Stories That End Well Part 16

"I know; Hester's a remarkable girl, Darrie; she has always appreciated your mother. Begun again, have they? Started something else while the ballots are counted. Like a continuous show, isn't it?"

He listened with a slackened zest while the questions of reorganization and details of the duties of chairmen pattered through the hour, the rain after the thunder-storm. Then, unexpectedly, Mrs. Hardy made her little speech. It was an excellent little speech, good-natured, full of sense, and with a dash of humor. At first, she was a little nervous, but she was too interested in her subject to be nervous more than an instant. Had she known of the presence of two auditors in the gallery, perhaps her composure had wavered. There could be no doubt regarding their agitation. They turned pale and clutched each other; then, first on Darrie's, next on his father's features, dawned and spread a light of exceeding confidence; with shameless effrontery--considering their relationship--they stimulated the applause; they beamed over the hits; and at the close they were radiant. Without a word Darius held out his hand to his son, who wrung it. Then, they both took a long, long breath of relief and satisfaction. Darius was the first to speak: "My son,"

said he, "I have known your mother for forty years and have been her husband for thirty-three, but she can surprise me still!"

"Mother certainly _is_ great," a.s.sented Darrie, solemnly; he added his own little feather of marital triumph: "Hetty always told me so," said he.

"Look at those women all around her," said Darius, "patting her on the shoulder and whispering; _they_ know. Darrie, I'll bet you anything, there hasn't been another speech in this convention that has put things as clearly as mother's."

Myrtle started when she saw her husband and son smiling in the doorway.

Her daughter-in-law was on one side, her daughter on the other, half a dozen of her delegation radiated complacency in her wake. "Hasn't she covered us with glory?" one of the followers called, gleefully to another. And a little din of compliments fell upon Darius' ears. It is pleasant to reflect that all over the hall similar groups were exulting unselfishly over their own prowess and their own heroines. Little did Darius Hardy concern himself with them. He took his wife under his arm with a proud and blissful smile. He waved a direction at Darrie: "You take the girls, Darrie, you'll find a cab, somewhere; I want your mother to myself. Now, Myrtle, if sated vanity can demand any more, I'll give it to you in the carriage!"

A few minutes later, she was gazing, through a happy mist, at the gems on her heart-shaped locket, murmuring: "And I thought you had forgotten the day. And you planning this lovely, lovely surprise for me. Oh, I am so glad, Dar, I didn't know you were there, I couldn't have said a _word_! Did I--were you--was it _pa.s.sable_?"

"You're fishing!" chuckled he; and he kissed her hand. But he whispered in her ear; and she blushed like a young girl.

Presently he laughed. "By the way, Myrtle, you haven't told me! Have you discovered what is the object of the federation?"

"Certainly," said she, "I don't know what it is for others, but in my case it is to help me find myself--and my husband!"

THE LITTLE LONELY GIRL

The golf links were picturesque; spreading along the sh.o.r.e or climbing through the heart of the island set in the great river; here and there a vista of the huge bulk of the a.r.s.enal-shops; walled over the river by the hills behind opulent, bustling little cities, the fair greens jeweled by the sun and dappled with shadow from trees older than the Louisiana Purchase. A breeze shifted the shadows. w.i.l.l.y Butler felt its touch on his wet forehead.

He half turned to take out his handkerchief. In the act he saw her. It was the same girl who had followed the course yesterday. She was alone, just as she had been alone yesterday.

The gallery was bobbing like the crest of a wave over the brow of the hill; the carriages and machines glittered in slow pomp after the rope, while the favorites and their caddies marched over the slope toward the bunkers. But w.i.l.l.y and d.i.c.kson had only this one follower, a little lonely figure, slim and straight and nimble, in white linen, whose brown arms and brown face against her dazzling gown made the effect of a Russian eikon minus the gold-incrusted robe. She halted when w.i.l.l.y halted. With impersonal interest she watched d.i.c.kson make a strike. At the clean, beautiful drive she nodded approval. Then her black brows met in a slightly worried frown. w.i.l.l.y, club in hand, was aware of the frown. He was aware--in a sort of subconscious way--that she wanted him to play well; and he was acutely aware that he had not played well this afternoon. Even his direction, which had always been his best ally, had not kept its form. Twice had he gone into the rough, losing a shot each time, despite his really hair-raising recoveries. Now the other man was two up, with only four more holes to play. At best w.i.l.l.y could but halve this hole, at best, with a perfect approach and a long putt. "A duffer at golf, like everything else!" ran his own bitter comment to himself.

