CHAPTER XVIMARIE ENCOUNTERS THE SECRET SERVICE
In the beginning Eveley had hesitated to leave her newly adopted sister alone in the Cloud Cote in the evening, but as Marie seemed absolutely to know no fear, and as time did not hang at all heavily upon her hands, Eveley was soon running about among her friends as she had always done. But with this change: there was always a light in the window at the top of the rustic stairs when she came home, and a warm and tender welcome awaiting her.
Marie had come to be charmingly useful in the Cloud Cote. She prepared breakfast while Eveley dressed, and did the light bit of housework nicely and without effort. Eveley usually had her luncheon down-town, but in the evening dinner was well started before she reached home. Her mending was always exquisitely done, even before she knew that mending was necessary, and among herlingerie she often came upon fine bits of lace she had not seen before.
After long and loving persuasion, Marie had consented to meet Eveley’s sister and brother-in-law, and Eveley had them in for dinner. Marie was quiet that night, scarcely speaking except now and then to the babies. The next week, however, when Winifred asked both girls to dinner, Marie went without argument, and seemed to take a great deal of quiet satisfaction in the visit.
Kitty and Eileen she met often in the Cloud Cote, but always withdrew as quickly as possible to her own room to leave Eveley alone with her friends. With Nolan, Eveley openly insisted that Marie should develop a friendship.
“Why, he will very likely be my husband one of these days, when he gets around to it,” she explained frankly.
“Your husband,” echoed Marie. “I thought Mr. Hiltze—”
“Oh, no,” denied Eveley, flushing a little. “He is just a pleasant in-between-whiles. We are fellow-Americanizers, that is all.”
“Does Mr. Hiltze know that?” queried Marie.
“Oh, everybody knows that I belong to Nolan when the time comes,” said Eveley, laughing.
Nolan, urgently warned by Eveley, met Marie with friendly ease and asked no questions. He took her hand cordially and said in his pleasant voice. “Well, if you are Eveley’s sister, I have a half-way claim upon you myself, and you must count me in.” And then he promptly began mashing potatoes for their dinner, and Marie did not mind him at all.
When Amos Hiltze came to the Cloud Cote she joined serenely with them, very easy and comfortable, always careful to go to her room before he left, that he might have a little while alone with Eveley. For she saw plainly that while he interested Eveley only in his enthusiasm for Americanization, for him Eveley had a deeper and sweeter charm.
One Saturday afternoon when Nolan was busy, the two girls went out for a picnic on the beach, a well-filled basket in the car fortheir dinner. On a sudden impulse, Eveley turned to Marie and cried:
“Oh, little sister, how would you like to learn to drive? Then you can take me to the office and have the car yourself to play with while I am busy.”
“Eveley,” came the ecstatic gasp, “would you—let me?”
“Would I let you?” laughed Eveley. “Should you like it? Why, you have been wanting to, haven’t you? Why didn’t you ask me, Marie?”
“Oh, I couldn’t.”
“Yes, you should have,” said Eveley gravely. “I would have told you honestly if I did not wish it. I said you must feel free to ask me for anything, didn’t I. And don’t I always mean what I say—to you, at least?”
“Does your love for Americanization carry you so far?” asked Marie curiously.
Eveley was silent a moment. “I can not exactly count you Americanization,” she said honestly. “I do not believe Americanizing you could add anything to your sweetness, anyhow. You are just fun, and—You may notbelieve it, Marie,” she added rather shyly, for she was not a demonstrative girl, “but I—really I love you.”
Quick tears leaped to Marie’s dark eyes, and she placed her head softly against Eveley’s shoulder, though she did not speak. Almost instantly Eveley brushed away the wave of sentiment and gave her quick bright laugh.
“Now listen, sweetness,” she said. “It is like this. This is the clutch that controls the gears. When it wabbles like this it is in neutral and the car will not run. When you shove down with your left foot, and pull the clutch to the left and backward, it is in low gear, and the car will go forward when you let your foot back. You must do it very slowly, so there will be no pull nor jerk. Like this.”
So the afternoon wore away, the two girls laughing gaily as Marie made her first bungling attempts to drive; but later, Marie was aglow with exultation and Eveley with deep pride, because the little foreigner showed real aptitude for handling the car.
Then in a lovely quiet part of the beach a little beyond La Jolla, they had an early supper and drove home, Eveley at the wheel, singing love songs, Marie humming softly with her.
“This is almost like sweethearting, isn’t it?” asked Eveley turning to look into the dark eyes fixed adoringly upon her. “Next to Nolan you satisfy me more than anything else in the world. But don’t tell Nolan. He is jealous of you,—he thinks I like you better than I do him.”
“You say you love me, Eveley. But do you? Is it the kind of love that can understand and sympathize and forgive—yes, and keep on loving even when—things are wrong?”
“Nothing could change my feeling for you, Marie,” said Eveley positively.
“But if things were wrong?” came the insistent query.
“Well, I am no angel myself,” answered Eveley, laughing again. “If you are a naughty girl, I shall say, ‘I will forgive you if you will forgive me,’ and there you are.” She stopped again, to laugh. “But I can’tthink of any wrong you could do, Marie. You just naturally do not associate with wrong things.”
“And you will always remember, won’t you, what you have said about love of one’s country? That it excuses and glorifies everything in the world?”
But Eveley was singing again.
Eveley had made an arrangement to call for Nolan at the office at eight, as they were going to Kitty’s for a late supper with her and Arnold Bender, so she kissed Marie good night when they reached home, and said:
“Will you be lonesome without your big sister, and boss?”
