CHAPTER XI—FISHING
They had an afternoon of it, Bob and Dolly. Bob made himself useful, if not agreeable. He was a willing though not altogether cheerful slave. But the girl did not appear to mind that. She had spirits enough for both of them and ordered Bob around royally. She was nice to him, but she wanted him to know that he was her property, as much hers as if she had bought him at one of those old human auction sales. Only hers was a white slave!
She had the grandest time. She made him help her across the stream on a number of unnecessary occasions, holding the slave’s hand, so that she wouldn’t slip on the slippery stones. And once she had him carry her across. She had to, because there weren’t any stones, slippery or otherwise, she could avail herself of, at that particular spot. It is true she might have gone on a little farther and found some slippery stones that would have served her purpose, but she pretended not to know about them. Besides, what is the use of being a despot and having a private slave, all to yourself, if you don’t use him and make him work? Mr. Bennett wasn’t only a slave either, he was a romantic hero, as well, and in the books, heroes always carry the heroines across streams. Miss Dolly experienced a real bookish feeling when Bob carried her. He fully realized the popular ideal, he had such strong arms. True, he didn’t breathe on her neck, or in her ear, and he grasped her rather gingerly, but she found no fault over that. Her great big hero was a modest hero. But he was very manly and masculine, too.
He had plunged right in the stream, shoes and all, in spite of her suggestion that he had better take them off. But what cared he for wet feet? Might cause pneumonia, of course; but pneumonia had no terrors for Bob! She smiled at his precipitancy, while secretly approving of it. The act partook of a large gallantry. It reminded her of Sir Walter Raleigh and that cloak episode. Miss Dolly nestled very cozily, en route, with a warm young arm flung carelessly over a broad masculine shoulder and her eyes were dreamy, the way heroines’ eyes are in the books. She was not thinking of chimneys.
On the other side, she sat down, and imperiously—mistresses of slaves are always imperious—bade him take off her shoes. It was doubly exciting to vary the role of heroine with that of capricious slave-mistress. Of course, she might just as well have taken off her shoes on the other side and walked over but she never dreamed of doing that. After the slave had taken off her shoes, she herself removed her stockings, while the slave (seemingly cold and impassive as Angelo’s marble Greek slave) looked away. Then she dabbled her tiny white feet in the cold stream. She was thinking of that Undine heroine. Dabbling her feet, also made her feel bookish. Only in the books the heroes (or slaves) gaze adoringly at said feet. Hers were worth gazing at, but Bob didn’t seem to have eyes. Never mind! She told herself she liked that cold Anglo-Saxon phlegm (what an ugly word!) in a man. She saw in it a foil to her own temperamental disposition.
Having dabbled briefly, she held out a tiny foot and the slave dried it with his handkerchief, looking very handsome as he knelt before her. Then she put out the other and he repeated the operation. Then she put on her shoes and stockings. Then she remembered they had come ostensibly to fish and began whipping the stream spasmodically, while he did the same mechanically. They caught one or two speckled beauties, or Bob did. She couldn’t land hers. They always got tangled in something which she thought very cute of them. She didn’t feel annoyed at all when they got away, but just laughed as if it were the best kind of a joke, while Bob looked at her amazed. She called that“sport.”
Then she made him build a “cunning little fire” on a rock and clean the fish and cook them and set them before her. She graciously let him sit by her side and partake of a few overdone titbits and a sandwich or two they had brought in the basket. But she also made him jump up every once in a while to do something, finding plenty of pretexts to keep him busy. In fact, she had never been more waited upon in her life, which was just what she wanted. Bob, however, didn’t complain, for the minutes and hours went by and she asked no embarrassing questions. She didn’t make herself disagreeable in that respect, and as long as she didn’t, he didn’t mind helping her over rocks, or toting her. At least, this was a respite. His headache wasn’t quite so bad; the fresh air seemed to have helped it.
As for her thinking him one of those high-class society-burglars, or social buccaneers, it didn’t so much matter to him, after all. He was getting rather accustomed to the idea. Of course, she would be terribly disappointed if she ever found out he wasn’t one, but there didn’t seem much chance of his ever clearing himself, in her mind, of that unjust suspicion. At least, he reflected moodily, he was capable of making one person in the world not positively miserable. Last night when he had parted from Dickie, he had found a small grain of the same kind of comfort, in the fact the he (or truth) had not harmed Dickie. But to-day Dickie had appeared saddened by Dan’s and Clarence’s troubles. Then, too, Bob had been obliged to walk off, right in front of Dickie’s eyes with the temperamental young thing whom Dickie wanted to marry the worst way. And here he (Bob) was helping her over stones, “toting” frizzling trout for her, and performing a hundred other little services which should, by right, have been Dickie’s pleasure and privilege to perform.
Bob murmured a few idle regrets about Dickie, but Miss Dolly dismissed them—and Dickie—peremptorily. She was sitting now, leaning against a tree and the slave, by command, was lying at her feet.
“Did you know,” she said dreamily, “I am a new woman?”
