Owen Johnson

Two days after the breaking of his engagement to Doris, Bojo wrote to Patsie. His letter—the first he had written her—he was two days in composing, tearing up several drafts. He was afraid to say too much, and to discuss trivial matters seemed to him insincere. Finally he sent this letter:

Dear Drina:

I suppose by now Doris has told you of what has happened. There are a great many things I want you to know about these trying months, that I've wanted you to know and have been hurt that you didn't know. Now that it's over I realize what a tragedy it would have been, and yet I would have gone on believing it was the right thing to do, trying to make myself believe in what I was doing. During all this time I have never forgotten certain things you said to me, your message the day of the panic, the look in your eyes that afternoon before I went in to see your father and—other memories. I want to see you. Where are you? When will you be back in New York?

Faithfully yours,
Bojo.

Having written this he carried it around in his pocket for another day before posting it. No sooner was it irrevocably beyond his hands than he had the feeling that he had committed an irretrievable blunder. The next moment it seemed to him that he had done the direct and courageous thing, that she would understand and be grateful to him for his frankness. Each morning he heard the rustle of the mail slipping under the door with a sudden cold foreboding, certain that her letter had come. Each evening, back from the grind of the factory, he came into the monastic corridors of Westover Court and turned the corner of the desk with a hot-and-cold hope that in the letter-box there, under the number 51, would be a letter waiting for him. When after a week no word had come, he began to make excuses. She was away on a visit, her mail had to be forwarded or more probably held for her return. But one day, happening to glance at the social column, in a report of the Berkshires he found her name as a contender in a tennis tournament. He wrote a second note:

Dear Patsie:

Did you get my letter of ten days ago, and won't you write me?

Yours,
Bojo.

Perhaps his first had miscarried. Such accidents were rare but yet they did occur. He calculated the shortest time she could receive his letter and answer it and waited expectantly all that day. Again a week passed and no word from her. What had happened? Had he really blundered in sending the first letter? Was her pride hurt, or what? A feeling of despair began to settle over him. He did not attempt a third letter, sick at heart. The thought that he might have wounded her—he always imagined her as a child—was unbearable. It hurt him as it had hurt him with a haunting sadness, the day after their wild toboggan ride, when he had seen the pain in her eyes—eyes that were yet too young for the knowledge of the sorrow and ugliness of the world. Finally, through a chance remark one day when he had dropped in to his club, he learned that she was to be present at a house party at Skeeter Stoughton's on Long Island. Overlooking the incident of his unsuccessful attempt to enter their employ, he took his friend into a half confidence and begged him to secure him an invitation for over Sunday.

When he was once on the train and he knew for certain that in a short two hours he would look into her eyes again, a feeling almost of panic seized him. When they were in the motor rushing over smooth white roads and he felt the lost distances melting away beneath him, this feeling became one of the acutest misery. All that he had carefully planned and rehearsed to say to her, suddenly deserted his mind.

"What shall I say? What shall I do?" he said to himself, cold with horror. There seemed to be nothing he could say or do. His very presence was an impertinence, which she must resent.

Luckily no one was in the house except their hostess and he had a short moment to reassemble his thoughts before they strolled down to join the party at the tennis courts. He was known to most of the crowd who greeted his appearance as the return of the prodigal. Patsie was on the courts, her back to him as they came up, Gladys Stone on the opposite side of the net. Some one called out joyfully, "Bojo Crocker!" and she turned with an involuntarily startled movement, then hastily controlling herself at the cry of her partner, drove the ball into the net for the loss of the point.

When next, ensconced under a red-and-white awning among the array of cool flannels and summery dresses, he sought her, she was seriously intent on her game, a little frown on her young forehead, her lips rebelliously set, the swirling white silk collar open at the browned throat, the sleeve rolled up above the firm slender forearm. She moved lightly as a young animal in slow, well calculated tripping movements or in rapid shifting springs. Her partner, a younger brother of Skeeter's, home on vacation, gathered in the balls and offered them to her with a solicitude that was quite evident. Bojo felt an instinctive antipathy watching their laughing intimacy. It seemed to him that they excluded him, that she was still a child unable to distinguish between a stripling and a man, still without need of any deeper emotions than a light-hearted romping comradeship.

With the ending of the set, greetings could no longer be avoided. As she came to him directly, holding out her hand in the most natural way, he felt as though he were going red to the ears, that every one must perceive his embarrassment before this girl still in her teens. He said stupidly, pretending amazement,

"You here? Well, this is a surprise!"

"Yes, isn't it?" she said with seeming unconsciousness.

