The Side Of The Angels Part 33

"That's absurd, of course; but between that and quickening the stride there's a difference."

"Exactly; which is what Vibart says. His whole argument is that if you want to do away with poverty you must begin at the beginning, and neither in the middle nor at the end. People used to begin at the end when they imagined the difficulty to be met by temporarily supplying wants. Now they're beginning in the middle by looking for social and economic readjustments which won't be effective for more than a few years at a time. To begin at the beginning, as I understand him to say, they must get at themselves with a new point of view, and a new line of action toward one another. They must try the Christian method which they never _have_ tried, or put up with poverty and other inequalities. It's futile to expect to do away with them by the means they're using now; and that," she added, in defense of the author she was endeavoring to sum up, "seems to me perfectly true."

Without following the line of argument, in which he took no interest, Claude spoke out of his knowledge of his brother. "Trouble with Thor is that he's in too much of a hurry. Won't let anything take its own pace."

This was so like a paraphrase in Claude's language of Uncle Sim's pietistic ditty that Thor winced. "Take its own pace--and stop still,"

he said, scornfully.

"And then," Lois resumed, tranquilly, "you've got to remember that Vibart has a spiritual as well as a historical line of argument. The evolution of the human race isn't merely a matter of following out certain principles; it depends on the degree of its conscious a.s.sociation with divine energy. Isn't that what he says? The closer the a.s.sociation the faster the progress. Where there's no such a.s.sociation progress is clogged or stopped. You remember, Thor. It's in the chapter, 'Fellow-workers with G.o.d.'"

"I couldn't make it out," Thor said, with some impatience.

"'Fellow-workers with G.o.d!' I don't see what that means."

"Then, until you do see--"

Apparently she thought better of what she was about to say, and suppressed it. The conversation drifted to cognate subjects, while Claude became merely an observer. He wanted to be perfectly convinced that Thor was happy. That Lois was happy he could see. Happiness was apparent in every look and line of her features and every movement of her person. She was like another woman. All that used to seem wistful in her and unfulfilled had resolved itself into radiant contentment.

According to Claude, you could see it with half an eye. She had gained in authority and looks, while she had developed a power of holding her own against her husband that would probably do him good.

As to Thor he was less sure. He looked older than one might have expected him to look. There was an expression in his face that was hardly to be explained by marriage and a two months' visit to Europe.

Claude was not a.n.a.lytical, but he found himself saying, "Looks like a chap who'd been through something. What?" Being "through something"

meant more than the experience incidental to a wedding and a honeymoon.

With that thought torture began to gnaw at Claude's soul again, so that when his brother was called to the telephone to answer a lady who was asking what her little boy should take for a certain pain, he sprang the question on Lois:

"What do you really think of Thor? You don't suppose he has anything on his mind, do you?"

Lois was startled. "Do you?"

"I asked first."

"Well, what made you?"

"Oh, I don't know. Two or three things. I just wondered if you'd noticed it."

Her face clouded. "I haven't noticed that he had anything on his mind. I knew already--he told me before we were married--that there was something about which he wasn't--wasn't quite happy. I dare say you know what it is--"

He shook his head.

"Don't you? Well, neither do I. He may tell me some day; and till then--But I've thought he was better lately--more cheerful."

"Hasn't he been cheerful?"

"Oh yes--quite--as a rule. But of course I've seen--"

They were interrupted by Thor's return, after which Claude took his departure.

He woke in the morning with a frenzy that astonished himself to put into execution what he had resolved. With his nervous volatility he had half expected to feel less intensely on the subject after having slept on it; but everything that could be called desire in his nature had focused itself now into the pa.s.sion to make Rosie his own. That first!--and all else afterward. That first!--but he could neither see beyond it nor did he want to see.

The excitement he had been tempted to ascribe on the previous evening to his talk with Elsie Darling, and perhaps in some degree to a gla.s.s or two of champagne, having become intensified, it was a proof of its being "the real thing." He was sure now that it was not only the real thing, but that it would be lasting. This was no spasmodic breeze through his aeolian harp, but the breath and life of his being. He came to this conclusion as he packed a bag that he could send for toward evening, and made a few other preparations for a temporary absence from his father's house. Putting one thing with another, he had reason to feel sure that he and Rosie would be back there together before long, forgiven and received, so that he was relieved of the necessity of taking a farewell.

