Harriet T. Comstock

"It Is Felicity on Her Wings."

The old New York house was once more opened and the fountain set free. Birds sang and flowers bloomed, but Joan was not there and for a blank but silent moment both Doris and Nancy wondered if the lack were to defeat them. The moment was appalling but it passed.

Felicity brooded over them and her wings did not droop.

Martin, with his sound common sense, came to the fore among the first. He was never more alert. His nephew, Clive Cameron, was entrenched in Martin's office and home—his name, alone, shone on the new sign.

"I've flung you in neck and crop, Bud, because I believe in you and have told my patients so. Sink or swim, but you've got clear water to do it in. I'll hang around—make my city headquarters with you; lend myself to you; but for the rest I'm going to do exactly what I want to do—for a time."

Cameron regarded his uncle as the young often do the older—yearningly, covetously, tenderly.

"I—I think I understand about Miss Fletcher, Uncle Dave," he said.

"I had hoped you did, boy. And remember this—it's only when a woman gets so into your system that she cannot be purged out, that you dare to be sure."

"But, Uncle Dave, the knowledge—what has it done for you?"

"You'll never be able to understand that, Bud, until you're past the age of asking the question."

And having settled that to his satisfaction, Martin turned resolutely to what threatened Doris and Nancy.

He meant to see fair play. Doris could be depended upon for a few strenuous months if her friends turned to and helped her as they should.

Nancy must no longer be sacrificed!

"If there is any sense in this tomfoolery about Joan," Martin mused, "it must apply to Nancy also."

Martin was extremely fond of Nancy. He often wished she would not lean so heavily, but then his spiritual ideal of a woman was after Nancy's design. Of Joan he disapproved, and Doris was a type apart.

"If we can marry Nancy off," plotted Martin—and he had his mind's eye on his nephew—"I'll bring Sister on from the West and get Doris to share Ridge House with us. Queer combination, but safe!"

And then he saw, as in a vision, the peaceful years on ahead. He would hold Doris's hand down the westering way. Hold it close and warm; never looking for more than the blessed companionship. And his sister, happy and content, would share the way with them and Nancy's children—would they be Clive's also?—would gladden all their hearts. And Joan?—well, Martin did not feel that Joan needed his architectural aid—she was chopping and hacking her own design.

At this point Martin sought Emily Tweksbury and bullied her into action.

Mrs. Tweksbury had not unpacked her trunks yet and was sorely depressed about Raymond.

"I wish I had stuck to Maine," she deplored, "and devoted myself to the boy. He looks like a fallen angel.

"Ken, what have you been doing to yourself?" she had asked.

"Just pegging away, Aunt Emily."

"Ken," Mrs. Tweksbury had an awful habit of felling the obvious by a blow of her common-sense hatchet; "Ken, you've got to be married. You're not the kind to float around town and enjoy it—and you are the kind that would enjoy the other."

"Oh! I'm having a bully time, Aunt Emily."

"That's not true, Ken. Life lacks salt; you look the need of it and I blame myself for going abroad."

"I'm glad you went!" fervently said Raymond.

"You are, eh? Well, I'm not going again until you're safely married."

At this Raymond found that he could laugh, and just then the hatchet fell, for Doctor Martin had entered the arena and Mrs. Tweksbury had agreed to help.

"Do you remember my speaking of that niece of Miss Fletcher's last spring?" she asked.

"Yes. I do recall it. Wasn't she to come here—or something like that?"

"Yes, she was, but she isn't. Doris Fletcher has brought her girl up to town herself and the old house is opened. I called there the other day. Ken, that girl is the loveliest thing I ever saw!"

"Is she?" Raymond was sitting on the edge of the table in Mrs. Tweksbury's dressing room. When she got through talking he was going to bed. He had to stifle a yawn.

"Yes, she is. She's not only the prettiest girl I've seen for many a year, but she's the girl."

"For what?" Raymond swung his lifted foot while he balanced with the other.

"For you, Ken!" The crash unsettled Raymond and he brought his free foot to the floor.

"Oh! come," he blurted; "don't begin that sort of rubbish, Aunt Emily. I thought you were above that."

"I'm not, Ken. I would go slow if I dared, but this girl will be snapped up before we get in touch with her, unless we act quick."

"Aunt Emily! For heaven's sake, is the girl hanging about open-mouthed for the first hook tossed to her?"

"No. But, Ken, she is the kind that men want—the kind they hold sacred in their souls and hardly dare hope ever to see in the flesh. The girl made me want to grab her. I remember as a child she was charming—she's a perfect, but very human, woman now."

