Nothing But the Truth. Isham Frederic Stewart

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      “What a brilliant conversationalist you are to-day, Mr. Bennett!” she remarked with a trace of irony in her tones.

      “Yes; I don’t feel very strong on the talk to-day,” answered Bob truthfully.

      Miss Gwendoline pondered a moment on this. She had seen young men embarrassed before – especially when she was alone with them. Sometimes her decidedly pronounced beauty had a disquieting effect on certain sensitive young souls. Bob’s manner recalled the manner of one or two of those others just before they indulged, or tried to indulge, in unusual sentiments, or too close personalities. Miss Gerald’s long sweeping lashes lowered ominously. Then they slowly lifted. She didn’t feel to-day any inordinate endeavor or desire on Bob’s part to break down the nice barriers of convention and to establish that more intimate and magnetic atmosphere of a new relationship. Well, that was the way it should be. It must be he was only stupid at the moment. That’s why he acted strange and unlike himself.

      Perhaps he had been up late the night before. Maybe he had a headache. His handsome face was certainly very sober. There was a silent appeal to her in that blond head, a little over half-a-head above hers. Miss Gwendoline’s red lips softened. What a great, big, nice-looking boy he was, after all! She let the lights of her eyes play on him more kindly. She had always thought Bob a good sort. He was an excellent partner in tennis and when it came to horses – they had certainly had some great spurts together. She had tried to follow Bob but it had sometimes been hard. His “jumps” were famous. What he couldn’t put a horse over, no one else could. For the sake of these and a few kindred recollections, she softened.

      “I suppose men sometimes do feel that way the next day,” she observed with tentative sympathy. One just had to forgive Bob. She knew a lot of cleverer men who weren’t half so interesting on certain occasions. Intellectual conversation isn’t everything. Even that soul-to-soul talk of the higher faddists sometimes palled. “I suppose that’s why you’re walking.”

      “Why?” he repeated, puzzled.

      “To dissipate that ‘tired feeling,’ I believe you call it?”

      “But I’m not tired,” said Bob.

      “Headachey, then?”

      “No.” He wasn’t quite following the subtleties of her remarks.

      “Then why are you walking?” she persisted. “And with that?” Touching his grip with the tip of her toe.

      “Save hack fare,” answered Bob.

      She smiled.

      “Man wanted a dollar and a half,” he went on.

      “And you objected?” Lightly.

      “I did.”

      Again she smiled. Bob saw she, too, thought it was a joke. And he remembered how she knew of one or two occasions when he had just thrown money to the winds – shoved it out of the window, as it were – orchids, by the dozens, tips, two or three times too large, etc. Bob, with those reckless eyes, object to a dollar and a half – or a hundred and fifty, for that matter? Not he! If ever there had been a spendthrift! —

      “Well, I’ll lend a hand to a poor, poverty-stricken wretch,” said Miss Gerald, indulgently entering into the humor of the situation.

      “What do you mean?” With new misgivings.

      “Put them” – indicating the grip and the sticks – “in the trap,” she commanded.

      Bob did. He couldn’t do anything else. And then he assisted her in.

      “Thanks for timely help!” he said more blithely, as he saw her slip on her gloves and begin to gather up the reins with those firm capable fingers. “And now – ?” He started as if to go.

      “Oh, you can get in, too.” Why shouldn’t he? There was room for two. She spoke in a matter-of-fact manner.

      “I – ?” Bob hesitated. A long, long drive – unbounded opportunity for chats, confidences! – and all at the beginning of his sojourn here? Dad’s words – that horrid advice – burned on his brain like fire. He tried to think of some excuse for not getting in. He might say he had to stop at a drug store, or call up a man in New York on business by telephone, or – But no! he couldn’t say any of those things. He was denied the blissful privilege of other men.

      “Well, why don’t you get in?” Miss Gerald spoke more sharply. “Don’t you want to?”

      The words came like a thunder-clap, though Miss Gwendoline’s voice was honey sweet. Bob raised a tragic head. That monster, Truth!

      “No,” he said.

      An instant Miss Gwendoline looked at him, the violet eyes incredulous, amused. Then a slight line appeared on her beautiful forehead and her red lips parted a little as if she were going to say something, but didn’t. Instead, they closed tight, the way rosebuds shut when the night is unusually frosty. Her eyes became hard like diamonds.

      “How charmingly frank!” she said. Then she drew up the reins and trailed the tip of the whip caressingly along the back of her spirited cob. It sprang forward. “Look out for the sun, Mr. Bennett,” she called back as they dashed away. “It’s rather hot to-day.”

      Bob stood and stared after her. What did she mean about the sun? Did she think he had a touch of sunstroke, or brain-fever? It was an inauspicious beginning, indeed. If he had only known what next was coming!

      CHAPTER IV – A CHAT ON THE LINKS

      At the top of the hill, instead of following the winding road, Bob started leisurely across the rolling green toward the big house whose roof could be discerned in the distance above the trees. The day was charming, but he was distinctly out of tune. There was a frown on his brow. Fate had gone too far. He half-clenched his fists, for he was in a fighting mood and wanted to retaliate – but how? At the edge of some bushes he came upon a lady – no less a personage than the better-half of the commodore, himself.

      She was fair, fat and forty, or a little more. She was fooling with a white ball, or rather it was fooling with her, for she didn’t seem to like the place where it lay. She surveyed it from this side and then from that. To the casual observer it looked just the same from whichever point you viewed it. Once or twice the lady, evidently no expert, raised her arm and then lowered it. But apparently, at last, she made up her mind. She was just about to hit the little ball, though whether to top or slice it will never be known, when Bob stepped up from behind the bushes.

      “Oh, Mr. Bennett!” He had obviously startled her.

      “The same,” said Bob gloomily.

      “That’s too bad of you,” she chided him, stepping back.

      “What?”

      “Why, I’d just got it all figured out in my mind how to do it.”

      “Sorry,” said Bob. “I didn’t know you were behind the bushes or I wouldn’t have come out on you like that. But maybe you’ll do even better than you were going to. Hope so! Go ahead with your drive. Don’t mind me.” His tone was depressed, if not sepulchral.

      But the lady, being at that sociable age, showed now a perverse disposition not to “go ahead.”

      “Just СКАЧАТЬ