At the top of the hill, instead of following the winding road, Bob
started leisurely across the rolling green toward the big house whose
roof could be discerned in the distance above the trees. The day was
charming, but he was distinctly out of tune. There was a frown on his
brow. Fate had gone too far. He half-clenched his fists, for he was in a
fighting mood and wanted to retaliate—but how? At the edge of some
bushes he came upon a lady—no less a personage than the better-half of
the commodore, himself.
She was fair, fat and forty, or a little more. She was fooling with a
white ball, or rather it was fooling with her, for she didn’t seem to
like the place where it lay. She surveyed it from this side and then
from that. To the casual observer it looked just the same from whichever
point you viewed it. Once or twice the lady, evidently no expert, raised
her arm and then lowered it. But apparently, at last, she made up her
mind. She was just about to hit the little ball, though whether to top
or slice it will never be known, when Bob stepped up from behind the
bushes.
“Oh, Mr. Bennett!” He had obviously startled her.
“The same,” said Bob gloomily.
“That’s too bad of you,” she chided him, stepping back.
“What?”
“Why, I’d just got it all figured out in my mind how to do it.”
“Sorry,” said Bob. “I didn’t know you were behind the bushes or I
wouldn’t have come out on you like that. But maybe you’ll do even better
than you were going to. Hope so! Go ahead with your drive. Don’t mind
me.” His tone was depressed, if not sepulchral.
But the lady, being at that sociable age, showed now a perverse
disposition not to “go ahead.”
“Just get here?” she asked.
“Yes. Anything doing?”
“Not much. It’s been, in fact, rather slow. Mrs. Ralston says so
herself. So I am at liberty to make the same remark. Of course we’ve
done the usual things, but somehow there seems to be something lacking,”
rattled on the lady. “Maybe we need a few more convivial souls to stir
things up. Perhaps we’re waiting for some one, real good and lively, to
appear upon the scene. Does the description chance to fit you, Mr.
Bennett?” Archly.
“I think not,” said gloomy Bob.
“Well, that isn’t what Mrs. Ralston says about you, anyway,” observed
the commodore’s spouse.
“What does she say?”
“‘When Bob Bennett’s around, things begin to hum.’ So you see you have a
reputation to live up to.”
“I dare say. No doubt I’ll live up to it, all right.”
“It’s really up to you to stir things up.”
“I’ve begun.” Ominously.
“Have you? How lovely!”
This didn’t require an answer, for it wasn’t really a question. A white
ball went by them, a very pretty snoop, and pretty soon another lady and
a caddy loomed on their range of vision. The lady was thin and
spirituelle and she walked by with a stride. You would have said she had
taken lessons of a man. She looked neither to the right nor the left. At
the moment, she, at any rate, was not sociably inclined. That walk meant
business. She wasn’t one of those fussy beginners like the lady Bob was
talking with.
“Isn’t that Mrs. Clarence Van Duzen?” asked Bob.
“Yes. She, too, poor dear, has had to desert hubby. Exactions of
business! Clarence simply couldn’t get away. You see he’s director of so
many things. And poor, dear old Dan! So busy! Every day at the office!
So pressed with business.”
“Quite so,” said Bob absently. “I mean—” He stopped. He knew Dan wasn’t
pressed for business and Bob couldn’t utter even the suspicion of an
untruth now. “Didn’t exactly mean that!” he mumbled.
The lady regarded him quickly. His manner was just in the least strange.
But in a moment she thought no more about it.
“You didn’t happen to see Dan?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“At his office, I suppose?” Dan had written he hadn’t even had time for
his club; that it had been just work—work all the time.
“No.”
“Where, then?”
“At the club and some other places.” Reluctantly.
“Other places?” Lightly. Of course she hadn’t really believed quite all
Dan had written about that office confinement. “How dreadfully
ambiguous!” With a laugh. “What other places?”
Bob began to get uneasy. “Well, we went to a cabaret or two.” No
especial harm about that answer.
“Of course,” said the lady. “Why not?”
Bob felt relieved. He didn’t want to make trouble. He was too miserable
himself. He trusted that would end the talk and now regarded the
neglected ball suggestively.
“And then you went to still some other places?” went on the lady in that
same light, unoffended tone.
“Ye-es,” Bob had to admit.
“One of those roof gardens, perhaps, where they have entertainments?”
she suggested brightly.
Bob acknowledged they had gone to a roof garden. And again, and more
suggestively, he eyed the little white ball. But Mrs. Dan seemed to have
forgotten all about it.
“Roof gardens,” she said. “I adore roof gardens. They _are_ such a boon
to the people. I told dear Dan to be sure not to miss them. So nice to
think of him enjoying himself instead of moping away in a stuffy old
office.”
Bob gazed at her suspiciously. But she had such an open face! One of
those faces one can’t help trusting. Mrs. Dan was just the homely, plain
old-fashioned type. At least, so she seemed. Anyhow, it didn’t much
matter so far as Bob was concerned. He had to tell the truth. He hadn’t
sought this conversation. It was forced on him. He was only going the
“even tenor of his way.” He was, however, rather pleased that Mrs. Dan
did seem in some respects different from others of her sex. Bob didn’t,
of course, really know much about the sex.
“So you went to the roof garden—just you and Dan,” purred Mrs. Dan.
Bob didn’t answer. He hoped she hadn’t really put that as a question.
“Or _were_ you and Dan alone?” She made it a question now.
“No-a.”
“Who else were along?”
“Dickie—”
“And—?”
“Clarence.”
She gazed toward Mrs. Clarence, while a shade of anxiety appeared on
Bob’s face. In the distance Mrs. Clarence had paused to contemplate the
result of an unusually satisfactory display of skill. Mrs. Dan next
glanced sidewise at her caddy, but that young man seemed to have
relapsed into a condition of innocuous vacancy. He looked capable of
falling asleep standing. Certainly he wasn’t trying to overhear.
