Courtlandt's fine brow puckered in a thoughtful crease as he waited in
the living-room of the Double O for Jerry the next evening. Benson, on
the arm of a chair, bent forward to get the light from the lamp on the
book he had picked up. Through the open windows came the scent of pine
and dewy fields, the murmur of the distant stream as it thundered and
rippled its never-ending triumphal march to the sea, the occasional soft
lowing of cattle.
Jerry had been tremendously pleased and excited over Greyson's
invitation to dine, Steve thought as he lighted a cigarette and blew the
smoke toward Goober. The dog was regarding him with an air of watchful
waiting. Was he to be invited to jump on the running-board of the
automobile which stood in the drive outside the front door? Courtlandt
remembered as clearly as though it had been yesterday what she had
answered the first night they met when he had asked her if she liked the
city. He could see her eyes now with their golden lights, hear her
musical voice:
"I love it. It is so big, so beautiful, so faulty. I--I like people; I
should starve for companionship, not food, in a wilderness."
And this was the girl who had been on the Double O ranch for over three
months and not a person outside it, except Doc Rand and some neighboring
ranchmen, had she seen before she made the trip to the B C. He had been
too busy to think of it before and--and he had intentionally kept out of
her way. He had thought that he had his course set to avoid danger, but
he had come mighty near going to pieces on an uncharted rock yesterday.
He tossed away his cigarette as Jerry's door opened. He took an
involuntary step forward, then thrust his hands into his pockets. Lord,
how impellingly beautiful she was! Her gold-color gown, all film where
it wasn't glistening paillettes, was as simple as the most expensive
modiste in New York could make it. Her lovely arms were bare. The ranch
life had deepened the coloring of her face and throat till her shoulders
looked startlingly white in contrast. Steve noted, with a surge of
primitive triumph, that the only jewels she wore were a string of softly
gleaming pearls and her wedding ring. Sir Peter had given her the pearls
when she was married. They had been worn by his wife and before that by
his mother. Steve heard Tommy give vent to a sound that was a cross
between a swallow and a gasp before he struck an attitude and
paraphrased theatrically:
"But soft! What light through yonder doorway breaks?
It is the east and Juliet is the sun."
Jerry laughed and blew him a kiss. Her teeth rivaled in beauty the
pearls below them. Ming Soy, more rice-papery than ever in the
resplendent embroideries she wore in the evening, followed the girl from
her room with a shimmering wrap over her arm.
"Were you casting aspersions on the brilliancy of my costume, Mr. Tommy
Benson? This is the first invitation I have received to dine since I
left the metropolis and I acknowledge I have splurged. Do--do you like
me, Steve?" Her attitude was demure but her smile was adorably
mischievous. Courtlandt's eyes flamed, then smoldered.
"You'll do," with an edge of sarcasm. He hated himself as he saw her
smile fade. Oh, why the dickens couldn't they have met--Tommy swept into
the breach:
"Oh boy, hear the lady, Steve. 'Will I do?' just as though she didn't
know that
"'Alack there lies more peril in thine eyes
Than twenty of their swords.'"
"_Gracias, senor!_ Alas, if it weren't for you, Tommy, I should go down
to my grave unwept, unhonored and unsung. Now that you have fully
absorbed the glory of my raiment hold my cloak for me, that's a dear.
Now this maline over my hair. I don't wish to appear before the guests
from the effete East like a Meg Merriles."
"You couldn't," encouraged Benson fervently. "You'd----"
"Let's go!" cut in Courtlandt sharply, and led the way to the
automobile. He sent the leaping, barking dog back with a curt command
which caused Goober to regard him in drooping, tawny-eyed reproach. He
took the wheel of the roadster. He kept his eyes resolutely on the road
as he drove though he felt as though a magnet of the nth power was
drawing his eyes to the girl who snuggled down between him and Benson.
At the door of the X Y Z ranch-house Greyson met them.
"It's mighty good of you all to come." His voice was nervous, hurried.
"Good of us! Bruce, you're a public benefactor. You're a candidate for a
specially designed, specially gilded halo. Do you realize what a risk
you have taken introducing me to your city friends? It is so long since
I have dined in state that I am quite capable of committing some
horrible social blunder."
Steve's anger flared. Why did she have to admit to Greyson that she had
been bored? It was still flickering as he entered the big living-room, a
room lined with books from floor to ceiling, with color only in the
crimson rug and heavy hangings.
"You see I've come to help you bear your exile, Steve!" greeted a
laughing voice. Jerry and Tommy, who had preceded Courtlandt, turned
involuntarily. He met the girl's startled eyes. He reddened furiously
before he turned to answer the golden-haired woman who had stepped from
behind a screen.
"Felice! Where did you come from?" His tone was dazed and strugglingly
cordial.
"Have you lost both manners and memory, Stevie? You haven't offered to
shake hands; you have apparently forgotten that I wrote you that while
he was at the Manor Mr. Greyson discovered that I had been at school
with his sister. Paula has come out for the summer and brought me with
her. I adore the ranch. Steve, we'll have some rides that will make
those we used to have take on a pale anemic blue." She linked her arm
within his and smiled up at him beguilingly.
