More than Raiment

by Margaret Cameron and Jessie Leach Rector

 

More Than Raiment

 

BY MARGARET CAMERON AND JESSIE LEACH RECTOR

 

TN the beginning the pink dress was merely a pink dress, and only when it was persistently denied and forbidden did Fergus Dean convert it into a symbol. Then it became his Blue Bird, which, from the time Tony was three years old, he pursued and tried to cage for her until, as the years passed, both father and daughter saw in its promise the fulfilment of happiness and high reward. But to Mrs. Dean, in the throes of social evolution, it symbolized only a reversion to type; and even when the long struggle that had begun in the oil -fields of West Virginia was finally ended, with Barbara Ventris's help, in the gold-fields of West Australia, to Tony's mother the pink dress still loomed—an outraged convention.

Mary Dean's trend was upward, and the first rung of her ladder had been the Methodist sewing society in Wellsville, then a primitive, ill-lighted, mushroom town, where the surrounding forest of unweathered oil-derricks was not more newly hewn than were the cultural ambitions of Fergus Dean's wife. In this early period it was she who introduced gilded thistles and umbrella-stands made of decorated drain-pipe to an envious and imitative circle. Consciousness of germs and the "individualism of the child" had not then dawned upon an eager world; but the day was to come when Mary Dean's pronunciation of been would rhyme with seen, and when it would be said, in describing her, "She's the wife of a leading citizen, and knows words like Matisse and Debussy."

She married Fergus Dean for love, and when later she found that he did not conform to the pattern of her favorite literature, in which duchesses abounded, she endeavored to mold him; but he was not plastic. He met her efforts with whimsical amusement, but with that same underlying determination which in after years led her to speak of him as "an individualist."

Meanwhile came Tony—Antoinette she was christened—and Tony supplied a new outlet. In floppy bonnets, and socks patterned after the most approved models in the fashion journals, she gave promise of fulfilling her mother's every worldly ambition, and with their greater wealth Mrs. Dean's horizon widened, and her dream of a brilliant marriage for Antoinette grew. Convention was her higher priest. But to follow its mandates to complete attainment under Fergus Dean's humorous eyes was never easy, and when she recognized in their daughter a recrudescence of the same indomitable spirit that had made the father unmalleable, she determined to yield it no vantage, however small. From first to last, Antoinette must learn to conform.

The pink dress, however, first became an issue the day before the child's third birthday, when Dean casually remarked:

"By the way, I couldn't play with Tony last night, and I promised that if she'd be good she should have a pink dress for her party to-morrow. Better get it to-day."

"A pink dress!" his wife echoed. "Absurd! Babies never wear pink."

"Don't they? I'm sorry, but, as I promised it, she's got to have it."

"My dear, she can't have it! It isn't conventional."

"What's that got to do with it? She mustn't be disappointed."

But she was disappointed. Notwithstanding continued reiteration of "Pink d'ess! Pink d'ess! Papa said pink d'ess!" no pink dress was forthcoming, and when bedtime came and still there was no fulfilment of her father's promise, she sobbed herself to sleep, only to demand with her first conscious breath the next morning, "Pink d'ess!"

"Oh, Fergus!" Mary wearily reproached. "Why did you put that notion into her head? Now she'll tease for it for days! You might leave her social training to me!"

"All right. That's a game I don't know," he conceded, good-naturedly. "But all the youngsters around here wear pink dresses. Tim Dolan's baby—"

"Tim Dolan's your head tool-dresser," she reminded him. "Will you never learn to make distinctions?"

"Oh, come! I bet you wore pink clothes when you were little! Honest, now, didn't you?"

"Antoinette is not to be hampered as I was—as I am," she corrected. "At least, I can spare her that."

"That's all right, but you know some of us prefer to make our own mistakes. And while you may play the social game for your Antoinette, remember there's always my Tony to reckon with. Besides, when in Rome—"

"Oh, you talk as if we expected to spend our lives here!" she interrupted with impatience, and he demanded:

"Where, in Heaven's name, do you expect to live?"

"Fergus, try to understand that I'm preparing Antoinette for a future! And when she's had the best that New York and the Continent have to offer, what will this place seem to her?"

"Home, I hope," was his terse reply.

Never again did Dean definitely promise his daughter a pink dress for a particular occasion or at a given time, but with humorous tenacity he continued to hold out to her its suggestion as a rosy possibility to be attained in some happy future; and never during all those years did Mrs. Dean permit the child to have the actual pink dress, lest in admitting its substance she should also give license to the spirit with which, for her, it was already imbued, and against which her whole life strove.

