Too-ri-looral!
Too-ri-looral!"
And, very gracefully, he sketched a step or two in contra-dance to his own shadow on the grass.
Truly rural,
Too-ri-looral,
Man prefers his maidens plural;
One is none, he wants them all!
Too-ri-looral!
Too-ri-looral—"
And he sauntered off humming gaily, making playful passes at the trees with his riding-crop as he passed.
Later he aided his wife to mount and stood looking after her as she rode away, Portlaw pounding along heavily beside her.
"All alone with the daisies," he said, looking around him when they had disappeared.
Toward noon he ordered a horse, ate his luncheon in leisurely solitude, read yesterday's papers while he smoked, then went out, mounted, and took the road to Pride's Fall, letting his horse choose his own pace.
Moving along through the pretty forest road, he glanced casually right and left as he advanced, tapping his riding-boots in rhythm to the air he was humming in a careless undertone—something about a shepherd and the plural tastes of man.
His mood was inspired by that odd merriment which came from sheer perversity. When the depths and shallows of his contradictory character were disturbed a ripple of what passed for mirth covered all the surface; if there was any profundity to the man the ripple obscured it. No eye had ever penetrated the secrecy of what lay below; none ever would. Perhaps there was nothing there.
He journeyed on, his horse ambling or walking as it suited him, or sometimes veering to stretch a long glossy neck and nip at a bunch of leaves.
The cock-partridge stood on his drumming-log and defied the forest rider, all unseen; rabbit and squirrel sat bolt upright with palpitating flanks and moist bright eyes at gaze; overhead the slow hawks sailed, looking down at him as he rode.
Sometimes Malcourt whistled to himself, sometimes he sang in a variably agreeable voice, and now and then he quoted the poets, taking pleasure in the precision of his own diction.
Mirliton, Mirlitaine!
Requiescant in pace!"
he chanted; and quoted more of the same bard with a grimace, adding, as he spurred his horse:
"Poeta nascitur, non fit!—the poet's nasty and not fit. Zut! Boum-boum! Get along, old fellow, or we'll never see the pretty ladies of Pride's this blooming day!"
There was a shorter cut by a spotted trail, and when he saw the first blaze glimmering through the leaves he steered his horse toward it. The sound of voices came distantly from the wooded heights above—far laughter, the faint aroma of a wood fire; no doubt some picnickers—trespassing as usual, but that was Mrs. Ascott's affair.
A little later, far below him, he caught a glimpse of a white gown among the trees. There was a spring down there somewhere in that thicket of silver birches; probably one of the trespassers was drinking. So, idly curious, he rode that way, his horse making no sound on the thick moss.
"If she's ornamental," he said to himself, "I'll linger to point out the sin of trespassing; that is if she is sufficiently ornamental—"
His horse stepped on a dead branch which cracked; the girl in white, who had been looking out through the birch-trees across the valley, turned her head.
They recognised each other even at that distance; he uttered a low exclamation of satisfaction, sprang from his saddle, and led his horse down among the mossy rocks of the water-course to the shelf of rock overhanging the ravine where she stood as motionless as one of the silver saplings.
"Virginia," he said, humorously abashed, "shall I say I am glad to see you, and how d'you do, and offer you my hand?—or had I better not?"
He thought she meant to answer; perhaps she meant to, but found no voice at her disposal.
He dropped his bridle over a branch and, drawing off his gloves, walked up to where she was standing.
"I knew you were at Pride's Hall," he said; "I'm aware, also, that nobody there either expected or wished to see me. But I wanted to see you; and little things of that sort couldn't keep me away. Where are the others?"
She strove twice to answer him, then turned abruptly, steadying herself against a birch-tree with one arm.
"Where are the others, Virginia?" he asked gently.
"On the rocks beyond."
"Picnicking?"
"Yes."
"How charming!" he said; "as though one couldn't see enough country out of one's windows every minute in the year. But you can't tell where sentiment will crop up; some people don't object to chasing ants off the dishes and fishing sticks out of the milk. I do.... It's rather fortunate I found you alone: saves a frigid reception and cruel comments after I'm gone.... After I'm gone, Virginia."
He seated himself where the sunlight fell agreeably and looked off over the valley. A shrunken river ran below—a mere thread of life through its own stony skeleton—a mockery of what it once had been before the white-hided things on two legs had cut the forests from the hills and killed its cool mossy sources in their channels. The crushers of pulp and the sawyers of logs had done their dirty work thoroughly; their acids and their sawdust poisoned and choked; their devastation turned the tree-clothed hill flanks to arid lumps of sand and rock.
He said aloud, "to think of these trees being turned into newspapers!"