"Hmp, vamp-stuff!" Courtlandt heard Tommy confide to Jerry before he
disengaged his arm from Mrs. Denbigh's clasp and reminded:
"Have you seen Mrs. Courtlandt, Felice? Jerry, you remember Mrs.
Denbigh?"
"Perfectly. She is one of those persons one never forgets. Mrs. Denbigh,
may I present Mr. Benson? Mr. Greyson, back up your statement, show me
that Hopi saddle-blanket which you claimed yesterday had Uncle Nick's
licked to a finish. That phrase is your bit of choice Americana, not
mine, remember."
Steve's eyes followed Jerry as she moved away with her host. There was a
slightly scornful tilt to her lips. Greyson looked as though he had been
caught stealing sheep, he decided. Was there a sinister undercurrent at
the X Y Z as well as a Double O? If there were he'd get to the bottom of
that, too. Regardless of Benson's proximity he burst out:
"Why did you intimate that I had been corresponding with you, Felice?"
The woman's super decollete frock was no greener than her eyes, her
elaborately coiffured yellow hair glittered; it hadn't the satiny sheen
of Jerry's; her hands were frosty with diamonds. Even her laugh had a
metallic ring as she answered:
"What a literal person you are, Stevie. Have you been bitten with the
nothing-but-the-truth mania? Can't I interest you in a saddle-blanket?
It makes an excellent smoke-screen for a tete-a-tete." Her laugh tinkled
maliciously as she nodded toward the corner where her host stood with
Jerry Courtlandt. Steve deliberately turned his back and inquired
irrelevantly:
"How was little ol' New York when you left, Felice?"
It wasn't to be wondered at that Jerry liked people, people so evidently
adored her, Courtlandt thought as coffee was being served in the
living-room after dinner. Paula Vance, who though no older than Felice
Denbigh, already showed symptoms of middle-age curves, was officiating
behind the massive silver tray with its rare, antique appointments. Her
husband, with those three unmistakable L's, liquor, lobster and leisure
writ large on his portly person from his terraced chin to his shining
patent leathers, Greyson and Benson were listening to Jerry as, with
eyes like stars, cheeks flushed, she sat at the piano. She played a low,
rippling accompaniment as, in answer to a question from her host, she
gave an account of her visit to Bear Creek ranch. Felice Denbigh also
had her eyes on the group. She divided her attention between it and her
coffee. Her light lashes swept her cheeks as she tapped her cigarette
against her thumb-nail and drawled:
"Better give young Benson his time, Steve. Isn't that ranch parlance for
discharge? He's in love with Mrs. Courtlandt." The man beside her
reddened angrily.
"Don't bring your tainted ideas out into this clean, glorious country,
Felice. Benson is----" he broke off to watch Greyson's Jap, a little man
with a face like the mask of tragedy who was speaking to Jerry.
"Are you sure that he said Mrs. Courtlandt?" Steve heard her ask in
surprise. Then as the man reiterated his message she excused herself to
the men about her and left the room. Tommy looked after her anxiously
before his eyes flashed to Steve. The latter gave an imperceptible nod
and with a murmured excuse to Felice followed Jerry. As he stepped to
the porch he saw the golden gleam of the girl's gown at the farther end.
She was talking earnestly with a man, a man who was holding a saddled
horse. The moon shone down upon the animal's wet sides; he had evidently
been ridden hard. What did it mean? Had Glamorgan, by any chance, sent
for his daughter? As he strode toward them he heard the girl say
breathlessly:
"No! No! Don't wait! Ride as fast as you can. I'll get there some way."
"Jerry!" in his anxiety Steve sent his voice ahead of him. At the sound
the man leaped to the horse's back and galloped away into the dusk of
the road. The girl strained her eyes after him before she turned.
"There is something queer about that man, Steve; he is a man of
mystery," she confided as though Courtlandt's materialization out of the
dark was quite what she expected.
"What did he want?"
"He wanted me. Don't look so incredulous. I may be an acquired taste
like olives but--some people like me." She abandoned her teasing tone
and hurried on, "That man is the range-rider at Bear Creek ranch. Mrs.
Carey has been taken suddenly ill, there,--there is a baby coming, you
know, Steve. He wanted me to go to her. Her husband is away. They
haven't had a telephone put in and it may take hours to get the doctor
and nurse from town, he may not be able to get them at all and so--and
so he asked me to go and stay with her until he could get help."
"But you can't go, girl, at this time of night."
"Oh, yes, I can, Steve. I'm going. Please ask Tommy to drive me. We'll
make better time going in the machine even by the roundabout wagon road.
If I rode I'd have to go home first and change my clothes. He can come
back for you. Hurry!"
"Back for me! Do you think you go off this ranch to-night with anyone
but me? It's rank folly for you to go----"
She caught the lapel of his coat and looked up at him with dewy eyes.
