Part 5

"To-night," she said, "when you have dined, walk down to the dock alone. One of us three will come to you and say: 'Too bad we didn't have better luck.' And you won't know if she's Lee or Phyllis or me."

* * * * *

Pritchard smoked upon the dock in the light of an arc-lamp. A vision, smiling and rosy, swept out of the darkness, and said:

"Too bad we didn't have better luck!"

"I beg your pardon," said Pritchard, "you're not Miss Gay, but I haven't had the pleasure of being presented to Miss Lee or Miss Phyllis."

The vision chuckled and beat a swift, giggling retreat to a dark spot among the pines, where other giggles awaited her.

A second vision came.

"Too bad we didn't have better luck!"

Pritchard smiled gravely into the vision's eyes, and said in so low a voice that only she could hear:

"Bad luck? I have learned to love you with all my heart and soul."

Silence. An answering whisper.

"How did you know me?"

"How? Because my heart says here is the only girl in all the world--see how different, how more beautiful and gentle she is than all other girls."

"But I'm not Gay--I'm Phyllis."

"If you are Phyllis," he whispered, "then you never were Gay."

She laughed softly.

"I _am_ Gay."

"Why tell me? I know. Am I forgiven?"

"There is nothing," she said swiftly, "to forgive," and she fled swiftly.

To her sisters waiting among the pines she gave explanation.

"Of course, he knew me."

"How?"

"Why, he said there couldn't be any doubt; he said I was so very much better-looking than any sister of mine could possibly be."

Forthwith Lee pinioned Gay's arms and Phyllis pulled her ears for her.

Mr. Pritchard paced the dock, offering rings of Cuban incense to the stars.

* * * * *

From Play House came the sounds which men make when they play cards and do not care whether they win or lose.

Maud was in her office, adding a column of figures which the grocer had sent in. The triplets, linked arm in arm, joined her. Arthur came, and Eve and Mary.

They agreed that they were very tired and ready for bed.

"It's going to be a success, anyway," said Mary. "That seems certain."

"We must have the plumber up," said Eve; "the laundry boiler has sprung a leak. Who's that in your pocket, Arthur?"

"Uncas. He came in exhausted after a long day in the woods. Something unusual happened to him. I know, because he tried so very hard to tell me all about it just before he went to sleep, and of course he couldn't quite make me understand. I think he was trying to warn me of something--trying to tell me to keep my eyes peeled."

The family laughed. Arthur was always so absurd about his pets. All laughed except Gay. She, in a dark corner, like the rose in the poem, blushed unseen.

XI

When their week was up, Mr. Langham's guests, Messrs. O'Malley, Alston, and Cox, felt obliged to go where income called them. Renier, however, who had only been at work a year, decided that he did not like his job, and would try for another in the fall. Lee delivered herself of the stern opinion that a rolling stone gathers no moss, and Renier answered that his late uncle had been a fair-to-middling moss gatherer, and that to have more than one such in a given family was a sign of low tastes. "I have a little money of my own," he said darkly, "and, what's more, I have a little hunch." To his face Lee upbraided him for his lack of ambition and his lack of elegance, but behind his back she smiled secretly. She was well pleased with herself. It had only taken him three days to get so that he knew her when he saw her, and for a young man of average intellect and eyesight that was almost a record.

The triplets were not only as like as three lovely vases cast in the same mould but it amused them to dress alike, without so much as the differentiation of a ribbon, and to imitate each other's little tricks of speech and gesture. It was even possible for them to fool their own brother at times when he happened to be a little absent-minded.

Every day Renier fished for many hours, and always the guide who handled his boat and showed him where to throw his flies was Lee.

"They're only children," said Mary, "and I think they're getting altogether too chummy."

Arthur did not answer, and for the very good reason that Mary's words were not addressed to him, nor were they addressed to Maud or Eve. Indeed, at the moment, these three were sound asleep in their beds. It was to that plumper and earlier bird, Mr. Samuel Langham, that Mary had spoken. The end of a kitchen table, set with blue-and-white dishes and cups that steamed, fragrantly separated them. They had formed a habit of breakfasting together in the kitchen, and it had not taken Mary long to discover that Sam Langham's good judgment was not confined to eatables and drinkables. She consulted him about all sorts of things. She felt as if she had known him (and trusted him) all her life.

