Quin
by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice · English · Gutenberg #20033 · 496,963 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Quin
Author: Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Release date: December 5, 2006 [eBook #20033]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20033
Credits: Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Kentuckiana Digital Library)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUIN ***
Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Kentuckiana Digital Library)
[Illustration: "If you don't leave the room instantly, I will!"]
Q U I N
BY
ALICE HEGAN RICE
Author of "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,"
"Lovey Mary," "Sandy," "Calvary Alley," etc.
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1921
Copyright, 1921, by
THE CENTURY CO.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
TO MY MERRIEST FRIEND
JOSEPHINE F. HAMILL
Transcriber's Note:
The Table of Contents was not in the original text and
has been created for the convenience of the reader.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 17
Q U I N
CHAPTER 1
If the dollar Quinby Graham tossed up on New Year's eve had not elected
to slip through his fingers and roll down the sewer grating, there might
have been no story to write. Quin had said, "Tails, yes"; and who knows
but that down there under the pavement that coin of fate was registering
"Heads, no"? It was useless to suggest trying it over, however, for
neither of the young privates with town leave for twenty-four hours
possessed another coin.
The heavier of the two boys, Cass Martel,--the lame one, whose nose began
quite seriously, as if it had every intention of being a nose, then
changed abruptly into a button,--scraped the snow from the sewer grating
with his cane, and swore savagely under his breath. But Quin shrugged his
shoulders with a slow, easy-going laugh.
"That settles it," he said triumphantly. "We got to go to the Hawaiian
Garden now, because it's the only place that's free!"
"I'll be hanged if I know what you want to go to a dance for," argued his
companion fiercely. "Here you been on your back for six months, and your
legs so shaky they won't hardly hold you. Don't you know you can't
dance?"
"Sure," agreed Quin amicably. "I don't mean to dance. But I got to go
where I can see some girls. I'm dead sick of men. Come on in. We don't
need to stay but a little while."
"That's too long for me," said Cass. "If you weren't such a bonehead for
doing what you start out to do, we could do something interesting."
One might have thought they were Siamese twins, from the way in which
Cass ignored the possibility of each going his own way. He glared at his
tall companion with a mingled expression of rage and dog-like devotion.
"Cut it out, Cass," said Quin at last, putting an end to an argument that
had been in progress for fifteen minutes. "I'm going to that dance, and
I'm going to make love to the first girl that looks at me. I'll meet you
wherever you say at six o'clock."
Cass, seeing that further persuasion was useless, reluctantly consented.
"Well, you take care of yourself, and don't forget you are going home
with me for the night," he warned.
"Where else could I go? Haven't got a red cent, and I wouldn't go back
out to the hospital if I had to bunk on the curbstone! So long, _chérie_!"
Sergeant Quinby Graham, having thus carried his point, adjusted his
overseas cap at a more acute angle, turned back his coat to show his
distinguished-conduct medal, and went blithely up the steps to the
dance-hall. He was tall and outrageously thin, and pale with the pallor
that comes from long confinement. His hands and feet seemed too big for
the rest of him, and his blond hair stuck up in a bristly mop above his
high forehead. But Sergeant Graham walked with the buoyant tread of one
who has a good opinion not only of himself but of mankind in general.
The only thing that disturbed his mind was the fact that, swagger as he
would, his shoulders, usually so square and trim, refused to fill out his
uniform. It was the first time he had had it on for six months, his
wardrobe having been limited to pajamas and bath-robes during his
convalescence in various hospitals at home and abroad.
Two years before, when he had left a lumber camp in Maine to answer
America's first call for volunteers to France, his personal appearance
had concerned him not in the least. But the army had changed that, as it
had changed most things for Quin.
He checked his overcoat at the hall entrance, stepped eagerly up to the
railing that divided the spectators from the dancers, and drew a deep
breath of satisfaction. Here, at last, was something different from the
everlasting hospital barracks: glowing lights, holiday decorations, the
scent of flowers instead of the stale fumes of ether and disinfectants;
soul-stirring music in place of the wheezy old phonograph grinding out
the same old tunes; and, above all, girls, hundreds of them, circling in
a bewildering rainbow of loveliness before him.
Was it any wonder that Quin's foot began to twitch, and that, in spite of
repeated warnings at the hospital, a blind desire seized him to dance? At
the mere thought his heart gained a beat--that unruly heart, which had
caused so much trouble. It had never been right since that August day in
the Sevzevais sector, when, to quote his citation, he "had shown great
initiative in assuming command when his officer was disabled, and, with
total disregard for his personal safety, had held his machine-gun against
almost impossible odds." In the accomplishment of this feat he had been
so badly gassed and wounded that his career as a soldier was definitely,
if gloriously, ended.
The long discipline of pain to which he had been subjected had not,
however, conquered Quin's buoyancy. He was still tremendously vital, and
when he wanted anything he wanted it inordinately and immediately. Just
now, when every muscle in him was keeping time to that soul-disturbing
music, he heard his own imperative desire voiced at his elbow:
"I don't want to go home. I want to dance. Nobody will notice us. Just
one round, Captain Phipps."
The voice was young and singularly vibrant, and the demand in it was
quite as insistent as the demand that was clamoring in Quin's own
khaki-covered breast.
He craned his neck to see the speaker; but she was hidden by her escort,
in whose supercilious profile he recognized one of the officers in charge
of his ward at the hospital.
"You foolish child!" the officer was saying, fingering his diminutive
mustache and viewing the scene with a somewhat contemptuous smile. "You
said if I would bring you in for a moment you wouldn't ask to stay."
"I know, but I always break my promises," said the coaxing voice; "and
besides I'm simply crazy to dance."
"You surely don't imagine that I would get out on the floor with all this
hoi-poloi?"
Quin saw a pair of small gloved hands grasp the railing resolutely, and
he was straightway filled with indignation that any man, of whatever
rank, should stand back on his dignity when a voice like that asked a
favor. A similar idea had evidently occurred to the young lady, for she
said with some spirit:
"The only difference I can see between these boys and you is that they
are privates who got over, and you are an officer who didn't."
Quin could not hear the answer, but as the officer shifted his position
he caught his first glimpse of the girl. She was very young and obviously
imperious, with white skin and coal-black hair and the most utterly
destructive brown eyes he had ever encountered. Discretion should have
prompted him to seek immediate safety out of the firing-line, but instead
he put himself in the most exposed position possible and waited results.
They arrived on schedule time.
"Captain Phipps!" called a page. "Wanted on the telephone."
"Will you wait for me here just a second?" asked the officer.
"I don't know whether I will or not," was the spirited answer; "I may go
home."
"Then I'll follow you," said the Captain as he pushed his way through the
crowd to the telephone-booth.
It was just at this moment, when the jazz band was breaking into its most
beguiling number, that Quin's eyes and the girl's eyes met in a glance of
mutual desire. History repeated itself. Once again, "with total disregard
for his personal safety, Sergeant Graham assumed command when his officer
was disabled," and rashly flung himself into the breach.
"Will you dance it with me?" he asked eagerly, and he blushed to the
roots of his stubbly hair.
There was an ominous pause, during which the young girl stood irresolute,
while Mrs. Grundy evidently whispered "Don't" in one ear and instinct
whispered "Do" in the other. It lasted but a second, for the next thing
Quin knew, a small gloved hand was slipped into his, a blue plume was
tickling his nose, and he was gliding a bit unsteadily into Paradise.
What his heart might do after that dance was of absolutely no consequence
to him. It could beat fast or slow, or even stop altogether, if it would
only hold out as long as the music did. Round and round among the dancers
he guided his dainty partner, carefully avoiding the entrance end of the
hall, and devoutly praying that his clumsy army shoes might not crush
those little high-heeled brown pumps tripping so deftly in and out
between them. He was not used to dancing with officers' girls, and he
held the small gray-gloved hand in his big fist as if it were a bird
about to take flight.
Next to the return of the Captain, he dreaded that other dancers, seeing
his prize, would try to capture her; but there was a certain tempered
disdain in the poise of his little partner's head, an ability to put up a
quick and effective defense against intrusion, that protected him as
well.
Neither of them spoke until the music stopped, and then they stood
applauding vociferously, with the rest, for an encore.
"I ought to go," said the Radiant Presence, with a guilty glance upward
from under long eyelashes. "You don't see a very cross-looking Captain
charging around near the door, do you?"
"No," said Quin, without turning his head, "I don't see him"--and he
smiled as he said it.
Now, Quin's smile was his chief asset in the way of looks. It was a
leisurely smile, that began far below the surface and sent preliminary
ripples up to his eyes and the corners of his big mouth, and broke
through at last in a radiant flash of good humor. In this case it met a
very prompt answer under the big hat.
"You see, I'm not supposed to be dancing," she explained rather
condescendingly.
"Nor me, either," said Quin, breathing heavily.
Then the band decided to be accommodating, and the saxophone decided to
out-jazz the piano, and the drum got its ambition roused and joined in
the competition, and the young couple who were not supposed to be dancing
out-danced everything on the floor!
Quin's heart might have adjusted itself to that first dance, but the
rollicking encore, together with the emotional shock it sustained every
time those destructive eyes were trained upon him, was too much for it.
"Say, would you mind stopping a bit?--just for a second?" he gasped, when
his breath seemed about to desert him permanently.
"You surely aren't _tired_?" scoffed the young lady, lifting a pair of
finely arched eyebrows.
"No; but, you see--as a matter of fact, ever since I was gassed----"
"Gassed!"
The word acted like a charm. The girl's sensitive face, over which the
expressions played like sunlight on water, softened to instant sympathy,
and Quin, who up to now had been merely a partner, suddenly found himself
individual.
"Did you see much actual service?" she asked, her eyes wide with
interest.
"Sure," said Quin, bracing himself against a post and trying to keep his
breath from coming in jerks; "saw sixteen months of it."
Her quick glance swept from the long scar on his forehead to the bar on
his breast.
"What do all those stars on the rainbow ribbon mean?" she demanded.
"Major engagements," said Quin diffidently.
"And the silver one in the middle?"
"A citation," He glanced around to make sure none of the other boys were
near, then confessed, as if to a crime: "That's where I got my medal."
"Come over here and sit down this minute," she commanded. "You've got to
tell me all about it."
It would be very pleasant to chronicle the fact that our hero modestly
declined to take advantage of the opportunity thus offered. But it must
be borne in mind that, his heart having failed him at a critical hour, he
had to fall back upon his tongue as the only means at hand of detaining
the Celestial Being who at any moment might depart. With what breath he
had left he told his story, and, having a good story to tell, he did it
full justice. Sometimes, to be sure, he got his pronouns mixed, and once
he lost the thread of his discourse entirely; but that was when he became
too conscious of those star-like eyes and the flattering absorption of
the little lady who for one transcendent moment was deigning "to love him
for the dangers he had passed." With unabated interest and curiosity she
drank in every detail of his recital, her half-parted lips only closing
occasionally to say, "Wonderful!" or "How _perfectly_ wonderful!"
On and on went the music, round and round went the dancers, and still the
private in the uniform that was too big and the officer's girl in blue
and gray sat in the alcove, totally oblivious to everything but each
other.
It was not until the girl happened to look at the ridiculous little watch
that was pretending to keep time on her wrist that the spell was broken.
"Merciful heaven!" she exclaimed dramatically, "It's six o'clock. What
_will_ the family say to me? I must fly this minute."
"But ain't you going to finish this dance with me?" asked Quin with
tragic insistence.
"Ought you to dance again?" The note was personal and divinely
solicitous.
"I oughtn't, but I am"; and, with superb disregard for doctors and syntax
alike, Quin put a firm arm around that slender yielding figure and swept
her into the moving crowd.
They danced very quietly this time, for he was determined to hold out to
the end. In fact, from the dreamy, preoccupied look on their faces one
might have mistaken them for two zealous young acolytes lost in the
performance of a religious rite.
Quin was still in a trance when he helped her on with her coat and
piloted her down the crowded stairs. He could not bear to have her
jostled by the boisterous crowd, and he glared at the men whose admiring
glances dared to rest too long upon her.
Now that the dance was over, the young lady was in a fever of impatience
to get away. Qualms of remorse seized her for the way she had treated her
one-time escort, and she hinted at the trouble in store for her if the
family heard of her escapade.
Outside the pavements were white with snow, and falling flakes glistened
against the blue electric lights. Holiday crowds thronged the sidewalks,
and every other man was in uniform.
"I left my car at the corner," said Quin's companion, nervously
consulting her watch for the fourth time. "You needn't come with me; I
can find it all right."
But Quin hadn't the slightest intention of forgoing one second of that
delectable interview. He followed her to her car, awkwardly helped her
in, and stood looking at her wistfully. In her hurry to get home she
seemed to have forgotten him entirely. In two minutes she would never
know that she had met him, while he----
"Good-by, Soldier Boy," she said, suddenly holding out her hand.
"My name is Graham," stammered Quin--"Sergeant Quinby Graham; Battery C,
Sixth Field Artillery. And yours?"
She was fussing with the starter by this time, but she smiled up at him
and shook her head.
"I? Oh, I haven't any! I'm just an irresponsible young person who is
going to gets fits for having stayed out so late. But it was worth it,
wasn't it--Sergeant Slim?"
And then, before he knew what had happened, the small runabout was
skilfully backed out of its narrow space and a red tail-light was rapidly
wagging down the avenue, leaving him standing dazed on the curbstone.
"Where in the devil have you been?" demanded a cross voice behind him,
and turning he encountered Cass's snub-nose and irate eyes.
Quin's own eyes were shining and his face was flushed. With a laugh he
flung his arm around his buddy's shoulder and affectionately punched his
head.
"In heaven," he answered laconically.
"Funny place to leave your overcoat!" said Cass, viewing him with
suspicion. "Quin Graham, have you had a drink?"
Quin hilariously declared his innocence. The draught of which he had so
freely imbibed, though far more potent than any earthly brew, was one
against which there are no prohibitory laws.
CHAPTER 2
The fact that Cass had neglected to tell the family that he was bringing
a friend home to supper did not in the least affect his welcome. It was
not that the daily menu was of such a lavish nature that a guest or two
made no difference; it was simply that the Martels belonged to that
casual type which accepts any interruption to the regular order of things
as a God-sent diversion.
In the present instance Rose had only to dispatch Edwin to the grocery
for eggs and cheese, and send Myrna next door to borrow a chafing-dish,
and, while these errands were being accomplished, to complete her own
sketchy toilet. Rose was an impressionist when it came to dress. She got
the desired effect with the least possible effort, as was evinced now by
the way she was whirling two coils of chestnut hair, from which the
tangles had not been removed, into round puffs over each ear. A dab of
rouge on each cheek, a touch of red on the lips, a dash of powder over
the whole, sleeves turned back, neck turned in, resulted in a poster
effect that was quite satisfactory.
Of course the Martels had heard of Quinby Graham: his name had loomed
large in Cass's letters from France and later in his conversation; but
this was the first time the hero was to be presented in person.
"What's he like, Rose?" asked Myrna, arriving breathlessly with the
chafing-dish. Myrna was twelve and seemed to labor under the constant
apprehension that she was missing something, due no doubt to the fact
that she was invariably dispatched on an errand when anything interesting
was pending.
"Don't know," said Rose; "the hall was pitch-dark. He's got a nice voice,
though, and a dandy handshake."
"I bid to sit next to him at supper," said Myrna, hugging herself in
ecstasy.
"You can if you promise not to take two helps of the Welsh rabbit."
Myrna refused to negotiate on any such drastic terms. "Are we going to
have a fire in the sitting-room?" she asked.
"I don't know whether there is any more wood. Papa Claude promised to
order some. You go see while I set the table. I've a good notion to call
over the fence and ask Fan Loomis to come to supper."
"Oh, Rose, _please_ do!" cried Myrna. "I won't take but one help."
Cass, in the meanwhile, was making his guest at home in the sitting-room
by permitting him to be useful.
"You can light the lamp," he said, "while I make a fire."
Quin was willing to oblige, but the lamp was not. It put up a stubborn
resistance to all efforts to coax it to do its duty.
"I bet it hasn't been filled," said Cass; then, after the fashion of
mankind, he lifted his voice in supplication to the nearest feminine ear:
"Oh! Ro--ose!"
His older sister, coming to the rescue, agreed with his diagnosis of the
case, and with Quin's assistance bore the delinquent lamp to the kitchen.
"Hope you don't mind being made home-folks," she said, patting the puffs
over her ears and looking at him sideways.
"Mind?" said Quin. "If you knew how good all this looks to me! It's the
first touch of home I've had in years. Wish you'd let me set the
table--I'm strong on K. P."
"Help yourself," said Rose; "the plates are in the pantry and the silver
in the sideboard drawer. Wait a minute!"
She took a long apron from behind the door and handed it to him.
"How do these ends buckle up?" he asked, helplessly holding out the
straps of the bib.
"They button around your little neck," she told him, smiling. "Turn
round; I'll fix it."
"Why turn round?" said Quin.
Their eyes met in frank challenge.
"You silly boy!" she said--but she put her arms around his neck and
fastened the bib just the same.
How that supper ever got itself cooked and served is a marvel. Everybody
took a turn at the stirring and toasting, everybody contributed a missing
article to the table, and there was much rushing from kitchen to
dining-room, with many collisions and some upsets.
Quin was in the highest of spirits. Even Cass had never seen him quite
like this. With his white apron over his uniform, he pranced about,
dancing attendance on Rose, and keeping Myrna and Edwin in gales of
laughter over his antics. Every now and then, however, his knees got
wabbly and his breath came short, and by the time supper was prepared he
was quite ready to sit down.
"What a shame Nell's not here!" said Rose, breaking the eggs into the
chafing-dish. "Then we could have charades. She's simply great when she
gets started."
"Who is Nell?" asked Quin.
"Eleanor Bartlett, our cousin. She's like chicken and ice-cream--the rich
Bartletts have her on weekdays and we poor Martels get her only on
Sundays. Hasn't Cass ever told you about Nell?"
"Do you suppose I spend my time talking about my precious family?"
growled Cass.
"No, but Nell's different," said Rose; "she's a sort of Solomon's baby--I
mean the baby that Solomon had to decide about. Only in this case neither
old Madam Bartlett nor Papa Claude will give up their half; they'd see
her dead first."
"You did tell me about her," said Quin to Cass, "one night when we were
up in the Cantigny offensive. I remember the place exactly. Something
about an orphan, and a lawsuit, and a little girl that was going to be an
actress."
"That's the dope," said Cass. "Only she's not a kid any more. She grew up
while I was in France. She's a great girl, Nell is, when you get her away
from that Bartlett mess!"
"Does anybody know where Papa Claude is?" Rose demanded, dexterously
ladling out steaming Welsh rabbit on to slices of crisp brown toast.
"He is here, _mes enfants_, he is here!" cried a joyous voice from the
hall, followed by a presence at once so exuberant and so impressive
that Quin stared in amazement.
"This is Quinby Graham, grandfather," said Cass, by way of introduction.
The dressy old gentleman with the flowing white locks and the white rose
in his buttonhole bore down upon Quin and enveloped his hand in both his
own.
"I welcome you for Cassius' sake and for your own!" he declared with such
effusion that Quin was visibly embarrassed. "My grandson has told me of
your long siege in the hospital, of your noble service to your country,
of your gallant conduct at----"
"Sit down, Papa Claude, and finish your oration after supper," cried
Rose; "the rabbit won't wait on anybody."
Thus cut short, Mr. Martel took his seat and, nothing daunted, helped
himself bountifully to everything within reach.
"I am a gourmet, Sergeant Graham, but not a gourmand. Edwin Booth used to
say----"
"Sir?" answered Edwin Booth's namesake from the kitchen, where he had
been dispatched for more bread.
"No, no, my son, I was referring to----"
But Papa Claude, as usual, did not get to finish the sentence. The advent
of the next-door neighbor, who had been invited and then forgotten,
caused great amusement owing to the fact that there was no more supper
left.
"Give her some bread and jam, Myrna," said Rose; "and if the jam is out,
bring the brown sugar. You don't mind, do you, Fan?"
Fan, an amiable blonde person who was going to be fat at forty, declared
that she didn't want a thing to eat, honestly she didn't, and that
besides she adored bread and brown sugar.
"We won't stop to wash up," said Rose; "Myrna will have loads of time to
do it in the morning, because she doesn't have to go to school. We'll
just clear the table and let the dishes stand."
"We are incorrigible Bohemians, as you observe," said Mr. Martel to Quin,
with a deprecating arching of his fine brows. "We lay too little stress,
I fear, on the conventions. But the exigencies of the dramatic
profession--of which, you doubtless know, I have been a member for the
past forty years----"
"Take him in the sitting-room, Mr. Graham," urged Rose; "I'll bring your
coffee in there."
Without apparently being conscious of the fact, Mr. Martel, still
discoursing in rounded periods, was transferred to the big chair beside
the lamp, while Quin took up his stand on the hearth-rug and looked about
him.
