Chapter 20

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_ CHAPTER XX

_In Which Mary Faces the Winter of Her Discontent; and in Which Delilah Sees Things in a Crystal Ball._

The summer slipped by, monotonously hot, languidly humid. And it was on these hot and humid days that Mary felt the grind of her new occupation. She grew to dread her entrance into the square close office room, with its gaunt desks and its unchanging occupants. She waxed restless through the hours of confinement, escaping thankfully at the end of a long day.

She longed for a whiff of the sea, for the deeps of some forest, for the fields of green which must be somewhere beyond the blue-gray haze which had settled over the shimmering city.

She began to show the effects of her unaccustomed drudgery. She grew pale and thin. Aunt Isabelle was worried. The two women sat much by the fountain. Mary had begged Aunt Isabelle to go away to some cooler spot. But the gentle lady had refused.

"This is home to me, my dear," she had said, "and I don't mind the heat. And there's no happiness for me in big hotels."

"There'd be happiness for me anywhere that I could get a breath of coolness," Mary said, restlessly. "I can hardly wait for the fall days."

Yet when the cooler days came, there was the dreariness of rain and of sighing winds. And now it was November, and Roger Poole had been away a year.

The garden was dead, and Mary was glad. Dead gardens seemed to fit into her mood better than those which bloomed. Resolutely she set herself to be cheerful; conscientiously, she told herself that she must live up to the theories which she had professed; sternly, she called herself to account that she did not exult in the freedom which she had craved. Constantly her mind warred with her heart, and her heart won; and she faced the truth that all seasons would be dreary without Roger Poole.

Her letters to him of late had lacked the spontaneity which had at first characterized them. She knew it, and tried to regain her old sense of ease and intimacy. But the doubts which Porter had planted had borne fruit. Always between her and Roger floated the vision of the little saint in red.

It was inevitable that Roger's letters should change. He ceased to show her the side which for a time he had so surprisingly revealed. Their correspondence became perfunctory--intermittent.

"It is my own fault," Mary told herself, yet the knowledge did not make things easier.

And now began the winter of her discontent. If any one had told her in her days of buoyant self-confidence that she would ever go to bed weary and wake up hopeless, she would have scorned the idea; yet the fact remained that the fruit of her independence was Dead Sea apples.

It was a letter from Barry which again brought her head up, and made her life march once more to a martial tune.

"I have found the work for which I am fitted," he wrote; "you don't know how good it seems. For so many years I went to my desk like a boy driven to school. But now--why, I work after hours for the sheer love of it--and because it seems to bring me nearer to Leila."

This from Barry, the dawdler! And she who had preached was whimpering about heat and cold, about long hours and hard work--as if these things matter!

Why, life was a Great Adventure, and she had forgotten!

And now she began to look about her--to find, if she could, some ray to illumine her workaday world.

She found it in the friendliness and companionship of her office comrades--good comrades they were--fighting the battle of drudgery shoulder to shoulder, sharing the fortunes of the road, needing, some of them, the uplift of her courage, giving some of them more than they asked.

As Mary grew into their lives, she grew away somewhat from her old crowd. And if, at times, her gallant fight seemed futile--if at times she could not still the cry of her heart, it was because she was a woman, made to be loved, fitted for finer things and truer things than writing cabalistic signs on a tablet and transcribing them, later, on the typewriter.

Leila had refused to be dropped from Mary's life. She came, whenever she could, to walk a part of the way home with her friend, and the two girls would board a car and ride to the edge of the town, preferring to tramp along the edges of the Soldiers' Home or through the Park to the more formal promenade through the city streets.

It was during these little adventures that Mary became conscious of certain reserves in the younger girl. She was closely confidential, yet the open frankness of the old days was gone.

Once Mary spoke of it. "You've grown up, all in a minute, Leila," she said. "You're such a quiet little mouse."

Leila sighed. "There's so much to think about."

Watching her, Mary decided. "It is harder for her than for Barry. He has his work. But she just waits and longs for him."

In waiting and longing, Little-Lovely Leila grew more mouse-like than ever. And at last Mary spoke to the General. "She needs a change."

