The moment he saw her, when she came into the old-fashioned living-room

of the quiet house that had once been too quiet, he understood that he

had much more to repay himself for than he had dreamed could be

possible. Elsie’s look of knowing something mysterious and lovely about

herself was still upon her; and Mr. Reamer set himself ardently and

instantly to the task of self-repayment.

“Elsie,” he said, “I’ve been away for a long, dreary time, and I’ve just

got back. I’ve come to spend my very first evening with you.”

He was too late.

Following Elsie from the library, where the three had been having coffee

and discussing the Battle of Waterloo, came two gentlemen. One was

Elsie’s father, and he walked with his hand upon the other gentleman’s

shoulder.

The other gentleman was a tall young man from out of town who had been

named for two marshals and a general of the First Empire.

XXVI

DESERT SAND

WE SPEAK now of that parent-troubling daughter of Mrs. Dodge’s as she

came to be through weltering experience, most of it hurried and all of

it crowded. For do we not know that there are maidens of twenty-three

who have already lived a lifetime? Such is their own testimony. They

have had a view of all the world can offer, and foresee the rest of

their existence as mere repetition, not stirring to the emotions. Life

henceforth is to be but “drab,” they say, several decades of them having

strongly favoured the word; and this mood, often lasting for days at a

time, usually follows one form or another of amatory anticlimax. Not

infrequently the anticlimax is within the maiden herself; she finds

herself lacking in certain supremities of feeling that appear not only

proper but necessary, if the sentimental passions are to be taken at all

seriously.

“It is all over—I shall never care for any man—I shall never marry—I

shall never feel anything about anything again,” such a one wrote to a

girl confidant abroad, and fully believed what she wrote. “I am tired of

everything,” she continued. “I am all dead within me. I look at things,

but I do not see them. I see nothing—nothing absolutely!”

And yet at that very moment, as she glanced absently out of the window

beside her pretty green-painted desk, her attention became concentrated

upon a young man passing along the suburban boulevard below. He was a

stranger, but a modish and comely one; she could not accurately call him

“nothing,” nor maintain that he was invisible;—her eyes followed him,

in fact, until he had passed out of the range of her window. Then, with

perfect confidence that she set forth the truth, she turned back to her

letter and continued:

“I cannot by the farthest stretch of my imagination picture

myself as feeling the least, the slightest—oh, the most

infinitesimal!—featherweight of interest in any man again so

long as my life shall last. I broke my engagement last night

simply on that account. It was not in the most formal sense an

engagement, since it hadn’t been announced; but Henry made as

much fuss as if I had turned back at the altar. He was frantic,

especially as I could give him no reason except that I did not

feel for him what I had expected to. He begged and begged to

know what he had done to change me. I could only tell him he had

done nothing. I had simply become incapable of caring. I think

now that I fell in love too often and too intensely in my

younger days. My ‘grand passion’ came too soon and since then I

have cared less and less each time that I have fancied my

interest intrigued. The absurd boy was my Sun-god—and yet I see

now that he is and always was a ridiculous person, and I laugh

when I remember how I glorified him to myself. He meant nothing.

Price Gleason meant nothing. Laurence Grover, Paul Arthur, Capt.

Williams, and all the others meant nothing. Henry, so long and

tediously a pursuer, means nothing now. None of them mean

anything. The spring has gone dry and my heart, that bloomed

once so eagerly, is desert sand—desert sand, my dear!”

She was rather pleased with this bit of metaphor and read it over aloud,

speaking the words lingeringly. Upon the wall beyond the pretty desk

there was a mirror facing her; she could see herself when she chose, and

she chose to see herself now in her mood of poetic melancholy. She saw a

winsome picture in that mirror, too, when she made this choice—an

exquisitely fair, delicate creature, slim, though not so fragile as she

had been, and, in spite of her heart of desert sand, all alive indeed.

Probably induced by pleasure in the metaphor just written, the young

lady in the glass was at the moment more sparkling, in fact, than seemed

suitable. Therefore, her face became poignantly wistful—an effect so

excellent that a surprised approbation was added, a little

incongruously, to the wistfulness. The approbation was removed in favour

of an inscrutable pathos, which continued throughout a long exchange of

looks between the image and its original; then both of these little

blonde heads bent once more above their green-painted desks, in a

charmingly concerted action, like two glints of sunshine glancing down

through foliage;—and the letter was resumed.

“My dear, our suburb is trembling with excitement. The chief

scion of all the McArdles is on the point of being Installed in

Residence among us. I think it should be spoken of as at least

an Installation, shouldn’t it? In our great Plutocracy, surely

the McArdle dynasty is Royalty, isn’t it? Anyhow, you’d think so

if you could see the excitement over the announcement that James

Herbert McArdle, III, is coming here to represent the dynasty’s

interests. That is, he’s supposed to be the new manager of the

huge McArdle Works, which are the smallest, I believe, of the

dozens of McArdle Works over the country. I understand he’s only

to be nominal manager and is really to ‘learn the business’

under old Mr. Hiram Huston, the McArdles’ trusted ‘local

representative.’ The youthful Dauphin is given command of an

army—but under the advice of old generals strictly! However,

you can guess what a spasm is happening here, with seventy

million dollars (or is it seven hundred million?) walking around

under one hat. I feel sorry for the poor agitated girls and

their poor agitating mothers. The rich marry the rich; _we_

sha’n’t get him!”

She looked up thoughtfully at the mirror, frowned in sharp

disapproval—not of the mirror—and continued: “It’s really disgusting,

the manœuvring to be the first to meet and annex him. Eleanor Gray and

her mother are accused of having gone to New York to try to be on the

same train with him! Yesterday there was a rumour that he had arrived at

the Jefferson Road Inn, which is to be his temporary quarters, and the

story went all round that Harriet Joyce thought she recognized him there

at tea and actually fainted away in order to make him notice her. My

dear, I _believe_ it! Really, you simply couldn’t imagine the things

that are going on. As for me, it is the piteous truth that this

stupendous advent fails to stir me. I wish it could! But no, upon my

life, I haven’t a flicker—not the faintest flicker of ordinary human

curiosity to know even if he looks like his tiresome pictures. These

curiosities, these stirrings are for the springtime of life, my dear,

while I—as I told poor Henry last night—I am autumn!”

Thus wrote Lily that most April-like of all maidens and within the hour

went forth, looking like the very spring itself, to meet an adventure

comparable to adventures met only in the springtime of the world. The

scene of this adventure should have been a wood near Camelot, or the

Forest of Arden, and Lily a young huntress in a leathern kirtle and out

with a gilded bow and painted arrows for hare or pheasant. Then, if one

of her arrows had pierced the thicket and also the King’s Son on the

other side of it, so that she came and took him, all swounding, in her

arms, the same thing in all true essentials would have happened that

happened to her to-day. The surroundings would have been more

appropriate—especially for a damsel with a dead heart—than the golf

course of the Blue Hills Country Club, but the hero and the heroine and

the wounding and the swounding would have been identical.

In particular, there was little difference between James Herbert McArdle

and a king’s son. From the time of his birth, which was announced by

greater tongues than those of royal heralds, these greater tongues being

the principal newspapers of the world, he was a public figure. At the

age of four his likeness and those of his favourite goat and dog were

made known to his fellow citizens up and down the land by means of

photographic reproductions in magazines and in the Sunday prints. Lest

there be fear on the part of the public that he might alter beyond

recognition as he grew up, these magazines and prints continued

reassuringly to present portraits of him, playing in the sea sand, or

seated upon the knee of his portentous grandfather, or—with tutor and

attendants—upon the platform of his father’s private car, and later,

when he reached a proper age, being instructed in the technique

necessary for driving his earliest automobile.

His first evening after matriculating as a freshman at a university was

spent in dining and conversing with the university’s president. When, as

a sophomore, he was found equal to a position in “left field” on the

varsity nine, and the nine went out of town to play, reporters

interviewed him and neglected to mention the captain. When he had

graduated and his father and grandfather began to prepare him for the

ponderous responsibilities that would some day rest upon his shoulders,

there were spreading “feature articles” about him everywhere. Wherever

he went, important old men hurried beamingly to his side, eager to be

seen conversing with him; magnificent old ladies went beyond all

amiability in caressing him; many of his contemporaries were unable to

veil their deference; and lovely girls looked plentifully toward him.

All his life he had been courted, attended, served, pointed out,

focussed upon, stared at, and lime-lighted before the multitude. No

wonder the poor young man liked solitude better than anything else!

When he contrived to be alone he protracted the experience as far as he

was able; and to-day, having escaped from a welcoming committee and the

mayor of the suburb that was to be his home for a year, he drove alone

to the country club, which had already elected him to membership. Here

he was delighted to find that the late hour and nipping air had divested

the links of every player, and, attended by a lingering caddy who was

unaware of his client’s identity, James Herbert set forth upon a round

of the course with a leisureliness unmatched by the most elderly member

of the club.

It was a leisureliness so extreme indeed that it annoyed a player who

arrived in full equipment a quarter of an hour after young Mr. McArdle

had made his first drive on that course. Her equipment was too complete

to please her, as it happened, for he had taken the last caddy, which

was another item in her list of indignations;—Lily had found time to

acquire such a list since finishing her letter. Most of the items

concerned that unfortunate Henry, mentioned as having been dismissed on

the previous evening. Henry had called; had been turned away at the door

with “Not at home”; and then, by an unworthy pretext—though his

lamentable state of mind might have offered some excuse—he had secured

her presence at the telephone, where merely what he said to her was

furniture enough for any ordinary list of indignations. She decided to

cool her temper by a solitary but vigorous round of the golf course.

Lily was one of those favoured creatures who have a genius for this most

inviting yet most baffling of all the pastimes of mankind; and

persistence had added so much to her native gift that a long shelf at

home was needed to support the tournament prizes she had won. Various

“ladies’ championships” were hers, too; and she was known among all the

country clubs for miles around on account of a special talent, well

practised, for marvellous little precisions of accuracy. Moreover, Lily

was what players have been heard to call “conscientious” about her game.

She wished ever to excel herself, to play excellently even when she

played alone, and she was never quite at her best when she had no caddy;

therefore she was annoyed with the gentleman ahead of her on that

account, as well as because of his leisure.

If she could play “all the way round” with a fine score before darkness

stopped her, Lily felt that her irritations within might be a little

soothed; but she found them, on the contrary, increasing. She might have

passed the laggard player if she had chosen; but his figure bore an

accurate resemblance to that of a gentleman named in her letter as

Captain Williams. Lily had her own reasons for avoiding any conversation

with Captain Williams, to whom she had been as enigmatic, six months

earlier, as she had yesterday been to Henry. She was almost certain, in

fact, that the languid golfer was Captain Williams, and so kept far

behind him—a difficult matter for one who wished to play at all.

She talked broodingly to herself, addressing him. “Old _Thing_!” she

called him between her teeth. “Slow Poke! Aren’t you _ever_ going to hit

that ball! Oh, my heaven, what are you doing _now_? Writing your score

or writing a book? Snail! Tortoise!” And as his procrastinations

continued, she called him worse. “Mule!” she said, and corroborated

herself vehemently. “Mule, mule, mule! You’re a mule once, you’re a mule

twice, you’re a mule a hundred and eighty-seven times over—and that’s

only _commencing_ to tell you what you are!” For now, as she waited and

waited, withholding her strokes intolerably as the late light waned and

waned, she hated him with that great hatred most human beings feel for

all things unconsciously and persistently in their way.

But in the deepening twilight haze she felt safe to approach him more

closely, until finally she was less than an arrow’s flight away. He was

upon the last of the greens by this time, and she, unnoticed, stood

waiting for him to leave it so that she might drive her ball upon it.

But here he delayed interminably. He lay prone upon the ground to study

a proper aim, though he studied it so long that his purpose might have

been thought a siesta; and when he rose it was to examine the sod by

inches. Finally, having completed all these preliminaries and benefited

little by them in their consummation, he remained standing upon the

green, preoccupied with his score card. “You go on!” Lily said,

dangerously. “You aren’t writing a dictionary. Go on!”