He didn’t know it. He never would have dreamed it, and he told her so.
“Yes,” she observed, “I marched in the parade to Washington. That is, I started, went a mile or two, and then got tired. But I marched there, in principle, don’t you see? I think women should throw off their shackles. Don’t you?” Bob might have replied he didn’t know that Miss Dolly ever had had any shackles to throw off, but she didn’t give him time to reply. “I read a book the other day wherein the women do the proposing,” she went on. “It’s on an island and the women are ‘superwomen.’ All women are ‘super’ nowadays.” She regarded him tentatively. Her glance was appraising. “Do you know of any reason why women should not do the proposing, Mr. Bennett?”
“Can’t say that I do,” answered Bob gloomily, feeling as if some one had suddenly laid a cold hand on his breast, right over where the heart is. Her words had caused his thoughts to fly back to another. She might not be proposing to the hammer-thrower at that moment in that “super” fashion, but the chances were that the hammer-thrower was proposing to her. He didn’t look like a chap that would delay matters. He would strike while the iron was hot.
The temperamental young thing eyed Bob and then she eyed a dreamy-looking cloud. She let the fingers of one hand stray idly in Bob’s hair as he lay with his head in the grass.
“It tries hard to curl, doesn’t it?” she remarked irrelevantly.
“What?” said Bob absently, his mind about two miles and a half away.
“Your hair. You’ve got lovely hair.” Bob looked disgusted. “It started to curl and then changed its mind, didn’t it?” she giggled.
Bob muttered disagreeably.
“I suppose you were one of those curly-headed little boys?” went on the temperamental young thing.
“I don’t know whether I was or not,” he snapped. He was getting back into that snappy mood. Then it struck him this might not be quite the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, for he added sulkily; “Maybe I was.”
“I can just see you,” said the temperamental young thing in a far-off voice. “Nursie must have thought you a darling.”
The slave again muttered ominously. He wished the temperamental little thing would take her fingers away. They trailed now idly over an ear.
“You’re tickling,” said Bob ill-naturedly.
She stopped trailing and patted instead—very gently and carelessly—as if she were patting a big Newfoundland dog which she owned all by herself. That pat expressed a sense of ownership.
“I’m wondering,” she said, “whether it would make things nicer, if I did propose and we became engaged?”
“Oh,” said Bob satirically, “you’re wondering that, are you?”
“Yes.” More tentative pats.
“And what do you suppose I’d say?” he demanded. He was feeling more and more grouchy all the time. He didn’t want any of that “superwoman” business. He had already had one proposal. What mockery! A proposal! He heard again that other “Will you marry me?” and looked once more, in fancy, into the starry, enigmatical violet eyes. He experienced anew that surging sensation in his veins. And he awoke again to the hollow jest of those words! He felt, indeed, a moderately vivid duplication of all his emotions of the night before. The temperamental young thing’s voice recalled him from the poignant recollections of the painful past into the dreary and monotonous present.
“Why, you actually blushed, just now,” she said accusingly.
“Did I?” growled Bob, looking grudgingly into dark eyes where a moment before, in imagination, there had been starry violet ones.
“Yes, you did. And”—her voice taking a tenderer accent—“it was becoming, too.”
“Rush of blood to the head,” he retorted shortly. “Comes from lying like this.”
“What would you say if I did?” she demanded, reverting to that other topic. “Propose, I mean? Would you accept? Would you take me—I mean, shyly suffer me,” with a giggle, “to take you into my arms?”
“Quit joshing!” growled Bob.
“Answer. Would you?”
“No.”
“No?” Bending over him more closely. For a “super,” she was certainly wonderfully attractive in her slim young way at that moment. Not many of the inferior sex would have acted quite so stonily as Bob acted. He didn’t show any more emotion when she bent over than one of those prostrate stone Pharaohs, or Rameses, which lie around with immovable features on the sands of Egypt. “You see you couldn’t help it,” the super-temperamental young thing assured him, confidentially.
“Ouch!” said Bob, for she was tickling again. He wished she would keep those trailing fingers in her lap. They felt like a fly perambulating his brow or walking around his ear.
“You’d just have to accept me,” she added.
“Oh, you mean on account of that silly burglar business?”
“Of course. You left two or three thumb-prints in the room.”
“I did?” That was incriminating. No getting around thumb-prints! He felt as if the temperamental little thing was weaving a mesh around him. In addition to being a “super,” she was a Lady of Shalott.
Dolly thrilled with a sense of her power. She could play with poor Bob as a cat with a mouse; she could let him go so far and then put out her claws and draw him back.
“Besides, I found out you didn’t quite tell me the truth about those accomplices of yours,” she went on triumphantly. “You said there weren’t any, and when I went out and looked around where the dog barked, I found footprints. They led to the trellis, right up into your room. The trellis, too, showed some person, or persons, had climbed up, for some of the boughs were broken. Deny now, if you can, you had visitors last night,” she challenged him.
Bob didn’t deny; he lay there helpless.
