The small boy scrambled over nimbly, ran squirrel-like across the transverse fence, dipped, swarmed over the iron railing and stood on guard.
“Say, mister,” he said, “if the cat starts this way you and your girl start a hollerin’ like — —”
“All right,” interrupted Brown, and turned toward the vision of loveliness and distress which was now standing on the top of her own back fence holding fast to a wistaria trellis and flattering Clarence with low and honeyed appeals.
The cat, however, was either too stupid or too confused to respond; he gazed blankly at his mistress, and when Brown began furtively edging his way toward him Clarence arose, stood a second in alert indecision, then began to back away.
“We’ve got him between us!” called out Brown. “If you’ll stand ready to seize him when I drive him — —”
There was a wild scurry, a rush, a leap, frantic clawing for foothold.
“Now, Miss Betty! Quick!” cried Brown. “Don’t let him pass you.”
She spread her skirts, but the shameless Clarence rushed headlong between the most delicately ornamental pair of ankles in Manhattan.
“Oh-h!” cried the girl in soft despair, and made a futile clutch; but she could not arrest the flight of Clarence, she merely upset him, turning him for an instant into a furry pinwheel, whirling through mid-air, landing in her yard, rebounding like a rubber ball, and disappearing, with one flying leap, into a narrow opening in the basement masonry.
“Where is he?” asked Brown, precariously balanced on the next fence.
“Do you know,” she said, “this is becoming positively ghastly. He’s bolted into our cellar.”
“Why, that’s all right, isn’t it?” asked Brown. “All you have to do is to go inside, descend to the cellar, and light the gas.”
“There’s no gas.”
“You have electric light?”
“Yes, but it’s turned off at the main office. The house is closed for the summer, you know.”
Brown, balancing cautiously, walked the intervening fence like an amateur on a tightrope.
Her pretty hat was a trifle on one side; her cheeks brilliant with excitement and anxiety. Utterly oblivious of herself and of appearances in her increasing solicitude for the adored Clarence, she sat the fence, cross saddle, balancing with one hand and pointing with the other to the barred ventilator into which Clarence had darted.
A wisp of sunny hair blew across her crimson cheek; slender, active, excitedly unconscious of self, she seemed like some eager, adorable little gamin perched there, intent on mischief.
“If you’ll drop into our yard,” she said, “and place that soap box against the ventilator, Clarence can’t get out that way!”
It was done before she finished the request. She disengaged herself from the fencetop, swung over, hung an instant, and dropped into a soft flower bed.
Breathing fast, disheveled, they confronted one another on the grass. His blue suit of serge was smeared with whitewash; her gown was a sight. She felt for her hat instinctively, repinned it at hazard, looked at her gloves, and began to realize what she had done.
“I — I couldn’t help it,” she faltered; “I couldn’t leave Clarence in a city of five m-million strangers — all alone — terrified out of his senses — could I? I had rather — rather be thought — anything than be c-cruel to a helpless animal.”
Brown dared not trust himself to answer. She was too beautiful and his emotion was too deep. So he bent over and attempted to dust his garments with the flat of his hand.
“I am so sorry,” she said in a low voice. “Are your clothes quite ruined?”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” he protested happily, “I really don’t mind a bit. If you’ll only let me help you corner that infern — that unfortunate cat I shall be perfectly happy.”
She said, with heightened color: “It is exceedingly nice of you to say so.... I — I don’t quite know — what do you think we had better do?”
“Suppose,” he said, “you go into the basement, unlock the cellar door and call. He can’t bolt this way.”
She nodded and entered the house. A few moments later he heard her calling, so persuasively that it was all he could do not to run to her, and why on earth that cat didn’t he never could understand.
XI
BETTY
In Which the Remorseless and Inexorable Results of Psychical Research Are Revealed to the Very Young
At intervals for the next ten minutes her fresh, sweet, fascinating voice came to him where he stood in the yard; then he heard it growing fainter, more distant, receding; then silence.
