THE MISCHIEF OF A FIANCÉ
The lady proved to be Alice Endicott. She came in without shyness or embarrassment, with her usual air of quiet refinement, and although she must have seen the surprise in Dick's face, she took no notice of it. Alice was one of those women so free from self-consciousness, so entirely without affectations, yet so rare in her simple dignity, that it was hard to conceive her as ever seeming to be out of place. She was so superior to surroundings that her environment did not matter.
"Good-morning, Mr. Fairfield," she said. "I should apologize for intruding. I hope I am not disturbing your work."
"Good-morning," he responded. "I am not at work just now. Sit down, please."
She took the chair he offered, and came at once to her errand.
"I came from Miss Calthorpe," she said.
"Miss Calthorpe?" he repeated.
"Yes. She thought she ought not to write to you again; and she asked me to come for her letters; those she wrote before she knew who you were."
"But why shouldn't she write to me for them?"
"You forget that she is engaged, Mr. Fairfield."
"I—Of course, I did forget for the minute; but even if she is, I don't see why so simple a thing as a note asking for her letters—"
Alice rose.
"I don't think that there is any need of my explaining," she said. "If I tell you that she didn't find it easy to write, will that be sufficient? Of course you will give me the letters."
"I must give them if she wishes it; but may I ask one question first? Doesn't she send for them because she's engaged?"
"Isn't that reason enough?"
"It is reason enough," Dick answered, smiling; "but it isn't a reason here. She isn't engaged any more. That is, she won't be by night."
Alice stared at him in astonishment.
"What do you mean?" she demanded.
"I mean that Jack never meant to marry her, and that he is going to release her from her engagement."
"How do you know that?"
"He told me himself."
They stood in silence a brief interval looking each other in the face. Fairfield was radiant, but Miss Endicott was very pale.
"I beg your pardon," she said presently. "Is Mr. Neligage in the house?"
"Yes; he's in his room."
"Will you call him, please?"
Fairfield hesitated a little, but went to call his chum.
"Miss Endicott wants to speak to you," he said abruptly.
"What does she want?"
"I haven't any idea."
"What have you been telling her?"
The necessity of answering this question Dick escaped by returning to the other room; and his friend followed.
"Jack," Alice cried, as soon as he appeared, "tell me this moment if it's true that you're not to marry May!"
He faced her stiff and formal in his politeness.
"Pardon me if I do not see that you have any right to ask me such a question."
"Why, I came to ask Mr. Fairfield for May's letters because she is engaged to you, and he told me—"
She broke off, her habitual self-control being evidently tried almost beyond its limit.
"I took the liberty, Jack," spoke up Fairfield, "of saying—"
"Don't apologize," Neligage said. "It is true, Miss Endicott, that circumstances have arisen which make it best for May to break the engagement. I shall be obliged to you, however, if you don't mention the matter to her until she brings it up."
Alice looked at him appealingly.
"But I thought—"
"We are none of us accountable for our thoughts, Miss Endicott, nor perhaps for a want of faith in our friends."
She moved toward him with a look of so much appeal that Dick discreetly turned his back under pretense of looking for something on his writing-table.
"At least," she said, her voice lower than usual, "you will let me apologize for the way in which I spoke to you the other morning."
"Oh, don't mention it," he returned carelessly. "You were quite justified."
He turned away with easy nonchalance, as if the matter were one in which he had no possible interest.
"At least," she begged, "you'll pardon me, and shake hands."
"Oh, certainly, if you like," answered he; "but it doesn't seem necessary."
Her manner changed in the twinkling of an eye. Indignation shone in her face and her head was carried more proudly.
"Then it isn't," she said. "Good-morning, Mr. Fairfield."
She went from the room as quickly as a shadow flits before sunlight. The two young men were so taken by surprise that by the time Dick reached the door to open it for his departing caller, it had already closed behind her. The friends stared a moment. Then Jack made a swift stride to the door; but when he flung it open the hall without was empty.
"Damn it, Dick," he ejaculated, coming back with a face of anger, "what did you let her go off like that for?"
"How in the world could I help it?" was all that his friend could answer.
Jack regarded Dick blackly for the fraction of a second; then he burst into a laugh, and clapped him on the shoulder.
"I beg your pardon, old man," he said, as cheerily as ever. "I'm going off my nerve with all these carryings on. If you hadn't written that rotten old novel of yours, we shouldn't have had these continual circuses."
He went for his hat as he spoke, and without farther adieu took his way down town. Men in this peculiar world are to be envied or pitied not so much for their fortunes as for their dispositions; and if outward indications were to be trusted, Jack Neligage was one of those enviable creatures who will be cheerful despite the blackest frowns of fate. From indifference or from pluck, from caring little for the favors of fortune or from despising her spite, Jack took his way through life merrily, smiling and sunny; up hill or down dale as it chanced he followed the path, with a laugh on his lip and always a kindly greeting for his fellow travelers. This morning, as he walked out into the sunlight, handsome, well-groomed, debonaire, and jocund, certainly no one who saw him was likely to suspect that the world did not go smoothly with him. Least of all could one suppose that his heart or his thought was troubled concerning the favor or disfavor of any woman whatsoever.
