Chapter XVIII

Teddy Mahr paused for a moment before descending to the street. He was honestly disappointed. He had hoped with all his heart to overcome Gard's opposition. Not that he was over anxious to pay, in some degree, the debt of gratitude that he owed--he had come to regard his benefactor as a being so near and dear to him that there was no question of the ethics of giving and taking, but he had longed to give himself the keen pleasure of bestowing something that his friend really wanted. There was just one more chance of achieving his purpose--the intervention of Dorothy; her caprices Gard never denied. If he could only induce Dorothy--Early as it was he determined to intreat her intercession.

Walking briskly for a few blocks, he entered an hotel and sought the telephone booth. The wide awake voice that answered him was very unlike the sweet and sleepy drawls of protest his matutinal ringings were wont to call forth when Dorothy had been a gay and frivolous débutante. The enforced quiet of her mother's prolonged illness, and the sojourn in the retirement of a hill sanitarium, had made of her a very different creature from the gaudy little night-bird of yore. The experiences through which she had passed, their anxiety and pain, had left her nature sweetened and deepened; had given her new sympathies and understandings. Now her laugh was just as clear--but its ring of light coquetry was gone.

"Of course, I'll take a walk with you," came her answer,--"if you'll stop for me. I'm quite a pedestrian, you know. I _had_ to take some sort of a cure in sheer self-defense, up there in the wilds, so I decided on fresh air--and now it's a habit. I'll be ready."

Teddy walked rapidly, his heart singing. He had quite forgotten his errand in the anticipated joy of seeing her. If he thought at all of the painting, it was an unformulated regret that no living artist could do Dorothy justice, or ever hope to transfer to canvas any true semblance of her many perfections.

She joined him in the hallway of her home, called back a last happy good-by to her mother, and passed with him into the silver and crystal morning light. She was simply dressed in a dark tailor suit, with a little hat and sensible shoes--a very different silhouette from that of the girl who left her room only in time to keep her luncheon appointments. He looked at her with approval and laughed happily.

"Hello, Country!--how are the cows to-day?"

"Fine," she answered. "All boiled and sterilized, milked by electricity, manicured by steam and dehorned by absent treatment, sir, she said--sir, she said."

"May I go with you into your highly sanitary barnyard, my pretty maid?" he asked seriously.

"Not unless you take a bath in carbolic solution, are vaccinated twice, and wear a surgeon's uniform, sir, she said."

"But, I'm going to marry you, my pretty maid." The words were out before he could check them. He blushed furiously. To propose in a nursery rhyme was something that shocked his sense of fitness. He was amazed to find that he meant what he said in just the very way he had said it.

But Dorothy took his answer as part of their early morning springtime madness.

"Nobody asked you to be farm inspector, sir, she said," she replied promptly.

But he was silent. His own words had choked him completely. She looked at him quickly, but his head was turned away. Her own heart began to beat nervously. She felt the magnetic current of his emotion vibrating through her being. Her eyes opened wide in wonder. She had for so long accustomed herself to the idea that Teddy was her own peculiar property, and that, of course, she intended to marry him, that but for his half-distressed perturbation, she would have thought no more of the momentous "Yes" than of voicing some long-formed opinion. Now his throbbing excitement had become contagious. She found herself fluttering and tongue-tied. Though she realized suddenly that their ridiculous child's-play had turned to earnest, she could not find word or look to ease the strain. They walked on in silence, step for step, in a sort of mechanical rhythmic physical understanding. Suddenly he spoke.

"Dolly, I wish you'd punch old Marcus!"

The remark was so unexpected that Dorothy slipped a beat in her step and shuffled quickly to fall in tune.

"Good Gracious!--what for?" Her surprise was unfeigned.

"Because he won't let me give him the Heim Vandyke--wants to buy it, insists on buying it. Asked me to let him have it--and then won't accept it. Now, do me a favor, will you? You _make_ him take it. You're the only person who can boss him--and he likes to have you do it. Will you see him to-day, and fix it?"

"Well of all!--Why, _I_ can't make him do anything he doesn't want to do. Of course, he ought to take it, if you want to give it to him; but I really don't see--I wonder--" She meditated for a full block in silence. "I'm going to lunch with him and Miss Gard and Mother. If I can, I'll--no, I _can't_. It's none of my business. It's up to you. How can I say--'You ought to do what Teddy says'? He'd tell me I was an impertinent little girl, and that he knew how he wanted to deal with little boys without being told by their desk-mates."

Teddy scowled. He wanted to get back to the barnyard he had left so abruptly, impelled by his new and unaccountable fright. But having hitched himself to his new subject of conversation, he felt somehow compelled to drag at it. It was up-hill work. To be sure, he had come to Dorothy for the purpose of soliciting her help, but Gard and Vandyke had both lost interest. Against his will he kept on talking.