That was all. The next moment she was in some new group, arranging another match. Short and circumstantial as her greeting had been, it left him with a sinking despair. He had hurt her irrevocably, she resented his presence—that was evident. His whole coming had been a dreadful mistake. Depressed, he turned to Gladys Stone to attempt the concealment from strange eyes of the disorder within himself. He was yet too inexperienced in the ways of the women of the world to even suspect the depth of resentment that could lie in her tortured heart.

"I'm awfully glad to see you—awfully," he said, committing the blunder of giving to his voice a note of discreet sympathy. It had been his distressing duty to bring her personally the little baggage of her sentimental voyage—letters, a token or two, several photographs—to witness with clouding eyes the spectacle of her complete breakdown.

She drew a little away at his words, straightening up and looking from him.

"Have you heard the date of the wedding, Doris's wedding?" she said coldly.

It was his time to wince, but he was incapable of returning the feminine attack.

"You should know better than I," he said quietly.

She looked at him with a perfect simulation of ignorance:

"You were rather well interested, weren't you?"

"More than that, as you know, Gladys," he said, looking directly in her eyes. A certain look she saw there caused her to make a sudden retreat into banality—

"Do you play?"

"Sometimes."

Miss Stoughton and others impatient of the rÔle of spectators were organizing tables of auction inside the house. His reason told him that the best thing for him to do would be to join them and show a certain indifference, but the longing, miserable and unreasoning, within him to stay, to be where he could see her, filling his eyes, after all the long vacant summer, was too strong. He hesitated and remained, saying to himself—

"Suppose I am a fool. She'll think I haven't the nerve of a mouse."

He wanted to chatter, to laugh at the slightest pretext, to maintain an attitude of light inconsequential amusement, but the attempt failed. He remained moody and taciturn, his eyes irresistibly fastened on the young figure, so free and untamed, reveling in the excitement and hazards of the game, wondering to himself that this girl, who now seemed so calmly steeled against the display of the slightest interest in him, had once swayed against his shoulder, yielding to the enveloping sense of a moonlight night, loneliness and the invisible, inexplicable impulse toward each other. What had come to end all this and how was it possible for her to dissemble the emotion that she must feel, with the knowledge of his eyes steadily and moodily fixed upon her?

He was resolved to find a moment's isolation in which to speak to her directly and she just as determined to prevent it. As a consequence he felt himself circumvented at every move, without being able to say to himself that it had been done deliberately. The others who perhaps perceived his intention sought an instinctive distance, with that innate sympathy which goes out to lovers, but Patsie with a foreseeing eye called young Stoughton to her side and pretending a slightly wrenched ankle, leaned heavily on his arm. In which fashion they regained the house without Bojo having been able by hook or crook to have gained a moment for a private word.

At dinner, where he had hoped that Skeeter Stoughton, in return for his half confidence, would have arranged so that he should sit next to her, he found Patsie on the opposite side of the table. An accusatory glance towards Skeeter was answered by one of mystification. Then he understood that she must have rearranged the cards herself. He was unskilled in the knowledge of the ways of young girls and their instinctive cruelty to those who love them and even those whom they themselves love. He was hurt, embarrassed, prey to idiotic suppositions that left him miserable and self-conscious. He was even ready to believe that she had taken the others into her confidence, that every one must be watching, smiling behind their correct masks. The dinner seemed interminable. He was too wretched to conceal his emotions, neglecting his neighbors shamefully until one, a dÉbutante of the year, rallied him maliciously.

"Mr. Crocker, I believe you're in love!"

He glanced at Patsie, frightened lest the remark might have carried, but from her attitude he could divine nothing. She was rattling away, answering some lightly flung remark from down the table. He began to talk desperately in idiotic, meaningless sentences, aware that his neighbor was watching him with a mischievous smile.

"Are you really in love?" she said delightedly when he had run out of ideas.

He was struck by a sudden inspiration.

"If I confess will you help me?" he said in a whisper. Miss Hunter, enraptured with the idea of anything that bordered on the romantic, bobbed her head in enthusiastic response.

"Very well, after dinner," he said in the same low tone. He had a feeling that Patsie had been trying to listen and began to talk with a gaiety for which he found no reason in himself. Several times he glanced across the table and he felt—though their eyes never met—that her glance had but just left him, was on him the moment he turned away. He found her much changed. She was not yet a woman, by a certain veil of fragility and inconscient shyness, but the child was gone. Her glance was more sobered and more thoughtful as though the touch of some sadness had stolen the bubbling spirits of childhood and left a comprehension of deeper trials approaching. At times she assumed an attitude of great dignity, la grande maniÈre, which was yet but assumed and made him smile.

