RUNNING AWAY.
The dramatic pause which followed Peter’s statement was first broken by
Mrs. D’Alloi, who threw her arms about Watt’s neck, and cried: “Oh! my
husband. Forgive me, forgive me for the suspicion!”
Peter turned to Celestine. “Madame,” he said. “We are not wanted here.”
He unlocked the door into the hall, and stood aside while she passed
out, which she did quietly. Another moment found the two on the
sidewalk. “I will walk with you to your hotel, if you will permit me?”
Peter said to her.
“Certainly,” Celestine replied. Nothing more was said in the walk of
ten blocks. When they reached the hotel entrance, Peter asked: “Can you
see me for a few moments?”
“Yes. Come to my private parlor.” They took the elevator, and were but
a moment in reaching that apartment.
Peter spoke the moment the door was closed. “Madame,” he said, “you saw
that scene. Spare his wife and child? He is not worth your anger.”
“Ah, Ciel!” cried Celestine, emotionally. “Do you think so lowly of me,
that you can imagine I would destroy your sacrifice? Your romantic,
your dramatic, _mon Dieu!_ your noble sacrifice? Non, non. Celestine
Lacour could never do so. She will suffer cruelty, penury, insults,
before she behaves so shamefully, so perfidiously.”
Peter did not entirely sympathize with the Frenchwoman’s admiration for
the dramatic element, but he was too good a lawyer not to accept an
admission, no matter upon what grounds. He held out his hand promptly.
“Madame,” he said, “accept my thanks and admiration for your generous
conduct.”
Celestine took it and shook it warmly.
“Of course,” said Peter. “Mr. D’Alloi owes you an ample income.”
“Ah!” cried Celestine, shrugging her shoulders. “Do not talk of him—I
leave it to you to make him do what is right.”
“And you will return to France?”
“Yes, yes. If you say so?” Celestine looked at Peter in a manner known
only to the Latin races. Just then a side door was thrown open, and a
boy of about twelve years of age dashed into the room, followed by a
French poodle.
“Little villain!” cried Celestine. “How dare you approach without
knocking? Go. Go. Quickly.”
“Pardon, Madame,” said the child. “I thought you still absent.”
“Is that the child?” asked Peter.
“Yes,” said Celestine.
“Does he know?”
“Nothing. I do not tell him even that I am his mother.”
“Then you are not prepared to give him a mother’s care and tenderness?”
“Never. I love him not. He is too like his father. And I cannot have it
known that I am the mother of a child of twelve. It would not be
believed, even.” Celestine took a look at herself in the tall mirror.
“Then I suppose you would like some arrangement about him?”
“Yes.”
Peter stayed for nearly an hour with the woman. He stayed so long, that
for one of the few times in his life he was late at a dinner
engagement. But when he had left Celestine, every detail had been
settled. Peter did not have an expression of pleasure on his face as he
rode down-town, nor was he very good company at the dinner which he
attended that evening.
The next day did not find him in any better mood. He went down-town,
and called on an insurance company and talked for a while with the
president. Then he called at a steamship office. After that he spent
twenty minutes with the head of one of the large schools for boys in
the city. Then he returned to his office.
“A Mr. D’Alloi is waiting for you in your private office, sir,” he was
told. “He said that he was an old friend and insisted on going in
there.”
Peter passed into his office.
Watts cried: “My dear boy, how can I ever—”
He was holding out his hand, but Peter failed to take it, and
interrupted him.
“I have arranged it all with Madame Lacour,” Peter said coldly. “She
sails on La Bretagne on Thursday. You are to buy an annuity for three
thousand dollars a year. In addition, you are to buy an annuity for the
boy till he is twenty-five, of one thousand dollars a year, payable to
me as his guardian. This will cost you between forty and fifty thousand
dollars. I will notify you of the amount when the insurance company
sends it to me. In return for your check, I shall send you the letters
and other things you sent Madame Lacour, or burn them, as you direct.
Except for this the affair is ended. I need not detain you further.”
“Oh, I say, chum. Don’t take it this way,” cried Watts. “Do you
think—?”
“I end it as suits me,” said Peter. “Good-day.”
“But, at least you must let me pay you a fee for your work?”
Peter turned on Watts quickly, but checked the movement and the words
on his tongue. He only reiterated. “Good-day.”
“Well, if you will have it so.” Watts went to the door, but hesitated.
“Just as you please. If, later, you change your mind, send me word. I
shan’t cherish any feeling for this. I want to be friends.”
“Good-day,” said Peter. Watts passed out, closing the door.
Peter sat down at his desk, doing nothing, for nearly an hour. How long
he would have sat will never be known, if his brown study had not been
ended by Rivington’s entrance. “The Appeals have just handed down their
decision in the Henley case. We win.”
