"Dear, a field-trial is not what we are discussing."
"No, of course. But those things count with a man. And besides, admitting that the story is all over Palm Beach and New York by this time, is there a more popular girl here than our little Shiela? Look at the men—troops of 'em! Alex Anan knew when he tried his luck. You had to tell Mr. Cuyp, but Shiela was obliged to turn him down after all. It certainly has not intimidated anybody. Do you remember two years ago how persistent Louis Malcourt was until you squelched him?"
"Yes; but he didn't know the truth then. He acts sometimes as though he knew it now. I don't think he would ask Shiela again. And, Neville, if Mr. Hamil does not know, and if you think there is the slightest chance of Shiela becoming interested in him, he ought to be told—indirectly. Unhappiness for both might lie in his ignorance."
"Shiela would tell him before he—"
"Of course. But—it might then be too late for her—if he prove less of a man than we think him! He comes from a family whose connections have always thought a great deal of themselves—in the narrower sense; a family not immune from prejudice. His aunt, Miss Palliser, is very amiable; but, dear, we must not make the mistake that she could consider Shiela good enough for her nephew. One need not be a snob to hesitate under the pitiful circumstances."
"If I know Hamil, he'll ask little advice from his relatives—"
"But he will receive plenty, Neville."
Cardross shrugged. "Then it's up to him, Amy."
"Exactly. But do you wish to have our little Shiela in a position where her declared lover hesitates? And so I say, Neville, that it is better for her that Mr. Hamil should know the truth in ample time to reconsider any sentiment before he utters it. It is only fair to him and to Shiela. That is all."
"Why do you say all this now, dearest? Have you thought—"
"Yes, a little. The child is fond of him. I did think she once cared for Louis—as a young girl cares for a boy. But we couldn't permit her to take any chances, poor fellow!—his family record is sadly against him. No; we did right, Neville. And now, at the first sign, we must do right again between Shiela and this very lovable boy who is making your park for you."
"Of course," said Cardross absently, "but the man who hesitates because of what he learns about Shiela isn't worth enlightening." He looked out across the lawn. "I hope it happens," he said. "And, by the way, dear, I've got to go to town."
"O Neville!"
"Don't worry; I'm not going to contract pneumonia—"
"When are you going?"
"To-morrow, I think."
"Is it anything that bothers you?"
"No, nothing in particular. I have a letter from Acton. There seems to be some uncertainty developing in one or two business quarters. I thought I'd see for myself."
"Are you worrying?"
"About what?"
"About the Shoshone Securities Company?"
"Not exactly worrying."
She shook her head, but said nothing more.
During February the work on the Cardross estate developed sufficiently to become intensely interesting to the family. A vast circular sunken garden, bewitchingly formal, and flanked by a beautiful terrace and balus trade of coquina, was approaching completion between the house and an arm of the lagoon. The stone bridge over the water remained unfinished, but already, across it, miles of the wide forest avenue stretched straight away, set at intervals by carrefours centred with fountain basins from which already tall sparkling columns of water tumbled up into the sunshine.
But still the steam jets puffed up above the green tree-tops; and the sickening whine of the saw-mill, and the rumble of traction engines over rough new roads of shell, and the far racket of chisel and hammer on wood and stone continued from daylight till dark.
Every day brought to Hamil new questions, new delays, vexations of lighting, problems of piping and drainage. Contractors and sub-contractors beset him; draughtsmen fairly buried him under tons of drawings and blue-prints. All of which was as nothing compared to the labour squabbles and endless petty entanglements which arose from personal jealousy or political vindictiveness, peppered with dark hints of peonage, threats, demands, and whispers of graft.
The leasing of convict labour for the more distant road work also worried him, but the sheriffs of Dade and Volusia were pillars of strength and comfort to him in perplexity—lean, soft-spoken, hawk-faced gentlemen, gentle and incorruptible, who settled scuffles with a glance, and local riots with a deadly drawl of warning which carried conviction like a bullet to the "bad" nigger of the blue-gum variety, as well as to the brutish white autocrat of the turpentine camps.
That the work progressed so swiftly was wonderful, even with the unlimited means of Neville Cardross to back his demands for haste. And it might have been impossible to produce any such results in so short a period had there not been contractors in the vicinity who were accustomed to handle vast enterprises on short notice. Some of these men, fortunately for Hamil, had been temporarily released from sections of the great Key West Line construction; and these contractors with their men and materials were immediately available for the labour in hand.
So all though February work was rushed forward; and March found the sunken garden in bloom, stone-edged pools full of lotus and lilies, orange trees blossoming in a magnificent sweep around the balustrade of the terrace, and, beyond, the graceful stone bridge, passable but not quite completed. Neither were the great systems of pools, fountains, tanks, and lakes completed by any means, but here and there foaming jets trembled and glittered in the sunlight, and here and there placid reaches, crystal clear, reflected the blue above.
As for Palm Beach, visitors and natives had watched with liveliest interest the development of the great Cardross park. In the height of the season visits to the scene of operations were made functions; tourists and residents gathered in swarms and took tea and luncheon under the magnificent live-oaks of the hammock.
Mrs. Cardross herself gave a number of lawn fêtes with the kindly intention of doing practical good to Hamil, the success of whose profession was so vitally dependent upon the approval and personal interest of wealth and fashion and idleness.
Shiela constantly tormented him about these functions for his benefit, suggesting that he attire himself in a sloppy velvet jacket and let his hair grow and his necktie flow. She pretended to prepare placards advertising Hamil's popular parks for poor people at cut rates, including wooden horses and a barrel-organ.
"An idea of mine," she suggested, glancing up from the writing-pad on her knees, "is to trim a dozen alligators with electric lights and turn them loose in our lake. There's current enough in the canal to keep the lights going, isn't there, Mr. Hamil? Incandescent alligators would make Luna Park look like a bog full of fireflies—"
"O Shiela, let him alone," protested Mrs. Carrick. "For all you know Mr. Hamil may be dreadfully sensitive."
"I'll let him alone if he'll let his beard grow horrid and silky and permit us to address him as Cher maître—"
"I won't insist on that if you'll call me by my first name," said Hamil mischievously.
"I never will," returned the girl. Always when he suggested it, the faint pink of annoyed embarrassment tinted Shiela's cheeks. And now everybody in the family rallied her on the subject, for they all had come to call him Garry by this time.
"Don't I always say 'Shiela' to you?" he insisted.
"Yes, you do and nobody was consulted. I informed my mother, but she doesn't seem to resent it. So I am obliged to. Besides I don't like your first name."
Mrs. Cardross laughed gently over her embroidery; Malcourt, who was reading the stock column in the News, turned and looked curiously at Hamil, then at Shiela. Then catching Mrs. Carrick's eye:
"Portlaw is rather worried over the market," he said. "I think he's going North in a day or two."
"Why, Louis!" exclaimed Mrs. Cardross; "then you will be going, too, I suppose."