“I think I shall go down and watch the dark shadows in your beautiful canyon,” said Marie, clinging to Eveley’s hand, and looking deeply into her eyes.
“Aren’t you afraid down there at night?” wondered Eveley. “I have lived on top of the canyon all my life, and we played hide-and-seek there when we were children, and I love it,—and yet when night comes, I do not even go so far as the rose pergola unless Nolan isthere to hold my hand and shoo away the ghosts and things.”
“That is our difference. You are afraid of the world and the night, I am afraid only of men and women. I have lived alone, and have had wide dark gardens to wander in. They have never harmed me. Only men have injured me, and my family. So I love to slip down into the soft fragrant darkness of the canyon and sit on the big stones or on the velvet grass, and see my future in the shadows.”
“But do not stay long. The whole canyon is yours to dream in, if it makes you happy. But wear a heavy wrap and do not get chilled.”
Then with a hasty kiss she ran down the steps to the car.
Eveley was tired that night. The first lesson in driving, the lazy supper on the beach, and the long ride, left her listless and indolent. So after their merry dinner, and a dance or two around the Victrola, she said she had a headache and wanted to go home.
They drove very slowly along the windingroad, and were quietly content. Nolan opened the doors of the garage and Eveley ran the car into place; then, as she was really tired, at the foot of the rustic stairs he said good night, while she crept slowly up the steps.
For the first time, there was no Marie to welcome her. The room, though lighted, looked dreary and forlorn without the pretty adopted girl.
“The little goosie,” said Eveley, with a tender smile. “I suppose she is still dreaming down in that spooky canyon. Maybe she has fallen asleep. I shall have to go after her.”
She took a small flash-light, and hurried down the rustic stairs and the well-known path beyond the rose pergola, where she hoped to find Marie.
But Marie was not there.
Eveley knew every foot of the canyon by heart; she went surely and without hesitation along the twisting, winding, rocky path, half-way down the narrow slope.
“Marie,” she called softly, “Marie.”
But there was no answer.
“Maybe she is behind the live oak in theRambler’s Retreat,” she thought, and climbed up the steep bank from the path, clinging to bits of shrubbery and foliage. But Marie was not there. And then as Eveley turned, she heard quick running steps in the pathway under the swinging bridge that spanned the canyon lower down.
Eveley sighed aloud in her relief,—then her breath caught in her throat,—a gasp of fear.
For sounding clear and distinct above the light steps came a pounding of heavier feet. Some one was following Marie up the path,—no, there were two for there was another pounding a little fainter, farther away. Now Eveley could hear the frightened intake of Marie’s breath as she ran. Two girls alone in the dark canyon.
Eveley clung desperately to the heavy shrubbery among which she was crouching. She was about three feet above the path on the steep bank. Clinging for support with one hand, she reached noiselessly about for a stone, but there was nothing upon which she could lay her hand.
Below the path, the canyon dropped sharply for a long way, fifty or sixty feet perhaps, not a precipice, but with a decided drop that could only be descended with care. If Marie would only lie down and roll, she might be able to hide among the bushes at the bottom. But Marie did not think of that. Her one idea was to run faster and faster, in the hope of escaping her pursuers.
“Marie,” whispered Eveley sharply as the girl came up the path near her, and Marie, hearing the faint sound, stopped suddenly in her tracks, swaying, more frightened than ever.
“Lie down, lie down,” urged Eveley, but Marie did not hear, and before she could gather her wits to run on, a man leaped toward her, both arms outstretched.
“I got you,” he panted.
Marie, following the terrified instinct of every hunted animal, swung her lithe body and ducked beneath his arm. And at that moment, Eveley, tightening her hold upon the branches of the bush, drew up her feet, braced herself against the bank for a moment, and then sprang heavily against the man with both feet and sent him reeling head-first down the canyon.
“Marie,” whispered Eveley sharply.
“Marie,” whispered Eveley sharply.
Like a flash, Marie flattened herself against the bank—one more dark shadow among the others—and none too soon, for the second man was close upon them, so close they could hear the heavy rasp of his breathing. Eveley had not time to raise herself for another spring, so she crouched against the bank in terror, hoping in his haste that he might pass them by. But as he came near he paused suddenly, his attention attracted by the sound of tearing brush, and the incoherent cries of his companion as he rolled down the canyon. Taking it as an indication that the chase was in that direction, he turned blindly to follow, and not knowing the lay of the land, lost his footing at once and fell headlong.
Eveley was upon her feet in an instant.
“Run, Marie,” she whispered, and in less than a moment they were hurrying up the path behind the rose pergola under the magnolias and beneath the light from their Cloud Cote.
“Wait,” whispered Marie. “Let’s hide a moment. They might see us going up the stairs. Wait beneath the roses until they are gone.”
Only faint sounds came up to them as the two men, bruised and sore, painfully picked themselves up from the rocks and the prickly shrubs. Evidently they realized there was no hope of further pursuit, for in a short while the girls could hear the faint echo of their heavy footsteps as they retraced their way down the canyon.
Eveley held Marie in her arms until the last sound had echoed away, and then silently they climbed the stairs, crossed the little garden on the roof, and crawled through the window into the safety of the Cote.
“Are you hurt, Marie?” asked Eveley, the first to break the tense silence that fell upon them when they were conscious of shelter and security.
Marie shook her head. Then she moved one step toward Eveley, and asked in a pleading whisper: “Are you angry with me? Do you hate me?”