Illustration: "OH, FERGUS, WHY DID YOU PUT THAT NOTION INTO HICK HEAD?"

More than once, as she grew older, Tony rebelled against her mother's decrees, but her father's counsel never varied.

"It's a game your mother knows, chick," he would say. "You see, everything's a game. But you must know all the rules before you can break any of them intelligently."

At twelve, her emotions quickened by her keen imagination, Antoinette was to be confirmed, and again Dean made his plea to his wife.

"This seems to be quite an event," he suggested. "Why can't we have the pink dress this time?"

"For confirmation? Fergus! It wouldn't be reverent."

"Wouldn't it?" The familiar whimsical light that she dreaded, because to her it was incomprehensible, came into his eyes. "The God of our youth wasn't supposed to be influenced by fashions."

"Oh, why do you persist in trying to hamper the child?"

"Hamper her! Dear girl, what I want her to have is freedom!"

Yielding again to the rules he admittedly did not know, Dean nevertheless marked this mile-stone in his daughter's life in his own way, and when Tony knelt at the chancel rail for her first communion, through the formal white prescribed by her mother's convictions could be seen the glow of the pink coral beads which were her father's gift.

His insistence, reinforcing the girl's own inclination, made inevitable her participation in the free life of the little town, and Mrs. Dean's decision to send her daughter away to be educated followed speedily upon her realization that she was in danger of losing Antoinette in Tony. Again the ensuing struggle left her victorious, and in due time, having spent most of her vacations away from home, Antoinette was graduated from one of the exclusive schools near New York, where the wealth and ambition from far places is passed through a crucible and converted by a happy and painless method into a purified pattern recognized but never named as culture. That it did not emerge bearing also the hall-mark stamped by association with the best families of New York and Philadelphia was a discovery that Mrs. Dean made with deep regret—but too late.

When Dean arriving at the eleventh hour, saw his daughter for a moment before the graduation exercises began, he said, "H'mph! White again, eh?"

"No, it isn't, Daddy!" she whispered, with starry eyes. "Look closer! It's pink! I'm going home!"

And home she went, after a summer spent with her mother at the seashore, to make her formal bow to an informal society. Ever since her daughter's advent into the world this coming-out party had been one of Mary Dean's dreams, but although all Wellsville—now neither so small nor so primitive as in its day of decorated drain-pipe—joyfully rallied to claim Tony as its own, there was still a fly in the amber. Mary's first premonition of this blemish came when Dean casually remarked, on the morning of the great day:

"By the way, I asked young McEwen to come in to-night."

"McEwen?" his wife repeated. "What McEwen?"

"Robert H.—Joe McEwen's nephew —down here looking up some oil titles for the old man."

"Fergus! He must be impossible!"

"Not a bit of it!" he assured her. "He's a mighty good-looking, presentable young chap. You'll like him. He's all right."

Had it occurred to him to add that the young man's conventional scruples against presenting himself in traveling-dress had been overruled by his own truthful assurance that Tony wouldn't mind, he might have aroused his wife's interest, but her discriminations were not subtle, and McEwen conformed outwardly to a pattern she knew. In his tall, loosely built body, his tanned skin and unconventional dress, his infectious smile and unconscious ease of manner, she saw merely one more of that vast army of adventurers attracted to the oil-fields—soldiers of fortune, socially eligible only when ripened by age and flavored by success, from whom Antoinette must be protected at any cost. Therefore she greeted him with reserve, and turned at once to meet other arriving guests, while McEwen, realizing too late the formality of the occasion, found himself standing before Tony—a radiant Tony, whose infinite charm was enhanced by a starry happiness that left even her old friends a little breathless.

For a moment his accustomed aplomb failed him, but social habit reasserted itself, encouraged by some quality of instant fellowship in her smile, and he said, lightly: "Miss Dean, this is magic! I'm in two places at once. At your mother's feet, begging indulgence for my unconventional attire—and here!"

"Anyway, I'm glad you're here." Tony smiled back into the pleasant eyes. "I like pink clothes myself."

"Pink!" He cast a bewildered glance down his gray tweed length. "It isn't as bad as that, is it?"

Her face flushed, but she laughed, too, as she explained: "On the contrary! Pink, to my father and me, spells all sorts of delightful things—among them freedom from foolish conventions."

"Oh, I see! Then will you prove the forgiveness your father promised by giving me a dance later on?"

