The Green Mouse
him intently all the while. That he already had the confidence of a horse
that he had never before seen was perfectly apparent. Little by little
the sweating, quivering limbs were stilled, the tense muscles in the neck
relaxed, the head sank, dusty velvet lips nibbled at his hand, his
shoulder; the heaving, sunken flanks filled and grew quiet.
Bareheaded, his attire in disorder and covered with slaver and sand, the
young man laid the bridle on the horse's neck, held out his hand, and,
saying "Come," turned his back and walked down the bridle path. The horse
stretched a sweating neck, sniffed, pricked forward both small ears, and
slowly followed, turning as the man turned, up and down, crowding at heel
like a trained dog, finally stopping on the edge of the walk.
The young man looped the bridle over a low maple limb, and leaving the
horse standing sauntered over to the bench.
"That horse," he said pleasantly, "is all right now; but the question is,
are you all right?"
She rose, handing him his hat, and began to twist up her bright hair. For
a few moments' silence they were frankly occupied in restoring order to
raiment, dusting off gravel and examining rents.
"I'm tremendously grateful," she said abruptly.
"I am, too," he said in that attractive manner which sets people of
similar caste at ease with one another.
"Thank you; it's a generous compliment, considering your hat and
clothing."
He looked up; she stood twisting her hair and doing her best with the few
remaining hair pegs.
"I'm a sight for little fishes," she said, coloring. "Did that wretched
beast bruise you?"
"Oh, no----"
"You limped!"
"Did I?" he said vaguely. "How do you feel?"
"There is," she said, "a curious, breathless flutter all over me; if that
is fright, I suppose I'm frightened, but I don't mind mounting at once--
if you would put me up----"
"Better wait a bit," he said; "it would not do to have that horse feel a
fluttering pulse, telegraphing along the snaffle. Tell me, are you
spurred?"
She lifted the hem of her habit; two small spurs glittered on her
polished boot heels.
"That's it, you see," he observed; "you probably have not ridden cross
saddle very long. When your mount swerved you spurred, and he bolted, bit
in teeth."
"That's exactly it," she admitted, looking ruefully at her spurs. Then
she dropped her skirt, glanced interrogatively at him, and, obeying his
grave gesture, seated herself again upon the bench.
"Don't stand," she said civilly. He took the other end of the seat,
lifting the still slumbering squirrel to his knee.
"I--I haven't said very much," she began; "I'm impulsive enough to be
overgrateful and say too much. I hope you understand me; do you?"
"Of course; you're very good. It was nothing; you could have stopped your
horse yourself. People do that sort of thing for one another as a matter
of course."
"But not at the risk you took----"
"No risk at all," he said hastily.
She thought otherwise, and thought it so fervently that, afraid of
emotion, she turned her cold, white profile to him and studied her horse,
haughty lids adroop. The same insolent sweetness was in her eyes when
they again reverted to him. He knew the look; he had encountered it often
enough in the hallway and on the stairs. He knew, too, that she must
recognize him; yet, under the circumstances, it was for her to speak
first; and she did not, for she was at that age when horror of overdoing
anything chokes back the scarcely extinguished childish instinct to say
too much. In other words, she was eighteen and had had her first season
the winter past--the winter when he had not been visible among the
gatherings of his own kind.
"Those squirrels are very tame," she observed calmly.
"Not always," he said. "Try to hold this one, for example."
She raised her pretty eyebrows, then accepted the lump of fluffy fur from
his hands. Instantly an electric shock seemed to set the squirrel
frantic, there was a struggle, a streak of gray and white, and the
squirrel leaped from her lap and fairly flew down the asphalt path.
"Gracious!" she exclaimed faintly; "what was the matter?"
"Some squirrels are very wild," he said innocently.
"I know--but you held him--he was asleep on your knee. Why didn't he stay
with me?"
"Oh, perhaps because I have a way with animals."
"With horses, too," she added gayly. And the smile breaking from her
violet eyes silenced him in the magic of a beauty he had never dreamed
of. At first she mistook his silence for modesty; then--because even as
young a maid as she is quick to divine and fine of instinct--she too fell
silent and serious, the while the shuttles of her reason flew like
lightning, weaving the picture of him she had conceived--a gentleman, a
man of her own sort, rather splendid and wise and bewildering. The
portrait completed, there was no room for the hint of presumption she had
half sensed in the brown eyes' glance that had set her alert; and she
looked up at him again, frankly, a trifle curiously.
"I am going to thank you once more," she said, "and ask you to put me up.
There is not a flutter of fear in my pulse now."
"Are you quite sure?"
"Perfectly."
They arose; he untied the horse and beckoned it to the walk's edge.
"I forgot," she said, laughing, "that I am riding cross saddle. I can
mount without troubling you--" She set her toe to the stirrup which he
held, and swung herself up into the saddle with a breezy "Thanks,
awfully," and sat there gathering her bridle.
