V
Late afternoon. The house was very still. Outside, the rain was falling, falling, and the shrubs bent under their burden of shining drops. Inside, the fire crackled and whispered and the girl lay in the big armchair and looked around the room.
The fireplace; the big, rich rugs; the dark paneling; the fine, unemotional pictures—no wonder the whole place had reminded her of Arthur Hammond. She ought to have known. She ought to have known.
She heard his step in the hall. His door banged, once; twice; again. Then, his voice, asking Eliza some question, and the murmur of the housekeeper's reply.
Then he came in.
She did not speak or move, and his, "Good-evening" was presently followed by the easy question: "What's the matter?"
Then she turned on him.
"Is it true that this house belongs to you?"
A pause. Then he answered slowly,
"Yes."
"And the grounds?"
"Yes."
"And the automobile—is yours?"
"Yes."
He stood quietly watching her. She knew it, though she did not look at him. She took a deep breath.
"Those insurance companies have not paid," she said in a stifled voice. "You told me they had. You—you gave me—Where did all that money come from I've been spending?"
"Well, I suppose originally it was mine."
"Then it's true you are a millionaire?"
"Ye-es. Just about, I guess."
"And my property—all those buildings that burnt up were mortgaged and—and I couldn't have rebuilt—and everybody knew it—except me. The money that's putting them up again——"
"I arranged about that. But what difference does it make?"
"What did you do it for?"
"I thought you'd feel better to have an income again—and on account of other people, too. It made me hot to have you treated as though you were—just anybody at all—simply because your income happened to be short for a time. And—and I thought you'd rather have it that way than take it from me—at the first," he ended lamely.
She jumped up and confronted him, white with rage.
"How dared you do that? How dared you? How do you suppose I feel, being in this position—to you?"
"I hope you don't feel at all. And besides—But how did you find out about this?"
"Cousin Mary has been here," the girl burst out, losing all idea of keeping anything back. "She had all sorts of things to say: how badly she'd been treated—how she was shipped off East, and I never wrote to her, nothing about my affairs, or that I was married, or anything. She couldn't talk enough. She said everybody sympathized with her, because her prospects were ruined, because the companies I'd insured in wouldn't pay and my land was mortgaged so I couldn't rebuild. She knew that—and she'd never told me. And then she spoke a piece about my conduct in getting married and never telling her a word about it beforehand. She said she was mortified to death to have to learn about my marriage from strangers—strangers—just accidentally. But there wasn't anything she didn't know: that you were a millionaire, but very eccentric and not given to going around like a rational being—in society; and that you had places around in different States and always made it a point not to know your neighbors, so you wouldn't have them come dropping in interfering with you; and that you were amusing yourself now with putting my affairs on their legs again; and how lucky it was for me; and how strange it was, when I was making a brilliant marriage, not to make it, at least, in a dignified, even if not in a brilliant manner, with a church wedding and all. There wasn't anything she didn't know. I believe she used detectives to find out. And she ended up by saying that she had a lovely disposition and would forgive me—I could have killed her—I was her only first cousin's only child—and she was coming here to live."
"The deuce she did!"
"But what did you do it for?" She turned on him furiously. "What did you do it for?"
"Yes—but where's this Cousin Mary?"
"We had a scene—at least, part of one: we didn't either of us say half we wanted to—and she's left. She'll probably decide in the end, though, that her disposition's lovely enough to overlook it, and insist on making her home with her eccentric millionaire cousin-in-law—What did you do this for?"
He stood there, frowning in perplexity. Then with a sigh of relief, "Supposing we sit down," he said, as one who has a happy inspiration. "I don't know as I can explain this to your satisfaction—exactly. But I'll try. It seemed to me—Don't you know, I thought—Hang it all, that King Cophetua business—was that the chap's name?—never did appeal to me a little bit. I'm dead sure that Beggar Maid had it in for him from the start for his beastly condescending ways to her. And I was afraid you might think—you see, it seemed to me that when your affairs were back in the position they ought to be, perhaps you'd feel better towards me."
He looked at her with boyish entreaty in his eyes. It was as though she were suddenly in the room with a new person. The expression of his face left her breathless.
"Then you came to that boarding-house deliberately to——"
"I did. Deliberately to let you get a bit used to me. It might have upset you to have a perfect stranger come up and marry you offhand."
"But—but"—she gasped.
She was flushed to the eyes. Suddenly he turned and switched on the electric lights. Then he turned back and looked at her—hard. The rose deepened.
"Surely, you're not pretending to tell me," he said slowly, as one thoroughly bedazed, "that you don't know I'm so looney about you my hand shakes whenever you come into the room?"
The girl looked away.
"You said that day—that day—that day, you know——"
"Well?"
"You said most distinctly that—you didn't love me."
He turned an exasperated face toward her.
"Said that? Of course I said it. What did you expect me to say? How apt would you have been to have taken me——"
"Taken you!"
"——if I'd come up with the confession that your eyes set me crazy and the impudent tilt of your little nose was very much on my nerves? Supposing I'd told you that you bowled me over the moment I saw you—It's God's truth. I saw you at the theater in New York just before you left for Fort Leavenworth. I followed you there, but nothing that wasn't brass buttons seemed to be having an inning; and I didn't care to meet you at all, unless I could win out. So I left and went down to Arizona, where there was some land business I had to look after. Then McFay came down there and talked a good deal with his mouth; and I was sure it was all off and was doubly glad I hadn't met you. Then came the news of the earthquake and the fire; and I kept waiting for the beggar to get leave and go to you—and he didn't go. And then one night he—well, he was drunk, or he wouldn't have done it—but he talked some more with his mouth; and so I knew what to expect from him and—er, removed your photograph from his rooms—he hadn't any business having it around for men to stare at, anyway—and then I came here to find you; and—and that's about all, I guess."
He laughed an embarrassed laugh.
"I was pretty well done for before—it seems to me everybody I met kept talking about you—but the boarding-house business finished me completely. There were you—you'd lost more than all that trash put together, and had been badly treated, and all—but you held your head high and never peeped and made that dining-table a thing to look forward to beyond everything. No wonder the landlady hated you. I could have kneeled down and kissed your little boots—not that you'd have cared about it especially."
He laughed his boyish, embarrassed laugh again.
"But to go back a bit—how apt would you have been to have taken me—after your experiences and that cur down at your office, besides—if I'd have trotted up and told you how I felt and asked you please to have me? How apt would you have been? I got the license and kept it dark and bided my time. There was nothing else to do—then."
They were standing again, facing one another, wide-eyed, and both rather breathless.
The girl turned away.
"I won't be humble," she whispered to herself tremulously. "I won't. It's a wretched policy for women, and the effects are dreadful on men."
She trailed away towards the other end of the room.
"I'm not Ikey any more. I'm not the Wandering Jew. The thirteenth move is a glorious move, and I've come home—to a man in a million."
Aloud she observed disdainfully, "The whole performance from beginning to end has been unspeakable—simply unspeakable; and I insist——"
She had reached the bay-window and pressed her little nose tight against the window-pane.
"I insist you're no gentleman," came her muffled, shaky voice from behind the curtains, "or I wouldn't have to be standing here quite by myself, waiting for you to come over here and—and kiss me."
GIFFORD PINCHOT, FORESTER
BY WILL C. BARNES
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
For almost a century the unoccupied government lands of the West have been used as a public commons. The stockmen have used the grass and water; the mining, sawmill, and railroad men the timber; until—simply because no one made it his business to object to the spoliation that was going on—what had been done wholly on the suffrance of the national government had come to be regarded and most lustily defended as an inherent privilege and right.