"Well, I've done everything I can to make him see my point of view. I've told him I owe it to him; that Father would want him to have it; that I'll give his money away if he sends it; that I've already shipped the thing to him; that I don't want it; that it's unbecoming to my house--he won't listen. Just says he's sent his cheque and we'll please change the subject."

"Well, you don't have to _cash_ his cheque, do you?" she inquired gravely.

"I know that," Teddy scoffed. "But if I don't, he'll send it in my name, in cash, to some charity, and that'll be all the same in the final addition. He's so confoundedly resourceful, you can't think around him."

"No, you can't," she agreed. "That's one of the wonderful things about him. He thinks in his own terms, in terms of you or me, or the janitor, or the President. He isn't just himself, he's everybody."

"He isn't thinking in terms of _me_," Teddy complained.

She shook her head. "No," she smiled wisely, "he's thinking in terms of himself, this time, and we aren't big enough to see that, too, and understand."

They had reached the entrance to the Park and crossed the already crowded Plaza to its quieter walks. The tender greens of new grass greeted them, and drifts of pink and yellow vaporous color that seemed to overhang and envelop every branch of tree and shrub, like faint spirits of flower and leaf, clustering about and striving to enter the clefts of gray bark, that they might become embodied in tangible and fragile beauty. Sweet pungent smells of damp earth rose to their nostrils,--fragrance of reviving things, of stirring sap, of diligent seeds moling their way to light and air. Mists shifted by softly, now gray, now rainbow-hued, now trailing on the grass, now sifting slowly through reluctant branches that strove to retain them.

Dorothy sighed happily. The restraint that had troubled them both slowly metamorphosed itself into a tender, dreamy content. Why ask anything of fate? Why crystallize with a word the cloudland perfection of the mirage in which they walked? They were content, happy with the vernal joy of young things in harmony with all the world of spring. They were silent now--unconscious, and one with the heart of life, as were Adam and Eve in the great garden of Eternal Spring--isolated, alone, all in all to each other, and kin with all the vibrant life about them, sentient and inanimate. For them the rainbow glowed in every drop the trailing mists scattered in their wake; for them the pale light of the sun was pure gold of dreams; every frail, courageous flower a delicate censor of fragrance. There was crooning in the tree-tops and laughter in the confidential whisper of the fountains--as if Pan's pipes had enchanted all this ruled-and-lined, sophisticated, urban _pleasaunce_ into a dell in Arcady.

Teddy looked down at his companion, trudging sturdily by his side. How sweet and dear were her eyes of violet, how tender and gentle the slim curves of her mouth, how wholly lovely the contour of cheek and chin, and the curled tendrils of her moist, dark hair!

She was conscious of his gaze. She felt an impulse to take his arm--that strong, strong arm; to walk with him like that--like the old, long married couples, who come to sun themselves in the warm light of the young day, and the sight of passing lovers. A Judas tree in full blossom arrested her attention, and they came to a halt before its lavish display.

"There's nothing in the world so beautiful as natural things," she said slowly, breaking the enchanted silence.

Teddy was master of himself again. "I know," he said, "and I want to get back again to the barnyard we left so suddenly. I said something then--I want to say it over again."

It was Dorothy's turn to become frightened and confused.

"Oh," she said with an indifference she was far from feeling. "Barnyard! It's such a commonplace spot after all. Don't you like the garden better?"

But Teddy was determined. "My pretty maid," he began in a tender voice.

But she moved away suddenly down a tempting path, and, perforce, he followed her.

"I've been thinking," she said hurriedly, "about Mr. Gard. I'm sure, if he felt he was hurting your feelings, he wouldn't think _all_ his own way. Now, if you want me to, I'll try and make him understand it. I'll tell him that you came to me in an awful huff--all cut up. I'm sure I can put it strongly enough."

"And I shall go to him, and complain that when I want to talk with you, you put me off--won't listen to me. I'll ask him to make you listen to reason. I'll tell him to put it to you. I'll show him that I _am_ cut up, all around the heart. Perhaps he can put it to you strongly enough--"

Dorothy stopped short and wheeled around to face him.

"Oh, very well, then," she smiled, "if you are going to get someone else to do your love making for you, _I_ apply for the position. Teddy Mahr, will you marry the milkmaid?--Honest and true, black and blue?"

"I will!" he cried ecstatically, and caught her in his arms.

Two wrens upon a neighboring branch, tilted forward to watch them, the business of nest building for the moment forgotten. A gray squirrel, with jerking tail and mincing gate, approached along the path. A florid policeman, wandering aimlessly in this remote arbor, stopped short, grinned, stuck his thumbs in his belt, and contemplated the picture, then wheeled about and stole out of sight in fashion most unmilitary. Across the lake the white swans glided, and two little "mandarin" ducks sidled up close to shore, regarding the moveless group of humans with bright and beady eyes.

Dorothy disengaged herself from his arms with a happy little gurgle, set her hat straight upon her tumbled hair, and glanced at the ducks.

"There," she said softly, "that's a lucky sign. In China they always send the newlyweds a pair. They are love birds; they die when separated--which means, I'm a duck."

