"Thank goodness she won't see this!" I volunteered to myself, as the tall gray figure came hastily down the line and caught up with me. "She has troubles enough of her own, and—and she won't stop to wonder over whether I went back to the city by trolley, motor, or chariot of fire!"
"You hadn't forgotten?" he inquired, coming up behind me with an expression of uneasiness as I passed the first two or three cars in the line.
"No—that is, I forgot for only a moment! I'm so used to going to town on this trolley-car."
"Then—ah, here we are—"
The limousine to which I was conducted was a gleaming dark-blue affair, with light tan upholstery, and the door-knobs, clock-case and mouth-piece of the speaking-tube were of tortoise-shell.
The chauffeur touched something and the big creature began a softened, throbbing breathing. Isn't it strange how we can not help regarding automobiles ascreatures? Sometimes we thinkof them as gliding swans—at other times as fiery-eyed dragons. It all depends upon whetherwe'rethe duster, or the dustee.
I gained the idea as I stepped into this present one—which of course belonged to the gliding swan variety—that its master must be rather ridiculously well-to-do—for a cave-man. His initials were on the panels, and the man at the wheel said, "Mr. Tait, sir," after a fashion that no American-trained servant, white, black, or almond-eyed, ever said. Evidently the car had come down from Pittsburgh and the chauffeur had made a longer journey. Together, however, they spelled perfection—and luxury. Still, strange to say, the notion of this man's possible wealth did not get on my throat and suffocate me, as the notion of Guilford's did. I felt that the man himself really cared very little about it all. The idea of his being a man who could do hard tasks patiently did not fade in the glamour of this damask and tortoise-shell.
"Which is—the longest way to town?" heasked in a perfectly grave, matter-of-fact way as we started.
"Down this lane to the Franklin Pike, then out past Fort Christian to Belcourt Boulevard—and on to High Street," I replied in a perfectly grave, matter-of-fact way, as if he were a tubercular patient, bound to spend a certain number of hours in aimless driving every day.
"Thank you," he answered very seriously, then turned to the chauffeur.
"Collins, can you follow this line? I think we drove out this way the day the car came?"
"Oh, yes, sir—thank you," the man declared, slipping his way in and out among the throngs of other vehicles.
Then as we whirled away down the pike I kept thinking of this man—this young Englishman, who had come to America and elevated himself into the position of vice-president and general-manager of the Consolidated Traction Company, but, absurdly enough, no thought of the limousine nor the traction company came into mymusings. I thought of him as a spirit—a spirit-man, who had lived in the woods. He had dwelt in a hut—or a cave—and toiled with his hands, hewing down trees, burning charcoal, eating brown bread at noon. Then, at dusk, he laid aside his tools, rumbling homeward in a great two-wheeled cart, whistling as he went, but softly—because he was deep in thought.
The sevenagesof man are really nothing to be compared in point of interest with the different conditions of mind which women demand of them.
Very young girls seek about—often in vain—for a man who can compel; then later, they demand one who can feel; afterward their own expansion clamors for one who can understand—but the final stage of all is reached when the feminine craving can not be satisfied save by the man who canachieve.
This, of course, indicates that the woman herself is experienced—sometimes even to the point of being a widow—but it is decidedly asatisfying state of mind when it is once reached, because it is permanent.
And your man of achievement is pretty apt to be an uncomplicated human. His deepest "problem" is how to make the voices of the nightingale and alarm clock harmonize. For he is a lover between suns—and alaborerduring them.
At Solinski's Japanese tea-room in Union Street, the limousine slowed up. The band was playingThe Rosaryas we went in, for it was the hour of the afternoon for the professional seers and seen of Oldburgh's medium world to drop in off the sidewalks for half an hour and dawdle over a tutti-frutti. The ultra-sentimental music always gets such people as these—and the high excruciating notes of this love-wail were ringing out with an intense poignancy.
"Each hour a pearl—each pearl a prayer—"
"Which table do you prefer?" my companion asked me, but for a moment I failed to answer. I was looking up at the clock, and I saw that the hands were pointing to six. I had met MaitlandTait at four!—Thus I had two pearls already on my string, I reckoned.
"Oh, which table—well, farther back, perhaps!"
I came down to earth after that, for getting acquainted with the caprices of a man's appetite is distinctly an earthly joy. Yet it certainly comes well within the joy class, for nothing else gives you the comfortable sense of possession that an intimate knowledge of his likes and dislikes bestows.
Just after the "each-hour-a-pearl" stage you begin to feel that you have arightto know whether he takes one lump or two! And the homely, every-day joys are decidedly the best. You don't tremble at the sounds of a man's rubber heels at the door, perhaps, after you're so well acquainted with him that you've set him a hasty supper on the kitchen table, or your fingers have toyed with his over the dear task of baiting a mouse-trap together—but he gets a dearness in this phase which a pedestal high as Eiffel Towercouldn't afford.—It is this dearness which makes you endure to see Prince Charming's coronet melted down into ducats to buy certified milk!
"And what are—those?" Maitland Tait asked, after the tea-service was before us, and I had poured his cup. He was looking about the place with a frank interest, and his gaze had lighted upon a group of marcelled, manicured manikins at a near-by table. They were chattering and laughing in an idly nervous fashion.
I dropped in two lumps of sugar and passed him his cup.
"They are wives," I answered.
"What?"
"Just wives."
Being English, it took him half a second to smile—but when he did I forgave him the delay.
"Justwives? Then that means not mothers, nor helpmeets, nor—"
"Nor housekeepers, nor suffragettes, nor saints, nor sinners, nor anything else that theLord intended, nor apprehended," I finished up with a fierce suddenness, for that was what Guilford wanted me to be. "They'rejustwives."
He stirred his tea thoughtfully.
"That's what I find all over America," he said, but not with the air of making a discovery. "Men must work, and women musteat."
"And the sooner it's over the sooner to—the opera," I said.
He looked at me in surprise.
"Then you recognize it?" he asked.
"Recognize it? Of courseIrecognize it—but I'm not a fair sample. I work for my living."
He was silent for a moment, looking at the manikins with a sort of half-hearted pity.