He didn't know why he looked up; swinging his club for a trial stroke on a leaf. Look he did, however, to catch the dark eyes of the little lonely girl intently watching him. If she had called to him aloud "Brace up!" he couldn't have heard the words more distinctly. He almost thought he did hear them, and gave the child an involuntary, half-starved smile.

With the same smile on his lips he sent a faultless approach into easy putting distance, and he felt absurdly pleased because she clapped her hands. They halved the hole. d.i.c.kson, the Harvard champion, looked bored as he sank on the bench by the red water-cooler. He had been w.i.l.l.y's cla.s.smate a year ago at college, knowing him as the man who makes all the best societies and "leads the life" may know the recluse who makes none; he was conscious of a certain irritation peppering his cool superiority. To think of the millions that shuffling, cowed-looking, insignificant chap would have, while he, d.i.c.kson, had to slave on a salary. A duffer who couldn't even win a golf game that belonged to him, because he was rattled! d.i.c.kson felt that the ways of Fate were scandalous.

w.i.l.l.y had limped up. The day before he had blistered his heel somehow, and every step cost a pang. He eased the lame foot by resting his weight on the other. His gray-blue eyes, which only his dead mother had ever found handsome, scanned with a certain wistfulness d.i.c.kson's graceful, athletic figure and clean, dark profile. His own profile was irregular and his figure was awkward, with arms too long and shoulders too square for harmony; he stooped in an ungainly fashion, as if he had the habit of musing as he walked; his plain face was deeply freckled. Yet as there was a suggestion of strength in the figure, so there was the same suggestion in the young mouth and chin, and something clear and strangely innocent, for a young man, looked out of his eyes. As he stood, every muscle seemed to sag; he appeared utterly spent; but the instant d.i.c.kson had driven he stepped alertly into his place and sent a drive like a bird sailing far beyond d.i.c.kson's dot of white on the green. Somehow a new uplift of energy and hope had come to him; bless that kid, he would show her that he could still do something with the sticks! He heard her whispered, unconscious "_Beauty!_" This time he kept his head straight, but when the hole was won, he met her smile frankly with another. The next hole was easy. He had steadied; he had his nerve back; every calculation worked; and when d.i.c.kson stymied, it was a simple trick (the like of which he had practiced often) to hop over the ball and roll into the hole, to the artless joy of his caddy.

"You're going to be the champeen," this worthy told w.i.l.l.y when they trudged on; "guess that young lady's a mascot."

"I guess she is," said w.i.l.l.y. He was sure of it when at the home hole, guarded by a high hedge, d.i.c.kson's ball was sliced into the stubborn net of osage-orange roots. When his own ball sailed cleanly over the wall he made an excuse of tying his shoe in order to get another view of "that kid's" brilliant smile. The girl herself went on to the bench in sight of the blackboard. Here she found herself beside an elderly man with a great head of thick gray hair. He was clapping so vigorously that she took him to be w.i.l.l.y's father, and sent him a glance of sympathy. "You been all 'round with him?" said he. "What sort of a game is he playing?"

"Pretty bad until the fifteenth, and then a wonder," she returned calmly.

"Rattled!" he snorted in disgust, as he chewed his cigar out of shape.

"First match game. How are the others? What's his chance?"

"He can beat them all if he will only think so," she returned in the same even tone. Her voice was fuller, with a different and more melodious intonation than those about him; he looked up at her quickly, as if from a pa.s.sing sense of the difference.

"Yes, he's rattled!" grunted the elderly gentleman. "Gone stale, practicing every minute. Too anxious. Wants to please his father by getting a little silverware."

"Aren't you his father?"

"_Me?_ No. His father could buy me up out of his pocket-money. His father is Hiram G. Butler. I'm only his boss. He's learning the steel business with me. I wish I _was_ his father; he's a genius in his way."

"I suppose his father is awfully proud of him."

"Proud nothing!" exploded the stout gentleman. "His father has bought and sold and fought inventors so long that when he discovered that his son was hatching formulas for open-hearth steel he was disgusted. Then at college Will took honors in chemistry and was a grind; and when his father wanted to load him with money, and told him to go ahead and make all the societies, he sent the money back and said he didn't know any boys in societies; the boys who ran after him were only after his money and the other boys didn't want him. The trouble simply is he is too all-fired shy and modest. Takes his father's word he is a failure because he couldn't make their fool societies. How should a fellow who has spent his life in English schools and traveling about with a tutor, and then is dumped into Harvard, be expected to make a splash among those snippy young swells? Harvard's no violet cold-frame! The other boys did, but they were chips of the old block, hard as nails and hustlers from 'way back. And since his mother died this poor chap has had n.o.body to chirk him up. Father didn't mind until the other boys died. All three in one year; pretty tough on their father. Pretty tough.

