"I've been thinking about that. I don't see how it can be managed," he replied briefly.
"Isn't there a boat-house?"
"Yes, but—unfortunately—no boats."
"It's a very awkward predicament," she murmured.
"Not nearly so awkward as it might have been if there had been no one here," he said slowly. "At least you won't starve."
"You're very kind. Oh, I hope you won't think me ungrateful. I'm not, really. I'll not bother you."
He looked at her amusedly.
"Can you cook?"
"No," she admitted, "but I'd like to try."
"I guess you'd better leave that to me," he finished grimly.
He was treating her as though she were a child, but she didn't resent it now. Indeed his attitude toward her made resentment impossible. His civility and hospitality, while lacking in the deference of other men of her acquaintance, were beyond cavil. But it was quite clear that the only impression her looks or her personality had made upon him was the slight one of having met and forgotten her—hardly flattering to her self-esteem. He was quite free from self-consciousness and at moments wore an air of abstraction which made it seem to Hermia as though he had forgotten her presence. In another atmosphere she had thought him unmannerly; here, somehow it didn't seem necessary to lay such stress upon the outward tokens of gentility. And his personal civility, more implied than expressed, was even more reassuring than the lip and eye homage to which she was accustomed.
In these moments of abstraction she inspected him curiously. His unshorn face was tanned a deep brown which with his rough clothing and longish hair gave him rather a forbidding aspect, and the lines into which his face fell in moments of repose were almost unpleasantly severe; but his eyes which had formed the painter's habit of looking critically through their lashes had a way of opening wide at unexpected moments and staring at her with the disconcerting frankness of those of a child. He turned them on her now so abruptly that she had not time to avert her gaze.
"You'll be missed, won't you?" he asked.
She smiled.
"Yes, I suppose I shall. They'll see the open hangar—"
"Do you think any one could have been watching your flight?"
"Hardly. I left at dawn. You see I've been bothered a lot by the curiosity of my neighbors. That's why I've been flying early."
"H—m. It's a pity to worry them so."
Markham rose and knocked out the ashes of his pipe.
"You see, Thimble Island is a good distance from the channel and only the smaller pleasure boats come this way. Of course there's a chance of one coming within hail. I'll keep a watch and do what I can, of course. In the meanwhile I hope you'll consider the cabin your own. I'll be quite comfortable to-night with a blanket in the boat-house."
She was silent a moment, but when she turned her head, he had already vanished into the cabin, where in a moment she heard the clatter of the dishes he was washing. At this moment Hermia was sure that she didn't dislike him at all. The clatter continued, mingled with the sound of splashing water and a shrill piping as he whistled an air from "Bohème." Hermia gazed out over the water a moment and then her lips broke into a lovely smile. She made a quick resolution, got up and followed him indoors.
He looked over his shoulder at her as she entered.
"Do you want anything?" he asked cheerfully.
"No—nothing—except to wash those dishes."
"Nonsense. I won't be a minute. It's nothing at all."
"Perhaps that's why I insist on doing it."
She had taken off her blouse, rolled up the sleeves of her waist with a business-like air and elbowed him away from the dishpan unceremoniously.
"I'm going to wash them—wash them properly. You may wipe them if you like."
He grinned and fished around on a shelf for a dishcloth. Having found it he stationed himself beside her and took the dishes one by one as she finished with them.
"Your name is Markham, isn't it?" she asked.
"Yes—how did you know?" he asked in surprise.
She indicated a packing case in the corner which was addressed in letters six inches high.
"Oh," he said. "Of course."
"You're the Mr. Markham, aren't you?"
"I'm not sure about that. I'm this Mr. Markham."
"Markham, the portrait painter?"
"That's what I profess. Why?"
"Oh, nothing."
He examined her, puzzling again, wiping the cup in his fingers with great particularity.
"Are you an anarchist?" she asked in a moment.
He laughed.
"Not that I'm aware of."
"Or a gorilla?"
"One of my grandfathers was—once a long while ago."
"Or a misogynist?"
"A what?"
"A grouch. Are you?"
"I don't know. Perhaps I am."
"I don't believe it now. I did at first. You can look very cross when you like."
"I haven't been cross with you, have I?"
"No. But you didn't like being interrupted."
"Not then—but I'm rather enjoying it now." He took a dish from her fingers. "You know you did drop in rather informally. Who's been talking of me?"
"Oh, that's the penalty of distinction. One hears such things. Are you queer, morbid and eccentric?"
"I believe I am," amusedly, "now that you mention it."
She was silent a moment before she spoke again.
"I don't believe it—at all. But you are unconventional, aren't you?"
"According to the standards of your world, yes, decidedly."
"My world! What do you know about my world?"
"Only what you've told me by your opinions of mine."
"I haven't expressed my opinions."
"There's no need of your expressing them."
"If you're going to be cross I'll not wash another dish." But she handed the last of them to him and emptied the dishpan.
"Now," she exclaimed. "I wish you'd please go outside and smoke."
"Outside! Why?"
"I'm going to put this place in order. Ugh! I've never in my life seen such a mess. Won't you go?"
He looked around deprecatingly. "I'm sorry you came in here. It is rather a mess on the floor—and around," and then as though by an inspiration, "but then you know, I do keep the pots and dishes clean."
By this time she had reached the shelves over which she ran an inquisitive finger.
"Dust!" she sniffed. "Barrels of it! and the plates—?" She took one down and inspected it minutely. "I thought so. Please go out," she pleaded.
"And if I don't?"
"I'll do it anyway."
By this time she was peering into the corners, from one of which she triumphantly brought forth a mop and pail.
"Oh, I say, I'm not going to let you do that."
"I don't see that you've got any choice in the matter. I'm going to clean up, and if you don't want to be splashed, I'd advise you to clear out."
She went to the spigot and let the water run into the bucket, while she extended her palm in his direction.
"Now some soap please—hand-soap, if you have it. Any soap, if you haven't."
"I've only got this," he said lifting the soap from the dishpan.
"Oh, very well. Now please go and paint." But Markham didn't. He found it more amusing to watch her small hands rubbing the soap into the fiber of the mop.
