Quaint Courtships Part 20

Again Edith's look deserved the foot-lights, but Rose shrugged her shoulders and withdrew her detaining hand. Edith caught up her parasol and ran down the stairs. The big hall was empty. From a room on the right came a click of billiard-b.a.l.l.s.

"Perhaps they are all in the house!" she thought, and drew a small breath of relief.

On the door-step she paused, with her parasol open, and considered. The house faced the west; her room was to the south, and the letter had disappeared to the east. She chose her line of advance carefully careless.

The lawn on the eastern side of the house sloped to an artificial pond, and near it a vine-covered summer-house made a dim retreat from the June sun. Look as she would, though, no faintest glimpse of white paper rewarded her gaze.

She strolled on--daunted, but still persistent, with the wind blowing her hair out of order--to the door of the summer-house. Within it a young man was standing, reading her letter. He looked up and took off his hat hastily, crumpling the letter in his hand. She saw he was quite ugly, with determined-looking eyes, and the redemption of a pleasant mouth.

She hesitated, the words "That is my letter!" absolutely frozen on her lips. He had been reading it! It seemed impossible for her to claim it, and so for a moment's silence she stood, with the green vines of the doorway--

Half light, half shade--

framing herself and her white umbrella.

"You are looking for a cool spot?"--he deprecatingly took the initiative. "This is a good choice. There's a wind--"

"Horrid!" she interrupted, so vehemently that she caught his involuntary surprise. "I don't like the wind," she added.

"'It's an ill wind,' you know, 'that doesn't blow some one good.'"

"I a.s.sure you _this_ is an ill wind! It has blown me all of the ill it could."

"Do come out of it," he begged. "The vines keep it off. It's a half-hour until luncheon," he added, "unless they've changed since I was here last." He put up his watch. "We're fellow guests. You came this morning, didn't you?--while we were out. I came last night."

She seated herself provisionally on the little bench by the door, and dug the point of her umbrella into the ground. Her mind was busy. He still held the letter. She had had a forlorn hope that he would throw down the sheet; but he did not. Was there any strategy, she wondered.

But none suggested itself; and indeed, as if divining her thought, he put the crumpled sheet in his pocket. Her eyes followed despairingly the "Dear Christopher," in her clear and, she felt, unfortunately individual writing, as it disappeared in his capacious blue serge pocket.

Different ideas wildly presented themselves, but none would do. Could she ask him to climb a tree? Of course in that case he would have to take off his coat and put it down, and give her the opportunity to recover the horrible letter from his pocket. But one cannot ask a stranger to climb a tree simply to exhibit his acrobatic powers. And trees!--there were none save saplings in a radius of fifty yards! Could she tumble in the pond? It would be even less desirable, and he would simply wade in and pull her out, with no need to remove his coat.

"Mrs. Manstey," he was saying, a little tentatively, upholding the burden of conversation, "sent some of us out riding this morning, and Ralph Manstey raced us home by a short cut cross country. That is, he took the short cut. _We_ gave it the cut direct and looked for gaps."

"If I had been out, I'd have taken every fence," she said, boastfully, and then laughed. He laughed too.

"If I--if you were my sister, I shouldn't let you follow Ralph Manstey on horseback. He's utterly reckless."

"So am I," she came in, with spirit. "At home I ride anything and jump everything."

"Well, you shouldn't if you were my sister," he repeated, decisively.

"I'm sorry for your sister," she declared.

"Well, you see, I haven't one," he said, gayly, and smiled down at her lifted face. Remembering the letter, she corrected her expression to colder lines.

"There's no one to introduce us,"--he broke the pause. "Mayn't I--" He colored and put his hand into his pocket, and taking out her letter, folded the blank sheet out and produced a pencil. "It's hard to call one's own name," he continued. "Suppose we write our names?"

As he was clumsy in finesse, she understood his idea, and her eyes flashed. But she said nothing as he scribbled and handed the paper to her. She read, "C.K. Farringdon," and played with the pencil.

"Mr. Farringdon,"--she said it over meditatively. "How plainly you write! My name's Edith Eversley," she added, tranquilly, and, because she must, per force, returned the sheet to him. She had a wicked delight in the defeat of his strategy which she could cleverly conceal.

"I wish," he deprecated, gently, but with persistence, "that you would write your name here--won't you, as a souvenir?"

But she shook her head and rose--angry, which she hid, but also amused at his pertinacity.

"I can't write decently with a pencil," she said, carelessly, and her eyes followed his hand putting the letter back into his pocket. That she should have actually had the letter in her hand, and had to give it back! But no quick-witted pretext had occurred to help her. Rose would think her stupid--utterly lacking in expedients.

She left the summer-house, unfurling her umbrella, and Farringdon followed instantly, his failure apparently forgotten.

They pa.s.sed the tennis-court on their way to the house, and--

"Do you play?" he asked.

"A little." Her intonation mocked the formula.

"Might we, then, this afternoon--"

She gave him a side glance. "If you don't mind losing," she suggested.

"But I play to win," he modestly met it, and again they laughed.

Rose Eversley looked with curiosity at her sister when she entered the dining-room for luncheon, followed by Farringdon, but Edith's face was non-committal. She was bright and vivacious, and made herself very pleasant to Farringdon, who sat by her. After luncheon they went to the tennis-court together.

"A delightful young man," Mrs. St. Cleve commented, putting up her lorgnette as she stood at the window with Rose, watching their disappearing figures, "but so far as money is concerned, a hopeless detrimental. Don't let your pretty sister get interested in him. He hasn't a cent except what he makes--he's an architect."

"Edith is to be depended upon," Rose said, enigmatically. She was five years older than her sister, and had drawn the inference of her own plainness, comparatively, ever since Edith had put on long dresses.

"Have you written to Christopher?" she asked, that night, invading Edith's room with her hair-brushes.

"No, I haven't," Edith said, thoughtfully. "I tried just now. It seems--I don't know how, exactly, but I just _can't_ write it over again! If I had the letter I wrote this morning, I suppose I would send it; but to write it all over again--it's too horrible!"

"'Horrible'!" Rose repeated. "Very few people would think it that! He's rich, thoroughly good, and devoted to you."

"You put the least last," Edith said, slowly, "and you're right. I'm not sure Christopher is so devoted to me, after all. He may only fancy that I like him, and from his high estate--"

"Nonsense!" Rose said, warmly. "He isn't, as you know, that sort of a man. I've known him for years--" She paused.

Edith said nothing; she brushed her hair with careful slowness.

"He is so sincere--so straight-forward," Rose went on, in an impersonal tone; "and as papa has had so much ill luck and our circ.u.mstances have changed--they _are_ changed, you know, though we are still able to keep up a certain appearance--he has been unchanged. You ought to consider--"

"You consider Christopher's interests altogether," Edith said. "I've some, too."

"Oh no! You needn't think of them with Christopher," Rose said, seriously. "That's just it! He would so completely look after _yours!_ It's _his_, in this regard, that need consideration."

"Well--I'll consider Christopher's interests," Edith said, quietly.

She remembered perfectly the letter she had written--which was in an ugly young man's pocket! It had been: