The Red Book Magazine/Volume 37/Number 2/The Astonishing Suzanne

by Emerson Hough

 

Chapter I

WHAT could it matter to me, as to this girl who passed my window every morning on her ride through the park? Obviously her habit was by Dupin, who has the pick of the city. Obviously also Dupin had the opportunity of a lifetime in this splendid creature—tall, slender, of absolute rhythm in woman symmetry. But what difference could that make to me? What difference that her mount—as classful a chestnut as ever sported the allowable frontal star and one white stocking—must have cost the ransom of a prince?

Always the girl rode as does a gentlewoman who learned riding in her childhood—hands low and gentle, weight well back, poise effortless and unconscious, as much at home as if the saddle were a divan. Her hat, trim and faultless; her gloves, not too tightly fitted; her boots, always polished just enough and not too much; her righteous and proper length of limb—all these made of her an equestrian figure of distinction and would have done so on any mall in all the world. Thereto the velvet brown and red of a flawless skin, the clean line of a family chin carried unconsciously well, the fair and open look of a patrician eye—these things simply added details in the perfection of the girl, as did the turn of a small hand, the stirrup-angle of a slender foot. Of all the riders who passed my window of a morning, she alone remained remembered—for causes sufficient, believe me who speak.

From my place toward the head of the park, where the bridle-path enters, I easily can see the throng of equestrians, sometimes fifty or more, every day. Most of them are awkward; some are fat; some are self-conscious; many are overdressed. Three-fourths of them are out for display, many of the remaining one-fourth out for exercise, and most of the residue out for anything but riding.

Most of these amateur horseback gentry come in charge of a professional riding-master whose school is located somewhere to the northward. But this girl always rode alone. She needed no instructions and no care. She rode for the sake of the horse and for the air, for the feel of leather and the sense of sweat and motion immemorially alluring to those of patrician descent—not easily taken on or even imitated by those less favored of the kindly Fates. She was sometimes absorbed, and yet half unconsciously alert, perceiving all the dangers and all the pleasures of the park paths. I am sure she sensed the flowers and the birds; I believe she heard the trees.

She seemed not to know many of those whom she met or passed. At times I have seen her just start her crop in a careless salute to a riding-master or to a traffic policeman at the head of the park. Of only one thing was I sure regarding her—she rode for company of her horse. I never marked her in any of the groups that came galloping, thumping and giggling by—I have seen her eyes open in surprise at such parties of clumsy strivers. She herself held her own gait in her own way.

She never had company; and yet she was beautiful—inordinately, imperiously, shamefully beautiful! Surely she had the great possessions of family, breeding, money, usage and brains. You could not avoid that conclusion.

But, I must repeat once more, what could it all mean to me? And now I must explain why it could mean so little.

She never saw me, could not see me when I sat back of the curtains in my house near the head of the park. True, that one time when I sat in front, on my little stone demi-gallery, with a foot propped on the rail and a robe across my knees—the very time I should not have chosen to be seen by her—she did leave the bridle-path and come at a canter along my little side-street. But I hardly thought she saw me then—I hoped she did not, though her bright gaze swept along my house-front as she passed.

The leg which I rested on the rail of my balcony was shorter than its fellow. I was not born so: but machine guns are merciless. The spray caught me twice below the knee. That, and the mustard gas in the early Argonne actions, sent me home. A soldier, even a captain—later to become major—is not consulted as to operations. When I made review of my case, I found myself en route home with one somewhat crippled leg, apparently permanently shorter than the other

What right had I, then, to lift hand or eye to such a girl as this—beautiful, fit, perfect, entitled to naught but the very best that life could give? As well believe that hummingbirds will take to thorns as that such a woman will not have her pick of men and her will of them. That was true for me from the very first, and more and more as day by day I saw her pass on her morning ride beyond my window.

I tried to put this recurrent apparition of loveliness out of my sight, out of my thought. A hundred times I said to myself that I cared nothing for her, her horse and her habit, her unconscious way of riding alone, absorbed, pensive, yet alert.

So it could have been nothing more than mere coincidence that as soon as I was done my morning coffee, I should sit by my window each morning at about nine-eighteen and look out over the bridle-path of the near-by park. Yes, mere coincidence.

She always came about nine-eighteen in the morning. I took on a certain mathematical problem. Obviously she lived somewhere to the northward. Perhaps she left home at about nine o'clock—I fancied that she did. Problem: how far, at a brisk trotting gait, would she ride in fifteen or eighteen minutes, including all the embarrassments of cross traffic? It was a problem which gave me an immense interest. I wondered who this girl was, where she lived, who were her family.

Not, of course, that these things could make the slightest difference in the world to me, for as anyone with half an eye very well might see, I was quite acquit of her. She was really no more than any one of the passing throng of park equestrians.

And then there began that astonishing series of events which just now have come to their astonishing conclusion.....

My doctor told me to resume interest in my business as soon as I could; so presently, as the summer advanced, I began to go down to my law-office of a morning, in my car. My man Van Emmons drove very carefully. A good man, Van Emmons. Without appearing solicitous, he would walk close at my side going down the steps, and looking the other way, would give me a stiff elbow at the car step lest I stumble. So good a man, Van Emmons, that I never blamed him in the least for the accident. On the contrary, I raised his wages!

We were moving along smartly on the Lagoon drive, parallel to the saddle-path, and through the car window I saw a party of the riding-school type—new breeches, new coats, new boots and all—approaching us. The riding-master was out with a dozen pupils, who rode as so many women do, for the purpose of being observed. I did not envy the riding. master. He could not perform miracles.

Neither, unless he had been a worker of miracles, could he have prevented the accident One of the horses stumbled and near fell. Others, ridden too close, almost piled atop. In an instant there was rearing and plunging. I could hear cries of fright. I could see the one man of the party doing his best to straighten out the mêlée.

