"And he"s sorry," supplemented Barbran.
"Yes; I wouldn"t wonder. Well, I won"t give him away," said the kindly journalist. "Now, as to the membership of your circle...."
The Sunday "story" covered a full page. The "millionairess" feature was played up conspicuously and repeatedly, and the ill.u.s.trations did what little the text failed to do. It was a "josh-story" from beginning to end.
"I"ll kill that pious fraud of a reporter," declared Phil.
"Now the place _is_ ruined," mourned Barbran.
"Wait and see," advised the wiser Cyrus.
Great is the power of publicity. The Wrightery was swamped with custom on the Monday evening following publication, and for the rest of that week and the succeeding week.
"I never was good at figures," said the transported Barbran to Phil Stacey at the close of the month, "but as near as I can make out, I"ve a clear profit of eight dollars and seventy cents. My fortune is made. And it"s all due to you."
Had the Bonnie La.s.sie been able to hold her painted retainers in line, the owner"s golden prophecy might have been made good. But they had other matters on hand for their evenings than sitting about in a dim cellar gazing cross-eyed at their own scandalous noses. MacLachan was the first defection. He said that he thought he was going crazy and he knew he was going blind. The Little Red Doctor was unreliable owing to the pressure of professional calls. He complained with some justice that a green nose on a practicing physician tended to impair confidence. Then Leon Coventry went away, and Boggs discovered (or invented) an important engagement with a growing family of clothes-moths in a Connecticut country house. So there remained only the faithful Phil. One swallow does not make a summer; nor does one youth with a vernal proboscis convince a skeptical public that it is enjoying the fearful companionship of a subversive and revolutionary cult. Patronage ebbed out as fast as it had flooded in. Barbran"s eyes were as soft and happy as ever in the evenings, when she and Phil sat in a less and less interrupted solitude. But in the mornings palpable fear stalked her.
Phil never saw it. He was preoccupied with a dread of his own.
One evening of howling wind and hammering rain, when all was cosy and home-like for two in the little firelit Wrightery, she nerved herself up to facing the facts.
"It"s going to be a failure," she said dismally.
"Then you"re going away?" he asked, trying to keep his voice from quaking.
She set her little chin quite firmly. "Not while there"s a chance left of pulling it out."
"Well; it doesn"t matter as far as I"m concerned," he muttered. "I"m going away myself."
"You?" She sat up very straight and startled. "Where?"
"Kansas City."
"Oh! What for?"
"Do you remember a fat old grandpa who was here last month and came back to ask about the decorations?"
"Yes."
"He"s built him a new house--he calls it a mansion--and he wants me to paint the music-room. He likes"--Phil gulped a little--"my style of art."
"Isn"t that great!" said Barbran in the voice of one giving three cheers for a funeral. "How does he want his music-room decorated?"
Young Phil put his head in his hands. "Scenes from Moody and Sankey," he said in a m.u.f.fled voice.
"Good gracious! You aren"t going to do it?"
"I am," retorted the other gloomily. "It"s good money." Almost immediately he added, "d.a.m.n the money!"
"No; no; you mustn"t do that. You must go, of course. Would--will it take long?"
"I"m not coming back."
"I don"t _want_ you not to come back," said Barbran, in a queer, frightened voice. She put out her hand to him and hastily withdrew it.
He said desperately: "What"s the use? I can"t sit here forever looking at you and--and dreaming of--of impossible things, and eating my heart out with my nose painted green."
"The poor nose!" murmured Barbran.
With one of her home-laundered handkerchiefs dipped in turpentine, she gently rubbed it clean. It then looked (as she said later in a feeble attempt to palliate her subsequent conduct) very pink and boyish and pathetic, but somehow faithful and reliable and altogether lovable.
So she kissed it. Then she tried to run away. The attempt failed.
It was not Barbran"s nose that got kissed next. Nor, for that matter, was it young Phil"s. Then he held her off and shut his eyes, for the untrammeled exercise of his reasoning powers, and again demanded of Barbran and the fates:
"What"s the use?"
"What"s the use of what?" returned Barbran tremulously.
"Of all this? Your father"s a millionaire, and I won"t--I can"t--"
"He isn"t!" cried Barbran. "And you can--you will."
"He isn"t?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Phil. "What is he?"
"He"s a school-teacher, and I haven"t got a thing but debts."
Phil received this untoward news as if a flock of angels, ringing joy bells, had just brought him the gladdest tidings in history. After an interlude he said:
"But, why--"
"Because," said Barbran, burrowing her nose in his coat: "I thought it would be an a.s.set. I thought people would consider it romantic and it would help business. See how much that reporter made of it! Phil!
Wh-wh-why are you treating me like a--a--a--dumbbell?"
For he had thrust her away from him at arm"s-length again.
"There"s one other thing between us, Barbran."
"If there is, it"s your fault. What is it?"
"Harvey Wheelwright," he said solemnly. "Do you really like that sickening slush-slinger?"
She raised to him eyes in which a righteous hate quivered. "I loathe him. I"ve always loathed him. I despise the very ink he writes with and the paper it"s printed on."
When I happened in a few minutes later, they were ritually burning the "Dear Friend and Admirer" letter in a slow candle-flame, and Harvey Wheelwright, as represented by his unctuously rolling signature, was writhing in merited torment. Between them they told me their little romance.
"And he"s not going to Kansas City," said Barbran defiantly.
"I"m not going anywhere, ever, away from Barbran," said young Phil.