Part 11 (1/2)

”Oh, yes, he'll be here in a moment,” answered his employer, and even as he spoke, Carleton appeared around the corner of the station, tossed his bag into the tonneau, and came up to the front of the machine with outstretched hand. ”Well, Tom, old man,” he cried, ”and how are you?

Looking fine. You couldn't drive anything but horses when I went away.

How do you like this kind of thing? More speed, I guess, all right.”

The chauffeur's answering smile was the friendliest imaginable, although his taking of Carleton's outstretched hand was a little reluctant, as if he were aware that this was a freedom hardly likely, in a servant, to find favor in his master's eyes. Henry Carleton, indeed, frowned with repressed disapproval. Kindness and even affability toward one's dependents were permissible--but this frank friends.h.i.+p, with its implication of equality, of which Jack was guilty, was apt to be destructive of a proper domestic regime. ”We're waiting, Jack,” he said, his meaning perfectly manifest in his tone, ”jump in behind, please.”

Jack Carleton was about to comply; then suddenly, either the beauty of the day or his lack of pleasure in Jim c.u.mmings' society, served to make him change his mind. He stepped quickly back. ”I guess I'll walk it, after all,” he said, ”just for the sake of old times. See you at the house,” and before he had gone a quarter of the length of the station lane, a cloud of powdery dust was the only memento of the big motor left in sight.

Thoughtfully he traversed the familiar path, the meadow lying smooth and fair before him, still peaceful and serene as on the day when Helmar had walked there three years ago. The same outward world, the same green underfoot, the same glory of blue above. But though Helmar had found nothing but pleasure in the scene, now, mellowed and tinted with the oncoming of the summer night, Carleton's meditation ran in a quieter and sadder strain.

Midway at the bank of the little stream, he paused, and his thoughts, casting backward, were of the little boy who had sailed his boat in the pool below the bridge, and who had searched so patiently along the pleasant, gra.s.s-grown banks to gather and bring home in triumph to his mother the earliest violets of the spring. Tinged all with vague regret were his dreamings, as backward glances in one sense always must be, but even as his thoughts came down the years, his face did not seem to brighten with them.

”Three years,” he muttered, ”of good resolutions. Three years of killing out old hatred, and honestly trying to feel toward him as I ought. And now--almost the first day home--to be put back just where I was before.

To find him the same as ever, so smooth, so self-satisfied, and so cursedly successful, too. And if I told any one what I believe--why, they'd think I was mad, I suppose.”

Once more he started on his homeward way, taking the old familiar short-cut through the woods, as the twilight deepened and the shadows of the tall elms lengthened down the quiet road. Still lost in thought, he strode along unheeding; then all at once, struck with a sense of something unfamiliar, he pulled up sharply and glanced about him. The path he was following now was new to him, there was something about it which he could not call to mind, tax his memory as he would. And then suddenly, as he turned a sharp corner, tucked away amid the shelter of a grove of birches which rose about it on every hand, a little cottage appeared before his eyes.

For a moment he stood silent, staring in astonishment. Of this Henry had told him nothing. The Birches itself was still a good half mile away.

”What in the world--” he muttered to himself, and then, obeying a sudden impulse, he turned aside, walked quickly up the path to the little house, mounted the steps leading to the porch, and knocked.

For a moment or two he waited. Then somewhere above him, a window opened; a woman's voice called low, ”Is it you?”

At the sound Carleton threw back his head with an uncontrollable start of astonishment; and then without raising his voice, he answered, ”Yes, it's I.”

The window closed. A moment still he waited in suspense, until the door cautiously opened. And then, suddenly, through the dusk there sounded a surprised cry, ”Jack, Jack!”

Carleton took a quick step forward. Three long years, as far as seeing women of any attraction went, he had spent practically alone. Three long years, and in the girl before him what a change. Charming she had always been, yet now in looks, in dress, in bearing, in every way she had altered for the better a hundredfold. Almost with a gasp, the memories of old days came flooding over heart and mind and soul. His voice, when at last he spoke, sounded hoa.r.s.e with stifled emotion; ”Jeanne,” he cried, ”you!”

As of old, the woman seemed to dominate the situation. She laughed the old friendly laugh as she stepped backward into the gloom. Her words were commonplace enough, but not the tone in which she uttered them.

”I'm glad to see you back, Jack,” she said. ”Won't you come in?”

CHAPTER XI

THE EVENTS OF AN EVENING

”What mighty ills have not been done by woman!”

_Otway._

It was nearly seven o'clock when Jack Carleton strolled into the carriage house, to find Satterlee, sleeves rolled up, his big rubber ap.r.o.n tied around his waist, busy was.h.i.+ng the carriages. Leisurely Carleton took his seat upon an inverted bucket, and lit a cigarette. ”So you use a horse now and then, too, do you, Tom?” he asked, ”it isn't all automobiles?”

Satterlee grinned a little ruefully. ”To speak true, Mr. Jack,” he answered, ”we gets a lot of trouble out of that there machine. The gentlemen walked the last quarter mile to-night, and she's out there in the road yet. You see, we got a new universal joint--”

Carleton raised his hand. ”No, no,” he cried, ”you don't get me to listen to any of those yarns. I don't know anything about motors, and I don't want to. A horse is good enough for me. It isn't your automobile troubles I want to hear about, Tom. It's your own, if you've got any, only I don't believe you have. As near as I can make out, you're an infernally lucky man.”

The chauffeur nodded. ”I am that, sir,” he answered, readily enough. ”No man could have had better luck, or more of it, than I've had the last year. It seems sometimes to me, Mr. Jack, like it couldn't really be so.

It's been most too much for one man.”

Jack nodded. ”It was all a surprise to me,” he said. ”Mr. Carleton never told me he'd built you the house; I didn't even know you were married. I wouldn't know it now if I hadn't happened to stop in there on the way up from the train. I only did it out of curiosity, too. I wondered who on earth had built that house, so near the big one.”