Jack in the afternoon took May for a drive. The engagement had thus far been a somewhat singular one. Jack had been to see May nearly every day, it is true, but either by the whimsical contrivance of fate or by his own cunning he had seldom seen her alone. She either had callers or was out herself; and as no one but Mrs. Neligage and Alice knew of the engagement there was no chance for that sentiment which makes callers upon a lady feel it necessary to retreat as speedily as possible upon the appearance of her acknowledged lover. So well settled in the public mind was the conviction that Jack was in love with Alice Endicott, that nobody took the trouble to notice that he was calling on May Calthorpe or to get out of his way that he might be alone with her. This afternoon, in the face of all the world, in a stylish trap, on the open highway, they were at last together without other company.
Had not the mind of May been provided with an object of regret and longing in the person of Fairfield, there might have been danger that Jack would engage her fancy by sheer indifference. Any girl must be puzzled, interested, piqued, and either exasperated or hurt according to her nature, when the man to whom she is newly betrothed treats her as the most casual of acquaintances. If nothing else moved her there would be the bite of unsatisfied curiosity. To be engaged without even being able to learn by experience what being engaged consists in may well wear on the least inquisitive feminine disposition. The fiancé who does not even make pretense of playing the lover is an object so curious that he cannot fail to attract attention, to awake interest, and the chances are largely in favor of his developing in the breast of his fair the determination to see him really aroused and enslaved. Many a woman has succumbed to indifference who would have been proof against the most ardent wooing.
"Well, May," Jack said, smiling upon her as they drove over the Mill Dam, "how do you like being engaged?"
She looked at him with a sparkle in her eyes which made her bewitching.
"I don't see that it's very different from not being engaged," she said.
"It will be if you keep on looking so pretty," he declared. "I shall kiss you right here in the street, and that would make folks talk."
The color came into her cheeks in a way that made her more charming still.
"Now you color," Jack went on, regarding her with a teasing coolness, "you are prettier yet. Gad! I shall have to kiss you!"
His horses shied at something at that instant, and he was forced to attend to them, so that May had a moment's respite in which to gather up her wits. When he looked back, she took the aggressive.
"It is horrid in you to talk that way," she remarked. "Besides, you said that I needn't kiss you until I wanted to."
"Well, I didn't promise not to kiss you, did I?"
"How silly you are to-day!" she exclaimed. "Isn't there anything better to talk about than kissing?"
Jack regarded her with a grin; a grin in which, it must be confessed, there was something of the look with which a boy watches a kitten he is teasing.
"Anything better?" repeated he. "When you've had more experience, May, perhaps you won't think there is anything better."
May began to look sober, and even to have the appearance of feeling that the conversation was becoming positively improper.
"I think you are just horrid!" she declared. "I do wish you'd behave."
He gave her a respite for some moments, and they drove along through the sunlight of the April afternoon. The trees as they came into the country were beautiful with the buds and promise of nearing summer; the air soft with that cool smoothness which is a reminder that afar the breeze has swept fragments of old snowdrifts yet unmelted; the sky moist with the mists of snow-fields that have wasted away. All the landscape was exquisite with delicate hues.
The supreme color-season of New England begins about the middle of March, and lasts—at the very latest—until the middle of May. Its climax comes in late April, when pearly mists hover among the branches that are soon to be hidden by foliage. Glowing tints of amethyst, luminous gray, tender green, coral, and yellow white, make the woods a dream of poetic loveliness beside which the gorgeous and less varied hues of autumn are crude. Something dreamlike, veiled, mysterious, is felt in these tints, this iridesence of the woods in spring; as if one were looking at the luminous, rosy mists within which, as Venus amid the rainbow-dyed foam of the sea, is being shaped to immortal youth and divine comeliness the very goddess of spring. The red of the maple-buds shows from afar; the russet leaflets of the ash, the vivid green, the amber, the pearl, and the tawny of the clustering hardwood trees, set against the heavy masses of the evergreens, are far more lovely than all the broad coloring of summer or the hot tints of autumn.
Under the afternoon sun the woods that day were at their best, and presently May spoke of the colors which spread down the gentle slopes of the low hills not far away.
"Isn't it just too lovely for anything!" she said. "Just look at that hill over there. It is perfectly lovely."
Jack glanced at the hill, and then looked at her teasingly.
"That's right," he remarked. "Of course spoony people ought to talk about spring, and how perfectly lovely everything is."
"I didn't say that because we're engaged," returned May, rather explosively. "I really meant it."
"Of course you did. That shows that you are in the proper frame of mind. Now I'm not. I don't care a rap to talk about the whole holy show. It's pretty, of course; but I'm not going in for doing the sentimental that way."
She looked up with mingled indignation and entreaty.
"Now you are going to be horrid again," she protested. "Why can't you stop talking about our being engaged?"