"If they could all be induced to work they'd not be what they are—to men," he observed.
"To men?"
"I find that an American wife is a tormenting side-issue to a man's busy life," he said, with a tinge of regret. "And I am sorry, too—for theyare most charming. For my part, I should like a woman who could do things—who was clever enough to be an inspiration."
I nodded heartily, forgetful of personalities.
"I too like the workers in the world," I coincided. "My ideal man is one whose name will be made into a verb."
He laughed.
"Like Marconi, eh, and Pasteur—and—"
"And Boycott, and Macadam, and—oh, a host of others!"
It was quite a full minute before he spoke again.
"I don't see how I could make my name into a verb," he said quietly, "but I must begin to think about it. It is certainly a valuable suggestion."
It was my turn to laugh, which I did, nervously.
"In Oldburgh, Tait seems to stand for the opposite of dictate," I hazarded. "That means totalk, and you won't—talk."
"But I am talking," he insisted. "I'm asking you questions as fast as ever I can."
"However, your technique is wrong," I replied. "You shouldn't ask questions of a newspaper woman. You should let her ask the questions, and you should furnish the answers."
"But you're not a newspaper woman now, are you?" he demanded in some alarm. "I hope not—and certainly I must ask you questions before I begin to tell you things. There are quite a few facts which I wish to find out now."
"And they are, first—?"
"Where you live?"
I told him, and he took from his pocket a small leather book with his name, Maitland Tait, and an address in smaller letters which I could not make out, on the inside lining. In a small, rather cramped hand, he wrote the address I gave him, "1919 West Clydemont Place," then looked up at me.
"Next?" I laughed, in a flutter.
"Next I want to know when you will let me come to see you?"
"When?" I repeated, rather blankly.
He drew slightly back.
"I should have said, of course,ifyou will let me come, but—"
"But I shall be very glad to have you come," I made haste to explain. "I—I was only thinking!"
I was thinking of my betrothed—for the first time that afternoon.
"The length of time I am to stay in the South is very uncertain," he went on to explain with a gentle dignity. "At first it appeared that I might have to make a long stay, but we are settling our affairs so satisfactorily that I may be able to get back to Pittsburgh at any time now. That's why I feel that I can't afford to lose a single day in doing the really important things."
"Then come," I said, with a friendly show, which was in truth a desperate spirit of abandon. "Come some day—"
"To-morrow?" he asked.
"To-morrow—at four."
But during the rest of the meal grandfather andUncle Lancelot came and took their places on either side of me. They were distinctly de trop, but I could not get rid of them.
"This is—really the wrong thing to do, Grace," grandfather said, so soberly that when I rose to go and looked in the mirror to see that my hat was all right, his own sad blue eyes were looking out at me in perplexed reproach. "—Very wrong."
Then the sad blue eyes took in the lower part of my face. I believe I've neglected to say that there is a dimple in my chin, and Uncle Lancelot's spirit is a cliff-dweller living there. He comes out and taunts the thoughtful eyes above.
"Nonsense, parson!" he expostulated jauntily now. "Look on the lips while they are red! She'syoung!"
"Youth doesn't excuse folly," said grandfather severely.
"It exudes it, however," the other argued.
I turned away, resolutely, from their bickering. I had enough to contend with besides them—forsuddenly I had begun wondering what on earth motherwouldsay, after she'd said: "Grace, you amaze me!"
The only difference between the houses in West Clydemont Place and museums was that there was no admission fee at the front door. Otherwise they were identical, for the "auld lang syne" flavor greeted you the moment you put foot into that corner of the town. You knew instinctively that every family there owned its own lawn-mower and received crested invitations in the morning mail.
Yet it was certainly not fashionable! Indeed, from a butler-and-porte-cochère standpoint it was shabby. The business of owning your own lawn-mower arises from a state of mind, rather than from a condition of finances, anyway. We were poor, but aloof—and strung high with the past-tension.The admiral, the ambassador and the artist rubbed our aristocracy in on any stray caller who lingered in the hall, if they had failed to be pricked by it on the point of grandfather's jeweled sword in the library.
I saw 1919 through a new vista as I came up to it in the late dusk, following the Flag Day reception, and I wondered what the effect of all this antiquity would be on the mind of a man who so clearly disregarded the grandfather clause in one's book of life. I hoped that he would be amused by it, as he had been by the long-tailed D. A. R. badge on my coat.
"You'd better have a little fire kindled up in the library, Grace," mother observed chillingly just after lunch that next afternoon. "It's true it's June, but—"
"But the dayisbleak and raw," I answered, with a sudden cordial sense of relief that she was on speaking terms with me again. "Certainly I'll tell Cicely to make a fire."
"The dampness of the day has nothing at allto do with it," she kept on with frozen evenness. "I suggested it because a fire is a safe place for a girl to look into while her profile is being studied."
"Mother!"
Her sense of outraged propriety suddenly slipped its leash.
"It keeps her eyes looking earnest, instead ofeager," she burst out. "And any girl who'd let a man—allow a man—to run away from a party whose very magnificence was induced on his account, and take her off to tea in a public place, and come to see her the very next afternoon—a stranger, and a foreigner at that—is—is playing with fire!"
"You mean she'd better be playing with fire while he's calling?" I asked quietly. "We must remember to have the old andirons polished, then."
She stopped in her task of dusting the parlor—whose recesses without the shining new player-piano suddenly looked as bare and empty as a shop-window just after the holidays.
"You wilfully ignore my warning," she declared. "If this man left that party yesterday and comes calling to-day, of course he's impressed! And if you let him, of courseyou'reimpressed. This much goes without saying; but I beg you to be careful, Grace! You happen to have those very serious,betrayingeyes, and I want you to guard them while he's here!"
"By keeping my hands busy, eh?" I laughed. "Well, I'll promise, mother, if that'll be any relief to you."
So the fire was kindled, as a preventative measure; and at four o'clock he came—not on the stroke, but ten minutes after. I was glad that he had patronized the street railway service for this call, and left the limousine in its own boudoir—you couldn't imagine anything so exquisite being kept in a lesser place—or I'm afraid that our little white-capped maid would have mistaken it for an ambulance and assured him that nobody was sick. Gleaming blue limousines were scarce in that section.