Such a jumble of a room as it was! Odds and ends of furniture, the
survival of various household wrecks; chipped bric-à-brac; a rug from
which the pattern had long ago vanished; an old couch piled with shabby
cushions; a piano with scattered music sheets. On the walls, from ceiling
to foot-board, hung faded photographs of actors and actresses, most of
them with bold inscriptions dashed across their corners in which the
donors invariably expressed their friendship, affection, or if the
chirography was feminine their devoted love, for "dear Claude Martel."
Over the mantel was a portrait of dear Claude himself, taken in the rôle
of Mark Antony, and making rather a good job of it, on the whole, with
his fine Roman profile and massive brow.
It was all shabby and dusty and untidy; but to Quinby Graham, standing on
the hearth-rug and trying to handle his small coffee-cup as if he were
used to it, the room was completely satisfying. There was a cozy warmth
and mellowness about it, a kindly atmosphere of fellowship, a sense of
intimate human relations, that brought a lump into his throat. He had
almost forgotten that things could be like this!
So absorbed was he in his surroundings, and in the imposing old actor
encompassed by the galaxy of pictured notables, that he lost the thread
of Mr. Martel's discourse until he heard him asking:
"What is the present? A clamor of the senses, a roar that deafens us to
the music of life. I dwell in the past and in the future, Sergeant
Graham--the dear reminiscent past and the glorious unborn future. And
that reminds me that Cassius tells me that you are both about to receive
your discharge from the army and are ready for the next great adventure.
May I ask what yours is to be? A return, perhaps, to your native city?"
"My native city happens to be a river," said Quin. "I was born on a
house-boat going up the Yangtse-Kiang."
"Indeed!" cried Mr. Martel with interest. "What a romantic beginning! And
your family?"
"Haven't got any. You see, sir," said Quin, expanding under the
flattering attention of his host, "my people were all missionaries. Most
of them died off before I was fourteen, and I was shipped back to America
to go to school. I didn't hold out very long, though. After two years in
high school I ran away and joined the navy."
"And since then you have been a soldier of fortune, eh? No cares, no
responsibilities. Free to roam the wide world in search of adventure."
Quin studied the end of his cigarette.
"That ain't so good as it sounds," he said. "Sometimes I think I'd
amounted to more if I had somebody that belonged to me."
"Isn't it rather early in the season for a young man's fancy to be
lightly turning----"
The quotation was lost upon Quin, but the twinkle in the speaker's
expressive eye was not.
"I didn't mean that," he laughingly protested; "I mean a mother or a
sister or somebody like that, who would be a kind of anchor. Take Cass,
for instance; he's steady as a rock."
"Ah! Cassius! One in ten thousand. From the time he was twelve he has
shared with me the financial burden. An artist, Sergeant Graham, must
remain aloof from the market-place. Now that I have retired permanently
from the stage in order to devote my time exclusively to writing, my only
business engagement is a series of lectures at the university, where, as
you know, I occupy the chair of Dramatic Literature."
The chair thus euphemistically referred to was scarcely more than a
three-legged stool, which he occupied four mornings in the week, the rest
of his time being spent at home in the arduous task of writing tragedies
in blank verse.
"What I got to think about is a job," said Quin, much more interested in
his own affairs than in those of his host.
"Commercial or professional?" inquired Mr. Martel.
"Oh, I can turn my hand to 'most anything," bragged Quin, blowing
smoke-rings at the ceiling. "It's experience that counts, and, believe
me, I've had a plenty."
"Experience plus education," added Mr. Martel; "we must not underestimate
the advantages of education."
"That's where I'm short," admitted Quin. "My folks were all smart enough.
Guess if they had lived I'd been put through college and all the rest of
it. My grandfather was Dr. Ezra Quinby. Ever hear of him?"
Mr. Martel had to acknowledge that he had not.
"Guess he is better known in China than in America," said Quin. "He died
before I was born."
"And you have no people in America?"
"No people anywhere," said Quin cheerfully; "but I got a lot of friends
scattered around over the world, and a bull-dog and a couple of cats up
at a lumber-camp near Portland."
"Cassius tells me that you are thinking of returning to Maine."
Quin ran his fingers through his hair and laughed. "That was yesterday,"
he said. "To-day you couldn't get me out of Kentucky with a machine-gun!"
Claude Martel rose and laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder. "Then,
my boy, we claim you as our own. Cassius' home is your home, his family
your family, his----"
The address of welcome was cut short by Cass's arrival with an armful of
wood which he deposited on the hearth, and a moment later the girls,
followed by Edwin, came trooping in from the kitchen.
"Let's make a circle round the fire and sing the old year out," suggested
Rose gaily. "Myrna, get the banjo and the guitar. Shall I play on the
piano, Papa Claude, or will you?"
Mr. Martel, expressing the noble sentiment that age should always be an
accompaniment to youth, took his place at the piano and, with a pose
worthy of Rubinstein, struck a few preliminary chords, while the group
about the fire noisily settled itself for the evening.
"You can put your head against my knees, if you like," Rose said to Quin,
who was sprawling on the floor at her feet. "There, is that comfy?"
"I'll say it's all right!" said Quin with heartfelt satisfaction.
There was something free and easy and gipsy-like about the evening, a
sort of fireside picnic that brought June dreams in January. As the hours
wore on, the singing, which had been noisy and rollicking, gradually
mellowed into sentiment, a sentiment that found vent in dreamy eyes and
long-drawn-out choruses, with a languorous over-accentuation of the
sentimental passages. One by one, the singers fell under the spell of the
music and the firelight. Cass and Fan Loomis sat shoulder to shoulder on
the broken-springed couch and gazed with blissful oblivion into the red
embers on the hearth. Rose, whose voice led all the rest, surreptitiously
wiped her eyes when no one was looking; Edwin and Myrna, solemnly
plucking their banjo and guitar, were lost in moods of dormant emotion;
while Papa Claude at the piano let his dim eyes range the pictured walls,
while his memory traveled back through the years on many a secret tryst
of its own.
But it was the lank Sergeant with the big feet, and the hair that stood
up where it shouldn't, who dared to dream the most preposterous dream of
them all. For, as he sang there in the firelight, a little god was busy
lighting the tapers in the most sacred shrines of his being, until he
felt like a cathedral at high mass with all the chimes going.
"There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing
And a white moon beams."
How many times he had sung it in France!--jolting along muddy, endless
roads, heartsick, homesick.
"There's a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true,
Till the day when I'll be going
Down that long, long trail with you."
What had "you" meant to him then? A girl--a pretty girl, of course; but
_any_ girl. And now?
Ah, now he knew what he had been going toward, not only on those terrible
roads in France, but all through the years of his life. An exquisite,
imperious little officer's girl with divinely compassionate eyes, who
wasn't ashamed to dance with a private, and who had let him hold her hand
at parting while she said in accents an angel might have envied,
"Good-by, Soldier Boy."
Quin sighed profoundly and slipped his arm under his head, and at the
same moment the owner of the knee upon which he was leaning also heaved a
sigh and shifted _her_ position, and somehow in the adjustment two lonely
hands came in contact and evidently decided that, after all, substitutes
were _some_ comfort.
It was not until all the whistles in town had announced the birth of the
New Year that the party broke up, and it was not until then that Quin
realized that he was very tired, and that his pulse was behaving in a way
that was, alas, all too familiar.
CHAPTER 3
Friday after New Year's found Sergeant Graham again flat on his back at
the Base Hospital, facing sentence of three additional weeks in bed. In
vain had he risked a reprimand by hotly protesting the point with the
Captain; in vain had he declared to the nurse that he would rather live
on his feet than die on his back. Judgment was passed, and he lay with an
ice-bag on his head and a thermometer in his mouth and hot rage in his
heart.
What made matters worse was that Cass Martel had come over from the
Convalescent Barracks only that morning to announce that he had received
his discharge and was going home. To Quin it seemed that everybody but
himself was going home--that is, everybody but the incurables. At that
thought a dozen nameless fears that had been tormenting him of late all
seemed to get together and rush upon him. What if the doctors were
holding him on from month to month, experimenting, promising,
disappointing, only in the end to bunch him with the permanently disabled
and ship him off to some God-forsaken spot to spend the rest of his life
in a hospital?
He gripped his hands over his chest and gave himself up to savage
rebellion. If they would let him alone he might get well! In France it
had been his head. Whenever the wound began to heal and things looked a
bit cheerful, some saw-bones had come along and thumped and probed and
X-rayed, and then it had been ether and an operation and the whole
blooming thing over again. Then, when they couldn't work on his head any
longer, they'd started up this talk about his heart. Of course his heart
was jumpy! All the fellows who had been badly gassed had jumpy hearts.
But how was he ever going to get any better lying there on his back? What
he needed was exercise and decent food and something cheerful to think
about. He wanted desperately to get away from his memories, to forget the
horrors, the sickening sights and smells, the turmoil and confusion of
the past two years. In spite of his most heroic efforts, he kept living
over past events. This time last year he had been up in the Toul sector,
where half the men he knew had gone west. It was up there old Corpy had
got his head shot off....
He resolutely fixed his attention on a spider that was swinging directly
over his head and tried to forget old Corpy. He thought instead of
Captain Phipps, but the thought did not calm him. What sense was there in
his ordering more of this fool rest business? Well, he told himself
fiercely, he wasn't going to stand for it! The war was over, he had done
his part, he was going to demand his freedom. Discipline or no
discipline, he would go over Phipps' head and appeal to the Colonel.
Throwing aside the ice-bag, he looked around for his uniform. But the
nurse had evidently mistrusted the look in his eyes when she gave him the
Captain's orders, for the hook over his bed was empty. He raised himself
in his cot and glared savagely down the ward, sniffing the air
suspiciously. Two orderlies were wheeling No. 17 back from the
operating-room, and Quin already caught the faint odor of ether. The
first whiff of it filled him with loathing.
Thrusting his bare feet into slippers and his arms into a shabby old
bath-robe, he flung himself out of bed and slipped out on the porch. The
air was cold and bracing and gloriously free from the hospital
combination of wienerwürst, ether, and dried peaches that had come to be
a nightmare odor to him. He sat on the railing and drew in deep,
refreshing breaths, and as he did so things began to right themselves.
Fair play to Quin amounted almost to a religion, and it was suddenly
borne in upon him that he would not be where he was had he observed the
rules of the game. But then again, if he had not danced, he never would
have----
At that moment something so strange happened that he put a hot hand to a
hotter brow and wondered if he was delirious. The singularly vibrant
voice that had been echoing in his memory since New Year's eve was saying
directly behind him:
"I shall give them all the chocolate they want, Captain Harold Phipps,
and you may court-martial me later if you like!"
Quin glanced up hastily, and there, framed in the doorway, in a Red Cross
uniform, stood his dream girl, looking so much more ravishing than she
had before that he promptly snatched the blue and gray vision from its
place of honor and installed a red, white, and blue one instead. So
engrossed was he in the apparition that he quite failed to see Captain
Phipps surveying him over her shoulder.
"Number 7!" said the Captain with icy decision, "weren't you instructed
to stay in bed?"
"I was, sir," said Quin, coming to attention and presenting a decidedly
sorry aspect.
"Go back at once, and add three days to the time indicated. This way,
Miss Bartlett."
Now, it is well-nigh impossible to preserve one's dignity when suffering
a reprimand in public; but when you are handicapped by a shabby
bath-robe, a three days' growth of beard, and a grouch that gives you the
expression of a bandit, and the public happens to be the one being on
earth whom you are most anxious to please, the situation becomes tragic.
Quin set his jaw and shuffled ignominiously off to bed, thankful for once
that he had been considered unworthy a second glance from those luminous
brown eyes. His satisfaction, however, was short-lived. A moment later
the young lady appeared at the far end of the ward, carrying an absurd
little basket adorned with a large pink bow, from which she began to
distribute chocolates.
A feminine presence in the ward always created a flutter, but the
previous flutters were mere zephyrs compassed to the cyclone produced by
the new ward visitor. Some one started the phonograph, and Michaelis, who
had been swearing all day that he would never be able to walk again,
actually began to dance. Witticisms were exchanged from bed to bed, and
the man who was going to be operated on next morning flung a pillow at an
orderly and upset a vase of flowers. Things had not been so cheerful for
weeks.
Quin, lying in the last bed in the ward, alternated between rapture and
despair as he watched the progress of the visitor. Would she recognize
him? Would she speak to him if she did, when he looked like that? Perhaps
if he turned his face to the wall and pretended to be asleep she would
pass him by. But he did not want her to pass him by. This might be the
only chance he would ever have to see her again!
Back in his fringe of consciousness he was frantically groping for the
name the Captain had mentioned: Barnet? Barret? Bartlett? That was it!
And with the recovery of the name Quin's mind did another somersault.
Bartlett? Where had he heard that name? Eleanor Bartlett? Some nonsense
about "Solomon's baby." Why, Rose Martel, of course.
Then all thought deserted him, for the world suddenly shrank to five feet
two of femininity, and he heard a gay, impersonal voice saying:
"May I put a cake of chocolate on your table?"
For the life of him, he could not answer. He only lay there with his
mouth open, looking at her, while she straightened the contents of her
basket. One more moment and she would be gone. Quin staked all on a
chance shot.
"Thank you, Miss Eleanor Bartlett," he said, with that ridiculous blush
that was so out of keeping with his audacity.
She looked at him in amazement; then her face broke into a smile of
recognition.
"Well, bless my soul, if it isn't Sergeant Slim! What are you doing
here?"
"Same thing I been doing for six months," said Quin sheepishly; "counting
the planks in the ceiling."
"But I thought you had got well. Oh, I hope it wasn't the dancing----"
"Lord, no," said Quin, keeping his hand over his bristly chin. "I'm
husky, all right. Only they've got so used to seeing me laying around
that they can't bear to let me go."
"Do you have to lie flat on your back like that, with no pillow or
anything?"
"It ain't so bad, except at mess-time."
"And you can't even sit up to eat?"
"Not supposed to."
Miss Bartlett eyed him compassionately.
"I am coming out twice a week now--Mondays and Fridays--and I'm going to
bring you something nice every time I come. How long will you be here?"
"Three weeks," said Quin--adding, with a funny twist of his lip, "three
weeks and three days."
"Oh! Were you the boy on the porch? How funny I didn't recognize you! I'm
going to ask Captain Phipps to let you off those extra days."
"No, you mustn't." Quin objected earnestly; "I'll take what's coming to
me. Besides," he added, "one of those days might be a Monday or a
Friday!"
This seemed to amuse her, for she smiled as she wrote his name and bed
number in a small notebook, with the added entry: "Oyster soup,
cigarettes, and a razor."
Just as she was leaving, she remembered something and turned back.
"How did you know my name?" she asked with lively curiosity.
"Didn't the Captain call it on the porch?"
"Did he? But not my first name. How on earth _did_ you know that?"
"Perhaps I guessed it," Quin said, looking mysterious. And just then a
nurse came along and thrust the thermometer back in his mouth, and the
conversation was abruptly ended.
Of course the calendar must have been right about the three weeks that
followed; there probably were seven days in each week and twenty-four
hours in each day. But Quin wasn't sure about it. He knew beyond doubt
that there were three Mondays and four Fridays and one wholly gratuitous
and never-to-be-forgotten Sunday when Miss Bartlett brought his dinner
from town, and insisted upon cutting his chicken for him and feeding him
custard with a spoon. The rest of the days were lost in abstract time,
during which Quin had his hair cut and his face shaved, and did
bead-work.
Until now he had sturdily refused to be inveigled into occupational
therapy. Those guys that were done for could learn to knit, he said, and
to make silly little mats, and weave things on a loom. If he couldn't do
a man's work he'd be darned if he was going to do a woman's. But now all
was changed. He announced his intention of making the classiest bead
chain that had ever been achieved in 2 C. He insisted upon the instructor
getting him the most expensive beads in the market, regardless of size or
color.
Now, for Quin, with his big hands and lack of dexterity, to have worked
with beads under the most favorable conditions would have been difficult,
but to master the art lying flat on his back was a _tour de force_. He
pricked his fingers and broke his thread; he upset the beads on the
floor, on the bed, in his tray; he took out and put in with infinite
patience, "each bead a thought, each thought a prayer."
"Don't you think you had better give it up?" asked the instructor, in
despair, after the fourth lesson.
"You don't know me," said Quin, setting his jaw. "You been trying to get
me into this for two weeks--now you've got to see me through."
It did not take long for the other patients to discover Quin's state of
mind.
"How about your heart disease, Graham?" they inquired daily; "think it's
going to be chronic?"
But Quin had little time for them. The distinction he had enjoyed as the
champion poker-player in 2 C. began to wane as his popularity with the
new ward visitor increased.
"I like your nerve!--keeping her up there at your bed all the time,"
complained Michaelis.
"She's an old friend of mine," Quin threw off nonchalantly.
"Aw, what you tryin' to put over on us?" scoffed Mike. "Where'd you ever
git to know a girl like that?"
"Well, I know her all right," said Quin.
The little mystery about Miss Bartlett's first name had been a fruitful
topic of conversation between a couple whose topics were necessarily
limited. She had teased Quin to tell her how he knew, and also how he
knew she wanted to go on the stage; and Quin had teased back; and at last
it had resolved itself into a pretty contest of wits.
This served to keep her beside him often as long as four minutes. Then he
would gain an additional two minutes by showing her what progress he had
made with his chain, and consulting her preference for an American flag
or a Red Cross worked in the medallion.
When every other means of detaining her had been exhausted, he sometimes
resorted to strategy. Constitutionally he was opposed to duplicity; he
was built on certain square lines that disqualified him for many a
comfortable round hole in life. But under the stress of present
circumstances he persuaded himself that the end justified the means.
Ignoring the fact that he was as devoid of relations as a tree is of
leaves in December, he developed a sudden sense of obligation to an
imaginary cousin whom he added, without legal authority, to the
population of Peru, Indiana. By means of Miss Bartlett's white hand he
frequently informed her that she was not to worry about him, because he
was "doing splendid," and that a hospital "wasn't so worse when you get
used to it." And while he dictated words of assurance to his "Cousin Sue"
his eyes feasted upon a dainty profile with long brown lashes that swept
a peach-blow cheek. Once he became so demoralized by this too pleasing
prospect that he said "tell him" instead of "tell her," and the lashes
lifted in instant inquiry.
"I mean--er--her husband," Quin gasped.
"But you had me direct the other letters to Miss Sue Brown."
"Yes, I know," said Quin, with an embarrassment that might have been
attributed to skeletons in family closets; "but, you see--she--er--she
took back her own name."
The one cloud that darkened Quin's horizon these days was Captain Phipps.
His visits to the ward always coincided with Miss Bartlett's, and he
seemed to take a spiteful pleasure in keeping the men at attention while
he engaged her in intimate conversation. He was an extremely fastidious,
well groomed young man, with an insolent hauteur and a certain lordly air
of possession that proclaimed him a conqueror of the sex. Quin regarded
him with growing disfavor.
When the three weeks were almost over, Quin was allowed to sit up, and
even to walk on the porch. Miss Bartlett found him there one day when she
arrived.
"Aha!" she cried, "I've found you out, Sergeant Slim! You are Cass
Martel's hero, and that's where you heard about me and found out my first
name."
Quin pleaded guilty, and their usual five minutes together lengthened
into fifteen while she gave him all the news of the Martel family. Cass
had taken his old position at the railroad office, and, dear knows, it
was a good thing! And Rose was giving dancing lessons. And what did he
think little old Myrna had done? Adopted a baby! Yes, a baby; wasn't it
too ridiculous! An Italian one that the washwoman had forsaken. And Papa
Claude had given up his lectures at the university in order to write the
great American play. Weren't they the funniest and the dearest people he
had ever known?
It was amazing how intimate Quin and Miss Bartlett got on the subject of
the Martels. He had to tell her in detail just what a brick her cousin
Cass was, and she had to tell him what a really wonderful actor Papa
Claude used to be.
"Captain Phipps says he knows more about the stage than any man in the
country."
"What does the Captain know about it?" asked Quin.
"Captain Phipps? Why, he's a playwright. He means to devote all his time
to the stage as soon as he gets out of the army. You may not believe it,
but he is an even better dramatist than he is a doctor."
"Oh, yes, I do," said Quin; "that's easy to believe."
The sarcasm was lost upon Miss Bartlett, who was intent upon delivering
her message from the Martels. They had sent word that they expected Quin
to come straight to them when he got his discharge, and that his room was
waiting for him.
"And you?" asked Quin eagerly. "You'll be there every Sunday?"
Her face, which had been all smiles, underwent a sudden change. She said
with something perilously like a pout:
"No, I shan't; I'm to be shipped off to school next week."
"School?" repeated Quin incredulously. "What do you want to be going back
to school for?"
"I _don't_ want to. I hate it. It's the price I am paying for that dance
I had with you at the Hawaiian Garden--that and other things."
"What do you mean?"
"Some old tabby of a chaperon saw me there and came and told my
grandmother."
"But what could she have told? You didn't do anything you oughtn't to."
Miss Bartlett shook her head. It was evidently something she could not
explain, for she sat staring gloomily at the wall above the bed, then she
said abruptly: "Well, I must be going. Good-by if I don't see you again!"
