CHAPTER VIII
At the breakfast-table Pen found at her plate a little bunch of flowers, clumsily arranged and tied.
“From Jo,” informed Betty—“The Bulletin,” as her father was wont to call her. “He came just after Uncle Kurt started for town.”
Pen smiled as she took up the little stiff nosegay. She held it lightly for a moment, looking down at the blossoms. There was a mute appeal in the little messengers from the boyish lover. Something infinitely tender stirred in her heart for a second, bringing a tear to her eye, as she mused upon his boyish faith in love.
She put the flowers in the glass of water beside her plate, and gave her attention to the prattle of the children.
After breakfast she pinned the little nosegayto her middy and went down to the pergola.
Jo saw her coming and hurried forward to meet her, his eyes brightening when he saw the flowers.
“Thank you, Jo. They are very pretty.”
“Thank you for wearing them.”
“I asked you to come here this morning, Jo, so you would do me a favor.”
“You know I would.”
“Will you mail this letter for me? I wrote it last night after you left, and you are the only one I can trust. And—Jo—will you please not read the address?”
He put the letter in his pocket.
“You can trust me.”
“You had better go, because I hear the rattle that can be made only by Kurt’s car. He must have come back for something. You can go around the bend here.”
“Say, Penny Ante, I don’t like this deceiving him—”
“Just a bit longer, Jo,” she saidpersuasively. “Mrs. Kingdon said to wait until her return.”
He followed her instructions, and she returned to the house.
“It’s a great possession,” she thought musingly, “the big love of a true and simple heart like his. It would probably be idyllic to live a life of love up here in these hills with the man of one’s choice, I suppose, but a happiness too tame for me. To be sure, there would be the excitement of trying to ruffle the love-feathers, but that, too, in time would pall. I wonder how much longer I shall stay hidden up here before my past finds me out. Any minute something is sure to drop and I will be called back—back to my other life that is less enticing now I have had a taste of domesticity.
“But,” she reflected, “domesticity doesn’t satisfy long. This semi-security is getting on my nerves. Hebby isn’t so good a trailer as I feared he would be, or he’d have tracked me up here.”
Her meditations were diverted by a tattoo upon her door which she had locked so that the ever-present, ever-prying Betty and the all-wise Francis could not intrude.
“Aunt Penny, let us in!” came in aggrieved chorus.
“I’ve a message for you, Aunt Pen. Open the door,” came Francis’ insistent voice.
The pounding and the voices forced a capitulation. She admitted the trio.
“Mrs. Merlin is going to take us to her house for the rest of the day,” informed Francis, “and we will have a picnic dinner there. She would have asked you, too, only Uncle Kurt came back and wants you to ride with him. He didn’t have to go ’way to town, ’cause he met the man he wanted to see on the way here.”
“Now what has come over the spirit ofhisdreams?” Pen asked herself wonderingly as she got into her riding things. “Well, there is always the refuge of fast riding. That is the only time I can make my tonguebehave. I’ll give him no chance to preach, that’s sure!”
When they set out on their ride, she was careful not to let the brisk pace falter. They stopped for luncheon at a ranch-house where there were many people at the table; but on the way home, when nearing the big bend, Kurt rode up to her; his detaining hand on the bridle slackened the speed she was striving to maintain.
“I want to say something to you,” he began stiffly. “You mustn’t think because I say nothing, that I am unmindful of what you have overcome—I—”
She stole a side glance at him. His eyes were as sombre and impenetrable as ever, but his chin worked nervously.
“You mean that I deserve a credit mark for not having lifted the children’s banks, or helped myself to the family silver and jewels. It’s sweet in you to put such trust in me and commend me for such heroic resistance!”
She jerked her bridle from his grasp and rode furiously on to the house, and had dismounted and escaped to her room before he could overtake her.
CHAPTER IX
Pen found the ranch-house quite deserted the next morning. Kurt had gone to Wolf Creek to purchase cattle and would not return until night. A little scrawled note from Francis apprised her of the fact that Mrs. Merlin was taking himself, Billy and Betty to spend the day at her own home.
“A whole day alone for the first time in ages!” she thought exultingly. “It is surely Pen Lamont’s day. What shall I do to celebrate? Stop the clock and play with the matches? I must do something stupendous. I know. I will go into town and shop. I will go in style, too.”
She took Kingdon’s racing car out of the garage, and was soon speeding down the hills with the little thrill of ecstasy that comes from leaving a beaten track.