It was not one dance, but several, that he managed to wrest from fate and clamorous swains that night, and as Mrs. Dean noted Tony's ready acceptance of his attentions, her resentment grew that her husband had introduced into her carefully composed picture this inharmonious and—to her—uncouth figure. She comforted herself, however, with the reflection that the man was a passing acquaintance soon to be forgotten.

The next morning a glowing Tony came into the breakfast-room. "Oh, I've had such a ride! I met Mr. McEwen out on the river road—and he rides just as well as he dances! Daddy, he's a mining engineer. He's only down here for his uncle."

"All the McEwens are impossible! Have you seen this?" Mrs. Dean interposed, indicating a florid description of her latest triumph in The Daily Sentinel, but her daughter chattered on:

Illustration: "NO, IT ISN'T, DADDY! IT'S PINK!"

"He's been in charge of a mine out in West Australia for two years, and he's going back. He's mined in Montana and Mexico, and all sorts of fascinating places—and he tells such wonderful stories about them! Daddy, why don't you buy some mines?"

"I've been asking myself why I didn't give away those I have," Dean replied, with a whimsical gleam. "The sun never sets on my mineral possessions."

"Doesn't it? Why don't we ever go to see them? Mother, I've asked Mr. McEwen to tea, and then we're going out on the river."

"Antoinette!" Mrs. Dean put aside her paper. "You know I never go out in a small boat!"

"Nobody expects you to, mother dear. It's just we two."

"You and Mr. McEwen—alone? Unchaperoned? Impossible!"

"But—mother! I'm at home now! Nobody's ever chaperoned here! Daddy!" Tony appealed to her father, who smiled rather wryly as he responded:

"Chaperons may be all right in New York, Mary, but we've never had any fifth wheels to our carts down here, and I don't see that we need 'em."

Dean rarely lifted the voice of authority, but his wife recognized this as his decree that their daughter should not be singular among her associates in the little town, and immediately set about finding a way to break the law and leave the letter intact. Consequently, from that moment, although ostensibly Tony was never chaperoned, she was always surrounded, and McEwen's rare opportunities for even a moment alone with her were limited by the length of a dance or the brief isolation possible in a merry group in which there was always an odd member. But still he lingered, although obviously not detained by business, as he spent too much time with Tony and her friends to make even a pretense of working. The mother was becoming seriously alarmed, and was formulating plans to whisk Antoinette away to Europe, when one afternoon McEwen failed to keep an appointment.

Several of the young people had arranged to meet at the Deans' house and drive out to the country club for dinner and a dance; and when McEwen did not arrive, after waiting half an hour and making fruitless efforts to locate him by telephone, the party drove off without him—Tony, girl-like, smiling the more brilliantly because of the pang that she would not acknowledge, even to herself.

The dance had just begun when she saw him striding toward her, and a moment later he had cut in. As her partner reluctantly relinquished her, she looked up at McEwen in feigned surprise, exclaiming:

"Oh, are you here?"

"I am." His arm encircled her and they swept on in the current. "And you had promised me this first dance. Had you forgotten?"

"I'm like time and tide," she returned, and he instantly retorted:

"But this is high tide—the flood—"

"Yours is certainly a high hand," she interposed, before he could finish.

"Shouldn't a high hand go with a high hope?" he asked, in a tone that made her say, hurriedly:

"Evidently you believe that the last should be first."

"I do." He stopped abruptly near a door. "At least—I hope so. Come out on the veranda. I want to tell you about it." But when he had led her to a quiet corner, they stood silent for a moment under the swaying lanterns, and Tony was grateful for the wavering light when he finally said, all the levity gone from his voice: "Tony—I've had a cable. I've got to go back to the mine."

^When?"

"As soon as possible."

"Oh, I—I'm sorry," she managed to say. "We shall miss you—all of us."

"I'm not keen about being missed collectively," he told her, unsteadily. "You know that nobody counts—except just you. I must go—but—may I come back? And take you home with me?"

"I—I couldn't bear it if you didn't!" said Tony. Much later she suggested wistfully, "I suppose you know mother won't be very happy about this."

"I know." McEwen nodded. "My stock's low with her, and I'm afraid I can't stay long enough this time to inflate my values. But she'll forgive me if you're happy—and your father understands."

"Does he? Did you speak to Daddy?"

"That's where I was this afternoon—talking to him. By the way, he gave me a cryptic message for you. He said, 'Tell her I'd like to keep her as she is, but if she must have new clothes, the time's come to have them pink.' Now what does that mean?"

