CHAPTER XVIII

AND FOLLOWS A WANDERING FLAME THROUGH PERILOUS SEAS

They had picnic dinner early up there on the Palisades: 

Nelly and Mr. Wrenn, Mrs. Arty and Tom, Miss Proudfoot and Mrs. Samuel Ebbitt, the last of whom kept ejaculating:  “Well!  I ain’t run off like this in ten years!” They squatted about a red-cotton table-cloth spread on a rock, broadly discussing the sandwiches and cold chicken and lemonade and stuffed olives, and laughing almost to a point of distress over Tom’s accusation that Miss Proudfoot had secreted about her person a bottle of rye whisky.

Nelly was very pleasant to Mr. Wrenn, but she called him neither Billy nor anything else, and mostly she talked to Miss Proudfoot, smiling at him, but saying nothing when he managed to get out a jest about Mrs. Arty’s chewing-gum.  When he moved to her side with a wooden plate of cream-cheese sandwiches (which Tom humorously termed “cold-cream wafers”) Mr. Wrenn started to explain how he had come to enter Istra’s room.

“Why shouldn’t you?” Nelly asked, curtly, and turned to Miss Proudfoot.

“She doesn’t seem to care much,” he reflected, relieved and stabbed in his humble vanity and reattracted to Nelly, all at once.  He was anxious about her opinion of Istra and her opinion of himself, and slightly defiant, as she continued to regard him as a respectable person whose name she couldn’t exactly remember.

Hadn’t he the right to love Istra if he wanted to? he desired to know of himself.  Besides, what had he done? Just gone out walking with his English hotel acquaintance Istra!  He hadn’t been in her room but just a few minutes.  Fine reason that was for Nelly to act like a blooming iceberg!  Besides, it wasn’t as if he were engaged to Nelly, or anything like that.  Besides, of course Istra would never care for him.  There were several other besideses with which he harrowed himself while trying to appear picnically agreeable.  He was getting very much confused, and was slightly abrupt as he said to Nelly, “Let’s walk over to that high rock on the edge.”

A dusky afterglow filled the sky before them as they silently trudged to the rock and from the top of the sheer cliff contemplated the smooth and steely-gray Hudson below.  Nelly squeaked her fear at the drop and clutched his arm, but suddenly let go and drew back without his aid.

He groaned within, “I haven’t the right to help her.”  He took her arm as she hesitatingly climbed from the rock down to the ground.

She jerked it free, curtly saying, “No, thank you.”

She was repentant in a moment, and, cheerfully: 

“Miss Nash took me in her room yesterday and showed me her things.  My, she’s got such be-yoo-ti-ful jewels!  La V’lieres and pearls and a swell amethyst brooch.  My!  She told me all about how the girls used to study in Paris, and how sorry she would be to go back to California and keep house.”