In town she left the car in front of thehotel and went down the Main street, looking in dismay at the windows loaded with assorted and heterogeneous lots of feminine apparel. At last she came to a little shop with but three garments on display, all of them quite smart in style.
“You must be a ‘lost, strayed or stolen,’” she apostrophized in delight.
She went within and purchased two gowns with all the many and necessary accessories thereto.
“Lucky, Kind Kurt and Bender didn’t search me that day,” she thought. “I never saw a sheriff or a near-sheriff so slack. If they’d been in my business, they’d have known that you can’t always tell what’s in the pocket of a ragged frock.”
She visited in turn a shoe store, a soda water fountain and a beauty shop. Then it was the town time for dining, and she returned to the hotel.
“I shouldn’t have exhausted the resources of the town so soon,” she thought ruefully,as she stood in the office after registering. “I don’t know what I will do this afternoon unless I sit in a red plush chair in the Ladies’ Parlor and gaze out through the meshes of a coarse lace curtain at the passers-by. I might call on Bender and see if he’d remember me. Bet his wife would. Maybe something interesting will come along, though.”
Something did. It came in the shape of a lean, brown-faced young man.
“Larry, Larry!” she cried. “It’s a homecoming to see you. I hadn’t any idea what part of the world you were in. What are you doing here?”
“The Thief!” he exclaimed, his dark eyes beaming with pleasure.
“Not so loud. I am Pen Lamont, at present. Incog, you see, under my real name, the least known of any. So don’t squeal on me.”
“I never gave anyone away yet, Pen, dear. What are you doing in this neck o’ the woods?”
“I am in hiding in the hills—at a ranch—quite domesticated. My first glimpse of a home. Like it better than I supposed I could.”
“You’d better watch out. Hebler is up in these parts somewhere, I hear. He’ll get you yet, Pen!”
“Hebler! You make my heart stop beating. I hit this trail more to escape him than anything else. What is he here for?”
“For you, I fancy. I ran across Wilks the other day and he said he heard Hebler say, ‘He’d get that thief if he never did another thing.’ So lay low. Are you here alone in town to-day?”
“Alone and untethered for the first time in ages. Same with you?”
“You’re right as to the alone part; but I am not altogether free. I have to give an exhibition fool flight this afternoon in my little old flier. We’ll have dinner together, and the rest of the day. Will you?”
“Will I? Try me.”
“What’s the idea, Pen?” he asked as theywent into the long dining-room and chose a remote table.
“I don’t know, Larry. I had one, but I seem to have lost it in trying to pick up others. I’m floundering.”
“You’ve always been in wrong, Pen. Wish you’d find your level. You made me ashamed of my old life. I am string-straight now, thanky.”
“I am glad, Larry. You never were crooked, you know—just a bit reckless. Tell me about yourself.”
“You gave me a good steer when you suggested this sky stuff. I don’t believe a flying man could be very bad—up there in the clouds in a world all his own. Whenever I felt as if I must break over the traces and go off for a time, I’d just get into my little old flier and hit the high spots and that would give me more thrills than all the thirst parlors ever brought. I am going soon to fly for France. In fact, I’m ‘on my way’ now.”
“Larry! Iamproud of you! But it tugsat my heartstrings to have you go, and in an aeroplane!”
“Did you ever go up, Pen?”
“No; it’s about the only exciting thing I haven’t done, and it’s the only stunt I ever lacked the nerve to tackle.”
“Terrors of the unknown? I’m booked for some of that fancy flying this afternoon, and you can watch me from the field.”
“I knew this was to be a real day, but I never hoped for such a big handful of luck as seeing you again and in such a good act.”
“Always invest heavily in hope, Pen. It is free to all, and you come out ahead because you get your dividends in anticipating anyway, and you know anticipation—”
“Hold on, Larry, don’t be a bromide!”
“Everyone is a bromide now. Sulphides are all in the asylums. I am hoping for a chance to win themedal militaire—I mean for the chance to do something worth getting one.”
Pen’s pleasure in her surreptitious expedition,the delight in shopping and the excitement of meeting some one from her former life had brought a most vivid beauty to her delicate face, and Larry looked at her with an approval that brought forth a sudden wonder.
“Say, Pen!” he exclaimed excitedly, “you haven’t got a man up there at your ranch, have you?”
“Certainly; two of them,” she replied assuredly.
“That’s all right. So long as there are two, it’s nothing serious. Safety in numbers, remember.”
After dinner they motored out to the field where the exhibition was to be given. A coatless, tanned, weather-beaten crowd had already gathered.
