Chapter 9

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_ CHAPTER IX

_In Which Roger Sallies Forth in the Service of a Damsel in Distress, and in Which He Meets Dragons Along the Way._

In the weeks which followed the trip to Fort Myer, Mary found an astonishing change in her brother. For the first time in his life he seemed to be taking things seriously. He stayed at home at night and studied. He gave up Jerry Tuckerman and the other radiant musketeers. She did not know the reason for the change but it brought her hope and happiness.

Barry saw Leila often, but, as yet, no one but Delilah Jeliffe knew of the tie between them.

"I ought to tell Dad," Leila had said, timidly; "he'd be very happy. It is what he has always wanted, Barry."

"I must prove myself a man first," Barry told her, "I've squandered some of my opportunities, but now that I have you to work for, I feel as strong as a lion."

They were alone in the General's library. "It is because you trust me, dear one," Barry went on, "that I am strong."

She slipped her little hand into his. "Barry--it seems so queer to think that I shall ever be--your wife."

"You had to be. It was meant from the--beginning."

"Was it, Barry?"

"Yes."

"And it will be to the end. Oh, I shall always love you, dearly, dearly----"

It was idyllic, their little love affair--their big love affair, if one judged by their measure. It was tender, sweet, and because it was their secret, because there was no word of doubt or of distrust from those who were older and wiser, they brought to it all the beauty of youth and high hope.

Thus the spring came, and the early summer, and Barry passed his examinations triumphantly, and came home one night and told Mary that he was going to marry Leila Dick. As he told her his blue eyes beseeched her, and loving him, and hating to hurt him, Mary withheld the expression of her fears, and kissed him and cried a little on his shoulder, and Barry patted her cheek, and said awkwardly: "I know you think I'm not worthy of her, Mary. But she will make a man of me."

Alone, afterward, Mary wondered if she had been wise to acquiesce--yet surely, surely, love was strong enough to lift a man up to a woman's ideal--and Leila was such a--darling.

She put the question to Roger Poole that night. In these warmer days she and Roger had slipped almost unconsciously into close intimacy. He read to her for an hour after dinner, when she had no other engagements, and often they sat in the old garden, she with her note-book on the arm of the stone bench--he at the other end of the bench, under a bush of roses of a hundred leaves. Sometimes Aunt Isabelle was with them, with her fancy work, sometimes they were alone; but always when the hour was over, he would close his book and ascend to his tower, lest he might meet those who came later. There were many nights that he thus escaped Porter Bigelow--nights when in the moonlight he heard the murmur of voices, mingled with the splash of the fountain; and there were other nights when gay groups danced upon the lawn to the music played by Mary just within the open window.

Yet he thanked the gods for the part which he was allowed to play in her life. He lived for that one hour out of the twenty-four. He dared not think what a day would be if he were deprived of that precious sixty minutes.

Now and then, when she had been very sure that no one would come, he had stayed with her in the moonlight, and the little bronze boy had smiled at him from the fountain, and there had been the fragrance of the roses, and Mary Ballard in white on the stone bench beside him, giving him her friendly, girlish confidences; she discussed problems of genteel poverty, the delightful obstinacies of Susan Jenks, the dominance of Aunt Frances. She gave him, too, her opinions--those startling untried opinions which warred constantly with his prejudices.

And now to-night--his advice.

"Do you think love can change a man's nature? Make a weak man strong, I mean?"

He laid down his book. "You ask that as if I could really answer it."

"I think you can. You always seem to be able to put yourself in the other person's place, and it--helps."

"Thank you. And now in whose place shall put myself?"

"The girl's," promptly.

He considered it. "I should say that the man should be put to the test before marriage."

"You mean that she ought to wait until she is sure that he is made over?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I feel that way. But what if the girl believes in him? Doesn't dream that he is weak--trusts him absolutely, blindly? Should any one try to open her eyes?"

"Sometimes it is folly to be wise. Perhaps for her he will always be strong."

"Then what's the answer?"

"Only this. That the man himself should make the test. He should wait until he knows that he is worthy of her."

