The Little Brown Jug at Kildare by Meredith Nicholson - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXI

GOOD-BY TO JERRY DANGERFIELD

The next morning Ardmore knocked at Griswold's door as early as he dared, and went in and talked to his friend in their old intimate fashion. The associate professor of admiralty was shaving himself with care.

"You won't have any hard feelings about that scarlet fever business, will you, Grissy? It was downright selfish of me to want to keep the thing to myself, but I thought it would be fun to go ahead and carry it through and then show you how well I pulled it off."

"Don't ever refer to it again, if you love me," spluttered Griswold amiably, as he washed off the lather. "I, too, have ruled over a kingdom, and I have seen history in the making, quorum pars magna fui."

"But I say, Grissy, there is such a thing as fate and destiny and all that after all; don't you believe it?"

"Don't I believe it! I know it!" thundered Griswold, reaching for a towel. He lifted a white rose from a glass of water where it had spent the night and regarded it tenderly. "The right rose under the right star, and the thing's done; the rose, the star and the girl,—the combination simply can't be beat, Ardy."

Ardmore seized and wrung his friend's hand, for the twentieth time; but he was preoccupied, and Griswold, fastening his collar at the mirror, hummed softly the couplet:

With the winking eye

For my battle-cry.

"Grissy!" shouted Ardmore, "she never did it!"

"Oh—bless my soul, what was I saying! Why, of course she wasn't the one! Not Miss Dangerfield—never!"

"Well, you like her, don't you?" demanded Ardmore petulantly.

"Of course I like her, you idiot! She's wonderful. She's—"

He frowned upon the scarf he had chosen with much care, snapped it to shake the wrinkles out, humming softly, while Ardmore glared at him.

"She's wise," Griswold resumed, "with the wisdom of laughter—accept that, with my compliments. It's not often I do so well before breakfast. And now if you're to be congratulated before I go back to the groves of Academe pray bestir yourself. At this very moment I have an engagement to walk with a lady before breakfast—thanks, yes, that's my coat. Good-by!"

Breakfast was a lingering affair at Ardsley that morning. The two governors and the national guard officers who had spent the night in the house were not in the slightest hurry to break up the party, for such a company, they all knew, could hardly be assembled again. The governors were a trifle nervous as to the attitude of the press, in spite of Collins' efforts to dictate what history should say of the affair on the Raccoon; but before they left the table the Raleigh morning papers were brought in and it was clear that the newspaper men were keeping their contract.

"I congratulate you, Dangerfield," said Governor Osborne. "I only hope that the Columbia and Charleston papers have done half as well by me."

Both governors had decided upon an inspection of such portions of their militia as were assembled on the Raccoon, and a joint dress parade was appointed for six o'clock.

Ardmore, anxious to make every one at home, saw the morning pass without a chance to speak to Jerry; and when he was free shortly before noon he was chagrined to find that she had gone for a ride over the estate with her father, Governor Osborne, Barbara and Griswold. He went in pursuit, and to his delight found her presently sitting alone on a log by the Raccoon, having dismounted, it appeared, to rescue a fledgling robin whose cries had led her away from her companions. She pointed out the nest and directed him to climb the tree and restore the bird. This done he sat down beside her at a point where the Raccoon curved sweepingly and swung off abruptly into a new course.

"I hope your father didn't scold you for anything we did," he began meekly.

"No; he took it all pretty well, and promised that if I wouldn't tell mama what he had been doing—about coming down here with Governor Osborne just to settle an old score at poker—mama doesn't approve of cards, you know—that he would make me a present of a better riding horse than the one I now have, and he might even consider a trip abroad next summer."

"Oh, you mustn't go abroad! It's—it's so lonesome abroad!"

"How perfectly ridiculous! Has it never occurred to you that I am never lonesome, not even when I'm alone."

"Well," said Ardmore, who saw that he was headed for a blind alley, "I'm glad your father was not displeased with our work."

"He'll think we did pretty well after he's read our correspondence in his letter books. I told him the stamp we stamped his name with worked better with the red ink pad than with the black one, which ought, at any rate, to be clear enough to a man of papa's intelligence."

