"You are a disgrace to an honored name!" he roared. "And the only explanation left for me to offer our guests is that you are drunk and don't know where you are!"

"Oh, father!" faltered the boy. And then he turned his black shrouded figure to the pale marble against which he leaned, and it seemed to me his very heart would sob away.

"What's the matter, dad?" came a voice from the head of the stairway.

"What in thunder is all the row about?"

"By George!" gasped Billings. Everybody looked upward--one of the women screamed. For there, slowly advancing down the angle leading to the landing, his yellow mop of hair shining above the dark collar of a dressing-robe, was the duplicate of the youth cowering under the elder Billings' wrath.

And out of a dead, tense silence, came his voice again:

"Can't any of you speak?" He touched the figure on the shoulder. "Who are you?" he asked in an odd, strained voice.

The black figure turned toward him a face agonized in grief.

"I--I don't know," came a voice pitifully--his voice, it seemed.

The cub just stood like a statue for a moment--stood as we all stood.

Then slowly his hand went out and touched the hand of his double.

Slowly his fingers swept the face, the hair; gradually his eyes closed, as though he were sensing by touch alone.

Suddenly a loud cry leaped from his throat.

"Sister!" he shouted. And he swept the black figure to him.

Then, tossing back his head, the youth faced us with blazing, angry eyes, looking as David must have, when he faced old what's-his-name.

"If there's a man among you, I'd like to know what this means?" he cried.

There was a blank silence for an instant, and then--

"Perhaps I can explain," said a voice.

And up the stairway advanced Professor Doozenberry.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

IN THE GLOW OF THE RUBIES

Evening had come again.

In fact, it was almost bedtime. Frances and I sat before the hearth in the library, looking silently into the red heart of the dying embers of fragrant pine cones. For in the heights of the Pocantico Hills it often is chilly on summer nights.

My darling sat on a low _fauteuil_, her chin resting upon her hand, her beautiful eyes fixed dreamily, inscrutably, upon the fading coals. In her lap lay the spread of the crimson pajamas.

She was thinking--thinking--I wondered what! And I was thinking how jolly rum it all was; that Francis wasn't Frances, that the professor wasn't Billings, Colonel Francis Kirkland wasn't Foxy Grandpa and wasn't the frump's father after all; and that the frump, herself--bless her, her name was Elizabeth--wasn't Frances, and wasn't a frump at all, but just a jolly, nice, homely old dear, you know. And I was trying to catch and hold some of the deuced queer things the professor had discoursed upon about ancient Oriental what's-its-name, and astral bodies, obsession, psychical research and all that sort of thing. Somehow, dash it, it had all seemed devilish unreasonable and improbable to _me_--couldn't get hold of it, you know; but as everybody else had said "Ah-h-h!" and had wagged their heads as though they understood, I just said: "Dash it, of course, you know!" and recrossed my legs and took a fresher grip on my monocle.

The most devilish hard thing to get hold of had been that Frances had never sat on the arm of my Morris chair, had never told me she liked me better than any man she had ever met, and had never called me "d.i.c.ky" at any time or anywhere. I wondered if she ever would, and how the deuce fellows went about it when they proposed to the girl they madly loved. I was devilish put out, you know, that I had never tried it so I _could_ know.

From across the hall droned the voices from the smoking-room--Colonel Kirkland and the judge debating something about treaty ports and the Manchurian railway. Through the French windows from the open loggia came the eager, pitched tones of the professor and the frump--no, Elizabeth, I mean--discussing Aldeberan and Betelguese, dead suns, star cl.u.s.ters and the nebular hypothesis.

Within the room Billings had snapped out the lights, to bring out the blazing fire of his treasured ruby, and from the tray in the dark corner where he was closing it in his collection vault, it gleamed like the end of a bright cigar. The other four were absently clutched in my darling's hand and the crimson shine gleamed bravely through her finger bars.

"Carbuncles--ancient carbuncles," the professor had called them, "that the Chinese believed their dragons carried in their mouths, in their black caves in days of old, to furnish light whereby they could see to devour their victims." And _that_ I believed, for I could see some practical sense about it!

"What _I_ should like to know," said the dear, precious cub, hugging his knee by the mantel, "is where _I_ come in!"

"You don't come in," said Billings, lifting him playfully by the ear; "you come _out_!" And out they went.

And my dear girl and I were like what's-his-name's picture--alone at last, you know. She stirred softly and her sigh came like the wind through the trees at night.

"I suppose we will have to burn them," she said dolefully; "the professor says it is the only thing to do."

"Jolly shame, I say!" I murmured indignantly.

"It seems a crime," she said softly, and there was a little choke in her voice. She slipped to the soft-fibered rug before the fire. I gently brought my chair closer to her.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

For a moment she pressed her cheek against the crimson ma.s.s, then kneeling forward, laid it gently on the glowing coals. There was a flash, a lightning blaze of red that almost blinded us, and then for a brief s.p.a.ce a field of shining ash. Against this the tiny serpent frogs writhed and twisted and turned at last to leaden gray. Over the spread of all, swept wave after wave of golden, crimsoned pictures--temples and paG.o.das--dragons that licked fiery tongues at us--strange faces that came and went, leering hideously into our own.

And then of a sudden it was all faded--gone! The breeze from the open window stirred the ashes to the side. She dropped back with a deep sigh.

"They're gone," she breathed mournfully.

"Never mind," I said; "you've these left." And daringly I laid my hand upon the one that clasped the rubies. And I thrilled as it lay still beneath my own.

"Good-by, you dear old, wicked, enchanted pajamas," she said. "I don't care--I just love you, because--" She paused.

"Because they brought us together?" By Jove, I didn't know I had said it, till it came out!

An instant, and then I caught it--just a little whisper, you know:

"Yes--d.i.c.ky!"

By Jove! And then, dash it, my monocle dropped! But I let it go.

Presently she looked at the glowing rubies in her hand.

"They are from India, you know, d.i.c.ky--from Mandalay, the professor said." And she murmured: "'On the road to Mandalay, where the old flotilla lay'--don't you remember? I've been there, d.i.c.ky."

"By Jove!" I said. "Have you, though? Is it jolly?"

"The poet seemed to think so--" She laughed. "Do you know Kipling, d.i.c.ky?" I tried to think, but dashed if I could remember.

I wondered if it would be a good place to take a trip to!