Chapter III

That night after dinner he found himself joining the procession upon the veranda, walking with a pretty girl whom he did not remember meeting, but, from whose conversation, he knew he must have danced attendance on somewhere or other.

In the half light of the mellow Japanese lanterns, he caught glimpses of familiar faces in the throng; Dr. Beezeley, unctuous and sticky-fingered, the faded Mrs. Dill with Dr. Samuel Meeke, poor little Mrs. Meeke, anxiously smiling when she caught the protruding eyes of her husband, Mrs. Weldon, gracious and serene, walking with some tall, heavy-whiskered Southerner, Tommy O’Hara conducting Miss Claire Weldon, with something of the determination that one notices in troopers who convoy treasure-trains. In and out of the lights they passed him, vague impressions of filmy draperies and lantern-lit faces, with now and then a shadowy gesture or a sparkle of eyes in the twilight. Beyond, the dark foliage of sycamore and maple loomed motionless, with never a wind to stir the tender leaves, but the locust-trees, where the grape-like bunches of white blossoms hung, were all hazy with the quivering wings of dusk-moths. Slender sphinx-moths darted and turned and hovered over the phlox, grey wraiths of dead humming-birds, poised above phantom flowers. Below the fountain spray, drifting fine as a veil of mist across the shadowy blossoms of white iris, a hidden tree-frog quavered a sweet-treble, and on every twig-tip gauzy-winged creatures scraped resonant accompaniment.

“Of what are you thinking, Mr. Edgeworth?” asked the girl beside him.

He started slightly; he had quite forgotten her. He had been thinking of the girl at the bridge and the tryst next morning, but he said: “I was listening to the tree-frog. It means rain to-morrow.”

“I am very sorry,” said the girl, “I was going to Painted Mountain on horseback. Shall we sit here a moment?” She shook out her skirts and seated herself, and he found a place on the veranda railing beside her.

“Painted Mountain?” he asked; “that is beyond Yo Espero, isn’t it?”

“Yo Espero is on the southern slope. I heard such an interesting story about Yo Espero to-day; shall I tell you?”

He looked at her sharply, then nodded, saying: “Tell me first what Yo Espero means. It’s Spanish, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,—I suppose so. I believe it means ‘_I hope._’ The village,—there’s only one house you know,—was named Yo Espero by the only inhabitant. They say he took the name from the label on the lid of an old cigar-box that he found among the rocks.”

“Very unromantic and intensely American,” said Edgeworth laughing.

“Ah, but wait,—there’s more to come. The man who lives at Yo Espero has a niece, a beauty they say, and would you believe it, the man, her uncle, named her also Yo Espero!”

“Oh!” said Edgeworth musingly.

“Poor girl,—named from a cigar brand! It is wicked—don’t you think so, Mr. Edgeworth?”

“Yo Espero,” he repeated softly,—“I don’t know,—Yo Espero.”

“Her uncle calls her Io for short when he does not call her Yo Espero. He must be a brute. They say he knows things about the blockade too.”

Edgeworth became interested.

“I have never seen the girl,” she continued, “but Mrs. Weldon has, and she says the girl is simply a raving beauty. Dr. Beezeley tried to call on the uncle but was shown the door without ceremony. They say the man is well educated and from the North, but he won’t allow anybody to enter his house or speak to his niece.”

“Do you know his name?” asked Edgeworth.

“Mrs. Beezeley says it is Clyde. He is some broken-down Northern man of good family who has sunk low enough to mix himself up with the blockade. People say the Revenue Officers are after him and will get him sooner or later. I wonder what the girl will do then?”

“I wonder,” repeated Edgeworth under his breath; “hello! here’s Tommy O’Hara, the pride of Drumgilt!”

“And the Pride has had a fall,” said O’Hara sentimentally;—“did—did you notice if Miss Weldon was passing this way, Jim? Ah, did you see her pass, Miss Marwood? With Colonel Scarborough? Oh, the mischief!”

“Come,” laughed Miss Marwood, “we’ll go and find them; Mr. Edgeworth doesn’t care; he likes solitude—”

Edgeworth attempted to protest, but was bidden to go with them or stay, as he pleased. And he stayed,—to smoke and muse and ponder on the long dim porch while the dew dripped from the perfumed vines, and the great stars spangled the sky, and the million voices of the night sang of summers past and summers to come. And the burden of the song was always the same, Yo Espero, Yo Espero.

At seven o’clock next morning, Edgeworth stood on the little foot-bridge, leaning both elbows upon the wooden railing. Between his elbows was a fresh white cut in the weather-stained plank, from which a shaving of wood had recently been planed, and on this white space was printed in pencil:

“I shall not see you again.”

He never doubted that the message was for him. He leaned idly upon the rail, reading and re-reading it. A fine warm rain, scarcely more than a mist, was falling through the calm air. The tiny globules powdered his cap and coat, shining like frost-dust.

Presently he fumbled in his pocket, found a jack-knife, opened it, and deliberately shaved the writing from the plank. Then, in his turn he wrote:

“If you will not see me I shall go to-morrow.”

“Let the Beezeley whelp read that and make the most of it,” he muttered, turning away with an unaccustomed feeling of wistfulness.

What he longed for he did not know; perhaps for a little of O’Hara’s society, so he lighted his pipe and started toward the hotel, his hands deep in his pockets, his tanned cheeks glistening with the fine rain.

