Her voice sounded with a bra.s.s-band echo of victory.

"But how did you--"

"By outwitting Pollie Kendall--plague take her!"

The man was coming leisurely, stopping once to speak to one of the graybeard financiers.

"Have you met him?" Mrs. Walker asked carelessly, as he approached.

"No."

She turned to him.

"I'm going to put you in here--where you'll have to stay," she laughed, her big, heavy frame looking dwarfed beside his own towering height.

"I wasn't going to run away."

"No? You can't always tell--and I thought it safe to take every precaution, for this lecture may be long, and it's certain to be irritating to one of your nationality.--In this location you'll be in the clutches of the Press, you see, and--by the way, you must meet Miss Christie!--Mr. Tait, Miss Christie!"

His face was still perfectly impa.s.sive, and he bowed gravely--with that down-to-the-belt grace which foreigners have. I nodded the pink satin rose on my hat in his direction. This was all! Neither made any further demonstration than that!--And to think that since Creation's dawn--the world over--the thing is done just as idly and carelessly as that! "Mr. Tait, Miss Christie!"--These are the words which were said--and, dear me, all the days of one's life ought to be spent in preparation for the event!

"You are a Daughter of the Revolution, I presume?" his voice finally asked me--a deep clear voice, which was strong enough to drown out the Wagnerian processionals beating at that moment against my brain, and to follow me off on the mother-of-pearl cloud I had embarked upon. It was a glorious voice, distinctly un-American, but with the suggestion of having the ability to do linguistic contortions. He looked like a man who had traveled far--over seas and deserts--and his voice confirmed it. It proclaimed that he could bargain with equal ease in piasters and pence. Still, it was a big wholesome voice. It matched the coat of goatskin, the bare knees and the moccasins I had planned for him.

"Yes, I am," I answered.

Our eyes met for an instant, as he disengaged his gaze from that ten-barred insignia on my coat. Far, far back, concealed by his dark iris, was a tinge of amused contempt.

"Then I dare say you're interested in this occasion?" he inquired. I shouldn't say that he inquired, for he didn't. His tone held a challenge.

"No, indeed, I'm not!" I answered foolishly. "I came only because I have to write up Major Coleman's speech for my paper. I am a special writer for the _Herald_."

And it was then that he smiled--really smiled. I saw a transformation which I had never seen in any other man's face, for with him a smile escapes! There is a breaking up of the ruggedness, an eclipse of the stern gravity for a moment, and--no matter how much you had cared for these an instant before--you could not miss them then--not in that twinkling flood of radiance!

"Oh--so you're not an ancestor-worshiper?"

"No."

"But I thought Americans were!" he insisted.

"Americans?" I repeated loftily. "Why, of course, that's an English--religion."

"Not always," he answered grimly, and the Italian band stationed behind the clump of boxwood cut short any further conversation.

I was glad, for I did not want to talk to him then. I merely wanted to stand off--and look at him--and tell myself what manner of man he must be.

To do this I glanced down at my copy paper, with one eyelid raised in favor of his profile. An ancestor-worshiper? Absurd! Ancestors were quite out of the question with him, I felt sure. There was something gloriously _traditionless_ about his face and expansive frame. But his hands? Those infallible records of what has gone before?--I dropped my eyes to their normal position. His hands were _good_! They were big and long and brown--that shade of brownness that comes to a meerschaum pipe after it has been kissed a time or two by nicotine. And his hair was brown, too light by several shades to match with his very dark eyes, but it likely looked lighter on account of its conduct, standing up, and away, and back from his face. His complexion spoke of an early-to-bed and early-to-tub code of ethics. His nose and mouth were well in the foreground.

"You are a man who cares nothing at all for your ancestors--but you'll care a great deal for your descendants!" was the summing up I finally made of him.

At the close of the band's Hungarian Rhapsody he leaned over and whispered to me.

"Did you say the _Herald_?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I have had my--attention called to your paper recently," he said, in so serious a tone that I was compelled to look up and search for the smile which I felt must lurk behind it. And when I saw it there I felt rea.s.sured, and smiled in response.

"So they told me at the office," I said with great cordiality. "Is it three or four of our reporters you've thrown down your front steps?"

"Oh, I haven't got close enough to them to throw them down the steps,"

he disclaimed quickly. "That's one thing you have to guard against with reporters. They've got you--if they once see the whites of your eyes!"

I felt it my duty to bristle, in defense of my kind.

"Not unless your eyes _talk_," I said. Then, when he stared at me in uncertainty for a moment, I dropped my own eyes again, for I felt that they were proclaiming their convictions as loudly as a Hyde Park suffragette meeting.

The band at that moment struck up _The Star-Spangled Banner_ in a manner to suggest the president's advent into the theater, and I searched in my bag for my pencil. I had seen the lecturer cough.

"I say--how long is this convocation supposed to last?" Maitland Tait inquired in a very inconspicuous whisper, as the white-flanneled lion of the affair arose from his chair and became the cynosure of lorgnettes.

"Well, this talk will absorb about forty-five minutes, I should hazard," I said. Already I had had the forethought to jot down the usual opening: "Ladies and Gentlemen--Daughters and Sons of the American Revolution: It is with a feeling of profoundest pleasure that I have the privilege of being with you to-day," etc. So for the moment my attention was undivided.

"And there will be other talks?"

"Yes."

"And a walk through the gardens, I believe Mrs.--Mrs. Walker said?"

"Probably so. The Seven Oaks gardens are very lovely in June."

At the mention of gardens his eyes wandered, with what I fancied was a tinge of homesickness, toward the colorful flowering s.p.a.ces beyond the box hedges. There were acres and acres of typical English gardens back there; and the odor of the sweet old-fashioned shrubs came in on gentle heat waves from the open area. He looked as if he would like to be back there in those English-looking gardens--with all the people gone.

CHAPTER VII

STRAWS POINT

"And are you going to write up the whole thing?" he inquired, during a little commotion caused by one of the large flags slipping from its stand and threatening to obscure the speaker.

"You mean make a society column report of it?"

"Yes."

"No. I'm a sort of special feature writer on the _Herald_, and I am to get only this speech of Major Coleman's to put in my Sunday page."