Peggy-in-the-Rain
I
HE breeze which had tempered the heat of a mid-March day had died away, and the leaves along the bridle path hung motionless in the sudden oppression. Above the tree tops the sky darkened ominously. Gordon Ames, gun on shoulder and three brace of plump quail bulging the pockets of his shooting jacket, paused for breath and wiped the perspiration from his face.
It was a good-looking face. Some thought it too good-looking. Perhaps, although the chin was square and prominent, the nose straight and the brown eyes candid and direct, it lacked strength, or seemed to. The fault was with the mouth, which, unhidden by a mustache, was smilingly soft. On the whole, however, the face was pleasing; honest, good-humored, merry, with a glint of dare-deviltry in the brown eyes. For the rest, Gordon Ames was twenty-seven years of age, five feet and eleven inches in height and slender with the slenderness of hard muscles and firm flesh.
The dry sand of the path made hard walking, and the air had grown hot and heavy and humid. It didn't require the sullen rumble of thunder overhead to apprise him of the fact that he was probably in for a wetting. He had been coming to Aiken for many winters and had long since learned the symptoms heralding the approach of the brief but terrific thunderstorms of the South. He was not particularly concerned about getting wet, and it wouldn't have helped if he had been, for he was a good mile and a half from town. Farther along, however, there was a deserted cabin, which Garret Fessenden had neglected to pull down when he had bought the tract to round out his five hundred acres of game preserve, and Gordon decided to reach it if the storm would let him. He shifted his shotgun to his other shoulder and pushed on. The woods had become very still. Not a leaf stirred, not a bird chirped. The jasmine blooms had almost gone, but enough remained on the festooning vines to fill the breathless air with their languorous perfume. A heavier rumble of thunder broke the silence, and as it died away in diminishing echoes, there came the soft thud of hoofs on the path behind him. He stepped aside and turned to look. A big rangy sorrel swept into sight at a gallop, and Gordon made ready to lift his hat to the rider, a girl in a linen habit who was bending low in the saddle as she raced against the storm. Gordon met for an instant the half-startled glance from a pair of dark eyes, and then horse and rider were past him and out of sight around the next turn.
He went on, mildly curious about the girl. There had been only time for a glance, but the glance had shown him a face quite unknown to him; and Gordon thought he knew, by sight at least, most of the feminine faces of Aiken's winter colony. Certainly the girl might be staying at the big hotel on the outskirts of town, but that didn't explain her mount. The big sorrel with his three white stockings was not a livery horse, of that he was certain. Moreover, he was almost equally certain that he had seen the horse before. Gordon's memory for horses was more than equal to his memory for girls, and now it annoyed him that he couldn't place the sorrel. Then there came the first patter of rain on the leaves, and the problem, which was an unimportant one in any case, was forgotten. A great flash of intense white light flooded the forest, turning the leaves to a strange and ghastly shade of arsenical green, and then a clap of thunder, deafening, appalling, rent the heavens and shook the earth, and the deluge began.
It is one thing to get moderately wet and quite another to be soaked to the skin. Gordon ran. Already the soft sand was heavy with water, and every hoof-print was a tiny puddle. The drops pelted down in great white streaks, blinding him. Leaves, stripped from their branches, splotched the ground. It was like a cloudburst. With the deserted cabin in mind, Gordon plunged on along the winding path, his shotgun tucked under his arm in an attempt to protect the breech. The lightning flashed almost incessantly, and the thunder, following the livid radiances, seemed to rip the sky in its terrific crashes. The cabin was still some distance away, how far he couldn't even guess, and already he was mentally likening his condition to that of a drowned rat, when, above the hissing clamor of the rain, he heard a cry. He stopped, shielded his eyes and looked about. At a little distance from the path was a big magnolia, and under it stood the horse with the three white stockings. His first glance failed to detect the girl, but a flash of light flooded the scene the next instant and Gordon caught sight of a figure huddled against the bole of the tree, of a white, frightened face, of a wet, gloved hand holding tightly to the bridle reins. He brushed through the dripping underbrush that caught and tripped him and hurried to the shelter of the tree. The horse, plainly nervous, whinnied at his approach. The girl summoned a smile to her pale face. She had been crouching on the ground, but now she stood up, steadying herself against the tree, her knees trembling under her.
"Would you mind—staying here?" she asked. "I'm so awfully afraid! I"
A clap of thunder drowned her voice. Gordon smiled and nodded reassuringly, leaned his gun against the tree, and took the reins from her clenched hand.
"Mind!" he exclaimed when the thunder had spent. "I should say not! Why, this is perfectly bully; a regular rain-proof tent!" He patted the horse's neck, spoke soothingly, and the sorrel, pointing his ears, seemed less restive on the instant. There was a flash of lightning, and the girl gasped and closed her eyes. The thunder broke, and she strained backward against the tree with clenched hands, fighting against her terror. When he could make himself heard, Gordon spoke lightly and cheerfully, apparently not noticing her panic.
"Quite a storm, isn't it? It will be all over in five minutes, though, and the sun out again. Did you get very wet?"
"N-no, I rode in here as soon as the rain started," she replied, her wide eyes straining for the next flash. "Oh, I'm such a coward about thunder and lightning. It—it's silly, I know, but I can't— Oh!"
He waited again. Then:
"Sit down," he said authoritatively. "Here, we'll both sit down. The ground isn't very wet, and, anyway, you'll be home in a few minutes." He drew the horse nearer, squatted beside her and 
"'Would you mind—staying here? I'm so awfully afraid!'"
She smiled wanly and clung tightly to his hand, shaking her head.
"I don't feel so scared," she said. "Isn't it almost over?"
"Pretty nearly now," he replied cheerfully. "First thing we know the sun will be out and we'll be steaming like—like a couple of clams!"
She tried to smile at his simile, but a jagged flash rent the sky asunder above the tops of the drooping trees and she closed her eyes again and clenched Gordon's hand convulsively so that he flinched as his ring bit into the flesh. He had a chance to look at her then. She looked absurdly small and helpless. Her hat, a narrow-rimmed Panama with a green and white scarf, had slipped to one side, revealing a good deal of soft brown hair. She was decidedly pretty, even now, frightened and bedraggled as she was, and Gordon felt a surge of big-brotherly pity.
"It's a darned shame," he muttered.
The girl heard him and opened her eyes.
"I'm—so silly," she said faintly.
Her eyes, he saw, were very deeply blue, almost violet, and now, with the terror in them, they were unnaturally large and dark. Somehow, with those eyes on him he felt less big-brotherly than he had a moment before. The eyes turned away and he was rather glad of it, for he found that his heart had begun to beat a strange tune. He studied the soft curve of her cheek and the little tendril of brown hair that had become plastered against it by the rain, and the desire to protect her became so strong that he could have stood up and, like Ajax, defied the lightning! The magnolia tree, while it fell far short of supplying the shelter of the tent that Gordon had likened it to, was a sturdy old forest giant, with a wide spread, and its great oval leaves, green-lacquered on top, spilled the rain from their glistening surfaces like so many duck's feathers. The rain found its way through, to be sure, but, Gordon reflected, perhaps the cabin which he had sought would have proved no tighter. The horse, trembling and snorting when the thunder crashed, behaved admirably, like the thoroughbred gentleman he was.
"They say," said the girl presently, "that it's dangerous to be under a tree. Is it?"
"Some trees," lied Gordon cheerfully, "but not a magnolia. I supposed that was the reason you selected this one. It's funny about magnolia trees. There's some—some quality in the—I think it's the sap, but it may be the bark—that deflects lightning. I thought of course you knew." He waited for the elements to have their inning. "We're just as safe here as though we were sitting on a glass table. You've never seen a magnolia that had been struck by lightning, have you?"
"N-no." She looked at him doubtfully and essayed a little laugh. "I—I don't believe it, but—it sounds nice!"
"When you know me better," replied Gordon gravely, "you'll want to apologize for that. I"
The thunder had its way again, but the din was less and there had been a perceptible pause between the flash and the clap.
"Hear that? "he asked.
She nodded dumbly, staring straight in front of her with puckered brow, for all the world, thought Gordon with another swift surge of pity, as though she expected some one to strike her.
"Well, it's going by fast. Why, it's halfway to Augusta now. I dare say it's looking for the river. They say thunderstorms follow the rivers. I guess this one got lost in the woods, eh?"
"Pro-probably," she gasped.
"You're staying in Aiken?" he asked.
"Yes."
"We haven't met before, have we? But that's a silly question to ask. If we had I'd have remembered."
"I've been here only a few days."
"I see." The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and a strange silence held the forest. The storm was dying away toward the south. "May I ask whether he is yours?" Gordon nodded toward the horse. "I've seen him before, I'm sure."
"No, he isn't mine. He—was loaned to me. This habit, too." She glanced down at the wet gray linen skirt. "It's—a mess, isn't it?"
The color was creeping back into her cheeks now and she withdrew her hand from his.
"It will wash, won't it?" he asked carelessly.
"I suppose so. Oh, there's the sun!"
"Yes, and now we'll frizzle up with heat. What time is it, I wonder." He looked at his watch and whistled. "By Jove, almost five! That storm must have lasted fully a half hour."
"Oh, I must get back!" she exclaimed in dismay. "They'll think something has happened to me!"
"Something has," he responded with a smile. "You've been marooned under a magnolia tree with a horse, a strange man and six quail. Isn't that a happening?"
She colored faintly. "Six quail?" she murmured.
"In my pockets. I'd been shooting. Garry Fessenden lets me pot his birds. He's abroad this winter. When the storm came up I was hiking for the old cabin back there. I'm glad, though, I missed it."
"So am I," she said simply. "I'd have died in another minute or two if you hadn't come. Or perhaps I'd have just fainted. I—I couldn't have stood it much longer, I know. I suppose it was—cheeky for me to call out to you"
"Cheeky! Rather not! It was very sensible. Besides, you were doing me a kindness; I'd have been soaked to the skin if I'd kept on to the cabin."
"You look soaked to the skin now," she replied with a shaky laugh. Gordon liked that laugh. He liked her voice, too. In fact, as he looked at her now, he found every instant something new to like.
"Oh, I'm not really wet. This jacket sheds the rain pretty well, about as well as any 'rain-proof' stuff does. Besides, I'm used to it. I'll be back at the hotel in ten minutes, and a tub and a palmetto will leave me feeling as fit as a fiddle."
"A palmetto?" she asked questioningly.
"Yes. Haven't you tried 'em? They make 'em to the King's taste at the club. I'll introduce you to one the first time we meet."
"Oh, it's something to drink?"
"Quite so," he laughed. "It's a very wonderful cocktail, quite the best thing to be found in Aiken. Oh, I say, you're not going yet?"
"I must." She tried to rise, but her cramped limbs failed her. Gordon sprang to his feet and helped her up.
"Are you sure you feel—aright enough?" he asked anxiously. "Don't you think you'd better wait a few minutes?"
She shook her head. "I'm all right now, thanks," she replied, pulling her hat into place and smoothing herself with quick, deft touches. "I must really get back. They may think I've been struck by lightning."
"At least let me go with you," he begged. "I'll walk along and keep a hand on the bridle."
But she shook her head. "You're very kind," she said firmly, "but it really isn't necessary. If you'll just give me a hand up"
He led the sorrel out through the wet undergrowth to the bridle path. The sun was out hot, and on every branch and spray quivering drops glittered like diamonds or shone like chrysoprase, limpidly green. The horse, nodding his sleek head, seemed eager to be away. Gordon looked to the girth, tossed the reins back and held his hands for a rather scuffed little brown boot. The girl settled herself in the saddle.
