I
EXAMINATIONS came at St. Thomas's, and Lariny passed with good grades, and checked off his list several subjects about which he would never have to think again.
He had now spent fourteen months in Connecticut; and during that period more than a million Americans had been ferried across to France. Jerry Pendleton and fifty thousand other sergeants were ready to try out the idea that German machine-gun nests could be wiped out by baseball players throwing Budd hand grenades. During the fourteen months' period the plants had been working day and night without let-up. Smoke billowed from their chimneys, the workers toiled like swarms of ants, and the products were piled by the million in warehouses in France and behind the fighting front. The doughboys had had a sort of tryout at the battle of Cantigny, and now were being moved into position to stop the German advance on Paris.
Such was the news in the papers when Lanny sat down to discuss with his father the problem of how to spend the summer. He still wanted to go into the plant; and when Robbie asked his ideas, he said: “Why shouldn't I take a job like anybody else, and see how it feels to put in an eight-hour day?”
“Beginning at the bottom of the ladder?” smiled the father.
“Isn't that the accepted way?”
“Accepted by the fiction editors. You'd be set down in one corner of one room, and learn six motions of your hands, and do them say eight hundred times a day for three months. You would learn that it is very fatiguing.”
“I thought I might learn something about the people I was working with.”
“You'd learn that nine out of ten of them don't know anything but their six motions, and don't care about those. You'd learn that they are making a lot of money, and don't know what to do with it except to buy fancy shirts and socks and a second-hand car. You can learn all that by going down on Center Street any evening.”
This was discouraging. “I didn't like to suggest going into the office, Robbie, because I don't know anything, and I saw that everybody was so busy.”
“Both those things are true. But, first, tell me what's in your mind. Do you want to become a Budd executive, and live out by the country club? Or would you rather learn my business in Europe? In other words, do you want to make munitions or sell them?”
“I thought I ought to know both jobs, Robbie.”
“You have to know something about both if you're going to know either; but they are highly specialized, and you have to concentrate. It's like choosing your major and minor subjects when you go to college.”
“Well, you're asking if I want to be with you, or with Uncle Lawford. You know what I'll say to that.”
“Then why not start in my office, and see everything in the plant from there, as I do?”
“Can you make sure I won't get in the way?”
“I'll make mighty darn sure of it,” said the father. “If you get in my way, I'll tell you, and if you get in other people's way, they'll tell you.”
“That's fair enough.”
“All right then; here's my idea for the summer: have a desk in my room, and sit there and study munitions instead of sines and cosines or the names of English kings. When I interview callers you listen, and when I dictate letters, you get the correspondence and follow it back until you understand the deal. Study contracts and specifications, prices and discounts; get the blueprints, and what you don't understand ask me about. Learn the formulas for steel, and when you know enough to understand what you're seeing, go down to the shop and watch the procèss. When you know the parts of a gun, take it apart and see if you can put it together again. Go to the testing grounds and watch it work — all sorts of things like that.”
Lanny listened in a glow. “Gee, Robbie, that's too much!”
“How far you get will depend on you. This much ought to be certain — in three months you'll know whether you're really interested and want to go on. Is that a deal?”
“You bet it is!”
“I'll tell my secretaries to give you whatever papers you ask for, and you'll make it your business to turn them back to the person you got them from. You mustn't touch the files yourself, because there can't be any blundering in them. If there's anything else you want, ask me, because everybody in the place is working under heavy pressure, and they wouldn't like you if you tripped them up. One thing you know already — you won't ever breathe a word to anybody about what you learn on this job.”
II
For a while Lanny was like a sailorman who has dug up an old chest full of Spanish doubloons and jewels; he couldn't get enough of looking at them and running them through his hands. All those mysterious things that he had heard his father discussing with army officers and ministers of war were now unveiled to him. One of the first that came along was a lot of reports from the firms abroad that had leased Budd patents for the duration of the war; also the secret reports that Bub Smith was sending on the same subject. It was like being turned loose amid the private papers of Sherlock Holmes! Lanny dreamed of the day when he might be able to call Robbie's attention to some discrepancy in the reports of Zaharoff's companies, something that Robbie himself had overlooked in the rush of affairs. But he never had that luck.
