The Eddy: A Novel of To-day

by Clarence Louis Cullen

  CHAPTER XV

  Before Louise had risen on the following morning Laura entered herbedroom and handed her an unopened cablegram. Louise tore open theenvelope with trembling hands. She had no means of surmising thecharacter of the message. Blythe had been purposely evasive in replyingto Louise's questions as to whether her mother had looked ill when hehad last seen her, for he disliked to be the bearer of disquieting news.His private report to Laura, however, as to the obvious state of Mrs.Treharne's health had been sufficiently alarming to cause Laura to lieawake a good part of the night, meditating as to whether she should tellLouise. Laura had read Mrs. Treharne's letter to Louise, announcing herdeparture from the house on the Drive for an undetermined destination;and this complicated the situation and was the reason why Laura withheldfrom Louise what Blythe had told her about her mother'sgravely-declining health. Since the receipt of that letter no messagehad reached Louise from her mother, giving her address; and Laura hadnot elected to alarm the girl needlessly while Mrs. Treharne's addressremained unknown.

  The cablegram took the problem out of Laura's hands. It was dated fromSaranac, in the Adirondacks, and read:

  "Am ill. Come immediately. MOTHER."

  Louise handed the message to Laura and rose at once. She found it verynatural that, at such a moment, she should lean upon the resourcefulnessof John Blythe.

  "I suppose John can arrange for our passage?" she said to Laura.

  "John," replied Laura, confidently, "can do anything, I think, even toobtaining accommodations on a New-York-bound steamer in July, which isnext to impossible."

  Laura immediately telephoned to Blythe at the Carlton, telling him ofthe summons Louise had received from her mother.

  "Of course I am to go with her," said Laura, "and equally of course weshall have a dreadful time getting steamer accommodations at thisseason."

  "Probably I can manage," was Blythe's prompt reply. "The _Mauretania_,which brought me over, is returning day after tomorrow. I know she isbooked to the gun'ls--but I'll see what can be done. Of course I amgoing, too. I'll see you by noon and let you know."

  Jermyn Scammel and his two companions who had been witnesses of Blythe'smeeting with Jesse at the Curzon Street house were staying at theCarlton, and Blythe knew that they had reserved accommodations on the_Mauretania_. Blythe found them at breakfast in Scammel's rooms and hetold them of the quandary in which two American ladies found themselvesowing to the extreme difficulty of securing passage on board West-boundsteamers at that season.

  "Anybody I know, Blythe?" Scammel asked him.

  "I think so," said Blythe. "Mrs. Laura Stedham is--"

  "Laura Stedham? Known her all my life--tried my infernallest to marryher when I was a cub, but she wouldn't so much as look at me," saidScammel, cheerily. "She can have my cabin if I have to stay over herefor the remainder of my natural life. How about you fellows?" addressinghis companions.

  It was all one to them, it appeared. If Scammel was willing to remain inLondon for a while longer, why--

  "But I haven't the least idea of remaining in London," put in Scammelwhen they had got that far. "The night train for Paris for mine, nowthat I can't get away on the _Mauretania_. No use talking, Blythe, fateis against me. I want to be good, but I'm not allowed to be. I'll leaveit to you or anybody else if I had the slightest idea of making Paristhis trip. I've been fighting the temptation to hit up Paris ever sinceI've been over this time. Now, you see, I'm positively driven to it. Mancomes along and grabs my homeward-bound cabin away from me. What else isthere for it but Paris? Are you cubs going along with me?" turning tothe two younger men.

  The "cubs," it appeared, were quite willing to defer their meditatedrepentance until such time as Scammel might be ready to repent withthem, and they proclaimed that Paris sounded good to them. Thus it wasthat Blythe was able to appear at the Savoy long before noon with theannouncement that he had contrived to obtain three highly-desirablestaterooms on the _Mauretania_.

  "What should we ever have done without him?" said Laura to Louise, whileBlythe lounged about--making occasional discreet exits--during theirpacking operations.

  "Without Jerry Scammel and the two apt and obliging young New Yorkpupils he is breaking in over here, you should say," observed Blythe.

