At The South Gate

Front matter

TH GATE

OR en

GRACE 5. RICHMOND

II HE immediate problem was finally solved

by a letter from Charlton Braithwaite, of

Braithwaite Court. It was not only a kind letter, it was a surprisingly understanding one.

“DEAR PAIGE:

“Just heard of your hard luck. We only came up last night. It must be the devil to be burned . out like that. Of course it will take time to replace things, and to build a home. Meanwhile, why won’t you and Mrs. Paige come and live in an empty house on our place, down by the South gate? No, it isn’t a lodge. Was used for that once, but that was before we changed the entrance. Now it’s standing idle. The house is furnished after a fashion. Our architect lived in it off and on while the big house was building, and Beatrice had some stuff put there she was discarding for the new place. As a sort of temporary quarters, while you make plans, it mightn’t be so bad. Anyhow, you could get on with the book I suppose you’re writing this summer, since a little thing like being burned out 4 would never slow down an actively visionary brain like yours.

“Let me know when you want it, and I’ll have it swept out for you. Beatrice will be glad to supply you with linen and so on till you can get together the new outfit. To tell the truth, old man, I’m hoping desperately you’ll accept this offer, if only for six months. I can’t tell you how | I should enjoy strolling down when our house is full of week-end guests, and smoking a pipe with you on that funny old porch. What do you say? Can you refuse me your hospitality?

“My best to Mrs. Paige.

“As ever, I’m faithfully yours, “CHARLTON BRAITHWAITE.”

When Michael Paige read this letter to Ann, —he had smoked his pipe over it for half an hour before he did so—she stopped short in her work of hastily making herself a dress as a beginning to replacing the burned wardrobe. The Paiges were quartered temporarily at the Black Lion Inn. The entire village had offered their spare rooms, but Michael and Ann had decided to be by themselves while they collected their scattered wits. It is rather disintegrating to be burned out of a comfortable if modest home in the twinkling of an eye.

“That certainly is a friendly letter,’ Ann said.

“T shouldn’t have expected it of Charlton Braithwaite. But—I don’t know ae

Michael confessed he didn’t know either. ‘They fell to discussing it. Part of the time Ann was at the sewing machine—lent her by the proprietor’s wife. Bits of sentences reached Michael through the whirring:

“Beatty Braithwaite wouldn’t really like it . .. At school she was always ... The girls detested that arrogant . . . She had it even then ... Can’t be very different now . . . Charlton’s plan . . . She had to agree . . . May not even know about it... I shouldn’t ‘use her sheets . . . Easily get a few common .. . It is a nice little old house . . .”

And so on. Presently Ann put away her work. It was dusk, and there was no drop light in the inn room by which she could sew.

“Let’s take a walk and go by the place,” she proposed.

Michael was willing. They had walked by the large, brick-walled estate a thousand times, but not critically, as prospective tenants of a small corner of it. It was about two miles from the centre of the Massachusetts village, on an elmshaded, winding road that led past many other great country places. They would have to pass © the ruins of their old home, for the first time since the ashes had stopped smouldering, but there was no use minding that. It hadn’t been a particularly attractive home of itself, but they had trained vines over its shabbiness, and had grown fond of it. It had sheltered some treasures, and there were memories tied up with it. Little Dick had gone from there—the only child the pair had had in the six years of their married life.

They paced along the road, hatless. It was a mild April evening—Ann didn’t own a hat now, anyhow. The dress she was wearing was a borrowed one. Her burnished chestnut hair shone under the village arc lights; her head came just above Michael’s angular shoulder. He was thin as a lath, with a gaunt, dark, good-looking face, and lips clamped tight on his pipe stem. Beside him Ann blossomed like a vigorous and vivid flower.

As they approached the low irregular outlines of what had been the walls of the small brown house, Michael felt Ann’s hand tighten on his arm. They went by in silence. If they had been able to salvage a little more—if Ann could have had certain things which had been stored in the tiny attic ... But, alone in the house when she wakened with the strong smell of smoke in her nostrils, she had had but one first thought, and there had been no time for second thoughts. More than once in the past Michael

8 ATAT HES OUP HGCA had said to her: “If the house ever gets afire, Ann, save my stuff in the desk and the chest. It might mean a year’s work to replace whatever I was working on—not to mention discarded manuscripts with possibilities. As for the books —they’re our most valuable 4

“Of course!” She had always interrupted him at this. point. “Your manuscripts and the books —of course they are. I’ll get them out if everything else goes.”