With this Mrs. Tweksbury dilated upon what Doris had confided of Nancy's loyal and devoted life.

"You see, Ken," Mrs. Tweksbury ran on, "the girl is like a rare thing that you cannot debate much about, and once lost, the opportunity will never come again. I've gone off about her, Ken."

"I should say you had! Will you smoke, Aunt Emily?"

"Yes!"

To see Emily Tweksbury smoke was about as incongruous as to see an antique remodelled to bring it up to date; but the smoke calmed her.

"You will call with me upon her, won't you, Ken?"

"With pleasure."

Raymond felt that any compromise would be well to offer.

"I'll do my best by her, too, Aunt Emily. I rather shy at perfect types; girls, at the best, make me skittish. They make me think of myself and then I get gawky."

"You'll forget yourself when you see Nancy Thornton."

"Nancy—queer old name for a modern girl!" The two puffed away like old cronies—Raymond had got into a chair now and Mrs. Tweksbury had relaxed, also.

"She isn't modern!"

"No? What then, Aunt Emily?"

"Ken, she's just woman. She appears just once so often, like a prophet or something, that keeps your faith alive. She's the kind that the Bible calls 'blessed,' and if she didn't reappear now and then I think the race would perish."

"Ugh!" grunted Raymond. Then added: "Calm down, Aunt Emily, go slow. When you lose your head you're apt to buck."

Mrs. Tweksbury laughed at this and helped herself to another cigarette.

It was a week later that Raymond met Nancy at his aunt's dinner table. He knew she was coming. At least he thought he knew—but when he saw her he felt that he had not expected her at all.

It was a small party: Doris Fletcher, Doctor Martin, young Doctor Cameron, and Nancy.

Nancy came into the dim old drawing room behind young Cameron. It was that fact that attracted Raymond first. He recalled what Mrs. Tweksbury had said about the type being the ideal of man—or something like that—and Cameron, whom he had just met a few weeks before, had apparently got into action.

After Nancy came Doctor Martin—it was as if the male element surrounded the girl.

She was rather breath-taking and radiant. She wore a coral-pink satin gown, very short and narrow. Her pretty feet were shod in pink stockings and satin slippers. Her dainty arms and neck were white and smooth, and her glorious fair hair was held in place by a string of coral beads.

There are a good many platitudes that are really staggering facts.

"Caught on the rebound," is one.

Raymond was more open to certain emotions than he had ever been in his life. He was sore and bruised; he had lost several beliefs in himself—and was completely ignorant of the big thing that had given him new strength.

He had had the vision of passion through the wrong lens; he had been blinded by the close range, but he knew what the vision was. In that he had the advantage of poor Joan.

His youth cried out for Youth; he wanted what he had all but lost the right to have. But he in no sense just then wanted Nancy; it was what she represented. She was what Mrs. Tweksbury had said, the kind of girl that men enshrine in their souls and never replace even when they gladly accept a substitute.

"If only——" and then Raymond's eyes looked queer. He was living over the black hour which he did not realize was the hour of his soul's birth. He'd never have that battle again, he inwardly swore, but that was poor comfort.

And then, while talking to Nancy, he grew very gay and light-hearted, like someone who had made a safe passage past the siren's rocks. Not that it mattered, except that one did not want to be shipwrecked. Of course, Raymond knew, he wouldn't forget while he lived, the other thing just past, but it had not wrecked him.

After that dinner nothing would have happened if all sorts of pressure had not been brought to bear. Raymond was affectionately inclined to be kind to Mrs. Tweksbury because he knew he had wronged her faith in him, though she would never know; so he accompanied her whenever she beckoned, and she beckoned frequently and always toward Nancy.

Then Clive Cameron happened, at the crucial moment, to be on the middle of the stage for the same reasons that Raymond was there. Cameron followed Martin's vigorous beckoning, although he was bored to the limit. He liked Nancy and thought her very beautiful, but Cameron had not enshrined any type of woman—a few men are like that. He knew, because he was young and vital and sane, that he had a shrine, or pedestal, in his make-up and if, at any time, he saw a girl that made him forget, for a moment, the profession that was absorbing him just then, he'd humbly implore her to fill the empty niche and after that he would do the glorifying. But if it pleased his uncle to trot him about, he went with charming grace; and because it did not affect him in the least, he played almost boisterously with Nancy and made her jollier than she had ever been in her life.

He made her forget things! Forget The Gap!

