"They don't see strangers every day, I take it," he thought absently; and suddenly he cast an inquiring eye at the heavens.
The night, so shining half an hour before, was becoming heavily overcast. Clouds had rolled up from nowhere and blotted out the moon. About him the night breeze was freshening with a certain significance; and now unexpectedly there fell upon his ear the faint far rumble of thunder. Decidedly, there would be rain, and that right soon. Varney quickened his pace.
At the end of that quiet block he came upon a crimson-cheeked lady, somewhat past her first youth and over-plump for beauty, who was engaged in putting up the shutters at her mother's grocery establishment. Glancing around casually at his approach, her glance became transfixed into a stare.
"Well!" she exclaimed in surprise and not without coquettishness—"if it ain't Mr. Ferris!"
"If it ain't Mr. Ferris—what then?" asked Varney. "For, madam, I assure you that it ain't."
The woman, taken aback by this denial, only stared and had no reply ready. But the young man, walking on, was set to thinking by this second encounter, and presently he mused: "I'm somebody's blooming double, that's what. I wonder whose."
And on that word, as though to get an answer to his speculation, he suddenly halted and turned.
He had now progressed nearly a block from the buxom young woman of the grocery. For some time, even before that meeting, he had been aware of light, steady footsteps behind him on the dark street, gaining on him. By this time they had come very near; and now as he wheeled sharply, with a vague anticipation of Peter's "old duck in a felt hat," he found himself face to face with quite a different figure—that of a thin young man whom he recognized.
"Bless us!" said Varney urbanely. "It's the student of manners again."
The pale young stranger stopped two paces away and gave back his look with the utmost composure.
"Still on my studies," said he, in his flat tones—"though I doubt," he added thoughtfully, "if that fully explains why I have followed you."
"Ah? Perhaps I may venture to ask what would explain it more fully?"
"Oh, certainly. My real motive was to suggest, purely because of a paternal interest I take in you, that you leave town to-morrow morning—you and your ferocious friend."
Varney eyed him amusedly. "But is not this somewhat—er—precipitate?"
"Oh, not a bit of it. In fact, you hardly require me to tell you, Beany, that you were a great fool to come back at all."
"Beany!"
"You don't mind if I sit down?"
A row of packing-cases clogged the sidewalk at the point where they stood, and the young man dropped down wearily upon one of them, and leaned back against the store-front.
"Beany?" repeated Varney.
"It was dark down on the river," observed the other slowly, "but the instant I saw you on the square, I recognized you, and so, my friend, will everybody else."
"With even better success, I trust, than you have done. For my name is not Beany, but indeed Varney—Laurence Varney—permit me—"
"Ah, well! Stick it out if you prefer. In any case—"
"But do tell me the name of this individual to whom I bear such a marked resemblance. I naturally—"
"The individual to whom you bear such a marked, I may say such a very marked, resemblance," said the stranger, mockingly, "is a certain Mr. Ferris Stanhope, a prosperous manufacturer of pink-tea literature. You never heard the name—of course. But never mind about that. I should advise you both to leave town anyway."
"Is it trespassing too far if I ask—"
"Any one who associates with little Hare, as I have a premonition that you two will do if you stay, is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward."
Varney came a step nearer and rested his foot on the edge of the packing-case.
"Now that," said he, "is by all odds the best thing you've said yet. Elucidate it a bit, won't you? I admit to some curiosity about that little tableau in the square—"
"Yes? Well, I owe you one for that box of matches, Beany—er—Mr.—and it would be rather asinine for you or your pugilistic partner to begin monkeying with our buzz-saw. I happened, you see, to overhear part of your talk with J. Pinkney Hare just now. How others might view it I know not, but to me it seemed only fair to warn you that that interesting young man must be shunned by the wise. As to the mayoralty, he has as much chance of getting in as a jack-rabbit has of butting a way through the Great Wall of China. For we have a great wall here of the sturdiest variety."
He meant, as he briefly explained, the usual System, and back of it the usual Boss: one Ryan, owner of the Ottoman saloon and the city of Hunston, who held the town in the hollow of his coarse hand, and was slowly squeezing it to death.
"The election," he went on listlessly, "is only two weeks off, but the rascal isn't lifting a finger. He doesn't have to. To-morrow night he holds what he calls his annual 'town-meeting'—a fake and a joke. The trustful people gather, listen to speeches by Ryan retainers, quaff free lemonade. Nominally, everybody is invited to speak; really only the elect are permitted to. I saw a reform candidate try it once, and it was interesting to see how scientifically they put a crimp in him."
"And J. Pinkney Hare?" queried Varney becoming rather interested.
Was everything, the young man explained, that Ryan was not—able, honest, unselfish, public-spirited. Studying the situation quietly for a year, he had uncovered a most unholy trail of graft leading to high places. But when he began to try to tell the people about it, he found his way hopelessly blocked at every turn.
"He can't even hire a hall," summarized the stranger. "Not to save his immortal soul. That was the meaning of the ludicrous exhibition a few minutes ago. In one word, he can't get a hearing. He might talk with the tongues of men and angels, but nobody will listen to him. It is a dirty shame. But what in the world can you expect? Lift a finger against the gang, and, presto, your job's gone, and you can't find another high or low. Ryan's money goes everywhere—into the schools, the church, the press. The press. That, of course, is the System's most powerful ally. The—infamousHollaston Gazette—"
"TheHollaston Gazette—is that published here?" asked Varney in surprise, for theGazettewas famous: one of those very rare small-town newspapers which, by reason of great age and signal editorial ability, have earned a national place in American journalism.
"Named after the county. You have heard of it?" said the young man in a faintly mocking voice, and immediately went on: "TheGazetteis eighty years old. Even now, in these bad times, everybody in the county takes it. They get all their opinions from it, ready-made. It is their Bible. A fool can see what a power such a paper is. For seventy-seven years theGazettefully deserved it. That was the way it won it. But all that is changed now. And the paper is making a great deal of money."
"It is crooked, then?"
"I said, did I not, that it was for Ryan?"
He lounged further back in the shadows upon his packing-case; he appeared not to be feeling well at all. Varney regarded him with puzzled interest.
"A very depressing little story," he suggested, "but after all, hardly a novel one. I don't yet altogether grasp why—"
"Your Jeffries of a friend is a red-hot political theorist, isn't he?" asked the other apathetically. "Our Hunston politicians are practical men. They are after results, and seek them with small regard, I fear, to copy-book precepts. You follow me? Rusticating strangers, visiting sociological students, itinerant idealists, these would do well to speak softly and walk on the sunny side of the road."
