As she came up one of them put her arm around her.
"My poor child," she said, "that man will never do."
"W-what!" faltered the girl, turning pale.
"Why, no. How in the world could you make such a mistake?"
Ethra looked piteously from one to another.
"What is the matter with him?" she asked. "I can"t see anything the matter with him. If his legs are a trifle--refined in contour--a bicycle will help----"
"But, Ethra, this is not a hospital, dear. This is not a sanitarium. We don"t want any imperfect living creature inside this preserve."
"W-w-what is your decision?" asked the girl; and her underlip began to quiver, but she controlled it.
"The first vote," said Miss Challis, "was for his instant eviction, Miss Vining dissenting. The second vote was for his expulsion with the privilege of taking another examination in three months--Miss Darrell dissenting----"
"I think he"s the limit," said Miss Darrell.
"Why, Jessica!" exclaimed Ethra, swallowing a sob.
"The next vote," continued Betty Challis, "was whether he might not remain here a day or two for closer observation. Jessica hasn"t voted yet, but Phyllis Vining and I are willing----"
"Oh, Jessica!" pleaded Ethra, catching her hands and pressing them to her own breast, "I--I beg you will let him remain--if only for a few days! Please, please, dear. I know his calves will grow if scientifically ma.s.saged; and if he is hygienically fed he will improve----"
Miss Darrell looked curiously at her; under her hands the girl"s heart was beating wildly.
"Well, then, Betty," she said to Miss Challis, "I vote we keep him under observation for a day or two. Give him the yellow ribbon." And, bending, she kissed Ethra lightly on the lips, whispering: "I"m afraid we won"t be able to keep him, dear. But if you"d like to have a little fun with him and jolly him along, why--why, I was a flirt myself in the old days of the old regime."
"That is all I want," said Ethra, dimpling with delight. "I want to see how far I can go with him just for the fun of it."
Miss Darrell smiled tenderly at the girl and strolled off to join the other Regents; and Ethra, her thoughtful eyes fixed on Langdon, came slowly back, the yellow ribbon trailing in her hand.
Langdon leaped to his feet to meet her, gazing delightedly at the yellow ribbon.
"I qualified, of course!" he said joyously. "When is it customary to begin the courting?"
"You haven"t qualified," said the girl, watching the effect of her words on the young man. "This is merely the probation ribbon."
An immense astonishment silenced him. She drew the big orange-coloured ribbon through his b.u.t.ton-hole, tied it into a bow, patted it out into flamboyant smartness, and, stepping back, gazed at him without any particular expression in her dark blue eyes.
"Then, then I may be chased away at any moment?" he asked unsteadily.
"I am afraid so."
Thunderstruck, he stared at her: "What on earth are we to do?" he groaned.
"We?"
"You and I?"
"How does it concern me?" asked the girl coldly.
"Doesn"t it?"
She looked him calmly in the eye and shook her head.
"No, Mr. Langdon. However, as you are to remain here for a day or two under observation, no doubt you will receive some attention."
"Ethra! Isn"t it possible that you might learn to care----"
"Hush! That is no way to talk!"
"Well--well, I can"t wait for you to----"
"You must wait! You have nothing to say about such things until some girl asks you. And that isn"t very likely. Those four perfectly handsome young men have been here for weeks now, and, although they have received lots of attention, not one girl has yet made any of them an actual declaration. The girls here are having too good a time to do anything more serious than a little fussing--just enough to frisk a kiss now and then and keep the men amused----"
"That is monstrous!" said Langdon, very red. "When a man"s really in love----"
"Nonsense! Men are flirts--every one of them!"
She laughed, made him a little gesture of adieu, refused to let him follow her, and coolly sauntered off among the trees, heedless of his remonstrances at being left to himself.
He watched her until she disappeared, then, with misgivings, walked toward a tennis court, where the four men were playing a rather dawdling and indifferent game and keeping a lively eye out for the advent of some girl.
They appeared to be rather good-looking fellows, not in any way extraordinary, remarkable neither for symmetry of feature nor of limb.
