"Are you driving?" asked Duane.
"Yes. We came in at a hell of a clip. It made my hair stand, but Mrs. Dysart likes it.... I say, Mallett, what sort of an outcome do you suppose there'll be?"
"Between Rosalie and Jack Dysart?"
"Yes."
"I know no more than you, Grandcourt. Why?"
"Only that—it's too bad. I've known them so long; I'm friendly with both. Jack is a curious fellow. There's much of good in him, Mallett, although I believe you and he are not on terms. He is a—I don't mean this for criticism—but sometimes his manner is unfortunate, leading people to consider him overbearing.
"I understand why people think so; I get angry at him, sometimes, myself—being perhaps rather sensitive and very conscious that I am not anything remarkable.
"But, somehow"—he looked earnestly at Duane—"I set a very great value on old friendships. He and I were at school. I always admired in him the traits I myself have lacked.... There is something about an old friendship that seems very important to me. I couldn't very easily break one.... It is that way with me, Mallett.... Besides, when I think, perhaps, that Jack Dysart is a trifle overbearing and too free with his snubs, I go somewhere and cool off; and I think that in his heart he must like me as well as I do him because, sooner or later, we always manage to drift together again.... That is one reason why I am so particular about his wife."
Another reason happened to be that he had been in love with her himself when Dysart gracefully shouldered his way between them and married Rosalie Dene. Duane had heard something about it; and he wondered a little at the loyalty to such a friendship that this young man so naïvely confessed.
"I'll tell you what I think," said Duane; "I think you're the best sort of an anchor for Rosalie Dysart. Only a fool would mistake your friendship. But the town's full of 'em, Grandcourt," he added with a smile.
"I suppose so.... And I say, Mallett—may I ask you something more?... I don't like to pester you with questions——"
"Go on, my friend. I take it as a clean compliment from a clean-cut man."
Delancy coloured, checked, but presently found voice to continue:
"That's very good of you; I thought I might speak to you about this Greensleeve & Co.'s failure before Mrs. Dysart returns."
"Certainly," said Duane, surprised; "what about them? They acted for Dysart at one time, didn't they?"
"They do now."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I am. I didn't want to say so before Mrs. Dysart. But the afternoon papers have it. I don't know why they take such a malicious pleasure in harrying Dysart—unless on account of his connections with that Yo Espero crowd—what's their names?—Skelton! Oh, yes, James Skelton—and Emanuel Klawber with his thirty millions and his string of banks and trusts and mines; and that plunger, Max Moebus, and old Amos Flack—Flack the hack stalking-horse of every bull-market, who laid down on his own brokers and has done everybody's dirty work ever since. How on earth, Mallett, do you suppose Jack Dysart ever got himself mixed up with such a lot of skyrockets and disreputable fly-by-nights?"
Duane did not answer. He had nothing good to say or think of Dysart.
Rosalie reappeared at that moment in her distractingly pretty pongee motor-coat and hat.
"Do come back with us, Duane," she said. "There's a rumble and we'll get the mud off you with a hose."
"I'd like to run down sometimes if you'll let me," he said, shaking hands.
So they parted, he to return to his studio, where models booked long ahead awaited him for canvases which he was going on with, although the great Trust Company that ordered them had practically thrown them back on his hands.
That evening at home when he came downstairs dressed in white serge for dinner, he found his father unusually silent, very pale, and so tired that he barely tasted the dishes the butler offered, and sat for the most part motionless, head and shoulders sagging against the back of his chair.
And after dinner in the conservatory Duane lighted his father's cigar and then his own.
"What's wrong?" he asked, pleasantly invading the privacy of years because he felt it was the time to do it.
His father slowly turned his head and looked at him—seemed to study the well-knit, loosely built, athletic figure of this strong young man—his only son—as though searching for some support in the youthful strength he gazed upon.
He said, very deliberately, but with a voice not perfectly steady:
"Matters are not going very well, my boy."
"What matters, father?"
"Down-town."
"Yes, I've heard. But, after all, you people in the Half Moon need only crawl into your shell and lie still."
"Yes."
After a silence:
"Father, have you any outside matters that trouble you?"
"There are—some."
"You are not involved seriously?"
His father made an effort: "I think not, Duane."
"Oh, all right. If you were, I was going to suggest that I've deposited what I have, subject to your order, with your own cashier."
"That is—very kind of you, my son. I may—find use for it—for a short time. Would you take my note?"
Duane laughed. He went on presently: "I wrote Naïda the other day. She has given me power of attorney. What she has is there, any time you need it."
His father hung his head in silence; only his colourless and shrunken hands worked on the arms of his chair.
"See here, father," said the young fellow; "don't let this thing bother you. Anything that could possibly happen is better than to have you look and feel as you do. Suppose the very worst happens—which it won't—but suppose it did and we all went gaily to utter smash.
"That is a detail compared with your going to smash physically. Because Naïda and I never did consider such things vital; and mother is a brick when it comes to a show-down. And as for me, why, if the very worst hits us, I can take care of our bunch. It's in me to do it. I suppose you don't think so. But I can make money enough to keep us together, and, after all, that's the main thing."
His father said nothing.
"Of course," laughed Duane, "I don't for a moment suppose that anything like that is on the cards. I don't know what your fortune is, but judging from your generosity to Naïda and me I fancy it's too solid to worry over. The trouble with you gay old capitalists," he added, "is that you think in such enormous sums! And you forget that little sums are required to make us all very happy; and if some of the millions which you cannot possibly ever use happen to escape you, the tragic aspect as it strikes you is out of all proportion to the real state of the case."
His father felt the effort his son was making; looked up wearily, strove to smile, to relight his cigar; which Duane did for him, saying:
"As long as you are not mixed up in that Klawber, Skelton, Moebus crowd, I'm not inclined to worry. It seems, as of course you know, that Dysart's brokers failed to-day."
"So I heard," said his father steadily. He straightened himself in his chair. "I am sorry. Mr. Greensleeve is a very old friend——"
The library telephone rang; the second man entered and asked if Colonel Mallett could speak to Mr. Dysart over the wire on a matter concerning the Yo Espero district.
Duane, astonished, sprang up asking if he might not take the message; then shrank aside as his father got to his feet. He saw the ghastly pallor on his face as his father passed him, moving toward the library; stood motionless in troubled amazement, then walked to the open window of the conservatory and, leaning there, waited.
His father did not return. Later a servant came:
"Colonel Mallett has retired, Mr. Duane, and begs that he be undisturbed, as he is very tired."
The possibility that his father could be involved in any of the spectacular schemes which had evidently caught Dysart, seemed so remote that Duane's incredulity permitted him to sleep that night, though the name Yo Espero haunted his dreams.
But in the morning, something he read in the paper concerning a vast enterprise, involving the control of the new radium mines in Southern California, startled him into trying to recollect what he had heard of Yo Espero and the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Tainting its title the sinister name of Moebus seemed to reoccur persistently in his confused imagination. Dysart's name, too, figured in it. And, somehow, he conceived an idea that his father once received some mining engineer's reports covering the matter; he even seemed to remember that Guy Wilton had been called into consultation.