"You appear," said Varney, his curiosity increasingly piqued, "to speak of these matters with authority—"
"Rather let us say with certitude."
"Possibly you yourself have felt the iron-toothed bite of the machine?"
"Why not?"
The young man looked shocked; slowly his pale face took on a look of cynical amusement. "Yes, yes. Certainly. Who more so?" He appeared to hesitate a moment, and then added with a laugh which held a curious tinge of defiance: "In fact, I myself have the honor of being the owner and editor of theGazette—Coligny Smith, at your service—"
"Coligny Smith!" echoed Varney amazed.
The young man glanced up. "It was my father you have heard of. He died three years ago. However," he added, with an odd touch of pride, "he always said that I wrote the better articles."
There was a moment's silence. Varney felt by turns astonished, disgusted, sorry, embarrassed. Then he burst out laughing.
"Well, you have a nerve to tell me this. Smith. In doing so, you seem to have brought our conversation to a logical conclusion. I thank you for your kindly advice and piquant confession, and so, good evening."
Mr. Smith straightened on his packing-case and spoke with unexpected eagerness.
"Oh—must you go? The night's so young—why not—come up to the Ottoman and have something? I'll—I'd be glad to explain—"
"I fear I cannot yield to the editorial blandishments this evening."
"Well—I merely—"
"What?"
"Oh, nothing. But remember—you'll get into trouble if you stay."
Varney laughed.
He went on toward his waiting gig feeling vaguely displeased with the results of his half-hour ashore, and deciding that for the future it would be best to give the town a wide berth. The privacy of the yacht better suited his mission than Main Street, Hunston. However, the end was not yet. He had not reached the landing before a thought came to him which stopped him in his tracks.
Clearly he must see Peter, at once, before that impetuous enthusiast had had time to involve himself in anything, and tell him bluntly that he must leave the affairs of Hunston alone until their own delicate business had been safely disposed of.
In such a matter as this it was not safe to take chances. Varney had a curious feeling that young Mr. Smith's melodramatic warnings had been offered in a spirit of friendliness, rather than of hostility. Nevertheless, the eccentric young man had unmistakably threatened them. While Varney had been more interested by the man, personally, than by his whimsical menaces, the editor's conversation could certainly not be called reassuring. Smith owned a corrupt newspaper; he was a clever man and, by his own confession, an unscrupulous one, bought body and soul by the local freebooters; and if he thought the headlong intruder Maginnis important enough to warrant it, there were presumably no lengths to which he would not go to make the town uncomfortable for him, to the probable prejudice of their mission. Clearly, here was a risk which he, as Mr. Carstairs's emissary, had no right to incur. TheCyprianiwas in no position to stand the fire of vindictive yellow journalism. Besides, there was the complicating matter of his own curious resemblance to somebody whom, it seemed, Hunston knew, and not too favorably.
Considerably annoyed, Varney turned his face back toward the town. To avoid more publicity, he turned off the main thoroughfare to a narrow street which paralleled it, and, walking rapidly, came in five minutes to the street where Peter and the little candidate had left him. This street came as a surprise to him: Hunston's best "residence section" beyond doubt. It was really pretty, spaciously wide and flanked by handsome old trees. Houses rose at increasingly long intervals as one got away from the town; and they were for the most part charming-looking houses, set in large lawns and veiled from public scrutiny by much fine foliage.
Varney cast about for somebody who would give him his bearings, and had not far to look.
Puffing stolidly on the butt of an alleged cigar, into which he had stuck a sharpened match as a visible means of support, a boy who was probably not so old as he looked sat upon the curbstone at the corner, and claimed the world for his cuspidor. He was an ill-favored runt of a boy, with a sedate manner and a face somewhat resembling a hickory-nut.
Varney, approaching, asked him where Mr. Hare lived. Without turning around, or desisting an instant from the tending of his cigar (which, indeed, threatened a decease at any moment), the boy replied:
"Acrost an' down, one half a block. Little yaller house wit' green blinds and ornings. Yer could n't miss it. Yer party left dere ten minutes ago, dough."
"What party?" asked Varney puzzled.
"Tall big party wit' yaller hat, stranger here. Seen him beatin' it out the street for the road, him and Hare. Goin' some, they was."
"How did you know I was looking for that party?"
"Took a chanst," said the boy. "Do I win?"
His stoical gravity made Varney smile. "You do—a good cigar. That one of yours has one foot in the grave, hasn't it?"
"T'ank you, boss."
"By the way," he added casually, struck by a thought, "Mrs. Carstairs must live on this street somewhere, doesn't she? Which way?"
"Same way as yer party went. Last house on de street—Remsen Street. Big white one, up on a hill like."
Varney hurried off on the trail of his elusive friend. He was puzzled in the last degree to know why Peter, having just entered Hare's house, should have left it at once and gone racing off, with Hare, down this empty street toward the open country. The one explanation that occurred to him was on the whole an unwelcome one. This was that he had made an opening to introduce the subject of Mary Carstairs, and the grateful candidate had volunteered his friendly offices—perhaps to show Peter the house, perhaps actually to take him up and present him.
In the light of a depressed corner-lamp he glanced at his watch. Having supposed that it must be nearly nine o'clock, he was surprised to find that it was only a few minutes after eight. He had the handsome street to himself. The night had grown very dark, and the faint but continuous rumble of thunder was a warning to all pedestrians to seek shelter without delay. Varney's stride was swift. Whatever Peter meant to do, he wanted to overtake him before he did it, and gently lead him to understand, here at the outset, that he was a subordinate in this expedition, expected to do nothing without orders from above.
But he found himself at the end of the street, and saw the country road dimly winding on beyond, without having found a trace of Peter, or seen any other human being. Here, for all his hurry, he was checked for a moment by a sudden new interest. Mindful of the boy's succinct directions, he paused in the shadow of the wood, which here came to the sidewalk's edge, and looked across the street for the residence of Mrs. Carstairs.
Through the trees of a sloping lawn, his gaze fell at once upon a wide rambling white house, directly opposite, well back from the street and approached by a winding white driveway. The house was well lighted; there was a porch-lamp lit; over the carriage-gate hung a large electric globe. Despite the darkness of the night, Varney had a first-rate view. The house was big; it was white; unquestionably it was up on a hill like. In fact there could be no doubt in the world that this was the house he had come from New York to find.
The sight drew and interested him beyond all expectation. Presently, by a curious coincidence, something happened which increased his interest tenfold. His eye had run over the house, about the lawn, even up at the windows, taking in every detail. There was no sign of life anywhere. But now as he stood and watched, the swing front-door was unexpectedly pushed open, and, like some feat in mental telepathy, a girl stepped out upon the piazza.
