Honor ran across Figueroa Street between flashing headlights on automobiles, and her heart was soft within her. _Poor_ old Cartie! How he must have grieved and reproached himself, and how seriously he must have taken it, to tell his mother! Fancy not forgiving people! Her stepfather had marked a pa.s.sage for her in her pocket "R. L. S."...

"The man who cannot forgive any mortal thing is a green hand in life,"

Stevenson had said. Honor believed him. She could even forgive James King, poor, proud, miserable James King, for failing Jimsy. It was because he cared so much. As she started up her own walk some one called to her from the steps of the King house.

"That you, Honor?"

"Yes, Doctor! I just came home to-day. How are you?" She ran over to shake hands with him. "Is Mr. King very sick?"

"He's dying."

"Oh, Doctor _Deering_!"

"Yes. No mistake about it this time. Wants to see you. Old n.i.g.g.e.r woman told him you were home. Will you come now?"

"Of course." She followed him into the house and up the long, shabbily carpeted stairs. She had never seen a dying person and she began to shiver.

As if he read her thought the doctor spoke. "Isn't going to die while you're here. Not for a week--perhaps two weeks. But he'll never be up again." His voice was gruff and his brow was furrowed. He had been with Jeanie King when Jimsy was born and when she died, and he had cherished and scorned James King for long years.

There was a chair beside the bed and Honor seated herself there in silence. Presently the sick man opened his eyes and his worn and ravaged look of his son caught at her heart.

"So," he said somberly, "you came home."

"Yes, Mr. King. I came because Jimsy was in trouble, and to-morrow I'm going to him."

His eyes widened and slow, difficult color came into his sharply boned face. "You're going ... to Mexico?"

"Yes; alone."

The color crept up and up until it reached the graying hair, crisply waved, like Jimsy's. "No King woman ever ... held harder ... than that!"

he gasped. "You're a good girl, Honor Carmody. They knew ... what to ...

name you, didn't they?"

She leaned nearer, holding her hand so that the rays of the night light fell on the ring. "Didn't you know I'd 'hold hard' when you let Jimsy give me this?"

He hauled himself up on an elbow and stared at it with tragic eyes.

"Jeanie wore it five years.... My mother wore it thirty.... Honor Carmody, you're a good girl.... You make me ... ashamed.... Tell the boy that ... I'm sorry ... that letter. Bring him back ... in time...." He fell back, limp, gasping, and the doctor signaled to the girl to go. As she was slipping through the door the sick man spoke again, querulously.

"d.a.m.n that mocking-bird ... make somebody shoot him!... There was one singing when Jimsy was born ... and when Jeanie went ... and this one now, mocking, mocking...."

She ran back to him. "Oh, Mr. King," she said, with shy fervor, "he isn't making fun of _us_!--Only of the bad, hard things! One sang out near Fiesta Park the day we thought Greenmount would win the championship, and one was singing the night Jimsy and I found out that we loved each other,--and this one was singing when I came home to-day!"

It was a long speech for Honor and she was a little shy and breathless.

"I _know_ he doesn't mean it the way you think! He's telling us that the sad, hard, terrible things are not the real things!" Suddenly she bent and kissed his cold forehead. "Oh, Mr. King, if you listen to him with--with your _heart_--you'll hear it! He's mocking at trouble and disgrace,--and misunderstanding and silly pride! He's--_hear him now!_--he's mocking at pain and sorrow and--and _death_!"

Then she ran out of the room and down the long stairs and across the lawn to her own house, where a noisy and jubilant section of the Old Guard waited.

CHAPTER XI

It was happily clear at breakfast that Stephen Lorimer had more or less made his peace--and Honor's peace--with his wife. Like his beloved Job, whom he knew almost by heart, he had ordered his cause and filled his mouth with arguments, and Mildred Lorimer had come to see something rather splendidly romantic in her daughter's quest for her true love.

Stephen, who never appeared at breakfast, was down on time, heavy-eyed and flushed, and Honor saw with a pang, in the stern morning light, that he was middle-aged. Her gay young stepfather! His spirit had put a period at nineteen, but his tired body was settling back into the slack lines of the late fifties. Her mother had changed but little, thanks to the unruffled serenity of her spirit and the skillful hands which cared for her.

"Muzzie," Honor had said, meeting her alone in the morning, "you are a marvel! Why, you haven't a single gray hair!"

"It's--well, I suppose it's because I have it taken care of," said Mrs.