"His ways are my ways," nodded Malcourt. "I've been here too long anyway," he added in a lower voice, folding the paper absently across his knees. He glanced once more at Shiela, but she had returned to her letter writing.
Everybody spoke of his going in tones of civil regret—everybody except Shiela, who had not even looked at him. Cecile's observations were plainly perfunctory, but she made them nevertheless, for she had begun to take the same feminine interest in Malcourt that everybody was now taking in view of his very pronounced attentions to Virginia Suydam.
All the world may not love a lover, but all the world watches him. And a great many pairs of bright eyes and many more pairs of faded ones were curiously following the manoeuvres of Louis Malcourt and Virginia Suydam.
Very little of what these two people did escaped the social Argus at Palm Beach—their promenades on the verandas of the two great hotels, their appearance on the links and tennis-courts together, their daily encounter at the bathing-hour, their inevitable meeting and pairing on lawn, in ballroom, afloat, ashore, wherever young people gathered under the whip of light social obligations or in pursuit of pleasure.
And they were discussed. She being older than he, and very wealthy, the veranda discussions were not always amiable; but nobody said anything very bitter because Virginia was in a position to be socially respected and the majority of people rather liked Malcourt. Besides there was just enough whispering concerning his performances at the Club and the company he kept there to pique the friendly curiosity of a number of fashionable young matrons who are always prepossessed in favour of a man at whom convention might possibly one day glance askance.
So everybody at Palm Beach was at least aware of the affair. Hamil had heard of it from his pretty aunt, and had been thoroughly questioned. It was very evident that Miss Palliser viewed the proceedings with dismay for she also consulted Wayward, and finally, during the confidential retiring-hour, chose the right moment to extract something definite from Virginia.
But that pale and pretty spinster was too fluently responsive, admitting that perhaps she had been seeing a little too much of Malcourt, protesting it to be accidental, agreeing with Constance Palliser that more discretion should be exercised, and promising it with a short, flushed laugh.
And the next morning she rode to the Inlet with Malcourt, swam with him to the raft, and danced with him until dawn at "The Breakers."
Mrs. Cardross and Jessie Carrick bent over their embroidery; Shiela continued her letter writing with Gray's stylographic pen; Hamil, booted and spurred, both pockets stuffed with plans, paced the terrace waiting for his horse to be brought around; Malcourt had carried himself and his newspaper to the farther end of the terrace, and now stood leaning over the balustrade, an unlighted cigarette between his lips.
"I suppose you'll go to Luckless Lake," observed Hamil, pausing beside Malcourt in his walk.
"Yes. There's plenty to do. We stripped ten thousand trout in October, and we're putting in German boar this spring."
"I should think your occupation would be fascinating."
"Yes? It's lonely, too, until Portlaw's camp parties begin. I get an overdose of nature at times. There's nobody of my own ilk there except our Yale and Cornell foresters. In winter it's deadly, Hamil, deadly! I don't shoot, you know; it's deathly enough as it is."
"I don't believe I'd find it so."
"You think not, but you would. That white solitude may be good medicine for some, but it makes me furious after a while, and I often wish that the woods and the deer and the fish and I myself and the whole devilish outfit were under the North Pole and frozen solid! But I can't afford to pick and choose. If I looked about for something else to do I don't believe anybody would want me. Portlaw pays me more than I'm worth as a Harvard post-graduate. And if that is an asset it's my only one."
Hamil, surprised at his bitterness, looked at him with troubled eyes. Then his eyes wandered to Shiela, who had now taken up her embroidery.
"I can't help it," said Malcourt impatiently; "I like cities and people. I always liked people. I never had enough of people. I never had any society as a boy; and, Hamil, you can't imagine how I longed for it. It would have been well for me to have had it. There was never any in my own home; there was never anything in my home life but painful memories of domestic trouble and financial stress. I was for a while asked to the homes of schoolmates, but could offer no hospitality in return. Sensitiveness and humiliation have strained the better qualities out of me. I've been bruised dry."
He leaned on his elbows, hands clasped, looking out into the sunlight where myriads of brilliant butterflies were fluttering over the carpet of white phlox.
"Hamil," he said, "whatever is harsh, aggressive, cynical, mean, sneering, selfish in me has been externally acquired. You scrape even a spineless mollusc too long with a pin, and the irritation produces a defensive crust. I began boy-like by being so damned credulous and impulsive and affectionate and tender-hearted that even my kid sister laughed at me; and she was only three years older than I. Then followed that period of social loneliness, the longing for the companionship of boys and girls—girls particularly, in spite of agonies of shyness and the awakening terrors of shame when the domestic troubles ended in an earthquake which gave me to my father and Helen to my mother, and a scandal to the newspapers.... O hell! I'm talking like an autobiography! Don't go, if you can stand it for a moment longer; I'm never likely to do it again."
Hamil, silent and uncomfortable, stood stiffly upright, gloved hands resting on the balustrade behind him. Malcourt continued to stare at the orange-and-yellow butterflies dancing over the snowy beds of blossoms.
"In college it was the same," he said. "I had few friends—and no home to return to after—my father-died." He hesitated as though listening. Whenever he spoke of his father, which was seldom, he seemed to assume that curious listening attitude; as though the man, dead by his own hand, could hear him....
"Wayward saw me through. I've paid him back what he spent on me. You know his story; everybody does. I like him and sponge on him. We irritate each other; I'm a beast to resent his sharpness. But he's not right when he says I never had any illusions.... I had—and have.... I do beastly things, too.... Some men will do anything to crush out the last quiver of pride in them.... And the worst is that, mangled, torn, mine still palpitates—like one of your wretched, bloody quail gaping on its back! By God! At least, I couldn't do that!—Kill for pleasure!—as better men than I do. And better women, too!... What am I talking about? I've done worse than that on impulse—meaning well, like other fools."
Malcourt's face had become drawn, sallow, almost sneering; but in the slow gaze he turned on Hamil was that blank hopelessness which no man can encounter and remember unmoved.
"Malcourt," he said, "you're morbid. Men like you; women like you—So do I—now—"
"It's too late. I needed that sort of thing when I was younger. Kindness arouses my suspicion now. Toleration is what it really is. I have no money, no social position here—or abroad; only a thoroughly discredited name in two hemispheres. It took several generations for the Malcourts to go to the devil; but I fancy we'll all arrive on time. What a reunion! I hate the idea of family parties, even in hell."
He straightened up gracefully and lighted his cigarette; then the easy smile twitched his dry lips again and he nodded mockingly at Hamil:
"Count on my friendship, Hamil; it's so valuable. It has already quite ruined one person's life, and will no doubt damage others before I flicker out."
"What do you mean, Malcourt?"
"What I say, old fellow. With the best intentions toward self-sacrifice I usually do irreparable damage to the objects of my regard. Beware my friendship, Hamil. There's no luck in it or me.... But I do like you."
