Tangles; Tales of Some Droll Predicaments/The Dénouement
THE DÉNOUEMENT
ALL this happened so long ago that not even Cecily can object to its being told now, although there was a time when she took umbrage at the merest mention of Santa Barbara. And if one chanced to speak of the Marquis! However, the Marquis is Otis Bradford's story, and comes later.
As far as the Porters were concerned, it began late one afternoon, when Cecily called Nan up by telephone—and telephones in private houses, even about New York, were rare in those days—demanding to be amused.
"It's like the grave over here," she complained. "Ned's not coming home to dinner, Ethel's locked in her room with a headache, and Sunshine's crying comfortably over a novel, which she'll neither finish nor abandon before midnight."
Ned was her cousin, at whose country-house she was a guest; Ethel was his wife; and "Sunshine" was Cecily's name for the long-suffering, elderly relative whose duty it was to accompany her whenever and wherever propriety might suggest the desirability of ballast. Miss Hinsdale's pleasure was chiefly derived from the perusal of lachrymose fiction; hence had her irreverent charge rechristened her "Sunshine." Cecily herself, be it said, was young, rich, and a widow. Incidentally, she was pretty.
"Come over to dinner," promptly suggested Nan. "I thought of calling you up. Tom's bringing some one home from town."
"Whom?" Cecily's tone indicated breaking clouds.
"I don't know. I wasn't here when he 'phoned, and Norah didn't understand the name."
"A man, I suppose?"
"Naturally."
"Young?"
"Presumably."
"I'll come. Heavens, what a relief! This life is killing me!"
Nan laughed, and rang off. In the course of time Cecily came, limping slightly still from her sprained ankle, but arrayed in trailing clouds of hand-wrought mist.
"Gemini!" exclaimed her hostess, looking her over appreciatively. "Was it as bad as that?"
"As what?" Cecily's tone held warnings, but Nan laughed at briers. Indeed, Nan laughed at most irritations.
"You must have been bored, if one unknown man seemed worth all that!"
"Oh, as to that, a frock's only a frock. What's the use of hoarding 'em in trunks?" She flung this over her shoulder as they descended the stairs.
"True," acquiesced Nan, good-humoredly; "why not wear cobwebs like that every night?"
"What's the use?" discontentedly repeated Cecily.
Nan Porter was too astute a woman to uncover the curiosity she was equally human enough to feel. Therefore she probed carefully, thus:
"Well, just now, there's Ned and Ethel and Sunshine—and us."
"And a lot you'd any of you care! Ned doesn't know lace from mosquito-netting—in fact, he'd probably give the preference to the latter because there are people who find it useful; Ethel is—Ethel," with a little grimace, "Sunshine is resigned to my clothes—and me. Poor thing! It must be hard to be dependent for one's living upon propriety and resignation! You and Tom don't really care for a thing on earth except your own two aggressively love-sick selves. What's the use of my trying to settle down and live near you? Who cares?" She dropped into an ample chair on the veranda.
"Are you getting ready to flit again? You haven't been back a week."
"I might, if it weren't for the trunks. Heaven's a place where there are no trunks! What's the use of forever packing? Oh, Nan," Cecily flung her arms over her head, "cui bono? Cui bono?"
Nan smiled reflectively. There had been a time, long ago, before love had rounded and amplified her life, when she, too, had cried "Cui bono?" She glanced curiously at her friend.
"Anybody been poking a hole in your dolly, Cecily?" she asked, in a carefully idle tone. "Or did it just spring a leak and take to scattering sawdust, all by itself?"
"How absurd you are!" resentfully cried Cecily. "My dolly's impervious, as you very well know. But what does that profit me," she cynically added, "in a world composed of sawdust? We eat it and breathe it, it seems to me. Does nothing ever happen in this place?" Nan was still reflectively smiling, and did not reply. "For Heaven's sake, don't look so complacent! Your sawdust's soaked in a saccharine solution, I know, but that doesn't make it any more palatable to the rest of us. Mercy! What a temper I'm in! But I'm so tired of things, Nan! Somehow, nothing has any flavor. I suppose it's partly my ankle. It's horrid to limp through the world!"
