CHAPTER XIVON THE ROAD“Dick,”said Mrs. Harlan, with extreme politeness, “I am perfectly willing that Lola should have all the best of it. I am used to that. I am quite prepared to admit that she is younger than I am, and better looking, although I still think that she might get along without telling me of it herself. It’s none of my business how much money you give her, nor how much she may bully you in private, but, my dear boy, I am just naturally damned if I’ll put up with her tantrums any longer.”“But, Madge,” pleaded Dick Fenway, rather anxiously, “Lola is—a little nervous!”“She’s all of that,” agreed Mrs. Harlan. “We started out to make a jolly party of this and it’s winding up like an Irish wake. Look at Bob.”In response to her rather dramatic invitation, Dick turned his head, and did as he was requested. He looked at Bob, and in spite of his disturbed mind hefound himself smiling. Bob Nelson, who made up the fourth in their little party, was a stout young fellow in the late twenties, whose sole ambition in life seemed to centre about a desire not to have rows; he sat on the sand a few paces away from them, and was earnestly practicing his favorite amusement, which consisted in fixing his eyes firmly upon nothing whatever, and allowing his mind to “stand without hitching,” as he had once described it, a mental gymnastic only possible of achievement inside of a skull so constituted as to allow the brain an abundance of room.“Bob,” continued Mrs. Harlan firmly, “is getting good and tired of the way things are going. We don’t mind a little change now and then, but we do object to being politely requested to get out of every hotel between Palm Beach and Quebec. Bob! What is your opinion of the way Lola is going on?”Bob, evidently anxious to do the subject full justice, gave the matter at least a moment’s calm thought before he replied.“I—er—yes——” He then, with considerable satisfaction, resumed his former amusement, only slightly troubled by the unusual mental effort.“There! You see!” exclaimed Mrs. Harlan.Although somewhat in doubt as to precisely what he was supposed to see, Dick was content to assume that it was not exactly a compliment to Lola.Lola had been making rows; there was no denying that. She was difficult to please, and absolutely indifferent to the rights of others. She was constantly getting them into disputes with the hotel clerks, the servants, or with the other guests, and on several occasions during their trip they had been politely informed that their rooms were needed for other purposes. All this had been fully as annoying to Dick as it had to either of the others, but during the six weeks they had been together, his love for her had grown into a great passion that made no account of her faults, although it could not blind him to them.“She’s in a difficult position, Madge,” he explained, anxious to smooth things over, for he knew that Lola would not travel about with him alone, and for the last few days he had seen that Mrs. Harlan was rapidly growing tired of her rôle of chaperone. “She’s had to break off with her people, and she’s new to this sort of thing. It will be all right as soon as that confoundeddivorce of mine is settled. Once we are married she’ll settle down and have an easy mind.”“All right,” Mrs. Harlan sighed patiently. “I’m your friend, and I’ll stick as long as I can, but I can’t help saying this, Dick: you’re the bravest man I ever knew. They make an awful fuss about ‘Daniel in the Lions’ Den’ but he wasn’t a marker to you!”“Oh, come now! Lola isn’t so bad as all that. She’s the best girl in the world, and the gamest little sport. Of course, I’ll admit she is a little bit upset right now, and her temper is a little—little violent.”“And then some,” agreed Mrs. Harlan coarsely.“Come on; let’s go back and see if she’s still asleep. If she is the hotel people will probably allow us to stay to lunch. Are you ready, Bob?”Bob was never what could properly be described as ready, but as it was easier on the whole to move than to dispute the matter, and as he was vaguely impressed with the idea that the word lunch had been mentioned, he rose ponderously to his feet and followed the others back to the hotel. Several groups of summer visitors, noticing the deep abstraction of his manner, were quite impressed. One young lady was heard to remark,that she “would like to know what he was thinking about;” a desire which, had he known of it, he would have been quite unable to gratify.They found Lola waiting for them on the broad veranda, and as she saw them she came to the head of the steps and stood there smiling down at them. She was all in white, and looked as fresh and as sweet as a flower. No one, to see her, would have believed that only the night before she had left them in a furious burst of temper, vowing that she never wanted to see any of them again as long as she lived.