"I hope you'll be none the worse for it," said Gordon, arranging the skirt of the bedraggled habit. "I shall see you again, of course. Everybody meets here."
'Perhaps," replied the girl, gathering up the reins.
"Perhaps! Oh, I say!"
She smiled and held down a small hand in a wet glove. "If we don't meet again you may credit yourself with having played the part of valiant knight beautifully. And the lady in distress thanks you very, very much indeed."
"Well—but—I shall want to know about you! Whether you caught cold, you know, or—or anything."
"I don't catch colds. You need not have any uneasiness about me," she answered with a smile.
"In the stories I have read," said Gordon plaintively, "the rescued Princesses are more—are much kinder."
"But I'm not a Princess, Mr. Ames."
"Then we have met before!" he exclaimed eagerly.
"No, never."
"But you know my name?"
"Why not?" She smiled. "Do you suppose that a gentleman who inherits—how many millions is it?—Fifty? A hundred?—when he is just out of college can escape attention? You have been pointed out to me more than once, Mr. Ames."
"Where? In New York?"
She nodded.
"Then you live there?"
"At present."
"And your name?" he asked boldly.
She shook her head again.
"It looks like a challenge," he said with a laugh and a frown. "If it is"
"It isn't, really. I'm not trying to make a mystery of myself. I'm very grateful to you for—for being so nice to me, but—there isn't any more, Mr. Ames."
"You mean you don't want to know me," he said a trifle stiffly.
"I mean—" She paused and frowned at the horse's restive head. Then, turning to him gravely, "I mean," she went on, "that I am not what you think I am. This is a borrowed horse and a borrowed habit. I am a daw in peacock's feathers. I am not in your set, Mr. Ames, and our paths are not likely to cross again."
"That doesn't matter," he said sturdily. "I want to know you."
"Suppose you did know me?" she asked.
"Why, then—we could be friends, couldn't we?"
"Do you really think so?" she asked mockingly. "Do you think a girl who earns her living—for that is what I do, Mr. Ames—can afford to have Grordon Ames for a friend?"
"I don't see why not," he said stubbornly.
"But I think you do see," she smiled. "I must go. Good-by—and thank you."
"Wait!" He laid a hand on the bridle. "I can't have it end this way. I— Why, I'm more than half in love with you, girl, whoever you are! Doesn't that mean a little to you? Can't you be a little bit kind?"
"Do you think—that's a good reason—for being kind to you? " she asked slowly, the color creeping into her cheeks, but her eyes meeting his quite steadily.
"I certainly do! Hang it, girl, surely you're not one of those narrow Puritans who think that just because a chap has money and belongs to what they call the 'swell set,' he's a—brute and a bounder! Why in Heaven's name shouldn't we be friends? Besides, you—you're not"
"You are trying to say," she laughed as he faltered, "that I am old enough to take care of myself? I am. I'm twenty-three, and I've been taking care of myself for five years."
"Then"
"Oh, but wait, please! Suppose I unreasonably forget that it was just friendship? You know you're not at all bad looking, Mr. Ames; and you don't seem a bit more conceited than the average man; and you can be very sweet and nice. So, as I say, suppose I fell in love with you?"
His face flushed. "I wish to God you would!" he said hoarsely.
"And if I did?" she asked ironically.
"Why—" The pause was short enough, but it was there—"why, if you did, I suppose we'd do the usual thing."
"Which is?" she pursued mercilessly.
"Be married." He laughed bitterly. "Your opinion of me is certainly flattering."
She paid no heed to that. "Be married," she mused. "You and I; the millionaire and the work girl! It would make a good story for the papers, at least, wouldn't it?"
"Damn the papers!" he said savagely. "I believe you're laughing at me all the time. Well, laugh if you like. But you can't forget me, can you?" he challenged.
She shook her head. "I don't think I want to. You have quite restored my faith in your kind, Mr. Ames. Thanks for that; and, again, for your kindness."
She picked up the reins. He laid a hand on them behind the bit.
"No, you can't go yet," he said hoarsely. "We've got to come to terms!"
Her eyes darkened, although a little smile still trembled about her mouth. For a long moment their glances held. Then he dropped his hand and stepped back.
"I beg your pardon," he said stiffly. "Good-by."
But when the horse moved forward she reined him back. And the smile grew until it was a very kindly one.
"If you're going, please go," he said impatiently.
But having won her victory, womanlike she would yield.
"Then—you don't want to know?" she asked.
"What?"
"My name."
"You know I do."
"Really?"
He nodded.
"Then … it's Peggy."
He waited. She shook the reins and the sorrel pranced forward.
"Peggy what?" he demanded.
She turned and smiled back at him as the horse broke into a canter.
"Peggy-in-the-Rain," she said softly.
II
N the branches of a chinaberry tree outside the open window a mocking-bird was going through his repertoire, a repertoire of trills and gurgles and sudden flutings that started off with a dash and invariably ended, after a dozen notes, for all the world like the performance of a tenor who has forgotten his song. But, unlike the singer, he showed no embarrassment. Off he went again, throatily chanting of the rain that had brought him a bountiful supper, trilling of the charms and virtues of his mate, who, doubtless, was attending to her housewifely duties and awaiting her lord's return in some nearby tree. Gordon, getting leisurely into his dinner clothes, went to the window and watched him where, halfway along a slender branch, he stood, head up, pouring a cascade of music from his trim gray body.
"Go it, you little duffer," encouraged Gordon, wrestling with a stubborn stud. "Tilt your head back and let's have it. That's the stuff!"
The bird heard and cocked an inquiring beady eye toward the open window. He shifted one foot, put his head at an angle and examined Gordon exhaustively. Then, apparently satisfied, he swelled his throat, took a firm grip on the branch and proceeded to tell all about everything. And Gordon, having conquered the refractory stud, listened.
Swing, swing, swing in the chinaberry tree!
Here's a breeze! Here's a breeze!
The leaves are rustling about me
And the twilight is creeping up, up
Over the hill and through the darkening forest,
And the moon, the tiny moon, hangs like a silver worm
Above the steeple. It has rained and the world
Is damp and fragrant, and the little fat bugs
Are crawling. There's one! There's one! There's one!
Sing, sing, sing in the chinaberry tree!
Hear me! Hear me! Hear me!
Was ever a song so sweet as mine?
See me ruffle and swell! What a voice have I!
I have dined; I am happy; I sing! Over there
Sits my plump little wife by our nest.
If I call she will answer. Did you hear? Did you hear?
Such a sweet little wife! I love her, I love her!
Eh? Did she call? Just a minute, my dear;
I must finish my song; just a minute, a minute, a minute!
Oh, how I sing! I'm in love with my voice.
And my wife and the beautiful world! Heigho! Good night!
Here I come! Here I come! Here I come!
Off he darted, a gray streak in the soft twilight.
"If there's a Hammerstein in Birdland," murmured Gordon, "he will have you signed for next season, I bet."
He lighted a cigarette, flicked the match onto the lawn below and blew a blue cloud of smoke through the window,
"What a voice she had!" he went on, half to himself. "Peggy! What a dear, queer little name! Peggy-in-the-Rain, she called herself." He smiled. "Please, who are you, Peggy-in-the-Rain? And where are you now, I wonder. Just around the corner, on the next street? Up yonder there in the big hotel? Out on Whiskey Road in some big white stucco palace? Are you thinking of me—a little—Peggy-in-the-Rain? Well, wherever you are, my dear, here's to you." He lifted a glass and drained the last spoonful of amber in the bottom. "Here's to you and to our next meeting, Peggy-in-the-Rain!"
III
VERYBODY meets in Aiken, Gordon had declared. And the next morning he set out to prove it so. White-flanneled, he hurried over to the golf club. There were plenty there who would have stayed his anxious search. The Golden Widow—they called Mrs. Burke-Parrish that to distinguish her from a brunette widow—barred his way with a silken sunshade.
"I'm looking for a friend," he explained.
"Won't I do?" asked Mrs. Hampton.
"Not as a friend, Fair Lady," he answered, catching sight of a face on the porch that might be Hers and longing to be off. "Hello, Pete."
"Tell us about her," said Peter Waring, hooking the handle of his stick about Gordon's ankle.
"Her?" asked the victim. "Who?"
"The friend you're looking for, of course. What's she like, old man?"
"Yes, dark or fair, Mr. Ames?" added the widow.
"Short or tall, old man?"
"Kind or unkind, O Disconsolate Lover?"
"Er—she's rather tall and short, with a lot of light black hair. And she's distinctly unkind, since she's evidently not here."
"She's foxy," declared Pete. "That's all, old man. They all are."
"Brute!" said the widow. "Ask Mr. Ames to drive out to the Farm with us this afternoon, Peter."
Gordon gently disengaged his imprisoned ankle and shook his head. "Don't do it, Pete," he warned regretfully. "I'd have to refuse you, and that would pain me deeply."
The Golden Widow pouted. "I believe the man's absolutely in love! Think of it! Gordon Ames in love!"
"I wondered if you'd never guess my secret," Gordon sighed.
The widow threatened him with the formidable sunshade and he retreated in terror. He doubled back and forth through and about the clubhouse without success. Then, as it was still early, he telephoned out to Amesdene for his saddle horse, joined a group of taproom golfers and imbibed a long, cold julep while waiting. Folly, a bay mare with an excitable and suspicious disposition, sidled her way through town, having a conniption fit at every encounter with a street car, and cantered through the pines to the big hotel on the other side of the village. Gordon ambled the length of the piazza, snooped into shady parlors and finally searched the register, running his finger back over two weeks of signatures. But that method was rather hopeless, as he realized, for it was more than likely that the name he sought was only a diminutive, or even a nickname. At all events, he found no entry on the register that encouraged inquiry, and he mounted his horse again and rode out to Amesdene.
The big white house with its tall pillars and green blinds, a rather showy replica of an old-fashioned Southern Colonial residence, was closed, for since Gordon's father had died, five years before, the place had lost its attractions for Mrs. Ames, who preferred the dingy brownstone house on Fifth Avenue to any place she knew of. Gordon, who liked Aiken for the attractions it provided for idlers of his kind, put up at the hotel in the village, using the Amesdene stables for his horses. Folly whisked up the drive, between rows of soldierly oleanders, and sidled into the stable yard. Culver, head groom and caretaker, was bandaging the ankles of a two-year-old, who, a daughter of the famous Amesdene Adventuress by the equally famous Amesdene Hero, had been named Ingenue and was booked to carry off some blues in the roadster classes at the winter shows. A stable-boy ran out to take Gordon's mount, and Folly disappeared, shaking her head and jangling her bit, determined to remain in the limelight to the last moment. After a talk about Ingenue and the other horses Gordon asked:
"Culver, do you know a big sorrel gelding with three white feet?"
"’Igh in the shoulders, sir?"
"Yes, quite, a big, rangy brute."
"I fancy it's that 'orse of the Morrills, sir. The Tiger they call him, sir, I think."
"Of course! That's where I saw him. Miss Morrill rode him out to the races last year. I knew I'd seen him somewhere."
"Thinking of buying him, sir?"
"No, I don't want him. Too leggy, eh?"
"That's accordin' to fancy, Mr. Ames," replied Culver, chewing thoughtfully on the straw in his mouth. "’E's an oldish 'orse, sir, but 'e's got a lot o' life in 'im yet. At five hundred 'e'd be a rare bargain, sir."
But Gordon was not listening.
"Give me The Goat, Culver. How's his knee, by the way?"
