At the Sign of the Fox: A Romance

by Mabel Osgood Wright

Brownell hesitated a moment, as many others had done, as to which door, front or side, was the more direct entrance, and deciding upon the latter, turned the corner of the house and took the cobbled path that ran between the prim box bushes toward the kitchen door. As he passed under the window of the little library, the sound of a voice inside made him stop as abruptly as if a detaining hand had been laid on his shoulder. “They are at Coronado,—the engagement is announced,—they are to be married immediately, and instead of coming home with the party go on to Vancouver and Alaska. Father can no longer be my all in all, yet there is no one to take his place!” were the words the voice uttered deliberately, with an accent half mocking, yet with an undercurrent of sadness to one who understood.

Standing on tiptoe for one brief moment, Brownell saw Lucy Dean’s clear-cut face through the shielding vines; it was turned away from the window, and she continued speaking to some one whom he could not see, but easily divined was Brooke herself.

Recovering his power of motion as quickly as he had lost it, Brownell darted down the lane toward the barn, and opening the door of the first outbuilding that he reached, sprang in, closing it quickly behind him with a heedless bang, in all the guilty trepidation of some peeping Tom in fear of justice. In reality the being that Brownell most feared at that moment was himself, as rendered illogical, helpless, and oblivious of even the carefully planned work of his life, when in close proximity to Lucy Dean. If she turned and saw him, he knew himself lost, so that immediate flight was the only hope left.

From the moment he had first met her Brownell had admired her stanch friendship for Brooke, while her buoyant and frank audacity had soon fairly swept him off his feet. He had gone to the Dean house many times, it is true, half because not to do so would have been brutally rude, half fluttering, moth-in-the-candle fashion and courting a singeing, until in the close companionship of the six weeks’ journey that had been proposed, he saw that he would not only be at bay, but completely at the mercy of that most uncertain of quantities, the motherless daughter of an influential and wealthy man.

As an institution he had no quarrel with matrimony,—simply it had no place at present in his somewhat altruistic plan of work. He did not wish either to love or to marry; to see Lucy had cast him into the former state, and caused matrimony to fill the entire vista.

What had he to offer—that is, financially? Even with his promotion he could little more than compete with her father’s chef. Of himself he had but an indifferent opinion, which was unwise, merely his ambitions were so far ahead of his achievements that he measured his shortcomings by the discrepancy.

That Lucy delighted to compete with him in a sort of game that Brooke had called “truth telling” he knew, also that in some way he seemed to stimulate her wit; but that there was a grain of sentiment in her practical, and what people thought somewhat hard, nature, he never for a moment dreamed. Therefore, knowing that if he saw her often the moment would come when from his own standpoint he must become ridiculous in her eyes, he had escaped from the overland trip, as he now sought to escape the sudden and unexpected meeting by flight.

It would soon be dusk, and he could slip back to his companions unseen, make some easy excuse for not having called, and tell Brooke of his partial discovery by letter. This flashed through his mind as the door closed. At the same time he looked about the building that he had entered, to see if it had another exit, and discovered it to be a poultry house, the well-white-washed perches of which were crowded by mature, experienced hens, each wing-capped for the night. In the uncertain light he made a misstep on the uneven ground, compounded of ashes and broken lime, that formed the floor, which sent him reeling into the midst of the feathered multitude, and as he grasped a perch to save himself from rolling in the dust, he shook off the portly sleepers. A perfect babel of hen alarm arose as the frightened ladies flew in his face and lodged on his arms and shoulders in their useless flight.

“Be still,” he called in a husky voice; “for heaven’s sake don’t raise such a devil of a row—they will take me for a rat or a weasel at the very least, and set the dogs on me,” and then he laughed when he realized upon what unintelligent scatterbrains his words had fallen. The windows, all too small for retreat, were also netted. There was but one door, so finally, getting his bearings, he made a dive for that, only to find it firmly fastened by Miss Keith’s anti-chicken-thief spring lock! They say love laughs at locksmiths, but bitter satire! when before had the device of one of the craft imprisoned a man flying love, in a fowl house?

Folding his arms, with shoulders squared and jaw set, Brownell waited. Already he heard the barking of a dog, women’s voices, and steps upon the porch of the house. Could any position be more preposterous?