Just then there came hoof-beats behind I was about to turn, when all at once the tangled group on the bridle-path broke into chaos of plunging horses. Just at the moment when Van Emmons turned our car toward the curb in order to get out of the way I felt the impact of the body of a horse at the rear window of our car. His hot breath came through the broken glass, almost in my face.

No one can explain about an accident—no two minds recall it alike or clarify it at all. I had no more than time to shift in seat and try to open the door when I saw this horse which broken the glass of my car window plunge aside frantically strike against the curb and fall. Then stretched on the grass border between the curb and the saddle-path, I saw his rider motionless.

I caught my own breath in a half sob of fear as I stumbled down the steps of the car.

The horse rose limping, and Van Emmons caught his bridle. The creature stood trembling, his ears and nostrils indicating pain. My man led him to a place of safety among the trees Came now the gabble of hopeless imbeciles as I bent above the girl, who lay motionless.

There was no official in sight. Van Emmons fastened the horse to a tree by the bridle-reins and came hurrying back. We each put an arm under the girl as she lay, and lifted her into my car. There was not space for her to lie; so we eased her all we could, half-leaning against the unbroken window. Her eyes were closed.

Then, out of nowhere, came the crowd. We were not near a telephone. There was no officer. None of these others knew the girl's name; nor did I. I told Van Emmons to go over to the conservatory and telephone for an ambulance. Meantime I closed the door of the car, and as best I could, shielded my charge from the stares of those who packed in at the curb.

When this girl was born, there must have been some unusual juxtaposition of the governing planets. I have said she was distinct from these others. From the very nature of her accident—I fancied she had headed for the mêlée to help the riding-master straighten it out—you might have called her unusual. I will testify that she was unusually beautiful as she sat on the car seat, her eyes closed, her hands limp. Also I will testify that she seemed extraordinary, when all at once, apparently without effort, she broke through the shock of her fall and regained consciousness. Apparently she was at once in full possession of her faculties when she spoke—as it appeared to me, in an unusual and unexpected way.

“Oh, my coco!” she murmured, raising an explanatory hand to her head.

I had expected something less colloquial, more elegant. Then she blazed out at me.

“You poor boob, what are you doing, sitting here? Let me out of this!”

“But my dear young lady—” I began. She looked at me! She leaned toward the door, pushed it half open.

“Get out of the way, you people!” she exclaimed. “Where is my horse?”

She espied him and pushed her way through the crowd, ran across and cast her arms about his neck. “Oh, Danny, Danny!” I heard her cry quaveringly.

She ran a hand of experience along the horse's legs, down the ridge of skin where his foreleg had struck the curb. Another abrasion was above the stifle joint. Danny laid his head on her shoulder and nickered in understanding.

The girl turned after a little, white to the lips. “Go on home!” she almost blazed at those who were following her even there. “If you can't learn to ride, stay home! Look what you've done!

The professional riding escort now came up deferentially and cleared the path. He offered an arm to the girl, seeing that her place in my car would be better than anything else that offered; for now other cars were piling in behind us on their way downtown, and the crowd was growing.

“It was not your fault, sir,” he said to me. “Her mount was crowded in. He plunged just as you drew around. I trust the lady isn't badly hurt.”

“I'm not in the least hurt,” an icy, even voice replied to him. “But how will I get my horse home? I'll not ride him now. Look at that stifle joint.”

“My dear young lady,” I began once more, “if you will allow a poor boob to suggest anything. I shall be very glad to drive you home. Perhaps the riding-master will lead your horse. I will go very slowly. I see my man is coming now.”

“It's the best I can do,” said the girl after a moment. “But I'll never forgive you—never, so long as I live! What kind of people are you, up here, anyhow?”

There was just a soft slur in her speech that coupled with her expression, “up here,” led me to believe that perhaps this rider had been bred in old Kentucky. She seemed to have a very pretty temper; that was certain.

There was a mad impulse, in part of resentment, in part I know not what, which almost drove me to lean toward her, to take her hand, to turn her face to mine so that I might look into her eyes. Yet all at once I remembered that I was a poor boob, no more. What difference could I make to her? So the instinct of a gentleman, I hope, overrode the mad impulse of that fashion of unrestrained gallantry sometimes known of soldiers. I sat with my hands clenched on the top of my stick. I recall now that the knuckles were white. Poor boob, forsooth!

Van Emmons came up and said he had called the patrol of the Humane Society. Neither did this please our haughty maiden. “No, you don't!” said she. “Danny can walk. This chap is going to lead him. Get in quick, idiot, and drive! Do you want to wait here until the whole town, including the Fire Department, gets here? Let's go!”

So Van Emmons meekly climbed to his seat and turned his head for directions. She told him, 1219 Allenby Place, repeated it to the riding-master, who now had led Danny out and was himself in saddle.

So at last fate had given me knowledge of the residence of this girl! What could it matter to me? None the less, one does certain conventional things.

“I am genuinely sorry,” said I to her at last, as we headed out of the park up the boulevard. “It was all my fault. I hope you're really not badly hurt. Shall I take you home, or would you like to stop—some doctor, you know?”

“No—home!” she said quickly. Then, with the instinct of the gentlewoman which I had known all along would be hers, she added quickly: “Don't be foolish. It was not in the least your fault. It was just an accident. It was those people—they don't belong horseback. I am quite all right. Don't mind what I said.”

Well, at last I began to see that here was a young woman of her own ways, but I fancied there was fair play in her, after all. I was sure she was what we call a good sport, in our fashion of speaking.

We passed my house as we left the park, and she nodded, much to my surprise, as she glanced toward my windows. “You are Major Murrell Cardon,” she said at length.

Then I knew that she had seen me sitting there, perhaps had asked concerning me. I suspected the traffic officer. It seemed to me am extraordinary fact that she should know my name.

“Yes,” said I, “and I suppose you are Miss Collingsworth.”

I was simply making a guess, based on geographical knowledge of my own city northwards, and on a newspaper illustration I had somewhere seen.

“Am I?” she remarked, without any attempt to aid me.

