I
Mrs. Howard Featherstone spent much time thinking up things for her
brother Archibald Bennett to do, and as Archie was the ideal bachelor
brother, always remembering the children's birthdays and turning up
dutifully for Christmas dinners, he accepted her commissions in the most
amiable spirit and his services were unfailingly satisfactory. He knew
perfectly well that most of the jobs she imposed upon him had been
politely but firmly declined by her busy husband, but this made no
difference to Archie, who had all the time in the world, and infinite
patience, and he rather enjoyed tracing express packages and matching
ribbons.
"The agent who's been looking up a summer house for us says this is an
unusual opportunity, as there are few places to let at Bailey Harbor and
this one is unexpectedly on the market. The owner is obliged to leave
just after settling in it, so it's all in perfect condition and if it
meets our needs we can go right up. Howard's simply swamped with
work--he's conducting some sort of investigation with night meetings and
that sort of thing--and we'd all appreciate it if you could run up there
for us."
The many preoccupations of his brother-in-law, who held a seat in
Congress and took his job seriously, were well known to Archie.
Featherstone was an important cog in the governmental machinery while
Archie had nothing on earth to do, so it was eminently fitting that he,
as an unattached and unemployed brother-in-law, should assume some of
Featherstone's domestic burdens. Archie had planned to leave for the
Canadian Rockies two days later, but as no urgent business called him in
that direction, he obligingly agreed to take a look at the Bailey Harbor
house that had been placed so providentially within reach of his sister.
"The owner belongs to that old New England Congdon family," Mrs.
Featherstone explained; "they date from the beginning of time, and some
of them are a trifle eccentric. You remember one of them--he must be the
father or an uncle of the owner of this house--Eliphalet Congdon, who
lives in Boston and is horribly rich but is always doing weird things.
There was a perfectly killing article in the paper just the other day
telling of his latest exploit, which was getting arrested for refusing
to allow them to check his umbrella at the Metropolitan Museum. They
thought, of course, that he was a crank who wanted to poke holes through
the pictures, and he made such a fuss that they had to arrest him and he
wouldn't give bail but had his lawyer get him out on a writ of habeas
corpus."
"The same philanthropist who had a bus built just like the Fifth Avenue
busses and wanted to run it himself to pick up women and children the
regular busses wouldn't stop for," laughed Archie. "If you're renting a
house from that family it's just as well to look into it carefully. All
right, May; I'll inspect the premises for you."
In spite of his good-natured assent she continued to pile up excuses
for her husband and explained in great detail the rundown condition of
the children which made it necessary to get them out of Washington as
quickly as possible. Archie was already mentally planning the details of
his trip with his customary exactness. As he traveled constantly in the
interest of his health, which had been a cause of solicitude to himself
and all his relatives as far back as any one could remember, he knew
train schedules by heart, and by catching the Federal Express the next
night he would be able to connect with a train at Boston that would land
him at Bailey Harbor at two o'clock the same day.
With any sort of luck he could escape from the Harbor, reach New York
the following morning and proceed immediately westward. A few telegrams
would readjust matters so that he would lose only a day in setting out
for Banff, which his newest doctor had told him was an ideal spot for
him. Many other doctors had posted him off to numerous other places in
pursuit of the calm or stimulus or whatever it was he needed to make him
a sound man capable of taking some part in the world's affairs. Archie's
condition was always a grateful topic of conversation and now that his
sister had told him how many bedrooms her menage required, and warned
him particularly to be sure that there was a sleeping porch and a
garage, and not to forget to look carefully into the drainage system of
the entire Maine coast; having watched him make notes of these matters,
Mrs. Featherstone, in her most sisterly tone, broached the subject of
his health.
"Your troubles, Archie, are all due to the scarlet fever you had when
you were a child. I've thought that if you could ever get into some
active work it would cure you. These sanatoriums you live in most of the
time never do you any good. They just keep you thinking about yourself.
What you need is a complete upsetting,--something that would give a new
turn to your life. And, you know," she went on softly, "I'd hoped,
Archie, that the right girl would turn up one of these days and that
that would prove the panacea. But the girls I've picked out never
pleased you, and here you are, the finest brother in the world, and the
most conscientious man alive, always doing generous things for
people--you know you do, Archie--with nothing ahead of you but just one
sanatorium after another. I haven't much faith in this idea of your
going to the Rockies; you know you tried the Alps five years ago and the
altitude nearly killed you."