"If you'll show me I'll be very glad—" he volunteered. But as he came forward, she brought the wet mop out of the bucket with a threatening sweep which splashed him, and set energetically to work about his very toes.
He moved to the door jamb, but she pursued him.
"Outside, please," with relentless scorn. "This is no place for a philosopher."
Markham was inclined to agree with her and retreated in utter rout.
CHAPTER VI
THE RESCUE
On the porch he sank into the wicker chair, filled his pipe and looked afar, his ear attuned to the sounds of his domestic upheaval, not quite sure whether he was provoked or amused. At moments, by her pluck she had excited his admiration, at others she had seemed a little less worthy of consideration than a spoiled child, but her present role amused him beyond expression. Whoever she was, whatever her mission in life, she was quite the most remarkable young female person in his experience. Who? It didn't matter in the least of course, but he found himself somewhat chagrined that his memory had played him such a trick. Young girls, especially the impudent, self-satisfied kind that one met in America, had always filled Markham with a vague alarm. He didn't understand them in the least, nor did they understand him, and he had managed with some discretion to confine his attentions to women of a riper growth. Madame Tcherny, for instance!
Markham sat suddenly upright in his chair, a look of recognition in his eyes.
Olga Tcherny! Of course, he remembered now. And this was the cheeky little thing Olga had brought to the studio to see her portrait, who had strutted around and talked about money—Miss—er—funny he couldn't think of her name! He got up after a while, walked around and peered in at the kitchen door.
His visitor had washed the shelves with soap and water, and now he found her down on her knees with the bucket and scrubbing-brush working like a fury.
"See here, I can't let you do that—" he began again.
She turned a flushed face up at him and then went on scrubbing.
"You've got to stop it, do you hear? I won't have it. You're not up to that sort of work. You haven't got any right to do a thing like this. Get up at once and go out of doors!"
She made no reply and backed away toward the door of the living-room, finishing the last strip of unscoured floor before she even replied. Then she got up and looked at her work admiringly.
"There!" she said as though to herself. "That's better."
The area of damp floor lay between them and when he made a step to relieve her of the bucket she had lifted, she waved him back.
"Don't you dare walk on it—after all my trouble. Go around the other way."
He obeyed with a meekness that surprised him, but when he reached the other door she had already emptied her bucket and her roving eye was seeking new fields to conquer.
"You've got to stop it at once," he insisted.
"It's the least I can do to earn my board. This room must be dusted, the bed made and—"
"No. I won't have it."
He took her by the elbows and pushed her out of the door to the chair on the porch into which she sank, red of face and out of breath.
"I'll only rest for a minute," she protested.
"We'll see about that later," he said with a smile. "For the present, strange as it may seem, you're really going to obey orders!"
She squared her chin at him defiantly.
"Really! Are you sure?"
"Positive!"
"It's more than I am."
"I'm bigger than you are."
"I'm not in the least afraid of you."
He laughed.
"You hardly know me well enough to be afraid of me."
"Then I don't want to know you any better."
"You're candid at any rate. But when I like I can be most unpleasant.
Ask Olga Tcherny."
Her gaze flickered then flared into steadiness as she said coolly.
"I haven't the remotest idea what you're talking about."
"Do you mean to say that you don't remember?" he asked smiling.
"My memory is excellent. Perhaps I lack imagination. What should I remember?"
"My studio—in New York. You visited me with the Countess Tcherny."
"I do not know—I have never met the Countess Tcherny."
The moment was propitious. There was a sound of voices, and Markham and his visitor glanced over their shoulders past the angle of the cottage to where in the bright sunlight into which she had emerged, stood the Countess Olga.
"Hermia, thank the Lord!" she was saying. "How you've frightened us, child!" She came quickly forward, but when Markham rose she stopped, her dark eyes round with astonishment.
"You! John Markham! Well, upon my word! C'est abracadabrant! Here I've been harrowing my soul all morning with thoughts of your untimely death, Hermia, dear, turning Westport topsy-turvy, to find you at your ease snugly wrapped in tête-à-tête with this charming social renegade. It is almost too much for one's patience!"
Hermia rose laughing, and faced the rescue party which came forward chattering congratulations.
"I thought my friends were too wise ever to be worried about me," she said coolly. "But I'm awfully obliged and flattered. Hilda, have you met Mr. Markham? Miss Ashhurst, Miss Van Vorst, and Mr. Armistead, Mr. Markham's island fortunately happened to be just underneath where my machine decided to miss fire—"
"You did fall then?"
"Well rather—look at my poor bird, there."
Salignac, the mechanician, was already on the spot confirming the damage.
"How on earth did you happen to know that you would find me here?" asked Hermia.
"We didn't know it," replied the countess. "We took a chance and came, worried to death. The head coachman's wife who was up with a sick child heard you get off and watched your flight over the bay in this direction. She didn't see you fall. But when you didn't return she became frightened and alarmed the household—woke us all at half-past five. Think of it!" She yawned and dropped wearily on the step of the porch. And then, as Markham went indoors in search of chairs, in a lower tone to Hermia, "With a person you have professed to detest you seem to be getting on famously, my dear."
"One hardly quarrels with the individual who provides one with breakfast," she said coolly.
At the call of Salignac, the mechanician, Hermia followed the others down the slope to the machine, leaving the Countess and Markham alone.
"Well," Olga questioned, "what on earth are you doing here?"
He couldn't fail to note the air of proprietorship.
"What should I be doing?" and he made a gesture toward his idle easel.
"Why didn't you answer my letters?"
"I have never received them. No mail has been forwarded here."
"Oh!" And then: "I didn't know just what to think—unless that you had gone back to Normandy."
"I'm going next month. Meanwhile I rented Thimble Island—"
"I wrote you that I was coming here to 'Wake-Robin,' Miss Challoner's place," she said pettishly, "and that I was sure there would be one or two commissions for you in the neighborhood if you cared to come."
"It was very kind of you. I'm sorry. It's a little too late now. I'm due at Havre in August."
She made a gesture of mock helplessness.
