SLEEP is a funny thing! Really comical I mean! A magician's trick!
"Now you have it--and now you don't!"
Certainly I had very little of it the night of Dr. Brawne's
telephone conversation. I was too surprised.
Yet staring up through those long wakeful hours into the jetty
black heights of my bedroom ceiling it didn't seem to be so much
the conversation itself as the perfectly irrelevant events
succeeding that conversation that kept hurtling back so into my
visual consciousness--The blueness of the May Girl's eyes! The
brightness of her hair!--Rollins's necktie! The perfectly wanton
hideousness of Rollins's necktie!--The bang--_bang_--_bang_ of a
storm-tortured shutter way off in the ell somewhere.
Step by step, item by item, each detail of events reprinted itself
on my mind. Fumbling back from the shadowy telephone-stand into the
brightly lighted upper hall with the single desire to find my
Husband and confide to him as expeditiously as possible this news
which had so amazed me, I had stumbled instead upon the May Girl
herself, climbing somewhat listlessly up the stairs toward bed,
Rollins was close behind her carrying her book and a filmy sky-blue
scarf. George Keets followed with a pitcher of water.
"Oh, it isn't Good Night, dear, is it?" I questioned.
"Yes," said the May Girl. "I'm--pretty tired." She certainly looked
it.
Rollins quite evidently was in despair. He was not to accomplish
his 'kiss' after all, it would seem. All the long day, I judged, he
had been whipping up his cheeky courage to meet some magic
opportunity of the evening. And now, it appeared, there wasn't
going to be any evening! Even the last precious moment indeed was
to be ruined by George Keets's perfidious intrusion!
It was the Bride's voice though that rang down the actual curtain
on Rollins's "Perfect Day."
"Oh, Miss Davies!--Miss Davies!" called the Bride. "You mustn't
forget to return your ring, you know!"
"Why, no, so I mustn't," rallied the May Girl.
Twice I heard Rollins swallow very hard. Any antique was sacred to
him, but a family antique. Oh, ye gods!
"K--K--Keep the ring!" stammered Rollins. It was the nearest point
to real heroism surely that funny little Rollins would ever attain.
"Oh, no, indeed," protested the May Girl. Very definitely she
snapped the silken threads, removed the clumsy bauble from her
finger, and handed it back to Rollins. "But--but it's a beautiful
ring!" she hastened chivalrously to assure him. "I'll--I'll keep
the orchids!" she assented with real dimples.
On Rollins's sweating face the symptoms of acute collapse showed
suddenly. With a glare that would have annihilated a less robust
soul than George Keets's he turned and laid bare his horrid secret
to an unfeeling Public.
"I'd rather you kept the _ring_," sweated Rollins. "The--The
orchids have got to go back!--I only hired the orchids!--That is I--I
bribed the gardener. They've got to be back by nine o'clock
to-night. For some sort of a--a party."
"To-night?" I gasped. "In all this storm f Why, what if the May
Girl had refused to--to----?"
In Rollins's small, blinking eyes, Romance and Thrift battled
together in terrible combat.
"I gotta go back," mumbled Rollins. "He's got my watch!"
"Oh, for goodness sake you mustn't risk losing your watch!" laughed
the May Girl.
George Keets didn't laugh. He hooted! I had never heard him hoot
before, and ribald as the sound seemed emanating from his
distinctly austere lips, the mechanical construction of that hoot
was in some way strangely becoming to him.
The May Girl quite frankly though was afraid he had hurt Rollins's
feelings. Returning swiftly from her bedroom with the lovely
exotics bunched cautiously in one hand she turned an extravagantly
tender smile on Rollins's unhappy face.
"Just--Just one of them," she apologized, "is crushed a little. I
know you told me to be awfully careful of them. I'm very sorry. But
truly," she smiled, "it's been perfectly Wonderful--just to have
them for a day! Thank you!--Thank you a whole lot, I mean! And for
the day itself--it's--it's been very--pleasant," she lied
gallantly.
Snatching the orchids almost roughly from her hand Rollins gave
another glare at George Keets and started for his own room. With
his fingers on the door-handle he turned and glared back with
particular ferocity at the May Girl herself. "Pleasant?" he
scoffed. "_Pleasant_?" And crossing the threshold he slammed the
door hard behind him.
Never have I seen anything more boorish!
"Why--Why, how tired he must be," exclaimed the May Girl.
"Tired?" hooted George Keets. He was still hooting when he joined
the Bride and Bridegroom in the library.