“Oh, Marie, don’t talk so,” cried Eveley, nervous tears springing to her eyes. “How could I be angry with you? But I was so frightened and shocked. I did not know how very much I loved you. You must never go into the canyon again at night. Never once,—for one minute. Will you promise me?”
“I will promise whatever you wish, Eveley, you know.”
Eveley smiled at her weakly, and turning to take off her wraps saw with surprise that the sleeves were torn almost from her coat.
“I must have come down with quite a bang,” she said faintly, suddenly aware that her shoulders were quivering with pain.
With a little cry of pity, Marie ran to her, and tenderly helped to remove her blouse. The tears ran down her face when she saw the red and swollen shoulders beneath.
“Oh, my poor angel,” she mourned. “All bruised and sore like that. For me. You never should have done it.”
Very sweetly she bathed the shoulders, and when Eveley crept painfully into bed, she arranged soft compresses of cotton and oilfor her to lie upon. And she asked, shyly, if she might sit by the bed.
“Until you fall asleep,” she pleaded. “I can not leave you like this, when you are in such pain,—for me.”
“Come and sleep with me, then,” said Eveley. “I do not want to let you go off alone, either, when—something so terrible might have happened to you.”
Eagerly and with great joy Marie availed herself of the privilege, and slipped into her place beside Eveley.
“If you suffer in the night, please ask me to help you,” she begged. “I will not sleep, but I do not wish to speak until I know you are awake.”
“You must sleep,” said Eveley.
But Marie did not sleep. Sometimes Eveley would moan a little, turning heavily, and then, without a sound, Marie was out of bed, replacing the bandages with fresh ones, crooning softly over Eveley as a mother over a suffering child.
Fortunately the next day was Sunday, and Eveley remained quietly on a couch, withMarie waiting upon her like a tender Madonna. Nolan came up, too, and insisted upon the full story of what had happened.
“I fell,” said Eveley positively.
“You did not fall on your shoulder-blades,” he said. “You girls have been up to some monkey business, and I want to know.”
After long insistence, Eveley told him of the night’s adventure, Marie sitting erect and rigid during the recital.
“Where did you go, Marie?” he asked, in deep concern.
“I went too far,” she confessed regretfully. “But it was an exquisite night, and I was happy. I went down farther and farther, and did not realize it. Suddenly I looked up, and knew I was far, far down. I turned at once.—Then some one called. A man’s voice. I ran, and the steps came pounding after me.”
“You must not go into the canyon at night again, please, Marie. You are too young. And—the canyon goes away down to the water-front where there are a lot of Greasers and—I mean, half-breeds,” he stammered quickly, “all kinds of foreigners along theroad down there! You must stay on top of your canyon and be good.”
The next morning, although Eveley knew her arms were too stiff and sore for work, she decided to go to the office anyhow to see the day well started.
“They will send me home, and I shall be here for luncheon with you. I can not drive yet, so I’ll just cross the bridge and go on the street-car.”
As she stood on the swinging bridge, looking down into the lovely canyon, it seemed impossible that there in the friendly shadows such horrible dangers had menaced them. Of a sudden impulse, she ran back, and climbed carefully down to where she had clung so grimly to the tangled vines and had knocked Marie’s assailant from the path.
No, it was no dream. The vines were torn and mangled and on the path were the marks of trampling feet, and peering down the canyon she could discern two distinct trails where the men had tumbled and reeled. She slowly followed the trails, picking her way carefully, clinging to bits of shrub. Her lipscurved into a grim smile as she pictured their surprise and pain. At the foot of the canyon she saw something shining among the rocks.
She lifted it curiously, and turned it in her hand. It was clean and shining,—a small steel badge marked Secret Service.
Eveley’s eyes clouded, and her brows took on a troubled frown, as she put the badge carefully into her purse.
“I shall never tell Marie,” she said. “It would not help much with the Americanization of a sweet and trusting foreign girl to know she had been followed at night by a steel badge marked Secret Service.”
And Eveley followed the path back to the bridge again with a grieved and troubled air.
CHAPTER XVIISPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION
As the weeks passed, Eveley noticed a change in the conduct of the honeymoon home beneath her. Many times in the early morning, she saw Mrs. Severs going out with a covered basket and wearing an old long coat and a tight-fitting small hat. And sometimes she met her in the evening, coming home, dusty, tired and happy.
“I am going to father’s,” she would explain lightly. Or, “I have been out with father to-day.”
And at the quizzical laughter in Eveley’s eyes, she would add defiantly: “He is a darling, Eveley, and I was very silly. Why didn’t you bring me to my senses?”
For Mrs. Severs was feeling less well than usual, and in the long absence of her husband every day, she was learning to depend on the brusk, kindly, capable father-in-law. And many days, when she was not wellenough to leave home, he came himself, and the girls up-stairs could hear him in the kitchen below, preparing dinner for Andy and his ailing bride.
“Whatever should I do without him, Miss Ainsworth?” she sometimes asked. “He does everything for me. And I think he likes me pretty well, now he is getting used to me. He is good to me,—his little funny ways are not really funny any more, but rather sweet. I spoiled everything with my selfishness, and he will never try to live with us again.”
One evening, when Father-in-law had been particularly tender and helpful, she looked at Eveley with brooding eyes, and said, “You are such a nice girl, but I sort of blame you because father is not with us. You are so much cleverer than I,—couldn’t you have opened my eyes before it was too late?”