His new job brought him the honor of an invitation to dine at his grandfather's. He and Robbie went together, and the old gentleman said: “Well, young man, I hear you have kept your promise.” Just that, and no more.
They talked about the war developments, and ate a New England boiled dinner served by an old-maid servant under the direction of an old-maid relative. Later in the evening the grandfather said: “Well, young man, you have attended my Bible class. Have you learned anything?” Lanny said that he had; and at once the other launched on a discourse having to do with the one certainty of Salvation through Faith. He talked for five minutes or more; and then he turned to Robbie and remarked: “Well, number 17-B gun seems to be holding up pretty well in France.”
Lanny was so absorbed in his new researches that he wanted to get to the office early, and wanted to stay at night when something kept his father. But Esther intervened again, and Robbie agreed — a growing youth ought not to work more than an eight-hour day, and Lanny ought to get some tennis and a swim in the pool at the country club before dinner. So it was ordered; and so the way was prepared for another stage in a young man's expanding career.
The Newcastle Country Club had purchased two large farms and built a one-story red brick clubhouse, close enough to town so that businessmen could motor out now and then for a round of golf before dinner on summer evenings. Besides the Budd people, there were officials of other manufacturing concerns, of utilities and banks and the bigger stores; several doctors and lawyers, the local newspaper publisher, and a few gentlemen of no special calling. The ladies came in the afternoon to play bridge, and in the evenings there were dances, and now and then some entertainment to relieve the boredom of people who knew one another too well. When you have lived all your life in a town, it may seem dull and commonplace; but when you are young, and a stranger, the commonest varieties of gossip take on the aspect of lessons in human nature.
There were several “sets” in this club: groups of persons who considered themselves superior to others, whether because they were richer, or because their families were older, or because they drank less, or because they drank more. There were a few who regarded themselves as clever; they were younger, and had the ideas called “modern.” Since the western part of Connecticut is a suburb of New York, there were “smart” people, who did what they pleased and made cynical remarks about the “mores” of their grandfathers. You couldn't very well keep them out of a club, because some of them belonged to the “best” families.
Of course such a group would be interested in a handsome youth who had lived abroad, and spoke French fluently, and could talk about Cannes and Paris and London, Henley and Ascot and Long-champs. He played the piano, he danced well, and if he did not smoke or drink, that made him all the more an object of curiosity; the bored ladies imagined that he must be virginal, and they made themselves agreeable, and worried because he insisted upon staying in a dull office and couldn't be lured away for a tête-à-tête.
It was the practice of the club to give dramatic performances during the summer, in an open-air theater built in a woodland glade. There was a “dramatics committee,” and hot arguments as to what sort of plays should be given. The smart crowd wanted modern things, full of talk about sex; the conservatives demanded and got something sentimental and sweet, suitable for the young people. In view of the conditions prevailing, they had given a war play called Lilac Time, which had been the success of the previous season in New York.
This summer everybody was supposed to be absorbed in war work. The businessmen went to their offices early and stayed late. The women spent their spare time rolling bandages, knitting socks and sweaters, or attending committee meetings where such activities were planned. But there were a few whom these efforts did not satisfy; perhaps their hearts were not in the killing of their fellow human beings, or in arousing the killing impulse in others. One could not say this, in the midst of all the patriotic fervors; what one said was that the cultural life of the community must not be allowed to lapse altogether, and that overworked executives who were forgoing their customary month of vacation ought to have some gracious form of entertainment.
So it was that the dramatics committee had summoned its courage and undertaken a production of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, which provides a variety of outdoor diversions and has charming music. The committee cast about for players suited to the various roles, and invited Lanny to become one of two lovelorn gentlemen who wander through a forest in the neighborhood of Athens. No one on the committee knew that Lanny himself had been a lovelorn gentleman for a couple of years. He still was — for only a few days ago he had received a letter from his erstwhile sweetheart, mentioning casually in the course of other news that she was about to be married to the grandson of the Earl of Sandhaven, who had been recalled from the “Mespot” front and was now attached to the War Office in London.