It must have been fifteen minutes later that, returning from an
investigation of the banging blind, I ran into Rollins stealing
surreptitiously to the May Girl's door. Quite unconsciously,
doubtless, but with most rapacious effect, his sparse hair was
rumpled in innumerable directions, and the stealthy boy-pirate
hunch to his shoulders added the last touch of melodrama to the
scene. Rollins, as a gay Lothario, was certainly a new idea. I
could have screamed with joy. But while I debated the ethics of
screaming for joy only, the May Girl herself, as though in reply to
his crafty knock, opened her door and stared frankly down at him
with a funny, flushed sort of astonishment. She was in her great
boyish blanket-wrapper, with her gauzy gold hair wafting like a
bright breeze across her neck and shoulders, and the radiance of
her I think would have startled any man. But it knocked the breath
out of Rollins.
"P-p-pleasant!" gasped Rollins, quite abruptly. "It was a--a
_Miracle_!"
"--Miracle?" puzzled the May Girl.
"Wall-papers!" babbled Rollins. "Suppose it had been true?" he
besought her. "To-day, I mean? Our betrothal?" With total
unexpectedness he began to flutter a handfull of wall-paper samples
under the May Girl's astonished nose. "I've got a little flat you
know in town," babbled Rollins. "Just one room and bath. It's
pretty dingy. But for a long time now I've been planning to have it
all repapered. And if you'd choose the wallpaper for it--it would
be pleasant to think of during--during the years!" babbled Rollins.
"_What_?" puzzled the May Girl. Then quite suddenly she reached out
and took the papers from Rollins's hand and bent her lovely head
over them in perfectly solemn contemplation. "Why--why the pretty
gray one with the white gulls and the flash of blue!" she decided
almost at once, looked up for an instant, smiled straight into
Rollins's fatuous eyes, and was gone again behind the impregnable
fastness of her closed door, leaving Rollins gasping like a fool,
his shoulders drooping, his limp hands clutching the sheet of white
gulls with all the absurd manner of an amateur prima donna just on
the verge of bursting into song!
And all of a sudden starting to laugh I found myself crying instead.
It was the expression in Rollins's eyes, I think. The one
"off-guard" expression perhaps of Rollins's life! A scorching flame of
self-revelation, as it were, that consumed even as it illuminated,
leaving only gray ashes and perplexity. Not just the look it was of a
Little-Man-Almost-Old-who-had-Never-Had-a-Chance-to-Play. But the
look of a Little-Man-Almost-Old who sensed suddenly for the first
time that he never _would_ have a chance to play! That Fate denying
him the glint of wealth, the flash of romance, the scar even of
tragedy, had stamped him merely with the indelible sign of a
Person-Who-wasn't-Meant-to-be-Liked!
Truly I was very glad to steal back into my dark room for a moment
before trotting downstairs again to join all those others who were
essentially intended for liking and loving, so eminently fitted,
whether they refused or accepted it, for the full moral gamut of
human experience.
On my way down it was only human, of course, to stop in the May
Girl's room. Rollins or no Rollins it was the May Girl's problem
that seemed to me the only really maddening one of the moment. What
in creation was life planning to proffer the May Girl?--Dr.
Brawne?--Dr. Brawne?--It wasn't just a question of Dr. Brawne! But
a question of the May Girl herself?
She was still in her blanket-wrapper when I entered the room, but
had hopped into bed, and sat bolt-up-right rocking vaguely, with
her knees gathered to her chin in the circle of her slender arms.
"What seems to be the matter?" I questioned.
"That's what I don't know," she dimpled almost instantly. "But I
seem to be worrying about something.
"Worrying?" I puzzled.
"Well,--maybe it's about the Pom dog," suggested the May Girl
helpfully. "His mouth is so very--very tiny. Do you think he had
enough supper?"
"Oh, I'm sure he had enough supper," I hastened to reassure her.
Very reflectively she narrowed her eyes to review the further field
of her possible worries.
"That cat--that your Husband said he sent away just before I came
for fear I'd bring some--some contradictory animals--are you quite
sure that he's got a good home?" she worried.
"Oh, the best in the world," I said. "A Maternity Hospital!"
"Kittens?" brightened the May Girl for a single instant only. "Oh,
you really mean kittens? Then surely there's nothing to worry about
in that direction!"
"Nothing but--kittens," I conceded.
"Then it must be Allan John," said the May Girl. "His feet! Of
course, I can't exactly help feeling pretty responsible for Allan
John. Are you sure--are you quite sure, I mean, that he hasn't been
sitting round with wet feet all the evening? He isn't exactly the
croupy type, of course, but--" With a sudden irrelevant gesture she
unclasped her knees, and shot her feet straight out in front of
her. "Whatever in the world," she cried out, "am I going to do with
Allan John when it comes time to go home! Now gold-fish," she
reflected, "in a real emergency,--can always be tucked away in the
bath-tub. And once when I brought home a Japanese baby," she
giggled in spite of herself, "they made me keep it in my own room.
