Peggy-in-the-Rain/Chapter 3
III
VERYBODY meets in Aiken, Gordon had declared. And the next morning he set out to prove it so. White-flanneled, he hurried over to the golf club. There were plenty there who would have stayed his anxious search. The Golden Widow—they called Mrs. Burke-Parrish that to distinguish her from a brunette widow—barred his way with a silken sunshade.
"I'm looking for a friend," he explained.
"Won't I do?" asked Mrs. Hampton.
"Not as a friend, Fair Lady," he answered, catching sight of a face on the porch that might be Hers and longing to be off. "Hello, Pete."
"Tell us about her," said Peter Waring, hooking the handle of his stick about Gordon's ankle.
"Her?" asked the victim. "Who?"
"The friend you're looking for, of course. What's she like, old man?"
"Yes, dark or fair, Mr. Ames?" added the widow.
"Short or tall, old man?"
"Kind or unkind, O Disconsolate Lover?"
"Er—she's rather tall and short, with a lot of light black hair. And she's distinctly unkind, since she's evidently not here."
"She's foxy," declared Pete. "That's all, old man. They all are."
"Brute!" said the widow. "Ask Mr. Ames to drive out to the Farm with us this afternoon, Peter."
Gordon gently disengaged his imprisoned ankle and shook his head. "Don't do it, Pete," he warned regretfully. "I'd have to refuse you, and that would pain me deeply."
The Golden Widow pouted. "I believe the man's absolutely in love! Think of it! Gordon Ames in love!"
"I wondered if you'd never guess my secret," Gordon sighed.
The widow threatened him with the formidable sunshade and he retreated in terror. He doubled back and forth through and about the clubhouse without success. Then, as it was still early, he telephoned out to Amesdene for his saddle horse, joined a group of taproom golfers and imbibed a long, cold julep while waiting. Folly, a bay mare with an excitable and suspicious disposition, sidled her way through town, having a conniption fit at every encounter with a street car, and cantered through the pines to the big hotel on the other side of the village. Gordon ambled the length of the piazza, snooped into shady parlors and finally searched the register, running his finger back over two weeks of signatures. But that method was rather hopeless, as he realized, for it was more than likely that the name he sought was only a diminutive, or even a nickname. At all events, he found no entry on the register that encouraged inquiry, and he mounted his horse again and rode out to Amesdene.
The big white house with its tall pillars and green blinds, a rather showy replica of an old-fashioned Southern Colonial residence, was closed, for since Gordon's father had died, five years before, the place had lost its attractions for Mrs. Ames, who preferred the dingy brownstone house on Fifth Avenue to any place she knew of. Gordon, who liked Aiken for the attractions it provided for idlers of his kind, put up at the hotel in the village, using the Amesdene stables for his horses. Folly whisked up the drive, between rows of soldierly oleanders, and sidled into the stable yard. Culver, head groom and caretaker, was bandaging the ankles of a two-year-old, who, a daughter of the famous Amesdene Adventuress by the equally famous Amesdene Hero, had been named Ingenue and was booked to carry off some blues in the roadster classes at the winter shows. A stable-boy ran out to take Gordon's mount, and Folly disappeared, shaking her head and jangling her bit, determined to remain in the limelight to the last moment. After a talk about Ingenue and the other horses Gordon asked:
"Culver, do you know a big sorrel gelding with three white feet?"
"’Igh in the shoulders, sir?"
"Yes, quite, a big, rangy brute."
"I fancy it's that 'orse of the Morrills, sir. The Tiger they call him, sir, I think."
"Of course! That's where I saw him. Miss Morrill rode him out to the races last year. I knew I'd seen him somewhere."
"Thinking of buying him, sir?"
"No, I don't want him. Too leggy, eh?"
"That's accordin' to fancy, Mr. Ames," replied Culver, chewing thoughtfully on the straw in his mouth. "’E's an oldish 'orse, sir, but 'e's got a lot o' life in 'im yet. At five hundred 'e'd be a rare bargain, sir."
But Gordon was not listening.
"Give me The Goat, Culver. How's his knee, by the way?"
"It's 'ealin', sir." Culver spoke disinterestedly. He didn't approve of The Goat, who was a half-bred Kentucky with little to recommend him but strength and willingness. "’E won't 'urt to be used a bit, sir."
The Goat was led out presently, a small flea-bitten gray with a meek eye and ears so large that Culver, out of Gordon's hearing, referred to him "as that damned mule." The Goat had been purchased under the misapprehension that he had somewhere within him the making of a polo pony, but he had proven too slow for that purpose, and Gordon, admiring the animal for his good disposition, promptly dubbed him The Goat and used him more often than any other saddle horse in the stable. They made a good deal of fun of Gordon and his Goat in the village at first, but now they were familiar sights and had ceased to arouse comment.
After lunch he mounted The Goat again and trotted westward. It was quite within the range of possibility that what had happened once would happen again, and he turned in through the Fessenden gateway, quite prepared for a second meeting. He pulled The Goat down to a walk and followed the bridle path in and out through the forest. But although he passed several riders—for the roads of the estate were open to the public—he saw nothing of the sorrel with the three white stockings or of the girl with the scuffled brown boots. In the end he decided that he had come out too early, and so, having completed the circuit of the place and emerged at the north of the village, he turned around and walked The Goat slowly back again, much to that animal's bewilderment, since walking was something he was very seldom allowed to indulge in. But the return journey was as disappointing as the other, and he jogged back to the club, feeling rather disgruntled with his luck. Of course, he comforted himself, he was bound to find her again sooner or later, for Aiken was too small a place for anyone to hide in, but, like the man in the song, he wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. And, having been luckier than the general run of persons in that particular, he was intolerant of denial. He played a remarkably poor game of golf-pool with Peter Waring and two other men, and went back to the hotel to dress for dinner, blaming himself for having wasted a whole day in searching for a person who didn't want to see him again.