  "John! Was it dear old Jerry Scammel who did this for us?" asked Laura,blushing. "Well, I shall certainly bake him a cake or crochet him a pairof pulse-warmers or ear-laps or something as soon as he gets back to NewYork. He's a dear, and always was, and I always fight tooth and nailfor him when the catty old dowagers call him the most dissipated man inNew York. Jerry, to this day, declares to me, every time I meet him,that he holds the world's record for proposals to the same girl within agiven time. I was the girl. I believe I was somewhat under sixteen andJerry was not yet nineteen. He swears that he proposed to me forty-fourtimes within one month. Of course he is wrong. It was onlytwenty-three."

  Laura and Blythe purposely kept up this sort of small talk to divertLouise's thoughts from her mother's illness. Louise, heavy-hearted asshe was, quite understood their kindly purpose, and successfully stroveto appear entertained by their banter. But her foreboding was not easyto dispel. She knew that her mother would not have summoned her if herillness had not been of the gravest character; for in her lastletter--the one she wrote on the night before leaving New York--she hadinsisted upon Louise having her London visit out. The girl had beenfilled with an intense happiness upon reading her mother's announcementof her departure from the house on the Drive. She had pictured a happyreunion with her mother and had begun immediately to make plans for thehome which they should have together upon her return to New York. Sothat her mother's summons and Louise's certainty that the summons wouldnever have been made had her mother's condition not been very serious,bore heavily upon her.

  "I begin to fear that I have found my mother only to lose her again,"she had said to Laura in talking over the cable message; and Laura,while professing to be shocked at Louise's premonition, had turned awayto hide her tears; for the same premonition, better-grounded thanLouise's on account of what she had heard from Blythe as to the visibledecline into which Mrs. Treharne had seemed to be falling, wasdepressing Laura.

  * * * * *

  The steamer made an unseasonably squally and heavy passage of it, andLaura, who had never been intended for a Vikingess, as she expressed it,kept to her stateroom almost throughout the voyage. Louise and Blythewere among the few on board the crowded steamer who did not shrink evenonce from mess call, which is the test of the born voyager. They keptpace with the most hardened constitutional-takers on deck every day, andwere together almost constantly.

  Louise Treharne and John Blythe already knew that they loved each other.On board the steamer, and for five days running, rarely out of eachother's company, both found that, humanly speaking, they also genuinelyliked each other. Even men and women entirely devoted to each otherquite commonly develop a certain pettishness often verging upon actualirascibility when they find themselves incessantly in each other'scompany on board a steamer. Louise and Blythe, despite theunfriendliness of the elements and the consequent discomforts of thepassage, both felt quite lost and miserable when they were separatedfrom each other even for short periods during the voyage. Louise, in herinexperience, did not seek to analyze this phenomenon. But Blythe did.

  "She is as fine-grained as she is beautiful, Laura," he said to thatever-receptive confidante, when he found himself alone with her for amoment one day toward the end of the voyage. "I have, as of course youknow, no particular amount of sweetness of disposition at sea oranywhere else. But, somehow, I have been a marvel of beatific mildnessand contentment ever since we left England. There's only one way toaccount for that. Louise is temperamentally perfect."

  "Charming, but wholly wrong," replied Laura. "Louise is magnificentlydeficient in the thing called 'temperament'--thank Heaven! Did you everhappen to encounter a female who delighted in calling herself a 'womanof tem
perament,' John Blythe? Then you know how hopelessly impossible awoman of that sort is, considered as a companion for any normal humanbeing of either sex. If Louise had been temperamental--_any_ kind oftemperamental--I am certain that you two would be passing each other ondeck without even nodding by this time. But the dear is just a sweetgirl-woman with a wholesome imagination and human impulses, and Imyself, a woman (and a fussy one, too, sometimes!), could live with herforever without a symptom of friction. You are a very lucky rising younglegal person. I don't know what I shall do without her."

  "Without her--when?" said Blythe, his surprise genuine. "You are goingup to the Adirondacks with her, aren't you?"

  "To be sure," replied Laura. "I mean that I don't know what I shall dowithout her when--" She broke off in momentary confusion. "Oh, you areimpossibly opaque today, John," she finished, smiling illuminatingly.

  "Oh--that!" said Blythe, enlightened, yet a bit rueful.

