trained in his master's service to show a flicker of surprise or
curiosity concerning his master's errands. But a master's
weakness being only too often the man's, the only blunder of his
ten years service slipped now from his faintly alcoholic lips.
"Good evening, Dighton!" nodded his master. [175]
"Good evening, sir!" saluted the man with punctilious formality.
"Here, fix those cushions a little better!" pointed his master
as he helped the vague white figure into the boat. "Here, Dighton,
give the lady a hand!"
Lifting his eyes for the first time to the little lady's laughing
face peering out half-affrighted from her bright disheveled hair,
Dighton the man gave a purely involuntary gasp, and stumbled a
bit clumsily over some shadowy obstacle.
"That's all right, Dighton," laughed his master. "She's got the
looks to knock most any man over! Your new Mistress, Dighton!"
he called out proudly.
"Your--your new Mistress?" bungled the man's addled lips.
Scarcely sensing the unhappy twist, but lashed like a whip by
the single expletive and ghastly silence that followed it,
Daphne curled up in her cushions and prattled her excitement
into space.
"Oh, what a night!" she cried. "Oh, what tall cocoanut palms!
Oh, what bright stars! Oh--oh--oh, whatever in the world shall I
[176] do about clothes?" she questioned precipitously. Gayer and
gayer her little laugh flashed from her lips. "Why, just for common
humanity," she gloated, "Miss Merriwayne will have to lend me a
nightie! And shoes and stockings! And a dress! Oh, won't I look
funny in Miss Merriwayne's great big clothes?" Dismayed at the
unbroken silence she turned and stared up wondering-eyed at the
furious, frowning man beside her. "Why--what's the matter
Sheridan Kaire?" she whispered. "You look so--sort of--as though
your face hurt? Does it?" With her eyes drawn as though by some
irresistible fascination to the pale zig-zagged outline of his
scar, she asked the one childish question that was left on her
lips. "Whoever hurt you so?" she questioned. "Was it in a--a
brave war or something? How ever in the world could----"
"Hush!" snarled the man. "For God's sake, hush!" Then in
passionate contrition he bent down through the darkness and
touched his lips to her finger tips. "Forgive me," he pleaded,
"my nerves _are_ jumpy!"
Brightly the house-boat loomed up before [177] them. In another
moment they would be alongside.
Once more the man bent down to the little figure beside him.
"Just once," he demanded, "from your own lips, I want to hear
it! It wasn't I who incited you to run away--was it? It was
your own idea, I mean? You'd already made up your mind for some
sort of a running--before you stumbled on me? I'm simply the
direction you decided to run in?" For a single instant across
his worldly young face the question of his own responsibility
flecked his lean features into an almost exaggerated asceticism.
"I'm not specially anxious, you know, to pose as a seducer of
the young."
"As a what?" questioned Daphne.
Then softly thudding into the big house boat's side the little
launch finished its journey, and only the chance of laughter was
left to either the man or the girl.
"Bang!" flew a little ladder to the launch. "Creak!" strained a
rope. With a patter of soft-soled feet a half dozen white-sailored
forms came running! A dark blue officer peered down from the deck!
An extra [178] lantern flashed! And another! And another! From some
far shadowed corner a piano and violin swept blithely into melody!
Then through hands and lips infinitely more discreet than
Dighton's, but eyes not nearly so blank, the sparkling,
spirited, utterly disheveled, utterly unexplainable little
figure followed the master of the house-boat to the luxuriant,
softly lighted cabin, where gathered round an almost priceless
mahogany table two frowning, serious-minded women, and three
frowning serious-minded men sat pouring over a great flare of
blue prints.
"Nothing," affirmed President Merriwayne's clear, incisive voice
at the moment, "nothing--I believe, so affects the human mind as
a noble appearance."
With a laugh about as mirthless as a maniac's, but a humor
fairly convulsed with joy, Sheridan Kaire took a single glance
at Daphne, and drew her into the room.
"Behold, Ladies and Gentlemen," he announced, "my Pirate Queen!
The future arbiter of my fortunes!"
From the priceless mahogany table five chairs jerked back as
though by a single thud. [179]
Five pairs of eyes flared suddenly on Daphne, lapped up the
beauty of her, the disheveledness, the audacity, and blinked
their lids with astonishment.
"Is--is it dramatics?" quavered the older lady's fine patrician
voice. "What a--what a child!"
"Dramatics?" bridled Miss Merriwayne. As though the unrecognized
figure before her was deaf, dumb, blind, she lifted her lorgnette
in frowning scrutiny. "Some of the poor whites down here are
extraordinarily good looking," she conceded, "but don't you really
think, Mr. Kaire, that your jest is just a little--little----"
"Jest?" said Sheridan Kaire.
From the deck just above their heads the thud of a dragging
anchor rope sounded suddenly, and the sharp cry of orders passed
from one sailor to another.
"In ten minutes at least," laughed Kaire, "or in five, Heaven
knows if we can make it, we shall _all_ be off!" With a quite
unnecessary air of diablerie he turned and chucked Daphne under
the chin.
From the further side of the lamp, beyond [180] the unmistakable
architect, beyond the unmistakable trustee, a figure not yet
distinct, rose slowly into view. It was John Burnarde. Very
courteously he advanced towards his host. Not a muscle of his
face twitched, not an accent of his voice either lifted or fell.
"Truly, Mr. Kaire," he suggested smilingly as one might have
smiled at a maniac, "don't you think perhaps it might be better
to finish the discussion outside? No matter what a bachelor may
contend his rights to be as regards his personal affairs with
women, you will hardly insist, I think, on pursuing said affair
while my mother and President Merriwayne remain your guests?
Surely, tomorrow, when you are more yourself again----"
"I am not drunk!" flared Sheridan Kaire, "and what's more you
haven't seen me drunk this whole week more than once! Or, at
most, twice!"
"Drunk or sober," said John Burnarde quite unflinchingly, "I
request that you do not involve us in any of your escapades!"
"Escapades?" scoffed Kaire. "You----"
From the shadow to which she had partly [181] retreated, Daphne
sprang out, and brushed the bright hair from her eyes.
"Why John!" she cried, "don't you know me? It's Daphne! Daphne
Bretton!"
"_What_?" staggered the new dean. "You? Why, Daphne! Why----"
"What difference is it to you who it is?" interposed Kaire a bit
roughly.
But before anybody could answer the President herself had jumped
to her feet.
"_You_, Daphne Bretton?" she gasped accusingly. "_You_?
What--are--you--doing here? Isn't it enough that you have disgraced
your college without adding this fresh escapade to your career?
What--what wild, unprincipled doings are you up to now? Is there
no shame in you? No----" With an imperious gesture she turned to
her host. "Surely, Mr. Kaire," she implored him, "you are not in
earnest about this girl? Are we really to understand for one
moment that you contemplate allying yourself with this girl?
Putting the stewardship of your great fortune in her hands? A
girl with such a history? A girl with such a character?"
"Miss Bretton's character is not under [182] discussion here," said
John Burnarde decisively.
"Once again," snapped Sheridan Kaire, "I ask what affair Daphne
Bretton's character is to you?"
"It's this to me," began John Burnarde with his tortured eyes
fairly raking the beloved young face before him. ('What _was
she_ doing here?' ached every pulse in his body. So lovely, so
irresponsible, so strangely all alone with this notorious young
roue.) "It's this to me," he repeated dully, glanced back for a
single worried second at his frail mother's dreadful pallor, and
crossed his arms on his breast. "_What_ is it to me, Daphne?" he
asked.
"It's this to him," said Daphne fearlessly. "He liked me a
little, but when the trouble came, it had to stop. It wasn't his
fault! My father said it wasn't his fault! There were merely
other things--other people, that had to be considered. It's all
right. It's quite all right!" Defiantly the little chin lifted.