Lanny said he didn't think he'd have time to rehearse a play; but the committee assured him that the work would be done in the evening — of necessity, since the part of the Duke of Athens was to be played by a stately vice-president of the First National Bank, and the part of Bottom was entrusted to a member of the town's busiest law firm. Lanny's family gave their approval, and thereafter he dined at the club with other members of the cast, and on the stage of the open-air theater he alternately pursued and repulsed a beautiful damsel whose father managed the waterworks of the city of Newcastle. To his rival for her favor he recited:
“Lysander, keep thy Hermia; I will none: If e'er I loved her, all that love is gone.”
Lanny could say this well, because he had only to imagine that Lysander was the heir to an English earldom, and that Hermia's last name was Codwilliger, pronounced Culliver.
III
America is the land of mass production and standardization; whatever it is that you want done, you will find somebody ready to do it according to the latest improved methods — if you have the price. If you want to raise funds for charity by means of amateur theatricals, you will discover that there are firms which specialize in showing you exactly how to do it. They will send you a director to take charge; they will rent you scenery and costumes, or provide experts to make them; they will advise you what play to give, and if you choose a modern one they will arrange about the copyright; they will have tickets and programs printed — in short they will do everything to smooth the development of whatever histrionic talent may be latent in Osawatomie, Kansas, or Deadwood Gulch, South Dakota.
The director of the Newcastle Country Club production of A Midsummer-Night's Dream came from New York; a tall young man of aesthetic appearance, wearing spectacles, and hair a bit longer than was usual in the town. He had an absentminded manner and a habit of making oddly humorous remarks. He took a liking to Lanny, and told him about a part of New York called Greenwich Village, where young people interested in the arts forgathered, writing plays on a little oatmeal and producing them on a shoestring. Walter Hayden was a discreet person, who valued his job, and never exercised his sense of humor upon anything in Newcastle; but he made general remarks to Lanny about the odd position of a stage director whose actors were all rich people accustomed to doing what they pleased, so that only by the exercise of patience and tact could things be got a little less than terrible.
After the first two or three rehearsals, there began to spread in the polite assemblage an uneasy sense that something was lacking in the Newcastle Country Club version of A Midsummer-Night's Dream. One of the “swank” young matrons found an opportunity to draw Lanny aside and ask whether he did not think it barely possible that Adelaide Hitchcock was less than completely adapted to the role of Puck? Adelaide was a lovely young girl with a wealth of wavy brown hair and large soulful brown eyes which turned quite often in the direction of Lanny Budd. She had a shapely figure, and everything that was needed to make a fairy, so long as she stood silent and motionless; but when she spoke her lines there was no life in them, and when she came onto the stage it was as a young lady entering a drawing room, and not in the least as a dancing sprite, the incarnation of mischief.
Now if Lanny had been more at home in Connecticut, he would have stopped to reflect that the Hitchcock family was prominent in his father's city, and that Adelaide's mother was first cousin to Lanny's stepmother. But he was thinking about art, and he said that in his opinion Adelaide with wings on her shoulders would make a great addition to the train of Queen Titania; but for the part of Puck they needed a boy or girl who could act; and if it was a girl, it ought to be one with a boyish figure, without hips.
They talked about various members of the younger set and couldn't think of anybody. Lanny asked if there wasn't some teacher of dancing in the town who could make a suggestion; then suddenly Mrs. Jessup recalled that she had seen a play given by the students at the high school, and in it was a girl who had “stolen the show” by the extraordinary verve of her acting. Lanny said: “Why don't you bring her here and let the members meet her?” Again he showed that he was not at home in Connecticut; for in this old-fashioned city the daughters of the aristocracy did not attend the free high schools, and girls who attended these schools were rarely invited to country clubs.
