The Unspeakable Perk

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"Don't gloom at me with those awful glasses," she said fretfully.
"I feel as if I were being stared at by a hidden person."

He disregarded the protest.

"If I get this message through, can you guarantee that your father
will take out the yacht as soon as the Dutch send word to him?"

"Oh, yes. He will do that. How are you going to deliver the
message?"

Again her words might as well not have been spoken.

"You'd better have your luggage ready for a quick start."

"Will it be soon?"

"It may be."

"How shall we know?"

"I will get word to you."

"Bring it?"

He shook his head.

"No; I fear not. This is good-bye."

"You're very casual about it," she said, aggrieved. "At least, it
would be polite to pretend."

"What am I to pretend?"

"To be sorry. Aren't you sorry? Just a little bit?"

"Yes; I'm sorry. Just a little bit--at least."

"I'm most awfully sorry myself," she said frankly. "I shall miss
you."

"As a curiosity?" he asked, smiling.

"As a friend. You have been a friend to us--to me," she amended
sweetly. "Each time I see you, I have more the feeling that you've
been more of a friend than I know."

"'That which thy servant is,'" he quoted lightly. But beneath the
lightness she divined a pain that she could not wholly fathom.
Quite aware of her power, Miss Polly Brewster was now, for one of
the few times in her life, stricken with contrition for her use of
it.

"And I--I haven't been very nice," she faltered. "I'm afraid"
sometimes I've been quite horrid."

"You? You've been 'the glory and the dream.' I shall be needing
memories for a while. And when the glory has gone, at least the
dream will remain--tethered."

"But I'm not going to be a dream alone," she said, with wistful
lightness. "It's far too much like being a ghost. I'm going to be
a friend, if you'll let me. And I'm going to write to you, if you
will tell me where. You won't find it so very easy to make a mere
memory of me. And when you come home--When ARE you coming home?"

He shook his head.

"Then you must find out, and let me know. And you must come and
visit us at our summer place, where there's a mountain-side that
we can sit on, and you can pretend that our lake is the Caribbean
and hate it to your heart's content--"

"I don't believe I can ever quite hate the Caribbean again."

"From this view you mustn't, anyway. I shouldn't like that. As for
our lake, nobody could really help loving it. So you must be sure
and come, won't you?"

"Dreams!" he murmured.

"Isn't there room in the scientific life for dreams?"

"Yes. But not for their fulfillment."

"But there will be beetles and dragon-flies on our mountain," she
went on, conscious of talking against time, of striving to put off
the moment of departure. "You'll find plenty of work there. Do you
know, Mr. Beetle Man, you haven't told me a thing, really, about
your work, or a thing, really, about yourself. Is that the way to
treat a friend?"

"When I undertook to spread before you the true and veracious
history of my life," he began, striving to make his tone light,
"you would none of it."

"Are you determined to put me off? Do you think that I wouldn't
find the things that are real to you interesting?"

"They're quite technical," he said shyly.

"But they are the big things to you, aren't they? They make life
for you?"

"Oh, yes; that, of course." It was as if he were surprised at the
need of such a question. "I suppose I find the same excitement and
adventure in research that other men find in politics, or war, or
making money."

"Adventure?" she said, puzzled. "I shouldn't have supposed
research an adventurous career, exactly."

"No; not from the outside." His hidden gaze shifted to sweep the
far distances. His voice dropped and softened, and, when he spoke
again, she felt vaguely and strangely that he was hardly thinking
of her or her question, except as a part of the great wonder-world
surrounding and enfolding their companioned remoteness.

"This is my credo," he said, and quoted, half under his breath:--

"'We have come in search of truth,
Trying with uncertain key
Door by door of mystery.
We are reaching, through His laws,
To the garment hem of Cause.
As, with fingers of the blind,
We are groping here to find
What the hieroglyphics mean
Of the Unseen in the seen;
What the Thought which underlies
Nature's masking and disguise;
What it is that hides beneath
Blight and bloom and birth and death.'"

Other men had poured poetry into Polly Brewster's ears, and she
had thought them vapid or priggish or affected, according as they
had chosen this or that medium. This man was different. For all
his outer grotesquery, the noble simplicity of the verse matched
some veiled and hitherto but half-expressed quality within him,
and dignified him. Miss Brewster suffered the strange but not
wholly unpleasant sensation of feeling herself dwindle.

"It's very beautiful," she said, with an effort. "Is it Matthew
Arnold?"

