let
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 RAINY WEEK
 
 RAINY WEEK 
 
 BY 
 
 ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT 
 
 AUTBom OP "OLD-DAD," "PEACE OK EARTH, 
 
 8OOD-WIU, TO DOGS," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 68 1 FIFTH AVENUE
 
 Copyright, 1921, 
 By E. P. Button & Company 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 PBTT7TED IW THE UNITED 
 STATES OF AMERICA
 
 RAINY .WEEK 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN the changes and chances of our New 
 England climate it is not so much what 
 a Guest can endure outdoors as what he 
 can originate indoors that endears him most 
 to a weather-worried Host. 
 
 Take Rollins, for instance, a small man, 
 dour, insignificant a prude in the moonlight, 
 a duffer at sailing, a fool at tennis yet once 
 given a rain-patter and a smoky fireplace, 
 of an audacity so impertinent, so altogether 
 absurd, that even yawns must of necessity 
 turn to laughter or curses. The historic 
 thunderstorm question, for instance, which he 
 sprang at the old Bishop s house-party after 
 five sweltering days of sunshine and ecclesias 
 tical argument: "Who was the last person you 
 kissed before you were married?" 
 
 A question innocent as milk if only swal- 
 
 I 
 
 h 
 
 +> 8G9885
 
 2 RAINY WEEK 
 
 lowed! But unswallowed? Gurgled? Spat 
 like venom from Bishop to Bishop? And 
 from Bishop s Wife to Bishop s Wife? Oh 
 la! Yet that Rollins himself was the only 
 unmarried person present on that momentous 
 occasion shows not at all, I still contend, the 
 slightest "natural mendacity" of the man, but 
 merely the perfectly normal curiosity of a 
 confirmed Anchoret to learn what truths he 
 may from those who have been fortunate or 
 unfortunate enough to live. 
 
 Certainly neither my Husband nor myself 
 would ever dream of running a house-party 
 without Rollins! 
 
 Yet equally certain it is not at all on 
 Rollins s account but distinctly on our own 
 that we invariably set the date for our annual 
 house-party in the second week of May. 
 
 For twenty years, in the particular corner 
 of the New England sea-coast which my hus 
 band and I happen to inhabit, it has never, 
 with one single exception only, failed to rain 
 from morning till night and night till morning 
 again through the second week of May! 
 
 With all weather-uncertainties thus settled 
 perfectly definitely, even for the worst, it is 
 a comparatively easy matter for any Host
 
 RAINY WEEK 3 
 
 and Hostess to Stage such events as remain. 
 It is with purely confessional intent that I 
 emphasize that word "stage." Every human 
 being acknowledges, if honest, some one su 
 preme passion of existence. My Husband s 
 and mine is for what Highbrows call "the 
 experimental drama." 
 We call it "Amateur Theatricals." 
 Yet even this innocent passion has not 
 proved a serene one! 
 
 After inestimable seasons of devotion to that 
 most ruthless of all goddesses, the Goddess 
 of Amateur Theatricals, involving, as it does, 
 wrangles with 
 
 Guests who refuse to accept unless they are 
 
 assured that there will be a Play, 
 wrangles with 
 
 Guests who refuse to accept unless assured 
 
 that there will not be a Play, 
 wrangles with 
 
 Guests already arrived, unpacked, tubbed, 
 seated at dinner, who discover suddenly 
 that their lines are too long, 
 wrangles with 
 
 Guests already arrived, unpacked, tubbed, 
 seated at dinner, who discover equally 
 suddenly that their lines are too short.
 
 4 RAINY WEEK 
 
 wrangles with 
 
 Guests who "can t possibly play in blue." 
 wrangles with 
 
 Guests who "can t possibly play in pink." 
 wrangles with 
 
 Guests who insist npon kissing in every act. 
 wrangles with 
 
 Guests who refuse to kiss in any act, it 
 was my Husband s ingenious idea to organize 
 instead an annual Play that should never 
 dream it was a Play, acted by actors who 
 never even remotely suspected that they were 
 acting, evolving a plot that no one but the 
 Almighty, Himself, could possibly foreordain. 
 
 We call this Play "Rainy Week." 
 
 Yet, do not, I implore you, imagine for a 
 moment that by any such simple little trick 
 as shifting all blame to the weather, all praise 
 to the Almighty, Care has been eliminated 
 from the enterprise. 
 
 It is only indeed at the instigation of this 
 trick that the real hazard begins. For a Play 
 after all is only a Play, be it humorous, amo 
 rous, murderous, adulterous, a soap-bubble 
 world combusting spontaneously of its own 
 effervescence. But life is life and starkly real 
 if not essentially earnest. And the merest
 
 RAINY WEEK 5 
 
 flicker of the merest eyelid in one of life s 
 real emotions has short-circuited long ere this 
 with the eternities themselves! It s just this 
 chance of "short-circuiting with the eternities" 
 that shifts the pucker from a Host s brow to 
 his spine! 
 
 No lazy, purring, reunion of old friends 
 this Rainy Week of ours, you understand? 
 No dully congenial convocation of in-bred rela 
 tives? No conference on literature, music, 
 painting? No symposium of embroidery 
 stitches? Nor of billiard shots? But the delib 
 erate and relentlessly-planned assemblage of 
 such distinctly diverse types of men and women 
 as prodded by unusual conditions of weather, 
 domicile, and propinquity, will best act and 
 re-act upon each other in terms inevitably dra 
 matic, though most naively unrehearsed ! 
 
 "Vengeance is mine !" said the Lord. "Very 
 considerable psychologic, as well as dramatic 
 satisfaction is now at last ours!" confess your 
 humble servants. 
 
 In this very sincere if somewhat whimsical 
 dramatic adventure of Rainy Week, the ex 
 igencies of our household demand that the 
 number of actors shall be limited to eight. 
 
 Barring the single exception of Husband
 
 6 RAINY WEEK 
 
 and Wife no two people are invited who have 
 ever seen each other before. Destiny plays 
 very much more interesting tricks we have 
 noticed with perfect strangers than she does 
 with perfect friends! 
 
 Barring nothing no one is ever warned 
 that the week will be rainy. It is astonish 
 ing how a guest s personality strips itself 
 right down to the bare sincerities when he is 
 forced unexpectedly to doff his extra-selected, 
 super-fitting, ultra-becoming visiting clothes 
 for a frankly nondescript costume chosen only 
 for its becomingness to a situation ! In 
 this connection, however, it is only fair to 
 ourselves to attest that following the usual 
 managerial custom of furnishing from its 
 own pocket such costumes as may not for 
 bizarre or historical reasons be readily re 
 converted by a cast to street and church 
 wear, we invariably provide the Rainy Week 
 costumes for our cast. This costume con 
 sists of one yellow oil-<skin suit or "slicker," 
 one yellow oil-skin hat, one pair of rubber 
 boots. One dark blue jersey. And very warm 
 woolen stockings. 
 
 Eeverting also to dramatic sincerity no pro 
 fessional manager certainly ever chose his
 
 RAINY WEEK 7 
 
 cast more conscientiously than does my purely 
 whimsical Husband! 
 
 After several years of experiment and re 
 adjustment the ultimate cast of Rainy Week 
 is fixed as follows: 
 
 A Bride and Groom 
 
 One Very Celibate Person 
 
 Someone With a Past 
 
 Someone With a Future 
 
 A Singing Voice 
 
 A May Girl 
 
 And a Bore. (Rollins, of course, figuring 
 as the Bore.) 
 
 Always there must be that Bride and Groom 
 (for the Celibate Person to wonder about). 
 And the Very Celibate Person (for the Bride 
 and Groom to wonder about). Male or Fe 
 male, one Brave Soul who had Eebuilt Ruin. 
 Male or Female, one Intrepid Brain that 
 Dares to Boast of Having Made Tryst with 
 the Future. Soprano, Alto, Bass or Tenor, 
 one Singing Voice that can Rip the Basting 
 Threads out of Serenity. One Young Girl so 
 May-Blossomy fresh and new that Everybody 
 Instinctively Changes the Subject When She 
 Comes into the Room. . . . And Rollins! 
 
 To be indeed absolutely explicit experience
 
 8 RAINY WEEK 
 
 has proved, with an almost chemical accuracy, 
 that, quite regardless of "age, sex, or previ 
 ous condition of servitude," this particular 
 combination of 
 
 Romantic Passion 
 
 Psychic Austerity 
 
 Tragedy 
 
 Ambition 
 
 Poignancy 
 
 Innocence 
 
 And Irritation 
 
 cannot be housed together for even one Eainy 
 Week without producing drama! 
 
 But whether that drama be farce or fury ? 
 Whether he who came to star remains to supe? 
 Who yet shall prove the hero? And who the 
 villain! Who? Oh, la! It s God s busi 
 ness now! 
 
 "All the more reason," affirms my Hus 
 band, "why all such details as light and color 
 effects, eatments, drinkments and guest-room 
 reading matter should be attended to with 
 extra conscientiousness." 
 
 Already through a somewhat sensational 
 motor collision in the gay October Berkshires 
 we had acquired the tentative Bride and
 
 RAINY WEEK 9 
 
 Groom, Paul Brenswick and Victoria Mere 
 dith, as ardent and unreasonable a pair of 
 young lovers as ever rose unscathed from a 
 shivered racing car to face, instead of anni 
 hilation, a mere casual separation of months 
 until such May-time as Paul himself, returning 
 from Heaven knows what errand in China, 
 should mate with her and meet with us. 
 
 And to New York City, of course, one would 
 turn instinctively for the Someone With a 
 Future. At a single round of studio parties 
 in the brief Thanksgiving Holiday we found 
 Claude Kennilworth. Not a moment s dissen 
 sion occurred between us concerning his ab 
 solute fitness for the part. He was beautiful 
 to look at, and not too young, twenty-five 
 perhaps, the approximate age of our tenta 
 tive Bride and Groom. And he made things 
 with his hands in dough, clay, plaster, any 
 thing he could reach very insolently, all the 
 time you were talking to him, modeling the 
 thing he was thinking about, instead! 
 
 "Oh, just wait till you see him in bronze?" 
 thrilled all the young Satellites around him. 
 
 * Till you see me in bronze ! thrilled young 
 Kennilworth himself. 
 
 Never in all my life have I beheld anyone
 
 10 RAINY WEEK 
 
 as beautiful as Claude Kennilworth with a 
 bit of brag in him! That head sharply up 
 lifted, the pony-like forelock swished like 
 smoke across his flaming eyes, the sudden 
 wild pulse of his throat. Heavens! What a 
 boy! 
 
 "You artist-fellows are forever reproducing 
 solids with liquids, " remarked my Husband 
 quite casually. "All the effects I mean! All 
 the illusion ! Crag or cathedral out of a dime- 
 sized mud-puddle in your water-color box! 
 Flesh you could kiss from a splash of tur 
 pentine! But can you reproduce liquids with 
 solids? Could you put the ocean into bronze, 
 I mean?" 
 
 "The ocean?" screamed the Satellites. 
 
 "No mere skinny bas-relief," mused my 
 Husband, "of the front of a wave hitched to 
 the front of a wharf or the front of a beach 
 but waves corporeally complete and all alone 
 shoreless skyless like the model of a vil 
 lage an ocean rolling all alone as it were 
 in the bulk of its three dimensions?" 
 
 "In bronze?" questions young Kennil 
 worth. "Bronze?" His voice was very faint 
 ly raspish. 
 
 "Oh, it wasn t a blue ocean especially that
 
 RAINY WEEK 11 
 
 I was thinking about," confided my Husband, 
 genially, through the mist of his cigarette. 
 "Any chance pick-up acquaintance has seen 
 the ocean when it s blue. But my wife and 
 I, you understand, we live with the ocean! 
 Call it by its first name, Oh Ocean! and 
 all that sort of thing ! he smiled out abruptly 
 above the sudden sharp spurt of a freshly- 
 struck match. "The the ocean I was think 
 ing of," he resumed with an almost exag 
 gerated monotone, "was a brown ocean 
 brown as boiled sea-weeds mad as mud under 
 a leaden sky seething souring perfectly 
 lustreless every brown billow-top pinched- 
 up as though by some malevolent hand into a 
 vivid verdigris bruise " 
 
 "But however in the world would one know 
 where to begin?" giggled the Satellites. "Or 
 how to break it off so it wouldn t end like the 
 edge of a tin roof I Even if you started all 
 right with a nice molten wave? What about 
 the last wave? The problem of the horizon 
 sense? Yes! What about the horizon sense?" 
 shouted everybody at once. 
 
 From the shadowy sofa-pillowed corner just 
 behind the supper table, young Kennilworth s 
 face glowed suddenly into view. But a minute
 
 12 RAINY WEEK 
 
 before I could have sworn that a girl s cheek 
 lay against his. Yet now as he jumped to his 
 feet the feminine glove that dropped from his 
 fidgety fingers was twisted with extraordinary 
 maliciousness, I noted, into a doll-sized carica 
 ture of a "Vamp. J 
 
 "I could put the ocean into bronze, Mr. 
 Delville," he said, "if anybody would give me 
 a chance!" 
 
 Perhaps it was just this very ease and ex 
 citement of having booked anyone as perfect 
 as young Kennilworth for the part of Some 
 one with a Future that made me act as im 
 pulsively as I did regarding Ann Woltor. 
 
 We were sitting in our room in a Washing 
 ton hotel before a very smoky fireplace one 
 rather cross night in late January when I 
 confided the information to my Husband. 
 
 "Oh, by the way, Jack," I said quite ab 
 ruptly, "I ve invited Ann Woltor for Rainy 
 Week." 
 
 "Invited whom?" questioned my Husband 
 above the rim of his newspaper. 
 
 "Ann Woltor," I repeated. 
 
 "Ann what?" persisted my Husband. 
 
 "Ann Woltor," I re-emphasized.
 
 RAINY WEEK 13 
 
 "Who s she?" quickened my Husband s in 
 terest very faintly. 
 
 "Oh, she s a woman," I explained "or a 
 girl that I ve been meeting most every day 
 this last month at my hair-dresser s. She 
 runs the accounts there or something and tries 
 to keep everybody pacified. And reads the 
 darndest books, all highbrow stuff. You d 
 hardly expect it! Oh, not modern highbrow, 
 I mean, essays as bawdy as novels, but the 
 old, serene highbrow, Emerson and Pater 
 and Wordsworth, books that smell of soap 
 and lavender, as well as brains. Beads em 
 as though she liked em, I mean ! Comes from 
 New Zealand I ve been told. Really, she s 
 rather remarkable!" 
 
 "Must be!" said my Husband. "To come 
 all the way from New Zealand to land in your 
 hair-dresser s library!" 
 
 "It isn t my hair-dresser s library!" I cor 
 rected with faint asperity. "It s her own 
 library! She brings the books herself to the 
 office. 
 
 "And just what part," drawled my Hus 
 band, "is this New Zealand paragon, Miss 
 Stoltor, to play in our Rainy Week?"
 
 14 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "Woltor," I corrected quite definitely. 
 "Ann Woltor." 
 
 "Wardrobe mistress?" teased my Husband. 
 "Or V 9 
 
 "She is going to play the part of the Some 
 one With a Past," I said. 
 
 "What?" cried my Husband. His face was 
 frankly shocked. "What?" he repeated blank 
 ly. "The most delicate part of the cast? 
 The most difficult? The most hazardous? It 
 seemed best to you, without consultation, 
 without argument, to act so suddenly in the 
 matter, and so so all alone?" 
 
 "I had to act very suddenly," I admitted. 
 "If I hadn t spoken just exactly the minute 
 I did she would have been off to Alaska 
 within another forty-eight hours." 
 
 "U m m," mused my Husband, and re 
 sumed his reading. But the half-inch of eye 
 brow that puckered above the edge of his 
 newspaper loomed definitely as the sample of 
 a face that was still distinctly shocked. 
 
 When he spoke again I was quite ready for 
 his question. 
 
 "How do you know that this Ann Woltor 
 has got a past?" he demanded.
 
 RAINY WEEK 15 
 
 "How do we know young Kennilworth s 
 got a future?" I counter-checked. 
 
 1 Because he makes so much noise about it 
 I suppose," admitted my Husband. 
 
 "By which very same method," I grinned, 
 "I deduct the fact fhat Ann Woltor has got a 
 past, inasmuch as she doesn t make the very 
 slightest sound whatsoever concerning it." 
 
 "You concede no personal reticence in the 
 world?" quizzed my Husband. 
 
 "Yes, quite a good deal," I admitted. "But 
 most of it I honestly believe is due to sore 
 throat. A normal throat keeps itself pretty 
 much lubricated IVe noticed by talking about 
 itself." 
 
 "Herself," corrected my Husband. 
 
 "Himself," I compromised. 
 
 "But this Ann Woltor has told you that 
 she came from New Zealand," scored my Hus 
 band. 
 
 "Oh, no, she hasn t!" I contradicted. "It 
 was the hair-dresser who suggested New 
 Zealand. All Ann Woltor has ever told me 
 was that she was going to Alaska! Any 
 body s willing to tell you where he s going! 
 But the person who never tells you where he s 
 been ! The person who never by word, deed
 
 16 RAINY WEEK 
 
 or act correlates to-day with yesterday! The 
 Here with the There ! IVe been home with 
 her twice to her room! IVe watched her 
 unpack the Alaska trunk! Not a thing in it 
 older than this winter! Not a shoe nor a 
 hat nor a glove that confides anything! No 
 scent of fir-balsam left over from a summer 
 vacation! No photograph of sister or 
 brother! Yet it s rather an interesting little 
 room, too, awfully small and shabby after 
 the somewhat plushy splendor of the hair- 
 dressing job but three or four really erudite 
 English Reviews on the table, a sprig of blue 
 larkspur thrust rather negligently into a water 
 glass, and a man s " 
 
 "Blue larkspur in January?" demanded 
 my Husband. "How how old is this this 
 Woltor person?" 
 
 "Oh twenty-five, perhaps," I shrugged. 
 
 With a gesture of impatience my Husband 
 threw down his paper and began to poke the 
 fire. 
 
 "Oh, Pshaw!" he said, "is our whole dra 
 matic endeavor going to be wrecked by the 
 monotony of everybody being twenty-five"?" 
 
 "Well call it thirty-five if you d rather," 
 I conceded. "Or a hundred and five! Arm
 
 RAINY WEEK 17 
 
 Woltor wouldn t care! That s the remarkable 
 thing about her face," I hastened with some 
 fervor to explain. "There s no dating on it! 
 This calamity that has happened to her, 
 whatever it is, has wrung her face perfectly 
 dry of all contributive biography except the 
 mere structural fact of at least reasonably 
 conservative birth and breeding." 
 
 A little bit abruptly my Husband dropped 
 the fire-tongs. 
 
 "You like this Ann Woltor, don t you?" 
 he said. 
 
 "I like her tremendously," I acknowledged. 
 
 "Tremendously as a person and tremen 
 dously for the part!" I insisted. 
 
 "Tremendously as a person and tremend 
 ously for the part!" I insisted. 
 
 "Yet there s something about it that wor 
 ries you?" quizzed my Husband not unami- 
 ably. 
 
 "There is," I said, "just one thing. She s 
 got a broken tooth." 
 
 With a gesture of real irritation my Hus 
 band sank down in his chair again and 
 snatched up the paper. 
 
 It was ten minutes before he spoke again.
 
 18 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "Is it a front tooth? " he questioned with 
 out lifting his eyes from the page. 
 
 "It is," I said. 
 
 When my Husband jumped up from his 
 chair this time he showed no sign at all of 
 ever intending to return to it. As he reached 
 for his hat and coat and started for the door, 
 he tried very hard to grin. But the effort 
 was poor. This was no mere marital dis 
 agreement, but a real professional shock. 
 
 "I simply can t stand it," he grinned. 
 "One s prepared, of course, for a tragedy 
 queen to sport a broken heart but when it 
 comes to a broken tooth !" 
 
 "Wait till you see her!" I said. There was 
 nothing else to say. "Wait till you see her!" 
 
 Even with the door closed behind him he 
 came back once more to tell me how he felt. 
 
 "Oh!" he shivered. "0 H!" 
 
 Truly if we hadn t gone out together the 
 very next day and found George Keets I 
 don t know what would have happened. De 
 pression still hung very heavily over my Hus 
 band s heart. 
 
 "Here it is almost February," he brooded, 
 "and even with what we ve got, we re still
 
 RAINY WEEK 19 
 
 short the Celibate and the Singing Voice and 
 the May Girl." 
 
 It was just then that we turned the street 
 corner and met George Keets. 
 
 "Why why the Celibate of all persons!" 
 we both gasped as in a single breath, and 
 rushed upon him. 
 
 Now it may seem a little strange instead 
 of this that we have never thought to feature 
 poor Rollins as the Celibate. To "double" 
 him as it were as Celibate and Bore. Con 
 serving thereby one by no means inexpensive 
 outfit of water - proof clothes, twenty - one 
 meals, a week s wash, and Heaven knows how 
 many rounds of Scotch at a time of imminent 
 drought. But Eollins though as far as any 
 body knows, a bachelor and eminently chaste 
 is by no means my idea of a Celibate. Oh, 
 not Rollins! Not anybody with a mind like 
 Rollins! For Rollins, poor dear, would 
 marry every day in the week if anybody 
 would have him. It s the "other people" 
 who have kept Rollins virgin. But George 
 Keets on the other hand is a good deal of 
 a "fascinator" in spite of his austerity, 
 perhaps indeed because of his austerity, 
 tall, lean, good-looking, extravagantly severe,
 
 20 RAINY WEEK 
 
 thirty-eight years old, and a classmate of my 
 Husband at college. Whether Life would ever 
 succeed or not in breaking down his unac 
 countable intention never-to-mate, that inten 
 tion, physical, mental, moral, psychic, call it 
 whatever you choose, was stamped indelibly 
 and for all time on the curiously incongruous 
 granite-like finish of his originally delicate 
 features. Life had at least done interesting 
 historical things to George Keets s face. 
 
 "Oh, George!" cried my Husband, "I 
 thought you were in Egypt digging mum 
 mies/ 
 
 "I was," admitted George without any fur 
 ther palaver of greeting. 
 
 "When did you get back?" cried my Hus 
 band, "And what are you doing now!" 
 
 "And where are you going to be in May?" 
 I interposed with perfectly uncontrollable in 
 terest. 
 
 "Why, I m just off the boat, you know," 
 brightened George. "A drink would be good, 
 of course. But first I d just like to run into 
 the library for -a minute to see if they ve put 
 in any new thrillers while I ve been gone. 
 There s a corking new book on Archselurus 
 that ought to be due about now."
 
 RAINY WEEK 21 
 
 "On w-what?" I stammered. 
 
 "Oh, fossil cats, you know, and all that 
 sort of thing," explained George chivalrously. 
 "But, of course you, Mrs. Delville," he 
 hastened now to appease me, "would heaps 
 rather hear about Paris fashions, I know. So 
 if you-people really should want me in May 
 I ll try my best, I promise you, to remem 
 ber every latest wrinkle of lace, or feather. 
 Only, of course," he explained with typical 
 conscientiousness, "in the museums and the 
 libraries one doesn t see just of course 
 the " 
 
 "On the contrary, Mr. Keats," I inter 
 rupted hectically, "there is no subject in the 
 world that interests me more at the moment 
 than Mummies. And by the second week 
 in May that interest will have assumed pro 
 portions that " 
 
 "S-sh!" admonished niy Husband. "But 
 really, George," he himself hastened to cut 
 in, "if you could come to us the second week 
 in May " 
 
 "May?" considered George. "Second week? 
 Why, certainly I will." And bolted for the 
 library, while my Husband and I in a per-
 
 22 RAINY WEEK 
 
 fectly irresistible impulse drew aside on the 
 curbing to watch him disappear. 
 
 Equally unexplainably three totally non-con 
 cerned women turned also to watch him. 
 
 "It s his shoulders," I ventured. "The 
 amazing virility of his shoulders contrasted 
 with the stinginess of his smile." 
 
 "Stinginess nothing!" snapped my Hus 
 band. "Devil take him!" 
 
 "He may yet," I mused as we swung into 
 step again. 
 
 So now we had nothing to worry about 
 or rather no uncertainty to worry about ex 
 cept the May Girl and the Singing Voice. 
 
 "The Singing Voice," my Husband argued, 
 "might be picked up by good fortune at most 
 any cabaret show or choral practise. Not 
 any singing voice would do, of course. It 
 must be distinctly poignant. But even poig 
 nancy may be found sometimes where you 
 least expect it, some reasonably mature, 
 faintly disappointed sort of voice, usually, lilt 
 ing with unquestionable loveliness, just this 
 side of real professional success. 
 
 "But where in the world should we find a 
 really ingenuous Ingenue?" 
 
 "They don t exist any more!" I asserted.
 
 RAINY WEEK 23 
 
 "Gone out of style like the Teddy Bear! 
 Old Ingenues yon see, of conrse, sometimes, 
 sweet and precious and limp as old Teddy 
 Bears. But a brand new Ingenue ? Don t 
 you remember the awful search we had last 
 year and even then ?" 
 
 " Maybe you re right, worried my Hus 
 band. 
 
 And then the horrid attack of neuralgia 
 descended on poor Mr. Husband so suddenly, 
 so acutely, that we didn t worry at all about 
 anything else for days! And even when that 
 worry was over, instead of starting off gaily 
 together for the Carolinas as we had intend 
 ed, to search through steam-heated corridors, 
 and green velvet golfways, and jessamine 
 scented lanes, for the May Girl, my poor 
 Husband had to dally at home instead, in a 
 very cold, slushy and disagreeable city, to be 
 X-rayed, tooth-pulled, ear- stabbed, and every 
 thing but Bertilloned, while I, for certain 
 business reason, went on ahead to meet the 
 Spring. 
 
 But even at parting it was the dramatic 
 anxiety that worried my Husband most. 
 
 "Now, don t you dare do a thing this 
 time," he warned me, "until I come! Look
 
 24 RAINY WEEK 
 
 around all yon want to! Get acquainted! 
 Size things up ! But if ever two people needed 
 to work together in a matter it s in this ques 
 tion of choosing a May Girl!" 
 
 Whereupon in an impulse quite as amazing 
 to himself as to me he went ahead and chose 
 the May Girl all by himself! 
 
 Before I had been in the Carolinas three 
 days the telegram came. 
 
 "Have found May Girl. Success beyond 
 wildest dreams. Doubles with Singing 
 Voice. Absolute miracle. Explanations." 
 
 Himself and the explanations arrived a week 
 later. Himself, poor dear, was rather de 
 pleted. But the explanations were full enough 
 to have pleased anybody. 
 
 He had been waiting, it seems, on the day 
 of the discovery, an interminably long time in 
 the doctor s office. All around him, in the 
 dinginess and general irritability of such an 
 occasion, loomed the bulky shapes of other 
 patients who like himself had also been wait 
 ing interminable eons of time. Everybody was 
 very cross. And it was snowing outside, one 
 of those dirty gray late-winter snows that 
 don t seem really necessary.
 
 RAINY WEEK 25 
 
 And when She came! Just a girl s laugh at 
 first from the street door! An impish prance 
 of feet down the dark, unaccustomed hallway! 
 A little trip on the threshold! And then 
 personified laughing blushing, stumbling 
 fairly headlong at last into the room the 
 most radiantly lovely young girl that you have 
 ever had the grace to imagine, dangling ex 
 ultantly from each frost-pinked hand a very 
 large, wriggly, and exceedingly astonished 
 rabbit. 
 
 "Oh, Uncle Charles!" she began, "s-ee 
 what I ve found! And in an ash-barrel, too! 
 In a " She blinked the snow from her 
 lashes, took a sudden startled glance round 
 the room, another at the clock, and collapsed 
 with confusion into the first chair that she 
 could reach. 
 
 A very tall "little girl" she was, and very 
 young, not a day more than eighteen surely. 
 And even in the encompassing bulk of her big 
 coon-skin coat with its broad arms hugging 
 the brown rabbits to her breast she gave an 
 impression of extraordinary slimness and del 
 icacy, an impression accentuated perhaps by a 
 slender silk-stockinged ankle, the frilly cuff of 
 a white sleeve, and the aura of pale gold hair
 
 26 RAINY WEEK 
 
 that radiated in every direction from the brim 
 of her coon-skin hat. For fully fifteen minutes 
 my Husband said she sat huddled-up in all 
 the sweet furry confusion of a young animal, 
 till driven apparently by that very confusion 
 to essay some distinctly normal-appearing, 
 every-day gesture, she reached out impulsively 
 to the reading table and picked up a book 
 which some young man had just relinquished 
 rather suddenly at a summons to the doctor s 
 inner office. Relaxing ever so slightly into the 
 depths of her chair with the bunnies noses 
 twinkling contentedly to the rhythm of her 
 own breathing, she made a wonderful picture, 
 line, color, spirit, everything of Youth. Read 
 ing, with that strange, extra, inexplainable 
 touch of the sudden little pucker in the eye 
 brows, sheer intellectual perplexity was in .that 
 pucker ! 
 
 But when the young man returned from 
 the inner office he did not leave at once as 
 every cross, irritable person in the room 
 hoped that he would, but fidgeted around 
 instead with hat and coat, stamped up and 
 down crowding other people s feet, and el 
 bowing other people s elbows. With a gaspy 
 glance at his watch he turned suddenly on the
 
 RAINY WEEK 27 
 
 girl with the rabbits. "Excuse me," he 
 floundered, "but I have to catch a train 
 please may I have my book?" 
 
 "Your book?" deprecated the Girl. Con 
 fusion anew overwhelmed her! "Your book? 
 Why, I beg your pardon! Why why " 
 Pink as a rose she slammed the covers and 
 glanced for the first time at the title. The 
 title of the book was "What Every Young 
 Husband Should Know." . . . With a sigh 
 like the sigh of a breeze in the ferns the ten 
 sion of the room relaxed! A very fat, cross- 
 looking woman in black satin ripped audibly 
 at a side seam. ... A frail old gentleman 
 who really had very few laughs left, wasted 
 one of .them in the smothering depths of his 
 big black-bordered handkerchief. . . . The lame 
 newsboy on the stool by the door emitted a 
 single snort of joy. Then the doctor himself 
 loomed suddenly from the inner office, and 
 started right through everybody to the girl 
 with the rabbits. "Why, May," he laughed, 
 "I told you not to get here till four o clock!" 
 
 "Oh, not May. ?" I protested to my Hus 
 band. "It simply couldn t be! Not really?" 
 
 "Yes, really," affirmed my Husband. "Isn t 
 it the limit? But wait till you hear the rest!
 
 28 RAINY WEEK 
 
 She s Dr. Brawne s ward, it seems, and has 
 been visiting him for the winter. . . . Comes 
 from some little place way off somewheres. . . . 
 And she s got one of those sweet, clear, ab 
 solutely harrowing boy soprano* types of 
 voices that sound like incense and altar lights 
 even in rag- time. But weirder than any 
 thing " triumphed my Husband. 
 
 "Oh, not than anything ?" I gasped. 
 
 "But weirder than anything," persisted my 
 Husband, "is the curious way she s marked." 
 
 "M-marked?" I stammered. 
 
 "Yes. After I saw her with her hat off," 
 said my Husband, "I saw the mark. I ve 
 seen it in boys before, but never in a girl 
 an absolutely isolated streak of gray hair ! In 
 all that riot of blondness and sparkle and 
 youth, just as riotous, just as lovely, a 
 streak of gray hair! It s bewitching! Be 
 wildering! Like May itself! Now sunshine! 
 Now cloud! You ll write to her immediately, 
 won t you?" he begged. "And to Dr. Brawne, 
 too? I told Dr. Brawne quite frankly that it 
 was going to be rather an experimental party, 
 but that, of course, we d take the best possible 
 care of her. And he said he d never seen an 
 occasion yet when she wasn t perfectly capable
 
 RAINY WEEK 29 
 
 of taking care of herself. And that he d be 
 delighted to have her come " laughed my 
 Husband quite suddenly, "if we were sure 
 that we didn t mind animals." 
 
 "Animals?" I questioned. 
 
