“'What immortal hand and eye
Framed thy wondrous symmetry?'”
he quoted (slightly altering the text for his own purposes) with a look
so direct and an intonation so profound that Paula, with all her armored
experience, felt herself growing pink.
“Then you brought me wonderful things to play with and a kite to fly and
gum to chew,” she said.
“And you put it in your hair.”
“So I did. And they found it. But I didn't tell. I said an angel brought
it to me. You remember? You were Angel.”
“And you were Tiger.”
Now, I realize that diplomats of ambassadorial degree do not snort. But
the eminent gentleman on Miss Varick's left delivered his emotions of
what, in a lesser mortal, would have been dangerously near a snort, and
thenceforward devoted his attention to his hostess exclusively, thereby
seriously hampering her in her efforts to follow the progress of the
reunion of old playmates.
Dinner being over, the Bonnie Lassie took the pair into her studio to
see her new series of unfinished bronzes, and, having got them there,
obeyed an imperative (and purely imaginary) summons from without, and
left them. Quite unwisely--for she had forgotten one important incident
herself--the Tiger reproached the Angel with his failure to remember
her.
“You promised,” she accused. “You said you'd never forget--never.”
Now, a less ready wit than Carlo's might have retorted with the “ettu”
argument, which would have been poor strategy. Carlo did better.
“I have forgotten nothing,” he said calmly.
“You forgot me. You didn't know me from--from any other tiger.”
“There never was any other tiger. There couldn't be. Also, I remember
every episode of our last meeting when I promised never to forget.
Do you?” Something significant in his tone caused the Tiger certain
misgivings. She began to feel dimly that her accusation was unfortunate.
“Do you?” persisted the Angel.
“I remember the dreadful feeling of seeing you disappear, down into that
hole. And your coming back with the blood trickling down your cheek. You
were very brave.”
“And our parting. Do you remember? When you came close to the wire
mesh, and lifted your face--Ah, I see you _do_ remember,” he concluded
quietly.
For suddenly the blood had flown into Paula Varick's face, and she stood
there, amazed, confused, thrilling with an alarm new to her womanhood,
and wholly glorious. In a moment she had recovered her poise.
“I remember that I had a true and loyal friend,” she said sweetly. “Have
I still?” He bent and lifted her finger-tips to his lips. “For as long
as you will command him,” he said.
So it was assumed, without definite arrangement, that on his return from
Washington they were to see each other, and so far had their thoughts
wandered from the distant Southwestern desert that neither conceived the
smallest misgivings as to the conflicting interests there of the Trent
projects and the Varick interests. In the course of a day or two the
Bonnie Lassie had the pair to tea, and afterward she and Cyrus the
Gaunt and I stood at the front window, watching them as they crossed Our
Square. They paused to look up at the cage on the housetop. The Bonnie
Lassie spoke.
“You remember Tarrant, the portrait-painter, bewailing himself over
Paula?” she asked.
“Because he couldn't catch the look of unconscious waiting in her eyes?”
“Yes. It's gone,” said the Bonnie Lassie.
“Is there something else in its place?”
“Wonder,” said the Bonnie Lassie.
As for Carlo, there was no mistaking what had happened to him. He came
to see me later, and tried hard not to talk of Paula Varick, but all the
time his eyes kept wandering to the cage on the roof. Once he asked me
whether I thought the Varick mansion could be bought. As for his affairs
in Washington, I think he must have commuted while the Senate hearings
were in progress, for there were few days when he wasn't in New York. By
what devices he succeeded in being around Our Square when his playmate
of other days came down to see the Bonnie Lassie, I do not know.
Probably the Bonnie Lassie was in the conspiracy. It would be like her.
All of which may have been going on for a fortnight when I stopped in
at the quaint, little, nestly, old-fashioned house which radiates the
happiness of Cyrus the Gaunt and the Bonnie Lassie all through Our
Square and beyond, and found the sculptress hard at work in her studio.
My particular purpose was to consult her about Orpheus the Greek and
his pipings to his lost Eurydice. Before I could begin the Bonnie Lassie
removed her finger from the eye of old Granny Glynn (in wet clay) and
pointed it at me.
“Plotter!” she said.
By that I knew that something had gone wrong. “Tell me the worst,” I
besought.
“You did it,” she accused, still holding me up at the point of that pink
and leveled digit.
“Guilty!” I pleaded. “What did I do, when, how, and to whom?”
“You brought those two ex-infants together. And now look at the poor
things!”
“Are they engaged?” I cried, in high hope.
“Engaged! Have you seen the morning papers?”
She waved a modeling tool at a heap of print in the corner and relieved
her feelings by giving Granny Glynn a vicious whack on the nose with the
implement. I caught up the top paper and read:--