Mrs. Jessup went off to find this girl, whose name was Gracyn Phillipson and whose mother was an interior decorator, having a little shop and her living rooms above it. Before Mrs. Jessup went, she told her friends that Lanny had made the suggestion, thus giving him full credit for what happened. Later on it would be said that she was an “intriguer,” and had manipulated matters to this end; but how could Lanny know about that?
IV
Gracyn Phillipson came to the club late the next afternoon, and Lanny was there as he had promised. One glance, and you could see that she was made for the role of Puck; a tiny, slender figure, with no hips that you would notice; a quick, eager manner, a voice full of laughter, and feet that danced of themselves. To be sure she was a brunette, and Lanny had somehow thought of fairies as blond; but when you came to consult the authorities, you couldn't find anything definite on the point.
Several of Mrs. Jessup's smart friends, having been told that Lanny Budd was interested in this young lady, had assembled to meet her. As the quickest way to bring out her “points,” someone asked her to dance. A record was put on the phonograph, and of course it was up to a gallant youth to escort her onto the floor. If he had been discreet, he would have found some other partner for her and would have sat and studied her with a cold professional eye. But Lanny had a weakness for dancing, and it may be that the intriguers were taking advantage of that.
Anyhow, there were the two young persons on the floor, and an extraordinary thing happened. Lanny hadn't had a real dance since coming to the land of the pilgrims' pride, and he had missed it. The dancing that was done at the club was so subdued that it amounted to little more than taking a lady in your arms and walking about the room with her, backing her for a while and then reversing and letting her back you. People did this to the pounding of ragtime music which exercised a hypnotic effect, so that you might have been watching a roomful of automatons, electrically controlled so that they didn't bump into one another as they wove here and there.
But if you are young and full of fire you can dance fast and freely to any music. You can take three steps while others are taking one; you can bend and turn and leap — in short you can express the joy that is in you. And if you have in front of you a girl who is the very soul of motion, who watches you with excitement in her eyes, and reads in your face what you are going to do — that is something to wake you up and get you going. A few tentative steps, a few quick words, and the two bodies were swaying together, they were bringing grace and charm into being — they were creating a dance.
The watching ladies of course had seen dancing on the stage; there was a thing known as “society dancing,” all the rage just then. But that dancing was carefully rehearsed; whereas these two young creatures had never seen each other before, and you could see that they were inventing something to express their pleasure in the meeting. It was stimulating, indeed it was almost improper — and that is what it became when the story started on its thousand-legged way through the city of Newcastle.
Was Gracyn Phillipson really what she seemed to Lanny that afternoon? Did joy really bubble up in her like water in a mountain spring? Lanny gave no thought to the question, and would have had no means of getting the answer. If Gracyn was acting — well, it meant that she was an actress. And surely nobody was expecting her to write A Midsummer-Night's Dream.
After the dancing there was tea, and this alert young creature revealed that it was the hope of her life to get on the stage. Mrs. Jessup had told her about the play that the club was producing, and she said that she would be tremendously honored by a chance to appear in it. Yes, she knew a little about the part of Puck; she had loved Shakespeare since childhood. Miss Phillipspn didn't exactly say that she carried an assortment of Shakespearean roles about in her head; and of course there was the possibility that she had sat up most of the night learning Puck.
Anyhow, when Mrs. Jessup said: “Could you give us an idea of how you would do it?” the answer came promptly: “I'd be glad to, if it wouldn't bore you.” No shyness, no inhibition; she was an actress. Right there in the main room of the clubhouse, with other ladies sipping tea or playing bridge, and gentlemen passing through with their golf bags, Gracyn Phillipson enacted the scene in which Puck replies to the orders of King Oberon to torment the lovers: “My fairy lord, this must be done with haste.”
Presently came the place where Demetrius enters, wandering in the forest. Lanny being Demetrius, Gracyn gave him a sign, and he recited his challenge to his rival. Puck answered in the rival's voice, taunting him:
“Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars, Telling the bushes that thou look'st for wars, And wilt not come?”