"How and when and where did you sprain that ankle? You haven't told me."
"Oh, it was simply a bit of stupidity. I fell in getting out of a vehicle—out West. It really didn't amount to much at first, but I used it too soon, and I've been lame ever since. And I'm tired! And there's nothing to do—that's worth doing! And Sunshine swims in tears all the time! And to-day, as a last straw, I broke my pet specs, and am reduced to these, which I loathe!" Cecily removed her eye-glasses and squinted astigmatically while she polished them. "That's really what's the matter with me, Nan. It's the glasses. I'm always perfectly furious when I break the others and have to wear these. Nothing but agreeable masculine society soothes my savage breast then. I hope Tom's man will prove efficacious!"
"I hope he will," laughed Nan. "It's almost time for them to arrive. Tom's taken to walking up from the station at night for exercise." She arose and strolled to the opposite end of the veranda, where she stood pulling the dry leaves from a vine. For a time neither spoke. Then said Cecily, carelessly:
"Nan, do you know this man coming up the walk with Tom?"
Mrs. Porter strolled back to the steps and looked under the trees toward the gate. "Why, it's Otis Bradford!" she cried, a note of excitement in her voice.
"Oh!" said Cecily; "is it?"
"I wonder when he came back? He's been West for months."
"Has he?" Cecily arose and delicately brushed back her skirt. "Is he a great friend of yours?"
"Yes; Tom's been very fond of him for years, and we saw a lot of him in England last summer."
"Oh," said Cecily again, "did you? How interesting!" Then she laughed.
"Why?"
"'Why?' Aren't Tom's friends always interesting? I find them so."
It chanced that, as the men approached the house, Cecily was standing behind a screen of vines, and for a moment they supposed Mrs. Porter, who met them at the top of the steps, to be the sole occupant of the veranda. Nan exclaimed delightedly over Bradford's unexpected arrival, and he was still enthusiastically shaking her hand and declaring that it was like getting home when he caught sight of the other guest, who stood, with tilted chin and level glance, surveying him. He caught his breath in the midst of a word, started toward her, and as quickly checked himself, an odd blankness in his face.
"I beg pardon," he stammered, "I—I didn't know—"
"Oh, Cecily!" Nan turned toward the young widow. "This is Tom's old friend, Mr. Bradford. Mrs. Mosgrove," she added, for his enlightenment.
"I'm always glad to meet Mr. Porter's friends," said Cecily, politely.
Bradford shot a glance at her. "I assure you, the pleasure is mine," he murmured. After which he fell to biting his mustache.
They had been seated for some time at dinner when Nan said:
"Now, Otis, proceed. Give an account of yourself. Where have you been, and what have you done? You're a worse correspondent than Cecily here."
"Is Mrs. Mosgrove dilatory about letters and—telegrams—and things?" he asked.
"Oh, very! She never was known to answer anything, and she writes only when the mood moves—and that's seldom."
"That's comforting, anyway," said Bradford, looking at Cecily. For some reason she flushed slightly. "In view of my own misdemeanors, of course," he added.
"I infer that you've been away?" Mrs. Mosgrove suggested, somewhat hastily.
"Yes," he replied, still looking at her. "I've been in Los Angeles—" he paused, "and San Francisco—" he paused again, "and in Salt Lake City—and Denver."
"How funny!" cried Nan. "That's exactly the route Mrs. Mosgrove has just come over. Isn't it, Cecily?"
"It's everybody's route," said she. "What a pity, Mr. Bradford, that you couldn't have started a little earlier, or I a little later. We might have met—who knows?"
"Los Angeles and San Francisco," ruminated Nan. "Do you mean to say you've come back without going to Santa Barbara?"
