The Common Law

"Sure I'm ashamed to be a broker with all you highbrows lining out homers for the girls while I have to sit on the bleachers and score 'em up. If I try to make a hit with the ladies it's a bingle; and it's the bench and the bush-league for muh—"

"You great, overgrown kid! It's a pity people can't see you down town. Everybody knows you're the cleverest thing south of Broad and Wall. Look at all the boards, all the committees, all the directorates you're mixed up with! Look at all the time you give freely to others—look at all your charities, all your: civic activities, all—"

"All the hell I raise!" said Cameron, very red. "Don't forget that, Louis!"

"You never did—that's the wonder and the eternal decency of you, Cameron. You're a good citizen and a good man, and you do more for the world than we painters ever could do! That's the real truth of it; and why you so persistently try to represent yourself as a commonplace something else is beyond me—and probably beyond Stephanie Swift," he added carelessly.

They whizzed along in silence for some time, and it was only when Ashuelyn was in sight that Cameron suddenly turned and held out his hand:

"Thank you, Louis; you've said some very kind things."

Neville shrugged: "I hear you are financing that New Idea Home. I tell you that's a fine conception."

But Cameron only looked modest. At heart he was a very shy man and he deprecated any idea that he was doing anything unusual in giving most of his time to affairs that paid dividends only in happiness and in the consciousness of moral obligation fulfilled.

The household was occupying the pergola as they arrived and sprang out upon the clipped lawn.

Neville kissed his mother tenderly, shook hands cordially with his father, greeted Lily with a fraternal hug and Stephanie with a firm grasp of both hands.

"How perfectly beautiful it is here!" he exclaimed, looking out over the green valley beyond—and unconsciously his gaze rested on the Estwich hills, blue and hazy and soft as dimpled velvet. Out there, somewhere, was Valerie; heart and pulse began to quicken. Suddenly he became aware that his mother's eyes were on him, and he turned away toward the south as though there was also something in that point of the compass to interest him.

Gordon Collis, following a hand-cart full of young trees wrapped in burlap, passed across the lawn below and waved a greeting at Neville.

"How are you, Louis!" he called out. "Don't you want to help us set these hybrid catalpas?"

"I'll be along by and by," he replied, and turned to the group under the pergola who desired to know how it was in town—the first question always asked by New Yorkers of anybody who has just arrived from that holy spot.

"It's not too warm," said Neville; "the Park is charming, most of the houses on Fifth Avenue are closed—"

"Have you chanced to pass through Tenth Street?" asked his father solemnly.

But Neville confessed that he had not set foot in those sanctified precincts, and his father's personal interest in Manhattan Island ceased immediately.

They chatted inconsequentially for a while; then, in reply to a question from Stephanie, he spoke of his picture, "A Bride," and, though it was still unfinished, he showed them a photograph of it.

The unmounted imprint passed from hand to hand amid various comments.

"It is very beautiful, Louis," said his mother, with a smile of pride; and even as she spoke the smile faded and her sad eyes rested on him wistfully.

"Is it a sacred picture?" asked his father, examining it through his glasses without the slightest trace of interest.

"It is an Annunciation, isn't it?" inquired Lily, calmly. But her heart was failing her, for in the beauty of the exquisite, enraptured face, she saw what might have been the very soul of Valerie West.

His father, removing his spectacles, delivered himself of an opinion concerning mysticism, and betrayed an illogical tendency to drift toward the Concord School of Philosophy. However, there seemed to be insufficient incentive; he glanced coldly toward Cameron and resumed Herbert Spencer and his spectacles.

"Mother, don't you want to stroll on the lawn a bit?" he asked presently. "It looks very inviting to a city man's pavement-worn feet."

She drew her light wool shawl around her shoulders and took her tall son's arm.

For a long while they strolled in silence, passed idly through the garden where masses of peonies hung over the paths, and pansies, iris, and forget-me-nots made the place fragrant.

It was not until they came to the plank bridge where the meadow rivulet, under its beds of cress and mint, threaded a shining way toward the woods, that his mother said in a troubled voice:

"You are not happy, Louis."

"Why, mother—what an odd idea!"

"Am I mistaken?" she asked, timidly.

"Yes, indeed, you are. I am very happy."

"Then," she said, "what is it that has changed you so?"

"Changed me?"

"Yes, dear."

"I am not changed, mother."

"Do you think a mother can be mistaken in her only son? You are so subdued, so serious. You are like men who have known sorrow…. What sorrow have you ever known, Louis?"

"None. No great one, mother. Perhaps, lately, I have developed—recognised—become aware of the sombre part of life—become sensitive to it—to unhappiness in others—and have cared more—"

"You speak like a man who has suffered."

"But I haven't, mother," he insisted. "Of course, every painter worries. I did last winter—last winter—" He hesitated, conscious that last winter—on the snowy threshold of the new year—sorrow and pain and happiness and pity had, in an instant, assumed for him a significance totally new.

"Mother," he said slowly, "if I have changed it is only in a better understanding of the world and those who live in it. I have cared very little about people; I seem to have come to care more, lately. What they did, what they thought, hoped, desired, endured, suffered, interested me little except as it concerned my work. And somehow, since then, I am becoming interested in people for their own sakes. It's a—new sensation."

He smiled and laid his hand over hers:

"Do you know I never even appreciated what a good man Alexander Cameron is until recently. Why, mother, that man is one of the most generous, modest, kind, charitable, unselfish fellows in the world!"

"His behaviour is sometimes a little extraordinary," said his mother—"isn't it?"

"Oh, that's all on the surface! He's full of boyish spirits. He dearly loves a joke—but the greater part of that interminable funny business is merely to mask the modesty of a man whose particular perversity is a fear that people might discover how kind and how clever he really is!"

They walked on in silence for a while, then his mother said:

"Mr. Querida was here. Is he a friend of yours?"

Neville hesitated: "I'll tell you, mother," he said, "I don't find Querida personally very congenial. But I have no doubt he's an exceedingly nice fellow. And he's far and away the best painter in America…. When did he go back to town?"

"Last week. I did not care for him."

"You and father seldom do care for new acquaintances," he rejoined, smiling. "Don't you think it is about time for you to emerge from your shells and make up your minds that a few people have been born since you retired?"

"People have been born in China, too, but that scarcely interests your father and me."