Chapter XXIX: The Eternal Feminine

With proverbial Southern hospitality, Mrs. Randolph insisted that the two ball players dine at her house on each of the three evenings before the departure of her niece and Miss Harting for Savannah. On the last of these evenings they were asked to come early enough for afternoon tea, which was served on a flagged terrace overlooking an attractive, old-fashioned garden laid out on the slope leading down to the river. It was a charming spot.

When the teacups were emptied and Mrs. Randolph had retired for her customary rest before dinner, Celia Berkeley lost no time in suggesting that Janet take the southpaw for a little stroll.

“I know he’s curious to see what a real Southern garden looks like,” she remarked, her gray eyes dancing. “Nelson doesn’t care much for flowers, so we’ll wait for you here.”

Lefty embraced the suggestion with enthusiasm, and without further delay they passed through the belt of shrubbery to one of the winding, box-bordered paths; a wilderness of flowers on either hand, before them the glinting river with a distant line of blue hills, beyond which the sun was dropping.

It was the first time they had been really alone, and there were quantities of things to say, none of which would have been of the slightest interest to a third person. Besides, back in Lefty’s mind was a half-formed notion of confiding to Janet his perplexities regarding Nelson Savage――perplexities which had been increased not a little that day by a change he had noticed in the busher’s manner.

It was nothing he would have paid much attention to under ordinary conditions. Savage had been noticeably thoughtful and preoccupied ever since breakfast, as if there were something on his mind. But nowadays the southpaw was fearful of the slightest alteration in his friend’s demeanor, and he had a positive longing to talk the matter over with a sympathetic, interested confidant.

At length they reached the end of the garden and paused, momentarily silent, beside an ancient stile which gave access through a moss-grown stone wall to the peach orchard and, beyond, the river. The sun had dipped out of sight behind the hazy, purple hills, leaving the sky a riot of orange and flaunting crimson. The sloping orchard before them was a sea of delicate pink. At their feet, sheltered by the wall, and creeping over it in places, a wild tangle of yellow jasmine sprawled untrammeled, perfuming the air afar with its heavy fragrance. It seemed to Lefty as if such a spot must necessarily beget confidences, and in a moment his mind was made up.

“Nels Savage is a good sort,” he began tentatively.

“Isn’t he!” agreed Janet. “I liked him the minute I saw him.”

“It’s certainly lucky, then, that you didn’t see him a week ago,” Locke said emphatically. “He wasn’t the same man at all.”

Janet bent suddenly and plucked a sprig of jasmine. Usually devoted to flowers, she seemed bent now on stripping the stem clean of its starlike yellow blossoms.

“Not the same?” she repeated slowly, her eyes bent on the unconscious work of destruction. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I say. You wouldn’t have known him. He was grouchy and ill-tempered. The whole crowd hated him like poison. I couldn’t stand him myself, and you know how thick we are now. When I think of what an unmitigated ruffian he was――”

“But, Phil!” The girl’s head came up suddenly; her eyes were wide――protesting. “You don’t understand. He wasn’t―― He had to――”

She broke off with a quick little gasp of dismay, and clapped one hand to her lips. For a second she stood silent, the color creeping into her face, her startled gaze fixed intently on Lefty’s narrowed, questioning eyes.

“Well?” queried the southpaw at length. “What did he have to do? Aren’t you going to finish?”

Janet dropped her hand and glanced down through the long vista of straight, slender trunks with their crowns of blossoms.

“I don’t know that there is anything more to say,” she answered slowly. “I suppose I was thinking how impossible it was for a man like Mr. Savage to――act as you say he did, unless――unless――he was obliged to. Don’t you think we’d better start back? It must be almost time for dinner.”

Lefty ignored the last remark. His face was serious――almost stern. His eyes were fixed intently on Janet’s profile. The perfume from the jasmine seemed suddenly to have become almost sickening in its cloying sweetness.

“Unless he was obliged to!” he repeated in an odd tone. “Can you suggest, Janet, any possible reason which would necessitate a fellow like Savage turning himself voluntarily into a beast?”

