Elinor (Norma Shearer) attends a Bohemian party at the apartment of Templeton Druid (Ward Crane).
(“The Valley of Content” screened as “Pleasure Mad.”)

THE

Valley of Content

By BLANCHE UPRIGHT

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers New York

Published by arrangement with W. J. Watt & Company

Copyright, 1922, by

W. J. WATT & COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

WITH LOVE AND DEVOTION

I DEDICATE THESE PAGES

TO

Marjorie Rambeau

MY BELOVED INSPIRER

THE VALLEY OF CONTENT

CHAPTER I

Over the immaculate, freshly ironed white cotton cloth on the little table set near the window in the kitchen-dining room of the Bentons’ tiny bungalow, a paper-shaded lamp glowed rosily. From its tempered rays, the plated knives and forks and spoons, polished to a shine that forgave the nickel spots of usage, caught a pinkish tinge, and the bowl of wild roses from its place of state in the center of the table returned blush for blush.

But neither the rosy light, nor the roses themselves had anything to do with the bright flush that adorned Marjorie Benton’s face as she arose from in front of the oven of her brightly shining kitchen stove. She felt of her burning cheek with the back of her hand. The twittering remonstrance of her canary in its cheap little brass cage, disturbed by the metallic clang of the closing oven door, turned her gaze in his direction. She shook her head ruefully.

“More cooking for women and there’d be less rouge, eh, Andy?” she asked, and an understanding “tweet-tweet” was her reply. Her glance wandered to the small alarm clock tick-ticking merrily from the shelf above her head.

“Another ten minutes,” she murmured. The slowly moving hands of the time piece marked off seven minutes after six. “Hugh should be here then, and he does so like his roast just out of the oven. Hmm! So do I—” she went on, but a cross little look of dawning discontent crept into her eyes as she glanced at the stove distastefully,—“except that I surely would like to have someone else take it out for me, for a change. Wonder if we’re ever going to have a maid, or if I’m just naturally to dry up and brown to a crisp bending over a stove all my life!”

Again she felt of her burning cheeks, as she turned toward the neatly set table. A mended spot in the table cloth caught her eye. She smoothed it over.

“Cotton!” she said, plaintively. “Just plain cotton! I can pretend it’s linen all I want to, but it don’t change the threads, nor—,” and she lifted a knife with its silver worn undisguisedly off the end and tried the effect of turning it over. She frowned at the poor pretense.

She turned back to the stove and picked up the dish cloth she had been using as a holder. Her hand went toward the kettle that simmered contentedly, a contrast to the simmering thoughts of the pretty woman who glanced at it.

“I wonder—” she began, half aloud.

She stopped, listening, the dish cloth dangling in her hand. With a hurried gesture she dropped it, and was across the room to the door that led into her hallway. Just a moment more she listened, her head with its fair curls pressed against the door. Then she opened it and tiptoed quietly through, closing it noiselessly behind her.

Before the closed nursery door she stopped once more. Unmistakable sounds from within proved that wee ones behind that portal were not spending their time in earned repose. Marjorie’s half frown was chased away by an indulgent smile of mother love. Then she opened the door and entered the room.

“Children!” she cried, as sternly as she had ever brought herself to command. “Dear little people, what does this mean? Mother can’t have this, you know. It’s sleepy time.”

From one of the two white cribs surrounded by their halo of the last rays of the September sun came a little wail. Two-year old Elinor Benton distinctly disapproved of something—perhaps of going to bed at all while the sun still shone.

From the other crib another brown tousled head bobbed up. Its owner sat erect. Master Howard Benton was reasoning that if his little sister who was only two should be receiving attention, what then was his due at the mature age of four.

Marjorie Benton’s thoughts flew to the kitchen she had just quitted, the flush from her oven still on her face. Everything was all right there for a few minutes, she knew. She did not approve of taking babies from their beds once they were tucked in for the night, but surely this once she could not refuse. Her glance rested softly on Elinor’s curly head and her pleading eyes. Then she lifted her gently and sat down with her in the low rocker. Baby Elinor snuggled in the protecting arms and though she felt that she may not have been doing the prescribed thing, Marjorie Benton’s eyes were soft and her voice caressing as her hold tightened on her baby and she began softly to sing.

As she sang, the girl-mother’s eyes wandered about the room, resting on the dado of Mother Goose pictures where more than one darkened spot proclaimed an interest and love for a particular story-book personage. What babies Howard and Elinor were! And they were hers! Hers! And Hugh’s! Her hold tightened the least bit on the baby in her arms, who was drifting off to dreamland.

The reverberation of the front door closed cautiously brought the mother back from drifting. Hugh! She must hurry.

This time the child made no protest as she was placed in her little crib and tucked in. But she stopped long enough to place a kiss on the hair of each baby before she lowered the shade and tiptoed out.

Her hands gave a quick pat to her own curls as she flew up the hallway to greet Hugh Benton. He had shuffled out of his light coat and turned from hanging it on the hall rack with his arms extended to his wife.

“H’lo sweetheart!” was his tender greeting, but there was all the fervor in the bear-like squeeze he gave her as she ran into his arms that there ever had been in the earlier days of their honeymoon. The Bentons were fond of remarking that their honeymoon was only extended.

Hugh Benton raised his head and looked over his wife’s shoulder.

“Um! Dinner!” he exclaimed with a boyish grin. “Pie! Your dinners are always wonderful, dearest.” And Hugh gave his shiny-haired wife another hug.

“Hugh! Please!” Marjorie struggled out of his arms. “You don’t know how strong you are. You almost hurt me—and do please be quiet—the kiddies are asleep.”

“Already?” Hugh Benton’s tone and eyes were full of disappointment. “No romp to-night? Seems like I never do get much of a chance for a frolic any more.”

So genuine was the young father’s disappointment, that Marjorie tempered the laugh she gave.

“Big baby!” she chided, lovingly. “It’s not hard to see who wants the romp most. But dinner will do you more good, just as sleep will do them. I can’t be having my family spoiled, you know.”

“Right, dear,—just as you always are. Be with you in a minute—some of the grime of an honest working man has to come off first.”

Marjorie Benton hurried to her dinner serving, and as she placed the roast on the white cloth, her eyes were tender as she heard the masculine splashing from the bath room and the soft-pedaled whistling that accompanied it.

She whispered again softly. “Who could help loving him. It’s enough to make me the happiest woman in the world to know——”

Her husband’s entry broke in on her reverie, and it filled her with all the pride of accomplishment to see the glance of delight with which he took in the simple tempting dinner. He leaned over to kiss her as he placed her in her chair—a small attention he had not discarded since the first days of their marriage.

“Wonderful little woman!” he complimented softly. “More wonderful every day.”

She gave his hand a gentle pat, but tried to put a depth of dignified remonstrance in her chiding.

“Don’t forget you’re a married man of five years’ standing, Mr. Hugh Benton,” she urged, but the laughter in her eyes belied the dignity of her words.

“So long!” Hugh took up the carving knife and glanced along its sharpened edge. “You’ve a fine idea of time, Mrs. Marjorie Benton. Now I’d say five days—” His eyes twinkled suddenly as though at some sudden thought, and he nodded toward the bedroom. “Er—pardon me, my dear,—I forgot,—you have the proof on me——”

“Flatterer!” Marjorie beamed on her husband as she took the service he offered her.

“Anything new to-day?” Hugh was busy with his dinner.

“Plenty!” was Marjorie’s enthusiastic answer as she let her fork drop and leaned across the table. “Isn’t there always,—with such children as ours? Oh, Hugh, dear, there never were such babies,—now don’t you laugh at me!” as a little quirk in the corner of Hugh’s mouth betrayed he was not becomingly solemn. “You know I’m not like other mothers,—brag about my children just because they’re mine—and yours—but you also know they’re extraordinarily bright.”

Hugh nodded, but there was that in his satisfied expression before his wife had completed her résumé of the day’s doings of her wonderful infants that quite persuaded her that he was of her opinion. As he laid aside his fork after his last bite of pie, his was the beatific expression of the inwardly satisfied male.

“Want help with the dishes?” he asked. Marjorie smiled at him.

