The Boss of Little Arcady/Chapter 29

by Harry Leon Wilson

 

Chapter XXIX

In which all rules are broken

Swiftly I appraised the cool perfection of her attire, scenting the spice of the pinks she had thrust at her belt. And I suffered one heart-quickening look from her eyes before she could lower them to me. In that instant I was stung with a presentiment that our treaty was in peril—that it might go fearfully to smash if I did not fortify myself. It came to me that the creature had regarded my past success in observing this treaty with a kind of provocative resentment. I cannot tell how I knew it—certainly through no recognized media of communication.

Most formally I offered her a chair by the card-table, and resumed my own chair with what I meant for an air of inhospitable abstraction. She declined the chair, preferring to stand by the table as was her custom.

"It was on this spot years ago," I said, laying down the second eight cards, "that Solon Denney first told me he was about to marry."

Discursive gossip seemed best, I thought.

"Two long yellow braids," she remarked. It would be too much to say that her words were snapped out

"And now he has told me again—I mean that he's going to marry again."

"What did you do?" she asked more cordially, studying the cards.

"The first time I went to war," I answered absently, having to play up the ace and deuce of diamonds.

"I have never been able to care much for yellow hair," she observed, also studying the cards; "of course, it's effective, in a way, but—may I ask what you're going to do this time?"

"This time I'm going to play the game."

Again she studied the cards.

"It's refining," I insisted. "It teaches. I'm learning to be a Sannyasin."

Eight other cards were down, and I engrossed myself with them.

"Is a Sannyasin rather dull?"

"In the Bhagavad-gita," I answered, "he is to be known as a Sannyasin who does not hate and does not love anything."

"How are you progressing?" I felt her troubling eyes full upon me, and I suspected there was mockery in their depths.

"Oh, well, fairishly—but of course I haven't studied as faithfully as I might."

"I should think you couldn't afford to be negligent."

I played up the four of spades and put a king of hearts in the space thus happily secured.

"I have read," I answered absently, "that a benevolent man should allow himself a few faults to keep his friends in countenance. I mustn't be everything perfect, you know."

"Don't restrain yourself in the least on my account."

"You are my sole trouble," I said, playing a black seven on a red eight. She looked off the table as I glanced up at her.

I am a patient enough man, I believe, and I hope meek and lowly, but I saw suddenly that not all the beatitudes should be taken without reservation.

"I repeat," I said, for she had not spoken, "your presence is the most troubling thing I know. It keeps me back in my studies."

"There's a red five for that black six," she observed.

"Thank you!" and I made the play.

"Then you're not a Sannyasin yet?"

"I've nearly taken the first degree. Sometimes after hard practice I can succeed in not hating anything for as much as an hour."

I dealt eight more cards and became, to outward seeming, I hope, absorbed in the new aspect of the game.

"Perseverance will be rewarded," she said kindly. "You can't expect to learn it all at once."

"You might try not to make it harder for me."

Again had I been a third person of fair discernment, I believe I should have sworn that I caught in her eyes a gleam of hardened, relentless determination; but she only pointed to a four of hearts which I was neglecting to play up.

"Why not play the game to win?" she asked, and there was that in her voice which was like to undo me—a tone and the merest fanning of my face by her loose sleeve as she pointed to the card.

Suddenly I knew that honor was not in me. She walked within my lines in imminent peril of the deadliest character. But there was no sign of fear in the look she held me with, and I knew she had not sensed her danger.

"You should play your stupid game to win," she repeated terribly. "You are too ingenious at finding balm in defeat." That little golden roughness in her voice seemed to grate on my bared heart. I left her eyes with a last desperate appeal to the game. My hand shook as it laid down the final eight cards.

"Have I ever had any reason to think I could win?" I found I could ask this if I kept my eyes upon the cards.

She laughed a curious, almost silent, confidential little laugh, through which a sigh of despair seemed to breathe.

I looked quickly up, but again there was that strange gleam in her eyes, a gleam of sternest resolve I should have called it under other circumstances.

"You see!" I exclaimed, pointing with a trembling but triumphant finger at the cards. "You see! I am beaten now, in this game that seemed easy up to the

 

"That will do," I said severely. "Remember there is a gentleman present."

 

very last moment. What could I hope for in a game where the cards fell wretchedly from the very start? If I hoped now, I'd be a hopeless fool, indeed!"

"Are you sure you know how to play this game?"

There was a sort of finality in her words that sickened me.

"I have abided always by the rules," I answered doggedly, "and I do know the rules. Look—this game is neatly blocked by one little four-spot on that queen. If that queen were free, I could finish everything."

"Oh, oh—I've told you it's a stupid game with stupid rules—and it makes its players—" She did not complete that, but went about on another tack—with the danger note in her voice. "Just now I overheard your caller say a thing—"

"Ah, I feared you overheard."

The arrogance of the gesture with which she interrupted me was splendid.

"He said, 'How long are you going to keep up that—that—'"

"That will do," I said severely. "Remember there is a gentleman present." But my voice sounded queerly indeed to the ears most familiar with its quality. Also it trembled, for her gaze, almost stern in its questioning, had not released me.

"But how long are you?" Her own voice had trembled, as mine did. She might as well have used the avoided word. Her tone carried it far too intelligibly. It was quite as bad as swearing. I tried twice before I succeeded in finding my voice.

"I've told you," I said desperately; "can't you see—that queen isn't free?"

Swiftly—I regret to say, almost with a show of temper—she snatched the four of diamonds from its lawful place and laid it brazenly far outside the game.

"The creature is free," she said crisply—but at once her arrogance was gone and she drooped visibly in weakness.

