When young Baldwin Barnes had ridden out of Sherwood that morning on his way to Washington, his car had swept by fields which were crisp and frozen; by clumps of trees whose pointed tops cut into the clear blue of the sky; over ice-bound streams, all shining silver in the early sunlight. It was very cold, and his little car was open to the weather. But he felt no chill. He wore the mustard-colored top-coat which had been his lieutenant’s garb in the army. The collar was turned up to protect his ears. His face showed pink and wedge-shaped between his soft hat and his collar.
He had the eye of an artist, and he liked the ride. Even in winter the countryside was attractive—and as the road slipped away, there came a few big houses surrounded by wide grounds, with glimpses through their high hedges of white statues, of spired cedars, of sun-dials set in the midst of dead gardens.
Beyond these there was an arid stretch until the Lake was reached, then the links of one country club, the old buildings of another, and at last on the crest of a hill, a view of the city—sweeping on[25] the right towards Arlington and on the left towards Soldiers’ Home.
Turning into Sixteenth Street, he crossed a bridge with its buttresses guarded by stone panthers—and it was on this bridge that his car stopped.
Climbing out, he blamed Fate furiously. Years afterward, however, he dared not think of the difference it might have made if his little flivver had not failed him.
He raised the hood and tapped and tinkered. Now and then he stopped to stamp his feet or beat his hands together. And he said things under his breath. He would be late at the office—life was just one—darned thing—after another!
Once when he stopped, a woman passed him. She was tall and slender and wrapped up to her ears in moleskin. Her small hat was blue, from her hand swung a gray suede bag, her feet were in gray shoes with cut-steel buckles.
Baldy’s quick eyes took in the details of her costume. He reflected as he went back to work that women were fools to court death in that fashion, with thin slippers and silk stockings, in this bitter weather.
He found the trouble, fixed it, jumped into his car and started his motor. And it was just as he was moving that his eye was caught by a spot of blue bobbing down the hill below the bridge. The woman who had passed him was making her way[26] slowly along the slippery path. On each side of her the trees were brown and bare. At the foot of the hill was a thread of frozen water.
It was not usual at this time to see pedestrians in that place. Now and then a workman took a short cut—or on warm days there were picnic parties—but to follow the rough paths in winter was a bleak and arduous adventure.
He stayed for a moment to watch her, then suddenly left his car and ran. The girl in the blue hat had caught her high heels in a root, had stumbled and fallen.
When he reached her, she was struggling to her feet. He helped her, and picked up the bag which she had dropped.
“Thank you so much.” Her voice was low and pleasing. He saw that she was young, that her skin was very fair, and that the hair which swept over her ears was pale gold, but most of all, he saw that her eyes were burning blue. He had never seen eyes quite like them. The old poets would have called them sapphire, but sapphires do not flame.
“It was so silly of me to try to do it,” she was protesting, “but I thought it might be a short cut——”
He wondered what her destination might be that this remote path should lead to it. But all he said was, “High heels aren’t made for—mountain climbing——”
[27]“They aren’t made for anything,” she said, looking down at the steel-buckled slippers, “useful.”
“Let me help you up the hill.”
“I don’t want to go up.”
He surveyed the steep incline. “I am perfectly sure you don’t want to go down.”
“I do,” she hesitated, “but I suppose I can’t.”
He had a sudden inspiration. “Can I take you anywhere? My little flivver is up there on the bridge. Would you mind that?”
“Would I mind if a life-line were thrown to me in mid-ocean?” She said it lightly, but he fancied there was a note of high hope.
They went up the hill together. “I want to get an Alexandria car,” she told him.
“But you are miles away from it.”
“Am I?” She showed momentary confusion. “I—hoped I might reach it through the Park——”
“You might. But you might also freeze to death in the attempt like a babe in the wood, without any robins to perform the last melancholy rites. What made you think of such a thing?”
He saw at once his mistake. Her voice had a touch of frigidity. “I can’t tell you.”
“Sorry,” he said abruptly. “You must forgive me.”
She melted. “No, it is I who should be forgiven. It must look strange to you—but I’d rather not—explain——”
On the last steep rise of the hill he lifted her over[28] a slippery pool, and as his hand sank into the soft fur of her wrap, he was conscious of its luxury. It seemed to him that his mustard-colored coat fairly shouted incongruity. His imagination swept on to Raleigh, and the velvet cloak which might do the situation justice. He smiled at himself and smiling, too, at her, felt a tingling sense of coming circumstance.
It was because of that smile, and the candid, boyish quality of it, that she trusted him. “Do you know,” she said, “I haven’t had a thing to eat this morning, and I’m frightfully hungry. Is there any place that I could have a cup of coffee—where you could bring it out to me in the car?”
“Could I?” the morning stars sang. “There’s a corking place in Georgetown.”
“Without the world looking on?”
“Without your world looking on,” boldly.
She hesitated, then told the truth. “I’m running away——”
He was eager. “May I help?”
“Perhaps you wouldn’t if you knew.”
“Try me.”
He helped her into his car, tucked the rug about her, and put up the curtains. “No one can see you on the back seat,” he said, and drove to Georgetown on the wings of the wind.
He brought coffee out to her from a neat shop where milk was sold, and buns, and hot drinks, to motormen and conductors. It was a clean little[29] place, fresh as paint, and the buttered rolls were brown and crisp.