Pen stood apart from the spectators, watching Larry whirl, turn turtle, and perform all the aviation agonies so fascinating to the untutored. When he shut off the engine and swung down, skimming the ground for a wayand stopping gently, she was in waiting nearby.
“I loathe this kind of exhibition work!” he declared. “It’s silly stuff, but it’s what the public wants. Sure you don’t want to try a little straight flight?” he tempted.
“N—o, Larry. Vice versa for mine, as the Irishman said.”
“All right. Here, Meder!” he said to the mechanic, who had come up. “Take care of the flier. I’ll see you later at the hotel.”
“It was wonderful, Larry,” said Pen as they were motoring to town. “I seem to see you from such a new angle now. I have always thought of you as a lovable, happy-go-lucky boy, but when I saw you take the air, I knew you had come to be something far different. You have the hawk-sense of balance, the sixth sense—the sense woman was supposed to have a monopoly of till the day of aeroplanes arrived. You had nerve to go up there and yet you were not nervous.”
“A fellow has to be without nerve and yetnervy,” explained Larry. “If he loses his sense of equilibrium up there, it’s all off; yet he has to be always ready to take a chance and to find one.”
“And, Larry—when you fly to the colors—”
“To the tricolors,” he interrupted.
“It will bring out the biggest and bravest and best there is in you, Larry. I am so glad! Don’t go out of my life again. Let me hear from you when you get over.”
“I was sore, Pen, when you handed me such a lecture, though it was coming to me all right. But it stuck, and the time came when I was grateful. When I found I could make good, I couldn’t find you. I wrote every one of the crowd or went to see them, but you had mysteriously disappeared. Hebby said you must have been run in.”
“Was; but luck was with me again. I will give you an address that will always reach me.”
“I shall never go up, Pen, without thinkingof you and to-day. But you have told me very little of yourself. Are you still—”
“The thief? Not at present. I am enjoying an interlude; but there are times when virtue palls, but I mean to keep out of Hebler’s clutches. Larry, I believe I will let you out here—on the edge of the town—the main street. I have a long ride before me. It’s lonesome to say good-bye.”
“I expect to be in two or three days yet—waiting for some mail.”
“I wish I might see you again, Larry, but I don’t know how I can manage it. If anyone knew I were in town to-day, it might lead to—developments. Send me your address at the port you are to sail from, and I’ll have things there for you.”
“Good-bye, Pen. You’re the best little scout I ever knew.”
He kissed her and got out of the car. There were tears in her eyes as she motored on up through the hills land. The air grew cold and brisk; she felt the sense of silence andstrength. She recalled her first ride up these hills in the early morning, and that turned her thoughts to Kurt. She wondered if he were of the stuff that bird men are made of. How much more sphinx-like he was, and how different from the keen, alert, business-like flier Larry had shown himself to be! They were types as remote as the eagle and the lark. Larry, of course, was the lark. She had a feeling of loneliness in her knowledge of his going so far away. He knew more about her than any one else. She never had to play a part with him.
Soon, all too soon, she found herself at the ranch. Dinner was over and the children had gone upstairs with Mrs. Merlin.
Kurt returned a few moments later and came into the library where she sat alone by the open fire, pensive and distrait, still thinking of Larry and of his going into service.
He looked at her oddly. This was not the pert, saucy, little girl he had taken from Bender, nor the little playmate of the children,nor yet the quiet, domestic woman who had served him that night in the kitchen.
There was an indefinable charm about her that defied definition or analysis—a rapt, exquisite look that lifted her up—up to his primitive ideal.
“Pen!”
He started toward her, seemed to remember, hesitated and then asked lamely:
“What have you been doing all day?”
Her former little air of raillery crept back momentarily at his change of tone.
“A narrow escape,” she thought, as she said aloud, reckless of consequences: “I motored into town by myself; bought some new clothes; had dinner with an old friend; saw an aeroplane go up and—”
He smiled in a bored way and asked her some irrelevant question.
“The easiest way to deceive, as Hebby always said, is to tell the truth,” she thought.
“Pen!” He spoke with a return of his first manner. “I—”
“I am very tired,” she quickly interrupted, “I think I will say good-night, now.”
“Don’t go yet,” he urged, “I—”
“I want to be alone,” she replied wearily.
“There is something I want to say to you. Jo Gary comes to-morrow!”
“Yes,” she answered indifferently. “Mr. Westcott found another manager, did he?”
“You knew Jo was at Westcott’s?” he gasped.