But he continued to stand, amending and editing his card as though

eternity were at everyone’s disposal. The long red ribbons in the

western sky merged with the general fog colour of the dusk, and he was

but a hazy figure when at last he moved. And as he turned his back and

lifted a slow foot to leave the green, Lily, impatient beyond all

discretion, cut the air with her heaviest implement.

“Mule!” she said, furiously, instead of “Fore!” and put that fury into

her swing. Nevertheless, the ball sped true in direction, though in the

thickened air it sped invisibly and would far have overshot the mark if

nothing had stopped it. Straight to the short dark hair on the back of

the languid player’s head the little white ball flew with fiercest

precision, and being hard, and on its way to a place much farther on, it

straightway rendered him more languid than ever. He dropped without a

moan.

XXVII

MIRACULOUS ACCIDENT

“OH, MURDER!” Lily gasped, not greatly exaggerating when she used that

word. She stood gazing toward him miserably, waiting for him to rise;

and then, as the stricken player’s inertia remained complete, she ran

forward, screaming to the caddy, who was disappearing toward the

clubhouse.

He came back, and together they turned the prone figure over so that it

lay upon its back, revealing an interesting young face of a disquieting

pallor. “I guess you must of killed him _this_ time,” the caddy said,

unreasonably, and then seemed to wish to solace the assassin, for he

added: “He ain’t a member though.”

Lily was already on the ground beside her victim, rubbing his hands.

“Run!” she cried. “Get a doctor! Run!”

She failed to recognize the fallen player, and so did the steward and

three waiters from the clubhouse, which was just then vacant of members.

James Herbert McArdle’s features were not so well known as those of the

President of the United States, nor, probably, as those of the more

conspicuous actors in moving pictures;—nevertheless, his face was

familiar to those who now sought to identify it; and as they worked to

restore the expression of life to it they were aware of elusive clews.

The steward said he was sure he knew the gentleman, who must often have

been about the club, though he couldn’t quite place him. The waiters had

the same impression and the same disability precisely, while the

trembling Lily herself was troubled by stirrings of memory. Either she

had once known her victim, she thought, or else he was like someone she

knew; but a white face inanimate, upturned to the evening sky, is

strange even to those who know it most intimately. The likeness remained

evasive, and the prostrate young man both unconscious and unidentified.

Lily was relieved of her first horror;—at least he was not dead. On the

other hand, certainly he was not well. And when she drove that ball she

had hated him. Of course she had not intended this dolorous stroke, yet

when she made it, had she really cared whether or not it laid him low?

She had not—and now regret shook her. Perhaps she would have felt it

less profoundly had the maddening player proved indeed to be Captain

Williams; but with the lifeless head of this well-favoured and

unoffending stranger upon her lap, her remorse was an anguish.

She would not leave him or cease to do what she could in every humble

way. She chafed his hands and bathed his forehead;—she helped to carry

him to the clubhouse; and, when the hospital ambulance came, she went in

it to the hospital with him. She stood in the corridor outside the door

of the room to which they carried him there, and waited while a surgeon

examined him. Indeed, she waited, weeping.

She knew the surgeon, and when he came out of the room she rushed to

him. “Doctor Waite, tell me! Don’t spare me!”

“He’s got a concussion. It’s no joke, but anyhow it isn’t a fracture.

Funny about nobody knowing who he is;—I’m sure I’ve met him, or else he

reminds me of somebody, I can’t think who.”

“Doctor, he isn’t—he isn’t going to——”

The surgeon looked upon her reassuringly. “No. We’ll pull him through.

You quit thinking about him and go home and get your dinner and then go

to bed and go to sleep.”

“I couldn’t,” Lily said, choking. “I couldn’t do any of those things.”

He laughed sympathetically. “Then I guess I’ll have to call up your

mother and tell her to come and make you.”

But when not only her mother but her father, too, arrived in hurried

response to the telephone, they could not get the tearful Lily to leave

the hospital; and they remained with her, engaging in intermittent

argument, until midnight. At that time Doctor Waite informed them that

the unknown patient was in a torpid but not critical condition; he had

mumbled a few words to the effect that he wanted to be let alone.

“And as that’s just what we’re doing with him,” the surgeon said to Lily

rather sharply, “and as you can’t do any possible good to anybody in the

world by staying here, I suggest that you take his advice, too, and obey

your father and mother.”

Not until then would the suffering girl allow them to lead her away; but

so far as sleep was concerned, she might as well have stayed at the

hospital. So might her father and mother, almost; for she was at their

door in her nightdress three times—three separated times, the last

being at four o’clock in the morning. “Papa, do _you_ think he’ll die?”

Mrs. Dodge wearily conducted her to bed again; but Lily only wept upon

her pillow, and in whispers begged it to forgive her for not calling

“Fore.” Sunrise found her dressed; and in the chilly November early

morning she slipped out of the house, crossed the suburban park to the

hospital, and immediately heard news indeed. Doctor Waite was already

there, and with him were three other surgeons and a physician, all of

them important. He came to speak to Lily.

“All this distinguishedness for your unknown patient,” he said, with a

gesture toward the group he had just left; and, as her expression began

to be grievous, he added hastily, “He’s perfectly all right. At least

he’s going to be. The importance yonder is only because he turns out to

be so unexpectedly important himself.”

“You’ve found out who he is?”

“Some_what_!” he returned with humorous emphasis. “We’ve managed to keep

your name out of the papers—so far.”

“What papers?”

“All of them. Take your choice,” he said—and he offered her two; but

one at a time was enough for Lily.

Headlines announced that a “Mysterious Accident” at the Blue Hills

Country Club had “resulted in grave injury” to James Herbert McArdle.

The illustrious youth had lain unconscious and unrecognized until a

short time after midnight, the more sober text of the report informed

her. Mr. H. H. Huston, the McArdle representative, had been alarmed by

Mr. McArdle’s disappearance and continued absence, subsequent to the

reception of an address by the suburban welcoming committee, and in the

course of an exhaustive search Mr. Huston had caused inquiries to be

made at the Blue Hills Country Club. Here it was learned that an unknown

gentleman had been struck in the head by a golf ball driven with such

force as to cause a concussion of the brain. The club’s employees had

withheld the name of the person responsible for the injury; but a

reporter had ascertained that it was a lady and that she had accompanied

the wounded man—“wounded man” was the newspaper’s phrase—in the

ambulance, and had “insisted upon remaining at the hospital until a late

hour.” Mr. H. H. Huston had reached the hospital not long after

midnight; Mr. McArdle had just become conscious and revealed his

identity to the nurse in charge. Mr. Huston had said to a reporter that

Mr. McArdle “positively declared himself ignorant of the name of the

person who had caused his injury.” Altogether, there was “an air of

mystery about the affair”; and Mr. McArdle’s condition was still grave,

though the surgeons said that he would “probably recover.”

It is to Lily’s credit that the strongest emotion roused in her by this

reading concerned these final two words. She repeated them pathetically

to Doctor Waite. “‘Probably recover’? ‘Probably’?”

He laughed. “Don’t you know newspapers? Didn’t I tell you last night

he’d be all right? We wired his family an hour ago that there was no

reason for any of them to come on. All that surgical and medical

impressiveness over yonder only represents old Hiram Huston’s idea of

the right thing to do for a McArdle with a bump on his head. The young

fellow may have to stay here quietly for a week or ten days possibly;

but by that time he ought to be pretty nearly ready to stop a ball for

you again.”

“Don’t joke about it,” Lily said, huskily. “When can I see him?”

“Think you better?”

“Why not?”

“The newspapers called it a ‘mystery,’ you know,” he explained. “They’ll

probably be inquisitive. They might get your name.”

“What do I care?” she cried. “Do you think I’d let that stop me from

asking him to forgive me?”

“So?” the doctor said, looking at her twinklingly. “So that’s why you

want to see him?”

She stared, not understanding his humorous allusion. “Why, what else

could I do?”

“Nothing,” he answered. “I was only thinking I’d heard that a good many

young ladies were anxious to make his acquaintance. I imagine you’ll be

the first, my dear.”

“Well, oughtn’t I to be?” she demanded. “If you’d done as terrible a

thing as that to anybody, wouldn’t you think you were entitled to ask

his pardon about as soon as he was able to listen?”

“Without doubt. In the meantime I think you’d better go home and to bed

again.”

She protested, but proved meeker under advice than she had the night

before. She went home, though not directly, for she stopped half an hour

at some greenhouses that were a mile out of her way. She sent to Mr.

James Herbert McArdle at the hospital a prodigious sheaf of

flowers—enough to cripple her rather moderate monthly allowance from

her father—and the following morning, since the allowance was already

so far gone, she did the same thing. Having thus fallen into the habit,

she was as lavish upon the third morning after the accident, so that at

three o’clock of this same day, when Doctor Waite took her into his

patient’s room, he seemed to be conducting her into a conservatory.

Like fair Elaine, James Herbert McArdle in a silken gown lay white and

motionless, embowered among blooms; but his eyes glimmered in surprised

appreciation when they beheld his serious visitor. Gray was becoming to

the fair and slim Lily—her clothes didn’t depend upon her

allowance—and she was never more charming than when she was serious.

“My goodness!” said the frank convalescent, with a feeble kind of

forcefulness. “I didn’t expect anybody like _you_! I was sure it would

turn out to be some old hag.”

Lily was a little given to the theatrical, though only when occasion

warranted it, as this one did if any occasion could. She swept forward

softly, her sensitive face all compassion and remorse. She knelt beside

the iron bed.

“Some day you may forgive me,” she said, tremulously, and her voice was

always stirringly lovely when it trembled. “Some day you may be able

even to forget what I’ve done to you—but I want you to be sure that I

shall never forget it or forgive myself.”

“Here!” he said. “There’s nothing to that. They tell me you came in the

ambulance with me and hung around and did all sorts of things. And look

at all these greenhouses you must have bought out! A person’s liable to

get a clip on the head almost anywhere these days. Let’s shake

hands—but not forget it.”

“You can’t——”

“I haven’t got anything to forgive you for, of course,” he said. “You

don’t forgive accidents; you just forget ’em. What I mean is, I don’t

want to forget this one—now I’ve seen you, I don’t.”

“Well——” Lily said, vaguely. “But I’d like you just to _say_ you

forgive me. Won’t you?”

“All right.” He moved his hand toward her and she took it for a moment.

“I forgive you—but I think you ought to do something for me.”

“What?”

“How long did the doctor say you can stay here?”

“Five or ten minutes.”

“Well, then, I think you ought to come back to-morrow when you can stay

half an hour or an hour.”

“I will,” she said.

But he had not finished. “And the next day, too. Maybe they’d let you

read to me, or something. And as long as I’m laid up here—it won’t be

long, at that—I think you ought to come every day and help me pass the

time. I forgive you, but I think you do owe me that much. And as soon as

they let me take a drive I think you ought to go along. How about it?”

“I will,” Lily said. “I will, indeed. I’ll do anything in the world you

think might make up a little for the pain I’ve brought you. Nothing

could make me happier.”

“That’s good news,” the young man told her, thoughtfully. “A clip on the

head isn’t necessarily such a bad thing, after all.”

More and more he seemed to incline to this opinion;—in fact, he went so

far as to assure Doctor Waite, three days later, that he preferred the

hospital to the apartment old Hiram Huston was preparing for him. “I

think I’d like to sort of settle down to the life here,” he said. “It’s

nice and private and suits me exactly.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, thoughtfully. “It’s a pity you’re too important

to do what you want to.” And lightly, as if to himself, he hummed a

fragment of frivolous song:

“I don’t want to get well,

I don’t want to get well,

I’m in love with a beautiful nurse!”

The young man heeded neither the humming nor the remark about his

unfortunate importance. He frowned, looking anxiously at his watch on

the table beside his couch. “I wonder what’s keeping her,” he said,

peevishly. “She said she’d be here with a book to read to me. When

anybody does to another person what she did to me, I think the least

they can do is to be punctual, especially when they’ve promised they

would.”

She of whom he complained was not far away, however. At that moment she

had just been greeted and detained by two girl friends of hers who

encountered her in the park on her way to the hospital. Their manner did

not please her.

“Lill-_lee_!” they shouted from the distance, at sight of her. They

whistled shrilly, and, as she looked toward them, they waved their arms

at her; then came running, visibly excited and audibly uproarious.

