"And now," said Lee, "I think I'll tell mamma."
On the way to find the princess, Lee and Renier encountered Herring. He appeared to be hurrying, but something in their faces brought him to a sudden stop.
Their attempts to meet his inquiring gaze with indifference proved unavailing, for he closed one eye and said:
"Which of you two has swallowed the family canary? Or has each of you swallowed half of him?"
The guilty pair were unable to preserve their natural coloring. They turned crimson, and each showed a courteous willingness to let the other be the first to speak.
"You've been to Carrytown," said Herring. "I saw you start. You raced down to the float. And in your rivalry to see which should board theStreakfirst, it looked as if you were going to knock each other overboard. Renier, he won, and you, Miss Lee, were annoyed. When youreturned from Carrytown, you had long, pensive, anxious faces. Renier stepped ashore and, in helping you ashore, gave you both hands. When a girl whom I have seen climb a tree after a baby owl accepts the aid of a man's two hands in stepping from a solid boat to a solid float, there is food for thought. Having landed, you proceeded direct to the head of the Darling family and were for some time engaged with him in solemn discourse. A paper was shown him. From a distance it looked as if it might be some sort of a license—a license to hunt and be hunted, perhaps——"
"But it wasn't," said Lee suddenly, and she thrust her hand under Renier's arm. "If you must know, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, it was a license to love and be loved. So there!"
She was no longer blinking, nor was Renier. They looked so loving and proud that it was Herring's turn to feel embarrassment. Then he said:
"I only meant to be a tease. If I'd really thought anything—I wouldn't, of course; none of my darn business. But I'mawfullyglad. I've hoped all along it would happen. It's the best ever. Am I to be secret as the grave or can I tell—any one I happen to meet?"
"Give us ten minutes to tell mamma," said Lee, "and then consider your lips unsealed."
Herring had drawn from his pocket a stop-watch and set it going.
"Ten minutes," he said. "Thanks awfully! And good luck!"
He had turned, waving his free hand to them, and darted away.
Lee laughed scornfully.
"Any one he happens to meet!" she exclaimed. "He's headed straight for the garden, and there he'll justhappento meet Phyllis. She was speaking of her tomatoes at breakfast, and saying that they ought to be ripening and that she was going to have a look at them."
"Lee, darling," said Renier, "nobody can possibly see us. And when Mr. Heartbeat left us alone in the front room it was a frightfully long time ago. And sometimes a fellow's arms get to aching with sheer emptiness, and—and, 'this is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks——'"
"Are mostly birches and larches hereabouts," said Lee, and, with a happy laugh, she drifted into a pair of arms that closed tightly about her. And, "It doesn't matter if anybody does see us," she said.
It was characteristic of Herring that he should enter the garden by leaping over the fence. It was also characteristic that he should catch his foot on the top rail and fall at full length in a bed of very beautiful and much cherished phlox.
Phyllis, in the path near by, gazed at the fallen man with mirth and anxiety.
"Hurt?" she asked.
He rose and examined a watch which he was carrying in his right hand.
"Crystal smashed," he said, "but still going. And I've got to wait four minutes!"
"Why have you got to wait four minutes?"
"Because I promised to wait ten, and six of them have elapsed. Oh, but won't you be excited when I am at liberty to speak! It's more exciting than when we were lost in the woods, crossing the swamp that had never been crossed before. Meanwhile, let us calm ourselves by talking of something prosaic. How are the tomatoes getting on?"
Phyllis put up her hand in a smiling military salute.
"'General Blank's compliments,'" she said, "'and the colored troops are turning black in the face.'"
"My favorite breakfast dish," said Herring,"is grilled tomatoes, preceded by raw oysters and oatmeal."
"Isn't it nice," said Phyllis, "that there is money in the family after all, and we're going to give up The Camp as an inn?"
"It would have been given up anyway," said Herring. "A determined body of men had so resolved in secret. There's one minute left."