“But I know so little of him,” she protested. “How can I tell――how can any one tell――what motives govern some one who is almost a stranger? Don’t be absurd, Phil, and make a mountain out of a molehill. Mr. Savage is nothing to me except that he’s practically engaged to Celia, and I like him.”

Lefty did not speak for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders slightly, and turned toward the house.

“It _is_ getting rather late,” he said quietly. “Perhaps, as you say, we’d better go in.”

His voice was colder than he realized. It was merely the man’s instinct to hide from a woman the fact that she had hurt him. That Janet knew something was perfectly evident. What it could be he had not the slightest idea, save that it had to do with the problem he had been trying his best to solve. He had no wish to force her confidence, but the fact that she was unwilling to give it freely stung him to the quick.

The girl herself started slightly at his tone, and turned a little pale. Then her chin went up in that old, familiar movement, and without a word she fell into step beside him, walking back to the house in silence.

The evening was not exactly a lively one. Lefty did his best to forget the incident and behave as if nothing unpleasant had happened. He honestly wanted to ignore it, but always at the back of his mind was the consciousness that Janet was keeping something from him. It was her own secret to keep or reveal as she chose; he admitted that. It might amount to nothing in the end; though, knowing the girl as he did, such a possibility was doubtful. But it had to do with another man, and there is no suitor alive, though he may have absolute faith in the woman he cares for, who can behold with equanimity that woman mixing up in the intimate affairs of even his best friend, if it be to his own exclusion.

Janet was, by turns, dull and superficially brilliant. At nine she pleaded a bad headache and wished to retire, thus breaking up the party prematurely. The girls were leaving at an hour which made it impossible for Lefty or Savage to see them off, so the good-bys had to be said that night. They left Locke enraged at himself, provoked at Janet, and soured with the world generally. He had a feeling that he was a brute who had spoiled what would otherwise have been three days to look back upon with unalloyed pleasure. He even blamed Savage because his interest in the busher had prompted him to ask that unfortunate question; and on reaching the hotel he hunted up a paper and took refuge behind its open sheets, mainly to avoid mingling with one of the several groups scattered about the lobby.

He did not escape; one of the groups joined him. He had scarcely settled down before Jack Stillman, Dalton, and Al Ogan invaded the ancient leather-covered sofa. The irrepressible Larry gently removed the newspaper and sat on it.

“What the deuce do you want with the world’s happenings?” he inquired airily. “Within a month we’ll be making history ourselves. Listen, till I tell you some real news. Did you know there was going to be a genuine, old-fashioned horse race over at the county seat next Saturday?”

“No; is there?” was the indifferent reply.

“There is. Wouldn’t you like to take it in?”

Lefty shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t say I’m pining away with any such desire.”

Dalton sighed and cast up his eyes. “Gee! You’re about as lively to-night as a wooden Indian. I thought you’d be all for it. Anybody who’s got a passably good nag around here will enter, and they say there’s an Englishman come on from the West with a couple of fast ones. It ought to be more fun than a badger pull.”

Locke drew himself up in the corner of the sofa, and surveyed the volatile infielder. “Have you figured out how you’re going to get off to see this jamboree?” he inquired briefly.

“Well, you know what a store Jack sets by you, old man,” Dalton said ingratiatingly. “We thought if you asked him――”

“Nothing doing!” put in Lefty decisively. “I’m not going to lay myself out for a panning. By next Saturday the old man will probably have games scheduled for every other day or so, and you’ve got just about as much chance of getting off for the afternoon as a snowball has down below. If you’re so keen about it, ask him yourself.”

All of which goes to show how completely a misunderstanding with a girl could sour even as good-tempered a man as Lefty Locke. Later, in his room, he realized that he had been rather short, and regretted it; but by that time he had begun to consider Janet’s abruptly terminated remark in detail and ponder over it.

She had intimated that Savage had been obliged to act the part of an ill-mannered rowdy in the early part of the training season. Whether she knew what she was talking about was, of course, a question; but if it was true, Lefty’s hypothesis of dual personality was knocked into a cocked hat. But how could it be true? How could any man deliberately work the transformation which had occurred in Savage’s case? How could any normal human being, of his own volition, be sane and decent and likable one day; a coarse, evil-eyed rowdy the next? Above all, supposing such a thing were possible, why should he do it?