“I don’t,” said Philip Lambert in much the same tone he had once said to Carlotta, “You can’t have this.”  “I am sorry, Mr. Cressy.  I don’t want to be rude, or unkind or obstinate; but there are some things no man can decide for me.  And there are some things I won’t do even to win Carlotta.”

Harrison Cressy’s head drooped for a moment.  He was beaten for once—­beaten by a lad of twenty-three whose will was quite as strong as his own.  The worst of it was he had never liked any young man in his life so well as he liked Philip Lambert at this minute, never so coveted any thing for his daughter Carlotta as he coveted her marriage with Philip Lambert.

“That is final, I suppose,” he asked after a moment, looking up at the young man.

“Absolutely, Mr. Cressy.  I am sorry.”

Harrison Cressy lumbered to his feet.

“I am sorry too,” he said, “damnably sorry for Carlotta and for myself.  Will you shake hands with me, Philip?  It is good to meet a man now and then.”

CHAPTER XXI

HARRISON CRESSY REVERTS

Left to himself, Harrison Cressy discovered to his annoyance that there was no train out of Dunbury for two hours.  That was the worst of these little one-horse towns.  You might as well be dead as alive in ’em.  By the time he had smoked his after-dinner cigar he felt as if he might as well be dead himself.  He felt suddenly heavy, old, almost decrepit, though that morning when he had left Boston he had considered himself in the prime of life and vigor.  Hang it!  He was sixty-nine.  A man was about done for at sixty-nine, all but ready to turn into his grave.  And he without son or grandson.  Lord!  What a swindle life was anyway!

Well, there was no use sitting still groaning.  He would get up and take a little walk until train time.  Maybe it was his liver that made him feel so confoundedly rotten and no count.  A little exercise would do him good.

Absentmindedly he noted, as he strolled down the elm-shaded streets, the neatness of the lawns, the gay flower beds, the hammocks and swings out under the trees as if people really lived out of doors here.  There were animate evidences of the fact everywhere.  Children played here and there in shady spaces under big trees.  Pretty girls on wide, hospitable-looking porches chatted and drank lemonade and knitted.  A lithe, red-haired lass in white played tennis on a smooth dirt court with a tall, clean looking youth.  As Mr. Cressy passed the girl cried out, “Love all” and the millionaire smiled.  It occurred to him it was not so hard to love all in a village like this.  It was only in cities that you hated your neighbor and did him first lest you be done yourself.

He hadn’t been loose in a country town like this for years.  He had almost forgotten what they were like when you didn’t shoot through them in a motor car, rushing always to get somewhere else.  His casual saunter down the quiet street was oddly soothing to his nerves, awoke happy, yet half-sad memories.