"I seem doomed to sit on the sidelines and watch the game," Archie
agreed gloomily.
"But sometimes, I think you yield too easily to discouragement. Please
don't think I mean to be unkind or unjust, but if at some turn of the
road you were obliged to put your back to the wall and fight for your
life! Really, dear, I think you would win the battle and be a very
different man afterward."
Archie smiled wanly. He had the lively imagination of the neurasthenic
and very often he had dreamed of vanquishing single-handed a dozen
enemies, or plunging into a burning house and staggering out half dead
bearing a helpless child in his arms. To look at him no one would
believe that he had a nerve in his tall frame. Once a friend carried him
off to a farm where an autocratic athletic trainer rejuvenated tired
business men; and Archie survived the heroic treatment and reappeared
bronzed and hardened and feeling better than he had ever felt in his
life. But a winter spent in an office and leisure to think of himself as
an invalid brought back the old apprehensions, and there being no one at
hand to drag him again to the trainer's, he renewed his acquaintance
with the waiting-rooms of specialists.
"There will be a few people in for dinner tonight," remarked Mrs.
Featherstone as he rose to go; "very simple, you know; and Howard just
telephoned that he can't possibly come, so if you can arrange it,
Archie--"
"All right, May. Weld and Coburn are in town and I was going to have
dinner with them at the Army and Navy, but if you really want me--"
"Oh, that's perfectly fine of you, Archie! You are splendid to break
your engagement with them when you three don't meet very often; but it
will be a real help to me to have you. It's so late now that I can't ask
any one else in Howard's place. And Isabel Perry will be here; you know
she's the dearest girl, and I always thought you really did like Isabel.
Her father lost all his money before he died and she's had a position as
gymnasium teacher in Miss Gordon's school. This summer she's to run a
girls' camp up in Michigan and she can't help making a splendid success
of it."
Archie did not at once detach Miss Perry from the innumerable host of
young women his sister had introduced him to; they were a hazy composite
in his memory, but when Mrs. Featherstone insisted that he couldn't have
forgotten Miss Perry's smile and merry laugh, he promptly declared that
he remembered her perfectly. When he found himself sitting beside her
later at Mrs. Featherstone's table, with a lady on his right who was
undoubtedly most distinguished in spite of the fact that he failed to
catch her name and understood very little of her rapid French, he was
very grateful for Miss Perry's propinquity. The smile and the laugh were
both better even than Mrs. Featherstone's specifications, and her
English had a refreshing Western tang and raciness that pleased him.
"I passed you on the street the other day and made frantic efforts to
attract your attention but you were in a trance and failed to see my
signals."
"I was taking my walk," he stammered.
"'_My_ walk!'" she repeated. "You speak as though you had a monopoly of
that form of exercise. I must say you didn't appear to be enjoying
yourself. Your aspect was wholly funereal and your demeanor that of a
man with a certain number of miles wished on him."
"Four a day," Archie confessed with an air of resignation; "two in the
morning and two before dinner."
"Then you were doing your morning lap when I passed you. Only four miles
a day?"
"By the doctor's orders," he assented with the wistful smile that
usually evoked sympathetic murmurs in feminine auditors.
"Oh, the doctors!" remarked the girl as though she had no great opinion
of doctors in general or of Mr. Bennett's medical advisers in
particular. He was used to a great deal of sympathy and he was convinced
that Miss Perry was an utterly unsympathetic person.
"What would you call a good walk?" he asked a little tartly.
"Oh, ten, twenty, thirty! I've done fifteen and gone to a dance at the
end of the tramp."
"But you haven't my handicap," he protested defensively. "You can't be
very gay about walking when you're warned that excessive fatigue may
have disastrous consequences!"
She was not wholly without feeling for her face grew grave for a moment
and she met his eyes searchingly, with something of the professional
scrutiny to which he had long been accustomed.
"Eyes clear; color very good; voice a trifle weak and suggesting
timidity and feeble initiative. Introspective; a little self-conscious,
and unimportant nervous symptoms indicated by the rolling of bread
crumbs."
"I've paid doctors large fees for telling me the same things," he said,
hastily hiding the bread crumbs under the edge of his plate. "I wish
you'd write those items down for me. I'm in earnest about that."
"When did you say you were leaving town?"
"Tomorrow evening. If you'll write out your diagnosis and any
suggestions you may have as to my habits, diet and general course of
life, I promise to put them into practice."
