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Show GEORGE AGNEW CfttMBERLAIN yf Wme 'COPY&SOfIT BY TfS CVT073Y CO. "- had done this thing to Gerry She felt a pans, half enry, half remorse. If she had been wise, less than that, If she had been merely sage, could Bhe not have saved Gerry to himself and spared her faith the test of the three long years lost out of their youth? Gerry stood erect by e door, one baud still holding the knob Why was he waiting? Mix' raisec" hand went slowly out to him in welcome but he did not move. She smiled ai him but his eyer remained steadfast and grave. A lump rose In Alix' throat and then, as pride came o her aid, a flare of color showed in her cheeks. Her Hps opened. What could she say to hurt him enough, to nay him back for this added, unjust rebuff? She knew so little about this new Gerry. How could she wound him? And then he spoke. "Will you please sit down? There are things I must tell you." Gerry had blundered on magic words. There Is no moment so emotionally emo-tionally tense that a true woman will not drop the immediate issue to sit down and listen to the untold things she has wanted to hear. Alix was a true woman. The flare died out of her cheeks. She sank Into a cbair beside the dully shining mahogany table and with a nod of her golden head motioned mo-tioned Gerry to a seat opposite her. She watched the easy swing of his body as he moved across the room. Gerry's mind was In sore conflict, but a body in perfect health has a way of taking care of itself. Gerry sat down and gripped the edge of the table with outstretched hands. He looked steadily into Alix' eyes. The moment he had foreseen had come. Alix sat in judgment She planted her bare elbows on the table, laid one hand, palm down on the other and on them both rested her cheek. Her head with its heavy crown of hair was thus to one side but also tilted slightly forward. for-ward. That slight forward tilt gave strength to the pose and intensity. A curious, measuring look came into Alix' eyes. She was silent and she was waiting. Gerry dropped his eyes to the table and began to talk. "The things I have got to tell you," he said, "begin with that day our last day. I went out and walked for hours and realized that I had been rough and unjust and to blame. I came over to the avenue and was standing, looking at some flowers when you passed. I saw you in the plate-glass of the window. I turned around to make sure. I recognized your trunk. I followed you to the station. sta-tion. I saw Alan signal to you. I saw you get into the train." Gerry stopped. His premise was finished and he found that he had no tongue to tell the things he had thought the long argument of the soul. He realized that all that must be left out. He must confine himself to mere physical phys-ical facts, let them troop np in the order in which they had come upon him and file naked before Alix. She must dress them as she saw fit, as her sympathies and her justice directed. He would give her but the groundwork, ground-work, plain simple words such as he could command, telling the events that had come upon him and how he had met them. Of the trip out he had nothing to say but of Pernambuco he told her in detail. de-tail. Somehow it seemed the least he could do for the filthy and beautiful city that had given him an unquestioning unques-tioning asylum. He told her of the quay, the Lingrceta, with its line of tall, stained houses, its vast plane trees and its cobbled esplanade, the stage where the city's life was in perpetual per-petual review. His words came slowly slow-ly but they left nothing out Unconsciously Uncon-sciously he. created an atmosphere. A light of interest burned in Alix' eyes. She saw the changing scene. It charmed her to restfulness as it had Gerry. She smelt the stacks of pineapples, the heaped-up mangoes, the frying fish, and through his eyes she saw the blue skies dotted with white, still clouds and glimpsed the secret, bigh-walled gardens with their, flaring hibiscus, trailing fuchsias, fantastic garden cockscombs and dark-domed mango and jack trees. She sat with Gerry and, later, on the long slim coasting craft she listened with him to the creak of straining masts and stays and to the lap of hurrying waters. She followed him up the San Francisco, felt his impatience im-patience with Penedo, took the little stern-wheeler and learned the fascination fascina-tion of a river with endless, undiscovered undiscov-ered turns. They came to Piranhas. Here she felt herself on familiar ground. Letters from the consul's envoy en-voy had made this place hers. Unconsciously Uncon-sciously she nodded as Gerry described the tiers of houses, the twisted, climbing climb-ing streets, the miserable little inn. Gerry told of the happy days of ponderous pon-derous canoeing and of the unvarying ' strings of fish. He lingered over those 1 days. Thus far be had brought Alix with him. He felt it. Now he came to the morning when he must leave her i behind. He told her of the glorious break of that day, of the sun fighting : through swirling mists. She saw him ' standing stripped on the sandsplt. She I saw the canoe nosing heavily against the shore and his pyjamas tossed care-i care-i lessly across a thwart She knew that i she had come to the moment of revela-i revela-i tion. She breathed BOftly lest she should lose a word for Gerry was , speaking very low. Then be showed her Margarita, Margarita