Channing knew himself very thoroughly.

But if he must not offer marriage to the girl, he could at least help her to a career. It flattered his _amour propre_ to realize that the object of his present affections, crude young thing as she was, might be called in a certain sense his equal, a fellow artist, one of the world's chosen. He spoke very often of her career, and Jacqueline listened, dreamily.

Of late she had somewhat lost interest in careers. Or rather, she had another sort of career in view; that of the lady in the tower, to whom her knight brings all his trophies. It seemed to her that this might be the happiest career of all.

She knew very well what she was doing for Channing. In the morning hours, and often after he left her far into the night, the author wrote steadily, with the ease and smoothness of creation that is one of the most satisfying pleasures known to human experience. Daily, when he came to her for refreshment, he brought ma.n.u.script to read, incidents, character sketches, whole chapters in the novel he had started. All of which filled Jacqueline with a new and heady sense of power. If she was not "writing a book," as Mag reported, she was at least helping to write one.

And she gave more to her lover than inspiration. He found her criticism unexpectedly valuable. There had been no lack of brains in her family, and the library at Storm was large and excellent. Philip Benoix and James Thorpe had both supplemented the girls' reading with great wisdom, so that Jacqueline's taste was formed upon far better literature than that of the average woman of his acquaintance. She was not easily shocked--Kate boasted that she had never put her girls' brains into petticoats--but now and then, despite Channing's growing care, unconscious product of his new chivalry, matter crept into his pages which made her shake her head in quick distaste.

"People might _do_ things like that," she said once, of a particularly unsavory episode, "but they'd never sit around and talk of it afterwards. They'd be ashamed!"

It was a comment on human nature the shrewdness of which he promptly appreciated. Jacqueline came to represent to him that invaluable portion of a writer's public, the average female mind. Under her proud guidance, Channing knew that he was writing the best and by far the cleanest of his novels.

It was at such moments that the thought of marriage came to him, and he reminded himself reluctantly that it would not do. "He travels fastest who travels alone...."

"I must speak to your mother about your voice," he said once. "She will have to let you study in Europe, or at least in New York. You're seventeen, aren't you? There's a long road to travel. No time to be lost."

"New York? But you live in Boston, don't you?"

"Heaven forbid! I was born in Boston, but one gets over it in time."

"I'm not sure now that it's worth while taking any more lessons," she said dreamily.

"You'll never be a singer without them."

"Well--sometimes I think I don't want to be a singer, Mr. Channing.

Sometimes I think I'd rather be a--housekeeper, for instance."

"What! Give up fame and fortune for a hypothetical domestic career?"

"Not for a hypothetical one, no." She gave him a side-wise glance, dimpling. "But I _would_ love to have a home of my own."

He humored her, for the sake of watching her rapt and eager face. "What would you do with a house of your own?"

"Oh, I'd have pink silk curtains at all the windows, and loads of books, and flowers, and a cook who could make things like Mr. Farwell's cook can--and--and a grand piano, and an automobile, and a stable full of thoroughbreds and puppies--" She paused for breath.

"Anything else?"

"Oh, yes. Babies! All ages and sizes of babies, small red wrinkled ones, and trot-abouts, and fat little boys in their first trousers--"

"Help, help!" murmured Channing. "Would there be any room in that house for a husband?"

"Yes," she said softly. "I used to think it was a nuisance, having to have a husband before you could have babies; but now--" she glanced at him shyly, and looked away again.

"But now?" he repeated, leaning toward her.

"I--I've changed my mind," she murmured, her heart beating very hard.

Was he going to say anything?

The indications were that he was. His eyes had a look that she called to herself "beaming," and he put out his arms as if to take her into them.

She swayed a little toward him, to make it easier.

But at the critical moment, discretion came once more to the rescue. He fumbled hastily in his pocket for a cigarette, and with that in his lips, felt safer.

"There is really no reason," he remarked, puffing, "that the operatic career may not be combined with the luxuries you mention, Jacqueline--pink silk curtains, infants, and all."

