The Place of Honeymoons
his plug hat and dress suit; always had a seat by the ring. I could hear
him tap with his cane when there happened to be a bit of pretty sparring.
He was no slouch himself when it came to putting on the mitts. Many's the
time I've had a round or two with him in my old gymnasium. Well, well!
It's good to see a man again. I've seen your name in the papers, but I
never knew you was Dick's boy. You've got an old grizzly's head in your
dining-room at home. Some day I'll tell you how it got there, when you're
not in a hurry. I went out to Montana for a scrap, and your dad went
along. After the mill was over, we went hunting. Come up to the villa and
meet the folks.... Hang it, I forgot. They're up to Caxley-Webster's to
tea; piffle water and sticky sponge-cake. I want you to meet my wife and
daughter."
"I should be very pleased to meet them." So this was Nora's father? "Won't
you come along with me to the colonel's?" with sudden inspiration. Here
was an opportunity not to be thrust aside lightly.
"Why, I just begged off. They won't be expecting me now."
"All the better. I'd rather have you introduce me to your family than to
have the colonel. As a matter of fact, I told him I couldn't get up. But I
changed my mind. Come along." The first rift in the storm-packed clouds;
and to meet her through the kindly offices of this amiable man who was her
father!
"But the pup and the cigar box?"
"Send them up."
Harrigan eyed his own spotless flannels and compared them with the
other's. What was good enough for the son of a millionaire was certainly
good enough for him. Besides, it would be a bully good joke on Nora and
Molly.
"You're on!" he cried. Here was a lark. He turned the dog and the
purchases over to the proprietor, who promised that they should arrive
instantly at the villa.
Then the two men sought the quay to engage a boat. They walked shoulder to
shoulder, flat-backed, with supple swinging limbs, tanned faces and clear
animated eyes. Perhaps Harrigan was ten or fifteen pounds heavier, but the
difference would have been noticeable only upon the scales.
* * * * *
"Padre, my shoe pinches," said Nora with a pucker between her eyes.
"My child," replied the padre, "never carry your vanity into a shoemaker's
shop. The happiest man is he who walks in loose shoes."
"If they are his own, and not inherited," quickly.
The padre laughed quietly. He was very fond of this new-found daughter of
his. Her spontaneity, her blooming beauty, her careless observation of
convention, her independence, had captivated him. Sometimes he believed
that he thoroughly understood her, when all at once he would find himself
mentally peering into some dark corner into which the penetrating light of
his usually swift deduction could throw no glimmer. She possessed the sins
of the butterfly and the latent possibilities of a Judith. She was the
most interesting feminine problem he had in his long years encountered.
The mother mildly amused him, for he could discern the character that she
was sedulously striving to batten down beneath inane social usages and
formalities. Some day she would revert to the original type, and then he
would be glad to renew the acquaintance. In rather a shamefaced way (a
sensation he could not quite analyze) he loved the father. The pugilist
will always embarrass the scholar and excite a negligible envy; for
physical perfection is the most envied of all nature's gifts. The padre
was short, thickset, and inclined toward stoutness in the region of the
middle button of his cassock. But he was active enough for all purposes.
"I have had many wicked thoughts lately," resumed Nora, turning her gaze
away from the tennis players. She and the padre were sitting on the lower
steps of the veranda. The others were loitering by the nets.
"The old plaint disturbs you?"
"Yes."
"Can you not cast it out wholly?"
"Hate has many tentacles."
"What produces that condition of mind?" meditatively. "Is it because we
have wronged somebody?"
"Or because somebody has wronged us?"
"Or misjudged us, by us have been misjudged?" softly.
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Nora, springing up.
"What is it?"
"Father is coming up the path!"
"I am glad to see him. But I do not recollect having seen the face of the
man with him."
The lithe eagerness went out of Nora's body instantly. Everything seemed
to grow cold, as if she had become enveloped in one of those fogs that
suddenly blow down menacingly from hidden icebergs. Fortunately the
inquiring eyes of the padre were not directed at her. He was here, not a
dozen yards away, coming toward her, her father's arm in his! After what
had passed he had dared! It was not often that Nora Harrigan was subjected
to a touch of vertigo, but at this moment she felt that if she stirred
ever so little she must fall. The stock whence she had sprung, however,
was aggressive and fearless; and by the time Courtlandt had reached the
outer markings of the courts, Nora was physically herself again. The
advantage of the meeting would be his. That was indubitable. Any mistake
on her part would be playing into his hands. If only she had known!
"Let us go and meet them, Padre," she said quietly. With her father, her
mother and the others, the inevitable introduction would be shorn of its
danger. What Celeste might think was of no great importance; Celeste had
been tried and her loyalty proven. Where had her father met him, and what
diabolical stroke of fate had made him bring this man up here?
"Nora!" It was her mother calling.
She put her arm through the padre's, and they went forward leisurely.
"Why, father, I thought you weren't coming," said Nora. Her voice was
without a tremor.
The padre hadn't the least idea that a volcano might at any moment open up
at his side. He smiled benignly.
"Changed my mind," said Harrigan. "Nora, Molly, I want you to meet Mr.