He laughed and sauntered off into the house as Hamil's horse was brought around; and Hamil, traversing the terrace, mounted under a running fire of badinage from Shiela and Cecile who had just come from the tennis-courts to attempt some hated embroidery for the charity fair then impending.
So he rode away to his duties in the forest, leaving a placid sewing-circle on the terrace. From which circle, presently, Shiela silently detached herself, arms encumbered with her writing materials and silks. Strolling aimlessly along the balustrade for a while, watching the bees scrambling in the scarlet trumpet-flowers, she wandered into the house and through to the cool patio.
For some days, now, after Hamil's daily departure, it had happened that an almost unendurable restlessness akin to suspense took possession of her; a distaste and impatience of people and their voices, and the routine of the commonplace.
To occupy herself in idleness was an effort; she had no desire to. She had recently acquired the hammock habit, lying for hours in the coolness of the patio, making no effort to think, listening to the splash of the fountain, her book or magazine open across her breast. When people came she picked up the book and scanned its pages; sometimes she made pretence of sleeping.
But that morning, Malcourt, errant, found her reading in her hammock. Expecting him to pass his way as usual, she nodded with civil indifference, and continued her reading.
"I want to ask you something," he said, "if I may interrupt you."
"What is it, Louis?"
"May I draw up a chair?"
"Why—if you wish. Is there anything I can do for you? "—closing her book.
"Is there anything I can do for you, Shiela?"
A tinge of colour came into her cheeks.
"Thank you," she said in curt negation.
"Are you quite sure?"
"Quite. What do you mean?"
"There is one thing I might do for your sake," he smiled—"blow my bally brains out."
She said in a low contemptuous voice: "Better resort to that for your own sake than do what you are doing to Miss Suydam."
"What am I doing to Miss Suydam?"
"Making love to her."
He sat, eyes idly following the slight swaying motion of her hammock, the smile still edging his lips.
"Don't worry about Miss Suydam," he said; "she can take care of herself. What I want to say is this: Once out of mistaken motives—which nobody, including yourself, would ever credit—I gave you all I had to give—my name.... It's not much of a name; but I thought you could use it. I was even fool enough to think—other things. And as usual I succeeded in injuring where I meant only kindness. Can you believe that?"
"I—think you meant it kindly," she said under her breath. "It was my fault, Louis. I do not blame you, if you really cared for me. I've told you so before."
"Yes, but I was ass enough to think you cared for me."
She lay in her hammock, looking at him across the crimson-fringed border.
"There are two ways out of it," he said; "one is divorce. Have you changed your mind?"
"What is the other?" she asked coldly.
"That—if you could ever learn to care for me—we might try—" He stopped short.
For two years he had not ventured such a thing to her. The quick, bright anger warned him from her eyes. But she said quietly: "You know that is utterly impossible."
"Is it impossible. Shiela?"
"Absolutely. And a trifle offensive."
He said pleasantly: "I was afraid so, but I wanted to be sure. I did not mean to offend you. People change and mature in two years.... I suppose you are as angrily impatient of sentiment in a man as you were then."
"I cannot endure it—"
Her voice died out and she blushed furiously as the memory of Hamil flashed in her mind.
"Shiela," he said quietly, "now and then there's a streak of misguided decency in me. It cropped out that winter day when I did what I did. And I suppose it's cropping up now when I ask you, for your own sake, to get rid of me and give yourself a chance."
"How?"
"Legally."
"I cannot, and you know it."
"You are wrong. Do you think for one moment that your father and mother would accept the wretched sacrifice you are making of your life if they knew—"
"The old arguments again," she said impatiently.
"There is a new argument," said Malcourt, staring at her.
"What new argument?"
"Hamil."
Then the vivid colour surged anew from neck to hair, and she rose in the hammock, bewildered, burning, incensed.
"If it were true," she stammered, leaning on one arm, "do you think me capable of disgracing my own people?"
"The disgrace will be mine and yours. Is not Hamil worth it?"
"No man is worth any wrong I do to my own family!"
"You are wronging more people than your own, Shiela—"
"It is not true!" she said breathlessly. "There is a nobler happiness than one secured at the expense of selfishness and ingratitude. I tell you, as long as I live, I will not have them know or suffer because of my disgraceful escapade with you! You probably meant well; I must have been crazy, I think. But we've got to endure the consequences. If there's unhappiness and pain to be borne, we've got to bear it—we alone—"
"And Hamil. All three of us."
She looked at him desperately; read in his cool gaze that she could not deceive him, and remained silent.
"What about Hamil's unhappiness?" repeated Malcourt slowly.
"If—if he has any, he requires no instruction how to bear it."
Malcourt nodded, then, with a weary smile: "I do not plead with you for my own chance of happiness. Yet, you owe me something, Shiela."
"What?"
"The right to face the world under true colours. You owe me that."
She whitened to the lips. "I know it."
"Suppose I ask for that right?"
"I have always told you that, if you demanded it, I would take your name openly."
"Yes; but now you admit that you love Hamil."
"Love! Love!" she repeated, exasperated. "What has that got to do with it? I know what the law of obligation is. You meant to be generous to me and you ruined your own life. If your future career requires me to publicly assume your name and a place in your household, I've told you that I'll pay that debt."
"Very well. When will you pay it?"
She blanched pitifully.
"When you insist, Louis."
"Do you mean you would go out there to the terrace, now!—and tell your mother what you've done?"
"Yes, if I must," she answered faintly.
"In other words, because you think you're in my debt, you stand ready to acknowledge, on demand, what I gave you—my name?"
Her lips moved in affirmation, but deep in her sickened eyes he saw terror unspeakable.
"Well," he said, looking away from her, "don't worry, Shiela. I'm not asking that of you; in fact I don't want it. That's not very complimentary, but it ought to relieve you.... I'm horribly sorry about Hamil; I like him; I'd like to do something for him. But if I attempted anything it would turn out all wrong.... As for you—well, you are plucky. Poor little girl! I wish I could help you out—short of a journey to eternity. And perhaps I'll take that before very long," he added gaily; "I smoke too many cigarettes. Cheer up, Shiela, and send me a few thousand for Easter."
He rose, gracefully as always, picked up the book from where it lay tumbled in the netting of the hammock, glanced casually through a page or two.
Still scanning the print, he said:
"I wanted to give you a chance; I'm going North in a day or two. It isn't likely we'll meet again very soon.... So I thought I'd speak.... And, if at any time you change your ideas—I won't oppose it."
"Thank you, Louis."
He was running over the pages rapidly now, the same unchanging smile edging his lips.
"The unexpected sometimes happens, Shiela—particularly when it's expected. There are ways and ways—particularly when one is tired—too tired to lie awake and listen any longer, or resist.... My father used to say that anybody who could use an anæsthetic was the equal of any graduate physician—"
"Louis! What do you mean?"
