The Business of Life

"Yes."

"It has to me frequently of late. And I wonder what I'd have turned into, given Cynthia's worldly chances." He shook his head, muttering to himself: "It's fine, fine– to be what she is after what she has had to stack up against!"

Desboro winced. Presently he said in a low voice:

"The worst she had to encounter were men of our sort. That's a truth we can't blink. It wasn't loneliness or poverty or hunger that were dangerous; it was men."

"Don't," said Cairns, rising impatiently and striding about the room. "I know all about that. But it's over, God be praised. And I'm seeing things differently now – very, very differently. You are, too, I take it. So, for the love of Mike, let's be pleasant about it. I hate gloom. Can't a fellow regenerate himself and remain cheerful?"

Desboro laughed uncertainly, listening to the gay voices on the stairs, where Jacqueline and Cynthia were garrulously exploring the house together.

"Darling, it's too lovely!" exclaimed Cynthia, every few minutes, while Jacqueline was conducting her from one room to another, upstairs, down again, through the hall and corridor, accompanied by an adoring multitude of low-born dogs and nondescript cats, all running beside her with tails stuck upright.

And so, very happily together, they visited the kitchen, laundry, storeroom, drying room, engine room, cellars; made the fragrant tour of the greenhouses and a less fragrant visit to the garage; inspected the water supply; gingerly traversed the gravel paths of the kitchen garden, peeped into tool houses, carpenters' quarters; gravely surveyed compost heaps, manure pits, and cold frames.

Jacqueline pointed out the distant farm, with its barns, stables, dairy, and chicken runs, from the lantern of the windmill, whither they had climbed; and Cynthia looked out over the rolling country to the blue hills edging the Hudson, and down into gray woodlands where patches of fire signalled the swelling maple buds; and edging willows were palely green. Over brown earth and new grass robins were running; and bluebirds fluttered from tree to fencepost.

Cynthia's arm stole around Jacqueline's waist.

"I am so glad for you – so glad, so proud," she whispered. "Do you remember, once, long ago, I prophesied this for you? That you would one day take your proper place in the world?"

"Do you know," mused Jacqueline, "I don't really believe that the place matters so much – as long as one is all right. That sounds horribly priggish – but isn't it so, Cynthia?"

"Few ever attain that self-sufficient philosophy," said Cynthia, laughing. "You can spoil a gem by cheap setting."

"But it remains a gem. Oh, Cynthia! Am I such a prig as I sound?"

They were both laughing so gaily that the flock of pigeons on the roof were startled into flight and swung around them in whimpering circles.

As they started to descend the steep stairs, Jacqueline said casually:

"Do you continue to find Mr. Cairns as agreeable and interesting as ever?"

"Oh, yes," nodded the girl carelessly.

"Jim likes him immensely."

"He is a very pleasant companion," said Cynthia.

When they were strolling toward the house, she added:

"He thinks you are very wonderful, Jacqueline. But then everybody does."

The girl blushed: "The only thing wonderful about me is my happiness," she said.

Cynthia looked up into her eyes.

"Are you?"

"Happy? Of course."

"Is that quite true, dear?"

"Yes," said Jacqueline under her breath.

"And – there is no flaw?"

"None – now."

Cynthia impulsively caught up one of her hands and kissed it.

In the library they found beside their deserted swains two visitors, Daisy Hammerton and Captain Herrendene.

"Fine treatment!" protested Cairns, looking at Cynthia, as Jacqueline came forward with charming friendliness and greeted her guests and made Cynthia known to them. "Fine treatment!" he repeated scornfully, " – leaving Jim and me to yawn at each other until Daisy and the Captain yonder – "

"Jack," interrupted his pretty hostess, "if you push that button somebody will bring tea."

"Twice means that Scotch is to be included," remarked Desboro. "You didn't know that, did you, dear?"

"The only thing I know about your house, monsieur, is that your cats and dogs must not pervade the red drawing-room," she said laughing. "Look at Captain Herrendene's beautiful cutaway coat! It's all covered with fur and puppy hair! And now he can't go into the drawing-room, either!"

Cairns looked ruefully at a black and white cat which had jumped onto his knees and was purring herself to sleep there.

"If enough of 'em climb on me I'll have a motor coat for next winter," he said with resignation.

Tea was served; the chatter and laughter became general. Daisy Hammerton, always enamoured of literature, and secretly addicted to its creation, spoke of Orrin Munger's new volume which Herrendene had been reading to her that morning under the trees.

"Such a queer book," she said, turning to Jacqueline, " – and I'm not yet quite certain whether it's silly or profound. Captain Herrendene makes fun of it – but it seems as though there must be some meaning in it."

"There isn't," said Herrendene. "It consists of a wad of verse, blank, inverted, and symbolic. Carbolic is what it requires."

"Isn't that the moon-youth who writes over the heads of the public and far ahead of 'em into the next century?" inquired Cairns.

"When an author," said Herrendene, "thinks he is writing ahead of his readers, the chances are that he hasn't yet caught up with them."

The only flaw in Daisy Hammerton's good sense was a mistaken respect for printed pages. She said, reverently:

"When a poet like Orrin Munger refers to himself as a Cubist and a Futurist, it must have some occult significance. Besides, he went about a good deal last winter, and I met him."

"What did you think of him?" asked Desboro drily.

"I scarcely knew. He is odd. He kissed everybody's hand and spoke with such obscurity about his work – referred to it in such veiled terms that, somehow, it all seemed a wonderful mystery to me."

Desboro smiled: "The man who is preëminent in his profession," he said quietly, "never makes a mystery of it. He may be too tired to talk about it, too saturated with it, after the day's work, to discuss it; but never fool enough to pretend that there is anything occult in it or in the success he has made of it. Only incompetency is self-conscious and secretive; only the ass strikes attitudes."

Jacqueline looked at him with pride unutterable. She thought as he did.

He smiled at her, encouraged, and went on: