VARNEY MEETS WITH A GALLING REBUFF, WHILE PETER GOES MARCHING ON
Peter's pronounced views as to Mr. Stanhope were not, it appeared,
purely of the stuff that dreams are made of. Testimony to the author's
lack of popularity in his native town came to Varney with unexpected
promptness.
In the corner of the square, as he swung along toward the Academy
Theatre that evening, he found himself suddenly confronted by a man who,
lounging against the fence of a shabby dwelling, straightened
dramatically at his approach and bent a sharp gaze upon him. He was a
tall, shambling fellow with a white cloth swathed about the top of his
head; and Varney, in the act of passing, suddenly recognized him as the
dog man, whom Peter had knocked out the night before. His gaze was a
wanton challenge for the young man to stop, and Varney cheerfully
accepted it.
"Why, it's--Mr.--er--Hackley, isn't it?"
The man's bandage left only one eye free to operate, and he kept this
upon Varney with a curious unwinking stare.
"Yes," said he slowly, "I'm Hackley."
"How'd the dog come out?" asked Varney.
"Dead," said Hackley, as quiet in mien as the Hackley of last night was
bellicose. "Dead _an'_ buried."
"I'm sorry," said Varney, his glance on the head-cloth. "The man who did
the kicking was a friend of mine, and he wouldn't want you to lose your
dog without some compensation. Er--please accept this with his
compliments and regrets."
Hackley, his single washed-out eye starting with pleasure, accepted the
proffered note with a gesture resembling a clutch, investigated its size
in the dim light with hardly concealed delight, and pinned it into his
waistcoat pocket with a large brass safety-pin. Then he raised his head
slowly and looked at Varney.
"Why n't you leave town to-night, Stanhope?" he inquired casually.
Varney started. Almost to the very language this was exactly what Editor
Smith had suggested to him the night before.
"Why do you call me Stanhope, Hackley? My name happens to be Laurence
Varney."
Mr. Hackley's gaze never relaxed. "Chuck it," he said without emotion.
"A sensible and eddicated man," he added impersonally, "never lies when
a lie couldn't do him no good. If I was you, Stanhope, I wouldn't lose a
minute in cuttin' loose from this town."
"If I were Stanhope, I daresay I wouldn't either. But suppose I were,"
he added, "why shouldn't I stay here if I wanted to?"
"For one reason," said Mr. Hackley deliberately, "there's me. When I'm
a-feelin' myself, there ain't a cammer, a more genteel nor lor-abidin'
citizen in Hunston. As for fussin' and fightin', I'd no more think of it
than a dyin' inverlid in the orspitle. But only throw a few drinks under
my belt like last night, and I'm a altogether different creetur. And I'm
mighty afraid that the next time I over-drink myself and don't rightly
know what I'm doin', I'll go out after you with a club. And then
there'll be trouble."
"But why should you want to go after Stanhope with a club? What did he
ever do to you?"
"Don't you know? I married Mamie Orrick's little sister!"
"Most interesting," said Varney, "as a bit of genealogy, but what's it
got to do with Stanhope and the club?"
But Mr. Hackley said again, cryptically: "Chuck it." Then, softened by
the young man's pleasant ways, and by the windfall of a fortune pinned
into his vest: "Be sensible, Stanhope," he added amiably. "I ain't the
only one. Old Orrick's heard that you've hit the town and is totin' a
gun and talk-in' wild. And, of course, there's others. Don't jump off no
tall buildin's, I say, expectin' Providence to land you soft. There's a
train to Noo York at eight-ten. Cut while you can!"
"Why, thanks," said Varney, laughing and starting on. "If I should see
Mr. Stanhope at any time, I won't fail to pass him the friendly tip."
"And if you should see that friend o' yourn," called Hackley after him,
"him that gimme the paste in the jor--you c'n just tell him that Jim
Hackley is goin' to fix you both, _good!_"
"At your convenience, Hackley."
The young man passed on, undisturbed by the dog man's quaint menaces. He
did not exactly see himself and Peter getting into trouble at the hands
of a crack-brained village humorist.
Streams of people, converging from all directions, guided him easily to
the theatre. Pushing his way in, he found the stage empty and the
proceedings not yet begun; and he stood for a minute at the inner door,
glancing over the house. It was crowded. Oratory is a real inducement in
societies seldom blessed with that attraction. Even lemonade is a magnet
if you get it seldom and never to surfeit. Already men were sitting in
the long low windows which ran down either side of the building; and a
score of ushers, singularly alert-looking men, were hurriedly
distributing camp-chairs to accommodate the overflow. Certainly, Peter
could have desired no better setting for his daring adventure for
reform.
Thanks to the reserved seat which his friend's reluctant liberality had
furnished him, Varney was in no hurry to join the throng inside.
Presently, to get clear of the rush at the doors, he strolled into the
lobby and idly stood at one side, watching the people streaming by.
Thus, by sheer luck, he became witness to the crucial episode of the
evening. An oily Teutonic voice spoke just at his elbow:
"Id's eight o'clock, I zee. We'd better go back und gif Taylor his
speech, I guess."
The young man turned. He happened to be standing just in front of the
little cubby of a box-office. In it stood two men, one large and fat and
blonde, the other short and stocky and dark. This latter, looking up
from a typewritten manuscript, spoke briefly:
"No hurry. Find Smith if you can and send him here."
The fat oily person departed obediently. Immediately there stepped
through the door of the box-office a rough-looking man in a slouch hat,
with three days' stubble stippling a grimy chin. He shut the door
carefully and came near. Varney, from where he stood, could see and hear
everything.
"Mr. Ryan?"
The stocky, dark man nodded. _Aha!_ thought Varney.
"Then step outside a minute, will yer? There's a genaman wants to speak
to you right away on a matter as concerns you close."
Ryan coldly looked the man over: "Then tell him to come in here. No! I
ain't got no time to fool with him now. Tell him to go to the devil."
The stranger never moved a muscle. "There's a reason w'y he can't come
in here--you'll see when you come outside, all right." Then bringing his
dark face sharply a foot nearer, he went on in a hasty undertone: "Hey,
you! Ever hear of a man named Maginnis?"
Ryan had: Peter's fame had traveled far in Hunston that day.
"Well, listen! There's a game on to bust this meetin' to-night and put
the hook into you good and hard. Maginnis has spent a thousand to do it.
D'yer savvy? Now will yer step lively?"
The boss considered a moment and then stepped lively. Varney, falling in
behind, stepped lively too, his curiosity strongly stirred. But outside,
before the theatre, there was no sign of a gentleman awaiting an
audience: only the people pouring on into the Academy.
"Around the corner," whispered the dark man hoarsely. "He dassen't wait
here. Quick!"
Around the corner the pair hurried, Varney close in their wake. In the
silent alley, half-hidden in the shadows of the building, stood a large
carriage with a pair of strapping bays tugging at their traces. They
halted before it, and the stranger, who had considerately taken Ryan's
arm, flung open the door.
"Here he is, Jim--Mr. Ryan. Now you c'n tell him--"
The sentence died unended. At the same moment the sound of a violent
scuffle smote the nocturnal air. It appeared that Jim, presumably
laboring under an unfortunate misapprehension, had not received his
visitor with that refined hospitality due from one gentleman to another.
Even more inexplicable, it looked in the deceitful darkness, remarkably
as though the boss's guide, suddenly dropping that gentleman's arm, had
laid forcible hold upon his outraged and madly protesting legs.
It was all over in a minute. There was a faint yell, quickly and
violently muffled. Then the carriage door banged, leaving nobody on the
sidewalk, and the horses, responding to an acutely painful lash from the
strong arm on the box, sprang forward at the gallop.
Varney stood in the dark alley, looking after the vanishing carriage
with mingled admiration and amazement. Swift footsteps sounded near him;
and the next moment a strong hand seized him and pulled him back into
the shadow of the wall.
"_Sh-h! It's me_! Anybody see it?"
"_Hello!_ Not a soul but me."
Peter leaned against the wall and drew a deep breath.
"He can never prove it on me--not to save his soul!--_and I hold his
meeting in the hollow of my hand_. Do you see that lighted window at
the back there? That's my last bridge. Waiting in there are the chairman
of the meeting and the mayor, who's the orator of the evening. I'm going
in and make 'em take me on as one of the platform speakers. I'll pass
out a few remarks and call on Hare--"
"But how will you make them--"
"They daren't refuse me anything," said Peter swiftly, and tapped his
breast-pocket. "I've papers here that mean stripes for them both. Mind
your eye, Larry, and be good!"
He disappeared through the little gate toward the dressing-room, where
the officials of the meeting waited vainly for last instructions from
their lord. Varney looked after him with a sigh. In Hunston only
twenty-four hours and already to be running the town!
He emerged from the alley feeling rather gloomy, and halted on the
sidewalk in front of the theatre, idly watching the people as they
poured in. The spectacle of this steady stream made a fitting background
for his meditations; for he was thinking, absently, of the extreme
boldness of Peter's course. Certainly, there was little here to suggest
the quiet onlooker. But all at once something happened which checked the
current of his thought as effectually as a slap upon the cheek.
In that shifting, waste of strange faces, his vagrant eye suddenly fell
upon a familiar one--two, three familiar ones--and his flagging interest
sprang to life. There approached, side by side, J. Pinkney Hare, who,
though few knew it, might prove the brilliant hero of the night's
proceedings; the child, little Jenny Something, who had spent yesterday
at the Carstairs house, leading strangers to think that she was somebody
else; and Miss Carstairs herself, a fair flower in that moving tangle of
weeds.
Hare saw Varney and bowed in his stiff affected way. But Varney's eyes
had already gone on to Miss Carstairs, and he did not return that
greeting. Seeing the little candidate lift his hat, her look followed
his, and so her eye met Varney's.
When this happened her expression did not change, except that, so he
thought, she faintly colored. Varney awaited her bow; he half bowed
himself: a stiff smile was ready on his lips. But he never gave it. Her
eyes rested full upon him for a second, with no sign of recognition, and
then moved away; and the next moment she swept past him into the
theatre.
There was no shadow of doubt about it. She who only last night had
treated him with such marked kindness, had unmistakably cut him. It
hardly seemed possible. Why, they had parted like friends!
But he understood instantly what had happened. To her, he was Ferris
Stanhope; he himself had given her the right to think that. Since they
had parted, some of that unpleasant gossip about Stanhope--of which she
had known nothing last night--had made its way to her; and she had
believed it as to him, Laurence Varney. Yes, she had believed it as to
him. Peter was right, after all. A self-respecting girl owed it to
herself, it seemed, not to recognize him. Curiously, so strong was his
sense of the personal meaning of the insult that its more practical
aspects for the moment altogether escaped him.
But that was only for the moment. In the next breath, it rushed over him
that with that cool glance the luncheon engagement upon which his whole
mission depended stood canceled; and with that thought he felt his will
hardening into iron. What she thought of him, personally, was of course
nothing; but no power should keep him from carrying through his plans
precisely as he had arranged them. He elbowed his way into the lobby to
find Uncle Elbert's daughter and make her retract that look.
But it gradually became evident that Uncle Elbert's daughter was not in
the lobby: the most systematic exploration failed to reveal any trace of
her. In fact, it was certain that she had passed straight on to her seat
within the hall; whence a loud roar presently gave warning to stragglers
that the oratory had begun.
* * * * *
Two hours later Varney rose from his seat, at once marveling over the
splendor of Peter's _coup_ and bewildered by the blaze of publicity
which it had turned upon his comrade and co-schemer. The well-laid plans
had carried through to brilliant success, and Ryan's meeting had been
converted into a triumph for Ryan's deadly enemy, J. Pinkney Hare.
The candidate had sat unobtrusively down in the audience with his friend
Miss Carstairs and the child Jenny,--spectators all: that was the way
they had arranged it. Peter, on the contrary, sat in the great white
light of a front seat on the stage, where he had masterfully intruded
himself in the galaxy of "other prominent citizens." And sure enough,
when the set speeches were over, it was the honorable chairman who
presented "a Mr. Maginnis of New York" to the meeting, doubtless having
been satisfactorily convinced beforehand that it was to his advantage to
do so. But, doubtless also convinced that there would be an accounting
to his master for this night's work, he rose to his duty only after Mr.
