THE ETERNAL FEMININE
With proverbial Southern hospitality, Mrs. Randolph insisted that the
two ball players dine at her house on each of the three evenings before
the departure of her niece and Miss Harting for Savannah. On the last
of these evenings they were asked to come early enough for afternoon
tea, which was served on a flagged terrace overlooking an attractive,
old-fashioned garden laid out on the slope leading down to the river.
It was a charming spot.
When the teacups were emptied and Mrs. Randolph had retired for her
customary rest before dinner, Celia Berkeley lost no time in suggesting
that Janet take the southpaw for a little stroll.
“I know he’s curious to see what a real Southern garden looks like,”
she remarked, her gray eyes dancing. “Nelson doesn’t care much for
flowers, so we’ll wait for you here.”
Lefty embraced the suggestion with enthusiasm, and without further
delay they passed through the belt of shrubbery to one of the winding,
box-bordered paths; a wilderness of flowers on either hand, before
them the glinting river with a distant line of blue hills, beyond which
the sun was dropping.
It was the first time they had been really alone, and there were
quantities of things to say, none of which would have been of the
slightest interest to a third person. Besides, back in Lefty’s mind was
a half-formed notion of confiding to Janet his perplexities regarding
Nelson Savage――perplexities which had been increased not a little that
day by a change he had noticed in the busher’s manner.
It was nothing he would have paid much attention to under ordinary
conditions. Savage had been noticeably thoughtful and preoccupied ever
since breakfast, as if there were something on his mind. But nowadays
the southpaw was fearful of the slightest alteration in his friend’s
demeanor, and he had a positive longing to talk the matter over with a
sympathetic, interested confidant.
At length they reached the end of the garden and paused, momentarily
silent, beside an ancient stile which gave access through a moss-grown
stone wall to the peach orchard and, beyond, the river. The sun had
dipped out of sight behind the hazy, purple hills, leaving the sky a
riot of orange and flaunting crimson. The sloping orchard before them
was a sea of delicate pink. At their feet, sheltered by the wall, and
creeping over it in places, a wild tangle of yellow jasmine sprawled
untrammeled, perfuming the air afar with its heavy fragrance. It seemed
to Lefty as if such a spot must necessarily beget confidences, and in a
moment his mind was made up.
“Nels Savage is a good sort,” he began tentatively.
“Isn’t he!” agreed Janet. “I liked him the minute I saw him.”
“It’s certainly lucky, then, that you didn’t see him a week ago,” Locke
said emphatically. “He wasn’t the same man at all.”
Janet bent suddenly and plucked a sprig of jasmine. Usually devoted
to flowers, she seemed bent now on stripping the stem clean of its
starlike yellow blossoms.
“Not the same?” she repeated slowly, her eyes bent on the unconscious
work of destruction. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. You wouldn’t have known him. He was grouchy and
ill-tempered. The whole crowd hated him like poison. I couldn’t stand
him myself, and you know how thick we are now. When I think of what an
unmitigated ruffian he was――”
“But, Phil!” The girl’s head came up suddenly; her eyes were
wide――protesting. “You don’t understand. He wasn’t―― He had to――”
She broke off with a quick little gasp of dismay, and clapped one
hand to her lips. For a second she stood silent, the color creeping
into her face, her startled gaze fixed intently on Lefty’s narrowed,
questioning eyes.
“Well?” queried the southpaw at length. “What did he have to do? Aren’t
you going to finish?”
Janet dropped her hand and glanced down through the long vista of
straight, slender trunks with their crowns of blossoms.
“I don’t know that there is anything more to say,” she answered slowly.
“I suppose I was thinking how impossible it was for a man like Mr.
Savage to――act as you say he did, unless――unless――he was obliged to.
Don’t you think we’d better start back? It must be almost time for
dinner.”
Lefty ignored the last remark. His face was serious――almost stern.
His eyes were fixed intently on Janet’s profile. The perfume from the
jasmine seemed suddenly to have become almost sickening in its cloying
sweetness.
“Unless he was obliged to!” he repeated in an odd tone. “Can you
suggest, Janet, any possible reason which would necessitate a fellow
like Savage turning himself voluntarily into a beast?”
“But I know so little of him,” she protested. “How can I tell――how can
any one tell――what motives govern some one who is almost a stranger?