Gracyn managed to produce the voice of an angry man from somewhere in her throat. She put such energy and conviction into the playful scene that ladies at the tables put down their tea cups or cards, and gentlemen rested their golf bags against the wall and stood and listened. Everybody could see at once that this was an actress; but why on earth was she exhibiting herself at the Newcastle Country Club?
V
Rumor with its thousand tongues took up the tidings that Robbie Budd's son had interested himself in a high-school girl, and was trying to oust Adelaide Hitchcock from the role of Puck and to put his protégée in her place. He had had this protégée at the club and had danced with her and played a scene with her, and now the dramatics committee was requested to give her a chance to show what she could do. Lanny was calling it a matter of “art”; the thousand tongues each said that word with a different accent, indicative of subtle shadings of incredulity and amusement. “Art, indeed! Art, no less! Art, if you please! Art, art — to be sure, oh, yes, naturally, I don't think!”
The rumor came to Adelaide Hitchcock in the first half-hour. She rushed to her mother in tears. Oh, the insult, the humiliation-making her ridiculous before the whole town, ruining her for life! “I told them I was no actress; but they said I could do it, they made me go and learn all those silly verses and take all that trouble getting fitted with a dress!”
Of course the mother hastened to the telephone and called her cousin. “What on earth is this, Esther? Has your stepson gone out of his mind? What a scandal — bringing this creature to the club and making a spectacle of himself before the world?”
Esther had made a strict resolve that if ever there was anything serious to be said to Lanny, it would be said by his father; so now she told Robbie what she had heard. She took the precaution of adding: “Better not mention me. Just say that you've heard it.”
Robbie led his son to his study after dinner and said: “What's this about you and an actress, kid?”
Lanny was astonished by the speed with which rumor could operate, with the help of a universal telephone system. “Gosh!” said he. “I never met the girl till this afternoon, and I never heard of her till yesterday.”
“Who told you about her?”
“Mrs. Chris Jessup.”
“Oh, I see!” said the father. “Tell me what happened.”
Lanny told, and it was interesting to compare notes and discover how a tale could grow in two or three hours. Robbie couldn't keep from laughing; then he said: “It would be better if you didn't have anything to do with this fight. You see, Molly Jessup and Esther have been in each other's hair of late; it had to do with the chairmanship of some committee or other.”
“Oh, I'm sorry, Robbie! I had no idea of that.”
“It's the kind of thing you get in for the moment you have anything to do with women's affairs. Just sort of lay off this Miss Pillwiggle, or whatever her name is, and let the women fight it out.”
“It'll be rather awkward,” said the young man. “I've expressed the opinion that she can act; and now people will be asking me about it, and what shall I say?”
“Well, of course, I wouldn't want you to violate your artistic conscience,” replied the father, gravely. “But it seems to me that when you find you've spilled some fat into a hot fire, you're justified in stepping back a bit.”
It was Lanny's turn to laugh. Then he said: “Strictly between you and me, Robbie, Adelaide is a stick.”
“Yes, son; but there are many kinds of sticks, and she's an important one.”
“A gold stick?”
“More than that — a mace of office, or perhaps a totem.”
VI
The dramatics committee assembled, and Miss Gracyn Phillipson, alias Pillwiggle, showed how she would propose to enact the role of Puck, alias Robin Goodfellow. After the demonstration had been completed, the committee asked the advice of Mr. Walter Hayden, and this experienced director of the rich replied that it was his practice to leave such decisions to the members; he would give his professional opinion only upon formal request. This having been solemnly voted, Mr. Hayden said that Miss Adelaide Hitchcock was endowed with gifts to make a very lovely fairy with wings on her shoulders; whereas Miss Phillipson was an actress and something of a find, who might some day reflect credit upon her native city.
Adelaide declined to put wings on her shoulders, and went away in a huff, declaring that she would never darken the doors of the country club again. The rehearsals went forward, and every evening for the next ten Lanny watched Gracyn Phillipson manifest enraptured gaiety upon the dimly lighted stage of a woodland theater. Every evening he staggered about in mock confusion, seeking to capture her, and crying:
“Nay, then, thou mock'st me. Thou shalt buy this dear, If ever I thy face by daylight see.”
