CHAPTER XIV

Allston talked rather more than usual that evening and he laughed often. But he was strangely restless. At least a half-dozen times he rose abruptly from his chair and walked about the room, picking up a book only to drop it, moving to the window only to turn away, lighting a cigarette only to toss it into the fire after a few puffs.

For an hour or more Wilmer noted his uneasiness without comment, but finally laughingly referred to it.

“If you were a woman I’d say you had the fidgets,” she declared.

“No--it isn’t that,” he answered. “My nerves are steady enough.”

“Then why don’t you sit still?”

“I give it up,” he smiled.

“It’s that Bud Childers,” broke in Howe. “He’s getting on my nerves too.”

Wilmer glanced up and shot a quick question at her father.

“You’ve heard something, then, that you haven’t told me?”

“No,” returned Howe.

“You’ve seen him?”

“No. I’ve neither seen nor heard of him for two or three days. I’d feel better if I had.”

Wilmer turned to Allston with an uneasy feeling that something was being concealed by one of the men.

“Nor I,” Allston assured her. “And I don’t expect either to see or hear of him again. I have a notion his bark is worse than his bite.”

Howe shook his head.

“I’m not so sure of that. Those men nourish a grudge for years. That’s how feuds are bred.”

“It isn’t Childers who is bothering me,” asserted Allston. “If I were obliged to describe my restlessness I’d have to turn to the spook world and I’m not very keen about that sort of thing.”

He sat down again in his chair before the fire, between Howe and his daughter. The latter studied him a moment with amused interest.

“Somehow you’re not the kind of man I’d suspect of being susceptible to spirits,” she said.

He had rather avoided her eyes this evening. He had found them increasingly dangerous. He would have said that in the last few days they had mellowed and deepened. They were still like pools reflecting the brown of autumn foliage and he was still tempted to fish in them for smiles. But he could not forget what he had caught there once.

“Why do you single out me?” he asked.

“Because your feet are so solidly on the ground.”

“I’m of the earth earthy?”

She frowned.

“Please don’t misinterpret.”

“I don’t mean to, but isn’t that what you said?”

She shrugged her pretty shoulders.

“I intended rather a compliment, but if you won’t have it--”

“I’ll accept all the crumbs of that kind you toss me,” he interrupted.

“If you two are beginning another quarrel, I’m going upstairs,” protested Howe good-naturedly.

He may have dozed a good deal in their company off and on, but it is surprising what a man of his age can pick up even when half asleep. He was sure of nothing yet, but his suspicions were aroused and he was not at all displeased with them. He had never met a young man who with so little effort had so thoroughly worked his way into his good graces. He had never met a young man whom he so thoroughly trusted. He proved that in his willingness to leave Allston so much alone with his daughter. He had not lived sixty-five years for nothing, and would have been quick enough to foil any development of this sort of which he did not approve.

As a matter of fact Howe for the last year or two had been more or less worried about Wilmer’s future. Not financially, for he had means enough to assure her of independence in that direction. But he did not believe in that kind of independence for a woman. Marriage to him was the wholesome and natural estate of womanhood. He had been conscious of a growing fear that Wilmer was deliberately sacrificing herself to him in this matter. He had never discussed it with her. It was a difficult and delicate question to bring up. But he had thought a good deal about it and could account for her apparent aversion to men in no other way. In spite of good health he was growing old and in his old age felt in his life the lack of those tiny baby fingers which so assist down the incline however gentle the slope. This craving for grandchildren is a sort of second birth. It is the logical continuation of growth. It makes for completion.

He could trust Wilmer to be sound in her choice--true to her heart--if only she would choose. He did not propose either to assist her or to advise. That would be an impertinence. With this newer generation it was possible for a father to be impertinent towards his daughter. He used to resent that where now he only smiled at it. He would not assist her directly, but whenever it was possible to retire gracefully from the field where these two were trying each other out, he welcomed the opportunity--even when he knew it annoyed Wilmer. As now, for example.

It was only nine o’clock when he rose upon the slightest of pretexts, to go to his room.

“No one is quarreling,” protested Wilmer.

“Call it a disagreement, then,” answered Howe.

“If you’ll stay I’ll read to you.”

Wilmer looked to Allston for support. She received little.

“No,” declared Howe, “I’m really ready for bed.”

With that he made his sturdy way across the room and went upstairs, Wilmer following him with a candle. When she returned, Allston was over by the window again staring out into the night. He came back to the fire as soon as he heard her steps.

“I feel,” he said, “exactly as though I heard some one calling--but so far off that I can’t identify either the voice or the words. Queer, isn’t it?”

“The imagination plays strange tricks sometimes.”

“You think that’s all it amounts to?”

“Certainly. What else?”

“I don’t know. I’m always getting back to that fool phrase; I don’t know.”

“We ought to know--always,” she said.

“I suppose so, but do we?”

“I--”

The phrase was on her own lips but she checked herself.

“Go ahead; finish it,” he insisted with a note of triumph.

“I refuse to be so stupid,” she answered, evidently nettled.

“We may as well be honest with ourselves.”