"Did you tell him about that railroad lawyer from New York who wanted to suppress the law which compels all locomotive whistles to be tuned to E flat?"

"No; that man sent me a ten-pound box of candy, which was highly improper, considering papa's position, and I should have scorned to accept the candy only I had forgotten to keep his card."

"And besides," added Ardmore gently, "you had eaten the candy. Don't you remember that you left nothing but a few burnt almonds which you wanted to keep for eating filapenas?"

"Don't be silly!" ejaculated Jerry contemptuously.

"It's a good thing all this fuss about the Appleweight people is over or I should be worse than silly. My mind was not intended for such heavy work."

"I think you have a good mind, Mr. Ardmore," said Jerry, with the air of one who makes concessions. "You really did well in all these troubles, and you did much better than I thought you would the day I hired you for private secretary. I think I could safely recommend you to any governor in need of assistance."

"You talk as though you were getting ready to discharge me," said Ardmore plaintively, "and I don't want to lose my job."

"You ought to have something to do," said Jerry thoughtfully. "As near as I can make out you have never done anything but study about pirates and collect pernicious books on the sinful life of Captain Kidd. You should have some larger aim in life than that and I think I know of a good position that is now open, or will be as soon as papa has cleared out the peanut shells we left in his desk. I think you would make an excellent adjutant-general with full charge of the state militia. You have already had experience in the handling of troops, and as Rutherford Gillingwater never did anything but get typhoid fever to earn the place, I see no reason why papa should not appoint you to the position."

"But you have to get rid of Gillingwater first," suggested Ardmore, his heart beating fast.

"If you mean that he has to be removed from office, I will tell you now, Mr. Ardmore, that Rutherford Gillingwater will no longer sign himself adjutant-general of North Carolina. I removed him myself in a general order I wrote yesterday afternoon just before I told papa that you and I could not act as governor any longer, but that he must resume the yoke."

"But that must have been a matter of considerable delicacy, Miss Dangerfield, when you consider that you are engaged to marry Mr. Gillingwater."

"Not in the least," said Jerry. "I broke our engagement the moment I saw that he came here the other night all dressed up to eat and not to fight, and he is now free to engage himself to that thin blonde at Goldsboro whom he thinks so highly intellectual."

Jerry held up her left hand and regarded its ringless fingers judicially, while Ardmore, his heart racing hotly against all records, watched her, and with a particular covetousness his eyes studied that trifle of a hand.

Then with a quick gesture he seized her hand and raised her gently to her feet.

"Jerry!" he cried. "From the moment you winked at me I have loved you. I should have followed you round the world until I found you. If you can marry a worthless wretch like me, if—oh, Jerry!"

She gently freed her hand and stepped to one side, bending her head like a bird that pauses alarmed, or uncertain of its whereabouts, glancing cautiously up and down the creek.

"Mr. Ardmore," she said, "you may not be aware that when you asked me to be your wife—and that, I take it, was your intention—you were standing in South Carolina, while I stood with both feet on the sacred soil of the Old North State. Under the circumstances I do not think your proposal is legal. Moreover, unless you are quite positive which eye it was that so far forgot itself as to wink, I do not think the matter can go further."

The slightest suggestion of a smile played about her lips, but he was very deeply troubled, and, seeing this, her eyes grew grave with kindness.

"Mr. Ardmore, if your muscles of locomotion have not been utterly paralyzed, and if you will leave that particular state of the Union which, next to Massachusetts, I most deeply abhor, I will do what I can in my poor weak way—as father says in beginning his best speeches—to assist you to the answer."

Then for many æons, when he had his arms about her, a kiss, which he had intended for the lips that were so near, somehow failed of its destination, and fell upon what seemed to him a rose-leaf gone to Heaven, but which was, in fact, Jerry Dangerfield's left eye. His being tingled with the most delicious of intoxications, to which the clasp of her arms about his neck added unnecessary though not unwelcome delight. Then she drew back and held him away with her finger-tips for an instant.

"Mr. Thomas Ardmore," she said, with maddening deliberation, "it may not be important, but I must tell you in all candor that it was the other eye.”