“Of course,” she said with another giggle, “I might let you say you’ll think it over. I might not press you too hard at once for an answer. I don’t want you to reply: ‘This is so sudden,’ or anything like that.” She got up suddenly with a little delirious laugh. “But I simply can’t wait. You look so handsome when you’re cross. Besides, it will be so exciting to be engaged to a—a—”
“Society-burglar—” grimly.
“That’s it. I’ve never been engaged to a burglar before!”
“But you have been engaged?”
“Oh, yes. Lots of times. But not like this. This feels as if it might lead—”
“To the altar?” Satirically.
“Yes.”
“But suppose I got caught?—that is, if I really enjoyed the distinction of being a burglar which I am not?”
“Then, of course, I never knew—you deceived me—poor innocent!—as well as the rest of the world. And there would be columns and columns in the papers. And some people would pity me, but most people would envy me. And I’d visit you in jail with a handkerchief to my eyes and be snap-shotted that way. And I’d sit in a dark corner in the court, looking pale and interesting. And the lady reporters would interview me and they’d publish my picture with yours—‘Handsome Bob, the swell society yeggman. Member of one of the oldest families, etc.’ And—and—”
“Great Scott!” cried Bob. She had that publicity-bee worse than Gee-gee. In another moment she’d be setting the day. “Shall we—ah!—retrace our steps?”
It was getting late. The hours had gone by somehow and as she offered no objections, they “retraced.” For some time now she was silent. Perhaps she was imagining herself too happy for words. Once or twice she cast a sidelong glance shyly at Bob. It was the look of a capricious slave-owner metamorphosed, through the power of love, into a yielding and dependent young maiden. Bob was supposed to be the brutal conqueror. Meanwhile that young man strode along unheedingly. He didn’t mind any little branches or bushes that happened to stand in his way and plowed right through them. It would have been the same, if he had met that historic bramble bush. A thousand scratches, more or less, wouldn’t count.
“You can put your arm around me now,” she observed, with another musical but detestable giggle, as they passed through a grove, not very far from the house. “It is quite customary here, you know.”
He didn’t know, but he obeyed. What else could he do?
“Now say something.” Her voice had once more that ownership accent.
“What do you want me to say?” None too graciously.
“The usual thing! Those three words that make the world go around.”
“But I don’t.” Even a worm will turn.
“You will.” Softly.
“I won’t.”
“Oh, yes, you will.” More softly. Then with a sigh: “This is the place. Under this oak, carved all over with hearts and things. Do it.”
“What?” He looked down on lips red as cherries.
“Are you going to?”
“And if I don’t?” he challenged her.
“Finger-prints!” she said. “Footmarks!”
“Oh, well! Confound it.” And he did—the way a bird pecks at a cherry.
She straightened with another giggle. “Our first!” she said.
“Hope you’re satisfied,” he remarked grudgingly.
“It will do for a beginning. Oh, dear! some one saw us!” He looked around with a start, his unresponsive arm slipping from about a pliant waist.
“I don’t see any one.”
“He’s dodged behind a tree. I think it was Dickie. And—yes, there are one or two other men. They—they seem to be dodging, too.” Bob saw them now. One, he was sure, was the commodore.
“Funny performance, isn’t it?” he said, with a sickly smile.
“Perhaps—?” She looked at him with genuine awe in the temperamental eyes. He read her thought; she thought—believed they had “come for him.” She appeared positively startled, and—yes, sedulous! Maybe, she was discovering in herself a little bit of that “really, truly” feeling.
“Oh!” she said. “They mustn’t—”
“Don’t you worry,” he reassured her. “I think I can safely promise you they won’t do what you expect them to.”
“You mean,” joyously, “you have a way to circumvent them?” She was sure now he had; the aristocratic burglars always have. He would probably have a long and varied career before him yet.
“I mean just what I say. But I think they want to talk with me? Indeed, I’m quite sure they do. They are coming up now. Perhaps you’d better leave me to deal with them.”
“You—you are sure they have no evidence to—?”
“Land me in jail? Positively. I assure you, on my honor, you are the only living person who, by any stretch of the imagination, could offer damaging testimony against me, along that line.”
He spoke so confidently she felt it was the truth. “I believe you,” she said. She wanted to say more, befitting the thrill of the moment, but she had no time. Dickie and two others were approaching. It might be best if he met them alone. So she slipped away and walked toward the house. It would be quite exciting enough afterward, she told herself, to find out what happened. It wasn’t until she got almost to the house, that she remembered she ought to have asked Bob for a ring. Of course, he would have a goodly supply of them. Would it make her particeps criminis though, if she wore one of his rings? Then she concluded it wouldn’t, because she was innocent of intention. She didn’t know. She wondered, also, if she should announce her “engagement” right off, or wait a day or two. She decided to wait a day or two. But she told Miss Gwendoline Gerald what a lovely time she and Mr. Bennett had had together, fishing. And Miss Gerald smiled a cryptic smile.
Meanwhile Bob had met Dan and Dickie and Clarence.