The Professor's Mystery Part 5

"Yes," she answered. "There is something about it--you feel as if it were such a splendid thing that after all your waiting for it--now, when the water is there before you, you must wait a little sacrificial moment. I didn't feel like going in just at the first among all those people. Do you understand what I mean? I suppose it's because on the first day I have always gone in alone early in the morning."

I nodded, for that had been my custom also. Without a word we turned together and went slowly down into the water. When it reached her waist, she threw her hands above her head and dived, swimming under water with long easy strokes. I looked after her a moment, then followed. We came to the surface together, drawing our breath deep and shaking the salt water from our eyes. We swam slowly back to the more crowded beach, mutually glorying in our pagan rite of baptism.

We stretched out lazily in the hot sand, leaning back against a battered and upturned dory. Lady had shaken down her hair, which her bathing cap had failed to keep altogether dry; and spread it l.u.s.trously dark upon the clean, sun-bleached planking.

"I think I understand you now a little better, Mr. Crosby," she said.

"Why?" I asked.

"I suppose because of the solemn rite of the first plunge. It somehow makes you clearer. If that is what you mean by romance, why I can agree with you."

I had to be honest. "No, that's not all I mean--only part. I want things to happen to me, not merely sensations. I'm always foolishly expecting some tilt with fortune at the next turn of the road. I suppose you were right that nothing much has happened to me, or I shouldn't hunt so for the physical uplift of the unexpected. I don't want to be merely selfish--I want to help in the world, not to harm. I know that sounds crudely sentimental, but it's hard to say. I mean, for instance, that I don't want distress to prove myself against, but I do want the shock of battle where distress exists."

"Then people must seem to you merely means to an end."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I suppose it must look that way to you"]

"I suppose it must look that way to you," I said uncomfortably. "I'm getting tangled, but I want you to understand--" I hesitated. "When I asked questions in the hurry of the other night, it wasn't any desire to force my way into things that didn't concern me, to make an adventure of what distressed you--you mustn't think that. But it seemed to me that you were in trouble, and I wanted--"

I stopped, for her face had clouded as I spoke until now I dared speak no more, blaming myself that the perplexities that possessed me had again blundered across her pain. Her eyes were upon the ground where her fingers burrowed absently in the sand. When she raised them to mine there were tears in them; but they were tears unshed, and eyes that looked at me kindly.

"Please don't," she said. "I do understand. I would like to let you help, but--there is nothing you can help about, nothing that I can ask or tell."

"Forgive me," I said, and looked away from her.

I think that from that morning we were better friends. Neither of us again made any allusion to the night of alarm; but it was as if both now felt a share in it, a kind of blindfold sympathy not altogether comfortless. Once when we were making a long tour of woods and beaches, she said suddenly: "You don't talk much about yourself, Mr. Crosby."

"Don't I?" I answered. "Well, I don't suppose that what I am or have done in the world would be particularly interesting. You were right the other day, after all: nothing much has happened to me, or I shouldn't be so hungry for adventures."

"Oh, but you must have had some adventure; everybody has."

I launched into a tale of a green parrot confiscated from an itinerant vendor and sold at auction in a candy store. I stopped suddenly. Was this her way of verifying her father's opinion of me? She read my half-formed suspicion like a flash.

"Listen," she said with quick seriousness. "If I had, or could have, the faintest belief in anything really bad about you, don't you see that I shouldn't be here? I want you to remember that."

"I ought to have known," I replied. "I'm very sorry."

With that she swung back into gaiety, demanding the conclusion of the tale; but I was for the moment too deeply touched to follow. We were on our way home; and before us where the path took a little turn about a tree larger than its neighbors, a man stepped into our sight. He was walking fast, covering the ground in long nervous strides. He carried a bit of stick with which he switched smartly at the bushes along the path. For a moment we were both silent, then Lady caught her breath in a long sigh. It was the man we had met at the gate. He saw us then, and took off his hat.

"Why, Walter," Lady cried; "when did you come?"

"Just now," he said, "just now. Ainslie told me where to look for you.

Good fellow, Ainslie. Said you and Mr. What's-his-name--beg pardon, I never can remember names--said you had gone for a walk."

She flushed a little. "Mr. Crosby, let me introduce Doctor Reid. His memory never can catch up with him, but you mustn't mind that. Walter, Mr. Crosby was a cla.s.smate of Bob Ainslie's, you know."