Ever lose--ur-r!--any one in your family? Then you know. Now w.i.l.l.y's the only child, and his father wants to make him over in his brothers'

image. Wants to give him a wife to help! And w.i.l.l.y so scared of a petticoat he walked two hours up and down before the Somerset Hotel at his first college dance trying to screw up courage to go in--and couldn't. Hiram never will get over that. But w.i.l.l.y, though he won't marry to please his father, is fond of the old dictator just the same.

And mighty proud. That's why he has worked so at golf. Trying to show he can do some things like other boys, you see. Well, I see that Harvard dude has got his ball on the green at last. Now it's up to w.i.l.l.y--Didn't I tell you? In all right! Shall--Oh!" It was a singularly small, soft "Oh!" which the elderly man uttered, and it slipped out of his rugged lips when he caught the shy flash from w.i.l.l.y's eyes at the girl. He studied her an infinitesimal s.p.a.ce before he spoke, and he turned a chuckle into a cough as he said, "Aren't you Lady Jean Bruce-Hadden and aren't you visiting the Brookes?"

She said that she was, rather indifferently, her gaze still following w.i.l.l.y, who was accepting d.i.c.kson's congratulations less awkwardly than was his wont.

"I guess Major Brooke has told you about me, Jabez Rivers--"

But ere he could finish the name, she had held out her hand with a kindling face, crying, "Oh, indeed, yes. I'm ever so glad to meet you, Mr. Rivers."

After this it was only natural to present w.i.l.l.y; but it was a bit of a surprise to have w.i.l.l.y, when presented, say, "This is my mascot, sir. I lost the game and she made me win it."

w.i.l.l.y was astonished at his own fluency; but then he had thought Lady Jean a very young girl, not quite the "kid" that he had styled her, but still hardly a young lady. Then, anyhow, she was different. Oh, _very_ different!

His friend was eying him critically, with queer little grunts, according to his fashion. "You're not fit to walk," he grumbled. "Why _will_ young folks wear shoes that don't fit! Say, you take Lady Jean home while I go over to the club-house with the major. And keep the car if you don't find me. I'll go back with Standish. And--I don't know but you better take her 'round the head of the island and show her that motor mowing-machine--lawn-mower, you know; I want her to see it."

He grinned as the young people obeyed him with grateful docility, speeding away in his electric runabout; and bestowed a look of orphic sagacity upon the officer in white undress uniform who had joined him.

The officer was younger than Rivers, although not young.

"That is one of the very finest little ladies in the world," he remarked.

To which Rivers returned dryly, "So you've told me. And that's one of the finest, decentest, cleanest fellows in the world with her."

"As you've told _me_."

Rivers grunted. "Go over that lingo you told me about the girl again--or I'll repeat to see if I've got it straight. She's the fifth daughter of the Earl of Paisley, Scotch earl, and poor as even a Scotch earl can be.

He has no sons. Distant cousin heir to t.i.tle. Countess dead. Oldest daughter married to Baron Fairley; second, widow of a bishop; third, wife of army officer. Bishopess manages family. She has brought Lady Moira and the earl over here to give American millionaires a chance with Lady Moira, who is the family beauty; and little Jean, who is good as gold, and has sense, but isn't showy, was just thrown in because an old-maid aunt offered to pay her expenses. Your wife, who knew them in Scotland, asked her to come here while the Bishopess, in New York, picks out the most eligible of the millionaire admirers. So?"

"Yes. Well?"

"Come on over to the club-house; and while we rest a bit, you telephone over to Mrs. Brooke, who only needs a tip to go straight, to _make_ w.i.l.l.y Butler stay to dinner--"

"Oh, I say--" began the major.

"No, you don't say anything. You don't ask questions. You have confidence in your Uncle Jabez and do what he asks. _Not?_"

"I will," said the major, and he went away smiling.

How astonishing to be taking a girl about alone and not be in torments of embarra.s.sment! But this girl was so nice and simple and boyish; not the least like those snippy Boston buds! And she knew golf to the ground; it seemed the most natural thing in the world to ask her if she was going to watch Cleaves play to-morrow.