“I thought we should,” said Peter mechanically.
“Why, Peter! What’s the matter with you? You look as seedy as—”
“As I feel,” said Peter. “I’m going to stop work and take a ride, to
see if I can’t knock some of my dulness out of me.” Within an hour he
was at the Riding Club.
“Hello,” said the stable man. “Twice in one day! You’re not often here
at this hour, sir. Which horse will you have?”
“Give me whichever has the most life in him.”
“It’s Mutineer has the devil in him always, sir. Though it’s not
yourself need fear any horse. Only look out for the ice.”
Peter rode into the Park in ten minutes. He met Lispenard at the first
turn.
“Hello! It’s not often you are here at this hour.” Lispenard reined his
horse up alongside.
“No,” said Peter. “I’ve been through a very revolt—a very disagreeable
experience, and I’ve come up here to get some fresh air. I don’t want
to be sociable.”
“That’s right. Truthful as ever. But one word before we separate.
Keppel has just received two proofs of Haden’s last job. He asks awful
prices for them, but you ought to see them.”
“Thanks.” And the two friends separated as only true friends can
separate.
Peter rode on, buried in his own thoughts. The park was rather empty,
for dark comes on early in March, and dusk was already in the air. He
shook himself presently, and set Mutineer at a sharp canter round the
larger circle of the bridle path. But before they had half swung the
circle, he was deep in thought again, and Mutineer was taking his own
pace. Peter deserved to get a stumble and a broken neck or leg, but he
didn’t. He was saved from it by an incident which never won any credit
for its good results to Peter, however much credit it gained him.
Peter was so deeply engrossed in his own thoughts that he did not hear
the clutter of a horse’s feet behind him, just as he struck the long
stretch of the comparatively straight path along the Reservoir. But
Mutineer did, and pricked up his ears. Mutineer could not talk
articulately, but all true lovers of horses understand their language.
Mutineer’s cogitations, transmuted into human speech, were something to
this effect:
“Hello! What’s that horse trying to do? He can’t for a moment expect to
pass me!”
But the next moment a roan mare actually did pass him, going at a swift
gallop.
Mutineer laid his ears back, “The impudence!” he said. “Does that
little whiffet of a roan mare think she’s going to show me her heels?
I’ll teach her!” It is a curious fact that both the men and horses who
are most seldom passed by their kind, object to it most when it
happens.
Peter suddenly came back to affairs earthly to find Mutineer just
settling into a gait not permitted by Park regulations. He drew rein,
and Mutineer, knowing that the fun was up, danced round the path in his
bad temper.
“Really,” he said to himself, “if I wasn’t so fond of you, I’d give you
and that mare, an awful lesson. Hello! not another? This is too much!”
The last remarks had relation to more clattering of hoofs. In a moment
a groom was in view, going also at a gallop.
“Hout of the way,” cried the groom, to Peter, for Mutineer was waltzing
round the path in a way that suggested “no thoroughfare.” “Hi’m after
that runaway.”
Peter looked after the first horse, already a hundred feet away. He
said nothing to groom nor horse, but Mutineer understood the sudden
change in the reins, even before he felt that maddening prick of the
spurs. There was a moment’s wild grinding of horse’s feet on the
slippery road and then Mutineer had settled to his long, tremendous
stride.
“Now, I’ll show you,” he remarked, “but if only he wouldn’t hold me so
damned tight.” We must forgive Mutineer for swearing. He lived so much
with the stablemen, that, gentleman though he was, evil communications
could not be entirely resisted.
Peter was riding “cool.” He knew he could run the mare down, but he
noticed that the woman, who formed the mount, was sitting straight, and
he could tell from the position of her elbows that she was still
pulling on her reins, if ineffectually. He thought it best therefore to
let the mare wind herself before he forced himself up, lest he should
only make the runaway horse the wilder. So after a hundred yards’ run,
he drew Mutineer down to the mare’s pace, about thirty feet behind her.
They ran thus for another hundred yards. Then suddenly Peter saw the
woman drop her reins, and catch at the saddle. His quick eye told him
in a moment what had happened. The saddle-girth had broken, or the
saddle was turning. He dug his spurs into Mutineer, so that the horse,
who had never had such treatment, thought that he had been touched by
two branding irons. He gave a furious shake of his ears, and really
showed the blood of his racing Kentucky forebears. In fifteen seconds
the horse was running even with the mare.
Peter had intended merely to catch the reins of the runaway, trusting
to his strength to do what a woman’s could not. But when he came up
alongside, he saw that the saddle had turned so far that the rider
could not keep her seat ten seconds longer. So he dropped his reins,
bent over, and putting his arms about the woman lifted her off the
precarious seat, and put her in front of him. He held her there with
one arm, and reached for his reins. But Mutineer had tossed them over
his head.
