Early in June, Sylvia and her little circle were shocked and saddened by the sudden death of Angus McIntosh. He had gone to the office as usual but had come in early in the afternoon, and in the dusk Gus had found him sitting in the big chair beneath his mother's picture looking as serene as if he had just fallen asleep. It seemed there had been for quite a while past the probability that the very thing which had happened would happen. This Gus had known and had been in a measure prepared, though we are never fully armed against such loss. When our dear ones leave us there is always a sad surprise about it. We can never quite believe they can really go, however we think our minds are fortified.
Silent in his grief as in his love, Gus went quietly about the grave duties which his foster-father's death imposed upon him, but no one could have seen the lad and not known he was suffering acutely. To Sylvia alone he seemed able to voice the grief that possessed him and to her he turned with natural impulse to seek solace from one who knew what the dead man had meant to the lonely boy. Sylvia gave him all the comfort and friending she could in his hour of need. She felt very pitiful for him not only because of this sorrow but because she knew he had another scarcely healed hurt, though this new grief had driven it into the background.
When the old man's will was read many were surprised to learn that aside from some bequests to servants and old friends and a small annuity to "my beloved son, Augustus Nichols," the bulk of Angus McIntosh's hard earned and considerable property was left to Thomas Daly in trusteeship to found a hospital for Greendale. When people tried to commiserate Gus on his rather meager sharings he had rejected their condolences. It appeared he had for some time known of the disposition Angus McIntosh had made of his estate. It had, indeed, been by the lad's own wish that he was not burdened by the management and responsibility of a great property.
"What would I want with all that money?" he asked Sylvia. "I should have hated it. I don't want money. I've never wanted it. I've had more than my share already in my musical training. Thanks to his generosity, my violin will bring me all the income I can stand. I couldn't tend to a big property and keep on playing. I've got to play. It is all I'm fit for. He understood. We talked it over so often. And he didn't want to fritter away his money in little driblets in small charities. He wanted to leave it in a lump sum where it would really do some good. The hospital seemed to be the best. His mother died because she didn't have proper medical care. It always hurt him to think about it. He wants a room named after her. Oh, he knew exactly what he was doing. I wish people would stop sympathizing with me. I don't want their sympathy."
So surprisingly it came about that Tom Daly's castle in the air suddenly appeared convertible to brick and mortar. And the beauty of having it so minutely and perfectly planned in advance was that there need not be the slightest delay in getting the substance of things hoped for under way. Thanks to Doctor Tom's unflagging effort other bequests to the hospital were already forthcoming, including Lois Daly's gift of love, but the big unhampered lump sum provided by Angus McIntosh's will made it possible to carry out the doctor's dreams on a scale which he had hardly dared hope to contemplate hitherto.
One day Phil Lorrimer, up in New York, had a letter from Tom Daly. The latter had for some time been considering the advisability, even the necessity, of taking to himself a professional partner. His hands had been already full before the hospital project had matured. Now they were overflowing. All of which was preliminary to asking the younger man if he would consider moving to Greendale to become Tom Daly's associate.
Phil's breath came hard as he read. It was of all things the one he would have liked best if he had chosen. Tom Daly had long been a boyish idol of his, and since the boy had attained his own manhood he had seen even more clearly the bigness of the other man's vision, the scope of the service he was rendering Greendale. Nothing could have pleased or flattered the young doctor more than that Tom Daly should consider him worthy of the proffered post.
Moreover, Phil's sickness had taken heavy toll even of his abundant young vitality. It would be a year at least before he would be perfectly strong again, and he had been warned since he had been back that it was extremely doubtful whether he would be able to stand the city work and city life. Here was his release in dignified, desirable form.
There were other considerations, too. It was no small inducement that he could be near his mother in Greendale. He had realized more than ever of late how hard it was for her to have her loved ones so scattered. His father was in China, his sister in Constantinople, he himself might just as well be at the uttermost parts of the earth for all she saw of him under normal conditions. And his going to Greendale would put an end to that source of regret and anxiety.
But, chief of all naturally, was the knowledge that the arrangement would bring joy to Sylvia. In spite of her sincere willingness to go anywhere with him he knew it was hard for her to leave the beloved home of her heart. And now there would be no need of such a sacrifice. The cottage and the Hall were but a stone throw apart, an admirable proximity so far as the professional partnership was concerned.
So Phil wired, "Accept gladly, if Sylvia approves," and had hardly sent the message before an enthusiastic letter arrived from Sylvia imploring him to say yes to Doctor Tom's proposition if it were not in any way contrary to his wishes and ambitions.