Whatever associations he had for the name of the Cascade Development and Securities Company must have originated in Paris the year before his father returned to America. It seemed to him that Wilton had been in Spain that year examining the recent and marvellously rich radium find; and that his father and Wilton exchanged telegrams very frequently concerning a mine in Southern California known as Yo Espero.
His father breakfasted in his room that morning, but when he appeared in the library Duane was relieved to notice that his step was firmer and he held himself more erect, although his extreme pallor had not changed to a healthier colour.
"You know," said Duane, "you've simply got to get out of town for a while. It's all bally rot, your doing this sort of thing."
"I may go West for a few weeks," said his father absently.
"Are you going down-town?"
"No.... And, Duane, if you don't mind letting me have the house to myself this morning——"
He hesitated, glancing from his son to the telephone.
"Of course not," said Duane heartily. "I'm off to the studio——"
"I don't mean to throw you out," murmured his father with a painful attempt to smile, "but there's a stenographer coming from my office and several—business acquaintances."
The young fellow rose, patted his father's shoulder lightly:
"What is really of any importance," he said, "is that you keep your health and spirits. What I said last night covers my sentiments. If I can do anything in the world for you, tell me."
His father took the outstretched hand, lifted his faded eyes with a strange dumb look; and so they parted.
On Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, Duane, swinging along at a good pace, turned westward, and half-way to Sixth Avenue encountered Guy Wilton going east, a packet under one arm, stick and hat in the other hand, the summer wind blowing the thick curly hair from his temples.
"Ah," observed Wilton, "early bird and worm, I suppose? Don't try to bolt me, Duane; I'm full of tough and undigested—er—problems, myself. Besides, I'm fermenting. Did you ever silently ferment while listening politely to a man you wanted to assault?"
Duane laughed, then his eye by accident, caught a superscription on the packet of papers under Wilton's arm: Yo Espero! His glance reverted in a flash to Wilton's face.
The latter said: "I want to write a book entitled 'Gentleman I Have Kicked.' Of course I've only kicked 'em mentally; but my! what a list I have!—all sorts, all nations—from certain domestic and predatory statesmen to the cad who made his beautiful and sensitive mistress notorious in a decadent novel!—all kinds, Duane, have I kicked mentally I've just used my foot on another social favorite——"
"Dysart!" said Duane, inspired, and, turning painfully red, begged Wilton's pardon.
"You've sure got a disconcerting way with you," admitted Wilton, very much out of countenance.
"It was rotten bad taste in me——"
Wilton grinned with a wry face: "Nobody is standing much on ceremony these days. Besides, I'm on to your trail, young man"—tapping the bundle under his arm—"your eye happened to catch that superscription; no doubt your father has talked to you; and you came to—a rather embarrassing conclusion."
Duane's serious face fell:
"My father and I have not talked on that subject, Guy. Are you going up to see him now?"
Wilton hesitated: "I suppose I am.... See here, Duane, how much do you know about—anything?"
"Nothing," he said without humour; "I'm beginning to worry over my father's health.... Guy, don't tell me anything that my father's son ought not to know; but is there something I should know and don't?—anything in which I could possibly be of help to my father?"
Wilton looked carefully at a distant policeman for nearly a minute, then his meditative glance became focussed on vacancy.
"I—don't—know," he said slowly. "I'm going to see your father now. If there is anything to tell, I think he ought to tell it to you. Don't you?"
"Yes. But he won't. Guy, I don't care a damn about anything except his health and happiness. If anything threatens either, he won't tell me, but don't you think I ought to know?"
"You ask too hard a question for me to answer."
"Then can you answer me this? Is father at all involved in any of Jack Dysart's schemes?"
"I—had better not answer, Duane."
"You know best. You understand that it is nothing except anxiety for his personal condition that I thought warranted my butting into his affairs and yours."
"Yes, I understand. Let me think over things for a day or two. Now I've got to hustle. Good-bye."
He hastened on eastward; Duane went west, slowly, more slowly, halted, head bent in troubled concentration; then he wheeled in his tracks with nervous decision, walked back to the Plaza Club, sent for a cab, and presently rattled off up-town.
In a few minutes the cab swung east and came to a standstill a few doors from Fifth Avenue; and Duane sprang out and touched the button at a bronze grille.
The servant who admitted him addressed him by name with smiling deference and ushered him into a two-room reception suite beyond the tiny elevator.
There was evidently somebody in the second room; Duane had also noticed a motor waiting outside as he descended from his cab; so he took a seat and sat twirling his walking-stick between his knees, gloomily inspecting a room which, in pleasanter days, had not been unfamiliar to him.
Instead of the servant returning, there came a click from the elevator, a quick step, and the master of the house himself walked swiftly into the room wearing hat and gloves.
"What do you want?" he inquired briefly.
"I want to ask you a question or two," said Duane, shocked at the change in Dysart's face. Haggard, thin, snow-white at the temples with the light in his eyes almost extinct, the very precision and freshness of linen and clothing brutally accentuated the ravaged features.
"What questions?" demanded Dysart, still standing, and without any emotion whatever in either voice or manner.
"The first is this: are you in communication with my father concerning mining stock known as Yo Espero?"
"I am."
"Is my father involved in any business transactions in which you figure, or have figured?"
"There are some. Yes."
"Is the Cascade Development and Securities Co. one of them?"
"Yes, it is."
Duane's lips were dry with fear; he swallowed, controlled the rising anger that began to twitch at his throat, and went on in a low, quiet voice:
"Is this man—Moebus—connected with any of these transactions in which you and—and my father are interested?"
"Yes."
"Is Klawber?"
"Max Moebus, Emanuel Klawber, James Skelton, and Amos Flack are interested. Is that what you want to know?"
Duane looked at him, stunned. Dysart stepped nearer, speaking almost in a whisper:
"Well, what about it? Once I warned you to keep your damned nose out of my personal affairs——"
"I make some of them mine!" said Duane sharply; "when crooks get hold of an honest man, every citizen is a policeman!"
Dysart, face convulsed with fury, seized his arm in a vicelike grip:
"Will you keep your cursed mouth shut!" he breathed. "My father is in the next room. Do you want to kill him?"
At the same moment there came a stir from the room beyond, the tap-tap of a cane and shuffling steps across the polished parquet. Dysart's grip relaxed, his hand fell away, and he made a ghastly grimace as a little old gentleman came half-trotting, half-shambling to the doorway. He was small and dapper and pink-skinned under his wig; the pink was paint; his lips and eyes peered and simpered; from one bird-claw hand dangled a monocle.
Jack Dysart made a ghastly and supreme effort:
"I was just saying to Duane, father, that all this financial agitation is bound to blow over by December—Duane Mallett, father!"—as the old man raised his eye-glass and peeped up at the young fellow—"you know his father, Colonel Mallett."
"Yes, to be sure, yes, to be sure!" piped the old beau. "How-de-do! How-de-do-o-o! My son Jack and I motor every morning at this hour. It is becoming a custom—he! he!—every day from ten to eleven—then a biscuit and a glass of sherry—then a nap—te-he! Oh, yes, every day, Mr. Mallett, rain or fair—then luncheon at one, and the cigarette—te-he!—and a little sleep—and the drive at five! Yes, Mr. Mallett, it is the routine of a very old man who knew your grandfather—and all his set—when the town was gay below Bleecker Street! Yes, yes—te-he-he!"
