George Keets and the May Girl came in from their walk just before supper. Judging from their personal appearances it had at least been a long walk if not a serene one. George Keets indeed seemed quite unnecessarily intent in the vestibule on taking the May Girl to task for what he evidently considered her somewhat careless method of storing away her afternoon's accumulation of pebble and shell. Every accent of his voice, every carefully enunciated syllable reminded me only too absurdly of what the May Girl had confided to me about "boys always trying to make her feel small." He was urging her now, I inferred, to stop and sort out her specimens according to some careful cotton-batting plan which he suggested.
"Whatever is worth doing at all, you know, Miss Davies," he said, "is worth doing well."
The May Girl's voice sounded very tired, not irritable, but very tired.
"Oh, if there's anything in the world that I hate," I heard her cry out, "it's that proverb! What people really mean by it," she protested, "is, 'Whatever's worth doing at all is worth doingSwell.' And it isn't either! I tell you I like simple things best! All I ever want to do with my shells tonight is just to chuck 'em behind the door!"
Truly if Claude Kennilworth hadn't turned up for supper all in white flannels and looking like a young god, I don't know just what I should have done. Everybody seemed either so tired or so distrait.
The tide would be low at ten o'clock. It was eight when we sat down to supper.
Ann Woltor I'm sure never took her eyes from the clock.
But to be perfectly frank everybody else at the table except the May Girl seemed to be diverting such attention as he or she retained to the personal appearance of Claude Kennilworth. Truly it wasn't right that anyone who had been so hateful all day long should be able to look so perfectly glorious in the evening.
"Where did you get the suit?" said Rollins. "Is it your own?"
"And the permanent wave?" questioned the Bride. "I think you and the ocean must patronize the same hair dresser."
"Dark men always do look so fine in white flannels," whispered Ann Woltor to my Husband.
"Personally," beamed Paul Brenswick, "you look to me like a person who had imported his own Turkish bath."
"Turkish?" scoffed George Keets. "Nobody works up a shine like that by being washed only in one language! Russian, too, it must be! Flemish——"
"Flemish are rabbits," observed the May Girl gravely. But even with this observation she did not lift her eyes from her plate. Whether she was consciously and determmingly ignoring Claude Kennilworth's only too palpable efforts to impress her with the fact that now at last he was ready to forgive her and subjugate her, or whether she really hadn't noticed him, I couldn't quite make out. And then quite suddenly at the end of her first course she put down her knife and fork and folded her hands in her lap. "Where is Allan John?" she demanded.
"Why, yes, that's so! Where is Allan John!" questioned everybody all at once.
"Some walk he's taking," reflected Paul Brenswick.
"Not too long I hope," worried my Husband very faintly.
"Hang it all, I do like that lad," acknowledged George Keets.
"Who wouldn't?" said Young Kennilworth.
"Yes, but why?" demanded Keets.
"It's his eyes," said the Bride.
"Eyes nothing!" scoffed young Kennilworth. "It's the way he came out of his fuss without fussing! To make a fool of yourself but never a fuss—that's my idea of a fellow being a good sport!"
"It was his tragedy that I was thinking of," said George Keets very quietly.
"Yes, where in the world," questioned my Husband with quite unwonted emotion, "would you have found another chap in the same harrowing circumstances, even among your own friends, I mean, a chum, a pal, who could have dropped in here the way he has, without putting a damper on everything? Not intentionally, of course, but just in the inevitable human nature of things. But I don't get the slightest sense somehow of Allan John being a damper!"
"'Damper?'" said the Bride. "Why he's like a sick man basking in the sun. Hasn't a word to say himself, not a single prance in his own feet. But I'd as soon think of shutting out the sun from a sick man as shutting out a laugh from Allan John. Why, Allan John needs us!" attested the Bride, "and Allan John knows that he needs us!"
With a sideways glance at the vacant chair George Keets's thin lips parted into a really sweet smile.
"Where in creation is the boy!" he insisted. "Frankly I think we rather need him."
"All of which being the case," conceded my Husband, "it behooves me even once more, I should say, to tell Allan John that the next time he speaks about moving on I shall hide his clothes. Certainly I haven't trusted him yet with even a quarter. He's so extraordinarily fussy about thinking that he ought to clear out."