"There. I thought so. My plans for you never seem to work out. It's really quite degrading the way I'm pursuing you. It almost seems as if you didn't want me"
He leaned over the back of her chair, his lips close to her ear. "You know better than that. But I'm such hopeless material to work with. These people, the kind of people one has to paint—they want lies. It gives me a diabolical pleasure to tell them the truth. I'll never succeed. O Madame! I'm afraid you'll have to give me up."
"And Hermia?" she asked.
He laughed.
"An enfant terrible! Has she no parent—or guardians? Do you encourage this sort of thing?"
"I—Dieu! No! She will kill herself next. I have no influence. She does exactly as she pleases. Advice merely decides her to do the opposite thing."
"It's too bad. She's quite human."
"Oh."
The Countess Olga examined him through her long lashes.
"Are you alone here?"
"Yes. I'm camping."
"Ugh," she shuddered. "You had better come to 'Wake-Robin'."
"No."
She stamped her small foot.
"Oh, I've no patience with you."
"Besides, I haven't been asked," he added.
The others were not approaching and Markham straightened as Hermia came toward him.
"Olga, dear, we must be going. It's too bad to have spoiled your morning, Mr. Markham."
The obvious reply was so easy and so polite, but he scorned it.
"Oh, that doesn't matter," he said, "and I'm the gainer by a clean kitchen."
No flattery there. Hermia colored gently.
"I—I scrubbed his floor," she explained to Olga. "It was filthy."
The Countess Olga's eyes opened a trifle wider.
"I don't doubt it," she said, turning aside.
Miss Van Vorst in her role of ingénue by this time was prying about outside the bungalow, on the porch of which she espied Markham's unfinished sketch.
"A painting! May I look? It's all wet and sticky." She had turned it face outward and stood before it uttering childish panegyric. "Oh, it's too perfectly sweet for anything. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite so wonderful. Won't you explain it all to me, Mr. Markham?"
Markham good-humoredly took up the canvas.
"Very glad," he said, "only you've got it upside down."
In the pause which followed the laughter Salignac came up the slope and reported to Hermia that he had found nothing wrong with the engine and that the damaged wing could be repaired with a piece of wire.
Hermia's eyes sparkled. The time for her triumphant departure, it seemed, had only been delayed. "Good news," she said quietly. "In that case I intend flying back to 'Wake-Robin'."
A chorus of protests greeted her decision.
"You shan't, Hermia," shouted Reggie Armistead, "until either Salignac or I have tried it out."
"You will oblige me, Reggie," replied Hermia calmly, "by minding your own business."
"O Hermia, after falling this morning! How can you dare?" cried Miss
Van Vorst, with a genteel shudder.
"Si Mademoiselle me permettrait—" began Salignac.
But she waved her hand in negation and indicated the wide lawn in front of the ruined buildings which sloped gently to the water's edge.
"Wheel it there, Salignac," in French, "and, Reggie, please go at once and help."
Armistead's boyish face turned toward her in admiration and in protest, but he followed Salignac without a word.
"It's folly, Hermia," added Hilda. "Something must be wrong with the thing. You remember just the other day—"
"I'm going, Hilda," imperturbably. "You can follow me in the launch."
Of Hermia's companions, Olga Tcherny alone said nothing. She had no humor to waste her breath. And Markham stood beside the group, his arms folded, his head bowed, listening. But when Hermia went into the cottage for her things he followed her.
"You're resolved?" he asked, helping her into her blouse.
"Well, rather."
"I wish I might persuade you—your nerves were—a little shaken this morning."
She paused in the act of putting on her gauntlets and held one small bare hand under his nose that he might see how steady it was. He grasped it in both of his own and then, with an impulse that he couldn't explain, kissed it again and again.
"Don't go, child," he whispered gently. "Not today."
She struggled to withdraw her hand, a warm flush stealing up her neck and temples.
"Let me go, Mr. Markham. Let me go."
He relinquished her and stood aside.
"As you please," he muttered. "I'm sorry—"
She turned, halfway to the door and examined his face.
"Sorry? For what?"
"That I haven't the authority to forbid you."
"You?" she laughed. "That is amusing."
"I would teach you some truths that you have never learned," he persisted, "the fatuity of mere bravado, the uses of life. You couldn't play with it if you knew something of its value—"
"The only value of life is in what you can get from it—"
"Or in what you can give from it—"
"Good-bye, Mr. Markham. I will join your school of philosophy another day. Meanwhile—" and she pointed her gauntleted hand toward the open doorway, "life shall pay me one more sensation."
He shrugged his shoulders and followed.
The machine was already on the lawn surrounded by Hermia's guests and preliminary experiments had proven that all was ready. Hermia climbed into the seat unaided, while Markham stood at one side and watched the propellers started. Faster and faster they flew, the machine held by Armistead and the Frenchman, while Hermia sat looking straight before her down the lawn through the opening between the rocks which led to open water.
"Au revoir, my friends," she cried and gave the word, at which the men sprang clear, and amid cries of encouragement and congratulation the machine moved down the lawn, gathering momentum with every second, rising gracefully with its small burden just before it reached the water and soaring into the air. The people on the lawn watched for a moment and then with one accord rushed for the launch.
Olga Tcherny paused a moment, her hand on Markham's arm.
"You will come to 'Wake-Robin'?" she asked.
"I think not," he replied.
"Then I shall come to Thimble Island," she finished.
"I shall be charmed, of course."
She looked over her shoulder at him and laughed. He was watching the distant spot in the air.
"You're too polite to be quite natural."
"I didn't mean to be."
"Then don't let it happen again."
The voices of her companions were calling to her and she hastened her footsteps.
"√ã bientôt," she cried.
"Au revoir, Madame." He saw her hurried into the launch, which immediately got under way, its exhaust snorting furiously, and vanished around the point of rocks. In a moment there was nothing left of his visitors to Markham but the lapping of the waves from the launch upon the beach and the spot in the air which was not almost imperceptible.
He stood there until he could see it no more, when he turned and took his pipe thoughtfully from his trousers pocket and addressed it with conviction.
"Mad!" he muttered. "All—quite mad!"
CHAPTER VII
"WAKE ROBIN"
Markham climbed the hill slowly, pushing tobacco into his pipe. Once or twice he stopped and turned, looking out over the bay toward the distant launch. The aëroplane had vanished. When he reached the bungalow he dropped into a chair, his gaze on space, and smoked silently for many minutes.