"So he said; so he said." Doctor Reid jerked out the words, frowning and biting his forefinger. "Excuse me, Lady, but--hold on a second. Got to go back next car, twelve forty-five." He looked at his watch. "Twelve seven now. Beg your pardon, Mr.--Mr. Crosby. Beg your pardon."

They spoke together for a moment, and we continued our walk uncomfortably. Miss Tabor seemed uneasy, and I thought that Doctor Reid restrained himself to our slower pace as if he resented having to wait and thought ill of me for my very existence. I caught him frowning sidelong at me once or twice, and shooting little anxious glances at Lady that angered me unreasonably.

I left them at the Ainslies' and went on to a hurried luncheon made tasteless by irritation. Who in Heaven's name was the man? A family physician would hardly go running about the country in the daughter's wake--for I could not doubt that it was she that had brought him here.

Why on earth should he be rude to me? I had never met the man. What business had he to behave as if he resented my being with her--or for that matter, to resent anything she did? We had planned a game of tennis for the afternoon, and Doctor Reid, I reflected, with savage satisfaction, could hardly be expected to make a third.

Bob met me at the door. "h.e.l.lo, old man," he said, "we have had a bitter loss; Doctor Reid has carried Lady off with him to his distant lair."

CHAPTER VI

A RETURN TO THE ORIGINAL THEME

For a moment I did not know which feeling was apparent; surprise, anger, or a new and abominable sensation that combined the sense of personal injury with an intolerable sense of loss. Then I saw in Bob's face the reflection of my own astonishment, and tried to pull myself together.

"Brace up, man," he said, pounding me heartily on the shoulder. "Don't look as if you saw Hamlet's grandmother. She's neither married nor dead--he's only taken her home in a hurry. Good Lord, if I'd known you were going to be so tragic I'd have broken it as gently as a sucking dove."

By that time I found words. "I'm all right," I said, "only you made me jump with your ornamental way of putting things. Who is he, anyway, and what the devil right has he to come and drag her away like this in the middle of her visit?"

"Reid? He's only her brother."

"Her half-brother, you mean."

"I suppose so, since the name's different. Anyhow, he's no relation to Bluebeard, so you needn't go looking for blood and thunder. I know you.

It's just that somebody wasn't well at home, and they wanted her.

Nothing at all serious, he said; only if Lady was on the ground she could be useful. Her mother's heart is a little weak, you know. I suppose it's that."

"Look here, Bob," said I. "There's something mysterious about that family; and although it's none of my business, I want to know whatever you can tell me about them. I want to tell you first what I know, and see if you can help me clear it up."

"Nonsense! You never saw a windmill yet without swearing it was a green dragon with yellow eyes and a three-p.r.o.nged tail. They are not half so mysterious as you are with that hush-hush expression on your innocent countenance. Tabor's an importer, with a flourishing business in red ink and spaghetti and other products of Sunny It'. Mrs. Tabor's a dear little soul with nerves and an occasional palpitation. Lady's a pippin, and Reid's a strenuous sawbones that lost half a second once in his youth and has been chasing it ever since. You've been reading too much cla.s.sical literature."

"Have you known them long?"

"Why, no, not so very. Oh, come in out of the sun and take a sedative.

You won't be happy till you've relieved your florid mind."

I followed him into his den and accepted a cigarette and something cool to drink. Then without more preface I told the tale of my adventure, beginning with my arrival at the Tabors' home.

"Fine!" was his unfeeling comment, "I shall lie awake nights waiting for your next instalment of confidences. What are you going to do next?"

"That's what I'm trying to decide," I growled. "And I wish you'd give me a little serious thought, if you can stand the strain. I like adventures, but my end of this one is getting rather unmanageable."

"My dear man, I'm as serious as a caged owl. You've been treated outrageously, if that's any comfort to you. Only I fail to see where your mystery comes in. Of course, it's just as they said: Mr. Tabor has heard some absurd slander, or got you mixed up with somebody else; and Mrs. Tabor worried herself into a state about it, and they turned you out. It's a shame--or it would be if the thought of you as a desperate character who couldn't be allowed overnight in a decent family were not so ridiculous. I'll write to Tabor myself and tell him that he's got the wrong mule by the wrong leg; or if you prefer, we'll delegate the job to one of your older and wiser friends. That's all there is to it."

"You're leaving out altogether too much. How about my door being locked?

How about the dago sailor at the inn? How about Miss Tabor's warning me off for all time, and then meeting me here as if she hadn't seen me since Christmas?"

Bob smoked and frowned a moment, then brushed the difficulty aside.