No answer. I called again--vainly. Nothing for it, then, but a search! I tethered Jessica to the cedar stump, convinced that Alma wouldn't wander far from her old friend, and started off through the field past a senile apple tree bearing a few scattered blossoms, beyond which a faintly suggested path seemed to lead upward through a wonder-grove of the pink dogwood, mingled with laurel and birch and towering cedars. That path, I knew, would have tempted Susan.

What there was of it soon disappeared altogether in an under-thicket of high-bush huckleberry, taller than a man's head. Through this I was pushing my way, and had stooped to win past some briers and protect my eyes--when I felt a silk scarf slip across them, m.u.f.fling my face.

It was swiftly knotted from behind; then my hand was taken, and Susan's voice--on a tone of blended mischief and mystery--quavered at my ear: "Hush! Profane mortal--speak not! This is holy ground."

With not another word spoken she drew me after her, guiding me to freer air and supporting me when I stumbled. We continued thus for some moments, on my part clumsily enough; and then Susan halted me, and turned me solemnly round three times, while she crooned in a weird gypsy-like singsong the following incantation:

_Cedar, cedar, birch and fern, Turn his wits as mine you turn._

_If he sees what now I see Welcome shall this mortal be._

_If he sees it not, I'll say Crick-crack and vanish May!_

But I must have seen! My initiation was p.r.o.nounced successful. From that hour all veils were withdrawn, and I was made free of the magic circle....

It was a dip in Lethe. Dinner was forgotten--the long miles home and the broken bridle. A powerful enchantment had done its work. For me, only the poised moment of joy was real. Nothing else mattered, nothing else existed, while that poised fragile moment was mine. We talked or were silent--it was all one. And when dusk crept in, and a grateful wood-thrush praised it, we still lingered to join in that praise....

Then a whippoorwill began to call insistently, grievously, from very far off. It was the whippoorwill that shattered my poised crystal moment of perfect joy.

"Those poor horses," I said.

"Oh!" cried Susan, springing up, "how _could_ we let them starve! I'm starved, too, Ambo--aren't you? What sillies we are!"

We got home safely, after some trifling difficulties, past ten o'clock....

_When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead----_

Only it doesn't, always--thank G.o.d! Memories.... And this was but one.

Oh, no; I was not to be alone. I should never really be alone....

XIII

The morning after Jimmy had dined with us, Susan, at my request, brought Miss Goucher to my study, and we had a good long talk together. And first of all the problem of Gertrude loomed before us, starting up ghostlike at a chance remark, and then barring all progress with more practical considerations, till laid. Neither Susan's telegram nor her private interview with Gertrude had been discussed between us; I had nervously shied off from both matters in my dread of seeming to question Susan's motives. But now Susan herself, to put it crudely, insisted on a show-down.

"The air needed clearing, Ambo, and I sent the telegram hoping to clear it by raising a storm. But, as Sister reminded me at breakfast, storms don't always clear the air--even good hard ones; they sometimes leave it heavier than ever. I'm afraid that's what my storm has done. Has it, Ambo? What happened when Mrs. Hunt came to see you here? But perhaps I ought to tell you first what happened between us?"

"No," I smiled; "Gertrude made that fairly plain, for once. And your storm did sweep off the worst of the fog! You see, Gertrude has, intensely, the virtues of her defects--a fastidious sense of honor among them. Once she felt her suspicions unjust, she was bound to acknowledge it. I can't say you won a friend, but you did--by some miracle--placate a dangerous foe."

"Is she coming back to you, Ambo?"

"No. She suggests divorce. But that of course is impossible!"

"Why?"

"Is it kind to ask?" said Miss Goucher. "And--forgive me, dear--after your decision, is it necessary for you to know?"

Susan reflected anxiously. "No," she finally responded, "it isn't kind; but it is necessary. I'll tell you why, Ambo. If you had been free, I think there's no doubt I should have married you. Oh, I know, dear, it sounds cold-blooded like that! But the point is, I shouldn't then have questioned things as I do now. My feeling for you--your need of me--they wouldn't have been put to the test. Now they have been--or rather, they're being tested, every minute of every hour. Suppose I should ask you now--meaning every word of it--to divorce Mrs. Hunt so you could marry me? At least you'd know then, wouldn't you, that simply being yours meant more to me than anything else in life? Or suppose I couldn't bring myself to ask it, but couldn't face life without you? Suppose I drowned myself----"

"Good G.o.d, dear!"

"I'm not going to, Ambo--and what's equally important, neither are you.

Why, you don't even pause over Mrs. Hunt's suggestion! You don't even wait to ask my opinion! You say at once--it's impossible! That proves something, doesn't it--about you and me? It either proves we're not half so much in love as we think we are, or else that love isn't for either of us the only good thing in life--the whole show." She paused, but added: "Why can't you consider divorcing Mrs. Hunt, Ambo? After all, she isn't honestly your wife and doesn't want to be; it would only be common fairness to yourself."

Miss Goucher stirred uneasily in her chair. I stirred uneasily in mine.

"There are so many reasons," I fumbled. "I suppose at bottom it comes to this--a queer feeling of responsibility, of guilt even...."

