"Little too fresh. Don't you want to change with me?"
"Not I."
Sometimes the trail permitted them to ride side by side for a few minutes, and look off over the world spread below.
"It's incredible—such peace," he said, as they drew their ponies to a halt.
"That passeth understanding," she nodded.
"I suppose this sense of awe, of rest,isworship,isreligion."
Barbara took a deep breath.
"Yes, it makes you feel purified."
The trail wound up and up. Every instant the view changed. There weredifficulties to be met, where washouts had made the road almost impassable. It seemed only an hour or two later that they caught up with Bill, clearing a space to make a fire and cook the lunch.
"Not lunch! Why, what time is it?" cried Bob.
"One o'clock by my watch, ten minutes since we started by my mind, and six o'clock to-night by my appetite," said Paul.
Seated on the ground, eating a thick sandwich and devouring Heinz's pickles, Barbara sighed ecstatically.
"There never was such food," said she.
"And that for your sated New York appetite!" laughed Paul.
After lunch Bill decreed a rest forman and beast. He made a couch of pine needles for Bob, threw down her blanket on it, and betook himself off with the ponies. Bob stretched out on her bed, Trent sitting beside her to smoke.
"Better take a nap," he suggested.
"Oh, I'm not at all sleepy," said she, and was off before she finished the sentence.
Trent sat, smiled, puffed, and looked off to the end of the world and back again at the sleeping girl. He lay on his back and stared up at the sky, glad of life, of health, glad, yes—he admitted it—glad of Barbara.
When Bill came back Paul laid his hand on Bob's and brought her to a sitting position, rubbing her eyes and blinking from deep sleep.
"I must have dropped off for a minute," she apologized.
"Yes, an hour or two."
"What?"
"You've been asleep for an hour."
"The divil I have! Did I miss anything?"
"A million-dollar panorama."
"Don't you let me sleep like that again, Paul Trent. I can sleep in a New York hotel to the tune of the Elevated. Did you sleep?"
"Yes."
"That helps some."
They rode through the late afternoon, when the air was like amber; through the time of the setting sun, when the world was like a glass prism of many colours; through the shadow time, when long bars of blue lay belowin the valley to mark the mountains. Then, just before the red disk burned into the mountain top and disappeared, Bill announced camp for the night.
A mountain stream bounded and roared along beside the place. A hut had been set up by a logging gang, and a thick bed of hardwood chips and bark powder marked the spot where the forest giants had met their inglorious end. Bill attended to the ponies while Bob and Paul collected firewood.
Supper was a silent function—the silence of people who understand each other and need not talk. Bob smiled at Paul when their eyes met, and for the rest, they looked off over a sample of God's handiwork that made man-talk as futile as monkey chatter.
"Do ye want to sleep in the cabin, Mrs. Bob?"
They both smiled at his appropriation of her name.
"No, Bill, I want to sleep on that bank, in the tanbark beside the brook."
"It'll keep ye awake. Awful noisy critter."
"I don't care if it does. Besides, it won't. I'll pretend I'm a goldfish, and the mountain torrent is my home."
Bill grinned at that.
"Ye goin' to be a goldfish, too, Mr. Trent?"
"I'll roll up here by the fire."
"I'll take the cabin myself, then. Can ye keep awake till I clean up camp, or shall I shake down some beds now?"
"No, no, you go ahead with thehousekeeping. We won't go to bed for hours," Bob answered.
She led the way up the trail a bit, Paul following.
"Bill has real tact—he's there when you want him, and only then."
"It is as near ideal as it can be," Paul assented. "You and I, and the world away," he added.
"There isn't any world—there's just earth and sky and God," said Bob softly.
"What about us?"
"We aren't us. We're blue shadows; the night will sap us up."
"No, no, I'm just beginning to be glad I'm I—to know what it means to live," he protested.
"I wonder if that is something to be glad for?" she mused.
It grew so dark that when Bill's shout reached them Paul had to grope his way down the trail first, Bob's hands on his shoulders as she came after him. Bill ordered them to turn in. They were to get an early start, and they needed sleep, because they were not broken in yet, they were still soft.
