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Show By George Agnew Chamberlain - - cGst J rnPTER XII Continued r i4- f j ...u are to proceed alone, se-"f se-"f .''announced their leaden". "It ' V weu we should be seen, yet be W we will be watching and k "torses are much faster than ' Jf You have only to follow the ff ;jnCa to reach your goal." y '; ''- sun was almost setting when y-i j "-Imt into full view of the haci- . He could have made a short- y 'across a stubble field, but he i-' :e to stick close to the barranca "TIL !j he should come upon the rope J There was no need to pause r gamine it since he had often :Sei the same sort of thing be-.. be-.. Swerving he rode straight for .eastern gate, confident his be-J, be-J, :2gled appearance together with :; of his scarecrow of a horse !ti lie protect him better than sub-li( sub-li( jage. He was right and a few Ikat(2 -iutes later was beinS admitted t' Van Suttart and Arnaldo since 'S5L-M1 'te, recognizing his stocky figure its'-f ::lc it was still afar, had decided sit --f i receive him at her leisure aiid 0:3 i3i"St baCkSr0Und- KQf "Y"'re Blackadder,' aren't -;:eTii.i5 said Dirk. sist5" Yes'" said Blackadder, dis-ati dis-ati counting heavily. "How did you j, p,";f tow?" 'jhr-'f "I'm from the American embas-sJf'1 embas-sJf'1 .)," said Dirk. "My name is Van izi'.'r' Suilart an is is Adan Arnaldo too happened to witness your cap-5l"j;'"''1 cap-5l"j;'"''1 lure. I congratulate you on your '.-cape." "Huh?" grunted Blackadder. Oh, yes. What about Joyce Sew-Q Sew-Q Had ::? She's here, isn't she?" V ,, "I'll take you to her," said Dirk, ' but she thought you'd be glad of a ance for a shave and a wash !ii aJtiil;."I haven't a razor," grumbled Blackadder, "and nothing to change ! Kt&jjiilo." Oiliev&i "I can lend you a razor," said -f:i ii;Dirk; "as for linen, you're .too big t sfe ifcr me, but we can fix that too if rs s!r.d jjou'll put up with stuff from the ttdycll ilacienda store. Come along." lite j He led him to a room near his ibit!0TOi showed him the bath, provided 'to to him with shaving equipment and tostlii promised to send up an assortment if shirts and underwear from the MO store. Scarcity of windows insures ilJS-T any Spanish habitation against curi-set" curi-set" osity on the part of the outer world Hi h but knocks the props from under in-ireie in-ireie dividual privacy. Since every apart-Jtl apart-Jtl lii ment depends for light and venti-liifc" venti-liifc" lation on high doors opening on a central patio the price of seclusion , lis apt to be darkness and suffoca-' suffoca-' jtion. On the way to do his errand fel Dirk saw Joyce standing expectant-fii expectant-fii ly in her boudoir-office-sitting room usl and pretended not to see her the Stii sort of thing he had been doing for . two long days and longer nights. On his way back she intercepted 1 him. Jj "Dirk, come in here, please." 9, "What for?" he asked blankly, "is "len remerrbered he was supposed JSB to be a diplomat. "Forgive me. Of ja. course I'll come in." -. "Quit being polite!" said Joyce "jtjj sharply. "I hate it. It isn't you b; B anl you've been doing it for two j days. It's spoiled our rides. It's made me unhappy. For a while yu were Dirk Van Suttart, a lov- able human being. But now what :it are you? A shell, varnish, floor wax. it veneer! I dislike you." "That goes for me too," said Dirk holly. "i dislike actresses who $ change their leading men but alii al-ii 'ays use the same old stage set." C "So that's it," said Joyce, "that's A really it! I couldn't believe it. Half " my mind told me that was the matter mat-ter but the other half called the " first half a fool. Why shouldn't 1 have taken Adan to the roof? Why? )W'hat conceivable reason?" "You're asking me what business it was of mine," said Dirk dully, "and I'll answer you. None none at all. What it did, though was to wake me up. I felt miser able. I thought it would pass bv morning, but it didn't." He looked up at her. "I I hate feeling mis erable." "Oh, Dirk poor Dirk! If you could only know what happened! He covered his nose and mouth with a silk handkerchief." "Why?" demanded Dirk, bewil dcred. "What for?" "On account of the night air." They looked at each other and ! their eyes began to dance. Another second and they would have burst into laughter, but unfortunately Dirk's thoughts veered into another channel. There was something he had been wanting to do for his own Personal satisfaction for what already al-ready seemed a long time and while her attention was still diverted he took her chin in his left hand and studied the tip of her nose as if it had a smudge. Her startled and Pulled eyes should have warned h'm but somehow her half parted ''PS seemed more important He leaned over quickly but kissed them slowly. Joyce had not imagined she Would mind being kissed by Dirk, yet the light in her eyes dimmed and went out. Instead of warming the turned cold so cold he released her and stood back. A sense of loss oppressed her. What had happened? Suddenly she knew. He had been selfish, casual. It wasn't only that she had been taken for granted; it went deeper-so much deeper. He had destroyed something they both should have