Madcap Part 18

"I'm awfully sorry, Olga--" Hermia paused.

"About what?"

"Last night. How could _I_ have known that the pergola was occupied!"

"Oh, it didn't matter in the least," she said coolly. "Markham was making love to me, that's all. Pity--isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," said Hermia slowly, "a great pity--you're no respecter of persons, Olga."

Olga shrugged effectively.

"How should _I_ have known?"

"You have had time enough to study him, I should say. Why couldn't you let him be? When there are so many other men--"

"Hear the child! One might think that I had brought him to my knees, _malice propense_. I didn't. _Mon Dieu_, one can't always prevent the unexpected."

Hermia laughed dryly. "One doesn't plan the unexpected _quite_ so carefully as you do, Olga, dear."

It was beneath Olga's dignity to reply.

"At any rate," continued Hermia, "you've driven him away from 'Wake-Robin'."

"Oh, he'll come back," said Olga lightly.

"Do you think so?"

"Of course."

"We shall see," said the girl.

At the end of three days the Countess Olga realized that for the first time in her life she had made a mistake in judgment; for Mr. Markham did not return to "Wake-Robin." And when she went to the island in the launch to make her peace with him she found the cabin deserted.

It was not until some days later that she received a letter from him dated in New York, and sent on the eve of his sailing for Europe.

My Dear Olga:

It is to laugh! But you can be sure that I was angry for a day or two. What is the use? I have forgotten my misadventure and will consider it a warning against rose gardens. I'll not venture into a rose garden by moonlight again unless quite alone. It's dangerous--even with a sworn friend. It wasn't altogether your fault or mine, and you served me quite properly in cutting my self-esteem to ribbons. But it hurt, Olga. You know the least of us mortals thinks he's a heart-breaker, if he tries to be. You've put me back upon my shelf among the cobwebs and there I shall remain. I'm hopeless material to work with socially and deserve no better fate than to be laid away and forgotten. People must take me as I am or not at all.

I don't mind rubbing elbows with the great unwashed. They're human somehow. But your world of dissatisfied women and unsatisfied men!

It gets on my nerves, and so I've cut it and run.

I'm painting an antiquated countess in Havre, and then I'm off for the open country with a thumb box, a toothbrush and a smile, and with this equipment I have all that the world can offer. I shall live upon the fat of the land at forty sous a day--_ripaille_--under the trees--a sound red wine to wash the dust from one's throat--and an appet.i.te and a thirst such as Westport will never know.

_Au revoir, chre_ Olga. I could wish you with me, but I shall be many honest kilometers from a limousine, which is not your idea of a state of being.

With affectionate regards, Faithfully, J.M.

In the same mail was a note to Hermia:

My Dear Miss Challoner:

Your kindness deserves a better return than my abrupt and rather churlish departure from "Wake Robin," and, if it isn't already too late to restore myself to your graces, I hope you will accept my regrets and apologies, and the sketch from Thimble Island, which goes to you by express. I hope you will like it. I do. That's why I've giving it to you. But it's hardly complete without the wrecked monoplane and the small person who came with it. Perhaps some day you'll "drop in" on me again somewhere and I can finish it. Meanwhile please think seriously about the portrait. I don't believe I'm just the man to do it. I can't seem to see you somehow. My business is to portray the social anachronism. That is easy--a matter of clothes.

But how shall a mere mortal define in terms of paint the dwellers of the air? You have me guessing, dear lady. Imagine _Ariel_ in the conventional broadcloth of commerce. It's preposterous. I can't lend myself to any such deception.

The rest of the letter was more formal and finished with a message of congratulation to Mr. Armistead and a word of thanks for her own hospitality. And he hoped to remain very cordially "John Markham."

Hermia smiled as she finished it and then read it over again. The letter with its mixture of the formal and whimsical both pleased and rea.s.sured her. It represented more the Markham of Thimble Island, a person whose ident.i.ty had lost something of its definiteness since her talks with Olga in the days that had followed his departure from "Wake-Robin." She had been aware of a sense of doubt and disappointment in him and she had not been quite so sure that she liked him now. Of course, if he chose to make a fool of himself over Olga it was none of her affair, and she had been obliged to admit that her discovery had taken from him some of the charm of originality.

She did not know what had pa.s.sed between her guests before her abrupt descent through the pergola, but she was quite certain she had fallen into the middle of a psychological moment. Whose moment was it, Olga's or his? She couldn't help wondering. Olga had intimated that Markham was in love with her. Hermia now doubted. Indeed a suspicion was growing in her mind that it was Olga who was in love with Markham.

Hermia smiled and put the letter away in her desk. It didn't matter to her, of course, only interested her a great deal, but she couldn't help wondering why, if Markham was so deeply under the spell of Olga's worldliness, he had not come back to her when she had wanted him.

A northeaster had set in along the coast, and the guests of "Wake Robin" were driven indoors. Olga, when she wasn't playing auction, wandered from window to window, looking out at the dreary skies, venting her ennui on anyone within earshot. Archie Westcott, who was losing more money than he could afford to lose, now lacked the buoyant spirits which carried him so blithely along the crest of the social wave and scowled gloomily at his cards which persisted in favoring his opponents. Crosby Downs, whose waistband had again reached its fullest tension, sought the tall gra.s.ses of the smoking-room and refused to be dislodged. Without the shadows of her hat and veil Mrs. Renshaw showed her age to a day, and that didn't improve her temper. Beatrice Coddington had an attack of the megrims and remained in her room.

