I went up the steps and into the office, where the hotel proprietor suavely greeted me, asked after my health, and inquired how my "estate"

was getting on.

"You mean my farm," said I.

He smiled politely, but not without a skepticism which annoyed me. I hastened from him, and left my ma.n.u.script with the stenographer, who had arrived for the summer.

"I'll call for the copy to-morrow noon," said I. Then I went to the telegraph booth and sent a day letter to Stella. "Buster sending me to thank you," it read. "Meet me Hotel Belmont six to-morrow. Sold over a bushel of peas to-day. Prepare to celebrate."

"Mike," said I, returning to the cart, "drop me at the golf club. Tell Mrs. Pillig not to expect me to lunch."

It was ten o'clock when we arrived at the entrance to the club. I jumped out and Mike drove on. The professional took my name, and promised to hand it to the proper authorities as a candidate. Then I paid the fee for the day, borrowed some clubs from him, and we set out. I had not touched a club since the winter set in. How good the driver felt in my hand! How sweetly the ball flew from the club (as the golf ball advertis.e.m.e.nts phrase it), on the first attempt! I sprang down the course in pursuit, elated to see that I had driven even with the pro.

Alas! my second was not like unto it! His second spun neatly up on the green and came to rest. Mine went off my mashie like a cannon ball, and overshot into the road. My third went ten feet. But it was glorious.

Why shouldn't a farmer play golf? Why shouldn't a golfer run a farm?

Why shouldn't either write stories? Heavens, what a lot of pleasant things there are to do in the world, I thought to myself, as I finally reached the green and sank my putt. Poor Stella, sweltering over a dictionary in New York! Soon she'd be here, too. She should learn to play golf, she should dig flower beds, she should wade in a brook. I flubbed my second drive.

"You're taking your eye off," said the pro.

"I'm taking my mind off," said I. "Give me a stroke a hole from here, for double the price of the round, or quits?"

"You're on," said he.

I stung him, too! I felt so elated that I went back to the hotel for an elaborate luncheon, and returned for eighteen holes more. The feats a man can perform the first day after he has had no sleep are astonishing. The second day it is different. In fact, I began to get groggy about the tenth hole that afternoon, so that the pro. got back his losses, as in a burst of bravado I had offered to double the morning bet. He came back with an unholy 68 that afternoon, confound him! They always do when the bet is big enough, which is really why they are called professionals.

That night I slept ten hours, worked over my ma.n.u.scripts most of the next morning, packed a load of them in my suitcase, and after an early dinner got Peter to drive me to the train, for his school had now closed.

"Peter," said I at the station, "your job is to take care of your mother, and keep the kindlings split, and drive to market for Mike when he needs you. Also to water the lawn and flower beds with the spray nozzle every morning. Mind, now, the spray nozzle! If I find you've used the heavy stream, I'll--I'll--I'll sell Buster!"

That amiable creature tried to climb aboard the train with me, and Peter had to haul him off by the tail. My last sight of Bentford was a yellow dog squirming and barking in a small boy's arms.

The train was hot and stuffy. It grew hotter and stuffier as we came out of the mountains into the Connecticut lowlands, and we were all sweltering in the Pullman by the time New York was reached. As I stepped out of the Grand Central station into Forty-second Street my ears were a.s.saulted by the unaccustomed din, my nose by the pungent odour of city streets, my eyes smarted in a dust whirl. But my heart was pounding with joy and expectation as I hurried across the street.

I climbed the broad steps to the lobby of the hotel, and scarcely had my feet reached the top than I saw a familiar figure rise from a chair.

I ran toward her, waving off the boy who rushed to grab my bag. A second later her hand was in mine, her eyes upon my eyes.

"It--it was nice of Buster to send you," she said.

"You look so white, so tired," I answered. "Where is all your tan?"

"Melted," she laughed. "Have you business in town? It's awfully hot here, you poor man."

"Yes," said I, "I have business here, very important business. But first some supper and a spree. I've got 'most two bushels of peas to spend!"

