Chapter 23

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_ CHAPTER XXIII

_In Which Little-Lovely Leila Looks Forward to the Month of May; and in Which Barry Rides Into a Town With Narrow Streets._

It was when Little-Lovely Leila was choosing certain gowns for her trip abroad that she had almost given away her secret to Delilah.

"I want a yellow one," she had remarked, "with a primrose hat, like I wore when Barry and I----" She stopped, blushing furiously.

"When you and Barry what?" demanded Delilah.

Leila having started to say, "When Barry and I ran away to be married," stumbled over a substitute, "Well, I wore a yellow gown--when--when----"

"Not when he proposed, duckie. That was the day at Fort Myer. I knew it the minute I came out and saw your face; and then that telephone message about the picture. Were you really jealous when you found it on my table?"

"Dreadfully." Leila breathed freely once more. The subject of the primrose gown was shelved safely.

"You needn't have been. All the world knew that Barry was yours."

"And he's mine now," Leila laughed; "and I am to see him in--May."

In the days which followed she was a very busy little Leila. On every pretty garment that she made or bought, she embroidered in fine silk a wreath of primroses. It was her own delicious secret, this adopting of her bridal color. Other brides might be married in white, but she had been different--her gown had been the color of the great gold moon that had lighted their way. What a wedding journey it had been--and how she and Barry would laugh over it in the years to come!

For the tragedy which had weighed so heavily began now to seem like a happy comedy. In a few weeks she would see Barry, in a few weeks all the world would know that she was his wife!

So she packed her fragrant boxes--so she embroidered, and sang, and dreamed.

Barry had written that he was "making good"; and that when she came he would tell Gordon. And the General should go on to Germany, and he and Leila would have their honeymoon trip.

"You must decide where we shall go," he had said, and Leila had planned joyously.

"Dad and I motored once into Scotland, and we stopped at a little town for tea. Such a queer little story-book town, Barry, with funny houses and with the streets so narrow that the people leaned out of their windows and gossiped over our heads, and I am sure they could have shaken hands across. There wasn't even room for our car to turn around, and we had to go on and on until we came to the edge of the town, and there was the dearest inn. We stopped and stayed that night--and the linen all smelled of lavender, and there was a sweet dumpling of a landlady, and old-fashioned flowers in a trim little garden--and all the hills beyond and a lake. Let's go there, Barry; it will be beautiful."

They planned, too, to go into lodgings afterward in London.

The thought of lodgings gave Leila a thrill. She hunted out her fat little volume of Martin Chuzzlewit and gloated over Ruth Pinch and her beef-steak pie. She added two or three captivating aprons to the contents of the fragrant boxes. She even bought a cook-book, and it was with a sigh that she laid the cook-book away when Barry wrote that in such lodgings as he would choose the landlady would serve their meals in the sitting-room. And this plan would give Leila more time to see the sights of London!

But what cared Little-Lovely Leila for seeing sights? Anybody could see sights--any dreary and dried-up fossil, any crabbed and cranky old maid--the Tower and Westminster Abbey were for those who had nothing better to do. As for herself, her horizon just now was bounded by primrose wreaths and fragrant boxes, and the promise of seeing Barry in May!

But fate, which has strange things in store for all of us, had this in store for little Leila, that she was not to see Barry in May, and the reason that she was not to see him was Jerry Tuckerman.

Meeting Mary in the street one day early in February, Jerry had said, "I am going to run over to London this week. Shall I take your best to Barry?"

Mary's eyes had met his squarely. "Be sure you take _your_ best, Jerry," she had said.

He had laughed his defiance. "Barry's all right--but you've got to give him a little rope, Mary."

When he had left her, Mary had walked on slowly, her heart filled with foreboding. Barry was not like Jerry. Jerry, coarse of fiber, lacking temperament, would probably come to middle age safely--he would never be called upon to pay the piper as Barry would for dancing to the tune of the follies of youth.

She wrote to Gordon, warning him. "Keep Barry busy," she said. "Jerry told me that he intended to have 'the time of his young life'--and he will want Barry to share it."

Gordon smiled over the letter. "Poor Mary," he told Constance; "she has carried Barry for so long on her shoulders, and she can't realize that he is at last learning to stand alone."

But Constance did not smile. "We never could bear Jerry Tuckerman; he always made Barry do things."

"Nobody can make me do things when I don't want to do them," said Gordon comfortably and priggishly, "and Barry must learn that he can't put the blame on anybody's shoulders but his own."

Constance sighed. She did not quite share Gordon's sense of security. Barry was different. He was a dear, and trying so hard; but Jerry had always had some power to sway him from his best, a sinister inexplicable influence.

Jerry, arriving, hung around Barry for several days, tempting him, like the villain in the play.

But Barry refused to be tempted. He was busy--and he had just had a letter from Leila.

