CAPTAIN WHITE'S BALL PLAY.
Prosperity and Tribulation had set out a prettily equipped table on the patch of green grass beside the tranquil river.
Capacious baskets stood beside them, and their slow moving figures showed slim and black against a dull green background of firs.
Miss Gastonguay would not allow these servants to wear livery. Her coachman was obliged to do so. He had always been an underling, but tyrannical as she often showed herself with these two favourites, she never allowed them to forget that she remembered a time when they had been in a position of independence.
Therefore their lives were happy. They followed the whims of their mistress with childish enjoyment, and just now they were as frolicsome as two schoolboys over this departure from the usual order of the day.
The cold dishes were all arranged carefully on the table. Flaming cardinal flowers and spikes of bluepickerel weed lay loosely about the white cloth; the hot dishes watched by the cook O'Toole were growing hotter by a leaping fire, yet Miss Gastonguay would not give the signal to serve the meal.
"Hush," she said, at last, "Mrs. Mercer is going to recite to us."
Prosperity and Tribulation demurely seated themselves and listened to the young lady as she drew herself up erect on her heap of cushions, and, with eyes wandering across the river, declaimed in a girlish way Whittier's exquisite lines on the fabled city of the early Maine Voyagers.
Captain White could not listen. He tried to follow the fortunes of the Christian knight, "who, with his henchman bold, sought through the dim wood the domes and spires of Norumbega's town," but the effort was a failure.
Just as Derrice was plaintively revealing the heart-sickness of the disappointed knight, Captain White wriggled toward his wife. "Hippy," he whispered in her ear, "that supper looks good, but you will excuse me from it. I must have a look at H. Robinson."
She nodded, and followed him with her eyes as he stole out of sight.
On occasions like the present, when the three house servants were withdrawn, the woman from the cottages took charge of affairs at French Cross.This woman Captain White found in the kitchen, gazing at a row of tin covers on the wall as fixedly as if she were mesmerised by them.
When he saluted her with a sudden "Good afternoon," she turned slowly.
"You might 'a' startled me. It's mortal quiet."
"No one round?" inquired Captain White, in his easy manner.
"Nobody but a man."
"Been here long?"
"Nigh on fifteen minutes."
"A stranger?"
"Yes, powerful fleshy,—more fleshy than I be," and she again fell into a reverie.
"Can you give me some warm water?" he asked, pulling the bandage off one of his scratched hands.
"You've been a-ripping of yourself," she said, with stupid interest.
"Yes; why don't you ask how it happened?"
"What odds, so long as you've did it!"
"You ain't curious," he remarked, as he splashed his hands in the water she presented to him.
"I ain't no call to be. Things get did. What matters how?"
He silently washed and dried his hands, and by dint of long staring at them she evolved a proposition. "I'll go get some of that sticky stuff I see in Miss Gastonguay's room."
Captain White walked to one of the windows from which he could command a portion of the avenue. No one left the house, no one approached it, and after what seemed to him to be an interminably long time Mrs. Stryper came waddling back.
"I ain't got your plaster," she said, deliberately, "'cause Miss Chelda's swounded, and I can't bring her to."
"Where is she?"
"In her aunt's room."
"Where's the stranger?"
"I s'pose he's in the library."
"Can I do anything?"
"Be you good at swounds?"
"First-class."
"Come on, then," and she began a return trip at a snail's pace.
Captain White wound an intricate pattern of footsteps all around her as they went up-stairs. He had never before been in the upper part of this house, and he gave himself up to admiration until he reached the long white bedroom. There he was shocked. Chelda looked badly, and he knelt hastily beside her, and laid his hand on her heart.
"Get me some of those bottles, can't you?" he said, pointing to a table,—"something strong. Never mind—I'll do it myself."
Some smelling-salts, that made him throw his headback with a jerk, had something of the same enlivening effect upon Chelda. She gasped, made a painful movement of her forehead, and began to lose the sickly pallor overspreading her olive complexion.
Captain White's fears on her account were at once put to rest, and he resumed his scrutiny of his surroundings. This was Miss Gastonguay's room. That was her bed. Close beside it was the table against which the burglar's efforts had been directed. If then its contents were valuable, why was the upper drawer open, the key falling from it?
He took the liberty of gently detaching the newspaper cutting from Chelda's clasped fingers.