as he had i first seen. her, kissing and kissed by dawn. (TO BE CONTINUED.) little waves of the bay, rushing to fling themselves at the feet of the goddess, became a multitude, eager for attainment, attain-ment, ready for sacrifice. It was ten o'clock on a morning in early autumn when Gerry Anally got free of the freighter and took the ferry for the other side of the river. He had left all bis baggage to be delivered at the house later. The morning was clear but sultry. In the city the apathy of summer days had settled down. People glanced at Gerry's heavy tweeds and antiquated hat but they did not smile, for Gerry himself was such a sight as makes men forget clothes. The tan of his lean face, the swing of his big, unpadded shoulders, bis clear eyes, carried the thoughts of passers-by away from clothes and city things. They seemed to catch a breath of spicy winds from the worn garments that clung to the stranger's virile body and In his eyes they saw a mirage of far-away places. As Gerry reached his own house, he was outwardly calm, even delib- "Why Was He Waiting?" erate, but inwardly he was fighting down a turmoil of emotions. What was be to find in Alix? Had he anything to give in exchange? Had he too much? He climbed the steps slowly. His hand trembled as he reached out to raise the heavy bronze knocker. Before Be-fore his fingers could seize it, the door swung softly inward. Old John bowed before him. For a moment Gerry stood dazed. The naturalness of that open door, of the old butler, of the cool shadows in the old familiar hall, struck straight at his heart with the shrewd poignancy of simple things. Old John raised a smiling face to greet him but down one wrinkled cheek crawled a surprised tear. Gerry held out his hand. "How do you do, John?" "I am very well today, sir," said John. "Mrs. Gerry is in the library. She told me to telephone to the club and if you were there to say she wished to see you." Gerry was puzzled. Why should Alls think he would go to the club? He handed the butler his old bat and strode to the library door. The door was closed. Somebody said, "Come in." The words were so low he hardly heard them. He opened the door, stepped inside and closed it behind him. Alix, dressed In a filmy blue and white housegown, stood in the middle ot the room. With one hand upraised, the other outstretched, she seemed to be poised, equally ready for advance or flight. Her eyes passed swiftly over Gerry's face, swept searching down to his feet and back again to his face. For weeks she had been wondering. wonder-ing. Terrible things had come to her mind. Alan and Gerry with his heartless heart-less note, bad conspired to mystify, to terrify her. All the joy she had looked forward to in Gerry's home-coming had turned into a bitter pain. They had not known on the hill how she was suffering. Only Kemp had seemed to understand a little and had brought his drop of comfort to her. ..As her eyes searched Gerry the sense of impending calamity left her. He was well, well as she had never seen him before. Except for that he seemed almost weirdly familiar, as though only a good night's sleep lay between him and the morning of three year;, ago when he had bullied her until she bad fought back and overwhelmed him. A hundred little differences went tc make up this solitary change. The flush of too many drinks had given way to a deep healthy glow, the eyes were deep : and grave instead of deep and vacant, the broad shoulders that had taken tc banging were braced In unconscious i strength. Every line In the body thai she had seen start on the road to gross- ness had been fined down. The bodj was no longer a mere abode for a lin gering spirit It bad become a mecha' nism, tuned to expression in action. II was not the body of a time-server Alan's sole word of comfort came back 1 to her. "I never thought the old Rock I would ever loom so big." What fores CHAPTER XXXIII Continued. 17 In those days when once more his thoughts demanded to be seen in their relation to Alix, that steady voice within li 1 in was his only comfort. The flood at Fuzenda F lores had swept away all that his hands had done, but the things that Fazenda Flores had done for him could not lie swept away by any material force. They stood and feared nothing except Alix. Wherever Ms mind turned, it came back to A fix arid found, in her an impasse. im-passe. Alix assumed more and more the portentous attributes of one unattached, unat-tached, flitting In Judgment over his acts. His memory of her frailty, 6f her floworllke detachment from the bones the skeleton of life, her artificiality, arti-ficiality, made hpr seem ludicrously incongruous in-congruous In the role of judge. He could not picture her, much less estimate esti-mate the sentence she would pass. His thoughts led him dully up to that Impasse Im-passe and left hlni. Then came the doubt and the question why should he lend himself bodily to the impasse at all? He was still fighting this point when i he reached Barbados but there an incident inci-dent befell which brought a new light to his mlud and then a new peace to his soul. lie had gone ashore at Bridgetown simply because his whole body, perfectly per-fectly attuned by three years of long hours of toil, was crying out for more exercise than the narrow decks of the freighter could afford. When the little group of passengers reached shore, with the exception of Gerry and an old returning Barbadian, they all turned in the same direction as If by a common impulse. The Barbadian glanced at Gerry and jerked his head at the disappearing group. "Men of the world in the big sense," he said. "What do you mean?" asked Gerry. "Son," said the old Barbadian, who was very tanned and whose kindly eyes blinked through thick glasses, "when a chap tells you he's a man of the world you ask him if be ever had a drinlt at the Ice house. You don't have to say 'in Bridgetown.' 