CHAPTER XIXSHE DOUBTS HER THEORY
One morning Eveley telephoned from the office to Marie that she would not be home for dinner that night, as she was going with Kitty to hear the minute details of her engagement, and the plans of her coming marriage with Arnold. She assured Marie that she would be home early, begged her not to be lonesome, cautioned her once more not to venture into the canyon after nightfall, and went serenely on her way.
At ten o’clock that night she guided her car into the garage whistling boyishly, and ran up the rustic stairs, stopping with painful suddenness on the landing as she observed there was no light in the Cote.
“Marie,” she called, “Marie!”
She looked anxiously over the little roof garden, and peered down to the canyon. Twice she went up to the window, and each time drew back again, afraid to enter.
She leaned over the railing on the roof, calling aimlessly and hopelessly.
“Marie, Marie!”
A moment later she heard a light step below, “Oh, Marie,” she cried and her voice was a sob.
“It’s me, Miss Eveley, what’s the matter?”
It was only Angelo running up the steps to her.
“Angelo, what are you doing here?” she demanded sharply, her nerves on edge.
“Oh, I was just fooling around,” he said evasively. “I thought I heard you calling.”
But Eveley’s nerves were too highly strung this night to brook an idle answer. She caught him by the shoulder.
“Tell me where you have been and what you were doing,” and there was something like suspicion in her voice.
And then suddenly the little bit of foreign flotsam became a man, to give her courage.
“Come inside and sit down,” he said authoritatively. “I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing, but don’t stand out here like this and get yourself all worked up for nothing.”
He threw up the window, and went in first, turning on the light, and Eveley followed him numbly.
“Now sit down and I’ll tell you. I have been sleeping in the garage ever since you got mixed up with that bunch of Bolshevists and—er Greasers. I thought something might happen and I’ve sort of stuck around. I had a key made to the garage, and I’ve got a nice bed fixed up in the attic.”
Eveley held out her hand with a faint smile. “You are a good friend, Angelo, sure enough. But there was no danger. And oh, where can my Marie have gone?”
“Are her things here?”
Acting instantly upon the suggestion, Eveley ran into the other room followed closely by Angelo. Every slightest scrap and shred that had been Marie’s had disappeared.
“Maybe she left a note somewhere,” said Angelo.
Frantically Eveley flashed through the small rooms, searching eagerly for some final word or token. But there was nothing to be found.
“Some one has kidnapped her,” she cried, wringing her hands. “We must phone the police.”
“I wouldn’t do that—not yet. I’d phone for Mr. Nolan first. Let me do it. And why don’t you go down-stairs and ask them if they saw any one around here to-day, or saw her leaving?”
“Oh, Angelo, that is fine,” she cried. “I’ll go—and you phone Nolan quickly.”
By the time she returned, Nolan was on his way to the Cote.
“She—she left herself—just walked away with her bag—alone,” said Eveley faintly. “I am afraid she did not—care for me.” And there was sorrow in her voice.
“Oh, sure she did,” said Angela reassuringly. “That’s why she left I guess. She may be in bad in some way, and so she went off not to get you mixed up in it.”
“Do you think that, Angelo? Do you really? But she should not have gone for that. I would have stood by Marie through any kind of trouble.”
Angelo walked impatiently about the room,fingering endless little objects, puzzling in his mind what to say and what to do.
“He could be here if he had taken a taxi,” he said restlessly. “I told him to beat it.”
“We might phone Mr. Hiltze,” said Eveley suddenly. “He may know where to find her.”
Angelo smiled scornfully at that. “Aw gee, Miss Eveley, ain’t you on to them yet? Sure they are working in cahoots.”
Eveley sat down at once and folded her hands. “Now, Angelo, tell me everything you know, or suspect about them. Begin at the beginning. You may be wrong, but let me hear it.”
But before Angelo could begin his little story, Nolan came springing up the steps, and knew in a word all they had to tell.
“Sit down now, Nolan, and listen. Angelo thinks he knows something.”
“Well, when Carranza got in, a lot of Mexicans had to get out. Political refugees they call them. Marie is one of them.”
