BIRDS OF A FEATHER
"What in the world are you doing, Vernie?" Angie paused in the library
door, stifling a yawn daintily as she slipped her evening cloak from
her shoulders.
Vernon looked up from his book with raised eyebrows.
"I should think that was self-evident," he observed. "What brings you
home so early?"
"The dance was insufferably stupid." She dropped into a chair and
began stripping off her gloves. "The music was awful and you know what
the Erskine's ball-room floor is like; domestic champagne, too, with
frilly serviettes around the labels and half the boys drank quite too
much of it. Ghastly bore, the whole affair."
"It seems to me everything is a bore nowadays, according to you."
Vernon grinned. "When is Starr Wiley coming back?"
"I haven't the least idea." Angie flushed. "What has he to do with
it?"
"A good bit, I imagine," responded her brother. "You were playing him
pretty strong before he left."
"Heavens! I wish you wouldn't use such horrid coarse expressions!
That's Willa's influence, but I knew just how it would be. I warned
mother it was a hopeless job to try to make anything of her the very
night she came, and I'm simply dreading next Tuesday!"
"I wouldn't worry on her account if I were you," Vernon returned. "She
may be a little green yet, but she's learning fast, and I wouldn't be
surprised if she were the hit of the season. That black hair and
dead-white skin and those deep blue eyes of hers are going to make a
sensation right off the bat. You'd better look to your laurels, my
dear sister."
"Tommyrot!" retorted Angie, inelegantly. "She's as awkward as a calf,
and hasn't a word to say for herself, though if she'll only continue to
keep still, I'm sure we shall all be thankful. Mother is in despair
over her studies; she simply refused to go on with the tutor, you
know--said she could read all the history and literature she wanted,
and it was a waste of time to study geography until the war was over
and the map settled. Moreover, she told Mr. Timmins to his face that
she knew more about practical mathematics and executive finance than he
did, and the dead languages could stay dead as far as she was
concerned."
Vernon chortled.
"Bully for her! I think she's a corker. She dances like a dream
already, and old Gaudet is ready to weep with joy over her fencing."
Angie compressed her lips, in the fashion she had inherited from her
mother.
"She ought to come naturally by the dancing, I'm sure," she sneered.
"And she rides in rotten form, like a Western cow-girl. It was wise of
mother to introduce her first at a small dinner instead of giving her a
formal coming-out party, where she would be the center of observation."
"Yes," Vernon teased. "It is rather awkward to engineer a second
début, while the first bud is still lingering on the parent stem. You
want to look out or she'll leave you at the post."
"Thank you!" Angie tossed her head. "I'm only afraid she will be a
laughing-stock and bring down ridicule on all of us. You and Father
are perfectly idiotic about her. You might be expected to make a fool
of yourself, but I am surprised at Father's interest in her."
"You wouldn't be if you'd heard them the other night, talking about the
oil business; she was actually advising him, and what's more, he took
it thankfully. I couldn't quite get the hang of it myself, but you can
bet I'm going to!" He flourished the book. "Little brother is going
into the oil game!"
"For about two days, I suppose, until something else comes along."
Angie yawned openly. "Thank heaven, there won't be many people here
Tuesday night."
"Who's coming, anyway?" Vernon demanded. "If I have to take in any
giggling idiot of a débutante, you and mother can just count me out!"
"Tell her your troubles then," Angie suggested lazily. "Mr. North and
Winnie will be here, of course; the Erskines, Harrington Chase, the
Judsons, Mrs. Beekman----"
"Me for her!" interjected Vernon. "She's the best all-round sport in
the crowd, and the only girl who can win cups at tennis and polo and
yet manage to look pink-and-white in the evening. I'll ask mother to
let me take her in. What's become of her brother, Kearn?"
"Mr. Thode?" Angie shrugged. "He's out West or down South,
prospecting about, I imagine. Awful bore, I thought him, and so silly
to spend most of his time in the wilds when he could stay in the New
York office and live like a gentleman if he chose."
