The lift in the little hotel put its head under its wing at ten-thirty and it was now almost eleven, so Honor set out on foot to do the three flights between her and her room. She ran lightly because she felt suddenly eased of a crushing burden; Stepper, good old Stepper, was on guard; Stepper was standing watch for her. There was a little writing-room and sun parlor on the second floor, dim now, with only one shaded light still burning, and as she crossed it a figure rose so startlingly from a deep chair that she smothered a small cry.

"It's I," said Carter. He stepped between her and the stairway.

"Cartie! You did make me jump!" Honor smiled at him; she was so cozily at peace for the moment that she had an increased tenderness for their frail friend. "It was so still in the hotel it might be the 'night before Christmas,'--'not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.'

You'd better go to bed," she added, maternally. "You look pale and tired."

"I'm not tired," he said shortly. He continued to stand between her and the stairs.

"Well--_I'm_ sleepy," she said, moving to pa.s.s him. "Good----"

But Carter was quicker. He caught hold of her by her arms and held her in a tense grip. "Honor, Honor, _Honor_!" he said, choking.

"Why,--Cartie! You--please--" She tried to free herself.

"Honor, I can't help it. I've got to speak. I've got to know. Don't you--couldn't you--care at all for me, Honor?"

"Carter! Not--not the way you mean! Of course I'm fond of you, but----"

"I don't want that!" He shook her, roughly, and his voice was harsh. "I want you to care the way I care. And I'm going to make you!"

"Carter," she was not angry with him, only unhappy, "do you think this is fair? Do you think you're being square with Jimsy?"

"No," he said, hotly, "and I don't care. I don't care for anything but you. Honor, you don't love Jimsy King. I know it. It's just a silly, boy-and-girl thing--you must realize that, now you're away from him!

Your mother doesn't want you to marry him. What can he give you or do for you? And he'll go the way of his father and all his family--I've tried to lie to you, but I'm telling you the truth now, Honor. He's drinking already, and he'll grow worse and worse. Give him up, Honor!

Give him up before he spoils your life, and let me--" with all his strength, far more than she would have thought it possible for him to have, he tried to pull her into his arms, to reach her lips.

But Jimsy's Skipper, for all her two soft years in Europe, had not lost her swimming, hiking, driving, out-of-door vigor, and her muscles were better than his.

"I'm going to kiss you," said Carter, huskily. "I've wanted to kiss you for years ... always ... and I'm going to kiss you now!"

"No, you're not, Carter," said Honor. She got her arms out of his grasp and caught his wrists in her hands. She was very white and her eyes were cold. "You see? You're weak. You're weak in your arms, Carter, just as you're weak in your--in your character, in your friendship! And I despise weakness." She dropped his wrists and saw him sit down, limply, in the nearest chair and cover his face with his hands. Then she walked to the stairs and went up without a backward glance.

He was pallid and silent at breakfast next morning and Honor was careful not to look at him. It was beginning to seem, in the eight o'clock sunlight, as if the happening of the night before must have been a horrid dream, and her sense of anger and scorn gradually gave way to pity. After all ... poor old Carter, who had so little ... Jimsy, who had so much! What Carter had said in his tirade about Jimsy's drinking she did not believe; it was simply temper; angry exaggeration. Mildred Lorimer, looking at Carter's white face and the gray shadows under his eyes and observing Honor's manner toward him, sighed audibly and was a little distant when she bade her daughter farewell. She loved her eldest born devotedly, but there were moments when she couldn't help but feel that Honor was not very much of a comfort to her....

Stephen held the girl's hands hard and looked deep into her eyes.

"Remember what I said, Top Step, 'Cross-my-heart!'"

"I'll remember, Stepper, dear! _Thanks!_" She turned to Carter and held out a steady hand. "My love to your mother, Carter, and I do hope you'll have a jolly crossing."

"Will you read this, please?" He lifted his heavy eyes to her face and slipped a note into her hand. She nodded and tucked it into her blouse.

Then she stood with the _Signorina_, on the pier, waving, and with misty eyes watching the steamer melting away and away into the blue water.

When she was alone she read the little letter.

"Dear Honor--" Carter had written in a ragged scrawl unlike his usual firm hand--"Will you try to forgive me? You are the kindest and least bitter person in the world; I know you can forgive me.

But--and this will be harder--can you forget last night? I promise to deserve it, if you will. Will you pretend to yourself that it never happened, and just remember the good days we've had this summer, and that--in spite of my losing my head--I'm your friend, and Jimsy's friend? Will you, Honor?"

And Honor Carmody, looking with blurred eyes at the sea, wished she might wave again and rea.s.suringly to the boy on the steamer, facing the long voyage so drearily. Then she realized that she still could, in a sense, wave to him. The steamer stopped at Naples and she could send a telegram to him there, and he would not have to cross the wide ocean under that guilty weight. She put on her hat and sped to the telegraph office, and there, because his note had ended with a question--had been indeed all a question--and because she was the briefest of feminine creatures, and because the _Signorina_ was waiting luncheon for her and did not enjoy waiting, she wired the one word, "Yes," and signed her name.

"Carter got a telegram," said Mildred Lorimer to her husband. "I wonder what it could have been. Did he say?"

"He didn't mention it," said Stephen. "About those silk shirts which weren't finished, I daresay. Certainly not bad news, by the look of him."

When Carter Van Meter reached Los Angeles and his tearfully happy mother he drew her into the library and closed the door. "Mater," he said with an odd air of intense repressed excitement, "I'm going to show you something, but you must promise me on your honor not to breathe it to a living soul, least of all, Mrs. Lorimer."