“I’ve been waiting for you for the longest time,” she cried out gayly. “I was afraid that you had all grown so disgusted with me that you had run away together, and were going to leave me here all by myself.”“You didn’t answer when I knocked at your door this morning, and I was afraid to wake you. I thought the sleep would do you more good than anything else.”Dick spoke tenderly, for he was really very fond of her, and anxious that the scene of the night before should be forgotten.“Aren’t you going to kiss me, Madge?”As Lola held out her hand pleadingly, and with an air of sweet repentance, Mrs. Harlan, who was kind-hearted enough in her way, completely surrendered, and kissed her warmly, although she had vowed to herself that she would make no more efforts to live at peace with her.“And you, Bob?” As she stood with her arm about Mrs. Harlan, she held out her left hand to him. “Will you forgive me also? You see that everyone else has; you don’t want to be the hard-hearted one of the crowd, do you?”“Lola, you’re all right,” said Bob, enormously flattered by all this unusual attention.“We’re going to cut out rows after this, and have a great time. Let’s go to lunch!”“Right again, Bob,” cried out Mrs. Harlan. “I always said you had more brains than any of us.”“Oh, no,” replied Bob modestly, as they started for the dining-room, “I don’t claim to have more than my share of brains, but I’m practical.”They had arrived here, at Narragansett Pier, only the day before, and Lola, who had been tired out by the long journey from Bar Harbor, had refused to godown stairs to dinner, and had, as she always did of late, taken breakfast in bed; so this was her first sight of the pretty dining-room.They were given a table by one of the front windows looking out over the water, and as she seated herself and looked around she made up her mind that she was going to like this new place.The room was crowded, although the season was drawing to a close, and she noted with approval that the guests were of a quieter sort than those to whom they had been accustomed of late.“It’s a fine assortment of old dopes we’ve fell into this time,” remarked Mrs. Harlan, looking about her scornfully. “Hadn’t you better say grace, Bob, or start a hymn?”“Good God, Madge!” exclaimed Bob in horror. “It ain’t as bad as that, is it?”“It’s a good thing for all of us,” said Lola. “It’s a rest to get where you can see decent women and children again. I’m tired of those sporty hotels we’ve been living in lately. I’m going in for the simple life, and besides, these are smart people; you can tell that by looking at them. There isn’t a thing in the worldthe matter with them, outside of their being respectable.”“They know enough to get good grub,” Bob asserted with strong approval. “If soup like this goes with being respectable, I believe I’ll get me a pair of spectacles and start in to raise whiskers.”“Look!” Lola nodded her head in the direction of a table near to them. “Did you ever see a finer looking old man or a prettier child! I wonder if he is her father? No, he’s too old. He is her grandfather; that pretty little woman next to him is his daughter and the little girl’s mother!”“Thank God for this cocktail!” exclaimed Mrs. Harlan piously, as she raised it to her lips. “It’s all that’s keeping me from a bad attack of the ‘Willies.’ You don’t seriously mean that you like this sort of thing.”“Of course I do,” replied Lola; “I like it better than any of the places we have been to yet; don’t you, Dick?”“I like any place where you are happy, Lola,” he replied.“Quick, Bob, send for another cocktail,” Mrs. Harlandemanded earnestly, “and tell the waiter to hurry up with it, or I’ll be turning virtuous myself.”There was, in fact, some reason for her surprise. Lola was never in the same mood for any great length of time, but up to now she had been tireless in her search for pleasure and excitement. She could not have told herself just why the atmosphere of this rather aristocratic hotel appealed so strongly to her, but the fact remained that, for the moment at least, she was happier than she had been at any time since their hurried flight from New York.They had gone first to Atlantic City, where Bob had joined their party, but on the second day after their arrival, one of the private detectives whom Dick had prudently engaged to keep an eye on John Dorris, had telegraphed that John had just taken a train for Atlantic City. How he had discovered their whereabouts they did not know, but long before his train arrived they were on their way to Cape May.That was the last they heard of John; whether he had continued the search, or given up and returned home, they neither knew nor cared. They travelled on, from one