Chapter XXIII--Waiting for the Human Mouse
Afterdinner I sat down to read, Amy and Willy played double Canfield, Evelyn and Herbert went off to the little drawing-room to talk about their house, Aunt Penelope ran the victrola, and Uncle Archie, S. K., and our two guests played auction. They put up quite a heavy stake on it, criticized each other’s plays after each hand, and acted as people do when they are playing cards for pleasure.
Ito came in with a tray of glasses and some sort of light Italian wine, and then he left, and it began to get late. Of course, Willy didn’t know about it, and at ten he left.
I went with him to the hall, and he told me how insulted he had been by Amy that morning, but that he felt that there were possibilities in her and that he was going to try to develop them.
Then he coughed and said: “You know that offer of mine?”
I said I recalled it.
“Well,” he went on, “it is good. No Southern gentleman ever forgets his honour, but we were both young. You know darned well, Nat, that I’ll go through with it if Ihaveto, but I think you’d be a better pitcher than a wife!”
Everybody had annoyed me that day, Uncle Frank had just left, and saying good-bye to him was hard, and I was excited over the mystery, so I spoke frankly, to be truthful. I almost shouted, “I wouldn’thaveyou!” and then I turned and saw S. K. coming towards us. He was going down to get a piece of Japanese carving that aunt wanted to see, but he let Willy start before he did.
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “thank Heaven I did! . . . Nat, I’m a fool, but that chap’s coming upset me. You see, my conscience keeps me from entering the race just now. His evidently does not.”
I explained and put him right on that. “And anyway,” I added, “there wouldn’t be any race.”
“Dear child,” he said, “if I dared let myself believe you! But,” he continued, with a change in tone, “that is a tabooed subject. Some day, if it is true, you’ll prove it. Now, won’t you?” He looked down at me ever so anxiously, and I laughed up at him. I felt exceedingly light-hearted since the weight of his disapproval was removed. That had really bothered me.
“The subject,” I said, “is tabooed!”
He put his hands on my shoulders, shook me gently, told me I was a “dear scamp,” and started off. The minute after he got outside the lights went out, and I never in all my life have heard anything like the noise that followed! Evelyn and Herbert rushed out of the little drawing-room and fell over a pedestal. Amy fell over a chair that had a pile of records on it, and those tipped off and clattered as they went to pieces on the bare floor. Someone knocked over the card-table, and someone else the chair that held the tray of glasses; Aunt Penelope screamed, and Uncle Archie said things that I cannot quote, repeating them at intervals, in this manner:
“What the blank do you think you’re doing!” or, “Penelope, shut up that blank noise!” He became frightfully natural, as people do in crises, and added considerably to the confusion.
When the lights came on again the detectives looked very silly. One of them said something about hoping “it” would never get out. Then Ito was summoned and asked what had happened to the lights.
“Not can say,” he replied, with a lift of his shoulders.
Then I went to my room, looked for my bracelet, and found it was gone. Everything moved after that. Ito, Jane, and the cook were ordered to the library, where for the first and last time they sat in state; S. K. and his man were sent for, and enough moves to satisfy even Douglas Fairbanks were packed into the next few minutes.
“What was this fellow doing when you went down?” the detective asked of S. K. He looked at Debson.
“I don’t know,” S. K. answered. “I didn’t go down. I heard the noise and tried to get back.”
“How about the outside men?” the detective went on; and I then found that there had been other people on guard--these watching outside. Someone went down and returned with a crest-fallen, baffled air.
“Saw nothing,” he said, “but this fellow”--looking at Debson--“went down the stairs after the lights went out.”
Then Ito spoke. “He has habit,” he explained, “of spending evening with Jane, when Mr. Kempwood suspect him to be answering door-bell, it was therefore that I remove light plug to delay Mr. Kempwood and cover retreat of Debson, since we are friends.”
“That is true,” said Jane, beginning to cry, “and I hope, sir, that you’ll not blame him, since it is my fault and----”
“That’ll do,” someone said, and she relapsed into very moist-sounding sniffs. I don’t know how the “servant class,” as aunt calls them, manage to sniff like that, for theirs is a pervasive, far-carrying sniff. But I notice that they always employ it when they are thinking of leaving, and perhaps strength comes from constant practice.
