The swift flow of events had not outwardly affected the handsome young man. The time of the early June roses had found him poor in worldly goods, but rich in a trained mind, a developed genius, a yearning after all things beautiful, a faith in divine Providence, abounding confidence in his own power to win to the mastery in his beloved art, and glorying in his freedom to do the thing he chose to do. It found him in love, and the almost accepted lover of a beautiful, wilful, magnetic girl—a girl with a sturdy courage in things wherein he was lacking; a frivolous, untrained girl, yet with surprising dependableness in any crisis. It found him the favorite nephew of a quiet, uninteresting, rich old money-grubbing uncle and his dominant, but highly approving wife, whose elegant home was always open to him the while he felt himself a pensioner on its hospitality.
Mid-July found him, in effect, the master where he had been the poor relation; the rich uncle gone forever from earthly affairs; a dominant aunt still ruling—so she fancied—as she had always ruled, but with the consciousness of her first defeated purpose rankling bitterly within her. It found Eugene still in love with the same beautiful, wilful girl, but far from any assurance of being a really accepted lover. It found him insensibly forgetting the aspirations of a lifetime and beginning, little by little, to grasp after the Egyptian flesh-pots. Life was fast becoming a round of easy days, whose routine duties were more than compensated by its charming domestic settings. The one unsatisfied desire was for the presence of the bright, inspiring girl who had left a void when she went away, for whose return all "Eden" was waiting.
The swift course of events had created other changes. Some growths are slow, and some amazingly swift, depending upon the nature of the life-germ in the seed and the soil of the planting. In Eugene Wellington the love of beauty found its comfort in his present planting. It was easier to stay where beauty was ready-made than to go out and create it in some less lovely surroundings. Combine with this artistic temperament an inherent lack of initiative and courage, a less resistant force, and the product is sure. Moreover, this very falling away from the incentive to artistic endeavor exacted its penalty in a dulled spirituality. Whoever denies the allegiance due, in however small a measure, to the call of art within him pays always the same price—a pound of tender bleeding flesh nearest his heart. For Eugene Wellington the Shylock knife was sharpening itself.
This July afternoon there were no misgivings in his soul, however—no black shadows of failure ahead. All the serpents of "Eden" were very good little snakes indeed. After a while he would paint again, leisurely, exquisitely; especially would he paint when Jerry came home.
As he lighted a cigarette, a recent custom of his, and strolled down the shady way to the rose-arbor to meet Mrs. Darby, he drew deep draughts of satisfaction. It had been an unusually good day for him. Unusually good. Business had made it necessary to open some closed records in the late Cornelius Darby's affairs, records that Mrs. Jerusha Darby herself had not yet examined. They put a new light on the whole Darby situation. They went further and threw some side-lights on the late Jim Swaim's transactions. Altogether they were worth knowing. And Eugene, wielding a high hand with himself, had, once for all, stilled his finer sense of fitness in his right to know these things. He had also made rapid strides in this brief time toward comprehending business ethics as differing from church ethics and artistic ethics. Face to face in a conflict with Jerry Swaim, with Aunt Jerry Darby, with his conscience, his God, he was never sure of himself. But as to managing things, once he had shut his doors and barred them, he was confident. It was a truly confident Gene who stepped promptly into the rose-arbor on the moment expected. To the old woman waiting for him there he was good to look upon.
"I'm glad you are on time, Gene," Mrs. Darby began, rocking and fanning more deliberately. "I'm ready now to settle matters once for all."
"Yes, Aunt Jerry," Eugene responded, fitting himself gracefully into the settings of this summer retreat, with a look of steady penetration coming into his eyes as he took in the face before him.
"Any news from the Argonaut to-day?" he asked, at length, as Mrs. Darby sat silently rocking.
"Not a line. I guess Jerry is waiting for me to ask her to come back. She must be through with her romantic fling by this time, and about out of money, too. So now's the time to act and settle matters, as I say, once for all. Jerry must come home."
"Amen, and amen," Eugene agreed, fervently.