gay summer resort to another, as franticin their search for amusement as the prospectors who journey up and down the Yukon are in their search for gold.At first Lola had great trouble in teaching Dick that, in spite of her complete surrender of her life to his care, she had no idea of allowing him any favors beyond those conventionally granted to an accepted lover. On rare occasions she let him kiss her, with a little more warmth than is usually considered quite correct; he was privileged to hold her hand; once or twice perhaps to take her in his arms for a moment; aside from that all that he was expected to do was to provide her with the most costly dresses, and in every way to gratify her extravagant whims and caprices.This attitude of Lola’s was such a surprise to Mrs. Harlan that the good lady went about in a sort of fog of astonished admiration, and confided to Bob, at intervals of about four hours, that Lola was “about the slickest article she had as yet discovered.”Dick himself, however, seemed perfectly satisfied after he had been made to clearly understand Lola’s attitude. She had read his nature with true feminine intuition; to him the thing out of his reach was alwaysthe thing to be desired, and he made the life of his Cleveland attorney a burden with his daily demands of a speedy settlement of his divorce.To Lola’s father, sitting alone in New York, quietly waiting her return, to John or to Dr. Crossett, now half way across the Atlantic on his way back to Paris, the knowledge of her attitude might have brought some comfort; to them she seemed lost to all feelings of shame or sense of prudence, and it is possible, had they known how matters stood, that they would have kept on in their search for her.The real facts were that Dick was to Lola the direct means by which she was to provide herself with the good things of life. He was a rich man. As his wife she could be sure of the things that just now seemed to her to be of all things the most to be desired. He, himself, was a handsome, good-natured, easily managed young fellow. To the physical side of her, which as yet had only been aroused for one moment when she had thrown herself into John’s arms, Dick made absolutely no appeal, and twenty years of purity of thought and action had provided her with a defence against the casual promptings of instinctive desirestoo strong to be easily broken down. Of late a restless, nervous condition of mind and body might have warned her of a growing longing to solve for herself some of the depths of the world’s knowledge. Her eyes had more than once been held for a moment by the bold, admiring gaze of some one of the strong, handsome men whom she had met or when she had passed casually on the beaches or on the hotel verandas, but the quick catch of her breath, the sudden leap of her heart at such times had speedily been forgotten; she was not given to self-analysis; her whole existence just now was centered in a daily search for pleasure.After lunch she and Dick went for a long walk, and Dick took advantage of her present gentle mood to tell her of his hope of a quick settlement of his divorce action and to discuss with her plans for their future. As they strolled along the shore road, Lola noticed, idly, a rather striking couple who seemed to keep at about the same distance ahead of them; father and daughter she thought they must be; a very pretty girl of perhaps eighteen and a man in the late fifties, but so hale and vigorous that at the first glance he suggested no thought of age; indeed, it was not untilthe couple turned and passed them that Lola, glancing quickly at him, saw on his face that in spite of his youthful step and almost soldierly bearing, he was a man of about her own father’s time of life. The thought came to her, as for a moment she met his strong, eager glance of approval, as he saw her fresh young beauty and splendid vitality, that here was a man of real force.“How queerly he looked to me,” she thought, “this old man, with a daughter very little younger than I am myself. Yet when he saw me his eyes seemed to burn into mine. He is in mourning, too, for he wore a band on his arm, and the girl is in black; how queer men are. Are they always the same, boys and men, always like that? A girl has only to look at them, and they can think of nothing but her.”“Father!” The young lady looked almost angrily at him, then turning threw a quick look of scorn over her shoulder toward Lola.“What a bold-looking girl!”“Was she, my dear?” remarked her father coldly. “I thought her rather pretty.”“Pretty! She is beautiful. I was looking at her at lunch. I thought she was sweet, although she waswith impossible persons, but as she looked at you just now——”“Well, my dear?”“She looked like—like an animal.”