 "Yes, dogs, cats, birds!" explained my 
 Husband. "It isn t apt to be a large animal 
 such as a horse or a cow, Dr. Brawne was kind 
 enough to assure me. But he never knew her yet, 
 he said, to arrive anywhere without a guinea 
 pig, squirrel, broken-winged bat, lame dove, 
 or half-choked mouse that she had acquired 
 on the way! She s very tender-hearted. And 
 younger than " 
 
 Blankly for a moment my Husband and I 
 sat staring into each other s eyes. Then, quite 
 impulsively, I reached over and kissed him. 
 
 "Oh, Jack," I admitted, "it s too perfect! 
 Truly it makes me feel nervous! Suppose 
 she should roll her hoop off the cliff or " 
 
 "Or blow out the gas!" chuckled my Hus 
 band. 
 
 So yon see now our cast wa>s all assembled. 
 
 Eadiant, "runctious," impatient Paul 
 Brenswick and Victoria Meredith for the 
 Bride and Groom. 
 
 George Keets for the Very Celibate Person.
 
 30 RAINY WEEK 
 
 Ann Woltor for the Someone With, a Past. 
 
 Claude Kennilworth for the Someone With 
 a Future. 
 
 May Davies for the May Girl and the Sing 
 ing Voice. 
 
 And Eollins for the Bore. About Eollins I 
 must now confess that I have not been per 
 fectly frank. We hire Rollins! How else 
 could we control him! Even with a mush 
 room mind like his, fruiting only in bad 
 weather, one can t force him on one s guests 
 morning, noon, and night! Very fortunately 
 here, for such strategy as is necessary, my 
 Husband concedes one further weakness than 
 what I have previously designated as his pas 
 sion for amateur theatricals and his tolerance 
 of me. That weakness is sea shells mol- 
 lusca, you know, and that sort of thing. . . . 
 From all over the world, smelling saltily of 
 coral and palms, iceberg or arctic, and 
 only too often alas of their dead selves, 
 these smooth-spikey-pink-blue-yellow-or-mot- 
 tled shells arrive with maddening frequency. 
 And Eollins is a born cataloguer! What 
 easier thing in the world to say than, "Oh, 
 by the way, Eollins, old man, here s an invoice 
 that might interest you from a Florida Key
 
 RAINY WEEK 31 
 
 that I ve just located. . . . How about the sec 
 ond week in May? Could you come then, do 
 you think? I m all tied up to be sure with a 
 houseful of guests that week, but they won t 
 bother you any. And, at least, you ll have 
 your evenings for fun. Clothes ? Haven t 
 got em? Oh, Pshaw! Let me see. It rained 
 last year, didn t it? ... Well, I guess we can 
 raise the same umbrella that we raised for 
 you then! S long!" 
 
 Everything settled then! Everything ready 
 but the springtime and the scenery! . . . And 
 God Himself at work on that! Hist! What 
 is it? The flash of a blue-bird? 
 
 A bell tinkles! A pulley-rope creaks! And 
 the Curtain Kises! 
 
 May always comes so amazingly soon after 
 February! So infinitely much sooner than 
 anyone dares hope that it would! Peering 
 into snow-smeared shop windows some rather 
 particularly bleak morning you notice with a 
 half-contemptuous sort of amusement a pre 
 cocious display of ginghams and straw hats. 
 And before you can turn round to tell any 
 body about it, tulips have happened! And 
 It s May! 
 
 More than seeming extravagantly early this
 
 32 RAINY WEEK 
 
 year, May dawned also with extravagant lav- 
 ishness. Through every prismatic color of 
 the world, sunshine sang to the senses! 
 
 "What shall we do," fretted ray Husband, 
 "if this perfection lasts?" The question in 
 deed was a leading one! 
 
 The scenery for Eainy Week did not arrive 
 until the afternoon of the eighth. 
 
 From his frowning survey of bright lawns, 
 gleaming surf, radiant sky, I saw my Hus 
 band turn suddenly with a little gasping sigh 
 that might have meant anything. 
 
 "What is it?" I cried. 
 
 "Look!" he said, "it s come." 
 
 Silently, shoulder to shoulder, we stood and 
 watched the gigantic storm-bales roll into the 
 sky packed in fleece, corded with ropes of 
 mist, gorgeous, portentous, To-morrow s 
 Eain! It is not many hosts and hostesses 
 under like circumstances who turn to each 
 other as we did with a single whoop of joy! 
 
 An hour later, hatless and coatless in the 
 lovely warm May twilight, we stood by the 
 larch tree waiting for our guests. We like to 
 have them sup in town at their own discre 
 tion or indiscretion, that first night, and all 
 arrive together reasonably sleek and sleepy,
 
 RAINY WEEK 33 
 
 and totally unacquainted, on the eight o clock 
 train. But the larch tree has always been our 
 established point for meeting the Rainy Week 
 people. Conceding cordially the truth of the 
 American aphorism that while charity may 
 perfectly legitimately begin at home, hospi 
 tality should begin at the railroad station! 
 We personally have proved beyond all doubt 
 that for our immediate interests at stake 
 dramatic effect begins at the entrance to our 
 driveway. 
 
 Yet it is always with mingled feelings of 
 trepidation and anticipation that we first sense 
 the blurry rumble of motor wheels on the 
 highway. If the station bus were only blue 
 or green! But palest oak! And shuttered 
 like a roll-top desk! Spilling out strange per 
 sonalities at you like other people s ideas 
 brimming from pigeon-holes! 
 
 For some unfathomable reason of constraint 
 this night, no one was talking when the bus 
 arrived. Shy, stiff-spined, non-communicative, 
 still questioning, perhaps. Who was who and 
 what was what, these seven guests who by 
 the return ride a week hence might even be 
 mated, such things have happened, or once 
 more not speaking to each other, this also has
 
 34 RAINY WEEK 
 
 happened, loomed now like so many dummies 
 in the gloom. 
 
 "Why, Hello!" we cried, jumping to the 
 rear step of the bus as it slowed slightly at 
 the curb, and thrusting our faces as genially 
 as possible into the dark, unresponsive door 
 way. 
 
 "Hello!" rallied someone I think it was 
 Eollins. Whoever it was he seemed to be 
 having a terrible time trying to jerk his suit 
 case across other people s feet. 
 
 "Oh, is this where you live?" questioned 
 George Keets s careful voice from the shad 
 ows. The faintest possible tinge of relief 
 seemed to be in the question. 
 
 "Here?" brightened somebody else. 
 
 A window - fastener clicked, a shutter 
 crashed, an aperture opened, and everybody 
 all at once, scenting the sea, crowded to stare 
 out where the gray dusk merging into gray 
 rocks merged in turn with the gray rocks into a 
 low rambling gray fieldstone house silhouetted 
 with indescribable weirdness at the moment 
 against that delicate, pale gold, French-draw 
 ing-room sort of sky cluttered so incongruous 
 ly with the clump of dark clouds. 
 
 "The road doesn t go any farther?" puz-
 
 RAINY WEEK 35 
 
 zled someone. "There s no other stopping 
 place you mean just a little bit farther along I 
 This is the end, the last house, the ?" 
 
 High from a cliff-top somewhere a sea bird 
 lifted a single eerie cry. 
 
 "Oh, how how dramatic!" gasped some 
 body. 
 
 Eeaching out to nudge my Husband s hand 
 I collided instead with a dog s cold nose. 
 
 Following apparently the same impulse my 
 Husband s hand met the dog s startling nose 
 at almost the same instant. 
 
 Except for a second s loss of balance on the 
 bus-step neither of us resented the incident. 
 But it was my Husband who recovered his 
 conversation as well as his balance first. 
 
 "Oh, you Miss Davies!" he called blithely 
 into the bus. "What s your Pom s name? 
 Nose-Gay? Skip-a-bout? Cross-Patch? What? 
 Lucky for you we knew your propensity for 
 arriving with pets! The kennel s all ready 
 and the cat sent away!" 
 
 In the nearest shadow of all it was almost 
 as though one heard an ego bristle. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, but the Pomeranian 
 is mine," affirmed Claude Kennilworth s un-
 
 36 RAINY WEEK 
 
 mistakable voice with what seemed like quite 
 unnecessary hauteur. 
 
 "What the deuce is the matter with every 
 body?" whispered my Husband. 
 
 With a jerk and a bump the bus grazed a 
 big boulder and landed us wheezily at our 
 own front door. 
 
 As expeditiously as possible my Husband 
 snatched up the lantern that gleamed from 
 the doorstep and brandishing it on high, 
 challenged the shadowy occupants of the bus 
 to disembark and proclaim themselves. 
 
 Ann Woltor stepped down first. As vague 
 as the shadows she merged from her black- 
 garbed figure faded un-outlined into the 
 I shadow of the porch. For an instant only the 
 uplifted lantern flashed across her strange 
 stark face and then went crashing down into 
 a shiver of glass on the gravelly path at my 
 Husband s feet. "Ann Stoltor!" I heard 
 him gasp. My Husband is not usually a fum- 
 bler either with hand or tongue. In the 
 brightening flare of the flash-light that some 
 one thrust into his hands his face showed 
 frankly rattled. "Ann Woltor!" I prompted 
 him hastily. For the infinitesimal fraction of 
 a second our eyes met. I hope my smile was
 
 RAINY WEEK 37 
 
 as quick. "What is the matter with every 
 body?" I said. 
 
 "With extravagant exuberance my Husband 
 jumped to help the rest of our guests alight. 
 "Hi, there, Everybody!" he greeted each new 
 face in turn as it emerged somewhat hump- 
 shouldered and vague through the door of the 
 bus into the flare of his lantern light. 
 
 Poor Eollins, of course, tumbled out. 
 
 Fastidiously, George Keets illustrated how 
 a perfect exit from a bus should be made, 
 suitcase, hat-box, English ulster, everything 
 a model of its kind. Even the constraint of 
 his face, absolutely perfect. 
 
 With the Pomeranian clutched rather dras 
 tically under one arm, Claude Kennilworth 
 followed Keets. All the time, of course, you 
 knew that it was the Pomeranian who was 
 growling, but from the frowning irritability of 
 young Kennilworth s eyes one might almost 
 have concluded that the boy was a ventrilo 
 quist and the Pom a puppet instead of a 
 puppy. "Her name is Pet, " he announced 
 somewhat succinctly to my Husband. "And 
 she sleeps in no kennel!" 
 
 A trifle paler than I had expected, but inex 
 pressively young, lovely, palpitant, and alto-
 
 38 RAINY WEEK 
 
 gether adorable, the May Girl sprang into my 
 vision and my arms. Her heart was beating 
 like a wild bird s. 
 
 With the incredibility of their miracle still 
 stamped almost embarrassingly on their faces, 
 our Bride-and-Groom-of-a-Week completed the 
 list. It wasn t just the material physical fact 
 that Love was consummated, that gave them 
 that look. But the spiritual amazement that 
 Love was consummatable ! No other "look" 
 in life ever compasses it, ever duplicates it! 
 
 It made my Husband quite perceptibly 
 quicken the tempo of his jocosity. 
 
 "One two three four five six 
 seven," he enumerated. "All good guests 
 come straight from Heaven! One two 
 three four five six Seven " he repeated 
 as though to be perfectly sure, "seven? 
 Why Why, what the ?" he interrupted him 
 self suddenly. 
 
 With frank bewilderment I saw him jump 
 back to the rear step of the bus and flash his 
 light into the farthest corner where the hud 
 dled form of an eighth person loomed weirdly 
 from the shadows. 
 
 It was a man a young man. And at first 
 glimpse he was quite dead. But on second
 
 RAINY WEEK 39 
 
 glimpse, merely drunk. Hopelessly, help 
 lessly, sodden drunk, with his hat gone, his 
 collar torn away, his haggard face sagging 
 like some broken thing against his breast. 
 
 With a tension suddenly relaxed, a faint 
 sigh seemed to slip from the group outside. 
 In the crowding faces that surrounded us in 
 stantly, it must have been something in young 
 Kennilworth s expression, or in the Pomera 
 nian s, that made my Husband speak just ex 
 actly as he did. With his arms held under 
 the disheveled, uncouth figure, he turned quite 
 abruptly and scanned the faces of his guests, 
 "And whose little pet may this be? * he asked 
 trenchantly. 
 
 From the shadow of the Porte-cochere some 
 body laughed. It was rather a vacuous little 
 laugh. Sheer nerves! Rollins, I think. 
 
 Framed in the half-shuttered window of 
 the bus the May Girl s face pinked suddenly 
 like a flare of apple blossoms. 
 
 "He came with me," said the May Girl. 
 
 No matter how informally one chooses to 
 run his household there is almost always some 
 one rule I ve noticed on which the smoothness 
 of that informality depends. 
 
 In our household that rule seems to be that
 
 40 RAINY WEEK 
 
 no explanations shall ever be asked either in 
 the darkness or by artificial light. ... It 
 being the supposition I infer that most things 
 explain themselves by daylight. . . . Per 
 fectly cordially I concede that they usually 
 do. . . . But some nights are a great deal 
 longer to wait through than others. 
 
 It wasn t, on this particular night, that 
 anyone refused to explain. But that nobody 
 even had time to think of explaining. The 
 young Stranger was in a bad way. Not delir 
 ium tremens nor anything like that, but a 
 fearful alcoholic disorganization of some 
 sort. The men were running up and down 
 stairs half the night. Their voices rang 
 through the halls in short, sharp orders to 
 each other. No one else spoke above a whis 
 per. With silly comforts like talcum powder, 
 and hot water bottles, and sweet chocolate, 
 and new novels, I put the women to bed. Their 
 comments if not explanatory were at least 
 reasonably characteristic. 
 
 From a swirl of pink chiffon and my best 
 blankets, with her ear cocked quite frankly 
 toward a step on the stairs, her eyes like 
 stars, her mouth all a-kiss, the Bride re 
 ported her own emotions in the matter.
 
 RAINY WEEK 41 
 
 "No, no one, of course had ever believed 
 for a moment," the Bride assured me, "that 
 the Drunken Man was one of the guests. . . . 
 And yet, when he didn t get off at any of 
 the stops, and this house was so definitely 
 announced as the end of the road* why it 
 did, of course, make one feel just a little bit 
 nervous," flushed the Bride, perfectly irrele 
 vantly, as the creak on the stairs drew nearer. 
 
 Ann Woltor registered only a very typical 
 indifference. 
 
 "A great many different kinds of things," 
 she affirmed, "were bound to happen in any 
 time as long as a day. . . . One simply had 
 to get used to them, that was all." She was 
 unpacking her sombre black traveling bag as 
 she spoke, and the first thing she took out 
 from it was a man s gay, green-plaided golf 
 cap. It looked strange with the rest of her 
 things. All the rest of her things were black. 
 
 I thought I would never succeed in putting 
 the May Girl to bed. With a sweet sort of 
 stubbornness she resisted every effort. The 
 first time I went back she was kneeling at her 
 bedside to say her "forgotten prayers." The 
 second time I went back she had just jumped 
 p to "write a letter to her Grandfather."
 
 42 RAINY WEEK 
 
 " Something about the sea/ she affirmed, "had 
 made her think of her grandfather." It was 
 a long time," she -acknowledged, since she "had 
 thought of her grandfather." "He was very 
 old," she argued, "-and she didn t want to 
 delay any longer about writing." Slim and 
 frank as a boy in her half-adjusted blanket- 
 wrapper dishabille she smiled up at me through 
 the amazing mop of gold hair with the gray 
 streak floating like a cloud across the sun 
 shine of her face. She was very nervous. She 
 must have been nervous. It darkened her 
 eyes to two blue sapphires. It quickened her 
 breath like the breath of a young fawn run 
 ning. "And would I please tell her -how to 
 spell * oceanic ?" she implored me. As though 
 answering intuitively the unspoken question 
 on my lips, she shrugged blame from her as 
 some exotic songbird might have shrugged its 
 fipst snow. "No she didn t know who the 
 young man was! Truly as far as she knew 
 fihe had never never seen the young man 
 before ! o-c-e-a-n-i-c was it ? " 
 
 The rain was not actually delivered until 
 one o clock in the morning. Just before dawn 
 I heard the storm-bales rip. In sheets of 
 silver and points of steel, with rage and roar,
 
 RAINY WEEK 43 
 
 and a surf like a picture in a Sunday supple 
 ment, the weather br-oke loose! 
 
 Thank heaven the morning was so dark 
 that no one appeared in the breakfast-r-oom 
 an instant before the appointed hour of nine. 
 
 George Keets, of course, appeared exactly 
 at nine, very trim, very distingue, in a mar- 
 velously tailored gray flannel suit, and abso 
 lutely possessed to make his own coffee. 
 
 Claude Kennilworth s morning manner was 
 very frankly peevish. "His room had a tin 
 roof and he hardly thought he should be .able 
 to stand it. ... Bain? Did you call this 
 rain? It was a Flood! . . . Were there any 
 Movie Palaces near? . . . And were they 
 open mornings? . . . And he d like an under 
 done chop, please, for the Pomeranian. . . . 
 And it wasn t his dog anyway, darn the 
 little fool, but belonged to the girl who had 
 the studio next to his and she was pos 
 sessed with the idea that a week at the shore 
 would put the pup on its feet again. . . . 
 Women were so blamed temperamental. . . . 
 If there was one thing in the world that he 
 hated it was temperamental people." And all 
 the time he was talking he wasn t making 
 anything with his hands, because he wasn t
 
 44 RAINY WEEK 
 
 thinking anything instead, "And how in Crea 
 tion, " he scolded, "did we ever happen to build 
 a house out on the granite edge of Nowhere? 
 
 . . . How did we stand it? How ? ... Hi 
 
 there! . . . Wait a moment! . . . God what 
 Form! That wave with the tortured top! 
 . . . Hush! . . . Don t speak! . . . Please leave 
 him alone! Breakfast? Not yet! When a 
 fellow could watch a a thing like that! . . . 
 For heaven s sake, pass him that frothy- 
 edged napkin! . . . Did anybody mind if he 
 tore it? ... While he* w^atched that other 
 froth tear!" 
 
 Dear, honest, ardent, red-blooded Paul 
 Brenswick came down so frankly interested 
 in the special device by which our house 
 gutters took care of such amazing torrents of 
 water that everybody felt perfectly confident 
 all at once that no bride of his would ever 
 suffer from leaky roofs or any other mechani 
 cal defect. Paul Brenswick liked the rain 
 just as much as he liked the gutters! And he 
 liked the sea! And he liked the house! And 
 he liked the sky! And he liked everything! 
 Even when a clumsy waitress joggled coffee 
 into his grapefruit he seemed to like that just 
 as much as he liked everything else. Paul
 
 RAINY WEEK 45 
 
 Brenswick was a real Bridegroom. I am not, 
 I believe, a particularly envious person, and 
 have never as far as I know begrudged another 
 woman her youth or her beauty or her talent 
 or her wealth. But if it ever came to a chance 
 of swapping facial expressions, just once in 
 my life, some very rainy morning, I wish I 
 could look like a Bridegroom! 
 
 But the expression on the Bride s face was 
 distinctly worried. Joy worried ! Any woman 
 who had ever been a bride could have read 
 the expression like an open book. Victoria 
 Brenswick had not counted on rain. Moon 
 light, of course, was what she had counted 
 on! Moonlight, day and night in all proba 
 bility! And long, sweet, soft stretches of 
 beach! And cavernous rocks! And inces 
 santly mirthful escapades of escape from the 
 crowd! But to be shut up all day long in a 
 houseful of strange people ! . . . With a Bride 
 groom who after all was still more or less 
 of a strange Bridegroom? The panic in her 
 face was almost ghastly! The panic of the 
 Perfectly-Happy! The panic of the person 
 hanging over-ecstatically on the absolute per 
 fection of a singer s prolonged high note, 
 driven all at once to wonder if this is the
 
 46 RAINY WEEK 
 
 moment when the note must break! ... To 
 be all alone and bored on a rainy day is no 
 more than anyone would expect. . . . But to be 
 with one s Lover and have the day prove 
 dull? ... If God in the terrible uncertainty of 
 Him should force even one dull day into the 
 miracle of their life together 1 
 
 Ann Woltor, dragging down to breakfast 
 just a few moments late, had not noticed 
 especially, it seemed, that the day was rainy. 
 She met my Husband s eyes as she met the 
 eyes of her fellow-guests, calmly, indifferently, 
 and with perfect sophistication. If his pres 
 ence or personality was in any way a shock 
 to her she certainly gave no sign of it. 
 
 The May Girl didn t appear till very late, 
 so late indeed that everybody started to tease 
 her for being such a Sleepy Head. Her face 
 was very flushed. Her hair in a riot of gold 
 and gray. Her appetite like the appetite of 
 a young cannibal. Across the rim of her 
 cocoa cup she hurled a lovely defiance at her 
 traducers. "Sleepy Head!" she exulted. 
 "Not much! Hadn t she been up since six? 
 ,And out on the beach? And all over the 
 rocks? . . . Way, way out to the farthest
 
 RAINY WEEK 47 
 
 point? . . . There was such a heavenly suit 
 of yellow oil-skins in her closet! . . . She 
 hoped it wasn t cheeky of her but she just 
 couldn t resist em! . . . And the fishes? . . . 
 The poor, poor little bruised fishes dashed 
 up, by that terrible surf on the rocks! .... 
 She thought she never, never would get them 
 ail put back! . . . They kept coming and com 
 ing so! Every new wave! Flopping! Flop 
 ping " 
 
 Eollins s breakfast had been sent to his 
 room. You yourself wouldn t have wanted to 
 spring Rollins on any one quite so early in the 
 day. And with my best breakfast tray, my 
 second best china, and sherry in the grape 
 fruit, there was no reason certainly why 
 Kollins in any way should feel discriminated 
 against. Surely, as far as Rollins knew, every 
 guest was breakfasting in bed. 
 
 Even without Rollins there was quite enough 
 uncertainty in the air. 
 
 Everybody was talking talking about the 
 morning, I mean not about yesterday morn 
 ing ; most certainly not about yesterday night f 
 Babble, chatter, drawl, laughter, the voices 
 rose and fell. Breakfast indeed was just
 
 48 RAINY WEEK 
 
 about over when a faint stir on the threshold 
 made everybody look up. 
 
 It was the Drunken Stranger of the night 
 before. 
 
 Heaven knows he was sober enough now. 
 But very shaky! Yet collarless as he was and 
 still unshaven our men had evidently not 
 expected quite so early a resuscitation he 
 loomed up now in the doorway with a certain 
 tragic poise and dignity that was by no means 
 unattractive. 
 
 "Why, hello!" said everybody. 
 
 "Hello!" said the Stranger. With a pal 
 pable flex of muscle he leaned back against 
 the wainscoting of the door and narrowed his 
 haggard eyes to the cheerful scene before 
 him. "I don t know where I am," he said, 
 "or how I got here. ... Or who you are." 
 "I can t seem to remember anything." The 
 faintly sheepish smile that quickened suddenly 
 in his eyes, if not distinctly humorous, was at 
 least plucky. "I think I must have had a 
 drink," he said. 
 
 "I wouldn t wonder!" grinned Paul Brens- 
 wick. 
 
 "You are perfectly right," conceded George 
 Keets.
 
 RAINY WEEK 49 
 
 "Have another!" suggested my Husband. 
 "A straight and narrow this time! You look 
 wobbly. There s nothing like coffee." 
 
 And still the Stranger stood undecided in 
 the doorway. "I m not very fit," he ac 
 knowledged. "Not with ladies. . . . But I had 
 to know where I was." Blinking with per 
 plexity he stared and stared at the faces 
 before him. "I m three thousand miles from 
 home," he worried. "I don t know a soul 
 this side of the Sierras. . . . I I don t know 
 how it happened " 
 
 "Oh, Shucks!" shrugged young Kennil- 
 worth. "Easiest thing in $he world to happen 
 to a stranger in a new town! * Welcome to 
 our City Welcome to our City* from night 
 till morning and morning till night again! 
 Any crowd once it gets started " 
 
 "Crowd!" brightened the Stranger. "I 
 I was in some sort of a a crowd I" he rum 
 maged hopefully through his poor bruised 
 brain. 
 
 From her concentrated interest in a fried 
 chicken-bone, the May Girl glanced up with 
 her first evidence of divided attention. 
 
 "Yes! You were!" she confided genially.
 
 50 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "It was at the railroad junction. And when 
 the officer arrived, he said, *I hate like the 
 dickens to run this gentleman in, but if there s 
 nobody to look after him V So I said you 
 belonged to me! I saw the crape on your 
 sleeve I 9 said the May Girl. 
 
 "Crape on my sleeve ?" stammered the 
 Stranger. With a dreadful gesture of in 
 credulity he lifted his black-banded arm into 
 vision. It was like watching a live heart torn 
 apart to see his memory waken. * My God ! 
 he gasped. "My God!" Still wavering but 
 with a really heroic effort to square his 
 stricken shoulders, he swung back toward the 
 company. His face was livid, his voice, 
 barely articulate. Over face and voice lay 
 still that dreadful blight of astonishment. 
 But when he spoke his statement was starkly 
 simple. "I I buried my wife and unborn 
 child yesterday," he said. "In a strange 
 land among strangers I I " 
 
 More quickly than I could possibly have 
 imagined it, George Keets was on his feet 
 beckoning the Stranger to the place which he 
 himself had just vacated. And with his hands 
 on the Stranger s shoulders he bent down
 
 RAINY WEEK 51 
 
 suddenly over him with a curiously twisted 
 little smile. 
 
 "Welcome to our Pity!" said George 
 Keets. 
 
 Between Paul Brenswick and his Bride there 
 flashed a sharp glance of terror. It was as 
 though the bride s heart had gasped out. 
 "What if I have to die some day? And this 
 day was wasted in rain?" 
 
 I saw young Kennilworth flush and turn 
 away from that glance. I saw the May Girl 
 open her eyes with a new baffled sort of 
 perplexity. 
 
 It was then that Rollins came puttering in, 
 grinning like a Chessy Cat, with his half- 
 demolished breakfast sliding round rather 
 threateningly on his ill-balanced tray. The 
 strange exultancy of rain was in his eye. 
 
 "I thought I heard voices," he beamed. 
 "Merry voices!" With mounting excitement 
 he began to beat tunes with his knife and 
 fork upon the delicate porcelain dome of his 
 toast dish. "Am I a King," he began to 
 intone, "that I should call my own, this !" 
 Struck suddenly by the somewhat strained 
 expression of Ann Woltor s face, he dropped
 
 52 RAINY WEEK 
 
 his knife and fork and fixed his eye upon her 
 for the first time with an unmistakable in- 
 tentness. 
 
 "How did you break your tooth? " beamed 
 Eollins.
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 FOB a single horrid moment everybody s 
 heart seemed to lurch off into space to 
 land only too audibly in a gaspy thud 
 of dismay. 
 
 Then Ann Woltor with unprecedented pres 
 ence of mind jumped up from the table and 
 ran to the mirror over the fireplace. Only 
 the twittering throat-muscle reflected in that 
 mirror belied for an instant the sincerity of 
 either her haste or her astonishment. 
 
 "Broken tooth!" she protested incredu 
 lously. "Why! Have I got a broken tooth?" 
 
 People acknowledge their mental panics so 
 divergently. My Husband acknowledged his 
 by ramming his elbow into his coffee cup. 
 Claude Kennilworth lit one cigarette after 
 another. The May Girl started to butter a 
 picture post card that someone had just 
 passed her. Quite starkly before my very 
 eyes I saw the Sober Stranger, erstwhile 
 drunken, reach out and slip a silver salt- 
 shaker into his pocket. Meeting his glance 
 
 63
 
 54 RAINY WEEK 
 
 my own nerves exploded in a single hoot of 
 mirth. 
 
 Into the unhappy havoc of the Stranger s 
 face a rather sick but very determinate little 
 smile shot suddenly. 
 
 "Well, I certainly am rattled?" he acknowl 
 edged. 
 
 His embarrassment was absolutely perfect. 
 Not a whit too much, not a whit too little, at 
 a moment when the slightest under-emphasis 
 or over-emphasis of his awkwardness would 
 have stamped him ineradicably as either boor 
 or bounder. More indeed by his chair s 
 volition than by his own he seemed to jerk 
 aside then and there from any further re 
 sponsibility for the incident. Turbid as the 
 storm at the window his eyes racked back to 
 the eyes of his companions. 
 
 "Surely," he besought us, "there must be 
 some place some hotel somewhere in this 
 town where I can crawl into for a day 
 or two till I can yank myself together again? 
 . . . Taking me in this way from the streets 
 or worse the way you-people have " Along 
 the stricken pallor of his forehead a glisten 
 of sweat showed faintly. From my eyes to 
 my Husband s eyes, and back to mine again
 
 RAINY WEEK 55 
 
 he turned with a sharply impulsive gesture 
 of appeal. "How do you-people know but 
 what I am a burglar?" he demanded. 
 
 "Even so," I suggested blithely, "can t you 
 see that we d infinitely rather have you visit 
 ing here as our friend than boarding at the 
 hotel as our foe!" 
 
 The mirthless smile on the Stranger s face 
 twitched ever so faintly at one corner. 
 
 "You really believe then " he quickened, 
 "that there is * honor among thieves ?" 
 
 "All proverbs," intercepted my Husband a 
 bit abruptly, "are best proved by their anti 
 thesis. We do at least know that there is 
 at times a considerable streak of dishonor 
 among saints!" 
 
 "Eh? What s that I didn t quite catch 
 it," beamed the Bridegroom. 
 
 But my Husband s entire attention seemed 
 focused rather suddenly on the Stranger. 
 
 "So you d much better stay right on here 
 where you are!" he adjured him with some 
 accent of authority. "Where all explanations 
 are already given and taken! . . . Ourselves 
 quite opportunely short one guest and long 
 one guest-room, and No! I won t listen for 
 a moment to its being called an imposition !"
 
 56 RAINY WEEK 
 
 protested my Husband. "Not for a moment! 
 Only, of course, I must admit," he confided 
 genially, above the flare of a fresh cigarette, 
 "that it would be a slight convenience to know 
 your name." 
 
 "My name?" flushed the Stranger. "Why, 
 of course! It s Allan John." 
 
 "You mean John Allan, " corrected the 
 May Girl very softly. 
 
 "No," insisted the Stranger. "It s Allan 
 John." Quite logically he began to rummage 
 through his pockets for the proof. "It s 
 written on my bill-folder," he frowned. "It s 
 in my check-book. ... It s written on no-end 
 of envelopes." With his face the color of 
 half-dead sedge grass he sank back suddenly 
 into his chair and turned his empty hands 
 limply outward as though his wrist-bones had 
 been wrung. * * Gone ! " he gasped. Stripped ! 
 Everything!" 
 
 "There you have it!" I babbled hysterically. 
 "Now, how do you know but what we are 
 burglars? . . . This whole house a Den of 
 Thieves? . . . The impeccable Mr. George 
 Keets there at your right, no more, no less, 
 than exactly what he looks, an almost per 
 fect replica of a stage Raffles ?"
 
 RAINY WEEK 57 
 
 "Eh? What s that?" bridled George Keets. 
 
 "Dragging you here to this house the way 
 we did," I floundered desperately. "Quite 
 helpless as you were. So so " 
 
 " * Spifflicated, : prompted the May Girl. 
 The word on her lips was like the flutter of a 
 rose petal. 
 
 With a little gasp of astonishment young 
 Kennil worth rose from his place, and drag 
 ging his chair in one hand, his plate of fruit 
 in the other, moved round to the May Girl s 
 elbow to finish his breakfast. Like a palm 
 trying to patronize a pine tree, his crisp 
 exotic young ego swept down across her young 
 serenity. 
 
 "Really, I don t quite make you out," he 
 said. "I think I shall have to study you!" 
 
 "Study me!" reflected the May Girl. 
 "Make a lesson about me, you mean! On a 
 holiday?" The vaguely dawning dimple in 
 her smooth cheek faded suddenly out again. 
 
 The Stranger Allan John it seemed, was 
 rising from the table. 
 