“If I didn’t already know you were the best man in the world,” she complimented, “that would prove it. Don’t I know how you hate dish wiping? No, dear, there are only a few,—I’ll do them.”

“Thereby proving your own wonder,” was Hugh’s praise. “Not another woman in this town would refuse such an offer.”

Marjorie laughed and gave him a playful shove toward a chair as she handed him his paper.

“There!” she exclaimed. “Take that,—and read it. Maybe you’ll find something in it to make you appreciate your own wife and babies. I’ll be through in a minute, and there are lots of things we can do—interesting things—like sitting on the porch and looking at the moon or something. It’s been splendid for the last few nights. Have you noticed?”

Hugh yawned contentedly. “Hasn’t it always been whenever we’ve seen it together?”

It had been. Marjorie Benton was sure of that,—surer now than during any of those five years she had been married. Everything had been splendid. She could not help considering how much more they had of the worth while things in the world than any of the friends they had as her bright head bent over her dish-washing and her glance darted through the steam of the hot water occasionally to where Hugh sat absorbed in his paper.

Perhaps the Benton romance had not been as spectacular as some, but Marjorie inwardly thanked the Providence that guided her that it was more real. Hugh was right, too. It did seem such a short time that they had been married. Then, anomalously came the thought that she could not seem to remember distinctly any time when she and Hugh had not been one. She had vague memories of the time she had been teaching school in this very town—that seemed so long ago. She had been used to hearing people say she was wasting her youth, her beauty and her brains in such an occupation, but it had in a way satisfied her. Then had come Hugh. He had come to Atwood to be cashier of the bank, and, though she did not know it then, he was as much alone in the world as she herself. All those nearest to them were gone. From the time of their first meeting at a dance, Marjorie remembered that life had taken on a different meaning to her. Her thoughts flew back to those beautiful days that followed. Her lips were tender in their smile of reminiscence as she thought of that time. There had been only Hugh and Marjorie. That was how it was to-day,—except that there were two young and tender Hughs and Marjories to bind them still closer together. Marjorie’s smile grew more wistful as she thought, her mind far from the bright glasses she was burnishing as they came hot from their pan of scalding suds. Hugh’s mention of the moon to-night—He remembered it, then—She, too, remembered how they so often sat under that big elm in the moonlight, and Hugh softly, huskily singing,—Poor Hugh! Wasn’t it too bad he never could keep to the same key for two consecutive bars. But he never noticed, and she knew she never cared. What was that he was always humming?

“What’s the matter with the moon to-night?”

Again he was right. There never had been anything the matter with it where they were concerned. It had helped them tell their love, and so——

“Seems like the end of a story, instead of the beginning,” whispered Marjorie Benton to her flowered salad bowl, “but——”

And so, in three months, they had been married. There hadn’t been much money; there wasn’t yet, but what did it matter? They had their bungalow; it was their own. What happiness they had had in planning all the details just as Marjorie had always planned them for herself when she put herself to sleep nights planning for that “sometime in the future.”

“Money!” Marjorie Benton sniffed as she swirled her dish cloth about the pan, and with one damp hand flung back a recalcitrant bright curl that tickled her small nose. “Humph! I’m the richest woman in the world! What else——”

“Something to tell you, sweetheart, when you’re through.” Hugh looked up from his paper and broke in on his wife’s reverie. “Something you’ll like, maybe.”

“Oh, Hugh, dear! Are they going to raise your salary again?” she asked eagerly.

Hugh laughed, but there was a rueful shrug to his shoulders.

“Nothing so exciting,” he declared. “Have you an idea that’s the Atwood Bank’s chief occupation? No, dear, but it’s just as long a chance. I got my patent from Washington to-day, and I believe I have some real people in New York interested in it.”

Casually as he spoke, there was in Hugh Benton’s manner that which would imply that he fully believed he was offering to his wife the equivalent of fur coats and jewels and estates so large that extra sized depot wagons would be required to transport the servants.

“Clever boy!” Marjorie flew to him excitedly. “Oh, I am so proud of you!”

“A bit early to be too proud yet, little one,” Hugh replied in the choppy way he bit off so many of his sentences. “Got to wait for results. But I’ll tell you this,” and his arm slipped around her waist as he bent for the kiss she offered, “if this thing does go through, it’ll go through big, and——”

“And I’ll be the wife of the great inventor!” Marjorie could not restrain her enthusiasm. Hugh smiled indulgently. But it was good to be appreciated,—to be so completely believed in by someone. It was the instinct of the woman who loves, though, that led her to add: “But if it doesn’t go through, dear, what of it? Won’t we still be the happiest people in the whole world? It couldn’t be any other way. Come on out on the porch and let the moon tell us so.” And she drew him by a coat sleeve out through the open door onto the small porch that the moon was beginning to silver with its pale vivid light.

Through the trees, themselves silvered and softened from their flaunting autumnal coloring of the day, came wafted to them the fragrance of new-mown hay. On the top step, they sat down, their faces upturned to the same old moon that is for lovers the world over. Softly Hugh Benton’s arm slipped about the slender waist of his lithe young wife. As of its own accord, her cheek nestled into the curve of his coat sleeve. Out of the silvered darkness, a phonograph from one of the nearby unseen homes began to play. Through the stillness came to them the voice of John McCormack:

“For this is the end of a perfect day.”

“A perfect day,—yes!” sighed Marjorie Benton as the singer’s voice died out. “But isn’t that the way with all our days? They end and start—perfectly.”

Hugh Benton’s dark head bent over his wife’s bright one. His lips placed there his kiss of reverence and thanksgiving.

CHAPTER II

There have been rumors that when the serpent in the Garden showed the apple to Eve, that it wasn’t exactly an apple she saw. Some even say the forbidden fruit, as she gazed at it, did what our best movie writers call “dissolved” and slowly faded into a yellow backed bill. And so the damage was done.

At any rate, money or the wishing for it has done a lot to women of all times ever since Eve first had her vision. Marjorie Benton may have fully believed in her own heart that it meant nothing to her, but from the time that Hugh first gave her an idea that his invention with which she had long been familiar might really mean that she could have whatever she wished, and was not a nebulous dream, there subtly grew within her a spirit of discontent which she would have denied—even to herself—but which was nonetheless real.

The bungalow. Somehow it didn’t seem the most desirable of all habitations as she had once thought it. She could so easily use another bathroom; perhaps two. With money, even these things were possible. And a dining room. She seemed quite to forget how wonderful had seemed that kitchen with its small alcove when she and Hugh had planned it from one of those perfect home magazines, she sitting with her head buried on Hugh’s shoulder, he holding her tightly with one hand as he marked out diagrams with the other. The babies! There was so much she wanted for them now, when she came to think of it, and as for what she wanted for them in the future—there seemed no end to the wishes or the castle building.

To do her justice, Marjorie really hadn’t thought much of what sudden fortune might mean to her personally. She wasn’t naturally vain. That is, she had not given herself the first thought. Discontent with her own lot came upon her gradually, and, as might reasonably be expected, she had been brought to realize it through other women. Her first realization was on a day when Mrs. Birmingham and Mrs. Wallace called. Usually Marjorie had accepted these two small town butterflies with a smile of tolerance. This time it was different.

Their talk had been of clothes,—a fairly general topic of conversation with average women. Mrs. Birmingham grew positively eloquent as she described her new fall costume with its garnishings of beaver; of the smart little hat to match; the gloves, shoes; all the little accessories necessary to an outfit to be envied. But then Mrs. Birmingham was telling of her possessions with just this purpose in view. Not to be outdone, Mrs. Wallace drawled:

“Oh, yes, my dear, but you know it is so much easier to be outfitted if one does it near home. Now I’ve had to send to New York for my moleskin stole. Harvey wouldn’t hear of anything else. Seal and the ordinary furs one sees are so common, don’t you think?”

In her usual contented frame of mind, Marjorie would have chuckled at the attempted arrogance. Now she sighed inwardly. Moleskin! And Mrs. Wallace, poor little mouse-haired nonentity, was actually going to have it while she, Marjorie— She showed nothing of her thoughts, though, as she listened, attentive and sweet as usual.

Not till they had gone and she sat curled up with one foot under her on a big floor cushion (a favorite attitude when she wanted to think) did she realize that they had given her food for thought, and that she wanted things! Wanted them!