“Certainly. I’ve seen Jo a number of times.”
“When, where?” he demanded in displeased tone.
“Let me think. Why, he came back from Westcott’s the day after my arrival. Their manager postponed departure. So Jo was here for the dance, and on field day—and—I think he went back to Westcott’s the day you came back. Wasn’t it all right to see him?” she asked guilelessly. “Mrs. Kingdon didn’t object.”
“What other times did you see him?”
“I heard him whistle one night, and I slid down the big tree near my window. Then he came one morning to bring me flowers. I am glad he is coming for keeps. He livens things up, Jo does.”
“Why did neither you nor he speak of your having met?”
“I begged him not to, because I felt that you wouldn’t approve.”
An intense silence followed.
“Do you think,” he asked bitterly, “that you are fair to Jo—”
“To Jo?” she asked in surprise. “I don’t understand.”
“You do understand. Jo told me what he asked you in Chicago and how you left him—to reform—to be worthy of his love.”
“I haven’t deceived Jo,” she replied slowly. “I told him where you found me and why. He doesn’t care. He understands. Jo loves—”
The pause that followed was so prolonged that she stole another side-glance. She had asudden, swift insight into the power and vigor of the man—the inner man.
“That the girl he loves,” she continued softly, “is a thief, makes no difference to Jo.”
“Remember, Jo is only a boy—younger than you in all but years.”
“Only a boy, it is true, but with the faith and love of a man.”
He started from his chair and came up close to her.
“Answer me,” he said, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Do you love Jo Gary?”
A sort of paralysis seemed to grip her, and she felt helpless to move her eyes from his. Her lips were slightly parted and he could feel the pull of her nerves. For a moment she looked like a startled deer, quivering at the approach of man, with no place to run.
Then she recovered.
“Ask Jo,” she said defiantly, and sped from the room.
“Jo didn’t tell me how much he had confided in Kurt,” she thought. “What a weeworld it is! I can’t see how, with all the shuffling billions of people, the same two, once parted, should ever meet. I believe I was wrong about Kurt. For a moment I was almost afraid of him.”
Kurt gazed into the fire, his gray eyes alert and a soft smile on his lips. He had not been misled. He had clearly read an answer in the young eyes looking into his own.
“She doesn’t love Jo,” he thought, and the knowledge was quickly darkened by the remembrance of what it would mean to the boy-lover.
CHAPTER X
“Jo!” called Pen, running down the road as she spied him driving away in a lightweight mountain wagon.
Quickly he reined in the pair of prancing horses.
“What ’tis, Miss Penny Ante? Isn’t it great that I am back to stay?”
“Indeed it is. Where are you going and may I go, too?”
“Over to Westcott’s, and I’d love to have you go with me.”
“I’ll have to get a furlough and a hat. Just wait a moment.”
She found Kurt and asked his permission with all the pretty pleading of a child in her voice. Her face was singularly young; her eyes like a mirror.
“I’ve never ridden in a wagon,” she said breathlessly, seeing that his expression wasn’tas forbidding as usual. “And I’ll come back. Can’t you see Iwantto come back?”
Something sweet dawned in his eyes.
“Yes;” he said, a note of exultation sounding in his voice with the knowledge that his last stand of resistance to long-held theories was giving away before some new force, powerful and overwhelming. “You may go. I wish I were driving instead of Jo, but—”
He stood watching her as she sped back to where Jo was waiting, and his gaze still followed as the horses tore over the road to Westcott’s. There was a far-away look in his eye and a faint smile about the curves of his mouth. Subconsciously, as though he were the one beside her, he followed in fancy after the wagon was lost to sight around the hills. He could see the point where the road would disappear into a plain, covered with soft grass over which the sleek horses would bound. He knew Jo’s irresistible bubbling gaiety, and the sparkle she would add to it. He wondered why he had never thought totake her for a drive. There had been no chance to talk to her in their rides. She always put spurs to her horse when he tried to talk to her.
All sense of time left him. The symphony of the hill winds from the south was in his ears; the beauty of the day in all his being. Vividly he recalled their ride in the early dawn and the brief moment she had lain unconscious in his arms. Ever since that moment he had barricaded himself against her appeal and charm. He felt himself yielding and knew that the yielding was bringing him happiness.
“I am in a Fool’s Paradise,” he thought, “but still a Paradise. She doesn’t care for me any more than she cares for Jo. I wonder does he know it, or is she deceiving him? I fear so, for he seems absurdly happy.”
