CHAPTER I

The engine shrieked a warning. Porters shouted, “All aboard!” As the
train shivered into action a black cocker spaniel jumped from the
baggage-car. Long ears flopping, red tongue hanging, the blue tag at his
collar flapping, he dashed into a trail which zigzagged up the hillside.
With an exclamation of dismay a girl on the step of the Pullman jumped
to the ground and gave chase. The man on the forward platform of the car
behind executed a spectacular leap and followed. The conductor of the
train yelled a protest.

On sped the spaniel. When his pursuers were almost upon him he dodged
into the underbrush only to emerge higher up with a broad grin, a
triumphant yelp and minus the blue tag. From below came a frantic
whistle, then the puff-puff of the engine as the train pulled away. With
a disturbed frown darkening his fine eyes the man looked down into the
valley where a haze of smoke lay lightly.

“Good Lord, they’ve left us!” he muttered angrily.

“Come quick! Oh, come quick! I’ve caught him,” called a breathless
voice.

With a smothered anathema on train-crews in general and this one in
particular the man picked up the soft hat the girl had dropped and
joined her. She was on her knees in a small clearing with the spaniel
clutched tightly in her arms. The light from the slanting sun dusted the
waves of her fair hair with gold, the color of her eyes fused from blue
to violet with every change of expression; her cheeks, her sturdy chin
were dented with dimples; the fine frills at throat and wrists were in
rags, the straight lines of her smart heliotrope crêpe frock accentuated
her boyish slenderness; her gray pumps were scratched irredeemably but
her voice was vibrant with triumph as she held out the wriggling black
creature in her arms.

“Here is your dog.”

“_Mine!_ Isn’t he _yours_?”

“_No!_ I saw him jump, feared that he might get lost and dashed after
him. I adore dogs. When I heard someone behind me I concluded that his
owner had joined in the chase. I couldn’t endure the thought that the
little thing might be gobbled up in this wilderness.”

She hugged the spaniel closer and sprang to her feet. With a quickly
controlled shiver she glanced over her shoulder at the dark pines and
their forest affinities which stretched up and back as far as she could
see. She looked down into the valley. With a last fiery glare at the
human atoms in the clearing the sun slid out of sight behind the hill.
As though encouraged by the retirement of the orb of day a few clouds
crawled forward. The air cooled. The mysterious sounds of unseen things
hushed to a murmur.

The lovely color ebbed from the girl’s face. Her eyes were deeply darkly
blue as she looked up at the man looking down at her. He seemed superbly
fit. There were two creases between his brows, there were stern lines
about his clean mouth, the gray eyes which steadily sustained her
scrutiny harbored a smile in their depths. She relaxed with a sigh of
relief. There was a suspicion of unsteadiness about her lips, a slight
catch in her voice as she asked:

“Has that silly train really gone?”

“It has. I’m sorry.”

“I heard them shout ‘All aboard!’ but it didn’t occur to me that they
would dare go on without us. This is the worst predicament in which my
impulsiveness has landed me to date and goodness knows my previous
record didn’t need beating. If the dog isn’t yours why, _why_ did you
follow me?”

The charm of his smile brought a responsive gleam to the girl’s eyes.

“Because when I saw you dash madly after the runaway I thought you might
need help. I know these woods.” For an instant he regarded her colorless
face, the strained white knuckles of the hands which clutched the dog’s
black coat, then he went on lightly:

“I have a mother who is a twentieth century model in all ways except her
dislike of being out after dark without a male escort. In that respect
she is hopelessly mid-Victorian. I have contracted the habit of looking
after her, so when I saw you race up the hill regardless of possible
consequences I instinctively followed to look after you. I hope that you
don’t mind?”

“_Mind!_ I should say not.” A golden thread of camaraderie ran through
the velvet of the girl’s voice; her eyes smiled with the frank
responsiveness of a boy’s as she confessed:

“I’m hopelessly mid-Victorian too. I hate the dark. The dog’s owner must
have gone on with the train blissfully unconscious of what had happened.
When he finds out will he place the blame where it belongs or will he
think that you and I conspired to snitch the spaniel who is undoubtedly
a thoroughbred? Will he?” There was a suspicion of tears in her voice as
she protested:

“Don’t stand there dumb as though I were that Gorgon female who turned
people to stone!”

