"I--do not drink." The banker uncoiled his leg, and put his hat on the floor.

His father pounded the decanter down on the table. "Simmons!" he called out; "light the rest of these lamps, you--you freckled n.i.g.g.e.r!

Gad-a-mercy! n.i.g.g.e.rs have no sense."

Simmons came stumbling in, the whites of his yellow eyes gleaming with excitement. While he was fumbling over the lamps, his lean brown fingers all thumbs, Benjamin Wright insisted upon filling Dr.

Lavendar's tumbler with whiskey until it overflowed and had to be sopped up by the old minister's red bandanna.

As soon as Simmons could get out of the room, Dr. Lavendar settled himself to the business which had brought them together. He said to his senior warden, briefly, that his father was concerned about Sam's attentions to Mrs. Richie; "he thinks it would be an especially good time to have the boy see a little of the world, if you will consent?

He says it's 'narrowing to live in Old Chester," said Dr. Lavendar, slyly jocose;--but Samuel refused to smile, and the old minister went on with determined cheerfulness. "I think, myself, that it would be good for Sam to travel. You know

'Home-keeping youths Have ever homely wits.'"

"A boy," said the senior warden, and stopped; his voice cracked badly and he cleared his throat; "a boy--Dr. Lavendar;--is better at home."

The old minister gave him a quick look--his senior warden was trembling! The cloak of careful pomposity with which for so many years this poor maimed soul had covered its scars, was dropping away. He was clutching at it--clearing his throat, swinging his foot, making elaborate show of ease; but the cloak was slipping and slipping, and there was the man of fifty-six cringing with the mortification of youth! It was a sight from which to turn away even the most pitying eyes. Dr. Lavendar turned his away; when he spoke it was with great gentleness.

"I don't know that I quite agree with you, Sam, any more than with your father; but still, if you don't want the boy to go away, can't we convince your father that he is in no real danger of a broken heart?

If he goes too far, I am sure we can trust Mrs. Richie to snub him judiciously. You think so, don't you, Samuel?"

"Yes;--Dr. Lavendar."

"Do you hear that, Wright?"

Benjamin Wright took off his hat and banged it down on the table. Then he threw away another barely lighted cigar, put his hand into the blue ginger-jar for some orange-skin, and looked closely at his son; his agitation had quite disappeared. "I hear," he said calmly.

But as he grew calm, Mr. Samuel Wright's embarra.s.sment became more agonizing, nor was it lessened by the very old man's quite obvious interest in it; his head, in its brown wig, was inclined a little to one side, like a canary's, and his black eyes helped out the likeness--except that there was a carefully restrained gleam of humor in them. But he said nothing. To cover up the clamorous silence between father and son, Dr. Lavendar talked a good deal, but rather at random.

He was confounded by the situation. Had he made a mistake, after all, in insisting upon this interview? In his own mind he was asking for wisdom, but aloud he spoke of the weather. His host gave no conversational a.s.sistance except an occasional monosyllable, and his senior warden was absolutely dumb. As for the subject which brought them together, no further reference was made to it.

"Take some more whiskey, Dominic," said Mr. Wright. His eyes were glittering; it was evident that he did not need any more himself.

Dr. Lavendar said, "No, thank you," and rose. Samuel shot up as though a spring had been released.

"Going?" said Benjamin Wright; "a short call, considering how long it is since we've met;--Lavendar."

Samuel cleared his throat. "'Night," he said huskily. Again there was no hand-shaking; but as they reached the front door, Benjamin Wright called to Dr. Lavendar, who stepped back into the library. Mr. Wright had put on his hat, and was chewing orange-skin violently. "It ain't any use trying to arrange anything with--So I'll try another tack." He came close to Dr. Lavendar, plucking at the old minister's black sleeve, his eyes snapping and his jaws working fast; he spoke in a delighted whisper. "But, Lavendar--"

"Yes."

"He wouldn't take a cigar."

"Samuel never smokes," Dr. Lavendar said shortly.

"And he wouldn't take a drink of whiskey."

"He's a very temperate man."

"Lavendar--"

"Yes?"