"Quite all right! I'm going--away--with Sheridan Kaire!"
With a piteously vain effort John Burnarde's mother struggled to
reach her crutch [183] and lapsed helplessly back into her chair
again. Only her white up-turned face betrayed her shock.
But for once in his life John Burnarde did not notice his mother.
"Oh, no--no!" he cried. "You don't know what you're doing! A
lovely--lovely--young girl like you to give yourself to a man
like Kaire with a reputation so notorious that----"
"I'm not too notorious--I notice--for you people--to beg libraries
from," drawled Sheridan Kaire. Then quite suddenly he leaned back
against the wainscoating of the cabin and began to laugh sardonically.
"Jabber all you want to," he said. "It's a good way to pass the
time! Just a minute more now and we'll be off, beating it for Key
West or Galveston--or any other place where the parsons are thickest
and quickest! Miss Daphne Bretton and Mr. Sheridan Kaire--heavily
chaperoned by President Claudia Merriwayne! All the newspapers
will lean heavily on that chaperone item! So square it any way
you want to with your college, Miss Merriwayne!" he bowed. "Now
that you [184] have squared it with Daphne!" More hilariously
yet he yielded to his mirth, and called loudly for the Steward.
"Champagne for everybody, to-night!" he ordered. "Guests, crew,
cabin boys, everybody! If the cat won't drink it, drown him in
it! Drat libraries!" he shouted lustily. "_This is_ my Bachelor
Dinner!"
Swishing like a serpent's hiss, Miss Merriwayne started for her
cabin. As she passed Daphne she drew her skirts aside with a
gesture that would have been sufficiently insulting without any
further action. But her tongue refused to be robbed of its own
particular reprisal.
"As I have remarked once before," she murmured icily, "you--you
little wanton!"
"_Not so fast_!" cried a new voice from the doorway. Towering,
white head and brown shoulders over everybody, Jaffrey Bretton
loomed on the scene.
"Oh--Hades!" sighed the master of the house-boat.
"_Not so fast, anybody_!" begged Jaffrey Bretton. If the smile
on his face was just a little bit set it was at least still a
smile. [185] Quite casually above the spurt and flare of his
inevitable match and his inevitable cigarette his shrewd glance
swept the gamut of startled faces. "_What's_ all the rumpus
about?" he quizzed. Simple as the question was it seemed for
some reason or other to put a queer sort of pucker into
everybody's pulses.
("Oh, what a place!" shivered the oldest trustee. "Why did we
ever come?") ("Oh, what a man!" quivered the architect. "I wish
I had designed him!")
Ignoring all other pulses, Jaffrey Bretton turned to Miss
Merriwayne. With sincere and unaffected interest he appraised
the majestic if somewhat arrogant bloom of what had been only a
mere bud of good looks and ambition twenty years before.
"You are certainly very handsome, Clytie," he affirmed.
"'Clytie?'" gasped the oldest trustee.
"C-Clytie?" stammered Daphne.
"Miss Merriwayne and I were boy and girl friends together,"
observed Bretton with unruffled blandness. "But for the moment
it is not personal reminiscence that concerns me most."
Towering, dominant, absolutely [186] relentless, but still serene,
he blocked Miss Merriwayne's exit. "Just--what, Clytie," he asked,
"were you calling my little girl?"
"You heard what I called her, Mr. Bretton!" said Miss
Merriwayne. "I called her a wanton!"
Above the flare of a fresh match and a fresh cigarette Jaffrey
Bretton restudied her face.
"And--do--you--find it convenient now to retract it?" he asked.
"I am not in the habit of retracting my statements," said Miss
Merriwayne.
"S--o?" mused Jaffrey Bretton. As though by pure accident, his
eyes strayed to the blue prints on the table. "What have we
here?" he smiled, "building plans?"
Sardonically from his own particular silence Sheridan Kaire's
laugh rang out.
"Those are the plans for the new library," he confided, "that
your daughter and I are considering giving to her--to her Alma
Mater!"
Humor for humor Jaffrey Bretton's laugh answered his. "Good
stuff!" he said, "the one bright thought!" [187]
"And you?" he addressed one stranger, "are the--the possible
architect?"
"I am," conceded the architect.
Very definitely Jaffrey Bretton drew back a little from the door
and pointed to the passageway. "Trot along!" he smiled. "And
you?" he asked the old gentleman.
"I am Miss Merriwayne's oldest trustee," asserted that dignitary
with some unctuousness.
"Trot along!" smiled Jaffrey Bretton.
With punctilious courtesy he waved the Dean's lovely old mother
after them. "For the moment," he begged her, "you will pardon my
peremptoriness? The thing that remains to be said is said best
to the least numbers."
"But I--I like--your little girl!" protested the frail but
determinate aristocrat.
"So do I!" smiled Bretton, but nodded her out.
"Who are you?" demanded Bretton of the only man but Kaire who
remained.
"I am John Burnarde!" said the man, quite invincibly.
"I thought so!" said Bretton.
"And as Miss Merriwayne's rather special [188] representative at
this time," added John Burnarde, "I refuse to leave the room while
she remains!"
"Oh, I like _you_!" said Bretton. "I've always rather liked you!
But whether I did or not!" he crisped, "you've _got_ to stay!
You and Miss Merriwayne, and Daphne, and myself!" With a toss of
his white hair he flung a message to the master of the house-boat.
"Sorry to bully your guests so, Kaire!" he said. "But not knowing
the plan of your boat, and being too formal to rummage around very
much," he added dryly, "this cabin seemed somehow the surest place
for a rather private conversation. . . . Shall you still remain
with us as our host?"
"I certainly shall!" snapped Kaire.
"You are perfectly welcome," smiled Jaffrey Bretton. "And you
notice, perhaps--that the engine has not started?"
"I notice only too damned well," said Kaire, "that the engine
has not started!"
Out of the shadowy curve of Sheridan Kaire's jealous arm Daphne
sprang suddenly forward.
"Oh, Old-Dad!" she besought him, [189] "please--Please--don't make
such a fuss! What's the good of it? What's the use? If I'm bad,
I'm bad! And--unless I'm going crazy, too--what is there left
but _fun_?"
"But you see you're all wrong," smiled her father. "You're not
'bad' at all! Without any question whatsoever you're the goodest
person here!"
"Oh--Old-Dad!" scoffed Daphne.
"But I mean it," said her father. "The little fracas at college
was only a mistake. Richard Wiltoner's mistake, indeed, rather
than yours--except in so far as you dared him into the making of
it. Oh, shucks!" shrugged her father. "Everybody makes mistakes!"
"Not mistakes like mine!" flared Daphne.
"Oh, yes, they do," smiled her father. "So, please, I beg of you
don't go bad just on that account! Truly, you'd be surprised if
you knew how many staid grown people of your acquaintance have
made very similar mistakes. Now take Miss Merriwayne and myself,
for instance. Twenty----"
With a gasp of horror Miss Merriwayne reached out and touched
him on the arm. Her face was stark, but even now she did not [190]
lose altogether the poise so long and laboriously acquired. "Some
other time--some other day," she essayed desperately, "I will be very
glad to--to discuss old days with you. But now--this moment--your
remarks--your suggestions are--are ribald. Have you no--no honor?"
she implored him.
"None--any--longer that conflicts with my daughter's honor,"
said Jaffrey Bretton. To the several pairs of startled eyes
raised to his, Jaffrey Bretton gave no glance. Every conscious
thought in his body was fixed at the moment on Daphne. "Come
here, Honey," he said.
With embarrassment but no fear Daphne came to him.
"Let me pass!" ordered Miss Merriwayne.
"It is not convenient," said Jaffrey Bretton.
