CHAPTER VI

As ten o’clock came and then eleven, Wilmer found it more and more difficult not to respond to her father’s fears.

“We shouldn’t have allowed him to go,” declared Howe.

“And yet,” answered the girl, “he’s the sort of man you feel to be capable of going anywhere.”

“I don’t doubt his courage,” responded Howe. “But against a man of the type of Childers he needs something more.”

“What do you mean, dad?”

“He needs to know his man. Childers has no code. If he couldn’t shoot a man in front, he’d shoot him in the back. Such a chap has one idea and only one--to get his man; by fair means, if convenient, by foul, if necessary.”

“You don’t think Childers means to--to get him?”

“I don’t know anything about it. Apparently the fellow is infatuated with Roxie. If that is so, he’ll resent any interference--particularly on the part of a stranger. I ought to have known better than to let him start.”

“I doubt if you could have prevented it, dad,” answered the girl.

“It was my duty--as host.”

Wilmer turned back to her book--a Galsworthy novel. That seemed to be about as far as she could get in it to-night--just to turn back to it again and again. The pages in which ordinarily she was able to lose herself were just so many white pieces of paper covered with print. They were very white and symmetrical and the print very black and even, making so many parallel lines from side to side. But there was a certain monotony to literature in this form. It seemed scarcely worth while to turn the leaves.

In the two weeks Wilmer had been living in daily contact with Allston--a more sustained contact than she had ever experienced with any man of her own age--she had developed a very real interest in him. Her life for the last five years, since the death of her mother, had been largely devoted to her father. By nature quiet and reflective, she had found this sphere adequate enough on the whole to satisfy her, and where it did not she was able to piece it out with her books. She read a great deal and intelligently without, however, any especial objective. She preferred, generally speaking, books with an analytical turn and modern rather than classic--James and Meredith, and the younger school of British novelists with their intense if somewhat vague passion for the super-critical and radical approach to present-day problems. And yet the net result of their influence was to leave her rather more conservative than before. She was willing enough to believe these young observers, but the effect of this was to cultivate in her a rather cynical distaste for actual contact with the life they described--particularly on its emotional side. And so, though her home in New Orleans still remained, through her social connections, a gathering-place for a group of young men and women, they came and went marking only so many pleasant inconsequential incidents of a season. There were several young fellows who, it is true, pressed their attentions upon her a little more eagerly than others, but her retreat at the beginning of each summer to this mountain fastness always discouraged them. They preferred to follow the pretty faces which led to the gayer resorts.

And yet Wilmer Howe was not without her attractions. As far as physical beauty goes she possessed a piquant charm of her own. She had as pretty a face as any of those who had pretty faces and not much else. Her brown eyes were like placid pools reflecting autumn foliage--the deep pools one finds in shaded places. Her mouth and nose and chin were modeled as a careful and sensitive artist might model them. If they were not as quickly responsive as the features of some of her friends, they perhaps inspired more confidence when they did respond. It meant something to rouse Wilmer Howe either to laughter or tears. Few had accomplished either, though many had made her smile and a few claimed to have seen her eyes dimmed. A handsome good-for-nothing from Georgia--later killed at Château-Thierry--had done more than that, but he never spoke of it. He kept it, to the end, a grave secret.

Allston was the first man ever presented to her without a well-filled-in background. He had done his best, since, to supply the deficiency by casual mention of his mother and father and sister, even a few aunts and cousins for good measure, and an incidental reference to the ancestor who settled on the James. She never questioned any of his statements--except her father she had never met a more straightforward man or one whose ordinary speech she was so ready to accept at its full face value--but these people to whom he referred remained nothing more than shadows. They lacked all the sidelights that mutual friends throw upon such a group.

Not that she minded particularly. In a way it was rather refreshing. It left her free--utterly free--to discover the man for herself. Here he was, undeniably prepossessing, straight and tall, clear of eye, thin of face, bearing a faint resemblance physically and superficially to the lean mountain folk hereabouts. But he and they had chosen different roads a hundred years ago--perhaps a thousand years ago. A passing glance told her all she needed to know of a man like Bud Childers. A decade might never fully reveal a man like Allston.

And yet, at times, she felt as though she had made wonderful progress in even this brief period of two weeks. She had come to like him. She had come to trust him. She had come to wait for him. And now to-night she had come to worry about him.

That, on the whole, was a bit absurd. She recognized as much herself. It rather vexed her. Of course her anxiety could be justified on general humanitarian grounds. She was not so cold-blooded but that any man in danger roused her sympathies. And this man was her guest. Moreover, she was indirectly responsible for having placed him in his present hazardous position. Clearly, then, there was nothing unnatural in the fact of her being more or less disturbed when he was two hours late.