For some reason they found nothing to say during the whole of that minute. When the last second thereof had passed forever, Herring said simply:
"Your sister Lee and Renier are going to be married."
I cannot describe the expression that came over Phyllis's face. It wasn't exactly jealousy; it wasn't exactly the expression of a beautiful female commuter who has just missed her train. It wasn't a wild look, or a happy look, or a sad look. Perhaps it was a little bit more of an aching void look than anything else.
Whatever its exact nature, the wily Herring studied it with an immense satisfaction. And then his heart began to flurry in a sort of panic.
"Lee!" exclaimed Phyllis, "married! Why, they're nothing but children!"
She felt something encircle her waist. Shelooked down and saw a hand and part of an arm.
"What are you doing?" she asked, in a sort of daze.
"I'm trying to establish a hold on you," said Herring, and toward the end of so saying his voice broke; "and you're not to feel lonely and deserted with me standing here, are you?"
For a moment it seemed to Herring that Phyllis was going to extricate herself from his encircling arm. She achieved, indeed, a quarter revolution to the left and away from him.
"Don't, Phyllis!" he cried. "Don't do it! I couldn't bear it!"
Then she ceased revolving to the left, stopped, and from a startled, uncertain, half-frightened young person became suddenly a warmly loving young person, warmly loved, who revolved suddenly to the right, and became the recipient of a sudden storm of ecstatic exclamations and kisses.
And then, nestling close to the one and only man in the world, she listened with complete satisfaction to his efforts to explain to her just how beautiful and wonderful and good she was.
When Lee and Renier, locked in each other's arms, stood in the forest primeval, they were mistaken in imagining themselves to be unobserved.
A short half-hour before, Mary Darling had received a proposal of marriage. But Mr. Sam Langham, usually so worldly-wise, had erred, perhaps, in his choice of time and place. Whatever a huge kitchen, bright with sunlight upon burnished copper, may be, it is not a romantic place. And, worse than this, Mary herself was not in a romantic mood. Certain supplies due by the morning express had not arrived. Chef was at the telephone shouting broken French to the butcher in Carrytown; one of the kitchen-maids had come down with an aching tooth, and the other had been sent upon an errand from which she should have long since returned.
"Oh," exclaimed Mary, as Mr. Langham entered, smiling, "everything is in such a mess! I don't believe there's going to be any lunch to-day for any one. And I think I shall have a nervous breakdown!"
"I told you you would long ago," said Langham, "if you didn't rest more and take things easier. Whatdoesit matter if things go wrong once in a while? And if there isn't going to be any lunch, I'm glad, for one. I was thinking of not eating mine, anyway. And ifI'mnot hungry, you can be pretty sure that nobody else is hungry. I tell you it hurts me to see you work so hard. I admire it and I bow down, but it hurts. You tell Chef to do the best he can, and you come for a brisk walk with me. We'll walk up an appetite, and——"
"I can'tpossibly," said Mary. "I've got to stand by."
"Then you go for a walk and I'll stand by. Only trust me.I'llsee that nobody goes hungry."
She did not appear to have heard his offer, and Mr. Langham spoke again, with a sudden change of tone.
"I'd like to take you out of this. I'd like to make everything in the world easy for you, if you would only let me. But you know that. You've known it all along. And knowing it, you've never even shown that it interested you; and so I suppose it's folly for me to mention it. But a man can't give up all his hopes of happinessin this world without even stating them, can he? I've hoped that you might get to care a little about me——"
Mary interrupted him with considerable impatience.
"Really," she said, "with Chef shouting at the telephone, and all, I don't know what you are driving at."
At that Mr. Langham looked so hurt and so unhappy and woebegone that Mary was touched with remorse.
"I didn't realize you were in earnest," she said. "I'm sorry I've hurt your feelings, but it's no use. I'm sorry—awfully sorry; but it's no use."
