At Corlear’s Hook there was no Zephine. It wasn’t that she was dining out, or anything so simple as that. She had gone up to paint at Fort Lee, in a farmhouse whose whereabouts the janitor endeavored to make plain to us in the accent of Warsaw. To Fort Lee we accordingly proceeded, to the vast delight of the taxi man. Luckily it was a moonlight night, or we never would have succeeded in tracking Zephine to her farmhouse. As it was, we nearly tumbled off the Palisades a dozen times.
I have no idea what time of night it was when we finally floundered through an orchard to Zephine’s dark and silent lair. I bet Nick she wouldn’t be in it. Nick bet me she would. She was—fast asleep in bed. But we routed her out, and she parleyed with us through a window while we kicked our heels on the edge of the piazza. It was rather like the third act of “Faust”—except that Zephine was a contralto. She had a pleasant gurgle in her voice that I had forgotten. She also had the proper yellow braid over her shoulder, if not two of them. And the whole place was operatic with apple blossoms and moonlight.
Many ladies might have betrayed a certain surprise at receiving a visit at an unknown hour of the night, in a New Jersey orchard, from a New York taxicab and two men of whom they had never seen one before in their life. Not so Zephine. She accepted it as perfectly natural that I, who had not seen her for longer than either of us could remember, should feel irresistibly impelled to bid her farewell before sailing for Norway, and that Nick, whose name she had apparently never heard, should pay this somewhat unusual tribute to a lady whose work he had happened to admire.
In token of his admiration Nick invited her to join us in a little drive—at this I heard a snicker from the direction of the taxi—and help us pick up an ice on the way. Zephine judicially considered the matter, stroking one of her Marguerite’s braids, but eventually opined that she would better not. She had models coming at sunrise, and she couldn’t paint if she were sleepy.
“O!” sighed Nick in evident disappointment. “Couldn’t you put your models off? What I really hoped was that you would get a little acquainted with us, or with me, and consent to go to Norway too.”
That was what I heard Nick Marler say, in Zephine’s moonlit orchard, swinging his long legs off her rickety little piazza! And I listened for her answer with my mouth open. For I knew she was perfectly capable of taking Nick at his word. Her deep gurgle however, reassured me.
“That is awfully nice of you, Mr. Marler. If I had sold my picture in the Academy, I might. But as it is, I’m afraid Norway is not for me.”
“O, I didn’t mean that!” cried Nick, secretly giving me an infernal pinch of reminder. “I do hope you won’t think me rude, or anything like that. But Herb here is going as my guest, to give me his expert opinion on some old enamels we have an idea of hunting up, and we’d be ever so pleased if you’d be good enough to come along too and make one of the jury.”
III
She went!