"Stop talking about it? Why, good heavens, we're expected to talk about it. I never was engaged before, but I hope I know my business."
"But I don't want to talk about it!"
"Oh, you really do, only you are shy about owning it."
"But I won't talk about it!"
"Oh, yes, you will, my dear; for if I say things you can't help answering 'em."
"I won't say another word!"
"I'll bet you a pair of gloves that the next thing I say about our being engaged you'll not only answer, but you'll answer in a hurry."
"I'll take your bet!" cried May with animation. "I won't answer a word."
Jack gave a wicked chuckle, and flicked his horses into a brisk run. In a moment or two he drew them down to an easy trot, and turned to May with a matter-of-fact air.
"Of course now we have been engaged a week," he said, "I am at liberty to read that letter you wrote to Christopher Calumus?"
"Read it!" she cried. "Oh, I had forgotten that you kept it! Oh, you mustn't read it! I wouldn't have you read it for the world."
"Would you have me read it for a pair of gloves?" inquired Jack wickedly. "You've lost your bet."
"I don't care anything about my bet," she retorted, with an earnestness so great as to suggest that tears were not so far behind. "I want that letter."
"I'm sorry you can't have it," was his reply; "but the truth is, I haven't got it."
"Haven't got it? What have you done with it?"
"Delivered it to the one it was addressed to,—Christopher Calumus."
"Delivered it? Do you mean you gave it to Mr. Fairfield?"
"Just that. You wrote it to him, didn't you?"
Poor May was now so pale and miserable that a woman would have taken her in her arms to be kissed and comforted, but Jack, the unfeeling wretch, continued his teasing.
"I didn't want you to think I was a tyrant," he went on. "Of course I'm willing you should write to anybody that you think best."
"But—but I wrote that letter to Mr. Fairfield before I knew who he was!" gasped May.
"Well, what of it? Anything that you could say to a stranger, of course you could say to a man you knew."
For reply May put up one hand to her eyes, and with the other began a distressing and complicated search for a handkerchief. Jack bent forward to peer into her face and instantly assumed a look of deep contrition.
"Oh, I say," he remonstrated, "it's no fair to cry. Besides, you'll spoil your gloves, and now you've got to pay me a pair you can't afford to be so extravagant."
The effect of this appeal was to draw from May a sort of hysterical gurgle, a sound indescribably funny, and which might pass for either a cry of joy or of woe.
"I think you are too bad," she protested chokingly. "You know I didn't want Mr. Fairfield to have that letter when I was engaged to you!"
"Oh, is that all?" he returned lightly. "Then that's easily fixed. Let's not be engaged any more, and then there'll be no harm in his having it."
Apparently astonishment dried her tears. She looked at him in a sort of petrified wonder.
"I really mean it, my dear," he went on with a paternal air which was exceedingly droll in Jack Neligage. "I'll say more. I never meant for a minute to marry you. I knew you didn't want to have me, and I'd no notion of being tied to a dragooned wife."
"A dragooned wife?" May repeated.
She was evidently so stupefied by the turn things had taken that she could not follow him.
"A woman dragooned into marrying me," Jack explained, with a jovial grin; "one that was thinking all the time how much happier she would be with somebody else."
"And you never meant to marry me? Then what did you get engaged to me for?"
"I didn't. You wrote me that you were engaged to me, and of course as a gentleman I couldn't contradict a lady, especially on a point so delicate as that."
May flushed as red as the fingers of dawn.
"Your mother—" she began; but he interrupted her.
"Isn't it best that we don't go into that?" he said in a graver voice. "I confess that I amused myself a little, and I thought that you needed a lesson. There were other things, but no matter. I never was the whelp you and Alice thought me."
"Oh, Alice!" cried May, with an air of sudden enlightenment.
"Well, what about her?" Jack demanded.
"Nothing," replied May, smiling demurely to herself, "only she will be glad that the engagement is broken. She said awfully hard things about you."
"I am obliged to her," he answered grimly.
"Oh, not really awful," May corrected herself quickly, "and anyway it was only because she was so fond of you."
To this he made no reply, and for some time they drove on in silence. Then Jack shook off his brief depression, and apparently set himself to be as amusing as he could. He aroused May to a condition of mirth almost wildly joyous. They laughed and jested, told each other stories, and the girl's eyes shone, her dimples danced in and out like sun-flecks flashing on the water, the color in her cheeks was warm and delightful. Not a word more was said on personal matters until Jack deposited her at her own door once more.
"I never had such a perfectly lovely ride in my life!" she exclaimed, looking at him with eyes full of animation and gratitude.
"Then you see what you are losing in throwing me over," he returned. "Oh, you've had your chance and lost it!"
She laughed brightly, and held out her hand.
"But you see," she said mischievously, "the trouble is that the best thing about the ride was just that loss!"
"I like your impudence!" he chuckled. "Well, you're welcome. Good-by. I'll send Fairfield round to talk with you about the letter."
And before she could reply he was away.