 "If you ll excuse me, I think I ll go to my 
 room," he explained. "I m still pretty shaky. 
 I m 
 
 But half way to the stairs, as though drawn
 
 58 RAINY WEEK 
 
 by some irresistible impulse, he turned, and 
 fumbling his way back across the dining-room 
 opened the big glass doors direct into the 
 storm. Tripping ever so slightly on the 
 threshold he lurched forward in a single 
 wavering step. In an instant the May Girl was 
 at his side, her steadying hand held out to 
 his! Eecovering his balance almost instantly 
 he did not however release her hand, but still 
 holding tight to it, indescribably puzzled, in 
 describably helpless, stood shoulder to shoul 
 der with her, staring out into the tempestuous 
 scene. Lashed by the wind the May Girl s 
 mop of hair blew gold, blew gray, across 
 his rain-drenched eyes. Blurred in a gusty 
 flutter of white skirts his whole tragic, sag 
 ging figure loomed suddenly like some weird, 
 symbolic shadow against the girl s bright 
 beauty. 
 
 Frankly the picture startled me! "S-s-h!" 
 warned my Husband. "It won t hurt her 
 any! He doesn t even know whether she s 
 young or old." 
 
 "Or a boy or a girl," interposed George 
 Keets, a bit drily. 
 
 "Or an imp or a saint," grinned young 
 Kennilworth. Or "
 
 RAINY WEEK 59 
 
 "Or anything at all," persisted my Hus 
 band, "except that she says Kindness and 
 nothing else, you notice, except just Kind 
 ness. No suggestions, you observe 1 ? No ad 
 vice? And at an acid moment in his life of 
 such unprecedented shock and general nervous 
 disorganization when his only conceivable 
 chance of * come-back* perhaps, hangs on the 
 alkaline wag of a strange dog s tail or the 
 tune of a street piano proving balm not blister. 
 By to-morrow I think you won t see him 
 holding hands with the May Girl nor with 
 any other woman. Personally," confided my 
 Husband a bit abruptly, "I rather like the 
 fellow! Even in the worst of his plight last 
 night there was a certain fundamental sort 
 of poise and dignity about him as of one who 
 would say, Bad as this is, you chaps must 
 see that I d stand ready with my life to do 
 the same for you !" 
 
 " To do the same for you? " gasped 
 the Bride. Very quietly, like an offended 
 young princess, she rose from the table and 
 stood for that single protesting moment with 
 her hand on her Bridegroom s shoulder. Her 
 eager, academic young face was frankly 
 aghast, her voice distinctly strained. "I m
 
 60 RAINY WEEK 
 
 sorry, " she said, "but I quite fail to see how 
 the word dignity* could possibly be applied 
 to any man who had so debased himself as to 
 go and get drunk because his wife and child 
 were dead!" 
 
 "You talk," said my Husband, "as though 
 you thought * getting drunk* was some sort 
 of jocular sport. It isn t! That is, not in 
 evitably, you know!" 
 
 "No I didn t know," murmured the Bride 
 coldly. 
 
 "Deplorable as the result proved to be," in 
 terposed George Keets s smooth, carefully 
 modulated voice, "it s hardly probable I sup 
 pose that the poor devil started out with the 
 one deliberate purpose of of debasing him 
 self, as Mrs. Brenswick calls it." 
 
 "N-o?" questioned the Bride. 
 
 "It isn t exactly, you mean, as though he d 
 leapt from the church shouting, *Yo ho , 
 and a bottle of rum, : observed young Ken- 
 nilworth with one faintly-twisted eyebrow. 
 
 "S-s-h!" admonished everybody. 
 
 "Maybe he simply hadn t eaten for days," 
 suggested my Husband. 
 
 "Or slept for nights and nights," frowned 
 George Keets.
 
 RAINY WEEK 61 
 
 "And just absolutely was obliged to have a 
 bracer," said my Husband, "to put the bones 
 back into his knees again so that he could 
 climb up the steps of his train and fumble 
 some sort of way to his seat without seeming 
 too conspicuous. Whatever religion may do, 
 you know, to starch a man s soul or stiffen 
 his upper lip, he s got to have bones in his 
 knees if he s going to climb up into railroad 
 trains. . . . And our poor young friend here, 
 it would seem, merely mis " 
 
 * Mis calculated, mused Kennilworth, 
 "how many knees he had." 
 
 "Paul wouldn t do it!" flared the Bride. 
 
 "Do what?" demanded young Kennilworth. 
 
 "Hush!" protested everybody. 
 
 "Make a beast of himself if I died if I 
 died!" persisted the Bride. 
 
 "Pray excuse me for contradicting either 
 your noun or your preposition," apologized 
 my Husband. "But even at its worst I m 
 quite willing to wager that the only thing in 
 the world poor Allan John started out to 
 make* was an oblivion for himself." 
 
 "An oblivion?" scoffed the Bride. 
 
 "Yes even for one night!" persisted my 
 Husband. "Even for one short little night I
 
 62 RAINY WEEK 
 
 . . . Before the horror of 365 nights to the 
 year and God knows how many years to the 
 life rang on again! Some men really like 
 their wives you know, some men so no 
 matter how thin-skinned and weak this desire 
 for oblivion seems to you " quickened my 
 Husband, "it is at least a " 
 
 "Paul wouldn t!" frowned the Bride. 
 
 In the sudden accentuation of strain every 
 body turned as quickly as possible to poor 
 Paul to decide as cheerfully as seemed com 
 patible with good taste just what that gor 
 geously wholesome looking specimen of young 
 manhood would or would not do probably 
 under suggested circumstances. Nobody cer 
 tainly wanted to consider the matter seriously, 
 yet nobody with the Bride s scared eyes still 
 scorching through his senses would have felt 
 quite justified I think in mere shrugging the 
 issue aside. 
 
 "No, I don t think Paul would I" rallied 
 my Husband with commendable quickness. 
 "Not with those eyes! Not with that particu 
 lar shade of crisp, controlled hair! . . . Com 
 plexions like his aren t made in one genera 
 tion of righteous nerves and digestions! . . . 
 Oh no ! Even in the last ditch the worst
 
 RAINY WEEK 63 
 
 thing Paul would do would be to stalk round 
 putting brand new gutters on a brand new 
 house!" 
 
 "Bridge-building is my job not gutters," 
 grinned Paul unhappily. 
 
 "Stalk round building brand new bridges," 
 corrected my Husband. 
 
 "Intoxicated with bridges!" triumphed 
 young Kennilworth. "Doped with specifica 
 tions ! 
 
 "But perhaps Allan John doesn t know 
 how to build bridges," murmured my Hus 
 band. "And perhaps in Allan John s family 
 an occasional Maiden Aunt or Uncle has 
 strayed just a " 
 
 "With the faintest possible gesture of impa 
 tience, but still smiling, the Bridegroom rose 
 from the table and lifted his Bride s hand very 
 gently from his shoulder. 
 
 "Who started this conversation, anyway?" 
 he quizzed. 
 
 "I did!" laughed everybody. 
 
 "Well, I end it!" said the Bridegroom. 
 
 "Oh, thunder!" protested young Kennil 
 worth. In the hollow of his hand something 
 that once had been the spongy shapeless center 
 of a breakfast roll crushed back into sponge
 
 64 RAINY WEEK 
 
 again. But in the instant of its crushing, 
 crude as the modeling was, half jest, half 
 child s play, I sensed the unmistakable parody 
 of a woman s finger-prints bruising into the 
 soft crest of a man s shoulder. Even in the 
 absurdity of its substance the sincerity of the 
 thing was appalling. Catching my eye alone, 
 young Kennilworth gave an amused but dis 
 tinctly worldly-wise little laugh. 
 
 "Women do care so much, don t they?" he 
 shrugged. 
 
 A trifling commotion in the front hall stayed 
 the retort on my lips. 
 
 The commotion was Ann Woltor. Coated 
 and hatted and already half -gloved she loomed 
 blackly from the shadows, trying very hard 
 to attract my attention. 
 
 In my twinge of anxiety about the May Girl 
 I had quite forgotten Ann Woltor. And in 
 the somewhat heated discussion of Allan 
 John s responsibilities and irresponsibilities, 
 the May Girl also, it would seem, had passed 
 entirely from my mind. 
 
 "I m very sorry," explained Ann Woltor, 
 "but with this unfortunate accident to my 
 tooth I shall have to hurry, of course, right 
 back to town." Even if you had never heard
 
 RAINY WEEK 65 
 
 Ann Woltor speak you could have presaged 
 perfectly from her face just what her voice 
 would be like, gravely contralto, curiously 
 sonorous, absolutely without either accent or 
 emphasis, yet carrying in some strange, inex- 
 plainable way a rather goose-fleshy sense of 
 stubbornness and finality. "One can t exactly 
 in a Christian land," droned Ann Woltor, 
 "go round looking like the sole survivor of a 
 massacre." 
 
 Across the somewhat sapient mutual con 
 sciousness that ever since we had first laid 
 eyes on each other five months ago and good 
 ness knows how long before that she had 
 been going round perfectly serenely looking 
 like the sole survivor of a massacre/ Ann 
 Woltor and I stared just a bit deeply into 
 each other s eyes. The expression in Ann s 
 eyes was an expression of peculiar poignancy. 
 
 "No, of course not!" I conceded with some 
 abruptness. "But surely if you can find the 
 right dentist and he s clever at all, you ought 
 to be able to get back here on the six-thirty 
 train to-night I" 
 
 "The six- thirty train? Perhaps," mur 
 mured Ann Woltor. Once again her eyes hung 
 upon mine. And I knew and Ann Woltor
 
 66 RAINY WEEK 
 
 knew and Ann Woltor knew that I knew, 
 that she hadn t the slightest intention in the 
 world of returning to us on any train whatso 
 ever. But for some reason known only to 
 herself and perhaps one other, was only too 
 glad to escape from our party anatomically 
 impossible as that escape sounds through the 
 loop-hole of a broken tooth. Already both 
 black gloves were fastened, and her black trav 
 eling-bag swayed lightly in one slim, deter 
 minate hand. "Your maid has ordered the 
 station bus for me," she confided; "and tells 
 me that by changing cars at the Junction and 
 again at Lees Truly I m sorry to make any 
 trouble," she interrupted herself. "If there 
 had been any possible way of just slipping 
 out without anybody noticing !" 
 
 "Without anybody noticing?" I cried. 
 "Why, Ann, you dear silly!" 
 
 At this, my first use of her Christian name, 
 she flashed back at me a single veiled glance 
 of astonishment, and started for the door. 
 But before I could reach her side my Husband 
 stepped forward and blocked her exit by the 
 seemingly casual accident of plunging both 
 arms rather wildly into the sleeves of his 
 great city-going raincoat. 

 
 RAINY WEEK 67 
 
 "Why the thing is absurd!" he protested. 
 "You can t possibly make train connections! 
 And there isn t even a covered shed at the 
 Junction! If this matter is so important I ll 
 run you up to town myself in the little closed 
 car!" 
 
 Across Ann Woltor s imperturbable face an 
 expression that would have meant an in-grow 
 ing scream on any other person s countenance 
 flared up in a single twitching lip-muscle and 
 was gone again. Behind the smiling banter 
 in my Husband s eyes she also perhaps had 
 noted a determination quite as stubborn as 
 her own. 
 
 "Why if you insist," she acquiesced, "but 
 it has always distressed me more than I can 
 say to inconvenience anybody." 
 
 * Inconvenience nothing ! beamed my 
 Husband. Ordinarily speaking my Husband 
 would not be described I think as having a 
 beaming expression. 
 
 With a chug like the chug of a motor-boat 
 the little closed car came splashing labori 
 ously round the driveway. Its glassy face 
 was streaked with tears. Depressant as black 
 life-preservers its two extra tires gleamed and 
 dripped in their jetty enamel-cloth casings. A
 
 68 RAINY WEEK 
 
 jangle as of dungeon chains clanked heavily 
 from each fresh revolution of its progress. 
 
 Everybody came rushing helpfully to assist 
 in the embarkation. 
 
 My Husband s one remark to me flung back 
 in a whisper from the steering wheel, though 
 frankly confidential, concerned Allan John 
 alone. 
 
 " Don t let Allan John want for anything 
 to-day," he admonished me. "Keep his body 
 and mind absolutely glutted with bland things 
 like cocoa and reading aloud . . . And don t 
 wait supper for us!" 
 
 With her gay jonquil-colored oil-skin coat 
 swathing her sombre figure, Ann Woltor 
 slipped into the seat beside him and slammed 
 the door behind her. Her face was certainly 
 a study. 
 
 "Sixty miles to town if it s an inch! How 
 cosy," mused young Kennilworth. 
 
 "Good-bye!" shouted everybody. 
 
 "Good-bye!" waved Ann Woltor and my 
 Husband. 
 
 As for Eollins, he was almost beside him 
 self with pride and triumph. Shuffling joy 
 ously from one foot to the other he crowded 
 to the very edge of the vestibule and with his
 
 RAINY WEEK 69 
 
 small fussy face turned up ecstatically to the 
 rain, fairly exploded into speech the instant 
 the car was out of earshot. 
 
 "She ll look better!" gloated Rollins. 
 
 "Who? the carl" deprecated young Ken- 
 nilworth. 
 
 Then, because everybody laughed out at 
 nothing, it gave me a very good chance sud 
 denly to laugh out at "nothing" myself. And 
 most certainly I had been needing that chance 
 very badly for at least the last fifteen min 
 utes. Because really when you once stopped 
 to consider the whole thrilling scheme of this 
 "Rainy Week" Play, and how you and your 
 Husband for years and years had constituted 
 yourself a very eager, earnest-minded Audi- 
 ence-of-Two to watch how the Lord Almighty, 
 the one unhampered Dramatist of the world, 
 would work out the scenes and colors the 
 exits and entrances the plots and counter 
 plots of the material at hand it was just 
 a bit astonishing to have your Husband jump 
 up from his place in the audience and leap to 
 the stage to be one of the players instead! 
 
 It wasn t at all that the dereliction worried 
 your head or troubled your heart. But it left 
 your elbow so lonely! Who was there left
 
 70 RAINY WEEK 
 
 for your elbow to nudge? When the morning 
 curtain rose on a flight of sea gulls slashing 
 like white knives through a sheet of silver 
 rain, or the Night Scene set itself in a plushy 
 black fog that fairly crinkled your senses; 
 when the Leading Lady s eyes narrowed for 
 the first time to the Leading Man s startled 
 stare, and the song you had introduced so 
 casually at the last moment in the last act 
 proved to be the reforming point in the Vil 
 lain s nefarious career, and the one character 
 you had picked for "Comic Relief" turned 
 out to be the Tragedienne, who in the world 
 was left for your elbow to nudge? 
 
 Swinging back to the breakfast-room I heard 
 the clock strike ten only ten? 
 
 It was going to be a nice little Play all 
 right! Starting off already with several quite 
 unexpected situations! And it wouldn t be 
 the first time by any means that in an emer 
 gency I had been obliged to "double" as 
 prompter and stage hand or water carrier 
 and critic. But how to double as elbow- 
 nudger I couldn t quite figure. 
 
 "Let s go for a tramp on the beach!" sug 
 gested the Bridegroom. Always on the first 
 rainy morning immediately after breakfast
 
 RAINY WEEK 71 
 
 some restive business man suggests "a tramp 
 on the beach!" Frankly we have reached a 
 point where we quite depend on it for a cue. 
 
 Everybody hailed the proposition with de 
 light except Allan John and Rollins. A zephyr 
 would have blown Allan John from his footing. 
 And Rollins had to stay in his room to cat 
 alogue shells. . . . Rollins was paid to stay in 
 his room and catalogue shells ! 
 
 Of the five adventurers who essayed to 
 sally forth, only one failed to clamor for oil 
 skins. You couldn t really blame the Bride 
 for her lack of clamoring. . . . The Bride s 
 trousseau was wonderful as all trousseaux 
 are bound perforce to be that are made up 
 of equal parts of taste, money, fashion, 
 and passion. No one who had "saved up" 
 such a costume as the Bride had for the first 
 rainy day together, could reasonably be ex 
 pected to doff it for yellow oil-skins. Of 
 some priceless foreign composition, half cloth, 
 half mist, indescribably shimmering, almost 
 indecently feminine, with the frenchiest sort 
 of a little hat gaily concocted of marshgrass 
 and white rubber pond-lilies, it gave her lovely, 
 somewhat classic type, all the sudden auda-
 
 72 RAINY WEEK 
 
 cious effect somehow of a water-proofed val 
 entine. 
 
 Young Kennilworth sensed the inherent con 
 trast at once. 
 
 "Beside you," he protested, "we look like 
 Yellow Telegrams! . . . Your Husband there 
 is some Broker s Stock Quotation sent col 
 lect! . . . Mr. Keets is a rather heavily-word 
 ed summons to address the Alumnae of Some- 
 thing-or-other College! ... I am a Lunch 
 Invitation to Miss Dancy-Prancy of the Sil 
 lies! . . . And you, of course, Miss Davies," 
 he quickened delightedly, "are a Night Letter, 
 because you are so long and inconsequent- 
 all about rabbits and puppies and kiddie 
 things like checked gingham pinafores!" 
 
 Laughing, teasing, arguing, jeering each 
 other s oil-skins, praising the Bride s splen 
 dor, they swept, a young hurricane of them 
 selves, out into the bigger hurricane of sea 
 and sky, and still five abreast, still jostling, 
 still teasing, still arguing, passed from sight 
 around the storm-swept curve of the beach, 
 while I stayed behind to read aloud to Allan 
 John. 
 
 Not that Allan John listened at all. But 
 merely because every time I stopped reading
 
 RAINY WEEK 73 
 
 he struggled up from the lovely soggy depths 
 of his big leather chair and began to worry. 
 We read two garden catalogues and a chap 
 ter on insect pests. We read a bit of Walter 
 Pater, and five exceedingly scurrilous poems 
 from a volume of free verse. It seemed to 
 be the Latin names in the garden catalogues 
 that soothed him most. And when we weren t 
 reading, we drank malted milk. Allan John, it 
 seemed, didn t care for cocoa. 
 
 But even if I hadn t had Allan John on my 
 mind I shouldn t have gone walking on the 
 beach. We have always indeed made it a 
 point not to walk on the beach with our guests 
 on the first rainy, restive morning of their 
 arrival. In a geographical environment where 
 every slushy step of sand, every crisp rug 
 of pebbles, every wind-tortured cedar root, 
 every salt-gnawed crag is as familiar to us 
 as the palms of our own hands, it is almost 
 beyond human nature not to try and steer 
 one s visitors to the preferable places, while 
 the whole point of this introductory expedi 
 tion demands that the visitors shall steer them 
 selves. In the inevitable mood of uneasiness 
 and dismay that overwhelms most house party 
 guests when first thrust into each other s un-
 
 74 RAINY WEEK 
 
 familiar faces, the initial gravitations that 
 ensue are rather more than usually significant. 
 To be perfectly explicit, for instance, people 
 who start off five abreast on that first rainy 
 walk never come home five abreast! 
 
 In the immediate case at hand, nobody 
 came home at all until long after Allan John 
 and I had finished our luncheon, and in the 
 manner of that coming, George Keets had 
 gravitated to leadership with the Bride and 
 Bridegroom. Very palpably with the Bride 
 groom s assistance he seemed to be coaxing 
 and urging the Bride s frankly jaded foot 
 steps, while young Kennilworth and the May 
 Girl brought up the rear staggering and 
 lurching excitedly under the weight of a large 
 and somewhat mysteriously colored wooden 
 box. 
 
 The Bridegroom and George Keets and 
 young Kennilworth and the May Girl were 
 as neat as yellow paint. But the poor Bride 
 was ruined. Tattered and torn, her diapha 
 nous glory had turned to real mist before the 
 onslaught of wind and rain. Her hat was 
 swamped, her face streaked with inharmonious 
 colors. She was drenched to the skin. Her
 
 RAINY WEEK 75 
 
 Bridegroom was distracted with anxiety and 
 astonishment. 
 
 Everybody was very much excited! Lured 
 by some will-o -the-wisp that lurks in waves 
 and beaches they had lost their way it seems 
 between one dune and another, staggered up 
 sand-hills, fallen down sand-hills, sheltered 
 themselves at last during the worst gust of 
 all "in a sort of a cave in a sort of a cliff" 
 and sustained life very comfortably " thank 
 you* on some cakes of sweet chocolate which 
 George Keets had discovered most oppor 
 tunely in his big oil-skin pockets! 
 
 But most exciting of all they had found a 
 wreck! "Yes, a real wreck! A perfectly 
 lovely beautiful and quite sufficiently grue 
 some real wreck!" the May Girl reported. 
 
 Not exactly a whole wreck it had proved 
 to be ... Not shattered spars and masts 
 and crumpled cabins with plush cushions 
 floating messily about. But at least it was a 
 real trunk from a real wreck! Mrs. Brens- 
 wick had spied it first. Just back of a long 
 brown untidy line of flotsam and jetsam, 
 the sea-weeds, the dead fish, the old bales 
 and boxes, that every storm brings to the 
 beach, Mrs. Brenswick had spied the trunk
 
 76 RAINY WEEK 
 
 lurching up half-imbedded in the sand. It 
 must have come in on the biggest wave of 
 all some time during the night. It was 
 "awfully wet" and yet "not so awfully wet." 
 Everybody agreed that is, that it wasn t 
 water-logged, that it hadn t, in short, been 
 rolling around in the sea for weeks or months 
 but bespoke a disaster as poignantly recent 
 as last night, on the edge of this very storm 
 indeed that they themselves were now frivol- 
 ing in. For fully half an hour, it appeared 
 before even so much as touching the trunk, 
 they had raced up and down the beach hunt 
 ing half hopefully, half fearfully for some 
 added trace of wreckage, the hunched body 
 even of a survivor. But even with this shud 
 dering apprehension once allayed, the original 
 discovery had not proved an altogether facile 
 adventure. 
 
 It had taken indeed at the last all their 
 combined energies and ingenuities to open 
 the trunk. The Bride had broken two finger 
 nails. George Keets had lost his temper. 
 Paul Brenswick in a final flare of desperation 
 had kicked in the whole end with an abandon 
 that seemed to have been somewhat of an 
 astonishment to everybody. Even from the
 
 RAINY WEEK 77 
 
 first young Kennilworth had contested "that 
 the thing smelt dead." But this unhappy odor 
 had been proved very fortunately to be noth 
 ing more nor less than the rain-sloughed col 
 oring matter of the Bride s pond-lily hat. 
 
 "And here is what we found in the trunk!" 
 thrilled the Bride. In the palm of her ex 
 tended hand lay a garnet necklace, fifty 
 stones perhaps, flushing crimson-dark in a 
 silver setting of such unique beauty and such 
 unmistakable Florentine workmanship as 
 stamped the whole trinket indisputably "pre 
 cious," if not the stones themselves. 
 
 "And there were women s dresses in it," 
 explained Paul Brenswick. "Rather queer- 
 looking dresses and " 
 
 "Oh, it was the the funniest trunk!" 
 cried the May Girl. "All " Her eyes were 
 big with horror. 
 
 "Anybody could have Sherlocked at a 
 glance," sniffed young Kennilworth, "that it 
 had been packed by a crazy person!" 
 
 "No, I don t agree to that at all!" protested 
 the Bride, whose own trunk-packing urgencies 
 and emergencies were only too recent in her 
 mind. "Anybody s liable to pack a trunk 
 like that when he s moving! The last trunk
 
 78 RAINY WEEK 
 
 of all! Every left-over thing that you thought 
 was already packed or that you had planned 
 to tuck into your suitcase and found suddenly 
 that you couldn t." 
 
 "Why, there was an old-fashioned copper 
 chafing dish!" sniffed young Kennilworth. 
 "And the top-drawer of a sewing- table fairly 
 rattling with spools!" 
 
 "And books!" frowned George Keets. "The 
 weirdest little old edition of Pilgrim & Prog 
 ress*!" 
 
 "And toys!" quivered the May Girl. "A 
 perfectly gorgeous brand new box of Toy 
 Village ! As huge as Oh it was awful!" 
 
 "As huge as that!" kicked young Kennil 
 worth wryfully against the box at his feet. 
 "I wanted to bring the chafing dish," he 
 scolded, "but nothing would satisfy this young 
 idiot here except that we lug the Toy Vil 
 lage. " 
 
 "One couldn t bring everything all at 
 once," deprecated the May Girl. "Perhaps 
 to-morrow if it isn t too far and we ever 
 could find it again " 
 
 "But why such haste about the Toy Vil 
 lage ?" I questioned. "Why not the dresses? 
 The "
 
 RAINY WEEK 79 
 
 Hopelessly, but with her eyes like blue skies, 
 her cheeks like apple-blossoms, the May Girl 
 tried to justify her mental processes. "Prob 
 ably I can t explain exactly," she admitted, 
 "but books and dishes and dresses being just 
 things wouldn t mind being drowned but 
 toys, I think, would be frightened." With a 
 frank expression of shock she stopped sud 
 denly and stared all around her. "It doesn t 
 quite make sense when you say it out loud r 
 does it?" she reflected. "But when you just 
 feel it inside " 
 
 "I brought the little Pilgrim s Progress* 
 back with me," confessed George Keets with 
 the faintest possible smile. "Not exactly per 
 haps because I thought it would be * fright 
 ened. But two nights shipwreck on a New 
 England coast in this sort of weather didn t 
 seem absolutely necessary." 
 
 "And I brought the dinkiest little pearl- 
 handled pistol," brightened Paul Brenswick. 
 "It s a peach! Tucked into the pocket of an 
 old blue cape it was! Wonder I ever found 
 it!" 
 
 From a furious rummaging through her 
 pockets the May Girl suddenly withdrew her 
 hand.
 
 80 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "Of course, we ll have to watch the ship 
 wreck news," said the May Girl. "Or even 
 advertise, perhaps. So maybe there won t be 
 any real treasnre-trove after all. But just to 
 show that I thought of you, Mrs. Delville," 
 she dimpled, "here are four very damp spools 
 of red sewing-silk for your own work-table 
 drawer! Maybe they came all the way from 
 China! And here s a I don t know what 
 it is, for Allan John I think it s a whistle ! 
 And here s a little not-too-soggy real Moroc 
 co-bound blank book for Mr. Eollins when 
 he comes down-stairs again! And " 
 
 "And for Mr. Delville?" I teased. "And 
 for Ann Woltor?" 
 
 With her hand slapped across her mouth 
 in a gesture of childish dismay, the May Girl 
 stared round at her companions. 
 
 "Oh dear Oh dear Oh dear!" she stam 
 mered. "None of us ever thought once of 
 poor Mr. Delville and Miss Woltor!" 
 
 "It s hot eatments and drinkments that 
 you d better be thinking of now!" I warned 
 them all with real concern. "And blanket- 
 wrappers ! And downy quilts ! Be off to your 
 rooms and I ll send your lunches up after 
 you! And don t let one of you dare show his
 
 RAINY WEEK 81 
 
 drenched face down-stairs again until supper- 
 time!" 
 
 Then Allan John and I resumed our read 
 ing aloud. We read Longfellow this time, and 
 a page or two of Marcus Aurelius, and half a 
 detective story. And substituted orange juice 
 very mercifully for what had grown to be 
 a somewhat monotonous carousal in malted 
 milk. Allan John seemed very much gratified 
 with the little silver whistle from the ship 
 wreck, and showed quite plainly by various 
 pursings of his strained lips that he was 
 fairly yearning to blow it, but either hadn t 
 the breath, or else wasn t sure that such a 
 procedure would be considered polite. Keally 
 by six o clock I had grown quite fond of Allan 
 John. It was his haunted eyes, I think and the 
 lovely lean line of his cheek. But whether he 
 was animal vegetable mineral Spirituelle 
 or Intellectuelle, I, myself, was not yet pre 
 pared to say. 
 
 The supper hour passed fortunately without 
 fresh complications. Everybody came down! 
 Everybody s eyes were like stars! And every 
 body s complexion lashed into sheer gorgeous- 
 ness by the morning s mad buffet of wind and 
 wave! Best of all, no one sneezed.
 
 $2 RAINY WEEK 
 
 Our little Bride was a dream again in a 
 very straight, very severe gray velvet frock 
 that sheathed her young suppleness like the 
 suppleness of a younger Crusader. Her re 
 generated beauty was an object-lesson to all 
 young husbands pocket-books for all time to 
 come that beauty like love is infinitely more 
 susceptible to bad weather than is either 
 homeliness or hate, and as such must be 
 cherished by a man s brain as well as by his 
 brawn. Paul Brenswick, goodness knows, 
 would never need to choose his Bride s clothes 
 for her. But lusty young beauty-lover that 
 he was by every right of clean heart and clean 
 living, it was up to him to see that his beloved 
 was never financially hampered in her own 
 choosing! A non-extravagant bride, wrecked 
 as his bride had been by the morning s tem 
 pest, might not so readily have recovered her 
 magic. 
 
 The May Girl, as usual, was like a spray of 
 orchard bloom in some white, frothy, middy 
 blouse sort of effect. With the May Girl s 
 peculiarly fragrant and insouciant type of 
 youthfulness one never noted somehow just 
 what she wore, nor rated one day s mood of 
 loveliness against another. The essential
 
 RAINY WEEK 83 
 
 miracle, as of May-time itself, lay merely in 
 the fact that she was here. 
 
 Everybody talked, of course, about the ship 
 wreck. 
 
 The Bride did not wear her necklace. "It 
 was too ghostly, " she felt. But she carried it 
 in her hand and brooded over it with the 
 tender, unshakable conviction that once at 
 least it must have belonged to "another 
 Bride/ 
 
 Rollins, I thought, was rather unduly en 
 thusiastic about his share of the booty. Yet 
 no one who knew Rollins could ever possibly 
 have questioned the absolute sincerity of him. 
 Note-books, it appeared, were a special hobby 
 of his! Morocco-bound note-books particular 
 ly. And when it came to faintly soggy Moroc 
 co-bound note-books, words were inadequate 
 it seemed to express his appreciation. Noth 
 ing would do but the May Girl must inscribe 
 it for him. "Aiberner Kollins," she wrote 
 very carefully in her round, childish hand, 
 with a giggly flourish at the tail-tip of each 
 word. "For Aberner Rollins from his friend 
 May Davies. Awful Shipwreck Time, May 
 10th, 1919. " Rollins used an inestimable num 
 ber of note-books it appeared in the collection
 
 84 RAINY WEEK 
 
 of his statistics. "The collection of statistics 
 was the consuming passion of his life," he 
 confided to everybody. "The consuming pas 
 sion I" he reiterated emphatically. "Already/ 
 he affirmed, "he had revised and reaudited the 
 whole fresh-egg-account of his own family 
 for the last three generations! In a single 
 slender tone," he bragged, "he held listed the 
 favorite flowers of all living novelists both of 
 America and England! Another tome bulged 
 with the evidence that would-be suicides in 
 variably waited for pleasant weather in which 
 to accomplish their self-destruction! In re 
 gard to the little black Morocco volume," he 
 kindled ecstatically, "he had already dedi 
 cated it to a very interesting new thought 
 which had just occurred to him that evening, 
 apropos of a little remark a most signifi 
 cant little remark that had been dropped dur 
 ing the breakfast chat. ... If anyone was 
 really interested " he suggested hopefully. 
 
 Nobody was the slightest bit interested! 
 Nobody paid the remotest attention to him ! 
 Everybody was still too much excited about 
 the shipwreck, and planning how best to sal 
 vage such loot as remained. 
 
 "And maybe by to-morrow there ll be even
 
 RAINY WEEK 85 
 
 more things washed up!" sparkled the May 
 Girl. "A real India shawl perhaps! A set 
 of chess-men carved from a whale s tooth! 
 Only, of course if it should rain as hard " 
 she drooped as suddenly as she had sparkled. 
 
 "It can t! * said young Kennilworth. Even 
 with the fresh crash of wind and rain at the 
 casement he made the assertion arrogantly. 
 "It isn t in the mind of God," he said, "to 
 make two days as rainy as this one." The 
 little black Pomeranian believed him anyway, 
 and came sniffing out of the shadows to see if 
 the arrogantly gesticulative young hand held 
 also the gift of lump sugar as well as of 
 prophecy. 
 