Involuntarily Varney shrank back into the shadows, assuming by instinct the best conspirators' style, and glued his eyes upon the impelling sight. Not that the girl herself was peculiarly fascinating to the eye. The porch-light revealed her perfectly: a small, dark, nondescript child, not above thirteen years old, rather badly dressed and, to say truth, not attractive-looking in any way. But to Varney, at the moment, she was the most irresistibly interesting figure in the six continents.
She came to the top of the step and stood there, peering out into the darkness as though looking for some one. Varney, from his dark retreat stared back at her. There they stood unexpectedly face to face, the kidnapper and his quarry. A sudden wild impulse seized the young man to act immediately: to make a dash from his cover, bind the girl's mouth with his handkerchief, toss her over his shoulder, and fly with her to the yacht. That was the way these things ought to be done, not by the tedious and furtive methods of chicanery. But, since this man-like method was forbidden him, why should he not at least cross boldly and go in—a lost wayfarer inquiring for directions—anything to start up the vitally necessary acquaintance? Would he ever have a better chance?
The thought had hardly come to him before the child herself killed it. She turned as suddenly as she had come and disappeared into the house. That broke the spell; and Varney, interested by the discovery that his heart was beating above normal, slipped unseen from his lurking-place, and resumed his interrupted progress after Peter and Hare.
Beyond the Carstairs's fence of hedge, the houses stopped with the sidewalk. The highway, having no longer anything to keep up appearances for, dwindled into an ordinary country road, meandering through an ordinary country wood. What could have carried Peter out here it was impossible to conceive; but clearly something had, and Varney raced on, hoping at every moment to descry his great form looming up ahead of him out of the blackness.
What luck—what beautiful luck—to have found her in his very first hour in Hunston! It was half his work done in the wink of an eye. To-morrow morning, the first thing, he would return to this quiet street, watch at his ease for the child to come outdoors, saunter calmly from his hiding-place, make friends with her. By this time to-morrow night, in all human probability, he would be back in New York, his errand safely accomplished. That done, Peter could play politics to his heart's content. Meantime, it was more desirable than ever to tell him of these unexpected developments and deter him from taking any step which might complicate the game….
A loud thunderclap crashed across the train of his thought. Another and a worse one crowded close upon it. He glanced up through the trees into the inky cavern of the skies, and a single large drop of water spattered upon his upturned forehead.
"Hang it!" he thought disgustedly. "Here comes the rain."
It came as though at his word, and with unbelievable suddenness. Thunder rolled; the breeze stiffened into a gale. Another drop fell upon his hat, and then another, and another. The young man came to an unwilling halt.
But he immediately saw that further pursuit was, for the moment at least, out of the question. The storm broke with a violence strangely at variance with the calm of the earlier evening. The heavens opened and the floods descended. Shelter was to be found at once, if at all, but as he hesitated, he remembered suddenly that he had not passed a house in five minutes. In the same moment his eye fell upon a little cottage just ahead of him, unlighted and barely perceptible in the thick darkness, standing off the road not a hundred feet away. He made for it through the driving rain and wind, stepped upon the narrow porch, discovered immediately that it gave him no protection at all, and knocked loudly upon the shut door. He got no answer. Trying it with a wet hand he perceived that it was unlocked; and without more ado, he opened it and stepped inside.
It was evidently, as he had surmised, an empty house. The hall was dark and very quiet. He leaned against the closed front door and dipped into his pockets for a match. Behind him the rain fell in torrents, and the turbulent wind dashed after it and hurled it against the streaming windows. It had turned in half an hour from a peaceful evening to a wild night, a night when all men of good sense and good fortune should be sitting secure and snug by their own firesides. And where, oh where, was Peter?
Speculating gloomily on this and still exploring his pockets for a match, he heard a noise not far away in the dark, and knew suddenly that he was not alone. The next moment a voice floated to him out of the blackness near at hand, clear, but a little irresolute, faintly frightened.
"Didn't some one come in? Who is there?"
It was a woman's voice and a wholly charming one. There could hardly have been its match in Hunston.
"What a very interesting town!" the young man thought. "People to talk to every way you turn."
Varney called reassuringly into the gloom: "I sincerely beg your pardon for bursting in like that. I—had no idea there was any one here."
There was a second's pause.
"N—no," said the pretty voice, hesitatingly. "You—you couldn't—of course."
"But please tell me at once," he said, puzzled by this—"have I taken the unforgivable liberty of breaking into your house?"
"My house?" And he caught something like bewildered relief in her voice."Why—I—was thinking that I had broken into yours."
Varney laughed, his back against the door.
"If it were, I'm sure I should be able to offer you a light at the least. If it were yours, now that I stop to think—well, perhaps itwouldbe a little eccentric for you to be sitting there in your parlor in the inky dark."
To this there came no reply.
"I suppose you, like me," he continued courteously, "are an unlucky wayfarer who had to choose hastily between trespassing and being drowned."
"Yes."
Inevitably he found himself wondering what this lady who shared his stolen refuge could be like. That she was a lady her voice left no doubt. His eye strained off into the Ethiopian blackness, but could make neither heads nor tails of it.
"Voices always go by contraries," he thought. "She's fifty-two and wears glasses."
Aloud he said: "But please tell me quite frankly—am I intruding?"
"Not at all," said the lady, only that and nothing more.
"Perhaps then you won't object if I find a seat? Leaning against a door is so dull, don't you think?"
He groped forward, hands outstretched before him, stumbled against the stairway which he sought, and sat down uncomfortably on the next-to-the-bottom step. Then suddenly the oddness of his situation rushed over him, and, vexed though he was with the chain of needless circumstances which had brought him into it, he with difficulty repressed a laugh.
An hour ago he had been lounging at peace upon the yacht, looking forward to nothing more titillating than bed at the earliest respectable hour. Now he was sitting with a strange lady of uncertain age in an unlighted cottage on a lonely country road, while a howling thunderstorm raved outside imprisoning him for nobody could say how long. In the interval between these two extremes, he had discovered that he was a "double," been threatened with violence, hopelessly lost Peter, and found Mary Carstairs. Surely and in truth, a pretty active hour's work!
On the tin roof of the cottage the rain beat a wild tattoo. Within, the silence lengthened. Under the circumstances, Varney considered reserve on the lady's part not unnatural; but a little talk, as he viewed the matter, would tend to help the dreary evening through.
He cleared his throat for due notice and began with a laugh.