It was just at that moment that the telephone rang. I decided to answer it myself, for some reason, from the instrument upstairs in my own room, rather than from the library. A minute's delay, and I held the transmitter to my lips.
"Yes," I called.
"Is this Mrs. Jack Delville?" queried the voice.
"Yes. Who's speaking?"
"It's Allan John," said the voice.
"Why, Allan John!" I laughed. "Of course it would be you! We were just speaking about you, and that's always the funny way that things happen. But wherever in the world are you? We'd begun to worry a bit!"
"I'm in town," said Allan John.
"In town," I cried. "Town! How did you get there?"
In Allan John's voice suddenly it was as though tone itself was fashion. "That's what I want to tell you," said Allan John. "I've done a horrid thing, a regular kid college-boy sort of thing. I've taken something from your house, that silver salt cellar you know that I forgot to give back, and left it with a man in the village as security for the price of a railroad ticket to town, and a telegram to my brother and this phone message. I didn't have a cent you know. But the instant I hear from my brother——"
"Why, you silly!" I cried. "Why didn't you speak to my Husband?"
"Oh, your Husband," said Allan John, just a bit drily, "would have given me the whole house. But he wouldn't let me leave it! And it was quite time I was leaving," the voice quickened sharply. "I had to leave some time you know. And all of a sudden I—I had to leave at once! Rollins, you know! His break about the little girl. After young Kennilworth's cubbishness I simply couldn't put another slight on that lovely little girl. But—" His voice was all gray and again spent, like ashes. "But I just couldn't play," he said. "Not that!"
"Why of course you couldn't play," I cried. "Nobody expected you to! Rollins is a—a horror!"
"Oh, Rollins is all right enough," said Allan John. "It's life that is the horror."
"Yes, but Allan John—!" I parried.
"You people have been angels to me," he interrupted me sharply. "I shall never forget it. Nor the lovely little girl. I'm going back to Montana to see how my ranch looks. I can't talk now. Not to anybody. For God's sake don't call anybody. But if I get straightened out again, ever, you'll hear from me. And if I don't——"
"But, Allan John," I protested. "Everybody will be desolated, your going off like this! Why, you're not even equipped in the simplest way! Not a single bit of baggage! Not a personal possession!"
Across the buzzing wires it seemed suddenly as though I could actually hear Allan John making one last really desperate effort to smile.
"I've got my little silver whistle," said Allan John. As though in confirmation of the fact he lifted the silver bauble to his lips and blew a single flutey note across the sixty miles.
"Goodbye!" he said.
Before I had fairly dropped the receiver back into its place, the May Girl was at my elbow. Her lovely childish eyes were strangely alert, her radiant head cocked ever so slightly to one side as though she held a shell to her listening ear. But there was no shell in her hand.
"What was that?" cried the May Girl. "I thought I heard Allan John's whistle!"
WERE you ever in a theatre, right in the middle of a play, on the very verge of an act that you were really quite curious about, and just as the curtain started to go up it was suddenly yanked down again instead, and a woman behind the scenes screamed—oh, horridly, and a man came rushing out in front of the curtain waving his arms and trying to tell everybody something, but everybody all of a sudden was so busy screaming for himself that even God, I think, couldn't have made you hear just what the trouble was?
It isn't a pleasant thing to have happen.
But that is almost exactly what happened to ourRainy Weekplay on this the fourth night of events just as I was waiting for the curtain to rise on the most carefully staged scene which we had prepared, the scene designated as "The Bungalow on the Rocks."
And the woman who screamed was the May Girl. And the man who came rushing back to try and explain was Rollins. And the May Girl it proved was screaming because she was drowning! And if it hadn't been for the silly little Pom dog that Claude Kennilworth had been silly enough to bring way from New York "for a week's outing at the sea shore" just to please the extraordinarily silly girl who occupied the studio next to his, the May Girl would have drowned! It makes one feel almost afraid to move, somehow, or even not to move, for that matter, afraid to be silly indeed, or even not to be silly, lest it foil or foul in some bungling way the plot of life which the Biggest Dramatist of All had really intended.
It was Ann Woltor who gave the only adequate explanation.
Everybody had at least pretended that night the unalterable intention of going to bed early.
