The guests went early. It was a relief to have them go. Not that they differed from other guests to whom Collingham Lodge was accustomed to open its doors, or that the dinner was less fastidiously good than Junia was in the habit of giving. Dinner and guests had both been up to form; and yet it was a relief when the last car glided from beneath the portico.

"Why do you suppose it is?"

Junia had asked this question so often of late that Collingham had ceased to try to answer it. Instead, he lit a cigar and strolled to the open French window. He, too, found it a relief to relax in the company of his family, though less puzzled than Junia at the state of mind.

"Oh, come out!" Edith called from the terrace. "It's heavenly."

It was a soft, warm, velvety night, starlit and voluptuous. The air astir was just enough to carry the scents of roses, honeysuckle, mignonette, and new-mown hay. Except for the dartings of small living things and the occasional peep of a half-awake bird, there was no sound but that of the plash of the fountains on the terraces. Edith went in for a light wrap for her mother; Collingham, his cigar in hand, dropped into the teakwood chair.

"It isn't our dinners only," Junia complained, when, with the wrap about her shoulders, she had settled herself in the wicker armchair she preferred; "it's all dinners. It's just as if people didn't enjoy them any more."

"Well, they don't." Edith half loungingly swung herself in a Gloucester hammock. "What we've got to learn, mother dear, is that entertaining, as we called it, was a pre-war habit which we've outlived in spirit, though we haven't quite come to the point in fact."

"There's something in that," Collingham agreed.

"And yet there's got to be hospitality," Junia reasoned. "You can't just live and die to yourself."

Edith swung lazily.

"Hospitality, yes; but isn't there a difference between that and entertaining?"

"If so, what is it?"

"I'm not sure that I can say. Isn't the one a permanent necessity, and the other merely a custom that can go out of date?"

"Between your custom that can go out of date and your permanent necessity, I don't see that there's much distinction."

"Well, there is, mother dear. It's like this: Entertaining is giving people something they don't particularly want and which you expect them to repay; while hospitality is opening your house to people in need, whether they can repay you or not."

"Oh, if we're going to open our houses to people in need—"

"Well, what?"

"I'm sure I don't know what; nor you, either."

"And that's just it. We're halting between two states of mind. Ever since the war began, mere entertaining bores us; and we're terrified at the idea of genuine hospitality; so there we are. We still give dinners and go to them; but when we do we feel it's something fatuous, which can't help making us dull."

Out of the silence that ensued Collingham said, moodily:

"It's all very fine to talk of opening your house to people in need; but it's not as easy as it looks."

"Is anything ever as easy as it looks, dad? Don't we shirk the social problems that are upsetting the world by declaring them impossible to solve, when a material difficulty only puts us on our mettle?"

He turned this over. All that day he had been calculating his own possible responsibility in Teddy Follett's going wrong, and was thinking of it now. In the end he said:

"All the same you've got to follow the regular trend. If you were in business you'd know. You can't do things differently from other people. You may be as sorry as you like not to be able to help; but if you can't, you can't—and there's an end of it."

"Mr. Ayling in his new book, Social Problems and the Individual, says there's a distinction to be drawn between can't and can't—there's the can't that comes from lack of ability, and the can't that springs from the accepted standard. He says—"

"I don't believe your father is at all interested in that, Edith dear."

"Oh yes; let her go on. I'm not afraid of what Ayling thinks."

But before Edith could resume the attention of all three was called by the tinkle of the telephone bell in the library, which could be approached from the terrace through the drawing-room. With a muttered, "Who's ringing up at this time of night?" Collingham dragged himself in to answer it. The women remained silent, each listening to see if the call was for her.

"Yes?... This is Mr. Collingham.... Who?... Oh, it's you, Mr. Brunt?... Yes?... What did you say?... Killed? Who's killed?... Not Flynn the detective, who comes in and out of the bank?... Indeed! Dear me! Dear me! Where was it?... Who did it?... Not that boy?... Oh, my God!... What happened?... Tell me quickly.... Over beyond Jersey City! Yes? Yes?... And they've got him?... In the Brig? That's the Ellenbrook jail, isn't it?... Jackman, too, did you say?... Wounded, but not killed.... Badly?... Oh, the poor fellow!... In the hospital?... That's right.... Has anyone communicated with his family?... Good! Good!... And Flynn's wife?... Oh, the poor woman!... And the boy's family?... You don't know anything? Then no one has informed his mother?... Not that you know of.... I see.... He's to be brought into court to-morrow morning.... Poor little devil!... Oh, I know he doesn't deserve pity, but—but I can't help it, Brunt. His father was with us so long and—and one thing and another!... No; I'll appear in court myself and see what I can do for him.... Good night, then. I'll see you in the morning."