“Suppose we go down and search,” said Amy. “Probably he’s”--she pointed to S. K.’s man--“hidden it.”
I never saw such a look of outraged innocence as that man wore. “If there is any doubt,” he said, “I will request a search. I am honest.”
“Was there a blind man around?” I asked. “Did you hear of him downstairs?”
The man whom I asked--the man who had been outside--said there was. “But,” he said, “I am afraid you won’t make a detective, miss. He has been watched; he has not moved, and, since this affair, he has been searched.”
“Where was he sitting?” I asked.
“Come to think of it,” said one of the men, “I think he was sitting by a window that leads to the coal cellars.”
“They got in coal to-day,” I said. “I heard it go in. Possibly the inner window was not replaced. If the grating only was locked, my bracelet would go through that.”
Then I saw Debson move. And he spoke quickly, and in doing so made me sure that he was guilty.
“As I said, I am honest,” he began, voice shaking. “I love this girl”--he pointed to Jane--“but, if you want my opinion, you will not have to go as far as the basement to find the bracelet.”
“What leads you to say that?” asked the man who was putting the questions. He asked it sternly.
“My conscience,” replied S. K.’s servant, “and a sudden recollection of having seen it on her arm one night when I took her to the Clover Leaf Social Club ball. I afterward saw it on Miss Page’s arm when she was having tea with Mr. Kempwood.”
Jane cried harder than ever. “Just onct,” she gasped, “and, honest to Gawd, I never done it again----”
But no one was convinced. I felt sure that Jane was being truthful, but I think I was alone in this. Then, after dividing the men and leaving the suspects guarded, a party was sent to the basements. I went with them, and I--found my bracelet.
It was wrapped in a piece of burlap and a string was tied to it.
“Lowered from my window to the blind man,” I said, as I triumphantly undid it. The man who had told me I was not a detective told me he would give me a job any day. I did feel proud. Then we started upstairs once again, and I heard how the bracelet had come back. Evelyn did it, and, after she finished, Herbert put his arm around her, which proved to me that he does really care deeply.
“There’s no mystery about that bracelet disappearing and reappearing,” she said suddenly and stridently, when I was being questioned about that. “I have--until recently--cared a good deal aboutthings, possessions, and, in this--my bracelet--I thought I had something that was unique, individual. When Natalie appeared with the real mate, it completely outshone mine and annoyed me frightfully. I began to warn her not to wear it, with hastily scribbled small notes which I left out. She ignored these. I therefore put it where she could not wear it. That is, I locked it in my jewel-case. When I felt that I must return it, I did so at night. Sometimes when I went in, she stirred, and I, wanting her to think the affair supernatural and not to have her connect it with me, began to send it back at the end of my riding-crop. I’d put the handle against the bracelet and shove it in the room just as far as I could reach; I don’t know how many times I did it. That is what she means when she said it ‘crept in by itself.’ . . . Naturally she didn’t see my crop, which is dark.”
“I only saw the glitter of the gold,” I said, “and I didn’t knowyoudidn’t want me to wear it. If I had, of course I wouldn’t have done so.”
“It seemed a joke then,” she went on. “I didn’t think at first that Natalie could misunderstand, and then--well, I was annoyed with her and I let it go on. It was a form of ‘getting even.’ I even tried to frighten her once or twice. One night I stole her flashlight; she saw my hand and was frightened, I think, for she called. When I began to care more for you, Natalie,” she continued in a different tone, and speaking directly to me, “I was sorry, but--somehow--I couldn’t say so. And because you’d stopped telling of things that occurred to bother you, I thought you weren’t frightened any more. I know it was contemptible. I hope you can forgive me.”
Of course I said I did and I cared a lot for her and that it didn’t matter.
“Didn’t you know your cousin’s writing?” asked one of the men. I shook my head.
“Perhaps it looked different in pencil,” I explained, “and I suppose I never had even noticed it in ink. Then I was so sure those notes came from Madam Jumel. Her initials and Evelyn’s are the same and----” Then I paused, but they made me go on, and I had to tell of our family misfortunes which had, to some minds, been twisted about that bracelet.