"Am I early?" he asked, after we had shaken hands and he had glanced toward the fire with a little surprised, gratified expression. "I wasted a quarter of an hour waiting for this car."
Now, a woman can always forgive a man for being late, if she knows he started on time, so with this reassurance I began to feel at home with him. I leaned over and stirred the fire hospitably—to keep my eyes from showing just how thoroughly at home I felt.
"No—you are not early. I was expecting you at four, and—and mother will be down presently."
He studied my profile.
"I was out at the golf club dance last night," he said, after a pause, with a certain abruptness which I had found characterized his more important parts of speech. I stood the tongs against the marble mantlepiece and drew back from the flame.
"Was it—enjoyable?" I asked politely.
"Extremely. Mrs. Walker was there, andshe had very kindly forgiven me for my defection of the afternoon. In fact, she was distinctly cordial. She talked to me a great deal of you and your mother."
My heart sank. It always does when I find that my women friends have been talking a great deal about me.
"Oh, did she?"
"She is very fond of you, it seems—and very puzzled by you."
"Puzzled because I work for theHerald?"
I spoke breathlessly, for I wondered if Mrs. Walker had told of the Guilford Blake puzzle, as well; but after one look into the candid half-amused eyes I knew that this information had been withheld.
"Well, yes. She touched upon that, among other things."
"But what things?" I asked impatiently. At the door I heard the maid with the tea tray. "I suppose, however, just the usual things that people tell about us. That we have been homelessand penniless—except for this old barn—since I was a baby, and that, one by one, the pomps of power have been stripped from us?"
He looked at me soberly for a moment.
"Yes, she told me all this," he said.
"And that our historic rosewood furniture was sold, years ago, to Mrs. Hartwell Gill, the grocer's wife who used the chair-legs as battering-rams?"
He smiled.
"Against Oldburgh's unwelcoming doors? Yes."
"And that—"
"That you belonged to the most aristocratic family in the whole state," he interrupted softly. "So aristocratic that even the possession of the rosewood furniture is an open sesame! And of course this state is noted for its blooded beings, even in my own country."
"Really?" I asked, with a little gratified surprise.
"Indeed, yes!" he replied earnestly. "AndMrs. Walker told me something that I had not in the least thought to surmise—that you are a descendant of the famous artist, Christie. I don't know why I happened not to think about it, for the name is one which an Englishman instantly connects with portrait galleries. He was very favorably known on our side."
"Yes. He had a very remarkable—a very pathetic history," I said.
Turning around, he glanced at a small portrait across the room.
"Is—is this James Christie?" he asked.
"Yes. There is a larger one in the hall."
He walked across the room and examined the portrait. After a perfunctory survey, which did not include any very close examination of the strong features—rugged and a little harsh, and by no means the glorious young face which had been a lodestar to Lady Frances Webb—he turned back to me. For a moment I fancied that he was going to say something bitter and impulsive—something that held a tinge of mass-hatredfor class, but his expression changed suddenly. I saw that his impulse had passed, and that what he would say next would be an afterthought.
"Do you care for him—for this sort of thing?" he asked, waving his hand carelessly toward the other portraits in the room and toward the sword, lying there in an absurd sort of harmlessness beneath its glass case. "I imagined that you didn't."
He spoke with a tinge of disappointment. Evidently he was sorry to find me so pedigreed a person.
"I do—and I don't," I answered, coming across the room to his side and drawing back a curtain to admit a better light. "I certainly care for—him."
"The artist?"
"Yes."
"But why?" he demanded, with a sudden twist of perversity to his big well-shaped mouth. "To me it seems such a waste of time—this sentimentfor romantic antiquity. But I am not an unprejudiced judge, I admit. I have spent all the days of my life hating aristocracy."
"Oh, my feeling for him is not caused by his aristocracy," I made haste to explain. "And indeed, the Christies were very commonplace people until he elevated them into the ranks of fame. He was not only an artist of note, but he was a very strong man. It is this part of his history that I revere, and when I was a very young girl I 'adopted' him—from all the rest of my ancestors—to be the one I'd care for and feel a pride in."
He smiled.
"Of course you don't understand," I attempted to explain with a little flurry. "Nomanwould ever think of adopting an ancestor, but—"
He interrupted me, his smile growing gentler.
"I think I understand," he said. "I did the selfsame thing, years ago when I was a boy. But my circumstances were rather different from yours. I selected my grandfather—my mother'sfather, because he was clean and fine and strong! He was—he was a collier in Wales."
"A collier?" I repeated, wondering for the moment over the unaccustomed word.
"A coal-miner," he explained briefly. "He was honest and kind-hearted—and I took him for my example. He left me no heirlooms that—"
I turned away, looking at the room's furnishings with a feeling of reckless contempt.
"Heirlooms are—are a nuisance to keep dusted!" I declared quickly.
"Yet you evidently like them," he said, as we took our places again before the fire, and the little maid, in her nervous haste, made an unnecessary number of trips in and out. The firelight was glowing ruddily over the silver things on the tea-table, and looking up, I caught his eyes resting upon the ring I wore—Guilford's scarab. "That ring is likely an heirloom?"
"Yes—the story goes that Mariette himself found it," I elucidated, slipping the priceless oldbit of stone off my hand and handing it to him to examine.
But as I talked my head was buzzing, for grandfather was at one ear and Uncle Lancelot was at the other.
"Grace, you ought to tell him!" grandfather commanded sharply. "Tell him this minute! Say to him: 'This ring is an heirloom in the family of my betrothed.'"
"Rot, parson!" came in Uncle Lancelot's dear comforting tones. "Shall a young woman take it for granted that every man who admires the color of her eyes is interested in her entire history?—Why, it would be absolutely indelicate of Grace to tell this man that she's engaged. It's simply none of his business."
"You'll see! You'll see!" grandfather warned—and my heart sank, for when a member of your family warns you that you'll see, the sad part of it is that youwillsee.
"It's a royal scarab, isn't it?" Maitland Taitasked, turning the ancient beetle over and viewing the inscription on the flat side.
