She sat late that night reading a book she detested; but Smith remained in his room. She could, at intervals, hear him tramping about, hear things slam now and then.

  After she had retired, and lay communing rather sadly with herself on her pillow, the disturbing idea occurred to her that Smith might have been packing up.

  Feminine intuition is remarkable, for that is exactly what he had been doing.

  And the next morning, at sunrise, he arose, settled with the superintendent, tipped the servants, had his steamer trunk placed on a waggon, and then, entering the living room, he seated himself before her desk and wrote his adieux:

  DEAR MISS WEYMOUTH:

  I have long overstayed my time under your delightful and hospitable roof, and I thank you very much for permitting a stranger to put up at your beautiful fruit ranch.

  It has all been a novel experience for me; every moment rendered interesting by your employees and by yourself when you very graciously permitted me to trespass upon your time.

  All that you have done — all that you are accomplishing — is very wonderful. Such energy, good judgment, executive ability, and personal charm are, I should judge, rarely united in one person. But you have them all.

  Please accept the gratitude and adieux of a rather useless young man who has not very much to say to the world, and who is not very diligent about saying it.

  I am afraid that what you say is true: a profession at which one works only intermittently is scarce worthy of the name. You are quite right: art is work: never idleness.

  With many thanks for your kindness to me, I am very sincerely yours, GEORGE SMITH.

  It was some letter: but he did not find it difficult to compose. That is why, perhaps.

  He left it on her desk, went out and climbed into the waggon beside the negro driver.

  Seated on her bed, her soft little hands against her breast, Cyrille listened breathlessly to the crunch of wheels on the marl road.

  Then she made three separate jumps,: to the window where her eyes corroborated what her ears had divined; into her riding breeches and coat and stock; and down to the living-room.

  There it was — the note she knew must be there: and she tore it open and swept it with tearful and excited eyes.

  The tears dried before she was in the saddle: before she had overtaken the waggon her cheeks were brilliant.

  Only the negro driver sat in the waggon.

  “Where is Mr. Smith?” she demanded.

  It appeared that Smith had walked forward toward the landing, saying he needed exercise.

  “Turn your horses and take that trunk back to the house,” she said. “Mr. Smith will decide to remain a little longer.”

  “Yaas’m,” drawled the driver. She cantered her horse past him; then he slowly turned his horses around toward the house he had recently left.

  As for Smith, he was sitting on a low-leaning branch of a white mulberry tree, eating the cool, dewy fruit, when Cyrille discovered him. How could a man eat under such circumstances! She forgot that he had had no breakfast, and, moreover, was probably angry at her.

  She pulled in her horse; he got up: she flung herself from the cross-saddle and went straight up to him:

  “I read your letter,” she said. “I met the waggon and sent back your trunk! I am ashamed and — and frightened, and p-perfectly miserable.... And I am — in love — with you!” She began to whimper. “D-darling!” stammered Smith, petrified.

  “I don’t know whether you are in love with me or not!” she said with a short sob. “Are you?”

  “I am now!” he said.

  “Were you when you went away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you yesterday when you went off by yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you day before yesterday?”

  “No.”

  There was a silence. Suddenly the rosy colour dyed her face and her superb, young figure grew limp.

  Smith took her into his arms with a decision and vigour comforting to them both.

  “Don’t you ever dare laugh at an author again!” he said. “You see what comes of it!”

  “I won’t,” she said, very humbly.

  “But you were right, darling,” he murmured. “I was an awful ass. And I don’t see how you can be in love with me.”

  “But I am,” she said, laying her face on his shoulder with a happy sigh.

  The future promised well for them — what with a dehydrating plant and a deaërated author in the family, what prospect could be brighter?

  “Dearest?” she said, with a heavenly sweetness in her eyes.

  “Cyrille, darling?”

  “Shall we go back to breakfast? I’m starved.” After all, she was young and sturdy, and her health and digestion were as perfect as her body.

  And only such as she can really love.