guarded. "Djrk," she said, "some day you 11 grow up and learn how foolish fool-ish it is to cheapen another person I believe people can make beauty for themselves, not out of whole cloth perhaps, but when they have a fair start. Friends are what you make them. Love is what you make it. Just now I think you yourself are too small to know what I'm talking talk-ing about." He threw up his head rebelliously and made an impulsive forward movement, but something in her steady eyes stopped him in time. He turned and walked blindly toward to-ward his room. CHAPTER XIII Blackadder recoiled from his first glance in a mirror in five days. He felt grateful to that young Van Suttart Sut-tart for saving him from showing himself to Joyce looking like a tramp. Being a stickler for daily shaving he hadn't seen his beard in years and was shocked to -find it splotched with gray. He took joy in getting rid of it, in steaming in a "I Sort of Don't Seem to Give a Tinker's Dam About My Post." hot bath and in slipping into underwear under-wear and shirt, coarse but clean, supplied from the hacienda store. In spite of his wrinkled suit he felt in better humor than at any moment since his departure from Elsinboro. Joyce was a fool, he reflected complacently. com-placently. What a chance she had missed by giving him this opportunity opportu-nity for recuperation! In his mind he credited her with tactical error number one. But the moment he was shown into her presence he wondered if and where he had gone wrong. Already Al-ready dressed in one of her flowered frocks, she turned in the chair at her desk but did not rise. She looked unbelievably cool cool inside in-side and out as she passed slow eyes over his face and figure. Here was a man out of her past, accurately ac-curately remembered, and he had not changed; yet he was distant, divided from her by a world. As for Blackadder, he beheld a person he did not know, a person he felt he might never know. He had been thinking of her as a young girl-headstrong, girl-headstrong, violent in her reactions, but young, unformed and consequently conse-quently malleable. Now he stared at something as fixed as a portrait; alive yet battling, impenetrable. Instantly In-stantly his own plan of attack went into reverse with an almost audible stripping of mental gears and as an added humiliation he discovered he would have to speak first or not at all. "Hardly what you'd call a warm welcome. Joyce." "No." she admitted; then continued contin-ued in an even tone. "Why have you come and what do you want?" He was at a loss for an answer. That a whipper-snapper should outface out-face him roused his always unmanageable unman-ageable temper and abandoning the sensible course he had just determined deter-mined upon he foolishly reverted to a prepared speech prepared and rehearsed for days. "You know why I'm here. You're a willful and ungrateful girl. You bit the hand that fed you fed you for years. Your escapade has cost me t'me and money and caused real anguish to Irma. as fine a woman a ever drew breath. But now it s a lo more serious. You're like a child plavms with matches around a keg of powder and thinking it's funny! Get this. Joyce: if you don't go back , with me at once you may find your- I elf responsible, silly as it may sound, for thousands of deaths. I or-1 tunately you're still a minor. Do you hear? A minor." "Yes, yes," said Joyce quietly, "you don't have to shout I heard you a minor. Well, what of it?" "Your stepmother has appointed me your guardian and by the laws of the state of New York" He stopped, halted by a clear laugh. "Excuse me," said Joyce, controlling control-ling herself, "but that sounded so funny. The state of New York, Elsinboro, El-sinboro, you. my stepmother it's all thousands of miles and a hundred hun-dred years away. There you were Mr. Blackadder, weren't you? Mr. Helm Blackadder, and a power in a small way. Well, here you're nothing. noth-ing. Unless you find some work to do around the place you haven't the right to eat, breathe, sleep or live." "You talk to me like that," exploded ex-ploded Blackadder, "a man twice your age who " "Please don't shout," interrupted Joyce. "Try to realize it's only because be-cause I hate bloodshed that you weren't shot. That's easy enough to understand, but what about this? If you had been it wouldn't have affected af-fected the course of my present life in the slightest it wouldn't even have rated an added inconvenience." inconven-ience." "Are you crazy?" gasped Black-adder. Black-adder. "Perhaps," said Joyce, "but that isn't what matters, is it? What stands for a whole lot more than you seem able to comprehend is that I'm mistress of La Barranca." "Anything I can do to help, Joyce?" asked Dirk, sauntering in from the balcony. "Oh, Dirk; I'm glad you came. Do you mind showing Mr. Black-adder Black-adder around for a while? I'm going to be busy until dinner time." Blackadder, though annoyed at the interruption, promptly saw the value of a chance to sound out Van Suttart. Whose ally would he turn out to be? What was he doing here anyway? How had he got here and when? He accompanied him with alacrity, glad of a chance besides to reassemble his shaken