"I'm sorry, too," said Langham; "sorry I spoke; sorrier there was no use in speaking; sorriest of all that I'm no good to any one. But as long as I had to come a cropper, why, I'm glad it was for no one less wonderful than you. Will you let things be as they were? I won't bother you about my personal feelings ever again by a look or a word."
After he had gone Mary stood for a while with knitted brows. Chef had finished telephoning. The kitchen was in silence. Suddenly she broke this silence.
"Chef," she exclaimed, "I'm no use at all!You'll just have to do the best you can about lunch by yourself."
And she left the kitchen with great swiftness, looking like an angel on the verge of tears.
Chef's shining red face divided into a white smile, and he began to bustle about and make a noise with pots and pans and carving tools, and to sing as he bustled:
"Sur le pont d'AvignonL'on y danse, l'on y danse,Sur le pont d'AvignonL'on y danse tout en rond—Les belles dames font comm'ça,Et puis encore comm'ça."
It is probable that in his gay Parisian youth Chef had known a good deal aboutles belles dames. He had latterly given much attention to the progress of Miss Darling's friendship with Mr. Langham, and that this same progress had received a sharp setback under his very nose concerned him not a little. Chef possessed altogether too much currency that had once belonged to that lavish tipper, Mr. Langham. And Chef did not wish Mr. Langham to be driven from the kitchen and The Camp. He wished Mr. Langham to become a permanent Darlingasset—like himself and the French range. And so, half singing, half speaking, and furiously bustling, he announced:
"I'll show her how little difference she makes. Without advice or dictation, practically without supplies of any kind, I shall arrange,nom de Dieu!a luncheon which, for pure deliciousness, will not have been surpassed during the entire Christian era. I shall hint to her that I tolerate her in my kitchen because I have known her since she was a little girl, but I shall make it clear by words and deeds that her presence or absence is not of the least importance. Let her then turn for comfort to the worthy, generous, and rich Mr. Langham, for whom the mere poaching of an egg is an exquisite pleasure!"
And he frowned and began to think formidable and inventive thoughts about matters connected with his craft and immediate needs and necessities.
Mary Darling had, of late, often imagined herself receiving an offer of marriage from Mr. Langham. That is badly expressed. Only the most insufferable and self-sufficient of men make offers of marriage. Your true, modest, and chivalrous lover gets down on his real or figurative knees and begs and beseeches. She had, then,often imagined her hand in the act of being besought by Mr. Langham. Being a practical young woman, she had pictured this as happening (repeatedly) at sunset, by moonlight, in the depths of romantic forests or on the tops of romantic mountains. And some voice in her (some very practical voice) told her that it never should have happened in a kitchen.
Mr. Langham's "sweet beseeching", instead of "moving her strangely," had made her rather cross. And such tenderness as she usually had for him had fled to cover. But now, as the clean, green forest closed about her, she had a reaction. She came to a dead stop and realized that she had been through an emotional crisis. Her heart was beating as if she had just finished a steep, swift climb. And her heart was aching too, aching for the kind and gentle friend and well-wisher to whom she had been so inexplicably cold and cutting. It was in vain to mourn for that diamond of a heart which she had rejected with so much finality. He had said that he would never "bother" her again (Botherher! The idea!), and he never would. He was a man of his word, Sam Langham was. Perhaps, even now he was causing his things to be packed with a view to leaving The Camp for ever and a day. But what could shedo? Could she go to him (in person or by writing) and in his presence eat as much as a single mouthful of humble-pie? No, she could not possibly do that. Then, what could she do? Well, with the usual negligible results, she could cry her eyes out over the spilt milk.
She went swiftly forward, the shadows dappling her as she went, and her heart swelling and swelling with self-pity and general miserableness. Thoughts of Arthur and his happiness flashed through her mind. The thought that she, Mary Darling, unmarried, would in the course of a few years be called an old maid, caused her a panicky feeling. She pictured herself as very old (and very ugly), exhibiting improbable Chinese dogs at dog-shows and scowling at rosy babies. And I must say she almost laughed.
