"Then you won't be in Baltimore for the Assembly, and you won't go to Georgia, and you won't do a thing that you expected to. Oh, you're the gay, quick-change artist! And don't tell me it's business, either," he added suspiciously.
"I do tell you exactly that."
"You mean to say that nothing except sheer, dry business keeps you here?"
The colour slowly settled under Desboro's cheek bones:
"It's a matter with enough serious business in it to keep me busy to-morrow——"
"Selecting pearls? In which show and which row does she cavort, dear friend—speaking in an exquisitely colloquial metaphor!"
Desboro shrugged: "I'll play you a dozen games of rabbit before we dress for dinner. Come on, you suspicious sport!"
"Which show?" repeated Cairns obstinately. He did not mean it literally, footlight affairs being unfashionable. But Desboro's easy popularity with women originated continual gossip, friendly and otherwise; and his name was often connected harmlessly with that of some attractive woman in his own class—like Mrs. Clydesdale, for instance—and sometimes with some pretty unknown in some class not specified. But the surmise was idle, and the gossip vague, and neither the one nor the other disturbed Desboro, who continued to saunter through life keeping his personal affairs pleasantly to himself.
He linked his arm in Cairns's and guided him toward the billiard room. But there were no tables vacant for rabbit, which absurd game, being hard on the cloth, was limited to two decrepit pool tables.
So Cairns again suggested his celebrated "snifter," and then the young men separated, Desboro to go across the street to his elaborate rooms and dress, already a little less interested in his business trip to Silverwood, already regretting the gay party bound South for two weeks of pleasure.
And when he had emerged from a cold shower which, with the exception of sleep, is the wisest counsellor in the world, now that he stood in fresh linen and evening dress on the threshold of another night, he began to wonder at his late exhilaration.
To him the approach of every night was always fraught with mysterious possibilities, and with a belief in Chance forever new. Adventure dawned with the electric lights; opportunity awoke with the evening whistles warning all labourers to rest. Opportunity for what? He did not know; he had not even surmised; but perhaps it was that something, that subtle, evanescent, volatile something for which the world itself waits instinctively, and has been waiting since the first day dawned. Maybe it is happiness for which the world has waited with patient instinct uneradicated; maybe it is death; and after all, the two may be inseparable.
Desboro, looking into the coals of a dying fire, heard the clock striking the hour. The night was before him—those strange hours in which anything could happen before another sun gilded the sky pinnacles of the earth.
Another hour sounded and found him listless, absent-eyed, still gazing into a dying fire.
CHAPTER III
At eleven o'clock the next morning Miss Nevers had not arrived at Silverwood.
It was still raining hard, the brown Westchester fields, the leafless trees, hedges, paths, roads, were soaked; pools stood in hollows with the dead grass awash; ditches brimmed, river and brook ran amber riot, and alder swamps widened into lakes.
The chances were now that she would not come at all. Desboro had met both morning trains, but she was not visible, and all the passengers had departed leaving him wandering alone along the dripping platform.
For a while he stood moodily on the village bridge beyond, listening to the noisy racket of the swollen brook; and after a little it occurred to him that there was laughter in the noises of the water, like the mirth of the gods mocking him.
"Laugh on, high ones!" he said. "I begin to believe myself the ass that I appear to you."
Presently he wandered back to the station platform, where he idled about, playing with a stray and nondescript dog or two, and caressing the station-master's cat; then, when he had about decided to get into his car and go home, it suddenly occurred to him that he might telephone to New York for information. And he did so, and learned that Miss Nevers had departed that morning on business, for a destination unknown, and would not return before evening.
Also, the station-master informed him that the morning express now deposited passengers at Silverwood Station, on request—an innovation of which he had not before heard; and this put him into excellent spirits.
"Aha!" he said to himself, considerably elated. "Perhaps I'm not such an ass as I appear. Let the high gods laugh!"
So he lighted a cigarette, played with the wastrel dogs some more, flattered the cat till she nearly rubbed her head off against his legs, took a small and solemn child onto his knee and presented it with a silver dollar, while its overburdened German mother publicly nourished another.
"You are really a remarkable child," he gravely assured the infant on his knee. "You possess a most extraordinary mind!"—the child not having uttered a word or betrayed a vestige of human expression upon its slightly soiled features.
Presently the near whistle of the Connecticut Express brought him to his feet. He lifted the astonishingly gifted infant and walked out; and when the express rolled past and stopped, he set it on the day-coach platform beside its stolid parent, and waved to it an impressive adieu.
At the same moment, descending from the train, a tall young girl, in waterproofs, witnessed the proceedings, recognised Desboro, and smiled at the little ceremony taking place.
"Yours?" she inquired, as, hat off, hand extended, he came forward to welcome her—and the next moment blushed at her impulsive informality.
"Oh, all kids seem to be mine, somehow or other," he said. "I'm awfully glad you came. I was afraid you wouldn't."
"Why?"
"Because I didn't believe you really existed, for one thing. And then the weather——"
"Do you suppose mere weather could keep me from the Desboro collection? You have much to learn about me."
"I'll begin lessons at once," he said gaily, "if you don't mind giving them. Do you?"
She smiled non-committally, and looked around her at the departing vehicles.
"We have a limousine waiting for us behind the station," he said. "It's five muddy miles."
"I had been wondering all the way up in the train just how I was to get to Silverwood——"
"You didn't suppose I'd leave you to find your way, did you?"
"Business people don't expect limousines," she said, with an unmistakable accent that sounded priggish even to herself—so prim, indeed, that he laughed outright; and she finally laughed, too.
"This is very jolly, isn't it?" he remarked, as they sped away through the rain.
She conceded that it was.
"It's going to be a most delightful day," he predicted.
She thought it was likely to be a busy day.
"And delightful, too," he insisted politely.
"Why particularly delightful, Mr. Desboro?"
"I thought you were looking forward with keen pleasure to your work in the Desboro collection!"
She caught a latent glimmer of mischief in his eye, and remained silent, not yet quite certain that she liked this constant running fire of words that always seemed to conceal a hint of laughter at her expense.