Part 12

I resisted a temptation to make a speech, which, however much in earnest I was, might have sounded silly, and contented myself with remarking that I was glad to have arrived in such good time, and I turned my attention to the taking of her--and Antaeus--safe home.

I could not get to sleep after going to bed that night. The evening's experience of itself was hardly a soporific, but there was yet another matter to occupy my thoughts and prevent my sleeping. Should I venture at the next favorable opportunity to put a certain question to a certain person? If I did so what answer should I receive? I hoped and I feared and I doubted concerning the sentiments of the said certain person toward my unworthy self. I revolved the thing in my mind until there seemed to be little else there but revolution. Progress in any direction, certainly there was none. My body was hardly less restless than my mind.

At three o'clock it flashed across me like a revelation, that I was hungry. I had eaten a light supper hours ago, and now my stomach was eloquent with emptiness; while the blood which should be doing good service there was pulsing madly about in my brain to no purpose. I went down stairs and inspected the contents of the ice-chest. Roast pork and brown bread make rather a hearty late supper, but breakfast time was so near I thought I would risk them--and a good deal of them.

Returning to my room, I set a lamp upon a stand at the head of the bed and, taking the first book that came to hand--it chanced to be an Italian grammar--I began to read. I had gone as far in the introduction as “CC like t-ch in hatchet,” when I grew drowsy. I laid down the book, my eyelids drooped, and there is good circumstantial evidence that a moment later I fell asleep, lying on my back with the upper half of my body bent into the form of a bow.

My slumbers were visited by a dream--a nightmare, composed, I estimate, of cold roast pork and brown bread, uncomfortable bodily position, the memory of certain occurrences in my past history, and an event to be described later. In this dream Antaeus figured largely. He seemed to come rolling across the bed, and me, until he had stopped upon my chest and stomach.

“What are you doing?” I asked in alarm. “Do you know you are crushing me? Get away!”

“I dare say I am. I _weigh_ fifteen tons,” Antaeus replied, heavily jocose. “I say,” he continued with a burst of anger, “you are an honorable, high-minded sort of person, you are. What do you mean by treating me so? Have you forgotten our compact? I have given you every chance man could ask for with _her_; what have you done for me in return? Nothing. Even worse than nothing. To faithlessness you have added treachery. Not content with deceiving me, you have sought to destroy me. I suppose you hoped to see my _débris_ strewn along the iron way.”

I was conscience-stricken by his accusations; but I could refute a part of them. “Oh, no! oh, no!” I protested, “it was an accident, I assure you. So far from desiring such a thing, I declare that I cannot even imagine your being reduced to _débris_. I----”

“Bah!” roared Antaeus, and in his rage he began to belch forth smoke--smoke so thick and black that I thought I should be stifled by it. In another moment I awoke gasping.

One feature of my dream was a reality--the smoke. The room was filled with it, and there were flames beside. As nearly as I can guess, the situation on which I opened my eyes had been thus brought about. While I slept the wind had risen and, pushing inward the shade at the open window, had pressed it against the small, unstable stand until the latter had been tipped over, bringing the lighted lamp to the floor. The muslin curtains had caught fire; from them the straw matting, kerosene-soaked, had flamed up, so that now a pretty lively blaze was in progress.

I sprang off the bed, made a snatch at some of my clothes, and got out of the room as soon as possible. After I had helped save everything portable, that could be saved without risk to life, I went and stood before the house in the cool air of the early dawn and watched the struggle between flames and flood. In the midst of my perturbation I noticed something that struck me as being worthy of remark. I had left Antaeus at the edge of the roadway before our gate; now the fire-engine, Electra, had been drawn up beside him. He was maintaining strict silence, but I hoped he was being well entertained, for Electra kept up an incessant buzzing--woman like, quite willing to do all of the talking. At any rate my share of our compact was now fulfilled; Antaeus and I were quits.

