"If you wish to hand bouquets to Pinky for a while," called Mrs. Marne, aside, "I will see that you are not disturbed, Mary."
"Thank you, Elsie, but it's your sisterly duty to listen to the story. Mr. Hare," she presently went on, to Varney, "had a great career ahead of him in New York—Judge Prentiss told me so—and he kicked it over without a quiver and came up here where there isn't any glitter or fireworks, but only plain hard work. Politics is only an incident with him. No one will ever understand all that he has done for Hunston, without any thought of return—working with all his heart and his head and his hands."
"Ha! Ha!" said Peter down the table. "That reminds me—"
"You have known him a long time, I suppose?" asked Varney.
"Yes," she laughed, "but he has known me longer—ever since I was a very little girl. That is why he calls me by my name, which gives him a great moral advantage. I call him Mister because I didn't know him when he was a very little boy. I have figured it all out, and I couldn't have, because he was thirteen when I was born. Besides, you can't begin to know people till you have reached a certain age. Can you?"
"Not to say know, I should think."
"Say six," said Miss Carstairs. "That's liberal, I think. Well, he was nineteenthen, and I never even saw him till seven years afterwards, anyway. That made him twenty-six, which was much too late. Now he says that I should call him by his name, but of course I'm not going to do it."
"It is hard to change an old habit in a thing like that."
"Oh, I don't mind the hardness of it. But whoever heard of calling aMayor by his first name? Call a Mayor Pinky! The thought is ridiculous.Isn't it, Mr. Hare?"
But Hare was engrossed with a conversation of his own, now turned upon economic lines.
"Everything in the world that goes up must come down," he was saying didactically, "except prices. They alone defy the laws of gravity."
Peter challenged the aphorism, wordily. Mrs. Marne smiled at Mary across the flower-sweet table.
"No," answered Hare presently. "Money isn't everything, but it is most. It makes the mare go; also the nightmare. It talks, it shouts, and in the only language that needs no interpreter. I may describe it, without fear of contradiction, as the Esperanto of commerce."
"Clever, Pinky!" called his sister, derisively. "Confess that you rehearsed this before a mirror."
The luncheon ended. If anything had been wanting to prove how agreeable it had been, it appeared now in the pretty reluctance with which the ladies rose. There was the customary pushing back of chairs, smoothing down of garments, recovering of handkerchiefs from beneath the board. The room and the table were the objects of new compliments, given in farewell.
"Who would have dreamed," said Mary, looking back from the door at her father's perfectly appointed room, "that yachts were as nice as this?"
"And to think," said Mrs. Marne, "that it was all done by a Mere Man."
McTosh, the mere man in question, blushed violently behind his deft hand.
They stepped up on deck into the shade of a great striped awning, and loitered along the side, caught by the beauty of the late summer scene. Sky and water and green wood blended into practised perfectness. The rippling water was blue as the heavens, which was very blue indeed. The sun kissed it like a lover.
"Will some one kindly tell me," demanded Hare, referring to his sister's remark, "how the superstition arose that men have no taste?"
"I have read," said Mary idly, her back against the rail, "that it was invented by the authority who started the slander about women's having no sense of humor."
"Why, they haven't, have they?"
"You're wrong there, Hare," said Peter, out of his fathomless ignorance."For my part I think that women are often more amusing than men."
"Of course, Maginnis, of course. The point is that it never dawns on them."
They were strung out along the after deck, a gay and friendly company, exactly as Varney had pictured them in his thoughts. From the hatch emerged the stewards, in stately processional, bearing coffee and cigars, their paraphernalia and appurtenances. Twenty feet away, on the other side, was to be seen the sailing-master's wife, sitting under orders, sedate, matronly, knitting a pale blue shawl and giving to the bright scene an air of indescribable domesticity.
"Women," said Mrs. Marne to Varney, "have a splendid sense of humor. I am a woman and I know. True, we keep a tight grip on our wit when we are with men, because, whatever men may say in moments like these, they do loathe and despise a comical woman. But when we are alone together—ah, dearie me, what funny things we do say! Don't we, Mary?"
Varney, to show himself how cool he was, was lighting a cigarette, and had just perceived with annoyance that his hand shook.
"At least," he answered easily, "no man will ever disprove that, since no man has ever had the pleasure of being present when women are alone together. I can recommend the Invincibles, Hare."
Peter, as one sensitive to the duties of host, now begged Mrs. Marne to let him show her something of the yacht. He mentioned the crew's quarters and the—er—butler's pantry as points which he particularly desired to bring to her attention.
"I'dloveto see them! Oh—I must take just one peep before I fly."
The trio started forward in a whirl of her animated talk, Peter leading with a dutiful face, Hare strutting solemnly along in the rear. Mary glanced at Varney.
"Aren't you going to show me your butler's pantry, too?"
"Rather!" he said, starting with her up the deck. "But I want you to see the whole ship, you know, much more thoroughly than Mrs. Marne has time for—and to take a little spin—"
He was interrupted by an exaggerated cry from the lady last mentioned, who, happening to glance down at her watch, had stopped short at the cabin-hatch in great dismay.
Now she turned back to Varney crying: "Oh! oh! Mr. Varney, it'stwenty minutes to four! I must fly to my Culturethis instant!"
At that, for Varney, the little party lost the last traces of its false good-fellowship and stood out for what it was. Mrs. Marne's hurried departure slightly dislocated his carefully-laid plans; it was evident that her brother had no intention of going with her. Over her unconscious head, his eye caught Peter's in a faint sweep which indicated the little candidate.
"Oh—must you, Mrs. Marne?" said Varney, with civil regret.
"Imust! I wish—oh, how I wish!—that culture had never been invented. The world lasted a long time without it, I'm sure. I detest to eat and run, yet what else can possibly be done by the author of 'Ideals of Immanuel Kant'?"
"It is too bad," said Varney, "but if duty really calls, I suppose there is nothing for it but to have your boat ready at once."
"I ought to go, too," said Mary.
A chorus of protests annihilated the thought. Mrs. Marne declared that she would never, no, never, forgive herself if she broke up so delightful a party. It was unanimously decided that the other guests were to remain long enough to be shown something of the yacht. Mention of a little spin down the river was once more casually thrown out.
Events moved swiftly. The gig was manned, waiting. Varney under cover of issuing orders, found opportunity to say a hurried word to Peter. Mrs. Marne approached Mary, who was discussing yachts with Hare, to make adieu. Suddenly the large face of Maginnis loomed over her shoulder.