"Lavendar--_it was efficacious!_"

CHAPTER XVI

"The play is my life--next to you," Sam Wright's Sam was saying to his father's tenant. He had left The Top before the two visitors arrived, and as Dr. Lavendar had foreseen, had gone straight to the Stuffed Animal House....

Helena was in a low chair, with David nestling sleepily in her arms; Sam, looking up at her like a young St. John, half sat, half knelt, on the step at her feet. The day had been hot, and evening had brought no coolness; under the sentinel locusts on either side of the porch steps the night was velvet black; but out over the garden there were stars.

A faint stirring of the air tilted the open bowls of the evening- primroses, spilling a heavy sweetness into the shadows. The house behind them was dark, for it was too hot for lamps. It was very still and peaceful and commonplace--a woman, a dozing child, and the soft night. Young Sam, so sensitive to moods, had fallen at once into the peace and was content to sit silently at Helena's feet.... Then David broke in upon the tranquillity by remarking, with a sigh, that he must go to bed.

"I heard the clock strike," he said sadly.

"I think you are a very good little boy," Helena declared with admiration.

"Dr. Lavendar said I must," David explained crossly. "You're misbehavious if you don't do what Dr. Lavendar says. Mrs. Richie, is heaven up in the sky?"

"Why, I suppose so," she said hesitating.

"What do they stand on?" David inquired. "There isn't any floor," he insisted doggedly, for she laughed under her breath.

Helena looked over at Sam, who was not in the least amused. Then she kissed the top of David's head. "I wish I could make his hair curl,"

she said. "I knew a little boy once--" she stopped and sighed.

She took the sleepy child up-stairs herself. Not for many guests would she have lost the half-hour of putting him to bed. When she came back her mind was full of him: "He hates to go to bed early," she told Sam, "but he always walks off at eight, without a word from me, because he promised Dr. Lavendar he would. I think it is wonderful."

Sam was not interested,

"And he is so funny! He says such unexpected things. He told me yesterday that Sarah 'slept out loud';--Sarah's room is next to his."

"What did he mean?" Sam said, with the curious literalness of the poetic temperament, entirely devoid of humor. But he did not wait for an answer; he locked his hands about his knee, and leaning his head back, looked up through the leaves at the stars. "How sweet the locust blossoms are!" he said. One of the yellow-white flakes fell and touched his cheek.

"They are falling so now," she said, "that the porch has to be swept twice a day."

He smiled, and brushing his palm along the step, caught a handful of them, "Every night you sit here all alone; I wish--"

"Oh, I like to be alone," she interrupted. As the balm of David's presence faded, and the worship in the young man's eyes burned clearer, that old joke of Lloyd's stabbed her. She wished he would go.

"How does the drama get on?" she asked, with an effort.

Sam frowned and said something of his father's impatience with his writing. "But I am only happy when I am writing; and when I am with you. The play is my life,--next to you."

"Please don't!" she said; and then held her breath to listen. "I think I hear David. Excuse me a minute." She fled into the house and up- stairs to David's room. "Did you want me, precious?" she said panting,

David opened dreaming eyes and looked at her. He had called out in his sleep, but was quiet again, and did not need her eager arms, her lips on his hair, her voice murmuring in his ear. But she could not stop cuddling the small warm body; she forgot Sam and his play, and even her own dull ache of discontent,--an ache that was bringing a subtle change into her face, a faint line on her forehead, and a suggestion of depth, and even pain, in the pleasant shallows of her leaf-brown eyes. Perhaps the discontent was mere weariness of the whole situation; if so, she did not recognize it for what it was. Her fellow-prisoner, straining furtively against the bond of the flesh which was all that held him to her, might have enlightened her, but he took her love so for granted, that he never suspected the discontent.

However, watching David, Helena was herself unconscious of it; when she was sure the little boy was sound asleep she stole the "forty kisses," which as yet he had not granted; folded the sheet back lest he might be too hot; drew a thin blanket over his feet, and then stood and looked at him. Suddenly, remembering Sam Wright, she turned away; but hesitated at the door, and came back for one more look. At last, with a sigh, she went downstairs.

"He loves your rabbits," she told Sam; "he has named them Mr. George Rufus Smith and Mrs. Minnie Lily Smith,"