to learn,” said Jim.
“And you see,” went on Amanthis, looking at him rather anxiously, “I’d been invited up to Southampton to visit my cousins—and when you said you were going, I wanted to see what you’d do. I always slept at the Harlans’ but I kept a room at the boardinghouse so you wouldn’t know. The reason I didn’t get there on the right train was because I had to come early and warn a lot of people to pretend not to know me.”
Jim got up, nodding his head in comprehension.
“I reckon I and Hugo had better be movin’ along. We got to make Baltimore by night.”
“That’s a long way.”
“I want to sleep south tonight,” he said simply.
Together they walked down the path and past the idiotic statue of Diana on the lawn.
“You see,” added Amanthis gently, “you don’t have to be rich up here in order to—to go around, any more than you do in Georgia—” She broke off abruptly, “Won’t you come back next year and start another Academy?”
“No mamm, not me. That Mr. Harlan told me I could go on with the one I had but I told him no.”
“Haven’t you—didn’t you make money?”
“No mamm,” he answered. “I got enough of my own income to just get me home. I didn’t have my principal along. One time I was way ahead but I was livin’ high and there was my rent an’ apparatus and those musicians. Besides, there at the end I had to pay what they’d advanced me for their lessons.”
“You shouldn’t have done that!” cried Amanthis indignantly.
“They didn’t want me to, but I told ’em they’d have to take it.”
He didn’t consider it necessary to mention that Mr. Harlan had tried to present him with a check.
They reached the automobile just as Hugo drove in his last nail. Jim opened a pocket of the door and took from it an unlabeled bottle containing a whitish-yellow liquid.
“I intended to get you a present,” he told her awkwardly, “but my money got away before I could, so I thought I’d send you something from Georgia. This here’s just a personal remembrance. It won’t do for you to drink but maybe after you come out into society you might want to show some of those young fellas what good old corn tastes like.”
She took the bottle.
“Thank you, Jim.”
“That’s all right.” He turned to Hugo. “I reckon we’ll go along now. Give the lady the hammer.”
“Oh, you can have the hammer,” said Amanthis tearfully. “Oh, won’t you promise to come back?”
“Someday—maybe.”
He looked for a moment at her yellow hair and her blue eyes misty with sleep and tears. Then he got into his car and as his foot found the clutch his whole manner underwent a change.
“I’ll say goodbye mamm,” he announced with impressive dignity, “we’re goin’ south for the winter.”
The gesture of his straw hat indicated Palm Beach, St. Augustine, Miami. His body-servant spun the crank, gained his seat and became part of the intense vibration into which the automobile was thrown.
“South for the winter,” repeated Jim, and then he added softly, “You’re the prettiest girl I ever knew. You go back up there and lie down in that hammock, and sleep—sle‑eep—”
It was almost a lullaby, as he said it. He bowed to her, magnificently, profoundly, including the whole North in the splendor of his obeisance—
Then they were gone down the road in quite a preposterous cloud of dust. Just before they reached the first bend Amanthis saw them come to a full stop, dismount and shove the top part of the car on to the bottom pan. They took their seats again without looking around. Then the bend—and they were out of sight, leaving only a faint brown mist to show that they had passed.
Love in the Night
I
The words thrilled Val. They had come into his mind sometime during the fresh gold April afternoon and he kept repeating them to himself over and over: “Love in the night; love in the night.” He tried them in three languages—Russian, French and English—and decided that they were best in English. In each language they meant a different sort of love and a different sort of night—the English night seemed the warmest and softest with a thinnest and most crystalline sprinkling of stars. The English love seemed the most fragile and romantic—a white dress and a dim face above it and eyes that were pools of light. And when I add that it was a French night he was thinking about, after all, I see I must go back and begin over.
Val was half Russian and half American. His mother was the daughter of that Morris Hasylton who helped finance the Chicago World’s Fair in 1892, and his father was—see the Almanach de Gotha, issue of 1910—Prince Paul Serge Boris Rostoff, son of Prince Vladimir Rostoff, grandson of a grand duke—“Jimber-jawed Serge”—and third-cousin-once-removed to the czar. It was all very impressive, you see, on that side—house in St. Petersburg, shooting lodge near Riga, and swollen villa, more like a palace, overlooking the Mediterranean. It was at this villa in Cannes that the Rostoffs passed the winter—and it wasn’t at all the thing to remind Princess Rostoff that this Riviera villa, from the marble fountain—after Bernini—to the gold cordial glasses—after dinner—was paid for with American gold.
The Russians, of course, were gay people on the Continent in the gala days before the war. Of the three races that used Southern France for a pleasure ground they were easily the most adept at the grand manner. The English were too practical, and the Americans, though they spent freely, had no tradition of romantic conduct. But the Russians—there was a people as gallant as the Latins, and rich besides! When the Rostoffs arrived at Cannes late in January the restaurateurs telegraphed north for the Prince’s favorite labels to paste on their champagne, and the jewelers put incredibly gorgeous articles aside to show to him—but not to the