“I’m frazzled and frayed—almost disreputable!” was her half bitter inward comment. “Why I haven’t had any kind of a new suit in two years, and as for a hat! Well,—” She laughed ruefully as she clambered to her feet and mechanically shook out the cushions that still bore the imprint of Mrs. Birmingham’s none too svelte figure, “I shouldn’t complain, I suppose. I had a new hat once,—some time before Elinor was born.”

Aggrieved as she felt for the moment, Marjorie Benton realized that her lack of finery was not her husband’s fault. He had always wished her to have it, and had urged that she set aside something for herself. But always something had happened to it. Once she had been on the verge of spending it, when Howard had to have his tonsils out; then had come their contribution toward building the new church.

Marjorie groaned. “Just one thing after another—all the time,” she complained, and complaining was something so new Marjorie Benton would not have recognized it in herself. “Oh, if Hugh should do something with that invention! Surely he must!”

And once again with the thought, came in a flood all the day-dreams she had been indulging since he had spoken to her a week and a half ago of his hopes. What would she not do? As she stood between the parted curtains gazing out into the street swept with a scurrying vista of whirling autumn leaves, it was not the brown and gold of fallen leaves she saw, but visions of shop windows in gorgeous colors, gowns of purple and gold and sapphire, and tissues fine as spun cobwebs. All for her. For Marjorie Benton was at least realizing how well her beauty would accord with the vanities of femininity and she knew she wanted them—not as she had thought she had when she had so generously given of her small store, but in the light of the possibility which Hugh’s hopes had opened up to her. All these women in Atwood who had somehow seemed to patronize her, even when they told her how they envied her her happiness. She wanted to show them!

Hardly realizing it, Marjorie Benton found herself a victim of an uneasy restlessness; a rapidly growing discontent. For antidote she plunged deeper than ever into her household duties, busied herself with the babies, did everything, anything, to keep her thoughts from straying. Each night as she heard Hugh’s step on the walk, her heart beat in mad suspense—“Would there be any news to-night?” was the question involuntarily on her lips.

The only answer so far had been Hugh’s sad little negative nod, but there came a night, after he kissed her, when he handed her a letter before he vanished into the bedroom where the children were playing.

Marjorie’s hands were so unsteady she could hardly open it, although Hugh’s demeanor had been such she almost knew what to expect in advance, and therefore the courteous refusal that met her eyes did not surprise her in the least. She brushed away unbidden tears and hastened after him.

“Never mind, dear,” she soothed gently, pulling his head down to kiss him, “you have other firms to hear from yet—we mustn’t let one answer discourage us.”

“Brave little girl,” he answered. “Thinking of me as usual, when I know what that letter meant to you—now wait,” as she started to protest, “let me finish, dear. Don’t you think, sweetheart, that I haven’t noticed a change in you this past week? You haven’t been yourself at all, although you have tried to make believe—and I know it’s been anxiety over my old invention. Why, dear one,” and Hugh Benton gently smoothed his wife’s hair as he soothed her as he would one of the youngsters who were pulling at his coat tails, “if I had known you were going to take it this way—that it would have caused you a moment’s worry, I wouldn’t have told you a thing about it until everything was all settled, and we were millionaires.”

Marjorie caught a sob in her throat as she gazed at Hugh with wide open eyes. So he had noticed that something was wrong. How selfish she had been. A tear trembled on her long lashes as she glanced up at him contritely.

“Oh, Hugh, dear, dearest,” she quavered. “I didn’t think you—I didn’t know—you see—” she clutched his coat sleeve and hid her face in it as little Elinor and Howard danced about shouting with glee, each with the idea of some new game. But mother was only searching for words. They came in a gush, and the little sob that accompanied them made grave for a moment the face of the man she held to so tightly,—a graveness replaced in a moment by an indulgent smile of understanding as she spoke. “Oh, I wasn’t thinking about the money so much, d-d-ear, but Mrs. Wallace has a new moleskin stole and Mrs. Birmingham has a be-e-aver co-co-at!”

So it was out. Man fashion Hugh hadn’t thought that Marjorie might want the things so dear to the hearts of other women. She had seemed so different. But he remembered that she was a woman, after all, and it was with a little pang that he realized how little she had really had during the past few years. His lips set in a grim line of determination to change all this as he patted her hair, but his words were as cheery and hearty as always as he whispered:

“There, there, honey, don’t fret! You shall have ’em, too! But right now, don’t you think it would be a good idea to get on the old blue bonnet and let’s take a whirl at the movies? Cheer up all around? Charlie Chaplin and Nazimova—weeps and laughs. What say? Can’t you get Mrs. Clancy to watch the babies?”

And as though the matter were settled, which Marjorie knew it was, Hugh Benton, in his usual abrupt way, resumed his interrupted romp with his son and heir and the little princess of the house of Benton.

Cypress Avenue was the rather imposing name that the dwellers on that thoroughfare in Atwood chose to use in referring to their place of residence. Why Cypress, though, was a question that was bound to present itself to the casual visitor. There were maple trees in plenty, a few dogwoods and scattered shrubs of nondescript nomenclature that grew without regard to any scheme of city gardening either inside or outside the flagged sidewalks at their own sweet will. But cypresses—stay! Yes, there was a cypress if one chose to go that far to look for it,—away out at the end of the street at the entrance to the Forest Home Cemetery, beyond the more pretentious homes of brick and concrete that housed such aristocracy as the Birminghams and the Wallaces. Mr. Birmingham was president of the Atwood Bank, and Edgar Wallace made sufficient as the town’s chief merchant to clothe his wife in moleskin. On Cypress Avenue, too, lived the Moultons, the Carvers, the Hopewells, coal and wood, hardware and grain barons and baronesses of their own small world. It was something to live on Cypress Avenue, and the Bentons, in building their shingle bungalow had felt a glow of pride in taking their place with the elect of their chosen place of residence. They were farther downtown, though, within such a short distance of Depot Avenue, the main street and business district, that they could easily see the lights of the Princess, the movie theater, flash on each night, and could tell to a nicety the time of night by seeing when Oscar Merriman, the depot agent and telegrapher, turned out the electrics preparatory to closing up and going to his own home far across the railroad tracks in Sandy Hill.

That the farmers coming and going from the outlying districts chose to speak of Depot Avenue as the main road, and of Cypress Avenue as the short cut, in no wise disturbed the residents of that avenue. They were quite assured that their chief residential street compared most favorably with that of any street in any town the size of Atwood.

Shaded as it was, and lighted with the new lights in their opalescent globes recently installed by the city fathers—and brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts, too,—it was a foregone conclusion that Cypress Avenue should be the favorite strolling place for Atwoodites on such nights as strolling was possible. So when Hugh and Marjorie Benton closed their front gate and started toward Depot Avenue and the movie lights, they did not particularly remark the numbers of people who passed and stopped them to pass laughing comments of the events of the day. With the thoughts of money she had been harboring, and the newly arisen desire for a change, Marjorie Benton realized with something of a pang that such a change as her day dreams had led her to desire would mean a forfeiting of all this jolly camaraderie. She was not altogether sure that she really wanted it, after all. But as they turned into the principal street and the few lights in front of the main stores greeted her, her mind flew hastily to the vision of New York and its Great White Way as she remembered it on one of her few visits to the city. Yes, that was what she wanted—must have!

So interested was she in her own thoughts, that she did not notice the unusual quietness of the husband who walked beside her, his brows drawn into a furrow, his lips compressed with determination as he glanced once or twice at his pretty young wife, apparently noticing for the first time that Marjorie’s hat wasn’t in the least like that of Mrs. Rolfe who had just passed them with a cheery good evening; that Marjorie’s gloves were undeniably mended; that in spite of the jauntiness with which she wore it, her little blue velvet coat was badly worn about the seams.

It was with a start that Marjorie Benton brought herself back to Atwood to recognize that a small car had stopped at the curb beside them. Someone was calling to her.

