_ A man that you'd call your friend. Such had been Fitzhugh
Carroll's reference to the Unspeakable Perk. With that
characterization in her mind. Miss Brewster let herself drift,
after her suitor had left her, into a dreamy consideration of the
hermit's attitude toward her. She was not prone lightly to employ
the terms of friendship, yet this new and casual acquaintance had
shown a readiness to serve--not as cavalier, but as friend--none
too common in the experience of the much-courted and a little
spoiled beauty. Being, indeed, a "lady nowise bitter to those who
served her with good intent," she reflected, with a kindly light
in her eyes, that it was all part and parcel of the beetle's man's
amiable queerness.
Still musing upon this queerness, she strolled back to find her
mount waiting at the corner of the plaza. In consideration of the
heat she let her cream-colored mule choose his own pace, so they
proceeded quite slowly up the hill road, both absorbed in
meditation, which ceased only when the mule started an argument
about a turn in the trail. He was a well-bred trotting mule,
worth six hundred dollars in gold of any man's money, and he was
self-appreciative in knowledge of the fact. He brought a singular
firmness of purpose to the support of the negative of her
proposition, which was that he should swing north from the broad
into the narrow path. When the debate was over, St. John the
Baptist--this, I hesitate to state, yet must, it being the truth,
was the spirited animal's name--was considerably chastened, and
Miss Brewster more than a trifle flushed. She left him tied to a
ceiba branch at the exit from the dried creek bed, with strict
instructions not to kick, lest a worse thing befall him. Miss
Brewster's fighting blood was up, when, ten minutes late, because
of the episode, she reached the summit of the rock.
"Oh, Mr. Beetle Man, are you there?" she called.
"Yes, Voice. You sound strange. What is it?"
"I've been hurrying, and if you tell me I'm late, I'll--I'll fall
on your neck again and break it."
"Has anything happened?"
"Nothing in particular. I've been boxing the compass with a mule.
It's tiresome."
He reflected.
"You're not, by any chance, speaking figuratively of your
respected parent?"
"Certainly NOT!" she disclaimed indignantly. "This was a real
mule. You're very impertinent."
"Well, you see, he was impertinent to me, saying he was out when
he was in. What is his decision--yes or no?"
"No."
A sharp exclamation came from the nook below.
"Is that the entomological synonym for 'damn'?" she inquired.
"It's a lament for time wasted on a--Well, never mind that."
"But he wants you to carry a message by that secret route of
yours. Will you do it for him?"
"NO!"
"That's not being a very kind or courteous beetle man."
"I owe Mr. Brewster no courtesy."
"And you pay only where you owe? Just, but hardly amiable. Well,
you owe me nothing--but--will you do it for me?"
"Yes."
"Without even knowing what it is?"
"Yes."
"In return you shall have your heart's desire."
"Doubted."
"Isn't the dearest wish of your soul to drive me out of Caracuna?"
"Hum! Well--er--yes. Yes; of course it is."
"Very well. If you can get dad's message on the wire to
Washington, he thinks the Secretary of State, who is his friend,
can reach the Dutch and have them open up the blockade for us."
"Time apparently meaning nothing to him."
"Would it take much time?"
"About four days to a wire."
She gazed at him in amazement.
"And you were willing to give up four days to carry my message
through, 'unsight--unseen,' as we children used to say?"
"Willing enough, but not able to. I'd have got a messenger through
with it, if necessary. But in four days, there'll be other
obstacles besides the Dutch."
"Quarantine?"
"Yes."
"I thought that had to wait for Dr. Pruyn."
"Pruyn's here. That's a secret, Miss Brewster."
"Do you know EVERYTHING? Has he found plague?"
"Ah, I don't say that. But he will find it, for it's certainly
here. I satisfied myself of that yesterday."
"From your beggar friend?"
"What made you think that, O most acute observer?"
"What else would you be talking to him of, with such interest?"
"You're correct. Bubonic always starts in the poor quarters. To
know how people die, you have to know how they live. So I
cultivated my beggar friend and listened to the gossip of quick
funerals and unexplained disappearances. I'd have had some real
arguments to present to Mr. Brewster if he had cared to listen."
"He'll listen to Dr. Pruyn. They're old friends."
"No! Are they?"
"Yes. Since college days. So perhaps the quarantine will be easier
to get through than the blockade."
"Do you think so? I'm afraid you'll find that pull doesn't work
with the service that Dr. Pruyn is in."
"And you think that there will be quarantine within four days?"
"Almost sure to be."
"Then, of course, I needn't trouble you with the message."
"Don't jump at conclusions. There might be another and quicker
way."
"Wireless?" she asked quickly.
"No wireless on the island. No. This way you'll just have to trust
me for."
"I'll trust you for anything you say you can do."
"But I don't say I can. I say only that I'll try."
"That's enough for me. Ready! Now, brace yourself. I'm coming
down."
"Wh--why--wait! Can't you send it down?"
"No. Besides, you KNOW you want to see me. No use pretending,
after last time. Remember your verse now, and I'll come slowly."
Solemnly he began:--
"Scarab, tarantula, neurop--"
"'Doodle-bug,'" she prompted severely.