“As long as we remain sensible,” she finished for him.

“Sensible? I wonder what we mean when we say that?”

“I mean governed by intelligence,” she replied instantly.

“Yes,” he admitted. “That’s a good definition. Only--it does leave out a whole lot.”

“Nothing worth while,” she insisted dogmatically.

“It leaves out war.”

“Perhaps war isn’t worth while.”

“But there it is. The idea governed a good many million men for five years. And there wasn’t much intelligence back of it when you think it over in cold blood.”

“Many were governed by the idea of self-protection and that’s intelligent.”

“It’s more instinctive. And the instincts--are they intelligent?”

He spoke rather more earnestly. She answered rather more cautiously:

“When properly trained.”

“But when properly trained we shouldn’t have instincts,” he laughed. “We should have only reason.”

“Well?”

“Having chased our tails we are back where we started.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Then let’s try again. Being sensible leaves out--love.”

She moved her chair a trifle--to turn her face away from him and towards the flames.

“Doesn’t it?” he asked.

There was one good feature about that objectionable phrase of “I don’t know” which she was willing enough to admit; it furnished, at least, a convenient refuge. If ever she had wished to use it, that was now. Without some such retreat one was forced always to direct answers.

“Perhaps you’re a better authority on love than I,” she parried.

“You’re wrong,” he returned quickly. “I don’t know a thing about it except that, as far as one can observe, it isn’t always sensible.”

“Your observations have been--extensive?” she queried.

There was a touch of coquetry about her now that enlivened her mouth. Her profile, he thought, was several years younger than her full face. The gentle curves that outlined her lips and rounded chin were at this moment--she had unconsciously relaxed her usual control over them--those of a girl of eighteen.

Allston leaned towards her, his long arms on his knees.

“My observations cover a period of not more than a week or two,” he said.

“No?”

“And I can’t make head nor tail out of them.”

“Your deductions may not be at all accurate,” she suggested.

“They are scarcely scientific,” he admitted. “They are based upon a series of impulses.”

“Impulses are dangerous,” she reminded him.

“And yet they get hold of one,” he said tensely, “like instincts.”

She rose upon the pretext of poking the fire. She rose instinctively--as one draws back at the approach of a flame. What was tempting her to reach out her hand and smooth the hair back from his troubled forehead? It was a little act of tenderness she sometimes indulged in with her father, but this man was not her father. Nor her brother. Nor bore any blood relationship with her whatsoever. The tenderness that sought expression in some definite act like this rather than in words, that demanded contact, was akin to mother love. Yet there was a difference; a distinct difference. Mother love is a result, born of the past. This emotion of hers was a desire urging her towards the future. It was more complex than mother love and more poignant. It was even less intelligent.

Yet--she felt like offering a little prayer of thanks--it was her intellect that enabled her to keep herself in control in this emergency. And with everything against her. Both her cheeks and her eyes tried to play her false. Only the heat from the burning logs before which she stooped saved her from an involuntary confession. They accounted, after a fashion, for her flushed skin and her excited eyes--brown still, but shot through and through with dazzling golden arrows as though some one had suddenly swept aside the autumn branches which kept them cool and let in the glare of the living sun. Reason, however, was still on her throne. She could still dictate as she chose the thoughts to which she would allow audible expression.

The only trouble was that, in contrast with those she concealed, the spoken thoughts sounded so utterly inane that she would much have preferred to keep silent. That privilege, however, she could not permit herself. Silence was far more expressive than speech.

So for another half-hour she rambled on in an effort to keep their conversation in the placid waters of banality until in desperation she was forced to seek safety in flight. This at a time when she knew that as far as her own thoughts went, flight offered no protection; this also at a time when she felt--uncannily enough--as though some unseen hand were on her arm urging her not to leave him. She could not account for that. It served further to confuse her. Doubtless it was merely a normal reaction to his strange mood. Yet it should not be in the face of her derision of that mood.

At half-past nine Wilmer excused herself.

“Perhaps a good night’s rest will help your fidgets,” she said to Allston, as she lighted her candle.

He rose.

“Perhaps,” he admitted. “Though I refuse to call them fidgets.”

Her mind was aggressively acute to-night. She seemed driven to pick up every phrase and analyze it.

“I wonder if it makes so much difference what we call things,” she reflected. “People argue over definitions as though it changed the thing itself.”

“I suppose it’s just another attempt to be honest.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Or to avoid the truth--dishonestly.”

“And yet if we spoke the stark truth as it comes to us, wouldn’t we make mistakes?”

Again the warning flame across her cheeks.

“Oh, it’s possible to keep on forever getting nowhere,” she exclaimed.

“And you’re tired,” he said anxiously.

“Good-night,” she answered simply.

She was about to turn away when he extended his hand.

“Good-night,” he said with a wistful plea in his voice.

She hesitated a moment and then placed her own warm fingers within his broad palm. But only for a second. He had no time to close over them.

“Good-night,” she whispered, and hurried up the stairs leading from the open room to the floor above.

He watched her until she disappeared--the flash of her pretty ankle the last glimpse he had of her.