In the later morning I saw the young lady. My misfortunes called forth from her expressions of sincerest pity; indeed, she bitterly reproached herself for having been the direct cause of them. When I described my narrow escape from death by suffocation, she grew so pale that I thought she must feel considerable interest in me, although I immediately reflected that it could not be very pleasant to have one's next-door neighbor roasted alive.

By-and-by I told her of my two dreams, and of the way in which I finally kept faith with Antaeus.

“It is a shame that you had to burn up your house to do it,” she commented, “when a brush-heap might have answered the purpose quite as well.”

I thought--or I hoped--that the time had come for making a decisive move with some chance of its being effective. I furtively possessed myself of her hand.

“I should not regret the house so much,” said I, “if I might hope you would deign to extend to me the favor with which Electra has made Antaeus happy.”

This was bunglingly put, but she understood me well enough, although she murmured in reply:

“You have it already; we are--acquainted. Surely you don't want--anything--more.”

But she did not withdraw her hand.

I have just heard that the town fathers contemplate purchasing Antaeus and giving him a permanent residence “within our borders.” If this report be true, I shall use all my influence--from motives of gratitude--to have him lodged beside the engine-house, so that he may be near his bewitching Electra.

WHICH MISS CHARTERIS? By C. G. Rogers

AVING completed his breakfast, Mr. Percy Darley seated himself in a n easy-chair, facing the cheerful grate-fire of ruddy anthracite, placed his toes upon the fender, and relapsed into a thoughtful contemplation of Leonard's letter.

“You had best come, my dear boy,” said the letter. “It is a sleepy little town--one of those idyllic Acadian places of which you used to rave when you were tired of the city and fretful at her ways. We can smoke our pipes and chat over the old days, before a fire in my big, old-fashioned grate. There is a noble stretch of clear ice here now. Our little river is frozen over, solid and safe, and the darkest prospects do not foreshadow another fall of snow for a fortnight. The sleighing is superb; and, as Madeline Bridges says, 'the nights are splendid.' Pack up your traps and come.”

The invitation was an alluring one, thought Darley. His head ached, and his heart was sick of the everlasting round of parties and calls and suppers. What a vision of beatific rest that idea of a chat over old times! Ah, dear old times of childhood and youth, when our tears are as ephemeral as our spendthrift dimes!

There seemed to be only one rational preclusion--to wit, Miss Charteris. Not that he thought Miss Charteris would personally object to his absence, but, rather, that _he_ had an objection to leaving Miss Charteris. Miss Charteris was an heiress, and a handsome woman; to be brief, Miss Charteris being rich, and our friend Darley having the millstone of debt about his neck, he had determined, if possible, to wed her. If he went away, however, at this period of his acquaintance, when the heiress and he were becoming fast friends, some one else would doubtless step into the easy shoes of attention.

So Darley went down into the city and telegraphed his friend Leonard that he would be in Dutton on the evening train. He thought he should like to see Miss Charteris, however, before going. He walked back slowly along a particularly favorite drive of hers, and presently met this young lady with her stylish little turn-out, looking very radiant and happy on this bright winter morning.

There was some one with her--a fact Darley noticed with no great feeling of pleasure. It was not a strange thing; but, following the course of things as they had been for the past few weeks, it should have been Darley himself. This morning it was a sallow, dark young man whom Darley did not remember having seen before.

Darley explained that he was about to leave town for a few weeks, as soon as Miss Charteris had drawn up alongside the pavement to wish him goodmorning. Then she introduced him to her companion. “A very old friend--Mr. Severance--just arrived from Australia.”

“Dear old Dutton!” said Miss Charteris, looking reminiscent. “You must not break any trusting hearts down there, Mr. Darley; for the Dutton maids are not only lovely, but proverbially trusting.”

“You know Dutton, then?” Darley answered, surprised.

“Oh, yes! I have a very dear aunt in Dutton--oh, but you will see! I spent some of my happiest days there. So did you, I think, Lawrence.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Severance reflectively, “days almost as happy as the present day. Don't you think, Mr. Darley, that a man's best years cluster round the age of ten?”

Darley could not help agreeing to this. All men, provided their youth has been happy, think so. Darley said good-by, and walked on.

