"Ann! I believe I have fallen in love with a little reformer. Will you be so good, madam, as to set forth your views?" He spoke in the lightest tone of jest. Evidently he had no idea that a woman possessed such a thing as views.
"Oh, it is a vague sort of belief; a dawning light of faith in the Eternal Wisdom, against which orthodoxy seems like a harsh glare which makes you squint your eyes."
"Upon my word! What would mother say to that?"
"She'll never say anything to it, for I shall never express such a thought to her. It is a useless waste of breath. But, Richard, if you love me, you will leave me untrammeled in such matters."
"My dear, you are to be untrammeled in all matters. My only wish is your happiness. Now run and get your hat."
"I'm not going to church with you for the sake of good form."
"What?"
"My conscience would hurt me all day."
"Of course you are not in earnest," he said, and the smile died away from his lips. "So hurry, dear. We are late already."
"But I am in earnest."
"Then you are a very foolish little girl, and I'll explain, as we walk on down the street, why it is well for me to show my face in the different churches around the city."
"You don't need to explain," I responded, but without stirring to get my hat. "I know that it will gain votes for you. But I don't approve of such methods."
"Ann, I have found that it will never do to discuss any kind of business proposition with a woman. So let us not waste any more time arguing the matter. Go and get your hat."
I had moved back from him a step or two and had opened my lips to state my position again, when Cousin Eunice, for the second time, broke in upon an interesting scene.
"Mr. Chalmers, Rufe has just called me to ask ifyou were out here. It seems that there are some important out-of-town voters down at theTimesoffice. They are anxious to see you, as they are just passing through the city and will leave at two o'clock. Rufe apologized for his cruelty, but he says it is important that you should come."
"Thank you very much, Mrs. Clayborne. Of course I shall have to go." He turned to me with sudden regret. Evidently he had already forgotten the slight difference of opinion. If he recalled it he would smile over my "stubbornness."
After he was gone I told Cousin Eunice of the occurrence.
"So soon?" she asked, with a smile for my earnestness. She did not consider his proposed offense such a crime as I did, but she looked serious as I told her of our little clash. "If the telephone hadn't summoned him I wonder which of you would have come off victorious?" she questioned.
"I—wonder?" I repeated absently, but the big diamond was flashing a reminder of his love into my eyes and heart, and, as Cousin Eunice turned and left me, I bent and kissed the stone.
SHADOWS
At home, back of the village, and extending so far away that I had never yet explored the uttermost reaches of it, lies a long, low hill. It is wooded in places with patriarchal oaks, so stately and far-reaching that they call to mind the tales of fairy forests, where knights in glittering armor rode through; or giants lived in hidden houses in the midst of them.
With the varying seasons this hill always seems to tell the silent story of the feelings in nature called forth by the changes. It speaks of joy in the spring; a gentle sadness in the summer; a glorious renunciation when the living green must give way to the gorgeous, though dying, red; and in winter there seems to be a spirit of patience.
Back of the actual summit of the hill, and partly shut in by its crest, which runs along half of its rounding curve, and skirted on the other side by the woods, where the oaks and chestnuts grow, isan expansive depression, wide, rolling, beautiful. The ground, which is barren red clay, is thickly coated over with a scrubby growth, green for only a short while every spring, when there are millions of minute blue blossoms deep-set in its mazes. Later, it takes on a dull brown which lasts until fall, when it changes to a withered yellow.
A few small cedar trees, growing sometimes singly, sometimes in sparse clumps, are dotted around over the ground, but the only actual beauty of the place is its look of great space. It is the only spot I know of where I can see sky enough.
The sky! Yes, that is its charm. It seems to close down upon this cup with such anearnessthat on summer days you can almost reach up and touch the clouds. And they are unbelievably lovely at such times. Then on other days, when the heavens are hidden by long, sweeping bars of heavy gray cloud, and the wind comes tearing over the crest, like a monster knowingly cruel and relentless—then the expanse of earth and sky indeed seem to run together; but the look of nearness is lost. The feeling of immensity is crushing; and you have the sense of being brought face to face with an unseen Presence.
Cathedrals hold this Presence, but tamed, trained and refined sometimes out of all semblance to its mighty prototype of the wilds.
Years ago, when I was a child, Cousin Eunice used to take me up here, for she was the first one of our family ever to discover the place. To be sure, it had always been there, and we had driven around it whenever it had been necessary, but nobody ever dreamed of wanting to take walks there, for it is a wild, lonesome-looking spot, besides being cut up in places by great gulches. In the exact center of the depression there is the bed of a prehistoric lake. The stone basin is there, with all signs of water, at a tremendous distance in the past.
"Isn't itgreat!" Cousin Eunice exclaimed, as we came upon the spot for the first time in our rambles. "Why, it is like being in another world, where everything is fresh, and free, and primitive. Let us pretend that this is our sacred garden, where we can carry only happy thoughts; where we can look at this immensity and learn the true value of things!" So we would often walk here, sometimes with Rufe; and then they would discuss the mysteries of Life and Death and Abiding Love.
On the Monday morning after the events of Sundaywhich I have just recorded, I awoke with an overpowering desire to get away to this "garden." I wanted to get out to where there was sky enough! To a place so immense that I could think it all out and get a true value of things! I wanted to dwell on the great happiness that has come to me; to take in, if I could, the unbelievable fact that I have been whirled away through the infinite spaces of human longing until I have come upon and possessed the star of my heart's desire. Star of my heart's desire! King or sultan, he is the "god of my idolatry,"—Richard Chalmers, my lover!
And while I craved this sight of a wild, free nature, I felt keenly that I should wish, on a morning like this, that the clouds and sky and trees should shrink into their proper place in the background of the mighty stage. They should move back and make room for me; and my triumphant ego should come and place itself in the limelight for me to review. I wanted to see myself at the age of Eve.
I explained some of this feeling to Cousin Eunice, in idiomatic English, after breakfast on Monday morning, but here was a hue and cry. It was the wrong thing for me to do, she declared. I should stay here and get better acquainted with my fiancé.Besides, the first few weeks of a courtship were too dear and precious to be spent apart! I should die of homesickness for a sight of this beautiful city where I had gained my new-found joy!
I mentioned the matter to Richard when he came that evening—that I wanted to go home for a day or so anyway, then I might come back—and I found that he approved the plan most decidedly.
"I shall be out of town for several weeks," he said, "and of course I don't want you here in the city while I'm away." He spoke with a half-playful air, but I had already learned to read his expression so well that I knew he was in earnest. "You don't suppose for a minute I'm going to give any other fellow a chance to steal you away from me now, do you? Before I have had time to realize my good fortune?"
