“Tom!” his sister’s voice cut in with an edge that startled him, and, glancing around, he saw that the newcomer was close to them.
“Aw—! Great Caesar’s ghost! Can you beat it? Come on, John, let’s you and me take a hike up the beach!”
But it was too late. Lauderdale was upon them. “Well, Jane, so here you really are at last! Upon my word, you’ve led me some chase! What’s the idea anyway?”
His tone was annoyed, rebuking, possessive, and Sherwood looked stern as he stood beside Jane with her Bible in his hand, his finger still between the leaves.
“Oh!” said Jane blankly. “I’m sorry! I did the best I could. Didn’t you get my note?”
“I certainly did,” he said in the tone of one who had a right to find fault, “but that didn’t tell me where to find you.”
“Why,” said Jane, laughing, “I didn’t suppose anyone would want to find me down here. I left you word when I could see you on Monday.”
“Rather a raw deal, I’ll say! Why did you suppose I would hang around all day Sunday?”
“Well, I’m afraid I didn’t have much time to think anything about it.” Jane spoke with a tinge of hauteur in her voice. “But excuse me, Lew, I believe you have met Mr. Sherwood and my brother, Tom, and Betty Lou, my little sister.”
Lauderdale looked rather imposing in the head gear and leather coat he was wearing for flying. Betty Lou was impressed by him, and her young eyes were full of awe and shyness. She had slipped behind her sister to watch him.
Lauderdale raised his eyes for the first time toward Sherwood, missing Tom entirely and not getting Betty Lou into his vision at all. He gave Sherwood a cold, sweeping glance, half-contemptuous, and let his eyes come to rest on the Bible in his hand.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, have I cut in on a Sunday school class?” he said, and he glanced up at Sherwood with an amused contempt.
But the gray eyes could give back as good as they got, only there was a grave twinkle in them as their owner said courteously, “Why, yes. Won’t you join us? Miss Arleth has been reading some passages in the Bible that refer to a matter we were discussing.”
“Thanks awfully!” said Lauderdale. “I’m afraid I shouldn’t be interested. The Bible is rather a back number, don’t you think, to enter into any modern discussion? Most people who have an education understand that. Besides, I have come to see Miss Arleth,” he added rudely. “Jane, I’ve come to take you flying. There’s something unusual going on up the coast this afternoon at the summer estate of a friend of mine, a private view of some marvelous paintings, the latest things in modern art and quite worth seeing. Also there are some people worth meeting, a young violinist who is going to be all the rage this winter is to play, and a singer who has carried all Europe by storm. You won’t need to stop for any wraps, just come along as you are. I had my pilot bring a leather outfit for you to fly in, and when we get there Gwen Marchand will fit you out in some things. I’ll explain to her that I just picked you up at the shore and you didn’t have your trunks with you. Then we can fly back late in the evening and get you home somewhere around midnight.”
Sherwood suddenly turned away and began to talk to Betty Lou, stooping down and drawing something in the sand and showing her how to arrange pebbles into the form of a star. Tom had wandered off in disgust down beyond the plane, not quite willing to tear himself entirely away from its neighborhood, but too proud to go near and examine it. Jane was left facing Lauderdale. She lifted astonished eyes to his face.
“I’m sorry you’ve taken all that trouble for me,” she said. “It was very kind of you of course, but it’s quite impossible for me to go anywhere. I came down here with my father and mother who have both been quite ill. I could not think of leaving them today. I shall have to go up to the city in the morning, but I am needed here tonight.”
“You’re away from them now,” said Lauderdale in an irritated tone. “I should think they might stay in a hotel for a few hours. What’s the matter with that brother and sister? Can’t they look out for them, if they need any help?”
Again that chill swept over Jane’s heart that she had felt a few days ago on the mountainside when Lauderdale had spoken of an apartment for her. It was an utter lack of understanding about her feeling for her family, and it seemed suddenly to set them miles apart.
