Part 13

“People brought it to me. The people of the dry country first. Afterward it came in from all over, much of it from New York; and when I needed more for my biggest projects I went to Europe and raised it.”

“You know what they say of you now? That you're advocating government control because you've got all you can get, and wish to shut out the others.”

“I'm offering to put my companies on the same terms with the others,” he said impatiently. “All I demand is that eventually, when the development concerns have made their fair profit, the rights should revert to the people. So I'm an anarchist,” he laughed. “And I've come here to preach my anarchy in the face of Wall Street.”

“And fifteen years ago you were a boy of--”

“Sh-h-h-h,” he warned with mock seriousness. “I pass for thirty-five. It's a studied solemnity of demeanor that does the trick. You should see me at a board meeting! This is holiday.” He seized and hugged me until my old ribs cracked.

“Yet you say you're all American,” I protested, extricating myself. “You'll be a Latin till the day you die.”

“Not enough to impair my business sense. Which reminds me. You've got a small, accumulated interest in one of my early projects. It isn't much,--just the debt for my lessons,--but it pays a twenty-five per cent dividend. Now, dominie, I don't wish to hear any protests. What do you know about business matters?” He stretched himself like a big, lithe animal and took another comprehensive glance about Our Square. “Who's left?” he asked. “Any one I knew?”

“MacLachan the Tailor. And Thomsen of the Élite Restaurant. Calder the artist is dead. And do you remember--” I cut myself short, on second thought, of mentioning Paula Varick. A better idea had come to me. The Bonnie Lassie loves and loves forever the friend who will bring to her house any one genuinely new and interesting, provided only that he be presentable. Carlo, otherwise Charles Trent, was all three in an eminent degree. “Would you care to dine at the pleasantest house in Our Square?” I amended.

“If I have the time.”

“Make the time,” I advised. “And I'll see if I can make the place. It'll be Wednesday evening.” For the Bonnie Lassie was giving one of her little dinners then, and I knew that Paula Varick was to be there.

Carlo agreed, gave me his address at a golden caravansary, and left to call on MacLachan and Thomsen. I sought out the Bonnie Lassie.

“Madam,” said I, “I am not coming to your dinner.”

“You are,” she retorted. “Paula Varick will be there. You'd crawl to San Francisco to see Paula.”

“That's the very reason. I've got a substitute.” And I explained.

The Bonnie Lassie, who is an inveterate romanticist, was delighted. “I'll have him take her in,” she said. “No, I can't do that. The new Ambassador to Spain is to take her in. He shall sit on her left.”

“When you present him, introduce her as Miss Mumbleplum or something inarticulate and non-committal of that sort. She won't know his name, of course. Let's see if they'll discover.”

“And you accuse me of fixing up dramatic situations,” said the Bonnie Lassie scornfully, for she has never quite forgiven my comments upon her management of the affair between Ethel Bennington and the Little Red Doctor, which was so nearly ruined by the hard, prosaic fact of a toothache. “You're worse than an old maid. But you may come to the dinner just the same. I don't mind an extra man.”

So I went to the dinner, and a very wonderful dinner it was, as all the dinners in the Bonnie Lassie's house are. Mr. Charles Trent was very much present, looking typically American with his severely correct clothes, and big, graceful figure, until you noticed his eyes, which weren't American at all, or anything else but individual. Miss Paula Varick was also very much present, looking--well, looking as only Paula can look, to the utter wreck and ruin of the peace of mankind's mind. In presenting Carlo to Miss Mumbleplum (as pre-arranged) the hostess gave them a lead by saying:--

“Mr. Trent can tell you all about your water-rights. He's a sort of magic lord of the dry desert.”

“A baron of sand and cactus,” said Trent, smiling. But the new Ambassador to Spain arrived just then, and nothing more was said.

At the first opportunity afforded by the diplomat, Miss Varick turned to the guest on her left.

“I'm a landed proprietor in your country,” she said. “I own ten whole shares of stock in a company of some sort.”

“Then you're my fellow citizen,” he claimed. “Perhaps it's one of the companies I'm interested in.”