Then Amy, who had had to be silent, and who had seen how gentle Herbert had been with Evelyn after her confession, put in. I like Amy most of the time, and we are good friends, but I knew she made her confession hoping that she would be thought noble and so that she would be noticed.
“I stole those violets,” she said, standing up. “I myself, under the lure of an orchid and a wish to snub some of my most intimate friends, put those stockings in the box that went back to Herbert!” Then she glared up at the ceiling and clasped her hands. It was a pose she got from Nazimova, but it didn’t look the way it did under Nazimova’s touch.
Aunt Penelope snapped at her so hard that I felt sorry for her. “You were a little sneak,” she said, “to let all of us punish your cousin for weeks for something thatyoudid. Sit down and be quiet or leave the room.”
“I only ask for forgiveness,” Amy went on sadly, “and that will bring me peace. How could I know, when I inserted those worn-out yellow socks of Evelyn’s, that I was to wreck the happiness of a care-free, girlish heart?”
The detectives laughed, but S. K. glared at her, and he muttered something about hoping people wouldn’t believe everything they heard hereafter!
“Am I forgiven?” asked Amy. She made her voice tremble beautifully. She had learned to from those singing lesson records that you can buy now.
I said she was, of course, and S. K. grunted. And then he put his arm around me. It seemed to be catching.
“I am going to take care of you after this,” he said through set teeth. “I have adopted you for the present. Understand? No more ofthatsort of nonsense shall occur!”
“How about those noises outside--those noises that were heard on the balcony?” someone asked.
Jane got in her innings then, and I imagine that Debson was sorry he’d mentioned having seen her wear my bracelet.
“He come up to see me that way,” she said; “time and again he done it. He had a long stick with a hook on top that he jabbed in a window-sill or over the balcony rail, and then he come up, hand over hand. . . . Hesaidhe done a turn one year in vaudeville and that that was in his bill----” And then she laughed shortly.
“Is true,” said Ito. “Greatly we laugh when he approach in climb manner. It was in dark of court. No one have opportunity to see. We encourage him to arrive so like monkey. I think he plan to come in such manners so that we in back of apartment hear scrape noises. Jane will think he visit me, I think he visit Jane, meanwhile he inspect and salute Jumel bracelet.”
“Why did you want it?” asked the detective.
Debson said he did not, loudly protesting his innocence until one of our visiting gentlemen went forward, slapped his pockets, and then began to unload them. He found all sorts of interesting things. An implement that is called a “jimmy,” that is, I believe, largely used in burglaries; a pistol; S. K.’s best cuff links; and--most important--a ball of twine, and that matched the piece that I found tied to the bracelet. He had to give in, and when he saw that protests amounted to nothing he talked frankly.
“I thought I was safe,” said Debson, after his conviction was achieved. “No one upherebelieved the kid, and almost every night I prowled around somewhere, and during the day too. After I was thick with these two”--he motioned to Ito and Jane--“why, it looked as exciting as a Sunday-school picnic. To be sure, I hadn’t located the right bracelet (she had a way of hiding it), but I could get into her room any time I wanted to. One afternoon I walked in and busted the lock of the window, and no one said nothing. I thought I had it all fixed and that my hunting was over, for just to-dayhepromised not to kick up a search until she wanted it. And I believed it. I believed it!” After that he looked at us and laughed, laughed in a silent, sneering way, but I felt that his own failure was what made his unhappy mirth; his own failure and his being caught by such a simple trap.
“Why did you want it?” asked Uncle Archie. “The thing isn’t worth enough for all the trouble you gave it.”
“Is that so, brother?” said the man, who as a servant had had the most quiet voice and repressed manner. “Just go ask Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez! That boy’s a little Sugar King, and he makes enough to sweeten several lives.Heoffered me twenty-five thousand if I could get the Jumel bracelet or its mate for him and get it down to the monkey zone. And now--yuh got me--what you going to do with me?” He snarled this.
“We’ll give you a nice chance to rest,” answered one of the men pleasantly, and, taking handcuffs from his pocket, snapped them on the man who had made me so much trouble, and all the mystery.
