_ CHAPTER XXXVII. SKIPPY RETIRES WITH HIS SCALP
CAME the last day. End of the summer, of summer's warmth. End of languid siestas on drowsy beaches, end of balmy moonlight nights, moonlight sails, moonlight picnics; end of intimate whispered half laughing, half serious intimacies
a deux. To-morrow separation and a man's life to take up again! To-morrow the chill of autumn and the melancholy of drifting leaves. The last partings to take, promises to be solemnly exchanged--heart burnings, bottom dropped out of everything, another milestone to be registered in the scurrying flight of Time!
Mr. Skippy Bedelle and Miss Vivi Balou separated themselves from the unromantic middle-aged crowd around the tennis courts and made their way up the beach to the sheltering swirls of convenient sand dunes. They walked in silence, oppressed by the greatness of their grief, from time to time their shoulders touched in dumb understanding.
"To-morrow!" said Skippy with a gulp in his throat.
"Don't!"
"To-morrow--gee!"
He carried a beach chair, four sofa cushions, two rugs, her work-bag, a box of chocolates and a romance they had dipped into.
"Don't!" repeated Miss Vivi, gazing out from under her pink parasol with stricken eyes at the unending sea.
"To-morrow afternoon at this time!"
"It's been wonderful--wonderful week."
He made a back of the chair, spread the rug and installed her solicitously. Then he camped down not too far away, not too near, pulled his cap over his eyes, locked his hands over his knees and stared out toward the horizon that, somehow, attracts at such moments.
A wind that was already cold played over the frosty waves and sent little scurries of sand twisting along the beach.
"Have a chocolate?"
"Thanks."
"Jelly or nut?"
"Nut. Thanks."
They munched in silence.
"That's the trouble with summer," said Skippy at last.
"Yes, isn't it?"
"It's rotten."
"Oh why must everything end?" said Vivi wildly.
"I can't realize that to-morrow--"
"You'll forget, men always forget."
Skippy shook his head.
"Yes. You'll write a letter or two and then heigh ho!"
"Look here, you don't mean that," said Skippy, turning on her.
Vivi's eyes dropped before his righteous indignation.
"No--no I don't mean that."
"Then don't talk that way--especially just now."
"Forgive me--Jack?"
"What?"
"You do forgive me?"
"Of course."
"You're going to do wonderful things at school," said Vivi, trying to be brave, "and I'm going to be so proud to think I know you."
"Do you think they'll let you come down to the Andover game?"
"I don't know about the game--but the Prom!"
"Gee, you'll be a knockout there!"
They ate more chocolates, while Skippy debated how to lead the conversation into the softer strain before bestowing on the object of his affections (for value exchanged, of course) the sacred emblem of the Philomathean Debating Society and bringing forth the Lawrenceville banner which was tightly folded up in his bulging hip pocket.
"I suppose you'll go back now to Dolly Travers," said Vivi, whose appetite for verbal expressions of sentiment was still far from being satisfied. "And forget all about--about this wonderful week."
"Women are fickler than men," said Skippy gloomily.
"Not--not always."
"Don't believe it."
"Out of sight out of mind."
"You know better than that," said Skippy, digging into his change pocket for the pin.
"How do I know?" said Vivi encouragingly.
"Because--" Suddenly Skippy remembered. His fingers relaxed on the pin. He brought forth his hand. "Say, you promised to read my hand you know."
"Did I?"
"Sure you did."
Miss Vivi sat up and carefully pillowed the squat calloused hand in her soft one. For a moment she studied it, turning it over and back again, running her finger meditatively over the mounds and depressions.
"Well?" said Skippy anxiously.
"Shall I tell all?"
"Everything."
"You have a very strong will--very obstinate and not easily influenced. Ambition will be your god and you will sacrifice--" Vivi hesitated.
"I say, go on."
"So far is true, isn't it?"
"Well, pretty true," said Skippy, who began to enjoy his portrait.
"You will sacrifice everything to your ambition--friends, family, the woman who loves you."
"Oh, I say!"
"It's here in your hand," said Vivi, shocked at the discovery. "Women will play very little part in your life. It's not that you haven't a lot to give, you have. See this bump, that's affection. It's very developed."
"That's where I threw my thumb out of joint," said Skippy doubtfully.
"But you've had a terrible experience in your life that has shaken your faith and you are afraid to trust again." Skippy looked the picture of gloom at this and thought bitterly on Mimi Lafontaine after hesitating once or twice on the backward journey. "This has made you cynical and cold, ready to impute the lowest motives. Women will love you--many women, but you will give your heart only once more--and that--
that will be a tragedy, on account of your own lack of faith."
"Say, is all that there?" said Skippy, beginning to be alarmed.
"That and more," said Vivi, warming up. "You are very loyal, not at all conceited, brilliant intellectual qualities and you will make a success--" Here Vivi paused and turned his hand over, studying it carefully. "I see railroads and banking in your hand."
