THE GIRL AND THE TOKEN
In his astonishment he looked round quickly to meet the gaze of
mischievous eyes that strove vainly to seem simple and sincere. His
own, in which amusement was blended with wonder, noted that they were
very handsome eyes and rather curiously colourful, the delicate sepia
shade of the pupils being lightened by a faint sheen of gold in the
irides; they were, furthermore, large and set well apart. On the whole
he decided that they were even beautiful, for all the dancing glimmer
of perverse humour in their depths; he could fancy that they might well
seem very sweet and womanly when their owner chose to be serious.
Aware that he faced an uncommonly pretty woman, who chose to study him
with a straightforward interest he was nothing loath to imitate, he
took time to see that she was very fair of skin, with that creamy,
silken whiteness that goes with hair of the shade commonly and unjustly
termed red. This girl's hair was really brown, a rich sepia interwoven
with strands of raw, ruddy gold, admirably harmonious with her eyes.
Her nose he thought a trace too severely perfect in its modelling, but
redeemed by a broad and thoughtful brow, a strong yet absolutely
feminine chin, and a mouth.... Well, as to her mouth, the young man
selected a rosebud to liken it to; which was really quite a poor
simile, for her lips were nothing at all like rose-leaves save in
colour; but they were well-shapen and wide enough to suggest
generosity, without being in the least too wide.
Having catalogued these several features, together with the piquant
oval of her face, and remarked that her poise was good and gracious in
the uncompromising lines of her riding-habit, he had a mental portrait
of her he was not likely soon to forget. For it's not every day that
one encounters so pretty a girl in the woods of Long Island's southern
shore--or anywhere else, for that matter. He felt sure of this.
But he was equally certain that he was as much a stranger to her as she
to him.
She, on her part, had been busy satisfying herself that he was a very
presentable young man, in spite of the somewhat formidable reputation
he wore as a person of learned attainments. There could be no better
way to show him to you than through her eyes, so you must know that she
saw a man of less than thirty years, with a figure slight and not
over-tall but well-proportioned, and with a complexion as dark as hers
was light. His eyes, indeed, were a very dark grey, and his hair was
black, and his face and hands had been coloured by the sun and wind
until the tan had become indelible, almost, so that his prolonged
periods of studious indoor seclusion worked little toward lightening
it. If his looks attracted, it was not because he was handsome, for
that he wasn't, but because of certain signs of strength to be
discerned in his face, as well as an engaging manner which he owned by
right of ancestry, his ascendants for several generations having been
notable representatives of one of the First Families of Virginia. Amber
was not inordinately proud of this fact, at least not more so than nine
out of any ten Virginians; but his friends--who were many but mostly
male--claimed that he wrote "F.F.V." before the "F.R.S." which he was
entitled to inscribe after his name.
The pause which fell upon the girl's use of his name, and during which
they looked one another over, was sufficiently prolonged to excuse the
reference to it which Amber chose to make.
"I'm sure," he said with his slow smile, "that we're satisfied we've
never met before. Aren't we?"
"Quite," assented the girl.
"That only makes it the more mysterious, of course."
"Yes," said she provokingly; "doesn't it?"
"You know, you're hardly fair to me," he asserted. "I'm rapidly
beginning to entertain doubts of my senses. When I left the train at
Nokomis station I met a man I know as well as I know myself--pretty
nearly; and he denied me to my face. Then, a little later, I encounter
a strange, mad Bengali, who apparently takes me for somebody he has
business with. And finally, you call me by name."
"It isn't so very remarkable, when you come to consider it," she
returned soberly. "Mr. David Amber is rather well known, even in his
own country. I might very well have seen your photograph published in
connection with some review of--let me see.... Your latest book was
entitled 'The Peoples of the Hindu Kush,' wasn't it? You see, I haven't
read it."
"That's sensible of you, I'm sure. Why should you?... But your theory
doesn't hold water, because I won't permit my publishers to print my
picture, and, besides, reviews of such stupid books generally appear in
profound monthlies which abhor illustrations."
"Oh!" She received this with a note of disappointment. "Then my
explanation won't do?"
"I'm sorry," he laughed, "but you'll have to be more ingenious--and
practical."
"And you won't show me the present the babu made you?"
He closed his fingers jealously over the bronze box. "Not until...."
"You insist on reciprocity?"
"Absolutely."
"That's very unkind of you."
"How?" he demanded blankly.
"You will have it that I must surrender my only advantage--my
incognito. If I tell you how I happen to know who you are, I must tell
you who I am. Immediately you will lose interest in me, because I'm
really not at all advanced; I doubt if I should understand your book if
I had to read it."
"Which Heaven forfend! But why," he insisted mercilessly, "do you wish
me to be interested in you?"
She flushed becomingly at this and acknowledged the touch with a
rueful, smiling glance. But, "Because I'm interested in you," she
admitted openly.
"And ... why?"