"Good-bye, Miss Carstairs—you'll excuse me, won't you?" said he, briefly. "I—I thought perhaps I'd just walk in with Mrs. Marne."
Mary repressed an inclination to smile. "Certainly, Mr. Maginnis. Good-bye. I've enjoyed it a great, great deal." And to Pinkney Hare she added: "You are going over the yacht with us, of course?"
Mrs. Marne embarked in a shower of farewells. Peter, however, loitered at the head of the stairs, and the gig waited at the foot of them. Varney stood at Miss Carstairs's elbow, cool, smiling, controlling the situation with entire and easy mastery.
"It occurs to me, Miss Carstairs," he said, "that I should begin our tour by showing you our sailing-master's wife, Mrs. Ferguson—decidedly the cultured member of the ship's household. She reads Shakespeare. She recites Browning. I dare say that she even sings a little Tennyson. You would enjoy meeting her, I am sure. Will you step around the other side for a moment?"
"How exceedingly interesting," murmured Hare, falling in beside them."Years ago, I used to read quite a bit of poetry myself."
The gig still waited at the foot of the stairs. Mrs. Marne, waving upward last adieus to Mary and Varney, called: "Do hurry, Mr. Maginnis. I'm outrageously late."
But Peter, who had more important matters than Kant on his mind at thatmoment, answered in a low, hurried voice: "Don't be alarmed, Mrs.Marne—but Imustsee your brother at once about—a critical matter.Oh, I say, Hare."
The candidate, now some distance up the deck with the others, stopped and looked back.
"May I have a word with you, please?"
Hare turned, with only a polite show of reluctance to his host and Miss Carstairs, and drew near. Politics interested him far more than the staunchest ship that ever sailed.
Five minutes later when Varney, having launched Miss Carstairs and the sailing-master's wife upon a strictly innocuous conversation, came around the deck-house again, neither the candidate nor his sister was anywhere to be seen. Peter—he who had engaged to accompany the lady—stood alone on the sunny deck, staring off at the returning gig, his great hands clenched in his coat-pockets. He met his friend with a calm face.
"It's all over but the shouting," he said. "They've just landed. I told Hare that there was a plot on against your life—which is very likely true by the way—said he and I must have a conference at once without alarming Miss Carstairs. I had to draw it pretty strong, you can bet, to make him go without telling her good-bye."
"You've got the letters," said Varney hurriedly. "Go to see Mrs. Carstairs the first thing—make the explanations. Call up Uncle Elbert and tell him six-thirty for the carriage at the dock. Be sure to explain to Hare and Mrs. Marne at once—prearranged visit to her father, kept quiet for—any good reason."
"Of course," said Peter. "Well, I must hurry along. I promised to overtake them in the woods. Oh, the lies I've told in this ten minutes!"
He turned and picked up his hat and cane to go.
To Varney, the simple act drove home with great force the stark fact that he was face to face with his business at last. Peter, holding out his hand to say good-bye, was struck to speculation by the look of that eye.
"Well, good luck, Larry!"
"In heaven's name—what does that mean?"
"Hanged if I know," said Peter, frankly. "I'll see you in New York—if not sooner." With which cryptic observation he clattered down the stairs to the gig.
Varney beckoned the sailing-master from the quarter-deck.
"I am returning to New York, as I told you, Ferguson, with the young lady, Mr. Carstairs's daughter. Start as soon as possible."
The sailing-master stared at the deck. "Ready at once, sir."
Mrs. Ferguson's fondness for classical poetry was no part of any stage make-believe. Varney, having found her the day before sitting on a coil of rope with Mr. Pope'sOdysseyfrom the ship's library, had conceived a veneration for her taste. Now, as he drew near them again, she was telling Mary that though Tennyson was fine for the purty language, it was really Browning who understood the human heart. And down in the engine room they had everything ready for the bell.
"Have you two settled the poets' hash yet?" asked Varney. "I hope youdidn't make the mistake of preferring Tennyson to Browning, MissCarstairs? Thank you very much for entertaining our guest so nicely,Mrs. Ferguson."
"What a wonder that woman is!" said Mary, looking back at her as they walked away. "I had thought that I was rather good at liking poetry, but she leaves me feeling like the dunce at the kindergarten."
She turned and looked out over the water, caught anew by the shining landscape. They stood side by side in the shade of the wide low awning. Half a mile to their left huddled the town, whither the others were already on their way; a few hundred yards behind them stood the big white Carstairs house, handsomely cresting the hill. From many miles to the northward a breeze danced down the river, and played capriciously over their faces, and so whisked on about its business. All the world looked smiling and very good.
Suddenly a bell tinkled. There was a slight splash, a faint rumble and quiver.
Varney laughed. "The passion for poetry," said he, "is a curious and complex thing. Its origin is shrouded in the earliest dawn of civilization. It appears in man's first instinctive gropings toward written self-expression—"
"Why," said Mary, in sudden surprise, "we are going!"
So Elbert Carstairs's dream had come true, and his daughter was going home to him at his desire. She stood on his yacht, as truly a prisoner as though she wore a ball and chain; and the beat of the engines, already gathering speed, was driving her straight toward that dock in Harlem whither he, within a very short time, would be driving down to meet her.
"Going? Of course we are," said Varney.
He leaned against the rail and, looking at Mary, almost laughed at the thought of how easy and simple it was.
"The point of being on a yacht, Miss Carstairs, is to see her go. Otherwise, one might as well sit in the den at home and look at pictures of them in the encyclopedia."
"But I—didn't expect to go," she said, gazing at him doubtfully—"only to look around a little. I'm really afraid I haven't time for a sail."
"Well, you know," he said cheerfully, "as far as looking around is concerned, going doesn't necessarily take any longer than staying. In one case, you stay and look around: in the other you go and look around. That is really all the difference, isn't it?"
"Well, then, it must be a little go and a short look around. Where does one begin, in looking around a yacht?"
It would have been plain to a far duller plotter that they should be fully clear of Hunston before he explained the situation to her more definitely.
"Suppose," said Varney, "we begin with a few general remarks of a descriptive nature. This vessel, Miss Carstairs, is what is known as a schooner-rigged steam-yacht. She stands a good bit under a hundred tons. She is ninety feet long, eighteen feet in the beam and she draws ten feet—"
"I don't understand a word of that except ninety feet long, but it all has a perfectly splendid sound! But where can Mr. Hare be? Please send for him like a good host, and begin back at the beginning again. He just told me that yachts interested him intensely."
"But, unfortunately, Mr. Hare is no longer with us."
"Not with us? Why—did heget off?"
