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Ah, my son, my son, with the hot blood of youth in you you've a man's head and heart and a will of your own Aye, she's sweet that she is I wonder!" At the front of Caleb Brent's little house there was a bench upon which the old man was wont to sit on sunny days usually in the morning, before the brisk, cool nor'west trade-wind commenced to blow.
Since in business matters he never had taken her into his confidence, and since she would not at any rate have understood such things, she had no proof of such a failing. But one or two vague remarks of Trixton Brent's which she recalled, and Howard's own request that she should be friendly with Brent, reenforced her instinct on this point.
That was what Miss Brent's letter meant; and his answer was a telegram to Bessy, announcing his return to Long Island. The step was not an easy one; but decisive action, however hard, was always easier to Amherst than the ensuing interval of readjustment. To come to Lynbrook had required a strong effort of will; but the effort of remaining there called into play less disciplined faculties.
And so it was that there was hardly a woman of any kind or degree, who lived within view of Brent's Rock, who did not cherish some form of secret admiration for the handsome wastrel.
It is terrible for the great of soul, the ambitious, the imaginative, when circumstances condemn them to life amid dull, uninteresting, drab, and sometimes sordid surroundings. Born to love and be loved, Nan Brent's soul beat against her environment even as a wild bird, captured and loosed in a room, beats against the window-pane.
Is the old lady really tucked away for the night, or is she coming down to read us a sermon? And how the deuce did you happen to pick her up?" She had come downstairs with confession on her lips, and in the agitation of her mind had scarcely heeded Brent's words or Mrs. Chandos'. She had come down prepared for any attitude but the one in which she found him; for anger, reproaches, arraignments.
When, at the first night of "The Scandal," the audience lingered, cheering Brent's picture thrown upon a drop, cheering Susan, calling her out again and again, refusing to leave the theater until it was announced that she could answer no more calls, as she had gone home when she was thus finally and firmly established in her own right she said to Sperry: "Will you see to it that every sketch of me that appears tomorrow says that I am the natural daughter of Lorella Lenox?"
The Captain does not take much part in the conversation, and he refuses the cigar which is offered him. Mr. Carvel draws back in surprise. "Lige," he says, "this is the first time to my knowledge." "I smoked too many last night," says the Captain. The Colonel sat down, with his feet against the mantel, too full of affairs to take much notice of Mr. Brent's apathy.
For a time it seemed as though Brent's bombshell had been a dud. There was no comment from around the table no sound of any kind. But each man was evaluating the information after his own fashion. The key thought, no doubt, other than a natural and instinctive moment of sheer unbelief, was that this marked a giant, forward lunge in world history.
When the two staring young rustics left the desk of the county court clerk and repaired to the dwelling of the minister of the Methodist Church near by, with the marriage license just procured safely stowed away in Brent's capacious hat, their anxieties were roused for a moment lest some delay ensue, as they discovered that the minister was on the point of sitting down to his dinner.
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