# Dicky

Extracted from Popular magazine, 07 November 1916, pp. 01-46.
Dicky
By Henry C. Rowland
Author of "The Rubber Man," "The Film Hunters," Etc.
One of the greatest charms of the POPULAR Complete Novel is the variety presented to the reader. Perhaps you have noticed that we do not stick to any given type of story, and, as long as it is vital and interesting, we do not care whether the tale be laid in the salmon canneries, in the vast spaces of earth, or in the counting house. And this unique and fascinating novel of Rowland's proves our variety. Dicky is a character that will please and pique your understanding, with his utter unconventionality, his ancient Greek attitude toward life, his unlimited money for which he cares nothing, and his capacity to love. It is safe to predict that you will never forget him as long as you live. He stays in your mind as persistently as a portrait by some great master.
(A Complete Novel)
THE first time that I laid eyes on Dicky was at one of those disquieting epochs in the life of a university when the alumni and well-wishers of my Alma Mater were shaking their heads and asking one another: "What's the matter with Yale?" For several months the rival cohorts had been exulting in their sinful pride and trampling the blue in a manner to make the campus elm trees look like weeping willows.
At a considerable sacrifice of personal interests I put aside my blue prints and descended on the fostering mother to coach her baby crew. Babies they looked, too, as compared with the fierce and hairy stalwarts of my former boat, and the first time I bent my brows upon them my argus eyes fastened on Dicky, and I snorted with rage and pain. They were all pink and pretty enough, and seemed healthy and well grown for their ages, but they did not resemble the massive athletes of my own time who were wont to break training in a wild and reckless manner one day and all the oars and records and things the next.
"What is this, anyhow?" I asked the trainer, "a Yale crew or a beauty show?"
"Both, sor," he answered. "They are good lads, strong and willing. Hair on the body is no proof of the stren'th beneath."
"I hope so," I said sourly. "Have they learned yet what those long sticks with flat ends they are holding in their hands are for?"
"Not yet, sor. They are waiting for you to tell them. But you must not be hasty. Here now is a slim lad that might make good at stroke if he would work." And he ducked his head at Dicky, who was playing with his oar and making little whirlpools.
I looked Dicky over, and felt pretty tired. Not a bone in sight, nor a muscle either. He looked like a trimly built, ten-year-old boy multiplied by two. He was masculine enough, but not manly, so far as his appearance was concerned. He had a wide, boyish face, with big, gray eyes and a short, straight nose and lips rolling back a little when he grinned, which was most of the time, and he seemed to be taking the whole business, myself included, as a sort of joke.
It did not take me very long to discover Dicky's qualities. There may have been stronger men in the boat, but there was not one who had anything like his tireless endurance. He seemed, if anything, to get stronger as he went on, and when the rest of the eight would be ready to flop he was fresh and cool and smiling and making impertinent remarks on their exhaustion. The trainer had the right of it.
"The lad has great organs," said he. "His muscles rest while they work, and all there is to him is of use. Look now at his arms and legs, as smooth and soft and round as a girl's. But the muscle fiber is long and has great power of contraction."
Dicky's personal habits were also unique. He abominated fresh meat, and could not be made to touch it, though he would sometimes toy with a little corned beef or bacon, and was fond of fish. His whole diet, though, was light to the point of what would have been fasting to the others. But he was inordinately fond of fruit and nuts, and usually had a five-pound box of candy in his room. Another peculiarity was his indifference to heat and cold. He slept under a single blanket when his water pitcher skimmed with ice, and I doubt if he ever had on a sweater in his life. The contact of fresh air on his skin seemed to give him a sort of voluptuous delight. I learned from one of the chaps whose family he had visited during summer vacation that it was hard work to keep him from scandalizing the neighborhood by going around half naked whenever opportunity offered and often when it did not.
He was not very sociable nor as popular as one might have expected, appearing to enjoy his own company more than that of others, and he roomed alone with quite a menagerie of pets, principally wild things which he had tamed; birds and squirrels, and at one time he had a fox which perfumed the dormitory until he was obliged to dispose of it. But he did not appear to have any particular affection for these companions, which enjoyed perfect liberty and went in and out of the open windows as they pleased. One debauched old crow made a great nuisance of itself, but was tolerated because of its amusing habits.
Although a good enough athlete, Dicky never appeared to care particularly for sports and games, and only went in for them because strongly urged, and, even more than that, for the opportunity they gave him to spend so much of his time undressed. He was often accused of liking to show his shape, but it was not that. He was too utterly natural to be conceited, and never posed. So far as one could observe, he was at all times utterly and absolutely indifferent to popular opinion, whether favorable or the reverse.
Well, we had a corking fine crew that year and the one following, and in my opinion, as well as that of the trainer, Dicky was about the most useful man in the boat. Then he graduated, and the next I heard of him was two years later, when out in California, where I was wrestling with a big development and funding company of which I was chief engineer and a considerable stock-holder, and out of which I had hopes of one day making a decent little fortune with which to start my two kids in life and give them the opportunities which their relative five and seven years of sturdy girlhood and boyhood seemed to warrant, the boy going to Yale, of course, and the girl going to a Yale man.
And if it is a girl, sir, we'll dress her up in blue
And send her down to Saltonstall to coach the freshman crew;
And if it is a boy, sir, we'll put him on the crew
And he shall wax the Hav-vards like his daddy used to do.…
Just at that moment the daddy was trying to wax a railroad crowd that threatened to dump the apple cart and wipe out the savings of ten hard-working years. What made it even worse, the prime pirate was a man named Maitland, the president of the road, who had been a schoolmate of mine at Andover and manager of the football team on which I played center. We were old enemies, and I'd never liked Maitland, though I had a lot of respect for his abilities. He had managed the team at a profit to everybody, himself included, and you can bet that the hotel keepers and livery stables and sporting-goods people never got any more profit than they were strictly entitled to. We were never skimped on anything, either. Maitland also was the business editor of the class book and a wonder at getting advertisements. He put that publication on a profitable basis, too, and sold typewriters and skates and transatlantic ferry tickets at reduced rates. Most of the boys admired him a lot, and he stood well with everybody, the faculty included, because he was smart as a whip in class, though when he studied I can't imagine.
Physically, he was about the best-looking boy in school. Medium height, well built, with wide shoulders and slim hips, black hair and blue eyes, with an alert, clean-cut face and that sort of reposeful expression which seemed to patronize us overgrown kids. I made him come out on the field one day—I was captain of the football team—just to see what he had in him. He had it.
It did not surprise me a bit when I heard indirectly that Maitland had married the daughter of a well-known financier whose name I need not mention and whose affairs Maitland managed to haul out of the junk heap. Maitland married when they were both very young. He was about twenty-four and she eighteen or thereabouts. They had a daughter, Diana, who, through Maitland's excellent business ability, inherited a couple of millions from her grandmother. I had seen a picture of her, with other New York débutantes, in a Sunday newspaper, and she was very beautiful.
It was just about the time that we were having our fight for water rights with Maitland and his crowd that I got a letter from Dicky urgently asking for a job. At the moment I had about as much need of another engineer as I had of an extra leg, but our camp was way off in the backwoods, and, as it looked as though I should have to spend a good deal of the next two or three months in San Francisco fighting our case, I decided that it might be just as well to have a young chap whom I could trust to look after things in my absence and incidentally play watchdog for my motherless kiddies, the little daughter having been born in a Mexican mining camp and at the cost of my wife's life. They were at an age which required a lot of herding, and were more than a handful for their fat, sleepy, old Creole nurse, Manuela.
So I wrote to Dicky, explaining the situation and telling him that he might sign on with the outfit at seventy-five per month and found, if that interested him, with the promise of a raise to a hundred as soon as we won our suit. There was no doubt in my mind that we were sure to win eventually if we could raise money enough to stick it out. Dicky wired back to say that he was coming immediately. I rather wondered at his strong desire to get a job under me, first because I had never known him very well nor treated him with any great amount of gentleness, and second because I knew that he had inherited plenty of money from a male parent that nobody seemed to know much about. In fact, there was mystery and doubt as to Dicky's origin, but as it never appeared to bother him, and he being singularly free of friends or enemies, the question of his right to be alive was never questioned to my knowledge. A benevolent old gentleman with eyebrows, supposed to be his guardian, came once to New Haven in a small steam yacht in the middle of winter, and while he was there Dicky took up his quarters aboard, flatly refusing to go near the training table while she was in port. Neither did he invite any of us aboard. I stretched a point in Dicky's case, knowing how he abominated "wines, liquors, and cigars," and he went on with her to New London, whence she cleared for Nassau, Dicky returning in time for morning chapel. He never strained the college entente cordiale which should really obtain between the faculty and undergraduate body. Nor do I think that he was highly esteemed for this observance of university regulations. He had no intimacy with either faculty or students.
I must say that I rather admired Dicky's utter indifference to popularity. He might have been so extremely popular if he had cared to be. But he never showed the slightest need of any close sympathy from a living soul. To me he seemed extremely young in spite of his resilient physique—just a grown-up little boy—and I fear that I am giving myself away in so describing him. Thinking of my own kiddies, I could never help but feel what a difference it might have made in Dicky to have crawled up on his papa's or mamma's knee and been told a story when he was very small and very tired. Though it was hard to conceive of Dicky's ever having been very tired, even when small.
Well, out he came, and I went to the station to meet him with my team of wiry little red mules. He hadn't changed the slightest particle, but was as boyishly handsome as ever and with that alert, interested way of taking in his surroundings which had about it an air of childish inquiry and eagerness. It was a hot day, and as usual he was half undressed, his coat on his arm, sleeves rolled up, and shirt open at the neck. He looked more like a school-boy off for a vacation than a serious-minded hydraulic engineer.
"What have you been up to since I saw you last?" I asked when we had stowed his scant luggage and started off.
"Traveling, mostly," he answered. "Bicycling on the Continent and yachting in the Mediterranean last winter. All through the Greek Archipelago with some friends. Greeks mostly and relations of mine."
"I didn't know you had any Greek relations," said I.
"Oh, yes, quite a lot," he answered indifferently. "I didn't know it myself until last winter. Afterward I went to Nice and then to Paris."
"All this sounds as if you'd been having a pretty good time," I observed.
"So I have," said Dicky, looking brightly around him as we spun along. "I always have a good time."
"How long were you in Paris?"
"A little over a month. Those mules can go, can't they?"
"Pretty well," I admitted. "What did you do with yourself in Paris?"
"Oh, I fooled around. Played tennis and golf and rode in the Bois."
"All alone?"
"No, not often. I rode with an American girl I met there, or rather I met her at Nice. I went to Paris because she was going to be there. Her name is Diana Maitland. She's here now."
"Where?" I asked, and the mules bolted. We bounced through a few ruts and roots and things before I got them quiet. Dicky pushed back his sleeves.
"Here in a sanitarium or something of the sort," he answered. "She's going to be here all summer. That's the reason I wrote to you asking for a job."
"Oh, it is, is it?" said I, reefing in the mules. "So your object in coming here is not to work for the Golden Gate Funding and Development Companies, but to be near Diana Maitland."
"Yes," said Dicky, and reached down for a peach which was in a basket between his knees. "She's going to be locked up all summer in this sanitarium place, and I promised to come out to see her."
"In that case," I told him, "it is my unpleasant duty to inform you that you are fired on the spot."
"Why?" asked Dicky, bathing his face in a large and succulent peach.
I maltreated the mules for a moment before answering. Then, once the intelligent little beasts discovered that they were to walk quietly, I said to Dicky that he was a fraud.
"But I'm not a fraud," he protested. "I'll do whatever you tell me to. You can pay me seventy-five dollars or seventy-five cents; I don't care. I'll make good. Just you wait and see."
"But it's foolish," said I. "If you come here as an employee of the company, that is the basis on which you are to work. Besides, this man Maitland, the father of your inamorata, is our worst enemy, barring one, and that is old Professor van Rippen."
"That nature-cure sanitarium man?"
"Yes. You can't have a foot in both camps, Dicky." I swore. "Van Rippen is even worse than Maitland. He has this big reservation just below us, and most of this railroad crowd own a lot of stock in it, though the professor has managed to hang onto the controlling interest. But he seems to be their tool more or less, and just now he's got an injunction holding us up on the riparian rights, and it looks as though we were in for no end of trouble and expense. They know that our funding the water would be of great benefit to this sanitarium plant, which is merely an advertising stunt for the land boom to come later. At this moment Van Rippen has it in his power to stall our operations for some time to come. Maitland hasn't, but he may have because he's got all sorts of money and influence back of him. All the same I'd rather take my chances with Van Rippen than Maitland."
"Why?" Dicky asked, chirping at the off mule in a peculiar way that made the little beast waggle its ears.
"Because he's a bigger man. Maitland is smart as a steel trap, but the old professor thinks all around him. Maitland stands a good chance of spoiling this scheme for all of us because he is greedy. The bird-in-the-hand thing, and then go catch another bird in some other bush. That's Maitland. He's afraid that once we get our source of water power we'll be trying to parallel his line with an electric railroad, and so we shall. We can manage it in the end if we sit tight and keep our eye on the ball, but it's going to take some doing. Meanwhile, this is an armed camp, and the sanitarium is the strategic point, so if your coming here is simply to be near Maitland's daughter, you can just consider all diplomatic relations to be closed."
"All right." Dicky looked at me a good deal as my little boy does when he feels that I'm out of patience with him. "Then I'll go away."
"Very well," said I, "but meanwhile it can't do any harm for you to visit me for a few days and call on Miss Maitland at the sanitarium."
"Thanks," said Dicky. "I'd like to visit you, but there's no use of my calling at the sanitarium. I wouldn't be let in."
"Why not?"
"Well, Maitland has set his heart on his daughter marrying a British title. He brought her over here to get her away from me."
"Oh, he did. Then how are you going to manage to see her?"
"I'll climb the fence or something," he answered cheerfully.
"You'll get yourself filled full of shot or something," I snapped. "This Van Rippen back-to-nature place is not like most such establishments. For one thing the inmates consist only of young and healthy women and girls between the ages of fourteen and thirty. He absolutely refuses to receive a person with any illness or infirmity. His particular crankism is to prepare young women physically for matrimony and future maternity, and his graduates get a diploma certifying to their capacity to produce prize specimens of their kind with the regularity of a plum tree and the unfailing accuracy of a patent multiplier. His establishment entertains at this moment about eighty fair daughters of the plutocratic class whose course of training costs three hundred dollars a month per capita, payable in advance for each term of three months. These ladies, clad only in sandals and short tunics, range over fifty acres of park and meadow surrounded by a ten-foot wire fence patrolled on the outside by elderly gamekeepers with sour dispositions and double-barreled shotguns. Inside the inclosure there are a number of large police dogs which are trained to regard anything in pants as their particular prey. Except for certain grave and learned members of the faculty of medicine, it is probable that the only male persons admitted to the sacred premises during the past four years were the State hydraulic engineer and myself, each a père de famille, and we made our inspection of the brook and Diana's pool with downcast eyes and mantling color. Also we narrowly escaped being devoured by some sort of ferocious beast which looked like a cross between a spotted hyena and a Wa-Wa dog with a possible bâton sintstre referring to some early mésalliance between a Tasmanian wolf and a harlequin Dane."
Dicky did not look particularly impressed. He took a luscious pear from the fruit basket between his knees, and began to eat it with relish. I threw away the stump of my favorite brand of sun-kissed cigar.
"So you want to marry Diana Maitland?" I observed.
"Why, no," he said, as if surprised by the question. "I don't want to marry her. At least I don't think that I do. I don't want to marry anybody." He appeared to reflect. "I just want to see her."
"You must want to see her pretty badly to come thousands of miles and climb a wire fence to manage it," I remarked.
"Well, I guess I must," he admitted, and reached for another pear. "Why shouldn't I? She's a bully girl; about the only one I ever knew that I liked to be with."
"Does she like to be with you?"
"Of course she does. Why shouldn't she? We have a lot of fun together. We like the same things. In Paris I bought a touring car, and we used to go out to the forests of Marly and Rambouillet and spend the whole afternoon fooling around and playing with the hares and rabbits and things."