Claude Kennilworth of course having absented himself from the breakfast table didn't know anything about the bungalow discussion. But pique alone at the May Girl's persistent yet totally unexcited rebuff of his patronage had retired him earlier than anyone to the seclusion of his own room. And Rollins's unhappy propensity of always and forever butting into other people's plans had been most efficiently thwarted, as far as we could see, by dragging him upstairs and slamming his nose into a brand new and very profusely illustrated tome on the subject of "The Violet Snail."
By half past ten, Ann Woltor confessed she had found the whole lower part of the house apparently deserted.
For the same reason, best known even yet only to herself, she was still very anxious it appeared to get to the bungalow before any of her house-companions should have forestalled her. The trip, I judged, had not proved unduly hard. By the aid of a pocket flashlight she had made the descent of the cliff without accident, and after a single confusion where a blind trail ended in the water discovered the jagged path that twisted along the ledge to the very door of the bungalow. Once in the bungalow she had dallied only long enough to search out by the aid of the flashlight the particular object or objects which she had come for. Startled by a little sound, the sound of a man humming a little French tune that she hadn't heard for fifteen years, she had grabbed up her treasure, whatever it was, and bolted precipitously for the house, not knowing she had sprung the trap of our concealed phonograph when she opened the door. Even once back in the safe precincts of the house, however, she was further startled and completely upset by running into the May Girl.
The May Girl was on the stairs, it seemed, just coming down. And she didn't look "quite right," Ann Woltor admitted. That is, she looked almost as though she was walking in her sleep, or a bit dazed, a bit bewildered, and certainly, dressed as she was, just a filmy night-gown with her warm blanket wrapper merely lashed across her shoulders by its sleeves, her pretty feet bare, her gauzy hair floating like an aura all around her, it certainly wasn't to be supposed that she was just starting off on a prankish endeavor to solve the bungalow mystery. Even her eyes looked unreal to Ann Woltor. Even her voice, when she spoke, sounded more than a little bit queer.
"I—I thought I heard Allan John whistle" she said. "I—I promised, you know, that if he ever needed me I'd come."
Ann Woltor nearly collapsed. "Nonsense!" she explained. "Allan John is in town! Don't you remember? He telephoned while we were at supper. Mrs. Delville delivered his messages and good-byes to us."
"Why, yes, of course!" roused the May Girl, almost instantly. "How silly!—I guess I must have been asleep! And just dreamed it!"
"Why, of course, you were asleep and just dreamed it." Ann Woltor assured her. "You're asleep now! Get back to bed before you catch your death of cold! Or before anybody sees you!"
Ann Woltor, on the verge of hysterics herself, quite naturally was not at all anxious that those dazed, bewildered eyes should clear suddenly and with inevitable questioning upon her own distinctly drenched and most wind-blown and generally dishevelled appearance.
A single little shove of the shoulders had proved enough to herd the May Girl back to her bed-room while she herself had escaped undetected to her own quarters.
But the May Girl hadnotbeen satisfied, it appeared, with Ann Woltor's assurances concerning Allan John.
An hour or more later, roused once again to a still somewhat dazed but now unalterable conviction that Allan John had whistled, and fully equipped this time to combat whatever opposition or weather she might meet, she crept from the house out into the storm with the little Pom dog sniffing at her heels. Just what happened afterwards nobody knows. Just how it happened or exactly when it happened, nobody can even guess. Maybe it was the brilliantly lighted bungalow my Husband had fixed for the setting of the "Bunga low Scene" just after Ann Woltor's surreptitious visit that incited her. Maybe to a mind already stricken with feverishness the rising tide did suck through the bungalow rocks with a sound that faintly suggested a rather specially agonized sort of whistle. Who can say? The fact remains that to all intents and purposes she seemed to have ignored the ledge that even yet, in spite of its drenching spray, would have been perfectly safe for another half hour at least, and plunged forth down the blind trail, off the rocks into the water below. Resolutely she refused to cry for help. Perhaps the shock of the cold water chilled the cry in her throat. She grasped the slippery seaweed clinging to the rocks—moaning a little—crying a little—the pitiful struggle setting the Pom dog nearly crazy. How long she clung there she couldn't tell. She was mauled and bruised by the threshing waves. Still some complex inhibition prevented her crying out for help. Ages passed, her bruised arms and numb fingers refused to hold the grip on the elusive seaweed forever and she eventually let go her hold. A receding wave took her and tossed her poor exhausted body still struggling against another ledge of rock well out of reach from shore. Then, for the first time, the May Girl seemed to realize fully her peril—and she shrieked for help.