The man straightened as though throwing off a spell. His laugh was
reassuring.

“Stone! You have quite the contrary effect. You——” He held the
sentence kicking in mid-air and produced a time-table. The crease
between his brows deepened as he studied it. The girl’s glance followed
his finger. Her eyes flashed up to his.

“Not another train north until morning! But I must get on; my aunt
expects me. If I do not appear Managing Martha will wire Mother and
frighten her. Can’t you do _something_?”

“Where does your aunt live?”

“At Clearwater on the coast. It is fourteen miles’ run by automobile
from the next station. How far are we from that?” She consulted the
time-table. “Is it really twenty-five miles?” she demanded in a shocked
whisper.

“Yes. Is your aunt a native or——”

“No, she is at her summer home, Shorehaven; sounds like a sailors’
retreat, doesn’t it? Wary relatives and friends have dubbed it
Match-haven. Perhaps you are going there to visit,” the girl ventured in
eager hope.

“I? There is no such glittering prospect before me. I stole a few days
for a conference in Boston and when I get home I shall be in work up to
my ears. Let’s go down the trail. I saw a log house near the track. It
is my best bet that it is a cabin belonging to a man I know. If it is I
can get into it and if we get in we will find it liberally supplied with
eats. We will have supper after which we’ll organize into a Ways and
Means Committee of two. Take your hat and give me the dog. If we put him
down he may run away and get lost. The rascal deserves to be thrashed
for getting you into this scrape.”

The color stole back into the girl’s face as she protested gaily:

“Thrashed! How like a man. Poor doggins fared forth on his own great
adventure. _You_ didn’t ask us to butt in, did you, Sweetie-peach?” she
crooned to the spaniel before she relinquished him. She gave an
occasional backward glance at the darkening forest as she followed close
at her guide’s heels.

Near the bank of a tumbling, foam-flecked stream a log house snuggled
between two towering pines. It was neither sinister nor forbidding; it
looked to be the last word in sylvan comfort. The man groped under the
wooden step in front and with a relieved, “I thought so!” produced a
key. He inserted it in a padlock and opened the door.

The girl peered in cautiously. The spaniel sniffed suspiciously. The one
room was clean and dry. The built-in bunks were piled high with
fresh-cut balsam boughs which emitted a spicy fragrance. There was a
table and three deep, roomy chairs of the type designed for the
fire-worshiper. In the fireplace once-split birch logs lay ready for
lighting. An open door in the rear showed a well-stocked wood-shed. The
man stood aside for the girl to enter. As she hesitated he smiled down
upon her.

“Welcome to our city!” Then as she stepped into the cabin he suggested,
“We’ll draw lots as to who shall light the fire and who shall forage for
eats. For some reasons it is a pity that we weren’t marooned at a
station, but we shall be a lot more comfortable here.”

“Why did the train stop? When it pulled up I went to the platform for a
breath of this glorious air. Just as I was about to inquire what had
delayed us I saw the dog, dashed after him and—here we are. I feel like
Goldilocks in the House of the Three Bears. There are three bunks and
three chairs. Hunt in the cupboard for the porridge, which should be
steaming on the table, while I touch a match to those shavings,” she
suggested as she dropped to her knees by the hearth.

“The train stopped for a hot box. The place is a repair station of
sorts.” The man’s muffled explanation oozed from the depth of the
cupboard. “We are playing in luck—Goldilocks. Here is tea, condensed
milk, canned corned beef, fifty-seven varieties of crackers and candles
to burn. We’ll take what we need and leave money to pay Father Bear.” He
deposited the supplies on the table and seized a shining tin pail. “I’ll
go for water while you prepare the collation.”