"He certainly did. He and Maginnis are a great pair, aren't they? Not a minute to give to pleasure or anything of that sort. I believe they slipped off to Hare's house for another of their eternal private talks."
"But—" Mary stared astoundedly. "Hesaidhe was going around with us! I asked him and he accepted. And besides," she went on, rolling up the count against the unhappy candidate, "he's got my parasol!"
"We detached that from him before he left. It's around on the other side. I'll send for it at once."
But her puzzled frown lingered. "I have known Mr. Hare well for six years," she said, "and this is the first time I ever knew him to do such an uncivil thing."
"It wasn't his fault, depend upon it. Maginnis called him back, you know, and no doubt hauled him off bodily, positively refusing to let him pause for good-byes. A man of ruthless determination, is Maginnis."
She glanced up the deck with vague uneasiness, disquieted by the unexpected situation. Forty feet away sat the sailing-master's wife still placidly knitting at her pale blue shawl, the perfect portrait of secure propriety. The sight of her there was somehow reassuring.
"So is Mr. Hare, I always believed. But never mind. How fast we are going already!"
"Yes, theC—this yacht goes fast."
"What is considered fast for a yacht? How long would it take us to get to New York?"
"Three hours. Why not go?"
A white-clad steward noiselessly approached with her parasol. She took it and smiled at Varney's idle pleasantry.
"Thank you, I have too many responsibilities this afternoon. First of all, we—have a guest at home. Then I simply must go to Mrs. Thurston's to see about some sewing at five. Last obstacle of all—my mamma! What would she think had happened?"
"Don't you suppose that she would guess?"
"Do you think I'm the daughter of a clairvoyant, Mr. Varney? No, she would not guess. She would simply stand at the front window in a Sister Ann position all the afternoon, crying her pretty, eyes red. But—this is a schooner-something steam-yacht, ninety feet long, I believe you said. What comes after that?"
They had left the town dock behind and were scudding swiftly. There was no longer any reason, even any pretext, for waiting. Every pulse of theCypriani'smachinery was beating into his brain: "Tell her now! Tell her now!"
But all at once he found it very hard to speak.
"There is time enough for that. There is something that I must tell you first—in fairness to Hare. The fact is that I—I made Peter take him away because I wanted to be alone with you."
The crude speech plainly embarrassed her; she became suddenly engrossed in examining the carved handle of her parasol, as though never in her life had she seen it before.
Varney turned abruptly from her and looked out at the flying shore.
"Last night," said he, "you may remember that you asked me a question.You asked me why I objected to accepting help from you."
"Yes, but that was last night," she interrupted, her instinct instantly warning her away from the topic—"and you didn't tell me, you know! Really—we must turn around in two minutes, and so I haven't time to talk about a thing but yachts."
"I fear that you must find time."
"Must, Mr. Varney?"
"Must. This is a matter in which you are directly concerned."
She faced him in frank wonderment. "Why, what on earth can you mean?"
"Now you must! Now you must!" sang theCypriani'sstaunch little engines.
But he made the mistake of looking at her, and this move betrayed him. There was no doubt of him in her upturned, perplexed face, no shadow of distrust to give him strength. His earlier dread of this moment, strangely faded for a while, closed in on him once more with deadly force.
"Don't you see that I am trying to tell you and that I am finding it—hard?" he said quietly.
There was a moment's silence; then she said hurriedly: "Of course I am all in the dark as to what you—are talking about—but tell me another time, won't you? Not now, please. And oh—meantime," she sped on, with the air of hailing a new topic with acclaim, "I have something to tell you, Mr. Varney!—mystery seems to be in the air to-day. Youmusthear the strange thing that happened to me this morning. I haven't had a chance to tell you before."
"Ah, yes! That mysterious warning."
He clutched at the respite like a drowning man at straws, though no drowning man would have felt his sudden rush of self-contempt.
"Who gave it to you, and what was it about?"
Free of his hidden restraints, she had quite thrown off the embarrassment which she had felt settling down upon her a moment before, and laughed lightly and naturally.
"It was about coming to this beautiful luncheon to-day—aboutnotcoming, I mean—and it was given to me—don't be angry—by Mr. Higginson, the old man, you know, who helped you last night."
"Ah!… Mr. Higginson."
"Tell me!" she said impulsively, her eyes upon his face—"I saw last night that you distrusted him—doyou know anything about him?"
With an obvious effort he wrenched his thought from his present urgency, and brought it to focus upon a puzzle which now seemed oddly like an echo from a distant past.
"Not yet," he said, with an impassive face. "But I trust—"
"Oh, I don't like the way you say that! I don't see how youcanbe so suspicious of such a patently well-meaning old dear. And yet—"
"Well, then, tell me what he said to you and convert me."
"I suppose I must—I have had it on my mind a little, and you have a right to know. Yet I don't want to at all! For I must say it seems just a little to—to support your view. Well, then," she said, some perplexity showing beneath her smile, "it happened about eleven o'clock this morning as I was going down the street to see Elsie Marne—never dreaming of mysteries. I met Mr. Higginson walking towards our house, and we stopped, so I thought, for a friendly word. For he and I made friends last night. Oh, you have a right to think I am too free, too easy, in the way I—I make friends with strangers, and yet really this—is not like me at all. And there is something very winning about this old man. Well, he asked me point-blank—begged me—not to come to your lunch-party to-day. What have you to say to that?"
He continued to look at her as from a distance, not answering her little laugh. Behind the grave mask of his face he cursed himself heartily for his self-absorption of the morning, which had led him entirely to lose sight of Mr. Higginson's activities last night. He had fully meant to search out that "winning" old man on his excursion to the town, but in his engrossment over the more important duty of the day, the matter had dropped completely from his mind. That the old spy had somehow ferreted out their secret was now too plain to admit a doubt. But what conceivable use did he mean to make of it? To interfere with theCypriani'shomegoing was beyond his power now. Did it better suit his mysterious purpose to hold back until the thing was done, in order to raise the dogs of scandal afterwards?…
For the moment his mind attacked the problem with curiously little spirit; but one thing at least was instantly clear. He must return to Hunston to-night, by the first train after his arrival in New York, find Higginson and call him to his well-earned reckoning. Meantime … here was this girl, this daughter of Uncle Elbert, whom the old sneak had for the second time failed to bend to his mean uses….
"But what reason," he said mechanically, "did he give for his rather unusual request?"