"I wish you wouldnottalk that way, even in jest," I told him seriously. "It implies a kind of distrust."
He had been there quite half an hour when this took place, but he came over to my chair and kissed me for the first time. If Richard does treat his wife as a plaything, as Cousin Eunice suggested, I don't believe he will find it necessary to showermany violets and diamonds upon her. I believe that kisses will do the work.
"Distrust! Love,littlelove, don't say that again!"
"Then let's for ever bar discussions about any other man."
"I shall be delighted to! And, to make assurance doubly sure, I'm going to pack you off down home, as I mentioned yesterday. I'll be gone just a few weeks, and shall, of course, run down to see you the minute I get back to this part of the state. I am going by Charlotteville to tell mother and Evelyn the news."
"And we'll have letters every day."
"And I'll call you up whenever I'm where a long-distance 'phone is. Some of those little towns don't boast one."
He drew me close to him and we went together out to the little balcony where he could smoke. The smoke blew through my hair and lingered there. It seemed almost like a kiss from him that night, as I loosened my hair and began to brush it out.
"Oh, Iwishit could stay there until he comes back," I whispered in agony, as I buried my face in the soft, odorous mazes; and thought of the longdays that would have to pass some way before I could see him again.
"I believe I'll go and get Neva to walk with me this morning," I decided, when mother told me that Mrs. Sullivan has been obliged, by maternal affection, to send for her daughter to come home and spend the week-end. "She will not disturb my musings."
I have been home several days now and have had an equal number of letters from Richard, dear letters, all; and after the receipt of each one I feel that same inclination to get out under the open skies with my joy.
This was Sunday morning, and there is a glorious Indian summer sun shining over the earth with that soft haze which only this season of the year gives. Of course I could not stay in the house.
When I rang the door-bell at the Sullivan cottage about ten o'clock I was admitted upon a scene of confusion which vainly tried to smooth itself out into a Sabbathical family-quiet upon my entrance. But the tension made itself felt in spite of the Sunday clothes in evidence, and the Bibles lying in readiness on the center-table in the parlor.
I mentioned the object of my visit, but Neva shook her head reluctantly. She would love to go walking with me, she explained, but she was going to church.
Her tone and statement were both so inoffensive that I was naturally startled at the storm which burst forth at her words.
"Youain't," Mrs. Sullivan contradicted flatly, displaying an unwonted degree of animation.
"I am," Neva answered, with aVere de Vererepose.
"Your hats is all locked up," her mother suggested.
"Then I'll go bareheaded. They'll think it's a new style that I've learned in the city."
Mrs. Sullivan subsided into a chair and showed signs of tears.
"I see that it's poorly worth while to educate you," she began, but Neva interrupted her nervously.
"Oh, mamma, don't sayeducate jew."
"Now, did you ever hear anything that sassy? I don't see hownoman could want you!"
Mrs. Sullivan's tone was tearful, but Neva's sensitive ears had already drunk in their money's worth of culture at the college for young ladies.
"There you go again! 'Want chew.' Mamma, haven't I begged you not to go through life saying chew and Jew, unless you refer to mastication—or an Israelite?"
The tears actually started at this piece of filial cruelty, and Mrs. Sullivan turned to me for consolation.
"Now, I'll put it to you, Miss Ann, ain't that enough to make a woman wish she hadn't never saw a child? And do you know what this trouble is all about?—That common, ig'nant clodhopper, Hiram Ellis, that Nevar's almost broke her neck to see since she's been home."
"Why, I thought Hiram was in high favor—with youall," I said in surprise, remembering the occasion of the fainting-spell.
"He was, so long as Nevar was just a ordinary country girl," Mrs. Sullivan explained, wiping her eyes and glancing with a look of shame and reproach at Neva; "but do you reckon me and Tim's spending all that money on her education, and then let her turn in and marry anybody asplainas Hiram Ellis?"
"Plain!Well, I don't see as we're sofancy!" Neva said indignantly.
"Is she going to marry him this morning?" Iasked, and I noted then the extreme fussiness of Neva's hair arrangement. It bore a truly leonine aspect. She had on her school uniform, and so, except for the number of class-pins, she had not sinned excessively in the way of dress. But the hair gave me some misgivings as to her intentions.
"Ain't no telling what she'll do," her mother said hopelessly. "She's bent on going to church where she can see him! We've done all we could to keep her at home, even to locking up her hats and Tim carrying off the curling-irons in his pocket so she couldn't curl her hair. But do you know what that young'un done? I'll be blessed if she didn't hunt up her pappy's old tool box and git out his oldaugur—and curled her hair on that. Did you ever hear of a girl so deep in love that she'dcurl her hair on a het augur?"
"Oh, mamma," she begged piteously, "don't say 'pappy!' Anddon't say 'het!'"
So it happened that I walked alone through the "garden." Alone, yet I felt that I was in a beloved presence, for Richard's last letter was with me. I sat down at the edge of the lake which had dried up in the Stone Age, and drew the letter out from its resting-place to read it over again.
Richard's handwriting is heavy, black, and almost as free from flowing curves as the chirography of a literary man. "Sweetheart," the letter began, and the firm lines which formed the letters looked very much as if he meant it. It was signed "Richard, R. I.," in humorous acceptance of the title I had given him. But perhaps the dearest thing in connection with the letter was the faint aroma of "Habana" which hung over it. I held the sheets up close to my face and shielded them from any vandal winds that might slip up and covet that sweet odor; and I recalled the smile in his eyes when he made me the promise that he would always be smoking when he wrote to me—that the letters might be more realistic.
"Don't tell me any more that you are a full-grown woman," he said, as he made the promise. "You are a child—but adorable."
He knew that I would be lonely, the letter stated, but he had left orders with a book-dealer that a batch of new books be sent out to me each week, to help while away the time. Orders had also been left with the florist and confectioner—and I must at once report to him any negligence on the part of these worthies.
"Of course you have already acted upon my suggestion that you return the Byron book," the letter continued, as if the mention of books had brought this affair to his mind, but I fancied that he had mentioned them rather as a means of leading up to this. "I know you would not keep it after I have shown you the impropriety of your doing so."
"Impropriety!" That is a word that I hate and avoid. No one had ever, to my knowledge, used it in connection with anything I have ever done up until this time. I bridled a little as I read it over. Somehow, out here in the wilds, I seemed to recall suddenly that if Richard is a gallant lover, so also is Alfred an old, and very dear friend—while the Byron book is a delightful possession.
