XV
DRUSILLA
_During Which Chapter Mr. Carr Sings and One of His Daughters Takes herPostgraduate_
Mr. Yates came presently, ushered by Ferdinand, and looking extremelyworried. Mr. Carr received him in his private office with ominousurbanity.
"Mr. Yates," he said, forcing a distorted smile, "I have rather abruptlydecided to show you exactly how one of the Destyn-Carr instruments issupposed to work. Would you kindly stand here--close by this table?"
Mr. Yates, astounded, obeyed.
"Now," said Mr. Carr, with a deeply creased smile, "here is the famousDestyn-Carr apparatus. That's quite right--take a snapshot at it withoutmy permission----"
"I--I thought----"
"Quite right, my boy; I intend you shall know all about it. You see itresembles the works of a watch.... Now, when I touch this spring thereceiver opens and gathers in certain psychic waves which emanate fromthe subconscious personality of--well, let us say you, for example!...And now I touch this button. You see that slender hairspring of Rosiumuncurl and rise, trembling and waving about like a tentacle?"
Young Yates, notebook in hand, recovered himself sufficiently to nod. Mr.Carr leered at him:
"That tentacle," he explained, "is now seeking some invisible, wireless,psychic current along which it is to transmit the accumulated psychicwaves. As soon as the wireless current finds the subconscious personalityof the woman you are destined to love and marry some day----"
"I?" exclaimed young Yates, horrified.
"Yes, you. Why not? Do you mind my trying it on you?"
"But I am already in love," protested the young man, turning, as usual, aready red. "I don't care to have you try it on me. Suppose that machineshould connect me with--some other--girl----"
"It has!" cried Carr with a hideous laugh as a point of bluish-white firetipped the tentacle for an instant. "You're tied fast to somethingfeminine! Probably a flossy typewriter--or a burlesque actress--somebodyyou're fitted for, anyway!" He clapped on his monocle, and glaredgleefully at the stupefied young man.
"That will teach you to enter my premises and hold my daughter's handwhen she is drawing innocent pictures of Cooper's Bluff!" he shouted."That will teach you to write poems to my eighteen-year-old daughter,Drusilla; that will teach you to tell her you are in love with her--youyoung pup!"
"I am in love with her!" said Yates, undaunted; but he was very whitewhen he said it. "I do love her; and if you had behaved halfway decentlyI'd have told you so two weeks ago!"
Mr. Carr turned a delicate purple, then, recovering, laughed horribly.
"Whether or not you were once in love with my daughter is of noconsequence now. That machine has nullified your nonsense! Thatinstrument has found you your proper affinity--doubtless below stairs----"
"I _am_ still in love with Drusilla," repeated Yates, firmly.
"I tell you, you're not!" retorted Carr. "Didn't I turn that machine onyou? It has never missed yet! The Green Mouse has got _you_ in theMouseleum!"
"You are mistaken," insisted Yates, still more firmly. "I was in lovewith your daughter Drusilla before you started the machine; and I loveher yet! Now! At the present time! This very instant I am loving her!"
"You can't!" shouted Carr.
"Yes, I can. And I do!"
"No, you don't! I tell you it's a scientific and psychical impossibilityfor you to continue to love her! Your subconscious personality is now ineternal and irrevocable accord and communication with the subconsciouspersonality of some chit of a girl who is destined to love and marry you!And she's probably a ballet-girl, at that!"
"I shall marry Drusilla!" retorted the young man, very pale; "because Iam quite confident that she loves me, though very probably she doesn'tknow it yet."
"You talk foolishness!" hissed Carr. "This machine has settled the wholematter! Didn't you see that spark?"
"I saw a spark--yes!"
"And do you mean to tell me you are not beginning to feel queer?"
"Not in the slightest."
"Look me squarely in the eye, young man, and tell me whether you do nothave a sensation as though your heart were cutting capers?"
"Not in the least," said Yates, calmly. "If that machine worked at all itwouldn't surprise me if you yourself had become entangled in it--caughtin your own machine!"
"W-what!" exclaimed Carr, faintly.
"It wouldn't astonish me in the slightest," repeated Yates, delighted todiscover the dawning alarm in the older man's features. "_You_ opened thereceiver; _you_ have psychic waves as well as I. _I_ was in love at thetime; _you_ were not. What was there to prevent your waves from beinghitched to a wireless current and, finally, signaling the subconsciouspersonality of--of some pretty actress, for example?"
