Concerning Belinda Part 11

"House shut up like this?"

"Naturally."

"No heat?"

"I can't see that the matter concerns you, Mr. Ryder--unless----"

"Oh, no. I'm not thinking of staying."

Her attempt at rebuff had not the smallest effect.

"No gas, either, I suppose?"

She didn't answer.

He said something under his breath that appeared to afford him relief.

"No friends in town, evidently?"

Belinda rose with fine stateliness.

"If there's nothing I can do for you, Mr. Ryder----"

"Sit down."

She sat down involuntarily, and then felt egregiously foolish because she had done it; but John Ryder was leaning forward with his honest eyes holding hers and was talking earnestly.

"Please don't be angry. I've been out in the Australian bush so long that I've forgotten my parlour tricks. Men say what they think, and ask for what they want, and do pretty well as they please--or can--out there. I've hardly seen a woman. I suppose they'd cut down the independence if they entered into the game. But, see here, Miss Carewe, you're homesick. I'm homesick, too--and I'm worse off than you, for I'm homesick at home. It's rather dreadful being homesick at home."

There was a note, half bitter, half regretful, in the voice and a look in the eyes that was an appeal to generosity.

Belinda's conventionality crumpled up and her heart warmed toward the fellow-waif.

"I've been counting a good deal upon a home Christmas," he went on; "more than I realised; and this isn't exactly the real thing."

Belinda nodded comprehension.

The "Black Sheep" read the sympathy in her eyes.

"It's good of you to listen. You see, I've been away twenty years. It's a long time."

He sat silent for a moment staring straight before him, but seeing something that she could not see. Then he came back to her.

"Yes; it's a long time. One imagines the things one has left stand still, but they don't. I thought I'd find everything pretty much the same. Of course I might have known better, but--well, a fellow's memory and imagination play tricks upon his intelligence sometimes. I liked New York, you know. It's the only place, but I made the mistake of thinking I could fill it, and it was bigger than I had supposed. I swelled as much as I could, but I finally burst, like the ambitious frog in the fable. I'd made a good many different kinds of a fool of myself, Miss Carewe."

He hesitated, but her eyes encouraged him.

"I'd made an awful mess of things, and the family were down on me--right they were, too. The girls were pretty bitter. It was hard on them, you see, and I deserved all I got. Emmy would have forgiven me, but Lou was just rather than merciful. You know justice is Lou's long suit. Well, I cut away to Australia, and I didn't write--first because I hadn't anything good to tell, and then because I didn't believe anybody'd care to hear, and finally because it had got to be habit. It'd a' been different if mother had been alive. Probably I'd never have run--or if I had run I'd have written, but sisters--sisters are different. Mothers are----"

His voice stuck fast with a queer quaver, and Belinda nodded again. She knew that mothers were----

He found his voice.

"I struck it rich after a while and I was too busy making money to think much; but by-and-by, after the pile was pretty big, I got to thinking of ways of spending it, and then old New York began bobbing into my world again, and I thought about the girls and the things I could do to make up, and about the good times I could give some of the old crowd who had stood by me when I was good for nothing and didn't deserve a friend.

And then I began planning and planning--but I didn't write. I used to go to sleep planning how I'd drop back into this little village and what I'd do to it. Finally I decided to get here for Christmas. The schoolgirls would be away then and I would walk in here and pick Emmy and Lou up, and give them the time of their lives during the holidays.

All the way across the Pacific and the continent I was planning the surprise. I've got two ten-thousand-dollar checks made out to the girls here in my pocket, and I've got a list a mile long of other Christmas presents I was going to get for them. I even had the Christmas dinner menu fixed--and here I am."

He looked uncommonly like a disappointed child. Belinda found herself desperately sorry and figuratively feeling in her pocket for sugar-plums.

"Your friends----" she began.

He interrupted.

"I tried to hunt up five of the old crowd, over the 'phone. Two are dead. One's in Europe. One's living in San Francisco. The other didn't remember my name until I explained, and then he hoped he'd see me while I was in town. It's going to be a lively Christmas."

Suddenly he jumped up and walked to the window, then came back and stood looking down at the Youngest Teacher.

"Miss Carewe, we are both Christmas outcasts. Why can't we make the best of it together?"

Belinda flushed and sat up very straight, but he went on rapidly:

"What's the use of your moping here alone and my wandering around the big empty town alone? Why can't we spend the day together? You'll dine with me and go to a matinee, and we'll have an early supper somewhere, and then I'll bring you home and go away. We can cheer each other up."

"But it's so----"

"Yes, I know it's unconventional, but there's no harm in it--not a bit.

You know my sisters, and n.o.body knows me here--and anyway, as I told you, I'm bleached. Word of honor, Miss Carewe, I'm a decent sort as men go--and I'm old enough to be your father. It would be awfully kind in you. A man has no right to be sentimental, but I'm blue. The heart's dropped out of my world. I'm not a drinker nowadays, but if I hadn't found you here I'm afraid I'd have gone out and played the fool by getting royally drunk. Babies we are, most of us. Please come. It will make a lot of difference to me, and it would be more cheerful for you than this sort of thing. Come! Do, won't you?"

And Belinda, doubting, wondering, hesitating, longing for good cheer and human friendliness, turned her back upon Dame Grundy and said yes.

Half an hour later a gay, dimpling girl, arrayed in holiday finery, and a stalwart, handsome man with iron-gray hair but an oddly boyish face, were whirling down Fifth Avenue, in a hansom, toward New York's most famous restaurant. The man stopped the cab in front of a florist's shop, disappeared for a moment, and came out carrying a bunch of violets so huge that the two little daintily gloved hands into which he gave the flowers could hardly hold them.

The restaurant table, reserved by telephone while Belinda was making a hasty toilette, was brave with orchids. An obsequious head waiter, impressed by the order delivered over the wire, conducted the couple to the flower-laden table and hovered near them with stern eyes for the attendant waiters and propitiatory eyes for the patron of magnificent ideas.

Even the invisible chef, spurred by the demand upon his skill, wrought mightily for the delectation of the Christmas outcasts--and the outcasts forgot that they were homesick, forgot that they were strangers, and remembered only that life was good.

John Ryder told stories of Australian mine and ranch to the girl with the sparkling eyes and the eager face: talked, as he had never within his memory talked to anyone, of his own experiences, ambitions, hopes, ideals; and Belinda, radiant, charming, beamed upon him across the flowers and urged him on.

Once she pinched herself softly under cover of the table. Surely it was too good to be true, after the gloom of the morning. It was a dream: a violet-scented, French-cookery-flavoured dream spun around a handsome man with frank, admiring eyes and a masterful way.

But the dream endured.

They were late for the theatre, but that made little difference. Neither was alone, forlorn, homesick. That was all that really counted.

After the theatre came a drive, fresh violets, despite all protest, an elaborate supper, which was only an excuse for comrades.h.i.+p.

As the time slipped by a shadow crept into John Ryder's eyes, his laugh became less frequent. He stopped telling stories and contented himself with asking occasional questions and watching the girl across the table, who took up the conversation as he let it fall and juggled merrily with it, although the colour crept into her cheeks as her eyes met the gray eyes that watched her with some vague problem stirring in their depths.