Listening, he suddenly heard a far, rushing sound from subterranean depths — like a load of coal being put in — then a frightened cry.
He sprang into the basement, ran through laundry and kitchen. The cellar door swung wide open above the stairs which ran down into darkness; and as he halted to listen Clarence dashed up out of the depths, scuttled around the stairs and fled upward into the silent regions above.
“Betty!” he cried, forgetting in his alarm the lesser conventions, “where are you?”
“Oh, dear — oh, dear!” she wailed. “I am in such a dreadful plight. Could you help me, please?”
“Are you hurt?” he asked. Fright made his voice almost inaudible. He struck a match with shaking fingers and ran down the cellar stairs.
“Betty! Where are you?”
“Oh, I am here — in the coal.”
“What?”
“I — I can’t seem to get out; I stepped into the coal pit in the dark and it all — all slid with me and over me and I’m in it up to the shoulders.”
Another match flamed; he saw a stump of a candle, seized it, lighted it, and, holding it aloft, gazed down upon the most heart rending spectacle he had ever witnessed.
The next instant he grasped a shovel and leaped to the rescue. She was quite calm about it; the situation was too awful, the future too hopeless for mere tears. What had happened contained all the dignified elements of a catastrophe. They both realized it, and when, madly shoveling, he at last succeeded in releasing her she leaned her full weight on his own, breathing rapidly, and suffered him to support and guide her through the flame-shot darkness to the culinary regions above.
Here she sank down on a chair for one moment in utter collapse. Then she looked up, resolutely steadying her voice:
“Could anything on earth more awful have happened to a girl?” she asked, lips quivering in spite of her. She stretched out what had once been a pair of white gloves, she looked down at what had been a delicate summer gown of white. “How,” she asked with terrible calmness, “am I to get to Oyster Bay?”
He dropped on to a kitchen chair opposite her, clasping his coal-stained hands between his knees, utterly incapable of speech.
She looked at her shoes — once snowy white; with a shudder she stripped the soiled gloves from elbow to wrist and flung them aside. Her arms and hands formed a starling contrast to the remainder of the ensemble.
“What,” she asked, “am I to do?”
“The thing to do,” he said, “is to telephone to your family at Oyster Bay.”
“The telephone has been disconnected. So has the water — we can’t even w-wash our hands!” she faltered.
He said: “I can go out and telephone to your family to send a maid with some clothes for you — if you don’t mind being left alone in an empty house for a little while.”
“No, I don’t; but,” she gazed uncertainly at the black opening of the cellar, “but, please, don’t be gone very long, will you?”
He promised fervidly. She gave him the number and her family’s name, and he left by the basement door.
He was gone a long time, during which, for a while, she paced the floor, unaffectedly wringing her hands and contemplating herself and her garments in the laundry looking-glass.
At intervals she tried to turn on the water, hoping for a few drops at least; at intervals she sat down to wait f
or him; then, the inaction becoming unendurable, musing goaded her into motion, and she ascended to the floor above, groping through the dimness in futile search for Clarence. She heard him somewhere in obscurity, scurrying under furniture at her approach, evidently too thoroughly demoralized to recognize her voice. So, after a while, she gave it up and wandered down to the pantry, instinct leading her, for she was hungry and thirsty; but she knew there could be nothing eatable in a house closed for the summer.
She lifted the pantry window and opened the blinds; noon sunshine flooded the place, and she began opening cupboards and refrigerators, growing hungrier every moment.
Then her eyes fell upon dozens of bottles of Apollinaris, and with a little cry of delight she knelt down, gathered up all she could carry, and ran upstairs to the bathroom adjoining her own bedchamber.
“At least,” she said to herself, “I can cleanse myself of this dreadful coal!” and in a few moments she was reveling, elbow deep, in a marble basin brimming with Apollinaris.
