Mildred Carver, U. S. A.

Chapter I

A I extremely pretty girl came through a long win dow onto the veranda of a house set high above Torexo Park. The house had been built long ago by her grandfather, William Carver, a con servative gentleman who felt that his wish to live where he could look across the green summits of the Catskills justified the spending of much money. Many new people had come to live in the valley but no one could forget that his house — vast, dominating, ugly — had been the first upon the mountain side. To Mildred Carver who stood looking down the mist lined valley, the roofs of these newer houses were as familiar as the dark woods that stood along the hills, or the roads shin ing white in the blurred moonlight, — as familiar even as the lad who followed her through the window and over to the edge of the veranda.

Mildred had seen Nicholas Van Arsdale every day during the summer that was just fading; every day of the summer before, and of the summer before that; and every summer as far back in her eighteen years as she could remember. The Van Arsdale cottage had been built just over the shoulder of the hill soon after the last inconsequent lightning rod was set on the tower of Wil liam Carver's mansion. Memories of Nick at every height from three feet to five feet nine; in every stage of growth from small boy stubbiness to slender, narrowfooted, brown youth; in every costume from kilts to the smartest of adult attire, were hung thick in Mildred's mental gallery.

Up to this year their friendship had been a happily commonplace affair, but now inexplicable things were continually happening between them. A year ago they would have spent the evening chattering with Ruthie and Junior or playing billiards or trying new dance steps with as many of the family as they could get to join them, instead of sitting together in the far corner of the room talking very young talk in tones pitched unconsciously below the ears of Mr. and Mrs. Carver — talk broken by disconcerting silences which neither of them knew how to fill. A year ago it wouldn't have occurred to Mildred suddenly that the big living room "glared" and that she must get out of it into something shadowy and dim, — it wouldn't have occurred to Nick that to follow her to the veranda edge was something overwhelmingly important and a very special privilege.

They stood together now — this boy and girl — above the pulsating valley. They were not thinking much, nor were they conscious of any particular feeling. The Katydids were calling back and forth below them ; a belated whip-poor-will had been wakened into complaint by the moonlight; way off somewhere a hunting owl cried lonesomely. There was menace in the mist creep ing up from the valley and Nick edged closer to Mildred — in spite of the great house full of servants she seemed suddenly to need protection. She leaned out into the moonlight and Nick felt a faint prickling of the spine. What had happened to make her so different? He knew her well, he had known her all his life — and yet she was utterly strange !

A harsh regular noise troubled Nick which, after such thought as he was capable of, he discovered to be the sound of his own breath rushing in and out. He was unable to think out this strange phenomenon because the fragrance floating up from a bed of late tuberoses troubled him. He could almost taste the perfume ! And then the iridescent mist billowing up and down in the moonlight made him feel dizzy. He wasn't conscious of wanting to say or do anything, of having any impulses or intentions, but he heard his voice, very hoarse and hard, saying:

"Mildred, are you cold ?"

As the girl turned her head to answer, the moonlight swept across her hair in tiny rainbows and before Nick knew what he was doing, his arms flung themselves around her and he kissed her on the lips.

"Nick!" she cried softly, "Nick — oh, Nick!" and struggled a little.

And then her arms, quite on their own initiative, lifted and went round his neck and she raised her lips again; and the little mist of pearl which had been slowly climb ing up through the valley drowning out the tree trunks till the leaves seemed floating in a silver sea, overflowed the veranda edge and blotted out the young lovers.

Chapter II

L\TE that night Mildred sat up in bed holding both hands close against her hot cheeks. She had set her trembling lips and kept her eyelids down while Henriette brushed out her long blond hair and braided it afresh; she had dipped in and out of her great white tub in a daze, and let the maid pull the light covers over her and switch off the light almost in silence. But when the door had shut softly, she sat up with a start, and now she held her flushed cheeks in her hot hands and looked into the dark with smiling lips and soft wide eyes that saw visions.

