In the Quarter by Robert W. Chambers

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"Do you know," he asked, strolling up to Ruth and tucking a cluster
of bluebells under her chin, "do you know what old Hugh Montgomery
would say if he were here?"

"He'd say," she replied promptly, "that `we couldn't take no traout
with the pesky sun a shinin' and a brilin' the hull crick."'

"Yes," said Rex. "Rise at four, east wind, cloudy morning, that was
Hugh. But he could cast a fly."

"Couldn't he!" said the colonel. "`I cal'late ter chuck a bug ez
fur ez enny o' them city fellers, 'n I kin,' says Hugh. Going to begin
here, Rex?"

"What does Ruth think?"

"She thinks she isn't in command of this party," Ruth replied.

"It will take us until late in the afternoon to whip the stream from
here to the lowest bridge." Rex smiled down at her and pushed back
his cap with a boyish gesture.

She had forgotten it until that moment. Now it brought a perfect flood
of pleasant associations. She had seen him look that way a hundred
times when, in their teens, they two had lingered by the Northern
Lakes. Her whole face changed and softened, but she turned away,
nodding assent, and went and stood by her father, looking down at him
with the bantering air which was a family trait. The lively colonel
had found a sunny log on the bank, where he was sitting, leisurely
joining his rod.

"Hello!" he cried, glancing up, "what are you two amateurs about?
As usual, I'm ready to begin before Rex is awake!" and stepping to
the edge he landed his flies with a flourish in a young birch tree.
Rex came and disengaged them, and he received the assistance with
perfect self-possession.

"Now see the new waterproof rig wade!" said Ruth, saucily.

"Go and wade yourself and don't bully your old father!" cried the
colonel.

"Old! this child old!"

"Oh! come along, Ruth!" called Rex, waiting on the shore and falling
unconsciously into the tone of sixteen speaking to twelve.

For answer she slipped the cover from her slender rod and dexterously
fitted the delicate tip to the second joint.

"Hasn't forgotten how to put a rod together! Wonderful girl!"

"Oh, I knew you were waiting to see me place the second joint in the
butt first!" She deftly ran the silk through the guides, and then
scientifically knotting the leader, slipped on a cast of three flies
and picked her way daintily to the river bank. As she waded in the
sudden cold made her gasp a little to herself, but she kept straight
on without turning her head, and presently stepped on a broad, flat
rock over which the water was slipping smoothly.

Gethryn waited near the bank and watched her as she sent the silk
hissing thirty feet across the stream. The line swished and whistled,
and the whole cast, hand fly, dropper and stretcher settled down
lightly on the water. He noticed the easy motion of the wrist, the
boyish pose of the slender figure, the serious sweet face, half shaded
by the soft woolen Tam.

Swish--h--h! Swish--h--h! She slowly spun out forty feet, glancing
back at Gethryn with a little laugh. Suddenly there was a tremendous
splash, just beyond the dropper, answered by a turn of the white
wrist, and then the reel fairly shrieked as the line melted away like
a thread of smoke. Gethryn's eyes glittered with excitement, and the
colonel took his cigar out of his mouth. But they didn't shout, "You
have him! Go easy on him! Want any help!" They kept quiet.

Cautiously, and by degrees, Ruth laced her little gloved fingers over
the flying line, and presently a quiver of the rod showed that the
fish was checked. She reeled in, slowly and steadily for a moment, and
then, whiz--z--z! off he dashed again. At seventy feet the rod
trembled and the trout was still. Again and again she urged him toward
the shore, meeting his furious dashes with perfect coolness and
leading him dexterously away from rocks and roots. When he sulked she
gave him the butt, and soon the full pressure sent him flying, only to
end in a furious full length leap out of water, and another sulk.

The colonel's cigar went out.

At last she spoke, very quietly, without looking back.

"Rex, there is no good place to beach him here; will you net him,
please?" Rex was only waiting for this; he had his landing net
already unslung and he waded to her side.

"Now!" she whispered. The fiery side of a fish glittered just
beneath the surface. With a skillful dip, a splash, and a spatter the
trout lay quivering on the bank.

Gethryn quickly ended his life and held him up to view.

"Beautiful!" cried the colonel. "Good girl, Daisy! but don't spoil
your frock!" And picking up his own rod he relighted his cigar and
essayed some conscientious casting on his own account. But he soon
wearied of the paths of virtue and presently went in search of a
grasshopper, with evil intent.

Meanwhile Ruth was blushing to the tips of her ears at Gethryn's
praises.