We had a gay supper, and then took a cab, left my grip at my college club, where I had long maintained a non-resident membership, and drove thence to Broadway.

"How like Bentford Main Street!" I laughed, as we emerged from Fourty-fourth Street into the blaze of grotesque electric signs which have a kind of bizarre beauty, none the less. "Where shall we go?"

"There's a revival of 'Patience' at the Casino," she suggested, "and there are the Ziegfeld Follies----"

"Not the Follies," I answered. "I'm neither a drummer nor a rural Sunday-school superintendent. Gilbert and Sullivan sounds good, and I've never heard 'Patience.'"

We found our places in the Casino just as the curtain was going up, and I saw "Patience" for the first time. I was glad it was for the first time, because she was with me, to share my delight. As incomparable tune after tune floated out to us the absurdest of absurd words, her eyes twinkled into mine, and our shoulders leaned together, and finally, between the seats, I squeezed her fingers with unrestrainable delight.

"Nice Gilbert and Sullivan," she whispered.

"It's a masterpiece; it's a masterpiece!" I whispered back. "It's as perfect in its way as--as your sundial! Oh, I'm so glad you are with me!"

"Is it worth coming way to New York for?"

"Under the conditions, around the world for," said I.

She coloured rosy, and looked back at the stage.

After the performance she would not let me get a cab. "You've not that many peas on the place," she said. So we walked downtown to her lodgings, through the hot, dusty, half-deserted streets, into the older section of the city below Fourteenth Street. I said little, save to answer her volley of eager questions about the farm. At the steps of an ancient house near Washington Square she paused.

"Here is where I live," she said. "I've had a lovely evening. Shall I see you again before you go back?"

I smiled, took the latchkey from her hand, opened the door, and stepped behind her, to her evident surprise, into the large, silent, musty-smelling hall. She darted a quick look about, but I ignored it, taking her hand and leading her quickly into the parlour, where, by the faint light from the hall, I could see an array of mid-Victorian plush. The house was silent. Still holding her hand, I drew her to me.

"I am not going back--alone," I whispered. "You are going with me.

Stella, I cannot live without you. Twin Fires is crying for its mistress.

You are going back, too, away from the heat and dust and the town, into a house where the sweet air wanders, into the pines where the hermit sings and the pool is thirsty for your feet."

I heard in the stillness a strange sob, and suddenly her head was on my breast and her tears were flowing. My arms closed about her.

Presently she lifted her face, and our lips met. She put up her hands and held my face within them. "So that was what the thrush said, after all," she whispered, with a hint of a happy smile.

"To me, yes," said I. "I didn't dream it was to you. _Was_ it to you?"

"That you'll never know," she answered, "and you'll always be too stupid to guess."

"Stupid! You called me that once before about the painters. Why were you angry about choosing the dining-room paint?"

She grew suddenly wistful. "I'll tell you that," she said. "It was--it was because you let a third person into our little drama of Twin Fires. I--I was a fool, maybe. But I was playing out a kind--a kind of dream of home building. Two can play such a dream, if they don't speak of it. But not three. Then it becomes--it becomes, well, matter-of-facty, and people talk, and the bloom goes, and--you hurt me a little, that's all."

I could not reply for a moment. What man can before the wistful sweetness of a woman's secret moods? I could only kiss her hair. Finally words came. "The dream shall be reality now," I said, "and you and I together will make Twin Fires the loveliest spot in all the hills.

To-morrow we'll buy a stair carpet, and--lots of things--together."

"Still with the pea money?" she gurgled, her gayety coming back. "No, sir; I've some money, too. Not much, but a little to take the place of the wedding presents I've no relatives to give me. I want to help furnish Twin Fires." She laid her fingers on my protesting lips. "I shall, anyway," she added. "We are two lone orphans, you and I, but we have each other, and all that is mine is yours, all--all--all!"

Suddenly she threw her arms about my neck, and I was silent in the mystery of her pa.s.sion.

Chapter XVII

I DO NOT RETURN ALONE