The King of Arcadia. Lynde Francis
Craigmiles mocked him again.
"My window in the Alta Vista sleeper chanced to be open that night while the train was standing in the Denver station. Didn't I hear Mr. Pelham say that the watchword – your watchword – was to be 'drive,' for every man, minute, and dollar there was in it?"
Ballard said, "Oh, good Lord!" under his breath, and a hot flush rose to humiliate him, in spite of his efforts to keep it down. Now it was quite certain that her word of welcome was not a mere coincidence. She had overheard that brutal and uncalled-for boast of his about making love to "the cow-punching princesses"; and this was his punishment.
It was a moment for free speech of the explanatory sort, but Miss Cauffrey's presence forbade it. So he could only say, in a voice that might have melted a heart of stone: "I am wholly at your mercy – and I am your guest. You shouldn't step on a man when he's down. It isn't Christian."
Whether she would have stepped on him or not was left a matter indeterminate, since the members of the house-party were coming down by twos and threes, and shortly afterward dinner was announced.
By this time Ballard was growing a little hardened to the surprises; and the exquisitely appointed dining-room evoked only a left-over thrill. And at dinner, in the intervals allowed him by Miss Dosia Van Bryck, who was his table companion, there were other things to think of. For example, he was curious to know if Wingfield's air of proprietorship in Miss Craigmiles would persist under Colonel Craigmiles's own roof.
Apparently it did persist. Before the first course was removed Ballard's curiosity was in the way of being amply satisfied; and he was saying "Yes" and "No" like a well-adjusted automaton to Miss Van Bryck.
In the seating he had Major Blacklock and one of the Cantrell girls for his opposites; and Lucius Bigelow and the other sharer of the common Cantrell Christian name widened the gap. But the centrepiece in the middle of the great mahogany was low; and Ballard could see over it only too well.
Wingfield and Elsa were discussing playmaking and the playmaker's art; or, rather, Wingfield was talking shop with cheerful dogmatism, and Miss Craigmiles was listening; and if the rapt expression of her face meant anything… Ballard lost himself in gloomy abstraction, and the colours of the electric spectrum suddenly merged for him into a greenish-gray.
"I should think your profession would be perfectly grand, Mr. Ballard. Don't you find it so?" Thus Miss Dosia, who, being quite void of subjective enthusiasm, felt constrained to try to evoke it in others.
"Very," said Ballard, hearing nothing save the upward inflection which demanded a reply.
Miss Van Bryck seemed mildly surprised; but after a time she tried again.
"Has any one told you that Mr. Wingfield is making the studies for a new play?" she asked.
Again Ballard marked the rising inflection; said "Yes," at a venture; and was straightway humiliated, as he deserved to be.
"It seems so odd that he should come out here for his material," Miss Van Bryck went on evenly. "I don't begin to understand how there can be any dramatic possibilities in a wilderness house-party, with positively no social setting whatever."
"Ah, no; of course not," stammered Ballard, realising now that he was fairly at sea. And then, to make matters as bad as they could be: "You were speaking of Mr. Wingfield?"
Miss Van Bryck's large blue eyes mirrored reproachful astonishment; but she was too placid and too good-natured to be genuinely piqued.
"I fear you must have had a hard day, Mr. Ballard. All this is very wearisome to you, isn't it?" she said, letting him have a glimpse of the real kindness underlying the inanities.
"My day has been rather strenuous," he confessed. "But you make me ashamed. Won't you be merciful and try me again?" And this time he knew what he was saying, and meant it.
"It is hardly worth repeating," she qualified – nevertheless, she did repeat it.
Ballard, listening now, found the little note of distress in the protest against play-building in the wilderness; and his heart warmed to Miss Dosia. In the sentimental field, disappointment for one commonly implies disappointment for two; and he became suddenly conscious of a fellow-feeling for the heiress of the Van Bryck millions.
"There is plenty of dramatic material in Arcadia for Mr. Wingfield, if he knows where to look for it," he submitted. "For example, our camp at the dam furnishes a 'situation' every now and then." And here he told the story of the catapulted stone, adding the little dash of mystery to give it the dramatic flavour.
Miss Dosia's interest was as eager as her limitations would permit. "May I tell Mr. Wingfield?" she asked, with such innocent craft that Ballard could scarcely restrain a smile.
"Certainly. And if Mr. Wingfield is open to suggestion on that side, you may bring him down, and I'll put him on the trail of a lot more of the mysteries."
"Thank you so much. And may I call it my discovery?"
Again her obviousness touched the secret spring of laughter in him. It was very evident that Miss Van Bryck would do anything in reason to bring about a solution of continuity in the sympathetic intimacy growing up between the pair on the opposite side of the table.
"It is yours, absolutely," he made haste to say. "I should never have thought of the dramatic utility if you hadn't suggested it."
"H'm! – ha!" broke in the major. "What are you two young people plotting about over there?"
Ballard turned the edge of the query; blunted it permanently by attacking a piece of government engineering in which, as he happened to know, the major had figured in an advisory capacity. This carrying of the war into Africa brought on a battle technical which ran on unbroken to the ices and beyond; to the moment when Colonel Craigmiles proposed an adjournment to the portico for the coffee and the tobacco. Ballard came off second-best, but he had accomplished his object, which was to make the shrewd-eyed old major forget if he had overheard too much; and Miss Van Bryck gave him his meed of praise.
"You are a very brave man, Mr. Ballard," she said, as he drew the portières aside for her. "Everybody else is afraid of the major."
"I've met him before," laughed the Kentuckian; "in one or another of his various incarnations. And I didn't learn my trade at West Point, you remember."
IX
THE BRINK OF HAZARD
The summer night was perfect, and the after-dinner gathering under the great portico became rather a dispersal. The company fell apart into couples and groups when the coffee was served; and while Miss Craigmiles and the playwright were still fraying the worn threads of the dramatic unities, Ballard consoled himself with the older of the Cantrell girls, talking commonplace nothings until his heart ached.
Later on, when young Bigelow had relieved him, and he had given up all hope of breaking into the dramatic duet, he rose to go and make his parting acknowledgments to Miss Cauffrey and the colonel. It was at that moment that Miss Elsa confronted him.
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