"Yes—perhaps—oh, I don't know, I'm sure," I answered in a bewildered fashion. Then suddenly I demanded: "But what else did Mrs. Walker tell you? Surely she didn't leave off with the mention of one illustrious member of my family."
"She told me about your great-aunt—the queer old lady who left James Christie's relics to you because you were the only member of the family who didn't keep a black bonnet in readiness for her funeral," he laughed, as he handed me back the ring.
"They were just a batch of letters," I corrected, "not any other relics."
"Yes—the letters written by Lady Frances Webb," he said.
It was my turn to laugh.
"I knew that Mrs. Walker must have been talkative," I declared. "She didn't tell you thelatest touch of romance in connection with those letters, did she?"
He was looking into the fire, with an expression of deep thoughtfulness; and I studied his profile for a moment.
"Late romance?" he asked in a puzzled fashion, as he turned to me.
"A publishing company has made me an offer to publish those letters! To make them into a stunning 'best-seller,' with a miniature portrait of Lady Frances Webb, as frontispiece, I dare say, and the oftenest-divorced illustrator in America to furnish pictures of Colmere Abbey, with the lovers mooning 'by Norman stone!'"
He was silent for a little while.
"No, she didn't tell me this," he finally answered.
"Then it is because she doesn't know it!" I explained. "You see, mother is still too grieved to mention the matter to any one by telephone—and it happens that she hasn't met Mrs. Walker face to face since the offer was made."
"And—rejected?" he asked, with a little smile.
"Yes, but how did you know?"
The smile sobered.
"There are some things oneknows," he answered. "Yet, after all, what are you going to do with the letters? If you don't publish them now how are you going to be sure that some other—some future possessor will not?"
"I can't be sure—that's the reason I'm not going to run any risks," I told him. "I'm going to burn them."
He started.
"But that would be rather a pity, wouldn't it?" he asked. "She was such a noted writer that I imagine her letters are full of literary value."
"It would be a cold-blooded thing formeto do," I said thoughtfully. "I've an idea that some day I'll take them back to England and—and burn them there."
"A sort of feeling that they'd enjoy being buried on their native soil?" he asked.
"I'll take them to Colmere Abbey—her oldhome," I explained. "To me the place has always been a house of dreams! She describes portions of the gardens in her letters—tells him of new flower-beds made, of new walls built—of the sun-dial. I have always wanted to go there, and some day I shall bundle all these letters up and pack them in the bottom of a steamer trunk—to have a big bonfire with them on the very same hearth where she burned his."
Again there was a silence, but it was not the kind of silence that gives consent. On the other hand his look of severity was positively discouraging.
"If I may inquire, what do you know about this place—this Colmere Abbey?" he finally asked. "I mean, do you know anything of it in this century—whether it's still standing or not—or anything at all save what your imagination pictures?"
It was a rather lawyer-like query, and I shook my head, feeling somewhat nonplused.
"No—nothing!"
"Then, if you should go to England, how would you set about finding out?"
"Oh, that wouldn't be so bad. In fact, I believeit would be a unique experience to go journeying to a spot with nothing more recent than a Washington Irving sketch as guide-book."
He looked at me half pityingly.
"You might be disappointed," he said gently. "For my part, I have never taken up a moment's time mooning about people's ancestral estates—I've had too much real work to do—but I happen to know that residents often fight shy of tourists."
I had a feeling of ruffled dignity.
"Of course—tourists!" I answered, bridling a little.
"Because," he hastened to explain, "the owners of the places can so often afford to live at home only a short season every year. Many of them are poor, and the places they own are mortgaged to the turrets."
"And the shut-up dilapidation would not make pleasant sight-seeing for rich Americans?"
He nodded.
"I happen to have heard some such report about this Colmere Abbey—years ago," he said.
"Are you sure it was the same place?" I asked, my heart suddenly bounding. "Colmere, in Lancashire?"
"Quite sure! I was brought up in Nottingham, and have heard of the estate, but have never seen it."
"Then it's still there—my house of dreams?"
For a moment I waited, palpitatingly, for him to say more, but he only looked at me musingly, then back into the fire. After a second he leaned forward, shaking his unruly hair back, as if he were trying to rid himself from a haunting thought.
"I—I can't talk about 'landed gentry,'" he said, turning to me with a quick fierceness. "I grow violent when I do! You've no idea how hateful the whole set is to a man who has had to make his own way in the world—against them!" Then, after this burst of resentment, his mood seemed to change. "But we must talk about England," he added, with a hasty gentleness. "There are so many delightful things we can discuss!Tell me, have you been there? Do you like it?"
I nodded an energetic affirmative.
"I have been there and—I love it! But it was a long while ago, and I wasn't old enough to understand about the things which would interest me most now."
"A long while ago?"
"Yes—let me see—ten years, I believe! At all events it was the summer after we sold the rosewood furniture—and the piano. Mother was so amazed at herself for having the nerve to part with the grand piano that she had to take a sea-voyage to recover herself."
"But what a happy idea!" he commented seriously, as he looked around. "A grand piano would really be a nuisance in this cozy room."
For a long time afterward I wondered whether my very deepest feeling of admiration for him had been born at the moment I looked at him first, or when he made this remark. But I've found it's as hard to ascertain Love's birthdayas it is to settle the natal hour of a medieval author.
"How long have you been in America?" I next asked, abruptly; and he looked relieved.
"Ten years—off and on," he answered briskly. "Most of the time in Pittsburgh, for my grandfather had chosen that place for me. He would not have consented to my going back to England often, if he had lived, but I have been back a number of times, for I love journeying over the face of the earth—and, strange as it may seem, I love England. Some day—when things—when my affairs—are in different shape over there I shall go back to stay."
The tea things were finally arranged by Cicely's nervous dusky hands, and with a cordial showing of the letter-but-not-spirit-hospitality, mother appeared, in the wake of the steaming kettle.
Her expression said more plainly than words that she would do the decent thing or die.
"I was—" she began freezingly, as we both arose to greet her, "I was—"
She took in at a glance Maitland Tait's gigantic size, and shrank back—a little frightened. Then his good clothes reassured her. A giant who patronizes a good New York tailor is acutabove an ordinary giant, she evidently admitted.