She made a little gesture of hopelessness, just the lifting of her hands and letting them drop; then she spoke with a rush of feeling.

"Mr. Poole--it is Barry and Leila. Ought I to let them marry?"

He smiled at her confidence in her ability to rule the destinies of those about her.

"I fancy that you won't have anything to do with it. He is of age, and you are only his sister. You couldn't forbid the banns, you know."

"But if I could convince him----"

"Of what?" gravely. "That you think him a boy? Perhaps that would tend to weaken his powers."

"Then I must fold my hands?"

"Yes. As things are now--I should wait."

He did not explain, and she did not ask, for what she should wait. It was as if they both realized that the test would come, and that it would come in time.

And it did come.

It was while Leila was on a trip to the Maine coast with her father.

July was waning, and already an August sultriness was in the air. Those who were left in town were the workers--every one who could get away was gone. Mary, with the care of her house on her hands, refused Aunt Frances' invitation for a month by the sea, and Aunt Isabelle declined to leave her.

"I like it better here, even with the heat," she told her niece, "than running around Bar Harbor with Frances and Grace."

Barry wrote voluminous letters to Leila, and received in return her dear childish scrawls. But the strain of her absence began to tell on him. He began to feel the pull toward old pleasures and distractions. Then one day Jerry Tuckerman arrived on the scene. The next night, he and Barry and the other radiant musketeers motored over to Baltimore by moonlight. Barry did not come home the next day, nor the next, nor the next. Mary grew white and tense, and manufactured excuses which did not deceive Aunt Isabelle. Neither of the tired pale women spoke to each other of their vigils. Neither of them spoke of the anxiety which consumed them.

Then one night, after a message had come from the office, asking for an explanation of Barry's absence; after she had called up the Country Club; after she had called up Jerry Tuckerman and had received an evasive answer; after she had exhausted all other resources, Mary climbed the steps to the Tower Rooms.

And there, sitting stiff and straight in a high-backed chair, with her throat dry, her pulses throbbing, she laid the case before Roger Poole.

"There is no one else--I can speak to--about it. But Barry's been away for nearly a week from the office and from home--and nobody knows where he is. And it isn't the first time. It began before father died, and it nearly broke his heart. You see, he had a brother--whose life was ruined because of this. And Constance and I have done everything. There will be months when he is all right. And then there'll be a week--away. And after it, he is dreadfully depressed, and I'm afraid." She was shivering, though the night was hot.

Roger dared not speak his sympathy. This was not the moment.

So he said, simply, "I'll find him, and when I find him," he went on, "it may be best not to bring him back at once. I've had to deal with such cases before. We will go into the country for a few days, and come back when he is completely--himself."

"Oh, can you spare the time?"

"I haven't taken any vacation, and--so there are still thirty days to my credit. And I need an outing."

He prepared at once to go, and when he had packed a little bag, he came down into the garden. There was moonlight and the fragrance and the splashing fountain. Roger was thrilled by the thought of his quest. It was as if he had laid upon himself some vow which was sending him forth for the sake of this sweet lady. As Mary came toward him, he wished that he might ask for the rose she wore, as his reward. But he must not ask. She gave him her friendship, her confidence, and these were very precious things. He must never ask for more--and so he must not ask for a rose.

And now he was standing just below her on the terrace steps, looking up at her with his heart in his eyes.

"I'll find him," he said, "don't worry."

She reached out and touched his shoulder with her hand. "How good you are," she said, wistfully, "to take all of this trouble for us. I feel that I ought not to let you do it--and yet--we are so helpless, Aunt Isabelle and I."

There was nothing of the boy about her now. She was all clinging dependent woman. And the touch of her hand on his shoulder was the sword of the queen conferring knighthood. What cared he now for a rose?

So he left her, standing there in the moonlight, and when he reached the bottom of the hill, he turned and looked back, and she still stood above him, and as she saw him turn, she waved her hand.

In days of old, knights fought with dragons and cut off their heads, only to find that other heads had grown to replace those which had been destroyed.

And it was such dragons of doubt and despair which Roger Poole fought in the days after he had found Barry.

