A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
out her mistake and making a game fight to hide it. When she first came
she went in for everything. She had never played tennis or golf, and she
got more fun out of learning than anybody I ever saw. Then suddenly she
stopped. Some old desiccated relative told the Doctor it didn't look
well for his wife to be running around with the young people, and that
settled it. She gave up like an angel, and she's not the kind that likes
to give up either. Now her days are devoted to the heavy domestic, and
her evenings to improving her mind in the Doctor's stuffy old study.”
“Talking to the Doctor,” confessed Decker, “always affected me like
looking at Niagara Falls; grand, and imposing and awe-inspiring, but a
little goes a long way. How is she standing it?”
“Getting thinner and paler and prettier every day. She's a country
girl, you know, used to horses, and outdoor exercise. She must have been
beastly homesick, but she's game through and through. It was awfully
hard for her to bluff at first. That's because she is so honest. But she
has had to learn. No woman, good or bad, can get through life without
learning to bluff, only it comes harder for the good ones. What's that
confounded racket in the street?”
They rose and went to the window, Gerald looking over the shoulder of
his shorter companion.
A superannuated gray mule hitched to a heavy cart had come to a
standstill in the middle of the street, and a group of excited negroes
were vainly trying to induce him to move on. With one ear cocked
forward, and his forefeet firmly planted, the decrepit animal dumbly
made his declaration of independence, taking the blows that rained upon
his back with the dogged heroism of one who has resolved to die rather
than surrender.
“By Jupiter, if those coons aren't fixing to build a fire under him!”
exclaimed Decker. “They'd rather fool with a balking mule than eat
watermelon! Let's go out to see the sport.”
When Decker reached the porch, having left Gerald at the hall mirror,
inspecting his face with minute solicitude, a new figure had appeared on
the scene. It was a girl dressed in white, standing in the Queeringtons'
yard, and as he looked he saw her suddenly dart out of the gate and into
the street as if she had been shot from a cannon.
“Stop pulling his head like that!” she demanded. “Don't you dare to
strike him again. Take that fire away!”
The negroes fell back somewhat astonished, and the driver arrested his
whip in the air.
“I'll show you how to make him go,” she went on; “put mud in his mouth.
Yes, mud, a big lump of mud. There, that'll do; make it into a ball, and
put it in. Yes, you can! Oh, dear! Give it to me!”
She seized the mule's lower jaw with her thumb and forefinger, and with
a deft movement succeeded in getting the unwelcome substance between the
animal's teeth.
The mule evinced surprise, then curiosity. His fore feet relaxed, his
eye lost its fire, and when a gentle pressure fell upon his halter, he
was too engrossed in the new sensation to resist it.
“Bravo, Miss Lady!” called Gerald, sauntering forward to meet her. “I
told you you were irresistible. What did you whisper in his ear?”
“Lots of things!” she said, accepting his immaculate handkerchief
to wipe the mud from her hands, “but of course the mud helped. Uncle
Jimpson taught me that trick. He says a mule has room in his head for
only one thought at a time, and all you have to do is to change his
balking thought for some other and he'll go.”
“I hope you will never have to put mud in my mouth,” said Gerald,
looking at her with no attempt to conceal his admiration. “Can't you
come over and see mother for a bit? She'd love to give you a cup of
tea.”
“I don't like tea in the afternoon; it spoils my supper.”
“Well, then, come over to see me. There's a friend of mine I want you to
meet. I've been telling him about you.”
“I can't. I'm drawing pictures for Bertie. He'll be disappointed.”
“So will I. So will Decker.”
“Decker?” Miss Lady flashed a glance at him. “You don't mean Cropsie
Decker?”
“Yes, I do; the special correspondent for the _Herald-Post_. Is that
sufficient inducement?”
Miss Lady looked at him rather strangely. “I'll come,” she said after a
moment's hesitation.
They did not return to the parlor but to the music-room, a large room
on the opposite side of the hall, which Mrs. Ivy, a firm believer in
the psychological effect of color, had fitted out in blue to induce a
contemplative mood in the occupants. On the mantel and tables were the
same miscellaneous collection of bric-a-brac that characterized the
parlor. Several pictures of Gerald adorned the walls, the most imposing
of which presented him seated at the piano, with his mother standing
beside him, a rapt expression on her elevated profile.
Miss Lady flitted about from object to object, asking questions, not
waiting for answers, seeing everything, commenting on everything while
the two young men stood side by side on the hearth rug and watched her.
She was like a humming-bird afraid to light.
“Please, Mrs. Queerington,” Gerald begged at last. “You know you don't
care for those old kodaks. I'll show them to you another time. I want
you to talk to Decker. Sit down here in this big chair and I'll sit at
your feet, where I belong, and Cropsie'll sit anywhere he likes and tell
us about his adventures.”
“But where's your mother? I thought you said she was serving tea?”
“She'll be down directly. Now, tell us a story, Decker. A man can't
wander around the Orient for a year without having something exciting
happen to him.”
“I'm afraid I haven't an experiencing nature,” said Decker, smiling.
“You ought to have Morley here. He's the fellow that went over with me,
Mrs. Queerington. I'll back him against the field for having adventures.