Maginnis had glared at him through a noticeable stage-wait, and then
made the introduction as prejudicial as he dared.
Mr. Maginnis did not appear disconcerted in the least. He began
speaking with a pertinence and ease which rather surprised his friend
Varney down in the audience, and with words which instantly let the
dullest know that something unusual was taking place. However, he had
not proceeded far when, the house having become very still, he was
suddenly interrupted by a sharp hiss from the rear of the hall, and a
raucous voice which shouted:
"Sit down, you! Nobody wants yer!"
Laughter followed and various murmurs, some approving, a few protesting.
Ryan's good and faithful servants were evidently settling down to work.
Peter's eye roved over the audience, seemed to catch something and lit
up with a faint signal.
"The gentleman who made that remark," he said in tones of great
gentleness, "will kindly leave the hall at once."
A ripple of merriment ran through the crowd, breaking in many places
into ostentatious guffaws. To those who knew the underside of those
meetings, the mild request appeared so ineffectual as to be merely
ridiculous. The honorable chairman, on the stage, hid a sinister smile
behind his hand.
Then a strange thing happened. Four "ushers" moved silently down the
side-aisle, halted at the end of the sixth row from the rear, laid hands
upon an angry and wriggling little man who screamed to high heaven that
he hadn't done nothing, and dropped him out of the open window, which
was just five feet above the ground.
It was rather a clean-cut piece of work, the moral effect of which was
in no wise weakened by the strong probability that they had ejected the
wrong man. It proved the turning-point in the evening's proceedings.
Ryanism seemed paralyzed by the mysterious absence of its chief, and a
few further essays by the faithful, more and more half-hearted in their
nature, made it plain that the control of that meeting had passed into
other hands. Peter, apologizing for the little interruption, told simply
but vividly how, coming to Hunston a stranger, he had instantly seen
that something was badly wrong with the town: how he had looked about at
the dirty streets, the dead business, the empty stores, the good men
idling, the good wives suffering for the money that streamed into the
big red saloon--
"That's right!" called a shrill, scared woman's voice. "That's right,
Mister!"
"No!" Peter answered steadily. "It's the _wrongest_ thing that ever
was--God help you poor women!"
Then a burst of hand-clapping, unforced by the faithful hirelings from
New York, ran unexpectedly through the house.
Peter told how easy it had been to find out what was choking the life
out of Hunston. His open countenance, democratic manners, and pungent
speech produced a most favorable impression, and it was undeniable that,
for the moment at least, he had the house with him when he swung into
his peroration.
"You know we are told," he said, "that it is the truth that makes us
free. Well, you are going to hear the truth to-night, at last. There is
a man listening to me at this moment who knows everything there is to be
known. Like me, he has no axe to grind, no special interest to promote,
no ambition but the manly wish to loose this town from the bonds with
which a dishonest boss has shackled it. He has sacrificed much to the
hope that he might help you, and for months he has been fighting against
big odds, just to get a chance to tell you the facts. To-night he has
got his chance, and you may be very sure that he will make the most of
it.
"Relieving your honorable chairman of the trouble of rising for the
purpose, I take pleasure in introducing to you Mr. J. Pinkney Hare, who
is, with your consent, the next mayor of Hunston."
Back in the center of the house, a foot scraped upon the floor, and
there was J. Pinkney Hare standing out in the aisle, his little black
bag stuffed with documents swinging in his hand. And then there arose,
to the surprise of everybody (barring those good fellows who had been
well paid for their work and were earnestly determined to earn it) a
deafening roar of applause, starting in the rear of the house, taken up
at certain definite points all through it, and gradually spreading
almost everywhere, many people joining in because they liked Peter
greatly and others without having any idea why. The roar subsided a
little as Hare drew near to the stage, mounted it, and deposited his
little bag upon the table. Then it broke again, more loudly, as he came
forward a step, looking out upon the crowded house--he who could not
hire a hall for himself--a little pale, a little awed by the bigness of
his chance, but with neither tremor nor uncertainty on his small, cool
face....