"But you will," announced Quin fiercely. "You are going to see me next
Sunday at the Martels'. I'll be there if I land in the guard-house for
it."
"Why, your time's up Saturday, isn't it? Oh! I forgot those three extra
days. Captain Phipps has got to let you off. He will if I tell him to."
At this something quite unexpected and elemental surged up in Quin. He
forgot the amenities that he had taken such pains to observe in Miss
Bartlett's presence, he entirely lost sight of the social gap that lay
between them, and blurted out with deadly earnestness:
"Say, are you his girl?"
This had the effect of bringing Miss Bartlett promptly to her feet, and
the next instant poor Quin was saying in an agony of regret:
"I'm sorry, Miss Bartlett. I didn't mean to be nervy. Honest, I didn't.
Wait a minute--_please_----"
But she was gone, leaving him to spend the rest of the afternoon searching
for a phrase sufficiently odious to express his own opinion of himself.
CHAPTER 4
Eleanor Bartlett, speeding home from the hospital with Captain Phipps
beside her, repeated Quin's question to herself more than once. Up to the
present her loves, like her friendships, had been entirely episodic. She
had gone easily from one affair to another not so much from fickleness as
from growth. What she wanted on Monday did not seem in the least
desirable on Saturday, and it was a new and disturbing sensation to have
the same person dominating her thoughts for so many consecutive days. If
her relations with the young officer from Chicago were as platonic as she
would have herself and her family believe, why had she allowed the affair
to arrive at a stage that precipitated her banishment? Why was she even
now flying in the face of authority and risking a serious reprimand by
letting him ride in her car?
In fierce justification she told herself it was simply because the family
had meddled. If they had not interfered, things would never have reached
the danger mark. She had met Captain Phipps three weeks ago at her Uncle
Randolph Bartlett's, and had at first not been sure that she liked him.
He had seemed then a little superior and condescending, and had evidently
considered her too young to be interesting. But the next time they met
there Aunt Flo had made her do the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet,"
and since then all had been different.
Captain Phipps had not only monopolized her at the dances--he had also
found time from his not over-arduous military duties to drop in on her
frequently in the afternoons. For hours at a time they had sat in the
long, dim Bartlett parlor, with only the ghostly bust of old Madam
Bartlett for a chaperon, ostensibly absorbed in the study of modern
drama, but finding ample time to dwell at length upon Eleanor's
qualifications for the stage and the Captain's budding genius as a
playwright. And just when Ibsen and Pinero were giving place to
Sudermann, and vague personal ambitions were crystallizing into definite
plans, the family interfered.
The causes of their condemnation were as varied as they were numerous. He
was ten years older than Eleanor; he was too sophisticated a companion
for a young girl; he had taken her to a public dance-hall on New Year's
eve, where she had been seen dancing with an unknown private; he had been
quite insolent to Madam when she had taken him to task for it; and, most
heinous of all, he was encouraging her in her ambition to go on the
stage. And beneath it all, Eleanor knew quite well, was the nervous
flutter of apprehension that seized the entire family whenever a
threatening masculine presence loomed on the horizon.
She stole a glance at her handsome companion, and, seeing that he was
observing her, quickly lowered her eyes. The Captain had a flattering way
of studying her poses, remarking on the lines of her gowns and her hats.
He was constantly discovering interesting things about her that she had
not known before. But sometimes, as now, she was restive under his too
close scrutiny.
"So you are actually going to leave me next week?" he asked, with a note
of personal aggrievement.
"To leave you? I like that! If it weren't for you I shouldn't be going."
"Are they really sending you away on my account?"
"Indeed they are. Grandmother says you are encouraging me about the
stage, and that poor Papa Claude is demoralizing us both."
"Isn't that absurd?" said the Captain. "Dear old C. M. is about as
innocuous as a peacock. Madam Bartlett should have been born in the
seventeenth century. What will she say when she sees your name blazing
over a Broadway theater?"
"In one of your plays! Oh, Captain, wouldn't that be glorious?"
"Haven't I asked you to drop the 'Captain'? My name is Harold. Say it!"
"No; I can't."
"Yes, you can. Come!"
But she defied him with tightly closed lips and dancing eyes. With
feminine instinct she had discovered that the irresistible Captain was
piqued and stimulated by the unusual taste of opposition.
"You little minx!" he said, lifting an accusing finger. "Those eyes of
yours are going to do a lot of damage before they get through with it."
Eleanor took kindly to the thought that she was dangerous. If she could
cause disturbance to an individual by the guarded flutter of her eyelids,
what effect might she not produce by giving them full play before a
larger audience?
"Do you really think I could act if I got the chance?" she asked
dreamily.
"I am absolutely sure. Your grandfather's quite right when he says you
were born to the footlights. With your voice and your unusual coloring
and your plastic little body----"
"But you can't imagine the opposition," Eleanor broke in. "It isn't as if
my mother and father were living. I believe they would understand. But
grandfather and the aunties, and even Uncle Ranny, throw a fit at the
mere mention of the stage."
"You do not belong to them," said the Captain impatiently. "You do not
even belong to yourself. A great talent belongs to the world. All these
questions will settle themselves, once you take the definite step."
"And you actually believe that I will get to New York to study?"
"I don't believe--I _know_. I intend to make it my business to see that
you do."
There was a confident ring of masterful assurance in his voice that
carried delicious conviction. A person who was so absolutely sure of
himself made other people sure of him, too, for the moment.
Eleanor, sitting low in the car, with her absent eyes fixed on the road
ahead, lapsed into a daydream. From an absorbed contemplation of herself
and her dramatic career, her mind veered in gratitude to the one who most
believed in its possibility. What a friend he had been! Just when she had
been ready to give up in despair, he had fanned her dying hope into a
glorious blaze that illuminated every waking hour. And it was not only
his sympathetic interest in her thwarted ambition that touched her: it
was also the fact that he had rescued her from the daily boredom of
sitting with elderly ladies making interminable surgical dressings, and
by an adroit bit of diplomacy outwitted the family and introduced her as
a ward visitor at the camp hospital.
The mere thought of the hospital sent her mind flying off at a tangent.
Even the stage gave way for the moment to this new and all-absorbing
occupation. Never in her life had she done anything so interesting. The
escape from home, the personal contact with all those nice, jolly boys,
the excitement of being of service for the first time in her butterfly
existence, was intoxicating. She smiled now as she thought of the way
Graham's eager head always popped up the moment she entered the door,
and of how his face shone when she talked to him. After all, she told
herself, there _was_ something thrilling in having hands that had
captured a machine-gun laboriously threading tiny beads for her, in
having a soldier who had been decorated for courage stammer and blush
in her presence.
"Well," said the Captain, who had been lazily observing her, "aren't you
about through with your mental monologue?"
Eleanor roused herself with a start.
"Oh, I am sorry! I was thinking about my boys at the hospital. You can't
imagine how I hate to leave them!"
The answer was evidently not what the Captain had expected. As long as
his company of feminine admirers marched in adoring unison he was
indifferent to their existence; but let one miss step and he was
instantly on the alert.
"I haven't noticed any tears being shed over leaving me," he said, and
the aggrieved note in his voice promptly stirred her humor.
"Why should I mind leaving you? You don't need me."
"How do you know?"
She looked at him scoffingly.
"You don't need anything or anybody. You've got all you want in
yourself."
"I'll show you what I want!" he said, and, quickly bending toward her, he
kissed her on the cheek.
It was the merest brush of his lips, but it brought the color flaming
into her face and the lightning into her eyes. She had never been so
angry in her life, and it seemed to her an age that she sat there rigid
and indignant, suffocated by his nearness but powerless to move away.
Then she got the car stopped, and announced with great dignity that she
was nearly home and that she would have to ask him to get out.
Captain Phipps lazily descended from the car, then stood with elbows on
the ledge of the door and rolled a cigarette with great deliberation.
Eleanor, in spite of her wrath, could not help admiring the graceful,
conscious movement of his slender hands with their highly polished nails.
It was not until he had struck his match that he looked at her and smiled
quizzically.
"What a dear little goose you are! Do you suppose that stage lovers are
going to stand in the wings and throw kisses to you?"
"No," said Eleanor hotly; "but that will be different."
"It certainly will," he agreed amiably. "You will not only have to be
kissed, but you will have to kiss back. You have a lot of little
puritanical prejudices to get over, my dear, before you can ever hope to
act. You don't want to be a thin-blooded little old maid, do you?"
The shot was well aimed, for Eleanor had no desire to follow in the arid
footsteps of her two spinster aunts. She looked at Captain Phipps
unsteadily and shook her head.
"Of course you don't," he encouraged her. "You aren't built for it.
Besides, it's an actress's business to cultivate her emotions rather than
repress them, isn't it?"
"Yes, I suppose it is."
"Then, for heaven's sake, obey your impulses and let other people obey
theirs. From now on you are to be identified with a profession that
transcends the petty conventions of society. Confess! Aren't you already
a little ashamed of getting angry with me just now?"
She was not ashamed, not in the least; but her ardent desire to prove her
fitness for that coveted profession, together with the compelling
insistence of that persuasive voice, prompted her to hold out a reluctant
hand and to smile.
"You are a darling child!" said Captain Phipps, with a level glance of
approval. "I shall see you to-morrow. When? Where?"
But she would make no engagement. She was in a flutter to be gone. It was
her first experience at dancing on a precipice, and, while she liked it,
she could not deny, even to herself, that at times it made her
uncomfortably hot and dizzy.
CHAPTER 5
Eleanor's thoughts were still in a turmoil as she slowed her car to a
within-the-law limit of speed and brought it to a dignified halt before
an imposing edifice on Third Avenue. The precaution was well taken, for a
long, pale face that had been pressed to a front window promptly
transferred itself to the front door, and an anxious voice called out:
"Oh, Nellie, _why_ did you stay out so late? Didn't you know it was your
duty to be in before five?"
"It's not late, Aunt Isobel," said Eleanor impatiently. "It gets dark
early, that's all."
"And you must be frozen," persisted Miss Isobel, "with those thin pumps
and silk stockings, and nothing but that veil on your head."
"But I'm _hot!_" declared Eleanor, throwing open her coat. "The house is
stifling. Can't we have a window open?"
Miss Isobel sighed. Like the rest of the family, she never knew what to
expect from this troublesome, adorable, disturbing mystery called
Eleanor. She worshiped her with the solicitous, over-anxious care that
saw fever in the healthy flush of youth, regarded a sneeze as premonitory
of consumption, and waited with dark certitude for the "something
dreadful" that instinct told her was ever about to happen to her darling.
"I am afraid your grandmother is terribly upset about your staying out so
late," she said, with a note of warning in her voice.
"What made you tell her?" demanded Eleanor.
"Because she asked me, and of course I could not deceive her. I don't
believe you know how hard it is to keep things from her."
"_Don't_ I!" said Eleanor, with the tolerant smile of a professional for
an amateur. "Well, a few minutes more won't make any difference. I'll go
and change my dress."
"No, dear; you must go to her first. She's been sending Hannah down every
few minutes to see if you were here."
"Oh, dear! I suppose I'm in for it!" sighed Eleanor, flinging her coat
across the banister. Then, in answer to a plaintive voice from the
library, "Yes, Aunt Enid?"
"Why on earth are you so late, sweetheart? Didn't you know your
grandmother would be fretted?"
The possessor of the plaintive voice emerged from the library, trailing
an Oriental scarf as she came. Like her elder sister, she was tall and
thin, but she did not wear Miss Isobel's look of martyred resignation. On
the contrary, she had the starved look of one who is constantly trying to
pick up the crumbs of interest that other people let fall.
Enid Bartlett might have passed for a pretty woman had her appearance not
been permanently affected by an artist once telling her she looked like a
Botticelli. Since that time she had done queer things to her hair, pursed
her lips, and cultivated an expression of chronic yearning.
"I haven't seen you since breakfast, Nellie," she said gently. "Haven't
you a kiss for me?"
Eleanor presented a perfunctory cheek over the banisters, taking care
that it was not the one that had been kissed a few minutes before.
"Remember your promise," Aunt Enid whispered; "don't forget that your
grandmother is an old lady and you must not excite her."
"But she excites me," said Eleanor doggedly. "She makes me want to smash
windows and scream."
"Why, Nellie!" Miss Enid's mournful eyes filled with tears. Instantly
Eleanor was all contrition.
"I'm sorry!" she said, with a real kiss this time. "I'll behave. Give you
my word I will!" And, with an affectionate squeeze of the hand that
clasped hers, she ran up the steps.
The upper hall, like the rest of the house, was pervaded by an air of
gloomy grandeur. Everything was dreary, formal, fixed. Not an ornament or
a picture had been changed since Eleanor could remember. She was the only
young thing about the place, and it always seemed to her as if the house
and its occupants were conspiring to make her old and staid and stupid,
like themselves.
At the door of her grandmother's room she paused. As far back as she
could remember, her quarrels with her grandmother had been the most
terrifying events of her life. Repetition never robbed them of their
horror, and no amount of spoiling between times could make up to her for
the violence of the moment. It took all the courage she had to turn the
knob of the door and enter.
A brigadier-general planning an important campaign would have presented
no more commanding presence than did the formidable old lady who sat at a
flat-top desk, issuing orders in a loud, decisive tone to a small
meek-looking man who stood before her. The most arresting feature about
Madam Bartlett was a towering white pompadour that began where most
pompadours end, and soared to a surprising height above her large,
handsome, masculine face. The fact that her hair line had gradually
receded from her forehead to the top of her head affected no change
whatever in the arrangement of her coiffure. Neither in regard to her
hair nor to her figure had she yielded one iota to the whims of Nature.
Her body was still confined in the stiffest of stays, and in spite of her
seventy years was as straight as an arrow. At Eleanor's entrance she
motioned her peremptorily to a chair and proceeded with the business in
hand.
"You go back and tell Mr. Bangs," she was saying to the meek-looking
person, "that I want him to send somebody up here who knows more than you
do. Do you understand?"
The meek one evidently understood, for he reached nervously for his cap.
"Wait!" commanded Madam peremptorily. "Don't start off like that, while I
am talking to you! Tell Mr. Bangs this is the third time I've asked him
to send me the report of Bartlett & Bangs' export business for the past
year. I want it immediately. I am not in my dotage yet. I still have some
say-so in the firm. Well, what are you waiting for?"
"I was waiting to know if there was anything more, ma'am."
"If there had been I would have said so. Tell Hannah to come in as you go
out."
Eleanor looked at her grandmother expectantly, but there was no answering
glance. The old lady was evidently in one of her truculent moods that
brooked no interference.
"Has the plumber come?" she demanded of the elderly colored maid who
appeared at the door.
"No, ma'am. He can't get here till to-morrow."
"Tell him I won't wait. If he can't come within an hour he needn't come
at all. Where is Tom?"
Hannah's eyes shifted uneasily. "Tom? Why, Tom, he thought you discharged
him."
"So I did. But he's not to go until I get another butler. Send him up
here at once."
"But he ain't here," persisted Hannah fearfully, "He's went for good this
time."
Eleanor, sitting demurely by the door, had a moment of unholy exultation.
Old black Tom, the butler, had been Madam's chief domestic prop for a
quarter of a century. He had been the patient buffer between her and the
other servants, taking her domineering with unfailing meekness, and even
venturing her defense when mutiny threatened below stairs. "You-all don't
understand old Miss," he would say loyally. "She's all right, only she's
jes' nachully mean, dat's all."
In the turning of this humble worm, Eleanor felt in some vague way a
justification of her own rebellion.
His departure, however, did not tend to clear the domestic atmosphere. By
the time Madam had settled the plumbing question and expressed her
opinion of Tom and all his race, she was in no mood to deal leniently
with the shortcomings of a headstrong young granddaughter.
"Well," she said, addressing her at last, "why didn't you make it
midnight?"
"It's only a little after five." Eleanor knew she was putting up a feeble
defense, and her hands grew cold.
"It is nearly six, and it is dark. Couldn't you have withdrawn the
sunshine of your presence from the hospital half an hour sooner?"
Under her sharp glance there was a curious protective tenderness, the
savage concern of a lioness for her whelp; but Eleanor saw only the
scoffing expression in the keen eyes, and heard the note of irony in all
she said.
"Your going out to the hospital is all foolishness, anyhow," the old lady
continued, sorting her papers with efficiency. "Contagious diseases,
germs, and what not. But some women would be willing to go to Hades if
they could tie a becoming rag around their heads. Why didn't you dress
yourself properly before you came in here?"
"I wanted to, but Aunt----"
"Aunt Enid, I suppose! If it was left to her she'd have you trailing
around in a Greek tunic and sandals, with a laurel wreath on your head."
There was an ominous pause, during which Madam's wrinkled, bony hands,
flashing with diamonds, searched rapidly among the papers.
"You are all ready to start on Monday? Your clothes are in good
condition, I presume?"
Eleanor brought her gaze from a detached contemplation of the ceiling to
a critical inspection of her finger-nails.
"I suppose Aunt Isobel has attended to them," she said indifferently.
"Aunt Isobel, indeed!" snarled Madam. "You'd lean on a broken reed if you
depended on Isobel. And Enid is no better. _I_ attended to your clothes.
I got you everything you need, even down to a new set of furs."
"Silver fox?" asked Eleanor, brightening visibly.
"No, mink. I can't abide fox. Ah! here's what I am looking for. Your
ticket and berth reservation. Train leaves at ten-thirty Monday morning."
"Grandmother," ventured Eleanor, summing up courage to lead a forlorn
hope, "you are just wasting money sending me back to Baltimore."
"It's my money," said the old lady grimly.
"It's your money, but it is my life," Eleanor urged, with a quiver in her
voice. "If you are going to send me away, why not send me to New York and
let me do the one thing in the world I want to do?"
That Madam should be willing to furnish unlimited funds for finishing
schools, music lessons, painting lessons, and every "extra" that the
curriculum offered, and yet refuse to cultivate her one real talent,
seemed to Eleanor the most unreasonable autocracy. She had no way of
knowing that Madam's indomitable pride, still quivering with the memory
of her oldest son's marriage to an unknown young actress, recoiled
instinctively from the theatrical rock on which so many of her old hopes
had been wrecked.
Eleanor's persistence in recurring to this most distasteful of subjects
roused her to fury. A purple flush suffused her face, and her cheeks
puffed in and out as she breathed.
"I suppose Claude Martel has it all mapped out," she said. "He and that
fool Harold Phipps have stirred you up to a pretty pitch. What do you see
in that silly coxcomb, anyhow?"
"If you mean Captain Phipps," Eleanor said with dignity, "I see a great
deal. He is one of the most cultivated men I ever met."
"Fiddlesticks! He smells like a soap-counter! When I see an affected man
I see a fool. He has airs enough to fill a music-box. But that's neither
here nor there. You understand definitely that I do not wish you to see
him again?"
Eleanor's silence did not satisfy Madam. She insisted upon a verbal
assurance, which Eleanor was loath to give.
"I tell you once for all, young lady," said Madam, by this time roused to
fury, "that you have _got_ to do what I say for another year. After that
you will be twenty-one, and you can go to the devil, if you want to."
"Grandmother!" cried Eleanor, shrinking as if from a physical blow. Then,
remembering her promise to her Aunt Enid, she bit her lip and struggled
to keep back the tears. As she started to leave the room, Madam called
her back.
"Here, take this," she said gruffly, thrusting a small morocco box into
her hand. "Isobel and Enid never had decent necks to hang 'em on. See
that you don't lose them." And without more ado she thrust Eleanor out of
the room and shut the door in her face.
Eleanor fled down the hall to her own room, and after locking the door
flung herself on the bed. It was always like that, she told herself
passionately; they nagged at her and tormented her and wore her out with
their care and anxiety, and then suffocated her with their affection. She
did not want their presents. She wanted freedom, the right to live her
own life, think her own thoughts, make her own decisions. She did not
mean to be ungrateful, but she couldn't please them all! The family
expectations of her were too high, too different from what she wanted.
Other girls with half her talents for the stage had succeeded, and just
because she was a Bartlett----
She clenched her fists and wished for the hundredth time that she had
never been born. She had been a bone of contention all her life, and,
even when the two families were not fighting over her, the Bartlett blood
was warring with the Martel blood within her. Her standards were
hopelessly confused; she did not know what she wanted except that she
wanted passionately to be let alone.
"Nellie!" called a gentle voice on the other side of the door. "Are you
ready for dinner?"
"Don't want any dinner," she mumbled from the depths of a pillow.
The door-handle turned softly and the voice persisted:
"You must unlock the door, dearie; I want to speak to you."
Eleanor flung herself off the bed and opened the door. "I tell you, I
don't want any dinner, Aunt Enid," she declared petulantly.
Miss Enid drew her down on the bed beside her and regarded her with
pensive persuasion. "I know, Nelchen; I often feel like that. But you
must come down and make a pretense of eating. It upsets your grandmother
to have any one of us absent from meals."