“Mutineer!” said Peter, with an inflection of voice decidedly
commanding.
“I covered a hundred yards to your seventy,” Mutineer told the roan
mare. “On a mile track I could go round you twice, without getting out
of breath. I could beat you now, even with double mount easily. But my
Peter has dropped the reins and that puts me on my honor. Good-bye.”
Mutineer checked his great racing stride, broke to a canter; dropped to
a trot; altered that to a walk, and stopped.
Peter had been rather astonished at the weight he had lifted. Peter had
never lifted a woman before. His chief experience in the weight of
human-kind had been in wrestling matches at the armory, and only the
largest and most muscular men in the regiment cared to try a bout with
him. Of course Peter knew as a fact that women were lighter than men,
but after bracing himself, much as he would have done to try the
cross-buttock with two hundred pounds of bone and brawn, he marvelled
much at the ease with which he transferred the rider. “She can’t weigh
over eighty pounds,” he thought. Which was foolish, for the woman
actually weighed one hundred and eighteen, as Peter afterwards learned.
The woman also surprised Peter in another way. Scarcely had she been
placed in front of him, than she put her arms about his neck and buried
her face in his shoulder. She was not crying, but she was drawing her
breath in great gasps in a manner which scared Peter terribly. Peter
had never had a woman cling to him in that way, and frightened as he
was, he made three very interesting discoveries:
1. That a man’s shoulder seems planned by nature as a resting place for
a woman’s head.
2. That a man’s arm about a woman’s waist is a very pleasant position
for the arm.
3. That a pair of woman’s arms round a man’s neck, with the clasped
hands, even if gloved, just resting on the back of his neck, is very
satisfying.
Peter could not see much of the woman. His arm told him that she was
decidedly slender, and he could just catch sight of a small ear and a
cheek, whose roundness proved the youth of the person. Otherwise he
could only see a head of very pretty brown hair, the smooth dressing of
which could not entirely conceal its longing to curl.
When Mutineer stopped, Peter did not quite know what to do. Of course
it was his duty to hold the woman till she recovered herself. That was
a plain duty—and pleasant. Peter said to himself that he really was
sorry for her, and thought his sensations were merely the satisfaction
of a father in aiding his daughter. We must forgive his foolishness,
for Peter had never been a father, and so did not know the parental
feeling.
It had taken Mutineer twenty seconds to come to a stand, and for ten
seconds after, no change in the condition occurred. Then suddenly the
woman stopped her gasps. Peter, who was looking down at her, saw the
pale cheek redden. The next moment, the arms were taken from his neck
and the woman was sitting up straight in front of him. He got a
downward look at the face, and he thought it was the most charming he
had ever seen.
The girl kept her eyes lowered, while she said firmly, though with
traces of breathlessness and tremulo in her voice, “Please help me
down.”
Peter was out of his saddle in a moment, and lifted the girl down. She
staggered slightly on reaching the ground, so that Peter said: “You had
better lean on me.”
“No,” said the girl, still looking down, “I will lean against the
horse.” She rested against Mutineer, who looked around to see who was
taking this insulting liberty with a Kentucky gentleman. Having looked
at her he said: “You’re quite welcome, you pretty dear!” Peter thought
he would like to be a horse, but then it occurred to him that equines
could not have had what he had just had, so he became reconciled to his
lot.
The girl went on flushing, even after she was safely leaning against
Mutineer. There was another ten seconds’ pause, and then she said,
still with downcast eyes, “I was so frightened, that I did not know
what I was doing.”
“You behaved very well,” said Peter, in the most comforting voice he
could command. “You held your horse splendidly.”
“I wasn’t a bit frightened, till the saddle began to turn.” The girl
still kept her eyes on the ground, and still blushed. She was
undergoing almost the keenest mortification possible for a woman. She
had for a moment been horrified by the thought that she had behaved in
this way to a groom. But a stranger—a gentleman—was worse! She had not
looked at Peter’s face, but his irreproachable riding-rig had been
noticed. “If it had only been a policeman,” she thought. “What can I
say to him?”
Peter saw the mortification without quite understanding it. He knew,
however, it was his duty to ease it, and took the best way by giving
her something else to think about.
“As soon as you feel able to walk, you had better take my arm. We can
get a cab at the 72d Street entrance, probably. If you don’t feel able
to walk, sit down on that stone, and I’ll bring a cab. It oughtn’t to
take me ten minutes.”
“You are very good,” said the girl, raising her eyes, and taking a look
at Peter’s face for the first time.
A thrill went through Peter.
The girl had slate-colored eyes!!