"I was industriously chasing two men from town when the storm caught me. You know what I mean—not drumming them out of the city, but merely pursuing them in this general direction. I wonder if by any chance you happened to pass them on the road?"
"N-no, I believe not."
"A very small man, very well-dressed, and a very large man, very badly dressed, wearing a kind of curious, rococo straw hat. I know," he mused, "that you could not have forgotten that hat. Once seen—"
"Oh!" she exclaimed with sudden evidences of interest—"do tell me—is the smaller man you mention Mr. Hare?"
"He is indeed," he answered surprised. "You know him? Oh, yes,—certainly! In Hunston—"
"Know him!" said she in tones of hardly suppressed indignation. "It is he who is responsible for my being caught in this—this annoying predicament."
At something in the way the lady said that, Varney unconsciously chipped twenty years off her age and conceded that she might be no more than thirty-two.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said with a laugh. "I should say that Mr.Hare has already had quite enough troubles for one night."
"Oh—then you have seen him this evening?"
"I had the pleasure of meeting him on the square not half an hour ago."
Each waited for the other to say more; and it was the lady who yielded. She went on hesitatingly, yet somehow as if she were not unwilling to justify herself to this stranger in the curious position in which she found herself.
"It—is very strange—and unlike him," she said doubtfully. "He was to call for me—at quarter past seven—and take me home. I was at the seamstress's, perhaps quarter of a mile up the road. I waited and waited—and then—Oh—what was that, do you know?"
"Only this old floor cracking. Don't flatter it by noticing. How odd to find, meeting in this way, that we are both searching for the same man. Isn't it?"
"It—seems to me even odder to find that he is not searching for me."
She was sitting, so he judged from the sound, about fifteen feet away. There was coldness in her voice as she spoke of the candidate. Varney felt sorry for that young man when he next held converse with her. From her voice he had also gathered that the dark rather frightened her, and that the presence of an unknown man had not allayed her uneasiness; though something of her reserve had vanished, he thought, when she found that the intruder knew Mr. Hare.
"Oh, but he was—is!" he cried encouragingly.
"I'm positive that he's searching for you at this minute. Why, of course—certainly! That would explain the whole thing."
Sitting damply on the dark stairway, he told of J. Pinkney Hare's evidently impromptu experiences in the public square, which had undoubtedly knocked from his mind all memory of his engagement at the seamstress's; and of the sudden recollection of it, which, there could be no question, was what had sent him and his new friend bursting out of the house and tearing for dear life up the road.
"I'll bet," said he, "that not a minute after you turned into shelter, they raced by here after you. Now they're kicking their heels at the sewing-lady's, probably soaked through, and wild to know if you got home safely. Oh, he's being punished for his sins, never fear."
"I—am sorry for your friend," her voice replied. "And I believe that I forgive Mr. Hare—now that I know what detained him. I think I must have heard them go by—just after I got in. Once I was sure I heard voices, but, of course, I was expecting Mr. Hare to be alone."
"Ha!" thought Varney. "A Hunston romance!"
"You don't know Maginnis," he answered gloomily. "Nobody in the world ever stays alone long when Maginnis can possibly get to him."
He heard something that he thought might be a faint laugh. And immediately ten years more came off the lady's age, and she stood at twenty-two. The young man began to consider with less distaste his obvious duty of escorting her home.
In the momentary silence, wood somewhere near them once more creaked loudly and scarily.
"Oh!" came her voice out of the blackness. "Would you mind striking a match and seeing if there isn't a lamp or something we could light?"
"But I haven't a match—that's just it! If Ihad—! Why I assure you I've been wishing for nothing so much as a light ever since you—ever since I came in."
"If I were a man—" she began, vexedly, but suddenly checked herself."Are you quite sure you haven't a singleone?"
"I'll gladly look again in all my twenty-seven pockets. I've been doing it ever since I arrived, and I've gotten rather to like it. But I'm awfully afraid it's a wild goose chase."
Crack! Crack! went the mysteriously stirring woodwork, for all the world like a living thing; and the lady again said "Oh!" And after that she said: "You are not—in this room, are you?"
"I'm sitting quietly on the steps digging around for matches," he said."Would you prefer to have me come in there?"
"Would you mind—? Not that I'm in the least frightened, but—"
"It will give me great pleasure to come—faithfully searching my pockets as I grope forward. Thus," he said, laughing, "I must grope only with my head and feet, which is a slightly dangerous thing to do. Ouch! Where are you, please?"
"Here."
"'Here' is not very definite, you know. I have nothing to steer by but my ear. Would you mind talking a good deal for a while?"
"It is not often," she said, with further signs of a thawing in her manner, "that a woman gets an invitation like that."
"Opportunity knocks at your door, golden, novel, and unique."
"The luck of it is that I can't think of anything to say. Would you care to have me hum something?"
Off came the lady's glasses, never to be donned again in fancy or in life; and Varney was ready to admit that there might be ladies in Hunston who were worse-looking than she by far. In the Stygian blackness he collided with a chair and paused, leaning upon the back of it.
"I'd like extremely to have you hum. From your voice, I—I'm sure that you do it div—awfully well. But since you seem to leave it to me, I'd honestly rather have you do something else."
"Yes?"
Larry laughed. "It's a game. A—an evening pastime—a sort of novel guessing contest. Played by strangers in the dark. You see—I must tell you that ever since you first spoke, my mind has been giving me little thumbnail sketches—each one different from the last—of what you look like."
She said nothing to this; so he laughed again.
"Oh, it's not mere curiosity, you know. It's purely a scientific matter with me. The science of deduction. The voice, you know, tells little or nothing. I may say that I have made something of a study of voices, and have discovered that they always go by contraries. For this reason," he laughed gayly, "when you first spoke, I—but perhaps I am simply tiring you?"
There was a small pause, and then the lady spoke, with apparent reluctance:
"I am not tired."
Varney smiled into the great darkness. "Well, when I first heard your voice—ha, ha!—I made up my mind that you could not possibly be less than fifty-two."
He was rewarded with a faint laugh: this time there could be no doubt of it.
"You remember that mythological tunnel where everybody went in old and came out young. This conversation has been like that. Since we have talked," said Varney, "I have knocked thirty years off your age. But much remains to be told—and that is the game. Are you dark?"
"Are you punning?"
"This is no punning matter," he said; and began his third exploration of himself for a match. And above them the water continued to thud upon the roof like a torrent broken out of a dam.
"This istoobad!" breathed the lady impatiently, and plainly she was not speaking to Varney. "I believe it's coming down harder and harder every minute!"
