Part 17

One of these was Mr. James Herbert McArdle, who was seated beside her at the time. She was accompanying him for a drive, as she had promised him; and his choice for the excursion had been an open red car, noticeable also in contour and dimensions. The top was folded back, so that Lily and her escort, both richly shrouded in furs, presented to the world a fast-flying sketch of affluent luxury. A fleeting glimpse of beauty might be caught there, too; for Lily’s colour was high, and sunshine glinted in her hair; amber lights danced from it and blue sparklings from her eyes as she sped by.

At one point, however, the fast-flying sketch ceased to fly, and halted, affording spectators more leisure for observation; but this, as presently appeared, was just the wrong point for such a thing to happen. The red car, returning from the open country, passed into the suburban outskirts, and Mr. McArdle directed the chauffeur to turn into the country club driveway. “I’ve got a fancy to see where our friendship began,” he said to Lily. “I noticed the last green was near the driveway. Let’s go look at it.”

She assented, and they drove to the spot that interested him; but they found it inhabited. A score or so of people were there, watching the conclusion of a match evidently of some special interest as an exhibition of proficiency. When the red car stopped, the last shot into the cup was in the final crisis of action, and a popular triumph was thereby attained, as the spectators made plain. They instantly raised a loud shout, acclaiming the successful player, cheering him and rushing forward to shake his hand; though he, himself, seemed far from elated.

On the contrary, there gleamed a bitter spark in his eye, and his appearance, though manly, was one of so dark a melancholy that he might have been thought an athletic and Americanized Hamlet. Not speaking, he waved the enthusiasts away, tossed his club to his caddy and turned to leave the green; but, as he did so, his glance fell upon the red car in the driveway near by. He halted, stock-still, while a thrilled murmur was heard rustling among the bystanders. Everybody stared at Lily, at her companion, and at the morbid winner of the golf match. There was a moment of potent silence.

Then the sombre player advanced a step toward Lily and, looking her full in the eye, took off his cap and swept the ground with it before her in mocking salutation—derisive humility before satirized greatness.

A startled but delighted “_Oh!_” came from among the people about the green. They began to buzz, and silvery giggles were heard.

Lily’s eyes shot icy fire at the bowing harlequin. “Tell the driver to go _on_,” she said to McArdle.

“Who was that fellow?” he asked her, as they drove away. “I had a notion to get out and see if I couldn’t make him bow even a little lower.”

“No, no,” she said, hastily. “You shouldn’t have. You aren’t well enough, and, besides, he’s only a ruffian.”

“But who is he?”

“I’ve just told you,” she said, fiercely. “He’s a ruffian. His name is Henry Burnett, if you want something to go with the definition of him I’ve just given you.”

“But what did he do it for? What made him bow like that?”

“Because he _is_ a ruffian!” Lily said. Her eyes were not less fiery than they had been, and neither were her checks. “I believe I never knew what it was to hate anybody before,” she went on in a low voice. “When I’ve thought I hated people it must have been just dislike. I’m sure I’ve never known what it was to hate anybody as he’s just made me hate him.”

“But see here!” Young Mr. McArdle was disquieted. “What’s it all about? Telling me he’s a ruffian doesn’t explain it. What made him do it?”

“This,” Lily said between her teeth. “For a while I thought I cared a little about him—not much but some—enough to let him know I thought so. Well, I found I didn’t.”

“How’d you find it out?” he asked.

“I discovered that I was absolutely indifferent to him, and that nothing he could ever do would have the slightest power to make me feel anything whatever. I told him so in the gentlest way I could, and since then he’s behaved like the brute that he is.”

“But is it true?”

“Is what true?” she asked, sharply.

“I mean,” he said, “is it true you’re indifferent to him?”

“Good heavens!” she cried, with the utmost bitterness. “Don’t you see that I hate him so that I’d like to wring his neck? I would!” she cried, fiercely. “I could almost _do_ it, too, if I were alone with him for a few minutes!” And she held up to his view her slender white-gloved hands, with her fingers curved as for the fatal performance.