Nervous spasms which passed as smiles distorted the younger Dysart's visage; the aged beau offered his hand to Duane, who took it in silence, his eyes fixed on the shrivelled, painted face:
"Your grandfather was a very fine man," he piped; "very fine! ve-ery fine! And so I perceive is his grandson—te-he!—and I flatter myself that my boy Jack is not unadmired—te-he-he!—no, no—not precisely unnoticed in New York—the town whose history is the history of his own race, Mr. Mallett—he is a good son to me—yes, yes, a good son. It is gratifying to me to know that you are his friend. He is a good friend to have, Mr. Mallett, a good friend and a good son."
Duane bent gently over the shrivelled hand.
"I won't detain you from your drive, Mr. Dysart. I hope you will have a pleasant one. It is a pleasure to know my grandfather's old friends. Good-bye."
And, erect, he hesitated a moment, then, for an old man's sake he held out his hand to Jack Dysart, bidding him good-bye in a pleasant voice pitched clear and decided, so that deaf ears might corroborate what half-blind and peering eyes so dimly beheld.
Dysart walked to the door with him, waved the servant aside, and, laying a shaking hand on the bronze knob, opened the door for his unbidden guest.
As Duane passed him he said:
"Thank you, Mallett," in a voice so low that Duane was half-way to his cab before he understood.
That day, and the next, and all that week he worked in his pitlike studio. Through the high sky-window a cloudless zenith brooded; the heat became terrific; except for the inevitable crush of the morning and evening migration south and north, the streets were almost empty under a blazing sun.
His father seemed to be physically better. Although he offered no confidences, it appeared to the son that there was something a little more cheerful in his voice and manner. It may have been only the anticipation of departure; for he was going West in a day or two, and it came out that Wilton was going with him.
The day he left, Duane drove him to the station. There was a private car, the "Cyane," attached to the long train. Wilton met them, spoke pleasantly to Duane; but Colonel Mallett did not invite his son to enter the car, and adieux were said where they stood.
As the young fellow turned and passed beneath the car-windows, he caught a glimpse above him of a heavy-jowled, red face into which a cigar was stuck—a perfectly enormous expanse of face with two little piglike eyes almost buried in the mottled fat.
"That's Max Moebus," observed a train hand respectfully, as Duane passed close to him; "I guess there's more billions into that there private car than old Pip's crowd can dig out of their pants pockets on pay day."
A little, dry-faced, chin-whiskered man with a loose pot-belly and thin legs came waddling along, followed by two red-capped negroes with his luggage. He climbed up the steps of the "Cyane"; the train man winked at Duane, who had turned to watch him.
"Amos Flack," he said. "He's their 'lobbygow.'" With which contemptuous information he spat upon the air-brakes and, shoving both hands into his pockets, meditatively jingled a bunch of keys.
The club was absolutely deserted that night; Duane dined there alone, then wandered into the great empty room facing Fifth Avenue, his steps echoing sharply across the carpetless floor. The big windows were open; there was thunder in the air—the sonorous stillness in which voices and footsteps in the street ring out ominously.
He smoked and watched the dim forms of those whom the heat drove forth into the night, men with coats over their arms and straw hats in their hands, young girls thinly clad in white, bare-headed, moving two and two with dragging steps and scarcely spirit left even for common coquetry or any response to the jesting oafs who passed.
Here and there a cruising street-dryad threaded the by-paths of the metropolitan jungle; here and there a policeman, gray helmet in hand, stood mopping his face, night-club tucked up snugly under one arm. Few cabs were moving; at intervals a creaking, groaning omnibus rolled past, its hurricane deck white with the fluttering gowns of women and young girls.
Somebody came into the room behind him; Duane turned, but could not distinguish who it was in the dusk. A little while later the man came over to where he sat, and he looked up; and it was Dysart.
There was silence for a full minute; Dysart stood by the window looking out; Duane paid him no further attention until he wheeled slowly and said:
"Do you mind if I have a word with you, Mallett?"
"Not if it is necessary."
"I don't know whether it is necessary."
"Don't bother about it if you are in the slightest doubt."
Dysart waited a moment, perhaps for some unpleasant emotion to subside; then:
"I'll sit down a moment, if you permit."
He dropped into one of the big, deep, leather chairs and touched the bell. A servant came; he looked across at Duane, hesitated to speak:
"Thank you," said Duane curtly. "I've cut it out."
"Scotch. Bring the decanter," murmured Dysart to the servant.
When it was served he drained the glass, refilled it, and turned in the rest of the mineral water. Before he spoke he emptied the glass again and rang for more mineral water. Then he looked at Duane and said in a low voice:
"I thought you were worried the other day when I saw you at my house."
"What is that to you?"
Dysart said: "You were very kind—under provocation."
"I was not kind on your account."
"I understand. But I don't forget such things."
Duane glanced at him in profound contempt. Here was the stereotyped scoundrel with the classical saving trait—the one conventionally inevitable impulse for good shining like a diamond on a muck-heap—his apparently disinterested affection for his father.
"You were very decent to me that day," Dysart said. "You had something to say to me—but were good enough not to. I came over to-night to give you a chance to curse me out. It's the square thing to do."
"What do you know about square dealing?"
"Go on."
"I have nothing to add."
"Then I have if you'll let me." He paused; the other remained silent. "I've this to say: you are worried sick; I saw that. What worries you concerns your father. You were merciful to mine. I'll do what I can for you."
He swallowed half of what remained in his iced glass, set it back on the table with fastidious precision:
"The worst that can happen to your father is to lose control of the Yo Espero property. I think he is going to lose it. They've crowded me out. If I could have endured the strain I'd have stood by your father—for what you did for mine.... But I couldn't, Mallett."
He moistened his lips again; leaned forward:
"I think I know one thing about you, anyway; and I'm not afraid you'd ever use any words of mine against me——"
"Don't say them!" retorted Duane sharply.
But Dysart went on:
"You have no respect for me. You found out one thing about me that settled me in your opinion. Outside of that, however, you never liked me."
"That is perfectly true."
"I know it. And I want to say now that it was smouldering irritation from that source—wounded vanity, perhaps—coupled with worry and increasing cares, that led to that outburst of mine. I never really believed that my wife needed any protection from the sort of man you are. You are not that kind."
"That also is true."
"And I know it. And now I've cleared up these matters; and there's another." He bit his lip, thought a moment, then with a deep, long breath:
"When you struck me that night I—deserved it. I was half crazy, I think—with what I had done—with a more material but quite as ruinous situation developing here in town—with domestic complications—never mind where all the fault lay—it was demoralising me. Do you think that I am not perfectly aware that I stand very much alone among men? Do you suppose that I am not aware of my personal unpopularity as far as men are concerned? I have never had an intimate friend—except Delancy Grandcourt. And I've treated him like a beast. There's something wrong about me; there always has been."
