"I forbid it," said Jerry. "The machine is at the upper gate. I'll drive you. Come."

She hesitated. Our glances met. I think she must have seen the eagerness in my face, the friendliness, the admiration. She read too the revolt in Jerry's eyes, the dawning of something like reason and of his grave sense of the injustice that had been done to her. He pleaded almost piteously--as though her acquiescence were the only sign he could have of her forgiveness.

"Very well," she said at last, "to the station, then."

"No," said Jerry firmly, "to town. I'm going to drive you to town.

We've got to have a talk. We've got to--to clear this thing up."

She hesitated again and I think she felt the need of companionship at that moment.

"But your guests--"

"Oh, I'll be here," I said. "They'll be going soon. Jerry can be back in time for the party."

"I'm not going to that party," Jerry muttered savagely.

He meant it. I bade them good-by--watched them until they pa.s.sed out of sight and hearing, and then sank on a nearby rock, and hugged my knees in quiet ecstasy.

CHAPTER XXI

JERRY ASKS QUESTIONS

Fortunately for me, neither Jack Ballard nor the expected overflow from the Van Wyck house-party came to disturb the serenity of my thoughts, Jack being suddenly called to Newport, the guests having been taken in elsewhere. So I sat up alone for Jerry until late and finally went to bed, happily conscious that my emba.s.sy, impossible as it had seemed, had borne fruit after all. Jerry did not go to Marcia Van Wyck's party, and his evening clothes remained where Christopher had laid them out, on the bed in his room. I gave myself an added pleasure in slumber that night by going in and looking at them before I sought my own room. I cannot remember a night when I have slept more soundly and I rose refreshed and intensely eager to hear how things had gone with Jerry and the dear lady whom I had once so inaptly dubbed "the minx." At the breakfast table Poole informed me that Jerry had returned late to the Manor and was sleeping. It was good. The glimmerings of reason that had appeared in the boy during the last few days had been encouraging, and his open revolt against the enchantress had made me hopeful that her dominion over him was not so complete as it had appeared. Viewed from any angle, the conduct of the Van Wyck girl was reprehensible, and admitted of no excuse. She had overshot the mark and had done her target no harm. However warm her friendship with those of her guests who were at the cabin, the comments I had heard convinced me that Jerry and I were not alone in our condemnation. The attack seemed to savor of a lack of finesse, surprising in a person of her cleverness, for had her bias not been so great she should have known that as a gentleman, Jerry must resent so palpable and designing an insult to a guest at Horsham Manor. Her impudence still astounded me. Did she think herself so sure of Jerry that she chose purposely to try him? Or had the point been reached in their amatory relations where she was quite indifferent as to what Jerry might do?

Smoothly as my plan had worked and happily (or unhappily) as Marcia's pique and ill-humor had fitted into it, I could not believe that Jerry's revolt had ended matters. Even if the boy had been willing to end them (a thing of which I was not at all sure), Marcia Van Wyck was not the kind of girl to retire on this ungraceful climax, and Jerry's absence from her house on so important an occasion was nothing less than a notice to those present that he and Marcia were no longer on terms. I had had a sense of the girl's taste for conquest, and the more I thought of her the surer I was that Jerry's championship of Una Habberton would revive whatever remained of the lingering sparks of Marcia's pa.s.sion.

Jerry joined me in the study later in the morning and sat for awhile reading the newspapers. He was silent, almost morose, and at last got up and walked about the place. I feared for a moment that he had gone to the garage with the intention of getting into his machine, and this I knew meant nothing less than a ride posthaste, to Briar Hills.

But he came back presently in a more cheerful mood and after luncheon suggested fishing, a proposal that I instantly fell in with. And so I followed him up stream, my own humor being merely to carry the net, watch him whip the pools and pray that his luck might be good, for a full creel meant good humor and good humor, perhaps confidences.