"I shall not send it back," I decided, after a little reflection. "I shall stand my ground. He is not unreasonable, and he will sooner or later understand that I am old enough to judge for myself between things proper and improper! Ugh, how the words remind me of my prospective mother-in-law!"
I hastily mapped out a letter in reply to this, telling him that I should keep the book, because I saw no reason, on the grounds he mentioned, for sending it back.
So intent was I upon this idea that I hastily jumped up from my sunny nook by the old lake and shook out my skirts. I would go home right now and write that letter!
I made my way across the breadth of the valley and leisurely climbed the hill, for the midday sun was quite hot. I paused and looked back once in a while, for the garden was so beautiful this morning.
There was absolutely no thought of defiance in my idea of showing Richard my viewpoint, for I did not dream that he considered the affair in any other light than the cut-and-dried distaste to "a young woman receiving presents from a young man to whom she is not engaged." He had notaskedme to return the book. He had simply shown me the error of my way—and I had failed to recognize it.
I stopped again to look around at the wild beauty of the place before leaving it, then, with a little running start, I quickly gained the crest. When I had reached it I stopped once more, this time with a startled surprise, for I found myself face to face with Neva. I noted, with amusement, that she had possessed herself of a hat.
"Well, so you decided to come for a walk?" Isaid in greeting. "How did you manage to get your hat out of the wardrobe?"
She stopped still in the path and her eyes suddenly met mine in a look of dumb misery. I first thought that the question might have been embarrassing to her, and was trying to think of something to cover it, when she spoke.
"Piled a box on a chair on a table," she explained with an effort, "until I could reach up high enough to prize the top off. 'Twas old and loose—and I still had the augur!"
"Neva! Think of the perseverance! And after all that, you didn't get to see him?"
At my words her mouth tightened at the corners, and her eyes looked very bright and dry.
"Oh, I saw him," she answered bitterly, after a moment's struggle. "He drove right past me while I was trudging down that dusty road to church. But he didn't seeme. He had Stella Hampton in the buggy with him."
"Stella Hampton? Who is she?"
"She's the girl that sicked the fit doctor on to me!"
I tried to comfort her, but she was desolate.
"It ain't that I care so much abouthim," she assuredme, forgetting, in her misery, her boarding-school English, "but oh, I can't bear to face them at home. It's so terrible to be made ashamed before folks."
I agreed with her and insisted that she go home with me, not braving the ordeal of facing her own family until late in the afternoon, when they should have forgotten it a little. Tears of gratitude came to her pretty, troubled eyes as she joyously accepted my invitation.
Mother was on the front porch as we came up the walk and she welcomed Neva cordially.
"Ann," she said, turning to me and speaking in an undertone, "there is a long-distance call for you. The operator has rung up several times, then said that the 'party' would call again at twelve-thirty."
"Oh, mother!" I cried, with a great throb of pleasure. In a few minutes I should be listening to the sound of his voice, and that was a deal more satisfying than the aroma of cigar smoke in a letter!
"Little runaway, where have you been all morning?" I heard in his dear, drawling tones after the connections had been made and listening ears supposed to be removed from the line. "I've been trying for three hours to get you."
"I've been out for my Sunday morning tramp," I answered, a sudden overwhelming longing toseehim sweeping over me. His voice sounded so near that I could scarcely believe that half the length of the state lay between us.
"Alone?"
There was no drawl to this query.
"No, not alone. I had your letter with me."
"When are you going to answer it, sweetheart?"
"To-day. I have already thought up some of the things I'm going to say to you."
It might have been thought transmission, or it might have been chance, but at all events, it is the honest truth, that the next question was the one in my mind.
"And what have you to say for yourself about Doctor Morgan's book, my lady?"
"A good deal more than is profitable to say over a long-distance telephone," I replied, hoping to change the drift of the talk. I felt that I could say my little speech better on paper than I could over the wires.
"Well, that has been troubling me a little, Ann," he said in his unsmiling voice, and I felt that his eyes were looking coldly into the space just beyond histelephone. "I see that you are disposed to argue the matter. I had an idea that you had not sent it back, so I decided to ask you when I got you to the 'phone. Now, the question is, are you going to be guided by what I tell you in this matter, or not?"
No woman who has not experienced the agony can half appreciate the feeling of sudden terror that came over me at the cold sound of his voice. It seemed to have a threatening tone offinalityin it that chilled me to the bone. I had such a feeling of helplessness somehow. You can argue with a man and cajole him and smooth his hair when he is where you can get your hands on him, knowing all the time that you are not going to let him leave the house until he has smiled the smile that won your heart; but, oh, the futility of trying to argue with a masterful lover over a long-distance telephone.
"Are you talking? I can't hear a word."
"I'm not talking, Richard," I answered. "I'm—I'mthinking."
"Well, I called you because I wanted to hear you talk. You haven't answered my question yet." Again that tone of cold meaning. A hundred thoughts a minute were flying through my brain. Should I say no and have a quarrel with him?Should I say yes, and prove myself a coward—or should I lie to him?
If this were a tale of heroism, I should have a few ringing words of challenge to insert right here and then a quick curtain. But this is not a heroic story, it is only simple truth, told with regret and aspirations after a higher courage, yet still a true account of what happened in our back hall this beautiful Sunday morning.I hedged.
"I'll send it back, Richard," I told him, and he at once changed his tone and the subject of his discourse, beginning a recital of how he missed me and how he was going to cut short his trip up there and come on back. I scarcely heard the words, for I was trying to frame for my own conscience my sophisticated excuse. "I shall send it back if heconvincesme that there is any just occasion for doing so," I pleaded to myself. But after he had said good-by and I started from the telephone I found mother's eyes fixed upon me in a kind of pitying wonder.
I flushed and looked away. Then I recalled Cousin Eunice's words: "Don't let him make you do anything that will lower your self-respect. Many wives don't know the meaning of that word." Wives? Dear me! I have been his fiancée only a week!
THANKSGIVING DAY
Thanksgiving day—and I have written nothing since the middle of October! But you remember I told you in the beginning that my journal might be, not so much a record of deeds as a setting forth of wishes; and my wishes all come to pass so speedily these days that there is no time to write them down.
To be honest, I had no idea of bringing my journal up here to Charlotteville with me, when I came for this Thanksgiving visit, for I thought of course Richard would be here all the time and I should not find a moment dull enough for me to sit down and write. But, as it happens, I am glad that the book was slipped into the tray of my trunk almost without my knowledge, else I should be spending a lonely evening right now.