"Your case interests me and I'll consider this matter of advising you."
"I shall expect the document tomorrow afternoon!"
"I should want to be very sure," she laughed, "that you were really
leaving town and that I shouldn't see you for a long time--perhaps never
again!"
"That has an ominous sound, as though you were going to give me a death
sentence! Is my case as bad as that?"
"Not at all; but it calls for that disagreeable frankness we all dislike
in our friends and very properly resent in mere acquaintances. I should
be enormously embarrassed to meet you until after--"
She paused and surveyed him once more, questioningly. The French lady
was telling a story to the whole company, and they were obliged to give
heed to it; and as Archie failed to catch the point of it Miss Perry
very kindly gave him the clue. The talk was general for a few minutes
and then he begged her to finish the sentence that had been left in the
air.
"Oh, it doesn't matter! I think I was going to say that it would be
embarrassing to see you until after you had given my little hints a
trial. I'll say now that just the orderly course of your life, with four
miles a day, no more, no less, isn't a bit likely to get you anywhere.
My treatment for such a case as yours would be very drastic. I'd set you
some real stunts to do if you were my patient. May tells me that they
won't have you in the army, the navy, or the flying corps, but I believe
I could find some excitement for you," she ended musingly.
"As, for example--?" he asked, finding the French lady conspiring with
an attaché of the Italian embassy. "To meet the competition of the nerve
specialists, you'll have to be very explicit and tell me exactly what to
do."
"Right there is one of your troubles--living by fixed schedules. You've
never felt the world's rough hand; you don't know life! Clubs and
sanatoriums and week-ends in comfortable houses don't count. You're a
tremendously formal person, Mr. Bennett! What you really need is a good
hard jar! Every morning you know exactly what you're going to do every
hour of the day. It's routine that kills! Now just suppose when you're
out on one of your walks you were to overpower the chauffeur of, we will
say, the British ambassador, and drive the car bearing his Excellency
into some lonely fastness of the Virginia hills, and hold him for a
ransom, and collect the money in twenty-dollar gold pieces and escape
with it and then come back to Washington and spend it all on a big party
with the ambassador as the guest of honor. There would be a real
achievement--something that would make you famous in two hemispheres."
"And incidentally lock me up for life if I escaped being shot! Such an
escapade would very likely spoil our cordial relations with England and
cause no end of trouble."
"There you are!" she exclaimed, "thinking always of the cost, never of
the fun! Of course you would never do any such thing. Let me try again!
Suppose you were to hold up a bank messenger in Wall Street and skip
with a satchelful of negotiable securities and then, after the papers
were through ragging the police for their inefficiency, you would drive
up to the bank in a taxi, walk in and return the money, saying you had
found it in the old family pew at Trinity when you went in to say your
prayers! Here would be an opportunity to break the force of habit and
awaken your self-confidence."
"Am I to understand that you practice what you preach? I don't mean to
be impertinent, but really,--"
"Oh, I'm perfectly capable of doing anything I've suggested. I'm merely
biding my time. Parents are pardonably fussy about the sort of person
they turn their children over to, so I must have a care. I mean to dig
for buried treasure this summer, realizing the dream of a lifetime."
"That appeals to me strongly. Perhaps you'd let me assist in that
undertaking?"
"Impossible! I want all the glory and eke the gold if I find the hidden
chests. Talk about romance being dead! My grandfather was a planter in
Mississippi before the Civil War. In about 1860 he saw trouble ahead,
and as he was opposed to secession he turned everything he had into
gold, bought several tracts of land in Michigan and New York and
secretly planted his money. His wife and children refused to share his
lonely exile and he sent them to England but clung to America himself,
and died suddenly and alone the second year of the war on the very acres
my father inherited in Michigan. That's where I'm opening my camp."
"And the gold hasn't been found?" asked Archie deeply interested.
"Not a coin so far! You see grandfather made his will in war time and
only divided the land, being afraid to mention the buried treasure in a
document that would become a public record when he died."
"This is most exciting. It's only unfortunate that it's not pirate gold
to give zest to your enterprise."
"Oh, the pirate in the story is a cousin of mine, who inherited the land
up near the St. Lawrence and has dug all over it without results. My
father gave the Michigan scenery to me, but this cousin has been
digging on my land, most unwarrantably! He's rather a dashing young
person!"