He left the door ajar as he went out. When he returned the fire was
casting fantastic shadows on the walls. The spaniel lay stretched on his
side, his back within comfortable toasting distance of the blazing logs.
He opened one eye as his rescuer entered, thumped on the floor languidly
with his tail, drew a prolonged sigh and relapsed into the arms of
Morpheus. The table was set with cups and dishes. A tin dipper full of
ferns served as a centrepiece. Candles stuck in bottles flickered
decoratively.

“Behold the festal effect,” laughed the girl as the man halted on the
threshold. “What happened to you? Your shoes are wet and muddy. Did you
fall into the stream?”

The lines between his brows deepened at the question. “No, I did a
little investigating. I told you that I thought I had been here before.
I came hunting with a fri—a man but we approached the cabin through the
woods back of it. You’ve transformed the place. The home-making fairy
with the shining wings must have endowed you royally.”

As he filled the kettle with water and swung the crane over a heap of
red coals he hummed softly:

“‘You remind me of my mother,
My mother was a lot like you,
So many little things you do,
I find . . .’”

“Go on,” the girl commanded as he stopped. “I love to hear a man sing.”

“Don’t you sing?”

“No, I whistle.”

She breathed a few soft notes, whistled a trill like the call of a bird
to its mate, minors, more experimental trills, a fragment of a dance,
then the notes of his song:

“You remind me of my mother——”

She broke off with a laugh and a little curtsey.

“Good Lord, I should say that you could whistle. I heard that song in a
musical comedy last night and the refrain has been phonographing in my
head ever since you boarded the train this morning.”

“Then you had seen me before I did my spectacular dash-for-a-dog act?”

“I had. Will Mademoiselle be seated?”

He drew out one of the chairs with a grandiloquent French-waitery bow.
As the kettle began to purr he made a cup of tea which he deposited in
front of her with a flourish. He abandoned his stage-centre manner and
took the chair opposite. He cut a piece of the corned beef and presented
it on a tin plate.

“I am not hungry. I had rather plan what we are to do next than eat,”
the girl protested.

“Nothing doing. No supper, no plan. Drink the tea, eat that meat and the
crackers. I refuse to discuss ways and means during this festive meal.
Let’s pretend that a taxi outside is gobbling our cash-on-hand while
waiting to take us to the next station. Be a good little sport, forget
our predicament and tell me what you meant by Managing Martha and
Match-haven. Methinks the lady across the table beareth a grudge against
her august aunt, what?”

The girl dimpled in delighted appreciation of his raillery. Her skin was
rosy from the fire, tiny curls lay moistly against the nape of her white
neck, her eyes had the velvety softness of purple pansies as she
answered:

“Do you insist upon hearing the story of my young life? ‘Then listen my
child——’ My father is a clergyman in a country town. He is a darling
but he belongs between book-covers, not in this hustling world. I am the
youngest of his six daughters, his boy, he calls me, perhaps because I
whistle. Mother’s sister married a man of enormous wealth. She is a
widow now and as she has no children she just naturally tries out her
theories on her nieces.”

“Managing Martha accounted for. Match-haven?”

“That stands for the worst phase of her managing. Somehow, somewhere she
was bitten with the match-making mania, only she calls it astrology. She
apparently believes that if marriages are made in heaven she is a
divinely appointed earthly deputy. Three years ago she bought a glorious
summer home and she adds an additional pearl to her rope for every
matrimonial engagement which materializes under that roof. Gunman stuff.
A notch for every victim, see? As her pearls are the size of able-bodied
peas she hands herself some bonus. That is why we call the place
Match-haven.”

The man threw back his head and shouted with laughter. The girl regarded
him with stormy eyes.

“You wouldn’t think it such a huge joke if you were one of her victims.”

“Are you?”

“I have been summoned for the sacrifice; the command was camouflaged by
an invitation. The high priestess has taken us girls one at a time.
Never before have I been invited to Shorehaven. I am the last of her
Lorraine nieces unmarried. Do you wonder that I detest Clearwater and
everything connected with it?”

“You don’t mean that she hit the matrimonial bull’s-eye five times in
one family?”