Let me see—shall I begin where I left off—that sunny morning when I parried with Richard acrosshalf the state and lived to regret it? Or shall I begin with my entrée into Charlotteville and then jot down the past happenings as they come to me? The latter course strikes me as rather the better, then perhaps I shall not be tempted to give any one little occurrence too much space. Things seen in a sort of over-the-shoulder perspective are more likely to shrink into their normal size.
If I had snatched you up, my journal, the day that Richard sent me that exquisite chased card-case—a counterpart in pattern of his own sacred cigarette-case which I had once fingered with admiring reverence—I should have used up pages and pages of space, besides impoverishing myself in the way of adjectives. But I spent so many days dangling that card-case in front of me, as I stood before the mirror—using always my sparkling left hand—that before I had grown accustomed to the possession of it there came something even better calculated to take my breath away. A dull gold brooch it was this time, set with a green jade scarab—the little beetle bearing along with it a page of typed pedigree, showing the why and wherefore of its being. It in nowise detracted from the joy of possession, that these trinkets came in the nature of olive branches.
Yes, my sovereign was angry when I brought up the discussion of the book again, the Byron book, which I had promised to return, but with the proviso, under my breath, that I should be made to see the reason why first. I learned that he not only has the heart of a lion, but a little of that beautiful animal's kingly fury also when he is aroused. And he was aroused at what he termed my deception.
I made a clean breast of the matter the very first hour we were together again, knowing that I could make him listen to reason if I got himliterallyat arm's length. But I had to listen to some things, too, in that hour; coming off victorious to such an extent that he finally called himself every kind of high-class villain imaginable. Then, the next week this plethora of express packages.
So it seems that my idea concerning the warring elements in his character was not altogether wrong.
But to hasten on to Charlotteville! Mrs. Chalmers wrote mother several weeks ago that she wanted me to come for Thanksgiving, so there was plenty of time for the getting together of clothes which I now knew to be absolutely essential to my peace of mind when I should be with Richard. I never knew a man to pay such attention to these littledetails. But what else can you expect when you are engaged to an Olympian god? Still—I almost wish sometimes that he did not lay so much stress on mere luxuries, for people can have a lot of enjoyment in life without them. Yet to Richard a big house, servants, expensive clothes, all are as necessary as the air he breathes, and he wants to make me feel the same dependence on them.
During the one little visit I have made in the city since our engagement he kept his promise of taking me for long country drives—but always in a big touring car, with a chaperon and a chauffeur! When I suggested that it would be more "fun" to drive that pretty horse of his and go alone, he assured me gravely that many things in this life which were good "fun" were not proper. So I said no more, but I felt a sudden sense of gratitude toward fate for not ever sending Richard driving past me last winter when I used not only to drive out the pikes with Alfred, but get out and go down on my knees to help him with a puncture. True, I wasn't much help, usually being good only to hand him things, orblowon the patches to make them dry the faster—but I always liked to help, and he always let me.
But Charlotteville! Well, it is a small town in the eastern end of the state—a citified little place enough—where there are at least a dozen people who own handsome motor-cars; and the ices are always frozen in fancy shapes at the parties. Still it is a little town, where everybody likes to talk about everybody else—and the power-house shuts off the electricity at midnight.
I was glad when I found that there were other guests for this occasion, for I thought that would give me more time alone with Richard, and after I had met these guests I felt glad on their own account, for they are delightful.
Mr. Maxwell, the only other man, came down the same day that I reached here; on the same train, in fact, but neither of us knew this at the time, for I happened to be in the day-coach and he was in the Pullman.
When I reached the station here at Charlotteville, and at first saw no one on the little platform to meet me, I felt a sudden sinking around my heart; but, after the crowd had moved along a bit, I espied Richard's tall form at the extreme end of the platform. He was looking with a good deal of eagerness into the windows of the one Pullman car.With him, and talking exuberantly, was a boyish-looking young man who had forgotten to remove his traveling-cap. Richard seemed to be paying no attention to this bright-faced youth.
I dropped my bag and hastened down the platform.
"Oh, she's disappointed you, old boy! 'Tain't another thing," the man in the cap was saying as I came up close behind them and slackened my pace. "I'll swear there wasn't a thing in that car that looked like a cross between Venus de Milo and—"
"Richard," I called softly, and he wheeled around in delighted surprise.
"Bless your little heart!" he said, so genuinely glad to see me that he forgot for a moment the presence of the other man. That is, I thought at the time he had forgotten, but I soon saw that he considered Mr. Maxwell too much of a good-natured fool to count. "I thought you had failed to come," he kept on. "Where the dickens were you?"
"I was in the day-coach," I answered, after I had shaken hands with Mr. Maxwell, when Richard remembered to present him.
"What?"
His tone was low and quiet, but his eyes spokesurprise, and I remembered, with a sudden chill, that according to his ethics I had done almost a disgraceful thing.
"There were some people in the day-coach I—wanted to be with," I began by way of explanation, but I saw that this was making matters worse.
"What kind of people?" he asked drily.
"A woman. I got to talking to her when we changed trains at M—; she hadsucha headache—and two babies. The littlest one consented to let me walk him around some; and I fed the other one the remains of a box of chocolates. When this train came they got into the day-coach, and of course I went with them."
"Why 'of course?'" he asked again, but with an amused smile dawning in his eyes.
"Well, I was still carrying the baby! I couldn't go off into another car with him, could I?"
Richard looked at Mr. Maxwell and laughed perfunctorily, but I knew that in some way he felt that I had humiliated him. Mr. Maxwell did not laugh, although his is essentially a laughing face.
"I understand," Richard said finally, turning to me again and asking for my checks. "You have quite the appearance of a good Samaritan. Yourhair is—er—just a trifle ruffled. Couldn't you have managed some way to smooth it a little before you reached here? Evelyn always spends the last hour of a journey back in the dressing-room arranging her hair and powdering her face."
"Well, of course I know that is the ladylike thing to do," I responded, with something more nearly like sarcasm than I had ever used to him before.
Mr. Maxwell was busy taking his things from the porter, and as he exchanged his cap for a more dignified, but less becoming, hat, I noticed a scar on his forehead, high up and extending quite a distance toward the crown of his head. His hair grew queerly along the line of the scar. He seemed purposely to have detached himself from us for a moment, so I spoke to Richard again.
"Richard," I said, speaking low and rapidly, so that only he could hear. "I am sorry if I am afright! But I just couldn't prink before that woman on the train. She was deathly sick, so I kept the baby all the way. Then she waspoorand proud and—I didn't care about opening my bag and spreading all my silver things out before her!"