 It was immediately after supper that the 
 May Girl decided to investigate the possibil 
 ities and probabilities of her "toy village." 
 
 Somewhat patronizingly at first but with a 
 surprisingly rapid kindling of enthusiasm, 
 young Kennilworth conceded his assistance. 
 
 The storm outside grew wilder and wilder. 
 The scene inside grew snugger and snugger. 
 The room was warm, the lamps well shaded, 
 the tables piled with books, the chairs them 
 selves deep as waves. "Loai and let loaf" 
 was the motto of the evening.
 
 86 RAINY WEEK 
 
 By pulling the huge wolf-skin rug away 
 from the hearth, the May Girl and young 
 Kennilworth achieved for their village a plane 
 of smoothness and light that gleamed as fair 
 and sweet as a real village common at high 
 noon. Curled up in a fluff of white the May 
 Girl sat cross-legged in the middle of it 
 superintending operations through a maze of 
 sunny hair. Stretched out at full-length on 
 the floor beside her, looking for all the world 
 like some beautiful exotic-faced little lad, 
 young Kennilworth lay on his elbows, adjust 
 ing, between incongruous puffs of cigarette 
 smoke, the faintly shattered outline of a minia 
 ture church and spire, or soothing a blister 
 of salt sea tears from the paint-crackled visage 
 of a tiny villa. Softly the firelight flickered 
 and flamed across their absorbed young faces. 
 Mysteriously the wisps of cigarette smoke 
 merged realities with unrealities. 
 
 It was an entrancing picture. And one by 
 one everybody in the room except Eollins and 
 myself became drawn more or less into it. 
 
 "If you re going to do it at all," argued 
 Paul Brenswick, "you might as well do it 
 right ! When you start in to lay out a village 
 you know there are certain general scientific
 
 RAINY WEEK 87 
 
 principles that must be observed. Now that 
 list to the floor there! What about drainage? 
 Can t you see that you ve started the whole 
 thing entirely wrong?" 
 
 "But I wanted it to face toward the fire," 
 drooped the May Girl, "like a village looking 
 on the wonders of Vesuvius." 
 
 "Vesuvius nothing!" insisted Paul Brens- 
 wick. "It s got to have good drainage!" 
 
 Enchanted by his seriousness, the Bride 
 rushed off up-stairs with her scissors to rip 
 the foliage off her second-best hat to make a 
 hedge for the church-yard. Even Allan John 
 came sliding just a little bit out of his chair 
 when he noted that there was a large, rather 
 humpy papier-mache mountain in the outfit 
 that seemed likely to be discarded. 
 
 "I would like to have that mountain put 
 there!" he pointed. "Against that table 
 shadow . . . And the mountain s name is Blue 
 Blurr!" 
 
 "Oh, very well," acquiesced everybody. 
 "The mountain s name is Blue Blurr!" It 
 was George Keets who suggested taking the 
 little bronze Psyche from the mantelpiece to 
 make a monument for the public square. "Of 
 course there ll be some in your village," he
 
 88 RAINY WEEK 
 
 deprecated, "who ll object to its being a nude. 
 But as a classic it " 
 
 "It s a bear! It s a bear! It s a bear!" 
 chanted Kennilworth in exultant falsetto. 
 "Speaking of classics!" 
 
 "Hush!" said George Keets. . . . George 
 Keets really wanted very much to play, I 
 think, but he didn t know exactly how to, so 
 he tried to talk highbrow instead. "This 
 village of yours," he frowned, "I I hope it s 
 going to have good government?" 
 
 "Well, it isn t!" snapped young Kennil 
 worth. "It s going to be a terror! But at 
 least it shall be pretty!" 
 
 Under young Kennilworth s crafty hand the 
 little village certainly had bloomed from a 
 child s pretty toy into the very real beauty 
 of an artist s ideal. The skill of laying out 
 little streets one way instead of another, 
 the decision to place the tiny red schoolhouse 
 here instead of there, the choice of a linden 
 rather than a pinetree to shade an infinite sti- 
 mal green-thatched cottage, had all combined 
 in some curious twinge of charm to make your 
 senses yearn not that all that cunning perfec 
 tion should swell suddenly to normal real estate 
 dimensions but that you, reduced by some
 
 RAINY WEEK 89 
 
 lovely miracle to toy-size, might slip across 
 that toy-sized greensward into one of those 
 toy-sized houses, and live with toy-sized pas 
 sions and toy-sized ambitions and toy-sized 
 joys and toy-sized sorrows, one single hour of 
 a toy-sized life. 
 
 Everybody, I guess, experienced the same 
 strange little flutter. 
 
 "That house shall be mine!" affirmed 
 George Keets quite abruptly. "That gray 
 stone one with the big bay-window and the 
 pink rambler rose. The bay-window room I m 
 sure would make me a fine study. And " 
 
 From an excessively delicate readjustment 
 of a loose shutter on a rambling brown bunga 
 low young Kennilworth looked up with a cer 
 tain flicker of exasperation. 
 
 "Live anywhere you choose !" he snapped. 
 "Miss Davies and I are going to live 
 here!" 
 
 W What?" stammered the May Girl. 
 "What?" 
 
 "Here!" grinned young Kennilworth. 
 
 "Oh no," said the May Girl. Without 
 showing the slightest offense she seemed sud 
 denly to be quite positive about it. "Oh, no! 
 5 If I live anywhere it s going to be in the
 
 90 RAINY WEEK 
 
 gray stone house with Mr. Keets. It s so in 
 finitely more convenient to the schools." 
 
 "To the what?" chuckled Kennilworth. Be 
 fore the very evident astonishment and dis 
 comfiture in George Keets s face, his own was 
 convulsed with joy. 
 
 "To the schools," dimpled the May Girl. 
 
 "You do me a a very great honor," bowed 
 George Keets. His face was scarlet. 
 
 "Thank you," said the May Girl. 
 
 In the second s somewhat panicky pause 
 Ithat ensued Rollins flopped forward with his 
 note-book. Rollins evidently had been waiting 
 a long and impatient time for such a pause. 
 
 "Now speaking of drinking to drown one s 
 sorrows " beamed Rollins. 
 
 "But we weren t!" observed George Keets 
 coldly. 
 
 "But you were this morning!" triumphed 
 Rollins. From the flapping white pages of 
 the little black note-book he displayed with 
 pride the entries that he had already made, 
 a separate name heading each page Mrs. 
 Delville Mr. Delville Mr. Keets Miss 
 Davies the list began. "Now take the hy 
 pothesis," glowed Rollins, "that everybody 
 has got just two bottles stowed away for all
 
 RAINY WEEK 91 
 
 time, the very last bottles I mean that he 
 will ever own, rum rye benedictine any 
 thing you choose and eliminating the first 
 bottle as the less significant of the two what 
 are you saving the last one for!" demanded 
 Rollins. 
 
 From a furtive glance at Allan John s 
 graying face and the May Girl s somewhat 
 startled stare, young Kennilworth looked up 
 with a rather peculiarly glinting smile. 
 
 "Oh, that s easy," said he, "I m saving 
 mine to break the head of some bally fool!" 
 
 "And my last bottle," interposed George 
 Keets quickly. "My last bottle !" In his 
 fine ascetic face the flush deepened suddenly 
 again, but with the flush the faintest possible 
 little smile showed also at the lip-line. "Oh, 
 I suppose if I m really going to have a wed 
 ding in that little gray toy house, it s up to 
 me to save mine for a * Loving Cup . . . 
 claret . . . Something very mild and rosy . . . 
 Yes, mine shall be claret." 
 
 With her pretty nose crinkled in what 
 seemed like a particularly abstruse reflection, 
 the May Girl glanced up. 
 
 "Bene benedictine?" she questioned. "Is
 
 92 RAINY WEEK 
 
 that the stuff that smells the way stars would 
 taste if you ate them raw?" 
 
 "I really can t say," mused Kennilworth. 
 "I don t think I ever ate a perfectly raw 
 star. At the night-lunch carts I think they 
 almost invariably fry them on both sides." 
 
 " Night-lunch carts ?" scoffed Keets, with 
 what seemed to me like rather unnecessary 
 acerbity. "N o, somehow I don t seem to 
 picture you in a night-lunch cart when it comes 
 time to share your last bottle of champagne 
 with with Miss Dancy-Prancy of the Sil 
 lies, wasn t it?" 
 
 "My last bottle isn t champagne!" flared 
 young Kennilworth. "It s scotch! . . . And 
 there ll be no Miss Anybody in it, thank you!" 
 His face was really angry, and one twitch of 
 his foot had knocked half his village into 
 chaos. "Oh, all right, I ll tell you what I m 
 going to do with my last bottle!" he frowned. 
 "The next-to-the-last-one, as you say, is none 
 of your business! But the last one is going 
 to my Old Man! ... I come from Kansas," 
 he acknowledged a bit shamefacedly. "From 
 a shack no bigger than this room . . . And 
 my Old Man lives there yet . . . And he s 
 always been used to having a taste of some-
 
 RAINY WEEK 
 
 thing when he wanted it and I guess he misses 
 it some. . . . And he ll be eighty years old the 
 15th of next December. I m going home 
 for it. ... I haven t been home for seven 
 years. . . . But my Old Man is going to get 
 his scotch! ... If they yank me off at every 
 railroad station and shoot me at sunrise each 
 new day, my Old Man is going to get his 
 scotch ! 
 
 "Bully for you," said George Keets. 
 
 "All the same," argued the May Girl, "I 
 think benedictine smells better." 
 
 With a little gaspy breath somebody dis 
 covered what had happened to the Village. 
 
 "Who did that?" demanded Paul Brens- 
 wick. 
 
 "You did!" snapped young Kennilworth. 
 
 "I didn t, either," protested Brenswick. 
 
 "Why of all cheeky things!" cried the 
 Bride. 
 
 "Now see here," I admonished them, 
 "you re all very tired and very irritable. 
 And I suggest that you all pack off to bed." 
 
 Helping the May Girl up from her cramped 
 position, George Keets bent low for a single 
 exaggerated moment over her proffered hand. 
 
 "I certainly think you are making a mis-
 
 94 RAINY WEEK 
 
 take, Miss Davies," bantered young Kennil- 
 worth. "For a long run, of course, Mr. 
 Keets might be better, but for a short run I 
 am almost sure that you would have been 
 jollier in the brown bungalow with me." 
 
 "Time will tell," dimpled the May Girl. 
 
 "Then I really may consider us formally 
 engaged?" smiled George Keets, still bending 
 low over her hand. He was really rather 
 amused, I think and quite as much embar 
 rassed as he was amused. 
 
 "No, not exactly formally," dimpled the 
 May Girl. "But until breakfast time to-mor 
 row morning." 
 
 "Until breakfast time to-morrow morn 
 ing," hooted young Kennilworth. "That s 
 the deuce of a funny time-limit to put on an 
 engagement ... It s like asking a person to 
 go skating when there isn t any ice! . . ." 
 
 "Is it?" puzzled the May Girl. 
 
 "What the deuce do you expect Keets to 
 get out of it?" quizzed young Kennilworth. 
 
 In an instant the May Girl was all smiles 
 again. "He ll get mentioned in my prayers," 
 she said. " Please bless Mr. Keets, my 
 nance-till-to-morrow-morning. "
 
 RAINY WEEK 95 
 
 * That s certainly something, conceded 
 George Keets. 
 
 "It isn t enough," protested Kennilworth. 
 
 The May Girl stared round appealingly at 
 her interlocutors. 
 
 "But the time is so awfully short," she 
 said, "and I did want to get engaged to aa 
 many boys as possible in the week I was 
 here." 
 
 "What what!" I babbled. 
 
 "Yes, for very special reasons," said the 
 May Girl, "I would like to get engaged to as- 
 many " 
 
 With a strut like the strut of a young ban 
 tam rooster, Eollins pushed his way sud 
 denly into the limelight. 
 
 "If it will be the slightest accommodation 
 to you," he affirmed, "you may consider your 
 self engaged to me to-morrow!" 
 
 Disconcerted as she was, the May Girl 
 swallowed the bitter, unexpected dose with 
 infinitely less grimace than one would have 
 expected. She even smiled a little. 
 
 "Very well, Mr. Kollins," she said, "I will 
 be engaged to you to-morrow." 
 
 Young Kennilworth s dismay exploded in a
 
 96 RAINY WEEK 
 
 single exclamation. "Well you certainly 
 are an extraordinary young person!" 
 
 "Yes, I know, * deprecated the May Girl. 
 "It s because I m so tall, I suppose " 
 
 Before the unallayed breathlessness of my 
 expression she wilted like a worried flower. 
 
 "Yes, of course, I know, Mrs. Delville," she 
 acknowledged, "that mock marriages aren t 
 considered very good taste . . . But a mock 
 engagement?" she wheedled. "If it s con 
 ducted, oh, very very very properly?" 
 Her eyes were wide with pleading. 
 
 "Oh, of course," I suggested, "if it s con 
 ducted very very very properly!" 
 
 Across the May Girl s lovely pink and white 
 cheeks the dark lashes fringed down. 
 
 * There will be no kissing, affirmed 
 the May Girl. 
 
 "Oh, Shucks!" protested young Kennil- 
 worth. "Now you ve spoiled everything." 
 
 Out of the corner of one eye I saw Rollins 
 nudge Paul Brenswick. It was not a facetious 
 nudge, but one quite markedly earnest. The 
 whole expression indeed on Rollins s face was 
 an expression of acute determination. 
 
 With laughter and song and a flicker of 
 candlelight everybody filed up-stairs to bed.
 
 RAINY WEEK 97 
 
 Eollins carried his candle with the partic 
 ularly unctuous pride of one who leads a 
 torchlight procession. And as he turned on 
 the upper landing and looked back, I noted 
 that -behind the almost ribald excitement on 
 his face there lurked a look of poignant wist- 
 fulness. 
 
 "I ve never been engaged before," he con 
 fided grinningly to Paul Brenswick. "I d like 
 to make the most of it . . ." 
 
 Passing into my own room I flung back the 
 casement windows for a revivifying slash of 
 wind and rain, before I should collapse ut 
 terly into the white scrumptiousness of my 
 bed. Frankly, I was very tired. 
 
 It must have been almost midnight when 
 I woke to see my Husband s dark figure sil 
 houetted in the bright square of the door. 
 Through the depths of my weariness a con 
 suming curiosity struggled. 
 
 "Did Ann Woltor come back?" I asked. 
 
 "She did!" said my Husband succinctly. 
 
 "And how did you get on with Allan 
 John?" 
 
 "Oh, I m crazy about Allan John," I 
 yawned amiably. And then with one of those 
 perfectly inexplainable nerve-explosions that
 
 98 RAINY WEEK 
 
 astonishes no one as much as it astonishes 
 oneself I struggled up on my elbow. 
 
 "But he s still got my best silver saltshaker 
 in his pocket ! I cried. 
 
 It was then that the scream of a siren whistle 
 tore like some fear-maddened voice through 
 the whole house. Shriller than knives it 
 ripped and screeched into the senses! Doors 
 banged! Feet thudded! 
 
 * * There s Allan John now ! I gasped. " It s 
 the whistle the May Girl gave him!"
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 
 EVERYBODY looked pretty tired when 
 they came down to breakfast the next 
 morning. But at least everybody came 
 down. Even Rollins! Never have I seen 
 Rollins so really addicted to coming down to 
 breakfast ! 
 
 Poor Allan John, of course, was all over 
 whelmed again with humiliation and despair, 
 and quite heroically insistent on removing his 
 presence as expeditiously as possible from our 
 house party. It was his whistle that had 
 screeched so in the night. And as far as he 
 knew he hadn t the slightest reason or excuse 
 for so screeching it beyond the fact that, rous 
 ing half-awake and half-asleep from a most 
 horrible nightmare, he had reached instinct 
 ively for the little whistle under his pillow, 
 and not realizing what he was doing, cried 
 for help, not just to man alone it would seem r 
 but to High Heaven itself! 
 "But however in the world did yon happen 
 
 99
 
 100 RAINY WEEK 
 
 to have the whistle under your pillow?" puz 
 zled the Bride. 
 
 "What else have I got?" answered Allan 
 John. 
 
 He was perfectly right! Robbed for all 
 time of his wife and child, stripped for the 
 ill-favored moment of all personal moneys and 
 proofs of identity, sojourning even in other 
 men s linen, what did Allan John hold as a 
 nucleus for the New Day except a little silver 
 toy from another person s shipwreck? (Once 
 I knew a smashed man who didn t possess 
 even a toy to begin a new day on so he didn t 
 begin it!) 
 
 "Well, of course, it was pretty rackety while 
 it lasted," conceded young Kennilworth. "But 
 at least it gave us a chance to admire each 
 other s lingeries." 
 
 "Negligees," corrected George Keets. 
 
 "I said scare-clothes !" snapped young 
 Kennilworth. "Everybody who travels by 
 land or sea or puts in much time at house 
 parties ought to have at least one round of 
 scare-clothes, one really chic escaping suit. 
 
 "The silver whistle is mine," intercepted 
 the May Girl with some dignity. "Mine and 
 Allan John s. I found it and gave it to Allan
 
 RAINY WEEK 101 
 
 John. And he can blow it any time he wants 
 to, day or night. But as long as you people 
 all made so much fuss about it and looked 
 so funny," dimpled the May Girl transiently, 
 "we will consider that after this any time 
 the whistle blows the call is just for me." 
 The May Girl s gravely ingenuous glance 
 swept down in sudden challenge across the 
 somewhat amused faces of her companions, 
 "Allan John is mine!" she confided with 
 some incisiveness. "I found him too!" 
 
 "Do you acknowledge that ownership, Allan 
 John!" demanded young Kennilworth. 
 
 Even Allan John s sombre eyes twinkled 
 the faintest possible glint of amusement. 
 
 "I acknowledge that ownership," acquiesced 
 Allan John. 
 
 "Now see here! I protest," rallied George 
 Keets. "Most emphatically I protest against 
 my fiancee assuming any masculine responsi 
 bilities except me during the brief term of 
 our engagement!" 
 
 "But your engagement is already over!" 
 jeered young Kennilworth. "Nice kind of 
 Lochinvar you are drifting down-stairs just 
 exactly on the stroke of the breakfast bell! 
 until breakfast time were the terms, I be-
 
 102 RAINY WEEK 
 
 lieve. Now Rollins here has been up since 
 dawn! Banging in and out of the house! 
 Racing up and down the front walk in the 
 rain! Now that s what I call real passion! 
 
 At the very first mention of his name Rollins 
 had come sliding way forward to the edge of 
 his chair. He hadn t apparently expected to 
 be engaged till after breakfast. But if there 
 was any conceivable chance, of course 
 
 "All ready any time!" beamed Rollins. 
 
 "Through breakfast time was what I un 
 derstood," said George Keets coldly. 
 
 "Through breakfast time was was what I 
 meant," stammered the May Girl. From the 
 only too palpable excitement on Rollins s face 
 to George Keets s chill immobility she turned 
 with the faintest possible gesture of appeal. 
 Her eyes looked suddenly just a little bit 
 frightened. "A after all," she confided, "I 
 I didn t know as I feel quite well enough 
 to-day to be engaged so much. Maybe I 
 caught a little cold yesterday. Sometimes I 
 don t sleep very well. Once " 
 
 "Oh, come now," insisted young Kennil- 
 worth. "Don t, for Heaven s sake, be a quit 
 ter!" 
 
 "A 4 quitter ?" bridled the May Girl. Her
 
 RAINY WEEK 103 
 
 cheeks went suddenly very pink. And then 
 suddenly very white. Like an angry little 
 storm-cloud that absurd fluff of gray hair 
 shadowed down for an instant across her 
 sharply averted face. A glint of tears threat 
 ened. Then out of the gray and the gold and 
 the blue and the pink and the tears, the jol- 
 liest sort of a little-girl-giggle issued suddenly. 
 "Oh, all right!" said the May Girl and slipped 
 with perfect docility apparently into the chair 
 that George Keets had drawn out for her. 
 
 George Keets I really think was infinitely 
 more frightened than she was, but in his case, 
 at least, a seventeen years lead in experience 
 had taught him long since the advisability of 
 disguising such emotions. Even at the dining- 
 table of a sinking ship George Keets I m al 
 most certain would never have ceased passing 
 salts and peppers, proffering olives and rad 
 ishes, or making perfectly sure that your 
 coffee was just exactly the way you liked it. 
 In the present emergency, to cover not only 
 his own confusion but the ^May Girl s, he 
 proceeded to talk archseology. By talking 
 archaeology in an undertone with a faintly 
 amorous inflection to the longest and least 
 intelligible words, George Keets really be-
 
 104 RAINY WEEK 
 
 lieved I think that he was giving a rather 
 clever imitation of an engaged man. What 
 the May Girl thought no one could possibly 
 have guessed. The May Girl s face was a 
 study, but it was at least turning up to his I 
 Whether she understood a single thing he 
 said, or was only resting, whether she was 
 truly amused or merely deferring as long as 
 possible her unhappy fate with Rollins, she 
 sat as one entranced. 
 
 Slipping into the chair directly opposite 
 them, young Kennilworth watched the pro 
 ceedings with malevolent joy. Between his 
 very frank contempt for the dulness of George 
 Keets s methods, and his perfectly palpable 
 desire to keep poor Rollins tantalized as long 
 as possible, he scarcely knew which side to 
 play on. 
 
 Everybody indeed except Ann Woltor 
 seemed to take a more or less mischievous 
 delight in prolonging poor Rollins a suspense. 
 Allan John never lifted his eyes from his 
 coffee cup, but at least he showed no signs 
 of disapproval or haste. Even George Keets, 
 to the eyes of a close observer, seemed to be 
 dallying rather unduly with his knife and fork 
 as well as with his embarrassment.
 
 RAINY WEEK 105 
 
 As the breakfast hour dragged along, poor 
 Rollins s impatience grew apace. Fidgeting 
 round and round in his chair, scowling fero 
 ciously at anyone who dared to ask for a 
 second service of anything, dashing out into 
 the hall every now and then on perfectly inex- 
 plainable errands, he looked for all the world 
 like some wry-faced clown performing by ac 
 cident in a business suit. 
 
 "Really, Rollins," admonished my Husband. 
 "I think it would have been a bit more delicate 
 of you if you d kept out of sight somehow till 
 Keets* affair was over this hovering round 
 so through the harrowing last moments all 
 ready to pounce hanged if I don t think it s 
 crude ! 
 
 "Crude? it s plain buzzard-y!" scoffed 
 Kennilworth. 
 
 It was the Bride s warm, romantic heart 
 that called the time-limit finally on George 
 Keets s philandering. 
 
 "Really, I don t think it s quite fair," whis 
 pered the Bride. Taken all in all I think the 
 Bridegroom was inclined to agree with her. 
 But stronger than anybody s sense of justice, 
 it was a composite sense of humor that sped 
 Rollins to his heart s desire. Even Ann Wol-
 
 106 RAINY WEEK 
 
 tor, I think, was curious to see just how 
 Rollins would figure as an engaged man. 
 
 The May Girl s parting with George Keets 
 was at least mercifully brief. 
 
 "Does he kiss my hand?" questioned the 
 May Girl. 
 
 "No I think not," flushed George Keets. 
 Having no intention in the world of kissing 
 any woman in earnest, it was not in his code, 
 apparently, to kiss a young girl in fun. Very 
 formally, with that frugal, tight-lipped smile 
 of his which contrasted so curiously with the 
 rather accentuated virility of his shoulders, 
 he rose and bowed low over the May Girl s 
 proffered fingers. "Really it s been a great 
 honor. I ve enjoyed it immensely!" he con 
 ceded. 
 
 "Thank you," murmured the May Girl. In 
 a single impulse everybody turned to look at 
 Rollins, only to find that Rollins had disap 
 peared. 
 
 "Hi, there, Rollins! Rollins!" shouted 
 young Kennilworth. "You re losing time!" 
 
 As though waiting dramatically for just this 
 cue, the hall portieres parted slightly, and there 
 stood Rollins grinning like a Cheshire Cat, 
 with a great bunch of purple orchids clasped
 
 RAINY WEEK 107 
 
 in one hand! Now we are sixty miles from a 
 florist and the only neighbor of our acquaint 
 ance who boasts a greenhouse is a most esti 
 mable but exceedingly close-fisted flower-fan 
 cier, who might under certain conditions, I 
 must admit, give bread at the back door, but 
 who never under any circumstances whatso 
 ever has been known to give orchids at the 
 front door. Nor did I quite see Rollins even 
 in a rain-storm actually breaking laws or glass 
 to achieve his floral purpose. Yet there stood 
 Rollins in our front hall, at half-past nine in 
 the morning, with a very extravagant bunch 
 of purple orchids in his hand. 
 
 "Well bully for you!" gasped young Ken- 
 nilworth. "Now that s what I call not being 
 a mutt!" 
 
 Beaming with pride Rollins stepped forward 
 and presented his offering, the grin on Ms 
 face never wavering. 
 
 "Just a just a trifling token of my esteem, 
 Miss Davies!" he affirmed. "To say nothing 
 ofof 
 
 The May Girl, I think, had never had or 
 chids presented to her before. It is something 
 indeed of an experience all in itself to see 
 a young girl receive her first orchids. The
 
 108 
 
 faint astonishment and regret to find that 
 after all they re not nearly as darling and 
 cosy as violets or roses or even carnations 
 the sudden contradictory flare of sex-pride 
 and importance flashed like so much large 
 print across the May Girl s fluctuant face. 
 
 "Why why they re wonderful!" she stam 
 mered. 
 
 Producing from Heaven knows what an 
 tique pin-cushion a hat-pin that would have 
 easily impaled the May Girl like a butterfly 
 against the wall, Rollins completed the pres 
 entation. But the end it seemed was not yet. 
 Fumbling through his pockets he produced a 
 small wad of paper, and from that small wad 
 of paper a large old-fashioned seal ring with 
 several strands of silk thread dangling from it. 
 
 "Of course at such short notice," beamed 
 Rollins, "one couldn t expect to do much. But 
 if you don t mind things being a bit old-timey, 
 this ring of my great uncle Aberner s if 
 we tie it on perhaps?" 
 
 Whereupon, lashing the ring then and there 
 to the May Girl s astonished finger, Rollins 
 proceeded to tuck the May Girl s whole aston 
 ished hand into the crook of his arm, and start 
 off with her still grinning to promenade
 
 RAINY WEEK 109 
 
 the long sheltered glassed-in porch, across 
 whose rain-blurred windows the storm raged 
 by more like a sound than a sight. 
 
 The May Girl s face was crimson! 
 
 "Well it was all yonr own idea, you know, 
 this getting engaged!" taunted Kennilworth. 
 
 It was not a very good moment to taunt 
 the May Girl. My Husband saw it I think 
 even before I did. 
 
 "Really, Rollins," he suggested, "you 
 mustn t overdo this arm-in-arm business. Not 
 all day long! It isn t done! Not this ball- 
 and-chain idea any more! Not this shackling 
 of the betrothed!" 
 
 "No, really, Rollins, old man," urged young 
 Kennilworth, "you ve got quite the wrong 
 idea. You say yourself you ve never been 
 engaged before, so you d better let some of 
 us wiser guys coach you up a bit in some of 
 the essentials." 
 
 "Coach me up a bit?" growled Rollins. 
 
 "Why, you didn t suppose for a minute, did 
 you," persisted young Kennilworth torment- 
 ingly, "that there was any special fun about 
 being engaged? You didn t think for a mo 
 ment, I mean, that yon were really going to
 
 110 RAINY WEEK 
 
 have any sort of good time to-day? Not both 
 of you, I mean?" 
 
 "Eh?" jerked Rollins, stopping suddenly 
 short in his tracks, but with the May Girl s 
 reluctant hand still wedged fast into the crook 
 of his arm, he stood defying his tormentor. 
 "Eh? What?" 
 
 "Why I never in the world," mused Ken- 
 nilworth, "ever heard of two engaged people 
 having a good time the same day. One or the 
 other of them always has to give up the one 
 thrilling thing that he yearned most to do and 
 devote his whole time to pretending that he s 
 perfectly enraptured doing some stupid fuddy- 
 duddy stunt that the other one wanted to do. 
 It s simply the question always of who gives 
 up! Now, Miss Davies for instance " Mock 
 ingly he fixed his eyes on the May Girl s 
 unhappy face. "Now, Miss Davies," he in 
 sisted, "more than anything else in the world 
 to-day what would you like to do?" 
 
 "Sew," said the May Girl. 
 
 "And you, Mr. Eollins," persisted Kennil- 
 worth. "If it wasn t for Miss Davies here 
 what would you be doing to-day?" 
 
 "I?" quickened Rollins. "I?" across his 
 impatient, irritated face, an expression of
 
 RAINY WEEK 111 
 
 frankly scientific ecstasy flared up like an 
 explosion. "Why those shells, you know!" 
 glowed Rollins. "That last consignment! 
 Why I should have been cataloging shells!" 
 
 "There you have it!" cried Kennilworth. 
 "Either you ve got to sew all day long with 
 Miss Davies or else she ll have to catalog 
 shells with you!" 
 
 "Sew?" hooted Rollins. 
 
 "Oh, I d just love to catalog shells!" cried 
 the May Girl. In that single instant the 
 somewhat indeterminate quiver of her lips had 
 bloomed into a real smile. By a dexterous 
 movement, released from Rollins s arm, she 
 turned and fled for the door. "Up-stairs, 
 you mean, don t you?" she cried. The smile 
 iiad reached her eyes now. In another minute 
 it seemed as though even her hair would be 
 all laughter. "At the big table in the upper 
 hall? Where you were working yesterday? 
 One, on one side of the table and one the 
 other? And one, the other!" she giggled tri 
 umphantly. 
 
 With unflagging agility Rollins started after 
 her. 
 
 "What I had really planned," he grinned, 
 "was a walk on the beach."
 
 112 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "Arm in arm!" mused young Kennil- 
 worth. 
 
 "Eh! You think you re smart, don t you!" 
 grinned Eollins. 
 
 "Yes, quite so," acknowledged Kennilworth. 
 "But if you really want to see smartness on 
 its native heath just pipe your eye to-morrow 
 when I dawn on the horizon as an engaged 
 man!" 
 
 "You?" called the May Girl. Staring back 
 through the mahogany banisters her face 
 looked fairly striped with astonishment. 
 
 "You certainly announced your desire," 
 said Kennilworth, "to go right through the 
 whole list. Didn t you? . 
 
 "Oh, but I didn t mean everybody," par 
 ried the May Girl. Her mouth and her eyes 
 and her hair were all laughing together now. 
 "Oh, Goodness me not everybody!" she ges 
 ticulated, with a fine air of disdain. 
 
 "Not the married men," explained the 
 Bride. 
 
 "No, I m sure she discriminated against 
 the married men," chuckled the Bridegroom. 
 
 "Well she sha n t discriminate against 
 me!" snapped young Kennilworth. Absurd 
 as it was he looked angry. Young Kennil-
 
 RAINY WEEK 113 
 
 worth, one might infer, was not accustomed 
 to having women discriminate against him. 
 "You made the plan and you ll jolly-well keep 
 to it!" affirmed young Kennilworth. 
 
 "Oh, all right," laughed the May Girl. "If 
 you really insist! But for a boy who s as 
 truly unselfish as you are about nursery-gov- 
 ernessing other people s Pom dogs, and sav 
 ing your last taste of anything for your old Old 
 Daddy you ve certainly got the worst man 
 ners ! 
 
 "Manners!" drawled George Keets. "This 
 is no test. Wait till you see his engagement 
 manners!" 
 
 "Oh, she ll wait all right!" sniffed young 
 Kennilworth, and turned on his heel. 
 
 Paul Brenswick, searching hard through the 
 shipping news in the morning paper, looked 
 up with a faint shadow of concern. 
 
 "What s the grouch?" he questioned. 
 