wits, and to all his questions except the first and most important obtained ready answers. At the end of half an hour he could murmur: "So that cable of mine is really all the authority you have for being away from your post?" . . "Why, yes, I guess so, yes," said Dirk, a little troubled by the tone of the statement. "I hadn't thought of it in exactly that way." "Now that you have and that I'm here," continued Blackadder, "it sort of does away with any reason for you to continue hanging around, doesn't it?" "Eh?" said Dirk, beginning to wake up; then he laughed. "Well, there's certainly an answer to that! The only method of departure at present happens to be ride or walk a hundred miles." "Not necessarily," said Blackadder. Blackad-der. "I have reason to think my driver may come to his senses and return; there's also the possibility he may have reported to the ambassador. am-bassador. Say I manage to get a car. Would you be inclined to help me persuade Miss Sewell to leave at once?" "I'm not sure," said Dirk, frowning, frown-ing, thoughtfully. "I'd have to talk to her about it first." "That's an extraordinary stand for you to take." "Why?" "If you can't see it," said Black-adder, Black-adder, "I won't try to show you. For your own good I might point out again that your justification for absence ab-sence from your post terminated with my arrival." "I can't blame you for being puzzled, puz-zled, Mr. Blackadder." said Dirk slowly, "since I'm a bit that way myself. I don't know quite how it's come about but somehow I sort of don't seem to give a tinker's dam about my post." I Blackadder snorted, stared at him, then turned away with a shrug. Here certainly was no ally and he dismissed him from mind. But not for long. At dinner, where Black-adder Black-adder sat in brooding silence, Dirk was the mainspring that kept the ball of conversation rolling. He egged Dog Jorge and Arnaldo into one of their perfervid political discussions, then bargained with the latter to alternate with him at playing a dance tune, Adan to go first. The challenge accepted, Dirk fairly forced Joyce to dance, but when it came his turn it developed he scarcely knew one note from an- , other. Joyce had been puzzled by his high spirits, in violent contrast to the gloom which had enshrouded him from the moment of the rebuke she had administered. It wasn't the kiss she had minded nor its rough-and-ready manner, not even its humiliating hu-miliating assumption. The truth was she had been hurt rather than angry and had spoken straight from the heart in protest against a blow struck at some vague beauty, still in the bud yet present to them both. But no sooner did he slip his arm around her to dance than his strategy strate-gy throughout dinner became evident. evi-dent. "This is the only way I could think of," he whispered, "to be alone with you. To tell you I'm sorry sorrier than I ever was about anything else in my life. You were quite right to say what you did. Please don't stay away from me. Please give me a chance. Please go for a ride tomorrow as though nothing had happened." "Will you promise on your word of honor your given word I believe be-lieve you called it never to do it again?" "No," he said after some deliberation, delib-eration, "I can't honestly promise any such thing. I'm through with giving my word. All I can say is I'll do my best my level best." It was all Joyce could do to keep from laughing and what stopped her, strangely enough, was his sincerity sin-cerity the very thing that made him comical. They rode the next morning; to Blockadder's disgust they were gone for hours. After their return came lunch and the inevitable in-evitable siesta. Even then Black-adder Black-adder got no chance for a further talk with Joyce, for she was busy with the myriad details tossed up as steadily as a playing fountain by a family of 500 souls. How long was this sort of thing to keep up? He could imagine himself hanging around for days without ever securing secur-ing five minutes free of interruption. interrup-tion. The dinner was an exact replica rep-lica of that of the night before except ex-cept that his surly abstraction was more profound so dense it gradually gradu-ally spread its wet blanket over everybody else. At last Joyce surrendered, sur-rendered, crushed into submission by a prolonged silence. "I'm afraid you're having a miserable mis-erable time, Mr. Blackadder. What can we do to cheer you up?" Helm raised somber eyes to her face. "You know the answer to that, Joyce," he said with overwhelming over-whelming simplicity. "All I ask from these gentlemen and yourself is an hour's uninterrupted talk with you." Joyce knew when she was fairly caught. "I'm sure that can be arranged ar-ranged any time you like," she said, making the best of it. "Shall we say in my sitting room in half an hour?" "Splendid," said Blackadder, and promptly turned affable. To the amazement of everyone, though he had appeared deaf to such talk as there had been, he took up a discussion where Don Jorge and Arnaldo had left ofT, enumerated enu-merated the omissions made by each and arrived at an unanswerable unanswer-able conclusion astonishing to both. (TO HE COST1M ED) |
