The Brown Study Part 17

"I should say that is just what you are!"

"No; but--'There is a tide,' you know. And Dot certainly has me worried to death over Ridge Jordan."

"But, Julius"--Mrs. Jack's voice took on a tinge of anxiety--"we've always thought well of Ridge. I don't just see--"

"I know you don't. He's not the man for Dot. I want a real man for her.

I've got him. Wait till you see Kirke!"

"You seem to think it's very simple--"

"By George, I think it is! I know how he felt about her when she was a youngster: adored the ground she walked on. She never looked at him. I tell you she'll look at him now; he's worth looking at."

"If he's so fine looking he may be engaged to some other girl."

"He's not. I made sure of that," declared Julius, audacity gleaming in his eyes as usual. "Besides, I tell you, he's not that sort. He's no matinee idol for looks; maybe you wouldn't even call him good looking.

I do; he's got the goods in his face, handsome or not. I tell you he's a real man. Dot hasn't seen one yet. I'll make her see Kirke--somehow.

You wait."

He marched away, head up, eyes thoughtful, lips pursed in a whistle.

Next morning, when three luxurious motor cars stopped at Mrs. Jack's door, Julius was lounging on the porch. It was his Senior vacation; he could be forgiven for lounging. In his flannels, hands in pockets, he strolled down the steps with his sister to see her off, though Ridgeway Jordan was escorting her devotedly. He surveyed her, as he followed her, with brotherly pride.

"That sister of mine has all the rest of them beaten at the quarter-mile," was his inward reflection. "Not much money to do it on, but she certainly knows how to get herself up to look as if she'd just walked out of a tailor's box and a milliner's bandbox. Made that stunner of a hat herself, I'll wager. Fresh as a peach, her face, too. The others look a bit jaded."

Along with these inner comments he was keeping up a running fire of talk with two of the bridesmaids, whom he knew well. His bright black eyes, however, noted that Dorothy's place in the first car was next that of Ridgeway Jordan, and that the face of that young man was soberer than usual.

"Bad sign," he reflected as he turned away, after a hot-and-heavy exchange of banter with certain of the men as the car prepared to start.

"When a chap begins to look solemn, sitting beside a girl you know he's in love with, you can be sure he has it on his mind to have it out with her before the day is over. If I could have just got Kirke to her yesterday! Ridge may do it any time now; I can see it in his eye--and she may take him. I don't know what's got into Dot. A month ago she'd have laughed at the idea of marrying him; but now I can't be sure of her.

It's this idiotic bridal hysteria that's got her in its grip. By George, she _shan't_ take him!"

An hour later, in his brother-in-law's trap, Julius drove to the station to meet his guest. Kirke Waldron, descending from the train, found his old schoolmate, younger than himself, but well remembered as the imp of the High School, waiting for him on the station platform.

"Mighty glad to be sure of you," Julius declared, shaking hands. "Until I actually caught sight of you I was still expecting a wire saying you couldn't afford even the one day."

"The coast is clear," Waldron answered, returning the grip with equal vigor. "I closed every account at midnight and have my one day as free as air."

"The question is," Julius lost no time in beginning, as the two walked along the trim, flower-bordered suburban platform toward the waiting trap, "what sort of a day do you want? Outdoors, of course; no question of that in hot weather. But--with people or away from them? I can take you to my sister's for luncheon; to tell the truth, she's counting on that. But afterward I have a little plan to carry you up into the mountains to a place I know for an all-afternoon tramp and a dinner at the best little inn in the country. Back in the late evening, a dash down to our river and a swim by moonlight. How does that programme suit you?"

"It's great," agreed Kirke Waldron decidedly. "Nothing could suit me better. Vacation, to me, means outdoors always. And it's a long time since I've done any tramping in the home State."

"I knew you weren't one of the hammock-and-novel vacation sort," Julius said as he put his new-old friend into the trap. "I'm not myself.

Though"--he confessed with honesty--"I have been known to sit with my heels in the air for a longer consecutive period than you've ever done if all your sittings were lumped together."

"What do you know as to where I've kept my heels?"

"On the ground, planting one before the other without rest, day in and day out, ever since I first knew you. That's why you're where you are; it doesn't take a soothsayer to tell that."

Waldron laughed. "You're a flatterer," he said.

Julius shook his head. "Not a bit of it. It's written all over you. If I got caught in the middle of an earthquake anywhere, and the ground stopped shaking and I looked around me to find out what to do next, and my eye fell on you out of hundreds bunched around me, I should simply--follow you out of the mess!"

"That's a great tribute," Waldron admitted, "from a fellow whom I used to know as the cleverest at getting himself out of sc.r.a.pes of all the boys who were resourceful in getting into them."

"Having exchanged large-sized bouquets," Julius observed with sudden gravity, "we will now drive home. Do you know I'm mighty sorry my sister Dorothy isn't there? You remember her, do you?--or maybe you don't. She was just a 'kid' with a couple of long tails of hair down her back. My second sister, Barbara--we call her 'Bud'--was in your cla.s.s, I believe.

She remembers you all right; says she was tremendously impressed by the way you slew the fractions on the blackboard. Bud married Jack Elliot, as I told you yesterday; and a great old boy he is, too, for a brother-in-law."

Discoursing of his family, with occasional mention of his sister Dorothy, Julius took his friend to the Elliot home. Mrs. Jack, fresh and charming, made them welcome. Jack himself, by some happy chance, had been able to come out for luncheon, and the three men found each other thoroughly congenial.