"It means—" she began, and paused to steady her voice—"it means that Daddy's the finest, splendidest, most understanding person in all the world—except one!"

Mrs. Dean was not "happy about it." In fact, she was at first inclined to be intractable, but when she learned that McEwen's departure was to be followed by almost a year of absence she breathed freely again. This separation and delay, so hard for the lovers, came to her as a reprieve, and she hoped that time and distance would erase the memory of this too vivid personality. Meanwhile, since to alienate her daughter was the last thing she desired, she made it evident that she could endure the inevitable with a certain grace, and her passivity was interpreted as acquiescence.

No detail of McEwen's experience in Australia was too trivial to be of moment to Tony now. She wanted during his absence to hold a vivid picture of his life there, and she made him tell of it at every opportunity. But their time together was brief at best, and she was more concerned at the moment with the conditions to which he was returning alone than with those which they would encounter together later, so it was not unnatural that he should dwell chiefly upon the interests vital to a busy man. He talked of his friends, John Campbell and Barbara Ventris, however, until they seemed like intimate acquaintances of her own.

"You'll like Babs," he told her. "She's English, but she's the greatest pal a man ever had! Rides, rows—does all the things a man can do, and is a beauty besides. She and Jack will be married before you come out—December's the month they've set, I believe—and the four of us will have bully good times together." To all of which Mrs. Dean listened with the hope that in these intimate revelations of his life McEwen might unconsciously place in her hands a weapon of defense.

Illustration: YOU KNOW THAT NOBODY COUNTS—EXCEPT JUST YOU

It was only after he had gone that Tony began to be conscious of her mother's fixed opposition to her engagement; but in spite of this she was happy, and she pored over McEwen's letters—the terse, unemotional letters of a man to whom the pen was almost an insuperable barrier—trying to extract from their concise sentences every shade of thought and feeling underlying them.

Presently, however, the letters grew briefer and came less regularly—sometimes consisting only of a line, saying he was well but too busy to write—and she found herself hotly resenting her mother's intimation that "cauld cools the love that kindles o'erhot." Then came a fortnight during which she had no word at all, and she had convinced herself that he must be ill, and was about to ask her father to cable an inquiry, when she received a letter announcing the death of his chum, Jack Campbell, a month before he was to have been married to Barbara Ventris. Again, through McEwen's brief, constrained sentences she read his love and his grief and felt herself in touch with him, rejoicing in the renewal of that warm consciousness of his personality and his nearness which had slipped away from her a little during those weeks of absence and interrupted communication. In spite of her deep sympathy with him, and with that widowed girl who was to be her friend, to whose courage in her great bereavement he paid tribute, Tony's heart went singing again, and she felt a little guilty to be so happy when her lover was sorrowing. It was not until much later that his comment on Barbara Ventris's pluck seemed the most vital thing in that letter.

As time wore on, however, and his mention of "Babs" became more frequent with each succeeding week, she began to realize what a large place in his life this other woman had come to occupy, and felt herself a little remote and alien to them—an opportunity of which Mrs. Dean was not slow to avail herself. Propinquity, Tony was made to remember, is a potent factor, and sympathy is often but the prelude to a warmer feeling. Over and over the girl read all McEwen's letters, and, in spite of her effort to find in their laconic phrases the assurance she sought and which she still believed to be there, she was increasingly conscious that they might be interpreted in other ways. Gradually the first shadow of real doubt that her frank mind had ever known spread and darkened, until dread of Barbara Ventris clouded all her days. Meanwhile, struggling against her fear of disloyalty, she wrote gay letters to McEwen, and, as spring merged into summer, began preparing for the October wedding for which they planned.

One morning, early in August, the mail brought two letters carrying Australian stamps, and, as Dean opened the one addressed to him, he glanced at Tony and caught a flash of the spontaneous glow of happiness he had begun to miss in her eyes. Then he turned to the sheet in his hand, but he had not finished reading McEwen's detailed explanation of troubles and disputes at the mine, involving not only the interests of the men whom he represented, but the continued success of his management as well, when he heard his wife exclaim, "Antoinette! What is it?" and looked up to see his daughter's face turned ashen and miserable.

"It's— Bob can't come home—this fall!" she faltered.

"But—the wedding?"

"We must—postpone it. He—can't come." As Tony rose hastily, crushing the letter in her hand, Dean sprang up to follow her, but his wife turned in her chair, saying, with a note of excitement in her usually controlled voice:

"I suppose it's that Ventris girl?"