Lorimer, flushing faintly. "It's not a dye. It's not in the least a dye--it simply _keeps_ the original color in the hair, that's all. I wouldn't think of using a dye. In the first place, they say it's really dangerous,--it seeps into the brain and affects your mind, and in the second place it gives your face a hard look, always,--and besides, I don't approve of it. But this thing Madame uses for me is _perfectly_ harmless, Honor."

"It's perfectly charming, Muzzie," said her daughter, giving her a hearty hug. It was a good world this morning. The breakfast table was gay, and Kada beamed. Takasugi had made countless pop-overs--Honor's favorites--and Kada was slipping in and out with heaping plates of them.

"Pop-all-overs" the littlest Lorimer called them, steaming, golden-hearted. Honor had sung for them and the Old Guard the night before and even the smallest of the boys was impressed and was treating her this morning with an added deference which flowered in many pa.s.sings of the marmalade and much brotherly banter. The girl herself was radiant. Nothing could be very wrong in a world like this. Suppose Jimsy had slipped once--twice--half a dozen times, when she was far away across the water? One swallow didn't make a spring and one slip (or several) didn't make a "Wild King" out of Jimsy. She was going to find him and talk it over and straighten it out and bring him back here where he belonged, where they both belonged, where they would stay. His expulsion from Stanford really simplified matters, when you came to think of it; now there need be no tiresome talk of waiting until he graduated from college. And she had not the faintest intention of going back to Italy. Just as soon as Jimsy could find something to do (and her good Stepper would see to that) they would be married and move into the old King house, and _how_ she would love opening it up to the sun and air and making it gay with new colors! All this in her quiet mind while she breakfasted st.u.r.dily with her noisy tribe. Good to be with them again, better still to be coming back to them, to stay with them, to live beside them, always.

Her train went at ten and the boys would be in school and her mother had an appointment with the lady whose ministrations kept her hair at its natural tint and Honor would not hear of her breaking it, so it was her stepfather only who took her to the station. She was rather glad of that and it made her put an unconscious extra fervor, remorsefully, into her farewells to the rest. Just as she was leaving her room there was a thump on her door and a simultaneous opening of it. Ted, her eldest Carmody brother, came in and closed the door behind him. He was a Senior at L. A. High, a football star of the second magnitude and a personable youth in all ways, and her heart warmed to him.

"Ted,--dear! I thought you'd gone to school!"

"I'm just going. Sis,--I"--he came close to her, his bonny young face suddenly scarlet--"I just wanted to say--I know why you're going down there, and--and I'm for you a million! He's all right, old Jimsy. Don't you let anybody tell you he isn't. I--you're a sport to pike down there all by yourself. _You're all right_, Sis! I'm strong for you!"

"Ted!" The distance between them melted; she felt the hug of his hard young arms and there was a lump in her throat and tears in her eyes, but she fought them back. He would be aghast at her if she cried. He wouldn't be for her a million any longer. She must not break down though she felt more like it than at any time since her arrival. She kept silent and let him pat her clumsily and heavily till she could command her voice. "I'm glad you want me to go, Teddy."

"You bet I do. You stick, Sis! _And don't you let Carter spill the beans!_"

"Why, Ted, he----"

"You keep an eye on that bird," said the boy, grimly. "You keep your lamps lit!"

She repeated his words to her stepfather as they drove to the station.

"Why do you suppose he said that, Stepper?"

Stephen Lorimer shrugged. "I don't think he meant anything specific, T. S., but you know the kids have never cared for Carter."

"I know; it's that he isn't their type. They haven't understood him."

"Or--it's that they have."

"Stepper! You, too?" Honor was driving and she did not turn her head to look at him, but he knew the expression of her face from the tone of her voice. "Do you mean that, seriously?"

"I think I do, T. S. Look here,--we might as well talk things over straight from the shoulder this morning. Shall we?"

"Please do, Stepper." She turned into a quieter street and drove more slowly, so that she was able to face him for an instant, her face troubled.

"Want me to drive?"

"No,--I like the feel of the wheel again, after so long. You talk, Stepper."

"Well, T. S., I've no tangible charge to make against Carter, save that his influence has been consistently bad for Jimsy since the first day he limped into our ken. Consistently and--_persistently_ bad, T. S. You know--since we're not dealing in persiflage this morning--that Carter is quite madly, crazily, desperately in love with you?"

"I--yes, I suppose that's what you'd call it, Stepper. He--rather lost his head last summer,--the night before you sailed."

"But the night before we sailed," said her stepfather, drawing from his neatly card-indexed memory, "it was with me that you held a little last session."