"There's a rocky bowl full of mounting water down there, where ye can wash," he said, pointing. "Here's yer bed, Mrs. Bob, and yer blankets is over there by the fire, Mr. Trent. I'll call ye in the mornin', if the sun don't git ye up."
He disappeared into the cabin, where a candle showed through the door.
"Let's go look at the bath-tub,"said Bob. They clung together and made their way to the spot where the rocks made a pool. The moon was up, but the trees threw mysterious shadows across the water. Bob took a stick and plumbed it.
"He tended the fire that was between them""He tended the fire that was between them"
"It isn't deep."
"No, only noisy, I think."
"Paul, I'm going in. You go off up there in that clump of trees, so I can call you, if I drown."
"You aren't going into that torrent now, in the dark!"
"Yes, I am."
"You're crazy!"
"Please let me. It's perfectly safe, and I never wanted to do anything so much in my life."
"You funny child!" he said, and walked off, according to orders.
Bob slid out of her clothes and plunged boldly into the icy torrent. She jumped up and down and squealed, she tried to swim, she laughed up at the moon, and was back into her clothes in a jiffy. At her call Paul plunged out of the trees to the rescue.
"Lost your nerve, did you?"
"No, I've been in. It's wonderful. Now, I want a drink of brandy, and my bark bed."
He laughed, came to the rescue with a flask, and led her to the place where Bill had spread her blankets.
"Good-night, Undine Goldfish," said Paul, and left her.
Presently, wrapped in her steamer rugs, she slid into sleep, like a mermaid into the sea. About three o'clock Paul turned over to throw alog on the fire, when a small figure, dragging blankets, came into view.
"What's the matter?"
"Oh, the night is so big and there's so much sky, it scares me."
"Is the night sapping you up?"
"Yes. I want to lie near the fire and you."
"Poor kid, she wants the lights o' home. Lie here where it's warm."
So until morning she lay on one side, and Paul on the other, while he tended the fire that was between them.
All days are alike in the mountains, all days are marvellously different. It seems sometimes as if a giant hand must push the great hills into new positions and relationships. Then the sky artist makes such daring experiments in shape and colour, as no Cubist ever dreamed of. People say they tire of the mountains and prefer the sea, because it is ever changing, but no man with the seeing eye ever makes that mistake. The sea soothes or irritates, but the mountains rouse the spiritual sources of your being—they are vision makers; they stretch you to your fullest measure, if you go to them with yearning.
The second day of their first expedition they jogged back to the ranch after an early supper on the heights. Barbara went on to the main house to see if hot water could be gotten for a bath, and came back chuckling.
"The bath-tubs are in the laundry house. You get a ticket. I'm thirteen. I hope this isn't a popular hour."
When she set forth laden with towels and soap Paul laughed.
"The luxury-loving idol of Broadway makes for the distant laundry!"
"I'd walk a mile for hot water to take this soreness out of my bones. You'd better get yourself a ticket."
"Thanks, I'll go into the river."
An hour later, in a soft frillynégligé, she joined him on the tiny veranda, where he sat smoking. He rose and bowed formally.
"How did you leave New York, Madam? I'd no idea we had guests."
"I'm only stopping over night," she retorted. "Are you alone in this wilderness?"
"No, I have a boy with me named Bob—a most engaging companion. He is away this evening.... How were the laundry tubs?"
She chuckled.
"I had to do battle for mine. A man was just going into my bathroom when I appeared. I claimed it, I presented my check as proof; he said I had forfeited my chance by being late."
"Western gallantry!"
"He was from New England, on the contrary!"
"What did you do?"
"I bowed low and quoted Sir Philip Sydney: 'Sir,' said I, 'thy need is greater than mine.'"
"Wasted, I'll warrant," laughed Trent. "Then what?"
"There was another vacant tub, so I took that and we splashed in unison, in adjoining booths. The water was hot and I feel too good to be true. How was the river?"
"Icy."
"Isn't it wonderful to feel all of yourself like this?"
"All of yourself?"
"Yes, most of the time you only feel the part of yourself that hurts. Now I feel my blood jumping in myveins, my heart pumping, my lungs expanding. I have eyes and ears in my skin. I'm using all of me."
"You've said it," he nodded appreciatively.