Porter began to laugh. "Oh no; he went to Santa Barbara!" he exclaimed. "We were interrupted before you got to the end of that story, Otis, but it's a good one. Tell it."
Bradford looked at Cecily, who now seemed to be giving minute attention to her portion of chicken.
"No," he said; "not now."
"Oh, do!" begged Nan.
"Go on," urged his host. "They'd enjoy it. It's all about a girl, and a bureau—"
"Burro," corrected Bradford.
"Burro—and a thrilling rescue, and—what else, Bradford? Tell it, man!"
"Yes, tell it," said Nan.
Otis looked at Mrs. Mosgrove. He had grown rather red.
"Oh, by all means, tell it!" she recommended, very distinctly. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes bright; her voice held inexplicable inflections. "Is it a personal adventure, Mr. Bradford?"
"It's a personal adventure," laughed Tom; "and it has some mysterious connection with Bradford's failure to go up Pike's Peak, though just what I haven't yet discovered. He didn't get beyond Santa Barbara—and the girl—this afternoon."
"Really?" Mrs. Mosgrove readjusted her glasses that she might better observe the young man. "And did he tell you all about the—girl, Tom?"
"Well, no—come to think of it, he didn't. I gather that she was a very spirited young person," he chuckled; "but he reserved her name—for the dénouement, I suppose."
"Well, don't let's begin with the dénouement," objected his wife. "Let's have the story first, and the rest in proper sequence."
"The dénouement—is not yet," said Bradford, slowly, addressing the company, but looking at Mrs. Mosgrove. "When it occurs, I'll tell you about it—perhaps."
"This sounds like a romance," said Nan.
"It is," serenely replied Otis.
"Or a farce," Cecily quietly suggested.
"I earnestly hope it will not prove to be a tragedy," he retorted.
"In the mean time, are we not to hear the beginning of the story?" demanded Mrs. Porter.
"I think not—just now."
"And the identity of—the lady?" Cecily leaned a little toward him, her eyes very brilliant.
"Is—pardon me—my secret."
"Delightful!" murmured Mrs. Mosgrove, leaning back in her chair. "I begin to suspect you, Mr. Bradford, of cleverness. So few men know the value of suspense!"
"Hm!" said Otis, dryly; "we should. We're so often called upon to illustrate it." She laughed.
"Then you didn't go up Pike's Peak, after all?" asked Nan.
"No; I stayed over only one train in Denver."
"You went from there to Colorado Springs, I suppose?" Cecily's eyes were still laughing.
"I did not," said Bradford, emphatically, his eyes replying in kind. "It occurred to me that I might save time by wiring to Colorado Springs, and it resulted in my not having to stop there at all."
"Oh, what a pity! I found it very interesting."
"Ah! Were you there long?" he pointedly inquired.
"Long enough to perceive various possibilities," she parried. "It's really too bad that you should have missed it!"
"I consider myself very fortunate in that," he imperturbably rejoined, "for if I had stopped there, I should not now be here."
"And then we might never have met," said Mrs. Mosgrove, gravely.
"Oh, a few days might not have been fatal, after all," he deliberated. "If you're staying with the Porters—"
"But I'm not."
"Eh!" It was less an inquiry than an ejaculation.
"I'm not." Cecily was wickedly smiling. "I'm merely here for dinner."
He turned to Nan for refutation.
"Mrs. Mosgrove is visiting her cousins, the Hinsdales, who are our neighbors," she explained.
"By the way, Otis, I want you to know Hinsdale," broke in Porter. "He'll be just the man to interest in that new company you're forming. I'll take you over there to-morrow."
Bradford looked at Cecily. It might have been thought that his glance was triumphant.
"I'm sure my cousin will be delighted to have you call upon him," she said, graciously. "I regret that I shall not be there to share his pleasure."
"Not there?" asked Nan.