Mad! Were they? Madness after all was merely a matter of relative mental attitudes. Doubtless he was as mad in the eyes of his visitors as they were to him. In his present mood he was almost ready to admit that the sanest philosophy of life was that which brought the greatest happiness. And sanity such as his own was only a sober kind of madness after all, a quiet mania which sought out the soul of things and in the seeking fed itself upon the problems of the world, a diet which too much prolonged might lead to mental indigestion. Morbid—was he? Introspective? A "grouch"? He was—he must be—all of these things.
His small inquisitor had neglected none of his failings, had practiced her glib tongue at his expense in the few hours in which she had taken possession of Thimble Island and of him. What a child she was, how spoiled and how utterly irresponsible! He identified her completely now, Hermia Challoner, the sole heiress of all Peter Challoner's hard-gotten millions, the heiress, too, it was evident, of his attitude toward the world, the flesh and the devil; Peter Challoner, by profession banker and captain of industry, a man whose name was remembered the breadth of the land for his masterly manipulation of a continental railroad which eventually came under his control; an organizer of trusts, a patron saint of political lobbyists, a product of the worst and of the best of modern business! This girl who had fallen like a bright meteor across Markham's sober sky this morning was Peter Challoner's daughter. He remembered now the stories he had heard and read of her caprices, the races on the beach at Ormonde, her fearlessness in the hunting field and the woman's polo team she had organized at Cedarcroft which she had led against a team of men on a Southern field. It had all been in the newspapers and he had read of her with a growing distaste for the type of woman which American society made possible. Peter Challoner's daughter, the spoiled darling of money idolaters, scrubbing the floor of his kitchen!
As he sat looking out over the bay thinking of his visitor, a picture rose and wreathed itself amid the smoke of his tobacco—the vision of a little working girl in New York, a girl with tired eyes and a patient smile, with the faded hair and the faded skin which came from too few hours of recreation—from too many uninterrupted hours of plodding grind at the tasks her employers set for her, a girl who would have been as pretty as Hermia Challoner if her youth had only been given its chance. This was Dorothy Herick, whose father, a friend of Markham's father, had been swallowed up in one of the great industrial combinations which Peter Challoner had planned. Markham, who had been studying in Paris at the time, had forgotten the details of Oliver Herrick's downfall, but he remembered that the transaction which had brought it about had not even been broadly in accordance with the ethics of modern business, and that there had been something in the nature of sharp practice on Peter Challoner's part which had enabled him to obtain for his combination the mills in the Wyoming Valley which had been in the Herrick family for three generations.
Markham knew little of business and hated it cordially, but he had heard enough of this affair to be sure that, whatever the courts had decided, Oliver Herrick had been unfairly dealt with and that a part, at least, of Peter Challoner's fortune belonged morally, at least, to the inconsiderable mite of femininity who read proof in a publisher's office in New York. He knew something of the law of the survival of the fittest, for he himself had survived the long struggle for honors which had put him at last in a position where he felt secure at least from the pinch of poverty, and whatever Oliver Herrick's failings among the larger forces with which he had been brought into contact, Markham knew him to have been an honest man, a good father and a faithful gentleman. Something was wrong with a world which pinched the righteous between the grindstones of progress and let the evil prosper.
It was an unfairness which descended to the second generation and would descend through the years until the equalizing forces of character and will—or the lack of them—brought later generations to the same level of condition. Markham could not help comparing Hermia Challoner with her less fortunate sister—Hermia Challoner, the courted, the fêted, who had but to wish for a thing to have it granted, with Dorothy Herrick, the neglected and forgotten, who was bartering her youth for twelve dollars a week and was glad to get the money; one, who boasted that the only value life had for her was what she could get out of it, with the other, who almost felt it a privilege to be permitted to live at all. The more he thought of these two girls, the more convincing was his belief that Miss Herrick did not suffer by the comparison. She was doing just what thousands of other girls were doing in New York, with no more patience and no more self-sacrifice than they, but the childish vagaries of his visitor, still fresh in his memory, seemed to endow Dorothy Herrick with a firmer contour, a stronger claim on his interest and sympathies.
And yet—this little madcap aviatrix disclosed a winning directness and simplicity which charmed and surprised him. She was a joyous soul. He could not remember a morning when he had been so completely abstracted from the usual current of thought and occupation as today, and whatever the faults bequeathed by her intrepid father, she was, as Markham had said to Olga, quite human. There were possibilities in the child-and it seemed a pity that no strong guiding hand led the way on a road like hers, which had so many turnings. She was only an overgrown child as yet, flat chested, slender, almost a boy, and yet redeemed to femininity by an unconscious coquetry which she could no more control than she could the warm flush of her blood; a child indeed, full of quick impulses for good or for evil.
Markham rose, knocked the ash out of his pipe, walked over to his canvas, set it up against the porch pillar and examined it leisurely. But in a moment he took it indoors and added it to the pile in the living-room, fetching a fresh canvas and carrying his easel and paint-box over the hill to another spot, a shady one among the rocks where he had already painted many times.
He worked a while and then sat and smoked again, his thoughts afar. What sort of an influence was Olga Tcherny for the mind of this impressionable child? The Countess was clever, generous and wonderfully attractive to men and to women but, as Markham knew, her views of life were liberal and she was not wise—at least, not with a wisdom which would help Hermia Challoner. One doesn't live for ten years in Paris in the set in which Markham had met her without absorbing something of its careless creed, its loose ethical and moral standards. New York society, he knew, reflected much that was bad, and much that was good of the gay worlds of Paris and London; for Americans are unexcelled in the talent of imitation, but from phrases that had passed Olga's lips he knew that she had outgrown her own country.
Markham tried to paint but things went wrong and so he gave it up, swearing silently at the interruption which had spoiled his day. After lunch he tried it again with no better success, and finally gave it up and, taking a book, went out on a point of rocks where the tide swirled and cast in a fishing line, not because he hoped to catch anything but because fishing, of all the resources available, had most surely the ways of peace. The book was a French treatise on the Marxian philosophies—dull reading for a summer's day when the water lapped merrily at one's feet, the breeze sighed softly, laden with the odors of the mysterious deeps, and sea and sky beckoned him invitingly into the realms of adventure and delight, so dull that, the fish biting not, Markham dozed, and at last rolled over in the sunlight and slept.
