She did not reply. She was absorbed in contemplating one small thumb.
"I'm all ready to go," he ventured.
She said nothing.
"Shall we?"
She looked up, looked into his youthful eyes. After a moment she rose, a trifle pale. And he followed beside her through the sun-lit woods.
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Atthe gate of the New Race University and Masculine Beauty Preserve the pretty gate-keeper on duty looked at Langdon, then at his fair captor, in unfeigned astonishment.
"Why, Ethra!" she said, "isthatall you've brought home?"
"Did you think I was going to net a dozen?" asked Ethra Leslie, warmly. "Please unlock the gate. Mr. Langdon is tired and hungry, and I want the Regents to finish with him quickly so that he can have some luncheon."
The gate-keeper, a distractingly pretty red-haired girl, regarded Langdon with dubious hazel eyes.
"He'll never pass the examination," she whispered to Ethra. "What on earth are you thinking of?"
"What areyouthinking of, Marcella? You must be perfectly blind not to see that he complies with every possible requisite! The Regents' inspection is bound to be only a brief formality. Be good enough to unbar the gates."
Marcella slowly drew the massive bolts; hostile criticism was in the gaze with which she swept Langdon.
"Well, of all the insignificant looking young men," she murmured to herself as Ethra and her acquisition walked away along the path, side by side.
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Thecollective and individual charms of the Board of Regents so utterly over-powered Langdon that he scarcely realised what was happening to him.
First, at their request, he sat cross-legged on the ground; and they walked round and round him, inspecting him. Under such conditions no man could be at his best; there was a silly expression on his otherwise attractive face, which, as their attitude toward him seemed to waver between indifference and disapproval, became unconsciously appealing.
"Kindly rise, Mr. Langdon," said Miss Challis, chairman of the board.
Langdon got up, and his ears turned red with a sudden and burning self-consciousness.
"Please walk past us two or three times, varying your speed."
He walked in the various styles to which he had been accustomed, changing speed at intervals and running the entire gamut between a graceful boulevard saunter and a lost-dog sprint.
"Now," said the beautiful chairman, "be good enough to run past us several times."
He complied and they studied his kangaroo-like action. Miss Vining even bent over and felt of his ankles doubtfully, and to his vivid confusion Miss Darrell strolled up, made him sit down on a log, placed one soft, white finger on his mouth, and, opening it coolly, examined the interior. Then they drew together, consulting in whispers, then Miss Challis came with a stethoscope and listened to his pneumatic machinery, while Miss Vining carelessly pinched his biceps and tried his reflexes. After which Miss Darrell pushed a thermometer into his mouth, measured his pulses andblood pressure, tested his sight and hearing and his sense of smell. The latter was intensely keen, as he was very hungry.
Then Miss Challis came and stood behind him and examined, phrenologically, the bumps on his head, while Miss Vining, seated at his feet, read his palm, and Miss Darrell produced a dream book and a pack of cards, and carefully cast his horoscope. But, except that it transpired that he was going to take a journey, that somebody was going to leave him money, and that a dark lady was coming over the sea to trouble him, nothing particularly exciting was discovered concerning him.
Miss Challis, relinquishing his head, produced a crystal and gazed into it. She did not say what she saw there. Miss Vining tried to hypnotise him and came near hypnotising herself. Which scared and irritated her; and she let him very carefully alone after that.
And all the while Ethra sat on a tree stump, hands tightly clasped in her lap, looking on with pathetic eagerness and timidly searching the pretty faces of the Board of Regents for any hopeful signs.
Presently the Board retired to a neighbouring cave to confer; and Langdon drew a deep breath of relief.
"Well," he said, smiling at Ethra, "what do you think?"
"It will be horrid of them if they don't award you a blue ribbon," she said.
"Good heavens!" he faltered, "do they give ribbons?"
"Certainly, first, second, third, and honourable mention. It is the scientific and proper method of classification."
Fury empurpled his visage.
"That's the limit!" he shouted, but she silenced him with a gesture, nodding her head toward the surrounding woods; and among the trees he caught sight of scores and scores of pretty girls furtively observing the proceedings.
"Don't let them see you display any temper or you'll lose their good will, Mr. Langdon. Please recollect that there is no sentiment in this proceeding; it is a scientific matter to be scientifically recorded—purely a matter of eugenics."
Langdon gazed around him at the distant andcharming faces peeping at him from behind trees and bushes. Everywhere bright eyes met his mischievously, gaily. An immense sense of happiness began to invade him. The enraptured and fatuous smile on his features now became almost idiotic as here and there, among the trees, he caught glimpses of still more young girls strolling about, arms interlacing one another's waists. The prospect dazzled him; his wits spun like a humming top.
"Are—are many ladies likely to come and—and court me?" he asked timidly of Ethra.
A quick little pang shot through her; but she said with a forced smile: "Why do you ask? Are you a coquette, Mr. Langdon?"
"Oh, no! But, for example, I wouldn't mind being rushed by that willowy blonde over there. I'd also like to meet the svelte one with store puffs and sorrel hair. Sheisa looker, isn't she?"
"She is certainly very pretty," said Ethra, biting her lips with unfeigned vexation.
He gazed entranced at the distant throng for a while.
"And that little grey-eyed romp—the veryyoung and slim one," he continued enthusiastically. "Me for a hammock with her in the goosy-goosy moonlight. . . . And I hope I'm going to meet a lot more—every one of 'em. . . .Whaton earth isthat?" he exclaimed, changing countenance and leaning forward. "By Jinks, it's aman!"
"Certainly. There are four men here. You knew that."
"I forgot," he said, glowering at the unwelcome sight of his own sex.