Had she said enough? How coldly her own thanks rang in her ears--for
perhaps he had saved her neck--and perhaps not. Busy with curb and
snaffle reins, head bent, into her oval face a tint of color crept. Did
he think she treated lightly, flippantly, the courage which became him
so? Or was he already bored by her acknowledgment of it? Sensitive,
dreading to expose youth and inexperience to the amused smile of this
attractive young man of the world, she sat fumbling with her bridle,
conscious that he stood beside her, hat in hand, looking up at her. She
could delay no longer; the bridle had been shifted and reshifted to the
last second of procrastination. She must say something or go.
Meeting his eyes, she smiled and leaned a little forward in her saddle as
though to speak, but his brown eyes troubled her, and all she could say
was "Thank you--good-by," and galloped off down the vista through dim,
leafy depths heavy with the incense of lilac and syringa.
II
THE IDLER
_Concerning the Young Man in the Ditch and His Attempts to Get Out of It_
Although he was not vindictive, he did not care to owe anything to
anybody who might be inclined to give him a hearing on account of former
obligations or his social position. Everybody knew he had gone to smash;
everybody, he very soon discovered, was naturally afraid of being
bothered by him. The dread of the overfed that an underfed member of the
community may request a seat at the table he now understood perfectly. He
was learning.
So he solicited aid from nobody whom he had known in former days; neither
from those who had aided him when he needed no aid, nor those who owed
their comfortable position to the generosity of his father--a gentleman
notorious for making fortunes for his friends.
Therefore he wrote to strangers on a purely business basis--to amazing
types lately emerged from the submerged, bulging with coal money, steel
money, copper money, wheat money, stockyard money--types that galloped
for Fifth Avenue to build town houses; that shook their long cars and
frisked into the country and built "cottages." And this was how he put
it:
"_Madam:_ In case you desire to entertain guests with the professional
services of a magician it would give me pleasure to place my very unusual
accomplishments at your disposal."
And signed his name.
It was a dreadful drain on his bank account to send several thousand
engraved cards about town and fashionable resorts. No replies came. Day
after day, exhausted with the practice drill of his profession, he walked
to the Park and took his seat on the bench by the bridle path. Sometimes
he saw her cantering past; she always acknowledged his salute, but never
drew bridle. At times, too, he passed her in the hall; her colorless
"Good morning" never varied except when she said "Good evening." And all
this time he never inquired her name from the hall servant; he was that
sort of man--decent through instinct; for even breeding sometimes permits
sentiment to snoop.
For a week he had been airily dispensing with more than one meal a day;
to keep clothing and boots immaculate required a sacrifice of breakfast
and luncheon--besides, he had various small pensioners to feed, white
rabbits with foolish pink eyes, canary birds, cats, albino mice,
goldfish, and other collaborateurs in his profession. He was obliged to
bribe the janitor, too, because the laws of the house permitted neither
animals nor babies within its precincts. This extra honorarium deprived
him of tobacco, and he became a pessimist.
Besides, doubts as to his own ability arose within him; it was all very
well to practice his magic there alone, but he had not yet tried it on
anybody except the janitor; and when he had begun by discovering several
red-eyed rabbits in the janitor's pockets that intemperate functionary
fled with a despondent yell that brought a policeman to the area gate
with a threat to pull the place.
At length, however, a letter came engaging him for one evening. He was
quite incredulous at first, then modestly scared, perplexed, exultant and
depressed by turns. Here was an opening--the first. And because it was
the first its success or failure meant future engagements or consignments
to the street, perhaps as a white-wing. There must be no faltering now,
no bungling, no mistakes, no amateurish hesitation. It is the empty-
headed who most strenuously demand intelligence in others. One yawn from
such an audience meant his professional damnation--he knew that; every
second must break like froth in a wine glass; an instant's perplexity, a
slackening of the tension, and those flaccid intellects would relax into
native inertia. Incapable of self-amusement, depending utterly upon
superior minds for a respite from ennui, their caprice controlled his
fate; and he knew it.
Sitting there by the sunny window with a pair of magnificent white
Persian cats purring on either knee, he read and reread the letter
summoning him on the morrow to Seabright. He knew who his hostess was--a
large lady lately emerged from a corner in lard, dragging with her some
assorted relatives of atrophied intellects and a husband whose only
mental pleasure depended upon the speed attained by his racing car--the
most exacting audience he could dare to confront.
Like the White Knight he had had plenty of practice, but he feared that
warrior's fate; and as he sat there he picked up a bunch of silver hoops,
tossed them up separately so that they descended linked in a glittering
chain, looped them and unlooped them, and, tiring, thoughtfully tossed
them toward the ceiling again, where they vanished one by one in mid-air.
The cats purred; he picked up one, molded her carefully in his handsome
hands; and presently, under the agreeable massage, her purring increased
while she dwindled and dwindled to the size of a small, fluffy kitten,
then vanished entirely, leaving in his hand a tiny white mouse. This
mouse he tossed into the air, where it became no mouse at all but a white
butterfly that fluttered 'round and 'round, alighting at last on the
window curtain and hung there, opening and closing its snowy wings.