From an open window—Mac had thrown it wide—came a breath of summer air, telling of green fields and fleecy clouds; of lappings about the bows of canoes; of balsam beds under bark slants; of white scoured decks and dancing waves; of queer cafés under cool arched trees and snowy peaks against the blue.
The glorious old fire felt the sun's power and shuddered, trembling with an ill-defined fear. It knew its days were numbered, perhaps its hours. No more romping and sky-larking; no more outbursts of crackling laughter; no more scurrying up the ghostly chimney, the madcap sparks playing hide-and-seek in the soot; no more hugging close of the old logs, warming themselves and everybody about them; no more jolly nights with the hearth swept and the pipes lighted, the faces of the smokers aglow with the radiance of the cheery blaze.
Its old enemy, the cold, had given up the fight and had crept away to hide in the North; so had the snow and the icy winds. No more! No more! Spring had come. Summer was already calling. Now for big bowls of blossoms, their fragrance mingling with the pungent odor of slanting lines of smoke. Now for half-closed blinds, through which sunbeams peeped and restless insects buzzed in and out. Now for long afternoons, soft twilights, and wide-open windows, their sashes framing the stars.
Mac had noted the signs and was getting ready for the change. Already had he opened his dust-covered trunk and had hauled out, from a collection of tramping shoes, old straw hats, and summer clothes, a thin painting coat in place of his pet velveteen jacket. It was only at night that he raked out the coals hiding their faces in the ashes, gathered them together—the fire had never gone out since the day he lighted it—and encouraged them with a comforting log.
Most of the members had formed their plans for the summer; one or two had already bidden good-by to the Circle. Lonnegan was off trout-fishing, and Jack Stirling was three days out—off the Banks really.
"Gone to look up Christine and the old boys and girls," Marny said; at which Mac shook his head, knowing the bee, and knowing also the kinds and varieties of flowers which grew in the gardens most frequented by that happy-go-lucky fellow.
Murphy was back in London; cabled for, and left without being able to bid anybody good-by. "Throw on another stick," he had written Mac by the pilot-boat, "and give the dear old logs a friendly punch and tell 'em it is from that wild Irishman, Murphy. I'd give you a tract of woodland if I had one, and build you a fireplace as big as the nave of a church. I shall never forget my afternoons around your fire, MacWhirter. You and your back-logs and the dear boys warmed me clear through to my heart. Keep my chair dusted, I'm coming back if I live."
With the budding trees and soft air and all the delights of the out-of-doors, the attendance even of those members who still remained in town began to drop off. Only when a raw, chill wind blew from the east, reminding us of the winter and the welcome of Mac's fire, would the chairs about the hearth be filled. Boggs, Pitkin, Woods, Marny, and I were the only ones who came with any regularity.
"Got to cover them up, Colonel," Mac said to me the last afternoon the fire was alight. I had arrived ahead of the others and had found him crooning over the smouldering logs, looking into the embers. "They've been mighty good to us all winter—never sulked, never backed out; start them going and give them a pat or two on their backs and away they went." He spoke as if the logs were alive. "Lots of comfort we've had out of them; going to have a lot more next year, too. I shall bury the embers of the last fire—perhaps this one, I can't tell—in its ashes and keep the whole till we start them up in the autumn. It will seem then like the same old fire. The flowers lie dead all winter but they bloom from the same old charred ember of a root. All the root needs is the sun and all the coals need is warmth. And the two never bloom in the same season—that's the best part of it."