They seemed to be bursting with laughter; yet when they reached her,

what they said was only, “Where you _going_, Lily?” And before she

replied, they clutched each other, perishing of their mutual jocularity.

From the first, Lily did not like their laughter;—it had not the sound

of true mirth, but was the kind of mere vocal noise that hints of

girlish malice.

She looked at them disapprovingly. “I’m going to the hospital,” she said

with some primness. “What’s so funny?”

“What you going to _do_ at the hospital, Lily?”

“Read to Mr. McArdle,” she replied. “He’s better and——”

But their immediate uproar cut her short. They clung together,

shrieking. “That’s not _your_ fault, _is_ it, Lily?” one of them became

coherent enough to inquire, whereupon they both doubled themselves,

rocked, gurgled, screamed, and clung again.

“What’s not my fault?” she asked.

“That he’s better!”

With that, they moved to be upon their way, still uproarious, still

clutching each other; and as they went they looked back to shout at her.

“He won’t get better very fast, will he, Lily?” one of them thus called

back to her, and, without pausing, replied to herself: “Not if you have

_your_ way!”

And the other: “Eleanor Gray and Harriet Joyce have nothing on _you_,

have they, Lily?”

They disappeared round a curving path, leaning upon each other from

exhaustion; and Lily stood looking after them frowningly. There had been

little good-nature in their raillery, and also there were mysterious and

vaguely unpleasant implications in it—particularly in the final jibe

about Eleanor Gray and Harriet Joyce. Miss Gray was the girl accused by

rumour of having sought to put herself upon James Herbert McArdle’s

train, and Miss Joyce was widely supposed to have fainted with the

deliberate purpose of attracting his attention. The implication of the

mirthful pair just encountered that Lily surpassed both Miss Gray and

Miss Joyce was plain enough—as if going to a hospital to read to a

patient were a mere manœuvre of the type to which the Gray and Joyce

manœuvres belonged! And as if one wouldn’t gladly give a little of one’s

time to a hospital patient who has become a patient through one’s own

fault! But more than mere rallying upon the hospital readings seemed to

have been implied; and as Lily thought the matter over, she felt that

something of the teasing pair’s meaning evaded her.

She had the same feeling after an interview the next day with one of her

nearest and dearest girl friends, who came to see her at home. “I don’t

want to be intrusive, dear,” the caller informed her, with sympathetic

but rather eager gravity. “You know me too well to believe I’d ask such

a thing out of pure curiosity; but I’ve simply _got_ to know how poor

Henry Burnett is taking it.”

“Taking what, Emma?”

“Lily! You know what I mean. I mean all this about you and Mr. McArdle.”

“‘All this’?” Lily repeated in a tone of cold inquiry. “I don’t see that

such a simple matter needs quite that sort of definition. Naturally, I’m

doing what I can to help him through his convalescence. Oughtn’t I to?

But perhaps you don’t know that I’m responsible for his _being_ in the

hospital, Emma.”

“Oh, yes,” Emma said, quietly, and she gave her friend a queer look.

“Yes, everybody knows that, Lily,” she went on in a thoughtful voice.

“Everybody! Yes, indeed!” She paused, then reverted to her former topic.

“I just wondered how poor Henry Burnett is taking it all.”

“I haven’t any idea what you mean,” Lily said, impatiently. “I fail to

see that there’s anything for him to ‘take’; and if there were, it would

certainly be no affair of his. I have no responsibilities to Mr.

Burnett.”

“But you did! Weren’t you almost——”

“That may be,” Lily interrupted. “But I don’t see him any more.”

“You broke with him, Lily?”

“I did not, because there was nothing absolutely announced and definite

to break. I simply decided not to waste any more of his time and mine.”

“Why?” Emma asked.

“Because I found that I had no feeling for him; none for him nor for

anything else—no interest in him or in any other man alive.”

“Oh, Lily!” Emma cried; and then she sat open-mouthed and round-eyed,

staring in perfect incredulity. “Oh, _Lily_!”

“What’s the matter?”

Emma still stared; but finally, being a true friend, she half gasped,

“Nothing!” as she rose to go.

She was still round of eye, though her mouth had become decorous for a

street appearance, when she left the house a few moments later; and Lily

was not much better pleased with her friend Emma than she had been with

the two taunting girls in the park.

Nor were these three the sum of all who displeased her. She went to a

“tea,” and easily perceived that she became instantly the centre of all

interest;—but she did not like the interest. Whispering and

half-suppressed laughter buzzed about her; eyes were furtively upon her

wherever she glanced; elderly women looked at her and talked behind

their hands; and she was uncomfortably aware of a wondering derision

focussing constantly upon her. She came away shivering, marvelling at

the pettiness of human nature that could make such a disagreeable pother

over a girl’s doing her simple best to atone for a moment’s carelessness

with a golf club. Moreover, before she got out of the gate she found

herself surrounded by a group of newcomers, girls of her own age, who

repeated almost precisely the performance of the two in the park. “How

long do you think you can keep his head from fitting together where you

broke it, Lily?” This was the last thing she heard from the group near

the gate, except for a loud burst of unfriendly laughter. She began to

be seriously indignant.

XXVIII

A PUBLIC MOCKERY

NOT MUCH time was granted her indignation to cool;—it became outright

fury not twenty-four hours later; and the occasion of this change for

the worse was a spectacular little performance on the part of the

gentleman for whom her emotions had forever ceased to stir—that unhappy

Henry so recently dismissed. And since Henry’s performance took place

“in public,” according to Lily’s definition of its background, her fury

was multiplied in intensity by a number corresponding to the number of

witnesses present at the spectacle.

One of these was Mr. James Herbert McArdle, who was seated beside her at

the time. She was accompanying him for a drive, as she had promised him;

and his choice for the excursion had been an open red car, noticeable

also in contour and dimensions. The top was folded back, so that Lily

and her escort, both richly shrouded in furs, presented to the world a

fast-flying sketch of affluent luxury. A fleeting glimpse of beauty

might be caught there, too; for Lily’s colour was high, and sunshine

glinted in her hair; amber lights danced from it and blue sparklings

from her eyes as she sped by.

At one point, however, the fast-flying sketch ceased to fly, and halted,

affording spectators more leisure for observation; but this, as

presently appeared, was just the wrong point for such a thing to happen.

The red car, returning from the open country, passed into the suburban

outskirts, and Mr. McArdle directed the chauffeur to turn into the

country club driveway. “I’ve got a fancy to see where our friendship

began,” he said to Lily. “I noticed the last green was near the

driveway. Let’s go look at it.”

She assented, and they drove to the spot that interested him; but they

found it inhabited. A score or so of people were there, watching the

conclusion of a match evidently of some special interest as an

exhibition of proficiency. When the red car stopped, the last shot into

the cup was in the final crisis of action, and a popular triumph was

thereby attained, as the spectators made plain. They instantly raised a

loud shout, acclaiming the successful player, cheering him and rushing

forward to shake his hand; though he, himself, seemed far from elated.

On the contrary, there gleamed a bitter spark in his eye, and his

appearance, though manly, was one of so dark a melancholy that he might

have been thought an athletic and Americanized Hamlet. Not speaking, he

waved the enthusiasts away, tossed his club to his caddy and turned to

leave the green; but, as he did so, his glance fell upon the red car in

the driveway near by. He halted, stock-still, while a thrilled murmur

was heard rustling among the bystanders. Everybody stared at Lily, at

her companion, and at the morbid winner of the golf match. There was a

moment of potent silence.

Then the sombre player advanced a step toward Lily and, looking her full

in the eye, took off his cap and swept the ground with it before her in

mocking salutation—derisive humility before satirized greatness.

A startled but delighted “_Oh!_” came from among the people about the

green. They began to buzz, and silvery giggles were heard.

Lily’s eyes shot icy fire at the bowing harlequin. “Tell the driver to

go _on_,” she said to McArdle.

“Who was that fellow?” he asked her, as they drove away. “I had a notion

to get out and see if I couldn’t make him bow even a little lower.”

“No, no,” she said, hastily. “You shouldn’t have. You aren’t well

enough, and, besides, he’s only a ruffian.”

“But who is he?”

“I’ve just told you,” she said, fiercely. “He’s a ruffian. His name is

Henry Burnett, if you want something to go with the definition of him

I’ve just given you.”

“But what did he do it for? What made him bow like that?”

“Because he _is_ a ruffian!” Lily said. Her eyes were not less fiery

than they had been, and neither were her checks. “I believe I never knew

what it was to hate anybody before,” she went on in a low voice. “When

I’ve thought I hated people it must have been just dislike. I’m sure

I’ve never known what it was to hate anybody as he’s just made me hate

him.”

“But see here!” Young Mr. McArdle was disquieted. “What’s it all about?

Telling me he’s a ruffian doesn’t explain it. What made him do it?”

“This,” Lily said between her teeth. “For a while I thought I cared a

little about him—not much but some—enough to let him know I thought

so. Well, I found I didn’t.”

“How’d you find it out?” he asked.

“I discovered that I was absolutely indifferent to him, and that nothing

he could ever do would have the slightest power to make me feel anything

whatever. I told him so in the gentlest way I could, and since then he’s

behaved like the brute that he is.”

“But is it true?”

“Is what true?” she asked, sharply.

“I mean,” he said, “is it true you’re indifferent to him?”

“Good heavens!” she cried, with the utmost bitterness. “Don’t you see

that I hate him so that I’d like to wring his neck? I would!” she cried,

fiercely. “I could almost _do_ it, too, if I were alone with him for a

few minutes!” And she held up to his view her slender white-gloved

hands, with her fingers curved as for the fatal performance.

Mr. McArdle seemed to be relieved. “Well, I guess it’s all right,” he

said. “That is, if you’re sure you don’t like him.” Then as she turned

angrily upon him, he added hurriedly, “And I see you don’t. I’m sure you

don’t.” He laughed with a slight hint of complacency not unnatural in an

important and well-petted invalid. “I think you kind of owe it to me not

to go around liking other men from now on. I mean—well, you know how

I’m getting to feel about you, I guess.”

Lily sat staring straight forward at the chauffeur’s back, though that

was not what she saw. What she saw was the tall young man of the tragic

face, mocking her before delighted onlookers. “I know what I feel about

_him_!” she said, too preoccupied with her fury to listen well to her

companion.

“I’m glad you do,” he said, earnestly. “I wouldn’t like to feel you were

thinking much about anybody but me. Of course I know you’ve been giving

me a good deal of your time; but the fact is, I’ll want you to give me

even more of it, especially the next week or so—before my mother comes

out to visit me. Will you?”

As she did not answer, but still gazed fiercely at the chauffeur’s back,

he repeated, “Will you?”

“I could!” she said; but this was evidently not a reply to his question,

for she again held up her curved fingers to view. “I could, and I would!

If I were left alone with him for five minutes I _know_ I would!”

“Let’s forget him just now,” young Mr. McArdle suggested. “I was telling

you about my mother’s coming out here to visit me in a week or so. My

family’s really pretty terrible about keeping tabs on me, you know—I

mean, for fear I’ll get engaged to anybody except my second cousin Lulu.

She’s one of the female branch of the family, you know, that married

into the banks, and of course they all feel it ought to be kept

together, and Lulu would be a great advantage. But she’s homely as sin,

and, so far, they’ve had a pretty hard time persuading me. You

understand, don’t you?”

“What?” Lily asked, vaguely. Then she drew a deep breath, clenched her

curved fingers tightly upon the fur rug and said virulently to herself:

“I could do it and sing for joy that I _had_ done it!” However, in the

ears of her companion this was only an indistinct murmur.

“I mean I suppose you understand about the family and all that,” he

said. “My mother’s bound to interfere, of course. If you and I expect to

see much of each other after she comes, we’ll have a fight on our hands,

because, of course, the family won’t stand for my getting too interested

in anybody out here. Naturally, they don’t expect me not to have a good

time; but you know what I mean;—they wouldn’t stand for my getting

serious, I mean.”

He was serious enough just then, however; that was plain. His voice was

almost quaveringly plaintive, in fact, as he leaned toward her. “Lily,”

he said, “I expect my mother would like you all right if you were my

cousin Lulu, or somebody in Lulu’s position; but the way things

are—well, of course she isn’t going to. She’s going to make an awful

fuss if I try to go about with you at all. But I’m willing to buck up to

her and see if we can’t pull it off anyhow. Honestly, I am. How about

it?”