  It was precisely "that" which, as the steamer drew near New York wascausing Blythe no little disquietude. He knew that he would miss Louiseacutely after the delightful intimacies of the voyage. No word as totheir tacit relationship had been spoken by Blythe since they had thusbeen thrown almost constantly together. A natural delicacy had deterredhim from touching upon that subject at a time when Louise was hurryingto the bedside of her mother. But, now that the steamer was less thanhalf a day from New York, he began to draw a desolate picture of hislonesome state when he should bid goodbye to Louise at the station. Hervigil at her mother's bedside might be a protracted one. He remembered,not without a shock of astonishment, that he had never asked Louise tobe his wife. When he mentally retraced the path, he found it easy enoughto understand why he had not put this question to her. Nevertheless, thefact that she was by no means plighted to him had caused him a vagueuneasiness since the beginning of the voyage; and, now that theirseparation, for an indeterminate period, impended, he found himselfswept by a desire to make their mutual understanding--if such, indeed,he thought nervously, Louise really took it to be--more explicit, if notmore binding.

  It chanced that Louise herself furnished him his opportunity to speak.She had written a wireless message of greeting to her mother, to betransmitted from New York to Saranac, and they watched the operator ashe flared the message over the waste of tumbling waters.

  "I told her in the message that you are with us," Louise said to him."And of course she shall know, when I see her, that Laura and I mighthave had to remain in England indefinitely had it not been for you."

  "There is something that I want your sanction to tell your mother whenI see her," said Blythe as they set out for a stroll on the long deck.

  "Yes?" she said, with a quick sidewise glance at him. She understoodperfectly well what he meant; had, indeed, been waiting for him toassume that direction; but women are not expected to make suchadmissions.

  "I think you will be ready to admit that I have striven to practiseself-restraint," said Blythe, with a smile in which there was a touch ofnervousness. "But there is a point beyond which I cannot go. Are you totell your mother that I have asked you to marry me, or am I to tell herwhen I see her?"

  "Have you asked me that?" inquired Louise, a little mischievously; butshe asked the question in order to gain time.

  Blythe laughed in self-deprecation.

  "If I have been guilty of so stupid an omission, I can rectify it byasking you now?" he said; and Louise noticed the flush that overspreadhis features. "I have, I know, a habit of taking too much for granted.But I really supposed you knew that my life is bound up in yours,Louise."

  "And mine in yours," she replied with a perfect candor that thrilledhim. "If I did not love you dearly--and I do--perhaps I should not sokeenly feel that I would be doing you an injustice to marry you."

  Blythe could scarcely credit his ears. Her first words had set him tosoaring, but, when she had finished, he was conscious of as stunned afeeling as if he had received a physical blow. Involuntarily he stoodstock still and faced her; but the need to keep moving in order not toblock the progress of the other deck pedestrians quickly flashed uponhim. When he moved forward again at her side, however, listening to herquiet, earnest words, he was conscious, for a while, of a certainnumbness, almost approaching languor, which he found it difficult tothrow off.

  Louise, more reservedly but with no lack of clearness, touched upon thepoints which she had made in going over the same ground with Laura.Surprised as he was, Blythe, whose mind had never been visited by any ofthe considerations which she named, nevertheless had an immediate andacute understanding of the ordeal through which the girl must be passingin thus presenting her analysis of the situation to him.

  "It would be the logical thing for me to say that you have whollymisjudged me, Louise," he said to her when she had finished. "ButI am not going to do that, because I know that you have done nothingof the sort. You are simply the victim of a perfectly naturalsupersensitiveness. I know how difficult you have found it to say suchthings. I blame myself for having pressed you to the point where youconsidered it necessary to say them. It is scarcely less hard for me totalk of such a matter--harder still because nothing that you havetouched upon has even once occurred to me. I know that you are the womanmy heart craves for. Nothing that you have said, or ever can say, willchange that. And if you care for me--"

  "I do," Louise interrupted him. "You are never out of my thoughts. Ifind it hard to believe that there ever was a time when I did not knowyou and love you."

  The beautiful spontaneity and frankness of the avowal sent the bloodpounding at Blythe's temples.

  "Then do you suppose, Louise," he said to her, in a vibrant voice ofenthrallment, "that anything in this world of God can ever keep usapart? Everything gives way--must give way--to the love of a man for awoman, of a woman for a man. You speak of my ambition, my career. Whatwould they be worth to me without you? Vain things--things that I wouldthrust away from me! I tell you it has come to pass that my life isinseparably bound up in yours. All the rest would be a futile strivingwithout you. The great miracle of life has come upon me. There was atime when I feared that it would pass me by. You are the woman of all mydreams--the dreams of boy and man. How can anything stand between us?"

