Part 7

There was a pause during which in much inward trepidation I avoided meeting her eyes. Then Polly added thoughtfully, “I think that was a very good reason.”

In our many talks the name of the Fletcher Farrells had never been mentioned. I had been most careful to avoid it. As each day passed, and their return imminent, and in consequence my need to fly grew more near, and the name was still unspoken, I was proportionately grateful. But when the name did come up I had reason to be pleased, for Polly spoke it with approval, and it was not of the owner of Harbor Castle she was speaking, but of myself. It was one evening about two weeks after we had met, and I had side-stepped the Lowells and was motoring with Polly alone. We were talking of our favorite authors, dead and alive.

“You may laugh,” said Polly, and she said it defiantly, “and I don't know whether you would call him among the dead or the living, but I am very fond of Fletcher Farrell!”

My heart leaped. I was so rattled that I nearly ran the car into a stone wall. I thought I was discovered and that Polly was playing with me. But her next words showed that she was innocent. She did not know that the man to whom she was talking and of whom she was talking were the same. “Of course you will say,” she went on, “that he is too romantic, that he is not true to life. But I never lived in the seventeenth century, so I don't know whether he is true to life or not. And I like romance. The life I lead in the store gives me all the reality I want. I like to read about brave men and great and gracious ladies.”

“I never met any girls like those Farrell write about, but it's nice to think they exist. I wish I were like them. And, his men, too--they make love better than any other man I ever read about.”

“Better than I do?” I asked.

Polly gazed at the sky, frowning severely. After a pause, and as though she had dropped my remark into the road and the wheels had crushed it, she said, coldly, “Talking about books----”

“No,” I corrected, “we were talking about Fletcher Farrell.”

“Then,” said Polly with some asperity, “don't change the subject. Do you know,” she went on hurriedly, “that you look like him--like the pictures of him--as he was.”

“Heavens!” I exclaimed, “the man's not dead!”

“You know what I mean,” protested Polly. “As he was before he stopped writing.”

“Nor has he stopped writing,” I objected; “his books have stopped selling.” Polly turned upon me eagerly.

“Do you know him?” she demanded. I answered with caution that I had met him.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “tell me about him!”

I was extremely embarrassed. It was a bad place. About myself I could not say anything pleasant, and behind my back, as it were, I certainly was not going to say anything unpleasant. But Polly relieved me of the necessity of saying anything.

“I don't know any man,” she exclaimed fervently, “I would so like to meet!”

It seemed to me that after that the less I said the better. So I told her something was wrong with the engine and by the time I had pretended to fix it, I had led the conversation away from Fletcher Farrell as a novelist to myself as a chauffeur.

The next morning at the hotel, temptation was again waiting for me. This time it came in the form of a letter from my prospective father-in-law. It had been sent from Cape May to my address in New York, and by my servant forwarded in an envelope addressed to “Frederick Fitzgibbon.”

It was what in the world of commerce is called a “follow-up” letter. It recalled the terms of his offer to me, and improved upon them. It made it clear that even after meeting me Mr. Farrell and his wife were still anxious to stand for me as a son. They were good enough to say they had found me a “perfect gentleman.” They hoped that after considering their proposition I had come to look upon it with favor.

As his son, Mr. Farrell explained, my annual allowance would be the interest on one million dollars, and upon his death his entire fortune and property he would bequeath to me. He was willing, even anxious, to put this in writing. In a week he would return to Fairharbor when he hoped to receive a favorable answer. In the meantime he enclosed a letter to his housekeeper.

“Don't take anything for granted,” he urged, “but go to Fairharbor and present this letter. See the place for yourself. Spend the week there and act like you were the owner. My housekeeper has orders to take her orders from you. Don't refuse something you have never seen!”

This part of the letter made me feel as mean and uncomfortable as a wet hen. The open, almost too open, methods of Mr. Farrell made my own methods appear contemptible. He was urging me to be his guest and I was playing the spy. But against myself my indignation did not last. A letter, bearing a special delivery stamp which arrived later in the afternoon from Mrs. Farrell turned my indignation against her, and with bitterness. She also had been spying. Her letter read:

The Pinkerton I employed to report on you states that after losing you for a week he located you at New Bedford, that you are living under the name of Fitzgibbon, and that you have made yourself conspicuous by attentions to a young person employed in a shop. This is for me a great blow and disappointment, and I want you to clearly understand Mr. Farrell's offer is made to you as an unmarried man. I cannot believe your attentions are serious, but whether they are serious or not, they must cease. The detective reports the pair of you are now the talk of Fairharbor. You are making me ridiculous. I do not want a shop-girl for a daughter-in-law and you will either give up her acquaintance or give up Harbor Castle!

I am no believer in ultimatums. In attaining one's end they seldom prove successful. I tore the note into tiny pieces, and defiantly, with Polly in the seat beside me, drove into the open country. At first we picked our way through New Bedford, from the sidewalks her friends waved to her, and my acquaintances smiled. The detective was right. We had indeed made ourselves the talk of the town, and I was determined the talk must cease.

We had reached Ruggles Point when the car developed an illness. I got out to investigate. On both sides of the road were tall hemlocks and through them to the west we could see the waters of Sippican Harbor in the last yellow rays of the sun as it sank behind Rochester. Overhead was the great harvest moon.

Polly had taken from the pocket of the car some maps and guide-books, and while I lifted the hood and was deep in the machinery she was turning them over.

“What,” she asked, “is the number of this car? I forget.”

As I have said, I was preoccupied and deep in the machinery; that is, with a pair of pliers I was wrestling with a recalcitrant wire. Unsuspiciously I answered: “Eight-two-eight.”