Across Daphne's tousled head, past Claudia Merriwayne's statuesque
shoulder, he stared off retrospectively into space. "What I have to
say," he confided, "will take only an instant . . . . Twenty years
ago," he mused, "Miss Merriwayne and I were trapped in a situation
quite astonishingly similar to Daphne's college tragedy. . . . Except
that [191] in our case there were four thoughtless youngsters involved
instead of two--and infinitely more kissing. . . . Let me see,"
he turned suddenly to Daphne. "In your case I believe there was
no kissing?"
"I should think not!" raged Daphne.
"U-m-m-m," mused her father. "Well--there was certainly _some_
kissing in ours."
"This is outrageous!" cried Miss Merriwayne. "Let me pass!"
With a smile that would have been insolent if it had not been so
brooding, Jaffrey Bretton spread his arms across the doorway.
"You are a bigger girl, Clytie, than you used to be," he said.
"You can't slip out of this situation quite as easily as you
slipped from the other."
With a shrug of his shoulders he turned and stared into space
again. When he glanced back at his companions it was with just a
little bit of a start.
"Oh, yes--I forgot," he said. "There was a door--that time,
that wasn't blocked. And the other boy jumped through the
window. . . . What possible haven was there left," he asked,
"for the panic-stricken little [192] room-mate except in my arms?
She smelt of violets, I remember," he mused, "and her throat was
very white. Nobody ever knew about the presence of the other boy.
And only the four of us knew about Cly--'Miss Merriwayne' I would
say. But if Miss Merriwayne had come back," he quickened ever so
slightly, "and acknowledged frankly that she, also, had been
present, the school authorities, I suppose, would hardly have judged
the unintentional tete-a-tete as harshly--as they did. . . . Even at
the eleventh hour, if she had been willing to come back and
acknowledge it or at the twelfth for the matter of that--or
even at one o'clock or two, while the outraged Powers harangued
on the case . . . . But by three o'clock, that timorous little
room-mate, seeing no other exit, slashed a door through her
little white throat and fled away.
"So you see, Daphne," he smiled, "that even across a mistake
like _that_----"
"You mean," blanched Daphne, "that----"
Like a man straining very slightly toward more air the new
Dean's throat muscles lifted. [193]
On Kaire's face alone the grin remained half a grin, anyway.
"Sailed away from a sinking wreck
With a--something--something--on her deck,"
he quoted diabolically.
"_Hush_!" warned Jaffrey Bretton.
"I had my own life to consider!" flared Claudia Merriwayne.
"You had your own life to consider," bowed Jaffrey Bretton.
"My people were very poor!" flared Claudia Merriwayne. "They had
made great sacrifices to educate me! Already, even then, my
chances of future academic distinction were the sole topics in
my home!"
"Already," acquiesced Jaffrey Bretton, "your chances of future
academic distinction were the sole topics in your home! . . .
"So you see, Daphne," he turned and readdressed his little girl
suddenly, "so you see that, even across a mistake like _that_,
people may yet achieve real honors and much usefulness!"
Like a man a little bit weary, his arms [194] dropped down to his
sides again, but his figure still blocked the doorway.
"That is all, Clytie," he bowed. "And you may rest assured, of
course, that neither Daphne nor Mr. Kaire nor I will ever repeat
the little anecdote which I have just quoted--unless Daphne herself
shall contend that Richard Wiltoner should know. . . . Mr. Burnarde,
of course, needs no guarantees, having already proved with fearless
courtesy that your interests are his."
With frank cordiality he swung about and held out his hand to
Burnarde.
"The best of luck to you, Burnarde! in all things!" he smiled.
"If Fate had ordained you to marry my little girl, you certainly
would have made a fine Friend-in-Law for me as well as an
honorable lord and master for Daphne! . . . And after the first
haste of the honeymoon was over what good times we would have
had together--you and I! Winter nights and an open fire!--our
books--our pipes--a plate of apples--a jug of cider--and the
Classics! With Daphne sitting low--somewhere on a little
stool--just a little bit off, somehow, on the edge of it all?
Very [195] beautiful? Very miraculous? Very soul-satisfying to
the eye--service of your senses? Darning your stockings, perhaps?
Or freshening up your second-best dress suit? With her little
bright head cocked ever so slightly to one side, listening,
yearning, starving for the 'Pipe of Pan' which neither you nor
I, Burnarde, will ever hear again nor recognize, probably, if we
did. . . . You chaps, Burnarde, whose hearts grow in the shape
of Books--you chaps who mix the best ink-knowledge of the world
with your own good blood--you love very purely, very ideally. No
man could fail to trust you. But, Youth, Burnarde, brooks no
rivals, either of work or play. And in the decision between two
women--which more men have to make than any woman, thank God,
ever guesses--you have chosen, I think--very wisely!"
Crackling with starch Miss Merriwayne swung sharply around.
"I consider it exceedingly impertinent," she affirmed, "for you
to link my name with Doctor Burnarde's in any way at just this
time! There is not the slightest excuse for it, not the
slightest justification." [196]
"It was Doctor Burnarde's--mother that I referred to," smiled
Bretton, and bowed both the Dean and the President from the
room.
If the little gasp that slipped from his lips expressed
relaxation as did Daphne's sharp sigh, or Kaire's somewhat
breathy grin, such relaxation was at least quite mutually
curtailed. Without any hesitancy whatsoever the cabin door
closed very definitely behind Miss Merriwayne, and from the
clicking lock Jaffrey Bretton extracted the key and threw it
down on the mahogany table.
"Now for--_you_, Sheridan Kaire!" he said.
"I am all here," grinned Kaire. "Also--incidentally, there are
other keys to the cabin door."
"Why, of course there are other keys to the cabin door,"
conceded Bretton with perfect good humor. From his own pocket as
he spoke he drew forth a bunch of keys, freed them from their
controlling ring, and tossed them in confused and confusing
muddle after the cabin key. "Any of us can get out of this cabin
in two minutes," he confided. "But it is not my intention that
anybody should bolt from it in much less time than that. [197] Many
a man has cooled his original purposes in the time that it takes
to fit an unfamiliar key to a perfectly familiar lock. Also,
while we are rating incidental things, it does not seem best to
me that, with Lost Man and Alliman waiting in the launch, we
should run any risk of being rushed from outside. If one of us
should sneeze, for instance--or raise his voice in any special
emphasis?--Alliman is so deplorably impulsive with his shot-gun."
"I get you!" said Kaire. "There is not to be any fuss."
"You get me perfectly," bowed Bretton. "Now for the--the
discussion." Quite casually he walked over to the mahogany
table, sat down, took a single interested glance at the blue
prints and swept them all aside. "Let's all be seated," he said.
Very reluctantly Daphne came forward into the light and slid
down into the chair opposite him.
"I--I look so funny," she deplored.
"You certainly do," said her father. "Yet I would be willing to
wager," he smiled quite unexpectedly, "that of all the variant
ladies who have been entertained in this room there [198] has never
been a lovelier one or--one more tempting."
"_Sir_?" bridled Kaire. With the dark flush rising once again to
his cheek-bones he sprang forward to the table and perched
himself on the edge of it with a sinister sort of nonchalance.
"_Sir_?" he repeated threateningly.
"Oh, don't concern yourself for a moment with my daughter's
tender sensibilities," begged Bretton. "Their conservation--you
must understand--is still in my hands."
Somberly for a moment each man concerned himself with the
lighting of a fresh cigarette.
Then Bretton jerked back his chair.
"Just what was your plan, Kaire?" he asked.
"I had planned," said Kaire, without an instant's hesitation,
"to take Daphne to the first port we could make and marry her
any old way she wanted to be married."
"Why?" asked Bretton.
"_Why_?" snarled Kaire. "_Why_? Well, what an extraordinary
question! Why does any man marry any woman?"
"For so many different reasons," said [199] Bretton, "that it
rather specially interested me to hear just what yours were."
"Why, I'm crazy about her!" flushed Kaire. "Utterly mad! Never
saw anything in my life that I wanted so much!"