He slaked his thirst again; his hand shook so that he nearly dropped the glass:
"Which is preliminary," he went on, "to saying to you that no matter what I said in access of rage, I never doubted that your encounter with—Miss Quest—was an accident. I never doubted that your motive in coming to me was generous. God knows why I said what I did say. You struck me; and you were justified.... And that clears up that!"
"Dysart," said the other, "you don't have to tell me these things."
"Would you rather not have heard them?"
Duane thought a moment.
"I would rather have heard them, I believe."
"Then may I go on?"
"Is there anything more to explain between us?"
"No.... But I would like to say something—in my own behalf. Not that it matters to you—or to any man, perhaps, except my father. I would like to say it, Mallett."
"Very well."
"Then; I prefer that you should believe I am not a crook. Not that it matters to you; but I prefer that you do not believe it.... You have read enough in the papers to know what I mean. I'm telling you now what I have never uttered to any man; and I haven't the slightest fear you will repeat it or use it in any manner to my undoing. It is this:
"The men with whom I was unwise enough to become partially identified are marked for destruction by the Clearing House Committee and by the Federal Government. I know it; others know it. Which means the ruthless elimination of anything doubtful which in future might possibly compromise the financial stability of this city.
"It is a brutal programme; the policy they are pursuing is bitterly unjust. Innocent and guilty alike are going to suffer; I never in all my life consciously did a crooked thing in business; and yet I say to you now that these people are bent on my destruction; that they mean to force us to close the doors of the Algonquin; that they are planning the ruin of every corporation, every company, every bank, every enterprise with which I am connected, merely because they have decreed the financial death of Moebus and Klawber!"
He made a trembling gesture with clenched hand, and leaned farther forward:
"Mallett! There is not one man to-day in Wall Street who has not done, and who is not doing daily, the very things for which the government officials and the Clearing House authorities are attempting to get rid of me. Their attacks on my securities will ultimately ruin me; but such attacks would ruin any financier, any bank in the United States, if continued long enough.
"Doesn't anybody know that when the government conspires with the Clearing House officials any security can be kicked out of the market? Don't they know that when bank examiners class any securities as undesirable, and bank officials throw them out from the loans of such institutions, that they're not worth the match struck to burn them into nothing?
"If they mean to close my companies and bring charges against me, I'll tell you now, Mallett, any official of any bank which to-day is in operation, can be indicted!"
He sat breathing fast, hands clasped nervously between his knees. Duane, painfully impressed, waited. And after a moment Dysart spoke again:
"They mean my ruin. There is a bank examiner at work—this very moment while we're sitting here—on the Collect Pond Bank—which is mine. The Federal inquisitors went through it once; now a new one is back again. They found nothing with which to file an adverse report the first time. Why did they come back?
"And I'll tell you another thing, Mallett, which may seem a slight reason for my sullenness and quick temper; they've had secret-service men following me ever since I returned from Roya-Neh. They are into everything that I've ever been connected with; there is no institution, no security in which I am interested, that they have not investigated.
"And I tell you also, incredible as it may sound, that there is no security in which I am interested which is not now being attacked by government officials, and which, as a result of such attacks, is not depreciating daily. I tell you they've even approached the United States Court for its consent to a ruinous disposal of certain corporation notes in which I am interested! Will you tell me what you think of that, Mallett?"
Duane said: "I don't know, Dysart. I know almost nothing about such matters. And—I am sorry that you are in trouble."
The silence remained unbroken for some time; then Dysart stood up:
"I don't offer you my hand. You took it once for my father's sake. That was manly of you, Mallett.... I thought perhaps I might lighten your anxiety about your father. I hope I have.... And I must ask your pardon for pressing my private affairs upon you"—he laughed mirthlessly—"merely because I'd rather you didn't think me a crook—for my father's sake.... Good-night."
"Dysart," he said, "why in God's name have you behaved as you have to—that girl?"
Dysart stood perfectly motionless, then in a voice under fair control:
"I understand you. You don't intend that as impertinence; you're a square man, Mallett—a man who suffers under the evil in others. And your question to me meant that you thought me not entirely hopeless; that there was enough of decency in me to arouse your interest. Isn't that what you meant?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Well, then, I'll answer you. There isn't much left of me; there'll be less left of my fortune before long. I've made a failure of everything, fortune, friendship, position, happiness. My wife and I are separated; it is club gossip, I believe. She will probably sue for divorce and get it. And I ask you, because I don't know, can any amends be made to—the person you mentioned—by my offering her the sort and condition of man I now am?"
"You've got to, haven't you?" asked Duane.
"Oh! Is that it? A sort of moral formality?"
"It's conventional; yes. It's expected."
"By whom?"
"All the mess that goes to make up this compost heap we call society.... I think she also would expect it."
Dysart nodded.
"If you could make her happy it would square a great many things, Dysart."
The other looked up: "You?"
"I—don't know. Yes, in many ways; in that way at all events—if you made her happy."
Dysart stepped forward: "Would you be nice to her if I did? No other soul in the world knows except you. Other people would be nice to her. Wouldyou? And would you have the woman you marry receive her?"
"Yes."
"That is square of you, Mallett.... I meant to do it, anyway.... Thank you.... Good-night."
"Good-night," said Duane in a low voice.
He returned to the house late that night, and found a letter from Geraldine awaiting him; the first in three days. Seated at the library table he opened the letter and saw at once that the red-pencilled cross at the top was missing.
Minutes passed; the first line blurred under his vacant gaze, for his eyes travelled no farther. Then the letter fell to the table; he dropped his head in his arms.
It was a curiously calm letter when he found courage to read it:
"I've lost a battle after many victories. It went against me after a hard fight here alone at Roya-Neh. I think you had better come up. The fight was on again the next night—that is, night before last, but I've held fast so far and expect to. Only I wish you'd come."It is no reproach to you if I say that, had you been here, I might have made a better fight. You couldn't be here; the shame of defeat is all my own."Duane, it was not a disastrous defeat in one way. I held out for four days, and thought I had won out. I was stupefied by loss of sleep, I think; this is not in excuse, only the facts which I lay bare for your consideration."The defeat was in a way a concession—a half-dazed compromise—merely a parody on a real victory for the enemy; because it roused in me a horror that left the enemy almost no consolation, no comfort, even no physical relief. The enemy is I myself, you understand—that other self we know about."She was perfectly furious, Duane; she wrestled with me, fought to make me yield more than I had—which was almost nothing—begged me, brutalised me, pleaded, tormented, cajoled. I was nearly dead when the sun rose; but I had gone through it."I wish you could come. She is still watching me. It's an armed truce, but I know she'll break it if the chance comes. There is no honour in her, Duane, no faith, no reason, no mercy. I know her."Can you not come? I won't ask it if your father needs you. Only if he does not, I think you had better come very soon."When may I restore the red cross to the top of my letters to you? I suppose I had better place it on the next letter, because if I do not you might think that another battle had gone against me."Don't reproach me. I couldn't stand it just now. Because I am a very tired girl, Duane, and what has happened is heavy in my heart—heavy on my head and shoulders like that monster Sindbad bore."Can you come and free me? One word—your arms around me—and I am safe."G.S."