"A society hanger-on, grafting dinners and week-end parties because
he's good-looking and there with the family tree, but not rich enough
to marry? Thode's too much of a man for that, and I fancy he prefers
to lead a man's life. I'm getting jolly sick of the whole thing
myself, and I'd like to cut it as he has!"
"By the way--" Angie's negligible thoughts had flown off at a
tangent--"isn't it funny about Cal Shirley?"
"What?" Vernon frowned. "Haven't seen him for ages."
"Nor has anyone else. He's simply dropped out of everything, and
to-night I overheard his mother tell Mrs. Erskine that he was going to
winter at Coronado, for the polo. It's odd, when he was rushing
Suzanne so violently. Perhaps she turned him down."
"Lucky for her if she did," growled Vernon. "He's a pretty-average
cad, if you want to know; I don't believe he'll show up again in a
hurry."
"Why----!" Angie's eyes gleamed. "What has he done, Vernie? Is there
going to be a scandal?"
"Sorry to disappoint you, my dear girl." He rose. "The incident is
closed, and there won't be even a whisper to delight your ears.
However, you can take it from me that Suzanne has seen the last of one
little playmate. I'm going to bed; you have interrupted the flow
of--of oily meditation."
"Wait a minute, Vernie. You and Father are so prejudiced that it's
scarcely worth while trying to talk to you, but mother has enough to
worry about as it is, with Willa on her hands. Besides, I--I couldn't
very well explain how I happened to see her, but I should like to know
what Willa was doing in a horrid little frame house out on the Parkway
at five o'clock this afternoon."
Vernon stared.
"Don't believe it. Someone's been stringing you. She doesn't know a
soul in town--er, that is, no one but the few she has run into
informally here."
"But I tell you I saw her myself! She was just coming out as I motored
past."
"I say, what were you doing out there yourself? I thought you went to
a matinée."
Angie grimaced.
"I went out to the Bumble Bee Inn for tea. You needn't be a prig about
it! Lots of really nice people go, and what's the harm?" She picked
up her gloves and trailed to the door. "I suppose you'll ask who I was
with next, and I sha'n't tell you, my dear. I'm bored to death doing
the same old proper thing all the time! Sweet dreams!"
Vernon looked after her for a moment with real anxiety in his eyes.
One of them was enough to be kicking over the traces; it wouldn't do
for Angie to start. However, that was her own affair. . . . He
shrugged, and, picking up his book, switched off the light.
Life was beginning to round out for Willa, if a multiplicity of demands
upon her time and interest could satisfy her eager impulses. There
were still moments of homesickness, and crises of unrest when she would
gladly have forsworn the stifling hot-house existence and gone back to
the joyous freedom of Limasito days, had it not been for her secret
project. That alone held her to her course and would so hold her until
her purpose was achieved.
The eventful night which was to mark her first appearance in her
cousins' circle came at last, and she smiled whimsically at herself in
the mirror as her new maid added the finishing touches to her toilette.
She still clung stubbornly to black, but Mrs. Halstead had seen to it
that no awkward suggestion of mourning marred the effect of her
shimmering sable gown. It brought out her waxen, lily-like pallor and
the midnight luster of her hair, accentuating her height and slimness,
and her eyes glowed like sapphire stars.
The reflection which met her eyes was a far cry from the khaki-clad
girl who rode man-fashion about the dusty white roads of the Limasito
country, and rallied the gamblers in the Blue Chip. Oblivious of the
maid's presence, Willa bowed solemnly in acknowledgment of the
transformation, and pinning on the orchids Ripley Halstead had
thoughtfully provided, she descended to her fate.
At first she was conscious only of a great many people; very bored,
very languid people who touched her hand limply and then turned away as
if to pursue some interrupted conversation of their own. Then all at
once Willa was aware of a handclasp more vitalizing, and looked up into
a pair of familiar laughing eyes.
She smiled infectiously.
"How do you do, Mr. North?"
"By Jove!" Winnie beamed at her. "How do you girls manage it?--to
change your type, I mean. I thought you were wonderful that night, but
now you've eclipsed the memory of it, and I didn't believe anything
could ever do that. Somehow, you make me feel as if that girl never
existed, and I don't know that I like it. She might have been a real
pal, but you are much too stunning and gorgeous for one to dare such a
thought."