 

Chapter II

WE turned into a side street and drove slowly, so that we could, by pausing now and then, keep in sight of the riding-master who was leading the limping Danny. I maintained silence. Conscious as I was of her gracious presence near to me, moved as I was to say something of comfort, pity alone would have kept me speechless now. I did not dare to look into her eyes or to turn her way

“Damn it!” she said half through her sobs, at length. “If you only knew how I love that horse! It's a shame!”

“Yes,” said I, “it is a shame. Everything seems a shame.”

We remained both cryptic, both perhaps a little on edge, without further speech until we turned into Allenby Place and drew up in front of the gray-stone house at whose number I had guessed with a certain accuracy. I was not sure I could see the name Collingsworth on the door plate, but I could see an old-fashioned S knocker on the door, a thing unusual in our city and confirmatory of a Southern origin of the occupants, as it seemed to me.

We waited for a time at the curb in front of the gray-stone house until Danny and his guardian drew in. She motioned the riding-master the way to the stables, just at the side of a garage, and stepped lightly to the pavement ahead of me—a tacit recognition of my own infirmity, which cut me to the core.

I saw her stand there, her veil now pulled down, her head bent just a little forward so I could not see her eyes. The line of the back of her head, with its close-drawn mass of dark hair, was superb. Shall I confess it?—my arms, my heart, all of me went hungry for her! And I had never heard her voice before that hour, did not really know who she was. And I was not fit for her.

“You must come in, of course,” she said. I was of a mind to do nothing of the sort, but it seemed courteous to attend her up the steps. She ran on up ahead of me, and knocked. The house man opened—I could not see him. I heard him say, “No, Miss Sue,” to some question which she asked. She turned to me hesitant, thoughtful.

“Mother has just gone out,” she said. “There is no one here now but the servants. Perhaps—you will let us write?”

“Certainly you have no cause to thank me,” I said. “It looked like a bad spill. I am very thankful Miss Collingsworth was not more seriously injured.”

She said nothing, but suddenly, with a smile which utterly irradiated her wonderful face and wholly contradicted all her previous conduct, she held out her hand at long-arm, and said not a word for her farewell!

I knew that she had seen my infirmity, for I was obliged to lean slightly on my stick.

That I had been hit again—and hard—was as sure to me as the time I had dropped in the wheatfield before the Argonne.

ON the day following, I received from Mrs. Margaret Williston Collingsworth a formal little note which I shall always regard as the height of social correctness. It expressed a mother's thanks to Major Murrell Cardon for prompt and much-appreciated kindness to her daughter in an emergency which might very easily have proved far more serious. She wished to be remembered as under very many obligations. And so forth. Very beautiful, very correct!

At least, my diagnosis had been entirely exact. The girl had family. Naturally, there was no reply I could make. I dared not call, had not been asked to do so. I was, in a manner of speaking, no more than a roadside acquaintance. I could not send flowers. I knew no one whom they knew. But once more I said to myself that it made no difference.

It chanced that this was in the year of a national election. Among many other returned soldiers I was called upon to address public gatherings upon this or that issue, as might accord with my own political beliefs. Always I refused, content to live on in my own half-morbid life and let others save the country, now that the fighting men were done. But at last came a very fervid appeal to address a certain woman's club in the hall of one of the college buildings of that institution which occupies a considerable frontage just above my own home. Again geography! I knew that this hall was not far from Allenby Place!

With what artless logic will a man in love endeavor to deceive himself! Just on the chance that geography might do something, I wrote the committee that I felt it my patriotic duty to comply with their request. The ladies of 1219 might come!

It was a stately audience that I confronted that afternoon, made up almost wholly of that vast and enigmatic class now new-come into the franchise, and whose votes we sought. They were of the best families of our part of town; and ours is the best part of town, so they say. They were well-clad and bejeweled, all opulent, some corpulent. There was a sprinkling of college girls, of the smarter sort. Our meeting surely had the social cachet. It was entirely correct, indeed very much of a social function. None of the elect was absent, and no others were allowed.

On the speakers' platform I followed a New York financier and a bank-president of my city. Of the latter, Mr. Thomas J. Blandsford, it was said that as a bank-president he was the best after-dinner talker in the West. Indeed, I know of no bank-president who has a more promising future as an orator. I listened amiably, much engrossed, as coming speakers always are, in what I myself was about to say.

My own speech was beautifully and most correctly applauded, never, or rarely, at the wrong time. Most intelligent, this audience! As we had all known all along how we intended to vote at the next election, it really made little odds what was said by anyone; so my own talk on our reconstruction problems perhaps was well enough. I was sure the impression I left was favorable, for my single-button cutaway, by Norris, had been much admired. The trousers were by Sansome, of whom I need say nothing in regard to trousers. With a white carnation, I was sure that my political views would be held to be entirely sound. The discreet and correct applause so indicated.

AFTER the ceremonies I shook hands with the club president who had introduced me, with other ladies who came up correctly and thanked me, with others who smiled and muttered unintelligible words. In return I also smiled and muttered unintelligibly and quite correctly. At length I started down the aisle to make my exit. The other two speakers, as it chanced, took the alternate aisle.

About halfway down the room a young girl was standing, her back to me—she must have been hidden behind some imposing Colonial Dame, so that I could not see her from the platform. Her frock, a steel-blue silk, was close drawn to a superbly lined young form. Her little hat, a cornflower blue with a close-bound single smoky plume, had a decoration of an upright buckle, containing several brilliant topazes. These details I could see as I approached—wishing all the time that she would face about.

Her head was turned toward the opposite aisle, as she stood speaking eagerly with a friend. For one instant she half turned, and I thrilled. It was the girl of the bridle-path! But just then my friend, the bank-president Mr. Thomas J. Blandsford was passing parallel with me down the opposite aisle. The girl knew him, then?

I saw her drop her tall young body with the finest, correctest, smartest curtsey one ever saw—as youth to age, you know; and now, since her face was still turned, I saw she had flashed toward him, that old and impossible personage, pasty-faced and gray-haired, as he was, a look of great eyes, a smile of a little mouth, turned up at the corners. I could just catch all this in side view.