Hermia played bottle pool and pinochle with Reggie Armistead until they began discussing the exact terms of Hermia's promise when there began a quarrel which lasted the entire afternoon and ended in Reggie's going out into the pouring rain and swearing that he would never come back.

But he did come back just in time for dinner, through which he sat pretending that he was interested in Phyllis Van Vorst and casting gloomy looks in the direction of the oblivious Hermia. At the end of three days there were no more than two people in the house on terms of civility, and most of Hermia's guests had departed.

Olga Tcherny, after an afternoon alone in her room, came downstairs at the last extremity of fatigue.

"I can't stand it another hour, Hermia. I'm off in the morning."

"Off? Where?" asked Hermia.

"Oh, I don't know. Anywhere. New York first and then--"

"Normandy?" queried Hermia impertinently.

Olga only smiled.

CHAPTER XI

THE GATES OF CHANCE

Markham had finished the portrait of his antiquated countess in Havre and abandoning the luxuries of the Hotel Frascati had taken to the road with his knapsack and painting kit for a two months' jaunt along unfrequented Norman byways. This had been his custom since his first year in Paris, when his means were small and the _wanderl.u.s.t_ drove him forth from the streets of Paris. He had walked from the Savoie to Brittany, from Belgium to Provence and the vagabond instinct in him had grown no less with advancing years. He liked the long days in the open. The slowly moving panorama of hill and dell, which was lost upon the touring motorists who continually pa.s.sed him, filling the air with their evil smells and clouds of dust. He liked the odor of the loam in the early morning, the clean air washed by the dew and redolent of burning wood, the drowsy hour of noon with its meal of cheese and bread eaten at the shady brink of some musical stream and the day-dream or doze that followed it; the long mellow afternoons under the blue arch of sky where the pink clouds moved as lazily as he, in vagabond procession, across the zenith. His aimlessness and theirs made them brothers of the air, and he followed them under the trackless sky, aware that his destination for the night lay somewhere ahead of him, leaving the rest to chance and the patron saint of Nomads. He liked the rugged faces he saw on the road, the Norman welcome of his host and the deep sleep of utter weariness and content which defied the tooth of time and discomfort.

After a few days in Rouen, where he always lingered longer than he intended to, he had crossed the river at Sotteville an had followed main roads which led him to the south and east through the heart of the historic Eure.

He had given Trouville a wide berth; for he knew some people there, friends of Olga Tcherny's, people of fas.h.i.+on who would have looked askance at his dusty clothes and general air of disrepute. He was not in the humor for Olga's kind of friends or indeed for Olga, if as the last note from her had indicated she, too, had arrived on this side of the water. He was sufficient unto himself and gloried in his selfishness. Song he would have and did often have at night with his chance companions of the road, and wine or the sound Norman cider which was better--but no women--no women for him!

It was on the road beyond Evreux that he thus congratulated himself for the twentieth time. His path pa.s.sed near the brink of a river fringed with trees and to the right the hills mounted abruptly to a rocky eminence, crowned with an ancient castle which stolidly sat as it had done for a thousand years and guarded the peaceful valley beneath. It had looked down upon the pageantry of an earlier day when knights in armor had ridden forth of its portals for the honor of their ladies, had listened to the hoof-beats of more than one army, and had heard in the distance the clash of Ivry. To-day a railroad wound around the base of its pedestal, reminding it of the new order of things and of its own antiquity.

As Markham approached the railroad crossing, from the opposite direction, in a cloud of dust, came an automobile. But as it neared the track a woman waving a red flag and blowing a horn came running from a small house by the roadside and pulled the gates across the road. The automobile, which had only one occupant, came to a sudden stop and an argument followed. Markham was too far away to hear what was said, but the gestures of the disputants could be easily understood. There was no train in sight and plenty of time to cross, said the motorist. The peasant waved her flag and pointed down the track. More words, more gesticulations, but the gate-keeper was obdurate. The motorist looked up the track and at the gate and road, and then followed explosives, smoke and dust from the impatient machine, which slowly moved backward a short distance up the road again. Markham, slowly approaching, watched the comedy with interest.

An impatient Parisian, jealous of the pa.s.sing minutes, and an obstinate peasant--to whom pa.s.sing minutes had no significance--could any two humans be more definitely antagonistic?

What was the person in the car about? More explosions and the blue of burning oil as the car came forward, its cutout open, turning to the left off the road over a ditch and into a field. The gate-keeper ran forward shaking her flag and screaming as she guessed the motorist's intention. But it was too late. The car was hidden for a moment from Markham's view in the declivity upon the other side of the railroad embankment, the exhaust roaring furiously, and leaped into sight, the front wheels high in the air as it took the near rail and then fell heavily with a complaining groan across the track and moved no more, its rear axle snapped in two.

Of all the fool performances! Markham ran forward crying in French to the chauffeur to jump, for around the profile of the hill the locomotive of the oncoming train was emerging. The motorist looked at Markham and then at the advancing train in bewilderment; then jumped clear of the track beside Markham as the freight train, its brakes creaking, its steam shrieking, crashed into the unfortunate machine, turning it over and then crumpling it into a shapeless ma.s.s, through which it tore, its impetus carrying it well down the road and scattering the torn fragments of nickel and steel on both sides of the tracks.

It was not until the train had been brought to a stop that Markham had had time to notice that the motorist was a woman--not until she turned a rather wan face in his direction that he saw that the victim of this misfortune was Hermia Challoner.