"It's 'ealin', sir." Culver spoke disinterestedly. He didn't approve of The Goat, who was a half-bred Kentucky with little to recommend him but strength and willingness. "’E won't 'urt to be used a bit, sir."
The Goat was led out presently, a small flea-bitten gray with a meek eye and ears so large that Culver, out of Gordon's hearing, referred to him "as that damned mule." The Goat had been purchased under the misapprehension that he had somewhere within him the making of a polo pony, but he had proven too slow for that purpose, and Gordon, admiring the animal for his good disposition, promptly dubbed him The Goat and used him more often than any other saddle horse in the stable. They made a good deal of fun of Gordon and his Goat in the village at first, but now they were familiar sights and had ceased to arouse comment.
After lunch he mounted The Goat again and trotted westward. It was quite within the range of possibility that what had happened once would happen again, and he turned in through the Fessenden gateway, quite prepared for a second meeting. He pulled The Goat down to a walk and followed the bridle path in and out through the forest. But although he passed several riders—for the roads of the estate were open to the public—he saw nothing of the sorrel with the three white stockings or of the girl with the scuffled brown boots. In the end he decided that he had come out too early, and so, having completed the circuit of the place and emerged at the north of the village, he turned around and walked The Goat slowly back again, much to that animal's bewilderment, since walking was something he was very seldom allowed to indulge in. But the return journey was as disappointing as the other, and he jogged back to the club, feeling rather disgruntled with his luck. Of course, he comforted himself, he was bound to find her again sooner or later, for Aiken was too small a place for anyone to hide in, but, like the man in the song, he wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. And, having been luckier than the general run of persons in that particular, he was intolerant of denial. He played a remarkably poor game of golf-pool with Peter Waring and two other men, and went back to the hotel to dress for dinner, blaming himself for having wasted a whole day in searching for a person who didn't want to see him again.
IV
T all events, he could easily discover her identity. He had only to question Leona Morrill, and Leona would undoubtedly be at the dinner which he was attending. And yet it would be a good deal like throwing himself on the mercy of the enemy, for ever since the newspaper had predicted an engagement between him and the girl, and a certain journal of society had actually announced it, Leona Morrill had disliked him. He knew it and the rest of the world guessed it. There were some who declared—women, these—that Gordon Ames had behaved badly when the enterprising press had sought to hasten the engagement. Others—and these were the men, chuckling wickedly—declared that he had been "jolly wise." What he had really done was to run! Leona, possibly finding something uncomplimentary in the precipitancy of his flight, had seemingly never forgiven it. It wag a recognized rule that the two were not to be seated together at the table, although they met in public without open hostilities.
Miss Morrill was a very handsome girl, tall, finely built, a good horsewoman and the only child of Anderson Morrill, whose Morrill's Magic Malt, handed down to him by his father, has been a household word—and a household necessity—for sixty years. "Old Magic" Morrill they had called Leona's grandfather back in Utica, since on all his preparations for restoring and preserving the health of humanity the word magic had featured. But the Magic Malt was the only one of the long list which had survived the test of time—and the Pure Food and Drugs Act. Whether there was aught of the magic about his medicines and cure-alls, it must be acknowledged that there was something closely akin to magic in the manner in which the astute old Yankee had accumulated wealth. Anderson Morrill retained a controlling stock in the business, but did not soil his hands with it. Nor, you may be sure, did he serve Morrill's Magic Malt as an appetizer at his dinners, although that excellent concoction contained ingredients not out of place in an appetizer. Anderson Morrill held true to the principles and obligations of the Second Generation. He rode to hounds in a pink coat, maintaining his own pack on Long Island and being M.F.H., cruised about the world in a steam yacht that was the last cry in nautical comfort, kept up three estates, and, in brief, proved to the world that only one generation is required to make a gentleman—when aided by magic. He was a fair horseman, a poor huntsman, a mediocre shot, a good husband and an indulgent father. He gave much to charity and saw that the world learned of it. He was ambitious regarding his daughter, and it was said that his disappointment when her engagement to Gordon Ames was denied was truly pathetic. At present, having failed at an alliance with America's Aristocracy of Wealth, he was patently negotiating for an alliance with England's Nobility of Poverty, and the fair-haired Earl of Marctdell—pronounced Mardel, if you please—who had been under his wing most of the winter was about run to earth. The earl was a good-natured, not overly scintillant youth who was known through the colony as Tommy or Tommy Tupence. "I say, don't call me that," he had begged a lady who addressed him as Your Grace. "Call me Tommy. The rest of it isn't worth tupence over here, you know."
It was Tommy whom Gordon gently but firmly detached from Leona Morrill on the porch after dinner.
"It won't do, Tommy," he said severely. "You're constituting yourself a combination in restraint of trade, old chap."
"Oh, but I say!" remonstrated Tommy as Gordon pushed him away.
"Objection overruled. If you don't run along I'll fine you twenty-nine million dollars, Tommy."
If Leona was surprised she failed to show it. She looked merely languidly amused. She affected languor, and it became her.
"It wears four shoes and only three stockings," said Gordon, taking the chair beside her. "Guess my riddle."
"The Tiger," replied Leona. "He's not for sale."
"Um; sorry. I saw him yesterday and I like his looks."
Miss Morrill remained silent.
"A—er—a girl was riding him, I believe. A friend of yours?"
She nodded, watching him calmly. Gordon smiled disarmingly.
"The fact is," he confessed, "I ran across her during the thunderstorm and we shared the same shelter for a few minutes. One can't discover young ladies in forests without becoming at least mildly curious about them."
"What is it you want to know about her?" asked Leona.
"Well, who she is, for one thing. After that, where she is."
"She didn't tell you her name?"
"Why should she? One doesn't ask a girl under such circumstances "
"No? How long did you—share the same shelter?"
Gordon shrugged. "Five minutes, perhaps; ten, maybe. It was banging away most of the time and there wasn't much chance for confidences."
Miss Morrill smiled. "Ten minutes? Then I fancy if you didn't learn her name it was because she wouldn't tell it."
Gordon made a grimace. "That doesn't sound flattering," he laughed.
"We are hardly—strangers," she replied coldly.
He was silent a moment. Then,
"Suppose we pass on to the second question," he suggested. "Where is she?"
"What time is it?"
"Ten minutes to nine," he answered, after looking at his watch.
"Then—I'd say—she was about at Washington."
"Washington! You mean that—she's gone?"
"Yes, she left this morning on the early train."
"For New York?"
"She told you that much, then?"
"Incidentally, yes."
"But not her name?"
"Surely, that's not strange," he smiled. "The meeting was rather—er—casual, you see."
"But you want to know it?"
"Please."
"Why?"
"Curiosity."
"Vulgar—and sometimes dangerous."
"But I'm not a cat; at least, I hope not."
"No, you're not catty. But I can't tell you her name."
"Can't or won't?"
"Well, won't. I'll tell you why. She is a friend of mine. We went to the same school a few years ago and she was one of the very few girls who were genuine. Her people—" Leona paused a moment—"were poor. She herself works for her living. She is not in our set and she's not your kind of a girl. And—well, in short, Gordon, it's no good."
"My kind of a girl," he repeated questioningly. "Just what is my kind of a girl?"
"You surely understand me," she replied a trifle impatiently. "I mean that she is not a girl you would marry and she's not a girl who would—take you without marriage. Is that frank enough?"
"Quite," he said dryly. "I must either marry the young lady or keep away, then. Is that it?"
"Exactly."
"You haven't much of an opinion of me as a friend, have you?"
"I don't think you'd make a very good friend for a girl who is situated as she is."
"You reminded me a moment ago that we are scarcely strangers," he said mildly. "Is that your real opinion of me?"
"I am considering you as one of—of your set," she answered calmly. "Besides, she doesn't want you to follow her."
"Then she thought it possible that I would? She told you so?"
"The expression is mine. What she did say was that she hoped you wouldn't try to find out about her. That was before the telegram came. She expected to remain with me another week."
"Oh, so it was a telegram that took her home?"
"Yes. Gordon, the girl is in trouble, a whole big lot of trouble. Let her alone, please."
"I'm sorry," he said, after a moment's silence. "You won't tell me her name, then?"
"No, I won't."
"I could learn it, I suppose," he mused.
"Yes, you could question the servants."
"I might even do that in my desperation," he replied with a smile. "However, I won't. Just to prove that I am not quite as bad as you paint me, I won't. Are you satisfied?"
"Yes, if you mean it."
"Much obliged!"
"Oh, I'm not questioning your veracity," she said calmly. "I'm sure you mean to steer clear now, only—I'm wondering if it will last."
"I see. Well, I'm only agreeing not to ask any more questions now—and here. If I should learn by accident I'd probably try to see her again. I suppose it's the—well, the element of mystery that has got me going. I dare say if she had told me her name I wouldn't have thought about her again."
"Then you did ask her?"
He nodded: "Yes; she told me the Peggy part of it."
"Oh!" Leona frowned. "She didn't"
He laughed. "She didn't fess up to that?" he asked.
"She may have mentioned it. I don't remember. And now, if you're quite through"
"Quite, thank you. Yes, I'd better go, for Tommy is scowling quite fiercely at me. By the by, you and she write?"
"Occasionally."
"Then, in your next letter"
"No," she said decisively.
He laughed as he arose. "Not even that?"
"Not even that."
"Do you know, Leona, I believe you're queering your own game?"
"In what way?"
"By—well, by flaunting the 'Keep off the Grass' sign too violently. The grass begins to look terribly inviting. Good night."
The Northern mail had arrived at the hotel during his absence, and Gordon found a letter from his mother. Mrs. Ames wrote regularly to her son and married daughter every Monday afternoon at a certain hour. She was the kind of woman whose life is ruled off into squares, with a duty for each square. Gordon had declared once that the notion that the country set its clocks by the Government Observatory was exploded, that the clocks were corrected every morning at seven-fifteen, when his mother rang for her maid, and again at four-thirty in the afternoon, when Hurd, the butler, paraded solemnly into the drawing-room with the tea-cart. There was only one portion of Mrs. Ames' four pages—she always wrote four pages; never more nor less—that interested Gordon, and that only slightly.
Gordon was more concerned over the butler's rheumatism than anything else mentioned in the letter. Hurd and he had been chums ever since he had been big enough to ride around on the old man's shoulders. He dropped the mail into his pocket, and procured a highly colored postcard exhibiting an expanse of unnaturally green grass sprinkled with white costumes and backed by a lemon-yellow building. It was inscribed "Palmetto Golf Club House, Aiken, S. C."
"Dear Mums," he wrote. "Tell Hurd to carry a horse-chestnut in his pants pocket. Much love. Gordon."
He chuckled as he addressed it and dropped it into the box. His mother detested postcards, disliked being called "Mums," and thought the word "pants" extremely vulgar.
V
HE season at Aiken came to an end with a sudden visitation of hot weather, and the colony went northward, many by easy stages that dropped them for a week or so at Pinehurst or Virginia Hot Springs or Old Point. Gordon, with Peter Waring and Mortimer Poole, dallied for a fortnight at the latter resort, and then went on again in a chilly rain that blurred the car windows and depressed even Peter's buoyant spirits. Mort Poole left them at Philadelphia, and Gordon and Peter reached New York late at night on the first day of April. Outside the terminal they shivered in the cold, damp breeze as they waited for Peter's car to come up.
"This weather is an April fool on us," said Peter plaintively. "When does spring begin up here, anyway, old man?"
"One month after you get back, whenever that happens," replied Gordon. "Thank Heaven he brought the limousine!"
