Jewel Weed Part 34

"I will never believe that d.i.c.k would lie."

"He certainly lied," Ellery persisted. "Any man would lie to protect the woman he loves."

"Never!" exploded Mrs. Lenox. "Frank, you would not lie for me!"

"a.s.suredly I would," her husband answered quietly, "if you needed lying for."

She looked at him with speechless dismay.

"Therefore," Ellery went on, "it behooves a man to love a woman who demands truth and not untruth as her reasonable service. The responsibility rests with you women. You can not only make men lie, but you can make them believe that there is no such thing as truth in the universe. Isn't it so, Lenox?"

Mr. Lenox smiled and nodded, Jove-like.

"Oh, yes, they pull some strings," he said; "but don't c.o.c.ker them up too much. Don't make them think we are nothing but clay in their hands."

"You couldn't, because, to our sorrow, we know better," retorted his wife.

"Nevertheless, you've unsettled everything," said Madeline dejectedly.

"But, Miss Elton," Norris put in, "you must not think that I believe that a man is without responsibility for the kind of woman he loves.

That is where the first turning up or down comes in. He's no right to give his soul to the thing that is mean or base. He has the right to choose his road, but after he's chosen, he has to travel wherever the road leads. d.i.c.k's disintegration began from the moment that he met Miss Quincy. I've known it for a long time."

"Poor little thing!" said Madeline. "She is so small. I hope she will grow to be something like a mate for d.i.c.k."

"Do not flatter yourself with wishes," cried Mrs. Lenox. "There's only one soil in which the soul can grow, and that is love. Unless I misread her, there is no room in her for anything but Lena Quincy Percival."

"And yet," objected Ellery, "she is certainly not a person weighted with intellect. I should say she is all impulse and emotion."

"Anomalous but by no means uncommon, Mr. Norris," she rejoined. "All emotion, yet without emotion of the heart. In her little world, self lies at the equator, and every one else is pushed off to the frozen poles."

The others looked at her doubtfully.

"Don't you think I have studied her? She has been a bald revelation to me of things I have only half understood in better-bred women. She's like a weed transplanted from her lean ground to a garden and grown more luxuriant in her weediness. Do you know what I think? I believe that when the last judgment shall strip her of her sweet pink flesh, there will be nothing found inside but a little dry kernel, too hard to bite, and labeled 'self'."

"You are positively vicious, Vera," said her husband gravely.

The tears came to her eyes as she turned to him.

"I really loved d.i.c.k, and she has stung him."

"But all this does not explain her hatred for Madeline."

"Do you not understand that even petty people can see how dreary and stupid their lives are when a person like Madeline comes along? So they hate her."

"It's good of you to consider my feelings how they grow, and to try to bolster them up," Madeline smiled. "But I am fearfully tired. I must go home. I hope that my father and mother will never hear of this."

"Why should they?" said Mr. Lenox. "It's only a trifle after all, though, to be true to her nature, Vera must needs philosophize about it.

It's only a trifle."

"Except for d.i.c.k," Ellery exploded.

"Except for d.i.c.k," Mr. Lenox echoed.

"It's a great pity," Mrs. Lenox meditated, "that d.i.c.k can't knock her down and then they could start again on a proper basis."

"It is a disadvantage to be a gentleman," laughed her husband.

"Vera," said Madeline impulsively, "you won't let this make any difference between us and Mrs. Percival? If she is a little twisted, poor child, she has had a cruel training; and she needs decent women all the more. I--I really have quite got over my anger with her--and don't let us lose d.i.c.k. d.i.c.k is like my brother. I mustn't break with him. We must all be good to him."

"I do not know that I feel any large philanthropy," answered Mrs. Lenox, with something between a laugh and a wry face. "But as I have invited them as well as you to spend Easter with us in the country, I suppose the ordinary laws of society will require me to behave myself." The older woman kissed Madeline warmly, and Ellery moved out with her. He had so entirely made up his mind to walk home with her that he quite forgot to ask her permission.

He began to talk to her about himself, for almost the first time in his reticent intimacy, and she forgot her own affairs, as he meant she should, in listening.

Afterward she could not remember his words because parallel with them she was reading her own interpretation. Already in a vague way she understood him, but his little story gave her the crystallized impression.

She had a picture of a lonely childhood, fatherless and motherless and pervaded with a longing for love that early learned to keep silence.

That had been the first step in his self-possession. Education had been hard to get, and yet he had got what to the sons of rich men comes easily, and because to him it meant struggle, it had been the more treasured. Knowledge came hard because his mind worked slowly and painfully; therefore his grip was the tighter, and the habits of thought wrought out by exercise were now giving him a facility that cleverer men might envy. He could not know how the simple history gave her an impression of slow irresistible manhood, always, without drifting, moving toward its chosen end.

When they halted at her door, she had a feeling that she could not let him go, just yet.

"You'll come in and dine with us, will you not?" she asked impulsively.

"I wish I might," he answered with that longing tone one falls into when surveying an impossible and alluring temptation. "I simply have to work to-night. I'm already late for my engagement. May I come sometime soon?"

"I wish you would. Father is really very fond of you," she went on, defending her warmth. "He likes young men. He has a sneaking longing for them that no mere girl satisfies. d.i.c.k used to be a great deal to him, but--d.i.c.k has drifted away. You have not been to see us for a long time."

"Not since the day that d.i.c.k's engagement was announced," he answered, looking her boldly in the face. "I couldn't. You made me feel then that you despised me."

"I despised you?" she spoke with bland innocence but rising color.

"Yes."

Madeline hesitated and looked down. She was scarlet.

"I'm not going to pretend to misunderstand you," she said, and turned laughing eyes toward him. "I knew all the time that it was d.i.c.k who had done some shabby thing, and you were trying to s.h.i.+eld him."

"You knew?"

"Of course I knew."

"But you told me I ought to get a mask," Ellery fumbled.

"I meant when you try to tell lies. You don't do it with the grace and conviction of an accomplished hand. Pooh, I can read you like an open book."

"I am very glad you can," he said deliberately. "I thank G.o.d you can, because on every page you will read the truth--that I love you--I love you. I'm wanting you to read it in your own way, but some time I am going to let the pa.s.sion of it loosen this slow tongue of mine and tell you in my own fas.h.i.+on how much it is."

He turned and strode abruptly away. Madeline went in to the firelight of home.

"Why, you look as bright as though you'd heard good news," exclaimed Mr.