"I've lost a battle after many victories. It went against me after a hard fight here alone at Roya-Neh. I think you had better come up. The fight was on again the next night—that is, night before last, but I've held fast so far and expect to. Only I wish you'd come.
"It is no reproach to you if I say that, had you been here, I might have made a better fight. You couldn't be here; the shame of defeat is all my own.
"Duane, it was not a disastrous defeat in one way. I held out for four days, and thought I had won out. I was stupefied by loss of sleep, I think; this is not in excuse, only the facts which I lay bare for your consideration.
"The defeat was in a way a concession—a half-dazed compromise—merely a parody on a real victory for the enemy; because it roused in me a horror that left the enemy almost no consolation, no comfort, even no physical relief. The enemy is I myself, you understand—that other self we know about.
"She was perfectly furious, Duane; she wrestled with me, fought to make me yield more than I had—which was almost nothing—begged me, brutalised me, pleaded, tormented, cajoled. I was nearly dead when the sun rose; but I had gone through it.
"I wish you could come. She is still watching me. It's an armed truce, but I know she'll break it if the chance comes. There is no honour in her, Duane, no faith, no reason, no mercy. I know her.
"Can you not come? I won't ask it if your father needs you. Only if he does not, I think you had better come very soon.
"When may I restore the red cross to the top of my letters to you? I suppose I had better place it on the next letter, because if I do not you might think that another battle had gone against me.
"Don't reproach me. I couldn't stand it just now. Because I am a very tired girl, Duane, and what has happened is heavy in my heart—heavy on my head and shoulders like that monster Sindbad bore.
"Can you come and free me? One word—your arms around me—and I am safe.
"G.S."
As he finished, a maid came bearing a telegram on a salver.
"Tell him to wait," said Duane, tearing open the white night-message:
"Your father is ill at San Antonio and wishes you to come at once. Notify your mother but do not alarm her. Your father's condition is favorable, but the outcome is uncertain."Wells,Secretary."
"Your father is ill at San Antonio and wishes you to come at once. Notify your mother but do not alarm her. Your father's condition is favorable, but the outcome is uncertain.
"Wells,Secretary."
Duane took three telegram blanks from the note-paper rack and wrote:
"My father is ill at San Antonio. They have just wired me, and I shall take the first train. Stand by me now. Win out for my sake. I put you on your honour until I can reach you."
"My father is ill at San Antonio. They have just wired me, and I shall take the first train. Stand by me now. Win out for my sake. I put you on your honour until I can reach you."
And to his father:
"I leave on first train for San Antonio. It's going to be all right, father."
"I leave on first train for San Antonio. It's going to be all right, father."
And to his mother:
"Am leaving for San Antonio because I don't think father is well enough to travel alone. I'll write you and wire you. Love to you and Naïda."
"Am leaving for San Antonio because I don't think father is well enough to travel alone. I'll write you and wire you. Love to you and Naïda."
He gave the maid the money, turned, and unhooking the receiver of the telephone, called up the Grand Central Station.
The autumn quiet at Roya-Neh was intensely agreeable to Scott Seagrave. No social demands interfered with a calm and dignified contemplation of the Rose-beetle,Melolontha subspinosa, and his scandalous "Life History"; there was no chatter of girls from hall and stairway to distract the loftier inspirations that possessed him, no intermittent soprano noises emitted by fluttering feminine fashion, no calflike barytones from masculine adolescence to drive him to the woods, where it was always rather difficult for him to focus his attention on printed pages. The balm of heavenly silence pervaded the house, and in its beneficent atmosphere he worked in his undershirt, inhaling inspiration and the aroma of whale-oil, soap, and carbolic solutions.
Neither Kathleen nor his sister being present to limit his operations, the entire house was becoming a vast mess. Living-rooms, library, halls, billiard-room, were obstructed with "scientific" paraphernalia; hundreds of glass fruit jars, filled with earth containing the whitish, globular eggs of the Rose-beetle, encumbered mantel and furniture; glass aquariums half full of earth, sod, and youthful larvæ of the same sinful beetle lent pleasing variety to the monotony of Scott's interior decorative effects. Microscopes, phials, shallow trays bristling with sprouting seeds, watering-cans, note-books, buckets of tepid water, jars brimming with chemical solutions, blockaded the legitimate and natural runways of chamber-maid, parlour-maid, and housekeeper; a loud scream now and then punctured the scientific silence, recording the Hibernian discovery of some large, green caterpillar travelling casually somewhere in the house.
"Mr. Seagrave, sir," stammered Lang, the second man, perspiring horror, "your bedroom is full of humming birds and bats, sir, and I can't stand it no more!"
But it was only a wholesale hatching of huge hawk-moths that came whizzing around Lang when he turned on the electric lights; and which, escaping, swarmed throughout the house, filling it with their loud, feathery humming, and the shrieks of Milesian domestics.
And it was into these lively household conditions that Kathleen and Geraldine unexpectedly arrived from the Berkshires, worn out with their round of fashionable visits, anxious for the quiet and comfort that is supposed to be found only under one's own roof-tree. This is what they found:
In Geraldine's bath-tub a colony of water-lilies were attempting to take root for the benefit of several species of water-beetles. The formidable larvæ of dragon-flies occupied Kathleen's bath; turtles peered at them from vantage points under the modern plumbing; an enormous frog regarded Kathleen solemnly from the wet, tiled floor. "Oh, dear," she said as Scott greeted her rapturously, "have I got to move all these horrid creatures?"
"For Heaven's sake don't touch a thing," protested Scott, welcoming his sister with a perfunctory kiss; "I'll find places for them in a minute."
"Howcouldyou, Scott!" exclaimed Geraldine, backing hastily away from a branch of green leaves on which several gigantic horned caterpillars were feeding. "I don't feel like ever sleeping in this room again," she added, exasperated.
"Why, Sis," he explained mildly, "those are the caterpillars of the magnificent Regal moth! They're perfectly harmless, and it's jolly to watch them tuck away walnut leaves. You'll like to have them here in your room when you understand how to weigh them on these bully little scales I've just had sent up from Tiffany's."
But his sister was too annoyed and too tired to speak. She stood limply leaning against Kathleen while her brother disposed of his uncanny menagerie, talking away very cheerfully all the while absorbed in his grewsome pets.
But it was not to his sister, it was to Kathleen that his pride in his achievements was naïvely displayed; his running accompaniment of chatter was for Kathleen's benefit, his appeals were to her sympathy and understanding, not to his sister's.
Geraldine watched him in silence. Tired, not physically very well, this home-coming meant something to her. She had looked forward to it, and to her brother, unconsciously wistful for the protection of home and kin. For the day had been a hard one; she was able to affix the red-cross mark to her letter to Duane that morning, but it had been a bad day for her, very bad.
And now as she stood there, white, nerveless, fatigued, an ache grew in her breast, a dull desire for somebody of her own kin to lean on; and, following it, a slow realisation of how far apart from her brother she had drifted since the old days of cordial understanding in the schoolroom—the days of loyal sympathy through calm and stress, in predatory alliance or in the frank conflicts of the squared circle.