'Ever have a drink at the Ice house?' Just like that; and if he says, 'No,' you know he meant he was a town rounder when he said he was a man of the world." Gerry smiled and fell naturally in step with the Barbadian as he moved slowly on. "Yes," said the old man. "It's a sure test The man that hasn't crooked his elbow at the big, round dear table in that old, ramshackle drink-house can't say he's really traveled. Long-lost brothers and friends have met there, and when men that roam the high seas want news of soine pal that's disappeared disap-peared down the highway of the world they drop in at the old Ice bouse and ask what road he took. It's halfway bouse to all the seven seas." "Have you lost anyone?" asked Gerry. "No, I'm not thirsty for a drink just now," said the Barbadian with a smile. "And you?" "Nor I," said Gerry, laughing. "I'm out to stretch my legs." "You can't do that here," replied the old man. "You don't know our sun. Come with me." He hailed a ramshackle ram-shackle victoria. Gerry hesitated. "You must have a home you want to ga to and friends to see. Don't worry about me. I'll be careful about the sun." "Boy." said the Barbadian, "I've got a home and I'm going to see it, but there's no reason why you shouldn't come along. As for friends the ones I left here won't get up to meet anyone till the last trump sounds. Come along. You are the only company and I'm the only host in our party." They climbed into the rickety cab and the Barbadian gave directions to tile driver. The driver answered in the soft guttural of the West Indian black. Slowly they crawled through the crooked streets of the town. Gerry leaned back and gazed at the freakish freak-ish buildings. They were all of framework. frame-work. Some swelled at the top, and Gerry " wondered . why they did not topple over; some swelled at the bottom bot-tom and he wondered why these did uot cave in. The Barbadian watched his face. "Funny town, eh?" Gerry nodded. Presently the found themselves on a country road. It was so smooth that t5s weighted carriage pushed the old horses along at an unwonted pace. Little houses hundreds of them that looked like big heucoops lined the road. Suddenly the carriage came to a halt. One ot the little houses was trying to straddle the road. From around it came screams and cries. "Now. then, yo' Gladys, when ah say heft, yo' heft" Th driver poured out an augry tor rent of words that tried their best to be harsh and failed. From around the obstructing house came an old darky. When his eyes fell on the Barbadian he rushed forward. "Lor. Misteh Malcolm, Mal-colm, when did yo' get back?" "Just now, Charles," said ttu Barbadian. Barba-dian. "What's the matter here?" The darky's eyes rolled. "Mattah, Misteh Malcolm? Why, that ole Cun-net Cun-net Stewaat he's jes' so natcherly parsimonious par-simonious that h requires me to pay rent fo' bavin' ma house on his lan', so I says to ole mammy, we'll jes' move this here residence or to a gen'le-nian's gen'le-nian's lan', and Misteh Malcolr me'n mammy 'n the chile art jes' a-movin' It on to yo' old cane fieF." The Barbadian laughed a little dryly and shrugged his shoulders. The driver got down, protesting, and helped the family carry Uie house across the road. Then the cab went on and soon turned up nn avenue under a fiery canopy of acacia flamboyante. As they progressed, thick, twining growths, spangled with brilliant blooms, walled in the avenue. The air grew cool but heavy with scents and the full-flavored spice of a tropical garden gar-den under a blazing sun. The air made Gerry dreamy. He woke with a start when the Barbadian said to the cabman, "This will do. You needn't drive In. Wait here." The cab stopped. Just ahead was the ruin of a great gate. The two pillars pil-lars still stood, but they were almost entirely hidden by vines. To one of them clung the rusted vestige of a gate. Beyond the pillars there was a winding way. Once it had been a road continuation of the avenue, now it was but a tunnef'through the densely dense-ly crowded foliage. Along the center of the tunnel was a narrow path. Even it was overgrown. The Barbadian Barba-dian led Gerry down the path. They came out under a grove of mighty trees whose dense shade had kept down the undergrowth, and beyond be-yond the trees Gerry saw a vast, irregular ir-regular mound of vines, with which mingled giant geraniums, climbing fuchsias, honeysuckle and rose. Then he spied a broad flight of marble steps; at one end of them an old moss-grown urn, at the other, its fallen, broken counterpart Above the mound rose the roof of a house; through the vines, as the two drew nearer, appeared shuttered shut-tered windows and a door, veiled with creepers. The Barbadian went up the steps and tore the creepers away from the "Have You Lost Anyone?" Asked , Gerry. door. Then he drew from his pocket an enormous key. With a rasp the lock turned and the door opened, letting let-ting