Ann Woltor, rousing sluggishly from her sleep, heard the black Pom dog barking furiously on the beach. Reluctant at first to leave her snug bed it must have been several minutes at least before sheer curiosity and irritation drove her to get up and peer from the window.
Out of that murky blackness of course not a single outline of the little dog met her sight. Just that incessant yap-yap- yap-yap of a tiny creature almost frenzied with excitement. But what really smote Ann Woltor's startled vision, and for the first time, was the flare of lights, which made the bungalow seem as if ablaze. And as she stared aghast into that flare of light which seemed to point so accusingly at her across the intervening waters, she either sensed or saw the May Girl's unmistakable head and shoulders banging into the single craggy rock that still jutted up from the depths saw an arm reach out heard that one blood-curdling scream!
Rollins must have thought she was mad! Dragging him from his bed, with her arms around his neck, her lips crushed to his ear,—even then she could hardly articulate or make a sound louder than a whisper.
Rollins fortunately did not lose his voice. Rollins bellowed. Rushing out into the hall just as he was, pajamas, nightcap and all, Rollins lifted his voice like a baying hound.
In a moment all hands were on deck. My Husband rushed for the dory—George Keets with him, Paul Brenswick, Kennilworth, Rollins!
The women huddled on the beach.
"Hold on! Hold on!" we shouted into space. "Just a minute more!—Just one minute more!"
We might just as well have shouted into a saw-dust pile.—The wind took the words and rammed them down our throats again till we sickened and choked!
Young Kennilworth came running. He was still in his white flannels. He looked like a ghost.
"There's been some hitch about the oars!" he cried. "Is she still there?"
In the flare of our lantern light I turned suddenly and stared at him. He looked so queer. In a moment so awful, it seemed almost incredible that any human face could have summoned so much EGO into it. From those gay, pleasure- roaming feet, it must have come hurtling suddenly—that expression! From those facile self-assured finger tips that were already coaxing the secrets of line and form from the Creator!—From that lusty, hot-blooded young heart that was even now accumulating its "Pasts!"—From the arrogant, brilliant young brain that knew only too well that it had a "FUTURE!"—And even as I watched, young Kennilworth stripped the white flannels from his body. And the pleasure. And the triumph. And all the little pasts. And all the one big future. And he who had come so presumptuously to us to make an infinitesimal bronze replica of the sea—went forth very humbly from us to make a man-sized model of sacrifice.
For an instant only as he steadied for the plunge a flash of the old mockery crossed his face.
"Of course I'm stronger than the ocean," he called back. "But if it shouldn't prove so—don't forget my Old Man's birthday!"
Ann Woltor fainted as his slim body struck the waves.
Hours passed—ages, aeons—before the dory reached them! Yet my husband says that it way only minutes. By the merciful providence of darkness we were at least spared some of the visual stages of that struggle. Minutes or aeons—there were not even seconds to spare, it proved by the time help actually arrived. Claude Kennilworth had a broken arm, but was at least conscious. The May Girl looked as though she would never be conscious again. Against the ghastly pallor of her skin the brutal bruises loomed like love's last offering of violets. The flexible finger-tips had clawed themselves to pulp and blood.
The village doctor came on the wings of the wind! We telephoned Dr. Brawne, but he was away on a business trip somewhere and could not be located! The rest of the night went by like a brand-new battle for life, but in the full glare of lamp-light this time! By breakfast-time, if one can compute hours so on a morning when nobody eats, Claude Kennilworth was almost himself again. But the May Girl's vitality failed utterly to rally. White as the linen that encompassed her she lay in that dreadful stupor among her pillows. Only once she roused herself to any attempt at speech and even then her words were almost inaudible. "Allan John," she struggled to say. "Was trying—to find him."
"Has she had any shock before this!" puzzled the Doctor. "Any recent calamity? Any special threat of impending illness?"