But his head was bent again in that curious attitude of listening; and after a moment he made an almost imperceptible gesture of acquiescence, and turned to her with the old, easy, half-impudent, half-challenging air.
"Gray has a butterfly in his collection which shows four distinct forms. Once people thought these forms were distinct species; now they know they all are the same species of butterfly in various suits of disguise—just as you might persuade yourself that unhappiness and happiness are radically different. But some people find satisfaction in being unhappy, and some find it in being happy; and as it's all only the gratification of that imperious egotism we call conscience, the specific form of all is simply ethical selfishness."
He laughed unrestrainedly at his own will-o'-the-wisp philosophy, looking very handsome and care-free there where the noon sun slanted across the white arcade all thick with golden jasmine bloom.
And Shiela, too intelligent to mistake him, smiled a little at his gay perversity.
He met Portlaw, later, at the Beach Club for luncheon; and, as the latter looked particularly fat, warm, and worried, Malcourt's perverse humour remained in the ascendant, and he tormented Portlaw until that badgered gentleman emitted a bellow of exasperation.
"What on earth's the matter?" asked Malcourt in pretended astonishment. "I thought I was being funny."
"Funny! Does a man want to be prodded with wit at his own expense when the market is getting funnier every hour—at his expense? Go and look at the tape if you want to know why I don't enjoy either your wit or this accursed luncheon."
"What's happening, Portlaw?"
"I wish you'd tell me."
"Muck-raking?"
"Partly, I suppose."
"Administration?"
"People say so. I don't believe it. There's a rotten lot of gambling going on. How do I know what's the matter?"
"Perhaps there isn't anything the matter, old fellow."
"Well, there is. I can sniff it 'way down here. And I'm going home to walk about and listen and sniff some more. Sag, sag, sag!—that's what the market has been doing for months. Yet, if I sell it short, it rallies on me and I'm chased to cover. I go long and the thing sags like the panties on that French count, yonder.... Who's the blond girl with him?"
"Hope springs eternal in the human beast," observed Malcourt. "Hope is a bird, Porty, old chap—"
"Hope is a squab," growled Portlaw, swallowing vast quantities of claret, "all squashy and full of pin-feathers. That's what hope is. It needs a thorough roasting, and it's getting it."
"Exquisite metaphor," mused Malcourt, gazing affably at the rather blond girl who crumbled her bread and looked occasionally and blankly at him, occasionally and affectionately at the French count, her escort, who was consuming lobster with characteristic Gallic thoroughness and abandon.
"The world," quoted Malcourt, "is so full of a number of things. You're one of 'em, Portlaw; I'm several.... Well, if you're going North I'd better begin to get ready."
"What have you got to do?"
"One or two friends of mine who preside in the Temple of Chance yonder. Oh, don't assume that babyish pout! I've won enough back to keep going for the balance of the time we remain."
Portlaw, pleased and relieved, finished his claret.
"You've a few ladies to take leave of, also," he said briskly.
"Really, Portlaw!"—in gentle admonition.
"Haw! Haw!" roared Portlaw, startling the entire café; "you'd better get busy. There'll be a run on the bank. There'll be a waiting line before Malcourt & Co. opens for business, each fair penitent with her little I.O.U. to be cashed! Haw! Haw! Sad dog! Bad dog! The many-sided Malcourt! Come on; I've got a motor across the—"
"And I've an appointment with several superfluous people and a girl," said Malcourt drily. Then he glanced at the blond companion of the count who continued crumbling bread between her brilliantly ringed fingers as though she had never before seen Louis Malcourt. The price of diamonds varies. Sometimes it is merely fastidious observance of convention and a sensitive escort. It all depends on the world one inhabits; it does indeed.
CHAPTER XIV
STRATEGY
An hour or two later that afternoon Wayward and Constance Palliser, Gussie Vetchen, and Livingston Cuyp gazed with variously mingled sentiments upon the torpid saurians belonging to one Alligator Joe in an enclosure rather remote from the hotel.
Vetchen bestowed largess upon the small, freckled boy attendant; and his distinguished disapproval upon the largest lady-crocodile which, with interlocked but grinning jaws, slumbered under a vertical sun in monochromatic majesty.
"One perpetual and gigantic simper," he said, disgusted.
"Rather undignified for a thing as big as that to lay eggs like a hen," observed Cuyp, not intending to be funny.
Wayward and Miss Palliser had wandered off together to inspect the pumps. Vetchen, always inquisitive, had discovered a coy manatee in one tank, and was all for poking it with his walking-stick until he saw its preposterous countenance emerge from the water.
"Great heavens," he faltered, "it looks like a Dutch ancestor of Cuyp's!"
Cuyp, intensely annoyed, glanced at his watch.
"Where the mischief did Miss Suydam and Malcourt go?" he asked Wayward. "I say, Miss Palliser, you don't want to wait here any longer, do you?"
"They're somewhere in the labyrinth," said Wayward. "Their chair went that way, didn't it, boy?"
"Yeth, thir," said the small and freckled attendant.
So the party descended the wooden incline to where their sleepy black chairmen lay on the grass, waiting; and presently the two double chairs wheeled away toward that amusing maze of jungle pathways cut through the impenetrable hammock, and popularly known as the labyrinth.
But Miss Suydam and Mr. Malcourt were not in the labyrinth. At that very moment they were slowly strolling along the eastern dunes where the vast solitude of sky and sea seemed to depress even the single white-headed eagle standing on the wet beach, head and tail adroop, motionless, fish-gorged. No other living thing was in sight except the slim, blue dragon-flies, ceaselessly darting among the beach-grapes; nothing else stirred except those two figures on the dunes, moving slowly, heads bent as though considering the advisability of every step in the breaking sands. There was a fixed smile on the girl's lips, but her eyes were mirthless, almost vacant.
"So you've decided to go?" she said.
"Portlaw decides that sort of thing for me."
"It's a case of necessity?"
Malcourt answered lightly: "He intends to go. Who can stop a fat and determined man? Besides, the season is over; in two weeks there will be nobody left except the indigenous nigger, the buzzards, and a few cast-off summer garments—"
"And a few cast-off winter memories," she said. "You will not take any away with you, will you?"
"Do you mean clothes?"
"Memories."
"I'll take some."
"Which?"
"All those concerning you."
"Thank you, Louis." They had got that far. And a trifle farther, for her hand, swinging next his, encountered it and their fingers remained interlocked. But there was no change of expression in her pretty, pale face as, head bent, shoulder to shoulder with him, she moved thoughtfully onward along the dunes, the fixed smile stamped on her lips.
"What are you going to do with your memories?" she asked. "Pigeon-hole and label them? Or fling them, like your winter repentance, in the Fire of Spring?"
"What are you going to do with yours, Virginia?"