"Everything I do upsets her!" cried Eleanor with tragic insistence. "I
can't please her--there's no use trying. Why does she treat me the way
she does? Why does she sometimes almost seem to hate me?"
Miss Enid's eyes involuntarily glanced at the picture of Eleanor's mother
over the desk, taken in the doublet and hose of _Rosalind_.
"Hush, child; you mustn't say such awful things," she said, drawing the
girl close and stroking her hair. "Mother adores you. Think of all she
has done for you ever since you were a tiny baby. What other girl of your
acquaintance has her own car, all the pretty clothes she can wear, and as
much pin-money as she can spend?"
"But that's not what I _want_!" cried Eleanor tragically. "I want to _be_
something and to _do_ something. I feel like I am in prison here. I'm not
good and resigned like you and Aunt Isobel, and I simply refuse to go
through life standing grandmother's tyranny."
Poor Eleanor, so intolerably sensitive to contacts, so hopelessly
confused in her bearings, sitting red-eyed and miserable, kicking her
feet against the side of the bed, looked much more like a naughty child
than like the radiant Lady Bountiful who had dispensed favors and
received homage in the hospital a few hours before.
So swift was the sympathetic action of her nerves that any change in her
physical condition affected her whole nature, making her an enigma to
herself as well as to others. Even as she sat there rebellious and
defiant, her eyes fell upon the small morocco box on her pillow, and she
picked it up and opened it.
"Oh, Aunt Enid!" she cried in instant remorse. "Just look what she's
given me! Her string of pearls! The ones she wore in the portrait! And
just think of what I've been saying about her. I'm a beast, a regular
little beast!"
And with characteristic impetuosity she flung herself on Miss Enid's neck
and burst into tears.
CHAPTER 6
The sun was getting ready to set on Sunday afternoon when a tall,
trim-looking figure turned the corner of the street leading to the
Martels' and broke into a run. In one hand he carried a large suit-case,
and in the other he held a bead chain wrapped in tissue-paper. In the
breast pocket of his uniform was a paper stating that Quinby Graham was
thereby honorably discharged from the U.S.A.
Whether it was his enforced rest, or his state of mind, or a combination
of the two, it is impossible to say; but at least ten pounds had been
added to his figure, the hollows had about gone from his eyes, and a
natural color had returned to his face. But the old cough remained, as
was evident when he presented himself breathless at the Martels' door and
demanded of Cass:
"Has she gone?"
"Who?"
"Miss Bartlett."
"I believe she's fixing to go now. What's it to you?"
"Oh, I just want to say good-by," Quin threw off with a great show of
indifference. "She was awful good to me out at the hospital."
"Oh, I see." Then Cass dismissed the subject for one of far more
importance. "Are you out for keeps? Have you come to stay?"
"You bet I have. How long has she been here?"
"Who?"
"Miss Bartlett, I tell you."
"Oh! I don't know. All day, I reckon. I got to take her home now in a
minute, but I'll be back soon. Don't you go anywhere till I come back."
Quin seized his arm: "Cass, I'll take her home for you. I don't mind a
bit, honest I don't. I need some exercise."
"Old lady'd throw a fit," objected Cass. "Old grandmother, I mean.
Regular Tartar. Old aunts are just as bad. They devil the life out of
Nell, except when she's deviling the life out of them."
"How do you mean?" Quin encouraged him.
"I mean Nell's a handful all right. She kicks over the traces every time
she gets a chance. I don't blame her. They're a rotten bunch of snobs,
and she knows it."
"Well, I could leave her at the door," Quin urged. "I wouldn't let her in
for anything for the world. But I got to talk to her, I tell you; I got
to thank her----"
Meanwhile, in the room above the young lady under discussion was
leisurely adjusting a new and most becoming hat before a cracked mirror
while she discussed a subject of perennial interest to the eternal
feminine.
"Rose," she was asking, "what's the first thing you notice about a man?"
Rose, sitting on the side of the bed nursing little Bino, the latest
addition to the family, answered promptly:
"His mouth, of course. I wouldn't marry a man who showed his gums when he
laughed, not if every hair of his head was strung with diamonds!"
The visualization of this unpleasant picture threw Eleanor into peals of
laughter which upset the carefully acquired angle of the new hat, to say
nothing of the nerves of the young gentleman just arrived in the hall
below.
"I wasn't thinking of his looks only," she said; "I mean everything about
him."
"Why, I guess it's whether he notices me," said Rose after deliberation.
"Exactly," agreed Eleanor. "Not only you or me, but girls. Take Cass, for
instance; girls might just as well be broomsticks to Cass, all except Fan
Loomis. Now, when Captain Phipps looks at you----"
"He never would," said Rose; "he'd look straight over my head. I'll tell
you who is a better example--Mr. Graham."
Eleanor smiled reminiscently. "Oh, Sergeant Slim? _he's_ thrilled, all
right! Always looks as if he couldn't wait a minute to hear what you are
going to say next."
"He's not as susceptible as he looks," Rose pronounced from her
vantage-point of seniority. "He's just got a way with him that fools
people. Cass says girls are always crazy about him, and that he never
cares for any of them more than a week."
"Much Cass knows about it!" said Cass's cousin, pulling on her long
gloves. Then she dismissed the subject abruptly: "Rose, if I tell you
something will you swear not to tell?"
"Never breathe it."
"Captain Phipps is coming up to Baltimore for the Easter vacation."
"Does your grandmother know?"
"I should say _not_. She's written Miss Hammond that I'm not to receive
callers without permission, and that all suspicious mail is to be
opened."
"How outrageous! You tell Captain Phipps to send his letters to me; I'll
get them to you. They'll never suspect my fine Italian hand, with my name
and address on the envelope."
Eleanor looked at her older cousin dubiously. "I hate to do underhand
things like that!" she said crossly.
"You wouldn't have to if they treated you decently. Opening your letters!
The idea! I wouldn't stand for it. I'd show them a thing or two."
Eleanor stood listlessly buttoning her glove, pondering what Rose was
saying.
"I wonder if I could get word to the Captain to-night?" she said. "Shall
I really tell him to send the letters to you?"
"No; tell him to bring them. I'm crazy to see what his nibs looks like."
"He looks like that picture of Richard Mansfield downstairs--the one
taken as _Beau Brummel_. He's the most fastidious man you ever saw, and
too subtle for words."
"He's terribly rich, isn't he?"
"I don't know," said Eleanor indifferently. "His father is a Chicago
manufacturer of some kind. Does Papa Claude think he is _very_ talented?"
"Talented! He says he's one of the most gifted young men he ever met.
They are hatching out some marvelous schemes to write a play together.
Papa Claude is treading on air."
"Bless his heart! Wouldn't it be too wonderful, Rose, if Captain Phipps
should produce one of his plays? He's crazy about him."
"You mean he's crazy about you."
"Who said so?"
"I don't have to be told. How about you, Nell? Are you in love with him?"
Eleanor, taking a farewell look in the mirror, saw a tiny frown gather
between her eyebrows. It was the second time that week she had been asked
the question, and, as before, she avoided it.
"Listen!" she said. "Who is that talking so loud downstairs?"
Investigation proved that it was Cass and Quin in hot dispute, as usual.
On seeing her descend the stair the latter promptly stepped forward.
"Cass is going to let me take you home, Miss Bartlett."
"I never said I would," Cass contradicted him. "I'm not going to get her
into trouble the night before she goes away."
"That's for her to decide," said Quin. "If she says I can go I'm going."
The very novelty of being called upon to decide anything for herself,
augmented perhaps by the ardent desire in his eyes, caused Eleanor to tip
the scales in his favor.
"I don't mind his taking me home," she said somewhat condescendingly.
"They'll think it's Cass."
"All buck privates look alike to them," added Rose, laughing.
"My private days are over," said Quin grandly. "This time next week I'll
be out of my uniform."
"You won't be half so good-looking," said Eleanor, surveying him with
such evident approval that he had a wild idea of reënlisting at once.
"Tell Papa Claude I couldn't wait for him any longer," Eleanor then said.
"Kiss him good-by for me, Rose, and tell him I'll write the minute I get
to Baltimore."
Then Cass kissed her, and Rose and the baby kissed her, and Myrna came
downstairs to kiss her, and Edwin was called up from the basement to kiss
her. It seemed the easiest and most natural thing in the world for
everybody to kiss her but Quin, who would have given all he had for the
privilege.
At last he found himself alone with her in the street, trying to catch
step and wondering whether or not it was proper to take hold of a young
lady's elbow. With commendable self-restraint he compromised on street
crossings and muddy places. It was not quite dark yet, but it was going
to be very soon, and a big pale moon was hiding behind a tall chimney,
waiting for a chance to pounce out on unwary young couples who might be
venturing abroad.
As they started across Central Park, an open square in the heart of the
city, Eleanor stopped short, and with eyes fixed on the sky began
incanting:
"Star light, star bright
Very first star I see to-night
Wish I may, wish I might--
May these three wishes come true before to-morrow night."
"I haven't got three wishes," said Quin solemnly; "I've only got one."
"Mercy, I have dozens! Shall I lend you some?"
"No! mine's bigger than all yours put together."
She flashed a look at him from under her tilted hat-brim:
"What on earth's the matter with you? You look so solemn. I don't believe
you wanted to bring me home, after all."
Quin didn't know what was the matter with him. Heretofore he had fallen
in love as a pebble falls into a pond. There had been a delicious splash,
and subsequent encircling ripples, each one further away than the last.
But this time the pebble had fallen into a whirlpool, and was being
turned and tossed and played with in a manner wholly bewildering.
"Oh, I wanted to come, all right," he said slowly. "I _had_ to come. Say,
I wish you weren't going away to-morrow."
"So do I. I'd give anything not to."
"But why do you go, then?"
"Because I am always made to do what I don't want to do."
Quin, who had decided views on individual freedom and the consent of the
governed, promptly espoused her cause.
"They've got no right to force you. You ought to decide things for
yourself."
"Do you really think that? Do you think a girl has the right to go ahead
and do as she likes, regardless of her family?"
"That depends on whether she wants to do the right thing. Which way do we
turn?"
"This way, if we go home," said Eleanor. Then she stopped abruptly. "What
time is it?"
Quin consulted his watch and his conscience at the same time.
"It's only five-thirty," he said eagerly.
"I wonder if you'd do something for me?"
"You bet I will."
"I want to go out to the hospital. I can get out there and back in my
machine in thirty minutes. Would you be willing to go with me?"
Would he be willing? Two hours before he had sworn that no power on earth
could induce him to return to those prison walls, and now he felt that
nothing could keep him away. Forty minutes of bliss in that snug little
runabout with Miss Bartlett, and the destination might be Hades for all
he cared.
It took but a few minutes to get to the garage and into the machine, and
then they were speeding out the avenue at a pace that would surely have
landed them in the police station had the traffic officer been on his
job.
Quin, doubled up like a jack-knife beside her, was drunk with ecstasy.
His expression when he looked at her resembled that of a particularly
maudlin Airedale. Having her all to himself, with nobody to interfere,
was an almost overwhelming joy. He longed to pour out his soul in
gratitude for all that she had done for him at the hospital; he burned to
tell her that she was the most beautiful and holy thing that had ever
come into his life; but instead he only got his foot tangled in the
steering gear, and muttered something about her "not driving a car bad
for a girl"!
But Eleanor was not concerned with her companion or his silent
transports. She evidently had something of importance on her mind.
"What time is the officers' mess?" she asked.
"About six. Why?"
"I want to catch Captain Phipps before he leaves the hospital."
Quin's glowing bubble burst at the word. She _was_ Captain Phipps' girl,
after all! She had simply pressed him into service in order to get a last
interview with the one officer in the battalion for whom he had no
respect.
The guard challenged them as they swung into the hospital area, but,
seeing Quin's uniform, allowed them to enter. Past the long line of
contagious wards, past the bleak two-story convalescent barracks, and up
to the officers' quarters they swept.
"You are not going in yourself?" Quin protested, as she started to get
out of the car.
"Why not? Haven't I been coming out here all the time?"
"Not at night--not like this."
"Nonsense. What's the harm? I'll only be a minute?"
But Quin had already got out, and was holding the door with a large, firm
hand.
"No," he said humbly but positively; "I'll go and bring him out here."
The unexpected note of authority in his voice nettled her instantly.
"I shall go myself," she insisted petulantly. "Let me out."
For a moment their eyes clashed in frank combat, hers angry and defiant,
his adoring but determined.
"Listen here, Miss Bartlett," he urged. "The men wouldn't understand your
coming out like this, at night, without your uniform. I told Cass I'd
take care of you, and I'm going to do it."
"You mean that you will dare to stop me from getting out of my own car?
Take your hand off that door instantly!"
She actually seized his big, strong fingers with her small gloved ones
and tried to pull them away from the door. But Quin began to laugh, and
in spite of herself she laughed back; and, while the two were childishly
struggling for the possession of the door-handle, Captain Phipps all
unnoticed passed out of the mess-hall, gave a few instructions to his
waiting orderly, and disappeared in the darkness.
CHAPTER 7
By the time they were on their way home, the moon, no longer dodging
behind chimneys, had swaggered into the open. It was a hardened old
highwayman of a moon, red in the face and very full, and it declared with
every flashing beam that it was no respecter of persons, and that it
intended doing all the mischief possible down there in the little world
of men.
Miss Eleanor Bartlett was its first victim. In the white twilight she
forgot the social gap that lay between her and the youth beside her. She
ceased to observe the size and roughness of his hands, but noted instead
the fine breadth of his shoulders. She concerned herself no longer with
his verbal lapses, but responded instead to his glowing confidence that
everybody was as sincere and well intentioned as himself. She discovered
what the more sophisticated Rose had perceived at once--that Quinby
Graham "had a way with him," a beguiling, sympathetic way that made one
tell him things that one really didn't mean to tell any one. Of course,
it was partly due to the fact that he asked such outrageously direct
questions, questions that no one in her most intimate circle of friends
would dare to ask. And the queer part of it was that she was answering
them.
Before she realized it she was launched on a full recital of her woes,
her thwarted ambition to go on the stage, her grandmother's tyranny, the
indignity of being sent back to a school from which she had run away six
months before. She flattered herself that she was stating her case for
the sole purpose of getting an unprejudiced outsider's unbiased opinion;
but from the inflection of her voice and the expressive play of eyes and
lips it was evident that she was deriving some pleasure from the mere act
of thus dramatizing her woes before that wholly sympathetic audience of
one.
It was not until they reached the Eastern Parkway and were speeding
toward the twinkling lights of the city that their little bubble of
intimacy, blown in the moonlight, was shattered by a word.
"Say, Miss Eleanor," Quin blurted out unexpectedly, "do you like me?"
The question, together with the fact that he had dared used her first
name, brought her up with a start.
"Like you?" she repeated in her most conventional tone, "Why, of course.
Whatever made you think I didn't?"
"I didn't think that. But--do you like me enough to let me come to see
you when you come back?"
Now, a romantically wounded hero receiving favors in a hospital is one
thing, and an unknown discharged soldier asking them is quite another.
The very thought of Quinby Graham presenting himself as a caller, and the
comments that would follow made Eleanor shy away from the subject in
alarm.
"Oh, you'll be on the other side of the world by the time I get back,"
she said lightly.
"Not me. Not if there's a chance of seeing you again."
A momentary diversion followed, during which Eleanor fancied there was
something wrong with the radiator and expatiated at length on her
preference for air-cooled cars.
Quin listened patiently. A gentleman more versed in social subtleties
would have accepted the hint and said no more. But he was still laboring
under the error that language was invented to reveal rather than to
conceal thought.
"You didn't answer my question," he said, when Eleanor paused for breath.
"What question?"
"About my coming to see you."
She took shelter in a subterfuge.
"I told you that the family was horrid to everybody that came to see me.
To tell you the truth, I don't think you would be comfortable."
"I'm not afraid of 'em," Quin insisted fatuously. "I'd butt in anywhere
to get to see you."
Eleanor's eyes dropped under his gaze.
"You don't know my grandmother," she said; "and, what is much more
important, she doesn't know you."
"No, but she might like to," urged Quin, with one of his most engaging
smiles. "Old ladies and cats always cotton to me."
Eleanor laughed. It was impossible to be dignified and superior with a
person who didn't know the first rules of the game.
"She might," she admitted; "you never can tell about grandmother. She
really is a wonderful person in many ways, and just as generous and kind
when you are in trouble! But she says the most dreadful things; she's
always hurting people's feelings."
"She couldn't hurt mine, unless I let her," said Quin.
"Oh, yes, she could--you don't know her. But even if she happened to be
nice to you, there's Aunt Isobel."
"What is she like?"
"_Horribly_ good and conscientious, and shocked to death at everything
people do and say. I don't mean that she isn't awfully kind. She'll do
anything for you if you are sick. But Uncle Ranny says her sense of duty
amounts to a vice. Whatever she's doing, she thinks she ought to be doing
something else. And she expects you to be just as good as she is. If she
knew I was out here with a strange man to whom I'd never been
introduced----"
Eleanor was appalled at the effect upon her aunt of such indiscretion.
"Oh, I could handle her all right," said Quin boastfully. "I'd talk
foreign missions to her. Any others?"
"Heaps. There's Aunt Flo and Uncle Ranny. He's a dear, only he's the
black sheep of the family. He says I am a promising gray lamb, which
makes grandmother furious. They all let her twist them round her finger
but me. I won't twist. I never intend to."
"Is that all the family?"
"No; there's Aunt Enid. She is the nicest of them all."
"What is her line?"
"Oh, she's awfully good, too. But she's different from Aunt Isobel. She
was engaged to be married once, and grandmother broke it off because the
man was poor. I don't think she'll ever get over it."
"Do you think she would like me?" Quin anxiously inquired.
"Yes," admitted Eleanor, "I believe she would. She simply adores to mold
people. She doesn't care how many faults they have, if they will just let
her influence them to be better. And she does help loads of people. I am
her one failure. She wouldn't acknowledge it for the world, but I know
that I am the disappointment of Aunt Enid's life."
She gazed gloomily down the long moonlit road and lapsed into one of her
sudden abstractions. A belated compunction seized her for not going
straight home from the Martels', for being late for dinner on her last
night, for going on with her affair with Captain Phipps, when she had
been forbidden to see him.
"Miss Nell," said the persistent voice beside her, "do you know what I
intend to do while you are away?"
"No; what?"
"I'm going to start in to-morrow morning and make love to your whole darn
family!"
Now, if there is one thing Destiny admires in a man, it is his courage to
defy her. She relentlessly crushes the supine spirit who acquiesces, but
to him who snaps his fingers in her face she often extends a helping
hand. In this case she did not make Quin wait until the morrow to begin
his colossal undertaking. By means of a humble tack that lay in the way
of the speeding automobile, she at once set in motion the series of
events that were to determine his future life.
By the time the puncture was repaired and they were again on their way,
it was half-past seven and all hope of a timely arrival was abandoned. As
they slowed up at the Bartlett house, their uneasiness was increased by
the fact that lights were streaming from every window and the front door
was standing open.
"Is that the doctor?" an excited voice called to them from the porch.
"No," called back Eleanor, scrambling out of the car. "What is the
matter?"
No answer being received, she clutched Quin's sleeve nervously.
"Something has happened! Look, the front hall is full of people. Oh, I'm
afraid to go in! I----"
"Steady on!" said Quin, with a firm grip on her elbow as he marched her
up the steps and into the hall.
Everything was in confusion. People were hurrying to and fro, doors were
slamming, excited voices were asking questions and not waiting for
answers. "What's Dr. Snowden's telephone number?" "Can't they get another
doctor?" "Has somebody sent for Randolph?" "Are they going to try to move
her?" everybody demanded of everybody else.
Eleanor pushed through the crowd until she reached the foot of the steps.
There, lying on the floor, with her towering white pompadour crushed
ignominiously against the newel-post, lay the one person in the house who
could have brought prompt order out of the chaos. On one side of her
knelt Miss Enid frantically applying smelling salts, while on the other
stood Miss Isobel futilely wringing her hands and imploring some one to
go for a minister.
Suddenly the buzz of excited talk ceased. Madam was returning to
consciousness. She groaned heavily, then opened one eye.
"What's the matter?" she demanded feebly. "What's all this fuss about?"
"You fell down the steps, mother. Don't get excited; don't try to move."
But Madam had already tried, with the result that she fell back with a
sharp cry of pain.
"Oh, my leg, my leg!" she groaned. "What are you all standing around like
fools for? Why don't you send Tom for the doctor?"
"Tom isn't with us any more, dearest," said Aunt Enid with trembling
reassurance, "and Dr. Snowden is out of town. But we are trying to get
Dr. Bean."
"I won't have Bean," Madam declared, clinching her jaw with pain. "I'll
send him away if he comes."
"Dr. Vaughn, then?" suggested Miss Enid tenderly.
"Vaughn nothing! Send for Rawlins. He's an old stick, but he'll do till
Dr. Snowden gets here."
"But, mother," protested Miss Isobel. "Dr. Rawlins lives in the country;
he can't get here for half an hour."
"Do as I tell you and stop arguing," commanded Madam. "Has anybody
telephoned Ranny?"