Ethra said: "Oh, yes, there are those first four men we caught—Mr. Willett, Mr. Carrick, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Green." She added carelessly: "I have been paying rather marked attention to Alphonso W. Green."
"To whom?" he asked, with a disagreeable sensation drenching out the sparks of joy in his bosom.
"To Alphonso W. Green. . . . And I've jollied De Lancy Smith with bon-bons a bit, too. They are having a lot of attention paid them—and they're rather spoiled. But, of course, any girl can marry any one of them if she really wants to."
Langdon gazed miserably at her; she seemed to be pleasantly immersed in her own reflections and paid no further heed to him. Then he cast a scowling glance in the direction of the young man who was gathering wild flowers and arranging them in a little basket.
"Ethra," he began—and stopped short under the sudden and unexpected unfriendliness of her glance. "Miss Leslie," he resumed, reddening, "I wouldn't have come here unless I thought—hoped—believed—that you would paymem-m-marked——"
"Mr. Langdon!"
"What?"
"Men do not assume the initiative here. They make no advances; they wait until a girl pays them attentions so unmistakable that——"
"Well, Ididcome here because of you!" he blurted out angrily.
"That is an exceedingly indelicate avowal!" she retorted. "If the Regents hear you talk that way you won't be permitted to receive any girl unchaperoned."
He gazed at her, bewildered; she stood a moment frowning and looking in the direction of the cave whither the Board of Regents had retired.
"They're calling me," she exclaimed as a figure appeared at the cave entrance and beckoned her.
"I won't be long, Mr. Langdon. I am perfectly confident that you have passed the inspection!" And she walked swiftly across to the edge of the thicket where the three Regents stood outside their cave.
As she came up one of them put her arm around her.
"My poor child," she said, "that man will never do."
"W-what!" faltered the girl, turning pale.
"Why, no. How in the world could you make such a mistake?"
Ethra looked piteously from one to another.
"What is the matter with him?" she asked. "I can't see anything the matter with him. If his legs are a trifle—refined in contour—a bicycle will help——"
"But, Ethra, this is not a hospital, dear. This is not a sanitarium. We don't want any imperfect living creature inside this preserve."
"W-w-what is your decision?" asked the girl; and her underlip began to quiver, but she controlled it.
"The first vote," said Miss Challis, "was for his instant eviction, Miss Vining dissenting. The second vote was for his expulsion with the privilege of taking another examination in three months—Miss Darrell dissenting——"
"I think he's the limit," said Miss Darrell.
"Why, Jessica!" exclaimed Ethra, swallowing a sob.
"The next vote," continued Betty Challis, "was whether he might not remain here a day or two for closer observation. Jessica hasn't voted yet, but Phyllis Vining and I are willing——"
"Oh, Jessica!" pleaded Ethra, catching her hands and pressing them to her own breast, "I—I beg you will let him remain—if only for a few days! Please, please, dear. Iknowhis calves will grow if scientifically massaged; and if he is hygienically fed he will improve——"
Miss Darrell looked curiously at her; under her hands the girl's heart was beating wildly.
"Well, then, Betty," she said to Miss Challis,"I vote we keep him under observation for a day or two. Give him the yellow ribbon." And, bending, she kissed Ethra lightly on the lips, whispering:
"I'm afraid we won't be able to keep him, dear. But if you'd like to have a little fun with him and jolly him along, why—why, I was a flirt myself in the old days of the old regime."
"That is all I want," said Ethra, dimpling with delight. "I want to see how far I can go with him just for the fun of it."
Miss Darrell smiled tenderly at the girl and strolled off to join the other Regents; and Ethra, her thoughtful eyes fixed on Langdon, came slowly back, the yellow ribbon trailing in her hand.
Langdon leaped to his feet to meet her, gazing delightedly at the yellow ribbon.
"I qualified, of course!" he said joyously. "When is it customary to begin the courting?"
"You haven't qualified," said the girl, watching the effect of her words on the young man. "This is merely the probation ribbon."
An immense astonishment silenced him. Shedrew the big orange-coloured ribbon through his button-hole, tied it into a bow, patted it out into flamboyant smartness, and, stepping back, gazed at him without any particular expression in her dark blue eyes.
"Then, then I may be chased away at any moment?" he asked unsteadily.
"I am afraid so."
Thunderstruck, he stared at her: "What on earth are we to do?" he groaned.
"We?"
"You and I?"
"How does it concernme?" asked the girl coldly.
"Doesn't it?"
She looked him calmly in the eye and shook her head.
"No, Mr. Langdon. However, as you are to remain here for a day or two under observation, no doubt you will receivesomeattention."
"Ethra! Isn't it possible that you might learn to care——"
"Hush! That is no way to talk!"
"Well—well, I can't wait for you to——"
"Youmustwait! You have nothing to say about such things until some girl asks you. And that isn't very likely. Those four perfectly handsome young men have been here for weeks now, and, although they have received lots of attention, not one girl has yet made any of them an actual declaration. The girls here are having too good a time to do anything more serious than a little fussing—just enough to frisk a kiss now and then and keep the men amused——"
"Thatis monstrous!" said Langdon, very red. "When a man's really in love——"
"Nonsense! Men are flirts—every one of them!"
She laughed, made him a little gesture of adieu, refused to let him follow her, and coolly sauntered off among the trees, heedless of his remonstrances at being left to himself.
He watched her until she disappeared, then, with misgivings, walked toward a tennis court, where the four men were playing a rather dawdling and indifferent game and keeping a lively eye out for the advent of some girl.
They appeared to be rather good-looking fellows, not in any way extraordinary, remarkable neither for symmetry of feature nor of limb.
Langdon stood at the edge of the court looking at them and secretly comparing their beauty with such charms as he was shyly inclined to attribute to himself. There could be no doubt that he compared favourably with them. If he was some, they were not so much.