"Nearer home. You an American, and don't know your Whittier? That
passage from his 'Agassiz' comes pretty near to being what life
means to me. Have I answered your requirements?"

"Fully and finely."

She rose from the rock upon which she had been seated, and
stretched out both hands to him. He took and held them without
awkwardness or embarrassment. By that alone she could have known
that he was suffering with a pain that submerged consciousness of
self.

"Whether I see you again or not, I'll never forget you," she said
softly. "You HAVE been good to me, Mr. Perkins."

"I like the other name better," he said.

"Of course. Mr. Beetle Man." She laughed a little tremulously.
Abruptly she stamped a determined foot. "I'm NOT going away
without having seen my friend for once. Take off your glasses, Mr.
Beetle Man."

"Too much radiance is bad for the microscopical eye."

"The sun is under a cloud."

"But you're here, and you'd glow in the dark."

"No; I'm not to be put off with pretty speeches. Take them off.
Please!"

Releasing her hand, he lifted off the heavy and disfiguring
apparatus, and stood before her, quietly submissive to her wish.
She took a quick step backward, stumbled, and thrust out a hand
against the face of the giant rock for support.

"Oh!" she cried, and again, "Oh, I didn't think you'd look like
that!"

"What is it? Is there anything very wrong with me?" he asked
seriously, blinking a little in the soft light.

"No, no. It isn't that. I--I hardly know--I expected something
different. Forgive me for being so--so stupid."

In truth, Miss Polly Brewster had sustained a shock. She had
become accustomed to regard her beetle man rather more in the
light of a beetle than a man. In fact, the human side of him had
impressed her only as a certain dim appeal to sympathy; the
masculine side had simply not existed. Now it was as if he had
unmasked. The visage, so grotesque and gnomish behind its
mechanical apparatus, had given place to a wholly different and
formidably strange face. The change all centered in the eyes. They
were wide-set eyes of the clearest, steadiest, and darkest gray
she had ever met; and they looked out at her from sharply angled
brows with a singular clarity and calmness of regard. In their
light the man's face became instinct with character in every line.
Strength was there, self-control, dignity, a glint of humor in the
little wrinkles at the corner of the mouth, and, withal a sort of
quiet and sturdy beauty.

She had half-turned her face from him. Now, as her gaze returned
and was fixed by his, she felt a wave of blood expand her heart,
rush upward into her cheeks, and press into her eyes tears of
swift regret. But now she was sorry, not for him, but for herself,
because he had become remote and difficult to her.

"Have I startled you?" he asked curiously. "I'll put them back on
again."

"No, no; don't do that!" She rallied herself to the point of
laughing a little. "I'm a goose. You see, I've pictured you as
quite different. Have you ever seen yourself in the glass with
those dreadful disguises on?"

"Why, no; I don't suppose I have," he replied, after reflection.
"After all, they're meant for use, not for ornament."

By this time she had mastered her confusion and was able to
examine his face. Under his eyes were circles of dull gray,
defined by deep lines,

"Why, you're worn out!" she cried pitifully. "Haven't you been
sleeping?"

"Not much."

"You must take something for it." The mothering instinct sprang to
the rescue. "How much rest did you get last night?"

"Let me see. Last night I did very well. Fully four hours."

"And that is more than you average?"

"Well, yes; lately. You see, I've been pretty busy."

"Yet you've given up your time to my wretched, unimportant little
stupid affairs! And what return have I made?"

"You've made the sun shine," he said, "in a rather shaded
existence."

"Promise me that you'll sleep to-night; that you won't work a
stroke."

"No; I can't promise that."

"You'll break down. You'll go to pieces. What have you got to do
more important than keeping in condition?"

"As to that, I'll last through. And there's some business that
won't wait."

Divination came upon her.

"Dad's message!"

"If it weren't that, it would be something else."

Her hand went out to him, and was withdrawn.

"Please put on your glasses," she said shyly.

Smiling, he did her bidding.

"There! Now you are my beetle man again. No, not quite, though.
You'll never be quite the same beetle man again."

"I shall always be," he contradicted gently.

"Anyway, it's better. You're easier to say things to. Are you
really the man who ran away from the street car?" she asked
doubtfully.

"I really am."

"Then I'm most surely sure that you had good reason." She began to
laugh softly. "As for the stories about you, I'd believe them less
than ever, now."

"Are there stories about me?"

"Gossip of the club. They call you 'The Unspeakable Perk'!"

"Not a bad nickname," he admitted. "I expect I have been rather
unspeakable, from their point of view."

A desire to have the faith that was in her supported by this man's
own word overrode her shyness.

"Mr. Beetle Man," she said, "have you got a sister?"

"I? No. Why?"

"If you had a sister, is there anything--Oh, DARN your sister!"
broke forth the irrepressible Polly. "I'll be your sister for
this. Is there anything about you and your life here that you'd be
afraid to tell me?"

"No."

"I knew there wasn't," she said contentedly. She hesitated a
moment, then put a hand on his arm. "Does this HAVE to be good-
bye, Mr. Beetle Man?" she said wistfully.

"I'm afraid so."

"No!" She stamped imperiously. "I want to see you again, and I'm
going to see you again. Won't you come down to the port and bring
me another bunch of your mountain orchids when we sail--just for
good-bye?"

Through the dull medium of the glasses she could feel his eyes
questioning hers. And she knew that once more before she sailed
away, she must look into those eyes, in all their clarity and all
their strength--and then try to forget them. The swift color ran
up into her cheeks.

"I--I suppose so," he said. "Yes."

"Au revoir, then!" she cried, with a thrill of gladness, and fled
up the rock.

The Unspeakable Perk strode down his path, broke into a trot, and
held to it until he reached his house. But Miss Polly, departing
in her own direction, stopped dead after ten minutes' going. It
had struck her forcefully that she had forgotten the matter of the
expense of the message. How could she reach him? She remembered
the cliff above the rock, and the signal. If a signal was valid in
one direction, it ought to work equally well in the other. She had
her automatic with her. Retracing her steps, she ascended the
cliff, a rugged climb. Across the deep-fringed chasm she could
plainly see the porch of the quinta with the little clearing at
the side, dim in the clouded light. Drawing the revolver, she
fired three shots.

"He'll come," she thought contentedly.

The sun broke from behind the obscuring cloud and sent a shaft of
light straight down upon the clearing. It illumined with pitiless
distinctness the shimmering silk of a woman's dress, hanging on a
line and waving in the first draft of the evening breeze. For a
moment Polly stood transfixed. What did it mean? Was it perhaps a
servant's dress. No; he had told her that there was no woman
servant.

As she sought the solution, a woman's figure emerged from the
porch of the quinta, crossed the compound, and dropped upon a
bench. Even at that distance, the watcher could tell from the
woman's bearing and apparel that she was not of the servant class.
She seemed to be gazing out over the mountains; there was
something dreary and forlorn in her attitude. What, then, did she
do in the beetle man's house?

Below the rock the shrubbery weaved and thrashed, and the person
who could best answer that question burst into view at a full
lope.

"What is it?" he panted. "Was it you who fired?"

She stared at him mutely. The revolver hung in her hand. In a
moment he was beside her.

"Has anything happened?" he began again, then turned his head to
follow the direction of her regard. He saw the figure in the
compound.

"Good God in heaven!" he groaned.

He caught the revolver from her hand and fired three slow shots.
The woman turned. Snatching off his hat, he signalled violently
with it. The woman rose and, as it seemed to Polly Brewster, moved
in humble submissiveness back to the shelter.

White consternation was stamped on the Unspeakable Perk's face as
he handed the revolver to its owner.

"Do you need me?" he asked quickly. "If not, I must go back at
once."

"I do not need you," said the girl, in level tones. "You lied to
me."

His expression changed. She read in it the desperation of guilt.

"I can explain," he said hurriedly, "but not now. There isn't
time. Wait here. I'll be back. I'll be back the instant I can get
away."

As he spoke, he was halfway down the rock, headed for the lower
trail. The bushes closed behind him.

Painfully Polly Brewster made her way down the treacherous footing
of the cliff path to her place on the rock. From her bag she drew
one of her cards, wrote slowly and carefully a few words, found a
dry stick, set it between two rocks, and pinned her message to it.
Then she ran, as helpless humans run from the scourge of their own
hearts.

Half an hour later the hermit, sweat-covered and breathless,
returned to the rock. For a moment he gazed about, bewildered by
the silence. The white card caught his eye. He read its angular
scrawl.

"I wish never to see you again. Never! Never! Never!"

A sulphur-yellow inquisitor, of a more insinuating manner than the
former participant in their conversation, who had been examining
the message on his own account, flew to the top of the cliff.

"Qu'est-ce qu'elle dit? Qu'est-ce qu'elle dit?" he demanded.

For the first time in his adult life the beetle man threw a stone
at a bird.

VIII

LOS YANKIS

Luncheon on the day following the kiskadee bird's narrow squeak
for his life was a dreary affair for Mr. Fitzhugh Carroll.
Business had called Mr. Brewster away. This deprivation the
Southerner would have borne with equanimity. But Miss Brewster had
also absented herself, which was rather too much for the devoted,
but apprehensive, lover. Thus, ample time was given him to
consider how ill his suit was prospering. The longer he stayed,
the less he saw of Miss Polly. That she was kinder and more
gentle, less given to teasing him than of yore, was poor
compensation. He was shrewd enough to draw no good augury from
that. Something had altered her, and he was divided between
suspicion of the last week's mail, the arrival of which had been
about contemporaneous with her change of spirit, and some local
cause. Was a letter from Smith, the millionaire, or Bobby, the
friend of her childhood, responsible? Or was the cause nearer at
hand?

For one preposterous moment he thought of the Unspeakable Perk. A
quick visualization of that gnomish, froggish face was enough to
dispel the suspicion. At least the petted and rather fastidious
Miss Brewster's fancy would be captured only by a gentleman, not
by any such homunculus as the mountain dweller. Her interest,
perhaps; the man possessed the bizarre attraction of the freakish.
But anything else was absurd. And the knight was inclined to
attaint his lady for a certain cruelty in the matter; she was
being something less than fair to the Unspeakable Perk.

The searchlight of his surmise ranged farther. Raimonda! The young
Caracunan was handsome, distinguished, manly, with a romantic
charm that the American did not underestimate. He, at least, was a
gentleman, and the assiduity of his attentions to the Northern
beauty had become the joke of the clubs--except when Raimonda was
present. By the same token, half of the gilded youth of the
capital, and most of the young diplomats, were the sworn slaves of
the girl. It was a confused field, indeed. Well, thank Heaven, she
would soon be out of it! Word had come down from her that she was
busy packing her things. Carroll wandered about the hotel, waiting
for the news that would explain this preparation.

It came, at mid-afternoon, in the person of Miss Polly herself.
Why packing trunks, with the aid of an experienced maid, should,
even in a hot climate, produce heavy circles under the eyes, a
droop at the mouth corners, and a complete submersion of vivacity,
is a problem which Carroil then and there gave up. He had too much
tact to question or comment.

"Oh, I'm so tired!" she said, giving him her hand. "Have you much
packing to do, Fitzhugh?"

"No one has given me any notice to get ready, Miss Polly."

"How very neglectful of me! We may leave at any time."

"Yes; you may. But my ship doesn't seem to be coming in very
fast."

The double entente was unintentional, but the girl winced.

"Aren't you coming with us on the yacht?"

"Am I?" His handsome face lighted hopefully.

"Of course. Dad expects you to. What kind of people should we be
to leave any friend behind, with matters as they are?"

"Ah, yes." The hope passed out of his face. "Dictates of humanity,
and that sort of thing. I think, if you and Mr. Brewster--"

"Please don't be silly, Fitz," she pleaded. "You know it would
make me most unhappy to leave you."

Rarely did the scion of Southern blood and breeding lose the self-
control and reserve on which he prided himself, but he had been
harassed by events to an unwonted strain of temper.

"Is it making you unhappy to leave any one else here?" he blurted
out.

The challenge stirred the girl's spirit.

"No, indeed! I wouldn't care if I never saw any of them again. I'm
tired of it all. I want to go home," she said, like a pathetic
child.

"Oh, Miss Polly," he began, taking a step toward her, "if you'd
only let me--"

She put up one little sunburned hand.

"Please, Fitz! I--I don't feel up to it to-day."

Humbly he subsided.

"I'd no right to ask you the question," he apologized. "It was
kind of you to answer me at all."

"You're really a dear, Fitz," she said, smiling a little wanly.
"Sometimes I wish--"

She did not finish her sentence, but wandered over to the window,
and gazed out across the square. On the far side something quite
out of the ordinary seemed to be going on.

"The legless beggar seems to have collected quite an audience,"
she remarked idly.

Her suitor joined her on the parlor balcony.

"Possibly he's starting a revolution. Any one can do it down
here."

Vehement adjuration, in a high, strident voice, came floating
across to them.

"Listen!" cried the girl. "He's speaking. English, isn't he?"

"It seems to be a mixture of English, French, and Spanish. Quite a
polyglot the friend of your friend Perkins appears to be."

She turned steady eyes upon him.

"Mr. Perkins is not my friend."

"No?"

"I never want to see him, or to hear his name again."

"Ah, then you've found out about him?"

