Lonesome Town Part 4

"I have crossed a continent to meet you. Don't let your friends see that you failed to recognize me at first. It takes only a moment to know me.

Give me that moment."

"Am I not giving it?" She looked still puzzled, still flushed, still brave. But she withdrew her hand and with it something of her confidence.

Would she deny him, after all, once she understood? She mustn't be allowed to.

"Give me the moment toward which I've lived my life," he said. "You won't regret it. Look at me. Recognize me. Trust me."

During the grave glance which she slanted slightly upward to his six-feet-flat, she obeyed; studied him; seemed to reach some decision regarding him, just what he had to surmise.

"The surprise of meeting you-here-at the opera--" she began hesitantly.

"Seeing so many people, I think, confuses me. Somehow, personalities and places get all scrambled in my memory. Do forgive me-but you are from--"

"Montana, of course," he prompted her.

"Oh!" She considered. Then: "I've been to the Yellowstone. It was there-that we met? I begin-to remember that--"

"That I'm a personal friend of Horace Albright, the superintendent," he supplied, quick to seize the opportunity she had made to speak a true, good word for himself. "Every one of the Spread-Eagle Ranger force, from Jim McBride down, calls me by my first name, so you see that I am no tusk-hunter. You can't have forgotten the snap of the air on those early-morning Y-stone rides or the colors of the border peaks in the afternoon sun or--"

"Or the spray of Old Faithful, the painted colors of the canon, the whole life of the wild. Never. Never," she contributed. "I was fascinated with the breadth and freedom of your West. Out there I felt like Alice in Wonderland, with everything possible."

His eyes reproached her. "Everything is possible everywhere, even in your narrow, circ.u.mscribed East. I am glad that you remember the worth-while things. Perhaps, if you try--"

"Jane dar-rling, do you want to sit brazenly in front or modestly in back for the second act? That first was enough to put the Mona Lisa out of countenance. But I've heard that a little child saves the second."

The interruption came from the bobbed-haired girl, who, from her repeated glances their way, evidently thought their aside somewhat protracted.

So "Jane" was the favorite, old-fas.h.i.+oned name she glorified! Pape was further thrilled by the touch of her hand on his arm.

"Do forgive me and help me out," she said low and hurriedly. "Some hypnotist must have given me mental suggestion that I was to forget names. I am constantly embarra.s.sed by lapses like this. Quick-I'll have to introduce you."

"Peter Pape." Gladly he supplied the lack.

With considerable poise she announced him as "a friend from the Yellowstone," who had happened in unexpectedly and been reviving memories of that most delightful summer she had spent in the West. If she accented ever so slightly the "revived memories" or flashed him a confused look with the p.r.o.nouncement of his name, none but he noticed.

And he did not care. Whether deceived by his high-handed play or playing a higher hand herself, she hadn't thrown him out. Now she wouldn't-couldn't. He was her "friend" from the Yellowstone-near enough home, at that, since h.e.l.lroaring Valley was right next door. She was committed to his commitment. His theory was proving beyond anything he could have hoped, had he wasted time on hope after evolving it.

In turn she named Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Allen, a middle-aged couple who supplied ample dignity and chaperonage for the younger element of the box party; Mr. Mills Harford, a genial, sophisticated and well-built young man, who would have been called handsome by one with a taste for auburn hair, brown eyes and close-cropped mustaches; Miss Sturgis, her little cousin-she of the bobbed hair, filet of pearls and affectionate address.

Even in her grown-up, down-cut evening gown of Nile-green, the girl didn't look more than fifteen-couldn't have exceeded nineteen without violating all laws of appearances. Despite her excessive use of make-up-blued-over eyelids, plucked brows, darkened lashes, thick-pasted lips and high-colored cheeks-Cousin "Irene" was quite beautiful. And her manner proved as a.s.sertively brilliant as her looks.

"Mr. -- Pape?" she demanded thinkingly. "Have I met you before or heard of you--"

His hand on his heart, he bowed toward her. "Why-Not Pape."

She stared at him much as she had at the sign.

"You don't claim to be-- Don't tell me that you are-- Then you're _not_ a breakfast-food?"

"Nothing so enlivening. Not even anti-fat," he apologized in broad-smiling return.

"Oh-_oh_!" she gasped. "You _couldn't_ have overheard what I said in the car coming down?"

"From the curb, Miss Sturgis."