"He wouldn't give any! That's what makes it all so ridiculous—don't you see? Naturally I asked, but he only said in his nervous apologetic way that he wasn't at liberty to tell, but that after last night I ought to consider whether you—your surroundings were likely to be quite safe. I said: 'But oughtn't you to give me some idea and, if there is any danger, warn Mr. Varney and Mr. Maginnis? You can't mean that there is another plot, involving the yacht this time—the likelihood of a naval battle on the Hudson?' And then he wrung his hands and said that he couldn't tell me what he meant, but that I'd certainly regret it if I came. There! Oh, Iknowhe thought he was doing somebody a kindness—you and me both, I believe! And yet—that was just a little creepy, wasn't it?"
He made no answer to this; hardly heard what she said. Mr. Higginson, his works and ways, had once more slipped wholly from his mind. Something in the look of her face, its young trustfulness, its utter lack of suspicion, had already laid paralyzing hold upon him. Now a new thought possessed him; and all at once his breast was in a tumult.
"And yet," he said, with sudden fierce exultation, "you came!"
She colored slightly under his look and tone and, to cover it, gave a light laugh.
"Oh, yes.. dauntless person that I am! Have you the remotest idea what he was talking about?… But oh, really we must turn around now! Indeed we must—I hadn't noticed how far we have come. And you can show me things as we go back, can't you?"
He started at her speech; asked himself suddenly and wildly what was wrong with him. A better opening for his crushing announcement could not have been desired. Yet he stood dumb as a man of stone. One blurted phrase would commit him irrevocably, but his lips would not say it. And he was glad.
He stared over the water thinking desperately what this might mean.
In that first meeting, radiant as it had somehow seemed to him, he knew that, given this chance, he could have carried his business through without a quiver. Even last night when, he thought, things to make it harder had piled one on another like Ossa on Pelion, it would not have been impossible. Now his lips appeared sealed by a new and overwhelming reluctance; a resistless weakness saturated him through and through, seducing his will, filching away his very voice.
TheCyprianirattled and wheezed, and her speed sharply slackened, but he did not notice it. His mind fastened on the stark fact of his impotence like a key in a lock: his heart leapt up to meet it. He turned slowly and looked at her.
She leaned lightly upon the rail, her eyes on the water, her lashes on her cheek like a silken veil. At her breast nodded his favor, theCypriani'sperfect rose. In her youth, her beauty, and, most of all, her innocent helplessness, there was something indescribably wistful, indescribably compelling: it sprang at him and possessed him. Even in permitting him her acquaintance, she had trusted him far past what he had any right to expect; and now, with his own sickening game at the touch, she gave this crowning proof of confidence in him—dashing it full in the face of the whispering and hinting Higginson, full in his own face too. Could anything in all the world matter beside the fact that this girl believed in him, that she had trusted him not only against convention, not only against his cowardly enemy, but last and biggest,against himself?
And she should not be disappointed. His pledge to her father was a Jephthah's oath, honorable only in the breaking. His mission, all his hours in Hunston, took changed shape before the eye of his whirling mind, monstrous, accusing, unbelievably base. Reward that trust with treachery, that faith with betrayal? Never while he lived.
Out of his turmoil came peace and light, flooding the far reaches of his soul.
In crises thought moves with the speed of light. The young man's mental revolution was over and done with in a second's time; the pause was infinitesimal. Almost as she finished her last remark, Mr. Carstairs's daughter turned from the rail and took a step forward upon the deck, as though to jog her host toward that promised tour of the yacht which had now flagged so long.
"I thought you ought to know this," she was saying, apparently quite unaware of his descent into the psychological deeps, "though perhaps you will think it not worth repeating. But before we go on, do tell me —won't you?—is Mr. Higginson merely—seeing things—a sort of he-Cassandra, you know—or really do you think there is any danger?"
"No!" answered Varney, so promptly as to give the air of having waited long for just that question. "There is no danger now, thank God!"
A heavy step sounded near, approaching. Starting to speak, he broke off, turned and saw the sailing-master coming towards him. Over the intervening stretch of deck the two men looked at each other, the master nervously, Varney victoriously.
It was one of those critical moments whose importance no one can gauge until after the time for guaging is past. However, as it fell out, it was the master who spoke first.
"Very sorry, sir, indeed," he began, with a curiously uneasy and hang-dog expression. "The gear's broke down again—in another place. Couldn't possibly have been foreseen, sir. We can—hem—manage to beat about without any trouble, but I fear it would not be safe to try to push on to New York."
"To New York!" said Mary Carstairs, looking at Varney and laughing at the man's stupidity. "It certainly would not be safe at all!"
Even the furtive-glancing sailing-master was conscious of the tide of gladness that had broken into his young master's eyes.
"Put about this instant, man!" he cried imperiously. "Miss Carstairs wishes to return to Hunston as soon as possible."
"Right, sir," stammered the astonished Ferguson, backing away. "At once, sir."
Varney met the man's amazement steadily, laughed into it, and so turned again to his old friend's daughter. She was conscious of thinking that this was the firsthappysmile she had seen on his face since the night when he lit the lamp at Mr. Stanhope's.
"He seemed nearly stupefied because you weren't going to scold him, did you notice? I wonder if you are usually very cross with him. But on with our sightseeing! What is the name of this such-and-such a kind of steam-yacht?"
"Miss Carstairs," said Varney, struggling against his sudden exaltation for calmness and self-control—"we are both conscious that I owe you an explanation for—for what of course you must think my very extraordinary behavior. Believe me, you shall have it very soon. There is nothing in the wide world—ah—that is, I'd like very much to give it to you now. But—no, no—it wouldn't be quite right—no—not fair—"
"You think I am eaten up with feminine curiosity about Mr. Higginson!" she said, a little hastily. "Oh, I'll show you. Look! Look! We're turning around already."
"Don't look there. Look in this general direction now and then, and tell me what you see."
"I see," she said, looking anywhere but at him, "the strangest, the mostvolatileand—notexcepting Mr. Higginson—the mostmysteriousman in Hollaston County!"
"Where are your eyes, Miss Carstairs? You are standing within two feet of the happiest man in America, and you don't even know it."
Passing the town-wharf laggingly like the maimed thing she was, limping nearer and nearer the spot whence she had set out three-quarters of an hour before, Mr. Carstairs'sCyprianislowed down at an abandoned private landing—the same one by which Peter's trunk had been conveyed ashore that morning—and ran out her stairs.
As the two on board stood watching the yacht make fast, conversing, if the truth be known, somewhat disjointedly, they were astonished to see the great form of a man rise from a grassy bed a little way back from the river-bank and advance towards them.