  "I have thought that, too, often," said Louise, no less moved by hisfervor than he had been by her avowal. "But the thought that I might bethe means of throwing a shadow upon your path--"

  "Shadow!" broke out Blythe. "There would be no _path_ for me withoutyou!"

  "But, dear," said Louise, conscious that her ground was giving waybeneath her, "we cannot always do that which we want to do, can we? Weowe each other unselfishness at least, if only on account of our love?And if you were to be swept by a regret in the time that is to come,how--"

  "Don't say that, Louise," said Blythe. "It is too impossible. It is tooinconceivable."

  They came to a pause in their stroll and stood, hands on rail, gazingover the billowing expanse of sun-sparkling sea.

  "You will give me time to think it all out, dear, won't you?" saidLouise. "My experience has been so small that I do not often presume tofeel very sure of my ground."

  "When you speak of how small your experience has been, Louise," saidBlythe, a symptom of a smile flickering around his eyes, "I am revisitedby a kind of self-condemnation that I have known ever since I becameaware that I loved you. Even now I wonder if I am really guilty ofhaving pounced upon you, when you were barely out of school, and beforeyou had your rightful chance to enslave and then appraise your clusterof suitors--"

  Louise, smiling, placed a hand upon his arm.

  "Please don't continue that," she said. "All the 'clusters of suitors'in the world would have made no difference to me. Always, I think, John,I should have been gazing beyond them--if they had appeared, which ofcourse is merely your polite assumption--to see your face. And then thepoor 'enslaved' ones would have disappeared in a sudden mist, and Ishould have seen only you."

  Hands resting upon steamer rails may be fur
tively pressed, no matter howmany deck strollers there may be.

  "How royally you grant absolution!" said Blythe. "But, for all that, itis not as a sister confessor alone that I need you. If now you have madethe path so clear for me, then it is your own fault, heart of dreams. Itis as wife, mate of me, that I need you--and shall have you."

  Wife and mate of the man beloved! They were new words--even expressing anew thought--to Louise, and they sang tumultuously in her heart.

  * * * * *

  Mrs. Treharne, very white and with the spiritual delicacy of an illnessalready far-advanced upon her features, was propped up in bed, gazingwith a sort of vacant wonderment at her almost transparent hands, whichshe held up to the light, when the faithful Heloise entered the roomwith Louise's wireless message from the _Mauretania_. She read iteagerly and then suffered the message to flutter from her fingers tothe coverlet.

  "My little girl will be here day after tomorrow morning," she said tothe maid, smiling wanly with the happiness of it. "Do you think she willknow her mother, Heloise?"

  "Know you, madame?" said the maid, half grumblingly, half soothingly, asshe raised her mistress and patted the pillows. "Madame must not bemorbid. The doctor said that. I, too, say it. Why should notMademoiselle Louise know her mother?"

  "Because, good Heloise, her mother is a spectre, a wraith, a lingeringghost," said Mrs. Treharne, taking the maid's hand in both her own andpatting it; whereupon Heloise promptly produced a handkerchief from thepocket of her tiny apron with her free hand and began to dab at hereyes. The mistress studied the maid with surprise. "Why, Heloise, I didnot know you cared so much," she said. "But I have noticed that you donot scold me any more. That is because you do care, then, Heloise?"

  "Madame does not need to be scolded any more," said Heloise, brokenly."Before, one was obliged to scold her; that is, one thought so." Thegirl turned away her face and gazed blankly out of the window at theswaying trees. "But now, madame, one is sorry ever to have scolded atall."

  They occupied a pretty hotel cottage on the outskirts of the brightlittle town of Saranac in the Adirondacks. It is a town transientlyinhabited mainly by victims of pulmonary affections. But Mrs. Treharne'sillness was not of that character. She had been obliged to take to bed afew days after reaching Saranac. Her medical men had told her that shewas suffering from a gradual disintegration of the vital forces.

  "I quite understood that before I came here," Mrs. Treharne had said tothem. "You express in terms of politeness a fact that I have beenperfectly familiar with for a long time: that I am simply worn out.There are reasons, aside from any consideration of myself, why I shouldlike to have you gentlemen inform me as to one point at once."

  "And that is?" the physicians had asked her.

  "Am I to get well, or am I to die?" Mrs. Treharne had asked them out ofhand.