"No. Don't you remember that I told you this afternoon. Nan," Cecily's face was the picture of guilelessness, "that country life had palled upon me? To-morrow Sunshine and I spread our wings and flit again." She refrained from even glancing at Bradford.
"Cecily!" gasped her hostess. "You don't—you can't mean it!"
"But I do!" The widow's mouth was mischievously mutinous. "I've decided. We're going."
"Where?"
"Oh—!" She brushed her thumbs lightly over her finger-tips and spread them wide, giving the impression of a scattering dandelion puff. "Quien sabe? Does that expression carry you back to southern California, Mr. Bradford?" She darted a provocative glance at him. "I'm tired of knowing where I'm going. I just want to float with the breeze. Some day, Nan, I'll send you a line from Moscow, or Tokio, or Rio. But I won't be there when you get it," she added, wilfully.
"But you've just come—"
"But Ned and Ethel—"
"But! But!" Cecily laughed. "Are you going to argue with me? Don't! What's the use?"
"What train do you intend taking into town?" asked Bradford, conscious that his inquiry was futile. "Won't you at least permit me the pleasure of going in with you?"
"Oh, thank you; I really don't know. We travel on either road, however the trains happen to suit our convenience; and as I haven't yet decided where I shall go, I've naturally not the slightest idea what train I shall take, or even what station I shall start from. It's such a relief to have really good transportation facilities. Didn't you find it exceedingly irritating getting in and out of some of those small Western towns? Santa Barbara, for example, where there's no railroad at all, and a steamer only once in four or five days?"
"There's a daily stage," grimly said Bradford, "a large, red stage, swung on leathern straps, which rivals a howdah for discomfort and a snail for leisureliness."
"You speak feelingly." To one who merely listened, Mrs. Mosgrove's tone had seemed full of soothing sweetness; Bradford, observing her eyes, found it maddening.
"I do!" he replied. "I traveled many sleepless hours in that stage." He paused a moment, somberly contemplating her impish amusement. Then he continued, with the utmost deliberation: "Since you are so familiar with the transportation facilities of the West—notably of Santa Barbara," her eyes blazed at him, and he met the volley with an answering flash, "possibly you would be interested in the story to which Mr. Porter has alluded."
"Oh, are you going to tell it, after all?" asked Nan, somewhat apprehensively. She had long since sniffed gunpowder in the air, but was still uncertain as to whether it indicated sharp-shooting or fire-works. In any event it would do no harm to discourage a possible breach of neutrality. She was bewildered, a state of mind in which she seldom found herself, and correspondingly uneasy.
Not so her unsuspicious spouse. Gunpowder? Nonsense! Women are always smelling smoke. He met Nan's danger signals with a puzzled stare, which ended in a chuckle.
"Go on, Otis," he said. "Tell it to 'em. Begin with the girl."
"Perhaps Mrs. Mosgrove will give me the opportunity of telling her the story to-morrow," suggested Bradford. "It's rather a long one, and Porter has already heard the first part of it. Shall we leave it until we call upon you to-morrow?" he asked her.
"Wouldn't it be wiser? Perhaps this is hardly the place or the hour—for such a long story"; she flashed a saucy glance at him, adding maliciously: "especially one which you admit has no dénouement."
"Perhaps you'll discover one," he daringly retorted. "At any rate, since You've been in Santa Barbara— By the way, I'm not at fault there? You have been in Santa Barbara?"
"I have." She drew in her lips whimsically.
"You will, I am sure, be interested in the story. Shall we say to-morrow, then?" She glanced up at him and then down at her plate. He watched her narrowly. "You'll be there?" he persisted.
"Possibly."
"I decline to take any chances. I've never told this story—the whole of it—to any one before," he said, soberly, forcing her to meet for a moment his direct gaze. Her eyelids drooped under the ordeal. "And I want to tell it to—some one who has been in Santa Barbara."
"Well, go on! Go on!" exclaimed Porter. "Wherefore all this preamble?"
