Anything Once Part 14

"Motoring down from the Hilton's," the other responded. "Pete was coming with me, but at the last minute he decided to stay over the week-end.

I'm off to Washington to-night to see about my pa.s.sport; sailing next Wednesday for Labrador, you know."

"Then you're alone?" Jim turned. "Miss Lacey, let me present Mr. Van Ness; he spends his time trailing all over the earth to find something to kill. Miss Lacey is a young friend of my aunt's; I'm taking her down to her for a visit."

The explanation sounded somewhat involved, but Mr. Van Ness seemed to grasp it, and bowed.

"You're motoring, too?" he asked.

"No. I--The fact is--" Jim stammered in his turn. "We were thinking of taking the train----"

"Why not let me take you both down in the car?" The other rose to the occasion with evident alacrity. "Miss Lacy will like it better than the train, I'm sure, and I haven't seen you for an age, old man."

Jim accepted with a prompt.i.tude which proclaimed a mind relieved of its final burden, and he turned to Lou. Mr. Van Ness had gone out to see to his car, and they were alone at a far corner of the counter.

"How about it, Lou? The last lap! The last fifteen miles. It's been a long pull sometimes, and we've had some rough going, but it was worth it, wasn't it?"

Her eyes all unconsciously gave him answer even before she repeated softly:

"'The last lap.' Oh, Jim, shall I see you some time, at this lady's house where you are takin' me?"

"Every day," he promised, adding with cheerful mendacity: "I dine with her nearly all the time; have for years. Come on, Lou. Harry's waving at us."

Through the village and the pleasant rolling country beyond; past huge, wide-spreading estates and tiny cottages, and cl.u.s.ters of small shops with the trolley winding like a thread between, the big maroon car sped, while the two men talked together of many things, and the girl sat back in her corner of the roomy tonneau and gave herself up to vague dreams.

Then the cottages gave place to sporadic growths of brick and mortar with more open lots between, but even these gaps finally closed, and Lou found herself being borne swiftly through street after street of towering houses out upon a broad avenue with palaces such as she had never dreamed of on one side, and on the other the seared, drooping green of a city park in late summer.

It was still light when the big car swept into an exclusive street of brownstone houses of an earlier and still more exclusive period, and stopped before the proudest of these.

Jim alighted and held out his hand.

"Come, Lou," he said. "Journey's end."

CHAPTER IX

The Long, Long Trail

Three hours later, in that same proudly exclusive house, an elderly lady with gray hair and an aristocratically high, thin nose paced the floor of her drawing-room with a vigor which denoted some strong emotion.

"I must say, John, that I think the whole affair, whatever it may be, is highly reprehensible. I supposed James to be up in Canada on a fishing trip when he telephoned me this morning from somewhere near town with a--a most extraordinary message----"

She broke off, glancing cautiously toward a room across the hall, and added: "He said he had something to tell me, and he would be here this evening. Now you come, and you appear to know something about it, but I cannot get a word out of you!"

"All I can tell you, Mrs. Abbott, is that if Jimmie does come to-night, I've got to pay him a thousand bones--dollars, I mean. It was a sort of a wager, and that must be what he wants to tell you about."

It was an exceedingly stout young man with a round, cherubic countenance standing by the mantel who replied to her, and the old lady glanced at him sharply.

"A wager? H-m! Possibly." She paused suddenly. "There's the bell."

A moment later James Tarrisford Abbott, in the most immaculate of dinner clothes, entered and greeted his aunt, halting with a slight frown as he encountered the beaming face of the young man who fell upon him.

"Good boy, Jimmie! You made it, after all!"

"With a few hours to spare." Jim darted a questioning glance at his aunt, and seemed relieved at her emphatic shake of the head.

"I knew we'd lost when Mrs. Abbott told me that you had telephoned to her from just a little way out of town to-day," Jack Trimble responded.

"I ran over on my way to the club to give her a message from my mother.

Did you have a hard time of it, old man?"

"Hard?" Jim smiled. "I've been a rough-rider in a circus----"

Mrs. Abbott groaned, but Jack Trimble's eyes opened as roundly and wide as his mouth.

"Thundering--So it was you after all!"

"Me?" Jim demanded with ungrammatical haste.

"You--rough-rider--circus!" Jack exclaimed. "Vera said the chap looked like you, but it never occurred to me that it could possibly be!"

"So it was Vera, was it?" Jim smiled. "I heard what she said--I mean, it was repeated to me. You were one of that party?"

"Yes. We were with the Lentilhons in their car, and the funniest thing happened the next day on the way home! Crusty old farmer wouldn't turn out on the road, and Guy Lentilhon lost control and smashed straight through his wagon!" Jack laughed. "W-what do you think it was loaded with?"

"Eggs!" responded Jim crisply. "I happened to be on it at the time, my boy, and your sense of humor--I hope you all got what I did! But I must explain to Aunt Emmy here, or she will think that we are both quite mad!"

"And I must be off to the club," Jack announced. "I'll break the news to Billy Hollis that we've lost. See you later, and we'll all settle up.

Good evening, Mrs. Abbott."

When the stout young man had taken his departure, Mrs. Abbott turned to her nephew between laughter and tears.

"James, this is the maddest of all mad things that you have ever done!"

"Jack doesn't know anything about Lou?" Jim demanded anxiously.

"Certainly not. He has only been here a quarter of an hour, and I kept her out of the way. But, James, you cannot be serious! You cannot mean to marry this nameless waif?"

"Stop right there, Aunt Emmy," he interrupted her firmly. "I'm going to marry, if she will have me, your ward whom you have legally adopted; I mean, you will have adopted her by the time she has grown up. But I don't intend to be nosed out by any of these debutante-grabbers; I'm going to have everything settled before her studies are finished and you bring her out. I saw her first!"

"H-m. We shall see," Aunt Emmy remarked dryly, adding: "But that can wait for the moment. What was this ridiculous wager all about, and how did you get into such horrible sc.r.a.pes?"

"The whole thing came out of an idle discussion Jack Trimble, Billy Hollis and I had at the club one night concerning human nature. It drifted into a debate about charity in general and the kindness shown toward strangers by country folk in particular, with myself in the minority, of course," Jim explained.

"They each wagered me a thousand against my five hundred that I couldn't walk from Buffalo to New York in twenty-five days with only five dollars in my pocket to start with, and work my way home without begging nor accepting more than a quarter for each job I managed to secure in any one time.

"The idea was to see how many of these hard-boiled up-State farmers we hear so much about would offer you the hospitality reputed to be extended only by the rural population of the South and West, and how many would give a foot-sore and weary traveler a lift upon the way.

There were other conditions, too; I was not to use my own surname, not to go a foot out of the State into either Pennsylvania or New Jersey. I was not to beg, borrow, or steal, and for the occasional twenty-five cents I might earn I could only purchase food or actual necessities, not use it for transportation, and I must not beat my way by stealing rides on boats or trains or any other conveyances."