Mr. Carr sank nervously onto a chair; his eyes, already wild, becamewilder as he began to realize the risk he had unthinkingly taken.
"Perhaps _you_ feel a little--queer. You look it," suggested the youngman, in a voice made anxious by an ever-ready sympathy. "Can I doanything? I am really very sorry to have spoken so."
A damp chill gathered on the brow of Bushwyck Carr. He _did_ feel atrifle queer. A curious lightness--a perfectly inexplicable buoyancyseemed to possess him. He was beginning to feel strangely youthful; thesound of his own heart suddenly became apparent. To his alarm it wasbeating playfully, skittishly. No--it was not even beating; it wasskipping.
"Y-Yates," he stammered, "you don't think that I could p-possibly havebecome inadvertently mixed up with that horrible machine--do you?"
Now Yates was a generous youth; resentment at the treatment meted out tohim by this florid, bad-tempered and pompous gentleman changed toinstinctive sympathy when he suddenly realized the plight his futurefather-in-law might now be in.
"Yates," repeated Mr. Carr in an agitated voice, "tell me honestly: _do_you think there is anything unusual the matter with me? I--I seem tof-feel unusually--young. Do I look it? Have I changed? W-watch me whileI walk across the room."
Mr. Carr arose with a frightened glance at Yates, put on his hat, andfairly pranced across the room. "Great Heavens!" he faltered; "my hat'son one side and my walk is distinctly jaunty! Do you notice it, Yates?"
"I'm afraid I do, Mr. Carr."
"This--this is infamous!" gasped Mr. Carr. "This is--is outrageous! I'mforty-five! I'm a widower! I detest a jaunty widower! I don't want to beone; I don't want to----"
Yates gazed at him with deep concern.
"Can't you help lifting your legs that way when you walk--as though aband were playing? Wait, I'll straighten your hat. Now try it again."
Mr. Carr pranced back across the room.
"I _know_ I'm doing it again," he groaned, "but I can't help it! I--Ifeel so gay--dammit!--so frivolous--it's--it's that infernal machine.W-what am I to do, Yates," he added piteously, "when the world looksso good to me?"
"Think of your family!" urged Yates. "Think of--of Drusilla."
"Do you know," observed Carr, twirling his eyeglass and twisting hismustache, "that I'm beginning not to care what my family think!... Isn'tit amazing, Yates? I--I seem to be somebody else, several years younger.Somewhere," he added, with a flourish of his monocle--"somewhere on earththere is a little birdie waiting for me."
"Don't talk that way!" exclaimed Yates, horrified.
"Yes, I will, young man. I repeat, with optimism and emphasis, that_somewhere_ there is a birdie----"
"Mr. Carr!"
"Yes, merry old Top!"
"May I use your telephone?"
"I don't care what you do!" said Carr, gayly. "Use my telephone if youlike; pull it out by the roots and throw it over Cooper's Bluff, for allI care! But"--and a sudden glimmer of reason seemed to come over him--"ifyou have one grain of human decency left in you, you won't drag me and myterrible plight into that scurrilous New York paper of yours."
"No," said Yates, "I won't. And that ends my career on Park Row. I'mgoing to telephone my resignation."
Mr. Carr gazed calmly around and
twisted his mustache with a satisfiedand retrospective smile.
"That's very decent of you, Yates; you must pardon me; I was naturallyhalf scared to death at first; but I realize you are acting veryhandsomely in this horrible dilemma----"
"Naturally," interrupted Yates. "I must stand by the family into which Iam, as you know, destined to marry."
"To be sure," nodded Carr, absently; "it really looks that way, doesn'tit! And, Yates, you have no idea how I hated you an hour ago."
"Yes, I have," said Yates.
"No, you really have not, if you will permit me to contradict you, merryold Top. I--but never mind now. You have behaved in an unusuallyconsiderate manner. Who the devil are you, anyway?"
Yates informed him modestly.
"Well, why didn't you say so, instead of letting me bully you! I've knownyour father for twenty years. Why didn't you tell me you wanted to marryDrusilla, instead of coming and blushing all over the premises? I'd havetold you she was too young; and she is! I'd have told you to wait; andyou'd have waited. You'd have been civil enough to wait when I explainedto you that I've already lost, by marriage, two daughters through thataccursed machine. You wouldn't entirely denude me of daughters, wouldyou?"