"I never saw a prettier sight!" he cried. "You're -- you're
splendid, Ruth! Nerve, judgment, skill -- my dear girl, you have
everything!"

Ruth's eyes shone like stars as she watched him in her turn while he
sent his own flies spinning across a pool. And now there was nothing
to be heard but the sharp whistle of the silk and the rush of the
water. It seemed a long time that they had stood there, when suddenly
the colonel created a commotion by hooking and hauling forth a trout
of meagre proportions. Unheeding Rex's brutal remarks, he silently
inspected his prize dangling at the end of the line. It fell back into
the water and darted away gayly upstream, but the colonel was not in
the least disconcerted and strolled off after another grasshopper.

"Papa! are you a bait fisherman!" cried his daughter severely.

The colonel dropped his hat guiltily over a lively young cricket, and
standing up said "No!" very loud.

It was no use -- Ruth had to laugh, and shortly afterward he was
seated comfortably on the log again, his line floating with the
stream, in his hands a volume with yellow paper covers, the worse for
wear, bearing on its back the legend "Calman Levy, Editeur."

Rex soon struck a good trout and Ruth another, but the first one
remained the largest, and finally Gethryn called to the colonel, "If
you don't mind, we're going on."

"All right! take care of Daisy. We will meet and lunch at the first
bridge." Then, examining his line and finding the cricket still
there, he turned up his coat collar to keep off sunburn, opened his
book, and knocked the ashes from his cigar.

"Here," said Gethryn two hours later, "is the bridge, but no
colonel. Are you tired, Ruth? And hungry?"

"Yes, both, but happier than either!"

"Well, that was a big trout, the largest we shall take today, I
think."

They reeled in their dripping lines, and sat down under a tree beside
the lunch basket, which a boy from the lodge was guarding.

"I wish papa would come," said Ruth, with an anxious look up the
road. "He ought to be hungry too, by this time."

Rex poured her a cup of red Tyroler wine and handed her a sandwich.
Then, calling the boy, he gave him such a generous "Viertel" for
himself as caused him to retire precipitately and consume it with
grins, modified by boiled sausage. Ruth looked after him and smiled in
sympathy. "I wonder how papa got rid of the other one with the green
tin water-box."

"I know; I was present at the interview," laughed Rex. "Your father
handed him a ten mark piece and said, `Go away, you superfluous
Bavarian!"'

"In English?"

"Yes, and he must have understood, for he grinned and went."

It was good to hear the ring of Ruth's laugh. She was so happy that
she found the smallest joke delightful, and her voice was very sweet.
Rex lighted a cigarette and leaned back against a tree, in great
comfort. Ruth, perched on a log, watched the smoke drift and curl.
Gethryn watched her. They each cared as much for the hours they had
spent in the brook, and for their wet clothing, as vigorous, happy,
and imprudent youth ever cares about such things.

"So you are happy, Ruth?"

"Perfectly. And you? -- But it takes more to make a spoiled young man
happy than -- "

"Than a spoiled young woman? I don't know about that. Yes, I -- am --
happy." Was the long puff of smoke ascending slowly responsible for
the pauses between his words? A slight shadow was in his eyes for one
moment. It passed, and he turned on her his most charming smile, as he
repeated, "Perfectly happy!"

"Still no colonel!" he went on; "when he comes he will be tired. We
don't want any more trout, do we? We have eighteen, all good ones.
Suppose we rest and go back all together by the road?" Ruth nodded,
smiling to see him fondle the creel full of shining fish, bedded on
fragrant leaves.

Rex's cap lay beside him, his head leaned back against the tree, his
face was turned up to the bending branches. Presently he closed his
eyes.

It might have been one minute, or ten. Ruth sat and watched him. He
had grown very handsome. He had that pleasant air of good breeding
which some men retain under any and all circumstances. It has nothing
to do with character, and yet it is difficult to think ill of a man
who possesses it. When she had seen him last, his nose was too near a
snub to inspire much respect, and his mustache was still in the state
of colorless scarcity. Now his hair and mustache were thick and tawny,
and his features were clear and firm. She noticed the pleasant line of
the cheek, the clean curve of the chin, the light on the crisp edges
of his close-cut hair -- the two freckles on his nose, and she decided
that that short, straight nose, with its generous and humorous
nostrils, was wholly fascinating. As girls always will, she began to
wonder about his life -- idly at first, but these speculations lead
one sometimes farther than one was prepared to go at the start. How
much of his delightful manner to them all was due to affection, and
how much to kindliness and good spirits? How much did he care for
those other friends, for that other life in Paris? Who were the
friends? What was the life? She looked at him, it seemed to her, a
long time. Had he ever loved a woman? Was he still in love, perhaps,
with someone? Ruth was no child. But she was a lady, and a proud one.
There were things she did not choose to think about, although she knew
of their existence well enough. She brought herself up at this point
with a sharp pull, and just then Gethryn, opening his eyes, smiled at
her.