"Well--_you can't have her_!" said Bretton.
"By the Lord!--I _will_ have her!" cried Kaire. "Why--why
shouldn't I have her?" he demanded. "Fate fairly threw her into
my arms just now, didn't it? I didn't know you people were here!
I didn't know where in thunder you people were!--or how I was
going to find you with your blooming old dog! Sitting on the
beach I was, all in the dark--and--and the girl comes crawling
right into my arms! 'Most shot her, I did!--thought she was some
kind of a varmint! Thought----"
"Daphne----" said her father.
With an impetuous gesture Kaire flung the interruption aside.
"She'd have run away with someone!" he cried. "Not to-night, of
course! But soon! Next week! Next month! She was all primed for
it! And you can't stop 'em when they once get started!--not the
high-spirited [200] ones!--not when they're hurt and mad, too! And
she might have done a heap sight worse than run away with me! I'm
going to worship her! I'm going to give her everything she
wants! I'm going to take her every place she wants to go! Why,
six months from now she won't even remember that she went to the
damned old college! Six months from now she'll think that being
expelled from college was something she read in a comic paper!
And I'm--going--to take--her," he said, with a suddenly lowered
and curiously sinister positiveness, "whether you like it or
not!--because she has given me her word!"
"Is that true, Daphne?" asked her father.
Like a little white whirlwind Daphne jumped to her feet.
"Why, of course it's true, Old-Dad!" she stormed. "Live or die,
sink or swim, I have given Mr. Kaire my solemnest word that I
will marry him!"
"An absolutely--unconditional word?" probed Bretton.
"On one condition only!" triumphed Daphne. [201]
"And that condition----" drawled her father.
"Is a matter of confidence between your daughter and me,"
interposed Kaire hastily.
"I respect the confidence," said Bretton. "But only a fool could
fail to make half a guess of what that condition was. . . . You
are keeping unconscionably sober."
"What I keep is my own business!" snapped Kaire.
"Per--haps," conceded Bretton. Quite casually, as one whom
neither Time nor Circumstance particularly crowded, he picked up
an ivory paper cutter from the table and studied it with some
intentness before he spoke again.
"Just what--were you doing on Martha's Island to-night, Kaire?"
he asked.
"What were you doing yourself?" quizzed Kaire.
"Do you trade your answer for mine?" smiled Bretton.
"Certainly!" said Kaire.
"I was there because Martha sent for me," said Bretton. "I
thought she was in some sort of trouble. I had no idea it was
about you [202] and the dog. . . . You were a brick about the dog,
Kaire!" he brightened abruptly. "And I sha'n't soon forget it!
_But you can't have my daughter!_"
Unflinching eye for unflinching eye, Sheridan Kaire answered the
challenge.
"I most always look Martha up when I'm down this way," he
confided informationally. "I knew Martha in Paris twelve years
ago."
"And loved Martha in Paris twelve years ago?" murmured Bretton.
"Everybody loved Martha in Paris twelve years ago, you know!"
shrugged Kaire.
"No, I didn't know," said Bretton. "I was in New Zealand about
that time. It was at an insane asylum in Chicago that I first
saw Martha."
"At an insane asylum?" frowned Kaire. "I knew she'd gone queer,
but I never knew it was as queer as that."
"It was quite as queer as that," said Bretton, a bit dryly.
"Right in the midst of one of her best vaudeville acts, it
seems, she went into hysterics because a man in the front row
had on a red tie--and on the way home to her hotel she fainted
in her carriage at a scarlet [203] hat in some brilliantly lighted
shop window. So they shut her up. And a medical friend of mine
was quite a bit interested in the case. Most extraordinarily
simple his explanation was. No Indian massacres involved, no
hidden Bluebeard Chambers. Something as trivial, perhaps, as a
kitten's cut foot bleeding across a child's first white dress--a
nervous injury so trivial that no one had stopped to investigate
it. . . . But thirty years afterward, when Life got ready to
smash her, it went back thirty years and smashed her there!
Seems sort of too bad though," mused Bretton, "to have to be
shut up just because you can't digest red. Some people, you
know, can't digest oysters. And at least two friends of mine
experience an almost complete mental stoppage at the very
mention of Suffrage. Yet _they_ are still at large! . . . So we
got Martha out of the asylum," he quickened, "and reinvested her
life and her fortunes in an all-green jungle, where, except for
a curious impression that I am her benefactor, and the unspoken
but doubtless persistent apprehension that she may even yet
sight the crimson of a gay yacht-cushion or [204] the flare of a
tourist's sweater and revert to chaos again, she seems to me
perfectly normal." With a little grim smack of his lips he
seemed to bite off the end of his narrative. "And that, Sheridan
Kaire," he snapped, "is the full and complete account of my
acquaintance with Martha. . . . But yours----" he attested very
slowly, very distinctly, "was not the full and complete account
of yours!"
With his voice as quiet as a knife Kaire swung round from his
table corner.
"Since when, Mr. Bretton," he asked, "has it been considered
healthy for one man to call another a liar?"
"Whatever worry you have about the healthiness of anything,"
smiled Bretton, "should concern yourself, I think--rather than
me. . . . No one will ever shut _me_ up," he smiled, "because,
like poor Martha, I also am just a little bit color-mad! 'Seeing
red' though isn't what bothers me, you understand?--it's seeing
_yellow_!"
"You think I have a yellow streak?" flushed Kaire.
"Most of us have," smiled Bretton. "But [205] yours--at the
moment--looks to me unduly broad!"
"Why, Old-Dad!" flamed Daphne. "How can you speak so to--to the
man I'm going to marry?
"But you see--you're not going to marry him!" smiled her father.
"I tell you I am!" flamed Daphne. "I have given my word!"
"And she'll keep it, too!" triumphed Kaire. "High-strung kids
always do, somehow! Whatever else they smash--china, hearts,
laws--they never seem to break their words!--not before they're
twenty, anyway!" he grinned with sudden diablerie. "And Daphne
is only eighteen!"
"Hanged if you're not rather an amusing cuss!" admitted Bretton.
Very coolly he narrowed his eyes to the insolent young face
before him. "I--I recognize your charm! Two parts devil to one
part imp--and all the rest of it. The mysterious fascination of
your scar with every emotion you feel in the World traveling up
and down its white track--in an open car! Truly, I'm sincerely
sorry about your health!" [206]
"Oh, quit twitting about my lungs!" snarled Kaire.
"Lungs?" questioned Bretton with faintly raised eyebrows.
"Lungs? Oh, dear me--there are several other things about your
looks--besides lungs--that I don't like!" Mercilessly, but not
maliciously, he jumped up and crossed to a spot directly
confronting Kaire. "With your waggish humor," he said, "and
your inherently sportsmanlike instincts, you might have made a
pretty good lad if you'd only started earlier." Piercingly his
eyes probed into Kaire's. "But my little girl," he said,
"isn't--going--to pay--because you didn't start earlier!"
With an oath Kaire sprang to his feet.
"I'm not the only man in the world who's been wild!" he cried.
"And you know it--if anybody does!"
"You're the only man I think of at the moment," said Bretton,
"who isn't pretty sorry about it when it comes to offering his
stale hand to the first real woman of his life."
"Is--that--so?" sneered Kaire.
"It's--so," said Bretton very quietly. With a single glance at
Daphne he turned to Kaire [207] again, struck another match, lit
another cigarette. "Love isn't an overcoat, you know, Kaire," he
said. "It's underclothes! The White Linen of Life! And there seems
to be something--peculiarly and particularly offensive to a fastidious
body--in being proffered personal linen which still retains even
the scent--let alone the sweat of a previous relation . . . . The
Almighty, our Mothers, and our Ministers, may forgive us our slovenly
dinginess or our careless laundrying, being all of them more or
less Museum Collectors and interested inherently in our historical
values or the original fineness of our weave-or the ultimate
endurance of our warp and woof. But the Almighty--and our
Mothers--and our Ministers--don't have to _wear_ us, Kaire!