“That is no secret,” said Eveley. “She told me that herself. And it is nothing to her discredit—rather the opposite I should think.”
“Yes, but they are looking ahead to the next election. That guy Obregon has promised to let all the refugees come back free and easy if he is elected, and no questions asked. But they’ve got such a lot running for president, that maybe they won’t elect anybody and then Carranza will stick on himself. And so the refugees on this side are working up a new little revolution of their own, to spring on Carranza the day after the election. And that is against the law, and the Secret Service is on to it, and after them hot and heavy.”
“The Secret Service,” said Eveley slowly. “The Secret Service.”
She crossed the room, and from her bag took out a small bit of steel which she had carried there for weeks.
“The Secret Service,” she said again, and held the badge tightly in her hand.
“What have you there, Eveley?” asked Nolan.
“Nothing,” she said, gripping it so tightly the sharp edges cut into her hand. “Just a little souvenir—of Marie. That is all.”
“Well, is there anything else, Angelo?”
“That guy Hiltze is a crook, too. He’s what you call a Red. He’s mixed up with all the funny business going on.”
“Are you sure, Angelo? You must only tell us what you really know.”
“Well, they’ve got a lot of crazy shacks around town, and they hold meetings. My dad goes to ’em. So a few times I went, too. This guy Hiltze does the talking. He’s got enough money. He don’t have to sell autos for a living, he does that for a blind, just like he strings Miss Eveley on the Americanization hot-air stuff.”
“Did you ever hear him speak?” asked Nolan.
“Sure. He says they are chasing him from cellar to garret, from mountain to desert. He says they are the damned rich, and they got to keep him harried to earth so they can grind the laborers under their heel. He gives ’em all money for doing things, and hauling stuff, and getting things across the border. I was there. He says they must pray God to strengthen them to fight to the last ditch. Hesays the army and navy are the slaves of the God of Money.”
“I know he had rather—advanced ideas,” said Eveley gravely. “But these are such troublous times. Every one feels the lack, and the need in the social life. He may have gone too far—but these are the days that try one’s soul. If it was only talk—”
“Aw gee,” interrupted Angelo. “They ain’t got no room to talk. I know all about that stuff. I was over there with the rest of ’em, and I know. We slept on straw, and dressed in rags, and lived like dogs. And they come to a decent country, and get soured because they ain’t fed up on chicken and wine like a lord. It’s a darn’ sight more than they ever had before, and the Secret Service needs to watch ’em. For they’re the ones that did for Russia—yes, and they’re doing it for Germany now, and trying it on Italy.”
The Secret Service—the diagnostician of social unrest, with professional finger on the pulse of the foreign element—had that finger touched the wrist of Marie?
“But this isn’t finding my Marie,” said Eveley. “I want her.”
“Let’s call Lieutenant Ames,” said Nolan suddenly. “I rather imagine this will hit him.”
“Oh, poor Jimmy,” cried Eveley. “He told me he wanted to marry her.”
Far into the night, they puzzled and pondered, not knowing which way to turn, but all in their love of Marie resolved that she must be found and saved again from the chaos. The next day, against the advice of all the others, Eveley sent word to Amos Hiltze and seemed to feel some comfort in his evident surprise and perturbation.
“I can not understand it,” he said. “She was so happy, and loved you so much. I will look for her. She may have taken fright at something—but what could it possibly have been?”
“Tell her I do not care what has happened, nor what she fears. She must come to me and I will help her.”
In spite of the insistence of Nolan, Angelo and Jimmy Ames, Eveley would have given the matter into the hands of the police, trusting to her own promises and her own standing to save Marie from whatever they heldagainst her. But at her first suggestion of this to Amos Hiltze, he took a most positive stand against it.
“If you do that, you have lost her forever. It is the police she fears. She would never forgive you for putting her into their hands, even if you could afterward extricate her. You must not dream of such a thing.”
So Eveley gave it up and tried to reconcile herself to patient waiting, and to prayers of faith, determined to believe that the persistent search going on in all sections of the town would be effective, and believing still more fervently that God must return to her again the sister she had learned to love.