“A very fine animal, Alice; she is a very beautiful woman, although I fancy you are right about her not being quite—quite the thing. The less notice you take of such people the better, my dear, unless you know something about who and what they are.”“That old boy,” remarked Dick to Lola, looking after the couple who had just passed them, “is Howard Bradley, of Detroit, one of the biggest lumbermen in the country, said to be worth eight or ten millions.”“Really?” She looked up with a quick flash of interest.“Yes, that’s his daughter, Alice Bradley; you must have often seen her picture in the Sunday papers. She’s a real swell; they are friends of my old man’s, although I’ve never met ’em myself.”“You are a foolish boy, Dick. You must go and introduce yourself at once! It’s silly not to make friends of that sort when you can.”“But I can’t be bothered.”“Now, Dick, you do as I tell you. I’d like to meet a girl like that myself. You could introduce me easily enough.”“All right, Lola,” replied Dick indifferently. “I’m even ready to butt into society if you think it will amuse you, but right now let’s go for a swim. Bob and Madge will be waiting for us.”The beach was crowded when they entered the water together a little later, and as Lola was the only one of the four who ever did any real swimming, she left the others without ceremony and struck out for the raft, which, as it was now high tide, was quite a distance from the shore.“Careful, Lola!” Dick called out to her anxiously, but she only turned her head and laughed at him as she swam easily along with an over-hand stroke that sent her through the water without the slightest apparent effort. In a moment she was past the line of bobbing heads that marked the limit of the average bather’s courage and in comparatively clear water; another moment and she was within a few strokes of the raft on which a half dozen men and one woman were standing; one of the men she saw was the gentlemanDick had told her was Howard Bradley; the girl was his daughter.A woman in her boudoir.LOLA’S THOUGHTS REVERT TO THE HANDSOME STRANGER WHOM SHE MET ON THE ATLANTIC CITY BOARDWALK.“She needn’t think she is the only girl that knows how to swim,” said Lola to herself, as she deliberately guided herself past the raft and out toward the distant shore line; she was quite conscious of the fact that all those on the raft had turned to watch her, and a feeling of bravado urged her to keep on. She felt strong to-day, full of youth and life, and she had no fear of any danger.“Look, father!” said Alice Bradley, following Lola anxiously with her eyes. “Surely she is going too far out.”“By Jove,” said Mr. Bradley, “she’s fine. Look at the way she goes through the water.”“But it isn’t safe; you know it isn’t,” exclaimed his daughter. “Look! Look at her now! Father! Look at her!”“Wait!” She felt her father’s fingers crush her bare arm as he clutched her in his excitement. “She’s turned over, swimming on her back. It’s all right; I think I—— No, by God! No! Here! Hello! Hello, there, guard!” He pointed with one hand towhere Lola floated, and waved the other frantically to a life guard who sat in a boat nearer to Lola than he was, but even at that a good fifty yards away. “Behind you! There! Behind you!”“He sees her, father. He is going to her,” cried Alice, while the others on the raft screamed out directions and encouragement to the sun-burned young fellow who was making his heavy surf-boat leap through the water. “He will be in time; she is keeping herself afloat!”She was keeping herself afloat, but that was all. Suddenly a pain had shot through her heart, and she felt herself powerless to move her arms; she sank over, and when she rose to the surface just managed to keep herself above water by floating on her back, and now and then, by the greatest effort, taking a feeble stroke when the numbness that was so rapidly spreading over her body allowed her to do so. She would die unless she managed to keep up until help should come; she knew that! She was fast losing consciousness now; she would die unless she forced herself to live! Unless she drove back, bit by bit, the weakness that was overpowering her. The pain in her heartwas not so bad now; she could move her arm a little more; she could move it more if she tried; she must try; she would—there—again—again—what did the pain matter; it was life—life——“Are you all right now?” She was lying in the bottom of a little surf-boat; a young man was bending over her, speaking to her. She looked up into his face and smiled. How big he was, and how strong, and how naked. Arms, and legs, and breast, and shoulders, firm, solid, sun-burned flesh.He had one arm about her, holding her up. She nestled close up to him, her head dropping back on his shoulder, her eyes answering the challenge that suddenly flashed into his.