He hardly knew her as a human being; he was under the spell of the play, a victim of enchantment, and she the fairy creature who poured into his eyes the magic juice which transformed the world. “But, my good lord, I wot not by what power! — ”
The long-awaited evening came, and Gracyn was trembling so that she was pitiful. But the moment she danced onto the stage something took hold of her — “I am that merry wanderer of the night!” She swept through the part in triumph, and lifted an amateur performance into something unique. The audience gave her a polite ovation.
Then next day — and the spell was broken. Lanny was an apprentice salesman of armaments, and Gracyn was a poor girl whose mother kept a shop and lived over it. The members of the club had had an evening's diversion, the Red Cross had got a thousand dollars, Lanny had made some enemies and Gracyn some friends; at least so she thought, but she waited in vain for another invitation to the club, and the painful realization dawned upon her that it took more than talent to crash those golden gates.
It was too bad that Lanny had to justify the gossips. Now that it was no longer a question of “art,” he had no excuse for seeing this young female. But he was interested enough to come and take her driving in his car, and investigate her as a human being. He discovered a quivering creature devoured by ambition, a prey alternately to hopes and fears. She wanted to get on the stage; how was it to be done? Go to New York, of course. Mr. Hayden had promised her introductions; but wasn't that just politeness? Didn't he do that to young actresses in every town he visited? Already he was on another job — and doubtless telling a stage-struck amateur that she had talent.
So far in Newcastle Lanny had lived a restricted life and hadn't met a single person outside his own class. But the impulse to get interested in strangers was still alive in him; and now he met Gracyn's friends, a group of young people with feeble and pathetic yearnings for beauty, and having no idea where to find it. Several were working in factories during the summer months, earning money to go to college; others had taken commercial courses in school, and now were taking jobs in offices, knowing themselves doomed to the dull round of business life. Most of them had never seen a great painting, or a “show” except vaudeville and cheap “road shows,” or heard music except jazz dances and the bellowing of a movie theater organ.
And now came Lanny Budd, an Oberon, master of magic. Lanny could sit at the little upright piano in the Phillipson home and, without stopping to think for a moment, could cause ecstasy to flow out of the astonished instrument; could weave patterns of beauty, build towering structures of gorgeous sound. He would play snatches of Chabrier's Espana — and Gracyn, who knew nothing about Spanish dancing except for pictures of girls with tambourines, would listen and catch the mood. She would say: “Play it again”; the young people would pull the chairs out of the way and she would make up dance steps while he watched her over his shoulder. Among the country-club crowd everybody had so much and was bored with everything; whereas here they had so little and were so pathetically grateful for a crumb of culture and beauty.
VII
Lanny took to being out frequently in the evening; and of course the watchful Esther did not fail to make note of it. Once more, she would say nothing to her stepson but only to his father. Robbie didn't feel the same way about a young man enjoying his evenings, provided he had done his job during the day; but Robbie understood his wife and tried to please her, and said he would speak to the boy.
What he said was: “I hope you're not getting in too deep with that girl, Lanny.”
“Oh, it's quite innocent, I assure you, Robbie. Her mother sits in one room and paints watercolor designs for house decorations; I play the piano and Gracyn dances and her young friends watch. Then we make cheese sandwiches, and twice we've had beer, and felt bohemian, really devilish.”
“Couldn't you do that with some of our own crowd?”
“It just happens that I haven't met any of them who take my music or dancing seriously.”
“They are a rather frozen-up lot, I suppose.”
“The trouble with most of them is they have no conversation.”
Robbie repressed a smile, and asked: “Aren't you ever alone with the girl?”
“I've taken her driving two or three times; that's the only way she'd ever see the country. But we talk about the theater; I've told her books to study, and she has done it. Her whole heart is set on being an actress.”
“It's a dog's life for a woman, son.”
“I suppose so; but if you're really in love with art, you don't mind hard work.”
“What usually happens is that a woman thinks she's in love with art, but really it's with a man. You mustn't get her into trouble.”
