A talk he had had with the major a day or two ago came back to him. The
old fellow's eyes had glowed as he told him the plan they had been
obliged to abandon in the early seventies for a boulevard from the
capitol to the river because of the lack of city construction funds.
Andrew's own father had formulated the plan and gone before the city
fathers with it, and for a time there had been hope of its
accomplishment. And the major had declared emphatically that a time was
coming when the city would want and ask for it again. That other Andrew
Sevier of the major's youth had conceived the scheme; the major had
repeated the fact slowly. Did he mean it as a call to him?
Andrew's eyes glowed. He could see it all, with its difficulties and its
possibilities. He rested his clenched hand on the table and the artist in
him had the run of his pulses. He could see it all and he knew in all
humbleness that he could construct the town as no other man of his
generation would be able to do; the beautiful hill-rimmed city!
And just as potent he felt the call of the half-awakened spirit of art
and letters that had lain among them poverty-bound for forty
reconstructive years. For what had he been so richly dowered? To sing
his songs from the camp of a wanderer and write his plays with a foreign
flavor, when he might voice his own people in the world of letters, his
own with their background of traditions and tragedy and their foreground
of rough-hewn possibilities? Was not the meed of his fame, small or
large, theirs?
Suddenly the tension snapped and sadness chilled through his veins. Here
there would always be that memory which brought its influences of
bitterness and depression to kill the creative in him. The old mad desire
to be gone and away from it beat up into his blood, then stilled on the
instant. What was it that caught his breath in his breast at the thought
of exile? Could he go now, _could_-Just at this moment he was interrupted by Mrs. Matilda who came hurrying
into the room with ribbons and veil aflutter. She evidently had only the
moment to stay and she took in his decorative schemes with the utmost
delight.
"Andrew," she said with enthusiasm in every tone, "it is all lovely,
lovely. You boys are wonders! These bachelor establishments are
threatening to make women wonder what they were born for. And what do you
think? The major is coming! The first place he has gone this winter--and
he wants to sit between Phoebe and Caroline Darrah. I just ran over to
tell you. Good-by! We must both dress."
And Andrew smiled as he rearranged the place-cards.