The path turned sharply to the right and disclosed to Mary's eyes two young people who stood locked in each other's arms and rocked slightly from side to side—rocked with ineffable delight and tenderness.
She stood stock-still, in plain view if they had looked her way, until presently they unlocked arms, drew a little apart, and had a good long look at each other, and then turned their backs upon that part of the forest and departed slowly.
Whither she was going, Mary did not know. But she went very swiftly and had upon her face the expression of a beautiful female commuter who has arrived at the station just in time to see her train pull out. But this expression changed when she found her path blocked by the diminutive house in which Sam Langham lived, and saw Sam Langham, a look of wonder on his face, rise from his big piazza chair and come toward her.
"Lee and Renier are going to be married," she exclaimed, all out of breath, "and I didn't mean to be such a brute! And I wouldn't have hurt you for anything in the world!"
Sam Langham only looked at her, for he was afraid to speak.
"I'm just an old goose," said Mary humbly, but very bravely, "and I take everything back. And if you meant what you said, Sam, and want to begin all over again, why, don't just stand there and look at me."
And presently she was ashamed of herself for having been so forward, and so she pursued the feelings of shame to their logical conclusion and hid her face.
And now, for the first time, she realized how hard she had worked ever since The Camp was changed into an inn to make it a go, and howmuch she needed rest and comforting and a masculine executive to lean on.
"Who said," murmured the ecstatic Langham, "that nothing good ever came of liking good things to eat?"
"Sam," said Mary, "I'm so happy I don't care if lunch is burned to a cinder."
It wasn't. Out of odds and ends of raw materials, and great slugs and gallons of culinary genius, Chef produced a lunch that transcended even Mary's and Langham's belief in him.
But it was Arthur who insisted that champagne be opened; and perhaps the champagne made the lunch seem even more delicious than it really was.
Maud and Eve had already discounted Arthur's engagement and Lee's. They had not, it is true, learned of the latter without feeling that if they didn't hurry they would miss their train; but they had disguised and fought off that feeling until now they were their gay and natural selves. It remained for Mr. Langham to shock them suddenly into a new set of emotions.
"I should be obliged," said he, rising to his feet, with a glass of champagne in his hand, "if everybody would drink the health of the happiest man present." Arthur and Renier looked very self-conscious.But Mr. Langham concluded: "And that man is myself. I have the honor to announce that, beyond peradventure, the loveliest and sweetest girl in all the world——"
And at that Mary blushed so and looked so happy and beautiful that everybody shouted with joy and surprise and laughter, and drank champagne, and tossed compliments about like shuttlecocks. And Arthur and Renier and Langham had a violent dispute as to which was the happiest; and decided to settle the dispute with sabres at—twenty paces.
Her first burst of surprise and excitement and pleasure having passed, Eve Darling experienced a sudden sinking feeling. She felt as if all the people she most loved to be with were going away on a delightful excursion and that she was being left behind. It was at this moment, while the uproar was still at its height, that she heard the shaken voice of Mr. Bob Jonstone in her ear.
"How about us?" he demanded.
"How about us—what?" she answered.
Then she felt her hand seized and held in the secret asylum furnished by the table-cloth, and there stole over her the solaceful feeling of having been asked at the last moment to go upon the delightful excursion.
"Eve?"
"Eve, darling—is it all right?"
"All right."
And then up shot Mr. Jonstone like a projectile from a howitzer, and he cried aloud, his habitual calmness and lazy habit of speech flung to the winds.
"You're not the only happy men in the world," he shouted. "I'm happier than the three of you put together, I am! Because my Darling is the best and most beautiful of all Darlings, and if any man dares to gainsay that, let him just step outside with me for five minutes—that's all."
Colonel Meredith's hair bristled like the mane of a fighting terrier.
"Do you mean to say," he whispered to Maud in a sort of savage whisper, "that I've got to swallow that insult without protest?"