Who was this fellow Severance? _She_ called him Lawrence--_Lawrence_, by Jove! There was something in it--rather old schoolmates, too, they had been, and what might they not be now? It was more pique than disappointment which caused Darley to wish momentarily that he was not scheduled for Dutton. However, he must stand the hazard of the die.

His things were soon packed; he also supplied himself with a box of the cigars Leonard and he used to love in “the days that are no more,” and a copy of “Outing.” And ten hours later the train, with a jovial roar, ran into the little town, where the lights gleamed cozily against the snowy background, and the sleigh-bells seemed to bid him a merry, musical welcome.

A short, erect, trimly built man with a finely chiseled face and a brown skin that seemed to breathe of pine woods and great wide, sunlit rivers grasped Darley's hand as he stepped to the platform.

“Well, old man!” exclaimed the brown man, cheerily. “Awfully glad you've come! Come this way! Here we are, Joseph! Step in!”

“By Jove! it _is_ wintry here, isn't it?” said Darley, as he slid under the buffalo robes. “What a peerless night!”

After supper the two men made themselves thoroughly comfortable in great leather chairs before Leonard's promised fire, and smoked and chatted.

“You look just the same, old boy,” said Leonard, scanning Darley carefully. “But the hair is a little thin in front there, and I think I see the growing spot of baldness, as Ike Marvel has it. Did you ever read that great book of his, 'A Bachelor's Reveries?' No? Well, you should. I find it sweetest company. Yes, you are the same old sobersides--a great deal deeper than you look, as the little boy said when he fell into the well. And not married yet, eh?”

“Who, the little boy?”

“No; you, you rogue! I should have thought you would have gone off long ago.”

“Why?”

“A hard question to answer. Are we not always in a condition of mild wonder that our friends have not gone over to the married ranks, when we ourselves have not? However, from floating gossip--that tongue's flotsam--I have heard that you meditate going over.”

“Eh?” said Darley, pricking up his ears.

“Why,” answered Leonard, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, “Beau Brummel cannot pay court to a beauty without the world knowing it! I, even I, have heard of Miss Bella Charteris. She is not the sort of girl, if I may make so bold, that I would have imagined you pinning yourself to. I should have thought some quiet, sober, angelic little woman like----”

“Like who?”

“Well, I was going to say like her sister,” said Leonard softly, bending his head over his pipe as he slowly refilled it. “But you do not know her sister, I think.”

“Why, I did not even know Miss Charteris had a sister!” exclaimed Dar-ley in amazement.

“No? Why, Miss Florence Charteris lives here--in Dutton!”

“Miss Charteris mentioned an aunt, and hinted at some one else whom she said I would see, now that I think of it.”

“Irony, I suppose,” said Leonard quietly, smiling a queer little smile. “Yes, Miss Charteris the second lives in Dutton: a quaint, gray little life, good, patient, and God-like. She is the sweet angel of Dutton. But tell me, Percy, are you in love with your Miss Charteris?”

“I am afraid she is not my Miss Charteris,” said Darley, smiling. “And to be candid with you, Jack, I am not in love with her--for which, perhaps, I should be thankful. However, if Miss Charteris _does_ accept me, which I think is highly improbable, I shall marry her for money.”

Leonard shook his head. “I thought that was the way the wind lay,” he said sagaciously. “Don't do it,” he added tersely, after a pause. “Take an old fool's advice--don't do it. I think you would only live to regret having sold yourself into bondage. That is what it would amount to in your case. You are not built upon rough enough lines, I know, not to care at having your poverty sneered at and constantly thrown in your face. It is a puzzle to me how any man with any sense of independence and honor can sell himself, as some men do; and it is beyond my understanding how _you_, with your fine feelings and high ideal of manhood, ever thought of such a thing.”

This was certainly rubbing it in, Dar-ley thought. But, then, Leonard was such an exceptionally odd fellow, with his one-man-in-a-million code of chivalry and his ethical eccentricities. Still, Darley shrunk at the castigation, because he knew that the feelings that prompted it were sincere.