"I suppose it isn't much of a story in itself," Bradford slowly continued, "but I'll do my best," glancing at Cecily, "to keep up the suspensive interest. It's primarily about the Marquis."
"Oh, a Marquis!" said Nan.
"It's my opinion," commented Porter "that the Marquis is a small part of it."
"Well, anyhow, it began with the Marquis. Do you know him?" he asked Mrs. Mosgrove.
"I do not!" she replied, with a little vindictive crack of the final t. The corners of Bradford's eyes wrinkled in amusement.
"Ah? Too bad! The Marquis, you must know," he turned to Nan, "is a burro. Eastern visitors to Santa Barbara usually begin by calling him, in plain English, a donkey, but time and affection soon teach the softer Spanish term to such of them as don't adopt the title bestowed upon him by the colored lady who reaps the financial benefits of his popularity. She calls him the Markwis dee Lay-fayette." Again he glanced at Cecily, whose chin was tilted and whose lips curved in a disdainful—one might almost have called it a contemptuous—smile. "You must have seen him," he said, "attached to the old blue dump-cart, which in its time has probably served all the lowly purposes of its kind. They've transformed it now into a sort of triumphal chariot for the children at the various hotels and boarding-houses, and every afternoon the little Marquis, decked in roses and pink ribbons, drags the big cart around the sleepy old town,.youngsters hanging over its sides as blossoms hang from a vase. It's a pretty sight. You remember?"
"I remember," she coldly replied.
"One afternoon—it was about two weeks ago; the exact date doesn't matter—I happened to be standing on the court-house porch, just before dark, waiting for a friend who had gone up to his office in the building for a moment. The court-house property, running through a block, from Figueroa Street back to Anapamu, is bordered by a fringe of trees, and there are other trees in the yard, spiky evergreen things mostly. Between the court-house and the side street—Anacapa—there's a vacant lot. Thus, any one standing on the court-house porch, as I was, may clearly see what takes place in that part of Anacapa Street, but may not himself be easily distinguishable, because of the many trees and the large pillars supporting the upper portion of the building. This, I infer, was the case on this occasion, for as I stood there, leaning against one of the aforesaid pillars, down Anacapa Street came my friend Billy Carr, aged ten, driving the Marquis home, after an arduous day. The little burro drooped his head, and with each step, as he plodded along, the bunches of roses, hanging by ribbons from his ears, flapped to and fro. There were vacant lots across the street, too, and on the other corners. In fact, there are no buildings along there, except one little brick cottage, where everything was quiet.
"Presently, while Billy and the Marquis were still in plain sight, up the same street came two young women, dressed in white, whom I immediately recognized as the most fascinating woman in the world, and a girl who boarded at the same house with her. Just why they chose to plow up through the dust of Anacapa Street—it's about knee-high, and there's no sidewalk—instead of going over to State Street, is none of my business. Anyhow, there they were. I was about deciding that my friend wasn't worth waiting for when they spied Billy and the Marquis. By the way, I should have said that they were both tall and—not attenuated. The ladies, I mean."
Astonishment and amusement were beginning to widen Nan's eyes, and she glanced at Cecily, who regarded her plate in what might have passed as bored indifference. Tom was visibly enjoying the tale.
"One of them—the most fascinating one—called out, '0h, Billy, will you take us home in the cart?'"
"Oh!" ejaculated Nan. Cecily's eyelids quivered ever so slightly and were still again.
"Yes," said Bradford, gravely, "that's what I thought, particularly as she had repulsed with scorn a similar suggestion from me. About ten days before, I had been indiscreet enough to ask her if she'd drive to the Mission with me in that cart. I thought it would be a lark, you know." Nan nodded. "Well, she didn't think so at all. In fact, she was very indignant, and it took me a week to make my peace. Trying every day, too. She was very severe with me. But that's what I heard—'Billy, will you take us home in the cart?' Naturally, I awaited developments with—well, with interest.