He laughed again.
"You are an extremist, Ann," he said. "But youare not a fright. Only, you're so fine, when you're at your best—and mother won't understand."
"Of course not," I answered rather shortly; and the drive out to the house might have been a very quiet one if it had not been for Mr. Maxwell's irrepressible chatter.
I was grateful for the chatter at the time, still more so when we reached the house, for it helped my ruffled hair to pass unnoticed.
The feminine portion of the family met us at the front steps, and, as darkness was drawing on, I failed to take in at the time the full magnificence of the outside of the house. When I saw it next morning in the bright sunshine it struck me as being an oppressively massive, gleaming structure, with a great display of plate-glass doors and windows; and, instead of long, generous porches, as we have at home, there are several tiled vestibules that each morning are—no, not scoured, they aremanicured.
Mr. Maxwell is a great friend of Richard's, strange as it may seem that two such incompatible natures should find so much in common; and, being heir to his mother's fortune, is such a desirable catch that Mrs. Chalmers frequently has him down here,hoping that he and Evelyn will take a fancy to each other. Richard told me this, quite simply. Evelyn wears her prettiest gowns and uses her softest tones when he is around, but she is no more interested in him than she is in any other man. In fact, she is too well brought-up to display any preference in her marriage. Whatever her mother arranges for her will be entirely satisfactory.
And as for Mr. Maxwell—but that brings me up to a mention of the other guest here now, and it is surprising that I have not said something about her before, for she and I have been great friends from the day I arrived.
It is amazing that people can get so well acquainted in such a short space of time when they are staying together in the same house, yet when neither of them is what you would call "easy to get acquainted with." I am not, I know, and I feel equally as sure that Sophie is the same way, yet you will notice that sometimes when two such diffident people are thrown together they will take a liking to each other right away.
It was this way with Sophie Chalmers and me. She is Richard's cousin and lives in some vague place "out west." She happened to be visiting someof the other Chalmers relatives in a near-by town for a few weeks this fall and I think Mrs. Chalmers must have felt that if she had to invite her it would be less trouble to have her when there were other guests, so she asked her to come and spend the Thanksgiving holidays with them. If the girl had been less obviously a sort of "poor relation" (though by no means looking the part) or if Mrs. Chalmers had not tried so persistently to keep her in the background the "unexpected" which happened in this case would have been less surprising.
For Mr. Maxwell had no more than walked into the drawing-room and been presented to her than he fell in love with her; and, like most merry-eyed people, he fell very deeply in love.
Even their meeting was most unusual—dramatic, you might call it. And, as it took place at the moment of our arrival, it served to divert somewhat the attention from my disheveled looks, which had been such a shock to Richard. "Mr. Maxwell—Miss Chalmers," some one had said, as we all passed into the house and the tall, rather tired-looking girl unfolded herself from one of the big chairs drawn up close to the hearth. She showed no surprise as she extended her hand to the new arrival, but Mr. Maxwelllooked at her for a moment as he held her hand in his; then he asked quite simply: "Where have we met before?"
The question was so earnest and so direct that the girl's face flushed, but before she could even start to offer a suggestion as to whether they had met before or had not, Mrs. Chalmers hastily put in that there was little probability of a former meeting, inasmuch as Sophie had not been in this part of the country in several years.
"We have certainly met before," Mr. Maxwell persisted, his eyes still fastened on Sophie's face, and running his fingers through his hair, along the line of the scar, as if that could help him in remembering. "I am certain of that. And I should surely not be so discourteous as to acknowledge that I have forgotten—except there are so many things hazy in my mind—since that night just outside El Paso."
I, too, was watching Sophie intently, as we all were, and I saw her eyes wander to the scar along his forehead. She looked away, but in another moment had returned to it again, as if the queer little white line held a fascination for her. At his mention of El Paso she gave a distinct start, but regained her equilibrium almost immediately.
"I must be a very common-looking person," she said with a little laugh, turning to me as she spoke, "for I seldom meet a stranger who doesn't know some one whom I am so exactly like that the resemblance is startling!"
We had all moved about a little from the positions into which Mr. Maxwell's first earnest words had petrified us, and Mrs. Chalmers was beginning to say something about taking us to our rooms, when that persevering young man spoke again. He had not moved an inch, but stood there in the middle of the floor, his eyes fastened on Sophie's face.
"It's not your looks, that is, your looks are not so convincing as your—your voice," he said, his expression still showing his bewildered surprise; but something in the girl's face must have pleaded with him to change the subject, which he did, easily.
"Well, don't you think the scar adds to my list of attractions?" he asked banteringly, as he turned to Mrs. Chalmers, who beamed approval upon him. "The girls all think I acquired it in some brave, though mysterious, manner—those who don't know that I got my sky-piece cracked in a wreck in Texas last year."
From that hour he began a course of small attentions,minor courtesies, but none the less meaning, all of which have been calculated to make Sophie regard him with quite a degree of favorable interest, and if I am not mistaken none of these calculations has failed to hit the mark. But since their first meeting I have only once heard him refer to that unusual resemblance she bears to some one whom he has known; and I am sure he found the impulse then to speak so strong and sudden that the words were out before he had time to think, for Sophie so clearly disliked a mention of the subject. This proves to me that they have known each other in some mysterious manner, but as she has never told me the secret, of course I have never questioned her.
Last night at the dinner table was when it came about, and, when I think it over, it was a ludicrous happening rather than a sentimental or even mysterious one. Mrs. Chalmers had been holding forth upon some Scriptural interpretations which her beloved pastor has recently made use of in his sermons, and, among others, the casting of pearls before swine was brought forward for discussion.
From the moment the word "swine" was mentioned Mr. Maxwell's face took on its bewildered look and he fixed his eyes on Sophie with thatsame intensity of expression which they have worn so often this last week. Suddenly he seemed to remember what his mind was so evidently searching for.
"Swine!Pigs!" he blurted out, in such a startled way that we all instinctively stopped eating to await developments. "That'swhat I heard you—or the girl with your voice—saying that night. I remember it distinctly now! It was hot—heavens, how hot it was!—and there was a fierce pain in my head for some reason; but I heard your voice, just a short distance away from me, saying: 'This little pig went to market, this little pig stayed at home; this little pig had—' and there you broke off, because you couldn't remember what it was the third little pig had. There was a peevish child's voice crying: 'Tell little pigs! Tell little pigs,' and then a man's voice, trying to help you out. You asked the man, 'Doyou know what the third little pig had—or did?' But he couldn't remember either. He began saying the doggerel over again, 'This little pig went to market; this little pig stayed at home; this little pig had—'
"'Roast beef, damn you,' I hollered, for somehow I wasn't as near being dead as you thought. 'Roastbeef, but you needn't stand outside my door rehashing it all night. Then you and the man laughed in a surprised, though subdued way, and walked away from me, although I didn't hear the sound of footsteps."