"I've got one, sir," confided Hurd confidentially as, a quarter of an hour later, Gordon handed him his overcoat.
"Eh? One what, you old reprobate?"
"A chestnut, sir; it's in my pocket, sir, and it's done a world of good. I had some difficulty getting one, sir, at this time of year, but here it is." He exhibited it proudly.
"By jove!" said Gordon, "so it is! And they're out of season, too, Hurd."
"Yes, sir, but a cousin of my wife's has a tree of them, sir, in her yard over on Staten Island and her little boy had some he'd kept. Mrs. Ames is waiting up for you, sir, in her room."
"I'll go right up. You were very fortunate, Hurd. You—er—you've noticed an improvement already, you say?"
"Oh, yes, sir! Why, last week I could scarcely bend my back, sir!"
"Quite wonderful! Send a couple of sandwiches and the Scotch to my room, will you?"
Mrs. Ames had not been wasting her time, as the little pile of gray envelopes, sealed, addressed and stamped, lying at her elbow on the writing desk, attested. She laid down her pen as Gordon entered, kissed him, patted his hand then viewed him critically.
"You've lost flesh," she pronounced. "Don't get much thinner, Gordon; it isn't becoming. It was so with your father. He tried never to get below a hundred and sixty. You've come home to quite the worst weather of the spring."
"One always does. You're looking very fit, Mums."
She allowed the appellation to pass unchallenged, a sign of extreme amiability.
"I have had a very good month," she replied in a manner that seemed to imply that such a satisfactory result had been attained only by the wisest and most careful management on her part; an implication open to doubt, since Mrs. Ames' health was always good. "I've always thought," she went on, "that if folks would stay sensibly at home and not go flitting around the globe they'd be a lot better off. We're becoming a nation of gadders, Gordon."
"Anything new?" he asked.
"Nothing of interest to you, I think," she replied reflectively. "I believe Mr. Lovering is anxious to see you."
He nodded. "I had a wire from him yesterday. I'm going down in the morning. It's something about the road. The Interstate Commerce Commission is smelling a rat, I fancy; Lovering wired something about an inquiry into freight rates. But why drag me into it, eh?"
"But, Gordon, it's your own road! Surely"
"It isn't my road at all, Fair Lady; it's Lovering's road, and Wharton's road and all the other old granny directors' road. If by any possible chance I have an idea of my own they throw up their hands in holy horror and squeak, 'Oh, dear, that would never do! Never in the world!' What's the use, eh? By Jove, some day I'll get up my spunk and go down there and take that road by the throat and shake the mischief out of it!"
"I suppose, my dear, that Mr. Lovering and Mr. Wharton and the others really know best. They're experienced, you see."
"Of course they know best! That's what makes me tired. Why the dickens didn't dad pound some railroad sense into me, I wonder? All I ever learned was to speak French and German with a New York accent, take a fall out of Euclid, and not get Julius Cæsar confused with Velasquez."
Mrs. Ames, smoothing her gray silk gown, looked troubled. "I've never heard you talk like this before," she said almost plaintively. "I'm sure your father and I always meant to give you as good an education"
"You did, Mums. Or, at least, you offered it to me. I was fool enough not to make the most of it."
"There was that year in Berlin"
"That I wasted, I know. And I might have stayed here and taken a post-graduate course. But I didn't. If dad hadn't died when he did I suppose I'd have done differently. But when a fellow comes into a fortune as big as a skyscraper at twenty-one, why, there's only one thing to do, and that's get busy and dig into it. And the sad part of it is that I haven't even been a success as a spender!"
"That is surely to your credit, Gordon."
"No, it isn't! There's no credit coming to a fellow for falling down on what he attempts. I tried to be a spender and failed from the first. Somewhere inside me there's a—a leaven of New England thrift that queers the game. Why, hang it, mother, I can't even loaf decently now! I get bored to death about every twenty-four hours. Sometimes I wish to Heaven I'd been born poor!"
"The obligations of wealth" began Mrs. Ames.
"Don't, please. Mums! I know all about that. What I want is something to do. I think I'll get married."
"Marriage is hardly an occupation," returned his mother, smiling.
"By gad, it is for some poor devils! Teddy Norden was down at Aiken for a week or two with that filly of his, and I give you my word I never saw a man more fully occupied than he was!"
"I am very sorry for Mr. Norden," said his mother, "but when men marry out of their set—I hope there was no—no scandal?"
"Nothing special," replied Gordon, with a shrug. "Enough to keep Teddy on the qui vive, though."
"Well, I'm not sure that marriage wouldn't be very good for you, my boy. You're twenty-seven. Your father married when he was twenty-eight. Have you—is there any one you fancy?"
"No, at the present moment I'm heart-whole. He paused a moment and frowned at the cigarette he was lighting. "Perhaps that's what the trouble is, Mums."
"If you are in earnest I'll look around for you, Gordon, but do try not to—to get mixed up again."
He nodded, blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. "All right. Not likely, anyhow. I've sown my wild oats. Still, you needn't begin to look just yet. I guess I like talking about it better than plunging. Happy marriages don't seem, in my experience, to be exactly a drug on the market! Ever known any, Mums?"
"One, at any rate," replied Mrs. Ames gently.
"I know," said Gordon gloomily. "But you were different from the women nowadays. I don't suppose you ever had a real flirtation after you married dad, did you?"
"No, dear. I never saw the man worth flirting with, and I wouldn't have known how to flirt if I had."
"Oh, yes you would," replied Gordon cynically. "Flirting doesn't have to be learned. Well, I'm tuckered." He drew his long length from the chair and stood up in the soft glow of the silk-shaded lights. Mrs. Ames sighed.
"Gordon, you're much too good looking. I don't know where you get it. Your father was a good man and a big man, but even I could never consider him handsome."
"Fortunately, then, I had a mother," responded Gordon. "Ever meet her, Mums? She's one of the best-lookers in New York this minute!"
Mrs. Ames smiled and shook her head. "I don't pretend that I wasn't—rather pretty when I was younger, Gordon "
"My word, you're getting better looking every day, Mother! Why, you'd have had the whole bunch of 'em 'ridden off' if you'd been at Aiken! Good night. I'll look in before I go downtown."
He bent over and kissed her. "How do you keep your hair so young-looking, Mums?"
"It's quite full of gray, my dear, and I'm only"
"Careful!"
"Fifty-two, Gordon. Lots of women don't get gray before sixty."
"Gray!" Gordon chuckled. "Why, you haven't enough gray hairs to put in a locket! Anyway, they'll become you when they do arrive; make you look more distinguished than ever. How are all the pet charities getting on?"
"Nicely, I think. That reminds me, dear. Can you stay a moment? It's about the Milburns."
"Who are the Milburns?" asked Grordon, yawning.
"Why, my dear, I wrote you"
"Oh, yes, of course; tenth cousins or something. Somebody died, didn't they?"
"Emma Milburn. I sent flowers in your name and mine, Gordon. Then I asked Mr. Lovering to look into her affairs. I wrote you I was going to."
"Quite right. Then what?"
"Well, it seems that Emma left one child, a grown-up daughter; her name is—is Margaret, I think he said. I have his note here somewhere. Well, never mind now. I'm quite sure it was Margaret, anyhow. It seems that they were rather poor and the girl is left quite on her own resources. She is about twenty-two or three, I believe. I have never believed that my father made any promises to Thomas Millburn, Gordon, but the girl is a relation in a way, and I think it is my duty to aid her. We thought that, say, ten thousand dollars placed with Mr. Lovering for investment would be about right."
"Four or five hundred a year? Can a girl live on that?"
"She is already employed at something, Gordon, and I have no desire to make her independent of her work. That would be most inadvisable. But five hundred a year would provide very nicely for her. I'm wondering whether to give her the income for life or merely until she marries.'
"Oh, let's go the whole hog, Mums. Perhaps she won't marry unless she has it. Have you ever seen her?"
Mrs. Ames shook her head. "I—I don't think I shall insist on that. It—might be painful, and could do no good. I don't think it is necessary for her to know where the money comes from, do you?"
"I fancy she won't much care," replied Gordon, hiding a yawn. "May I go halves with you?"
"No, dear, it's quite my affair. Still, I'm glad you approve. You do, Gordon?"
"Quite. Good night."
VI
T is a penalty of Prominence to be photographed. The Home Edition of the Evening Journal, which an attendant was placing on the tables in the club when Gordon dropped in at four o'clock, flaunted a four-column cut on the first page which purported to be a snap-shot of the young millionaire emerging from the offices of the Central and Western Railroad after a conference with the directors. Had the reproduction been a little clearer it might have been observed that a frown disturbed the usual placidity of the young gentleman's brow. As it was, however, one had to accept the enterprising photographer's word as to the identity of the subject, for the picture showed only a dim figure, attired in light clothes and a derby hat, striding from the marble entrance of a building, with a feather duster vender shuffling into range and a messenger-boy in the act of observing the principal figure over his shoulder and colliding with the vender. There was a half-column of speculation masquerading as knowledge in which Gordon was referred to variously as the Boy Magnate, the Young Railroad President, the Bachelor Millionaire, and Society's Darling. Gordon glanced through the article, mentally shrugged his shoulders and tossed the paper to the table again. Then he picked up a magazine, pushed a button and dropped into a leather chair. An attendant crossed the heavy crimson and blue rug with noiseless steps.
"When Mr. Waring comes in," Gordon instructed, "ask him to look for me here, please."
The magazine, which he had selected quite at random, opened itself at an article on "New York's Landed Proprietors." The first turn of a page revealed a half-tone reproduction of a photograph labelled "Gordon Patterson Ames—Photo Copyrighted by Neville." Gordon had set for the likeness four years before, and it represented him as an insufferably priggish young man of twenty-three with an incipient mustache, his hair plastered to his head and a gardenia as big as a cabbage rose in the buttonhole of a checked morning coat. He shuddered. Old photographs, like sins, continually find one out. With pardonable curiosity he turned back and began to read the article. "New York's Landed Proprietors—How the Old Knickerbocker families, together with a few More Recent Arrivals, have gained control of over a Billion Dollars worth of Manhattan Island—By Margaret Mill." There was little in the story that hadn't been told time and time before, but the facts were presented brightly and crisply, round numbers of seven, eight and nine figures were sprinkled through the text with breath-taking carelessness, and the accompanying illustrations showed bejeweled ladies and frock-coated men with lavish prodigality. It was a veritable Romance of Money. It started with the penniless butcher's son who, with the money accumulated in fur trading, purchased farm lands which now, in the fourth generation, were valued at almost a half-billion dollars. It told of the son of the Huguenot refugee who set up his ironmonger's shop and founded a fortune approximately represented to-day by nine figures. And so it went, tracing the development of one fortune after another so enticingly that Gordon, meaning only to skim the story, found himself reading it with interest. His own real estate holdings he found placed at fifty millions, while his mother's personal property was figured at twenty-five. Gordon smiled, but the smile faded the next moment. "The present head of the Ames family," he read, "is but twenty-seven years of age and of his ability to add to the fortune of which he became possessed on the death of his father little is known. So far he has been seemingly content to leave the conduct of his affairs in the hands of older and wiser men. He is an enthusiastic sportsman, with horses and yachts his main hobbies. In society, where he is a notable figure, he is immensely popular, although his democratic tastes have at times quite shocked his friends. Gordon Ames is still young, and it may be that when he is tired of playing he will buckle down and show that he is, after all, a true son of the hardy New Englander who, in the last century, carved his fortune from the granite hills. But even lack of ability will scarcely affect so much of his fortune as is represented by New York real estate, which, barring the most unimaginable influences, will continue to increase in value from year to year."