“What?” she said, absently, still looking forward and not at him. “What

did you say?”

“My goodness!” he exclaimed, blankly. “I don’t believe you were even

_listening_!”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t.”

At that, a natural resentment deepened the colour in this important

young man’s cheeks. “Well, I should think it might be considered worth

your while,” he said. “I don’t put too much on being James Herbert

McArdle, Third, I believe; but at least I might claim it isn’t a thing

that happens every day in the world, exactly—my asking a girl to marry

me, I mean.”

She turned to him, frowning. “Was that what you were doing?”

“I was telling you I hoped to make a try for it,” he explained a little

querulously. “When my mother comes and hears about this she’ll send for

my father probably and there’ll be a big fuss—more than you could have

any idea of until you really hear it. But I never took to any girl as

much as I’ve taken to you, never in my life.” Here his querulousness

gave way to another feeling and his voice softened. “I’m ready to buck

up to the whole crew of ’em for your sake, Lily. What about it?”

She looked at him blankly. “I don’t know,” she said.

“What?” he cried. “Don’t you understand? I’m asking you to _marry_ me!”

“Yes,” she said. “I hear you say it; but so far as I’m concerned you

might almost as well be telling me it’s a pleasant day! I’m not in the

right state to think about it or even to understand it.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” she said, “I’m so angry I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Look here——” he began; but said no more, and, in spite of her

preoccupation with her anger, she was able to perceive that he now had

some of his own. She put her hand lightly upon his sleeve and,

simultaneously, the car stopped at the hospital door.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m terribly rude. But don’t you

know there are times when you get so furious you just _can’t_ think

about anything else?”

“Can’t you?” he returned, coldly, as the chauffeur helped him down from

the car. “I’m afraid I doubt if you’d _ever_ consider what I was saying

as of enough importance to listen to.”

“I’m so sorry,” Lily said; and in spite of herself she said it absently;

so that nothing could have been plainer than that her mind was not even

upon this apology, but altogether upon the offence she had received from

Mr. Henry Burnett.

A special attendant of the convalescent’s came from within the building

and offered his arm. Young Mr. McArdle took it and gave a final glance

at the flushed cheeks and fiery eyes of the lady who had already twice

smitten him and thus smote him again. Something hot in his upper chest

seemed to rise against this provincial and suburban young woman who was

too busy being furious with a local nonentity to know what she was doing

indeed! The affronted young man’s last word was to the chauffeur.

“When you have taken Miss Dodge home I sha’n’t want you until

day-after-to-morrow. I don’t care to drive every day.”

Lily was borne away murmuring, “I’m sorry,” again, but what she thought

was: “I could! I could wring Henry Burnett’s neck and sing for joy!”

. . . When the long red car drew up before her father’s house, there was

another machine standing at the curb, a small black thing of the

hardiest variety and odiously familiar to Lily. She jumped out, and,

shaking with rage and her desire to express it, fairly ran up the brick

walk to her front door.

But here a housemaid sought to detain her, whispering urgently: “Mr.

Burnett’s in the living-room, waiting. Your mother isn’t home and I

didn’t know how to keep him out. If you don’t want to see him you’d

better go round to the——”

Lily interrupted her. “I _do_ want to see him,” she declared in a loud

voice. “I want to see him _instantly_!” And she swept into the room to

confront the mocker.

But mockery was no part of Mr. Henry Burnett’s present mood—far from

it. He had come to apologize, and apology was profoundly in his manner

as he rose from the chair in which he had been most dejectedly sitting.

Dark semicircles beneath his eyes were proof of inner sufferings; he was

haggard with his trouble and more Hamlet-like than ever; but now he was

a Hamlet truly humble.

“Lily,” he said, huskily, “I’d sworn to myself I’d never make another

attempt to see you as long as I lived, but after what I did awhile ago I

had to. I _had_ to explain it. It was in vile taste, and you can’t think

any worse of it than I do. But you came on me suddenly. I hadn’t dreamed

I’d see you; then all at once I looked up and there you were—and with

the man you threw me over for! I just couldn’t——”

“Henry Burnett,” she said, and her hot little voice shook with the rage

that vibrated in her whole body;—“you used to be a gentleman. Twice

within less than an hour you’ve shown me you’ve forgotten what that word

means.”

“Twice, Lily?” he said, pathetically; “I admit the other time—out at

the club—but how have I offended you besides that?”

“In your very apology,” she told him scornfully. “You’ve just had the

petty insolence to stand there and say I threw you over for Mr.

McArdle!”

“But you did,” he said; and he seemed surprised that she should not

admit it. “Why, it’s—why, Lily, everybody knows that!”

“What? You dare to repeat it?”

He looked at her in the most reasonable astonishment, his eyes widening.

“But, Lily, I’m not the only one. Everybody repeats it.”

“Who does?”

“Everybody,” he said. “You certainly couldn’t expect a thing like this

not to be talked about, with the whole place in the state of excitement

it was about McArdle’s coming here, let alone what’s happened since. I

had no idea you’d deny it to me now, though I supposed you might to

other people, as a matter of form. Of course no one would believe it

could be a coincidence.”

She stepped closer to him dangerously. “No one would believe what could

be a coincidence, Henry Burnett?”

“That you threw me over just by chance the very day before McArdle came

to town and you took that shot at him.”

“I did _what_?”

“Hit him in the head,” Henry explained. “Your name didn’t get in the

papers; but you don’t for a moment imagine that everybody in town

doesn’t understand, do you, Lily?”

She stamped her foot. “Understand what? What are you talking about?

_What_ does everybody understand?”

“Your plan,” he said, simply. “You don’t think you can lay out a man

like that—a man that every other girl in the place is ready to fight

you for—you don’t think you can do it in such a way as to make you the

_only_ girl who has a _chance_ to see him, and then spend all your time

with him, and day after day send him so many bushels of flowers that the

florist himself gasps over it—and read to him hour after hour, and

drive _more_ hours with him—you can’t do all that and expect people not

to _see_ it, can you?”

Lily’s high colour was vanishing, pallor taking its place. “You needn’t

believe I don’t hate you because I stop telling you so for a moment,”

she said. “But there’s a mystery somewhere, and I’ve got to get at it.

What do you mean I mustn’t expect people not to see?”

“Why, the truth about how he got hurt.”

Lily stepped back from him. “Henry Burnett,” she said, “Henry Burnett,

do you dare——”

Henry interrupted her. He had come to apologize; but what he believed to

be her hypocrisy was too much for him. “I don’t see the use of your

pretending,” he said. “The whole population knows you did it on

purpose.”

“Did _what_ on purpose?”

“Hit him in the head with your golf ball on purpose!”

Lily uttered a loud cry and clasped her hands to her breast. Aghast, she

stared at him with incredulous great eyes; but even as she stared, her

mind’s eye renewed before itself some painful pictures that had

mystified her—the spitefully uproarious girls in the park; her friend,

Emma; the buzzing “tea”; the group at the gate as she came out;—and

there were other puzzles that explained themselves in the dreadful light

now shed upon them. Uttering further outcries, she sank into a chair.

“Slander!” she gasped. “Oh, a _horrible_ slander!”

“What?” Henry cried again. “When everybody knows the things you can do

with a golf ball if you care to? When that professional trick-player

gave his exhibition here, knocking five balls into five hats in a row,

and all that, how many of his shots didn’t you duplicate after you’d

practised them? And some of the girls talked to the caddy McArdle had

with him when it happened, and the boy said he didn’t think you were

over forty yards away when you hit him. Lily, there isn’t a soul that

knows you who’ll ever believe you didn’t do exactly what you planned to

do. I don’t mean they think you could do it every time, or that they’re

all certain you aimed at his head; but they all believe you tried to hit

him—and succeeded!”

“And _you_ do?” she said. “_You_ believe it?”

He laughed bitterly. “Lily, it’s clear as daylight, and I knew it when I

looked up and saw you with him to-day. I knew you’d won what you were

after. It was in his face.”

Lily gulped and smiled a wry smile. “I see,” she said. “It all works

out, and nobody’ll ever believe I didn’t plan it. Yes, I think he

proposed to me on the way home this afternoon.”

“Let me wish you happiness,” Henry said, and seemed disposed to repeat

his satiric bow, but thought better of it. “Is the engagement to be a

long one?” he inquired, lightly, instead; and this seemed to be as

effective as the bow, for Lily sprang up, as if she would strike him.

“I could murder you!” she cried. “And, oh, how I’d like to! I’m not

_sure_ Mr. McArdle proposed to me; I only _think_ he did. I told him I

couldn’t listen because I was too angry.”

“Too angry with whom?” Henry asked, frowning.

“With _you_!” Lily shouted fiercely.

At that, it was his turn to utter a loud cry. “Lily, is it true? Did you

hate me so that you couldn’t even listen to him? Is it true?”

“A thousand times true!” she said, and, in her helpless rage, began to

weep. “But I hate you worse than that!”

“And you sent me away because I couldn’t make you _feel_ anything!” he

cried. “Lily, when will you marry me?”

“Do you think I’d ever be engaged to you again,” she sobbed, “when you

believed I’d do a brutal thing like that on purpose?”

“Lily,” he said again, “when will you marry me?”

“Never,” she answered. “I’ll never marry anybody.” But even as she

spoke, the fortunate young man’s shoulder was becoming damper with her

tears.

XXIX

MRS. CROMWELL’S OLDEST DAUGHTER

ALL OF the players except three had returned to the clubhouse before the

close of the fine April afternoon, and, after an interval in the locker

rooms, had departed either in their cars or strolling away on foot,

homeward bound to the pleasant groups of suburban houses east of the

country club. Westward lay the links, between ploughed fields and groves

of beech and ash and maple, a spacious park of rolling meadows with a

far boundary of woodland, and, beyond that, nothing but a smoky sunset.

All was quiet; there were no sounds from within the clubhouse, nor came

any from the links; and although no kine wound slowly o’er the lea and

no ploughman plodded his weary way, the impending twilight in such a

peace might well have stirred a poetic observer to murmurous quotation

from the Elegy. Nevertheless, in this sweet evening silence, emotion was

present and not peaceful.

There was emotion far out upon the links, and there was more upon the

western veranda of the clubhouse where two ladies sat, not speaking, but

gazing intently toward where the dim and hazy great sun was immersing

itself in the smoke of the horizon. These two emotional ladies were

sisters; that was obvious, for they shared a type of young matronly

fairness so decidedly that a photograph of one might have been mistaken,

at first glance, for that of the other.

A student of families, observing them, would have guessed immediately

that their mother was a fair woman, probably still comely with robust

good health, and of no inconsiderable weight in body as well as in

general prestige. The two daughters were large young women, but graceful

still; not so large as they were going to be some day, nor less

well-favoured than they had been in their slenderer girlhood. They were

alike, also, in the affluence displayed by the sober modishness of what

they wore; and other tokens of this affluence appeared upon the club

driveway, where waited two shining, black, closed cars, each with a trim

and speechless driver unenclosed. The sisters were again alike in the

expectancy with which they gazed out upon the broad avenue of the golf

links; but there was a difference in their expressions;—for the

expectancy of the younger one was a frowning expectancy, an indignant

expectancy, while the expectancy of the other, who was only a year or

two the older, appeared to be a timid and apprehensive expectancy—an

expectancy, in fact, of calamity.

This elder sister was the one who broke the long silence, though not by

uttering words, the sound she produced being an exclamatory gasp and but

faintly audible. It appeared to be comprehended as definite information,

however, by the younger sister.

“Where, Mildred?” she asked. “I don’t see them yet.”

The other’s apprehension was emphasized upon her troubled forehead, as

she nodded in the direction of the far boundary of the links. There,

upon the low crest of rising ground capped with the outermost green,

appeared six tiny figures, dwindled by the distance and dimmed by the

mist that rose into the failing light. For the sun was now so far below

the dark horizon that the last ruddiness grew dingy in the sky.

“Yes,” said the younger sister, and her angry frown deepened. “It’s

they.”

“Oh, Anne!” the older murmured. “Oh, Anne!”

“Yes, I should say so!” this Anne returned, decisively. “I certainly

intend to express myself to _my_ husband, Mildred.”