"I simply can't run around town with you, Tuckerman," he explained. "Holding down a job in an office like this isn't like holding down a government job."

"So they've put your nose to the grindstone?" Jerry grinned as he said it, and Barry flushed. "I like it, Tuckerman; there's something ahead, and Gordon has me slated for a promotion."

But what did a promotion mean to Jerry's millions? And Barry was good company, and anyhow--oh, he couldn't see Ballard doing a steady stunt like this.

"Motor into Scotland with me next week," he insisted; "get a week off, and I'll pick up a gay party. It's a bit early, but we'll stop in the big towns."

Barry shook his head.

"Leila and the General are coming over in May--she wants to take that trip--and, anyhow, I can't get away."

"Oh, well, wait and take your nice little ride with Leila," Jerry said, good-naturedly enough, "but don't tie yourself too soon to a woman's apron string, Ballard--wait till you've had your fling."

But Barry didn't want a fling. He, too, was dreaming. On half-holidays and Sundays he haunted neighborhoods where there were rooms to let. And when one day he chanced on a sunshiny suite where a pot of primroses bloomed in the window, he lingered and looked.

"If they're empty a month from now I'll take them," he said.

"A guinea down and I'll keep them for you," was the smiling response of the pleasant landlady.

So Barry blushingly paid the guinea, and began to buy little things to make the rooms beautiful--a bamboo basket for flowers--a Sheffield tray--a quaint tea-caddy--an antique footstool for Leila's little feet.

Yet there were moments in the midst of his elation when some chill breath of fear touched him, and it was in one of these moods that he wrote out of his heart to his little bride.

"Sometimes, when I think of you, sweetheart, I realize how little there is in me which is deserving of that which you are giving me. When your letters come, I read them and think and think about them. And the thing I think is this: Am I going to be able all my life to live up to your expectations? Don't expect too much, dear heart. I wonder if I am more cowardly about facing life than other men. Now and then things seem to loom up in front of me--great shadows which block my way--and I grow afraid that I can't push them out of your path and mine. And if I should not push them, what then? Would they engulf you, and should I be to blame?"

Mary found Leila puzzling over this letter. "It doesn't sound like Barry," she said, in a little frightened voice. "May I read it to you, Mary?"

Mary had stopped in for tea on her way home from the office. But the tea waited.

"Barry is usually so--hopeful," Leila said, when she had finished; "somehow I can't help--worrying."

Mary was worried. She knew these moods. Barry had them when he was fighting "blue devils." She was afraid--haunted by the thought of Jerry. She tried to speak cheerfully.

"You'll be going over soon," she said, "and then all the world will be bright to him."

Leila hesitated. "I wish," she faltered, "that I could be with him now to help him--fight."

Mary gave her a startled glance. Their eyes met.

"Leila," Mary said, with a little gasp, "who told you?"

"Barry"--the tea was forgotten--"before--before he went away." The vision was upon her of that moment when he had knelt at her feet on their bridal night.

Haltingly, she spoke of her lover's weakness. "I've wanted to ask you, Mary, and when this letter came, I just had to ask. If you think it would be better--if we were married, if I could make a home for him."

"It wouldn't be better for you."

"I don't want to think about myself," Leila said, passionately; "everybody thinks about me. It is Barry I want to think of, Mary."

Mary patted the flushed cheek. "Barry is a fortunate boy," she said. Then, with hesitation, "Leila, when you knew, did it make a difference?"

"Difference?"

"In your feeling for Barry?"

And now the child eyes were woman eyes. "Yes," she said, "it made a difference. But the difference was this--that I loved him more. I don't know whether I can explain it so that you will understand, Mary. But then you aren't like me. You've always been so wonderful, like Barry. But you see I've never been wonderful. I've always been just a little silly thing, pretty enough for people to like, and childish enough for everybody to pet, and because I was pretty and little and childish, nobody seemed to think that I could be anything else. And for a long time I didn't dream that Barry was in love with me. I just knew that I--cared. But it was the kind of caring that didn't expect much in return. And when Barry said that I was the only woman in the world for him--I had the feeling that it was a pleasant dream, and that--that some day I'd wake up and find that he had made a mistake and that he should have chosen a princess instead of just a little goosie-girl. But when I knew that Barry had to fight, everything changed. I knew that I could really help. More than the princess, perhaps, because you see she might not have cared to bother--and she might not have loved him enough to--overlook."

"You blessed child," Mary said with a catch in her voice, "you mustn't be so humble--it's enough to spoil any man."

"Not Barry," Leila said; "he loves me because I am so loving."

Oh, wisdom of the little heart. There might be men who could love for the sake of conquest; there might be men who could meet coldness with ardor, and affection with indifference. Barry was not one of these. The sacred fire which burned in the heart of his sweet mistress had lighted the flame in his own. It was Leila's love as well as Leila that he wanted. And she knew and treasured the knowledge.