Dinner over, dancing began. He made no attempt to seek out Patsie, putting off Miss Hunter too with evasive answers. He danced once or twice, but without enjoyment and finally, not to witness the spectacle of her dancing with other men, made the pretext of an evening cigar to seek the obliterating darkness of the verandah. Safely hidden in a favoring corner, he sat, moodily watching the occasional flitting of laughing couples silhouetted against the starry night. He was totally at loss to account for the reception. At times a suspicion passed through his mind that Doris might have given a different account of their parting scene than the facts warranted. At others, remembering details of romantic novels, he had devoured, he was willing to believe that his letter had not reached her, had been intercepted perhaps by Mrs. Drake. At the end of an hour, fearing to have made his absence too noticeable, he rose unwillingly to join the gay party within. Suddenly as he rounded the corner he came upon a couple separating, the man returning to the dance, the girl leaning against a pillar, plucking at invisible vines. Then she too turned, coming into a momentary reflection. It was Patsie.

She stopped short, divining who it was, and the instinctive step backward which she made brought an angry outburst to his lips.

"I beg your pardon," he said stiffly. "I didn't mean to annoy you. I had been finishing my smoke. I—" He paused, at his wits' end. At this moment if he had been called upon to recognize his true feelings, he would have sworn that he hated her bitterly with a fierce, unreasoning hatred.

"You do not annoy me," she said quietly.

"I was afraid so."

"No."

He hesitated a moment.

"Did you get my letters?"

"Yes."

"Did you answer them?" he said, with a last hope of some possible misunderstanding.

She shook her head.

He waited a moment for some explanation and as none came, he started to leave, saying,

"I don't understand at all—but—I don't suppose that matters—"

He went toward the door. Then stopped. He thought he had heard her calling his name. He returned slowly.

"Did you call me?"

"No, no."

All at once he came to her tempestuously, catching her arm as he would a naughty child's.

"Drina, I won't be turned away like this. In heaven's name what have I done that you should treat me like this? At least tell me!"

She did not struggle against his hold, but turned away her head without answer.

"Was it my first letter? You didn't like me to write that way—so soon—so soon after breaking the engagement? Was that it? It was, wasn't it?"

It seemed to him, though he could not be sure, that her head made a little affirmative nod.

"But what was wrong?" he cried in dismay. "You wouldn't have me be insincere. You know and I know what you meant to me, you know that if I went on with Doris after—after that night, it was only from a sense of duty, of loyalty. Yes, because you yourself came to me and begged me to. If that's true, why not be open about—"

"Hush," she said hastily. "Some one will hear."

"I don't care if they all hear," he said recklessly. "Drina, what's the use of pretending. You know I've been in love with you, you and only you, from the first day I saw you."

She drew her arm from his grasp and turned on him defiantly—

"Thanks— I don't care to be second fiddle!" she said spitefully.

"Good heavens, that is it!"

"Yes, that is it," she cried out and breaking from him she fled around the corner of the verandah and it seemed to him that he had caught the sound of a sob.

He entered the house, a prey to conflicting emotions, perplexed, angry, inclined to laugh, with alternate flashes of hope and as sudden relapses into despair. Just as he had made up his mind that she had left for the night, she reappeared without a trace of concern. But try as he might he did not succeed in getting another opportunity to speak to her. She avoided him with a settled cold antagonism. The next day it was the same. It seemed that everything she did was calculated to wound him and display her hostility. He had neither the strength nor the wisdom to respond with indifference, suffering openly. At ten o'clock that night as he was miserably preparing to enter the automobile that was to take him to the station, Patsie came hurriedly down the steps, something white in her hand.

"Please do something for me," she said breathlessly.

"What is it?"

"A letter— I want you to mail this letter—it's important."

He turned, taking the letter and putting it in his pocket without noticing it.

She held out her hand. Surprised, he took it, yet without relenting.

"Good-by, Bojo," she said softly.

The next moment he was whirled away. When he reached the Court he remembered for the first time his commission and, stopping at the desk, he handed the letter absent-mindedly to Della, saying,

"If you're going out, Della, mail this."

She burst out laughing, with her irresistible Irish smile.

"What are you laughing at?" he said, surprised.

"You're always up to tricks, Mr. Crocker," she said, looking at the inscription.

"What do you mean?" he asked, puzzled, and, perceiving the cause of her merriment, he snatched the envelope and glanced at it. It was addressed to him. Covered with confusion he fled up to his room in a fever of anticipation and wild hope.

Patsie.

Drina.

He went to bed in the seventh heaven of delight, repeating to himself a hundred times every word of this letter, turning each phrase over and over for favorable interpretation. It seemed to him that never had he spent such deliciously happy days as the last two.