"You can't come too soon!" I answered spitefully.
CHAPTER II
THE AMAZING WIDOW
As soon as Torrence left I returned to the garage, feeling that with Mrs. Bashford on American soil my use of the residence even as a loafing-place was unbecoming. Mrs. Bashford was not only in America, but with a motor at her command she might reach Barton at any hour. And the vigorous, dominating woman who had captured my uncle Bash, buried him in a far country, and then effected a hop, skip, and jump from Bangkok to Seattle, was likely to be a prodigal spender of gasoline. Her propensity for travelling encouraged the hope that she would quickly weary of Barton and pine for lands where the elephant and jinrickisha flourish.
I had brought with me the manuscript of Searles's play, and I fell upon it irritably and began reading the first act. The dialogue moved briskly, and I read on as though enfolded in the air of a crisp spring morning. It was Searles's whimsical stroke, only with a better vehicle than he had ever before found for it. My grouch over the upsetting of my plans yielded under the spell of his humor.
"Lady Larkspur" was the name assumed by the daughter of a recluse naturalist in the valley of Virginia. She had known no life but that of the open country, where she ran wild all summer, aiding her father in collecting plants and butterflies. At twenty she had never seen a city, and her social contacts had been limited to the country folk, who viewed her with commiseration as the prisoner of her misanthrope father, who in the fifteen years of his exile had maintained a hostile attitude toward his neighbors. He had, however, educated the girl in such manner that only the cheer and joy of life were known to her. Hating mankind, he had encouraged her in nature-worship. She knew no literature except the classics; all history, even the history of the storied valley in which she lived, was a sealed book to her.
The girl's curiosity is roused by the sudden appearance of strangers from the unknown world beyond, whom she mystifies by her quaint old-worldishness. Searles had taken an old theme and given a novel twist to it. The solution of the mystery of the father's exile and an amusing complication of lovers afforded a suspensive interest well sustained to the end. There were innumerable charming scenes, as where the girl in the outlandish costume in which she roamed the hills perches on a boulder and recites the "Iliad" to her suitors. In the last act she appears at a ball at a country house in sophisticated raiment, and the story ends in the key of mirth in which it began.
It was a delightful blending and modernization of Diana, Atalanta, Cinderella, and Rosalind; but even in the typewritten page it was amazingly alive and well calculated to evoke tears and laughter. That a play so enthralling should be buried in a safety-vault was not to be thought of, and I sat down and wrote Searles a long letter demanding that he at once forget the lost star for whom he had written the piece, suggesting the names of several well-known actresses I thought worth considering for the difficult leading rôle. Not satisfied with this, I telephoned a telegram to the agent at Barton for transmission to Searles at the Ohio address he had given me.