"Gentleman George"—Oh, here was the solution of the mystery. Chelda had been electrified. She had to-day, strange to say, made the same discovery that he had, but she had made hers by dishonest means. She had taken advantage of her aunt's absence to rummage the hiding-place in which, with a woman's tenderness, were kept some remembrances of the disgraced brother.
Unfortunate aunt! Unfortunate girl! She was recovering. He would be able to question her; but first he must get rid of this lout of a woman, and, turning abruptly, he said, "Have you got any pickled quinces in the house?"
"I dunno," she said, stolidly.
"Go and see. It's the best thing for faint spells.There is a peculiar juice in the quince that puts life into the patient."
Mrs. Stryper, without the slightest sign of doubt, went obediently to search in closets and storeroom for something that could not be found.
"Well," said Captain White, when Chelda at last sat up on the floor, and put her hand to her head, "has the world straightened itself out again?"
Without replying to him her gaze went to the open drawer.
"We'd better shut that thing's mouth," and, springing up, he restored the piece of newspaper to its place, locked the drawer, and put the key in her hand.
Chelda took it, feebly tried to reach a chair, and falling over in the attempt, was assisted by Captain White.
"You're as weak as a kitten," he observed. "You've had a great knock-over."
All confusion was rapidly clearing from Chelda's mind. She tried to wither him by a glance, but she had not yet got her bodily faculties under control, and the effort ended in a weak facial contortion.
"You're in trouble," he said; "is there anything I can do for you?"
Chelda found her voice. The exigencies of the case demanded nerve and coolness. "I am not in trouble," she said.
"You are," he replied, bluntly, "and I know what it is. I expect you feel pretty well ashamed of yourself, but it's never too late to turn. Give up this sort of business," and he scornfully pointed his thumb over his shoulder.
"What do you mean?"
"Picking and feeling round other people's property."
"Do you dare to insinuate that I have been doing so?"
"It looks mighty like it," he said, slightly uplifting his shoulders.
"If my aunt chooses to go out and leave an unlocked drawer, you have no right to assail me with base suspicions."
"Did your aunt go and leave an unlocked drawer?"
"Ask her."
"You're clever," he said, admiringly; "you can figure to a dot what folks will do. You know I wouldn't ask a fishy question like that. You know you're lying at the present moment. You know out of jealousy you set H. Robinson on the track of your cousin Derrice. You know you're most dead to think of the shame you were about to bring on this house. 'Pon my word, I wouldn't change places with you for all the gold in the State. Go to bed, you wretched girl, and think over your sins. Whenyou get out of this white heat of fright, tell me anything I can do for you and I'll do it. First, though, have you broken off with H. Robinson?"
"Yes, I have. Tell him to go and—" she said, making an imperious effort to subdue the sudden shaking of her figure, "I have nothing to say to you. I do not wish to see you again."
"Unhappy girl," he said, mournfully, "you don't understand my interest. I shall not explain it, but you have given me a blow to-day. Sometime you may find out why I surprise you by ferreting out your plans. In the meantime, good-bye; rest if you can," and without a trace of his usual vivacity he left her.
The sight of the stranger's hat lying on one of the massive tables of the entrance-hall at once changed the current of his thoughts from dull melancholy to active hostility,—and there was H. Robinson himself peeping from the library.
The detective was hot and tired and inwardly displeased with this house, in which he had been offered nothing to quench his thirst,—not even a drop of water. He was afraid also of losing his train. It was an extremely strange thing that the stuck-up young lady should keep him waiting such a length of time, and he was just making up his mind to leave, when, to add to his troubles, this stranger came spying about him.
He did not like the twinkle in Captain White's eye, yet he felt constrained to answer him when he leaned politely over the carved railing of the staircase, and said in an interrogative tone of voice, "H. Robinson?"
"That's my name."
"Occupation?" inquired Captain White.
"Haven't got any."
"Glad to get something?"
"Wouldn't mind a soft snap."
"Fishing, for example?"
"Fishing what?"
"Herring,—know anything about them?"
"Not much."
"Know anything about blacksmithing?"
"No."
"Can't make keys,—false keys, nasty, low, picking keys?"
"No, I can't," said H. Robinson, sulkily, and advancing to the table he seized his hat, and began a retreat toward the open hall door, through which a southern breeze was peacefully stealing.