"Oh, dearest," gasped his mother, "I promise faithfully----"

He took Honor's telegram out of his wallet and unfolded it and smoothed it out for her to read the single word it contained. Then, at her glad cry, "Sh ... Mater! It isn't--exactly--what you think. I can't explain now. But it's a hope; it may--I believe it will, one day--lead to the thing we both want!" He folded it again carefully into its creases and put it back into his wallet and he was breathing hard.

CHAPTER IX

Ethel Bruce-Drummond was better than her word. She did not wait for the Christmas holidays but went down to Florence early in December for Honor's first concert, and she wrote many pages to Stephen Lorimer.

Of course you know by this time that the concert was a success--you'll have had Honor's modest cable and the explosive and expensive one from the fat lark! They are sending you translations from the Italian papers, and clippings in English, and copies of some of the notes she's had from the more important musical people, and I really can't add anything to that side of it. You know, my dear Stephen, when it comes to music I'm confessedly ignorant,--not quite, perhaps, like that fabled countryman of mine who said he could not tell whether the band were playing "G.o.d Save the Weasel"

or "Pop Goes the Queen," but bad enough in all truth. Therefore, I keep cannily out of all discussion of Honor's voice. I gather, however, that it has surprised every one, even the _Signorina_, and that there is no doubt at all about her making a genuine success if she wants to hew to the line. She has had, I hear, several rather unusual offers already. But of course she hasn't the faintest intention of doing anything in the world but the thing her heart is set upon. It's rather pathetic, really. There's something a little like Trilby about her; she does seem to be singing under enchantment. What she really is like, though, is a lantern-jawed young Botticelli Madonna. She's lost a goodish bit of flesh, I should say, and her color's not so high, and she might easily have walked out of one of the canvases in the Pitti or the Ufizzi, or the Belli Arti. Her hair is Botticelli hair, and that "reticence of the flesh" of which one of your American novelists speaks--Harrison, isn't it?--and that faint austerity.

She sang quant.i.ties of _arias_ and groups of songs of all nations, and at the end she did some American Indian things,--the native melodies themselves arranged in modern fashion. I expect you know them. The words are very simple and touching and the Italian translations are sufficiently funny. Well, the very last of all was something about a captive Indian maid, and a young chap here who clearly adores her and whom she hasn't even taken in upon her retina played a wailing, haunting accompaniment on the flute. As nearly as I can remember it went something like:

From the Land of the Sky Blue Water They brought a captive maid.

Her eyes were deep as the--(I can't remember what, Stephen) But she was not afraid.

I go to her tent in the evening And woo her with my flute, But she dreams of the Sky Blue Water, And the captive maid is mute.

My dear Stephen, I give you my word that I very nearly put my nose in the air and howled. She _is_ a captive maid--captive to her talent and the fat song-bird and her mother's ambition and yours, and her mother's determination not to let her marry her lad, and to that Carter chap, and the boy playing the flute--the whole network of you,--but she's dreaming of the Sky Blue Water, and dreaming is doing with that child. You'd best make up your minds to it, and settle some money on them and marry them off. My word, Stephen, is there so much of it lying about in the world that you can afford to be reckless with it? I arrived too late to see her before the concert, and I went behind--together with the bulk of the American and English colonies--directly it was over. She was tremendously glad to see me; I was a sort of link, you know. When I started in to tell her how splendidly she'd sung and how every one was rejoicing she said, "Yes,--thanks--isn't every one sweet? But did Stepper write you that Jimsy was 'Varsity Captain this year, and that they beat Berkeley twelve to five? And that Jimsy made _both_ touchdowns? Do you remember that game you saw with us--and how Jimsy ran down the field and shook hands with the boy who'd scored on us? And how that gave every one confidence again, and we won? We _always_ won!"--and standing there with her arms full of flowers and all sorts of really important people waiting to pat her on the head, she hummed that old battle song:

_You can't beat L. A. High!_ _You can't beat L. A. High!_

and her eyes filled up with tears and she gave me her jolly little grin and said, "Oh, Miss Bruce-Drummond, I can hardly wait to get back to real living again!"

Honor was honestly happy over her success. It was good to satisfy--and more than satisfy--the kind _Signorina_ and all the genial and interested people she had come to know there; to send her program and her clippings home to her mother; it was jolly to be asked out to luncheon and dinner and tea and to be made much of; it was best of all to have something tangible to give up for Jimsy. If she had failed, going back to him and settling quietly down with him would have seemed like running to sanctuary; now--with definite promises and hard figures offered her--it was more than a gesture of renunciation. She could understand adoring a life of that sort if she hadn't Jimsy; as it was she listened sedately to the _Signorina's_ happy burblings and said at intervals:

"But you know, _Signorina_ dear, that I'm going to give it up and be married next year?"

"You cannot give it up, my poor small one. It will not give you up. It has you, one may truly say, by the throat!"

There was no use in arguing with her. The interim had to be filled until summer and home. She would do, docilely, whatever the _Signorina_ wished.

Jimsy was happy and congratulatory about her concert but he took it no more seriously than Honor herself. His letters were full, in those days, of the unrest at Stanford. Certain professors had taken a determined stand against drinking; there was much agitation and bitterness on both sides. Jimsy was all for freedom; he resented dictation; he could hoe his own row and so could other fellows; the faculty had no right to treat them like a kindergarten. Honor answered calmly and soothingly; she managed to convey without actually setting it down on the page that Jimsy King of all people in the world should take care not to ally himself with the "wets," and he wrote back that he was keeping out of the whole mess.