CHAPTER XXX

“Oh; the light, light love that has wings to fly!”

DR. GRANT had not found the wrench of parting much easier than his sister, but, like many people with deep emotions, he had found room enough to keep his unhappiness apart from his everyday work and appearance, and to take a certain amount of placid enjoyment out of his new mode of living. The difficulty was in completely deceiving Cynthia by the constant holiday aspect she expected of him. Sometimes the shadow fell between them, and they would be silent and apart, then both would bitterly blame themselves, pity each other, and rush back into the holiday aspect again. They would have been far happier if they had been less reserved.

It was about six when Geoff, returning to their apartments, heard the noise of talk and merry laughter in his sister’s room. He opened the door hastily to find Cynthia on her knees before the fire roasting chestnuts with a curly-headed youngster, who laughed the more at his appearance, as if it were a part of the game.

“This is the Knight Sir Launcelot,” said Cynthia gravely, waving her hand towards the boy. “Launcelot—the King!” Launcelot nodded.

“I always ’spected him,” he said earnestly, “and now God must have sent him instead of Tony. Do you think kings are nicer than birds?” he added anxiously to Cynthia.

“Not most of them,” said Cynthia preparing to shell a hot chestnut; “but mine’s a very nice king, as nice as any bird I should think.”

“Things when they’re _very_ nice fly away,” puzzled the thoughtful knight; “if kings _was_ as nice as birds they might fly too!” He drew down his brows and gazed at the solid and substantial doctor. “But you—you don’t look as if you was a very flying person,” he finished triumphantly. “Would you like a chestnut?” The doctor accepted one with enthusiasm, and Launcelot, the king and the woman with red hair spent a charming and exciting evening.

They only parted at bedtime at his mother’s door on the express understanding that he was to come again the next day, and that knights never even under the hardest circumstances cried, and that last, but not least, the coal-black charger with a stiff neck under the king’s coat transported thither from a fairy shop must be shown without delay to Marie, daddy and the cook. These facts being grasped the worst was over, and the knight, strewing wet kisses in his wake, was borne away to bed, leaving his volatile mother expressing shrill-voiced thanks to Cynthia and Geoff. The streets seemed ten times brighter and less chilly to the doctor and his sister, and they went to a screaming French farce for the rest of the evening, and felt much the better for it. In fact they even forgot for a while their determination to enjoy themselves.

After this it became the custom for Launcelot to go to Cynthia every afternoon and stay with her till evening. Millicent was always grateful, but frequently hurried—more hurried even than an American woman in Paris generally is. She did not refer again to the charming Count and his sister, but one day she told Cynthia that “Clifton had gone away.”

“For how long?” asked Cynthia quietly. Millicent stared, then she sat down and laughed. She laughed for a long while, but not very merrily. Finally she explained with a blank terseness.

“He’s just quit; he’s gone! he’s left me. Don’t stand there and stare, Cynthia. Sit down. We didn’t have a very good time together.” She continued pacing restlessly up and down the little tawdry room. “He was always the sort of man that wanted a good time, and we didn’t have much money. After the child came, you know, it was worse than ever. I wasn’t going to play the door-mat to Clifton, but I did my best to make it pretty.” She looked at the little concealments, ragged and thin in the heartless Paris sunshine, and they looked more pathetic than ever. “And I dressed real well, but there wasn’t any keeping him. He only told me I was ruining him with dressmakers’ bills, though he knew I make the most of my own clothes! Sometimes I wish I hadn’t been so cock-sure about Paris. In America there’d have been something to keep him back, but there’s nothing to keep one back in Paris. Things look as innocent and pretty——” her voice broke; “but they aren’t, Cynthia—they’re real mean! they’re real mean!” Cynthia sat silently gazing at the carpet. The nervous, breaking voice, the frightened, restless figure were not lost upon her. They seemed familiar somehow, quite as if she had seen them before; and the ring of pain in the most meagre phrase “But they aren’t—they’re real mean! they’re real mean!” voiced a feeling that had once been part of her without a voice. She waited for the inevitable sequel. It came in a burst of hysterical sobs. “He left me a note, Cynthia—Clifton did—he said I should know where to look for consolation!”

“The brute!” cried Cynthia. Millicent laughed.

“Well! don’t you know they’re all that way when a man is tired. Nothing will keep him; and then he wants to throw a sop to something, maybe he thinks it’s his conscience, so he invents another man for the woman he’s left—if—if there isn’t one already.”

“Millicent,” Cynthia stood up, and took the pretty, heavily ringed hand in hers, “do you think the second man will bring you anything better than the first? He never does—the only difference is he leaves you worse. Stick to your art and Launcelot!” Millicent tore her hands away.

“Pshaw! you’re always talking about the child—I hate him!—there!—I hate him! I hated the pain, I hated being put aside, I hated having to spend my time on him—maybe if he hadn’t come Clifton would have been different; maybe other things would have been different too! As for my art, as you call it, what is art to a woman? Why, it’s nothing! you know it, Cynthia. If Leslie Damores hadn’t played the fool——”

“Hush!” Cynthia stammered in a piteous attempt to hide the pain of his name.

“Well, then! If a man wanted you, I’d like to know what pictures would mean? Pictures! I may be weak and silly—I know I am—I loved my husband. Yes! I did! I know I did. But if I can’t have him, I must have somebody. And you want me—to paint! Well! I’ll tell you. I wanted to please Clifton—so I painted. Now the Count doesn’t like the folks I mix with——” she bridled perceptibly, and Cynthia felt sick, “so I won’t paint any more.”

She looked at the clock. Cynthia gazed at her desperately; she heard Launcelot’s voice in the next room. She had taught him “Sir Galahad,” and his voice rose in a triumphant shout at the last words, “All arm’d I ride, whate’er betide, until I find the Holy Grail!”

“What are you going to do with the child?” she asked wearily. Millicent flushed. No woman is without the saving grace of feeling, through some chord, a touch of shame.

“The Count,” she said, “says he’ll send him to school; he’s very kind.”

“Very,” said Cynthia dryly. “He will send him to a French school, where he will grow into a second Count—it’s very kind of him. Millicent, if you have no other plan, will you give him to me?”

“To you!” said Millicent—“to you?” She was astonished. She was, after all, his mother, and even where motherhood brings no love it keeps its sense of property. “Why, Cynthia, I don’t know as I _can_; you see, after all, I’m his mother! It’s very kind of you, Cynthia—but——” She looked again at the clock.

“Look here!” said Cynthia suddenly, “I’m not going without the boy. You had better make up your mind to give him to me. You don’t want to ruin his life as well as your own, and if you don’t let me have him——” Cynthia’s eyes flashed. “He will be more in your way than ever now. I shall stay and—explain—to the Count!” she finished grimly. Millicent turned white.

“Oh, go!” she said. “For Heaven’s sake go, and take the boy with you. I suppose you don’t know what people will say! I suppose it doesn’t matter to you that we all know why Leslie Damores didn’t marry you. I suppose——”

“Oh, Lady Beautiful!”—the knight stood looking from one to the other at the door—“Lady Beautiful, do you know where it is?”

“Where what is, my darling?”

“The Holy Grail,” said the knight wrinkling his brows. “I don’t know where to find it.” Cynthia took his hand.

“Let’s go and look for it,” she said; “it isn’t here.”

She hesitated, but Millicent stood at the window with her back to them. She put her hands to her hair and replaced a pin. Cynthia turned with the boy, and together they left the little tawdry flat for the last time; left the strange, sad life with its shattered opportunities and sordid concealments; left his mother standing by the window waiting for the Count.