"Let's spend most of our time in the hills, Paul. I like it better than this, don't you?"
"Is this too domestic for you?" he teased.
"I suppose so. I don't want to be too intimate with you."
"You don't like me, on closer association?"
"I didn't say that."
"This kind of life is the ultimate test, I grant you that."
"Yes, it is. It's a good place to get acquainted." She turned her eyes on him. "I've just met you up here."
"Think you're going to like me?"
"I don't know."
"It is an awful responsibility."
"What is—liking you?"
"No, trying to make you like life well enough to stay on a while."
"I'm staying until you're elected, anyhow."
"If you should decide to stay on after that, what could I do to interest you?"
She lifted her brows in question.
"It's only the governor you're interested in—his fight, his success. I'm just the works inside his officialism."
"Like the stick inside the scarecrow," she smilingly assented.
"Exactly. Now will that scarecrow continue to interest you when he is set up in the gubernatorial field?"
"Depends on how the 'big stick' acts. I love a fight, you know."
"I see no peace ahead for me," he sighed.
"Better take it now," she said. "Look off there—peace like frozen music. Is there such a thing as a fight for governor, as Broadway, marionettes on a stage, turmoil and unrest? Bad cess to 'em, I'm going to bed," she ended abruptly.
"Good-night, Boy-Girl-Woman."
When her light was out he spoke through the open window: "Why don't you want to be intimate with me?"
"Oh, I think it's more interesting not to be," she answered.
"Do you think our present relations are interesting?"
"Rather," she answered sleepily.
They rarely came to the cabin after this except for supplies and fresh clothes. Day after day they spent in the saddle up on the heights. Bill found them insatiable, they gave him no rest. Barbara was introduced to a trout line and a mountain brook trout of her own catching. After that she insisted on visiting all the streams for miles around, where trout were to be found.
"Talk about a taste for whiskey, it's nothing to a taste for trout," said Bob.
"More exclusive, too," Paul added. "You can get whiskey on every corner in New York, but real fresh mountain trout you travel for."
"And work for, and suffer after!"
The usual plan was to break camp early. Paul and Barbara would fish upstream, while Bill led the ponies and met them at an appointed place to eat the catch. In her hip boots, with her basket on her shoulder, Bob waded the swift-running streams, or stood on the rocks above, the sun bright, the air like a new life fluid, time measured only by an ever-pursuing appetite. Long talks with Paul at night, under the stars, hours of silence, save for a word now and then to her pony, sleep in the open, with a plunge in an ice pool at dawn. Life was reduced to the lowest common denominator, the natural companionship of man, woman, and nature.
"How do you suppose we ever wandered so far away from the real things?" she asked him one day.
"What do you count the real things?" curiously.
"Life in the open; simple relations of people."
"Is Bill your highest ideal of man? By that definition he has the things that count."
"He's happier than either of us."
"Happy nothing! He's contented—tight in the only rut he knows. His mind is as active as rutebaga." She laughed at the homely word, but he went on with the idea. "Do you think he thrills at your mountains—sings rude hymns to your sunsets? Not he. The mountains are made for tourists, tourists are made for guides. As for sunset, well, that means time to sleep."
"Oh, Paul," she protested.
"It's true. Your 'plain man of the soil' is a hero only in novels. In real life he is apt to be a grub."
"I'd rather be a grub than a Broadway Johnny."
"Oh, let's talk about a man," he suggested, smiling.
"But where will you find him?"
"Somewhere between your two extremes. A man's sensibilities have to be opened to nature by training, as his mind is to books. You said it yourself, 'he's got to use all of himself.'"
In all their days of closest intercourse, there was no hint of sentiment. They were two good chums, off holiday making, that was all. What might come later, what was to be their ultimate relation, this sufficed for now.They both unconsciously protected this interim, this breathing space, before they faced a possible upheaval in their lives.
The day was fair and the trout biting well. Barbara stood on a rock while Paul cast in midstream below her. All at once her line went taut and she began to play her fish. Nearer and nearer the edge of the high rock he drew her, more and more excited she became with the struggle. All at once Paul heard a mighty splash, and strode to the rescue. She sat shoulder deep in the swift stream, as she had fallen, but with grim determination she played her fish!