"I only want one," said John Yates, simply.
"Well, all right; I'm a decent father-in-law when I've got to be. I'mreally a good sport. You may ask all my sons-in-law; they'll admit it."He scrutinized the young man and found him decidedly agreeable to lookat, and at the same time a vague realization of his own predicamentreturned for a moment.
"Yates," he said unsteadily, "all I ask of you is to keep this terriblen-news from my innocent d-daughters until I can f-find out what sort of aperson is f-fated to lead me to the altar!"
Yates took the offered hand with genuine emotion.
"Surely," he said, "your unknown intended must be some charming leader inthe social activities of the great metropolis."
"Who knows! She may be m-my own l-laundress for all I know. She may beanything, Yates! She--she might even be b-black!"
"Black!"
Mr. Carr nodded, shuddered, dashed the unmanly moisture from hiseyeglass.
"I think I'd better go to town and tell my son-in-law, William Destyn,exactly what has happened to me," he said. "And I think I'll go throughthe kitchen garden and take my power boat so that those devilishreporters can't follow me. Ferdinand!" to the man at the door, "ring upthe garage and order the blue motor, and tell those newspaper men I'mgoing to town. That, I think, will glue them to the lawn for a while."
"About--Drusilla, sir?" ventured Yates; but Mr. Carr was already gone,speeding noiselessly out the back way, through the kitchen garden, andacross the great tree-shaded lawn which led down to the boat landing.
Across the distant hedge, from the beautiful grounds of his next-doorneighbor, floated sounds of mirth and music. Gay flags fluttered amongthe trees. The Magnelius Grandcourts were evidently preparing for thebrilliant charity bazaar to be held there that afternoon and evening.
"To think," muttered Carr, "that only an hour ago I was agreeably andcomfortably prepared to pass the entire afternoon there with mydaughters, amid innocent revelry. And now I'm in flight--pursued byfuries of my own invoking--threatened with love in its most hideous form--matrimony! Any woman I now look upon may be my intended bride for all Iknow," he continued, turning into the semiprivate driveway, borderedheavily by lilacs; "and the curious thing about it is that I really don'tcare; in fact, the excitement is mildly pleasing."
He halted; in the driveway, blocking it, stood a red motor car--a littlerunabout affair; and at the steering-wheel sat a woman--a lady's maid byher cap and narrow apron, and an exceedingly pretty one, at that.
When she saw Mr. Carr she looked up, showing an edge of white teeth inthe most unembarrassed of smiles. She certainly was an unusuallyagreeable-looking girl.
"Has something gone wrong with your motor?" inquired Mr. Carr,pleasantly.
"I am afraid so." She didn't say "sir"; probably because she was toopretty to bother about such incidentals. And she looked at Carr andsmiled, as though he were particularly ornamental.
"Let me see," began Mr. Carr, laying his hand on the steering-wheel;"perhaps I can make it go."
"It won't go," she said, a trifle despondently and shaking her charminghead. "I've been here nearly half an hour waiting for it to do something;but it won't."
Mr. Carr peered wisely into the acetylenes, looked carefully under thehood, examined the upholstery. He didn't know anything about motors.
"I'm afraid," he said sadly, "that there's something wrong with themagne-e-to!"
"Do you think it is as bad as that?"
"I fear so," he said gravely. "If I were you I'd get out--and keep wellaway from that machine."
"Why?" she asked nervously, stepping to the grass beside him.
"It _might_ blow up."
They backed away rather hastily, side by side. After a while they backedfarther away, hand in hand.
"I--I hate to leave it there all alone," said the maid, when they hadbacked completely out of sight of the car. "If there was only some safeplace where I could watch and see if it is going to explode."
They ventured back a little way and peeped at the motor.
"You could take a rowboat and watch it from the water," said Mr. Carr.
"But I don't know how to row."
Mr. Carr looked at her. Certainly she was the most prepossessing specimenof wholesome, rose-cheeked and ivory-skinned womanhood that he had everbeheld; a trifle nearer thirty-five than twenty-five, he thought, but sosweet and fresh and with such charming eyes and manners.