Mr. McArdle seemed to be relieved. “Well, I guess it’s all right,” he said. “That is, if you’re sure you don’t like him.” Then as she turned angrily upon him, he added hurriedly, “And I see you don’t. I’m sure you don’t.” He laughed with a slight hint of complacency not unnatural in an important and well-petted invalid. “I think you kind of owe it to me not to go around liking other men from now on. I mean—well, you know how I’m getting to feel about you, I guess.”

Lily sat staring straight forward at the chauffeur’s back, though that was not what she saw. What she saw was the tall young man of the tragic face, mocking her before delighted onlookers. “I know what I feel about _him_!” she said, too preoccupied with her fury to listen well to her companion.

“I’m glad you do,” he said, earnestly. “I wouldn’t like to feel you were thinking much about anybody but me. Of course I know you’ve been giving me a good deal of your time; but the fact is, I’ll want you to give me even more of it, especially the next week or so—before my mother comes out to visit me. Will you?”

As she did not answer, but still gazed fiercely at the chauffeur’s back, he repeated, “Will you?”

“I could!” she said; but this was evidently not a reply to his question, for she again held up her curved fingers to view. “I could, and I would! If I were left alone with him for five minutes I _know_ I would!”

“Let’s forget him just now,” young Mr. McArdle suggested. “I was telling you about my mother’s coming out here to visit me in a week or so. My family’s really pretty terrible about keeping tabs on me, you know—I mean, for fear I’ll get engaged to anybody except my second cousin Lulu. She’s one of the female branch of the family, you know, that married into the banks, and of course they all feel it ought to be kept together, and Lulu would be a great advantage. But she’s homely as sin, and, so far, they’ve had a pretty hard time persuading me. You understand, don’t you?”

“What?” Lily asked, vaguely. Then she drew a deep breath, clenched her curved fingers tightly upon the fur rug and said virulently to herself: “I could do it and sing for joy that I _had_ done it!” However, in the ears of her companion this was only an indistinct murmur.

“I mean I suppose you understand about the family and all that,” he said. “My mother’s bound to interfere, of course. If you and I expect to see much of each other after she comes, we’ll have a fight on our hands, because, of course, the family won’t stand for my getting too interested in anybody out here. Naturally, they don’t expect me not to have a good time; but you know what I mean;—they wouldn’t stand for my getting serious, I mean.”

He was serious enough just then, however; that was plain. His voice was almost quaveringly plaintive, in fact, as he leaned toward her. “Lily,” he said, “I expect my mother would like you all right if you were my cousin Lulu, or somebody in Lulu’s position; but the way things are—well, of course she isn’t going to. She’s going to make an awful fuss if I try to go about with you at all. But I’m willing to buck up to her and see if we can’t pull it off anyhow. Honestly, I am. How about it?”

“What?” she said, absently, still looking forward and not at him. “What did you say?”

“My goodness!” he exclaimed, blankly. “I don’t believe you were even _listening_!”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t.”

At that, a natural resentment deepened the colour in this important young man’s cheeks. “Well, I should think it might be considered worth your while,” he said. “I don’t put too much on being James Herbert McArdle, Third, I believe; but at least I might claim it isn’t a thing that happens every day in the world, exactly—my asking a girl to marry me, I mean.”

She turned to him, frowning. “Was that what you were doing?”

“I was telling you I hoped to make a try for it,” he explained a little querulously. “When my mother comes and hears about this she’ll send for my father probably and there’ll be a big fuss—more than you could have any idea of until you really hear it. But I never took to any girl as much as I’ve taken to you, never in my life.” Here his querulousness gave way to another feeling and his voice softened. “I’m ready to buck up to the whole crew of ’em for your sake, Lily. What about it?”

She looked at him blankly. “I don’t know,” she said.

“What?” he cried. “Don’t you understand? I’m asking you to _marry_ me!”

“Yes,” she said. “I hear you say it; but so far as I’m concerned you might almost as well be telling me it’s a pleasant day! I’m not in the right state to think about it or even to understand it.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” she said, “I’m so angry I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Look here——” he began; but said no more, and, in spite of her preoccupation with her anger, she was able to perceive that he now had some of his own. She put her hand lightly upon his sleeve and, simultaneously, the car stopped at the hospital door.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m terribly rude. But don’t you know there are times when you get so furious you just _can’t_ think about anything else?”

