cool air that this was the spring, to reach up and out and take what one wanted, to think clearly, accomplish mightily, and achieve desire, to love if one ever would. Amos, walking at nightfall, through the street he had called the Avenue of Tulips, was prompted to a Puck- like exchange of a flying phrase with a small boy who was running swiftly, eyes far ahead. "Why are you running so fast?" he called. "I feel just like it !" came back the vanishing answer. They understood each other. Spring came to the country more demurely and not so early, a much more delicate affair. Wild flowers 160 The Golden Answer hid, and were not flaunted ; returning birds flashed in quick, thin streaks of yellow, blue and scarlet. But in despite of sweeter delicacy the swelling urge to joy was deeper and wilder here. . . . With spring, and also with the lilacs and the violets, though not so modest, came Uncle Benton Hoyle privately, Uncle Bells on business. He stayed at the small house in the lane, to save hotel bills, though he did not earn his bread per diem but lived up to the advice of bond advertisers, "Make your money work for you." He still had, from one standpoint, a neat sum. It was his intention, after his visit, to take Chris- tina back to Boston with him. She had never given up the idea (as, indeed, why should she give it up?) of this spring visit with her aunt ; and had not allowed Amos to forget it, by using the simple, direct method of mentioning it once a fort- night, always with pretty casualness. He expected her to go, wanted her to go and have a good time, but it would be awkward to spare the money. He wished to give it to her himself for the trip, and, indeed, he knew from other uses she had put hers to that she did not expect to spend her own for this. Christina occupied most of her time during Uncle Bells's visit in getting new clothes. Amos had given her a preliminary sum for that. And she went about in happy anticipation that made him wonder if, with all he knew she had sincerely felt, the winter had, on the whole, bored her. She showed him the clothes as she bought them, wisely and with thrift, but with an eye to good material that made the prices soar. There were a delightful "little" corn-colored silk suit, and a daring jade evening gown. And also there were two simple afternoon dresses (simple!), and a plainly tailored cloth suit. Hats, shoes, and stockings were The Golden Answer 161 complements. It hardly seemed as if Christina had worn out her trousseau of variety; but if these things were necessary Mrs. Amos Fortune must have them, as long as it was possible. The figures in the thrifty note book had long since been revised. The last day of Uncle Bells's visit came. Amos actually welcomed it; though he knew he should miss Christina badly, he thought that it meant she would stop "getting ready to go." Being merely a man he had not guessed that there would also be shopping tours with Mrs. Dana in Boston; he innocently sup- posed that everything would have been bought. That morning he left on an earlier train than usual for there was to be a meeting of the directors of the A. S. R. Company which Mr. Coxe had asked him to attend. He had a complicated report to give, which had caused him many sleepless nights. It was not an encouraging document. Uncle Bells was going on the night train to Boston. He had a settled theory that daylight should not be wasted in travel, if avoidable. So Christina, used to this eccentricity, was going with him on the 10.22 train. Her trunks went in to the Grand Central Sta- tion during the day to be claimed and checked later. As they sat that evening waiting for the whistle of Amos's train, which was always the signal for Johanna to begin to "take up" the dinner, the telephone bell rang. Harmony answered it, and came to stand before Chris- tina. "It was Amos," she announced. "He said he wouldn't be here for dinner, and he rang right off." Christina scowled. She disliked any kind of in- attention, especially before Uncle Benton, and on the part of a husband, the choice of whom he had ar- raigned. 162 The Golden Answer "How stupid!" she exclaimed, really saying more than she felt, unconsciously for effect. "Tell Johanna not to wait, Harmony." After the early dinner, sunlight still dappled the shady street. Country sounds fell upon the quiet air. In the garden, where the grass had long been green, the white lilac bush, now blossoming, threw off a cool fragrance. The library where stood Amos's ances- tral secretary, and where Christina and Harmony and Benton Hoyle sat again waiting for him was pleasant with the low sunshine and the new chintzes Christina had chosen. The lilac bush now and then brushed one of the windows inquiringly. He was long in coming ; Christina grew restless and piqued. And when at last he did stand in the doorway, with Harmony, the only one who had gone to meet him, by his side, the other two involuntarily exclaimed. His face was white, with a queer transparency. The lines that cut each cheek were cruelly deepened. But his eyes were brilliant, though his very shoulders looked tired. Christina lost color herself. He sat down in the large chair by the secretary, seemed to disappear into it with weariness. Before he had said a word Harmony climbed into his lap. He spoke quieuy enough, but as though he needed to clear his throat. "The Atlantic Seaboard Realty Company has failed," he said. "I don't believe it !" It was Christina who cried out sharply. "It isn't true. They can't have failed !" "Absolutely. Smashed. Gone. Done for. Not a splinter left to pick up." "Most unfortunate for all directly concerned," said Uncle Benton. The Golden Answer 163 Amos did not look at him. He opened and shut a drawer of his desk without intention. In one of the private inner drawers, safely locked, "Avalon," the book, lay. He could always feel its pres- ence as he felt Christina's. To-night its mute beauty stabbed him in the heart. He had locked it there, buried alive, for the sake of the Atlantic Seaboard Realty Company, which had failed. No! Stop a minute! for the company, perhaps outwardly, but in truth in the service of something more beautiful than any book, which had not failed yet ! Harmony sat in his lap, silent too, and the others stood over him, waiting for something, it almost seemed as if for an apology. But he ignored that. On the pretext of kissing the back of Harmony's neck he buried his face in her curls. Then he smiled at Chris- tina. "Don't worry," he said ; "I'll do something about it to-morrow." He then remembered for the first time since the opening of the cataclysmic meeting that morning that Christina was supposed to be going to Boston to- morrow no, to-night. Well, of course, now she would not go. They could talk things out minus Uncle Bells. It must be almost time for him to take himself off. Amos intended to wait for Uncle Bells's departure before he spoke of details, but Christina did not see that. "To-morrow!" she said bitterly. "The time to do something about it was yesterday !" "You're right, dear. It certainly was. Yester- day. . . ." "Why didn't you, then ? You were warned. Other men " 164 The Golden Answer "I don't believe I can go all over it again to-night. To-morrow I will try to make it clear." "But to-morrow " Christina's cheeis. suddenly flamed with anger. He interrupted her quietly, his look closing her lips. "Have you eaten dinner? I hope you didn't wait for me." "Yes, we ate," Harmony spoke up. "Aren't you hungry? We had very nice mashed potatoes and I had Lake Luzerne in mine, you know, of gravy. I hate the Atlantic Seaboard " "Hush," said Amos, hugging her. Johanna stood in the doorway, kind, wise, gray eyes upon him. "I've kept your supper hot, sir. Are you ready for it?" "Thank you, Johanna. That was nice of you. I don't want any." "You ought to eat," Johanna stood by her guns, with a glance at Mrs. Fortune. "You know yourself you ought to eat, sir." "Johanna," said Christina in a cold voice, "Mr. For- tune knows what he wants. You may put everything away." With an anxious look backward Johanna dis- appeared. They would not let him alone. "A man must have some experience," began Uncle Bells in a voice that boomed out in the now shadowy room, "before he learns to extricate himself from such predicaments. This affair is certainly unfortunate, most unfortunate. Is Coxe caught too ?" "I believe it's not serious for him," replied Amos wearily. "There are ways of saving yourself. You didn't The Golden Answer 165 ask my advice, didn't want it, I suppose. I've had years of experience, more years than Bertha likes me to count, getting to be an old fellow; haven't done much else but make money. I could have told you " "He was warned " interrupted Christina, unable to forget that strong point. "Uncle Bell Benton," suddenly inquired Amos, "do you remember once telling me about your carpen- ter shop?" "Wh my my eh what?" Uncle Bells was in- clined to bluster. "Your carpenter shop," repeated Amos rather loudly, as if Mr. Hoyle were deaf. "And your little airplane that wouldn't fly?" Uncle Bells, his under lip irritable, said stiffly, on the defensive: "I believe so, I believe so. You have an extraor- dinary memory for minutiae." "Well, I would rather have you tell me about your airplane that wouldn't fly you gave it as your hobby, you know, your Little Dream, than hear about your business experience, your er methods of extricat- ing yourself." Christina supposed he was thinking now about his made-up music teacher, was it? or somebody. "Christina!" burst out her uncle. "My poor child, you have married a maniac !" He stalked to the window, which was open, thrust out his hand and angrily yanked a spray from the white lilac bush, finding it necessary to destroy some- thing, and then threw the blossom onto the ground under the window. The bush flew back with a gentle swish of protest. After that he glared at his watch and looked at Christina. i66 The Golden Answer "Oh, no," she answered slowly, in sharp, cold anger that, too, desired to hurt, like an instrument of steel suddenly animated; "on the contrary he knows what he is doing, Uncle Benton. He knew all the time!" She turned upon Amos, and she had never looked lovelier than when she dealt him these blows. "I suppose you have plans to support your family? I suppose they are included in what you will say to- morrow? That is why I am not to worry! Or do you still consider people made up out of your head old maid music teachers who never existed more im- portant than your wife and and somebody's child?" It seemed that he could not look at her. When at last, white to the lips, he did raise his eyes to hers, their look was of one who tried not to see what was all too apparent. "I expect to take care of you and Harmony. We shall come through this somehow, together." Uncle Bells suddenly snapped his old-fashioned watch. "In the meantime don't make me miss my train, Christina. I hope you won't disappoint your aunt be- cause of this." A stillness, sudden and palpable, dropped down and spread in the room. It reacted upon Harmony as an unpleasant presence does upon a little animal. With a quick, distressed sound she put her arms around Amos's neck, though he had not stirred or spoken. Ex- cept for that the silence wa3 so intense that Johanna's washing the silver in the kitchen became, in the small house, plainly audible, and three short whistles of a locomotive echoed forlornly, miles away. "I can't," said Christina, slowly and deliberately, "very well resurrect the Atlantic Seaboard Realty Company by staying, can I ?" The Golden Answer 167 As she spoke she looked at no one, addressed no one; but after a moment her eyes drew to Amos' s against her will. There was a breathless pause while their eyes held. "You certainly cannot," he agreed at last. "I will stay if you insist upon it, but I don't see what / can do," she spoke directly at him now. He was still sitting in the chair by his desk, and he happened to notice, just then, that the ink in the ink well was all dried up. Harmony saw the line in his left cheek which she used to call the Perfectly Beauti- ful Joke Line, quickly cut deep. But he was not exactly smiling. He still looked up at Christina. "If you want to go, you had better run along." "It's not necessary to speak to me as if I were a child ! I suppose you think I ought not to go." "I should not dream of keeping you." Her anger seemed to have frozen into something glazed and hard and perpetual. "You don't approve of my business methods so I should hardly obtrude any plans of my own. However," her cool voice was a martyr's, "I'll stay if you demand it." "I shall never demand anything of you, Christina. When have I done that? I think it is right that you should go and make your visit." "You must hurry," interrupted Benton Hoyle, "it's late. I'll just telephone for a taxi." Christina suddenly turned without speaking and left the room. Harmony ran upstairs after her in excitement over the sudden hurry. Amos did not stir from the chair into which he had first dropped. He was tired to the bone. As he said nothing to Mr. Hoyle, that gentleman went out to walk i68 The Golden Answer up and down the porch while waiting. Amos was thankful to be alone. The spring night had come and lights had sprung out far across the meadow. The library was almost dark. Johanna, a shadowy figure, came to turn on the lamp, but he waved her away. There were sounds upstairs of Christina's pretty feet tapping lightly across the bedroom, as she did a few last things. He remembered well enough, now, that she had been ready to go that morning. How had he come to forget, even for a moment? . . . Harmony's running skip fol- lowed Christina's feet everywhere. He smiled at that ... By the sound there seemed to be a great many things to go into the suit case at the last minute. There always were. He remembered how heavy it had been on their wedding trip, when he had frequently carried it for the saving of tips, to Christina's amusement. The clock struck nine with unnecessary solemnity. Then he heard Christina's voice calling : "Can you come up and carry my bag? The cab is here." So the commonplace asserted itself. He rose, feeling sick, and went upstairs. Standing at the foot of the bed in their room he gave her some money, which she took absently and thrust into her purse. She was dressed in her new, smart spring suit of brown and a lovely little close hat with a brown tip, that drooped and kissed her ear, but was never out of place any more than her rippling hair was ever untidy. Suddenly he spoke to her passionately: "Christina, we mustn't part like this, even for a short time ! How did it ever happen ? I want you to go, and enjoy yourself. It is much more sensible. There is no reason why why you shouldn't go. I The Golden Answer 169 shall be busy; it is just a little visit anyhow. We're being too dramatic." "Yes," she said. She looked a little white and tired herself. "It seems sensible to go on, and make this visit, since it is all planned." "I'll say good-by here," he told her. She raised her eyes and actually looked hurt. "I expected you would come to the station!" At that he picked up the heavy bag and went down- stairs and out to the porch, where he left it for the cab driver, and went back for his hat. He saw Christina kissing Harmony in the hall and saying good-by to a solemn Johanna. Again he felt a bitter sickness sweep over him, a physical nausea. He kissed her himself by the front door. He drove with them to the station, where, as he had expected, Uncle Bells walked off and left him to pay for the taxicab. CHAPTER XIX HILDA stood in the sunny sitting room at home look- ing up at Charles Brent. Her steady eyes, with their keen, lurking amusement always confused him, as no eyes of coquetry had ever done. Hilda's were boyish eyes, in spite of the femininity of the rest of her; an understanding observer would have said, from the look in them, that she found Charles Brent amusing, as an elder brother thinks a younger is endearingly absurd. "All-day picnic?" she was saying. "But I'll have to make conditions." "Go ahead bring on your conditions," agreed Mr. Brent grimly. "First, we must take Harmony." "That's easy," agreed C. M., brightening, and at the same time curbing a disappointment he could not exactly lay his finger on. "And then it will depend on how Mother is. She isn't well, exactly. I don't know, there doesn't seem to be anything special the matter. ... So if you want to leave it like that, not knowing until the minute be- fore we start " "We'll leave it any way you say. I'll call you up after breakfast for the verdict." "I may not be able to get Harmony," said Hilda, smiling. "You'll get her if I have to kidnap the child of For- tune!" Hilda's truthful frankness was even more efficacious 170 The Golden Answer 171 than well-plotted retreats and hesitations. In all serene sincerity she employed a time-honored method. She kept the man uneasy until the last moment over his chances of seeing her, and also from making an engagement with any other girl for that day. But C. M., not un- touched by the gay give and take involved in the society of ladies sometimes he had thought it mostly take would never have dreamed of misinterpreting that clarity of hers. If she had known she could go or ah, there was the rub wanted to go with him alone, she would have said so. After C. M. had left, with his uncertainty in his bosom, Hilda stood for some minutes, perhaps three, opposite the telephone, before she called for Amos Fortune's number to ask if she might have Harmony for the next day. She had talked with him only once since his marriage, and that a conversation which occupied, from beginning to end, ten minutes. It had taken place one day when Amos had come to take Harmony home, for the little girl had not given Hilda up because of Christina's advent. She often asked, and was permitted by Amos's order, to spend Saturday afternoon with the Martins. And in truth Amos would not have "given Hilda up," either, if Christina had not that winter, to his astonishment, refused to invite her or call upon her. He felt uncomfortable and ashamed at having dropped a friend, for the attitude Christina forced him to take toward Hilda, he made out, was one that really pre- supposed, as a basis of Hilda's and his relationship, the status of an "affair." His dropping Hilda, suddenly, not any longer meeting her as a friend, savored of the crude triteness of its being necessary to be off with an old love, etc., which was odious and untrue and an insult to Hilda, for affair there was none, God knew ! 172 The Golden Answer She was his good friend. She would not have treated him so. His good friend stood for three minutes before the telephone into which traveled the wire that might bring his voice to her, before she took down the receiver with a shaking hand. . . . She knew of the failure of the Atlantic Seaboard Realty Company. Harmony was permitted to go on the picnic, and Mrs. Martin felt well the day of the event, or said she did, denying paleness, so when Charles Brent called Hilda up, on Sunday morning, his anxiety was stilled. It was a soft, sunny June morning when C. M., shining like the sun himself with cheeriness, put Hilda and Harmony into his big car and sped off with them. In the tonneau stood a substantial English tea-basket, which Harmony, upon investigation, found was full to the brim. For Mr. Brent had forbidden Hilda to bring so much as one pickle, having a horror of picturing Mrs. Martin and her daughter "fussing." Hilda ap- preciated this considerateness perhaps more than the ride. They flew through the summer country, the three of them sitting in front. Harmony was at her happiest, except that once she looked wistful, and said: "I wish Amos was here !" ^ "Gee!" exclaimed C. M., "Why'n't I ask him? ... Chump !" he added. Hilda said nothing. She wished that she could for- get about the Atlantic Seaboard Realty Company. What would he do ? But she was happy, let no one think she was not. She laughed often and easily. Her arm encircled Har- mony, whom she loved; occasionally she tickled her. Charles Brent was very nice. Sometimes he made her think of a seawall that no waves could damage, how- The Golden Answer 173 ever they might buffet it. She liked to think of him that way: The foundations of him in the bottom of the sea, his head defying storms. Of course a seawall does not vibrate delicately. . . . They went the long way around to the place chosen that seemed to be Charles Brent's custom. But he explained to Hilda that it was better to have the ride first, then they would be free to loiter at the lake, knowing they had but a short journey home. So that it was nearly two o'clock and they were very hungry before he swung around to a shady glen beside a little blue lake with a tiny river running into it. Here, sit- ting on his far-voyaged steamer rug, they ate from his English tea-basket and drank lemonade poured from his thermos bottle, laughing and having a light-hearted time of it. After luncheon they played games with Harmony, and took a walk around the lake. When they had returned to the pleasant, shady spot, Har- mony said: "Did you know that this is where Amos and I found Christina?" Hilda started, and Charles Brent's expression be- came a little strained. "You 'found' her," repeated Hilda, "here!" "Yes." Harmony became interestedly reminiscent. "The year before die fairy play it was. Sitting on the shore in a gold sweater. A storm was coming up, and she didn't dare go back. She had our canoe." "What was she doing then with your canoe?" Hilda could not restrain the question. "She had to take it, you see, to run away from some- one. I think it was partly a joke, but Amos never splained it to me. So we had to take an awful old boat to go and look for the canoe. An' Christina told us vre ought to paint it I mean our canoe; but you 174 The Golden Answer know it's quite a nice one, the shape is perfectly lovely, isn't it, Hilda?" "Yes." "It wasn't very rough, but Christina didn't dare go back in the canoe so she got into our boat." "Oh." Charles Brent knew, and Hilda had read it in the local "society column" that Christina was an expert with the paddle. Once she had shot difficult rapids alone. "I wonder," mused Harmony, "who she ran away from. Do you think it was a joke?" Charles Brent's face became, slowly and sullenly, a painful red. He gazed across the river. Hilda, turn- ing to him for aid in switching Harmony's mind else- where, saw the conflagration, saw that he miserably knew that she saw it and understood. She laughed. There really were the elements of farce in this situa- tion. "And so," she said to Harmony, relieving C. M. of her candid gaze, "you named her the Discreet Princess. Do you ever call her that now ? What do you call her every day, Harmony?" "I call her Christina. Amos said that was better than such a royal title, for every day. And better than Mama. I wanted to call her that." "You did ? . . . But Amos is always right, isn't he ? Imagine saying 'Discreet Princess, where are my shoes, or or where is my old polka-dot necktie?' Ridic- ulous." Harmony giggled. "This morning Amos couldn't find the tie I made for him, the one you taught me how to crochet. We think maybe Christina took it with her to wear with her new silk sport-shirt." The Golden Answer 175 "Took it with her, Harmony!" "Yes." Hilda looked at C. M., who was normal by this time, and back to Harmony. "Why, where is she?" "She's gone to Boston. Didn't you know?" "No." "She went the day we struck." "What on earth you strange child struck what?" "We are on a reef now, that's rocks, and they are probably coral. Amos says we will not be cast away." Hilda rose, and walked down the river. Charles Brent told Harmony to stay with him. On the river the summer sun sparkled, making all the little waves, which were hurrying by the smooth, green meadows, shine and look inconsequently gay. How strange to remember the inperturbability of nature ! The river did not know it was there, or that it was beautiful. It flowed, blind, senseless, uncon- scious of bulk or shape. Once she had run from the ocean in fright at the overwhelming