She wondered if it was because he hadn’t had any people of his own to love that he seemed so unfeeling. Perhaps she ought to be patient with him.
“We are not in a hotel,” she said gently. “Our cottage is right up there. My father and mother are resting now, but I am within call.”
“Cottage?” he said, sweeping the empty landscape with his cold eyes.
She pointed lightly toward the little shelter that suddenly seemed even more squalid than it had at first sight.
“You don’t call that shanty a cottage, do you?”
“It’s really quite capacious inside,” she said with a sweet dignity that reminded Sherwood, who could not help overhearing, of her father. “Won’t you come up and take supper with us? We’re going to have clam chowder. Mother has a famous recipe, and Betty Lou and I are going to try our hands at it tonight. The clams here are simply wonderful. Of course we’re just picnicking, but we all love it.”
“Heavens!” said Lauderdale in disgust, “you don’t mean to tell me you are cooking! You?”
“Why yes,” said Jane, forcing a laugh to cover her indignation. “I’m a good cook. Didn’t you know it?”
“But cooking! A girl like you! It’s preposterous! They have no right to let you!”
“Let?” said Jane with asperity. “I don’t like that word, Lew. I don’t understand your attitude at all. You have no right to talk to me like that.”
There was something in her tone that made Sherwood rise up and stand protectively just behind her, to let her know he was there in case she needed a second.
Lauderdale flashed him a withering glance and turned on his heel.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Can’t we get away where we can talk by ourselves? There isn’t any reason at all why you shouldn’t go up the coast to that house party and have a good time. I’m sure some of these fisher folk around here in these shanties can be hired to cook and would be glad to earn an extra dollar or two. This is really an opportunity, and I know you would enjoy it. Besides, you owe it to me after I’ve been to all this trouble and expense to come down after you.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jane, looking troubled. “I would have explained the situation more fully if I had dreamed you would do anything like this. But indeed, it is quite impossible for me to be spared here at present, and even if I could—” She paused with troubled eyes, searching his face as if she wondered how he would take what she was about to say.
“Yes, even if you could—what? I thought there was some reason back of all this,” said Lauderdale sharply.
There was a sneer in the flip of his words that scorched like the sting of a loaded whip. But the effect of it was to bring a certain firmness to the set of Jane’s lips. She tilted her chin just the least bit, and her eyes took on a look of clear determination.
“Even if it were convenient,” she finished, “I would not think it was the way to spend Sunday. If you must know it, that was one of the reasons why I came home from the mountains. I did not want to be there over another Sunday. I have not been accustomed to treating that day just like any other, and it made me very unhappy.”
Lauderdale’s cold astonished eyes rained contempt upon her as she spoke, and his voice was like one talking to a small child as he answered. “Oh for sweet pity’s sake! Shades of the dark ages! Sunday! There isn’t any such thing anymore, don’t you know that? I thought you were too intelligent to follow any such Victorian superstitions as that! Come on over here and get into that plane,” he said, suddenly taking firm hold of her arm as if he had a right. “Let’s get up into the sky and blow a few cobwebs out of your brain. Then you’ll be able to see things as they really are
and we can talk sense. Come on, don’t let’s waste any more time!”
Back of her Jane could hear a softly suppressed “Oh, Jinny!” in a dismayed tone from her little sister, and she could feel Sherwood’s steady gray eyes watching her, waiting to see what she would say next. It somehow gave her courage and comfort.
“No, Lew,” she said determinedly, drawing away from the possessive hand, “I’m not going—anywhere. Please don’t ask me again!” And it was very plain by the light in her eyes that she meant what she said.
“Ye gods and little fishes!” said the baffled young man. “Shade of the archaic angels! Well, can’t we at least walk up the beach a little way and talk? We don’t have to have a chaperone, do we?” And he cast another look of dislike at Sherwood who had assumed the air of a patient but indifferent bystander, studying a distant sail on the horizon with a face as calm as a summer morning.
