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DIANE OF THE GREEN VAN
by
LEONA DALRYMPLE
Illustrations by Reginald Birch
Chicago
The Reilly & Britton Co.
Third printing
1914
"_In Arcadie, the Land of Hearte's Desire,
Lette us linger whiles with Luveres fond;
A sparklynge Comedie they playe--with Fire--
Unwyttynge Fate stands waytynge with hir Wande._"
Diane of the Green Van was awarded the $10,000.00 prize in a novel
contest in which over five hundred manuscripts were submitted.
[Frontispiece: "Excellency, as a gentleman who is not a coward, it
behooves you to explain!"]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I Of a Great White Bird Upon a Lake
II An Indoor Tempest
III A Whim
IV The Voice of the Open Country
V The Phantom that Rose from the Bottle
VI Baron Tregar
VII Themar
VIII After Sunset
IX In a Storm-Haunted Wood
X On the Ridge Road
XI In the Camp of the Gypsy Lady
XII A Bullet in Arcadia
XIII A Woodland Guest
XIV By the Backwater Pool
XV Jokai of Vienna
XVI The Young Man of the Sea
XVII In Which the Baron Pays
XVIII Nomads
XIX A Nomadic Minstrel
XX The Romance of Minstrelsy
XXI At the Gray of Dawn
XXII Sylvan Suitors
XXIII Letters
XXIV The Lonely Camper
XXV A December Snowstorm
XXVI An Accounting
XXVII The Song of the Pine-Wood Sparrow
XXVIII The Nomad of the Fire-Wheel
XXIX The Black Palmer
XXX The Unmasking
XXXI The Reckoning
XXXII Forest Friends
XXXIII By the Winding Creek
XXXIV The Moon Above the Marsh
XXXV The Wind of the Okeechobee
XXXVI Under the Live Oaks
XXXVII In the Glades
XXXVIII In Philip's Wigwam
XXXIX Under the Wild March Moon
XL The Victory
XLI In Mic-co's Lodge
XLII The Rain Upon the Wigwam
XLIII The Rival Campers
XLIV The Tale of a Candlestick
XLV The Gypsy Blood
XLVI In the Forest
XLVII "The Marshes of Glynn"
XLVIII On the Lake Shore
XLIX Mr. Dorrigan
L The Other Candlestick
LI In the Adirondacks
LII Extracts from the Letters of Norman Westfall
LIII By Mic-co's Pool
LIV On the Westfall Lake
ILLUSTRATIONS
"Excellency, as a gentleman who is not a coward it behooves you to
explain." . . . _Frontispiece_
Diane swung lightly up the forest path
White girl and Indian maid then clasped hands
"No, I may not take your hand."
CHAPTER I
OF A GREAT WHITE BIRD UPON A LAKE
Spring was stealing lightly over the Connecticut hills, a shy, tender
thing of delicate green winging its way with witch-rod over the wooded
ridges and the sylvan paths of Diane Westfall's farm. And with the
spring had come a great hammering by the sheepfold and the stables
where a smiling horde of metropolitan workmen, sheltered by night in
the rambling old farmhouse, built an ingenious house upon wheels and
flirted with the house-maids.
Radiantly the spring swept from delicate shyness into a bolder glow of
leaf and flower. Dogwood snowed along the ridges, Solomon's seal
flowered thickly in the bogs, and following the path to the lake one
morning with Rex, a favorite St. Bernard, at her heels, Diane felt with
a thrill that the summer itself had come in the night with a
wind-flutter of wild flower and the fluting of nesting birds.
The woodland was deliciously green and cool and alive with the piping
of robins. Over the lake which glimmered faintly through the trees
ahead came the whir and hum of a giant bird which skimmed the lake with
snowy wing and came to rest like a truant gull. Of the habits of this
extraordinary bird Rex, barking, frankly disapproved, but finding his
mistress's attention held unduly by a chirping, bright-winged caucus of
birds of inferior size and interest, he barked and galloped off ahead.
When presently Diane emerged from the lake path and halted on the
shore, he was greatly excited.
There was an aeroplane upon the water and in the aeroplane a tall young
man with considerable length of sinewy limb, lazily rolling a
cigarette. Diane unconsciously approved the clear bronze of his lean,
burned face and his eyes, blue, steady, calm as the waters of the lake
he rode.
The aviator met her astonished glance with one of laughing deference
even as she marveled at his genial air of staunch philosophy.
"I beg your pardon," stammered Diane, "but--but are you by any chance
waiting--to be rescued?"
"Why--I--I believe I am!" exclaimed the young man readily, apparently
greatly pleased at her common sense. "At your convenience, of course!"
"Are you--er--sinking or merely there?"
"Merely here!" nodded the young man with a charming smile of
reassurance. "This contraption is a--er--I--I think Dick calls it an
hydro-aeroplane. It has pontoons and things growing all over it for
duck stunts and if the water wasn't so infernally still, I'd be
floating and smoking and likely in time I'd make shore. That's a
delightful pastime for you now," he added with a lazy smile of the
utmost good humor, "to float and smoke on a summer day and grab at the
shore."
"I was under the impression," commented Diane critically, "that in an
hydro-aeroplane one could rise from the water like a bird. I've read
so recently."