Her prophetic promise had been almost exactly fulfilled. The house had been all ablaze when she jumped out of bed, at midnight, with a hot partition next her burning her hand as she touched it. She had rushed to the telephone, roused a sleepy operator and sent in the alarm. Then she had made her way into the study, already reeking with smoke, had snatched an old steamer rug off the couch and tumbled the contents of the drawers and chest into it. She had thrown this out of the window, and had fired pile after pile of books out after it. Hearing of this afterward, Michael’s breath had stopped, for the village fire chief had told him graphically that when he reached the spot the study windows, above the front porch, had shown enough firelight to make Ann’s figure stand out against it, as she worked frantically at her task

A hee SOUTH GATE 9 of pitching their “most valuable” assets out to the lawn below. The chief’s first move had been to dash up the little stairway, thick with smoke, and into the room.

““Mis’ Paige,’ I says to her, ‘you ain’t goin’ to stay here another minute. Come along.’ She looked at me cool as a cucumber. ‘AII right,’ says she. ‘I’ve got everything valuable out except this chest. I’d like to save that. If you'll help me * I picked her up and took her downstairs under my arm—and high time. I never see a house go so quick in all my experience with fires.”

Safely out of the house Ann had seen to the picking up of the books and the contents of the rugs. They had been carried by a neighbour to a near-by cellar, and there piled, helter-skelter. From this place Michael had rescued them, much the worse for the hard fall from the windows—the manuscripts in confusion, the books with occasional broken backs and bent corners, but all still “valuable” beyond comparison.

“T was terribly sorry to throw them, Mikey,” Ann had apologized. “But it was the only way. And, anyhow, with everything else gone »

“They’re worth more than all the rest put together, to me,” he assured her. “Except you. I can only keep on thanking God you-——”

“Oh, I shouldn’t have burned myself up saving the books,” she said lightly. “It wouldn’t have been as much of a jump for me from that window as it was for the books.”

rir

O now the Paiges walked past the ruins in silence, and on along the road in the soft April night. Ann wasn’t shedding even a tear or two as they went. She wasn’t that sort. At thirtythree she was young and strong of body and healthy of mind. The house had burned down, and with it every keepsake she had in the world, but she was over the worst of the inevitable reaction, and already she was busy with plans and hopes. The one thing important to her was that Michael’s work shouldn’t be long interrupted.

The truth was, as Michael had realized at once, that they had hardly any funds in hand, and wouldn’t have till he had marketed his new book. It was a long time since he had had much of any royalties from his first book, though it had been a fair success. Articles and reviews had brought in enough to live on, but the fire had placed the Paiges in a difficult position. There were few houses to rent in the old New England town, and they couldn’t now afford even the least attractive of these. 11 ae) AT THE SOUTH GATE

Charlton Braithwaite’s letter certainly had given a new turn to the situation. On the face of it, it solved all the difficulties at a stroke. There seemed to be no real reason why the ‘Paiges shouldn’t accept so kind an offer from an old college classmate who could afford to give them the house, if he were so inclined,—and if they would take it—as of course they wouldn’t. (The Braithwaites were among the richest people in the county. Charlton hadn’t been a special friend, but Michael had tutored “Charl” time and again at crises, and had pulled him through examinations that would otherwise have floored him. He had been a florid chap even then, a lavish spender, and a favourite with a certain care- - free set. Now—well—he was Charlton Braithwaite of Braithwaite Court.

That wasn’t so bad, Ann thought, that he should be Charlton Braithwaite. He really couldn’t help that. The trouble was that his wife was Beatrice Braithwaite—who had been Beatrice Lawton. Ann had frankly detested her at school, and she knew Beatrice had warmly returned the feeling.