After a few moments it occurred to him that he had put it rather strongly;—in fact it was an unwarranted and idiotic thing to write. Why in the world should he leave Diamond Springs because a girl whom he had met three times and spoken to once, refused to meet him again? He hesitated, mused a little, and finally resumed his course. Let it stay as it was; it mattered nothing to him anyway. He would leave the hotel,—he would leave the state too, for that matter, for he was sick and weary of the Carolinas, and of the big hotels, filled with invalids who sat in hot baths or drank bottles of nasty “waters.” Would O’Hara go with him? He thought of Claire Weldon and frowned.

“She’s spoiled O’Hara, that’s what she’s done!” he pondered bitterly.

When he came in sight of the hotel he saw Dr. Beezeley pottering about the croquet-ground. When the reverend gentleman walked, his flat feet scraped the gravel and lapped over each other in front, like the toes of a Shanghai rooster.

“Hey!” said Dr. Beezeley, “been a walkin’?”

Edgeworth nodded.

“Want to play croquet?” asked Beezeley, looking at him over his glasses; “it ain’t goin’ to rain much more.”

Edgeworth said he never played croquet.

Beezeley straightened a wicket, hammered a painted stake, and sniffed.

His face, with the bunchy chop-whiskers cut a little close, reminded Edgeworth of the countenance of some big buck rabbit. The reverend gentleman also had other rabbit peculiarities, such as a perpetual appetite, a prehensile lip, and an enormous progeny.

O’Hara hailed him from the tennis courts and he went over, puffing his pipe moodily. But when he found that Tommy intended to invite two girls to make up doubles, Edgeworth flatly refused to play.

“Confound it, Tommy,” he said, “you are good enough company for me, and I ought to be for you. What’s the use of lugging in strangers every minute?”

“Ladies are never strangers,” said Tom airily; “one of them is Miss Weldon.”

“That’s all right,” said Edgeworth savagely, “but she can’t play tennis. Is it a kindergarten you’re setting up, Tom O’Hara? Call your caddy and come on to the links.”

“Listen to the lad!” said O’Hara; “why, man, I’ll go with you where you like and I’ll do what you like,—only,” he added, “I have an appointment to ride at ten—with Miss Weldon.”

“Ride then,” said Edgeworth with a scowl, and turned on his heel, leaving O’Hara a sadly puzzled man.

“What the mischief is the matter with me, anyhow?” muttered Edgeworth, striding wrathfully away across the meadow; “why can’t I let Tommy alone with his girl. I’m making a nuisance of myself I fancy.”

The restlessness which possessed him he did not even attempt to analyse. That it was caused by something or somebody outside of himself he was convinced.

“These people here,” he thought, “are empty-headed and common—when they’re not sanctimonious and vulgar. I’ll be hanged if I’m going to spend the time talking platitudes to girls in golf gowns.”

Of course it was their fault that he felt irritable and bored. He thought of his book, “The Origin of the Cherokee Indian,” but the prospect of shutting himself in his room to drive a pen over reams of foolscap had small attraction for him. The rain had ceased, the heavy perfumed air, vague with vapour, oppressed him, and he looked up at the mountains, half veiled in mist. But climbing was out of the question,—he didn’t know exactly why,—but it was clearly out of the question. He would not go fishing either; neither would he read. What was there left to do? Nothing, except to go back to the foot-bridge.

So when at last, by the highways and byways of cogitation, he had completed the circle, and had arrived at the point from which he started, he found that his legs had secured the precedence of his brain, for already they were landing him at the foot-bridge.

He was really a little surprised when he found himself there. He stepped to the railing to find his inscription. Somebody had shaved it off with a knife, and, in its place was written:

“Good-bye.”

It was then that Edgeworth experienced a most amazing, not to say painful, sensation. It started in the region of the heart, and, before he was aware, it began to affect his throat.

“Good-bye.”

He looked stupidly at the word, repeating it aloud once or twice. Presently he pulled out his knife and hacked away the writing with a misty idea that it might bother him less when it was obliterated. On the contrary it bothered him more than ever. A desire possessed him to go away, but, when he pictured himself in a train, rushing northward, the prospect was not as alluring as he felt it should be. Perhaps it was because he knew O’Hara would not go with him.

“The devil take Tom O’Hara!” he blurted out.

The effect of this outburst did not soothe him; it did, however, frighten a small hedge-sparrow nearly to death.

He looked up at the sun-warped sign-post on the end of the bridge. It bore the following valuable information.

HOG MOUNTAIN 6 miles.
BUZZARD RUN 10 miles.

RED ROCK 1 mile.
YO ESPERO 3 miles.
]

“Yo Espero,” he repeated aloud.

There was a step on the creaking planks behind him,—a light step,—but he heard it.

They faced each other for a moment in silence. The sun shone out of the mist above and tinged the edges of her hair with a mellow radiance.

“Come,” she said, “we can’t stay here.”

“Where—then?”

Their eyes met. Her lips were slightly parted; perhaps she had walked fast, for her breast rose and fell irregularly. In that silent exchange of glances, each read, for one brief second, a line in the book of fate;—each read,—but whether they understood or not, God knows, for they smiled at each other and turned away, side by side into the forest.