“I never tasted anything so good,” the runaway told Baldy. “And now I am going to ask you to drive me over the Virginia side—I’ll get the trolley there.”
When at last he drew up at a little way station, and unfastened the curtain, he was aware that she had opened the suede bag and had a roll of bills in her hand. For a moment his heart failed him. Was she going to offer him money?
But what she said, with cheeks flaming, was: “I haven’t anything less than ten dollars. Do you think they will take it?”
“It’s doubtful. I have oodles of change.” He held out a handful of silver.
“Thank you so much, and—you must let me have your card——”
“Oh, please——”
Her voice had an edge of sharpness. “Of course it must be a loan.”
He handed her his card in silence. She read the name. “Mr. Barnes, you have been very kind. I am tremendously grateful.”
“It was not kindness—but now and then a princess passes.”
For a breathless moment her amazed glance met his—then the clang of a bell heralded an approaching car.
As he helped her out hurriedly she stumbled over[30] the rug. He caught her up, lifted her to the ground, and motioned to the motorman.
The car stopped and she mounted the steps. “Good-bye, and thank you so much.” He stood back and she waved to him while he watched her out of sight.
His work at the office that morning had dreams for an accompaniment. He went out at lunch-time but ate nothing. It was at lunch-time that he bought the violets—paying an unthinkable price for them, and not caring.
He had wild thoughts of following the road to Alexandria—of finding his Juliet on some balcony and climbing up to her. Or of sending the flowers forth addressed largely to “A Princess who passed.” One could not, however, be sure of an uncomprehending mail service. He would need more definite appellation.
He had not, indeed, bought the flowers for Jane. He had had no thought of his sister as he passed the florist’s window. He had been drawn into the shop by the association of ideas—when he entered all the scent and sweetness seemed to belong to a garden in which his lady walked.
He did not eat any lunch, and he took the box of violets back with him to the office, wrapped to prodigious size to protect it from the cold. It was an object of much curiosity to his fellow-clerks as it sat on the window-sill. They all wanted to know who it was for, and one of the abhorred flappers,[31] who, at times, took Baldy’s dictation, tried to peep between the covers.
He felt that her glance would be desecration. What did she know of delicate fragrances? Her perfumes were oriental, and she used a lipstick!
He managed, however, to carry the thing off lightly. He was, in the opinion of the office, a gay and companionable chap. They knew nothing of his reactions. And he was popular.
So now he said to the girl, “If you’ll let that alone, I’ll bring a box of chocolates for the crowd.”
“Why can’t I look at it?”
“Because curiosity is a deadly sin. You know what happened to Bluebeard’s wife?”
“Oh, Bluebeard.” She had read of him, she thought, in the Paris papers. He had killed a lot of wives. She giggled a little in deference to the spiciness of the subject. Then pinned him down to his promise of sweets. “You know the kind we like?”
“This week?”
“Yes. Butter creams.”
“Last week it was the nut kind. One never knows. I should think you ought to standardize your tastes.”
“That would be stupid, wouldn’t it? It’s much more exciting to change.”
He went back to his work and forgot her. She was one of the butterflies who had flitted to Washington[32] during the war, and had set that conservative city by the ears in defiance of tradition.
It was these young women who had eaten their lunches within the sacred precincts of Lafayette Square, draping themselves on its statues at noon-time, and strewing its immaculate sward with broken boxes and bags, who had worn sheer and insufficient clothing, had motored under the moon and without a moon, unchaperoned, until morning, and had come through it all a little damaged, perhaps, as to ideals, but having made a definite impress on the life of the capital. The days of the cave-dwellers were dead. For better, for worse, the war-worker and the women of old Washington had been swept out together from a safe and snug harbor into the raging seas of social readjustment.
It was after office that Baldy carried the flowers to his car. He set the box on the back seat. In the hurry of the morning he had forgotten the rug which still lay where his fair passenger had stumbled over it. He picked it up and something dropped from its folds. It was the gray suede bag, half open, and showing the roll of bills. Beneath the roll of bills was a small sheer handkerchief, a vanity case with a pinch of powder and a wee puff, a new check-book—and, negligently at the very bottom, a ring—a ring of such enchantment that as it lay in Baldy’s hand, he doubted its reality. The hoop was of platinum, slender, yet strong enough to bear up a carved moonstone in a circle of diamonds.[33] The carving showed a delicate Psyche—with a butterfly on her shoulder. The diamonds blazed like small suns.
Inside the ring was an inscription—“Del to Edith—Forever.”
Del to Edith? Where had he seen those names? With a sudden flash of illumination, he dropped the ring back into the bag, stuffed the bag in his pocket, and made his way to a newsboy at the corner.
There it was in startling headlines: Edith Towne Disappears. Delafield Simms’ Yacht Said to Have Been Sighted Near Norfolk!
So his passenger had been the much-talked-about Edith Towne—deserted at the moment of her marriage!
He thought of her eyes of burning blue,—the fairness of her skin and hair—the touch of haughtiness. Simms was a cur, of course! He should have knelt at her feet!
The thing to do was to get the bag back to her. He must advertise at once. On the wings of this decision, his car whirled down the Avenue. The lines which, after much deliberation, he pushed across the counter of the newspaper office, would be ambiguous to others, but clear to her. “Will passenger who left bag with valuable contents in Ford car call up Sherwood Park 49.”