And Eveley ran up the stairs shaking her slender fists in the air. “Deliver me from brides,” she said devoutly to the rose in the corner of her roof garden. “Grooms are bad enough, but brides are utterly impossible. I would not live with one for anything on earth.To think of the wretched life they were living until I helped them to a proper adjustment,—and now she holds me responsible. I always said Father-in-law was the most desirable member of the family.”
But even he disappointed her.
“Well, are you getting enough freedom?” she asked him pleasantly one evening as she met him coming in.
He looked about cautiously before he answered. “Excuse me, miss,” he said apologetically, “but you are away off on some things. Freedom is all right, but a little of it goes a long ways. Sometimes folks like company. She,” he said, with an explanatory wave of his thumb toward the house, “she is a pretty fair sort. I’ve got so danged sick of having my own way that, Holy Mackinaw, I’d try living with an orphan asylum for a change. You see, I was just getting used to her, and so I kind of miss her cluttering around under foot.”
Eveley was quite annoyed at this turn of events, and her feeling of perturbation lasted fully half-way up the rustic stairs. But bythe time she had crossed the roof garden and swung through the window she was herself again. She caught Marie about the shoulders and danced her through the room with a spinning whirl.
“Such a lark,” she cried. “The most fun we are going to have. Listen, sweetest thing in the world, we are going to have a party to-night, you and I, and Nolan and Jimmy Ames. They are coming here, Jimmy for you of course, for I always get Nolan if he is in the party.”
“Oh, Eveley,” gasped Marie, paling a little. “I can’t. I—Mr. Hiltze said I should not meet men, you know.”
“Well, he is not the head of our family. And besides, he will not know a thing about this. You will love Jimmy Ames. I nearly do myself. He is so big and blond and boyish,—you know, the slow, good, lovey kind.”
“But he’ll ask—”
“Don’t worry. I know Jimmy Ames. After one look at you, he will not be able to ask questions for a month. Come, let’s hurry. You must wear that exquisite little yellowthing, and I’ll wear black to bring you out nicely.”
“Oh, Eveley, you mustn’t—”
“Well, Nolan likes me in black, anyhow. He says it makes me look heavenly, and of course one ought to sustain an illusion like that if possible. Now do not argue, Marie. We are going to have a perfectly wonderful time, and you will be as happy as a lark.”
For a moment longer Marie hesitated, frowning into space. Then she suddenly brightened, and a wistful eagerness came into her eyes.
“Eveley, I am going to do whatever you tell me. If you wish me to be of your party, I will. And if you say, ‘Do not tell Mr. Hiltze,’ I shall never tell him. And if you say, ‘Like Mr. Ames,’ I shall adore him.”
“That’s a nice girl,” cried Eveley, happily whirling into her chair at the table and dropping her hat upon the floor at her side. “I couldn’t have planned anything nicer than this. Kitty and Arnold often have parties with us, but it will be much better havingyou and Jimmy. He looks very smart in his uniform.”
“Uniform,” faltered Marie suddenly.
“Yes,—Lieutenant Ames, you know,—Jimmy Ames.”
“Lieutenant? Oh, Eveley, please, let’s not. I—am not fond of the military. I am afraid of soldiers. Let me—Have some one else dear, please. Get Kitty this time, won’t you? I am afraid.”
“Wait till you see Jimmy. He isn’t the snoopy overbearing kind that you are used to. Can’t you trust me yet, Marie? I wouldn’t have you meet any one who would be unpleasant or suspicious. You have found the rest of my friends all right, haven’t you?”
“Well, never mind,” Marie decided suddenly. “I will come to the party, but do not ever let Mr. Hiltze know, will you? He would be raging.”
“Marie, do you love Amos Hiltze?”
“Love him! I hate him.”
“Hate him? Then why in the world are you so afraid of him? You obey every word hesays, and follow every suggestion he makes. I thought you were great friends.”
Marie flushed and paled swiftly. “It is because I am grateful to him,” she said at last, not meeting Eveley’s eyes. “He brought me to you,—and he helps me,—and I am, willing to do whatever he tells me except when you wish something else. But I do not like him personally by any means, and I wish he did not come here so much.”
“I thought you were friends,” Eveley repeated confusedly.
“He is in love with you—don’t you know that?”
“Yes,—perhaps so. But Angelo says men can love two women simultaneously. Angelo says there is something strange about his bringing—I mean,” she interrupted herself quickly, “Angelo wondered where he found you, or—or something.”
“Angelo is a good friend to you, Eveley. You might pay better heed to his suggestions, to your own good,” said Marie faintly.
“I thought,—oh, I do not know what I thought. Well, we can shunt Mr. Hiltze offa little, if you wish. But you should not dislike him. He is greatly interested in you, and so full of enthusiasm and eagerness for this Americanization idea. He has been a great help to me, and he is very clever. And since he brought us together we should love him a little. Any one who struggles with Americanization deserves my patriotic and sympathetic interest, at least.”
“Yes, I know.” And she added slowly: “One can show enthusiasm for the things one hates worst in the world,—if there is a secret reason.”
“You do not mean Mr. Hiltze, do you?” asked Eveley, with quiet loyalty.
“No, to be sure not. I only said one could.”
“Mr. Hiltze is nothing to us. Toss him away. Come now, let’s doll up for our party.”
They were two radiantly lovely girls who stood in the little garden on the roof of the sun parlor, waiting for the men who ran up the wavering rustic stairs to join them.
