Arkwright did not call to see Alice Greggory for some days. He did not
want to see Alice now. He told himself wearily that she could not help
him fight this tiger skin that lay across his path, The very fact of her
presence by his side would, indeed, incapacitate himself for fighting.
So he deliberately stayed away from the Annex until the day before he
sailed for Germany. Then he went out to say good-by.
Chagrined as he was at what he termed his imbecile stupidity in not
knowing his own heart all these past months, and convinced, as he also
was, that Alice and Calderwell cared for each other, he could see no way
for him but to play the part of a man of kindliness and honor, leaving a
clear field for his preferred rival, and bringing no shadow of regret to
mar the happiness of the girl he loved.
As for being his old easy, frank self on this last call, however, that
was impossible; so Alice found plenty of fuel for her still burning
fires of suspicion--fires which had, indeed, blazed up anew at this
second long period of absence on the part of Arkwright. Naturally,
therefore, the call was anything but a joy and comfort to either one.
Arkwright was nervous, gloomy, and abnormally gay by turns. Alice was
nervous and abnormally gay all the time. Then they said good-by and
Arkwright went away. He sailed the next day, and Alice settled down to
the summer of study and hard work she had laid out for herself.
On the tenth of September Billy came home. She was brown, plump-cheeked,
and smiling. She declared that she had had a perfectly beautiful time,
and that there couldn't be anything in the world nicer than the trip
she and Bertram had taken--just they two together. In answer to Aunt
Hannah's solicitous inquiries, she asserted that she was all well and
rested now. But there was a vaguely troubled questioning in her eyes
that Aunt Hannah did not quite like. Aunt Hannah, however, said nothing
even to Billy herself about this.
One of the first friends Billy saw after her return was Hugh Calderwell.
As it happened Bertram was out when he came, so Billy had the first
half-hour of the call to herself. She was not sorry for this, as it
gave her a chance to question Calderwell a little concerning Alice
Greggory--something she had long ago determined to do at the first
opportunity.
“Now tell me everything--everything about everybody,” she began
diplomatically, settling herself comfortably for a good visit.
“Thank you, I'm well, and have had a passably agreeable summer,
barring the heat, sundry persistent mosquitoes, several grievous
disappointments, and a felon on my thumb,” he began, with shameless
imperturbability. “I have been to Revere once, to the circus once,
to Nantasket three times, and to Keith's and the 'movies' ten times,
perhaps--to be accurate. I have also--But perhaps there was some one
else you desired to inquire for,” he broke off, turning upon his hostess
a bland but unsmiling countenance.
“Oh, no, how could there be?” twinkled Billy. “Really, Hugh, I always
knew you had a pretty good opinion of yourself, but I didn't credit you
with thinking you were _everybody_. Go on. I'm so interested!”
Hugh chuckled softly; but there was a plaintive tone in his voice as he
answered.
“Thanks, no. I've rather lost my interest now. Lack of appreciation
always did discourage me. We'll talk of something else, please. You
enjoyed your trip?”
“Very much. It just couldn't have been nicer!”
“You were lucky. The heat here has been something fierce!”
“What made you stay?”
“Reasons too numerous, and one too heart-breaking, to mention. Besides,
you forget,” with dignity. “There is my profession. I have joined the
workers of the world now, you know.”
“Oh, fudge, Hugh!” laughed Billy. “You know very well you're as likely
as not to start for the ends of the earth to-morrow morning!”
Hugh drew himself up.
“I don't seem to succeed in making people understand that I'm serious,”
he began aggrievedly. “I--” With an expressive flourish of his hands he
relaxed suddenly, and fell back in his chair. A slow smile came to
his lips. “Well, Billy, I'll give up. You've hit it,” he confessed. “I
_have_ thought seriously of starting to-morrow morning for _half-way_ to
the ends of the earth--Panama.”
“Hugh!”
“Well, I have. Even this call was to be a good-by--if I went.”
“Oh, Hugh! But I really thought--in spite of my teasing--that you had
settled down, this time.”
“Yes, so did I,” sighed the man, a little soberly. “But I guess it's
no use, Billy. Oh, I'm coming back, of course, and link arms again with
their worthy Highnesses, John Doe and Richard Roe; but just now I've got
a restless fit on me. I want to see the wheels go 'round. Of course, if
I had my bread and butter and cigars to earn, 'twould be different. But
I haven't, and I know I haven't; and I suspect that's where the trouble
lies. If it wasn't for those natal silver spoons of mine that Bertram
is always talking about, things might be different. But the spoons are
there, and always have been; and I know they're all ready to dish out
mountains to climb and lakes to paddle in, any time I've a mind to say
the word. So--I just say the word. That's all.”
“And you've said it now?”
“Yes, I think so; for a while.”
“And--those reasons that _have_ kept you here all summer,” ventured
Billy, “they aren't in--er--commission any longer?”
“No.”
