A Fool There Was Part 7

Blake waited. But she did not go on. At length he spoke:

"How long will he be gone?"

"Maybe two months," she returned.... "It will be the first time that we've been apart for more than a day or two since we were married.... I-- I suppose that's silly, isn't it?

"If that's silly, it's too bad anyone ever gets sensible," was his a.s.suring reply.

She had risen. Slowly she went around behind the little high chair.

Leaning lithely over, she laid her cheek against that of her child, soft, rounded arms pressing her close. And then she looked at Blake, eyes to eyes.

"I don't like it, Tom," she said, very slowly.

"But," he protested, "it's a big honor--a great honor--an appointment like this, from the President."

"Yes," she answered, thoughtfully. "It is a big honor. And I suppose that I should be very, very happy--Of course, in a way, I am." Then, suddenly: "But I'm not. I don't like it, Tom. I try to like it. I tell myself that I ought to like it. And yet I can't. Happiness is more than honors; and we are happy here--as happy as it is possible for two people" her eyes, laden of the mother love, fell upon the child that was hers, "for three people," she corrected, "to be. We have everything we need--everything we ought to want. I'd rather have just peace, and quiet and contentment, than all the honors there are."

"And yet--"

"I mustn't stand in the way of his advancement, you mean. I know that; and I haven't.... You know he left it all to me; and I said, 'Go.' It hurt, too, Tom.... I didn't want that he should go. I don't know why....

I--" she stopped. The child had finished her oatmeal. Lithely, the mother, stooping, lifted her from the chair, held her close for a tiny minute and then, kissing her, set her down upon the floor.

"Run along, dearie," she directed. "Tell Mawkins to get you dressed."

She watched the graceful, pretty child until she vanished through the door. Slowly she walked to the window. Hands clasped behind her she stood, gazing across the sunlit lawn--across the dancing, flashing waters of the Sound. A big, black schooner, a mountain of bellying whiteness superimposed upon a tiny streak of hull, was standing off for the Long Island sh.o.r.e. Her eyes followed it.

Blake, lids half closed, as a man who seeks within the denseness of masculine brain for something that lieth not therein, considered for a long moment, eyes upon the perfect figure of perfect womanhood before him. At length he spoke.

"It doesn't seem to me," he began, "that it means either very much or very little." He went on, more lightly: "Two months isn't such a long time, you know, after all. He'll soon be back, laden with honors. And then, because he was raised on the seacoast and doesn't know the difference between a Lima bean and a bole weevil, they'll probably make him Secretary of Agriculture."

She was still gazing at the vanishing sail; she had not heard his words.

He leaned back in his chair, a little, watching her. At length he sighed, and murmured to himself:

"To him that hath, shall be given all they can take away from him that hathn't."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

THE GOING.

John Schuyler had come to be a big man and a broad one--big in the great things of life that sometimes are so small, big in the small things of life that sometimes are so great. Broad of mind, as well as broad of shoulder he was. Forty years of age now, his hair, by the habit of thought, was tinged with gray at the temples; yet skin and complexion were as those of a boy. Quick in movement, agile, alert, thrilling with vitality and virility, his pleasures were, as they had always been, the pleasures of the great out-of-doors. A yachtsman, his big yawl, the "Manana," was known in every club port from Gravesend to Bar Harbor. He motored. He rode. He played tennis, and golf, and squash, and racquets.

He was an expert swimmer, a skilful fencer, a clever boxer. And, more wonderful than the combination of these things was the fact that he found time away from his work to do them all, and to enjoy them with the youthful, contagious, effervescent enthusiasm of a man of half his age.

It showed in his well-set-up, well-poised body. It showed in the expression of his clear-cut bronzed features. It showed in every little shift of pose, every little turn of his well-shaped head, as he stood, leaning gracefully against the ledge of the bay window, talking with Blake; for Mrs. Schuyler and Muriel had gone to make ready for the trip to the city, and to the dock.

"I don't like to leave it, Tom," he said slowly, his eyes roaming over the bright, little room. "I don't like to leave it even to hobn.o.b with crowned heads, and to take tea with dukes, earls, princes and kings, to say nothing of mere lords. My world is right here; and it's all the world I want, Tom. It's bounded on the south by the sound, on the north by the property of the munic.i.p.ality, on the east and west by somebody else's worlds, and above by eternity." Blake lighted a cigar.

"Then what are you going for?" he asked, practically.

Schuyler shrugged his shoulders.

"I wonder," he replied.

"Want me to tell you?" queried the other.

"I should be obliged," he said with a smile.

"Well," began Blake, placing finger ends to finger ends, judicially. "In the first place, you're ambitious. You like the plaudits of the populace.

You see here a chance to get about a million per cent on your investment.

Whereby you stick two months time and a little effort into the proposition and draw down a position that means sitting beside the chief executive and trying to look as though you knew what he was talking about. Also a chance to live in Washington and cut figure eights in the diplomatic circles. All of which is perfectly natural, nothing at all to your discredit, and furthermore shows whence come the few good men, who, sticking their heels in, are trying to keep the country from going to the demnition bow-wows. Am I right?"

Schuyler watched a little ring of blue smoke rising to the ceiling.

"No," he answered, slowly, "you're wrong. I care nothing for the plaudits of the populace. I'm ambitious, in a way; but when that way requires me to leave the people--the things--that I love, then ambition chameleonizes and I become ambitious ant.i.thetically. Furthermore, I loathe the climate of Washington; and all the society I want, I can find right in my home-- with the exception of yourself."

"Which is not so much of an exception, after all," commented Blake; "because, when it comes to sticking around, I'm the original young Mr.

Glue."

"You know, Tom," went on Schuyler, "I don't like to take any chances with a happiness such as mine.... I wonder, sometimes, if I really know how happy I am. One can get used to happiness, you know, just as to other things--except unhappiness."

"Hum," snorted Blake. "I've got used to that, even. Dad--burn it all, nothing ever goes right with me--except money; and that's no good without the rest. Money is merely an agreeable accessory. To have money and nothing with it is like having an olive and no c.o.c.ktail to put it in. If I eat what I like, I get sick. I'm always either forty pounds too heavy or twenty pounds too light. I'm continually dieting or training and wondering why in Sam Hill I'm doing either. I have to live alone--to spend my evening at theatres or clubs--I am a man who would willingly give up all his clubs for one large pair of pink carpet slippers, and the theatres for a corpulent, aristocratic Maltese cat, with a baritone purr."

Schuyler, immersed in his own thoughts, had not been listening.

Blake eyed him, whimsically.

"Ain't I the gabby thing, though?" he remarked, at length. And then:

"A couple of million dollars for your thoughts, sweet chuck."

"I was thinking how near I came to turning this all down--and how I'm sort of sorry that I didn't."

"Nell's better, isn't she?" queried Blake, suddenly.

"Better, yes; but not out of danger. Why?"

"Why," returned Blake, "it just occurred to me--see here, old man, I've nothing much to do. Can't I stick around here? And then you can take Kate and Muriel with you."

"That's good of you, Tom," said Schuyler, smiling a little. "But a bachelor around a sick room is of about as much use as an elephant at a pink tea.... No, Kate and I have talked it all over, and, under the conditions, she has decided to stay at home. It'll be mighty hard, though--mighty hard.... It must be nearly time to leave."

Blake looked at his watch.

"Nine fifty," he said. "What time does the train go?"