As the stain of the coal disappeared she remembered a rose-colored morning gown reposing in her bedroom clothespress; and she found more than that there — rose stockings and slippers and a fragrant pile of exquisitely fine and more intimate garments, so tempting in their freshness that she hurried with them into the dressing room; then began to make rapid journeys up and downstairs, carrying dozens of quarts of Apollinaris to the big porcelain tub, into which she emptied them, talking happily to herself all the time.
“If he returns I can talk to him over the banisters!... He’s a nice boy.... Such a funny boy not to remember me.... And I’ve thought of him quite often.... I wonder if I’ve time for just one, delicious plunge?” She listened; ran to the front windows and looked out through the blinds. He was nowhere in sight.
Ten minutes later, delightfully refreshed, she stood regarding herself in her lovely rose-tinted morning gown, patting her bright hair into discipline with slim, deft fingers, a half-smile on her lips, lids closing a trifle over the pensive violet eyes.
“Now,” she said aloud, “I’ll talk to him over the banisters when he returns; it’s a little ungracious, I suppose, after all he has done, but it’s more conventional.... And I’ll sit here and read until they send somebody from Sandcrest with a gown I can travel in.... And then we’ll catch Clarence and call a cab — —”
A distant tinkling from the area bell interrupted her.
“Oh, dear,” she exclaimed, “I quite forgot that I had to let him in!”
Another tinkle. She cast a hurried and doubtful glance over her attire. It was designed for the intimacy of her boudoir.
“I — I couldn’t talk to him out of the window! I’ve been shocking enough as it is!” she thought; and, finger tips on the banisters, she ran down the three stairs and appeared at the basement grille, breathless, radiant, forgetting, as usual, her self-consciousness in thinking of him, a habit of this somewhat harebrained and headlong girl which had its root in perfect health of body and wholesomeness of mind.
“I found some clothes — not the sort I can go out in!” she said, laughing at his astonishment, as she unlocked the grille. “So, please, overlook my attire; I was so full of coal dust! and I found sufficient Apollinaris for my necessities.... What did they say at Sandcrest?”
He said very soberly: “We’ve got to discuss this situation. Perhaps I had better come in for a few minutes — if you don’t mind.”
“No, I don’t mind.... Shall we sit in the drying room?” leading the way. “Now tell me what is the matter? You rather frighten me, you know. Is — is anything wrong at Sandcrest?”
“No, I suppose not.” He touched his flushed face with his handkerchief; “I couldn’t get Oyster Bay on the ‘phone.”
“W-why not?”
“The wires are out of commission as far as Huntington; there’s no use — I tried everything! Telegraph and telephone wires were knocked out in this morning’s electric storm, it seems.”
She gazed at him, hands folded on her knee, left leg crossed over, foot swinging.
“This,” she said calmly, “is becoming serious. Will you tell me what I am to do?”
“Haven’t you anything to travel in?”
“Not one solitary rag.”
“Then — you’ll have to stay here to-night and send for some of your friends — you surely know somebody who is still in town, don’t you?”
“I really don’t. This is the middle of July. I don’t know a woman in town.”
He was silent.
“Besides,” she said, “we have no light, no water, nothing to eat in the house, no telephone to order anything — —”
He said: “I foresaw that you would probably be obliged to remain here, so when I left the telephone office I took the liberty of calling a taxi and visiting the electric light people, the telephone people and the nearest plumber. It seems he is your own plumber — Quinn, I believe his name is; and he’s coming in half an hour to turn on the water.”
“Did you think of doing all that?” she asked, astonished.
“Oh, that wasn’t anything. And I ventured to telephone the Plaza to serve luncheon and dinner here for you — —”
“You did?”
“And I wired to Dooley’s Agency to send you a maid for to-day — —”
“That was perfectly splendid of you!”
“They promised to send one as soon as possible.... And I think that may be the plumber now,” as a tinkle came from the area bell.