a bar of light into a wide, cool hall. Gerry followed the Barbadian through the hall to a broad veranda at the back of the house. A large living room faced on to the veranda. The Barbadian entered it, opened the French door-windows and, dusting off two lounge chairs, invited Gerry to sit down. Gerry looked around curiously. The living room was comfortably furnished. fur-nished. There were one or two excellent excel-lent rugs on the waxed floor; a great couch, set into a bow-window; lace curtains, creamy with age; a wonderfully wonder-fully carved escritoire in rosewood: a sideboard, round table and chairs of mahogany that was almost as dull and black as ebony. Over all lay a coat of dust. The Barbadian walked to the round table and with his finger wrote in the dust, then he sat down in a worn and comfortable chair, a companion to Gerry's. He fell into so deep a reverie that Gerry thought he was asleep. Gerry got up and walked around the room. His eye fell on the table. He saw what the Barbadian had written: simply the date of the day. But above the freshly written date showed another, an-other, filmed over with dust, and above that another almost obliterated. Gerry leaned over the table. He could see that a long succession of dates had been written into the thick-laid dust. Beginning with the fresh numerals staring up at him they reached back and buck through the years till they faded away into a dim past. Gerry tiptoed out on to the veranda. Before him was a ruined lawn; In its center a cracked, dry, marble fountain. Off to one side was a giant plane tree. From one of its limbs hung two frayed ropes. Against its trunk leaned a weather-beaten swing-board. Under the ropes, a wisp of path still showed, beaten hard in a bygone day by the feet of children. Beyond the lawn stretched wide hunrmocky cane fields. They were abandoned save for little patches of cane here and there, bunched up against little hen-coop houses. "Got a home, boy?" Gerry turned and found the Barbadian Barba-dian -.landing beside him. "A home!" he answered, his thoughts flying to Red Hill, "I should think I have and it's a li " Gerry caught himself but not in time. The Barbadian nodded slowly. "I know," he said, "you were going to say it's a live one. Well, as to that, don't you make a mistake. This home is alive too just exactly as alive as I am, for I'm the last of the Barbados Malcolms. "Home," he went on, "isn't altogether alto-gether a matter of cash, comfort and cool drinks. Sometimes it's just a gathering place for memories. "There was a time when we whites stood fifteen to one over the blacks on this island. Now the tables are turned. A chap that only takes a drink every time he sees a white man would have to go to a mass meeting to get drunk. "Lately they've been sending out scientific commissions from England to sit like coroners on this mound in the sea. They say they're going to bring the corpse back to life. I've been offered a big price for this old place but I'm not selling." Gerry looked at the Barbadian's rather shabby clothes. "Why don't you sell if you don't want to work the place? It's worth money. I . know enough to tell you that." The Barbadian rested one hand high on the thick trunk of a wistaria. A slow smile drew the corners of his mouth. "Worth money?" he echoed. "My boy, not every man kills the thing that he loves best. This is my home. You read those dates written in dust and still you thought my home was dead. But Is isn't dead. I haven't killed the thing that I love best. You can get cash, comfort and cool drinks almost anywhere, but I have remembered remem-bered that memories travel only beaten beat-en paths." Even as Gerry picked his way back to the waiting cab he felt Red Hill reaching out for him, drawing him. And during the long, slow drive to the quay he learned that he had passed the crossroads that had given so long a pause to his troubled soul. The Barbadian Bar-badian had opened his eyes. Doubt left him. There was but one road the road back and it was open. He wrote his cable to Alix with a firm hand. The freighter reached quarantine after a quiet voyage twelve hours ahead of time and just at sundown. A tug hurried down the bay to tel! tbem their berth was not ready. The freighter was forced to anchor at the mouth of the narrows. Gerry watched the lights spring out from the shadowy shores. They beckoned him to familiar scenes. Stateu Island had been to his boyhood an undiscovered land and the scene of his first wanderings. Bay-shore Bay-shore he knew through constant passing pass-ing by. In the sky beyond it, bung the glow of the summer city, here and there pierced with the brighter flame of some grotesque monstrosity. Up the bay the dark waters forked into two bands that lost themselves in a sea and sky of twinkling lights. He could just determine the sweeping arch of Brooklyn bridge and the presence of more than one new Tower of Babel that broke the ever-changing skyline of his native city and made bim feel, by that much, forgotten and an alien. But from all the myriad lesser lights his eyes turned gratefully to the high-held high-held torch of Liberty. Beneath it, the familiar, tilted diadem, the shadowy folds draping the up-standing pose, the strength and steadfastness and the titanic grandeur of the statue, carried their message to him as never before. It became to him what Its creator had conceived, an emblem, and the myriad |