What an old humbug of a world it was, he thought, when, passing before the one and only book-store the little village boasted of, he ran plump into, or almost into, Miss Gwendoline Gerald.
She, at that moment, had just emerged from the shop with a supply of popular magazines in her arms. A gracious expression immediately softened the young lady’s lovely patrician features and she extended a hand. As in a dream Bob looked at it, for the fraction of a second. It was a beautiful, shapely and capable hand. It was also sunburned. It looked like the hand of a young woman who would grasp what she wanted and wave aside peremptorily what she didn’t want. It was a strong hand, but it was also an adorable hand. It went with the proud but lovely face. It supplemented the steady, direct violet eyes. The pink nails gleamed like sea-shells. Bob set down the grip and took the hand. His heart was going fast.
“Glad to see you,” said Miss Gwendoline.
Bob remained silent. He was glad and he wasn’t glad. That is to say, he was deliriously glad and he knew he ought not to be. He found it difficult to conceal the effect she had upon him. He dreaded, too, the outcome of that meeting. So, how should he answer and yet tell the truth? It was considerable of a “poser,” he concluded, as he strove to collect his perturbed thoughts.
“Well, why don’t you say something?” she asked.
“Lovely clay,” observed Bob.
The violet eyes drilled into him slightly. Shades of Hebe! but she had a fine figure! She looked great next to Bob. Maybe she knew it. Perhaps that was why she was just a shade more friendly and gracious to him than to some of the others. They two appeared so well together. He certainly did set her off.
“Is that all you have to say?” asked Miss Gwendoline after a moment.
“Let me put those magazines in the trap for you?” said Bob, making a desperate recovery and indicating the smart rig at the curb as he spoke.
“Thanks,” she answered. “Make yourself useful.” And gave them to him. But there was now a slight reserve on her part. His manner had slightly puzzled her. There was a constraint, or hold-offishness about him that seemed to her rather a new symptom in him. What did it mean? Had he misinterpreted her “Will you?” The violet eyes flashed slightly, then she laughed. How ridiculous!
“There! You did it very well,” she commended him mockingly.
“Thanks,” said Bob awkwardly, and shifted. It would be better if she let him go. Those awful things he might say? – that she might make him say? But she showed no disposition to permit him to depart at once. She lingered. People didn’t usually seek to terminate talks with her. As a rule they just stuck and stuck around and it was hard to get rid of them. Did she divine his uneasiness? Bob showed he certainly wasn’t enjoying himself. The violet eyes grew more and more puzzled.
“What a brilliant conversationalist you are to-day, Mr. Bennett!” she remarked with a trace of irony in her tones.
“Yes; I don’t feel very strong on the talk to-day,” answered Bob truthfully.
Miss Gwendoline pondered a moment on this. She had seen young men embarrassed before – especially when she was alone with them. Sometimes her decidedly pronounced beauty had a disquieting effect on certain sensitive young souls. Bob’s manner recalled the manner of one or two of those others just before they indulged, or tried to indulge, in unusual sentiments, or too close personalities. Miss Gerald’s long sweeping lashes lowered ominously. Then they slowly lifted. She didn’t feel to-day any inordinate endeavor or desire on Bob’s part to break down the nice barriers of convention and to establish that more intimate and magnetic atmosphere of a new relationship. Well, that was the way it should be. It must be he was only stupid at the moment. That’s why he acted strange and unlike himself.
Perhaps he had been up late the night before. Maybe he had a headache. His handsome face was certainly very sober. There was a silent appeal to her in that blond head, a little over half-a-head above hers. Miss Gwendoline’s red lips softened. What a great, big, nice-looking boy he was, after all! She let the lights of her eyes play on him more kindly. She had always thought Bob a good sort. He was an excellent partner in tennis and when it came to horses – they had certainly had some great spurts together. She had tried to follow Bob but it had sometimes been hard. His “jumps” were famous. What he couldn’t put a horse over, no one else could. For the sake of these and a few kindred recollections, she softened.
“I suppose men sometimes do feel that way the next day,” she observed with tentative sympathy. One just had to forgive Bob. She knew a lot of cleverer men who weren’t half so interesting on certain occasions. Intellectual conversation isn’t everything. Even that soul-to-soul talk of the higher faddists sometimes palled. “I suppose that’s why you’re walking.”
“Why?” he repeated, puzzled.
“To dissipate that ‘tired feeling,’ I believe you call it?”
“But I’m not tired,” said Bob.
“Headachey, then?”
“No.” He wasn’t quite following the subtleties of her remarks.
“Then why are you walking?” she persisted. “And with that?” Touching his grip with the tip of her toe.
“Save hack fare,” answered Bob.
She smiled.
“Man wanted a dollar and a half,” he went on.
“And you objected?” Lightly.
“I did.”
Again she smiled. Bob saw she, too, thought it was a joke. And he remembered how she knew of one or two occasions when he had just thrown money to the winds – shoved it out of the window, as it were – orchids, by the dozens, tips, two or three times too large, etc. Bob, with those reckless eyes, object to a dollar and a half – or a hundred and fifty, for that matter? Not he! If ever there had been a spendthrift! —
“Well, I’ll lend a hand to a poor, poverty-stricken wretch,” said Miss Gerald, indulgently entering into the humor of the situation.
“What do you mean?” With new misgivings.
“Put them” – indicating the grip and the sticks – “in the trap,” she commanded.
Bob did. He couldn’t do anything else. And then he assisted her in.
“Thanks for timely help!” he said more blithely, as he saw her slip on her gloves and begin to gather up the reins with those firm capable fingers. “And now – ?” He started as if to go.
“Oh, you can get in, too.” Why shouldn’t he? There was room for two. She spoke in a matter-of-fact manner.
“I – ?” Bob hesitated. A long, long drive – unbounded opportunity for chats, confidences! – and all at the beginning of his sojourn here? Dad’s words – that horrid advice – burned on his brain like fire. He tried to think of some excuse for not getting in. He might say he had to stop at a drug store, or call up a man in New York on business by telephone, or – But no! he couldn’t say any of those things. He was denied the blissful privilege of other men.
“Well, why don’t you get in?” Miss Gerald spoke more sharply. “Don’t you want to?”
The words came like a thunder-clap, though Miss Gwendoline’s voice was honey sweet. Bob raised a tragic head. That monster, Truth!
“No,” he said.
An instant Miss Gwendoline looked at him, the violet eyes incredulous, amused. Then a slight line appeared