Langdon stood at the edge of the court looking at them and secretly comparing their beauty with such charms as he was shyly inclined to attribute to himself. There could be no doubt that he compared favourably with them. If he was some, they were not so much.
One, a tall young fellow with blond, closely clipped hair, nodded pleasantly to him, and presently came over to speak to him.
"I suppose you are a new recruit. Glad to see you. We"re all anxious to have enough men captured to get up two ball nines. My name is Reginald Willett."
"Mine is Curtis Langdon."
"Come over and meet the others," said Willett pleasantly.
Langdon followed him, and was presently on excellent terms with James Carrick, De Lancy Smith, and Alphonso W. Green, amiable, clean cut, everyday young fellows.
To them he related the circ.u.mstances of his capture, and they all laughed heartily. Then he told them that he was here merely on probation for a day or two, navely displaying the yellow ribbon.
Willett laughed. "Oh, that"s all right. They usually say that. We all came in on probation; the Regents couldn"t agree, and some girl always swings the deciding vote as a special favour to herself."
"You don"t think they"ll kick me out?"
"Not much!" laughed Willett. "First of all, your captor would object--not necessarily for sentimental reasons, but because she caught you; you are hers, her game; she says to herself: "A poor thing, but mine own!" and hangs to you like grim death. Besides, no woman ever lets any man loose voluntarily. And women haven"t changed radically, Mr. Langdon. Don"t worry; you can stay, all right."
"Here comes Betty Challis," said Carrick, glancing at Alphonso W. Green. "It"s you for a stroll, I guess."
Mr. Green looked conscious; more conscious still when the pretty Miss Challis strolled up, presented him with a bouquet, and stood for a few moments conversing with everybody, perfectly at her ease. Other girls came up and engaged the young men in lively conversation. Presently Miss Challis made a play for hers: "Would you care to canoe, Mr. Green?" she asked casually, turning to him with a slight blush which she could not control.
Green blushed, too, and consented in a low voice.
As they were departing, Miss Vining rode up on horseback, leading another horse, which De Lancy Smith, at her request, nimbly mounted; and away they galloped down a cool forest road, everybody looking after them.
Miss Darrell cut out and roped Willett presently and took him to walk in the direction of a pretty cascade.
A charming girl, a Miss Trenor, arrived with a hammock, book, and bon-bons, and led Carrick away somewhere by virtue of a previous agreement, and the remaining girls pretended not to care, and strolled serenely off in pretty bunches, leaving Langdon standing, first on one foot, then on the other, waiting to be spoken to.
Abandoned, he wandered about the tennis court, kicking the b.a.l.l.s moodily. Tiring of this, he sat down under a tree and twirled his thumbs.
Once or twice some slender figure pa.s.sed, glancing brightly at him, and he looked as shyly receptive as he could, but to no purpose. Gloom settled over him; hunger tormented him; he gazed disconsolately at the yellow ribbon in his b.u.t.ton-hole, and twiddled his thumbs.
And all the while, from the shadow of a distant cave, Ethra was watching him with great content. She knew he was hungry; she let him remain so. By absent treatment she was reducing him to a proper frame of mind.
The word had been pa.s.sed that he was Ethra"s quarry; mischievous bright eyes glanced at him, but no lips unclosed to speak to him; little feet strolled near him, even lingered a moment, but trotted on.
His sentiments varied from apathy to pathos, from self-pity to mortification, from hungry despair to an indignation no longer endurable.
He had enough of it--plenty. Anger overwhelmed him; hunger smothered sentiment; he rose in wrath and stalked off toward a girl who was strolling along, reading a treatise on eugenics.
"Will you be good enough to tell me how to get out?" he asked.
"Out?" she repeated. "Have you a pa.s.s to go out?"
"No, I haven"t. Where do I obtain one?"
"Only the girl who captured you can give you a pa.s.s," she said, amused.
"Very well; where can I find her?"
"Who was it netted you?"
"A Miss Leslie," he snapped.
"Oh! Ethra Leslie"s cave is over in those rocks," said the girl, "among those leafy ledges."