“Oh, girls,” cried Nolan plaintively, as he saw them in their beauty. “It is not fair of you to look like this. Marie, you are exquisite.Eveley, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Yes, we are,” said Eveley pleasantly. “Jimmy, I want you to meet my darling and adorable little friend, Marie Ledesma. This is Lieutenant Ames, Marie.”
Lieutenant Ames stood very tall and slim and straight as he looked into Marie’s face. Then he saw the soft appeal in her eyes.
“Be good to me,” they seemed to beg, “be generous, and kind.”
It was in answer to this plea of the limpid eyes that he held out his hand with sudden impulse, and said:
“Miss Ledesma, when Eveley speaks like that, I know your friendship is a priceless boon, and I want my share of it. I am receiving a sort of psychic message that you and I are destined to be good comrades.”
A sudden wave of light swept over her lovely face, and her lips parted in a happy smile.
“Lieutenant Ames,” she whispered in her soft voice, “do you really feel so? And then you also are my friend?”
“Jimmy Ames, you stop that,” cried Eveley. “Marie belongs to me, and you must not even try to supplant me. I won’t have it. Come on in, everybody, and let’s play, play, play to our heart’s content.”
Marie went through the window first, with a light slender swing of her feet. But Eveley, as always plunging impulsively, lost her balance and fell among the cushions. Nolan and the lieutenant followed laughing.
“We must take a day off and teach Eveley the approved method of making entrance to a social gathering,” said Nolan. “Are you all black and blue, you poor child?” he asked, helping her up, for she had waited patiently for his assistance.
It was a wonderfully happy party. They played the Victrola, and danced merrily through the two rooms, around the reading table, through the archway, winding among the chairs in the dining-room. When they were tired, Marie brought her mandolin,—for having remarked once idly that she could play it, Eveley that night had brought her one as a little gift of love. And she playedsoft Spanish love-songs, singing in her pretty lilting voice. Then altogether they prepared their supper and because the night was still young and lovely, and they were happy and free from pressing care, they decided suddenly for a drive. They crossed the bay on the ferry to Coronado, and went down on the sands of the beach for a while, standing quietly to watch the silver tips of the waves shining in the pale moonlight. Then they drove out the Silver Strand and so home once more.
Before they parted, they arranged for another party, two nights later, and after long discussion agreed that it should be an evening swimming party in the bay at Coronado, with a hot supper afterward in the Cloud Cote.
“How did you like our Lieutenant Jimmy?” Eveley demanded, as soon as they were alone.
“He is incomparable,” said Marie simply.
“I knew it,” cried Eveley ecstatically. “Nolan and I both said so. Spontaneous combustion, that is what it was. Come and sleep with me again to-night. It is such fun to goto bed and turn out the light and talk. Did you ever do it?”
“No, my life has not been of that kind.”
“But you will learn. I never saw any one learn as quickly as you do,—especially things about men.—Now I shall begin by telling you how adorable Nolan is, and you must interrupt me to say how wonderful Jimmy is.—Did you ever have a sweetheart, Marie?”
Then she added quickly: “Wait, wait. I—I did not mean to ask questions,—Excuse me, I am sorry. Let’s talk of something else.”
“No, let’s talk of lovers,” said Marie, snuggling close to Eveley, her head lying against her shoulder. “I have never had the regular kind of a lover,—your kind,—the kind that women want. My life was full of war and horrors, and I had not time for the thrills of love. And the men I knew were not the men that one would wish to love one.”
“Then, this is your chance,” said Eveley happily. “Now I am positively sure that one of these days you will be a matchless American woman. You are just ripe and ready for love. You can’t escape it, you sweet thing,even if you could wish. War and horrors were left behind in your old home. Here in your new home you will know only peace and contentment and love. Aren’t you glad I adopted you? We must give Mr. Hiltze credit for that anyhow, mustn’t we?”
There was a sudden tension in the slender figure at her side. “Eveley, are you so innocent? Do you never attribute evil motives to any one? Do you always believe only good and beautiful and lovely things of those you meet?”
“Well, I have no real reason for thinking mean or ugly things of any one—not really. I never had any horrors in my life until the war came. I have just lived along serenely and contentedly, and being fairly nice and kind, I have no guilty conscience to trouble me, and no one has ever been hateful or mean to me—not in anything that really counted.”
Both were silent a moment, thinking, each in her different way, of the contrast in their lives. Then Eveley went on, more slowly:
“I feel sometimes that we are living on the crest of a terrible upheaval—that we are onthe edge of a seething volcano which is threatening and rumbling beneath us, each day growing fiercer and more ominous, and that presently may come chaos, and we on the crater of life will be dragged down into the furnace with the rest. I suppose,” she added apologetically, “it is because of the conditions that always follow a war, the political unrest, the social chaos, the anarchistic tendencies of every one. I am not in the midst of things enough to understand them, but even up here on the top of our canyon, we sometimes get a blast of the hot air from below, and it troubles us. Then we try to forget, and go on with our playing. But the volcano still rumbles beneath.”
Eveley slipped her hand out to take Marie’s and found it icy cold.
“Did—did you ever feel so before?” asked Marie in a low strange voice. “That you were living on the rim of a volcano, ready to catch and crush you?”
“No, not before. It is just now—after the war. Conditions were never the same before.”
Then Marie burst into a passion of tears. “It is my fault,” she sobbed. “It is because I am here. All my life I have lived in the crater of a volcano, and I have brought it upon you. It is a curse I carry with me. It is the chaos from which I have come, and to which I must go again when I leave you—it is that which destroys your peace.”