“I wonder why the Sugar King wanted it?” I asked as the men went off, taking Debson between them.
“I’ll find out,” S. K. answered. And he did.
Chapter XXIV--What made the Chase
Toquote S. K., it had an entirely “sane and logical” explanation, and it was started by that little fellow who wears wings, carries a quiver, is talked of and felt often, but is never seen--except on Valentines. And of course you know whom I mean. His name comes from an old monk, which is strange, I think. S. K. said it was not. He said that everybody has their monastery garden where they, quite alone, make the prettiest rhymes to love. And he explained further that when you try to say them aloud, in the fumbling words of men, they will not echo even half of what is felt.
All this discussion came because of the date, which was February fourteenth. Much had happened since Christmas week, and this day we all sat in the living-room reviewing things.
Evelyn was hemming napkins, and Herbert sat on a foot-rest at her feet, muttering things like “Beautifulhands!” or “Did she prick hersweetfinger!” which everybody heard, but had to pretend they didn’t. (That’s a funny sentence, but I haven’t time to alter it.) Amy and Willy were doing a picture puzzle, S. K. was sitting idle, and I was trying to address post-cards to people at home. Personally, I don’t like them, but the people to whom I was going to send them did. I could take part in all the talk, inasmuch as I only wrote, “Wish you were here,” and, “This is a picture of Grant’s tomb,” or, “The Woolworth Tower,” or whatever it was. Of course, it said what the picture was, in print; but people always do explain again in writing on post-cards, I suppose because it fills up space. Even real writers always use a great deal of explaining to do that, I have noticed.
Willy would leave the table now and again to read my messages, all of which were almost the same, in a different voice. He made it deeply dramatic, or Miss Hooper-high, and Amy giggled awfully. She laughs at anything he says; and he says she has more perception and appreciation of true humour than any woman he has ever met--which is what men always do say when women laugh at their jokes.
The fifth time he made a tour to the desk he picked up a card I had addressed to Colonel Sephus I. Lemley, who did detective work in Baltimore in 1892. He has been resting since then, and his wife takes in sewing. He explained that the business world was not a fit place for a Southern gentleman. Willy told about how he acts when he gets drunk. On one occasion he painted the entire house with apple butter (his wife had just made five crocks), and it was in fly season, too. And on another he sawed out the lower panel of the front door, and then he got down on his hands and knees and stuck his head through the hole and barked at everyone who passed. That was really very funny, because he has a little goatee which wags when he talks, and to see his head, topped by a wide-brimmed felt hat, and bottomed by wiggling fluff, to see this sticking through a hole in the door and hear him say, “Bow, wow!” in a high falsetto, was enough to make you yell. For three days he honestly thought he was Miss Hooper’s dog, Rover. His wife was visiting in a near town. When she is at home she tactfully restrains him, with a broom, the neighbours say, and it is noticeable that he stands in front of the Mansion House after these attacks, instead of occupying one of the rocking-chairs which trail all over the porch and half across the sidewalk.
But to get back. After Willy told of him, he said he should have been on the job. And I agreed. “No six weeks to find out what started it, if Sephus had humped!” he stated, surely. I nodded, for Colonel Lemley’s own tales of his achievements made Sherlock Holmes’ affairs look as exciting as the woven mats you do in the first year of school.
After I wrote for perhaps fifteen more minutes I finished my work and went over to sit by S. K., who was on the davenport before the fire. I had on a lovely bunch of violets he had sent me, and I was enjoying them a lot, also the prospect for the evening, which was a theatre party, which S. K. was giving because Evelyn and Herbert are engaged. People seem to do things like that for engaged people, quite as if they need cheering up. And I was to wear a new dress, which was pink and fluffy and, I must admit, becoming.
“You are going to sit next to me, to-night,” said S. K.
I said I hoped so, and then I was quiet, for I was thinking how very much S. K. had done to make my New York life happy and to smooth out, and erase, my troubles.