But----"
"But I've got a worry of my own," I interrupted. "It's about your
fainting. It scared me dreadfully. I've just been telephoning to
Dr. Brawne about it."
Across the May Girl's supple body a curious tightness settled
suddenly.
"You--told--Dr. Brawne that--I fainted?" she said. "You--you
oughtn't to have done that!" It was only too evident that she was
displeased.
"But we were worried," I repeated. "We had to tell him. We didn't
like to take the responsibility."
With her childish hands spread flatly as a brace on either side of
her she seemed to retreat for a moment into the gold veil of her
hair. Then very resolutely her face came peering out again.
"And just what did Dr. Brawne--tell _you_?" asked the May Girl.
"Why something very romantic," I admitted. "The somewhat
astonishing news, in fact, that you were engaged--to him."
"Oh, but you know, I'm _not_!" protested the May Girl with
unmistakable emphasis. "No--No!"
"And that he was hoping to be married next September. On the 15th
to be perfectly exact," I confided.
"Well, very likely I _shall_ marry him," admitted the May Girl
somewhat bafflingly. "But I'm not engaged to him now! Oh, I'm much
too young to be engaged to him now! Why, even my grandmother thinks
I'm much too young to be engaged to him now!--Why, he's most fifty
years old!" she affirmed with widely dilating eyes. "--And I--I've
scarcely been off my grandmother's place, you know, until this last
winter! But if I'm grown-up enough by September, they say--you see
I'll be eighteen and a half by September," she explained
painstakingly, "so that's why I wanted to get engaged as much as I
could this week!" she interrupted herself with quite merciless
irrelevance. "If I've got to be married in September--without ever
having been engaged or courted at all--I just thought I'd better go
to work and pick up what experience I could--on my own hook!"
"Dr.--Dr. Brawne will, of course, make you a very distinguished
husband," I stammered, "but are you sure you love him?"
"I love everybody!" dimpled the May Girl.
"Yes, dogs, of course," I conceded, "and Rabbits--and horses and----"
"And kittens," supplemented the May Girl.
"Your mother is--not living?" I asked rather abruptly.
"My father is dead," said the May Girl. "But my mother is in
Egypt." Her lovely face was suddenly all excitement. "My mother ran
away!"
"Oh! An elopement, you mean?" I laughed. "Ran away with your
father. Youngsters used to do romantic things like that."
"Ran away _from_ my father," said the May Girl. "And from me. It
was when I was four years old. None of us have ever seen her since.
It was with one of Dr. Brawne's friends that she ran away. That's
one reason, I think, why Dr. Brawne has always felt so sort of
responsible for me."
"Oh, dear--oh, dear, this is very sad," I winced.
"N-o," said the May Girl perfectly simply. "Maybe it was bad but
I'm almost sure it's never been sad. Dr. Brawne hears from her
sometimes. Mother's always been very happy, I think. But everybody
somehow seems to be in an awful hurry to get me settled."
"Why?" I asked quite starkly, and could have bitten my tongue out
for my impertinence.
"Why--because I'm so tall, I suppose," said the May Girl. "And not
so very specially bright. Oh, not nearly as bright as I am tall!"
she hastened to assure me with her pretty nose all crinkled up for
the sheer emphasis of her regret. "Life's rather hard, you know,
on tall women," she confided sagely. "Always trying to take a
tuck in them somewhere! Mother was tall," she observed; "and
Father, they say, was always and forever trying to make her look
smaller--especially in public! Pulling her opinions out from under
her! Belittling all her great, lovely fancies and ideas! Not that
he really meant to be hateful, I suppose. But he just couldn't help
it. It was just the natural male-instinct I guess of wanting to be
the everythinger--himself!"
"What do you know of the natural male 'instinct'?" I laughed out in
spite of myself.
"Oh--lots," smiled the May Girl. "I have an uncle. And my
grandmother always keeps two hired men. And for almost six months
now I've been at the Art School. And there are twenty-seven boys at
the Art School. Why there's Jerry and Paul and Richard and--and----"
"Yes, but your father and mother?" I pondered. "Just how----?"