"Why, look!" said Mary. "There's Mr. Maginnis! I thought he'd gone to town long ago."
Varney did not answer her. His eyes were glued upon Maginnis, and he called in a strange voice:
"You have been waiting for us."
"Haven't budged a step," answered Peter, moving out upon the landing. And he added what seemed an odd remark to Miss Carstairs: "I knew you were coming back."
He greeted Mary at the foot of the stairs, cordially, and begged the privilege of escorting her to any destination it might be her fancy to name. But she stoutly declined his good offices, as she had Varney's a moment before, declaring that she could not think of troubling so busy and important a man.
"But where did you spirit Mr. Hare off to, if I might ask?" she said.
"On a very important mission I assure you, madam,—that is, Miss Carstairs," said Peter, diplomatically, having no idea how matters stood. "He begged me to let him go back and say good-bye to you, but I told him I'd make it a personal matter."
"I am awfully glad that you have stopped calling me 'madam,'" said Mary, rather inconsequently. "Ididhate it so!"
And she walked off up the woodland path, swinging her recovered parasol, and finding herself with a good deal to think about.
Peter, coming on deck, found his friend waiting for him, taut as a whipcord.
"Well, old horse!" said Maginnis. "Welcome back to jolly littleHunston."
"The machinery broke down on me," said Varney, turning away to light a cigarette.
"Sure," said Peter cheerfully. "You knew it was going to do it when you started. I read it in your eye when we said farewell forever."
"You are quite mistaken," said Varney. "Ask Ferguson."
"Oh! Then you'll do it to-morrow morning, when the machinery is all right again?"
"No," said Varney, "nor at any other time."
The two men looked at each other steadily, unwinkingly. As the look lengthened, each face gave way to a slow reluctant smile.
"I won't pretend," said Peter, "that I am disappointed in you. I never dreamed that I hated this thing till the time came, and hang me if I don't rather like that little girl."
"It was a thing," said Varney, "that simply couldn't be done. We were a pair of asses not to see that all along." He glanced hurriedly at his watch and started for the companionway. "Jove! I'll have to hustle."
"Hustle! Where the devil to?"
"I'm off to New York by the five o'clock train to tell Uncle Elbert thatI've resigned. I'll feel mighty mean doing it, too."
"Well, don't anticipate trouble," called Peter dryly. "You can't feel mean by the five o'clock train, however much you may deserve—"
"Why not?"
"There isn't any. She goes through at four-seven. You'll have to compose yourself to wait till eight-ten, unless you want to walk."
Varney halted at the head of the companionway, surprisingly disappointed. From the moment when theCyprianihad put about, he had been insistently conscious that his first duty now was to see Mr. Carstairs, beg absolution from his promise, and formally surrender his commission. So only, he had felt, could he go on with clean hands.
"Well, don't look so glum over it," said Peter. "You're not any sorrier about your prolonged stay in our midst than I am."
Varney turned an inquiring eye upon him, and he began walking rather restlessly up and down the deck.
"Oh, this same old rot!" he broke out impatiently. "I'll never be easy in my mind till you are back in New York, andstaythere—"
"Well, well, Peter! Stick it out for three hours more—"
"Not long after you and Miss Carstairs steamed off," continued Peter, "Hare blew back down here, tired of waiting and a little excited. He had just heard some passing whispers about you and me. He says there seems to be a little suppressed excitement in town this afternoon."
"Why, I thought your paper had kicked all that nonsense into a cocked hat."
"A lot of people don't believe the paper, though," said Peter. "On the contrary they believe that you are Stanhope and that you bought theGazetteto disown yourself and save your hide. A foolish idea, but it has doubtless been helped out by whispers from higher up. Smith's selling out has made Ryan see red. Smith's still in town, by the way, which argues a good deal of cool nerve on his part. Hare hears that Ryan is in a murdering humor—"
"You seem to forget entirely that Stanhope—the real, the genuine, double-extry-guaranteed—has appeared, to bear his own—"
"But Hunston doesn't know it yet!" exclaimed Peter. "Kindly get that well into your head. All these Hackleys and Orricks still think that you're their meat—Where're you going?"
Varney, pausing at the hatch, deliberated whether he should say anything to Peter about Mr. Higginson's latest and most daring intrusion, and declared for the negative. "There's no reason," he mused, "why I should let him in on this. And besides—"
"To town," he said aloud. "I've got to send a telegram to Uncle Elbert.He's very much on my conscience—poor old chap!"
"I'll go with you. Got a Reform Committee meeting at five-thirty. And some other business."
But Varney had already disappeared below. Peter picked up his splendid guitar and, sprawling upon the transom, gave himself up to soft humming and, presently, to the work of composition. Soon, after some little painstaking effort, he produced the following, to be rendered to the tune of "Yankee Doodle":
The tale of crime is at an end,For little Laurence Va-arneyDeclines to swipe his loidy friendUpon theCypria-a-ani!
Peter tried this over to himself with considerable satisfaction. He possessed a remarkably sweet tenor and pleasurably anticipated singing his ditty to its hero, and doubtless getting a cushion pitched at his head for his pains. But it happened that Varney was to go to his grave without ever hearing that small chanson.
He came on deck again in five minutes with a face which drove all thoughts of melody from Peter's head. In fact, at sight of it, he came instantly to a sitting position and his guitar slid unheeded to the floor.
"What's happened?"
Varney did not answer immediately. He stood at the rail and stared into the woods with fixed eyes which saw nothing. Peter rose and came towards him.
"Out with it!" he said encouragingly. "I'm full partner here. You want to murder somebody. Well and good! Now who is it?"
Varney turned towards him, half-reluctantly, and spoke in a quiet voice.
"I told you just now that the machinery broke down. I was mistaken. It was broken down."
"Broken down?"
"When I went below," continued the younger man, "it occurred to me to look in the engine-room and see how bad the damage was. It was very bad indeed. I'm no mechanic, Lord knows, but a child could make no mistake here. The effect is about as if somebody had jammed a crowbar in the works while she was running full-tilt. Probably that is just what somebody did. It'll be some days before she'll run again."
Peter's bewilderment deepened. "What in the world does this mean?"
"Treachery," said Varney calmly. "Somebody on board has been bought."
The two men stared at each other. Varney read on Peter's face the swift unfolding of precisely his own thought. He was rather surprised at Peter's quickness, in view of the fact that he knew nothing of the episode of the morning.
"Yes," he said. "That's the man."