The bracelet business had made me half sick. It had been so crawly. And it all happened because a little coquette, who was the Spanish girl we saw photographed in the Sunday paper, and the one who muttered pretty Spanish admirations over the bracelet (one of the people who stays at the Mansion told me of those), had made her lover a test. I think she did it in joke, but he took it seriously because he was so very much in love. Of course, he was Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez, and it happened this way:
He had met her somewhere on a business trip. I suppose he had letters of introduction which admitted him almost anywhere, since he has a great deal of money and is of great importance in the business world of Cuba. And, like a good many Latin men, he fell in love with her immediately, and wildly so. He called her “orange blossom,” and “white, sweet heart of the rose” (that is, in notes), and he threatened to kill himself if she didn’t love him, but he didn’t. And she didn’t love him; she only laughed. That is, at first.
I think she was capricious and liked to feel her power, for she played with him. One day being kind, and the next day scorning, as only her race can scorn. . . . S. K. told me the story, and he put in trimmings, as he always does. And I am repeating in part from the tale that he related. . . .
Each day this man who had so much money--but not the love he wanted more than all of the world--would send her mountains of flowers, or a strange string of beads, or candied fruits from the Orient, or candies from our States. S. K. said he was a good lover, and he sounded so. I became very much interested, and I did not see how Marguerita Angela Blanco y Chiappi could help liking it, but sometimes she didn’t. One morning she threw all of his flowers out on the street, and then she called to him (he was lurking around on the other side of the way; they act that way more there than here), and she said: “The scent in all of its heaviness is wearisome!” And rumour states that he tore his hair, but I think S. K. put that in for a nice touch, because he had it clipped so short I don’t see how he could get a decent hold.
Well, things went on in that way. She would soften, only to harden. And he would become elated, only to taste the depth of despair. It was very romantic. And then--Marguerita’s father had a mission to perform in the United States; she came along, and of course Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez trailed at a respectful distance (but he didn’t stay so), which is the paper-chase manner in which some South American and Cuban courtships come off.
Their pictures were taken together at the Jumel Mansion, and so evidently she was a little kinder to him then. And that was the day she paused before the bracelet and said, “Es incomparable lindo y yo lo deseo!” and she said it with hunger floating on her liquid voice.
“Would that I could give it to you!” whispered Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez.
“You can give me nothing I want!” he was answered, and after this pleasant speech the little señorita shrugged her shoulders.
S. K. said he clenched his hands, glared ahead, and then said: “A copy? A good copy, Fairest Angel of Heaven?”
And she said, “A copy? Bah!” and her lips curled. I didn’t see why he loved her after that, but S. K. said she stimulated his interest by acting that way. But that I wasn’t to try it on him, since his interest didn’t need stimulating. Then Marguerita looked mischievous and said: “The man who would get for me this original, I would give the gift of my love. . . . But it is a poor thing, my little heart, and perhaps not worth the effort to get?”
He said: “You cast me to the depths. . . . How can I live? . . . For this, you ask the impossible!”
And again she shrugged her shoulders.
“Why ask the possible?” she said, “since that I could get myself?” Then S. K. said Vicente went out, sat down on the green bench that faces the side gate, held his head in his hands, and stared unseeingly at the gravel at his feet. He said they both enjoyed acting that way and being miserable, as a good many people do.
And Marguerita laughed in her tinkling way, not seeming to care how unhappy she had made him. Just before they started back to The Biltmore, he spoke to her again. “You meant that?” he said fiercely.
“But certainly,” she replied. “I have said, my heart in exchange for that bracelet!” And then they all got in motors and started off for lunch.
Well, Vicente was determined to get that bracelet, and he set out to do it. Somehow he got into communication with Debson, offered him twenty-five thousand dollars if he got the bracelet and delivered it into his, Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez’s hands, and then he sailed off on another chase, for Marguerita and her papa had started home again.
So much is simple, and the rest is only the result of the start.
Debson heard me tell the tale of my bracelet that day I first visited the Mansion. Getting the one in the case was not an easy affair, for the place is well guarded, and so--he naturally decided to get mine. It was he who chased me, dodging behind things when I turned, and even sitting on the kerb at the last with his cup for pennies, and telling me that he was blind! . . . He had, of course, visited the Mansion often in different disguise, hoping each time to have the opportunity. And, of course, he began to lurk around our apartment-house after he knew what was in my possession.
