The Common Law

Annan cautiously appeared, ready for rapid flight.

"Aw come on in! My face suits me. Besides, thank Heaven I've got a reputation back of it; but yours breaks the speed laws. Will you go up there with me—like a man?"

"Where?"

"To Estwich?"

"When?" inquired Annan, sceptically.

"Now!—b' jinks!"

"Have you sufficient nerve, this time?"

"Watch me."

And he dragged out a suit-case and began wildly throwing articles of toilet and apparel into it,

"Come on, Harry!" he shouted, hurling a pair of tennis shoes at the suit-case; "I've got to go while I'm excited or I'll never budge!"

But when, ten minutes later, Annan arrived, suit-case in hand, ready for love's journey, he could scarcely contrive to kick and drag Sam into the elevator, and, later, into a taxicab.

Ogilvy sat there alternately shivering and attempting to invent imperative engagements in town which he had just remembered, but Annan said angrily:

"No, you don't. This makes the seventh time I've started with you for Estwich, and I'm going to put it through or perish in a hand-to-hand conflict with you."

And he started for the train, dragging Sam with him, talking angrily all the time.

He talked all the way to Estwich, too, partly to reassure Ogilvy and give him no time for terrified reflection, partly because he liked to talk. And when they arrived at the Estwich Arms he shoved Ogilvy into a room, locked the door, and went away to telephone to the Countess d'Enver.

"Yes?" she inquired sweetly, "who is it?"

"Me," replied Annan, regardless of an unpopular grammatical convention.

"I'm here with Ogilvy. May we come to tea?"

"Is Mr. Ogilvy here?"

"Yes, here at the Estwich Arms. May I—er—may he bring me over to call on you?"

"Y-yes. Oh, with pleasure, Mr. Annan…. When may I expect hi—you?"

"In about ten minutes," replied Annan firmly.

Then he went back and looked into Ogilvy's room. Sam was seated, his head clasped in his hands.

"I thought you might tear up your sheets and let yourself out of the window," said Annan sarcastically. "You're a fine specimen! Why you're actually lantern-jawed with fright. But I don't care! Come on; we're expected to tea! Get into your white flannels and pretty blue coat and put on your dinkey rah-rah, and follow me. Or, by heaven!—I'll do murder right now!"

Ogilvy's knees wavered as they entered the gateway.

"Go on!" hissed Annan, giving him a violent shove.

Then, to Ogilvy, came that desperate and hysterical courage that comes to those whose terrors have at last infuriated them.

"By jinks!" he said with an unearthly smile, "I will come on!"

And he did, straight through the door and into the pretty living room where Hélène d'Enver rose in some slight consternation to receive this astonishingly pale and rather desperate-faced young man.

"Harry," said Ogilvy, calmly retaining Hélène's hand, "you go and play around the yard for a few moments. I have something to tell the Countess d'Enver; and then we'll all have tea."

"Mr. Ogilvy!" she said, amazed.

But Annan had already vanished; and she looked into a pair of steady eyes that suddenly made her quail.

"Hélène," he said, "I really do love you."

"Please—"

"No! I love you! Are you going to let me?"

"I—how on earth—what a perfectly senseless—"

"I know it. I'm half senseless from fright. Yes, I am, Hélène! Now! here! at this very minute, I am scared blue. That's why I'm holding on to your hand so desperately; I'm afraid to let go."

She flushed brightly with annoyance, or something or other—but he held fast to her hand and put one arm around her waist.

"Sam!" she said, exasperated. That was the last perfectly coherent word she uttered for several minutes. And, later, she was too busy to say very much.

* * * * *

When Annan returned, Hélène rose from the couch where she and Ogilvy had been seated and came across the floor, blushing vividly.

"I don't know what on earth you think of me, Mr. Annan, and I suppose I will have to learn to endure the consequences of Mr. Ogilvy's eccentricities—"

"Oh, I'm terribly glad!" said Annan, grinning, and taking her hand in both of his.

They had tea on the veranda. Ogilvy was too excited and far too happy to be dignified, and Hélène was so much embarrassed by his behaviour and so much in love that she made a distractingly pretty picture between the two young men who, as Rita had said, would never, never be old enough to grow up.

"Do you know," said Hélène, "that your friends the Nevilles have recently been very nice to me? They have called, and have returned my call, and have asked me to dinner. I suppose cordiality takes longer to arrive at maturity in New York State than in any other part of the Union. But when New York people make up their minds to be agreeable, they certainly are delightful."

"They're a bunch of snobs," said Ogilvy, calmly.

"Oh!" said Hélène with a distressed glance at Annan.

"He's one, too," observed her affianced, coolly nodding toward Annan. "We're a sickening lot, Hélène—until some charming and genuine person like you comes along to jounce us out of our smiling and imbecile self-absorption."

"I," said Annan gravely, "am probably the most frightful snob that ever wandered, in a moment of temporary aberration, north of lower Fifth Avenue."

"I'm worse," observed Sam gloomily. "Help us, Hélène, toward loftier aspirations. Be our little uplift girl—"