One, a tall young fellow with blond, closely clipped hair, nodded pleasantly to him, and presently came over to speak to him.
"I suppose you are a new recruit. Glad to see you. We're all anxious to have enough men captured to get up two ball nines. My name is Reginald Willett."
"Mine is Curtis Langdon."
"Come over and meet the others," said Willett pleasantly.
Langdon followed him, and was presently on excellent terms with James Carrick, De Lancy Smith, and Alphonso W. Green, amiable, clean cut, everyday young fellows.
To them he related the circumstances of his capture, and they all laughed heartily. Then hetold them that he was here merely on probation for a day or two, naïvely displaying the yellow ribbon.
Willett laughed. "Oh, that's all right. They usually say that. We all came in on probation; the Regents couldn't agree, and some girl always swings the deciding vote as a special favour to herself."
"You don't think they'll kick me out?"
"Not much!" laughed Willett. "First of all, your captor would object—not necessarily for sentimental reasons, but because she caught you; you are hers, her game; she says to herself: 'A poor thing, but mine own!' and hangs to you like grim death. Besides, no woman ever lets any man loose voluntarily. And women haven't changed radically, Mr. Langdon. Don't worry; you can stay, all right."
"Here comes Betty Challis," said Carrick, glancing at Alphonso W. Green. "It's you for a stroll, I guess."
Mr. Green looked conscious; more conscious still when the pretty Miss Challis strolled up, presented him with a bouquet, and stood for a fewmoments conversing with everybody, perfectly at her ease. Other girls came up and engaged the young men in lively conversation. Presently Miss Challis made a play for hers:
"Would you care to canoe, Mr. Green?" she asked casually, turning to him with a slight blush which she could not control.
Green blushed, too, and consented in a low voice.
As they were departing, Miss Vining rode up on horseback, leading another horse, which De Lancy Smith, at her request, nimbly mounted; and away they galloped down a cool forest road, everybody looking after them.
Miss Darrell cut out and roped Willett presently and took him to walk in the direction of a pretty cascade.
A charming girl, a Miss Trenor, arrived with a hammock, book, and bon-bons, and led Carrick away somewhere by virtue of a previous agreement, and the remaining girls pretended not to care, and strolled serenely off in pretty bunches, leaving Langdon standing, first on one foot, then on the other, waiting to be spoken to.
Abandoned, he wandered about the tennis court, kicking the balls moodily. Tiring of this, he sat down under a tree and twirled his thumbs.
Once or twice some slender figure passed, glancing brightly at him, and he looked as shyly receptive as he could, but to no purpose. Gloom settled over him; hunger tormented him; he gazed disconsolately at the yellow ribbon in his button-hole, and twiddled his thumbs.
And all the while, from the shadow of a distant cave, Ethra was watching him with great content. She knew he was hungry; she let him remain so. By absent treatment she was reducing him to a proper frame of mind.
The word had been passed that he was Ethra's quarry; mischievous bright eyes glanced at him, but no lips unclosed to speak to him; little feet strolled near him, even lingered a moment, but trotted on.
His sentiments varied from apathy to pathos, from self-pity to mortification, from hungry despair to an indignation no longer endurable.
He had enough of it—plenty. Anger overwhelmed him; hunger smothered sentiment; he rosein wrath and stalked off toward a girl who was strolling along, reading a treatise on eugenics.
"Will you be good enough to tell me how to get out?" he asked.
"Out?" she repeated. "Have you a pass to go out?"
"No, I haven't. Where do I obtain one?"
"Only the girl who captured you can give you a pass," she said, amused.
"Very well; where can I find her?"
"Who was it netted you?"
"A Miss Leslie," he snapped.
"Oh! Ethra Leslie's cave is over in those rocks," said the girl, "among those leafy ledges."
"Thanks," he said briefly, and marched off, scowling.
Ethra saw him coming, and his stride and expression scared her. Not knowing exactly what to do, and not anticipating such a frame of mind in him, she turned over in her hammock and pretended to be asleep, as his figure loomed up in the mouth of the cave.
"Miss Leslie!" His voice was stentorian.
She awoke languidly, and did it very well, making a charming picture as she sat up in her hammock, a trifle confused, sweet blue eyes scarcely yet unclosed.
"Mr. Langdon!" she exclaimed in soft surprise.
He looked her squarely, menacingly, in the eyes.
"I suppose," he said, "that all this is a grim parody on the past when women did the waiting until it was men's pleasure to make the next move. I suppose that my recent appraisement parallels the social inspection of a debutante—that my present hunger is paying for the wistful intellectual starvation to which men once doomed your sex; that my isolation represents the isolation from all that was vital in the times when women's opportunities were few and restricted; that my probation among you symbolises the toleration of my sex for whatever specimen of your sex they captured and set their mark on as belonging to them, and on view to the world during good behaviour."
He stared at her flushed face, thoughtfully.
"The allegory is all right," he said, "but you've cast the wrong man for the goat. I'm going."
"Y-you can't go," she stammered, colouring painfully, "unless I give you a pass."
"I see; it resembles divorce. My sex had to give yours a cause for escape, or you couldn't escape. And in here you must give me a pass to freedom, or I remain here and starve. Is that it?"
She crimsoned to her hair, but said nothing.
"Give me that pass," he said.
"If I do every girl here will gossip——"
"I don't care what they say. I'm going."
She sat very still in the hammock, eyes vacant, chin on hand, considering. It was not turning out as she had planned. She had starved him too long.