The two sisters exchanged significant glances.
"Their line is busy," said Miss Enid soothingly. "We will get him soon."
"I want to be taken upstairs," announced Madam; "I want to be put in my
own bed."
A buzz of protest met this suggestion, and a small, nervous man in
clerical garb, who had just arrived, came forward to add his voice to the
rest.
Madam glared at him savagely. "There'll be plenty of time for parsons
when the doctors get through with me," she said. "Tell some of those
able-bodied men back there to come here and take me upstairs."
Quin, who had been standing in the background looking down at the
formidable old lady, promptly came forward.
"I'll take you up," he said. "Which leg is hurt?"
The old lady turned her head and looked up at him. The note of confidence
in his voice had evidently appealed to her.
"It's my left leg. I think it's broken just above the knee."
"Do you want me to put a splint on it?"
"Are you a doctor?"
"No, ma'am; but I can fix it so's it won't hurt you so bad when we move
you," Quin replied.
"How do you know you can?"
Quin ran his fingers through his hair and smiled.
"Well, I wasn't with the Ambulance Corps for six months in France for
nothing."
Madam eyed him keenly for a moment; then, "Go ahead," she commanded.
A chorus of protests from the surrounding group only deepened her
determination.
"It's _my_ leg," she said irritably. "If he knows how to splint it, let
him do it. I want to be taken upstairs."
It is difficult enough to apply a splint properly under favorable
circumstances; but when one has only an umbrella and table napkins to
work with, and is hemmed in by a doubtful and at times protesting
audience, it becomes well-nigh impossible.
Quin worked slowly and awkwardly, putting the bones as nearly as possible
in position and then binding them firmly in place. He paid no more
attention to the agitated comments of those about him than he had paid to
the whizzing bullets when he rendered first aid to a fallen comrade in No
Man's Land.
During the painful operation Madam lay with rigid jaws and clenched
fists. Small beads of perspiration gathered on her forehead and her lips
were white. Now and then she flinched violently, but only once did she
speak, and that was when Miss Enid held the smelling salts too close to
her high-bridged nose.
"Haven't I got enough to stand without that?" she sputtered, knocking the
bottle into the air and sending the contents flying over the polished
floor.
When Quin finished he looked at her with frank admiration.
"You got nerve, all right," he said; then he added gently: "Don't you
worry about getting upstairs; it won't hurt you much now."
"You stay and help," said Madam peremptorily.
"Sure," said Quin.
It was not until she was in her own bed, and word had come that Dr.
Rawlins was on his way, that she would let Quin go, and even then she
called him back.
"You! Soldier! Come here," was the faint edict from the canopied bed. She
was getting very weak from the pain, and her words came in gasps. "Do you
know where--the--Aristo Apartments are?"
"No, but I can find out," said Quin.
"I want you--to--go for my son--Mr. Randolph Bartlett. If he's not at
home--you find him. I'll make it--worth your while."
"I'll find him," Quin said, with a reassuring pat on her wrinkled hand.
As he went into the hall, Eleanor slipped out of the adjoining room and
followed him silently down the stairs. She did not speak until they were
at the front door, and even then took the precaution of stepping outside.
"I just wanted to come down and say good-by," she said.
"But you surely won't be going now?" said Quin hopefully.
"Yes, I'm to go. Grandmother has just told Aunt Isobel that everything is
to be carried out exactly as she planned it. But I wish they'd let me
stay and help. Poor granny!"
Her eyes brimmed with ready tears.
"She'll pull through all right," said Quin, to whom the tear-dimmed eyes
of youth were more unnerving than age's broken bones. "Don't worry, Miss
Eleanor, please. What time does your train go in the morning?"
"Ten-thirty."
"I'll be there at ten."
Eleanor brushed her tears away quickly. "No, no--you mustn't," she said
in quick alarm. "They don't know that we ever saw each other before. They
think you just happened to be passing and ran in to help. Oh, I don't
want to give them any more trouble. Promise me not to come!"
"Well, when you come back, then?"
"Yes, yes, when I come back," she whispered hurriedly. Then she put out
her hand impulsively. "I think you've been perfectly splendid to-night.
Good-by."
For a moment she stood there, her dainty figure silhouetted against the
bright doorway, with the light shining through her soft hair giving her
an undeserved halo. Then she was gone, leaving him on the steps in the
moonlight, tenderly contemplating the hand that had just held hers.
CHAPTER 8
It was well that Quin had an errand to perform that night. His emotions,
which had been accumulating compound interest since five o'clock,
demanded an outlet in immediate action. He had not the faintest idea
where the Aristo Apartments might be; but, wherever they were, he meant
to find them. Consultation with a telephone book at the corner drug-store
sent him across the city to a newer and more fashionable residence
quarter. As he left the street-car at the corner indicated, he asked a
man who was just dismounting from a taxi-cab for further information.
When the dapper gentleman, thus addressed, turned toward him, it was
evident that he had dined not wisely but too well. He was at that mellow
stage that radiates affection, and, having bidden a loving farewell to
the taxi driver, he now linked his arm in Quin's and repeated gaily:
"'Risto? Of course I can find it for you, if it's where it was this
morning! Always make a point of helping a man that's worse off than I am.
Always help a sholdier, anyhow. Take my arm, old chap. Take my cane, too.
I'll help you."
Thus assisted and assisting, Quin good-humoredly allowed himself to be
conducted in a zigzag course to the imposing doorway of a large
apartment-house across the street.
"Forgive me f' taking you up stairway," apologized the affable gentleman.
"Mustn't let elevator boy see you in this condishun. Take you up to my
apartment. Put you bed in m' own room. Got to take care sholdiers."
At the second floor Quin tried to disentangle himself from his new-found
protector.
"You can find your way home now, partner," he said. "I got to go down and
find out which floor my party lives on."
But his companion held him tight.
"No, my boy! Mustn't go out again to-night. M.P.'s'll catch you. I'll get
you to bed without anybody knowing. Mustn't 'sturb my wife, though.
Mustn't make any noise." And, adding force to persuasion, he got his arms
around Quin and backed him so suddenly against the wall that they both
took an unexpected seat on the floor.
At this inopportune moment a door opened and a delicate blonde lady in a
pink kimono, followed by an inquisitive poodle, peered anxiously out.
"'S perfectly all right, darling!" reassured the nethermost figure
blithely. "Sholdier friend's had a little too much champagne. Bringing
him in so's won't be 'rested. Nicest kind of chap. Perfectly harmless!"
Quin scrambled to his feet and exchanged an understanding look with the
lady in the doorway.
"I found him down at the corner. Does he belong here?" he asked. And,
upon being informed sorrowfully that he did, he added obligingly, "Don't
you want me to bring him in for you?"
"Will you?" said the lady in grateful agitation. "The maids are both out,
and I can't handle him by myself. Would you mind bringing him into his
bedroom?"
Quin succeeded in detaching an affectionate arm from his right leg and,
getting his patient up, piloted him into the apartment.
"I'd just as leave put him to bed for you if you like?" he offered,
noting the nervousness of the lady, who was fluttering about like a
distracted butterfly.
"Oh, would you?" she asked. "It would help me immensely. If he isn't put
to bed he is sure to want to go out again."
"Shure to!" heartily agreed the object of their solicitude. "Leave him to
me, darling. I'll hide his uniform so's he can't go out. Be a good girl,
run along--I'll take care of him."
Thus left to each other, a satisfactory compromise was effected by which
the host agreed to be undressed and put to bed, provided Quin would later
submit to the same treatment. It was not the first time Quin had thus
assisted a brother in misfortune, but he had never before had to do with
gold buttons and jeweled cuff-links, to say nothing of silk underwear and
sky-blue pajamas. Being on the eve of adopting civilian clothes for the
first time in two years, he took a lively interest in every detail of his
patient's attire, from the modish cut of his coat to the smart pattern of
his necktie.
The bibulous one, who up to the present had regarded the affair as
humorous, now began to be lachrymose, and by the time Quin got him into
the rose-draped bed he was in a state of deep dejection.
"My mother loves me," he assured Quin tearfully. "Gives me everything. I
don't mean to be ungrateful. But I can't go on in the firm. Bangs is
dishonest, but she won't believe it. She thinks I don't know. They both
think I'm a cipher. I _am_ a cipher. But they've made me one. Get so
discouraged, then go break over like this. Promised Flo never would take
another drink. But it's no use. Can't help myself. I'm done for. Just a
cipher, a cipher, a ci----"
Quin standing by the bed waiting for him to get through adding noughts to
his opinion of himself, suddenly leaned forward and examined the picture
that hung above the table. It was of an imperial old lady in black
velvet, with a string of pearls about her throat and a tiara on her
towering white pompadour. His glance swept from the photograph to the
flushed face with the tragic eyes on the pillow, and he seemed to hear a
querulous old voice repeating: "Ranny--I want Ranny. Why don't they send
for Ranny?"
With two strides he was at the door.
"Are you Mrs. Randolph Bartlett?" he asked of the lady who was nervously
pacing the hall.
"Yes; why?"
"Because they sent me after him. It's his mother, you see--she's hurt."
"Madam Bartlett? What's happened?"
"She fell down the steps and broke her leg."
"How terrible! But she mustn't know about him," cried Mrs. Ranny in
instant alarm. "It always makes her furious when he breaks over; and yet,
she is to blame--she drives him to it."
"How do you mean?" asked Quin, plunging into the situation with his usual
temerity.
"I mean that she has dominated him, soul and body, ever since he was
born!" cried Mrs. Ranny passionately. "She has forced him to stay in the
business when every detail of it is distasteful to him. His life is a
perfect hell there under Mr. Bangs. He ought to have an outdoor life. He
loves animals--he ought to be on a ranch." She pulled herself up with an
effort. "Forgive me for going into all this before a stranger, but I am
almost beside myself. Of course I am sorry for Madam Bartlett, but what
can I do? You can see for yourself that my husband is in no condition to
go to her."
"Can't you say he's sick?"
"She wouldn't believe it. She's suspicious of everything I do and say. Do
you _have_ to take back an answer?"
"I told the old lady I'd find him for her. You see, I'm a--sort of a
friend of Miss Eleanor's."
Under ordinary circumstances Mrs. Ranny would have been the last to
accept this without an explanation; but there were too many other
problems pressing for her to worry about this one.
"I wonder how it would do," she said, "for you to telephone that we are
both out of town for the night, spending the week-end in the country?"
"I guess one lie is as good as another," said Quin ruefully. He was
getting involved deeper than he liked, but there seemed no other way out.
"I'll telephone from the drug-store. Anything else I can do for you?"
"You have been so kind, I hate to ask another favor."
"Let's have it," said Quin.
"Would you by any chance have time to leave a package of papers at
Bartlett & Bangs' for me the first thing in the morning? Mr. Bangs has
been telephoning me about them all day, and I've been nearly distracted,
because my husband had them in his pocket and I did not know where he
was."
"Wait a minute," said Quin, going back into the bedroom. "Are these the
ones?"
"Yes. They must be very important; that's why I am afraid to intrust them
to my maid. Be sure to take them to Mr. Bangs himself, and if he asks any
questions----" She caught her trembling lip between her teeth and tried
to force back the tears.
"Don't you worry!" cried Quin. "I'll make it all right with him. You
drink a glass of hot milk or something, and go to bed."
She looked up at him gratefully. "I don't know your name," she said, "but
I certainly appreciate your kindness to me to-night. I wish you would
come back some time and let us thank you----"
"Oh, that's all o.k.," said Quin, turning to the door in sudden
embarrassment. Then he discovered that he was trying to shake hands and
hold his cap with the same hand, and in his confusion he slipped on the
hard-wood floor, and achieved an exit that was scarcely more dignified
than his entrance a half-hour before.
CHAPTER 9
The news that Quin had broken through the Bartlett barrage afforded great
amusement to the Martels at breakfast next morning. Of course they were
sympathetic over Madam Bartlett's accident--the Martels' sympathy was
always on tap for friend or foe,--but that did not interfere with a frank
enjoyment of Quin's spirited account of her high-handed treatment of the
family, especially the incident of the smelling salts.
"She ought to belong to the Tank Brigade," said Rose. "'Treat 'em rough'
is her motto."
"I like the old girl, though," said Quin disrespectfully, "she's got so
much pep. And talk about your nerve! You should have seen her set her jaw
when I put the splint on!"
"Is the house very grand?" asked Myrna, hungering for luxurious details.
"No," Cass broke in scornfully. "I been in the hall twice. It looks like
a museum--big pictures and statuary, and everything dark and gloomy."
"Yes, and Miss Isobel and Miss Enid are the mummies," added Rose. "The
only nice one in the bunch besides Nell is Mr. Ranny, and he is hardly
ever sober."
"Well, I wouldn't be, either," said Cass, "if I'd been held down like he
has all his life. The Bartlett estate was left in trust to the old lady,
and she holds the purse-strings and has the say-so about everything."
Quin refrained from mentioning the fact that he had also met Mr. Ranny.
It was a point to his credit, for the story would have been received with
hilarity, and he particularly enjoyed making Rose laugh.
The entrance of Mr. Martel put an end to the discussion of the Bartletts.
Bitter as was his animosity toward the old lady, he would permit no
disrespect to be shown her or hers in his presence. In the garish light
of day he looked a trifle less imposing than he had on New Year's eve in
the firelight. His long white hair hung straight and dry about his face;
baggy wrinkles sagged under his eyes and under his chin. The shoulders
that once proudly carried Mark Antony's shining armor now supported a
faded velvet breakfast jacket that showed its original color only in
patches. But even in the intimacy of the breakfast hour Papa Claude
preserved his air of distinction, the gracious condescension of a
temporary sojourner in an environment from which he expected at any
moment to take flight.
When Cass had gone to work and the girls were busy cleaning up the
breakfast dishes, he linked his arm in Quin's and drew him into the
living-room.
"I have never allowed myself to submit to the tyranny of time!" he said.
"The wine of living should be tasted slowly. Pull up a chair, my boy; I
want to talk to you. You don't happen to have a cigar about you, do you?"
"Yes, sir. Here are two. Take 'em both. I got to cut out smoking; it
makes me cough."
Mr. Martel, protesting and accepting at the same time, sank into his
large chair and bade Quin pull up a rocker. In the Martels' living-room
all the chairs were rockers; so, in fact, were the table and the sofa,
owing to missing castors.
"I am going to talk to you quite confidentially," began Mr. Martel,
giving himself up to the enjoyment of the hour. "I am going to tell you
of a new and fascinating adventure upon which I am about to embark. You
have doubtless heard me speak of a very wealthy and talented young friend
of mine--Mr. Harold Phipps?"
Quin admitted without enthusiasm that he had, and that he also knew him.
"Well, Mr. Phipps,--or Captain, as you probably know him,--after a short
medical career has found it so totally distasteful that he is wisely
returning to an earlier love. As soon as he gets out of the army he and I
are going to collaborate on a play. Of course I have technic at my
finger-tips. Construction, dramatic suspense, climax are second nature to
me. But I confess I have a fatal handicap, one that has doubtless cost me
my place at the head of American dramatists to-day. I have never been
able to achieve colloquial dialogue! My style is too finished, you
understand, my diction too perfect. Manager after manager has been on the
verge of accepting a play, and been deterred solely on account of this
too literary quality. I suffer from the excess of my virtue; you see?"
Quin did not see. Mr. Martel's words conveyed but the vaguest meaning to
him. But it flattered his vanity to be the recipient of such a great
man's confidence.
"Well, here's my point," continued his host impressively. "Mr. Phipps
knows nothing of technic, of construction; but he has a sense for
character and dialogue that amounts to genius. Now, suppose I construct a
great plot, and he supplies great dialogue? What will be the inevitable
result? A masterpiece, a little modern masterpiece!"
Mr. Martel, soaring on the wings of his imagination, failed to observe
that his listener was not following.
"Does--does Miss Eleanor know about all this?" Quin asked.
"Alas, no. I had no opportunity to tell her. Ah, Mr. Graham, I must
confess, it hurts me, it hurts me here,"--he indicated a grease-spot just
below his vest pocket,--"to be separated from that dear child just when
she needs me most. She should be already embarked in her great career.
Ellen Terry, Bernhardt, Rachel, all began their training very early. If
she had been left to me she would be behind the footlights by now."
"They'll never stand for her going on the stage," said Quin
authoritatively. It was astonishing how intimate he felt with the
Bartletts since he had put two of them to bed.
"Ah, my friend," said Mr. Martel, shaking his head and smiling, "what can
be avoided whose end is purposed by the mighty gods? Eleanor will follow
her destiny. She has the temperament, the voice, the figure--a trifle
small, I grant you, but lithe, graceful, pliant as a reed."
"Yes, I know what you mean," Quin agreed ardently; "you can tell that in
her dancing."
"But more than all, she has the great ambition, the consuming desire for
self-expression, for----"
Quin's face clouded slightly and he again lost the thread of the
discourse.
"Lots of girls are stage-struck," he said presently, breaking in on Mr.
Martel's rhapsody. "Miss Eleanor's young yet. Don't you believe she will
get over it?"
"Young! Why, Mary Anderson was playing _Meg Merrilies_ when she was two
years younger than Eleanor. I tell you, Quinby--you'll forgive my
addressing you thus--I tell you, the girl will never get over it. She has
inherited the histrionic gift from her mother--from me. The Bartletts
have given her money, education, social position; but it remained for
me--the despised Claude Martel--to give her the soul of an artist. And
mark me,"--he paused effectively with a lifted forefinger,--"it will be
Claude Martel who gives her her heart's desire. For years I have fostered
in her a love for the drama. I have taken her to see great plays. I have
taught her to read great lines, and above all I have fed her ambition.
The time was limited--a night here, a day there; but I planted a seed
they cannot kill. It has grown, it will flower; no one can stop it now."
The subject was one upon which Quin would fain have discoursed
indefinitely, but a glance at his watch reminded him that the business of
the day did not admit of further delay. He not only had an important
errand to perform, but he must look for work. His exchequer, as usual,
was very low and the need for replenishing it was imperative.
When he reached Bartlett & Bangs' on the outskirts of the city, the big
manufacturing plant was ominously still. The only sign of life about the
place was at the wide entrance doors at the end of the yards, where a
group of men were talking and gesticulating excitedly.
"What's the shindy?" Quin asked a bystander.
"Union men trying to keep scabs from going to work," answered his
informant. "Somebody's fixin' to get hurt there in about two minutes."
Quin, to whom a scrap was always a pleasant diversion, ran forward and
craned his neck to see what was happening. Speeches were being made, hot
impassioned speeches, now in favor of the union, now against it, and
every moment the excitement increased. Quin listened with absorbed
attention, trying to get the straight of the matter.
Just now a sickly-looking man, with a piece of red flannel tied around
his throat, was standing on the steps, making a futile effort against the
noise to explain his return to work.
"I can't let 'em _starve_," he kept repeating in a hoarse, apologetic
voice. "When a man's got a sick wife and eight children, he ain't able to
do as he likes. I don't want to give in no more 'n you-all do. Neither
does Jim here, nor Tom Dawes. But what can we do?"
"Do like the rest of us!" shouted some one in the crowd, "Stick it out!
Learn 'em a lesson. They can't run their bloomin' old plant without us.
Pull him down off them steps, boys!"
"Naw, you don't!" cried another man, seizing a stick and jumping at the
steps. "We got a right to do as we like, same as you! Come on up, Tom
Dawes! We ain't going to let our families in for the Charity
Organization."
Quick cries of "Traitor!" "Scab!" "Pull 'em down!" were succeeded by a
lively scrimmage in which there was a rush for the steps.
Quin, from his place at the edge of the crowd, saw a dozen men surround
three. He saw the man with the red rag about his throat put up a feeble
defense against two assailants. Then he ceased to see and began only to
feel. Whatever the row was about, they weren't fighting fairly, and his
blood began to rise. He stood it as long as he could; then, with a cry of
protest, he plunged through the crowd. In his sternest top-sergeant voice
he issued orders, and enforced them with a brawny fist that was used to
handling men. A moment later he dragged a limp victim from under the
struggling group.
This unexpected interruption by an unknown man in uniform, together with
the appearance of a stern-faced man in spectacles at an upper window, had
an instant effect on the crowd. The strikers began to slink out of the
yards, while the three assaulted men dusted their clothes and entered the
factory.
Quin followed them in, and upon inquiring for the office was directed to
the second floor, where he followed devious ways until he reached the
door of a large room filled with desks in rows, at each of which sat a
clerk.
"Mr. Bangs?" repeated a red-nosed girl, in answer to his inquiry. "Got an
appointment?"
"No," said Quin; "but I've got a parcel that's to be delivered in
person."
The red-nosed one thereupon consulted the man at the next desk, and,
after some colloquy, conducted Quin to one of the small rooms at the rear
of the large one.
The next moment Quin found himself face to face with the stern-looking
personage whose mere appearance at the window a few minutes before had
had such a subduing effect on the crowd below.