"Very amusing," said I. "Who went with you?"
"Her chaperon, the Countess de Rosoy. A nice old thing. She is English herself, and pretty hard up, I guess. When I came away I gave her the car."
"That was a kind thought. You must have inherited money, Dicky."
"I have. Is that the fence around the sanitarium?"
"Yes," I told him. "We're almost home. You'll see the lake when we turn the bend ahead. Where did you put up in Paris?" I liked to hear him talk about Paris because I had spent my own honeymoon there.
"Oh, I stopped with a chap that is sort of a relation of mine," said Dicky. "He's a secretary or something in the British embassy. That's a pretty lake. Any fish in it?"
"Some rainbow trout. All of this land will be under water when we build our projected dam. I've got a gang at work now cutting out the timber. The spillway empties into old Van Rippen's brook, Heretofore it's been nearly dry for three months of the year, and I've pointed out to him the advantage he can expect in having the flood water funded and a contract from our company to keep his mean level the same the year round. He understands it well enough. Maitland is the fly in the amber."
"What does Maitland want?" Dicky asked, as though bored.
"Oh, nothing much," I answered bitterly. "Only a controlling interest in our company, of which I happen to be the main guy at this moment. If he gets what he asks for, it means that all of my work here. resolves itself into that of a rather underpaid hydraulic engineer expert. If it weren't for my kids, I'd sell out for even less to some other bandit. It's possible that I may have to do it, anyhow."
"Why?" Dicky asked.
"Through lack of funds. With another hundred thousand dollars I could stick it out, but goodness knows where I can raise it and hang onto my interest." And I reined in the mules, who were beginning to smell their alfalfa.
"Oh, don't bother about that, Tom," said Dicky. "I'll lend you the money if you like."
I fetched up my two little red devils so short that the nigh one began to kick. Dicky clucked at him, and he got docile.
"What are you trying to say?" I asked. "Have you come into a big pile or what?"
"I've always had a lot of money," Dicky answered, and stared out at the lake. "Me for a swim. I like this place." He looked at me and laughed. "Don't bother about that money question, Tom," said he.
"How can I help it?" I exclaimed. "When I show you this proposition you'll understand. There are millions in it if we can only manage to swing the business. Where did you get this money you talk so easily about?"
"I got it from my father. From my mother, too. I own quite a big island in the Mediterranean. But it isn't worth much just now. They tell me it might be some day. Is that where you live?" And Dicky looked eagerly at my little bungalow, which was on the edge of the lake and really nothing more than a rough shack.
"Yes, and the idlers we're paying to take a nature cure live in that long shanty behind. We are quite a family party here, Dicky."
"It must be nice to have a family," said Dicky. "I think I'd like to have one myself."
"Well," I answered, "when you marry Diana you might."
Dicky nodded. "That's so. I never thought of that."
My two kiddies discovered us about this moment, and came tearing down the trail, old Manuela sagging along in their wake. She threw away her corn-husk cigarette and developed power enough to keep Tommy from falling under the feet of the mules. They swarmed up over us, but instead of asking for the little things which I always brought them on coming back from town, they began to examine Dicky. They seemed to think that he was the big, new toy. Dicky responded to these advances graciously enough for a few minutes, but being a child himself other children did not amuse him very much. He caught sight of a cub wolf chained to a kennel, and went over to examine it, the kiddies trailing at his heels. Manuela had taught them not to go near that half-grown little devil.
"Look out!" said Tommy. "He bites."
"Does he?" Dicky looked at me. The cub was nuzzling his legs and pinching at his ankles. The little brute respected me, but others had to feed him with a stick when I happened to be away. "What if I let him loose?" Dicky asked.
"All right," I said. "That means that we've seen the last of him, but I don't care. He's a nasty little devil. Let him go."
Dicky unhitched him, and that half-grown cub proceeded to go crazy. He tore around in circles, rushed at the children, and knocked them both over, swiping their faces with his tongue, which was far out. When Manuela tried to rescue them he made a dash for her skirt, and romped off with the best part of it. Fearing that he might snap at one of the kids in his wild exuberance, I let fly at him with a pine knot, and caught him in the ribs. He let out a snarling yelp, and I fully expected to see him start for the tall timber, and was quite willing that he should, but not a bit of it. He hovered about with a wary eye on me, and an hour later, when I came back from inspecting some gear, he was sitting on his haunches, watching Dicky disport himself in the lake. None of the rest of us could get within less than ten feet of him, but that evening he ate some scraps from Dicky's hand and permitted himself to be chained up with perfect docility, which was wise of him, as I did not propose to take any chances with his interest in my poultry once night approached.
For the next three or four days Dicky roamed about the place in knickers, bare legs, and a sleeveless shirt, sandaled and bareheaded, with my two kiddies tagging constantly at his heels and Ki-yi, the cub coyote, never far away. In the new interests of the place Dicky appeared to have forgot about Diana Maitland. He played around like a little boy, dug up the material from somewhere and built a sort of Eskimo kayak in which he disported himself on the lake to the great delight of the children and such of the hands as happened to be loitering about. He got acquainted with the men immediately, and while failing quite to make him out, they appeared to admire him and to enjoy his society. I was cutting out timber at that moment on the other side of the lake, and Dicky lent himself to this labor with great enthusiasm. Where he ever learned to handle an ax I couldn't say. The chances are that he never had learned until then. But the beautiful coordination of eye and muscle, backed by his absolute, untiring strength, quickly won the esteem of my crabbed old gang boss.
All hands regarded Dicky as a freak, but a pleasant one, and after their first reticence had worn off, which was in about an hour, they became very chummy. Too much so, I thought. He knew them all, and they called him "Dicky," and their attitude toward him was much the same as the one with which they favored Tommy and Juanita, both beloved and petted. I must say that I might have let several of them go if it hadn't been that the kids would have grieved at such a breaking up of our family party.
Then, one day when I came back from town cross and discouraged after an interview with a local attorney whom I suspected strongly of having a foot in the enemies' camp, I saw Dicky paddling up from the provisional dam which we had thrown across the gorge at the foot of the lake. He flopped out of his kayak thing, and came up dripping from his plunge, and sat down on the edge of the porch.
"Well, what have you been up to?" I asked, batting the pipe cinders off the front of my sweater. "You had better go in and rub down."
Dicky just sat and breathed hard. There was a cool, north wind blowing, but he didn't seem to notice it.
"How did you get all scratched up like that?" I asked, looking at his arms and shoulders.
"In the culvert," Dicky answered. "It was choked up, but I managed to squirm through. I thought it would be easier to go that way than to try to climb the fence."
"What are you talking about?" I cried.
"I've been to see Diana," said he. "I sent her a note yesterday, asking her how to manage it. Manuela took the note for me, but there was nothing doing. She told me, though, that Diana and some of the others went to swim every afternoon in the pool just below the fence where your brook goes through the culvert underneath the trail. So I paddled down there, and left the kayak beside the dam, then swam downstream and went through the culvert."
"You young idiot!" was all that I could say.
"It wasn't so easy as I thought," Dicky admitted. "The place was all choked up with brush. The heavy grillage that you put at the mouth of it has been ripped loose and is all over the place. But I got through. The brook widens out just beyond the fence. There is a big pool, and just below a sort of sluice. I stopped to rest in the pool, and while I was leaning there on a tree trunk an old fellow in pajamas asked me where I'd come from. He asked me in Greek; not modern Greek, but Homeric. He must have been looking at my ears, and thought that he was seeing a faun or something like that."
"What did you say?" I asked.
"I said——" And Dick rattled off something which was all Greek to me.
"That was a very good answer," said I. "And where did you learn Greek? Not at Sheff."
"I never learned it." Dicky looked out across the little lake which the night was beginning to cover up. "I just know it. Not modern Greek, of course. Well, Tom, this old chap, Van Rippen——"
"Van Rippen?" I interrupted.
"Yes. He told me his name. He was sitting there in his pajamas, eating thin slices of bread with honey smeared on 'em. He gave me some. I like honey. I don't see why you shouldn't raise some bees——"
"Never mind the bees!" I snapped. "What then?"
"Oh, nothing much. While we were talking some hens came down the bank and began to swim around——"
"What——"
"Yes. It sounds funny, but they looked just like ordinary hens; all but their feet. He told me that he had bred them with a poule d'eau; not the sort you see in France, but the Oriental variety. The old man's fad seems to be like Professor Burbank's principles, but applied to animals instead of plants and things. He told me all about it. The trouble is it takes so long. While we were sitting on the bank, eating our bread and honey and talking Greek—he seemed to like talking Greek—we heard the most awful racket behind us. A regular dog fight. We looked around and saw Ki-yi getting chewed up by some sort of an animal I'd never seen. It had rings over its back and down its tail, and a lot of young ones. I rescued Ki-yi, and the young ones scuttled up and took a dive into the pouch of this beast. If was a marsupial wolf. Ki-yi had followed me through the culvert or else managed to get over the fence. He was scared and ran away. I haven't seen him since."
"I have," said I. "He is under your bed."
"Then it's all right," said Dicky, apparently relieved. "I was afraid that one of the keepers might have shot him, as I heard the sound of a gun and a yelp. Well, old Van Rippen asked me a lot of questions, and I told him that I'd come to see Diana. He laughed and told me to think of Actæon."
"All this in Homeric Greek?" I asked.
"Yes. He didn't speak it very well. Like a cockney dropping his h's, and sticking them on in the wrong places. Anyhow, I understood him. Then he asked me in English if I realized that I was trespassing and subject to prosecution and heavy fines, and I told him that I hadn't thought about it, but that no doubt it was true, but that I didn't care, as I had money enough to pay the fines. There are lots of birds in that place; mostly wood pigeons. They were all over us while we sat there. One of them snatched a piece of bread out of my hand and flew away. These ring-tailed puppies were a nuisance, too."
"You had better go in and put on some clothes," said I. "You can tell me the rest at supper."
"I'm not cold. Besides, there isn't much more to tell." He looked up at me and laughed. "I think I've managed to do you a good turn, Tom."
"Indeed?"
"Yes," said Dicky. "It may not come to anything, but then again it might. Old Van Rippen is crazy about landscape gardening. He must have been sitting there, thinking about how he could make that brook very beautiful, when I came paddling down. He had a big portfolio under his arm, and he fished out some of his plans. They weren't any good. His idea was to dam the low places. That's Dutch thrift. But I showed him how much more beautiful the effect would be if he were to bank up the water in the high places, such as the pool where we were sitting, and drain the low ones, so as to have dry pastures. He said that would take a lot more water, and I told him that you were prepared to furnish him with all the water he needed. He's coming to see you about it."
"And Maitland?" I asked.
"He doesn't like Maitland any more than you do," Dicky answered.
"How about yourself?"
Dicky looked rather surprised.
"I've never laid eyes on him," said he.
"Well, you had better," I told him. "When a man is in love with a girl and wants to marry her it can't do any great amount of harm to make the acquaintance of her father."
"That's what Van Rippen said," Dicky replied. "He talked a good deal the way you do, Tom. I like Diana, of course. How could I help it? But I must say I can't see any sense in this marrying stuff."
"All right," I retorted. "Then somebody else has got to teach you that sort of sense one of these days. Now listen to me, Dicky, and tell me the truth. Do you want to marry this Diana girl, or do you not? Because I tell you frankly that I'm not going to have you here swimming through culverts or climbing over wire fences for the purpose of philandering. That sort of business doesn't go in this part of the country. I'm no lover of Maitland nor of Maitland's daughter, but all the same I've got some respect for modern conventions. If you want to marry the girl, go about it in a respectable manner. Tell Maitland who you are and what you've got and all the rest of the thing. But tell me first, or else keep away from Diana, as long as you are here with me. Do you get that?"
"Yes," Dicky answered, "I guess I'd better not try to see her at all."
"I guess so, too," said I, "especially if you feel that way about it. What I can't make out is why you followed her way out here unless you're really in love with her."
"I told her I'd come," said Dicky. "Maybe I am in love with her. I don't know. She's an awfully nice girl. Wait until you see her, Tom. The chances are you'll cut me out. She likes old men."
"Oh, go to the devil!" I snapped, not much caring to be put on the retired list at forty. "If she looks like the picture I saw of her in the Sunday Magazine, you may have your work cut out for you, my little boy. Let me tell you I've made the girls take notice in my time."
Dicky went singing off about some sort of play, Tommy and Juanita trotting after him as usual, and Ki-yi scouting on the flanks of the party. Dicky seemed to enjoy the society of the kiddies, though no more demonstrative of any particular affection for them than he had ever showed toward others. While lovable in a way, I doubted that he possessed any deep emotions of the heart. It was evident enough that he was not the least in love with Diana Maitland, The chances were, I thought, that he had greatly enjoyed her society in Paris, and, being rich and free as air, had decided to follow her to California. No doubt he had found Paris rather dull without her. It was merely the case of a child missing its playmate and resolving to go find her. He knew that I was in the same immediate locality, and, being fond of me in his immature way and rather interested in the sort of work upon which I was engaged, had made up his mind to try active occupation for a change, incidentally being near his pretty pal.
But once arrived at my camp he had found the surrounding conditions so pleasantly suited to his childish nature that he no longer felt any great need of his former playmate, and, she being particularly difficult of access, he had accepted the situation with the calm indifference of a little boy to prohibited playthings when plentifully supplied with all his juvenile interests require. Dicky had the constructive mind, and he grasped the big principles of our elaborate proposition with amazing acumen for one whose knowledge was merely theoretical. My carefully detailed plans for funding the water supply, principally torrential, and diverting it to industrial enterprises gave him the keen delight which an alert youngster might be expected to take in a mammoth toy. Incidentally he threw in several excellent suggestions which quickly proved to me that the company would lose nothing by taking him on officially as an assistant hydraulic engineer, once it cut through the jungle of legal complications.
Meanwhile, Dicky appeared to be perfectly happy, playing about the place half naked. He loved the water like an otter hound, and was usually on or about the little lake with the kiddies, with Ki-yi watching their maneuvers from the shore and occasionally dashing into the woods on business of his own. But I soon discovered that Dicky's promenades had a purposeful object.
"You can improve a whole lot on those plans of yours, Tom," said he one evening.
"Indeed!" I exclaimed, with a touch of irony in my voice.
"Yes," he went on. "The way they are now you stand to lose a lot of water in the deeper alluvials. You are counting on the torrential water from the hills to keep up the level when you build your dam in the gorge. It strikes me that it would be a lot better to divert all that muddy stuff by a big spillway, so as not to clog your reservoir with silt. Then, instead of putting your dam where you have planned, you might spend a little more money on caisson work and throw a low, masonry core dam about a mile downstream so as to control the deeper alluvial currents which are constant the year around. Better water, and no clay and stuff to clean out."
"How do you know they are there?" I demanded.
"They must be there with this formation. You don't need deep borings to know that. Most of the water runs off naturally in flood times, but an awful lot of it seeps down into the deep alluvials? Doesn't it?"
"What is the basis of your knowledge? A hazel wand?"
"No." Dicky smiled. "I never tried that. But you know why it works, don't you?"
"Probably because there is water under the ground almost everywhere."
Dicky nodded. "That's it. There's water almost everywhere. If you were to scratch a little in the Sahara Desert, you'd find water most places. Look at the people that have died of thirst in these American deserts with the water about a fathom under their feet. The Texas Panhandle, for instance; the staked plains."
"True," I said, "but your scheme has its disadvantages. The place where you propose to build this dam is in the sanitarium grounds, and we don't happen to control them."
"You might, though,," suggested Dicky, and looked thoughtful.
"How?"
"Well, in the first place nobody in this country has the right to stop big schemes for development."
"They can stop them long enough to bust the developers sometimes," I said bitterly, for this was the burden of my thought at the moment.
"Sometimes," Dicky admitted. "But in your case I think you are borrowing trouble."
"No doubt," I answered dryly. "Too bad that money can't be borrowed at the same rates."