He told concisely of Mr. Higginson's attempt to break up the lunch-party by keeping the guest of honor away. Peter's face, as he listened, underwent a curious change. It first slowly gained color, then slowly lost it; and all of it, from the top of his forehead to the end of his chin, seemed subtly to contract and tighten up.
His comment at the end was: "Excuse me a minute."
Upon which he vanished below to see with his own eyes and judge with his own brain. He was back in less than two minutes, with a tiny spot of red in the corner of his eye, and his manner unwontedly calm.
"You're right. Pretty clumsy treachery that," he said, standing and staring at Varney, who had dropped into a chair. "What was the man thinking about to … I don't begin to see bottom on this."
Varney's eyes were on the sailing-master, who sat far forward, feet on the rail, apparently engrossed in a magazine. The young man had just recalled the master's curious manner when he notified him of the accident to the machinery.
"Larry—you meant to turn around anyway?"
"But Higginson, you see, couldn't predict that."
"The immediate cause of your turning—"
"Was the little mishap to our gear."
He raised his voice: "Ferguson! I'd like a word with you if you please."
The sailing-master jumped at the sound of the voice as though it had shot a projectile into his back. However, he rose at once and came forward in his usual, brisk, stiff way, halting before the two men with a salute. Varney eyed him inscrutably.
"I believe you were in town for a while this morning, Ferguson?"
"Yes, sir, I was."
"While there did you chance to see anything of an elderly gentleman, a stranger here, by the name of Higginson?"
Though he had the look of being braced for trouble, the man changed color at the direct question, and his eyes instantly shifted. With an evident effort he recaptured something like his usual steadiness and spoke in a voice of elaborate thought fulness.
"Higginson? No, sir. I know no one of that name."
"Ah? I thought not. I asked on the mere chance. And oh, Ferguson."
"Sir?"
"I have just been down to look at the damaged machinery. Ignorant of these matters myself, I can naturally make little of it. You will prepare a written report for Mr. Carstairs, explaining in detail the nature of the accident, and in particular just how it took place."
"Very good, sir."
"And—oh, Ferguson."
"Yes, sir?"
"As the—er—mishap appears to be so serious, I think it best to have an expert from town advise with me before the work of repairing begins. You will therefore leave matters just as they are until I instruct you otherwise."
"Oh—very good, sir."
Peter turned his dissatisfied eyes from the back of the retreating sailing-master to Varney.
"What better proof d'you want than the rogue's face? Why didn't you fire him on the spot?"
"I neither hire nor fire here," said Varney. "These are Mr. Carstairs's employees. He will have to deal with them as he thinks best."
He rose immediately and put on his hat.
"With Mr. Higginson, however," he mused, starting for the stair, "the case is altogether different."
"Exactly," said Peter with great heartiness.
As one man they descended the stairs, crossed the battered landing and struck rapidly up the woodland path for Remsen Street and the town. As they walked, Varney silently condemned the unfailing genius of the Irish for intruding themselves into all the trouble that hove upon the horizon. It was with acute pleasure that he recalled, before long, his friend's engagement for half-past five. For he himself had but three hours left in Hunston that day, and he had an urgent use for them—beyond even Mr. Higginson.
"I confess once more," said Peter, tramping heavily, "that this chap is too many for me. I don't seem to grasp his game."
"And you call yourself a conspirator, Peter! Why, this is ABC."
"All right. I'm listening. Spell it out for me."
"Suppose the gang here is deep enough, as you think, to plan a little rough-house, ostensibly for my benefit, but really to get you into it and thus wipe you out. Doesn't it occur to you that my fading away to New York at the critical moment would rather knock the bottom out of the scheme? Why, it's as clear as noonday! Higginson, learning somehow that I expected to fly off immediately after the lunch-party, first tries to break up the party, and failing that, he bribes Ferguson to break up the machinery. Thus he hopes to make it impossible for me to get away—me whom he needs in his business as the red rag for his little old mob."
They had emerged from the woods and walked a block up Remsen Street before Peter replied.
"By Jove! That does seem to explain everything! That's it! It's Higginson, not Smith, who has been pulling all these wires from the beginning. I suspected the man the first minute I ever clapped eyes on him. But where do you suppose he got his hint?"
"Hammerton?"
"Never. That boy is trustworthy, or I'll eat my hat."
"Well, I think so too. Then he simply corrupted Ferguson and wormed the whole thing out of him. Pretty clever, the whole thing, wasn't it? How much Ferguson may really know, or suspect, I have no idea. Of course, there is only one thing to fear now, and that is scareheads in the New York papers to-morrow—attempted kidnapping foiled, and so on. It would break Uncle Elbert's heart if anything of that sort should come out—"
"Don't you worry. It won't. I'll close his trap—tight."
Once more Varney was slightly annoyed by Peter's presence.
"If we find him," he began, as they came to the square, "you—"
"We must try not to be brutal, Larry," warned Peter soberly. "I remind myself that he is an elderly man—"
"If we find him," began Varney again, "you will please remember that he belongs to me. Higginson is strictly my pickings."
Peter grunted, looking rather annoyed too.
They crossed the square, two determined-looking men, and entered the Palace Hotel. Behind the desk a bored clerk sat paring his nails with a pair of office scissors. He looked up with a certain resentfulness.
"Excuse my interruption," said Varney. "Is Mr. Higginson in?"
The clerk's glance lowered tiredly. "Naw. Left town on the four-seven."
"I don't believe it," said Peter instantly.
There followed a silence. So stern were the gazes fastened upon the clerk that, looking hastily up at Peter's word, he promptly lost something of his lordly demeanor and became for the moment almost human.
"Well, sir, he's leftus.Saidhe was takin' the four-seven."
"Where did he go?" demanded Varney.
"Don't know, sir, but I think to New York."
"You must know where he checked his baggage to."
"Didn't have any baggage, sir," protested the clerk. "Only his suit-case."
"Did he leave no address for the forwarding of his mail?"
"Naw, sir. He did not."
"Of course not. Why on earth should he?" said Peter.
Desisting from the absent but fierce stare with which he was transfixing the clerk, he drew Varney hurriedly aside.
"All bluff!" he stated positively. "Is it likely, afterhisday's work, that he'd be lolling around the lobby waiting for us to call? He'smoved! But depend on it, he's got more work to do, and hehasn't left town!"
"If that's so, where do you recommend looking?"
Peter made a large gesture. "That's a horse of another color. I told you he had a faculty for disappearing into a hole and pulling the hole in after him. If anybody besides Ryan knows where he is, I should say that it might be Miss Carstairs. She seems to be his only friend on our side of the fence, since I tipped Hare off."