"I don't— No, it isn't!" Tony flung back from the doorway. "How can you be so unjust? It's his work—his duty. Daddy, you see, don't you?" With this appeal she fled, leaving her father, who had started toward her, arrested,, staring at his wife.

"What do you mean by that?" he demanded. "Have you been putting notions into that child's head?"

"There's no need to put notions into anybody's head," she returned. "Nobody with eyes could fail to see."

"See what?" His tone was blunt. "What do you mean?"

"That this man has simply been playing with her affection." At his impatient exclamation, she leaned forward, insisting: "Fergus, for once you must listen to me! What do we really know of Robert McEwen?"

"I know all about him! Do you think for a moment that I'd let Tony marry a man I hadn't investigated?"

"You may know all about his professional record. But remember that he fell in love with Antoinette at sight."

"Well, who wouldn't?"

"In a little more than a fortnight they were engaged—in less than a month he was gone. Do you think it was the first time he had yielded to an impulse? Or that it will be the last? A man so easily swept off his feet is never very firm on them—as this proved."

"Have you been telling Tony all this?"

"He's told her himself—between the lines in all his letters. He and this Ventris girl are constantly together—"

"But she was engaged to his chum!"

"Precisely—she was engaged," she repeated, significantly. "And we all know where pity—and propinquity—lead! It's been perfectly evident. He's made no effort to conceal it. And now this excuse to postpone the wedding—"

"Mary, stop it! You ought to know that there are times when a man simply can't leave his work. Bob's reasons are legitimate. He couldn't do otherwise."

"Of course, he says he couldn't! Wouldn't you, under similar circumstances? A man doesn't actually jilt a girl if he can avoid it. But this makes Antoinette's position more impossible than ever, and it's high time for you to end this senseless engagement—since she won't!"

"H'm—well—at any rate, there's no occasion to be precipitate."

At first impatient and incredulous, Dean found himself as the days wore on more impressed by his wife's argument than he was willing to admit, and, when he realized also that Tony's faith in McEwen was not unclouded, his feeling that he might have been mistaken in the man grew, and with it his determination to know the truth. Consequently, a few days later, when he and Tony were driving together, he mentioned in a casual tone that business might call him to South Africa shortly, and was amazed when she exclaimed:

"South Africa? Then you'll touch at Australia? Oh, take me with you!"

"My dear little girl!"

"I know! But don't you see, Daddy? I know what mother thinks about Bob—and I'm afraid of what I may think myself. And I can't bear it! I can't bear it not to trust him! But nobody can do it for me. I must know myself. You will take me?"

In spite of her mother's opposition to this plan, and Dean's own grave doubts of its wisdom, Tony had her way; whereupon her mother insisted upon going with them, acidly declaring that at least she could try to maintain a semblance of dignity.

Mrs. Dean never indulged in half-measures, and she was a bad sailor. Consequently the storm they encountered after touching at New Zealand prostrated her so completely that it was decided to leave the ship at Sydney and rejoin it again at Adelaide. Her weak inquiry about luggage was met by the assurance that everything was arranged, and her discovery that all but the steamer-trunks had gone on with the ship was made only when her normal interests were beginning to revive, stimulated by breathing the same air that blew over Government House. When Dean good-naturedly explained that they had conceived themselves birds of passage, to whom the life was more than meat and the body than raiment, she retorted:

"Oh, you may jeer! But knowing oneself well dressed is as comforting as the confidence of a certain faith! And now we have only traveling-clothes!"

"Then go out and buy what you need—and the eleventh trunk to put it in," he suggested, and she scoffed:

"Buy what we need—here? A man always thinks he's found the solution when he's willing to spend money!"

"Generally he has," was his dry reply.

Forced to forego her potential social triumphs, Mrs. Dean was frankly bored, and while Tony made a brave effort to simulate interest in the things about her, hour by hour her father saw the constraint in which she held herself increase, and recognized as a part of himself her eagerness to meet the situation and have her fears confuted or affirmed without delay. Therefore he made inquiries of transportation agents, and when he learned that by going directly to Adelaide by rail they could connect with a steamer due in Perth a week ahead of their schedule, Tony hailed the suggestion with the first spontaneous enthusiasm she had shown, and Mrs. Dean made no objection, in consequence whereof they found themselves, in due time, leaving Adelaide.

As Tony stepped off the gang-plank to the deck of the small steamer, she found herself confronted by a girl a little her senior, who exclaimed, with outstretched hands:

"Oh, it is Tony Dean, isn't it?"