She turned quickly away; to her perfect consternation her cheeks grew
hot. Bewildered by her own confusion, she rose as she turned, and
saying how lovely the water looked, went and stood on the bridge,
leaning over. Rex was on his feet in an instant, so covered with
confusion too, that he never saw hers.

"I say, Ruth, I haven't been such a brute as to fall asleep! Indeed I
haven't! I was thinking of Braith."

"And if you had fallen asleep you wouldn't be a brute, you tired boy!
And who is Braith?"

Ruth turned smiling to meet him, restored to herself and thankful for
the diversion.

"Braith," said Rex earnestly. "Braith is the best man in this
wicked world, and my dearest friend. To whom," he added, "I have not
written one word since I left him two ears ago."

Ruth's face fell. "Is that the way you treat your dearest friends?"
-- and she thought: "No wonder one is neglected when one is only an
old playmate!" -- but she was instantly ashamed of the little
bitterness, and put it aside.

"Ah! you don't know of what we are capable," said Gethryn; and once
more a shadow fell on his face.

A familiar form came jauntily down the road. Ruth hastened to meet it.
"At last, Father! You want your luncheon, poor dear!"

"I do indeed, Daisy!"

The colonel came as gallantly up as if he had thirty pounds of trout
to show instead of a creel that contained nothing but a novel by the
newest and wickedest master of French fiction. He made a mild attempt
to perjure himself about a large fish that had somehow got away from
him, but desisted and merely added that a caning would be good for
Rex.

Tired he certainly was, and when he was seated on the log and Ruth was
bringing him his wine, he looked sharply at her and said, "You too,
Daisy; you've done enough for the first day. We'll go home by the
road."

"It is what I was just proposing to her," said Rex.

"Yes, you are both right," said Ruth. "I am tired."

"And happy?" laughed Rex. But perhaps Ruth did not hear, for she
spoke at the same time to her father.

"Dear, you haven't told Rex yet how you got the invitation to
shoot."

"Oh, yes! It was at an officers' dinner in Munich. The duke was there
and I was introduced to him. He spoke of it as soon as they told him
we were stopping here."

"He's a brick," said Rex, rising. "Shall we start for home,
Colonel? Ruth must be tired."

When they turned in at the Forester's door, the colonel ordered Daisy
to her room, where Mrs Dene and their maid were waiting to make her
luxuriously comfortable with dry things, and rugs, and couches, and
cups of tea that were certainly not drawn from the Frau Foerster's
stores. Tea in Germany being more awful than tobacco, or tobacco more
awful than tea, according as one cares most for tea or tobacco.

The colonel and Rex sat after supper under the big beech tree. Ruth,
from her window, could see their cigars alight, and, now and then,
hear their voices.

Rex was telling the colonel about Braith, of whom he had not ceased
thinking since the afternoon. He went to his room early and wrote a
long letter to him.

It began: "You did not expect to hear from me until I was cured.
Well, you are hearing from me now, are you not?"

And it ended: "Only a few more weeks, and then I shall return to you
and Paris, and the dear old life. This is the middle of July. In
September I shall come back."

Fourteen

After the colonel's return, Mr Blumenthal found many difficulties in
the way of that social ease which was his ideal. The ladies were never
to be met with unaccompanied by the colonel or Gethryn; usually both
were in attendance. If he spoke to Mrs Dene, or Ruth, it was always
the colonel who answered, and there was a gleam in that trim warrior's
single eyeglass which did not harmonize with the grave politeness of
his voice and manner.

Rex had never taken Mr Blumenthal so seriously. He called him "Our
Bowery brother," and "the Gentleman from West Brighton," and he
passed some delightful moments in observing his gruesome familiarity
with the maids, his patronage of the grave Jaegers, and his fraternal
attitude toward the head of the house. It was great to see him hook a
heavy arm in an arm of the tall, military Herr Foerster, and to see the
latter drop it.

But there came an end to Rex's patience.

One morning, when they were sitting over their coffee out of doors, Mr
Blumenthal walked into their midst. He wore an old flannel shirt, and
trousers too tight for him, inadequately held up by a strap. He
displayed a tin bait box and a red and green float, and said he had
come to inquire of Rex "vere to dig a leetle vorms," and also to
borrow of him "dot feeshpole mitn seelbern ringes."