"Are you hardened to such adventures?" She nodded in the direction the
babu had taken. "Are you accustomed to being treated with extraordinary
respect by stray Bengalis and accepting tokens from them? Is romance
commonplace to you?"
"Oh," he said, disappointed, "if it's only the adventure--! Of course,
that's easily enough explained. This half-witted mammoth--don't ask me
how he came to be here--thought he recognised in me some one he had
known in India. Let's have a look at this token-thing."
He disclosed the bronze box and let her take it in her pretty fingers.
"It must have a secret spring," she concluded, after a careful
inspection.
"I think so, but...."
She shook it, holding it by her ear. "There's something inside--it
rattles ever so slightly. I wonder!"
"No more than I."
"And what are you going to do with it?" She returned it reluctantly.
"Why, there's nothing to do but keep it till the owner turns up, that I
can see."
"You won't break it open?"
"Not until curiosity overpowers me and I've exhausted every artifice,
trying to find the catch."
"Are you a patient person, Mr. Amber?"
"Not extraordinarily so, Miss Farrell."
"Oh, how did you guess?"
"By remembering not to be stupid. You are Miss Sophia Farrell, daughter
of Colonel Farrell of the British Diplomatic Service in India." He
chuckled cheerfully over this triumph of deductive reasoning. "You are
visiting the Quains for a few days, while _en route_ for India with
some friends whose name I've forgotten--"
"The Rolands," she prompted involuntarily.
"Thank you.... The Rolands, who are stopping in New York. You've lived
several years with your father in India, went back to London to 'come
out' and are returning, having been presented at the Court of St.
James. Your mother was an American girl, a schoolmate of Mrs. Quain's.
I'm afraid that's the whole sum of my knowledge of you."
"You've turned the tables fairly, Mr. Amber," she admitted. "And Mr.
Quain wrote you all that?"
"I'm afraid he told me almost as much about you as he told you about
me; we're old friends, you know. And now I come to think of it, Quain
has one of the few photographs of me extant. So my chain of reasoning's
complete. And I think we'd better hurry on to Tanglewood."
"Indeed, yes. Mrs. Quain will be wild with worry if that animal finds
his way back to the stable without me; I've been very thoughtless." She
caught up her riding-skirt and started down the path with Amber
trudging contently beside her. "However," she considered demurely, "I'm
not at all sorry, really; it's quite an experience to have a notability
at a disadvantage, even if only for a few minutes."
"I wish you wouldn't," he begged in boyish embarrassment. "I'm not a
notability, really; Quain's been talking too much. I'll get even with
him, though."
"That sounds so modest that I almost believe I've made a mistake about
your identity. But I've no doubt you're right; Mr. Quain does
exaggerate in praise of his friends. Very likely it is as you insist,
and you're only an ordinary person, after all. At least, you would be
if stray babus didn't make you mysterious presents."
"So long as there is that to hold your interest in me, I'm content," he
told her, diverted. "How much longer shall you stay at Tanglewood, Miss
Farrell?"
"Unhappily," she sighed, "I must leave on the early train to-morrow, to
join the Rolands in New York."
"You don't want to go?"
"I'm half an American, Mr. Amber. I've learned to love the country
already. Besides, we start immediately for San Francisco, and it'll be
such a little while before I'll be in India."
"You don't care for India?"
"I've known it for less than six years, but already I've come to hate
it as thoroughly as any exiled Englishwoman there. It sits there like a
great, insatiable monster, devouring English lives. Indirectly it was
responsible for my mother's death; she never recovered from the illness
she contracted when my father was stationed in the Deccan. In the
course of time it will kill my father, just as it did his father and
his elder brother. It's a cruel, hateful, ungrateful land--not worth
the price we pay for it."
"I know how you feel," he said with sympathy. "It's been a good many
years since I visited India, and of course I then saw and heard little
of the darker side. Your people are brave enough, out there."
"They are. I don't know about Government; but its servants are loyal
and devoted and unselfish and cheerful. And I don't at all understand,"
she added in confusion, "why I should have decided to inflict upon you
my emotional hatred of the country. Your question gave me the opening,
and I forgot myself."
"I assure you I was thoroughly shocked, Miss Farrell."
"You should have been--surprised, at least. Why should I pour out my
woes to you--a man I've known not fifteen minutes?"
"Why not, if you felt like it? After all, you know, we're both of us
merely making talk to--ah--to cover our interest in one another."
She paused momentarily to laugh at his candour. "You are outspoken, Mr.
Amber! It's very pretty of you to assert an interest in me; but why
should you assume that I--"
"You said so, didn't you?"
"Wel-l ... yes, so I did."
"You can change your mind, of course."
"I shan't, honestly, until you turn stupid. And you can't do that until
you stop having strange adventures. Will you tell me something?"
"If I can."
"About the man who wouldn't acknowledge knowing you? You remember
saying three people had been mistaken about your identity this
afternoon."