"Yes." She flushed. "Yes--at least--Yes," she concluded.

"He admitted it to you?"

"No, he lied about it."

"I think I shall go up and make a call on Mr. Perkins," said
Carroll, with formidable quiet.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," she answered wearily. "He'd only run away
and hide." As she said it, her inner self convicted her tongue of
lying.

"Very likely. Yet, see here, Miss Polly,--I want to be fair to
that fellow. It doesn't follow that because he's a coward he's a
cad."

"He isn't a coward!" she flashed.

"You just said yourself that he'd run and hide."

"Well, he wouldn't, and he IS a cad."

"As you like. In any case, I shall make it a point to see him
before I leave. If he can explain, well and good. If not--" He did
not conclude.

"Our orator seems to have finished," observed the girl. "I shall
go back upstairs and write some good-bye notes to the kind people
here."

"Just for curiosity, I think I'll drive across and look at the
legless Demosthenes," said her companion. "I was going to do a
little shopping, anyway. So I'll report later, if he's revoluting
or anything exciting."

From her own balcony, when she reached it, Polly had a less
obstructed view of the beggar's appropriated corner, and she
looked out a few minutes after she reached the room to see whether
he had resumed his oratory. Apparently he had not, for the crowd
had melted away. The legless one was rocking himself monotonously
upon his stumps. His head was sunk forward, and from his
extraordinary mouthings the spectator judged that he must be
talking to himself with resumed vehemence. From what next passed
before her astonished vision, Miss Brewster would have suspected
herself of a hallucination of delirium had she not been sure of
normal health.

One of the well-horsed, elegant little public victorias with which
the city is so well supplied stopped at the curb, and the handsome
head of Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll was thrust forth. At
almost the same moment the Unspeakable Perk appeared upon the
steps. He was wearing a pair of enormous, misfit white gloves. He
went down to the beggar, reached forth a hand, and, to the far-
away spectator's wonder-struck interpretation, seemed to thrust
something, presumably a document, into the breast of the
mendicant's shirt. Having performed this strange rite, he leaped
up the steps, hesitated, rushed over to Carroll's equipage, and
laid violent hands upon the occupant, with obvious intent to draw
him forth. For a moment they seemed to struggle upon the sidewalk;
then both rushed upon the unfortunate beggar and proceeded to
kidnap him and thrust him bodily into the cab.

The driver turned in his seat at this point, his cue in the mad
farce having been given, and opened speech with many gestures,
whereupon Carroll arose and embraced him warmly. And with this
grouping, the vehicle, bearing its lunatic load, sped around the
corner and disappeared, while the sole interested witness retired
to obscurity, with her reeling head between her hands.

One final touch of phantasy was given to the whole affair when,
two hours later, she met Carroll, soiled and grimy, coming across
the plaza, smoking--he, the addict to thirty-cent Havanas!--an
awful native cheroot, whose incense spread desolation about him.
Further and more extraordinary, when she essayed to obtain a
solution of the mystery from him, he repelled her with emphatic
gestures and a few half-strangled words with whose
unintelligibility the cheroot fumes may have had some connection,
and hurried into the hotel, where he remained in seclusion the
rest of the day.

What in the name of all the wonders could it mean? On Mr.
Brewster's return, she laid the matter before him at the dinner
table.

"Touch of the sun, perhaps," he hazarded. "Nothing else I know of
would explain it."

"Do two Americans, a half-breed beggar, and a local coachman get
sunstruck at one and the same time?" she inquired disdainfully.

"Doesn't seem likely. By your account, though, the crippled beggar
seems to have been the little Charlie Ross of melodrama."

"Then why didn't he shout for help? I listened, but didn't hear a
sound from him."

"Movie-picture rehearsal," grunted Mr. Brewster. "I can't quite
see the heir of all the Virginias in the part. Isn't he coming
down to dinner this evening?"

"His dinner was sent up to his room. Isn't it extraordinary?"

"Ask Sherwen about it. He's coming around this evening for coffee
in our rooms."

But the American representative had something else on his mind
besides casual kidnapings.

"I've just come from a talk with the British Minister," he
remarked, setting down his cup. "He's officially in charge of
American interests, you know."

"Thought you were," said Mr. Brewster.

"Officially, I have no existence. The United States of America is
wiped off the map, so far as the sovereign Republic of Caracuna is
concerned. Some of its politicians wouldn't be over-grieved if the
local Americans underwent the same process. The British Minister
would, I'm sure, sleep easier if you were all a thousand miles
away from here."

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