"Oh, it was when they were walking downtown one day past a great
big mirror," explained the May Girl brightly. "And Mother saw that
she was getting round-shouldered trying to keep down to Father's
level--it was then that she ran away! It was then that she began to
run away I mean! To run away in her mind! I heard grandmother and
Dr. Brawne talking about it only last summer. But I?" she affirmed
with some pride, "oh, I've known about being tall ever since I
first had starch enough in my knees to stand up! While I stayed in
my crib I don't suppose I noticed it specially. But just as soon as
I was big enough to go to school. Why, even at the very first," she
glowed, "when every other child in the room had failed without the
slightest reproach some perfectly idiotic visitor would always pipe
up and say, 'Now ask that tall child there! The one with the yellow
hair!' And everyone would be as vexed as possible because I failed,
too! It isn't my head, you know that's tall," protested the May
Girl with some feeling, "it's just my neck and legs!
"You certainly are entrancingly graceful," I smiled. How anybody as
inexpressibly lovely as the May Girl could be so oblivious of the
fact was astonishing!
But neither smile nor compliment seemed to allay to the slightest
degree the turmoil that was surging in the youngster's mind.
"Why, even at the Art School," she protested, "it's just as bad!
Especially with the boys! Being so tall--and with yellow hair
besides--you just can't possibly be as important as you are
conspicuous! And yet every individual boy seems obliged to find out
for himself just exactly how important you are! But no matter what
he finds," she shrugged with a gesture of ultimate despair, "it
always ends by everybody getting mad!"
"Mad?" I questioned.
"Yes--very mad," said the May Girl. "Either he's mad because he
finds you're not nearly as nice as you are conspicuous, or else,
liking you most to death, he simply can't stand it that anyone
as nice as he thinks you are is able to outplay him at tennis
or--that's why I like animals best--and hurt things!" she
interrupted herself with characteristic impetuosity. "Animals and
hurt things don't care how rangy your arms are as long as they're
loving! Why if you were as tall as a tree," she argued, "little
deserted birds in nests would simply be glad that you could reach
them that much sooner! But men? Why, even your nice Mr. Keets,"
she cried; "even your nice Mr. Keets, with his fussy old
Archaeology, couldn't even play at being engaged without talking
down--down--down at me! Tall as he is, too! And funny little old
Mr. Rollins," she flushed. "Little--_little_--old Mr. Rollins--Mr.
Rollins really liked me, I think, but he--he'd torture me if he
thought it would make him feel any burlier!
"And Claude Kennilworth," I questioned.
The shiver across the May Girl's shoulders looked suddenly more
like a thrill than a distaste.
"Oh, Claude Kennilworth," she acknowledged quite ingenuously. "He's
begun already to try to 'put me in my place'! Altogether too
independent is what he thinks I am. But what he really means is
'altogether too tall'!" Once again the little shiver flashed across
her shoulders. "He's so--so awfully temperamental!" she quickened.
"Goodness knows what fireworks he'll introduce tomorrow! I can
hardly wait!"
"Is--is Dr. Brawne--tall?" I asked a bit abruptly.
"N--o," admitted the May Girl. "He's quite short! But--his years
are so tall!" she cried out triumphantly. "He's so tall in his
attainments! I've thought it all out--oh very--very carefully," she
attested. "And if I've got to be married in order to have someone
to look out for me I'm almost perfectly positive that Dr. Brawne
will be quite too amused at having so young a wife to bully me very
much about anything that goes with the youngness!"
"Oh--h," I said.
"Yes,--exactly," mused the May Girl.
With a heart and an apprehension just about as gray and as heavy as
lead I rose and started for the door.
"But, May Girl?" I besought her in a single almost hysterical
desire to rouse her from her innocence and her ignorance. "Among
all this great array of men and boys that you know--the uncle--yes,
even the hired men," I laughed, "and all those blue-smocked boys at
the Art School--whom do you really like the best?"
So far her eyes journeyed off into the distance and back again I
thought that she had not heard me. Then quite abruptly she answered
me. And her voice was all boy-chorister again.
"The best?--why, Allan John!" she said.
Taken all in all there were several things said and done that
evening that would have kept any normal hostess awake, I think.
The third morning dawned even rainier than the second! Infinitely
rainier than the first! It gave everybody's coming-down-stairs
expression a curiously comical twist as though Dame Nature herself
had been caught off-guard somehow in a moment of dishabille that
though inexpressibly funny, couldn't exactly be referred to--not
among mere casual acquaintances--not so early in the morning,
anyway!
Yet even though everybody rushed at once to the fireplace instead
of to the breakfast-table nobody held us responsible for the
weather. Everyone in fact seemed to make rather an extra effort to
assure us that he or she--as the case might be, most distinctly did
not hold us responsible.