Cameron simply knocked unpleasant memories into limbo; he was like a fresh northwest wind—he revived everyone. He made Doris think of David Martin as she first knew him—and naturally Doris adored Cameron. She came near praying that Nancy might, after a fashion, pay her debts for her. But no! she would not influence Nancy—she must be respected in her beautiful freedom as Joan was in hers.

So Doris widened the field of Nancy's vision, and old friends came happily to the front.

It is not wholly ignoble, the marriage market. To understand the game of life is to be prepared, and women like Doris Fletcher were not entirely self-seeking when they presented their best to what they believed should be the best. Nancy was worthy, as Martin often said, to carry on the truest American tradition of womanhood, so it became a reverent concern to help this matter personally, and nationally, on its course.

Young men swarmed about Nancy because, as Mrs. Tweksbury truly said, the ideal was in their hearts and they were stirred by it.

And Nancy was radiant and lovely. She blossomed and throbbed—she was happy and appreciative. She was charming to everyone, but ran to Cameron for safety and kept her sweet eyes on Raymond.

So secretly did she do this that no one but Cameron suspected it. The perfectly serene atmosphere that surrounded him and Nancy permitted him to understand the state of affairs.

When a girl uses a man as a buffer between her and others he does not confuse things.

For a short time Cameron debated as to which particular man Nancy wanted him to save her for while he was preserving her from the mass. It did not take him long to decide. He grinned at the truth when it struck him. He was surprised, as men usually are, at a woman's choice of males. Cameron liked Raymond; thought him a good sort, but herd-bound.

"But Nancy's got the brand mark, too," he reflected. "They're both headed in the same direction, only Raymond doesn't know it—a woman always finds things out first, and it's up to me, I guess, to lasso Raymond for her."

So Cameron took up the "big brother" burden and steered the unsuspecting Raymond to his fate.

Cameron did this in a masterly way. He blinded everyone except Nancy.

Doris sighed with content, and Martin lifted his eyes in praise and gratitude. Mrs. Tweksbury, like a war-horse smelling powder, saw danger to her plans and quickened Raymond to what was going on.

At first Raymond was relieved—he wished Cameron good luck. Having done that, he began to wonder if he really did?

There was something unutterably sweet about Nancy: she was so purely the kind of woman that made life a success. Why should he play straight into Cameron's hand? If Nancy really preferred Cameron, why, then—but did she?

This was interesting. He took to watching; presently he concluded that Cameron was a conceited ass.

After a short time Raymond began to feel the pressure of Nancy's little body in his arms—when their dance was over. He began to resent other arms about her. Her eyes were lovely—so blue and sympathetic. She never set a man guessing. Raymond had had enough of guessing!

About that time Mrs. Tweksbury added an urge to her heart's desire that she little suspected.

"Ken," she remarked one morning, "I dropped into the Brier Tea Room yesterday." It was the brier that signified the meaning of the place to the old lady.

"Do you remember?"

Raymond nodded. Did he not remember!

"The place is quite ordinary now—but the food is still superior. Miss Gordon has come to her senses."

"Has she?" Raymond asked, lamely.

"Yes. And that girl—do you remember her, Ken?"

Raymond nodded again.

"Just as one might expect," Mrs. Tweksbury rattled on, keeping to her one-tracked idea of things, "the minx ran off with a man, never considering Miss Gordon at all."

"I doubt if Miss Gordon could see any one's side but her own," ventured Raymond.

"Ken, that's unjust. The girl was a little fraud, and I think Miss Gordon is heartily ashamed of herself for having resorted to such cheap methods to get trade. She has young Scotch girls helping her now. No more tricks, says Miss Gordon."

There was a pause.

"I thought for a time, Ken, that that girl was one of our kind—risking far too much. I'm not usually mistaken in blood, but—the creature was a good counterfeit; I'm glad she's gone. Say what you will, we older women know the young man needs protection as well as the young women."

"Oh! Aunt Emily, cut it out!"

Raymond got up and stalked about. This added to Mrs. Tweksbury's uneasiness.

For days after that talk Raymond had his uncomfortable hours. He wished he knew about the girl of the tea room. It was "the girl" now. If she were only unscathed the future would be safer for everyone.

But how could he—Raymond was getting into the meshes—how could he run to safety and happiness and forget, if he had really harmed, in any way, a girl who might have cared? The difference between playing with fire and being burned by fire was clear now.

Had that hour, when the beast in him rampaged, killed forever the ideal she had had? Was she saved by his madness? Or had she been driven on the rocks? If he only knew!

Raymond still had moments when he believed that the girl would materialize in his own safeguarded world. He had seen a resemblance now and then that turned him cold, but when all was said and done there was no reason, no unforgivable reason, for him to exile himself from life.