“But I am terribly in debt, Jack,” he said, almost deprecatingly. “What is there left for me to do?”

“What is there left? The opportunity to fight it out!” retorted Leonard. “Retrench. In a year, or two at most, unless you are _hopelessly_ insolvent, if you live without the profitless pleasures that have brought you to this pass, you can come out triumphantly independent.”

Darley shook his head. “I am afraid I could not stand the strain, Jack,” he answered, almost sadly. “A fellow of your caliber might. How is it, by the way, that you yourself are still in single harness?”

Leonard was silent, gazing in the coals with almost a melancholy air.

“Perhaps I should not say so,” he said at last, “yet you have been so frank with me; but I do not like the subject when applied to myself. However, there is but one answer, which is embodied in that one word that hangs like a pall before the eyes of the young literary aspirant--_refused_. I shall always be single, Darley. Always the same old solitary sixpence, with my rods and guns and dogs and books. Not bad companions, all of them, when used well--faithful, too. Eh, Rosy?”

The beautiful hound addressed raised her head and looked pathetically at her master, rubbing her nose in a sympathetic way against his leg.

Darley felt deeply interested. “What was the trouble, old fellow?” he ventured.

“The whole story is contained in that one word--refused. I never cared for but one woman; and _she_ did not care for me--at least, not enough to marry. Which was, after all, the most natural thing in the world, I suppose. I could not blame her, could I, since I would only marry for love myself? It is not much of a story, is it?”

“On the contrary, I think there is a great deal in it!” answered Darley, warmly. “I think I see that you loved this woman as only men with hearts like yours can love--once and for all.”

“Loved her? My love has no past participle, Darley! I shall always love her! I shall always think her the sweetest woman in the world, and the best! There is no other like her--God bless her! But you are sleepy, old fellow; and even Rosy is yawning and thinks it is time all decent people went to bed. Let us have one of the old-time horns, one of those old camp-fire nips--and then to bed. To-morrow you shall see our little town. By the way, did you bring your skates?”

“Skates! I haven't seen one for five years.”

“Never mind. I have a dozen pairs, and I dare say we can fit you. Do you curl? No? Well, you shall learn. We have the finest rink within a hundred miles. Here's your room, old fellow! Good-night, and rosy dreams and slumbers bright, as Sir Walter says.”

The days passed happily for Darley. The ice was perfect; and though he had not skated for years, his old power over the art came swiftly back. The river was one glaring, narrow, indefinite sheet of incomparable ice. Then there was the curling-rink, of which Leonard was an ardent devotee. It is a quiet, satisfying sport, this “roaring” game, and has peculiar charms for the man who has turned forty. The snow-bird shooting was good, too, out in the broad white fields beyond the town. And one glittering night the pair drove out into the country, and went on a hunt after some depredatory foxes with some farmers. They did not get the foxes; but they had a jolly supper at the farm-house, and an eight-hand reel in the kitchen, which Darley thoroughly enjoyed--more, he affirmed to his black-eyed partner, than any ball in the city he had ever attended.

One morning, Leonard having some business to detain him, Darley went off alone for the customary spin down the river. Skating out of the town and away past the white fields and the farmhouses, he presently espied a small feminine figure ahead of him, gliding quietly along. Suddenly the figure tripped and fell. One skate had come off and flew out to the center of the ice.

Darley sped to the rescue. The little figure in gray made a futile attempt to rise.

“Are you hurt?” exclaimed the rescuer as he wheeled to a short stop.

The lady looked up, and Darley saw the likeness in an instant. It was the other Miss Charteris--not at all like his acquaintance of the city. A rather pale, patient little face, with quiet gray eyes set far apart; a plain face, Darley said to himself. But on second thought he decided that it was not.

“I am afraid I have hurt my ankle,” said this little woman in answer to Darley's inquiry. “I tried to stand up, but I got a twinge that told me something was wrong.”

“Let me help you. Which foot is it?”

“This one,” indicating the foot minus the skate.

Darley lifted her up. “Now you keep the injured member off the ice,” he said, “and I will skate you to shore.”

