"It does interfere with our plans," she said crossly. "We were going up to the mountains for a beefsteak fry with Jimmy and Nolan."
"Never mind," said Marie softly. "It may come another Sunday. Mr. Landis seems to need you."
"All ready, Eveley? Let me help you. Good-by, Miss Ledesma."
And Eveley found herself marching briskly down the rustic steps away from her own plan and her own desire, and with no knowledge of what lay before her.
"You might at least tell me where we are going," she said at last, after he had hurried her into the car and started away.
"To see Miriam," he answered.
"Oh!" Eveley"s voice was a long gasp. She was content to wait after that for his explanation, although it was very slow in coming.
"She is at a ranch up in the mountains," he said finally. "About fifty miles. We just located her last night. I have been looking, for her all the time. You are going to talk to her for me."
"Oh, am I?"
"Yes. I was afraid to come alone for fear she would not see me. She will not refuse to see you."
"Do you mind telling me what I am going to say to her?"
He was silent a while, thinking. "She refused to take any money from me,"
he said, presently. "And she has very little. If she persists in this, she will have to work for her living. Miriam can not do that."
"No," said Eveley softly.
"She does not want me for a husband yet," he said humbly. "And that is right. But I must have Miriam, and she shall never have any one else but me--not that I think she would ever want anybody else. You are to tell Miriam she must come home, and live her life just as she wishes and do as she pleases in everything, and allow me to be a servant for her, to provide what she wants and needs, to take care of her if she is sick.
Tell her she may have any friends she likes, lovers even if she wishes, but that she must let me work for her."
Eveley laid her hand affectionately upon his arm. "I have never done you justice, Lem; forgive me. I think Miriam will come home. I hope she will."
"She has to. And after a while, when she sees in me what she used to think was there, she will love me again. But in the meantime, I shall ask nothing and expect nothing. But Miriam has got to be in the house."
Eveley only spoke once after that.
"If she will not come?"
He turned upon her then, a sudden grim smile lighting his face. "I know what I shall do then," he said. "But you will think it is madness. If she refuses to come, I shall make the necessary arrangements, and kidnap her.
She"s got to come."
Eveley burst into quick laughter at the picture that came to her--a picture of the old-time, immaculate Lem of the ballrooms, carrying his wife away into the mountains to live a cave-man life.
He laughed with her, but the dead-set of his face remained. "It sounds like a joke," he admitted. "But I have made up my mind. Miriam is mine, and I am going to have her. We"ll just go up into the mountains for a few months, and she will see that I am cured."
Mile after mile they drove in silence up the steep mountain grades, and after a long time he drew the car off beside the road under a cl.u.s.ter of trees.
"That is the ranch, but I will not drive in. If she saw us coming she would not talk to us, so you must catch her unawares. I shall wait here for you. You"d better not tell her I am going to kidnap her, I think I would rather take her by surprise. She has to come, Eve, now make her see it. Just a servant that is all I want to be to her for a while. But she did love me, and she will again."
So Eveley walked swiftly up the drive to the house, keeping in the shadow as much as possible, surprised to know that after all the years of her disgust for the husband of her friend, her sympathies now were all with him.
At the kitchen door she a.s.sumed her most winsome and disarming smile and asked for Mrs. Landis.
"She does not wish to see any one," said the woman quickly. "She said particularly that she would not see any callers."
"But she will see me, I am sure," said Eveley coaxingly. "You ask her.
Tell her it is Eveley Ainsworth. She always sees me."
"But she told me particularly," repeated the woman. "And she is not here anyhow. She has gone over the hill. She likes to be among the pines. She is not well, either. I am sorry, miss, but she is not here, and she would not see you if she were."
"How far is it to the hill? And does she stay long?"
"It is not far," said the woman, with a wave of her hand toward the east.
"But she will not come home for luncheon. She has no appet.i.te. And the boys are out, so I have no one to send for her. I am sorry, miss."
"You think there is no use to wait, then?"
"Oh, no use at all, miss. She will be gone for hours, and she would not see you if she were here."
"Tell her I came, won"t you? Eveley Ainsworth. Thank you."
And with another disarming smile Eveley turned back to the path. But as soon as she was out of sight of the house, she slipped off through the trees, and started on a light run for the pine grove on the hill to the east.
"As Lem says, poor thing, she has to," she said to herself, with a smile.
And very soon she was among the big pines, looking eagerly back and forth, quite determined not to return to Lem until she had seen Miriam and talked her into reason. And so at last she came upon her, sitting somberly under the big trees, her back against a huge boulder, staring away down the mountains into the haze of the sea in the west, where her husband lived in the city by the bay.
"Miriam," Eveley called in a ringing voice, and ran joyously down the path.
Miriam sprang up to meet her. "Eveley!" she cried, catching her hands eagerly. And then, "Have you seen--Lem? Is he--all right?"
Eveley held her hands a moment, looking searchingly into the thin face and the shadowy eyes.
"Revolutions are hard work, aren"t they?" she asked with deep sympathy.
"Oh, Eveley, they are killing, heart-breaking, soul-wracking," she cried.
"And yet of course it was right and best for me to come," she added gravely. "Does Lem seem to--miss me?" And there was wistfulness in her voice.
"He is out there now," said Eveley, waving her hand toward the road. "He brought me up."
At the first word, Miriam had turned quickly, ready to run down--not to the house for shelter, but to the car for comfort. But she stopped in a moment, and came back.
"I shall not see him, of course," she said quietly.
"I brought a message from him. He says you must come home, Miriam, he says his madness is all purged away, and that you are his and he must have you. But he wants you to come and live your own life and do as you wish, only allowing him, to stay in the home not as your husband, but as your servant until you learn to love and trust him again. He says you must come, and let him work for you, and take care of you."
Miriam"s face was very white, and her eyes deep wells of pain.
"Poor Lem!" she said tenderly. "So sweet--and so weak."
"I think he is finding strength," said Eveley.