ENCOUNTERS
"By the way, Rob, I saw Rich Kendrick to-day." Louis Gray detained his
sister Roberta on the stairs as they stopped to exchange greetings on a
certain evening in March. "It struck me suddenly that I hadn't seen him
for a blue moon, and I asked him why he didn't come round when he was in
town. He said he was sticking tight to that new business of his up in
Eastman, but he admitted he was to be here over Sunday. I invited him
round to-night, but to my surprise he wouldn't come. Said he had another
engagement, of course--thanked me fervently and all that--but there was
no getting him. It made me a bit suspicious of you, Bobby."
"I can't imagine why." But, in spite of herself, Roberta coloured. "He
came here when he was helping Uncle Calvin. There's no reason for his
coming now."
Her brother regarded her with the observing eye which sisters find it
difficult to evade. "He would have taken a job as nursemaid for Rosy, if
it would have given him a chance to go in and out of this old house, I
imagine. Rosy stuck to it, it was his infatuation for the home and the
members thereof, particularly Gordon and Dorothy. He undoubtedly was
struck with them--it would have been a hard heart that wasn't touched by
the sight of the boy--but if it was the kiddies he wanted, why didn't he
keep coming? Steve and Rosy would have welcomed him."
"You had better ask him his reasons, next time you see him," Roberta
suggested, and escaped.
It was two months since she had seen Richard Kendrick. He seemed never
so much as to pass the house, although it stood directly on his course
when he drove back and forth from Eastman in his car. She wondered if he
really did make a détour each time, to avoid the very chance of meeting
her. It was impossible not to think of him, rather disturbingly often,
and to wonder how he was getting on.
The month of March in the year of this tale was on the whole an
extraordinarily mild and springlike piece of substitution for the
rigorous, wind-swept season it should by all rights have been. On one
of its most beguiling days Roberta Gray was walking home from Miss
Copeland's school. Usually she came by way of the broad avenue which led
straight home. To-day, out of sheer unwillingness to reach that home and
end the walk, she took a quite different course. This led her up a
somewhat similar street, parallel to her own but several blocks beyond,
a street of more than ordinary attractiveness in that it was less of a
thoroughfare than any other of equal beauty in the residential portion
of the city.
She was walking slowly, drawing in the balmy air and noting with delight
the beds of crocuses which were beginning to show here and there on
lawns and beside paths, when a peculiar sound far up the avenue caught
her ear. She recognized it instantly, for she had heard it often and she
had never heard another quite like it. It was the warning song of a
coming motor-car and it was of unusual and striking musical quality. So
Roberta knew, even before she caught sight of the long, low, powerful
car which had stood many times before her own door during certain weeks
of the last year, that she was about to meet for the first time in two
months the person upon whom she had put a ban.
Would he see her? He could hardly help it, for there was not another
pedestrian in sight upon the whole length of the block, and the March
sunshine was full upon her. As the car came on the girl who walked
sedately to meet it found that her pulses had somehow curiously
accelerated. So this was the route he took, not to go by her home.
Did he see her? Evidently as far away as half a block, for at that
distance his motor-cap was suddenly pulled off, and it was with bared
head that he passed her. At the moment the car was certainly not running
as fast as it had been doing twenty rods back; it went by at a pace
moderate enough to show the pair to each other with distinctness.
Roberta saw clearly Richard Kendrick's intent eyes upon her, saw the
flash of his smile and the grace of his bow, and saw--as if written upon
the blue spring sky--the word he had left with her, "Midsummer." If he
had shouted it at her as he passed, it could not have challenged her
more definitely.
He was obeying her literally--more literally than she could have
demanded. Not to slow down, come to a standstill beside her, exchange at
least a few words of greeting--this was indeed a strict interpretation
of her edict. Evidently he meant to play the game rigorously. Still, he
had been a compellingly attractive figure as he passed; that instant's
glimpse of him was likely to remain with her quite as long as a more
protracted interview. Did he guess that?
"I wonder how I looked?" was her first thought as she walked on--a
purely feminine one, it must be admitted. When she reached home she
glanced at herself in the hall mirror on her way upstairs--a thing she
seldom took the trouble to do.