‘Why shouldn’t she?” Ann argued. “There she was, a little nabob. I mean she was arrogant—often insufferable. It wasn’t because she had so much money. There were plenty of other rich girls at school—perfect dears, my best

AT, EHE SOUTHIiGATE 13 friends. But Beatty Lawton and I simply couldn’t get on.” |

“I can guess another reason,” Michael suggested. He well remembered the popularity of Ann Gaysworthy. One could hardly get a look-in on her at Proms. An arrogant nabob would be sure to be jealous of a popular girl without much money to spend.

“There were lots of other reasons—no matter. But the recollection of them makes me wonder.”

“The thought of Charl makes me wonder, too,” Michael admitted. “When he used to come for his coaching hour, decidedly the worse for wear, smoking his monogrammed smokes, I used to pull harder on my old pipe that cost a dollar, and get even by pointing out to him that if he put down in his paper that the Congress of Vienna was assembled in 1714, he’d be flunked. That was a pretty decent letter, though, Ann.— Here we are. Well i

It was an interesting-looking house, no doubt of that. They strolled slowly in at the abandoned South gate—the elaborate new stone entrance known as the North gate was farther down the road—and wandered about the house in the April dusk. It had been built lofg before . the great mansion had been reared back among the trees, at the end of a winding avenue. In its first days, the small old red brick house had been the home of a great-grandfather Braithwaite. Then, when the first ambitious dwelling had been built, the old house had become a lodge. When the big house had been torn down to make way for the now existing enormous gray stone structure with its tall columns, the South gateway and the old homestead had together been abandoned.

“Yes, it’s a fascinating little old house,” Ann gaid, ‘and not so small, either. Of course, if it’s furnished, it would be perfectly comfortable, whether or not we liked Beatty Lawton’s discards.”

“They may be much more likable than her mew and gorgeous furnishings,” Michael suggested.

“There’s a great square chimney in the middle.” Ann was walking backward to peer up at it in the gathering darkness. ““That must mean fireplaces. If it does——”

ioLir-ite does ”” Michael repeated. ‘Well, Suppose we come over and look at it in the morning and see how we like it.”

“Tf we can make up our minds to live at our old school acquaintances’ South gateway. Oh, I wish we could offer them rent for it!”

“We can’t, at present. Either we take it or leave it—as a gift.”

“Yes—I suppose so. Mikey—I keep thinking about that bank balance!”

“So do I. I don’t think of anything else.”

“{ don’t suppose Beatty Lawton”—Ann couldn’t get over referring to Mrs. Braithwaite as she had known her, for since her marriage the two had seldom met—‘will come down here more than once. I can bear that once. I don’t imagine her husband will come more than once either—that about smoking on our porch was just a way of being nice to you. The guests will go in and out the other way. The tennis courts and the bathing pool and the rose gardens and all the other things aren’t anywhere near here. And the shrubbery shelters us so from the road, we shan’t seem near it at all. Honestly—how do you feel about it?”

“Exactly as you do, I fancy. That it’s a windfall and we should pick it up. Why should we feel a false pride, Ann? The arrangement is only temporary. We can keep on looking around and be away from here in two months, if we wish—and find anything we can swing. Meanwhile, I confess, the more I look at this house the more I think I could do some good work in it.”

“That settles it,’ Ann decided. “If you can work here we ought to take it. We——” She stopped short. “That’s the Braithwaite car turning in,” she said under her breath. She confessed afterward that at the moment she was fairly praying that Beatty wasn’t in the car.

She wasn’t. It was Charlton Braithwaite himself, having been met at the late train up from New York. The South gate was nearer the village than the North one, and though the mistress of the Court always insisted on being driven in properly between the big North gateposts with their lighted iron lanterns, the master, when alone, preferred this shorter route.

Charlton got out of the car and came forward. Michael advanced to meet him, and Ann slowly followed. Charlton weighed more than he should, these days, but his movements were active. He was always faultlessly dressed. In the light from the big car he looked like some stout prince descending to meet one of his subjects. To do Charlton justice, however, there was no swagger about him; merely the assurance which goes with wealth and conscious power. Michael was sure that even as he came to meet them he was telling himself to take care to say the right thing to old Michael Paige, because he was always a reserved sort of chap, and touchy inside, whether he showed it or not.

