Part 21 (1/2)

The girl deliberately stopped. There was never less of sweet gracious surrender in a suffragette hurling a stone through a shop-keeper's window. She eyed Mr. Magee pityingly, and they stood until Mr. Max caught up with them.

”So that's the hermit's shack,” said Max, indicating the little wooden hut at which they had arrived. ”A funny place for a guy to bury himself.

I should think he'd get to longing for the white lights and the table d'hotes with red wine.”

”A very unromantic speech,” reproved the girl. ”You should be deeply thrilled at the thought of penetrating the secrets of the hermitage. I am. Are you, Mr. Magee?”

She smiled up at Magee, and he was in that state where he thought that in the blue depths of her eyes he saw the sunny slopes of the islands of the blest.

”I--” he caught himself in time. He would not be idiot enough to babble it again. He pulled himself together. ”I'm going to make you believe in me,” he said, with a touch of his old jauntiness.

Mr. Max was knocking with characteristic loudness at the hermit's door.

CHAPTER XI

A FALSEHOOD UNDER THE PALMS

”Make me a willow cabin at your gate,” quoted Mr. Magee, looking at the hermit's shack with interest.

”U-m-m,” replied Miss Norton. Thus beautiful sentiments frequently fare, even at the hands of the most beautiful. Mr. Magee abandoned his project of completing the speech.

The door of the hermit's abode opened before Mr. Max's masterful knock, and the bearded little man appeared on the threshold. He was clad in a purple dressing-gown that suggested some woman had picked it. Surely no man could have fallen victim to that riot of color.

”Come in,” said the hermit, in a tone so colorless it called added attention to the gown. ”Miss, you have the chair. You'll have to be contented with that soap-box davenport, gentlemen. Well?”

He stood facing them in the middle of his hermitage. With curious eyes they examined its architecture. Exiled hands had built it of poles and clay and a reliable brand of roofing. In the largest room, where they sat, were chairs, a table, and a book-shelf hammered together from stray boards--furniture midway between that in a hut on a desert isle and that of a home made happy from the back pages of a woman's magazine. On the wall were various posters that defined the hermit's taste in art as inflammatory, bold, arresting. Through one door at the rear they caught a glimpse of a tiny kitchen; through another the white covering of a hall-room cot could be seen.

”Well?” repeated Mr. Peters. ”I suppose you're a delegation, so to speak?”

”A cold unfeeling word,” objected Mr. Magee.

”We have come to plead”--began Miss Norton, turning her eyes at their full candle-power on the hermit's bearded face.

”I beg pardon, miss,” interrupted Mr. Peters, ”but it ain't any use.

I've thought it all out--in the night watches, as the poet says. I came up here to be alone. I can't be a hermit and a cook, too. I can't and be true to myself. No, you'll have to accept my resignation, to take effect at once.”

He sat down on an uncertain chair and regarded them sorrowfully. His long well-shaped fingers clutched the cord of the purple gown.

”It isn't as though we were asking you to give up the hermit business for good,” argued Magee. ”It's just for a short time--maybe only for a few days. I should think you would welcome the diversion.”

Mr. Peters shook his head vigorously. The brown curls waved flippantly about his shoulders.

”My instincts,” he replied, ”are away from the crowd. I explained that to you when we first met, Mr. Magee.”

”Any man,” commented Mr. Max, ”ought to be able to strangle his instincts for a good salary, payable in advance.”

”You come here,” said the hermit with annoyance, ”and you bring with you the sentiments of the outside world--the world I have foresworn. Don't do it. I ask you.”

”I don't get you,” reflected Mr. Max. ”No, pal, I don't quite grab this hermit game. It ain't human nature, I say. Way up here miles from the little bra.s.s rail and the sporting extra, and other things that make life worth living. It's beyond me.”

”I'm not asking your approval,” replied the hermit. ”All I ask is to be let alone.”