He nodded. "I know it. I am thinking of taking her over in the spring."

"How lovely. Have you told her?"

"No--I thought it would be a grand surprise."

"Tell her now, dear General. She needs to look forward."

So the General, who had been kept in the house nearly all winter by his rheumatism, spoke of certain baths in Germany.

"I thought I'd go over and try them," he informed his small daughter, on the day after his talk with Mary, "and you could stop and call on Barry."

"Barry!" She made a little rush toward him. "Dad, _Dad_, do you mean it?"

"Yes."

She tucked her head into his shoulder and cried for happiness. "Dad, I've missed him so."

With this hope held out to her, Little-Lovely Leila grew radiant. Once more her feet danced along the halls, and the music of her voice trilled bird-like in the big rooms.

Delilah, discussing it with her artist, said: "Leila makes me believe in Romance with a big R. But I couldn't love like that."

Colin smiled. "You'd love like a lioness. I've subdued you outwardly, but within you are still primitive."

"I wonder----" Delilah mused.

"The man for you," Colin turned to her suddenly, "is Porter Bigelow. Of course I'm taking it from the artist's point of view. You're made for each other--a pair of young gods--his red head just topping your black one--It was that way at the garden party; any one could see it."

Delilah laughed. "His eyes aren't for me. With him it is Mary Ballard. If I were in love with him, I should hate Mary. But I don't; I love her. And she's in love with Roger Poole."

Colin looked up from the samples from which he and Delilah were choosing her spring wardrobe.

"Poole? I knew his wife," he said abruptly; "it was her picture that I showed you the other night--the little saint in the Fra Angelico pose--it didn't come to me until afterward that he might be the same Poole of whom I had heard you speak."

Delilah swept across the room, and turned the canvas outward. "Roger Poole's wife," she said, "of all things!" Then she stood staring silently.

"You didn't tell us who she was."

"No," he was weighing mentally Porter's attitude in the matter, "no one knew but Bigelow."

"And he showed this to Mary?" They looked at each other, and laughed. "Perhaps all's fair in love," Delilah murmured, at last, "but I wouldn't have believed it of him."

As she turned the picture toward the wall, Delilah decided, "Mary Ballard is worth a hundred of such women as this."

"A woman like you is worth a hundred of them," Colin stated deliberately.

Delilah flushed faintly. Colin Quale was giving to her something which no other man had given. And she liked it.

"Do you know what you are doing to me?" she said, as she sat down by the window. "You are making me think that I am like the pictures you paint of me."

"You are," was the quiet response; "it's just a matter of getting beneath the surface."

There was a pause during which his fingers and eyes were busy with the shining samples--then Delilah said: "If Leila and her father go to Germany in May, I'm going to get Dad to go too. I don't suppose you'd care to join us? You'll want to get back to that girl in Amesbury or Newburyport, or whatever it is."

"What girl?"

"The one you are going to marry."

"There is no girl," said Colin quietly, "in Amesbury or Newburyport; there never has been and there never will be." Coming close, he held against her cheek a sample of soft pale yellow. "Leila Dick wears that a lot, but it's not for you." He stood back and gazed at her meditatively.

"Colin," she protested, "when you look at me that way, I feel like a wooden model."

He smiled, "That's what you have come to mean to me," he said; "I don't want to think of you as a woman."

"Why not?" asked daring Delilah.

"Because it is, to say the least, disturbing."

He occupied himself with his samples, shaking his head over them.

"None of these will do for the Secretary's dinner. You must have lace with many flounces caught up in the new fashion. And I shall want your hair different. Take it down."

She was used to him now, and presently it fell about her in all its shining sable beauty; and as he separated the strands, it was like a thing alive under his hands.

He crowned her head with the braids in a sort of old-fashioned coronet. And so arranged, the old fashion became a new fashion, and Delilah was like a queen.

"You see--with the lace and your pearl ornaments. There is nothing startling; but no one will be like you."