"—detained," she added, with the air of making a concession. She accepted the chair he drew up for her, and his down-to-the-belt grace began making itself conspicuous. She looked him over, and her jaundiced eye lost something of its color.
"—unavoidably," she plead, with a regretful prettiness.
Then she made the tea, and when she saw how caressingly the big man's smooth brown hands managed his cup, the remaining thin layer of ice over her cordiality melted, and she became the usual charming mother of a marriageable daughter. While she was at all times absolutely loyal to Guilford, still she knew that a mother's appearance is a daughter's asset, and she had always laid up treasures for me in this manner.
"You were at Mrs. Walker's Flag Day receptionyesterday Grace tells me?" she inquired as casually as if a bloody battle of words had not been waging over the occurrence all morning. "And Mrs. Kendall was talking with me this morning on the telephone about her dance Friday night—"
She paused, looking at him interrogatively, because that had been Mrs. Kendall's own emotion when mentioning the matter.
Mr. Tait glanced toward me.
"Ah, yes—I had forgotten! You will be there?"
"Yes," I answered hastily, and mother came near scalding the kitten on the rug in the excess of her surprise. All morning, through the smoke of battle, I had sent vehement protestations against having my white tissue redraped for the occasion, declaring that nothing could induce me to go.
"I find that one usually goes to no less than three social affairs on a trip like this—and I—well, I'm afraid I'm rather an unsocial brute! Iselect the biggest things to go to, for one has to talk less, and there is a better chance of getting away early," he explained.
Mother left the room soon after this—the sudden change of decision about the dance had been too much for her. Even perfect clothes and well-bred hands and a graceful waist-line could not make her forgive this in me. She made a hasty excuse and left.
Then our two chairs shifted themselves back into their former positions before the fire and we talked on in the gloaming. Somehow, since that outburst of anger against the present-day owners of Colmere Abbey, the vision of the big man—the cave-man—in the coat of goatskins, with the bare knees and moccasins, had come back insistently.
Yet it was just a vision, and after a few minutes it vanished—after the manner of visions since the world began. He looked out the window at the creeping darkness and rose to go.
"Then I'm to see you Friday night?" he asked at parting.
"Yes."
"I'm—I'm glad."
There had been a green and gold sunset behind the trees in the park across the way, and after a moment more he was lost in this weird radiance; then he suddenly came to view again, in the glow of electric light at the corner.
A car to the city swung round the curve just then, and a dark figure, immensely tall in the shadows, stepped from the pavement. I heard the conductor ring up a fare—a harsh metallic note that indicatedfinalityto me—then silence.
"He's gone—gone—gone!" something sad and lonesome was saying in my heart. "What if he should be suddenly called back to Pittsburgh and I shouldn't see him again?"
To see the very last of him I had dropped down beside the front door, with my face pressed against the lace-veiled glass, and so intent was I upon my task that I had entirely failed to hear mother's agitated step in the hall above.
I was brought to, however, when I heard theclick of the electric switch upon the stair. The lower hall was suddenly flooded with light. I scrambled to my feet as quickly as I could. Mother's face, peering at me from the landing, was already pronouncing sentence.
"Grace, I was just coming down to tell you that—well, I am compelled to say that youamazeme!" she emitted first, with a tone of utter hopelessness struggling through her newly-fired anger. "Down on your knees in your new gown—and gowns as scarce as angels' visits, too!"
"Ah—but—I'm sorry—"
"What on earth are you doing there?" she kept on.
I turned to her, blinking in the dazzling light.
"I was—let me see?—oh,yes!" A brilliant thought had just come to me. "—I was looking for thekey!"
Now, I happen to hate a liar worse than anything else on earth, and I hated myself fervently as I told this one.
"The key?" she asked suspiciously.
"It—it had fallen on the floor," I kept on, for of course whatever you do you must do with all your might, as we learn in copy-book days.
"And it never occurred to you to turn on the light?" she demanded, coming up and looking at me as if to see the extent of disfigurement this new malady had wrought. "Down on your knees searching for a key—and it never occurred to you to turn on the light?"
"No," I answered, thankful to be able to tell the truth again. "No, it never once occurred to me!"
Have you ever thought that the reason we can so fully sympathize with certain great people of history, and not with others, is because we are occasionally granted a glimpse of the emotion our favorites enjoyed—or endured?
For instance, no man who has ever knocked the "t" out of "can't" stands beside Napoleon's tomb without a sensation which takes the form of: "Weunderstand each other—don't we, old top?"
And every year at spring-time, Romeo is patted on the back condescendingly by thousands of youths—so susceptible that they'd fall in love with anything whose skirt and waist met in the back.
The night of the Kendalls' danceIknew what Cleopatra's cosmic consciousness resembled—exactly. I knew it from the moment she glanced away from the glint of her silver oars of the wonderful Nile barge (because the glint of Antony's dark eyes was so much more compelling) to the hour she recklessly unwrapped the basket of figs in her death chamber! I ran the whole gamut of her emotions—'twixt love and duty—and I came out of it feeling that—well, certainly I felt that a conservatory is a room where eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves!
"Is everybody crazy to-night?" I whispered to Guilford, as we paused for a moment before the dancing commenced just outside one of the downy, silky reception rooms—quite apart from the noisy ballroom farther back—and I saw two people inside. The girl was seated before the piano, and was singing softly, while the man stood at her side, listening with a rapt expression.
"Who would ever have thought thatthatgirl would be singingthatsong tothatman?" I asked,with a quivery little feeling that the world was going topsyturvy with other people besides me. The singer was the careless, rowdy golf champion of the state, and the man listening was Oldburgh's astonishing young surgeon—the kind who never went anywhere because it was said he laid aside his scalpel only when he was obliged to pick up his fork.
"What is the song?" Guilford inquired, looking in, then drawing back softly and dropping the curtain that screened the doorway.
"Caro Mio Ben!"
"A love song?"
I smiled.
"Well, rather!"