“You must be thinking of something very pleasant—and far away,” came the staccato voice of Mrs. Birmingham, as she leaned out of the car and shook her hand admonishingly at Marjorie. “I’ve called you three times.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Marjorie was earnestly apologetic. “I was thinking——”

Little Mr. Birmingham’s snappy laugh broke in to cover her confusion. “Don’t do it, my dear,” he advised. “Bad for your pretty head. Now Matilda, here, she never thinks—and look at her——”

“James William!” Mrs. Birmingham brought all the hauteur she could command in reprimand of her spouse. Then, ignoring him, she turned to the Bentons and there was a purr in her voice as she went on:

“I only stopped you, Marjorie, dear, to see if you would not promise me—positively promise—to be one of the hostesses at the Dilemma Club’s reception next Friday. We’ve seen so little of you recently—everyone is asking why you are keeping so to yourself, and—oh, I know what you’re going to say,” raising her gray gloved hand protestingly as Marjorie started to speak, “—the babies, and all that, but you should not neglect your social duties so—other women have babies, too, and we need you, you know. You’re our prize ‘cultured lady,’ remember, and besides you’re much better off than so many women who never neglect the club. You have your incomparable Mrs. Clancy who will always come when you call her, but how you’re able to manage it when it is so hard for anyone to get servants,—now my second girl who has only been with me a week was telling me only to-day that she couldn’t stay, and——”

Mr. Birmingham’s sniff was loudly audible.

“Second chief cook and bottle washer,” he commented, “and twenty-fourth you’ve tried to have stay and wear a confounded white cap. Hmmph! What a woman needs of two girls to wait on her beats me, eh, Benton?”

Though she flushed angrily, Mrs. Birmingham’s control was admirable as she added, before Marjorie could voice a reply: “Then that’s settled. You’ll come—I can depend on you——”

Marjorie’s thoughts were aghast as she thought of her one all-too-worn best gown, the impossibility of wearing it,—and the still greater impossibility of getting another.

“Why, really, I—I can’t say right now—” Marjorie stammered, and she was conscious of the hot flood that crimsoned her face.

“Certainly she will go!” Hugh Benton broke in in his decided way. His single glance into the knowing depths of Mrs. Birmingham’s small gray eyes had decided him. He felt the slight twinge as his wife nipped his arm in remonstrance, but his lips were still set in that firm line of determination that had first come to him when he had learned that Marjorie wanted more than he had been able to give her. He would make good for Marjorie, and this should be a beginning.

“But dear, I——”

He cut her remonstrance short.

“If it’s a new gown that’s bothering you,” he said bluntly, “then you can order one to-morrow,—from New York. You know,” and he looked squarely at Mrs. Birmingham as she lifted politely inquiring eyebrows, “my wife has been going out so little, that she has not paid the attention to frills that are usual with women, I believe.”

“Splendid!” enthused the banker’s wife, but there was a queer half smile on Birmingham’s thin lips that told of his glee that his Matilda had received one quietus to her patronizing. “Then we won’t keep you any longer. Sorry we haven’t the big car with us,” she drawled. “But it’s a beautiful night for a stroll, isn’t it?”

“We’re going to the movies,” remarked Marjorie, in the tone she might have employed at announcing an opera opening. “They’re having two splendid pictures to-night—why don’t you come with us?”

Mrs. Birmingham stifled a well-assumed yawn. “Oh, the movies,” she said languidly. “They bore me to extinction. I’m dreadfully spoiled, I’m afraid. In New York when I’m with my sister (you know I spent three months there the last time) we went to the theater almost every night. Theaters make the movies seem so—er—banal, don’t you think?”

“Hmmph!” once more remarked the snappy little banker, in a tone that led one to believe it was his favorite expression, or, rather, explosion. “Theatres every night—brother-in-law with a pull that got free tickets for everything where they couldn’t sell seats—made you forget you once wanted to dress your hair and roll your eyes like Theda Bara, didn’t they, eh, Matilda? Well, I like the movies—wish I could be going with you, folks, but we got to be getting along. Good luck!” His hand went toward the starter, but the hand of Mrs. Birmingham stayed him for a last word.

“Oh, I almost forgot, Marjorie, my dear,” she called, as Hugh and Marjorie turned toward the lights of Depot Avenue, “my sister sent me a lot of things yesterday—some new books and so on—and I know you’re just crazy about reading, so I’m going to send some of them over to you for you to read and tell me about. I always get so much more benefit out of a book when someone who is interested tells me about it. You will, there’s a dear?”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Birmingham,” Marjorie began, and she was almost startled by the abrupt way in which Hugh hurried her along, her thanks half expressed.

“Patronizing old frump!” he fumed. “Well, that’s the last of it—no more!”

Marjorie laughed at his intensity.

“Oh, what harm, Hugh, dear?” she defended, and the humorous light that he knew and loved so well chased away the half wistfulness of the last few hours. “She likes it and it doesn’t do me any harm. But,” and she dimpled as she looked up at her tall husband and gleefully squeezed his arm, “did you notice she didn’t have on the beaver coat?”

“Plenty of cat, though,” and Hugh’s frown did not lighten as his hand slipped into his trousers pocket and he laid his money down on the cashier’s window in front of the gay little movie theater.

In shaded Cypress Avenue the Birminghams’ small car whirled along. Its occupants were silent—for a few moments. Mrs. Birmingham broke that silence.

“James William Birmingham,” she declared (he was always “James William” instead of “Jimmie” when Mrs. Birmingham had anything of great importance to say), “you have hurt my feelings!”

The banker snorted. “Then you know how it feels.”

“And in front of the Bentons, of all people!” She was on the verge of tears, but Mr. Birmingham believed in letting a lesson sink in.

“Well, what’s wrong with them?”

“N-nothing, nothing at all,” was the impatient reply. “But, oh, you know how it is as well as I do. Marjorie Benton is just perfect in most people’s eyes, and if anything is wanted, don’t they go and ask her instead of coming to me, the banker’s wife? All I have is clothes and theaters and things, and if you think I’m not going to make her feel that I’m superior in some ways, then you’re all wrong. Marjorie Benton hasn’t had a new thing in years. I’ve got to get even with her someway, or she’d be thinking she was better than I am, or than anyone. All of us pity her, though, because she’s so shabby.”

Louder than at any time previously James William Birmingham exploded his “Hmmph!”

“Hmmph! Pity all you like, but it’ll be wasted, I can tell you. Unless I miss my guess, the Bentons ’ll soon be richer than anyone in this little old town, just as she’s already the brightest and prettiest little woman here, and he’s the finest man I know. Wish I had money enough to back him myself.”

“Wonderful invention, indeed!” Matilda Birmingham was disdainful. “That old rubber stamp thing! Why, we’ve been hearing about it for ages, and I for one, don’t believe it will ever amount to anything.”

“All you know about it.” The banker had the closing word. “Well, you just chew over this—if it wasn’t for a lot of little old inventions like that women like you would be finding a lot more to do keeping house and making a home instead of gadding and talking about their new clothes to someone who hasn’t got ’em!”

• • • • •

Mrs. Clancy, the dependable, was dozing in the kitchen when Hugh and Marjorie returned from their outing. But she had not forgotten to put out on the little table the bit of supper that she knew Hugh and Marjorie liked on such occasions. Marjorie’s smile was different from her usual one, though, as she recalled how often she and Hugh had sat down at their own little table thus, and over and over had reminded each other how much better it was than any restaurant, how much luckier they were than most people. To-night, somehow—well, she wasn’t so sure.

“Not a whimper out of the blessed lambs,” the old serving woman assured Marjorie’s eagerness about her babies. “Oi’ve caught forty winks, too, and—” She stopped in the careful tying of her bonnet strings, to dig deep into a pocket, bringing out a crumpled telegram. “Now, and if Oi didn’t almost forget the bit letter Tim Smith’s bye Jerry brought.”

Marjorie’s heart lost a beat.

“A telegram!” she cried. “Why, who can it be——”

Already Hugh had torn it open, and it was with a light of gladness in his eyes and a flourish as of laying at her feet the wealth of the world, that he handed it to his wife.

“We’ve won, dearest,—I’m sure of it. See it is from the biggest of all the firms I’ve wanted to interest.”

In a daze Marjorie gazed at the few typed words as though they held magic. She was but dimly aware of her mechanical good-night to the good-hearted Irishwoman who made it possible for such little pleasures as she and Hugh had to-night enjoyed. There was entrancement; the words danced in letters of gold before her eyes.

