Active Service Part 23

At the train, the party split into three sections.

Coleman and his man had one compartment, Nora Black and her squad had another, and the Wainwrights and students occupied two more.

The little officer was still in tow of Nora Black.

He was very enthusiastic. In French she directed him to remain silent, but he did not appear to understand.

" You tell him," she then said to her dragoman, " to sit in a corner and not to speak until I tell him to, or I won't have him in here." She seemed anxious to unburden herself to the old lady companion.

" Do you know," she said, " that girl has a nerve like steel. I tried to break it there in that inn, but I couldn't budge her. If I am going to have her beaten I must prove myself to be a very, very artful person."

" Why did you try to break her nerve ? " asked the old lady, yawning. "Why do you want to have her beaten ? "

" Because I do, old stupid," answered Nora. " You should have heard the things I said to her."

"About what?"

" About Coleman. Can't you understand anything at all?"

" And why should you say anything about Coleman to her?" queried the old lady, still hopelessly befogged.

" Because," cried Nora, darting a look of wrath at her companion, " I want to prevent that marriage."

She had been betrayed into this avowal by the singularly opaque mind of the old lady. The latter at once sat erect. - " Oh, ho," she said, as if a ray of light had been let into her head. " Oh, ho. So that's it, is it ? "

"Yes, that's it, rejoined Nora, shortly.

The old lady was amazed into a long period of meditation. At last she spoke depressingly. " Well, how are you going to prevent it? Those things can't be done in these days at all. If they care for each other-"

Nora burst out furiously. "Don't venture opinions until you know what you are talking about, please.

They don't care for each other, do you see? She cares for him, but he don't give a snap of his fingers for her."

" But," cried the bewildered lady, " if he don't care for her, there will be nothing to prevent. If he don't care for her, he won't ask her to marry him, and so there won't be anything to prevent."

Nora made a broad gesture of impatience. " Oh, can't you get anything through your head ? Haven't you seen that the girl has been the only young woman in that whole party lost up there in the mountains, and that naturally more than half of the men still think they are in love with her? That's what it is. Can't you see ? It always happens that way.

Then Coleman comes along and makes a fool of himself with the others."

The old lady spoke up brightly as if at last feeling able to contribute something intelligent to the talk.

" Oh, then, he does care for her."

Nora's eyes looked as if their glance might shrivel the old lady's hair. "Don't I keep telling you that it is no such thing ? Can't you understand? It is all glamour! Fascination! Way up there in the wilderness! Only one even pa.s.sable woman in sight."

" I don't say that I am so very keen," said the old lady, somewhat offended, "but I fail to see where I could improve when first you tell me he don't care for her, and then you tell me that he does care for her."

" Glamour,' ' Fascination,'" quoted Nora. " Don't you understand the meaning of the words ? "

" Well," asked the other, didn't he know her, then, before he came over here ?"

Nora was silent for a time, while a gloom upon her face deepened. It had struck her that the theories for which she protested so energetically might not be of such great value. Spoken aloud, they had a sudden new flimsiness. Perhaps she had reiterated to herself that Coleman was the victim of glamour only because she wished it to be true. One theory, however, re- mained unshaken. Marjory was an artful rninx, with no truth in her.

She presently felt the necessity of replying to the question of her companion. " Oh," she said, care- lessly, " I suppose they were acquainted-in a way."

The old lady was giving the best of her mind to the subject. " If that's the case-" she observed, musingly, " if that's the case, you can't tell what is between 'em."

The talk had so slackened that Nora's unfortunate Greek admirer felt that here was a good opportunity to present himself again to the notice of the actress.

The means was a smile and a French sentence, but his reception would have frightened a man in armour.

His face blanched with horror at the storm, he had invoked, and he dropped limply back as if some one had shot him. "You tell this little snipe to let me alone! " cried Nora, to the dragoman. " If he dares to come around me with any more of those Parisian dude speeches, I-I don't know what I'll do! I won't have it, I say." The impression upon the dragoman was hardly less in effect. He looked with bulging eyes at Nora, and then began to stammer at the officer. The latter's voice could sometimes be heard in awed whispers for the more elaborate explanation of some detail of the tragedy. Afterward, he remained meek and silent in his corner, barely more than a shadow, like the proverbial husband of imperious beauty.

"Well," said the old lady, after a long and thoughtful pause, " I don't know, I'm sure, but it seems to me that if Rufus Coleman really cares for that girl, there isn't much use in trying to stop him from getting her.

He isn't that kind of a man."

" For heaven's sake, will you stop a.s.suming that he does care for her ? " demanded Nora, breathlessly.

"And I don't see," continued the old lady, "what you want to prevent him for, anyhow."

CHAPTER XXV.

" I FEEL in this radiant atmosphere that there could be no such thing as war-men striving together in black and pa.s.sionate hatred." The professor's words were for the benefit of his wife and daughter. ,He was viewing the sky-blue waters of the Gulf of Corinth with its background of mountains that in the suns.h.i.+ne were touched here and there with a copperish glare.

The train was slowly sweeping along the southern sh.o.r.e. " It is strange to think of those men fighting up there in the north. And it is strange to think that we ourselves are but just returning from it."

" I cannot begin to realise it yet," said Mrs. Wain- wright, in a high voice.

" Quite so," responded the professor, reflectively.

"I do not suppose any of us will realise it fully for some time. It is altogether too odd, too very odd."

"To think of it!" cried Mrs. WainWright. "To think of it! Supposing those dreadful Albanians or those awful men from the Greek mountains had caught us! Why, years from now I'll wake up in the night and think of it! "

The professor mused. " Strange that we cannot feel it strongly now. My logic tells me to be aghast that we ever got into such a place, but my nerves at present refuse to thrill. I am very much afraid that this singular apathy of ours has led us to be unjust to poor Coleman."

Here Mrs. Wainwright objected. " Poor Coleman!

I don't see why you call him poor Coleman.

" Well," answered the professor, slowly, " I am in doubt about our behaviour. It-"

" Oh," cried the wife, gleefully," in doubt about our behaviour! I'm in doubt about his behaviour."

" So, then, you do have a doubt. of his behaviour?"

" Oh, no," responded Mrs. Wainwright, hastily, " not about its badness. What I meant to say was that in the face of his outrageous conduct with that- that woman, it is curious that you should worry about our behaviour. It surprises me, Harrison."

The professor was wagging his head sadly. " I don't know I don't know It seems hard to judge * * I hesitate to-"

Mrs. Wainwright treated this att.i.tude with disdain.

" It is not hard to judge," she scoffed, " and I fail to see why you have any reason for hesitation at all.

Here he brings this woman-- "

The professor got angry. "Nonsense! Nonsense!

I do not believe that he brought her. If I ever saw a spectacle of a woman bringing herself, it was then.

You keep chanting that thing like an outright parrot."

"Well," retorted Mrs. Wainwright, bridling, "I suppose you imagine that you understand such things, Men usually think that, but I want to tell you that you seem to me utterly blind."