"Mr. Langdon," she said in a low voice, "if it is only because you are hungry——"
"I'm not; I'm past mere hunger. You disciplined me because I took a human and natural interest in the pretty inhabitants of this new world. And Itoldyou that I never would have entered it except for you. But you made me pay for a perfectly harmless and happy curiosity. Well, I've starved and paid. Now I want to go.. . . Either I go or there'll be something doing—because I won't remain here and go hungry much longer."
"S-something—doing?" she faltered.
"Exactly. With the first——"
"You can go if you wish," she said, flushing scarlet and springing out of the hammock.
He waited, jaws set, while she seated herself at a table and wrote out the pass.
"Thank you," he said, in such a rage that he could scarcely control his voice.
She may not have heard him; she sat rigid at the table, looking very hard into space—sat motionless as he took a curt leave of her, never turning her head—listened to his tread as he strode off through the ferns, then laid her brow between snowy hands which matched the face that trembled in them.
As for him, he swung away along the path by which he had come, unstrung by turns, by turns violently desiring her unhappiness, and again anticipating approaching freedom with reckless satisfaction.
Then a strange buoyancy came over him as hearrived in sight of the gate, where the red-haired girl sat on a camp stool, yawning and knitting a silk necktie—for eventualities, perhaps; perhaps for herself, Lord knows. She lifted her grey eyes as he came swinging up—deep, clear, grey eyes that met his and presently seemed ready to answer his. So his eyes asked; and, after a long interval, came the reply, as though she had unconsciously been waiting a long, long while for the question.
"I suppose you will wish to keep this," he said in a low voice, offering her the pass. "You will probably desire to preserve it under lock and key."
She rose to her slender height, took it in her childish hands, hesitated, then, looking up at him, slowly tore the pass to fragments and loosed them from her palm into the current of the south wind blowing.
"That does not matter," she said, "if you are going to love me."
There was a moment's silence, then she held out her left hand. He took it; with her right hand, standing on tiptoe, she reached up and unbarred the gates. And they passed out together into the infernal splendour of the sunset forest.
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Theriots in London culminated in an episode so cataclysmic that it sobered the civilised world. Young Lord Marque, replying to a question in the House of Lords, said: "As long as the British peerage can summon muscular vigour sufficient to keep a monocle in its eye and extract satisfaction from a cigarette, no human woman in the British Empire shall ever cast a bally ballot for any bally purpose whatever. What!"
And the House of Lords rose to its wavering legs and cheered him with an enthusiasm almost loud enough to be heard above ordinary conversation.
But that unwise and youthful and masculine defiance was the young man's swan-song. A malesuffragette rushed with the news to Miss Pondora Bottomly; Lord Marque was followed as he left the house; and that very afternoon he was observed fleeing in a series of startled and graceful bounds through Regent Park, closely pursued by several ladies of birth, maturity, and fashion carrying solid silver hair-brushes.
The Queen, chronicling the somewhat intimate and exclusive affair a week later, mentioned that: "Among those present was the lovely Lady Diana Guernsey wearing tweeds, leather spats, and waving a Directoire Banner embroidered with the popular device, 'Votes for Women,' in bright yellow and bottle green on an old rose ground;" and that she had far outdistanced the aged Marchioness of Dingledell, Lady Spatterdash, the Hon. Miss Mousely, the Duchess of Rolinstone, Baroness Mosscroppe, and others; and that, when last seen, she and the Earl of Marque were headed westward. A week later no news of either pursuer or pursued having been received, considerable uneasiness was manifested in court and suffragette circles, and it was freely rumoured that Lady Guernsey had made a rather rash but thoroughly characteristic vow that she would never relinquish the trail until she had forced Lord Marque to eat his own words, written in frosting upon a plum cake of her own manufacture.
Marque may have heard of this vow, and perhaps entertained lively doubts concerning Lady Diana's abilities as a pastry cook. At any rate, he kept straight on westward in a series of kangaroo-like leaps until darkness mercifully blotted out the picture.
Remaining in hiding under a hedge long enough to realise that London was extremely unsafe for him, he decided to continue west as far as the United States, consoling himself with the certainty that his creditors would have forced his emigration anyway before very long, and that he might as well take the present opportunity to pick out his dollar princess while in exile.
But circumstances altered his views; the great popular feminine upheaval in America was now in full swing; the eugenic principle had been declared; all human infirmity and degenerate imperfections were to be abolished through marriages based no longer upon sentiment and personal inclination, but upon the scientific selection of mates for the purpose of establishing the ideally flawless human race.
This was a pretty bad business for Lord Marque. The day after his arrival he was a witness of the suffragette riots when the Mayor, the Governor, and every symmetrical city, county, and State official was captured and led blushing to the marriage license bureau. He had seen the terrible panic in Long Acre, where thousands of handsome young men were being chased in every direction by beautiful and swift-footed suffragettes. From his window in the Hotel Astor he had gazed with horror upon this bachelors' St. Bartholomew, and, distracted, had retired under his bed for the balance of the evening, almost losing consciousness when a bell-hop knocked at his door with a supply of towels.
Only one thought comforted him; the ocean rolled majestically between the Lady Diana, her pastry, and the last of the house of Marque.
Never should that terrible and athletic young woman discover his whereabouts if he had to remain away from London forever; never, never would he eat that pastry!
As he lay under his bed, stroking his short moustache and occasionally sneezing, he remembered with a shudder his flight from those solid silver hair-brushes through Regent's Park; he recalled how, behind him, long after the heavier feminine aristocracy had given up the chase, one youthful, fleet, supple, and fearsome girl had hung to his trail—a tall, lithe, incarnation of her goddess namesake.
She had been too far away for him to distinguish her features; only in Liverpool, where one dark night he ventured out to buy a copy of theQueenand eagerly read the details of the function, did he learn the name of his closest pursuer.