After luncheon Julius contrived a chance to exchange a brief colloquy with Mrs. Jack on the subject of the guest.

"What do you think of him, Bud? Pretty fine sort to have developed from the grub who did the stunts with fractions, with his freckled face turning lobster colour because you girls were looking at him?"

"I can't believe he's the same," Mrs. Jack whispered, looking through the open window at the figure on the porch outside, its side turned toward her. "I haven't seen a man in a long time with so much character in his face. He's not exactly handsome, but--yes, I certainly do like his face very much. I wish--I really wish Dot were here."

"Oh, no, not at all!" Julius objected. "Dot's satisfied with Ridge Jordan, or thinks she is. So are you."

"I have always liked Ridge," Mrs. Jack insisted; "but--well, Mr. Waldron is quite another type."

"Yes, quite another," Julius murmured, and returned to the porch.

Before the two took the train for the mountains Julius managed to let Waldron see a photograph of Dorothy. As a matter of fact; photographs of Dorothy were all about the house, but in Julius's own room hung one which the brother considered the gem of them all. It showed one of those straight-out-of-the-picture faces which are sometimes so attractive, the eyebrows level above the wonderful eyes, the lips serious and sweet, the head well poised upon the lovely neck, the whole aspect one of youth unconscious of its charm, yet feeling a subtle power of its own.

Waldron, his attention called to the photograph, surveyed it with a quiet comment: "I should have known she would look like this when she grew up"; and turned away without undue lingering. Yet Julius was satisfied that Waldron would know the face again when he saw it, as it was intended that he should.

It was a journey of an hour and a half by rail up into the mountain resort where, by certain artfully veiled investigations, Julius had ascertained that the bridal party would stop for dinner. Scheming joyously, he led his companion from the train at a station several miles from Saxifrage Inn, alighting at a mere flag station in the midst of a semi-wilderness. The promised tramp began without the knowledge of the guest as to where it was to end or hint as to what might be found there.

Coats over their arms, the two young men swung away upon the trail--a wide, much-used trail, which could be followed without difficulty. The warm summer air was fragrant with the scent of balsam, pine, and fern; pine needles carpeted the path; faint forest sounds came to their ears--the call of a loon from a distant lake, the whirr of a partridge, the chatter of a squirrel, the splash of falling water. Waldron took off his straw hat and tucked it under his arm, baring his forehead to the spice-laden breeze that now and then filtered through the forest, stirring languid leaves to motion.

"Ah, but I'd like to be just setting out on a fortnight of this!" he breathed. "Dressed for the part, a pack on my back--or a canoe. When I was a boy I used to go on long canoeing trips, following our river to its mouth. I don't like the tropics as well as I do the temperate zones."

"If you weren't such a tremendous grind you would do it now," Julius offered. "A fellow needs a vacation, now and then, if he's to keep in shape."

Waldron glanced at him, smiling. "So he does. But somehow I've managed to keep in shape. I inherit from my father a fairly tough const.i.tution, and also the love of work, the seeing my job through to the finish without loss of time. I suspect that's what keeps me going."

They fell into talk about Waldron's work.

In answer to Julius's questions Waldron told him a good deal about the work itself--little, as Julius afterward realized, of his own part in it.

The miles fell away beneath their steadily marching feet, and in due season, by Julius's management, they emerged from the trail at a certain rocky bluff overlooking the distant country, upon which was perched the small but county-famous inn where they were to have dinner.

A string of automobiles stood along the driveway, and among them Julius readily recognized the three with which he was familiar as those which had been conveying the Clifford-Jordan bridal party to and from its places of entertainment for the last fortnight. No sign of the party itself was to be seen upon the side piazzas which encompa.s.sed the inn.

But this was easily understood. From some distance away the sounds proceeding from a shrubbery-screened point upon the bluff before the inn betrayed the presence of a company of revellers. This was as it should be. Even Julius Broughton's audacity was not to be carried to the point of forcing himself and his friend, uninvited, upon a set of young people already carefully selected and for the time being rigidly separated from the rest of mankind by metaphorical white ribbons stretched to insure privacy.

Julius left Waldron upon the porch and went into the inn to ascertain, if might be, from the management where the bridal party would be dining.

Learning, as he had expected, that a private apartment was devoted to their use, he went to the public dining room and selected a table. Being early he was able to secure one in an alcove, looking out through an open window upon the path along which the bridal party, returning from the bluff, would be sure to approach. To this he presently led Waldron and seated him so that he faced the path outside, the vista of distant countryside beyond. The young people of the Clifford-Jordan party were to dine at eight, and it lacked only a few minutes of this hour when they appeared down the path.

Julius had just given his order and leaned comfortably back in his chair when he caught sight of them. "By George!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Well, well! so _this_ is where they've come! Been mighty mysterious about where they meant to spend the day, but we've caught 'em. Started in the opposite direction this morning, too--just for a blind. You see there are a lot of practical jokers among Clifford's friends, and their attentions haven't been confined to the hour of the wedding itself. I say, recognize the girl in the lead with the bride's brother, that light-haired fellow?"

Drawing back so that he was concealed by the curtains of the window Waldron looked out at the approaching bevy of young people. Up the path they came, talking, laughing, shifting like a pattern in a kaleidoscope, gay, handsome, sophisticated, modishly dressed, unconventionally mannered, yet showing, most of them, the traces of that youthful ennui so often betrayed in these modern days by those who of all the world should feel it least.