In Her Own Right Part 30

"Quite immaterial to the question, which is: A lemon or not a lemon?"

"If you could but see yourself at this moment, you would not ask," he said, looking at her with amused scrutiny.

The lovely face, the blue black hair, the fine figure in the simple pink organdie, the slender ankles, the well-shod feet--a lemon!

"But as I can't see myself, and have no mirror handy, your testimony is desired," she insisted. "A lemon or not a lemon?"

"A lemon!" he answered.

"Then you can't have any objection----"

"If you bring Miss Erskine in?" he interrupted. "Nay! Nay! _Nay!_ NAY!"

"----if I take you there for a game of Bridge--shall we go this very evening?"

"If you wish," he answered.

She laughed. "I don't wish--and we are growing very silly. Come, tell about your Annapolis trip. You stayed a great while."

"Something more than three weeks!"

"It's a queer old town, Annapolis--they call it the 'Finished City!'

It's got plenty of landmarks, and relics, but nothing more. If it were not for the State Capitol and Naval Academy, it would be only a lot of ruins, lost in the sand. In midsummer, it's absolutely dead. No one on the streets, no one in the shops, no one any place.--Deserted--until there's a fire. Then you should see them come out!"

"That is sufficiently expressed!" laughed Croyden. "But, with the autumn and the Academy in session, the town seemed very much alive. We sampled 'Cheney's Best,' Wegard's Cakes, and saw the Custard-and-Cream Chapel."

"You've been to Annapolis, sure!" she replied. "There's only one thing more--did you see Paul Jones?"

He shook his head. "We missed him."

"Which isn't surprising. You can't find him without the aid of a detective or a guide."

"Then, who ever finds him?"

"No one!--and there is the shame. We accepted the vast labors and the money of our Amba.s.sador to France in locating the remains of America's first Naval Hero; we sent an Emba.s.sy and a warship to bring them back; we received them with honor, orated over them, fired guns over them.

And then, when the spectators had departed--a.s.suming they were to be deposited in the crypt of the Chapel--we calmly chucked them away on a couple of trestles, under a stairway in Bancroft Hall, as we would an old broom or a tin can. That's _our_ way of honoring the only Naval Commander we had in the Revolution. It would have been better, much better, had we left him to rest in the quiet seclusion of his grave in France--lost, save in memory, with the halo of the past and privacy of death around him."

"And why didn't we finish the work?" said Croyden. "Why bring him here, with the attendant expense, and then stop, just short of completion?

Why didn't we inter him in the Chapel (though, G.o.d save me from burial there), or any place, rather than on trestles under a stairway in a midshipmen's dormitory?"

"Because the appropriation was exhausted, or because the Act wasn't worded to include burial, or because the Superintendent didn't want the bother, or because it was a nuisance to have the remains around--or some other absurd reason. At all events, he is there in the cellar, and he is likely to stay there, till Bancroft Hall is swallowed up by the Bay. The junket to France, the parade, the speeches, the spectacular part are over, so, who cares for the entombment, and the respect due the distinguished dead?"

"I don't mean to be disrespectful," he observed, "but it's hard luck to have one's bones disturbed, after more than a hundred years of tranquillity, to be conveyed clear across the Atlantic, to be orated over, and sermonized over, and, then, to be flung aside like old junk and forgot. However, we have troubles of our own--I know I have--more real than Paul Jones! He may be glad he's dead, so he won't have any to worry over. In fact, it's a good thing to be dead--one is saved from a heap of worry."

She looked at him, without replying.

"What's the use?" he said. "A daily struggle to procure fuel sufficient to keep up the fire."

"What's the use of anything! Why not make an end of life, at once?" she asked.

"Sometimes, I'm tempted," he admitted. "It's the leap in the dark, and no returning, that restrains, I reckon--and the fact that we must face it alone. Otherwise----"

She laughed softly. "Otherwise death would have no terrors! You have begged the question, or what amounts to it. But, to return to Annapolis; what else did you see?"

"You have been there?"

"Many times."

"Then you know what I saw," he replied. "I had no wonderful adventures. This isn't the day of the rapier and the mask."

She half closed her eyes and looked at him through the long lashes.

"What were you doing down on Greenberry Point?" she demanded.

"How did you know?" he asked, surprised.

"Oh! very naturally. I was in Annapolis--I saw your name on the register--I inquired--and I had the tale of the camp. No one, however, seemed to think it queer!" laughing.

"Why should they? Camping out is entirely natural," Croyden answered.

"With the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs?"

"We were in his party!"

"A party which until five days ago he had not joined--at least, so the Superintendent told me, when I dined at his house. He happened to mention your name, found I knew you--and we gossiped. Perhaps we shouldn't, but we did."

"What else did he tell you?"

"Nothing! he didn't seem even to wonder at your being there----"

"But _you_ did?"

"It's the small town in me, I suppose--to be curious about other people and their business; and it was most suspicious."

"What was most suspicious?" he asked.

"Your actions. First, you hire a boat and cross the Bay direct from Hampton to Annapolis. Second, you procure, through Senator Rickrose, a permit from the Secretary of the Navy to camp on Greenberry Point.

Third, you actually do camp, there, for nearly, or quite three weeks.

Query:--Why? Why go clear to the Western Sh.o.r.e, and choose a comparatively inaccessible and exposed location on United States property, if the idea were only a camp? Why not camp over on Kent Island, or on this coast? Anywhere, within a few miles of Hampton, there are scores of places better adapted than Greenberry Point."

"You should be a story teller!" he laughed. "Your imagination is marvelous. With a series of premises, you can reach whatever conclusion you wish--you're not bound by the probabilities."

"You're simply obscuring the point," she insisted. "In this instance, my premises are facts which are not controverted. You admit them to be correct. So, why? Why?----" She held up her hand. "Don't answer! I'm not asking for information. I don't want to be told. I'm simply 'chaffing of you,' don't you know!"

"With just a lingering curiosity, however," he added.

"A casual curiosity, rather," she amended.

"Which, some time, I shall gratify. You've trailed me down--we _were_ on Greenberry Point for a purpose, but nothing has come of it, yet--and it's likely a failure."