thought that in all its terrifying vastness it did not know it was there. That, to be sure, was another aspect of inanimate beauty. Christina made her think of the river. She seemed to be as unconscious of direction, and of, at least, the consequences of her beauty. She traveled on, glitter- ing, over sandy or muddy or rocky bottom. She shaped herself and her course according to the slant of circumstances and to the wind. . . . Hilda was gone an hour, and when she came back she found Charles Brent looking guilty and Harmony full of guile. Harmony kissed her several times and tried to tell her a story about Diana, also named Arte- 176 The Golden Answer mis, but Hilda, enlightened by C. M.'s expression, would not listen. "Harmony, look at your feet. What have you been doing?" Harmony became forlorn. "I walked in the brook." "I should say you had ! What did you do that for?" "Well, you see, Hilda, one foot slipped in, and I thought I might as well wet both." "Your feet ! You're wet to your knees, and look at that mud ! Mr. Brent, I left her with you. Why didn't you watch her?" "Well, I got to thinking about something," confessed Charles Brent miserably, "and when I looked around the child was in the mud." Hilda burst into laughter at their fallen aspect. "I'm not going to eat you for it," she told them. "But this means we must go home at once. Harmony takes cold easily. Mr. Brent, kindly scrape her with this stick while I pack up the tea-basket." So another picnic on the river came to an unlooked- for end. They wrapped Harmony in a rain coat from Charles Brent's well supplied car, and took her home. Amos Fortune came to the gate when the car stopped. He had a book in his hand. It was Sir Philip Sidney's "A Defense of Poesy." He had risen from his old deck chair on the veranda when he saw them corning. Hilda thought, as he stood by the gate, glad to see them, that the winter and spring had changed him. He looked both older and younger ! Or was it that no one could hold a memory equal to the reality of his vital presence, a spirited energy of voice and look that had nothing to do with the flesh? He lifted Harmony down, holding her muddy legs The Golden Answer 177 Bnd skirts at a distance in dismay, and he asked Hilda and Charles Brent to come in. When Harmony, sneezing, confessed her crime, he commanded her, with a mixture of alarm and amuse- ment in his eyes, to take a hot bath and go to bed. "Let me help her," pleaded Hilda. "Johanna is out on Sunday afternoons, isn't she ?" He nodded and went upstairs with them. "The towels are in that closet, and here's her night- gown. Are you cold, dear?" He felt Harmony's hands. Hilda had always seen that anything wrong with Harmony could throw Amos into a passion of anxiety. "I don't want to go to bed," said the little girl. He put his hand under her chin and lifted up her face. "But, you see, this naturally follows walking in brooks. This is what you chose ! Understand ?" A long look passed between them, each pair of brown eyes searching the other, until they both smiled. "Yes," Harmony finally answered. Hilda, going to turn on hot water in the bathroom, thought that she had never before seen punishment like that. She bathed Harmony joyfully and put her to bed. She preferred this occupation to her work in the South Sea House. It seemed to her to be just as broadening as compound interest. The warm, soft water, the delicate-scented green oval of lemon verbena soap, Harmony's velvet body, was not this all more "real" than figures that represented paper that represented gold locked in a vault, all of which was not hers any- way? And supposing Harmony were hers? (Who were these mad women who talked about getting out into "real life" and doing things that counted?) 178 The Golden Answer Harmony's conversation was entertaining, but she did not listen to it. She was thinking about the woman who had been Harmony's mother. Harmony wanted her doll to sleep with her. It was in Amos's room. Harmony spoke of it as Amos's room and Hilda thought of it as Christina's. She went in to get the doll, who was lank and naked and named Diana! The door to the closet was open slightly, and on it hung a yellow kimono. The silken thing drooped there, languid and pretty, left behind. Hilda, standing in the middle of that cool gray and yellow room, holding the awful doll, was without warn- ing filled with overwhelming rage. For the first time in her life a sickening, blinding, killing jealousy shook her. Downstairs Amos and Charles Brent were talking in serious voices. They stopped when she came into the library. Amos seemed to hate to have them leave him. Finally he asked them to stay and eat with him. He explained that Johanna had left his supper in the re- frigerator and that he would fix up something else if they would stay. Hilda, not caring at all about "appearances," decided to stay. "Christina is away on a little visit," he explained, looking at her in an approving manner. (How she longed to do her hair over!) "But you won't mind, will you? I'll see that you don't starve." "I'm not afraid," she laughed. She got the supper, with Amos's help, in the yellow and white kitchen, while Charles Brent looked on. The eyes with which he followed her were thoughtful. Her body felt light and quick all over, and im- mensely skillful. The Golden Answer 179 At supper they talked about the South Sea House, and you would have thought it a gay, heavenly place. C. M. sat silent and bewildered in Christina's chair, where Hilda had contrived to put him. The early dusk descended on the garden. Harmony called down- stairs for more milk toast. Amos, eating little, sat back in his chair and smoked, looking from Hilda to Charles Brent. "I wish you two could come and see us often," he said all at once, and Hilda put it down as the first awkward thing she had ever heard him say. "We'll have some parties. And you must come again, too, while Christina is gone." Hilda's mind ran: All right, I don't care, I'll come if he wants me, I will ! When they were going she and Amos stood near the secretary alone for a moment. She looked up at him. "Remember; don't let it die," she said, "the thing that couldn't. Jeremy Pride but especially the other !" His eyes grew bright. "I don't forget," he told her. CHAPTER XX THE most immediate result of Christina's departure for her visit was for Amos the sudden acquisition of more time. This, coupled with the fact that it was no longer necessary to go to the offices of the defunct Realty Company, whose affairs were in the "hands of a receiver," created around him desert spaces of hours. In this desert he sat down to sum up his situation. The actual physical sickness which had attacked him when he saw that Christina meant to carry out her plans did not pass away immediately. Because he had so far refused to face the meaning of her action, that meaning remained in the background of his mind, or, in what seems the truer language of feeling, at the bottom of his heart, manifesting itself in a heaviness of the limbs and a pervading soreness, as of a bruise. It occurred to him in this connection to wonder, if a mental and spiritual state could cause such a condi- tion, how much there might be to the philosophy which premised the mind's control of matter. He put that aside for further thinking. He tried to put all aside for further consideration except the immediate and pressing necessity of finding another "South Sea House." He must make plans, he must establish other business connections, at once. He must earn money. For with the ruin of the Realty Company, whose land had, after all, not been quite so tangible as it sounded, had gone all his capital little enough. He had literally only a few hundred dollars in the world. 180 The Golden Answer 181 He was amazed by the sudden realization of how many men sailed their smartly rigged vessels thus close to the wind. The loss of work, or death, would in millions of cases precipitate almost immediate want. These were they whom Mr. Coxe had called fools. Well, that was one way of looking at it, certainly! He must reestablish himself immediately, to be ready for Christina when she came back. And so he took stock of himself, trying to put on strength for this phase of his adventure. For in all the situations into which his life had taken him, he suddenly felt this to be the strangest. He was not unfamiliar with beginning again. When he had taken Harmony and gone to work at the South Sea House, that had been a beginning. He had chosen that kind of work without very much thought, perhaps not wisely, because it presented itself. It was steady and hard and respectable. He had felt that he needed the discipline of its arduous routine. Then, as now, he had been almost wholly without money, and at that time he was unaccustomed to being without it. An- other man in his situation, having a dilettante art, might have scorned a "job" and tried to rely on that, would have become a scribbler of mediocre things for money, a cheap and unsuccessful railer against fortune in a garret. Amos had thought too well of himself and too little of himself for that. Having written only in leisure for the sheer fun of the thing, it had not occurred to him to spoil his fun for his living, and, besides, he had not dreamed anyone would buy what he wrote. It was only when the leisure was gone forever, and the work of the South Sea House, having accom- plished what he had hoped it would accomplish, had become an irksome familiar, that the chains were felt, and he had longed to break them and be himself all the 182 The Golden Answer hours of his day. Then had come another and more passionate longing, and he had become even more tightly bound. Now that it was necessary to find another South Sea House he wondered if he had chosen wisely long ago, for it was upon this experience that he must now rely in looking for work. He had a university education and the polish of travel, as had all his forebears, but no profession. In his own class he corresponded to the unskilled laborer in the industrial class. Lacking a profession, an estab- lished business, and capital, he must take up with the odd job, and make a place for himself. He had through bad luck, combined with the urgent necessity of routine, stumbled into a position where there was no future to speak of. Many a man with brains had done the same. Gradually he had seen that only his hobby, his divine fooling, his "little dream," would pull him out (He wanted to take everyone else out with him. He forgot that they did not, all of them, have dreams.) And then he had hazarded even that crystal hope for his other greater adventure. It was the most char- acteristic thing he could have done. Amos started with the idea that perhaps his ex- perience in essay writing might give him an entrance in magazine or newspaper offices. He was uncertain what to ask for, but knew that if he were given a desk and a job in an office of this kind he could do the work. But there was a conspiracy against letting him try. He visited most of the magazine and newspaper offices in New York, receiving for the most part cour- teous, but occasionally surly, treatment. Everyone who had a job was holding on to it. He even went to the women's magazines. In the office of one of these he claimed, as a likely qualification, to know something The Golden Answer 183 about children. The young woman who interviewed him, he felt, regarded him with curiosity tinged with pity. She was a little, exuberant, red-haired thing, with large eyes that looked him over and patronized him. She was very kind, and asked him to fill out an application blank, to be filed. When it became plain that no magazine or news- paper staff required his editorial assistance, he tried his hand at hack-writing and pot-boilers, turning these out in the evening when he could not pursue his search. He sold two short articles for equally short checks, but the rest came back, showing the tin- reliableness of article writing as a livelihood. Then, with his tongue in his cheek, he wrote a melo- dramatic love story, which he sent to The Yellow Book. It was returned promptly with a printed slip. This he deserved and knew it. After that he spent ten evenings on a new "Prismatic Banking" paper. The idea was excellent. He realized that the essay was one of the best he had done, better than several of the series in The Atlantic Monthly. He sent the manu- script off with confidence. It was a blow to receive a letter from the editor, saying that the charm of the paper was indisputable, that no one regretted more than he the fact that it did not seem wise to continue the series. Amos thought that he regretted it even more than the editor. So he turned to the work in which he had had the most experience. Fortified with his letters from the South Sea House, he made the round of the banks. It was extraordinary to see how these slaving souls hugged their chains. Apparently no one ever left a desk where it was his privilege to pass, with his nose in a ledger, the time allotted him in a world of fields, mountains, trackless skies, and five oceans. 184 The Golden Answer At last he ventured to go back to the South Sea House itself. They had told him to return if he wanted to. How he once scorned the idea! He went down among the roaring thoroughfares to the smoky antique bank. Standing outside its gloomy doors he turned his back upon them and looked up at the Bridge. It had not changed in aspect, though those who passed over it and under it had changed. Everything changed but the Bridge. It still made its daring plunge and reached the other side. . . . That was all that counted: to build enduringly and gracefully. To add a strong, subtle, and beautiful element to that harmony which was most to be desired and worshiped. He turned and went into the South Sea House, doubting if he himself were building such a bridge. He sought Hilda first, and joked with her about being "out of a job." She showed no surprise, because it was not in her to dissimulate. And why should she ? She was in a room lighted wholly by electricity and around which was built an iron network, making a cage. The air was very bad. There were two other "girls" in the room with her one probably forty-five years old, the other about sixty. Also two very sub- ordinate young men, whose shirt cuffs were turned back, as were their coat sleeves, showing a soiled lining that rubbed on their blackened desks. These persons all greeted Amos with interest and a limited good will, returning to their tasks while he talked in a low tone with Hilda. She looked pale, sweet, sturdy, and businesslike as she raised grave eyes to his. "I think there might still be a chance for you here," she told him, making triangles on a piece of blotting paper, "although of course your old job is filled. You The Golden Answer 185 can see the men over there." She indicated an ad- jacent compartment. "I hear they have made good. Still, there may be something else. Why not go in now and talk with Mr. Carlton ?" "I will," he answered. But he lingered. "How is your work going ?" he asked, knowing the question was inane. The grave eyes were quickly invisible ; he found himself looking at very white lids and suddenly thought of the petals of Annunciation lilies. "Very well indeed," she said with heartiness. "We've had some interesting business on which I've done the figuring. By the way, Captain Joel Mayo's son had a successful voyage to the Arctic, and a change of heart. He's come back and paid the mortgage on the Seagull, and Captain Joel and he are in partner- ship. I believe the lady with the hair fell in love and remained in the north." Amos was interested. "I got the notes on that you sent me. I had so much to think of that I never thanked you. But the essay that I wrote around it (using the part about the neat little boy inimitable!) was returned. So Ethan has repented, has he? Perhaps he was too neat. Bring up a child, etc." "It came back!" said Hilda. "What luck! How stupid of them!" "Oh, well Now I'll go in and see Carlton. . . . When Christina's visit is over we four must have din- ner together. I like Brent." "So do I," said Hilda. His interview with benevolent old Mr. Carlton lasted ten minutes. "I like you, Fortune, and I like your work," said Joseph Carlton, finally, when matters were understood i86 The Golden Answer between them. He was the go-between who linked the members of the firm with the employees ; he did the "hiring and firing." "That was an unfortunate affair, that Realty Company. It looked good. I admit it looked good to me. I lost a little. Quite a little. . . . I'd like to have you back here. Faithful service. Man of different stamp you understand me. Might be a chance for advancement. In fact, I was thinking about it when you left. Couldn't offer you then the equiv- alent of what you were going to. Now times are uncertain. Very. I'm not taking on anybody new. All I could do would be to let someone go say two people. That would give you an entering wedge, and we'd see." "But," said Amos, "I couldn't do that!" "Now, now, not so fast. It might be to the best interests of the firm as well as of you. They're two girls I had in mind. Or, rather, one's getting old ; she makes mistakes. I think she lied about her age to me when she came. They'll do that. No scruples at all about it. She's aged in two years. Mistakes won't do. And then there's that little one younger you used to know her. She's a bright little thing. But she's lost interest. They do sometimes at her age. It's because it's the time when they get a man for good or else they don't. I know ; I've got three old-maid sisters. Three! I'll fire those two and take you back." The next moment Joseph Carlton had the oddest sensation of his life. He suddenly found himself straining back in his leather chair to remove his person as far as possible from the proximity of hard knuckles being shaken in his face, from a tower of anger, from a close, white mouth that was pouring into his face a stream of low-voiced and elegantly chosen profanity. In short, Joseph Carlton was being insulted in his own office. If an office boy had not at that moment burst The Golden Answer 187 in with a sheaf of telegrams he felt it quite likely that he would have been injured in a personal physical way unknown to civilization. But even the office boy could not stop the forceful and succinct summary with which his visitor concluded an estimate of his character. With joyful admiration for youth, belligerence, and fluency the office boy watched the tower of anger depart. Then he and the white, soft old man stared at each other. Such is the contamination of associa- tion that Joseph Carlton, reaching a shaking, wrinkled hand for a glass of water, remarked quite loudly: 'Til be damned!" Thus it happened that Amos did not return to the South Sea House. And Hilda knew why he did not return, for the office boy, who was her admiring friend, reported the flaming summary in detail to her. He had listened with such fascinated attention that he had the main points quite correct. Amos worried about what old Joseph Carlton had said about Hilda's work. Some other man out of a job might not be so scrupulous as he. He wrote her a letter explaining that there had been nothing offered him which he could take, and adding, after delibera- tion, that he thought from something Carlton had said that if she spurted up she might get an increase in salary. He now faced an extraordinary situation: A man with a good education, experience of a sort, an art, and a few friends to speak for him (Charles Brent had come forward voluntarily), can go for months without finding work, given just the right combination of cir- cumstances. Circumstance of course did it, that flighty but implacable creature which some of us are tempted to call, with what provocation ! the only god. It "hap- pened" now that the financial break prophesied by The Golden Answer wiseacres a year ago had come. Some men must break with it; Amos knew that. With the passage of time his efforts to find work became hurried and nervous, not so well directed. Christina's visit, already somewhat prolonged, would soon be drawing to its close ! ( She had been writing him once a week, serene, brief letters that ignored the consciousness of anything unusual having occurred; and he had answered in the same vein.) His ill- directed efforts had the same results as those most carefully thought out, as one might expect, though when the God of Chance is with a man he sometimes gains by a happy fluke what no effort will win him. At the end of the summer he had not succeeded and something drastic had to be done. His money was going rapidly. He could no longer pay Johanna. Therefore it was clear that, though it would break Harmony's heart, temporarily, and be a wrench for him, Johanna must go. After an especially ignominious afternoon in which he had been turned away by an oily, ungrammatical little politician, he called her in to break the news to her. He stood before the elder Amos Fortune's desk summoning courage to face her. Johanna was salvage from the past. She had been a housemaid in his father's home, many years ago. She had known his brother. It seemed to bring him to a sharp edge of forlornness to be obliged to cut himself off from this cool, stern old serving woman who, alone of those he lived among, had known his brother, whom he had loved. He swung around to her, when he heard her in the doorway, and smiled by way of keeping his courage up to the point to which he had screwed it. She laid her hand on her side. This angular, gray-gowned woman with white hair The Golden Answer 189 was as silent and austere as she was faithful and lov- ing. She seldom expressed herself by gesture or word. She kept her distance, which she thought of as "her place," year in and year out. Looking at her now, Amos Fortune had a strange impulse to throw his arms around her neck and put his head on her shoulder. Instead, he said quickly: "Johanna, I'm out of work and most particularly stony-broke. I can't afford to go on paying you until I get work and am in funds again. I think you'd better take another place for the winter. Then, I hope, you'll come back to us." Johanna looked at him, clear-eyed. Her voice was calm and respectful: "I've got money in the bank, sir. I'd be happy to have you owe me the pay until spring." "Spring, Johanna," he said sadly. "But it's not the first of September yet. You see, I can't afford you. I - I might not be able to pay you then !" Johanna rubbed her brown hand across her cheek and returned it to her side. "When I looked at my bank book last evening, I was thinking about it all, Mr. Amos. Your father and mother, and and your brother, and all, and, thinks I, I don't need so much money as I've got saved. . . . I'd like to stay, if you please, and when it's convenient, you can begin again to pay me. I know you're a one debts worries. I wouldn't have you contracting 'em! Not to me !" He went close to her and took her large, hard, brown hands, covering them with both of his. "I'll never forget that. It's worth losing a lot to hear that. But you can't do it for me, dear Johanna ; not even for 'us/ for I know you remember all of us. I'm afraid you remember, in that silence of yours, 190 The Golden Answer things anything but good ; but you can't remember our doing one like that, can you?" She bent her head and took her hands away from him, hiding them under her apron. "You've just done something I can't thank you for, and I've got to send you away, . . . Johanna, our many adventures are eccentric ones! . . . And now I'll have to tell Harmony you're going!" She raised her eyes at last, maternal under shrouding lids, and put a trembling hand on his own. "I'll tell her for you, my dearie." Amos turned quickly away. After a moment he heard Johanna's voice again at the door. It was steady and distant but had withal a ground tone of comfortableness. "I've got Scotch broth, sir, hot for your supper." At the end of that week Johanna went, straight and calm, looking, in her best black dress, very dependable. She carried a "telescope" bag and started in a taxicab, which she could amply afford, on an indefinite visit to her sister in Cedar Rapids, her slope-top, brown leather trunk riding before her. At the door Harmony clung to her, and Amos wondered for one moment if he had done wrong. Should he have let her stay and serve them for the little girl's sake ? And what would Chris- tina say when she found no Johanna? But he let her go, and tried to fill the void she left by joking with Harmony. He did not go out to look for work that afternoon. At first they managed the housework rather well between them, Amos thought. He made Harmony laugh a good deal by saying and doing absurd things on purpose. For he had always felt bound to give Harmony a good time in life. Sometimes he made her laugh without meaning to, by flopping pancakes into The Golden Answer 191 the coal hod, for instance. But she cried when he burned his hand with blazing bacon fat. Johanna had left a list of instructions, which he followed conscien- tiously, but in spite of that dust collected at a dismay- ing rate, dishes accumulated in the sink; he never seemed to have anything "in the house" to fall back on, and would surely discover the lack of an essential in- gredient for a meal in the midst of preparing it, though he always seemed to be buying food. This state he arrived at after the first week, when they had eaten what Johanna had prepared for them before her de- parture. He developed an interest in the cook book, conceiv- ing it to be a weird combination of the delectable, the bloodthirsty, and the puzzling. He would wander off from the stern case at hand to read a charming old- fashioned direction for English chicken pie, such as: "Add two sprigs of thyme, one sprig of sweet mar- joram, a bit of a bay leaf and two sprigs of parsley tied in a bag; simmer gently." He had not dreamed of such things between these commonplace covers. He saw the old English kitchen, the fireplace and ovens, the small-paned windows, shining with sunlight, bou- quets of herbs hanging from blackened rafters, a fat cook and a mischievous pot boy, fragrant steam. . . . (And as for the murderous excesses of the author's dreadful plans ! To read was to sound the depths of them: "A green goose should never be more than four months old!" "Take a three weeks' old pig." Take him! (This was headed shamelessly "Roast Little Pig.") "Parboil brains in a muslin bag!" "Wash one heart and place it on a rack." . . . Truly, cooks used a strange art and language. "Dredge with flour," said the book about what should be an ordinary dish. Dredge ? And, moreover "Baste with port wine !" He 192 The Golden Answer associated basting with a large white spool of thread in Johanna's work basket, now departed with her, and dredging with a steam shovel. And he had no port wine. There was the saloon at the end of the lane * But surely Johanna had never basted with port wine. He called up Hilda and asked her advice. She laughed and explained a simple act and method. Why should the writer of the directions be so mysterious about it? And to use port wine for such a thing was seldom done, anyway, Hilda said. The cook book was indeed a strange and diverting volume. And now, when he felt it almost criminal to spend time in any way that was not remunerative, he went on with the book because he could not help it. Exhausted as he was after he came from a day of tramping the city, or dashing up and down in the subway, and after taking hundreds of unnecessary steps in preparing a confused meal, he would find peace and rest in pouring out on the pages of "Avalon" what he had months planned to put there but been unable to. It was like the opening of a dam beneath a swollen river, or even more like the opening of a beach he had once seen on a beautiful island he had visited. A series of ponds and streams could not empty into the sea because the high surf deposited too rapidly a solid beach of sand across their outlet. But the wise islanders cut a chan- nel through the senseless obstructing sand and let the stream go free. It was nothing to Amos that what he thus wrote would probably be worth little, if any, money. He knew that it was beautiful and good. CHAPTER XXI HE expected Christina back in September at the latest. Her letters continued to recount dutifully a very pleasant life in Boston. Mr. and Mrs. Hoyle had not been able to afford to leave the city for the sum- mer, an unheard-of deprivation; but the Danas had taken a house at Marblehead and Christina visited them frequently. Friends of Mrs. Hoyle had invited her and Christina for two weeks in Gloucester. But even a summer that was one long visit cost money. And in one of Christina's letters she made a suggestion which was both kindly, reasonable, and humiliating to Amos. She told him that since he had not "formed any business connections yet," she would get along on her small income for a while. He need not send her any money. She emphasized the fact that Mr. Hoyle was in difficulty. Amos knew she meant by that to have him understand he could not borrow from Uncle Bells. It was the last thing he expected to do. By way of reply he sent Christina twenty-five dollars and asked her when he and Harmony should expect her home. Then he began to watch the postman for her answer. One Saturday afternoon, while Amos was waiting for the last mail, Charles Brent called at the white house in the lane. He drove in his car, and walked up the front path rather heavily. Harmony, who had just come in from a glorious hour of raking leaves and building bonfires with Amos, out from the city early 194 The Golden Answer because all the South Sea Houses were closed, ran to the door to let him in. She jumped up and down before him like a playful puppy, her curls bobbing, her crimson cheeks and brown eyes an augury of the beauty she would have some day. The sharp air and exercise had also flushed Amos Fortune's lean face. Charles Brent suddenly looked from him to Harmony and back again, and had a strange thought. Harmony threw herself upon him and dragged him into the library. It was conceivable that she was a very lone- some little girl while Amos was in the city. Now she had them both. Her eager eyes were triumphant, as she asked, "Oh, dear Mr. C. M., why didn't you bring Hilda too?" But C M. had come to talk privately with Amos. Seeing that, Amos soon sent Harmony on an errand. In her absence the object of the visit came out. It was hard for Charles Brent to do anything grace- fully. He realized the fact, and that only increased his awkwardness. But the knowledge had also brought him to the conclusion, several years ago, that it was best, after all, to do and say things in his own way. Attempted grace suggested the gambols of better un- named animals. So now he said, sitting wedged into a chair too small for him it was Christina's: "Look here. I'm going to China. India, too, maybe. They're about the only places I never been, except the Poles. I know what's up with you. Can't I lend you some money before I go?" Then he wiped his face as if it were a hot day. Amos was touched. He liked Charles Brent. If it came to the necessity of borrowing from anybody, for Harmony's sake, he thought he could do it with less pain from him than from anyone else. But he did not The Golden Answer 195 want to borrow from anyone ! It made him hot with shame to think of it. He had never borrowed, not even in the bad days just preceding the South Sea House. He had always won through somehow himself, and he expected to win through now. Besides, only this morning he received an encouraging reply to his answer to an advertisement. He had an appointment for Monday which he thought would bring success at last. So he refused as gently as he could the kind, blunt offer. And he and Charles Brent talked about India, and tiger shooting and the interesting effect of the lack of roads in China. He asked after Hilda Martin, and noticed that C. M. spoke of her with a suddenly averted eye. It seemed that he had not seen her for two weeks. He refused hastily an invitation for a farewell supper party which should include Hilda, say- ing that he thought she would be too busy to come, and his own evenings were all taken. He was to leave in a week. As Amos watched C. M/s broad back receding down the front path he had stayed only a little while after Harmony's return he felt a sudden sinking of the heart. A friend who could be relied on was going a long way. C. M. in his big car turned around and snorted up the lane, waving his hand to Harmony. It was nearly dark. Clouds had banked up and thickened overhead and it was beginning to drizzle. When C. M. dis- appeared Harmony, drooping wistfully, put her hand into Amos's as they stood in the doorway looking after this good friend. She said an unchildish thing: "I wonder when we'll see him again, Amos." Amos squeezed her hand, for he saw the postman coming down the lane. 196 The Golden Answer "You can go up to his house to-morrow, dear, or next day, and take him something for his trip. There are things up-garret We'll see what we can find. How would you like to take him a perfectly beautiful little pistol?" "Oh, my !" cried Harmony, brightening. "To shoot tigers with?" Amos laughed. "Well, perhaps. It's a very fine gun." Then the postman came up the walk and handed Amos the letter from Christina. With strange foreboding and access of a heaviness about the chest well known now, he suggested to Har- mony that she make some biscuits for their supper, as Johanna had taught her to do when she left for Cedar Rapids another far-off place. And before reading the letter he turned on the light in the yellow and white kitchen and shook up the fire, getting the fattest yellow bowl down from the top shelf. He patted Harmony's head and left her sifting flour happily. Carrying Christina's letter up to their room he read it there. With the first line he understood; and knew that Christina did not understand. He knew her better than she knew herself. Christina could do a momen- tous, decisive thing because, at the time, it was con- venient. The division of a path was not for her marked with sign post, or milestone. "You don't seem to have found anything to do yet," wrote Christina. "I can't help wondering a little if you have looked very hard. I have been thinking things over, and it seems to me that it would be awkward if I came back now. Expenses would be higher if I were there. We ought to entertain, at least have a few people, and you wouldn't feel we could. It would look The Golden Answer 197 very queer not to. I have told you that I would use my own little income for myself for a while. And it will go much further if I stay here, and use it for clothes and extras. I'll be cheaper here than there, Amos. So let's be sensible. I think it would be most indiscreet for me to come back now." After reading the letter the first time, he thought of two inconsequent things: He wondered whether she had received the check for twenty-five dollars. Had he forgotten to enclose it? And it occurred to him that his friends and family were seeking a strange variety of distant places. Cedar Rapids, China, and Boston. Boston seemed the farthest away. After reading the letter a second time he decided that it was an extraordinary one; that it was a letter entirely in character ; that he had known from the first that Christina had such a letter in her. He had fallen in love with her knowing it. And he wondered, with a sick astonishment, how he had happened to do so. In very truth he had put on bells and motley. But -the thing that caused him the greatest pain was not that he had fallen in love with Christina, but that he loved her still, without knowing why. He lay down on the bed and hid his face in her pillow. All her good and gentle moods came to taunt him. "When I did this and that I had the letter in me," they said. "When I let you kiss me first by the locked gate, I was even then small and selfish," whis- pered the most exquisite. "When I gave myself to you in the mountains, I was a deserter and a coward," de- clared the most beautiful of them all. But it is unjust, he argued, to sum up a soul, finally, for its unworthiness. A man who has committed one illegal act is forever and entirely dishonest; one deed of cowardice makes the coward. One drop of black 198 The Golden Answer blood creates the outcast; a million drops of white blood will not make white him so tainted ! Christina, in her loveliness, was as much the potentially lovely as in her loveliness she was potentially ugly. And whatever she was she was his. He wanted her, in all her match- less imperfection. But she had decreed that he could not have her. After a long time with a wrenching of the spirit, he got up in the dark room and went slowly downstairs. He found Harmony excited and happy. She had cooked the supper all herself. As he stood in the door- way looking at her she made another of her incredible speeches. "Amos," she said, "do you s'pose if you had chosen Hilda to bring home to live with us that she would have gone away ?" The appointment on Monday did not bring success. Amos felt sure that this was again Chance taking a hand in his fortunes. The position was a good one, and his letter had, with a few others, been selected from hundreds. But the man who had the appoint- ment fifteen minutes ahead of Amos got the place. This failure, coupled with another event, brought him to a decision long pending in his mind. His rent was raised, the increase to begin the first of October. He could not pay the advanced rate ; in fact, he could no longer pay the old rate. The decision he made was that, since Christina was not returning just yet he and Harmony must leave the white house in the lane, which was the only home Harmony remembered. It would be a hard thing to do, but the necessity was im- perative. And there would be advantages : The work he was seeking, and must eventually find, would be in New York. It was costing a good deal to go back and The Golden Answer 199 forth on the train each day. He thought that if he and Harmony could take two or three rooms in a cheap neighborhood, furnish them simply from the house, and store the other furniture, he could make his money now alarmingly diminished go further. He acted quickly on this decision. Haste, too, was a matter of necessity. But he was wise enough not to refuse to sign his lease until he had found another place to live. In the middle of the night, as he was lying awake, a scene floated to him out of the memory of that first incomparable year of his marriage. He and Christina were walking through the marsh woods, Christina in gray and gold with a dash of scarlet what was it, like the red wing of a bird? The ver- milion maple leaf. . . . And they had met Truebee Lark coming down the path, birdlike and queer. He had remarked one or two strange things, now forgot- ten. Amos remembered that he was said to be getting queerer lately. What was it, at the end, about a house ? His sister Zinnia was renting the top floor of her mis- erable city house by the river! Miserable, because Truebee despised all city houses, as his sister despised the country. That was a year ago. But Zinnia's rooms might now be vacant again, for it was the season of annual migration. Amos fell asleep com- forted by the thought that he would speak to Mr. Lark in the morning. The change, like other momentous things, was ac- complished with astonishing ease and quickness. Zin- nia's rooms were vacant, the price was low; she was glad to have Amos and Harmony on her brother True- bee's recommendation. Amos sold some of his furni- ture and stored all but a few pieces of the rest. (He asked Hilda Martin to keep the secretary and Chris- tina's little mahogany rocking chair.) He did not 2OO The Golden Answer write Christina of the change. And on the first of October he and Harmony went to the city to live. Zinnia Lark's house was in Jane Street, a by-way of which Amos Fortune had never even heard. But he found that it lay over near the North River and the wide thoroughfare of the piers. Zinnia's was the last one of a row of shabby little three-story red brick houses, facing south and receiving a blaze of sunlight all day, which went a long way to redeem them from an aspect of dilapidation. Indeed, the row was neat, painted to mellowness, and would not have disgraced a "remodeled block" in a more popular, picturesque neighborhood. Number thirteen, a bit fatter than the rest, and wearing a perky air of homelikeness, was next door to a warehouse and two doors from a garage ; its basement had been turned into a shop. A block west of it, hiding the wide river, rose the front of the piers of the Southern Pacific Steamship Company. And above the great f agade towered masts and funnels. In Zin- nia's house you could tell time by ships' bells. "Is this home?" asked Harmony, as they mounted the steps and rang the doorbell. She was looking large- eyed, startled from her first journey on the elevated, but interested and adventurous. Amos knew, with an amused certainty, that he could trust her to be that. "Why, yes," he said, "it is! Those are our rooms up there on top ; you see the sunlight pouring in? And there's a fireplace. I don't wish to be sentimentally cheerful, my dear, but, really, a southern exposure, a fireplace (with wood to burn in it, which we'll see about), a bottle of ink and you having me and I having you -don't you think that makes rather a nice home ?" She squeezed his hand and laughed. "Of course! Look, Amos, the house is winking one eye at us." The Golden Answer 201 As they gazed upward at the windows of the second story, where one drawn curtain gave the house a rollicking air, the shade was popped up so quickly that they jumped. Miss Zinnia Lark's face appeared at the window. She waved a very white hand at them and nodded her white head several times more than seemed necessary. Perhaps that was to reassure them about getting in, for it was a long time before she reached the door. When she did fling it wide she was out of breath. "A welcome to Brother Truebee's neighbors!" she said. And one could see that as a resident of the city she greeted country folk. She gave them her hand in turn in a both timid and stately way, and led them into her parlor. Miss Zinnia Lark was the whitest lady they had ever seen. She was a little slender thing with curly white hair, a pale blue-veined face and small, white, blue-veined hands. She wore over her shoulders, this fall afternoon, a white camel's-hair shawl, and a large white muslin apron covered the front of her light gown. She leaned on a stick with a carved white ivory top. Like Truebee she had sparkling black eyes, and quick motions. Unlike him she had a bad limp in her walk, so that, despite an agile manner, she did not make rapid progress at all. "Sit down," she said, flourishing the beautiful ivory- headed stick first at Amos and then at Harmony. "I'll get my breath in a minute. You're a nice little girl, though your dress is too short. Sit down ; I like your name, Amos Fortune. I might as well ask you now can you tell time without a clock ?" Amos put her into a chair, rather against her will. "If the sun is out I can make a good guess." 2O2 The Golden Answer "Because there isn't a clock in this house," she con- tinued, "and if you've brought one you can't stay ! I have a more beautiful way of counting the hours, the few that are left to me." She slipped out of her chair again and limped to the window. Opening it, she held up her white hand to them in a listening attitude. With the yellow sunlight the balmy autumn air floated in, and a medley of sounds from the waterfront. A look of soft pleasure lighted her charming face. Then, calm and clear from the river, came two rapid, musical strokes of a bell, repeated. A moment later Miss Lark's hand was still uplifted in a lower key the four notes, in two swift pairs, rang again, and, faint in the distance, a bit higher this time, four more. Ding-ding; ding-ding. Dong-dong; dong-dong. Ding-ding; ding-ding. Instantly one felt in how many happy or unhappy far-off waters those bells had thus with sweet non- chalance rung the watches. "Four bells," murmured Miss Zinnia, with a light sigh of satisfaction. "Six o'clock in the dog watches." "Shall I add 'all's well' ?" smiled Amos, closing the window for her. "I hope you're not a noble young man," she re- marked, looking at him sharply. "If you are the rent will be a dollar more. I took you because your name is Fortune. If you should turn out to be aimiable ! Here, little girl, run upstairs and show your papa his rooms." So it happened that Amos and Harmony climbed the two narrow stairways alone and found the three rooms in which several strange things were to happen to them. The scant furniture was huddled in the middle of the bare floor. Harmony saw her cricket, The Golden Answer 203 flew to it and sat down. She laughed and beckoned to Amos. "Don't you love this funny house? Oh, Amos, 7 know why it winked at MJ," CHAPTER XXII WHILE Amos and Harmony were settling their rooms in Jane Street, Christina was really not having a very gay time in Boston. In the first place, she did not have much money and she had put herself in a place where merely to "get along" took all that she had, and demanded more. She could not philosophize about standards of living; she merely knew that what might have sufficed almost to support a girl like Hilda Mar- tin, for example, and, when she was at home with Amos, was for herself more than ample pocket money, here, with her aunt's friends, all richer than the Hoyles, had shrunken again to the meager proportions it had seemed to have before her marriage. Then, however, there had been frequent gifts from her aunt. Now she could not accept gifts of money. This fact surprised her. She did not analyze it. She merely felt that she could not let anyone but Amos give her money now. Since the Hoyles were somewhat in straits also, the offer was not pressed upon her. And something else concerning her money began vaguely to stir in her mind and disturb her. One afternoon Benton Hoyle was surprised to have his aunt's niece come to him with an unusual curiosity concerning the details of finance which she never be- fore had shown. He was embarrassed, first because she came upon him in his carpenter's shop, a place where he did not like to be followed. It was several years since he had spent much time there, but he had gone so far as to have a room in the fourth story of 204 The Golden Answer 205 the old-time high-shouldered Boston house set apart as a place for his "tools," as Mrs. Hoyle called all his equipment, indiscriminately. And on this rainy after- noon he had, breathlessly, ascended to it. Christina found him puttering over the model of the wing of a "flying machine." He always used that old-fashioned term, and he knew little of modern models. Labori- ously, more than once, he had worked out independ- ently a crude idea that long since, unknown to him, had been perfected. Christina, looking around the dull, cluttered, dusty room, smiled strangely, but made no comment. If she was reminded of Amos Fortune's remark about a man's hobby she gave no sign. But she suddenly had a more kindly feeling than usual toward her uncle. She did not, in truth, know that this warm kindliness was due to the sudden twinge of pity at the remem- brance of the story of Amos's brother, who made the little airplane that flew once across a green meadow, and then broke. "Uncle Benton," she began, somewhat timidly, for Christina disliked to show ignorance, "is there any way of rinding out who bought stock that was sold some time ago?" "Hey? I don't understand. What stock? How long ago ? What' re you getting at ? Don't beat about the bush!" (In a quick parenthesis Christina thought: Beat about the bush. I wonder how that figure came about. Has he used it in its real sense ? It would be interest- ing to find out. Amos ) "Well?" Mr. Hoyle was looking at her sharply over the flying machine's left wing. "I I w ish ; that is, I think Ed rather like to know 2o6 The Golden Answer who bought the stock in the Atlantic Seaboard Realty that you sold for me, just before just before the break." "What for?" "Is there any way of knowing?" counter-questioned Christina. After a pause during which their eyes held, Mr. Hoyle said slowly: "The brokers have canceled checks, and files of correspondence. No doubt it might be traced a little way. What's the matter?" "I haven't said that anything was the matter. . . . Traced ? You mean, it might involve a a good many people?" "Yes. Changed hands quickly toward the end." "I see. Several people." She strolled over to the window and looked out. The rain came down in evenly slanting lines into the sodden city garden. This was a very depressing day. "I suppose," she remarked, with her back to Mr. Hoyle, "that the last person who held it my stock lost all he put in, and all along the line each one lost a little, for it was steadily going down. It seems quite personal." "Humph!" said Mr. Hoyle. A chime on a tower, not far away, sounded dully through the thick air. It was really a most harmonious and piquant chime, but it contrived to-day to seem pathetic. Christina felt irritated with the chime. "Uncle Benton," she said suddenly, with her back still toward him, "did you know when you sold, that is, had you 'inside information,' that the company would break?" There was stillness behind her, broken only by the eaves' dripping. Somehow Christina felt there was a The Golden Answer 207 'brittle quality about that silence. When she could no .longer endure it she quickly turned around. Benton Hoyle held the wing of his flying machine poised in the position it had been in when she put her question. As she turned he dropped it, with a little sound of delicate wood breaking. He did not stoop to pick up the broken wing. "There!" he said, in a querulous tone for the first time old, and with unaccustomed profanity. "Now you've made me break it ! Damn it, Christina, you've made me break it. The cursed thing never will go now. What in hell did you come up here bothering me for? I don't want anybody in this room. . . ." While he was still talking Christina slipped out, She went into the library and decided to read, since it was not likely that anyone would call this rainy afternoon or call her up to suggest a more diverting occupation. But she found herself looking beyond her book and picturing to herself an eccentric search for canceled checks. Even if the search were rewarded, could she ever explain to people that they must take this money she was offering them because her husband was an unusual sort of man who said things so vividly you could never forget them, and she hoped the music teacher wouldn't be sick, and But those weren't real people ! How absurd ! Amos did make his stories seem so real. Probably the real people were fat packers. She had a very vague idea of what a "packer" might be, but she had heard the term. Undoubtedly they didn't need money as much as she did. Come to think of it, she didn't have any money, anyhow, to send her if the piano wasn't paid for. There she went again! She threw aside her book because the story was not easy to follow ; one of those up from the cradle kind 2o8 The Golden Answer it was, that began by describing the costumes of the hero's grandparents. And she pulled out from a lower shelf a year-before-last bound volume of The Atlantic Monthly. Opening it she saw first with a start: "Prismatic Banking Papers By Jeremy Pride. If With her mouth curving in a little lovely smile she began to read. An hour later, when the telephone bell rang near her elbow, she was saying to herself: "I never knew much about the inside of people's heads before. I wonder if they really all do have such interesting things hidden away. I wonder how Amos knows Does he know what I think?" She answered the telephone. "Yes, Philip, it's Christina. . . . Just reading. . . . Rather blue. . . . An awful overdose of my own society. . . . Yes, do, come. I think I must be getting queer, due to solitary confinement on a rainy day. Yes I'm all alone for an hour or two. I'll be very glad to see you, Philip !" The god of circumstance was on duty that rainy day. For Philip Dana came, in his most lyrically cheerful mood, declared she needed waking up, took her out to dinner (Edith had a headache and hoped they would go) and to a new musical comedy. Christina reacted quickly, and it was a long time before she thought again of worthless stock or how much Amos knew about other people's hearts. Certainly she was not thinking of such matters one afternoon when she and Philip Dana walked together along the Charles River in Cambridge. It was late and The Golden Answer 209 a blue mistiness hung the water with a lovely veil. Several hardy crews were still out, their weird craft shooting over the water with incredible speed. In their wake lazy swans, immodestly lacking in timidity, cruised about, vain and graceful ghosts, arching their necks and preening in the twilight. It came to Christina, with a deep surprise, that she was happy with Philip Dana, or perhaps content was the word. It was a wholly different happiness from that which she had felt with Amos. Dana never puz- zled her. He was her own sort. She sank back, when she was with him, into an easy-going state that was welcome and comfortable. She did not wish to meet the issue of their renewed intimacy. And with him it was not necessary to meet it, or any issue. It was not necessary to be definite and clear about things. What was the use of getting "all wrought up" ? When she was with Amos she felt that she had to strain to keep up to something she only half visualized. Once in a while she saw that it was beautiful, but also hard. She always, with Amos, seemed to be exercising spiritual and mental muscles, and she grew tired. The park-like river front was deserted. Suddenly Dana stopped in the shadow of the shrubbery and kissed her. And she laughed, pushing him away, deli- cately. "You don't mean it, Philip. So why do you do it ?" "Mean it ! Give me a chance to show how much I mean." "You had your chance." "My God, Christina! Can't you forget that?" "I wonder if I could. Perhaps, some day "Now!" "No, let's talk about something else. Let's talk about the swans. I don't want to be bothered with 2io The Golden Answer anything. I want to be just comfortable. If I begin to think, Philip, I think too hard. And then I do queer things." "I wonder," said Dana, "if you know how much you've changed." But Christina only laughed again. CHAPTER XXIII ^ ON a night when Hilda was working overtime at the South Sea House she had an adventure. One might call it that. Amos Fortune's hint about a possible increase in salary had kindled her imagination and reawakened her ambition. If she could get a five-dollar-a-week advance perhaps she could send her mother South for a month a little journey that Mrs. Martin badly needed. Hence the overtime work, and Joseph Carl- ton's nod of approval. She was grateful to Amos for thus giving her new energizing. She was grateful to him for many things, although they might have made a queer list. Smiling over her ledger she wished that she might show her gratitude; she wished she might do something for him scrub floors, perhaps. There was a woman in the outer office scrubbing floors for someone Hilda wondered for whom. She was there every night; but Hilda, on other ambitious evenings, had seen her only at a distance. To-night she had come face to face with her, and had noticed her with a throb of interest. Another prismatic bank- tic banking paper here, no doubt ! They would not all come back from blind editors. She wondered if Amos had sent the last one out again. The other night worker, who had stood aside to allow Hilda to pass on the damp floor that smelled of soap, was a tall, dark, common-looking woman with tragic eyes once beautiful. Suddenly Hilda was sure that she had seen her before. But where ? Then she 211 212 The Golden Answer remembered in a flash that the scrubwoman was also a waitress in a cheap downtown restaurant. Therefore, she must be working night and day. That was hard. In passing, Hilda smiled at her. The woman did not return the smile, but scowled, looked down quickly, and scrubbed a little faster. There were two men and a girl also working late to-night. The "girl" was the woman over sixty whom Joseph Carlton had suspected of lying about her age and was watching for a chance to discharge. Amos had confided to Hilda the precariousness of Miss Blinn's position, and Hilda had urged the woman several times to stay late with her to keep her company, straightening out a mistake or two, trying not to look at the aging hands, and taking Miss Blinn out on her way home for a hot stew at a little oyster house around the corner. The two young men also in the cage, were so much alike that they might have been twins the sloping-shouldered, undernourished clerk who wants to be thought a devil of a fellow. Hilda hated these young men. One of them had Amos Fortune's desk (though not his work it took three of them to do that). She especially hated the incumbent of that desk. Hilda, working rapidly in the hope of finishing in time to catch the 9.46, forgot the odious young men and Miss Blinn, who had a cold, exuded the smell of peppermint, sniffed, and was not easily forgotten. She even forgot the dark-eyed, black-haired scrub- woman, whose smudged beauty was of a haunting kind. But at about half past eight she went to get a drink of water, and remembered her! There by the tank of ice water the woman was scrubbing with a sort of angry violence, and the tears were dropping into the dirty suds. The Golden Answer 213 Hilda stopped short, and her heart beat unreason- ably, considering that this was nobody to her. The woman looked up with a defiant glance. And Hilda, longing to help, could only say that there was a nice moon outside ; and go back into her office ! Her chest ached; she hated to see a woman cry, for she some- times cried herself. By nine o'clock Hilda was finishing her work. She had found a mistake in Miss Blinn's accounts and sent her home, relieved and happy, still sniffing and with a peppermint in her cheek. The two young men, with yawns, were preparing to go, and Hilda, also, closed her books and slipped into her coat. She could see that they were keeping the scrubwoman out of that office ; she had set her pails inside and was working around the door. The young man who had Amos's desk stretched his skinny arms and drew on his bright tan gloves. He felt important, heaven knows over what. He put his hat on and looked at Hilda, chewing gum slowly. "Say/' remarked this Mr. Daniel Flynn, with as- surance, "I hear old Amos Fortune went broke with that Atlantic Seaboard Realty Company. What'ye know about that?" Hilda, tempted not to answer at all, replied stiffly, "I know it's so." "Serves him right for not stickin' to a safe job. Now look at him ! Down and out and a kid to bring up, too, ain't he?" "Yes." "Believe me, no kids in mine ! And little Daniel is all for the thin but regular pay envelope. Atlantic Seaboard hell ! Nightie-night, Miss Martin." Hilda soberly put on her hat without a mirror, drew on her gloves, and made her way through the darkened, 214 The Golden Answer night-smelling bank to the outer door, where the watch- man was hovering. She never felt afraid to stay here late because Michael, the night watchman, was a good friend of hers ; he had her on his mind. Now he said: "Ye'll get tired to death, Miss Martin, workin' late so much. No time and a half for overtime in the office either, hey? Headwork is bad bad!" "Oh, I'm all right, Michael. Good night." "Well, look-a here, where's yer pocketbook 't al- ways hangs on yer arm? Forgot it, hey? Who says ye ain't tired?" "Oh, dear well, I shouldn't have gone far without it, should I? Thanks, Michael." She quickly went back into the little room that was partitioned off by iron bars, like a cage. The lights were still burning there, and as she stepped to her desk and opened her drawer, Hilda thought she was alone in the office. She started to snap off the electric lamps, thinking that, after all, she had interfered with its being cleaned by working late, when a slight sound startled her heart Wheeling around, she saw the scrubwoman sitting on the damp floor with her head in her arms. Hilda felt herself choked with pity, the very strength of which was an inhibition. And as she stood silent, wondering what to do, the woman lifted her head. A lock of black hair fell across her eyes. She pushed it back and rose to her knees. The front of her old red dress was damp with scrub water. "I want to ask, miss," her voice had a resonant huskiness, and there was an inscrutable dark flash of her eyes "do you know Amos Fortune?" Hilda began to tremble, so that she put one hand back of her, grasping the high desk. "Yes!" The Golden Answer 215 The woman wiped her cheek upon which there were tears with the back of her damp red hand before she spoke again: "I'm glad!" "Why?" asked Hilda, dry-voiced. "Maybe then you know where he is?" "Yes, I know." "Well, think of that !" The woman gave a long sigh of relief. But again her eyes clouded over. She set- tled back on her heels, still in the kneeling position, her marred hands fumbling with her dress, smoothing down the damp skirt. Suddenly the hands began to tremble. "My name's Kit Farley; once 'Kitty' !" She of- fered abruptly with an unhumorous laugh. Hilda waited. "I knew him 'way back, eight, nine years ago. . . . I heard that young fellah talkin' . . . about him bein' broke. It just upset me. You can see it would you know him. You're his friend, ain't you ?" "Yes." "How close?" "Not very." "Oh . . . Well, do you think he's bad this time?" Hilda met the penetrating eyes. "He's in trouble, but he'll win out of it. He's that kind." "I'd like to be near," said the strange woman. She was unmistakably concealing something, some living, flaming interest. "I'd like to be near, if he's in trouble. He they ain't at the old address. The house is empty." "Why do you want to be near?" Kit Farley dropped her eyes and her terrible hands began confused motions. 216 The Golden Answer "Oh, of course I couldn't do anything." Then her humbleness left her. Her eyes flashed again. "I don't know's I have any call to tell you why. You say you ain't close to him." "But I'd like to help him and Harmony," Hilda braved. "Is that what you want to do ?" "It is." Kit Farley quickly covered her mouth which was beautiful with her hand. "Then they live at at number thirteen Jane Street, on the top floor," said Hilda. "Down to that!" "It's quite a nice old house, quaint, you know. But it's not heated." "I'llbetcha! Quaint! My Gawd!" Kit Farley rose slowly from her knees, stumbling. She grasped the pail full of dark brown water. With one hand she pinned up a lock of black hair. She had become mistress of herself and of the situa- tion. Nodding curtly to Hilda who looked frail and stricken beside her she turned toward the door. "I'll say good-night," she threw out in her queer, resonant voice. "Thanks for the tip !" All at once she looked back and in a penetrating glance took in Hilda from head to foot her meager colorlessness. "I wouldn't 'uv said he's a-picked y'u." With this comment, she swung away into the damp gloom. CHAPTER XXIV AMOS in his search for work had avoided the possi- bility, or the closing in of the necessity of a makeshift. After two false starts in business it was unthinkable that he should undertake a third. But he came to the point where the pinch of the situation demanded money at once. So it was that he obtained work of a sort. Ironically, it was just before this questionable success that he was doing his best work on the book. He gave his mornings to it, while Harmony was in the public school where he had entered her. Immediately after their breakfast of milk and toast he sat down at the one table in the clean, cold room on the top floor of the Jane Street house, where the sum poured in nearly all day, and time was so musically measured, and wrote until one o'clock. The notes of years were marshaling themselves and falling into shape so as to develop a thought so beauti- ful that he could get it in its fullness only in flying moments. But it came more often all the time. When it was absent he sought to test his artistic power by building up, after the advice of the two young poets who once gave the world a slim volume of beauty called "Lyrical Ballads" (with an introduction!) "the recollected emotion." He found he could accomplish this, and that, as the wise young men of another cen- tury had said, the method was better than composing in the flame of first emotion. The book, "Avalon," would have been finished in a few more months. The bulk of it was done! This the failure of the Atlantic Sea- 217 218 The Golden Answer board Realty Company and Christina's absence had accomplished, there was no denying the fact. He had only to write the climax, already fully outlined, in its permament form, and after that, revision. And then, as his luck would have it, he found "work" ! But he had come so near to his last dollar that this ending of his long search was a matter of almost public thanksgiving. He came home to the house on Jane Street that afternoon it was the day of the first snowfall of the season, when the eaves of the red houses hung white and ran up the stairs, almost knocking Miss Zinnia down in the upper hall. She never ascended to the third story, partly because, having rented it, she re- spected her tenant's privacy, and partly because one pair of stairs was all she could manage. Now Amos, whom she liked and who had proved himself not noble in the least, put his arms around her to save her from a fall, and then astonishingly began to laugh, picked her up, and carried her up the second flight of stairs to the top story. She hooked her ivory-headed cane around his arm and took with calmness the turn of events. He dumped her onto his cot bed, which was disguised as a divan with an old brown and red steamer rug, of expensive, soft indestructibility. Har- mony ran to smooth Miss Lark's ruffled aspect and to pick up her cane, which had clattered to the floor. "I wouldn't give a penny for a man who couldn't abduct me," gasped Zinnia. "I suppose this child already knows about the rape of the Sabine women. It's taught to babies. Remember, little girl, this is what it meant! . . . What's up?" Amos sat down beside Zinnia on the cot and took Harmony on his knee. "I've got work," he glowed. The Golden Answer 219 "Mercy!" exclaimed Zinnia. "I thought it was something important." He asked in astonishment: "Well, what would you consider important?" Miss Lark reflected before answering : "Meeting an old companion who had stood by in a gale of wind ! These streets are full of such shipmates. Sometimes I see them meet. After years. I like to." "That would be important indeed. But " "Or an old love. The heart changes. There are extraordinary meetings !" "Yes but, dear Miss Lark, I've met no one at all except a man who is willing to give me work with which I can feed Harmony and pay for these rooms. Surely that is important. It's not much" his glow was leaving him "I had to take a makeshift after all. Something temporary. There are strange compro- mises! But it's honorable, steady work. I can save half the pay. And in the spring You may think it odd, but I'm happy over it !" "What is this work?" "Why the the garage two doors from here they they needed a bookkeeper. I'm taken on at twenty- five a week." "If I weren't a woman, and lame," said Zinnia Lark, looking disappointed in him, "I'd go to sea." "And leave a little girl alone to learn about the Sabine women?" Zinnia folded her lips. Amos bent close to her until she raised her eyes. His sparkled. "Miss Zinnia, they asked me to sweep out the office every morning, and once a week to swab the floor." She smiled. And then she pulled his ear. 22O The Golden Answer "What else do you expect, before the mast?" she demanded. Then Zinnia, picked up her cane, and smoothed it in silent thought. "I believe I should like to go downstairs the way I came up," she mentioned. When he had put her carefully in her own chair by her front bedroom window, she looked up again. Hooking her cane around his neck she pulled him down a little and peered into his face. After this scrutiny she released him and waved him off. And as he went she called after him: "You'll do." Before the happiness of his relief wore off he wrote to Christina. He did not, of course, intend to keep her long in ignorance of the removal to Jane Street. Just at first he could not write her of it. Now that he had even inferior work he felt different about admitting that downfall. So he wrote to her, even happily. In her reply she said very little about the change of address, except that she had never heard of Jane Street. (They were alike in that, certainly.) Toward the end of a letter which was remarkable for the little it told, she wrote, though he had not mentioned her return: "It is better to wait here until things right themselves. What would you do with me if you had me there?" The garage was awful. The hours were very long. But he would not have minded so much if Christina had been there when he came home. He missed her more in this unfamiliar, castaway existence than he had when all his surroundings had spoken of her and it seemed that at any moment she might walk in the door. Having Harmony was the one thing that kept him going. And when one came to think of it that The Golden Answer 221 was strange! There were many puzzling things; life presented unsupposed values. Another puzzle was that his own beautiful hazard had brought them to this, but with it had come happiness, while Christina's dis- cretion was undeniably reasonable, perhaps even wise (for what in heaven's name would he do with her here ?) , yet it cut like a sword, and he doubted if it were bringing her happiness. There was no time any more for the book. The deprivation, after having gone back to it, wore on him. He was always tired. When he did try to write at night, after the exhausting, deadening work he was forced to do, the words became confused and perfectly mad. "If a man would find harmony, which is only an- other word for beauty or reality or God," he found himself writing on his old yellow pad, "let him go up into a high mountain and kneel down and pray that he may understand why it is that he continues to love Christina." Surely that was a mad sentence ! He spent the rest of the evening trying to think what he had intended to say. Night after night he had experiences of this kind. His mind was too weary to be forced beyond a certain point; after that it ran of itself into the grooves of habit. He could not wrench it out of this preoccupa- tion with the strange situation between him and his wife. But one night, after having startled Miss Zinnia Lark by kissing her on the stairs, he was alert and brilliant and very gay with Harmony. She laughed with him happily, and, after writing a perfect page, he fell asleep on the couch, where he spent the night, forgetting to undress. 