Courtlandt. I don't know that I ever said anything about it, but his
father was one of the best friends I ever had. He was on his way up here,
so I came along with him." Then Harrigan paused and looked about him
embarrassedly. There were half a dozen unfamiliar faces.
The colonel quickly stepped into the breach, and the introduction of
Courtlandt became general. Nora bowed, and became at once engaged in an
animated conversation with the Barone, who had just finished his set
victoriously.
The padre's benign smile slowly faded.
CHAPTER XII
DICK COURTLANDT'S BOY
Presently the servants brought out the tea-service. The silent
dark-skinned Sikh, with his fierce curling whiskers, his flashing eyes,
the semi-military, semi-oriental garb, topped by an enormous brown turban,
claimed Courtlandt's attention; and it may be added that he was glad to
have something to look at unembarrassedly. He wanted to catch the Indian's
eye, but Rao had no glances to waste; he was concerned with the immediate
business of superintending the service.
Courtlandt had never been a man to surrender to impulse. It had been his
habit to form a purpose and then to go about the fulfilling of it. During
the last four or five months, however, he had swung about like a
weather-cock in April, the victim of a thousand and one impulses. That
morning he would have laughed had any one prophesied his presence here. He
had fought against the inclination strongly enough at first, but as hour
after hour went by his resolution weakened. His meeting Harrigan had been
a stroke of luck. Still, he would have come anyhow.
"Oh, yes; I am very fond of Como," he found himself replying mechanically
to Mrs. Harrigan. He gave up Rao as hopeless so far as coming to his
rescue was concerned. He began, despite his repugnance, to watch Nora.
"It is always a little cold in the higher Alps."
"I am very fond of climbing myself." Nora was laughing and jesting with
one of the English tennis players. Not for nothing had she been called a
great actress, he thought. It was not humanly possible that her heart was
under better control than his own; and yet his was pounding against his
ribs in a manner extremely disquieting. Never must he be left alone with
her; always must it be under circumstances like this, with people about,
and the more closely about the better. A game like this was far more
exciting than tiger-hunting. It was going to assume the characteristics of
a duel in which he, being the more advantageously placed, would succeed
eventually in wearing down her guard. Hereafter, wherever she went, there
must he also go: St. Petersburg or New York or London. And by and by the
reporters would hear of it, and there would be rumors which he would
neither deny nor affirm. Sport! He smiled, and the blood seemed to recede
from his throat and his heart-beats to grow normal.
And all the while Mrs. Harrigan was talking and he was replying; and she
thought him charming, whereas he had not formed any opinion of her at all,
nor later could remember a word of the conversation.
"Tea!" bawled the colonel. The verb had its distinct uses, and one
generally applied it to the colonel's outbursts without being depressed by
the feeling of inelegance.
There is invariably some slight hesitation in the selection of chairs
around a tea-table in the open. Nora scored the first point of this
singular battle by seizing the padre on one side and her father on the
other and pulling them down on the bench. It was adroit in two ways: it
put Courtlandt at a safe distance and in nowise offended the younger men,
who could find no cause for alarm in the close proximity of her two
fathers, the spiritual and the physical. A few moments later Courtlandt
saw a smile of malice part her lips, for he found himself between Celeste
and the inevitable frump.
"Touched!" he murmured, for he was a thorough sportsman and appreciated a
good point even when taken by his opponent.
"I never saw anything like it," whispered Mrs. Harrigan into the colonel's
ear.
"Saw what?" he asked.
"Mr. Courtlandt can't keep his eyes off of Nora."
"I say!" The colonel adjusted his eye-glass, not that he expected to see
more clearly by doing so, but because habit had long since turned an
affectation into a movement wholly mechanical. "Well, who can blame him?
Gad! if I were only twenty-five or thereabouts."
Mrs. Harrigan did not encourage this regret. The colonel had never been a
rich man. On the other hand, this Edward Courtlandt was very rich; he was
young; and he had the entree to the best families in Europe, which was
greater in her eyes than either youth or riches. Between sips of tea she
builded a fine castle in Spain.
Abbott and the Barone carried their cups and cakes over to the bench and
sat down on the grass, Turkish-wise. Both simultaneously offered their
cakes, and Nora took a ladyfinger from each. Abbott laughed and the Barone
smiled.
"Oh, daddy mine!" sighed Nora drolly.
"Huh?"
"Don't let mother see those shoes."
"What's the matter with 'em? Everybody's wearing the same."
"Yes. But I don't see how you manage to do it. One shoe-string is virgin
white and the other is pagan brown."
"I've got nine pairs of shoes, and yet there's always something the
matter," ruefully. "I never noticed when I put them on. Besides, I wasn't
coming."
"That's no defense. But rest easy. I'll be as secret as the grave."
"Now, I for one would never have noticed if you hadn't called my
attention," said the padre, stealing a glance at his own immaculate
patent-leathers.
"Ah, Padre, that wife of mine has eyes like a pilot-fish. I'm in for it."
"Borrow one from the colonel before you go home," suggested Abbott.
"That's not half bad," gratefully.
Harrigan began to recount the trials of forgetfulness.