The Place of Honeymoons - Page 27/123

"You are a blockhead!" exploded the younger man.

"All right, I am." Courtlandt laughed.

"Man, she wrote me that she would sing Monday and to-night, and wanted me

to hear her. I couldn't get here in time for La Bohème, but I was

building on Faust. And when she says a thing, she means it. As you said,

she's Irish."

"And I'm Dutch."

"And the stubbornest Dutchman I ever met. Why don't you go home and settle

down and marry?--and keep that phiz of yours out of the newspapers?

Sometimes I think you're as crazy as a bug."

"An opinion shared by many. Maybe I am. I dash in where lunatics fear to

tread. Come on over to the Soufflet and have a drink with me."

"I'm not drinking to-day," tersely. "There's too much ahead for me to

do."

"Going to start out to find her? Oh, Sir Galahad!" ironically. "Abby, you

used to be a sport. I'll wager a hundred against a bottle of pop that

to-morrow or next day she'll turn up serenely, with the statement that she

was indisposed, sorry not to have notified the directors, and all that.

They do it repeatedly every season."

"But an errand of mercy, the strange automobile which can not be found?

The engagement to dine with the Barone? Celeste Fournier's statement? You

can't get around these things. I tell you, Nora isn't that kind. She's too

big in heart and mind to stoop to any such devices," vehemently.

"Nora! That looks pretty serious, Abby. You haven't gone and made a fool

of yourself, have you?"

"What do you call making a fool of myself?" truculently.

"You aren't a suitor, are you? An accepted suitor?" unruffled, rather

kindly.

"No, but I would to heaven that I were!" Abbott jammed the newspaper into

his pocket and slung the stool over his arm. "Come on over to the studio

until I get some money."

"You are really going to start a search?"

"I really am. I'd start one just as quickly for you, if I heard that you

had vanished under mysterious circumstances."

"I believe you honestly would."

"You are an old misanthrope. I hope some woman puts the hook into you some

day. Where did you pick up the grouch? Some of your dusky princesses give

you the go-by?"

"You, too, Abby?"

"Oh, rot! Of course I never believed any of that twaddle. Only, I've got a

sore head to-day. If you knew Nora as well as I do, you'd understand."

Courtlandt walked on a little ahead of the artist, who looked up and down

the athletic form, admiringly. Sometimes he loved the man, sometimes he

hated him. He marched through tragedy and comedy and thrilling adventure

with no more concern that he evinced in striding through these gardens.

Nearly every one had heard of his exploits; but who among them knew

anything of the real man, so adroitly hidden under unruffled externals?

That there was a man he did not know, hiding deep down within those

powerful shoulders, he had not the least doubt. He himself possessed the

quick mobile temperament of the artist, and he could penetrate but not

understand the poise assumed with such careless ease by his friend. Dutch

blood had something to do with it, and there was breeding, but there was

something more than these: he was a reversion, perhaps, to the type of man

which had made the rovers of the Lowlands feared on land and sea, now

hemmed in by convention, hampered by the barriers of progress, and

striving futilely to find an outlet for his peculiar energies. One bit of

knowledge gratified him; he stood nearer to Courtlandt than any other man.

He had known the adventurer as a boy, and long separations had in nowise

impaired the foundations of this friendship.