"Yes," he answered cheerfully, "the good old rain is at it in earnest. We're probably fixed for hours and hours. I might argue, you know," he added, "that I have a right to know these things. The box of matches I just gave away like a madman would have told me, and no questions asked. Matches and lamps you have none, but such as you have—"
"Could you not talk of something else, please?"
Varney laughed. "Certainly, if I must. Only I've been rather generous about this, I think, showing you my hand and giving you the chance to laugh at me. You see, for all I know you may be fifty-two, after all. Or even sixty-two—Oh, glory! Hallelujah!"
"What on earth is the matter?"
"Oh, nothing! Nothing at all! Just I have found a match. That's all!"
"Amatch! Splendid!" she cried, and her voice suddenly seemed to come from a higher point in the darkness, as though she had risen. "Just one! Oh, we—you must be extremely careful with it."
"The trouble is," he said with exaggerated dejection, "it's pretty wet.I don't know whether it will strike or not."
"You mustmakeit strike. Oh, it will be—unpardonable—if you don't make it strike!"
"Then I'll throw my soul into the work. I'll concentrate my whole will-power upon it. On the back of this chair here—shall I?"
"All right. I'll concentrate too. Are—you ready?"
"Ready it is," said Varney.
Gently he drew the match across the rough wood of the chair-back, his ear all eager expectancy—and nothing happened. Thrice he did this fruitless thing, and something told him that a large section of the sulphur had been rubbed away into eternity.
"It's nip and tuck," he breathed, stifling an impulse to laugh. "Nip and tuck!"
Pressing the match's diminished head firmly against the wood, he drew it downward vigorously and long. There was a faint crackle, a little splutter, and—glory of glories!—a tiny flame faltered out into the darkness.
"Oh—be careful!"
Varney cupped his hand about the little flare, and for a moment ceased to breathe. Then it caught more fully, and it was evident to both that the victory was won.
He had meant to look instantly about for lamp or candle to light; but if all his future happiness had hinged upon it, it seemed to him that he could not have helped one glance at the lady who shared that shelter and that match with him.
She stood a few feet away, regarding him breathlessly, hatted, gloved, all in white, one hand resting lightly on the center-table, one folded about the crook of a dainty draggled parasol. The match threw a small and ghostly light, but he saw her, and she wore no veil.
"Why—why—I—"
"Oh, quick! There's a lamp just behind you."
He caught himself with a start. By incredible luck a lamp was at his very elbow; as it was the match died on the wick. He put back the chimney and shade, turned up the wick, and the room was bathed in golden light.
It was a good-sized room, evidently newly furnished and as neat as a bandbox. The empty book-case on which the lamp rested was of handsome quartered oak, which transiently struck him as curious. But in the next instant he turned away and forgot all about it.
The lady stood where she had risen and was regarding him without a word. The lamplight fell full upon her. He came nearer, and his waning assurance shook him like a pennant in the wind and was suddenly gone. The sense ofcamaraderiewhich the dark had given faded; his easy friendliness left him; and he was an embarrassed young man face to face with a girl whose sudden beauty seemed to overwhelm him with the knowledge that he did not so much as know her name.
"None of my thumbnail sketches," he faltered, "made you look like this."
She had rested her wet parasol against the table, where a slow pool gathered at the ferrule, and was pulling on more trimly her long white gloves. Now she looked at him rather quizzically, though her young eyes reflected something of his own unsteadying embarrassment.
"No," she said, "I shall not be sixty-two for—for some time yet. But of course it was a game—a pastime—where I had a—little the advantage. Do you know, I—I am not entirely surprised, after all."
"Oh, aren't you?" he said, completely mystified, but as charmed by her smile as he was by the subtle change in her manner which had come with the lighting of that match.
"And itwasnice of you to tell me that polite story at the beginning," she said. "And quick—and clever. When I heard the front door burst open, the first thing I thought of, really, was that it must be you."
"I can't think," he said, unable to take his eyes off her, "what in the world you are talking about."
She laughed with something of an effort, and sat down exquisitely in a cruel cane chair. "Well, then—doyou forgive me for taking possession of your house like this? You will, won't you? I can't be silly, now, and pretend not to know you. But really I never dreamed that you—"
"Is it possible," he broke in stormily, "that you are mistaking me for that insufferable Stanhope?"
She looked at him startled, dumfounded; in her eyes amazement mingled with embarrassment; then her brow wrinkled into a slow, doubtful smile.
"Oh-h—I beg your pardon! I—did n't understand. But is it my fault that I've seen your picture a hundred times? Yes, I suppose it is; for, at the risk of making you crosser still, I'll confess that I—I cut it out and framed it."
Varney leaned his elbow on the mantel and faced her.
"You have made a mistake," he said. "I am not Mr. Stanhope."
"You mean," she laughed, very pretty and pink, "that it is no affair of mine that you are."
A kind of desperation seized him. It was evident that she did not believe him, just as Coligny Smith had not believed him, and the plump young woman of the grocery who had used his Christian name. He was almost ready not to believe himself. However, there were cards in his pocket; he got one of them out, and coming nearer, handed it to her.
"My name is Laurence Varney," he said mechanically, for that slogan seemed fated to meet skeptics everywhere. "I am from New York and have happened to come up here on a friend's yacht to—to spend a few days. You have made a mistake."
She took the card, held it lightly in her gloved hand, bowed to him with mocking courtesy.
"I am very glad to meet you—Mr. Laurence Varney! I—I am from New York, too, and have happened to come up here on the New York Central with my mother to spend a few years. And I live in a white house half a mile down the road, where I ought to have been an hour ago. And I am Mary Carstairs, who has read all your books and thinks that they—Oh"—she broke off all at once: for there was no missing the look in his astounded face. "What in the world have I said now?"
"You—can't be—Mary Carstairs!" he cried.
"Is—that so terrible?" she laughed, a little uncertainly.
But he recovered in a flash, aware of the criticalness of that moment, and met her bewildered gaze steadily.
"Terrible? Certainly not. Your name surprised me a little. That was all.I thought, you see, that you were somebody else."
"Yes? Who?"
"I really—do not know exactly. Do forgive my stupidity, won't you? As I say, I was just a little surprised."
"You would explain to a man," she said, "and don't you think you ought to to me? If you did not know exactly who you thought I was, why should my name surprise you so?"
He picked up a hideous china swan from a smart little oak stand and examined it with excessive interest.
