The Brown Study Part 20

He had written on shipboard, and the letter came back to her from Greater Inagua, the first West Indian island at which his ship had touched.

Coming in one September evening from a long walk through the hazy air, its breath fragrant with the peculiar pungent odour of distant forest fires, Dorothy found the letter on the hall table. She knew it was his before she saw the postmark; recognized, as if she had often seen it, the clean cut, regular lettering, the mark of the man of exactness and order, of the well-trained mind. Her heart leaped at sight of it, a heart which had never before really leaped at sight of any man's handwriting. She picked up the letter and went away upstairs with it to her room. Here she locked the door.

She placed the letter upon her dressing-table and studied its envelope while she removed her dress, brushed and arranged her hair, and put on the frock she intended to wear for the evening; she was going with Tom Wendell to a small dance at the home of a special friend. She did not open the letter, but left it, unopened, propped up against a little pink silk pincushion, giving it one last glance as she switched off the light before closing the door. On the evening of the Clifford-Jordan wedding Ridgeway Jordan, brother of the bride and best man to the bridegroom, had offered himself in marriage to the maid of honour, Dorothy Broughton. She had done her best to prevent him, but he had reached such a stage of despairing pa.s.sion that he could no longer be managed and did the deed at a moment when she could not escape. Being gently but firmly refused, he had declared his life to be irretrievably ruined and immediately after the wedding had flung himself out of town, vowing that she should not be bothered with the sight of the work her hands had wrought. When another long-time friend, Thomas Wendell, seized the opportunity of Ridge's absence to further his own claims to Dorothy's preferment, she, profiting by painful experience, had somehow made it clear to him that only comradeship was in her thoughts. Even on these tacit terms Wendell was eager to serve as escort whenever she would allow it.

On this September evening he was on hand early and bore her away with ill-concealed satisfaction. "I say," he observed suddenly in the pause of a waltz, "did you happen to have a fortune left you to-day?"

"Why, Tommy?" Dorothy's face grew instantly sober.

"Oh, don't turn off the illumination. I'm sorry I spoke. It was only that you somehow seemed--well, not exactly unhappy to-night, and I couldn't get at the cause. I should like to flatter myself that I'm the cause, but I know better."

"I must be a gloomy person ordinarily if there seems any change to-night. Don't be foolish, Thomas; I've had no fortune left me; I never shall have."

She felt not unlike one with a fortune, however, a fortune of unknown character about to be made known to her, as, shortly after midnight--Dorothy kept comparatively early hours when she went to dances--she opened the door of her room again. Her first glance was for the letter. There it stood as she had left it. More than once during the evening she had caught herself fearing that something might happen to it in her absence. She might find the letter gone--forever gone--and unread!

She smiled at it as she saw it standing there, but still she did not open it. She took off her dancing frock, braided her hair for the night in two heavy plaits, and slipped into a little loose gown of cambric, lace, and ribbon before at last she approached the waiting letter.

Why she did all this, putting off the reading of it until the latest possible moment, only a girl like Dorothy Broughton could have told. And even when she broke the seal it was with apparently reluctant fingers. It was so delightful not to know, yet to be upon the verge of knowing! But as soon as the first words met her eyes there was no longer any delay.

She read rapidly, her glance drinking in the letter at a draught.

"ON BOARD S.S. "WESTERWALD," OFF GREATER INAGUA

"August 21, 19--

"DEAR DOROTHY BROUGHTON: The first time I saw you was the day you came to school for the first time. You wore a blue sailor dress with a white emblem on the sleeve, and your curly black hair was tied with red ribbons. You did not see me that day--nor any other day for a long time.

I was simply not in your field of vision. That year I was wearing my older brother's suit, and I had pressed him rather closely in inheriting it, so that it was none too large for me. I remember that the sleeves were a bit short. Anyhow, whether it was the fault of the suit or not, I had a very indefinite idea what to do with my feet when they were not in action, and even less at times when they were. I recall vividly that there seemed to be a sort of ground swell between my desk and the blackboard, so that I never could walk confidently and evenly from one to the other. When by any chance I imagined your eyes were turned my way the ground swell became a tidal wave.

"Once, just once, I was allowed to help you with a lesson. You were unable to make head or tail of a problem in fractions; I don't think figures were your strong point! Miss Edgewood began to show you; an interruption came along. I happened to be at her elbow--I had a sort of reputation for figures--she called on me to help you out. I remember that at the summons my heart turned over twice, and its action after that was irregular, affecting my breathing and making my hand shake. Luckily it did not upset my brain, so that I was able to make the thing clear to you. I dared not look at you! You did not get it at first and you stamped your foot and said: "But I don't see any _sense_ to it!" I replied with a tremendous effort at lightening the situation: "Plenty of cents, and dollars, too!" At which you turned and gave me a look--at first of pride and anger, then melting into appreciation of my wit, and ending by blinding me with the beauty of your laughter! We went on from that famously, and you saw the thing clearly and thanked me. I thought I knew you then--had made myself a friend of yours. Next day, alas! you pa.s.sed me with a nod. But I never forgot what it might be like to know you.

