"Look here, you"re a curious child, but a nervy one. How"d you like to see if you can get the Key? If you do we"ll go to a hotel and have a real meal, and we can talk about your Career."
Although quivering with Terror, I consented. How could I do otherwise, with such a prospect? For now I began to see that all other Emotions previously felt were as nothing to this one. I confess, without shame, that I felt the stiring of the Tender Pa.s.sion in my breast. Ah me, that it should have died ere it had hardly lived!
"Where is the key?" I asked, in a wrapt but anxious tone.
He thought a while.
"Generaly," he said, "it hangs on a nail at the back entry. But the chances are that Patten took it up to his room this time, for safety, You"d know it if you saw it. It has some b.u.t.tons off sombody"s batheing suit tied to it."
Here it was necessary to hide again, as father came stocking out, calling me in an angry tone. But shortly afterwards I was on my way to the Patten"s house, on shaking Knees. It was by now twilight, that beautiful period of Romanse, although the dinner hour also. Through the dusk I sped, toward what? I knew not.
The Pattens and the one-peace lady were at dinner, and having a very good time, in spite of having locked a Guest in the bath-house. Being used to servants and prowling around, since at one time when younger I had a habit of taking things from the pantrey, I was quickly able to see that the Key was not in the entry. I therfore went around to the front Door and went in, being prepared, if discovered, to say that somone was in their bath-house and they ought to know it. But I was not heard among their sounds of revelry, and was able to proceed upstairs, which I did.
But not having asked which was Mr. Patten"s room, I was at a loss and almost discovered by a maid who was turning down the beds--much to early, also, and not allowed in the best houses until nine-thirty, since otherwise the rooms look undressed and informle.
I had but Time to duck into another chamber, and from there to a closet.
I REMAINED IN THAT CLOSET ALL NIGHT.
I will explain. No sooner had the maid gone than a Woman came into the room and closed the door. I heard her moving around and I suddenly felt that she was going to bed, and might get her ROBE DE NUIT out of the closet. I was petrafied. But it seems, while she really WAS undressing at that early hour, the maid had laid her night clothes out, and I was saved.
Very soon a knock came to the door, and somhody came in, like Mrs.
Patten"s voice and said: "You"re not going to bed, surely!"
"I"m going to pretend to have a sick headache," said the other Person, and I knew it was the One-peace Lady. "He"s going to come back in a frenzey, and he"ll take it out on me, unless I"m prepared."
"Poor Reggie!" said Mrs. Patten, "To think of him locked in there alone, and no Clothes or anything. It"s too funny for words."
"You"re not married to him."
My heart stopped beating. Was SHE married to him? She was indeed. My dream was over. And the worst part of it was that for a married man I had done without Food or exercise and now stood in a hot closet in danger of a terrable fuss.
"No, thank Heaven!" said Mrs. Patten. "But it was the only way to make him work. He is a lazy dog. But don"t worry. We"ll feed him before he sees you. He"s always rather tractible after he"s fed."
Were ALL my dreams to go? Would they leave nothing to my shattered ilusions? Alas, no.
"Jolly him a little, to," said----can I write it?--Mrs. Beecher. "Tell him he"s the greatest thing in the World. That will help some. He"s vain, you know, awfully vain. I expect he"s written a lot of piffle."
Had they listened they would have heard a low, dry sob, wrung from my tortured heart. But Mrs. Beecher had started a vibrater, and my anguished cry was lost.
"Well," said Mrs. Patten, "Will has gone down to let him out, I expect he"ll attack him. He"s got a vile Temper. I"ll sit with you till he comes back, if you don"t mind. I"m feeling nervous."
It was indeed painful to recall the next half hour. I must tell the truth however. They discussed us, especialy mother, who had not called.
They said that we thought we were the whole summer Colony, although every one was afraid of mother"s tongue, and n.o.body would marry Leila, except Carter Brooks, and he was poor and no prospects. And that I was an incorrigable, and carried on somthing gastly, and was going to be put in a convent. I became justly furious and was about to step out and tell them a few plain Facts, when sombody hammered at the door and then came in. It was Mr. Patten.
"He"s gone!" he said.
"Well, he won"t go far, in bathing trunks," said Mrs. Beecher.
"That"s just it. His bathing trunks are there."
"Well, he won"t go far WITHOUT them!"
"He"s gone so far I can"t locate him."
I heard Mrs. Beecher get up.
"Are you in ernest, Will?" she said. "Do you mean that he has gone without a Stich of clothes, and can"t be found?"
Mrs. Patten gave a sort of screach.
"You don"t think--oh Will, he"s so tempermental. You don"t think he"s drowned himself?"
"No such luck," said Mrs. Beecher, in a cold tone. I hated her for it.
True, he had decieved me. He was not as I had thought him. In our to conversations he had not mentioned his wife, leaveing me to beleive him free to love "where he listed," as the poet says.
"There are a few clues," said Mr. Patten. "He got out by means of a wire hairpin, for one thing. And he took the ma.n.u.script with him, which he"d hardly have done if he meant to drown himself. Or even if, as we fear, he had no Pockets. He has smoked a lot of cigarettes out of a candy box, which I did not supply him, and he left behind a bath towle that does not, I think, belong to us."
"I should think he would have worn it," said Mrs. Beecher, in a scornfull tone.
"Here"s the bath towle," Mr. Patten went on. "You may recognize the initials. I don"t."
"B. P. A.," said Mrs. Beecher. "Look here, don"t they call that--that fliberty-gibbet next door "Barbara"?"
"The little devil!" said Mr. Patten, in a raging tone. "She let him out, and of course he"s done no work on the Play or anything. I"d like to choke her."
n.o.body spoke then, and my heart beat fast and hard. I leave it to anybody, how they"d like to be shut in a closet and threatened with a violent Death from without. Would or would they not ever be the same person afterwards?
"I"ll tell you what I"d do," said the Beecher woman. "I"d climb up the back of father, next door, and tell him what his little Daughter has done, Because I know she"s mixed up in it, towle or no towle. Reg is always sappy when they"re seventeen. And she"s been looking moon-eyed at him for days."
Well, the Pattens went away, and Mrs. Beecher manacured her Nails,--I could hear her fileing them--and sang around and was not much concerned, although for all she knew he was in the briney deep, a corpse. How true it is that "the paths of glory lead but to the grave."
I got very tired and much hoter, and I sat down on the floor. After what seemed like hours, Mrs. Patten came back, all breathless, and she said:
"The girl"s gone to, Clare."
"What girl?"
"Next door. If you want Excitement, they"ve got it. The mother is in hysterics and there"s a party searching the beech for her body, The truth is, of course, if that towle means anything."
"That Reg has run away with her, of course," said Mrs. Beecher, in a resined tone. "I wish he would grow up and learn somthing. He"s becoming a nusance. And when there are so many Interesting People to run away with, to choose that chit!"
Yes, she said that, And in my retreat I could but sit and listen, and of course perspire, which I did freely. Mrs. Patten went away, after talking about the "scandle" for some time. And I sat and thought of the beech being searched for my Body, a thought which filled my Eyes with tears of pity for what might have been, I still hoped Mrs. Beecher would go to bed, but she did not. Through the key hole I could see her with a Book, reading, and not caring at all that Mr. Beecher"s body, and mine to, might be washing about in the cruel Sea, or have eloped to New York.
I lothed her.
At last I must have slept, for a bell rang, and there I was still in the closet, and she was ansering it.