"Nothing. They are not disturbing enough to destroy. Besides, unlike yours, they are my first memories of indiscretions, and they are too new to forget easily, too incredible yet to hurt. A woman is seldom hurt by what she cannot understand."
He passed one arm around her supple waist; they halted; he turned her toward him.
"What is it you don't understand?"
"This."
"My kissing you? Like this?"
She neither avoided nor returned the caress, looking at him out of impenetrable eyes more green than blue like the deep sea under changing skies.
"Is this what you don't understand, Virginia?"
"Yes; that—and your moderation."
His smile changed, but it was still a smile.
"Nor I," he said. "Like our friend, Warren Hastings, I am astonished. But there our resemblance ends."
The eagle on the wet sands ruffled, shook his silvery hackles, and looked around at them. Then, head low and thrust forward, he hulked slowly toward the remains of the dead fish from which but now he had retired in the disgust of satiation.
Meanwhile Malcourt and Miss Suydam were walking cautiously forward again, selecting every footstep as though treading on the crumbling edges of an abyss.
"It's rather stupid that I never suspected it," she said, musing aloud.
"Suspected what?"
"The existence of this other woman called Virginia Suydam. And I might have been mercifully ignorant of her until I died, if you had not looked at me and seen us both at once."
"We all are that way."
"Not all women, Louis. Have you found them so? You need not answer. There is in you, sometimes, a flash of infernal chivalry; do you know it? I can forgive you a great deal for it; even for discovering that other and not very staid person, so easily schooled, easily taught to respond; so easily thrilled, easily beguiled, easily caressed. Why, with her head falling back on your shoulder so readily, and her lips so lightly persuaded, one can scarcely believe her to have been untaught through all these years of dry convention and routine, or unaware of that depravity, latent, which it took your unerring faith and skill to discover and develop."
"How far have I developed it?"
She bent her delicate head: "I believe I have already admitted your moderation."
He shivered, walking forward without looking at her for a pace or two, then halted.
"Would you marry me?" he asked.
"I had rather not. You know it."
"Why?—once again."
"Because of my strange respect for that other woman that I am—or was."
"Which always makes me regret my—moderation," he said, wincing under the lash of her words. "But I'm not considering you! I'm considering the peace of mind of that other woman—not yours!" He took her in his arms, none too gently. "Not yours. I'd show no mercy to you\ There is only one kind of mercy you'd understand. Look into my eyes and admit it."
"Yes," she said.
"But your other self understands!"
"Why don't you destroy her?"
"And let her die in her contempt for me? You ask too much—Virginia-that-I-know. If that other Virginia-that-I-don't-know loved me, I'd kill this one, not the other!"
"Do you care for that one, Louis?"
"What answer shall I make?"
"The best you can without lying."
"Then"—and being in his arms their eyes were close—"then I think I could love her if I had a chance. I don't know. I can deny myself. They say that is the beginning. But I seldom do—very seldom. And that is the best answer I can give, and the truest."
"Thank you.... And so you are going to leave me?"
"I am going North. Yes."
"What am I to do?"
"Return to your other self and forget me."
"Thank you again.... Do you know, Louis, that you have never once by hint or by look or by silence suggested that it was I who deliberately offered you the first provocation? That is another flicker of that infernal chivalry of yours."
"Does your other self approve?" he said, laughing.
"My other self is watching us both very closely, Louis. I—I wish, sometimes, she were dead! Louis! Louis! as I am now, here in your arms, I thought I had descended sufficiently to meet you on your own plane. But—you seem higher up—at moments.... And now, when you are going, you tell my other self to call in the creature we let loose together, for it will have no longer any counterpart to caress.... Louis! I do love you; how can I let you go! Can you tell me? What am I to do? There are times—there are moments when I cannot endure it—the thought of losing the disgrace of your lips—your arms—the sound of your voice. Don't go and leave me like this—don't go—"
Miss Suydam's head fell. She was crying.
The eagle on the wet beach, one yellow talon firmly planted on its offal, tore strip after strip from the quivering mass. The sun etched his tinted shadow on the sand.
When the tears of Miss Suydam had been appropriately dried, they turned and retraced their steps very slowly, her head resting against his shoulder, his arm around her thin waist, her own hand hanging loosely, trailing the big straw hat and floating veil.
They spoke very seldom—very, very seldom. Malcourt was too busy thinking; Virginia too stunned to realise that, it was, now, her other austere self, bewildered, humiliated, desperate, which was walking amid the solitude of sky and sea with Louis Malcourt, there beneath the splendour of the westering sun.
The eagle, undisturbed, tore at the dead thing on the beach, one yellow talon embedded in the offal.
Their black chair-boy lay asleep under a thicket of Spanish bayonet.
"Arise, O Ethiope, and make ready unto us a chariot!" said Malcourt pleasantly; and he guided Virginia into her seat while the fat darky climbed up behind, rubbing slumber from his rolling and enormous eyes.
Half-way through the labyrinth they met Miss Palliser and Wayward.
"Where on earth have you been?" asked Virginia, so candidly that Wayward, taken aback, began excuses. But Constance Palliser's cheeks turned pink; and remained so during her silent ride home with Wayward.
Lately the world had not been spinning to suit the taste of Constance Palliser. For one thing Wayward was morose. Besides he appeared physically ill. She shrank from asking herself the reason; she might better have asked him for her peace of mind.
Another matter: Virginia, the circumspect, the caste-bound, the intolerant, the emotionless, was displaying the astounding symptoms peculiar to the minx! And she had neither the excuse of ignorance nor of extreme youth. Virginia was a mature maiden, calmly cognisant of the world, and coolly alive to the doubtful phases of that planet. And why on earth she chose to affiche herself with a man like Malcourt, Constance could not comprehend.
And another thing worried the pretty spinster—the comings, goings, and occult doings of her nephew with the most distractingly lovely and utterly impossible girl that fate ever designed to harass the soul of any young man's aunt.
That Hamil was already in love with Shiela Cardross had become painfully plainer to her every time she saw him. True, others were in love with Miss Cardross; that state of mind and heart seemed to be chronic at Palm Beach. Gussie Vetchen openly admitted his distinguished consideration, and Courtlandt Classon toddled busily about Shiela's court, and even the forlorn Cuyp had become disgustingly unfaithful and no longer wrinkled his long Dutch nose into a series of white corrugations when Wayward took Miss Palliser away from him. Alas! the entire male world seemed to trot in the wake of this sweet-eyed young Circe, emitting appealingly gentle and propitiating grunts.
"The very deuce is in that girl!" thought Constance, exasperated; "and the sooner Garry goes North the better. He's madly unhappy over her.... Fascinating little thing! I can't blame him too much—except that he evidently realises he can't marry such a person—"
The chair rolled into the hotel grounds under the arch of jasmine. The orchestra was playing in the colonnade; tea had been served under the cocoa-nut palms; pretty faces and gay toilets glimmered familiarly as the chair swept along the edge of the throng.
