There"s that well-known phrase with which I have ended most of our conversations for the past few years--"Shut up!""
And with that she turned, included the two old men, the officer, and the two sailors in a curt glance of contempt, and walked proudly down the companionway.
But had she waited an instant longer she would have heard a sound from her uncle quite unfamiliar in most of their interviews. He gave vent to a whole-hearted amused chuckle, in which the second old man joined.
The latter turned briskly to Carlyle, who had been regarding this scene with an air of cryptic amus.e.m.e.nt.
"Well Toby," he said genially, "you incurable, hare-brained romantic chaser of rainbows, did you find that she was the person you wanted?"
Carlyle smiled confidently.
"Why--naturally," he said "I"ve been perfectly sure ever since I first heard tell of her wild career. That"d why I had Babe send up the rocket last night."
"I"m glad you did," said Colonel Moreland gravely. "We"ve been keeping pretty close to you in case you should have trouble with those six strange n.i.g.g.e.rs. And we hoped we"d find you two in some such compromising position," he sighed. "Well, set a crank to catch a crank!"
"Your father and I sat up all night hoping for the best--or perhaps it"s the worst. Lord knows you"re welcome to her, my boy.
She"s run me crazy. Did you give her the Russian bracelet my detective got from that Mimi woman?"
Carlyle nodded.
"Sh!" he said. "She"s coming on deck."
Ardita appeared at the head of the companionway and gave a quick involuntary glance at Carlyle"s wrists. A puzzled look pa.s.sed across her face. Back aft the negroes had begun to sing, and the cool lake, fresh with dawn, echoed serenely to their low voices.
"Ardita," said Carlyle unsteadily.
She swayed a step toward him.
"Ardita," he repeated breathlessly, "I"ve got to tell you the--the truth. It was all a plant, Ardita. My name isn"t Carlyle. It"s Moreland, Toby Moreland. The story was invented, Ardita, invented out of thin Florida air."
She stared at him, bewildered, amazement, disbelief, and anger flowing in quick waves across her face. The three men held their breaths. Moreland, Senior, took a step toward her; Mr. Farnam"s mouth dropped a little open as he waited, panic-stricken, for the expected crash.
But it did not come. Ardita"s face became suddenly radiant, and with a little laugh she went swiftly to young Moreland and looked up at him without a trace of wrath in her gray eyes.
"Will you swear," she said quietly "That it was entirely a product of your own brain?"
"I swear," said young Moreland eagerly.
She drew his head down and kissed him gently.
"What an imagination!" she said softly and almost enviously. "I want you to lie to me just as sweetly as you know how for the rest of my life."
The negroes" voices floated drowsily back, mingled in an air that she had heard them singing before.
"Time is a thief; Gladness and grief Cling to the leaf As it yellows---"
"What was in the bags?" she asked softly.
"Florida mud," he answered. "That was one of the two true things I told you."
"Perhaps I can guess the other one," she said; and reaching up on her tiptoes she kissed him softly in the ill.u.s.tration.
The Ice Palace
The sunlight dripped over the house like golden paint over an art jar, and the freckling shadows here and there only intensified the rigor of the bath of light. The b.u.t.terworth and Larkin houses flanking were entrenched behind great stodgy trees; only the Happer house took the full sun, and all day long faced the dusty road-street with a tolerant kindly patience. This was the city of Tarleton in southernmost Georgia, September afternoon.
Up in her bedroom window Sally Carrol Happer rested her nineteen-year-old chin on a fifty-two-year-old sill and watched Clark Darrow"s ancient Ford turn the corner. The car was hot--being partly metallic it retained all the heat it absorbed or evolved--and Clark Darrow sitting bolt upright at the wheel wore a pained, strained expression as though he considered himself a spare part, and rather likely to break. He laboriously crossed two dust ruts, the wheels squeaking indignantly at the encounter, and then with a terrifying expression he gave the steering-gear a final wrench and deposited self and car approximately in front of the Happer steps. There was a heaving sound, a death-rattle, followed by a short silence; and then the air was rent by a startling whistle.
Sally Carrol gazed down sleepily. She started to yawn, but finding this quite impossible unless she raised her chin from the window-sill, changed her mind and continued silently to regard the car, whose owner sat brilliantly if perfunctorily at attention as he waited for an answer to his signal. After a moment the whistle once more split the dusty air.
"Good mawnin"."
With difficulty Clark twisted his tall body round and bent a distorted glance on the window.
"Tain"t mawnin", Sally Carrol."
"Isn"t it, sure enough?"
"What you doin"?"
"Eatin" "n apple."
"Come on go swimmin"--want to?"
"Reckon so."
"How "bout hurryin" up?"
"Sure enough."
Sally Carrol sighed voluminously and raised herself with profound inertia from the floor where she had been occupied in alternately destroyed parts of a green apple and painting paper dolls for her younger sister. She approached a mirror, regarded her expression with a pleased and pleasant languor, dabbed two spots of rouge on her lips and a grain of powder on her nose, and covered her bobbed corn-colored hair with a rose-littered sunbonnet. Then she kicked over the painting water, said, "Oh, d.a.m.n!"--but let it lay--and left the room.
"How you, Clark?" she inquired a minute later as she slipped nimbly over the side of the car.
"Mighty fine, Sally Carrol."
"Where we go swimmin"?"
"Out to Walley"s Pool. Told Marylyn we"d call by an" get her an"
Joe Ewing."
Clark was dark and lean, and when on foot was rather inclined to stoop. His eyes were ominous and his expression somewhat petulant except when startlingly illuminated by one of his frequent smiles. Clark had "a income"--just enough to keep himself in ease and his car in gasolene--and he had spent the two years since he graduated from Georgia Tech in dozing round the lazy streets of his home town, discussing how he could best invest his capital for an immediate fortune.