"Renier," he said, "is one of the few really eligible young men I know. That is why I asked him up here. I don't mean that my intention was match-making, but when I saw your picture in the advertisement, I said to myself: 'The Inn is no place for attractive scalawags. Any man that goes there on my invitation must be sound, morally and financially.' Young Renier is as innocent of anything evil as Miss Lee herself. If they take a fancy to each other--of course it's none of my business, but, my dear Miss Darling--why not?"

"Coffee?"

"Thanks."

"An egg?"

"Please."

Mary was very tactful. She never said: "_Some more_ coffee?" She never said: "_Another_ egg?"

"Some people," said Mr. Langham, smiling happily, "might say that _we_ were getting too chummy."

"Suppose," said Mary, "that somebody did say just that?"

"I should reply," said Mr. Langham thoughtfully, "that of the few really eligible men that I know, I myself am, on the whole, the most eligible."

Mary laughed.

"Construe," she said.

"In the first place," he continued, "and naming my qualifications in the order of their importance, I don't ever remember to have spoken a cross word to anybody; secondly, unless I have paved a primrose path to ultimate indigestion and gout, there is nothing in my past life to warrant mention. To be more explicit, I am not in a position to be troubled by--er--'old agitations of myrtle and roses'; third, something tells me that in a time of supreme need it would be possible for me to go to work; and, fourth, I have plenty of money--really plenty of money."

Mary smiled almost tenderly.

"I can't help feeling," she said, "that I, too, am a safe proposition. I am twenty-nine. My wild oats have never sprouted. I think we may conclude that they were never sown. The Inn was my idea--mostly, though I say it that shouldn't. And The Inn is going to be a success. We could fill every room we've got five times--at our own prices."

"I pronounce your bill of health sound," said Mr. Langham. "Let us continue to be chummy."

"Coffee?"

"Thanks."

Whatever chance there may have been for Gay and Pritchard to get "too chummy"--and no one will deny that they had made an excellent start--was promptly knocked in the head by Arthur. It so happened that, in a desperately unguarded moment, when Arthur happened to be present, Pritchard mentioned that he had spent a whole winter in the city of Peking. The name startled Arthur as might the apparition of a ghost.

"Which winter?" he asked. "I mean, what year?"

Pritchard said what year, and added, "Why do you ask?"

Arthur had not meant to ask. He began a long blush, seeing which Gay turned swift heels and escaped upon a suddenly ejaculated pretext.

"Why," said Arthur lamely, "I knew some people who were in Peking that winter--that's all."

"Then," said Pritchard, "we have mutual friends. I knew every foreigner in Peking. There weren't many."

Although Arthur had gotten the better of his blush, he felt that Pritchard was eying him rather narrowly.

"They," said Arthur, "were a Mr. and Mrs. Waring."

"I hope," said Pritchard, "that _he_ wasn't a friend of yours."

"He was not," said Arthur, "but she was. I was very fond of her."

"Nobody," said Pritchard, "could help being fond of her. But Waring was an old brute. One hated him. He wouldn't let her call her soul her own. He was always snubbing her. We used to call her the 'girl with the dry eyes.'"

"Why?" asked Arthur.

"It's a Chinese idea," said Pritchard. "Every woman is supposed to have just so many tears to shed. When these are all gone, why, then, no matter what sorrows come to her, she has no way of relieving them."

Arthur could not conceal his agitation. And Pritchard looked away. He wished to escape. He thought that he could be happier with Gay than with her brother. But Arthur, agitation or no agitation, was determined to find out all that the young Englishman could tell him about the Warings. He began to ask innumerable questions: "What sort of a house did they live in?" "How do Christians amuse themselves in the Chinese capital?" "Did Mrs. Waring ride?" "What were some of her friends like?" etc., etc. There was no escaping him. He fastened himself to Pritchard as a drowning man to a straw. And his appetite for Peking news became insatiable. Pritchard surrendered gracefully. He went with Arthur on canoe trips and mountain climbs; at night he smoked with him in the open camp. And, in the end, Arthur gave him his whole confidence; so that, much as Pritchard wished to climb mountains and go on canoe trips with Gay, he was touched, interested, and gratified, and then all at once he found himself liking Arthur as much as any man he had ever known.