Frightened and astonished, Eveley soothed her, cradling her in her arms. “You little silly,” she said tenderly. “You dear little goose. Don’t you believe any such nonsense as that. We are in a condition of turmoil, our United States and all the rest of the world. It is not the affairs of your Mexico that worry me—it is the tempest in my own country. And don’t you ever talk any more about going back. You shall never go back. You are to stay here with me forever and ever, world without end, amen. You will, won’t you?”
Marie only stirred a little, and did not answer.
“Marie,” cried Eveley, her voice sharp with fear. “Do you ever think really of going backto—that? Answer me.” And she gripped Marie’s soft shoulder with strong fingers.
“I do not think any more,” said Marie gently. “But one always has a feeling that one must return whence one has come, do you not think? It is only that. It seems incredible that I, alone out of our struggling thousands, should be let to come away and live serenely in a cloud cote, does it not? And the struggle in Mexico goes on.”
“The same kind of peace and contentment will come to all your country when the world is settled down to law and order once more,” said Eveley, with the sublime faith of the young and the unsuffering. “It just takes time. And God was good enough to carry you away before the end of the conflict. Just wait. When our country is thoroughly Americanized, and returns to joyful work and love and life again, the contagion will spread to your people, and peace will reign there also. So do not talk any more nonsense about leaving me. Now let’s go back to the beginning, and talk about—the men.”
CHAPTER XVIIICONVERTS OF LOVE
A very warm intimacy developed rapidly between the four friends, and every evening for nearly two weeks found them joyfully, even riotously, making merry together in the Cloud Cote. As Eveley had prophesied, Lieutenant Ames was hopelessly lost from the first, and Marie yielded herself very readily to the charm of an ardent wooing.
But with Eveley, Marie was different, more quiet, less demonstrative, sometimes plainly listless and absent-minded. Eveley ascribed the change to her newly developed interest in Lieutenant Ames, and patiently awaited the outcome of the ripening romance. For Eveley had a deep-seated sympathy with every appeal of love.
For many weeks she had received no word from Miriam Landis. Although she had passed in an hour from all connection withtheir daily plans, yet she was never far from their thought. Even without their tender and sympathetic memories, they could not have forgotten her, for her husband was a frequent and always tumultuous visitor in the Cote.
He invariably began talking before he was through the window, and his first words were unfailingly the same.
“I can’t stand it, Eveley, I simply can’t stand it. You’ve got to do something about it.”
Again and again he came with this appeal, always overlooking the fact that Eveley had no faintest idea of Miriam’s whereabouts, for, true to her word, she had kept her hiding-place unknown to them all.
Then for several weeks he did not come, and Eveley felt that perhaps he was reconciled, and had returned to his old pursuit of secluded ballroom corners. But Nolan assured her of the injustice of this. Lem had forsaken all his former haunts, and had become a recluse, brooding alone in his deserted home.
“It will do him good, even if it does not last,” Nolan said. “Almost any one would grieve for a woman like Miriam for a few months.”
“Perhaps it is permanent this time, and there will be a reconciliation, and both live happily ever after,” said Eveley, with her usual buoyant faith in the cheerful outcome.
Gordon Cameron she had seen only once since Miriam’s departure, and that was when he came at her request to receive Miriam’s message. He had listened quietly, while she repeated the words of her friend.
“I expected it, of course,” he said at last gravely. “The pity of it is that her little revolution was so hopeless from the beginning. As long as a woman loves her husband, she can not hope for happiness, nor even for forgetfulness.”
“Oh, she does not love her husband any more,” said Eveley confidently. “Not a bit. She is over that long ago.”
“That was the whole trouble,” he insisted. “If she had not loved him, she could have stood it and gone her way. But loving him,the situation was impossible for a woman of spirit and pride. Well, there is always one to pay in every triangle, and this time the bill comes to me. But I had anticipated that from the beginning. She is a wonderful woman.”
“Do you think she will go back to her husband?” asked Eveley breathlessly.
“I hardly think so. She might as well, though; perhaps it would be better. She can not be happy without him, and she was certainly not happy with him. It is only a choice of miseries. As long as she loves him, she will suffer for it. I begin to think that one who loves can not be happy.”
“Oh, yes, one can. One is,” asserted Eveley positively.
“Perhaps I should say, when one is married to it,” he added, with a sober smile for her assurance.
Then he had gone away, and when Lem’s pleadings had suddenly ceased, Eveley felt that the little tempest would live its life, and die its death, and perhaps Miriam at least would find happiness in the lull that followed.
So it was something of a shock to have her pleasant Sunday morning nap disturbed by Lem pounding briskly upon her window.
“Get up, immediately,” he said in an assertive voice quite different from his futile and inane pleadings of a short while before. “Hurry, Eveley, I want you. Dress for motoring, my car is here. I shall wait in the garden—give you ten minutes.”
“He must want me for a bridesmaid for his second wedding,” thought Eveley resentfully, as she hurriedly dressed. But accustomed to obey the calls of friendship, she put on a heavy sport skirt and sweater, and had even pulled her soft hat over her curls before she went to the window.
“I am ready, but I do not approve of it,” she began rather unpleasantly.
“You’d better take a doughnut, or a roll, or an orange, or something, for we have no time for breakfast,” he said in the same assertive voice. “She will not be back until afternoon, Miss Ledesma. Sorry if it interferes with any of your plans, but it can not be helped. Get your coat, quickly, Eveley.”
“It does interfere with our plans,” she said crossly. “We were going up to the mountains for a beefsteak fry with Jimmy and Nolan.”