Mildred shook her head unhappily. “If I only could to mine! But that’s

just what I can’t do.”

“I don’t know,” the other said. “I think in your place I should; though

it’s true I can’t imagine myself in your place, Mildred. My husband has

his faults, and one of ’em’s the way he’s letting himself be used

to-day, but I can’t imagine his behaving as your husband is behaving.

Not _that_ way!”

She made an impatient gesture toward the west, where the six figures had

left the green and were now moving toward the clubhouse, three of them

playing deliberately as they came, with three smaller figures, the

caddies, in advance. One of the players detached himself, keeping to the

southern stretch of the fairway; while the two others, a man and a

woman, kept to the northern, walking together, each halting close by

when the other paused for a stroke.

“Can you make out which is which, Anne?” the older sister inquired in a

voice of faint hope. “Isn’t it John who’s playing off there by himself,

and Hobart she keeps so close to her?”

“Not very likely!” Anne returned with a short laugh. “She’s using _my_

husband as a chaperon strictly, and I must say he’s behaving like a

tactful one. It’s your John she ‘keeps so close to her’—as usual,

Mildred!”

Mildred made merely a desolate sound, and then the sisters resumed the

troubled silence that falls between people who have long since discussed

to a conclusion every detail of an unhappy affair, and can only await

its further development.

The three players came nearer slowly, growing dimmer in the evening haze

as they grew larger; until at last it was difficult to see them at all.

Other things were as dim as they, the player to the south found to his

cost; and, finally deciding to lose no more balls that day, he crossed

the fairway to his competitors.

“I’m through, John,” he called, cheerfully. “It’s no use in the world

trying to play out these last two holes.”

“I don’t suppose it is,” the other man assented. “Julietta rather wanted

to, though.” He turned to the tall girl beside him. “Hobart says——”

“I heard him!” she said, laughing a light laugh, a little taunting in

its silveriness. “Hobart’s a well-trained husband. You know what that

is, don’t you, John? A well-trained husband is one who doesn’t dare to

call his soul his own. Hobart’s been worrying this last half-hour about

what Mrs. Simms will say to him for keeping her waiting.”

“You’re right about that, Julietta,” Mr. Hobart Simms agreed. “My wife’s

a pretty amiable lady; but I’ve kept her waiting longer than I like to,

and old John’s done the same thing. So, as he’s probably in the same

apologetic state I’m in, and it’s ridiculous to try to play these last

two holes in the pitch dark anyhow, I suggest we——”

The girl interrupted him, though it was to his brother-in-law that she

addressed herself. “_Are_ you in the ‘same apologetic state’ that Hobart

is, John?” she asked; and there was an undercurrent in her voice that

seemed to ask more than appeared upon the surface. She seemed to

challenge, in fact, and yet to plead. “Are you as afraid of Mrs. Tower

as Hobart is of Mrs. Simms, John?”

Mr. Tower laughed placatively. “My dear Julietta! Of course if you’d

like to play it out——”

“There!” Julietta said, gaily triumphant. “You see he wants to, himself.

I believe you’re the one man I know who isn’t terrorized by a wife,

John.” She stepped closer to him, speaking through the darkness in a

warm, soft voice, almost a whisper. “But then you’re a wonderful man,

anyhow—the most wonderful I ever knew, John.”

“Oh, no!” He laughed deprecatingly, and, pleased with her, yet

embarrassed by his modesty, coughed lightly for a moment or two. “Of

course I’m not; but I do value your thinking so, Julietta. I appreciate

it very deeply indeed.”

“Are you _sure_ you do?” she said in a hurried whisper, so low that he

could just hear it. Then she turned briskly toward his brother-in-law,

who stood at a little distance, waiting their pleasure. “Run along,

Hobart, and please tell Mrs. Tower I haven’t kidnapped him;—he’s

staying to play it out with me of his own free will. And please pay all

the caddies off and let them go. We don’t need them, and they’re dying

to get home.”

He was obedient, and from the clubhouse veranda, where lights now shone,

it could be discerned that the party on the links had broken up. The

caddies ran scurrying by, their shrill outcries disturbing the air about

them, and, in their wake, the slight figure of Mr. Hobart Simms appeared

within the radius of illumination from the building.

“They’re coming,” Anne Simms said to her sister. “Don’t let them see

anything.”

Mr. Simms mounted the dozen steps that led up to the veranda. “Dear me,

Anne!” he said. “I’m afraid you’ve been waiting quite a time. I can’t

tell you how sorry——”

But she cut his apology short. “Where’s John?”

“Old John? Why, I gave up; but he’s decided to play it out. Old John and

I started pretty late anyhow, and we were playing around with Julietta

Voss, as it happened——”

“Yes,” his wife said, dryly, “‘as it happens’ rather often! Where are

they?”

“Just out yonder.”

“Where? _We_ can’t see anybody.”

“Well, they’re there anyhow,” he returned. “They’ll be along in a minute

or two.”

Mrs. Simms rose from her chair. “Suppose you go and bring them,” she

said.

But before he could make any response, her sister intervened. “No! Oh,

_no_!” Mildred cried in a voice of distress, and, rising, too, she

caught Anne’s hand in hers. “Don’t send him! It would look as if——”

She stopped, perceptibly agitated.

The surprise of the gentleman present was genuine, though not so acute

as that of an inexperienced man who expects ladies never to show

unreasonable and apparently causeless emotion. “Why, what’s the matter?”

he said. “It doesn’t seem to me that just because two people happen to

get interested in the game——”

“Never mind!” his wife said, sharply. “If you intend to take your clubs

down to the locker room you’d better be doing it.”

“Very well.” He entered the clubhouse through a French window that

opened upon the veranda, and his surprise was somewhat increased when

his wife followed him.

“Wait,” she said, as she closed the window behind her. “Hobart Simms, I

never dreamed you’d allow yourself to be put in such a position.”

“What?” he said. “What position am I in?”

“I didn’t think you were this kind of man at all,” his wife informed him

with continued severity. “I always believed you were intelligent—even

about women!”

“Oh, no,” he protested. “Don’t go so far as that, my dear!” He laughed

as he spoke, but despite both his protest and his laughter, his looks

deserved what Mrs. Simms declared to have been her previous opinion of

him. Bodily, he was still a featherweight, and of that miraculous

slimness which appears inconsistent with the possession of the organs

necessary to sustain life; but his glance was the eagle’s.

“I did think so!” his wife exclaimed. “I used to think you were

different, and that women couldn’t fool you any more than men could.”

“Anne, what woman has taken enough interest in me to fool me?”

“Nobody. She doesn’t take any interest in you; she only uses you.”

“Who is she?”

The lady gave utterance to an outcry of indignant amazement at the

everlasting stupidity of a man beguiled by a woman; for, in spite of the

ages during which men have been beguiled by women, the women who are not

doing the beguiling never cease to marvel that it can be done. “You poor

blind thing!” she cried. “Julietta Voss!”

At this he was merely amused. “You’re not feeling well, Anne,” he

remarked. “What you say doesn’t sound like you at your best. I never

heard anything so——”

Mrs. Simms interrupted him. “Who paid her caddy?”

“I did. I paid both hers and old John’s, but I don’t think we need——”

“What made you keep so far away from them? What made you play down the

south side of the course and leave them so far over on the north? Did

she ask you to?”

“Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “It just happened! They were playing the

same ball, against me. Naturally——”

“‘Naturally,’” she said, taking up the word sharply, “it was like that

all round the course, wasn’t it?”

“What of it? I understood you to charge me with being fooled by poor

little Julietta——”

“Stop calling her ‘little’,” Mrs. Simms commanded. “She’s a foot taller

than you are!”

“Well, then,” he mildly remonstrated, “with all that advantage, what

would she take the trouble to fool me for? If she wanted to make love to

me she could do it openly, by force.”

At this, his wife’s face showed sheer despair of him. “I just said that

she doesn’t take the slightest interest in you—except as a foil! This

is the third time.”

“The third time what?”

“The third time you’ve been manœuvred into coming out here to play with

them. Good heavens, don’t you _see_ it?”

“No,” he returned, meekly. “Tell me in words of one syllable, Anne.”

Mrs. Simms complied, and in her response there was that direct brevity

not unusual with her sex in the climaxes of bitter moments. “She’s

trying to get my sister’s husband away from her!”

The bewilderment of Mr. Simms was complete. “Old John?” he cried. “Old

John _Tower_? Poor little Julietta Voss is trying to get old John away

from Mildred? Of all the preposterous——” His laughter interrupted his

enunciation. “Why, that’s the most far-fetched fancy work I ever—— But

of course you don’t mean it seriously.”

“I do.”

“But it’s nonsense! Julietta’s always ready to come and be an outdoor

comrade for anybody; but it’s only because she’s such a good fellow she

doesn’t stop to care whether she’s with old married men like John and

me, or with the boys of her own age that she’d naturally like to be with

a great deal better of course.”

“She’s almost my own age; she’s over thirty,” the grim Mrs. Simms

informed him. “The ‘boys of her own age’ are busy elsewhere.”

“Well, she isn’t that kind of a schemer, no matter what her age is, and

if she were, why, the last person on earth she’d pick out would be

steady old John Tower. He’s absolutely devoted to Mildred, and everybody

knows it. And, finally, if poor Julietta is trying to break up Mildred’s

hearth and home, what in the world are you so sharp with _me_ about? If

it’s John, and not me that Julietta’s after——”

“Didn’t I tell you she uses you as a foil? Who could criticize her for

running after another woman’s husband when his own brother-in-law is

always chaperoning them? She knows there’s talk——”

“She does? Well, I don’t. You say——”

“I certainly do. Of _course_ there’s talk. There has been for some

time.”

“Does Mildred share your idea?” he asked.

“She does—most unhappily!”

“Anne, do you mean to tell me that as sensible a woman as Mildred’s

always seemed could actually let herself get worried about——”

“Any wife would,” Anne interrupted, severely. “Especially with a husband

as odd as John Tower. So far as women are concerned he’s nothing but a

grown-up child! He believes everything they tell him, and Julietta knows

it. It’s because he _is_ so perfectly simple and naïve and

trustful—with women—that Mildred is wretched about him.”

“What’s she said to old John about it?”

“Nothing.”

“Why not?”

“Because if she did,” Mrs. Simms explained, “it might look as if she

were jealous.”

“Well, she is, isn’t she?”

“Not at all. She’s terribly hurt, and naturally she’s angry and rather

disgusted to think her husband would let such a person as Julietta Voss

have so much effect upon him.”

Hobart’s intelligent forehead became lined with the effort to solve the

puzzle before him. “You say she’s terribly hurt and she’s angry and

she’s disgusted because she thinks her husband is letting another woman

carry on with him; but she’s not jealous. How would you define jealousy,

Anne?”

“As nothing that a girl like Julietta Voss could make a lady feel,” Anne

returned, with no little heat. “Mildred is a lady—and I’m going back to

her. Be kind enough to hurry with your ablutions, if you intend any.”

He went away meekly to obey, and when he returned to the veranda he

still looked meek, though there was in his glance a sly skepticism

readily visible to his wife. She was sitting by the veranda railing with

her sister, who was staring forth into the darkness in a manner somewhat

pathetic; but, as her brother-in-law thought her imaginings absurd, his

sympathies were not greatly roused. “Hasn’t that old Don Giovanni of

yours finished playing it out yet, Mildred?” he inquired.

Both ladies looked round at him over their shoulders, Mildred piteously,

but Anne sternly. “There’s one great trouble with an unflagging humour,”

Mrs. Simms said. “It never flags.”

“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “If Mildred thinks poor old John and

Julietta—— Mildred, you don’t for one minute honestly and truly——”

But Mildred made a gesture of agonized entreaty. “Please! Please!” she

said in a low voice. “They’re coming!”

A peal of light laughter was heard from the darkness, and the figures of

the two delaying players became visible within the outer reaches of the

clubhouse lights. They were walking slowly, engaged in obviously

cheerful conversation, and from the shoulders of the stalwart Tower were

slung both bags containing the implements used in the game they had been

playing. It was characteristic and like old John’s punctilious

gallantry, his brother-in-law thought, to have seized upon both those

bags the moment the caddies were dismissed. Miss Voss, almost as tall as

he, was more than equal to carrying her own bag without effort.