"No, only one--the babu. You're not mistaken--"
"I knew you must be David Amber the moment I heard you speaking Urdu."
"And the man at the station wasn't mistaken--unless I am. He knew me
perfectly, I believe, but for reasons of his own refused to recognise
me."
"Yes--?"
"He was an English servant named Doggott, who is--or once was--a valet
in the service of an old friend, a man named Rutton."
She repeated the name: "Rutton? It seems to me I've heard of him."
"You have?"
"I don't remember," she confessed, knitting her level brows. "The name
has a familiar ring, somehow. But about the valet?"
"Well, I was very intimate with his employer for a long time, though we
haven't met for several years. Rutton was a strange creature, a man of
extraordinary genius, who lived a friendless, solitary life--at least,
so far as I knew; I once lived with him in a little place he had in
Paris, for three months, and in all that time he never received a
letter or a caller. He was reticent about himself, and I never asked
any questions, of course, but in spite of the fact that he spoke
English like an Englishman and was a public school man, apparently, I
always believed he had a strain of Hungarian blood in him--or else
Italian or Spanish. I know that sounds pretty broad, but he was
enigmatic--a riddle I never managed to make much of. Aside from that he
was wonderful: a linguist, speaking a dozen European languages and more
Eastern tongues and dialects, I believe, than any other living man. We
met by accident in Berlin and were drawn together by our common
interest in Orientalism. Later, hearing I was in Paris, he hunted me up
and insisted that I stay with him there while finishing my big
book--the one whose title you know. His assistance to me then was
invaluable. After that I lost track of him."
"And the valet?"
"Oh, I'd forgotten Doggott. He was a Cockney, as silent and
self-contained as Rutton.... To get back to Nokomis: I met Doggott at
the station, called him by name, and he refused to admit knowing
me--said I must have mistaken him for his twin brother. I could tell by
his eyes that he lied, and it made me wonder. It's quite impossible
that Rutton should be in this neck of the woods; he was a man who
preferred to live a hermit in centres of civilisation.... Curious!"
"I don't wonder you think so. Perhaps the man had been up to some
mischief.... But," said the girl with a note of regret, "we're almost
home!"
They had come to the seaward verge of the woodland, where the trees and
scrub rose like a wild hedgerow on one side of a broad, well-metalled
highway. Before them stretched the eighth of a mile of neglected land
knee-deep with crisp, dry, brown stalks of weedy growths, beyond which
the bay smiled, a still lake of colour mirroring the intense
lapis-lazuli of the calm eastern skies of evening. Over across its
waters the sand dunes of a long island glowed like a bar of new red
gold, tinted by the transient scarlet and yellow glory of the
smouldering Autumnal sunset. Through the woods the level, brilliant,
warmthless rays ran like wild-fire, turning each dead, brilliant leaf
to a wisp of incandescent flame, and tingeing the air with an
evanescent ruby radiance against which the slim young boles stood black
and stark.
To the right, on the other side of the road, a rustic fence enclosed
the trim, well-groomed plantations of Tanglewood Lodge; through the
dead limbs a window of the house winked in the sunset glow like an eye
of garnet. And as the two appeared a man came running up the road,
shouting.
"That's Quain!" cried Amber; and sent a long cry of greeting toward
him.
"Wait!" said the girl impulsively, putting out a detaining hand. "Let's
keep our secret," she begged, her eyes dancing--"just for the fun of
it!"
"Our secret!"
"About the babu and the Token; it's a bit of mystery and romance to
me--and we don't often find that in our lives, do we? Let us keep it
personal for a while--between ourselves; and you will promise to let me
know if anything unusual ever comes of it, after I've gone. We can say
that I was riding carelessly, which is quite true, and that the horse
shied and threw me, which again is true; but the rest for ourselves
only.... Please.... What do you say?"
He was infected by her spirit of irresponsible mischief. "Why, yes--I
say yes," he replied; and then, more gravely: "I think it'll be very
pleasant to share a secret with you, Miss Farrell. I shant say a word
to any one, until I have to."
* * * * *
As events turned he had no need to mention the incident until the
morning of the seventh day following the girl's departure. In the
interim nothing happened, and he was able to enjoy some excellent
shooting with Quain, his thoughts undisturbed by any further appearance
of the babu.
But on that seventh morning it became evident that a burglary had been
visited upon the home of his hosts. A window had been forced in the
rear of the house and a trail of burnt matches and candle-grease
between that entrance and the door of Amber's room, together with the
somewhat curious circumstance that nothing whatever was missing from
the personal effects of the Quains, forced him to make an explanation.
For his own belongings had been rifled and the bronze box alone
abstracted--still preserving its secret.
In its place Amber found a soiled slip of note-paper inscribed with the
round, unformed handwriting of the babu: "Pardon, sahib. A mistake has
been made. I seek but to regain that which is not yours to possess.
There will be naught else taken. A thousand excuses from your hmbl.
obt. svt., Behari Lal Chatterji."