222 The Golden Answer After that the book became a mournful ghost. Sen- tences which should go into it would lilt through his mind at work and fly away, lost, he knew from ex- perience, forever. So he grew fairly to hate it, because he loved it so much ; just as in his longing for Chris- tina he sometimes almost hated her. Of course it was reasonable that he should not work on a thing that at best would bring only a very little money, possibly none. But in spite of his recent experience he still clung to the conviction that the Real Things in the world are of a wind-flung prodigality of life and love and daring. Miss Zinnia Lark, who had ideas of her own about what was important and unimportant, and whom Amos would have liked to know better if he had had more time, now was obliged to leave for a little while the house on Jane Street to which she had clung so long and go to the assistance of her brother Truebee. For Truebee was becoming increasingly queer, just as Amos had heard before he first thought of renting the top floor of Zinnia's "miserable house." He and Hilda Martin had once thought that the delicate little man who gave his life to the cultivation of flowers seemed to pour all his strength into them, so that they bloomed in his stead. And it was after a peculiarly riotous year, when his gardens and greenhouses had blazed almost crazily in an outburst of flaming exuberance, that Truebee himself weakened. The transmutation, if that were it and who knows? there are stranger things! was complete. So at last his sister left her ships' bells and traveled inland. It was her expecta- tion, when it became possible, to bring Truebee back with her. There were no flowers of any kind on Jane Street Harmony was the only blossoming thing in number thirteen. The Golden Answer 223 Zinnia's going left the house empty except for the top floor, for her only servant was a charwoman, and Amos could not afford to hire her. He did the neces- sary cleaning himself. Perhaps the unbroken white little woman had un- intentionally helped him. At any rate, after her going he faced for the first time frankly the necessity of a conflict he had been subconsciously expecting and staving off. His old enemy would have at him again, it seemed. That was it. No use in disguising it any more. That which he could hold in abeyance with ease when he was happy for in the years he had had Harmony his lapses had been few, and there were none while he had Christina would assail him now in his ill fortune. But it was not in him not to fight. His greatest horror was weakness. For like most strong men he sometimes feared he was weak. It is the weak who make a habit of boasting of their strength, as a coward will brag of his bravery. So he settled down to it, and again Harmony, a child who, perhaps, should not have been born, was his greatest aid and comfort. He kept her up when she should have been asleep, playing and reading with her. He took her walking with him, tiring her out, and then carried her while she slept until he himself was exhausted. He awakened her in the middle of the night to have supper with him in her blue bath robe. (Harmony thought that this was living again.) And once he lifted her out of her warm bed the sweet, babyish odor still clung to her soft body and taking her to his own bed, slept with her in his arms. But Harmony could not protect him forever. The man of valor is not the one who can fight only with the support of others, but he who creeps out alone on a 224 The Golden Answer terrible errand, who, falling wounded, gets up and goes on, or, alone and suffering, does not lose hope. There were three nights when he let Harmony sleep, locking her door because he did not want her to wake and see him as she might see him. On the first night he walked up and down until morning. The second he wrote all night, and tore up the worthless stuff, laugh- ing at the idea that he should have thought it possible to win against so big a thing as Fate. The third night he did not come home until in the early dawn he was tortured by the sudden remembrance that Harmony was alone in the house, and ran all the way to Jane Street, fearing fire. On the fourth night, in a drizzling rain that had soaked him to the skin, he met a woman on the street corner whom he called Kit. She turned and walked with him, her hand slipped through his arm, while he talked a great deal in a wild, bewildering way about someone called "Gloriana." "Gloriana!" muttered Kit. "Never heard of her. It can't be that skimpy one !" "And then," he said to her solemnly, "the white flames began to eat the cloth of gold. Oh, God !" The woman called Kit went all the way home to number thirteen Jane Street with him, without saying much, and left him at the door. CHAPTER XXV IT was a week later that he had strange proof of Christina's love for him. After Harmony was asleep, her door unlocked to- night, he got out his old red portfolio and began to write, feeling ashamed of the work he had been obliged to burn. He built up the fire in the small "wood" stove, for since his income had risen to twenty-five dollars a week he and Harmony had at least one of the requisites of a home a bright fire. The open grate was not sufficient to keep them warm, so a small, fat stove with apoplectic tendencies to become red hot, had been installed. Amos was not the traditional genius in an attic who shivered in his overcoat. But he wrote by candlelight, because the thin blue flame of the im- perfect gas fixture was worse than nothing for illumi- nation, and filled the room with fumes. He had not bothered to buy an oil lamp. To-night the book went well. It seemed to him absurdly beautiful. He knew, as one does in a dream, that he would awake and see its faults, but was grateful to find that for a short time he could feel it was all he wanted it to be. Fatigue fell away, and with a warm work-a-day intentness, every faculty acute, he gave himself to artificial and temporary con- tent. Yet, alert as he was, he did not hear a taxicab stop outside in Jane Street, though cabs were rare enough in that byway to attract attention. Not until a bell had rung sharply three times did he realize that it was sounding in the empty hallway downstairs. 225 226 The Golden Answer Someone, who had come in a cab, was ringing the bell of thirteen Jane Street with persistence. He sat still, wondering who it could be. If Miss Lark had returned with Truebee, she would come in a cab, but she would not ring the bell. Perhaps this was an old friend of Miss Zinnia's; for she who dwelt on strange meetings must have one in mind. As the bell jangled for the fifth time he roused to the idea that he must go to the door, for the caller, evidently seeing his light, would not leave unsatisfied. He went down through the dark house with his hand on the cold, dusty stair railings, and in the lower hall lighted the gas, after several failures. It burned feebly in its old-fashioned red "globe," that was not globular at all but open at the top and had on one side a design of daisies. He was pleased after his success with the gas and nearly forgot to open the door. When the bell jangled very close to him in the back hall, he jumped, and, unbolting the rusty catch, opened the old front door and peered out. Christina was on the steps. He stood a long time looking at her, and finally with a slight motion of invitation said: "Won't you come in?" She walked in without a word and looked around curiously. A faint scent of roses and fresh air entered the chilly hall. Amos shut the door, and bolted it. He did not look at her after the first, but with another slight motion of his hand, said: "I'll just show you the way." He preceded her up the two flights of stairs. When they were in the warm, candle-lighted room on the third floor, he was still afraid to look at her. To recover from this embarrassing terror he walked over to the window and looked down into the silent The Golden Answer 227 street. The taxicab was thudding softly before the door. He turned back to her at last, his heart flooded with mounting joy. "You didn't write me," he stammered. "I didn't know! Let me let me take your things, dear " She met his eyes, and hers fell, veiling a sudden change. It was much later that, in the "recollected emotion," he recaptured the disturbed curiosity in her eyes that had leapt out over the calmness of a settled plan, and the something else, warmer than curiosity. Christina was looking very lovely in her plain light brown suit and dark brown furs. Her small hat rested with inimitable grace on her shining hair. Now, raising her eyes to his again, she said, not answering him: "What have you been doing, to get so thin?" Another flare of joy. "I I suppose I've been walking a good deal. I'm naturally thin. Christina " She was looking at his table and at the two white candles spilling grease. "You ought not to write by candlelight," she said. "Christina " "Oil is cheaper than eyesight," was her conclusion. He felt the knowledge stealing over him that this was a strange conclusion. And with it came a slight, oh, a very slight, chilly misgiving. . . . She turned now and looked around the room : at the walls bare of pictures except for one of the Matter- horn, which she knew Amos had climbed, at the floor, on which was one small, braided rug, at his cot bed, with the bright plaid steamer rug askew. "You can't be very comfortable here." When she turned her head her chin was outlined 228 The Golden Answer white against the dark brown fur in a beautiful, sweet curve. He had forgotten how was it possible to for- get? he had forgotten how beautiful, how imper- fectly, unbelievably lovely and desirable she was. In one blind moment he held her in his arms again. He had it to remember afterward that she kissed him then! But she could not have meant to, because what she said was breathlessly : "I believe you've been drinking!" He felt, then, the most terrible shame that had ever come to him. For it was true. White-faced, he had nothing to say, but he would not have touched her again for a king's fortune. They stood apart, both miserable now, Christina as pale as he. It was a strange meeting. In the silence the patient throbbing of the taxicab came up from the street below. And with the sound an idea that had been darting shapelessly about in his mind, like a bat in the twilight, took on definiteness. She had told the cab driver to wait. He understood the creeping, chill misgiving, which was now a cer- tainty. As if conscious of his thought she began to speak with attempted casualness. "Amos, this is an entirely unexpected trip. Aunt Bertha is on her way to Washington. She invited me to go with her. We had had a couple of hours here. So " He did not help her out. "We are passing through " She faltered to a pause and could not finish. "I understand," he finally said in a low voice. "I wanted to know to see how you are. I am sorry you aren't looking well. I wish you could find a better room." The Golden Answer 229 "This is all right, thanks. I like it here. So does Harmony." "Oh how is Harmony?" "I think she is quite happy." "I suppose she is asleep." "Yes, I don't want to wake her." "Amos I have forgotten how old is Har- mony?" "She was eight the fourth of last June." He wondered with passion how he could manage to make this thing very brief. But Christina did it for him. She raised her hand and looked at the tiny watch on her wrist. It was made of platinum and set with several small diamonds. Amos had given it to her. He said now: "Don't lose your train. It would be awkward." "No, I I mustn't lose the train of course." She looked around the room, coming as near herself to awkwardness as it was possible for a woman of her grace. Then she turned and walked very quickly to the door. He saw her muff on the floor in the shadow of the table where it had fallen when he kissed her. He tried to speak, to move, to pick it up and go after her with it, but could not He could not bear to touch it I The door closed after her and he heard her running down the stairs. Then the front door slammed. For a moment or two his mind refused to work. His only thought was that now he would have to go down and bolt the door, because it had an old-fash- ioned lock to which he had the key and could be opened from outside. But thought and feeling came back soon enough. Had he not begun the evening with senses all acute? Half mad with anger he raged up and down the room 230 The Golden Answer because she had done this thing to him, and he loved her! He knew, too, that she loved him! This was merely her way. He had been drinking. But this would not exactly make him stop. Her way was a peculiar way. Epitomized in the casual, insolent, half yearning, half hateful act of the woman he had married, all that was desolate or tragic in his whole life seemed to roll over him now. There was no touch lacking to the bitterness of it. For in her he had once found all the beauty he had felt in life. He tried to pull her image down and cast it into the fire. That was the place for such images the fire. But he had not yet the strength. There was the book, "Avalon," too! He paused before the table where it was all spread out. And the madness was still on him. This, too, he loved and hated. He loved it because in it was all the beauty he had seen in the world. He hated it because he knew that life would not let him achieve it in perfection. The fanatical madness of men who kill the thing they love shook him. In trembling hands he gathered up a pile of pages, covered with small, black writing, and car- ried them, dropping several, to the stove. Opening the little iron door he thrust the pages into the red heart of the fire. Flames burst from them. . . . He went back for more. . . . Suddenly the hall door opened and Christina, who had risked losing her train to come back for her muff, stood watching him. He threw another handful of manuscript on the fire. The small stove was beginning to roar now. Christina stepped inside the room. "Amos!" she cried. "What are you doing? It's your book ! Oh, stop 1" The Golden Answer 231 He answered her quietly, though his eyes glittered. "Please stand out of my way. It makes a good blaze, doesn't it?" She began to cry. "You don't know what you're doing. Give it to me, Amos! Don't burn it! You you worked so hard " He turned on her and she hardly knew his face. His voice came jerkily. "Perhaps I'm drunk, as you suggest but I know what I'm doing. Perfectly. I'm burning up my book ! I don't want it to disappoint me. Or mock me. I'm burning it because I can't afford to love it. Do you see that? I'm burning it because it's beautiful " He crammed the last handful into the red stove and shut the door. Then he walked, unsteadily, over to her. He stood close, but did not touch her. He said: "Won't you go now, Christina, please?" She had never heard more forceful words in her life. She went out very swiftly, and quietly closed the door. After all she did not take her muff. Her hands would be cold very cold! He did not understand why his own hands were so cold, when there was such a hot fire in the stove. He had thought it would burn forever ! But he found to his surprise that it was out. It must be out, because he was cold all over. And so was the candle out. The silver light, then, that lay across the room? The moon of course. . . . He dis- covered, to his intense surprise and curiosity, that he was lying on the floor, between the stove and the table. Something electrically soft and sweet was against his 232 The Golden Answer cheek. Christina's muff! He vaguely thought about getting up, but decided against it. ... The contract- ing stove snapped. The moonlight crept up the wall and rested on the Matterhorn. He fell asleep with his face buried in Christina's muff. CHAPTER XXVI HILDA did not send her mother South, because it was impossible. Although Joseph Carlton, with the grudging admission that she had "got down to work," gave her an increase in pay, it was not enough to make it wise to touch the small sum laid away for an emer- gency. As her mother grew frailer, Hilda wondered if this, after all, were not the emergency. Grimly frank, she asked herself if she were saving the money to pay the expenses of her mother's death instead of for the sunshine, and rest that would bring her life. She had decided to risk everything and send her to Florida before the raw New York winter reached its worst, when the decision was taken out of her hands. Mrs. Martin went to bed, one December afternoon, with pneumonia. She did not die: Hilda thought it was because she was too sensible. She hung on to life, not passionately, but with a calm determination to stay with Hilda for a while longer to help make things easy. It might not be possible, of course, but she intended to stay if she were allowed. Being practical, she got ready for Death, in case it came. She did not fear it, but thought that it was just as well to be prepared. She always had put her blankets away in mothballs early. Although she was an old-fashioned woman she did not turn to the churchly comforts that would have been in character. Instead, she relied upon the more pagan supports, which had been her husband's. This she did at first merely because they were his, afterward from 233 234 The Golden Answer preference. The preference secretly shocked her, but she decided that the Lord would not care, as long as these things helped her. She had Hilda get out the books which had sustained the Engineer in his tedious illness. One of her favorites, as it had been the Engineer's, was "Socrates in His Own Defense." She fell into a peaceful sleep after Hilda had read to her: "For the fear of death is indeed the pretense of wis- dom, and not real wisdom, being a pretense of knowing the unknown ; and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good." She shook her gray head a little over the prayer of Socrates on the slope of the Ilissus, thinking more of the Engineer in life and death than of the conversa- tional philosopher or of herself, and yet sure that such a prayer would help her to be good. "Dear Pan, and other gods who may be here, grant that I may grow beautiful within. May what I have with what I am be friendly." And so, whether it was Pan who helped her, or some other god, or a good doctor, or whether she helped herself, she did not die, but stayed on a while longer with Hilda. ' If Amos Fortune had known he would have smiled over the apparent paradox of the commonplace old lady (Hilda was the child of her middle age) who at the approach of death prayed in the words of Socrates instead of the church, while in active life her occupa- tion was making people comfortable and her highest pinnacle a Wednesday evening prayer meeting. For out of just this sort of paradox had grown his "pris- matic banking" idea. And there was Miss Zinnia Lark. And had he not written in "Avalon" of the The Golden Answer 235 light that shines through the prism of commonplace souls and makes them kindle in fantastic beauty ? One Sunday when Mrs. Martin was convalescent Amos sent Harmony to call on Hilda and inquire for her mother. He was not feeling well enough to go himself, but he took Harmony to the station, put her on the suburban train, and arranged to meet her when she returned. He sent a note to Hilda, with a small bunch of English violets for Mrs. Martin. The note said: "Dear Hilda: If there is any way in which I can help you, let me know. I realize what these weeks have meant to you, although I did not hear about them until they were over; and am sending you Harmony, for she is better than the spring flowers (grown under glass, not skies) that I must not send. I thank God with you that the little lady is better. Give her my love. "I have some work which is helping out nicely until I find a good opening somewhere. When your mother is better bring her over to call on Harmony and me. I'd like to see her amazement at Miss Lark, who. I hope, will be back by that time. "Faithfully yours, "Amos Fortune." Hilda read the note that told her so little and gave herself up to the happiness of having Harmony with her, her mother downstairs for the first time, thrilled over the violets, and a note from Amos, all on the same afternoon. Harmony, in her old brown linen smock, very short now, and with a three-cornered tear that had not been mended, sat on the Engineer's rickety sofa and drank cambric tea and was very talkative. 236 The Golden Answer "We have the duckiest house, Hilda. It's a little red brick house, sort of fat. We think it looks like a cab driver, with a red face, you know, and a turned up nose and a wink in his eye, and just a teeny bit drunk. Oh, Hilda, don't you adore to pieces Sam Weller and Sam Weller's father? I just had to laugh so when he called right out in court, 'Put it down a we, my lord !' Amos says I'm not too little to read about Mr. Pickwick now. Don't you think Snodgrass is a very ludicuss name, Hilda?" "Fine old English name, my dear," said Hilda. "Always longed to be Mrs. Snodgrass myself." Harmony giggled and stirred her tea. "I think Mr. Pickwick was a very kind-hearted, moral man and no wonder they made him the head of the club and drank his health so often, but of course it wasn't good for them at all. Was it?" "No, indeed." "Oh, Hilda, there's a book in the school library well, I guess you never read in your life such a good book. I love it well, more than tongue can tell, as I used to say when I was a small girl. Well, I guess you can't tell what that book is, Hilda. But Amos said he bet you had a copy, and he's sorry he hasn't one, but you see he was a boy and not a girl, and Christina didn't have one, but he'll buy me one soon " "Hold on, give me two guesses !" cried Hilda. "Well, they had a Pickwick Club, too, and now, you know, and Jo was Mr. Snodgrass. And do you remember how Laurie hid in the closet on the piece bag and so they had to make him a member? And they had a paper, and a post office, and they made up plays! Oh, dear me, I certainly wish I had three sisters." "You darling!" Hilda exclaimed, and hugged the The Golden Answer 237 slim, brown-smocked figure. "Of course I have the book and have read it two dozen times. Will you ever forget how Amy broke through the ice? Harmony dear, you may take my copy; I can't give it to you because it was Mother's when she was a little girl, but you can keep it as long as you like." "Oh, thank you ; the school copy does smell !" Harmony examined with joy Hilda's old-fashioned books, for this was the little light red edition in two volumes, of Mrs. Martin's generation. "Isn't it funny," remarked Harmony, looking up from a picture of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy in hoop skirts and hair nets, "it doesn't make a bit of difference how they dressed!" "Say that to the woman who wrote it when you get to heaven, darling," Hilda answered. After tea, and after the little girl had stood very close to Mrs. Martin while she mended the three- cornered tear, Harmony revealed other enthusiasms. Hilda had asked her what she did with herself on Jane Street when Amos was out, with no yard to play in or hills to slide down. "Oh, Amos makes me take a walk every day after school, always the same way straight through to Fifth Avenue and down to Washington Square, and around it, and back by the same streets. But then, besides, I have the Secret to keep me busy." "Oh, lovely ! Nothing like a Secret." "I have decided to tell you. Because you are my confidential friend. I talked it over with Amos, and he said yes, you were that to both of us." "Thank you." Harmony, politely asking Mrs. Martin's pardon, whispered in Hilda's ear. "I am writing a book." 238 The Golden Answer "Heavens!" "That isn't anything to jump so about, Hilda. I love it. It's the story of a queen and a king and a little baby. The baby belongs to them, of course: There is a prince, too, and I am going to have a robber baron, and I want to have a cab driver somewhere, and Robin Hood, too." "I am sure it will be extremely exciting with that combination." "The trouble is I want to have so many things, and Amos says they can't all be in the same book." "Better take his advice." "Oh, certainly. It is the most fun, Hilda ! I showed it to Amos ; but that was before and he said he wished I hadn't begun it, but the best thing to do was to go on and finish it now, and heaven help me. I felt pretty bad when he said that, because I thought he would be pleased, and he kissed me ever so many times and said I couldn't help it." Harmony did not talk all the time, having been trained to listen to older people, but she burst out again later, after Mrs. Martin and Hilda had finished a dis- cussion of Mrs. Martin's trip South. For as soon as she was able Hilda was going to send her mother to Florida, even though the journey took the last of her savings. "I think Amos loves me very much just now," Harmony said. "I mean extra love. Did it ever strike you, Hilda, that Amos is a very loving man?" "That child says the most extraordinary things," exclaimed Mrs. Martin, knitting rapidly. "Dearie, see if you can pick up this stitch I've dropped. I declare, it's down two rows !" But in spite of Harmony's garrulity, she told nothing of the nights when she had been locked in her The Golden Answer 239 room, and knew why. Nor did she say anything about the burning of the book "Avalon." She had found him, and the ashes. One reason why Harmony had been especially glad to go to the Martins' was because she expected to hear news of Charles Brent. She had not seen him since she went to his house to say good-by and was received by his irritable sister, who shrieked when Harmony told her that the bundle she carried contained a pistol. The shriek had brought C. M. on the run. He had admired the pistol and had been most grateful, had said that he would make it a point to shoot tigers with it, but he didn't know whether there were any in China. The farewell had been tearful, Charles Brent's eyes becoming moist when Harmony cried. He had sent her a card from London and another from Port Said, for he went the long way, but that was the last she knew of him. "Now," she requested, sitting with one bare leg under her while Hilda darned her stocking, "tell me every single bit you know about Mr. C. M." A faint color rose in Hilda's face. "There are some pretty cards," she answered. "He loves to send picture post cards." Harmony admired them, especially a photograph of C. M. on a camel with the Sphinx as a background. "He is doing all the things that he is supposed to do. I imagine that he is a perfect tourist. Of course," Hilda hastened, "he has traveled such a lot that he knows just what to do." Mrs. Martin's keen glance was withdrawn from her daughter. "I think," she said quietly, "that the little girl could appreciate Mr. Brent's last letter. The one about the snake charmer." 