It was on the tip of Maud's tongue to say that she didn't know what he meant. But how could she say that when she knew perfectly well?
"Only give me the right to answer him," continued the sincere warrior. He rose to his feet. "Is it yes—or no?"
"It's yes—yes," exclaimed Maud and, horrified with herself, she leaned back blushing and full of wonder.
"Mr. Jonstone—Mr. Bob—Jonstone!" cried Colonel Meredith.
Mr. Jonstone's attention was presently attracted, and he gave his cousin a glittering look.
"I'll be only too delighted to step outside with you for five minutes," said Colonel Meredith.
And the cousins glared and glared at each other. But whether or not they were really in earnest, if only for a moment, will never be known; at any rate, each of them appeared suddenly to perceive something comic about the other, and both burst into peals of schoolboy laughter.
Only Gay's happiness seemed a little forced, and her mother's.
Gay hardly slept at all. She was at her window half the night asking troubled questions of the stars and of the moon and of the moonlight on the lake. She had not, during the summer, taken her sisters' affairs very seriously, perhaps because she was so seriously engrossed with her own. She had, even in her heart, almost accused them of flirting and carrying on lest time hang heavy on their hands. Her own romance she had supposed all along to be real, the others mere reflections of romantic places and situations. But it began to look as if only her own romance had been spurious. It was a long time since she had heard from Pritchard. He had told her very simply that he was now the Earl of Merrivale, and that, as soon as certain things were settled and arranged, he intended to return to America. After that, there had been no word from him of any kind. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that if he was that kind of man—blow hot, blow cold—she was well rid of him, and she failed dismally.
A man is in love with a certain girl. He learns that she is vain, gay, extravagant, heartless, and going to marry some other man. Does any of this comfort him? Not if he is in love with her, it doesn't. Not a bit.
So Gay could say to herself: "He's thoughtless and inconstant, and I'm well out of it!" She could say that, and she did say that, and then she buried her face in her pillow and cried very quietly and very hard.
She was up before the sun.
It would have taken more than one night of wakefulness and weeping to leave marks upon that lovely face which sudden cold water and the resolution to suffer no more could not erase.
But she had not rowed a mile or more before the color in her cheeks was really vivid again and the whites of her eyes showed no traces of tears.
She did not know why she was rowing or whither. It was as if some strong hand had forced her from bed before sunrise, forced her into her fishing-clothes, forced her into a guide boat, placed oars in her hands, and compelled her to row.
She even smiled, wondering where she was going.
"I can go anywhere I like," she thought; "but I don't want to go anywhere in particular, and yetI am quite obviously on my way to somewhere or other. I'm like Alice in Wonderland. I think I'll go to Carrytown and get the morning mail."
But she had no sooner beached toward Carrytown than the distance there seemed unutterably long, especially for a rower who had yet to breakfast.
"I know," thought Gay at last; "I'll row to Placid Brook and see if the big trout is still feeding in his private preserve. I'll land just where we did before and cross the meadow and spy on him from behind a bush. I wish I'd brought some tackle. I'd like to catch him and cook him for my breakfast—so I would!"
Upon this resolution, the work of rowing became very light. It was as if the force which had started her upon the excursion had had Placid Brook in mind all the time.
Having laid her course for the meadow at the mouth of Placid Brook, she kept the stern of the boat in direct line with a distant mountain-top, and so held it. The sun was now peeping over the rim of the world, and here and there morning breezes were darkening and dappling the burnished surface of the lake.
Now and then, as she neared the meadow, Gay glanced over her shoulder, once for quite a longtime, resting on her oars, because she thought she saw a doe with a fawn. They turned out to be nothing more tender than a couple of granite rocks. And once again she rested on her oars and looked for a long time—not this time upon the strength of a hallucination, but of an impulse.
She followed this inconsequential act with a long sigh, and enough strokes of the oar to bring her to land.
