Her lips curled as she allayed his consternation. "She came into a little money--an obliging aunt died, I believe. Pity it hadn't come early enough to do her some real good. She patched up her old house, and adopted five or six orphan-asylum kids, and I suppose the poor thing thinks she's having a good time." Even to the most prejudiced eye Annabel could not have looked beautiful at that moment. The venom that poisoned her spirit, disfigured her face like a scar. Hag-ridden by those unlovely twins, jealousy and hate, she looked for the instant prematurely old.

Justin did not notice. He was absorbed in gleaning from her all possible information as to the change in Persis' circ.u.mstances and quite indifferent to the emotions of his reluctant informant. With the relentlessness of the thoroughly selfish, he continued his cross-examination till Annabel's mind seemed to herself a squeezed orange. She felt something like terror mingling with a sense of physical exhaustion. It always frightened her to find herself unable to keep a man's attention focused on herself when she had him to herself.

"When shall I see you again?" she asked, as she approached her home.

Had the interview continued with the dramatic intensity of its beginning, she could safely have left him to ask that question. Under the circ.u.mstances she did not dare.

"I'm not quite sure. I have some business that has hung fire an unconscionable time, and ungallant as it seems, we twentieth century fellows have to put business before pleasure." He smiled propitiatingly and therein lay the sting, that he did not even take the trouble to conceal that he was trying to appease her. Their parting sank to the level of the commonplace for he shook hands hastily, and her look of appeal flattened itself ineffectively against his preoccupation.

A little skilful quizzing of the hotel clerk confirmed in every detail Annabel's remarkable story, and in his own room Justin sat down to think the matter through to a conclusion. The renewal of his acquaintance with Persis Dale nearly a year earlier had enlightened him as to the tenacity of certain impressions he had thought obliterated long before. The girl he had loved in his callow youth and had forgotten, still retained something of her old fascination for him. A year earlier this discovery was responsible for an amused wonder at himself, coupled with a realization of the need of caution. Now common sense took sides with his lingering fondness. Persis Dale, with a comfortable little fortune added to her unique personality, had become distinctly desirable. She was a woman with an infinite capacity for surprises, which meant that she would not bore the man she married, unduly. With a little metropolitan polish added to her native cleverness she should be able to give a good account of herself socially. The children were a drawback of course, but there must be some way of getting rid of an adopted family of which one tired. And it was quite impossible that Persis' fondness for the little ones she had picked up the other day, so to speak, would prove a serious rival to an affection which had been a vital factor in her life for more than twenty years.

By supper-time he had made up his mind. With a little sigh for the freedom he was relinquishing, he resolved on matrimony. He had always intended to marry somebody and domesticity with Persis promised at least commonplace comfort, something Justin was the last man on earth to despise. With the children disposed of, Joel sent adrift and Persis' money wisely handled, there was no reason why they should not get on better than the majority of married people. Justin ate an unusually hearty supper as if to fortify himself for his wooing.

He had made up his mind to ignore the change in Persis' circ.u.mstances that his call might seem a spontaneous tribute to her personal attractions. But the change in the house and its furnishings was so p.r.o.nounced that he judged it bad policy to pa.s.s it over without comment. "I thought for a minute I'd come to the wrong house, Persis, and I felt positively alarmed about myself. I knew if I couldn't find the Dale place blindfolded, I needed the services of a nerve specialist." He laughed a little with an air of catching himself up before he had said too much, something he had found effective with many women.

She smiled upon him gravely. "It was the improvements that mixed you up, I suppose. There was a spot on the ceiling of mother's room where the rain leaked through the winter she died. After the papering was finished I missed that spot as if it had been human. Time and again when I went into that room I'd jump as if I'd got into somebody else's house by mistake." Her voice lost a subtle pensive quality as she added: "But the new furniture ain't the best of the changes, Justin. I wish I could show you the children, but they're all in bed and asleep."

"I'm not sure I'm sorry." Justin's voice was low and caressing. "It's always been hard for us two to have any time alone. I used to wonder when I came here who would be sitting by and listening to every word we said, your father or your mother or Joel or some other young fellow who'd discovered the most charming girl in Clematis. If fate has granted us an evening to ourselves at last, let's be thankful."