But Jane’s face flamed indignantly at the rudeness. “Oh, why certainly,” she answered haughtily. “We can walk up the beach if you wish to speak with me privately. That is,” and she smiled back at Sherwood, “if you will excuse me a few minutes—John?”
She had never called him that before. His eyes came back in a flash from the sail on the skyline, with a twinkle of understanding.
“Oh, surely, Jane!” he answered quickly. “You’ll find me right here when you get back—unless you’d like me to put on the teakettle pretty soon. Is our friend staying to tea with us?”
“He is not!” responded the other young man in a tone that said as plainly as words might have done. “And he’s no friend of yours, either.”
“Oh, I shall be back in a very few minutes,” assured Jane smiling. “There will be plenty of time for the teakettle later.”
Sherwood dropped down on the sand serenely beside Betty Lou, opened the Bible to the place his finger had marked, and began to read.
Jane, drawing away from that possessive hand on her arm, walked briskly away down the beach beside Lauderdale, and the two were presently a dim speck in the distance.
Tom marched back and forth getting nearer and nearer to the fascinating plane until his dignity at last allowed him to saunter up to the bored pilot who was reading an old newspaper and accost him with a keen question about his machine.
Presently Betty Lou ran up to the cottage to get a book she was reading, and Sherwood was left alone with the Bible, a book as utterly new to him as if he had never heard of it before except for a scattering verse or two he had been taught in his babyhood days when his mother used to take him to Sunday school.
Jane and Lauderdale were scarcely out of hearing before the young man began. “Who is that young cur you’ve picked up? Is he a theological student or some sappy young divine?” he asked contemptuously.
Jane laughed merrily, and because her laughter was so near to tears, she had a hysterical feeling that she would not be able to stop it.
“What’s so funny?” asked Lauderdale angrily.
When she saw him glaring at her, she controlled herself and answered gravely, “I was only thinking how amused John would be, if he knew you thought him a preacher.”
“Well, what’s so funny about that? If he isn’t some kind of a preacher, what’s he trotting a Bible around on display for?”
“It happens to be my Bible,” said Jane, the dimples in the corners of her mouth glimmering out fitfully and a twinkle coming into her eyes. “I brought it out to hunt up a verse we were discussing this morning after church.”
“You went to church—down here?”
“Yes,” said Jane taking the initiative pleasantly, “over in a quaint little old-fashioned wooden chapel all gray and weather-beaten like the quaint people who live here. But they had a fine young minister who gave us a wonderful message, and we were talking about it on the way home.”
“Well, if this person isn’t a preacher, what is he?”
“Oh, just a man from the office where I work. He has been most kind to Father. Drove him down in his car so that he wouldn’t have to be crowded into our car with all the rest of us, and to give Mother room to lie down when she got tired. Mother has been in a very serious condition.”
“And I suppose he was just being kind to your father out there on the sand reading the Bible with you!” sneered Lauderdale.
“Really, Lew, you’re in a most disagreeable mood,” said Jane with asperity. “Are you trying to be unpleasant?”
“Well, don’t you think I have good reason to be?” asked the man, drawing her arm within his own and looking down into her eyes intimately. This was the sort of thing he had affected at the mountains, and somehow it stirred her again as it had then, yet her good sense told her that she did well to be angry and not to let him so easily slip into the old friendly attitude. He had no right to take everything for granted in this way. He was slipping his hand along her arm now and taking her hand in his, and Jane’s cheeks burned as she realized that she had grown lax in the mountains and had allowed this sort of intimacy. Up until now, she had held herself pleasantly aloof from little caresses like this. Gently she slid her hand away, putting it up to catch a recalcitrant lock of hair that the breeze had caught and was flinging into her eyes. She drew away from him a little, too, but he boldly possessed himself of the arm and hand again. How was it, thought Jane, that she had let her invariable rule of “hands off ” be overstepped? Was it just that she had been among young people who thought nothing of it? Or was it that in her heart she had actually been calculating whether perhaps she was going to let this man have a closer relationship to her than just a passing friend? Her cheeks burned the hotter as these questions appeared in a flash like moving pictures going across her inner vision.
