Part 9

"Let's agree right now," he said, "which each of us thinks is the prettiest. It would be dreadful after travelling so far if we were both to pick on the same one."

"We would have to fight a duel," said Meredith, "with swords, and considering that you could never even sharpen a pencil without cutting yourself----"

"A boy wouldn't come along," said Jonstone, "and sell us a copy of a magazine months old if fate hadn't meant us to see this picture. I think I like the third one from the end."

"I think I like the three that look just alike."

"That is because you have travelled in Turkey. You never seem to remember that you are a Christian gentleman."

XIX

When they found out how much the buried silver was worth--the inventory was very thorough in the matter of description, dates, and weights--Mr. Bob Jonstone burst out laughing. But Colonel Meredith, although determined to stand by his bargain whatever the cash cost, looked like a man who has just missed the last train.

"I haven't got that much money loose, Bob," he said, "but I can raise it in a few days and then we'll execute a bill of sale. Meanwhile, allow me to congratulate you on your accession to the aristocracy."

"Aristocracy? It's blood that counts--not money."

"According to the old democracy, yes. According to the new, distinguished people pay an income tax and common people don't. And you, a moment ago, before the valuation was completed, were a very common fellow, indeed."

"Mel, I had no idea that old junk was worth so much."

"You hadn't? Well, it's worth more. I'm getting a bargain. Thank the Lord you're a gentleman, so there's no danger of your backing out."

Jonstone seized his cousin's hand and pressed it affectionately.

"Mel," he said, "can you afford to do this thing? God knows the money will make all the difference in the world to me! But in taking it I don't feel any too noble."

"It was always ridiculous for me to be rich and for you to be poor. That's done with. I'm still rich, thank God!--and you're well-to-do. You can travel if you like, breed horses, install plumbing, burn coal, and marry."

"If I was sure that the silver would ever be turned up, I wouldn't feel so sheepish."

"As long as you don't look sheepish or act sheepish--suppose that now, after a slight fortification, we visit a tailor. It is necessary for you to dress according to your station in life."

Their first day in New York was immensely amusing to both of them. Meredith was coming back to it after a long absence; Jonstone was seeing it for the first time, and for the first time his pockets were full of money that he did not owe. Now, New York is one of the finest summer resorts in the world. Do not pity the poor business man who sends his family to the mountains for the hot weather, for while they are burned by the sun and fed an interminable succession of blueberry pies, he basks in the cool of electric fans and dines on the fat of the land. His business may worry him, but there is no earthly use in his attending to it. That is done for him. He can skip away when he pleases for an afternoon's golf or tennis. Somebody's motor is always going somewhere where there is pleasure to be found and laughter. The lights of Luna Park are brighter than the Bar Harbor stars, and the ocean which pounds upon Long Beach is just as salt as that which thunders against Great Head--and about twice as warm. For pure torture give me a swim anywhere north of Cape Cod. Merely to step into such water is like having one's foot bitten off by a shark.

It did not take Jonstone long to acknowledge that New York is even bigger than Richmond, Virginia, and even livelier. The discovery of a superannuated mosquito in his bathroom had made him feel at home, and the fact that the head bartender in the hotel, though a native of Ireland, fashioned a delicious julep.

But his equanimity came very near to being upset in the subway. He felt a hand slipping into his pocket and caught it by the wrist. He had a grip like looped wire twisted with pinchers. The would-be thief uttered a startled shriek and was presently turned over to a policeman.

All the way to the station-house Mr. Jonstone talked excitedly and triumphantly to his cousin.

"Yes, sir," he said, "you had me groggy with your high buildings and your Aladdin-cave stores and your taxicabs and park systems. But by the Everlasting, sir, this would never have happened to me south of the Mason and Dixon line. No, sir; we may be short on show but we're long on honesty down there. I don't even have to lock my door at night."

"That's because the lock's broken and you've always kept it shut with a keg of nails. There are more pickpockets in New York than in Charleston, but only because there are more pockets to pick."

"I don't get you," said Jonstone stiffly. A little later he did.