Not next to their skins! Don't have to sleep with us--wake with
us--live with us--die with us!" The hand that held the cigarette
trembled very slightly, the eyes that glanced back again at Daphne
were dark and poignant with pain. "You are perfectly right, Kaire!
No man knows better than I the mess that a chap may make of his
life--nor how poor the fabric that I, personally--in [208] the common
experience of men--will have to offer the woman I love . . . . very
worn it will be, very frayed!--but at least it has been cleansed
in the bitter tears of regret!"
"Is that--so?" sneered Kaire.
"It is--so," persisted Bretton. "And God knows that neither
Piety nor Wit nor anything in the world but sheer Good Luck
pulled me ashore in time. But, like other half-drowned men, I
suppose, I had neither wit nor time to choose my landing. Rocks,
sands, valleys, mountains, all looked like miracles to me. So,
mistaking austerity for purity, and severity for integrity, I
married a woman to whom the slightest caress was a liberty, and
marriage itself a sacrilege. In being sorry for myself I have
not altogether, I trust, failed to be sorry for her. We are made
as we are made. But it is only natural I suppose--that I should
like my daughter to be a Good Lover. I believe in Good Lovers.
But no one can make a good lover who is mated to a poor one!"
"I'll risk the kind of Lover I am!" cried Kaire.
"_I won't_! affirmed Bretton. [209]
"There are also some things that I won't do!" grinned Kaire. "I
won't release your daughter from her promise!"
"She doesn't love you, you know?" warned Bretton. "Even granting
perfectly frankly that you have excited her wonderment,
'wonderment' isn't love. We're all of us put together on a more
or less hasty plan, I suppose, but just because some forgotten
basting thread gives us an odd tweak now and then doesn't mean,
you know, that the actual seams of our existence are ripping any."
"I don't care what anything means," said Kaire, "as long as
Daphne has given me her promise to marry me."
"But the promise is so hysterical," argued Bretton. "The sublime
adolescent idiocy of the Boy on the Burning Deck, with fame for
one generation and caricature for eternity."
"I'm not interested in eternity," said Kaire.
"What are you interested in?" asked Bretton.
"In--myself!" said Kaire.
Very soberly for a moment Bretton frowned off into space.
"Kaire," he resumed at last rather quickly, [210] "you are making
a brutal mistake. Listen! There is a lad up North who was made for
Daphne!--a fine lad!--a clean lad! With young energies to match
her young energies! And young mysteries to mate her young
mysteries! And young problems to steady her young problems!
Across the mutual innocence of their little disaster it is
absolutely inevitable that each should have received a peculiarly
poignant sex-image of the other. Except for you--except for
_this_--who knows but what----"
"There will be time enough for that when I am through," said
Kaire. "Six months--ten--a year at the most."
"When you are through?" said Bretton very quietly. "The tender
soul of a young girl who marries a man like you--is not over-apt
to survive the experience."
Defiantly and unscrupulously Kaire delivered his ultimatum.
"It is not my responsibility," he said, "where any train goes
after I get off!"
"That is your last word?" asked Bretton.
"It is my last word," grinned Kaire.
"And yours, Daphne?" quizzed her father. [211]
"I will not break my word!" persisted Daphne. "I will not! I
will not!" Her cheeks were raging red as though with fever, her
eyes oddly aglint. "I will not! I will not!" she repeated.
"All right then, Kaire," said Jaffrey Bretton. "I'm going to
smash you!"
"Oh, no, you won't!" laughed Kaire. "That's the limitation of
good men like you! You'll think you're going to smash me!--you'll
have every intention indeed of smashing me!--push me way to the
edge!--but never quite over! Something won't let you! Honor, I
believe you call it."
"I--am--going--to push you--over the edge," said Bretton. "I am
going to send for Martha."
"Martha?" cried Kaire. His face was suddenly ashy gray. Then
abruptly his laugh rang out again.
"There hasn't been power in heaven or earth for ten years," he
scoffed, "that could bring Martha out of her green jungle when
even so much as the smoke of a yacht showed on her horizon! Even
if she could slip by [212] her attendant!" he scoffed, "or her
Chinese cook!--or----"
"Martha is in the passageway--just outside," pointed Bretton.
"About three feet, I should think, from where you are standing!"
"_What_?" staggered Kaire.
"And I am going to push Martha to the edge and over," said Bretton
very quietly. "And you to the edge and over--and jump in after you
with every wallowing truth I know--if by so doing, the little girl
I begot in bewilderment and ignored in indifference--but have
found at last in love and understanding remains on the safe side!"
With eyes half crazed Daphne stood staring from her father's grim
face to Sheridan Kaire's blanching features.
"Do you mean----" she gasped, "that there is another woman?
Someone who has a--a claim? Someone who----"
"We will let Martha tell her own story," said Jaffrey Bretton.
Very softly he stepped to the table and began to rummage among
the loose keys. "I have tried not to act impulsively," he said.
With unmistakable significance he glanced back at Kaire. "It will
[213] take me at least a minute, Kaire," he said, "to fit a key
to this door. . . . As I have remarked once before--many men
have found time to change their minds in a minute."
"I have better things to do in a minute than change my mind!"
boasted Kaire. As stealthily as a cat he slipped round the table
to Daphne and took her in his arms while Jaffrey Bretton
tinkered with the lock.
"Oh, my little beautiful!" he implored her. "My white--white
darling! My lily girl! The only sweet--the only decent love I've
ever known! You won't fail me now, will you? I have not failed
_you_! I never claimed," he besought her, "that there had never
been any other women! Surely you're not going to hold any silly
Past against me? You, my good angel! My----" Unconsciously his
excited voice slipped from its whisper. "From to-day on!" he
vowed. "From----"
"From what time to-day on?" asked Bretton a bit dryly.
Vaguely through the opening door loomed the white figure of a
woman with her elbow crooked across her eyes. Except that the [214]
lamp in the cabin was not unduly bright she might have been any
normal person shielding her dark-attuned optic nerves from some
unexpected glare. Yet the tropical pallor that gleamed both
above and below the crooked elbow was oddly suggestive of
floridness, and the faded muslin gown of a skirt-and-sleeve
fashion ten years outlawed, molded her sumptuous figure with all
the sleek sensuousness of satin.
"Martha," said Jaffrey Bretton very gently, "this cabin is hung
with crimson, cushioned with crimson, carpeted with crimson!
Will you still come if I ask you to?"
"It ees as I have said, Mr. Bret-ton," answered the faintly
foreign voice.
Then Kaire with a cry sprang forward and slammed the door in the
woman's wincing face.
"Stop! Stop, Bretton!" he begged. "Just a minute! Just a
minute!--give me one tiny little more minute to think!" His
forehead was beaded with sweat his hands shaking like aspens.
"I have one more minute I will be very glad to give you," said
Bretton. [215]
Like a person distracted, Kaire stood staring all around him.
Half askance from over his shoulder his glanced flashed back at
Daphne, wavered an instant, and settled again on her face with a
curious sort of gasp.
"Do--do you _still_ hold to your word?" he stammered.
Fevered, frightened, strangling back her sobs as best she could,
Daphne lifted her strained but indomitable little face to his.
"I--will--not break my word!" she smiled.
On Sheridan Kaire's incongruous, dissolute face, a smile as
tortured-sweet as hers quickened for a single unbelievable
instant and was gone again. As one puzzled only, he turned back
to Bretton, and stood staring almost vacantly into the older
man's impatient eyes. Then quite abruptly he turned and started
toward the door.
"I--I feel a little faint," he said. "A little queer. . . . I
will be back in a moment!"