240 The Golden Answer Hilda brought the letter out she seemed to have a good many and read aloud Charles Brent's ; erky and unimaginative descriptions of his travels. Without intending to of such primitive form were the good young man's sentences and paragraphs Hilda read an abrupt question that followed imme- diately a comment on a robber dragoman. "When are you going to write me to come back ?" Harmony cried in amazement. "Oh, Hilda, write him to-night." Hilda answered her shortly, and put away the let- ters, irritated at herself. She felt sure that Harmony would tell Amos that she had only to send for Charles Brent and he would return, and the thought was not agreeable to her. For it was true. Charles Brent had not had the slightest intention of visiting China, or any other foreign land, until after a certain call he had made at the Martins'. He and Hilda, alone in the room with the red cover on the center table, had talked things out. Hilda supposed everything perfectly plain and settled definitely. Not so C. M. (Here he was writing about her sending for him.) He had told her with simplicity about his love, and when she wept asked if there were any other man. Hilda, frank to the core of her heart, told him what she would never tell her mother. He took it a little hard, but assured her gently that he understood; he was merely sorry that she had such a thing to "go through." He assumed that she would come through it. And then he told her of his own first love, from which he had "recovered." That was the word he used. Strange confidences! For he had loved Christina. Hilda told him finally, that, at any rate, he would not The Golden Answer 241 want her until she had "come through." It did not occur to her as indicative that she could talk to Charles Brent more frankly than to her mother. Mrs. Martin had been disappointed when C. M. left for China. But she made no sign. Life with the Engineer had made her wise. At the end of that Sunday afternoon of contentment full of the blessed relaxation and peace that the con- valescence of our beloved brings Hilda took Har- mony to the station and put her aboard the train Amos had agreed to meet. On the way, Harmony, passing an open drug store, had insisted on making a purchase. To Hilda's amusement she bought perfume ! Wisely, she left the necessary admonitions to Amos. After all he had brought the little girl up marvelously well, so far. As the train slid out Hilda looked after it wistfully. But strangely enough she was wondering what kind of trains there were in China. And when she turned away a thought glowed in her mind like a ruby em- bedded in velvet a thought that almost any other girl would have had months earlier. The wonder of travel- ing, lovingly protected, to all the flame-colored, tropically perfumed lands of the wide earth! She wished she had not had the thought. And because she wished that, was immune to its influence. For Hilda's soul was crystal. Amos met the train and took Harmony home to Jane Street, hardly hearing her chatter. When they had returned to the top floor of number thirteen and Harmony had taken her things off and made herself ready for their late supper he noticed her. She had slipped off the brown linen and put on one of her white dresses, in which he liked to see her. He looked across at her and noticed how her cheek glowed 242 The Golden Answer and her eyes darkened as she talked. Then he sniffed the air. "Harmony, have you perfume on?" "Yes, Amos, it's a surprise. I bought it all myself in a drug store, out of my allowance." "You selected it yourself?" "Yes, Amos," proudly. He leaned toward her. "Is it white rose?" "Yes, Amos." "Go get the bottle." She brought it to him, and he took it gently from her troubled, curving hands. Carrying it to the win- dow, he threw it out. It fell shattering down into Jane Street with a brittle explosive sound. "Never buy that again, Harmony. Now, don't cry, but go and wash your hands." CHAPTER XXVII BETWEEN longing for the beautiful thing he had made, and killed, and for Christina, who loved him in such a queer way, Amos began to feel light-headed sometimes while he was about his dreadful work. He began to fear that he might fall ill. And the first fear brought with it another, which is a way of fear. If he were ill he could not work! And there was Har- mony! This excitement of mind was the cause of strange illusions. He had, for instance, the sensation that his thoughts were being chanted aloud by many voices, which rose higher and higher to a dizzy pitch, ending in a scream. When this happened he would bury his face in his hands, and set his teeth to keep from groan- ing aloud. Once, awakening in the night to find his room filled with moonlight, he thought he saw his younger brother, whom he loved. For an instant he did dis- tinctly see him standing outside Harmony's closed door. He was as he had looked at eighteen, smiling, with his little model airplane in his hand. Amos leaped up but nothing was there except the moonlight shining on the Matterhorn. . . . They had climbed it together once, and Amos stood now looking at the peak a long time. But the crowning illusion was of another sort. One night after he had eaten his belated supper with Har- mony, sleepy-eyed in her blue dressing gown, ready for bed, he went out into the clear, cold evening because 243 244 The Golden Answer the top-floor rooms seemed a prison to him. He was unfettered: if he stretched out his arms he could reach the horizons; he could lift his face up among the stars! The old trouble had nothing to do with this drunken exaltation, for with the burning of the book had come a terrible revulsion from the cause of it. It was as if he were unconsciously saving himself. Perhaps the old habit of resistance, stored away in his subconscious mind, made such an apparent miracle only a natural phenomenon. At any rate the calamity had sobered him. Neither did the old trouble have anything to do with his illusion that the girl he met in the middle of a great bridge over the river (the Bridge; he had wan- dered that far) was Christina the incarnation of wor- shipful loveliness or with his kissing her high under the stars. But when he did not talk to her, or give sign that he even understood her language, she ran away. Amos walked on across the Bridge, which seemed to him to have risen to a marvelous height over the great silent river that swirled in swollen darkness to the sea. The tide at its fullness had just turned, and was flooding out. As swiftly as the river, his veins seemed to run with a fluid at once cold and burning, like camphor. The whole tide of them eddied also to the Sea! He felt mighty. He desired to give bodily shape and contour to the violent, radiant thoughts in his soul to put them in the Book, which was burnt, so that he could not. A cold wind blew from the ocean, lying vast in its age-long mystery just beyond the harbor. The wind cleared his head. He knew that the girl had not been Christina of course not, what was wrong with him? But she seemed beautiful and inscrutable. She was all women. And when he reached the end of the Bridge, The Golden Answer 245 there she was, yellow hair blowing around her thin face, waiting. He stopped before her, leaning on the rail. "You followed, didn't you?" she said with pallid archness. "You'll do for 'Avalon' !" exclaimed Amos excitedly. "You're perfect for it. ... Your slim body, the lovely dreadfulness of you. . . . I'll put in your hands, too. Let me see them fragile and white and dirty ! You didn't know they were made to hold an alabaster box. They might have been beautiful, my dear, curving around it . It's broken, I suppose. Cost too much, didn't it?" "Le'go my hand " "Lots of things do. But your throat that's free. It looks like Diana's in marble." He touched her throat gently with his fingers. "But it isn't." "You're some queer guy," said she. He took her out to the middle of the Bridge again, keeping a tight hold on her arm for fear she would break away and run from him as she seemed about to do, and there, because it was cold, removed his coat and put it around her. She turned her large blue eyes on him fearfully, and fell to fingering her "pearl" ear- rings with a nervous hand. Amos and she stood, as at the rail of a ship, facing downstream. And as if they wer~ new creations, he showed her the river, deep, sliding, the jagged shores, with their black buildings and steeples and domes beyond the thin spars or dingy funnels of ships. He showed her, far below, the moving sky, the distant, dark hills. It seemed to him, all at once, that everything moved except the hills. The earth and he sensed all of it swarmed and beat with life. 246 The Golden Answer "Look at it," he commanded the frail girl beside him. She jumped at his voice. "I'm not going to hurt you. . . . Feel it beat, like a heart. For millions of years under the stars, it was silent and vegetable, with enor- mous plants, beautiful and hideous, until there came a movement and a crawling and a bursting into animal life. After ages more the beasts stood up, and were men. And all of it is you! Can't you feel it? I love the warm earth in you. Your breath is a west wind." "My Gawd!" she cried out. She pulled away from him, giving a shrill, shaky laugh. The river plunged headlong and the world's heart beat while she ran away down the Bridge, with a tapping of her small, runover heels a scrap of man's story. He did not watch her out of sight. Instead, he looked up again and saw the stars, be- yond the icy lace work of the Bridge the many bright and "tingling" stars. What cries went shivering up to them, the more thrilling because unvocal. A tremendous quickening of perception, accom- panied by a sweep of emotion, stronger than that in which he had conceived the idea of the whole earth, a passionate, vivid conception of the universe, rushed through him. . . . Infinity of space. . . . Infinity of time. . . . Spin- ning worlds. . . . One called God ! . . . A single planet, minute among many. . . . Man and his small dramatic story. ... In the whirl and flash of perception (as if in the moment he knew the truth and was free) he dragged his reaching mind back to consider his own soul and body, with their part in the staggering drama, back, back to the marvel of the single cell, each a part of the whole, each potentially harmonious. In very truth the stars sang together ! The Golden Answer 247 He thought: But what of dissonance? And then: As long as man's soul does mount up- ward, as long as his cry does "shiver to the tingling stars," beauty is triumphant. In the morning he was too ill to go to work. He could not even go out to explain at the garage, be- cause the weather had turned colder, and the strange girl on the Bridge had taken his overcoat away with her. So he sent Harmony around to the garage, before school, to say he would surely be there in the afternoon. But he grew worse in the afternoon, so that when Harmony returned from school he made her go out again to play with her sled, for snow had fallen, and ice frozen over it. Jane Street was almost as good as the country. He lay on the couch huddled under the steamer rug and could not get up. It was impossible to imagine what could be the matter with him, except he knew that it was not pneumonia or anything like that, for which one needed a doctor. The short afternoon quickly drew to darkness. Harmony came in, and when he said he still felt lazy, got her own supper. She tried to make him eat, but he could not do that any more than he could get up. He pulled her down beside him and told her a story, though she looked far away and small and queer. Harmony fussed over him, after the first alarm being rather pleased at the opportunity of playing nurse. And she was happy because it had been so long since she had seen the Perfeckly Beautiful Joke Line. He called her Mustardseed and Peaseblossom, just as in the old days before the play, in which he had been a Fool. But he found it impossible to let her read to him, 248 The Golden Answer the words played such queer tricks. Promising to "take a hot bath and go to bed" which was Har- mony's remedy he sent her away to bed herself. After she had gone away he grew very cold, but found, on trying, that he could not get up to mend the fire. Indeed, he felt so strange that he began to laugh weakly, and to wonder what was going to happen to him next. He was curious about it, as about the next step in his adventure. Ridiculously for he believed he was not a sentimental man it was a great comfort to have Christina's muff. He tried to warm himself with it. The fur was still faintly sweet, like arbutus on a cold spring day. . . . Hours later, when he awoke from a stupor into which he had fallen, he was amazed to see that some- one was bending over the stove, briskly shaking it down. A tall, dark, shabby woman with tragic eyes stood erect after she had set the little stove roaring. When she saw him looking at her she came toward him and stood with her hands on her hips looking down at him. "For old times' sake, Fortie," she said in a husky but resonant voice. "Good God you're not drunk at all!" She got him into his bed which was the couch he was lying on tenderly. "Kit," he whispered, grasping at her old skirt, "you're not going to stay?" "Do you think I can forget all you done for Har- mony?" she answered. CHAPTER XXVIII WHILE he lay feeling more comfortable and re- laxed after the hot broth she had prepared and given him, Kit Farley put the room to rights with energy, though quietly. She did not offer to open Harmony's door, but several times she looked at it. By and by she came back and stood beside Amos. Her dark eyes were fixed on the door. "Is she in there?" "Do you mean Harmony?" he asked. "Yes." The woman's hands began to tremble large, red hands, originally not badly formed. "Yes; is Harmony in there? Can I see her?" "Tell me first how you found us, Kit." "I went to your house in the country, but you'd gone away." "Why did you go there ? You've never broken your word before." "I went to thank you for the money you sent. I wanted to tell you I was 'respectable' That's why I needed it." "I understood." "I thought likely, but I wasn't taking no risk. I thought if you did understand, maybe I could see her. Oh, I had another plan, too." "What was it?" "Perhaps if you wasn't married you'd need a house- keeper. You know what I mean hired help. A man can't bring up a a little girl, alone, all the way. I'd 249 250 The Golden Answer been cutting out pieces from the papers The Mothers' Circle/ and The Little Daughters' Club/ Q^ She broke off, but Amos did not answer. He had put his hand over his eyes. "But you'd gone away," she resumed after a pause. "I thought it was better if I didn't ask people around there about you. It was a nice little house and a pretty yard. I suppose Harmony played there." "Yes." "But the houses up the street were all big. So I didn't ask. I went away. I've been working in the city. It wasn't easy to get a place, because I used up all my money coming here from Chicago, and once you get shabby Well, I'm a waitress in an awful joint. Oh, respectable. But small tips. So I had to take on other work. I got a job scrubbing offices at night. That's what's spoiled my hands already ! But I don't care, because I want to pay you back your money. I wouldn't have asked if it hadn't been for Harmony. Perhaps you don't know what I mean by that." "I know." "Well, you would." "How did you finally find us ?" "I heard a young fellah talk about you when I was at work, and I and I asked someone around there where you was and they told me. So I come down here ; but I saw you couldn't afford a housekeeper now, and the lame old lady looked awful particular. And I saw how it was going with you. That scairt me. You didn't know I took you home one night" "I I'm afraid not." ' "Then I found out that the old lady had gone, and they told me downstairs in the shop where I'm engaged to scrub twice a week that you must be sick, the little The Golden Answer 251 girl said so. And Harmony forgot to put the latch on that's how I got in." "Why did you come, Kit?" "Well, ain't somebody got to be here ?" "I shall be all right to-morrow." "Maybe. Fortie, why haven't you ever married ?" Amos laughed. "Well, you see, Kit, I am married." "Where is she now?" "She went away for a visit. I I am not a very good husband, Kit. I think I can remember telling you once that I wouldn't be a good husband." She turned away. She was about to speak again when they both saw the knob of Harmony's door moving. They watched it in sudden breathlessless. And then the door opened and Harmony appeared on the threshold. She was in her thin white nightgown, which had grown short for her and was buttoned with babylike lack of effect, close about her neck. Her brown hair was tumbled into damp curls, her eyes were misty. There were tears on her cheeks but she smiled in pleased sur- prise. "Oh, the door isn't locked to-night," she said, and stepped into the room. Kit Farley stood very still, one hand on her cheek. The eyes that Amos Fortune fixed on Harmony's fresh baby aspect were anguished. But he said nothing. Harmony stopped before the tall woman and looked up at her. Then she held out her hand and, putting one bare foot behind her, made the little curtsy Christina had taught her. "Have you come to see us ? How do you do ?" she said. Kit took her little hand. Harmony thought she 252 The Golden Answer would not speak at all, but finally a roughened voice said: "Did you have a bad dream my dear?" "Yes " Harmony hesitated for a name, and then added, "I did." "What did you dream?" "I thought Christina had gone away and was lost, all by herself. It made me cry." Kit Farley sat down. Looking around for a chair and seeing none near, she sat on the edge of the bed where Amos lay. He shivered. She drew Harmony onto her lap. "Let me wipe your eyes." Harmony laughed. "I guess they need it." Kit reached into a little pocket of her old blouse, where there was, neatly folded, an immaculate hand- kerchief. She shook out the clean folds and softly wiped Harmony's cheeks and eyes. The child sniffed. "Urn. Good! What is it?" Kit Farley smiled, trembling with pleasure. "Do you like it darling? That's white rose per- fumery. Nice, ain't it?" "Yes," said Harmony. She stuck out her toes toward the stove and wriggled comfortably. "What a nice fire you can build, can't you? I'm glad you came, because Amos doesn't feel well, and I didn't know what to do. Do you think you know what to do?" "Yes." Harmony wriggled again, and then, curling up her feet, put her head down on Kit's arm. "You have a very good lap," she said. The Golden Answer 253 The woman sat rigid while Harmony's eyelids drooped. Without stirring she glanced over her shoulder at Amos, whispering: "She looks like you!" "I know it." Harmony sat up suddenly. "Oh, excuse me," she requested. "I didn't know my eyes went shut!" "Put her to bed," Amos exclaimed suddenly, "I think I'm ill." In the morning he would not let Kit send for the doctor, though she told him she thought he had a fever. "I haven't a fever," he said. "It's something else. I thought it would never happen again send Harmony to school, and please don't go to work to-day. There's something I want you to do for me." "I had not thought of going to work," declared Kit. "You're a sick man." She looked at him gravely. There was a bright flush in each cheek and he seemed to wish to keep his eyes shut, but he was smiling. When Harmony was ready to go he kissed her and said : "Be a good Mustardseed." "Oh, yes, I suppose so," sighed Harmony. "Some day maybe I'll be awful naughty, jes' for fun." He laughed. "Terrible Mustardseed ! How's the Secret ?" "I'm on chapter ninety-two," Harmony confided. "Wonderful! Do you write it in school? Har- mony!" "The teacher said I could ! For English." "I must go and look at her. She's a rare person." 254 The Golden Answer "Oh, no, Amos. She's lovely." "I know it, dear. That's just my queer, grown-up way of saying so." Kit Farley stood by watching and listening. There was a wistful, perplexed look in her dark eyes. "Good-by, Amos," Harmony threw her arms around him and kissed his mouth. "Now hurry up and get well." "Oh, yes," he said. After the child had gone Kit saw that he again closed his eyes and seemed to be queerly attentive, to hold something with that same slight smile of absorp- tion. Finally he called her to him. "Kit," he said, without opening his eyes, "how far did you get in school ?" She looked worried and a little resentful. "I had two years of high school if I don't talk like it." "You talk all right. You talk like an angel." "Don't!" "Well, you're here now isn't that being an angel? Kit can you get some paper out of that table drawer, a lot of paper, and a pencil, several pencils, and sit down here by me ?" She did as he asked. "Now, can you write exactly what I tell you, every word, with the punctuation marks I say, and the spell- ing I give you ? Can you do that ?" "I guess so." She saw that he was trembling from head to foot, and put her hand on his a moment to quiet it. "I'm ready," he said. He began to dictate with slow deliberateness and accuracy, one sentence at a time, including the punc- The Golden Answer 255 tuation. Kit Farley's hand toiled over the paper awkwardly, and then with greater ease. At first she was confused and mechanical, but after an hour she changed from incomprehension to interest, from in- terest to amazement and to excitement. For the "recollected emotion" of his experience on the Bridge, of the golden ghost of "Avalon," refined by the fire, of his finding and loving and losing Christina, of his whole life refined by fire, was upon him. He gave contour to his emotion in something that was to "Avalon" as the immortal spirit is to a lovely, faulty body. Strangely enough, this was entirely different from "Avalon," though it had grown out of it A simple, clear, dramatic story of a soul, who happened to be a woman, but might have been anyone man or child so universal was she, slipped from his lips. It was hewn with bold outlines and lovely economy out of vivid marble, glowing with beauty and terror and pity and love. No more was the beauty with him only a flying moment. It dwelt with him. His apprenticeship had been long. In the ten days that followed he and Kit Farley lived in a strange companionship, for she worked faith- fully and lovingly until he had finished. She did not know the value of what she wrote, but its effect on her was the unconscious evidence of its value. For Kit was filled with dread and with anticipation. She laughed. Sometimes rather coarse guffaws, they were. Sometimes she sneered bitterly, or defiantly murmured. She wept with slow, cruel, remembered anguish, and once she lifted a pale, passionate face and smiled at an unequaled memory. And for ten days the man on the bed, growing white 256 The Golden Answer hourly himself, let fall his slow, meticulous and limpid sentences. When the last one was written, he said : "Tell Harmony it's finished, she can make a noise now. . . . And perhaps, after all, you had better send for that doctor/' CHAPTER XXIX MORNING sunshine shone into the upper room where Christina and her aunt sat, brightening the yellow, blue and crimson of the chintz and blazing on the pot of golden tulips in each window. It was one of those deceptive days when winter is not over, but the gutters run with the water of a thaw and the air smells of the earth. Something within the heart leaps up, though the mind knows spring has not yet come and next week may bring a snowstorm. The suggestion of spring and the sun on yellow chintz made Christina think of her room at home, of her "jonquil chair," of the green meadow opposite her windows. . . . She sat at a desk, making out a shopping list, but her eyes wandered to the street, where boys were playing a premature and sanguine game of ball, in spite of the mud. Their merry calling rose inharmoniously in the sedate street. Presently they would be asked to move their game elsewhere. They were not inhabitants of this quarter. Mrs. Hoyle glanced at Christina. She was knitting, with twinkling motions of her thin, elderly hands, a tiny corn-colored sweater for a two-year-old child she had never seen, daughter of another niece in the West. Lately she was beginning to miss grandchildren. But one cannot have them, she reflected logically, without first having children ! Sometimes one puts things off youth seems so everlasting and never takes thought of the long future, until the present has settled the future ! 