  Very naturally the medical men had paused under the impact of sounusually direct a question. Then they had begun to tell her that hercase presented certain complications of a somewhat grave character, andthat--

  "I understand," Mrs. Treharne had interrupted, smiling up at them with abravery which the physicians later commented upon glowingly. But theyhad not sought to disabuse her of the inference which their haltingwords and manner had caused her to derive.

  Mrs. Treharne had turned the matter over in her mind for days beforecabling to Louise. Before sending that message she had, in herperplexity, turned to her maid for advice.

  "Heloise," she had said to the devoted French girl, "tell me something,won't you? The doctors have given me to understand that--oh, well, thatI am not to be here very long. Do you think it would be well for me tosend for my daughter?"

  Heloise, thus hearing of the physicians' pronouncement for the firsttime, had given way to a torrent of tears; but, upon becoming calm underher mistress's cheerful words, she had replied that it would be aneverlasting pity if Louise were not sent for in any case.

  "I am not so sure about that," Mrs. Treharne had replied. "I recall veryeasily how I myself, when I was of Louise's age, recoiled from thethought of death--though I do not at all now, oddly enough. I shouldhave hated to be at the bedside of my mother when she died--I was only achild in arms and did not know anything about it. Louise, I think, mustfeel the same way. Why should she not? She is my daughter. Would it notbe quite as well for her to return to this country and find me gone, asit would be to send for her now and subject her to the distress ofseeing me pass? I am not considering myself, Heloise. Every minute I amlonging to see her. But I want to be fair now, at least, and do what isbest."

  Heloise had found no difficulty at all in withstanding this sort ofreasoning.

  "If madame does not send for her daughter," Heloise had replied, "Imyself shall do so, in my own name."

  "Very well," Mrs. Treharne had replied, "I shall cable her at once, andGod speed her over the sea to me!"

  * * * * *

  On the second morning--sunny and beautiful--after Mrs. Treharne hadreceived Louise's wireless message, she and Heloise heard the grindingof carriage wheels on the short gravel road leading to the cottageporch. The doctor already had paid his visit and departed, so they knewthat the sound was not that of his buggy. Heloise raced on tiptoes tothe window and looked down. Then she turned a delighted face upon hermistress, whose hair she had been arranging with unusual care inexpectation of Louise.

  "It is mademoiselle!" cried the maid.

  There was a sound of hurried tripping up the stairs; and Louise, flushedfrom the drive, regally beautiful, swept softly into the room and,kneeling by the bed, took her mother in her arms and held her tight,rocking back and forth on the pillows, and restraining her tears bysheer effort of will. Laura found an excuse to remain on the porch for amoment, giving directions to the driver of the carriage, while motherand daughter met.

  Louise had schooled herself to withstand the shock of finding her motherlooking badly. But her first glance at the white-faced invalid hadcaused her heart to beat with agonized trepidation. It would have beenobvious to an uninterested stranger that Mrs. Treharne was fastapproaching the end of her days. Louise perceived it at a glance. Butshe would not yield to her almost overwhelming woman's impulse to weep.Her mother's penetrating mind quickly sensed the girl's struggle and thevictory; and she raised Louise's head from where it nestled on hershoulder and held her face in her hands and looked at her with a smile.

  "It is fine of you not to cry, dear," she said, stroking the girl'sface. "It means a good deal to me to know that my daughter is athoroughbred--and you are always that, sweetheart. And how superb youhave become! What a commotion you and Laura must have made in London!Where is Laura--she is with you, of course?"

  "Here I am, Tony dear, as unlosable as the proverbial bad penny," saidLaura, entering the room just then and bending over from the other sideof the bed and taking her old friend in her arms. "Isn't Louise lookingsuperb? I can say it before her, because the child hasn't a groat'sworth of vanity. And she has behaved extraordinarily well. I haven't hadto tie her to the bedpost once."

  "You are looking dazzling yourself, Laura," said Mrs. Treharne with alittle sigh. "Did you know that I always was just a little jealous ofyou, dear?" and she laughed more merrily than she had for a long time."Not that I ever had any reason to be, for it was the design ofProvidence that you should outshine me. You and Louise are to spendhours with me, are you not, telling me of your conquests in Europe? Andwhere is John Blythe?" turning to Louise. "Is he not with you? I judgedfrom your wireless message that--"

  "Oh, yes, he returned with us on the steamer, but he remained in NewYork, mother," Louise put in, a quick flush overspreading her features."Did you wish to see him? I know he would come if I were to--"

  Mrs. Treharne glanced, smiling, at Laura, who returned the smile.