Don’t be absurd, Phil, and make a mountain out of a molehill. Mr.
Savage is nothing to me except that he’s practically engaged to Celia,
and I like him.”
Lefty did not speak for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders
slightly, and turned toward the house.
“It _is_ getting rather late,” he said quietly. “Perhaps, as you say,
we’d better go in.”
His voice was colder than he realized. It was merely the man’s instinct
to hide from a woman the fact that she had hurt him. That Janet knew
something was perfectly evident. What it could be he had not the
slightest idea, save that it had to do with the problem he had been
trying his best to solve. He had no wish to force her confidence, but
the fact that she was unwilling to give it freely stung him to the
quick.
The girl herself started slightly at his tone, and turned a little
pale. Then her chin went up in that old, familiar movement, and without
a word she fell into step beside him, walking back to the house in
silence.
The evening was not exactly a lively one. Lefty did his best to forget
the incident and behave as if nothing unpleasant had happened. He
honestly wanted to ignore it, but always at the back of his mind was
the consciousness that Janet was keeping something from him. It was
her own secret to keep or reveal as she chose; he admitted that. It
might amount to nothing in the end; though, knowing the girl as he did,
such a possibility was doubtful. But it had to do with another man,
and there is no suitor alive, though he may have absolute faith in the
woman he cares for, who can behold with equanimity that woman mixing up
in the intimate affairs of even his best friend, if it be to his own
exclusion.
Janet was, by turns, dull and superficially brilliant. At nine she
pleaded a bad headache and wished to retire, thus breaking up the party
prematurely. The girls were leaving at an hour which made it impossible
for Lefty or Savage to see them off, so the good-bys had to be said
that night. They left Locke enraged at himself, provoked at Janet,
and soured with the world generally. He had a feeling that he was a
brute who had spoiled what would otherwise have been three days to
look back upon with unalloyed pleasure. He even blamed Savage because
his interest in the busher had prompted him to ask that unfortunate
question; and on reaching the hotel he hunted up a paper and took
refuge behind its open sheets, mainly to avoid mingling with one of the
several groups scattered about the lobby.
He did not escape; one of the groups joined him. He had scarcely
settled down before Jack Stillman, Dalton, and Al Ogan invaded the
ancient leather-covered sofa. The irrepressible Larry gently removed
the newspaper and sat on it.
“What the deuce do you want with the world’s happenings?” he inquired
airily. “Within a month we’ll be making history ourselves. Listen,
till I tell you some real news. Did you know there was going to be
a genuine, old-fashioned horse race over at the county seat next
Saturday?”
“No; is there?” was the indifferent reply.
“There is. Wouldn’t you like to take it in?”
Lefty shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t say I’m pining away with any
such desire.”
Dalton sighed and cast up his eyes. “Gee! You’re about as lively
to-night as a wooden Indian. I thought you’d be all for it. Anybody
who’s got a passably good nag around here will enter, and they say
there’s an Englishman come on from the West with a couple of fast ones.
It ought to be more fun than a badger pull.”
Locke drew himself up in the corner of the sofa, and surveyed the
volatile infielder. “Have you figured out how you’re going to get off
to see this jamboree?” he inquired briefly.
“Well, you know what a store Jack sets by you, old man,” Dalton said
ingratiatingly. “We thought if you asked him――”
“Nothing doing!” put in Lefty decisively. “I’m not going to lay myself
out for a panning. By next Saturday the old man will probably have
games scheduled for every other day or so, and you’ve got just about
as much chance of getting off for the afternoon as a snowball has down
below. If you’re so keen about it, ask him yourself.”
All of which goes to show how completely a misunderstanding with a
girl could sour even as good-tempered a man as Lefty Locke. Later, in
his room, he realized that he had been rather short, and regretted it;
but by that time he had begun to consider Janet’s abruptly terminated
remark in detail and ponder over it.
She had intimated that Savage had been obliged to act the part of an
ill-mannered rowdy in the early part of the training season. Whether
she knew what she was talking about was, of course, a question; but if
it was true, Lefty’s hypothesis of dual personality was knocked into a
cocked hat. But how could it be true? How could any man deliberately
work the transformation which had occurred in Savage’s case? How
could any normal human being, of his own volition, be sane and decent
and likable one day; a coarse, evil-eyed rowdy the next? Above all,
supposing such a thing were possible, why should he do it?