Late that evening a girl and a young man sat on a wooden bench in a moonlit garden. As far as shades of expression were revealed by the dim silvery light, it might be seen that their faces were filled with the fire of triumphant happiness; but it might also have been observed that every now and then the girl’s eyes were turned upward with a suggestion of mingled curiosity and hesitation.
“Ned,” she said suddenly, “I want to know — you must tell me — who is she?”
Mr. Besant took his lips away from her fingers long enough to answer, “Who?”
“Why — the — Baba.”
“Ah!” Mr. Besant looked up. “That’s a secret, my dearest Sylvia. But no” — he appeared to consider — “I might as well tell you now. You’re sure to find out some day. It is very simple. The word baba is Hindustani for baby. Speaking vulgarly and more or less metaphorically, you are certainly my baby. Therefore—”
“You don’t mean—” began Sylvia, while her eyes danced with sudden comprehension.
“Yes, I do,” interrupted Mr. Besant, again raising her fingers to his lips and preparing to resume operations. “Baba was what you might call a strategical creation — a figment of the imagination. There never was any Baba except you.
“And,” he added, as something happened that caused him to forget all about the fingers, “there never will be.”
Warner & Wife
I
Lora Warner, after a leisurely inspection of herself in the pier mirror next the window, buttoned her well-fitting blue jacket closely about her, put on her hat, and caught up a bulging portfolio of brown leather that was lying on the dressing table. Then she turned to call to her husband in the adjoining room:
“Timmie!”
When she had waited at least half a second she called again, this time with a shade of impatience in her voice: “Timmie!”
The door opened and a man appeared on the threshold. Picture him a scant three inches over five feet in height, weighing perhaps a hundred and fifteen or twenty pounds; in short, a midget. A thin forelock of reddish hair straggled over his left eyebrow; his mustache, also thin and red, pointed straight down in a valiant but abortive attempt to reach his full lips; his ears, of generous size, had an odd appearance of being cocked like those of an expectant horse.
The small and deep-set eyes, filled as they were with timidity and self-deprecation amounting almost to docility, seemed nevertheless to possess a twinkle of intelligence. This was Timothy D. Warner.
“Good morning, my dear!” said he, stopping three paces from the threshold like a well-trained servant.
“Where were you at breakfast?” returned his wife, scorning the convention of salutation.
Mr. Warner blinked once, then said pleasantly:
“I haven’t been.”
“Indeed! I supposed as much, or I would have seen you. I told you last night I wanted to talk over this Hamlin & Hamlin matter at the breakfast table.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But you see” — Mr. Warner appeared to hesitate — “I... the fact is, the beastly alarm clock failed to go off.”
“Did you wind it?”
“No.” This manfully.
Lora Warner sighed. “Timmie, you are unthinkable! What about Hamlin & Hamlin? Did you look it over?”
This simple question seemed to upset Mr. Warner completely. He grew red, hesitated, and finally stammered:
“No — that is — I read something—”
“Do you mean you didn’t?”
He nodded reluctantly.
“Then what were you doing? There was a light in your room when I went to bed.”
Mr. Warner gazed on the floor, and was silent.
“What were you doing?”
Still silence.
“I have asked you twice, Timmie, what you were doing.” The tone was merciless.
Mr. Warner, seeing there was no help for it, raised his eyes and met her gaze. “I was playing solitaire,” he announced bravely.
Then, before the storm had time to break, he continued apologetically:
“I didn’t know there was any hurry about it, my dear, or I would have looked it over at once. The case doesn’t come up till the twenty-fifth. Besides, you said you had it all worked up, and merely wanted my opinion on one or two minor points. If I had known you really needed—” He stopped suddenly.
“Well? If you had known I really needed—”
“Nothing,” said Mr. Warner lamely.
“What were you going to say?”
“Why — advice — if you needed my advice—”
“Your advice! Do you think by any chance I need your advice?”
“My dear, goodness no!” exclaimed Mr. Warner, as though the idea were preposterous.
“I should hope not,” his wife agreed. “I am quite able to manage my business without you, Timmie. Only, as you do nothing but sit around and read, I thought you might have happened on something that would throw light on the question of annulled liens, which is intricately involved and has an important bearing on this case. But I believe I have it very well in hand.”
“There is plenty of time till the twenty-fifth,” Mr. Warner observed diffidently.
“There is,” assented his wife. “But that has nothing to do with this. The case has been put forward. It is calendared for today.”
“Today! But what — then perhaps — I can look it over this morning and see you at lunch — at recess—”
“My dear Timmie,” smiled Mrs. Warner, “you appear to think I do need your advice. Don’t trouble yourself. I have it well in hand. Play solitaire by all means.” She moved toward the door.
“At ten dollars a point,” announced Mr. Warner to her back, “I am sixty-two thousand dollars ahead of the game.”
“Fine!” She sent a derisive smile over her shoulder. “By-by, Timmie!”
Mr. Warner gazed at the closed door for a full thirty seconds, then turned and went to his own room to complete his interrupted toilet. That done, he went downstairs to the dining room.
Sadie, the cook, appeared in the doorway.
“Good morning!” she observed unamiably.
“I see I am late,” returned Mr. Warner with a weak attempt at cheerfulness. “Do you suppose I could have a couple of eggs, Sadie?”
“Fried or boiled?”
“Well — shirred.”
Mr. Warner never ate his eggs any other way than shirred, and as Sadie never failed to ask him, “Fried or boiled?” he was forced to begin each day with the feeling that he was being somehow put in the wrong. A most uncomfortable feeling, but one to which he was so well accustomed that he shook it off almost immediately and fell to thinking of other things.
First of the case of Hamlin & Hamlin vs. the Central Sash and Door Company, which was to come up that day in court. No use to worry about it, he decided; no doubt his wife, as she had said, had it well in hand. His wife usually had things well in hand. No less could be expected of her, being, as she was, the ablest lawyer in the city of Granton, excepting neither man nor woman.
Everybody said so, including Mr. Warner; indeed, he had said it before anyone else. He had expected it of her from the first; and during all the fifteen years of their married life she had been mounting steadily, with never a faltering step, to the height of his expectation and her own ambition.
Mr. Warner often pictured her to himself as he appeared on that day when he had first seen her in the law school in New York. His attention, which had just begun to be solidly fixed on torts and evidence, had suddenly wavered, fluttered through the air, and settled inextricably in the fluffy brown mass of her glorious hair.