Even before her glance swept the smiling features, already familiar through her study of the many photographs McEwen had sent, Tony realized that she was face to face with Barbara Ventris, and a hot surge of emotion left her breathless. Then, feeling the warm clasp of the other's hands, she looked into eyes seeming so friendly in their welcoming glow that she exclaimed, with a sharp sense of relief, "And you're Babs!"

"But how did you get here?" Barbara asked, when she had been presented to Mr. and Mrs. Dean. "Bob wired that you were coming next week, and I was hurrying home to make ready for you."

"Yes—we were," Tony replied. "But we found we could make this ship by coming across country—and we saw no reason for waiting over."

"No—one wouldn't, would one? I suppose you've come out to be married?"

"Oh no!" Tony perceived the tinge of wistfulness in the other's tone, but attributed it, at the moment, entirely to Barbara's own broken plans, although later she remembered it and wondered. "No—we're going around the world."

"But—won't Bob be frightfully disappointed?"

"How can he be? There's been no suggestion of my coming out to be married." Tony's tone was tinged with reserve, and she was entirely conscious of the keen, speculative glance with which the elder girl studied her.

Disarmed, however, and generous, as was her wont, she was prepared to accept Bob's friend as her own, in proof whereof she was no sooner alone with her parents than she exclaimed:

"I don't wonder Bob likes Barbara Ventris! Isn't she lovely?"

"She's all that—and more," her father agreed. "She's a beauty, if you ask me."

"I suppose she would impress a man that way," was Mrs. Dean's pregnant comment. "And I notice she doesn't wear mourning."

Illustration: "NO, IT ISN'T!" TONY FLUNG BACK FROM THE DOORWAY. "HOW CAN YOU BE SO UNJUST?"

"Oh, mother dear, do be fair!" Tony begged; but after forty-eight hours she began to be aware of a change in her own mental attitude. Although Barbara's cordial manner never lapsed, it seemed to Tony that she was deliberately picturing life in West Australia in somber colors, and the American girl could draw upon no knowledge with which to disprove the arid picture.

"I wonder if you know what life is in the gold country?" Barbara began, and Tony brightly answered:

"Oh yes! Bob's told me."

"He's probably told you that it's a big project," the other replied, with a smile, "and a splendid opportunity—and that the men are good fellows. I suppose he's even told you that it will be lonely; but no man—not even a man like Bob—ever sees the things that are really essential to a woman. He's busy—and interested—and he cheerfully accepts the theory that gold in the ground is nature's compensation for a total lack of trees and vegetation. It's his compensation, too. But it doesn't always satisfy a woman."

"It doesn't sound too attractive as you tell about it," Tony admitted.

"Any place is attractive with the man you love—if you love him enough." Again that keen glance. "But it's very hard to come into it unprepared. I mean to say, I've grown up out here and I'm used to it; but I can see, as the men don't, how hard it is for a woman who comes out with illusions about a cozy little home and pretty things about."

"But why? Are there no cozy little homes?" Tony asked, rather stiffly.

"They may be little—but it's difficult to be cozy in a corrugated iron house, without a growing thing in sight, oil-cloth on the floors, wooden chairs—and no cushions. Some one has described the gold country as 'the land of tea, toast, and tin houses'—and they all have sand in them!"

"But—surely there's no law against cushions—and rugs?"

"Government doesn't forbid them." Again Barbara smiled. "But cleanliness does. And when you've fought that demon sand, you'll realize that it's a law unto itself. A woman went back last month because she couldn't endure it. She came out a bride ten months ago—and has been in tears most of the time since. So her husband gave up his berth and they've gone home."

"Bob wrote me about her," Tony hastened to state. "He said she wasn't well out here."

"She wasn't," was the brief reply. "It got on her nerves. She cried for hours over her trunks of pretty things that she couldn't wear. She was that sort.

"But you wear pretty things."

"In Perth. Not up-country. Khaki and stout boots meet all one's needs there, if not all one's desires."

"Bob's told me some of this."

"Yes, he would—being Bob. But he's too busy—and too much man—to understand what life up-country means to a girl accustomed to softness and luxury. It isn't that he wouldn't care. He just doesn't understand. And it is a shock if one isn't prepared for it."

This was only the first of several such conversations, and from slightly resenting the other girl's apparent assumption that it was necessary to interpret Bob to her, or that his presence would not more than compensate for anything she might sacrifice to join him, Tony presently found herself fighting once more against doubt and suspicion. One day her mother said, with the slight, amused smile she reserved for emergencies:

"Miss Ventris seems inclined to emphasize the hardships of life out here, doesn't she? Is she afraid you'll insist upon sharing them, whether or no?"