‘How are you, Paige?” he said, cordially, and his hand grasped Michael’s warmly. “How do you do, Mrs. Paige?” He bowed over Ann’s hand which she had extended with a certain gracious air she had at command. Of course after that first smothered exclamation Ann rose to the occasion. There was no look of the wouldbe runaway about her even though the situation seemed an awkward one.

“How do you do, Mr. Braithwaite?” she answered, and her voice was delightful. Ann’s voice was one of her best points—Michael noticed it particularly at the moment. “‘You see we couldn’t resist your offer, or wait to look again at the lovely old house. It was mighty kind of you to suggest our having it for the summer.”

“Then you’re going to take it. I certainly am glad to hear that.’ Charlton’s tone was hearty —not too hearty, either. Michael had to give him credit for avoiding the over-beneficent manner of the landowner among his peasantry. “T wish the place were in better shape, but if you can give me a couple of days I’ll have it thoroughly aired to get the mustiness out of it. Fortunately it’s been used from time to time, so I think nothing’s mouldy. I have a real affection for it, you see, as my great-grandfather’s early home.”

“That’s pleasant to remember.” Ann was taking the burden of the conversation, as she usually did. Michael was more or less reticent— except with her. He was feeling a certain constraint just now in spite of his conviction that they would be fools to refuse this chance. “It surely looks like a real home,” Ann went on, “and uke re feeling so homeless es now it invites us.’

‘You must be feeling that way, Mrs. Paige. I’ve always thought I’d sit down and cry like a baby if I ever lost certain old junk of mine that nobody else would care a hang for. Wasn’t anything saved at all?”

“The most important things—Michael’s manuscripts and his books. We were very lucky to get those out.”

“That was luck! Especially for him, if he’s as I remember him. I suppose he’d rather lose everything else he had than those.”

“Tt was more than luck, it was daring,” Michael interpolated. “My wife saved them at the risk of her life.”

‘Nonsense, Michael! I really had the thrill of my life doing it.”

“My word!” Braithwaite turned and stared at the house, as if he expected to see through its walls. “I don’t know whether there’s a bookcase in the house. The truth is, I don’t think anybody with literary tastes ever lived in it, Well, never mind—we’ll produce some bookcases somehow.”

“I beg you won’t.” Ann pounced upon him, determination in her low tone. “We're going to have some plain cases made, and I shall paint them. I know exactly what to do. Please don’t send anything.”

“But I want to—if I know what you'd like. The house is mostly furnished with old stuff— Beatty hates it, but I rather like it. We'd go in now and look the place over, but the lighting System’s turned off. I'll get it turned on tomorrow. By the way, let me take you back to the Black Lion—that’s where you’re staying, isn’t st27

“Yes, thank you—but we want the walk, you know. We always do several miles a day, for the good of our souls. And we love this road.”

“Tt’s more than for the good of your souls, I suspect,’ Charlton answered Ann. Michael could see him noting her beautifully proportioned, youthful figure. He had met Ann two or three times before now. Not an ounce too much did Ann Paige carry—she simply wouldn’t permit it to happen. As for Michael, tall as he was he didn’t much outweigh his wife. But Charlton and Beatrice Braithwaite were both many pounds too heavy. Nobody ever saw either of them on foot, Ann reflected, if the distance to be covered were more than a few rods.

Charlton got into his car, and Michael and Ann walked away out of the South gate. The thing was done now, anyhow. They were committed to living for a time in the former lodge of the owner of this great estate. The redeeming feature of the situation, Michael agreed with Ann, was that the small ivy-covered brick house, so close to the gateway in the high wall which enclosed the entire place, had also been the former home of old Eliphalet Braithwaite, a bigger and a better man, according to his place in our American histories, than his greatgrandson. Why should they not want to live between the walls which had once sheltered General Braithwaite, whose portrait, they were to find, hung dimly above the fireplace, beneath the crossed swords he once had carried?