A figure got hastily to its feet and came out into the hall to meet her
as she passed the door of the reception-room. "Miss Roberta!" said an
eager voice.
"Why, Mr. Westcott! I didn't know you were in town!"
"I didn't intend to be until next month, as you knew. But this wonderful
weather was too much for me."
He held her hand and looked down into her face from his tall height. He
told her what he thought of her appearance--in detail with his eyes, in
modified form with his lips.
"In my old school clothes?" laughed Roberta. "How draggy winter things
seem the first warm days. This velvet hat weighs like lead on my head
to-day." She took it off. "I'll run up and make myself presentable,"
said she.
"Please don't. You're exactly right as you are. And--I want you to go
for a walk if you're not too tired. The road that leads out by the West
Wood marshes--it will be sheer spring out there to-day. I want to share
it with you."
So Roberta put on her hat again and went to walk with Forbes Westcott
out the road that led by the West Wood marshes. There was not a more
romantic road to be found in a long way.
When they were well out into the country he began to press a question
which she had heard before, and to which he had had as yet no answer.
"Still undecided?" said he, with a very sober face. "You can't make up
your mind as to my qualifications?"
"Your qualifications are undoubted," said she, with a face as sober as
his. "They are more than any girl could ask. But I--how can I know? I
care so much for you--as a friend. Why can't we keep on being just good
friends and let things develop naturally?"
"If I thought they would ever develop the way I want them," he said
earnestly, "I would wait patiently a great while longer. But I don't
seem to be making any progress. In fact, I seem to have gone backward a
bit in your good graces. Since I saw that young prince of shopkeepers in
your company over at Eastman, I've been wondering--"
"Prince of shopkeepers! What an extraordinary characterization! I
thought he was a most amateurish shopkeeper. He didn't even know the
name of his own batiste, much less where it was kept."
"He knew how to skate and to take you along with him. I beg your pardon!
But ever since that night I've been experiencing a most disconcerting
sense of jealousy whenever I think of that young man. He was such a
magnificent figure there in the firelight; he made me feel as old as the
Pyramids. And when you two were gone so long and came back with such an
odd look, both of you--oh, I beg your pardon again! This is most
unworthy of me, I know. But--set me straight if you can! Have you seen
much of him since that night?"
"Absolutely nothing," said Roberta quickly, with a sense of great
relief. "To-day he passed me in his car, on my way home from school,
over on Egerton Avenue, and didn't even stop."
He scanned her face closely. "And you are not even interested in him?"
"Mr. Forbes Westcott," said Roberta desperately, "I have told you often
and often that I'm not interested in any man except as one or two are my
very good friends. Why can't all girls be allowed to live along in peace
and comfort until they are at least thirty years old? You didn't have
anybody besieging you to marry before you were thirty. If anybody had
you'd have said 'No' quickly enough. You had that much of your life
comfortably to yourself."
He bit his lip, but he was obliged to laugh. His thin, keen face was
more attractive when he laughed, but there was an odd, tense expression
on it which did not leave it even then.
"I can see you are still hopeless," he owned. "But so long as you are
hopeless for other men I can endure it, I suppose. I really meant not to
speak again for a long time, as I promised you. But the thought of that
embryo plutocrat making after you, as he has after so many girls--"
"How many girls, I wonder?" queried Roberta quite carelessly. "Do you
happen to know? Has his fame spread so far?"
"I know nothing about him, of course, except that he's a gay young
spendthrift. It goes without saying that he's made love to every pretty
face, for that kind invariably do."
"If it goes without saying, why say it?--particularly as you don't know
it. I dare say he has--what serious harm? I presume it's quite as likely
they've run after him. I'm sure it's a matter of no concern to me, for I
know him very little and am likely to know him much less now that he
doesn't come to work with Uncle Calvin any more. Let's go back, Mr.
Westcott. I came out to look for pussy-willows, not for
Robby-will-you's!"
With which piece of audacity she dismissed the subject. It certainly was
not a subject which harmonized well with that of Midsummer Day, and the
thought of Midsummer Day, quickened into active life by the unexpected
sight of the person who had made a certain preposterous prophecy
concerning it, was a thought which was refusing to down.