"Who the devil writes these things for the magazines?" he demanded as Peter Waring perched himself on the table.
Peter glanced uninterestedly at the article and shook his head. "Search me, old man. I don't. Wish I could. Never was able to string three words together and make sense. What's wrong with this one?"
Gordon hesitated. "Nothing," he answered finally, tossing the magazine aside. "Let's have a drink."
Peter glanced at the gold-rimmed clock over the library door. "Can't," he said, shaking his head. "I'm on the wagon till five. Beastly bore, but it's doctor's orders."
"Well, it'll be five by the time we get back there. Come on. What seems to be the trouble with you, Pete?"
"Doctor says liver. I don't know. I get up feeling like the very devil; don't eat; sleep rotten; grouchy all the time."
"You're in love, Pete."
Peter shook his head quite soberly. "No, that ain't it. I guess it's pickled liver, just like the doctor says. What do you want?"
"Who's giving this party? Waiter, bring Mr. Waring a liver pill and a glass of water."
The waiter smiled discreetly.
"Rye high-ball,"said Peter. "I believe it's these damned mixed drinks that have got me going, Gordon. Saw your pretty in the paper this afternoon."
"Make it two. Yes, good likeness, wasn't it?"
"Well, I'd have known those long legs of yours. Ran into the Widow a minute ago on the Avenue."
"Ran into her? Well, you're insured, aren't you, up to twenty thousand? How much is a widow worth, Pete, if you break her?"
"She inquired about you."
"That means she's losing hope of you, Pete. Hope you told her I'd gone abroad or somewhere?"
"I don't believe she'd have me," replied Pete moodily.
"Good God, old man, you aren't thinking of that, are you?"
"Oh, I don't know. Say, look here, now; I'm 'most thirty, ain't I?"
"You ought to know better than I."
"Well, I am. Now, why not get married, eh?"
"Really and truly, you mean?"
"Shut up! Yes. I'm getting sort of sick of just hanging around, old man. What I want is a place to go home to."
"Foreclosed the mortgage, have they?"
"Hell, that ain't a home! I mean a—a place of my own, don't you see. A little house with a wife and a cat on the hearth"
"Trouble is, Pete, it's hard nowadays to get a wife who will stay on the hearth. They all want to be treated like one of the family!"
"Quit kiddin'; I'm in earnest. Here's regards. Now, look; why not marry a nice girl and settle down?"
"Found her yet?"
"N-no. I could, though. I've got money enough to marry on"
Gordon put his head back and laughed. "Good old Peter! He's got money enough to marry on! Pete, did you know that there are men in this old town who marry on twelve dollars a week?"
"Are there?" asked Peter vaguely. "Well, but look at the girls they marry! Make their own hats and do their own cooking, don't they? By Jove, I'd like to find a girl who'd do that for me?"
"Think of your poor liver," said Gordon feelingly. "Look here, you poor old idiot, what you want is a housekeeper, not a wife. You can hire them."
"Oh, I'm through with that sort of thing," responded Pete virtuously.
"I wish you wouldn't misconstrue my suggestions. I was referring to a bona-fide housekeeper; a perfect lady. You advertise for them in the papers. They are usually widows, I believe, and dress in black merino, whatever that is, and live in the past. If you paid a big enough salary I'll bet you could get one to sit on the hearth with the cat."
"You're a damned fool," said Peter with a grin. "I come to you for sympathy and all I get is a lot of silly jokes. Let's have another drink."
"No more, thanks. What are you doing this evening?"
"Dinner; Sinclair's. Going?"
"I believe I am. I'd forgotten it. Let's get away and go to a show afterwards."
"I'm your boy," said Peter more cheerfully. "Seen 'The Girl with the Diamond Heels'? They say it's ripping."
"All right. I'll get some tickets. Are you crazy about boxes?"
"Hate 'em. Feel like a silly ass sitting in a box. First row for me."
"Punch the bell, will you? I'm sorry if I haven't been sufficiently sympathetic, Pete. The fact is, your plan rather took my wind. I—I've been contemplating matrimony myself."
"You? Good Lord!"
"Well, why not, you silly fool? Think you're the only man in New York who can get married?"
"But—but you're not the marrying kind, Gordon?"
"Why not?"
"Because—oh, I don't know."
"Of course you don't know, you chump!" replied Gordon, signing his check. "Cigarette? There isn't such a thing as a non-marrying kind of a man, Pete. I'm just as much of a marrying man as you are, confound you. And I've a darned good mind to try it."
"Who's the lady?"
"I don't know—yet."
"Hm."
"Same to you. Come on and let's get those tickets. Anyhow, it's time."
"Yes, they're sold out weeks ahead."
"I mean it's time for me to get married. Pete, that picture of a wife and a cat on the hearth looks awfully good to me, too!"
VII
ND the picture persisted after he had parted from Peter Waring at his corner and walked on uptown alone in the spring twilight. The hearth, he reflected, wouldn't be a grandiose affair. In fact, it would be something like the hearth in his Adirondack bungalow, a comfortable, homey affair of rough bricks, with an inglenook. And the cat would be an old-fashioned tabby cat such as one reads of in old-fashioned stories. And the wife—well, she wouldn't be actually on the hearth, but she'd be in front of it, with the firelight playing on her brown hair and in her eyes, which would be darkly blue. And when he came up she would put a hand over her shoulder without turning and draw him down to her. And
Gordon muttered an apology to the pedestrian he had jostled and came to with a start. He had seen the face of the woman on the hearth and lo, she was Peggy-in-the-Rain!
VIII
EONA MORRILL was at dinner that evening, but almost the length of the table separated them, and it was only later, in the hall, that Gordon found an opportunity to speak to her. Leona and Mrs. Morrill, attended by Tommy Tupence, were leaving early, and she was already cloaked when he reached her. Since there were others around them, they shook hands.
"Have you relented yet?" he asked.
She raised her brows languidly. "Relented?" she repeated.
"Repented, if you like," he replied with a smile.
"You still remember—at the end of a fortnight? The lady must have made a real impression on you!"
"She did. I hope she is well."
"I believe so. I haven't seen her since she left me at Aiken."
"I wish you'd be generous."
"To her?"
"To me. If you think you oughtn't to tell me her name, will you write to her and ask her permission?"
"Is it as bad as that? " she mocked.
"Well, I'm—very much interested in her, Leona."
"Can't you find some one in your own set to be—interested in?"
Tommy laid a persuasive hand on Gordon's arm. "You're blocking traffic, old chap."
"Hello, Tommy. Good evening, Mrs. Morrill. Won't you try to persuade Leona to be kind to me?"
Mrs. Morrill, stout and good-natured, struggled with her gloves, beaming archly at the petitioner.
"Fancy any one being unkind to you, Mr. Ames! What have you done to him, dear?"
"Merely refused him something that wouldn't be good for him, mamma."
"But why not let me be the judge of that?" asked Gordon.
"You're not a good judge, Gordon."
"Then you won't?" he asked dejectedly.
She shook her head, smiling. Tommy Tupence, his face convulsed with his efforts to fathom the conversation, glanced at his watch. Mrs. Morrill nodded to him and laid her gloved hand on Leona's elbow.
"Perhaps she will think better of it, Mr. Ames," she said. "Let her reflect. Come, dear."
Gordon said good night and watched them go through the big copper-grilled glass doors with a frown.
"Hang it," he muttered. "I'll find out now if only to get the best of her!" He went in search of Peter Waring, and a few minutes later they were speeding toward the theater, Peter grumbling because he feared they had missed the first act entire. They had, as it proved. As, however, the last act failed to please them Pete forgot his regrets. After the play they dropped in at Rector's, where, over coffee, Benedictine and cigars, Gordon suddenly demanded:
"Pete, what do you think about honesty?"
Peter looked a little startled. "Why," he replied, "it—it's a good thing."
"Well, is it practical nowadays? Can one be honest and get along?"
"Why not? I'd say it was easier to be honest than dishonest, Gordon."
"I think it is for you, old man. You're about the—well, the squarest chap I know." Peter colored faintly with embarrassment. "But you don't get up against any problems. If you were in business, Pete, I'll bet you'd go bankrupt in a month."
"I don't see it," said Peter stoutly. "Business isn't different from anything else. A chap acts square in anything, doesn't he?"
"Some, perhaps. No, he doesn't—not if it's business. The trouble isn't with the man, it's with business itself. Business seems to me to be just another name for dishonesty. There are men who wouldn't think of double-crossing a friend in the ordinary relations of life, who'd shoot themselves rather than cheat at cards, who'd be as square as a block with a woman, Pete. Put that same man in business and he'd cheat the eye-tooth out of his dearest friend!"
"Piffle!"
"By gad, no, it isn't piffle! It's the lamentable truth, old man. Why, hang it, I'll bet there's graft in even a Bible society! Only they don't call it cheating or grafting; they call it 'business.'"
"Well, maybe. Glad I'm not in business, then. Glad you're not, too."
"But I am, and that's what makes me mad. So are you to a lesser extent. You rent your buildings, don't you?"
"A chap does it for me," said Pete.
"Well, how do you know that you are dealing honestly with your tenants?"
"Because if I wasn't I'd knock that chap's damned block off!"
"Then knock it off. Afterwards look into things and you'll find you were justified. My business is railroading. You'd think a big system like the C. and W. could be run honestly and make enough money to satisfy the stockholders, wouldn't you?"
Peter blinked. "I'm satisfied with what I get."
"Yes, and you get what you do because—or in spite—of the fact that the road is run like any other business."
"Oh, I say, old man!"
"Fact, though. And I'm not telling you anything you won't learn for yourself in a week or two. They're after us now, the Government. We've been rebating and juggling cars and all the rest of the damned programme. Oh, they all do it—until they get found out. And even if we get punished we'll go on doing it—in another way. Squeeze the public, jump on the small shipper, doctor the rates—and fill the pockets of the share-holders!"
"What's it for? Can't you make enough without it?"
"Yes, or I believe we can. But you can't convince the directors. They don't want to be convinced, hang 'em! They'd rather get a dollar by some underhand 'business' methods than get two dollars by being plain honest. It's a good road, too. I'm fond of it. My dad made it; bought here and there, built connections, fought the Mardens for four years and won, and finally created the finest railroad system in the world. And now it's being run by a lot of—of vultures who don't give a continental cuss what becomes of the road as long as it fills their damned purses. I've a mind, Pete, to"
He paused and puffed savagely on his cigar. Peter maintained a sympathetic silence. Gordon dropped his cigar in the ash-tray.
"Come on," he said. "Let's go home. I want to walk."
They left Broadway behind them and crossed to the Avenue, an almost deserted and silent canyon above whose rims the stars shone white in a purple April sky. They walked in silence for a while. Then,
"I've a good mind, Pete," Gordon continued quietly, "to oust the whole lot of 'em, to put my own directors in and see if a railroad system can't be run honestly and still make money. Sounds a bit—quixotic, eh?"
"Sounds like horse-sense," growled Peter.
"It would be a fight," reflected Gordon aloud. "Some of 'em would struggle like fiends before they'd let go. Why, hang him, even Lovering smiles at me sadly and shakes his head when I talk about honesty. And he'd be horrified and insulted if I so much as hinted that he wasn't the—the personification of probity!"
"He's a deacon in his church," murmured Peter mildly.
