The circle banner. [volume] (Circle, Mont.) 1914-1939, 1915-04-16
CHAPTER II.

|
able one. That portion of the hous'
which rightly may be described a!
public" in order to distinguish i
from other parts where privacy wa!
enforced, was not unlike any of thu
richly furnished, old fashioned places
Il in. the lower part of the city, where
there are still traces left of the Knick
erbockers and their times. This was
not the home of men who had beer
merely rich; 1t was not wealth alone
that stood behind these stately invest
ments.
rooms which no one entered except by
the gracious will of the master. Here
James Brood had stored the quaint
priceless treasures of his own peculiar
fancy-exquisite, curious things from
the mystic East, things that are not
to be bought and sold but come only
to the hand of him who searches in
lands where peril is the price.
/ Worlds separated the upper and
lower regions of that fine old house /;
a single step took one from the sedate
Occident into the very heart of the
Orient; a narrow threshold was the
line between the rugged West and the
soft, languorous, seductive East. In
this part Of the house, James Brood,
when at home for one of his brief
stays, spent many of his hours in Sc
| clusion, shut off from the rest of the
establishment as completely as if he
were the inhabitant of another world.
Attended by his Hindu servant, a
silent man named Ranjab, and on &C.
casions by his secretary, he saw but
little of the remaining members of
his rather extensive household. For
several years he had been engaged in
the task of writing his memoirs-so
called-in so far as they related to his
experiences and researches of the past
twenty years.
Lydia Desmond, the nineteen-year-old
daughter Of his one-time companion
and friend, the late John Desmond,
whose death occurred when the girl
was barely ten years Of age.
Brood, on hearing of the mans
death, Immediately made inquiries con-
corning the condition in which he had
left his wife and child, with the result
that Mrs. Desmond was installed as
housekeeper in the New York house
and the daughter given every advan-
tage in the way of education. Des-
mond had left nothing in the shape of
riches except undiminished love for
his wife and diary kept during those
perilous days before he met and mar
ried her. This diary was being incor-
porated in the history Of James
Brood's adventures, by consent of the
widow, and was to speak for Brood
in words he could not with modesty
utter for himself. In these pages John
Desmond was to. tell his own story, in
his own way, for Brood's love for his
friend was broad enough even to ad
NIT of that. He was to share his life
in retrospect with Desmond and the
two old men as he had shared it with
them in reality.
Lydia's room, adjoining her moth
er's, was on the third floor at the foot
of the small stairway leading up to
the prescribed retreat at the top of |
the house. There was a small sitting |
room off the two bed chambers, given
over entirely to Mrs. Desmond and her |
daughter. In this little room, Frederic |
Brood spent many quiet, happy hour. |
The Desmonds, mother and daughter,
and pitied the lonely boy |
who came to the big house soon after
hey were themselves installed. His /
heart, which had many sores, expand
I'd and glowed in the warmth of their
kindness and affection; the plague of
that was his by absorb
ion gave way before this unexpected
sindness, not Immediately, it is true,
tut completely in the end.
By nature he was slow to respond
o the advances of others; his life had
,een such that avarice accounted for
Ii that he received from others in the
hape of respect aud consideration.
lie was prone to discount q friendly
ttitude for the simple reason that in
is experience all friendships we're
1arred by the fact that their sincerity ,
ested entirely upon the generosity of ,
he man who paid for them-his IA
her. No one had loved him for him
elf; no one had given him an unself- ,
III thought in all the years of his !
oyhood. :
At first he held himself aloof from 8
le Desmonds; he was slow to sur :
ender. He suspected them of the I
anne motives that had been the basis G
: all previous attachments. When at 2
st he realized that they were not 4
Ike the others, his cup OF Joy, long 7
l empty vessel, was filed to the brim I
Id his happiness was without bounds. +
hey were amazed by the transforma- h
on. The rather sullen, unapproach- 4
de lad became at once SO friendly, F
} dependent, that had they not been '
,quainted with the causes behind the
state of reticence, his very Joy ii
tight have made a nuisance OF him.
Q followed Mrs. Desmond about In n
~ much the same spirit that in n
ises hungry dog; he watched her L
til eager, half-famished eyes: he III
u ON her heels four-fiftha ~ tha :,