It hadn't felt the same — oh, not at all the same ! - as the time she had sprained her ankle and he had carried her up from the boat house. No, this was quite differ ent and much, much nicer. She had been too surprised and excited out there on the veranda to feel as happy as she really was. To marry Nick ! Well, why not ? Only she had never thought of it before. Her cheeks were cooling now and she clasped her hands over her knees. She could see the mist settling down into the valley again, shimmering like mother of pearl with the tree tops sticking through. Yes, of course she was going to marry Nick — it was the most natural thing in the world! A half submerged tree out there in the moon light looked like a giant horse struggling through a river — a warrior's horse carrying a knight of the Round Table. How she used to imagine herself a lady out of the Idylls of the King — Elaine usually, only it was always Sir Gareth she dreamed about, contrary to the precedent of the poem! It might be Sir Gareth on just such a charger as the tree seemed to be ! And then her power of picturing showed her Nick on Sheridan II; a slim, straight figure in London riding clothes and the trimmest of boots on a delicate footed bay with nothing nearer the caparisoning of the jousts than a light bridle and the merest suggestion of a saddle. Nick was a good rider but he was not in the least like Sir Gareth, and he preferred his motor to all the horses that ever galloped over a thousand hills. But of course she couldn't expect Sir Gareth — there weren't any men like that now. Yes, she and Nick would be married. She wondered idly whether they would live here or at the Van Arsdale house. Nick's mother was dead, so probably they would go there. It didn't seem to matter much.

The mist had sunk further into the valley, and the charger plunging through the silver stream turned out to be nothing but a quite ordinary oak tree that almost always had wormy acorns — they'd talked of cutting it down ! Everybody expected her to marry — usually girls married soon after they were presented to society - most of her cousins had. Only of course there was Lucile — she hadn't married. But then she had gone into the Red Cross during the war and been in France in a hospital. It was more interesting to hear her tell about it than anything — for all she had heard it so many times. Why even Aunt Millicent was proud of her — and usually Aunt Millicent wanted everybody to be ex actly like everybody else. And there was Agnes, — she had married a man that nobody knew. He taught some thing somewhere, and she had heard her aunts say that of course they must remember that Agnes' mouth wasn't good and she stooped — and involuntarily Mildred squared her shoulders.

She looked through the window again. The moon had set and a careless sort of a wind had driven all the silver mist out of the valley. But there was a dull glow over the hill ! It must be a fire ! She got out of bed and ran to the window. It was a fire, she could see the flames! It looked like the new house the Arnolds had built. And then came the clang and rush of the fire engines and at quick intervals the lights of motor cars which she knew were carrying the boys of the Universal Service up to help fight the fire. A motor started in the lower drive below the house and the light sped away through the trees. It sounded like Nick's little grey racer but of course it couldn't be.

Mildred's cheeks were quite cool now and her new emotion had run down like a clock. She went back to bed and pulled up the covers. Certainly there wasn't any reason why she should lie awake because she was going to marry Nick! And throwing her blond braid back on the pillow and tucking her hand under her cheek she went placidly to sleep.

Chapter III

NICHOLAS VAN ARSDALE, in a state of serene unconsciousness, had stepped from the Carver's veranda into the encircling mist and begun to feel his way down the path. To listen to his pounding heart beats absorbed all his conscious atten tion but he instinctively followed the descending road to the lower drive where he bumped into a standing automo bile. Walking around this in a beatific trance he felt his way onward still with the feel of Mildred's lips on his. What a wonderful thing to have happened! If anybody had told him even this morning that he was in love with Mildred he would have said — no, he was not — and here he had been all the time and no more knowing it than if there'd be rain next week !

So this was being in love ! Nick was eighteen, which seemed to him a great number of years in which never to have been in love before. Well, it was a great idea — being in love — he had that to say for it at the start. Of course, when he had thought of what it would be like, he had had a picture of a sort of Spanish girl with a lace thing on her head — singing or dancing or something like that. Great black eyes, you know, and short high-heeled slippers like the girls on the stage. But now it was Mildred! And he had been in love with her with out knowing it at all ! It wasn't a bit like what he'd expected, but they'd be married and do everything to gether just as they always had — only it would all be different, of course — being married. And he thought of his father and how he'd probably give her all the jew els his mother had had. Nick had sometimes imagined it would be fun to give these things to a little Cinderella sort of girl who had never had anything pretty — but of course Mildred was nicer than anybody else could be — only it had been pleasant to think of that little Spanish Cinderella ! Well, when they were married —