Later, furtively haunting the smoking room on theCaramania, he learned from the gossip there of Lady Diana's vow that she would never rest until Lord Marque had eaten her plum cake with its frosted inscription—this inscription consisting of the flippant words of his own rash speech delivered in the upper house of Parliament.
Now, lying on his back under the bed, whileoutside in Long Acre the dreadful work was going on, he lighted a cigarette and pondered the situation. He didn't believe that Lady Diana would attempt to trail him to America. That was one comfort. But, in view of the suffragette disturbances going on outside his windows, he saw little prospect of a dollar princess for the present. Meanwhile, how was he to exist?
The vague and British convictions concerning the rapid accumulation of wealth on a "ranch" of any kind comforted Marque. He also believed them.
And three months later he had managed to survive a personal acquaintance with the following episodes:
First, one large revolver bullet through hat with request to answer affably when addressed by white men.
Second, one infuriated cow.
Third, one indigestion incubated by cumulative series of pie and complicated by attentions from one large centipede.
Fourth, one contusion from a Montana boot with suggestion concerning monocle.
Fifth, one 45-70 Winchester projectile severing string of monocle, accompanied by laughter and Navajo blanket.
Sixth, comprehensive corporal casualties incident upon international altercation concerning relative importance of Guy Fawkes and July 4th.
Seventh, physical debility due to excessive local popularity following personal encounter with one rustler.
Eighth, complete prostration in consequence of frequent attempts to render thanks for toasts offered him at banquet in celebration of his impending departure for the East.
Ninth, general collapse following bump of coal and forcible ejection from freight train near Albany, New York.
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Theduties of young Lord Marque, the new man on the Willett estate at Caranay, left him at leisure only after six o'clock, his day being almost entirely occupied in driving a large lawn mower.
Life, for John Marque—as he now called himself—had become exquisitely simple; eating, sleeping, driving a lawn mower—these three manly sports so entirely occupied the twenty-four hours that he had scarcely time to do much weeding—and no time at all to sympathise with himself because he was too busy by day and too sleepy at night.
Sundays he might have taken off for the purpose of condoling with himself, had it not been for the new telephone operator.
She was a recent incumbent at the railroad station—a tall, clear-skinned, yellow-haired girl of twenty-five who sat at her desk all day saying in a low, prettily modulated voice, "hello—hello—hello—hello" to unseen creatures of whom John Marque wotted not.
Three things concerning her he had noticed: She wore pink gingham; she never seemed to see him when he came down to the little sunburnt platform and seated himself on the edge, feet dangling over the rails; he had never seen her except when she was seated at the pine table which was ornamented by her instrument and switchboard. She had a bed-room and kitchen in the rear. But he never saw her go into them or emerge; never saw her except seated at her switchboard, either reading or sewing, or, with the silvery and Greek-like band encircling her hair and supporting the receiver close to her small ears, repeating in her low, modulated voice: hello—hello—hello—hello.
He wondered how tall she might be. He had never seen her standing or walking. He wondered what her direct gaze might be like. Only her profile had he yet beheld—a sweet, youthful, profile nobly outlined under the gold of her hair; but under the partly lowered lashes as she sat sewing or reading or summoning centrals from the vast expanses of North America, he divined eyes of a soft lilac-blue. And he chewed his pipe-stem and kicked his feet and thought about them.
Few trains stopped at Caranay except for water; the station, an old-time farm house of small dimensions, overlooking the track and Willow Brook, contained ticket office, telephone, and telegraph in one—all presided over by the telephone operator. Sometimes as many as two people in a week bought railroad tickets; sometimes a month would pass without anybody either sending or receiving a telegram. Telephone calls were a little more frequent.
So the girl had little to do there at her sunny open window, where mignonette and heliotrope and nasturtiums bloomed in pots, and the big bumble bees came buzzing and plundering the little window garden. And, except on Sundays, Marque had little leisure to observe her, although in thelong late June evenings it was still light at eight o'clock, and he had, without understanding how or why, formed the habit of coming down to the deserted station platform to smoke his pipe and sometimes to fish in the shallow waters of Willow Brook, and watch the ripples turn from gold to purple, and listen to a certain bird that sat singing every day at sunset on the tip of a fir-balsam across the stream—a black and white bird with a rosy pink chest.
So lovely the evening song of this bird that Marque, often watching the girl askance, wondered that the surprising beauty of the melody never caused her to lift her head from book or sewing, or even rise from the table and come out to the doorway to listen.
But she never did; and whether or not the bird's singing appealed to her, he could not determine.
Nobody in the little gossiping hamlet of Caranay seemed to know more than her name; he himself knew only a few people—men who, like himself, worked on the Willett place with hoe and rake and spraying cart and barrow—comrades of roller and mower and weed-fork and mole-trap—dull-witted cullers of dandelion and rose-beetle. And mostly their names were Hiram.
These had their own kind in the female line to "go with"—Caranay being far from the metropolis, and as yet untroubled by the spreading feminine revolution. Only stray echoes of the doings had as yet penetrated to Caranay daisy fields; no untoward consequences had as yet ensued except that old Si Dinglebat's wife, after reading the remains of a New York paper found on the railroad track, had suddenly, and apparently in a fit of mental aberration, attacked Si with a mop, accompanying the onslaught with the reiterated inquiry: "Air wimmen to hev their rights?"
That was the only manifestation of the welt-weh in Caranay—that and the other welt on Si's dome-like and knobby forehead.
He encountered Marque that evening after supper as that young man, in clean blue jeans, carrying a fish-pole and smoking his pipe, was wandering in circles preparatory to a drift in the general direction of the railroad station.
"Evenin', neighbour!" he said.
"Good evening," said the young man.