"It was merely that I happen to know some one in New York who had mentioned you—and done it in a way to make me think you were not—very old. In fact, I had supposed that Miss Mary Carstairs wore short dresses and a plait down her back. You see," he said, with a well-planned smile, "how absurdly wrong I was. And then, just now, somebody pointed out your house to me. There was a girl standing in the doorway—a small, dark girl, with—"
A peal like chimes cut him short. "Dear Jenny Thurston! Our seamstress's little girl. She is spending the day with my mother, while I've been spending most of the day withhermother! Turn about! But I wish you'd tell me," she said, "who it is that could have spoken of me—to you. How interesting that we have a friend in common!"
"Not a friend," he said grimly, at the window. "Only a former— acquaintance of yours—somebody that I imagine you have pretty well forgotten. I'll tell you—another time. But I see it has stopped raining, Miss—Miss—Miss Carstairs. Perhaps we had better take advantage of the lull to start?—for I hope you are going to let me act for Mr. Hare, and walk home wih you."
"Oh—would you! Then indeed we had!" she said rising at once. "I am horribly late now: I know my mother is frantic. I don't mind your not telling me that, really! But—it is odd that you should have spoken of my age twice to-night. Shall I tell you something, Mr. Stanhope—to show you why I have had to give up pigtails? This is my birthday: I am nineteen to-day!"
She raised her eyes, shining, heavy-fringed, deep as the sea and bluer, and looked at him. His own fell instantly. A shade of annoyance flitted across his still face.
"It is a delightful surprise," he said, mechanically. "But you must not call me Mr. Stanhope, please, Miss Carstairs."
"Why—mayn't I call you by your name?"
"My name," said Varney, "in fairly legible print, is on the card which you hold in your hand."
She raised her eyes and looked at him, perplexed, hesitating, a little mortified, like one who has encountered an unlooked-for rebuff. "Forgive me," she ventured rather shyly, "but do you think it would be possible for you to—to keep an incog here—where you must have so many friends? If you want to do that—to try it—of course I'll not tell a soul. But I'd like it very much if you could trust—me, who have known you through your books for so long."
"I should be quite willing to trust you, Miss Carstairs, but there is nothing to trust you about. I am not incog. I am not the author. I have written no books whatever—"
"Ah! Then good-bye," she said with a swift change of manner, starting at once for the door. "I shall not trouble you to walk home with me. Thank you again for giving me shelter and light during the storm."
"Will you be good enough to wait one minute?"
She paused with one gloved hand on the knob, cool, resolute, a little angry, the blue battery of her eyes fixing him across her white embroidered shoulder. But he had turned away, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his coat, brow rumpled into a frown, jaw set to anathema of the plight in which a needless fortune had plunged him.
If he let Uncle Elbert's daughter go like this, he might as well put theCyprianiabout at once for New York, for he knew that he would never have the chance to talk with her again. With engaging young friendliness which overrode reserve, she had been moved to ask his confidence, and he had angered her, even hurt her feelings, it seemed, by appearing to withhold it. In return she had thrown down the issue before him, immediate and final. Abstract questions of morals, and there were new ones of great seriousness now, would have to wait. Should he allow her to think that he was another man, or should he bid her good-bye and abandon his errand?
There was no alternative: she had made that unmistakable. His oath to her father came suddenly into his mind. After all, was it not a little absurd to boggle over one small deception when the whole enterprise, as now suddenly revealed, was to be nothing but one continuous and colossal one?
"Miss—Miss Carstairs," said Varney, "withyouI shall not argue this. I am going to let you think I am whoever you want. We needn't say anything more about it, need we? Only—I'll ask you to call me by the name I gave you, please, and, so far as you can, to regard me that way. Is that—a bargain?"
Mary Carstairs stood at the threshold of the lighted room, looking at him from under her wide white hat, eyes shining, lips smiling, cheeks faintly flushed with a sense of the triumph she had won.
"Of course," she said. "And I don't think you'll need ever be sorry for having trusted me—Mr. Varney!"
He bowed stiffly. "If you will kindly open the door, I will blow out the lamp and give myself the pleasure of taking you home."
They left the hospitable cottage of Ferris Stanhope, and went out into the night, side by side, Varney and Mary Carstairs. The young man's manner was deceptively calm, but his head was in a whirl. However, the one vital fact about the situation stood out in his mind like a tower set on a hill. This was that Uncle Elbert's daughter was walking at his elbow, on terms of acquaintanceship and understanding. The thing had happened with stunning unexpectedness, but it had happened, and the game was on. The next move was his own, and what better moment for making it would he ever have?
The road was dark and wet. Rain-drops from the trees fell upon them as they walked, gathered pools splashed shallowly under their feet. Suddenly Varney said:
"Do you happen to be interested in yachts, Miss Carstairs? Mine is anchored just opposite your house, I believe, and it would be a pleasure to show her to you sometime."
Peter had not yet returned to the yacht when Varney went to bed that night. Like the Finnegan of song, he was gone again when Varney rose next morning. Indeed, it was only too clear that his Celtic interests had been suddenly engrossed by matters much nearer his heart than the prospect, as he saw the thing, of spanking a naughty child.
"He was off by half-past eight, sir," the steward, McTosh, told Varney at breakfast. "He said to tell you to give yourself no uneasiness, sir; that he was only going to Mr. Hare's—I think was the name—for a short call, and would return by ten o'clock."
"What else did he say?"
"Well, sir, he was saying how the poltix of the village is not all they might be, but he seemed very cheerful, sir, and took three times to the chops."
At dinner-time last night such extraordinary behavior from his fellow-conspirator would have both disturbed and angered Varney. At breakfast-time this morning it hardly interested him. He had employed his walk from the cottage of refuge to the Carstairs front gate to unbelievable advantage. In fact, his mission in Hunston seemed to be all over but the shouting, and until the moment of final action arrived, there appeared no reason why Peter should not employ his time in any way he saw fit.
The heavy storm had scoured the air, and the world was bright as a new pin. In the shaded solitude of the after-deck, Mr. Carstairs's agent sat in an easy-chair with a cigarette, and thought over the remarkable happenings of his first night in Hunston. In retrospect young Editor Smith seemed to be but the ordered instrument of fate, dispatched in a rowboat to draw him against his will from the yacht to the town, where all his business was neatly arranged for his doing. Certainly it appeared as if the hand of intelligent destiny must have been in it somewhere. No mere blind luck could have driven him half a mile into the country to the one spot in all Hunston—impossibly unlikely as it was—where he could become acquainted with Uncle Elbert's daughter without the formality of an introduction.