As he listened to Quin's message he looked at him narrowly and
suspiciously with piercing black eyes that seemed intent on seeking out
the weakest spot of whatever they rested upon.
"When did Mr. Bartlett give you these letters?" he asked in a tone as
cold as the tinkle of ice against glass.
"I got 'em last night, sir."
"Where?"
"At his house, when I went to carry word about his mother's accident."
"Close that door back of you," said Mr. Bangs, with a jerk of his head;
then he went on, "So Mr. Bartlett was at home when you reached there last
night?"
"Oh, _yes_, sir!" Quin assured him with an emphasis that implied Mr.
Randolph Bartlett's unfailing presence at his own fireside on every
Sabbath evening.
"That is strange," Mr. Bangs commented dryly. "Miss Enid Bartlett
telephoned an hour ago that her brother and his wife were out of the
city."
Quin was visibly embarrassed. He was not used to treading the quicksands
of duplicity, and he felt himself sinking.
"Young man," said Mr. Bangs sternly, "I am inclined to think you are
deceiving me."
"No," said Quin with spirit, "I haven't deceived you; but I did lie to
Miss Eleanor's aunt over the telephone."
"What was your object?"
"Well, I couldn't tell her Mr. Bartlett was stewed, could I?"
Mr. Bangs gave a short, contemptuous laugh. "As I thought," he said.
"That will do."
But Quin had no intention of going until he had spoken a word in his own
behalf. The idea had just occurred to him that by obtaining a position
with Bartlett & Bangs he could add another link to the chain that was to
bind him to Eleanor.
"You don't happen to have a job for me?" he inquired of the back of Mr.
Bangs's bald, dome-like head.
"A job?" repeated Mr. Bangs, glancing over his shoulder at Quin's
uniform.
"Yes, sir. I'm out of the service now."
"What can you do?"
Quin looked at him quizzically. "I can receive and obey the orders of the
commanding officer," he said.
Mr. Bangs, being humor-proof, evidently considered this impertinent, and
repeated his question sharply.
"Oh, I'll do anything," said Quin rashly. "Soldiers can't be choosers
these days."
Mr. Bangs cast a critical eye on his strong, well built frame:
"We might use you in the factory," he said indifferently; "we need all
the strike-breakers we can get."
Quin's face fell. "I don't know about that," he said slowly. "I haven't
made up my mind yet about this union business."
"I thought you were helping the union men in the yard just now."
"I was helping that little Irishman that was getting the life choked out
of him."
Mr. Bangs's mouth became a hard, straight line.
"Then I take it you sympathize with the strikers?"
"I don't know whether I do or not," Quin declared stoutly. "I don't know
anything about it. But one thing's certain--I'm not going to take another
fellow's job, when he's holding out for better conditions, until I know
whether those better conditions are due him or not."
Mr. Bangs's fish eyes regarded him with glittering disfavor.
"Perhaps you would prefer an office job?" he suggested with cold
insolence. "I need some one to brush out in the morning and to wash
windows when necessary."
The erstwhile hero of the Sixth Field Artillery felt his heart thumping
madly under his distinguished-conduct medal; but he had declared that he
would accept any kind of work, and he was determined not to have his
bluff called.
"All right, sir," he said gamely; "I'll start at that if it will lead to
something better."
"That rests entirely with you," said Mr. Bangs. "Report for work in the
morning."
Quin got out of the office with a hot head, cold hands, and a terrible
sinking of the heart. He had forged the first link in his chain--he was
an employee of the great Bartlett & Bangs Company; but the gap between
himself and Eleanor seemed suddenly to have widened to infinity.
CHAPTER 10
If the window-washing did not become an actuality, it was due to the
weather rather than to any clemency on the part of Mr. Bangs. He seemed
bent upon testing Quin's mettle, and required tasks of him that only a
man used to the discipline of the army would have performed.
Quin, on his part, carried out instructions with a thoroughness and
dispatch that upset the entire office force. He had been told to clean
things up, and he took an unholy joy in interpreting the order in
military terms. Never before had there been such a drastic overhauling of
the premises. He did not stop at cleaning up; he insisted upon things
being kept clean and orderly. In a short time he had instituted reforms
that broke the traditions of half a century.
"Who moved my desk out like this?" thundered Mr. Bangs on the second day
after Quin's arrival.
"I did, sir," said Quin. "You can get a much better light here, and no
draught from the door."
"Well, when I want my desk moved I will inform you," said Mr. Bangs.
But a day's trial of the new arrangement proved so satisfactory that the
desk remained in its new position.
Other innovations met with less favor. The clerks in the outer office
objected to the windows being kept down from the top, and Mr. Bangs was
constantly annoyed when he found that his papers were disturbed by a
daily dusting and sorting. Quin met the complaints and rebuffs with easy
good humor, and went straight on with his business. The moment his
energies were dammed at one point, they burst forth with fresh vigor at
another.
The only object about the office that was left undisturbed was Minerva, a
large black cat which the stenographer told him belonged to Mr. Randolph
Bartlett. Quin was hopelessly committed to cats in general, and to black
cats in particular, and the fact that this one met with Mr. Bangs's
marked disfavor made him champion her cause at once. One noon hour, in
his first week, he was sitting alone in the inner office, scratching
Minerva's head in the very spot behind the ear where a cat most likes to
be scratched, when a lively voice from the doorway demanded:
"Well, young man, what do you mean by making love to my cat in my
absence?"
"She flirted with me first," said Quin. Then he took a second look at the
stranger and got up smiling. "You are Mr. Bartlett, I believe?"
"Yes. Are you waiting for Mr. Bangs?"
"No, sir," said Quin; "he's waiting for me. I'm to let him know as soon
as you come in. I am the new office-boy."
He grinned down on the shorter man, who in his turn laughed outright.
"Office-boy? What nonsense! Where have I seen you before? What is your
name?"
"Quinby Graham, sir."
"Drop the sir, for heaven's sake. I'm no officer. Where in the dickens
have I met you? Oh! wait a second, I've got it! Sunday night. We were out
somewhere together----"
"Hold on there," said Quin. "_You_ were out together, but I was out by
myself. We met at your door."
"So you were the chap that played the good Samaritan? Well, it was damned
clever of you, old man. I'm glad of a chance to thank you. I hadn't
touched a drop for six weeks before that, but you see----"
Mr. Bangs's metallic voice was heard in the outer office, and the two
younger men started.
"You bet I see!" said Quin sympathetically as he hurried out to inform
the senior member of the firm that the junior member awaited his
pleasure.
What happened at that interview was recounted to him by Miss Leaks, the
little drab-colored stenographer, who had returned from lunch when the
storm was at its height.
"It's a wonder Mr. Ranny don't kill that old man for the way he sneers at
him," she said indignantly to Quin, "Why, _I_ wouldn't take off him what
Mr. Ranny does! But then, what can he do? His mother keeps him here for a
mouth-piece for her, and Mr. Bangs knows it. It's no wonder he drinks,
hitched up to a cantankerous old hyena like that. He never can stand up
for himself, but he stood up for you all right."
"For me?" repeated Quin. "Where did I come in?"
"Why, he said it was a shame for a man like you to be doing the work you
are doing, and that he for one wouldn't stand it. He talked right up to
the boss about patriotism and our duty to the returned soldier, until he
made the old tyrant look like ten cents! And then he come right out and
said if Mr. Bangs couldn't offer you anything better he could."
"What did he say to that?" asked Quin.
"He curled up his lip and asked Mr. Ranny why he didn't engage you for a
private secretary, and if you'll believe me Mr. Ranny looked him straight
in the eye and said it was a good idea, and that he would."
"A private secretary!" Quin exclaimed. "But I don't know a blooming thing
about stenography or typewriting."
"Don't you let on," advised Miss Leaks. "Mr. Ranny doesn't have enough
work to amount to anything, and he's so tickled at carrying his point
that he won't be particular. I can teach you how to take dictation and
use the typewriter."
The following week found Quin installed in the smaller of the two private
offices, with a title that in no way covered the duties he was called
upon to perform. To be sure, he got Mr. Ranny's small affairs into
systematic running order, and, under Miss Leaks's efficient instruction,
was soon able slowly but accurately to hammer out the necessary letters
on the typewriter. He was even able at times to help Mr. Chester, the
melancholy bookkeeper whom the other clerks called "Fanny."
Through working with figures all his life Mr. Chester had come to
resemble one. With his lean body and drooping oval head, he was not
unlike the figure nine, an analogy that might be continued by saying that
nine is the highest degree a bachelor number can achieve, the figures
after that going in couples. It was an open secret that the tragedy of
Mr. Chester's uneventful life lay in that simple fact.
In addition to Quin's heterogeneous duties at the office, he was
frequently pressed into service for more personal uses. When Mr. Ranny
failed to put in an appearance, he was invariably dispatched to find him,
and was often able to handle the situation in a way that was a great
relief to all concerned.
One day, after he had been with the firm several weeks, he was dispatched
with a budget of papers for Madam Bartlett to sign. It was the first time
he had entered the house since the night of the accident, and as he stood
in the front hall waiting instructions, he looked about him curiously.
The lower floor had been "done" in peacock blue and gold when Miss Enid
made her début twenty years before, and it had never been undone. An
embossed dado and an even more embossed frieze encircled the walls, and
the ceiling was a complicated mosaic of color and design. The
stiff-backed chairs and massive sofas were apparently committed for life
to linen strait-jackets. Heavy velvet curtains shut out the light and a
faint smell of coal soot permeated the air. Over the hall fireplace hung
a large portrait of Madam Bartlett, just inside the drawing-room gleamed
a marble bust of her, and two long pier-glasses kept repeating the image
of her until she dominated every nook and corner of the place.
But Quin saw little of all this. To him the house was simply a background
for images of Eleanor: Eleanor coming down the broad stairs in her blue
and gray costume; Eleanor tripping through the hall in her Red Cross
uniform; Eleanor standing in the doorway in the moonlight, telling him
how wonderful he was.
He had written her exactly ten letters since her departure, but only two
had been dispatched, and by a fatal error these two were identical. After
a superhuman effort to couch his burning thoughts in sufficiently cool
terms, he had achieved a partially successful result; but, discovering
after addressing the envelope that he had misspelled two words, he
laboriously made another copy, addressed a second envelope, then
inadvertently mailed both.
He had received such a scoffing note in reply that his ears tingled even
now as he thought of it. It was only when he recalled the postscript that
he found consolation. "How funny that you should get a position at
Bartlett & Bangs's," she had written. "If you should happen to meet any
member of my family, for heaven's sake don't mention my name. They might
link you up with the Hawaiian Garden, or the trip to the camp that night
grandmother was hurt. Just let our friendship be a little secret between
you and me."
"'You and me,'" Quin repeated the words softly to himself, as he stood
there among the objects made sacred by her one-time presence.
"Madam Bartlett wishes you to come upstairs and explain the papers before
she signs them," said a woman in nurse's uniform from the stair landing,
and, cap in hand, Quin followed her up the steps.
At the open door of the large front room he paused. Lying in royal state
in a huge four-poster bed was Madam Bartlett, resplendent in a purple
robe, with her hair dressed in its usual elaborate style, and in her ears
pearls that, Quin afterward assured the Martels, looked like moth-balls.
"You go on out of here and stay until I ring for you," she snapped at the
nurse; then she squinted her eyes and looked at Quin. She did not put on
her eye-glasses; they were reserved for feminine audiences exclusively.
"What do they mean by sending me this jumble of stuff?" she demanded,
indicating the papers strewn on the silk coverlid. "How do they expect me
to know what they are all about?"
"They don't," said Quin reassuringly, coming forward; "they sent me to
tell you."
"And who are you, pray?"
"I am Mr. Randolph's er--er--secretary."
For the life of him he could not get through it without a grin, and to
his relief the old lady's lips also twitched.
"Much need he had for a secretary!" she said, then added shrewdly:
"Aren't you the soldier that put the splint on my leg?"
Quin modestly acknowledged that he was.
"It was a mighty poor job," said Madam, "but I guess it was better than
nothing."
"How's the leg coming on?" inquired Quin affably.
"It's not coming on at all," Madam said. "If I listen to those fool
doctors it's coming off."
Quin shook his head in emphatic disapproval.
"Don't you listen to 'em," he advised earnestly.
"Doctors don't know everything! Why, they told a fellow out at the
hospital that his arm would have to come off at the shoulder. He lit out
over the hill, bath-robe and all, for his home town, and got six other
doctors to sign a paper saying he didn't need an amputation. He got back
in twenty-four hours, was tried for being A. W. O. L., and is serving his
time in the prison ward to-day. But he's still got his arm all right."
"Good for him!" said Madam heartily; then, recalling the business in
hand, she added peevishly: "Well, stop talking now and explain these
papers."
Quin went over them several times with great patience, and then held the
ink-well while she tremblingly signed her name.
"Kinder awkward doing things on your back," he said sympathetically, as
she sank back exhausted.
"Awkward? It's torture. The cast is bad enough in itself; but having to
lie in one position like this makes me sore all over."
"You don't have to tell me," said Quin, easing up the bed-clothes with
quite a professional air; "I was six months on my back. But there's no
sense in keeping you like this. Why don't they rig you up a pulley, so's
you can change the position of your body without disturbing your leg?"
"How do you mean?"
"Like this," said Quin, taking a paper-knife and a couple of spoons from
the table and demonstrating his point.
Madam listened with close attention, and so absorbed were she and Quin
that neither of them were conscious of Miss Isobel's entrance until they
heard her feeble protest:
"I would not dare try anything like that without consulting Dr. Rawlins."
"Nobody wants you to dare anything," flared out her mother. "What the boy
says sounds sensible. He says he has fixed them for the soldiers at the
hospital. I want him to fix one for me."
"When shall I come?" Quin asked.
"Come nothing. You'll stay and do it now. Telephone the factory that I am
keeping you here for the morning. Isobel, order him whatever he needs.
And now get out of here, both of you; I want to take a nap."
Thus it was that, an hour later, the new colored butler was carrying the
papers back to Bartlett & Bangs's, and Mr. Randolph's new secretary was
sawing wood in Madam Bartlett's cellar. It was a humble beginning, but he
whistled jubilantly as he worked. Already he saw himself climbing, by
brilliant and spectacular deeds, to a dazzling pinnacle of security in
the family's esteem.
CHAPTER 11
Madam Bartlett's accident had far-reaching results. For fifty years her
firm hand had brooked no slightest interference with the family
steering-wheel, and now that it was removed the household machinery came
to a standstill. She who had "ridden the whirlwind and directed the
storm" now found herself ignominiously laid low. Instead of rising with
the dawn, primed for battle in club committee, business conclave, or
family council, she lay on her back in a darkened room, a prisoner to
pain. The only vent she had for her pent-up energy was in hourly tirades
against her daughters for their inefficiency, the nurses for their
incompetency, the doctors for their lack of skill, and the servants for
their disobedience.
The one person who, in any particular, found favor with her these days
was her son's new secretary. Every Saturday, when Quinby Graham stopped
on his way to the bank with various papers for her to sign, he was plied
with questions and intrusted with various commissions. A top sergeant was
evidently just what Madam had been looking for all her life--one trained
to receive orders and execute them. All went well until one day when Quin
refused to smuggle in some forbidden article of diet; then the
steam-roller of her wrath promptly passed over him also.
He waited respectfully until her breath and vocabulary were alike
exhausted, then said good-humoredly:
"I used to board with a woman up in Maine that had hysterics like that.
They always made her feel a lot better. Don't you want me to shift that
pulley a bit? You don't look comfortable."
Madam promptly ordered him out of the room. But next day she made an
excuse to send for him, and actually laughed when he stepped briskly up
to the bed, saluted smartly, and impudently asked her how her grouch was.
There was something in his very lack of reverence, in his impertinent
assumption of equality, in his refusal to pay her the condescending
homage due feebleness and old age, that seemed to flatter her.
"He's a mule," she told Randolph--"a mule with horse sense."
Quin's change from khaki to civilian clothes affected him in more ways
than one. Constitutionally he was opposed to saying "sir" to his fellow
men; to standing at attention until he was recognized; to acknowledging,
by word or gesture, that he was any one's inferior on this wide and
democratic planet. He much preferred organizing to being organized,
leading to being led. Early in his military training he had evinced an
inclination to take things into his own hands and act without authority.
It was somewhat ironic that the very trait that had deprived him of a
couple of bars on his shoulder should have put the medal on his breast.
But freedom from the restrictions of army life brought its penalties. He
found that blunders condoned in a soldier were seriously criticized in a
civilian; that the things he had been at such pains to learn in the past
two years were of no apparent value to him now. It was a constant
surprise to him that a plaid suit and three-dollar necktie should meet
with less favor in the feminine eye than a dreary drab uniform.
About the first of March he was getting somewhat discouraged at his slow
progress, when an incident happened that planted his feet firmly on the
first rung of his social ladder.
Ever since their mother's accident, Miss Isobel and Miss Enid had stood
appalled before their new responsibilities. They were like two trembling
dead leaves that still cling to a shattered but sturdy old oak. What made
matters worse was the absence of the faithful black Tom, who for years
had served them by day and guarded them by night. They lived in constant
fear of burglars, which grew into a veritable terror when some one broke
into the pantry and rifled the shelves.
Quin heard about it when he arrived on Saturday morning, and as usual
offered advice:
"What you need is a man in the house. Then you wouldn't be scared all the
time."
"Well," said Madam, "what about you?"
Quin's face fell. He had no desire to exchange the noisy, wholesome
family life of the Martels for the silent, somber grandeur of the
Bartletts. His affections had taken root in the shabby little brown house
that always seemed to be humming gaily to itself. When the piano was not
being played, the violin or guitar was. There were bursts of laughter,
snatches of song, and young people going and coming through doors that
never stayed closed.
"You don't seem keen about the proposition," Madam commented dryly,
smoothing the bed-clothes with her wrinkled fingers.
"Well, I can't say I am," Quin admitted. "You see, I'm living with some
friends out on Sixth Street. They are sort of kin-folks of yours, I
believe--the Martels."
A carefully aimed hand grenade could have produced no more violent or
immediate result. Madam damned the Martels, individually and
collectively, and furiously disclaimed any relationship.
"They are a trifling, worthless lot!" she stormed. "I wish I'd never
heard of them. They fastened their talons on my son Bob, and ruined his
life, and now they are doing all they can to ruin my granddaughter.
Haven't you ever heard them speak of me?"
"Oh, yes," said Quin with laughing significance.
"What do they say?" Madam demanded instantly.
"You want it straight?"
"Yes."
"Well, Mr. Martel told me only last night that he thought you were an
object of pity."
Madam's jaw relaxed in amazement.
"What on earth did he mean?" she asked.
"He said you'd got 'most everything in life that he'd missed, but he'd
hate to change places with you."
She lay perfectly still, staring at him with her small restless eyes, and
when she spoke again it was to revert to the subject of burglars.
Quin was relieved. He had been skating on thin ice in discussing the
Martels, for any moment might have brought up a question concerning
Eleanor.
"I used to have a corporal that was an ex-burglar," he said, plunging
into the new subject with alacrity. "First-rate fellow, too. Last I heard
of him, he had a position as chauffeur with a rich old lady who lived
alone up in Detroit. She had two burglar-alarm systems, but the joke of
it was she made him sleep in the house for extra protection!"
"I suppose you are trying to frighten me off from engaging you?" Madam
asked.
"Not exactly," Quin smiled. "Of course I'll come if you can't get anybody
else. But there's no question of engaging me. If I come, I pay board."
Madam laughed aloud for the first time since her accident.
"Do you take me for a landlady?" she asked.
"Only when you take me for a night-watchman," said Quin.
They eyed each other steadily for a moment, then she held out her hand.
"We'll compromise," she said. "No salary and no board. We'll try it out
for a week."
The next day Quin's suit-case, containing all his worldly possessions,
was transferred from the small stuffy room over the Martels' kitchen to
the large luxurious one over the Bartletts' dining-room. It was quite the
grandest room he had ever occupied, with its massive walnut furniture and
its heavily draped windows; but, had it been stripped bare but for a
single picture, it would still have been a _chambre de luxe_ to him. The
moment he entered he discovered a photograph of Eleanor on the mantel,
and ten minutes later, when Hannah tapped at the door to say that dinner
was served, he was still standing with arms folded on the shelf in
absorbed adoration.
That first meal with the Misses Bartlett was an ordeal he never forgot.
Their formal aloofness and evident dismay at his presence were enough in
themselves to embarrass him; but combined with the necessity of choosing
the right knife and fork, of breaking his bread properly, and of removing
his spoon from his coffee-cup, they were quite overpowering. During his
two years in the army he had drifted into the easy habits and easier
vernacular of the enlisted man. Whatever knowledge he had of the
amenities of life had almost been forgotten. But, though his social
virtues were few, he passionately identified himself with them rather
than with his faults, which were many. To prove his politeness, for
instance, he insisted upon his hostesses having second helps to every
dish, offered to answer the telephone whenever it rang, and even
obligingly started to answer the door-bell during the salad course.
That dinner was but the initiation into a week of difficult adjustments.
