The Brown Study Part 22

Waldron took from his breast pocket a card, on which, in very small, close writing and figures, was a concise schedule of his engagements for the coming five days, and, as he had said, nights.

Julius scanned it, and whistled softly a bar from a popular song, "Now Do You See?" "Do eating and sleeping happen to come in on this anywhere?" he queried gently.

"On the run. It's this trip up into New Hampshire that's crowding things; otherwise, I might have managed it very well."

"Couldn't anybody else have seen Mr.--Hackett home?" asked Julius.

"No." Waldron's tone settled that and left no room for dispute. "There are some things that can't be done, you know, and that's one of them." He glanced at the great clock over his head. "Come over and meet him."

Julius went.

A long, thin figure, wrapped in an ulster, reached out a hand, and a determinedly cheerful voice said, with an evident effort not to show the severe fatigue the journey was costing the convalescent: "Think of me as Sackett or Jackett or something. I'm no Hackett; they're a huskier lot."

"As you will be soon, of course," Julius broke in confidently.

"Colombia air is pretty fine, but New Hampshire air is better--for old New Hampshire boys," a.s.serted Waldron. He nodded at a red-capped porter waiting near, and laid a hand on his friend's shoulder. "This chap is going to be all right when he gets where a certain little mother can look after him. Mothers and blood poisoning don't a.s.similate a bit. And now we have to be off, for I want to get my patient settled in his berth before the train pulls out, and it's going to be called in about thirty seconds."

He turned aside for a final word with Julius. "I'm not asking too much?"

"Do you think you are?"

The two pairs of eyes searched each other.

"I know Miss Dorothy is an orphan; I know, too, that you are her only brother. You understand that I mean to ask her to marry me, if I can have the chance. I couldn't do it--on paper. If you approve the match--and I think you do or you wouldn't have planned quite so cleverly last July--"

"What?"

"You brought about that meeting, you know," said Waldron, smiling, with such a penetrating look that Julius felt it go past all defenses.

"How do you know I did?"

"By a certain peculiar twist to your left eyebrow when that train came in from the wrong direction. You forget that I went to school with you. I have seen that twist before; it meant only one thing."

"Well, I'll be--see here, it was after dark when that train--"

"The hotel hand had a lantern. You unwisely allowed its rays to strike your face."

Julius burst into a smothered laugh. "Well, you're a good one!"

"I'm glad you think so--since I'm asking of you this thing you so dislike to do."

"I don't dislike it; I'm delighted to have the chance. I'll have her on that train if I have to blindfold her."

"Don't do that. Show her the card."

The two shook hands with a strong grip of affection and understanding.

Then Waldron, wheeling the chair himself, took his friend Hackett away as carefully as if he were convoying a baby. Julius, after seeing the party through the gates, went back to his college rooms, his wits busy with the task which so took hold of his fancy.

Julius would have enjoyed scheming involvedly, but Waldron had been too peremptory about that to allow of a particle of intrigue. So, before he slept, he sent his sister a special-delivery letter knowing she would receive it in the morning. It stated, after describing the situation to her (with a few private and characteristic touches of his own), that he would call her up by telephone to receive her reply, and that he would go through the city on a certain afternoon train on which she was to join him. This plan would give the pair time for a leisurely dinner in Boston before meeting Waldron upon the ten o'clock train. When he had Dorothy on the wire next morning he was not surprised that her first words were these:

"Julius--is it surely Julius? Well--I don't see how I can go!"

"Why not? Got the mumps--or any other disfiguring complaint?"

"Mercy, no! But--it can't be that it is necessary! He--he certainly could--"

"Did you read that schedule?"

Julius's voice had in it a commanding, no-compromise quality. He knew that this feminine evasiveness was probably inevitable; they were made that way, these girls; but he did not intend to let the time limit of an expensive long-distance call be exceeded by mere nonsense.

"Ye-es, but--"

"Now listen. We've got three minutes to talk; we've used thirty seconds already saying nothing. I'm going to be on that train. I'm going to have that little trip with Kirke, and if you don't have it, it will be pure foolishness; and you'll cry your eyes out afterward to think you didn't.

He can't get to you; if he could he'd do it; you must know him well enough for that if you've been hearing from him all these months.

Now--will you be there?"

"Julius! I'm afraid I--"

"Will you be there?"

"Why--don't you think I--perhaps I ought to have Bud--"

"No, I don't. I'm all the chaperon you'll need for this affair. If you go and get another woman mixed up with it you'll lose half of your fun, for she'll be sure to forget she's the chaperon--you know Bud--and first you know you'll be chaperoning her. See? Will you be at the station? I'm going to hang up now in just fifteen seconds!"

"Oh, Jule--wait!--I--"

"All right! I'll telephone down for the seats. Good-bye!"

He was on the vestibuled platform of his car to meet her when his train pa.s.sed the home city from whose suburbs she had come in. His eager eye fell delightedly on the trimly modish figure his sister presented; he would be proud to take her back into his car. He knew just how two or three sleepy fellows of his own age, in chairs near his own, would sit up when they saw him return with this radiant girl. Dot certainly knew how to get herself up, he reflected, as he had often done before.

It was April and it was "raining cats and dogs" as Dorothy came aboard, but the blue rainproof serge of her beautifully fitting suit was little the worse therefor, and the close little black hat with the fetching feather was one to defy the elements, be they never so wildly springlike.

"You're a good sport!" was Julius's low-pitched greeting as he kissed her, the tail of his eye on one of his young fellow-pa.s.sengers who had followed him to the platform for a breath of fresh air and stood with his hands in his pockets staring at the pretty girl close by.

"I feel like a buccaneer--or a pirate--or something very bold and wild and adventurous," she returned.

"You don't look it--except in your eye. I think I do see there the gleam of a desperate resolve." He bent over her devotedly as he put her in her chair, noting the effect on the young gentlemen who had been too slothful to leave the car, but who now, as he had predicted to himself, were "sitting up," both physically and mentally, as they covertly eyed his new travelling companion. "I admit it takes courage for a New England girl to start out to meet a barbarian from the wilds of South America, unchaperoned except by a perfectly good brother."

"If I could be sure the brother would be perfectly good--" she suggested, smiling at him as she slightly altered the position of her chair so that the attentive fellow-travellers were moved out of her line of vision.

"I'm sworn to rigorous virtue," he replied solemnly. "He attended to that for you."

Dorothy looked out of the window. She looked out of the window most of the way to Boston, so that the interested youths opposite were able to enjoy only the averted line of her profile.

Julius, however, took delight in playing the lover for their benefit, and his attention to his sister would have deceived the elect. The result was a considerably heightened colour in Dot's face, which added the last touch of charm to the picture and completed her brother's satisfaction.

Arrived in the city, Broughton treated his sister to a delicious little dinner at a favourite hotel, which he himself relished to the full. He questioned whether she knew what she was eating or its quality, but she maintained an appearance of composure which only herself knew was attained at a cost.