The Bronze Bell Part 2

She, on her part, had been busy satisfying herself that he was a very presentable young man, in spite of the somewhat formidable reputation he wore as a person of learned attainments. There could be no better way to show him to you than through her eyes, so you must know that she saw a man of less than thirty years, with a figure slight and not over-tall but well-proportioned, and with a complexion as dark as hers was light. His eyes, indeed, were a very dark grey, and his hair was black, and his face and hands had been coloured by the sun and wind until the tan had become indelible, almost, so that his prolonged periods of studious indoor seclusion worked little toward lightening it. If his looks attracted, it was not because he was handsome, for that he wasn't, but because of certain signs of strength to be discerned in his face, as well as an engaging manner which he owned by right of ancestry, his ascendants for several generations having been notable representatives of one of the First Families of Virginia. Amber was not inordinately proud of this fact, at least not more so than nine out of any ten Virginians; but his friends--who were many but mostly male--claimed that he wrote "F.F.V." before the "F.R.S." which he was ent.i.tled to inscribe after his name.

The pause which fell upon the girl's use of his name, and during which they looked one another over, was sufficiently prolonged to excuse the reference to it which Amber chose to make.

"I'm sure," he said with his slow smile, "that we're satisfied we've never met before. Aren't we?"

"Quite," a.s.sented the girl.

"That only makes it the more mysterious, of course."

"Yes," said she provokingly; "doesn't it?"

"You know, you're hardly fair to me," he a.s.serted. "I'm rapidly beginning to entertain doubts of my senses. When I left the train at Nokomis station I met a man I know as well as I know myself--pretty nearly; and he denied me to my face. Then, a little later, I encounter a strange, mad Bengali, who apparently takes me for somebody he has business with. And finally, you call me by name."

"It isn't so very remarkable, when you come to consider it," she returned soberly. "Mr. David Amber is rather well known, even in his own country. I might very well have seen your photograph published in connection with some review of--let me see.... Your latest book was ent.i.tled 'The Peoples of the Hindu Kush,' wasn't it? You see, I haven't read it."

"That's sensible of you, I'm sure. Why should you?... But your theory doesn't hold water, because I won't permit my publishers to print my picture, and, besides, reviews of such stupid books generally appear in profound monthlies which abhor ill.u.s.trations."

"Oh!" She received this with a note of disappointment. "Then my explanation won't do?"

"I'm sorry," he laughed, "but you'll have to be more ingenious--and practical."

"And you won't show me the present the babu made you?"

He closed his fingers jealously over the bronze box. "Not until...."

"You insist on reciprocity?"

"Absolutely."

"That's very unkind of you."

"How?" he demanded blankly.

"You will have it that I must surrender my only advantage--my incognito. If I tell you how I happen to know who you are, I must tell you who I am. Immediately you will lose interest in me, because I'm really not at all advanced; I doubt if I should understand your book if I had to read it."

"Which Heaven forfend! But why," he insisted mercilessly, "do you wish me to be interested in you?"

She flushed becomingly at this and acknowledged the touch with a rueful, smiling glance. But, "Because I'm interested in you," she admitted openly.

"And ... why?"

"Are you hardened to such adventures?" She nodded in the direction the babu had taken. "Are you accustomed to being treated with extraordinary respect by stray Bengalis and accepting tokens from them? Is romance commonplace to you?"

"Oh," he said, disappointed, "if it's only the adventure--! Of course, that's easily enough explained. This half-witted mammoth--don't ask me how he came to be here--thought he recognised in me some one he had known in India. Let's have a look at this token-thing."

He disclosed the bronze box and let her take it in her pretty fingers.

"It must have a secret spring," she concluded, after a careful inspection.

"I think so, but...."

She shook it, holding it by her ear. "There's something inside--it rattles ever so slightly. I wonder!"

"No more than I."

"And what are you going to do with it?" She returned it reluctantly.

"Why, there's nothing to do but keep it till the owner turns up, that I can see."

"You won't break it open?"

"Not until curiosity overpowers me and I've exhausted every artifice, trying to find the catch."

"Are you a patient person, Mr. Amber?"

"Not extraordinarily so, Miss Farrell."

"Oh, how did you guess?"

"By remembering not to be stupid. You are Miss Sophia Farrell, daughter of Colonel Farrell of the British Diplomatic Service in India." He chuckled cheerfully over this triumph of deductive reasoning. "You are visiting the Quains for a few days, while _en route_ for India with some friends whose name I've forgotten--"

"The Rolands," she prompted involuntarily.

"Thank you.... The Rolands, who are stopping in New York. You've lived several years with your father in India, went back to London to 'come out' and are returning, having been presented at the Court of St.

James. Your mother was an American girl, a schoolmate of Mrs. Quain's.

I'm afraid that's the whole sum of my knowledge of you."

"You've turned the tables fairly, Mr. Amber," she admitted. "And Mr.

Quain wrote you all that?"

"I'm afraid he told me almost as much about you as he told you about me; we're old friends, you know. And now I come to think of it, Quain has one of the few photographs of me extant. So my chain of reasoning's complete. And I think we'd better hurry on to Tanglewood."

"Indeed, yes. Mrs. Quain will be wild with worry if that animal finds his way back to the stable without me; I've been very thoughtless." She caught up her riding-skirt and started down the path with Amber trudging contently beside her. "However," she considered demurely, "I'm not at all sorry, really; it's quite an experience to have a notability at a disadvantage, even if only for a few minutes."

"I wish you wouldn't," he begged in boyish embarra.s.sment. "I'm not a notability, really; Quain's been talking too much. I'll get even with him, though."

"That sounds so modest that I almost believe I've made a mistake about your ident.i.ty. But I've no doubt you're right; Mr. Quain does exaggerate in praise of his friends. Very likely it is as you insist, and you're only an ordinary person, after all. At least, you would be if stray babus didn't make you mysterious presents."

"So long as there is that to hold your interest in me, I'm content," he told her, diverted. "How much longer shall you stay at Tanglewood, Miss Farrell?"

"Unhappily," she sighed, "I must leave on the early train to-morrow, to join the Rolands in New York."

"You don't want to go?"

"I'm half an American, Mr. Amber. I've learned to love the country already. Besides, we start immediately for San Francisco, and it'll be such a little while before I'll be in India."

"You don't care for India?"

"I've known it for less than six years, but already I've come to hate it as thoroughly as any exiled Englishwoman there. It sits there like a great, insatiable monster, devouring English lives. Indirectly it was responsible for my mother's death; she never recovered from the illness she contracted when my father was stationed in the Deccan. In the course of time it will kill my father, just as it did his father and his elder brother. It's a cruel, hateful, ungrateful land--not worth the price we pay for it."