And when he was in this state of mind, Cameron was like vinegar on a raw wound to him. Cameron's joyousness, born of indifference, passed for assurance based, as Raymond believed, on his asinine conceit.

"He takes Nancy for granted," Raymond grumbled, "and he need not be too sure—why, only last night——"

Then Raymond recalled the look in Nancy's eyes.

As a matter of fact, while Raymond was no better nor worse than the average young man visiting the marriage market, Nancy had selected him for worship and glorification. He loomed high and then, suddenly, he loomed alone!

There is that in woman which selects for its own. It is not merely the instinct of mating, it is choice, in the main, and makes either for success or failure—but it always has its compensations in that vague, groping sense that calls for its own. The world may look on wondering or dismayed, but the woman, under the crude exterior, clings to the ideal she sought.

With Nancy and Raymond conditions favoured the moment. Nancy had a wide choice and she was radiantly happy. Doris saw to it that the girl should see and hear the best of everything and be free to live her days unfettered.

Raymond had inherited the purest desires for family and home—he had never seen them gratified in his parents' life, so they still lay dormant in his heart. Nancy presently awakened them and Cameron's mistaken attitude drove them into action.

Raymond counted Nancy's charms. Her devotion to her aunt, her unselfish service while her twin sister followed her own devices, Doctor Martin's very pronounced admiration, and Mrs. Tweksbury's ardent affection all carried him along like favouring winds. And presently the constant appearance of Cameron with Nancy lashed Raymond to the amazing conviction that he was in love!

He grew pale and abstracted; the revealment was pouring like light and sun into the depths of his nature. He wished that he was a better man; he thanked whatever god he reverenced that he was not a worse one. He recalled the one foolish episode of his youth with contempt for his weakness and gratitude for the escape—not only for himself but for the unknown girl.

As a proof of the sincerity of his present change of heart he wished above everything that he might find the girl and confess to her, for he felt, beyond doubt, that it would give her joy.

He believed this, not because he wanted to believe it, but because he felt the truth of it, and presently it gave him courage.

But there was Cameron!

Finally Raymond discovered that his business was suffering. He grew indifferent to the exact hour of leaving his office; took no pride in his well-regulated habits. He began to dislike Cameron and he dreamed of Nancy. Day and night he saw her as the safe and sweet solution of all that was best in him. She held sacred what his inheritance reverenced; she was human and divine; she was his salvation—or Cameron's.

At this point Mrs. Tweksbury gave him an unlooked-for stab.

"Well!" she remarked with a groan—she never sighed, "I guess Clive Cameron has got in at the death!"

She looked gruesome and defeated. Raymond grew hot and cold.

"What do you mean?" he asked, and glared shamelessly.

"I mean," Mrs. Tweksbury confronted Raymond as if repudiating him forever, "I mean that you've let the chance of your life slip through your fingers and fall into the gaping mouth of that Clive Cameron. It's disgusting, nothing less!"

"Aunt Emily! What in thunder do you mean? Nancy Thornton has only been here a month; if she's so easily gobbled"—the discussion waxed crude—"I'm sure I could not prevent it—I'm not a gobbler."

"No—you're a fool!"

"Come, come, Aunt Emily." Raymond flushed and Mrs. Tweksbury grew mahogany-tinted.

"Oh! I know"—two tears—they were like solid balls—rolled down the deep red cheeks. Almost it seemed that they would make a noise when they landed on the expansive bosom.—"I sound brutal, but I'm the female of the species and it hurts to know defeat the—the second time."

"The—second—time?" gasped Raymond.

"Yes—your father! I could—oh! Ken, it is no shame to say it to you—but I could have made him happy, but it came, the chance, too late. Then when you came I pledged my soul that I would try to secure your happiness. I know what you want, need, and deserve, and here is this perfect child—the one woman for you, snatched from under your nose by Clive Cameron who will—" Emily Tweksbury sought for a figure of speech—"who will, without doubt, end in dissecting her!"

"Good Lord!" gasped Raymond. The dramatic choice of words was unnerving him.

"Oh! you men," spluttered Mrs. Tweksbury. "You make me weary—disgusted; you're no more fit to manage your affairs than babies, and your monumental conceit drives sensible women crazy. We ought to ask you to marry us. We ought not wait to see you ruin yourselves and us, too."

"But, Aunt Emily, why in thunder do you think Nancy Thornton cares for me? If she wants Cameron, why shouldn't she have him?"

At this Emily Tweksbury flung her head back and regarded Raymond with flaming eyes.