This time, because Eveley was suffering no one connected the disappearance of Marie with Eveley’s theory of duty. And to herself Eveley made no claims, not even for her favorite Exception.
For if Marie had loved her, would she not have left at least one word of sympathy, and affection, in farewell? Indeed, if she had loved her, would she not have preferred the investigation of the Secret Service to separation?For Eveley would have braved every court in the country for her little foreign sister.
She tried to interest herself in the affairs of her friends, as of old. She tried to return to her old whimsical routine of living alone in her Cloud Cote, but from being a little nook of laughter and love, it became ineffably dreary and dull. And Eveley was suffering not only because her love had been slighted and her hospitality abused, but because everything she had undertaken had failed. Americanization—what was it? For to Marie she had given every good thing in her power—and Marie had used her as long as she could be of service, and then had gone back to her own life, to her own people.
CHAPTER XXSHE PROVES HER PRINCIPLE
All of Eveley’s friends, realizing the loneliness and the sickness of heart which possessed her, united to plan little entertainments and bits of amusement for her. And Eveley accepted their plans gratefully, and acted upon their suggestions gladly, but the bitterness remained in her heart.
“I loved that girl,” she would say to herself. “How could she do such a thing to any one who loved her? It isn’t as if I had only tried to do what was right and kind by her. She owed me something for all that love.”
One evening she went to Eileen’s for a rollicking dinner with the twins in clamorous evidence. Eileen’s home was a new creation; every day, she said frankly, was a new cycle of life. Her years of sober, studied business had not at all prepared her for the raptures and the uncertainties and the annoyances andthe thrills of a household that had young twins in it.
“Billy bosses Betty unmercifully, and I do not believe in the dominance of men,” she told Eveley. “And Betty charms Billy into submission, and I do not approve of the blandishments of woman upon man. And yet my sympathies are with both of them, and I adore them both. And I can never find anything when I want it, and when I do find it there is something wrong with it, and they both talk at once and I have to talk at the same time or I never get anything said, and yet we have wonderful times.”
“You are certainly doing your duty by those babies,” said Eveley tentatively.
Eileen took it quickly. “Um, not a bit of it. I am just fulfilling the desire of my heart. So you may take it that I am proving your theory if you like.”
“At least you are proving my exception,” said Eveley, with a smile.
“What is the exception?” Eileen questioned eagerly. “It seems to get all the proving, doesn’t it?”
“It used to,” said Eveley gravely. “But I have lost faith in it for myself. It worked for everybody else, but it failed for me. Now let’s talk of something else.”
They were in the midst of a merry game with the children, when the bell rang, and Eveley was called to the door, to look into the face of Amos Hiltze.
“You have found Marie,” she cried out at once.
“Yes. She is at the ranch in the mountains where we found her first. She is in trouble, and sick. I told her I would come for you, but I suppose you can not leave yet?”
“Not leave—when Marie is sick and wants me? Wait until I get my wraps. Shall we go in my car?”
“Yes, please. I was up at the Cote for you, and Mrs. Severs said you were here. I let the taxi go.”
Eveley’s face was alight with joy, and her heart sang with happiness. Marie had been sick—it had not been cold neglect that kept her away and silent. And she had sent for Eveley.
“You are certainly a wonder,” said Amos Hiltze, as she slipped into her place behind the wheel, and he took his seat at her side.
“You do not know how happy I am,” she cried, turning the car toward the country. “You—do get so awfully fond of a girl like Marie, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Is she very sick?”
“Not very. She will be better when she sees you.”
“Why did she really leave me?”
“Oh, she was afraid the Secret Service would locate her, and it would get you into trouble.”
“I might have known it was her duty. Wait till I get my hands on that girl. I’ll tell her a few things about duty that will astonish her.”
Already they were wheeling rapidly through East San Diego, and when a motorcycle pulled up beside them, Eveley stopped with a gasp. Of course she had been speeding—a thousand miles an hour, probably, though it had seemed like crawling.
“I am so sorry, Officer,” she began quickly. “But I have to hurry. I have a little friend in the country who is sick and needs me.”