Nick interrupted himself by coming out on a knoll and noticing that the mist was driving out of the valley and that over toward the upper end of the Park a red glow was striking up into the sky. As he stopped to watch it, came the clang of the fire engines rushing up from the village below. Nick knew that the Universal Service boys stationed in Torexo must be tumbling into their clothes and getting their cars out to follow. They always got a chance to help in any sort of emergency duty, even if their regular work was keeping the roads in order and distributing the mail and dull things like that. But fires were rare in Torexo. He didn't want to miss this one even if he wasn't in the Service. He'd get his car, — and then he remembered that he'd gone to the Carver's house in his motor. Why, that must have been it he bumped into in the lower drive ! He stopped short in sudden realization of the fact that he hadn't known his own car when he saw it — hadn't remembered that there was such a thing in the world !

" Well I should say I am in love! " he cried aloud and turning ran back through the clearing air.

If Mildred and he could go together on this adventure ! He peered up at her windows but there was no stir. The whole house was dark. A flood of emotion engulfed him — Mildred ! He loved her and she loved him — it was the greatest thing in the world! Why, she was probably thinking about him at this very minute !

He sprang into the car and was about to start the en gine when he heard quick steps running down the road from the house. Could it by any possibility be Mildred ? He waited, his hand on the lever. They were strong footsteps beating a rapid tremolo on the hard road. Somebody was making good time. Nick's lamps threw a steady white river before him and the invisible runner blurred the foot beats together in a final burst of speed and plunged into the light. It was Wicks, one of the Carver's young footmen!

Nick straightened from the wheel in disappointment. He had been sure it must be Mildred because he wanted her to come.

" Oh, is it you, Mr. Nicholas, sir! " the man gasped. " I saw the headlight and I thought I might catch it, sir. If the fire's in the woods I might help. I did my service in the Forestry and learned about fire fighting out west. Are you going to it, sir? "

" Yes, jump in, Wicks."

They struck down into the valley. The mist was all gone now and they followed clear roads in the soft dark after moonset and rushed on toward the mounting flames.

" I didn't know you'd been in the Service, Wicks. What did you do?"

" It was two years ago, Mr. Nicholas. I didn't choose what I'd like to do so they put me in the Forestry. I cleared out the dead bushes and trees, sir, and the gang boss'd tell me how to girdle a tree that ought to come down, and we got more kinds of bugs and worms that eats trees than you'd know there was, and sent 'em to Washington. We done a lot of work trying to find out what was killing the chestnuts, and planting other kinds — specially from China — to see if they'd get the blight."

"Did they get it?"

" I don't know, sir, my year was up before they fo out. But when I'm off duty at the house I go into woods here and see if there's anything more I can out about them. I sent a new kind of fungus up to Department last week."

Nick's lips formed themselves into a silent whistli he forced his car up a steep grade.

' You seem to have liked the Service."

"You bet!"

Nick grinned. It tickled his taste to find that man whom he had thought merely a uniformed har of plates and opener of doors, was an indepem citizen collecting destructive fungi for the governm the possible discoverer of the cure for the chestnut bli which had so distressed his father and the other resid of Torexo Park.

"If you like it so much why did you come back be a footman? "

" Well, sir, it isn't that I want to. I'd have give ; thing to have gone into the Forestry regular. But mother, she's in New York and she couldn't make without me another year. You see I wouldn't be ting anything for my first year in the Forestry but keep and twenty a month. But some time I'm going 1 to it, you bet."

Nick shot the car furiously up under the roadtrees and they tumbled out and ran toward the bun house.

It was a modern house trying to look as though it \ old. Artificially and needlessly it straggled along ground pretending that it had been added to ell b) through the generations instead of having been buili at once by an expensive and fashionable architect.

trees overhung the low gables in an affectionate ancestral way carefully induced by a landscape gardener, and close back of it rose a great white pine. Wicks, dashing on ahead of Nick, groaned as he saw the sparks flying to ward this tree. They were both stopped by a lad in khaki uniform who ordered them back, but Wicks cried out:

" I'm Forestry Service — two years back — fought a lot of fires — better let me help."

The Service lad relaxed.

" Sure we need you ! There's the captain — report to him."

Nick tried to follow Wicks but the Service boy swung out before him.

" See here, young feller, you get back to the line — see!"

"Confound you — I'm going to help — let me by!"