He had a brother who worked with him; they had an idea that confusion of evidence made evidence weak, and so there were two blind men around the Mansion that Sunday, and no two people agreed about where they had seen the shambling figure. It wasn’t a bad idea, for during the investigation of that particular event the police had been so tried by different stories of where people had seen this old man that they brushed aside any mention of him, and muttered of “crowd hysteria.” It was the brother of Debson who knocked S. K. down because he had seen me give the bracelet into S. K.’s keeping. It was he who was the old Italian woman that day and who suddenly shed his shawl and skirts and was again the blind man shuffling up the steps. That was after he stuffed his woman-duds in a basket of soiled clothes which some neglectful small boy had left for a moment on the sidewalk while he went up to join the crowd around Sammy.
That was clever, I think, for when the washwoman returned the things washed, the Italian garb was probably sent back to her with a word that it did not belong in that particular laundry, and she, the washwoman, was, I suppose, glad enough to keep the garments and say no more.
Meanwhile, that same afternoon, Debson had seen me give the bracelet to the keeper--probably he peered through a window, or half hid behind a big pillar outside--and it was he who attacked him, after the crowd had gone out to see what had happened to S. K.; and he who, with tears running down his face, called for help--since getting away was dangerous. It all seems very simple--now--and makes us seem great fools.
When S. K. advertised for a servant, Debson applied for the position, and fortune favoured him, since I often went to see S. K. and talked all my troubles over with him.
He used a long rod with a hook on top of it to get upstairs, since the back entrances were too public for his late night visits, and he could come in this way under the dark of the court. For people kept their shades down in their court windows. Other windows are too close to do otherwise. He made those tapping noises that night everyone was frightened and Uncle Archie fell over the pedestal, and it was only coincidence that made them tap in three in that way.
He also made violent love to Jane, thinking perhaps that he could get her help, or that in that way his visits to our apartment would be accounted for. But it was not my bracelet, but Evelyn’s, she wore that night he took her to the ball. And she wore it because he had talked so much of how greatly a bracelet “enhanced the fair roundness of a woman’s arm. . . .” Jane admitted that statement “got her,” and it must have, for she remembered it absolutely correctly. Evelyn at that time sometimes substituted her bracelet for mine, because the Tiffany mark made her story of its being real a lie; and she, at that time, wanted the real one.
Jane told me lots about it. “It was that romantic, miss,” she said, “to hear a tap, and then to lean from the window, and to see him coming hand over hand up that there rod with the hook on top. And it used to turn me sick like, to think that he might fall, but he never did--worse luck!” And then she sniffed.
He had a very hard time, for I hid my bracelet often and Evelyn took it too, and it seemed that every time he called it was out. . . . Of course, he had come up that night that we had the detectives waiting, for he thought it was his last chance, and of course it was he whom I followed down the fire-escape. He expected to bag the bracelet easily that night that he was caught. He was going to get it in some way, and he had been sure that would be easy; then lower it to his brother, who would, if possible, take it off; if not, throw it, as he did, in the coal cellar.
I found out everything and began to believe S. K.’s remark about sanity and logical reasons for all events. I even found out about Jane’s blushes and the ice-pick. It seemed she used to give Debson suppers when he came up, and she gave him a very nice grape juice that aunt had got for Evelyn. It was that that made her so anxious to speak of thefts as borrowing. . . . And again there was coincidence in the hurt hands. All but Debson’s had happened from innocent causes. His came from my mouse-trap, but to throw people off the scent he deliberately broke that Stiegel glass.
Of course, I was shadowed and followed, and it was Debson’s brother who pulled me from my mount on Riverside Drive. . . . Two men who are very intent on getting anything can think lots of ways to get it, and--twenty-five thousand dollars is quite an incentive. I felt sorry for the men--I couldn’t help it--and for Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez, for I was afraid Marguerita would never marry him.
I wrote Señor Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez and told him how sorry I was and that I would give him my bracelet if my mother had not owned and worn it, and that I hoped perhaps Señorita Blanco y Chiappi could get one made like it. And I explained about how nice Evelyn’s was. I really wanted to send my bracelet to Señor Alcon y Rodriguez, but S. K., who occasionally gives me orders quite as if he had every right to, would not permit it.