"--doodle-bug, flea,"--
he concluded obediently.
"Scarab, tarantula, doodle-bug, flea.
Scarab, tarantula, doodle--"
"Oof! I--I--didn't think you'd be here so soon!"
He scrambled to his feet, hardly less palpitating than on the
occasion of their first encounter.
"Hopeless!" she mourned. "Incurable! Wanted: a miracle of St.
Vitus. Do stop nibbling your hat, and sit down."
"I don't think it's as bad as it was," he murmured, obeying. "One
gets accustomed to you."
"One gets accustomed to anything in time, even the eccentricities
of one's friends."
"Do you think I'm eccentric?"
"Do I think--Have you ever known any one who didn't think you
eccentric?"
Upon this he pondered solemnly.
"It's so long since I've stopped to consider what people think of
me. One hasn't time, you know."
"Then one is unhuman. _I_ have time."
"Of course. But you haven't anything else to do."
As this was quite true, she naturally felt annoyed.
"Knowing as you do all the secrets of my inner life," she observed
sarcastically, "of course you are in a position to judge."
Her own words recalled Carroll's charge, and though, with the
subject of them before her, it seemed ridiculously impossible, yet
the spirit of mischief, ever hovering about her like an attendant
sprite, descended and took possession of her speech. She assumed a
severely judicial expression.
"Mr. Beetle Man, will you lay your hand upon your microscope, or
whatever else scientists make oath upon, and answer fully and
truly the question about to be put to you?"
"As I hope for a blessed release from this abode of lunacy, I
will."
"Mr. Beetle Man, have you got an awful secret in your life?"
So sharply did he start that the heavy goggles slipped a fraction
of an inch along his nose, the first time she had ever seen them
in any degree misplaced. She was herself sensibly discountenanced
by his perturbation.
"Why do you ask that?" he demanded.
"Natural interest in a friend," she answered lightly, but with
growing wonder. "I think you'd be altogether irresistible if you
were a pirate or a smuggler or a revolutionary. The romantic
spirit could lurk so securely behind those gloomy soul-screens
that you wear. What do you keep back of them, O dark and shrouded
beetle man?"
"My eyes," he grunted.
"Basilisk eyes, I'm sure. And what behind the eyes?"
"My thoughts."
"You certainly keep them securely. No intruders allowed. But you
haven't answered my question. Have you ever murdered any one in
cold blood? Or are you a married man trifling with the affections
of poor little me?"
"You shall know all," he began, in the leisurely tone of one who
commences a long narrative. "My parents were honest, but poor. At
the age of three years and four months, a maternal uncle, who,
having been a proofreader of Abyssinian dialect stories for a
ladies' magazine, was considered a literary prophet, foretold that
I--"
"Help! Wait! Stop!--
"'Oh, skip your dear uncle!' the bellman exclaimed,
And impatiently tinkled his bell."
Her companion promptly capped her verse:--
"'I skip forty years,' said the baker in tears,"--
"You can't," she objected. "If you skipped half that, I don't
believe it would leave you much."
"When one is giving one's life history by request," he began, with
dignity, "interruptions--"
"It isn't by request," she protested. "I don't want your life
history. I won't have it! You shan't treat an unprotected and
helpless stranger so. Besides, I'm much more interested to know
how you came to be familiar with Lewis Carroll."
"Just because I've wasted my career on frivolous trifles like
science, you needn't think I've wholly neglected the true
inwardness of life, as exemplified in 'The Hunting of the Snark,'"
he said gravely.
"Do you know"--she leaned forward, searching his face--"I believe
you came out of that book yourself. ARE you a Boojum? Will you,
unless I 'charm you with smiles and soap,'
"'Softly and silently vanish away,
And never be heard of again'?"
"You're mixed. YOU'D be the one to do that if I were a real
Boojum. And you'll be doing it soon enough, anyway," he concluded
ruefully.
"So I shall, but don't be too sure that I'll 'never be heard of
again.'"
He glanced up at the sun, which was edging behind a dark cloud,
over the gap.
"Is your raging thirst for personal information sufficiently
slaked?" he asked. "We've still fifteen or twenty minutes left."
"Is that all? And I haven't yet given you the message!" She drew
it from the bag and handed it to him.
"Sealed," he observed.
The girl colored painfully.
"Dad didn't intend--You mustn't think--" With a flash of generous
wrath she tore the envelope open and held out the inclosure. "But
I shouldn't have thought you so concerned with formalities," she
commented curiously.
"It isn't that. But in some respects, possibly important, it would
be better if--" He stopped, looking at her doubtfully.
"Read it," she nodded.
He ran through the brief document.
"Yes; it's just as well that I should know. I'll leave a copy."
Something in his accent made her scrutinize him.
"You're going into danger!" she cried.
"Danger? No; I think not. Difficulty, perhaps. But I think it can
be put through."
"If it were dangerous, you'd do it just the same," she said,
almost accusingly.
"It would be worth some danger now to get you away from greater
danger later. See here, Miss Brewster"--he rose and stood over
her--"there must be no mistake or misunderstanding about this."
"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. _