"She fainted day before yesterday," was all the information anybody could proffer. "She is subject to fainting spells, it seems. Last night Miss Woltor thought she looked a little bit dazed as though with a touch of fever."
"We've got to rouse her some way," said the Doctor.
"Oh, if we could only find Allan John," cried the Bride. "Allan John—and his whistle," she supplemented with almost shamefaced playfulness.
My Husband and George Keets tore off to town in the little car! They raked the streets, the hotels, the telegraph offices, the railroad station, God knows what before they found him. But they did find him. That's all that really matters!
It was ten o'clock at night before they all reached home again. Allan John asked only one question as he crossed the threshold. His forehead was puckered with perplexity.
"Is—everybody—in the world going to die?" he said.
They took him directly to the May Girl's room and put him down in a chair just opposite her bed, with the whistle in his hands. "Spring and Youth and the Pipes of Pan!" But such a sorry Pan! All the youth that was left in him seemed to have been wrung out anew by this latest horror. In the grayness of him, the hopelessness, the pain, he might have been fifty, sixty, himself, instead of the scant twenty-eight or thirty years that he doubtless was. A little bit shakily he lifted the whistle to his lips.
"Not that I put a great deal of credence in it," admitted the Doctor. "But if you say it was a sound—a signal that she had been waiting for——"
Softly Allan John fluted the silver note.
A little shiver—a struggle, passed across the figure on the bed.
"Again!" prompted the Doctor.
Once more Allan John lifted the whistle to his lips.
The May Girl opened her eyes and struggled vainly to raise herself on her elbow. When she saw Allan John a vague sort of astonishment flushed across her face and an odd apologetic little laugh slipped weakly from her lips.
"I—I came just as soon as I could, Allan John," she said, and sinking back into her pillows began quite unexpectedly to cry. It was the Doctor himself who sat by her side and wiped her tears away.
Ann Woltor shared the watches with me through the rest of the night. Allan John never left the room. Towards dawn I sent even Ann Woltor to her sleep and Allan John and I met the new day alone. By the time it was really light the May Girl, weak as she was, seemed to have recovered a certain amount of talkativeness. Recognizing thoroughly the presence and activity of both my hands and my feet, she seemed to ignore entirely the existence of either my eyes or my ears. Her puzzled wonderments were directed at Allan John alone.
"Allan John—Allan John," I heard her call softly.
"Yes," said Allan John.
"It's a lie," said the May Girl, "what people say about drowning, that as you go down you remember every little teeny weeny thing that has ever happened to you in your life! All your past, I mean! All the dreadful—wicked things that you've ever done! Oh, it's an awful lie!"
"Is it?" said Allan John.
"Yes, it certainly is;" attested the May Girl. "Why, I never even remembered the day I bit my grandmother."
"N—o," shivered Allan John.
"No, indeed!" insisted the May Girl. "The only things that I thought of were the things I had planned to do!—The—the— PLANS that were drowning with me! One of them," she flushed suddenly, "one of the plans I mean I didn't seem to care at all when I saw it go down and the plan about going to Europe some time. Oh, I don't think that suffered so terribly. But the farm. The farm I was planning to have. The cows. The horses. The dogs. The chickens. The rabbits. Why, Allan John, I counted seventeen rabbits!" Very softly to herself she began to cry again.
"S—s—h. S—s—h," cautioned Allan John. "Things that have never happened you know can't die."
"Of that," reflected the May Girl through her tears, "I am— not so perfectly sure. Is—is it going to clear up?" she asked quite irrelevantly.
"Oh, yes,surely!" rallied Allan John. He would have told her it was Christmas I think if he had really thought that that was what she wanted him to say. Very expeditiously instead he began to shine up the silver whistle with the corner of his handkerchief.
With an almost amusing solemnity the May Girl lay and watched the proceeding. Under the heavy fringe of her lashes her eyes looked very shy. Then so gently, so childishly, that even Allan John didn't wince till it was all over, she asked him the question that no other person in the world probably could have asked him at that moment, and lived.
"Allan John," she asked, "do you suppose that you will ever marry again?"
"Oh, my God, no!" gasped Allan John.
"Men—do," mused the May Girl.
