The Madness of May Part 3

"I don't believe I'll go back to the Barton just yet," Deering suggested timidly. "It's possible, you know, that that girl _might_----"

"You've got it!" exclaimed Hood eagerly, clapping his hands upon Deering's shoulders. "The spell is taking hold! Wait here a thousand years if you like for that kid to come back, and don't bother about me.

But cut out your vulgar bond twaddle, and don't ask her if she stole your suitcase! As like as not she'll lead you to the end of the rainbow, and show you a meal sack bulging with red, red gold. Here's her cap--better keep it for good luck."

Deering stood, with the clown's cap in his hand, staring after Hood's retreating figure. It was not wholly an illusion that he had experienced a change of some sort, and he wondered whether there might not be something in Hood's patter about the May madness. At any rate, his troubles had slipped from him, and he was conscious of a new and delightful sense of freedom. Moreover, he had been kidnapped by the oddest man he had ever met, and he didn't care!

IV

Beyond the bungalow rose a dark strip of woodland, and suddenly, as Deering's eyes caught sight of it, he became aware that the moon, which had not appeared before that night, seemed to be lingering cosily among the trees. Even a victim of May madness hardly sees moons where they do not exist, but to all intents and purpose this _was_ a moon, a large round moon, on its way down the horizon in the orderly fashion of elderly moons. He turned toward the road, then glanced back quickly to make sure his eyes were not playing tricks upon him. The moon was still there, blandly staring. His powers of orientation had often been tested; on hunting and fishing trips he had ranged the wilderness without a compa.s.s, and never come to grief. He was sure that this huge orb was in the north, where no moon of decent habits has any right to be.

With his eyes glued to this phenomenon, he advanced up the slope. When he reached the crest of the meadow the moon still hung where he had first seen it--a most unaccountable moon that apparently lingered to encourage his investigations.

He jumped a wall that separated the meadow from the woodland, and advanced resolutely toward the lunar mystery. He found Stygian darkness in among the pines: the moon, considering its size, shed amazingly little light. He crept toward it warily, and in a moment stood beneath the outward and visible form of a moon cleverly contrived of barrel staves and tissue-paper with a lighted lantern inside, and thrust into the crotch of a tree.

As he contemplated it something struck him--something, he surmised, that had been flung by mortal hand, and a pine-cone caught in his waistcoat collar.

"Please don't spoil my moon," piped a voice out of the darkness. "It's a lot of trouble to make a moon!"

Walking cautiously toward the wall, he saw, against the star dusk of the open, the girl in clown costume who had danced in the meadow. She sat the long way of the wall, her knees clasped comfortably, and seemed in nowise disturbed by his appearance.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I didn't know it was _your_ moon. I thought it was just the regular old moon that had got lost on the way home."

"Oh, don't apologize. I rather hoped somebody would come up to have a look at it; but you'd better run along now. This is private property, you know."

"Thanks for the hint," he remarked. "But on a night when moons hang in trees you can't expect me to be scared away so easily. And besides, I'm an outlaw," he ended in a tone meant to be terrifying.

She betrayed neither surprise nor fear, but laughed and uttered a "Really!" that was just such a "really" as any well-bred girl might use at a tea, or anywhere else that reputable folk congregate, to express faint surprise. Her way of laughing was altogether charming. A girl who donned a clown's garb for night prowling and manufactured moons for her own amus.e.m.e.nt could not have laughed otherwise, he reflected.

"A burglar?" she suggested with mild curiosity.

"Not professionally; but I'm seriously thinking of going in for it. What do you think of burgling as a career?"

"Interesting--rather--I should think," she replied after a moment's hesitation, as though she were weighing his suggestion carefully.

"And highway robbery appeals to me--rather. It's more picturesque, and you wouldn't have to break into houses. I think I'd rather work in the open."

"The chances of escape might be better," she admitted; "but you needn't try the bungalow down there, for there's nothing in it worth stealing. I give you my word for that!"