Varney all but jumped. "I'll ask her!" he offered almost precipitately."The very thing!"
"It is quite possible," continued Peter, tensely thoughtful, "that the old rascal has sneaked to her since the luncheon, to try to pump something out of her about our movements—even within the bounds of possibility that he is with her at this moment—"
"A great suggestion!" said Varney cordially. "You certainly have a head on you, Peter. Of course, on the other hand, it is quite possible that hehasskipped—made a bee-line for Newspaper Row. In that case, I'll see if she—Miss Carstairs, you know—if she knows his address in New York, and I'll hunt him up to-night."
Peter, glancing at his watch, discovered that he was already fifteen minutes late for his committee meeting.
"For this afternoon, then," he said, unwillingly, "you can have him, if you can find him. After to-day, though, he belongs to me. Wherever he is now, he'll certainly be back on the job to-morrow. Well—I'll leave you, then. Er—Larry. It's just as well not to be prowling around after dark by yourself, you know. I'll be back at the yacht early and we'll have dinner together before your train. Say six-thirty, eh?"
"I'll be there."
Peter hurried off for Hare's house with a mingled sense of unjustly baffled vengeance and vague uneasiness. Varney, drawing a long breath of relief, headed for the telegraph office, whence he dispatched the following telegram to Mr. Carstairs:
"Plan permanently abandoned. Arrive in New Yorkby train 9.20 to-night. Expect me ten minutes later."
That done, he started rapidly down Remsen Street with a steadily mounting spirit.
There was a fine old hedge of box bordering the Carstairs lawn, old rosebushes inside it and many flowering shrubs. Splendid oaks curtained the big white house on either side, shading the expanse of close-clipped turf. At the left, a fountain-sprayer now whirled a mist of water over the trim grass, and far to the rear a man in rubber boots was hosing off a phaeton before a carriage house. On the back porch, an elderly cook was peeling potatoes and gently crooning some old ballad of Erin.
It was a serene and reassuring scene. Yet upon the spacious piazza, which undeniably contributed to the pervading air of all's well, the stunning information came to Varney that the lady of his quest was not at home. Nor could the maid at the door say where her young mistress had gone, or with whom, or when she would return. Possibly Mrs. Carstairs knew, but Mrs. Carstairs was unwell and could not be disturbed. Miss Carstairs would be sorry to miss him, the kind-hearted girl opined, and would he please leave his name?
The young man descended the steps in a state of the flattest depression. Disappointment, he reflected bitterly, crowded upon the heels of disappointment on this anticlimactic afternoon which yet should have been, in a bigger sense, so gloriously climactic. He had missed his train, and with it his honorable confession to Mr. Carstairs; missed Higginson; last and worst of all—it seemed to him now that this was all that mattered in the least—he had missed Miss Carstairs. In sooth, the world was all awry.
But at the gate, a thought came to him, radiant as a heavenly messenger. Miss Carstairs was at her seamstress's on the Remsen road. Had she not told him with her own lips that she was to be there at this hour?
He made aTe Deumof the click of the gate, and turned northward a face which bore record of an inner splendor.
He had set out to see Miss Carstairs in order to ask of her if she knew the whereabouts, in Hunston or New York, of the fair-spoken yet elusive Higginson. But with every step he found the force of this errand weakening within him. The memory of that gentleman's villany, so burning a moment since, grew steadily fainter and more inconsequential. Failing to locate him, he would of course make a precautionary round of the newspaper offices in New York that night. At the worst, he told himself with the swift fading of his anger, there was only a remote risk of any unpleasant aftermath. Why, the thing was over and done with—let by-gones be by-gones. As for those other matters supposed to be upon his mind—hints of approaching trouble for himself, and the knowledge of Mr. Carstairs's bitter disappointment over the collapse of his all but triumphant scheme—he could not for the life of him give them any attention whatever.
A far nearer and more vital matter was pressing upon his mind and heart.
To tell her everything at the moment when the yacht had swung back and he had thrown up his commission forever had been his first strong impulse. He had crushed it down only because he saw that to speak then was to take her at an ungenerous disadvantage. Now Fortune had sent him this new meeting, to be untrammeled by any such restraints. No grim duty governed his movements now; no consciousness of secret chicanery any longer enfolded him like a pall. Already the thought of what he had meant to do came back to him hazily, like the plot of a half-forgotten play. The hobgoblins in a nightmare seemed not more unreal to him now. His heart sang with the knowledge that he was to see her again, this time with no shadow between.
Two nights' rain had left the road dustless: it was silent and empty. All about him fell the pleasant evening noises of the wood, but he did not hear them. As he walked, his mind was rehearsing the whole story of his coming to Hunston, as he was now free to confess it to Uncle Elbert's daughter. That she would forgive him he never entertained a doubt. For he would throw himself wholly on her mercy—telling her everything, painting himself as blackly as he could—and suing for pardon only because he had failed.
But when suddenly he saw her, sooner than he had expected, his polished and elaborate phrases dropped from his mind as cleanly as had the recollection of the roguery of Higginson.
It was at that hour when the skies remember the set sun in a gold and pink glow. A little kink in the road straightened out under his swift feet, and a small cottage in a fair-sized lawn jumped out of the woods into vision, almost upon him. On the small square porch, her back to the road, stood Miss Carstairs, talking through the open window to some one in the room beyond.
Varney, having stopped short at the first sudden sight of her, walked on very slowly. Her voice came to him distinctly, and now and then he caught scattering words of what she was saying. She wore her blue dress of the luncheon and the hat which Mrs. Marne, and others, had so admired; and she gave him the odd impression of being somehowolderthan she had ever seemed before…. Yet she was ten years his junior and three days ago, at this very hour, he had never so much as laid eyes upon her.
"I'll come Saturday morning, then," she was saying, "and you'll certainly have them ready for me, won't you? Good-bye."
She turned from the window, came towards the steps. At the top of them, she saw Varney standing at the gate, not twenty yards away, and stopped dead. Then she came on down the stairs, down the graveled walk towards him.
"I'm going away at eight o'clock," he began without greeting, striving to make his voice casual. "I went to your house first—and—"
"You—followed me here?"
"Yes," he said, unsmiling. "I had to see you before I went—on matters of business—and—"
She was nearer to him now: for the first time he could see her eyes. In them lay a faint shadowiness like the memory of shed tears; but sweeping over that and blotting it out he saw a look which struck him like a blow.
"There is nothing for you to see me about, I think—any more," she said with a little laugh. "The game is up—isn't that what they say in melodrama? My mother has told me all about it."