“Oh, is it you, Miss Ainsworth?” And the officer smiled. “I did not recognize you. That is all right. Your car is a Rolls, isn’t it? We are looking for a man in a Rolls—but I can hardly hold you.” He turned his pocket flash upon Amos Hiltze.
“This is my friend, Mr. Hiltze,” she explained. “I think you do not want him, either.”
“No, I think not. Yet our man is supposed to have come this way. If you see any men on foot, or any one in trouble, better not stop. We’ll have a man out that way pretty soon.”
“Thank you,” said Eveley. “Good night.” And again they were on their way.
“Poor Mr. Man in the Rolls,” she said after a while. “I wonder what mischief he has been into.”
“I wonder.”
“I hope he gets away. Perhaps he is not so bad as they think, and may do better next time. Or maybe he had a reason.”
“I am sure of that,” said Hiltze with some earnestness. “There is always a reason, I think.”
Through La Mesa, through El Cajon, they drove in silence as they had driven once before, when they went for Marie the first time. Only then Eveley had been quivering with anxiety and nervousness—and now it was only hope and joy. But was it only hope and joy? For she realized suddenly that her hands were gripping the wheel with nervous intensity, and that she was shivering.
“Are you cold?”
“I do not know,” she faltered.
He turned slightly in his seat, and reached for a rug.
“A disorderly pile on the floor as usual,” he said with a slight smile. “Don’t your friends ever put the rugs back on the rack, Eveley?”
“No, never,” she replied, smiling, too, but gravely.
He tucked the rug closely about her, but she still shivered, and a sense of dread was heavy upon her.
When they came at last to the branch in the road, he looked carefully about in every direction, and then told her to drive quickly. Under his direction she took the car far back from the road in a sheltered place, and stopped the engine.
“Please hurry, will you? I have not Angelo with me this time, and I am afraid.”
“Eveley, I must talk to you first. You know I love you, you must know it. You have tried to discourage me, but I will not take discouragement. I shall never go away without you.”
“Are you going away?”
“Yes, to-night. Business takes me away. I am going to South America. I have money—lots of money, and we can start afresh and do well. But I can not go without you.”
“Mr. Hiltze, it is impossible. I do not love you. I told you that before.”
“But you will love me. If you come away with me, and take time, you can love me. I will be good to you, and not hurry you. You must let yourself go, and try.”
“But I do not wish to. Love should not be forced. It ought to come spontaneously of itself. And I love Nolan.”
“Damn Nolan! Oh, I don’t mean that, but—Eveley, you will forget him. Just come with me, and give yourself time. Marie will go with us—”
“Marie.”
“Yes, she has promised to go with us, to help make you happy.”
“Then she is not sick?”
“No, not sick.”
“You only brought me here to—”
“Yes, Eveley. I am sorry, but I had to. We are going out by aeroplane to-night, and there is a fishing fleet at sea waiting to pick us up. I hated to trick you, but it was my love that forced it. I can not give you up. I will not. Did you think I was a fool to be with you, and know your loving lovely ways, and—and—”
Suddenly he crushed her in his arms, and for a moment she was helpless. Then he released her.
“Your bag is here—yes, in the back of the car.”
“My bag?”
“Yes, I took Marie to the Cote this afternoon and she packed it for you—things necessary until you can shop again.”
“Marie did that?”
“Oh, I told her to. I told her you wished it. Oh, yes, I lied, but I would do worse than that for you, yes, I would kill for you. Now be reasonable, Eveley, and come with us nicely. You shall have all the time you wish. I know you will love me.”
“Love you. Love you after this! I hate you, I despise you. Do not say you love me.”
“Eveley, be quiet, this will do no possible good.”
“Then it was you they were looking for, in the car? You are a common criminal.”
“Not a criminal, no,” he cried furiously. “Yes, they wanted me, of course. You should have known there was a reason why a man like myself should live as I have done here. But we are not criminals—we are advance agents of freedom.”
“Anarchists,” she interrupted, in a cutting voice.
“Some time there must be justice and equality in the world—”
“And you have got rich by preaching lawlessness.”
