Through the tremulous beauty of the California woods, in the silent April afternoon, came Sammy Peneyre, riding Clown. The horse chose his own way on the corduroy road, for the rider was lost in dreams. Clown was a lean old dapple gray so far advanced in years and ailments that when Doctor Peneyre had bought him, the year before, the dealer had felt constrained to remark:
"He's better'n he looks, Doc'. You'll get your seven dollars' worth out of him yet!"
To which the doctor had amiably responded:
"Your saying so makes me wonder if I WILL, Joe. However, I'll have my boy groom him and feed him, and we'll see!"
But, as Clown had stubbornly refused to respond to grooming and feeding, he was, like other despised and discarded articles, voted by the Peneyre family quite good enough for Sammy, and Sammy accepted him gratefully.
The spirit of spring was affecting them both to-day—a brilliant day after long weeks of rain. Sammy whistled softly. Clown coquetted with the bit, danced under the touch of the whip, and finally took the steep mountain road with such convulsive springs as jolted his rider violently from dreams.
"Why, you fool, are you trying to run away?" said Sammy, suddenly alive to the situation. The road here was a mere shelf on the slope of the mountain, constantly used by descending lumber teams, and dangerous at all times. A runaway might easily be fatal. Sammy pulled at the bit; but, at the first hard tug, the old bridle gave way, and Clown, maddened by a stinging blow from the loose flying end of the strap, bolted blindly ahead.
Terrified now, Sammy clung to the pommel and shouted. The trees flew by; great clods of mud were flung up by the horse's feet. From far up the road could be heard the creaking of a lumber team and the crack of the lumberman's long whip.
"My Lord!" said Sammy, aloud, in a curious calm, "we'll never pass THAT!"
And then, like a flash, it was all over. Clown, suddenly freed from his rider, galloped violently for a moment, stopped, snorted suspiciously, galloped another twenty feet, and stood still, his broken bridle dangling rakishly over one eye. Sammy, dragged from the saddle at the crucial instant to the safety of Anthony Gayley's arms, as he brought his own horse up beside her, wriggled to the ground.
"That was surely going some!" said Anthony, breathing hard. "Hurt?"
"No-o!" said Sammy. But she leaned against the tall, big fellow, as he stood beside her, and was glad of his arm about her shoulders.
They had known each other by sight for years, but this was the first speech between them. Anthony suddenly realized that the doctor's youngest daughter, with her shy, dark eyes and loosened silky braids, had grown from an awkward child into a very pretty girl. Sammy, glancing up, thought—what every other woman in Wheatfield thought—that Anthony Gayley was the handsomest man she had ever seen, in his big, loose corduroys, with a sombrero on the back of his tawny head.
"I was awfully afraid I'd grate against your leg," said the boy, with his sunny smile; "but I couldn't stop to figure it out. I just had to hustle!"
"There's a lumber wagon ahead there," Sammy said. "I'm—I'm very much obliged to you!"
They both laughed. Presently Anthony made the girl mount his own beautiful mare.
"Ride Duchess home. I'll take your horse," said he.
"Oh, no, indeed; PLEASE don't bother!" protested Sammy, eagerly.
But Anthony only laughed and gave her a hand up. Sammy settled herself on the Spanish saddle with a sigh of satisfaction.
"I've always wanted to ride your horse!" said she, delightedly, as the big muscles moved smoothly under her.
Anthony smiled. "She's the handsomest mare here-abouts," said he. "I wouldn't take a thousand dollars for her!"
Sammy watched him deftly repair the broken bridle of the now docile and crestfallen Clown, and spring to the saddle.
"I'm taking you out of your way!" she pleaded, and he answered gravely:
"Oh, no; I'll be much happier seeing you safe home."
When they reached her gate, the two changed horses, and Sammy rode slowly up the dark driveway alone. Even on this brilliant afternoon the old Peneyre place looked dull and gloomy. Dusty dark pines and eucalyptus trees grew close about the house. There was no garden, but here and there an unkempt geranium or rank great bush of marguerites sprawled in the uncut grass, and rose bushes, long grown wild, stood in spraying clusters that were higher than a man's head. Pampas trees, dirty and overgrown, outlined the drive at regular intervals, their shabby plumes uncut from year to year.
The house was heavy, bay-windowed, three-storied. Ugly, immense, unfriendly, it struck an inharmonious note in the riotous free growth of the surrounding woods. The dark entrance-hall was flanked by a library full of obsolete, unread books, and by double drawing-rooms, rarely opened now. All the windows on the ground floor were darkened by the shrubbery outside and by heavy red draperies within.
Sammy, entering a side door, seemed to leave the day's brightness behind her. The air indoors was chill, flat. A half-hearted little coal fire flickered in the grate, and Koga was cleaning silver at the table. Sammy took David Copperfield from the mantel and settled herself in a great chair.
"Koga, you go fix Clown now," she suggested.
Koga beamed assent. Departing, he wrestled with a remark: "Oh! Nise day. I sink so."
Sammy agreed. "You don't have weather like this in Japan in April!"
"Oh, yis," said Koga, and, drunk with the joy of speech, he added: "I sink so. Awe time nise in Jap-pon! I sink so."
"All the time nice in Japan?" echoed Sammy, lazily. "Oh, what a story!"
But Koga was convulsed with innocent mirth. However excruciating the effort, he had produced a remark in English. He retired, repeating between spasms of enjoyment: "Oh, I sink so. Awe time nise in Jap-pon!"
The day dragged on, to all outward seeming like all of Sammy's days. Twilight made her close her book and straighten her bent shoulders. Pong came in to set the table. The slamming of the hall door announced her father.