"What boy can that be?" Junia whispered, as her husband hung the receiver in its place.

"I'm sure I don't know—unless—unless it's the Follett boy."

"Oh, I hope not. It would make such awful complications."

They waited for Collingham to come and tell them his plainly thrilling news, but he remained in the library.

"It would make complications," Edith ventured, in a low voice, "if it proved to be young Follett—with Bob in love with his sister."

Junia spoke not so much from impulse as from inspiration.

"He's more than in love with her. He's married to her."

"Mother!"

"Yes; he was married to her a few days before he sailed. I've known it all along."

Edith was breathless.

"Did he tell you?"

"No; she did."

"She? The Follett girl? Why, mother!"

Junia rose. She knew that if her suspicions were correct she would have things to do before she slept.

"Go to bed now, dear; and I'll come to your room and give you the whole story. In the meantime I may have to tell your father."

"You mean to say that he doesn't know?"

"No; not yet. I've been rather hoping that before I told him Bob would—would see his way out of the mess."

"He'll never do that, never in this world—not according to what he's said to me."

"Oh, well, he didn't know everything then that he'll have to know now. But go and say good night to your father; and I'll come up by the time you're in bed."

"Mother, you're amazing!" Edith spoke more in awe than in admiration; but she obeyed orders by going to her father.

She found him still sitting in the chair by the telephone, bowed forward, his elbows on his knees, and his forehead in his hands. When he lifted his haggard eyes toward her she stood still.

"Daddy, what in the world has happened? Who is it that has killed some one? We couldn't help hearing that much."

He raised himself. "Come here."

Going forward, she knelt down beside him, taking his hand and kissing it.

"You poor daddy! You're bothered, aren't you?"

"It's—it's young Follett. He's been stealing money from the bank, and now he's shot one of the detectives who heard he was hiding in a cabin out on the New Jersey marshes. They'd sent out a description of him to the suburban stations. And only to-day I told his sister that I'd call the thing off and give him another chance."

"She came to see you?"

"She came to see me."

"Then you did what you could, didn't you?"

"I did what I could—then." In spite of the emphasis on the final word, he slapped his knee with new conviction. "I've done what I could all through. It's no use saying I haven't, because I have. There's just so much you can do, and you can't do any more. You can't make a business a home for indigent old gentlemen—now, can you?"

He sprang to his feet, leaving her kneeling by the chair.

"No, I don't suppose you can," she assented, rising slowly. "But I do wish you'd talk to Mr. Ayling sometime, daddy. He seems to see all these things from new points of view—"

He was pacing about the room very much like Max in moments of agitation.

"Oh, new points of view! There's only one point of view, I tell you, and that's the one on what we've made the country prosperous."

She smiled wistfully.

"Prosperous for some."

"Well, that's better than prosperous for nobody, isn't it?"

She said good night to him then, for the reason that she herself was so stirred that she needed seclusion in which to think these strange things over. That Bob should have married Jennie Follett was a shock in itself; but that through his wife he should now be involved in this frightful tragedy was something that her mind found it hard to take in. It was the first time that she had ever come so close to the more terrible happenings in life.

Meanwhile, Junia, overhearing what was said, reconstructed her plan of campaign. In common with great generals, she possessed the faculty of rapid revision, as events took place differently from the way she had expected. By the time she heard Edith go upstairs she had foreseen the line of action which the new situation forced on them.

Collingham was still lashing about the library when she appeared on the threshold. Her calmness arrested him. In a measure it soothed him. It was the kind of juncture in which she always knew what to do, and he had confidence in her judgment. When she said, "Sit down, Bradley; I've something to say," he obeyed her quietly, relighting his cigar. As she, too, sat down, Max or Dauphin would have noted in her the aura of authority which a master wears when about to lecture a schoolboy.

"I've something startling to tell you, Bradley; but I want to say beforehand that you mustn't get worked up, because I see a way out."

Taking his cigar from his lips, he looked at her sidewise. His expression said, "What's it going to be now?"

"What I've heard you telling Edith about this young Follett killing a detective concerns us more closely than you may think, because Bob is married to his sister."

He laid his cigar on an ash tray, swung round to the table between them, clasped his fingers, and leaned on his outstretched elbows. His tone was quiet, even casual.

"When did he do that?"

"Just before he sailed."

"Then I'm through with him."

"Oh no, you're not, Bradley! He's your son, whether he's married anyone or not."

"I can't help his being my son; but I can help having anything more to do with him."

"Listen, Bradley. This whole thing is going to be in the papers in the course of two or three days; and you must come through it with honors. It's perfectly simple to do it, and win everyone's respect and sympathy. In addition to that you can get Bob's devoted affection; and you know how much that means to us all."