'' You ever been in the Service ? "

" No, I haven't, but I can carry Mrs. Arnold's chairs and tables out of that house as well as the rest of you. You let me by ! "

The Service boy — Nick recognized him as a young westerner who assisted in the Torexo Post Office — kept crowding him back and the dispute threatened to become a personal conflict when Nick felt his arm caught and turning saw his father, who, having been roused from his reading, had come up the hill on foot.

" Hullo, son, how did you get here ? I thought you were dining with Mrs. Carver? "

At the memory, the boy caught his breath. Mildred had been sitting on the other side of the table and he had never dreamed of being in love with her! But he was able to answer his father steadily enough :

" I was there, sir, but I saw the fire and came in my car."

" Pretty good work these young men are doing. They're getting a lot of the furniture out but I don't think they can save the house. Pity if the fire gets those pines ! "

" O, Lord, I wish they'd let me help ! I could carry rugs as well as they can! What's the use of their keep ing me out because they're in the Service? It isn't fair! No, I'm not going to butt in " (this to the young west erner). ''Don't you dare wave your hand at me again, though! I'm as big as you are if you are nineteen and I won't stand it ! "

Mr. Van Arsdale laughed and caught him by the arm again.

" Here, you young hot head — your turn will come next year ! "

The crowd of neighbors swayed back and forth in the light of the burning house. Some of them tried to comfort Mrs. Arnold who sat on a little hillock crying and clutching her wide-eyed children; for even if you are rich enough to own an imitation ancestral home, and socially important enough to have it set in Torexo Park, you do have an occasional human feeling; and while your control over your tear ducts is probably greater than that of ordinary mortals, it is still not absolute. It was sur prising how many more people there were in Torexo than Nick knew — and yet his father entertained everybody at dinner at least once during the summer! He began to recognize faces here and there which he had only seen before under maids' caps or above servants' uniforms. His talk with Wicks had somewhat widened the popula tion of the place. It now included servants! The people were in all sorts of haphazard costumes, but blended into harmony by the setting and the light of the fire like the peasant chorus in an opera. Here and there some one would stand out from the chorus like a " prin cipal " and Nick noticed that it was just as likely to be somebody's chauffeur as " somebody " himself.

Nick ranged round the edges of the crowd trying again and again to break into the ranks of the fire fighters and being repulsed with increasing hauteur by the uniformed Service boys — lads whom he ordinarily disregarded because they were different from himself ; as he had dis regarded the boys who went to the public schools, instead of having tutors or going to Groton; boys who had bicy cles instead of automobiles; boys who worked in stores or offices instead of playing polo. Now these boys in the Service were disregarding him because they worked and he didn't!

Nick and his father stayed till the house had been mostly reduced to red coals. Mr. Van Arsdale would have been glad to go earlier but he stayed to restrain his son, whose ideas of authority as vested in any one but himself were purely rudimentary. When at last Nick was content to go, the older man sighed in relief. This only child of his was most particularly dear, but life for him had settled down into an easy routine which he re sented having disturbed — the routine of generations of rich scholars whose investments, providently made in the previous century, had gone on increasing automatically in value so that they could pursue learning entirely for its own sake.

" I guess I better take Wicks home too," Nick re marked absently as they reached his automobile.

"Who's Wicks?"

" He's the Carvers' footman. I brought him up with me."

"Well, can't he get back by himself? It's not far."

" But you see, sir, he's been in the Service — in the

Forestry — and he's been fighting the fire. They let him! "

Nick ran back for Wicks and his father sat in the motor wondering. Did a footman's having been in the Universal Service make him any less a footman? Put any more obligation on Nick to drive him back in his car ? Make it necessary for himself, Henry Van Arsdale, to wait when he was anxious to get to bed ?

" Wicks is going to stay," said Nick, reappearing. " He's out there where the wind's blowing too, watching to put out sparks. He says he wouldn't feel right to go when there's a chance of a forest fire getting started. He thinks it's up to him because he worked for the United States for a year."

And Mr. Van Arsdale wondered again at the attitude of the footman toward the country and of his son toward the footman.

Nick's little gray racer slid down into the dark of the valley, the headlight picking out one tree after another in autumn red or brown or deceptive spring-like green. The boy was still railing at not having been allowed to help at the fire and wholly occupied with his rebuff by the Service men. The connection between his mind and the event on the veranda seemed broken.