Suddenly her whole heart filled with a blind need of her brother's sympathy—a desire to return to the old intimacy as though in it there lay comfort, protection, sanctuary for herself from all that threatened her—herself!
Kathleen was assisting Scott to envelop the frog in a bath towel for the benevolent purpose of transplanting him presently to some other bath-tub; and Kathleen's golden head and Scott's brown one were very close together, and they were laughing in that intimate undertone characteristic of thorough understanding. Her brother's expression as he looked up at Kathleen Severn, was a revelation to his sister, and it pierced her with a pang of loneliness so keen that she started forward in sheer desperation, as though to force a path through something that was pushing her away from him.
"Let me take his frogship," she said with a nervous laugh. "I'll put him into a jolly big tub where you can grow all the water-weeds you like, Scott."
Her brother, surprised and gratified, handed her the bath-towel in the depths of which reposed the batrachian.
"He's really an interesting fellow, Sis," explained Scott; "he exudes a sticky, viscous fluid from his pores which is slightly toxic. I'm going to try it on a Rose-beetle."
Geraldine shuddered, but forced a smile, and, holding the imprisoned one with dainty caution, bore him to a palatial and porcelain-lined bath-tub, into which she shook him with determination and a suppressed shriek.
That night at dinner Scott looked up at his sister with something of the old-time interest and confidence.
"I was pretty sure you'd take an interest in all these things, sooner or later. I tell you, Geraldine, it will be half the fun if you'll go into it with us."
"I want to," said his sister, smiling, "but don't hurry my progress or you'll scare me half to death."
The tragic necessity for occupation, for interesting herself in something sufficient to take her out of herself, she now understood, and the deep longing for the love of all she had of kith and kin was steadily tightening its grip on her, increasing day by day. Nothing else could take its place; she began to understand that; not her intimacy with Kathleen, not even her love for Duane. Outside of these there existed a zone of loneliness in which she was doomed to wander, a zone peopled only by the phantoms of the parents she had never known long enough to remember—a dreaded zone of solitude and desolation and peril for her. The danger line marked its boundary; beyond lay folly and destruction.
Little by little Scott began to notice that his sister evidently found his company desirable, that she followed him about, watching his so-called scientific pursuits with a curiosity too constant to be assumed. And it pleased him immensely; and at times he held forth to her and instructed her with brotherly condescension.
He noticed, too, that her spirits did not appear to be particularly lively; there were often long intervals of silence when, together by the window in the library where he was fussing over his "Life History," she never spoke, never even moved from her characteristic attitude—seated deep in a leather chair, arms resting on the padded chair-arms, ankles crossed, and her head a trifle lowered, as though absorbed in studying the Herati design on a Persian rug.
Once, looking up suddenly, he surprised her brown eyes full of tears.
"Hello!" he said, amazed; "what's the row, Sis?"
But she only laughed and dried her eyes, denying that there was any explanation except that girls were sometimes that way for no reason at all.
One day he asked Kathleen privately about this, but she merely confirmed Geraldine's diagnosis of the phenomenon:
"Tears come into girls' eyes," she said, "and there isn't anybody on earth who can tell a man why, and he wouldn't comprehend it if anybody did tell him."
"I'll tell you one thing," he said sceptically; "if Rose-beetles shed tears, I'd never rest until I found out why. You bet there's always a reason that starts anything and always somebody to find it out and tell another fellow who can understand it!"
With which brilliant burst of higher philosophy they went out into the October woods together to hunt for cocoons.
Geraldine, rather flushed and nervous, met them at Hurryon Gate, carrying a rifle and wearing the shortest skirts her brother had ever beheld. The symmetry of her legs moved him to reproof:
"I thought people looked that way only in tailor's fashion plates," he said. "What are you after—chipmunks?"
"Not at all," said his sister. "Do you know what happened to me an hour ago? I was paddling your canoe into the Hurryon Inlet, and I suppose I made no noise in disembarking, and I came right on a baby wild boar in the junipers. It was a tiny thing, not eighteen inches long, Kathleen, and so cunning and furry and yellowish, with brown stripes on its back, that I tried to catch it—just to hug it."
"That was silly," said her brother.
"I know it was, now. Because I ran after it, and it ran; and, one by one, a whole herd of the cunning little things sprang out of the hemlock scrub and went off bucking and bucketing in all directions, and I, like a simpleton, hard after one of them——"
"Little idiot," said her brother solicitously. "Are you stark mad?"
"No, I'm just plain mad. Because, before I knew it, there came a crash in the underbrush and the biggest, furriest, and wickedest wild boar I ever saw halted in front of me, ears forward, every hair on end——"
"Lord save us, you jumped the sow!" groaned her brother. "She might have torn you to pieces, you ninny!"
"She meant to, I think. The next thing I knew she came headlong, mouth open, fairly screaming at me; and I turned and jumped clean into the Gray Water. Oh, Scott, it was humiliating to have to swim to the point with all my clothes on, scramble into the canoe, and shove off because a very angry wild creature drove me out of my own woods!"
"Well, dear, you won't ever interfere with a sow and pigs again, will you?" said Kathleen so earnestly that everybody laughed.
"What's the rifle for?" inquired Scott. "You don't intend to hunt for her, do you?"
"Of course not. I'm not vindictive or cruel. But old Miller said, when I came past the lodge, dripping wet, that the boar are increasing too fast and that you ought to keep them down either by shooting or by trapping them, and sending them to other people for stocking purposes. The Pink 'uns want some; why don't you?"
"I don't want to shoot or trap them," said Scott obstinately.
"Miller says they pulled down deer last winter and tore them to shreds. Everything in the forest is afraid of them; they drive the deer from the feeding-grounds, and I don't believe a lynx or even any of the bear that climb over the fence would dare attack them."
Kathleen said: "You really ought to ask some men up here to shoot, Scott. I don't wish to be chased about by a boar."
"They never bother people," he protested. "What are you going to do with that rifle, Geraldine?"
"My nerve has gone," she confessed, laughing; "I prefer to have it with me when I take walks. It's really safer," she added seriously to Kathleen. "Miller says that a buck deer can be ugly, too."
"Oh, Lord!" said her brother, laughing; "it's only because you're the prettiest thing ever, in that hunting dress! Don't tell me; and kindly be careful where you point that rifle."
"As if I needed instructions!" retorted his sister. "I wish I could see a boar—a big one with a particularly frightful temper and tusks to match."
"I'll bet you that you can't kill a boar," he said in good-humoured disdain.
"I don't see any to kill."
"Well, I bet you can't find one. And if you do, I bet you don't kill him."
"How long," asked Geraldine dangerously, "does that bet hold good?"
"All winter, if you like. It's the prettiest single jewel you can pick out against a new saddle-horse. I need a gay one; I'm getting out of condition. And all our horses are as interesting as chevaux de bois when the mechanism is freshly oiled and the organ plays the 'Ride of the Valkyries.'"
"I've half a mind to take that wager," said Geraldine, very pink and bright-eyed. "I think I will take it if——"
"Please don't, dear," said Kathleen anxiously. "The keepers say that a wounded boar is perfectly horrid sometimes."
"Dangerous?" Her eyes glimmered brighter still.
