The Adventures of a Modest Man. Robert W. ChambersЧитать онлайн книгу.
let me gamble just once at the club—won't you?"
"Not much! Where did you hear that sort of talk, Catharine?"
"Don't tweak Omar's tail and I'll tell you—there! you've done it again, and I won't tell you."
He fell to stroking the cat's fur, gazing the while into space with an absent eye that piqued her curiosity. For a year now he had acquired that trick of suddenly detaching himself from earth and gazing speculatively toward heaven, lost in a revery far from flattering to the ignored onlooker. And now he was doing it again under her very nose. What was he thinking about? He seemed, all at once, a thousand miles removed from her. Where were his thoughts?
Touched in her amour propre, she quietly resumed the map of southern Florida; but even the rustle of the paper did not disturb his self-centred and provoking meditation.
She looked at him, looked at the map, considered him again, and finally watched him.
Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she thought him dangerously attractive. Surprised and interested, she regarded him in this new light, impersonally for the moment. So far away had he apparently drifted in his meditation that it seemed to her as though she were observing a stranger—a most interesting and most unusual young man.
He turned and looked her straight in the eyes.
Twenty-two, and her first season half over, and to be caught blushing like a school-girl!
There was no constraint; her self-possession cooled her cheeks—and he was not looking at her, after all: he was looking through her, at something his fancy focused far, far beyond her.
Never had she thought any man half as attractive as this old friend in a new light—this handsome, well-built, careless young fellow absorbed in thoughts which excluded her. No doubt he was so habituated to herself in all her moods that nothing except the friendliest indifference could ever——
To her consternation another tint of warm color slowly spread over neck and cheek. He rose at the same moment, dropped the cat back among the cushions, and smiling down at her, held out his hand. She took it, met his eyes with an effort; but what message she divined in them Heaven alone knows, for all at once her heart stood still and a strange thrill left her fingers nerveless in his hand.
He was saying slowly, "Then I shall see you at Palm Beach next week?"
"Yes.... You will come, won't you?"
"Yes, I will come."
"But if you—change your mind?"
"I never change. May I write you?"
"Good-night.... You may write me if you wish."
"I will write, every day—if you don't mind."
"No—I don't mind," she said thoughtfully.
She withdrew her hand and stood perfectly still as he left the room. She heard a servant open the door, she heard Harroll's quick step echo on the stoop, then the door closed.
A second later Mr. Delancy in the library was aroused from complacent meditation by the swish of a silken skirt, and glancing up, beheld a tall, prettily formed girl looking at him with a sober and rather colorless face.
"Father," she said, "I'm in love with Jim Harroll!"
Mr. Delancy groped for his monocle, screwed it into his left eye, and examined his daughter.
"It's true, and I thought I'd better tell you," she said.
"Yes," he agreed, "it's as well to let me know. Ah—er—when and how did it occur?"
"I don't know, father. I was feeding Omar bonbons and looking over the map of South Florida, and thinking about nothing in particular, when Jim came in. He said he was going to Palm Beach, and I said, 'How jolly!' and he sat down and picked up Omar, and—I don't know how it was, but I began to think him very attractive, and the first thing I knew—it—happened!"
"Oh! So that's the way it happened?"
"I think it was, father."
"No doubt you'll outgrow it."
"Do you think so?"
"I haven't a doubt of it, little daughter."
"I have."
Mr. Delancy dropped his monocle and looked at the fire. The fire was all right.
"Do you—do you suppose that Jim is—does—thinks—knows——"
"I never speculate on what Jim is, does, thinks, or knows," said her father, thoughtfully, stirring the embers and spoiling a perfectly good fire. When he looked up again she had gone.
"One theory smashed!" observed Mr. Delancy. "I'll try another, with separation as the main ingredient."
He sat down before the fire and lighted a fresh cigar, which wasn't good for him.
"Must avoid making a martyr of Jim or there will be trouble," he mused. "There remains another way—make a martyr of myself."
He sat swinging his monocle around his forefinger, gazing vacantly at the pattern the shadows cast across the hearth.
"Avalon!" he said, abruptly. "Avalon! The 'back-to-nature' business, 'grass-cure' and all. It can't harm either Catharine or me, I fancy—or any other pair of donkeys!"
CHAPTER III
TROUBLE FOR TWO
A Note Found by Young Harroll on his Dresser the Evening of his Arrival at Palm Beach.
"11.30 a.m.
"Dear Jim—Everything is spoiled, after all! Father's failing health has suddenly become a serious matter, and we are going to try the 'nature cure,' or whatever they call it, at Avalon Island. I had no idea he was really ill. Evidently he is alarmed, for we have only been here six days, and in a few minutes we are to start for Avalon. Isn't it perfectly horrid? And to think that you are coming this evening and expecting to find us here!
"Father says you can't come to Avalon; that only invalids are received (I didn't know I was one, but it seems I'm to take the treatment, too!), and he says that nobody is received for less than a month's treatment, so I suppose that bars you even if you were self-sacrificing enough to endure a 'nature cure' for the pleasure of spending two weeks with [me, crossed out] us.
"I'm actually on the verge of tears when I think of all we had planned to do together! And there's my maid at the door, knocking. Good-by. You will write, won't you?
"Catharine Delancy."
Mr. James Harroll to Miss Catharine Delancy, Avalon, Balboa County, Florida.
"Holy Cross Light, February 15.
"Dear Catharine—Your father was right: they refuse to take me at Avalon. As soon as I found your note I telegraphed to Avalon for accommodations. It seems Avalon is an island, and they have to wait for the steamers to carry telegrams over from the mainland. So the reply has just reached me that they won't take me for less than a month; and my limit from business is two weeks or give up my position with your father.
"Yesterday I came out here to Holy Cross Spring to shoot ducks. I'd scarcely begun shooting, at dawn, when along came a couple of men through the fog, rowing like the mischief plump into my decoys, and I shouted out, 'What the deuce are you about?' and they begged my pardon, and said they had