"Take my line while I get up!" she ordered, transferring it.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
"No, I sat down for the fun of it, Mister!" she snapped, as she got to her feet. "Give me that!" He grinned and resigned her rod to her and watched her land her antagonist.
"There," said she, plumping him into Paul's basket. "He was a good fighter and a diplomat. He thought if he drowned me I'd let go."
"He was a poor judge of character," Paul remarked.
"Gee! I'm wet!" she exclaimed.
"Naturally—you swam after him. I thought you were drowned when I heard the splash. We'd better follow Bill to camp and get you dried out."
"Oh, no, not with them biting a mile a minute," she protested.
"But you're wet to the skin."
"I won't melt."
"This isn't the last day of the world, you know. Have you got dry clothes in your kit?"
"Shirt, but no breeches."
"Bill will have to make a fire and hang you on the line."
"I'll go, but you stay on. I'll come back when I'm dry."
"Sure you can find the way alone?"
She made a face at him. As she waded for the bank she addressed the fish that sped by her: "Go over and bite him!" Slopping water at every step she started for camp. When she saw he was watching her, she threw a shower of drops with a quick turn of her body.
"Automatic fire extinguisher!" she called back. His laugh answered her.
"That man has a nice laugh," she confided to the woods.
Bill received her with whoops of joy, and set to work to dry her out.
"You know how to make people very comfortable, Bill. Are you married?" she asked him.
"Not jest now."
"Does that mean that you have been or you're going to be?"
"I had a wife fer a while, but she lit out with a logger thet played the fiddle."
"Well, did you just let her go?"
"Sure, she was gone when I heard 'bout it."
"That was tough," she commiserated him.
"Oh, I don't know. She didn't like it on a ranch. I got her in a mining camp, so natcherlly she thought itwas slow out here. She was used to a shootin' or two on Sat'day nights."
"Think of not liking it here!"
"Wa'al, my likin' ain't your likin', ye know; no two the same. If I cud have played the fiddle, an ef I'd a had a hellofa temper, I might a kep' her. But there ye are."
"You don't know where she is?"
"Nope."
"You don't miss her?"
"Not so's ye'd notice."
"You didn't have any children?"
"Nope. Now let's talk about somethin' cheerful, like a lynchin'."
She begged for a tale of his gold-mining days. He was usually a silent man, but once or twice over the fire at night they had succeeded in unlocking his lips, and from that time on hiscolourful cowboy language had delighted Barbara. At first he had been a little shy of her, but now they were fast friends. He always mentioned her to Trent as "the little feller," and he admitted that "she was the best all-round woman exhibit he ever saw."
He had just reached the climax of his adventure when Paul came into camp. Barbara, wrapped in a blanket, sat beside the fire, while her clothes hung on the line behind her. Her face was alive with response to Bill's oratory.
"I grabbed him round the middle, an' I swang him over my head, an' I sot him down so hard it jarred his ancestors," said he. Barbara's laugh greeted the phrase and Paul stalked in on them.
"How is the little feller?" he asked.
"He has to stay in a barrel till his duds dries out," said Bill. "He furgot to hang his clothes on the hickory-nut limb."
"I've had the time of my life, listening to Bill. He knows more good stories than anybody in the world."
"Listen at her! She's stringin' ye, Mr. Trent." He strode off to take in the clothes, big with pride.
"Think you'll take cold?" asked Paul.
"Cold? The only way a cold could get me would be to bite me. I'm the wellest thing on earth."
"Broadway won't know you, you're so brown," he commented, looking down at her.
"Broadway? What's that?"
"A state of mind," he laughed.
The days slid by with incredibleswiftness. They extended their holiday twice to please Bill, who insisted on some special expeditions. A descent upon the cabin in the valley found a pile of mail awaiting them.
"Shall we burn it without opening it?" Trent asked her.
"And never go back?" she challenged him.
"And never go back," he answered gravely.
"Your proposition interests me," she said to lessen the tension. "This is a call to rehearsal." She held up the envelope.
"And this is a summons from my party leaders," he remarked, matching her envelope with his.
"What do you say, Barbara? Work or bolt?"
