“Come here, boy,” said the Colonel, as Paul entered the room. “You are a plucky little chap, and I want to tell you that I shan’t forget what you did for Peg today.” The little Colonel’s voice grew suddenly husky. He shook Paul warmly by the hand and turned away, leaving Paul standing overwhelmed with embarrassment and filled with rage at Peggy. But an even more trying experience awaited the unhappy Paul, when Aunt Augusta came to him and, putting her arms around him, drew him close and kissed him, a most unusual proceeding with her.
“Paul,” she said, “I am sorry I spoke to you as I did. And I am glad it was not your fault. I know I can trust Peggy with you always. Now, come away to lunch.”
Paul found himself gulping and fighting hard to keep back the tears, tears caused partly by Aunt Augusta’s unusual demonstration of affection and partly by his furious indignation at Peg, that she should have given him away. It did not help matters much that Peg insisted during the lunch hour of reiterating her various thrilling experiences, her emotions of fear and despair and relief and joy, her admiration of Paul’s heroic courage, her gratitude, and all the rest of it. Paul was grateful, however, that apparently up to this point Peg had so far observed the decencies as to make no reference to his lamentable “fall from grace.”
Immediately after lunch, with the timely assistance of Aunt Augusta, who seized upon Peg and promptly put her to bed, Paul was able to effect his escape from the household, and betook himself to the solitude of Pine Croft Ranch. There, under the pines on the hill at the back of the bungalow, which had become to him a holy place, a very temple of God, where he was wont to hold his secret communions with his own spirit and with the world unseen, he entered upon the soul conflict which had to be fought out before he could sleep in peace.
How it came he could not tell, but somehow, before the pines at the far horizon across the river had cast their long lance-shaped shadows upon the plain below, he had found his way to peace. As he lay upon his back, looking up through the waving tops of the great pine trees into the blue of the sky above, the surging tides of furious rage against Asa and his sense of ill-desert which had deepened within him throughout the early afternoon faded, in some mysterious way, from his soul, as the mists before the rising sun. There, beneath the pines, he became aware of a mighty Presence, comforting, cleansing, healing, that made all else seem insignificant. He was his own man again, and once more in tune with those vast infinities in the midst of which he moved and had his being. Chastened and at peace with himself and all his world, he returned to the big white house, ready to meet with a serene heart whatever life might bring to him.
It was well that it was so, for the morrow had in store for him experiences that should test to the uttermost the quality of that serene peace.
CHAPTER IX
Three years of neglect had left their mark upon the Pine Croft bungalow. The stables, the corral, the paddock for the thoroughbred riding horses were in woeful disrepair. The garden was riotous with a tangled mass of weeds and flowers. The water main from the little lake in the hills above, an engineering triumph of Gaspard and the joy of his wife, was broken and the water running in a flood over the lawn.
“What a shame! What a ghastly shame! And the whole place used to be so wonderful! So perfect! It is a cruel shame!” The Colonel’s wife was quite petulant over it. “And so unnecessary! Why didn’t he pull himself together and play the man?”
“Why? Don’t you know? I wonder if you can understand?” The little Colonel’s voice was slightly wistful.