  DOWN AND OUT

  ON STING-RAY BAYOU lived Cisthene and Chrysis. They wore very white skins, hair which had red gleams through it, blue eyes, and usually a few freckles. Thus costumed by nature they were equipped for eventualities. Also, their age was nineteen. As the Verbena Herald explained, when noting their presence at a University Commencement dance: “The Misses Castle have been twins from birth.”

  Their father, Professor Castle, once temporarily inhabited Jasmine Inlet as assistant professor of Greek at Verbena University; hence the names adorning the twins — pronounced Cis-the-ne and Chry-sis — in case you read this story aloud.

  But the production and the classical embellishment of progeny was all he ever accomplished of any permanent significance; and since his retirement to the home of his forebears he had continued to occupy easy chairs and read Greek for his own edification. Meanwhile, the twins kept his cuffs trimmed and his hose darned. The financial barometer of the family had never fallen lower — not even in 1865. And it was still falling. In plainer vernacular, the Castles were down and out. Which was nothing against them in that region, and would even have added to their social prestige, if anything could add prestige to a Castle of Sting-Ray Bayou. But that would have been gilding the lily, which everybody knows is a silly pastime.

  As for Cisthene and Chrysis, they rode herd on the wild and branded razorbacks that roamed the outlying wilderness. Otherwise, they lounged about the business of life, looking slender, fresh, ornamental, and optimistic.

  The Commencement Ball at Verbena University had been their only dissipation since they were old enough to dissipate. After which yearly revel, their money being spent, they invariably retired from civilization to Sting-Ray Bayou and the vast, unkempt, decaying house of their nativity, known for many generations to many generations as “Castle Place.”

  But the Confederacy had come and gone, and now only honour remained at Castle Place. The house was full of it — every dim room, every screened gallery seemed redolent of it, as with a sad and subtle perfume.

  The roofs of the flanking “quarters,” heavy with moss, had long since sagged inward. A few negroes still inhabited the western quarters, descendants of former occupants. They and a dozen “houn’-dawgs” stuck to Castle Place as limpets stick to rocks, not to be loosened or pried away.

  How they lived and multiplied, and remained as fat as they were lazy, nobody seemed to know, for there was no abundance of anything at Castle Place — nor had been since their father’s youth.

  And yet, somehow, everybody lived and thrived and appeared wholesome and sturdy — the Professor, the graceful twins, negro, houn’-dawg, and the four horses always ready and resigned to either saddle or plow.

  How this distribution of manna was managed by Providence remained a mystery — for there seemed to be no other management at Castle Place — yet no negro ever yearned for hawg and hominy in vain; no creature hungered unappeased.

  And if the Professor’s coat was darned, and if Cisthene’s riding skirt displayed indiscreetly more of Cisthene’s symmetry than might be regarded as conservative; and if Chrysis’ hunting bridle was part rope, and her saddle held together only by the grace of God and a copper wire, it bothered that family and their black retainers not at all.

  For a ci-devant professor of Greek who, in the natural and kindly course of events, had not a hundred years of life before him, sufficient remained at Castle Place to interest and amuse him during the balance of his career. There was the house itself, the grounds, the aged trees; the many dim rooms furnished as they had been from the beginning: there were his books, shelf after shelf of them; there were his memories.

  As for Cisthene and Chrysis, they shot, fished, made preserves and pies, knitted, darned, constructed their own clothes, managed the smokehouse, superintended the limited agricultured activities of the negroes in garden patch and orange grove, and rode herd like a pair of blond demons.

  Rounding up and branding the wild hogs of the wilderness was a serious business. The twins took a hand in it partly from choice, liking the excitement of the headlong gallop through pathless woodlands — partly because they knew negroes too well to leave either hog or orange grove to the easy stewardship of any dusky overseer.

  Such was the narrow world which circumscribed Castle Place and they that dwelt therein. And one day, into that very limited and remote section of North America sauntered a young man from New York.