  "Would he, dear?" asked Mrs. Treharne. "I haven't the least doubt of it.But there will be time. Later I should like to see him. He has acompelling way." She paused,
then added with a smile at Louise: "But heis very lucky, all the same."

  Louise, marveling at her mother's penetration in discerning, with solittle to go upon, the bond between Blythe and herself, nevertheless wasglad that the relationship had thus been read; for there still remainedenough of her habitual shyness with her mother to have caused her toshrink slightly from making even so natural and simple a revelation.

  Laura left the room presently to attend to the disposal of the arrivingbaggage, and Louise, removing her hat and travelling wrap, arranged hermother's pillows and then sat beside her on the bed.

  "I do not ask you, you see, dear, to try to conceal the fact that youfind me so greatly altered," said her mother, holding the girl's hand."I am ashamed to recall how petulant it used to make me when you seemedto be tracing, with your big, wide eyes, my new wrinkles--which you werenot doing at all; I know that now, dear heart."

  "When does your doctor come today, mother?" asked Louise, a littlehaltingly.

  "He has been here and gone," replied her mother, discerning what was inLouise's mind. "But there is no need for you to see him privately,daughter. Your little mother will tell you, for you have shown how braveyou can be. I am quite as ill as you suppose me to be, Louise, andentirely beyond the help of medical men. Cry, dear, if you feel like it;I shall not mind; and there are times when tears do help one."

  Louise, yielding at last, knelt beside the bed and buried her face onher mother's shoulder in an agony of quiet weeping, while her motherstroked her hair and murmured phrases of endearment that had notvisited her lips since Louise had been a child.

  "Take heart, girl of mine," she said after a while, when she observedthat Louise's sobs were gradually abating. "I am resigned. It was tobe--but I shall not distract you with phrases of that kind, which, afterall, are not so consoling as they are supposed to be. I am glad that Ihave lived to know and to understand and to appreciate so fine and sweeta daughter as I have. And, Louise: listen."

  "Yes, mother: I am listening."

  "It is a gift of God, I know, that I have a daughter who, when my verysoul was in peril, regenerated, recreated me. You have done that for me.I confess it without shame. My little girl summoned me, raised me fromthe depths. Thank God I answered the summons before I knew that my lifewas slipping away from me, so that I am at least open to no charge ofhypocrisy or of repenting in mere grovelling fear of the judgment. Mylittle Louise, grown to sweet, serene, pure womanhood, did this thingfor me. It is something to have brought your mother to the foot of theCross, my dear; and that knowledge, I know, will ennoble and exalt youduring all the years that are to come."

  When Heloise entered the room, hours later, she found her mistressasleep, and Louise's head still pillowed upon her mother's breast.

  CHAPTER XVI

  A tall, bronzed man, erect and broad of shoulder, strode slowly,meditatively, hands clasped behind him, back and forth on the wide porchof a rambling, palm-shaded one-story Hawaiian bungalow. He had theunlined countenance of a man of forty-five who had lived most of hislife in the open; but his silvered, almost white, hair and mustache,might well have given at first glance, the impression that he was older.

  He was clad in white linen, although it was the day before Christmas.December in Hawaii! There is nothing in the whole world to compare withit. The sun shone in serene splendor from a cloudless sky of theintensest indigo. The fronds of the towering palms stirred with asoothing sibilance under the light touch of fragrant whispering zephyrs.Surrounding the bungalow were many unfenced acres rioting in the myriadhued flowers of the tropics; thence, from where the welter of blossomsceased, on all sides, as far as the eye could see, stretched miles ofsugar-cane in growing, with its unmatchable tint of young, tender yetvivid green. It was the Island of Maui; and Maui, next to the mainIsland of Hawaii, is the most beautiful of all the sugar-cane islands inthe world.

  In the still air the chattering of hundreds of Japanese workers amongthe cane reached, mitigated by distance, the porch of the bungalow,attached to one of the stanchions of which was a telephone at which thebronzed man occasionally stopped to reply to the questions of foremenscattered over the plantation. From the rear came the softer tones ofthe Kanaka household servants; at intervals the voices were raised infragments of the melodious but curiously melancholy Hawaiian folk songs.