"Oh, I hadn't thought of the bungalow. I had it in mind to begin by holding up a motor. n.o.body's doing that sort of thing just now."

"Capital!" she murmured pleasantly, as though she found nothing extraordinary in the idea. "So you're really new at the game."

"Well, I've _stolen_ before, if that's what you mean, but I didn't get much fun out of it. I suppose after the first fatal plunge the rest will come easier."

"I dare say that's true," she a.s.sented. There was real witchery in the girl's light, murmurous laugh.

It seemed impossible to surprise her; she was taking him as a matter of course--as though sitting on a wall at night, and talking to a strange young man about stealing was a familiar experience.

"I've joined Robin Hood's band," he continued. "At least I've been adopted by a new sort of Robin Hood who's travelling round robbing the rich to pay the poor, and otherwise meddling in people's affairs--the old original Robin Hood brought up to date. If it hadn't been for him I might be cooling my heels in jail right now. He's an expert on jails--been in nearly every calaboose in America. He's tucked me under his wing--persuaded me to take the highway, and not care a hang for anything."

"How delightful!" she replied, but so slowly that he began to fear that his confidences had alarmed her. "That's too good to be true; you're fooling, aren't you--really?"

His eyes had grown accustomed to the light, and her profile was now faintly limned in the dusk. Hers was the slender face of youth. The silhouette revealed the straightest of noses and the firmest of little chins. She was young, so young that he felt himself struggling in an immeasurable gulf of years as he watched her. Apparently such sophistication as she possessed was in the things of the world of wonder, the happy land of make-believe.

"Keats would have liked a night like this," she said gently.

Deering was silent. Keats was a person whom he knew only as the subject of a tiresome lecture in his English course at college.

"Bill Blake would have adored it, but he would have had lambs in the pasture," she added.

"Bill Blake?" he questioned. "Do you mean Billy Blake who was half-back on the Harvard eleven last year?"

She tossed her head and laughed merrily.

"I love that!" she replied lingeringly, as though to prolong her joy in his ignorance. "I was thinking of a poet of that name who wrote a nice verse something like this:

'I give you the end of a golden string; Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven's gate, Built in Jerusalem's wall.'"

No girl had ever quoted poetry to him before, and he was thinking more of her pretty way of repeating the stanza--keeping time with her hands--than of the verse itself.

"Well," he said, "what's the rest of it?"

"Oh, there isn't any rest of it! Don't you see that there couldn't be anything more--that it's finished--a perfect little poem all by itself!"

He played with a loosened bit of stone, meekly conscious of his stupidity. And he did not like to appear stupid before a girl who danced alone in the starlight and hung moons in trees.

"I'm afraid I don't get it. I'd a lot rather stay by this wall talking to you than go to Jerusalem."

"You'd be foolish to do that if you really had the end of the golden string, and could follow it to Paradise. I think it means any nice place--just any place where happiness is."

He was not getting on, and to gain time he bade her repeat the stanza.

"I think I understand now; I've never gone in much for poetry, you know,"

he explained humbly.

"Burglars are natural poets, I suppose," she continued. "A burglar just has to have imagination or he can't climb through the window of a house he has never seen before. He must imagine everything perfectly--the silver on the sideboard, the watch under the pillow, and the butler stealing down the back stairs with a large, shiny pistol in his hand."

"Certainly," Deering agreed readily. "And if he runs into a policeman on the way out he's got to imagine that it's an old college friend and embrace him."

"You mustn't spoil a pretty idea that way!" she admonished in a tone that greatly softened the rebuke. "Come to think of it, you haven't told me your name yet; of course, if you become a burglar, you will have a great number of names, but I'd like awfully to know your true one."

"Why?" he demanded.

"Because you seem nice and well brought up for a burglar, and I liked your going up to the moon and poking your finger into it. That makes me feel that I'd like to know you."