Paul Brenswick indeed grew almost eloquent telling us about an
accident to the weather which he himself had witnessed in a
climate as supposedly well-regulated as the climate of South
Eastern Somewhere was supposed to be! Ann Woltor raked her
cheerier memories for the story of a four days' rain-storm which
she had experienced once in a very trying visit to her great aunt
somebody-or-other on some peculiarly stormbound section of the
Welsh coast. George Keet's chivalrous anxiety to set us at our ease
was truly heroic. He even improvised a parody about it: "Rain,"
observed George Keets, "makes strange umbrella-mates!" A leak
had developed during the night it seemed in the ceiling directly
over his bed--and George, the finicky, the fastidious, the
silk-pajamered--had been obliged to crawl out and seek shelter with
Rollins and his flannel night-cap in the next room. And Rollins, it
appeared, had not proved a particularly genial host.
"By the way, where is Mr. Rollins this morning?" questioned the
Bride from her frowning survey of the storm-swept beach.
"Mr. Rollins," confided my Husband, "has a slight headache this
morning."
"Why, that's too bad," sympathized Ann Woltor.
"No, it isn't a bad one at all," contradicted my Husband. "Just the
very mildest one possible--under the circumstances. It was really
very late when he got in again last night. And very wet." From
under his casually lowered eyes a single glance of greeting shot
out at me.
"Now, there you are again!" cried George Keets. "Flirting! You
married people! Something that anyone else would turn out as
mere information,--'The Ice Man has just left two chunks of ice!'
or 'Mr. Rollins has a headache'!--you go and load up with some
mysterious and unfathomable significance! Glances pass! Your
wife flushes!" "Mysterious?" shrugged my Husband. "Unfathomable?
Why it's clear as crystal. The madam says, 'Let there be a
headache'--and there _is_ a headache!"
As Allan John joined the group at the fireplace everybody began
talking weather again. From the chuckle of the birch-logs to the
splash on the window-pane the little groups shifted and changed.
Everybody seemed to be waiting for something. On the neglected
breakfast table even the gay upstanding hemispheres of grapefruit
rolled over on their beds of ice to take another nap.
In a great flutter of white and laughter the May Girl herself came
prancing over the threshold. It wasn't just the fact of being in
white that made her look so astonishingly festal; she was almost
always in white. Not yet the fact of laughter. Taken all in all I
think she was the most radiantly laughing youngster that I have
ever known. But most astonishingly festal she certainly looked,
nevertheless. Maybe it was the specially new and chic little twist
which she had given her hair. Maybe it was the absurdly coquettish
dab of black court-plaster which she had affixed to one dimply
cheek.
"Oh, if I'm going to be engaged to-day to a real artist," she
laughed, "I've certainly got to take some extra pains with my
personal appearance. Why, I've hardly slept all night," she
confided ingenuously, "I was so excited!"
"Yes, won't it be interesting," whispered the Bride to George
Keets, "to see what Mr. Kennilworth will really do? He's so
awfully temperamental! And so--so inexcusably beautiful. Whatever
he does is pretty sure to be interesting. Now up-stairs--all day
yesterday--wouldn't it----?"
"Yes, wouldn't it be interesting," glowed Ann Woltor quite
unexpectedly, "if he'd made her something really wonderful?
Something that would last, I mean, after the game was over? Even
just a toy, something that would outlast Time itself. Something
that even when she was old she could point to and say, 'Claude
Kennilworth made that for me when--we were young'."
"Why, Ann Woltor!" I stammered. "Do you feel that way about him?
Does--does he make you feel that way, too!"
"I think--he would make--anyone feel that way--too," intercepted
Allan John quite amazingly. In three days surely it was the only
voluntary statement he had made, and everybody turned suddenly to
stare at him. But it was only too evident from the persistent
haggardness of his expression that he had no slightest intention in
the world of pursuing his unexpected volubility.
"And it isn't just his good looks either!" resumed the Bride as
soon as she had recovered from her own astonishment at the
interpolation.
"Oh, something, very different," mused Ann Woltor. "The queer
little sense he gives you of--of wires humming! Whether you like
him or not that queer little sense of 'wires humming' that all
really creative people give you! As though--as though--they were
being rather specially re-charged all the time from the Main
Battery!"
"The 'Main Battery,'" puzzled the Bridegroom, "being----?"
"Why God,--of course!" said the Bride with a vague sort of
surprise.
"When women talk mechanics and religion in the same breath,"
laughed the Bridegroom, "it certainly----"
"I was talking neither mechanics nor religion," affirmed the Bride,
with the faintest possible tinge of asperity.
"Oh, of course, anyone can see," admitted the Bridegroom, "that
Kennilworth is a clever chap."
"Clever as the deuce!" acquiesced George Keets.
With an impatient tap of her foot the May Girl turned suddenly back
from the window.
"Yes! But where _is_ he?" she laughed.