"I don't quite know which the real girl is." Willa eyed him gravely.
"She seems like a stranger to me, sometimes, but I reck--I think the
one you met first is down underneath, just taking a siesta, and she's
apt to wake up any time. Who is the man with the lock of hair shot
away over his right ear?"
Winnie started, and eyed her curiously.
"You mean Harrington Chase? He says his hair grew out that way after
an attack of yellow fever."
Willa pursed her lips.
"It is only a bullet which leaves a scalded furrow like that, as clean
and clear as a line drawn on paper. Who is he, anyway?"
"Funny you should have asked that. He's one of the biggest
oil-operators on the Exchange; owns a lot of leases somewhere in
Mexico. His partner is down there now, Starr Wiley. I don't suppose
you ever ran across him."
"Yes, I think I have." Willa's tone was quite colorless. "At any
rate, I've heard of him.--Oh, there's your father!"
As it happened, the senior Mr. North had been just behind her when she
greeted his son and the latter's opening remarks had given him food for
lively conjecture. Dexterously, considering his bulk, he had
insinuated himself into and through a screening group of people and
rejoined his hostess near the door. Where and when could that boy of
his have encountered Willa Murdaugh?
The man with the scarred forehead took her in to dinner and Willa
listened politely to his rather heavy pleasantries, studying him the
while through narrowed eyes. Of a type foreign to the frequenters of
the Blue Chip, he had not crossed her path in Limasito, but his
previous activities there were an open book to her. She knew that his
methods in acquiring more than one lease had been unscrupulous and his
reputation none too good, yet the man interested her.
"Your cousin tells me that you've been in Mexico yourself." He turned
his small eyes, sleepily bright, upon her. "Says you've picked up an
uncommon lot of knowledge about the petroleum industries."
"I've heard them discussed, that is all," Willa deprecated.
"Naturally, they're the main subject down there, after government
upheavals, of course. It would be a good thing if the States took the
oil lands under protection, wouldn't it?"
He laughed shortly.
"Good for us. It will come in time, too. A few more outrages----"
"Yes." Willa interposed softly. "Even the less important disturbers,
like El Negrito for instance, have their uses."
"El Negrito?" He laid down his knife and fork. "That's what they call
Alvarez, isn't it? I didn't know his fame had spread all over Mexico.
You were at school there, I understand."
Willa shook her head.
"Not lately. I happened to be among those present when El Negrito made
his last sortie from the hills."
"The deuce you were!" The small eyes filmed craftily. "I beg your
pardon, Miss Murdaugh, but you astonish me! I had no idea----! Most
disastrous affair, that."
"Very." Willa dropped her eyes. "That is the worst of the country
down there, those bandit raids. Creatures like El Negrito know no law
but their own; they can't be hired or bribed or coerced and no one
knows when they will take it into their heads to appear, murdering and
looting and burning. It's a picturesque country, but bad for the
nerves."
She turned as the man on her right spoke to her, and apparently was
deaf to the sigh with which Harrington Chase drained his wine-glass.
She had piqued his curiosity, aroused his interest and disturbed by
just a pin-prick his pachydermatous equanimity; she would not raise
again before the draw.
Later, Winnie found his way to her side in the music-room.
"Chase has been telling us over the liqueurs that you've had some
exciting experiences down in Mexico. That's where you learned to play
poker, isn't it? Jove, I envy you!"
"Poker isn't so difficult!" she laughed. "If you'd stop betting your
head off on two pairs, Mr. North, you wouldn't find it so expensive."
"Oh, you know I don't mean that! I was thinking of your adventures.
Father told me he found you living with some old friends on a big
fruit-growing estate near a small town, and I supposed it had been all
rather lonely and humdrum, until that quiet little game a few weeks ago
made me realize that you must have seen a bit of the strenuous side
down there. That would be the life for me!"
She glanced at his round, innocuous face, with the downy mustache and
ruminative eyes, and smiled irrepressibly. Then her own face grew
grave.