She looked at him steadily for a long moment, then slit her envelope. He lifted his eyebrows slightly and began on his letters.
"My call is for Monday. When is yours?" she said presently.
"Mine is urgent, but Monday in New York is soon enough. That means we must leave here Friday morning."
"This is Tuesday night. Let's go up once more, and come down Thursday night. We can pack in an hour. Let's say good-bye to it, up there."
"Good-bye to what?"
"To the mountains."
So it was arranged, and they set out on their last climb. The weather was uncertain but Bob would hear of no postponement.
"It seems as if we had always spent our days like this, as if we always would," she said as they rode.
"But you wouldn't like that."
"Probably not."
As the day wore on and they went higher with each mile, clouds began to gather, and thunder rumbled far away, then nearer.
"Goin' to git a storm," said Bill.
"Good! That's the one big thing we haven't had in the way of experience," Bob answered.
"Yer goin' to git it."
"How far are we from shelter, Bill?" Trent asked.
"There's a loggin' shack 'bout five miles up. We'd better jog along and git to it, fer when this here thing busts it's goin' to rip snort."
They pushed the ponies into a trot on all the level spots, and they scrambled up the steep grades, as if they, too, sensed danger. The clouds grew blacker and blacker.
"Those clouds bubble out of a huge cauldron," Bob said. Lightning began to crack across the sky, like fiery lashes of a whip. Bob reined up to watch.
"Come on, Bob, hurry!" ordered Trent. "This is no stage storm, it's the real thing."
The wind began to rise in intermittent gusts at first, then steadier, stronger, as if loosed from all restraint. The aspen trees and the ash bent to the earth in graceful salutations which fascinated Bob. A big tree trunk snapped somewhere, and they heard it fall with a noise like a groan.
"Hurry up, folks, it's after us!" shouted Bill.
Barbara answered with a shout of excitement and pleasure. They put their ponies to the run, sparing them neither for climb nor descent. The mountains seemed to rock about them; the noise of wind and thunder made speech impossible, little whirlwinds of dust and loose earth and stones enveloped them. Down below the valley was a black abyss.
They sighted the shack and made a last frantic scramble for it. As Bill kicked in the door of the cabin the last full fury broke. Trent lifted Barbara off her pony and ran into the house with her. Then the two men tried to shut the door.
"No, no, let it be open! It's wonderfulto be a part of it!" cried the girl. She tried to stand in the door, but the wind whirled her aside as if she were a leaf. At her beckoning Paul stood beside her, holding her upright. It was like a war of worlds they looked upon.
"Will the shack stand, Bill?" Paul called to him.
"Can't say. Not if this wind keeps up."
Crash and crack and hurricane of wind. Mountains blurred by distant rain, mountains streaked by lightning flashes. Then came the downpour: the rain deluged, it leapt out of the sky and pierced the earth like javelins. The men got the door closed, and tried to fit an old wash-pan into the window to keep out the torrent. Barbarawatched them, so excited she could scarcely contain herself. She would have gone out into it, if they could be induced to let her. Finally the shack was as waterproof as they could make it, with every available thing stuffed round the cracks and the edges.
Bill lit a candle, and Bob sat on the bunk, her feet drawn up under her. It was the one dry spot. They ate crackers and cheese and sardines for supper, with no chance to make a fire.
"It seems trivial to eat, when all that wonder is happening out there," she protested.
"Might as well eat as anything. Can't do nuthin' else," said Bill. "Pesky shame we can't make no coffee."
"But look whatthat'smaking, Bill!" she cried.
"Makin' a pesky lot of noise," he grumbled.
"The superman," jeered Paul.
Little by little the artillery diminished.
"He's calling them off—the god of war. What's his name?" she said.
"Thor. Weren't you frightened?" he asked curiously.
"No. It was worth all the dull days I've ever spent. I know how to go out now, Paul, if the time comes: up here, in glorious destruction!"
"You queer, uncanny Celt," said he.
Later they opened the door and ventured out. The earth was blotted out in blackness, as of the void beforeGod spoke. They made for a rock a few feet from the cabin, and stood peering off into opaque nothingness. Barbara felt for Paul's hand and clung to it. They stood so for a space of time, silent.