Then somebody crowded up and separated Guilford and me. I stood there listening to the lovely Italian words, and wondering if the night were in truth bewitched. Guilford, under the impulse induced by a white tissue gown and big red roses, had suffered an unusual heart-action already and had spent half an hour whisperingthings in my ear which made me feel embarrassed and ashamed. The only thing which can possibly make a lifelong engagement endurable is the brotherly attitude assumed by the lover in his late teens.
"Come in," he said, elbowing his way back to me through the chattering throng of the autumn's débutantes, after a few minutes. "I hear the violins beginning to groan—and say—haven'tthey got everybody worth having here to-night?"
"I don't—know," I replied vaguely, looking up and down the length of the room that we were entering.
"But—there's Mrs. Walker, and there are the Chester girls, and Dan Hunter, just back from Africa—and—"
"Certainly they've got a fine selection of Oldburgh's solid, rolled-gold ornaments," I commented dryly, as my eyes searched the other side of the room.
"Oh, besides local talent in plenty to create some excitement, there's an assortment of importedartists," he went on. "That French fellow, d'Osmond, has been teaching some of the kids a new figure and they're going to try it to-night. Have you met him?"
"Yes, indeed—oh, no, of course I haven't met him, Guilford!" I answered impatiently. "How could I meet a stray French nobleman? The society editor ishisBoswell."
He turned away, hurt at my show of irritation, but I didn't care. I was in that reckless mood that comes during a great fire, or a storm at sea, or any other catastrophe when the trivialities of living fade into pygmy proportions before the vast desire for mere life.
"And there's that Consolidated Traction Company fellow," he said humbly, calling my attention to a bunch of new arrivals at the doors of the ballroom. "What's his name?"
"Maitland Tait."
"Have you met him?" he inquired.
Now usually Guilford is not humble, nor even very forgiving, so that when he turned to meagain and showed that he was determined to be entertaining, I glanced at a mirror we happened to be passing. How easy it would be to keep men right where we wanted them if life could be carried on under frosted lights, in white tissue gowns, holding big red roses!
"Yes, I've met him," I answered giddily. "He was at Mrs. Walker's Flag Day reception Tuesday—and he brought me to town in his car, then came calling Wednesday afternoon, and—"
Guilford had stopped still and was looking at me as if anxious to know when I'd felt the first symptoms.
"Oh, it's true," I laughed desperately.
"Then why——"
"Didn't I tell you?"
"Yes—that is, you might have mentioned it. Of course, it really makes no difference—" He smiled, dismissing it as a triviality.
Gentle reader, I don't know whether your sympathies have secretly been with Guilford all the time or not—but I know that mine were distinctlywith him at that moment. If there is ever a season when a woman's system is predisposed toward the malady known as sex love, it is when some man is magnanimous about another man. And Guilford's manner at that instant was magnanimous—and I already had fifty-seven other varieties of affection for him! I decided then, in the twinkling of my fan chain, which I was agitating rather mercilessly, that if Guilford were the kind of a man Icouldlove, he'd be the very man I should adore.
—But he wasn't. And the kind I could love was disentangling himself from the group around the door and coming toward me at that very moment.
"Have you met him?" I asked of my companion, trying to pretend that the noise was my fan chain and not my heart.
"No."
In another instant they were shaking hands cordially.
"You'll excuse me a moment?" Guilford asked,turning to me—after he and Maitland Tait had propounded and answered perfunctory questions about Oldburgh. "I wanted to speak to—Delia Ramage."
I had never before in my life heard of his wishing to speak to Delia Ramage, but she was the nearest one to him, so he veered across to her side, while I was left alone with the new arrival. This is called heaping coals of fire.
"I was glad to see you—a moment ago," Maitland Tait said in that low intimate tone which is usually begotten only by daily or hourly thought. Take two people who have not seen each other for a week, nor thought of each other, and when they meet they will shrill out spontaneous, falsetto tones—but not so with two people whose spirits have communed five minutes before. They lower their voices when they come face to face, for they realize that they are before the sanctum. "You're looking most—unusually well."
He was not, but I refrained from telling himso. Most thoughtful men assume a look of constraint when they are forced to mingle with a shallow-pated, boisterous throng, and he was strictly of this type—I observed it with a thrill of triumph.
Yet the festive appearance of evening dress was not unbecoming to him. His was that kind of magnificent plainness which showed to advantage in gala attire, and I knew that even if I could get him off to live the life of a cave-man, occasionally a processional of the tribe would cause him to thrust brilliant feathers into his goatskin cap and bind his sandals with gleaming new thongs. But then the martial excitement of a processional would cause his eyes to light up with a brilliancy to match the feathers in his cap, and a dance could not do this.
"Of course you're engaged for the first dance?" he asked, as the music began and a general commotion ensued. "I knew that I'd have to miss that—when I was late. But"—he came a step closer and spoke as if acting under somehasty impulse—"I want to tell you how very lovely I think you are to-night! I hope you do not mind my saying this? I didn't know it before—I thought it was due to other influences—but you are beautiful."
It was at this moment that the silver oars of the Nile barge were dimmed under the greater resplendence of dark eyes—and the purple silk sails closed out the sky, but closed in heaven. Cleopatra and I might have cut our teeth on the same coral ring, for all the inferiorityIfelt to her in that instant.
"I—I'm afraid—" I began palpitatingly, for you must know that palpitations are part of the Egyptian rôle—the sense of danger and wrong were what raised—or lowered—the flitting space of time out of the ordinary lover thrills. "I am afraid——"
"But you must not say that!" he commanded, his deep voice muffled. "This is just the beginning of what I wish to say to you."
I wrenched my eyes away from his—thenlooked quickly for Guilford. Grandfather Moore's warnings in my ear were choking the violin music into demoniac howls. I don't believe that any woman ever really enjoys having two men love her at the same time—and this is not contradicting what I've said in the above paragraph about Cleopatra. I never once said that I hadenjoyedfeeling like her—you simply took it for granted that I had!
"Aren't you going to dance—with some one?" I asked, turning back quickly, as Guilford's arm slipped about me and we started away into a heartless, senseless motion. Maitland Tait stood looking at me for an instant without answering, then swept his eyes down the room to where Mrs. Charles Sefton—a sister-in-law of the house of Kendall—and her daughter Anabel were standing. Mrs. Sefton was a pillar of society, and, if onemustuse architectural similes, Anabel was a block. They caught him and made a sandwich of him on the spot. I whirled away with Guilford.