  His shoulders were adorned with a pack upon which was strapped a rifle and a stewpan; his grey flannel shirt hung open to his wishbone, and his sunburnt skin glimmered moist with perspiration. He was all in.

  On the veranda the Professor closed his volume and rose rheumatically to receive the stranger: from the cool, dusky drawing-room also rose and presently appeared Cisthene with a tray, glasses, and a decanter of light, homemade wine; and Chrysis arrived with a newly-baked orange cake. So the rites of hospitality began without haste, apology, or embarrassment.

  It naturally transpired that the stranger’s name was Jones; that he was a student at the forestry school which infested one of the Northern state forests; that he had come to study the adjacent forests. But Jones did not inform them that he was not obliged to work for a living, or that his father’s income tax alone would run an average railroad both prosperously and indefinitely.

  Indeed, there was a simplicity, a homespun and butternut effect about the boy which, with the visible sweat of his manly brow, forbade any such surmise.

  Jones was not, perhaps, actually horny-handed, but his brier-torn fists had been deeply stained with pine pitch, and his heavy boots and leggins would have instantly won the confidence of Northern proletariat or local aristocrat.

  Gordon Jones was his entire and impressive name; and Cisthene looked at him and decided she was about to like him; and Chrysis gazed upon him with sweet, unspeculative eyes and made up her mind that she liked him, too.

  So they all sipped a little homemade wine and ate orange cake; and Cisthene, keeping her riding skirt together with one furtive hand, resolved to take some more stitches in it; and Chrysis, who wore her mother’s ring, let the sunshine glimmer on it with an innocent desire to please.

  But when Jones arose and remarked that it was about time he made camp, Castle Place also arose, protesting; and Jones very quickly understood what hospitality meant to those whose ancestors had inherited the habit from forebears remoter yet.

  A mere glance at the people before him, a casual survey of the dilapidated surroundings, was sufficient to inform Jones of their poverty and their pride. Yet, he had no choice; he must accept or hurt them.

  So Cisthene and Chrysis went away very happily to prepare a room for him — which preparation consisted of dusting; investing the huge, four-post bed with clean but ragged linen, and sending a negro to fill the water pitcher. There were no candles; a splinter of light-wood projected from a candlestick, and two matches lay beside it. Such was compulsory economy at Castle Place.

  Jones, seated on the veranda below with his mild-eyed, dreamy host, was troubled; and presently ventured to voice his apprehensions concerning one George Scott, his comrade and fellow student, whom he did not desire to inflict upon Castle Place.

  But the Professor, surprised and courteously reproachful, reminded Jones that Castle Place was as ample as its hospitality: and a quarter of an hour later Scott appeared in rig similar to Jones’; was received, formally regaled with wine and orange cake; and another chamber prepared for his entertainment.

  The young fellows had only one change of outer garments, and these were anything but dainty.

  They sat on the edge of Scott’s bed, consulting and dressing intermittently, greatly disturbed at the expense which their sojourn must add to the slender means of these kindly people.

  “What a wreck of a fine place—” observed Jones in a low voice, “everywhere mildew, mould, decay, disintegration! How they exist here, I can’t see, yet the niggers and the dogs stick to them. It’s tragic, isn’t it!”

  “It’s a sign they’ll keep afloat,” suggested. Jones. “Rats leave a sinking ship.”

  “It was a fine ship once,” remarked Scott. “Wonderful! Those doors — what beautiful old wood! What architectural degenerates we Yankees, have become!”

  “We are becoming regenerated.”

  “I don’t agree with you.”

  “Oh, you never do,” retorted Scott.

  Jones ignored the retort:

  “The wainscoting in this room would set an antiquary mad with delight!” he said. “Have you noticed any of the furniture?”

  “Yes. It’s mostly Sheraton.”

  “It’s mostly Chippendale.”

  In the fading light they turned and looked around them, and Scott presently got up and closely inspected the magnificently carved posts of the bed on which he had been sitting.