"I'm ready now to go back down. There's nothing more to learn up here. I know His peace and His wrath," she said at last.
"Life seems simpler, somehow—and greater, much greater," he answered her.
Monday found them back in New York. As they drove from the station to the hotel they watched the passing panorama in silence.
"It seems a little dwarfed, doesn't it?" Barbara said.
"Yes. New York needs an occasional dose of absence, to keep the perspective true," he answered.
They looked about the hotel living-room with a sense of its strangeness. The maid had everything in order, even to flowers everywhere.
"I can't seem to remember why we clutter up with so many luxuries," Barbara sighed.
"Are you a little sorry that you slit the envelope?" he teased her.
"No. Are you sorry I did it?"
"I had more to leave behind than you did."
She looked her surprise.
"I left the best playmate I ever had, up there in the hills."
"You mean Bill?" impudently.
"I mean the 'little feller'."
"You must ask him to visit you."
"No, he belongs to the hills and a heyday holiday. I doubt if Barbara Garratry, Broadway's darling, would care for that kid."
"I'm partial to nice boys."
"He might be fascinated with you, and make me jealous."
"That is a joke," she laughed. "I had to make a sacrifice, too, you know."
"You mean?"
"I had to exchange a big boy chum for a possible governor, plain garden variety."
"I wonder if that big boy and the little feller will ever play again?"
"'I ain't no pruphut,' as Bill says."
The morrow found them both buckling down to work. Paul went off to his office at nine, and Barbarawas due at the theatre an hour later. He stopped at her door a moment before he left.
"I seem to recall a great many truisms about the joy of work!"
"It's flapdoodle," she agreed, "the stuff that dreams are made of."
"No, speeches," he amended.
For a few days they both felt cramped, they shifted the old burden of the day's work uneasily, but routine breaks down resistance in the end, and they fell into step with their tasks. Paul was driven every moment. Their hurried visits were unsatisfactory enough. Bob kept in touch with his plans and movements as well as she could, but her own work was trying. The late heat was exhausting, and rehearsing always tried her soul.
"You act like a balky pony, Barbara Garratry," she scolded herself, "I wish Bill were here to give you a 'good jawin'."
Paul appeared at night about seven, hot, tired, harassed.
"Busy to-night?"
"No."
"What do you say to dinner on a roof garden—a city mountain top?"
"Delighted. Are you speaking to-night?"
"Yes, but not until late."
"May I come?"
"Oh, no, don't. I don't know why I dread so to have you in my audience."
"But I've never heard you speak. Maybe you think I couldn't understand your speeches."
"Or maybe I'm afraid you'll find out how much of them you inspire."
They went to the garden on top of the Biltmore, and secured a table as far from people as possible. They looked off over the roofs, which in the half light took on romantic outlines of mosques and minarets. The twin spires of St. Patrick's were mistily dominating it all, as usual. Lights burst slowly, here, there, then the whole upper way was white with electric radiance.
"This has a certain grandeur, too," Barbara said.
He nodded acquiescence, reading her thought.
"It inspires and stimulates, but it never rests you. I wonder why one's kind is so exhausting?" He indicatedthe garden, now full to the last seat. The chatter, the raised voices, the whirr of electric fans, they all taxed tired nerves to the snapping point. Barbara caught his weary look.
"Do you use all that force we stored up in the hills?" she asked.
"Of course. It's like a reserve army to a hard-pressed general."
"Let me tell you how I use it. I can plunge into the calm that lies out there in the mountains, just as surely as I stepped into that icy stream the first night we were there. I lie down in it, I drink it, I steep myself in it, and I come out refreshed and renewed. Try it, it's a trick of imagination."
The idea caught and held his attention for several minutes.
"Thanks. I'll try that. You're working very hard, aren't you?"
"Yes. I have to. I can't get interested. I want to go fishing."
"Me, too," he laughed.
"I've had bad news to-day."
He leaned toward her quickly.
"We are to open in Boston."
"No?"
"Yes. I must leave Sunday."
"You don't like Boston? You don't want to go?"
"No, I don't want to go."
"Why?" eagerly.
"Oh, I don't know. I'm more comfortable here."
"Oh!"
"You'll be glad to have me out of the way, while you're so busy."