"Men do," conceded Allan John. With the sweat starting on his brow he jumped up and strode to the window. From the window he turned back slowly with a curious look of perplexity on his face. "Why—do you ask—that?" he said.
"Oh, I don't know!" said the May Girl. "I was just wondering," she sighed.
"Wondering what?" said Allan John.
"Wondering," mused the May Girl, "if you would ever want to marry me."
For a moment Allan John did not seem to understand—for a moment he gazed aghast at the May Girl's impassive face. "Why—child," he stammered.
"Why Honey-Dear," I intercepted wildly.
It was the strangest wooing I ever saw or dreamed of. The wooing by a person who didn't even know she was wooing—of a person who didn't even know he was being wooed.
"Well—all right—perhaps it doesn't matter," said the May Girl. "I was only thinking how sad it would be—if Allan John ever did need me for his wife and I was already married to somebody else."
When the Doctor came at noon he reported with eminent satisfaction a decided improvement in both his patients. Claude Kennilworth, contrary to one's natural expectations, was proving himself an ideal patient despite his painful injury which he steadfastly refused to acknowledge.
Even the May Girl's more subtle and mystifying complications seemed to have cleared up most astonishingly, he felt, since his previous visit.
"Oh, she's coming out all right," he assured us. "Fresh air, plenty of range, freedom from all emotional concern or distress," were the key-notes of his advice. "She's only a baby, grown woman-sized in an all too brief eighteen years," he averred.
Words, phrases, judgments, rioted only too confusedly through my mind that was already so inordinately perplexed with the whole chaotic situation.
As I said "good-bye," and turned back from the front door, I was surprised to see both my Husband and Ann Woltor standing close beside me. The constrained expressions on their faces startled me.
"You heard what the Doctor said," I exclaimed. "You heard his exact words—'great big overgrown baby,' he said. 'Ought to be turned out to play in a sand-pile for at least two years more.' Just a baby," I protested, "And she'll be tending her own babies before the two years are over! They are planning to marry her in September you know to a man old enough to be her grandfather—almost. To Doctor Brawne," I stormed!
"To whom?" gasped Ann Woltor. Her face was suddenly livid. "To whom?"
A horrid chill went through me. "What's Doctor Brawne to you?" I asked.
"It's time you told her," interposed my Husband, quietly.
"What is Doctor Brawne to you!" I demanded.
"Doctor Brawne? Nothing!" cried Ann Woltor. "But the girl— the girl is my girl—my own little girl—my own big little girl."
"What!" I gasped. "What!" As though my knees had turned to straw I sank into the nearest chair.
With the curious exultancy of a long strain finally relaxed, I saw Ann Woltor's immobile face flame suddenly with amusement.
"Did you think I was talking just weather with your husband all that first harrowing day and evening? In the car? In the bungalow? Oh, no—not weather!" she exclaimed. "Not even just the 'May Girl,' as you call her, but—everything! Your husband discovered it that first morning in the car," she annotated hurriedly. "I dropped my watch. It had a picture in it. A picture of May taken last year. Dr. Brawne sent it to me."
"Yes, but Dr. Brawne?" I puzzled.
"Oh, I knew that May was to be married," she frowned. "And to a man a good deal older than herself. Dr. Brawne wrote me that. But what he quite neglected to mention,—" once again the frown deepened, "was that the old man was himself. I like Dr. Brawne. He is a very brilliant man. But I certainly do not approve of him as my daughter's husband. There are reasons. One need not go into them now," she acknowledged. "At least they do not specially concern his age. My daughter would hardly be happy with a boy I think. Boys do not usually like simplicity. It takes a mature man to appreciate simplicity."
"Yes, but the discovery?" I fretted. "Your own discovery?— Just when?"
"In the train of course, coming down that first night!" cried Ann Woltor. "I thought I should go mad. I thought at every station I would jump off. And then Rollins's bungling remark the next day about my tooth gave me the chance, as I supposed, to get away. Except for that awkward accident to my watch I should have gotten away. Your husband implored me for my own sake, for everyone's sake, to stop and consider. There was so much to consider. I had all my proofs with me, my letters, my papers, my marriage certificate. We went to the Bungalow. We thrashed it all out. I was still mad to get away. I had no other wish in the world except to get away! Your husband persuaded me that my duty was here—to watch my girl—to get acquainted with my girl—before I even so much as attempted meeting my other problems. I was very rattled. I left my broken watch in the bungalow! The picture was still in it! That's why I went back! I wasn't sure eyen then that I would disclose my identity even to my daughter! For that reason alone I made your husband promise that he would not betray my secret even to you. If I decided to tell all right. But I wished no such decision forced upon me!"