"_I_ think it's splendid," rang in his heart like a cheer. Any one would think it splendid who knew what he was going to do--and what he was renouncing!

It was annoying that on reaching the spot where he took the electric car to go to town old Jasper Fay should be waiting there. It was still more annoying that among the other intending pa.s.sengers there should be no one whom Claude knew. To drop into conversation with a friend would have kept Fay at a distance. Just now his appearance--neat, shabby, pathetic, the superior workingman in his long-preserved, threadbare Sunday clothes--introduced disturbing notes into the swelling hymeneal chant to which Claude felt himself to be marching. There were practical reasons, too, why he should have preferred to hold no intercourse with Fay till after he had crossed his Rubicon. He nodded absently, therefore, and, pa.s.sing to the far end of the little straggling line, prayed that the car would quicken its speed in coming.

Through the tail of his eye he could see Fay detach himself from the patient group of watchers and shamble in his direction. "What's it to be now?" Claude said to himself, but he stood his ground. He stood his ground without turning, or recognizing Fay's approach. He leaned nonchalantly on his stick, looking wearily up the line for rescue, till he heard a nervous cough. The nervous cough was followed by the words, huskily spoken:

"Mr. Claude!"

He was obliged to look around. There was something about Fay that was at once mild and hostile, truculent and apologetic. He spoke respectfully, and yet with a kind of anger in the gleam of his starry eyes.

"Mr. Claude, I wish you wouldn't hang round my place any more. It don't do any one any good." Claude was weighing the advantages of avowing himself plainly on the spot, when Fay went on, "One experience of that kind has been about enough--in _one_ year."

Claude's heart seemed to stop beating. "One experience of what kind?"

"You're all Mastermans together," Fay declared, bitterly. "I don't trust any of you. You're both your father's sons."

"By G.o.d! I've got at it!" Claude cried to himself. Aloud he said, with no display of emotion. "I don't understand you. I don't know what you mean."

Fay merely repeated, hoa.r.s.ely, "I don't want either of you coming any more."

Claude took a tone he considered crafty. "Oh, come now, Mr. Fay. Even if you don't want me, I shouldn't think you'd object to my brother Thor."

"Your brother Thor! You've a nice brother Thor!"

"Why, what's he done?"

"Ask my little girl. No, you needn't ask her. She wouldn't tell you. She won't tell me. All I know is what I've seen."

If it hadn't been for the decencies and the people standing by, Claude could have sprung on the old man and clutched his throat. All he could do, however, was to say, peacefully, "And what _have_ you seen?"

Fay looked around to a.s.sure himself that no one was within earshot. The car was bearing down on them with a cras.h.i.+ng buzz, so that he was obliged to speak rapidly. "I've seen him creep into my hothouse where my little girl was at work, under cover of the night, and I've seen him steal away. And when I've looked in after he was gone she was crying fit to kill herself."

"What made you wait till he went away?" Claude asked, fiercely. "Why didn't you go in after him and see what they were up to?"

The old man's face expressed the helplessness of the average American parent in conflict with a child. "Oh, she wouldn't let me. She won't have none of my interference. She says she knows what she's about. But I don't know what _you're_ about, Mr. Claude; and so I'm beggin' you to keep away. No good'll come of your actions. I don't trust any Masterman that lives."

The car had stopped and emptied itself. The people were getting in. Fay climbed the high steps laboriously, dropping a five-cent piece into a slot as he rounded a little barrier. Claude sprang up after him, dropping in a similar piece of money. Its tinkle as it fell s.h.i.+vered through his nerves with the excruciating sharpness of a knife-thrust.

CHAPTER XXI

Claude went on to the office as a matter of routine, but when his father appeared he begged to be allowed to go home again. "I'm not well, father," he complained, his pallor bearing out his statement.

Masterman's expression was compa.s.sionate. He was very gentle with his son since the latter had been going so often to the Darlings'. "All right, my boy. Do go home. Better drop in on Thor. Give you something to put you to rights."

But Claude didn't drop in on Thor. He climbed the hill north of the pond, taking the direction with which he was more familiar in the gloaming. In the morning sunlight he hardly recognized his surroundings, nor did he know where to look for Rosie at this unusual time of day. He was about to turn into the conservatory in which he was accustomed to find her, when an Italian with beady eyes and a knowing grin, who was raking a bed that had been prepared for early planting, pointed to the last hothouse in the row. Claude loathed the man for divining what he wanted, but obeyed him.