She named it, and he was amused to learn that her little ownership was in the corporation which was fighting him and his plans most savagely. She did not mention that her father was a principal stockholder and an officer in that same corporation. Nor did Trent deem it necessary to define his position. He didn't wish to talk politics to this wonderful flower-woman next him. But he did wish, most determinedly, to keep those luminous eyes turned in his direction. What Charles Trent determinedly wished he usually got, and he achieved this particular end by talking so well that the fresh-bloomed diplomat on the farther side began presently to get fretful. As for Mr. Trent's right side, it mattered not a whit whether it knew what his left side was doing, for it was on his right that I sat. Carlo fell to telling Paula of the romance of the hunt for the treasure of water in a dry land--more thrilling to a pioneer of imagination than any search for gold or silver or copper because it meant something more basic than wealth: it meant life in a country which was dead. There were searches for lost canons and unmapped rivers; explorations of wild gorges where the adventurers in improvised boats shot down along thou-sand-foot-deep cracks in the earth toward unknown rapids, listening for the thunder of possible cataracts; and, out of all this rude peril, the growth of vast projects and the gathering in from far cities of dollars, pounds, francs, marks, and even roubles, that a desert land might flower and new cities arise.

“What about your own hairbreadth 'scapes in the imminent, deadly thingumbob--I never can remember the whole of a quotation?” she inquired. “You're very modest about your own share. Tell me the narrowest escape you ever had.”

He answered, thoughtfully: “Curiously enough, I fancy the narrowest escape I ever had was less than a block from here. I fell down between two houses.”

The girl's eyes widened suddenly. “On Our Square?”

“Yes. Except for the prosaic matter of the week's wash on a clothesline which shunted me off, I probably shouldn't be here to-day.”

“Mr. Trent,” said she slowly, “do you mind turning around this way? Farther. Thank you. Is that scar over your temple--”

“Yes. I got it there. How could you know?”

Then recognition flashed between them. They laughed excitedly, like two children. To the scandal of the bewildered Ambassador's ears, they then entered upon the following incredible conversation:--

“Little Boy, where did you come from?”

“Up there.”

“From that cloud?” (The diplomat looking at the ceiling with pained amazement.)

“Yes.”

“Let--me--see,” said the girl dreamily. “What comes next? We mustn't lose it.”

“Do you like gum?” he supplied quickly. (The ambassadorial eyes began to protrude.)

“What's gum?”

“Chewing-gum, of course. But alas! I haven't any with me,” lamented Carlo. “Then there was something about a tiger.

“Oh, yes! I'm a tiger in my cage. Gr-rr-rr-rr! If I could get out I'd eat you up, Little Boy.”

“Of course!

'Tiger! tiger! burning bright-- In the forests of the night!'”

“Say some more. You couldn't remember it, though, could you? Can you remember it now?”

He leaned over to her the merest trifle:--

“'What immortal hand and eye Framed thy wondrous symmetry?'”

he quoted (slightly altering the text for his own purposes) with a look so direct and an intonation so profound that Paula, with all her armored experience, felt herself growing pink.

“Then you brought me wonderful things to play with and a kite to fly and gum to chew,” she said.

“And you put it in your hair.”

“So I did. And they found it. But I didn't tell. I said an angel brought it to me. You remember? You were Angel.”

“And you were Tiger.”

Now, I realize that diplomats of ambassadorial degree do not snort. But the eminent gentleman on Miss Varick's left delivered his emotions of what, in a lesser mortal, would have been dangerously near a snort, and thenceforward devoted his attention to his hostess exclusively, thereby seriously hampering her in her efforts to follow the progress of the reunion of old playmates.

Dinner being over, the Bonnie Lassie took the pair into her studio to see her new series of unfinished bronzes, and, having got them there, obeyed an imperative (and purely imaginary) summons from without, and left them. Quite unwisely--for she had forgotten one important incident herself--the Tiger reproached the Angel with his failure to remember her.

“You promised,” she accused. “You said you'd never forget--never.”

Now, a less ready wit than Carlo's might have retorted with the “ettu” argument, which would have been poor strategy. Carlo did better.

“I have forgotten nothing,” he said calmly.

“You forgot me. You didn't know me from--from any other tiger.”

“There never was any other tiger. There couldn't be. Also, I remember every episode of our last meeting when I promised never to forget. Do you?” Something significant in his tone caused the Tiger certain misgivings. She began to feel dimly that her accusation was unfortunate.