"Goin' sparkin'?" inquired Si, overflowing with natural curiosity and tobacco.
"What?"
"Be you goin' a-sparkin'?"
"Nonsense!" said Marque, reddening. "I don't know any girls in Caranay."
"Waal, I cal'late you know that gal down to the depot, don't ye?"
"No, I don't."
"Hey? I'm a leetle deef."
"No!" shouted Marque, "I don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't know her, dammit!"
"Aw, quit yer cussin'," said Si, with a gummy wink. "Folks has been talkin' ever since the fustest time you set onto that there platform and that Eden gal fooled ye with her lookin' glass."
"What are you talking about?" said Marque impatiently.
"Issy Eden and her pretendin' not to see nobody—an' her a lookin' into the leetle glass behind her table and a seein' of ye all the time! I know she kin see because she ketched Hi Orville's boy a-hookin' apples outen the bar'l that—"
"You mean she is able to seeanybodyon the platform," said Marque, confused and astounded.
"You bet she kin. I know because I peeked in the winder an' I seen her a-lookin' at you when you was fishin'——"
But the young fellow had recovered himself: "All right," he interrupted; "that isn't your business or mine. Who gave you that crack on the lid?"
"By gum," he said, "Hetty done it. I was that took! Forty year, and she ain't never throwed s'much as a dish pan at me. I wa'n't lookin' for no sech thing at my time o' life, young man. So when I come in to wash up for supper, I sez to my woman, 'Hello, Het,' sez I, an' she up an' screeched an' fetched me a clip.
"'Lord a'mighty!' sez I. 'Look out what ye doin',' sez I. 'Air wimmen to hev their rights?' sez she, makin' for me some more. 'Is wimmen to be free?' she sez.
"'Yew bet,' sez I, grabbin' onto her. 'I'll make free with ye,' sez I. An' I up an' tuk an' spanked Hetty—the first time in forty year, young man! An' it done her good, I guess, for she ain't nevercooked like she cooked supper to-night. God a'mighty, what biscuits them was!"
Marque listened indifferently, scarcely following the details of the domestic episode because his mind was full of the girl at the station and the amazing discovery that all these days she could have seen him perfectly well at any moment if she had chosen to take the trouble, without moving more than her dark, silky lashes. Had she ever taken that trouble? He did not know, of course. He would like to have known.
He nodded absently to the hero of the welt-weh clash, and, pipe in one hand, pole in the other, walked slowly down the road, crossed the track, and seated himself on the platform's edge.
She was at her desk, reading. And the young man felt himself turning red as he realised that, if she had chosen, she could have seen him sitting here every evening with his eyes fixed—yes, sentimentally fixed upon the back of her head and her pretty white neck and the lovely contour of her delicately curved cheek.
All by himself he sat there and blushed, head lowered, apparently fussing with his line and hookand trying to keep his eyes off her, without much success.
His angling methods were simple; he crossed the grass-grown track, set his pole in position, and returned to seat himself on the platform's edge, where he could see his floating cork and—her. Then, as usual, he relapsed into meditation.
If only just once she had ever betrayed the slightest knowledge of his presence in her vicinity he might, little by little, cautiously, and by degrees, have ventured to speak to her.
But she never had evinced the slightest shadow of interest in anything as far as he had noticed.
Now, as he sat there, the burnt out pipe between his teeth, watching alternately his rod and his divinity, the rose-breasted grosbeak began to sing in the pink light of sunset. Clear, pure, sweet, the song rang joyously from the tip of the balsam's silver-green spire. He rested his head on one hand and listened.
The song of this bird, the odour of heliotrope, the ruddy sunlight netting the ripples—these, for him, must forever suggest her.
He had curious fancies about her and himself. He knew that, if she ever did turn and look at him out of those lilac-tinted eyes, he must fall in love with her, irrevocably. He admitted to himself that already he was in love with all he could see of her—the white neck and dull gold hair, the fair cheek's curve, the glimpse of her hand as she deliberately turned a page in the book she was reading.
But that evening passed as had the others; night came; she lowered her curtain; a faint tracery of lamplight glimmered around the edges; and, as always, he lighted his pipe and took his fish, and shouldered his pole and went home to die the little death we call sleep until the sun of toil should glitter above the eastern hills once more.
A few days later he decided to make an ass of himself, having been sent with a wagon to Moss Centre, a neighbouring metropolis.
First he sent a telegram to himself at Caranay, signing it William Smith. Then he went to the drug store telephone, and called up Caranay.
"Hello! What number, please?" came a far, sweet voice; and Marque trembled: "No number.I want to speak to Mr. Marque—Mr. John Marque."
"He isn't here."
"Are you sure?"
"Perfectly. I saw him driving one of Mr. Willett's wagons across the track this morning."
"Oh, that's too bad. Could I—might I—ask a little information of you?"
"Certainly."
"What sort of a fellow is this John Marque? He doesn't amount to much I understand."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I might want to employ him, but I don't believe he is the sort of man to trust——"
"You are mistaken!" she said crisply.
"You mean he is all right?"
"Absolutely."
"Honest?"
"Of course."
"Capable?"
"Certainly."
"Sober?"
"Perfectly."
"M-moral?"
"Unquestionably!" she said indignantly.
"Are you sure?"
"I am."
"How do you know?"
"I have means of information which I am not at liberty to disclose. Who is this speaking?"
"William Smith of Minnow Hollow."
"Are you going to take Mr. Marque to Minnow Hollow?"
"I may."
"You can't. Mr. Willett employs him."
"Suppose I offer him better wages——"
"He is perfectly satisfied here."
"But I——"
"No! Mr. Marque does not care to leave Caranay."
"But——"
"I am sorry. It is useless to even suggest it to him. Good-bye!"