He was still lost in the dreams of the lotus-eater when he heard something that resembled the rattling of his own noisy car. Looking down the hill road from town, he saw avehicle approaching which he recognized as the “town taxi.” It turned into the ranch grounds and he quickly went to the front of the house, supposing that Kingdon or his wife must have returned.
A strange young girl was alighting. As he went wonderingly to meet her, he saw that she was city-bred. She seemed to be dazed by the illimitable spaces and was blinking from the sunshine. His observant eye noted the smart suitcase and the wardrobe trunk the man was depositing on the porch. There was city shrewdness in having had the amount of the fare fixed before leaving town.
She was a little slip of a girl with a small-featured face and a certain pale prettiness. There was an appealing tinge of melancholy in her eyes notwithstanding they were eager and alert. Her dress was plain, but natty and citified.
“Is this Top Hill—where Mrs. Kingdon lives?” she asked in a low, softly-pitched voice.
“Yes;” he replied, “but Mrs. Kingdon is away—”
“I know—but she wrote me to come here; that she would be home very soon.”
“I am glad to hear that. Come in,” he urged hospitably, as he picked up her suitcase. “The housekeeper will make you comfortable.”
She hesitated.
“Is Miss Lamont in?”
“Miss Lamont—Miss Pen Lamont?” he asked in surprise. “She is a friend of yours?”
“Yes,” she replied composedly.
“She has gone for a drive, but she will be back soon.”
She followed him within and stood gazing at the pleasant interior,—books, pictures, piano and fireplace, while he went to summon the housekeeper.
“Mrs. Merlin, this is a friend of Mrs. Kingdon’s,” he said on his return. “Will you show her to one of the guest rooms?”
“Oh!” exclaimed the girl in expostulary tone, “I amnota guest. My name is—Bobbie Burr. Mrs. Kingdon hired me to do plain sewing for the children and to care for the linen.”
There was no trace of a seamstress in the plain but elegant garb and appointments of the young girl, and Mrs. Merlin was at a loss as to the proper establishment of the newcomer.
“Maybe,” she said to Kurt hesitatingly, “the room the last nursery governess had—”
“Any room will do,” said the girl hurriedly, as she followed Mrs. Merlin.
Kurt went down the road which Jo and Pen had taken. He felt the need of a pipe and solitude to help him figure out this puzzling problem, and soon he was sending a jet of smoke up to the branches of the tree which he had selected for a resting place.
Who was this girl whose belongings betokened money, and yet who said she had come to do plain sewing? Enlightenment came withthe recollection that she had been sent by Mrs. Kingdon and was doubtless one of her protégées. The name she had given sounded demimondish, and she was a friend of Pen’s! The thought made him wince. She had seemed to him some way isolated from her kind, with naught in common with them save her profession. To find he was mistaken brought him an unpleasant shock.
A sound of wheels around the curve; the clatter of hoofs. In a moment they came into his vision—the prancing team, the merry driver and—the thief. Delicate as a drop of dew, as lovely as a forest blossom, her voice, bird-like and rippling, wafted to him from the clear aromatic air, she inverted again all his theories and resolutions.
He walked toward them, his hand raised.
Jo reined in.
“Will you get out and walk up to the house with me?” Kurt asked her, the question given in the form and tone of command.
“A friend of yours is at the house,” hesaid abruptly, when Jo had driven on and was outside of hearing.
“A friend of mine!” she repeated, losing a little of the wild rose tint in her fear that Hebler might have arrived.
“So she says. Mrs. Kingdon sent her here to sew for the children.”
“How you relieve me! I was fearing it might be a man.”
“Her name,” he said, “is Bobbie Burr.”
“What!” Her voice had a startled note. “Bobbie Burr! Oh, yes; I remember her.”
“Is she a particular friend of yours?”
“I am more attracted by her than by any girl I ever knew. Let’s sit down in the shade of one of the few-and-far-between trees you have up here. You were interested in my welfare when you took me from Bender, but you will be doubly interested in Bobbie when you hear her story. She is a convert far more worthy of your efforts and those of Mrs. Kingdon than I have proved to be.