257 258 The Golden Answer Christina completed her list by writing "handker- chiefs, veils, rubbers." "Aunt Bertha," she said, turning around in the desk chair, "how long have I been with you?" "I'm not rude enough to count off each month on the calendar, my dear. You ought to know." "But I don't know exactly. It's rather a long visit, I'm afraid. You and Uncle Benton must be terribly tired of me." "We are not tired of you. I haven't liked to speak, Christina. But now, since you have you know it need not be a visit." ''Yes, I know what you mean. You mean I needn't go back, as far as you and Uncle Benton are concerned. It is very dear of you to want me to stay." Mrs. Hoyle increased the speed of her knitting, dropped a stitch, and was at irritated pains to pick it up. Christina folded her arms on the slender chair back, and gazed out of the window. "Aunt Bertha, I suppose most people would find it impossible to believe this but really and truly all these months, almost a year, I haven't been a bit definite with myself. I have felt all the time as if I ivere on a visit. That no convenient time had come for going back. I I haven't 'left' Amos. When I came away, I didn't intend to 'leave' him. Things just developed . . . without me, after they once got started." "No, you haven't left Amos Fortune, yet." Christina looked keenly at her aunt, and dropped her eyes to her own pretty hands, idle, now that the list was finished. She disliked all mechanical work. She twisted her narrow platinum wedding ring, and looked The Golden Answer 259 into the golden heart of the single large topaz that was the jewel of her engagement ring. "I must be a strange person," was her next remark. "I suppose everybody else knows exactly where they are going all the time." Mrs. Hoyle became philosophical rarely. But now she said : "Some people are opportunists. I believe there have been very great ones. There are two kinds of oppor- tunistsdepending on the direction they take. One seizes an opportunity to go forward, the other to go backward." "I suppose," her niece said slowly, letting the topaz glint in the sun, which in turn had flashed upon the yellow tulips, "that the definition of 'forward' and 'backward' might depend upon several things the point of view, for one." "Oh, yes, of course." There was a silence now, in the cheerful room, the room of women of leisure who can find time to discuss their personal destiny at eleven o'clock in the morning. "I think," Christina seemed to begin again, "that the world is arranged very queerly. You never know, do you, Aunt Bertha, what you are doing? I mean well the significance of what you are doing. It seems as if there ought to be some kind of guide posts ! Why, I know a woman, in Qiicago, who had tickets for a matinee for herself and three friends they played cards together each week and sometimes went to a matinee and they thought children would enjoy this play more, and at the last minute she gave the tickets to her only daughter so that she could take her three little girls. And the theater burned, you know, and they never got out! That was a generous impulse, too." 260 The Golden Answer "Yes," Mrs. Hoyle commented dryly. "You are very young, my dear, if you think virtue is rewarded, and sin or mistakes punished, always." "It seems a pity one can't tell what is important." "Now you have put your finger on something that is important. I've had an eventful time coming through to sixty-one next birthday, and I'm not wise or generous, but I've learned one thing. You won't learn it, though, till it's rubbed in; nobody does. A sense of proportion is the most useful thing in life. I advise you to go out and get yourself one." Mrs. Hoyle began to knit down an absurdly small sleeve and counted her stitches aloud. It did not take many to measure the length of a fat, two-year-old arm. When she finished she looked again at her niece's pro- file, turned toward the sun. She had no intention of advising her ; she had no intention of being generous. Christina should decide as she pleased, and who should say whether Bertha Hoyle or Amos Fortune had a better right to profit by her decision? Neither one of them was a plaster saint. She had clear insight, but no thirst for abstract justice. And, as she had told her niece only the other day, one of the compensations of old age was that one didn't have to consider any- body! "Amos said the same thing to me once," Christina answered after the counting had ceased. "About hav- ing a sense of proportion." "Very likely. . . . There, I'm glad somebody is sending those boys away. This street is no place for them. . . . And I'll tell you something he's never told you: You are fundamentally good, Christina, but you're easy-going and lazy-minded. And you are the most discreet person I know." The Golden Answer 261 "He called me the Discreet Princess." She said it slowly, and smiled. Mrs. Hoyle did not reply. And suddenly Christina jumped up. "It's late. Shall I get your veils like mine ? And a dozen initialed handkerchiefs ?" "Yes, and two papers of pins," said Mrs. Hoyle. Christina came back with her hat and suit coat on, fastening her dark furs. "I didn't tell you, Aunt Bertha," she said from the doorway ; "last month when we had that wait in New York I went to see Amos, while you rested at the hotel. I think he's lonely." "Why don't you take your muff? It isn't spring," was Mrs. Hoyle's answer. But Christina had vanished. She had enough of that useful and valuable sense of proportion to know that for her to say only after what she had seen that evening in Amos Fortune's rooms that he was lonely, was ridiculous. For after leaving him that night and she constantly reminded herself that he had seemed to want her to go she had known what she had done to him. Oh, it all might be indirect and complicated, but she had done it. She had made him burn his book. An unaccustomed pain washed over her at the memory. She felt sudden and utter loneliness. . . . What was Amos doing, this morning ? It was true, too, that all these months she had never been definite with herself, 'had drifted, without even acknowledging that there was a reason for her to find out where she was going. She had not consciously thought things out. But a queer thing had been hap- pening within her all the time. Now that she had been 262 The Golden Answer shocked into taking account of herself, she found that somehow she must have been dwelling on unaccus- tomed matters without knowing it; there was more than there had been, to take account of. Although Christina had heard that she possessed a subconscious mind, she knew but little of its processes. She did not know that without her own effort or knowledge there really might have been a development of thought in that veiled and secret place of the "soul." She merely felt surprise that she should find certain matters shaping with astonishing aspects. And she was deeply troubled. There were outer things to trouble her as well as inner. As she bought handkerchiefs, veils and rubbers, this wet, breezy morning that seemed painfully like spring but was not spring, she remembered she really had never forgotten for a moment that she would see Philip Dana in the evening at a small dance. Would Edith be there, too? Edith Dana was uglier than ever lately, her eyes more beautiful. She had begun to stay at home, to encourage Philip to go out alone. Poor Edith ! Chris- tina reflected that it was hard lines to be unhappy twice. Of course one did not in decency commit the absurdity of a third venture; therefore Edith had nothing to look forward to. Christina did not like the idea of looking forward to nothing. How terrible! . . . Would Edith be at the dance? She bought a daffodil-colored scarf to wear that evening. Edith Dana was not at the dance; but Philip came without her, not offering an explanation of her absence as far as Christina knew. They danced many times to- gether in an unusual silence. Philip seemed to have something on his mind. The Golden Answer 263 Christina stole glances at him, and knew again, honestly, that his physical beauty was the source of much of his attraction for her. She had always loved to trace with her eyes the perfect line of his nose, than which it would have been hard to find a handsomer, and the pair of black eyebrows that seemed endowed with a magical amount of expressiveness. To-night they were slightly drawn together, slightly lifted. She , wondered what this somber and yet unexpected wist- fulness could mean. It was a new expression. He drew her, as soon as he could, into a small room which they might have for a few minutes to them- selves. It was a vivid room with white walls, black furniture and crimson hangings. A fire burned in the grate, but Philip put her scarf around her. "I've never seen you in that green dress before," he said suddenly. "It's the color of those long, slim daffodil stems silvery green." "It isn't new," Christina replied in a matter of fact voice. "It's dyed. I'm poor these days, you know. I shouldn't have bought this scarf. Do you like it?" "It's perfect. Like spring but I suppose you bought it because of that." "Well, perhaps unconsciously on purpose. I didn't think till afterward. Do you ever do things that way?" "That's too much for me. Don't try to be high- brow, my dear." She laughed. "What's the matter, Philip?" He was smoking rapidly, as he stood leaning against the wall. All his motions were quick and jerky, and his eyes were unhappy. Why were so many people in tangles, she thought. "I intended to tell you here but somebody'll gal- lop in. Let me take you home. You can find a 264 The Golden Answer place where we can be alone there, can't you? Will you?" "Yes I could," she said slowly; "but I'm not sure that I want to go home, now or that I want to find a place where we can be alone." "Yes, you do; you will want to. I've got some- thing to tell you. You'll want to hear it." "Tell me here." "I can't. You'll see why. Let me take you home." He stood above her looking down a tall, slim, black and white figure with its rather narrow, colorless, handsome face and black hair and eyes, a marked, emphatic, sharply defined presence in the eccentric room. Christina closed her eyes. Her thoughts began to whirl. Dimly she had a sense of resentment against material things that seemed in a conspiracy. Even this room conspired against her ! The scene in the garden, before her fairy play, rose in her mind's eye : the same face with how different a look! He had been satirical then, now, now he was eager! If he had been eager then She did not dare open her eyes. Yes, perhaps it would be better to let him take her home. She would select for their interview her uncle's shabby study, where the furniture was drab, a mixture of odd, cast- off pieces rescued by him from oblivion. When she did open her eyes Philip was leaning very near her. She looked up at him and could not look away; then: "Let's go," she murmured, with a catch of her breath. "I'm quite ready." In Uncle Benton's study there was nothing start- lingly black and white and red, as a background, and the only light came from an antiquated gas "mantel" with a garish white globe. The room was little used The Golden Answer 265 and frankly ugly. Also, it was chilly; there was no fireplace. Christina kept her evening coat about her; there was no settling down into intimacy. But she had let him come. That fact was indicative. She sat down at Uncle Benton's desk and Dana stood before her, as if they were having a business interview. His words were remote from business, and yet there seemed to hang about them something distinctly savoring of the practical, combined oddly with passion. He began in his low, quick voice: "Of course you had a reason for pulling out when you did, for leaving Fortune. But I've never known whether it was a useful reason." "Useful?" "Don't pretend unsophistication. Naturally, I mean divorce." "But I haven't referred to it," said Christina slowly. He ignored that, and took a turn up and down Uncle Benton's study. "Do you know where he is now?" "Amos? Yes, I know where he is." "Do you know who is with him?" "Harmony " "And somebody else." "Somebody " "A woman, who has been rather well known in her time, is with him." "I don't believe it" "Why?" "Because I know Amos, and he wouldn't have- ner there with Harmony !" Dana laughed. "I have the proof that he and Kit Farley are together at thirteen Jane Street in New 266 The Golden Answer York, and that they are not by any means newly ac- quainted. That's enough, isn't it?" "Please stop, Philip, you talk so fast !" He sat down in an old leather chair which was cold and slippery, and watched Christina, who had covered her face with her hands. She thought: "Was she there when I went to Jane Street? He wanted me to leave. He asked me to go quickly. Was she there with him then?" Humiliation was her first emotion. After that came rising anger, and a new pain of which she did not know the name. Philip Dana began to talk again, seeming to try to speak slowly because she wanted him to: "I've been a fool. I saw you playing with every man, and I vowed you should not play with me. I thought I'd be smart, and get away. . . . Well, I went away." "Yes," she said in a dazed voice, "you went away, Philip." "I've been devilishly unhappy." She almost smiled over his grieved surprise at his unhappiness. What babies men were. "That's too bad," she answered in such a strange tone that he stared at her. "I imagine Edith is un- happy, too; and there's me, and there's Amos. Oh, what a fairy play it was, wasn't it? A fairy play for which I needed a Fool !" "I don't know what you're talking about," he said stiffly. "I think I'm the one to say that to you. Why are you telling me all this now, Philip ?" He came close to her. "Edith is miserable she wants to be free. It's all my fault. Christina, it's been always you you you!" TKe Golden Answer 267 "Don't! Philip, stop!" She remembered that summer when he had left her in the garden. This was indeed a late return. But, only an hour ago she had thrilled when he came near her. What had happened in the interval ? "I won't stop!" he answered, and cruelly, because he was the stronger, kissed her. She had not believed he meant it, by the river. There was no doubt of it now. She began to cry miserably. "I wish you would go away! Can't you see that you're too late? You're never in the right place at the right time, Philip. I'm sorry for my part of this." "Do you mean it?" "Yes; and I think it would be rather decent of you to try to make Edith happier." "Don't moralize," he said harshly. "It doesn't sound well, from you." "No I know it. Good-by, Philip." She buried her face in her arms on Uncle Benton's desk, and Dana left her there. Christina was roused, after a long time, by a clock striking two. She rose, gathered her coat about her and dragged herself up the stairs, the daffodil scarf trailing like a lost sunbeam after her. Once in her room she opened the window and stepped out onto a little balcony, to let the cool, soft night wind stir her hair. Leaning against the railing, she took deep breaths of the damp balminess, still subtly springlike. She felt weak, bewildered, lost. She had been crying a long time, down there in Uncle Benton's queer study tears were not frequent with her but this weeping had left her no sense of relief 268 The Golden Answer: or comfort, only a dull, desperate realization that tears would do no good. She had passed through humiliation and anger into jealousy a wild state, in which she was divided be- tween the desire to leave Amos forever and a longing to rush back and turn the woman who was with him out. She felt superior and injured, yet was stabbed with the thought of his ever having loved Kit Farley. She could do what she had done to Amos, and yet feel that if he smiled at Kit it would kill her. Christina's sense of "mine" was highly developed. As she stood on the little balcony above the small dark garden where in a few weeks immortal crocuses would prick through the mud, a distant chime began to ring over all the city. It was a quaint and ancient tune which Christina had first heard in Holland, drop- ping down from an abbey tower over a cobbled square ; it seemed to trip a dance woodenly, like sabots clatter- ing to a queer measure. And as it died away, the echo returned it for a moment with an almost elfish kick. For the first time in her life, standing there with a heavy heart, Christina knew thankfulness for the lovely and delightful that exist for their own sake only, in the midst of sin, trouble and death; and in that thought, had she known it, she came nearer to Amos than she had ever been before. And she was nearer him to-night for another reason: Throughout the wildness of her jealousy and anger, her tears had been for something else than that. In- deed it was only when her anger had burned out that they had come, and could not bring relief. For she had wept for what she had done to Amos, not for what he had done to her. She had known ever since she had seen his face bending over the red-hot stove that night on Jane street that she had made him burn the thing The Golden Answer 269 he had labored for and loved so long. And now she knew that if Kit Farley was with him, and was the wrong woman to be with him, that, too, was her fault. She had left him alone to take what comfort he could. And the thing she was most certain about of all others was that if Kit were there in her place, then Amos loved Kit. And she had, by her own fault, lost him. The thought, glaring like a searchlight, illuminated many others. It was agony to look at them, but look she must. She saw her departure for a visit as the pretense that it was. Truly, it had not been "leaving" Amos, but it had been a refusal to meet his crisis with him, an easy stepping aside from a difficulty, the disinclination to take a risk, or pay a price, a lack of prodigality with her love. And its significance had increased one hun- dredfold with every month of her absence. Christina knew how Amos despised this lack of prodigality with love, and life "wind flung prodi- gality" he had called it once, and she had laughed and changed the subject. She had thought then that he must mean something savoring of a romantic gesture in a crisis. She wondered now if he had not meant to include little things, too. (There was the old diffi- culty: How could you tell when little things would turn out to have been big?) And, far from a romantic gesture, she questioned if he had not meant the utter simplicity of full giving. The accumulation of little things in which she had been meager with her love thus made an appalling total, when viewed from the little balcony after the chime had offered its lovely, measured encouragement to mortals, seeming to say, "Listen, / can still dance, gravely, stiffly, to be sure, because of my age and my wooden shoes and all that I have seen five hundred 270 The Golden Answer springs with love and death in each. But I dance not without grace, eh ? One, two, three, four, and a kick !" Christina used the word "love" with no hesitation. She knew she had loved Amos Fortune from the moment when, long ago, he had shielded her from a betrayal of her own infatuation. Then she did not know, but now she knew. Her marriage, which when she herself had first contemplated it, she had planned as a "marriage of spite" had been a marriage of love, after all. There was no doubt about the first few months of her yielding, against her will and yet in spite of herself. The test was time. Very well, let the test be applied. It had seemed to fail, but now she knew that time had proved the truth. "What a strange way," said Christina aloud, "I have taken to prove my love." But there were two questions which, even after she had crept to bed in miserable exhaustion, she had not decided: Could she, after all, be the wife of a man like Amos a failure? If she had been the wrong woman for him to marry, had been in part the cause of his failure, would she not make things even worse, and, through loving him, harm him even more, by going back? And the other question was: Would he take her back? True to form, Christina, who had not dared to stay, was questioning the discretion of going back. CHAPTER XXX HILDA MARTIN had the strange idea that if she could once do something for Amos, she could forget him, would as Charles Brent had phrased it "come through." Perhaps the idea would not have been con- sidered so strange by a psychologist. At any rate, she thought about it a long time, and resolved upon an eccentric journey. One night, after her mother had almost completely recovered, Hilda took a late train for Boston. Lying sleepless in her berth she wondered how she had the audacity to do what she had planned. Although she could not sleep she was filled with a wide peace that told her the instinct which prompted her was a right one. While she traveled in the service of Amos For- tune her mind forsook him and pictured the return of Charles Brent. . . . In the morning a pale, brilliant April morning, early Hilda, by the aid of several policemen and a taxi driver, found the house for which she searched. The name of Hoyle was on the door. She stood several minutes looking up at the self-contained, hard- featured residence which sheltered the wife of Amos Fortune. And she smiled with some happiness and considerable humor. If he ever knew but he would not know ! Amos would rage at this. And Christina ? Hilda wondered how she would take it. For she in- tended to tell Christina just how much Amos needed her; and bring her back! With a long breath Hilda ran up the steps and rang the bell. 271 272 The Golden Answer Five minutes later she was descending them, puz- zled, disappointed, hopeful, all in one. For she had been told by a neat servant that Mrs. Fortune was out of town. What did it mean? Was Christina so indifferent as to be traveling for pleasure, now ? Or had she, of her own volition, gone back to New York? Had they passed on the night journey, each thinking of the same man? She felt baffled, and, in a forlorn way, bruised. Fate was determined, then, that she could do nothing for Amos. She marveled over that truth that all but the heaven-blessed discover: we are surrounded by in- significant and meaningless contacts, many of us fated to daily intercourse that might be supremely lovely if someone else