“Eveley, do not talk like that. I—I lose my head—and I do not wish to frighten you. Sit quietly, and let me tell you. Peace can come only through warfare—and out of the death throes of an old world, a new world of peace will—”
“You are traitors.”
“Eveley, you know I was in the service, but there must be a union of the free men of the world against oppression—”
“Do not make stump speeches to me. I will not stand for it. Justice and freedom will come to the world, but not through lying and trickery and bloodshed. Justice must come through sympathy and love and comradeship.”
“It did not get you far with Marie, though, did it?”
“Marie.”
“Certainly. That was my interest in her. Marie was working with us, doing what she could for us, for what we could do for her in Mexico. She is a regular traitor if you like, putting things over in great style, on you and Nolan and Ames—the whole bunch of you. She is a slick little devil. But I fell—because I loved you.”
Sudden illumination came to Eveley. “Then that is why she left me. When she learned to love me, she would not profane our friendship. That is why she left.”
“She left because the cops were getting wise, and she had to get out in a hurry or get pinched.”
“And she is going with you—”
“Sure. She will be the idol of the revolutionists for what she has done—they will carry her about on a tin platter.”
“You will let me go now, Mr. Hiltze, please. But tell Marie that I understand everything, and when she wishes to come back to me, the Cote is open. It was only a mistaken loyalty to a wrong principle. Please go, I want to hurry home.”
He laughed a little. “Eveley, you are going to South America with me.”
In a sudden panic she turned, flinging open the door of the car, hoping to rush away into the darkness, but his arm held her.
“You will love me. I may not care for your Americanization, but I love you. I am going to be good to you. Don’t be a fool, Eveley, it will do you no good. You’ve got to go.”
Struggling was in vain, as Eveley realized at once, and she subsided quickly, trying to think. The thing was impossible. It could not be. Such things did not happen any more—not in real life in the United States. It was cruel, preposterous, unbelievable.
“Please let me go,” she pleaded. “I shall not try to report you, you can get away without trouble. But let me go home, please. I could never change toward you—I am not the kind that changes.”
“I shall have to tie you for a few minutes. I am sorry, but I do not wish you to go to the shack. I have wasted a lot of time trying to reason with you. Put out your hands—yesyes, that way, and let me tie them to the wheel. I hate to do this—there is no use for you to yell, Eveley, for no one can hear, so I shall not gag you. Let me wrap the blanket about you; it is very cold. Sit still, dear, and do not shake it off. I love you very much. We are going to start the world afresh with a clean slate, and leave the past behind. The future shall be of your choosing, only it must be with me.”
Then he went away, and Eveley began a valiant tugging on the straps that bound her.
“Wait a minute, Eveley, I’ll cut them,” came a friendly whisper, and Eveley with a cry turned to look into Angelo’s face.
“Sure, I come along,” he said. “I saw him up at the house, and when he came down for you, I followed his taxi on my bike. And when he went in to get you, I got into the back under the rugs. Lucky he only took one rug for you, or he’d got hold of my legs. Gee, he uses good straps.”
All this, while Angelo was sawing on the straps with his rusty knife, and almost before he finished talking, Eveley was free.
Like a flash she was starting the engine.
“Suppose you get out and hide a while, and let me scout around,” he said. “I hate to leave a decent sort like your Marie with those cutthroats. Maybe I can get hold of her.”
“Yes, do try. I’ll hide among the bushes for fear they come while you are gone. Be careful, Angelo. We are going to need you.”
Eveley waited what seemed an endless length of time, crouching almost breathless under the shrubs. But finally she heard light running steps, and in a moment Marie was in her arms.
“Oh, my poor child, they told me you wanted to go. And did they tie you—the cruel straps? You are free now, and you will go back to your Cote and be happy. But do not forget your poor Marie. And never play with fire again, sweet; in the end it always burns. American women never know what a tempest love can be. Now, kiss Marie, and say your forgive her, and then go quickly.”
“Marie, come with me,” begged Eveley, clinging to her. “You must not go with them.They are treacherous, selling their honor for money. Do not trust them. Come with me. Nolan and I will take care of you, and Nolan will straighten out your tangles with the law. And Jimmy is wild for you, raging all over town trying to find you. Please, dear, let all the ugly past lie dead, and live a new life with us here. Oh, I can not let you go.”