So quickly did I rise from the table that the cards of the game were hurled into a meaningless confusion. I stood at her side. I had lost myself.

"Little Miss,—oh, Little Miss! I've a thousand arms all crying for you."

Slowly she made her eyes come to mine—not without effort, for we were close.

"I am glad we left you,"—she had meant to say "that arm," I judge, but there was a break in her voice, a swift movement, and she suddenly said "this arm," with a little shudder in which she could not meet my eyes; for, such as the arm was, she had finished her speech from within it. Close I held her, like a witless moonling, forgetting all resolves, all lessons, all treaties—all but that she was not a dream woman.

"Oh, Little Miss!" was all I could say; and she—"Calvin Blake!" as if it were a phrase of endearment.

"Little Miss, that loss has put me out, but never has it been the hardship it is now—one arm!"

I had not thought it possible for her to come nearer, but a successful nestling movement was her answer.

"I feel the need of a thousand arms, and yet their strength is—"

"Is in this one." She completed my sentence with her own nestling emphasis for "this one."

"Can you believe now, Little Miss?"

"Yes—you gave it to me again."

"Can you believe that I—I—"

"That was never hard. I believed that the first evening I saw you."

"A womanish thing to say—I didn't know it myself."

But she laughed to me, laughed still as I brought her face nearer—so near. Only then did her parted lips close tensely in the woman fear of what she read in my eyes. I have reason to believe that she would have mastered this fear, but at that instant Miss Caroline coughed rather alarmingly.

"You should do something for that right away," I said, as we struck ourselves apart. "You let a cough like that run along and you don't know what it may end in." Whereupon, having kissed no one on this occasion, I now kissed Miss Caroline,—without difficulty, I may add.

"I've been meaning to do it for a year," I explained.

"I must remind you that they were far less deliberate in my day," said she, with a delicate hint of reminiscence in her tone. Whereupon she looked searchingly at each of us in turn. Then, with a little gasp, she wept daintily upon my love's shoulder.

I had long suspected that tears were a mere æsthetic refreshment with Miss Caroline. I had never known her weaken to them when there seemed to be far better reasons for it than the present occasion furnished.

"I must take her home," said my love, without speaking.

"Do!" I urged, likewise in silence, but understandably.

"And I must be alone," she called, as they stepped out on to the lawn.

"So must I." It had not occurred to me; but I could see thoughts with which my mind needed at once to busy itself. I watched them go slowly into the dusk. I thought Miss Caroline seemed to be recovering.

When they had gone, I stepped out to look up at the strange new stars. The measure of my dream was full and running over. To stand there and breathe full and laugh aloud—that was my prayer of gratitude; nor did I lack the presence of mind to hope that, in ascending, it might in some way advantage the soul of J. Rodney Potts, that humble tool with which the gods had wrought such wonders.

It was no longer a dream, no vision brief as a summer's night, when the light fades late to come again too soon. Before, in that dreaming time, I saw that I had drawn water like the Danaides, in a pitcher full of holes. But now—I wondered how long she would find it good to be alone. I felt that I had been alone long enough, and that seven minutes, or possibly eight, might suffice even her.

She came almost with the thought, though I believe she did not hurry after she saw that I observed her.

"I had to be alone a long time, to think well about it—to think it all out," she said simply.

I thought it unnecessary to state the precise number of minutes this had required. Instead I showed her all those strange new stars above us, and together we surveyed the replenished heavens.

"How light it is—and so late!" she murmured absently.

"Come back to our porch."

There for the first time in its green life my vine came into its natural right of screening lovers. In its shade my love cast down her eyes, but intrepidly lifted her lips. Miss Caroline was still where she should have remained in the first place.

"I am very happy, Little Miss!"

"You shall be still happier, Calvin Blake. I haven't waited this long without knowing—"

"Nor I! I know, too."

"I hope Jim will be glad," she suggested.

"He'll be delighted, and vastly relieved. It has puzzled him fearfully of late to see you living away from me."

We sat down, for there seemed much to say.

"I believed more than you did, with all your game," she taunted me.

"But you broke the rules. Anybody can believe anything if he can break all the rules."

"I'd a dreadful time showing you that I meant to."

I shall not detail a conversation that could have but little interest to others. Indeed, I remember it but poorly. I only know that it seemed magically to feed upon itself, yet waxed to little substance for the memory.

One thing, however, I retain vividly enough. In a moment when we both were silent, renewing our amazement at the stars, there burst upon the night a volume of song that I instantly identified.

"She sleeps, my lady sleeps!" sang the clear tenor of Arthur Updyke. "My lady sleeps—she sleeps!" sang three other voices in well-blended corroboration; after which the four discoursed upon this interesting theme.

We were down from the stars at once, but I saw nothing to laugh at, and said as much.

"We might take them out some sandwiches and things to drink," persisted my Little Miss.

But the starlight had shown me a gleam in her eyes that was too outrageously Peavey.

"We will not," I chanted firmly to the music's mellowed accompaniment. "I am free to say now that the thing must be stopped, but you shall do it less brutally—to-morrow or next day."

"Oh, well, if you—"

She nestled again. So soon had this habit seemed to fasten upon her adaptable nature.

"It's wonderful what one arm can do," she said; and in the darkness she felt for the closing hand of it to draw it yet more firmly about her.

"It has the spirit of all the arms in the world, Little Miss—oh, my Little Miss—my dream woman come true!"

She nestled again, with a sigh of old days ended.

"You can't get any closer," I admonished.

"Here!" she whispered insistingly, so that I felt the breath of it.