At the end of the dance I found myself at the far end of the ballroom, close to a door that opened into a small conservatory. The dim green within looked so calm and uncomplicated beside the glare of light which surrounded me that I turned toward it—thirstily.
"I'm going in here to rest a minute, Guilford," I explained, setting him free with a little push toward a group of girls he knew. "You run along and dance with some of them. Men aren't any too plentiful to-night."
"No-o—I'll go with you," he objected lazily, slipping his cigarette case from his pocket. "You're too darned pretty to-night to stay long in a conservatory alone."
"But I'll not be alone," I replied, with a return of that frightful recklessness which tempted me to throw myself on his mercy and say: "I'm in love with this Englishman—madly in love! I have never been in love before—and I hope I shall never be again if it always feels like this!" Instead of saying this, however, I said, with asmile: "Don't think for a moment that I shall be alone. Grandfather and Uncle Lancelot will be with me."
He looked disgusted.
"What's going on in your conscience now?" he asked, with slightly primped lips.
"Something—that I'll tell you about later."
"But has it got to be threshed out to-night?" he demanded irritably. "I had hoped that we might spend this one evening acting like human beings."
"Still, it seems that we can't," I answered, with a foolish attempt to sound inconsequential. "Please let me sit down in here by myself for a little while, Guilford."
He turned on his heel, with an unflattering abruptness, and left me. I entered the damp, earthy-smelling room, where wicker tables held giant ferns, and a fountain drizzling sleepily in the center of the apartment, broke off the view of a green cane bench just beyond; I made for this settee and sank down dejectedly.
How long I sat there I could not tell—one never can, if you've noticed—but after a little while I heard the next dance start, and then three people, still in the position of a sandwich, entered.
"How warm it is to-night!" I heard Maitland Tait's voice suddenly proclaim, in a fretful tone, as if the women with him were responsible for the disagreeable fact. But he drew up a chair, rather meekly, and subsided into it. "This is the first really warm night we've had this summer."
"It seems like the irony of fate, doesn't it?" Anabel Sefton asked with a nervous little giggle. There are some girls who can never talk to a man five minutes without bringing fate's name into the conversation.
"We had almost no dances during April and May, when one really needed violence of some sort to keep warm," her mother hastened to explain. "And now, at this last dance of the season, it is actually hot."
"The last big dance, mother."
"Of course!" Mrs. Sefton leaned toward the other two chairs confidentially. "A crush like this is too big," she declared.
"Oh, but I like the big affairs," Anabel pouted. "You never know then who you're going to run across! Just think of the unfamiliar faces here to-night! I happened up on Gayle Cargill and Doctor Macdonald down in the drawing-room a while ago—where they'd hidden to sing Italian, sotto voce!"
"Then Dan Hunter is here—for a wonder," her mother agreed, as if a recital of Oldburgh's submerged tenth were quite the most interesting thing she could think up for a foreigner's delectation, "and Grace Christie! Have you met Miss Christie, Mr. Tait?"
"Yes," he replied.
"She's gone in for newspaper work," Anabel elucidated.
"Just a pose," her mother hastily added. "She really belongs to one of our best families, and is engaged to Guilford Blake."
"But she won't marry him," Anabel said virtuously. "I'm sureIcan't understand such a nature. They've been engaged all their lives and——"
"She doesn't deserve anything better than to lose him," her mother broke in. "If he should chance to look in some other direction for a while she'd change her tactics, no doubt."
"Oh—no doubt," echoed a deep male voice, the tones as cool as the water-drops plashing into the fountain beside him.
"Anyway, it's her kind—those women who would be sirens if the mythological age hadn't passed—who cause so much trouble in the world," Mrs. Sefton wound up. At fifty-two women can look upon sirens dispassionately.
After a while the music began throbbing again, and a college boy came up to claim Anabel. The trio melted quietly away. I rose from my chair and started toward the door when I saw that Maitland Tait had not left with the others. He was standing motionless beside the fountain.
I came up with him and he did not start. Evidently he had known all the while that I was in the room.
"Well?" he said, with a certain aloofness that strangely enough gave him the appearance of intense aristocracy. "Well?"
"Well—" I echoed, feebly, but before I could go away farther he had drawn himself up sharply.
"I was coming to look for you—to say good-by," he said.
"Good-by?" I repeated blankly. "You mean good night, don't you?"
"No."
Our eyes met squarely then, and mine dropped. They had hit against steel.
"And this is—good-by?" I plead, while I felt that wild wind and waves were beating against my body and that the skies were falling.
"Of course!" he answered harshly. "What else could it be?"
I think that we must have stood there in silence for a minute or more, then, without speakinganother word, or even looking at me squarely in the face again, he moved deliberately away and I lost all trace of him in the crowd.
The next afternoon the city editor again said "Damn" and blushed.
"You needn't blush," I said to him wearily.
He glanced around in surprise.
"No?"
"No! I quite agree with you!"
It was late in the afternoon, but I made no apology for my tardiness, as I hung my hat on its nail and started toward my desk.
"Oh, you feel like saying it yourself, eh?" he questioned.
"I do."
He turned then and looked at me squarely. It was very seldom that he did such a thing, and assome time had elapsed since his last look he was likely able to detect a subtle change in my face.
"What's wrong with you?" he asked gruffly. "If you hadmyjob, now, there'd be something to worry over! What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
He turned away, precipitately.
"Gee! Let me get out of here! That's what women always say when they're getting ready to cry."
"But I'm not going to cry!" I assured him, as he dashed through the doorway and I turned with some relief to my desk, for talking was somewhat of an effort.
I raised the top, whistling softly—one can nearlyalwaysmanage a little sizzling whistle—then shrank back in terror from what I saw there.—Such chaos as must have been scattered about before sunrise on the morning of the First Day! Was it possible that I had been excited yesterday to the point of leaving the mucilage bottle unstopped?