"Why, I'd trust him with anything I've got—outside of business, Pete! But there it is. 'Make a clean breast of it,' I said yesterday. 'Tell 'em we've done this and that and are ready to take our medicine. Tell 'em we'll behave after this. What's the use of having an investigation with the papers full of it?' He was terribly distressed. 'It would never do,' he said. 'No, no, we must fight it out. There are interests that can be reached; it's quite probable that the Commission will act—er—discreetly; after all our methods have been only those universally followed; let us sit snug and—er—see what happens.' That means that there's to be dirty, underhand work at Washington, and a raft of money spent in an effort to hush it all up, or, failing that, to get off easily. Got any money not working, Peter?"
"A little, I guess. How much do you want?"
"I don't want it; you do. You're going to be a director of the C. and W., old man, and it will cost you something."
"All right," said Peter. "Let me know when you're ready."
IX
HAT reason does she give?" asked Gordon.
"None." Mrs. Ames laid the two letters beside her plate and helped herself sparingly to the tenderloin fillet. "I suppose it's her pride. Her mother was always just the same way." She took up the briefer of the two communications and sniffed. "Purple ink, too! There's nothing more vulgar than purple ink. She says—let me see" Mrs. Ames held her lorgnette between her eyes and the offending note—"She says: 'My dear sir: Your letter of the 29th informing me that a sum of money has been placed in your hands for investment for my benefit has been received. There is evidently some misapprehension as to my financial condition. Please say to the person you represent that I appreciate the kindness, but must refuse the charity offered. Any remittances sent by you will be promptly returned. Very sincerely, Margaret Milburn.' I knew her name was Margaret," added Mrs. Ames with mild triumph.
"But she does give a reason, you see," said Gordon. "She as much as says that she doesn't need the money."
"That's not the real reason. She does need it. Mr. Lovering has made inquiries. I told you that. She simply suspects where the money comes from and won't have it. Well, I feel that I have done all I can, Gordon. Don't you think so? Or would you—persist?"
"In face of that purple throw-down?" laughed Gordon. "Well, hardly, mother. I think you've done your duty. By the way, you say the young lady is employed. What does she do?"
"What was it he said?" Mrs. Ames knitted her brow. "Oh, yes, she does something on a newspaper; writes, I think."
"Then perhaps her reason is the real one, Mums. I've heard that those newspaper women make very good money. Anyhow, I rather admire her pluck. Let's hope she won't regret it later."
"Hm." Gordon smiled discreetly. It sounded as though his mother rather hoped she would regret it. "I fancy she's a little—a little common, Gordon. There's the ink, and then being on a newspaper—I remember a young woman who came to see me last fall about the upset at the hospital. She represented the—the—well, anyway, it was one of the respectable papers. But she didn't seem at all a nice sort of person."
"I suppose there are all kinds in that business, as in all others."
Mrs. Ames glanced through the second letter. "Mr. Lovering asks what he is to do about it."
"Tell him to drop it," answered Gordon with a shrug. "You can't force the young lady to accept an annuity. Perhaps if you'd offered her the ten thousand— was it ten?—outright she'd have been better pleased."
"But that would be absurd! Fancy giving a young girl ten thousand dollars to do as she pleased with! Why, she would spend it all at once, I've no doubt; gowns and hats and jewels."
"But think of the fun she'd have," mused Gordon, smilingly. "It would be a regular fairy story for her, wouldn't it? Like waking up on Christmas morning when you're a kiddie and finding the bed all heaped up with toys. I say. Mums, let's try her on the whole lump?"
"Do what, Gordon?"
"Let's offer her the ten thousand and see what happens. I'll bet she'd jump at It. Cash in hand looks so different from a prospective income. What do you say?"
"Perfectly absurd, Gordon! Why, it might be the ruin of the child? So much money all at once"
"Oh, I say, Mums! Ten thousand!"
"Ten thousand would be a great deal of money to her, Gordon. I wanted to help the girl. Giving her a sum of money outright might accomplish a directly opposite result, my dear. Of course, if one could be certain that she is—well, sensible and provident"
"That wouldn't be hard to learn," said Gordon. "You might commission me to look the young lady up—and over."
"I suppose, however, that since Thomas Milburn died—and even while he was alive—they never had much money. Besides, persons in poor circumstances have absolutely no idea, as a rule, how to use their money. They do spend it so—so wastefully!"
"I know." Gordon nodded sympathetically. "Jewels—yachts—grouse moors; oh, it's a sin!"
"You may jest about it, my dear, but it's really so. They speak of the wealthy class being extravagant, but it's really the poor people and the people with a little money who are extravagant. I've observed and I know. It's the real reason why the poor stay poor and the wealthy remain wealthy."
"But they don't," Gordon smiled. "That is, the poor don't stay poor. It's the poor who become eventually the wealthy."
"That used to be so, Gordon, but it's becoming less and less the rule every year. Look about you and see. Wealth is becoming more firmly intrenched all the time, and before very long—not in my time, nor yours—it will be impossible for the poor to move out of their poverty."
"My dear mother, you sound absolutely socialistic!"
"I don't sympathize with socialism," replied Mrs. Ames, shaking her head. "Equal distribution of wealth is impossible until all men are born with the same brains and ability. Distribute wealth equally to-day and to-morrow you'll have a rich class and a poor class again, just as now. I believe that it must always be that some persons must have greater possessions than others. The hope for the future is that those whose wealth gives them power will learn to realize the obligations of wealth and so use that power wisely and mercifully; not only mercifully, my dear, but helpfully. When that time comes there should be no poverty as we know it to-day, no ignorance and filth, no hovels to breed disease. There will be poverty, but not want nor misery."
"And this is to be brought about by the continued centralization—is that the word? no,—the continued accumulation of wealth by the wealthy? My dear Mums, you have a wonderful faith in human nature!"
"I have faith in civilization and education," she replied gravely. "Science is teaching us all the time. We are learning something new and wonderful every year. Just now we are learning that crime is a disease and that the disease may be stamped out in time by applying the principles of the 9cience they call eugenics. Disease and crime and poverty go hand in hand, and in time science will do away with them all."
"That's a bit of a load for science, isn't it? What about religion? What part is religion to play in this—this regeneration of the human race, Mums?"
"Less than it should, I fear. It must join hands with science before it can attain any creative power. Now it is like a mole burrowing into the earth and refusing to see light. It is fighting science instead of aiding it. I am a religious woman, Gordon, and I believe that we must always have religion. Man can't live without a belief in a God. We are only little children, the strongest of us and the weakest, and like children we want to feel that Someone is caring for us, loving us, waiting to comfort us when we are hurt. Some day religion will come out of the earth and it won't be a mole any more, but a giant walking upright with its head in the clouds. And all these things will come to pass some day, unless"
"Unless?" prompted Gordon eagerly.
"Unless the Being who created our world for us takes it away from us first."
Gordon sighed. "My dear mother," he said, "you make me feel distressingly shallow-minded, for I've never given a thought to the future of society, or to the part that Science and Religion are to play in it. May I ask very humbly where you acquired all these startling—for they're startling to me, I confess—all these startling and interesting theories?"
Mrs. Ames smiled. "Some of them were your father's, Gordon. Some of them are my own. Those that are mine I've got by reading and listening and observing. You are too young yet to bother your head with such things, I suppose. By and by, though, you will evolve a theory of your own. I don't know what it will be, but you'll have it. A theory that explains things to your own mind, at least, is a great comfort when you get on in years. It's like having something solid under your feet, something to stand on, if you see what I mean."
"Yes, I understand," replied Gordon thoughtfully. "And I rather like your—platform, Mums. It sounds hopeful. I confess that you're more optimistic about the ultimate result than I am—or should be if I stopped to consider it—but optimism costs no more than pessimism, and I guess it wears better. Some day, when I don't have to journey to Brooklyn to see about having a yacht put in commission, I shall sit at your feet and learn more wisdom, Mums."
His mother shook her head smilingly as Hurd pulled back her chair for her. "You'll get your wisdom in living, Gordon, and not by listening to an old woman gabble. Will you hand me those letters, Hurd? Thank you. Dear me, has the clock got out of order again?"
"No, madam," replied Hurd. "It is quite correct."
"What! Almost twenty minutes to three! My good gracious, Hurd, why didn't you tell me? Why, I told Tolland to be at the door at half-past two."
"Yes, madam, he is waiting."
"I shall be late at the meeting, Gordon! This is your fault. You let me talk and talk and talk, like—like a phonograph!"
"Not at all," laughed Gordon. "A phonograph talks in a circle and you haven't done that."
"Well, that's one comfort," grumbled his mother. "Shall I see you at dinner?"
"Not this evening, Mums. I'm dining at the club."
"And you think" Mrs. Ames glanced at the letters in her hand—"I had better do nothing more about this?"
"I wouldn't. After all, charity may seem degrading to the recipient. Let the girl keep her self-respect. I dare say she won't starve. If she does she'll be doing it like a true sport!"
X
ORDON walked across town to the garage, two blocks from the house, and found his big, gray underslung roadster awaiting him. Peter Waring had promised to go along, but at the club there was only a hurriedly scrawled note saying that Peter had been kidnapped by his sisters and forcibly conveyed up Westchester way for luncheon.
"Darn sisters anyway," wrote Peter, with a fine disregard for punctuation. "They're always hashing things up for a fellow aren't they? I'll see you at the club at seven."
So Gordon made the journey to Brooklyn alone, spent an hour or more at the basin in looking over the Siren, one hundred and eighty feet of speed and luxury, and in conferring with his sailing master, and then sped homeward. It had already sprinkled once, a five-minute downpour from a sunny April sky, and now, as he hummed across the bridge, It began again. Northward the sun was gleaming on white sails and sparkling on the water, but overhead a purple-gray cloud was moving up from the south, and from it in the still air the rain plashed straight down in big lazy drops. Gordon stopped and slipped on a rubber coat, and then, the shower increasing to a very respectable downpour meanwhile, slid into the busy traffic on the Manhattan side and worked cautiously over slippery pavements toward Fifth Avenue. The cloud had grown and the city was enveloped in a false twilight of falling raindrops and dim reflections. The afternoon was mild and soft, hinting at May, scarcely a week distant, and the shower, hissing against the stones and flooding the gutters, drew forth a pleasantly earthy smell. Above the roofs the white steam writhed and floated in billowing festoons. Here and there in some basement shop a light appeared, splashing the gloom with lemon-yellow radiance. As he turned into the Avenue his gaze, wandering idly under a dripping awning on the corner, caught sight of a figure there. The big wheels hissed on the wet asphalt as the car came to a stop within its length. Gordon leaped out and hurried back.
"As he turned into the Avenue his gaze caught sight of a figure there."
She had not seen him, it seemed, for she was standing, back toward him, one of a group of six or eight persons caught unprotected in the shower and marooned under the tiny awning. She was in black and looked smaller than he remembered her. His heart was pounding like a runner's as he took off his cap and put out his hand to her.
"Peggy-in-the-Rain!" he said softly.
She looked up with startled eyes. There was no instant of unrecognition; she knew him at once. Afterwards he strove to recall her expression, but failed. The memory of the meeting was very blurry. At the moment he was conscious of scarcely more than his own feelings, strangely happy and triumphant. She gave him her hand and smiled up at him, while a little warmth of color crept into the pale cheeks.
"I've been looking for you everywhere," he said joyfully, "but I should have known that when I found you it would be like this—in a shower! What do you do with yourself when the sun shines, Peggy-in-the-Rain?"
She drew her hand from his—he was honestly surprised to find he was still holding it!—and shook her head. "That's my secret," she answered. She became suddenly aware of the curious glances of the persons huddled around them. "Have you been back long?" she asked hurriedly, drawing away from him a little.