"Probably she's exaggerating it, so I won't be too disappointed when I see it," Tony loyally defended; but day by day it became increasingly difficult, in view of the nature of Barbara's revelations, to credit the sincerity of her friendly attitude, and when the voyage ended Tony was still holding her new acquaintance at arm's-length and refusing her confidence.

As the ship warped into the dock, the four stood side by side at the rail, looking among the upturned faces below for one that was not there; and while Barbara exclaimed, at frequent intervals: "But what can have happened? He must be here to meet us!" and Mrs. Dean murmured: "Another time, Fergus, perhaps you'll trust my judgment. Antoinette's position now is unthinkable!" and her father, with forced cheerfulness, reiterated his conviction that Bob had merely been detained by a fallen horse or a blocked tram and would be there in a minute, Tony stood silent, her hands gripping the rail and the pain deepening in her searching, incredulous eyes.

Illustration: "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? IT'S CRUEL!"

Nor was this lessened when presently a telegram from McEwen was brought to her, explaining that he had been detained at the last moment, hoped to get away the following day, and had written. Then for the first time she saw a flash of angry doubt—no less revealing because he instantly controlled it—in her father's face; her mother was obviously and indignantly skeptical; and Barbara Ventris, as obviously, was trying to carry off a difficult situation with an appearance of unconcern, although her manner was visibly constrained. In none of which could Tony find balm for her own sick heart.

The letter she found awaiting her at the hotel, though brief, was so packed with love and longing and disappointment that it comforted her, in spite of her mother's reminder that this was no time to be reassured by words. There was also a letter from McEwen for Dean, explaining that a strike was threatened, that the men were in an ugly humor, and that while he hoped to have the situation in hand within a day or two, he dared not leave at the moment, at the same time begging that Tony should be shielded from the knowledge that her lover was in danger. When she saw her father's face clear after reading this letter, Tony felt that possibly the sun might be shining somewhere, after all, and she even caught a little of its radiance when he exclaimed: "It's all right, chick! There are times when a man simply has to stay with his job, and this is one of the times." But she wondered why he did not show her Bob's letter.

As day followed day, however, punctuated for Tony only by telegrams from McEwen, postponing his arrival and ignoring her intimation that Mohammed had solved a similar situation, Dean saw the burden of uncertainty growing too heavy for her. So, disregarding instructions, he told her about the threatened strike and gave her Bob's letter to him, which at first afforded her the greatest relief. Then, as Barbara met her anxious inquiries about conditions at the mine with smiling assurance, minimizing the danger and reiterating that Bob would surely be down in a day or two, and still he did not come, her mother's interpretation of the situation began to be the only one Tony could see, and even had its effect upon Dean.

Meanwhile, Barbara helped them fill these days of waiting; and Mrs. Dean, succumbing to her social instincts, dragged her husband and daughter about to races and breakfasts and other daylight amusements for which their wardrobes were adequate, and assiduously cultivated those who sat in high places, anticipating the arrival of the trunks containing the vestments of state. But before these were restored to her, even she had ceased to consider them.

Dean precipitated action, forty-eight hours before their luggage was due, by announcing that he was going, strike or no strike, to the mine to see McEwen. The pain in Tony's eyes was more than he could endure, and for the first time in her life she had built a barrier about herself that excluded even her father.

"Fergus, are you mad?" his wife demanded, and he returned:

"No—but I shall be if I play this waiting game much longer."

"I agree with you that there's been too much of it. But you shall not throw Antoinette at that man's head! She's suffered quite enough already. We'll take this ship and go directly on to South Africa."

"But it's only fair to give him a chance," he protested. "This situation may be just what he says it is. The thing's possible."

"The whole situation's impossible!" she retorted. "And it has been from the first! I've yielded to you thus far—and see what it's led to! Now I insist that you shall yield to me! We'll leave this place by the first ship—and Antoinette shall never hear that man's name again!"

"Well—let's leave it to Tony," he suggested, but she asserted:

"You will leave it to me. Antoinette's in no condition to decide anything now—and she has no judgment at any time, or we should not be in this predicament. Day after to-morrow we go on."

Tony, with another negative telegram from McEwen in her hand, heard her mother's decree without visible emotion, accorded it a dull acquiescence, and shut herself into her own room, where she remained, asking only to be left alone.