"You—well!—just what are you? Can't you see? Could you possibly believe any girl would take Cameron if she had you to choose?"

At this Raymond laughed. He laughed with abandon, going the gamut of emotions like a scale. But presently he became quiet, and a rare tenderness overspread his face. He went over to Mrs. Tweksbury and bent to kiss her.

"I never knew before, Aunt Emily," he said, "just what a mother meant. I'm sorry, dear. Upon my word, I'm deadly sorry, but I'm made slow and cautious and mechanical—I'm afraid of making mistakes—and if I have lost because of my weakness, why, you and I must cling the closer."

"Oh! Ken. When you talk like that I feel that I must go and have it out with Nancy!"

"Aunt Emily, hands off!"

Raymond was suddenly stern, and Mrs. Tweksbury bowed before the tone.

But Raymond meant to make sure before he accepted defeat. He spurred himself to the test with the name of Emily Tweksbury on his lips. That name seemed to hold all his responsibilities and hopes—his long-ago past; the only claim upon the future except—— And in this Raymond was sincere. His own honest love for the girl who had entered his life so soon after his doubt of himself had had birth made him fear to put his feet upon the broad highway.

But he braced himself for effort and on a stormy, sleety January afternoon he telephoned to Nancy and asked her if she were to be free that evening.

She was. And—to his shame Raymond heard it gleefully—she had a "sniffy little cold" that made going out impossible.

"Are you afraid of sniffy colds?" asked Nancy, "they say they are catching!"

"I particularly like them," Raymond returned.

"We'll have a big fire in the sunken room and," here Nancy gurgled over the telephone, "we'll toast marshmallows."

Raymond presented himself as early as he dared and was told by the maid to go to the sunken room. Believing that Nancy was there awaiting him, he approached with a beaming countenance.

Cameron stood with his back to the roaring fire.

"Hello, Ken!" he blurted, cheerfully. "You look like a gargoyle."

"Thanks!" All the light and joy fled at the sight of the big fellow by the hearth. Dispiritedly, Raymond sat down and resigned himself to what he believed was the inevitable.

Cameron regarded him critically as he might have a puzzling case. Then, having made a diagnosis, he prescribed:

"Sorry to see me here, old chap?"

"Why in thunder should I be?" Raymond glared.

"No reason—but then reason isn't everything. Nancy's a bit off—I'd hate to have her confront that mug of yours, Ken, if I can soften it up any. I came to bring some medicine from Uncle David—he's worried about colds these days. Nancy told me you were coming, she went upstairs to take her dose in private—she told me to stay and give you the glad hand and explain. Somehow you don't look exactly appreciative."

"Sorry!" Raymond found himself relaxing. "Want me to kiss you?"

"Try it! I'd like to have a fling at you. What's up, anyway, Ken? See here, old man, you know there might be any one of twenty fellows here to-night—you ought to be on your knees thanking heaven that it's I—not one of the twenty."

"What the devil do you mean?" Raymond got up, tried to feel resentment but could not.

"Nothing, only I'm going and—well, Ken, don't be an ass. It don't pay."

Raymond tried to think of something to say, but before the right thing occurred he heard Cameron's cheerful whistle cut off by the closing of the heavy front door.

Then he sat down by the fire and did some thinking. It was the kind of concentrated thought that separates the chaff and wheat; foregoes the glitter of romance and reaches out for the guiding, unfailing light of reality.

How long he sat alone Raymond never realized. It seemed like years, then like a moment—but it brought him to Nancy as she stood at the top of the flight of steps leading to the warm, fire-lighted room while the fountain splashed cheerfully and a restless, curious little bird twittered in its cage.

Nancy wore the faintest of blue gowns; a cloudlike scarf fell from her shoulders; her eyes held the full confession of her love as they met the groping in Raymond's.

He opened his arms.

"My darling!" he said, "will you come?"

Slowly, radiantly, Nancy stepped down.

"It seems as if I'd always been coming," she was saying. "I—I don't want to hurry now that I—I see you."

"I—I think I've always been coming, too," Raymond would not take a step, "but I was walking in the dark."

"And I——" but Nancy did not finish her sentence—she had found her heart's desire.

"I'm not worthy," murmured Raymond, pressing the light hair with his lips.

"Neither am I. We'll grow worthy together. It's like finding a beautiful thing we both were seeking. It isn't you or I—alone—it is something outside us that we are going to make—ours."

Spiritually Raymond got upon his knees, humanly he pressed the girl close.

"It's—you—the Thing is—you" he whispered, and at that moment knew the last, definite difference between what he now felt and—all that had gone before.