 Standing with her hands on her Bride 
 groom s shoulders the Bride glanced back 
 from the stormy window to Kennilworth s 
 face with a somewhat provocative smile. 
 
 "Well it was in the mind of God, wasn t 
 it?" she said.
 
 114 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "What was!" demanded young Kennil- 
 worth. 
 
 "The rain," shrugged the Bride. 
 
 "Oh damn the rain!" cried young Ken- 
 nilworth. "I wish people wouldn t speak to 
 me! It drives me crazy I tell you to have 
 everybody babbling so! Can t you see I want 
 to work? Can t anybody see anything?" 
 Equally furious all of a sudden at everybody, 
 he swung around and darted up the stairs. 
 "Don t anybody call me to lunch," he or 
 dered. "For Heaven s sake don t let anyone 
 be idiot enough to call me to lunch." 
 
 Even Ann Woltor s jaw dropped a bit at 
 the amazing rudeness and peevishness of it. 
 
 It was then that the beaming grin on Rol 
 lins s face flickered out for a single instant of 
 incredulity and reproach. 
 
 "Why Miss Woltor!" he choked, "you 
 didn t have your tooth fixed after all!" 
 
 With a great crackle of paper every man s 
 face seemed buried suddenly in the shipping 
 news. 
 
 "No!" I heard my Husband s voice affirm 
 with extravagant precision, "not the slightest 
 mention anywhere of any maritime disaster." 
 
 "Not the slightest!" agreed George Keets.
 
 RAINY WEEK 115 
 
 "Not the slightest!" echoed Paul Brens- 
 wick with what seemed to me like quite un 
 necessary monotony. 
 
 It was the Bride who showed the only real 
 tact. Slipping her hand casually into Ann 
 Woltor s hand she started for the Library. 
 
 "Let s go see if we can t find something 
 awfully exciting to read to-day," she sug 
 gested. Once across the library threshold 
 her voice lowered slightly. "Really, Miss 
 Woltor," she confided, "there are times when 
 I think that Mr. Kollins is sort of crazy." 
 
 "So many people are," acquiesced Ann 
 Woltor without emotion. 
 
 Caroming off to my miniature conservatory 
 on the pretext of watering my hyacinths I 
 met my Husband bent evidently on the same 
 errand. My Husband s sudden interest in 
 potted plants was bewitching. Even the hya 
 cinths were amused I think. Yet even to pro 
 long the novelty of the situation there was 
 certainly no time to be lost about Kollins. 
 
 "Truly Jack," I besought him, "this Kollins 
 man has got to be suppressed." 
 
 "Oh, not to-day surely?" pleaded my Hus 
 band. "Not on the one engagement day of
 
 116 RAINY WEEK 
 
 his life? Poor Rollins when he s having such 
 a thrill?" 
 
 "Well not to-day perhaps," I conceded 
 with some reluctance. "But to-morrow surely! 
 We never have been used you know to start 
 ing off the day with Rollins! And two break 
 fasts in succession? Well, really, it s almost 
 more than the human heart can stand. Far 
 be it from me," I argued, "to condone poor 
 Allan John s lapse from sobriety or advocate 
 any plan whatsoever for the ensnaring of the 
 very young or the unwary; but all other 
 means failing," I argued, "I should consider 
 it a very great mercy to the survivors if 
 Rollins should wake to-morrow with a slight 
 headache. No real cerebral symptoms you 
 understand nothing really acute. Just !" 
 
 "Oh, stop your fooling!" said my Husband. 
 "What I came in here to talk to you about was 
 Miss Woltor." 
 
 " Woltor or Stoltor ?" I questioned. 
 
 "Who said * Stoltor ?" jerked my Husband. 
 
 "Oh, sometimes you say * Woltor and some 
 times you say Stoltor !" I confided. "And 
 it s so confusing. Which it it really?" 
 
 "Hanged if I know!" said my Husband. 
 
 "Then let s call her Ann," I suggested.
 
 RAINY WEEK 117 
 
 With an impulse that was quite unwonted 
 in him my Husband stepped suddenly forward 
 to my biggest, rosiest, most perfect pot of pink 
 hyacinths, and snapping a succulent stem in 
 two thrust the great gorgeous bloom incon 
 gruously into his button-hole. Never in fifteen 
 years had I seen my Husband with a flower in 
 his button-hole. Neither, in all that time, had 
 I ever seen him flush across the cheek-bones 
 just exactly the shade of a rose-pink Hya 
 cinth. I could have hugged him! He looked 
 so confused. 
 
 "Oh, I say " he ventured quite abruptly, 
 "Miss Woltor and I, you know, we never 
 went near the dentist yesterday!" 
 
 "So I inf erred, " I said, * < from Rollins s 
 observation. What were you doing?" Truly 
 I didn t mean to ask, but the long-suppressed 
 wonder most certainly slipped. 
 
 "Why we were just arguing!" groaned my 
 Husband. "Round and round and round!" 
 
 "Round what?" I questioned now that 
 the slipping had started. "Round and round 
 the country?" 
 
 "Country, no indeed!" grinned my Husband 
 unhappily. "We never left the place!"
 
 118 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "Never left the place?" I stammered. 
 "Why, where in Creation were you?" 
 
 "Why, first," said my Husband, "we were 
 down at the end of the driveway right there 
 by the acacia trees, you know. She was 
 crying so I didn t exactly like to strike the 
 state highway for fear somebody would no 
 tice her. And then afterward when I saw 
 that she really couldn t stop " 
 
 "Crying?" I puzzled. "Ann Woltor cry 
 ing?" 
 
 "And then afterward," persisted my Hus 
 band, "we went over to the Bungalow on 
 the Rock and commenced the argument all 
 over again! Fortunately there was some tea 
 there and crackers and sardines and enough 
 firewood. But it was the devil and all getting 
 over ! We ran the car into the boat-house and 
 took the punt! I thought the surf would 
 smash us, but " 
 
 "But what was the argument ?" I ques 
 tioned. 
 
 "Why about her coming back!" said my 
 Husband. "She was so absolutely determined 
 not to come back! I never in my life saw 
 such stubbornness! And if she once got away 
 I knew perfectly well that she never would
 
 RAINY WEEK 119 
 
 ome back! That she d drop out of sight just 
 as And such crying ! " he interrupted him 
 self with apparent irrelevance. "Everything 
 smashed up altogether at once! Hadn t cried 
 before, she said, for eight years!" 
 
 "Well, it s time she cried, the poor dear!" 
 I affirmed sincerely. "But " 
 
 "But I couldn t bring her back to the 
 house!" insisted my Husband. "Not crying 
 so, not arguing so!" 
 
 "No, of course not," I agreed. 
 
 "I kept thinking she d stop!" shivered my 
 Husband. 
 
 "Jack," I asked quite abruptly, "Who is 
 Ann Woltor?" 
 
 "Search me!" said my Husband, "I never 
 saw her before." 
 
 "You never saw her before!" I stam 
 mered. "Why why you called her by name! 
 you " 
 
 "I knew her face," said my Husband. "I ve 
 seen her picture. In London it was. In Hal 
 Ferry s studio. Fifteen years ago if it s a 
 day. A huge charcoal sketch all swoops and 
 smouches. Just a girl holding up a small 
 hand -mirror to her astonished face. The 
 woman with the broken tooth it was called."
 
 120 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "Fifteen years ago?" I gasped. " The 
 the woman with the broken tooth! What a 
 what a name for a picture ! 
 
 "Yes, wasn t it?" said my Husband. "And 
 you d have thought somehow that the picture 
 would be funny, wouldn t you? But it wasn t! 
 It was the grimmest thing I ever saw in my 
 life! Sketched just from memory too it must 
 have been. No man would have had the cheek 
 to ask a woman to pose for him like that, 
 to reduplicate just for fun I mean that partic 
 ular expression of bewilderment which he had 
 by such grim chance surprised on her unwit 
 ting face. Such shock! Such astonishment! 
 It wasn t just the astonishment you under 
 stand of Marred Beauty worrying about a 
 dentist. But a look the stark, staring, chain- 
 lightning sort of look of a woman who, 
 back of the broken tooth, linked up in some 
 way with the accident of the broken tooth, 
 saw something, suddenly, that God Himself 
 couldn t repair! It was horrid, I tell you! 
 It haunted you! Even if you started to hoot 
 you ended by arguing! Arguing and won 
 dering! Ferry finally got so that .he wouldn t 
 show it to anybody. People quizzed him so." 
 
 "Yes, but Ferry?" I questioned.
 
 RAINY WEEK 121 
 
 "No," said my Husband. "It was only by 
 the merest chance that I heard the name Ann 
 Stoltor associated in any way with the picture. 
 Hal Ferry never told anything. Not a word. 
 But he never exhibited the picture, I noticed. 
 It was a point of honor with him, I suppose. 
 If one lives long enough, of course, one s 
 pretty apt to catch every friend off guard 
 at least once in his facial expression. But 
 one doesn t exhibit one s deductions I suppose. 
 One mustn t at least make professional presen 
 tation of them." 
 
 "Yes, but Ann Woltor Stoltor," I puzzled. 
 "When she tried to bolt sol Was it because 
 she knew that you knew Hal Ferry? When 
 you called her Stoltor and dropped the lan 
 tern so funnily when you first saw her, was 
 it then that she linked you up with this some 
 thing whatever it is that has hurt her so? 
 And determined even then to bolt at the 
 very first chance she could get? But why in 
 the world should she want to bolt?" I puzzled. 
 "Certainly she s had to take us on faith quite 
 as much as we ve taken her. And I? I love 
 her!" 
 
 In the flare of the open doorway George 
 Keets loomed quite abruptly.
 
 122 RAINY WEEK 
 
 . "Oh, is this where you bad people are?" lie 
 reproached us. "We ve been searching the 
 house for you." 
 
 "Oh, of course, if you really need us," con 
 ceded my Husband. "But even you, I should 
 think, would know a flirtation when you saw 
 it and have tact enough not to butt in." 
 
 "A flirtation?" scoffed Keets. "You? At 
 ten o clock in the morning? All trimmed up 
 like an Easter bonnet I And acting half scared 
 to death? It looks a bit fishy to me, not to 
 say mysterious!" 
 
 "All Husbands move in a mysterious way 
 their flirtations to perform," observed my 
 Husband. 
 
 From one pair of half-laughing eyes to the 
 other George Keets glanced up with the faint 
 est possible suggestion of a sigh. 
 
 "Eeally, you know," said George Keets, 
 "there are times when even / can imagine that 
 marriage might be just a little bit jolly." 
 
 "Oh never jolly ," grinned my Husband, 
 "but there are times I frankly admit when 
 it seems a heap more serious than it does at 
 other times." 
 
 "Less serious, you mean," corrected Keets. 
 
 "More serious," grinned my Husband.
 
 RAINY WEEK 123 
 
 "Oh, for goodness sake, let s stop talking 
 about us," I protested, "and talk about the 
 weather!" 
 
 "It was the weather that I came to talk 
 about," exclaimed George Keets. "Do you 
 think it will clear to-day?" he questioned. 
 
 For a single mocking instant my Husband s 
 glance sought mine. 
 
 "No, not to-day, George," he said. 
 
 "U m!" mused George Keets. "Then 
 
 in that case," he brightened suddenly, "if 
 Mrs. Delville is really willing to put up a 
 water-proof lunch we think it would be rather 
 good sport to go back to the cave and explore 
 a bit more of the beach perhaps and bring 
 home Heaven knows what fresh plunder from 
 the shipwrecked trunk." 
 
 "Oh, how jolly!" I agreed. "But will Mrs. 
 Br ens wick go?" 
 
 "Mrs. Brenswick isn t exactly keen about 
 it," admitted Keets. "But she says she ll 
 go. And Brenswick himself and Miss Woltor 
 and Allan John " It was amusing how 
 everybody called Allan John "Allan John" 
 without title or subterfuge or self-conscious 
 ness of any kind. 
 
 With their arms across each other s shoul-
 
 124 RAINY WEEK 
 
 ders the Bride and Bridegroom came frolick 
 ing by on their way to the foot of the stairs. 
 
 "Oh, Miss Davies! Miss Davies!" they 
 called up teasingly. "Are you willing that 
 Allan John should go to the cave to-day?" 
 
 Smiling responsively but not one atom 
 teased, the May Girl jumped up from her 
 tableful of shells and came out to the edge of 
 the balustrade to consider the matter. 
 
 "Allan John! Allan John!" she called. 
 "Do you really want to go?" 
 
 "Why, yes," admitted Allan John, "if 
 everybody s going." 
 
 Behind the May Girl s looming height and 
 loveliness the little squat figure of Eollins 
 shadowed suddenly. 
 
 "Miss Davies and I are not going," said 
 Eollins. 
 
 "Not going?" questioned the May Girl. 
 
 "Not going," chuckled Rollins, "unless she 
 walks with me!" He didn t say "arm-in 
 arm." He didn t need to. That inference 
 was entirely expressed by the absurdly trium 
 phant little glint in his eye. 
 
 I don t think the May Girl intended to 
 laugh. But she did laugh. And all the laugh 
 in the world seemed suddenly "on" Rollins.
 
 RAINY WEEK 125 
 
 "No really, People," rallied the May Girl, 
 "I d heaps rather stay here with Mr. Rollins 
 and work on these perfectly darling shells. 
 One on one side of the table and one on 
 the other." 
 
 "We are going to have lunch up here 
 in fact," counterchecked that rascally Rollins 
 with a blandness that was actually malicious. 
 "There is a magnificent specimen here I no 
 tice of * Triton s Trumpet. The Pacific Isl 
 anders I understand use it very successfully 
 for a tea-kettle. And for tea-cups. With 
 the aid of one or two Hare s Ears which I m 
 almost sure I ve seen in the specimen cab 
 inet " 
 
 " Hare s Ears ?" gasped the May Girl. 
 
 "It s the name of a shell, my dear, just 
 the name of a shell," explained Rollins with 
 some unctuousness. "Very comfortable here 
 we shall be, I am sure!" beamed Rollins. 
 "Very cosy, very scientific, very ro-romantic, 
 if I may take the liberty of saying so. Very " 
 
 "Oh, Shucks!" interrupted George Keets 
 quite surprisingly. "If Miss Davies isn t go 
 ing there s no good in anybody going!" 
 
 "Thank you," murmured Ann Woltor. 
 At the astonishingly new and relaxed timbre
 
 126 RAINY WEEK 
 
 of her voice everybody turned suddenly and 
 stared at her. It wasn t at all that she spoke 
 meltingly, but the fact of her speaking melted- 
 ly, that gave every one of us that queer little 
 gasp of surprise. Still icy cold, but fluid at 
 last, her voice flowed forth as it were for the 
 very first time with some faint suggestion of 
 the real emotion in her mind. "Thank you 
 Mr. Keets," mocked Ann Woltor, "for your 
 enthusiasm concerning the rest of us." 
 
 "Oh, I say!" deprecated George Keets. 
 "You know what I meant!" His face was 
 crimson. "It it was only that Miss Davies 
 was so awfully keen about it all yesterday! 
 Everybody, you know, doesn t find it so ex 
 hilarating." 
 
 "No-0?" murmured Ann Woltor. In the 
 plushy black somberness of her eyes a high 
 light glinted suddenly. Suppressed tears make 
 just that particular kind of glint. So also 
 does suppressed laughter. "I was out in a 
 storm once," drawled Ann Woltor, "I found 
 it very exhilarating. 
 
 With a flash of rather quizzical perplexity 
 I saw my Husband s glance rake hers. 
 
 Wincing just a little she turned back to 
 me with a certain gesture of appeal.
 
 RAINY WEEK 127 
 
 "Cry one day and laugh another, is it?" 
 she ventured experimentally. 
 
 "Going to the dentist isn t very jolly 
 you re quite right," interposed the Bride. 
 
 "No, it certainly isn t," sympathized every 
 body. 
 
 It was perfectly evident that no one in the 
 party except my Husband and myself knew 
 just what had happened to the dentistry expe 
 dition. And Ann Woltor wasn t quite sure 
 even yet, I could see, whether I knew or not. 
 The return home the night before had been 
 so late the commotion over Allan John s 
 whistle so immediate the breakfast hour it 
 self such a chaos of nonsense and foolery. 
 Certainly there was no object in prolonging 
 her uncertainty. I liked her infinitely too 
 much to worry her. Very fortunately also she 
 had a ready eye, the one big compensating gift 
 that Fate bestows on all people who have ever 
 been caught off their guard even once by a 
 real trouble. She never muffed any glance 
 I noticed that you wanted her to catch. 
 
 "Oh, I hate to think, .Ann dear," I smiled, 
 "about there being any tears yesterday. But 
 if tears yesterday really should mean a laugh 
 to-day "
 
 128 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "Oh, to-day I" quickened Ann Woltor. 
 "Who can tell about to-day!" 
 
 "Then you really would like to go?" said 
 George Keets. 
 
 Across Ann Woltor s shoulders a little 
 shrug quivered. 
 
 "Why, of course, I m going!" said Ann 
 Woltor. 
 
 "Good! Famous!" rallied George Keets. 
 "Now that makes how many of us?" he reck 
 oned. "Kenmlworth?" 
 
 "No, let s not bother about Kennil worth, " 
 said my Husband. 
 
 "You?" queried George Keets. 
 
 "Yes, I m going," acquiesced my Husband. 
 
 "And you, Mrs. Delville, of course?" 
 
 "No, I think not," I said. 
 
 "Just the Brenswicks then," counted George 
 Keets. "And Allan John and " 
 
 Once again, from the railing of the upper 
 landing, the May Girl s wistfully mirthful face 
 peered down through that amazing cloud of 
 gold-gray hair. 
 
 "Allan John Allan John!" she called very 
 softly. "I d like to have you dress warmly 
 you know! And not get just too absolutely 
 tired out! And be sure and take the whistle,"
 
 RAINY WEEK 129 
 
 she laughed very resolutely, "and if anybody 
 isn t good to you you just blow it hard and 
 I ll come." 
 
 As befitted the psychic necessities of a very 
 cranky Person-With-a-Future, young Kennil- 
 worth was not disturbed for lunch. 
 
 And Rollins, it seemed, was grotesquely 
 genuine in his desire to picnic up-stairs with 
 the May Girl and the shells. Even the May 
 Girl herself rallied with a fluttering sort of 
 excitement to the idea. The shell table for 
 tunately was quite large enough to accommo 
 date both work and play. Eollins certainly 
 was beside himself with triumph, and on Eol 
 lins s particular type of countenance there is 
 no conceivable synonym for the word "tri 
 umph" except "ghoulish glee." Eeally it was 
 amazing the way the May Girl rallied her 
 gentleness and her patience and her playful 
 ness to the absurd game. She opposed no 
 contrary personality whatsoever even to Eol 
 lins s most vapid desires. Unable as he was 
 either to simulate or stimulate "the light that 
 never was on land or sea," it was Eollins s 
 very evident intention apparently to "blue" 
 his Lady s eyes and "pink" his Lady s cheeks 
 by the narration at least of such sights as
 
 130 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "never were on land or sea"! Flavored by 
 moonlight, rattling with tropical palms, green 
 as Arctic ice, wild as a loon s hoot, science 
 and lies slipped alike from Rollins s lips with 
 a facility that even I would scarcely have 
 suspected him of! Lands he had never visited 
 adventures he had never dreamed of can 
 nibals not yet born babble babble babble 
 babble! 
 
 As for the May Girl herself, as far as I 
 could observe, not a single sound emanated 
 from her the entire day, except the occasional 
 clank of her hugely over-sized "betrothal 
 ring" against the Pom dog s collar, or the 
 little gasping phrase, "Oh, no, Mr. Rollins! 
 Not really?" that thrilled now and then from 
 her astonished lips, as, elbows on table, chin 
 cupped in hand, she sat staring blue-eyed and 
 bland at her tormentor. 
 
 It must have been five o clock, almost, be 
 fore the beach party returned. Gleaming like 
 a great bunch of storm-drenched jonquils, the 
 six adventurers loomed up cheerfully in the 
 rain-light. Once again George Keets and the 
 Bridegroom were dragging the Bride by her 
 hand. Ann Woltor and my Husband followed 
 just behind. Allan John walked alone.
 
 RAINY WEEK 131 
 
 Even young Kennilworth came out on the 
 porch to hail them. 
 
 "Hi, there!" called my Husband. 
 
 "Hi, there, yourself!" retaliated Kennil 
 worth. 
 
 Oh, we Ve had a perfectly wonderful day ! 
 gasped the Bride. 
 
 "Found the cave all right!" triumphed 
 Keets. 
 
 "Allan John found a found an old-fash 
 ioned hoop-skirt!" giggled the Bride. 
 
 "The devil he did!" hooted Rollins. 
 
 "But we never found the trunk at all!" 
 scolded the Bridegroom. "Either we were 
 way off in our calculations or else the sand " 
 
 In a sudden gusty flutter of white the May 
 Girl came round the corner into the full buffet 
 of the wind. It hadn t occurred to me before 
 just exactly how tired she looked. "Why, 
 hello, everybody " she began, faltered an 
 instant crumpled up at the waist-line and 
 slipped down in a white heap of unconscious 
 ness to the floor. 
 
 It was George Keets who reached her first, 
 and gathering her into his long, strong arms, 
 bore her into the house. It was the first 
 time in his life I think that George Keets had
 
 132 RAINY WEEK 
 
 ever held a woman in his arms. His eyes 
 hardly knew what to make of it. And his 
 tightened lips, quite palpably, didn t like it at 
 all. But after all it was those extraordinarily 
 human shoulders of his that were really doing 
 the carrying? 
 
 Very fortunately though for all concerned 
 the whole scare was over in a minute. En 
 sconced like a queen in the deep pillows of 
 the big library sofa the May Girl rallied al 
 most at once to joke about the catastrophe. 
 But she didn t want any supper, I noticed, 
 and dallied behind in her cushions, when the 
 supper-hour came. 
 
 "You look like a crumpled rose," said the 
 Bride. 
 
 "Like a poor crumpled white rose," sup 
 plemented Ann Woltor. 
 
 "Like a very long-stemmed poor crumpled 
 white rose," deprecated the May Girl her 
 self. 
 
 Kennilworth brought her a knife and fork, 
 but no smiles. 
 
 George Keets brought her several different 
 varieties of his peculiarly tight-lipped smile, 
 and all the requisite table-silver besides. 
 
 Paul Brenswick sent her the cherry from
 
 RAINY WEEK 133 
 
 his cocktail and promised her the frosting from 
 his cake. 
 
 The Bride sent her love. 
 
 Ann Woltor remembered the table napkin. 
 
 Allan John watched the proceedings with 
 out comment. 
 
 It was Rollins who insisted on serving the 
 May Girl s supper. 1 It was his right, he said. 
 More than this he also insisted on gathering 
 up all his own supper on one quite inadequate 
 plate, and trotting back to the library to eat 
 it with the May Girl. This also was his right, 
 he said. Truly he looked very funny there 
 all huddled up on a low stool by the May 
 Girl s side. But at least he showed sense 
 enough now not to babble very much. And 
 once, at least, without reproof I saw him 
 reach up to the May Girl s fork and plate and 
 urge some particularly nourishing morsel of 
 food into her languidly astonished mouth. 
 
 It was just as everybody drifted back from 
 the dining-room into the library that the May 
 Girl wriggled her long, silken, childish legs 
 out of the steamer-rug that encompassed her, 
 struggled to her feet, wandered somewhat 
 aimlessly to the piano, fingered the keys for 
 a single indefinite moment and burst ecstati 
 cally into song!
 
 134 RAINY WEEK 
 
 None of us, except my Husband, had heard 
 her sing before. None of us indeed, except my 
 Husband and myself, knew even that she could 
 sing. The proof that she could smote suddenly 
 across the ridge of one s spine like the prickle 
 of a mild electric shock. 
 
 My Husband was perfectly right. It was 
 a typical "Boy Soprano" voice, a chorister s 
 voice clear as flame passionless as syrup. 
 As devoid of ritual as the multiplication table 
 it would have made the multiplication table 
 fairly reek with incense and Easter lilies! 
 Absolutely lacking in everything that the tone 
 sharks call "color" yet it set your mind 
 a-haunt with all the sad crimson and purple 
 splendors of memorial windows! Shadows 
 were back of it! And sorrows! And mys 
 teries! Bridals! And deaths! The prattle 
 alike of the very young and the very old! 
 Carol! And Threnody! And a fearful Tran 
 siency as of youth itself passing! 
 
 She sang 
 
 " There is a Green Hill far away 
 
 Without a city wall, 
 Where our dear Lord was crucified, 
 Who died to save us all."
 
 RAINY WEEK 135 
 
 and she sang 
 
 "From the Desert I come to thee, 
 On a stallion shod with fire! 
 And the winds are not more fleet 
 Than the wings of my de sire!" 
 
 Like an Innocent pouring kerosene on the 
 Flame-of-the- World the young voice soared 
 and swelled to that lovely, limpid word "de 
 sire." (In the darkness I saw Paul Br ens- 
 wick s hand clutch suddenly out to his Mate s. 
 In the darkness I saw George Keets switch 
 around suddenly and begin to whisper very 
 fast to Allan John.) And then she sang a 
 little nonsense rhyme about "Kabbits" which 
 she explained rather shyly she had just made 
 up. "She was very fond of rabbits," she ex 
 plained. "And of dogs, too if all the truth 
 were to be told. Also cats." 
 
 "Also shells!" sniffed young Kennilworth. 
 
 "Yes, also shells," conceded the May Girl 
 without resentment. 
 
 "Ha!" sniffed young Kennilworth. 
 
 "0 h, a jealous lover, this," deprecated 
 George Keets. "Really, Miss Davies," he 
 condoned, "I m afraid to-morrow is going to 
 be somewhat of a strain on you."
 
 136 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "To-morrow?" dimpled the May Girl. 
 
 "Ha! To-morrow!" shrugged young Ken- 
 nilworth. 
 
 "It was Hie rabbits," dimpled the May 
 Girl, "that I was going to tell you about now. 
 It s a very moral song written specially to 
 deplore the the thievish habits of the rab 
 bits. But I can t seem to get around to the 
 deploring* until the second verse. All the 
 first verse is just scientific description." 
 Adorably the young voice lilted into the non 
 sense 
 
 "Oh, the habit of a rabbit 
 Is a fact that would amaze 
 From the pinkness of his blinkness and the blandness 
 
 of his gaze, 
 In a nose that s so a-twinkle like a merri perri 
 
 winkle 
 And" 
 
 Goodness me! That voice! The babyish- 
 ness of it! And the poignancy! Should one 
 laugh? Or should one cry? Clap one s hands? 
 Or bolt from the room? I decided to bolt 
 from the room. 
 
 Both my Husband and myself thought it 
 would be only right to telephone Dr. Brawne 
 about the fainting spell. There was a tele-
 
 RAINY WEEK 137 
 
 phone fortunately in my own room. And 
 there is one thing at least very compensatory 
 about telephoning to doctors. If you once 
 succeed in finding them, there is never an 
 undue lag in the conversation itself. 
 
 "But tell me only just one thing," I be 
 sought my Husband, "so I won t be talking 
 merely to a voice ! This Dr. Brawne of yours 1 
 Is he old or young? Fat or thin? Jolly? 
 Or?" 
 
 "He s about fifty," said my Husband. 
 "Fifty-five perhaps. Stoutish rather, I think 
 you d call him. And jolly. Oh, I " 
 
 "Ting-a-ling ling ling!" urged the tele 
 phone-bell. 
 
 Across a hundred miles of dripping, rain- 
 bejeweled wires, Dr. Brawne s voice flamed 
 up at last with an almost metallic crispness. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "This is Dr. Brawne?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "This is Mrs. Delville Jack Delville s 
 wife." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "We just thought we d call up and report 
 the safe arrival of your ward and tell you 
 how much we are enjoying her!"
 
 138 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "Yes? I trust she didn t turn up with any 
 more lame, halt, or blind pets than you were 
 able to handle." 
 
 "Oh no no not at all!" I hastened to 
 affirm. (Certainly it seemed no time to ex 
 plain about poor Allan John.) 
 
 "But what I really called up to say," I 
 hastened to confide, "is that she fainted this 
 afternoon, and " 
 
 "Yes?" crisped the clear incisive voice 
 again. 
 
 "Fainted," I repeated. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Fainted!" I fairly shouted. 
 
 "Oh, I hardly think that s anything," mur 
 mured Dr. Brawne. His voice sounded sud 
 denly very far away and muffled as though 
 he were talking through a rather soggy soda 
 biscuit. "She faints very easily. I don t find 
 anything the matter. It s just a temporary 
 instability, I think. She s grown so very fast." 
 
 "Yes, she s tall," I admitted. 
 
 "Everything else all right?" queried the 
 voice. The wires were working better now. 
 "I don t need to ask if she s having a good 
 time," essayed the voice very courteously. 
 "She s always so essentially original in her
 
 RAINY WEEK 139 
 
 ways of having a good time even with 
 strangers even when she s really feeling 
 rather shy." 
 
 "Oh, she s having a good time, all right," 
 I hastened to assure him. "Three perfectly 
 eligible young men all competing for her 
 favor!" 
 
 "Only three?" laughed the voice. "You 
 surprise me!" 
 
 "And speaking of originality," I rallied 
 instantly to that laugh, "she has invented the 
 most diverting game ! She is playing at being- 
 engaged-to-a-different-man every day of her 
 visit. Oh very circumspectly, you under 
 stand," I hastened to affirm. "Nothing serious 
 at all!" 
 
 "No, I certainly hope not," mumbled the 
 voice again through some maddeningly soggy 
 connection. "Because, you see, I m rather 
 expecting to marry her myself on the fifteenth 
 of September next."
 
 CHAPTER W 
 
 SLEEP is a funny thing! Really comical 
 I mean! A magician s trick! "Now 
 you have it and now you don t!" 
 
 Certainly I had very little of it the night 
 of Dr. Brawne s telephone conversation. I 
 was too surprised. 
 
 Yet staring up through those long wakeful 
 hours into the jetty black heights of my bed 
 room ceiling it didn t seem to be so much the 
 conversation itself as the perfectly irrelevant 
 events succeeding that conversation that kept 
 hurtling back so into my visual consciousness 
 The blueness of the May Girl s eyes! The 
 brightness of her hair! Rollins s necktie! 
 The perfectly wanton hideousness of Rollins s 
 necktie! The bang bang bang of a storm- 
 tortured shutter way off in the ell somewhere. 
 
 Step by step, item by item, each detail of 
 events reprinted itself on my mind. Fum 
 bling back from the shadowy telephone-stand 
 into the brightly lighted upper hall with the 
 
 140
 
 RAINY WEEK 14! 
 
 single desire to find my Husband and con 
 fide to him as expeditiously as possible this 
 news which had so amazed me, I had stumbled 
 instead upon the May Girl herself, climbing 
 somewhat listlessly up the stairs toward bed, 
 Eollins was close behind her carrying her book 
 and a filmy sky-blue scarf. George Keets fol 
 lowed with a pitcher of water. 
 
 "Oh, it isn t Good Night, dear, is it?" I 
 questioned. 
 
 1 Yes," said the May Girl. "I m pretty 
 tired." She certainly looked it. 
 
 Rollins quite evidently was in despair. He 
 was not to accomplish his kiss after all, it 
 would seem. All the long day, I judged, he 
 had been whipping up his cheeky courage 
 to meet some magic opportunity of the eve 
 ning. And now, it appeared, there wasn t 
 going to be any evening! Even the last pre 
 cious moment indeed was to be ruined by 
 George Ketts s perfidious intrusion! 
 
 It was the Bride s voice though that rang 
 down the actual curtain on Eollins s "Perfect 
 Day." 
 
 "Oh, Miss Davies! Miss Davies!" called 
 the Bride. "You mustn t forget to return 
 your ring, you know!"
 
 142 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "Why, no, so I mustn t/ rallied the May 
 Girl. 
 
 Twice I heard Eollins swallow very hard. 
 Any antique was sacred to him, but a family 
 antique. Oh, ye gods! 
 
 "K K Keep the ring!" stammered Eol- 
 lins. It was the nearest point to real heroism 
 surely that funny little Eollins would ever 
 attain. 
 