“I do. She did. Her successes are spread over a period of ten years. I
don’t wonder that you are incredulous. Aunt Martha claims that by
studying the horoscopes of her victims she has brought the right persons
together. I claim that my sisters were easy marks. As children they
contracted every disease to which they were exposed. What could be
expected when they were plucked from a manless, small-town atmosphere
and flung into a heaven of luxury which teemed with eligible males? They
caught love as they would a cold. Now Aunt Martha is concentrating on
me, ‘little Julie, the last of the Lorraine girls,’” she quoted with a
theatrical sigh.

“Then she warns you of her dark and dour design. I call that sporting of
her.”

“If you persist in chuckling about it——”

“I won’t. I promise. Go on. Who is to be wished on you?”

“Her late lamented’s nephew. I understand that he is a charmer with
thirty birthdays to his credit, has innumerable female scalps dangling
from his belt and that he is the remainder-man or ultimate consumer of
the Marshall fortune. As the stars ordain that this is his year as well
as mine to slip into double harness Aunt Martha has cannily decided to
keep the money in the family. August and September being the open season
for engagements here I am on my way to Shorehaven.”

“Is the nephew such a poor fish that he can’t select his own wife?”

“Don’t growl. You are not being lured into the spider’s parlor.”

“Why are you walking into it?”

At his tone a tint of color crept to the girl’s hair. She threw a
cracker to the spaniel who, head tilted, tongue hanging, tail thumping
the floor, sat up and begged. She kept her eyes on the dog as she
explained:

“Partly for the thrill of defying Destiny—for Destiny see Managing
Martha—even when I was a child she infuriated me. She was kind, she was
generous but oh, so bossy. Now that I am older and ought to know better,
if I find her on one side of a question I just naturally take the other.
She can’t forgive my sense of humor which I inherit from Mother.”

“Was to defy Destiny your only reason for coming?”

“You have missed your vocation. You should be Inquisitor-in-Chief for a
detective agency.”

She wrinkled her nose in laughing friendly derision and crossed her arms
on the table. As she leaned toward him the candle-light made a nimbus of
gold about her head. The laughter had gone from her voice; there was a
tiny crease of determination on her brow as she answered his question:

“I came to get possession of myself. I suppose a man can’t understand
what that means. As my sisters have married, their duties at home—Aunt
Martha has supplied any number of servants but they won’t stay in our
small town—their classes, their charities have fallen back upon me
until I, the real I, have been buried as deep as poor King Tut. I have
been at the beck and call of the parish. ‘Julie’ll do it!’ has quite
unconsciously become the family and village slogan. So when Mother’s
cousin wrote that she would be glad to live with us and help for her
board, I seized her offer as a submerged person would a rope and
accepted Aunt Martha’s invitation.”

“Only to drop into a matrimonial sea of trouble?”

“No. While I am at Shorehaven I shall think only of myself. I shall
_not_ sacrifice myself for anyone, I shall consider first _my_ welfare,
_my_ pleasure, _my_ happiness.”

“Were you thinking only of yourself when you dashed after the dog?
You’ve made a great start on your all-for-self program.”

She colored richly as she met his quizzical eyes.

“I forgot for an instant, but it won’t happen again.”

“Did your mother want you to come? Does she approve of your marrying for
money? Does your father?”

“For money? Haven’t I told you that the man is attractive? Mother adores
Dad but she has spent her life as the link between two ends of an income
which couldn’t be made to meet. Can you wonder if she hopes that I will
fall in love with someone who can provide a checking account which will
resemble the widow’s cruse? I wanted to take a business course but I
have been needed at home. However, Mother’s hopes will be blasted. I can
converse in three languages, I have been brought up on the classics,
housework and the Ladies’ Aid, but when it comes to talking to a man
under sixty, my mind collapses like a pricked balloon.”

“Good Lord, you don’t think me sixty or over, do you?”