Hugh Benton

Atwood, N. Y.

Meeting with Directors Arranged for Ten Thirty, Sept. 23. Everything Favorable to Date.

Templeton, Baird & Co.

“Dearest!” At last she found voice. “How perfectly wonderful! Oh, I knew you would make me proud of you!” She flew to him and her arms reached up to cling about his neck. The man’s eyes, too, were dim, but there was in them that which showed he knew now he must not fail,—that he must do all this woman he loved and who loved him believed him capable of. His arms folded about her tenderly. With a sudden thought, though, she drew away a bit to glance once more at the crumpled yellow sheet that meant so much. “Why dear!” she gasped wonderingly, “it’s right away, too! Did you notice? This meeting is for to-morrow!”

Hugh Benton nodded.

“Yes, sweetheart. And I’ve been thinking while you’ve been dreaming and waking up to realities. I’ll take the morning train—I’ll telephone Mr. Birmingham—and I can be back at mid-night. You can get Mrs. Clancy to come over and stay with you.”

Marjorie drew back reproachfully.

“Mrs. Clancy! Oh, Hugh, dear! How can you think I could have anybody about when I’ll have so much to think of—so much to plan——”

Hugh smiled a bit ruefully.

“Seemed to me lately you’d already been planning a lot—got new ones to make?” he asked, half teasingly.

“Hundreds, thousands, millions of them,” declared Marjorie, sweeping her hands in a gesture to include the world. “Oh, I won’t be lonely—you can be sure of that. But,” and her eyes roved toward the table with its untouched food and the coffee pot simmering on the stove, “here we are forgetting to eat. It must be serious. Sit down dear, and let’s plan it all out. I’m going to get the chocolate cake. This isn’t to be an ordinary feast, you know!”

Hugh Benton’s eyes were somber as he watched his wife, her face flushed to a deep wild rose, her eyes shining like stars, as she flew to arrange their belated supper. His thoughts were far off.

“I wonder,” he murmured, as he closely followed her movements, his chin cupped in one hand, his elbow resting on the table with its embroidered doilies, Marjorie’s own handiwork, “I wonder if it is really what she wants. But I’ve got to do it—I must make good—I will!”

CHAPTER III

Hugh Benton reached out and took a large piece of the chocolate cake which his wife held toward him. He bit into it hugely with satisfaction.

“Well, little one,” he said, his mouth full of the toothsome morsel, “let’s hear what’s on your mind. Shoot!”

“Hugh, dear!” Marjorie shook a remonstrative finger at him. “You know how I dislike slang! And what if the babies should see you with your mouth crammed like that!”

Her husband grinned boyishly.

“Pardon me,” he said, with exaggerated dignity. “What I meant to say, Mrs. Benton, was, what have you been planning to do when your husband is no longer a wage slave, a poor minion whose chief duty is to watch other people’s money, and shall himself become a personage of wealth and position?”

Marjorie’s eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed rosy with excitement as she answered enthusiastically. “Oh, such heaps and heaps of wonderful plans, dear. I scarcely know how to begin to tell them all. First of all, of course, we’ll leave here and go to New York. We will purchase a lovely home—somewhere on the Drive, I think. Then we will spend days and days going about in all sorts of quaint little shops searching for rare antiques and selecting beautiful furniture and draperies. When our home is ready, we will have a nurse for the kiddies, and after a couple of years, a governess, and when they grow up, Elinor can go to a select finishing school for young ladies, and Howard can attend college and—oh, I could go on forever and ever planning, but it seems absurd, so many years ahead, and—” She stopped suddenly. “Why dear, you’re not enthusing at all, and you don’t seem to be interested in anything I am saying. Don’t my castles in the air meet with your approval?”

Hugh shook his head sadly. “Well not exactly, dear—the first time since we’ve been married, too, but our ideas are mighty far apart.”

“Well then, what do your ideas happen to be?” Marjorie was a little hurt.

Hugh contemplated his wife for a moment, as though loath to say anything that might dim the enthusiasm that glowed in her blue eyes.

“My thoughts are a long way from New York,” he began, “probably you wouldn’t be interested at all. But all my life I’ve had just one dream.”

“Of course, I’m interested in what you want, Hugh dear,” quietly answered Marjorie, but something in her tone belied the ardor of the words. “Tell me.”

“It’s just this.” For a moment Hugh stopped, and the vision he conjured brought an eagerness to his words when he spoke.

“I want to be a farmer—a gentleman farmer. I want to buy an estate or small farm not far from New York but near this place where we have always been so happy. I’ll hire men to do the rough part of the work, but I want to keep myself busy and occupied overseeing things. I never did like to be idle. You know that. Then we can have that nurse for the children so that we can run up to New York occasionally for a few days and have all the theaters and opera we want. Then when the youngsters are old enough to attend school, I should like to send them to a public school. Some of our greatest men and women have been educated in them, you must recall. I don’t believe in finishing schools—never did—they’d make Elinor a snob. As for colleges, unless a boy is absolutely sincere in wanting to be a professional man, what good would they do him? Howard would just get in with the idle rich, which in the end would surely spell disaster for him morally and financially. You see, my dear, I want my daughter to be a real woman like her mother; and my son, all I ask is that he be a man!” He stopped, musing.

Had Hugh Benton not been so interested in his own dream, he would have seen on the face of his wife more varying emotions than he had ever seen since he had known her. They would have been new to him. Disappointment she showed, disapproval, injury, then, swiftly following, a real indignation in the narrowing to pin points of the pupils of her wide eyes. But when she spoke, it was in a meek, cool voice.

“And what about your wife?”

Hugh laughed. “Why, everything for my wife,” he said. “You’ll be chatelaine of it all.” He glanced up at her and stopped, fork suspended in midair at the strange expression he saw. “Why, Marjorie, little girl,” he queried, earnestly, “what’s wrong? What is it, dear?”

Marjorie’s foot tapped impatiently on the bare floor of the kitchen-dining room. She gave an almost imperceptible shrug.

“Nothing,” she declared, without apparent interest. “Nothing at all—except that after all these five years of privation and hard work, now when you have prospects of actually becoming wealthy, you sit there and calmly propose to bury me on a farm!” The scorn in the utterance of the last words brought a look of surprise, quickly followed by pain to the eyes of Hugh Benton. He spoke, slowly, contritely.

“I suppose I’m selfish, like all men,” he said sadly, “but, someway, because I’ve been so happy myself, I’ve never known before that the years we’ve been married had been a burden to you.”

Then the real Marjorie Benton came to the surface. She reached over to grab his hand convulsively.

“I’m the one to be forgiven, dear,” she begged contritely. “Oh, I never meant that—indeed I didn’t—you know I’ve been happy. Oh, I didn’t realize what I was saying!” She forced back the tears.

“Of course, it hasn’t been hard—I’ve had you, haven’t I, and my babies, but somehow, I can’t make you understand how I feel—I’m all unstrung. I do want to try life in a different sphere among an entirely different class of people. I can’t help having aspirations for my children, can I, and I can’t see anything ahead of them if they are narrowed down to a life like ours has been. And what could I do if we go to live on a farm? Just routine—monotony—forever!”

“You could do a great deal of good, dear,” Hugh answered gently. “Think of all the poor and needy that you could aid. You could be a ministering angel right here in our own little town, for you know as well as I do how many there are who would be grateful to have a helping hand.”

“So you think being a ‘ministering angel’ could fill my life?”

“Combined with the love of your husband and children, it most assuredly should. Why, dear, there isn’t anything in the world that can bring you such happiness as helping someone in distress.”

“Well, couldn’t I do that in New York?” Marjorie brightened a little. “There’s lots of room for charity there—I could go in for settlement work or something. Think how much larger a field I would have to ‘minister’ in!”

So earnest was his gravity, that he passed his wife’s bit of levity unheeded.

“There you are!” he exclaimed. “The field’s too large—and there are already too many in it—workers of all kinds,—sincere and insincere. I guess you could find enough to do, if you want to, a lot nearer home.”

With his usual manner of having settled a matter, Hugh Benton rose from the little table and yawned broadly. He never even thought as he saw his wife fingering a doily, nervously folding and unfolding it in creased patterns, that this was a symptom of nervous tumult.