It was when Mary left that she said, with forced lightness, "You'll be going soon, and what a summer you will have together."

It was on Leila's lips to cry, "But I want our life together to begin now. What's one summer in a whole life of love?"

But she did not voice her cry. She kissed Mary and smiled wistfully, and went back into the dusky room to dream of Barry--Barry her young husband, with whom she had walked in her little yellow gown over the hills and far away.

And while she dreamed, Barry, in Jerry Tuckerman's big blue car, was flying over other hills, and farther away from Leila than he had ever been in his life.

It was as Mary had feared. Barry's strength in his first resistance of Jerry's importunities had made him over-confident, so that when, at the end of the month, Jerry had returned and had pressed his claim, Barry had consented to lunch with him.

At luncheon they met Jerry's crowd and Barry drank just one glass of golden sparkling stuff.

But the one glass was enough to fire his blood--enough to change the aspect of the world--enough to make him reckless, boisterous--enough to make him consent to join at once Jerry's party in a motor trip to Scotland.

In that moment the world of work receded, the world of which Leila was the center receded--the life which had to do with lodgings and primroses and Sheffield trays was faint and blurred to his mental vision. But this life, which had to do with laughter and care-free joyousness and forgetfulness, this was the life for a man who was a man.

Jerry was saying, "There will be the three of us and the chauffeur--and we will take things in hampers and things in boxes, and things in bottles."

Barry laughed. It was not a loud laugh, just a light boyish chuckle, and as he rose and stood with his hand resting on the table, many eyes were turned upon him. He was a handsome young American, his beautiful blond head held high. "You mustn't expect," he said, still with that light laughter, "that I am going to bring any bottles. Only thing I've got is a tea-caddy. Honest--a tea-caddy, and a Sheffield tray."

Then some memory assailing him, he faltered, "And a little foolish footstool."

"Sit down," Jerry said. There was something strangely appealing in that gay young figure with the shining eyes. In spite of himself, Jerry felt uncomfortable. "Sit down," he said.

So Barry sat down, and laughed at nothing, and talked about nothing, and found it all very enchanting.

He packed his bag and left a note for Gordon and when he piled finally with the others into Jerry's car, he was ready to shout with them that it was a long lane which had no turning, and that work was a bore and would always be.

And so the ride which Leila had planned for herself and her young husband became a wild ride, in which these young knights of the road pursued fantastic adventures, with memories blank, and with consciences soothed.

For days they rode, stopping at various inns along the way, startling the staid folk of the villages by their laughter late into the night; making boon companions in an hour, and leaving them with tears, to forget them at the first turn of the corner.

Written as old romance, such things seem of the golden age; looked upon in the light of Barry's future and of Leila's, they were tragedy unspeakable.

And now the car went up and up, to come down again to some stretch of sand, with the mountains looming black against one horizon, the sea a band of sapphire against another.

And so, fate drawing them nearer and nearer, they came at last to the little town which Leila had described in her letter.

Going in, some one spoke the name, and Barry had a stab of memory. Who had talked of narrow streets, across which people gossiped--and shook hands?--who had spoken of having tea in that little shop?

He asked the question of his companions, "Who called this a story-book town?"

They laughed at him. "You dreamed it."

Steadily his mind began to work. He fumbled in his pocket, and found Leila's letter.

Searching through it, he discovered the name of the little place. "I didn't dream it," he announced triumphantly; "my wife told me."

"Wake up," Jerry said, "and thank the gods that you are single."

But Barry stood swaying. "My little wife told me--_Leila_!"

With a sudden cry, he lurched forward. His arm struck the arm of the driver beside him. The car gave a sudden turn. The streets were narrow--so narrow that one might almost shake hands across them!

And there was a crash!

Jerry was not hurt, nor the other adventurers. The chauffeur was stunned. But Barry was crumpled up against the stone steps of one of the funny little houses, and lay there with Leila's letter all red under him.

It was Porter and Mary who told Leila. The General had begged them to do it. "I can't," he had said, pitifully. "I've faced guns, but I can't face the hurt in my darling's eyes."

So Mary's arms were around her when she whispered to the child-wife that Barry was--dead.

Porter had faltered first something about an accident--that the doctors were--afraid.

Leila, shaking, had looked from one to the other. "I must go to him," she had cried. "You see, I am his wife. I have a right to go."

"_His wife_?" Of all things they had not expected this.

"Yes, we have been married a year--we ran away."

"When, dear?"

"Last March--to Rockville--and--and we were going to tell everybody the next day--and then Barry lost his place--and we couldn't."

Oh, poor little widow, poor little child! Mary drew her close. "Leila, Leila," she whispered, "dear little sister, dear little girl, we must love and comfort each other."

And then Leila knew.

But they did not tell her how it had happened. The details of that last ride the woman who loved him need never know. Barry was to be her hero always. _

Read next: Chapter 24

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