Pape mounted the wobbly doorstep and peered outside. No accompanying officers loomed through the fast-falling shadows. Either the dog had outsped them or had deserted them temporarily for some reason canine and less comprehensible. On relatching the door and facing about, he saw that reason.
The Belgian, his tail waving like a feather fan, trotted toward the girl, swinging from his mouth a shiny object which explained why he had bumped against and scratched at the door, instead of barking for admittance. In Jane’s lap he deposited the tin lunch pail, to carry which to his master at noon-time was his dearest duty and privilege.
More than curiosity as to its contents—an animal eagerness almost as unrestrained as the dog’s, returned Pape to his former seat upon the cuff of his coat and hurried his removal of the lid. Three hovered gratefully over the removed contents of that pail. Certainly two were ready to believe that the errand of the third had been as innocent as it now looked. They gave the quondam deserter benefit of every doubt, if only the dog’s share of the benefits he had brought.
“You’ve vindicated yourself, Towser,” remarked Pape. “The lady in this case was right. She looks to me like one of the perfect kind that always is—right, you know. She said, old side-Kick, that you’d gone to bring a party. And you sure have brought one—some party, this! From the depths of the heart of my inner man, I crave your pardon.”
The Belgian’s grant of grace was as prompt as moist. His anxiety centered upon a less subtle exchange.
“Oh, I am so hungry—that’s mostly what made me collapse!” Jane sighed. “You see, I’ve formed the bad habit of eating once in a while. I’d quarrel over a crust of stale rye bread. But boiled-tongue-and-mustard sandwiches, potato salad, apple pie—Peter, let’s begin!”
It did not take the three of them long to demonstrate that there was one luncheon of which Shepherd Tom never should get a crumb. Between bites Pape remembered aloud the herdsman’s rather dubious admission of Kicko’s propensity at times to present the precious pail to the “wrong” person. In this case, however, even he must have admitted that the wrong was the right. As the edge of their hunger was dulled they deducted the possibilities. Either the police dog had missed his master at the noon hour or allowed himself to be distracted by some canine caprice. Happening into the excitement of the posse, he had relinquished the pail to join the chase. Afterward, having found preferred friends rather than enemies to be the quarry, he had remembered duty neglected and broken away to retrieve his pail.
The three-from-one meal ended, the girl took off her hat and settled back against the stone wall with a smile the more æsthetic for its physical content. The dog, although fuller of good-fellowship than of food, emulated her smile in spirit if not in expression, stretched out across their feet, gaped his mouth and flopped his tail. The man was able to delight the more in that rare smile on Jane’s reposeful features because released from crasser cravings. He leaned low toward her in the dusk, as though to be under its downshed radiance.
Her beauty seemed to intensify—to be taking the light and making the darkness. Small wonder, he thought, that blind eyes ached again to behold that face, pure as marble alive, tender of line, yet strong—eyes the purple of a royal mystery, lips the color of life, hair a black, lustrous veil draped to reveal, rather than conceal.
“You look,” said he, “like the spirit of evening—the spirit that lures a fellow away from the rest of the world and contents him with one warm hearth-fire, one steady light, one complete companionship. Every man who battles through his day hopes for that spirit at his eventide. I have battled a bit to-day, Jane, and I—I can’t help hoping——”