"You can borrow money, if you like," said Dicky.
"From you?"
"Yes, and from old Van Rippen."
"Are you crazy?" I asked.
"No. He told me so himself this morning."
"This morning? Where did you see him?"
"Down the brook. In the sanitarium grounds, where I saw him the other day. I saw Diana, too."
"The deuce you did!"
"Yes. It was very early. About six. I went down through the culvert again. I didn't go to see Diana, but I felt curious to see what the place was like farther down, and I thought that nobody would be about so early. Then I slid down through a sort of natural sluice into a big pool, and there were Diana and two other girls in bathing. They were frightened at first, but Diana introduced me, so it was all right."
"Quite so," I said. "How were these young ladies clad?"
"Oh, I don't know. They weren't naked, though, if that's what you mean. I apologized for butting in, and went on downstream. Coming back, I met the old man, and we had quite a talk. He was a little grouchy at first, but I explained that I hadn't expected to see anybody, and pretty soon he cheered up. We got talking about this dam thing, and I described your position in the matter."
"You mean that you told him I was hard up?"
"Not exactly. I told him that you were worried about the money end of it and the lawsuit and the lost time and all that, but there was no need of it as, rather than see the scheme fall through for lack of funds, I'd lend you all you needed myself. A couple of millions, if necessary. Pounds, I mean, not dollars. I told him how we were old friends and the same fraternity and all, and he seemed to understand. He questioned me about the plan I've been telling you for the big dam, and the end of it was he liked the idea. What seemed to please him most was that it would be an awful joke on Maitland. Just what the trouble is I don't know, but I've got an idea he's awful sore with Maitland. I'll tell you the rest of it later. Is there anything to eat? Some bread and butter and milk or something. I'm empty as a hollow log."
Naturally this information gave me food for thought. Dicky's plan for so enormously increasing the contents of our reservoir had never really occurred to me, possibly because the increased cost of such a project would have seemed prohibitive on the face of it. Besides, it meant the inundation, as closely as I could figure it, which I immediately proceeded to attempt, of about half the area of the sanitarium. It could never have entered my head that old Professor van Rippen could have possibly been brought to discuss such a scheme.
There were a thousand and other details to consider naturally, and I was giving myself up to a sort of folie de grandeur in which I saw myself a millionaire and Dicky a Prince de Monte Cristo—for somehow it never occurred to me to doubt his statement in regard to his financial resources—when there came from outdoors certain sounds which fetched me up all standing. These consisted of a long, rippling peal of laughter as sweetly modulated as it is possible to imagine, followed by noises suggesting a number of smoothly running motor cars of which the engines had been set in motion at the same instant. Interspersed were guttural ejaculations in a fat voice not difficult to recognize as Van Rippen's.
I stepped to the window and beheld a curious sight. About two hundred yards away on the shore of the lake stood Dicky in his pale-green bathing suit and a measure of corn in his hand. Overhead the boughs of the trees were bent down almost to the point of breaking with a great multitude of big wood pigeons, which in later years have for some reason become so rare. He was apparently trying to coax them down by tossing handfuls of the yellow grain, while, at some distance, Tommy and Juanita were watching his maneuvers with breathless interest, and Ki-yi, near them, sitting very erect, head slightly cocked and brushy tail curled around his toes.
But it was not this Arcadian group which caught and held my attention. Just outside my door stood what seemed to me the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. It is quite impossible to describe just how she impressed me, pausing there in the late creamy sunlight, and of a cameo vividness and delicacy against the turquoise lake. She was like some exquisite goddess; a creature utterly removed from the gross, material world. Her costume, too, was singular and enhanced this effect, being the last note of simplicity, but graceful in the extreme; such a light, diaphanous, and sensitively draped tunic as seemed to caress rather than conceal the lovely form to which it clung. The long, round, dazzling arms were bare from the shoulder, and the delicious neck was exposed by an oval opening rather low between the shoulders. This shimmering, snowy gown fell nearly to the ankles, of which the nudity was modified by broad bands crossing as they rose from the open sandals incasing the small, bare, rosy feet. The profusion of very, fine silvery golden hair was twisted up in a psyche knot and held by a double filet which looked like mother-of-pearl.
A few paces away stood the fat old professor, rotund and ridiculous in some sort of a costume of which the material looked like coarse homespun pongee silk, and the cut capable of claiming kin with anything from a suit of pajamas to a sentry box.
He was bareheaded, and his bald, brown pate might have been used as a heliograph. But he carried a hat in his hand, a very fine panama with a broad puggaree. His feet, very small for his enormous bulk, were beautifully shod in a curious buckskin moccasin laced up to the huge, bulging calf, and containing the lower extremities of his baggy trousers. He was armed with a stout Alpine climbing stick, and wore a pair of great, shell-rimmed, amber-tinted goggles.
The Far West "is so full of a number of things that I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings," to quote that faithful companion of my many months of loneliness, R. L. S. What with converting and diverting and perverting and animadverting at the profit or loss of all the animate or inanimate matter within reach the dweller of these parts has no reasonable excuse for being taken by surprise. All the same I was. Surprises are like floods. You can handle them when they come with some warning and not too fast and frequent, but there are limits.
While I was gaping at the goddess, with the tail of my eye on Dicky, the kids, Ki-yi, and the professor, there came another spectacle which passed in the flash of a second from the sublime to the ridiculous. I say sublime because it began by a peep through the curtain which cuts off our vision of some wonderful age which must have suggested the return of the millennium. An age when there was no war nor feelings of fear and hatred and suspicion and distrust between cognate beings high or low; when a man might have trod on an ant, without meaning to do so and been forgiven by that ant's immediate family and political affiliations.
Because it became quickly evident that these migrating pigeons had no fear whatever of Dicky and desired to profit by his hospitality, but were deterred by the propinquity of others about whom they were not so sure. Perhaps it may have been Ki-yi. At any rate, they suddenly decided to take a chance, and at some sign from their flight commander the whole vast flock took wing and came crashing down like a cloudburst, and the beat of their wings was what I have already mentioned—like the whir of many motors. They deluged Dicky, and it was really a wonderful thing to see.
Then came the ridiculous, as often occurs. This violent rain of pigeons was more than Ki-yi's furtive nature could stand. He started for Dicky's room in the bungalow, voicing his name as he went. His wild stampede started a panic with the kids, but they rallied round the colors and hoofed it for Dicky, not quite sure but that he might be in danger of getting eaten with his corn. And that scared the pigeons, when there came another general movement, this time an actual rout, and they made a racket about it.
The next thing was Diana Maitland screaming with laughter and the professor blasting out remarks, and I realized that this same thing had happened before while I was poring over my plans. I should have gone out at once and welcomed my guests, but for some reason I felt upset, so instead I went in and intrenched myself behind my desk and waited for some official information that I had guests. It was not the professor nor what Dicky had told me that made me feel that way. It was something that struck through me at that last glimpse I had of Diana, up on her tiptoes and shrieking with joy and clapping her hands.
"Well," I said to myself while sitting there, "Dicky is certainly a darling of the gods." Then it occurred to me that I'd never heard any reports of his being a darling of the goddesses, and I tried to feel sorry that he was so childish and incapable of profiting by his gifts.
Nobody came to announce that I had guests, so I cursed my Chinaman in my heart, and got up to investigate. A reconnoissance from the window of the office showed all hands, barring Ki-yi, talking very happily. So I woke up Manuela and sent her to tell Chang to get tea and be quick about it. Then I went out, and found Diana being closely examined by my two kiddies and apparently enjoying their appreciation of her. I did not wait for any formal introduction from Dicky or Van Rippen, but took the small, strong hand which she offered me and welcomed her as best I could. While speaking to her I observed that the portrait which I had considered so very beautiful was actually slanderous in its shortcomings; also that she was a less ethereal creature than my first glimpse of her had led me to suppose, she being quite sufficiently palpable to withstand the buffets of this rough world of ours and even to return them should the occasion require it.
She gave me a very intent look from her sea-green eyes, and her charming mouth, which twisted up a little at one corner, wore an amused expression.
"You don't look like the ogre I'd expected," said she.
"Who has been maligning me?" I asked.
"Dicky and the father, and Professor van Rippen. When I asked Dicky what you were like he said: 'Like the devil when he gets after a chap, and acts the part, too.' Father says that you are the only man he ever met he felt shy of having trouble with, and the professor said that in some dispute you had with them about your water power you made him feel thin. That was when you lost your temper and called him a greasy old tub of Dutch——"
She looked away with a demure smile.
"Never mind," I said. "The word was inelegant and unjust. I spoke hastily."
The professor interrupted us. "This is a most informal call," said he. "Its object is neighborly. I wished to ask if you and your friend, this adolescent Pan who swims through culverts and charms wolves and pigeons and other creatures, would give me the pleasure of lunching with me to-morrow and afterward taking a stroll about the place."
"That is a very great honor," I assured him. "We should be delighted, I am sure."
"Good! At noon, then, if the hour suits your convenience. Look at him. Do you think that he is entirely human?"
"Possibly a little more than that," I answered, glancing at Dicky, who, after a brief word with Diana, had dropped down on the trunk of a tree and appeared to be looking for something inside it. His search was soon rewarded in the appearance of a "timber cat," a large chipmunk which emerged from a hole and proceeded to fill its cheeks with the kernels of grain offered it.
"Go put on some clothes," said I sternly, "and come up for tea."
"All right," said Dicky, and started for the boathouse, where he was in the habit of changing one scanty costume for another. All the luggage which he had brought consisted of a kit bag and a very large box of books, the latter a curious collection, among which were the most recent set of encyclopedia in their light bindings, a large parcel of French plays published in feuilleton form by l'Illustration, a collection of handsome colored plates of the birds of all countries of the world, some technical handbooks on different branches of my own profession, and a lot of descriptive travel books. Dicky had the same fondness for reading to be found in a schoolboy, but curiously enough, or perhaps not so curious as natural, he much preferred natural sciences to fiction. When he observed the pleasure I took in the beautiful encyclopedia he presented it to me on the spot, saying that he was tired of lugging it around.
Diana lingered with the kiddies, who insisted on her making the rounds of the place and observing their various interests. I wanted to corral them and turn them over to Manuela that they might be properly polished for tea, but both Diana and the professor requested their liberty, so I refrained, rather suspecting a conspiracy on the part of Van Rippen. Our relations having been purely antagonistic, I wondered at his having brought Diana with him, but decided, as we strolled up to the house, that the girl had forced his hand, probably being in love with Dicky and wishing to see what possible attraction our camp could hold for him if not for its propinquity to herself.
But nothing transpired to show any reason for this idea. Dicky came up immediately, decently enough clad, and a few minutes later the children returned, chattering to Diana, and we had our tea and toast and muffins and honey and things in the most ordinary way imaginable. Then, as night approached, Diana and the professor took their departure on foot, it being scarcely a mile to the sanitarium.
We dined always at half past seven, and after dinner, while sitting on the porch, I said to Dicky:
"That suggestion of yours must have stirred up the old man a lot."
"Why shouldn't it?" Dicky asked. "It's a perfectly good idea."
"It's a pretty big idea," I answered. "You're sure that you could lay your hands on the money to back it?"
"Of course. Otherwise I would never have proposed it. When the time comes for your wanting to capitalize the business we'll write to my London bankers. They can furnish all the assurance necessary."
"Why do you want to go into it?" I asked. "There's always a certain amount of risk attached and you have money enough now."
"I like to see things like that develop," he answered, "and I'd like to have a hand in it."
I thought I understood. Here was the little boy again, playing on the beach and damming the water as the tide went out, or building miniature lakes in brooks for the fun of changing the original order of things.
"I have an idea that if we were to tackle it, we'd have a good fight on our hands with Maitland," I observed.
"What of it?" Dicky asked. "You have now, haven't you? Crowd him out if you can. That's what he'd do to you."
"How about Diana?"
"Oh, she can't suffer," said Dicky indifferently. "She's, got plenty of money of her own. She once told me so."
"Even then," I ventured, "it's not apt to help your popularity with her. Look here, Dicky, I wish you would tell me something, and tell it straight."
"I'll tell you anything I know," said Dicky, and pointed at the moon, just rising above the treetops on the other side of the lake.
"I see it." I spoke impatiently. "Very fine moon. What I want to know is, are you in love with Diana Maitland or are you not? And if not, why not? How can you help it? And if you are, why do you offer to help hand her father one in the eye? If we put through this scheme you propose, we can knock his line's local traffic galley-west and kill all his schemes for town traction and lighting companies dead as a hundred-year-old Chinese egg. It's not going to help you with Maitland, my son. With a bigger man it might; but not with him."
"Oh, he be hanged!" exclaimed Dicky. "Don't you worry about me, Tom."
"Then you must be pretty sure of yourself—and of her," I observed. "Now tell the truth. Don't you want to marry her? Did you ever meet a more lovely girl, or one whose whole nature and personality appeared to promise as much? She's a wonder!"
Dicky looked at me with an impudent, boyish grin which made me feel like giving him a back-handed slap across the mouth.
"I thought you'd fall in love with her, you old troglodyte," said he.
"Don't be an ass!" I snapped. "Here am I, a widower twice her age and with two well-grown kids. Her father and I were in the same class at Andover."
"What of it?" Dicky demanded. "Years don't count with a man of your strength."
"Good Lord!" I groaned. "To hear you talk, one might think you wanted me to marry her."
"So I do," he replied. "I like her and I like you, and I don't like Maitland just from what I've heard about him. There's no use bothering about Maitland, though."
"But don't you want to marry her yourself?" I shot at him. "Yes or no. Haven't you ever thought that you wanted to marry her?"
"No," Dicky answered. "I'd rather be free to do whatever I feel like doing whenever I feel like doing it."
"A great many people feel that way at times," I commented.
"Yes," said Dicky, "but most of them feel it too late."
"Yes, most." And I was chewing this remark on the end of my pipe when there came a sound from the dark stillness all about which brought back certain memories which I had thought to be dead and buried. Dicky and I turned our heads to listen.
"Do you have nightingales here?" he asked.
"No," I answered, "but that sounds like one, doesn't it?"
"Yes," said he, and imitated it perfectly with a low whistle from the root of his tongue. There was no response. Then Ki-yi began to yelp. I had insisted on Dicky's chaining him up every night.
"We've got to get rid of that cub," said I. "He keeps everybody awake when there's a moon."
"I'll try to quiet him," said Dicky, and slipped off into the shadows.
I waited a few minutes, smoking my pipe and thinking of a good many things. Ki-yi stopped barking, but Dicky did not come back. Presently I went into my office and told Chang to make me a pot of strong coffee and then go to bed. I felt sleepless, and I was excited over this idea of Dicky's and wanted to work the business out more thoroughly before seeing Van Rippen the following day, because I was quite sure that he was thinking about it as hard as I, and that his invitation for luncheon was not based entirely on the neighborly motive which he had indicated.
So I got out my maps, and had just started to pick up the thread interrupted that afternoon when there came a rap on the door.
"Come in," I said, and looked around to see old Manuela.
"What do you want?" I growled. "Why don't you go to bed and not disturb me?" I spoke to her in Spanish, and the conversation was continued in the same tongue, Manuela's English being rather worse than my Spanish.
"I feel it my duty to tell the señor something," said she.
"Then hurry up about it."
"I have a confession to make," said Manuela. "I hope that the señor may be so kind as to forgive me. There seemed to be no harm in it, and Señor Ricardo is so very kind."
"Have you been taking any more notes to the sanitarium?" I asked.
Manuela ducked her head. "Yes. I have taken a note every day since Señor Ricardo has been here. I thought there could be no harm in it. Besides, the señorita is so much in love with him and he with her."
"True." I felt myself beginning to boil inside. "And what sort of a servant do you consider yourself, to come to me with this tittle-tattle about my guest, who has no doubt paid you very well to keep your silly old mouth shut? You make me sick. You get out of here to-morrow. Don't let me lay my eyes on you again!"
She began to gesticulate. "Oh," she wailed, "if the señor could only imagine how much they love—these two children—and how difficult it is for them——"
"Shut up your mouth and get out!" I roared.
