WHEN I reached the hotel I found Miss Gage at the door, and Kendricks
coming out of the office toward her.
“Oh, here he is!” she called to him at sight of me.
“Where in the world have you been?” he demanded. “I had just found out
from the clerk that you hadn’t come in yet, and I was going back for you
with a searchlight.”
“Oh, I wasn’t so badly lost as all that,” I returned. “I missed you in
the crowd at the door, but I knew you’d get home somehow, and so I came
on without you. But my aged steps are not so quick as yours.”
The words, mechanically uttered, suggested something, and I thought that
if they were in for weirdness I would give them as much weirdness as they
could ask for. “When you get along toward fifty you’ll find that the
foot you’ve still got out of the grave doesn’t work so lively as it used.
Besides, I was interested in the night effect. It’s so gloriously dark;
and I had a fine sense of isolation as I came along, as if I were
altogether out of my epoch and my environment. I felt as if the earth
was a sort of _Flying Dutchman_, and I was the only passenger. It was
about the weirdest sensation I ever had. It reminded me, I don’t know
how, exactly of the feeling I had when I was young, and I saw the sunset
one evening through the woods after a sleet-storm.”
They stared at each other as I went on, and I could see Kendricks’s fine
eyes kindle with an imaginative appreciation of the literary quality of
the coincidence. But when I added, “Did you ever read a poem about the
end of the world by that City of Dreadful Night man?” Miss Gage
impulsively caught me by the coat lapel and shook me.
“Ah, it was you all the time! I knew there was somebody following us,
and I might have _known_ who it was!”
We all gave way in a gale of laughter, and sat down on the verandah and
had our joke out in full recognition of the fact. When Kendricks rose to
go at last, I said, “We won’t say anything about this little incident to
Mrs. March, hey?” And then they laughed again as if it were the finest
wit in the world, and Miss Gage bade me a joyful good-night at the head
of the stairs as she went off to her room and I to mine.
I found Mrs. March waiting up with a book; and as soon as I shut myself
in with her she said, awfully, “What _were_ you laughing so about?”
“Laughing? Did you hear me laughing?”
“The whole house heard you, I’m afraid. You certainly ought to have
known better, Basil. It was very inconsiderate of you.” And as I saw
she was going on with more of that sort of thing, to divert her thoughts
from my crime I told her the whole story. It had quite the effect I
intended up to a certain point. She even smiled a little, as much as a
woman could be expected to smile who was not originally in the joke.
“And they had got to comparing weird experiences?” she asked.
“Yes; the staleness of the thing almost made me sick. Do you remember
when we first compared our weird experiences? But I suppose they will go
on doing it to the end of time, and it will have as great a charm for the
last man and woman as it had for Adam and Eve when they compared _their_
weird experiences.”
“And was that what you were laughing at?”
“We were laughing at the wonderful case of telepathy I put up on them.”
Mrs. March faced her open book down on the table before her, and looked
at me with profound solemnity. “Well, then, I can tell you, my dear, it
is no laughing matter. If they have got to the weird it is very serious;
and her talking to him about her family, and his wanting to know about
her father, that’s serious too—far more serious than either of them can
understand. I don’t like it, Basil; we have got a terrible affair on our
hands.”
“Terrible?”
“Yes, terrible. As long as he was interested in her simply from a
literary point of view, though I didn’t like that either, I could put up
with it; but now that he’s got to telling her about himself, and
exchanging weird experiences with her, it’s another thing altogether.
Oh, I never wanted Kendricks brought into the affair at all.”
“Come now, Isabel! Stick to the facts, please.”
“No matter! It was you that discovered the girl, and then something had
to be done. I was perfectly shocked when you told me that Mr. Kendricks
was in town, because I saw at once that he would have to be got in for
it; and now we have to think what we shall do.”
“Couldn’t we think better in the morning?”
“No; we must think at once. I shall not sleep to-night anyhow. My peace
is gone. I shall have to watch them every instant.”
“Beginning at this instant. Why not wait till you can see them?”
“Oh, you can’t joke it away, my dear. If I find they are really
interested in each other I shall have to speak. I am responsible.”
“The young lady,” I said, more to gain time than anything else, “seems
quite capable of taking care of herself.”
“That makes it all the worse. Do you think I care for her only? It’s
Kendricks too that I care for. I don’t know that I care for her at all.”
“Oh, then I think we may fairly leave Kendricks to his own devices; and
I’m not alarmed for Miss Gage either, though I do care for her a great
deal.”
“I don’t understand how you can be so heartless about it, Basil,” said
Mrs. March, plaintively. “She is a young girl, and she has never seen
anything of the world, and of course if he keeps on paying her attention
in this way she can’t help thinking that he is interested in her. Men
never can see such things as women do. They think that, until a man has
actually asked a girl to marry him, he hasn’t done anything to warrant
her in supposing that he is in love with her, or that she has any right
to be in love with him.”
“That is true; we can’t imagine that she would be so indelicate.”
“I see that you’re determined to tease, my dear,” said Mrs. March, and
she took up her book with an air of offence and dismissal. “If you won’t
talk seriously, I hope you will think seriously, and try to realise what
we’ve got in for. Such a girl couldn’t imagine that we had simply got
Mr. Kendricks to go about with her from a romantic wish to make her have
a good time, and that he was doing it to oblige us, and wasn’t at all
interested in her.”
“It does look a little preposterous, even to the outsider,” I admitted.
“I am glad you are beginning to see it in that light, my dear, and if you
can think of anything to do by morning I shall be humbly thankful. _I_
don’t expect to.”
“Perhaps I shall dream of something,” I said more lightly than I felt.
“How would it do for you to have a little talk with her—a little motherly
talk—and hint round, and warn her not to let her feelings run away with
her in Kendricks’s direction?” Mrs. March faced her book down in her
lap, and listened as if there might be some reason in the nonsense I was
talking. “You might say that he was a society man, and was in great
request, and then intimate that there was a prior attachment, or that he
was the kind of man who would never marry, but was really cold-hearted
with all his sweetness, and merely had a passion for studying character.”
“Do you think that would do, Basil?” she asked.
“Well, I thought perhaps you might think so.”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t,” she sighed.
“All that we can do now is to watch them, and act promptly, if we see
that they are really in love, either of them.”
“I don’t believe,” I said, “that I should know that they were in love
even if I saw it. I have forgotten the outward signs, if I ever knew
them. Should he give her flowers? He’s done it from the start; he’s
brought her boxes of Huyler candy, and lent her books; but I dare say
he’s been merely complying with our wishes in doing it. I doubt if
lovers sigh nowadays. I didn’t sigh myself, even in my time; and I don’t
believe any passion could make Kendricks neglect his dress. He keeps his
eyes on her all the time, but that may be merely an effort to divine her
character. I don’t believe I should know, indeed I don’t.”
“I shall,” said Mrs. March.