Dolly had a glimpse of a broad polished mahogany table, of heavy chairs.
She went in; he followed her; the door closed.
Fifteen minutes later, she stood again at the outer door, Bison Billiam, k.n.o.b in hand, arching above her in deferential leave-taking. "I will see to everything," he a.s.sured her; "everything. This is certainly most worthy of being looked into. And I shall do it myself. Myself," he repeated, emphasizing the two little syllables as though that fact were of tremendous importance; "myself." He bowed again, to the ground. The door closed.
Dolly, alone on the landing, suddenly slid the length of the hall in an airy jig. "Oh," she said, "we"re going to be rich. I"ll have a butler; and things!"
"Clang!" went the elevator, stopping at the floor. Dolly abruptly became again a very dignified little lady. Once out on the street, however, she went straightway to the milliner"s, where she purchased almost with the last of her bank account the coveted fall hat. It was a furry toque, with a white aigrette; it came down to her ears and made her look like a little Cossack.
CHAPTER XIII
On the other side of the continent, Charles-Norton"s retreat began to be haunted.
He was taking his flight above the lake, one morning, in the cool gold of sunrise, when suddenly a suspicion, a vague sensing of peril, pa.s.sed like a cloud between him and the light. Immediately he let himself eddy to the beach, and there, stretched low along the sand, with craning neck he peered carefully about him.
At first he could see nothing. Twice he half rose to resume his flight, but each time flattened out again to the same subtle sense of presence.
And at last, with a thump of his heart, he saw him--on the edge of the meadow, a man upon a horse, in the dusk of the pines.
They stood there, man and beast, framed by the pines, immobile and silent. The horse was a beautiful silken white, with a bridle of twisted rawhide heavily plaqued with silver; the saddle, of high-pommeled Spanish style, was also heavily incrusted; and the man sat it as though he had been poured molten into it. He wore a wide, flapping sombrero, set cavalierly upon long white hair that descended to the shoulders of his fringed buckskin jacket; the belt at his waist drooped loosely to the weight of a great holster, out of which protruded the l.u.s.trous b.u.t.t of a silver-mounted revolver; long gleaming boots rose to his hips, their toes within carved tapaderos, their heels, high to the point of feminity, roweled with long rotary spurs.
They stood there a long time, man and beast, motionless, a sculptured group but for the slight forward p.r.i.c.king of the horse"s pointed ears, and the man gazed steadily at Charles-Norton, his eyes shaded by his heavily-buckskinned hand. Charles-Norton, hypnotized, gazed back. There was something about the man, his flaming accouterment, specially about the gesture--the theatric peering from beneath gauntleted hand--which somehow stirred Charles-Norton with a sense of past experience. They gazed thus long at each other in immobility and silence; then suddenly there ran lightly through the meadow the resonance of a champed bit; the horse, rising on his hind legs, pivoted, the man"s waist bending pliably to the movement--and they were gone. A soft thudding of hoofs came m.u.f.fled through the trees; it rose to a flinty clatter, which in its turn diminished, and ceased.
Charles-Norton, after a while, went on with his usual routine. He had his swim, his breakfast, and his pipe. But an uneasiness was with him now; he cast abrupt, suspecting glances about him, about his profaned retreat.
And during the day"s long flight, something seemed to follow him like an impalpable menace.
When he returned at sundown, the man was again there. This time he was among the rocks overlooking the cabin, and was afoot, his white horse motionless behind him with long bridle dropped to the ground.
Charles-Norton watched him from behind a tree. He stood there long, his right hand negligently upon the horse"s neck, his left hand shielding his eyes as he looked; and to the posture, somehow, the whole landscape gradually changed its aspect, seemed to take on an air subtly theatrical, the waning sunlight like calcium, the rocks like cardboard, the trees painted. "Where, oh, where have I seen that before?" murmured Charles-Norton, intrigued in the midst of his panic.
The man mounted, the horse came forward, and with a silvery tinkle of spur and bit, they went slowly across the meadow and into the forest, toward the trail that led to the camp.
"_Where_ have I seen that geezer before?" murmured Charles-Norton again, as he was going to sleep that night.
The question was to remain unanswered. The man did not appear again. But on the Sunday following, at dusk, as the lake was aflash with leaping trout, Dolly came running to him out of the trees.
CHAPTER XIV
Dolly came suddenly out of the fringe of the trees. It was dusk; the lake was aflash with leaping trout. And she came to him across the darkened meadow like a fawn panting for her retreat. He stood there petrified, but as she neared, felt his arms open in an irresistible and large movement; she nestled within them, her head on his heart.
They stood there long, without speaking a word, in the center of the dusky meadow, by the sparkling lake. Her face was on his breast; his arms were about her, but his eyes were looking straight ahead into the obscurity. He could feel her palpitate softly against him, and a tenderness like a warm pool was collecting in his heart.
"Dolly!" he said at length.
But she did not answer; only pushed farther into his embrace in a blind little snuggling movement like that of a puppy. He dropped his eyes down upon her, slyly. He could see her shoulders, agitated as if she were weeping, and a wisp of her golden hair, and one tip of a rosy ear; and then, nearer, he saw the furry toque with its white aigrette.
"You little Cossack!" he said, a bit huskily.