“Never mind,” said Marie softly. “It may come another Sunday. Mr. Landis seems to need you.”
“All ready, Eveley? Let me help you. Good-by, Miss Ledesma.”
And Eveley found herself marching briskly down the rustic steps away from her own plan and her own desire, and with no knowledge of what lay before her.
“You might at least tell me where we are going,” she said at last, after he had hurried her into the car and started away.
“To see Miriam,” he answered.
“Oh!” Eveley’s voice was a long gasp. She was content to wait after that for his explanation, although it was very slow in coming.
“She is at a ranch up in the mountains,” he said finally. “About fifty miles. We just located her last night. I have been looking, for her all the time. You are going to talk to her for me.”
“Oh, am I?”
“Yes. I was afraid to come alone for fear she would not see me. She will not refuse to see you.”
“Do you mind telling me what I am going to say to her?”
He was silent a while, thinking. “She refused to take any money from me,” he said, presently. “And she has very little. If she persists in this, she will have to work for her living. Miriam can not do that.”
“No,” said Eveley softly.
“She does not want me for a husband yet,” he said humbly. “And that is right. But I must have Miriam, and she shall never have any one else but me—not that I think she would ever want anybody else. You are to tell Miriam she must come home, and live her life just as she wishes and do as she pleases in everything, and allow me to be a servant for her, to provide what she wants and needs, to take care of her if she is sick. Tell her she may have any friends she likes, lovers even if she wishes, but that she must let me work for her.”
Eveley laid her hand affectionately upon his arm. “I have never done you justice, Lem; forgive me. I think Miriam will come home. I hope she will.”
“She has to. And after a while, when she sees in me what she used to think was there, she will love me again. But in the meantime, I shall ask nothing and expect nothing. But Miriam has got to be in the house.”
Eveley only spoke once after that.
“If she will not come?”
He turned upon her then, a sudden grim smile lighting his face. “I know what I shall do then,” he said. “But you will think it is madness. If she refuses to come, I shall make the necessary arrangements, and kidnap her. She’s got to come.”
Eveley burst into quick laughter at the picture that came to her—a picture of the old-time, immaculate Lem of the ballrooms, carrying his wife away into the mountains to live a cave-man life.
He laughed with her, but the dead-set of his face remained. “It sounds like a joke,” he admitted. “But I have made up my mind.Miriam is mine, and I am going to have her. We’ll just go up into the mountains for a few months, and she will see that I am cured.”
Mile after mile they drove in silence up the steep mountain grades, and after a long time he drew the car off beside the road under a cluster of trees.
“That is the ranch, but I will not drive in. If she saw us coming she would not talk to us, so you must catch her unawares. I shall wait here for you. You’d better not tell her I am going to kidnap her, I think I would rather take her by surprise. She has to come, Eve, now make her see it. Just a servant that is all I want to be to her for a while. But she did love me, and she will again.”
So Eveley walked swiftly up the drive to the house, keeping in the shadow as much as possible, surprised to know that after all the years of her disgust for the husband of her friend, her sympathies now were all with him.
At the kitchen door she assumed her most winsome and disarming smile and asked for Mrs. Landis.
“She does not wish to see any one,” said the woman quickly. “She said particularly that she would not see any callers.”
“But she will see me, I am sure,” said Eveley coaxingly. “You ask her. Tell her it is Eveley Ainsworth. She always sees me.”
“But she told me particularly,” repeated the woman. “And she is not here anyhow. She has gone over the hill. She likes to be among the pines. She is not well, either. I am sorry, miss, but she is not here, and she would not see you if she were.”
“How far is it to the hill? And does she stay long?”
“It is not far,” said the woman, with a wave of her hand toward the east. “But she will not come home for luncheon. She has no appetite. And the boys are out, so I have no one to send for her. I am sorry, miss.”
“You think there is no use to wait, then?”
“Oh, no use at all, miss. She will be gone for hours, and she would not see you if she were here.”
“Tell her I came, won’t you? Eveley Ainsworth. Thank you.”
And with another disarming smile Eveley turned back to the path. But as soon as she was out of sight of the house, she slipped off through the trees, and started on a light run for the pine grove on the hill to the east.
“As Lem says, poor thing, she has to,” she said to herself, with a smile. And very soon she was among the big pines, looking eagerly back and forth, quite determined not to return to Lem until she had seen Miriam and talked her into reason. And so at last she came upon her, sitting somberly under the big trees, her back against a huge boulder, staring away down the mountains into the haze of the sea in the west, where her husband lived in the city by the bay.
“Miriam,” Eveley called in a ringing voice, and ran joyously down the path.
Miriam sprang up to meet her. “Eveley!” she cried, catching her hands eagerly. And then, “Have you seen—Lem? Is he—all right?”
Eveley held her hands a moment, looking searchingly into the thin face and the shadowy eyes.
“Revolutions are hard work, aren’t they?” she asked with deep sympathy.
“Oh, Eveley, they are killing, heart-breaking, soul-wracking,” she cried. “And yet of course it was right and best for me to come,” she added gravely. “Does Lem seem to—miss me?” And there was wistfulness in her voice.
“He is out there now,” said Eveley, waving her hand toward the road. “He brought me up.”
At the first word, Miriam had turned quickly, ready to run down—not to the house for shelter, but to the car for comfort. But she stopped in a moment, and came back.
“I shall not see him, of course,” she said quietly.