“Dick,”said Mrs. Harlan, with extreme politeness, “I am perfectly willing that Lola should have all the best of it. I am used to that. I am quite prepared to admit that she is younger than I am, and better looking, although I still think that she might get along without telling me of it herself. It’s none of my business how much money you give her, nor how much she may bully you in private, but, my dear boy, I am just naturally damned if I’ll put up with her tantrums any longer.”
“But, Madge,” pleaded Dick Fenway, rather anxiously, “Lola is—a little nervous!”
“She’s all of that,” agreed Mrs. Harlan. “We started out to make a jolly party of this and it’s winding up like an Irish wake. Look at Bob.”
In response to her rather dramatic invitation, Dick turned his head, and did as he was requested. He looked at Bob, and in spite of his disturbed mind hefound himself smiling. Bob Nelson, who made up the fourth in their little party, was a stout young fellow in the late twenties, whose sole ambition in life seemed to centre about a desire not to have rows; he sat on the sand a few paces away from them, and was earnestly practicing his favorite amusement, which consisted in fixing his eyes firmly upon nothing whatever, and allowing his mind to “stand without hitching,” as he had once described it, a mental gymnastic only possible of achievement inside of a skull so constituted as to allow the brain an abundance of room.
“Bob,” continued Mrs. Harlan firmly, “is getting good and tired of the way things are going. We don’t mind a little change now and then, but we do object to being politely requested to get out of every hotel between Palm Beach and Quebec. Bob! What is your opinion of the way Lola is going on?”
Bob, evidently anxious to do the subject full justice, gave the matter at least a moment’s calm thought before he replied.
“I—er—yes——” He then, with considerable satisfaction, resumed his former amusement, only slightly troubled by the unusual mental effort.
“There! You see!” exclaimed Mrs. Harlan.
Although somewhat in doubt as to precisely what he was supposed to see, Dick was content to assume that it was not exactly a compliment to Lola.
Lola had been making rows; there was no denying that. She was difficult to please, and absolutely indifferent to the rights of others. She was constantly getting them into disputes with the hotel clerks, the servants, or with the other guests, and on several occasions during their trip they had been politely informed that their rooms were needed for other purposes. All this had been fully as annoying to Dick as it had to either of the others, but during the six weeks they had been together, his love for her had grown into a great passion that made no account of her faults, although it could not blind him to them.
“She’s in a difficult position, Madge,” he explained, anxious to smooth things over, for he knew that Lola would not travel about with him alone, and for the last few days he had seen that Mrs. Harlan was rapidly growing tired of her rôle of chaperone. “She’s had to break off with her people, and she’s new to this sort of thing. It will be all right as soon as that confoundeddivorce of mine is settled. Once we are married she’ll settle down and have an easy mind.”
“All right,” Mrs. Harlan sighed patiently. “I’m your friend, and I’ll stick as long as I can, but I can’t help saying this, Dick: you’re the bravest man I ever knew. They make an awful fuss about ‘Daniel in the Lions’ Den’ but he wasn’t a marker to you!”
“Oh, come now! Lola isn’t so bad as all that. She’s the best girl in the world, and the gamest little sport. Of course, I’ll admit she is a little bit upset right now, and her temper is a little—little violent.”
“And then some,” agreed Mrs. Harlan coarsely.
“Come on; let’s go back and see if she’s still asleep. If she is the hotel people will probably allow us to stay to lunch. Are you ready, Bob?”
Bob was never what could properly be described as ready, but as it was easier on the whole to move than to dispute the matter, and as he was vaguely impressed with the idea that the word lunch had been mentioned, he rose ponderously to his feet and followed the others back to the hotel. Several groups of summer visitors, noticing the deep abstraction of his manner, were quite impressed. One young lady was heard to remark,that she “would like to know what he was thinking about;” a desire which, had he known of it, he would have been quite unable to gratify.
They found Lola waiting for them on the broad veranda, and as she saw them she came to the head of the steps and stood there smiling down at them. She was all in white, and looked as fresh and as sweet as a flower. No one, to see her, would have believed that only the night before she had left them in a furious burst of temper, vowing that she never wanted to see any of them again as long as she lived.