"From Aiken? Some time. I left about a fortnight after you did. Do you know that I looked all over the place for you, hunted you high and low? And then, when I finally got news of you, you'd gone! You didn't play fair!"
She smiled, looking away. "It's you who aren't playing fair, Mr. Ames. I thought we agreed that—that a thunderstorm wasn't sufficient introduction."
"You may have agreed; I didn't," he replied laughingly. "I went back there the next afternoon and rode for weeks looking for The Lady and The Tiger."
"The Lady—Oh!" she laughed. "That's quite clever."
"It's nothing to what I can do if I have an inspiring audience."
"Meaning that I'm not?"
"Meaning that you are! Meaning that if you'll let me perform for you I'll be as—as amusing as—well, Eddie Foy and Richard Carll and the best of them are mere gobs of gloom beside me! What do you say?"
"It sounds tempting," she replied lightly, "but I'm a very busy young person, Mr. Ames, and these are my work days."
"But you can't work all the time," he insisted. "You must have some hours of play."
"Not very many. And when I have sleep looks better to me than amusement. And besides"
"Well?" he asked as she paused.
She looked up at him gravely. "Have you forgotten what I told you that day—in Aiken?"
"Never! I remember every word you spoke, every glance, every smile and—every frown. There were a lot of frowns, Peggy-in-the-Rain."
"Please don't call me that," she said. "I—we were silly that day"
"I deny it! We were wise! Besides, I like that name—Peggy-in-the-Rain. I think I shall always call you that," he added softly.
The color crept back into her cheeks, but she frowned impatiently. "You are not behaving—very well," she murmured. "I asked you not to."
"Then tell me another name and I'll try to call you by it—if I like it."
"You know my name," she said, faintly indignant.
He looked puzzled. "Peggy, you mean?"
"My last name, of course."
"Oh, but I don't! I want to! What is it, please?"
She smiled scornfully. "At least be truthful, Mr. Ames!"
"Truthful? What do you mean? Don't you believe me? I give you my word that I haven't any more idea what your last name is than—than that truck horse!"
She viewed him doubtfully. "But—I thought" She paused confusedly.
"What did you think, please?"
"Nothing. That is, I thought—Leona Morrill had told you."
"Then you know that I asked her? She told me only a night or so ago that she hadn't seen you."
"She hadn't then. I lunched with her yesterday."
"But surely she didn't tell you that she'd told me your name? She wouldn't tell me a thing. She said you—didn't want me to know. Didn't you?"
She shook her head.
"Why?" he asked. And then, as she made no answer, "Why?" he repeated.
"You know why," she replied finally, lifting a rather defiant face to him. "I told you—that day. You have forgotten, it seems, after all."
"Oh, that!" he said carelessly. "About our not being in the same bunch. That's no reason at all."
"It's a very good reason," she returned. "Such a good reason that had I seen you coming I'd have run. What do you suppose people who know you by sight—and most every one in New York does, I guess—what do you suppose they think when they see you talking to me here on a street corner?"
"Think? Let them think what they like! Besides, I don't want to talk to you on a corner. Heaven knows! Let's go somewhere where we can be comfortable; Martin's—the Hoffman—anywhere. My car's over there. I'll find an umbrella for you and we'll be under cover in no time. Shall we? Please be kind! If you only knew how I've looked for you ever since I got back to town, Peggy-in-the-Rain!"
"You refuse to understand," she sighed. "If you don't care what they might think, Mr. Ames, I do. So please let's say good-by."
"Good-by!" he exclaimed incredulously. "Now? When I've just found you at last? You don't really mean it! Why—why, hang it, there isn't going to be any good-by—ever! Don't you feel that?"
The blue eyes dropped troubledly. She turned away, one hand clutching at her skirts. "I must go now," she said.
"In this rain? Good Lord, you can't! You'll get sopping wet! Wait, please! What is it you want me to do? I don't understand, I guess. Do you really mean that I'm not to—to see you, not to have anything to do with you? Just because you—because I—Why, it's absurd! You can't be in earnest! You aren't, are you? You're just teasing me?"
"I am in earnest." she answered stoutly. "I mean just that."
"But—look here, I'm not a villain in a melodrama. Miss—Miss Peggy! I'm only asking you to let me be a friend. Can't you do that? I thought—well, you know you do rather like me; you must, or you wouldn't have been so decent to me that day in the woods. So where's the harm, please, if you let me see you now and then and talk to you? Why shouldn't we go to Martin's for tea; Martin's or any other place you suggest?"
She was silent a moment. Then she raised her eyes and looked at him with a little smile trembling about her lips. "And this friendship," she asked, "how does it end?"
"Friendship doesn't end," he answered.
"And how will you explain to your friends when they see us having tea together at Martin's?"
"There is no explanation necessary. Is it an unusual thing for a chap to take a lady to tea?"
"And if they ask my name, who I am?"
"I shall tell them. But you're making a mountain"
"And if any one who knows me asks who you are—no, they wouldn't do that, for they'd know. But if they asked why I was with you?"
"You'd tell them because I was your friend."
"Yes." She smiled ironically. "They'd be quite willing to believe that without my telling them."
Gordon flushed. "Then damn such friends!" he exclaimed savagely. "A real friend wouldn't think the rottenest thing possible!"
"One's friends are of all kinds," she answered sagely. "No, I'm not anxious for—the notoriety that would be mine if I did what you propose. I know New York pretty well, Mr. Ames; my work has shown me all sides of it; and I know that friendship between a man in your position and with your wealth and a woman such as I is impossible; at all events, for the woman! But we can be friends, can't we, even if we don't see each other? You're rather nice and I do like you, just as you said, and I shall like to think that we are friends." She smiled frankly and held out her hand to him. "And now I really must get on. I've loads to do, and the shower is almost over."
He took her hand and held it tightly. "No," he said, "that won't do. I won't keep you now if you must go, but this isn't good-by. I give you fair warning, you see. You aren't rid of me as easily as that, Peggy-in-the-Rain."
"You—you're selfish," she answered sadly, trying to pull her hand away.
"Perhaps. Anyhow, I'm truthful. I said I wanted your friendship. I don't. I want—more than that, Peggy. And—this isn't good-by." He released her hand.
"It is good-by," she said desperately. "I shall never see you again! Please understand that! Never!"
Her eyes met his, frightened and angry. He smiled back into them. "That's not with you," he answered calmly. "It rests with the gods, perhaps with Jupiter Pluvius. I think we shall meet again. I don't even know your name, nor ask it, so confident am I."
"You've made me hate you," she cried defiantly. "I want never to see you!"
"Then pray to Jupiter, Peggy-in-the-Rain!"
He watched her hurry over the crossing, watched her until she was lost in the throng almost a block away. The rain had ceased and westward a faint yellow glare told of sunset. Up and down the Avenue the lights shone steely blue. Gordon sighed, frowned and went back to his car. With the motor started he paused to light a cigarette and smiled to find his fingers trembling.
XI
UT the next morning his confidence had waned, and, seated alone at the breakfast table—his mother never came down in the morning—with a litter of papers and mail about him, he called himself several kinds of a fool, addressing his remarks sotto voce to the silver coffee-pot which purred enticingly over its blue flame. He had got out of bed feeling on edge, and neither his mail, largely composed of begging letters, invitations to subscribe to various charities and glowing offers of investment securities, nor the morning papers had added to his happiness. The papers were full of the Commerce Commission's probe into the methods of the Central and Western Railway. It was a nasty mess, and Gordon frowned and muttered as he glanced through news stories and editorials. A financial journal, actuated by friendly motives, stated that the Administration could scarcely afford at present to antagonize the powerful interests behind the Central and Western system, adding with optimistic naïvete that the opinion was current at the Capitol that the Commission would be persuaded to delay the inquiry until Autumn at least. The "yellow" sheets clamored for "a full and impartial probe into the high-handed and unlawful methods of the Ames System." (A week later one at least of these sheets changed its tune. It doubtless had a good reason.) Gordon wondered helplessly how his father would have dealt with such a situation, realizing the next moment that had Patterson Ames been alive the situation would never have arisen. His scheme to wrest the conduct of affairs from those at present in power looked, in the wan light of a rainy morning, chimerical to the point of absurdity. After all, could he do any better in the conduct of the road's affairs? Of the practical side of railroading he knew almost nothing. He cursed his ignorance and the inertia of helplessness that came from it. This morning he was all for letting well alone. Perhaps Lovering and the others were right, and the methods he had on several occasions tentatively suggested were impractical. And then, at a tangent, his thoughts for the fiftieth time, flew off to a slim little black-gowned figure seen against a silvery curtain of rain, to a pair of violet-blue eyes that seemed to hold in their depths all the mysteries of life.
He called himself a fool for letting her go without discovering her name, where she lived. Yesterday he had believed the absurd things he had said, believed that the Fate which had thrown them together twice would do so again. To-day he frowned at his confidence and had scant faith in Fate's administration. His feeling for the girl was not love. She pleased him, fascinated him, excited him, piqued his curiosity. He wanted her and meant to have her, and he never doubted that ultimately she would come to him. He was too wise to expect her to fall into his arms at once; he wouldn't have it so; but in the end—well, she liked him already; she had owned to that, and he had seen it for himself; and sooner or later Youth rebels against poverty and lovelessness. He was ready to make any concessions save marriage. Pushing aside an almost untasted breakfast, he arose to tramp the length of the big dining-room, hands in pockets and a frown on his face. She should have anything she wanted, anything in his power to give. Of course, in such cases, the woman sacrificed more than the man; all the wealth in the world could never quite make up for what she yielded; but it was the woman's lot to do it, she always had and always would while the world spun. And "respectability" couldn't keep a woman from growing faded, couldn't give her beautiful things, couldn't save her from loneliness and heartaches, couldn't even provide bread and butter!
At the broad window he paused and threw aside the heavy draperies impatiently. Below him a little space of grass showed the first adventurous spears of the crocuses. Beyond the grass stood a high fence of ornamental iron. Beyond that was the side street, rain-beaten, puddled. The Avenue was visible for half a block. A big touring car swept by, its curtains closed tightly against the pelter of rain. A hansom followed, one of the few survivors of a dying race. Behind the half-drawn glass Gordon caught a glimpse of a man and a girl. Something that was almost a shiver went over him and his pulses raced furiously for a moment. If only it were he and Peggy there in the hansom! And why not? What was youth for if not for love and its pleasures? What was wealth for if not to be obeyed? He would find her, find her now, at once, his Peggy-in-the-Rain! What were all her silly objections weighed against his want of her, her want of him? For she did care for him, she must care for him. And if she cared
A vision of her face came to him, her shadowy eyes raised as they had been raised yesterday, half-frightened, half angry. His heart stirred and he smiled tenderly.
"Ah, but I'll be good to you, Peggy-in-the-Rain," he murmured. "So good to you, dear!"
And then the realization that he neither knew who she was nor where to find her obtruded and he felt sick with a sense of powerlessness. What a fool he had been with his silly heroics yesterday! Why, he might not find her for days, for weeks! He might never find her! Might never see her again! The thought was intolerable, producing a veritable panic of despair until he cast it off with a grim tightening of his lips and a grimmer resolution to find her at any cost. After all. New York was but a small place. Why, he might run into her to-day or to-morrow! And if not, there was still Leona Morrill. And if Leona still refused, why, there were detective agencies! But he wouldn't go to one of those until every other means had failed. Of course, Leona's mother knew who Peggy was, and probably her father as well, but Gordon didn't doubt that they had each been sworn to silence. The Morrill servants might be bribed, but aside from the caddishness of it, he felt that he had virtually bound himself not to seek his information in that manner. First of all, then, to see Leona again!