Archie was so enthralled that he forgot the typewritten dietary he
always carried in his pocket and ate most of his portion of beef
tenderloin before he remembered that red meats were denied him. He laid
down his fork so abruptly that she asked him what was the matter.
"Nothing; only you've interested me so much that I've eaten a whole lot
of stuff that's positively forbidden. You've already scored a victory
over my specialists!"
"Splendid!" she cried. "Eat when you're hungry and never think about
your food. Don't let a mere piece of beef know that you're a coward.
Have you ever committed murder? You pale at the suggestion and yet a
pleasant little murder might be the very thing to set you on your feet
again!"
From time to time he caught Mrs. Featherstone's eyes fixed upon him
approvingly, and he knew that she was thinking that at last he had met a
girl who interested him. The impression that he was an invalid in
imminent peril of death caused his friends and acquaintances to talk to
him as though he were a sick child, and it was refreshing to find a girl
who openly chaffed him about his health and went the length of
prescribing a career of riotous crime as a cure for his ills. This was
enormously amusing for in prep school and college he had been guiltless
of the traditional pranks and in the six years that had elapsed since he
emerged into the world he had walked circumspectly in the eyes of all
men.
Isabel Perry was not afraid of him and she didn't treat him as girls
did who had an idea that if they talked to him very long he might faint
or even die on their hands. He noted her fine rounded arms and supple
fingers that spoke for strength, reflecting that very likely she could
pick him up and pitch him through the window. He had always disliked
athletic girls, fancying that they nodded to him patronizingly as they
passed him on country club verandas all aglow from golf or tennis. This
amiable Isabel was quite capable of making him dance through a set of
tennis and with her high spirits and strong will might even bring him
out alive. It was obvious that the sudden sweeping away of her father's
fortune had not troubled her in the least. He marveled at this, for he
had a great deal of money that had been conferred upon him in the cradle
and what he should do if he lost it was a depressing possibility that
had contributed not a little to his neurasthenia.
When it came time for Isabel to say good-night to her hostess Bennett
was hovering near to offer his services in calling her car.
"Nothing like that for me! I brought walking shoes and shall foot it
home, thank you. But--" she hesitated and said with mock gravity, "if
you're not afraid of the night air or the excessive fatigue, you might
take me home. That will add a mile to your prescription but you can ride
back!"
The other guests had gone when she reappeared, wrapped in a long cloak
and bearing a party-bag containing her slippers. She spoke of her plans
for the summer with charming candor as they set off at a brisk pace.
Little bits of autobiography she let fall interested him immensely. She
was born in Wyoming, where her father had been a ranchman, and she had
first known Mrs. Featherstone in college. She was enthusiastic about the
summer camp; if it succeeded she meant to conduct an outdoor school for
girls, moving it from Michigan to Florida with the changing seasons.
"People have been so kind to me! And I shall have a wonderful lot of
girls--just think of it,--one hundred dear young beings from all over
the country. It's a big responsibility but that land of my grandfather's
is a lovely site for the camp. It's on a bay, where the swimming will be
perfectly safe, and there's a wonderful forest, with Indian trails that
run back to Marquette's time. We shall have a doctor--a woman, of
course--and two trained nurses and some splendid young women to act, as
councilors."
There was no question of her making a success of it, he said, marveling
at her vitality, her exuberance, the confidence with which she viewed
the future.
"I wish you all good luck," he said when they reached the house of the
friend she was visiting. "The camp will be a great success,--I'm sure of
that."
"Oh, it's a case of sink or swim--I've got to make it go!" she replied
with her buoyant laugh. "If I don't succeed I can't emerge from the
woods next fall and face my creditors!"
"There's the buried treasure; you mustn't neglect that! I'm greatly your
debtor for all the interesting things you've told me. This has been the
happiest evening I've spent since----"
"Since you began taking everything so hard? Please quit looking on your
life as a burden; try to get some fun out of it!"
The door opened to the key she gave him and the light of the hall lamp
fell upon her face and glinted her brown hair as she put out her hand.
"Don't forget me in the rush of things! And particularly don't forget
that note of instructions. I'm counting on that!"
"Not really?" she exclaimed. "I was just in fun, you know."
"If I don't get it before I leave tomorrow evening, I shall be terribly
disappointed. I shall take it as a sign that you don't think me worth
bothering about!"
There was a pleading in his voice that held her for a moment; she
surveyed him gravely, then answered lightly,
"Oh, very well! You shall have it, sir!"