When he was not in the arctic region surrounding Miss Isobel and Miss
Enid, he was in the torrid zone of Madam's presence. New and embarrassing
situations confronted him on every hand, and when he was not breaking
conventions he was breaking china. But Quin was not sensitive, and, in
spite of the fact that he was being silently or vocally condemned most of
the time, he cheerfully persevered in his determination to win the
respect of the family.
The saving of his ignorance was that he never tried to conceal it. He
looked at it with surprise and discussed it with disconcerting frankness.
He was no more abashed in learning new and better ways of conducting
himself than he would have been in learning a new language. He laughed
good-humoredly at his mistakes and seldom committed the same one a second
time. His limitations were to him like the frontier to a pioneer--a thing
to be reached and crossed.
If only he could have contented himself with performing the one duty
required of him and then gracefully effacing himself, his success would
have been assured. But that was not Quin's nature. Having identified
himself with the family, he promptly assumed full responsibility for its
welfare. By the end of the second week he was the self-constituted head
of the establishment. No mission was too high or too low for him to
volunteer to perform. One moment he was tactfully severing diplomatic
relations with a consulting physician in the front hall, the next he was
firing the furnace in the basement. Whenever he was in the house he was
meeting emergencies and adjusting difficulties, upsetting established
customs and often achieving unexpected results with new ones.
Miss Isobel and Miss Enid stood aghast at his temerity, and waited hourly
for the lightning of Madam's wrath to annihilate him. But, though the
bolts rained about him, they failed to destroy him.
On one occasion Miss Isobel was so outraged by his familiar attitude
toward her mother that she plucked up courage to remonstrate with him;
but Madam, instead of appreciating the interference on her behalf,
promptly turned upon her defender.
"Now, Isobel," she said caustically, "_you_ may be old enough to want men
to respect you, but I am young enough to want them to like me. You leave
young Graham alone."
Quin meanwhile, in spite of his arduous duties at the office and at home,
was living in a world of dreams. The privilege of hearing Eleanor's name
frequently mentioned, of getting bits of news of her from time to time,
the exciting possibility of being under the same roof with her when she
returned, supplied the days with thrilling zest. Since her teasing note
in answer to his double-barreled communication, he had written but once
and received no answer; but he knew that she was expected home for the
Easter vacation, and he lived on that prospect.
One evening, when he was summoned to Madam's room to shorten her new
crutches, he realized that the all-important subject was under
discussion.
"Isn't that exactly like her?" Madam was saying. "Refusing to go in the
first place, and now objecting to coming home."
"Well, it isn't especially gay for her here, is it?" Miss Enid ventured
in feeble defense. "I am afraid we are rather dull company for a young
girl."
"Well, make it gay," commanded Madam. "You and Isobel aren't so old and
feeble that you can't think of some way to entertain young people."
"A tea?" suggested Miss Enid.
"A tea would never tempt Eleanor. She's too much her mother's child to
enjoy anything so staid and respectable."
"Why don't you give her a dance?" suggested Quin enthusiastically,
looking up from his work.
"Give who a dance?" demanded Madam in surprise.
"Miss Eleanor," said Quin, bending over his work and blushing to the
roots of his stubby hair.
The three ladies exchanged startled glances; then Miss Enid said:
"Of course. I had forgotten that you met her the night of the accident. I
wonder if we _could_ give the dear child a party?"
"It is not to be thought of," said Miss Isobel, "with no regular butler,
and mother ill----"
"I tell you, I'm _not_ ill!" snapped Madam. "I intend to be up and about
by Easter. I'll give as many parties as I like. Hurry up with those
crutches, Graham; do you think I am going to wait all night?"
One of Quin's first acts upon coming into the house had been to aid and
abet Madam in her determination to use her injured leg. Dr. Rawlins had
infuriated her by his pessimistic warnings and his dark suggestions of a
wheeled chair.
"We'll show 'em what you can do when you get that cast off," Quin had
reassured her with the utmost confidence. "I've limbered up heaps of
stiff legs for the fellows. It takes patience and grit. I got the
patience and you got the grit, so there we are!"
Now that the cast was off, a few steps were attempted each night, during
which painful operation Miss Enid fled to another room to shed tears of
apprehension, while Miss Isobel hovered about the hall, ready to call the
doctor if anything happened.
"Is that better?" he asked now, as he got Madam to her feet and carefully
adjusted the crutches. "If you say they are too short, I'll tell you what
the little man said when he was teased about his legs. 'They reach the
ground,' he said; 'what more can you ask?'"
"Shut up your nonsense, and mind what you are doing!" cried Madam. "My
leg is worse than it was yesterday. I can't put my foot to the ground."
"Oh, yes, you can," Quin insisted, coaxing her from the bed-post to the
dresser. "You are coming on fine. I never saw but one person do better.
That was a guy I knew in France who never danced a step until he lost a
leg, and then his cork leg taught his other leg to do the fox-trot."
"Didn't I tell you to hush!" commanded Madam, laughing in spite of
herself. "You will have me falling over here in a minute."
When she was back in her chair and Quin was leaving, she beckoned to him.
"What about Mr. Ranny?" she asked in an anxious whisper. "Was he at the
office to-day?"
Quin had been dreading the question, but when it came he did not evade
it. Randolph Bartlett's lapses from grace were coming with such alarming
frequency that the sisters' frantic efforts to keep the truth from their
mother only resulted in arousing her suspicion and making her more
unhappy.
"No," said Quin; "he hasn't been there for a week. He's never going to be
any better as long as he stays in the business. You don't know what he
has to stand from Mr. Bangs."
"I know what Mr. Bangs has had to stand from him."
"Yes; but Mr. Ranny's never mean. He is one of the kindest, nicest
gentlemen I ever met up with. But he can't stand being nagged at all the
time, and he feels that he don't count for anything. He says Mr. Bangs
considers him a figurehead, and that he'd rather be selling shoestrings
for himself than be in partnership with him."
"Yes, and if I let him go that's what he _would_ be doing," said Madam
bitterly.
"Mr. Chester don't think so," persisted Quin; "he says Mr. Ranny's got a
lot of ability."
"Don't quote that sissified Francis Chester to me. He may be a good
man--I suppose he is; but I can't abide the sight of him. He goes around
holding one hand in the other as if he were afraid he'd spill it! What
did you say he said about Ranny?"
"He said he had ability; that if he was on his own in the country some
place----"
"'On his own'!" Madam's contempt was great. "He hasn't _got_ any own.
He's just like the girls--no force or decision about any of them. Their
father wasn't like that; I am sure _I'm_ not. What's the matter with
them, anyhow?"
Quin looked her straight in the eyes. "Do you want to know, honest?"
Disconcerting as it was to have an oratorical question taken literally,
Madam's curiosity prompted her to nod her head.
"The same thing's the matter with them," said Quin, with brutal
frankness, "that's the matter with your leg. They've been broken and kept
in the cast too long."
Then, before he could get the berating he surely deserved, he was off
down the stairs, disturbing the silence of the house with his cheerful
whistle.
At breakfast the next morning he scented trouble. Until now he had made
little headway with the two sisters, having been too much occupied in
storming the fortress of Madam's regard to concern himself with the
outlying districts. But this morning he met with an even colder reception
than usual. In vain he fired off his best jokes: Miss Enid remained pale
and languid, and Miss Isobel presided over the coffee-pot as if it had
been a funeral urn. A crisis was evidently pending, and he determined to
meet it half way.
"Is Queen Vic mad at me?" he asked suddenly, leaning forward on his
folded arms and smiling with engaging candor.
Miss Isobel started to pour the cream into the sugar-bowl, but caught
herself in the act.
"If you mean my mother," she said with reproving dignity, "she has asked
me to tell you--that is, we all think it best----"
"For me to go?" Quin finished it for her. "Now, look here, Miss Isobel;
you can fire me, but you know you can't fire the furnace! Who is going to
stay here at night? Who is going to carry Madam up and down stairs? Of
course I don't want to butt in, but if ever a house needed a man it's
this one. Why don't you have me stay on until things get to running easy
again?"
There was an embarrassing pause during which Miss Isobel fidgeted with
the cups and saucers and Miss Enid bit her lips nervously.
"Don't you-all like me?" persisted Quin with his terrible directness.
Now, Miss Isobel had spent her life in evasions and reservations and
compromises. To have even a personal liking stripped thus in public
offended her maiden modesty, and she scurried to the cover of silence.
"Of course we like you," murmured Miss Enid, coming to her rescue. "We
like you very much, Mr. Graham, and we appreciate your kindness in coming
to help us out. But mother feels that we shouldn't impose on your good
nature any longer."
Quin shook his impatient head.
"That's not it," he said. "She's mad at something I said last night, and
she's got a right to be. It was true all right, but it was none of my
business. I made up my mind before I went to bed that I was going to
apologize. I can fix things up with her. It's you and Miss Isobel I can't
understand. You say you like me, but you don't act like it. I know I make
mistakes about lots of things, and that I do things wrong and say things
I oughtn't to. But all you got to do is to call me down. I want to help
you; but that's not all--I want to learn the game. When a fellow has
knocked around with men since he was a kid----"
He broke off suddenly and stared into his coffee-cup.
"I think he might go up and speak to mother, don't you, Isobel?" asked
Miss Enid tentatively.
Quin pushed back his chair and rose precipitately from the table,
dragging the cloth away as he did so.
"That's not the point!" he said heatedly. "It's for you two to decide, as
well as her. Do you want me to go or to stay?"
Miss Isobel and Miss Enid, who had been assuring each other almost hourly
that they could not stand that awful boy in the house another day, looked
at each other intercedingly.
"It would be a great help if you could stay at least until mother learns
to use her crutches," urged Miss Enid.
"Yes, and until we get some one we can trust to stay with us at night,"
added Miss Isobel.
"I'll stay as long as you like!" said Quin heartily; and he departed to
make his peace with Madam.
CHAPTER 12
From that time on Quin's status in the family became less anomalous. To
be sure, he was still Mr. Randolph's private secretary, Madam's top
sergeant, Miss Isobel's and Miss Enid's body-guard, and the household's
general-utility man; but he was now something else in addition. Miss
Isobel had discovered, quite by chance, that he was the grandson of Dr.
Ezra Quinby, whose book "Christianizing China" had been one of the
inspirations of her girlhood.
"And to think we considered asking him to eat in the pantry!" she
exclaimed in horror to her sister.
"Well, I told you all along he was a gentleman by instinct," said Miss
Enid.
To be sure, they were constantly shocked by his manners and his frank
method of speech, but they were also exhilarated. He was like a
disturbing but refreshing breeze that swept through their quiet, ordered
lives. He talked about things and places they had never heard of or seen,
and recounted his experiences with an enthusiasm that was contagious.
As for Quin, he found, to his surprise, that he was enjoying his new
quarters quite as much as he had the old ones. Madam was a never-ending
source of amusement and interest to him, and Miss Isobel and Miss Enid
soon had each her individual appeal. He liked the swish of their silk
petticoats, and the play of their slim white hands about the coffee-tray.
He liked their super-feminine delicacies of speech and motion, and the
flattering interest they began to take in all his affairs.
Miss Isobel developed a palpitating concern for his spiritual welfare and
invited him to go to church with her. She even introduced him to the
minister with proud reference to his distinguished grandfather, and
basked in the reflected glory.
Quin did not take kindly to church. He considered that he had done his
full duty by it in the first fourteen years of his life, when he, along
with the regenerate heathen, had been forced to attend five services
every Sunday in the gloomy chapel in the compound at Nanking. But if
Eleanor's aunt had asked him to accompany her to the gates of hell
instead of the portals of heaven, he would have acquiesced eagerly. So
strenuously did he lift his voice in the familiar hymns of his youth that
he was promptly urged to join the choir, an ordeal whose boredom was
mitigated only during the few moments when the collection was taken up
and he and the tenor could bet on which deacon would make his round
first.
Not for years had Miss Isobel had such thrilling occupation as that of
returning Ezra Quinby's grandson to the spiritual fold. In spite of the
fact that Quin was a fairly decent chap already, whose worst vices were
poker and profanity, she persisted in regarding him as a brand which she
had been privileged to snatch from the burning.
What gave him a yet more intimate claim upon her was the fact that his
heart and lungs were still troublesome, and with any over-exertion on his
part, or a sudden change in the weather, his chest became very sore and
his racking cough returned. At such times Miss Isobel was in her glory.
She would put him to bed with hot-water bottles and mustard plasters and
feed him hot lemonade. Quin took kindly to the coddling. No one had
fussed over him like that since his mother died, and he was touchingly
grateful.
"Say, you'd be a wonder out at the hospital," he said to her on one of
these occasions. "I wish some of those fellows with the flu could have
you to look after them."
Miss Isobel's long, sallow face with its dark-ringed eyes lit up for a
moment.
"There is nothing I should like better," she said. "But of course it's
out of the question."
"Why?"
"Mother doesn't approve of us doing any work at the camp. She did make an
exception in the case of my niece, but Eleanor was so insistent. Sister
and I try never to oppose mother's wishes. It cuts us off from a great
many things; but then, I contend that our first duty is to her."
Miss Isobel's attitude toward her mother was that of a monk to his
haircloth shirt. She acquired so much merit in her friends' eyes and in
her own by her patient endurance that the penance was robbed of half its
sting.
"Things are awful bad out at the hospital now," went on Quin. "A fellow
was telling me yesterday that in some of the wards they only have one
nurse to two hundred patients. The epidemic is getting worse every day.
You-all in town here don't know what it's like where there's so many sick
and so few to take care of 'em."
Miss Isobel, with morbid interest, insisted upon the details. When Quin
had finished his grim recital, she turned to him with scared
determination.
"Do you know," she fluttered, "I almost feel as if I ought to go in spite
of mother's wishes."
"Of course you ought," Quin conceded, "especially when you are keeping a
trained nurse here in the house who doesn't do a thing but carry up trays
and sit around and look at herself!"
"I know it," Miss Isobel admitted miserably. "I've lain awake nights
worrying over it. Sister and I are perfectly able to do what is to be
done. But mother insists upon keeping the nurse."
"Well, she can't keep you, if you really want to go. I guess you got a
right to do your duty."
The word was like a bugle call to Miss Isobel. She went about all day in
a tremor of uncertainty, and at last yielded to Quin's insistence, and,
donning Eleanor's Red Cross uniform, accompanied him to the hospital.
Every afternoon after that, when Madam was taking her rest, Miss Isobel,
feeling like Machiavelli one moment and Florence Nightingale the next,
stepped into the carriage, already loaded with delicacies, and proceeded
on her errand of mercy. She invariably returned in a twitter of subdued
excitement, and recounted her experiences with breathless interest at the
dinner-table.
"I've never seen sister like this before," Miss Enid told Quin. "She
talks more in an hour now than she used to talk in a week, and she seems
so happy."
The change wrought in Miss Isobel's life by Quin's advent into the family
was mild, however, compared to the cataclysm effected in the life of her
sister. Miss Enid, having had her own affections wrecked in early youth,
spent her time acting as a sort of salvage corps following the
devastation caused by her cyclonic mother. When Madam shattered things to
bits, Miss Enid tried patiently to remold them nearer to the heart's
desire. She had acquired a habit of offsetting every disagreeable remark
by an agreeable one, and she was apt to see incipient halos hovering
above heads where less sympathetic observers saw horns. When the last
chance of getting rid of the disturbing but helpful Quin vanished, she
set herself to work to discover his possibilities with the view of
undertaking his social reclamation.
One evening, as he was passing through the hall, she called him into the
library. It was a small, high-ceilinged room, with bookcases reaching to
the ceiling, and a massive mahogany table bearing a reading-lamp with two
green shades. Lincoln and his Cabinet held session over one door, and
Andrew Jackson, surrounded by his weeping family, died over the other.
Miss Enid, with books piled up in front of her, was sitting at the table.
"Quinby," she said,--it had been "Quinby" ever since the discovery of his
grandfather,--"I wonder if you can help me? I have a club paper on the
14th, and I can't find a thing about my subject. Can't you tell me
something about the position of women in China?"
Quin, who had come in expecting to be called upon to put up a window or
fix the electric light, looked at her blankly. Under ordinary
circumstances he would have laughingly disclaimed any knowledge of the
subject; but with Miss Enid sitting there looking up at him with such
flattering confidence, it was different. Out of the dusty pigeon holes of
his brain he dragged odds and ends of information, memories of the native
houses, the customs and manners of the people, stories he had heard from
his Chinese nurses, street incidents he had seen, stray impressions
picked up here and there by a lively active American boy in a foreign
city.
"I ought to be able to tell you a lot more," he said apologetically in
conclusion. "I could if I wasn't such a bonehead."
"But you've given me just what I wanted!" cried Miss Enid. "And you've
made it all so _vivid_. It takes a very good mind to register details
like that and to be able to present them in such good order."
Quin looked at her quizzically. He was confident enough of his abilities
along other lines, but he had a low opinion of his mental equipment.
"I guess the only kind of sense I got is common," he said.
But Miss Enid would not have it so. "No," she said, earnestly regarding
the toe of her beaded slipper; "your mind is much above the average. But
it isn't enough to be born with brains--one must know how to use them."
"I suppose you mean I don't?" asked Quin, also regarding the beaded
slipper.
"Nobody does who has had no training," Miss Enid gently suggested. "It
seems a pity that a young man of your possibilities should have had so
little opportunity for cultivating them."
"Well, I ain't a Methuselah!" said Quin, slightly peaked. "What's the
matter with me beginning now?"
"It's rather late, I am afraid. Still, other men have done it. I wonder
if you would consider taking up some night courses at the university?"
"I'd consider anything that would get me on in the world. I've got a very
particular reason, Miss Enid, for--for wanting to get on."
She looked at him with increased interest.
"Really? How interesting! You must tell me all about it some day. But
this would keep you back for a time. You would have to give all your
spare hours to study, and you might not even be able to take the better
position they promised you at the factory this spring."
"I've already got it," Quin said. "Mr. Bangs told me to-day that I was to
start in as shipping clerk Monday morning. But he'd let me off nights if
I'd put it up to him. Old Chester says----"
Miss Enid's Pre-Raphaelite brows contracted slightly. "Don't you think it
would be more respectful----"
"Sure," agreed Quin; "I didn't mean any harm. I like Mr. Chester. He
asked me to come up to his rooms some night and see his collection of
flutes."
"That was like him," Miss Enid said warmly. "He's always doing kind
things like that. I know his reputation for being diffident and hard to
get acquainted with, but once you get beneath the surface----"
Quin was not in the least interested in Mr. Chester's surface. He sat on
the edge of the table, swinging his foot and staring off into space,
wholly absorbed in the idea of cultivating that newly discovered
intellect of his.
"Say, Miss Enid," he said, impulsively interrupting her eulogy of Mr.
Chester's neglected virtues, "I wish you'd sort of take me in hand. _You_
know what I need better than I do. If you'll get a line on that school
business, I'll start right in, if I have to start in the kindergarten.
Hand out the dope and I'll take it. And whenever you see me doing things
wrong, or saying things wrong, I'd take it as a favor if you'd jack me
up."
Miss Enid smiled ruefully. "Why, Quinby, that is just what we have all
been doing ever since you came. If you weren't the best-natured----"
"Not a bit of it," disclaimed Quin. "Queen Vic lets me have it in the
neck sometimes, but that's nothing. I've learned more since I've been in
this house than I ever learned in all my life put together. Why,
sometimes I don't hardly know myself!"
"Two negatives, Quinby, make an affirmative," suggested Miss Enid primly;
and thus his higher education began.
Miss Enid was right when she said his mind was above the average. Its one
claim to superiority lay in the fact that it had received the little
training it had at first hand. What he knew of geography he knew, not
from maps, but from actual observation in many parts of the world. Higher
mathematics were unknown to him, but through years of experience he had
learned to solve the most difficult of all problems--that of making ends
meet. He had learned astronomy from a Norwegian sailor, as they lay on
the deck of a Pacific transport night after night in the southern seas.
He had even tackled literature during his six months in hospital, when he
had plowed through all the books the wards provided from Dante's
"Inferno" to "Dere Mable."
Soon after his talk with Miss Enid he decided to call upon Mr. Chester,
not because Mr. Chester was an enlivening companion, but because he was
so touchingly grateful for the casual friendship that Quin bestowed upon
him.
"He's so sort of lonesome," Quin told Miss Leaks. "When he looks at me
with those big dog eyes of his, I feel like scratching him back of his
ear."
Mr. Chester, in his small but tastefully furnished bachelor apartment,
outdid himself in his efforts to be hospitable. He insisted upon Quin
taking the best chair, gave him a good cigar, showed him some rare first
editions, displayed his collection of musical instruments, and struggled
valiantly to establish a common footing. But there was only one subject
upon which they could find anything to say, and they came back again and
again to the affairs of the Bartlett family.
"Why don't you ever come around and see the folks?" Quin asked
hospitably. "They get awful lonesome with so few people dropping in."