When she stood upright on the meadow she could see the very spot from which Pritchard had cast for the big trout. And she saw (and had a curious dilating of the heart at the same moment) that that particular spot of meadow was once more occupied by a human being—or were her eyes and her breakfastless stomach playing tricks?
A young man in rusty meadow-colored clothes appeared to be kneeling with his back toward her. She advanced swiftly toward him, curious only of a great wonder and an indescribable (and possibly fatal) beating of her heart. And suddenly she knew that her man was real and no hallucination, for she perceived at her feet the stub of a Turkish cigarette, still smoking. Then she called to him:
"Halloo, there!"
The Earl of Merrivale started as if he had beenshot at, then leaped to his feet and turned toward her with a cry of joy.
"What are you doing here?" he cried.
And they had approached to within touching distance of each other.
"I don't know," she said. "What are you?"
"It was too early to pay calls," he said, "so I thought I'd have one more whack at the big char and bring him to you for a present. But tell me—does our bet still stand?"
He looked at her so tenderly and lovingly and hopefully that she hadn't the heart to be anything but tender and loving herself.
"The bet still stands," she said, "if you win. I've missed you terribly."
"I took him," said the earl. "I was just weighing him when you called. He weighs a lot more than three pounds. So I win."
"Yes, you win."
"And the bet still stands?"
She nodded happily.
"And you won't renege—you'll pay? You'll be Countess of Merrivale?"
"If you want me to be," she said humbly.
"If I want you to be!"
And she had imagined herself so often in his arms that she was not now surprised or troubled to find herself there.
"I was so unhappy," she said; "and now I'm so happy."
And after a little while she said:
"I'd like to see him."
Presently they stood looking down at the great trout.
"He's done a lot for us, hasn't he?" said Gay. "He was the beginning of things. And it seems sort of a pity——"
"He's still breathing. He'll live if we put him back. Shall we?"
"Yes, please."
There was plenty of life and fight in the old trout. He no sooner felt that water was somewhere under him than he gave a triumphant, indignant flop, tore himself from Merrivale's hands, and disappeared with a splendid, smacking splash.
"Good old boy!" laughed Merrivale.
"And yet," said Gay, "it's a pity that we couldn't take him back to camp and show him off. He was the biggest trout I ever saw."
"He wasn't a trout, dear," said Merrivale; and he grinned lovingly at her. "He was a char."
"Of course he was," said Gay humbly; "I forgot."
I wish I could write first, "The Seven Darlings lived happily ever afterward," and then the word "Finis." But I cannot end so easily and maintain a reputation for veracity. They can't have lived happily afterward until they are dead—can they? At the moment they have just closed The Camp after the summer and scattered to their winter homes; that is, all of them except Gay.
The Camp, of course, is no longer an inn. They run it on joint account for themselves and for their friends. And they have delightful times.
Colonel Meredith has built a tremendous house on his ancestral acres, and during the winter Arthur and his wife, the Herrings, the Reniers, the Jonstones, and the Langhams are apt to make it their headquarters.
Gay and her young man were to have visited the Merediths this winter. There was going to be a united family effort to discover the buried silver which Mr. Bob Jonstone sold to his cousin, but of course the great war has upset this excellentplan, together with a good many million other plans, even more excellent and important.
The Earl of Merrivale is fighting somewhere in the wet ditches—Gay doesn't know exactly where. She herself, a red cross on her sleeve, is with one of the field-hospitals, working like a slave to save life. Because her husband is an Englishman, she didn't think that she could ever be kind to a German or an Austrian, but that turned out to be a whopping big error of judgment. They all look alike to her now, and her heart almost breaks over them. But I don't know what will become of her if anything happens to Merrivale. I think poor little Gay would just curl up and die. He is all the world to her, just as she is to him.
Well, they are only one loving couple out of a good many hundred thousands. The times are too momentous to follow them further or waste words and sympathy on them. The world is thinking in big figures, not in units.
Only a sentimentalist here and there regards as more important than empire and riches the little love-affairs that death is hourly ending, and the little babies who are never to be born.