"But, oh, señor? here am I telling you all about it——"
"I don't want to hear——" I snarled at her, and she began to weep.
A hot wave of anger and disgust swept through me. Here apparently was Dicky not only lying to me, but trying to make a fool of me into the bargain, and old Van Rippen false to his sacred charge and probably scheming to use Diana Maitland as a fulcrum to pry himself loose from her father, and here was Manuela, the nourrice of my little daughter, and, as I thought, a faithful and devoted servant playing the sneak—it was unbearable. I was so disgusted that for a moment I fairly saw red.
"You old pig!" I snarled at Manuela. "Is this the way you return all the kindness that you have had from me?"
She began to blubber. "Oh, señor," she wailed, "what was the harm? And she so beautiful with her great black eyes, so sorrowful——"
"Have you gone crazy?" I demanded. "Black eyes? You'll be talking next about her black hair——"
"Blacker than mine," sobbed Manuela, "and she so far from her native land with nobody who speaks her own tongue "
"What?" I asked. "Who are you talking about, old fool?"
She bridled up. "Who should I be talking about but her excellency the princess?" she retorted. "The Princess Maria, who came from across the sea with the Señorita Maitland. And poor Don Ricardo, who is so kind and so gay——"
"All right, Manuela," I said. "Now go to bed and let me continue my work. It was very wrong of you to deceive me and carry notes from one of my guests to a person in the sanitarium. I shall demand an explanation later."
But Manuela declined to be dismissed. She hovered about, looking very much distressed.
"Well, why don't you go?" I barked.
"Oh, señor, I think that I ought to tell you that they are out there——"
"Out where?"
"In the woods. They meet there every night——"
"All right," I interrupted. "Now go to bed, Manuela, and remind me to give Tommy a dose of castor oil to-morrow morning. Stop your silly noise and go to bed. I am very busy."
So Manuela paddled off to her room, which was next that of the kids, and I turned my mind to the effort of adjusting the information which she had cackled out to my preformed idea of things. This was not very easy, because it so upset all of my calculations, while at the same time explaining a lot that had completely puzzled me. It struck me that I had heard somewhere of Miss Maitland having arrived at the sanitarium with two or three other guests, but this fact had not impressed me. Neither was I particularly disturbed at the idea of Dicky's being out in the woods with some black-haired princess who had come to the sanitarium with Diana. He had my permission to remain in the woods with her for the rest of their lives.
I gathered some sense after a bit, and began to get a line on things. Diana was not Dicky's ladylove at all, and never had been, but was, no doubt, doing her best to help along an amorous affair between Dicky and some high-born young female person whom he had encountered in his travels and chosen to be reticent about. It made me rather sore at first to think that Dicky should have kept me in the dark and bribed Manuela to carry his messages, but I reflected that, after all, there was no great harm in that to me and mine. Neither Dicky nor I were given to heart-to-heart talks.
It struck me that, all things considered, the joke was on whoever was responsible for the discreet behavior of the black-haired princess. I got up and stepped out onto the porch. It was a soft, balmy night, the air sweet and still, and a great, mellow moon hung over the lake. I reflected that I should not care to have a daughter of mine keeping a tryst under such conditions with as handsome and self-willed a young pagan as Dicky. So far as I knew, his moral behavior had always been without reproach, but still one can never tell. Dicky had never given any indications of having principles or a code of ethics which might control the sudden sway of a strong, natural impulse, and if ever surroundings seemed rife with soft suggestions of an amorous character those silent woods, with their dark shadows and mysterious aisles, were replete with them. Moreover, Dick had acted in a furtive manner which betokened primitive stealth, and his princess must have been irresistibly attracted to him to have made her escape from the carefully guarded sanitarium and braved the unknown dangers of her lonely promenade to the edge of our clearing.
I shook my head, and, walking to where the trail entered the big timber, stood for a few moments, listening. There was not a sound, and I was about to return when a dark figure slipped across a band of moonlight some fifty yards ahead of me. I stepped back behind the trunk of a great tree and waited. A twig snapped, there was the faint rustle of a garment, and I stepped out to confront this solitary prowler. My square bulk must have loomed startling against the brilliant moonlight of the clearing. There was a smothered scream, and the figure stopped and swayed, and I caught the flash of bare white arms thrown out in terror.
"Who is that?" I asked sharply.
There was an instant's silence; then a gasping voice answered:
"It is I—Diana Maitland. Is that you, Mr. Nelson?"
"Yes," I answered. "Good Lord, Miss Maitland, what are you doing here alone at this time of night?"
"I came to find you—to ask your help——" Her voice was low and tremulous.
"What is wrong?"
"Where is Dicky?" she asked.
"Somewhere in the woods," I told her. "We were sitting on the porch when we heard what sounded like the beginning of a nightingale's song. Dick went to investigate it, and as he did not return I walked down here to see if I could find him—or the nightingale."
She leaned back against the tree, and placed her hands against the smooth trunk.
"You know, don't you?" said she.
"I have my suspicions," I answered, "that the nightingale is some foolish bird of European species which has flown the fence of the sanitarium."
"The nightingale is——" And she told me the name of this indiscreet young person, which I immediately recognized, and whom I shall refer to as the Princess Alessandra.
"We must find them at once," Diana said. "It is all my fault because I am responsible in a way, having presented Dicky to her in Paris and afterward urging her to come here with me. Of course you know who Dicky really is, Mr. Nelson?"
"No," I told her. "I only know what he is, and that's a tricky young whelp I'd like to baste, and maybe shall. He has abused my hospitality."
"Dicky's father is of the higher British nobility," said Diana, "and his mother royalty, though not British. I can't tell you any more than that." She hesitated, then added: "Dicky's birth was—morganatic or something of that sort."
"'Something of that sort' appears to be cropping out in Dicky," I observed. "What part have you in this clandestine affair?"
"None—at least not in Alessandra's slipping out to-night," replied Diana. "I knew that he had been coming to see her at night in the sanitarium grounds, but either her companion or I was always with her."
"How did you-all manage it?" I asked.
"He cut a hole through the fence where the rhododendron is thick. We have our apartments on the ground floor, so it wasn't hard to slip out and go down to the brook through the vine-yards. There didn't seem to be any harm, because Dicky and Alessandra are such children and it was fun to know that we were fooling old Rip, who thinks himself so clever with his dogs and watchmen and things. The dogs never so much as growled at Dicky. They treated him like an old friend. But we must find them, Mr. Nelson. I can tell you all this some other time."
"Wait a minute," I said. "How did you get here to-night, and why did you come? What difference does it make whether they see each other here or in the grounds of the sanitarium? You weren't in the habit of sitting between them, were you? I must say I don't see anything to be so distressed about. Lovers usually manage to see each other in every walk of life, whether they happen to be royalty or ragpickers."
Diana let go the tree which she had been leaning against like a dryad just freed and not quite sure about the outer world. She seemed quite recovered from the shock of our meeting.
"Mr. Tom," said she, "it's not the propriety of the thing that is worrying me. All of that is their own lookout, and, after all, they are grown-up children. Dicky was to have come to-night, and when it got late and there was still no sign of him, Alessandra was wild. She was sure that something terrible had happened to him, so she went through the fence and came here to see. Lady Cardogan tried to prevent her, but it was no use, because Alessandra would not listen to her. So Lady Cardogan hurried back and told me, because Alessandra——"
"Why did Alessandra think that something terrible had happened to Dicky?" I interrupted. Diana was getting incoherent.
"Because she is sure that she is being watched by her cousin Dimitri and his servant. Alessandra came in awfully upset the other day and said that she had seen a man looking through the fence where the brook goes under the road. He limped off when he saw that she had seen him, and Dimitri's servant, Josef, limps. It must have been Josef."
"Most tramps limp," I answered, "and a good many traipse by at this season on their way south to pick oranges. But why should Dimitri want to make trouble?"
Diana waved her hands. "Oh, because he is madly in love with Alessandra and Alessandra is madly in love with Dicky, and Dicky is not madly in love with anybody, so far as I can make out."
"He tried to make me believe that he had come out here to be near you," I observed.
"Did he?" said she. "That sounds like Dicky. But what are we going to do about it all, Mr. Tom?"
"Just this, Miss Diana: I shall proceed to conduct you back to the hole in the fence, and there dismiss you with my fatherly blessing. After that I purpose to scout the premises for Dicky."
"But by that time he may be murdered," Diana objected. "They might both be murdered. Alessandra says that Dimitri is a terrible man and would stop at nothing. She came here to get away from him. He swore to kill her if she refused to marry him, and when I told her about the sanitarium she said that would be just the place. She did not believe that Dimitri would follow her way over here."
"I don't believe he has. The sight of a lame tramp looking through a fence is not much as evidence."
"But that is not all," said she. "Alessandra had a letter from a friend not long ago saying that Dimitri had disappeared and nobody appeared to know what had become of him. He has a double reason for wanting to marry Alessandra. He's not only mad about her, but she is enormously rich, and Dimitri has gone through his fortune and is heavily in debt. Do let us try to find them, Mr. Tom." And her white face looked up at me appealingly.
"Very well," I answered, "but I must say I don't just see how we are going about it. If we start hollering through the woods, they'll hide all the closer. It wouldn't do for you to call out, and would probably bring some of the hands from the bunk house, and we don't care to have any scandal. Perhaps the best thing would be to look quietly about, stopping once in a while to listen. It's so still that sounds carry a good way."
Diana agreed to this, and, the woods being open, with scattered clumps of underbrush here and there, we started to steal quietly through the hushed darkness. Reflecting that lovers like to contemplate the moon on water, I thought it probable they might be somewhere along the shore of the lake, and so turned obliquely in that direction. Coming presently to a place where no light to speak of filtered through, I took Diana's hand, which nestled in mine most pleasantly. Every few minutes we stood for some time, straining our ears to catch the murmur of voices, but the only sound was the soft breathing of the girl beside me.
A nice situation, I thought, for a staid and sober-minded engineer and the father of a family to be stealing through the woods at night with the loveliest girl in the world and the daughter of my worst business enemy, who was at that time trying his best to ruin me, stalking a pair of lovers, one of whom was royalty, in order to warn them of possible assassination by a bloodthirsty lord of the levant! I did not for the moment have the slightest belief that this Dimitri person was within five thousand miles of the place, and was certain that were we to stumble upon Dicky and his princess they would be extremely sore. It might even cost me Dicky's friendship, and his promise of financial backing, but there was no refusing Diana's appeal.
My own pulses were by no means sluggish at the contact of her firm little hand and the faint, sweet fragrance of her when occasionally we paused, close together, listening and trying to penetrate the gloom. She had slipped a dark blue kimono over her white tunic, and her hair hung over either shoulder in two heavy braids, as she had arranged it for bed, I fancy, the hours at the sanitarium being those of small children: supper at six and their day beginning at about the same hour of the morning. Any person objecting to this régime was not required to remain. Old Van Rippen's discipline was flawless. He himself, an ex-professor of the faculty of medicine, and, as I had learned, a brilliant surgeon in his day, lived quite apart, dining well and wining well also for that matter. When with my scientific colleague I had lunched with him one day the repast had proved a delicate and delicious banquet with the rarest of food and drink. The chef de cuisine of the establishment was a cordon bleu, and no expense was spared on the table of his inmates, while yet conducted on lines of strict hygiene. The fat grew heavy on all parts of Van Rippen, excepting his clever old brain.
Weaving through the woods with Diana, I wondered what the old boy would have felt if he could have known what was going on, and the idea brought an inward chuckle which could not have been entirely suppressed, for Diana whispered in my ear to ask what amused me.
"All this folly," I whispered back, and she gave my hand a little squeeze.
"It's dear of you, anyhow," she murmured. "I knew that I could count on you."
Presently we came out on the north side of the lake, where the bank was rather precipitous. There was a fathomless silence all about. One could almost have heard a heart beat seven yards away. I had borne up in this direction because I knew that from there we could get an extended view of the shore, and, the light being now so brilliant, we could discover any object as though in broad day. And my logic proved fruitful, for as I scanned the top of the little beach I saw the gleam of some moving shapes just under the shadow of the trees. Looking closer, two dark figures became apparent, coming slowly in our direction.
"There they are," I whispered, my lips so close to Diana's ear that I could feel the tendrils of her hair against my cheek.
For some reason, probably the sense of protection it gave her, she had not withdrawn her hand from, my clasp, and now I felt her fingers tighten a little as she drew back. Scarcely breathing, we watched the pair approach. The bank on which we stood was ten or twelve feet high, and they were on the beach, partly in the shadow, but occasionally emerging under the full radiance of the moon. Dicky's arm was about the girl's waist, and her head on his shoulder, their faces together. No doubt, in their rapture they forgot that they were walking at all, but felt themselves to be floating onward, borne by invisible, etheric currents.
I felt Diana quiver and heard her breath coming quickly. It was a beautiful, idyllic scene, these two passionate lovers drifting along on the gleaming shore of that mystic lake in the benign effulgence of the moon. Prosaic as I am, it affected me and made me forget that I was playing the part of a peeping Tom. Diana, too, seemed spellbound and fascinated. There was something in the clinging grace of that love-drunk girl and a suggestion of Heaven-sent oblivion in the slow, gliding rhythm of their forward steps which was like an exquisite passion dance, a lovers' minuet.
I was the first to recover from the spectacle, and leaned toward Diana. This time my lips actually brushed her ear as she lifted her face to listen, her shoulder against my chest.
"We can't disturb them," I said. "It would be a crime. They'd never forgive us. We had better go away."
She seemed to hesitate. She was leaning forward, her breath coming quickly between her parted lips like a child watching the fairies.
The lovers had reached a spot where a dead and branchless tree had fallen across the beach, and here their lagging steps lingered, then paused. With Dicky's arm still about her waist, and his hand holding hers, the princess sank down on the tree trunk, drawing him beside her.
Diana's hold on my hand tightened. "Come," she whispered.
But at that second my eyes were caught by some stirring object in the shadow of the bank almost abreast of the fallen tree where our lovers were sitting. It seemed to be quadruped and with a hunched back, like a hog or hyena so far as I could outline its vague shape. But I did not waste much time in such analysis, for the creature, whatever it might be, was slinking behind the tree trunk toward the pair.
"Look out, Dicky!" I yelled, and over the brink I went, scuffling and rolling down in a small avalanche of loose earth. I heard Dicky give a sort of shout, and as I sprang up saw him scuffling with a man. Then came another assailant from the same black recess, and I took a running dive at him clean across the tree and tackled him around the knees. Good old football tactics; they are sometimes useful in later life. Over and over we went, I clawing up his body and trying to clamp his arms, and he jabbing at me with a knife. Three times I felt the bite of it in my shoulder and ribs. Then I managed to get his wrist, and, shifting my hold, I gave his arm a jujutsu wrench. He squalled like a lynx in a jaw trap, and I loosed his arm and grabbed for his throat. But he knew the game, and broke my hold, scrambling to his feet. I hopped up the same time, and for a second we stood there, panting, face to face. He had hung onto his knife and was just getting ready for another try when a thick voice behind me said:
"Stop all this or I shall shoot!" And we stopped.
In a scrimmage like that it is impossible to tell how things happen. It is like a football game when the umpire blows his whistle and all hands disentangle and get up. Here was old Van Rippen with a double-barreled shotgun, and his little spaniel was dashing around. I can't describe precisely what he said or how he said it, but it was something like this:
"Let go of that man, Dicky, and get up! Is anybody hurt? What a pack of idiots! What a scandal! How lucky that I came! What a nuisance! Stop crying, Alessandra! Diana, you have betrayed my confidence in your discretion, but it was my fault. I should have known better than to believe in the discretion of anybody. Don't dare to move, you bandits, or I shall shoot you! What a mess! Don't one of you dare to speak a word! Are any of you hurt? Answer me!"
Nobody said anything. The professor's remarks appeared to have a very soothing effect on all hands. He was quite impressive, standing there in the blaze of the moon with his shotgun. And he appeared quite to understand the strategic value of his position.