  “Old black San Domingo mahogany,” he said, “period of 1790. But the chairs yonder are English and much older.”

  “Chippendale,” nodded Jones, lifting one with an effort; “and absolutely genuine. Scott, these things are amazingly beautiful! Look at that chest of drawers. Have you any idea what it would fetch in New York?”

  “About eight hundred dollars.”

  “About eighteen hundred!”

  He examined the carving, worn and softened to an exquisitely polished texture.

  “And those chairs,” he exclaimed; “why, they are worth easily from eight hundred to a thousand dollars apiece!”

  Scott said under his breath:

  “I wonder whether these people know what they have and what it is worth.”

  “Perhaps they do, and prefer to keep them and live on nothing a year. I think they’re that sort of people.”

  “Ought we to tell them? Some antique dealer may wander out here some day and skin the life out of them.”

  Jones, examining the faded and ghostly glass of a lovely old Adam mirror, looked around at his comrade perplexed.

  “If the entire house is full of such stuff,” he said, “there’s a small fortune in it. No New England kitchen crudeness here! No back stairs slat-backs, no native Windsor chairs, no damn spinning-wheel junk — no rag-carpets, no messy Dutch cupboards, no heaps of pewter and coarse and cracked blue china sitting around on curly-maple bureaus! These are fine pieces, every one of them — mellowed and made beautiful by years of care — noble pieces designed, carved, and put together for aristocrats!”

  “They are certainly museum pieces,” nodded Scott. Jones walked back to the pale and faded mirror again, and began to knot his tie under the collar of his clean flannel shirt.

  “I know plenty of wealthy people who would go crazy over these things,” he remarked.... “And those very charming girls are so poor.... It seems a pity, doesn’t it?”

  “They are very pretty,” mused Scott.... “There is one — whose hair is a little redder than the other’s — Chrysis.”

  “She is not so attractive as Cisthene. What a name for a girl — Chrysis!”

  Scott said:

  “You know that is purely a matter of opinion, Jones, about Chrysis having a punk name and not being as attractive as the other.”

  “Do you think she is?”

  “I do. I think she is even prettier and more attractive.”

  “You’re wrong, old top.”

  “Maybe you are, too.”

  One of their customary disputes had begun. “Anybody,” retorted Jones impatiently, “can see that Cisthene is actually beautiful — I don’t care whether she has freckles or not. Chrysis merely resembles her, but the original of this unusual type of beauty is Cisthene.”

  “How can she be the original if they’re twins?” demanded Scott, irritated. “And let me tell you that she looks positively plain and faded compared to her sister.”

  “Doubtless you prefer red hair to gold,” snapped Jones with a shrug.

  “It isn’t red” insisted Scott earnestly. “Not that I care — not that I have any personal interest in either of them; and of course we’re never likely to see them again after we leave; but your snapshot, cocksure opinions irritate me, and I want you to know that I have artistic taste and good taste in girls as well as in furniture; and my judgment tells me that Chrysis is beautiful and Cisthene isn’t!”

  “Cisthene,” retorted Jones sharply, “is, in face and figure, a practically perfect specimen of the human girl! Anybody who denies it doesn’t know anything.”

  “I know something,” returned Scott, getting very red, “and I know that Chrysis is what you say Cisthene is, and Cisthene isn’t!”

  Jones sat down on the bed, too mad to speak; Scott shoved his hands into his pocket and sauntered out.

  They quarrelled rather frequently concerning anything and everything; but they remained inseparable, neither one apparently being able to do without the other. So presently Jones went tagging after Scott, and came up with him on the veranda.

  “Scotty,” he said, linking arms with him, “you’re fearfully pig-headed, but I like you. You’re welcome to your girl.”

  “Same to you, Gordon,” returned his comrade.

  “Lord! Listen to those mosquitoes! If it were not for the screens we’d all be murdered alive!”

  A white figure stole out of the scented gloom: it was Cisthene come to summon them to dinner.

 

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