There was, of course, no woman in that hall to compare with her—nay, nor in any hall. Carelessly absorbing approval of men, carelessly indifferent to the hostility of women, carelessly sure of herself, she stood, the very acme and apotheosis of Woman, the lure, the enigma, the despair of Time. Then!

She half turned, the little sophisticated smile not yet faded from her lips, and looked straight into my face!

I came abreast of her as she stood near the aisle. She looked into my eyes. I knew that she knew who I was, and I would have known her anywhere.

I saw the passive smile on her lips—saw all her exquisitely alluring face close to mine as she turned. A smile of recognition would have risen to my own features, naturally—nay, did so, for aught I know. I thought she was about to speak to me. Of course, the simple courtesy to a speaker of the day would have allowed her to say something, if only mumblingly polite. But then—

But then the smile quite left her lips. Her eyes lost their merriment and went cool. Great Heavens! Could she prefer a pasty-faced bank-president to me, even as I was? Could she not advance at least one conventional compliment to a man who had been at such pains to come here? I knew naught of these things, but I do know that, she dropped her eyes. I could not note that she turned to anyone who might have been a chaperon. The truth was that she had cut me dead, even though the color rose to her cheeks as she did so—cut me dead, with the coyest and most reserved of looks, when my very heart was aflame for her!

I felt the red blood rush to my face, so that I put up my handkerchief to conceal the sudden confusion that I felt. It seemed to me cruel injustice. There was no excuse whatever for direct rudeness to me. Had I willfully injured her horse, then? Had I not made every amend a man might for the accident? Had I not shown her all of the courtesy a gentleman could in the circumstances? And that being done, had I ever intruded myself upon her in any way? Since I had violated no propriety, even those of Allenby Place, she needed not thus to have hurt me openly. No, not even though she must have seen that I was obliged to rest against my stick while speaking, up yonder, as I had.

I KNEW the bank-president, Mr. Thomas J. Blandsford, intimately enough, because I happen to own some stock in his bank, and am one of its attorneys, besides having been, at times, a depositor worth noting by a bank-president. We met on the walk as we waited for our cars.

“By the way,” I said to him with fine carelessness, after we had shaken hands and I had felicitated him on his oratory, “I see that you have not forgotten the ways of your youth. Stunning girl who spoke to you in there—and you an old married man as you are! Who is she, if I might ask?”

“You don't know Peggy Collingsworth?” he retorted. “That argues yourself unknown. You're living too far south down the Drive, I suppose. Her real name is Susan or Suzette or Suzanne or something, I believe, but I always call her 'Peggy' as her mother does. She comes and sits on my knee, you see.” He chuckled again. The varlet!

“You see,” he resumed, “they have taken on the old Bligh house, in Allenby Place—widow—rich—Kentucky—best people in the world—received everywhere here, of course. Everybody is crazy over them. Well, do you blame them? And you say you don't know Peggy Collingsworth!”

I drew myself up somewhat stiffly. “I had a note from her mother just the other day,” I replied. “Yes, fine people, I am sure. Some of our very best people have come from the old State.”

He had had a smile, I no more than a cut, from Peggy Collingsworth! My sudden jealousy of a fat pasty old man kept me from asking a single question further. At that time I did not know his actual ambitions.

That night I slept but little. There was a vast injustice in life. As to my crippled limb, in part I had suffered for an ideal. Now I must suffer for a girl. That was injustice.....

I must think no more of this young woman who had ruined all such imperfect plans as I had been able to formulate for my own future life. No, I must never think of her again. But I did.

 

Chapter III

NOT far from our park there is a city bathing-beach, during the summer months frequented by thousands of all manner of folk, some of them good, many bad, most of them indifferent to the eye, as for the most part is the way with the human assemblage, however gathered. For myself, I never care to become a part of these multitudes.

Toward autumn, however, after the beaches are closed officially, when there is a keen nip in the morning air and the water is icy cold, sometimes I have evaded the beach guardians and slipped across for a morning plunge when the waves are white, and when the beach is quite deserted. It is simple, when one has a bathrobe and a car.

By now the effects of the mustard gas upon my lungs had well worn away. And on the very last morning of my own secret and chill bathing season, as I promised myself, I drove my car beyond the park and over the hard flat sand close down to the edge, so that the run might be shorter. My man protested that I was killing myself, spoke of the danger of ice-water; but I was used to this so I cast off my bath-robe, after a look about for a chance officer, and in I was with much need for prompt work to keep from going blue.

Soon I caught the glow of a good reaction and headed straight out for a long turn, with all the zest in the world now and wishing winter might never come to last I turned to go shoreward, carried in by a series of combers, which sometimes delightfully buried me in a fuming smother of icy needle-points.

Approaching the shallower water, I saw drawn up on the beach, perhaps couple of hundred yards above my my car, a smart little closed runabout which had apparently a single occupant. To my vast surprise, this occupant threw off a bathrobe—I could see the car window dimmed by the garment just an instant—and sprang out, heading for the water forthwith, just as I had done!

There is—for a man—no mistaking the feminine figure, no matter how far observed or how fully concealed. Unclad to the extent of a close-fitting costume for swimming, there was no mistaking this newcomer's figure, certainly. She was bare of arm and foot and lower limb Thus she ran, goddess-like, and liker still to woman, across the narrow strip of sand; and in she went.

Feigning to be carried thitherward by the waves, I made well across in her direction. She did not go out very far, but remained in the water so long that I almost began to lose something of my own reaction. But presently she turned shoreward, and literally, we were cast up by the waves at almost the same time; for now a rising wind would not be gainsaid, and it was full time to be ashore.

And so, even as I rose, I saw her, a little space above me on the beach, leave the last wrinkling wave of the covet water which followed her feet as though reluctant to release her. She stood young and tall, splendid in vital youth. An thus there dawned at last all that remained hid of the sun for my day of love. Now I saw who she was.