The culprit was asked his name by a formidable desk sergeant.

"Stephen Breckenridge."

Bob Jonstone gasped.

"Where do you come from?"

"Lexington, Kentucky."

Colonel Meredith let forth a howl of laughter. And after he had been frowned into decorum by the sergeant, he continued for a long time to look as if he was going to burst.

For some hours Mr. Jonstone was moody and unamused. Then suddenly he broke into a winning smile.

"Mel," he said, "I wouldn't have minded so much if he had been smart enough to get my money. It was bad finding out that he was a compatriot of ours, but much more to realize that he was a fool."

XX

Mr. Langham was consulted about everything. And it was to him that Maud Darling took Meredith's letter asking for accommodations.

"We've only two rooms left," she said, "and such nice people have come, or are coming, that it would be an awful pity if we had the bad luck to fill up with two men that weren't nice. Did you ever hear of a Colonel Meredith?"

"Is that his letter? May I look?"

Mr. Langham read the letter through very carefully. Then he said, looking at her over the tops of his thick glasses:

"I don't know if you know it, but I have made quite a study of handwritings. The writer of this letter is a gentleman--a Southern gentleman, if I am not mistaken. Accepting this premise, we may assume that his friend Mr. Robert Middleton Jonstone is also a Southern gentleman. Middleton, in fact, is pure South Carolinian."

"But if they are from South Carolina, wouldn't our terms stagger them? I've always understood that Southern gentlemen lost all their money in the war."

"Nevertheless," said Mr. Langham, "this is the writing of a rich man."

"How _can_ you know that?"

"I tell you that I have made a study of handwriting. It is also the writing of a horse-loving, war-loving, much-travelled man--in the late twenties."

"You will tell me next that he is about five feet ten inches tall, has blue eyes, and is handsome as an angel."

"You take the words out of my mouth, Miss Maud."

"Tell me more." She was laughing now.

"He is very handsome, but not as angels are--his eyes are too bold and roving. If he wasn't a good man he would be a very bad man. There was a time, even, when strong drink appealed to him. He is quixotically brave and generous. And I should by all means advise you to let him have his accommodations."

"I can never tell when you are joking."

"I was never more serious in my life. Shall I tell you something else that I have deduced?"

"Please."

"Well, then, he isn't married, Miss Maud, and he is a great catch!"

Miss Maud blushed a trifle.

"I don't know if you know it," she said, "but I have made a profound study of palmistry. Will you lend me your hand a moment?"

"Very willingly. And I don't care if some one were to see us."

She studied his palm with great sternness.

"I read here," she said, "with regret, that you are an outrageous flirt. It seems also that you are something of a fraud."

"One more calumny," exclaimed Mr. Langham, "and I withdraw my hand with a gesture of supreme indignation."

But she held him very tightly by the fingers.

"And this little line," she cried, "tells me that you have known Colonel Meredith intimately for years and that you never studied handwriting in all your born days."

Mr. Langham began to chuckle all over.

"The next time," he said, "that people tell me you are easily imposed on, I shall deny it."

"You _do_ know him?"

He blinked and nodded like a wise owl.

"Shall I write or telegraph?"

"You will use your own judgment."

So she did both. She wrote out a telegram and sent it to Carrytown in the _Streak_. And she tried to picture in her mind a young man who should look like an angel if his eyes weren't too bold and roving.

Her sisters and her brother all proclaimed that Maud was a really sensible person. But none of them knew how really sensible she was.

She was, for instance, more interested in Colonel Meredith than in his cousin Mr. Jonstone, and for the simple reason that she knew the one to be rich and handsome and knew nothing whatever about the other.

XXI

Mr. Langham was at the float to welcome the two Carolinians.

"You have," he complimented Colonel Meredith, "once more proved the ability to land on your feet in a soft spot. You will be more comfortable here, better fed, better laundered than anywhere else in the world."