She had the figure of a distance runner in training, lithe, hard, and

active; and there was something lively, yet hard, too, in her tanned

long face, which was a handsome face in spite of its length. But her

eyes were what was most noticeable about her, for they were beautiful.

They were brilliantly dark, and at times seemed to hold little dancing

lights within them, as if they gave glimpses of secret laughter. All in

all, she was a cheery companion for an outdoor afternoon, but by no

manner of means a tricky witch, Mr. Hobart Simms decided, as he looked

down smilingly upon her and upon that odd man, his brother-in-law and

junior partner, old John Tower.

“Old John,” of an age not more than Hobart’s, was queer, Hobart thought;

but his queerness did not alter the simple steadiness of character that

made his intimates think and speak of him as “old John.” Moreover, his

oddity lay mainly in his literal, simple truthfulness under all

conditions, in his belief that others were as truthful as himself, and

in an indefatigable formal politeness of manner, sometimes a little

stately, that was really the expression of a kind heart.

The two came gaily up the steps, still laughing at something said out of

hearing from the veranda, and Julietta gave a final fillip to their joke

by reeling against her companion as they reached the top step. She

steadied herself by clutching his shoulder, and seemed almost to hang

upon him, for a moment or two, while she chid him. “Don’t make me laugh

any more, or I’ll give you up as a partner and absolutely not play with

you again to-morrow!” Then she turned briskly to Mildred. “I hope you

haven’t been waiting long for your poor abducted husband, Mrs. Tower.

I’m afraid he’s the kind of man who never gives up anything he sets out

to do, even when he has to finish it in the dark. I suppose that’s why

he’s a great man.”

“Do you think he’s a great man, Julietta?” Hobart Simms inquired in a

carefully naïve manner.

“Everyone knows he is,” Julietta returned. “Of _course_ you’re a great

man, John, since Hobart asks me!”

“At least, it’s most lovely of you to say you think so,” Mr. Tower

responded, bowing his dark head before her gratefully. “I’m only a

feeble assistant to Hobart here, who really _is_ a great man; but it’s

charming of you to say I’m one, too. Really it’s most kind of you,

Julietta.” He turned to his wife. “My dear, I hope you haven’t been

waiting long, and I hope, if you have, you haven’t minded.”

“No, not at all,” she murmured. “But can’t we go now?”

“Just a moment. I must take these bags to the locker room and freshen up

the least bit. Julietta, if you’ll give me the key to your locker I’ll

have your bag put away for you.”

But Julietta laughed ruefully and shook her head. “Just leave the bag

here. It takes every penny of my poor little allowance to keep me a

member of the club. They charge too much for lockers. I told you the

other day I didn’t have a locker.”

The kindly John struck his hands together in a sharp sound; he was

shocked by his forgetfulness. “Dear me! So you did! Of course, you must

allow me to make up for my omission. I’d meant to attend to that

yesterday. Of _course_ you must have a locker. I’ll see to it at once

and bring you the key.”

Julietta said promptly, “How lovely of you!” and he went toward the

French windows; but a murmur from his wife stopped him.

“John, it’s very late. Couldn’t you postpone seeing about lockers and

things like that, and let’s be starting home?”

“In just a moment, my dear,” he said in the kindest tone. “I’ll just

arrange about a locker for Julietta and leave our clubs. It won’t take a

moment.”

“He’s so thoughtful always,” Julietta said, looking after him gratefully

as he departed. “I think I never knew a man so careful about all the

little things most men don’t seem even to be conscious of.”

“Thanks, Julietta,” Mr. Simms said, cheerfully, and was immediately

aware that his wife looked at him with some tensity. She had not spoken

since the arrival of Julietta and her companion upon the veranda.

“Thanks for the rest of us.”

“Oh, you!” Julietta said; and the dancing lights in her extraordinary

eyes sparkled as she turned to him. “You’re a great man really, as dear

old John just explained, and we all know what everybody says about you

and Julius Cæsar—or is it Napoleon? You’ve scattered fortunes around

among your friends taking them into your corporations, the way he

scattered kingdoms around among his relatives. You’re so great you don’t

have to bother being thoughtful about little things.”

“Julietta,” he responded, “you sound like a testimonial banquet. I hope

you’ll convince my wife, though.”

“She’d be the last to need convincing,” Julietta returned. “Wouldn’t

you, Mrs. Simms?”

“I might be,” Anne replied, dryly. “Hobart, I think you’d better run and

tell John he’s keeping us all waiting.”

But the absent gentleman returned before his brother-in-law, moving to

obey, could go in search of him; and he came with a key in his hand.

“There, Julietta, if you’ll be so kind as to use this——”

“You dear man!” she cried, enthusiastically. “Now just for that I’m

going to forgive you for making me laugh so hard, and we’ll finish that

game to-morrow, because Hobart didn’t play it out with us to-day. Don’t

you think we could all three be here a _wee_ bit earlier to-morrow—say

by four o’clock?”

At this, Mildred Tower turned to her sister in an almost visible appeal

for help; and Anne hurriedly endeavoured to respond with the succour

besought. “So far as Mr. Simms is concerned——” she began; but Tower,

unaware that she was speaking, had already accepted Julietta’s

invitation.

“Delightful,” he said, bowing. “Julietta, that will be delightful. I

shall be here by four o’clock promptly. Thank you for thinking of it.”

“You’ll be sure to come, too, Hobart?” Julietta asked.

Hobart’s wife began again, and her tone was emphatic. “So far as Mr.

Simms is concerned——” But again she was interrupted, this time by her

husband.

“Why, yes, Julietta,” he said, amiably, “I’d like very much to play it

out. I’ll be here at four.”

For a moment or two there was a silence during which his consciousness

that both his wife and his sister-in-law were looking at him became

somewhat acute. Then, without even a murmur of leave-taking or any sound

at all, Mildred Tower walked quickly to the steps, descended them, and

went toward the waiting cars. Her sister, after a final look, which

swept scorchingly over both gentlemen—though but one of them, her

husband, was aware of its heat—turned sharply away and hurried after

her.

Only the best of women are capable of doing things so embarrassing,

thought the philosophical Mr. Simms; and then realized that his

brother-in-law was not embarrassed at all.

“Wait a moment, my dear,” Tower called placidly after his wife.

“Julietta has been kind enough to say we could drop her at her house on

our way. She’s going with us.”

No response came from the hurrying Mrs. Tower.

“My dear!” her husband called. “Julietta is going to permit us——”

Then, as Mildred disappeared silently into the interior of her car, he

remarked with unsullied confidence, “She doesn’t hear me.”

Julietta laughed and put her hand upon his arm, looking up at him. “Do

you think she wants me?”

“My dear Julietta! Of course she does. Everybody wants you. Why

shouldn’t she?”

“Perhaps she thinks I live too far out of your way, and she’s in a hurry

to eat her dinner,” Julietta said, wistfully. “It isn’t everyone that’s

too generous to keep thinking of food when someone needs a little lift.

It isn’t everybody who remembers all the little thoughtful things as you

do, John, you know.”

“Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “Mildred will be only too delighted to have

you, though I do appreciate your kind opinion of me.” He looked down at

her hand, which was still upon his coat sleeve, and, taking it in one of

his, tucked it under his arm. “You’re charming, Julietta,” he said,

beaming upon her. “Indeed you are! Perfectly charming! Shall we go down

and get into the car?”

It was time for the third person present during this little interview to

depart, that person decided. “_Hobart!_” his wife called from her car,

and her voice was threateningly eloquent.

Hobart delayed no longer, though he was thinking with some concentration

just then; and, bidding Miss Voss and his brother-in-law a quick

good-night, he went by them and hurried toward the summoning voice.

Descending the steps arm-in-arm, and talking, old John and Julietta did

not seem to hear the word of farewell;—Hobart was some distance away

when the scrupulous Tower called after him: “Hobart, did you say,

‘Good-night’? I beg your pardon; I was listening to Julietta.

Good-night, Hobart. Good-night, Anne.” Then, as Hobart got into his own

car, he could hear his brother-in-law busily talking beside the other.

“And now, my dear Julietta, if you’ll be so kind as to step in and sit

beside Mildred, I believe you’ll be quite comfortable. There’s an extra

rug, Julietta, if you——”

But Mrs. Simms had already spoken to her chauffeur, and the engine was

in motion. As they drove away, she and her husband could still hear the

thoughtful old John addressing himself to the subject of Julietta’s

comfort, and replying to her thanks. “Not at all, my dear Julietta; it’s

the greatest imaginable pleasure. And if you’ll be so kind as to allow

me to place this other rug over your knees, Julietta——”

The Simms’ car passed out of hearing, and within the dark interior its

owner continued to be thoughtful. He was still certain that Mildred

indulged herself in mere folly when she worried about steady, simple old

John. But he was not so sure of the artlessness of Julietta;—the final

little interview upon the veranda had somewhat shaken his convictions in

regard to Julietta.

“I suppose you’re pleased with yourself,” Mrs. Simms said, icily, after

an extended silence.

“I couldn’t decline,” he returned, easily. “You didn’t give me a chance

to.”

“Hobart, that’s really too much! You stopped me—interrupted me when I

was in the very act of declining for you.”

“That was the reason,” he explained. “I couldn’t let you decline for me.

It might have looked as though I let my wife do embarrassing things for

me that I haven’t backbone enough to do for myself.”

“How diplomatic!” she said. “May I ask your _real_ reason for accepting

her invitation after what I’d just told you about her? Perhaps, though,

it was merely to hurt Mildred and irritate me. In that case, you made a

perfect success of what you intended.”

“It wasn’t precisely that,” he laughed. “For one thing, if what you and

Mildred believe has any foundation, why, old John certainly needs a

chaperon; and, for another thing, I wanted the chance to see for myself

if there is any reason to believe what you told me.”

“Oh, _so_?” She uttered a little cry of triumph, and laughed in the tone

of her outcry. “So you’re not so sure as you were a little while ago,

when you implied that my mind was wandering! So you see there _is_

something in it?”

“Only this: I admit the possibility that Julietta might want to have him

attached to her as a sort of providing friend, to do little useful

things for her and——”

“‘Little useful things’?” his wife said, scornfully. “Don’t you

understand what type she belongs to? Only a few minutes ago you paid her

caddy for her, and John rented a locker for her. Last week he got her a

new set of golf clubs, Mildred told me. Julietta complained of her old

ones, and he sent away for the most expensive clubs you can get in the

country. When she said you put your friends into fortunes, she meant

more than just to flatter you about the fortune you’ve put John Tower

into; she meant you to begin to get the idea into your head that it

would be pleasant some day to put _her_ into one—or her worthless old

father, perhaps!”

Then, as Hobart laughed loudly at an idea apparently so far-fetched,

Anne defended it. “Oh, I know it was only her impulse and not

deliberate, just a chance shot of hers; but she never misses a

possibility, and that possibility was somewhere in the back of her head.

Of course, it isn’t you, but John that she’s playing for. She’d _rather_

have played for you; but she didn’t see any chance, of course. She

discovered John’s weakness and did see the chance with him.”

“What weakness, Anne?”

“Why, the poor old thing’s childlike acceptance of women at the face

value they put upon themselves, and his quaint belief that they say

everything they mean and mean everything they say—just as he does

himself. Mildred’s helpless because he’s such a helpless idealist; he

tells her the only thing he can’t bear in a woman is when she’s so

small-minded as to speak slightingly of any other woman! All Mildred can

do is to suffer and not speak. I never saw anything so pitiful as what

she did when you hurt her feelings so terribly.”

“When I did what?”

“When you insulted her awhile ago,” Mrs. Simms explained with calm

frigidity. “She knew I’d told you what she was suffering;—I’d just told

her I had. And then she had not only to listen to her husband accepting

that girl’s overtures for another long tête-à-tête with him to-morrow,

but to hear you promising to lend countenance to it by being used again

as you’ve already been used three times. It was the same as either

telling Mildred that she’s a fool, imagining the whole thing, or that

you approve of Julietta’s little plans and intend to lend your aid to

further them. You might as well have slapped my sister in the face.”