Captain White followed close behind him. "Ever coming here again?"
"I'll come if I like," said H. Robinson, over his expansive shoulder, and with the same manner in which he might have thrown a bone to an impudent dog.
Standing with his foot on the floor of the French Cross hall, Captain White easily imagined himself a champion for the ladies of the house. It was his duty to frighten away this intruder who had been leading the younger and more foolish of the ladies into by and forbidden paths of unlawful curiosity.
"Better give up this little affair," he said, persuasively.
The detective easily lost his temper. However, he controlled himself, and set his foot on the door-sill.
Captain White gave him a playful tap on the shoulder. "Don't come again. As a friend I advise you."
The detective stopped. Short as was his time, and prejudicial as it might be to his interests, he would love to punish this little whipper-snapper of a man.
"Get out," he said, unexpectedly thrusting forth an elbow in close proximity to Captain White.
"Oh!" responded the latter, and one of his elbows flew out with such directness of aim that it sought the detective's hidden ribs with the precision of a dagger.
H. Robinson choked and sputtered with rage, yet in the midst of it remembered that it would be madness for him to indulge in an altercation, and clutching his fat hands he sidled down the steps, his goodgenius telling him not to present the broad target of his back to the teasing companion crowding against him.
"That was a low thing for me to do," said Captain White, tauntingly.
"You bet it was," returned H. Robinson, with feeling. "I'll do as much for you some day."
"Ever hear of the Pope's mule?" asked Captain White, softly.
The detective muttered something under his breath, and continued edging toward the poplars of the avenue.
"The Pope's mule," went on Captain White, pushing along beside him, "was a peculiar mule. He got mad with a man once, but he couldn't get a kick at him for seven years. Then the kick was a revelation,—to the man of course. Afterward he understood mules better. I blame that mule. He was too patient. He might have kicked some of the man's connections, or his partner in business. That would have scared the man green, and kept him from nagging mules. You can always manage men if you take 'em in time, and are any kind of a decent mule yourself— Hurry up! what are you crabbing it so slow for?" and he slightly assisted the detective with his shoulder.
H. Robinson hastened his steps. He felt strangely calm; he was forgiving this man.
"We might be brothers or twin dogs in this lockstep," said Captain White, affably.
This remark was comparatively unoffensive, yet it caused something like lightning to dance before the eyes of the fat man. His wrath blazed high and fierce, and wheeling around he whacked Captain White soundly over the head with the small cane he carried.
"Whew!" ejaculated Captain White, delightedly, and drawing back he ran at his victim like a combative sheep.
H. Robinson was rolled off his legs, and for a few minutes he had a confused vision of a sky hung with Captain Whites, and an earth gay with the same decorations. There were Captain Whites to the right of him, Captain Whites to the left of him, Captain Whites behind and before, and each figure was frisking, jumping, rolling up its sleeves, and making a pretence of spitting on its hands. The figures tapped him, pushed him, bowled him over, helped him up, but kept him steadfastly moving in the direction of the big iron gates.
A kind of warning chant accompanied the dance, "Don't come back—better stay away," and as the chant grew louder some of its echoes floated to the ears of a quartette of people emerging from the wood.
Miss Gastonguay was escorting her guests to theterminus of the car line, and at a sudden exclamation from Derrice she turned her eyes toward the enormously fat man being propelled like a rubber ball down the gravelled road.
A slim figure leaped about it. Sometimes the figure was beside the ball, sometimes beyond it,—running at it, trundling it in the gutter, helping it out again, guiding it in the middle of the road, incommoding it in every possible way, yet keeping it moving.
A hat and a cane were accompanying articles, and went spinning through the air like jugglers' toys.
"Has that quirky captain gone crazy?" exclaimed Miss Gastonguay.
No one spoke but Mrs. White. "If that man is getting kicked," she observed, with deliberation, "and Micah's doing it, he deserves a kicking."
Her sentiments were clear, though the construction of her sentence was slightly equivocal, and without contradiction her hearers continued to watch the ball play until the ball arrived at its destination, and was caught up and whirled away by a car into which it was politely assisted by its attendant demon.
Then they remained spectators of a joyful hornpipe danced by the superintendent of the sardine factories, who joyously communed with himself, "First round with H. R. I lead and force him from ring,—what'll be the end of the bout?"