Part 24 (1/2)

”Very much. The sea is beautiful.”

So, after all, it was the sea which she had cared for at Dragon Beach, and not the clam-bakes and merry-go-rounds and women in wrappers in the surf. Robert felt rebuked for thinking of anything but the sea in his memory of Dragon Beach; there was a wonderful water-view there.

All the time they sat there in the parlor, the murmur of conversation at the south door continued, and now and again over it swelled the fervid exhortations of Nahum Beals. Not a word could be distinguished, but the meaning was beyond doubt. That voice was full of denunciation, of frenzied appeal, of warning.

”Who is it?” asked Lloyd, after an unusually loud burst.

”Mr. Beals,” replied Ellen, uneasily. She wished that he would not talk so loud.

”He sounds as if he were preaching fire and brimstone,” said Robert.

”No, he is talking about the labor question,” replied Ellen.

Then she looked confused, for she remembered that this young man's uncle was the head of Lloyd's, that he himself would be the head of Lloyd's some day. All at once, along with another feeling which seemed about to conquer her, came a resentment against this young man with his fine clothes and his gentle manners. Two men pa.s.sed the windows and one of them looked in, and when the electric-light flashed on his face she saw Granville Joy, and the man with him was in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves. She saw those white s.h.i.+rt-sleeves swing into the darkness, and felt at once antagonized against herself and against Robert, and yet she knew that she had never seen a man like him.

”I suppose he has settled it,” said Robert.

”I don't know,” replied Ellen.

”He sounds dangerous.”

”Oh, no. He is a good man. He wouldn't hurt anybody. He has always talked that way. He used to come here and talk when I was a child.

It used to frighten me at first, but it doesn't now. It is only the way that poor people are treated that frightens me.”

Again Robert had a sensation of moving un.o.btrusively aside from a direct encounter. He looked across the room and started at something which he espied for the first time.

”Pardon me,” he said, rising, ”but I am interested in dolls. I see you still keep your doll, Miss Brewster.”

Ellen sat stupefied. All at once it dawned upon her what might happen. In the corner of the parlor sat her beloved doll, still beloved, though the mother and not the doll had outgrown her first condition of love. The doll, in the identical dress in which she had come from Cynthia's so many years ago, sat staring forth with the fixed radiance of her kind, seated stiffly in a tiny rocking-chair, also one of the treasures of Ellen's childhood. It was a curious feature for the best parlor, but Ellen had insisted upon it. ”She isn't going to be put away up garret because I have outgrown her,”

said she. ”She's going to sit in the parlor as long as she lives.

Suppose I outgrew you, and put you up in the garret; you wouldn't like it, would you, mother?”

”You are a queer child,” f.a.n.n.y had said, laughing, but she had yielded.

When young Lloyd went close to examine the doll, Ellen's heart stood still. Suppose he should recognize it? She tried to tell herself that it was impossible. Could any young man recognize a doll after all those years? How much did a boy ever care for a doll, anyway?

Not enough to think of it twice after he had given it up. It was different with a girl. Her doll meant--G.o.d only knew what her doll meant to her; perhaps it had a meaning of all humanity. But the boy, what had he cared for the doll? He had gone away out West and left it.

But Lloyd remembered. He stared down at the doll a moment. Then he took her up gingerly in her fluffy pink robes of an obsolete fas.h.i.+on. He held her at arm's length, and stared and stared.

Suddenly he parted the flaxen wig and examined a place on the head.

Then he looked at Ellen.

”Why, it is my old doll,” he cried, with a great laugh of wonder and incredulity. ”Yes, it is my old doll! How in the world did you come by my doll, Miss Brewster? Account for yourself. Are you a child kidnapper?”

Ellen, who had risen and come forward, stood before him, absolutely still, and very pale.

”Yes, it is my doll,” said Lloyd, with another laugh. ”I will tell you how I know. Of course I can tell her face. Dolls look a good deal alike, I suppose, but I tell you I loved this doll, and I remember her face, and that little cast in her left eye, and that beautiful, serene smile; but there's something besides. Once I burned her head with the red-hot end of the poker to see if she would wake up. I always had a notion when I was a child that it was only a question of violence to make her wake up and demonstrate some existence besides that eternal grin. So I burned her, but it made no difference; but here is the mark now--see.”

Ellen saw. She had often kissed it, but she made no reply. She was occupied with considerations of the consequences.