IV 66 HEY’VE decided to accept, Beatty.” “Who've decided to accept—what?”

Charlton Braithwaite regarded his wife across her breakfast tray, which spanned her half reclining figure propped against several pillows of tumbled linen and lace. She looked as if she liked neither her breakfast nor anything else in the world. Even the lace-andribbon bandeau which subdued her as yet undressed blonde hair was slightly awry—like her mouth. Even so, she was not an altogether unattractive young woman.

“Why—the Paiges—our offer to take the old lodge, till they can find something permanent.”

Beatty Braithwaite’s frown, between her lowering brows, became deeper. Her voice was very petulant.

“Oh. Of course they would. You were sure they wouldn’t. I don’t know why they should be proud. Ann Gaysworthy wasn’t anybody, and she didn’t marry anybody.”

“Michael Paige is somebody. He’s done something—in his literary world. Undoubtedly he’ll aI do more. And Mrs. Paige is a particularly charming woman. I’m glad they're coming.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Anything for a diversion —with you. Well—when are these people coming? I knew they'd accept. I told you they would.”

“Why did we offer them the house if we didn’t want them to accept?”

“Oh, you did it—heaven knows I opposed the silly idea. Just because he happened to be in Harvard when you were, and Ann Gaysworthy went to school with me, I have to put myself out to look after them.”

“Beatty, you’re absolutely unreasonable about this. It’s a very simple matter to have that house put in shape. No houses in the village to be had —they’ve got to live somewhere till they can find something. Now, I want you to do the decent thing and send Ann Paige a note telling her —what you ought to tell her.”

“That I’m overwhelmed with joy she’s coming to live at my door, I suppose.” Beatty Braithwaite’s laugh was mirthless. ““There’s one thing I want you to understand though, Charl. I will ot make neighbours of them, village fashion—as theyll of course expect. You've forced them on me so far, but I won’t have them here. They’d fit in nicely, wouldn’t they, with the sort of people we entertain! I can see them —like a couple of brown hens in a flock of—of pheasants. No—I won’t!”

Charlton Braithwaite flushed angrily. “‘There’s no reason to think they’d care to get into your covey of pheasants,” he retorted. “All I’m asking is that you'll treat them civilly, not as if they were the dust of the earth. They’re very interesting people, I tell you. It might easily be that they’d condescend to us, instead of the other way around. Literary people——”

“Literary people are the dullest, drabbest, fustiest people there are,” replied his wife promptly. “Ann Gaysworthy always looked like a dust heap at school—never wore anything but browns and dingy dark blues. Her hats were unspeakable—they never had a particle of style.”

“T’ve no doubt of it—from your point of view.” Charlton got up and walked away to the window. “Nevertheless, I expect you to be ordinarily polite. Promise me you'll write that note this morning.”

“To-morrow ll do. I’ve got any amount of things to see to to-day.”

“Shall I send Miss Heath to you nowe”

“You needn’t trouble yourself—though I presume you’d enjoy doing it. She’s due in my room at twelve, as you very well know.”

24 AT THE $8 O.047 B2GAZLe

“Promise me you'll write the note this morning.”

“Oh, heavens—anything to stop your heckling. [ll dictate one—I won’t write it myself. Ann Gaysworthy won’t know the difference.”

He had to be content with that. He knew the note would come out the better for having gone through the accomplished hands of the social secretary who, though only recently come, was now his wife’s main reliance. He came back to the bedside, stooped and placed a light kiss on Beatty’s cheek—which she received with an indifference to match his who gave it—and left the room.

Five minutes later the secretary rapped, was admitted, and came to stand at the foot of Mrs. Braithwaite’s bed. A greater contrast between two young women could hardly have been imagined.

Beatrice Braithwaite, plump of body, slightly blowsy of face, very blonde hair showing beneath the French bandeau with its rose ribbons, looked somewhat like a cross child, though her years were very evidently more than those of her secretary. Julia Heath’s silky-smooth black hair lay in a definite line above her white forehead and gray-blue, black-lashed eyes; her clear, slightly dusky skin held the mere sugges-

Aree SOUTHIGATE 25 tion of a flush, as if she might recently have come in from a brisk walk. She was slim, not very tall, and dressed with a dark simplicity of finish, upon which her employer instantly commented, barely returning Miss Heath’s low ““Good-morning, Mrs. Braithwaite.”