She saw me, of course, could not avoid doing so—perhaps understood my artifice in landing so far from my own car. But in the comradeship of athletics, in the fellow-feeling for one who like herself would evade the law for the sake of a she stood, turning upon me one swift saucy smile as she stooped to wring the water from her bobbed pretense of skirt.

Her white teeth made a clean across her rather well tanned face. She waved me a wondrous gesture of admission to some sort of comradeship. I was careless of what it was, so only she admitted me to the same earth that had produced her.

Then, paying no more attention to me, was off, running with a long, free stride to her car, as graceful as a deer, and indeed reminding me very much of one in the ease of her going.

I saw her draw on her robe, pull over her shoulders some heavier garment. Then a foot touched a pedal, and she was gone, her car whirling off toward the park.

It could be no other girl in all the world—nay, not among ten thousand thousand! And that little wave of a hand was in recognition—yes, that was certain! Though Peggy Collingsworth had cut me dead socially, though she had shown cavalier conduct in spite of my attempt to be only of service to her, here in the free-masonry of the open air, she had relented!

I walked toward my own car, my man meeting me, hurrying with my bathrobe. Now I was shivering strongly—looking straight ahead and shivering. My body had in nowise been overtaxed. The blood had not left the capillaries. It was my heart, my soul that trembled in sudden chill!

“For God's sake, Mr. Murrell, cut it out! Strike me, but I hate to see a man go in with the ice ready to form—you'll take your death at this. Come on, sir, let's go 'ome. I say, you'll get your death of it!” Thus my man.

“I have got my death of it now, I'm thinking,” I said to him. “This is the last time. I will not come back again.”

Nor did I.

VAN EMMONS, excellent man, helped me into my library. I still shivered in a strong rigor, although I felt no cold. I heard Van Emmons use the telephone in the hall, for what purpose I did not know. Presently he came to me and said, in a matter-of-fact way, that the doctor would be out within the hour.

“The doctor! What doctor? I want no doctor!” said I. But Van Emmons, who is very firm with me at times, only turned toward me an impassive face and repeated that very presently Dr. Westfield would be out.

For an instant I sat sullen. Then the humor of the situation came to me, and I did not countermand the order. An instant later, like a flash, my humor changed to quite a different mood. A sudden idea came to me which left me grave yet determined. Now I awaited the arrival of Dr. Westfield with impatience. There was something I wanted to say to him.

He came in due course, in his great French car, of a nice cream-color—I presume the finest car driven by any doctor along the Rich Coast. I knew him well enough, and he had known me from my childhood, having served my father before my time. I welcomed him now and showed him into the library.

“Well, what's the matter?” he demanded of me in his brusque fashion. Then, as he gave me a swift glance of appraisal, he added: “There's nothing the matter with you. Why should you take the time of other people? I'm busy and I'm off.”

It was his fashion of performance. But now I raised a hand and told him to be seated.

“There something the matter, Dr Westfield,” said I. “I need your help. It is a serious case.”

Now he became another man. He seated himself and looked at me very intently. “What is wrong, son?” he demanded.

In reply I raised to the chair in front of me the leg slightly shortened, slightly deviating from its true line.

He nodded.

“Yes, I know. That's too bad, but you're not alone. That's the price our fellows paid. Little enough the people care for it, but it's the price some of our boys pay.”

“I am not content with the price, Doctor!” said I. “I'm going to rue back, I'm going to renege! I want my leg back again. Nothing else in the world is ever going to do me any good. If you can't do that, if you can't fix that leg so it will be as good as the other, then you're no doctor and I'm no man.”

He never changed a muscle of his face, did not smile, did not frown. He made a motion which told me I must strip. Then he went over the injured limb carefully, gently, delicately, his gray eyebrows just drawn together a little.

“Well,” said he at length, “what do you want me to do? The thing's knit perfectly—it is as strong as the other. Might have been a better operation, perhaps, but good Heavens, what do you expect in a hospital at the front? There were others whose need was greater than yours—you are damned lucky to be here at all. What have you to kick about, I'd like to know.”

“Only this, Doctor,” said I to him after a time, “—that I come of a family of me. When a man can't be a fighting man any more—when he can't succeed, when can't survive in the keenest competition with the best of the world, then he isn't the sort of man my family likes to produce.”

He sat back in his chair for a moment, the ends of his fingers together, looking at me as though to read my soul.

By and by he nodded his head. “I understand something about it, I suppose,” said he. “What proud fools men are, sometimes! What proud fools the Blue Guard of Napoleon, the Red Guard of Wellington—and the Khaki Guard of your own division! Proud fools, all of you—all through the ages.”

“So now,”—he sighed—“being a fool and being proud, you want that leg straightened out. Why? Of course, there is only one reason why, and you have said it. Who is she?”

“As a lawyer, Dr. Westfield,” I replied, “I make objections to that question as irrelevant, immaterial and incompetent. All you have to do is straighten the leg and send me your bill. I suppose I could pay it—by giving you my income for a month or two. Is it a surgical possibility?”

He bent once more over the injured limb, delicately, critically.

“Why, yes,” said he at length; “it can be done. Of course, you remember what Sandy Forsythe did—of the old regular army. He had his leg broken and set three different times, after the Arickaree fight, until it was fixed just to suit him. It was a perfectly good leg ever after.”

“Precisely,” said I. “Now I want a perfectly good leg too, not a fraction longer or shorter than the other one. Can you do it?”

“I could, except for one thing,” he said. “The lower part of the fracture carried away something of the bone. My son, there is nothing can make you quite the same now excepting the grafting in of a piece of bone. We do that sort of thing—skin-grafting and bone-grafting—it is very common throughout the military hospitals today. We make new noses, new chins, new everything. A new leg is a mere detail. If we can find a man who has a leg just the length and shape of yours, we could cut it off of him and sew it onto you, and you would be as good as new; but otherwise I don't see what we can do.”