"Certainly, a wounded boar is dangerous. I heard Miller say——"
"Bosh!" said Scott. "They run away from you every time. Besides, Geraldine isn't going to have enough sporting blood in her to take that bet and make good."
Something in the quick flush and tilt of her head reminded Scott of the old days when their differences were settled with eight-ounce gloves. The same feeling possessed his sister, thrilled her like a sudden, unexpected glimpse of a happiness which apparently had long been ended for ever.
"Oh, Scott," she exclaimed, still thrilling, "itislike old times to hear you try to bully me. It's so long since I've had enough spirit to defy you. But I do now!—oh, yes, I do! Why, I believe that if we had the gloves here, I'd make you fight me or take back what you said about my not having any sporting spirit!"
He laughed: "I was thinking of that, too. You're a good sport, Sis. Don't bother to take that wager——"
"Idotake it!" she cried; "it's like old times and I love it. Now, Scott, I'll show you a boar before we go to town or I'll buy you a horse. No backing out; what's said can't be unsaid, remember:
"King, king, double king,Can't take back a given thing!Queen, queen, queen of queens,What she promises she means!"
That was a very solemn incantation in nursery days; she laughed a little in tender tribute to the past.
Scott was a trifle perturbed. He glanced uneasily at Kathleen, who told him very plainly that he had contrived to make her anxious and unhappy. Then she fell back into step with Geraldine, letting Scott wander disconsolately forward:
"Dear," she said, passing one arm around the younger girl, "I didn't quite dare to object too strongly. You looked so—so interested, so deliciously defiant—so like your real self——"
"I feel like it to-day, Kathleen; let me turn back in my own footsteps—if I can. I've been trying so very hard to—to get back to where there was no—no terror in the world."
"I know. But, darling, you won't run into any danger, will you?"
"Do you call a hard-hit beast a danger? I've wounded a more terrible one than any boar that ever bristled. I'm trying to kill something more terrifying. And I shall if I live."
"You poor, brave little martyr!" whispered Kathleen, her violet eyes filled with sudden tears; "don't you suppose I know what you are doing? Don't you suppose I watch and pray——"
"Didyouknow I was really trying?" asked the girl, astonished—"I mean before I told you?"
"Know it! Angels above! Of course I know it. Don't you suppose I've been watching you slowly winning back to your old dear self—tired, weary-footed, desolate, almost hopeless, yet always surely finding your way back through the dreadful twilight to the dear, sweet, generous self that I know so well—the straightforward, innocent, brave little self that grew at my knee!—Geraldine—Geraldine, my own dear child!"
"Hush—I did not know you knew. I am trying. Once I failed. That was not very long ago, either. Oh, Kathleen, I am trying so hard, so hard! And to-day has been a dreadful day for me. That is why I went off by myself; I paddled until I was ready to drop into the lake; and the fright that the boar gave me almost ended me; but it could not end desire!... So I took a rifle—anything to interest me—keep me on my feet and moving somewhere—doing something—anything—anything, Kathleen—until I can crush it out of me—until there's a chance that I can sleep——"
"I know—I know! That is why I dared not remonstrate when I saw you drifting again toward your old affectionate relations with Scott. I'm afraid of animals—except what few Scott has persuaded me to tolerate—butterflies and frogs and things. But if anything on earth is going to interest you—take your mind off yourself—and bring you and Scott any nearer together, I shall not utter one word against it—even when it puts you in physical danger and frightens me. Do you understand?"
The girl nodded, turned and kissed her. They were following a path made by game; Scott was out of sight ahead somewhere; they could hear his boots crashing through the underbrush. After a while the sound died away in the forest.
"The main thing," said Geraldine, "is to keep up my interest in the world. I want to do things. To sit idle is pure destruction to me. I write to Duane every morning, I read, I do a dozen things that require my attention—little duties that everybody has. But I can't continue to write to Duane all day. I can't read all day; duties are soon ended. And, Kathleen, it's the idle intervals I dread so—the brooding, the memories, the waiting for events scheduled in domestic routine—like dinner—the—the terrible waiting for sleep! That is the worst. I tell you, physical fatigue must help to save me—must help my love for Duane, my love for you and Scott, my self-respect—what is left of it. This rifle"—she held it out—"would turn into a nuisance if I let it. But I won't; I can't; I've got to use everything to help me."
"You ride every day, don't you?" ventured the other woman timidly.
"Before breakfast. That helps. I wish I had a vicious horse to break. I wish there was rough water where canoes ought not to go!" she exclaimed fiercely. "I need something of that sort."
"You drove Scott's Blue Racer yesterday so fast that Felix came to me about it," said Kathleen gently.
Geraldine laughed. "It couldn't go fast enough, dear; that was the only trouble." Then, serious and wistful: "If I could only have Duane.... Don't be alarmed; I can't—yet. But if I only could have him now! You see, his life is already very full; his work is absorbing him. It would absorb me. I don't know anything about it technically, but it interests me. If I could only have him now; think about him every second of the day—to keep me from myself——"
She checked herself; suddenly her eyes filled, her lip quivered:
"I want him now!" she said desperately. "He could save me; I know it! I want him now—his love, his arms to keep me safe at night! I want him to love me—loveme! Oh, Kathleen! if I could only have him!"
A delicate colour tinted Kathleen's face; her ears shrank from the girl's low-voiced cry, with its glimmer of a passion scarcely understood.
Long, long, the memory of his embrace had tormented her—the feeling of happy safety she had in his arms—the contact that thrilled almost past endurance, yet filled her with a glorious and splendid strength—that set wild pulses beating, wild blood leaping in her veins—that aroused her very soul to meet his lips and heed his words and be what his behest would have her.
And the memory of it now possessed her so that she stood straight and slim and tall, trembling in the forest path, and her dark eyes looked into Kathleen's with a strange, fiery glimmer of pride:
"I need him, but I love him too well to take him. Can I do more for him than that?"
"Oh, my darling, my darling," said Kathleen brokenly, "if you believe that he can save you—if you really feel that he can——"
"I am trying to save myself—I am trying." She turned and looked off through the forest, a straight, slender shape in the moving shadows of the leaves.
"But if he could really help you—if you truly believe it, dear, I—I don't know whether you might not venture—now——"
"No, dear." She slowly closed her eyes, remained motionless for a moment, drew a deep, long breath, and looked up through the sunlit branches overhead.
"I've got to be fair to him," she said aloud to herself; "I must give myself to him as I ought to be, or not at all.... That is settled."
She turned to Kathleen and took her hand:
"Come on, fellow-pilgrim," she said with an effort to smile. "My cowardice is over for the present."
A few steps forward they sighted Scott coming back. He was unusually red in the face and rather excited, and he flourished a stick.
"Of all the infernal impudence!" he said. "What do you think has happened to me? I saw a wild boar back there—not a very big one—and he came out into the trail ahead, and I kept straight on, thinking he'd hear me and run. And I'm blessed if the brute didn't whirl around and roughen up, and clatter his tusks until I actually had to come to a halt!"
"I don't want to walk in these woods any more," said Kathleen with sudden conviction. "Please come home, all of us."