With a sharp bang the door shut behind him. In the passage
outside they heard a single rough word, a woman's imperious
protest, the soft thud of feet on a thick carpet, and a cabin
boy's shrill call. [216]
On the carved mahogany shelf in the cabin the clock went on
about its business--one minute--three--five--ten. Through the
open portholes a faint breeze sucked at the crimson silk
curtains, and ripple to creak, and creak to ripple, the
houseboat yearned to the tide and the tide to the houseboat.
Daphne's eyes never left the clock. Weirdly exultant, excitantly
heroic, she kept the ill-favored tryst.
Blurred in the smoke of his cigarette, Jaffrey Bretton's vivid
white head merged like a half-erased drawing into the big
shimmering mirror behind him. It was just as well, perhaps, that
the twist of his mouth was hidden from Daphne's eyes.
There was no sound of voices in the outer passageway to herald
Sheridan Kaire's return: just a little stumble on the edge of a
rug--an unwonted fumble with the door handle. It wasn't defiance
that backed him up now against the support of the wainscoating,
but a very faint uncertainty in his legs. There was nothing
uncertain, however, about his face. Geniality, not to say,
jocularity, [217] wreathed it from ear to ear and from brow to chin.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting so long, dear--dear people," he
beamed. "But a Host has so many responsibilities . . . . Overseeing
the pantries and the--the libraries and the ladies!" he beamed.
"Why--why, I can't help my way with the ladies!" he turned and
explained with half-mocking anxiety to Jaffrey Bretton's absolutely
inscrutable face. "Always, ever since I was a little boy," he
deprecated, "I've been the Village cut-up! So was my father before
me, and his father before--before me. Too bad, isn't it?" he
questioned sharply. "Such a nice family! And so lively!" At an
unexpected glimpse of his face in the mirror he turned back to meet
Daphne's staring face. "Now this scar of mine, darling--darling,"
he confided dramatically, "you want to know where I got it? All
the ladies always want to know where I got it! Just as soon as a
lady gets up her courage to ask me about it," he chuckled, "then
I always know she's really beginning to think of me! You asked if I
got it in a 'brave war,'" he chuckled. "Sure I got it in [218] a
brave war. Only the brave deserve--affairs," he parodied lightly.
"It was in Smyrna," he confided, "when I was eighteen. I--I made
a little poem about it:
"'There was a young Princess of Smyrna,
Of love I endeavored to learn her,
But her father in hate cleft a seam through my pate,
Now wasn't that the deuce of a turn-a?'"
Precipitately and without the slightest warning he plunged down
into a chair and began to whimper maudlinly while with one
uncertain finger tip he traced and retraced the twitching,
zig-zagged scar. "It--it isn't nice, is it?" he babbled idiotically.
"And I was such a pretty boy? . . . Ladies shouldn't ask such
questions," he babbled. "Not just as you're going to kiss 'em.
It--it makes dead faces floating between! It--isn't nice! Oh,
Daphne darling--darling----"
But with a little scream of release Daphne's hand was already on
the door knob.
"Oh, come quick, Old-Dad!" she cried. "It's _all over_! It's all
canceled! He's broken _his_ promise! He's----" [219]
In a single bound her father was at her side.
"Oh, I hope I haven't said anything that I shouldn't have!"
babbled Kaire. With a desperate effort he struggled to his feet
and raised his arms after the manner of one who is just about to
lead a cheer. "Now, all together, ladies and gentlemen!" he
cried.
"There was a young lady from Smyrna,
Of--of Smyrna----"
Across his flaccid mouth the odd little smile tightened suddenly
in a single poignant flash of bewilderment and pain. "Oh, you
Little Good Works Business!" he grinned. "You--you----"
Then, before their startled eyes, he pitched over headlong on
the table, gave a queer twitch of his shoulders, and lay very
quiet, with a little flush of blood spreading redder and redder
from his lips.
But before Jaffrey Bretton could snatch Daphne from the sight,
her overtaxed brain had collapsed into delirium. Dodging down
the narrow passageway with the dreadful [220] little burden in
his arms he stumbled almost immediately on Martha's crouching
figure.
"Martha!" he cried. "There's something redder than curtains in
the cabin back there! Run and get Kaire's man!"
"Kaire's _man_?" scoffed the woman shrilly. Robbed in that
single instant of all her inhibition she turned and sped madly
for the reddest thing that she would ever know, every thought in
her awakened brain, every flash of her jeweled hands keyed
suddenly to service.
Close behind her a cabin boy came hurrying. Champagne and
crystal glasses were on his tray.
Roused from a half-completed nap Kaire's man came running to the
scene.
Like an old hound scenting disaster Lost Man himself loomed
unexpectedly in the doorway. With his great tunic-swathed height,
his sharply dilating nostrils, he seemed bristling suddenly with
some strange new sort of authority. For a single instant his beetling
brows glowered to the stark, startled faces around him. Then out
of--God knows what stained-glass memories--out of God knows [221] what
chanceled associations he burst forth resonantly into the opening
lines of the Episcopal burial service.
"'I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord. He that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And
whosoever liveth----'"
With a gasp from his own frazzled nerves Jaffrey Bretton pushed
mercilessly past him.
"Oh, cut it out, Lost Man," he cried. "This isn't death--yet!
Kaire's man knows just what to do, and has got a chance to do
it--probably--even one or more times yet! Go get the launch
ready, you and Alliman! If there's nothing here we can do, we'll
go _quick_!"
"Where?" stared Lost Man.
"Back to our own island, you idiot!" snapped Bretton. "And pack
up everything we've got! And catch that coast steamer in the
morning! We're going North," he paled, "as fast as we can get
there! I want a brain specialist for my little girl!" Stumbling
along after Lost Man with his babbling burden in his arms, he
stepped down into the waiting launch. [222]
Already with his gnarled calloused hands Alliman the outlaw was
wringing strange cries from the reluctant engine. Up from a
somber shadow in the bow the brown khaki lady lifted a startled
but unquestioning face.
"Let me hold her!" insisted Lost Man. "I know how to hold
'em--the little lambs!" Like some vaguely parodied picture of
"The Good Shepherd" the old man gathered the little limp figure
into his arms, and retreated to the stern of the boat.
Half resentful, half relieved, Bretton hesitated an instant and
then merged himself into the shadowy bow.
With a grunt of triumph Alliman started the launch gulfward.
With creaks and groans and puffy sighs the old engine rallied to
the task. Except for the chop of waves against the bow, the
trickle of tides at the stern, no other sound broke the black
silence except Lost Man's crooning monotone.
"There--there--there--there--there," crooned Lost Man.
"There--there--there--there--there!" When he wasn't saying
"There--there--there," he seemed to be trying to sing. Very
laboriously, very [223] painstakingly, word by word and note by note
he was straining very evidently to dig up something from his memory.
"Bring to--little children (he struggled)
Visions--sweet--of Thee,
Guard the sailors tossing (he quavered)
On the--the deep blue sea."
Along the whole dark shadowy length of the launch, the Outlaw's
face alone shone wanly bright and reasonably clear-featured in
the flare from the engine. Bloodless as the salt-pork that he
fed on, dank-haired as the swamps and glades that encompassed
him, brooding on Heaven knows what Past or what Future--a single
convulsive tremor passed his pipe-clenched lips.
"Say, Boss," he said, "on them home runs of Baker's, was they
straight-away hits? Or did they go over some fence?" [224]
III
IT WAS the Northern March--very cold, very snowy, very blustery,
when Daphne woke from her last bad dream.
Brisk, bleak, absolutely literal, the frosted roofs and gables
of a pleasant suburban landscape gleamed sociably at her through
every casement window.
No squawking pelicans screeched like steam-whistles into her
splitting eardrums. No interminable flights of sea gulls dragged
their sharp-feathered wingpoints across her naked eyeballs. On
the slime and stench of a dead shark's body her little foot had
forever stopped slipping.