" Wait till next year, though — then I'll be in it my self — then they can't keep me out just because I'm not in uniform. Just wait till next year! "

But suddenly the boy jammed in the brake and brought the car to a stop with a jolt that nearly disemboweled it and almost threw his father out.

" Dad," he whispered, turning a white face to his father. " Dad, I can't go into the Service — I'd for gotten — Mildred and I are going to be married."

The elder man recovered himself a little testily. Vio lence did not appeal to him.

" What do you mean by nearly breaking my neck like this?"

" Mildred and I are going to be married ! "

" Well, what of it? Everybody always supposed you would be."

" But I can't go into the Service then."

The older man looked his son over speculatively.

" It looks to me as though you've forgotten that you've got to go into the Service whether you want to or not. They don't ask you whether you're going to be married, or vaccinated or graduated or anything else — they ask you if you're eighteen years old and if you are you have to go. In your normal frame of mind you know this as well as I do. Mildred has got to go into the Service too. And you ought to know, if you don't, that the law doesn't recognize any marriage between people who haven't served their year."

Nick drummed impatiently on the steering wheel.

" But I'm going to marry Mildred."

" I haven't the slightest objection to your marrying Mildred. She's a fine girl with a good little brain of her own, and she wouldn't be marrying you for the money. I imagine everybody would be pleased about it. But the Universal Service isn't a thing you can dodge, my son. Every excuse that can possibly be thought of has been tried already and unless you are physically disabled or mentally deficient — and I'm proud to say you're neither — you've the choice of going into the Service or going into jail, and incidentally losing your citizenship, and so has Mildred. Don't be a fool, Nick."

" But, dad — Mildred — I asked her to marry me this evening! "

' That's all right — the most natural thing in the world! But after all, Nick, though I believe in early marriages, eighteen is a bit too young even from my standpoint, and I think Frank and Mary Carver will agree with me. I'm glad Mildred is willing to marry you. It greatly diminishes the chance of your making a fool of yourself over some one you couldn't marry — but I'll not aid or abet any son of mine in being a slacker. If I remember the date, both you and my future daughter-in-law — bless the dear child ! — will be drafted in about six weeks."

Nick started his car again and drove home in absolute silence. His mind was oscillating between thoughts of Mildred — so wonderful as he found her under this new emotion — and thoughts of the Service which he had so passionately desired back there at the fire.

Chapter IV

MILDRED would have been glad to oversleep the next morning but that was not a thing countenanced by her mother. Mrs. Carver was busily engaged in training her daughter in the vir tues of princesses which seem to be much the same whether these fortunate young persons have titles and live in Europe or merely have breeding, birth and fortune and live in America. So in spite of her new conscious ness of importance as a girl who had given her promise of marriage and so settled her life in its preordained channel, Mildred came to the family table at the usual time, ate just as hearty a breakfast as usual, put just as much cream on her dish of late peaches and showed just as fundamental an objection to oatmeal as she usually did.

Mildred watched her mother, serene and trim as one who is about to attack competently the country routine of consulting her housekeeper, surveying her gardens and instructing her secretary. Mrs. Carver was physically no great contrast to her eldest daughter, a little darker, a little less tall and slender, just a trifle less differenti ated from the dead level of the race, as being one joint further back on the parent stem. Mildred wondered if her mother would be surprised to know she was going to marry Nick. What would her father think? He was a silent man, tall, blonde and, to the eye, English. A shade finer than his wife in the details of culture, but c 17 very like her in type. Mildred looked like both her par ents without any conflict of features.

Mr. Carver was just finishing his eggs in the imper turbability born of the conscious ability to follow the com mand of taking no thought of what he should eat or what he should put on when Wicks came in with the morning letters on a tray, a function which he performed in the country, Waddell the butler being left in charge of the New York house. There was a pile of letters for her mother, a few for her father, two for her mother's sec retary, Miss Price, a Wellesley girl, one for Junior's tutor, Mr. Harmine. After all these had been laid be side the plates, Wicks came back around the table, stopped for an appreciable moment behind her chair, and then with a hand that was not as steady as the hand of the per fect footman should be, put beside her a large square envelope, redirected from New York, and marked in the upper left-hand corner :