"Do you think so?" said Skippy unconvinced.
"There it is. You will make loads and loads of money."
"I say, do I get married?"
"That is not quite clear," said Vivi frowning. "This looks like it--but again this line--the cold calculating streak in your nature--"
At this moment, from down the beach, came a shrill whistle imitative of the whip-poor-will, insistent, querulous and repeated.
Vivi dropped his hand and glanced hastily at her watch.
"Good heavens, it's four o'clock!"
"All right, I'm on. Who's the little bird?" said Skippy, who had not heard himself described as the acme of suspicion for nothing.
"Jack!"
The whip-poor-will rose to shriller heights.
"It's Charlie Brownrigger," said Vivi, trying to appear embarrassed, "and he's come round to say good-bye."
"Oh, indeed."
"I
had to let him say good-bye," said Vivi imploringly to the young sultan. "I've treated him abominably since you came. I can't be rude to a chap, can I? I'll be right back."
"How long's it going to take?" asked Skippy, drawing out his watch.
"Oh about twenty minutes," said Vivi.
"I'll wait exactly half an hour. Four-thirty to the minute. Not a second more."
"I do believe you're jealous, Jack Bedelle!" said Vivi expectantly.
"Jealousy has no part in my nature," said Skippy loftily. "Besides you can see it in my hand. Firmness, that's all!"
"Brute!" said Vivi with a killing glance.
She picked up the pink parasol and hastened down the beach. Skippy fished out the Philomathean Debating Society pin and slowly attached it to his vest. He switched to the vacated place with the back rest and began to whistle to himself. At the end of a seeming hour he glanced at his watch. Exactly seven minutes had elapsed.
"Half an hour was a mistake. Fifteen minutes is enough for a mut like Brownrigger. I should have been firmer. When a girl gets you to waiting for her--she has you going and coming. Firmer, I should have been much firmer!"
He slipped off his shoes to empty them of sand, and in doing so filled the gayly coloured work-bag that was Vivi's. His toilette finished, he took up the bag to clean it in turn. At the first touch as fate had decreed a book tumbled out and lay with opened pages before him. It looked most suspiciously like a diary. He averted his eyes and then his glance came slowly back to it.
"Here, that's not square," he said to himself angrily, torn by a mighty temptation. He leaned over and closed the book abruptly. The next moment he was staring at three gilded words that confronted him with the suddenness of Belshazzar's vision:
THE CHAP RECORD
A sudden brain storm swept over the emotional nature of Mr. Skippy Bedelle, of the sort which in modern legal etiquette is held to excuse all crimes. He knew what a chap record was. He had found one in his sister Clara's bureau and had been lavishly paid for his silence. He opened it violently and this is what he read:
HARRY FELTON. June 30-Sept. 6th. Good-looking in a soapy sort of way, but dull: Good dancer, agonizingly slow at a twosing. Takes what you give him and is grateful. Good for last minute calls.
JOE RANDOLPH. July 2d-August 6th. Awfully lavish and liberal. Spoiled and hard to keep in place. Useful later. Salt away for College Prom.
CHARLES BROWNRIGGER. Xmas to--. Terribly proper and easily shocked. Every girl an angel. Seeking a good influence. Good only for concerts and lectures.
CHARLIE DULER. Easter vacation. Professional flirt. Tried hard for him but no go. On to all the old tricks. Too much alike.
HECTOR CHISOLM. May 3 to May 6th. Three day rush fast and furious. Nice teeth and eyes, cold English style in daytime but wilts rapidly in the moonlight. Dreadfully exciting. Au revoir!
* * * * *
Having thus wandered through the carnage, Skippy braced himself and read:
* * * * *
JACK BEDELLE. August 20th--Dreadfully young and conceited, feed him on flattery--nice eyes but funny nose--poor conversationalist but works hard. Dreadful dancer. Pretends indifference but awfully soft in spots. Hooked him in twenty minutes--
* * * * *
Skippy laid the book down in his lap and glanced up the beach which showed no signs of an advancing parasol. Then he looked at his watch which indicated exactly the half hour. He sat a long moment thinking. Then he opened the book and at the paragraph devoted to him he added:
"Easy to hook is hard to hold."
But this did not satisfy him. He stood up and suddenly inspired sunk to his knees and hurriedly gathered together the sand into a mound capable of burying Miss Vivi's little body. Across it he laid the opened book. At its head he placed the box of chocolates as a headstone. Then below he wrote in the sand (symbol indeed of transient loves):
SACRED TO THE MEMORY
OF
VIOLET BALOU
SLAIN BY HER OWN HAND
August 27th, 1896.
Then as a masterly afterthought he added savagely:
GONE AND NOW FORGOTTEN
Mr. Skippy Bedelle then wriggled away through the sand dunes just as Miss Vivi Balou with malice aforethought came up the beach accompanied by Mr. Charles Brownrigger. _