"Why--why, how--perfectly extraordinary!" woke Daphne.
It seemed to be a pretty room. A little too neat, perhaps, a
little too impersonal, to be one's very own. But by no means as
plushily impersonal as a hotel, and by no means as poison-neat
as a hospital. [225]
"Wherever--in--the world--am I?" puzzled Daphne.
Very cautiously, very experimentally, she began to investigate
her most immediate surroundings.
"I am at least in a very pretty--pale blue--wadded silk wrapper,"
she discovered with eminent satisfaction. "Also, on an astonishingly
comfortable couch with at least a hundred pillows. . . . Oh--I hope
the bow on my pigtail matches my pale blue wrapper!" she quickened
expectantly. But there was no pigtail. Shockingly to her uplifted
hands her short-cropped head loomed round and crisp and fluffy as
a great worsted ball. "Oh, dear--oh, dear--oh, dear!" she gasped.
"If I am dead and born again--I am a boy!" Wilting down discouragedly
into her "hundred pillows" one slender hand dropped weakly to the
floor. "Life is very empty," she said. "Everything in life is very
empty--everything." Along her sluggish spine a curious little
thrill passed suddenly. "There is a nose in my hand!" she gasped.
"A _lovin'_ nose! Creep-Mouse!" she cried out [226] desperately. "Is
it--possible that it's your lovin' nose?"
"Perfectly possible!" thudded Creep-Mouse's essentially
practical tail. "Perfectly possible," swished and fawned the
bashful little fur body.
"This is certainly very extraordinary," struggled Daphne. "Instead
of being anything that I thought it was, it is quite evidently
some sort of a bewitchment. I am a boy! But Creep-Mouse is still
Creep-Mouse! I who went to sleep _real_ have waked up in a Fairy
Story! But _what_ Fairy Story?" she shivered. "And _what_ page?"
Quite inadvertently her eyes strayed to the little white table
at the head of her couch. In the middle of the table shone a
silver bell.
"It would be interesting," mused Daphne, "to ring that bell and
see who comes! If it's the 'Hunch-Backed Pony'--then I'll know,
of course, that I'm in the Russian Fairy book. And if it's Snow
White--" very cautiously she struggled up from her pillows and
reached for the silver bell. "But I must ring you very--little-y,"
she faltered in her weakness. "So that whatever comes will
surely [227] be very little." Then with an impetuous wilfulness
that surprised even herself she grabbed up the bell with both hands
and rang it and rang it and _rang_ it!
In the corridor somewhere a door slammed and footsteps came
running--running! Her doorhandle turned! A portiere wrenched
aside!
"It's the seven bears story--_life size_!" she screamed. And
opened her eyes to Richard Wiltoner. Like a silver bomb the bell
whizzed by his head. "Get out of my room!" she screamed. "Get
out of my room before I'm expelled again!"
"Silly!" laughed Richard Wiltoner. "I'm visiting in your house!
They told me to answer your bell!"
"My house?" collapsed Daphne. "Don't blame this house on me! I
don't even know where I am!"
"Why, you're in your own home!" laughed Richard Wiltoner. "Just
wait a minute and I'll call your people. . . . Everybody rushed
outdoors to help a horse that fell on the ice."
"Fell on the ice? How nice," mused Daphne. "Why--why, I can rhyme
again!" [228] she exulted suddenly with softly clapping hands.
"Why, I'd forgotten all about it!" Then a little bit bewilderedly
the white brow clouded. "Richard," she asked, "you--you said
'everybody' rushed out. What do you mean--'everybody'?"
"Why, your father, Mr. Bretton," said Richard, "and Mrs.
Bretton."
"'Mrs. Bretton?'" jumped Daphne. Very limply she sank back into
her pillows again. "Oh, I knew it," she said. "I've waked in the
wrong story!" Quite severely she seemed to hold Richard
responsible for the mistake. "Oh--no, Richard," she corrected
him. "In the story I belong in there's no Mrs. Bretton. Just Mr.
Bretton!--Mr. Jaffrey Bretton!--a tall man," she endeavored to
illustrate, "with snow-white hair!"
"The very lad," laughed Richard, "and Mrs. Bretton. She's a
brick! She's got red hair. Oh, I didn't mean to be funny!" he
apologized hastily.
"Funny?" flamed Daphne. Flushing, paling, flushing again--a dozen
conflicting emotions seemed surging through her brain. [229]
"Richard?" she questioned. "Have you ever lost anything?"
"I've lost both my parents," said Richard, "and three sisters--and
I don't remember any of them."
"Haven't you anything left?" asked Daphne.
"I've got one brother," said Richard. "The crippled brother, you
know? And my horse, Brainstorm."
"Do you love them?" questioned Daphne.
"I love Brainstorm," said Richard.
"I've had trouble, too," sighed Daphne. "I've lost my father and
my hair."
"Someone seems to have found your father," laughed Richard in
spite of himself. "But whatever in the world have you done with
your hair?"
"That's just it, Richard," said Daphne. "Will you look in the
top bureau drawer?"
Flushing forty colors Richard opened the top bureau drawer. He
was handsome enough when he wasn't embarrassed. But under
embarrassment he glowed like stained glass with a light behind
it. "There are [230] ribbons here," he pawed. "And--and things!
But no hair!"
"Oh, isn't it--awful?" shivered Daphne. "Well, is there a hair
brush? I would so like to look all right when my--my stepmother
comes."
"Just as though she hadn't seen you looking all kinds of wrong
for weeks and weeks!" scoffed Richard. But very obediently he
brought the hair brush.
"Just where do you think you'd better begin?" worried Daphne.
"I?" stammered Richard. "I?" With a wild little lunge he
commenced the attack.
"My! But you're bumpy!" winced Daphne. "Don't you think that
maybe it would be better to use the bristly side of the brush?"
"Oh, I say!" apologized Richard, "I _am_ rattled!" With
reconstructed acumen he resumed the task.
"Oh, _that's_ nice," purred Daphne. "In a book I was reading
there was the funniest thing--the husband in it was always
brushing his wife's hair."
"How funny!" acquiesced Richard.
"Oh--awfully funny," purred Daphne. "I [231] guess there's a good
deal more to this marriage-business," she observed sagely, "than
some of us had supposed."
"Very likely," admitted Richard.
"Less nonsense, I mean," reflected Daphne. "But more hair-brushing--and
putting away winter clothes, and----"
"Oh, I wish I had a wife," hooted Richard, "to put away my
winter clothes!"
"I wish you had!" laughed Daphne. For the first time her mind
went back to her little college tragedy with purely historical
interest instead of pain. "Oh, I wish you had! That dress suit
you bumped my nose against smelled so strong of camphor--I
couldn't get it out of my nostrils all winter! Why, we're both
laughing!" she exclaimed with sudden astonishment.
"Why shouldn't we?" argued Richard Wiltoner. In the midst of the
reflection a most curious expression flashed across his eyes.
"_Wouldn't_ it have been funny," he said, "if you _had_ married
me--that time I asked you?"
"We'd have fought like cats and dogs, I suppose," said Daphne. [232]
"But at least," laughed Richard, "you would have been putting
away my winter clothes--just about now."
"And you--" retaliated Daphne.
"I'm already--brushing your hair!" laughed the boy.
"Let's never marry anybody," suggested Daphne. "Not for years!"
"I can't!" said Richard. "Not for years and years and years!--not
to make a girl comfortable, I mean! There won't be any
money. . . . There's my brother, you know; and I've got so
many animals. . . . It's queer about animals," he stammered,
"you--you can't fail the old ones when they're old, and you can't
fail the young ones when they're young. It's like any other kind of
family, I suppose," he smiled. "All fun and all responsibility!