As they strolled from the float to the office, Mr. Jonstone looked about him a little uneasily. Not one of the beautiful girls who had looked into his eyes from the page of _The Four Seasons_ was in sight, or, indeed, any girl, woman, or female of any sort whatever. He had led himself to expect a resort crowded with rustling and starchy boarders. He found himself, instead, in a primeval pine forest in which were sheltered many low, austere buildings of logs, above whose great chimneys stood vertical columns of pale smoke. It was not yet dusk, but the air among the long shadows had an icy quality and was heavily charged with the odor of balsam. It was difficult to believe the season summer, and Mr. Jonstone was reminded of December evenings in the Carolinas.

"This is the office," said Mr. Langham, and he ushered them into the presence of a bright birch fire and Maud Darling. Each of the Carolinians drew a quick breath and bowed as if before royalty. Mr. Langham presented them to Miss Darling. She begged them to write their names in the guest book and to warm themselves at the fire.

"And then," said Sam Langham, "I'll shake them up a cocktail and show them their house."

"Are we to have a whole house to ourselves?" asked Colonel Meredith. He had not yet taken his eyes from Maud Darling's face.

"It's only two rooms: bath, parlor, and piazza," she explained.

"That last?" asked Mr. Jonstone.

"It's the same thing as a 'poach,'" explained Mr. Langham with a sly twinkle in his eyes.

"It's to sit on and enjoy the view from," added Maud.

"But I don't want to admire the view," complained Colonel Meredith. "I want to lounge about the office. It's the prerogative of every American citizen to lounge about the office of his hotel."

Colonel Meredith had yet to take his eyes from Maud Darling's face. And it was with protest written all over it that he at length followed his cousin and Mr. Langham into the open air.

The three were presently sampling a cocktail of the latter's shaking in the latter's snug little house, and speech was loosened in their mouths.

"Darling, _père_," explained Sam Langham, "went broke. He used to run this place as it is run now, with this difference: that in the old days he put up the money, while now it is the guests who pay. Two years ago the Miss Darling you just met was one of the greatest heiresses in America; now she keeps books and makes out bills."

"And are there truly five others equally lovely?" asked Colonel Meredith.

"Some people think that the oldest of the six is also the loveliest," said Sam Langham, loyal to the choice of his own heart. "But they are all very lovely."

To the Carolinians, warmed by Langham's cocktail, it seemed pitiful that six beautiful girls who had had so much should now have so little. And with a little encouragement they would have been moved to the expression of exaggerated sentiments. It was Maud, however, and not the others, who had aroused these feelings in their breasts. The desire to benefit her by some secret action--and then to be found out--was very strong in them both.

Langham left them after a time and they began to dress for dinner. Usually they had a great deal to say to each other; often they disputed and were gorgeously insolent to each other about the most trifling things, but on the present occasion their one desire was to dress as rapidly as possible and to visit the office upon some pretext or other.

When Colonel Meredith from the engulfment of a starched shirt announced that he had several letters to write and wondered where one could buy postage-stamps, it afforded Bob Jonstone malicious satisfaction to inform him that the "little drawer in their writing-table contained not only plenty of twos but fives and a strip of special deliveries."

"All I have to think about," said he, "is my laundry. I suppose they can tell me at the office."

"_They?_" exclaimed Colonel Meredith.

As he spoke the collar button sprang like a slippery cherry-stone from between his thumb and forefinger, fell in the exact middle of the room in a perfectly bare place, and disappeared. Up to this moment the cousins had remained on even terms in the race to be dressed first. But now Mr. Jonstone gained and, before the collar button was found, had given a parting "slick" to his hair and gone out.

It was now dark, and the woodland streets of The Camp were lighted by lanterns. Windows were bright-yellow rectangles. A wind had risen and the lake could be heard slapping against the rocky shore.

Maud Darling had left the office long enough to change from tailor-made tweeds to the simplest white muslin. She was adding up a column in a fat book. She looked golden in the firelight and the lamplight, and resembled some heavenly being but for the fact that, for the moment, she was puzzled to discover the sum of seven and five and was biting the end of her pencil. The divine muse of Inspiration lives in the "other" ends of pens and pencils. The world owes many of its masterpieces of literature and invention to reflective nibbling at these instruments, and if I were a teacher I should think twice before I told my pupils to take their pencils out of their mouths.