"Tell the chair-boy that we'll tea here, Jim," said Miss Palliser, catching sight of her nephew and the guilty Circe under whose gentle thrall Hamil was now boldly imbibing a swizzle.
So Wayward nodded to the charioteer, the chair halted, and he and Constance disembarked and advanced across the grass to exchange amenities with friends and acquaintances. Which formalities always fretted Wayward, and he stood about, morose and ungracious, while Constance floated prettily here and there, and at last turned with nicely prepared surprise to encounter Shiela and Hamil seated just behind her.
The younger girl, rising, met her more than half-way with gloved hand frankly offered; Wayward turned to Hamil in subdued relief.
"Lord! I've been looking at those confounded alligators and listening to Vetchen's and Cuyp's twaddle! Constance wouldn't talk; and I'm quite unfit for print. What's that in your glass, Garry?"
"A swizzle—"
"Anything in it except lime-juice and buzz?"
"Yes—"
"Then I won't have one. Constance! Are you drinking tea?"
"Do you want some?" she asked, surprised.
"Yes, I do—if you can give me some without asking how many lumps I take—like the inevitable heroine in a British work of fiction—"
"Jim, what a bear you are to-day!" And to Shiela, who was laughing: "He snapped and growled at Gussie Vetchen and he glared and glowered at Livingston Cuyp, and he's scarcely vouchsafed a word to me this afternoon except the civility you have just heard. Jim, I will ask you how many lumps—"
"O Lord! Britain triumphant! Two—I think; ten if you wish, Constance—or none at all. Miss Cardross, you wouldn't say such things to me, would you?"
"Don't answer him," interposed Constance; "if you do you'll take him away, and I haven't another man left! Why are you such a dreadful devastator, Miss Cardross?... Here's your tea, James. Please turn around and occupy yourself with my nephew; I'd like a chance to talk to Miss Cardross."
The girl had seated herself beside Miss Palliser, and, as Wayward moved over to the other table, she gave him a perverse glance, so humourous and so wholly adorable that Constance Palliser yielded to the charm with an amused sigh of resignation.
"My dear," she said, "Miss Suydam and I are going North very soon, and we are coming to see your mother at the first opportunity."
"Mother expects you," said the girl simply. "I did not know that she knew Miss Suydam—or cared to."
Something in the gentle indifference of the words sent the conscious blood pulsing into Miss Palliser's cheeks. Then she said frankly:
"Has Virginia been rude to you?"
"Yes—a little."
"Unpardonably?"
"N-no. I always can pardon."
"You dear!" said Constance impulsively. "Listen; Virginia does snippy things at times. I don't know why and she doesn't either. I know she's sorry she was rude to you, but she seems to think her rudeness too utterly unpardonable. May I tell her it isn't?"
"If you please," said Shiela quietly.
Miss Palliser looked at her, then, succumbing, took her hand in hers.
"No wonder people like you, Miss Cardross."
"Do you?"
"How could I escape the popular craze?" laughed Miss Palliser, a trifle embarrassed.
"That is not an answer," returned Shiela, the smile on her red lips faintly wistful. And Constance surrendered completely.
"You sweet, cunning thing," she said, "I do like you. You are perfectly adorable, for one reason; for the other, there is something—a nameless something about you—"
"Quite—nameless," said the girl under her breath.
A little flash of mist confused Miss Palliser's eyesight for a moment; her senses warned her, but her heart was calling.
"Dear," she said, "I could love you very easily."
Shiela looked her straight in the eyes.
"What you give I can return; no more, no less—"
But already Constance Palliser had lifted the girl's smooth hand to her lips, murmuring: "Pride! pride! It is the last refuge for social failures, Shiela. And you are too wise to enter there, too sweet and wholesome to remain. Leave us our obsolete pride, child; God knows we need something in compensation for all that you possess."
Later they sipped their tea together. "I always wanted you to like me," said the girl. Her glance wandered toward Hamil so unconsciously that Constance caught her breath. But the spell was on her still; she, too, looked at Hamil; admonition, prejudice, inculcated precept, wavered hazily.
"Because I care so much for Mr. Hamil," continued the girl innocently.
For one instant, in her inmost intelligence, Miss Palliser fiercely questioned that innocence; then, convinced, looked questioningly at the girl beside her. So questioningly that Shiela answered:
"What?"—as though the elder woman had spoken.
"I don't know, dear.... Is there anything you—you cared to ask me?—say to me?—tell me?—perhaps—"
"About what?"
So fearless and sweet and true the gaze that met her own that Constance hesitated.
"About Mr. Hamil?"
The girl looked at her; understood her; and the colour mounted to her temples.
"No," she said slowly, "there is nothing to tell anybody.... There never will be."
"I wish there were, child." Certainly Constance must have gone quite mad under the spell, for she had Shiela's soft hands in hers again, and was pressing them close between her palms, repeating: "I am sorry; I am, indeed. The boy certainly cares for you; he has told me so a thousand times without uttering a word. I have known it for weeks—feared it. Now I wish it. I am sorry."
"Mr. Hamil—understands—" faltered Shiela; "I—I care so much for him—so much more than for any other man; but not in the way you—you are kind enough to—wish—"
"Does he understand?"
"Y-yes. I think so. I think we understand each other—thoroughly. But"—she blushed vividly—"I—did not dream that you supposed—"
Miss Palliser looked at her searchingly.
"—But—it has made me very happy to believe that you consider me—acceptable."
"Dearest child, it is evident that we are the unacceptable ones—"
"Please don't say that—or think it. It is absurd—in one sense.... Are we to be friends in town? Is that what you mean?"
"Indeed we are, if you will."
Miss Cardross nodded and withdrew her hands as Virginia and Malcourt came into view across the lawn.
Constance, following her glance, saw, and signalled silent invitation; Malcourt sauntered up, paid his respects airily, and joined Hamil and Wayward; Virginia spoke in a low voice to Constance, then, leaning on the back of her chair, looked at Shiela as inoffensively as she knew how. She said:
"I am very sorry for my rudeness to you. Can you forgive me, Miss Cardross?"
"Yes.... Won't you have some tea?"
Her direct simplicity left Virginia rather taken aback. Perhaps she expected some lack of composure in the girl, perhaps a more prolix acceptance of honourable amends; but this terse and serene amiability almost suggested indifference; and Virginia seated herself, not quite knowing how she liked it.
Afterward she said to Miss Palliser:
"Did you ever see such self-possession, my dear? You know I might pardon my maid in exactly the same tone and manner."
"But you wouldn't ask your maid to tea, would you?" said Constance, gently amused.
"I might, if I could afford to," she nodded listlessly. "I believe that girl could do it without disturbing her Own self-respect or losing caste below stairs or above. As for the Van Dieman—just common cat, Constance."
Miss Palliser laughed. "Shiela Cardross refused the Van Dieman son and heir—if you think that might be an explanation of the cattishness."