“For them I care nothing,” Marie cried, with a smart snap of her fingers. “They are dogs. They only help us for money, and they wish only to embroil the world in war. It is no love for us—but they are cheap—we buy them. When the time comes, we tramp them under our feet. Eveley, if you wish me, I will come.”
Then in a moment they were away, the car swinging dizzily down the steep grade rocking from side to side.
“How did you get Marie, Angelo—you angel?” asked Eveley, after a while.
“They were all running around moving things, and Marie was helping. So I pitched in and helped too. When I walked by Marie she understood and came. And they did notnotice. There isn’t much difference between a Wop and a Greaser.”
“And you will never leave me again, Marie?”
“I am all through with hatred and strife, now. I want only a home, where I can be happy, and live as you and I have lived. That is the only Americanization. Talk is nothing. Social service is a game. But when one makes living so fine that every one in the world wants to live that way—then it is Americanization. I am satisfied now.”
“Say, you’d better cut the talk and watch the road,” said Angelo suddenly. “You’ve been half over the grade a dozen times.”
“Yes, I will,” promised Eveley. “But I must hurry. They will follow us—will they follow us, Marie?”
“Oh, surely, when they miss us. They have motorcycles. Listen. Hear them far back? Of course they would follow.”
“Sit tight, Marie, and do not worry. I know this road all right.”
“They are gaining on us, dear. Can you do better?”
But Eveley was afraid to go faster on those sharp curves, though she strained her eyes to see the road before them.
“We are nearly to Flynn Springs,” she said. “We must be. We can stop there.”
“They will soon be up with us,” said Angelo, looking back.
“We must leave the car, and hide in the woods,” said Marie.
“Oh, I am afraid to leave the car.”
“The woods will not hurt us. It is only men who harm. Come, we must. If they catch us, we are lost. Pull out here to the left, and turn off the lights. They may pass us in the darkness. Take the key with you. And hurry.”
Acting upon this plan, they were soon slipping over the small stones and pebbles down a shallow gully and up among the rocks and shrubs of a little cliff.
Already the tremendous roar of the motorcycles was close upon them.
“Quick, Eveley, behind this bush.—Lie down flat. Yes, all right, Angelo. Sh, quiet now.”
“Please let me go,” she pleaded.
“Please let me go,” she pleaded.
At that instant the motorcycles whirled past—a sudden call from the familiar voice of Amos Hiltze, and with a great tearing and crashing of brakes, the cycles stopped and the men ran back to the car.
“It is her car,” cried Amos Hiltze. “They have deserted it. They must be very close, we shall find them quickly. You go—”
“We can not find them,” said a new authoritative voice. “The cops may be here any moment. We’ve got to get away to-night, or it is everlastingly too late. You have lost the girl—lost them both. Now make the best of it.”
And one motorcycle was started again.
“I’ll slash their tires for luck,” said Amos Hiltze. “And we can send a couple of men to look for them. Then we can send back for them later on if they find them.”
Eveley ground her teeth at the ripping of the tires, for the rubber is to a motorist as a baby to a loving mother. But in a moment came the sputter and roar of the motors, and the men had gone again back the road they had come.
“We’ll just have to crawl into Flynn Springs on the rims, and phone for Nolan. It can not be far.”
But even that was impossible, for with devilish foresight, Amos Hiltze had taken the timer from the carburetor, and the little Rolls was powerless.
“We’ll walk then,” said Eveley bravely, and hand in hand, the three of them set out on the rocky winding road to Flynn Springs.
“Nolan will not waste any time coming for us,” said Eveley confidently.
“And perhaps Lieutenant Ames is in town and can come also,” suggested Marie softly.
Some time later, wearily, weakly, they limped into Flynn Springs, and Eveley hurriedly put in her call.
“Nolan? It is Eveley. I am at Flynn Springs. You must come for me, and bring Jimmy Ames. Yes, Marie is with me, and Angelo.—Yes, we are all right. And have a man from the garage with extra tires and a timer for the carburetor. No, we do not need the police. No guns either. Nolan, your voice is sweeter than any angel’s.”