“Oh, no, Robbie; it won't be anything like that, I assure you. I've made up my mind that I'm through with love until I've got my education, and know what I want to be and do. I had some talk with Mr. Baldwin, my master at St. Thomas's, and he convinced me that that's the wisest way to live.”
“Maybe so,” said the cautious father; “but sometimes the women won't let you, and it's hard to say no. You find you've got your foot in a trap before you realize it.”
So Lanny had to go off and consider in his mind: was he the least bit in love with Gracyn Phillipson, or she with him? He was sure that if he had been thinking of falling in love, he'd have chosen some girl like Adelaide, who was soft and warm, and obviously made to melt in your arms. It would have been a wiser choice, because his parents would have been pleased, and her parents, and they would have a lovely church wedding with bridesmaids and orange blossoms and yards and yards of white veils spread all around her like a pedestal. But he hadn't been thinking about love, he had been interested in acting, and in music and dancing and poetry and the other arts that Shakespeare had woven into an immortal fairy tale. Gracyn was boylike and frank and interested in the same things, and they had made a pleasant friendship on that basis.
If she'd been thinking about anything else, she'd have let him know it. Or would she? She was an actress; and might it be that she was acting the part of boylike frankness? Acting is a tricky business, and a woman might fool herself as well as others. Gracyn wanted a start in life, and could surely not be unaware of the fact that Lanny might give it to her. His father could get her a start if he chose to take the trouble. Gracyn must have thought of this; and would she think that Lanny was careless and indifferent to her needs? Would she be too proud to hint at it, or take advantage of their friendship? If so, she must be a fine person, and Lanny was putting her to a severe test.
VIII
He took her driving the next evening, that being the only way she could ever see the country. They followed the river drive, and a full moon was strewing its showers of light over the water; fireflies were flickering, and the world was lovely, as well as mysterious. Over in France the doughboys had begun their long-expected drive, and the newspapers were full of their exploits; which lent a strange quality to any happiness you felt — as if it were something you had no right to, and that might disappear while you held it in your hands.
“Gracyn,” said Lanny, “I've been thinking that if you're going to get a job this season, you ought to be in New York now, while the managers are getting their fall productions ready.”
“I know, Lanny; but I can't!”
“What I thought was, I'd ask my father to back you to the extent of a trip there. He saw your performance and liked it a lot.”
“Oh, Lanny!” The girl caught her breath. “Oh, I couldn't let you do that!”
“It wouldn't break him.”
“I know — but I haven't the right — ”
“You can call it a loan. Anybody starting in business borrows money and pays it back out of his earnings. You surely won't fail to earn something; and it would make me happy if I could help you.”
“Oh, Lanny, what a darling you are!”
“You'll do it, then?”
“How could I say no?”
“I haven't asked him, you understand; but he's never refused to do anything within reason.”
“Lanny, I'll work so hard — I'll have one reason more for making good!”
“I know you'll work; the chances are you'll work too hard and do yourself up.”
The road passed a wooded point, and came to an open spot with a tiny bay. “Oh, Lanny, how lovely!” whispered the girl. “Stop for a bit.”
They drew up by the roadside, as young couples were doing along ten thousand rivers and streams of America. They sat looking over the water, strewn with shimmering bright jewels; and Gracyn put her hand on Lanny's and murmured: “Lanny, you are the kindest, sweetest man I've ever known.”
“It's easy for me to be generous with money I don't have to earn,” said he.
She answered: “I don't mean only that. I mean a lot, lot more than that.”
He felt her hand trembling, and a strange feeling which he had learned to know began to steal over him. When she leaned toward him he put his arm about her. They sat so for quite a while; until at last the girl whispered: “Lanny, let me tell you how I feel.”
She waited, as if it were a question; he answered: “Yes, dear, of course.”
“I think you are the best person I've ever known, and I'll do anything I can to make you happy — anything in this world. You have my promise that I'll never ask anything of you, never make any claim upon you — never, never!”
So there was Lanny mixed up with the sex problem again. His father had said: “It's hard to say no.” Lanny found that it was impossible.