How long he lay there he did not know. He was awakened by the exhaust of a launch close at hand and sat up so quickly that "Karl Marx," rudely jostled by his elbow, went sliding over the edge of the rock and into the sea. But there was no time at present to bewail this calamity for the man in the launch had brought her inshore and hailed him politely.
"Mr. Markham?" he questioned.
Markham nodded. "That's my name," he said.
"A note for you." The launch moved slowly in toward the landing and
Markham met his visitor, already aware that there was to be a further
intrusion on his solitude. He broke the seal of the note and read.
It was from Hermia Challoner.
Dear Mr. Markham:
Life, as you see, has yielded me one more sensation without penalty. I am safe at home again, my philosophy triumphant over yours. There isn't a great deal of difference between them after all. You, too, take from life, Mr. Markham—you take what you need just as I do; but just because your needs differ from mine, manlike, you assume that I must be wrong. Perhaps I am. Then so must you, because you give less than I do.
There is but one way to justify yourself, and that is to give up what you are hoarding—what you prize most highly—your solitude. We want you at "Wake Robin," Mr. Markham. Will you come to dine and stay the night? By so doing you will at least show an amiable disposition, which is more to the point than all the philosophy in the world. We are very informal and dine at eight.
I am sure that if you disappoint us Madame Tcherny, who is already tired of us all, will perish of ennui.
Very cordially yours,
Hermia Challoner
Markham read the note through and turned toward the cabin for pen and paper.
"Will you moor the launch and come ashore?"
"Oh, no, sir," said the man, tinkering with the engine, "I'll wait for you here. Miss Challoner said that I was to wait."
When Markham reached the bungalow he remembered suddenly that he had no ink, pen—or indeed paper, and yet a verbal reply would hardly be courteous. He stood in the doorway puzzling a moment and then went over to a trunk in the corner, opened it and began pitching its contents about. He straightened at last, put some garments on the bed and looked at them with a ruminative eye.
"Oh, I had better go," he muttered, rubbing the roughness on his chin. "I owe it to Olga. But why the devil they can't leave a fellow alone—" and, fuming silently, he shaved, made a toilet, and packing some things in a much battered suit case made his way to the launch.
At the Westport landing he found the Countess Olga, wonderfully attired in an afternoon costume of pale green, awaiting him in a motor.
"There's a chance for you still, my friend," she laughed. "You have won my fond regard—and, incidentally, the cost of a new frock."
"I?"
"Yes. We laid a bet as to whether you would come, Hermia and I. We've been watching the island through the telescope, and saw you embark—so to me—the victor, falls the honor of conducting you home in triumph."
"I'm to go in chains, it seems," he laughed, getting in beside her.
"I've rarely seen you looking so handsome."
"You're improving. It's joy, mon ami, at seeing once again a full grown man. I have been bored—oh, so bored! Will you be nice to me?"
The motor skimmed smoothly over the perfect roads, mounting the hills through the village and spinning along a turnpike flanked by summer residences. "Wake Robin" stood at some distance from the village on the highest point of the hills and made a very imposing vista from the driveway—an English house with long wings at either side, flanked by terraces, lawns and gardens, guarded from the intrusive eyes of the highway by a high privet hedge. The tennis courts seemed to be the center of interest and in a corner of the terrace which faced the bay were some people taking tea and watching a match of singles between Reggie Armistead and their hostess. The chauffeur took the suit case to the butler and Olga Tcherny led the way to the tea table where Phyllis Van Vorst was pouring tea. Beside her sat a tall handsome woman with a hard mouth, dressed in white linen and a picture hat, who ogled him tentatively through a lorgnon during the moment of introduction before permitting her face to relax into a smile of welcome.
"So glad," she purred at last, extending a long slim hand in Markham's direction. "Phyllis, do give Mr. Markham some tea."
"How d'ye do, Mr. Markham," chortled Miss Van Vorst. "I'm afraid you'll have to put up with the Philistines for a while. Hermia's beating Reggie Armistead at tennis, and it's as much as one's life is worth to interrupt."
"That's no joke," said Archie Westcott, who was watching the game.
"Some tennis, that. They're one set all and Hermia just broke through
Reggie's service. That makes it five four."
Markham, teacup in hand, followed the Countess to the balustrade and watched. One would never have supposed from the way she played that this girl had been up since dawn and suffered an accident which had temporarily incapacitated her. Youth was triumphant. Vigor, suppleness and grace marked every movement, the smashing overhand service, the cat-like spring to the net, the quick recovery, the long free swing of the volley from the back-court, all of which showed form of a high order. It was a man's tennis that the girl was playing and Reggie Armistead needed all his cleverness to hold her at even terms. It was an ancient grudge, Markham learned, and an even thing in the betting, but Armistead pulled through by good passing and made the sets deuce.
"Gad! It makes me hot to look at 'em!" said Crosby Downs, fingering at his collar band, his face brick-color from the day in the open. "Make 'em stop, somebody."
He dropped into a wicker chair and fanned vigorously with his hat.
"Lord! Golf is bad enough. Oh, what's the use," he sighed heavily.
"Been golfing, Crosby?" smiled the Countess.
"Oh, call it that if you like," he growled. "Rotten game, that. Doctor's orders. A hundred and ten to-day. Couldn't hit the earth even and there were acres of it."
"Living up to your reputation, Crosby," sneered Carol Gouverneur. "Sans putt et sans approach?"
"You've struck it, young man. Sans anything, but that Weary Willie feelin' and a devourin' thirst. But I lost four pounds," he added more cheerfully—his fingers demonstrating in his waistband. "Oh, I'll put it on again to-night at dinner. Silly ass business—this runnin' around in the sun."
"Quite so," Olga agreed, "but everything we do is silly and asinine."
There was an outburst of applause form the others at a particularly brilliant shot below.
"By George!" cried Westcott, "she's got him. It's Hermia's vantage and forty-love. O Reggie! A love game, by Jiminy! Hermia, you've won me a cool hundred."