“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “Don’t look at it that way! I didn’t mean——”

“Didn’t you?” Anne had no compunctions whatever in punishing him to the

best of her ability. “You’d already mocked her for suffering what no

woman in her position could _help_ suffering. Then, in addition to what

she was already trying to bear and not show, you gave her some _more_ to

bear—and she couldn’t trust herself to speak; she could only run from

you!”

This was indeed a new light upon what Hobart had been masculine enough

to think a mere example of woman’s rudeness to woman; and in that light

the speechless flight of the unfortunate Mildred now bore the colour of

true pathos. Moreover, following his awakened doubts of Julietta, his

wife’s view of his conduct began to be uncomfortably convincing. He

feared that he was going to be remorseful.

“Of course you don’t dream I’m not fond of Mildred,” he said. “I’ve

always been very——”

“You show it strangely,” Anne interrupted. She spoke with no softening

of her resentment, though what she felt for her sister brought to her

eyes the tears she had been withholding, and he saw them as a street

light flashed through the glass of the window beside her. “Mildred’s the

kind of woman people do hurt, I suppose. She’s so gentle and harmless

herself, it must be a temptation! She’s always been so lovely to _you_,

I suppose you couldn’t resist it.”

“Oh, look here!” he protested, and his fears were realized; he was

already remorseful. “You know I wouldn’t have hurt——”

“Then why did you?”

“Well, if I did,” he said, desperately;—“and, confound it, I’m afraid

maybe I did—I suppose it was because jealousy is the kind of suffering

that onlookers always have the least sympathy with. I’ll beg her pardon,

and, if I caused her pain, I’ll try to make it up to her.”

“How can you do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, regretfully. “I’ll just have to try to find

some way.”

“That wouldn’t be very easy,” his wife said. “Could you get her husband

back for her, if this girl gets him away?”

“But that _is_ nonsense,” he protested. “Julietta Voss couldn’t get that

far with old John—not if she had all eternity to try in!”

This was the position he took, and he maintained it during the rest of

their drive, and at intervals during the rather stately dinner for two

people that was the evening custom of their big country house. After

dinner, however, as he sat down to coffee with his wife in the library,

he was forced to adopt another view. His sister-in-law came in suddenly

and dramatically, the fur cloak she had thrown about her for a hasty

drive falling to the floor as she entered the door.

Anne sprang up from her easy chair. “Mildred! What’s happened?”

For Mildred’s pallor, and her visible struggle for composure, as she

stood with both hands upon the back of a chair to steady herself, left

no doubt that she came because of some definite happening.

Hobart moved to withdraw. “I imagine you and Anne might like to have a

talk together, Mildred. I’ll just——”

“No,” Mildred said in a strained and plaintive voice, “I’ve come for

help. You’ve both got to help me somehow, because I can’t stand it. I

really can’t.”

He was distressed for her. “Anything—anything in the world——”

“I _hope_ you mean it,” Mildred said, staring at him with wide and

desperate eyes. “If any one can do anything to help me it’s you, Hobart,

because you’ve always been able to do everything you’ve ever wanted to

do. Maybe you won’t want to help me.”

“What?” he cried. “My dear girl!”

“No,” she said, pathetically;—“maybe you won’t want to. After the way

you treated me before them at the club, I shouldn’t be sure you’d want

to.”

“My dear sister, don’t think that,” he begged. “I see I did hurt you,

and I only ask a chance to make up to you for it. What can I do?”

“Nothing!” his wife said, taking the reply into her own mouth, as she

put an arm about her sister and stood facing him scornfully. “Nothing

that will make up to her for what you did. That’s something you can

never do, because even you can’t recall and do again what has passed.”

Troubled, admiring Anne for the proud anger of her attitude, and

secretly pleased with her “even you,” he gave her a queer look in which

there was a gleam of doggedness. “I’ll try, at any rate,” he said; and

then, more casually, he addressed his sister-in-law: “You drove over

alone, Mildred?”

“As soon as John left the house after dinner,” she said. “I kept up till

he went, and then I found I couldn’t bear it any longer—I had to ask

for help. After he put her into the car with me at the club, he asked me

why I was so quiet, and I said I had a bad headache;—it was true

enough, too. She said that was ‘too bad’ and immediately proposed that

we should ‘all three’ drive into town after dinner to a cabaret

vaudeville and dance and late supper!”

“She did?” Hobart asked. “Not just after you’d told them your head

ached?”

“Yes. She said the way to cure a headache was to ‘be gay and forget

it.’”

“What did you tell her, Mildred?”

“I said I couldn’t and that John couldn’t go either, because he had to

be in his office early to-morrow morning. He said no; he didn’t need

more than three or four hours’ sleep, and he would be only too glad to

escort Julietta, since if I had a headache, I’d probably go to bed, and

he’d have nothing to do. At dinner I asked him please not to go;

_please_ to stay with me, instead. He said in his kindest way that he’d

be glad to, any other night, but it was impossible this evening since

he’d ‘promised Julietta,’ and couldn’t possibly break a promise. So he

went—and I found I couldn’t stay in the house and think it over any

longer. Hobart, you mustn’t go out there and help them pretend to play

golf to-morrow.”

“Very well,” he said, gravely. “I’ll do whatever you wish. But isn’t it

just possible you’d rather have me with them? If Julietta really is the

designing person you believe she is——”

“If!” Mildred cried with sudden loudness. “‘If’ she is! You don’t

understand, Hobart. This is what happened in the car just before we

reached her house to-night;—it happens all the time. She made a

gesture—she always talks with gestures—and her hand smashed against

the door-frame and broke the crystal of her wrist-watch. She said she

was sure the works were broken, too. It was a plain gold watch, old and

not very valuable, but she made a great lamentation over it. John took

it from her, put it in his pocket, and said that since it was broken in

our car it was our place to restore it; she should have a new one as

near like it as possible to-morrow;—it would be the ‘greatest

privilege’ to obtain it for her! She _knew_ that was just what he’d do,

and she broke it on purpose, of course.”

“Mildred, you really believe——”

She stopped him. “You don’t understand. It goes on all the time. And if

she does this much under my very eyes, what doesn’t she get out of him

when they’re alone together?”

“There might be something reassuring in that,” Hobart suggested. “If she

spends her energies getting these trifles from him—because of course

that’s all they are to a man in old John’s position—doesn’t that look

as if her designs might be limited to——”

“No, it does not,” Mrs. Simms interrupted, promptly.

“But——”

“No,” his wife repeated. “Don’t you see that the very fact of her

wanting the trifles would make her want something a great deal more

important, and that’s to be in a position where she wouldn’t have to

work for them?”

“Well, then,” her husband returned;—“if she expects to reach that

position by supplanting Mildred, she has a ridiculous ambition!”

“Is it?” Mildred asked, unhappily. “If John were any other kind of man,

it might be ridiculous.” Tears came into her eyes that had been dry

until now; but she struggled with herself and kept more from coming.

“Isn’t it ironical?” she said. “The very goodness of such a man as John,

his simple kindness, his idealizing—the very things I’ve cared for most

in him—that they should be his weakness and just what leaves him open

to the easy cajoling of a crude trespasser like Julietta Voss! Don’t you

understand, Hobart? I know you didn’t understand this afternoon, but

don’t you now? You thought I was jealous of him, I know. Perhaps I am;

perhaps I do want to keep him for myself; but I’m his wife; why

shouldn’t I? And I know I’m better for him than she’d be. Oh, don’t you

understand? I want to _protect_ him!”

Hobart came to her and took her hand. “Mildred, old John hasn’t the

remotest idea you’re suffering like this. You’ve got to tell him about

it.”

“But I _can’t_,” she cried. “I can’t let him think I’m just a jealous

woman, and what else would he think of me if I told him the truth about

her? That’s why I don’t want you to go out there with them to-morrow,

Hobart.”

“Of course I won’t, since you ask it,” he said, mystified. “Yet I don’t

see——”

“You don’t?” his wife asked, sharply; and, in obvious pity for a poor

understanding, characteristically manlike, she explained what she had

instantly divined—her unhappy sister’s reason for coming to ask him to

help her. “Julietta counts on your being with them as the answer to the

talk about them. She intends to have a defence against the talk—an

answer that will help to keep people on her side—and if you break your

engagement without any explanation she’ll wonder what it means, and if

we haven’t _asked_ you to do it; and she’ll get John to find out. He’ll

ask you why you didn’t come. Then you can tell him you stayed away

because you’re troubled about what Mildred may think. It’s all you need

say, and he’ll speak to Mildred about it. That will give her a _chance_

to talk to him.”

“Is it what you want, Mildred?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s the only thing I can think of. It gives me a

chance to talk to him, that’s all. It may make him despise me, anyhow. I

don’t know what he’ll say, but I’ve got to do it;—I can’t go on any

longer not saying _anything_! Perhaps”—her breath caught in her throat,

and for a moment she could not speak—“perhaps he’ll ask me for a

divorce. Well, if he does, I’ll give it to him!”

“No, no!” her sister cried. “You said you wanted to protect him!”

“If he doesn’t love me any more, I _couldn’t_,” Mildred sobbed, for her

struggle to control herself was lost now, and her weeping became

convulsive. “Don’t you see I couldn’t? You can’t protect anybody that’s

tired of you. If he’s tired of you, how can you protect him against

someone he’s in love with?”

“My dear sister!” Hobart begged her, deeply moved. “Don’t think it. Old

John isn’t in love with Julietta Voss any more than I am!”

“How do I _know_?” she sobbed. “He _acts_ as if he is. What other way is

there to tell? How do I know?” And, clinging to his hand, she sank down

into the chair beside which she had been standing. “Oh, Hobart, you must

help me; you must try your best to help me!”

“Indeed I will,” he promised, with all the earnestness that was in him.

“I’ll do anything in the world, Mildred—absolutely anything!”

He meant it indeed; but over the bowed form of the unhappy lady who

clung to his hand, entreating him, he looked into the denouncing and

skeptical eyes of his wife. She needed no words, nor anything except

those implacable eyes of hers, to tell him that his own recent behaviour

was in great part responsible for the misery before them, and that he

lacked the power to make up to Mildred for what he had done.

He adored his wife, and he took that look of hers as a challenge.

XXX

MRS. CROMWELL’S SONS-IN-LAW

HE WAS far from convinced, however, that Mildred’s necessity was as

tragic as she believed. If it was, he would prove to his wife that he

was a man of more resources than she thought; but it still seemed to him

that old John Tower could be in no danger from the simple wiles of

Julietta. For Hobart had accepted the theory that Julietta was wily; he

had finally gone that far unconditionally before the unhappy evening was

over; and he even wondered why he had hitherto been so blind when he

looked at Julietta. But as for steady old John Tower—“No,” he said to

himself, as he drove into the city the next morning. “Absolutely

impossible!” Yet in this emphasis there was that faint shade of doubt so

often present when people buttress their convictions with “absolutely”;

so he decided to buttress himself further by means of a diplomatic

experimental talk with old John.

Arrived in the heart of the city at the great building that was his own,

with all its thirty stories obedient to his five feet three inches, a

Giant Jinn enslaved by a little master enchanter, he went, not to his

own offices, but to old John’s. “I just dropped in for a morning cigar,”

he explained.

His brother-in-law received him heartily.

“My dear Hobart, this is indeed a pleasure. Will you smoke one of my

cigars or one of your own? I’m afraid yours are much the better.”

“No, they’re not,” Hobart laughed. “Mine are much the worse. Your taste

is a lot better than mine about pretty nearly everything.” As he spoke

he took a long cigar from the box that Tower was offering him, and

lighted it. “You have better taste in cigars, better taste in

furniture——” Here he seated himself in one of the set of

seventeenth-century English chairs that helped to make the room the

pleasant place it was. “You even have better taste on the golf links,”

he concluded, chuckling as if reminiscently.

“How so? You play a better game. You don’t allude to my apparel for it,

I imagine.”

“That, too,” Hobart said. “But I was thinking of something else.”

“Of what, my dear Hobart?”

Hobart laughed, gave him a look of friendly raillery, mixed with jocose

admiration, and said: “Don’t you think I’m a good deal of a dunderhead?

On your word, don’t you, old John?”

Old John, beaming genially and amused by his caller’s question, but

puzzled by it, laughed with him. “On my word then, no. I haven’t the

slightest conception of what you mean.”