“Can’t you?” he returned, coldly, as the chauffeur helped him down from the car. “I’m afraid I doubt if you’d _ever_ consider what I was saying as of enough importance to listen to.”

“I’m so sorry,” Lily said; and in spite of herself she said it absently; so that nothing could have been plainer than that her mind was not even upon this apology, but altogether upon the offence she had received from Mr. Henry Burnett.

A special attendant of the convalescent’s came from within the building and offered his arm. Young Mr. McArdle took it and gave a final glance at the flushed cheeks and fiery eyes of the lady who had already twice smitten him and thus smote him again. Something hot in his upper chest seemed to rise against this provincial and suburban young woman who was too busy being furious with a local nonentity to know what she was doing indeed! The affronted young man’s last word was to the chauffeur.

“When you have taken Miss Dodge home I sha’n’t want you until day-after-to-morrow. I don’t care to drive every day.”

Lily was borne away murmuring, “I’m sorry,” again, but what she thought was: “I could! I could wring Henry Burnett’s neck and sing for joy!”

. . . When the long red car drew up before her father’s house, there was another machine standing at the curb, a small black thing of the hardiest variety and odiously familiar to Lily. She jumped out, and, shaking with rage and her desire to express it, fairly ran up the brick walk to her front door.

But here a housemaid sought to detain her, whispering urgently: “Mr. Burnett’s in the living-room, waiting. Your mother isn’t home and I didn’t know how to keep him out. If you don’t want to see him you’d better go round to the——”

Lily interrupted her. “I _do_ want to see him,” she declared in a loud voice. “I want to see him _instantly_!” And she swept into the room to confront the mocker.

But mockery was no part of Mr. Henry Burnett’s present mood—far from it. He had come to apologize, and apology was profoundly in his manner as he rose from the chair in which he had been most dejectedly sitting. Dark semicircles beneath his eyes were proof of inner sufferings; he was haggard with his trouble and more Hamlet-like than ever; but now he was a Hamlet truly humble.

“Lily,” he said, huskily, “I’d sworn to myself I’d never make another attempt to see you as long as I lived, but after what I did awhile ago I had to. I _had_ to explain it. It was in vile taste, and you can’t think any worse of it than I do. But you came on me suddenly. I hadn’t dreamed I’d see you; then all at once I looked up and there you were—and with the man you threw me over for! I just couldn’t——”

“Henry Burnett,” she said, and her hot little voice shook with the rage that vibrated in her whole body;—“you used to be a gentleman. Twice within less than an hour you’ve shown me you’ve forgotten what that word means.”

“Twice, Lily?” he said, pathetically; “I admit the other time—out at the club—but how have I offended you besides that?”

“In your very apology,” she told him scornfully. “You’ve just had the petty insolence to stand there and say I threw you over for Mr. McArdle!”

“But you did,” he said; and he seemed surprised that she should not admit it. “Why, it’s—why, Lily, everybody knows that!”

“What? You dare to repeat it?”

He looked at her in the most reasonable astonishment, his eyes widening. “But, Lily, I’m not the only one. Everybody repeats it.”

“Who does?”

“Everybody,” he said. “You certainly couldn’t expect a thing like this not to be talked about, with the whole place in the state of excitement it was about McArdle’s coming here, let alone what’s happened since. I had no idea you’d deny it to me now, though I supposed you might to other people, as a matter of form. Of course no one would believe it could be a coincidence.”

She stepped closer to him dangerously. “No one would believe what could be a coincidence, Henry Burnett?”

“That you threw me over just by chance the very day before McArdle came to town and you took that shot at him.”

“I did _what_?”

“Hit him in the head,” Henry explained. “Your name didn’t get in the papers; but you don’t for a moment imagine that everybody in town doesn’t understand, do you, Lily?”

She stamped her foot. “Understand what? What are you talking about? _What_ does everybody understand?”

