“A year later war was declared. Patrick Ives enlisted at once, and was among the first to reach France. The whole village believed that if he came back alive he would marry Mimi. But they were counting without Mimi.
“War, gentlemen, changed more things than the map of Europe. It changed the entire social map in many an American community; it changed, drastically and surprisingly, the social map of the community of Rosemont in the county of Bellechester. For the first time since the country club was built and many of the residents of New York discovered that it was possible to live in the country and work in the city, the barrier between the villagers and the country club members was lowered, and over this lowered barrier stepped Mimi Dawson, straight into the charmed sewing circles, knitting circles, Red Cross circles, bandage-making circles that had sprung up overnight—straight, moreover, into the charmed circle of society, about whose edges she had wistfully hovered—and straight, moreover, into the life of Elliot Farwell.
“Elliot Farwell was the younger brother of Mrs. George Dallas, at whose house met the Red Cross Circle of which Mrs. Dallas was president. Many of the village girls were asked to join her class in bandage making—after all, we were fighting this war to make the world safe for democracy, so why not be democratic? A pair of hands from the village was just as good as a pair of hands from the club—possibly better. So little Mimi Dawson found herself sitting next to the great Miss Thorne, wrapping wisps of cotton about bits of wood and going home to the village with rapidly increasing regularity in Mr. Elliot Farwell’s new automobile, quite without the knowledge or sanction of Mr. Farwell’s sister, whose democracy might not have stood the strain.
“Elliot Farwell was one of the two or three young men left in Rosemont. His eyes made it impossible for him to get into any branch of the service, so he remained peaceably at home, attending to a somewhat perfunctory business in the city as a promoter. He would have had to be blind enough to require the services of a dog and a tin cup not to have noted Mimi Dawson’s beauty, however; as a matter of fact, he noted it so intently that three months after peace was declared and three weeks before Patrick Ives returned from the war, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Dawson announced the engagement of their daughter Madeleine to Mr. Elliot Farwell—and a startled world. Not the least startled member of this world, possibly, was Susan Thorne, to whom young Farwell had been moderately attentive for several years.
“Such was the state of affairs when the tide of exodus to Europe turned, and back on the very crest of the incoming waves rode Major Patrick Ives, booted, spurred, belted, and decorated—straight over the still-lowered barrier into the very heart of the country-club set. He was, not unnaturally, charmed with his surroundings, and apparently the fact that he found Mimi Dawson already installed there with a fiancé did not dampen his spirits in the slightest. From the day that he first went around the golf course with Susan Thorne, he was as invariably at her side as her shadow. Mr. Curtiss Thorne’s open and violent disapproval left them unchastened and inseparable. Apparently they found the world well lost, as did Farwell and his fiancée. And into the midst of this idyllic scene, a month or so later, wanders the last of our actors, Stephen Bellamy.
“Stephen Bellamy was older than these others—seven years older than Susan Thorne or Patrick Ives, twelve years older than the radiant Mimi. He was the best friend of Susan’s elder brother Douglas, and a junior partner of Curtiss Thorne. He had done well in the war, as he had in his business, and he was generally supposed to be the best masculine catch in Rosemont—intelligent, distinguished, and thoroughly substantial. It was everybody’s secret that Curtiss Thorne wanted him for his son-in-law, and he and Elliot Farwell were the nearest approaches to beaus that Susan Thorne had had before the war.
“Within a week of their respective returns, she had lost both of them. The sober, reserved, conservative Stephen Bellamy fell even more violently and abjectly a victim to Mimi Dawson’s charms than had Elliot Farwell. The fact that she was engaged to another man who had been at least a pleasant acquaintance of his did not seem to deter Mr. Bellamy for a second. At any rate, the brought three shocks to the conservative community of Rosemont that left it rocking for many moons to come. On Monday, after a violent and public quarrel with Farwell, Mimi Dawson broke her engagement to him; on Wednesday Sue Thorne eloped with Patrick Ives, and on Thursday Miss Dawson and Mr. Bellamy were married by the justice of the peace in this very courthouse.
“It is a long stride from that amazing week in June to another June, but I ask you to make it with me. In the seven years that have passed, the seeds that were sown in those far-off days—seeds of discord, of heartbreak, of envy and malice—have waxed and grown into a mighty vine, heavy with bitter fruit; and the day of harvest is at hand—and the hands of the harvesters shall be red. But on this peaceful sunny summer afternoon of the , those who are sitting in the vine’s shadow seem to find it a tranquil and a pleasant place.
“It is five o’clock at the Rosemont Country Club, and the people that I have brought before you in the brief time at my disposal are gathered on the lawn in front of the club; the golfers are just coming in; it