"That's what I say!" cried my Husband. "We've waited quite long
enough for him!"
"Dallying up-stairs probably to put a dab of black court-plaster on
_his_ cheek!" observed George Keets drily.
With one accord everybody but the May Girl rushed impulsively to
the breakfast table.
"Seems as though--somebody ought to wait," dimpled the May Girl.
"Oh, nonsense!" asserted everybody.
A little bit reluctantly she came at last to her place. Her face
was faintly troubled.
"On--on an engagement morning," she persisted, "it certainly seems
as though--somebody ought to wait."
In the hallway just outside a light step sounded suddenly. It was
really astonishing with what an air of real excitement and
expectancy everybody glanced up.
But the step in the hall proved only the step of a maid.
"The young gentleman upstairs sent a message," said the maid. "Most
particular he was that I give it exact. 'It being so rainy again,'
he says, 'and there not being anything specially interesting on
the--the docket as far as he knows, he'll stay in bed--thank you.'"
For an instant it seemed as though everybody at the table except
Allan John jerked back from his plate with a knife, fork or spoon,
brandished half-way in mid air. There was no jerk left in Allan
John, I imagine. It was Allan John's color that changed. A dull
flush of red where once just gray shadows had lain.
"So he'll stay in bed, thank you," repeated the maid
sing-songishly.
"What?" gasped my Husband.
"W-w-what?" stammered the May Girl.
"Well--of all the--nerve!" muttered Paul Brenswick.
"Why--why how extraordinary," murmured Ann Woltor.
"_There's_ your 'artistic temperament' for you, all right!" laughed
the Bride a bit hectically. "Peeved is it because he thought Miss
Davies----?"
"Don't you think you're just a bit behind the times in your
interpretation of the phrase 'artistic temperament'?" interrupted
George Keets abruptly. "Except in special neurasthenic cases it is
no longer the fashion I believe to lay bad manners to the artistic
temperament itself but rather to the humble environment from which
most artistic temperaments are supposed to have sprung."
"Eh? What's that?" laughed the Bride.
Very deliberately George Keets lit a fresh cigarette. "No one
person, you know, can have everything," he observed with the
thinnest of all his thin-lipped smiles. "Three generations of
plowing, isn't it, to raise one artist? Oh, Mr. Kennilworth's
social eccentricities, I assure you, are due infinitely more to the
soil than to the soul."
"Oh, can your statistics!" implored my Husband a bit sharply, "and
pass Miss Davies the sugar!"
"And some coffee!" proffered Paul Brenswick.
"And this heavenly cereal!" urged the Bride.
"Oh, now I remember," winced the May Girl suddenly. "He said
'she'll wait all right'--but, of course, it does seem just a
little--wee bit--f-funny! Even if you don't care a--a rap," she
struggled heroically through a glint of tears. "Even if you don't
care a rap--sometimes it's just a little bit hard to say a word
like f-funny!"
"Damned hard," agreed my Husband and Paul Brenswick and George
Keets all in a single breath.
The subsequent conversation fortunately was not limited altogether
to expletives. Never, I'm sure, have I entertained a more vivacious
not to say hilarious company at breakfast. Nobody seemed contented
just to keep dimples in the May Girl's face. Everybody insisted
upon giggles. The men indeed treated them selves to what is usually
described as "wild guffaws."
Personally I think it was a mistake. It brought Rollins down-stairs
just as everybody was leaving the table in what had up to that
moment been considered perfectly reestablished and invulnerable
glee. Everybody, of course, except poor Allan John. No one
naturally would expect any kind of glee from Allan John.
In the soft pussy-footed flop of his felt slippers none of us heard
Rollins coming. But I--I saw him! And such a Rollins! Stripped of
the single significant facial expression of his life which I had
surprised so unexpectedly in his eyes the night before, Rollins
would certainly never be anything but just Rollins! Heavily swathed
in his old plaid ulster with a wet towel bound around his brow he
loomed cautiously on the scene bearing an empty coffee cup, and
from the faintly shadowing delicacy of the parted portieres
affirmed with one breath how astonished he was to find us still at
breakfast, while with the next he confided equally fatuously, "I
thought I heard merry voices!"
It was on Claude Kennilworth's absence, of course, that his
maddening little mind fixed itself instantly with unalterable
concentration.
"What ho! The--engagement?" he demanded abruptly.
"There isn't any engagement," said my Husband with a somewhat
vicious stab at the fire.
From his snug, speculative scrutiny of the storm outside, George
Keets swung round with what quite evidently was intended to be a
warning frown.
"Mr. Kennilworth has--defaulted," he murmured.