"Oh, Ann, Ann dear," I cried, "don't tell me any more, you've suffered enough. Just Rollins's bungling alone—the impudence of him——!"
"Rollins?—Rollins?" intercepted that pestiferous gentleman's voice suddenly. "Do I hear my name bandied by festive voices?" In another moment the Pest himself stood beside us.
My Husband is by no means a swearing man, but I distinctly heard from his unwonted lips at that moment a muttered blasphemy that would make a stevedore blush for shame.
Despite all her terrible stress and strain Ann Woltor smiled— actually smiled.
My Husband gasped. The cause of that gasp was only too evident. Once again we saw Rollins's ominous gaze fixed with unalterable intent on Ann Woltor's face. What was meant to be an ingratiating smile quickened suddenly in his eyes.
"Truly, Miss Woltor," he said, "tell me, why don't you get it fixed!"
For an instant I thought Ann Woltor would scream. For an instant I thought Ann Woltor would faint, then quicker than chain lighting, right there before our eyes we saw her make her great decision. It was as though her brain was glass and we could see its every working.
"All right," said Ann Woltor, very quietly. "All right—you— Damn fool—Iwilltell you! I will tell everybody!"
For the first time in his life I saw Rollins stagger!
But Rollins could not remain prostrate even under such a rebuff as this.
"Why—er—thank you—thank you very much," he rallied with his first returning breath. "Shall I—shall I call the others?"
"By all means, call them quickly," said Ann Woltor.
"Oh, Ann!" I protested.
"I mean it," she said. Her face was strangely quiet. "The time has come—I've made up my mind at last."
From the door of the porch we heard Rollins's piping voice.
"Mr. Brenswick! Mr. Keets! Kennilworth! Allan John!—Come on! Miss Woltor's going to tell us a story!"
With vaguely responsive interest, the people came trooping in.
"A story?" brightened the Bride. "Oh, lovely—what is it about?"
"The story of my broken tooth," said Ann Woltor, very trenchantly, "told by request—Mr. Rollins's request," she added.
With a single comprehensive glance at my tortured face—at my Husband's—at Ann Woltor's, Claude Kennilworth turned sharply on his heel and started to leave the room.
"What, don't you want to hear the story?" piped Rollins.
"No, not by a damn sight," snapped Kennilworth.
"But I want you to hear it," said Ann Woltor, still in that deadly quiet but absolutely firm voice.
George Keets's lips were drawn suddenly to a mere thin white line.
"One has no desire to intrude, Miss Woltor," he protested.
"It is no intrusion," said Aim Woltor.
For a single hesitating moment her sombre eyes swept the waiting group. Then, without further break or pause, she plunged into her narrative.
"I am the May Girl's mother," she said. "I ran away from the May Girl's father. I ran away with another man. I don't pretend to explain it. I don't pretend to condone it. This is not a discussion of ethics but a mere statement of history. All that I insist upon your understanding—is that I ran away from a legalized life of incessant fault-finding and criticism to an unlegalized life of absolute approval and love.
"I cannot even admit, after the first big wrench, of course, that I greatly regretted the little child I left behind. Mothers are always supposed to regret such things I know, but I was not perhaps a normal mother. I suffered, of course, but it was a suffering that I could stand. I could not stand, it seems, the suffering of living with my child's father.
"My husband followed us after a few months, not so much for outraged love, I think, as for vindictiveness. We met in a cafe, the three of us. My husband and my lover were both cool-blooded men. My lover was a Quaker who had never yet lifted his hand against any man. The two men started arguing. I came of a hot-blooded family. I had never seen men arguing only about a woman before. More than that I was vain. I was foolish. The biggest portrait painter of the hour had chosen me for what he considered would be his masterpiece. I taunted my lover and my husband with the fact that neither of them loved me. John Stoltor struck my husband. It was the first blow. My husband made a furious attack on him. I tried to intervene. He struck me instead, with such damage as you note. Enraged beyond all sanity at the sight, John Stoltor killed him.