"Really?" asked Virginia, without interest. "Where did you hear that gossip?"
"From our vixenish tabby herself. The thin and vindictive are usually without a real sense of humour. I rather suspected young Jan Van Dieman's discomfiture. He left, you know, just after Garret arrived," she added demurely.
Virginia raised her eyes at the complacent inference; but even curiosity seemed to have died out in her, and she only said, languidly:
"You think she cares for Garret? And you approve?"
"I think I'd approve if she did. Does that astonish you?"
"Not very much."
Virginia seemed to have lost all spirit. She laughed rarely, nowadays. She was paler, too, than usual—paler than was ornamental; and pallor suited her rather fragile features, too. Also she had become curiously considerate of other people's feelings—rather subdued; less ready in her criticisms; gentler in judgments. All of which symptoms Constance had already noted with incredulity and alarm.
"Where did you and Louis Malcourt go this afternoon?" she asked, unpegging her hair.
"Out to the beach. There was nothing there except sky and water, and a filthy eagle dining on a dead fish."
Miss Palliser waited, sitting before her dresser; but as Virginia offered no further information she shook out the splendid masses of her chestnut hair and, leaning forward, examined her features in the mirror with minute attention.
"It's strange," she murmured, half to herself, "how ill Jim Wayward has been looking recently. I can't account for it."
"I can, dear," said Virginia gently.
Constance turned in surprise.
"How?"
"Mr. Malcourt says that he is practising self-denial. It hurts, you know."
"What!" exclaimed Constance, flushing up.
"I said that it hurts."
"Such a slur as that harms Louis Malcourt—not Mr. Wayward!" returned Constance hotly.
Virginia repeated: "It hurts—to kill desire. It hurts even before habit is acquired ... they say. Louis Malcourt says so. And if that is true—can you wonder that poor Mr. Wayward looks like death? I speak in all sympathy and kindness—as did Mr. Malcourt."
So that was it! Constance stared at her own fair face in the mirror, and deep into the pained brown eyes reflected there. The eyes suddenly dimmed and the parted mouth quivered.
So that was the dreadful trouble!—the explanation of the recent change in him—the deep lines of pain from the wing of the pinched nostril—the haunted gaze, the long, restless silences, the forced humour and its bitter flavour tainting voice and word!
And she had believed—feared with a certainty almost hopeless—that it was his old vice, slowly, inexorably transforming what was left of the man she had known so long and cared for so loyally through all these strange, confusing years.
From the mirror the oval of her own fresh unravaged face, framed in the burnished brown of her hair, confronted her like a wraith of the past; and, dreaming there, wide-eyed, expressionless, she seemed to see again the old-time parlour set with rosewood; and the faded roses in the carpet; and, through the half-drawn curtains, spring sunlight falling on a boy and a little girl.
Virginia, partly dressed for dinner, rose and went to the window, frail restless hands clasped behind her back, and stood there gazing out at the fading daylight. Perhaps the close of day made her melancholy; for there were traces of tears on her lashes; perhaps it suggested the approaching end of a dream so bright and strange that, at times, a dull pang of dread stilled her heart—checking for a moment its heavy beating.
Light died in the room; the panes turned silvery, then darker as the swift Southern night fell over sea, lagoon, and forest.
Far away in the wastes of dune and jungle the sweet flute-like tremolo of an owl broke out, prolonged infinitely. From the dark garden below, a widow-bird called breathlessly, its ghostly cry, now a far whisper in the night, now close at hand, husky, hurried, startling amid the shadows. And, whir! whir-r-r! thud! came the great soft night-moths against the window screens where sprays of silvery jasmine clung, perfuming all the night.
Still Constance sat before the mirror which was now invisible in the dusk, bare elbows on the dresser's edge, face framed in her hands over which the thick hair rippled. And, in the darkness, her brown eyes closed—perhaps that they might behold more clearly the phantoms of the past together there in an old-time parlour, where the golden radiance of suns long dead still lingered, warming the faded roses on the floor.
And after a long while her maid came with a card; and she straightened up in her chair, gathered the filmy robe of lace, and, rising, pressed the electric switch. But Virginia had returned to her own room to bathe her eyelids and pace the floor until she cared to face the outer world once more and, for another hour or two, deceive it.
CHAPTER XV
UNDER FIRE
Meanwhile Constance dressed hastily, abetted by the clever maid; for Wayward was below, invited to dine with them. Malcourt also was due for dinner, and, as usual, late.
In fact, he was at that moment leisurely tying his white neckwear in his bed-chamber at Villa Cardross. And sometimes he whistled, tentatively, as though absorbed in mentally following an elusive air; sometimes he resumed a lighted cigarette which lay across the gilded stomach of a Chinese joss, sending a thin, high thread of smoke to the ceiling. He had begun his collection with one small idol; there were now nineteen, and all hideous.
"The deuce! the deuce!" he murmured, rejecting the tie and trying another one; "and all the things I've got to do this blessed night!... Console the afflicted—three of them; dine with one, get to "The Breakers" and spoon with another—get to the Club and sup with another!—the deuce! the deuce! the—"
He hummed a bar or two of a new waltz, took a puff at his cigarette, winked affably at the idol, put on his coat, and without a second glance at the glass went out whistling a lively tune.
Hamil, dressed for dinner, but looking rather worn and fatigued, passed him in the hall.
"You've evidently had a hard day," said Malcourt; "you resemble the last run of sea-weed. Is everybody dining at this hour?"
"I dined early with Mrs. Cardross. Mrs. Carrick has taken Shiela and Cecile to that dinner dance at the O'Haras'. It's the last of the season. I thought you might be going later."
"Are you?"
"No; I'm rather tired."
"I'm tired, too. Hang it! I'm always tired—but only of Bibi. Quand même! Good night.... I'll probably reappear with the dicky-birds. Leave your key under that yellow rose-bush, will you? I can't stop to hunt up mine. And tell them not to bar and chain the door; that's a good fellow."
Hamil nodded and resumed his journey to his bedroom. There he transferred a disorderly heap of letters, plans, contracts, and blue-prints from his bed to a table, threw a travelling rug over the bed, lay down on it, and lighted a cigar, closing his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them wearily.
He did not intend to sleep; there was work waiting for him; that was why he left the electric bulbs burning as safeguard against slumber.
For a while he smoked, flat on his back; his cigar went out twice and he relighted it. The third time he was deciding whether or not to set fire to it again—he remembered that—and remembered nothing more, except the haunted dreams in which he followed her, through sad and endless forests, gray in deepening twilight, where he could neither see her face nor reach her side, nor utter the cry which strained in his throat.... On, on, endlessly struggling onward in the thickening darkness, year after year, the sky a lowering horror, the forest, no longer silent, a twisting, stupefying confusion of sound, growing, increasing, breaking into a hellish clamour!—
Upright on his bed he realised that somebody was knocking; and he slid to the floor, still stupid and scarcely convinced.