The request, and the grossness of his appearance before the ladies,
were too much for a gentleman and an angler.

Rex felt his gorge rise, and standing up brusquely, he walked away.
Ruth thoughtlessly slipped after him and murmured over his shoulder:

"Friend of yours?"

Gethryn's fists unclenched and came out of his pockets and he and Ruth
went away together, laughing under the trees.

Mr Blumenthal stood where Rex had left him, holding out the bait-box
and gazing after them. Then he turned and looked at the colonel and
his wife. Perspiration glistened on his pasty, pale face and the rolls
of fat that crowded over his flannel collar. His little, dead,
white-rimmed, pale gray eyes had the ferocity of a hog's which has
found something to rend and devour. He looked into their shocked faces
and made a bow.

"Goot ma--a--rnin, Mister and Missess Dene!" he said, and turned his
back.

The elderly couple exchanged glances as he disappeared.

"We won't mention this to the children," said the gentle old lady.

That was the last they saw of him. Nobody knew where he kept himself
in the interval, but about a week later he came running down with a
valise in his hand and jumped into a carriage from the "Green Bear"
at Schicksalsee, which had just brought some people out and was
returning empty. He forgot to give the usual "Trinkgeld" to the
servants, and a lively search in his room discovered nothing but a
broken collar button and a crumpled telegram in French. But Grethi had
her compensation that evening, when she led the conversation in the
kitchen and Mr Blumenthal was discussed in several South German
dialects.

By this time August was well advanced, but there had been as yet no
"Jagd-partie," as Sepp called the hunting excursion planned with
such enthusiasm weeks before. After that first day in the trout
stream, Ruth not only suffered more from fatigue than she had
expected, but the little cough came back, causing her parents to draw
the lines of discipline very tight indeed.

Ruth, whose character seemed made of equal parts of good taste and
reasonableness, sweet temper and humor, did not offer the least
opposition to discipline, and when her mother remarked that, after
all, there was a difference between a schoolgirl and a young lady, she
did not deny it. The colonel and Rex went off once or twice with the
Jaegers, but in a halfhearted way, bringing back more experience than
game. Then Rex went on a sketching tour. Then the colonel was suddenly
called again to Munich to meet some old army men just arrived from
home, and so it was not until about a week after Mr Blumenthal's
departure that, one evening when the Sennerins were calling the cows
on the upper Alm, a party of climbers came up the side of the Red Peak
and stopped at "Nani's Huetterl."

Sepp threw down the green sack from his shoulders to the bench before
the door and shouted:

"Nani! du! Nani!" No answer.

"Mari und Josef!" he muttered; then raising his voice, again he
called for Nani with all his lungs.

A muffled answer came from somewhere around the other side of the
house. "Ja! komm glei!" And then there was nothing to do but sit on
the bench and watch the sunset fade from peak to peak while they
waited.

Nani did not come "glei" -- but she came pretty soon, bringing with
her two brimming milk-pails as an excuse for the delay.

She and Sepp engaged at once in a conversation, to which the colonel
listened with feelings that finally had to seek expression.

"I believe," he said in a low voice, "that German is the language
of the devil."

"I fancy he's master of more than one. And besides, this isn't
German, any more than our mountain dialects are English. And really,"
Ruth went on, "if it comes to comparing dialects, it seems to me ours
can't stand the test. These are harsh enough. But where in the world
is human speech so ugly, so poverty-stricken, so barren of meaning and
feeling, and shade and color and suggestiveness, as the awful talk of
our rustics? A Bavarian, a Tyroler, often speaks a whole poem in a
single word, like -- "

"Do you think one of those poems is being spoken about our supper
now, Daisy?"

"Sybarite!" cried Ruth, with that tinkle of fun in her voice which
was always sounding between her and her parents; "I won't tell you."
The truth was she did not dare to tell her hungry companions that, so
far as she had been able to understand Sepp and Nani, their
conversation had turned entirely on a platform dance -- which they
called a "Schuh-plattl" -- and which they proposed to attend
together on the following Sunday.

But Sepp, having had his gossip like a true South German hunter-man,
finally did ask the important question:

"Ach! supper! du lieber Himmel!" There was little enough of that for
the Herrschaften. There was black bread and milk, and there were some
Semmel, but those were very old and hard.

"No cheese?"

"Nein!"

"No butter?"

"Nein!"

"Coffee?"

"Yes, but no sugar."

"Herr Je!"

When Sepp delivered this news to his party they all laughed and said
black bread and milk would do. So Nani invited them into her only room
-- the rest of the "Huetterl" was kitchen and cow-shed -- and brought
the feast.

