The Green Mouse Chapter 16: Part 16

room and stood looking down into the yard. The grass out there was long and unkempt; roses bloomed on the fence; wistaria, in its deeper green of midsummer, ran riot over the trellis where Clarence had basely dodged his lovely mistress, and, after making a furry pin wheel of himself, had fled through the airhole into Stygian depths. Somewhere above, in the silent house, Clarence was sulkily dissembling. "I suppose," said Brown, quietly coming back to where the girl was sitting in the golden dusk, "that I might as well find Clarence while we are waiting for your maid. May I go up and look about?" And taking her silence as assent, he started upstairs. He hunted carefully, thoroughly, opening doors, peeping under furniture, investigating clothespresses, listening at intervals, at intervals calling with misleading mildness. But, like him who died in malmsey, Clarence remained perjured and false to all sentiments of decency so often protested purringly to his fair young mistress. Mechanically Brown opened doors of closets, knowing, if he had stopped to think, that cats don't usually turn knobs and let themselves into tightly closed places. In one big closet on the fifth floor, however, as soon as he opened the door there came a rustle, and he sprang forward to intercept the perfidious one; but it was only the air stirring the folds of garments hanging on the wall. As he turned to step forth again the door gently closed with an ominous click, shutting him inside. And after five minutes' frantic fussing he realized that he was imprisoned by a spring lock at the top of a strange house, inhabited only by a cat and a bewildered young girl, who might, at any moment now that the telephone was in order, call a cab and flee from a man who had tried to explain to her that they were irrevocably predestined for one another. Calling and knocking were dignified and permissible, but they did no good. To kick violently at the door was not dignified, but he was obliged to do it. Evidently the closet was too remote for the sound to penetrate down four flights of stairs. He tried to break down the door--they do it in all novels. He only rebounded painfully, ineffectively, which served him right for reading fiction. It irked him to shout; he hesitated for a long while; then sudden misgiving lest she might flee the house seized him and he bellowed. It was no use. The pitchy quality of the blackness in the closet aided him in bruising himself; he ran into a thousand things of all kinds of shapes and textures every time he moved. And at each fresh bruise he grew madder and madder, and, holding the cat responsible, applied language to Clarence of which he had never dreamed himself capable. Then he sat down. He remained perfectly still for a long while, listening and delicately feeling his hurts. A curious drowsiness began to irritate him; later the irritation subsided and he felt a little sleepy. His heart, however, thumped like an inexpensive clock; the cedar-tainted air in the closet grew heavier; he felt stupid, swaying as he rose. No wonder, for the closet was as near air-tight as it could be made. Fortunately he did not realize it. And, meanwhile, downstairs, Betty was preparing for flight. She did not know where she was going--how far away she could get in a rose-silk morning gown. But she had discovered, in a clothespress, an automobile duster, cap, and goggles; on the strength of these she tried the telephone, found it working, summoned a coupé, and was now awaiting its advent. But the maid from Dooley's must first arrive to take charge of the house and Clarence until she, Betty, could summon her family to her assistance and defy The Green Mouse, Beekman Brown, and Destiny behind her mother's skirts. Flight was, therefore, imperative--it was absolutely indispensable that she put a number of miles between herself and this young man who had just informed her that Fate had designed them for one another. She was no longer considering whether she owed this amazing young man any gratitude, or what sort of a man he might be, agreeable, well-bred, attractive; all she understood was that this man had suddenly stepped into her life, politely expressing his conviction that they could not, ultimately, hope to escape from each other. And, beginning to realize the awful import of his words, the only thing that restrained her from instant flight on foot was the hidden Clarence. She could not abandon her cat. She must wait for that maid. She waited. Meanwhile she hunted up Dooley's Agency in the telephone book and called them up. They told her the maid was on the way--as though Dooley's Agency could thwart Destiny with a whole regiment of its employees! She had discarded her roses with a shudder; cap, goggles, duster, lay in her lap. If the maid came before Brown returned she'd flee. If Brown came back before the maid arrived she'd tell him plainly what she had decided on, thank him, tell him kindly but with decision that, considering the incredible circumstances of their encounter, she must decline to encourage any hope he might entertain of ever again seeing her. At this stern