“Do you?” persisted the Angel.

“I remember the dreadful feeling of seeing you disappear, down into that hole. And your coming back with the blood trickling down your cheek. You were very brave.”

“And our parting. Do you remember? When you came close to the wire mesh, and lifted your face--Ah, I see you _do_ remember,” he concluded quietly.

For suddenly the blood had flown into Paula Varick's face, and she stood there, amazed, confused, thrilling with an alarm new to her womanhood, and wholly glorious. In a moment she had recovered her poise.

“I remember that I had a true and loyal friend,” she said sweetly. “Have I still?” He bent and lifted her finger-tips to his lips. “For as long as you will command him,” he said.

So it was assumed, without definite arrangement, that on his return from Washington they were to see each other, and so far had their thoughts wandered from the distant Southwestern desert that neither conceived the smallest misgivings as to the conflicting interests there of the Trent projects and the Varick interests. In the course of a day or two the Bonnie Lassie had the pair to tea, and afterward she and Cyrus the Gaunt and I stood at the front window, watching them as they crossed Our Square. They paused to look up at the cage on the housetop. The Bonnie Lassie spoke.

“You remember Tarrant, the portrait-painter, bewailing himself over Paula?” she asked.

“Because he couldn't catch the look of unconscious waiting in her eyes?”

“Yes. It's gone,” said the Bonnie Lassie.

“Is there something else in its place?”

“Wonder,” said the Bonnie Lassie.

As for Carlo, there was no mistaking what had happened to him. He came to see me later, and tried hard not to talk of Paula Varick, but all the time his eyes kept wandering to the cage on the roof. Once he asked me whether I thought the Varick mansion could be bought. As for his affairs in Washington, I think he must have commuted while the Senate hearings were in progress, for there were few days when he wasn't in New York. By what devices he succeeded in being around Our Square when his playmate of other days came down to see the Bonnie Lassie, I do not know. Probably the Bonnie Lassie was in the conspiracy. It would be like her. All of which may have been going on for a fortnight when I stopped in at the quaint, little, nestly, old-fashioned house which radiates the happiness of Cyrus the Gaunt and the Bonnie Lassie all through Our Square and beyond, and found the sculptress hard at work in her studio. My particular purpose was to consult her about Orpheus the Greek and his pipings to his lost Eurydice. Before I could begin the Bonnie Lassie removed her finger from the eye of old Granny Glynn (in wet clay) and pointed it at me.

“Plotter!” she said.

By that I knew that something had gone wrong. “Tell me the worst,” I besought.

“You did it,” she accused, still holding me up at the point of that pink and leveled digit.

“Guilty!” I pleaded. “What did I do, when, how, and to whom?”

“You brought those two ex-infants together. And now look at the poor things!”

“Are they engaged?” I cried, in high hope.

“Engaged! Have you seen the morning papers?”

She waved a modeling tool at a heap of print in the corner and relieved her feelings by giving Granny Glynn a vicious whack on the nose with the implement. I caught up the top paper and read:--

VARICK FLAYS TRENT AS A FAKER AND SELF-SEEKER AT SENATE HEARING

“Oh, that's only politics,” I said, with an attempt at easiness.

“Putnam Varick himself turned Mr. Trent out of the house when he went to see Paula,” said the Bonnie Lassie, a bright spot of color burning in each soft cheek. “Is _that_ politics?”

“That,” said I, “is war. What is Paula going to do about it?”

“What can she do?”

“Meet him outside, I suppose.”

“Do you think Paula Varick is the kind of girl to practice hole-and-corner meetings at museums or restaurants?” said the sculptress scornfully.

“There are other places. Here, for instance. Though I suppose you wouldn't allow that.”

This reasonable hypothesis nearly cost old Mrs. Glynn an ear. “Indeed I would! I'd do anything to get ahead of that father of Paula's. The mean old skinkum!” said the Bonnie Lassie, who under great provocation sometimes uses violent language. “But Paula wouldn't come. It's the Varick pride--all that there is of Varick in her, thank Heaven!”

“It has its disadvantages,” I said. “But the point is, does she care for him?”