A second Sennerin came with her this time, in a costume which might
have startled them, if they had not already seen others like it. It
consisted of a pair of high blue cotton trousers drawn over her
skirts, the latter bulging all round inside the jeans. She had no
teeth and there was a large goiter on her neck.

"Good Heavens!" muttered the colonel, setting down his bowl of milk
and twisting around to stare out of the window behind him.

"Poor thing! she can't help it!" murmured Ruth.

"No more she can, you dear, good girl!" said Rex, and his eyes shone
very kindly. Ruth caught her breath at the sudden beating of her
heart.

What was left of daylight came through the little window and fell upon
her face; it was as white as a flower, and very quiet.

Dusk was setting in when Sepp made his appearance. He stood about in
some hesitation, and finally addressed himself to Ruth as the one who
could best understand his dialect. She listened and then turned to her
father.

"Sepp doesn't exactly know where to lodge me. He had thought I could
stay here with Nani -- "

"Not if I can help it!" cried the colonel.

"While," Ruth went on -- "while you and Rex went up to the Jaeger's
hut above there on the rocks. He says it's very rough at the
Jagd-huette."

"Is anyone else there? What does Sepp mean by telling us now for the
first time? " demanded the colonel sharply.

"He says he was afraid I wouldn't come if I knew how rough it was --
and that -- " added Ruth, laughing -- "he says would have been such
a pity! Besides, he thought Nani was alone -- and I could have had her
room while she slept on the hay in the loft. I'm sure this is as neat
as a mountain shelter could be," said Ruth -- looking about her at
the high piled feather beds, covered in clean blue and white check,
and the spotless floor and the snow white pine table. "I'd like to
stay here, only the -- the other lady has just arrived too!"

"The lady in the blue overalls?"

"Yes -- and -- " Ruth stopped, unwilling to say how little relish
she felt for the society of the second Sennerin. But Rex and her
father were on their feet and speaking together.

"We will go and see about the Jagd-huette. You don't mind being left
for five minutes?"

"The idea! go along, you silly boys!"

The colonel came back very soon, and in the best of spirits.

"It's all right, Daisy! It's a dream of luxury!" and carried her
off, hardly giving her time to thank Nani and to say a winningly kind
word to the hideous one, who gazed back at her, pitchfork in hand,
without reply. No one will ever know whether or not she felt any more
cheered by Ruth's pleasant ways than the cows did who were putting
their heads out from the stalls where she was working.

The dream of luxury was a low hut of two rooms. The outer one had a
pile of fresh hay in one corner and a few blankets. Some of the dogs
were already curled up there. The inner room contained two large bunks
with hay and rugs and blankets; a bench ran where the bunks were not,
around the sides; a shelf was above the bunks; there was a cupboard
and a chest and a table.

"Why, this is luxury!" cried Ruth.

"Well -- I think so, too. I'm immensely relieved. Sepp says artists
bring their wives up here to stay over for the sunrise. You'll do?
Eh?"

"I should think so!"

"Good! then Rex and I and Sepp and the Dachl" -- he always would say
"Dockles" -- "will keep guard outside against any wild cows that
may happen to break loose from Nani. Good night, little girl! Sure
you're not too tired?"

Rex stood hesitating in the open door. Ruth went and gave him her
hand. He kissed it, and she, meaning to please him with the language
she knew he liked best, said, smiling, "Bonne nuit, mon ami!" At the
same moment her father passed her, and the two men closed the door and
went away together. The last glimmer of dusk was in the room. Ruth had
not seen Gethryn's face.

"Bonne nuit, mon ami!" Those tender, half forgotten -- no! never,
never forgotten words! Rex threw himself on the hay and lay still, his
hands clenched over his breast.

The kindly colonel was sound asleep when Sepp came in with a tired but
wagging hound, from heaven knows what scramble among the higher cliffs
by starlight. The night air was chilly. Rex called the dog to his side
and took him in his arms. "We will keep each other warm," he said,
thinking of the pups. And Zimbach, assenting with sentimental whines,
was soon asleep. But Gethryn had not closed his eyes when the Jaeger
sprang up as the day broke. A faint gray light came in at the little
window. All the dogs were leaping about the room. Sepp gave himself a
shake, and his toilet was made.

"Colonel," said Rex, standing over a bundle of rugs and hay in which
no head was visible, "Colonel! Sepp says we must hurry if we want to
see a `gams."'

The colonel turned over. What he said was: "Damn the Gomps!" But he
thought better of that and stood up, looking cynical.

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