He looked up at her whimsically.
"The least I can do is to help grow them again. As a phosphate I might amount to something—if I'm carefully spaded in." And in a lower voice just escaping mockery: "How are you, Virginia?"
"I am perfectly well."
"Are you well enough to sit down and talk to me for half an hour?"
She made no reply.
"Don't be dignified; there is nothing more inartistic, except a woman who is trying to be brave on an inadequate income."
She did not move or look at him.
"Virginia—dear?"
"What?"
"Do you remember that day we met in the surf; and you said something insolent to me, and bent over, laying your palms flat on the water, looking at me over your shoulder?"
"Yes."
"You knew what you were doing?"
"Yes."
"This is part of the consequences. That's what life is, nothing but a game of consequences. I knew what I was doing; you admit you were responsible for yourself; and nothing but consequences have resulted ever since. Sit down and be reasonable and friendly; won't you?"
"I cannot stay here."
"Try," he said, smiling, and made room for her on the sun-crisped moss. A little later she seated herself with an absent-minded air and gazed out across the valley. A leaf or two, prematurely yellow, drifted from the birches.
"It reminds me," he said thoughtfully, "of that exquisite poem on Autumn:
They're falling everywhere;
They're falling in the atmosphere,
They're falling in the air—'
—and I don't remember any more, dear."
"Did you wish to say anything to me besides nonsense?" she asked, flushing.
"Did you expect anything else from me?"
"I had no reason to."
"Oh; I thought you might have been prepared for a little wickedness."
She turned her eyes, more green than blue, on him.
"I was not unprepared."
"Nor I," he said gaily; "don't let's disappoint each other. You know our theory is that the old families are decadent; and I think we ought to try to prove any theory we advance—in the interests of psychology. Don't you?"
"I think we have proved it."
He laughed, and passing his arm around her drew her head so that it rested against his face.
"That is particularly dishonourable," she said in an odd voice.
"Because I'm married?"
"Yes; and because I know it."
"That's true; you didn't know it when we were at Palm Beach. That was tamer than this. I think now we can very easily prove our theory." And he kissed her, still laughing. But when he did it again, she turned her face against his shoulder.
"Courage," he said; "we ought to be able to prove this theory of ours—you and I together—"
She was crying.
"If you're feeling guilty on Shiela's account, you needn't," he said. "Didn't you know she can scarcely endure me?"
"Y-yes."
"Well, then—"
"No—no—no! Louis—I care too much—"
"For yourself?"
"N-no."
"For me? For Shiela? For public opinion?"
"No."
"For what?"
"I—I think it must be for—for—just for being—decent."
He inspected her with lively interest.
"Hello," he said coolly, "you're disproving our theory!"
She turned her face away from him, touching her eyes with her handkerchief.
"Or," he added ironically, "is there another man?"
"No," she said without resentment; and there was a certain quality in her voice new to him—a curious sweetness that he had never before perceived.
"Tell me," he said quietly, "have you really suffered?"
"Suffered? Yes."
"You really cared for me?"
"I do still."
A flicker of the old malice lighted his face.
"But you won't let me kiss you? Why?"
She looked up into his eyes. "I feel as powerless with you as I was before. You could always have had your will. Once I would not have blamed you. Now it would be cowardly—because—I have forgiven myself—"
"I won't disturb your vows," he said seriously.
"Then—I think you had better go."
"I am going.... I only wanted to see you again.... May I ask you something, dear?"
"Ask it," she said.
"Then—you are going to get over this, aren't you?"
"Not as long as you live, Louis."
"Oh!... And suppose I were not living?"
"I don't know."
"You'd recover, wouldn't you?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Well, you'd never have any other temptation—"
She turned scarlet.
"That is wicked!"
"It certainly is," he said with great gravity; "and I must come to the scarcely flattering conclusion that there is in me a source of hideous depravity, the unseen emanations of which, like those of the classic upas-tree, are purest poison to a woman morally constituted as you are."
She looked up as he laughed; but there was no mirth in her bewildered eyes.
"There is something in you, Louis, which is fatal to the better side of me."
"The other Virginia couldn't endure me, I know."
"My other self learned to love your better self."
"I have none—"
"I have seen it revealed in—"
"Oh, yes," he laughed, "revealed in what you used to call one of my infernal flashes of chivalry."
"Yes," she said quietly, "in that."
He sat very still there in the afternoon sunshine, pondering; and sometimes his gaze searched the valley depths below, lost among the tree-tops; sometimes he studied the far horizon where the little blue hills stood up against the sky like little blue waves at sea. His hat was off; the cliff breeze played with his dark curly hair, lifting it at the temples, stirring the one obstinate strand that never lay quite flat on the crown of his head.