"Now, of all the worshipers at the shrine of—the most fascinating woman in the world, none was more boundlessly adoring than Billy Carr. We were very intimate, and I trust it won't be regarded as a breach of faith on my part if I tell you that he had that day confided to me his definite intention of marrying her when he grew up." The glint of a smile flitted across Mrs. Mosgrove's face and was gone. "But he wasn't one to wear his heart on his sleeve. Not Billy! So he parleyed. 'I don't b'lieve he'll turn round,' he said. The Marquis strengthened this statement by turning back his ears, and the roses swung with them!" Nan laughed. "Oh, but I'm sure you can make him turn around,' said the fascinating one. You see, it's evident she had met and overcome the eternal masculine before. I'd have undertaken to move the Mission if she had exhibited that confidence in me! Billy promptly conceded that 'f course he c'd make him 'f he wanted to, and while he was accomplishing it there was apparently some opposition entered by the other girl, for the fascinating one said—she has a beautiful, low voice, with marvelous carrying power—she said: 'Oh, pooh! There's no one to see; and if there were, who cares?' Please remember that. She said, 'If there were, who cares?'" Once more he looked at Cecily, but she refused to meet his glance.
"The other girl said they'd soil their gowns. 'Never mind; they'll wash,' said the fascinating one. The other girl was afraid they were too heavy for the Marquis, because he was such a little donkey. 'Tell that to somebody who hasn't seen one of these animals under a pack! We're a mere feather to him. We'll sit in the back and hang our feet over, and if we meet anybody who matters, we can hop off.' So the fascinating one sprang into the cart with an energy that jerked the shafts up, and sat, as she had suggested, hanging her feet over. 'Come on,' she said; 'don't keep the Marquis waiting.' The other girl jumped up beside her, and they called to Billy to go on. Billy passed the word along to the Marquis, but apparently the Marquis had other plans. He stood perfectly still, and the long shafts—have I said that the cart was several sizes too large for him?—the long shafts, tipped up by the weight in the back of the cart, pointed above his ears. 'Git up!' shouted Billy. The Marquis turned back one ear, and tried to rub his nose on his foreleg; but the shaft interfered with freedom of action, so he turned his head and looked reproachfully back at Billy. The fascinating one laughed. 'Make him go, Billy,' she said. 'He mustn't be humored. It's bad for men and burros to be humored. They need discipline,' she said."
Nan giggled delightedly, and Cecily shot a covert and furious glance at the narrator, who pleasantly smiled at her, continuing:
"Billy leaned forward, and larruped the Marquis with the ends of the reins. The Marquis took about two steps, and Billy lifted his voice in what was probably intended for a shout of triumph. Then a funny thing happened. That burro began to rise slowly, forefeet first, as if he was being lifted bodily by those tremendous shafts. When he got well up on his hind legs, Billy's pæan changed to a shriek of terror. 'Jump, girls! Jump!' he yelled. 'You're too heavy! You're pulling him up in the air!'"
Tom and Nan shouted with laughter, and Cecily, finding herself in Rome, succeeded in emulating the Romans to the extent of contributing a weary smile. Bradford gravely waited for the merriment to die away. "That's what I did," he said, ruefully. "I laughed. The girls rolled out at the back; Billy jumped; the Marquis resumed a horizontal position, and dropped one ear out at right angles to his head, with an innocently inquiring expression that would have done credit to a diplomat; and I—I stood there and laughed!" His tone indicated deep disgust.
"Well, I should think you would!" approved Nan. "What did the girls do?"
"One of them got up—and the other one didn't. Presently it dawned on me that the fascinating one was still lying in the dust, and I stopped laughing. I ran—with my heart in my mouth. When I got near them the other one called out, '0h, she's sprained her ankle!' But the fascinating one just lay there, propped up on one elbow, and her eyes were blazing, I can tell you!" Mrs. Mosgrove smiled faintly, and glanced fleetingly at him. Nan looked from one to the other. She was amused, but no longer bewildered.