"One can," smiled the shipwrecked philosopher readily, "provided his
motor isn't deaf and dumb and insanely indifferent to suggestion. When
it grows shy and silent, one swims eventually and drips home, unless a
dog barks and a rescuer emerges from the trees equipped with sympathy
and common sense. I've a mechanician back there," he added sociably.
"He--he's in a tree, I think. I--er--mislaid him in a very dangerous
air current."
"Are you aware," inquired the girl, biting her lip, "that you're
trespassing?"
"Lord, no!" exclaimed the aviator. "You don't mean it. Have you by
any chance a reputable rope anywhere about you?"
"No," said Diane maliciously, "I haven't. As a rule, I do go about
equipped with ropes and hooks and things to--rescue trespassing
hydroaviators, but--" she regarded him thoughtfully. "Do you like to
float about and smoke?"
The sun-browned skin of the young aviator reddened a trifle, but his
eyes laughed.
"I'm an incurable optimist," he lightly countered, "or I wouldn't have
tried to fly over a private lake in a borrowed aeroplane."
"I believe," said Diane disapprovingly, "that you were cutting giddy
circles over the water and dipping and skimming, weren't you?"
"I did cut a monkeyshine or two," admitted the young man. "I was
having a devil of a time until you--until the--er--catastrophe
occurred."
"And Miss Westfall, the owner," murmured Diane with sympathy, "is
addicted to firearms. Hadn't you heard? She _hunts_! The Westfalls
are all very erratic and quick-tempered. Didn't you know she was at
the farm?"
The young man looked exceedingly uncomfortable.
"Great guns, no!" he exclaimed. "I presumed she was safe in New
York. . . . And this is her lake and her water and her waves, when
there are any, and no matter how I engineer it, I've got to poach some
of her property. Some of it," he added conversationally, "is in my
shoe. Lord, I am in a pickle! Are you a guest of hers?"
"Yes," said Diane calmly.
"I'm staying over yonder on the hill there with Dick Sherrill," offered
the young man cordially. "They are opening their place with a party of
men, some crack amateur aviators--and myself. Do you know the
Sherrills?"
"Perhaps I do," said Diane discouragingly. "Why didn't you float about
and smoke on Mr. Sherrill's lake?" she added curiously. "It's ever so
much bigger than this."
"Circumstances," began the young man with dignity, and lighted another
cigarette. "My mechanician," he added volubly, after an uncomfortable
interval of silence, "is an exceedingly bold young man. He'll fly over
anything, even a cow. Isn't really mine either; he's borrowed, too.
Dick keeps a few extra mechanicians on hand, like extra cigars. It's
Dick's fault I'm out alone. He lent my mechanician to another chap and
nobody else would come with me."
"I thought," flashed Diane pointedly, "I thought your mechanician was
somewhere in a tree."
The aviator coughed and reddened uncomfortably.
"Doubtless he is," he said lamely. "He--he most always is. Do you
know, he spends a large part of his spare time in trees--and
swamps--and once, I believe, he was discovered in a chimney. I--I'd
like to tell you more about him," he went on affably. "Once--"
"Thank you," said Diane politely, "but you've really entertained me
more now than one could expect from a gentleman in your distressing
plight. Come, Rex." She turned back again at the hemlocks which
flanked the forest path. "I'll ask Miss Westfall to send some men,"
she added and halted.
For Diane had surprised a look of such keen regret in the young
aviator's face that they both colored hotly.
"Beastly luck!" stammered the young man lamely. "I _am_ disappointed.
I--I don't seem to have another match."
"Your cigarette is burning splendidly," hinted Diane coolly, "and
you've a match in your hand."
For a tense, magnetic instant the keen blue eyes flashed a curious
message of pleading and apology, then the aviator fell to whistling
softly, struck the match and finding no immediate function for it,
dropped it in the water.
"I don't in the least mind floating about," he stammered, his eyes
sparkling with silent laughter, "and possibly I'll make shore directly;
but Lord love us! don't send the sharp-shooteress--please! Better
abandon me to my fate."
Slim and straight as the silver birches by the water, Diane hurried
away up the lake-path.
"The young man," she flashed with a stamp of her foot, "is a very great
fool."
"Johnny," she said a little later to a little, bewhiskered man with
cheeks like hard red winter apples, "there's a sociable, happy-go-lucky
young man perched on an aeroplane in the middle of our lake. Better
take a rope and rescue him. I don't think he knows enough about
aeroplanes to be flying so promiscuously about the country."
Johnny Jutes collected a band of enthusiasts and departed.
"Nobody there, Miss Diane," reported young Allan Carmody upon
returning; "leastwise nobody that couldn't take care of himself. Only
a chap buzzin' almighty swift over the trees. Swooped down like a hawk
when he saw us an' waved his hand, laughin' fit to kill himself, an'
dropped Johnny a fiver an' gee! Miss Diane, but he could drive some!
Swift and cool-headed as a bird. He's whizzin' off like mad toward the
Sherrill place, with his motor a-hummin' an' a-purrin' like a cat.
Leanish, sunburnt chap with eyes that 'pear to be laughin' a lot."
Diane's eyes flashed resentfully and as she walked away to the house
her expression was distinctly thoughtful.