The Vision Splendid Part 39

As he swung round the smoking saloon Jeff came face to face with Alice.

He turned and caught step with her. The coat she wore came to her ankles, but it could not conceal her light, strong tread nor the long lines of the figure that gave her the grace of a captured wood nymph.

"Only five hundred miles from Verden. By night we ought to be in wireless communication," he suggested.

Her glance flashed at him. "You'll be glad to get home."

"I will and I won't. There's work for me to do there. But it's the first real vacation I ever had in my life that lasted over a week. You can't think how I've enjoyed it."

"So have I. More than anything I can remember." They stopped to look at a steamer which lay low on the distant horizon line. After they had fallen into step again she continued at the point where they had been interrupted: "And after we reach home? Are you going to come and see me? Are you going to let me meet your friends, those dear people who are giving themselves to make life less hideous and harsh for the weak?

Shall I meet Mr. Mifflin... and Mr. Miller and your little Socialist poet? Or are you going to desert me?"

He smiled a little at her way of putting it, but he was troubled none the less. "Are you sure that your way is our way? One can give service on the Hill just as much as down in the bottoms. There's no moral grandeur in rags or in dirt. Isn't your place with your friends?"

"Haven't I a right to take hold of life for myself at first hand?

Haven't I a right to know the truth? What have I done that I should be walled off from all these people who earn the bread I eat?"

"But your friends... your father..."

Her ironic smile derided him. "So after all you haven't the courage of your convictions. Because I'm Peter C. Frome's daughter I'm not to have the right to live."

"No, it's your right to take hold of life with both hands. But surely you must live it among your own people."

"I've got to learn how to live it first, haven't I? Most of my friends are not even aware there a problem of poverty. They thrust the thought of it from them. Our wealthy cla.s.s has no social consciousness. Take my father. He thinks the submerged are lost because they are thriftless and that all would be right if they wouldn't drink. To him they are just a waste product of civilization.

"But can you study the life of the people without growing discontented with the life you must lead?"

"There is a divine discontent, you know. I've got to see things for myself. Why should all my opinions, my faith, be given to me ready-made.

Why must I live by a formula I have never examined? If it isn't true I want to know it. And if it is true I want to know it." She had been looking straight before them toward the rising sun but now her gaze swept round on him. "Don't blame yourself for giving me new thoughts. I suppose all new ideas are likely to make trouble. But I've been working in this direction for years. Ever since I've been a little girl my heresies have puzzled my father. Meeting you has shown me a short cut.

That's all."

Something she had said recalled to him a fugitive memory.

"Do you know, I think I saw you once when you were a little bit of a thing?"

"Where?"

"On the doorstep of your old place. I was rather busy at the time fighting Edward Merrill."

She stopped, looking at him in surprise. "Were you that boy?"

"I was that boy."

"You fought him to help a little ragged girl. She was a foreigner."

"I've forgotten why I fought him. The reason I remember the occasion is that I met then for the first time two of my friends."

She claimed a place immediately. "Who was the other one?"

"Captain Chunn."

Presently she bubbled into a little laugh. "How did the fight come out?

My nurse dragged me into the house."

"Don't remember. I know the school princ.i.p.al licked me next day. I had been playing hookey."

They made another turn of the deck before she spoke again.

"So we're old acquaintances, and I didn't know it. That was nearly eighteen years ago. Isn't it strange that after so long we should meet again only last week?"

Jeff felt the blood creep into his face. "We met once before, Miss Frome."

"Oh, on the street. I meant to speak."

"So did I."

"When?"

With his eyes meeting hers steadily Jeff told her of the time she had found him in the bushes and mistaken him for a sick man. He could see that he had struck her dumb. She looked at him and looked away again.

"Why do you tell me this?" she asked at last in a low voice.

"It's only fair you should know the truth about me."

They tramped the circuit once more. Neither of them spoke. The trumpeter's bugle call to breakfast rang out.

At the bow she stopped and looked down at the waters they were furrowing. It was a long time before she raised her head and met his eyes. The color had whipped into her cheeks, but she put her question steadily.

"Are you telling me... that I must lose my friend?"

"Isn't that for you to say?"

"I don't know." She faltered for words, but not the least in her intention. "Are you--what I have always heard you are?"

"Can you be a little more definite?" he asked gently.

"Well--dissipated! You're not that?"

"No. I've trodden down the appet.i.te. I'm a total abstainer."

"And you're not... those worse things that the papers say?"

"No."

"I knew it." Triumph rang in her voice. She breathed a generous trust.

To know him for a true man it was necessary only to look into his fearless eyes set deep in the thin tanned face. It was impossible for anything unclean to survive with his humorous humility and his pervading sympathy and his love of truth. "I didn't care what they said. I knew it all the time."

Her sweet faith was a thing to see with emotion. He felt tears scorch the back of his eyes.