“Just think of it!” Hobart chuckled. “Here we go, afternoon after

afternoon, you and I, out to the links; and every single time, when we

get there, I go roving round the course virtually all by myself, while

you put in the time with Julietta! You and she keep together and play

the same ball—and what do I play? It seems to me I play the Lone

Fisherman! Honestly, do you think it’s fair?”

“Fair?” Old John had become grave, and the other was surprised and

interested to observe that a tinge of red was slowly mounting in his

cheeks. “Let me understand you, Hobart,” he said. “You mean that I’ve

been monopolizing Julietta?”

“Rather!” Hobart continued his rallying jocosity, though inwardly he was

disturbed by the spreading of that tinge of red over his

brother-in-law’s face. “Don’t you think it’s about time I had a share of

feminine camaraderie in our outdoor sports?”

“You mean, Hobart, that this afternoon you’d prefer to play the same

ball with Julietta and have me play against you?”

This was not the question Hobart had desired to evoke; and his jocosity

departed from him suddenly. “Well——” he said. Then, as his shrewd eyes

took note again of old John’s rosy face and of his gravity—already

troubled as by some forthcoming disappointment—the Napoleonic Hobart

came to one of those swift and clear resolutions, the capacity for which

had made possible his prodigious business career during what was still

almost his youth. Old John was indeed in danger, although old John was

“too innocent” to know it, himself. And in the very instant of this

realization, Hobart decided that he had found the opportunity to take up

his wife’s challenge and atone in full for his fault to her sister.

“Why—why, yes,” he said, slowly. “Don’t you think it’s about time? You

wouldn’t mind very much, would you?”

Old John’s large and well-favoured face grew redder than ever, though

otherwise it was expressive of the most naïvely plain regret. “Ah—I

suppose it would be fair,” he said. “Julietta _is_ attractive, as you

say. In fact, I believe she is the most attractive girl I have ever

known. I value her friendship very highly, Hobart. I came into town to a

cabaret with her last night, and neither of us knew anybody in the

place. We danced together and had a little supper, and danced some more,

and talked—altogether until about two o’clock, I think, Hobart. And in

all that time I never had a dull moment—not one! She is a most

attractive girl, as you say, and I believe there’s perhaps some justice

in your idea that you’re entitled to more of her companionship than

you’ve been enjoying—for this afternoon at least. Since you put it as

you do, suppose we arrange, then, that you and she play the same ball

this afternoon and I play against the two of you.”

“I believe that would be fair,” Hobart said, his eyes sidelong upon old

John. “It’s settled then.” He rose to go.

“I suppose so.” Tower’s gravity increased; but he brightened at a

thought that came to him as his departing caller reached the door. “I

suppose, Hobart, to-morrow—to-morrow——”

“To-morrow what?” Hobart inquired, staring at him.

“Ah—to-morrow——” Old John hesitated, then finished hopefully: “We

might return to our former arrangement?”

“To-morrow? Oh, yes, certainly—to-morrow we’ll return to our former

arrangement,” Hobart said; and as he passed through the anteroom beyond

he murmured the word incredulously to himself, “‘To-morrow.’” He laughed

shortly, and in his imagination continued the dialogue with old John.

“Day after to-morrow, too, I suppose? And the day after that? And the

next, and the next? Why, yes! Why not?” Then he became serious. “You

poor dear old thing, there’s got not to _be_ any ‘to-morrow’!”

He took the affair into his own hands for complete settlement; and at

noon he went to a jeweller’s and bought the most expensive wrist-watch

in the place—a trifling miracle of platinum intricately glittering with

excellent white diamonds. He put the little packet in his coat pocket,

and at about five o’clock that afternoon he showed it to Miss Julietta

Voss.

Old John Tower, absent-minded and not playing well, had driven his ball

into a thicket fifty yards away from where Hobart and Julietta had

paused;—he was in the underbrush, solemnly searching, with his caddy.

“Something for you,” Hobart said, tossing the little packet up and down

in his hand.

She looked surprised. “For me? From you?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, nothing to speak of,” he replied, airily. “I just happened to hear

you broke that gold wrist-watch you usually wear——”

“I did,” she said. “But John found another for me to-day—a new one

exactly like it.” She displayed her left forearm for inspection. “Isn’t

it lovely of him always to be so dear about all the little thoughtful

things?”

“I don’t know,” Hobart said; and he quoted an ancient bit of slang:

“There might be others!”

She shook her head. “Not like him!”

“Are you sure, Julietta?” He gave her a quick and serious look that

increased her surprise. “You might at least take a glance round you to

see.”

“What on earth are you talking about, Hobart Simms?”

At that he gave her another quick glance—a personal glance, as it might

have been defined, since to Julietta it seemed to convey an unexpected

feeling concerning herself and himself. Then he looked wistfully away,

and when he spoke, a moment later, his voice had not the briskness

customary in his speech;—it was, on the contrary, perceptibly unsteady.

“Julietta, I’ve been—well, don’t you suppose a man might some day get a

little tired of being—I mean to say, here I am with you, day after

day—yet really _not_ with you. You’re so busy noticing old John all the

time, you never take time off to be a little friendly with anybody

else.”

She caught her breath, staring at him wonderingly. “But you—you never

showed me you wanted me to,” she said, slowly.

“Didn’t I?” He turned to her, smiling, and as he spoke he removed the

paper wrappings of the small packet. “Other people might want to do some

of the ‘little thoughtful things’ too—if they ever got a chance.”

He put into her hand the green velvet box that had been inside the

wrapping, and she opened it curiously;—then suppressed an outcry.

“Good Heaven!” she gasped, and stared at him. “Of course you know I

couldn’t accept a thing like _this_!”

“Why not? You would from John.”

“But——”

“You’re wearing the one he gave you.”

“Yes, but _this_——”

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Of course, if you don’t like it——”

Sorrowfully he extended his hand to take back the little green velvet

box from her; but she retained it and stood staring at him, amazed and

also profoundly thoughtful. Like Hobart, she was a person who could make

quick decisions.

“I never dreamed of this,” she said. “I thought you only came along with

us because you thought it was a good course and because John asked you.”

“And he asked me because you made him,” Hobart added. “And the reason

you did was because you wanted me for a chaperon.”

She laughed excitedly. “You don’t seem contented with the rôle, I must

say!”

“How could I?”

“I never dreamed!” she said, and she looked at the watch upon her wrist

and at that in the green velvet box. “Queer!” she laughed. “Now I have

two!”

“Would you mind wearing mine?” Hobart asked, and he laughed with her.

“But he’ll see it!”

Hobart’s laughter became gayer and louder. “What if he does?”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Julietta said, and as she took the magnificent

tiny miracle from the box, there began to shine in her eyes an

exultation that could be ruthless. “Perhaps I’d better wear yours and

keep his in my pocket.”

“Perhaps you’d better,” he agreed, still laughing. “Don’t let him see

the joke’s on him till we get back to the clubhouse, though. If he asks

you about it, don’t tell him till then;—I want to get away first.”

“Yes,” she assented, thoughtfully. “Perhaps that would be just as well.”

XXXI

THE ANNIVERSARY DINNER

WHEN he got home from the country club, something less than an hour

later, his wife told him coldly that he seemed to be in high spirits.

“You appear to have the happy faculty of not being depressed by the

troubles of people close to you,” she added. “However, your gaiety may

be useful this evening, at Mother’s.”

“At your mother’s?” he inquired. “Are we going there?”

She looked at him sternly. “What have you been doing that makes you

forget such a thing? It’s Father’s and Mother’s thirty-eighth wedding

anniversary.”

“So it is!” he exclaimed. “I’d forgotten all about it.”

“Obviously. You’d better hurry and dress, because the dinner’s to be

very early on account of the younger grandchildren;—I sent them half an

hour ago.” And, as he did not move, she added, “Please get ready right

away.”

He still hesitated, for in his absorption in his plan to atone to his

sister-in-law and take up Anne’s challenge he had forgotten more than

the anniversary dinner. He had forgotten to consider in what terms he

would eventually inform his wife of that plan and what already appeared

to be its successful beginnings. The present seemed to be a wise time to

say something about it; but he found himself in a difficulty. Face to

face with his wife, especially in her present state of mind, which was

plainly still critical of him, he was convinced that she would prove

unsympathetic. He decided to postpone all explanations, at least until

they were on their way to his father-in-law’s house.

But, alone in the car with her, when the postponed moment seemed to have

arrived, he found the difficulty no less discouraging. He made an

effort, however; but he put it off so long that when he made it they

were almost at their destination.

“Oh, about that interview I’m supposed to have with old John, to-morrow

morning——”

“Yes,” she said. “When he asks you why you didn’t join him and Julietta

at the club this afternoon, you’ll not weaken, I trust.”

“‘Weaken’?”

“Oh, you’ll protest _now_ that you won’t, I know,” she said. “But men

are sympathetic—with other men, especially in ‘affairs’—and John’s

terribly sensitive. I shouldn’t be surprised if you failed to carry it

through. I shouldn’t at all!”

“But—but of course I shall,” Hobart said, before he knew what he was

saying. It was not what he wished to say; but he found himself

apparently without control of his own speech, for the moment; and he

realized that it would now be more difficult than ever to make the

needed explanation. He attempted it feebly, however. “That is to

say——” he began. “I mean—ah—suppose such an interview shouldn’t——”

The car stopped.

“We’re here,” Anne said. “I hope you’ll be as thoughtful as you can of

Mildred. And please don’t be too cordial to John. Let him begin to feel

what you think about him.”

But Hobart’s determination, as he followed his wife into his

father-in-law’s gaily illuminated house, was to be as cordial as

possible to old John and to seek the first private opportunity to

request him not to mention their game of the afternoon. Unfortunately,

the anniversary dinner was already in jovial motion;—Anne and her

husband were late; the adults of the party had yielded to the clamours

of the children and had just gone out to the dining-room. Hobart found

himself between Mildred and Cornelia, across the wide table from his

brother-in-law.

Old John was silent, and his sensitive face wore such visible depression

that presently his father-in-law began to rally him upon it. “Good

gracious, John, this is a party, not the bedside of a sick friend! Why

don’t you eat, or laugh, or anyhow say something? You and Mildred both

seem to think it’s a horrible thing to be present at a celebration of

two people’s having been happily married for thirty-eight years. Is that

what makes you feel so miserable?”

“No, not at all,” John replied, gloomily. “I wasn’t thinking of that. My

mind was on other matters.” And, being the singular soul he was, and of

such a guileless straightforwardness, he looked across the table at his

brother-in-law. “I was thinking of our golf game,” he said, to that

gentleman’s acute alarm. “I mean the one this afternoon, Hobart.”

Hobart heard from the chair next upon his right the subdued and

lamentable exclamation uttered by Mildred; but what fascinated his

paling gaze was the expression of his wife, seated beside old John. She

looked at her husband for a moment of great intensity;—then she turned

to Tower.

“So?” she said, lightly. “Did Hobart play with you and Julietta again

to-day?”

“He played with Julietta,” old John explained, and in his noble

simplicity he continued, to his brother-in-law’s horror, “_I_ didn’t

seem to be needed. I’ve been very fond of Julietta, very fond indeed of

Julietta. She broke her watch in our car yesterday, and so I took her a

new one this afternoon and gave it to her before we began to play.

Hobart brought her one, too; and she took mine off and wore his. The one

I brought her was an ordinary little gold one; but his was platinum and

diamonds—it must have cost a remarkable sum. It was very generous and

kind of Hobart, because Julietta isn’t well off; but the way she took it

made me feel peculiarly disappointed in her. She evidently considers

only the relative financial value of gifts, and not the spirit. She was

quite different in her manner toward me. I cannot say that I value her

friendship as I did.”

“You don’t?” Anne said; and she laughed excitedly. “Don’t you mean

you’ve decided she values my husband’s friendship more than you thought

she did?”

The unhappy Hobart, upon whom the wrong he had done to Julietta thus

already began to be avenged, made an effort to speak; but beneath the

table he felt a warm hand upon his knee, pressing warningly. It was

Mildred’s.

“Wait!” she whispered, rapturously. “I understand. I’ll help you to talk

to her later. It will be terribly difficult, but I’ll do what I can for

you—you angel!”