"Why don't you answer me?" he demanded.
"Because you have just told us to shut up," I made bold to answer, and sat down on the trunk of the tree. "You have the floor, professor; go ahead. The pleasure is ours."
Old Van Rippen did not waste much time about the business. I remember hearing him telling Count Dimitri that he would give him and his servant twenty-four hours to get out of the place and that if they lingered after that he would have them up on a charge of assault with intent to kill. Dimitri answered, with a bravado that I could not help but admire, that the princess was his promised wife, betrothed to him in childhood, and that he would kill any man who tried to usurp his rights; also that he would leave the country when it suited his convenience.
"Very well," said the professor. "In that case I shall march you to the jail, and the chances are that you will remain in the country permanently."
"No court in East or West would convict me for what I have done," Dimitri stated.
"You are right," answered the professor, "especially about the West. No court in this part of the country would ever get the chance to convict you. When it was learned by the local population that you had tried to assassinate a young and lovely girl, a mob would escort you from the jail to the nearest tree and there strangle you like the murderous dog you are. Come, we shall soon know. March on ahead of me! If you try to turn your head or to escape, I will shoot you as I would a wild pig in your own beech forests, and I am a very good shot."
This information rather staggered Dimitri, who had no doubt heard of Western necktie parties.
"You would not dare," he answered. "I am a prince of the blood royal."
"You will soon be of the blood coagulated," snapped the professor. "Of the many lynchings which have occurred in this region I do not believe that the star performer has ever been royalty, and the opportunity to vindicate democracy would be considered as too splendid to be neglected. As for myself, I should ask nothing better than a good excuse to get such free, world-wide advertising for my establishment."
Old Van Rippen's voice had the cold-blooded cut of the surgeon's knife. Dimitri weakened.
"Very well," he answered indifferently. "I accept your terms."
"Then go away," said the professor, "and keep on continuing to go away. Such primitive actions as yours have no place in this day and age, particularly in such a part of the world as this, where the people are peaceful and law-abiding and would break into the jail and take you out and hang you from a tree if they were to know of the crime which you have attempted. The fact of its being a crime passionelle would have no influence upon their judgment, because they are honest folk. Now go, or I shall be compelled to shoot my gun at you. There is nothing more to be said. Go!"
So they bowed to us and went, for while the professor's way of summing up the case may have been slightly inconsistent, the tone of his voice was very convincing.
During this brief discussion my knife cuts must have been bleeding quite freely, for I suddenly became very faint. Nobody had observed that I was wounded, nor had I thought much about it myself. But all at once the moon began to weave peculiar parabolas, and then became totally eclipsed.
When I came round a little later I found myself lying on my back, with my head in Diana's lap, and she bathing my face with cold water. Sitting on the tree trunk were the princess and the professor, conversing in low tones. I lay still, listening, and feeling none too badly. The professor got up, and, seeing my eyes wide open, nodded his big head.
"Zo!" said he. "You are feeling better? Good! What a scandal! You have three bad knife wounds, but not dangerous, especially to a man of your physique. What a business! What a scandal——"
"There needn't be any scandal about it," I interrupted. "I can lie up for a few days and give it out that I've got appendicitis or a liver attack or anything you say."
"True," said the professor. "No scandal for the ladies' sakes. That is why I let these people go. What I told them was rot, of course, but it seemed best."
"How did you happen to get here?" I asked.
"Countess Cardogan could no longer contain her anxiety, and told me what had happened. I took my gun and my little dog Rover, which is part beagle hound and has been taught to follow a trail without yelping. I put him on the scent at the hole which this precious young scoundrel, Dicky, cut in my fence, and he tracked Diana, she having been the last and also a great friend of Rover. A nice chase she led me, I must say. I arrived in the height of the struggle."
"Was Dicky hurt?" I asked.
"No. He met the attack of the servant with a kick in the hypogastric region which rendered the fellow practically hors de combat. The knife flew out of his hand and into the lake, which was lucky for him, as otherwise he would certainly have got a dose of his own medicine. As it was, Dicky had him nearly throttled when I arrived. The brute was all but finished. As for your own affair, that might have ended less happily but for my timely arrival."
The Princess Alessandra leaned over and shyly offered me her hand.
"Thank you for saving my life, Mr. Tom," said she, in a singularly sweet and liquid voice with a slightly foreign accent.
"I rejoice to have been of service to your royal highness," I answered, and raised her hand to my lips, whereupon, for some reason, Diana appeared to consider that my face no longer had need of her kind attentions. But she did not shift my head from its most agreeable resting place, nor did I offer to remove it.
"When Mr. Tom went over my head I thought that a tiger had leaped from the bushes," said Alessandra. "It is a wonder that Dimitri had a bone unbroken. But he is very strong."
"He is a dangerous man," growled the professor. "You will have to be very careful."
"I am not afraid," she answered. "Once I am married, it is not probable that he will continue to molest me."
I was not so sure about this, but made no remark. Personally I considered the professor to have done very wrong in dismissing two very sincere would-be assassins with his Dutch blessing. I realized, of course, that nothing would so delight the press as the trial of such a case, and that the fair fame of all concerned in it would suffer a good many hard knocks. But all the same it seemed a very poor procedure to permit such a person as Dimitri, who had taken all the trouble to come several thousand miles for the express purpose of murdering a pair of young and ardent lovers, to escape unpunished, and he promising a better job of it the next time.
The chances were, I thought, that Van Rippen had been thinking a lot less about the reputations of Diana and Alessandra than of his sanitarium. He had no desire for the particular sort of advertising to be had from such an exploitation. The old chap was not avaricious nor in any sense a fake. His establishment was his pride and joy, no doubt the fulfillment of long-cherished ideas, and he did not want it smirched. He rejoiced in this garden of paradise which he had created with all of its Adamless Eves, and no doubt he had favored Dicky's scheme of a lovely lake with a water line which should be constant, less for its commercial possibilities than because he saw that it was bound to enhance the beauties of his reservation.
These ideas were milling around in my head when Diana leaned over and asked:
"How do you feel, Mr. Tom?"
"Sleepy," I told her, "and awfully thirsty. I think I'll go down to the lake and get a drink."
"You shall drink nothing for the next few hours," said the professor. "It would only make you bleed some more. When the vessels are secured, yes. Otherwise, no. Many a wounded man has been killed by being given water too soon. The blood you have lost can do you no harm. But you must keep quiet."
Realizing that my head must be getting heavy, I started to raise it, but Diana laid her hand on my forehead and pushed it gently back. At that moment we heard the sound of oars, and presently Dicky arrived with the skiff. I managed to get aboard without fainting again, though I came pretty near it. So we said good night to the ladies, and started for camp, where Dicky got me up to the house and to bed without disturbing anybody. An hour or so later the professor arrived in his buckboard, bringing a good-sized bale of dressings, and proceeded, with Dicky's assistance, to sew up the crease over my shoulder blade. The other two were stab wounds, inflicted with the point, so he merely inserted drains and strapped them snugly.
Though not considering my condition dangerous, the professor said that I must resign myself to at least a fortnight of bed. It did not matter particularly so far as loss of time was concerned, the engineering work being suspended until our case should be decided and such few hands as I had kept on being engaged in cutting out timber on the tract to be inundated later, and my gang boss was steady and reliable. I was supposed to have an attack of appendicitis and to be under the care of Van Rippen, who undertook to dress my wounds daily and remove the dressings in his valise.
"We shall try to make your captivity as pleasant as possible," said he. "Miss Maitland may come with me to see you, and, as soon as I decide that it is safe, the princess also. But"—he turned and shook his finger at Dicky—"there are to be no more philanderings. She has told me all about the affair and appears determined to forego her claims in order to marry you. But this cannot be managed until she comes of age, which will not be for nearly a year."
I was too much used up to have it out with Dicky that night, but I gave him a bad quarter of an hour the next morning. At least I tried to, though Dicky did not appear to be particularly repentant.
"What made you lie to me?" I asked.
"I didn't," he protested. "I never said that I was in love with Diana. I said that I wanted to be near her, which was true, because she helped me to see Alessandra."
"Then why couldn't you have said so?" I demanded.
"Because I was afraid you wouldn't let me stay here if you had thought that I had come to carry on a love affair with a royal princess. That sort of thing always sounds so shady. My wishing to see more of a nice American girl I'd got to know in Paris was different."
"I fail to see the difference, when it comes to swimming through culverts and cutting holes in fences," I remarked crossly. "Are you very much in love with your princess?"
An indescribable look swept across Dicky's boyish face. For the first time I saw beyond that limpid, juvenile expression of childish simplicity and got a glimpse of the intense, primitively pagan nature beneath. For an instant he looked scarcely human; vital, passionate, untamed as a faun. Or perhaps it would express more accurately the impression I got to say that in that fleeting second he suggested a young demigod caught in the flame of some Olympian, supermortal impulse. There was something so hot, so vital, an incandescence that glowed up out of him, that I almost caught my breath. Then suddenly the rich, red blood suffused his face, and his eyes filled. He turned away his head.
"I beg your pardon, Dicky," I said gently. "You see, my boy, I have never really known you."
"Nobody has," he replied in a low voice. "Nobody ever could. I don't know myself. Sometimes I think there's no such person; that I'm just an idea or an element like fire or water—or a mass of senses without any soul and wrapped up in a perfect physical machine. I get horribly lonely. I have all my life. But I never noticed it particularly until I met her. Perhaps she is my soul. I know that my body would die if I should lose her. She's the only one that ever understood me, inside, the way birds and animals and things like that have always done. We must have been in love with each other before ever we met, because we both knew it the minute we laid eyes on each other. She's my life—all of my lives——" And he turned suddenly and rushed out like some wild creature.
Well, here was a primordial passion but ill contained in the person of what I and others had fatuously taken to be an immature child who would probably never entirely grow up. It was such a love as poets and painters and philosophers try so vainly to explain and which perhaps musicians come nearest to suggesting remotely. A sort of an ecstasy of soul which heavy mortal senses serve rather to hamper than to interpret. A divine fire; a glory of vibrating delight—words are impossible. How describe in speech something of which one has only the vaguest appreciation of the mere existence? As well try to describe the fourth dimension, which possibly it occupies.
Van Rippen came in the afternoon, bringing Diana with him. He took my temperature, and, reading it to his satisfaction, decided not to change the dressings until the next day. Finding me rather uncommunicative—Bre'r Dimitri's cuts were giving me more pain than I cared to admit—he said that I might talk with Diana for half an hour while he smoked a cigar and drank a bottle of steam beer and conversed with Dicky, who was playing around the boathouse with the kiddies precisely as though nothing at all had happened to upset anybody.
"You are suffering, aren't you, Mr. Tom?" asked Diana, drawing a wicker chair to the side of my bed.
"Not now," I told her.
She looked at me with a curious little smile on her crooked mouth.
"Rip told me that if your bones and muscles had not been so thick and strong, we might all have been slaughtered," said she.
"Rip is an old fraud," I countered. "You wouldn't have been slaughtered at all. Dicky would have made that pair of thugs look like a canary bird caught in an electric fan. I know his work. He's as quick as a heliograph, and, at the same time, as cool as"—I hunted my mind for an apt simile—"as your father."
Diana nodded. "Perhaps Dicky is something of an unknown quantity. All the same, I'm glad that you were there, Mr. Tom." And she leaned over me and smiled. That same peculiar smile. "So is Alessandra," said she.
"You've got it all wrong," said I. "It was my being there and rushing down the bank that made Dimitri think he'd fallen into a trap. Otherwise he would have let his servant finish Dicky and then——" I stopped.
"Well," said Diana, "what then?"
"Oh, almost anything. Since it did not happen, there's no use to bother about it. I mean that Dimitri would not have tried to kill the princess if I hadn't come spilling off the top of the bank. He had it all fixed up for Stephan or Imri or Mohammet or whatever his name is to do the dirty work. But when he saw me boiling down he thought it time to get busy."
"He was right," said Diana, and got up and brought me a glass of orange juice and soda. She saw that my lips and mouth were pretty dry. "Don't let's talk about it any more, Mr. Tom. Doctor's orders."
"All right. But I should like to tell you something that I learned this morning from Dicky, if you care to listen."
"Tell me," said Diana.
So I told her, just as I have tried to describe it all. I told her how I had started to scold Dicky and what he had said and how it impressed me. Perhaps I exaggerated. Diana did not listen very well. What I said seemed to upset her. She got up and walked around the room and then came back and stared at me.
"Do you think that love like that is possible, Mr. Tom?" she asked.
"It might be," I answered. "I don't know."
"But in your own case," she insisted, "can you imagine such love as that? Could you possibly feel it?"
"I feel it every day for my kiddies," said I. "Perhaps that may be the strongest love of all."
Diana turned and stared down at me. "I don't think there is any 'perhaps' about it, Mr. Tom," said she. "I wish that I were one of your kiddies. Not that I mean that I don't love my father nor he me. But it must be nice to be loved every minute—and close to that love. After all, love is the greatest thing in the world, isn't it, Mr. Tom? Don't you think it is? Don't you think that if there was enough love nothing very bad could ever happen? I must go now——" She looked through the window. "Here comes Rip—and Dicky looking very penitent and naked." She wheeled about. "Alessandra told me to give you her love and a kiss," said she. "Here's the kiss, Mr. Tom——"
She dropped it on the top of my head, and went out.
Unlike most lovers, Dicky said no more to me about his state of heart, nor did he make any attempt to see Alessandra clandestinely. He went frequently to the sanitarium as the guest of Van Rippen, who now lent himself actively to the scheme of the big reservoir. We decided to give Maitland the chance of coming in, though doubting that he would be satisfied with the limited interest we proposed to offer him. It did not greatly matter, though, as it was certain that with Van Rippen's opposition withdrawn and the prospectus of the enterprise on such a grand scale to which it was now augmented nothing could hinder its progress. My own company would, I felt sure, be quick to appreciate the advantage of the new plans and lend it their support, especially as it did not necessitate the finding of more capital on our part.
This not being the history of the Sierra Funding and Development Company, I will only say that matters proceeded satisfactorily enough, the only hitch being a certain cupidity displayed on the part of the professor himself, which, however, by argument and concessions on either side, I managed to control within reasonable limits. Meanwhile, my own condition left nothing to be desired, which was to be expected in such a climate and with a man of my physique. The days passed pleasantly and busily, for there was a great deal of correspondence.
Diana came to see me almost every day, and, needless to say, I quickly realized what a barren desert the rest of my life was destined to be if obliged to traverse it without her. And yet I shrank from letting her know the depth of my feeling for her. I could not help but see that she was beginning really to care for me and seemed to ask nothing better than to be with me, but I reflected that such attractions for older men were not unusual in very young girls. It seemed to me wrong to take advantage of it. Here was Diana barely eighteen and I a widower turned forty and with two small children. It is true that she was devoted to the kiddies, and they to her, while I was a youthful man for my age, like all of my race; younger, I really believe, than most men of thirty. But still that extra ten years was always there to my debit, and Diana was possessed of such uncommon richness of soul and heart and body and estate, too, for that matter, that she was entitled to the very best life had to offer. So I tried to possess my soul in as much peace as possible, and at least to make no present attempt to win her. I should have felt unworthy and undignified in doing so. The mere fact of her fortune did not enter into the question, as I was convinced that the venture in which I had staked all I possessed could not help but reap a golden reward.
Therefore I masked my state of heart under a direct and natural big-brother manner quite free of all gallantry and delicate attention or obvious attempts to please her. I spoke often of my early married life and ambitions for the children, and referred to myself as a man whose youthful dreams and aspirations were things of the past. This seemed always rather to irritate Diana.
"Why do you speak like that, Mr. Tom?" said she one day, drawing down her pretty brows. "Is it a pose or what? You know in your heart that you'll not be old for another thirty years, and probably not then. You haven't a gray hair in your head nor a line in your face, except the lines of character a strong man should have, and I don't believe you ever paid a dollar to a dentist! To hear you maunder along one might think you had one foot in the grave." She examined me with those limpid, multicolored eyes which, I had already discovered, held more wisdom than her years entitled. "I don't believe that you talk to other people that way," said she, with her puzzling smile, which was half tender, half mocking. "Do I make you feel as old as that? It's not very complimentary, Mr. Tom."