 "Oh, no, indeed," protested the May Girl. 
 Very definitely she snapped the silken threads, 
 removed the clumsy bauble from her finger, 
 and handed it back to Eollins. "But but 
 it s a beautiful ring!" she hastened chival 
 rously to assure him. "I ll I ll keep the 
 orchids!" she assented with real dimples. 
 
 On Eollins s sweating face the symptoms of 
 acute collapse showed suddenly. With a glare 
 that would have annihilated a less robust soul 
 than George Keets s he turned and laid bare 
 his horrid secret to an unfeeling Public. 
 
 "I d rather you kept the ring," sweated 
 Eollins. "The The orchids have got to go 
 back! I only hired the orchids! That is I 
 I bribed the gardener. They ve got to be back 
 by nine o clock to-night. For some sort of a 
 a party."
 
 RAINY WEEK 143 
 
 "To-night?" I gasped. "In all this storm f 
 Why, what if the May Girl had refused to 
 to ?" 
 
 In Rollins s small, blinking eyes, Romance 
 and Thrift battled together in terrible combat. 
 
 "I gotta go back," mumbled Rollins. "He s 
 got my watch!" 
 
 "Oh, for goodness sake you mustn t risk 
 losing your watch!" laughed the May Girl. 
 
 George Keets didn t laugh. He hooted! I 
 had never heard him hoot before, and ribald as 
 the sound seemed emanating from his dis 
 tinctly austere lips, the mechanical construc 
 tion of that hoot was in some way strangely 
 becoming to him. 
 
 The May Girl quite frankly though was 
 afraid he had hurt Rollins s feelings. Return 
 ing swiftly from her bedroom with the lovely 
 exotics bunched cautiously in one hand she 
 turned an extravagantly tender smile on 
 Rollins s unhappy face. 
 
 "Just Just one of them," she apologized, 
 "is crushed a little. I know you told me to 
 be awfully careful of them. I m very sorry. 
 But truly," she smiled, "it s been perfectly 
 wonderful just to have them for a day! 
 Thank you! Thank you a whole lot, I meant
 
 144 RAINY WEEK 
 
 And for the day itself it s it s been very 
 pleasant," she lied gallantly. 
 
 Snatching the orchids almost roughly from 
 her hand Rollins gave another glare at George 
 Keets and started for his own room. With 
 Iris fingers on the door-handle he turned and 
 glared back with particular ferocity at the 
 May Girl herself. "Pleasant?" he scoffed. 
 "Pleasant?" And crossing the threshold he 
 slammed the door hard behind him. 
 
 Never have I seen anything more boorish ! 
 
 "Why Why, how tired he must be," ex 
 claimed the May Girl. 
 
 "Tired?" hooted George Keets. He was 
 still hooting when he joined the Bride and 
 Bridegroom in the library. 
 
 It must have been fifteen minutes later that, 
 returning from an investigation of the banging 
 blind, I ran into Rollins stealing surreptitious 
 ly to the May Girl s door. Quite unconscious 
 ly, doubtless, but with most rapacious effect, 
 his sparse hair was rumpled in innumerable 
 directions, and the stealthy boy-pirate hunch 
 to his shoulders added the last touch of 
 melodrama to the scene. Rollins, as a gay 
 Lothario, was certainly a new idea. I could 
 have screamed with joy. But while I debated
 
 RAINY WEEK 145 
 
 the ethics of screaming for joy only, the May 
 Girl herself, as though in reply to his crafty 
 knock, opened her door and stared frankly 
 down at him with a funny, flushed sort of 
 astonishment. She was in her great boyish 
 blanket-wrapper, with her gauzy gold hair 
 wafting like a bright breeze across her neck 
 and shoulders, and the radiance of her I think 
 would have startled any man. But it knocked 
 the breath out of Rollins. 
 
 " P-p-pleasant ! " gasped Rollins, quite ab 
 ruptly. "It was a a Miracle!" 
 
 11 Miracle?" puzzled the May Girl. 
 
 "Wall-papers!" babbled Rollins. "Suppose 
 it had been true?" he besought her. "To-day, 
 I mean? Our betrothal?" With total un 
 expectedness he began to flutter a handfull 
 of wall-paper samples under the May Girl s 
 astonished nose. "I ve got a little flat you 
 know in town," babbled Rollins. "Just one 
 room and bath. It s pretty dingy. But for a 
 long time now I ve been planning to have it 
 all repapered. And if you d choose the wall 
 paper for it it would be pleasant to think of 
 during during the years!" babbled Rollins. 
 
 "What?" puzzled the May Girl. Then quite- 
 suddenly she reached out and took the papers
 
 146 RAINY WEEK 
 
 from Kollins s hand and bent her lovely head 
 over them in perfectly solemn contemplation. 
 "Why why the pretty gray one with the 
 white gulls and the flash of blue!" she de 
 cided almost at once, looked up for an instant, 
 smiled straight into Bollins s fatuous eyes, 
 and was gone again behind the impregnable 
 fastness of her closed door, leaving Kollins 
 gasping like a fool, his shoulders drooping, 
 his limp hands clutching the sheet of white 
 gulls with all the absurd manner of an ama 
 teur prima donna just on the verge of burst 
 ing into song! 
 
 And all of a sudden starting to laugh I 
 found myself crying instead. It was the ex 
 pression in Rollins 9 a eyes, I think. The one 
 " off-guard " expression perhaps of Rollins s 
 life! A scorching flame of self -revelation, as 
 it were, that consumed even as it illuminated, 
 leaving only gray ashes and perplexity. Not 
 just the look it was of a Little-Man-Almost- 
 Old- who-had-Never-Had-a-Chance-to-Play. But 
 the look of a Little - Man - Almost - Old who 
 sensed suddenly for the first time that he 
 never would have a chance to play ! That Fate 
 denying him the glint of wealth, the flash of 
 romance, the scar even of tragedy, had
 
 RAINY WEEK 147 
 
 stamped him merely with the indelible sign of 
 a Per son- Who wasn t Meant to-be-Liked! 
 
 Truly I was very glad to steal back into my 
 dark room for a moment before trotting down 
 stairs again to join all those others who were 
 essentially intended for liking and loving, so 
 eminently fitted, whether they refused or ac 
 cepted it, for the full moral gamut of human 
 experience. 
 
 On my way down it was only human, of 
 course, to stop in the May Girl s room. 
 Rollins or no Kollins it was the May Girl s 
 problem that seemed to me the only really 
 maddening one of the moment. What in 
 creation was life planning to proffer the May 
 Girl? Dr. Brawne? Dr. Brawne? It wasn t 
 just a question of Dr. Brawne ! But a question 
 of the May Girl herself? 
 
 She was still in her blanket-wrapper when I 
 entered the room, but had hopped into bed, 
 and sat bolt-up-right rocking vaguely, with 
 her knees gathered to her chin in the circle of 
 her slender arms. 
 
 "What seems to be the matter?" I ques 
 tioned. 
 
 "That s what I don t know," she dimpled
 
 148 RAINY WEEK 
 
 -almost instantly. "But I seem to be worrying 
 about something. 
 
 " Worrying ?" I puzzled. 
 
 "Well, maybe it s about the Pom dog," 
 suggested the May Girl helpfully. "His mouth 
 is so very very tiny. Do you think he had 
 enough supper?" 
 
 "Oh, I m sure he had enough supper," I 
 hastened to reassure her. 
 
 Very reflectively she narrowed her eyes to 
 review the further field of her possible 
 worries. 
 
 "That cat that your Husband said he sent 
 away just before I came for fear I d bring 
 some some contradictory animals are you 
 quite sure that he s got a good home?" she 
 worried. 
 
 "Oh, the best in the world," I said. "A 
 Maternity Hospital!" 
 
 "Kittens?" brightened the May Girl for a 
 single instant only. "Oh, you really mean 
 kittens? Then surely there s nothing to worry 
 about in that direction!" 
 
 "Nothing but kittens," I conceded. 
 
 "Then it must be Allan John," said the May 
 Girl. "His feet! Of course, I can t exactly 
 help feeling pretty responsible for Allan John.
 
 RAINY WEEK 149 
 
 Are you sure are you quite sure, I mean, 
 that he hasn t been sitting round with wet feet 
 all the evening? He isn t exactly the croupy 
 type, of course, but " "With a sudden irrele 
 vant gesture she unclasped her knees, and shot 
 her feet straight out in front of her. "What 
 ever in the world," she cried out, "am I going 
 ,to do with Allan John when it comes time to 
 go home! Now gold-fish," she reflected, "in a 
 real emergency, can always be tucked away 
 in the bath-tub. And once when I brought 
 home a Japanese baby," she giggled in spite 
 of herself, "they made me keep it in my own 
 room. But " 
 
 "But I ve got a worry of my own," I inter 
 rupted. "It s about your fainting. It scared 
 me dreadfully. I ve just been telephoning to 
 Dr. Brawne about it." 
 
 Across the May Girl s supple body a curious 
 tightness settled suddenly. 
 
 "You told Dr. Brawne that I fainted?" 
 she said. "You you oughtn t to have done 
 that!" It was only too evident that she was 
 displeased. 
 
 "But we were worried," I repeated. "We 
 had to tell him. We didn t like to take the 
 responsibility."
 
 150 RAINY WEEK 
 
 With her childish hands spread flatly as a 
 brace on either side of her she seemed to re 
 treat for a moment into the gold veil of her 
 hair. Then very resolutely her face came peer 
 ing out again. 
 
 "And just what did Dr. Brawne tell you?" 
 asked the May Girl. 
 
 "Why something very romantic," I ad 
 mitted. "The somewhat astonishing news, in 
 fact, that you were engaged to him." 
 
 "Oh, but you know, I m not!" protested the 
 May Girl with unmistakable emphasis. "No 
 No!" 
 
 "And that he was hoping to be married next 
 September. On the 15th to be perfectly exact," 
 I confided. 
 
 "Well, very likely I shall marry him," ad 
 mitted the May Girl somewhat bafflingly. "But 
 I m not engaged to him now! Oh, I m much 
 too young to be engaged to him now! Why, 
 even my grandmother thinks I m much too 
 young to be engaged to him now! Why, he s 
 most fifty years old!" she affirmed with widely 
 dilating eyes. " And II I ve scarcely been 
 off my grandmother s place, you know, until 
 this last winter! But if I m grown-up enough 
 by September, they say you see I ll be eigh-
 
 RAINY WEEK 151 
 
 teen and a half by September," she explained 
 painstakingly, "so that s why I wanted to get 
 engaged as much as I could this week!" she 
 interrupted herself with quite merciless irrele 
 vance. "If I ve got to be married in Sep 
 tember without ever having been engaged or 
 courted at all I just thought I d better go 
 to work and pick up what experience I could 
 on my own hook!" 
 
 "Dr. Dr. Brawne will, of course, make you 
 a very distinguished husband," I stammered, 
 "but are you sure you love him?" 
 
 "I love everybody!" dimpled the May Girl. 
 
 "Yes, dogs, of course," I conceded, "and 
 rabbits and horses and " 
 
 "And kittens," supplemented the May Girl. 
 
 "Your mother is not living?" I asked 
 rather abruptly. 
 
 "My father is dead," said the May Girl. 
 "But my mother is in Egypt." Her lovely 
 face was suddenly all excitement. "My mother 
 ran away!" 
 
 "Oh! An elopement, you mean?" I laughed. 
 "Kan away with your father. Youngsters 
 used to do romantic things like that." 
 
 "Kan away from my father," said the May 
 Girl. "And from me. It was when I was four
 
 152 RAINY WEEK 
 
 years old. None of us have ever seen her 
 since. It was with one of Dr. Brawne s friends 
 that she ran away. That s one reason, I think, 
 why Dr. Brawne has always felt so sort of 
 responsible for me." 
 
 "Oh, dear oh, dear, this is very sad," I 
 winced. 
 
 "N-o," said the May Girl perfectly simply. 
 " Maybe it was bad but I m almost sure it s 
 never been sad. Dr. Brawne hears from her 
 sometimes. Mother s always been very happy, 
 I think. But everybody somehow seems to be 
 in an awful hurry to get me settled." 
 
 "Why?" I asked quite starkly, and could 
 have bitten my tongue out for my imperti 
 nence. 
 
 "Why because I m so tall, I suppose," 
 said the May Girl. "And not so very spe 
 cially bright. Oh, not nearly as bright as I 
 am tall!" she hastened to assure me with her 
 pretty nose all crinkled up for the sheer 
 emphasis of her regret. "Life s rather hard, 
 you know, on tall women," she confided sagely. 
 "Always trying to take a tuck in them some 
 where! Mother was tall," she observed; "and 
 Father, they say, was always and forever 
 trying to make her look smaller especially
 
 RAINY WEEK 153 
 
 in public! Pulling her opinions out from 
 under her! Belittling all her great, lovely 
 fancies and ideas! Not that he really meant 
 to be hateful, I suppose. But he just couldn t 
 help it. It was just the natural male-instinct 
 I guess of wanting to be the everythinger 
 himself!" 
 
 "What do you know of the natural male 
 instinct "?" I laughed out in spite of myself. 
 
 "Oh lots," smiled the May Girl. "I have 
 an uncle. And my grandmother always keeps 
 two hired men. And for almost six months 
 now I ve been at the Art School. And there 
 are twenty-seven boys at the Art School. Why 
 there s Jerry and Paul and Richard and 
 and " 
 
 "Yes, but your father and mother?" I pon 
 dered. "Just how ?" 
 
 "Oh, it was when they were walking down 
 town one day past a great big mirror," ex 
 plained the May Girl brightly. "And Mother 
 saw that she was getting round-shouldered 
 trying to keep down to Father s level it was 
 then that she ran away! It was then that she 
 began to run away I mean! To run away in 
 her mind! I heard grandmother and Dr. 
 Brawne talking about it only last summer.
 
 154 RAINY WEEK 
 
 But I?" she affirmed with some pride, "oh, 
 I ve known about being tall ever since I first 
 had starch enough in my knees to stand up! 
 While I stayed in my crib I don t suppose I 
 noticed it specially. But just as soon as I was 
 big enough to go to school. Why, even at the 
 very first," she glowed, "when every other 
 child in the room had failed without the 
 slightest reproach some perfectly idiotic 
 visitor would always pipe up and say, Now 
 ask that tall child there! The one with the 
 yellow hair ! And everyone would be as vexed 
 as possible because I failed, too! It isn t my 
 head, you know that s tall," protested the 
 May Girl with some feeling, "it s just my 
 neck and legs ! 
 
 "You certainly are entrancingly graceful," 
 I smiled. How anybody as inexpressibly love 
 ly as the May Girl could be so oblivious of the 
 fact was astonishing ! 
 
 But neither smile nor compliment seemed to 
 allay to the slightest degree the turmoil that 
 was surging in the youngster s mind. 
 
 "Why, even at the Art School," she pro 
 tested, "it s just as bad! Especially with the 
 boys! Being so tall and with yellow hair 
 besides you just can t possibly be as impor-
 
 RAINY WEEK 155 
 
 tant as you are conspicuous! And yet every 
 individual boy seems obliged to find out for 
 himself just exactly how important you are! 
 But no matter what he finds," she shrugged 
 with a gesture of ultimate despair, "it always 
 ends by everybody getting mad!" 
 
 "Mad?" I questioned. 
 
 "Yes very mad," said the May Girl. 
 "Either he s mad because he finds you re not 
 nearly as nice as you are conspicuous, or else, 
 liking you most to death, he simply can t stand 
 it that anyone as nice as he thinks you are is 
 able to outplay him at tennis or that s why 
 I like animals best and hurt things!" she 
 interrupted herself with characteristic im 
 petuosity. "Animals and hurt things don t 
 care how rangy your arms are as long as 
 they re loving! Why if you were as tall as a 
 tree," she argued, "little deserted birds in 
 nests would simply be glad that you could 
 reach them that much sooner! But men? 
 Why, even your nice Mr. Keets," she cried; 
 "even your nice Mr. Keets, with his fussy old 
 Archaeology, couldn t even play at being en 
 gaged without talking down down down at 
 me! Tall as he is, too! And funny little old 
 Mr. Kollins," she flushed. "Little little
 
 156 RAINY WEEK 
 
 old Mr. Kollins Mr. Kollins really liked me, 
 I think, but he he d torture me if he thought 
 it would make him feel any burlier ! 
 
 "And Claude Kennilworth, " I questioned. 
 
 The shiver across the May Girl s shoulders 
 looked suddenly more like a thrill than a 
 distaste. 
 
 "Oh, Claude Kennilworth," she acknowl 
 edged quite ingenuously. "He s begun al 
 ready to try to put me in my place ! Alto 
 gether too independent is what he thinks I 
 am. But what he really means is * altogether 
 too tall !" Once again the little shiver flashed 
 across her shoulders. "He s so so awfully 
 temperamental!" she quickened. "Goodness 
 knows what fireworks he ll introduce tomor 
 row! I can hardly wait!" 
 
 "Is is Dr. Brawne tall?" I asked a bit 
 abruptly. 
 
 "N o," admitted the May Girl. "He s 
 quite short! But his years are so tall!" 
 she cried out triumphantly. "He s so tall in 
 his attainments! IVe thought it all out oh 
 very very carefully," she attested. "And if 
 I ve got to be married in order to have some 
 one to look out for me I m almost perfectly 
 positive that Dr. Brawne will be quite too
 
 RAINY WEEK 157 
 
 amused at having so young a wife to bully me 
 very much about anything that goes with the 
 youngness!" 
 
 "Oh h," I said. 
 
 "Yes, exactly," mused the May Girl. 
 
 With a heart and an apprehension just about 
 as gray and as heavy as lead I rose and started 
 for the door. 
 
 "But, May Girl?" I besought her in a sin 
 gle almost hysterical desire to rouse her from 
 her innocence and her ignorance. "Among all 
 this great array of men and boys that you 
 know the uncle yes, even the hired men," 
 I laughed, "and all those blue-smocked boys at 
 the Art School whom do you really like the 
 best?" 
 
 So far her eyes journeyed off into the dis 
 tance and back again I thought that she had 
 not heard me. Then quite abruptly she an 
 swered me. And her voice was all boy- 
 chorister again. 
 
 "The best? why, Allan John!" she said. 
 
 Taken all in all there were several things 
 said and done that evening that would have 
 kept any normal hostess awake, I think. 
 
 The third morning dawned even rainier than 
 the second ! Infinitely rainier than the first !
 
 158 RAINY WEEK 
 
 It gave everybody s coming-down-stairs ex 
 pression a curiously comical twist as though 
 Dame Nature herself had been caught off- 
 guard somehow in a moment of dishabille that 
 though inexpressibly funny, couldn t exactly 
 be referred to not among mere casual ac 
 quaintances not so early in the morning, any 
 way! 
 
 Yet even though everybody rushed at once 
 to the fireplace instead of to the breakfast- 
 table nobody held us responsible lor the 
 weather. Everyone in fact seemed to make 
 rather an extra effort to assure us that he or 
 she as the case might be, most distinctly did 
 not hold us responsible. 
 
 Paul Brenswick indeed grew almost eloquent 
 telling us about an accident to the weather 
 which he himself had witnessed in a climate 
 as supposedly well-regulated as the climate of 
 South Eastern Somewhere was supposed to 
 be! Ann Woltor raked her cheerier memories 
 for the story of a four days rain-storm which 
 she had experienced once in a very trying 
 visit to her great aunt somebody-or-other on 
 some peculiarly stormbound section of the 
 Welsh coast. George Keet s chivalrous anx 
 iety to set us at our ease was truly heroic.
 
 RAINY WEEK 159 
 
 He even improvised a parody about it: 
 "Bain," observed George Keets, "makes 
 strange umbrella-mates!" A leak had de 
 veloped during the night it seemed in the 
 ceiling directly over his bed and George, the 
 finicky, the fastidious, the silk-pa jamered 
 had been obliged to crawl out and seek shelter 
 with Eollins and his flannel night-cap in the 
 next room. And Rollins, it appeared, had not 
 proved a particularly genial host. 
 
 "By the way, where is Mr. Rollins this 
 morning?" questioned the Bride from her 
 frowning survey of the storm-swept beach. 
 
 "Mr. Rollins," confided my Husband, "has 
 a slight headache this morning." 
 
 "Why, that s too bad," sympathized Ann 
 Woltor. 
 
 "No, it isn t a bad one at all," contradicted 
 my Husband. "Just the very mildest one 
 possible under the circumstances. It was 
 really very late when he got in again last 
 night. And very wet." From nnder his 
 casually lowered eyes a single glance of greet 
 ing shot out at me. 
 
 "Now, there you are again!" cried George 
 Keets. "Flirting! You married people! 
 Something that anyone else would turn out
 
 160 RAINY WEEK 
 
 as mere information, The Ice Man has just 
 left two chunks of ice! or Mr. Kollins has a 
 headache ! you go and load up with some 
 mysterious and unfathomable significance! 
 Glances pass! Your wife flushes!" "Myster 
 ious?" shrugged my Husband. "Unfathom 
 able? Why it s clear as crystal. The madam 
 says, Let there be a headache and there is a 
 headache!" 
 
 As Allan John joined the group at the fire 
 place everybody began talking weather again. 
 From the chuckle of the birch-logs to the 
 splash on the window-pane the little groups 
 shifted and changed. Everybody seemed to 
 be waiting for something. On the neglected 
 breakfast table even the gay upstanding hemi 
 spheres of grapefruit rolled over on their beds 
 of ice to take another nap. 
 
 In a great flutter of white and laughter the 
 May Girl herself came prancing over the 
 threshold. It wasn t just the fact of being in 
 white that made her look so astonishingly 
 festal; she was almost always in white. Not 
 yet the fact of laughter. Taken all in all I 
 think she was the most radiantly laughing 
 youngster that I have ever known. But most 
 astonishingly festal she certainly looked, nev-
 
 RAINY WEEK 161 
 
 ertheless. Maybe it was the specially new 
 and chic little twist which she had given her 
 hair. Maybe it was the absurdly coquettish 
 dab of black court-plaster which she had 
 affixed to one dimply cheek. 
 
 "Oh, if I m going to be engaged to-day to 
 a real artist," she laughed, "I ve certainly 
 got to take some extra pains with my per 
 sonal appearance. Why, IVe hardly slept all 
 night, " she confided ingenuously, "I was so 
 excited!" 
 
 "Yes, won t it be interesting," whispered 
 the Bride to George Keets, "to see what Mr. 
 Kennilworth will really do? He s so awfully 
 temperamental ! And so so inexcusably 
 beautiful. Whatever he does is pretty sure to 
 be interesting. Now up-stairs all day yester 
 day wouldn t it ?" 
 
 "Yes, wouldn t it be interesting," glowed 
 Ann Woltor quite unexpectedly, "if he d made 
 her something really wonderful? Something 
 that would last, I mean, after the game was 
 over? Even just a toy, something that would 
 outlast Time itself. Something that even when 
 she was old she could point to and say, * Claude 
 Kennilworth made that for me when we were 
 young. "
 
 162 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "Why, Ann Woltor!" I stammered. "Do 
 you feel that way about him? Does does he 
 make you feel that way, too!" 
 
 "I think he would make anyone feel 
 that way too," intercepted Allan John quite 
 amazingly. In three days surely it was the 
 only voluntary statement he had made, and 
 everybody turned suddenly to stare at him. 
 But it was only too evident from the persistent 
 haggardness of his expression that he had no 
 slightest intention in the world of pursuing 
 his unexpected volubility. 
 
 "And it isn t just his good looks either!" 
 resumed the Bride as soon as she had recov 
 ered from her own astonishment at the inter 
 polation. 
 
 "Oh, something, very different," mused 
 Ann Woltor. "The queer little sense he gives 
 you of of wires humming ! Whether you like 
 him or not that queer little sense of wires 
 humming* that all really creative people give 
 you! As though as though they were being 
 rather specially re-charged all the time from 
 the Main Battery!" 
 
 "The Main Battery/ " puzzled the Bride 
 groom, "being f "
 
 RAINY WEEK 163- 
 
 "Why God, of course!" said the Bride 
 with a vague sort of surprise. 
 
 "When women talk mechanics and religion 
 in the same breath," laughed the Bridegroom, 
 "it certainly " 
 
 "I was talking neither mechanics nor relig 
 ion," affirmed the Bride, with the faintest pos 
 sible tinge of asperity. 
 
 "Oh, of course, anyone can see," admitted 
 the Bridegroom, "that Kennilworth is a clever 
 chap." 
 
 "Clever as the deuce!" acquiesced George 
 Keets. 
 
 With an impatient tap of her foot the May 
 Girl turned suddenly back from the window. 
 
 "Yes! But where is he?" she laughed. 
 
 "That s what I say!" cried my Husband. 
 "WeVe waited quite long enough for him!" 
 
 "Dallying up-stairs probably to put a dab 
 of black court-plaster on his cheek!" observed 
 George Keets drily. 
 
 With one accord everybody but the May 
 Girl rushed impulsively to the breakfast table. 
 
 "Seems as though somebody ought to 
 wait," dimpled the May Girl. 
 
 "Oh, nonsense!" asserted everybody.
 
 164 RAINY WEEK 
 
 A little bit reluctantly she came at last to 
 her place. Her face was faintly troubled. 
 
 "On on an engagement morning," she 
 persisted, "it certainly seems as though 
 somebody ought to wait." 
 
 In the hallway just outside a light step 
 sounded suddenly. It was really astonishing 
 with what an air of real excitement and ex 
 pectancy everybody glanced up. 
 
 But the step in the hall proved only the 
 step of a maid. 
 
 "The young gentleman upstairs sent a mes 
 sage," said the maid. "Most particular he 
 was that I give it exact. It being so rainy 
 again/ he says, and there not being anything 
 specially interesting on the the docket as 
 far as he knows, he ll stay in bed thank 
 
 you/ " 
 
 For an instant it seemed as though every 
 body at the table except Allan John jerked 
 back from his plate with a knife, fork or 
 spoon, brandished half-way in mid air. There 
 was no jerk left in Allan John, I imagine. It 
 was Allan John s color that changed. A dull 
 flush of red where once just gray shadows had 
 lain.
 
 RAINY WEEK 165 
 
 "So he ll stay in bed, thank you/ repeated 
 the maid sing-songishly. 
 
 "What?" gasped my Husband. 
 
 "W-w-whatf" stammered the May Girl. 
 
 "Well of all the nerve!" muttered Paul 
 Br ens wick. 
 
 "Why why how extraordinary," murmured 
 Ann Woltor. 
 
 "There s your artistic temperament for 
 you, all right!" laughed the Bride a bit hecti 
 cally. "Peeved is it because he thought Miss 
 Davies ?" 
 
 "Don t you think you re just a bit behind 
 the times in your interpretation of the phrase 
 * artistic temperament ?" interrupted George 
 Keets abruptly. "Except in special neuras 
 thenic cases it is no longer the fashion I 
 believe to lay bad manners to the artistic 
 temperament itself but rather to the humble 
 environment from which most artistic tem 
 peraments are supposed to have sprung." 
 
 "Eh? What s that?" laughed the Bride. 
 
 Very deliberately George Keets lit a fresh 
 cigarette. "No one person, you know, can 
 have everything," he observed with the thin 
 nest of all his thin-lipped smiles. "Three 
 generations of plowing, isn t it, to raise one
 
 166 RAINY WEEK 
 
 artist? Oh, Mr. Kennilworth s social eccen 
 tricities, I assure you, are due infinitely more 
 to the soil than to the soul." 
 
 "Oh, can your statistics!" implored my 
 Husband a bit sharply, "and pass Miss Davies 
 the sugar!" 
 
 "And some coffee!" proffered Paul Brens- 
 wick. 
 
 "And this heavenly cereal!" urged the 
 Bride. 
 
 "Oh, now I remember," winced the May 
 Girl suddenly. "He said she ll wait all right 
 but, of course, it does seem just a little- 
 wee bit f-funny! Even if you don t care 
 a a rap," she struggled heroically through a 
 glint of tears. "Even if you don t care a 
 rap sometimes it s just a little bit hard to 
 say a word like f-funny!" 
 
 "Damned hard," agreed my Husband and 
 Paul Brenswick and George Keets all in a 
 single breath. 
 
 The subsequent conversation fortunately was 
 not limited altogether to expletives. Never, 
 I m sure, have I entertained a more vivacious 
 not to say hilarious company at breakfast. 
 Nobody seemed contented just to keep dimples 
 in the May Girl s face. Everybody insisted
 
 RAINY WEEK 167 
 
 upon giggles. The men indeed treated them 
 selves to what is usually described as "wild 
 guffaws. 
 
 Personally I think it was a mistake. It 
 brought Eollins down-stairs just as every 
 body was leaving the table in what had up to 
 that moment been considered perfectly rees 
 tablished and invulnerable glee. Everybody, 
 of course, except poor Allan John. No one 
 naturally would expect any kind of glee from 
 Allan John. 
 
 In the soft pussy-footed flop of his felt 
 slippers none of us heard Kollins coming. But 
 I I saw him ! And such a Kollins ! Stripped 
 of the single significant facial expression of his 
 life which I had surprised so unexpectedly in 
 his eyes the night before, Kollins would cer 
 tainly never be anything but just Rollins! 
 Heavily swathed in his old plaid ulster with 
 a wet towel bound around his brow he loomed 
 cautiously on the scene bearing an empty 
 coffee cup, and from the faintly shadowing 
 delicacy of the parted portieres affirmed with 
 one breath how astonished he was to find us 
 still at breakfast, while with the next he con 
 fided equally fatuously, "I thought I heard 
 merry voices!"
 
 168 RAINY WEEK 
 
 It was on Claude Kennilworth s absence, of 
 course, that his maddening little mind fixed 
 itself instantly with unalterable concentration. 
 
 "What ho! the engagement 1 he de 
 manded abruptly. 
 
 "There isn t any engagement," said my 
 Husband with a somewhat vicious stab at the 
 fire. 
 
 From his snug, speculative scrutiny <of the 
 storm outside, George Keets swung round 
 with what quite evidently was intended to be 
 a warning frown. 
 
 "Mr. Kennilworth has defaulted," he mur 
 mured. 
 
 "Defaulted!" grinned Kollins. Then with 
 perfectly unprecedented perspicacity his rov 
 ing glance snatched up suddenly " the unmis 
 takable tremor of the May Girl s chin. "Oh, 
 what nonsense!" he said. "There are plenty 
 of other eligible men in the party!" 
 
 "Oh, but you see there are not!" laughed 
 Paul Brenswick. "Mr. Delville and I are 
 married and our wives won t let us." 
 
 "Oh, nonsense!" grinned Rollins. Once 
 again his roving glance swept the company. 
 
 Everybody saw what was coming, turned
 
 RAINY WEEK 169 
 
 hot, turned cold, shut his eyes, opened them 
 again, but was powerless to avert. 
 
 "Why, what s the matter with trying Allan 
 John?" grinned Rollins. 
 
 The thing was inexcusable! Brutal! 
 Blundering! Absolutely doltish beyond even 
 Rollins s established methods of doltishness. 
 But at last when everybody turned inad 
 vertently to scan poor Allan John s face 
 there was no Allan John to be scanned. Some 
 where through a door or a window somehow 
 between one blink of the eye and another 
 Allan John had slipped from the room. 
 
 "Why why, Mr. Rollins!" gasped every 
 body all at once. "Whatever in the world 
 were you thinking of?" 
 
 "Maybe maybe he didn t hear it after 
 all!" rallied the Bride with the first real ray 
 of hope. 
 
 "Maybe he just saw it coming," suggested 
 the Bridegroom. 
 
 "And dodged in the nick of time," said 
 George Keets. 
 
 "To save not only himself but ourselves," 
 frowned my Husband, "from an almost irre 
 trievable awkwardness. 
 
 "Why just the minute before it happened,"
 
 .170 RAilNY WEEK 
 
 deprecated Ann Woltor, "I was thinking 
 suddenly how much better he looked, how his 
 color had improved, why his cheeks looked 
 almost red." 
 
