Jewel Weed. Alice Ames Winter
what he means to do.”
“Fire away. I knew your father, Dick.”
“Then you’ll know what I mean when I say that it has always been my ambition to live up to his traditions—his ideal of a man’s public duties.”
Mr. Elton nodded and Dick went on, while Ellery eyed him with some of the old college respect, and Madeline leaned eagerly forward.
“I don’t mean any splurge, you understand, but the same quiet service he gave. Father left his affairs in such good order that there isn’t any real necessity for me to try to add to my income. Of course, it isn’t a great fortune, but it’s more than enough; and my ambitions don’t lie that way. There’s a certain amount of business in taking care of it as it stands. Mother is glad to turn the burden of it over to me. She’s done nobly—dear little woman—but—”
“I understand. It’s a man’s business.”
“Yes,” said Dick, with the simple masculine superiority of four and twenty. “That’s enough of a background for life, you see; but I long since made up my mind that public affairs—affairs that concern the whole community—are to be my real interest.”
“So you’re going into politics, Dick?” said the older man slowly.
“Well, not to scramble for office,” Percival answered with a flush. “We fellows have been well-enough taught, haven’t we, Ellery? to know that it is rather an ugly mess—I mean municipal affairs in this country. The local situation, here in St. Etienne, I have yet to study; and I don’t mean to lose any time in beginning.”
Mr. Elton made no reply for a moment, and when he spoke there was an unpleasant cynicism in his voice that galled Dick’s pride.
“The young reformer! Well, I suppose a decent man with a little ability could do something here, if he knew what he was going to do. It’s a good thing to get on your sea-legs before you try to command a ship.”
“Father!” Madeline cried out, unable to contain herself. “Don’t you be a horrid wet blanket!”
The three looked at her to see her face aglow with the lovely feminine belief in masculinity that also belongs to the early twenties.
“That’s all right,” said the elder Elton unemotionally. “I wasn’t wet-blanketing—I know things are needed. There’s plenty of corruption wanting to be buried, and most of us are content to hold our noses and let it lie. Or perhaps we give an exclamation of disgust when it is served up in the newspapers. Reform if you must, but don’t reform all day and Sundays too; and build your cellars before you begin your attics.”
Then he went on a shade more heartily: “It’s a mighty good thing for some of you young fellows to be going into politics; perhaps that’s the chief work for the next generation. And Norris—what of you?”
Ellery started. It had been a silent evening for him, but his silence had glowed with interest, not so much in the conversation as in his own thoughts. Two things had forced themselves home—the first when he looked down on that expanse of vivid water, vivid sky, vivid green. Here a man, even a young man, might waken to all his faculties and make something of life. He need not plod dully through years, to reach success only when he is old and tired. The landscape poured like wine into Ellery Norris’ veins.
And now here was the other side. He had watched with fascination the restfulness of Miss Elton’s hands, the one that held her mother’s, the one that lay quietly in her lap. He watched her steady eyes that kept upon her father and Dick as they talked. He saw her face glow with sympathy and interest and yet remain calm, as if secure in the goodness of the world; and he told himself that he was glad this wonderful thing belonged to Dick. Dick’s restlessness would be held in leash, as it were, by this steadfastness.
Once she half turned as though she felt his scrutiny, and queer pains darted through his body when her eyes met his.
Now when Mr. Elton attacked him, he came back from his far-away excursion with a sense of surprise that there was a present, but he smiled cheerfully.
“Oh, I’m not a very important person. I’m just beginning to learn the trade of a newspaper man, and I’m afraid I shan’t be able to think about much but city news and bread and butter for the next few years.”
“No telling what may happen, with his Honor, the mayor here, backed up by the power of the press. We’ll make St. Etienne a model city in the sight of gods and men, eh, boys?” said Mr. Elton good-humoredly, but rising as if to cut short the conversation.
“Can’t we take a walk before Ellery and I go back to town?” asked Dick.
“Go, you kid things. I haven’t seen the evening paper yet, and that’s more to my old brain than moonlight strolls.” Mr. Elton dismissed them.
The three young people set out upon a path that twisted by the lake shore, bordered on its inner side by trees that had become in the darkness mere shapeless masses out of which an occasional mysterious thread of light brought into sight some uncanny shape. The purple of the evening zenith had sunk into deeper and deeper blue, pricked here and there with stars. Bats were wheeling in mysterious circles among the tree-tops, and the air was full of sounds that seem to come only at twilight.
“Isn’t it strange that though every one of those trees is an old friend, I should be frightened at the very idea of being alone among them at night? And yet there’s nothing in the dark that isn’t in the day,” said Madeline.
“Oh, yes, there is,” Dick rejoined. “There’s more being afraid in the dark.”
She laughed and they went on in silence.
“Who’s been building a new house, just on the very spot I always meant to own some day—right here next to your father?” Dick demanded, stopping abruptly.
“Oh, you haven’t seen that, have you?” said Madeline. “Let’s sit down on this log and look at the stars. That’s Mr. Lenox’s new house; and I’m so sorry for them!”
“Why grieve for the prosperous? Reserve your tears for the suffering.”
“Why, you know, in town, they live with Mr. Windsor, who is Mrs. Lenox’s father, and he’s a multimillionaire; and it’s a great establishment; and the world is necessarily very much with them. So when Mr. Lenox proposed that they should build a country house of their own and spend their summers here, I think he wanted to get out to some primitive simplicity, where the children could go barefoot if they wanted to. But as soon as it was suggested, Mr. Windsor presented his daughter with a big tract, and insisted on building this great palace, and they have to keep so many servants that Mr. Lenox says it is a regular Swedish boarding-house. And there are so many guest-rooms that it would be a shame not to have them occupied; and extra people run out in their motors every day; and the children have to be kept immaculate all the time. So they’ve brought the world out with them. Mr. Lenox has to dress for dinner, instead of putting on old slippers and going out to weed the strawberry-bed, which is what he would like to do when he gets out on the evening train.”
“Poor things, in bondage to their house!” said Norris, and they all looked solemnly at the multitude of lights shining through the trees.
“There are ever so many disadvantages about being among the few very rich people in a western town, where most of your friends aren’t opulent,” Madeline went on. “When Mrs. Lenox makes a call, she has to wait while the woman changes her dress. And nobody says to her, ‘Oh, do stay to lunch,’ when they’ve nothing but oysters or beefsteak, but they wait till they get in an extra chef and then send her a formal invitation. I believe ours is one of the half-dozen houses where people don’t pretend to be something quite different from what they are when Mrs. Lenox appears. And yet she’s the most simple-minded and genuine person, and would rather have beefsteak and friendship than paté de fois gras and good gowns any day.”
“Poor things!” said Dick again.
“I