“How subtle! I have been garrulous but you see before you the new Julie
Lorraine rising Phœnix-like from the ashes of the old Julie. I have
promised Mother that I will be as nice to Aunt Martha as is humanly
possible, that I will accept whatever she wants to give me. Heretofore I
have snubbed her whenever she has tried to be generous, so naturally she
stopped trying. Never has she sent me a frock before this. I have worn
hand-me-downs. Now I am wearing a Martharine and see what I have done to
it!” She held up her hands and regarded her torn frills with laughing
consternation.

“What is a Martharine? First cousin to a Worth or a Doucet?”

“Now I know where your women friends get their clothes. We girls coined
the word for Aunt Martha’s gifts. My frock is a Martharine, my shoes,
what there is left of them, are Martharines.”

“If you so hate hand-me-downs why isn’t your aunt’s plan a dispensation
of providence?”

“Because I don’t intend to marry at present. I am afraid of love. Love
smashes friendship between a man and a girl. When I promised Mother that
I would be nice to Aunt Martha, it was with reservations. I shall
hesitate at nothing to combat her match-making. I refuse to be
horoscoped into a pearl for her string. If I find that I am falling
under her spell—don’t laugh, her success is uncanny—I shall run away
with Billy.”

“Who is Billy?”

“William Jaffrey, the novelist.”

“Billy Jaffrey?”

“Yes. He has been my pal since our Dutch-cut days. Then and ever since
on his vacations I have tagged adoringly at his heels eager to show that
I was of as stern stuff as he. He was a relentless taskmaster and an
ardent believer in the survival of the fittest. He taught me to swim, to
handle boats, to climb trees, to ride, to drive his car.”

“Hasn’t Jaffrey sufficient money and reputation to satisfy your aunt?”

Her eyes glimmered with mischief as she whispered dramatically:

“The planets are against our union!” She relaxed into a conversational
tone. “Aunt Martha adores Billy. He spends part of each summer with her,
but she has warned him that he is not to park his heart in my vicinity.
Neither he nor I had thought of sentiment but now—you never can tell!”
She sighed theatrically. Her lips curved with laughter.

“Are you in love with Jaffrey?”

She met his stern eyes indignantly. “Of course not. I shall not
sacrifice my freedom for anyone. ‘Julie won’t do it!’ is my present
slogan. My life has been spent in a country town. Now I have fared forth
to link arms with those irresistible twins, Romance and Adventure.”

“You said that you were afraid of romance.”

“Love, man, love. I am looking for the romance of business, of politics,
for the dragon-slayers, the imprisoned princesses, the sleeping
beauties, the wicked dragons, the fairy-godmothers of real life, not for
romance for myself. Dad has brought me up to believe that if I once
succumb it is for life. He believes that marriage should be entered into
solemnly, advisedly, only through a great love or a great purpose.”

“A purpose?”

“Yes. He would be in full sympathy with a princess who formed an
alliance to save her heritage. He is a ‘Right or wrong, My Country!’
American. He had so hoped for a son. When his sixth daughter came he
determined to give her the training he would give a boy. I learned
Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech as soon as I learned my prayers and I was
brought up on Webster’s orations. Mother, fearing that Dad would make me
into an unbearable infant prodigy, stuffed my mind and imagination with
fairy-tales and saved her child.”

“What is the nephew’s name?”

“Are you back to him again? What persistence! Dallas Carfax Second.
Sounds like a boat, doesn’t it?”

“You may love Carfax. He may make you love him.”

Julie rose with a suddenness which sent her chair backward with a crash.

“You are siding with Aunt Martha. It serves me right for confiding in
you, a stranger. I suppose I did it because of your reference to your
mother, possibly because you have a tinge of Dad’s
cry-it-out-on-my-shoulder manner. You seemed own-folksy, almost as
though we had been friends in a previous incarnation. I deserve to be
disillusioned for——”

Her voice caught. Her eyes widened as she leaned toward him and warned:

“Don’t move! Keep on listening and laugh! Laugh! There is a red,
shiny-faced man looking in the window behind you! His eyes are bleak,
his expression is dev-devilish! L-look at the dog!” she whispered
hoarsely as the black spaniel ruffed his coat and gave vent to a
nerve-rasping howl.