“Oh, well, I guess we’re a couple of kids,” he told her with a laugh. “Day dreaming,—fussing over make believes. We haven’t any money—yet—Time enough to argue when the papers are signed. And if I don’t get to bed pretty quick I won’t be in much shape to talk to those people, either. Coming along?”

Marjorie shook her head.

“Not for a few minutes. I must put the cake away. Butter and eggs still mean something, as you’ve reminded me. So run along.”

Deeply in love with his wife as he was, Hugh Benton would not have dropped off to sleep so quickly had he known how long his wife was to sit where he had left her, brooding over their talk, telling herself of his unfairness, wearing herself into a mood so entirely unlike herself. There was indeed, something radically wrong with Marjorie Benton,—and money was at the bottom of it. Already it had made her almost quarrel with her husband. Now the prospect of it had roused in her a bitterness and resentment of which she would not have believed herself capable a few short weeks before.

When at last she crept softly in beside her sleeping husband, it was with the determination that she would not be put aside in the way Hugh had put her—that she was going to have one great big say as to how that not-yet-earned money was going to be spent. And none of her plans included any farms or ministering angels. Restlessly she turned from side to side, unable to sleep. She was filled with smoldering indignation. Surely she was right about Hugh treating her unfairly. Wasn’t it his duty to live where she would be happiest, if he could afford it? Was it right for him to want to please himself only? And besides—all that talk about the children. Surely she, their mother, should know what was best for them. With her last troubled waking thought a determination to let Hugh understand exactly how she stood in the matter before he left for New York, she dropped into an uneasy slumber.

A dream came. She was walking through a narrow path in a beautiful garden. On each side of her were rows of magnificent roses. She gathered them as she walked along. Repeatedly a voice whispered to her to turn back, but she ignored the warning, and went on her way blithely. As she reached a bend in the path and was about to turn into it Hugh suddenly appeared before her. He, too, implored her to relinquish her roses and return from whence she came. She eyed him haughtily from head to foot, and disdainfully brushing aside his detaining hand, went forward. Then it was that the ground gave way under her, and she found herself slipping downward—downward, with startling rapidity. The weight of the roses in her arms became unbearable. It was impossible to free herself from their overwhelming odor of sickening sweetness; she was submerged beneath them. In desperation she commanded her last ounce of strength and screamed aloud for Hugh to save her.

She awoke to find him bending solicitously over her.

“What is it, honey?” he asked gently. “That nightmare must have been dreadful—you screamed so you awakened us all.” Marjorie sat up in bed dazedly, rubbing her eyes. Through the open door she saw Elinor and Howard peeking at her through the bars of their cribs. “Did I scream?” she asked wonderingly. “How silly—I did have a dreadful dream, but,” she sat up wide awake, “what time is it?”

“Half past six.”

“Already?” She yawned a bit, but strangely was not sleepy. Sudden memory of her determination came to her. “Well, then, I’m going to get up and dress the babies as long as I scared them out of their sleep. I’ll start them with their breakfast, then I want to have a talk with you, Hugh.”

Hugh groaned with mock seriousness.

“Can’t a fellow even go to the big town to make a million dollars without having to carry a lot of samples to match or have to bring home an aluminum pan or something?”

But there was no answering light of humor from his wife. How little Hugh knew how serious had been their talk of the night before, she thought as she deftly swung little Elinor around to fasten her tiny rompers. Well, he would know before he left that she was not going to let him have his own way without a word from her.

As a usual thing Hugh’s not over-melodious whistling as he shaved and dressed was a pleasure to her. She thought of him as a big boy, a grown-up edition of her own small Howard, and it was with an indulgent smile that she would listen to him as she hurried the children with their breakfasts while his coffee was being prepared and the little table set for their own breakfast. This morning, however, it had a strangely disturbing effect. Somehow she wished he wouldn’t do it. He sounded so—well, so overconfident. Of course, she was glad if he felt confident of the success of his mission in New York, but he shouldn’t be planning, as she knew he was, to spend their money as he had proposed the night before.

But Hugh was so full of his plans for selling his invention, so eager in his hurried talk, that he never noticed her attitude, her unusual silence as she opened his eggs, spilling them a little as her hand trembled with the indignation that she had nursed through the night. He hurried through the last mouthful, rose and started to put on his overcoat.

“Got to hurry a little in spite of our early start, honey,” he observed, glancing at his watch. “Hurry up with your orders for the head of the house.”

Still Marjorie Benton was silent until she had followed her husband from the kitchen out onto the little porch and closed the door behind her.

“Hugh,” she began, and there was firmness and determination in her tone and in the set of her daintily-molded young chin. “I’m sorry to have to say this, but I can’t let you go off to New York until we come to a decision about the matter of which we spoke last night.”

“What matter?” For the minute, his mind far away on what he intended to do, the master of the house of Benton had forgotten the talk which had come to mean so much to his wife. Then a light dawned on him, and he grinned. “Oh, yes, I remember,” and his light laugh only further annoyed Marjorie, “we spent several million dollars in several different ways, didn’t we?”

“It’s no laughing matter, Hugh.” At last Hugh turned his wondering gaze on his wife’s set face to see that she was really in earnest. “Why, honey——”

“Oh, it’s all right to put me off with sweet words,” Marjorie burst out with a sudden impatience, “but we must have an understanding before you go. It’s just as well for you to know I won’t be shut up in anybody’s farm house.”

The man glanced again at his watch, and all the smile had died from his eyes as he spoke quietly.

“Don’t you think it just a little unfair to bring up unpleasant things to-day, of all days—when I ought not to think of anything but business. Trivial annoyances of this kind are anything but pleasant at any time, but——”

“Trivial possibly to you,” Marjorie retorted, and her face flushed darkly as she bit her lips to keep back the tears that were imminent, “but it’s a serious matter to me, and I want you to know exactly how I feel. I think it is but right that you should, before even another step is taken. It is just this. Not only do I positively refuse to live on a farm, but I will not have my children given a public-school education if I can afford to give them any other!”

“Said it all?” Hugh bit off his words, and there was a graveness and injury in his manner that was new to Marjorie, and which she did not fail to catch. “If you have, I think I’d better be getting along, or we may not have any money to quarrel over!”

Chameleon that she was, Marjorie Benton was changed in a minute. One soft arm reached up to cling around her husband’s neck, while she pulled him toward her by one overcoat lapel.

“Oh, Hugh dear, we weren’t quarreling, were we? Please say we weren’t! Why, we’ve never had a quarrel in our lives, and—oh, I just wanted you to know how I feel, and try to think as I do. You will, won’t you?”

Hugh Benton bent and kissed both eyes that looked at him so beseechingly.

“I’ll try, dear,” was his grave promise. “You know that your happiness is all that concerns me, just as you know it is for you that I want to put this thing across at all.”

Marjorie Benton sighed with happiness as she bade her husband good-by. What a good place the world was after all!

Busy as she was through the day, Mrs. Hugh Benton often thought afterward that it was the longest day of her life. It seemed that night and the train that would bring Hugh back—back to her with the good news that she was sure he would bring—would never come.

In the afternoon there was one slight diversion. Mrs. Birmingham’s big car stopped outside her gate, and the great lady herself came into Marjorie’s humble little home bearing the books she had promised the day before. But for once in her life, Marjorie was not in the least interested in the chatter of the banker’s wife. She did not even take the trouble to offer any prideful reason for Hugh’s absence in New York. She only wanted to be alone to think what he was doing, and to plan what they would all do with the wealth he would lavish on them.

Four o’clock, five—six at last. Time for Howard’s and Elinor’s supper. At last they were in bed. The last question was answered, little Elinor’s eyes shutting tightly in spite of herself as she crooned the last lines of her “Wock-a baby” she had had in mother’s lap.