 "Yes, the top of his cheeks," said the May 
 Girl, "were really quite red." Her own cheeks 
 at the moment were distinctly pale. "Where 
 do you suppose he s gone to?" she questioned. 
 "Don t you think that p raps somebody 
 ought to go and find him?" 
 
 "Oh, for heaven s sake leave him alone!" 
 cried Paul Brenswick. 
 
 "Leave him alone," acquiesced all the other 
 men. 
 
 In the moment s nervous reaction and let 
 down that ensued it was really a relief to hear 
 George Keets cry out, with such poignant 
 amazement from his stand at the window : 
 
 "Why what in the world is that red-roof 
 out on the rocks?" he cried. 
 
 In the same impulse both my Husband and 
 myself ran quickly to his side. 
 
 "Oh, that s all right!" laughed my Hus 
 band. "I thought maybe it had blown off or 
 something. Why, that s just the * Bungalow 
 on the Rocks, " he explained. 
 
 "My Husband s study and work-room," I
 
 RAINY WEEK 171 
 
 exemplified. " Forbidden-Ground is its real 
 name! Nobody is ever allowed to go there 
 without an invitation from himself!" 
 
 "Why but it wasn t there yesterday!" as 
 serted George Keets. 
 
 "Oh, yes, it was!" laughed my Husband. 
 
 "It was not!" said George Keets. 
 
 The sheer unexpected primitiveness of the 
 contradiction delighted us so that neither of 
 us took the slightest offense. 
 
 "Oh, I beg your pardon, of course, George 
 Keets recovered himself almost in an instant 
 that right here before our eyes that same 
 vivid scarlet roof was looming there yesterday 
 against the gray rocks and sea and none of 
 us saw it?" 
 
 "Saw what?" called Paul Brenswick. 
 "Where?" And came striding to the window. 
 
 "Gad!" said Paul Brenswick. "Victoria! 
 Come here, quick!" he called. 
 
 With frank curiosity the Bride joined the 
 group. "Why of all things!" she laughed. 
 "Why it never in the world was there yes 
 terday ! 
 
 A trifle self-consciously Ann Woltor joined 
 the group. "Bungalow?" she questioned. "A 
 Bungalow out on the rocks." Her face did
 
 172 RAINY WEEK 
 
 certainly look just a little bit queer. Anyone 
 who wanted to, was perfectly free of course, to 
 interpret the look as one of incredulity. 
 
 "No, of course not! Miss Woltor agrees 
 with me perfectly, " triumphed George Keets. 
 "It was not there yesterday!" 
 
 "Oh, but it must have been!" dimpled the 
 May Girl. "If Mr. and Mrs. Delville say so! 
 It s their bungalow!" 
 
 "It was not there yesterday," puzzled 
 George Keets. More than having his honor at 
 stake he spoke suddenly as though he thought 
 it was his reason that was being threatened. 
 
 With her cheeks quite rosy again the May 
 Girl began to clap her hands. Her eyes were 
 sparkling with excitement. 
 
 "Oh, I don t care whether it was there yes 
 terday or not!" she triumphed. "It s there 
 to-day! Let s go and explore it! And if it s 
 
 magic, so much the better! Oh, loo loo 
 
 look!" she cried as a great roar and surge of 
 billows broke on the rocks all around the little 
 red roof and churned the whole sky-line into 
 a chaos of foam. "Oh, come come!" she 
 besought everybody. 
 
 "Oh, but, my dear!" I explained, "How 
 would you get there? No row-boat could live
 
 RAINY WEEK 173 
 
 in that sea! And by way of the rocky ledge 
 there s no possible path except at the lowest 
 tide! And besides," I reminded her, "it s 
 named Forbidden Ground, you know! No 
 body is supposed to go there without " 
 
 With all the impulsiveness of an irrespon 
 sible baby the May Girl dashed across the 
 room and threw her arms round my neck. 
 
 1 Why, you old dear," she laughed, "don t 
 you know that that s just the reason why I 
 want to explore it! I want to know why it s 
 * Forbidden Ground ! Oh, surely surely, 
 she coaxed, "even if it is a work-room, there 
 couldn t be any real sin in just prying a 
 little?" 
 
 "No, of course, no real sin," I laughed back 
 at her earnestness. "Just an indiscretion!" 
 
 Quite abruptly the May Girl relaxed her 
 hug, and narrowed her lovely eyes dreamily 
 to some personal introspection. 
 
 "I ve never yet committed a real indis 
 cretion," she confided with apparent regret. 
 
 "Well, pray don t begin," laughed George 
 Keets in spite of himself, "by trying to ex 
 plore something that isn t there." 
 
 "And don t you and Keets," flared Paul
 
 174 RAINY WEEK 
 
 Brenswick quite unexpectedly, "by denying 
 the existence of something that is there!" 
 
 "Well, if it is there to-day," argued George 
 Keets, "it certainly wasn t there yesterday!" 
 
 "Well, if it wasn t there yesterday, it is at 
 least there to-day!" argued Paul Brenswick. 
 
 "Kollins! Hi there Rollins !" they both 
 called as though in a single breath. 
 
 From his humble seat on the top stair to 
 which he had wisely retreated at his first ink 
 ling of having so grossly outraged public 
 opinion, Kollins s reply came wafting some 
 what hopefully back. 
 
 "H h iii," rallied Rollins. 
 
 "That red roof on the rocks " shouted 
 Paul Brenswick. 
 
 "Was it there yesterday?" demanded 
 George Keets. 
 
 "Wait!" cackled Kollins. "Wait till I go 
 look!" A felt footstep thudded. A window 
 opened. The felt footstep thudded again. 
 "No," called Rollins. "Now that I come to 
 think of it I don t remember having noticed 
 a red roof there yesterday." 
 
 "Now!" laughed George Keets. 
 
 "But, oh, I say!" gasped Rollins, in what 
 seemed to be very sudden and altogether in-
 
 RAINY WEEK 175 
 
 disputable confusion. "Why why it must 
 have been there! Because that s the shack 
 where we ve catalogued the shells every year 
 for the last seven years!" 
 
 "Now!" laughed Paul Brenswick. 
 
 Without another word everybody made a 
 bolt for the hat-rack and the big oak settle, 
 snatched up his or her oil-skin clothes 
 anybody s oil-skin clothes and dashed oft 
 through the rain to the edge of the cliff to 
 investigate the phenomenon at closer range. 
 
 Truly the thing was almost too easy to be 
 really righteous! Just a huge rock-colored 
 tarpaulin stripped at will from a red-tiled roof 
 and behold, mystery looms on an otherwise 
 drab-colored day! And a mystery at a house- 
 party? Well whoever may stand proven as 
 the mother of invention Curiosity, you know 
 just as well as I do, is the father of a great 
 many very sprightly little adventures! 
 
 Within ten minutes from the proscenium 
 box of our big bay-window, my Husband and 
 I could easily discern the absurd little plot and 
 counterplots that were already being hatched. 
 
 It was the Bride and George Keets who 
 seemed to be thinking, pointing, gesticulating, 
 in the only perfect harmony. Even at this
 
 176 RAINY WEEK 
 
 distance, and swathed as they were in hastily 
 adjusted oil-skins, a curiously academic sort 
 of dignity stamped their every movement. 
 Nothing but sheer intellectual determination 
 to prove that their minds were normal would 
 ever tempt either one of them to violate a 
 Host s "No Trespass" sign! 
 
 Nothing academic about Paul Brenswick s 
 figure! With one yellow elbow crooked to 
 shield the rain from his eyes he stood esti 
 mating so many probable feet of this, so many 
 probable feet of that. He was an engineer! 
 Perspectives were his playthings! And if 
 there was any new trick about perspectives 
 that he didn t know he was going to solve 
 it now no matter what it cost either him or 
 anybody else! 
 
 More like a young colt than anything else, 
 like a young colt running for its pasture- 
 bars, the May Girl dashed vainly up and 
 down the edge of the cliff. Nothing academic, 
 nothing of an engineer about any young colt ! 
 If the May Girl reached "the Bungalow on the 
 Bocks" it would be just because she wanted 
 to! 
 
 Ann Woltor s reaction was the only one that 
 really puzzled me. Drawn back a little from
 
 RAINY WEEK 177 
 
 the others, sheltered transiently from the 
 wind by a great jagged spur of gray rock but 
 with her sombre face turned almost eagerly 
 to the rain, she stood there watching with a 
 perfectly inexplainable interest the long white 
 blossomy curve of foam and spray which 
 marked the darkly submerged ledge of rock 
 that connected the red-tiled bungalow with the 
 beach just below her. Ann Woltor certainly 
 was no prankish child. Neither was it to be 
 supposed that any particular problem of per 
 spective had flecked her mind into the slightest 
 uneasiness. Ann Woltor knew that the bunga 
 low was there ! Had spent at least nine hours 
 in it on the previous day! Lunched in it! 
 Supped in it! Proved its inherent prosiness! 
 Yet even I was puzzled as she crept out from 
 the shelter of her big boulder to the very edge 
 of the cliff, and leaned away out still staring, 
 always at that wave-tormented ledge. 
 
 From the hyacinth-scented shadows just be 
 hind me I heard a sudden little laugh. 
 
 "I ll wager you a new mink muff," said my 
 Husband quite abruptly, "that Ann Woltor 
 gets there first!"
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IN this annual Rainy Week drama of ours, 
 one of the very best parts I "double" in, 
 is with the chambermaid, making beds! 
 
 Once having warned my guests of this 
 occasional domestic necessity, I ought, I 
 suppose, to feel absolutely relieved of any 
 embarrassing sense of intrusion incidental to 
 the task. But there is always, somehow, such 
 an unwarrantable sense of spiritual rather 
 than material intimacy connected with the sight 
 of a just deserted guest-room. Particularly 
 so, I think, in a sea-shore guest-room. A beach 
 makes such big babies of us all! 
 
 Country-house hostesses have never men 
 tioned it as far as I can remember. Moun 
 tains evidently do not recover for us that par 
 ticular kind of lost rapture. Nor even green 
 pine woods revive the innocent lusts of the 
 little. But in a sea-shore guest-room, every 
 fresh morning of the world, as long as time 
 
 178
 
 RAINY WEEK 179 
 
 lasts, you will find on bureau-top desk or 
 table, mixed up with chiffons and rouges, 
 crowding the tennis rackets or base balls, 
 blurring the open sophisticate page of the 
 latest French novel, that dear, absurd, ever- 
 increasing little hoard of childish treasures! 
 The round, shining pebbles, the fluted clam 
 shell, the wopse of dried sea-weed, a feather 
 perhaps from a gull s wing! Things common 
 as time itself, repetitive as sand! Yet irre 
 sistibly covetable! How do you explain it? 
 
 Who in the world, for instance, would expect 
 to find a cunningly contrived toy-boat on 
 Kollins s bureau with two star-fish listed as 
 the only passengers! Or Paul Brenswick s 
 candle thrust into a copperas-tinted knot of 
 water-logged cedar? In the snug confines of a 
 small cigar box on a lovely dank bed of ma 
 roon and gray sea-weed Victoria Brenswick 
 had nested her treasure-trove. Certainly the 
 quaint garnet necklace could hardly have 
 found a more romantic and ship-wrecky sort of 
 a setting. Even Allan John had started a little 
 procession of sand-dollars across his mantel 
 piece. But there was no silver whistle figur 
 ing a>s the band, I noticed. 
 
 What would Victoria Brenswick have said,
 
 180 RAINY WEEK 
 
 I wondered, what would Allan John have 
 thought if they had even so much as dreamed 
 that these precious "ship-wreck treasures" 
 of theirs had been purchased brand new in 
 Boston Town within a week and "planted" 
 most carefully by my Husband with all those 
 other pseudo mysteries in the old trunk in 
 the sand? But goodness me, one s got to 
 "start" something on the first day of even 
 the most ordinary house-party! 
 
 With so much to watch outside the window, 
 figures still moving eagerly up and down the 
 edge of the cliff, and so much to think about 
 inside, all the little personal whims and fan 
 cies betrayed by the various hoards, the bed- 
 making industry I m afraid was somewhat 
 slighted on this particular morning. Was my 
 Husband still standing at that down-stairs 
 window, I wondered, speculating about that 
 bungalow on the rocks even as I stood at the 
 window just above him speculating on the 
 same subject? Why did he think that Ann 
 Woltor would be the one to get there first? 
 What had Ann Woltor left there the day be 
 fore that made her specially anxious to get 
 there first? Truly this Rainy Week experi 
 ment develops some rather unique puzzles.
 
 RAINY WEEK 181 
 
 Maybe if I tried, I thought, I could add a 
 little puzzle of my own invention! Just for 
 sheer restiveness I turned and made another 
 round of the guest-rooms. Now that I re 
 membered it there was a bit more sand oozing 
 from the Bride s necklace box to the mahogany 
 bureau-top than was really necessary. 
 
 The rest of the morning passed without 
 special interest. But the luncheon hour de 
 veloped a most extraordinary interest in the 
 principles of physical geography which be 
 ginning with all sorts of valuable observations 
 concerning the weight of the atmosphere or 
 the conformation of mountains or the law of 
 tides, ended invariably with the one direct 
 question: "At just what hour this evening, 
 for instance, will the tide be lo wagain?" 
 
 My Husband was almost beside himself with 
 concealed delight. 
 
 "Oh, but you don t think for a moment, do 
 you " I implored him in a single whisper of 
 privacy snatched behind the refilling of the 
 coffee urn. "You don t think for a moment 
 that anybody would be rash enough to try 
 and make the trip in the big dory?" 
 
 1 Well hardly, laughed my Husband. * If 
 you d seen where I ve hidden the oars!"
 
 182 RAINY WEEK 
 
 The oars apparently were not the only things 
 hidden at the moment from mortal ken. Claude 
 Kennilworth and Ego still persisted quite 
 brutally in withholding their charms from us. 
 Eollins had retreated to the sacristy of his 
 own room to complete his convalescence. And 
 even Allan John seemed to have wandered for 
 the time being beyond the call of either voice 
 or luncheon bell. Allan John s deflection wor 
 ried the May Girl a little I think, but not 
 unduly. It didn t worry the men at all. 
 
 "When a chap wants to be alone he wants 
 to be alone!" explained Paul Brenswick with 
 unassailable conciseness. 
 
 "It s a darned good sign," agreed my Hus 
 band, "that he s ready to be alone! It s the 
 first time, isn t it?" 
 
 "Yes, that s all right, of course," conceded 
 the May Girl amiably, "if you re quite sure 
 that he was dressed right for it." 
 
 "Maybe a hike on the beach at just this 
 moment, whether he s dressed right for it or 
 not," asserted George Keets, "is just the one 
 thing the poor devil needs to sweep the last 
 cobweb out of his brain." 
 
 "I agree with you perfectly," said Victoria 
 Brenswick.
 
 RAINY WEEK 183 
 
 It was really astonishing in a single morn 
 ing how many things George Keets and the 
 Bride had discovered that they agreed on per 
 fectly. It teased the Bridegroom a little I 
 think. But anyone could have seen that it 
 actually puzzled the Bride. And women, when 
 they are puzzled, I ve noticed, are pretty apt 
 to insist upon tracing the puzzle to its source. 
 So that when George Keets suggested a further 
 exploration of the dunes as the most plausible 
 diversion for the afternoon, it wouldn t have 
 surprised me at all if Victoria Brenswick 
 had not only acquiesced in the suggestion for 
 herself and her Bridegroom but exacted its 
 immediate fulfillment. She did not, however. 
 Quite peremptorily, in fact, she announced in 
 stead her own and her Bridegroom s unalter 
 able intent to remain at home in the big warm 
 library by the apple-wood fire. 
 
 It was the May Girl who insisted on forging 
 forth alone with George Keets into the storm. 
 
 "Why, I shall perish," dimpled the May 
 Girl, "if I don t get some more exercise to-day! 
 Weather like this why why it s so glori 
 ous!" she thrilled. "So maddeningly glorious! 
 I I wish I was a seagull so I could breast 
 right off into the foam and blast of it! I
 
 184 RAINY WEEK 
 
 wish I wish !" But what page is long 
 
 enough to record the wishes of Eighteen? 
 
 My Husband evidently had no wish in the 
 world except to pursue the cataloging of 
 shells in Bollins s crafty company. 
 
 Ann Woltor confessed quite frankly that her 
 whole human interest in the afternoon cen 
 tred solely on the matter of sleep. 
 
 Hyacinths, of course, are my own unfailing 
 diversion. 
 
 Tracking me just a little bit self-consciously 
 to my hyacinth lair, the Bride seemed rather 
 inclined to dally a moment, I noticed, before 
 returning to her Bridegroom and the library 
 fire. Her eyes were very interesting. What 
 bride s are not? Particularly that Bride 
 whose intellect parallels even her emotions. 
 
 "Maybe," she essayed quite abruptly, 
 "Maybe it was a trifle funny of me not to 
 tramp this afternoon. But the bridge-build 
 ing work begins again next week, you know. 
 It s pretty strenuous, everybody says. Men 
 come home very tired from it. Not specially 
 sociable. So I just made up my mind," she 
 said, in a voice that though playfully lowered 
 was yet rather curiously intense. "So I just 
 made up my mind that I would stay at home
 
 RAINY WEEK 185 
 
 this afternoon and get acquainted with my 
 Husband." Half -proud, half-shamed, her puz 
 zled eyes lifted to mine. "Because it s dawned 
 on me very suddenly," she laughed, "that I 
 don t know my Husband s opinion on one 
 solitary subject in the world except just 
 me!" "With a rather amusing little flush she 
 stooped down and smothered her face in a pot 
 of blue hyacinths. "Oh hyacinths!" she 
 murmured. "And May rain! The smell of 
 them ! Will I ever forget the fragrance of this 
 week while Time lasts?" But the eyes that 
 lifted to mine again were still puzzled. * Now 
 that Mr. Keets," she faltered. "Why in just 
 an hour or two this morning, why in just 
 the little time that luncheon takes, I know his 
 religion and his Mother s first name. I know 
 his philosophies, and just why he adores Bus 
 kin and disagrees with Bernard Shaw. I know 
 where he usually stays when he s in Amster 
 dam and just what hotel we both like best in 
 Paris. Why I know even where he buys his 
 boots, and why. And I buy mine at the same 
 place and for just exactly the same reason. 
 But my Husband." Quite in spite of herself 
 a little laugh slipped from her lips. "Why 
 I don t even know how my Husband votes!"
 
 186 RAINY WEEK 
 
 she gasped. In some magic, excitative flash of 
 memory her breath began to quicken. "It 
 It was at college, you know, that we met 
 Paul and I," she explained. "At a dance the 
 night before my graduation." Once again 
 her face flamed like a rose. "Why, we were 
 engaged, you know, within a week! And then 
 Paul went to China ! Oh, of course, we wrote, 
 she said, "and almost every day, too. But ." 
 
 "But lovers, of course, don t write a great 
 deal about buying boots," I acquiesced, "nor 
 even so specially much about Euskin nor even 
 *heir mothers." 
 
 In the square of the library doorway a man s 
 figure loomed a bit suddenly. 
 
 "Vic! Aren t you ever coming?" fretted 
 her impatient Bridegroom. 
 
 Like a homing bird she turned and sped to 
 her mate! 
 
 Yet an hour later, when I passed the library 
 door, I saw Paul Brenswick lying fast asleep 
 in the depth of his big leather chair. Fire 
 wasted books neglected Chance itself for 
 gotten or ignored ! But the Bride was nowhere 
 to be seen. 
 
 I was quite right though when I thought 
 that I should find her in her room. Just as I
 
 RAINY WEEK 187 
 
 expected, too, she was standing by the window 
 staring somewhat blankly out at the Dunes. 
 
 But the eyes that she lifted to me this time 
 were not merely puzzled they were suffering. 
 If Paul Brenswick could have seen his beloved 
 at this moment and even so much as hoped 
 that there was a God, he would have gone down 
 on his knees then and there and prayed that 
 for Love s sake the very real shock which 
 he had just given her would end in laughter 
 rather than tears. Yet her speech, when it 
 came at last, was perfectly casual. 
 
 "He he wouldn t talk," she said. 
 
 "Couldn t, you mean!" I contradicted her 
 quite sharply. "Husbands can t, you know! 
 Marriage seems to do something queer to their 
 vocal chords." 
 
 "Your husband talks," smiled the Bride 
 very faintly. 
 
 "Oh beautifully," I admitted. "But not 
 to me! It doesn t seem to be quite compatible 
 with established romance somehow, this talk 
 ing business, between husbands and wives." 
 
 "Komance?" rallied the Bride. "Would 
 you call Mr. Delville ex exactly romantic!" 
 
 "Oh very!" I boasted. "But not conver 
 sationally."
 
 188 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "But I wanted to talk," said the Bride, 
 very slowly. 
 
 "Why, of course, you did, you dear dar 
 ling!" I cried out impulsively. "Most brides 
 do! You wanted to discuss and decide in 
 about thirty minutes every imaginable issue 
 that is yet to develop in all the long glad years 
 you hope to have together! The friends you 
 are going to build. Why you haven t even 
 glimpsed a child s picture in a magazine, this 
 the first week of your marriage, without stay 
 ing awake half the night to wonder what your 
 children s children s names will be." 
 
 "How do you know?" asked the Bride, a 
 bit incisively. 
 
 "Because once I was a Bride myself," I 
 said. "But this Paul of yours," I insisted. 
 "This Paul of yours, you see, hasn t finished 
 wondering yet about just you !" 
 
 "For Heaven s sake," called my own hus 
 band through the half open doorway, "what s 
 all this pow-wow about?" 
 
 "About husbands," I answered, quite frank 
 ly. "An argument in fact as to whether taken 
 all in all a husband is ever very specially 
 amusing to talk to." 
 
 "Amusing to talk to?" hooted my Husband.
 
 RAINY WEEK 189 
 
 "Never! Then most that any poor husband 
 can hope for is to prove amusing to talk 
 about!" 
 
 "Who said Paul ?" called that young per 
 son himself from the further shadows of the 
 hallway. 
 
 "No one has," I laughed, "for as much as 
 two minutes." 
 
 A trifle flushed from his nap, and most be 
 comingly dishevelled as to hair, the Bride 
 groom stepped into the light. I heard his 
 Bride give a little sharp catch of her breath. 
 
 "I I think I must have been asleep," said 
 the Bridegroom. 
 
 Twice the Bride swallowed very hard before 
 she spoke. 
 
 "I I think you must have, you rascal!" 
 she said. It was a real victory! 
 
 Really my Husband and I would have been 
 banged in the door if we hadn t jumped out as 
 fast as we did! 
 
 George Keets and the May Girl came in 
 from their walk just before supper. Judging 
 from their personal appearances it had at least 
 been a long walk if not a serene one. George 
 Keets indeed seemed quite unnecessarily in 
 tent in the vestibule on taking the May Girl
 
 190 RAINY WEEK 
 
 to task for what he evidently considered her 
 somewhat careless method of storing away her 
 afternoon s accumulation of pebble and shell. 
 Every accent of his voice, every carefully 
 enunciated syllable reminded me only too ab 
 surdly of what the May Girl had confided to 
 me about "boys always trying to make her 
 feel small." He was urging her now, I in 
 ferred, to stop and sort out her specimens 
 according to some careful cotton-batting plan 
 which he suggested. 
 
 "Whatever is worth doing at all, you know, 
 Miss Davies," he said, "is worth doing well." 
 
 The May Girl s voice sounded very tired, 
 not irritable, but very tired. 
 
 "Oh, if there s anything in the world that I 
 hate," I heard her cry out, "it s that proverb! 
 What people really mean by it," she protested, 
 "is, * Whatever s worth doing at all is worth 
 doing Swell. And it isn t either! I tell you 
 I like simple things best! All I ever want to 
 do with my shells tonight is just to chuck em 
 behind the door!" 
 
 Truly if Claude Kennilworth hadn t turned 
 up for supper all in white flannels and look 
 ing like a young god, I don t know just what
 
 RAINY WEEK 191 
 
 I should have done. Everybody seemed either 
 so tired or so distrait. 
 
 The tide would be low at ten o clock. It 
 was eight when we sat down to supper. 
 
 Ann Woltor I m sure never took her eyes 
 from the clock. 
 
 But to be perfectly frank everybody else at 
 the table except the May Girl seemed to be 
 diverting such attention as he or she retained 
 to the personal appearance of Claude Kennil- 
 worth. Truly it wasn t right that anyone who 
 had been so hateful all day long should be able 
 to look so perfectly glorious in the evening. 
 
 "Where did you get the suit?" said Rollins. 
 "Is it your own?" 
 
 "And the permanent wave ?" questioned 
 the Bride. "I think you and the ocean must 
 patronize the same hair dresser." 
 
 "Dark men always do look so fine in white 
 flannels," whispered Ann Woltor to my Hus 
 band. 
 
 "Personally," beamed Paul Brenswick, 
 "you look to me like a person who had im 
 ported his own Turkish bath." 
 
 "Turkish?" scoffed George Keets. "No 
 body works up a shine like that by being
 
 192 RAINY WEEK 
 
 washed only in one language! Bussian, too, it 
 must be! Flemish " 
 
 "Flemish are rabbits," observed the May 
 Girl gravely. But even with this observation 
 she did not lift her eyes from her plate. 
 Whether she was consciously and determming- 
 ly ignoring Claude Kennilworth s only too 
 palpable efforts to impress her with the fact 
 that now at last he was ready to forgive her 
 and subjugate her, or whether she really 
 hadn t noticed him, I couldn t quite make out. 
 And then quite suddenly at the end of her 
 first course she put down her knife and fork 
 and folded her hands in her lap. "Where 
 is Allan John?" she demanded. 
 
 "Why, yes, that s so! Where is Allan 
 John!" questioned everybody all at once. 
 
 "Some walk he s taking," reflected Paul 
 Br ens wick. 
 
 "Not too long I hope," worried my Husband 
 very faintly. 
 
 "Hang it all, I do like that lad," acknowl 
 edged George Keets. 
 
 "Who wouldn t?" said Young Kennilworth. 
 
 "Yes, but why?" demanded Keets. 
 
 "It s his eyes," said the Bride. 
 
 "Eyes nothing!" scoffed young Kennil-
 
 RAINY WEEK 193 
 
 worth. "It s the way he came out of his fuss 
 without fussing! To make a fool of yourself 
 but never a fuss that s my idea of a fellow 
 being a good sport!" 
 
 "It was his tragedy that I was thinking of," 
 said George Keets very quietly. 
 
 "Yes, where in the world," questioned my 
 Husband with quite unwonted emotion, "would 
 you have found another chap in the same 
 harrowing circumstances, even among your 
 own friends, I mean, a chum, a pal, who could 
 have dropped in here the way he has, without 
 putting a damper on everything? Not inten 
 tionally, of course, but just in the inevitable 
 human nature of things. But I don t get the 
 slightest sense somehow of Allan John being 
 a damper!" 
 
 " Damper? " said the Bride. "Why he s 
 like a sick man basking in the sun. Hasn t a 
 word to say himself, not a single prance in 
 his own feet. But I d as soon think of shut 
 ting out the sun from a sick man as shutting 
 out a laugh from Allan John. Why, Allan 
 John needs us!" attested the Bride, "and 
 Allan John knows that he needs us!" 
 
 With a sideways glance at the vacant chair
 
 194 RAINY WEEK 
 
 George Keets s thin lips parted into a really 
 sweet smile. 
 
 "Where in creation is the boy!" he insisted. 
 "Frankly I think we rather need him." 
 
 "All of which being the case," conceded my 
 Husband, "it behooves me even once more, I 
 should say, to tell Allan John that the next 
 time he speaks about moving on I shall hide 
 his clothes. Certainly I haven t trusted him 
 yet with even a quarter. He s so extraordi 
 narily fussy about thinking that he ought to 
 clear out." 
 
 It was just at that moment that the tele 
 phone rang. I decided to answer it myself, 
 for some reason, from the instrument upstairs 
 in my own room, rather than from the 
 library. A minute s delay, and I held the 
 transmitter to my lips. 
 
 "Yes," I called. 
 
 "Is this Mrs. Jack Delville?" queried the 
 voice. 
 
 "Yes. Who s speaking?" 
 
 "It s Allan John," said the voice. 
 
 "Why, Allan John!" I laughed. "Of course 
 it would be you ! We were just speaking about 
 you, and that s always the funny way that
 
 RAINY WEEK 195 
 
 things happen. But wherever in the world 
 are you? We d begun to worry a bit!" 
 
 4 I m in town," said Allan John. 
 
 "In town," I cried. "Town! How did you 
 get there?" 
 
 In Allan John s voice suddenly it was as 
 though tone itself was fashion. "That s what 
 I want to tell you," said Allan John. "I ve 
 done a horrid thing, a regular kid college-boy 
 sort of thing. I ve taken something from your 
 house, that silver salt cellar you know that I 
 forgot to give back, and left it with a man 
 in the village as security for the price of a 
 railroad ticket to town, and a telegram to my 
 brother and this phone message. I didn t have 
 a cent you know. But the instant I hear from 
 my brother " 
 
 "Why, you silly!" I cried. "TOy didn t 
 you speak to my Husband?" 
 
 "Oh, your Husband," said Allan John, just 
 a bit drily, "would have given me the whole 
 house. But he wouldn t let me leave it! And 
 it was quite time I was leaving," the voice 
 quickened sharply. "I had to leave some time 
 you know. And all of a sudden I I had to 
 leave at once! Eollins, you know! His break 
 about the little girl. After young Kennil-
 
 196 RAINY WEEK 
 
 worth s cubbishness I simply couldn t put an 
 other slight on that lovely little girl. But " 
 His voice was all gray and again spent, like 
 ashes. "But I just couldn t play," he said. 
 "Not that!" 
 
 "Why of course you couldn t play," I cried. 
 "Nobody expected you to! Rollins is a a 
 horror!" 
 
 "Oh, Rollins is all right enough," said 
 Allan John. "It s life that is the horror." 
 
 "Yes, but Allan John !" I parried. 
 
 "You people have been angels to me," he 
 interrupted me sharply. "I shall never for 
 get it. Nor the lovely little girl. I m going 
 back to Montana to see how my ranch looks. 
 I can t talk now. Not to anybody. For God s 
 sake don t call anybody. But if I get straight 
 ened out again, ever, you ll hear from me. 
 And if I don t " 
 
 "But, Allan John," I protested. "Every 
 body will be desolated, your going off like 
 this! Why, you re not even equipped in the 
 simplest way! Not a single bit of baggage! 
 Not a personal possession!" 
 
 Across the buzzing wires it seemed suddenly 
 as though I could actually hear Allan John
 
 RAINY WEEK 197 
 
 making one last really desperate effort to 
 smile. 
 
 "IVe got my little silver whistle," said 
 Allan John. As though in confirmation of the 
 fact he lifted the silver bauble to his lips and 
 blew a single flutey note across the sixty 
 miles. 
 
 "Goodbye!" he said. 
 
 Before I had fairly dropped the receiver 
 back into its place, the May Girl was at my 
 elbow. Her lovely childish eyes were strange 
 ly alert, her radiant head cocked ever so 
 slightly to one side as though she held a 
 shell to her listening ear. But there was no 
 shell in her hand. 
 
 "What was that?" cried the May Girl. "I 
 tkought I heard Allan John s whistle!"
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 WERE you ever in a theatre, right in 
 the middle of a play, on the very 
 verge of an act that you were really 
 quite curious about, and just as the curtain 
 started to go up it was suddenly yanked down 
 again instead, and a woman behind the scenes 
 screamed oh, horridly, and a man came rush 
 ing out in front of the curtain waving his 
 arms and trying to tell everybody something, 
 but everybody all of a sudden was so busy 
 screaming for himself that even God, I think, 
 couldn t have made you hear just what the 
 trouble was? 
 
 It isn t a pleasant thing to have happen. 
 
 But that is almost exactly what happened 
 to our Rainy Week play on this the fourth 
 night of events just as I was waiting for the 
 curtain to rise on the most carefully staged 
 scene which we had prepared, the scene desig 
 nated as "The Bungalow on tlie Rocks." 
 