Mr. Chester in evident embarrassment flicked the ash from his cigar and
answered guardedly:
"I used to be there a great deal in the old days. Unfortunately, Madam
Bartlett and I had a misunderstanding. As a matter of fact, I have not
crossed that threshold in--let me see--it must be fifteen years! It was a
party, I remember, given for Eleanor, the little granddaughter, on her
fifth birthday."
"Oh, yes!" said Quin, finding Mr. Chester for the first time interesting.
"They've got a picture of her taken with Miss Enid in her party dress."
"I suppose you mean this?" Mr. Chester reached over and took from his
desk a somewhat faded photograph, in a silver frame, of a little girl
leaning against a big girl's shoulders, both enveloped in a cloud of
white tulle.
"Gee, but she was pretty!" exclaimed Quin, devouring every detail of
Eleanor's chubby features.
"A beautiful woman," sighed Mr. Chester--and Quin, looking up suddenly,
surprised a look in his host's eyes that was anything but numerical.
Obligingly relinquishing his application of the pronoun for Mr.
Chester's, he said:
"She certainly thinks a lot of you!"
"How do you know?" demanded Mr. Chester.
"From the way she talks. She says people are barking up the wrong tree
when they think you are cold and indifferent and all that; says you've
got one of the noblest natures _she_ ever knew."
Quin was appalled at the effect of these words. Mr. Chester's eyes got
quite red around the rims and his lips actually trembled.
"Poor Enid!" he said. Then he remembered himself, or rather forgot
himself, and became a Number Nine again, and bored Quin talking business
until ten o'clock.
At parting they shook hands cordially, and Mr. Chester urged him to come
again.
"I wonder if you would care to use one of my tickets for the Symphony
Orchestra next week?" he asked.
Quin looked embarrassed. He had accepted a similar invitation the week
before, and had confided to Rose Martel afterward that he "never heard
such a bully band playing such bum music." But Mr. Chester's intention
was so kind that he could run no risk of offending him.
"I'll go if I can," he said, leaving himself a loophole.
"Here is the ticket," said Mr. Chester, "and in case you do not use it,
perhaps you will so good as to pass it on to some one who can."
This suggestion afforded Quin an inspiration.
"Say, Miss Enid," he said the next morning at breakfast. "I want to give
you a ticket to the Symphony Orchestra next Friday night. Will you go?"
"But, my dear boy," she protested greatly touched, "I cannot go by
myself."
"You don't have to. I'm going to take you and come for you. You ain't
going to turn me down, are you?"
"Have you got the ticket?"
"Right here. Now you will go, won't you?"
It would have taken a less susceptible heart than Miss Enid's to resist
Quin's persuasive tones, and in spite of Miss Isobel's disapprobation she
agreed to go.
Just what happened on that opening night of the Fine Arts Series, when
two old lovers found themselves in embarrassing proximity for the first
time in fifteen years, has never been told. But from subsequent events it
is safe to conclude that during the long program they became much more
interested in their own unfinished symphony than in Schubert's, and when
Quin came to take Miss Enid home, he found them in a corner of the lobby,
still so engrossed in conversation that he obligingly walked around the
block to give them an additional five minutes.
CHAPTER 13
Quin's desire for self-improvement soon became an obsession. With Miss
Enid's assistance he got into a night course at the university, and
proceeded to attack his ignorance with something of the fierce
determination he had attacked the Hun the year before in France. He
plunged through bogs of history, got hopelessly entangled in the barbed
wire of mathematics, had hand-to-hand struggles with belligerent parts of
speech, and more than once suffered the shell-shock of despair. But his
watchword now, as then, was, "Up and at 'em!" And before long he had the
satisfaction of seeing his enemy gradually giving way.
Having taken his small public into his confidence in regard to his
belated ambition to get an education, he was surprised to find how ready
everybody was to help him. Mr. Chester not only assisted him with his
mathematics, but insisted upon taking him to hear good music, in the vain
effort to reclaim an ear hopelessly attuned to jazz and rag-time. Mr.
Martel devoted Sunday afternoons to making him read aloud from the
classics, with great attention to precise enunciation. Miss Isobel still
looked after his moral welfare, and Miss Enid continued to devote herself
to his social improvement. But it remained for Madam Bartlett to render
him the service of which he was most in need. Whenever the bubble of his
self-esteem threatened to carry him away, she always took pains to
puncture it.
"Don't let them make a fool of you, Graham," she said one day, as she
leaned heavily upon his arm in a painful effort to walk without her
crutches--an experiment that she allowed neither one of her daughters to
share, as they invariably limped with her and got frightened when she
stumbled. "They all treat you like a puppy that has learned to walk on
its hind legs. Remember that you belong on your hind legs. You are only
doing what most boys in your position do in their teens. If you were as
smart as they claim, you would have got an education long ago. But young
people these days have no sense! Just look at my granddaughter, for
instance."
There being no direction in which he was more eager to look, Quin gave
her his undivided attention.
"I've spent thousands of dollars on that girl's education," Madam
continued, "and what do you suppose she elected to specialize in?
'Expression'! In my day they called it elocution. When a girl was too
dumb to learn anything else, the teacher got money out of her parents by
teaching her to swing her arms around her hear and say, 'Curfew Shall Not
Ring To-night.' Now they all want to write poetry, or play the flute, or
go on the stage, or some other fool thing like that."
"What about those that want to go on a farm? That's sensible enough for
you." Quin couldn't resist the thrust on behalf of Mr. Ranny.
"It's sensible for a sensible person," Madam said crossly. "It's where
_you_ belong, instead of attempting all this university business."
There were times these days when Quin quite agreed with Madam. When the
tide of his confidence was out, he regarded himself as a hopeless fool
and despaired of ever making up the years he had lost. But at high tide
there was no limit to his aspirations, nor to his courage. While his
struggles at the university kept him humble, his success at the factory
constantly elated him. Having achieved two promotions in less than three
months, he already saw himself a prospective member of the firm. In fact,
he slightly anticipated this event by flinging himself into the affairs
of Bartlett & Bangs with even more ardor than was advisable. Hardly a day
passed that he did not seek a chance to apprise Mr. Bangs of some
colossal scheme or startling innovation that would revolutionize the
business.
"See here, young man," said Mr. Bangs, when this had occurred once too
often; "I pay you to work for me, not to think for me."
"But they are the same thing," urged Quin, with appalling temerity. "Why,
I can't sleep nights for thinking how other firms are walking away with
our business. Smith & Snelling, up in Illinois, have got a plant that's
half as big as ours, and they export twice as much stuff as we do. And
their plows can't touch ours; they ain't in a thousand miles of 'em."
"How do you know?"
"I've seen 'em both in action, and I've heard men talk about 'em. Why, if
we could get a start in the Orient, and open up an agency in Japan and
China----"
"There--that will do," said Mr. Bangs testily; "you get back to your
work. You talk too much."
Both Mr. Ranny and Mr. Chester warned Quin again and again that he was
not supposed to emerge from the obscurity of his humble position as
shipping clerk. But Quin was the descendant of a long line of
missionaries whose duty it was to reform. The effect of his heredity and
early environment was not only to increase his self-reliance and
intensify his motive power, but to commit him to ideals as well. Once he
recognized a condition as being capable of improvement, he could not rest
until he had tried to better it.
It was not until the approach of Easter that his mind began to stray from
the highroads of industry and learning into the byways of pleasure. From
certain signs about the Bartlett house it was apparent that preparations
were in progress for an event of importance. Paperhangers and cleaners
came and went, consultations were held daily concerning new rugs and
curtains. Miss Enid and Miss Isobel gave tentative orders and Madam
promptly countermanded them. Workmen were engaged and dismissed and
reëngaged. The door to the room at the head of the stairs, which he knew
to be Eleanor's, now stood open, revealing a pink-and-white bower. Stray
remarks now and then concerning caterers and music and invitations
further excited his fancy, and he waited impatiently for the time when he
should be formally apprised of Eleanor's home-coming.
Never before in his life had he been so inordinately happy. He burst into
song at strange times and places, and had to be spoken to more than once
for whistling in the office. Instead of studying at night, he frequently
lapsed into delectable reveries in which he anticipated the bliss of
being under the same roof with Eleanor. He already heard himself telling
her about his promotions, his work at the university, his capture of her
family. And always he pictured her as listening to him as she had that
day at the Hawaiian Garden, with lips ready to smile or tremble and eyes
that sparkled like little pools of water in the sunlight.
Occasionally reason suggested that she would be at home very little and
that the obnoxious Phipps would be lying in wait for her whenever she
went abroad. But Phipps was forbidden the house, and with such a handicap
as that he surely was out of the running. Besides, Miss Eleanor had
probably forgotten all about the Captain by this time! Thus reassuring
himself, the fatuous Quin loosened the reins of his fancy and rode full
tilt for an inevitable fall.
The first intimation of it came the week before Easter, when Madam
presented him with a handsome watch in recognition of his services. The
gift itself was sufficiently overwhelming, but the formal politeness of
the presentation sounded ominous. Madam suggested almost tactfully, in
conclusion, that, now she was on her feet again, he need not feel
obligated to remain longer.
"But I _don't_ feel obligated!" he burst out impetuously. "I'd rather
stay here than anywhere in the world."
"Well, you can't stay," said Madam, whose small stock of courtesy had
been exhausted on her initial speech. "My granddaughter is bringing some
girls home with her for the Easter vacation, and I need your room."
"But I'll sleep in the third story," urged Quin wildly. "You can billet
me any old place--I don't care _where_ you put me."
"No," said Madam firmly. "It's best for you to go."
That night at dinner the sisters did what they could to soften the blow
for Quin. They gave vague excuses that did not excuse, and explanations
that did not explain.
"Of course, we have no idea of losing sight of you," Miss Enid said with
forced brightness. "You must drop in often to tell us how you are getting
along and to make mother laugh. You are the only person I know who can do
that."
"Yes, and we shall count on you to come to supper every Sunday evening,"
Miss Isobel added; "then we can go to church together."
"Next Sunday?" asked Quin, faintly hopeful.
"Well, no," said Miss Isobel. "For the next two weeks we shall be
occupied with the young ladies and their friends; but after that we shall
look for you."
Quin looked at the two gentle sisters in dumb amazement. How _could_ they
sit there saying such kind things to him, and at the same time shut the
door between him and the great opportunity of his life? What did it all
mean? Where had he failed? Surely there was some terrible misunderstanding!
In his complete bewilderment he created quite the most dreadful blunder
that is registered against him in his long list of social sins.
"But don't you expect me to meet the young ladies?" he blurted out
indignantly. "Aren't you going to ask me to the party?"
A horrible pause followed, during which the walls seemed to rock around
him and he felt the blood surging to his head. He was starting up from
the table when Miss Enid laid a quieting hand on his sleeve.
"Of course you are to be invited, Quinby," she said in her suavest tones;
"the invitation will reach you to-morrow."
CHAPTER 14
On the night of the Bartlett party, Quin stood before the small mirror
of his old room over the Martels' kitchen and surveyed himself in
sections. The first view, obtained by standing on a chair, was the
least satisfactory; for, in spite of the most correct of wing-toed
dancing-shoes, there was a space between them and the cuffs of his
trousers that no amount of adjustment could diminish. The second
section was far more reassuring. Having amassed what to him seemed a
fortune, for the purchase of a dress-suit, Quin had allowed himself to
be persuaded by the voluble and omniscient salesman to put all of his
money into a resplendent dinner-coat instead. The claim for the coat
that it was "the classiest garment in the city" was reinforced by the
fact that it had adorned the dummy in the shop window for seven
consecutive days and occasioned much comment by its numerous
"novelties." Quin had no doubts whatever about the coat. Its glory not
only dimmed his eyes to the shortcomings of the trousers, which he had
rented for the occasion, but even made him forget the aching tooth that
had been harassing him all day.
As he went down to present himself for the family inspection, it is
useless to deny that he was very much impressed with the elegance and
correctness of his costume. It had been achieved with infinite pains
and considerable expense. Nothing was lacking, not even a silver
cigarette-case, bearing an unknown monogram, which he had purchased at
a pawn-shop the day before.
His advent into the sitting-room produced a gratifying sensation.
"Ha! Who comes here!" cried Mr. Martel. "The glass of fashion and the
mould of form." Then he came forward for close inspection. "Hadn't you
any better studs than those, my boy?"
"They are the ones that came in the shirt," said Quin, instantly on the
defensive.
"Well, they hardly do justice to the occasion. Step upstairs, Cassius,
and get my pearl ones out of the top chiffonier drawer."
"I wish Captain Phipps could see you," said Rose admiringly. "You should
have seen his face when I told him you were going to-night! He wasn't
invited, you know."
"Where did you see him?" Quin asked, brushing a speck of lint from the
toe of his shining shoe.
"Here. He's been coming twice a week to work with Papa Claude ever since
you left. Give 'em to me, Cass"--this to her brother. "I'll put them in."
"Aren't they too little for the buttonholes?" asked Quin anxiously.
"Not enough to matter," Rose insisted. Then, as she finished, she added
in a whisper: "Tell Nell somebody sent his love."
"Nothing doing," laughed Quin with a superior shrug; "somebody else is
taking his."
The curb was lined with automobiles by the time he arrived at the
Bartletts'. The house looked strangely unfamiliar with its blaze of
lights and throng of arriving guests. He instinctively felt in his pocket
for his latch-key, and then remembered, and waited for the strange butler
to open the door. The inside of the house looked even less natural than
the outside. The floors were cleared for dancing and the mantels were
banked high with flowers and ferns. Under the steps the musicians were
already tuning their instruments.
"Upstairs, sir; first room to your left," said the important person at
the door, and Quin followed the stream of black-coated figures who were
filing up the stairs and turning into the room he had occupied a short
week ago. It was just as he had left it, except for the picture that no
longer adorned the mantel.
"Beg pardon, sir," said the lofty attendant who took his overcoat, "your
stud's come loose."
"I bet the damn thing's going to do that all night," Quin said
confidentially. "Say, you haven't got a pin, have you?"
"Oh, no, sir, it couldn't be pinned," protested the man in a shocked
tone.
Quin adjusted it as best he could, took a final look at himself in the
mirror, and proceeded downstairs. Arrived in the lower hall, he glanced
about him in some perplexity. Not a member of the family was visible, and
he looked in vain for a familiar face. In his uncertainty as to his next
move, he went back to the pantry and got himself a glass of water.
As he was returning to the hall, some one plucked at his sleeve and
whispered:
"Hello there, Graham!"
Turning around, he encountered the gaping mouth of a shining saxophone,
behind which beamed the no less shining countenance of Barney McGinness.
Barney had been in the 105th Infantry Band, and he and Quin had returned
from France on the same transport. They exchanged hearty greetings under
their breath.
"Serving here to-night, are you?" asked Barney.
"Serving?" repeated Quin; then he laughed good-naturedly. "You got
another guess coming your way, Barney."
"So it's the parlor instid of the pantry, is it? I'd 'a' seen it for
meself if I had used me eyes instead of me mouth. You look grand enough
to be doing a turn on the vawdyville."
Quin tried not to expand his chest in pride, for fear the movement would
disturb those temperamental studs. He would fain have lingered
indefinitely in the warmth of Barney's admiring smile, but the signal for
the first dance was already given, and he moved nervously out into the
throng again.
Now that the moment had come for him to meet Eleanor--the moment he had
longed for by day and dreamed of by night,--he found himself overcome
with terrible diffidence. Suppose she did not want to see him again?
Suppose she should be angry at him for coming to her party? Suppose she
should be too taken up with all these strange friends of hers to have
time to dance with him?
After obstructing social traffic in the hall for several moments, he
encountered Miss Enid. She was all a lavender flutter, with sleeves
floating and scarf dangling, and she wore an air of subdued excitement
that made her almost pretty.
"Why, Quinby!" she said, and her eyes swept him. "Have you spoken to
mother yet?"
"No; where is she?"
"In the library. And sister will present you to the young ladies in the
parlor."
She hesitated a moment, then she placed a timid hand on Quin's arm.
"But before you go in would you mind doing something for me? Will you
watch the front door and let me know as soon as Mr. Chester arrives?"
"Mr. Chester?"
"Yes. You see, it's been a great many years since he came to the house,
and I want to--to make sure that he is properly welcomed."
"I'll wait for him," said Quin, glad of any excuse for not entering that
crowded parlor.
Lovely young creatures in rainbow tints drifted down the stairs and
disappeared beyond the portières; supercilious young men, all in tail
coats and most of them wearing white gloves, passed and repassed him.
Quin was experiencing the wholly new sensation of timidity. In vain he
sought reassuring reflections from the long pier-glass, as he did guard
duty in the front hall pending Mr. Chester's arrival. He'd be all right,
he assured himself, as soon as he got to know some of the people. Once he
had spoken to Eleanor and been sure of her welcome, he didn't care what
happened. Meanwhile he worked with his shirt-stud and tried not to think
about his tooth.
It was late when Mr. Chester arrived, and by the time he had been placed
in Miss Enid's care the receiving line in the parlor had dissolved and
the dance was in full swing.
Quin made his way back to the library and presented his belated respects
to Madam, who sat enthroned in state where she could command the field
and direct the manoeuvers. She was resplendent in black velvet and old
lace. A glittering comb topped her high white pompadour, and a dog-collar
of diamonds encircled her wrinkled neck.
"Well, I am glad one man has the manners to come and speak to his
hostess!" she said grimly, extending her hand to Quin. "The young lords
of the present day seem to consider a lady's house a public dance-hall.
Sit down and talk to me."
Quin didn't wish to sit down. He wished very ardently to plunge into that
dancing throng and find Eleanor. But the old lady's vise-like grip closed
on him, and he had to content himself with watching the couples circle
past the door while he listened to a tirade against present-day customs.
"Why, this dancing is indecent!" stormed the old lady. "I never saw
anything like it in my life! Look at that little Morris chit with her
cheek plastered up to Johnnie Rawlins'! If somebody doesn't speak to her,
I will! I will not have such dancing in my house! And there's Kitty
Carey, the one with no back to her dress. What her mother is thinking
of--Mercy! Look at the length of that skirt!"
It was not until Mr. and Mrs. Ranny arrived, and Madam had no time for
any one else, that Quin was able to escape.
"Can you tell me where I can find Miss Eleanor?" he asked eagerly of Miss
Isobel, whom he encountered in the back hall.
Miss Isobel, looking thoroughly uncomfortable in a high-necked,
long-sleeved evening dress, sighed anxiously:
"I am looking for her myself. She has had all the windows opened, and
mother gave express orders that they were to be kept closed. Would you
mind putting this one down? It makes such a draught."
It was a high window and an obstinate one, and by the time it was down
Quin's cuffs were six inches beyond his coat sleeves and his vest was
bulging.
"I don't want that window down," said a spirited voice behind him. "I
wish you had left it alone."
"Eleanor!" said Miss Isobel reprovingly. "He is doing it at my request.
It is our young friend Quinby Graham."
Quin wheeled about in dismay, and found himself face to face with a
slender vision in shimmering blue and silver, a vision with flushed
cheeks and angry eyes, who looked at him in blank amazement, then burst
out laughing.
"Why, for mercy sakes! I never would have known you. You look so--so
different in civilian clothes."
The words were what he had expected, but the intonation was not. It
seemed to call for some sort of explanation.
"It's my face," he blurted out apologetically, drawing attention to the
fact that of all others he most wished to ignore. "Had an abscess in my
tooth; it's swelled my jaw up a bit."
Eleanor was not in the least concerned with his affliction. A civilian
with the toothache could not expect the consideration of a hero with a
shrapnel wound. Moreover, this was her first appearance in the rôle of
hostess at a large party, and she fluttered about like a distracted
humming-bird.
Miss Isobel laid a detaining hand on her bare shoulder.
"Did you know they were smoking in the dining-room, Nellie? Even some of
the _girls_ are smoking. If mother finds it out I don't know _what_ she
will do!"
"Call out the fire department, probably," said Eleanor flippantly.
"But listen! She will speak to them--you know she will. Don't you think
you can stop them?"
"Of course I can't!" declared Eleanor, her anger rekindling. "And we
can't dance with the windows down, either. Oh, dear, I wish we'd never
_tried_ to give a party!"
"May I have the next dance, Miss Eleanor?" Quin ventured at this
inopportune moment.
She turned upon him a perturbed face, "It's taken," she said absently.
"They are all taken until after supper. I'll give you one then." And with
this casual promise she hurried away.
Quin wandered disconsolately into the hall again. Everybody seemed to
know everybody else. Apparently he was the one outsider. At the soldier
dances to which he was accustomed, he was used to boldly asking any girl
on the floor to dance, sure of a welcoming smile. But here it was
different. It seemed that a fellow must wait for an introduction which
nobody took the trouble to give. He leaned against the door-jamb and
indulged in bitter reflections. Much that bunch cared whether he had
risked his life for his country or not! The girls had already forgotten
which were the heroes and which were the slackers. He didn't care! All he
had come for, anyhow, was to see Eleanor Bartlett. Just wait until he got
her all to himself in that dance after supper----
Finding the strain of being a spectator instead of a participant no
longer endurable, he wandered upsta
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