His scar showed very white as he finished this queer little story; and he looked at Sophie almost beseechingly. He had the appearance of a man groping about in the dark.
Sophie, too, was clearly embarrassed, but said nothing by way of explanation; and, ridiculous as the incident was, not one of us even smiled.
There was a heavy, tense silence about the board for a moment, then Richard spoke.
"Upon my word, but this is interesting," he said, in a slow, sarcastic drawl. "Sophie, have you been traveling in vaudeville?"
As we left the dining-room one of the servants told Richard that there was a long-distance call for him, a bit of news which brought a frown to my lord's handsome face.
"Well, tell 'em I can't be found," he commanded briefly, as he caught the extreme tip of my elbow and began steering our course toward the library.We usually had a few short minutes alone there after dinner.
"The operator has already told the party that you are here, Mr. Chalmers," the colored boy answered, looking embarrassed and trying to slink away into the back hall as soon as he could.
"The devil!" Richard exclaimed, under his breath, but he loosed his hold upon my arm as we reached the foot of the steps, and he suggested that I run on up-stairs and wait until I thought he had had time to finish his conversation, then come back and join him in the library.
"If you mix up with them in the drawing-room now you can't find an excuse to get up and leave when I have finished," he explained, and I smiled a happy assent.
Sophie, too, had gone to her room for a few minutes after dinner, and, as she heard me stirring around in mine, she called at my open door to say that she wanted my advice about something.
"Come in, by all means," I bade her. "I have lots of advice."
"It's about a dress for the ball to-morrow night," she said, holding over her arm a dainty gown of soft white silk. She spread the garment out upon mybed, then stood off a few steps and looked at it. "Do you think it will do?" she finally asked.
"Do? Why, I think it's lovely!" I declared truthfully.
"Well, I want to look lovely," she answered, with a queer little smile, but as she sat down on the bed and picked up a bit of chiffon flounce in the neck of the gown, she looked up at me again, with an expression of almost tragedy in her eyes. "But I have no gloves that are long enough and clean enough to wear with this!"
"Well, wear a pair of mine, then," I began, noting that her hands and mine are about the same size, but before I could suggest this she had interrupted me.
"I didn't come in here forthat," she exclaimed, rather haughtily, throwing back her head a little and looking me squarely in the eyes. "I wanted to talk with you a little because you don't seem so oppressively elegant andrich, you know—"
"I am not in the least rich," I assured her comfortingly. "Nearly all my gloves have beencleaned."
I hastily threw up the top of my trunk and scrambled around for my glove box.
"See!" I exclaimed, holding up a pair that she had seen me working on the day before. "Theylookas good as new, but whew! it would take one of your Texas cyclones to blow the smell of gasolene out!"
"One ofmyTexas cyclones?" She looked surprised, but I fancied that she was pleased. "Who told you that I live in Texas?"
"Nobody that I remember; yet I got it into my head somehow that you live in Texas."
"I do. I live in El Paso," she threw aside the flounce of chiffon which she was still fingering and started to her feet. I was standing in front of her with the pair of freshly cleaned gloves in my hand. "Ann, I hate lying, and I am going to tell you something, for I can't keep up this deception any longer. I don't care what Aunt Ida says."
There was a quick rap at the door at this most interesting juncture and Evelyn stuck her head in.
"Ann," she said, glancing quickly at us both and seeming a little surprised to see us closeted together in this familiar fashion. "Richard has just had a long-distance message from the city. He has to go up there to-night on business and he wants to know if you'll let him come up to your door and say good-by?"
SOPHIE'S STORY
Ihad to lay my journal aside last night before I reached the really thrilling occurrence of Thanksgiving day, which was, strangely enough, neither the dinner nor the ball, although each was in its own peculiar way a decided success.
I have Evelyn's word that the ball was a success, for neither Sophie nor I attended it, albeit Richard had, at my whispered suggestion, sent Sophie a box of long white gloves from the city, getting them off on an early train that they might reach her in time; and sending along with this a box of roses—Maréchal Niel for Sophie, La France for Mrs. Chalmers and Evelyn, while for me there was a great sheaf of American Beauties.
But he did not come back in time for the ball, and I suddenly lost all interest in the affair as the last train out from the city that evening failed to bring him. Sophie had been suffering all day with afrightful neuralgic headache, and, as night drew near, it became so much worse that she declared that she could not go to the ball. The lights and dizzy whirling around would be the death of her, she decided, so she dropped down into a chair in the library after dinner and said she would give it up.
"Then I'll stay with you," I volunteered, and, despite her own protestations and feebler ones from Mrs. Chalmers and Evelyn, the matter was thus arranged. There were always far too many girls at such affairs anyway, they all knew, so that my absence would really be a blessing.
Mr. Maxwell came into the room just as the matter had been thus satisfactorily settled and when he heard of the arrangement his face beamed with a kind of mischievous happiness.
"Now, that's what I call luck," he said, as the door closed upon Mrs. Chalmers' retreating form and left us three alone together. "I'll go with the ladies and stay long enough to see that Evelyn's card is filled—then I'll take a sneak, and come on back home to see how the headache is progressing."
His smile spoke immense approval of his own cleverness, but Sophie cut it short.
"You'll do nothing of the kind," she said decidedly,looking up at him as he stood by the library table, a folded newspaper in his hand; "you'll stay and do your duty by the wall-flowers."
"Not I, sweet lady," he answered banteringly. "Life is too short. I'm coming back here and entertain your headache away!"
And he did. He came in at about half-past ten, for the filling up of Evelyn's card had been a matter quickly despatched, and he was in radiant spirits over having "jumped the game."
"Mrs. Chalmers didn't mind at all," he explained as he drew a chair up to the fire and lighted a cigarette. "I left her in a corner with a few other fond mammas and she even insisted that I should not go back, as Jim goes for them about two o'clock. All I'm to do is to go out to the stables and punch Jim in the ribs and wake him up in time. So we are going to have a jolly evening together."
"Oh, dear, what a pleasant prospect!" Sophie said, only half in jest, as her hand went up to her aching head. "Now, if I could just get rid of this one-eyed pain I might find life decidedly worth living."