Mr. Jonstone knocked on the open door of the office.

"This is the office," said Miss Maud Darling; "you don't have to knock. Is anything not right?"

"Everything is absolutely perfect," bowed Mr. Jonstone. "But you are busy. I could come again. I only wanted to ask about sending some things to a laundry."

"You're not supposed to think about that," said Maud. "There is a clothes-bag in the big closet in your bedroom and my sister Eve does the rest."

"Oh, but I couldn't allow----"

"Not with her own hands, of course; she merely oversees the laundry and keeps it up to the mark. But if you like your things to be done in any special way you must see her and explain."

"In my home," said Jonstone, "my old mammy does all the washing and most everything else, and I wouldn't dare to find fault. She would follow me up-stairs and down scolding all the time if I did. You see, though she isn't a slave any more, she's never had any wages, and so she takes it out in privileges and prerogatives."

"No wages ever since the Civil War!" exclaimed Maud.

"We had to have servants," he explained, "and until the other day there was never any money to pay them with. We had nothing but the plantation and the family silver."

"And of course you couldn't part with that. In the North when we get hard up we sell anything we've got. But in the South you don't, and I've always admired that trait in you beyond measure."

"In that case," said Mr. Jonstone, turning a little pale, "it is my duty to tell you that the other day I parted with my silver in exchange for a large sum of money. I made up my mind that I had only one life to live and that I was sick of being poor."

Maud smiled.

"If you want to keep your ill-gotten gains," she said, "you ought never to have come to this place. Wasn't there some kind friend to tell you that our prices are absolutely prohibitive? We haven't gone into business for fun but with the intention of making money hand over fist. It's only fair to warn you."

She imagined that, at the outside, he might have received a couple of thousand dollars for his family silver, and it seemed wicked that he should be allowed to part with this little capital for food, lodging, and a little trout-fishing.

"My silver," he said, "turned out to be worth a lot of money, and I have put it all in trust for myself, so that my wife and children shall never want."

A flicker of disappointment appeared in Maud Darling's eyes.

"But I didn't know you were married," she said lamely.

"Oh, I'm not--yet!" he exclaimed joyfully. "But I mean to be."

"Engaged?" she asked.

"Hope to be--mean to be," he confessed.

And at this moment Colonel Melville Meredith came in out of the night. Having bowed very low to Miss Darling, he turned to his cousin.

"Did Langham find you?" he asked.

"No."

"Well, he's a-waiting at our house. I said I thought you'd be right back."

"Then we--" began Jonstone.

"Not we--_you_," said his cousin, malice in his eyes. "I want to ask Miss Darling some questions about telegrams and special messages by telephone."

Bob Jonstone withdrew himself with the utmost reluctance.

"We have a telephone that connects us with the telegraph office at Carrytown," Maud began, but Colonel Meredith interrupted almost rudely.

"We engaged our rooms for ten days only," he said, "but I want to keep them for the rest of the summer. Please don't tell me that they are promised to some one else."

"But they are," said she; "I'm very sorry."

"Can't you possibly keep us?"

She shook her fine head less in negation than reflection.

"I don't see how," she said finally, "unless some one gives out at the last minute. There are just so many rooms and just so many applicants."

"How long," he asked, "would it take to build a little house for my cousin and me?"

"If we got all the carpenters from Carrytown," said Maud, "it could be done very quickly. But----"

"Now you are going to make some other objection!"

"I was only going to say that if you wanted to go camping for a few weeks, we could supply you with everything needful. We have first-rate tents for just that sort of thing."

"But we don't want to go camping. We want to stay here."

"Exactly. There is no reason why you shouldn't pitch your tent in the main street of this camp and live in it."

"That's just what we'll do," said Colonel Meredith, "and to-morrow we'll pick out the site for the tent--if you'll help us."