"We are four days out from New York--shall call at Matthew Town to-day.

Another eight days will bring us to Puerto Colombia; then for the river trip which will take me within thirty miles of the camp in the mountains.

When I am up at the mines I shall write again. My address will be Puerto Andes, Colombia, the port of the Company. If some day, when I go down the trail to send off my report, I should find a letter from you, I should go back the happier.

"Meanwhile I am,

"Faithfully yours,

"KIRKE WALDRON."

Dorothy went over and stood by the window, gazing out into the September night. It was an unpretentious letter enough, but she liked it--liked it very much. He had gone back to the beginning, picked up the one link between them in their past, the fact that they had been schoolmates. He had dared to remind her of his poverty, of his awkward schoolboy personality, and of the fact that even in those days he had cared how she might regard him. Well, as for the poverty, she knew his family; knew that it was of good stock, that his parents were people of education and refinement, and that circ.u.mstances wholly honourable had been the cause of their lack of resources.

Should she answer the letter? How should she not answer it? Delay, then, lest he think her too eager with her reply? Why?--when she knew as well as he, and he as well as she, that the thing was already done, that the mutual attraction had been of the sort which holds steadily to the end.

Yet, being a woman, she could not fling herself into his arms at the first invitation. And indeed he had not invited. He had counted on her wish to begin at the beginning and play the beautiful, thrilling play through to the end, as if it were not already decided how it was to come out. The fact that she knew how it was to come out would not make it less the interesting play--in a world where, after all, strange things happen, so that no man may see the end from the beginning, nor count upon as inevitable an outcome which all the fates may combine to threaten and to thwart.

So she delayed a little before she wrote. She let one ship, two ships, sail without her message, so that it would not be at the first tramping of the trail into Puerto Andes that he should find the letter. When it finally left her hands it was a very little letter after all, and one which it could not be imagined would take three days to write--as it had!

"DEAR MR. WALDRON: I think I know quite well that the little girl of the curly black hair, red ribbons, and blue sailor dress was a very audacious, pugnacious little person, and I wonder that you were willing to help her through the tangle of fractions as you did so cleverly. I well remember thinking you a very wonderful scholar, but you were so much older than I that I admit not thinking about you very much. It was like that small girl to stamp her ridiculous foot; she has gone on stamping it, more or less, all her life. But I believe she has done some smiling, too.

"It will be very interesting to hear from the depths of Colombia; school days are so far gone by I had to look it up on the map. Is it very hot there, and do you live on bananas and breadfruit? I don't mind showing how little I know, because then you may tell me about it. I am really going to read up concerning South America at once, so that I may be an intelligent if not a "gentle" reader.

"Very good luck to you there,

"Wished you by

"DOROTHY BROUGHTON."

As promptly as the return mails could bring her a reply one came, although it was, of course, a matter of weeks. During those weeks Dorothy had not only "read up" on the subject of South America with especial reference to Colombia; she had also posted herself, so far as a general reader may, concerning the rather comprehensive subject of mining engineering. This knowledge helped her to an understanding of Waldron's next letter. He gave her a brief but graphic description of his surroundings in a camp upon the mountains, reached by a trail of nearly thirty miles from Puerto Andes. Certain long-delayed and badly needed machinery had arrived at ten o'clock of the previous evening, packed over the trail by mules. This had been unloaded by three in the morning, and the engineers had been so glad to see the stuff at last that they had been unwilling to go at once to bed, tired as they were. The mail had come in by the same route, and it had been by the smouldering campfire of the early morning that Waldron had read his letter from Dorothy. "Such a very short letter!" he said of it, and continued:

"Yet it was more welcome than you can guess. I had done a lot of speculating as to what it would look like when it came--if it came--and it looked not unlike what I had fancied. I was sure you wouldn't write one of those tall, angular hands, ten words to a page, which remind one of linked telegraph poles. Neither would you be guilty of that commonplace little round script which school-children are taught now, and which goes on influencing their handwriting all their days. There would be character in it, thought I--and there was!

"It made me long for more--that letter! I wonder if you have the least idea what it feels like to be off in a country like this, your only real companion another engineer. Splendid fellow, Hackett, and I couldn't ask a better; and the work is great. But there comes an hour now and then when there seems more beauty in one small letter postmarked "home" than in all the gorgeous sunsets of this wonderful country.

"May I write often and at length? I can think of no happier way to spend the hour before we turn in than in writing to you. And if you will answer my letters, as you have been so good as to do with my first one, I shall have the most compelling reason of my life to watch the mails.

"I want--as I wanted when a schoolboy--"to know you." I want you to know me. There is no way in which this can be accomplished for a long time to come except by letters. Won't you agree to this regular interchange? I don't mean that which I presume you mean when you say it will be "interesting to hear from Colombia." You mean, I suppose, a letter now and then, at the intervals which conventionality imposes at the beginning of a correspondence, possibly shortening as time goes on, but taking at least half a year to get under way. I want it to get under way at once!