“It was all my fault,” said the patient, as Darley knelt down and removed the remaining skate. “I would put on these old-fashioned things just because the blades are splendid.”

Darley secured the refractory skate and removed his own. Then he asked how the ankle felt.

Miss Charteris attempted to stand upon both feet, but sat down upon the bank instantly.

“It _does_ hurt,” she said, as if unwilling to admit the painful fact. She looked at Darley almost appealingly, then about her. The nearest house was a quarter of a mile away. Finally she looked back at Darley, with an expression that seemed to say, What are we going to do now, I wonder?

Darley made up his mind quickly. He always did when a woman was in the question. “You can't walk,” he said; “I shall have to carry you.”

Miss Charteris' pale cheeks assumed a rapid flush. “I can walk,” she said, hastily.

“Very well,” said Darley, gently. “Take my arm.”

A few painful steps proved to Miss Charteris that she _could_ walk, at the expense of excruciating agony. So, being a sensible little soul, she stopped.

“You see, it is impossible,” said her knight. “You will have to let me carry you, Miss Charteris. I beg your pardon for not introducing myself. I am Mr. Percy Darley, a guest at Mr. John Leonard's.”

“I knew you were Mr. Darley, but I don't see how you knew that I was Miss Charteris,” said that young lady, looking surprised, and quite forgetting her ankle.

“I have the pleasure of knowing your sister, and I recognized the likeness,” answered Darley, truthfully. “Now, will you allow me? Or I am afraid I shall have to take the law into my own hands.”

“I am not the law,” retorted Miss Charteris, attempting to proceed.

“The very reason that I should become the law,” answered Darley, laughing.

“I think I can _hop_,” said the girl, desperately. She did so for a few yards, and then came to a last halt. Hopping through deep snow proved rather heavy exercise.

“I am afraid you will have to carry me,” she said in a tone of surrender.

Darley picked her up. She was no weight, this little gray thing, and Darley was an athletic young man. Despite the snow, it did not take him long to reach the farm-house.

The farmer's wife was a kind soul, and knew Miss Charteris. She also knew a sprain, she said, when she saw one; and Miss Charteris' ankle was sprained. So, while the injured member was being attended to by the deft hand of the farmer's wife, Darley posted off to the town for Miss Charteris' aunt's sleigh, the farmer being absent with his own.

Darley secured the sleigh, drove back to the farm-house, and his charge, her ankle warmly and carefully wrapped up, was placed in the cutter and driven home. The family doctor had already arrived, and Darley took his leave.

“May I call and see how you are get-ing on?” he ventured as he said good-by.

“I shall be happy if you will,” said Miss Charteris. But the gray eyes seemed to say to Darley, Could you think of not doing so?

“I am afraid you are in love, or on the way,” said this young man to himself as he walked briskly to his friend's house. “In love, young fellow, and with a real woman, not a woman of the world, but a genuine sweet woman, one worth the loving.”

He related the story as simply as he could to Leonard, and the latter listened quietly. But Darley did not observe the odd look in his friend's eyes during the narration, nor did he guess that Leonard was saying to himself, Ah! my young friend, and have you, too, fallen at the first shaft?

“Shall we go round to the rink?” suggested Leonard the following evening, after dinner, as they sat over their pipes.

“I think I will stroll round and see how Miss Charteris is,” said Darley, smoking furiously. “I will call in at the rink afterward, eh?”

“Very well, old fellow,” was all Leonard said.

Darley found Miss Charteris' ankle improved. The doctor had pronounced it a severe sprain, had prescribed some wonderful liniment, and had alleviated the pain.

“But I shall not be able to be out again for three weeks,” said the invalid, plaintively, on the occasion of a second visit of anxious inquiry. “It is too bad; for I think open-air skating the most exhilarating of all sport! It always seems to lift me up.”

“It didn't seem to lift you up yesterday,” suggested Darley.

“No, indeed. I have thought since that I should be very grateful to you, because, if you had not happened along, I am sure I don't know what I should have done.”