Billy hesitated, regarding her companion meditatively. Then, with the
feeling that she had followed a blind alley to its termination, she
retreated and made a fresh start.
“Well, you haven't yet told me everything about everybody, you know,”
she hinted smilingly. “You might begin that--I mean the less important
everybodies, of course, now that I've heard about you.”
“Meaning--”
“Oh, Aunt Hannah, and the Greggorys, and Cyril and Marie, and the twins,
and Mr. Arkwright, and all the rest.”
“But you've had letters, surely.”
“Yes, I've had letters from some of them, and I've seen most of them
since I came back. It's just that I wanted to know _your_ viewpoint of
what's happened through the summer.”
“Very well. Aunt Hannah is as dear as ever, wears just as many shawls,
and still keeps her clock striking twelve when it's half-past eleven.
Mrs. Greggory is just as sweet as ever--and a little more frail, I
fear,--bless her heart! Mr. Arkwright is still abroad, as I presume
you know. I hear he is doing great stunts over there, and will sing in
Berlin and Paris this winter. I'm thinking of going across from Panama
later. If I do I shall look him up. Mr. and Mrs. Cyril are as well as
could be expected when you realize that they haven't yet settled on a
pair of names for the twins.”
“I know it--and the poor little things three months old, too! I think
it's a shame. You've heard the reason, I suppose. Cyril declares that
naming babies is one of the most serious and delicate operations in the
world, and that, for his part, he thinks people ought to select their
own names when they've arrived at years of discretion. He wants to
wait till the twins are eighteen, and then make each of them a birthday
present of the name of their own choosing.”
“Well, if that isn't the limit!” laughed Calderwell. “I'd heard some
such thing before, but I hadn't supposed it was really so.”
“Well, it is. He says he knows more tomboys and enormous fat women named
'Grace' and 'Lily,' and sweet little mouse-like ladies staggering along
under a sonorous 'Jerusha Theodosia' or 'Zenobia Jane'; and that if he
should name the boys 'Franz' and 'Felix' after Schubert and Mendelssohn
as Marie wants to, they'd as likely as not turn out to be men who hated
the sound of music and doted on stocks and dry goods.”
“Humph!” grunted Calderwell. “I saw Cyril last week, and he said he
hadn't named the twins yet, but he didn't tell me why. I offered him two
perfectly good names myself, but he didn't seem interested.”
“What were they?”
“Eldad and Bildad.”
“Hugh!” protested Billy.
“Well, why not?” bridled the man. “I'm sure those are new and unique,
and really musical, too--'way ahead of your Franz and Felix.”
“But those aren't really names!”
“Indeed they are.”
“Where did you get them?”
“Off our family tree, though they're Bible names, Belle says. Perhaps
you didn't know, but Sister Belle has been making the dirt fly quite
lively of late around that family tree of ours, and she wrote me some
of her discoveries. It seems two of the roots, or branches--say, are
ancestors roots, or branches?--were called Eldad and Bildad. Now I
thought those names were good enough to pass along, but, as I said
before, Cyril wasn't interested.”
“I should say not,” laughed Billy. “But, honestly, Hugh, it's really
serious. Marie wants them named _something_, but she doesn't say much
to Cyril. Marie wouldn't really breathe, you know, if she thought Cyril
disapproved of breathing. And in this case Cyril does not hesitate to
declare that the boys shall name themselves.”
“What a situation!” laughed Calderwell.
“Isn't it? But, do you know, I can sympathize with it, in a way, for
I've always mourned so over _my_ name. 'Billy' was always such a trial
to me! Poor Uncle William wasn't the only one that prepared guns and
fishing rods to entertain the expected boy. I don't know, though, I'm
afraid if I'd been allowed to select my name I should have been a 'Helen
Clarabella' all my days, for that was the name I gave all my dolls, with
'first,' 'second,' 'third,' and so on, added to them for distinction.
Evidently I thought that 'Helen Clarabella' was the most feminine
appellation possible, and the most foreign to the despised 'Billy.' So
you see I can sympathize with Cyril to a certain extent.”
“But they must call the little chaps _something_, now,” argued Hugh.
Billy gave a sudden merry laugh.
“They do,” she gurgled, “and that's the funniest part of it. Oh, Cyril
doesn't. He always calls them impersonally 'they' or 'it.' He doesn't
see much of them anyway, now, I understand. Marie was horrified when she
realized how the nurses had been using his den as a nursery annex and
she changed all that instanter, when she took charge of things again.
The twins stay in the nursery now, I'm told. But about the names--the
nurses, it seems, have got into the way of calling them 'Dot' and
'Dimple.' One has a dimple in his cheek, and the other is a little
smaller of the two. Marie is no end distressed, particularly as she
finds that she herself calls them that; and she says the idea of boys
being 'Dot' and 'Dimple'!”
“I should say so,” laughed Calderwell. “Not I regard that as worse than
my 'Eldad' and 'Bildad.'”
