The old gentleman had walked to the door to get away from Morris’s thanks, but he turned, with his rare smile.
“Are you keeping up your Horace? An ode once a day! I haven’t missed mine for forty years. There’s that particularly delightful one—the sixteenth—I recommend it to you,—the daughter more charming than her charming mother. A word to the wise! Good night, my boy!”
When Morris heard the outer door close he sat down and thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and indulged in dreams. He made a practice of writing once a week to his mother, and he wrote her a letter now, telling her of his stroke of fortune. “It is almost too good to be true,” the letter ran. “I’m twenty-six years old, and I’m to be the partner of the best lawyer in the state, something that I never expected. I know you will be glad. I only regret that father isn’t here to rejoice with us.”
He left the office with a quick step and a light heart, and walked to the post-office to mail his letter. He had known many lonely hours since moving to Mariona. He glanced up and down Jefferson Street as he crossed it. The lights, the noisy trolley cars, the great illuminated signs had all stood to him for loneliness; but he noted them to-night with a different spirit. He had been for five years an unimportant member of the community, winning respect from many; working hard, but enjoying his labor, and he felt a new courage. He had received a high mark of favor from the first lawyer at the Mariona bar; his name was to be linked with that of an historic law firm, and with a new elasticity of spirit he trod the familiar path from the old office to the federal building, where the United States Court sat. He wondered what his friend, the clerk of the court, would say when he heard of the new partnership; and the pleasant thought of the firm name of Carr and Leighton as it would appear in the court records caused Morris to parley chaffingly with a belated newsboy who sold him a paper at the post-office door.
He carried the paper to a table in a hotel restaurant where he sometimes got his meals, and opened it to the interurban time-table. It was seven o’clock. He could eat his supper, go to his rooms to change his clothes, and reach the Damerons’ by half-past eight. His mood of depression passed, but there still lingered in his heart the sense of longing, the need for sympathy, that an honest, clean love brings to the heart of a man.
CHAPTER XXIV
ONLY ABOUT DREAMS
The wide windows of the heavy interurban car were open and the air of the summer night beat in gratefully upon him. Morris felt increasingly at peace with himself and all the world. His thoughts leaped agilely from peak to peak of possibility and achievement. He would be a lawyer; he would continue, as he had begun, a serious student of his profession. And there was Zelda! The thought of her was very sweet,—it had never been so sweet as it was to-night, and her name repeated itself over and over again in his memory. There was no vista of the future through which he did not see her. In all the world there was no one like her,—no one comparable to her. He recited his lover’s alphabet of her charms and graces—the deep melody of her voice, the baffling mystery of her dark eyes; her ease of speech and grace of manner; the slender fingers of her eloquent hands. And a year ago he had known not one of these things, not one!
His hat was suddenly tipped forward over his eyes by some one who had entered the car at the last stop before the long straight run into the country.
“Hail, Demetrius, master of all the arts, and faithful priest at the altar of Hymen, move over and let a fellow pilgrim sit down!”
It was Balcomb, with his unfailing high spirits and undeniable claim upon the attention.