The Land of Content. Edith Barnard Delano
in all that army was more aware than he of the vivid beauty of the moving scene. For three years he had watched the Avenue burst into life and color under the recurring influence of Spring; but he had lost none of the keenness of his first perception of it, none of his delight in its unique splendor, none of the thrill of having achieved the right to be a part of it.
Achievement, indeed, was what Benson Flood stood for. Beginning life in a Western town, his subsequent history was one of those spectacular dramas common enough in American progress, yet always thrilling in their exhibition of daring and courage, in their apparent forcing of opportunity, their making and taking of chances, their final conquest of power and wealth. Flood's career differed from many another only in two particulars: as early as the age of forty he had reached that point where he could afford to lay aside his more public pursuits; and at the same time, perhaps because he had grown no older in the cult, the mere accumulation of wealth ceased to be the first object in life for him. He was the offspring of one of the curious mixtures of race that distinguish America; and doubtless from some ancestor of an older civilization he inherited a taste and longing for that to which, in his youth and early manhood, he had been an absolute stranger. When he left his West behind him, he faced towards those gentler things which, in his fine imagination and the perception trained by the exigencies of his career, he felt to be more desirable than anything he had yet attained to. Certainly they had become to him, untasted though they were at the time, of greater importance. He valued his experiences, his labors, his millions; but they were not enough. However unaccustomed to it he might be, he knew very definitely what he now wanted; and a winter in New York, with a year or two in Europe, had put him in a fair way of adding the fulfillment of his later ambition to his earlier achievements. A race-winning yacht, a few introductions among people who welcome the owners of mines and large fortunes, these gave a social background which, with the excellent foundation of his millions, served very well in New York, and taught him much about those things which he was now so sure of wanting. It was not strange that he believed them to be summed up, embodied, realized to the utmost, in one woman.
He was looking for her as he walked up the Avenue on this April afternoon; she loved its life and color and change, and was apt to pass over some part of it as often as she could. So Flood watched the passing women for the face that could so magically quicken his pulses. Many sought his recognition, yet he was oblivious of their number, ignoring the various half-invitations that were tentatively made him—the leaning forward of one in a limousine, the slight pause or lingering look of another.
His thoughts were still full of his journey, and Spring on the Avenue only brought up memories—so lately realities—of the breath of the woods, the wind in the tree-tops, the brown and green of fields so lately seen; and Flood had reached that state of mind where all that was sweet in memory, all that was beautiful in the present, all that he desired from the future, only reminded him of the one woman.
Several times, through the crowd, he thought he saw her, and went more quickly forward; but as often he fell back, disappointed. Suddenly, in answer to a firm grasp on his arm, he turned.
"Ah, Marshall!" he said, not too enthusiastically.
"I say, Benny, is it a wager? You're stalking up the Avenue without a word or a look for anybody, trampling on people, mowing them down by the thousand like a Juggernaut from the West! That's how I traced you, by the bodies strewn in your path."
Flood was always amused by Pendleton's nonsense; yet now he smiled and said nothing. To-day it was not Pendleton he wanted to see. The other seemed to divine this.
"You don't seem very sociable," he remarked. "Did your lone trip to Virginia give you a confirmed taste for solitude?"
Again Flood smiled; he could no more resist Pendleton's aimless chatter than a large dog can resist the playfulness of a small one. His side-long glance had to go downwards to meet Marshall's.
"Quite the contrary," he said. "I've bought the old Gore place in Berkeley and now I want to fill it up with guests. I count on you to help me out, Marshall."
"Right you are! Come up to Mrs. Maxwell's with me, and we'll get dear Cecilia to help us out, too!"
Flood's face suddenly hardened a little. It was an unconscious trick of his under the stress of any sudden emotion; in effect, it was as if a hand had passed over his features, leaving them expressionless. Many a game had he won, mastered many a situation, by means of it.
He paused perceptibly before he answered Pendleton. Then he said, "I shall have to leave that to you!"
"You're too modest, Benny," Pendleton said, shaking his head. "Remember your taxes, man, not to mention your bank account, and don't let dear Cecilia awe you."
It was presently made evident enough that the dear Cecilia in question held nothing of awe for Pendleton himself; for they were no sooner in the rather austere little drawing room than he bent over Mrs. Maxwell, and, quite deliberately ignoring the five or six earlier comers, whispered in her ear:
"Get rid of the crowd, Cecilia; we've great news for you!"
Mrs. Maxwell was apparently oblivious of his whisper, for she made herself more charming than ever to the other men; yet presently, almost before Flood was aware of it, the others were gone, and she was saying:
"Well, Marshall? You always bring your little budget with you, don't you? What is it now?"
"If you're going to be, nasty, Cecilia, I won't tell you!"
Flood, who had not so far progressed as to become accustomed to such badinage, looked uneasily from Pendleton to their hostess; but Mrs. Maxwell seated herself beside him on the sofa, and calmly smiled.
Apparently she was going to ignore Pendleton for the moment. "I am always so glad when I can have my tea comfortably, without having to look after a roomful of people," she said. "You don't take it, I know, Mr. Flood, and Marshall can look out for himself. What do you think of this pink lustre cup, Mr. Flood? It's Rosamund's latest acquisition."
Flood had, after all, learned much in his three years. He bent forward to examine the cup, while Mrs. Maxwell turned its iridescent beauty towards the light.
"It is adorable," he said. "Is Miss Randall hunting for more to-day?"
Again his face had quickly become expressionless, but neither of the others were aware of it, and his question was doomed to remain unanswered.
Pendleton could no longer withhold his news. "Benny's just back from Virginia, Cecilia," he said. "He's bought Oakleigh."
"I think it's West Virginia, and it's just a little farm, you know," Flood said, weakly; but his geography was entirely immaterial to the others.
"Oakleigh? The Gore place?"
Flood still found it amazing that so many people knew so many other people; his lately made acquaintances in New York always seemed to know all about his lately made acquaintances in Florida or Virginia or the Berkshires, or, for that matter, in Europe. It was another of the things to which he had not yet become accustomed.
"And he wants you and me to help him fill it up with people," Pendleton went on, with the frankness for which he was famous.
Mrs. Maxwell looked quickly over her tea-cup at Flood, raising her eyebrows ever so slightly. For once Flood could not control his expression; his face flushed deeply as he leaned towards her.
"If you only would!" he begged. "I thought—I scarcely dared to hope—that perhaps if—if Miss Randall came along, too, you might consent to play hostess for a lone man?"
Cecilia was a practiced campaigner, as she had had need to be during the dreary years before she had Rosamund's money to count upon; instantly she recalled the place Flood could afford to call a "little farm," Oakleigh, white-pillared and stately, with its kennels and stables and conservatories. She could not imagine why he had chosen her unless it were thanks to Pendleton; yet, to be hostess of Oakleigh, even for a week or two, distinctly appealed to her. It would be possible enough, if she were to go as Rosamund's chaperon. Even Flood had seen that; and if it were left to her to fill its rooms with guests,