"Nonsense!" cried Susan. "You never could have satisfied her, Ambo. You weren't born to be human, but somehow, in spite of everything, you just are! It's your worst fault in Mrs. Hunt's eyes. Mrs. Hunt shouldn't have married a man; she should have married a social tradition; an abstract idea."

"How could she?" asked Miss Goucher.

"Easily," said Susan; "she's one herself, so there must be others. It's hard to believe, but apparently abstractions like that do get themselves incarnated now and then. I never met one before--in the flesh. It gave me a creepy feeling--like shaking hands with the fourth dimension or asking the Holy Roman Empire to dinner. But I don't pretend to make her out, Ambo. Why _did_ she leave you? It seems the very thing an incarnate social tradition could never have brought herself to do!"

Before I could check myself I reproved her. "You're not often merely cruel, Susan!" Then, hoping to soften it, I hurried on: "You see, dear, Gertrude isn't greatly to blame. Suppose you had been born and brought up like her, to believe beauty and brains and a certain gracious way of life a family privilege, a cla.s.s distinction. Don't you see how your inbred worship of cla.s.s and family would become in the end an intenser form of worshipping yourself? Gertrude was taught to live exclusively, from girlhood, in this disguised worship of her own perfections. We're all egotists of course; but most of us are the common or garden variety, and have an occasional suspicion that we're pretty selfish and intolerant and vain. Gertrude has never suspected it. How could she? A daughter of her house can do no wrong--and she is a daughter of her house." I sighed.

"Unluckily, my power of unreserved admiration has bounds, and my tongue and temper sometimes haven't. So our marriage dissolved in an acid bath compounded of honest irritations and dishonest apologies. _I_ made the dishonest apologies. To do Gertrude justice, she never apologized. She knew the initial fault was mine. I shouldn't have joined a church whose creed I couldn't repeat without a sensation of moral nausea. That's just what I did when I married Gertrude. There was no deception on her side, either. I knew her G.o.ds, and I knew she a.s.sumed that mine were the same as hers, and that I was humbly entering the service of their dedicated priestess. Well, I apostatized--to her frozen amazement. Then a crisis came--insignificant enough.... Gertrude refused to call with me on the bride of an old friend of mine, because she thought it a misalliance. He had no right, she held, under her jealous G.o.ds, to bring a former trained nurse home as his wife, and thrust her upon a society that would never otherwise have received her.

"I was furious, and blasphemed her G.o.ds. I insisted she should either accompany me, then and there, or I'd go myself and apologize for her--yes, these are the words I used--her 'congenital lunacy.' She left me like a statue walking, and went to her room."

"And you?" asked Susan.

"I made the call."

"Did you make the apology?"

"No; I couldn't."

"Naturally not," a.s.sented Miss Goucher.

"Oh, Ambo," protested Susan, "what a coward you are! Well, and then?"

"I returned to a wifeless house. From that hour until yesterday morning there have been no explanations between Gertrude and me. Gertrude is superb."

"I understand her less than ever," said Susan.

"I understand her quite well," said Miss Goucher. "But your long silence, Mr. Hunt--that I can't understand."

"I can," Susan exclaimed. "Ambo's very bones dislike her. So do mine. Do you remember how I used to shock you, Ambo, when I first came here--saying somebody or other was no d.a.m.n good? Well, I can't help it; it's stronger than I am. Mrs. Hunt's no----"

"Oh, _child_!" struck in Miss Goucher. "How much you have still to learn!" Then she addressed me: "I've never seen a more distinguished person than Mrs. Hunt. I know it's odd, coming from me, but somehow I sympathize with her--greatly. I've always"--hesitated Miss Goucher--"been a proud sort of n.o.body myself."

Susan reached over and slipped her hand into Miss Goucher's. "Poor Sister! Just as we're going off together you begin to find out how horrid I can be. But I'll make a little true confession to both of you.

What I've been saying about Mrs. Hunt isn't in the least what I think about her. The fact is, I'm jealous of her, in so many ways--except in the ordinary way! To make a clean breast of it, when I was with her she brought me to my knees in spite of myself. Oh, I acknowledge her power!

It's uncanny. How did you ever find strength to resist it, Ambo? My outbreak was sheer Birch Street bravado--a cheap insult flung in the face of the unattainable! It was all my shortcomings throwing mud at all her disdain. Truly! Why, the least droop of her eyelids taught me that it takes more than quick wits and sensitive nerves and hard study to overcome a false start--or rather, no start at all!

"Birch Street isn't even a beginning, because, so far as Mrs. Hunt's concerned, Birch Street simply doesn't exist! And even Birch Street would have to admit that she gets away with it! I'd say so, too, if I didn't go a step farther and feel that it gets away with her. That's why ridicule can't touch her. You can't laugh at a devotee, a woman possessed, the instrument of a higher power! Mrs. Hunt's a living confession of faith in the absolute rightness of the right people, and a living rebuke to the incurable wrongness of the wrong! Oh, I knew at once what you meant, Ambo, when you called her a dedicated priestess!

It's the way I shall always think of her--ritually clothed, and pouring out tea to her G.o.ds from sacred vessels of colonial silver! You can smile, Ambo, but I shall; and way down in my common little Birch Street heart, I believe I shall always secretly envy her.... So there!"