  But George Treharne, accustomed to the beauty of his surroundings, wasgiving little heed, as he paced unceasingly back and forth, to thesights and sounds of his marvelous investiture. His mind was upon thesnowy Christmas Eves of the flown years. He had not heard from hisdaughter, nor even from Blythe, a punctilious correspondent in mattersof business, since receiving Louise's announcement of her mother'sdeath, in the early part of September. And he had been unable to makehis contemplated visit to "the main land," as Americans living in Hawaiicall the United States.

  After one born and reared in temperate zones has passed many Christmasesin tropic lands, the approach of that memory-hallowed day never fails toarouse longing for the keen bite of the cutting, North wind, the sightof drifting snow, the sound of sleigh-bells, the holiday activities ofthe icy Winter lands; nor does the flowery, fragrant beauty of thetropics, after long familiarity, compensate the native of theWinter-knowing lands for his severance from the holiday spirit to whichhis youth made him accustomed.

  George Treharne was more lonesome on this day before Christmas than hehad ever been in his life. He came to a pause in his stride, stopped bythe telephone and began to devise the terms of a Christmas greeting bycable to Louise. He could telephone the message to Lahaina, the nearbyseaport of the Island of Maui, whence it could be transmitted bytelephone to Honolulu for the cable.

  He was taking down the receiver, when he happened to glance down thelong white road to the entrance gate, nearly three-quarters of a mileaway. In the clear air he could discern that the horse trotting up theroad was ridden by a woman. Many tourists visited the Treharneplantation and were received with solicitous hospitality by its owner inperson. Knowing that this presumable tourist would reach the bungalowbefore he could finish his message to Lahaina, George Treharne deferredtaking down the receiver of the telephone. He resumed his strolling backand forth on the porch, and, when horse and rider were within a hundredyards or so of the bungalow, he summoned a Kanaka boy to take charge ofthe horse. He himself descended the steps and went to the edge of theroad, where, with bared head, he waited to assist the visitor from herhorse.

  The sunlight was blindingly in his eyes, so that he scarcely saw herface when he lifted her from the saddle. After a few words of courteousgreeting he led the way, his vision still slightly obscured by theafter-effects of the sun's direct rays, to the wide palm-shaded porch.

  When she stood beside him on the porch, rather nervously switching herriding crop, he observed that she was a very lovely, unusually tallyoung woman with a great coil of auburn hair flowing from beneath herwide-brimmed soft hat; and he had noticed, too, when she spoke, that shepossessed a singularly sweet, rather subdued voice.

  But he did not know her.

  He was about to conduct her through the open door into the long, coolhall, when, turning his head to speak to her, he was struck by somethingin her face and attitude. She was not following him. That was what henoticed at once. Instead, she was standing quite still in the middle ofthe porch, her riding crop now at rest, and holding up the skirt of herhabit with the other hand. There was a half-smile on her face; but, inodd contrast to this, he noticed that her eyes were filmed with tears;that, in truth, two tears at least already had fallen.

  Halting, then, in the doorway, he turned full around upon her. A tremorran through his frame. He reached her in two bounds which were as suddenand springy as the bounds of a wrestler.

  He crushed her to his heart without a word. He knew that he wasincapable of speaking. He kissed her over and over again and devouredher with his eyes.

  "My little girl Louise!" he was finally able to say in a broken voice."My beautiful, woman-grown little girl--God
forever bless her!" and heheld her out at arm's length, his powerful, bronzed hands gripping hershoulders, and gazed avidly at her until once again he clasped her tohis heart.

  * * * * *

  After a time, when father and daughter were able to speak collectedly,Louise walked over to the railing of the porch and raised her ridingcrop high in the air. Her father saw the signal. The man for whom it wasintended saw it as quickly. Instantly, from behind the superintendent'shouse at the gate of the plantation road, a horse, ridden by a man inkhaki, emerged and quickly swung into a gallop, making for the bungalow.

  When John Blythe, with his wide smile, leaped from the horse and tossedthe reins to the waiting Kanaka boy, George Treharne, recognizing him atonce, glanced wonderingly from his face to the smiling, flushed face ofLouise. Then his own bronzed features were creased by a smile of warmthand happiness.

  "Then I have a son, too, Louise?" he asked his daughter.

  But he knew how needless her brightly nodded answer was when, an instantlater, he saw her clasped in her husband's arms.