We can receive mail but once a fortnight at the best up here, and there are often delays. So if you answer my letters as soon as you get them I shall not hear from you too often. Please!

"I am an engineer, you know; that means a fellow who is trained to action--all the time. If he can't get results fast enough by working his men by day he works them by night also--day-and-night shifts--and works with them, too, much of the time. In that way--well, samples taken from our south drift a.s.say more than we had dared to hope a ton, but not till we got well in. The vein may pinch out, of course, but there are no signs of it. I expect it to widen instead, and grow richer in quality. So--if you'll forgive the miner's a.n.a.logy--with another vein I know of--the finest sort of gold!"

So the correspondence began. It was easy for a young woman of Dorothy's discernment to see that here was no case for a long-distance flirtation, if she had wanted one. From the moment when she had flung her left hand into Waldron's right, and that other moment when she had told him with absolute truth that she was not afraid with him beside her, he had taken her at her word. She could not play with him, even if he had been near her; far less now that thousands of miles separated them. She answered with a letter of twice the length of her first one, a gay little letter, full of incident and her comments thereon. The reply came promptly, and this time it was a long one. He told her many details of the situation as it was developing in these new, extraordinarily promising mines; and she found it as fascinating as a fairy tale. But, of course, although she read these pages many times over, she read more often certain opening and closing pa.s.sages. One ran like this:

"Now to bed--and to work again with the dawn. While I am writing to you I forget everything about me. Natives may chatter near me; I don't hear them. My friend Hackett may come and fire a string of questions at me; he tells me afterward my answers wouldn't do credit to a monkey on a stick. I am lost in the attempt to put your face before me--your face as I saw it last. There was not much light in the car, but what there was fell on your face. I see rose colour always; what was it--the bonnet?--if they call those things bonnets! I see more rose colour--reflection? I see a pair of eyes which were not afraid to look into mine--for a minute; only for a minute--but I can see them.

"The night grows cold. Even in the tropics the nights may be cold in the mountains. My fire has burned down to a few coals. My bunk awaits me; I thought I was tired when I sat down to write. I'm not tired now--refreshed!

"Good-night! Sleep well--up there somewhere in the North!"

After this letter Dorothy Broughton went about like a girl in a dream.

Yet she was so practical a girl, had been so thoroughly trained to fill her days with things worth while, that she was able to keep up a very realistic appearance of being absorbed in the old round of duties and pleasures. She was leading a life by no means idle or useless. As for the happiness of it, she carried about with her a constant sense that something wonderful had happened, was happening--and was yet to happen--which made no task too hard for her newly vitalized spirit.

The day before Thanksgiving the arrival of a particularly thick letter from Colombia gave her a more than ordinarily delightful sense of antic.i.p.ation. Her brother Julius, at home for the annual festival, saw it upon the hall table three seconds before she did, and captured it. He withdrew from his breast pocket another letter in a similar handwriting addressed to himself. With an expression of great gravity he compared the two while Dorothy held out her hand in vain.

"Don't be in a hurry," he advised her. "There is a curious likeness between these two addresses--not to mention the envelopes--which interests but baffles me. The word 'Broughton' in both cases begins with an almost precisely identical B. The small t is crossed in almost exactly the same manner--with a black bar of ink which indicates a lavish disposition. The whole address upon your letter seems to me to bear a close and remarkable resemblance to the address upon mine. Another point which should not be overlooked: both are postmarked with a South American stamp, a Colombian stamp, with--yes--with the same stamp. What can this mean? I--"

"When you are through with your nonsense--" Dorothy still extended her hand for her letter.

Julius sat down upon the third step of the staircase, his countenance indicating entire absorption in the comparison before him. He held the letters in one hand; with his other he made it clear to his sister that her nearer approach would be resisted. "There is one point where the likeness fails," he mused. "My letter is an ordinary one as to thickness; it consists of two meagre sheets of rather light-weight paper. Your letter, on the other hand, strikes me as extraordinarily bulky. Now there--"

"Jule, I'm busy. Will you please--"

"Just as I get on the trail of this thing you insist on diverting my mind," her brother complained bitterly. He held the two letters at arm's length, continuing to study them while his extended hand kept his sister away. But she now turned and walked off down the hall.

He looked after her with a sparkle in his black eyes. "Sis," he entreated, "don't go. I need your help. Have you by any chance an inkling as to the sender of these curiously similar epistles?"

She turned. Her eyes were sparkling, too. She shook her head.

"I'll tell you what," cried the inspired Julius, "let's read 'em together, paragraph by paragraph. Look here, I dare you to!" he suddenly challenged her. "Mine first." Stuffing his sister's letter into his pocket he spread forth his own. "I suppose you always read the last page first," said he, "I've understood women do. So we'll begin at the last page. Listen!"

She would have left him but he had walked over to her and now held her by the wrist while he began to read. It was impossible for her eyes to resist the drawing power of that now familiar penmanship.