“Because you asked me to visit you,” replied Thorndyke, something within him forcing the truth out of him against his will, and then he added, hastily:
“Forgive me, I’m a perfect brute. I wouldn’t blame you in the least if you sent me back north by the next train.”
“Get up, Frolic, you idiot!” cried Constance to her smart cob, and flicking him with the whip. Her face coloured, her eyes shone—it was plain she was not displeased. But a horrible suspicion occurred to Thorndyke—possibly she was, after all, a thorough-going flirt! Many of those Southern women are, and can’t imagine why a man should object to having a football made of his dearest affections as long as it amuses the lady in the case.
This gruesome and uncanny thought, together with Cathcart’s presence at Malvern, was a huge fly in Thorndyke’s ointment, but misery is as much a concomitant of love as joy is, and Thorndyke had his share of miseries.
The great live oaks were casting long shadows on the large, smooth lawn when Constance drove up to the doors of Malvern Court. It was a spacious brick house with wings, and at the back a four-roomed structure common to Virginia houses, and known as “the office,” where the bachelors were lodged. The house-guests were having tea under the trees, where the shadows were long, when Thorndyke and Constance joined them. Scipio Africanus served the tea, which was iced, and was like water in the desert to travellers. It was handed with much ceremony by Scipio, who had doffed his smart livery, and appeared in a snow-white linen jacket. He was assisted by one of the coloured maids, who now wore the smartest of smart caps and the neatest of neat print gowns instead of the short skirt, pink shirtwaist, and picture-hat which had electrified Thorndyke at the Washington station a few weeks before. Constance Maitland knew precisely when to relax and when to tighten discipline among her staff of negro servants.
Like all people in a country house, the guests were glad to see some one from the outside world. It was a pleasant and amiable party, and Thorndyke enjoyed himself in spite of Cathcart’s presence; but Cathcart, being a remarkably pleasant and personable man, everybody except Thorndyke relished his company.
While they were lingering over tea, a ramshackly buggy of the prehistoric age of buggies, with an unkempt horse, was seen driving up the winding, shady road which led to the lawn. In the buggy sat no less a person than Senator Mince Pie Mulligan. He had seen himself ignominiously left in the lurch by Thorndyke, but with the same spirit of enterprise which had made him the greatest pie-manufacturer on earth he had investigated his resources, and promptly pursued his object with the best means at hand—a sure mark of superiority.
When he alighted from his ancient buggy, Constance advanced to meet him, and greeted him with a cordiality which inspired Mr. Mulligan with admiration and hope. He did not know that Southerners in their own habitat meet every guest, however undesirable, with the same overflowing cordiality, which is reckoned as merely good manners. Senator Mulligan, however, thought this custom of generations a special tribute to himself, and gloated over that cool, supercilious Thorndyke, who had smiled in a superior manner at the Senator’s predicament at Roseboro’ station. So he replied genially to Constance’s greeting:
“As you were good enough to ask me to call, and as I don’t know how long I’ll be in these parts, I said to myself, ‘Faith, I’ll pay Miss Maitland a visit this very afternoon.’ And here I am with this ould cruelty cart, when I’ve got a stable full of horses at home, and a Panhard red devil that cost me six thousand dollars to buy and a thousand a year to keep—but, like the butterfly, I get there just the same.”
Constance, being a clever woman, looked into Michael Mulligan’s soul and saw that it was honest, according to his lights, and that his bragging was not bragging at all, but an innocent way of mentioning what the pie business had brought him.