The Green Mouse
anything, Yates! She--she might even be b-black!"
"Black!"
Mr. Carr nodded, shuddered, dashed the unmanly moisture from his
eyeglass.
"I think I'd better go to town and tell my son-in-law, William Destyn,
exactly what has happened to me," he said. "And I think I'll go through
the kitchen garden and take my power boat so that those devilish
reporters can't follow me. Ferdinand!" to the man at the door, "ring up
the garage and order the blue motor, and tell those newspaper men I'm
going to town. That, I think, will glue them to the lawn for a while."
"About--Drusilla, sir?" ventured Yates; but Mr. Carr was already gone,
speeding noiselessly out the back way, through the kitchen garden, and
across the great tree-shaded lawn which led down to the boat landing.
Across the distant hedge, from the beautiful grounds of his next-door
neighbor, floated sounds of mirth and music. Gay flags fluttered among
the trees. The Magnelius Grandcourts were evidently preparing for the
brilliant charity bazaar to be held there that afternoon and evening.
"To think," muttered Carr, "that only an hour ago I was agreeably and
comfortably prepared to pass the entire afternoon there with my
daughters, amid innocent revelry. And now I'm in flight--pursued by
furies of my own invoking--threatened with love in its most hideous form--
matrimony! Any woman I now look upon may be my intended bride for all I
know," he continued, turning into the semiprivate driveway, bordered
heavily by lilacs; "and the curious thing about it is that I really don't
care; in fact, the excitement is mildly pleasing."
He halted; in the driveway, blocking it, stood a red motor car--a little
runabout affair; and at the steering-wheel sat a woman--a lady's maid by
her cap and narrow apron, and an exceedingly pretty one, at that.
When she saw Mr. Carr she looked up, showing an edge of white teeth in
the most unembarrassed of smiles. She certainly was an unusually
agreeable-looking girl.
"Has something gone wrong with your motor?" inquired Mr. Carr,
pleasantly.
"I am afraid so." She didn't say "sir"; probably because she was too
pretty to bother about such incidentals. And she looked at Carr and
smiled, as though he were particularly ornamental.
"Let me see," began Mr. Carr, laying his hand on the steering-wheel;
"perhaps I can make it go."
"It won't go," she said, a trifle despondently and shaking her charming
head. "I've been here nearly half an hour waiting for it to do something;
but it won't."
Mr. Carr peered wisely into the acetylenes, looked carefully under the
hood, examined the upholstery. He didn't know anything about motors.
"I'm afraid," he said sadly, "that there's something wrong with the
magne-e-to!"
"Do you think it is as bad as that?"
"I fear so," he said gravely. "If I were you I'd get out--and keep well
away from that machine."
"Why?" she asked nervously, stepping to the grass beside him.
"It _might_ blow up."
They backed away rather hastily, side by side. After a while they backed
farther away, hand in hand.
"I--I hate to leave it there all alone," said the maid, when they had
backed completely out of sight of the car. "If there was only some safe
place where I could watch and see if it is going to explode."
They ventured back a little way and peeped at the motor.
"You could take a rowboat and watch it from the water," said Mr. Carr.
"But I don't know how to row."
Mr. Carr looked at her. Certainly she was the most prepossessing specimen
of wholesome, rose-cheeked and ivory-skinned womanhood that he had ever
beheld; a trifle nearer thirty-five than twenty-five, he thought, but so
sweet and fresh and with such charming eyes and manners.
"I have," said Mr. Carr, "several hours at my disposal before I go to
town on important business. If you like I will row you out in one of my
boats, and then, from a safe distance, we can sit and watch your motor
blow up. Shall we?"
"It is most kind of you----"
"Not at all. It would be most kind of you."
She looked sideways at the motor, sideways at the water, sideways at Mr.
Carr.
It was a very lovely morning in early June.
As Mr. Carr handed her into the rowboat with ceremony she swept him a
courtesy. Her apron and manners were charmingly incongruous.
When she was gracefully seated in the stern Mr. Carr turned for a moment,
stared all Oyster Bay calmly in the face through his monocle, then,
untying the painter, fairly skipped into the boat with a step distinctly
frolicsome.
"It's curious how I feel about this," he observed, digging both oars into
the water.
"_How_ do you feel, Mr. Carr?"
"Like a bird," he said softly.
And the boat moved off gently through the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay.
At that same moment, also, the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay were gently
caressing the classic contours of Cooper's Bluff, and upon that
monumental headland, seated under sketching umbrellas, Flavilla and
Drusilla worked, in a puddle of water colors; and John Chillingham Yates,
in becoming white flannels and lilac tie and hosiery, lay on the sod and
looked at Drusilla.
Silence, delicately accented by the faint harmony of mosquitoes, brooded
over Cooper's Bluff.
"There's no use," said Drusilla at last; "one can draw a landscape from
every point of view except looking _down_ hill. Mr. Yates, how on earth
am I to sit here and make a drawing looking down hill?"
"Perhaps," he said, "I had better hold your pencil again. Shall I?"
"Do you think that would help?"
"I think it helps--somehow."
Her pretty, narrow hand held the pencil; his sun-browned hand closed over
it. She looked at the pad on her knees.
After a while she said: "I think, perhaps, we had better draw. Don't
you?"
They made a few hen-tracks. Noticing his shoulder was just touching hers,
and feeling a trifle weary on her camp-stool, she leaned back a little.