Presently Mrs. Moore, the housekeeper, came downstairs. Lamps were lighted; dinner loitered its leisurely way. After it the doctor set up one of his endless chess problems on the end of the table, and Sammy returned to David Copperfield.
"Father, you know Anthony Gayley—that young carpenter in Torney's shop?"
"I do, my dear."
"Well, Clown ran away to-day, and he really saved me from a bad smash."
A long pause.
"Ha!" said the doctor, presently. "Set this down, will you, Sammy? Rook to queen's fourth. Check. Now, knight—any move. No—hold on. Yes. Knight any move. Now, rook—wait a minute!"
His voice fell, his eyes were fixed. Sammy sighed.
At eight she fell to mending the fire with such vigor that her colorless little face burned. Then her spine felt chilly. Sammy turned about, trying to toast evenly; but it couldn't be done. She thought suddenly of her warm bed, put her finger in her book, kissed her father's bald spot between two yawns, and went upstairs.
The dreams went, too. There was nothing in this neglected, lonely day, typical of all her days, to check them. It was delicious, snuggling down in the chilly sheets, to go on dreaming.
Again she was riding alone in the woods. Again Clown was running away. Again, big gentle Anthony Gayley was galloping behind her. Again for that breathless moment she was in his arms. Sammy shut her eyes....
Her father, coming upstairs, wakened her. She lay smiling in the dark. What had she been thinking of? Oh, yes! And out came the dream horses and their riders again....
The next day she rode over the same bit of road again, and the day after, and the day after that. The rides were absolutely uneventful, but sweet with dreams.
A week later Sammy teased Mrs. Moore into taking her to the Elks' concert and dance at the Wheatfield Hall over the post-office. When Mrs. Moore protested at this unheard-of proceeding, the girl used her one unfailing threat: "Then I'll tell father I want another governess!"
Mrs. Moore hated governesses. There had been no governess at the doctor's for two years. She looked uneasy. "You've nothing to wear," said she.
"I'll wear my embroidered linen," said Sammy, "and Mary's spangled scarf."
"You oughtn't borrow your sister's things without permission," said Mrs. Moore, half-heartedly.
"Mary's in New York," said Sammy, recklessly. "She's not been home for two years, and she may not be back for two more! She won't care. I'm eighteen, and I've never been to a dance, and I'm GOING—that's all there is about it!"
And she burst into tears, and presently laughed herself out of them, and went to her sister's orderly empty room to see what other treasures besides the spangled scarf Mary had left behind her.
Three months later, on a burning July afternoon, the Wheatfield "Terrors" played a team from the neighboring town of Copadoro. Wheatfield's population was reputedly nine hundred, and certainly almost that number of onlookers had gathered to watch the game. The free seats were packed with perspiring women in limp summer gowns, and restless, crimson-faced children; and a shouting, vociferous line of men fringed the field. But in the "grand stand," where chairs rented for twenty-five cents, there was still some room.
Three late-comers found seats there when the game was almost over—Sammy's sister Mary, an extremely handsome young woman in a linen gown and wide hat, her brother Tom, a correct young man whose ordinary expression indicated boredom, and their aunt, a magnificent personage in gray silk, with a gray silk parasol. Their arrival caused some little stir.
"Well, for pit—!" exclaimed a stout matron seated immediately in front of them. "If it ain't Mary Peneyre—an' Thomas too! An' Mrs. Bond—for goodness' sake! Well, say, you folks ARE strangers. When 'jew all get here? Sammy never told me you was coming!"
"How d'you do, Mrs. Pidgeon?" said Sammy's aunt, cordially. "No, Samantha didn't know it. We came—ah—rather suddenly. Yes, I've not been in Wheatfield for ten years. We got here on the two o'clock train."
"Going to stay long, Mary?" said Mrs. Pidgeon, sociably.
"Only a few days," said Miss Peneyre, distantly. ("That's the worst of growing up in a place," she said to herself. "Every one calls you 'Mary'!") "We are going to take Samantha back to New York with us," she added.
"Look out you don't find you're a little late," said Mrs. Pidgeon, with great archness. "I'm surprised you ain't asked me if there's any news from Sammy. Whole village talking about it."
The three smiles that met her gaze were not so unconcerned as their wearers fondly hoped. Mrs. Bond ended a tense moment when she exclaimed, "There's Sammy now!" and indicated to the others the last row of seats, where a girl in blue, with a blue parasol, was sitting alone. Mrs. Pidgeon delivered a parting shot. "Sammy might do lots worse than Anthony Gayley," said she, confidentially. "Carpenter or no carpenter, he's an elegant fellow. I thought Lizzie Philliber was ace high, an' then folks talked some of Bootsy White. I guess Bootsy'd like to do some hair-pulling."
"I dare say it's just a boy-and-girl friendship," said Mrs. Bond, lightly, but trembling a little and pressing Mary's foot with her own. When they were climbing over the wooden seats a moment later, on their way to join Sammy, she added:
"Oh, really, it's insufferable! I'd like to spank that girl!"
"Apparently the whole village is on," contributed Tom, bitterly.
A moment later Sammy saw them; and if her welcome was a little constrained, it was merely because of shyness. She settled down radiantly between her sister and aunt, with a hand for each.
"Well, this is FUN!" said Sammy. "Did you get my letter? Were you surprised? Are you all going to stay until September?"
Her happy fusillade of questions distressed them all. Mary said the unwise thing, trying to laugh, as she had always laughed, at Sammy:
"DON'T talk as if you were going to be married, Sammy! It's too awful—you don't know how aunty and I feel about it! Why, darling, we want you to go back with us to New York! Sammy—"
The firm pressure of her aunt's foot against her own stopped her.
