The Silent Battle

ildings came into focus, cleanly cut against the sparkling sky at the northern end of the Avenue; jets of steam appeared overhead and vanished at once into space; flags quivered tensely at their

dquo;[77]“They’d be there now, if the guides hadn’t found them.”“His guides?”“Yes, and hers.”“Hers! She wasn’t a native then?”“Not on your life. A New Yorker—and a clinker. That’s the mystery. Her guide came from the eastward but her camp must have been—why, what’s the matter, Coley?”Mr. Van Duyn had put his glass upon the table and had risen heavily from his easy chair, his pale blue eyes unpleasantly prominent. He pulled at his collar-band and gasped.“Heat—damn heat!” and walked away muttering.It was just in the doorway that he met Phil Gallatin, who, with a smile, was extending the hand of fellowship. He glowered at the newcomer, touched the extended fingers flabbily and departed, while Gallatin watched him go, not knowing whether to be angry or only amused. But he shrugged a shoulder and joined the group near the window.The greetings were cordial and the Colonel motioned to the servant to take Gallatin’s order.“No, thanks, Colonel,” said Gallatin, his lips slightly compressed.“Really! Glad to hear it, my boy. It’s a silly business.” And then to the waiting-man: “Make mine a Swissesse this time. It’s ruination, sir, this drinking when you don’t want it—just because some silly ass punches the bell.”“But suppose you do want it,” laughed Spencer.“Then all the more reason to refuse.”Gallatin sank into the chair that Van Duyn had vacated. These were his accustomed haunts, these were[78] his associates, but he now felt ill at ease and out of place in their company. He came here in the afternoons sometimes, but the club only made his difficulties greater. He listened silently to the gossip of the widening group of men, of somebody’s coup down town, of Larry Kane’s trip to the Rockies, of the opening of the hunting season on Long Island, the prospects of a gay winter and the thousand and one happenings that made up the life of the leisurely group of men about him. The servant brought the tray and laid the glasses.“Won’t change your mind, Phil?” asked Colonel Broadhurst again.Gallatin straightened. “No, thanks,” he repeated.“That’s right,” laughed the Colonel jovially. “The true secret of drinking is to drink when you don’t want it—and refuse when you do.”“Gad! Crosby, for a man who never refuses—” began Kane.“It only shows what a martyr I am to the usages of society,” concluded the Colonel with a chuckle.“How’s the crop of buds this year?” queried Larry Kane.“Ask ‘Bibby’ Worthington,” suggested Percy Endicott. “He’s got ’em all down, looks, condition, action, pedigree——”“Bigger than usual,” said the gentleman appealed to, “queens, too, some of ’em.”“And have you picked out the lucky one already?” laughed Spencer.“Bibby” Worthington, as everybody knew, had been “coming out” for ten years, with each season’s crop of debutantes, and each season had offered his hand and heart to the newest of them.[79]But the question touched his dignity in more than one tender spot, and he refused to reply.“They’re all queens,” sighed the Colonel, raising his glass. “I love ’em all, God bless ’em, their rosy faces, their round limpid eyes——”“And the smell of bread and jam from the nursery,” put in Spencer, the materialist, dryly. “Some newcomers, aren’t there, Billy?”“Oh, yes, a few Westerners.”“Oh, well, we need the money, you know.”The crowd broke up into groups of two and three, each with its own interests. Gallatin rose and joined Kane and Endicott at the window, where the three sat for awhile watching the endless procession of vehicles and pedestrians moving up and down the Avenue.“Good sport in Canada, I hear, Phil,” said Percy in a pause of conversation.Gallatin glanced quickly at his companion.“Fishing—yes,” he said quietly, unable to control the flush that had risen unbidden to his temples. “No shooting.”“That’s funny,” went on the blissful Endicott with a laugh. “I heard you got a deer, Phil.”“Oh, yes, one——”“A two-legged one—with skirts.”Gallatin started—his face pale.“Who told you that?” he asked, his jaw setting.“Oh, don’t get sore, Phil. Somebody’s brought the story down from Montreal—about your being lost in the woods—and—and all that,” he finished lamely. “Sorry I butted in.”“So am I,” said Gallatin, stiffly.Percy’s face crimsoned, and he stammered out an apology. He knew he had made a mistake. Gossip that[80] he was, he did not make it a habit to intrude upon other men’s personal affairs, especially men like Gallatin who were intolerant of meddlers; but the story was now common property and to that extent at least he was justified.“Don’t be unpleasant, Phil, there’s a good chap. I only thought——”“Oh, it doesn’t matter in the least,” said Gallatin, rising, suddenly aware of the fact that the whole incident would only draw his adventure into further notoriety. “Somebody’s made a good story of it,” he laughed. “I did meet a—a girl in the woods and she stayed at my ca