“Nonsense!” he said. “She’s only tiring him out. After he begins to gasp and shows signs of giving up, she’ll pull him in the boat. I know ’em!” which I considered cynical. But she did. Just that very thing happened, and I got a piece of wedding cake. They were married January twentieth after an engagement of two days. He answered my note most courteously and apologized at length. And she added a little line.
“I have capitulated,” she acknowledged, in a very shaded, elaborate writing. “It is useless to allow innocent childs to be stabbed in back because of my light mention of a bracelet, and because of his great urgency I have achieved for myself the married state. We are happy and wish you the same.”
And then she said she kissed my feet, which is very polite Spanish, and signed herself undyingly and affectionately mine.
Señor Vicente gave S. K.’s words backing when he wrote: “I was willing to give up. All was despair. I vowed I would not request again, when lo! she softened and turned to me the glory of her love.”
I was glad it ended that way.
“What are you thinking of?” asked S. K. that afternoon of February fourteenth when we were all together and yet--all sort of paired off in the living-room. I told him.
“You like to see people love the people who love them,” I said. “Now Evelyn has answered the right call, and I think Amy is going to.”
“Pshaw!” said S. K. “You don’t mean those kids----” He didn’t finish his sentence, but he meant that Amy and Willy weren’t old enough to do anything but all the latest waltz and fox steps.
“I’m sure they’re going to throw into it,” I said. “Somehow--I feel it. They slam each other now, and disagree terribly, but he has unexpected moments of patience with her, and when he has those I can see that he likes her lots.”
“What sort?” asked S. K., looking at them. They were doing a one-step, and Amy said Willy did it all wrong, and Willy said no Northerner could dance. What with the victrola and their quarrelling, we could shout anything and not be heard.
I told him. “He is trying to explain baseball to her,” I said, “since you said you’d take us all to all the games. And after he finished yesterday she said: ‘I don’t think it’spoliteor nice for the man with the stick to wave it in front of the man with the little thing like a dish-drain over his face!’ She saw a game last year, and that’s all she got out of it!” And I went on to explain how well Willy played and how he would usually greet that sort of a remark.
S. K. laughed and after a little more watching them agreed.
“Then,” I went on, “I asked her last night whether she was going to marry the broker, and she clasped her hands, stared ahead, and whispered: ‘What a child I was!’ ”
S. K. laughed some more. Then he sobered.
“So,” he said, “you like to see the ‘fellow get the girl’?”
I said I thought everyone was disappointed in books or life, if he didn’t.
Then he mentioned a subject that he hadn’t touched for ages and didn’t mean to then. I think it slipped out. And I found I didn’t mind, but really liked it.
“Do you think,” he asked in an undertone, “that this fellow is going to get her?”
“Oh, S. K.,” I answered, as I slipped my hand in his, “Iknowhe is! And you do too! Howcanyou help it?”
“Dear child!” said S. K. “Mydearchild!” He said it in that tight way in which people speak when they care very much, and he pressed my hand between both of his.
“What are you talking of over there?” asked Evelyn, looking up from her work. And I gave an answer which did not surprise her, for everyone did talk of them a great deal--if not exactly the sort S. K. and I had touched that day.
“We’re discussing mysteries,” said I.
“Right,” added S. K., looking down at me. And then Ito came in, trundling a tea-waggon ahead of him. I saw that he had Aunt Penelope’s best service on it, little cakes in paper cases, and big pink roses on the napkins. It looked pretty, festive and good.
“It is day of love,” said Ito. “We have fancy tea!”
THE END
NOVELS BYKATHARINE HAVILANDTAYLORNatalie PageStanley Johns’ WifeYellow SoapTonyHODDER ANDSTOUGHTONLtd., London
NOVELS BY
KATHARINE HAVILAND
TAYLOR
Natalie Page
Stanley Johns’ Wife
Yellow Soap
Tony
HODDER AND
STOUGHTON
Ltd., London
Transcriber’s Notes:
Spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. A few obvious typesetting errors have been corrected without note.
[End ofNatalie Pageby Katharine Haviland Taylor]