“She is the type you thought I was beforeyou snatched me from the burning—I mean from Bender. Let me see if I can quote you correctly: ‘One of the many young city girls who go wrong because they have no chance; bred in slums, ill-treated, ill-fed.’ Poor Bobbie had no chance until—you’ll be skeptical when I tell you how she first received her moral uplift—she had some nice clothes. Stealing was her only vice! At that, she only took enough to meet her needs; but one day shefoundsome money; quite a lot, it seemed to her. Down in her little fluttering fancy she had always had longings for a white dress—anicewhite dress. She had the inherent instinct for judging rightly ‘what she should wear.’ So, for the first time in her life she was able to be correctly and elegantly clad. The white dress she bought was simple, one of the plain but effective and expensive kind. With the wearing of this new gown there naturally came the feminine desire to be seen and admired. She didn’t know where to go. Shehad never been a frequenter of dance halls. She knew, of course, there were few open sesames for her. She went to one where no questions are asked before admittance. Things didn’t look good to her at this Hurricane Hall, and she thought her doll was filled with sawdust until the inevitable man appeared and changed her angle of vision. He was that most unusual apparition, a nice, honest man. He saw her; she saw him; after that there were no others visible in their little world.
“Within twenty-four hours he had told her of his love and asked her to marry him. Then—I tried to convince you thieves could be honest—she was brave enough to tell him what she was. He was a true knight and lover. Her confession didn’t alter his feelings or his intentions; in fact, his determination to marry her was strengthened. Because she loved him very much, she ran away from him, leaving him in a strange city without even her name for a clue. But now she had a hope, a real incentive—the biggest one there is.She pawned all the coveted clothes she had bought and went to a place far away where she could begin a new life—the life of an honest working-girl.
“In her little game with destiny, she lost out, and was apprehended for a theft of which she was entirely innocent, but her past record barred acquittal. A man was instrumental in gaining a reprieve for her, however, and she was sent away to new environment where she found friends, health and, best of all, a job.
“So the desire was born in her to turn the proverbial new leaf, not for the sake of winning her ‘man,’ but from the simple wish to be ‘good.’ I interested Mrs. Kingdon in her and told her where she was, but did not dream of such good luck for—Bobbie as to be sent up here. I know she will find happiness up here in these hills. You’ll be kind to the little girl, won’t you?” she pleaded. “You know you haven’t much mercy for sinners, but you will see she is serious about reforming;not flippant like me. She will never yield to temptation again.”
“How do you know?” he asked, looking at her keenly.
“Because,” she answered softly. “Sheloves, and—the man she loves is worthy of her.”
“And you think love is powerful enough to cure?”
“I think so.”
“Would it cure—you?”
“I don’t know,” she said ingenuously. “You see I have never loved.”
A fervid light smouldered in his eyes.
“Aunty Pen!”
Francis came running around the curve.
“There is a nice girl at the house. Mother sent her. She’s got a boy’s name—Bobbie. I like her. She does anything I tell her to.”
“That’s the masculine measure,” she said, taking his hand and running on with him.
“Come back!” was the strident summons from Kurt.
“Stay here a moment,” Pen hurriedly bade Francis.
“I want to ask you how this girl is able to have such expensive looking things—if she has only a job?”
“They were given to her.”
“By the man who was instrumental in getting her reprieved? You said she was virtuous.”
“Don’t do the man an injustice, even if you doubt poor little Bobbie. He acted from charitable motives. He has never seen her, or tried to see her.”
“Look at me, Pen!”
“I’m looking. You have the true Western eye—the eye of a sharpshooter and a—sheriff.”
“The story you just told me is the story of Marta Sills. Is thathername or yours?”
“It belongs to us both. Being ‘particular pals,’ we shared alike. Interchange of names often comes handy with us.”
“Was it you or Bobbie Burr—the girl whojust came—whom Jo met in a dance hall, and took to St.—some place on Lake Michigan?”
“Dear me! You cattlemen are such gay birds when you come to a city! How can I tell how many girls Jo Gary took to a dance hall? If that St. Something was St. Joe, he must have gone there to get married. It’s what most people go there for, and probably he’s no more saintly than the place is. Maybe it was named after him.”
“Tell me! Was it Bobbie Burr?”
“She never mentioned Jo Gary’s name to me, so how do I know. Yes, Francis; coming.”
She ran fleetly on to join the boy who was impatiently calling to her.
“Marta! How the plot does thicken!” she thought as she ran a race with Francis to the house. “Now we’re all here but Hebby. What next? Curtain soon, I expect. No need longer for understudies. I must start things before Kurt succumbs to her charms. That little subdued, clinging-vine air she hasis most appealing to his type. He’ll come to forgiveheranything.”
“Marta,” she said quickly, as she met the young girl, “come upstairs with me.”
She locked the door as soon as they were in her room.
“Now tell me all about yourself and everything that has happened since I last saw you.”
