Puzzled as always by his whimsical tone, she sat looking at him with her gentle, uncomprehending glance. "I wish, all the same," she murmured, "that you would let me send you a mustard plaster to put on your chest."

He shook his head without replying in words to her suggestion.

"Do you know it is three months since we had a letter from Alice," he said, "and six since she went away?"

"Oh, it's that then? You have been worrying about Alice?"

"How can I help it? We hardly know even that she is living."

"I've thought of her day and night since her marriage, though it's just as likely, isn't it, that she's taken up with the new countries and her new clothes?"

"Oh, of course, it may be that, but it is the awful uncertainty that kills."

With a sigh she looked down at her slippered feet. "I was thinking to-day what a comfort d.i.c.k is to me--to us all," she said, "one is so sure of him and he is doing so splendidly at college."

"Yes," he agreed, "d.i.c.k is a comfort. I wish poor Alice was more like him."

"She was always wild, you remember, never like other children, and it was impossible to make her understand that some things were right and some wrong. Yet I never thought that she would care for such a loud, vulgar creature as Geoffrey Heath."

"Did she care for him?" asked Daniel, almost in a whisper, "or was it only that she wanted to see Paris?"

"Well, she may have improved him a little--at least let us hope so," she remarked as if she had not heard his question. "He has money, at any rate, and that is what she has always wanted, though I fear even Geoffrey's income will be strained by her ceaseless extravagance."

As she finished he thought of her own youth, which she had evidently forgotten, and it seemed to him that the faults she blamed most in Alice were those which she had overcome patiently in her own nature.

"I could stand anything better than this long suspense," he said gently.

"It does wear one out," she rejoined. "I am very, very sorry for you."

Some unaccustomed tone in her voice--a more human quality, a deeper cadence, made him wonder in an impulse of self-reproach if, after all, the breach between them was in part of his own making? Was it still possible to save from the ruin, if not love, at least human companionship?

"Lydia," he said, "it isn't Alice, it is mostly loneliness, I think."

Rising from her chair she stood before him with her vague, sweet smile playing about her lips.

"It is natural that you should feel depressed with that cough," she remarked, "I really wish you would let me send you a mustard plaster."

As the cough broke out again, he strangled it hilariously in a laugh.

"Oh, well, if it's any comfort to you, I don't mind," he responded.

When she had gone he picked up Baxter's letter from the table and opened it with trembling fingers. What he had expected to find, he hardly knew, but as he read the words, written so laboriously in Baxter's big scrawling writing, he felt that his energy returned to him with the demand for action--for personal responsibility.

"I don't know whether or not you heard of Mrs. Brooke's death three months ago," the letter ran, "but this is to say that Mr. Beverly dropped down with a paralytic stroke last week; and now since he's dead and buried, the place is to be sold for debt and the children sent off to school to a friend of Miss Emily's where they can go cheap. Miss Emily has a good place now in the Tappahannock Bank, but she's going North before Christmas to some big boarding school where they teach riding. There are a lot of things to be settled about the sale, and I thought that, being convenient, you might take the trouble to run down for a day and help us with your advice, _which is of the best always_.

"Hoping that you are in good health, I am at present,

BAXTER."

As he folded the letter a flush overspread his face. "I'll go," he said, with a new energy in his voice, "I'll go to-morrow."

Then turning in response to a knock, he opened the door and received the mustard plaster which Lydia had made.

CHAPTER II

AT TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN

He had sent a telegram to Banks, and as the train pulled into the station, he saw the familiar sandy head and freckled face awaiting him upon the platform.

"By George, this is a bully sight, Smith," was the first shout that reached his ears.

"You're not a bit more pleased than I am," he returned laughing with pleasure, as he glanced from the station, crowded with noisy Negroes, up the dusty street into which they were about to turn. "It's like coming home again, and upon my word, I wish I were never to leave here. But how are you, Banks? So you are married to Milly and going to live contented forever afterward."

"Yes, I'm married," replied Banks, without enthusiasm, "and there's a baby about which Milly is clean crazy. Milly has got so fat," he added, "that you'd never believe I could have spanned her waist with my hands three years ago."

"Indeed? And is she as captivating as ever?"

"Well, I reckon she must be," said Banks, "but it doesn't seem so mysterious, somehow, as it used to." His silly, affectionate smile broke out as he looked at his companion. "To tell the truth," he confessed, "I've been missing you mighty hard, Smith, marriage or no marriage. It ain't anything against Milly, G.o.d knows, that she can't take your place, and it ain't anything against the baby. What I want is somebody I can sit down and look up to, and I don't seem to be exactly able to look up to Milly or to the baby."

"The trouble with you, my dear Banks, is that you are an incorrigible idealist and always will be. You were born to be a poet and I don't see to save my life how you escaped."

"I didn't. I used to write a poem every Sunday of my life when I first went into tobacco. But after that Milly came and I got used to spending all my Sundays with her."

"Well, now that you have her in the week, you might begin all over again."

They were walking rapidly up the long hill, and as Ordway pa.s.sed, he nodded right and left to the familiar faces that looked out from the shop doors. They were all friendly, they were all smiling, they were all ready to welcome him back among them.

"The queer part is," observed Banks, with that stubborn vein of philosophy which accorded so oddly with his frivolous features, "that the thing you get doesn't ever seem to be the same as the thing you wanted. This Milly is kind to me and the other wasn't, but, somehow, that hasn't made me stop regretting the other one that I didn't marry--the Milly that banged and snapped at me about my clothes and things all day long. I don't know what it means, Smith, I've studied about it, but I can't understand."

"The meaning of it is, Banks, that you wanted not the woman, but the dream."

"Well, I didn't get it," rejoined Banks, gloomily.

"Yet Milly's a good wife and you're happy, aren't you?"

"I should be," replied Banks, "if I could forget how darn fascinating that other Milly was. Oh, yes, she's a good wife and a doting mother, and I'm happy enough, but it's a soft, squashy kind of happiness, not like the way I used to feel when I'd walk home with you after the preaching in the old field."

While he spoke they had reached Baxter's warehouse, and as Ordway was recognized, there was a quiver of excitement in the little crowd about the doorway. A moment later it had surrounded him with a shout of welcome. A dozen friendly hands were outstretched, a dozen breathless lips were calling his name. As the noise pa.s.sed through the neighbouring windows, the throng was increased by a number of small storekeepers and a few straggling operatives from the cotton mills, until at last he stopped, half laughing, half crying, in their midst. Ten minutes afterward, when Baxter wedged his big person through the archway, he saw Ordway standing bareheaded in the street, his face suffused with a glow which seemed to give back to him a fleeting beam of the youth that he had lost.

"Well, I reckon it's my turn now. You can just step inside the office, Smith," remarked Baxter, while he grasped Ordway's arm and pulled him back into the warehouse. As they entered the little room, Daniel saw again the battered chair, the pile of Smith's Almanacs, and the paper weight, representing a gambolling kitten, upon the desk.

"I'm glad to see you--we're all glad to see you," said Baxter, shaking his hand for the third time with a grasp which made Ordway feel that he was in the clutch of a down cushion. "It isn't the way of Tappahannock to forget a friend, and she ain't forgotten you."

"It's like her," returned Ordway, and he added with a sigh, "I only wish I were coming back for good, Baxter."