“I know it, and Alice says--By the way, you haven't mentioned Alice, but
I suppose you see her occasionally.”
Billy paused in evident expectation of a reply. Billy was, in fact,
quite pluming herself on the adroit casualness with which she had
introduced the subject nearest her heart.
Calderwell raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, yes, I see her.”
“But you hadn't mentioned her.”
There was the briefest of pauses; then with a half-quizzical dejection,
there came the remark:
“You seem to forget. I told you that I stayed here this summer for
reasons too numerous, and one too heart-breaking, to mention. She was
the _one_.”
“You mean--”
“Yes. The usual thing. She turned me down. Oh, I haven't asked her yet
as many times as I did you, but--”
“_Hugh!_”
Hugh tossed her a grim smile and went on imperturbably.
“I'm older now, of course, and know more, perhaps. Besides, the finality
of her remarks was not to be mistaken.”
Billy, in spite of her sympathy for Calderwell, was conscious of a throb
of relief that at least one stumbling-block was removed from Arkwright's
possible pathway to Alice's heart.
“Did she give any special reason?” hazarded Billy, a shade too
anxiously.
“Oh, yes. She said she wasn't going to marry anybody--only her music.”
“Nonsense!” ejaculated Billy, falling back in her chair a little.
“Yes, I said that, too,” gloomed the man; “but it didn't do any good.
You see, I had known another girl who'd said the same thing once.” (He
did not look up, but a vivid red flamed suddenly into Billy's cheeks.)
“And she--when the right one came--forgot all about the music, and
married the man. So I naturally suspected that Alice would do the same
thing. In fact, I said so to her. I was bold enough to even call the man
by name--I hadn't been jealous of Arkwright for nothing, you see--but
she denied it, and flew into such an indignant allegation that there
wasn't a word of truth in it, that I had to sue for pardon before I got
anything like peace.”
“Oh-h!” said Billy, in a disappointed voice, falling quite back in her
chair this time.
“And so that's why I'm wanting especially just now to see the wheels go
'round,” smiled Calderwell, a little wistfully. “Oh, I shall get over
it, I suppose. It isn't the first time, I'll own--but some day I take it
there will be a last time. Enough of this, however! You haven't told me
a thing about yourself. How about it? When I come back, are you going
to give me a dinner cooked by your own fair hands? Going to still play
Bridget?”
Billy laughed and shook her head.
“No; far from it. Eliza has come back, and her cousin from Vermont is
coming as second girl to help her. But I _could_ cook a dinner for you
if I had to now, sir, and it wouldn't be potato-mush and cold lamb,” she
bragged shamelessly, as there sounded Bertram's peculiar ring, and the
click of his key in the lock.
It was the next afternoon that Billy called on Marie. From Marie's,
Billy went to the Annex, which was very near Cyril's new house; and
there, in Aunt Hannah's room, she had what she told Bertram afterwards
was a perfectly lovely visit.
Aunt Hannah, too, enjoyed the visit very much, though yet there was one
thing that disturbed her--the vaguely troubled look in Billy's eyes,
which to-day was more apparent than ever. Not until just before Billy
went home did something occur to give Aunt Hannah a possible clue as to
what was the meaning of it. That something was a question from Billy.
“Aunt Hannah, why don't I feel like Marie did? why don't I feel like
everybody does in books and stories? Marie went around with such a
detached, heavenly, absorbed look in her eyes, before the twins came to
her home. But I don't. I don't find anything like that in my face,
when I look in the glass. And I don't feel detached and absorbed and
heavenly. I'm happy, of course; but I can't help thinking of the dear,
dear times Bertram and I have together, just we two, and I can't seem to
imagine it at all with a third person around.”
“Billy! _Third person_, indeed!”
“There! I knew 'twould shock you,” mourned Billy. “It shocks me. I
_want_ to feel detached and heavenly and absorbed.”
“But Billy, dear, think of it--calling your own baby a third person!”
Billy sighed despairingly.
“Yes, I know. And I suppose I might as well own up to the rest of it
too. I--I'm actually afraid of babies, Aunt Hannah! Well, I am,” she
reiterated, in answer to Aunt Hannah's gasp of disapproval. “I'm not
used to them at all. I never had any little brothers and sisters, and I
don't know how to treat babies. I--I'm always afraid they'll break, or
something. I'm just as afraid of the twins as I can be. How Marie can
handle them, and toss them about as she does, I don't see.”
“Toss them about, indeed!”
“Well, it looks that way to me,” sighed Billy. “Anyhow, I know I can
never get to handle them like that--and that's no way to feel! And
I'm ashamed of myself because I _can't_ be detached and heavenly and
absorbed,” she added, rising to go. “Everybody always is, it seems, but
just me.”
“Fiddlededee, my dear!” scoffed Aunt Hannah, patting Billy's downcast
face. “Wait till a year from now, and we'll see about that third-person
bugaboo you're worrying about. _I'm_ not worrying now; so you'd better
not!”