"Your own extreme youth is such a violent comparison," I explained.
Diana nodded. "Yes, I haven't been born very long," she admitted, "but I'm not as young as you may think. Years are as elastic as consciences or bubbles or promissory notes. They really stand terrific strains."
"Until they burst," I answered. "You can never tell when that might happen."
"Fortunately," Diana agreed. "Otherwise it would seem hardly worth while to grow up. We would all die when we were babies, and then think of all that we should miss."
"In happiness or unhappiness?" I asked.
"Both. It must be better to have been something than never to have been anything. Otherwise there would be nothing but a great empty space in nothing. Fortunately there appears always to be something in something. Like rain in the clouds and sun in the sky beyond and——"
"'And a nightingale in the forest and hope in one's soul,'" I quoted, translating the verse.
"Precisely," said Diana. "I am glad to see that you are becoming vibrant again, Mr. Tom. The weight of years has fallen from your shoulders, and so has your bandage. Let me put it right. You have very strong shoulders for such an ancient man, Mr. Tom. Please don't wriggle or I shall pin the bandage into the outside of your earthly envelope."
She secured the loose gear over my shoulder, then sat down on the luxurious divan, of which the chassis was canned-goods boxes and the upholstering a mattress crammed with bay leaves and covered by Mohave blankets. This perfectly practical place of repose was across the room and against the windows which looked on the lake. The sun reflection, striking in, silhouetted Diana most wonderfully. She looked like a water nymph who had flitted in to mock me gently and ask what I was going to do about her domain.
She turned to the window. "There is Papa Rip sitting under a tree with his pipe, watching Dicky walk on his hands for the edification of Tommy and Juanita," said she. "Tommy is trying it, too—"
"Who is coming?" I interrupted, for I heard the rattle of a wagon.
She rested her elbows on the window sill and looked out, then sprang to her feet.
"It's father!" she cried.
"Oh, is it? Well, run out and ask him to come in."
Diana hesitated. "I didn't know that he was coming."
"Nor I. Sorry I can't do the honors. You might tell Dicky to stop walking on his hands and act for me."
"All right, Mr. Tom," said she, and went out.
I lay there in bed, enjoying my amusement over the situation. Maitland had been advised of what was afoot, and must have been pretty well jarred by the situation, which promised to kill all of his projects for local development of the country to be penetrated by his branch lines. No doubt he had come hotfoot from San Francisco to learn more definitely what was doing, and it struck me as decidedly humorous that he should have happened to arrive at a moment to see the principal capitalizer of the scheme walking along the beach on his hands for the edification of two kids and a mongrel coyote, while the two persons who shared the controlling interest were respectively sitting on a canned-beef box smoking a porcelain pipe and reclining in a brass bedstead strewn with blue prints and entertained during the intervals of their examination by his own daughter.
However, nobody appeared to find the position embarrassing in the least. There were a few brief moments of conversation outside, and then Maitland came in with his usual brisk manner, accompanied only by Van Rippen.
Maitland was a handsome man with an active, well-knit figure and alert, clean-cut features. His eyes were gray, very intelligent, and observant. Although never in any sense a popular man, he undoubtedly possessed an unusual amount of magnetism, as he seemed always to get what he went after and to induce people to carry out his wishes. Personally I had never liked him from our school days, sensing in him always a cold, determined selfishness, which character, backed by a quick, calculating brain, had made him a dangerous business enemy. But I had always felt that he might prove even more selfish as a business associate. However, although in hostile positions to each other, we had never quarreled, and our attitude was friendly enough.
"Hello, Tom," said he. "Sorry to find you laid up."
"Hello, John," I greeted him. "Glad to see you looking so fit yourself. Sit down. Have a smoke. Have a drink."
"Thanks," he answered, "but I just finished a cigar and scarcely ever take anything. I just ran up from town to have a little business talk with you." He turned to Van Rippen: "Sure it can't do him any harm, doctor?"
"It will do him good," the old man put in.
"Well," said Maitland, "it looks as if you had us on the go, I'd never counted on the professor's drowning us out." He said this with no hint of acrimony.
"You should have thought of it when you tried to smoke me out," observed Van Rippen, referring to Maitland's attempt to run a branch line through his reservation.
"That's so," Maitland agreed. "It's a perfectly open game. What I want to know is where I come in on the deal."
"Just as I stated in my letter," I answered.
He shook his head. "Not good enough," he answered. "Is that the best you can do, Tom?"
"'Fraid it is, John. We've got too much respect for your talents to give you room to swing a sledge in."
"You know I can knock you pretty hard from the outside," he observed.
"It would be a waste of time and money, John," I insisted. "You might have hung up the first scheme indefinitely, as you know we hadn't much money. But we've got millions back of us now."
He looked incredulous, which was to be expected, as he knew that the proposition was of very recent origin and would naturally require some time to finance. Not seeing that it could do the slightest harm to convince him, I said:
"This is no bluff, John. You can have the proof, if you like. I don't mind telling you anything you want to know. Besides what we had already and the professor's interest, we've got the sure promise of backing up to five million pounds sterling."
"Who's the goat?" he asked.
"The young gentleman whom you may have observed, half naked, walking on his hands, as you drove up," I answered. "He is an intimate friend of mine, and has great faith in this scheme. The more so as it is all his own. He is a very intelligent engineer, and he not only saw the possibilities at a glance, but managed to convince Professor van Rippen of them in about as quick a time."
Maitland glanced through the window, and, following his gaze, we saw Dicky hanging from the limb of a tree by his legs and swinging Juanita to and fro; a one-ring circus whereof the audience was composed of Diana, Tommy, and the ever-aloof Ki-yi.
"Where is his keeper?" Maitland asked.
"Here in bed at present," I answered. "He is playful, but harmless, entirely sane, and enormously rich. If it would induce you to draw in your horns and not try to butt in on our little game, I can put you in possession of full information as to his resources. The professor and I are naturally supplied with the data. You have only to say the word."
Maitland looked thoughtful. He was a keen judge of men, and believed me to be telling the truth. Besides, he was too keen a promoter and had too quick a perception of big-business possibilities not to see that we had a very magnificent proposition by the tail. I knew that he had sunk a fortune in his new and expensive branch line, and hoped to reap his harvest from local developments along its course. If we were now to parallel him with an electric system which it would cost us practically nothing to operate, and an irrigation system, he was quick «to see that he would be left with a very pretty toy railroad on his hands and nothing much to carry on it. His stock was already much diluted, and the mere knowledge of what we were up to getting about would make his real-estate investments and prospective town lots and other property along the line look like a Long Island pleasure beach on New Year's Day.
But I had no idea how hard he was really hit until presently Van Rippen got up and left, saying that he was expecting some new guests by the four-o'clock train and must be getting back. He took Diana with him, as Maitland was to spend the night at the sanitarium. Diana had a friend in the arriving party whom she wished to welcome. When they were gone, Maitland lighted a cigar, and sat for a moment, smoking and looking through the open window.
"Would you consider an offer to sell you my road, Tom?" he asked presently, without looking around.
"I wouldn't take your road as a gift," I said bluntly. "It's about the worst planned and expensively built and ruinous to run of all the little lines that I ever saw. You've already had some nasty slides and washouts and lost your beautiful bridge. I don't say that the scheme might not have proved a good one but for us. Plenty of possibilities in the country itself and all that. But wait until you see the freight rates that we'll be able to offer and the train service and the little it's going to cost We've got you stung, John."
"It looks that way," he admitted "But what makes me sore is the way I've been played for a sucker by this infernal old Dutchman. I knew, of course, that he wasn't all fat, but I thought I could count on him to play the game without fishing one out of his sleeve."
"You got his Dutch dander up when you tried to shove your branch line through the sanitarium grounds," I told him.
"That was as much to his interest as mine," said Maitland. "But he couldn't be made to see it in that light, so I tried to run over him to our joint profit. How was I to know that he was so stuck on his cussed old preserve?"
"You should have stopped to think," I retorted. "Just as a man ought to remember that he has jammed a rock under the front wheel of his car before he tries to start."
"I guess that's right," Maitland agreed. "To tell the truth, I gave in to the controlling interest he stood out for because this first funding scheme of yours had been talked about already and I thought he would be a good, useful block. So he was, too, until he saw the chance of springing a new one. It's like a game of chess. The old coot is chucking his interest in my little road because he sees the chance of getting it all back, and more besides, on this new proposition. He has swapped his knight for a bishop on the chance of a checkmate."
"Well," I countered, "isn't that playing the game?"
"Yes," said Maitland. "I can't kick about that. What jars my liver is getting beaten at my own game."
"That might do your system a lot of good," I suggested.
"It won't though," said he, "any more than it will do yours good when you find that you've been flimflammed by this old duck. Of course I don't know how you stand relatively in the deal, but I'm quite willing to bet you a thousand dollars that when it comes to the show-down you'll find that you've been done. If he'd double cross me, he will do the same for you if he gets a chance, and you bet it won't take him long to find the chance. If he can't find one, he'll make one."
Such a possibility as this had already occurred to me. I had never been a brilliant business man, though always able to see opportunities in connection with my technical work. For the financial end of it, however, it would not have taken a Morgan or a Harriman or a Hill to have outwitted me. At this moment I was not altogether pleased with Van Rippen's attitude, nor did I have any overwhelming confidence in his good faith. But in answer to Maitland's remarks I merely said:
"Oh, well, I'll have to take a chance on that, I suppose. I'll try to get things nailed down so that nobody can lift out any planks."
Maitland appeared to reflect for a moment, sitting on the edge of the window seat and swinging one leg.
"See here, Tom," said he, "why not take over our road? It would be useful in your construction work, and later on you could change the power to electricity. It needn't interfere with your building another of your own to open up the country to the south. You can have the road for a song and pay for it in stock."
"But I don't want your road at any price, John," I answered. "I don't consider it a good road. I consider it badly planned and worse constructed. If you had given me the job when I applied for it, and let me build it myself, I'd feel differently about it. As the case stands, I'd no more think of buying it than I would a jerry-built house or a rotten ship or a salted mine. In my professional opinion, it's a bum property."
"Oh, not quite as bad as all that," he said rather lifelessly. "I'll admit, though, you've got it in your power to kick the props from under it. Once this new project of yours is announced nobody would touch it with a ten-foot pole. It will be worth about as much as an ice plant at the north pole."
He talked a little while longer, but finding me inflexible said good night, and drove back to the sanitarium, there, as I presumed, to get to work on Van Rippen. But I had no fear of his accomplishing anything in that direction. The professor disliked Maitland and distrusted him with good reason, from what he had told me. Maitland had tried to serve Van Rippen just as Van Rippen now proposed to serve Maitland, and, other interests aside, I felt confident that the old Dutchman's set and obstinate nature would effectually bar even the consideration of any of Maitland's suggestions.
I cannot say that it gave me any satisfaction to turn Maitland down so hard, and the prospect of costing him a considerable fortune was rather painful. I was never revengeful, and the fact of his being Diana's father would have been enough to make me let him in on a good basis if there had not been the interests of others at stake as well as my own. As it was, there seemed no other course to take. He had got, no doubt, the answer he really expected, and I doubted that he would try to make us any more bother. He was not vindictive, but merely a cold-blooded business man.
Consequently I was rather surprised when, the next morning at about ten, he drove up again. He looked rather badly, I thought, and like a man who had not slept, and his manner was nervous and ill at ease. But with his usual businesslike directness he went straight at the point.
"Look here, Tom," said he, standing by the foot of my bed and with his keen, observant eyes fastened on my face, "are you in love with my daughter Diana?"
I stared at him for a moment in silence; then—— "Yes," I answered.
"Oh, you are, are you?" he snapped, and began to pace up and down. "Well, what do you expect to do about it?"
"Nothing," I answered.
He shot me a look of quick surprise, "Eh, what?"
"Nothing. She is too young and lovely a girl to throw herself away on a widower of forty with a pair of children. I don't think that it would be right for her to marry me, even in the very improbable event of her being able to care for me."
"H'mph!" he grunted. "I guess there wouldn't be much trouble about that."
"What makes you think so?" I asked.
"Because she's in love with you already," said he. "She told me so. Naturally she hardly expected me to tell you. But I don't think it would bother her much if she knew I had."
"How did she happen to tell you?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady and natural and to control the thumping of my heart.
"I wanted to take her away from the sanitarium; to send her back East. The old man and I had rather a warm session last night, and after certain things which were said I decided to quit the ring for the present. When I told Diana to get her things packed she told me that she would rather stay where she was. Naturally I was a bit surprised, seeing as she came out here to be near me. You see, we've always been good chums; more like brother and sister than father and daughter, so when I'd explained that my business was finished, and found her still determined to stay on I began to have suspicions. Then I thought of this young Dicky person, and it suddenly occurred to me that he might be the chap who had been hanging around her in Paris, so I asked her point-blank if she'd gone and fallen in love with somebody out here. 'I'm afraid I have,' says she. Diana is a peculiar girl in some ways. 'I was never in love before,' says she, 'so I can't be sure; but one thing is certain and that is that I don't want to go East just yet.'" He looked at me with a peculiar expression.
"Go on," said I. "What then?"
"Well, I asked her why she hadn't told me about it, and she said: 'I didn't think there was any hurry about it, especially as he has never said that he cared for me, though I've got an idea that he does care and cares a lot, but has a silly notion that just because he's so much older and has two children it's not to be thought of.' 'Good Lord,' I said, 'you don't mean to tell me it's Tom!' 'Yes,' she answered, with that twisted little smile of hers, 'it's Tom.'"
"God bless her heart!" I almost cried, raising up on my pillows, then sank back again. "But it's no use, John. Take my word, you needn't add that to your list of worries. She's too sweet and lovely a girl for an old cove like me. Tell her so, if you like, and take her back East with you."
Maitland did not answer, but stood there studying me with a curious intentness of expression that I found rather annoying.
"Well," I demanded irritably, "don't you believe me?"
"Yes," he answered, "I believe you. I know your sort. How did it happen, anyhow?"
"Oh," I said rather crossly, "Van Rippen brought her with him one day, and she seemed to like us all and enjoy seeing Dicky perform and playing with the kids. Then since I've been laid up she's come with him almost every day and stopped a while to talk to me while Dicky and the old man went over maps and things. I never so much as squeezed her hand, but we seemed to understand each other pretty well from the first. Such things happen sometimes, I suppose, though not often where there's such disparity of age. Still, as you say, Diana is an uncommon girl, and her mind is very mature for her age. However, she'll soon forget about me, once she gets away. What are you staring at me that way for? As if I were a sea serpent or something?" I demanded resentfully.
"I beg your pardon," said Maitland quietly, and glanced away. "I think you must be pretty hard hit, old chap."
"'Fraid I am," I answered, "and the more fool I, considering my age and condition."
"Oh, I don't know," said Maitland reflectively. "You and I are the same age; both widowers, and I have a grown-up daughter, but that wouldn't prevent my marrying an eighteen-year-old girl like Diana if I happened to fall in love with her and she with me. A man of forty is apt to make a darn sight better husband than one of twenty-four."
I looked at him in astonishment. "Heavens and earth, man, you're not in favor, of it, are you?"
"Why not?" he said wearily. "I've got Diana's happiness at heart and a lot of respect for you as a man, and no end of confidence in your future success." He rested his elbows on the foot rail of the bed, and stared at me thoughtfully. "Did you know that Diana inherited a million from her mother's estate?" he asked.
"Yes, but of course that hadn't anything to do with it. She might have two million or two cents for all I'd care."
"Well," said Maitland dryly, and I noticed that his face had whitened a little, "she hasn't got even the two cents now."
I stared at him uncomprehendingly. "What do you mean?" I asked.
"Just that," he answered. "Diana's fortune is all sunk in that railroad scheme of mine." His mouth tightened.