"There is something wonderfully fine about your brother," he said to Gay. "At first I thought he was a queer stick, with his pets and his secret haunts in the woods, and his unutterable contempt for anything mean or worldly. We ought to dress him up in proof armor and send him forth upon the quest of some grail or other."

"Grails," said Gay, "and auks are extinct."

"Grails extinct!" exclaimed Pritchard. He was horrified.

"Why, my dear Miss Gay, if ever the world offered opportunities to belted knights without fear and without reproach, it's now."

"I suppose," said she, "that Arthur has told you all about his--his mix-up."

Pritchard nodded gravely.

"Is that the quest he ought to ride on?"

"No--it won't do for Arthur. He might be accused of self-interest. That should be a matter to be redressed by a brother knight."

"Or a divorce court."

"Miss Gay!"

"I don't think it's nice for one's brother to be in love with a married woman."

"It isn't," said Pritchard gravely, "for him. It's hell."

"_We_," said Gay, "never knew her."

"She's not much older than you," said Pritchard. "If I'd never seen you, I'd say that she was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. But she's gentler and meeker than even you'd be in her boots. She isn't self-reliant and able."

"You talk as if you'd been in love with her yourself."

"I? I thought I was talking as if I was in love with you."

"Looks like it, don't it?" said she. "Spending all your time with a girl's brother."

"Not doing what you most want to do," said Pritchard, "is sometimes thought knightly."

"Do you know," she said critically, "sometimes I think you really like me a lot. And sometimes I think that I really like you. The funny thing is that it never seems to happen to both of us at the same time. There's Arthur looking for you. Do me a favor--shake him and come for a tramp with me."

"I can't," said Pritchard simply. "I've promised. But to-morrow----"

"_Certainly not_," said she.

XII

Warm weather and the real opening of the season arrived at the same time. The Camp hummed with the activities and the voices of people. And it became possible for the Darlings to withdraw a little into their shells and lead more of a family life. As Maud said:

"When there were more proprietors than guests, we simply had to sail in and give the guests a good time. But now that the business is in full blast, we mustn't be amateurs any more."

Langham, Renier, and the future Earl of Merrivale remained, of course, upon their well-established footing of companionship, but the Darlings began to play their parts of innkeepers with the utmost seriousness and to fight shy of any social advances from the ranks of their guests.

Indeed, for the real heads of the family, Mary, Maud, and Eve, there was serious work to be done. For, to keep thirty or forty exigent and extravagant people well fed, well laundered, well served, and well amused is no frisky skirmish but a morning-to-night battle, a constant looking ahead, a steady drain upon the patience and invention.

In Sam Langham Mary found an invaluable ally. He knew how to live, and could guess to a nicety the "inner man" of another. Nor did he stop at advice. Being a celebrated _bon viveur_ he went subtly among the guests and praised the machinery of whose completed product they were the consumers and the beneficiaries. He knew of no place, he confided, up and down the whole world, where, for a sum of money, you got exactly what you wanted without asking for it.

"Take me for an example," he would say. "I have never before been able to get along without my valet. Here he would be a superfluity. I am 'done,' you may say, better than I have ever been able to do myself. And I know what I'm talking about. What! You think the prices are really rather high. Think what you are getting, man--think!"

Among the new guests was a young man from Boston by the name of Herring. He had written that he was convalescing from typhoid fever and that his doctor had prescribed Adirondack air.

Renier knew Herring slightly and vouched for him.

"They're good people," he said, "his branch of the Herring family--the 'red Herrings' they are called locally--if we may speak of Boston as a 'locality'--he's the reddest of them and the most showy. If there's anything he hasn't tried, he has to try it. He isn't good at things. But he does them. He's the fellow that went to the Barren Lands with a niblick. What, you never heard of that stunt? He was playing in foursome at Myopia. He got bunkered. He hit the sand a prodigious blow and the ball never moved. His partner said: 'Never mind, Syd, you hit hard enough to kill a musk-ox.'