"I have," said Mr. Carr, "several hours at my disposal before I go totown on important business. If you like I will row you out in one of myboats, and then, from a safe distance, we can sit and watch your motorblow up. Shall we?"
"It is most kind of you----"
"Not at all. It would be most kind of you."
She looked sideways at the motor, sideways at the water, sideways at Mr.Carr.
It was a very lovely morning in early June.
As Mr. Carr handed her into the rowboat with ceremony she swept him acourtesy. Her apron and manners were charmingly incongruous.
When she was gracefully seated in the stern Mr. Carr turned for a moment,stared all Oyster Bay calmly in the face through his monocle, then,untying the painter, fairly skipped into the boat with a step distinctlyfrolicsome.
"It's curious how I feel about this," he observed, digging both oars intothe water.
"_How_ do you feel, Mr. Carr?"
"Like a bird," he said softly.
And the boat moved off gently through the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay.
At that same moment, also, the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay were gentlycaressing the classic contours of Cooper's Bluff, and upon thatmonumental headland, seated under sketching umbrellas, Flavilla andDrusilla worked, in a puddle of water colors; and John Chillingham Yates,in becoming white flannels and lilac tie and hosiery, lay on the sod andlooked at Drusilla.
Silence, delicately accented by the faint harmony of mosquitoes, broodedover Cooper's Bluff.
"There's no use," said Drusilla at last; "one can draw a landscape fromevery point of view except looking _down_ hill. Mr. Yates, how on eartham I to sit here and make a drawing looking down hill?"
"Perhaps," he said, "I had better hold your pencil again. Shall I?"
"Do you think that would help?"
"I think it helps--somehow."
Her pretty, narrow hand held the pencil; his sun-browned hand closed overit. She looked at the pad on her knees.
After a while she said: "I think, perhaps, we had better draw. Don'tyou?"
They made a few hen-tracks. Noticing his shoulder was just touching hers,and feeling a trifle weary on her camp-stool, she leaned back a little.
"It is very pleasant to have you here," she said dreamily.
"It is very heavenly to be here," he said.
"How genero
us you are to give us so much of your time!" murmuredDrusilla.
"I think so, too," said Flavilla, washing a badger brush. "And I ambecoming almost as fond of you as Drusilla is."
"Don't you like him as well as I do?" asked Drusilla.
Flavilla turned on her camp-stool and inspected them both.
"Not quite as well," she said frankly. "You know, Drusilla, you are verynearly in love with him." And she resumed her sketching.
Drusilla gazed at the purple horizon unembarrassed. "Am I?" she saidabsently.
"Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencilagain'"]
"Are you?" he repeated, close to her shoulder.
She turned and looked into his sun-tanned face curiously.
"What is it--to love? Is it"--she looked at him undisturbed--"is it to bequite happy and lazy with a man like you?"
He was silent.
"I thought," she continued, "that there would be some hesitation, someshyness about it--some embarrassment. But there, has been none betweenyou and me."
He said nothing.
She went on absently:
"You said, the other day, very simply, that you cared a great deal forme; and I was not very much surprised. And I said that I cared very muchfor you.... And, by the way, I meant to ask you yesterday; are weengaged?"
"Are we?" he asked.
"Yes--if you wish.... Is _that_ all there is to an engagement?"
"There's a ring," observed Flavilla, dabbing on too much ultramarine andusing a sponge. "You've got to get her one, Mr. Yates."
Drusilla looked at the man beside her and smiled.
"How simple it is, after all!" she said. "I have read in the books Pa-pahpermits us to read such odd things about love and lovers.... Are welovers, Mr. Yates? But, of course, we must be, I fancy."
"Yes," he said.
"Some time or other, when it is convenient," observed Flavilla, "youought to kiss each other occasionally."
"That doesn't come until I'm a bride, does it?" asked Drusilla.
"I believe it's a matter of taste," said Flavilla, rising and naivelystretching her long, pretty limbs.
She stood a moment on the edge of the bluff, looking down.
"How curious!" she said after a moment. "There is Pa-pah on the waterrowing somebody's maid about."
"What!" exclaimed Yates, springing to his feet.
"How extraordinary," said Drusilla, following him to the edge of thebluff; "and they're singing, too, as they row!"