“Your plan,” he said, simply. “You don’t think you can lay out a man like that—a man that every other girl in the place is ready to fight you for—you don’t think you can do it in such a way as to make you the _only_ girl who has a _chance_ to see him, and then spend all your time with him, and day after day send him so many bushels of flowers that the florist himself gasps over it—and read to him hour after hour, and drive _more_ hours with him—you can’t do all that and expect people not to _see_ it, can you?”

Lily’s high colour was vanishing, pallor taking its place. “You needn’t believe I don’t hate you because I stop telling you so for a moment,” she said. “But there’s a mystery somewhere, and I’ve got to get at it. What do you mean I mustn’t expect people not to see?”

“Why, the truth about how he got hurt.”

Lily stepped back from him. “Henry Burnett,” she said, “Henry Burnett, do you dare——”

Henry interrupted her. He had come to apologize; but what he believed to be her hypocrisy was too much for him. “I don’t see the use of your pretending,” he said. “The whole population knows you did it on purpose.”

“Did _what_ on purpose?”

“Hit him in the head with your golf ball on purpose!”

Lily uttered a loud cry and clasped her hands to her breast. Aghast, she stared at him with incredulous great eyes; but even as she stared, her mind’s eye renewed before itself some painful pictures that had mystified her—the spitefully uproarious girls in the park; her friend, Emma; the buzzing “tea”; the group at the gate as she came out;—and there were other puzzles that explained themselves in the dreadful light now shed upon them. Uttering further outcries, she sank into a chair.

“Slander!” she gasped. “Oh, a _horrible_ slander!”

“What?” Henry cried again. “When everybody knows the things you can do with a golf ball if you care to? When that professional trick-player gave his exhibition here, knocking five balls into five hats in a row, and all that, how many of his shots didn’t you duplicate after you’d practised them? And some of the girls talked to the caddy McArdle had with him when it happened, and the boy said he didn’t think you were over forty yards away when you hit him. Lily, there isn’t a soul that knows you who’ll ever believe you didn’t do exactly what you planned to do. I don’t mean they think you could do it every time, or that they’re all certain you aimed at his head; but they all believe you tried to hit him—and succeeded!”

“And _you_ do?” she said. “_You_ believe it?”

He laughed bitterly. “Lily, it’s clear as daylight, and I knew it when I looked up and saw you with him to-day. I knew you’d won what you were after. It was in his face.”

Lily gulped and smiled a wry smile. “I see,” she said. “It all works out, and nobody’ll ever believe I didn’t plan it. Yes, I think he proposed to me on the way home this afternoon.”

“Let me wish you happiness,” Henry said, and seemed disposed to repeat his satiric bow, but thought better of it. “Is the engagement to be a long one?” he inquired, lightly, instead; and this seemed to be as effective as the bow, for Lily sprang up, as if she would strike him.

“I could murder you!” she cried. “And, oh, how I’d like to! I’m not _sure_ Mr. McArdle proposed to me; I only _think_ he did. I told him I couldn’t listen because I was too angry.”

“Too angry with whom?” Henry asked, frowning.

“With _you_!” Lily shouted fiercely.

At that, it was his turn to utter a loud cry. “Lily, is it true? Did you hate me so that you couldn’t even listen to him? Is it true?”

“A thousand times true!” she said, and, in her helpless rage, began to weep. “But I hate you worse than that!”

“And you sent me away because I couldn’t make you _feel_ anything!” he cried. “Lily, when will you marry me?”

“Do you think I’d ever be engaged to you again,” she sobbed, “when you believed I’d do a brutal thing like that on purpose?”

“Lily,” he said again, “when will you marry me?”

“Never,” she answered. “I’ll never marry anybody.” But even as she spoke, the fortunate young man’s shoulder was becoming damper with her tears.

XXIX MRS. CROMWELL’S OLDEST DAUGHTER

ALL OF the players except three had returned to the clubhouse before the close of the fine April afternoon, and, after an interval in the locker rooms, had departed either in their cars or strolling away on foot, homeward bound to the pleasant groups of suburban houses east of the country club. Westward lay the links, between ploughed fields and groves of beech and ash and maple, a spacious park of rolling meadows with a far boundary of woodland, and, beyond that, nothing but a smoky sunset. All was quiet; there were no sounds from within the clubhouse, nor came any from the links; and although no kine wound slowly o’er the lea and no ploughman plodded his weary way, the impending twilight in such a peace might well have stirred a poetic observer to murmurous quotation from the Elegy. Nevertheless, in this sweet evening silence, emotion was present and not peaceful.