"Nonsense," he said. "I won't stand for being hustled out of my own woods. Give me that rifle, Geraldine."
"I certainly will not," she said, smiling.
"What! Why not?"
"Because it rather looks as though I'm about to win my bet with you," observed Geraldine. "Please show me your boar, Scott." And she threw a cartridge into the magazine and started forward.
"Don't let her!" pleaded Kathleen. "Scott, it's ridiculous to let that child do such silly things——"
"Then stop her if you can," said Scott gloomily, following his sister. "I don't know anything about wild boar, but I suppose straight shooting will take care of them, and Sis can do that if she keeps her nerve."
Geraldine, hastening ahead, rifle poised, scanned the woods with the palpitating curiosity of an amateur. Eyes and ears alert, she kept mechanically reassuring herself that the thing to do was to shoot straight and keep cool, and to keep on shooting whichever way the boar might take it into his porcine head to run.
Scott hastened forward to her side:
"Here's the place," he said, looking about him. "He's concluded to make off, you see. They usually go off; they only stand when wounded or when they think they can't get away. He's harmless, I suppose—only it made me very tired to have him act that way. I hate to be backed out of my own property."
Geraldine, rather relieved, yet ashamed not to do all she could, began to walk toward a clump of low hemlocks. She had heard that wild boar take that sort of cover. She did not really expect to find anything there, so when a big black streak crashed out ahead of her she stood stock still in frozen astonishment, rifle clutched to her breast.
"Shoot!" shouted her brother.
"Oh, dear, oh, dear," she said helplessly, "he's gone out of sight! And I had such a splendid shot!" She stamped with vexation. "What a goose!" she repeated. "I had a perfectly splendid shot. And all I did was to jump like a scared cat and stare!"
"Anyway, you didn't run, and that's a point gained," observed her brother. "I had to. And that's one on me."
A moment later he said: "I believe those impudent boar do need a little thinning out. When is Duane coming?"
"In November," said Geraldine, still looking vaguely about for the departed pig.
"Early?"
"I think so, if his father is all right again. I've asked Naïda, too. Rosalie wants to come——"
"Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't," he protested. "All I wanted was a shooting party to do a little scientific thinning out of these boar. I'll do some myself, too."
Geraldine laughed. "Rosalie is a dead shot at a target, dear. She wrote asking us to invite her to shoot. I don't see how I can very well refuse her. Do you?"
"That means her husband, too," grumbled Scott, "and that entire bunch."
"No; if it's a shooting party, I don't have to ask him."
Her brother said ungraciously: "Well, I don't care who you ask if they'll thin out these cheeky brutes. Fancy that two-year-old pig clattering his tusks at me, planted there in the path with his mane on end!—You know it mortifies me, Kathleen—it certainly does. One of these fine days some facetious pig will send me shinning up a tree!" He grew madder at the speculative indignity. "By ginger! I'm going to have a shooting party before the snow flies," he muttered, walking forward between Kathleen and his sister. "Keep your eyes out ahead; we may jump another at any time, as the wind is all right. And if we do, let him have it, Geraldine!"
It was a beautiful woodland through which they moved.
The late autumn foliage was unusually magnificent, lacking, this year, those garish and discordant hues which Americans think it necessary to admire. Oak brown and elm yellow, deep chrome bronze and sombre crimson the hard woods glowed against backgrounds of pine and hemlock. Larches were mossy cones of feathery gold; birches slim shafts of snowy gray, ochre-crowned; silver and green the balsams' spires pierced the canopy of splendid tapestry upborne by ash and oak and towering pine under a sky of blue so deep and intense that the lakes reflecting it seemed no less vivid.
Already in the brooks they passed painted trout hung low over every bed of gravel and white sand; the male trout wore his best scarlet fins, and his sides glowed in alternate patterns, jewelled with ruby and sapphire spots. Already the ruffed grouse thundered up by coveys, though they had not yet packed, for the broods still retained their autonomy.
But somewhere beyond the royal azure of the northern sky, very, very far away, there was cold in the world, for even last week, through the violet and primrose dusk, out of the north, shadowy winged things came speeding, batlike phantoms against the dying light—flight-woodcock coming through hill-cleft and valley to the land where summer lingered still.
And there in mid-forest, right in the tall timber, Scott, advancing, flushed a woodcock, which darted up, filling the forest with twittering music—the truest music of our eastern autumn, clear, bewildering, charming in its evanescent sweetness which leaves in its wake a startling silence.
Ahead, lining both sides of a gully deep with last year's leaves, was an oak grove in mid-forest. Here the brown earth was usually furrowed by the black snouts of wild boar, for mast lay thick here in autumn and tender roots invited investigation.
"Get down flat and crawl," whispered Scott; "there may be a boar or two on the grounds."
Kathleen, in her pretty white gown of lace and some sheer stuff, looked at him piteously; but when he and Geraldine dropped flat and wriggled forward into the wind, misgiving of what might prowl behind seized her, and she tucked up her skirts and gave herself to the brown earth with a tremor of indignation and despair.
Nearer and nearer they crept, making very little sound; but they made enough to rouse a young boar, who jerked his head into the air, where he stood among the acorns, big, furry ears high and wide, nose working nervously.
"He's only a yearling," breathed Scott in his sister's ear. "There are traces of stripes, if you look hard. Wait for a better one."
They lay silent, all three peering down at the yearling, who stood motionless, nosing for tainted air, listening, peering about with dull, near-sighted eyes.
And, after a long time, as they made no sound, the brute wheeled suddenly, made a complete circle at a nervous trout, uttered a series of short, staccato sounds that, when he became older, would become deeper, more of an ominous roar than a hoarse and irritated grunt.
Two deer, a doe and a fawn, came picking their way cautiously along the edge of the gully, sometimes flattening their ears, sometimes necks outstretched, ears forward, peering ahead at the young and bad-tempered pig.
The latter saw them, turned in fury and charged with swiftness incredible, and the deer stampeded headlong through the forest.
"What a fierce, little brute!" whispered Kathleen, appalled. "Scott, if he comes any nearer, I'm going to get into a tree."
"If he sees us or winds us he'll run. Don't move; there may be a good boar in presently. I've thought two or three times that I heard something on that hemlock ridge."
They listened, holding their breath. Crack! went a distant stick. Silence; nothing stirred except the yearling who had returned to the mast and was eagerly nosing among the acorns. They could hear him crunching the husks, see the gleam of long white teeth which one day would grow outside that furry muzzle and curve up and backward like ivory sabres.
Geraldine whispered: "There's a huge black thing moving in the hemlock scrub. I can see its feet against the sky-line, and sometimes part of its bulk——"
"Oh, heavens," breathed Kathleen, "what is that?"
Out of the scrub trotted a huge, shaggy, black thing, all head and shoulders, with body slanting back abruptly to a pair of weak hindquarters. Down the slope it ran in quick, noiseless, jerky steps; the yearling turned his head, still munching, ears cocked forward. And suddenly the monster rushed at him with a squeal, and the yearling shrieked and fled, chased clear up the slope.
"It's a sow; don't shoot," whispered Scott. "Look, Sis, you can't see a sign of tusks. Good heavens, what a huge creature she is!"