"I knew you would feel that way about it, Mary," said Sammy, very quietly, but with blazing cheeks; "but I am of age, and father says that Anthony has as much right to ask for the girl he loves as any other man, and that's all there is to it!"
"You have it all thought out," said Mary, very white; "but, I must say, I am surprised that a sister of mine, and a granddaughter of Judge Peters—a girl who could have EVERYTHING!—is content to marry an ordinary country carpenter! You won't have grandmother's money until you're twenty-one; there's three years that you will have to cook and sweep and get your hands rough, and probably bring up—"
"Mary! MARY!" said Mrs. Bond.
"Well, I don't care!" said Mary, unreproved. "And when she DOES get grandma's money," she grumbled, "what good will it do her?"
"We won't discuss it, if you please, Mary," said little Sammy, with dignity.
There was a silence. Tom lighted a cigarette. They watched the game, Mary fighting tears, Sammy defiant and breathing hard, Mrs. Bond with absent eyes.
"Stunning fellow who made that run!" said the elder woman presently. "Who is he, dear?"
"That's Anthony!" said Sammy, shortly, not to be won.
"Anthony!" Mrs. Bond's tone was all affectionate interest. She put up her lorgnette. "Well, bless his heart! Isn't he good to look at!" she said.
"He's all hot and dirty now," Sammy said, relenting a little.
"He's MAGNIFICENT," said Mrs. Bond, firmly. She cut Mary off from their conversation with a broad shoulder, and pressed Sammy's hand. "We'll all love him, I'm sure," said she, warmly.
Sammy's lip trembled.
"You WILL, Aunt Anne," said she, a little huskily. Pent up confidence came with a rush. "I know perfectly well how Mary feels!" said Sammy, eagerly. "Why, didn't you yourself feel a little sorry he's a carpenter?"
"Just for a moment," said Aunt Anne.
"I wish MYSELF he wasn't," Sammy pursued; "but he likes it, and he's making money, and he's liked by EVERY one. He's on the team, you know, and sings in all the concerts. Wild horses couldn't drag him away from Wheatfield. And why should he go away and study some profession he hates," she rushed on resentfully, "when I'm PERFECTLY satisfied with him as he is? Father asked him if he wouldn't like to study a profession—I don't see why he SHOULD!"
"Surely," said Mrs. Bond, sympathetically, but quite at a loss. After a thoughtful moment she added seriously: "But, darling, what about your trousseau? Why not make it November, say, and take a flying trip to New York with your old aunty? I want the first bride to have all sorts of pretty things, you know. No delays,—everything ready-made, not a moment lost—?"
Sammy hesitated. "You do like him, don't you, Aunt Anne?" she burst out.
"My dear, I HOPE I'm going to love him!"
"Do—do you mind my talking it over with him before I say I'll go?" Sammy's eyes shone.
"My darling, no! Take a week to think it over!" Mrs. Bond had never tried fishing, but she had some of the instincts of the complete angler.
A mad burst of applause interrupted her, and ended the game. Strolling from the field in the level, pitiless sunshine, the Peneyres were joined by young Gayley. He was quite the hero of the hour, stalwart in his base-ball suit, nodding and shouting greetings in every direction. He transferred a bat to his left hand to give Mrs. Bond a cheerfully assured greeting, and, with the freedom of long-gone days when he had played in the back lot with the Peneyre children, he addressed the young people as "Mary" and "Tom." If three of the party thought him decidedly "fresh," Sammy had no such criticism. She evidently adored her lover.
It was at her suggestion, civilly indorsed by the others, that he came to the house a few hours later for dinner. It was a painful meal. Mr. Gayley did not hesitate to monopolize the conversation. He was accustomed to admiration—too completely accustomed, in fact, to perceive that on this occasion it was wanting.
After dinner he sang—having quite frankly offered to sing. Mary played his accompaniments, and Sammy leaned on the closed cover of her mother's wonderful old grand piano—sadly out of tune in these days!—and watched him. Tom, frankly rude, went to bed. Mary, determined that the engaged pair should not be encouraged any further than was unavoidable, stuck gallantly to her post.
Mrs. Bond sat watching, useless regrets filling her heart. How sweet the child was! How full of possibilities! How true the gray eyes were! How stubborn the mouth might be! Sammy's power to do what she willed to do, in the face of all obstacles, had been notable since her babyhood. Her aunt looked from the ardent, virginal little head to the florid, handsome face of the singer, and her heart was sick within her.
Anthony Gayley came to the train to see them off, two weeks later, and Sammy kissed him good-by before the eyes of all Wheatfield. She had made her own conditions in consenting to make the Eastern visit. She was going merely to buy her trousseau; the subject of her engagement was never to be discussed; and every one—EVERY one—she met was to know at once that she was going back to Wheatfield immediately to be married in December.
Anthony had agreed to wait until then.
"It isn't as if every one knew it, Kid," he said sensibly to his fiancee; "it gives me a chance to save a little, and it's not so hard on mother. Besides, I'm looking out for a partner, and I'll have to work him in."
"I wonder you don't think of entering some other business, Anthony," Mrs. Bond said, to this remark. "You're young enough to try anything. It's such a—it's such hard work, you know."
"I've often thought I'd like to be an actor," said Mr. Gayley, carelessly; "but there's not much chance to break into that."
"You could take a course of lessons in New York," suggested Mary, and Sammy indorsed the idea with an eager look. But Anthony laughed.
"Not for mine! No, sir. I'll stick to Wheatfield. I was a year in San Francisco a while back, and it was one lonesome year, believe me. No place like home and friends for your Uncle Dudley!"
