“But a girl you know nothing about; how can you think of it? I never heard such a thing! What did Hattie Brown say?”
“Oh, Hattie! She thought her very beautiful; but she prefers dark people. Madame Lucile told us afterwards that the young lady was highly educated. Now, I’ve said all I have to say. If you don’t want to meet her, John, that’s your loss. But I tell you she’s a wonder.”
John saw that his sister was really in earnest and would hurt her feelings if he carried his jocular manner too far. Rising, he went up to her and put his arms around her shoulders.
“All right, sissie, some day I’ll ask you to introduce me. But not just now. I’m going to Idaho. I’ll seek your kind favors when I get back. Mother, dear,” he turned to Mrs. Morton, “I’ve got to go to Jackson’s Hole next week. Do you mind if I take the opportunity to put in a week’s shooting? I feel I need the rest.”
“Oh, John,” exclaimed his mother, “I’m so glad you’re going to take a vacation. You deserve it, and I’m sure you need it. When do you start? There’s nothing to keep you so far as I am concerned.”
“Thank you, mater, I’ll start next Tuesday. That will give me two days here. Judge Lowell arrives on Friday and promised to remain until I return. He’ll see to everything you may want. When you feel like going to town to stay for the season, I’ve leased the Arkwright house, and I’ve taken the even days for Box 17 at the Opera. Shall we have our coffee on the verandah, mother; it’s a lovely evening?”
Mrs. Morton smiled her assent; but said nothing further about his going away. Since her husband’s death she had clung to John with a double tenacity—a mother’s love for a son, and a woman’s reliance on the man. But she was too wise to permit her own feelings to come between them. When, later in the evening, the three were together in the spacious living-room, Ruth took her brother aside and finally got her way about the little wood.
The following morning Morton returned to the city. But this time he carried back with him his old dreams. Ruth’s story at the dinner-table had unlocked a door in his memory which he had kept closed; and now the gracious spirit wandered once more about the chambers of his mind giving him neither rest nor hope.
Would the promised letter arrive? Perhaps it was even now on its way to him across the ocean! What if it should come while he was away in Idaho? He made a note to leave instructions that it must be forwarded on to him.
Love is said to give the lover almost supernatural powers of insight and vision, as if the mysterious force produced a psychical state which responded in harmony to the presence of the loved one. If this be true, then Morton must have been born of a different species. In all his concentrated thoughts of Helène he saw her either in some retired village in Germany, or in some nunnery, or sitting in tearful neglect in a dreary attic, or living with some high-born relative and walking the world a queen in grace and beauty, the cynosure of all eyes. But never for one instant did he picture her in New York, working patiently and hopefully in a place he had passed a thousand times.