And there was no one like her. And because of the dress, which Colin had planned, and because of the way which he had taught her to do her hair, Delilah annexed to her train of admirers on the night of the Secretary's dinner a distinguished titled gentleman, who was looking for a wife to grace his ancestral halls--and who was impressed mightily by the fact that Delilah looked the part to perfection.

He proposed to her in three weeks, and was so sure of his ability to get what he wanted that he was stunned by her answer:

"Perhaps I'll make up my mind to it. I'll give you your answer when I come over in the spring."

"But I want my answer now."

"I'm sorry. But I can't."

When she told Colin of her abrupt dismissal of the discomfited gentleman, she asked, almost plaintively, "Why couldn't I say 'yes' at once? It is the thing I've always wanted."

"Have you really wanted it?"

"Of course."

"Not of course. You want other things more."

"What for example?"

"I think you know."

She did know, and she drew a quick breath. Then laughed.

"You're trying to teach me to understand my--emotions, Colin, as you have taught me to understand my clothes."

"You're an apt pupil."

Tea came in, just then, and she poured for him, telling his fortune afterward in his teacup.

"Are you superstitious?" she asked him, having worked out a future of conventional happiness and success.

"Not enough to believe what you have told me." He was flickering his pale lashes and smiling. "Life shall bring me what I want because I shall make it come."

"Oh, you think that?"

"Yes. All things are possible to those of us who believe they are possible."

"Perhaps to a man. But--to a woman. There's Leila, for example. I'm afraid----"

"You mustn't be. Life will come right for her."

"How do you know?"

"It comes right for all of us, in one way or another. You'll find it works out. You're afraid for your little friend because of Ballard--he's pretty gay, eh?"

"Yes. More, I think, than she understands. But everybody else knows that they sent him away for that. And I can't see any way out. If he marries her he'll break her heart; if he doesn't marry her he'll break it--and there you have it."

"You must not put these 'ifs' in their way. There'll be some way out."

She rose and went to a table to a little cabinet which she unlocked.

"You wouldn't let me have my crystal ball in evidence," she said, "because it doesn't fit in with the rest of my new furnishings--but it tells things."

"What things?"

"I'll show you." She set it on the table between them. "Put your hand on each side of it."

He grasped it with his flexible fingers. "Don't invent----" he warned.

She began to speak slowly, and she was still at it when Porter's big car drove up to the door, and he came in with Mary and Leila.

"I picked up these two on their way home," Porter explained; "it is raining pitchforks, and I'm in my open car. And so, kind lady, dear lady, will you give us tea?"

Colin and Delilah, each a little pale, breathing quickly, rose to greet their guests.

"She's been telling my fortune," Colin informed them, while Delilah gave orders for more hot water and cups. "It's a queer business."

Porter scoffed. "A fake, if there ever was one."

Colin mused. "Perhaps. But she has the air of a seeress when she says it all--and she has me slated for a--masterpiece--and marriage."

Leila, standing by the table, touched the crystal globe with doubtful fingers. "Do you really see things, Delilah?"

"Sit down, and I'll prove it."

Leila shrank. "Oh, no."

But Porter insisted. "Be a sport, Leila."

So she settled herself in the chair which Colin had occupied, her curly locks half hiding her expectant eyes.

And now Delilah looked, bending over the ball.

There was a long silence. Then Delilah seemed to shake herself, as one shakes off a trance. She pushed the ball away from her with a sudden gesture. "There's nothing," she said, in a stifled voice; "there's really nothing to tell, Leila."

"I knew that you'd back out with all of us here to listen," Porter triumphed.

But Colin saw more than that.

"I think we want our tea," he said, "while it is hot," and he handed Delilah the cups, and busied himself to help her with the sugar and lemon, and to pass the little cakes, and all the time he talked in his pleasant half-cynical, half-earnest fashion, until their minds were carried on to other things.

When at last they had gone, he came back to her quickly.

"What was it?" he asked. "What did you see in the ball?"

She shivered. "It was Barry. Oh, Colin, I don't really believe in it--perhaps it was just my imagination because I am worried about Leila, but I saw Barry looking at me with such a white strange face out of the dark." _

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