"She looked up at me, and demanded, 'Did you laugh?' Well, she was alive and conscious—apparently not much hurt—and there stood Billy and that ridiculous burro and the old dump-cart, and to save my neck I couldn't have kept my face straight! I admitted the first charge and rendered myself liable to a second. I laughed again—but only a little, because she groaned and dropped her head down on her arms. Then I knew I was a brute—and I think I said so; I don't remember. Anyhow, she had sprained her ankle and couldn't walk, and the quickest way to get her home seemed to take her in the cart." Nan laughed, and he frowned at her quickly. "Oh, it wasn't a bit funny then! She was in pain, and we were a long way from her boarding-house, and she was furious with me, and didn't want me to touch her or do anything for her, and none of us had any sense, anyhow, and—it wasn't funny, I tell you! However, we finally got her into the cart—the other girl and I—and we sent Billy post-haste for a doctor, and then we started home with her through the dusk. Nobody who's never been in Santa Barbara knows what the dusk is there," he said, softly. "It's golden and amethyst and gray, all mixed up together and blended—and it's fragrant. The night before we had walked together in the dusk on the beach, she and I, and—somehow I thought that perhaps some day she'd let me tell her what that dusk—with her—meant to me." He looked across the table at Cecily; she had grown a little pale. Nan drew in her breath quickly and looked away.
"By Jove!" whispered Tom, not yet fully enlightened, but beginning to see.
"But there she lay, on the floor of the cart, and she wouldn't look at me nor speak to me. She said she wanted to go home, and she wanted the other girl to walk beside her every step of the way, and then she lay down in the cart and shut her eyes. So the girl walked beside the cart, and I led the burro—and thought of all the things that I wanted to say to her." His voice was low and a little husky. "I wanted to tell her that I was a brute and knew it; I wanted to tell her that she was—what she was; and I wanted to tell her—other things. But all I could do was to lead the burro and see that the wheels didn't jolt into chuck-holes. And that's the way we went home." He ceased speaking, and nobody stirred. Presently he resumed:
"I helped lift her out of the cart and carry her into the house. She wouldn't even say good night to me. I thought then that the sprain was a very bad one, and that she was in great pain!" Cecily flushed red at this point. "So I went back to the hotel and smoked—and smoked. The next morning, as soon as I decently could, I went over to her boarding-house, and—what do you suppose they told me?" He paused, looking at Nan.
"What?"
"That she had taken the steamer for San Francisco the night before."
"Gone?"
"Gone. Apparently she had recovered from the intense pain of that sprain rather quickly. Anyhow, she had stirred up the old lady who was with her, had her trunks packed in a hurry, and they had taken the north-bound steamer at midnight. Fortunately for her scheme, the boat was late."
Mrs. Mosgrove's mouth wore an aggravating, tantalizing smile.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" ejaculated Tom. This part of the story he had not heard. "What did you do?"
"Took the name of her San Francisco hotel, and engaged a seat in the next north-bound stage. I'd missed that day's."
"Did you catch her?" demanded Porter.
"No! She had several hours' start, and that stage is no Flier! I got to Frisco, to find that she'd stayed there only overnight, and had left Salt Lake City as her next mail-address. I telegraphed her, asking her to wait for me there, and took the next train east. They only run one through train a day on that road, and of course I'd missed it that day. At Salt Lake City I learned that she had remained there only over one train, but had gone to Denver. I telegraphed her at Denver, and took the next train over. Same old story. She had stayed there only a few hours, and had gone on to Colorado Springs. By this time I was getting wary; and as I had lots of time before there was a train to the Springs, I wired her hotel, asking if these ladies were there. Reply came that they had been there, but had gone. I wired for their next address. They'd left none. I wired again, asking their probable destination. Clerk didn't know, but thought it was New York. Definite, isn't it?"