Hare spoke for an hour and a half, and not a soul left the hall. It was
impossible to call him off or cry him down: the plain sentiment of the
house was, "Give the little man his show." Afterwards, Chairman Bates
had made a desperate effort to overcome the damning effect of that
address, calling on various Ryanites of aggressive manners, and making a
second speech himself, but with little avail. Even the free fight which
broke out during the distribution of the ice-cream of the Neapolitans
(the announcement of which addition to the regular _menu_ evoked the
loudest spontaneous applause of the evening) resulted, until the police
checked it, decidedly in favor of the strangers from New York.
This part of the evening's pleasures Varney did not see. He rose with
many others when the published tidings of refreshment gave notice that
the speechmaking was over, and turned his face toward the door against a
stream of ushers entering with alluring trays. Already all sense of the
daring brilliance of Peter's stroke had faded and dropped from his mind.
His own concerns crowded instantly upon his attention, and all his
thought was of finding Mary Carstairs immediately and compelling her to
recognize him for the man he was.
She, too, had risen to leave the hall. While he listened to the fierce
philippic of J. Pinkney Hare, Varney's eye had carefully marked her
seat: it was empty now. Once, as he pushed his way slowly toward the
door, he caught a brief glimpse of her over in the other aisle, some
distance ahead of him; but he hardly saw her before she was lost to him
again, swallowed up in the jostling throng. The theatre was in an
uproar: all was noise and bustle and movement. And the wide lobby, when
at length he reached it, was no better; it looked scarcely more
promising to his quest than the traditional haystack to the searcher of
needles.
Here were set the ice-cream freezers and the other paraphernalia of
delight, and about them was a struggling mob. Varney circled the throng
with a roving eye. Of the lady he saw no sign anywhere. But presently,
on the outer fringe of the cohorts which stormed the freezers, he came
upon the child Jenny, and knew that he had found a guide according to
his heart's desire.
He touched her on the elbow. "Do you want to get some ice-cream?"
She turned her homely little face up towards him, and said shyly:
"Yes, sir. But they won't let me get near. And they say the chocolate is
going fast."
"They'll let me get near," said Varney heartily. "Chocolate is it, then?
Lemonade, of course. And a thought of the cake with icing, shall we say?
Good! But you're not here alone, are you?"
"No, sir. I'm here with Miss Mary--over there in that corner."
"Well, you just run over there with her and wait. Trust everything here
to me."
He emerged from the ruck a few moments later, disheveled but triumphant.
Hat under his arm and both hands heavily laden, he made a gingerly
progress to the place of his tryst, a comparatively unpopulated corner
near the door. And there she stood, her comely youth brought into sharp
relief by her surroundings, side by side with the living hunger and
thirst of Jenny, whose yearning eyes summoned the young man like a
beacon.
Miss Carstairs happened to be looking in another direction. Varney,
standing before her, calmly took up their acquaintance where he had left
it last night at her mother's gate.
"Good evening, Miss Carstairs. I bear refreshment for your little
friend. What a magnificent evening for Hare and Reform, isn't it?"
She turned, startled at the sound of his voice, looked at him, and
looked at once away.
"Oh ... yes, indeed. I--am waiting for Mr. Hare now. Jenny, are you sure
you haven't seen him come out?"
"Yessum," said Jenny, her eyes all for the tall stranger.
Unable to resist their imploring appeal, he turned at once and delivered
his burden.
"Ice-cream--lemonade--" he made inventory--"cake with icing--tin
spoon--paper napkin in my pocket. Is there anything else?"
"I think," said Jenny, conscientiously, "there's figs."
"You do not wish any figs to-night, Jenny," declared Miss Carstairs,
rather more severely than mere figs seemed to warrant.
"_No'm!_ I thought maybe he might want some."
"I doubt if I'll take any figs to-night, either," laughed Varney. "But
mayn't I get something for you, Miss Carstairs? I'm happy to say that
the chocolate is holding out better than we feared."
"Thank you," she said, apparently addressing the child, "I don't believe
I wish anything."
Jenny here produced and handed around a small, rather dangerous-looking
paper-bag, which proved, upon investigation, to contain marshmallows.