He thought it a very fair beginning. The reference to their early love affair could not fail to soften her. The implication that the interference of interested third parties was responsible for keeping them apart was cleverly done. It was a distinct surprise at the end of an hour to find himself no further along than at the start. Justin had no intention of offering his hand and heart to any woman without a reasonable a.s.surance of a rapturous acceptance, and singularly enough, he was far from certainty. He had been making love in a restrained and subtle fashion for the better part of an hour and was ready for an avowal of his devotion as soon as Persis showed any intention of meeting him half-way. But up to this point, she had skilfully disguised any such intention, and while showing no displeasure at the sentimental tendency disclosed in his remark, had so persistently injected a tincture of matter-of-factness into the conversation that he seemed as far as ever from coming to the point. With it all, her air was friendly. He suspected her of playing with him, taking her revenge by keeping him in doubt overnight.

Resistance seldom detracts from a woman's value in a man's eyes. When Justin rose to go he was almost ready to believe himself in love. He was a little angry, slightly amused and more in doubt as to her state of mind than he often felt regarding his opponents in the eternal duel.

When Persis gave him her hand for good night he held it in both his own for a moment and raised it to his lips. The curious rekindling of a burned-out tenderness, due to her lack of responsiveness, gave the act an effect of sincerity which impressed him, even while he thrilled with honest pa.s.sion, as an excellent move.

He looked into her eyes and found them gravely contemplative.

"Justin," she said, "there's something I want to speak to you about if you're not in a hurry."

He tingled with triumph. Women were all alike. She could play the coquette for an hour, but she could not let him leave her till she had heard the words he had been trying all the evening to speak. He put down his hat. "You know of course," he said with an air of repressed feeling, "that I am at your service now and always." And as her eyes fell he laid his hand on hers.

It was not easy to restore the balance, but Persis did it. "The property my aunt left me," she began in her most matter-of-fact voice, "brings me a pretty fair income, but nothing's good enough as long as it might be better. Only yesterday I got an offer of ten thousand dollars for some water-works stock in a place out West where Aunt Persis Ann lived for a good many years."

Justin put his hands in his pockets, the character of her opening rendering sentimental advances ludicrously inopportune.

"Have you any idea what income you get from that stock?"

"Last year it was a thousand and fifty dollars."

"Why, that's over ten per cent. on what the fellow offers you," Justin exclaimed, and Persis nodded.

"Yes, about ten per cent. And in the Apple of Eden Investment Company I'd be guaranteed twenty-five per cent. by the tenth year, with a good chance to double my money even before that. I didn't stop you to ask your advice, Justin, for I can see you'd feel a little delicate about urging me to invest in your company. But what I've heard from Mis'

Hornblower makes it plain enough that the best thing for me to do is to turn my property into cash as fast as I can and put every penny into apples."

Justin crossed his feet, reflecting impatiently that it was high time for Persis Dale to have a husband. His elation over all that was implied by her consulting him on so personal a matter, was almost lost in his feeling of annoyance. This made it plain that he must lose no time, but marry her offhand. What with her penchant for orphans and for foolish investments, she would make ducks and drakes of her fortune unless a man peremptorily took the helm.

"It would be a pity to be precipitate, Persis. An investment that pays ten per cent. isn't to be sneezed at nowadays. And this fellow's offer just now looks as if the stock wasn't in any danger of depreciating."

He glanced at her and was annoyed to find her face stubborn. Had she been the type of woman to accept masculine counsel as akin to divine guidance, his task would have been easier. Her evident lack of yielding forced him to take a superior tone.

"My dear girl, you will admit that I am a little better versed in business matters than you are. And my advice is to hold on to your stock unless you should have a better reason for selling than appears at present."

"Ten per cent. looks pretty well alongside the Savings bank, I'll admit. But why shouldn't I get twenty-five? I've got these children to educate. I can use considerable more than if I just had myself to think of."

He gulped down his vexation, "Raising apples is a science, Persis. The weakness of the American investor is to imagine that he can do whatever any other fellow has done. Because some horticultural shark doubles his money on his orchard in a banner year, you fancy you can do the same every year."

"Gracious, Justin! I'm not going into apple-raising. I've got my hands full enough without that. I'm going to leave the company to run my orchard for me. All they ask is twenty-five per cent of the net profits, but you know that without my telling you."

"And suppose there comes a year like 1896, when apples didn't bring enough to pay for the barrels they were packed in? You can't count on top-notch prices every season."

"No, but I can count on the company's guarantee."

An oath, a tribute to her obstinacy, winged through his brain. In his exasperation he forgot caution.

"That guarantee--"

"Well?"

"There's nothing to hold us after you've become the owner of the property. If we find that running your orchard isn't profitable, as we might easily do after one or two bad seasons, we could slip from under, and you could use the guarantee as you call it, for curl papers.