With cheeks flushed and a slightly worried expression she resumed her sewing through the golden stillness of the afternoon. Now and then the clank of wagon wheels crossing the metals caused her to glance swiftly into her mirror to see whatwas going on behind her. And at last she saw Marque drive up, cross the track, then, giving the reins to the boy who sat beside him, turn and walk directly toward the station. And her heart gave a bound.
For the first time he came directly to her window; she saw and heard him, knew he was waiting behind the mignonette and heliotrope, and went on serenely sewing.
"Miss Eden?"
She waited another moment—time enough to place her sewing leisurely on the table. Then, very slowly she turned in her chair and looked at him out of her dark lilac-hued eyes.
He heard himself saying, as in a dream:
"Is there a telegram for me?"
And, as her delicate lifted brows questioned him:
"I am John Marque," he said.
She picked up the telegram which lay on her table and handed it to him.
"Thank you," he said. After he had gone she realised that she had not spoken.
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Wheneverhe went to Moss Centre with the wagon he telephoned and telegraphed to himself, and about a month after he had begun this idiot performance he ventured to speak to her.
It occurred late in July, just before sunset. He had placed his rod, lighted his pipe, and seated himself on the platform's edge, when, all of a sudden, and without any apparent reason, a dizzy sort of recklessness seized him, and he got up and walked over to her window.
"Good evening," he said.
She looked around leisurely.
"Good evening," she said in a low voice.
"I was wondering," he went on, scared almost to death, "whether you would mind if I spoke to you?"
After a few seconds she said:
"Well? Have you decided?"
Badly frightened, he managed to find voice enough to express his continued uncertainty.
"Why did you care to speak to me?" she asked.
"I—we—you——" and he stuck fast.
"Had you anything to say to me?" she asked in a lower—and he thought a gentler—voice.
"I've a lot to say to you," he said, finding his voice again.
"Really? What about?"
He looked at her so appealingly, so miserably, that the faintest possible smile touched her lips.
"Can I do anything for you, Mr. Marque?"
"If—if you'd only let me speak to you——"
"But I am letting you."
"I mean—to-morrow, too——"
"To-morrow? To-morrow is a very, very long way off. It is somewhere beyond those easternhills—but a very, very long way off!—as far as the East is from the West. No; I know nothing about to-morrow, so how can I promise anything to anybody?"
"Will your promise cover to-day?"
"Yes. . . . The sun has nearly set, Mr. Marque."
"Then perhaps when to-morrow is to-day you will be able to promise——"
"Perhaps. Have you caught any fish?"
After a moment he said: "How did you know I was fishing? You didn't turn to look."
She said coolly: "How did you know I didn't?"
"You never do."
She said nothing.
At her window, elbows on the sill, the blossoms in her window-box brushing his sunburnt face, he stood, legs crossed, pipe in hand, the sunset wind stirring the curly hair at his temples.
"Did you hear the bird this evening?" he asked.
"Yes. Isn't he a perfect darling!"
Her sudden unbending was so gracious, so sweet that, bewildered, he remained silent for a while, recovering his breath. And finally:
"I never knew whether or not you noticed his singing," he said.
"How could you suppose any woman indifferent to such music?" she asked indignantly. She was beginning to realise how her silence had starved her all these months, and the sheer happiness of speech was exciting her. Into her face came a faint glow like a reflection from the pink clouds above the West.
"That little bird," she said, "sings me awake every morning. I can hear his happy, delicious song above the rushing chorus of dawn from every thicket. He dominates the cheery confusion by the clear, crystalline purity of his voice."
It scarcely surprised him to find himself conversing with a cultivated woman—scarcely found it unexpected that, in her, speech matched beauty, making for him a charming and slightly bewildering harmony.
Her slim hands lay in her lap sometimes; sometimes, restless, they touched her bright hair or caressed the polished instruments on the table before her. But, happy miracle! her face and bodyremained turned toward him where he stood leaning on her window-sill.
"There is a fish nibbling your hook, I think," she said.
He regarded his bobbing cork vaguely, then went across the track and secured the plump perch. At intervals during their conversation he caught three more.
"Now," she said, "I think I had better say good-night."
"Would you let me give you my fish?"
She replied, hesitating: "I will let you give me two if you really wish to."
"Will you bring a pan?"
"No," she said hastily; "just leave them under my window when you go."
Neither spoke again for a few moments, until he said with an effort:
"I have wanted to talk to you ever since I first saw you. Do you mind my saying so?"
She shook her head uncertainly.
He lingered a moment longer, then took his leave. Far away into the dusk she watched him until the trees across the bridge hid him. Thenthe faint smile died on her lips and in her eyes; her mouth drooped a little; she rested one hand on the table, rose with a slight effort, and lowered the shade. Listening intently, and hearing no sound, she bent over and groped on the floor for something. Then she straightened herself to her full height and, leaning on her rubber-tipped cane, walked to the door.
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Hecame every day; and every day, at sundown, she sat sewing by the window behind her heliotrope and mignonette waiting.
Sometimes he caught perch and dace and chub, and she accepted half, never more. Sometimes he caught nothing; and then her clear, humorous eyes bantered him, and sometimes she even rallied him. For it had come to pass in these sunset moments that she was learning to permit herself a friendliness and a confidence for him which was very pleasant to her while it lasted, but, after he had gone, left her with soft lips drooping and gaze remote.
Because matters with her, with them both, shefeared, were not tending in the right direction. It was not well for her to see him every day—well enough for him, perhaps, but not for her.
Some day—some sunset evening, with the West flecked gold and the zenith stained with pink, and the pink-throated bird singing of Paradise, and the brook talking in golden tones to its pebbles—some such moment at the end of day she would end all of their days for them both—all of their days for all time.