"Of course it is just too heavenly to think of our living at Arden Hall," she had written, "but, Phil, don't let any thought of me influence your decision. Whatever you want, I want. You know I'd be happy going to sea in a sieve with you if you elected to be a sieve pilot. But, oh Phil, I can't help hoping you will want to come to Greendale."
All of which made Sylvia's approval fairly evident.
Soon after this Phil went to call on the Huntleys, who had been kindness itself to him and to his mother during the latter's stay in the city. The doctor was not at home but Mrs. Huntley was delighted to see him and hovered over him with tea and sandwiches and cakes as a fond female bird hovers over its offspring with juicy worms.
When Phil came to revealing his future plans he did so a little warily remembering how he had refused Justin Huntley's generous offer. But Mrs. Huntley seemed genuinely pleased.
"How lovely for you! Now you can marry that sweet girl and everything will be quite all right, will it not?"
Phil explained that everything would have been quite all right in any case since the "sweet girl" had been willing to come to him if he had not been able to come to her.
"Quite as it should be," Mrs. Huntley had declared approvingly. "But I am glad it has come out as it has just the same. Do you know, Philip, I've always been a little glad you didn't take Justin's offer, dearly as I should have loved to have you with us."
Phil hesitated to speak, not being quite certain of his hostess' course of reasoning. But she soon enlightened him.
"It isn't the kind of work for a young man," she went on. "It is too disillusioning. Don't you think so? It might have made you a little--just a little--cynical, you know. Mightn't it? It is hard to keep your faith in human nature when you have a practice like Justin's." She paused a moment then continued with unusual affirmatives. "Justin was a country practitioner in a little town once. He took his father's place. Wonderful old man--Justin's father! As much of a priest as a doctor Justin used to say. He lived among kind, simple, hard-working people and they loved him like a father. You should have seen them flocking in from the farms and mountains to his funeral. There was a kind of personal relation you don't get in cities."
"No," agreed Phil. "Anyway, you don't get it in Dr. Huntley's kind of practice. I get some few chunks of personality at the clinic."
"Sometimes I've wished Justin had stayed in the country and followed his father's steps. But I suppose it had to be this way. Justin wasn't satisfied until he had worked his way to the top, though sometimes one wonders what the top really is," she sighed. "But, anyway, I am glad your father's son is going to have a different outlook. Justin will be glad, too. He liked your refusal, though it disappointed him. He understood."
"He has been very good to me, and you, too," said Phil, warmly. "I hope you don't think I don't appreciate his kindness and was ungrateful. It was a big thing to offer a young man. But I couldn't take it. I had to hold tight for my kind of a job. And, thanks to luck and Doctor Daly, I have it."
Watching the fine, earnest, young face, with its clear, honest, blue eyes, and that firm, strong chin, Mrs. Huntley thought Phil Lorrimer owed his opportunity chiefly to his own intrinsic worth, clear head, and fine ideals, which was true. But perhaps almost more was he beholden to a big-souled missionary out in China who had set him a standard of manhood to follow and a gentle, low-voiced woman who lived at the foot of Sylvia's Hill and had a gift for mothering.
July brought Stephen Kinnard back to Greendale after much wandering, from Alaska to Mexico, from Mexico to Quebec, and finally to Maryland. He had written charming desultory letters from time to time to Felicia and had been especially rejoiced over her having won the competition as he had prophesied. But never in any of the letters had he pressed again the question he had asked in September. Among other arts Stephen Kinnard possessed the art of long patience and the power of biding his time.
Occasionally jolly, friendly, brotherly epistles had come for Hope, too. At first Hope had blushed delightfully over them and read and reread them until she fairly knew them by heart. But as the letters came less frequently she gradually ceased to watch for them. Youth needs something more substantial than a chimera to feed upon. Moreover, in June, a young architect had come to Greendale to build Doctor Tom's hospital, a rather clever young man with some Beaux Arts letters after his name and a good eye for a pretty girl. Passing up the Hill and down it as he did frequently in his interviews with the Doctor, he had occasion to go by the Oriole Inn and it took him remarkably little time to discover that it was agreeable to drop in afternoons for a cup of tea in the quaint dining-room or out under the trees which the orioles still haunted. Perhaps not the least of the charms of the place was the presence of the fair-haired, slender lily of a girl who hovered about with a pleasing anxiety that he be well served and often took the task of ministration upon herself in her zeal.