"Defaulted!" grinned Rollins. Then with perfectly unprecedented
perspicacity his roving glance snatched up suddenly the
unmistakable tremor of the May Girl's chin. "Oh, what nonsense!" he
said. "There are plenty of other eligible men in the party!"
"Oh, but you see--there are not!" laughed Paul Brenswick. "Mr.
Delville and I are Married--and our wives won't let us."
"Oh, nonsense!" grinned Rollins. Once again his roving glance swept
the company.
Everybody saw what was coming, turned hot, turned cold, shut his
eyes, opened them again, but was powerless to avert.
"Why, what's the matter with trying Allan John?" grinned Rollins.
The thing was inexcusable! Brutal! Blundering! Absolutely doltish
beyond even Rollins's established methods of doltishness. But at
last when everybody turned inadvertently to scan poor Allan John's
face--there was no Allan John to be scanned. Somewhere through
a door or a window--somehow between one blink of the eye and
another--Allan John had slipped from the room.
"Why--why, Mr. Rollins!" gasped everybody all at once. "Whatever in
the world were you thinking of?"
"Maybe--maybe--he didn't hear it--after all!" rallied the Bride
with the first real ray of hope.
"Maybe he just saw it coming," suggested the Bridegroom.
"And dodged in the nick of time," said George Keets.
"To save not only himself but ourselves," frowned my Husband, "from
an almost irretrievable awkwardness.
"Why just the minute before it happened," deprecated Ann Woltor, "I
was thinking suddenly how much better he looked, how his color had
improved,--why his cheeks looked almost red."
"Yes, the top of his cheeks," said the May Girl, "were really quite
red." Her own cheeks at the moment were distinctly pale. "Where
do you suppose he's gone to?" she questioned. "Don't you think
that--p'raps--somebody ought to go and find him?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake leave him alone!" cried Paul Brenswick.
"Leave him alone," acquiesced all the other men.
In the moment's nervous reaction and letdown that ensued it was
really a relief to hear George Keets cry out, with such poignant
amazement from his stand at the window:
"Why what in the world is that red-roof out on the rocks?" he
cried.
In the same impulse both my Husband and myself ran quickly to his
side.
"Oh, that's all right!" laughed my Husband. "I thought maybe it had
blown off or something. Why, that's just the 'Bungalow on the
Rocks,'" he explained.
"My Husband's study and work-room," I exemplified. "'Forbidden-Ground'
is its real name! Nobody is ever allowed to go there without an
invitation from--himself!"
"Why--but it wasn't there yesterday!" asserted George Keets.
"Oh, yes, it was!" laughed my Husband.
"It was not!" said George Keets.
The sheer unexpected primitiveness of the contradiction delighted
us so that neither of us took the slightest offense.
"Oh, I beg your pardon, of course," George Keets recovered himself
almost in an instant--"that right here before our eyes--that same
vivid scarlet roof was looming there yesterday against the gray
rocks and sea--and none of us saw it?"
"Saw what?" called Paul Brenswick. "Where?" And came striding to
the window.
"Gad!" said Paul Brenswick. "Victoria! Come here, quick!" he
called.
With frank curiosity the Bride joined the group. "Why of all
things!" she laughed. "Why it never in the world was there
yesterday!"
A trifle self-consciously Ann Woltor joined the group. "Bungalow?"
she questioned. "A Bungalow out on the rocks." Her face did
certainly look just a little bit queer. Anyone who wanted to, was
perfectly free of course, to interpret the look as one of
incredulity.
"No, of course not! Miss Woltor agrees with me perfectly,"
triumphed George Keets. "It was not there yesterday!"
"Oh, but it must have been!" dimpled the May Girl. "If Mr. and Mrs.
Delville say so! It's their bungalow!"
"It--was--not there--yesterday," puzzled George Keets. More than
having his honor at stake he spoke suddenly as though he thought it
was his reason that was being threatened.
With her cheeks quite rosy again the May Girl began to clap her
hands. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement.
"Oh, I don't care whether it was there yesterday or not!" she
triumphed. "It's there to-day! Let's go and explore it! And if it's
magic, so much the better! Oh, loo--loo--look!" she cried as a
great roar and surge of billows broke on the rocks all around the
little red roof and churned the whole sky-line into a chaos of
foam. "Oh, come--_come_!" she besought everybody.
"Oh, but, my dear!" I explained, "How would you get there? No
row-boat could live in that sea! And by way of the rocky ledge
there's no possible path except at the lowest tide! And besides," I
reminded her, "it's named 'Forbidden Ground', you know! No body is
supposed to go there without----"
With all the impulsiveness of an irresponsible baby the May Girl
dashed across the room and threw her arms round my neck.