Again there was a silence; then he felt the vibration of her m.u.f.fled voice against his chest. "Do you like it?" she asked timidly.
"It"s dandy," he said.
The silence that followed was like that of a kitten after a cup of cream.
Then the voice sounded again within the depths of his embrace.
"O, Goosie," she sobbed; "I"ve been so miserable!"
"Poor little girl," he growled, above there in the dark; "poor little girl!"
"All my money is gone, Goosie--and the janitor was impolite and treated me dreadfully, and oh, Goosie, I"ve had such a terrible time!"
"Yes, yes, yes," he said soothingly (I"ll kill that janitor, he thought, gnashing his teeth).
"Goosie," began the voice again; "you won"t drive me away, will you? You won"t drive me away; I can stay to-night, can"t I? It"s so dark, and so cold! And in the morning, if you still don"t want me, I"ll--I"ll go away, Goosie. I"ll go away and never, never bother you any more, Goosie; never!
But let me stay to-night; Goosie, don"t drive me away to-night!"
"Good G.o.d!" groaned Charles-Norton, horrified at the very possibility, and suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of the enormity of his past conduct.
"Good G.o.d, Dolly! don"t, don"t----"
"I can stay--then--to-night?" she asked, with a glimmer of hope, of hope that cannot believe itself. "I can stay to-night, Goosie?"
"Oh, Dolly, you can stay to-night, you can stay to-morrow night, you can stay always, Dolly, poor little Dolly," moaned the agonized Charles-Norton. "We"ll stay here, always, together, Dolly. Never will I move from you again, Dolly; Dolly, my little wife, my love, my----"
Dolly snuggled back close. "Oh, Goosie," she said, "if you let me stay, I"ll be so good! I won"t bother you at all, Goosie. You can do just what you want; I"ll let you have--anything! I won"t bother you, you won"t know I"m here. I"ll just hide around and take care of you, Goosie, I"ll do _anything_! If only you"ll let me stay, Goosie!"
"Come," he said, not daring to give his voice much of a chance; "come; let us go in."
The little nose suddenly popped out like a squirrel"s out of its hole.
She no longer wept, though he could see a tear still at the end of one of her lashes, agleam in the dark. She raised her head out of his arms and looked about her. "Oh," she cried, "is that your house? What a cute baby-house! It"s pretty here, isn"t it?"
"It is beautiful!" he said enthusiastically. "We"ll be happy here. Come,"
he said; and very close, her head upon his shoulders, his arm about her waist, they went slowly across the meadow to the cabin.
It was pleasant, somehow, the next morning, to loll about with trailing wings, undesirous of flight. The cabin, the meadow, had taken on a certain intimacy, a coziness; it was pleasant to remain there all day, upon earth, idle-winged.
Charles-Norton had his morning swim alone after vain attempts to entice Dolly, her eyes still full of blue sleep, into the crystal waters. Then he fished from his rock--twice as long as he usually fished. And when he returned with his string of rainbows, Dolly, uncovering the dutch-oven which he had bought on his arrival, but the mystery of which he had never mastered, proudly showed him the cracked golden dome of a swelling loaf of bread. Its warm fragrance mingled with the pungent puffs coming from the curved nozzle of the coffee-pot, set in the glowing coals. He gave her the fish, all cleaned, and rolling them in corn-meal, she laid them delicately in the sizzling frying-pan, each by the side of a marbled strip of bacon.
There was no doubt that this breakfast was an improvement on breakfasts that had gone before. Bread is mighty good when one has not had any for nearly two months; and warm golden bread just out of the oven and made by Dolly is more than mighty good. The coffee had undeniably an aroma that it had not had of past mornings. And as you held up to the light, delicately between thumb and finger, a little trout with crisply-curved tail, and slipped it head first between eager white teeth, your eyes smiled into two other eyes (like blue stars), smiling back at you over just such another troutlet, golden crisp, entering in successive movements between just such eager teeth (small pearly ones, these).
Oh, you Charles-Norton!
He wore a blanket on his back, undulating from his shoulders, over his wings, to the ground. Dolly had put it there, fearing he would catch cold. Now and then, by some reflex action of which Charles-Norton was unconscious, the wings stirred uneasily to the burden and let it slip to the ground, upon which Dolly, springing up with a laugh, quickly replaced it. This happened so often that it became a game.
After breakfast Dolly, instead of throwing the dishes in a shallow spot of the lake, as it was the habit of Master Charles-Norton, placed them in a pot of boiling water, at the bottom of which, with wonder-eyes, he saw them miraculously dissolve to brightness. "You"re a genius, Dolly," he said. She laughed, a silver peal that filled the clearing, then, going into the cabin, returned with his pipe all filled. Nicodemus came to them for his salt, then wandered off again. They sat side by side, their backs against the cabin-wall, the meadow before them, sloping to the lake; he smoked, and she was silent. The sun had risen. It inundated the western slopes with a cascade of light; here and there on the crest glaciers flashed signals; far to the west the plain palpitated liquidly; and above, the sky domed very high, a miracle of pellucid azure. A big sigh escaped Charles-Norton, with a blue wafture of smoke. "Isn"t this beautiful?" he said; "isn"t it beautiful?"