"Isn't there anything we can do?" he asked solicitously, casting his cigarette quickly into the fire as if he thought the smoke might make her head worse."Can't Miss Fielding and I make you a mustard plaster—or something?"
"There is a little bottle of stuff in my bag up-stairs that sometimes acts like magic in a case like this," she finally said with some hesitancy, and I realized that she was hesitating because she disliked the idea of having any one fussing over her. She is one of these capable creatures who seldom ask even a small service of any one.
"Let me run and get it," I said starting up and resolving that I should get the bottle, hand it in to Mr. Maxwell at the door, then betake myself off to my own room and leave them alone together. I imagined that he would enjoy the privilege of hunting about to get her a glass and a spoon himself. And it would make them feel more at home with each other for him to be rendering her these little services.
I went to Sophie's room and found a bag where she had told me to look, in the closet on the lower shelf. I caught it up and moved across to the bed, where I sat down and deposited it by my side; then I began a wrestling match with the most obstinate catch that it has ever been my ill-fortune to come across on an alligator-skin bag.
"I'll just have to take it down and get Mr. Maxwellto open it," I finally decided, after I had worked with the thing until my strength and patience were both exhausted. "It is provoking to see the ease with which a man can subdue a thing like this after a woman has broken off all her best-looking finger-nails over the task."
So I caught the bag up in one hand and my trailing skirts in the other and wended my way back to the library. My load was quite heavy, heavier than an ordinary traveling-bag I remembered afterward; and in struggling with the lock I had at one time pulled slightly apart an end of the stubborn opening. A whiff of drugs was borne to me in that instant—a kind of combination of odors, none of which I knew by name, but they were all strikingly familiar, for they were exactly like the smells in Alfred's small black instrument case.
"I hope you don't take all these different kinds of dope for your headaches," I thought with a quick little feeling of contempt, for I don't have much patience with the headache-powder habit. I learned this contempt from Alfred, of course.
Mr. Maxwell was alone in the library when I returned and told me that Sophie had gone to get a glass of hot water.
"She says that is all she ever takes for these spells of neuralgia," he said, holding out his hand for the bag, when I explained to him about the fastening. "But there is a little bottle of something or other in here that she rubs on her forehead—and that eases the pain."
"Then why on earth didn't she rub it on early this morning?" I inquired wonderingly.
"That's what I asked her," he answered with a slight laugh, "but she says that the stuff burns the skin and leaves a red mark; and she didn't want to be disfigured for the ball—I told her that she would have looked just the same to me—red mark or no red mark."
He was smiling good-naturedly as he worked with the lock of the bag, which after a moment or two came open with a lamb-like docility. He was walking across the room to deposit it upon the table when Sophie came in and saw him with the bag opened in his hand. She gave a little startled exclamation and we both wheeled and faced her.
"That's the wrong bag," she said, speaking with such nervous haste and her face wearing such a white, scared look that we both instinctively glanced into the open case Mr. Maxwell held in his hands."Don't! There's something in there that I don't want you to see!"
Poor girl, if it had been a dynamite bomb or a counterfeiter's kit of tools, she could scarcely have looked more frightened, for Mr. Maxwell and I had already seen the contents. His face suddenly went white, too, as he quickly strode across the room and laid the bag upon the table.
"Thisis likely the thing you didn't want us to see," he exclaimed, reaching in and holding up to the light a glittering little object. It was a hypodermic syringe!
When she saw the silvery-looking instrument actually in his hand and observed the stern, harsh look in his eyes she gave a wild, hysterical laugh and walked quickly across to him. She clutched the shining thing from his hand and held it up before me.
"Nowyou both know the 'disgraceful secret' which Aunt Ida has made me keep so securely locked away from you," she cried, holding the instrument in her hand and pulling the piston backward and forward with a deftness born of long familiarity. "She made me promise to keep it a secret, for she said that if her 'society' friends knew of it I should be consideredbeyond the pale. Heavens knows that I am sorry for it and ashamed of it, but there was a mighty—temptation."
She sat down in the nearest chair and began to cry, her face buried in her folded arms, and her shoulders heaving convulsively. I went over quickly and laid my hand upon her head.
"Don't cry, Sophie!" I begged, "it will make your head worse; and—thisdoesn't make the slightest difference in our feeling for you. We are not 'society,' are we, Mr. Maxwell?"
I glanced appealingly toward him, but he did not see me. His eyes were fixed upon Sophie's bowed head with a pitying, yethorrifiedstare, then the look of bewilderment which he wore at the first sight of her came over his face, painfully intensified this time.
"My God!" he finally broke out, and I knew that he did not know he was speaking aloud. "I have seen you before to-night with that thing in your hand! I can even feel its sharp little sting inmyarm—but where—where—I can't remember."
At his queer words Sophie looked quickly up, but he had already turned his back to us two and was leaving the room. We heard him linger a moment inthe hall as if he might be looking for his hat; then the big front door closed behind him.
"He still doesn't remember!" she said slowly, looking at me in surprise. "I thought he would. I don't imagine that he has had much experience with trained nurses, so I fancied it would all come back to him when he found that I was one."
"You took care of him when his head was hurt last year?"
"Yes. I nursed him from the night he was brought into the hospital until he was almost out of danger—it was a long, tedious case, and we thought for a while that we were not going to save him."
"And you really were telling some child about the little pigs going to market one night when he heard you?" I asked, thinking how much stranger than fiction this case was.
"Yes. That was after he was beginning to be better, but I was still his 'special.' The baby's cot had been moved out into the corridor just beyond his door—it was so hot—and I used to slip out there occasionally and get the little fellow to sleep. But I came down with malarial fever myself before Mr. Maxwell was entirely well. That's the reason his memory of me is so hazy."
"Then why didn't you tell him plainly—when you first met him here and saw that he remembered you?" I asked as she got up and opened the bag wider to try to find the bottle of medicine she wanted, for her hand went to her head in a manner which told me that all this excitement had in nowise lessened the pain.
"That's what I am so sorry for and ashamed of," she answered simply, as she lifted some of the contents of the bag out and placed them upon the table. "I shouldn't have stayed here anhourafter Aunt Ida told me I must sail under false covers, but—I said a while ago, in my excitement, that there was a mighty temptation! I didn't intend to say it, but—it is true."
"And the temptation was—"
We heard the front door open then and close again softly. Mr. Maxwell had finished his walk out in the cool night air. I hoped that he would come on back into the library as he heard our voices, but he passed the door and in another moment we heard his footsteps on the stairs.
"They told me thathewas coming," Sophie said.