"Even then, so overwrought as I was, so bewildered with my mouth all cut and bleeding, I snatched up a mirror to gauge the extent of my ruin. John Stoltor spoke to me—the only harsh words of his life.
"Your damage can be repaired in an hour," he said—"but his— mine—never!"
"It was at that moment they took him away—almost fifteen years—it has been. He did not have to pay the extreme penalty. There were extenuating circumstances the judge thought. His time expires next month. I am waiting for him. I have been waiting for fifteen years. At least he will see that I have subjugated my vanity. I swore that I would never mend my damage until I could help him mend his."
With a little gesture of fatigue she turned to Rollins. "This is the story of the broken tooth," she finished, quite abruptly.
"Wasn't Allan John even listening?" I thought. With everyone else's eyes fairly glued to Ann Woltor's arresting face, even now, at the supreme climax of her narrative, his eyes seemed focussed far away. Instinctively I followed his gaze. At the top of the stairs, her arms holding tight to the banisters for support, sat the May Girl!
In the almost breathless moment that ensued, Rollins swallowed twice only too audibly.
"All the same"—insisted Rollins hesitatingly, "all the same— I really do think that——"
With a little cry that might have meant almost anything, the Bride jumped up suddenly and threw her arms around Ann Woltor's neck.
Even at twilight time everybody was still discussing the problem of the May Girl. Certainly there was plenty of problem to discuss.
The question of an innocent young girl on the very verge of her young womanhood. The question of a practically unknown mother. The question of a shattered unrelated man coming fresh to them from fifteen years in prison. The question even of Dr. Brawne. Everybody had his or her own impractical or unsatisfactory solution to suggest. Everybody, that is, except Allan John.
Allan John as usual had nothing to say.
Upstairs, in the privacy of her own room, Ann Woltor and the May Girl, without undue emotion, were very evidently threshing out the problem for themselves.
Yet when they came down and joined us just before supper- time, it was only too evident from their tired faces that they had reached no happier conclusion than ours.
George Keets and my Husband brought the May Girl down. Claude Kennilworth, quite in his old form, save for his splinted arm, superintended the expedition.
"It's her being so beastly long," scolded Kennilworth, "that makes the job so hard!"
In the depths of the big leather chair the May Girl didn't look very long to me, but she did look astonishingly frail.
With a gesture of despair. Ann Woltor turned to her companions, as if she had read our thoughts.
"There isn't any solution," she said.
Why all of us turned just then to Allan John I don't know, but it became perfectly evident to everyone at that moment that Allan John was about to speak.
"It seems quite clear to me," said Allan John simply. "It seems quite natural to me somehow," he added, "that you should all come home with me to my ranch in Montana. The little girl needs it—the big outdoors—the animals—the life she craves. You need it," he said, turning to Ann Woltor, "the peace of it, the balm of it. But most of all John Stoltor will need it when it is time for him to come. Far from prying eyes, safe from intrusive questionings, that certainly will be the perfect chance for you all to plan out your new lives together. How much it would mean to me not to have to go back alone I need not say."
Startled at his insight, compelled by his sincerity, Ann Woltor saw order dawn suddenly out of the chaos of her emotions.
From her frankly quivering lips a single protest wavered.
"But Allan John," she cried, "you've only known us four days."
Across Allan John's haggard face flickered the faintest possible suggestion of a smile.
"I was a stranger—and you took me in."
With the weirdest possible sense of supernatural benediction, the dark room flooded suddenly with light. From the window, just beyond me, I heard my Husband's astonished exclamation:
"Look, Mary," he cried, "come quickly."
At an instant I was at his side.
Across the murky western sky the tumultuous storm-clouds had broken suddenly into silver and gold. In a blaze of glory the setting sun fairly streamed into our faces.
Struggling up from the depths of her chair to view it—even the May Girl's pallid cheeks caught up their share of the radiance.
"Oh, Allan John," she laughed, "just see what you have done— you've shined up all the world."
With a curiously significant expression on his face my Husband leaned toward me quickly.
"Ring down the curtain, quick," he whispered. "The Play's done—Rainy Weekis over."