But not just yet; she had been silent so long, waiting, hoping, trusting, biding her time, that to her his voice and her own at eventide was a happiness yet too new to destroy.
That evening, as he stood at her window, the barrier of mignonette fragrant between them, he said rather abruptly:
"Are you ill?"
"No," she said startled.
"Oh, I am relieved."
"Why did you ask?"
"Because every Tuesday I have seen the doctor from Moss Centre come in here."
In flushed silence she turned to her table and, folding her hands, gazed steadily at nothing.
Marque looked at her, then looked away. The big, handsome young physician from Moss Centre had been worrying him for a long while now, but he repeated, half to himself: "I am very much relieved. I was becoming a little anxious—he came so regularly."
"He is a friend," she said, not looking at him.
He forced a smile. "Well, then, there is no reason for me to worry about you."
"There never was any reason—was there?"
"No, no reason."
"You don't say it cheerfully, Mr. Marque. You speak as though it might have been a pleasure for you to worry over my general health and welfare."
"I think of little else," he said.
There was a silence. Between them, along the barrier of heliotrope and mignonette, the little dusk moths came hovering on misty wings; the sun had set, but the zenith was bright crimson. Perhaps it was the reflection from that high radiance that seemed to tint her face with a softer carmine.
She looked out into the West across the stream, thinking now that for them both the end of things was drawing very near. And, to meet fate half way with serenity—nay, to greet destiny while still far off, with a smile, she unconsciously straightened in her chair and lifted her proud little head.
"Lord Marque," she said quietly, "why do you not go back to England?"
For a moment what she had said held no meaning for him. Then comprehension smote him like lightning; and, thunderstruck, he remained as he was without moving a muscle, still resting against her window-sill, his lean, sun-browned face illuminated under the zenith's fiery glory.
"Who are you?" he said, under his breath.
"Only an English girl who happened to have seen you in London."
"When?"
She turned deliberately and, resting one arm across the back of her chair, looked him steadily in the eyes.
"I am twenty-five. Since I was twenty your face has been familiar to me."
They exchanged a long and intent gaze.
"I never before saw you," he said.
"Perhaps."
"HaveI?"
"Who can know what a fashionable young man really looks at—through a monocle."
"I don't wear it any more. I lost it out West," he said, reddening.
"You lost your top hat once, too," she said.
He grew red as fire.
"So you've heard of that, too?"
"I saw it."
"You! Saw me attacked?" he demanded angrily, while the shame burnt hotter on his cheeks.
"Yes. You ran like the devil."
For a moment he remained mute and furious; then shrugged: "What was I to do?"
"Run," she admitted. "It was the only way."
He managed to smile. "And you were a witness to that?"
She nodded, eyes remote, her teeth nipping at the velvet of her underlip. He, too, remained lost in gloomy retrospection for a while, but finally looked up with a more genuine smile.
"I wonder whatever became of that fleet-footed girl who hung to my heels long after the more solidly constructed aristocracy gave up?"
"Lady Diana Guernsey?"
"That's the one. What became of her?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Because she gave me the run of my life. She was a good sport, that girl. I couldn't shake her off; I took to a taxi and she after me in another; my taxi broke down in the suburbs and I started across country, she after me. And the last I saw of her was just after I leaped a hedge and she was coming over it after me—a wonderful athletic young figure in midair silhouetted against the sky line. . . . That was the last I saw of her. I fancy she must have pulled up dead beat—or perhaps she came a cropper."
"She did," said the girl in a low voice.
"Is that so?" he said, interested. "Hope it didn't damage her."
"She broke her thigh."
"Oh, that's too bad!" he exclaimed. "If I'd guessed any such thing I'd have come back. . . . The poor little thing! I mean that, though shewas nearly six feet, I seem to think of her as little—and, of course, I'm six—two and a half. . . . Good little sport, that Diana girl! She got over it all right, I hope."
"It lamed her for life, Lord Marque."
Shocked, for a moment he could find no words to characterise his feelings. Then:
"Oh, dammitall! I say, it's a rotten shame, isn't it? And all on account of me—that superb young thing taking hedges like a hunter! Oh, come now, you know I—it hurts me all the way through. I wish I'd let her catch me! What would she have done to me? I wouldn't mind being pulled about a bit—or anything—if it would have prevented her injury. By gad, you know, I'd even have eaten her plum cake, frosting and all, to have saved her such a fate."
The girl's eyes searched his. "That was not the most tragic part of it, Lord Marque."
"God bless us! Was there anything more?"
"Yes. . . . She was in love with you."
"With—withme?" he repeated, bewildered.
"Yes. As a young, romantic girl she fell in love with you. She was a curious child—like allthe Guernseys, a strange mixture of impulse and constancy, of romance and determination. If she had fallen in love with Satan she would have remained constant. But she only fell in love with young Marque. . . . And she loves him to this day."
"That—that's utterly impossible!" he stammered. "Didn't she become a suffragette and carry a banner and chase me and vow to make me eat my own words frosted on a terrible plum cake?"
"Yes. And all the while she went on loving you."
"How do you know?" he demanded, incredulously.
"She confided in me."
"Inyou!"
"I knew her well, Lord Marque. . . . Not as well as I thought I did, perhaps; yet, perhaps better than—many—perhaps better than anybody. . . . We were brought up together."
"You were her governess?"
"I—attempted to act in a similar capacity. . . . She was difficult to teach—very, very difficult to govern. . . . I am afraid I did not do my best with her."
"Why did you leave her to come here?" he asked.
She made no reply.
"Where is she now?"
She looked out into the cinders of the West, making no answer.
He gazed at her in silence for a long time; then:
"Is she really lame?"
"Yes."