 And the woman who screamed was the May 
 
 198
 
 RAINY WEEK 199 
 
 Girl. And the man who came rushing back 
 to try and explain was Rollins. And the May 
 Girl it proved was screaming because she 
 was drowning! And if it hadn t been for the 
 silly little Pom dog that Claude Kennilworth 
 had been silly enough to bring way from New 
 York "for a week s outing at the sea shore" 
 just to please the extraordinarily silly girl who 
 occupied the studio next to his, the May Girl 
 would have drowned! It makes one feel al 
 most afraid to move, somehow, or even not to 
 move, for that matter, afraid to be silly in 
 deed, or even not to be silly, lest it foil or 
 foul in some bungling way the plot of life 
 which the Biggest Dramatist of All had really 
 intended. 
 
 It was Ann Woltor who gave the only 
 adequate explanation. 
 
 Everybody had at least pretended that night 
 the unalterable intention of going to bed early. 
 
 Claude Kennilworth of course having 
 absented himself from the breakfast table 
 didn t know anything about the bungalow dis 
 cussion. But pique alone at the May Girl s 
 persistent yet totally unexcited rebuff of his 
 patronage had retired him earlier than any 
 one to the seclusion of his own room. And
 
 200 RAINY WEEK 
 
 Rollins s unhappy propensity of always and 
 forever butting into other people s plans had 
 been most efficiently thwarted, as far as we 
 could see, by dragging him upstairs and slam 
 ming his nose into a brand new and very 
 profusely illustrated tome on the subject of 
 "The Violet Snail." 
 
 By half past ten, Ann Woltor confessed she 
 had found the whole lower part of the house 
 apparently deserted. 
 
 For the same reason, best known even yet 
 only to herself, she was still very anxious it 
 appeared to get to the bungalow before any 
 of her house-companions should have fore 
 stalled her. The trip, I judged, had not 
 proved unduly hard. By the aid of a pocket 
 flashlight she had made the descent of the 
 cliff without accident, and after a single con 
 fusion where a blind trail ended in the water 
 discovered the jagged path that twisted along 
 the ledge to the very door of the bungalow. 
 Once in the bungalow she had dallied only 
 long enough to search out by the aid of the 
 flashlight the particular object or objects which 
 she had come for. Startled by a little sound, 
 the sound of a man humming a little French 
 tune that she hadn t heard for fifteen years,
 
 RAINY WEEK 201 
 
 she had grabbed up her treasure, whatever it 
 was, and bolted precipitously for the house, 
 not knowing she had sprung the trap of our 
 concealed phonograph when she opened the 
 door. Even once back in the safe precincts 
 of the house, however, she was further startled 
 and completely upset by running into the May 
 Girl. 
 
 The May Girl was on the stairs, it seemed, 
 just coming down. And she didn t look "quite 
 right," Ann Woltor admitted. That is, she 
 looked almost as though she was walking in 
 her sleep, or a bit dazed, a bit bewildered, 
 and certainly, dressed as she was, just a filmy 
 night-gown with her warm blanket wrapper 
 merely lashed across her shoulders by its 
 sleeves, her pretty feet bare, her gauzy hair 
 floating like an aura all around her, it cer 
 tainly wasn t to be supposed that she was 
 just starting off on a prankish endeavor to 
 solve the bungalow mystery. Even her eyes 
 looked unreal to Ann Woltor. Even her voice, 
 when she spoke, sounded more than a little 
 bit queer. 
 
 "I I thought I heard Allan John whistle" 
 she said. "I I promised, you know, that if 
 he ever needed me I d come."
 
 202 RAINY WEEK 
 
 Ann Woltor nearly collapsed. * Nonsense ! 
 she explained. "Allan John is in town! Don t 
 you remember? He telephoned while we were 
 at supper. Mrs. Delville delivered his mes 
 sages and good-byes to us." 
 
 "Why, yes, of course!" roused the May 
 Girl, almost instantly. "How silly! I guess 
 I must have been asleep! And just dreamed 
 it!" 
 
 "Why, of course, you were asleep and 
 just dreamed it." Ann Woltor assured her. 
 "You re asleep now! Get back to bed before 
 you catch your death of cold! Or before any 
 body sees you!" 
 
 Ann Woltor, on the verge of hysterics her 
 self, quite naturally was not at all anxious 
 that those dazed, bewildered eyes should clear 
 suddenly and with inevitable questioning upon 
 her own distinctly drenched and most wind 
 blown and generally dishevelled appearance. 
 
 A single little shove of the shoulders had 
 proved enough to herd the May Girl back to 
 her bed-room while she herself had escaped 
 undetected to her own quarters. 
 
 But the May Girl had not been satisfied, it 
 appeared, with Ann Woltor ? s assurances con 
 cerning Allan John.
 
 RAINY WEEK 203 
 
 An hour or more later, roused once again to 
 a still somewhat dazed but now unalterable 
 conviction that Allan John had whistled, and 
 fully equipped this time to combat whatever 
 opposition or weather she might meet, she 
 crept from the house out into the storm with 
 the little Pom dog sniffing at her heels. Just 
 what happened afterwards nobody knows. 
 Just how it happened or exactly when it 
 happened, nobody can even guess. Maybe it 
 was the brilliantly lighted bungalow my Hus 
 band had fixed for the setting of the "Bunga 
 low Scene" just after Ann Woltor s surrepti 
 tious visit that incited her. Maybe to a mind 
 already stricken with feverishness the rising 
 tide did suck through the bungalow rocks 
 with a sound that faintly suggested a rather 
 specially agonized sort of whistle. Who can 
 say? The fact remains that to all intents and 
 purposes she seemed to have ignored the 
 ledge that even yet, in spite of its drenching 
 spray, would have been perfectly safe for an 
 other half hour at least, and plunged forth 
 down the blind trail, off the rocks into the 
 water below. Kesolutely she refused to cry 
 for help. Perhaps the shock of the cold water 
 chilled the cry in her throat. She grasped the
 
 204 RAINY WEEK 
 
 slippery seaweed clinging to the rocks moan 
 ing a little crying a little the pitiful strug 
 gle setting the Pom dog nearly crazy. How 
 long she clung there she couldn t tell. She 
 was mauled and bruised by the threshing 
 waves. Still some complex inhibition pre 
 vented her crying out for help. Ages passed, 
 her bruised arms and numb fingers refused to 
 hold the grip on the elusive seaweed forever 
 and she eventually let go her hold. A receding 
 wave took her and tossed her poor exhausted 
 body still struggling against another ledge of 
 rock well out of reach from shore. Then, for 
 the first time, the May Girl seemed to realize 
 fully her peril and she shrieked for help. 
 
 Ann Woltor, rousing sluggishly from her 
 sleep, heard the black Pom dog barking furi 
 ously on the beach. Eeluctant at first to leave 
 her snug bed it must have been several 
 minutes at least before sheer curiosity and 
 irritation drove her to get up and peer from 
 the window. 
 
 Out of that murky blackness of course not 
 a single outline of the little dog met her 
 sight. Just that incessant yap-yap-yap-yap of 
 a tiny creature almost frenzied with excite 
 ment. But what really smote Ann Woltor s
 
 RAINY WEEK 205 
 
 startled vision, and for the first time, was the 
 flare of lights, which made the bungalow seem 
 as if ablaze. And as she stared aghast into 
 that flare of light which seemed to point so ac 
 cusingly at her across the intervening waters, 
 she either sensed or saw the May GirPs un 
 mistakable head and shoulders banging into 
 the single craggy rock that still jutted up from 
 the depths saw an arm reach out heard that 
 one blood-curdling scream! 
 
 Rollins must have thought she was mad! 
 Dragging him from his bed, with her arms 
 around his neck, her lips crushed to his ear, 
 even then she could hardly articulate or make 
 a sound louder than a whisper. 
 
 Rollins fortunately did not lose his voice. 
 Rollins bellowed. Rushing out into the hall 
 just as he was, pajamas, nightcap and all, Rol 
 lins lifted his voice like a baying hound. 
 
 In a moment all hands were on deck. My 
 Husband rushed for the dory George Keets 
 with him, Paul Brenswick, Kennilworth, Rol 
 lins! 
 
 The women huddled on the beach. 
 
 "Hold on! Hold on!" we shouted into 
 space. "Just a minute more! Just one 
 minute more!"
 
 206 RAINY WEEK 
 
 We might just as well have shouted into a 
 saw-dust pile. The wind took the words and 
 rammed them down our throats again till we 
 sickened and choked! 
 
 Young Kennilworth came running. He was 
 still in his white flannels. He looked like a 
 ghost. 
 
 "There s been some hitch about the oars!" 
 he cried. "Is she still there? 
 
 In the flare of our lantern light I turned 
 suddenly and stared at him. He looked so 
 queer. In a moment so awful, it seemed al 
 most incredible that any human face could 
 have summoned so much EGO into it. From 
 those gay, pleasure-roaming feet, it must have 
 come hurtling suddenly that expression! 
 From those facile self-assured finger tips that 
 were already coaxing the secrets of line and 
 form from the Creator ! From that lusty, hot- 
 blooded young heart that was even now 
 accumulating its "Pasts!" From the arro 
 gant, brilliant young brain that knew only too 
 well that it had a "FUTURE!" And even as 
 I watched, young Kennilworth stripped the 
 white flannels from his body. And the pleas 
 ure. And the triumph. And all the little 
 pasts. And all the one big future. And he
 
 RAINY WEEK 207 
 
 who had come so presumptuously to us to 
 make an infinitesimal bronze replica of the 
 sea went forth very humbly from us to make 
 a man-sized model of sacrifice. 
 
 For an instant only as he steadied for the 
 plunge a flash of the old mockery crossed his 
 face. 
 
 "Of course I m stronger than the ocean, " 
 he called back. "But if it shouldn t prove so 
 don t forget my Old Man s birthday!" 
 
 Ann Woltor fainted as his slim body struck 
 the waves. 
 
 Hours passed ages, aeons before the dory 
 reached them! Yet my husband says that it 
 way only minutes. By the merciful provi 
 dence of darkness we were at least spared 
 some of the visual stages of that struggle. 
 Minutes or aeons there were not even seconds 
 to spare, it proved by the time help actually 
 arrived. Claude Kennilworth had a broken 
 arm, but was at least conscious. The May 
 Girl looked as though she would never be 
 conscious again. Against the ghastly pallor 
 of her skin the brutal bruises loomed like 
 love s last offering of violets. The flexible 
 finger-tips had clawed themselves to pulp and 
 blood.
 
 208 RAINY WEEK 
 
 The village doctor came on the wings of the 
 wind! We telephoned Dr. Brawne, but he was 
 away on a business trip somewhere and could 
 not be located! The rest of the night went 
 by like a brand-new battle for life, but in the 
 full glare of lamp-light this time! By break 
 fast-time, if one can compute hours so on a 
 morning when nobody eats, Claude Kennil- 
 worth was almost himself again. But the 
 May Girl s vitality failed utterly to rally. 
 White as the linen that encompassed her she 
 lay in that dreadful stupor among her pillows. 
 Only once she roused herself to any attempt at 
 speech and even then her words were almost 
 inaudible. " Allan John," she struggled to 
 say. "Was trying to find him." 
 
 "Has she had any shock before this!" 
 puzzled the Doctor. "Any recent calamity? 
 Any special threat of impending illness?" 
 
 "She fainted day before yesterday," was all 
 the information anybody could proffer. "She 
 is subject to fainting spells, it seems. Last 
 night Miss Woltor thought she looked a little 
 bit dazed as though with a touch of fever." 
 
 "We ve got to rouse her some way," said 
 the Doctor. 
 
 "Oh, if we could only find Allan John,"
 
 RAINY WEEK 209 
 
 cried the Bride. "Allan John and his 
 whistle," she supplemented with almost shame 
 faced playfulness. 
 
 My Husband and George Keets tore off to 
 town in the little car ! They raked the streets, 
 the hotels, the telegraph offices, the railroad 
 station, God knows what before they found 
 him. But they did find him. That s all that 
 really matters! 
 
 It was ten o clock at night before they all 
 reached home again. Allan John asked only 
 one question as he crossed the threshold. His 
 forehead was puckered with perplexity. 
 
 "Is everybody in the world going to 
 die?" he said. 
 
 They took him directly to the May Girl s 
 room and put him down in a chair just 
 opposite her bed, with the whistle in his hands. 
 "Spring and Youth and the Pipes of Pan!" 
 But such a sorry Pan! All the youth that 
 was left in him seemed to have been wrung out 
 anew by this latest horror. In the grayness 
 of him, the hopelessness, the pain, he might 
 have been fifty, sixty, himself, instead of the 
 scant twenty-eight or thirty years that he 
 doubtless was. A little bit shakily he lifted 
 the whistle to his lips.
 
 210 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "Not that I put a great deal of credence in 
 it," admitted the Doctor. "But if you say it 
 was a sound a signal that she had been 
 waiting for " 
 
 Softly Allan John fluted the silver note. 
 
 A little shiver a struggle, passed across 
 the figure on the bed. 
 
 "Again!" prompted the Doctor. 
 
 Once more Allan John lifted the whistle to 
 his lips. 
 
 The May Girl opened her eyes and struggled 
 vainly to raise herself on her elbow. When 
 she saw Allan John a vague sort of astonish 
 ment flushed across her face and an odd 
 apologetic little laugh slipped weakly from 
 her lips. 
 
 "I I came just as soon as I could, Allan 
 John," she said, and sinking back into her 
 pillows began quite unexpectedly to cry. It 
 was the Doctor himself who sat by her side 
 and wiped her tears away. 
 
 Ann Woltor shared the watches with me 
 through the rest of the night. Allan John 
 never left the room. Towards dawn I sent 
 even Ann Woltor to her sleep and Allan John 
 and I met the new day alone. By the time it 
 was really light the May Girl, weak as she was,
 
 RAINY WEEK 211 
 
 seemed to have recovered a certain amount of 
 talkativeness. Eecognizing thoroughly the 
 presence and activity of both my hands and 
 my feet, she seemed to ignore entirely the 
 existence of either my eyes or my ears. Her 
 puzzled wonderments were directed at Allan 
 John alone. 
 
 "Allan John Allan John," I heard her call 
 softly. 
 
 "Yes," said Allan John. 
 
 "It s a lie," said the May Girl, "what 
 people say about drowning, that as you go 
 down you remember every little teeny weeny 
 thing that has ever happened to you in your 
 life! All your past, I mean! All the dread 
 ful wicked things that you ve ever donet 
 Oh, it s an awful lie!" 
 
 "Is it?" said Allan John. 
 
 "Yes, it certainly is;" attested the May 
 Girl. "Why, I never even remembered the 
 day I bit my grandmother." 
 
 "N o," shivered Allan John. 
 
 "No, indeed!" insisted the May Girl. "The 
 only things that I thought of were the things 
 I had planned to do! The The PLANS 
 that were drowning with me! One of them," 
 she flushed suddenly, "one of the plans I
 
 212 RAINY WEEK 
 
 mean I didn t seem to care at all when I 
 saw it go down and the plan about going to 
 Europe some time. Oh, I don t think that 
 suffered so terribly. But the farm. The 
 farm I was planning to have. The cows. 
 The horses. The dogs. The chickens. The 
 rabbits. Why, Allan John, I counted seven 
 teen rabbits!" Very softly to herself she be 
 gan to cry again. 
 
 "S s h. S s h," cautioned Allan John. 
 "Things that have never happened you know 
 can t die." 
 
 "Of that," reflected the May Girl through 
 her tears, "I am not so perfectly sure. Is 
 is it going to clear up?" she asked quite 
 irrelevantly. 
 
 "Oh, yes, surely! 7 rallied Allan John. He 
 He would have told her it was Chirstmas I 
 think if he had really thought that that was 
 what she wanted him to say. Very expedi- 
 tiously instead he began to shine up the silver 
 whistle with the corner of his handkerchief. 
 
 With an almost amusing solemnity the May 
 Girl lay and watched the proceeding. Under 
 the heavy fringe of her lashes her eyes looked 
 very shy. Then so gently, so childishly, that 
 even Allan John didn t wince till it was all
 
 RAINY WEEK 213 
 
 over, she asked him the question that no other 
 person in the world probably could have asked 
 him at that moment, and lived. 
 
 "Allan John," she asked, "do you suppose 
 that you will ever marry again?" 
 
 "Oh, my God, no!" gasped Allan John. 
 
 "Men do," mused the May Girl. 
 
 "Men do," conceded Allan John. With the 
 sweat starting on his brow he jumped up and 
 strode to the window. From the window he 
 turned back slowly with a curious look of 
 perplexity on his face. "Why do you ask 
 that?" he said. 
 
 "Oh, I don t know!" said the May Girl. 
 "I was just wondering," she sighed. 
 
 "Wondering what?" said Allan John. 
 
 "Wondering," mused the May Girl, "if you 
 would ever want to marry me." 
 
 For a moment Allan John did not seem to 
 understand for a moment he gazed aghast 
 at the May Girl s impassive face. "Why 
 child," he stammered. 
 
 "Why Honey-Dear," I intercepted wildly. 
 
 It was the strangest wooing I ever saw or 
 dreamed of. The wooing by a person who 
 didn t even know she was wooing of a person 
 who didn t even know he was being wooed.
 
 214 RAINY WEEK 
 
 "Well all right perhaps it doesn t mat 
 ter," said the May Girl. "I was only think 
 ing how sad it would be if Allan John ever 
 did need me for his wife and I was already 
 married to somebody else/ 
 
 When the Doctor came at noon he reported 
 with eminent satisfaction a decided improve 
 ment in both his patients. Claude Kennil- 
 worth, contrary to one s natural expectations, 
 was proving himself an ideal patient despite 
 his painful injury which he steadfastly re 
 fused to acknowledge. 
 
 Even the May Girl s more subtle and mysti 
 fying complications seemed to have cleared up 
 most astonishingly, he felt, since his previous 
 visit. 
 
 1 Oh, she s coming out all right," he assured 
 us. "Fresh air, plenty of range, freedom 
 from all emotional concern or distress," were 
 the key-notes of his advice. "She s only a 
 baby, grown woman-sized in an all too brief 
 eighteen years," he averred. 
 
 Words, phrases, judgments, rioted only too 
 confusedly through my mind that was already 
 so inordinately perplexed with the whole cha 
 otic situation. 
 
 As I said "good-bye," and turned back from
 
 RAINY WEEK 215 
 
 the front door, I was surprised to see both 
 my Husband and Ann Woltor standing close 
 beside me. The constrained expressions on 
 their faces startled me. 
 
 "You heard what the Doctor said," I ex 
 claimed. "You heard his exact words * great 
 big overgrown baby, he said. l Ought to be 
 turned out to play in a sand-pile for at least 
 two years more. Just a baby, I protested, 
 "And she ll be tending her own babies before 
 the two years are over ! They are planning to 
 marry her in September you know to a man 
 old enough to be her grandfather almost. To 
 Doctor Brawne," I stormed! 
 
 "To whom?" gasped Ann Woltor. Her 
 face was suddenly livid. "To whom?" 
 
 A horrid chill went through me. "What s 
 Doctor Brawne to you?" I asked. 
 
 "It s time you told her," interposed my 
 Husband, quietly. 
 
 "What is Doctor Brawne to you!" I de 
 manded. 
 
 "Doctor Brawne? Nothing!" cried Ann 
 Woltor. "But the girl the girl is my girl 
 my own little girl my own big little girl." 
 
 "What!" I gasped. "What!" As though
 
 216 RAINY WEEK 
 
 my knees had turned to straw I sank into the 
 nearest chair. 
 
 With the curious exultancy of a long strain 
 finally relaxed, I saw Ann Woltor s immobile 
 face flame suddenly with amusement. 
 
 "Did you think I was talking just weather 
 with your husband all that first harrowing day 
 and evening? In the carl In the bungalow? 
 Oh, no not weather!" she exclaimed. "Not 
 even just the May Girl, as you call her, but 
 everything! Your husband discovered it 
 that first morning in the car," she annotated 
 hurriedly. "I dropped my watch. It had a 
 picture in it. A picture of May taken last 
 year. Dr. Brawne sent it to me." 
 
 "Yes, but Dr. Brawne?" I puzzled. 
 
 "Oh, I knew that May was to be married," 
 she frowned. "And to a man a good deal 
 older than herself. Dr. Brawne wrote me that. 
 But what he quite neglected to mention, " 
 once again the frown deepened, "was that 
 the old man was himself. I like Dr. Brawne. 
 He is a very brilliant man. But I certainly 
 do not approve of him as my daughter s hus 
 band. There are reasons. One need not go 
 into them now," she acknowledged. "At least 
 they do not specially concern his age. My
 
 RAINY WEEK 217 
 
 daughter would hardly be happy with a boy 
 I think. Boys do not usually like simplicity. 
 It takes a mature man to appreciate sim 
 plicity." 
 
 "Yes, but the discovery?" I fretted. "Your 
 own discovery? Just when?" 
 
 "In the train of course, coming down that 
 first night!" cried Ann Woltor. "I thought 
 I should go mad. I thought at every station 
 I would jump off. And then Rollins s bun 
 gling remark the next day about my tooth gave 
 me the chance, as I supposed, to get away. 
 Except for that awkward accident to my 
 watch I should have gotten away. Your hus 
 band implored me for my own sake, for every 
 one 9 s sake, to stop and consider. There was 
 so much to consider. I had all my proofs 
 with me, my letters, my papers, my marriage 
 certificate. We went to the Bungalow. We 
 thrashed it all out. I was still mad to get 
 away. I had no other wish in the world ex 
 cept to get away! Your husband presuaded 
 me that my duty was here to watch my girl 
 to get acquainted with my girl before I 
 even so much as attempted meeting my other 
 problems. I was very rattled. I left my 
 broken watch in the bungalow! The picture
 
 218 RAINY WEEK 
 
 was still in it! That s why I went back! I 
 wasn t sure eyen then that I would disclose 
 my identity even to my daughter! For that 
 reason alone I made your husband promise 
 that he would not betray my secret even to 
 you. If I decided to tell all right. But I 
 wished no such decision forced upon me!" 
 
 "Oh, Ann, Ann dear," I cried, "don t tell 
 me any more, you ve suffered enough. Just 
 Rollins s bungling alone the impudence of 
 him !" 
 
 "Rollins? Rollins?" intercepted that pesti 
 ferous gentleman s voice suddenly. "Do I 
 hear my name bandied by festive voices?" In 
 another moment the Pest himself stood beside 
 us. 
 
 My Husband is by no means a swearing 
 man, but I distinctly heard from his unwonted 
 lips at that moment a muttered blasphemy that 
 would make a stevedore blush for shame. 
 
 Despite all her terrible stress and strain 
 Ann Woltor smiled actually smiled. 
 
 My Husband gasped. The cause of that 
 gasp was only too evident. Once again we saw 
 Rollins s ominous gaze fixed with unalterable 
 intent on Ann Woltor s face. What was meant
 
 RAINY WEEK 219 
 
 to be an ingratiating smile quickened suddenly 
 in his eyes. 
 
 "Truly, Miss Woltor," he said, "tell me, 
 why don t you get it fixed!" 
 
 For an instant I thought Ann Woltor would 
 scream. For an instant I thought Ann Woltor 
 would faint, then quicker than chain lighting, 
 right there before our eyes we saw her make 
 her great decision. It was as though her brain 
 was glass and we could see its every working. 
 
 "All right," said Ann Woltor, very quietly. 
 "All right you Damn fool I will tell you! 
 I will tell everybody!" 
 
 For the first time in his life I saw Rollins 
 stagger ! 
 
 But Rollins could not remain prostrate even 
 under such a rebuff as this. 
 
 "Why er thank you thank you very 
 much," he rallied with his first returning 
 breath. "Shall I shall I call the others?" 
 
 "By all means, call them quickly," said 
 Ann Woltor. 
 
 "Oh, Ann! "I protested. 
 
 "I mean it," she said. Her face was 
 strangely quiet. "The time has come I ve 
 made up my mind at last."
 
 220 RAINY WEEK 
 
 From the door of the porch we heard 
 Kollins s piping voice. 
 
 "Mr. Brenswick! Mr. Keets! Kennil- 
 worth! Allan John! Come on! Miss Wol- 
 tor s going to tell us a story!" 
 
 With vaguely responsive interest, the people 
 came trooping in. 
 
 "A story ?" brightened the Bride. "Oh, 
 lovely what is it about?" 
 
 "The story of my broken tooth," said Ann 
 Woltor, very trenchantly, "told by request 
 Mr. Rollins s request," she added. 
 
 With a single comprehensive glance at my 
 tortured face at my Husband s at Ann 
 Woltor s, Claude Kennilworth turned sharply 
 on his heel and started to leave the room. 
 
 "What, don t you want to hear the story?" 
 piped Rollins. 
 
 "No, not by a damn sight," snapped Ken 
 nilworth. 
 
 "But I want you to hear it," said Ann Wol 
 tor, still in that deadly quiet but absolutely 
 firm voice. 
 
 George Keets *s lips were drawn suddenly to 
 a mere thin white line. 
 
 "One has no desire to intrude, Miss Wol 
 tor," he protested.
 
 RAINY WEEK 221 
 
 "It is no intrusion," said Aim Woltor. 
 
 For a single hesitating moment her sombre 
 eyes swept the waiting group. Then, without 
 further break or pause, she plunged into her 
 narrative. 
 
 "I am the May GirPs mother," she said. 
 "I ran away from the May Girl s father. I 
 ran away with another man. I don t pretend 
 to explain it. I don t pretend to condone it. 
 This is not a discussion of ethics but a mere 
 statement of history. All that I insist upon 
 your understanding is that I ran away from 
 a legalized life of incessant fault-finding and 
 criticism to an unlegalized life of absolute 
 approval and love. 
 
 "I cannot even admit, after the first big 
 wrench, of course, that I greatly regretted the 
 little child I left behind. Mothers are always 
 supposed to regret such things I know, but I 
 was not perhaps a normal mother. I suffered, 
 of course, but it was a suffering that I could 
 stand. I could not stand, it seems, the suffer 
 ing of living with my child s father. 
 
 "My husband followed us after a few 
 months, not so much for outraged love, I 
 think, as for vindictiveness. We met in a 
 cafe, the three of us. My husband and my
 
 222 RAINY WEEK 
 
 lover were both cool-blooded men. My lover 
 was a Quaker who had never yet lifted his 
 hand against any man. The two men started 
 arguing. I came of a hot-blooded family. I 
 had never seen men arguing only about a 
 woman before. More than that I was vain. 
 I was foolish. The biggest portrait painter 
 of the hour had chosen me for what he con 
 sidered would be his masterpiece. I taunted 
 my lover and my husband with the fact that 
 neither of them loved me. John Stoltor struck 
 my husband. It was the first blow. My hus 
 band made a furious attack on him. I tried 
 to intervene. He struck me instead, with such 
 damage as you note. Enraged beyond all 
 sanity at the sight, John Stoltor killed him. 
 
 "Even then, so overwrought as I was, so be 
 wildered with my mouth all cut and bleeding, 
 I snatched up a mirror to gauge the extent of 
 my ruin. John Stoltor spoke to me the only 
 harsh words of his life. 
 
 "Your damage can be repaired in an hour," 
 he said "but his mine never I" 
 
 "It was at that moment they took him away 
 almost fifteen years it has been. He did 
 not have to pay the extreme penalty. There 
 were extenuating circumstances the judge
 
 RAINY WEEK 223 
 
 thought. His time expires next month. I am 
 waiting for him. I have been waiting for 
 fifteen years. At least he will see that I have 
 subjugated my vanity. I swore that I would 
 never mend my damage until I could help him 
 mend his." 
 
 With a little gesture of fatigue she turned 
 to Rollins. "This is the story of the broken 
 tooth, " she finished, quite abruptly. 
 
 "Wasn t Allan John even listening?" I 
 thought. With everyone else s eyes fairly 
 glued to Ann Woltor s arresting face, even 
 now, at the supreme climax of her narrative, 
 his eyes seemed focussed far away. Instinct 
 ively I followed his gaze. At the top of the 
 stairs, her arms holding tight to the banisters 
 for support, sat the May Girl! 
 
 In the almost breathless moment that en 
 sued, Rollins swallowed twice only too au 
 dibly. 
 
 "All the same" insisted Rollins hesitating 
 ly, "all the same I really do think that " 
 
 With a little cry that might have meant 
 almost anything, the Bride jumped up sud 
 denly and threw her arms around Ann Wol 
 tor s neck. 
 
 Even at twilight time everybody was still
 
 224 RAINY WEEK 
 
 discussing the problem of the May Girl. Cer 
 tainly there was plenty of problem to discuss. 
 
 The question of an innocent young girl on 
 the very verge of her young womanhood. The 
 question of a practically unknown mother. The 
 question of a shattered unrelated man coming 
 fresh to them from fifteen years in prison. The 
 question even of Dr. Brawne. Everybody had 
 his or her own impractical or unsatisfactory 
 solution to suggest. Everybody, that is, ex 
 cept Allan John. 
 
 Allan John as usual had nothing to say. 
 
 Upstairs, in the privacy of her own room, 
 Ann Woltor and the May Girl, without undue 
 emotion, were very evidently threshing out the 
 problem for themselves. 
 
 Yet when they came down and joined us 
 just before supper-time, it was only too evi 
 dent from their tired faces that they had 
 reached no happier conclusion than ours. 
 
 George Keets and my Husband brought the 
 May Girl down. Claude Kennilworth, quite in 
 his old form, save for his splinted arm, super 
 intended the expedition. 
 
 "It s her being so beastly long," scolded 
 Kennilworth, "that makes the job so hard!"
 
 RAINY WEEK 225 
 
 In the depths of the big leather chair the 
 May Girl didn t look very long to me, but she 
 did look astonishingly frail. 
 
 With a gesture of despair, .Arm Woltor 
 turned to her companions, as if she had read 
 our thoughts. 
 
 "There isn t any solution," she said. 
 
 Why all of us turned just then to Allan 
 John I don t know, but it became perfectly 
 evident to everyone at that moment that Allan 
 John was about to speak. 
 
 "It seems quite clear to me," said Allan 
 John simply. "It seems quite natural to me 
 somehow," he added, "that you should all 
 come home with me to my ranch in Montana. 
 The little girl needs it the big outdoors the 
 animals the life she craves. You need it," 
 he said, turning to Ann Woltor, "the peace of 
 it, the balm of it. But most of all John Stoltor 
 will need it when it is time for him to come. 
 Far from prying eyes, safe from intrusive 
 questionings, that certainly will be the perfect 
 chance for you all to plan out your new lives 
 together. How much it would mean to me 
 not to have to go back alone I need not say." 
 
 Startled at his insight, compelled by his
 
 226 RAINY WEEK 
 
 sincerity, Ann Woltor saw order dawn sud 
 denly out of the chaos of her emotions. 
 
 From her frankly quivering lips a single 
 protest wavered. 
 
 "But Allan John," she cried, "you ve only 
 known us four days." 
 
 Across Allan John s haggard face flickered 
 the faintest possible suggestion of a smile. 
 
 "I was a stranger and you took me in." 
 
 With the weirdest possible sense of super 
 natural benediction, the dark room flooded 
 suddenly with light. From the window, just 
 beyond me, I heard my Husband s astonished 
 exclamation : 
 
 "Look, Mary," he cried, "come quickly." 
 
 At an instant I was at his side. 
 
 Across the murky western sky the tumultu 
 ous storm-clouds had broken suddenly into 
 silver and gold. In a blaze of glory the set 
 ting sun fairly streamed into our faces. 
 
 Struggling up from the depths of her chair 
 to view it even the May Girl s pallid cheeks 
 caught up their share of the radiance. 
 
 "Oh, Allan John," she laughed, "just see 
 what you have done you ve shined up all the 
 world."
 
 RAINY WEEK 227 
 
 With a curiously significant expression on 
 his face my Husband leaned toward me quickly. 
 
 "Ring down the curtain, quick," he whis 
 pered. "The Play s done Rainy Week is 
 over."
 
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