"Suppose,--suppose that it were I, Steve----"
Even in the dim light he could see the soft color steal to her hair. He
turned away with a sharp:
"Get your wrap while I go for the car, and give Benson his orders. He'll
have to keep a date for me."
The star-spangled night was clear and still as Courtlandt slowed down in
front of the Bear Creek ranch-house. The girl beside him shivered as she
looked at the lighted windows. He laid one hand on hers.
"Steady, little girl, steady. You won't be able to help if you lose your
nerve."
"I know, Steve, I'll be all right as soon as I get busy. I have never
seen----" She sprang from the car and ran up the path, her golden gown
gleaming in the dim light. As she opened the door Courtlandt heard a
sound which sent him from the car. He couldn't sit still. Lips set he
paced back and forth, back and forth while a voice inside his head,
which didn't seem his voice at all, kept repeating, "Suppose--just
suppose it were I, Steve?"
Other thoughts crowded in upon him as he paced like a sentinel, a
sentinel in dinner clothes, before the little house. The dawn crept
slowly up in the east spraying the dark sky overhead with gorgeousness.
It transformed the world into the fairyland of the pantomimes of his
boyhood, a world full of magic passwords and talismans. He almost
expected to see a shimmering, masked Harlequin tap on the cabin door
with his supple wand and a dainty Columbine pirouette out in response.
Whatever it might be outside, there was no illusion behind that closed
door. It was raw reality. What wonders women were, some of them, Steve
amended. He thought of the girls with whom he had dined and danced in
the last two years. Many of them sensation-seeking privateers. Was it
after-war reaction which made them so recklessly, flagrantly determined
in their attempts to lure? They had succeeded only in repelling him but
they had plenty of victims. How they crackled the glaze of their
reputations. How they married and unmarried, those people whom he knew,
and with what tragic consequences to their children. Felice was a
product of the atmosphere in which she lived. He realized now that she
would have no scruples in coming between him and the girl he had married
if she could. A fragment from Kant which had been the text for a college
theme teased at the tip Of his tongue. He had it! "No one of us can do
that, which if done by all, will destroy society." If this divorce
business kept up it would destroy society. Did luxurious social life
breed inconstancy of purpose, contempt of covenants?
As though in answer to his question came a vision of Jerry as she had
knelt beside Old Nick's bed. He could see her face, the hint of tears
under the steadiness of her gaze, hear her voice as she repeated
reverently the marriage service.
She would keep her marriage vow at any cost to herself, Courtlandt
thought, no matter how she might care for someone else. She was the sort
of woman who would stand the wear and tear of daily companionship,
making allowance for a man's moods but never knuckling to them. She'd
bring him up with a round turn, but she'd laugh while she did it. He
couldn't imagine her irritable or fretty or snappy. She had the saving
grace of humor. If women could only learn the persuasive value of a
laugh as against tears or sulks how many marriages would be saved from
the scrap-heap. After all, any poor dumb-bell could get married; it was
staying married which proved one's metal.
The color overhead spread with increasing beauty. The last friendly star
high up above a mountain twinkled out. Somewhere toward the barns a
shrill-voiced, enterprising cock "hailed the smiling morn." A curl of
smoke rose lazily from the cabin chimney. The sun shot up through a
fleece of clouds; it painted the fields and sloping hillside with
radiance. A horse whinnied in the corral, a light breeze sprang up and
brought with it the odor of barns, the strong scent of wool. From the
road came the labored breathing of a flivver.
"Thank God, someone's coming!" Courtlandt thought. He looked toward the
cabin, transformed in the morning light into a habitation of gold. As he
looked the lights in the windows went out. What was Jerry doing? Could
he have helped? A flivver rattled up and stopped. In the exuberance of
his relief Steve opened the door of the car before either of the
occupants had a chance. "Mother" Egan, a portly woman whose clothing
suggested a starch and soap advertisement, it was so immaculate and
standoutish, nodded as she stepped heavily out. Her face beamed with
kindliness and sympathetic understanding as she lumbered up to the door.
Doc Rand regarded Courtlandt with an incredulous grin:
"For the love of Mike, Steve, what you doing here? This isn't your
party----" with a hardened chuckle.
"Cut out the comedy, Doc. I brought Mrs. Courtlandt over to stay until
you came. For God's sake get in there and stop those sounds. Send Jerry
out."
"What you say goes, Steve. Out she comes. Run the flivver round to the
barn, will you? I'm likely to stay here most of the day."
Worn black bag in hand he disappeared inside the house. As Steve started
the car a horseman galloped into sight on the road. He stopped his horse
with a suddenness that threw the animal back on his haunches, then,
after an instant's hesitation he went on toward the huddle of buildings.
Steve looked after him curiously. Was he Jerry's Man of Mystery? He
deliberately followed the horseman. When he dismounted Steve shut off
his engine and jumped to the ground. The rider turned. Steve stared.
"Phil Denbigh!" he exclaimed incredulously.