Graduated there from prize-fighting. Prize-fighting, the stage, and then writing for magazines--that"s the usual progression. Sometimes, as a sort of denouement before the final curtain, we have dinner at the White House."
I took a liking to the man at once. It was a relief to have somebody who was willing to tell all about himself and wasn"t incognito, or in hiding, or under somebody else"s name. I put a fresh log on the fire, and as it blazed up I saw him looking at me.
"Ye G.o.ds and little fishes!" he said. "Another redhead! Why, we"re as alike as two carrots off the same bunch!"
In five minutes I knew how old he was, and where he was raised, and that what he wanted more than anything on earth was a little farmhouse with chickens and a cow.
"Where you can have air, you know," he said, waving his hands, which were covered with reddish hair. "Lord, in the city I starve for air! And where, when you"re getting soft you can go out and tackle the wood-pile.
That"s living!"
And then he wanted to know what he was to do at the sanatorium and I told him as well as I could. I didn"t tell him everything, but I explained why Mr. Pierce was calling himself Carter, and about the two in the shelter-house. I had to. He knew as well as I did that three days before Mr. Pierce had had nothing to his name but a folding automobile road map or whatever it was.
"Good for old Pierce!" he said when I finished. "He"s a prince, Miss Waters. If you"d seen him sending those girls back to town--well, I"ll do all I can to help him. But I"m not much of a doctor. It"s safe to acknowledge it; you"ll find it out soon enough."
Mr. and Mrs. Van Alstyne came in just then, and Mr. Sam told him what he was expected to do. It wasn"t much: he was to tell them at what temperatures to take their baths, "and Minnie will help you out with that," he added, and what they were to eat and were not to eat. "Minnie will tell you that, too," he finished, and Mr. Barnes, DOCTOR Barnes, came over and shook my hand.
"I"m perfectly willing to be first a.s.sistant," he declared. "We"ll put our heads together and the result will be--"
"Combustion!" said Mr. Sam, and we all laughed.
"Remember," Mr. Sam instructed him, as Doctor Barnes started out, "when you don"t know what to prescribe, order a Turkish bath. The baths are to a sanatorium what the bar is to a club--they pay the bills."
Well, we got it all fixed and Doctor Barnes started out, but at the door he stopped.
"I say," he asked in an undertone, "the stork doesn"t light around here, does he?"
"Not if they see him first!" I replied grimly, and he went out.
CHAPTER XIII
THE PRINCE--PRINc.i.p.aLLY
It was all well enough for me to say--as I had to to Tillie many a time--that it was ridiculous to make a fuss over a person for what, after all, was an accident of birth. It was well enough for me to say that it was only by chance that I wasn"t strutting about with a crown on my head and a man blowing a trumpet to let folks know I was coming, and by the same token and the same chance Prince Oskar might have been a red-haired spring-house girl, breaking the steels in her figure stooping over to ladle mineral water out of a hole in the earth.
Nevertheless, at five o"clock, after every one had gone, when I saw Miss Patty, m.u.f.fled in furs, tripping out through the snow, with a tall thin man beside her, walking very straight and taking one step to her four, I felt as though somebody had hit me at the end of my breast-bone.
They stopped a minute outside before they came in, and I had to take myself in hand.
"Now look here, Minnie, you idiot," I said to myself, "this is America; you"re as good as he is; not a bend of the knee or a stoop of the neck.
And if he calls you "my good girl" hit him."
They came in together, laughing and talking, and, to be honest, if I hadn"t caught the back of a chair, I"d have had one foot back of the other and been making a courtesy in spite of myself.
"We"re late, Minnie!" Miss Patty said. "Oskar, this is one of my best friends, and you are to be very nice to her."
He had one of those single gla.s.s things in his eye and he gave me a good stare through it. Seen close he was handsomer than Mr. Pierce, but he looked older than his picture.
"Ask her if she won"t be nice to me," he said in as good English as mine, and held out his hand.
"Any of Miss Patty"s friends--" I began, with a lump in my throat, and gave his hand a good squeeze. I thought he looked startled, and suddenly I had a sort of chill.
"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, "should I have kissed it?"
They roared at that, and Miss Patty had to sit down in a chair.
"You see, she knows, Oskar," she said. "The rest are thinking and perhaps guessing, but Minnie is the only one that knows, and she never talks. Everybody who comes here tells Minnie his troubles."
"But--am I a trouble?" he asked in a low tone. I was down in the spring, but I heard it.
"So far you have hardly been an unalloyed joy," she replied, and from the spring I echoed "Amen."
"Yes--I"m so hung with family skeletons that I clatter when I walk," I explained, pretending I hadn"t heard, and brought them both gla.s.ses of water. "It"s got to be a habit with some people to save their sciatica and their husband"s dispositions and their torpid livers and their unpaid bills and bring "em here to me."
He sniffed at the gla.s.s and put it down.
"Herr Gott!" he said, "what a water! It is--the whole thing is extraordinary! I can understand the reason for Carlsbad or Wiesbaden--it is gay. One sees one"s friends; it is--social. But here--!"
He got up and, lifting a window curtain, peered out into the snow.
"Here," he repeated, "shut in by forests and hills, a thousand miles from life--" He shrugged his shoulders and came back to the table. "It is well enough for the father," he went on to Miss Patty, "but for you!
Why--it is depressing, gray. The only bit of color in it all is--here, in what you call the spring-house." I thought he meant Miss Patty"s cheeks or her lovely violet eyes, but he was looking at my hair. I had caught his eye on it before, but this time he made no secret about it, and he sighed, for all the world as if it reminded him of something.
He went over to the slot-machine and stood in front of it, humming and trying the different combinations. I must say he had a nice back.
Miss Patty came over and slipped her hand in mine.
"Well?" she whispered, looking at me with her pretty eyebrows raised.
"He looks all right," I had to confess. "Perhaps you can coax him to shave."
She laughed.
"Oskar!" she called, "you have pa.s.sed, but you are conditioned. Minnie objects to the mustache."
He turned and looked at me gravely.
"It is my--greatest attraction," he declared, "but it is also a great care. If Miss Minnie demands it, I shall give it to her in a--in a little box." He sauntered over and looked at me in his audacious way.
"But you must promise to care for it. Many women have loved it."
"I believe that!" I answered, and stared back at him without blinking.
"I guess I wouldn"t want the responsibility."
But I had an idea that he meant what he said about the many women, and that Miss Patty knew it as well as I did. She flushed a little, and they went very soon after that. I stood and watched them until they disappeared in the snow, and I felt lonelier than ever, and sad, although certainly he was better than I had expected to find him. He was a man, and not a little cub with a body hardly big enough to carry his forefathers" weaknesses. But he had a cold eye and a warm mouth, and that sort of man is generally a social success and a matrimonial failure.
It wasn"t until toward night that I remembered I"d been talking to a real prince and I hadn"t once said "your Highness" or "your Excellency"
or whatever I should have said. I had said "You!"