Hurd came in with noiseless steps to clear the table.
"Let me have those letters over here, will you, Hurd?" Gordon asked. He seated himself by the window, drew a pencil from his notebook and went over the correspondence on the broad arm of the chair, marking some of the communications with an O, others with an X and crumpling up the rest. At eleven Miss Creed would come and attend to them, inditing polite negatives in her copper-plate hand to the X's and equally polite affirmatives or acceptances to the O's. An invaluable person. Miss Creed, attending to both Gordon's and Mrs. Ames's correspondence, keeping the latter's accounts, both personal and household, and scheduling her engagements. There were two invitations in his mail, and Gordon wanted to decline them both, but ended by marking them for acceptance and noting them in his book; at one or both of the houses he was fairly certain to meet Leona Morrill.
"Hurd," he said, as he gathered the letters together, "if you wanted to find some one in New York how would you go about it? I mean, of course, if you didn't know where they lived."
"Well, sir, there's the directory."
"Um, yes; but supposing you didn't know the—the gentleman's last name?"
Hurd considered, thoughtfully regarding the vase of golden daffodils in his hand.
"Well, sir, that would complicate matters."
"Yes. Consider them complicated, Hurd. Then what would you do?"
"I think, sir, I'd advertise in the Herald."
"Um."
"Has the gentleman a place of business, sir?"
"Er—yes, I think so, but I don't know where it is or what the business is. Further complications, eh?"
"Yes, sir. I'd say advertise, Mr. Gordon."
"But how the dickens— Look here, I can't say 'If the gentleman named Peggy, last name unknown, will—'" The butler's expression of surprise, momentary but acute, brought Gordon to a stop and a hurried explanation. "Yes, funny name, isn't it? It's just—just a nickname, you see."
"Yes, sir," replied Hurd, expressionless now of face and voice. "It would be difficult in that case, sir."
"Damned difficult! Supposing, then, we cut out the advertising project. Then what?"
Hurd set the flowers on the sideboard the better to give his full mind to the problem. Hurd's father, an estimable English gardener, now deceased, would have scratched his head frankly and inelegantly. Hurd, quite as estimable and more polished, stroked his chin, thereby perhaps supplying the same stimulus.
"Does—does the gentleman want to be found, sir?"
"I wonder!" Gordon studied that question a moment. Finally, "Let us suppose that he is not averse to it, Hurd," he replied. "Then what?"
"Well, it makes a difference, Mr. Gordon, and that's why I made so bold as to ask," explained Hurd apologetically. "If a man doesn't want to be found it's pretty hard to find him in New York, sir. In a case of that sort I'd put the matter in the hands of the police."
Gordon shook his head. "A bit vulgar, eh, Hurd?"
"Perhaps, sir. Then there's private detectives, sir; very smart some of them, I've heard; and very discreet, sir."
"Well, I suppose it comes to that, Hurd," said Gordon with a sigh. "I like the idea of advertising, but when you don't know the la—the gentleman's name Look here, Hurd, I might as well tell you that it's a lady I have in mind."
"Thank you, sir. That ought to make it easier."
"Really? And why?
Hurd coughed discreetly behind his hand and hesitated a moment. "Begging your pardon, Mr. Gordon, but the ladies usually want to be found, sir, if you see what I mean. Intending no disrespect to the lady that's lost, Mr. Gordon."
"All right. But, hang it, I'm not at all sure this lady does want to be found!"
Hurd's expression showed that to his mind that put an entirely different complexion on the affair; in short, that matters were again complicated. He coughed dubiously.
"Perhaps, sir, an advertisement might do it after all. Suppose you referred to the young lady"
"Young lady, Hurd?"
"Beg pardon, sir. I should have said the lady."
"Very well," said Gordon with a smile. "Go ahead."
"Suppose you referred to the lady as Miss—I think you said Peggy, sir?"
"Quite right; Peggy."
"Referred to her as Miss Peggy Blank, sir, recalling—ah—any incident that might—might let her know you were meaning her, sir"
"I know the style you mean, Hurd. 'Will young and attractive brunette who noticed handsome, stout gentleman in lobby of New Amsterdam Theatre last evening communicate with ardent admirer? Object matrimony.' That's the style, eh?"
"Well, sir, not quite. More like the lawyers' advertisements, sir. More—more respectable, perhaps, Mr. Gordon. 'If Miss Peggy Blank will communicate with the undersigned she will learn of something to her advantage.' Then sign your name, sir."
"The devil! I'm afraid that wouldn't do. So many others would read it, Hurd, besides the young—the lady in question. And I am lamentably susceptible to ridicule. No, I think an assumed name would be better."
"Very good, sir. Perhaps it would be best to let a lawyer do it for you and sign his name to the notice, sir."
"Not a bad idea, Hurd! Distinctly clever! Thank you. And—er—Hurd."
"Yes, sir?"
"Kindly forget our consultation. Especially the lady's name, Hurd."
"Oh, most certainly, sir. Anything else, Mr. Gordon?"
"Nothing else. Here's the mail for Miss Creed. I'm going out. I may not be home for luncheon."
"Thank you, sir."
Gordon arose and went again to the window, drumming thoughtfully on the pane. Then, "You said that if the lady didn't want to be found it would complicate things, I think?"
"Depending, sir, on how much."
"How much?" asked Gordon, turning from his contemplation of the dreary morning world. "How much what?"
"How much she didn't want to be found, sir," replied Hurd.
XII
HITHERTO quite unknown restlessness pursued Gordon. He knew the meaning of it, but resented it impatiently. No place seemed able to hold him for long. In the morning he was out of the house as early as the duty of sitting through an almost untasted breakfast would allow. He wandered into one club or another only to wander out again. One afternoon he drove his car up and down the Avenue and through the principal cross streets until darkness, his eyes searching the crowded sidewalks, peering into carriages and automobiles and 'buses. Once a brougham passed him near Thirty-fourth Street, and he was shouted at by a traffic officer because he swung his car around short of the street intersection and went racing back to overtake it. And when he ran alongside he found that the likeness which had deceived him was infinitesimal. The girl in the brougham laughing and talking with a red-faced middle-aged man was no more like Peggy-in-the-Rain than day was like night. His emotion following the discovery was difficult of analysis, being partly relief and partly disappointment, but there had been nothing complicated about the fierce, blind rush of jealousy that had overmastered him when he had first caught sight of the girl. That had been plain and primitive, and it had left him with shaking hands and hot cheeks. He guided his car to the front of a hotel, went inside and dropped into a chair, and while the drink he ordered was being prepared he considered himself with something closely bordering on dismay.
What in Heaven's name had gotten into him? He had been attracted by women before; he had been in love before; one affair had even been for a time rather desperate; but never had a woman taken possession, of him as Peggy had. It seemed to him uncanny, and the more he thought of it, the more he realized his subjection, the more uneasy he became. There was a fair leaven of New England caution in his make-up, and the idea of losing control of himself was at once distasteful and alarming. A waiter brought his drink and he gulped it down eagerly. Gradually it produced a change of mood. The whole thing was absolutely absurd, he told himself. The idea of letting any woman get such a hold on him! Why, he was worse than any silly, love-sick schoolboy! He lighted a cigar, with a smile for his folly, and went out to his car. And in the act of entering his glance fell on a slim, black-clad figure and his pulses pounded and his heart leaped into his throat!
A second look showed that, the girl was not Peggy-in-the-Rain, and Gordon cursed himself for an idiot and resolved savagely to stop thinking about her. But in spite of that resolve his eyes searched for her in the gathering twilight all the way back to the club, where, discovering Peter Waring, he worked off a good deal of ill-temper on that good-natured and long-suffering friend.
The next morning there was a meeting of Central and Western directors, and Gordon, seated at the head of the long table listened absently to the proceedings and wrote "Peggy" over and over on the blue blotting-pad before him. The Commission was to proceed with its inquiry, but, explained Mr. Lovering blandly, there—ah—need be no uneasiness as to the result. Nods of satisfaction went up and down the table and the matter of the quarterly dividend was taken up and put through. After that Gordon signed some papers, accepted an envelope containing a twenty dollar gold piece and took his departure.
So far Leona Morrill had eluded him, but he ran across her that evening at a dance. He put his name down twice on her card, danced the first number and sat out the second. But Leona was still adamant. She apparently took a malicious satisfaction in refusing the knowledge he asked. Gordon, grown desperate, charged her with it, and they parted ill-temperedly. Two days later the Siren took aboard a party of eight carefully selected persons and dropped down the coast. But if Gordon hoped to find peace of mind by getting away from New York he was doomed to disappointment. Even the dazzling Miss Standley who, having labored valiantly and failed bravely to make "Winning Winnie" a success at the Metropole, had flatly refused to eke out the season with another vehicle, thereby precipitating a quarrel with Mr. Frohman which was still interesting the public, failed to distract Gordon. On the second day out Miss Standley—whose given name was Bessie—announced with ludicrous pathos that "Winning Winnie" was child's play compared with "Winning Gordon." At Charleston Gordon received a mythical telegram and headed the yacht sharply around for New York, turning what was to have been a fortnight's cruise into a week's. Peter Waring, who had upset all calculations by paying assiduous attention to the fascinating chaperon, wanted to know why Gordon had bothered with the Siren. "You might have taken us over and back on the Weehawken ferry, old chap. Just when we're sort of getting acquainted"
"Getting acquainted!" sneered Gordon. "Do you call sitting up all night with Mrs. Ferris and drinking wine at four o'clock in the morning over my state-room getting acquainted?"
"Was that your room?" asked Peter mildly. "Grace bet me it was Miss Massey's. Joke on her, what?"
"Look here, Pete, you were supposed to be nice to Alice Roberts and not gallivant about with Mrs. Ferris. Damn it, you said you wanted to get married! You can't marry Grace Ferris, you simple idiot! She's got a husband and two kids!"
"I know," replied Peter, "but when it comes to choosing a wife I want to do the choosing, Gordon."
"Well, I dare say you do. What of it?"
Peter grinned. "That's the answer," he replied.
"What's the answer?"
"Miss Roberts. She was doing the choosing."
"Piffle!"
"Fact," said Peter gravely. "She almost had me tagged, old chap."
"You're a damned conceited idiot."
"Conceited if you like, old chap; idiot, no. I've played it safe, what?"
"Yes, unless Bob Ferris hears what you've been doing. Then you may get your silly head knocked off."
Peter grinned again. "Say, Gordon, you've got a peach of a grouch, haven't you? What's the matter? Wouldn't she come along?"
"Oh, go to thunder!" growled Gordon. "I'll be glad when I've got the whole bunch of you dumped in New York again."
"Nice, hospitable host you are," mourned Peter. "And, say, you hypocritical old cuss, I like your cheek, rowing me because I didn't do my duty by that Roberts girl! Why, confound you, why don't you play your own hand decently? Miss Standley has yawned her head off ever since we left home!"
"To the devil with Miss Standley! And you, too! Anyway, we're going home. I've had a telegram"
"Sure; I know; and I don't wish her any harm, but I hope she chokes!"
"She?" demanded Gordon irascibly.
"Whoever she is," replied Peter calmly. "Trust a woman to spoil the fun somehow or other. Why the dickens don't you run home by rail, hold her hand awhile and come back and finish out the cruise? We'll get on all right, old chap."
"You're a fool four ways from the ace!"
"Well," Peter chuckled, "I'm not fool enough to believe in that telegram!"
| This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. |