Then they went into a small room where there was a bed, and Eveley took off her ruined pumps, and bathed her burning feet, and they fixed their hair, and had hot coffee, always looking at each other with tender eyes.
“Will you never go back on me again, little sister?”
And Marie kissed her in answer.
So they waited patiently for the men breaking all known speed laws to come to them, and the time did not seem long, for they lay on the bed together, each with an arm across the other’s shoulder. And in the small dark hallway outside, Angelo sat before their door, his arms clasped around his knees, his head sunk upon his breast, sound asleep. But even in his sleep keeping guard over his Americanizer and the “little Greaser.”
CHAPTER XXIHER ONE EXCEPTION
All evening Kitty had been trying to get Nolan by telephone, always being told that he was not at the hotel and had gone to the office, and then hearing that the office line was busy. It was after eight when she finally got him on the wire.
“Nolan, whoever have you been talking to? If it was anybody else besides Eveley, I am going to tell. I have been trying to get you all evening. I want you to come over here immediately. Something terrible is about to happen, and you must stop it.”
Nolan hesitated. “I am to be at Eveley’s at nine, but if you promise to talk fast I will come.”
Receiving her fervent assurance, he immediately closed his desk, and in ten minutes Kitty was drawing him feverishly into her favorite corner of the living-room.
“Nolan, you could never guess what is going on.”
“No,” he admitted, with a reminiscent smile. “So many odd things have been going on lately that I confess my inability as a guesser.”
“Listen to this. Eveley’s sister has fallen in love with some crazy aviator, and is going to elope with him. And she wants Burton to get a divorce so she can marry him.”
Nolan was plainly dumfounded at this revelation.
“And that is not the worst. She is going to desert those two children, and Eveley—You know Eve. She says she will be the willing sacrifice to save the honor of the family, and has decided to marry Burton herself, to be a mother to Winifred’s children.”
“Preposterous!” gasped Nolan, looking into her flushed face for symptoms of delirium.
“True,” came the grim answer. “But we must never allow such a bloodcurdling thing to happen. It wouldn’t be right. I want you to go right over to Eveley’s as fast as you can, and make her marry you. You can pretend you do not know anything about this, and sweep her right off her feet. Get herpromise before she knows what is going on, and marry her before she realizes it. Then perhaps Winifred will come to her senses and not do this outrageous thing.”
“But, Kitty—”
“You love Eveley, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course, but—”
“Then do you call yourself a man, and yet stand idly by and see the woman you love sacrifice her life for her sister’s honor—and—er babies—and—”
“And husband,” he said gloomily. “I could stand the honor and the babies, but I object to the husband.”
“Of course you do. I have my car here, and I will take you right over to Eveley’s and you can settle it immediately.”
“I do not believe I could propose before you, Kitty,” he objected shyly. “I could not think of the words.”
“I shall wait in the car until it is over. Then I shall come sauntering up later on and wish you joy, etc., and Eveley need not know I had a thing to do with it. Just you get her promise, and I shall be witness for you. Ifshe tries to back out we shall sue her for breach of promise.”
“All right,” he decided suddenly. “We certainly can not submit to any such nonsense as this. Let’s go.”
All the way to the Cloud Cote they kept up hearty agreement that the idea was utterly wild and preposterous, and that Nolan should never stand for it. As she stopped the car, two doors down where Eveley could not see from her window, Kitty said:
“Arnold and I want to take a honeymoon trip to Yosemite after we are married, and we want you and Eveley to get married in time to go along. It is so much more fun when everybody’s married.”
“Now, you fix it up with Eveley, and when you are through pull back the shade in the living-room, and I’ll take it for a sign and come up to make my call.”
So Nolan went up the rustic steps to Eveley, and Kitty settled down in a corner of the car. For thirty minutes she chuckled gleefully to herself, but after half an hour she began to feel that he was decidedly slow.
“I could be engaged to a dozen people in that time,” she thought impatiently, “Oh, the poky thing. But I suppose they are waxing demonstrative, and he has forgotten me.”