Fortune favored. By the time we had gotten up the gorge, Jerry was in high spirits, for luck had crowned his skill and at least a dozen fish lay stiffening in the basket, and when we reached the iron grille Jerry emitted a deep sigh of satisfaction, drew out his pipe and sank on a rock to smoke it. I lay back beside him, my hat over my eyes.

Nothing stimulates confidences so much as indifference. Jerry glanced at me once or twice, but I made no sign and after awhile he began talking. Whenever he paused I put in a grunt which encouraged him to go on. That is how I happened to hear about Jerry's ride home with Una Habberton.

It seems that when they got into the machine Una was very quiet and answered his questions only in mono-syllables, but Jerry was patient and all idea of Marcia's party being out of his head, he drove slowly so that he would not reach the city until everything was clear and friendly between them again. Her profile was very sober and demure, he said. He wasn't quite sure for a long time whether she was going to burst into anger, tears, or to laugh. Jerry must have looked sober too and for awhile it couldn't have been a very cheerful ride, but at last the boy saw Una looking at him slantwise and when he turned toward her she burst into the merriest kind of a laugh.

"Oh, Jerry, is it home you're driving me to, or just a funeral?"

He gasped in relief at her sudden change of mood. "I was just waiting," he said quietly. "I didn't want to intrude, Una."

"But you _do_ look _so_ like the undertaker's a.s.sistant," she smiled.

"You have no right to be glum. I have. I'm the corpse. A corpse _might_ laugh in sheer relief when the lid was screwed down and everything comfortable."

"Una! I don't see anything so funny--"

"My reputation! A trifling thing," she said coolly, "still, I value it."

"_Your_ reputation! That's absurd--nothing could hurt _you_. I don't understand."

"I can't quite see yet how it all came out," she went on thoughtfully, "how Marcia knew that I had been inside the wall. Why, Jerry, unless she learned it recently, since I saw you in New York--" she paused.

"No," protested Jerry uncomfortably. "It was last summer--"

"But I had no name to you then--I was merely Una--"

"And I blurted it out, Una, the only name I knew, never thinking that you and Marcia were acquaintances."

"Oh, I see," and she smiled a little. "If my name had been plain Jane or even Mary, my reputation would have been safe."

"What rubbish, Una! Can't a fellow and a girl have a chat without--"

"Yes, but the girl mustn't get through eight-foot walls."

"I don't see what difference that makes." She must have given him a swift glance here. But she laughed again. "You evidently don't realize, Jerry, that monasteries are supposed to be taboo for young girls."

"Yes, but you didn't know about it being a monastery," he said seriously.

"Of course, or I shouldn't have dared. But that makes no difference to Marcia. I was there. You told her. Don't you know, Jerry, that it isn't good form to tell _everything_ you know?"

"She guessed it," he muttered. "It's such a lot of talk about nothing." I think Jerry was getting a little warm now. "Suppose you _were_ in there, whose affair is it but yours and mine?"

"Everybody's," she shrugged. "Everybody's business! That ought to be inscribed on the tombstone of every dead reputation. _Hic jacet_ Una Habberton. Nice girl, but she _would_ visit monasteries."

But nothing was humorous to Jerry's mood just then.

"I can't have you talking like that, Una," he said in a suppressed tone. "It's very painful to me. I can't imagine why anyone should try to injure you. They couldn't, you know. You're above all that sort of thing. It's too trivial--"

"Oh, is it? You'll see. All New York will have the story in twenty-four hours. Pretty sort of a tale to get to the Mission! The Mission! If those people heard! Imagine the embroideries! I could never lift my head down there again."

"Let the world go hang. Have you anything to be ashamed of, Una?"

"No."

"Nor I. Very well."

The seriousness that Una attached to the affair, while it bewildered, also inflamed him. "I wish it had been a man who had talked to you the way Marcia did."

Una turned toward him soberly.

"What would you do to him, Jerry?"

He smiled grimly. "I think I'd kill him," he said softly.

I think Jerry's tone must have comforted her, for he said that after that Una grew quieter.

"The world is very intolerant of idyls, Jerry."