Four days have passed since the night of theThanksgiving ball; and at a house-party where four days drag there is a greater sense of calamity than would be caused by a dreary four weeks at some other time. For there is always the tormenting thought of how much hay one might have been piling up if the sun would only shine.
Here are the three of us—Evelyn, Sophie and I—all at the age of Eve; and all enduring such a period of gloom that I feel sure if the original Eve had been half as badly bored she would never have waited for a pretty snake to come along and amuse her—she would have started up a flirtation with agrub-worm!
Richard is still away and I have not even had a line from him. Neither has any one else on the place, of course, but his name appeared in the society columns of theTimesthe day after Thanksgiving. He had attended the football game that afternoon with Major Blake's party, the paper stated—and alas! I was in no position to dispute the statement.
Now if there isonething a girl hates worse than having her rat show in the presence of her beloved it is to have that beloved's name appear in a society column when her own is not in the same line!
"Why the Blakes?" I kept wondering uneasily, as I read over the hateful paragraph again and again; and I tried to fight down the fierce feeling of jealousy which took possession of me. "Why couldn't he have gone to the foot-ball game with some one else—or why couldn't he have come home?"
I found upon this occasion that jealousy is a passion which makes me physically ill, and I thought quickly of how tormented Richard must be by his jealous disposition. I wondered if he had ever felt the quick desire to strangle Alfred Morgan that I now caught myself feeling to annihilate the entire Blake faction. They had no right to make Richard leave home upon such an occasion as this; or they should have finished their hateful business and sent him on back home for Thanksgiving. They certainly had no right to take him off with them to a foot-ball game for all the world to see—and have his name with theirs in the paper next morning.
"Major Blake had with him in his car, besides Mrs. Blake, Miss Berenice Blake, who returned last week from Denver, and Mr. Richard Chalmers."
I knew the horrid words by heart, yet I read them over and over. And even this was not the worst.On the front page of theTimeswas a cartoon representing Major Blake seated beside a little creek, angling persistently for a fish in midstream—a fish with Richard's handsome head and "Chalmers" printed in big letters across the side. The bait was a bag of gold and a handful of glory; and beneath it was written "Little fishie in the brook, can daddy catch him with a hook?"
Such a cartoon in Rufe's paper struck me as being pregnant with meaning. What did it portend? Why did Richard leave home at this time to spend Thanksgiving with old man Blake if it did not mean that he was entangled with him? How deeply entangled—and for what? Major Blake had some time ago given the anti-liquor forces to understand that they had not money enough for their campaign to make a union with them interesting to him. But the Appleton followers had been equally unsuccessful in trying to gain his support.Couldit be that he and Richard intended forming a separate faction where his own personal popularity should cut a tremendous figure in gaining for him what he wanted, and he could have the backing of Richard's friends among the temperance forces? But where would Richard come in then? Why should old manBlake give all the biggest portion of the plum to Richard, when he had never been governor himself?
I thought over the matter andthought—until I grew dizzy with the problem, yet I never found anything that could serve even as a half-way solution. But enough of my own grievances.
As I have said, Sophie and Evelyn are both miserable, too, though in entirely different ways. Evelyn is half ill, with a constantly threatening pain in her right side—a trouble which she has had for several years—and Sophie, poor girl, has stayed in her room most of the time because she is so disappointed in the way Mr. Maxwell has acted since he learned that she is a working-woman. Horrid cad! He has watched Sophie every minute she has been in his presence since that night, looking as if he were a detective and suspected her of carrying concealed weapons about her. Yet all the time there is a look of dumb misery in his eyes—sorrow andincredulity.
He has several times tried to get me off alone where he could talk to me of the occurrence Thanksgiving night, but I have been careful to avoid him, for I am as much disappointed in him as Sophie is. Each of them has tried to leave, but Mrs. Chalmers has insisted upon their not doing so. She is so upsetover Evelyn that she needs Sophie's skilled advice in nursing, although no open acknowledgment of the matter has been made. And she has insisted that Mr. Maxwell remain at least until Richard returns.
Meanwhile she has tried to get a message through to Richard in the city, but she has been so far unable to find him. Altogether it is rather a miserable household.
Another day; and it started so well and ended so queerly that I am not going to try to sleep for hours yet—until I have written the whole thing out so I can read it over and see whether or not it really happened, for I find it so hard to believe.
To begin at the beginning, Richard called up from the city this morning and explained to his mother that he had been on a business trip down in the country—far away from a telephone station, he said, and so he had not been able to communicate with her. He asked her to call me to the telephone and we had as satisfying a little talk as people in our position ever have over wires. He would be down home on the first train in the morning, he told me, and he insisted that I tell him something he might have the pleasure of bringing me.
"Oh, I'll excuse the olive branch," I replied in answer to this question, "for I'll be so glad to see you."
Glad to see him? Ah yes, so glad! And in the joy of the thought I forgot all about being jealous of the Blakes. With this restoration of happiness the day naturally passed more quickly to me, and I found myself wondering why Evelyn didn't get over that hurting in her side, and why Mrs. Chalmers still looked so anxious and why Sophie and Mr. Maxwell continued to eye each other so reproachfully when the one thought the other was not looking. Richard was coming home in the morning! Surely all would be well then!
Dinner was a dismal affair, for Evelyn was not any better—was not so well, Mrs. Chalmers said, with a look of great anxiety, although the doctor had not said positively what the trouble was. As soon as we had left the table Sophie followed Mrs. Chalmers to Evelyn's room, thus leaving Mr. Maxwell to a tête-à-tête evening with me.
There was a brilliant fire in the library and we both were attracted toward its cheer as we crossed the hall. He lit a cigarette and sat staring moodily at the little clouds of smoke which he puffed intothe air. Clearly he was not going to thrust conversation upon me. To make sure that he should have no encouragement to do so I began looking around vaguely for something to read. There was a pile of fresh papers which had come by the night's train lying folded on the table, but I have had little appetite for newspapers since the day of the fishy cartoon. I should not read any more of the horrid tales about him, but he should tell me all that there was to tell and I would believe him. But not a question did I expect to ask. His confidence should be entirely voluntary or not given at all.
No newspapers for me then this night; and I glanced around the room for something else. Something forbidding-looking and very deep I decided on as being best to keep Mr. Maxwell's conversational powers in abeyance. I went to one of the book-shelves which lined the walls. Running my hand along a line of Huxley's works I came toScience and the Christian Traditionand promptly decided that this was the very volume I needed to impress Mr. Maxwell that I was reading something very profound and needed all my wits about me.