The Goblin Girl7
“There’s Mr. Tams with that creature!”
Nelly Fay bit her bright lip, clenched her small hand, overturned her chair, and, abandoning her mother and the veranda, rushed into the house, not omitting to slam the door.
Beyond, on the road, a motor freighted with youth and beauty had shot like a comet. Mrs. Fay blinked at it. Then, rising, she sneezed and followed her daughter.
Nelly at the moment was staring unseeingly at a tall mirror which showed back her lemon-colored frock, her slim figure, and her face, which even in anger was delicious. It takes a very pretty girl to look appetizing when she is furious, yet in that, and without trying to in the least, she succeeded. She had the loveliest features, amber hair, and eyes big and blue, blue as the sea and bluer.
But now, conscious of her mother’s approach, she turned on her.
“I do wish you wouldn’t wear that ridiculous shawl! It gives me the fidgets!”
The hall, high and wide, gravely furnished, led to the dining room. Nelly, her mother in leash, went on and into this room, where already luncheon was ready, and where Fred, her brother, a good-looking lad in admirably cut clothes, presently followed.
Sarah, a maid, whom Mrs. Fay openly treasured, served them. The midday meal began. Fred ate with quiet ferocity, Mrs. Fay uncomplainingly, Nelly not at all. But she drank. She took a whole glass of water at a gulp.
Fred, eying her, interrupted himself and laughed.
“Did you see Tams and his secretary? A hummer from Hummersville, eh?”
Nelly gave him one look. Immediately, like a beautiful whirlwind, she had gone. Surprisedly, Fred turned to his patient mother.
“I say! What’s wrong now?”
If Mrs. Fay knew, she omitted to tell. As for Nelly, if she had tried, she would have failed. She herself did not know. That she was quivering with anger, she was aware. But as will sometimes happen to angered people, she did not know what she was angry at. The week previous, she had been subjected to a grave affront. The memory of it still rankled. But it was not that. Then what was it?
In her bedroom, to which she had flown, darkly she wondered. Then, precisely as you may have seen in a moving picture, before her stood Tams.
Tams was an inventor. He had discovered a process whereby you could—one of these days—telephone along a shaft of light. He had discovered tamsar, that explosive of which the dynamics exceed the potentialities of trinitrotoluol. He had in process of completion an aeroplane that would serve as a rocking-chair and on which you could fly out of the window. Recently he had been occupied with a theatrical device which Goldburg, the showman, intended to produce in “The Goblin Girl,” a musical comedy that was to delight Broadway.
For the rest, Tams was a virile, resolute man, with eyes that, while blue, were not the blue of the sea or of the sky, but of steel. They were very determined. So, too, was his jaw. He gave the impression of getting what he wanted. At the time when this drama began, he wanted two things, neither of which he ever mentioned. There was the theatrical device. He wanted it to be a go. But first and foremost and over and beyond everything else, he wanted Nellie Fay.
In the Long Island village where, during the summer and the better part of the autumn, the Fays resided, Tams had a bungalow and a workshop. In town he had an office and presumably a clerk. In any event, during the past week he had apparently acquired a secretary, a young woman with whom he motored about and with whom, through the bungalow’s wide-open windows, he was seen at table.
Previously, of an evening, he had looked in on the Fays. Fred liked him, Mrs. Fay liked him, so did Nelly. Moreover, of an afternoon, when he could get off early enough, he and Nelly had gone for a ride.
Nelly always looked well, but she looked best astride. Her togs were perfect and perhaps a bit heady. In these togs, one green afternoon, when riding through the woods with Tams, her cob picked a stone. The immediate limp had made that so obvious that both had stopped and dismounted. In the process of extracting the stone from the hoof, they had collided. A moment later, he had got a crack on the head.
Meanwhile, he had caught her, held her, kissed her, and would have kissed her again, but she had fought free and hit out, slashing him with her crop as hard as she could across the face. It had made quite a welt. Then, in a jiffy, she had been on and off.
Tams had rubbed his face, held a hand to it, jumped on, hurried after, overtaken the girl, and apologized.
Nelly, her cheeks aflame, her nose in the air, to all intents deaf and blind, had ridden on, first at a run, then at a gallop, then at a canter. The village had been reached. There, spotting a girl, she had waved at her, hopped off and, bridle in hand, walked along to the girl’s house, where she had tied the cob and entered.
At that, Tams, whose apologies had not ceased until she had dismounted, had gritted his teeth, wheeled, and vanished.
Since then, except with that creature, Nelly had not seen him nor had she wished to. The memory of his offense was too recent. It rankled, and not at all because she had not been kissed before, for she had been. Yet, after such kisses as she had previously received, her pulse had registered normal. That woodland kiss had been different. Unwarranted and unawaited, it had hurt and alarmed her.
The hurt had passed; the alarm had subsided; only anger remained, and its persistence perplexed, for she was angry in spite of herself, angry with an anger that was akin to a fever that you cannot shake off,