"But how did you have the right?" I demanded.
"I didn't. That is, not the legal right. I considered at the time that I had the moral right, first because the money was of my making and got through my manipulation of a busted concern; that million and a lot besides. In the second place, I considered the railroad proposition as such a dead-sure thing that I felt justified in using Diana's fortune to slam it through. But the law would call it the misplacement of trust funds and invite me for a nice long visit at an institution which has not the luxury of Van Rippen's. That may happen yet."
"But great Jupiter!" I gasped. "Haven't you millions of your own?"
"I haven't a million cents," Maitland answered, "and I'm mortgaged up to the ears. Diana is not the only victim. There are other members of the family who are apt to want an accounting within a few months. For the last several years they have been quite well satisfied with their dividends. But two of my nieces by marriage are due to be married in the spring, and then there has got to be a show-down. I'd hoped to have everything in apple-pie order by that time, but now that you have gone and dumped the apple cart there is apt to be a corner in apples." He gave his short little laugh.
"And then what?" I asked.
"No pie," he answered, and then, with a significant gesture: "This for mine. Stripes were never becoming to me. I'd rather be measured for a suit of pine planks. But get it straight, Tom. I'm not telling you this sad story of my business career in the hope of softening your heart. I've heard 'em too many times from other people, and they never softened mine. A fellow ought to play the game without turning on water power when it comes time to cash in. Let's cut out my part of it and talk about Diana. She thinks that she's in love with you, and there's no question about your being in love with her, and I'm convinced that you would make her a darn good husband, so go ahead and don't be foolish. You are bound to make trainloads of money out of this thing if you keep your eye on the ball and don't let somebody steal your bone while you are half asleep."
"Does Diana know about this, John?" I asked.
"No—nor anybody else but you. The others will find out soon enough, but between you and me and this brass bed-post I don't give a darn about the others. They took me into the family under protest, and treated me like a poor relation at first. Then, when they discovered that I could make money, they began to get polite. I made a lot for them—scads of it—and it was 'well done, thou good and faithful servant,' and a pat on the head. I never minded much. It was the game that interested me, not the people, and, not having any money of my own, I played it with their stakes. That's a perfectly all right game when you win, but a rotten one when you lose."
"Most games are like that, John," said I.
"Yes—especially when playing with other peoples' money, even when they do give you a verbal carte blanche. There are worse places than the poor-house. But to get back to Diana. The thought of her future has been the toughest thing for me in this business. Granted that she's uncommonly pretty and talented and all the rest of it, just the same life doesn't offer much for the eighteen-year-old daughter of a busted embezzler. The family would be the first to knock her, and I have no real friends myself. Never did have, to my knowledge. The men I've helped to make fortunes know that I never did it out of love." He gave a bitter little laugh. "I know of one bunch that will probably hold a praise service when it learns that I'm down and out. So you see, Tom, you needn't hang back about marrying my daughter on her account."
He walked to the window, and stood for a moment looking out across the little lake, while I lay there with my mind in a whirl. Somehow it never occured to me to blame Maitland for his illegal actions. In my association with promoting schemes I had known of a good many such cases, and understood that often they had their mitigating circumstances. A man who has built up a big fortune out of trust funds is often apt to regard himself as privileged to use the capital as if it were his own. It's not so much the money that he wants as the use of it to further his schemes, and it is only when the crash comes that he wakes up to the fact that he is a thief in the eyes of the law.
So here we were, this former business enemy of mine and myself at the two extremities of fortune; Maitland facing ruin, disgrace, and death—for I had little doubt he would fulfill his threat of suicide rather than go to prison—and I with the only obstacle to the promise of great wealth removed and free to woo and win the girl I loved. And yet I was not conscious of any wild elation. The sight of Maitland's drawn, tired face and his quiet, manly acceptance of the situation aroused in me a sympathy which I would not have felt if he had come whining and whimpering and begging me to help him out for his daughter's sake.
"Look here, John," I said, "what can I do to help you out of this mess?"
"Nothing," he answered promptly. "If you were to take over my road and marry my daughter, it would be dishonest to your other shareholders and give you a black eye that would never clear up. Besides, Van Rippen wouldn't stand for it. As you say, the road is no good to you nor anybody else with your proposition in sight. You've got a bully scheme, Tom. I went down and looked at your site for a dam. There'll be some caisson work, but nothing enormous, and with that five-hundred-foot drop into the gorge for your flume you will have power to burn. No, there's nothing you can do, old man, thanks all the same. Well, I must be getting along. I'm starting East to-morrow on a sort of forlorn hope, and I shall leave Diana at the sanitarium. We won't say anything to her about this talk. No use to bother her until the bell rings, and I hope that by that time she'll have your strong arm to hold her up. Good-by and good luck——"
So out he went, leaving me in a regular whirlpool of conflicting ideas. For about an hour I lay there, scarcely budging, while my brain studied on the situation. But it was no use. There was no way that I could think of for tiding Maitland over his crisis. He was too deeply in the mire. As he said, I couldn't sacrifice the interests confided in me simply to save my prospective wife's father from destruction. I couldn't, and, what was more, I wouldn't if I could.
"My prospective wife!" That set off another alarm clock. It was lucky for me my wounds were about healed or I'd have probably been down with fever. Then Dicky came in, lightly clad, as was his wont, to ask if. I needed anything. I did. I needed a counselor, and, knowing that Dicky would be an absolutely safe confidant, and failing to see how it could do the slightest possible harm, I told him the whole story. All about myself and Diana and Maitland's predicament; the whole business. He listened without a word, looking out the window and at times scarcely appearing to have his mind on what I was saying.
When I had finished, he looked around with his boyish expression of mild interest.
"Well, you're to be congratulated, Tom," said he. "Diana's a peach."
"Is that all you can say?" I asked impatiently. "Do you think it's a cheerful thing to marry the girl you love over her father's dead body?"
"I wish I could marry the one I love over the dead bodies of her whole blooming family," said he.
"Oh, go to the devil!" I snapped disgustedly. "This is different. Diana is really devoted to her father. Besides, she's a proud girl, and the disgrace will break her heart. She thinks, like everybody else, that he's a financial genius and a multimillionaire. Think of what it will do to her when she learns that he's a common, garden variety of everyday embezzler."
"Pretty tough," Dicky admitted, as though commenting on the breaking of a favorite meerschaum. "You had better get married before that happens."
"I don't know yet that she'll marry me when it comes right down to brass tacks."
"Then ask her and find out," he suggested, and began to look for a thorn in his knee.
"You're a darn fine spiritual adviser!" I sneered. "Supposing she does consent and we get married, it's going to be a cheerful honeymoon for me waiting every day to hear that my bride's father has blown his brains out and not knowing how she may be affected by the news! I tell you she loves her father."
Dicky found the thorn, extracted it, examined it with interest, and flicked it away.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked. "Lend him a couple of millions?"
"I want you to go to Halifax!" I said, really angry. "Why should you lend him a couple of millions? He's got no claim on you. I only told you this because you have your flashes of human intelligence at rare intervals, and I thought you might have something to suggest. If you haven't, clear out of here and go hang by your legs or stand on your head, and leave me to try to dope out the business the best I can."
Dicky looked at me pityingly. "You're getting peevish from lying so long in bed," he observed. "Old Rip says you can sit up to-morrow. Don't fret about Maitland, Tom. He's a pretty slick article, and I guess he'll be able to wriggle out of it somehow."
"Thank you so much for your kind words of comfort and cheer," I growled, and picked up a letter from the sheaf which had been brought me just before Maitland's arrival. I was pretty sore with Dicky. A couple of weeks earlier I should never have thought of taking him into my confidence at all, considering him, as I did, a mere, undeveloped, irresponsible child. But after that glimpse which I'd got at his deeper nature, I felt that I had a right to expect better things in the way of interest and sympathy.
He sat there for a few minutes, tapping his sandaled feet on the floor and humming a little tune, then slipped off the window seat, and, going to the center table, helped himself to a handful of sugared almonds, which he carried back to the divan and proceeded to munch. I had never seen him eat what one might call an actual meal, but he was always chewing at something between-times—fruit or cakes or nuts or candy, with which he took care to keep the place supplied, feeding them also to the kiddies in spite of my injunctions to the contrary. It may have affected their appetites, though, if it did, they gave no symptoms of it. Pretty soon a flutter of wings around the window sill announced that the birds had discovered Dicky and his treasure-trove, and were demanding a hand-out. Their pipings and his crunchings interfered with my perusal of a very important mail, and I was about to tell him to clear out when he swung round and said:
"I'm going to town for a couple of days, Tom. Got to see the correspondents of my bankers. Besides, I've got to buy some clothes."
"Far be it from me to interfere with the latter errand," I said. "When are you going?"
"This afternoon. Anything I can do for you while I am there?"
If it had been any one but Dicky, I could have given him a staggering burden of commissions. As it was, I answered:
"Why, yes. You might look up Maitland to-night at the Palace and ask him for a special permit for a special at any time that we might care to look over his line. I never thought about it when he was here."
"All right," said Dicky. "I'll remember."
So off he went to town, where, instead of two days, he spent two weeks. Van Rippen and I were, of course, up to the ears in work, but I saw Diana almost every day. Maitland had told him that I had asked his permission to marry her if she would have me, and that he had given it. The professor informed me of this fact in a manner none too flattering.
"Perhaps he thinks that as your father-in-law you might manage to get him a slice in our affair," said the old fellow. "Or maybe he did not believe that she would accept you. At any rate, he knows that you will be rich one of these days."
But in spite of the open road which now lay before me, my manner toward Diana underwent no change, except perhaps for a little added tenderness which I could not help, knowing the sorrow which menaced her life. Her very joyousness cut me deeply sometimes; gave me what the French call le cœur gros. Often, as I listened to her gay, bantering talk and rippling laughter, I could feel my heart swell and a hot sensation about the eyes, and I would have to turn away quickly and pretend to busy myself about something in order to pull myself together. But I did not make love to her in any sense. I wished to wait a little, first in order to give her time to get over what might have been a mere transient, romantic attraction, and second to clinch the promise of our big scheme, as anything which might have arisen to thwart it would have meant financial ruin and a fresh start for me. I knew that I had still some months of leeway where Maitland's affairs were concerned, and I was hoping against hope that Dicky's suggestion that Maitland might yet find some way out of his troubles would come about.
My wounds were soon entirely healed and gave me no trouble whatever. Of course I was constantly in and about the sanitarium, and occasionally had a few words with Alessandra, whom the professor kept very close. She was certainly a very lovely and charming girl, and I did not wonder at Dicky's consuming passion for her.
Some peculiar change appeared to have been wrought in Dicky by his trip to town. He was less communicative than ever, and thoughtful and preoccupied, very. Then one day he announced that it would be necessary for him to go East and that he might be away for a couple of months, but could not be sure. His former guardian was going to be in New York, and he had a good many affairs which required his attention. So off he went, handsomely dressed in the suit with which he had supplemented his wardrobe while in town, and for some few days following he was sorely missed by Tommy and Juanita and Ki-yi and old Manuela and a few others at the camp, sundry birds and chipmunks and pigeons and things included.
So far as our work was concerned, I did not consider the lack of Dicky any great loss, and thought it far better that he should occupy himself in making sure that there be no hitch in the money supply in case of accident. It was Dicky, of course, who had struck on our present scheme and done most to make it realizable, but I was inclined to regard his suggestion for the dam as more of a lucky shot than anything else, and his conquest of old Van Rippen as the affinity between two impractical cranks. His wealth seemed to be another fortunate accident, and as I saw it our whole position was one evolved of singular luck and circumstance. I had absolutely no respect whatever for Dicky as a promoter, engineer, financier, or person of any depth of thought—though willing to concede him plenty of depth of feeling of a primitive or pagan sort. I doubted that this feeling could possibly extend beyond the limits of his own desires, any more than could that of any other pagan.
Something of this I told Diana, but she was not of my opinion.
"Nobody could love like Dicky and not have a tremendous lot of soul," said she. "That's what soul means. Love is soul. Mind is different."
"Don't you think they go together?" I asked.
"They ought to," she answered, "but it doesn't always happen. Sometimes one's mind is developed at the cost of soul"—she gave me a mischievous, side-long look—"just as it may be developed at the cost of common sense," she added. "Old Rip says you have an excellent mind, Mr. Tom."
"Indeed?" I exclaimed. "That is very amiable of him. And what should you say it was developed at the cost of in this case?"
She gave me a demure look, and said, with that little smile which pushed out her delicate upper lip so charmingly: "Certainly not soul, Mr. Tom."
This was Sunday afternoon, and we had gone for a stroll around the lake and were now sitting on the same tree trunk which had been the scene of our scrimmage with Dimitri and his henchman. Van Rippen had followed with the kiddies, the trio having struck up a most intimate friendship, and they had now wandered off into the woods for an ambling lesson in natural history; not according to the Dicky school, but more academic and usually of a botanical character. It was one of those lambent days when the air seems highly charged with all the ingredients of life, so thin and fine and solvent as to have absorbed the forces of gravity themselves and one moves about with no slightest sense of weight. It would not have surprised me greatly to discover that our footsteps were leaving no traces in the sand.
Diana, however, appeared to have materialized in these latter days and become more of the mortal maid. Her costumes also were less unconventional, and she wore shoes and stockings when she left the sacred precincts of the sanitarium instead of sandals and bare ankles. But she was always lithe and supple and swaying, with her exquisite figure free and unconfined except for a high girdle, usually a band of pale green, which was her favorite color; the green of very early foliage. I have not attempted to describe her face, as that would be impossible, but its expression suggested that of a thoughtful, grown-up little girl. There was a certain wisdom in her long eyes, which were of a pale, slaty gray, with a curious amber tone in certain lights. Unlike most girls' faces, the telltale quality was not in the eyes, but in the lines about her rather wide but sensitive mouth, which was mobile in the extreme, with usually a quiver near its corners and never set in lines of prim control. Altogether it was a sensuous face, and, like ail the rest of her, seemed constantly to thrill and vibrate under the perception of a multitude of impulses, whether from within or without.
Looking at her now, I turned coward again. It was inconceivable, to my mind, that so lovely and wonderfully fashioned a masterpiece of God's handiwork should be given over to the tender mercies of such an animated lump of clay as myself. Because I could not help but feel that if Diana were mine, she was bound to be very much mine; a very tremendously total quantity of mine to me. I could not imagine myself in the light of a self-obliterating, protective genius, worshiping from an adoring distance and crawling into her sacred presence on all fours after a course of fasting and prayer. No. Once Diana was married to me, I knew that she would find herself married from the bottom of her spiritual body to the top of her physical one, and I wondered how much of this she could possibly realize.
Such ideas as these were milling around my cemented depths under a surface current of trivial talk, whereof the topic was Dicky, when Diana, with one of those swift impulses which were like an overcharged induction circuit, observed:
"I know what you are thinking about, Mr. Tom."
"Of course you do," I answered. "So do I."
"Do you want me to tell you?" she asked, and leaned toward me.
"No. I'll tell you myself—when the time comes."
"In that case, I shall tell you now," said she. "It is always better to take Time by the scythe. Don't you see, Mr. Tom, that Father Time is our very best friend, and for that single reason might be our very worst enemy? Let's take away his scythe. Without his scythe he would be nothing but a harmless old bore, just as Cupid without his bow and arrows would be a harmless little love of a baby." She raised her chin, and her mouth laughed and the amber gleam came into her eyes. There was no fly in that amber.
"You might disarm Cupid first," I suggested.
"Too late," said Diana, and shook her head sadly. "His shaft is sped. I love you, Mr. Tom."
"I love you, Diana," I echoed.
"I know you do," said she. "If I hadn't, I would not have said it first. I might have, though. Will you marry me, Mr. Tom?" She dropped her hands on my shoulders, and, turning on the log, stared into my eyes. I took her hands, and, holding her at arms' length, stared back.
"Are you sure, Diana?" I asked.
She threw back her head and laughed. Some birds in the treetops answered. I did not feel like laughing myself. The chances are that if my race had been Latin, instead of Norse, I might have wept.
