Part 31

“Draw a line from the eyes to the ears—I mean the opposite ears, sir. And where the lines cross—”

“That will do,” Chris interrupted. “You know the watering place at the second bend. You’ll find Ban there with a broken back.”

* * *

“Oh, here you are, sir. I have been looking for you everywhere since dinner. You are wanted immediately.”

Chris tossed his cigar away, then went over and pressed his foot on its glowing fire.

“You haven’t told anybody about it?—Ban?” he queried.

Lute shook her head. “They’ll learn soon enough. Martin will mention it to Uncle Robert to-morrow.”

“But don’t feel too bad about it,” she said, after a moment’s pause, slipping her hand into his.

“He was my colt,” he said. “Nobody has ridden him but you. I broke him myself. I knew him from the time he was born. I knew every bit of him, every trick, every caper, and I would have staked my life that it was impossible for him to do a thing like this. There was no warning, no fighting for the bit, no previous unruliness. I have been thinking it over. He didn’t fight for the bit, for that matter. He wasn’t unruly, nor disobedient. There wasn’t time. It was an impulse, and he acted upon it like lightning. I am astounded now at the swiftness with which it took place. Inside the first second we were over the edge and falling.

“It was deliberate—deliberate suicide. And attempted murder. It was a trap. I was the victim. He had me, and he threw himself over with me. Yet he did not hate me. He loved me ... as much as it is possible for a horse to love. I am confounded. I cannot understand it any more than you can understand Dolly’s behavior yesterday.”

“But horses go insane, Chris,” Lute said. “You know that. It’s merely coincidence that two horses in two days should have spells under you.”

“That’s the only explanation,” he answered, starting off with her. “But why am I wanted urgently?”

“Planchette.”

“Oh, I remember. It will be a new experience to me. Somehow I missed it when it was all the rage long ago.”

“So did all of us,” Lute replied, “except Mrs. Grantly. It is her favorite phantom, it seems.”

“A weird little thing,” he remarked. “Bundle of nerves and black eyes. I’ll wager she doesn’t weigh ninety pounds, and most of that’s magnetism.”

“Positively uncanny ... at times.” Lute shivered involuntarily. “She gives me the creeps.”

“Contact of the healthy with the morbid,” he explained dryly. “You will notice it is the healthy that always has the creeps. The morbid never has the creeps. It gives the creeps. That’s its function. Where did you people pick her up, anyway?”

“I don’t know—yes, I do, too. Aunt Mildred met her in Boston, I think—oh, I don’t know. At any rate, Mrs. Grantly came to California, and of course had to visit Aunt Mildred. You know the open house we keep.”

They halted where a passageway between two great redwood trunks gave entrance to the dining room. Above, through lacing boughs, could be seen the stars. Candles lighted the tree-columned space. About the table, examining the Planchette contrivance, were four persons. Chris’s gaze roved over them, and he was aware of a guilty sorrow-pang as he paused for a moment on Lute’s Aunt Mildred and Uncle Robert, mellow with ripe middle age and genial with the gentle buffets life had dealt them. He passed amusedly over the black-eyed, frail-bodied Mrs. Grantly, and halted on the fourth person, a portly, massive-headed man, whose gray temples belied the youthful solidity of his face.

“Who’s that?” Chris whispered.

“A Mr. Barton. The train was late. That’s why you didn’t see him at dinner. He’s only a capitalist—water-power-long-distance-electricity transmitter, or something like that.”

“Doesn’t look as though he could give an ox points on imagination.”

“He can’t. He inherited his money. But he knows enough to hold on to it and hire other men’s brains. He is very conservative.”

“That is to be expected,” was Chris’s comment. His gaze went back to the man and woman who had been father and mother to the girl beside him. “Do you know,” he said, “it came to me with a shock yesterday when you told me that they had turned against me and that I was scarcely tolerated. I met them afterwards, last evening, guiltily, in fear and trembling—and to-day, too. And yet I could see no difference from of old.”

“Dear man,” Lute sighed. “Hospitality is as natural to them as the act of breathing. But it isn’t that, after all. It is all genuine in their dear hearts. No matter how severe the censure they put upon you when you are absent, the moment they are with you they soften and are all kindness and warmth. As soon as their eyes rest on you, affection and love come bubbling up. You are so made. Every animal likes you. All people like you. They can’t help it. You can’t help it. You are universally lovable, and the best of it is that you don’t know it. You don’t know it now. Even as I tell it to you, you don’t realize it, you won’t realize it—and that very incapacity to realize it is one of the reasons why you are so loved. You are incredulous now, and you shake your head; but I know, who am your slave, as all people know, for they likewise are your slaves.

“Why, in a minute we shall go in and join them. Mark the affection, almost maternal, that will well up in Aunt Mildred’s eyes. Listen to the tones of Uncle Robert’s voice when he says, ‘Well, Chris, my boy?’ Watch Mrs. Grantly melt, literally melt, like a dewdrop in the sun.

“Take Mr. Barton, there. You have never seen him before. Why, you will invite him out to smoke a cigar with you when the rest of us have gone to bed—you, a mere nobody, and he a man of many millions, a man of power, a man obtuse and stupid like the ox; and he will follow you about, smoking; the cigar, like a little dog, your little dog, trotting at your back. He will not know he is doing it, but he will be doing it just the same. Don’t I know, Chris? Oh, I have watched you, watched you, so often, and loved you for it, and loved you again for it, because you were so delightfully and blindly unaware of what you were doing.”