"You are," he agreed, and kissed her again.

"Now," she said seriously, "I've found a way to clear all difficulties."

He looked at her, troubled. "I didn't know there were any," he said anxiously. "I think your mother likes me, and I don't see--I can keep you in hats and candy; and Miss Gard is the only person who has seemed to disapprove of me."

"All wrong," she said. "I don't mean that at all. I mean about the picture. I have thought it all out while you were kissing me."

He grinned. "Did you, indeed? I'm vastly flattered, I'm sure. In that case I shall go to kissing school no later than to-morrow. However, since you work out problems in that way, I'll give you another to Q.E.D. When will the wedding be?" He folded his arms about her rapturously.

The ducks waddled up the bank; the squirrel climbed to the back of the bench; one wren captured a damaged feather from Dorothy's hat that had fallen to earth, and made off with his nest contribution.

"Now," Teddy demanded as he released her. "Did you work _that_ out?"

She gasped. "If you act like that, I'll not tell you anything. I'll leave you guessing all the rest of your life."

"I expect that," he laughed. "Who am I to escape the common lot?"

She frowned. "As I was saying before you interrupted me so rudely, I have found a way to overcome the arguments and refusals of 'Old Marcus'--by the way, if he heard you call him that, he'd beat you up, and perfectly right. He isn't old, and I wish you had half his sense."

"Dolly, we are _not_ married yet, and I object to unfavorable comparisons. Kindly get down to business."

"Well," she said, "I was thinking just this. We can give it to him as a wedding present--we've got him there, don't you see?"

"No, I _don't_ see," he replied. "Will you kindly show me how you work that out. He'll probably want to give you a Murillo and a town house and a Cellini service, and a motor car upholstered in cloth of gold, a Florentine bust and an order on Raphael to paint your portrait. If you ask me if I see him accepting the Vandyke as a wedding present from us--I don't."

"Goose!" she said with withering scorn.

He laughed. "Oh, very well, I'm back in the barnyard, so I don't mind. Just a minute ago and you had me a duck. I've lost caste--I was a mandarin then."

"I didn't say a wedding present for _our_ wedding, did I?" she inquired loftily. "Why don't you stop and think a minute. They don't teach observation in college, evidently."

Teddy was nonplussed. "You've got me," he said, his brows drawn together in a puzzled frown.

She tapped her foot impatiently. "Well, how else could we be giving him a wedding present?" she inquired.

"That's just what I don't see," he replied emphatically.

"When _he_ gets married, of course--heavens! you are dense!"

Teddy was stunned. "When he--why--what nonsense!--he's a confirmed old bachelor. There! I knew you couldn't think out problems when I was kissing you. I'm glad you didn't answer my second question, if that's the way you work things out. Who in the world would he marry!"

"How would you like him for a step-father-in-law?" She looked at him with an amused smile.

"Good gracious!" he exclaimed. "Why, I never thought of that! Your mother!--Oh, by golly! that's great, that's great! Of course, of course. Here, I'll kiss you again--you can answer my second question." He embraced her with hysterical enthusiasm. "Oh, when did it happen?" he begged. "How did you know? Since when have they been engaged? My! I have been a bat! Where were my eyes? Of all the jolly luck!" he leaped from the bench and executed a triumphal war dance.

"You act just like the kids--I mean, the baby goats, up in the Bronx," she laughed. "Teddy, stop, somebody might see you, and they'd send us both to an asylum. Stop it! And besides, my step-father hasn't proposed yet."

Teddy ceased his gambols abruptly. "What in the world have you been telling me, then?" he demanded, crestfallen. "Here I've been celebrating an event that hasn't happened."

"Well, it's going to," she affirmed with an impressive nod of her head. "_I_ know. Why, even Mother hasn't the slightest idea of it yet. Poor, dear Mother, she's so really humble minded, she wouldn't let herself realize how he loves her. But she leans on him, on the very thought of him. When we were away recuperating, she used to watch for his letters--like--like--I watched for yours, Teddy; and when I'd hand her one, she had such a look of calm, of rest. I've found her asleep with one crushed up in her hand. I'm sure she used to put them under her pillow at night, just as--well--just as I used to put yours, Teddy, under mine. Don't you know, that when two women are in love, they know it one from another, without a word. Of course, Mother knew all about how _I_ felt, I used to catch her looking at me, oh, so wistfully--but she never dreamed that wise little daughter had guessed her secret--oh, no--mothers never realize that their little chick-children have grown to be big geese. But, _I_ know, and, well, Teddy, as you know, if he doesn't ask her pretty soon, I'll go and ask him myself--and he never refuses me anything. I shall say, 'Dear old Marcus, Teddy and I wish you'd hurry up and ask Mother to marry you. We have set our hearts on picking out our own "steps." We think of being married in June, and we want it all settled.' There," she said with a radiant blush, "I've answered all your questions--have you another problem?"

* * * * *