“Do you ever have a hair out of place, my dearr”

Her secretary smiled. “TI try not to have. It would annoy you if I did, wouldn’t it?”

“You know you could be perfectly in order without that look of having been chiselled into shape—so you couldn’t get out of it, even in a high gale. I don’t mean to say I don’t envy you —I do.” The tone was fretful, like the face. “Well—” she sighed heavily—‘twe may as well get at business. I suppose you have everything in order. I never can remember when I wake up what I have on for the day.”

From the secretary’s notebook Mrs. Braithwaite was informed. She was due at a luncheon at a country house two miles away. There was an afternoon bridge club, at the home of a neighbour—the sort of neighbour whose great Georgian mansion, like Braithwaite Court itself, was never seen from the high road. That evening the Braithwaites were entertaining at dinner, a small affair—twelve. Next morning nine or ten house guests were to arrive for the week-end, and there would be gayer affairs on foot than dinners.

“There are several letters—personal.” Julia Heath laid them, unopened, on the bed cover, close to the languid, white hand resting there. “A number of invitations—I’ll take your replies, if you wish, and get them off. Then, if there’s anything else you want to dictate ”

“There is—but we’ll do everything else first. Read me the invitations. I hope there’s something worth having. I need to be amused, and everything’s dull as ditchwater. Well—go on.”

It took nearly an hour to get through the routine, interrupted as it was by Beatty’s capricious comments. Finally, the moment arrived when she could find nothing more to delay the promised note to Ann Paige. She punched a small lace-covered pillow into place under her neck, sighed again, complaining that it made her head ache to attend to all her own affairs and her husband’s too, and began to dictate:

“My dear Ann.” Then she paused, undecided. “Oh, well,” she said, “begin again. I suppose I must. Dearest Ann.”

The secretary paused, with held pencil: “Do you wish me to write this as if it were in your own hand?”

“Of course I do. She won’t know the differ-

Al THE SOUTH GATE 27 ence—she hasn’t seen my handwriting in years. Make it tall and slanting—you know how I write. And sign it yourself—my name, of course. I don’t want to see the thing again, once it’s off my mind.”

Miss Heath bent her head over ite paper. “Very well.”

“Dearest Ann, then—Oh, blazes!—Of course, that’s not in the note—I don’t know what to say.— Well—” she made a wry face—“I am so pleased that you will live in our old lodge—no, wait—I mean in our South gate house until you can make better plans.”

The note went on haltingly, but it was completed at last, and the dictator lay back with a sigh of relief. “Find out when they’re arriving —the people my husband has asked to live in the old lodge for the summer. And send this down by Lena.”

The secretary rose, notebook in hand, with the little packet of invitations, to which Mrs. Braithwaite had indicated the replies. “Ill go and attend to these at once,” she said, and stood for a minute looking down at the figure in the bed, as if there were something she wanted to say.

“Oh, you may go.” Beatty Braithwaite waved her hand with a gesture of dismissal. “I can’t stand seeing anybody who looks so like an un-

28 AT THE SOULE GA smutched lily as you do. I feel like a big red rose that somebody’s worn to a dance, beside you. I’m badly wilted, with the petals torn. How do you do it?”

“Plenty of sleep, long walks, and—no excitement, I suppose, Mrs. Braithwaite,” her secretary replied, with an amused smile.

“No excitement! How do you live without Ler

“I’m used to that.”

“Tf you stay here, you’ll have to have some. I shall wish you present when I have a crowd, and you'll have to fill in sometimes at dinner when a guest fails. I suppose you dance—all girls do— and have evening things.”

“T have a few simple things.”

“Very well. Now run along. I want to get the thought of business out of my head.”

Miss Heath withdrew. For the following hour she attended scrupulously to her duties. Then, the letters and notes dispatched, she addressed herself to something personally more interesting. In the next mail there went out a long letter to her brother, Dale Heath, in Montana.