"'Did I?' said Herring, much interested, 'but I never heard of killing a musk-ox with a niblick. Has it ever been done? Are there any authorities one might consult?'

"His partner assured him that 'it' had never been done. Herring said that was enough for him. The charm of Herring is that he never smiles; he's deadly serious--or pretends to be. When they had holed out at the eighteenth, Herring took his niblick and said: 'Well, so long. I'm off to the Barren Lands.'

"They bet him there and then that he would neither go to the Barren Lands nor kill a musk-ox when he got there. He took their bets, which were large. And he went to the Barren Lands, armed only with his niblick and a camera. But he didn't kill a musk-ox. He said they came right up to be photographed, and he hadn't the heart to strike. He brought back plenty enough pictures to prove where he'd been, but no musk-ox. He aimed at one tentatively but at the last moment held his hand. 'He remembered suddenly,' he said, 'that he had never killed anything, and didn't propose to begin.' So he came home and paid one bet and pocketed the other. He can't shoot; he can't fish; he can't row. He's a perfect dub, but he's got the soul of a Columbus."

"Something tells me," said Pritchard, "that I shall like him."

Herring, having arrived and registered and been shown his rooms, was not thereafter seen to speak to anybody for two whole days. As a matter of fact, though, he held some conversation with Renier, whom he had met before.

"It's just Boston," Renier explained. "They're the best people in the world--when--well, not when you get to know them but when they get to know you. Give him time and he will blossom."

"He looks like a blossom already," said Lee. "He looks at a little distance like a gigantic plant of scarlet salvia, or a small maple-tree in October."

Upon the third day Mr. Herring came out of his shell, as had been prophesied. He went about asking guests and guides, with almost plaintive seriousness, questions which they were unable to answer. He began to make friends with Pritchard and Langham. He solemnly presented Arthur with a baseball that had figured in a Yale-Harvard game. Then he got himself introduced to Lee.

"You guide, don't you?" he said.

"I have guided," she said, "but I don't. It was only in the beginning of things when there weren't enough real guides to go around. But, surely you don't need a guide. You've been to the Barren Lands and all sorts of wild places. You ought to be a first-class woodsman."

"I thought I'd like to go fishing to-morrow," he said. "It's very disappointing. I've looked forward all my life to being guided by a young girl, and when I saw you, I said, if this isn't she, this is her living image."

"You shall have Bullard," said Lee. "He knows all the best places."

Herring complained to Arthur. "Your sisters," he said, "are said to be the best guides in the Adirondacks, but they won't take me out. How is a fellow to convalesce from typhoid if people aren't unfailingly kind to him?"

Arthur laughed, and said that he didn't know.

"Let me guide you," he offered.

"No," said Herring, "it isn't that I want to be guided. It's that I want the experience of being guided by a girl. I want to lean back and be rowed."

Herring walked in the woods and came upon Phyllis's garden, with Phyllis in the midst of it.

"Halloo again!" he said.

Now it so happened that he had never seen Phyllis before.

She straightened from a frame of baby lettuce and smiled. She loved bright colors, and his flaming hair was becoming to her garden.

"Halloo again!" she said.

"Have you changed your mind?" he asked.

She sparred for time and enlightenment and said:

"It's against all the rules."

"We could," said he, "start so early that nobody would know. I have often gotten up at five."

"So have I," said Phyllis wistfully.

"We could be back before breakfast."

Phyllis appeared to think the matter over.

"Of course," he said, "you said you wouldn't. But if girls didn't change their minds, they wouldn't be girls."

"That," said Phyllis, "is perfectly true."

To herself she said:

"He's asked Lee or Gay to guide him, and thinks he's asked me."

Now, Phyllis was not good with oars or fishing-tackle, but she liked Herring's hair and the fact that he never smiled. Furthermore, she believed that, if the worst came to the worst, she could find some of the places where people sometimes took trout.

"I have never," said Herring, "been guided by a young girl."

"What, never!" exclaimed Phyllis.

"Never," he said. "And I am sure that it would work wonders for me."

"Such as?"