Miss Carstairs declined. Varney, to show how unimpeachable he considered
his standing with the party, gratefully accepted.
"I'm afraid," he said, looking at Miss Carstairs, "that Mr. Hare's
admirers are likely to detain him some time. If you don't care to wait
so long, perhaps you would again give me the pleasure of supplanting him
and taking you home--you and Miss--Miss Jenny?"
"No, thank you--I am sure he will be out soon ... You look awfully
trampled on and--mashed, Jenny," she continued, twitching the child's
hat on straight. "And _my dear! Don't_ eat so fast."
Despite himself, Varney felt his blood rising a little. "Miss
Carstairs," he said slowly, "I must tell you that I came with Miss Jenny
on purpose to see you. There is something that I wanted to say."
She raised her eyes then, and though their look was very young and
embarrassed, he felt himself lose something of his composure under it.
"You wanted to say something--to me?"
"A good deal. I have an explanation to make--"
"I'm afraid that I have not time to--listen--Mr. Hare--"
"You must listen--to be fair," he said slowly. "I have to blame myself
for it, but you are doing me an injustice at this moment. I am not--that
man."
She made no answer. Beside them, Miss Jenny ate ice-cream succulently.
All around them were people jostling this way and that, laughing,
shouting: but they might have been alone on a mountain-top for all
either was aware of them.
"Since I have been in Hunston--just a day," Varney said easily, "I seem
to have done nothing but explain over and over that I am not Mr.
Stanhope. I got awfully tired of it, Miss Carstairs; it seemed so
horribly useless. Like the others, you insisted that I was he. You
candidly didn't believe me--"
"No," she said, "that is true."
"I shall make you believe me now," said Varney.
A great hullabaloo suddenly arose around them. Four or five men broke
pellmell, and for the most part backwards, out of the swing-doors,
evidently ejected from within. A lonely-looking policeman, on guard at
the entrance, charged them. The lobby was already thronged; now people
retreating before that violent infusion of arms and legs crowded them
close.
Varney, standing in front of Miss Carstairs, shielded her from the
press, her capable buffer. Soon he noticed that that part of the wall
upon which she leaned was not a wall, but a door. He reached past her,
turned the knob, revealed a brilliantly-lit little room.
"Ah!... A haven, Miss Carstairs."
She stepped backward, into the tiny box-office where Ryan had stood two
hours before and cynically waited for his sport to begin. It was empty
now, offering a perfect refuge. Varney followed and stood with his hand
on the knob just inside the door.
"Thank you," said Miss Carstairs, breathing a little rapidly. "The
meetings have never been as bad as this before. But--I must not lose
sight of Jenny."
"I'm here, Miss Mary," gurgled an ice-creamy voice at the door.
"I think I had better wait outside after all," said Mary. "Mr. Hare will
hardly know where to look for me."
"Miss Jenny will be his clew: he couldn't miss her," said Varney. "Let
me go on, while I have time. Miss Carstairs, it is not fair to either of
us to let matters stay like this. In the cottage last night, you forced
me to let you think I was--another man--"
"That is absurd," she said. "How could I possibly force you to say what
was not--the fact?"
"Did I really say anything that was not--the fact? I tried particularly
not to. But I did let you deceive yourself about it: that is quite true
and I'm sorry. I did it because--well, because if I hadn't done it, you
were not going to let me walk home with you."
She leaned against the little desk at which the Academy man sat to sell
tickets, and hesitated, almost imperceptibly. "Then why," she asked,
"should you wish to _undeceive_ me now?"
"You know why," he answered. "If I don't, something tells me that you
are not going to speak to me any more."
Her silence conceded the truth of this. It began to be evident how
difficult he had made matters for himself.
Varney laughed. "I am determined to make you believe me, yet just how am
I to go about it? It's rather an absurd position, when you come to think
of it--this arguing with somebody as to who one is. Suppose I were that
fellow, Miss Carstairs. How could I possibly hope to come back to my old
hometown and persuade people to believe that I am somebody else?"
Her eyes had wandered out through the little grated window, and she made
no reply.
"You see how preposterous that would be. A mere resemblance is not
enough to condemn a man upon, Miss Carstairs."