Well, did she want this man to be all in all to her? And was that perhaps what he had come for this afternoon? Was that why he was annoyed and disagreeable, because she had given him no opportunity to speak with her alone?
What was the matter with her anyway? Why was it that his touch annoyed her now? Why wasn’t she pleased and flattered that he had come all this way in an airplane to get her? Why was it that even if conscience and her duty had not been in the way, the thought of going with him to that house party did not attract her? Why? She was actually disappointed to have the pleasant day broken in upon in this way.
Yet she did not want to give him up. She was not ready to say that if he really cared for her she might not care for him someday. But there were things—things that had to be settled—before she could possibly know how she did feel toward him. She could not get away from the memory of his cold, contemptuous words about her staying with her parents. She could not lightly forgive his rudeness to Sherwood and her brother, his utter ignoring of her lovely little sister. There might be excuses for his actions, but she wanted them brought forward. She wanted to be sure he was not as cold and selfish as his words would seem to indicate. She was thinking all these rapid thoughts while he possessed himself of her hand again and walked her quickly away around a curve till they were out of sight of the little group of whitewashed shanties, the airplane lolling on the shore, and Sherwood sitting on the sand.
Jane recovered her hand again, as she thought in a most unobtrusive manner, but the young man took it again almost angrily.
“You’ve lost your temper!” he charged bluntly. “I thought you had more sense than that.”
“I haven’t lost my temper yet,” said Jane sweetly, taking her hand firmly away and stepping a little apart from him, “but I’m afraid I shall presently. Suppose we sit down here and talk. I don’t feel like walking any farther.” And Jane dropped down upon the sand.
The young man faltered, looking at her discontentedly, and finally dropped down in the sand at her feet.
“In the name of all the Puritan fathers, Jane, what’s the matter with you? I can’t make you out at all. You didn’t act this way in the mountains. Here I’ve come all this way after you, and you’re acting like a stranger. Don’t you understand you mean a lot to me? Jane, I
knew the minute I glimpsed you on the golf course in that little blue frock you wore that you and I were destined to be more than friends, and when I came to meet you my first impression was confirmed. I knew at once that you had the rare quality of a perfect comrade. Jane, I want you where I can run in and see you whenever I get lonesome. Everything went stale at the mountains after you left, and here I race down here after you, have a fierce time locating you, and then you get up in the air and act like a stranger. What’s the idea? What more do you want?”
“Want?” said Jane coldly, “I don’t want anything, and I’m not trying to act like anything. I left word for you I would take lunch with you tomorrow if you found it convenient, and it really was the first time I could give you. You know I’m not a butterfly at home as I was in the mountains. I have work to do, and duties. Please understand that once for all. I haven’t been trying to be unpleasant in the least. Can’t we forget all this and be pleasant? Suppose we go back in a few minutes and let me take you up to the cottage and introduce you to my family. They would love to meet some of my summer friends. I’ve told them all about everybody. And then we’ll have supper together. Then I think you’ll understand, when you’re acquainted with my family.”
“What on earth has your family got to do with me?” asked Lauderdale irritably. “I came down here to see you, not a lot of relatives. Really, Jane, spare me! It would take away all the romance to go to a little shanty like that and eat supper. I want to see you by yourself. I want to watch the sunlight on your face. Turn your face a little more to the sea, look out at that boat over there. That’s it. I’d like to have you painted like that! What’s more, I mean to someday. I’ve picked out the artist who shall do you, too—Corusco is his name. He comes from a line of famous artists, and he’s greater than all of them I think. I may as well break the news that that was one reason why I wanted you to go up this afternoon. He’s to be there, and I wanted him to get acquainted with you and get interested in painting you. He’s most temperamental and won’t take subjects unless he takes a liking to them.”