"Mrs. Carrick's compliments, and is Mr. Hamil quite well bein' as the lights is burnin' an' past two o'clock, sir?" said the maid at the door.
"Past two! O Lord! Please thank Mrs. Carrick, and say that I am going to do a little work, and that I am perfectly well."
He closed the door and looked around him in despair: "All that stuff to verify and O.K.! What an infernal ass I am! By the nineteen little josses in Malcourt's bedroom I'm so many kinds of a fool that I hate to count up beyond the dozen!"
Stretching and yawning alternately he eyed the mass of papers with increasing repugnance; but later a cold sponge across his eyes revived him sufficiently to sit down and inspect the first document. Then he opened the ink-well, picked up a pen, and began.
For half an hour he sat there, now refreshed and keenly absorbed in his work. Once the stairs outside creaked, and he raised his head, listening absently, then returned to the task before him with a sigh.
All his windows were open; the warm night air was saturated with the odour of Bermuda lilies. Once or twice he laid down his pen and stared out into the darkness as a subtler perfume grew on the breeze—the far fragrance of china-berry in bloom; Calypso's breath!
Then, in the silence, the heavy throb of his heart unnerved his hand, rendering his pen unsteady as he signed each rendered bill: "O.K. for $——," and affixed his signature, "John Garret Hamil, Architect."
The aroma of the lilies hung heavy in the room, penetrating as the scent of Malcourt's spiced Chinese gums afire and bubbling. And he thought again of Malcourt's nineteen little josses which he lugged about with him everywhere from some occult whim, and in whose gilt-bronze laps he sometimes burned cigarettes, sometimes a tiny globule of aromatic gum, pretending it propitiated the malice-brooding gods.
And, thinking of Malcourt, suddenly he remembered the door-key. Malcourt could not get in without it. And the doors were barred and chained.
Slipping the key into his pocket he opened his door, and, treading quietly through the silent house, descended to the great hall. With infinite precaution he fumbled for the chains; they were dangling loose. Somebody, too, had drawn the heavy bars, but the door itself was locked.
So he cautiously unlocked it, and holding the key in his hand, let himself out on the terrace.
And at the same moment a shadowy figure turned in the starlight to confront him.
"Shiela!"
"Is that you, Mr. Hamil?"
"Yes. What on earth are you—"
"Hush! What are you doing down here?"
"Louis Malcourt is out. I forgot to leave a key for him under the yellow rose—"
"Under the rose—and yellow at that! The mysteries of the Rosicrucians pale into insignificance beside the lurid rites of Mr. Malcourt and Mr. Hamil—under the yellow rose! Proceed, my fearsome adept, and perform the occult deed!"
Hamil descended the terrace to the new garden, hung the key to a brier under the fragrant mass of flowers, and glanced up at Shiela, who, arms on the balustrade above him, was looking down at the proceedings.
"Is the dread deed done?" she whispered.
"If you don't believe it come down and see."
"I? Come down? At two in the morning?"
"It's half-past two."
"Oh," she said, "if it's half-past two I might think of coming down for a moment—to look at my roses.... Thank you, Mr. Hamil, I can see my way very clearly. I can usually see my own way clearly—without the aid of your too readily offered hand.... Did you ever dream of such an exquisitely hot night! That means rain, doesn't it?—with so many fragrances mingling? The odour of lilies predominates, and I think some jasmine is in the inland wind, but my roses are very sweet if you only bend down to them. A rose is always worth stooping for."
She leaned over the yellow blossoms, slender, spirit-white in the starlight, and brushed her fresh young face with the silken petals.
"So sweet," she said; "lean down and worship my young roses, you unappreciative man!"
For a few minutes she strolled along the paths of the new garden he had built, bending capriciously here and there to savour some perfect blossom. The night was growing warmer; the sea breeze had died out, and a hot wind blew languidly from the west.
"You know," she said, looking back at him over her shoulder, "I don't want to go to bed."
"Neither do I, and I'm not going."
"But I'm going.... I wonder why I don't want to? Listen! Once—after I was a protoplasm and a micro-organism, and a mollusc, and other things, I probably was a predatory animal—nice and sleek with velvet feet and shining incandescent eyes—and very, very predatory.... That's doubtless why I often feel so deliciously awake at night—with a tameless longing to prowl under the moon.... And I think I'd better go in, now."
"Nonsense," he said, "I'm not going to bed yet."
"Oh! And what difference might that make to me? You are horridly conceited; do you know it?"
"Please stay, Calypso. It's too hot to sleep."
"No; star-prowling is contrary to civilized custom."
"But every soul in the house is sound asleep—"
"I should hope so! And you and I have no business to be out here."
"Do little observances of that sort count with you and me?"
"They don't," she said, shaking her head, "but they ought to. I want to stay. There is no real reason why I shouldn't—except the absurd fear of being caught unawares. Perhaps, perhaps I might stay for ten more minutes.... Oh, the divine beauty of it all! How hot it is!—the splash of the fountains seems to cool things a little—and those jagged, silvery reflections of the stars, deep, deep in the pool there.... Did you see that fish swirl to the surface? Hark! What was that queer sound?"
"Some night bird crying in the marshes. It will rain to-morrow; the wind is blowing from the hammock; that's why it's hot to-night; can you detect the odour of wild sweet-bay?"
"Yes—at moments. And I can just hear the surf—calling, calling 'Calypso!' as you called me once.... I must go, now."
"To the sea or the house?" he asked, laughing.
She walked a few paces toward the house, halted, and looked back audaciously.
"I'd go to the sea—only I'm afraid I'd be found out.... Isn't it all too stupid! Where convention is needless and one's wish is so harmless why should a girl turn coward at the fear of somebody discovering how innocently happy she is trying to be with a man!... It makes me very impatient at times." ... She turned, hesitated, stepped nearer and looked him in the face, daringly perverse.
"I want to go with you!... Have we not passed through enough together to deserve this little unconventional happiness?" She was breathing more quickly. "I will go with you if you wish."
"To the sea?"
"Yes. It is only a half mile by the hammock path. The servants are awake at six. Really, the night is too superb to waste—alone. But we must get back in time, if I go with you."
"Have you a key?"
"Yes, here in my gloves"—stripping them from her bare arms. "Can you put them into your pocket with the key?... And I'll pin up my skirt to get it out of the way.... What? Do you think it's a pretty gown? I did not think you noticed it. I've danced it to rags.... And will you take this fan, please? No, I'll wear the wrap—it's only cobweb weight."
She had now pinned up her gown to walking-skirt length; her slim feet were sheathed in silken dancing gear; and she bent over to survey them, then glanced doubtfully at Hamil, who shook his head.
"Never mind," she said resolutely; "only we can't walk far on the beach; I could never keep them on in the dune sands. Are you ready, O my tempter?"