To Collingham it meant so much that he listened to her attentively, with eager eyes. In Bob's marriage, with its attendant circumstances, they had obviously received a shock. All Marillo Park, as well as the public in general, would know it to be a shock and would be watching to see how they took it. In that case, the best thing was the sporting thing. They must stand right up to the facts and accept them. Everyone knew that the younger generation was peculiar. It was the war, Junia supposed, and yet she didn't know. In any case, it was not the Collinghams alone who were so afflicted, but dotted all over Marillo were families whose young ones were acting strangely. There were the Rumseys, whose twin sons had refused an uncle's legacy amounting to something like three millions, because they held views opposed to the owning of private property. There were the Addingtons, whose son and heir had married a girl twice imprisoned as a Red and was believed to have gone Red in her company. There were the Bendlingers, whose daughter had eloped with a chauffeur, divorced him, and then gone back and married him again. These were Marillo incidents, and in no case had the parents found any course more original than the antiquated one of discarding and disinheritance. And yet you couldn't wash your hands of your flesh and blood like that. They were your flesh and blood whatever they did; and it was idiotic to act as if you could cut the tie between yourself and them. He could see for himself that Rumseys, Addingtons, and Bendlingers had lost rather than gained in general esteem by their melodramatic poses.

Now, the thing for the Collinghams was to accept the situation with a great big generous heart. They were to open their arms to Bob, and back him loyally in the combination of difficulties he had to swing. But he himself must swing them. Junia laid emphasis on that. By direct action they couldn't intervene. They could only make it possible for him to act directly on his own responsibility. He had married a wife whose family was in trouble. They, the Collinghams, would not share that trouble, but they would help him to share it, since he had brought on himself the necessity for doing so.

To accomplish this, Junia suggested sending to Bob a cablegram covering the following five points. The Follett boy was in jail charged with murdering a detective; Bob should publish at once his marriage to this boy's sister; he should return to New York by the first convenient steamer; his father was placing ten thousand dollars to his account, and when that was used would place more; he was also ready, if instructed by Bob, to engage the best counsel in New Jersey to defend the boy.

"That will take care of everything till he gets here," Junia concluded, "and in the meantime, we can't do better, it seems to me, than go up, as we always do at this time of year, to our camp in the Adirondacks. This house can be kept open for Bob when he arrives, and Gull can stay with one of the motors to run him in and out of town."

"And what are we to do about the girl?"

"Nothing. That isn't for us to take up. We must leave it to Bob. If he ever brings her to us as his wife—But, then, he never may."

"What makes you think so?"

Her superb eyes covered him with their fine, audacious, womanly regard.

"I'd tell you, Bradley, if—if I didn't think there are things that had better not go into words, even between you and me. Whatever Bob discovers will be his own affair. You and I had best know as little as possible. We can back Bob up, and that's all we can do. Everything else he will have to work out for himself. By the time he's done that he'll be a grown-up man. It's possible he's needed something of the sort to develop him."

So Collingham telephoned his cablegram to Bob, and went to bed comforted. Next morning, on arriving at the bank, he found Junia's counsels supported by the best opinion among his co-workers. That is, he changed his mind as to going to the court in Ellenbrook for the first hearing of the Follett boy, or otherwise expressing himself toward the Follett family. He had given Bob the means of doing whatever needed to be done, and Bob had the cable at his disposition. To go to the court, or to express sympathy in any way, would, according to Bickley, be dangerous to discipline. Feeling in the bank was extremely hostile to young Follett, and it was better that it should remain so. The bank employee's cast of mind, so Bickley said, was, not revolutionary or rebellious against acknowledged rights. By sheer force of habit, it was schooled to reverence for life and property. The principle of ownership being holier to it than any tenet of religion, the Follett boy could not be looked upon otherwise than as an enemy of mankind; and this was as it should be.

While Collingham thus weighed the counsels offered him at the bank, Gussie Follett was blindly making her way homeward from Corinne's with a paper so folded in her hand as not to display its headlines. She had gone to her work with comparative cheerfulness, since, on the previous day, Jennie had been assured by no less authority than Mr. Collingham himself that Teddy should not be sent to jail. So long as he was not sent to jail, they would be free from public comment, and, free from public comment, they could "manage somehow." Managing somehow being an art in which they had gained authority, they were not afraid of that, even though it involved parting with the one great asset against calamity, the house.

Gussie's first intimation of bad news came when, on entering the shop, she found the four or five other girls huddled round Corinne. Her appearance made them start as if she was a ghost. Her own heart sank at that, though she hailed this shudder with a laugh.

"Say, girls, is this the big reel in 'The Specter Bride'?"

Corinne, whose real name was Mamie Callaghan, emerged from a miniature forest of upright metal rods crowned with hats at various roguish angles. A dark, wavy-nosed woman of cajoling Irish witchery, she could hardly keep the prank from her voice even at such a time as this.