It was not the plumber; it was waiters bearing baskets full of silver, china, table linen, ice, fruits, confections, cut flowers, and, in warmers, a most delectable luncheon.
Four impressive individuals commanded by a butler formed the processional, filing solemnly up the basement stairs to the dining room, where they instantly began to lay the table with dexterous celerity.
In the drying room below Betty and Beekman Brown stood confronting each other.
“I suppose,” began Brown with an effort, “that I had better go now.”
Betty said thoughtfully: “I suppose you must.”
“Unless,” continued Brown, “you think I had better remain — somewhere on the premises — until your maid arrives.”
“That might be safer,” said Betty, more thoughtfully.
“Your maid will probably be here in a few minutes.”
“Probably,” said Betty, head bent, slim, ringless fingers busy with the sparkling drop that glimmered pendant from her neckchain.
Silence — the ironing board between them — she standing, bright head lowered, worrying the jewel with childish fingers; he following every movement, fascinated, spellbound.
After a moment, without looking up: “You have been very, very nice to me — in the nicest possible way,” she said.... “I am not going to forget it easily — even if I might wish to.”
“I can never forget you!... I d-don’t want to.”
The sparkling pendant escaped her fingers; she picked it up again and spoke as though gravely addressing it:
“Some day somewhere,” she said, looking at the jewel, “perhaps chance — the hazard of life — may bring us to — togeth — to acquaintance — a more formal acquaintance than this.... I hope so. This has been a little — irregular, and perhaps you had better not wait for my maid.... I hope we may meet — sometime.”
“I hope so, too,” he managed to say, with so little fervor and so successful an imitation of her politely detached interest in convention that she raised her eyes. They dropped immediately, because his quiet voice and speech scarcely conformed to the uncontrolled protest in his eyes.
For a moment she stood, passing the golden links through her white fingers like a young novice with a rosary. Steps on the stairs disturbed them; the recessional had begun; four solemn persons filed out the area gate. At the same moment, suave and respectful, her butler pro tem. presented himself at the doorway:
“Luncheon is served, madam.”
“Thank you.” She looked
uncertainly at Brown, hesitated, flushed a trifle.
“I will stay here and admit the plumber and then — then — I’ll g-go,” he said with a heartbroken smile.
“I suppose you took the opportunity to lunch when you went out?” she said. Her inflection made it a question.
Without answering he stepped back to allow her to pass. She moved forward, turned, undecided.
“Have you lunched?”
“Please don’t feel that you ought to ask me,” he began, and checked himself as the vivid pink deepened in her cheeks. Then she freed herself of embarrassment with a little laugh.
“Considering,” she said, “that we have been chasing cats on the back fences together and that, subsequently, you dug me out of the coal in my own cellar, I can’t believe it is very dreadful if I ask you to luncheon with me.... Is it?”
“It is ador — it is,” he corrected himself firmly, “exceedingly civil of you to ask me!”
“Then — will you?” almost timidly.
“I will. I shall not pretend any more. I’d rather lunch with you than be President of this Republic.”
The butler pro tem. seated her.
“You see,” she said, “a place had already been laid for you.” And with the faintest trace of malice in her voice: “Perhaps your butler had his orders to lay two covers. Had he?”
“From me?” he protested, reddening.
“You don’t suspect me, do you?” she asked, adorably mischievous. Then glancing over the masses of flowers in the center and at the corners of the lace cloth: “This is deliciously pretty. But you are either dreadfully and habitually extravagant or you believe I am. Which is it?”
“I think both are true,” he said, laughing.
And a little while later when he returned from the basement after admitting Mr. Quinn, the plumber:
“Do you know that this is a most heavenly luncheon?” she said, greeting his return with delightfully fearless eyes. “Such Astrakan caviar! Such salad! Everything I care for most. And how on earth you guessed I can’t imagine.... I’m beginning to think you are rather wonderful.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 471