"Do singers marry?" she asked; and he could not but admire the nonchalance with which she covered her disappointment.

"Rather! Fast and frequently."

"But surely they don't have babies?"

"Why not? A friend of mine on the operatic stage"--he mentioned her name--"a.s.sures me that each baby improves her voice noticeably."

"I think it is very hard on her husband," declared Jacqueline. "You _know_ he'd rather have her at home taking care of the children properly, and darning the stockings, and ready to greet him when he comes home tired at night!"

"Judging from the size of her income," murmured Channing, "I fancy that he would not."

Jacqueline jumped up, scarlet. The chagrin of her recent repulse, the nervous strain of the past few weeks, the reaction from too exalted a plane of emotion, all found vent in a burst of temper rare indeed to her sunny nature.

"That's a horrid thing to say," she flared out, "and sometimes I think you're a horrid man! Yes, I do! When you're cynical and--and worldly that way, I just can't bear you. So there! I'm going straight up to the house. Good-by! You needn't try to stop me."

She went, but very slowly, regretting already her foolish anger, waiting for him to call her back. Her feet lagged. She said to herself that these clever men could be very stupid....

But Channing did not call her back. He followed the ascending figure, so boyishly slender yet so instinct with feminine grace, with eyes that held regret, and pity, and something else. When it was out of sight among the upper trees, he heaved a sigh of relief.

"That was a narrow squeak, Percival, my boy," he admonished himself.

"Another instant, and it would have been all up with you. Time you were finding pressing business elsewhere!"

As has been said, Mr. Channing knew himself extremely well; a knowledge that was the result of expert study. He had learned that men pay a penalty for keeping their emotions highly sensitized. They react too readily to certain stimuli; they are not always under perfect control.

There are times when the only safety lies in flight.

However, he was not quite ready to flee. He had his novel to finish. It is always a mistake, he had found, to change environment in the middle of a book.

CHAPTER XXIV

Philip, true to his promise to himself, deliberately set about the business of making friends with Jacqueline's lover. He found the matter less difficult than he had expected. Channing was an agreeable surprise to him. There was an atmosphere about him, man of the world that he was, as comforting to the young country cleric as an open fire to one unconsciously chilled. Philip recognized in the other a certain finish, a certain fine edge of culture and comprehension, that had set his own father apart from the people about them, kept him always a stranger in his environment, even to the perceptions of a young boy. With Channing he found many tastes in common, the love of books, of music, of art in every form; as well as a keen interest in the study of humanity, pursued by both from vastly different angles, but with equal ardor. Philip came to understand very well the man's fascination for Jacqueline; but the better he understood it, the more uneasy he became.

Channing's life seemed so rounded, so filled, so complete--what permanent place was there in it for a crude, untrained little country girl? He suspected that the author thought of her, as everybody else had thought of her, as a charming, impulsive, beautiful child, whose blandishments were almost impossible to resist; and he knew men well enough to guess that Channing had not tried very hard to resist them.

Why should he? She was too young to be taken seriously, and she was very sweet. Philip himself, lover of another woman as he was, had more than once been quite uncomfortably stirred by the near sweetness of Jacqueline.... Neither as priest nor as man could he bring himself to condemn a thing he so well understood. The sense of responsibility deepened. What was he to do about it?

Percival Channing, on his part, always sensitive to environment, gave of his very best to Philip, reason enough for liking whoever brought it forth. But he had other reasons for liking the grave, simple, courteous young countryman--a sincere respect for his courage in choosing to live out his life in the very shadow of his father's disgrace, and also a very sincere if pagan admiration for the other's physical prowess--the admiration of the weakling for the man who is as nature meant men to be.

On the occasion of Philip's initial visit at Holiday Hill, Channing had stood on the porch watching him ride away, his well-knit body moving in the perfect accord with his horse that means natural horsemanship, taking a gate at the foot of the road without troubling to open it, in one long, clean leap that brought an envious sigh from the watcher.