"I wonder! You see, Mr. North, it isn't all like a movie; there's an
element of uncertainty that keeps a man quick on the trigger. I was
living with friends at the Casa de Limas, as your father told you. But
if he had arrived on a certain night just a week or so before, he would
have found me barricaded in a--a great hall in town, with men shot to
pieces and dying like flies all around me, and three hundred butchering
rebels from the hills battering in the door."
"Great guns!" exclaimed Winnie. "Fancy your living through that! What
happened--did your friends manage to beat them off?"
"No, the government troops came; the Carranzistas. But they were only
just in time."
"Phew! No wonder you spoke of the movies! It sounds like a melodrama,
doesn't it?"
"It was a tragedy." Willa's voice was very low. "We would all have
been wiped out, if it had not been for one man. He was with us when
the raiders came, but he fought his way through them, took one of their
own horses and rode to the barracks for the troops; ten miles each way,
and he made the whole trip in an hour, wounded as he was. He reached
us just as the door went down, and I'll never forget him cutting his
way through that crowd of fiends to fall unconscious at my feet."
"I shouldn't think you could!" Winnie's breath came fast. "What a
magnificent stunt for a chap to do! Was he a Mexican?"
"No, an American. His name is Kearn Thode."
"What! Who?" Winnie exploded. "You can't mean----! For the love of
Pete!"
Willa stared at him in dawning comprehension.
"You don't mean that you know him?"
"'Know him'?" he repeated, jubilantly. "I should rather think I do!
Classmate of mine at college and the best fellow that ever lived. So
old Kearn's been pulling off heroic stuff in Mexico! I never thought
he had it in him; he was always one of the quiet kind, but at that he
was right there when it came to a show-down. He's an engineer of some
sort and forever wandering over the face of the earth. I haven't seen
much of him consequently in the last three or four years, but I ran
into him about six months ago, and he told me he'd been out in
Oklahoma. I wonder what he's doing in Mexico!"
"Tell me about him," Willa invited. "I'm interested after what he did,
although I really liked him before that; he is so strong and clean and
straightforward."
"Yes, he's all of that," replied Winnie. "There isn't very much to
tell about him, though. We were at St. Paul's together and then
college, and we were pretty thick in those days, although he never
cared much for the society racket. His sister is his only living
relative; that's she, Mrs. Beekman, in the gray gown over there."
Willa eagerly followed his eyes. Why had she not guessed? He had
spoken only of "Edna" to her, but the likeness was unmistakable; the
same smooth brown hair, clear-cut profile with the firm, rounded chin
and frank, steady, laughing eyes. She remembered vaguely having been
presented, but the conventional tone of the other's greeting had
awakened no memories. Willa drew a deep breath.
"I'd like to really know her," she said wistfully.
"She's a rattling good sort; you'll like her, when you do.--I say, was
Wiley anywhere around when that raid took place?"
"I don't know." The eager light faded from Willa's eyes. "Why?"
"Oh, well, I can't just imagine him doing what Thode did, that's all.
But perhaps I shouldn't have said that. Even if you haven't met him
yet, you will probably see a great deal of him when he returns."
"How do you mean?" Her tone was oddly constrained, but Winnie was
impervious to subtleties.
"I really haven't any right to discuss it since it hasn't been
announced, but I thought you knew." He nodded toward the group of
callow youths who surrounded Angelica. "It's an open secret that he's
going to marry your cousin."
Still later, as the two Norths rode homeward, the older turned a
speculative eye on his son.
"Win, how did you meet Miss Murdaugh?--Don't look at me like that, you
young pirate! I mean the first time. I overheard some of your
conversation before dinner."
"I refuse to answer, not on the ground that it would incriminate either
the lady or myself, but merely because it is against the rules of the
game." Winnie responded glibly, throwing an affectionate arm across
his father's shoulders. "Governor, she's a peach of a girl!"
"She is a most extraordinary young woman." Mason North agreed, with
conviction. "Fine-looking, too; I don't believe I noticed it before
to-night. You seemed to be getting on famously with her later in the
evening. Except when she is angry, I have never seen her so animated."
"Yes." Winnie sobered. "We were talking about another fellow."