The game was over and the players shook hands before the net, Hermia laughing gaily, Armistead's eyes full of honest adoration. They were handsome children, those two.
Hermia climbed the steps slowly amid the congratulations of the guests and smiled as Markham came forward to meet her. She was rosy as a cherub, her bright hair tumbled beneath her crimson hair-band.
"Very good of you to come, Mr. Markham," she said breathlessly. "I had my eye in, and couldn't stop. I simply had to beat Reggie, you know," And then as her responsibilities recurred to her, "you've met everybody? Mrs. Renshaw, Miss Coddington—Mr. Markham—the Hermit of Thimble Island."
With a laugh she led him away from the others and threw herself in a lounge chair and motioned him to a seat nearby.
"You see," she said gaily, "her I am—quite safe—and ready to mock at all seriousness-the grasshopper entertaining the ant. Do you think you can stand so much gayety, Mr. Markham?"
"Even an ant must have its moments of frivolity."
"You frivolous!" she smiled.
"I've always wanted to be. It's one of my secret longings. I was born old. Show me how to be young and I'll give you anything I possess."
"That's tempting. I think I'll begin at once."
He laughed. "At what?"
She scrutinized him from top to toe.
"Oh, at your goggles."
He fingered his glasses.
"These?"
She nodded.
He took them off and looked at them amusedly.
"That's the first step. You're ten years younger already," she said.
"Oh, am I?"
"Yes. I'm sure of it—when you don't frown."
"And next?"
"You must flirt, Mr. Markham—and make pretty speeches—"
"Pretty speeches!"
"Oh, yes—you must treat every woman as though you adored her secretly, and when ladies visit your studio you mustn't bang the door in their faces."
"Did I do that?"
"Er—figuratively, yes. You were very impolite." She lay back and laughed at him. "There—I feel better. Now we shall be good friends."
He fingered his goggles a moment, and then his eyes met hers in frank agreement.
"I'm glad of that," he said, with a slow smile. "I like you a great deal."
She straightened, her eyes sparkling merrily.
"You see? You're improving already. I have great hopes for you, Mr. Markham." She threw a glance at the others and rose. "Here endeth the first lesson. It is time to dress. We will resume after dinner. That is," she added, "if Olga will spare you for a few moments."
"Olga—Madame Tcherny won't mind in the least," he laughed. "If you can make me anybody but myself, she will thank you from the bottom of her heart. Madame Tcherny is already at the point of giving me up as a hopeless case."
"In what respect?"
"Oh, in all respects. I'm a great disappointment to her—" He stopped suddenly. "I mean socially—professionally. You see I'm not the stuff that successful portrait painters are made of—"
"Except perhaps that you really can paint?" she asked over her shoulder.
He shrugged and followed.
CHAPTER VIII
OLGA TCHERNY
As the guests gathered in the drawing-room and on the terrace before dinner it was apparent to Markham that, unless he obeyed the injunctions of his small preceptor, he would be quite forgotten amid this gay company. On Thimble Island, as in New York, he had not found them necessary to his own existence, and it was quite clear that her at "Wake-Robin" they returned his indifference. After the first nod and appraising glance in his direction, Crosby Downs and Carol Gouverneur had completely ignored him. Archie Westcott had unbent to the point of offering him a cigarette, and Trevvy Morehouse, who had joined them over the cocktails, and injected polite bromidics into the conversation which Reggie Armistead, who knew nothing of Markham's art and cared less, only saved by some wholesome enthusiasm, in which all joined, over the "sand" and all-around good fellowship of their hostess.
But it required little assurance to make one's self at home here where informality seemed to be the rule, and before Hermia and the Countess came down Markham found himself on easy terms with the group he had joined. Mrs. Renshaw's appraisal and patronizing air dismayed him less than the china blue eyes of Phyllis Van Vorst which she had raised with a pretty effectiveness to his; Hilda Ashhurst hadn't even taken the trouble to notice him. When Carol Gouverneur was in her neighborhood there were no other men in the world.
But Hermia took pains to make her guests aware of the status of Mr.
Markham in her house by seating him on her right at dinner and paying
him an assiduous attention which detracted something from Reggie
Armistead's interest, as well as Olga's, in that repast.
With a carelessness which put him off his guard Hermia drew him into the general conversation, aroused his sense of humor, until with a story of an experience in France, which he told with a dry wit that well suited him, he found himself the center of interest at the head of the table.
Out on the terrace over the coffee and tobacco, the compound slowly resolved itself into its elements, social and sentimental. Markham, scarcely aware of the precise moment when she had appropriated him, found himself in the garden below the terrace with Olga Tcherny. The heavy odor of the roses was about them, unstirred by the land breeze which faintly sighed in the treetops. A warm moon hung over Thimble Island, its soft lights catching in the ornaments Markham's companion wore, caressing her white shoulders and dusky hair, and softening the shadows in her eyes which peered like those of a seer down the path of light where the moonbeams played upon the water.
He had always thought her handsome, but to-night she was a fragment of the night itself, with all its tenderness and its melancholy mystery. He watched her slender figure as she reached forward, plucked a rose and raised its petals to her lips—a full flown rose, wasting its last hours of loveliness. She fastened it in her corsage and led the way to a stone bench beneath an arbor at the end of the wall where she sat and motioned to the place beside her.
The accord which existed between these two was unusual because of the total difference in their points of view on life and the habits of thought which made each the negative pole of the other. However unusual Markham may have appeared to a person of Olga Tcherny's training, he was not an unusual young man in the ordinary sense. He had always taken life seriously, from the hour when as a clerk in a broker's office he had started to work at night at the League in New York, with the intention of becoming a painter. He was no more serious than thousands of other young men who plan their lives early and live them up to specifications; but Olga Tcherny, who had flitted a zig-zag butterfly course among the exotics, now found in the meadows she had scorned a shrub quite to her liking. Markham was the most refreshingly original person she had ever met. He always said exactly what he thought and refused to speak at all unless he had something to say. Those hours in the studio when he had painted her portrait had been hours to remember, sound, sane hours in which they had discussed many things not comprehended in her philosophy, when he had led her by easy stages up the steep path he had climbed until she had gained, from the pinnacle of his successes, a vista of what had lain beneath. Unconsciously he had drawn upon her mentality until, surprised at its own existence, it had awakened to life and responded to his. To make her mental subjection the more complete, he had in his simplicity peered like a child through all her disguises and painted her soul as he saw it—as it was. The flattery was the more effectual because of its subtlety and because she knew, as he did, that in it there was no guile, no self-interest or sentimentality. And in return she could have paid him no higher compliment than when coolly, almost coldly, she told him of her life and what she had made of it.