“That is to say, you want a new piece of bone a few inches long to graft into that fracture down below? We both know you will have to break that leg and reset it in a cast, including the new bone graft? Isn't that the truth of it?”

DR. WESTFIELD nodded. “Quite right, my boy,” said he. “But who is going to give us that nice piece of bone?”

“Why not myself?” said I.

He looked at me thoughtfully. “That's done quite often,” he replied soberly. “The front part of a rib might be straight enough. We could saw out a section, not quite across, and no doubt get the needed splinter. Pretty operation—I'll have to admit it would be pretty—damned pretty. I would love to undertake it—on some criminal. But what have you done?”

“I've done plenty, Dr. Westfield,” said I. “You needn't consider me as anything but a criminal and a fool.”

He nodded again. “Oh, of course. It is because you are a proud fool. But don't you know there is just a little risk about this? Suppose it fails? Suppose you lose the rest of that leg? Suppose it doesn't come out straight after all—suppose there's trouble? These stories in the medical journals and papers about the marvels of surgery include only the successes of surgery. Of our failures we say nothing.”

“As to that, Dr. Westfield,” said I, “if you fail, then I have failed. Aut leg, aut nihil! I know my own mind.”

Dr. Westfield smiled. “Well, you wont be the first man who gave up a rib for the sake of a woman. Think of Adam!”

“Precisely, Doctor! This is the old case of Adam and Eve. I have seen Eve.”

“I work at the St. Columba Hospital,” replied Dr. Westfield. “Be there to-morrow at half-past two in the afternoon. Don't eat any luncheon, please.”

 

Chapter IV

IF our human suffering did not pass from memory, the race itself would die. We forget. That is Nature's plan for us. She has also other plans, and imperious ones.

For the sake of Eve, my surgeon took all or at least a portion of a rib from Adam. He replaced it in Adam's leg for the betterment thereof. If there was pain, I have forgotten it. I, Adam unribbed could not forget the love I bore for Eve. Of love's pains, nature gives us no surcease; nor can the art of men do much for remedy. I lay in my hospital bed the dagger point of my love always at my heart, and all I cared for was that presently I might be whole and fit Eve.

“Well, son,” began Dr. Westfield one day when he visited me—it was now well into the winter-time,—“today you are to get out of bed and stand up. Do it now. You are well. You are straight and sound as a tree. Your two legs are mates again. I promise you, and I ought to know, for I have measured them often enough.

I rose and stood. I stamped a foot the floor. Suddenly a new sense of manhood came over me. “Shall I be strong, Doctor? Can I run, leap? Could I lead my men again?”

“You are good as new, my boy,” was his answer. “Prettiest piece of bone-surgery I have done and seen some in my time. “You'll not limp a particle, my boy—you are as good as new, I tell you.”

“Doctor,” said I, “there's no fee can repay you for what you have done. You don't know—”

“No? Perhaps I'd better collect my fee while that sense of gratitude remains fresh and strong. Doctors have known it to wane.”

“Never! What if I owe you all my future life—owe you my feeling of fitness to offer myself to the woman whom I love—what if I should owe you for her?”

“Not so fast! You don't know how all that will come out yet. But of course I know about your madness over Peggy Collingsworth.”

“Peggy?”

“Blandsford and I call her Peggy, and so does her mother. Yes? Well, there are plenty of men with two good legs who also are mad over Peggy. Something seems to run in the family. Now, there is Blandsford, smug all over himself, he is mad about Peggy's mother!”

“Great heavens! The old fool!”

“Yes? But did you ever see Peggy's mother? Perhaps I should say Suzanne's mother?”

“No, nor ever will, if I have to wait for Blandsford to introduce me—the maundering old fool.”

“Tut-tut! Do not scorn any means that lead to good opportunity. The Blandsfords never did. That's how they came on. That's how they got the entrée at 1219 Allenby Place, both of them.”

“What do you mean, Doctor—not Jimmy? Why, I know Jimmy Blandsford as well as I do you. You don't mean to say that he—that he is—that she cares a rap for him! They aren't—they can't be engaged?”

“I don't know. I'd say, off-hand, it would be hard for anyone to be engaged to that young person for very long. She's a lot of them dangling all the time. But Jimmy is a fine boy, made the crew at Yale, hasn't got any offensively good habits, and does have a rattling fine chance in Papa's bank. He's ambitious. He hopes to be vice-president before long. Could you blame him for hoping to marry Mistress Collingsworth? Neither of his legs had to be mended, you see. Also his income right now is over thirty thousand dollars.”

I FELT the light of the whole world die as I gazed from the hospital window toward the sinking sun. I sighed. Perhaps my surgeon sensed something of my feeling, although he had little of definite information as to my footing with the Collingsworths. Be sure I did not acquaint him with my meager stock of past or future opportunities.

“I'll tell you, son,” said he, “you have been a bit morbid. Really you must get out more, move about more. Come with me tomorrow afternoon, and it just barely possible you may find reward or being bored.”

“When, if and as?”

“I have got to lecture to the Quadrangle Woman's Club tomorrow at three. Everybody that's anybody'll be there—maybe the Collingsworths, who knows?”

“I didn't know you lectured, Doctor.”

“I don't very much. But my talk on the New Theory in Marriage—since the war, you know—has been rather well received, they say. They—well, they come out.”

“That sort of thing? Thank you, Doctor, but do I belong? Why not leave it to all you old people who are beyond the need of theories in marriage?”

“Tut-tut! There'll be more young women there than you think. Obviously, you do not know much about the young women of today. Obviously, also, you don't know how these lectures are handled.”

“But your theme?”

“I only tell them the truth. I tell them that marriage is the best compromise yet invented, that good health is the greatest endowment a human being can have, that only the fit should marry fit.”

“Oh, so? My own religion.”

I glanced at the bed I just vacated, at my own image in the glass.

“I make it a religion also,” said my surgeon. “They take it as such—even the young women, as I hope.”

“But,” he continued, “while young women come to my lectures, young men do not.”

“Yet you have just asked me.”