"Don't you meet a bunch of swell Eastern fellows and forget me," he said to Sammy, as they stood awaiting the train. "I'll be getting a little home ready for you; I'll—I'll trust you, Kid."
"You may," said Sammy. She looked at the burning, dry little main street, the white cottages that faced the station from behind their blazing gardens; she looked at the locust trees that almost hid the church spire, at the straggling line of eucalyptus trees that followed the country road to the graveyard a mile away. It was home. It was all she had known of the world—and she was going away into a terrifying new life. Her eyes brimmed.
"I swear to you that I'll be faithful, Anthony," she said solemnly. "On my sacred oath, I will!"
And ten minutes later they were on their way. The porter had pinned her new hat up in a pillow-case and taken it away, and Sammy was laughing because another porter quite seriously shouted: "Last call for luncheon in the dining-car!"
"I always knew they did it, but I never supposed they really DID!" said Sammy, following her aunt through the shaded brightness of the Pullman to an enchanted table, from which one could see the glorious landscape flashing by.
It was all like a dream—the cities they fled through, the luxury of the big house at Sippican, the capped and aproned maids that were so eager to make one comfortable. The people she met were like dream people; the busy, useless days seemed too pleasant to be real.
August flashed by, September was gone. With the same magic lack of effort, they were all in the New York house. Sammy wore her first dinner gown, wore her first furs, made her youthful conquests right and left.
From the first, she told every one of her engagement. The thought of it, always in her mind, helped to give her confidence and poise.
"You must have heard of me, you know," said her first dinner partner, "for your sister's told me a lot about YOU. Piet van Soop."
"Piet van SOOP!" ejaculated Sammy, seriously.
"Certainly. Don't you think that's a pretty name?"
"But—but that can't be your name," argued Sammy, smilingly.
"Why can't it?"
"Why, because no one with a name like van Soop to begin with would name a little darling baby PIET," submitted Sammy.
"Oh, come," said Mr. van Soop. "Your own name, now! Sammy, as Mary always calls you—that's nothing to boast of, you know, and I'll bet you were a very darling little baby yourself!"
Sammy laughed joyously, and a dozen fellow guests glanced sympathetically in the direction of the fresh, childish sound.
"Well, if that's really your name, of course you can't help it," she conceded, adding, with the naivete that Mr. van Soop already found delightful: "Wouldn't the COMBINATION be awful, though! Sammy van Soop!"
"If you'll consider it, I'll endeavor to make it the only sorrow you have to endure," said Mr. van Soop; and the ensuing laughter brought them the attention of the whole table.
"No danger!" said Sammy, gayly. "I'm going home in December, you know, to be married!"
Every one heard it. Mary winced. Mrs. Bond flushed. Tom said a word that gave his pretty partner a right to an explanation. But Sammy was apparently cheerful.
Only apparently, however. For that night, when she found herself in her luxurious room again, she took Anthony's picture from the bureau and studied it gravely under the lights.
"I said that right out," she said aloud, "and I'll KEEP ON saying it. Then, when the time comes to go, I simply CAN'T back out!"
She put the picture back, and sat down at her dressing-table and stared at her own reflection. Her hair was filleted with silver and tiny roses; her gown was of exquisite transparent embroidery, and more tiny roses rumpled the deep lace collar. But even less familiar than this finery were the cheeks that blazed with so many remembered compliments, the scarlet lips that had learned to smile so readily, the eyes brilliant with new dreams.
"I feel as if sorrow—SORROW," said little Sammy, shivering, "were just about two feet behind me, and as if—if it ever catches up—I'll be the most unhappy girl in the world!"
And she gave herself a little shake and put a firm little finger-tip on Gabrielle's bell.
"Sammy," said Mr. van Soop, one dull gray afternoon some weeks later, "I've brought you out for a special purpose to-day."
"Tea?" said Sammy, contentedly.
"Tea, gluttonous one," he admitted, turning his big car into the park. "But, seriously, I want to ask you about your going away."
"I don't know that there's anything to say about it," said Sammy, carelessly. "I've had a wonderful time, and every one's been charming. And now I've got to go back."
"Sammy, I've no right to ask you a favor, but I've a REASON," Piet began. He halted. Both were crimson.
"Yes, yes; I know, Piet," said Sammy, fluttered.
The car slackened, stopped. Their faces were not two feet apart.
"Well! Will you let me BEG you—for your aunt, and sister, and for—well, for me, and for your own sake, Sammy—will you let me BEG you just to wait? Here, or there, or anywhere else—will you just WAIT a while?"
Sammy was silent a moment. Then—
"For what reason?" she said.
"Because you may save yourself lifelong unhappiness."
Sammy pondered, her lashes dropped, her hands clasped in her muff.
"Piet," she said gravely, "it's not as bad as that. No—I'll not be unhappy. I love Wheatfield, and horses, and the old house, and—" she hesitated, adding more brightly: "and you can MAKE happiness, you know! Just because it's spring, or it's Thanksgiving, or you've got a good book! Please go on," she urged suddenly. "We're very conspicuous here."
They moved slowly along under the bare trees. A sullen sunset colored the western sky. The drive was filled with motor-cars, and groups of riders galloped on the muddy bridle-path. It was just dusk. Suddenly, as the lamplighters went their rounds, all the park bloomed with milky disks of light.
"You see," Sammy went on presently, "I've thought this all out. Anthony's a good man, and he loves me, and I—well, I've promised. What RIGHT have I to say calmly that I've changed my mind, and to hurt him and make him ridiculous before all the people he loves? He knows I'll have money some day—no, Piet, you needn't look so! That has nothing to do with it! But, of course, he KNOWS it; and I said we would have a motor,—he's wild for one!—and entertain, don't you know, and that's what he's waiting for and counting on. He doesn't DESERVE to be shamed and humiliated. And, besides, it would break his mother's heart. She's been awfully sweet to me. And it must be a BITTER thing to be told that you're not good enough for the woman you love. Anthony saved my life, you know, and I can't break my word. I said: 'On my oath, I'll come back.' And just because there IS a difference between him—and us," she hesitated, "he's all the prouder and more sensitive. And it's only a difference in surface things!" finished Sammy, loyally.
