"I don't believe she has, Lyn. I'm not worried about Ann as you and Con are. Her Lady Macbeth pose is just plain girl; but she has depths we have never sounded. Sometimes I think she hides them to prove her grat.i.tude and affection, and because she is so helpless. She was nearly five when she came to you, Lyn, and I believe she does remember the hills and her mother!"

"Why, Betty, what makes you think this?" Lynda was appalled.

"It is her eyes. There are moments when she is looking back--far back.

She is trying to hold to something that is escaping her. Love her, Lyn, love her as you never have before."

"If I thought that, Betty!" Lynda was aghast. "Oh! Betty--the poor darling! I cannot believe she could be so strong--so--terrible."

"It's more or less subconscious--such things always are--but I think Ann will some day prove what I say. In a way, it's like the feeling I have for--for my own baby, Lyn. I see him in Bobbie; I feel him in Bobbie's dearness and naughtiness. Ann holds what went before in what is around her now. Sometimes it puzzles her as Bobbie puzzles me."

About this time--probably because he was happier than he had ever been before, possibly because he had more time that he could conscientiously call his own than he had had for many a well-spent year--Truedale repaired to his room under the eaves, sneaking away, with a half-guilty longing, to his old play! So many times had he resurrected it, then cast it aside; so many hopes and fears had been born and killed by the interruption to his work, that he feared whatever strength it might once have had must be gone now forever.

Still he retreated to his attic room once more--and Lynda asked no questions. With strange understanding Ann guarded that door like a veritable dragon. When Billy's toddling steps followed his father Ann waylaid him; and many were the swift, silent struggles near the portal before the rampant Billy was carried away kicking with Ann's firm hand stifling his outraged cries.

"What Daddy doing there?" Billy would demand when once conquered.

"That's n.o.body's business but Daddy's," Ann unrelentingly insisted.

"I--I want to know!" Billy pleaded.

"Wait until Daddy wants you to know."

Under the eaves, hope grew in Truedale's heart. The old play had certainly the subtle human interest that is always vital. He was sure of that. Once, he almost decided to take Ann into his confidence. The child had such a dramatic sense. Then he laughed. It was absurd, of course!

No! if the thing ever amounted to anything--if, by putting flesh upon the dry bones and blood into the veins, he could get it over--it was to be his gift to Lynda! And the only thing that encouraged him as he worked, rather stiffly after all the years, was the certainty that at times he heard the heart beat in the shrunken and shrivelled thing! And so--he reverently worked on.

CHAPTER XXII

Among the notes and suggestions sprinkled through the old ma.n.u.script were lines that once had aroused the sick and bitter resentment of Truedale in the past:

"Thy story hath been written long since.

Thy part is to read and interpret."

Over and over again he read the words and pondered upon his own change of mind. Youth, no matter how lean and beggared it may be, craves and insists upon conflict--upon the personal loss and gain. But as time takes one into its secrets, the soul gets the wider--Truedale now was sure it was the wider--outlook. Having fought--because the fight was part of the written story--the craving for victory, of the lesser sort, dwindled, while the higher call made its appeal. To be part of the universal; to look back upon the steps that led up, or even down, and hold the firm belief that here, or elsewhere--what mattered in the mighty chain of many links--the "interpretation" told!

Truedale came to the conclusion that fatalism was no weak and spineless philosophy, but one for the making of strong souls.

Failure, even wrong, might they not, if unfettered by the narrow limitations of here and now, prove miracle-working elements?

Then the effect upon others entered into Truedale's musings as it had in the beginning. The "stories" of others! He leaned his head at this juncture upon his clasped hands and thought of Nella-Rose! Thought of her as he always did--tenderly, gently, but as holding no actual part in his real life. She was like something that had gained power over an errant and unbridled phase of his past existence. He could not make her real in the sense of the reality of the men, women, and affairs that now sternly moulded and commanded him. She was--she always would be to him--a memory of something lovely, dear, but elusive. He could no longer place and fix her. She belonged to that strange period of his life when, in the process of finding himself, he had blindly plunged forward without stopping to count the cost or waiting for clear-sightedness.

"What has she become?" he thought, sitting apart with his secret work.

And then most fervently he hoped that what Lynda had once suggested might indeed be true. He prayed, as such men do pray, that the experience which had enabled him to understand himself and life better might also have given Nella-Rose a wider, freer s.p.a.ce in which to play her chosen part.