From far below, wafted across the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay, Mr.Carr's rich and mellifluous voice was wafted shoreward:
"_I der-reamt that I dwelt in ma-arble h-a-l-ls._"
The sunlight fell on the maid's coquettish cap and apron, and sparkledupon the buckle of one dainty shoe. It also glittered across the monocleof Mr. Carr.
"Pa-_pah!_" cried Flavilla.
Far away her parent waved a careless greeting to his offspring, thenresumed his oars and his song.
"How extraordinary!" said Flavilla. "Why do you suppose that Pa-_pah_ isrowing somebody's maid around the bay, and singing that way to her?"
"Perhaps it's one of our maids," said Drusilla; "but that would be ratherodd, too, wouldn't it, Mr. Yates?"
"A--little," he admitted. And his heart sank.
Flavilla had started down the sandy face of the bluff.
"I'm going to see whose maid it is," she called back.
Drusilla seated herself in the sun-dried grass and watched her sister.
Yates stood beside her in bitter dejection.
So _this_ was the result! His unfortunate future father-in-law was donefor. What a diabolical machine! What a terrible, swift, relentless answerhad been returned when, out of space, this misguided gentleman had, bymistake, summoned his own affinity! And _what_ an affinity! A saucysoubrette who might easily have just stepped from the _coulisse_ of aParisian theater!
Yates looked at Drusilla. What an awful blow was impending! She nevercould have suspected it, but there, in that boat, sat her futurestepmother in cap and apron!--his own future stepmother-in-law!
And in the misery of that moment's realization John Chillingham Yatesshowed the material of which he was constructed.
"Dear," he said gently.
"Do you mean me?" asked Drusilla, looking up in frank surprise.
And at the same time she saw on his face a look which she had neverbefore encountered there. It was the shadow of trouble; and it drew herto her feet instinctively.
"What is it, Jack?" she asked.
She had never before called him anything but Mr. Yates.
"What is it?" she repeated, turning away beside him along the leafy path;and with every word another year seemed, somehow, to be added to heryouth. "Has anything happened, Jack? Are you unhappy--or ill?"
He did not speak; she walked beside him, regarding him with wistful eyes.
So there was more of love than happiness, after all; she began to halfunderstand it in a vague way as she watched his somber face. Therecertainly was more of love than a mere lazy happiness; there wassolicitude and warm concern, and desire to comfort, to protect.
"Jack," she said tremulously.
He turned and took her unresisting hands. A quick thrill shot throughher. Yes, there _was_ more to love than she had expected.
"Are you unhappy?" she asked. "Tell me. I can't bear to see you this way.I--I never did--before."
"Will you love me; Drusilla?"
"Yes--yes, I will, Jack."
"Dearly?"
"I do--dearly." The first blush that ever tinted her cheek spread anddeepened.
"Will you marry me, Drusilla?"
"Yes.... You frighten me."
She trembled, suddenly, in his arms. Surely there were more things tolove than she had dreamed of in her philosophy. She looked up as he bentnearer, understanding that she was to be kissed, awaiting the event whichsuddenly loomed up freighted with terrific significance.
There was a silence, a sob.
"Jack--darling--I--I love you so!"
Flavilla was sketching on her camp-stool when they returned.
"I'm horridly hungry," she said. "It's luncheon time, isn't it? And, bythe way, it's all right about that maid. She was on her way to serve inthe tea pavilion at Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt's bazaar, and her runaboutbroke down and nearly blew up."
"What on earth are you talking about?" exclaimed Drusilla.
"I'm talking about Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt's younger sister fromPhiladelphia, who looks perfectly sweet as a lady's maid. Tea," sheadded, "is to be a dollar a cup, and three if you take sugar. And," shecontinued, "if you and I are to sell flowers there this afternoon we'dbetter go home and dress.... _What_ are you smiling at, Mr. Yates?"
Drusilla naturally supposed she could answer that question.
"Dearest little sister," she said shyly and tenderly, "we have somethingvery wonderful to tell you."
"What is it?" asked Flavilla.
"We--we are--engaged," whispered Drusilla, radiant.
"Why, I knew that already!" said Flavilla.
"Did you?" sighed her sister, turning to look at her tall, young lover."I didn't.... Being in love is a much more complicated matter than youand I imagined, Flavilla. Is it not, Jack?"