"It is very pleasant to have you here," she said dreamily.
"It is very heavenly to be here," he said.
"How generous you are to give us so much of your time!" murmured
Drusilla.
"I think so, too," said Flavilla, washing a badger brush. "And I am
becoming almost as fond of you as Drusilla is."
"Don't you like him as well as I do?" asked Drusilla.
Flavilla turned on her camp-stool and inspected them both.
"Not quite as well," she said frankly. "You know, Drusilla, you are very
nearly in love with him." And she resumed her sketching.
Drusilla gazed at the purple horizon unembarrassed. "Am I?" she said
absently.
"Are you?" he repeated, close to her shoulder.
She turned and looked into his sun-tanned face curiously.
"What is it--to love? Is it"--she looked at him undisturbed--"is it to be
quite happy and lazy with a man like you?"
He was silent.
"I thought," she continued, "that there would be some hesitation, some
shyness about it--some embarrassment. But there, has been none between
you and me."
He said nothing.
She went on absently:
"You said, the other day, very simply, that you cared a great deal for
me; and I was not very much surprised. And I said that I cared very much
for you.... And, by the way, I meant to ask you yesterday; are we
engaged?"
"Are we?" he asked.
"Yes--if you wish.... Is _that_ all there is to an engagement?"
"There's a ring," observed Flavilla, dabbing on too much ultramarine and
using a sponge. "You've got to get her one, Mr. Yates."
Drusilla looked at the man beside her and smiled.
"How simple it is, after all!" she said. "I have read in the books Pa-pah
permits us to read such odd things about love and lovers.... Are we
lovers, Mr. Yates? But, of course, we must be, I fancy."
"Yes," he said.
"Some time or other, when it is convenient," observed Flavilla, "you
ought to kiss each other occasionally."
"That doesn't come until I'm a bride, does it?" asked Drusilla.
"I believe it's a matter of taste," said Flavilla, rising and naively
stretching her long, pretty limbs.
She stood a moment on the edge of the bluff, looking down.
"How curious!" she said after a moment. "There is Pa-pah on the water
rowing somebody's maid about."
"What!" exclaimed Yates, springing to his feet.
"How extraordinary," said Drusilla, following him to the edge of the
bluff; "and they're singing, too, as they row!"
From far below, wafted across the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay, Mr.
Carr's rich and mellifluous voice was wafted shoreward:
"_I der-reamt that I dwelt in ma-arble h-a-l-ls._"
The sunlight fell on the maid's coquettish cap and apron, and sparkled
upon the buckle of one dainty shoe. It also glittered across the monocle
of Mr. Carr.
"Pa-_pah!_" cried Flavilla.
Far away her parent waved a careless greeting to his offspring, then
resumed his oars and his song.
"How extraordinary!" said Flavilla. "Why do you suppose that Pa-_pah_ is
rowing somebody's maid around the bay, and singing that way to her?"
"Perhaps it's one of our maids," said Drusilla; "but that would be rather
odd, too, wouldn't it, Mr. Yates?"
"A--little," he admitted. And his heart sank.
Flavilla had started down the sandy face of the bluff.
"I'm going to see whose maid it is," she called back.
Drusilla seated herself in the sun-dried grass and watched her sister.
Yates stood beside her in bitter dejection.
So _this_ was the result! His unfortunate future father-in-law was done
for. What a diabolical machine! What a terrible, swift, relentless answer
had been returned when, out of space, this misguided gentleman had, by
mistake, summoned his own affinity! And _what_ an affinity! A saucy
soubrette who might easily have just stepped from the _coulisse_ of a
Parisian theater!
Yates looked at Drusilla. What an awful blow was impending! She never
could have suspected it, but there, in that boat, sat her future
stepmother in cap and apron!--his own future stepmother-in-law!
And in the misery of that moment's realization John Chillingham Yates
showed the material of which he was constructed.
"Dear," he said gently.
"Do you mean me?" asked Drusilla, looking up in frank surprise.
And at the same time she saw on his face a look which she had never
before encountered there. It was the shadow of trouble; and it drew her
to her feet instinctively.
"What is it, Jack?" she asked.
She had never before called him anything but Mr. Yates.
"What is it?" she repeated, turning away beside him along the leafy path;
and with every word another year seemed, somehow, to be added to her
youth. "Has anything happened, Jack? Are you unhappy--or ill?"
He did not speak; she walked beside him, regarding him with wistful eyes.
So there was more of love than happiness, after all; she began to half
understand it in a vague way as she watched his somber face. There
certainly was more of love than a mere lazy happiness; there was
solicitude and warm concern, and desire to comfort, to protect.
"Jack," she said tremulously.
He turned and took her unresisting hands. A quick thrill shot through
her. Yes, there _was_ more to love than she had expected.
"Are you unhappy?" she asked. "Tell me. I can't bear to see you this way.
I--I never did--before."
"Will you love me; Drusilla?"
"Yes--yes, I will, Jack."
"Dearly?"
"I do--dearly." The first blush that ever tinted her cheek spread and
deepened.
"Will you marry me, Drusilla?"
"Yes.... You frighten me."
She trembled, suddenly, in his arms. Surely there were more things to
love than she had dreamed of in her philosophy. She looked up as he bent
nearer, understanding that she was to be kissed, awaiting the event which
suddenly loomed up freighted with terrific significance.
There was a silence, a sob.