Late in the afternoon of the second day, responding to a light tap, which she supposed to announce the maid with towels, she unlocked her door, and drew herself up in startled indignation when Barbara stepped into the room.

"I know," the English girl said. "They told me I couldn't see you—but I must! Tony, what is it? Why are you doing this? It's cruel!"

"Go away!" said Tony, thickly. "Go away!"

"I will not go away until you tell me why you're doing this wicked thing!"

"What—thing?"

"Why are you going before Bob can come? Why did you come all this distance, only to—" She made a quick gesture. "I don't understand you! If you love Bob—and sometimes I think you do—how can you make him suffer?"

"I?"

"Yes—you! I know you don't like me. You've made that evident enough. But you do seem to care for Bob. Yet for some reason that I can't fathom you seem to distrust him, too. It isn't easy for me to say all this. I might have found it easier if you'd liked me—and been friendly. But I owe it to Bob, anyway. You seem to imagine—you and your mother—that he's staying away because he's indifferent. Have you no conception, then, of what you mean to him? Have you no idea of what he's suffering because he can't come? Don't you know what he went through when he found he couldn't possibly go home to be married?"

"Then—why doesn't he want us to go up there?" Tony asked.

"Because there's danger! Oh, I know I've made light of it. He begged me to do that—to spare you. The whole investment up there's at stake; and Bob, with his fine sense of loyalty, would never shrink at danger for himself—but he couldn't let you go into it. I've been nearly mad myself, for fear, but I've tried to hide it from you."

"You—seem to care—a great deal," said Tony.

"Care? For Bob? I love him," the other girl declared. "Think what he did for me when Jack was ill! I—can't talk—about Jack. I hoped I could—to you. I wanted—to talk to you. I thought you'd understand. But how can you ask whether I 'care' for Bob—remembering what he did for Jack?"

"What—did he do?" Tony asked. "I don't know."

"You don't know!" Barbara's eyes opened in amazement and then filled with tears. "How like Bob—never to tell you! When Jack was so ill, during the epidemic—"

"What epidemic?"

"The fever epidemic. Don't you even know that for weeks there was fever at the mine—men died by the score—and Bob and Jack stayed and fought side by side with the doctors? He didn't want you to know at the time—but didn't he ever tell you?"

"No! Oh no—I didn't know! Was that the reason—" Tony choked with sobs, remembering those weeks of interrupted letters.

"And then Jack came down with it—and all but one of the doctors was dead—and Bob stayed—until the end. My own brother couldn't have done more!—nor be dearer to me! And it's his happiness I'm fighting for now! Can't you see that? You sha'n't hurt him! You must let him see you, at least! It's his duty to stay up there at the mine—and the thought that you wouldn't understand and expect him to stay has never crossed his mind. It couldn't! He thinks you're as fine as he is!"

"Oh—oh, Babs!" The next instant they were sobbing in each other's arms.

An hour of readjustment followed, during which Tony salved her soul by confession; and Barbara, after explaining that her frank revelations of living conditions at the mine had been made to spare Tony disappointment and Bob the pain of seeing it, found herself at last able to talk of her own broken life.

"And you won't go—you won't let them take you away until Bob comes, will you?" she begged, repeatedly. "I thought he'd be here to-day, if only for the few hours between trains, because I wired him as soon as I knew your plans. But I've had no word. Things must be very wrong up there, because he'd have wired if—" She was interrupted by a tap at the door, and McEwen's card lay on the tray the boy presented.

An hour later it was a flushed, palpitant, sparkling Tony who announced to her parents: "Here's Bob! And he's got to go back to the mine to-night—so I'm going with him!"

"Antoinette!" cried her mother, but Dean stood looking into the other man's steady eyes.

"Is there danger—up there?" the father asked.

"Not much, now—but—"

"Danger or no danger, if it's his business to be there, it's mine to be with him!" Tony declared. "We're going to be married in an hour!"

"Antoinette! You're mad! It's impossible!" Mrs. Dean ejaculated, and Tony happily returned:

"I know it; but it's true! Babs is arranging everything—"

"Really? Is Miss Ventris, perhaps, going with you?"

"Don't, mother dear!" Tony's eyes filled with tears and her voice softened inexpressibly. "You don't know what I owe to Babs! She only wants us— Why, mother dear, she even offered me her own wedding-dress! It was on the way out when Jack died—and she begged me to wear it. Of course I couldn't do that—I know, how I'd feel if it were mine—but I am going to wear one of her bridesmaids' dresses—she's given me that—and oh, Daddy, it's pink!"