More or less--upon the nice balance of those two words hung the fine distinction of whether her present agitation was normal or abnormal. A little more in one scale, a little less in the other, makes all the difference in the world. The trouble was that with her it was one moment a little more and the next a little less. The scales refused to remain stationary.

And her friend Galsworthy did not help her in the slightest. Rightfully he should have bade her shrug her shoulders and go on with him. He should have said, in effect:

“Be sensible. This man is not anything in particular to you, and even if he is your guest there is nothing you can do to relieve his plight. He is only a figure in real life and you know you are not greatly concerned about such. They are merely shadows. Come with me and I will show you the substance--men who are men. I will reveal to you the raw, crude inwardness of men. You will be wiser--and safer.”

But he failed her. To be sure, she refused to listen, but the fault still remained his. The function of the artist is to command attention.

At quarter past eleven she put down her book and moved restlessly about the room. Covertly her father watched her. There was an expression on her face he had never seen since she was a little girl--frank, unrestrained fear.

“There’s a full moon and the chances are he is enjoying it,” the father suggested.

She brushed aside the curtains and looked out. The grass was a stagy green; the trees like the trees of Maeterlinck. The driveway leading to the road was as clear as by daylight.

“The moon is full,” she nodded. “That makes it easy to see.”

But if it made it easy for Allston to see, it made it easy for Childers. One had the choice of getting comfort or added fear from that.

“Of course he may have strayed from the road,” said Howe.

“It is possible, but not probable,” decided Wilmer.

“Why do you say that?”

“He has told me about his night patrols in France.”

“He had his maps and his instructions to help him there.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “That’s true.”

“Then--”

But at that moment Wilmer caught sight of a figure in the roadway. Only the slightest quickening of the movement of her nostrils revealed the jump her heart gave. She drew back a little so as not to be seen. Then she waited perhaps two breaths before saying:

“Here he comes now.”

She recrossed the room to the table, resumed her seat, and picked up her book. It was here Allston saw her when he came in. Howe had hurried to the door.

“Welcome back,” the latter greeted the younger man heartily. “You gave us all a scare.”

“I’m sorry. The night was so wonderful I took my time.”

Wilmer looked up from her book with a smile. His presence was enough to throw her back into her usual calm. Her fears of a moment ago honestly now appeared ludicrous.

“You didn’t meet with any adventures, then?”

“But I did,” Allston smiled back. “I was the hero of a real bit of melodrama.”

He sat down crossing his long legs comfortably.

Howe appeared concerned.

“You didn’t meet Childers?”

“In full force,” admitted Allston.

Then lightly and entertainingly he told the whole story. And yet not the whole story. As he talked, somehow Roxie did not stand out as prominently in his narrative as actually she did in the picture the episode had left in his own mind. Rather deliberately he was slightly reticent about some details--insignificant enough in themselves--which had registered with unusual vividness in his own mind. He did this partly as a matter of personal taste and partly out of respectful deference to Roxie herself. He considered certain moments in the nature of private and confidential communications: for example, those few seconds after Bud’s departure when Roxie, in gratitude, had stood there so silently in the moonlight, her face uplifted to his. He was sure she had been moved by nothing but girlish gratitude and had no conception of the astonishingly dramatic picture she made. Yet he never mentioned the incident. His conclusion from this point on was matter-of-fact enough.

“So I took her to the house and then came home--striking into the woods instead of keeping to the road.”

“You were wise in that,” said Howe.

“The trouble was I discovered my gun was empty,” laughed Allston. “The last time I used it I popped away at some squirrels on the road. I’d already wasted the one shell I had on Bud and I was afraid a second bluff might not work.”

“Good Lord!” gasped Howe. “Bluff _is_ a dangerous game to play against that kind of man. You don’t realize how recklessly they kill. They never reckon consequences.”

“Well,” said Allston, willing enough to forget the whole affair, “here I am back again, at any rate. I’m sorry if I’ve kept you up.”

Wilmer rose.

“You must be tired after your long tramp. You’ll let me make you a cup of coffee?”

“Please don’t trouble,” he pleaded.

No one had noticed the slight, tired-looking figure who had suddenly appeared at the door leading from the kitchen. Her cheeks were flushed after the stumbling journey she had taken at a run as long as her breath held out. Her hair was awry and her face stained where she had wiped away the perspiration with an earth-soiled hand. Below her eyes were other streaks--channels made by tears forced from her, not by maudlin grief, but sheer elemental anger because her feet would not carry her faster; the helpless rage of one baffled in an overwhelming effort.

“Roxie!” exclaimed Wilmer as she caught sight of the girl.

“Please, I’ll git him his coffee,” she panted.