Part 8 (1/2)
stated Stewart. Then, to all appearances entirely unconcerned with the listening veterans, he dictated:
”Meanwhile I was thinking of my first love, As I had not been thinking of aught for years.
Till over my eyes there began to move Something that felt like tears.”
Mac Tavish bent on Dow a wild look and swapped with the old pensioner of the Morrisons a stare of amazement for one of bewildered concern.
”I thought of the dress that she wore last time When we stood 'neath the cypress-tree together In that lost land, in that soft clime, In the crimson evening weather.
”Of that muslin dress (for the eve was hot) And her warm white neck in its golden chain, And her full, soft hair, just tied in a knot, And falling loose again.
”I thought of our little quarrels and strife, And the letter that brought me back my ring.
And it all seemed then, in the waste of life, Such a very little thing.”
The girl dabbed up her hand under pretense of fixing a lock of hair; she scrubbed away tears that were trickling. So this was it! The powwow over business and politics had not been stirring even languid interest in her.
Now her emotions were rioting. Here seemed to be something worth while in the life of the master!
”But I will marry my own first love With her primrose face; for old things are best.
And the flower in her bosom I prize it above--
”My G.o.d!” Mac Tavish gasped. ”Next he'll be playing jiggle-ma-ree wi'
dollies on his desk! His wits hae gane agley!”
In the horror of his discovery he flung his arms and knocked off the desk his full stock of paperweight ammunition. Then he was convinced beyond doubt that the Morrison was daft. Stewart did not even raise his eyes from the book; he kept on dictating above the clatter of the rolling weights; his intentness on the matter in hand was that of a business man putting a proposition on paper for the purpose of making it definite and cogent and clear.
But Stewart's thoughts were not at all clear, he was confessing to himself; in spite of his a.s.sumed indifference, he was embarra.s.sed by the focused stares of Dow and Mac Tavish. He wondered what sudden, devil-may-care whimsy was this that was galloping him away from business and politics and every other sane subject! He was conscious that there was in him a freakish and juvenile hankering to astonish his friends.
He heard Dow say: ”Oh, don't worry about the boy, Andy! We do strange things in big times! Even Nero fiddled when Rome was burning!”
Stewart finished the dictation and closed the book.
”Los.h.!.+ I canna understand!” mourned Mac Tavish, not troubling to hush his tones.
The girl hesitated, her gaze on her notes. Then she looked full into Morrison's face, all her woman's intuitive and long-repressed sympathy in her br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes. ”But I understand, sir!” She arose. She extended her hand and when he took it she put into her clasp of his fingers what she did not presume to say in words.
”Thank you!” said Morrison.
Then he left his chair and strolled across to the old men, while Miss Bunker rattled her typewriter. ”It begins to look, boys, like we're going to have quite a large evening!” he remarked, sociably.
IV
ANSWERING THE FIRST ALARM
After his dinner with his mother, Stewart went to the library-den, his own room, the habitat consecrated to the males of the Morrison menage. He was in formal garb for the reception at Senator Corson's. He removed and hung up his dress-coat and pulled on his house-jacket; he was prompted to make this precautionary change by a woolen man's innate respect for honest goods as much as he was by his desire for homely comfort when he smoked.
He lighted a jimmy-pipe and marched up and down the room. He was determined to give the situation a good going-over in his mind.
He had settled many a problem in that old room!