Piet was silent.
"Why, Tom keeps telling me that mother was a Cabot, and grandfather a judge, and talking Winthrop Colony and Copleys and Gilbert Stuarts to me!" the girl burst out presently. "As if that wasn't the very REASON for my being honorable! That's what blood's for!"
Still Piet was silent, his kind, ugly face set and dark.
"And then, you know," said Sammy, with sudden brightness, "when I get back, and see the dear old place again, and get a good big breath of AIR,—which we don't have here!—why, it'll all straighten out and seem right again. My hope is," she added, turning her honest eyes to the gloomy ones so near her, "my hope is that Anthony will be willing to wait a while—"
"What makes you think he is likely to?" said Piet, dryly.
There was a silence. Then he added:
"When do you go?"
"The—the twenty-sixth, I believe. I've got aunty's consent—I go with the Archibalds to San Francisco."
"And this is—?"
"The twentieth."
For some time after that they wove their way along the sweeping Parkroads without speaking, and when they did begin to talk to one another again, the subject was a different one and Mr. van Soop was more cheerful. The tea hour was a fairly merry one. But when he left Sammy, an hour later, at her aunt's door, he took off his big glove, and grew a little white, and held out his hand to her and said:
"I won't see you again, Sammy. I've been thinking it over. You're right; it's all my own fault. I was very wrong to attempt to persuade you. But I won't see you again. Good-by."
"Why—!" began Sammy, in astonishment; then she looked down and stammered, "Oh—," and finally she put her little hand in his and said simply:
"Good-by."
Therefore it was a surprise to Mr. van Soop to find himself entering Mrs. Bond's library just twenty-four hours later, and grasping the hands of the slender young woman who rose from a chair by the fire.
"Sammy! You sent for me?"
Sammy looked very young in a little velvet gown with a skirt short enough to show the big bows on her slippers. Her eyes had a childishly bewildered expression.
"I wanted you," she said simply. "I—I've had a letter from Anthony. It came only an hour ago. I don't know whether to be sorry or glad. Read it! Read it!"
She sat on a little, low stool by the fire, and Piet flattened the many loose pages of the letter on his knee and read.
Anthony had written on the glazed, ruled single sheets of the "Metropolitan Star Hotel"—had covered some twenty of them with his loose, dashing hand-writing.
MY DEAR SAMMY [wrote Anthony, with admirable directness]: The boys wanted me to sit in a little game to-night, but the truth is I have been wanting for a long time to speak to you of a certain matter, and to-night seems a good chance to get it off my chest. A man feels pretty rotten writing a letter like this, but I've thought it over for more than a month now, and I feel that no matter how badly you and I both feel, the thing to do is not to let things go too far before we think the thing pretty thoroughly over and make sure that things—
"What the deuce is he getting at?" said Piet, breaking off suddenly.
"Go on!" said Sammy, bright color in her cheeks.
—make sure that things are best for the happiness of all parties [resumed Piet]. You see, Sammy [the letter ran on], as far as I am concerned, I never would have said a word, but I have been talking things over with a party whose name I will tell you in a minute, and they feel as if it would be better to write before you come on. I mean Miss Alma Fay. You don't know her. She is Lucy Barbee's cousin. Lucy and I had a great case years ago, and she and Tom asked me up to their house a few weeks ago, and Alma was staying with Lucy. Well, I took her to the Hallowe'en dance, and it was a keen dance, the swellest we ever had at the hall. Some of us rowed the girls on the river between the dances; we had a keen time. Well, after that I took her riding once or twice. She rides the best of any girl I ever saw; her father has the finest horses in East Wood—I guess he counts for quite a lot up there, he has the biggest department store and runs his own motor. Well, Sammy, I never would of written one word of this to you, but when Alma came to go away we both realized how it was. You know I have often had cases, as the boys call them, and a girl I was engaged to in Petrie told me once she hoped some day I'd get MINE. Well, she would be pleased if she knew that I HAVE. I have not slept since—
"Sammy!" said Piet, suddenly stopping.
"Go on!" said she, again.
But Piet couldn't go on. He glanced at the next page, read, "Now, Sammy, it is up to you to decide," skipped another page or two and read, "Neither Alma nor I would ever be happy if—" glanced at a third; then the leaves fluttered in wild confusion to the floor, and, with something between a sob and a shout, he caught Sammy in his arms.
"My darling," said Piet, an hour later, "if I release your right hand for ten minutes, do you think you could write a line to Mr. Anthony Gayley? I would like to mail it when I go home to dress."
"I was thinking I might wire—" said Sammy, dreamily.
Sometimes Ferdie's jokes were successful; sometimes they were not. This was one of the jokes that didn't succeed; but as it led to a chain of circumstances that proved eminently satisfactory, Ferdie's wife praised him as highly for his share in it as if he really had done something rather meritorious.
At the time it occurred, however, nobody praised anybody, and feeling even ran pretty high for a time between Ferdie and Elsie, his wife, and her sister Sally, and Dr. Bates.
Dr. Samuel Bates was a rising young surgeon, plain, quiet, and kindly. He was spending a few busy months in California, and writing dutifully home to friends and patients in Boston that he really could not free his hands to return just yet. But Sally knew what that meant; she had known business to keep people in her neighborhood before. So she was studiously unkind to the doctor, excusing herself to Elsie on the ground that nothing on earth would ever make her consider a man with fuzzy red hair and low collars.