Uncle Elbert! How desperately the old man must desire his daughter to have planned a mad scheme like this with a subterfuge at the expense of his best friend cunningly hidden away in the heart of it. Yet, after the first staggering flash, Varney had found it impossible to be angry with Mr. Carstairs. He only felt sorry for him, sorrier than he had ever felt for anybody in his life. The old man's madness and his deceit were but the measure of his desire for his daughter. And the more he desired her, so it seemed to Varney, the more he was entitled to have her.
Interrupting his meditations, the steward approached on silent feet, bearing a flat brown-paper package in his hand. It appeared that the under-steward had just returned from a marketing tour in Hunston, had met Mr. Maginnis on the street, and been ordered to take back the parcel to Mr. Varney.
"All right, McTosh," said Varney.
He broke the string with some curiosity and pulled off the wrappers.Within was nothing but a copy of a current literary monthly.
A present of a magazine from Peter! This was a delicate apology for his remissness, indeed. "He will be sending me chocolates next," thought Varney, not a little puzzled.
He turned the pages curiously. Soon, observing a bit of brown wrapping-paper sticking out between the leaves, he opened the magazine at that point and found himself looking at a picture; and he sat still and stared at it for a long time.
It was the full-page portrait of a young man of some thirty years: a rather thin young man with a high forehead, a straight nose, and a smallish chin. The face was good-looking, but somehow not quite attractive. About the eyes was an expression faintly unpleasant, which the neat glasses did not hide. On the somewhat slack lip was a slight twist, not agreeable, which the well-kept mustache could not conceal. Still it was an interesting face, clever, assured, half-insolent. To Varney, it was exceptionally interesting; for removing the mustache and eye-glasses, it might have passed anywhere for his own.
Below the portrait was printed this legend:
The popular author of "Rosamund," etc., who will reopen the old Stanhope cottage near Hunston, New York, and spend the autumn there upon a new novel.
Mr. Stanhope's health has not been good of late, and his physicians have recommended an extended stay in this quiet Hudson River country.
* * * * *
Here was that "Mr. Ferris," whom the young lady of the grocery had coyly saluted; the "Beany," whom the pale young editor had bluntly bidden to leave town; and the literary celebrity whom Miss Mary Carstairs so evidently and so warmly admired. Varney stared at the portrait with a kind of fascination. Now he saw many points of difference between the face of "the popular author" and his own. The resemblance was only general, after all. Still it was undoubtedly strong enough to warrant all kinds of mistakes.
What a very extraordinary sort of thing to have happen!
Suddenly his eye fell upon a penciled line in the white margin above the picture which had at first escaped him:
"On no account leave the yacht till I come back. Vitally important."
Varney pitched the magazine across the deck with an irritated laugh. Peter—utterly ignorant of how matters stood—attempting to fire off long-distance orders and direct his movements. The splendid gall!
As it chanced, he had no occasion to leave the yacht, either before or after Peter got back. His work was done. He made himself comfortable with morning papers and a novel—not one of Mr. Stanhope's—and began to seek beguilement.
But his reading went forward rather fitfully. There were long intervals when his book, "eleventh printing" though it was, slipped forgotten to his knees, and he sat staring thoughtfully over the sunny water….
Peter failed to keep his promise about returning to the yacht at ten o'clock. In fact, it was four o'clock that afternoon when he arrived, and at that, the manner in which he sprang up the stair indicated him as a man who had but few moments to spare to yachts and that sort of thing.
Varney, at his ease upon the transom, watched his friend's approach with a quizzical eye.
"Greetings, old comrade! How did you leave them all in Hunston?"
Peter, who, truth to tell, had been looking forward to bitter personal denunciation, looked somewhat relieved, and laughed. However, his manner suggested little of hang-dog consciousness of guilt; it was far too absorbed and business-like for that. He dropped down into a chair by Varney and swabbed the back of his neck with a damp-looking handkerchief.
"Larry, who'd have dreamed last night that we were parting for all this time?"
"Well, not I for one."
"Awfully sorry about it all, and I know you'll think I'm acting like a funny kind of helper. I hadn't the faintest idea of bottling you up on the yacht all day like this, but—well, you might say, Larry, that a man couldn't help it to save his life. I certainly meant to be back by the time you had finished breakfast and explain the whole situation to you—there are a deuced lot of complications, you know—but one thing led right on to another and—good Lord! I couldn't find a minute with a fine-tooth comb."
"It's all right, statesman. You don't hear me making any complaints. All I ask is a littlerésuméof what you've been doing since you so cleverly lost me. In Reform to the ears, I suppose?"
Peter again looked rather surprised at his chief's easy indifference.
"You want that part of it first? Well," he said rapidly, "I've been trying to do four days' work for Reform in one, and a pinch it's been to make both ends meet, I can tell you. At it practically without a break since I left you last night. J. Pinkney took me right in and bared his soul. Said he was down and out and beaten to a fluid. A clever little devil fast enough, but no more idea of how to play the game than a baby baboon. When he caught on to what I wanted to do for him, he would have fallen on my neck except that he isn't that kind. That was this morning. I worked out my idea in the still watches: couldn't sleep for thinking of it. It just means this: if my plans carry through Hare gets the biggest hearing to-night that this old town can give. And I think they'll carry all right. You wouldn't be interested in the details. Now this other thing—"
"Oh, but I would, though! Give me at least a peep behind the scenes before you dash on. What about these plans of yours?"
Peter laid down the newspaper with which he had been busily fanning himself. A sudden light came into his eyes.
"I'll tell you just how it all happened," he said in an eager voice. "Only I'll have to hurry, as I'm due back in town right away—that is, of course, unless you should need me for anything. Well, I left Hare last night after only a couple of hours' talk, listening to the same old story of boss-rule, and giving him, if I do say it, some cracking good practical pointers. By the way, we were interrupted at that. Hadn't got started before Hare remembered that he'd promised to bring some girl home from somewhere, and dragged me off a mile down the road, only to find out afterwards that she'd gone home with somebody else. Made me tired. I left him about ten o'clock and started down Main Street for the river, meaning to come straight back here. But as I was footing it along, thinking over my talk with Hare and attending to my own business, who should brace me but that pale-faced rascal we saw playing dead in the rowboat. This time theposeurwas lying flat on some packing-cases in front of a store, and who do you suppose he turned out to be?"
"The brains of the machine," said Varney.
He told briefly of his own meeting with Coligny Smith at the same spot two hours earlier, and of the editor's stagey warnings.