She turned her head with a sudden gesture of annoyance. "What difference
can it possibly make whether I speak to you or not, Mr. St--"
"_Don't!_" he interrupted swiftly. "You know my name. You shall not call
me by that one."
Hare's neat pink face appeared at the ticket-window, for all the world
like a belated theatre-goer, anxious for several in the orchestra.
"Ah, Mary! There you are! Whenever you are ready--"
"I have been waiting for you a long time," said Miss Carstairs. "It was
so splendid, Mr. Hare! Is Jenny there? We'll go at once."
She turned to Varney, cool as a dewy rose, and came forward a short
step. "I--I must say this before I go: has no one told you that you are
in danger here?"
Under her tone and her look, his plan of being the easy master of the
situation grew increasingly difficult. "Everybody has told me," he said
rather shortly. "It's gotten to be a bore."
"Then--won't you--won't you please go away before--anything happens?"
"I am going on Thursday afternoon," he answered, stung by her beauty,
which was so remote, and by the sudden compassion in her voice. "My
engagements will keep me here till that day, you remember? I promise
you, since you are so good as to interest yourself in the matter, that I
shall leave Hunston directly after that--"
"Your engagements on Thursday?" she repeated, looking away. "Are--you
speaking of--"
"The luncheon on my yacht. We are inviting Mr. Hare and his sister to
meet you."
"I am sorry," began Miss Carstairs, not looking at him, "but--I--I find
that I shall n--"
"Er--Mary?" said the candidate's voice through the window.
She turned toward the door at once, as though welcoming a summons which
so opportunely relieved her from embarrassing explanations: but Varney,
who happened to have duties to her father to discharge, stood before
her, not moving.
"Just now in the theatre," he said pleasantly, "you cut me. That was for
him. I understood. But is there any valid reason why you should not stay
on speaking terms with--Laurence Varney?"
To his surprise, a vivid red swept up her face from throat to hair and
her eyes fluttered and fell.
"Please," she said, "don't ask me to discuss this any more."
Varney stood aside, bowing, to let her pass out.
"I shall bring you proofs of my identity to-morrow, since that seems
necessary," he said with a laugh. "You won't refuse to see me, if you
care anything about being fair. But shall I tell you something, Miss
Carstairs? In your heart _you believe me now_!"
At the outer door, Varney all but collided with a man listlessly
entering, and, glancing up, saw that it was the pale young editor,
Coligny Smith.
"I hope you enjoyed the meeting," flung out Varney in passing.
"Why, greetings--greetings!" said Mr. Smith, a mocking smile on his thin
lips. "I've just been out to buy your picture, Beany."
With which singular rejoinder, he slipped by into the lobby.
* * * * *
J. Pinkney Hare lingered some time in the theatre after Miss Carstairs
joined him, enveloped in a heartening whirl of new popularity. To the
candidate it seemed that his star had changed with stunning swiftness.
His advance to the door had been a Roman progress; and when he finally
reached the lobby he was still the focus of a coterie of enthusiasts who
would not be shaken off. Here a new halt was made: new people surrounded
him; more hand-shakings and back-slappings took place; and everything
seemed merry as a marriage-bell.
But Peter, coming out of the hall a moment after Varney had left, saw
hovering about this intimate circle an elderly man of a faded exterior
and shabby clothes, who wore a black felt hat pulled down over
wary-looking eyes. Even at that moment of splendid triumph, Peter was
annoyed to recognize in him the man Higginson, of whose too friendly
interest in the candidate's doings he had complained to Varney a few
hours earlier. Whether he was, in truth, the man who had followed them
on the street the night before, he was not ready to make affidavit. But
undoubtedly there was something furtive in the man's appearance and
manner; and Peter, watching him from the door, was highly irritated to
see Hare present the fellow to Miss Carstairs, who smiled on him as upon
one of her friend's good friends.
"The sneak!" thought Peter. "I'll just drop him a quiet hint to butt out
before he gets hurt."
But his "head-usher" due to vanish back to New York by the
ten-forty-five claimed him just then for a business talk, and when Peter
had time to think of Mr. Higginson again, he found that the man had
disappeared.