Sally was a "daughter" and a "dame"; the doctor was the son of "Bates's Blue-Ribbon Hair Renewer"—awful facts against which the additional fact that he was rich and she was not, counted nothing. Sally talked all the time; the doctor was the most silent of men. Sally was twenty-two, the doctor thirty-five. Sally loved to flirt; the doctor never paid any attention to women. Altogether, it was the most impossible thing ever heard of, and Elsie might just as well stop thinking about it!
"It's a wonderful proof of what he feels," said Elsie, "to have him so gentle when you are rude to him, and so eager to be friends when you get over it!"
"It's a wonderful example of hair-tonic spirit!" Sally responded.
"There's a good deal behind that quiet manner," argued Elsie.
"But NOT the three generations that make a gentleman!" finished Sally.
Sally was out calling one hot Saturday afternoon when Ferdie, as was his habit, brought Dr. Bates home with him to the Ferdies' little awninged and shingled summer home in Sausalito. Elsie, with an armful of delightfully pink and white baby, led them to the cool side porch, and ordered cool things to drink. Sally, she said, as they sank into the deep chairs, would be home directly and join them.
Presently, surely enough, some one ran up the front steps and came into the wide hall, and Sally's voice called a blithe "Hello!" There was a little rattle to show that her parasol was flung down, and then the voice again, this time unmistakably impeded by hat-pins.
"Where's this fam-i-ly? Did the gentlemen come?"
This gave an opening for the sort of thing Ferdie thought he did very well. He grinned at his guest, and raised a warning finger.
"Hello, Sally!" he called back. "Elsie and I are out here! Bates couldn't come—operation last minute!"
"What—didn't come?" Sally called back after an instant's pause. "Well, what has happened to HIM? But, thank goodness, now I can go to the Bevis dinner to-morrow! Operation? I must say it's mannerly to send a message the last minute like that!" She hummed a second, and then added spitefully: "What can you expect of hair-tonic, anyway?" The frozen group on the porch heard her start slowly upstairs. "Well, I might be willing to marry him," added Sally, cheerfully, as she mounted, "but it's a real relief to snatch this glorious afternoon from the burning! Down in a second—keep me some tea!"
Nobody moved on the porch. The doctor's face was crimson, Elsie's kind eyes wide with horror. Sally called a final reflection from the first landing:
"Too bad not to have him see me looking so beautiful!" she sang frivolously. "Operation—h'm! An important operation—I don't believe it!"
She proceeded calmly to her room, and was buttoning herself into a trim linen gown when Elsie burst in, flushed and furious, cast the baby dramatically upon the bed, and hysterically recounted the effects of her recent remarks. Sally, at first making a transparent effort to seem amused, and following it with an equally vain attempt at being dignified, finally became very angry herself.
"When Ferdie does things like this," said Sally, heatedly, "I declare I wonder—I was going to say I wonder he has a friend left in the world! As you say, it's done now, but it makes me so FURIOUS! And I don't think it shows very much savior faire on your part, Elsie. However, we won't discuss it! Ferdie will try one joke too many, one of these days, and then—Now, look here, Elsie," Sally interrupted her tirade to state with deadly deliberation, "unless that man goes home before dinner, as a man of any spirit would do, I'm going over to Mary Bevis's, and you can make whatever apologies you like!"
"Of course he won't go," said Elsie, with spirit. "The only thing to do is to ignore it entirely. And of course you'll come down."
Sally had resumed her ruffled calling costume, and was now pinning on an effective hat. Her mouth was set.
"Please!" pleaded her sister, inserting a gold bracelet tenderly between George's little jaws, without moving her eyes from Sally.
"I will not!" said Sally. "I never want to see him again—superior, big, calm codfish—too lofty to care what any one says about him! I don't like a man you can walk on, anyway!" She began to pack things in a suit-case—beribboned night-wear, slippers, powder, and small jars. Presently, hasping these things firmly in, she went to the door, and opened it a cautious crack.
"Where are they?" she asked.
"I don't know," said Mrs. Ferdie, dispiritedly. "I think you're very mean!"
The bedrooms of the Ferdies' house opened in charming Southern fashion upon open balconies, over whose slender rails one could look straight into the hall below. Sally listened intently.
"What a horrible plan this house is built upon!" she said heartily. "Nothing in the world is more humiliating than to have to sneak about one's own house like a thief, afraid of being seen! Where's the motor—at the side door? Good. I'll run it over to the Bevises' myself, and Billy can come back with it. That is, I will if I can manage to get to the side door. Those idiots of men are apparently looking at Ferd's rods and tackle, right down there in the hall! I can distinctly hear their voices! I wish Ferd had thought of situations like this when he planned this silly balcony business! The minute I open this door they'll look up; and I'll stay up here a week rather than meet them!"
"They'll go out soon," said Elsie, soothingly, as she removed a shoe-horn from contact with George's mouth.
"I knew Ferd would regret this balcony!" pursued Sally, eyes to the crack.
"Ferdie's not regretting it!" tittered her sister.
Sally cast her a withering glance. Elsie devoted herself suddenly to George.
"Go down and lure them into the garden," pleaded Sally, presently.
Elsie obligingly picked up her son and departed, but Sally, watching her go, was infuriated to notice that a mild request from George's nurse, who met them in the hall, apparently drove all thoughts of Sally's predicament from the little mother's mind, for Elsie went briskly toward the nursery, and an absolute silence ensued.