"Exactly the way he did me!" cried Peter. "Saved the announcement of who he was for the grandfinalein Act V. I got mad as a wet hen, told him what I thought of him in simple language, and then when the grafter twitted me to go and do something about it, I broke loose and swore that I'd make Hare Mayor of Hunston if I had to buy the little two-by-twice town to do it. Told him to pack his trunk, for all the crooks would soon be traveling toward the timber. So then I turned right around, hiked back to Hare's, told him what I'd done, gave him my hand on it, and pulled out the old family check-book. This morning I went to him and laid before him the greatest scheme that ever was. You know Hare can't get a hall to speak in for love or money—nobody dares rent him one; he can't buy an inch of space in theGazette; he can't put spreads on the billboards without having 'em pasted out in the night. To-night the whole thing's been done for him—Ryan's big town-meeting. Well, we're going to try toswipe that meeting—do you see? I'm getting in some husky fellows from New York to see fair play, and so on. Oh, it's a bully chance—you can see! I've spent a nice bunch of father's money working the scheme up, and, by George! I believe we are going to get by with it. If we do—well, we give this town the biggest shock it's had in years, and that's the way reform begins, Larry.Shock!"
Something of his contagious enthusiasm spread to and fired Varney. Fate had thrown in their way a plucky and honest man engaged in an apparently hopeless fight against overwhelming powers of darkness. He deserved help. And what possible risk was there now when theCypriani'swork was practically done?
"I can't say," continued Peter dutifully, "that this is exactly playing the quiet onlooker, as my orders read. As I said last night, I consider that this excursion into politics will help our little business, not interfere with it. It will divert attention. It will seem to explain why we are here. But if you don't agree with me, if you want me to drop it—"
"No," said Varney, slowly. "I don't."
"Good for you, old sport!" cried Peter, evidently relieved. "Needless to say, I'm right on the job whenever you need me. And nothing's going to happen. Trust me. Now as to this other matter. You got that magazine I sent this morning?"
"Yes. Thanks for the picture of my twin brother. But why couldn't I leave the yacht till you got back?"
Peter stared. "Why, just that, of course. Deuced unfortunate coincidence, isn't it? Everybody in town is going to think that you are this fellow Stanhope."
"Well?"
"Well? Oh, I forgot—you haven't heard. Well, from the stories that are floating round town to-day, Stanhope is a cad of the original brand. He was born here—lived here until he was twenty-one or two. Women were his trouble. The climax came about twelve years ago. The girl was named Orrick—Mamie Orrick, I believe. Nobody knows exactly what became of her, but they practically ran Stanhope out of the town then. Well—there it is."
He paused long enough to light one of his Herculean cigars, employing his hat as a wind-shield, and rapidly continued: "It's very curious and strange, and all that, but there it is. A month or so ago theGazetteannounced that Stanhope was coming back to Hunston. Last night you were seen on the square, and now the news has spread like wildfire that the author has arrived. Hare heard a lot of gossip on the street to-day. He's lived here only a few years and doesn't know anything personally; but he says the old feeling against Stanhope seems to have revived as though it had all happened yesterday. Orrick, the girl's father, a half-witted old dotard, was heard to say that he would shoot on sight. There are three or four others besides Orrick who've got personal grudges too. If any of these meet you, there is almost sure to be trouble. How is that for a little complication?"
"And this was the reason you sent me word to lock myself up on theCypriani? You're a bird, Peter. Not that it made any difference, but I ventured to suppose that my leaving before you got back would interfere with some plans you had been making for me, and—"
"It would interfere with some plans I have been making for you, in a general way, to have you assassinated."
"Stuff. Ten to one all these stories that somebody has been so careful to have get back to you are right out of the whole cloth—"
"What's the use of setting up your cranky opinions against the hard facts? The plain truth is that everybody who ever heard of Stanhope is going to give you the cold shoulder for a dog; we can depend absolutely on that."
But Varney had his own reasons for depending on nothing of the sort.
"You've been imposed upon, Peter. In fact, one of the population mistook me for the author last night, and instead of giving me the cold shoulder, as you say, she seemed to think that being Stanhope was the best credentials that a man could have."
"She? Who're you talking about?"
"I'm talking about Uncle Elbert's daughter, Miss Mary Carstairs. I had the pleasure of meeting her last night."
"The devil you did!" cried Peter, laughing with astonishment. "You certainly walk off with the prize for prompt results. How in the world did you manage it?"
Varney told him succinctly how he had managed it.
"Fine! Fine! Honestly, I was getting afraid that you never could do it at all, with the rotten reputation they've pinned on you here. Good enough! Still it's absurd to cite the opinion of a little child in a matter like this."
"It depends upon what you call a little child, doesn't it? MissCarstairs is nineteen years old."
Peter straightened in his chair with a jerk, and stared at him as though one or the other had suddenly gone mad.
"Nineteen! Why, I thought she was twelve."
"So did I."
"Why, how in Sam Hill did you ever make such an asinine mistake?"
Varney gave an impatient laugh.
"What difference does that make now? My impression was that the separation took place about eight years ago. It may have been twelve. My other impression was that the girl was about four at the time. She may have been eight instead. If it's of any interest to you, I should say that the mistake was natural enough. Besides, Uncle Elbert rather helped it along."
"Uncle Elbert rather lied to you—that's what he did," said Peter with the utmost quietness.
There was a considerable silence. Peter pulled frowningly at his cigar; it had gone out but he was too absorbed to notice it, and mechanically pulled on. Presently he raised his head and looked at Varney.
"Well? This ends it, I suppose? You'll go back to New York this afternoon?"
"No," said Varney, "I'm going to stay and carry it through just as I expected."
Peter tapped the chair-arm with his heavy fingers. "Why?"
"Because—well, I promised to, and on the strength of my promise, Uncle Elbert has gone to trouble and expense for one thing, and has pinned high hopes on me, for another. I had my chance to ask questions and make terms and stipulations—and I didn't do it. That was my fault. I am not even sure that he meant to deceive me. I have no right to break a contract because I find that my part in it is going to be harder than I thought."
"This business about her age changes everything. Carstairs has no legal rights over a nineteen-year-old daughter."
"Legal rights! My dear Peter, you never supposed I thought I was doing anything legal, did you? No, no; the moral part of it has been my prop and stay all along, and that still holds. I promised without conditions, and I'll go ahead on the same terms."
"Give me a match," said Peter thoughtfully. "Maybe you are right, Larry," he added presently. "I only wanted to point out another way of looking at it. I stand absolutely by your decision. You think that this girl is wrong-headed and obstinate, and that her father has a moral right to have her, over age or not. This—discovery makes it a pretty serious business, but of course you've thought of all that. But—will it be possible now?"
"I have invited her," said Varney, with a light laugh, "to lunch on theCyprianion Thursday with two or three other Hunston friends."
"Well?"