You remember that big fire last year in Tokyo? Don was the first Johnny
on the spot, doing the noble hero act, dragging out women and children
and gallantly fighting the flames, while I lay up in bed at the Imperial
Hotel and fought mosquitoes! He was in a collision at sea, just off the
coast of Korea, got mixed up in a Chinese uprising in Nanking and
was arrested for a spy while taking pictures of the fortifications at
Miyajima. If I had half his luck I'd be the highest priced man in the
syndicate.”
“I don't know that I particularly envy him his luck in the incident
that happened here just before he left,” said Gerald, lighting a fresh
cigarette.
“It was nothing to his discredit,” said Decker hotly. “He happened to be
a witness when that fool Dillingham got into a shooting scrape, and he
left town because he did not want to testify against the man his niece
was going to marry. He didn't consider the consequences, he never does.
It was a toss up when I met him in 'Frisco whether he would come home,
or go on.”
“Didn't he know he was indicted?” asked Gerald.
“Certainly not. Neither of us knew it until I got home and found people
talking about 'Poor Donald Morley,' and acting as if he were a refugee
from justice. Two or three letters came from Mrs. Sequin, but she was
so busy urging Don to stay away that she hadn't time to write anything
else. We did get one old home paper, somewhere in Java, with an account
of the trial. That was the first intimation Don had that Dillingham was
throwing off on him. Even then he could scarcely believe it; there's
nothing in him to understand a man like Lee Dillingham.”
“But he was with him,--that night at the saloon,” ventured Miss Lady,
sitting up very straight and listening very intently.
Gerald smiled skeptically. “He went in out of the rain, my dear lady;
that's what he wrote home, I understand; and he didn't indulge in
a single drink. Rather a strain on the imagination in the light of
subsequent events.”
“See here, Ivy,” said Decker, rising and standing before the fire with
his square jaw thrust out, and the twinkle gone from his eye. “I happen
to know this story from beginning to end, and we both know Don Morley.
He's as full of faults as a porcupine is of quills, but he's neither a
liar nor a coward. If he says he was sober that night I'd stake my life
he was.”
There was an uncomfortable pause during which Gerald tenderly felt his
afflicted face, and Decker glared at the chandelier.
“He ought to have stayed to explain,” said Miss Lady, not daring to look
up; “a man's first duty is to himself and--and to those who care for
him.”
“That was the trouble,” said Decker slowly. “It seems that the one
person Don cared most about wouldn't listen to an explanation. He wrote
her full particulars, and asked her to telegraph him if he should go or
stay. When I met him in 'Frisco he had been waiting for that wire for
three days, and he was nearly off his head. I got him on the steamer
almost by main force. We laid over ten days in Honolulu, and he got the
notion that a letter would be waiting for him in Yokohama, and that he
would take the next steamer home. All the way across I heard about that
girl from the time the Chino brought our coffee in the morning until we
went below again for the night. He all but said his prayers to her; cut
out everything to drink; even refused to play a friendly game of poker.
Why, I've tramped so many decks to the tune of that girl's charms that I
could write a book about her.”
“What is her name?” asked Gerald greatly interested.
“Heavens, I don't know! She was a wood nymth, a dryad, a jewel, a
flower, I could keep it up indefinitely. He had a new one for her every
day. When we reached Japan, he couldn't wait for the steamer to dock but
went ashore in the pilot boat, and made a bee line for Cook's. There was
nothing there. It was like that at every port we touched. Each time
he would get his hopes up to fever heat, and each time he'd be
disappointed. I never saw such perseverance and belief. He made excuse
after excuse for her. He was too proud to write again, and he got leaner
and leaner and more and more homesick. You know that collision I spoke
of? Well, he got in that by waiting over a steamer at Nagasaki in the
hope of getting a letter before he left Japan.”
“What happened next?” asked Gerald; “did another planet swim into his
ken?”
“Hardly. The smash came just before I left him, a couple of months ago.
We were at Raffles Hotel in Singapore having tea with some French girls
from the steamer. Our purser happened along and gave Don a letter which
I recognized as being from Mrs. Sequin. He read the first sheet, then
looked up in a wild sort of way, and asked if we'd mind excusing him as
he had something he wanted to see to before the steamer sailed. At five
o'clock he'd never shown up, and I had to hustle our bags ashore and
start out to look for him. He'd been awfully seedy for a couple of
months and when he got left I knew something serious had happened. I
found him late that night in the foreign hospital out of his head with
a fever. It seems the letter had told him that his girl was going to
be married, and half beside himself he had gotten into a rikisha, and
ridden for hours in the tropical sun, trying to face the fact. Of course
in the run-down state he was in, it put him out of business, and by the
time he got back to Raffles', he didn't know who he was, nor where he
was. I stayed with him until the _Herald-Post_ sent for me to come
home. Maybe you don't think I hated to leave the old chap, in that
God-forsaken country, lying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling,
with all his illusions smashed.”
“Did he want to come with you?” asked Gerald.
“He didn't want anything. He had wanted one thing so long there was no
more want left in him. I tried to get him to let me engage passage for
him on the next home-bound steamer. But he said he doubted if he'd ever