"And that's why you're here?" Tom was excited.
"That's why I'm here," repeated Bradford, significantly. "I really believe that's why I'm here." He looked again across the table at Cecily. This time she met his glance rather nervously—half pleading, half defiant.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" reiterated his friend. "If a woman gave me the slip that way, I'd let her go!"
"No, you wouldn't, Tom," quietly replied Otis, with one quick, deep glance into Cecily's baffling eyes. "Not this woman."
"Well, then, if it's as serious as that, let's find her! Who is she?" Tom was as unconscious of the undercurrent as he had earlier been of the gunpowder.
"She is—" said Bradford, and paused. Cecily opened her eyes wide and looked straight at him. Nan held her breath.
"Well?" urged Porter.
"She is—the most lovable woman in the whole wide world!" said Otis, under his breath. Cecily's gaze was suddenly withdrawn.
"Yes, yes, but her name! What's her name?"
"That," said Bradford, for the second time, "is my secret."
"But don't you see, man? We may be able to help you find her! It's possible—of course, not probable, but entirely possible—that we may even know her!"
"That's not impossible," drolly admitted Bradford.
"Well, then?"
"I shall find her—if it is to be."
"Oh, fiddlesticks!" said Tom.
"What do you think about it, Mrs. Mosgrove?" suddenly asked Otis. "Do you think I shall ever find her again?"
"Quien sabe?" she replied; but to Bradford's ears her laugh was unnatural, and his heart leaped within him.
"You travel a great deal," he said. "You may find her for me some day. Will you let me come to-morrow and tell you who she is?"
"To-morrow?" faltered Cecily, and then, hard pressed, fell back upon quotation:
"Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n thousand Years.
At any rate, I shall not be here."
The coffee had long since been finished, and Cecily moved suggestively, looking at Nan. But the hostess was apparently oblivious of the hour and the situation. She sat, her elbows on the table, her chin propped in her hands, looking at Bradford, over whose face a sudden shade had fallen.
"You have this to comfort you, anyway, Otis," she remarked; "she found you formidable."
"What do you mean?" he quickly asked.
"There's only one thing in the world that will make a woman run away from a man," said Nan, judicially, "and that is fear."
"How absurd!" exclaimed Mrs. Mosgrove, flushing to her hair.
"Now," continued Mrs. Porter, ignoring Cecily's barbed glances, "let's proceed by the method of elimination. She was not afraid of physical violence from you. She was not, presumably, afraid of violence, physical or otherwise, from any other man because of you. She was not afraid of you at all; for if you had succeeded in finding her and telling her your story, she would have had only to say 'no,' and that would have ended it. Ergo, she was afraid to let you tell your story, for fear of what she herself might do or feel. In other words, she was afraid she might yield."
"But why should she be afraid to yield if—if she could care for me?" puzzled the man.
"Because she's a woman, you goose!" laughed Nan. "We all hate the thought of yielding—until we've done it, and then we glory in it! You may depend upon it, as long as she runs from you, she's afraid."
"Oh!" said Bradford, "I wonder if that's so? Do you think it is, Mrs. Mosgrove?"
"Not at all!" protested Cecily, somewhat over-fervently, "She probably runs—that is, she probably wishes not to be annoyed, and—and I should advise you to give it up!"
"Never!" said Bradford, quietly. "Never until she herself tells me, in so many words, that she does not and cannot—love me. And I'm not sure that I shall give it up even then," he added. "At any rate, I've told you the story. I warned you that it had no dénouement unless—have you, possibly, discovered one?"
For an instant Cecily looked across the table into eyes that told more than ever his lips could.
"Will you tell me?" he whispered.
She arose, and they all followed her example.
"I shouldn't wonder," she said, unsteadily, "I'm not sure, but—I shouldn't wonder if—perhaps—it will turn out to be 'And they—lived happily—ever after.'"