Part 7 (1/2)

What the atlas omitted, however, was supplied by Wallie's imagination.

When he closed his eyes he could see great herds of cattle--his--with their broad backs glistening in the suns.h.i.+ne, and vast tracts--his also--planted in clover, oats, barley, or whatever it was they grew in the country. For diversion, he saw himself scampering over the country on horseback on visits to the friendly neighbours, entertaining frequently himself and entertained everywhere. As for Helene Spenceley--she would soon learn the manner of man she had belittled!

This frame of mind was responsible for the fact that when he had finished dressing and gone below he spoke patronizingly to Mr. Appel, who paid an income tax on fourteen million.

It was a wrench after all--the going--and the fact that his aunt did not relent made it the harder. It was the first time he ever had packed his own boxes and decided upon the clothes in which he should travel. But she sat erect and unyielding at the far end of the veranda while he was in the midst of a sympathetic leave-taking from the guests of The Colonial. There were tears in Mrs. Budlong's eyes when she warned him not to fall into bad habits, and Wallie's were close to the surface when he promised her he would not.

”Aw--you'll be back when it gets cold weather,” said Mr. Appel.

”I shall succeed or leave my bones in Wyoming!” Wallie declared, dramatically.

Mr. Appel snickered: ”They'll help fertilize the soil, which I'm told needs it.” His early struggles had made Mr. Appel callous.

Miss Macpherson, looking straight ahead, gave no indication that she saw her nephew coming.

”Will you say good-bye to me, Aunt Mary?”

She appeared not to see the hand he put out to her.

”I trust you will have a safe journey, Wallace.” Her voice was a breath from the Arctic.

He stood before her a moment feeling suddenly friendless. ”This makes me very unhappy, Aunt Mary,” he said, sorrowfully.

Since she did not answer, he could only leave her, and her failure to ask him to write hurt as much as the frigidity of the leave-taking.

The motor-bus had arrived and the chauffeur was piling his luggage on top of it, so, with a final handshake, Wallie said good-bye, perhaps forever, to his friends of The Colonial.

They were all standing with their arms about each other's waists or with their hands placed affectionately upon each other's shoulders as the bus started, calling ”Good-bye and good luck” with much waving of handkerchiefs. Only his aunt sat grim-visaged and motionless, refusing to concede so much as a glance in her nephew's direction.

Wallie, in turn, took off his girlish sailor and swung it through the bus window and wafted kisses at the dear, amiable folk of The Colonial until the motor had pa.s.sed between the stately pillars of the entrance.

Then he leaned back with a sigh and with the feeling of having ”burned his bridges behind him.”

CHAPTER VII

HIS ”GAT”

”How much 'Jack' did you say you got?” Pinkey, an early caller at the Prouty House, sitting on his heel with his back against the wall, awaited with evident interest an answer to this pointed question. He explained further in response to Wallie's puzzled look: ”Kale--dinero--the long green--_money_.”

”Oh,” Wallie replied, enlightened, ”about $1,800.” He was in his blue silk pajamas, sitting on the iron rail of his bed--it had an edge like a knife-blade.

There was no resemblance between this room and the one he had last occupied. The robin's egg-blue alabastine had scaled, exposing large patches of plaster, and the same thing had happened to the enamel of the wash-bowl and pitcher--the dents in the latter leading to the conclusion that upon some occasion it had been used as a weapon.

A former occupant who must have learned his art in the penitentiary had knotted the lace curtains in such a fas.h.i.+on that no one ever had attempted to untie them, while the prison-like effect of the iron bed, with its dingy pillows and counterpane and sagging middle, was such as to throw a chill over the spirits of the cheeriest traveller.

It had required all Wallie's will power, when he had arrived at midnight, to rise above the depression superinduced by these surroundings. His luggage was piled high in the corner, while the two trunks setting outside his doorway already had been the cause of threats of an alarming nature, made against the owner by sundry guests who had bruised their s.h.i.+ns on them in the ill-lighted corridor.

Pinkey's arrival had cheered him wonderfully. Now when that person observed tentatively that $1,800 was ”a good little stake,” Wallie blithely offered to count it.

”You got it with you?”