A Fool There Was | Page 7

all was deep within him.
He murmured, beneath his breath:
"Good God!"
Then he spoke to her, a muttered word, a meaningless word. She swung
her body over, sinuously, so that she faced him, slender legs half
stretched. The dead black hair rippled over budding breasts. She did not
answer. She merely looked at him.
The stranger sat there. His eyes blinked a little; he brushed his hand
across them, weakly. Then he looked at her again.
Came a sudden rustling in the brush, beside him. His horse leaped
forward, almost unseating him.... He had gone far down the trail before
he reined it in. Then he crossed himself. His eyes showed that he was
frightened.
There was a turning in the path, a turning that led to the main road. The
stranger swung his horse into this turning. He knew that it added to the
length of his journey by a good league and a half. And yet he took that
turning.
And, later, as he turned into the travelled road, he breathed a deep, deep

sigh; and again he crossed himself.

[Illustration]
CHAPTER FIVE.
AS TIME PASSES.
Time passed on over the heads of young Jack Schuyler and young Tom
Blake and the daughter of Jimmy Blair. They grew in stature, and in
intellect. They grew through the grades of school that lie between nine
and fifteen; and then they separated to go to boarding school.
Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake went to one; the daughter of Jimmy Blair
and Kathryn Blair to another. And the baby brother that had turned out
to be a sister, and who had been named Elinor, stayed at home with the
widow of Jimmy Blair; and the widow of Jimmy Blair was now hardly
as lonely as were the parents of Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake.
John Stuyvesant Schuyler had built for himself a place at Larchmont,
on the Sound. "Grey Rocks," he called it. It was a long, low rambling
house, built of stone and of darkened wood. It sat ensconced in a deep
phalanx of great, green trees at the head of a great, green lawn. It was
not a big house, of pretension, of arrogant wealth, of many servants--of
closely-shaven shrubbery and woodeny landscape gardening. It was,
rather, a house that was a home--and there is a distinction--a vast
distinction; for there is many a house that is not a home even as there is
many a home that is not a house.
Thomas Cathcart Blake built for himself another house, next to it. That
also was a rambling, homelike place, with broad halls and deep
windows, and wide doors. And the doors he kept open most of the time;
for he liked good people, and good people liked him. His big yacht lay
during most of the summer a quarter of a mile from the end of his pier.
He lived on it part of the time, with Mrs. Thomas Cathcart Blake, and
their guests; part of the time he lived on the shore, in the house that he

had built. Dr. DeLancey once asked him if he ever moved the yacht
from its moorings, and wanted to bet that the sail covers were stuffed
with hay. Thomas Cathcart Blake grinned and said that, as for taking
the yacht out to sea, he was afraid of getting it wet; and he wouldn't
want to bet as to what the sail covers were stuffed with because it might
be excelsior, or cotton, or any one of a number of things.
They always had much company at "The Lawns," which was the name
of the house, and on the "Idlesse," which was the name of the yacht that
seldom sailed; although Dr. DeLancey begged them to rechristen it
"The Dock," or "The Stake Boat," or something of the sort, which he
thought would be much more appropriate. And among this company,
was a great deal, the widow of Jimmy Blair, and her daughter.
Young Jack Schuyler and young Tom Blake got home from college
that year about the middle of June. Kathryn Blair was a few days later,
owing to certain nonacademic festivities which she didn't want to miss.
You can know, how popular and attractive and altogether charming she
was when I tell you that she was like her mother at her age; and all
New York knows how hard it was even for Jimmy Blair--and there
have been very few Jimmy Blairs, you know--to make any perceptible
progress amid the choking masses of his competing fellows.
Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake went down to the train, in a trap, to meet
her. They hardly recognized the girl with whom they had pillow-fought
and leopard-stalked in the dainty figure that descended from the dusty
train. A year, with a girl