“Just you four men!” Mrs. Dan resumed her purring. “Or were you all
alone? No ladies along?”
While expecting, of course, the negative direct, she was studying Bob
and gleaning what she could, surreptitiously, or by inference. He had an
eloquent face which might tell her something his lips refused to reveal.
His answer almost took her breath away.
“Ye-es.”
He was sorry, but he had to say it. No way out of it! Mrs. Dan’s jaw
fell. What she might have said can only be conjectured, for at this
moment, luckily for Bob, there came an interruption.
“Tête-à-têting, instead of teeing!” broke in a jocular voice. The
speaker wore ecclesiastical garments; his imposing calves were encased
in episcopal gaiters. Mrs. Ralston always liked to dignify her
house-parties with a religious touch, and this particular bishop was
very popular with her. Bob inwardly blessed the good man for his
opportune appearance. He was a ponderous wag.
“Forgive interruption,” he went on, just as if Mrs. Dan who was
non-amatory had been engaged in a furious flirtation. “I’ll be hurrying
on.”
“Do,” said Mrs. Dan, matching his tone, and concealing any inward
exasperation that she might have felt.
“It’s I who will be hurrying on,” interposed Bob quickly. “You see, I’m
expected to arrive at the house,” he laughed.
“Looked as if you were having an interesting conversation,” persisted
the bishop waggishly.
“And so we were,” assented Mrs. Dan. She could have stamped with
vexation, but instead, she forced a smile. The dear tiresome bishop had
to be borne.
“Confess you find me de trop?” he went on, shaking a finger at Bob.
“On the contrary,” said Bob.
“Has to say that,” laughed the good man. He did love to poke fun (or
what he conceived “fun”) at “fair, fat and forty.” “I suppose you were
positively dee-lighted to be interrupted?”
“I was,” returned Bob truthfully.
“Ha! ha!” laughed the bishop.
Bob looked at him. The bishop thought he was joking, just as the hackman
had. Of course, no one could say such a thing as that seriously and in
the presence of the lady herself. People always didn’t believe truth
when they heard it. They thought telling the truth a form of crude
humor, and a spark of hope-a very small one—shot through Bob’s brain.
Perhaps they would continue to look upon him in the light of a joker. He
would be the little joker in the pack of cards and he might yet pull off
that “three weeks” without pulling down the house. Only—would Miss
Gerald look upon him as a joker? Intuition promptly told him she would
not. His thoughts reverted to that last meeting. Think of having told
her he didn’t want—His offense grew more awful unto himself every
moment. He ceased to remember Mrs. Dan, and saying something, he hardly
knew what, Bob walked on.
Miss Gwendoline Gerald was on the big veranda when he reached the house.
He would have thanked her humbly and with immense contrition for having
transferred his bag and clubs hither, but as he went by, that gracious,
stately young lady seemed not to see him. It was as if he had suddenly
become invisible. Her face didn’t even change; the proud contour
expressed neither contempt nor disdain; the perfectly formed lips didn’t
take a more pronounced curve or grow hard.
Bob felt himself shrink. He was like that man in the story book who
becomes invisible at times. The fiction man, however, attained this
convenient consummation through his own volition. Bob didn’t. She was
the magician and he wasn’t even a joker.
He managed to reach the front door without stumbling. A wild desire to
attract her attention by asking her if his luggage _had_ arrived safely,
he dismissed quickly. It wouldn’t do at all. It might imply a fear she
had dumped it out, en route. And if she hadn’t, such an inquiry would
only emphasize the fact that she had acted as expressman—or woman—and
for him!
He would go to his room at once, he told the footman. He didn’t mind a
few moments’ solitude. If so much could happen before his house-party
had begun—before he even got into the house—what might he not expect
later? In one of the upper halls he encountered the man with the
monocle.
“I say!” said this person. “What a jolly coincidence!”
“Think so?” said Bob. He didn’t find anything “jolly” about it. On
another occasion, he might have noticed that the eye behind the
“window-pane” was rather twinkling, but his perceptions were not
particularly keen at the present time.
In the room to which he had been assigned, Bob cast off a few garments.
Then he stopped with his shirt partly off. He wondered how Miss Gerald
would look the next time he saw her? Like a frozen Hebe, perhaps! Bob
removed the shirt and cast it viciously somewhere. Then he selected
another shirt—the first that came along, for why should he exercise
care to select? It matters little what an invisible man wears. _She_
wouldn’t see the extra stripe or the bigger dot. Stripes couldn’t rescue
him from insubstantiability. Colors, too, would make no difference.
Pea-green, yellow, or lavender—it was all one. Any old shirt would do.
And any old tie!
When he had finished dressing, he didn’t find any further excuse for
remaining in his room. He couldn’t consult his desires as to that. He
wasn’t asked there to be a hermit. He couldn’t imitate Timon of Athens,
Diogenes or any other of those wise old fellows who did the glorious
solitude act. Diogenes told the truth, mostly, but he could live in a
tub. He didn’t have to participate in house-parties. Whoever invented
house-parties, anyhow? They were such uncomfortable “social functions”
they must have been invented by the English. Why do people want to get
together? Bob could sympathize with Diogenes. Also, he could envy Timon
his howling wilderness! But personally he couldn’t even be a Robinson
Crusoe. Would there were no other company than clawless crabs and a goat
and a parrot! He would not be afraid to tell _them_ the truth.
He had to go down and he did. Nemesis lurked for him below. Had Bob
realized what was going to happen he would have skipped back to his
room. But, as it was, he assumed a bold front. He even said to himself,
“Cheer up; the worst is yet to come.” It was.