“But for a purpose, and only transiently and temporarily. I know about your voice. You could sing in opera, if you liked, with a tenor such as yours. Now, listen. You are to do 'The Toreador' tomorrow to open the exercises—we have had all sorts of artists at different times. Between 'Celeste Aida' and 'The Toreador,' I will lay a bet on the latter.

“As to the procedure; you sing; they applaud; you retire; then I lecture. But even so, you will have a moment or so; and all the audience also will have a moment or so with their lorgnettes. Let 'em look. I shall defy any one of them to detect my transplanting—no, not though you stood and jumped on one leg, which tenors are not supposed to do at entertainments of this sort.”

I laughed and tried a bar or two of José by way of answer. All the soreness was gone from my side. Apparently, as Dr. Westfield had said, I was now as good as new.

“Fine!” commented my mentor. “And you'll have no competition on the stage Of course, no society lecture is correct without Blandsford to make a few introductory remarks. He introduces me and introduces you. Then he pleads another engagement, bows and vanishes. You sing and you also vanish, as I have said. I alone remain. It is bad you cannot also, for my boy, that is the only place to see into the soul woman. You don't know them. They are fine. So am I fine with them.”

He turned aside his face, grave and dignified. I was somewhat abashed at his own reverence for his task.

“Jimmy Blandsford is not going to be there?” said I at length, breaking with what was most om my soul.

“Jimmy isn't on the program. So make the most of your chance to get one more look at the face that is the fairest. If they encore you, give them something Scotch. Then you and Papa Blandsford pass out and have something else Scotch, if you can find it. Do you understand the arrangement?”

I nodded.

“I'll call at your home, two-thirty to-morrow,” concluded Westfield. “Get out of here tonight and go to your own home. You are a man now, and you must take your chances.”

With nothing more, he arose and left me, briskly as was his wont.

SO, as he had counseled me, I took my chances. I opened the lecture program the next afternoon with “The Toreador,” done the best I could. I gave them something Scotch for encore. Then I passed off stage—it was a stage, with miniature wings and drops, for the ladies quite often gave little plays here. Shall I confess it?—for just one instant I halted back of the wings, hearing the grave voice of my friend deliberately beginning. And then I couldn't resist it—the little peephole that I found in the back-drop. For just one instant quietly I did peep through, looking out at the open sea of faces, the motley of richly made gowns and multicolored headwear. Yes, it was a function.

I knew my own guilt and turned to go, but all at once my attention was caught by something as directly as though a ray of light had come to my peering eye. There was a little movement far back in the audience. Beside a smartly clad matron there was a young woman who leaned forward. I wondered how it could have been that I had not seen her and while I was on the stage, because—because the young woman with the grave, rapt, spiritual look in her wide eyes was the same whom I had taken to her home that day in the park, the same I had seen that other morning in the icy lake, the same who had forgotten me, and again remembered me, but whom I never them could forget!

IT was Suzanne! So she would come here! At least she was modern. I supposed that it was being done. But for myself I went suddenly shy. Deep in a sense of my guilt here, I hurriedly left by the side entrance, a somewhat puzzled amateur Toreador.

But now when I stepped out into the air, whom should I meet but Blandsford walking up and down, hands behind back, cigar in mouth, parading the side pavement which ran along the building! So this was his earlier engagement! Well, it was mine also. I resolved to wait out the curtain with the best of any of the Blandsfords. The old peacock!

Mr. Blandsford was clean and pink beyond belief, wholly radiant in his single-button with a red flower, not mentioning gray spats and a very excellent top hat. He made some remark about industrial readjustment and its effect upon the condition of rails. I rejoined by asking him if he knew where we could find something Scotch. He did not.

“But in three-quarters of an hour I can promise you some very good tea,” he beamed.

“Where, then, and why not now?”

“You didn't know? Why, the ladies always serve tea after the lecture—it's their custom all through the course. Best part of the business. Best people in town. Westfield's always prompt—at three-forty-eight he is through. We'll step in again just by chance, you know. By the way, I want to congratulate you, Major; you've a wonderful voice, wonderful. They'll be glad to see you. Now, what was it that you sang, something out of 'Tosca,' wasn't it?”

We walked about the block once, twice, thrice, across the street, talked more of the industrial readjustment—and looked at our watches. At last the doors opened. A few ladies came down to their cars, but there was no general exodus.

“Come!” Blandsford père caught my arm. With almost undignified he dragged me across the street to the side entrance once more. It was his plan to make a grand entry from the stage. I found myself with him advantageously near the table, now arranged, where Madam President poured.

The proprieties demand that a soloist who asks no fee be thanked individually also by the ladies in a lecture course. I smiled a thousand smiles, pressed a thousand hands, mispronounced a thousand names, almost forgot my own, floundered in the gentle shallows of conventions. Blandsford and Westfield at my elbows did as much. The former was an imposing figure, pink and gray and pasty white. But of us three, the only men within the hall, Westfield alone was calm.

“You did fine, son,” said he to me, “—looked like a million dollars and sang like a thousand a night. Have you seen her?” he grinned. I could only look at him mutely, for continually ladies were pressing up to compliment us all.

But where was Suzanne? I caught the prominent eye of Blandsford père, roving at times, his air distrait, while his lips muttered polite banalities. Ever he glared toward the rear of the hall. Turning my own gaze thither, I saw again the widow Collingsworth, herself exquisite, faultless, wholly composed. I saw again Suzanne! Her face, turned just a little, was framed in the deep brim of the steel-blue hat. Her straight young figure was perfectly gowned; she was Suzanne in yet another phase, no longer hoyden, but alluring siren, if she liked.

Some one touched my arm. “My dear Major,” said Madam President, “I want to introduce—”

So charmed; and so forth. And when I had next respite, I looked down the aisle, piqued at the absence of the very two ladies whom I most desired to meet of all this throng. At first I did not see either. There was a shade of annoyance on the face of Blandsford père. Following his gaze, I saw the widow Collingsworth moving toward the door. Suzanne was with her.