There was emotion far out upon the links, and there was more upon the western veranda of the clubhouse where two ladies sat, not speaking, but gazing intently toward where the dim and hazy great sun was immersing itself in the smoke of the horizon. These two emotional ladies were sisters; that was obvious, for they shared a type of young matronly fairness so decidedly that a photograph of one might have been mistaken, at first glance, for that of the other.

A student of families, observing them, would have guessed immediately that their mother was a fair woman, probably still comely with robust good health, and of no inconsiderable weight in body as well as in general prestige. The two daughters were large young women, but graceful still; not so large as they were going to be some day, nor less well-favoured than they had been in their slenderer girlhood. They were alike, also, in the affluence displayed by the sober modishness of what they wore; and other tokens of this affluence appeared upon the club driveway, where waited two shining, black, closed cars, each with a trim and speechless driver unenclosed. The sisters were again alike in the expectancy with which they gazed out upon the broad avenue of the golf links; but there was a difference in their expressions;—for the expectancy of the younger one was a frowning expectancy, an indignant expectancy, while the expectancy of the other, who was only a year or two the older, appeared to be a timid and apprehensive expectancy—an expectancy, in fact, of calamity.

This elder sister was the one who broke the long silence, though not by uttering words, the sound she produced being an exclamatory gasp and but faintly audible. It appeared to be comprehended as definite information, however, by the younger sister.

“Where, Mildred?” she asked. “I don’t see them yet.”

The other’s apprehension was emphasized upon her troubled forehead, as she nodded in the direction of the far boundary of the links. There, upon the low crest of rising ground capped with the outermost green, appeared six tiny figures, dwindled by the distance and dimmed by the mist that rose into the failing light. For the sun was now so far below the dark horizon that the last ruddiness grew dingy in the sky.

“Yes,” said the younger sister, and her angry frown deepened. “It’s they.”

“Oh, Anne!” the older murmured. “Oh, Anne!”

“Yes, I should say so!” this Anne returned, decisively. “I certainly intend to express myself to _my_ husband, Mildred.”

Mildred shook her head unhappily. “If I only could to mine! But that’s just what I can’t do.”

“I don’t know,” the other said. “I think in your place I should; though it’s true I can’t imagine myself in your place, Mildred. My husband has his faults, and one of ’em’s the way he’s letting himself be used to-day, but I can’t imagine his behaving as your husband is behaving. Not _that_ way!”

She made an impatient gesture toward the west, where the six figures had left the green and were now moving toward the clubhouse, three of them playing deliberately as they came, with three smaller figures, the caddies, in advance. One of the players detached himself, keeping to the southern stretch of the fairway; while the two others, a man and a woman, kept to the northern, walking together, each halting close by when the other paused for a stroke.

“Can you make out which is which, Anne?” the older sister inquired in a voice of faint hope. “Isn’t it John who’s playing off there by himself, and Hobart she keeps so close to her?”

“Not very likely!” Anne returned with a short laugh. “She’s using _my_ husband as a chaperon strictly, and I must say he’s behaving like a tactful one. It’s your John she ‘keeps so close to her’—as usual, Mildred!”

Mildred made merely a desolate sound, and then the sisters resumed the troubled silence that falls between people who have long since discussed to a conclusion every detail of an unhappy affair, and can only await its further development.

The three players came nearer slowly, growing dimmer in the evening haze as they grew larger; until at last it was difficult to see them at all. Other things were as dim as they, the player to the south found to his cost; and, finally deciding to lose no more balls that day, he crossed the fairway to his competitors.

“I’m through, John,” he called, cheerfully. “It’s no use in the world trying to play out these last two holes.”

“I don’t suppose it is,” the other man assented. “Julietta rather wanted to, though.” He turned to the tall girl beside him. “Hobart says——”