now.”
“It’s probably better that way.”
“Oh, yes, much better. Well, that’s all, Kieth. I just wanted to tell you why I’m a little—lukewarm, at present.”
“I’m not shocked, Lois. I understand better than you think. We all go through those times. But I know it’ll come out all right, child. There’s that gift of faith that we have, you and I, that’ll carry us past the bad spots.”
He rose as he spoke and they started again down the path.
“I want you to pray for me sometimes, Lois. I think your prayers would be about what I need. Because we’ve come very close in these few hours, I think.”
Her eyes were suddenly shining.
“Oh, we have, we have!” she cried. “I feel closer to you now than to any one in the world.”
He stopped suddenly and indicated the side of the path.
“We might—just a minute——”
It was a pietà, a life-size statue of the Blessed Virgin set within a semicircle of rocks.
Feeling a little self-conscious she dropped on her knees beside him and made an unsuccessful attempt at prayer.
She was only half through when he rose. He took her arm again.
“I wanted to thank Her for letting us have this day together,” he said simply.
Lois felt a sudden lump in her throat and she wanted to say something that would tell him how much it had meant to her, too. But she found no words.
“I’ll always remember this,” he continued, his voice trembling a little—“this summer day with you. It’s been just what I expected. You’re just what I expected, Lois.”
“I’m awfully glad, Kieth.”
“You see, when you were little they kept sending me snap-shots of you, first as a baby and then as a child in socks playing on the beach with a pail and shovel, and then suddenly as a wistful little girl with wondering, pure eyes—and I used to build dreams about you. A man has to have something living to cling to. I think, Lois, it was your little white soul I tried to keep near me—even when life was at its loudest and every intellectual idea of God seemed the sheerest mockery, and desire and love and a million things came up to me and said: ‘Look here at me! See, I’m Life. You’re turning your back on it!’ All the way through that shadow, Lois, I could always see your baby soul flitting on ahead of me, very frail and clear and wonderful.”
Lois was crying softly. They had reached the gate and she rested her elbow on it and dabbed furiously at her eyes.
“And then later, child, when you were sick I knelt all one night and asked God to spare you for me—for I knew then that I wanted more; He had taught me to want more. I wanted to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me. I saw you growing up, that white innocence of yours changing to a flame and burning to give light to other weaker souls. And then I wanted some day to take your children on my knee and hear them call the crabbed old monk Uncle Kieth.”
He seemed to be laughing now as he talked.
“Oh, Lois, Lois, I was asking God for more then. I wanted the letters you’d write me and the place I’d have at your table. I wanted an awful lot, Lois, dear.”
“You’ve got me, Kieth,” she sobbed, “you know it, say you know it. Oh, I’m acting like a baby but I didn’t think you’d be this way, and I—oh, Kieth—Kieth——”
He took her hand and patted it softly.
“Here’s the bus. You’ll come again, won’t you?”
She put her hands on his cheeks, and drawing his head down, pressed her tear-wet face against his.
“Oh, Kieth, brother, some day I’ll tell you something——”
He helped her in, saw her take down her handkerchief and smile bravely at him, as the driver flicked his whip and the bus rolled off. Then a thick cloud of dust rose around it and she was gone.
For a few minutes he stood there on the road, his hand on the gate-post, his lips half parted in a smile.
“Lois,” he said aloud in a sort of wonder, “Lois, Lois.”
Later, some probationers passing noticed him kneeling before the pietà, and coming back after a time found him still there. And he was there until twilight came down and the courteous trees grew garrulous overhead and the crickets took up their burden of song in the dusky grass.
VII.
The first clerk in the telegraph booth in the Baltimore Station whistled through his buck teeth at the second clerk:
“S’matter?”
“See that girl—no, the pretty one with the big black dots on her veil. Too late—she’s gone. You missed somep’n.”
“What about her?”
“Nothing. ’Cept she’s damn good-looking. Came in here yesterday and sent a wire to some guy to meet her somewhere. Then a minute ago she came in with a telegram all written out and was standin’ there goin’ to give it to me when she changed her mind or somep’n and all of a sudden tore it up.”
“Hm.”
The first clerk came around the counter and picking up the two pieces of paper from the floor put them together idly. The second clerk read them over his shoulder and subconsciously counted the words as he read. There were just thirteen.
“This is in the way of a permanent goodbye. I should suggest Italy.
“Lois.”
“Tore it up, eh?” said the second clerk.
— ◆ —
Dalyrimple Goes Wrong.
The Smart Set (February 1920)
In the millennium an educational genius will write a book to be given to every young man on the date of his disillusion. This work will have the flavor of Montaigne’s essays and Samuel Butler’s note-books—and a little of Tolstoi and Marcus Aurelius. It will be neither cheerful nor pleasant but will contain numerous passages of striking humor. Since first-class minds never believe anything very strongly until they’ve experienced it, its value will be purely relative … all people over thirty will refer to it as “depressing.”
This prelude belongs to the story of a young man who lived, as you and I do, before the book.
II.
The generation which numbered Bryan Dalyrimple drifted out of adolescence to a mighty fanfare of trumpets. Bryan played the star in an affair which included a Lewis gun and a nine-day romp behind the retreating