And bending toward her lovingly, with open admiration, there was Blandsford fils—Jimmy, once my friend! I say, formerly my friend.

I had not met Suzanne. My acceptance at 1219 Allenby Place was no more established now than before. I had sung today for naught, after all. My opportunity was slipping away—passing into the hands of this young ruffian who, arriving by the watch, had come in at the open door.

I hardly know how Blandsford père and myself got free—we suddenly clapped eyes to watch in concert, suddenly bethought ourselves of engagements. Whereupon, would Madam President excuse us? We smiled and bowed, said a thousand more banalities and edged toward the door. We emerged at length at the pavement under the awning.

Entangled in the friendly salutations continued from those who had not yet reached the tea-table, I became separated from my friend Blandsford père. When I emerged, it was to see him shooing into his own car none other than the widow Collingsworth! Apparently he was overruling her rather cool shrug to the invitation. He had quite forgotten me. That mattered not so much. Where was Suzanne?

I hastened from under the awning and looked this way and that. At length, well down the block, walking, I saw her. She was looking up into the face of Jimmy Blandsford. There was camaraderie in her glance, a sort of intimacy. He bent toward her with an air of proprietorship, unmistakable even there. I felt myself half a murderer. I put my hand on my breast to comfort my heart. What was the world without Suzanne? But I resolved now to set her aside, to forget her.

But I did not.

 

Chapter V

IT became midwinter, late winter. As I say, I did not put Suzanne out of my life and memory. I could not. Yet I could devise no means of meeting her. I felt that I would die before I would ask either of the Blandsfords for aid. I avoided them both as much as I could, turning the bank cases over to my partners in the law office.

But concealment began to prey on the rose-damask which by now should have mantled my cheek. In effect, no matter what the cost, no matter what the method, I must see Suzanne.

Having put the matter pro and con, I resolved to.call personally at the Collingsworth house without invitation—this even though the footman threw me out.

And so one day—believe me who say it—I found myself ascending the steps of the Collingsworth house. It was evening of the winter day, and after dinner. The subdued lights of hall and side windows told me that the opera had perhaps not claimed all the family that night—so I had hoped. I heard a limousine whirl into the street even as the door opened to my hand—I had a presentiment that it also intended to draw up at this curb.

A sober, gray old negro man in a long blue coat with many brass buttons opened to me, unsmilingly inquiring. I mumbled my name, fumbled my pocket case, murmured something about “for Mrs. Collingsworth,” and pushed on in so that he might close the door; for I was conscious now that my own car was admitting the other at the curb. I laid aside my hat and coat without invitation, and resolved, even if over the dead body of the old negro, to ask boldly for Mrs. Collingsworth, to find her, and to tell her my story like a man.

I stepped toward the heavy curtain which fell straight and sheer, cutting off the little entry hall from the interior of the spacious house.

I heard swift footfalls tapping. The curtains parted. There for an instant I saw defined against the illumination within—the outer hall was dim and discreet—the splendid figure of a marvelous, almost a miraculous girl.

It was Suzanne! She was in full evening dress without jewels, her neck and shoulders gleaming, undecorated; there was only a corsage bouquet of some small dark flower, violets, perhaps; I never knew.

I knew nothing at all beyond that one swift vision. For all at once, with a strange little chuckle of content, Suzanne threw both her young arms about me and kissed me fair upon the cheek!

A welcome of sorts, to one who had rated himself a doubtful guest! I had not even been bidden here, had never been recognized here before this moment.

But with no reason in the world, carried on by the instant impulse which thrilled through me, without the slightest hesitation, or the slightest doubt in all the world, in return I put both my arms about her—oh, glorious!—and kissed her in return. It was not more than on the cheek, for she averted her face swiftly. Then she screamed. It was too late.

The poet tells us of the stately dame, mistress of self though china fall. Somewhat worse than china had fallen here. But what marvel of composure this young woman showed! I have known no instance like it in all my life.

Regardless of the old negro man, Suzanne screamed no more than once. She drew back, her eyes wide. Then, seeing my own swift horror, my repentance or my exultation, I know not what, she did an astounding thing—a thing incomprehensible, a thing which left me doubting her or doubting myself, but doubting not the imperiousness of my love for her.

“After all, why not!” remarked Suzanne, and kissed me again, this time fair and full!

While I still trembled, I felt myself and the old negro man pushed back beyond the curtains into the fully lighted room. Suzanne herself was now opening the door.

I would record my admiration for William, the old negro man, retainer of the Collingsworth family. He was not perturbed by what he saw. He glanced at my card. I heard his voice gently say “Mistah Murrell Deming Cardon” at an inner door, pompous as though he were footman for a general reception.

Suddenly there was a little rustle audible in the room beyond. I heard footfalls coming toward me. My card in her hand, the mistress of the house appeared to greet me.

And then, just as she appeared silently, there swept by me, eager, holding to the arm of the young man who had entered with her, Suzanne! He did not see me as she led him to the little music-room toward the left, but I saw him perfectly. It was Jimmy Blandsford. And again Suzanne—ah, hypocrite, ah, cruel and inexplicable hypocrite!—was looking up, eager and absorbed, into his face intimately, confidently, talking volubly; he was looking down into hers with that same air of proprietorship.

HOT and cold I stood, even as I heard a gentle woman's voice, even as I saw Mrs. Collingsworth graciously extend a hand to me.

“Major Cardon,” said Mrs. Collingsworth, “how fine of you to come! We have been waiting for you. Perhaps—” She was motioning me to the room from which she but now had emerged.

I could hear the voice of Suzanne in the little music-room. I bent over Mrs. Collingsworth's hand and began my apologies. I have no memory of what I said. I could hear the voice of Suzanne, who just had kissed me, speaking gayly with another man.

The next installment of this graceful novel by the distinguished author of “The Mississippi Bubble” and “The Sagebrusher” will appear in the forthcoming July issue of The Red Book Magazine.