I set to work, however, with a little sickening sense of shame, to making right the ravages that had taken place.
"A woman may fashion her balloon of anticipation out of silver tissue—but her parachute isalwaysmade of sack-cloth!" I groaned.
My desk was really in the wildest disorder. The tin top of the mucilage bottle had disappeared, the bottle had been overturned, its contents had been lavished upon the devoted head of a militant suffragette, and she was pinioned tightly to my blotting-pad.
"The elevator to Success is not running—take the stairs," grinned a framed motto above the desk.
"You take a—back seat!" I said, jumping up and turning the thing to the wall. "What do I care about success, if it's the sort of thing connected with typewriters, offices, copy paper and a pot of paste? I'm—I'mdes-qua-mat-ing!"
Never before in my experience had the life ofjournalistic devotion looked quite so black as the ink that accompanies it.
"Mottoes about success ought to belong to men, anyhow!" I said again, looking up furiously at the drab back of the frame. "I'm not a man, nor cut out for man's work. I'm just a woman, and my head aches!"
I looked again at the militant suffragette, for it was a tragedy to me. I had spent a week of time and five honest dollars in the effort to get that photograph from a New York studio. She wasn't any common suffragette, but a strict head-liner.
"I'm not even a woman—I'm a child to let a little thing like this upset me," I was deciding a while later, when the door of the room opened again and some one entered.
"You're a big baby!" the city editor pronounced disgustedly, coming up to my desk and lowering his voice. "I knew you were going to cry."
"I—I think I may be coming down with typhoid,"I said coldly, to keep from encouraging him in conversation. "And I've got a terrible lot of work to do before it gets quite dark. Really, an awful lot."
He dropped back a few paces, then circled nearer once more.
"Got anything—special?" he asked aimlessly.
His manner was so entirely inconsequential that I knew he had the most important thing for a month up his sleeve.
"Do you call this—mess anything special?" I asked. "I've got to do a general house-cleaning, and I wish I had a vacuum machine that would suck the whole business up into its mouth, swallow it and digest it—so I'd never see a scrap of it again."
Have I said before that he was a middle-aged man, named Hudson, and had scant red hair? It doesn't make any special difference about his looks, since I hadn't taken any rash vow to marry the first unfortunate man who crossed my path, but he looked so ludicrously insignificant and unlikean instrument of fate as he stood there, trying to break the news to me by degrees.
"Hate your ordinary work this afternoon?" he asked.
"I hate everything."
"Then, how would you like to change off a little?"
"I'd like to change off from breathing—if that would accommodate you any," I replied.
He made a "tut-tut" admonition with the tip of his tongue.
"You might not find blowing red-hot coals any pleasanter," he warned, "and angry little girls like you can't hope to go to heaven when they die!"
I rose, with a great effort after professional dignity.
"Mr. Hudson, evidently you have an assignment for me," I said. "Will you be so good as to let me know what it is?"
But even then he looked for a full thirty seconds into the luscious doors of a fruit stand across the street.
"I wantyouto get—that Consolidated Traction Company story for me," he then declared.
I jumped back as I had never jumped but once in my life before—the time when Aunt Patricia announced that she was going to leave James Christie's love-letters to me.
"You were at that dance last night!" I cried out accusingly, then realizing the absurdity of this I began stammering. "I mean, that I'm a special feature writer!" I kept on before he had had time to send me more than a demon's grin of comprehension.
"You are and this story is devilish special," he returned. "I want you to get it."
His tone, which all of a sudden was the boiled-down essence of business, sent me in a tremor over toward the nail where my hat hung. It was getting dark and I remembered then that I had heard fragments of telephonic conversation earlier in the evening anent "catching him there about seven."
"Well?"
He looked at me—with almost a human expression.
"I wasn't at the ball last night—but grapevines have been rustling, I admit," he said. "I hate like the very devil to ask you to do it, if you want to know the truth, but there's no other way out. I hope you believe me."
"A city editor doesn't have to be believed, but has to be obeyed," I responded, rising again from my chair where I had dropped to lock my desk. "Now, what is it I must do?"
"Well, I have a hunch that you will succeed where Clemons and Bolton and Reade have failed," he said. "And the foolish way the fellow acts makes it necessary for us to use all haste and strategy!"
"The fellow?"
"Maitland Tait. A day or two ago it was understood that he might remain in this town for several days longer—then to-day comes the news that he's straining every nerve to get away to-morrow!"
"Oh, to-morrow!"
"It appears that all the smoke in Pittsburgh is curling up into question marks to find out when he's coming back—"
"He's so important?"
"Exactly! But to-night he's going to hold a final conference at Loomis, and you can catch him before time for this if you'll go right on now."
"Very well," I answered, feeling myself in profound hypnosis.
"And, say! You'll have to hurry," he said, pressing the advantage my quiet demeanor offered. "Here! Take this hunk o' copy paper and hike!"
I accepted the proffered paper, still hypnotized, then when I had reached the door I stopped.
"Understand, Mr. Hudson, I'm doing this because you have assigned it to me!" I said with a cutting severity. "Please let that be perfectly plain! I shouldn't go a step toward Loomis—not even if it were a matter of life and death—if it werenota matter of urgent business!"
He looked at me blankly for a moment, then grinned. Afterward I realized that he knew this declaration was being made to my own inner consciousness, and not to him.
"Don't ask him for a photograph—for God's sake!" he called after me, from the head of the steps. "Remember—you're going out there on theHerald'saccount and theHeralddoesn't need his picture, because it happens that we've already got a dandy one of him!"
I turned back fiercely.
"I hadn'tdreamedof asking him for his photograph!" I fired. "I hope I have some vestige of reasoning power left!"
At the corner a car to Loomis was passing, and once inside I inspected every passenger in the deadly fear of seeing some one whom I knew. There was no one there, however, who could later be placed on the witness-stand against me, so I sat down and watched the town outside speeding by—first the busy up-town portion, then the heavy wholesale district, with its barrels tumbling outof wagon ends and its mingled odor of fruit, vinegar and molasses, combined with soap and tanned hides. After this the river was crossed, we sped through a suburban settlement, out into the open country, then nearer and nearer and nearer.