Out of the corner of her eye Martha watched this too, even as she had watched Hope and Stephen the previous summer. It had for some time been evident to Martha's astute vision that so long as Hope remained unclaimed there would always be honey seekers about her sweet rose. Much as she dreaded to have Hope marry she thought she would prefer the sad certainty of such a contingency to the eternal worrying lest Hope be somehow hurt and her white flower-likeness be made to droop in the dust. The young architect apparently meant business. By July he was spending most of his free hours in Hope's society. Martha had almost settled down to acquiesce in the idea of Hope's surrender when she heard that Stephen Kinnard was back in Greendale, news which brought the anxious pucker back to her forehead.
But she need not have worried. Hope was pleased to see Stephen as a younger sister might have been glad to welcome back a long absent brother. She had all but forgotten she had ever had any dreams about him. The real love which was daily more engrossing made the pale little phantom love so insignificant as to be scarcely a thing to be recalled. It had been love and not the lover that Hope had hungered for from the first.
As for Stephen himself, Hope had never dwelt except upon the outer margins of his consciousness. He had admired her as the artist in him always paid tribute to beauty wherever he found it. He had a fatal gift of kindness always and gave careless largess easily to lovely women whenever they had the luck to cross his path. That Hope had invested him, even temporarily, with the glamour of her sweet, shy, little dreams he had no manner of idea. He had, from the beginning, paid homage to a higher court.
Shrewdly perceiving that the chief obstacle to his suit was Sylvia, Stephen did not blunder into a premature insistence. Sylvia's wedding was set for early September. He could afford to wait a little, though he took pains to make himself very useful and desirable in little ways to the household on the Hill while he waited.
During the summer Sylvia had a few brief letters from Jack. He was well, intensely thrilled by the experience he was undergoing, rejoicing endlessly, apparently, in his luck at having at last found a genuine task which he could pursue with all the zest of play. Physical courage had always been an inherent characteristic with him. Danger agreed with him as he had said to Sylvia. In deeds of daring he had always delighted, simply, with no fuss about it. Jack was never spectacular. It was merely that being a good gambler he liked hazards. This game of life and death made an excellent substitute for the game of love in which he had gallantly lost. In fact it seemed he found even greater satisfaction in it. At any rate, he was in it, as he had been in love, with all his might and main and with all his heart.
Sylvia's engagement, expected as it had been, had appeared to disturb little less than the surface of his exultant, new found joy of service. Perhaps the larger issues swallowed up his private grief even as they had swallowed Hilda Jensen's. Certainly he had little time for thought or brooding. Life crowded thick around him. He was in the same unit with John Armstrong and that in itself was a satisfaction, for the two had long been staunch friends. Hilda, also, he saw occasionally as she was working in the hospital at Neuilly, not far from the front.
It was Hilda who wrote in August that Jack had been wounded and was in the hospital in her care. The injury, though painful, was not serious and Jack made light of it as well he might, for he had been "cité" for "distinguished service under fire" and won the Croix de Guerre.
"The men all say he has a charmed life," wrote Hilda. "The Poilus are quite superstitious about him. He goes anywhere, everywhere with his car, in the most unheard of, impossible places with the utmost disregard of it and himself. John says he never saw anything like him. He keeps them all, French and American alike, in an uproar of mirth, too. Even in the hospital it is the same. He tells his funniest stories and makes his absurdest jokes and has everybody in a good humor without trying. He is the sunniest fellow I ever knew. You can't down him. You needn't worry about him as far as you are concerned, Sylvia. I don't mean he doesn't care. He does care tremendously. He deserves the Croix de Guerre, in love, too. He has been under fire. You can see that. But what I mean is, he is so thoroughly wholesome and happy-hearted he will come out all right. He can't help it. John says it is making a man of him over here, and I believe it is true, though I think you started that process.
"But, oh, Sylvia, it is dreadful! If ever it ends I shall fly back to safe, peaceful, happy America and try to forget all the agonies I've seen and lived over here. We all hope America will manage to keep out of war, but it seems as if she could not long do so with safety and honor. It is hard to forget the Lusitania, and for us it is almost harder to forget Belgium. Americans at home will never fully understand Belgium. For us it has been stamped with red hot irons upon our minds and memories. We cannot forget."
As Sylvia eagerly read this letter she couldn't help hoping that somehow or other this terrible experience Hilda and Jack were going through together might, in time, bring them still nearer. Women are incorrigible matchmakers where their old lovers are concerned, and Jack and Hilda had long been good friends. They were both too essentially sane and too young to let their lives be wrecked by the hapless experiences with which they had started out. If only they might find consolation and happiness in each other Sylvia thought she would have nothing left to wish for.
And so summer days came and went, with their joys and their sorrows, their dreams and their despairs, their losses and their gains, woven all into the common web of life. And finally again came September.