"Why, you old dear," she laughed, "don't you know that that's just
the reason why I want to explore it! I want to know why it's
'Forbidden Ground'! Oh, surely--surely," she coaxed, "even if it is
a work-room, there couldn't be any real sin in just prying a
little?"
"No, of course, no real sin," I laughed back at her earnestness.
"Just an indiscretion!"
Quite abruptly the May Girl relaxed her hug, and narrowed her
lovely eyes dreamily to some personal introspection.
"I've--never yet--committed a real indiscretion," she confided with
apparent regret.
"Well, pray don't begin," laughed George Keets in spite of himself,
"by trying to explore something that isn't there."
"And don't you and Keets," flared Paul Brenswick quite
unexpectedly, "by denying the existence of something that is
there!"
"Well, if it is there to-day," argued George Keets, "it certainly
wasn't there yesterday!"
"Well, if it wasn't there yesterday, it is at least there to-day!"
argued Paul Brenswick.
"Rollins! Hi there--Rollins!" they both called as though in a
single breath.
From his humble seat on the top stair to which he had wisely
retreated at his first inkling of having so grossly outraged public
opinion, Rollins's reply came wafting some what hopefully back.
"H--h--iii," rallied Rollins.
"That red roof on the rocks--" shouted Paul Brenswick.
"Was it there--yesterday?" demanded George Keets.
"Wait!" cackled Rollins. "Wait till I go look!" A felt footstep
thudded. A window opened. The felt footstep thudded again. "No,"
called Rollins. "Now that I come to think of it--I don't remember
having noticed a red roof there yesterday."
"Now!" laughed George Keets.
"But, oh, I say!" gasped Rollins, in what seemed to be very sudden
and altogether indisputable confusion. "Why--why it must have been
there! Because that's the shack where we've catalogued the shells
every year--for the last seven years!"
"Now!" laughed Paul Brenswick.
Without another word everybody made a bolt for the hat-rack and the
big oak settle, snatched up his or her oil-skin clothes--anybody's
oil-skin clothes--and dashed off through the rain to the edge of
the cliff to investigate the phenomenon at closer range.
Truly the thing was almost too easy to be really righteous! Just a
huge rock-colored tarpaulin stripped at will from a red-tiled roof
and behold, mystery looms on an otherwise drab-colored day! And a
mystery at a houseparty? Well--whoever may stand proven as the
mother of invention--_Curiosity_, you know just as well as I do, is
the father of a great many very sprightly little adventures!
Within ten minutes from the proscenium box of our big bay-window,
my Husband and I could easily discern the absurd little plot and
counterplots that were already being hatched.
It was the Bride and George Keets who seemed to be thinking,
pointing, gesticulating, in the only perfect harmony. Even at this
distance, and swathed as they were in hastily adjusted oil-skins, a
curiously academic sort of dignity stamped their every movement.
Nothing but sheer intellectual determination to prove that their
minds were normal would ever tempt either one of them to violate a
Host's "No Trespass" sign!
Nothing academic about Paul Brenswick's figure! With one yellow
elbow crooked to shield the rain from his eyes he stood estimating
so many probable feet of this, so many probable feet of that. He
was an engineer! Perspectives were his playthings! And if there was
any new trick about perspectives that he didn't know--he was going
to solve it now no matter what it cost either him or anybody else!
More like a young colt than anything else, like a young colt
running for its pasture-bars, the May Girl dashed vainly up and
down the edge of the cliff. Nothing academic, nothing of an
engineer--about any young colt! If the May Girl reached "the
Bungalow on the Rocks" it would be just because she wanted to!
Ann Woltor's reaction was the only one that really puzzled me.
Drawn back a little from the others, sheltered transiently from the
wind by a great jagged spur of gray rock but with her sombre face
turned almost eagerly to the rain, she stood there watching with a
perfectly inexplainable interest the long white blossomy curve of
foam and spray which marked the darkly submerged ledge of rock that
connected the red-tiled bungalow with the beach just below her. Ann
Woltor certainly was no prankish child. Neither was it to be
supposed that any particular problem of perspective had flecked her
mind into the slightest uneasiness. Ann Woltor knew that the
bungalow was there! Had spent at least nine hours in it on the
previous day! Lunched in it! Supped in it! Proved its inherent
prosiness! Yet even I was puzzled as she crept out from the shelter
of her big boulder to the very edge of the cliff, and leaned away
out still staring, always at that wave-tormented ledge.
From the hyacinth-scented shadows just behind me I heard a sudden
little laugh.
"I'll wager you a new mink muff," said my Husband quite abruptly,
"that Ann Woltor gets there first!"