“I brought a message from him. He says you must come home, Miriam, he says his madness is all purged away, and that you are his and he must have you. But he wants you to come and live your own life and do as you wish, only allowing him, to stay in the home not as your husband, but as your servant until you learn to love and trust him again.He says you must come, and let him work for you, and take care of you.”
Miriam’s face was very white, and her eyes deep wells of pain.
“Poor Lem!” she said tenderly. “So sweet—and so weak.”
“I think he is finding strength,” said Eveley.
For a long time, the two girls stood there, side by side, Eveley looking into the haze of the sea miles below, Miriam staring down through the pines to where she knew a car might be waiting in the shadows.
“We must not keep him waiting,” she said at last.
Without a word, they turned, hand in hand and started down to the road again. When she saw the little, well-known car beneath the trees, and Lem standing rigid beside it, she caught her breath suddenly. Eveley would have hung back, to let her greet her husband alone, but Miriam clung to her hand and pulled her forward.
He came to meet them, awkwardly, a gleam of hope in his eyes, but meekness in his manner.He held out his hand, and Miriam with a little flutter dropped her own into it, pulling it quickly away again.
“Are you—all right, Lem? You look—thin,” she said with shy solicitude.
“I feel thin,” he replied grimly. “Are—you coming with us?”
“Yes, of course,” said Eveley.
“Yes, of course,” Miriam echoed faintly.
“Shall I drive?” suggested Eveley, anticipating complete reconciliation for the two in their first moment of privacy.
“I will drive,” said Lem. “You girls sit in the back. Did Eveley explain that I only expect to be—your driver, and your valet, and your servant—for a while.”
Tears brightened in Miriam’s eyes. “Oh, Lem,” she cried, holding out her hands. “How can people talk of servants who have loved—as we have loved?”
Eveley immediately went into a deep and concentrated study of the rear tires, for Miriam was close in her husband’s arms, and his tears were falling upon her fragrant curls.
After a while, he held her away from him and looked into her tender face.
“It isn’t—you aren’t coming, then, just because it is your duty to give me every chance,” he whispered.
“Oh, no, dear, just because I love you.”
Eveley was still utterly immersed in the condition of the tires.
“We’ll try it again, Lem—”
“Oh, Miriam,” he broke in, “it isn’t any trial this time. This is marriage.”
Eventually they got started toward home and had driven many miles before Miriam noticed that her uncovered hair was blowing in the wind, and remembered that she had left the ranch without notice and that all her things were there. But what were simple things and formal notices when human hearts were finding happiness and faith?
In the Cloud Cote, Eve’s friends were patiently awaiting her return. Nolan was reading poetry aloud to himself in the roof garden, and Lieutenant Ames was laboriously picking chords on the piano, with Marie near him strumming on the mandolin.
The first creak of the rustic stair brought them all to the landing to greet her.
“Reconciliation,” shouted Nolan, before she was half-way up. “Miriam is home, and they have already lived happily ever after.”
Eveley began immediately to give an account of the day’s happenings standing motionless on the third step from the top until she finished her recital.
Then she went back down, and gave an impatient tap on the seventh stair.
“Well, you started something,” she said to it solemnly. “And you ought to be satisfied now, if anybody is. To-morrow I shall crown you with a wreath of laurel.”
Then she went up again. “Does this do anything to your theory about duty?” asked Nolan. “Does it prove it, or disprove it, or what? I can not seem to get any connection.”
“But there is a connection,” she said, with a smile. “It absolutely and everlastingly proves the Exception.”
“Eveley Ainsworth, don’t ever say exception again until you can explain it,” criedNolan. “I dream of exceptions by night, and I legalize them by day. Be a nice girl, and do a good deed this Sabbath Day by expounding the virtues of the One Exception.”
But Eveley was hungry, and said she could not expound anything when her system clamored for tea.
Eveley’s Sabbath, however, was not yet ended. While she was blissfully sipping her tea, the three she loved best in the world about her, there came a gentle tap upon her window, and Mrs. Severs walked in.
“So sorry to bother you, Miss Ainsworth,” she began apologetically, “but I want to ask a favor. Father is moving back with us to-day, and—”
“What!”
“Yes, indeed he is,” she cried blithely. “I was so lonesome, and some days I am so ill, that I asked him as a personal favor if he wouldn’t come and try me just once more, and he said, Holy Mackinaw! he had been aching to do that very thing.”
“Well,” Eveley said judiciously, “I suppose you will all be satisfied now that you are backin your old rut wretchedly doing your duty by each other.”
“I should say not,” denied Mrs. Severs promptly. “I asked father to come because I—like him awfully much, and it is so lonely without him, and he is coming because he missed us and is fond of us, and there isn’t any duty about it. You have converted us. We do not believe in duty.”
“And the favor?”
“Yes—father is bringing the flivver of course—and the garage is so big. Do you mind if we keep it there with your car? We will pay any extra rent, of course.”
“Keep it there by all means,” said Eveley generously. “And there is no rent. And when I get stuck anywhere I shall expect you to tow me home for love.” And when Mrs. Severs had gone, Eveley said: “Make another pot of tea, please, Marie. Make two pots—three if you like.”
“Pretty hard to keep some people properly adjusted, isn’t it?” asked Nolan soberly, but with laughter in his eyes.
“What is proved by the case of Father-in-lawand the Bride, Eveley?” asked Marie with a soft teasing smile as she refilled Eveley’s cup.
But Eveley went into a remote corner of the room, and brandished the bread knife for protection, before she cried triumphantly:
“The Exception. It is another positive proof of the utter efficacy of my One Exception.”