She was very winning to-night—very gentle and womanly—more English than French or Russian, more American than either. Neither of them spoke for a long while. Such words as they could speak would have taken something from the perfection of their background. But Markham thought of her as he had frequently done, thankful again for the benefits of her regard, the genuineness of which she had brought home to him in many material ways.
To Olga alone there was a peril in the silence, a peril for the sanity he had taught her, for the pact which she had made with herself. She had eaten the bread and salt of his friendship and had given him hers. He believed in her and she could not deceive him. She knew his nature well. She had not been a student of men all her life for nothing. It would have been so easy to lie to him, to befuddle and bewitch him, to bring him to her feet by unfair means. But she had scorned to use them. For her, John Markham had been taboo. But there was peril in the silence. She sat looking into the wake of the moon in the water, very quiet, tense and almost breathless.
"You're glad you came?" she asked at last in the tones of matter and fact.
"Yes, I am. You've been too kind and patient with me, Olga."
He laid his hand over hers with a genuine impulse. It did not move beneath his touch or return his pressure.
"Yes," she said coolly, "I think I have."
"Have I offended you?"
"No. Not at all—only disappointed me a little. I had such nice plans for you."
He laughed.
"Olga, you're the most wonderful woman in the world. I don't deserve your friendship. But I did want to loaf—I worked pretty hard last winter."
"Oh, you needn't evade me. I can't make you like my friends. But I hoped you wouldn't disappoint them. Mrs. Berkley Hammond, the Gormeley twins, and now Hermia—"
"Miss Challoner!" in surprise. "Her portrait! I thought she disapproved of my method."
She smiled. "Oh, you don't know Hermia as I do. One is never more certain in one's judgment of her than when one thinks one is wrong." She gave a short laugh. "At any rate, she said she was going to speak to you about it."
"That's curious," he muttered.
"Will you do it?" she asked.
He looked away toward the terrace.
"I hadn't planned to do any portraits until Fall."
"Doesn't she interest you?" she continued quickly.
"She's paintable—it would be profitable, of course—"
"You're evading again."
"Yes, she interests me," he said frankly. "She's clever, amiable, hospitable—and quite irresponsible. But then she would want to be 'pretty.' I'm afraid I should only make her childish."
"Oh, she's prepared for the worst. You had better paint her. It will do you a lot of good. Besides, you paint better when you're a little contemptuous."
"I'm not sure that I could take that attitude toward Miss Challoner," he said slowly. "She's too good for the crowd she runs with, that's sure, and—"
"Thanks," laughed Olga. "You always had a neat turn for flattery."
But he didn't laugh.
"I mean it," he went on warmly. "She's too good for them—and so are you. Mrs. Renshaw, a woman notorious even in New York, who at the age of thirty has already changed husbands three times, drained them and thrown them aside as one would a rotten orange; Hilda Ashhurst who plays cards for a living and knows how to win; Crosby Downs, a merciless voluptuary who makes a god of his belly; Archie Westcott, the man Friday of every Western millionaire with social ambitions who comes to New York—a man who lives by his social connections, his wits and his looks; Carol Gouverneur, his history needn't be repeated—"
"Nor mine—" finished Olga quietly, "you needn't go on." The calmness of her tone only brought its bitterness into higher relief. Markham stopped, turned and caught both her hands in his.
"No, not yours, Olga. God knows I didn't mean that. You're not their kind, soulless, cynical, selfish and narrow social parasite who poison what they fee don and live in the idleness that better men and women have bought for them. Call them your crowd if you like. I know better. You've only taken people as you've found them—taken life as it was planned for you—moved along the line of least resistance because you'd never been taught that there was any other way to go. In Europe you never had a chance to learn—"
"That's it," she broke in passionately, "I never had a chance—not a chance."
Her fingers clutched his and then quickly released them.
"Oh, what's the use?" she went on in a stifled tone. "Why couldn't you have let me live on, steeped in my folly? It's too late for me to change. I can't. I'm pledged. If I gamble, keep late hours, and do all the things that this set does it's because if I didn't I should die of thinking. What does it matter to any one but me?"
She stopped and rose with a sudden gesture of anger.
"Don't preach, John. I'm not in the humor for it—not to-night—do you hear?"
He looked up at her in surprise. One of her hands was clenched on the balustrade and her dark eyes regarded him scornfully.
"I've made you angry? I'm sorry," he said.
The tense lines of her figure suddenly relaxed as she leaned against the pergola and then laughed up at the sky.
"Would you preach to the stars, John Markham? They're a merry congregation. They're laughing at you—as I am. A sermon by moonlight with only the stars and a scoffer to listen!"
Her mockery astonished and bewildered him. His indictment of those with whom she affiliated was no new thing in their conversations, and he knew that what he had said was true.
"I'm sorry I spoke," he muttered.
She laughed at him again and threw out her arms toward the moonlit sea.
"What a night for the moralities—for the ashes of repentance! I ask a man into the rose-garden to make love to me and he preaches to me instead—preaches to me! of the world, the flesh and the devil, par exemple! Was ever a pretty woman in a more humiliating position!"
She approached him again and leaned over him, the strands of her hair brushing his temples, her voice whispering mockingly just at his ear.
"Oh, la la! You make such a pretty lover, John. If I could only paint you in your sackcloth and ashes, I should die in content. What is it like, mon ami, to feel like moralizing in a rose-garden by moonlight? What do they tell you—the roses? Of the dull earth from which they come? Don't they whisper of the kisses of the night winds, of the drinking of the dew—of the mad joy of living—the sweetness of dying? Or don't they say anything to you at all—except that they are merely roses, John?"