She toyed restlessly with the keys and screws on the car, still watching the black window in the Cloud Cote with only the faint gleam of light from behind.
“An hour,” she cried at last furiously. “If that isn’t the limit! I have a notion to go right home, and let him settle it as best he can—but I do want to see how Eveley takes it. Oh, well, I shall give him fifteen minutes more, and then if he has not signaled I’ll go up and see for myself.”
So she waited another uneasy quarter of an hour, and then banged stormily out of the car and up the rustic steps. Her sharp tap brought a sudden scurry and scramble from within, but Kitty did not wait for a summons. She drew back the portières and climbed in, uninvited.
Eveley was standing flushed and brilliant in the center of the room, trying to tuck up badly straying curls, and Nolan was adjustinghimself to the davenport with an air of studied ease.
“Well, Kitty,” cried Eveley nervously. “Why didn’t you phone you were coming over?”
“You do not seem any too glad to see me,” said Kitty rather peevishly, and then at their flushed and shining faces, she laughed. “My, how happy you look! Just like newlyweds—or something.”
“Yes—something,” said Eveley. She flashed a questioning look at Nolan, and received a reassuring nod. “Nolan and I are engaged, Kitty.”
“Really,” cried Kitty. “After all these years. How surprising.” She put her arms around Eveley lovingly. “When did all this happen?”
“Last night, coming down from Flynn Springs,” said Eveley. “We—we had a whole car full of it.”
“Last night!” Kitty quickly disengaged herself from Eveley’s arm and looked sharply at Nolan, smiling in great contentment on the davenport. “Last night?”
“Yes, last night. It was an awfully big night all around, wasn’t it, Nolan?”
“It was for me,” he said, coming over and taking Eveley’s hand in his.
“Last night,” Kitty repeated again, glaring intently at Nolan.
He nodded.
“Then you knew I was lying all the time.”
“Well, since Eveley and I had luncheon with Winifred and Burton to-day to announce our engagement,—yes, I may say that I was fairly well assured you were lying. They seemed on their usual tender terms at noon.”
“What are you two talking about?” wondered Eveley.
Kitty drew her small hat over her ears with a vicious tug.
“But we shall be glad to motor to Yosemite with you and Arnold this summer,” Nolan went on pacifically, “we think it will be great sport. We asked Marie and Jimmy Ames to go along. They are going to be married to-morrow. They are in Marie’s room now, so go in and congratulate them if you like. Butdo not bring them out here, because we are a crowd already.”
“I am going home, anyhow, if you mean me,” she said pettishly. She looked at Eveley. “I suppose you think it is very clever for you to be engaged to Nolan twenty-four hours without notifying me, after all the trouble I have taken in the last five years to bring it about. And as for you, Nolan, I think you have a lot of courage to marry a woman who openly and notoriously refuses to do her duty in any shape, size or form. I call it a pretty big risk, myself.” She clambered crossly through the window. “Congratulations,” she called back snappily. And again, from half-way down the stairs: “And we shall hold you to the Yosemite bargain, too.”
Then Nolan took Eveley in his arms again and kissed her. “It may be pretty risky,” he said tenderly. “A wife who steels her heart against her duty—”
Eveley smiled into his eyes. “Don’t worry. The One Exception will save you. I still claim that duty isn’t the biggest thing in theworld. And hasn’t my theory held good? Patriotic duty could not Americanize Angelo nor Marie, nor anybody else. And filial duty could not make the Severs live happily with the Father-in-law. And domestic duty could not bring Miriam and Lem Landis into harmony. But there was something else big enough to work all the miracles, and it was the Big Exception.”
“Yes, tell me, Eveley—the Big Exception that is Everybody’s Duty—what is it?”
“Well,” she said, snuggling a little closer into his arms, “I believe it is everybody’s duty to love somebody else with all his heart and mind and soul and body. And that is what has worked all the transformations for our friends. And it will protect you, Nolan—for I do.”
Nolan kissed her again. “Then it is no risk at all,” he whispered, laughing tenderly. “Don’t try to do your duty by me—just go on loving me like this.”