That's all it would be good for."

He was glad to see that he had shaken her foolish stubbornness at last.

She caught her breath like one jerked back from an unrealized danger by a friendly hand.

"I--I guess it's lucky I consulted you, Justin. It's foolish for a woman to think that she's up to all the tricks in business nowadays."

The slight trembling of her hand tempted him to kiss it, though he compromised by merely taking it again.

"If I've helped you a little, Persis, dear girl, I'm very happy. I only wish you were willing to make use of me always." His hope that this was the psychological moment was dashed when ignoring the attempted caress, she grasped his hand and shook if vigorously.

"Good night, Justin. Thank you for setting me right in that matter. I believe that's the baby starting to cry. I'll have to hurry up before she rouses the house."

But she got no farther than the foot of the stairs on this errand, and Justin, letting himself out, gave voice to the oath he had thought more than once that evening. Persis stood listening as he made his way down the walk, but up-stairs all was still. She returned to the living-room rather slowly. Through all the various changes in the household, indicative of increased prosperity, the photograph in the blue plush frame had triumphantly retained its post of honor on the mantel, a landmark of constancy. Now she took it up with hands that trembled.

"It's not that I've got anything against you." She addressed it as if there were an intelligence back of the vacuous pleasantness of the young face. "It's only that there's not any you and hasn't been for I don't know how long. It's so much deader than death, all ashes to ashes and dust to dust and the spirit turned into something different."

And then Justin's hopes would have soared high had he seen her, for she kissed the lips that smiled at her, a strange kiss in which pity blended with forgiveness.

Holding fast to the blue plush frame, Persis pa.s.sed through the house to the woodshed, found a trowel among the garden tools, and then made her way into the night. The sky was overcast, hiding the stars, but the flitting fire-flies outlined strange constellations against the velvety darkness. Persis groped her way through the dewy gra.s.s toward the syringa bush, guided as much by the odor of blossoms as by sight, and falling on her knees used her trowel industriously for many minutes. And when the grave was deep enough, she laid the plush frame into its recesses, hiding the smile she once had loved with heaped-up earth. Since so many of her girlish hopes were covered by that same earth, it is not strange that her tears fell upon the little mound.

"I'm going to miss that picture same as if it was alive. It was always smiling so cheerful that it cheered me just to look at it. But when a thing's dead, it ought to be buried, and as it is, I guess this funeral is pretty near twenty years behind time."

CHAPTER XX

CHECKMATE

In spite of the lack of success which had attended his tentative wooing, Justin Ware slept soundly, woke cheerful and made a comfortable breakfast. Over his coffee and pancakes he outlined not the plans for a systematic siege of Persis' affections, but the maneuver through which he hoped to carry the Hornblower citadel by storm. He had used no meaningless figure of speech when he a.s.sured Annabel of his practise of making pleasure secondary to business. Robert Hornblower's resistance had piqued and baffled him, the more as he knew that Mrs.

Hornblower was his uncompromising ally. Indeed his presence in Clematis at this juncture was due to a letter from this invaluable colleague, casually mentioning that her husband had received an offer for the farm which she wished he might be induced to accept. "While I leave all such matters for Robert to decide, as I consider to be a wife's _plain_ duty," wrote Mrs. Hornblower, with a lavish use of italics, "I have not hesitated to tell him that I think his closing with the offer is for the best interests of us all." And Justin had interpreted the communication to mean that his confederate believed the day of victory at hand.

He finished his breakfast at an early hour, judged by metropolitan standards, selected the most promising animal from the sorry exhibition of horse-flesh in the local livery and drove out to the Hornblower farm, smoking on the way a better cigar than could be bought in Clematis, and feeling unusually well satisfied with the world and himself. His failure to bring the Hornblower affair to a successful conclusion had annoyed him, not so much because of the importance of the transaction, as because his professional pride was hurt at finding himself unequal to the task of convincing a henpecked old man. From the tone of Mrs. Hornblower's letter he was confident this failure was about to be retrieved, and that Persis would prove amenable to his flattering advances, could be taken for granted. On one point he must be firm. From the beginning he must a.s.sume the necessity of her renouncing her recently acquired family. He could say and with truth that children made him nervous. But to postpone the settlement of the difficulty until after the wedding would be a fatal blunder. When women felt sure of a man, they sometimes developed a disagreeable tenacity in holding to their own way. Altogether on this early morning drive, Justin's difficulties dwindled almost to imperceptible points while his blessings loomed large, a state of mind we are a.s.sured, most favorable to success.