"I think I'll go see Jane Hubbard this evening," Orde remarked to his mother, as he arose from the table. This was his method of announcing that he would not be home for supper.
Jane Hubbard lived in a low one-story house of blue granite, situated amid a grove of oaks at the top of the hill. She was a kindly girl, whose parents gave her free swing, and whose house, in consequence, was popular with the younger people. Every Sunday she offered to all who came a "Sunday-night lunch," which consisted of cold meats, cold salad, bread, butter, cottage cheese, jam, preserves, and the like, warmed by a cup of excellent tea. These refreshments were served by the guests themselves. It did not much matter how few or how many came.
On the Sunday evening in question Orde found about the usual crowd gathered. Jane herself, tall, deliberate in movement and in speech, kindly and thoughtful, talked in a corner with Ernest Colburn, who was just out of college, and who worked in a bank. Mignonne Smith, a plump, rather pretty little body with a tremendous aureole of hair like spun golden fire, was trying to balance a croquet-ball on the end of a ruler. The ball regularly fell off. Three young men, standing in attentive attitudes, thereupon dove forward in an attempt to catch it before it should hit the floor--which it generally did with a loud thump. A collapsed chair of slender lines stacked against the wall attested previous acrobatics. This much Orde, standing in the doorway, looked upon quite as the usual thing. Only he missed the Incubus. Searching the room with his eyes, he at length discovered that incoherent, desiccated, but persistent youth VIS-A-VIS with a stranger. Orde made out the white of her gown in the shadows, the willowy outline of her small and slender figure, and the gracious forward bend of her head.
The company present caught sight of Orde standing in the doorway, and suspended occupations to shout at him joyfully. He was evidently a favourite. The strange girl in the corner turned to him a white, long face, of which he could see only the outline and the redness of the lips where the lamplight reached them. She leaned slightly forward and the lips parted. Orde's muscular figure, standing square and uncompromising in the doorway, the out-of-door freshness of his complexion, the steadiness of his eyes laughing back a greeting, had evidently attracted her. Or perhaps anything was a relief from the Incubus.
"So you're back at last, are you, Jack?" drawled Jane in her lazy, good-natured way. "Come and meet Miss Bishop. Carroll, I want to present Mr. Orde."
Orde bowed ceremoniously into the penumbra cast by the lamp's broad shade. The girl inclined gracefully her small head with the glossy hair. The Incubus, his thin hands clasped on his knee, his sallow face twisted in one of its customary wry smiles, held to the edge of his chair with characteristic pertinacity.
"Well, Walter," Orde addressed him genially, "are you having a good time?"
"Yes-indeed!" replied the Incubus as though it were one word.
His chair was planted squarely to exclude all others. Orde surveyed the situation with good-humour.
"Going to keep the other fellow from getting a chance, I see."
"Yes-indeed!" replied the Incubus.
Orde bent over, and with great ease lifted Incubus, chair, and all, and set him facing Mignonne Smith and the croquet-ball.
"Here, Mignonne," said he, "I've brought you another assistant."
He returned to the lamp, to find the girl, her dark eyes alight with amusement, watching him intently. She held the tip of a closed fan against her lips, which brought her head slightly forward in an attitude as though she listened. Somehow there was about her an air of poise, of absolute balanced repose quite different from Jane's rather awkward statics, and in direct contrast to Mignonne's dynamics.
"Walter is a very bright man in his own line," said Orde, swinging forward a chair, "but he mustn't be allowed any monopolies."
"How do you know I want him so summarily removed?" the girl asked him, without changing either her graceful attitude of suspended motion or the intentness of her gaze.
"Well," argued Orde, "I got him to say all he ever says to any girl--'Yes-indeed!'--so you couldn't have any more conversation from him. If you want to look at him, why, there he is in plain sight. Besides, I want to talk to you myself."
"Do you always get what you want?" inquired the girl.
Orde laughed.
"Any one can get anything he wants, if only he wants it bad enough," he asserted.
The girl pondered this for a moment, and finally lowered and opened her fan, and threw back her head in a more relaxed attitude.
"Some people," she amended. "However, I forgive you. I will even flatter you by saying I am glad you came. You look to have reached the age of discretion. I venture to say that these boys' idea of a lively evening is to throw bread about the table."
Orde flushed a little. The last time he had supped at Jane Hubbard's, that was exactly what they did do.
"They are young, of course," he said, "and you and I are very old and wise. But having a noisy, good time isn't such a great crime--or is it where you came from?"
The girl leaned forward, a sparkle of interest in her eyes.
"Are you and I going to fight?" she demanded.
"That depends on you," returned Orde squarely, but with perfect good-humour.
They eyed each other a moment. Then the girl closed her fan, and leaned forward to touch him on the arm with it.
"You are quite right not to allow me to say mean things about your friends, and I am a nasty little snip."
Orde bowed with sudden gravity.
"And they do throw bread," said he.
They both laughed. She leaned back with a movement of satisfaction, seeming to sink into the shadows.
"Now, tell me; what do you do?"
"What do I do?" asked Orde, puzzled.
"Yes. Everybody does something out West here. It's a disgrace not to do something, isn't it?"
"Oh, my business! I'm a river-driver just now."
"A river-driver?" she repeated, once more leaning forward. "Why, I've just been hearing a great deal about you."
"That so?" he inquired.
"Yes, from Mrs. Baggs."
"Oh!" said Orde. "Then you know what a drunken, swearing, worthless lot of bums and toughs we are, don't you?"
For the first time, in some subtle way she broke the poise of her attitude.
"There is Hell's Half-Mile," she reminded him.
"Oh, yes," said Orde bitterly, "there's Hell's Half-Mile! Whose fault is that? My rivermen's? My boys? Look here! I suppose you couldn't understand it, if you tried a month; but suppose you were working out in the woods nine months of the year, up early in the morning and in late at night. Suppose you slept in rough blankets, on the ground or in bunks, ate rough food, never saw a woman or a book, undertook work to scare your city men up a tree and into a hole too easy, risked your life a dozen times a week in a tangle of logs, with the big river roaring behind just waiting to swallow you; saw nothing but woods and river, were cold and hungry and wet, and so tired you couldn't wiggle, until you got to feeling like the thing was never going to end, and until you got sick of it way through in spite of the excitement and danger. And then suppose you hit town, where there were all the things you hadn't had--and the first thing you struck was Hell's Half-Mile. Say! you've seen water behind a jam, haven't you? Water-power's a good thing in a mill course, where it has wheels to turn; but behind a jam it just RIPS things--oh, what's the use talking! A girl doesn't know what it means. She couldn't understand."
He broke off with an impatient gesture. She was looking at him intently, her lips again half-parted.
"I think I begin to understand a little," said she softly. She smiled to herself. "But they are a hard and heartless class in spite of all their energy and courage, aren't they?" she drew him out.
"Hard and heartless!" exploded Orde. "There's no kinder lot of men on earth, let me tell you. Why, there isn't a man on that river who doesn't chip in five or ten dollars when a man is hurt or killed; and that means three or four days' hard work for him. And he may not know or like the injured man at all! Why--"
"What's all the excitement?" drawled Jane Hubbard behind them. "Can't you make it a to-be-continued-in-our-next? We're 'most starved."
"Yes-indeed!" chimed in the Incubus.
The company trooped out to the dining-room where the table, spread with all the good things, awaited them.
"Ernest, you light the candles," drawled............