resolve her heart, being an automatic and independent affair, refused to approve, and began an unpleasantly irregular series of beats which annoyed her. "It is true," she admitted to herself, "that he is a gentleman, and I can scarcely be rude enough, after what he has done for me, to leave him without any explanation at all.... His clothes are ruined. I must remember that." Her heart seemed to approve such sentiments, and it beat more regularly as she seated herself at a desk, found in it a sheet of notepaper and a pencil, and wrote rapidly: "_Dear Mr. Brown:_ "If my maid comes before you do I am going. I can't help it. The maid will stay to look after Clarence until I can return with some of the family. I don't mean to be rude, but I simply cannot stand what you told me about our--about what you told me.... I'm sorry you tore your clothes. "Please believe my flight has nothing to do with you personally or your conduct, which was perfectly ('charming' scratched out) proper. It is only that to be suddenly told that one is predestined to ('marry' scratched out) become intimately acquainted (all this scratched out and a new line begun). "It is unendurable for a girl to think that there is no freedom of choice in life left her--to be forced, by what you say are occult currents, into--friendship--with a perfectly strange man at the other end. So I don't think we had better ever again attempt to find anybody to present us to each other. This doesn't sound right, but you will surely understand. "Please do not misjudge me. I must appear to you uncivil, ungrateful, and childish--but I am, somehow, a little frightened. I know you are perfectly nice--but all that has happened is almost, in a way, terrifying to me. Not that I am cowardly; but you must understand. You will--won't you?.... But what is the use of my asking you, as I shall never see you again. "So I am only going to thank you, and say ('with all my heart' crossed out) very cordially, that you have been most kind, most generous and considerate--most--most----" * * * * * Her pencil faltered; she looked into space, and the image of Beekman Brown, pleasant-eyed, attractive, floated unbidden out of vacancy and looked at her. She stared back at the vision curiously, more curiously as her mind evoked the agreeable details of his features, resting there, chin on the back of her hand, from which, presently, the pencil fell unheeded. What could he be doing upstairs all this while. She had not heard him for many minutes now. Why was he so still? She straightened up at her desk and glanced uneasily across her shoulder, listening. Not a sound from above; she rose and walked to the foot of the stairs. Why was he so still? Had he found Clarence? Had anything gone wrong? Had Clarence become suddenly rabid and attacked him. Cats can't annihilate big, strong young men. But _where_ was he? Had he, pursuing his quest, emerged through the scuttle on to the roof--and--and--fallen off? Scarcely knowing what she did she mounted on tiptoe to the second floor, listening. The silence troubled her; she went from room to room, opening doors and clothespresses. Then she mounted to the third floor, searching more quickly. On the fourth floor she called to him in a voice not quite steady. There was no reply. Alarmed now, she hurriedly flung open doors everywhere, then, picking up her rose-silk skirts, she ran to the top floor and called tremulously. A faint sound answered; bewildered, she turned to the first closet at hand, and her cheeks suddenly blanched as she sprang to the door of the cedar press and tore it wide open. He was lying on his face amid a heap of rolled rugs, clothes hangers and furs, quite motionless. She knew enough to run into the servants' rooms, fling open the windows and, with all the strength in her young body, drag the inanimate youth across the floor and into the fresh air. "O-h!" she said, and said it only once. Then, ashy of lip and cheek, she took hold of Brown and, lashing her memory to help her in the emergency, performed for that inanimate gentleman the rudiments of an exercise which, if done properly, is supposed to induce artificial respiration. It certainly induced something resembling it in Brown. After a while he made unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds became articulate. He said: "Betty!" several times, more or less distinctly. He opened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands that were holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on the floor. She, crouched beside him, eyes still dilated with the awful fear of death, looked back, breathless, trembling. "That is a devil of a place, that closet," he said faintly. She tried to smile, tried wearily to free her hands, watched them, dazed, being drawn toward him, drawn tight against his lips--felt his lips on them. Then, without warning, an incredible thrill shot through her to the heart, stilling it--silencing pulse and breath--nay, thought itself. She heard him speaking; his words came to her like distant sounds in a dream: "I cared for you. You give me life--and I adore you.... Let me. It will not harm you. The problem of