"And you recognized me here in the box and that's why-Dar-rling-" the endearment was drawled with a brief glance toward her relative-"isn't that just too _utterly_ romantic?"

"I hope, Irene, not _too_ utterly."

Jane's quiet reply started a smile wreathing around the little circle, evidently of amus.e.m.e.nt over the child-vamp's personal a.s.sumption of all honors.

Samuel Allen interposed in a tone of b.u.t.ter-melting benignity: "Any friend of Miss Lauderdale is more than welcome to our city so far as I am concerned."

"Rawther! And welcome-thrice welcome to our midst," the madcap again interpolated, seizing one of his large, brown hands in both her white, bejeweled, small ones.

"Dee-lighted!" Pape breathed, returning the extra shake.

Indeed, he felt delighted. She was _Miss_ Jane Lauderdale, the reserved, long-haired relative of this short-haired enthusiast. And she wore no engagement ring-not any ring on any finger. He could only hope that she had no "understanding" with the good-looking chap ranged beside her. If so, she'd have to be made to mis-understand. She was more fl.u.s.tered over his acceptance of the unconscious invitation of that long, strange, magnified look than she had at first appeared. That showed in the tight clutch of her fingers on her feather fan. And she was taller than he had calculated-just enough shorter than he for ideal dancing. One thing about her he needed to decide, but couldn't. Did she or did she not know that she didn't know him?

But he must pay attention. Irene, continuing to baby-vamp him, waved him into the chair beside that into which she had sunk. Although of necessity she had dropped his hand she released neither his interest nor his eyes.

"You must be just a terribly important person to be flashed all over Broadway in that rosy wreath. I don't blame your friends, though, for feeling a bit extravagant over you. We were talking about the sign before you came in-were guessing what kingdom you belong to, animal, vegetable or mineral. Millsy Harford here held out that you were more likely some manufactured product than anti-fat. Isn't it all quite too funny for anything?"

"My folks used to say, from the rate of speed at which I grew up-" Pape applied to his ready store of persiflage-"that I was more like a vegetable than a boy. _I_ always thought I was animal, judging by my appet.i.te, you know. But my life's been kind of lived with minerals.

Maybe I'm all three."

"How interesting." Mrs. Allen, a lady faded to medium in coloring, age and manner, turned from an over-rail inspection of some social notable among the horseshoe's elect to survey him through her lorgnette. "Just why, if I am not too personal, are you called 'Why-Not?'"

"My nickname about the headwaters of our greatest river, madam."

From her look of vague perplexity Pape turned his glance around the group until it halted for a study of Jane Lauderdale's face-again Irish pale, tropic-eyed, illegible. He chose his further words with care.

"Guess I was the first to ask myself that question after the boys hung the sobri. on me and nailed it there," he said, addressing himself to none in particular. "I made the interesting discovery that there wasn't any answer, although there are limitless answers to almost every seemingly unanswerable question. You see, when I find myself up against the impossible, I just ask myself why not and buck it. I've found the impossible a boogey-boo."

"You call yourself, then, a possible person?"

He was not to be discountenanced by Jane's quiet insertion.

"Everything worth while that I've got in the past I owe to that belief,"

he maintained. "It happens that I want some few extras in my near future. That's how I'll get 'em, from realizing that nothing-_absolutely nothing_-is impossible."

Considerable of a speech this was for him. Yet he could see that he had made something of an impression by its delivery. One moment he marveled at his own a.s.surance; the next wanted to know any good and substantial reason why he shouldn't feel a.s.sured. He had made himself, to be sure.

But probably he had done the job better than any one else could have done it for him. At least he had been thorough. And his efforts had paid in cash, if that counted.

A stir in the house-rather, a settling into silence-presaged the parting of the curtains on Act II. Mills Harford who, as had developed, was the host of the evening, began to rearrange the chairs to the better advantage of the fair of his party. The interloper felt the obligation at least of offering to depart. Irene it was who saved him. With a pout of the most piquantly bowed pair of lips upon which female ever had used unnecessary stick, she dared him to wish to watch the second act with her as much as she wished him to.

Pape could not keep down the thrill she gave him-she and the situation.

To think that he, so lately the wearer of an Indian sign, should be begged to stay in such a circle! Only for a moment did he affect reluctance. During it, he glanced across at the box that was his by right of rental, with its content of brightly attired "true-lovers"

blooming above the rail; smiled into the challenge of the precocious child's black eyes; sank into the chair just behind her.