Alone, Marjorie was distinctly restless. She even began to be sorry she had not sent for Mrs. Clancy, and once even started for the telephone to send for the garrulous old lady. It was such a long time between six-thirty and mid-night. But no, she would find something to do. It was not with a great deal of success that she tried to busy herself, however. She straightened out the sideboard drawers. Another half hour gone. There was a lot of mending piled in her sewing basket, but somehow she did not feel like that now. She contented herself with rearranging its contents. Scattered about were a lot of magazines she and Hugh had finished reading. Now was a good time to tie them up to be sent to the infirmary. She straightened up from this task to glance at the clock which had never ticked so slowly before. Why, it was only a little after seven now! Her eyes wandered to the table where she had placed the gayly bound books Mrs. Birmingham had brought. She idly turned the pages of one. It did not look uninteresting. Once more her hand reached out for a moment through habit for the mending basket. Then she laughed as she withdrew it. What was the use? They wouldn’t have to be wearing mended things much longer, any of them. She might as well read until Hugh’s train reached Atwood.

“I’ll find out just how Mrs. Birmingham’s sister’s taste in literature runs,” she mused, “though I doubt if Mrs. B. will ever profit very much this time by having her books read for her.”

Another shovelful of coal for the fire, and with the big wicker chair drawn up in front of it, Marjorie Benton gave herself a little shake to settle down comfortably as she opened her book and slipped her fingers between its pages to find if there were any uncut leaves. For the first time that day, she forgot the passage of time. Page after page she turned as the clock ticked on, striking its hours and half hours unheeded. It was a fascinating story, at that.

The soft closing of the kitchen door caused her to look up with a start. She jumped to her feet as though she could not believe her eyes. There was Hugh standing before her, a wide bland smile on his handsome face as he drew off a brand new glove.

“Hugh, dear!” she exclaimed, “how you startled me! I didn’t hear you come up the walk—why, I didn’t even hear the train! Did you get an earlier one? What time is it?”

“Ten after twelve, honey,” he answered. “You must have been reading something mighty good, and here I came in so quietly. Thought you’d be asleep!”

“Asleep! Oh, how could you! Don’t you know I’m just perishing to know what happened! Tell me—quick, quick!”

Hugh Benton’s ready grin broadened. He was teasingly slow in answering as his hand went into his pocket and he drew out a wallet, and with maddening slowness drew from it a certified check.

“Just a scrap of paper,” he commented off-handedly, “but this will tell you what you want to know, and then I’ll tell you the rest.”

Marjorie’s eyes widened with amazement at the startling figures on the face of the small piece of paper he dangled before her. She was too choked with emotion for a moment to speak. Her husband’s arms closed gently around her and he drew her to him.

“We did it, dear—you and I,” he whispered. “And it’s all for you. This is only a starter, too, for if you think this is big, you ought to see the contracts I’ve made for royalties.”

“Hugh! Hugh!” Marjorie’s voice was a sob as she kissed him again and again. “Oh, I’m too happy to tell you! Oh, please don’t wake me out of this wonderful dream!”

“Well, I, for one,” Hugh laughed as he slipped the check between his fingers, “am too used to handling these things belonging to other people to think this is a dream. There is only one thing I’m thinking of, and that is your happiness.” Marjorie drew back from him a step and looked levelly into his eyes.

“Are you quite, quite sure, Hugh dear?” she begged earnestly.

“Quite.” In that one word Hugh Benton put a world of meaning. “I’ve had plenty of time to think, too—and I’ve decided. You shall do with this money just exactly as you please. Whatever your plans are, they must be for the best, so I have given up all thoughts of the farm. And now that’s settled,” he said, in the old way, giving himself a little shake of renunciation.

“Oh, Hugh, you are a darling! And you’ll never regret it—never regret letting me have my way in this one big thing. I promise you!”

For a moment the big man’s eyes were solemn. Into them came just a hint of that far-away look of wonder. But his voice was tender, if a bit grave as he spoke:

“Let’s hope not, sweetheart—let’s hope not!”

CHAPTER IV

Christmas Eve in the new home!

A Christmas tree that glittered and dazzled with its festoons of twinkling little bulbs of sapphire and gold, ruby, and orange, and violet, and pale lemon from its wide-spreading base in the center of the Bentons’ upstairs living room of their fourteen-room house on that most wonderful of driveways, Riverside, in New York—to the top-most branch that swept the high creamy ceiling jostling the fine bisque cherub that adorned that branch— And a house warming.

As Marjorie Benton with a long-drawn sigh of contentment looked for the hundredth time about this one new big room with its sweeping spaces, its gay cretonnes and deep, cushion-piled wicker chairs and out through the row of French windows across the dusky blue of the Hudson to the Palisades with their twinkling starlights, she felt that life at last was worth living. All this—all—and her arms moved in a comprehensive gesture impelled by her thoughts—was hers! Her home! What more fitting than that they should have their house warming on Christmas Eve. Marjorie’s tired nerves and body that ached a bit, too, in sympathy, reminded her that she had not been able to have all this ready for Christmas Eve without effort. But how glad she was that she had done it! Glad!

True, Hugh was glooming a little—sentimental glooming for a time he should be glad to have put behind him, but he would get over that she was sure. He would come to see that her judgment was best, and that this was the way to live. Once more she sighed with utter contentment as she rearranged a heavy strand of silver tinsel that dangled inartistically. It was all ready for the children now and she could take time to breathe. In a deep chair in front of the sputtering open fire on its quaintly tiled hearth she dropped down for a moment’s rest and retrospection.

How busy and interesting had been the few short months that had passed since the night Hugh had come home to her in Atwood with his wonderful news!

They had been most fortunate in securing the services of a capable and competent nurse for the children, so they could catch the early train to New York every day on their house-hunting expeditions. Their reward had been this beautiful little house on the Drive, with its view of the Hudson. To Marjorie it seemed a mansion with its fourteen rooms, its servants’ quarters in the attic, their garage with space for three cars, and oh, so many more things she had not at first thought of herself.

Then had begun the real work and pleasure of furnishing it. What a never-changing miracle it was to Marjorie to be able to select whatsoever she wished without having to hesitate and consider the price and durability of each article as she had always been obliged to do.

Every detail had been completed a few days before Christmas, when they bade farewell to their friends and the little village with its memories of five happy years, and moved into the new home.

Stretched lazily on Marjorie’s wicker chaise longue, smoking his after-dinner cigar, careless of his tumbling of his wife’s carefully selected new pillows, Hugh Benton let his gaze rove over the vivid scene. It paused as his eyes reached his wife sitting before the cheery fire, her slight smile telling of what she saw in the blazing logs. Because they were so close, so much to each other, Marjorie Benton felt this and as she turned in Hugh’s direction, her smile broadened as her features lighted up with expressed happiness. In a moment she was by his side, kneeling on a cushion in the old familiar child manner her husband knew and loved, and her fingers were running caressingly through his shock of dark hair.

“What do you think of it all, dear?” she asked exultingly. “Isn’t the tree wonderful? I think those decorators were marvelous, but I guess I’m not quite used to money yet, for I almost dread to think of the bill they’ll present.”

Slowly Hugh sat up, and reached for her hand. He patted it gently as he spoke.

“It has all been wonderful, dear,” he answered, “and you mustn’t forget you’re to forget the bills—but honey-girl,” and there was a little droop to the corners of his mouth and unmistakable yearning in his earnest eyes as he voiced his plaint, “somehow I can’t help missing the little old Christmas Eves we always had at Atwood. Remember how you and I would sit up nights ahead stringing popcorn, gilding walnuts, tinseling cotton to represent snow, and doing everything we could to have a pretty, effective tree for the kiddies, without hardly investing anything?”

Marjorie laughed as she gave his hand a playful squeeze. To her it was incomprehensible, with all this grandeur before him, that Hugh should regret the Atwood days.

“How funny, those other little trees were compared with this one, weren’t they?” she wanted to know.

But there was no gleam of answering mirth from Hugh.

“Umm, funny, maybe,” he agreed with an air of reservation. But there was a fuller meaning than Marjorie caught, as he added: “You’re right—one couldn’t possibly compare those other trees with this. Still,” and he was so plaintively appealing that his wife’s clear laughter rang out more bubblingly than ever, “still, we got a lot of happiness out of those funny little trees, didn’t we, dear?”

Marjorie was not going to commit herself too far.

“Yes—I suppose we did,” was her reluctant admission.

“And say, do you remember,” Hugh rambled on, his eyes aglow with animation, “the night we cut out the movies to buy two whole ornaments the next day—I’ll tell you——”

Marjorie stopped him a little impatiently. She playfully placed her hand over his mouth.