"Your mother hastold you!" he echoed stupidly, as one to whom the words conveyed no meaning.
"She had not expected to see me so soon again, when I went off to lunch on my father's yacht. The surprise was a little too much for her. You must try to forgive her," said Mary, and punctuated the observation with a small, final bow. "Will you open the gate for me?"
"No," said Varney, pulling himself sharply together. "Not like that."
The shock of her voice and look, even more than her words, had been stunning in their first unexpectedness. But now he remembered, with infinite relief, that of course she did not understand the matter at all; of course she would speak and look very differently when he had made his explanation.
"You think," Varney said, "that Imindyour knowing about our poor little plot—that I am found out and my plans are all upset? How on earth could you think that? Why, that's all like something in another life. Don't you know what my being here at this moment means? The thing is all over, Miss Carstairs—all past and done with an hour before you ever saw your mother. I gave it up voluntarily. When the time came, just now on the yacht, I found out that it was impossible—unthinkable—I couldn't do it. The game was up then. That is one thing that your mother could not tell you, and it was to tell you this, and all the rest of it, that I followed you here."
She stood on the other side of the gate, hardly an arm's length from him, looking at him; a figure so pretty, so dainty, so extremely decorative that she seemed incapable of giving anything but pleasure. But in the eyes that met his own so unwaveringly, he read at once the contradiction of this.
"Yes, I suppose that would always be the way, wouldn't it?—that whenever I found out, you were just going to tell me?"
If she had searched her mind for a way to strangle his headlong self-defence, she could not possibly have done it more effectually. There followed a horrible pause.
"You mean … that you do not believe me?"
"In the little while that I have known you, have you given me much reason to?"
"Can't you see that that is exactly the reason I wanted to tell you all the truth now?"
"Why did you wait tillnow? Weren't there chances to tell me this afternoon on my father's yacht? But—there's no use to speak of all this. It is enough that I know it now."
He was aware that her voice had lost that hard and polished lightness with which she had first struck at him; on this last sentence, he thought that it trembled a little; and in a flash, he saw the whole matter from her side of it, and for the moment ceased to think about himself.
He leaned his arms upon the green panel of the gate and looked down at her.
"Don't think that I blame you for not taking my word. Probably I couldn't expect it. We can't very well argue about that…. And of course I have known all along—how you would feel about me, when you found out what I came here to do. I was ready for that—ready for you to be angry. But I don't seem to have taken it in that you would be … hurt. That makes it a good deal worse."
She made no reply. She had lowered her heavy-fringed eyes; her slim, gloved hands were busily furling and unfurling her white parasol.
"There is nothing in this that need hurt you. Believe me in this, at any rate. Only three people are concerned in it. You will have no doubt of your mother. That she told you shows how impossible it was to her, even with Uncle Elbert wanting you so much. You will not mind about your father—not in any personal way. He is a stranger to you. That leaves only me."
Still she said nothing. It seemed to him that he had never looked at so still a face.
"For me, I might make you angry as any—acquaintance might—any stranger. But that is all. It is not … as if we had been friends."
She raised her eyes, and the look in them seemed to give the lie to every word he had said.
"What do you call a friend? Did I not trust you—put myself in your power—fall confidingly in with your hateful plot—after I had been plainly warned not to? Oh, if I had only listened to Mr. Higginson, I should not have the humiliation of remembering that—hour on the yacht!"
The name stung him into instant recollection. He stood staring at her, and his face darkened.
In the first staggering revelation of her look, his sub-conscious mind had leapt instantly to the conclusion that his cunning enemy, having found out his secret, had betrayed it to Miss. Carstairs. Her first words had disposed of that. It was the tortured mother, not the professional sneak, who had been before him with his explanation. But now it rushed over him that he had an infinitely deeper grudge against the vanished spy. For it was Higginson, with his bribe-money, who had broken down the yacht; Higginson who would, in any case, have forced the return to Hunston; Higginson who had given this girl the right to think, as she did think, that she owed her escape wholly to an "accident" to the machinery.
He had thought that he had saved Uncle Elbert's daughter from himself, and lo, his enemy had plucked the honor from him. The world should not be big enough for this man to elude his vengeance.
"You mention Mr. Higginson. Where is he?"
She glanced at him, impersonally, struck by the unconscious sternness of his voice.
"I do not know, but I am most anxious to see him—to thank him—"
"I am told that he left town at four o'clock. Perhaps you know his address in New York?"
"I do not," she answered coldly. "No doubt he went away hurriedly … frightened of you because of his kindness to me."
She came a step forward to the gate. Instantly his thought veered back to her and his tense face softened.
"How can I blame you," he said hurriedly, "for thinking the worst of me? I've been thinking badly enough of myself, God knows. But don't you know, can't you imagine, that nothing could have held me to the miserable business a single moment after I saw you, had I not been bound by a solemn promise to your poor father?"
"My father! Oh, if he is the sort of man to plot a thing like this, and to bludgeon my mother into it, how could you endure topromiseto do it for him?"
"Because he is breaking his heart for you, and you didn't know it. It seemed right that he should see you, since he wants to so much."
All her sense of the wrong he had done her flared up in anger at that. "How doyou—daresay what seems right between my father and me? He is breaking his heart for me, he told you? Did he mention to you that she hadbrokenhers for him? Don't you suppose that I have had time—and reasons—to decide which of them I belong to?"
"All this," he said, "was before I knew you."
About them hung the stillness of the country and the long empty road.The woods stirred; a bird called; a portly hare poked his nose throughthe brush over the way, and suddenly scuttled off, his white flag up. InMrs, Thurston's yard, the quiet was profound.
"All his life," said Mary Carstairs, "my father has thought about nothing but himself. I am sorry for him—but he must take the consequences of that now. If he is lonely, it is his own making. If my mother has been lonely till it has almost killed her, that is his doing, too. For you—there was never any place in this. As for me, I owe him nothing. He must beg my mother's forgiveness before he shall ever get mine."
She came forward another half-step and laid her hand upon the gate-latch with a movement whose definiteness did not escape him.
"You may take back that answer from me if you wish. And so, good-bye."
"Not good-bye," said Varney, instantly. "You must not say that."
"I am quite sure that I have nothing else left to say."
Her eyes went past him over the gate, out into the wood beyond. Dusk was falling about them; it shaded her face, intangibly altered it, made it for the moment almost as he had known it before. She looked very young, and tired. This was the picture of her, and he knew it then as he looked at her, that he would carry with him to the longest day he lived.