He recalled his knowledge of the hill-women as Jim White had described them--women to whom love, in its brightest aspect, is denied. Surely Nella-Rose had caught a glimpse more radiant than they. Had it pointed her to the heaven of good women--or--?

And eventually this theme held and swayed the play--this effect of a deep love upon such a nature as Nella-Rose's, the propelling power--the redeeming and strengthening influence. In the end Truedale called his work "The Interpretation."

And while this was going on behind the attic door, a seemingly slight incident had the effect of reinforcing Truedale's growing belief in his philosophy.

He and Lynda went one day to the studio of a sculptor who had suddenly come into fame because of a wonderful figure, half human, half divine, that had startled the sophisticated critics out of their usual calm.

The man had done much good work before, but nothing remarkable; he had taken his years of labour with patient courage, insisting that they were but preparation. He had half starved in the beginning--had gradually made his way to what every one believed was a mediocre standstill; but he kept his faith and his cheerful outlook, and then--he quietly presented the remarkable figure that demanded recognition and appreciation.

The artist had sold his masterpiece for a sum that might reasonably have caused some excitement in his life--but it had not!

"I'm sorry I let the thing go," he confided to a chosen few; "come and help me bid it good-bye."

Lynda and Conning were among the chosen, and upon the afternoon of their call they happened to be alone with him in the studio.

All other pieces of work had been put away; the figure, in the best possible light, stood alone; and the master, in the most impersonal way, stood guard over it with reverent touch and hushed voice.

Had his att.i.tude been a pose it would have been ridiculous; but it was so detached, so sincere, so absolutely humble, that it rose to the height of dignified simplicity.

"Thornton, where did you get your inspiration--your model?" Truedale asked, after the beauty of the thing had sunk into his heart.

"In the clay. Such things are always in the clay," was the quiet reply.

Lynda was deeply moved, not only by the statue, but by its creator.

"Tell us, please," she said earnestly, "just what you mean. I think it will help us to understand."

Thornton gave a nervous laugh. He was a shy, retiring man but he thought now only of this thing he had been permitted to portray.

"I always"--he began hesitatingly--"take my plaster in big lumps, squeeze it haphazard, and then sit and look at it. After that, it is a mere matter of choice and labour and--determination. When this"--he raised his calm eyes to the figure--"came to me--in the clay--I saw it as plainly as I see it now. I couldn't forget, or, if I did, I began again. Sometimes, I confess, I got weird results as I worked; once, after three days of toil, a--a devil was evolved. It wasn't bad, either, I almost decided to--to keep it; but soon again I caught a glimpse of the vision, always lurking close. So I pinched and smoothed off and added to, and, in the end, the vision stayed. It was in the clay--everything is, with me. If I cannot see it there, I might as well give up."

"Thornton, that's why you never lost courage!" Truedale exclaimed.

"Yes, that's the reason, old man."

Lynda came close. "Thank you," she said with deep feeling in her voice, "I do understand; I thought I would if you explained, and--I think your method is--G.o.dlike!"

Thornton flushed and laughed. "Hardly that," he returned, "it's merely my way and I have to take it."

It was late summer when Truedale completed the play. Lynda and the children were away; the city was hot and comparatively empty. It was a time when no manager wanted to look at ma.n.u.scripts, but if one was forced upon him, he would have more leisure to examine it than he would have later on.

Taking advantage of this, Truedale--anxious but strangely insistent--fought his way past the men hired to defeat such a course, and got into the presence of a manager whose opinion he could trust.

After much argument--and the heat was terrific--the great man promised, in order to rid himself of Truedale's presence, to read the stuff. He hadn't the slightest intention of doing so, and meant to start it on its downward way back to the author as soon as the proper person--in short his private secretary--came home from his vacation.

But that evening an actress who was fine enough and charmingly temperamental enough to compel attention, bore down through the heat upon the manager, with the appalling declaration that she was tired to death of the part selected for her in her play, and would have none of it!

"But good Lord!" cried the manager, fanning himself with his panama--they were at a roof garden restaurant--"this is August--and you go on in October."

"Not as a depraved and sensual woman, Mr. Camden; I want to be for once in my life a character that women can remember without blushing."