He dodged just in time to escape the lighted pipe that was hurled upon
him, and he couldn't have suspected that a hastily-formed plan to place
himself opposite Caroline Darrah had gone up in the smoke that followed
the death of life in Andrew's pipe.
Then following the urgent instructions of David, Andrew began to right up
the papers in his den which opened off the living-room. His desk was
littered with manuscript, for the three days past had been golden ones
and he had written under a strong impetus. The thought suddenly shot
through him that he had been writing as he had once read, to eyes whose
"depths on depths of luster" had misted and glowed and answered as he
turned his pages in the twilight. Can ice in a man's breast burn like
fire? Andrew crushed the sheets and thrust them into a drawer.
Then came Eph and the cook to lay the cloth in the dining-room, and a man
brought up the flowers. For a time he worked away with a strange
excitement in his veins.
When they had finished and he was alone in the apartment he walked slowly
through the rooms. Where David happened to keep his household gods had
been home to Andrew for many years. His books were in the dark Flemish
oak cases and some of the prints on the walls were his. Most of the rugs
he had picked up in his travels upon which his commissions led him, and
some interesting skins had been added since his jungle experiences. It
was all dark and rich and right-toned--the home of a gentleman. And David
was like the rooms, right-toned and clean.
Andrew found himself wondering if there would be men like David in the
next generation, happy David with his cavalier nature and modern wit. The
steady stream of wealth that was pouring into the South, down her
mountain sides and welling up under her pasture lands, would it bring in
its train death to the purity and sanity of her social institutions?
Would swollen fortunes bring congestion of standards and grossness of
morals? Suddenly he smiled for Billy Bob and Milly and a lot of the
industrious young folks seemed to answer him. He had found eleven little
new cousins on the scene of action when he had returned after five
years--clear-eyed young Anglo-Americans, ready to take charge of the
future.
And he, what was his place in the building of his native city? His
trained intelligence, his wide experience, his genius were being given to
cutting a canal thousands of miles away while the streets of his own home
were being cut up and undermined by half-trained bunglers. The beautiful
forest suburbs were being planned and plotted by money-mad schemers who
neither pre-visioned, nor cared to, the city of the future which was to
be a great gateway of the nation to its Panama world-artery. He knew how
to value the force of a man of his kind, with his reputation and
influence, and he would gage just what he would be able to do for the
city with the municipal backing he could command if he set his shoulder
to the wheel.