"Sure about your love for me?" she answered. "Of course I am, Mr. Tom. Be still. Let me have my say. I can feel love just as I can smell flowers or hear music. If I had not been sure, do you think, you silly Mr. Tom, that I would have proposed to you in this shameless way? I know what you feel before you do. Be still, Mr. Tom—and don't squeeze my wrists so hard—that's better. Hold them, if you like, but don't hurt me. I could feel you loving me that first day when old Rip and I were watching Dicky play with the wild pigeons—and you were looking out through the window. Something began to sing in my heart, and I stood there and let it sing without looking round. I have felt it before, but never the same way—without discords and—bad sounds. I want to be loved that way, Mr. Tom. I have always wanted to be loved that way—every woman does—but no one so much as—as I do——"
"Diana!" I interrupted. "Of course I love you, and of course, you being you, you couldn't help but know it."
"All the time you were there in bed and talking to me it poured out of you like water over one of your dams——"
"But that's not the question," I interrupted again. "Are you sure of your love for me? Stop and think—or don't think. Let me do the thinking for you. Do you realize——"
"I realize you. You seem very real to me, Mr. Tom——"
The shadows were screening the lights in the lake when we walked back to the camp, where we found Van Rippen having tea with the kiddies. He turned his back on us when we came in, and devoted himself to Juanita, who was sleepy and spilling her chocolate. One might have thought that he dared not look at us for fear of being struck blind. Nor had he anything to say, but climbed into his buckboard when it was brought from the stable, and left me to help Diana in as best I could with his restive little broncho backing and filling and threatening to capsize the contraption. They drove off, and I stood watching them and wondering why so fat and phlegmatic a person as Van Rippen liked to drive half-trained horses. Then I started after them afoot, merely to satisfy my mind that they had arrived at the sanitarium without accident.
Van Rippen came over the next morning at about ten with a large portfolio of correspondence which required our joint attention for a couple of hours. Just as he was leaving he handed me an envelope.
"Diana asked me to give you this," said he. "The State engineer is coming to-morrow, and I shall expect you for déjeuner at twelve. Good-by." And he spun off down the trail.
I ripped open the envelope, and this is what I read:
Mr. Tom, you are a silly old fool, and I am a silly young fool. They say that there is no fool like an old fool, but sophistries are the excuses of lazy minds. Old fools usually know pretty well what they are about.
This is a polite way of saying that I regret what happened yesterday and of having for some weeks past cajoled you so shamelessly. But it was really pretty dull here for an eighteen-year-old girl who is a flirt by nature and accustomed to a great deal of masculine attention. You see, you were the only man available, and I wanted to keep my hand in. As to the ethics of my behavior, you must remember that I am my father's own daughter.
Please spare me the unpleasantness of reproaches, and don't try to see me again. I am leaving for the East to-morrow. A man of your age and experience ought not to be so easily taken in. Let us hope that the experience may prove of value to you. With best wishes for your future success,
Diana Maitland.
I read this letter through a second time and smiled sadly to myself. Not for the fraction of a second did it deceive me. Poor girl, I thought, she must have learned by her evening's mail of her father's ruin and disgrace, and the blow to her faith and affection and pride had for the moment upset her mental balance. For her to reflect on the avowal which she had made to me and asking me to marry her, and she at that very moment the penniless daughter of a defaulter was more than she could stand. Her heart was, no doubt, bursting with shame, and she assumed to herself the dishonor of her father's act. That phrase—"you must remember that I am my father's own daughter"—betrayed her. Of course she could not guess that I knew all about Maitland's position, and she had sent me this bitter, mocking note as the quickest and most efficient way of breaking our new relations.
I hurried to the stables, threw a saddle on my mare, and a moment later was loping along the trail for the sanitarium, to the precincts of which I was now admitted at any time without question. Tossing the reins to a servant, I walked around the house to the broad, tiled terrace on which Diana's apartment opened. I did not bother to have myself announced, knowing that she would decline to see me. It was then the luncheon hour for the guests, and there was nobody about, but I did not believe that Diana would be in the big refectory. My judgment proved to be correct, for as I stepped up to the long French blinds of her door I heard from within the sound of sobbing. I drew the butt of my riding crop down the slanting shutters, and the sobbing ceased.
"Who is there?" came a low, strangling voice. "Please go away. I am ill and do not wish to see anybody."
"It's I—Tom," I 'Answered. "Open the blinds, dear."
There came a gasp, a rustle as though she were suddenly rising, then——
"Oh—it's you. May I ask you to be so kind as to leave me alone? Wasn't my note enough for you?"
"Open the blinds!" I commanded.
"How dare you come to my room like this?" she cried. "If you don't go away at once, I shall ring for the servants. Do you want to compromise me? Or have you merely come to strangle me——"
My answer was to shove my riding crop into the slight opening between the door blinds, knock up the hook, and fling the blinds open. In the sudden light which flooded the place I saw Diana sitting on the side of her bed in a kimono. Her hair was disordered, and her face flushed and wet with tears. She sprang to her feet.
"Are you crazy?" she demanded furiously, and took a step toward me, her small hands clenched. "What do you mean, bursting into my room——"
"Sh-h-h!" I whispered. "No need to make a row. When did you learn about your father?"
The question struck her like a blow. One hand flew up to her throat, and she stared at me wildly.
"What do you know about my father?" she demanded.
"I know all about him. More than you do, I imagine. He told me himself. He is not so much to blame as you may think. What he did was done in all sincerity for the best interest of those whose affairs he had been managing. Can't you give him the benefit of the doubt? And did you think for a moment that I was such a fool as to be deceived by your silly note? Come here! Come here to me—or must I go to you?"
She stood there, staring and choking. "Come!" I said sternly, but in a low voice. For an instant she struggled to resist the force of will which I was projecting toward her. Then, with wide, frightened eyes and lagging steps, she began to move in my direction. "Come!" I repeated, holding out my arms. She paused, raised both hands in a protesting gesture, but like a person in a trance continued to approach. Almost to me, she tottered, swayed forward, and flung herself upon my chest, where I held her close, her pliant body crushed in my clasp. I kissed her hair and eyes, soothed her, petted her as I might have caressed and comforted my own baby daughter. She did not try to speak, but rested there, breathing convulsively, her bare arms twined about my neck.
I do not know how long we remained in this close embrace, but presently she grew calmer and loosed herself gently. Her hands dropped on my shoulders, and she held me at arms' length, looking into my eyes.
"Oh, Mr. Tom," she whispered, "isn't it terrible! And to think that you knew! Why didn't you tell me? Why couldn't you have prepared me in some way?"
"Because I have been hoping against hope that there might be some way out of the business," I answered. "How did you learn?"
"A letter, from an aunt. Some of them grew uneasy, and they have been investigating father's affairs. He may have to go to prison. Oh, they are all so bitter—so cruel. I would rather have learned that he had been killed. I must go to him at once. Poor, poor father! I know he did not mean to be dishonest. I must go to him and tell him so. I am leaving to-night."
"Then I'll go with you," I said.
"But how can you?"
"I can, and will. That's all. What's more, if you feel that you really must go, you shall go as my wife."
She shook her head. "That is not to be thought of any longer, Mr. Tom."
"Not much longer," said I. "Just long enough to get the knot tied. Tied good and hard, too, my darling."
She shook her drooping head, and I took her in my arms again. At the same moment there came a sharp rap at the door. Diana sprang back.
"Who is there?" she called.
"A telegram for you, Miss Maitland," came a woman's voice.
I stepped out upon the terrace and drew the blind in front of me. Diana crossed the room, took the telegram from the maid, then closed and locked her door. She came to the window, the message in her hand, her face as white as chalk. My own could not have held much more color, as I fully expected the wire to announce Maitland's death, not stopping to reflect that such ill tidings would probably have been addressed to the professor. Diana held out the telegram with a trembling hand.
"See what it says, Mr. Tom," she faltered, and leaned against the window casement. I ripped it open, glanced it through, then looked at her with a smile and the sweat breaking out on my forehead.
"Good news," I said, and, stepping inside, I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her to me as I read:
Don't be disturbed by rumors or letters of bad news. Matters clearing up and nothing to fear. Best love. Father.
"Thank God!" I murmured, and kissed her bright hair as her head fell on my shoulder. She twisted about, slipped her arms about my neck, and crushed her wet face against mine.
"I adore you, Mr. Tom," she whispered. "You do love me, don't you?"
Back I rode to camp, feeling rather limp, but with a singing heart. It had turned hot again, and I was sitting at my desk, busily filling my waste-paper basket with torn-up, unfinished letters, when there came the rattle of a loose-jointed trap—all of this was before the time of motor cars—and I looked out and saw Dicky disentangling a wad of bills to present one to the driver. He gathered his loose clothes under one arm and came in.
"Hello, Tom," said he. "Everything all right? How are the kids?"
"Fine and dandy," I answered. "Why didn't you let me know that you were coming?"
"Oh, I thought I'd go straight through to Frisco, but it was so hot on the train I decided to get off and have a swim. Besides, I wanted to relieve your mind about Maitland."
"That was kind of you," I said rather ironically. "When did you see Maitland?"
"In New York." Dicky was divesting himself of his negligée shirt and trousers. Refreshingly costumed in abbreviated underclothes, he seated himself on the divan, and looked at me with a grin. "I've bought his blooming railroad," said he.
"You have—excuse me—what?" I exclaimed.
"I've bought his road." He slipped off the window seat, and, going to the fruit basket which the Chinaman had brought in with his other scant effects, selected a luscious peach in which he proceeded to bathe.
"That is very interesting," I observed. "Tell me about it."
"Well," said Dicky, his mouth full of peach, "when I went to Frisco that last time I looked up Maitland and asked him to show me his property. He didn't seem to think it worth while at first, but I told him that if I could see my way clear to buy it without too great a loss there might be something doing. He asked me why I wanted to buy it at all, and I told him that it was on your account."
"Why on my account?" I asked.
"Because he is Diana's father, of course, and you want to marry Diana," he answered. "You explained all that. No use going all over it again. But from what I had heard about the property I got sort of an idea that it might be just my business. So it was, too, as it turned out——"
"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "Tell me why his being Diana's father and my wanting to marry Diana should have made you consider the purchase of an absolutely worthless property and one which your interests here were bound to push even deeper into the soup."
Dicky threw away what was left of his peach. He turned his square, boyish face toward me, and I caught another of those flashes which were like the flame from a short-circuited high-tension wire. Just for a second, though.
"You saved Alessandra's life," he explained.
I said nothing. Dicky looked out across the lake, and continued talking His voice sounded strained for a moment or two, but soon returned to its usual boyish tone.
"I told Maitland that I thought his road was punk, from all I'd heard about it," said he, "but that if I could see the possibilities for a scheme I had in mind I might buy it, first on your account, as I've said——"
"What did he say about that?" I asked.
"Oh, he wanted to know where you came in, and I told him that you were in love with his daughter and would like to feel that you hadn't busted up her father's pet scheme, and that I felt that I owed you a lot for certain things that you had done for me. He didn't seem to take much stock in all that, but he changed his mind and stopped over to take me out to see the property. It turned out to be just what I wanted, and when I had told him why he was like a kid with a new toy."
"What was the why, if it's not a secret?"
"It might be better to say nothing about it outside just yet," Dicky answered, "but, you see, Tom, my scheme is this: I propose to transplant about a thousand families of Greek peasants—small farmers—and stake 'em out along that line on the tracts which it controls. You know I told you once that I inherited a good-sized island in the Greek Archipelago? Well, I'm the hereditary lord of that pile of dirt, and so I naturally feel sort of responsible for the good of the people that live there. They have a pretty tough time of it to get along, I guess, but they are a thrifty, industrious bunch, and really a mighty decent lot, taking 'em all around. So far the dam' place hasn't paid me anything at all to speak of. On the contrary, I've had to help 'em out from time to time. But the people are really good people, hard-working and well behaved and all that. Once they get a fair chance they'll make things hum. You wait and see."
For a moment I sat and stared at this nearly naked youth with feelings impossible to describe. Dicky helped himself to another peach.
"Why not have staked them out on our own prospective grants?" I asked.
"Oh, stop and think a minute, Tom. You know as well as I do that it would have put all the surrounding country on the bum. These Greeks of mine are all right, but any big immigrant colony knocks the value of surrounding real estate. That is, it does at first, until they get Americanized, and it usually takes the second generation to do that. Since Maitland's road was a dead issue, and as it struck me that the country thereabouts would be just the meat for my Greeks, I thought I could see a way of killing two birds with one stone—or three maybe. In the first place, my buying the road saves Maitland from disaster. Second, it may prove a land of Canaan for my starving crowd. Third, I stand to make a lot out of it in the end when they get well rooted. Maitland thinks so, and so does my former guardian, and so does Dimitri——"
"So does—Dimitri!" I gasped. "Hold on, Dicky! Don't fling it in too fast and frequent or you'll have me sitting on the floor playing with paper dolls!" I mopped my brow. It seemed to me as though I had already stood as many shocks that day as was good for a white man. "Dimitri? My friend?"
"Yes," Dicky answered, flinging his peach pit through the window. The birds had already discovered his return, and were fluttering all about. Fortunately the children had not returned from the district school. "Dimitri is a sort of cousin of mine. I knew where to find him in Frisco. I've been keeping tabs on him through a detective agency ever since he tried to get gay. I felt sort of sorry for Dimitri because—oh, for a lot of reasons. All the same, that wouldn't have kept me from sticking a knife into his throat if I got a good chance. Dimitri's kick wasn't so much jealousy through love as it was being sore at seeing a rank outsider and what he thought to be just an ordinary, everyday American fellow come along and cut him out of his girl and no end of money. When I went to see him this last time, and proved to him who I was it gave him no end of a jolt. He turned green, and Stefan nearly had a fit. Got down and groveled."
"Did you go to see them alone?" I asked.
"Yes," he answered. "I knew that there was no danger. They were flat broke and living in the attic of a rotten sailors' boarding house. You must have given his arm a darn good wrench, as he still had it in a sling. Well, I told Dimitri that while he didn't deserve it I was willing to put him in a way to make a fortune if he'd behave himself and stick to business. Then I explained my scheme, and he was keen about it and promised to be good." Dicky clapped his hands, and Chang came in. "Look in my valise and bring me that big box of candy."
I leaned back in my chair and stared at him with wonder. Chang brought the candy, and Dicky began to munch nougat, feeding the birds little morsels which they pecked from his fingers. It seemed to me that there was a sort of radiance about him which was brighter than the sunlight streaming in.
"Go on," I said in a subdued voice. "What then?"
"Oh, I took them up over the property and showed them all the possibilities of the business, and then we went to New York, where we met Maitland and worked the proposition out in detail. Maitland was really in the devil of a mess, but I got him out of that by advancing him money on his shares. We formed a syndicate, of which I am president with a controlling interest. Maitland is to run the railroad and land business, and Dimitri will have charge of the colonists and all that part of it. We are going to charter a ship to fetch these people out, and Dimitri is going over on her to round up the bunch."
"You are sure they'll come?" I asked.
"You bet they'll come. They'd go to the north pole on my say-so. Besides, Dimitri has a lot of influence, and so has my former guardian, Mr. Constant. He's in the syndicate, too, and he's going, out with Dimitri. Maitland is coming here in about a fortnight and he's going to look after this end of it. Here come the kids——" And Dicky ran out just as he was to greet them.
"Chang!" I shouted. "Saddle Nelly and bring her up—and be quick about it!"
"It allee same lunch time——"
"Do what I say, and get a move on you!" I bellowed, and, five minutes later, was tearing back over the road to the sanitarium.
The rest of the tale is quickly told; that is, as much as requires the telling. Diana and I were married a month later, and left for the East, where there was much business to transact.
Dicky and Alessandra were married about a year later, and finally settled on their palatial estate in California, there to rear an interesting family. We are all rich people now, but when I contemplate my golden goddess and our sturdy flock I feel myself to be the richest of them all.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1933, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 91 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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