were to take the place of the person nearest. This sort of thing can be the masterpiece of Tantalus. Hilda knew, for example, that it would be made perfectly easy for her to be of service to True- bee Lark, or to Miss Blinn! And she had had the bitter privilege of carrying up meals to a sick lodger, when she knew that Amos was ill and alone. But the fact that she had tried to bring Christina back to him, that she had worn herself out trying, brought its own relief. The peace that she had felt during the long wakeful night came back. And by the time she had lain down to rest in a hotel room, and slept a little, it almost seemed as if, by her intention, she actually had helped him. She felt released; she had "come through." And she began to think how wonderful it was going to be to feel nothing but friendship for Amos Fortune. What a happy friend- ship they could have ! When she arose, refreshed, and went to take the afternoon train back to New York, she had begun to think again of the steadying quality in The Golden Answer 273 stalwart Charles Brent. She figured out what time it was in China, and decided that, while she was finding her way among crooked streets to the South Station, he was in bed and asleep. The thought crossed her mind of what she might say if she wrote him to come back. When Hilda reached home, late that night, unspeak- ably weary, she found that her mother had left the light on in the hall and also in the parlor, but had gone to bed herself. She knew that her mother was in bed, for otherwise she would have been at the door. She was glad to have her resting but she especially hated not being greeted at the door. Setting down her bag, she went into the parlor to turn out the light, and on the threshold stopped, with the idea that she was dreaming. For who was the tall, fair, sunburned man who stood before her? It couldn't be C. M., for he was in China ! "Oh, no," she argued faintly, "you're in China." His big laugh came then, subdued with character- istic thoughtfulness. "I've come back," said Charles Brent. "I didn't wait to be sent for. Thought about now maybe you'd want me ! Don't you think you can try to want me Hilda?" Her lip began to tremble. She was very tired. She could not speak. C. M. took her in his arms. "You put your head where it belongs," he said. CHAPTER XXXI AMOS would not let Kit Farley write to Christina that he was ill. Why should she be told ? He might never sec her again. It seemed to him ridiculous, any- way, to be unable to get up when there was nothing tangible the matter, like tonsilitis or typhoid fever ; and the very vagueness worried him. The doctor whom Kit had sent for, after those ten days of dictation, had spoken of nervous exhaustion and a complete rest. The body could be rested, no doubt, by Staying in bed, but the taut nerves were tortured by the necessity of getting up and going to work. Kit told him, briefly, not to worry; she would go on scrubbing, and that would keep them for a time ! Indeed, she still had that convenient job of cleaning the shop in the basement of Miss Lark's house. And when Miss Lark herself came home she climbed to the top floor to tell him not to think about the rent. Zinnia made no comment on Kit Farley's presence and asked no questions. She had "her hands full" taking care of Truebee, and moreover something pos- sibly she would have said it was telling time without a clock had given her a fine tolerance. She had seen strange meetings in Jane Street, as she had told Amos Fortune, and if this were one of them, it was not her affair. Truebee was her affair. For Truebee Lark, perforce, had come to the city, at last, to stay. And nothing would blossom that year in Jane Street, except Harmony. Zinnia had been willing to make hers the sacrifice, and live with her brother 274 The Golden Answer 275 over beyond the marsh, but that had been impossible. For Truebee, owing to his increasing queeraess, after that last luxuriant summer when he had given away his glowing blossoms prodigally, had "failed." His greenhouses were taken for the mortgage on them, and his own silvery cottage had been sold. Now he sat at a window all day long, and hummed a tune for which he could not remember the words. Amos hated to think of him there. He could sometimes hear the humming in the room below him, when the street was quiet. It sounded like a large and despondent bee, and was another reason why he could not rest. One rainy night Kit put Harmony to bed, as she did always now, and after giving Amos a drink of water, started out to work. He smiled at her as she took the glass from him. "What an awfully decent, dear old girl !" he said. She did not reply. "Kit," he called as she went toward the door, "you know I'll never forget this, don't you?" "Yes," she answered from the threshold, "that's why I'm here, ain't it because you don't forget things?" With that she went out and shut the door, and he heard her walk heavily down the stairs, and then the front door close. She was out in the wet night. He thought of her tall, straight figure slopping along the sidewalk in old shoes, of how her dark eyes must peer out from under her dripping hat. He hoped she did not talk to herself as she walked, she had not come yet to that ! And this was another reason why he could not rest Harmony called from the room to him: "I'm not asleep yet, Amos, are you?" "No." 276 The Golden Answer "Doesn't it just pour and pour on the roof ? Do you like it?" "Not very much." "Oh, I do ; it makes me think of nice things." "What things?" "Oh afternoons when I was a little girl, and the lilac bush was all wet, and smelled sweet." He smiled with the thought that Harmony was the ultimate satisfaction. "Do you want me to come out there and kiss you?" inquired Harmony. "Yes." She seemed taller than she had been even last week, standing beside him in her pale, coral-pink kimona. Her hair, which was now allowed to grow long, hung on each side of the slim oval of her face. Her young throat was babyish. "Slippers?" "It isn't a bit cold." She laid her cheek, soft as pussy willow, against his. "I'll take care of you forever and ever, world with- out end," said Harmony. "When you get well, let's go away and have a lilac bush again by ourselves." "Perhaps we can some day." She poked her finger in his cheek. "You know, Amos, I like the people who come and live with us from time to time, but we belong just to each other, don't we?" "I think we do." She made him laugh by her emphatic reply. "I can tell you what, I'm glad of it!" She kissed him with equal emphasis, and running with white, swift feet leaped into bed. It continued to pour monotonously after Harmony The Golden Answer 277 had fallen asleep, as if all the waters over the earth were descending. Above the ground thunder of the downpour was the loud splashing of the tin gutter just outside his window. He shut his eyes and tried not to think, but pictures thronged under the lids. Most of all he tried not to think of the book, for when he did he became confused between that which was burnt and that which was complete in Kit Farley's penciled scrawl, and a white-hot flame seemed to lick around the edges of his skull and then creep down his spine which was not pleasant. He had times like this when he forgot what had become of the manuscript Kit had written for him, though it was to change his whole life. In an adventurous moment he had mailed it to The Atlantic Monthly. The letter of acceptance which had come yesterday would ordinarily have made him wild with joy. Now nothing mattered, except that he was tired and wanted Christina, and wished it would not rain. It seemed to him that he would give a million dollars to stop the uproar of the rain, but he could not call out the offer, because iron fingers were grasping his throat with a grip that bound and choked him. He thought of the night that they had come home from their brief wedding journey. How it had rained then like this! And suddenly he remembered the drenched tramp at their back door. He winced, and thought he called out in a loud tone, "God forgive her !' but he did not even whisper it. His thoughts were all shouting again, in that way they had lately, in mighty, echoing voices that rose hysterically higher and higher. "God forgive her and love her, forgive her and love her, forever and ever, world without end, amen !" Then, descending and enveloping, the comforting 278 The Golden Answer sense that God would forgive and love her, even as he did, brought such a wide, deep peace that he drifted into sleep, for the first time in thirty-six hours. In that sleep he dreamed that Christina came to him. That was not strange, for while he slept she was coming. In a taxicab speeding in the rain and skidding through the dark, deserted streets, Christina sat hold- ing a letter from Harmony, Amos had forgotten to forbid Harmony to write. But the letter had told Christina nothing she did not know. "There isn't any book now," wrote Harmony, "be- cause Amos has burned it all up. It made the stove smoke the night you came for a few minutes. Isn't he funny, Christina, to burn it because it was another thing he could not afford to love ? He hasn't told me what else there is, did you make him burn it up? I wish he would get better, but he is funny now two, he makes us laff awful hard." The outer door of the house had been left unlatched. Christina opened the door of the top-story room she had visited once, and then shut it behind her with a little gasp. A faint night light was burning on the only table. There was a shadowy figure on the bed. Her heart beat wildly. This was Amos! She took off her long coat and her hat, bedraggled in the short distance she had been obliged to walk, and dropped them on the floor before her feet. They might have belonged, she thought in a flash of detail, to the woman she had seen in the empty shop in the basement, scrub- bing the floor. Christina took two steps around the sodden heap of clothes toward the man on the cot. For a terrible moment she thought he was dead, he was so quiet and white under the blanket that was drawn up to his chin and pointed over his feet. The Golden Answer 279 If he were dead, she had killed him. First the book, and then him. The burned book, living to her since its death as never before, had brought her back to take her punishment which would lie in the state in which she found him. She had never thought that she might come too late. ... A burning anguish rose in Chris- tina's soul the eternal epic anguish of Love and Death. . . . Then she saw him breathe. He was sleeping. With thronging joy she stole near and watched the blanket slightly rise and fall. It was as gentle and calm a sleep as a young boy's. As she stood there, weak and cold from her terror, she began to tremble with an unknown passion of protectiveness, tenderness new and mystify- ing and beautiful, the desire to defend him from every- thing harmful, and suffer in defending him. He must not be awakened. One thing she could do, and that was see that no one wakened him. She looked around the room. The inner door was shut. It was Harmony's ; he had told her, that night, that Harmony slept in there. She must find someone else. For though she was his wife, whom he had loved well once, who had now come back to him, she did not know whether she could stay ! She had realized that when she had begun her journey. There might no longer be a place for her here. Creeping out into the hall she closed the door. Suddenly she remembered the woman downstairs in the basement shop, and felt unreasonably sure that she was the one to be found ! Christina, shivering with disgust at that thought, leaned against the rail in the dim gas-flickering hall, sick with a drenching pain of jealousy. But pride came welling back, and something else. 280 The Golden Answer She was in the right at last ! Close as she was to the few elemental emotions, she could feel self-satisfac- tion. Involuntarily smoothing her hair, she decided to confront the creature and show her a virtuous wife who could take care of her own husband. CHAPTER XXXII As Christina went downstairs through the quiet house, past closed doors behind which, unknown to her, Zinnia and Truebee were dreaming of fulfilled desires, her self-satisfaction grew. In the lower hall, illumi- nated by a small tip of flame within the red globe with daisies in it, she looked around to see if there might be a way of entering the shop without going out again in the rain, and finding dark backstairs descended into an unknown cavern. Already she smelled soap. Groping carefully she found the handle of the front basement room, once the servants' dining room in tne days when Jane Street was in its glory. Christina opened this door and found herself in a tiny grocery store. It smelled vaguely of coffee and a combination of candles, tea, spices and damp boards. The prevail- ing odor was of damp boards. One gas jet blew wildly in a draught over a sign, "No green things." Another sign read baldly : "No credit here." Standing upright in the middle of the place was a tall figure which the racing shadows enhanced into almost terrifying size. The woman who confronted Christina was dressed in a clean, dark red calico. Her abundant black hair was piled high on her head. Christina, abnormally quick now, did not miss the lovely daring angle in the posture of her head, nor the handsome eyes. For the rest she saw only premature age and sordidness. She felt light and young and rested beside this woman. "Who are you?" Christina's question was involun- 281 282 The Golden Answer fary; she had meant to be superior in her politeness, remembering that of the two she was the lady. "Well if you knew, what then?" countered the strange woman calmly. "I might go and never come back," said Christina, suddenly sure. But even as she said this the thought of Amos For- tune sleeping upstairs stabbed her. "Ain't you his wife?" The other woman seemed sure too. "Yes." "Then it's your muffl" Christina was puzzled. Perhaps, after all, she was crazy! Breathlessly she demanded again, ready for flight: "You haven't told me. Who are you?" Kit Farley answered, the steadiness all on her side: "I'm Harmony's mother." Christina felt her body grow red all over and then Cold. Her face stiffened into a sneer. "You are the 'friend' whose child he was bringing Up!" Kit took a step forward and spread out her hands ; she looked almost pitying. "Well, can't you see, if I am, and what you think is true, you got to respect him more? Men don't usually go and get their child born out of wedlock and bring it up, do they?" Christina did not answer, but backed away from Kit and leaned against a glass counter which held cheap candy and chewing gum. This could not be real, that was her chief sensation ; such things did not happen to her. "Now I got something to tell you that will be good for you to hear," the other woman said slowly. "And The Golden Answer 283 you stay and get it all. You ain't the staying kind, I take it!" Christina knew that she was being insulted, but it did not seem to matter much. "Harmony's my child, and I was never married to anybody, so you don't have to respect me. But Fort Mr. Fortune you got another guess coming about him 1" She paused, and Christina lifted her hands up and twisted them together. "Oh," she breathed. "Yes, 'oh'," said Kit harshly; "but I'm beginning to wonder if Harmony's such a wicked thing to have done! I loved her father. ..." "Tell me about it," whispered Christina. Suddenly Kit covered her face with her hands. When she raised her head, she had controlled herself; she even smiled a little. "We were young! It's heaven to be young. . . ." "Yes." "There were the two Fortunes there were jokes about the name, and who would be Mis' 'Fortune.' But I wasn't the kind, even then. Jokes, I said. Be- lieve me, they were a lively family. Ever hear the yarns about the grandfather? Well, I was the devil they were supposed to be going to, see! At least, Harmon " "Harmon ?" "He was younger. Good lord, how young! He loved me. . . . Yes, he loved me. "Well, Amos tried to get him away from me. Oh, I mean to save him from me, you see? That was the first thing made me think. But it was too late, then. "Because one night oh, my God, I wisht I could 284 The Golden Answer forget it! Well, this is how it was. It rained that night. He'd been drinking and he slipped in front of a truck. All in a minute it killed him. I can see his blood in the rain "He had a way with him, you know like Amos " Christina shivered. There was a death-like silence in the shop. Then Kit's husky, resonant voice took up her story. "Amos I always called him Fortie he came to see me when he heard there was a baby. Yes, there was, and I didn't care, I was glad. I wasn't quite the devil they thought, was I? Well, he came. When I told him it was a girl I remember he swore. Then we talked it all over. And I couldn't be sure, and he couldn't, about the future. But, it seemed to make more difference what / was! To her, I mean. Things are queer like that. I agreed he should take the baby away. . . . "He was very good. You see, now, he had to save her from me. I wanted him to. Don't you forget that. But he told me to let him know when I was ready to start all over, and he'd help me. I know he thought it was tough luck for me. He never blames anyone very much. "He kept his word, though I guess he had a hard time. I mean finally I was ready to start all over. So I wrote him." Kit stopped and laughed without mirth. "You don't know what that means, I guess starting over. I've been used to fine things, too! But I got to thinking too much about Harmony, and how big she'd be by now. It was Harmony done it. That's why I don't think she's a wicked thing. Or maybe if there's a God he's turned her into a good one. I don't The Golden Answer 285 know. I wrote him, and he sent me some money. Fifty dollars first, and more later. So I came to New York, and got work. It's not so easy when you're untrained and look years older than you are, and that's not young. But I found something, you see. ... I wasn't going to even try to speak to them on the street. Then I got up a fine plan, but never mind what it came to nothing. I went to his house, the address he sent the checks from, and he was gone. Then I heard a young fellah say he'd gone broke, and a girl told me he lived here. That seemed queer to me and I was scared for Harmony, because of her father. And I found out what I feared was true, because I watched for him. And I saw him on the street at night, drunk as Harmon!" Christina had covered her face now, and Kit Farley eyed her strangely. "He didn't know me, he was so taken up talking about you. I guess it was you. It was somebody that treated him like dirt. "I found him sick and so I stayed. There wasn't anyone else. I didn't know he was married." Christina was silent, and Kit's voice suddenly stopped. It seemed impossible for her to speak. Finally Kit, who had kept her distance, moved close to her, looking down at the slim form. Her voice, when she went on, sounded broken: "You said, when you first come down here to find me, that if I was what you thought, you might go. Well, I might have lied, or I might have just kept still, and I guess you would have gone. I guess I got your number. And I could have had my heaven. Taking care of Harmony why I've been sleeping in the same room !" Her voice gave out "I'm a fool, all right, because I decided as soon as I saw you, to give it up I 286 The Golden Answer You're sorry I could see that in spite of you despising me and he won't blame you when you're sorry. He wants you and I'd like to have him get what he wants. I'm not ungrateful. He's brought up Har- mony beautiful. . . . I've talked straight and hard to you but I can see you've got sweet things in you. He loves you, so you must have. So, I think it's better for Harmony to have you for a mother than me. . . . If I go, will you stay?" Christina looked up at Kit, and her last littleness fell away. She was no longer self-satisfied, but humble. It was not a sacrifice for her to stay. She felt un- worthy to take what another woman wanted, even after repentance had brought her back to the place where she belonged. For she did belong here. If Amos wanted her and Kit Farley said that he wanted her ! The woman standing so close seemed to her all at once pitifully magnificent. She tried to speak, but broke down, and found herself sobbing with Kit's arms around her. She had not answered the question, but they both knew the answer. Finally, Christina was ready to go out of that dim place that smelled of spices to the upper room where Amos lay. She went with her new soul shining * "Gloriana" now. And turning at the door she said to Kit Farley: "You must never go far !" He lay where she had left him, thin and long under the blanket, his head turned away. His brown hair was rumpled. In his temple a purple vein showed like tracery in marble and there was another one under each eye. His high, straight nose had sharpened a little. Christina knelt beside the narrow bed and put her The Golden Answer 287 arms around him. More than anything else in the world she wanted to see him smile. As her arms encircled him he awoke. This was a continuation of his dream. He was still hearing his thoughts shout: "God forgive her and love herl" "I have come home," she said. His eyes traveling over her, finally looked into hers. "Dearest," she whispered, "will you risk letting me stay?" He put his cheek to hers, and a warm thrill of com- fort spread through his body, with a heavenly relief of the old strain. His thoughts were still shouting. She must hear them, so he merely smiled at her and closed his eyes again. He did not know that he drowsed in her arms. When he awoke, refreshed, she was still there. He said: "I dreamed about the Book. Isn't it funny, I can do it now? I couldn't have done it right before." She kissed him ; her tears were on his cheek. "Amos let me do something hard for you !" "Would it be too hard to love me?" he asked, smiling again. CHAPTER XXXIII IN the early morning Amos Fortune awoke to a feeling of clarity and divine understanding. Yellow spring sunlight, thrilling and brilliant after the storm in the night, streamed in upon him through the open window and seemed miraculously to be the source of this feeling. One of those remarkable moments was upon him when he was threefold alive, conscious of things veiled usually. He knew why he loved Christina; this was his first thought in the new day. There would be, always, times when they would disappoint each other ; but this he knew : Besides her April loveliness and the person- ality that eternally endeared, was the fact that all the time it was in her to grow into something golden. With a shock of joy he beheld the "incredible godhead" in her. And it was shining like the sun. It was a great moment, one of those "when eternal Beauty is seized traveling through time." Jane Street was waking. Carts rumbled through the narrow way, early newsboys called, a girl threw open her shutters and laughed at the sunlight. Truebee Lark leaned out of his window and peered forth into the street and up at a round, white cloud. He wrinkled his forehead, and began his monotonous humming of a tune, the words of which were for- gotten. Suddenly he started, looked mysterious, held up his finger and began to beat time. His face was transfigured. For the words had come back to his warped brain a soft, triumphant chant : 288 The Golden Answer 289 " 'A thousand ages in Thy sight' " sang Truebee, " 'Are as an evening gone. Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun.' ' A milk wagon clattered through the street, and when its echo had vanished, from the river mistiness, not "burned off" yet, came the sound of silver notes in nonchalant musical pairs. A matter of business, this time aboard ship. "Ding-ding ding-ding." And far down the river, fainter and deeper, from a distant traveler. "Dong-dong ; dong-dong." "Four bells that's six in the morning watch," said Truebee, quietly. "Zinnia," he added, turning to his sister, "I can tell tune without a clock 1" Pntttd in th* Unittd Stain of Amtriea ,1,,,.,, ..". 000,27055