“I’ve been waiting for you for the longest time,” she cried out gayly. “I was afraid that you had all grown so disgusted with me that you had run away together, and were going to leave me here all by myself.”
“You didn’t answer when I knocked at your door this morning, and I was afraid to wake you. I thought the sleep would do you more good than anything else.”
Dick spoke tenderly, for he was really very fond of her, and anxious that the scene of the night before should be forgotten.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me, Madge?”
As Lola held out her hand pleadingly, and with an air of sweet repentance, Mrs. Harlan, who was kind-hearted enough in her way, completely surrendered, and kissed her warmly, although she had vowed to herself that she would make no more efforts to live at peace with her.
“And you, Bob?” As she stood with her arm about Mrs. Harlan, she held out her left hand to him. “Will you forgive me also? You see that everyone else has; you don’t want to be the hard-hearted one of the crowd, do you?”
“Lola, you’re all right,” said Bob, enormously flattered by all this unusual attention.
“We’re going to cut out rows after this, and have a great time. Let’s go to lunch!”
“Right again, Bob,” cried out Mrs. Harlan. “I always said you had more brains than any of us.”
“Oh, no,” replied Bob modestly, as they started for the dining-room, “I don’t claim to have more than my share of brains, but I’m practical.”
They had arrived here, at Narragansett Pier, only the day before, and Lola, who had been tired out by the long journey from Bar Harbor, had refused to godown stairs to dinner, and had, as she always did of late, taken breakfast in bed; so this was her first sight of the pretty dining-room.
They were given a table by one of the front windows looking out over the water, and as she seated herself and looked around she made up her mind that she was going to like this new place.
The room was crowded, although the season was drawing to a close, and she noted with approval that the guests were of a quieter sort than those to whom they had been accustomed of late.
“It’s a fine assortment of old dopes we’ve fell into this time,” remarked Mrs. Harlan, looking about her scornfully. “Hadn’t you better say grace, Bob, or start a hymn?”
“Good God, Madge!” exclaimed Bob in horror. “It ain’t as bad as that, is it?”
“It’s a good thing for all of us,” said Lola. “It’s a rest to get where you can see decent women and children again. I’m tired of those sporty hotels we’ve been living in lately. I’m going in for the simple life, and besides, these are smart people; you can tell that by looking at them. There isn’t a thing in the worldthe matter with them, outside of their being respectable.”
“They know enough to get good grub,” Bob asserted with strong approval. “If soup like this goes with being respectable, I believe I’ll get me a pair of spectacles and start in to raise whiskers.”
“Look!” Lola nodded her head in the direction of a table near to them. “Did you ever see a finer looking old man or a prettier child! I wonder if he is her father? No, he’s too old. He is her grandfather; that pretty little woman next to him is his daughter and the little girl’s mother!”
“Thank God for this cocktail!” exclaimed Mrs. Harlan piously, as she raised it to her lips. “It’s all that’s keeping me from a bad attack of the ‘Willies.’ You don’t seriously mean that you like this sort of thing.”
“Of course I do,” replied Lola; “I like it better than any of the places we have been to yet; don’t you, Dick?”
“I like any place where you are happy, Lola,” he replied.
“Quick, Bob, send for another cocktail,” Mrs. Harlandemanded earnestly, “and tell the waiter to hurry up with it, or I’ll be turning virtuous myself.”
There was, in fact, some reason for her surprise. Lola was never in the same mood for any great length of time, but up to now she had been tireless in her search for pleasure and excitement. She could not have told herself just why the atmosphere of this rather aristocratic hotel appealed so strongly to her, but the fact remained that, for the moment at least, she was happier than she had been at any time since their hurried flight from New York.
They had gone first to Atlantic City, where Bob had joined their party, but on the second day after their arrival, one of the private detectives whom Dick had prudently engaged to keep an eye on John Dorris, had telegraphed that John had just taken a train for Atlantic City. How he had discovered their whereabouts they did not know, but long before his train arrived they were on their way to Cape May.
That was the last they heard of John; whether he had continued the search, or given up and returned home, they neither knew nor cared. They travelled on, from one gay summer resort to another, as franticin their search for amusement as the prospectors who journey up and down the Yukon are in their search for gold.