Beaming with the excitement that comes from narrative of self, the newcomer talked animatedly for some time.
“And,” she concluded, “Mrs. Kingdon said you told her all about me, and she sent me a ticket to come here. And it’s lovely up here, isn’t it? She told me I’d better keep to the name of Bobbie Burr for the present, until she came anyway.”
“I should say!” agreed Pen. “Marta Sills might land you in most unpleasant places. But, Marta, that man you told me about, whose name you didn’t mention?”
“Yes, Miss Lamont. I try not to think of him.”
“Marta, why did you tell him that you stole. You could have married him. He’d never have known. And you and he could both have been happy.”
In the girl’s wondering eyes, Pen read a mute rebuke.
“I’d rather lose him forever than deceive him!”
“Marta,” said Pen impressively, “Diogenes should have known you.”
“Who is he, Miss Lamont?”
“Never mind, Marta. I thought I knew what love meant, but I see I didn’t until now. If I loved a man as you do yours, I would stop stealing if I had to cut my hands off to do it.”
“I have stopped. I know now that I could have stopped long ago, if any one had given me the right boost, or made me want to stop.”
Just then Pen’s eyes caught sight of a trunk in the corner of her room.
“What’s that here for?” she asked.
“Oh, please, Miss Lamont, I brought it toyou. I never touched anything in it. I earned enough to buy what I am wearing and a few things in my suitcase, besides what I had on that day—”
“Marta, that’s sweet in you. I am beginning to feel I’d like to tog once more. I shall reward you. But first, will you do something for me?”
“You know I will be glad to do anything.”
“I want a note delivered. I’ll write it now.”
Hastily she wrote a few lines at her desk.
“Come with me, Marta. We’ll have to go to a certain vine-clad pergola by devious routes to avoid three wise children and one suspicious and formidable foreman.”
By much circumambulation the two girls reached the pergola unseen.
“You sit here for a few moments, Marta, and the person to whom you are to give the note will come to you.”
Pen walked on to the barracks where she met Jo.
“Will you do something for me, Jo? Right away, quick?”
“Sure thing, Miss Penny Ante. What did his nibs want?”
“Never mind, now. Go to the pergola and receive a note from me. Now don’t be stupid. Do as you are told,—like a good soldier does.”
With a laugh Jo started in swinging gait for the place indicated, but he was halted several times by some of the men who wanted directions for their work.
After waiting patiently, Marta concluded Pen’s plans had miscarried, so she started for the house, but becoming confused as to turns, she went toward the barracks.
To a little girl whose life had been spent in slums and reformatories, the big spaces and silences were more appalling than the wildest hours of traffic on misguided State Street. She had a strange inclination to walk down hill backward that she might not see what other ascension must be made.
“If I’d only been born as high up as this, maybe I’d never have got down so low,” she philosophized.
She came around a bend in the road. A man was approaching. He looked up.
“Marta, oh, Marta!”
“Jo!” she cried wildly, looking about for retreat.
Another second, in his arms, she thought no longer of flight.
“Marta, how did you ever get here?” Wild astonishment was visible in Jo’s eyes.
“Mrs. Kingdon sent for me. I’ve been killed with kindness ever since that night I saw you, Jo. I didn’t know you were here. Miss Lamont told me to stay in that place where the vines are until a man came, and to give him this note; but that was long ago. I came out and lost my way. Are you the man she meant?”
“I must be.”
“Does she know that you—that we—”
“Sure she knows. Give me the note.”
He removed the little folded paper from the envelope and read it aloud:
“DEAR JO: Here is your heart-ease. Don’t let doubt kill your love. Just take Marta. A woman loves an audacious lover.“Yours,“PENNY ANTE.”
“DEAR JO: Here is your heart-ease. Don’t let doubt kill your love. Just take Marta. A woman loves an audacious lover.
“Yours,“PENNY ANTE.”
“Yours,
“PENNY ANTE.”
“I feel sort of crazy. Gee, Marta, but it’s great to be crazy! Let’s sit down here and talk about it. You don’t need to tell me much. She told me. Why didn’t you let me hear from you?”
“I wanted to be sure, Jo. I’m not going to make excuses for myself, but I had it handed to me hard. Whenever I thought I’d like to be like other folks, some one would give me a shoveback, and then I felt cornered and that it was no use. Sometimes—most always—I was down and out. Then I’d hit a little lucky wave and go up. It was one of those times I saw you in that dance hall.”
