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The Lost Road
by
“I don’t like that at all,” cried the soldierman. “It’s too–too sad–it doesn’t give you any encouragement. The way it ends, I mean: ‘But there is no road through the woods.’ Of course there’s a road! For us there always will be. I’m going to make sure. I’m going to buy those woods, and keep the lost road where we can always find it.”
“I don’t think,” said the girl, “that he means a real road.”
“I know what he means,” cried the lover, “and he’s wrong! There is a road, and you and I have found it, and we are going to follow it for always.”
The girl shook her head, but her eyes were smiling happily.
The “season” at Agawamsett closed with the tennis tournament, and it was generally conceded fit and proper, from every point of view, that in mixed doubles Lee and Miss Gardner should be partners. Young Stedman, the Boston artist, was the only one who made objection. Up in the sail-loft that he had turned into a studio he was painting a portrait of the lovely Miss Gardner, and he protested that the three days’ tournament would sadly interrupt his work. And Frances, who was very much interested in the portrait, was inclined to agree.
But Lee beat down her objections. He was not at all interested in the portrait. He disapproved of it entirely. For the sittings robbed him of Frances during the better part of each morning, and he urged that when he must so soon leave her, between the man who wanted her portrait and the man who wanted her, it would be kind to give her time to the latter.
“But I had no idea,” protested Frances, “he would take so long. He told me he’d finish it in three sittings. But he’s so critical of his own work that he goes over it again and again. He says that I am a most difficult subject, but that I inspire him. And he says, if I will only give him time, he believes this will be the best thing he has done.”
“That’s an awful thought,” said the cavalry officer.
“You don’t like him,” reproved Miss Gardner. “He is always very polite to you.”
“He’s polite to everybody,” said Lee; “that’s why I don’t like him. He’s not a real artist. He’s a courtier. God gave him a talent, and he makes a mean use of it. Uses it to flatter people. He’s like these long-haired violinists who play anything you ask them to in the lobster palaces.”
Miss Gardner looked away from him. Her color was high and her eyes very bright.
“I think,” she said steadily, “that Mr. Stedman is a great artist, and some day all the world will think so, too!”
Lee made no answer. Not because he disagreed with her estimate of Mr. Stedman’s genius-he made no pretense of being an art critic–but because her vehement admiration had filled him with sudden panic. He was not jealous. For that he was far too humble. Indeed, he thought himself so utterly unworthy of Frances Gardner that the fact that to him she might prefer some one else was in no way a surprise. He only knew that if she should prefer some one else not all his troop horses nor all his men could put Humpty Dumpty back again.
But if, in regard to Mr. Stedman, Miss Gardner had for a moment been at odds with the man who loved her, she made up for it the day following on the tennis court. There she was in accord with him in heart, soul, and body, and her sharp “Well played, partner!” thrilled him like one of his own bugle calls. For two days against visiting and local teams they fought their way through the tournament, and the struggle with her at his side filled Lee with a great happiness. Not that the championship of Agawamsett counted greatly to one exiled for three years to live among the Moros. He wanted to win because she wanted to win. But his happiness came in doing something in common with her, in helping her and in having her help him, in being, if only in play, if only for three days, her “partner.”