XXII

Early the next morning Colonel Meredith and his cousin Bob Jonstone presented themselves at the office dressed for walking. Butter would not have melted in their mouths.

"Can you come now and help us pick out a site for the tent?" asked the youthful colonel.

Maud was rather busy that morning, but she closed her ledger, selected a walking-stick, and smiled her willingness to aid them.

"It will seem more like real camping-out," said Mr. Jonstone, "if we don't pitch our tent right in the midst of things. Suppose we take a boat and row along the shores of the lake, keeping our eyes peeled."

Maud was not averse to going for a row with two handsome and agreeable young men. They selected a guide boat and insisted on helping her in and cautioning her about sitting in the middle. Maud had almost literally been brought up in a guide boat, but she only smiled discreetly. The cousins matched for places. As Maud sat in the stern with a paddle for steering, Colonel Meredith, who won the toss, elected to row stroke. Bob Jonstone climbed with gingerness and melancholy into the bow. Not only was he a long way from that beautiful girl, but Meredith's head and shoulders almost completely blanketed his view of her.

"We ought to row English style," he said.

"What is English style, and why ought we to row that way?"

"In the American shells," explained Jonstone, "the men sit in the middle. In the English shells each man sits as far from his rowlock as possible."

"Why?" asked Meredith, who understood his cousin's predicament perfectly.

"So's to get more leverage," explained Jonstone darkly.

"It's for Miss Darling to say," said Meredith. "Which style do you prefer, Miss Darling, English or American?"

"I think the American will be more comfortable for you both and safer for us all," said she.

"There!" exclaimed the man of war, "what did I tell you?"

"But--" continued Maud.

"I could have told you there would be a 'but,'" interrupted Jonstone triumphantly.

"But," repeated Maud, "I'm coxswain, and I want to see what every man in my boat is doing."

So they rowed English style.

"It's like a dinner-party," explained Maud to Colonel Meredith, who appeared slightly discomforted. "Don't you know how annoying it is when there's a tall centrepiece and you can't see who's across the table from you?"

"Even if you don't want to look at him when you have found out who he is," agreed Meredith. "Exactly."

They came to a bold headland of granite crowned with a half-dozen old pines that leaned waterward.

"That's rather a wonderful site, I think," said Maud.

"Where?" said the gentlemen, turning to look over their shoulders. Then, "It looks well enough from the water," said Jonstone, "but we ought not to choose wildly."

"Let us land," said Colonel Meredith, "and explore."

They landed and began at once to find reasons for pitching the tent on the promontory and reasons for not pitching it.

"The site is open and airy," said Jonstone.

"It is," said Colonel Meredith. "But, in case of a southwest gale, our tent would be blown inside out."

A moment later, "How about drinking-water?" asked the experienced military man.

"I regret to say that I have just stepped into a likely spring," said Jonstone.

"We must sit down and wait till it clears."

When the spring once more bubbled clean and undefiled Mr. Jonstone scooped up two palmfuls of water and drank.

"Delicious!" he cried.

Colonel Meredith then sampled the spring and shook his head darkly.

"This spring has a main attribute of drinking-water," he said; "it is wet. Otherwise----"

"What's the matter with my spring?" demanded his cousin.

"Silica, my dear fellow--silica. And you know very well that silica to a man of your inherited tendencies spells gout."

Jonstone nodded gravely.

"I'm afraid that settles it." And he turned to Maud Darling. "I can keep clear of gout," he explained, "only just as long as I keep my system free from silica."

"Do you usually manage to?" asked Maud, very much puzzled.

"So far," he said, "I have _always_ managed to."

"Then you have never suffered from gout?"

"Never. But now, having drunk at this spring, I have reason to fear the worst. It will take at least a week to get that one drink out of my system."

And so they passed from the promontory with the pine-trees to a little cove with a sandy beach, from this to a wooded island not much bigger than a tennis-court. In every suggested site Jonstone found multitudinous charms and advantages, while Colonel Meredith, from the depths of his military experience, produced objections of the first water. For to be as long as possible in the company of that beautiful girl was the end which both sought.