"So, Gussie, you don't know! Well, some one's got to break it to you, and I guess it'll have to be me."

But it was broken already, even before Corinne had brought forward the paper she was hiding behind her back.

"Teddy!" Gussie cried out. "There's something about him in that thing. Let me see it! Let me see it!"

Corinne let her see it, and the work was done. Gussie couldn't read beyond the headlines with their "Robbery" and "Murder" in Italic capitals, but she grasped enough. The snapshot of Teddy taken in the road, just as he had been dragged, a mass of slime, out of the morass, made her reel backward as if about to fall; but when Eily O'Brien sprang to her support she waved her away gently. She was not going to faint. Her physical strength wouldn't leave her, whatever else was gone.

"I'm—I'm going home," was all she said, crushing the paper against her breast.

"Oh, Gus, lemme go with you!" Eily had begged; but this kindness, too, Gussie put away from her.

She could go alone, and alone she went, with one consuming thought as she sped along.

"Oh, momma! Poor momma! This'll about finish her."

And yet when she entered the living-room her mother was sitting, calm and serene, while Mr. Brunt told the tale of the New Jersey marshes. Jennie, white, tearless, terrified, crept up to Gussie, and the two clung together as their mother said, in her steady voice.

"So I understand that only one of them is dead—the Irish one."

Mr. Brunt assented.

"Yes, Flynn, the Irish one."

"I'm not surprised. I told him when he was here the other day that what he called 'law and order' would bring him to grief, as they bring most of us, though I didn't expect it to be so soon. And my son, you say, is in jail."

"At Ellenbrook."

"They'll try him, I suppose."

"I'm afraid so."

"And then they'll send him to the chair." Mr. Brunt didn't answer. "Oh, you needn't be afraid to speak of it. I know they will. I'm not sorry. Teddy will be sorry, of course—till it's over. But I'd rather he'd suffer a little now and be done with it than go through the hell of years his father and I have had. If there was going to be any chance for him, it would be different; but there's no chance, not the way the world is organized now."

The girls crept forward together.

"Momma darling—"

But Lizzie resumed, calmly:

"Where there's nothing but government by the strong for the strong, people like ourselves must go under. You'll go under, too, Mr. Brunt. You belong to the doomed class. The workingman will soon be getting share and share alike with the capitalist; and the white-collar crowd will be kicked about by both. If we had the pluck to fight as the workingman has fought, we might save something even now; but we haven't, and so there's no hope for us. Law and order have us by the throat, and we must suffer till they strangle us. Well, my boy will soon be out of it—thank God!—and all I ask is to follow him."

When Mr. Brunt got himself to the door, Jennie went with him, as she had done with Flynn and Jackman two days earlier. She did this in the dazed condition of a woman who performs some little act of courtesy during shipwreck, while waiting for the vessel to go down.

"You must excuse my mother, Mr. Brunt. Ever since my father died her mind's been unsettled, and we don't know what to make of her."

But Mr. Brunt's demeanor did not encourage conversation. To do him justice, the mission on which Collingham had sent him had been repugnant for other reasons than the breaking of bad news. His mind being of the cast Bickley had analyzed that morning, Teddy's theft filled him with more horror than his killing of a man. To come so near to crime against the ownership of bank notes inspired him with a physical loathing which even Jennie's loveliness couldn't mitigate. It was as if she herself was tainted by some horrible infection, making it a relief to him to get away from her.

But turning to re-enter the house, she felt again that access of new strength which had come to her repeatedly during the past few days. It was as if resources of her being never taxed before were now offering themselves for use. What she had to do was in the forefront of her thought rather than what some one else had done. What some one else had done was already in the past. That was made for her and couldn't be helped; whereas her own duties imperatively summoned her to look ahead.

"Teddy will need a suitcase of clean things," was the direct expression of these thoughts before she had recrossed the threshold.

Having said this aloud to Gussie, Gussie's mind could also tackle the minor concrete details to the exclusion of the bigger considerations involved in Teddy's plight. That the honest, loving, skylarking boy whom they had grown up with could be a thief and a murderer was something the intelligence rejected as it rejected dreams. They could, therefore, take the new straw suitcase which had once been a family present to Gussie, and which she had never used, pack it with Teddy's other suit and the necessary linen, as if he were really at Paterson or Philadelphia.

"How shall we get it to him?" Gussie asked, when the work was done.

"I'll take it," Jennie answered, "if you'll stay and look after momma."

"Momma won't need much looking after—the way she is."

"Well, that's one comfort anyhow. With this to go through with I'm glad her mind's not what it used to be."

So, stunned and dry eyed, they caught on to the new conditions by doing little perfunctory things, consoling and helping each other.