The boy had hidden himself in a small hotel in the down-town district of Baltimore. Following one clue and then another, Roger had come upon him. There had been no explanations. Barry had seemed to take his rescue as a matter of course, and to be glad of some one into whose ears he could pour the litany of his despair.

"It's no use, Poole. I've fought and fought. Father helped me. And I promised Con. And I thought that my love for Leila would make me strong. But there's no use trying. I'll be beaten. It is in the blood. I had an uncle who drank himself to death. And back of him there was a grandfather."

They had been together for two days. Barry had agreed to Roger's plans for a trip to the country, and now they were under the trees on the banks of one of the little brackish rivers which flow into the Chesapeake. They had fished a little in the early morning, then had brought their boat in, for Barry had grown tired of the sport. He wanted to talk about himself.

"It's no use," he said again; "it's in the blood."

Roger was propped against a tree, his hat off, his dark hair blown back from his fine thin face.

"Our lives," he said, "are our own. Not what our ancestors make them."

"I don't believe it," Barry said, flatly. "I've fought a good fight, no one can say that I haven't. And I've lost. After this do you suppose that Mary will let me marry Leila? Do you suppose the General will let me marry her?"

"Will you let yourself marry her?"

Barry's face flamed. "Then you think I'm not worthy?"

"It is what you think, Ballard, not what I think."

Barry pulled up a handful of grass and threw it away, pulled up another handful and threw it away. Then he said, doggedly, "I'm going to marry her, Poole; no one shall take her away from me."

"And you call that love?"

"Yes. I can't live without her."

Roger with his eyes on the dark water which slipped by the banks, taking its shadows from the darkness of the thick branches which bent above it said quietly, "Love to me has always seemed something bigger than that--it has seemed as if love--great love took into consideration first the welfare of the beloved."

There was a long silence, out of which Barry said tempestuously, "It will break her heart if anything comes between us. I'm not saying that because am a conceited donkey. But she is such a constant little thing."

Roger nodded. "That's all the more reason why you've got to pull up now, Ballard."

"But I've tried."

"I knew a man who tried--and won."

"How?" eagerly.

"I met him in the pine woods of the South. I was down there to recover from a cataclysm which had changed--my life. This man had a little shack next to mine. Neither of us had much money. We lived literally in the open. We cooked over fires in front of our doors. We hunted and fished. Now and then we went to town for our supplies, but most of our things we got from the schooner-men who drove down from the hills. My neighbor was married. He had a wife and three children. But he had come alone. And he told me grimly that he should never go back until he went back a man."

"Did he go back?"

"Yes. He conquered. He looked upon his weakness not merely as a moral disease, but as a physical one. And it was to be cured like any other disease by removing the cause. The first step was to get away from old associations. He couldn't resist temptation, so he had come where he was not tempted. His occupation in the city had been mental, here it was largely physical. He chopped wood, he tramped the forest, he whipped the streams. And gradually he built up a self which was capable of resistance. When he went back he was a different man, made over by his different life. And he has cast out his--devil."

The boy was visibly impressed.

"His way might not be your way," Roger concluded, "but the fact that he fought a winning battle should give you hope."

The next day they went back. Mary met them as if nothing had happened. The basket of fish which they had brought to be cooked by Susan Jenks furnished an unembarrassing topic of conversation. Then Barry went to his room, and Mary was alone with Roger.

She had had a letter from him, and a message by telephone; thus her anxiety had been stilled. And she was very grateful--so grateful that her voice trembled as she held out her hands to him.

"How shall I ever thank you?" she said.

He took her hands in his, and stood looking down at her.

He did not speak at once, yet in those fleeting moments Mary had a strange sense of a question asked and answered. It was as if he were calling upon her for something she was not ready to give--as if he were drawing from her some subconscious admission, swaying her by a force that was compelling, to reveal herself to him.

And, as she thought these things, he saw a new look in her eyes, and her breath quickened.

He dropped her hands.

"Don't thank me," he said. "Ask me again to do something for you. That shall be my reward." _

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