Part 22 (2/2)

”What do you mean?”

”Well,” said Lewis, ”Le Brux says that luck often leads to success, never to greatness.”

”And how did luck come in?” drawled Vi.

Lewis smiled again.

”I'll tell you,” he said. ”The model is an old pal of mine. One day we were bathing in the Marne,--at least I was bathing, and she was just going to,--when a farmer appeared on the scene and yelled at her. She was startled and turning to make a run for it when I shouted, 'Hold that pose, Cellette! She's a mighty well-trained model. For a second she held the pose. That was enough. She remembered it ever after.

”Does it take a lot of training to be a model?” asked Blanche. ”How would I do?” She turned her bare shoulders frankly to him.

Lewis glanced at her. ”Yours is not a beauty that can be held in stone,”

he said. ”You are too respectable for a bacchante, too vivacious for anything else.” He turned to Vi. ”You would do better,” he said as though she too had asked.

Vi said nothing, but her large, dark eyes suddenly looked away and beyond the room. A flush rose slowly into her smooth, dusky cheek.

Blanche bit her under lip.

”Vi has won out,” said H lne to Leighton.

CHAPTER XXVI

Natalie and her mother were sitting on the west veranda of Consolation Cottage at the evening hour. Just within the open door of the dining-room mammy swayed to and fro in a vast rocking-chair that looked too big for her.

The years had not dealt kindly with the three. Years in the tropics never do deal kindly with women. Mammy had grown old and thin. Her clothes, frayed, but clean, hung loosely upon her. Her hair was turning gray. She wore steel-rimmed gla.s.ses. Mrs. Leighton's face, while it had not returned to the apathy of the years of sorrow at Nadir, was still deeply lined and of the color and texture of old parchment. The blue of her eyes had paled and paled until light seemed to have almost gone from them. To Natalie had come age with youth. She gave the impression of a freshly cut flower suddenly wilted by the sun.

In Mrs. Leighton's lap lay two letters. One had brought the news that Natalie had inherited from a Northern Leighton aunt an old property on a New England hillside. The other contained the third offer from a development company that had long coveted the grounds about Consolation Cottage.

”It's a great deal of money, dear,” said Mrs. Leighton to Natalie. ”What shall we do?”

For a moment Natalie did not reply, and when she spoke, it was not in answer. She said:

”Mother, where is Lew? I want him.” Her low voice quivered with desire.

Mrs. Leighton put her fingers into Natalie's soft hair and drew the girl's head against her breast. A lump rose in her throat. She longed to murmur comfort, but she had long since lost the habit of words. What was life worth if she could not buy with it happiness for this her only remaining love?

”Darling,” she whispered at last, ”whatever you wish, whatever you say, we'll do. Do you think--would you like to go back to--to Nadir--and look for Lewis?”

Natalie divined the sacrifice in those halting words. Her thin arms went up around Ann Leighton's neck. She pressed her face hard against her mother's shoulder. She wanted to cry, but could not. Without raising her face, she shook her head and said:

”No, no. I don't want ever to go back to Nadir. Lew is not there. That night--that night after we buried father I went out on the hills and called for Lew. He did not answer. Suddenly I just knew he wasn't there.

I knew that he was far, far away.”

Ann Leighton did not try to reason against instinct. She softly rocked Natalie to and fro, her pale eyes fixed on the setting sun. Gradually the sunset awoke in her mind a stabbing memory. Here on this bench she had sat, Natalie, a baby, in her lap, and in the shelter of her arms little Lewis and--and Shenton, her boy. By yonder rail she had stood with her unconscious boy in her arms, and day had suddenly ceased as though beyond the edge of the world somebody had put out the light forever. Her pale eyes grew luminous. The unaccustomed tears welled up in them and trickled down the cheeks that had known so long a drought.

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