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"THE LIMIT OF THE LINE”
By Odessa Strickland Payne and Lamar Strickland Payne
T
HEN, it seems to me, Mr. Ford, that you
demand an idol of stone or gold, and
not a God!”
“An idol? Why?”
“Well, who could worship a Being
they could define or limit? As for your
faith being wrecked on the rock of mir
acles, why, I find in them an unspeaka
ble inspiration to belief. Pray tell me,
what do we understand? Why, a color is a miracle.
What is blue? You can not fathom even that mys
tery. They why stumble at the Incarnation and all
that followed in its wake?”
‘‘ Science, ” he replied, “reports that which it
can see. Therefore, with the physical eye I behold
your color, blue, in The violet, the sky, the moun
tain lake, the sea, and, as Keats said, 1 alive with
Fate,’ in another’s eye.”
“You may see,” she warned him, “still further.
You may see the holy color alive in the eye of
your God.”
He stood erect, slightly startled.
“You recall Tennyson’s confession,” she said,
implying by her tone that he did recall, for it was
impolite to do otherwise.
“Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies:—
Held you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know 7 what God and man is.”
Ford swung the gate back for Shirley, a glow of
awakened interest in his eyes.
“Thank you,” he said, simply.
“Thank Tennyson,” she said, naively.
A half hour later he knocked on the sitting room
door, on the Bryan side of the hall. Little Nell
stared at her young man from Gotham. He was in
faultless evening dress.
“I am the Marquis Hirobumi,” he gravely in
formed her. “My
She wishes your family to heq\ /
“The whole family,” said Littles ell.
“Even unto the number of three, Minerva,” he
said.
Warned by Aunt Dilsey, Shirley had dressed for
the evening. It was a becoming dress, a soft gray
voile made over messaline, with a yoke of rare lace.
The girlish forearm was bare, and a wide, thin
bracelet of gold clasped the left wrist. There was
nothing occult about the bracelet, neither figured
asp or dove.
Mrs. Bryan was dressed simply in black, as was
her custom; but her white hair and wonderful self
poise gave her an air of distinction, which it is not
in the power of clothes to confer. Little Nell was
in white, with her hair looped up at the back of her
ap enormous blue bow.
to sit down,” she said to the as-
1 get to your tay party.
MBSfefirrLi. pPccl her foot on the
of explana-
across, leav-
tea
■SWrn ia 1 i ||l H'1e ou s -
she extended a'jeweled hand to each of her
guests and smiled approvingly on Little Nell. The
pseudo-Marquis of Hirobumi avoided his mother’s
eye.
Shirley had been introduced to Mrs. Ford before,
but she had not made the slightest effort to culti
vate her. She impressed the young girl as a woman
who had never had a thrill! Whistler might have
painted young Ford’s mother as “Mrs. Ford —ar-
rangement in black and heliotrope.”
“Gregory never mailed a letter,” confessed Mrs.
The Golden Age for January 28, 1909.
Ford, “or delivered a message straight. I can see
by your smiles that he has given my invitation a
comical turn.”
“Yes,” replied Little Nell, from the depths of her
leather chair, “he is the Marquis of ’Bumi, and
you the lady who drinks considerable tea.”
“And he asked you to help me, you wise child?”
“No, madam, he thought that it would take the
whole family.”
Mrs. Ford laughed merrily, although the laugh
was at her expense.
Shirley, leaving her mother to talk with Mrs.
Ford over their thin tea cups, turned graciously to
young Ford.
“Mr. Ford, why do you like to stand by the
mantel?”
Ford was standing in a peculiar, psychological
pose. His face was pale, the blue eyes burned with
the light of inner conflict, while one arm was
stretched almost rigid along the polished surface of
the quartered oak, the fingers spread out like a half
open fan.
“Surely, it is not the glass?” Shirley went on,
mischievously.
“For the same reason,” he replied, “that you
like to stand by a window, Miss Bryan. One of
my ancestors liked this position, and .... ”
“And,” she said, “one of mine the position by
the'window.” She gazed into the fire, meditatively.
“There is something in that,” in a reasoning
tone, “even if it is a trifle uncanny.”
“1 hope,” she continued, determined to make
him talk, “that you have not been illustrating the
theory of Pythagoras today?”
“I do not know,” he countered, good humoredly.
“About wild-fowl,” she suggested, meekly.
“1 have been hunting,” he confessed, catching
her drift. “But it was an English game bird that
Malvolio was warned about.”
“A woodcock,” she nodded. “Beware of them,
Mr. Ford. You might kill the soul of youi' grand
mother. ” ' v
“Perhaps,” he smiled, “your,Southern doves and
partridges don’t allow the souls of humans to get
into them.”
“I am not so sure, Mr. Ford,” Shirley said,
spreading her black fan between her face and the
flare of the hickory logs. “By the way that some
of my cousins missed them, I believe that the birds
were certainly possessed with something.”