But never any time! And never any money!" Quite furiously he
resumed the hair-brushing. "Oh, after all," he remarked, "_this_
isn't so awfully different from getting the snarls out of
Brainstorm's mane. Only Brainstorm's mane is brown. And yours?"
With a cry of sheer joy he stood off and surveyed his handiwork.
"And yours--" he laughed, [233] "looks like a bunch of short-stemmed
jonquils!"
"Oh, how--awful!" cried Daphne.
"No, it's cunning," flushed Richard.
A little bit teased by the laugh, Daphne met her own embarrassment
with a fresh command.
"Oh, please--run quick now," she begged, "and tell my people as
you call them--that a Lady-Who-Has-Been-Long-Away--sends her
love and is home again!"
"You're too slow with your invitation," called her father's
voice from the doorway. "We've already arrived!" With a most
curious merge of excitement and serenity Jaffrey Bretton and the
Intruding Lady walked into the room.
"How do you do?" said Daphne, with the faintest possible tinge
of formality.
"Why, very well indeed," said her father, a bit casually. "How's
yourself?" His more immediate attention at the moment seemed
fixed on Richard and the waving hair brush.
"Oh, I'm all right," drawled Daphne very evenly. Then, with all the
sudden tempestuous intensity of a child, she threw her arms [234]
in the air. "Only, I don't see--even yet," she cried, "just what
Richard Wiltoner is doing here."
With a quite unexplainable laugh her father dropped down on the
edge of her couch.
"Why it's--it's about potatoes!" he laughed. "Richard is getting
to be some farmer! He's written a magazine article about some
new potato scheme of his. It's very interesting! I like
experiments! I'm going to finance it. Not much, you know, but
just a little. Just enough to take the strain off--and leave the
push on. We'll go over in the spring when it's planting time,"
he began to laugh all over again, "and see that the experiment
is started properly."
Quite severely Daphne drew back into her pillows. "I don't think
it's very nice of you, Old-Dad," she said, "to laugh so at
Richard's farming. Farming is a very--very noble profession, I
think."
"It certainly is," conceded her father.
"And have you rabbits, Richard, as well as potatoes?" she
questioned with unbroken [235] gravity. "And will there be
jonquils? And new pigs?"
"There's liable to be 'most everything by that time," admitted
Richard.
"Oh, all right then," brightened Daphne. "I think I'll come,
too! I've thought a good deal about potatoes, myself!" With a
little sigh, half fatigue, half contentment, she glanced up at
her father just in time to intercept the glance of "white magic"
that passed between him and the Intruding Lady. In an instant
her little spine stiffened again. "Only--Richard," she smiled up
bravely, "we unmarried people must surely stand by each other!
Even after you go away maybe you'll write me about the rabbits
and things? It's just a little bit lonely sometimes," quivered
the smile, "to be the only unmarried person in the house."
With a perceptible quiver of her own smile the Intruding Lady
came forward and dropped down on the couch just in front of Old-Dad.
"Oh, Little Girl," she said, "don't you think you're ever--ever
going to like me any?" [236]
"Why, I like you now," whispered Daphne.
"And I'd like to like you--lots--only----" A bit worriedly the
fluffy head turned and re-turned on its pillows. "Only--I don't
understand," fretted Daphne, "about your having so many honeymoons."
"So many 'honeymoons?'" smiled the Intruding Lady. "Why, I'm
thirty-two years old! And this is the very first honeymoon I've
ever had in my life!"
"Why--why, you said you were on a honeymoon--down South!"
frowned Daphne.
"So I did!" laughed the Intruding Lady. "And so I was! But I
never said it was _my_ honeymoon!"
"Old-Dad--thought it was your honeymoon!" accused Daphne.
"Yes--I meant him to!" laughed the Intruding Lady. "Just for a
little while I meant him to! . . . We'd had such a quarrel--ever
since the winter before! Love at first sight it seemed to be!--and
quarrel at first sight too!"
"Oh, dear me--dear me," worried Daphne. "The more I hear about
this 'Love' the more [237] complicated it seems. There's even more
study to it--I believe--than going to college."
"Oh, a great deal more study to it than going to college!"
attested the Intruding Lady.
"But _whose_ honeymoon--was it?" persisted Daphne.
"Why, it was the honeymoon," mused the Intruding Lady, "of a
very silly little chorus girl and an unduly wise New York
magnate. He was very much pleased with everything about her, it
seemed, except her Grammar--so I was brought along to mend the
Grammar. Now wasn't that a perfectly idiotic thing to do?" she
turned quite unblushingly to ask Old-Dad. "Where there are so
many perfectly beautiful things to learn on a honeymoon to waste
any time learning Grammar? Oh, of course, I know perfectly
well"--she re-turned a bit quickly to Daphne--"that it was very
wrong indeed of me to run away from them--that it caused the old
magnate, at least, a considerable amount of anxiety. Only, of
course, I never dreamed for a moment," she acknowledged, "that
the yacht would go off without me! I merely [238] thought," she
blushed, "I merely heard," she blushed, "that that was Jaffrey
Bretton's Island."
"And you found him with me!" giggled Daphne, "all cuddled up in
the sand."
"Yes," blushed the Intruding Lady.
With the cloud still on her brow Daphne studied the Intruding
Lady's face with an entirely brand-new interest.
"But, how ever in the world," she demanded, "could anybody
quarrel with my father?"
As though wanting to give full consideration to the question,
the Intruding Lady glanced back at her husband before she
essayed to face Daphne again.
"Why, really," she answered, "don't you suppose--that perhaps--it's
because he's so tall?"
"Hardly," said Daphne.
"Well, then--maybe," mused the Intruding Lady, "it's because
he's so--so funny?"
"Not at all," said Daphne.
"Well--just possibly--of course," smiled the Intruding Lady,
"it's because I have red hair!" [239]
"Now you're talking!" said Jaffrey Bretton.
But no smile ruffled Daphne's gravity.
"Were you a--a sort of a teacher?" she questioned.
"Yes, a sort of a teacher," admitted the Intruding Lady.
"Where?" asked Daphne.
"Oh, on houseboats and yachts and things," smiled the Intruding
Lady. "Just a sort of traveling teacher. That's why I didn't
quite understand your father at first--I suppose," she
acknowledged. "Our lives were so far apart."
"Do you think you understand me?" whispered Daphne.
"Oh, I understand you perfectly," smiled the Intruding Lady.
"Then what are you going to teach me?" quivered Daphne. "There
are so many things I want to know! Who Lost Man was! Why people
like the Outlaw _are_! Did--did Sheridan Kaire--break his word
on purpose to free me?"
From the Intruding Lady's merry eyes a most astonishing tear
rolled suddenly.
"First of all, Little Girl," she said, "I'm going [240] to try
very--very hard to teach you to love me!"
"I'm--I'm enjoying my first lesson very much thank you," smiled
Daphne faintly.
"Heaven bless my soul!" cried her father quite abruptly, "I'd
forgotten all about smoking!" Adroitly with match and cigarette
he proceeded to remedy the omission, brooding thoughtfully all the
while on his daughter's wistful young face the positive, generous
womanliness of his own chosen mate the splendid clean-limbed,
clean-souled promise of the young lad before him. With more emotion
than he cared to show he bent down suddenly and gathered Creep-Mouse
into his arms. "There--there isn't a man in the world," he affirmed,
"who has as good a--as good a dog as I have!"
"'Dog?'" deprecated Richard Wiltoner quite unexpectedly. "'Family I
guess is what you mean!'"
"But even yet," questioned Daphne worriedly of the Intruding
Lady, "everything's been so sudden and queer--even yet I don't
quite seem to realize just how you figure in my story?" [241]
"Why, I don't suppose I figure at all," smiled the Intruding
Lady very modestly, "except in so far as I do my bit towards
making a Happy Ending.
"'Happy Ending?'" quickened Jaffrey Bretton. "Why this--is just
the Happy Beginning!"
THE END.