“Have you seen them together lately? But then, what's the use! You're only a man,” said the Bonnie Lassie with sovereign contempt. For the moment she ceased to be an artist and became a philosopher. “Some people,” she pronounced sagely, “just naturally fall in love by degrees. Some”--her face turned unconsciously toward the outer room where Cyrus the Gaunt was busy, and became dreamy and tender--“run away from love and are overtaken by it. And some go open-hearted and open-armed, to meet it when it comes. That is Paula. She's the type of woman to whom there is only one possible man in the world. He has found her.”

“Does she know it?”

The Bonnie Lassie, smiling, poised her tool above a difficult problem of artistry pertaining to Granny Glynn's front hair (which was false). “You're less stupid than you might be. Her heart does. But her mind hasn't admitted it.”

“Does _he_ know it?”

“No. He hardly dares hope. He's so terribly afraid.”

“It's the first time in his life, then.”

“I believe you, dominie. Perhaps it's the first time he's been in love, too. It's good for his soul, but it's hard on the poor man. When he came this morning for a sitting he looked more like a pale martyr in a stained-glass window than a flesh-and-blood man. I had to send him away.”

“Oh, well,” I said comfortably, “if they really care for each other, time will straighten it out.”

“It will,” she retorted. “About three days' time. The Varicks start for the Far East on Saturday.”

“Without Paula's seeing Carlo again?” I asked in dismay.

“Mr. Varick has written a note to Mr. Trent saying that it is by Paula's own wish, and that she does not want to see him again.”

“That's a lie, isn't it?” I asked.

“Probably it is. But I don't think Paula will see him. If she has promised her father, she certainly won't. Now, what are you going to do about it?” she concluded calmly, laying down her implement and fixing me with an accusing eye.

“What am _I_--”

“Don't try to evade your responsibility, dominie. It's all your doing.”

“Just because it isn't turning out right,” I said hotly. “You know perfectly well, lassie, that if everything had gone smoothly you would have--”

“Claimed all the credit.” The Bonnie Lassie, dimpling, took the words out of my mouth. “And quite right too. When I manage things they're--they're _managed_. Once again I ask you, dominie: What are you going to do about it?”

I walked over to the window and looked out, leaning on my cane. Against a pale corner of the sky, the cage top loomed haggard and grim. A swift and soaring notion sprang into being in my mind.

“I'm going to borrow your telephone,” said I.

Getting Miss Paula Varick was no slight task. I had to run the gauntlet of half a dozen questioners--they were guarding her against the onslaught of the predatory Trent, I suppose--before she answered me, not in the softly ringing music of her familiar voice, but with a deadened tonelessness which both startled and reassured me. When I had delivered my message, I returned to the studio.

“Well?” queried the Bonnie Lassie.

“I have just talked with Paula.”

“What did she say?”

“She said, as nearly as I recall, 'Oh!' Also, 'Thank you, dominie!'”

“Don't be a horrid and exasperating old man. What did you say to her?”

“I gave her some interesting news about a local landmark.”

The Bonnie Lassie came over to me in three swift little bounds like a kitten, and pointed some sort of high-art tool at my chin. “Tell me at once,” she commanded.

“I've just informed Miss Varick that the cage on the roof of No. 13 has been ordered removed not later than tomorrow.”

“Has it?”

“Thinking,” I pursued serenely, “that she might wish to take a final look at the place where she first tasted the delights of chewing-gum,--these crucial experiences of childhood, you know--”

“Don't be a goose, dominie. Suppose she doesn't come?”

“Then you were wrong, and she doesn't really care for him.”

The Bonnie Lassie lowered her tool and bestowed a glance of approval upon me which encouraged me to continue.

“She might even want to go up to the housetop once more.”

“She might,” agreed the Bonnie Lassie thoughtfully. “That could be arranged--in case she does.”

“A little judicious stimulus to her mind,” I suggested, “if it doesn't occur to her.”

“Leave it to me.”

One of the many delightful things about the Bonnie Lassie is that it's never necessary to draw diagrams for her. So I left it to her and went to telephone Carlo. He said that he had a business engagement or two for the following morning, but it didn't matter (in a voice which indicated that nothing in the world mattered any more), and if I wished to see him of course he'd come.