Sally went listlessly to the window, where her eye was immediately caught by a long pruning ladder, leaning against the house a dozen feet away. Alma, the little waitress, quietly mixing a mayonnaise on the kitchen porch, was pressed into service, and five minutes later Sally's suit-case was cautiously lowered, on the end of a Mexican lariat, and Sally was steadying the top of the ladder against her window-sill. Alma was convulsed with innocent mirth, but her big, hard hands were effective in steadying the lower end of the ladder.
Sally, who was desperately afraid of ladders, packed her thin skirts tightly about her, gave a fearful glance below, and began a nervous descent. At every alternate rung she paused, unwound her skirts, shut her eyes, and breathed hard.
"PLEASE don't shake it so!" she said.
"Aye dadden't!" said Alma, merrily.
The ladder slipped an inch, settling a little lower. Sally uttered a smothered scream. She dared not move her eyes from the rung immediately in front of them. Her face was flushed, her hair had slipped back from her damp temples. It seemed to her as if she must already have climbed down several times the length of the ladder. At every step she had to kick her skirts free.
"Permit me!" said a kind voice in the world of reeling brick walks and dwarfed gooseberry bushes below her.
Sally, with a thump at her heart, looked down to see Dr. Bates lay a firm hand upon the rocking ladder.
Speechless, she finished the descent, reeling a little unsteadily against the doctor's shoulder as she faced about on the walk. Her face was crimson. To climb down a ladder, with him looking pleasantly up from below, and then to fall into his very arms! Sally shook out her skirts like a furious hen, and walked, with one chilly inclination of the head for acknowledgment of his courtesy, toward the waiting motor.
"Ferdie has promised Bill Bevis that you will spin me over in the motor," said the doctor, a little timidly, when they reached it.
Sally eyed him stonily.
"Ferd—"
"Why, I had promised Bevis that I would look in to-day," pursued the doctor, uncomfortably; "and when they telephoned about it, a few minutes ago, one of the maids said that she believed that you were going right over, and would bring me."
"I have changed my mind," said Sally. "Perhaps you will drive yourself over?"
"I don't know anything about motors," apologized the doctor, gravely.
"Ferd told one of the maids to say I would?" Sally said pleasantly. "Very well. Will you get in?"
They got in, Sally driving. They swept in silence past the lawns, and into the wide, white highway. A watering-cart had just passed, and the air was fresh and wet. The afternoon was one of exquisite beauty. The steamer from San Francisco was just in, and the road was filled with other motor-cars and smart traps. Sally and the doctor nodded and waved to a score of friends.
"I am as sorry as you are," said the doctor, awkwardly, after the silence had grown very long.
"Don't mention it," said Sally, her face flaming again. "That's my brother's idea of humor. I—I shall stay at the Bevises' overnight."
"I—why, I said I would do that!" said Dr. Bates, hastily. "I just called in to the maid, when she telephoned Bevis, and said, 'Ask him if he can put me up overnight.' You see, I've got my things."
"Well, then, I won't," said Sally. Her tone was cold, but a side glance at his serious face melted her a little. "This is ALL Ferdie!" she burst out angrily.
"Too bad to make it so important," said the doctor, regretfully.
"I don't see why you should stay at the Bevises'," said the girl, fretfully. "It looks very odd—when you had come to us. I—I am going to Glen Ellen early to-morrow, anyway. I would hate to have the Bevises suspect—"
"Then I will go back with you," agreed the doctor, pleasantly.
Sally frowned. She opened her lips, but shut them without speaking. She had turned the car into a wide gateway, and a moment later they stopped at a piazza full of young people. The noisy, joyous Bevis girls and boys swarmed rapturously about them.
After an hour of laughter and shouting, Sally and the doctor rose to go, accompanied to the motor by all the young people.
"Ah, you just got in, doctor?" said gentle Mrs. Bevis, with a glance at the suit-cases.
Sally flushed, but the doctor serenely let the misunderstanding go. There was no good reason to give for the presence of two cases in the car.
"You look quite like an elopement!" said Page Bevis with a joyous shout.
"Put one of the cases in front, Bates, and rest your feet on it," suggested the older boy, Kenneth.
As he spoke, he caught up Sally's case, and gave it a mighty swing from the tonneau to the front seat. In mid-flight, the suit-case opened. Jars and powders, slippers and beribboned apparel scattered in every direction. Small silver articles, undeniably feminine in nature, lay on the grass; a spangled scarf which they had all admired on Sally's slender shoulders had to be tenderly extricated from the brake.
With shrieks of laughter, the Bevis family righted the case and repacked it. Sally was frozen with anger.
"Mother SAID she knew you two would run off and get married quietly some day!" said pretty, audacious Mary Bevis.
"Dearie!" protested her mother. "I only said—I only thought—I said I thought—Mary, that's very naughty of you! Sally, you know how innocently one surmises an engagement, or guesses at things!"
"Oh, mother, you're getting in deeper and deeper!" said her older son. "Never you mind, Sally! You can elope if you want to!"
"San Rafael's the place to go, Sally," said Mary. "All the elopers get married there. The court-house, you know. No delays about licenses!"
"They're very naughty," said their mother, beginning to see how unwelcome this joking was to the visitors. "Are you going straight home, dear?"
"Straight home!" said the doctor.
"Well, speaking of San Rafael," pursued the matron, kindly—"can't you two and Elsie and Ferd go with us all to-night, say about an hour from now, up to Pastori's and have dinner?"
"Oh, thanks!" said Sally, trying to smile naturally. "I'm afraid not to-night. I've got a headache, and I'm going home to turn in."
Amid cheerful good-bys, she wheeled the car, and drove it along rapidly, pursuing thoughts of the Bevis boys hardly short of murderous. The doctor was silent; but Sally, glancing at him, saw his quiet smile change to an apologetic look, and hated both the smile and the apology.