"On the contrary. I rarely see you,but it is a pleasure to think that you are here."
"Thanks! Boston is suburban; if you could find time to——"
"I may come?"
She nodded.
"I'll find time."
Sunday she left for a month's absence. In a way she was glad to go. She realized that she needed time and solitude to think out several problems that confronted her. First and most important, she wanted to discover just how much of a part Paul Trent had come to play in her days. Removed entirely from the influence of his personality, she intended to free herself from him, look at him, and at herself impersonally.
He had rushed away from a meetingto put her on the train, and his farewell had been as casual as if she were going to Brooklyn for the evening. It had piqued her a bit. Then angry at herself that she had wanted him anything but casual, she had punished him with an indifference which a more astute student of women would have detected at once as over played.
She sighed over the growing complexity of the situation. Why could it not always be as simple and natural as it had been in the mountains? Monday was too busy for thoughts, rehearsal in the new theatre, getting settled in the new hotel, followed by a first night as climax.
When she arrived at the theatre she found her dressing-room full of Killarney roses, with a telegram from Paul:"Irish roses have to do. I wish I could fill the room with mountain laurel."
She was both touched and pleased. She knew he had taken time and thought from his busy day, and it gave her a thrill of happiness. It was enough to key her performance to a high note of joy which her audience felt at once. She was gladsome youth and daring, and she danced into their hearts, just as she had into the more hospitable affections of Broadway. There was no withstanding her. It was a triumph.
Later when the manager came to her room to congratulate her, she said: "Yes, they liked me, but I'm not going to extend the run."
"Why not, if the money's rolling in?"
"I don't care if it is. I want to get back to New York."
"You Irish are all crazy!" he remarked, with the Hebraic patience of one whose gods are all outraged. "She don't care for money, she likes New York," he mocked her.
Her friends came back in numbers after the play. She was invited to sup, to dine, to play bridge, to take tea. She refused to go anywhere until she was rested after the strain of the first night, and when they had all departed, she hurried into her street clothes. All at once it came to her that there was no need of this rush. Paul would not be pacing the corridor to-night. With a sigh and a sudden acute sense of loneliness, she led the way to the hotel.
As she stopped for her key the clerk told her that New York would call her at midnight. She hurried to her room, her heart beating, and as she opened the door the telephone rang. She flew to it.
"Yes, yes,Paul!" she said, and scarcely knew her own voice. "Yes, great success. I was wonderful, thanks to you ... yes, I was so happy about the flowers and the telegram; it sang in my playing. Tell me about your day. What happened?" She listened attentively. "Everything all right, then. Empty?... You mean you miss me? I can't be sorry for that, Playmate."
They talked on for several minutes. When good-nights were said, Bob crossed the room to lay off her cloak,smiling. She caught sight of herself in the mirror.
"Why, Barbara Garratry," she said, staring at herself. "How can you look like that after a Boston opening?" Then she laughed.
Friends absolutely closed in on her after the first few days. She had all she could do to protect herself.
The days were crowded with little things, people and teas. She found herself too restless to work. She could not analyze her state of mind at all. Nothing interested her, people seemed unusually stupid and bromidic, she lost interest in the play she was writing and found the one she was playing a bore. She knew that her health was perfect and she could not make it out.
In her search for something to diverther mind and serve as an escape from over-devoted admirers, she discovered a public municipal bath house, where she could go to swim. Clad in the shapeless blue garment provided by the bath house—Bob called it "the democratic toga"—she would shut her eyes and dive off the spring board, pretending that she was going into the mountain pool in the dark. The strength she had stored up in the hills stood her in good stead for the swimming races. Pauline, as she taught the girls to call her, was always, or nearly always, winner.
Nobody suspected who she was, and she found great amusement in the occasional outburst of some matinee adorer, in regard to the charms of Bob Garratry. She heard marvellousyarns about herself, her unhappy marriage, her large group of children, her many lovers.
"No, I haven't seen the lady," she answered one of them, "but I'll wager I can beat her swimming fifty yards."
"Oh, she wouldn'tswim!" protested the girl.
"Wouldn't she? Poor sort, then," said "Pauline," trying the Australian Crawl.