At first Lola had great trouble in teaching Dick that, in spite of her complete surrender of her life to his care, she had no idea of allowing him any favors beyond those conventionally granted to an accepted lover. On rare occasions she let him kiss her, with a little more warmth than is usually considered quite correct; he was privileged to hold her hand; once or twice perhaps to take her in his arms for a moment; aside from that all that he was expected to do was to provide her with the most costly dresses, and in every way to gratify her extravagant whims and caprices.
This attitude of Lola’s was such a surprise to Mrs. Harlan that the good lady went about in a sort of fog of astonished admiration, and confided to Bob, at intervals of about four hours, that Lola was “about the slickest article she had as yet discovered.”
Dick himself, however, seemed perfectly satisfied after he had been made to clearly understand Lola’s attitude. She had read his nature with true feminine intuition; to him the thing out of his reach was alwaysthe thing to be desired, and he made the life of his Cleveland attorney a burden with his daily demands of a speedy settlement of his divorce.
To Lola’s father, sitting alone in New York, quietly waiting her return, to John or to Dr. Crossett, now half way across the Atlantic on his way back to Paris, the knowledge of her attitude might have brought some comfort; to them she seemed lost to all feelings of shame or sense of prudence, and it is possible, had they known how matters stood, that they would have kept on in their search for her.
The real facts were that Dick was to Lola the direct means by which she was to provide herself with the good things of life. He was a rich man. As his wife she could be sure of the things that just now seemed to her to be of all things the most to be desired. He, himself, was a handsome, good-natured, easily managed young fellow. To the physical side of her, which as yet had only been aroused for one moment when she had thrown herself into John’s arms, Dick made absolutely no appeal, and twenty years of purity of thought and action had provided her with a defence against the casual promptings of instinctive desirestoo strong to be easily broken down. Of late a restless, nervous condition of mind and body might have warned her of a growing longing to solve for herself some of the depths of the world’s knowledge. Her eyes had more than once been held for a moment by the bold, admiring gaze of some one of the strong, handsome men whom she had met or when she had passed casually on the beaches or on the hotel verandas, but the quick catch of her breath, the sudden leap of her heart at such times had speedily been forgotten; she was not given to self-analysis; her whole existence just now was centered in a daily search for pleasure.
After lunch she and Dick went for a long walk, and Dick took advantage of her present gentle mood to tell her of his hope of a quick settlement of his divorce action and to discuss with her plans for their future. As they strolled along the shore road, Lola noticed, idly, a rather striking couple who seemed to keep at about the same distance ahead of them; father and daughter she thought they must be; a very pretty girl of perhaps eighteen and a man in the late fifties, but so hale and vigorous that at the first glance he suggested no thought of age; indeed, it was not untilthe couple turned and passed them that Lola, glancing quickly at him, saw on his face that in spite of his youthful step and almost soldierly bearing, he was a man of about her own father’s time of life. The thought came to her, as for a moment she met his strong, eager glance of approval, as he saw her fresh young beauty and splendid vitality, that here was a man of real force.
“How queerly he looked to me,” she thought, “this old man, with a daughter very little younger than I am myself. Yet when he saw me his eyes seemed to burn into mine. He is in mourning, too, for he wore a band on his arm, and the girl is in black; how queer men are. Are they always the same, boys and men, always like that? A girl has only to look at them, and they can think of nothing but her.”
“Father!” The young lady looked almost angrily at him, then turning threw a quick look of scorn over her shoulder toward Lola.
“What a bold-looking girl!”
“Was she, my dear?” remarked her father coldly. “I thought her rather pretty.”
“Pretty! She is beautiful. I was looking at her at lunch. I thought she was sweet, although she waswith impossible persons, but as she looked at you just now——”
“Well, my dear?”
“She looked like—like an animal.”
“A very fine animal, Alice; she is a very beautiful woman, although I fancy you are right about her not being quite—quite the thing. The less notice you take of such people the better, my dear, unless you know something about who and what they are.”
“That old boy,” remarked Dick to Lola, looking after the couple who had just passed them, “is Howard Bradley, of Detroit, one of the biggest lumbermen in the country, said to be worth eight or ten millions.”
