The Forbidden Way

Rita took up one of the tiny garments and examined it with minute interest.

"It's very pretty, isn't it? But quite silly. Imagine anything so tiny! What a lot of trouble you take. And you've made them all yourself. They're really exquisite."

"They're Art's tribute to Nature, Rita," said Camilla with an air of finality.

Mrs. Cheyne sighed.

"My mission in life is ended, Camilla. I'm quite sure of it now. You've convinced me. I'm actually envious of a woman who sits by the fire and sews baby-clothes. Your industry is a reproach – your smile a reproof and your happiness a condemnation. I know you're right. You've really solved the problem, and I haven't. I never will. I'm past that now. I'm going to grow old ungracefully, yielding the smallest fraction of an inch at a time to the inevitable. I'm going to be stout, I know it – and probably dumpy. I could weep, Camilla."

"Who's talking of weeping here?" said a voice. And General Bent, with his stick, came thumping in. "Oh – you, Rita?" he laughed. "Women never cry unless there's something to be gained by it." Rita offered him her cheek, and Camilla rang for tea. In a moment Mrs. Rumsen came in.

"I knew you were here, Rita," she said, bending her tall figure for a caress.

"How?"

"Teddy Wetherby's machine – at the corner – and Teddy."

"Is he waiting still? Such a nice boy – but absolutely oblivious of the passage of time."

"I thought you'd given up your kindergarten, Rita," put in Camilla, laughing.

"I have. But Teddy is my prize pupil. He's taking a post-graduate course." And, when they all laughed at her, she turned on them severely. "I won't have you laughing at Teddy. He's really an angel."

"I'm going to tell his mother," said Mrs. Rumsen.

Rita took her tea cup and sank back in her chair absently. "Oh, well – perhaps you'd better," she said. "I'm going in for square-toed shoes and settlement meetings."

The General grunted and sipped his Scotch, but when Jeff and Cortland came in the women were still laughing at Mrs. Cheyne. Jeff walked across the room to his wife and kissed her.

"Father – Aunt Caroline – Hello! Rita."

"Well, sir – " from Camilla, "please give an account of yourself."

"You'll have to speak to Cort. We stopped in at the Club for a minute. Cheyne was there and Hal Dulaney, Perot, Steve Gillis, Douglas Warrington, and two or three others. They wanted us to stay for dinner. But we didn't."

"Of course not," said Camilla so decisively that Rita Cheyne laughed.

"There!" she said pityingly. "Oh, Jeff! a subject and a slave as well! Aren't you really going to let him go, Camilla?"

Camilla looked up into Jeff's face with a heavenly smile.

"Of course – if he wants to."

"But I don't want to," said Jeff, sinking into a chair with a comfortable sigh. "This is good enough for me. Besides," he added mischievously, "it looked like a meeting."

"What kind of a meeting?"

"Of the Rita Cheyne Protective Association."

"Jeff, you're horrid!" said Rita, but she laughed.

"I'm not," he said calmly. "They have my full sympathy and support. I told 'em so."

"Your sins are finding you out, my dear cousin," chuckled the General. "They always do in the end."

"Oh, you're hopeless —all of you," sighed the culprit, setting down her tea cup.

Cortland finished his drink in leisurely fashion and dropped into the vacant chair beside his father. "Well, we put it over," he said quietly.

"The bond issue?"

"Yes, sir – we had a fight in the board, but we got McIntyre's vote at last and jammed it through – that was all we needed."

"I didn't think it was possible," the old man exclaimed.

"It wasn't easy, but Jeff managed it."

"I didn't sir," Jeff interposed. "Cort did the whole thing. We've made him president. We made it unanimous in the end."

"By George, Cort, I'm proud of you. I always knew you had the stuff in you if we ever woke you up."

"Oh, I guess I'm awake all right. A fellow has to be down there." He leaned forward and picked up an article on the work basket.

"Where's His Majesty?" he asked of Mrs. Wray.

Camilla glanced at the clock.

"Asleep, I hope. He's been very dissipated lately. He was up yesterday until seven."

"Takes after his father," said Mrs. Cheyne scornfully.

At that moment a small cry was heard upstairs, and Camilla flew. "The lamb!" she cried, and from the hall they heard her telling the trained nurse to bring the infant down. At the bottom of the steps she met them and bore him triumphantly in. He was a very small person with large round blue eyes that stared like Jeff's. They looked at nobody in particular, and yet they were filled with the wisdom of the ages.

"What a little owl he is!" said Rita, but when she jangled her gold purse before his eyes he seized it with both hands and gurgled exultantly.

"He knows a good thing when he sees it," laughed Cort. "Got the gold fever, too."

"What a shame!" said Camilla indignantly. "He hasn't any kind of a fever, have you, Cornelius?"

The child said, "Da!"

"Didn't I tell you? He knows."

"He has such fuzzy pink hair!" said Cort, rubbing it the wrong way. "Do you think it will stay pink?"

"You sha'n't be godfather to my son if you say another word, Cortland. Here, nurse, take him. They sha'n't abuse him any longer." She pressed her lips rapturously against his rosy cheek and released him. Mrs. Rumsen gazed through her lorgnon, while the infant, with a cry of delight, pulled the glasses from the General's nose.

"No respect for age! None at all!" said Mrs. Rumsen.