Joyce’s reappearance through the shrubbery, accompanied by her stepmother, interrupted Masterson’s daydreaming. The two offered a striking contrast. Mrs. Hudson was Latin in every feature and curve, in the glossy blackness of her shingled hair, the arch of her brows, the utter lack of self-consciousness in her posture and carriage. Joyce was perfect Saxon; slightly the taller. Leading the way, she seemed the older.
He strolled to meet them. Helen waved her hand, upon sight of him. She had adopted the role of being years his senior, much to his amusement. They had often made a little game of it—he, cast for the part of a spoiled nine-year-old, which he carried off with amazing skill; she, the exasperated but polite mother, endeavouring to keep her whelp in hand without making too much of a scene. They had done it, quite spontaneously, at the Byrnes, one evening. Laura Byrne, upon her own testimony, “had about passed out,” Senator Byrne had said the skit was worth a fortune in vaudeville “big time.” They had thought it not half bad, themselves.
The conventional uniform of the bereft had only accentuated her youth. It called attention to her girlish vitality, deepened her dimples, whitened her throat; as a severe frame on a bright etching will heighten its colours; emphasize its values.
She extended a small hand and smiled. Her recent experience had left traces. She was pale and a bit remote, her appearance suggesting convalescence from a serious illness.
The smile fluttered momentarily and was gone; but it was essentially the same smile that one waited for, plotted for, tried to recapture in memory, analyzed without success. Once Masterson had attempted to persuade one of his women in a story to smile like that; but she couldn’t learn it. He had written, of “Gloria”—
“It was more than a smile. It was a little sonata, in three movements. It arrived first in her eyes, which gradually grew wider and bluer. Almost imperceptibly, but very disturbingly, the patrician brows lifted, ever so little, as if they asked permission. That was the adagio movement.
“Then, suddenly, the sonata played upon her lips, as when an organist seeks with one hand a lower bank of keys for the melody. They parted to disclose the smallest, straightest, whitest of teeth. That was the scherzo movement.
“Instantly, however, as if the lips had become alarmed at their own audacity, they closed, demurely. But the smile lingered in her eyes—in the outer corners of her eyes—long after her pretty mouth had done with it; and that was the largo movement. Largo dolcemente.
“And the beholder? What of him? Ah—but his pulse ran on into throbbing, pounding strotto!”
Masterson knew the description was silly. He had added, rather helplessly:
“—a vastly disquieting smile; a smile to be smiled with discretion, preferably among strong-minded, elderly men—relatives, if at all convenient to have relatives at hand.”
Helen Hudson smiled. Today it was a sonatina. The movements were adagio, andante, lento; but it was no less stirring for its chastened mood.
“It seems a long time since we saw you, Tom,” she said, in her husky contralto, motioning him to a place beside her in the swing.
Joyce had remained standing.
“Tommy,” said she, “I had promised Ned Brownlow I would go for a ride with him. He’s out front now, waiting for me … Mind if I go?”
“Depart in Peace!” Masterson held up two fingers, pontifically. “I am in excellent hands.”
Joyce’s slim fingers trailed caressingly across her stepmother’s shoulders as she moved away. “I’ll not be long, dear,” she said.
“Have you been getting out, at all?” inquired Masterson, with comradely solicitude.
Helen shook her head.
“Too busy! Callers come here at all hours; people one can’t very well refuse to see; patients of Doctor Hudson’s and others he appears to have befriended in one way or another. I presume you recall the quite unusual number of floral remembrances …”
“I never saw so many!”
“Well, Tom, those flowers came at the direction of people from many places; from persons whose relation to us was very difficult to establish. Fully a score were unidentifiable by anyone at Brightwood. And these callers I am receiving daily are mostly unknown to us. They come to inquire if there is anything they can do for Joyce and me. Yesterday a queer old Italian turned up and tried to present me with a thousand dollars. That’s just a sample. Their stories are quite different, what there is of them—for they are strangely reticent—but one fact is common to all … sometime, somewhere, Doctor Hudson had helped them meet a crisis—usually involving money loaned; though not always money; sometimes just advice, and the aid of his influence.”
“He surely had a big heart!” said Masterson.
“Yes, certainly; but there’s more to it than that. Lots of men have big hearts, and are generous with their money. This is a different matter. His dealings with these people were something other. They all act as if they belonged with him to some eccentric secret society. They come