“Really?” She looked up with a quick flash of interest.
“Yes, that’s his daughter, Alice Bradley; you must have often seen her picture in the Sunday papers. She’s a real swell; they are friends of my old man’s, although I’ve never met ’em myself.”
“You are a foolish boy, Dick. You must go and introduce yourself at once! It’s silly not to make friends of that sort when you can.”
“But I can’t be bothered.”
“Now, Dick, you do as I tell you. I’d like to meet a girl like that myself. You could introduce me easily enough.”
“All right, Lola,” replied Dick indifferently. “I’m even ready to butt into society if you think it will amuse you, but right now let’s go for a swim. Bob and Madge will be waiting for us.”
The beach was crowded when they entered the water together a little later, and as Lola was the only one of the four who ever did any real swimming, she left the others without ceremony and struck out for the raft, which, as it was now high tide, was quite a distance from the shore.
“Careful, Lola!” Dick called out to her anxiously, but she only turned her head and laughed at him as she swam easily along with an over-hand stroke that sent her through the water without the slightest apparent effort. In a moment she was past the line of bobbing heads that marked the limit of the average bather’s courage and in comparatively clear water; another moment and she was within a few strokes of the raft on which a half dozen men and one woman were standing; one of the men she saw was the gentlemanDick had told her was Howard Bradley; the girl was his daughter.
A woman in her boudoir.LOLA’S THOUGHTS REVERT TO THE HANDSOME STRANGER WHOM SHE MET ON THE ATLANTIC CITY BOARDWALK.
LOLA’S THOUGHTS REVERT TO THE HANDSOME STRANGER WHOM SHE MET ON THE ATLANTIC CITY BOARDWALK.
“She needn’t think she is the only girl that knows how to swim,” said Lola to herself, as she deliberately guided herself past the raft and out toward the distant shore line; she was quite conscious of the fact that all those on the raft had turned to watch her, and a feeling of bravado urged her to keep on. She felt strong to-day, full of youth and life, and she had no fear of any danger.
“Look, father!” said Alice Bradley, following Lola anxiously with her eyes. “Surely she is going too far out.”
“By Jove,” said Mr. Bradley, “she’s fine. Look at the way she goes through the water.”
“But it isn’t safe; you know it isn’t,” exclaimed his daughter. “Look! Look at her now! Father! Look at her!”
“Wait!” She felt her father’s fingers crush her bare arm as he clutched her in his excitement. “She’s turned over, swimming on her back. It’s all right; I think I—— No, by God! No! Here! Hello! Hello, there, guard!” He pointed with one hand towhere Lola floated, and waved the other frantically to a life guard who sat in a boat nearer to Lola than he was, but even at that a good fifty yards away. “Behind you! There! Behind you!”
“He sees her, father. He is going to her,” cried Alice, while the others on the raft screamed out directions and encouragement to the sun-burned young fellow who was making his heavy surf-boat leap through the water. “He will be in time; she is keeping herself afloat!”
She was keeping herself afloat, but that was all. Suddenly a pain had shot through her heart, and she felt herself powerless to move her arms; she sank over, and when she rose to the surface just managed to keep herself above water by floating on her back, and now and then, by the greatest effort, taking a feeble stroke when the numbness that was so rapidly spreading over her body allowed her to do so. She would die unless she managed to keep up until help should come; she knew that! She was fast losing consciousness now; she would die unless she forced herself to live! Unless she drove back, bit by bit, the weakness that was overpowering her. The pain in her heartwas not so bad now; she could move her arm a little more; she could move it more if she tried; she must try; she would—there—again—again—what did the pain matter; it was life—life——
“Are you all right now?” She was lying in the bottom of a little surf-boat; a young man was bending over her, speaking to her. She looked up into his face and smiled. How big he was, and how strong, and how naked. Arms, and legs, and breast, and shoulders, firm, solid, sun-burned flesh.
He had one arm about her, holding her up. She nestled close up to him, her head dropping back on his shoulder, her eyes answering the challenge that suddenly flashed into his.