“Now, Hugh darling, don’t lecture—there’s a good boy! I’m not going to let you on Christmas Eve. You’re just not used to things yet. When you are, you’ll just be bound to admit you have the wisest little wife in the world—” She stopped his protest with a quick caress as she got to her feet, and went over to the tree to place a life-like big doll and a “really, truly” railroad train in more conspicuous positions.

“It is beautiful, though, isn’t it, dear?” she repeated, and without waiting for his reply, hurried on: “There are two people I know who’ll think so if you don’t. Just wait till you see their eyes in the morning!”

She stifled an unwelcome yawn with the pat of fingers.

“More tired than I thought, dear,” she admitted. “I really must get some sleep. There’s so much to enjoy to-morrow. Coming along, or are you going to smoke for awhile?”

“Believe I’ll finish my cigar. Don’t stay awake waiting for me now—good-night, dearest, pleasant dreams, and a world of happy Christmases before you,” and he kissed her as he opened the door for her, in the old-world manner he never neglected.

Alone, Hugh Benton extinguished all the lights in the room, even those on the tree, and seated himself in the rocker before the fire. For a long time he sat smoking his cigar, gazing into the dying embers. His thoughts were of many things—of his years of unalloyed happiness—of his great love for his wife and babies, and then of this newly-acquired fortune. Marjorie’s theory of living he at last concluded appeared to be more sensible than his own, after all, and when he finally arose, it was with the full determination to use every power within his grasp to meet all the requirements due this new position of his. He would mold his life anew; become a man of affairs. With all that was in him he would strive diligently to reach the pinnacle of success that his ambitious wife had planned for him.

Boredom has long been the common complaint of the idle rich. Many things are excused because of it; many useless and reckless occupations condoned for and by that favored class on the ground that the time passes so slowly that they must have something to do. Whether or no this is exactly the case, however, is a moot question. To come right down to it, time generally passes a great deal more quickly for those who have more store of worldly goods than they would wish. To the woman of fashion and wealth months and days seem actually to have flown by from the time she made her more or less blushing début until she suddenly wakes one day to realize that there is gray in her hair, and that it will take arduous hours at the beauty parlors to smooth over the ravages of time in a once-unwrinkled countenance. Men, too—more often than not the man of unlimited means comes to know that middle life is upon him and that he has not accomplished any of the great things that he had once planned, always having known that with wealth to back him he could accomplish them. It is all the fault of time. It flies rapidly—too rapidly for those who have the means for gratifying every wish and whim.

The Bentons were no exception to the rule. Time flew by on such light wings for them that it was hard to realize that so much had been accomplished, so much changed in the three years that might have been so many months since they had left Atwood for New York. Of them all, though, the children had most readily accustomed themselves to the change and long since had become seasoned little New Yorkers with little noses turned up at less lucky youngsters who had no nice warm closed car to command whenever they wished a ride.

Hugh, too, at the end of the three years (though his change had been more gradual), might always have lived on Riverside Drive and known club life since his salad days. Unlike his wife, who in the first flush of her good fortune had elected play as her life work, Hugh had turned his attention to work. Ambitious as he was, and before his first success with his invention with no outlet for it, he had not let grass grow under his feet since he had changed his cottage in Atwood for a house on Riverside Drive. Personal attention to the details of the manufacture of his invention had brought him in contact with business men of wealth and solidity and deep down Hugh Benton was not the sort of man to neglect what opportunity threw in his way. From manufacturing to Wall Street had been but a step. Had Hugh Benton’s lucky fairy been with him day by day to wave her magic wand, he could not have had more fortune in his ventures. His was not the story of the ordinary novice. It was the thousandth one that daily draws more and more grist to the mills of the “big men” who rule so autocratically in that small street called Wall;—the story that draws adventurers with all the fascination that fishermen who daily cast their lines off the bathing beaches know because of tales of a solitary tide runner that some time has been known to become unwary.

So it was, that at the end of three years, Hugh Benton was a rich man. He was becoming richer. He might have been a blood relation of Midas, said those who had come eagerly to watch for a tip that might fall from his lips unguardedly, for in so short a time his had become the platitudinous but nonetheless expressive sobriquet of “Lucky Benton.”

With success, came all that it usually implies. His, too, had become the pleasures of the rich. Almost without knowing it, so subtle had come the transformation, home no longer held the joys it once did for the former bank employee. Roadsters of high speed, cards at any of the many clubs where he had been eagerly welcomed, fishing and hunting expeditions from the base of a hundred-thousand-dollar “shack” in the Adirondacks had taken the place of more homely pleasures. It had all come about so easily too. Looking back in one of his few retrospective moods Hugh Benton smiled as he recalled the thought he would never accustom himself to New York. He smiled a bit disdainfully at his own small viewpoint when he remembered how once he had believed he would be content as a gentleman farmer.

Only Marjorie Benton was dissatisfied, though she was queerly conscious that she ought not to be—that she had everything that she had once so sincerely believed necessary to her happiness. The artificiality of all about her had come to her with a shock, an eye opening all the more distressing because of its suddenness. Marjorie Benton had found out she did not know how to play. More, she had discovered she did not want to. At least she did not want to play as did those with whom she came in contact and who had, from the horizon of Atwood, seemed all that was most desirable in the world. For instance, one of her most eager plans when she once put herself to sleep planning was to play bridge and spend wonderful afternoons in the company of cultured and delightful women such as those of whom she had read and whom she hoped to emulate. One of her first steps had been to get an instructress, so that she would be prepared to enter “society.”

It had not been hard for the Bentons to enter the charmed circle. It had been surprisingly easy, in fact, for Hugh’s financial success opened many doors that might otherwise have been barred, and present-day “society” may well be trusted not to overlook the tales the journals have to tell of sudden wealth (and Hugh had proven good copy) however much they may profess to scorn it.

So she had met a great many people, as the wives of Hugh’s friends had called and invited her to one affair after the other. At first she had been fairly beside herself with joy. But it was of short duration. Try as she would, she simply could not “take” to any of these new friends. They were all so frivolous and petty. Life held nothing for them obviously but bridge, dress, theater and gossip.

Then had come the day of her own first bridge party and her first real shock and mute protest. Somehow the thought of playing for money had never entered her mind. She had imagined that they played for a prize, the same as they had done at home at their little whist socials; or perhaps society matrons simply played for amusement.

“You must be particularly nice to Mrs. Gregory,” Hugh told her when she was starting off for the bridge party at the exclusive Mrs. Arnold’s Fifth Avenue home. “She’s one of ‘the’ Gregorys, you know, and it will mean a great deal socially to have her good will.”

Marjorie promised. This would not be hard, for was it not her way to be particularly nice to all her own and her husband’s friends and acquaintances? It was Mrs. Gregory who gave Mrs. Hugh Benton her surprise and shock, however. At the table where she sat with three other players, including Hugh’s Mrs. Gregory, Mrs. Allen cut the cards languidly and remarked:

“Well, what shall it be? May I suggest a quarter of a cent?”

Mrs. Gregory suppressed a polite yawn.

“Oh, my dear!” was her reproof. “How can you suggest wasting our time so! You know I never play for anything less than two cents—it’s boring enough even then.”

So Marjorie Benton played for money. She had not in the least intended to, but she was too embarrassed to utter a protest. She played, and with a mind perturbed, of course, played badly. At the end of the afternoon she had lost sixty dollars. Her cheeks burned as she made out her check and laid it on the table.

All the way home as she sat comfortably in her limousine she thought of it. It wasn’t the money—sixty dollars meant nothing to Marjorie Benton—she would have felt precisely the same had she won. It was the principle of the thing that worried her—she felt utterly debased to think that she had spent an afternoon gambling. She couldn’t imagine just why it should affect her that way, unless it was her puritanical upbringing that arose to the surface, despite all her efforts to force it back.

When she told Hugh about it, he laughed, and called her a “little old-fashioned country girl.”

“Have you forgotten about ‘living in Rome,’ honey?” he said lightly. “Don’t let it upset you. You’ll get used to it!”

But Marjorie knew better. There was only one thing to do. So never again did she play bridge. Bridge bored her, she insisted, and she didn’t enjoy it.