"It might lead me to take an interest in gardening. I have always hoped that I should some day."

"People," thought Phyllis, "interested in gardening are rare--especially beautiful young gentlemen with flaming hair. Here is my chance to slaughter two birds with one stone."

"You'll swear not to tell?" she exhorted.

"Yes," he said, "but not here. Soon. When I am alone." He did not smile.

"Then," she said, "be at the float at five-thirty sharp."

That night she sought out Lee and Gay.

"Such a joke," she said. "I've promised to guide Mr. Herring--to-morrow at five-thirty, but he thinks that it's one of you two who has promised. Now, as I don't row or fish, one of you will have to take my place for the credit of the family."

But her sisters were laughing in their sleeves.

"My dear girl," said Gay, "why the dickens didn't you tell us sooner? We also have made positive engagements at five-thirty to-morrow morning."

"What engagements?" exclaimed Phyllis.

Gay leaned close and whispered confidentially.

"We've made positive engagements," she said, "to sleep till breakfast time."

XIII

In an athletic generation Phyllis was an anachronism. She was the sort of girl one's great-grandmother was, only better-looking--one's great-grandmother, if there is any truth in oil and canvas, having been neatly and roundly turned out of a peg of wood. Phyllis played no game well, unless gardening is a game. She liked to embroider and to write long letters in a wonderfully neat hand. She disliked intensely the roaring of firearms and the diabolic flopping of fresh-caught fish. She was one of those people who never look at a sunset or a moonrise or a flower without actually seeing them, and yet, withal, her sisters Lee and Gay looked upon her with a certain awe and respect. She was so strong in the wrists and fingers that she could hold them when they were rambunctious. And she was only afraid of things that aren't in the least dangerous. "No," they said, "she can't fish and shoot and row and play tennis and dive and swim under water, but she's the best dancer in the family--probably in the world--and the best sport."

Phyllis was, in truth, a good sport, or else she was more attracted by Mr. Herring's _Salvia-splendens_ hair than she would have cared to admit. Whatever the cause, she met him at the float the next morning at five-thirty, prepared to guide him or perish in the attempt. She wore a short blue skirt and a long white sweater of Shetland wool. It weighed about an ounce. She wore white tennis shoes and an immense pair of well-oiled gardening gloves. At least she would put off blistering her hands as long as possible.

Phyllis, to be exact, was five minutes early for her appointment. This gave her time to get a boat into the water without displaying awkwardness to any one but herself--also, to slip the oars over the thole-pins and to accustom herself to the idea of handling them. She had taken coaching the night before from Lee and Gay, sitting on a bearskin rug in front of the fire, and swaying rhythmically forward and back.

As Herring was no fisherman, her sisters advised her to row very slowly. "Tell him," they said, "that a boat rushing through water alarms fish more than anything in the world."

She told him when he was seated in the stern of the boat facing her.

"You mustn't mind going very slow," she said. "The fish in this part of the Adirondacks are noted for their sensitiveness in general and their acute sense of hearing in particular. Why, if I were to row as fast as I can"--there must have been a twinkle in her eyes--"trout miles away would be frightened out of their skins," and she added mentally, "and I should upset this horribly wabbly boat into the bargain."

They proceeded at a snail's pace, Phyllis dabbing the water gingerly with her oars, with something of that caution and repulsion with which one turns over a dead snake with a stick--to see if it is dead.

The grips of guide-boat oars overlap. And your hands follow rather than accompany each other from catch to finish, and from finish to catch. If you are careless, or not to the stroke born or trained, you occasionally knock little chunks of skin and flesh from your knuckles.

Herring watched Phyllis's gentle and restrained efforts with inscrutable eyes.

"I never could understand," he said, "how you fellows manage to row at all with that sort of an outfit. At Harvard they only give you one oar and let you take both hands to it, and then you can't row. At least, I couldn't. They put me right out of the boat. They said I caught crabs. As a matter of fact, I didn't. All I did was to sit there, and every now and then the handle of my oar banged me across the solar plexus."

"We're not going far, you know," said Phyllis (and she mastered the desire to laugh). "Hadn't you--ah--um--better put your rod together?"