So I bade the Bonnie Lassie good-day and went home to mature a reasonable excuse for summoning one of the busiest young men in America to my side. By the time he arrived the next day I had a plausible sort of lie fixed up about a stock concerning which I wished some advice. Schepstein, our local financier, had coached me on it. But when Carlo inquired at the start whether it was common or preferred I was talking about, I had to admit that I didn't know.

“What _did_ you send for me for, then, dominie?” he asked patiently.

A motor-car which I recognized had arrived at and departed from the Bonnie Lassie's door. I played desperately for time, while Carlo's disconsolate regard wandered to the wire-mesh structure, seen only dimly now through the half-bare branches of trees which had been small when he was a boy and my pupil. From where he sat he could not see--I maneuvered his seat to manage that--what I saw; two girlish figures cross Our Square and separate at the entrance to No. 13. The Bonnie Lassie had done her part. Now for mine.

“Carlo,” I said, “are you looking at the Tiger's cage?”

“Yes.”

“They're tearing it down to-day or to-morrow.”

“Are they?” said he vaguely, and lost himself in a sad maze.

I reflected with bitterness that sentiment in the man and sentiment in the woman often assume different manifestations.

“I was in your garret last week,” I continued. “It isn't much changed.”

“What is it being used for?”

“A sort of loft. The wall panel your father sketched in crayon is still there.”

“I'd like to see that,” said Carlo.

“Nothing easier,” I replied with elation. “I know the people. Come along.” Five minutes later we were climbing the stairs to the top floor. Carlo sought out the blurred sketch and stood before it. “Poor old padre,” he mused. “He believed that he was destined to become a great painter. I wonder.”

His glance roamed. “There's where I used to sleep when the nights were hot. And there's my study corner. You were good to me, dominie. What's the matter? Aren't you well?”

“It's close here,” I said with desperate strategy, and pushed open the dormer half-door leading to the roof.

Carlo's face, which had grown dreamy, suddenly became overspread with gloom as he looked out upon the roof. He hesitated. And the precious moments were passing. Paula must be on her former roof at that moment. Any minute she might leave. Would Carlo go out for a look, or--He went out. I followed. A high, inspiring wind was blowing. It hummed and cried through the meshes of the cage on the roof below with the voice of a thousand imperative and untranslatable messages. The girl in the cage held her face toward it, yearning to its dim and pregnant music, and I thought I had never seen a face so lovely, so lonely, so desolate. Then I turned to Carlo and was glad to the root-nerves of my heart that I had brought him.

That gladness lasted about one heartbeat and died a death of terror. For, without a word, Carlo stepped upon the coping, lowered himself over the grim well-space between the houses, then threw his body outward, with a swift, powerful impulsion. He hurtled down the ten feet, which might be fifty, and destruction, if his out-thrust were not forceful enough. But he landed, one hundred and ninety-odd pounds of hard, lithe manhood, on the edge of the roof, as light and firm as a cat. At the sound she turned and saw him coming to her from behind the chimney, as he had come in the days of her lonely childhood.

“Little Tiger,” he said very softly.

“Angel!” She tried bravely to laugh, but it was an uncertain, fluttering sound. “Have you dropped from your cloud again?”

He came straight to the cage door and stood, looking at her with his soul in his eyes, and she strove to meet his gaze, her own look fluttering away before the sweet terror of full realization.

Carlo set his hand to the latch. Some unknown imbecile, solicitous for the safety of the week's wash, had put some sort of an infernal patent spring lock upon the door. It resisted. His hand fell.

“Will you open it to me?” he said quietly.

“I--I can't,” said the girl.

“Is it to be the old barrier, then?” he said passionately--“the barrier that has always been set between us?”

She made no reply. But there came to her face a wonderful color, and to her lips a wonderful smile.

“Paula,” said Carlo, “nothing can stand between us except your will.” He raised both hands to the heavy meshes. “Shall I come?”

“Come!” she said.

Then that gate sprang from its hinges with a shriek of tortured metal, the voice, as it might be, of all the generations of Varicks, raised in frenzied, ineffectual protest. Oh, yes, I suppose the sockets _were_ rusted out and ready to give way; nevertheless, it was a startling and thrilling thing to see. He tossed the door behind him, where it fell with a harsh rattle. And Paula, uncaged at last, came to his heart with a cry, and clung there.