"Thanks," he said briefly, and marched off, scowling.
Ethra saw him coming, and his stride and expression scared her. Not knowing exactly what to do, and not antic.i.p.ating such a frame of mind in him, she turned over in her hammock and pretended to be asleep, as his figure loomed up in the mouth of the cave.
"Miss Leslie!" His voice was stentorian.
She awoke languidly, and did it very well, making a charming picture as she sat up in her hammock, a trifle confused, sweet blue eyes scarcely yet unclosed.
"Mr. Langdon!" she exclaimed in soft surprise.
He looked her squarely, menacingly, in the eyes.
"I suppose," he said, "that all this is a grim parody on the past when women did the waiting until it was men"s pleasure to make the next move. I suppose that my recent apprais.e.m.e.nt parallels the social inspection of a debutante--that my present hunger is paying for the wistful intellectual starvation to which men once doomed your s.e.x; that my isolation represents the isolation from all that was vital in the times when women"s opportunities were few and restricted; that my probation among you symbolises the toleration of my s.e.x for whatever specimen of your s.e.x they captured and set their mark on as belonging to them, and on view to the world during good behaviour."
He stared at her flushed face, thoughtfully.
"The allegory is all right," he said, "but you"ve cast the wrong man for the goat. I"m going."
"Y-you can"t go," she stammered, colouring painfully, "unless I give you a pa.s.s."
"I see; it resembles divorce. My s.e.x had to give yours a cause for escape, or you couldn"t escape. And in here you must give me a pa.s.s to freedom, or I remain here and starve. Is that it?"
She crimsoned to her hair, but said nothing.
"Give me that pa.s.s," he said.
"If I do every girl here will gossip----"
"I don"t care what they say. I"m going."
She sat very still in the hammock, eyes vacant, chin on hand, considering. It was not turning out as she had planned. She had starved him too long.
"Mr. Langdon," she said in a low voice, "if it is only because you are hungry----"
"I"m not; I"m past mere hunger. You disciplined me because I took a human and natural interest in the pretty inhabitants of this new world. And I told you that I never would have entered it except for you. But you made me pay for a perfectly harmless and happy curiosity. Well, I"ve starved and paid. Now I want to go... . Either I go or there"ll be something doing--because I won"t remain here and go hungry much longer."
"S-something--doing?" she faltered.
"Exactly. With the first----"
"You can go if you wish," she said, flushing scarlet and springing out of the hammock.
He waited, jaws set, while she seated herself at a table and wrote out the pa.s.s.
"Thank you," he said, in such a rage that he could scarcely control his voice.
She may not have heard him; she sat rigid at the table, looking very hard into s.p.a.ce--sat motionless as he took a curt leave of her, never turning her head--listened to his tread as he strode off through the ferns, then laid her brow between snowy hands which matched the face that trembled in them.
As for him, he swung away along the path by which he had come, unstrung by turns, by turns violently desiring her unhappiness, and again antic.i.p.ating approaching freedom with reckless satisfaction.
Then a strange buoyancy came over him as he arrived in sight of the gate, where the red-haired girl sat on a camp stool, yawning and knitting a silk necktie--for eventualities, perhaps; perhaps for herself, Lord knows. She lifted her grey eyes as he came swinging up--deep, clear, grey eyes that met his and presently seemed ready to answer his. So his eyes asked; and, after a long interval, came the reply, as though she had unconsciously been waiting a long, long while for the question.
"I suppose you will wish to keep this," he said in a low voice, offering her the pa.s.s. "You will probably desire to preserve it under lock and key."
She rose to her slender height, took it in her childish hands, hesitated, then, looking up at him, slowly tore the pa.s.s to fragments and loosed them from her palm into the current of the south wind blowing.
"That does not matter," she said, "if you are going to love me."
There was a moment"s silence, then she held out her left hand. He took it; with her right hand, standing on tiptoe, she reached up and unbarred the gates. And they pa.s.sed out together into the infernal splendour of the sunset forest.
[Ill.u.s.tration]