“That wasmylucky wave. I can see you now as you sat away from the rest—so little and so different-looking from those tough ones.”
“And I can see you—alone, by yourself; you looked different from anyone I’d ever seen, so healthy and jolly and kind. I saw you looking at me and knew right off what you thought—that I was straight and had got in the wrong place by mistake. And I let you think so and let you get to know me. And we danced and talked till near sunrise. That lovely day over at St. Joe! I thought I was in Heaven until we were in that little park and you asked me to marry you. First time a real man ever asked me that. I wasn’t low enough to fool you then. When you said it made no difference, I knew you were too good for me, and it made me love you so much that I had to run away.”
“It was sure great in you to tell me, Marta.”
“You know how I got help and hope; butI’m not Marta now, Jo. Not any more. I’m Bobbie Burr.”
“You’ll always be Marta. But it makes no difference; you’ll soon be changing your name for keeps. You can’t ever lose me, now, and love has Mrs. Kingdon and all the rest of them beat for what you call reforming.”
“If I had only known long ago that there were folks like you and Mrs. Kingdon and—”
“Never mind long ago. There’s nothing to it. Let’s talk about the little shack we are going to put up in these hills somewhere. Like it?”
“It seems like a beautiful dream up here, Jo. Too good for me.”
He looked down into the kitten face with its eyes of Irish blue.
“Nothing in the world is too good for you, my Marta.”
“Miss Lamont said I could play I had died and been born again. She said it was a good way to turn over a new leaf.”
“You will be born again as Mrs. Jo Gary.”
Time went very swiftly then, and it was Marta who realized Pen might be expecting to see her.
“Please start me in the right direction, Jo.”
“I’ll take you to the house myself,” said Jo protectingly.
As they came around a curve in the road that wound its way upward and downward, they encountered Kurt.
“This is Miss Sills, Mr. Walters,” introduced Jo proudly—“the little girl I told you about when I came from Chicago. We are engaged.”
She looked up a little fearfully at the stern-looking young foreman. She was surprised and relieved at the kindly look in the steel-gray eyes. He took one of her little hands in his strong brown ones. He was ashamed that his instinct told him it was the typical hand of a thief, slim, smooth and deft-fingered.
“Let me congratulate you, Jo, and you, too, Marta. Jo is my friend.”
Tears came into her eyes and her little mouth puckered pathetically.
“Say, Kurt, you’re a brick!” exclaimed Jo heartily. “I was afraid—you know you said—”
He stopped in confusion.
“Forget everything I said, old man. I was a grouch then and I didn’t know—anything. I know better now. But Marta, why did you tell me your name was Bobbie Burr.”
“Mrs. Kingdon told me to use that name until—”
“Until she has her right name, Marta Gary,” finished Jo.
Kurt smiled condoningly.
“Mrs. Kingdon always knows what is best.”
“That is what Miss Lamont said. She said that with Jo to love me and Mrs. Kingdon to advise me I couldn’t help but be—what I want to be.”
“Did she say that?” he asked eagerly, a light in his eyes. “She was right.”
“She left outherhelp. It was Jo that first made me want to be straight, but it was Miss Lamont who gave me the chance. Isn’t she grand, Mr. Walters? She has such a kind heart.”
“Will you tell me something about her, Marta? Is—”
He stopped abruptly. It wouldn’t be just the right thing to cross-examine this little girl about her “particular pal.”
“I’ll see you again, soon,” he said, and went on to the garage.
The sound of Jo’s jolly laugh with the little added tender note made him turn and look after them. They had stopped on their way and were looking into each other’s eyes, oblivious to all else but the happiness to be found in the kingdom of love and youth.
Silhouetted on the crest of the hill they stood—Jo, lean, long and picturesque in his rough clothes; Marta, neat and natty fromher little pumps to her shining yellow hair smoothed back over her forehead.
With the feeling that he also was initiated into the Great Brotherhood and had recognized the tokens of membership, he went about his tasks, seeing a vision of a girl with a sweetness in her eyes that often belied the bantering of her tone.
When he came up to dinner, Pen’s place was vacant.
“Bobbie won’t eat with us,” explained Francis. “Nora didn’t, you know. Aunt Pen thought she might be lonesome eating her first meal all alone, so they are having their dinner together.”
Marta’s words, “she has such a kind heart,” came back to him.
“She is right,” he said. “Marta knows.”
And suddenly there was born in him a deep compassion for all women of her kind. In vain he waited for Pen in the library that night. But, feeling she was in deep waters, Pen had resolved to stay in her room.