Ford’s rigid arm relaxed. He was a splendid
shot.
“I don’t know what makes a good shot,” he
mused, his eyes on the yellow hickory flames, “I do
not think it good form to wound. I always try to
kill.”
Mrs. Ford looked up from her tea cup.
“Don’t believe that he tries, Miss Shirley. He
never tries to do anything.”
“He does everything so well, Mrs. Ford,” said
Mrs. Bryan, “that he does not have the guilty
look.”
Ford smiled broadly. He glanced at the palm
of his hand. '
“Webster could not out-talk three charming wo
men,” he observed.
“And one little girl,” finished Little Nell.
CHAPTER VI.
Shirley’s prophecy about the contrast of condi
tions, on either side of the hall, became gradually
true. But it did not hurt her, in the way she had
anticipated, for the attitude of the Fords was too
generous and friendly for snobbery. They shared
their abundance, with their less fortunate neighbors,
in so many graceful and tactful ways, that the sting
—if sting in wealth there is—was mitigated, if not
forgotten.
Mrs. Ford had confided to Mrs. Bryan the verdict
of the specialist about her son’s case, so that an
atmosphere of real sympathy and understanding
had been established betweenjthe two, although they
were not especially congenial on other lines.
Southern-born and bred, Mrs. Ford had been edu
cated at Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson, and had married
a Northerner. Travel had made her a citizen of the
world, a cosmopolite. Gregory showed his unique
heritage, in many interesting ways, and, in his
moods, the predominant characteristics of both sec
tions —tht Blue and the Gray —were startlingly ex
emplified. He was almost a double personality, a
compound of velvet and iron.
“Ruskin said,” Young Ford mused, “ ‘if there is
one way of wasting time, that I hate worse than an
other, it is “ calling. ’ ’ It often upsets a whole after
noon for the calller and the called-on.’ I am going
to call.”
Murat yawned. He did not care for Ruskin.
Young Ford smiled, pulled his tie to rights, and
strolled across the hall.
Amber flames flared, invitingly, in the* old-fash
ioned fire-place of Mrs. Bryan’s spacious sitting
room. Coals burnt to a crimson residue gleamed un
der the silver smoke of the hickory logs.
“Invited my honorable self,” said Ford to Mrs.
Bryan, who sat by a broad window 7 , embroidering. _
She nodded toward a chair. idfr
“Even the Ma of Hirobumi, although a great
and distinguished diplomat, must have a seat. If
you prefer the floor, Marquis, because your ances
tors sat up on it . . .”
“Truly,” said Ford, with a broad grin, “I envy
Miss Shirley.”
Mrs. Bryan’s eyes danced, behind her rimless
glasses.
Ford stared at a medley of ferns on the wide ledge
of the double windows, interspersed with geraniums
in crimson flower, which were in pleasant contrast
to the soft white muslin curtains, looped back to auW
mit all the light possible.
“Charming!” he said, with a nod.
“You are an excellent young man,” she told him.
The excellent young man continued his quiet in
spection.
“A square piano means a square deal?” His eyes
were on a very old mahogany or ebony instrument,
in one corner of the room.
“As an upright indicates uprightness,” she coun
tered.
They exchanged smiles.
Young Ford’s glance traveled to the pictures.
“Fishermen,” he commented, leaning forward,
slightly, and indicating a group picture over the
White mantel. “I have seen Da Vinci’s head of
Christ, Rembrandt’s ‘Supper at Emmaus’, but this
is quite original.”
“The force of the conception,” explained Mrs.
Bryan, “lies in the hands.”
“Ah! Certainly!” He studied the picture, close
ly. ‘ ‘ Those hands! Those wonderful, healing hands!
Those mystical hands of . . . ”
“The Son of God!” she finished for him.
“I am very blind,” he confessed. “I never no
ticed, before. I only saw the group of Fishermen. ’ ’
There was a note of profound pathos in this
speech.
“I haven’t any right,” Mrs. Bryan continued, as
she pulled a long thread through the heart of a rose,
“I suppose, to own such a picture.”
“Yes, you have,” said young Ford, decidedly.
“Well, anyway, although it cost SI,OOO, twenty
years ago, I have never been able to make up my
mind to sell it. We have wanted many things, many
times, but still we cling to the ‘Fishermen.’ ”
“I like that of you,” he confessed.
“Southerners are more sentimental than commer
cial,” Mrs. Bryan replied, with a slight accent of
deprecation.
“Yes,” he said, “and, do you know I rather ad
mire it. lam a grandson of the South,” with a lift
ing of his chin. “I don’t believe it good form to
gush, but, say what you will, sentiment differenti
ates . . .”
“From what?” she queried.
“From the lower animals,” he said, weighing his
words carefully.