They went more slowly on the steep road from the water front to the hillside. The level light of the sinking sun shone brilliantly on daisies and nasturtiums at the roadside. Boats, riding at anchor, dipped in the wash of another incoming steamer. Dr. Bates hummed; but Sally frowned, and he was immediately hushed.
"Boy looking for you?" he said presently, as a small and dusty boy rose from a boulder at one side of the road and shouted something unintelligible.
"Why, I guess he is for me!" said Sally, in the first natural tone she had used that afternoon.
But the boy, upon being interrogated, said that the telegram was for "the doc that was visiting up to Miss Sally's house."
Dr. Bates read the little message several times, and absently dismissed the messenger with a coin, which Sally thought outrageously large, and a muttered worried word or two.
"Bad news?" she asked.
"In a way," he said quickly. "When's the next train for San Rafael, Miss Sally? I've got to be there to-night—right away! Do we have to stand here? Thank you. There's a case Field and I have been watching; he says that there's got to be an operation at eight—" His voice trailed off into troubled silence, and he drew out his watch. "Eight!" he muttered. "It's on seven now!"
"Oh, and you have to operate—horrible for you!" said Sally, taking the car skilfully toward the railroad station as she spoke. "But I don't see how you CAN! You've missed the six-thirty train, and there's not another until after nine. But you can wire Dr. Field that you will be there the first thing in the morning."
The doctor paid no attention.
"The livery stable is closed, I suppose?" he asked.
"Oh, long ago!"
He ruminated frowningly. Suddenly his face cleared.
"Funny how one thinks of the right solution last!" he said in relief. "How long would it take you to run me up there? Forty minutes?"
"I don't see how I could," said Sally, flushing. "I can take the car home, though, and ask Ferd to do it. But that woman's at the hotel, isn't she? I couldn't go up there and sit outside, with every one I knew coming out and wondering why I brought you instead of Ferd! Elsie wouldn't like it. You must see—"
"It would take us fifteen minutes at least to go up and get Ferd," objected the doctor, seriously; "and he's not much better than I am at running it, anyway!"
"Well, I'm sorry," said Sally, shortly, "but I simply couldn't do it. Dr. Field should have given you more notice. It would look simply absurd for me to go tearing over these country roads at night—Elsie would go mad wondering where I was—"
They were in the village now. Troubled and stubborn, Sally stopped the car, and looked mutinously at her companion. The doctor's rosy face was flushed under his flaming hair, and in his very blue eyes was a look that struck her with an almost panicky sensation of surprise. Sally had never seen any man regard her with an expression of distaste before, but the doctor's look was actually inimical.
"I feared that you would be the sort of woman to fail one utterly, like this," he said quietly. "I've often wondered—I've often said to myself, 'COULD she ever, under any circumstances, throw off that pretty baby way of hers, and forget that this world was made just for flirting and dressing and being admired?' By George, I see you can't! I see you can't! Well! Now, whom can I get to take me up there within the hour?"
He appeared to ponder. Sally sat as if stupefied.
"Don't resent what I say when I'm upset," said the doctor, absently. "You can't help your limitations, I can't help mine. I see a young woman—she's just lost a little boy, and she's all her husband has left—I see her dying because we're too late. You see a few empty-headed women saying that Sally Reade actually went driving alone, without her dinner, for three hours, with a man she hardly knew. I am not blaming you. You have never pretended to be anything but what you are. I blame myself for hoping—thinking—but, by George, you'd be an utter dead weight on a man if it was ever up to you to face an epidemic, or run a risk, or do one-twentieth of the things that those very ancestors of yours, that you're so proud of, used to do!"
Sally set her teeth. She leaned from the car to summon a small girl loitering on the road.
"You're one of the White children, aren't you?" said she to the child. "I want you to go up to Mrs. Ferdie Potter's house, and tell Mrs. Potter that her sister won't be home for several hours, and that I'll explain later. Now," said Sally, turning superbly to the doctor, "pull your hat down tight. We're going FAST!"
They were three miles farther on their way before he saw that her little chin was quivering, and great tears were running down her small face. Time was precious, but for a few memorable moments they stopped the car again.
Miss Sally and Dr. Bates returned to the sleepy and excited Ferdies' at one o'clock that night. The light that never was on land or sea glittered in Sally's wonderful eyes; the doctor was white, shaken, and radiant. Sally flew to her sister's arms.
"We waited to see—and she came out of it—and she has a fair fighting chance!" said Sally, joyously; and the look she gave her doctor made Elsie's heart rise with a bound.
"Runaways," said Elsie, "come in and eat! I never knew a serious operation to have such a cheering effect on any one before!"
"It all went so well," said Sally, contentedly, over chicken and ginger ale. "But, Elsie! Such fun!" she burst out, her dimples suddenly again in view. "I am disgraced forever! After we had done everything to make the Bevis crowd think we were eloping, what did we do but run into the whole crowd at San Anselmo! I wish you could have seen their faces! We had said we couldn't possibly go; and we were going too fast to stop and explain!"
"We'll explain to-morrow," said the doctor, so significantly that Ferdie rose instantly to grasp his hand, and Elsie fell again upon Sally as if she had never kissed her before.
"Not—not really!" gasped Elsie, turning radiantly from one to the other.
"Oh, really!" said Sally, with her prettiest color. "He despises me, but he will take the case, anyway! And he has done nothing but mortify and enrage me all day, but I feel that I should miss it if it stopped! So we are going to sacrifice our lives to each other—isn't it edifying and beautiful of us? We'll tell you all about it to-morrow. Jam—Sam?"