She brushed the blossom in her fingers lightly across his lips and sprang away from him. But it was too late. She had gone too far and she realized it in a moment; for thought she eluded him once, he caught her in his arms and kissed her roughly on the lips.
"You'd mock at me, would you?" he cried.
She struggled in his arms and then lay inert. She deserved this revenge she knew, but not the carelessness of these kisses of retribution, each of them merciless with the burden of her awakening.
"Let me go, John," she said faintly. "You must not—"
"Not yet. I'm no man of stone. Can you scoff now?"
"No, no. Let me go. I've paid you well and you—O God! you've paid me, too. Let me go."
"Not until you kiss me."
"No—not that."
"Why?" he whispered.
"No—never that! Oh, the damage you have done!"
"I'll repair it—"
"No. You can't bring the dead to life——our friendship——it was so clean——Let me go, do you hear?"
But he only laughed at her.
"You'll kiss me—"
"Never!"
"You shall—"
"Never!"
He raised her face to his. She quivered under his touch, but her lips were insensate, and upon his hand a drop of moisture fell—a tear limpid, pure from the hidden springs of the spirit. He kissed its piteous course upon her cheek.
"Olga!" he whispered softly. "What have I done?"
"Killed something in me—I think—something gentle and noble that was trying so hard to live—"
"Forgive me," he stammered. "I didn't know you cared so much."
She started in his arms, then slowly released herself, and drew away while with an anxious gaze he followed her.
"Our friendship—I cared for that more than anything else in the world," she said simply.
"It shall be stronger," he began.
"No—friendship does not thrive on kisses."
"Love—" he began. But her quick gesture silenced him.
"Love, boy! What can you know of love!"
"Nothing. Teach me!"
She looked up into his face, her hands upon his shoulders holding him at arm's length, flushed with her empty victory—ice-cold with self contempt at the means she had used to accomplish it. Another man—a man of her own world—would have played the game as she had played it, mistrusting the tokens she had shown and taking her coquetry at its worldly value; would have kissed and perhaps forgotten the next morning. But as she looked in Markham's eyes she saw with dismay that he still read her heart correctly and that the pact of truthfulness which neither of them had broken was considered a pact between them still. Her gaze fell before his and she turned away, sure now that for the sake of her pride she must deceive him.
"No, I can teach you nothing, it seems, except, perhaps, that you should not make the arms of your lady black and blue. Love is a zephyr, mon ami, not a tornado."
He stared at her, bewildered by the sudden transformation.
"I—I kissed you," he said stupidly. "You wanted me to."
"Did I?" she taunted him. "Who knows? If I did"—examining her wrist—"I have now every reason to regret it."
He stood peering down at her from his great height, his thoughts tumbling into words.
"Don't lie to me, Olga. You were not content with friendship. No woman ever is. You wanted me to do—what I have done."
"Perhaps," she admitted calmly, "but not the way you did it. Kissing should be done upon the soft pedal mon ami, adagio, con amore. Your technique is rusty. Is it a wonder that I am disappointed?"
She was mocking him again, but this time he was not deceived.
"Perhaps I will improve with practice," he muttered.
He would have seized her again but she eluded him, laughing.
"Thank you, no—" she cried.
He went toward her again, but she sprang behind the bench, Markham following, both intent upon their game. He had seized her again when suddenly over their very heads there was a sound of feminine laughter among the vines from which there immediately emerged a white satin slipper, a slender white ankle, followed quickly by another—draperies, and at last Hermia Challoner, who, swinging for a moment by her hands, dropped breathlessly upon the bench between them. Markham, whose nose had been narrowly missed by the flying slippers, drew back in astonishment.
"Hello!" panted Hermia, laughing. "Reggie was chasing me, so I slipped over the balustrade onto the pergola—" She stopped and looked with quick intuition from one to the other. "Sorry I blunder'd in here, though, Olga—awfully sorry. Did I kick you in the nose, Mr. Markham?"
CHAPTER IX
OUT OF HIS DEPTH
Markham stammered something, but Olga was laughing softly. "Hermia, darling, you always do go into things feet first, but it's perilous in French heels. Mr. Markham and I were just trying to decide whether this stone bench wouldn't be just the place to do your portrait. If you'll observe—"
The situation was so palpable. Hermia looked from one to the other amusedly. Markham was following Olga's artistic dissertation with the eye of dubiety, but their hostess was merciless.
"Olga, dear," she inquired sweetly, "did you know your back hair was down?"
"Oh, is it? How provoking! Georgette is positively worthless!"
Even Olga's resourcefulness was not proof against Hermia's persistent audacity, especially as she was aware of a smudge of face-powder on John Markham's coat lapel which could not have been attributed by any chance to the deficiencies of her unlucky maid.
"Poor Georgette!" said Hermia softly, watching Olga's fingers quickly twist the erring strand into place.
At this moment there was a sound of footsteps on the walk and Reggie Armistead, who, like an ubiquitous terrier, had at last found the scent, came down the arbor on the run with Trevvy Morehouse after him, a poor second, and emerged upon the scene.
"You're mine—" cried Reggie triumphantly. "I win!" He moved forward and would have caught Hermia around the waist, but she dodged him.
"Reggie," she cried, "how dare you!"
"Oh, don't mind us," laughed Olga.
"I don't—" he said stoutly. "But I got here first, Olga, didn't I?"
"You surely did—"
"I'm glad to have witnesses. Hermia's dreadfully slippery, you know."
Olga, who had dropped into a corner of the stone bench, looked up languidly.
"Would you mind telling us what it all means?" she asked.
Hermia laughed. "May I, Trevvy?"
The excellent Trevelyan smiled politely and shrugged his shoulders.
"By all means—since I have no further interest in the matter."
"It's too amusing. They were to give me ten minutes' start from the house—the two of them. Oh, what a lark!" she laughed. "I made for the Maze, while they watched me from the drawing-room windows; but instead of going in, I skirted the edge and crept through the bushes on the other side. By the time they had reached the privet hedge, I had gone through the house from the kitchen to the terrace again, where I sat for ten minutes entirely alone laughing and watching those geese chasing each other around in the moonlight. I've never had such fun since I was born."