Twice she looked around as though to interrupt his preoccupation, but he neither responded nor even seemed to be aware of her; and she sighed imperceptibly and followed his errant eyes with her own.
At last:
"Is there no way out of it for you, Louis? I am not thinking of myself," she added simply.
He turned fully around.
"If there was a way out I'd take it and marry you."
"I did not ask for that; I was thinking of you."
He was silent.
"Besides," she said, "I know that you do not love me."
"That is true only because I will not. I could."
She looked at him.
"But," he said calmly, "I mustn't; because there is no way out for me—there's no way out of anything for me—while I live—down here."
"Down—where?"
"On this exotic planet called the earth, dear child," he said with mocking gravity. "I'm a sort of moon-calf—a seed blown clear from Saturn's surface, which fell here and sprouted into the thing you call Louis Malcourt." And, his perverse gaiety in full possession of him again, he laughed, and his mirth was tinctured with the bitter-sweet of that humorous malice which jeered unkindly only at himself.
"All to the bad, Virginia—all to the bow-wows—judging me from your narrow, earthly standard and the laws of your local divinity. That's why I want to see the real One and ask Him how bad I really am. They'd tell me down here that I'll never see Him. Zut! I'll take that chance—not such a long shot either. Why, if I am no good, the risk is all the better; He is because of such as I! No need for Him where all the ba-bas are white as the driven snow, and all the little white doves keep their feathers clean and coo-coo hymns from dawn to sunset.... By the way, I never gave you anything, did I?—a Chinese god, for example?"
She shook her head, bewildered at his inconsequences.
"No, I never did. You're not entitled to a gift of a Chinese god from me. But I've given eighteen of them to a number of—ah—friends. I had nineteen, but never had the—right to present that nineteenth god."
"What do you mean, Louis?"
"Oh, those gilded idols are the deities of secrecy. Their commandment is, 'Thou shalt not be found out.' So I distributed them among those who worship them—that is, I have so directed my executors.... By the way, I made a new will."
He looked at her cheerfully, evidently very much pleased with himself.
"And what do you think I've left to you?"
"Louis, I don't—"
"Why, the bridle, saddle, crop, and spurs I wore that day when we rode to the ocean! Don't you remember the day that you noticed me listening and asked me what I heard?"
"Y-yes—"
"And I told you I was listening to my father?"
Again that same chilly tremor passed over her as it had then.
The sun, over the Adirondack foot-hills, hung above bands of smouldering cloud. Presently it dipped into them, hanging triple-ringed, like Saturn on fire.
"It's time for you to go," he said in an altered voice; and she turned to find him standing and ready to aid her.
A little pale with the realisation that the end had come so soon, she rose and walked slowly back to where his horse stood munching leaves.
"Well, Virginia—good-bye, little girl. You'll be all right before long."
There was no humour left in his voice now; no mocking in his dark gaze.
She raised her eyes to his in vague distress.
"Where are the others?" he asked. "Oh, up on those rocks? Yes, I see the smoke of their fire.... Say good-bye to them for me—not now—some day."
She did not understand him; he hesitated, smiled, and took her in his arms.
"Good-bye, dear," he said.
"Good-bye."
They kissed.
After she was half-way to the top of the rocks he mounted his horse. She did not look back.
"She's a good little sport," he said, smiling; and, gathering bridle, turned back into the forest. This time he neither sang nor whistled as he rode through the red splendour of the western sun. But he was very busy listening.
There was plenty to hear, too; wood-thrushes were melodious in the late afternoon light; infant crows cawed from high nests unseen in the leafy tree-tops; the stream's thin, silvery song threaded the forest quiet, accompanying him as he rode home.
Home? Yes—if this silent house where he dismounted could be called that. The place was very still. Evidently the servants had taken advantage of their master's and mistress's absence to wander out into the woods. Some of the stablemen had the dogs out, too; there was nobody in sight to take his horse, so he led the animal to the stables and found there a lad to relieve him.
Then he retraced his steps to the house and entered the deserted garden where pearl-tinted spikes of iris perfumed the air and great masses of peonies nodded along borders banked deep under the long wall. A few butterflies still flitted in the golden radiance, but already that solemn harbinger of sunset, the garden toad, had emerged from leafy obscurity into the gravel path, and hopped heavily forward as Malcourt passed by.
The house—nothing can be as silent as an empty house—echoed his spurred tread from porch to stairway. He went up to the first landing, not knowing why, then roamed aimlessly through, wandering from room to room, idly, looking on familiar things as though they were strange—strange, but uninteresting.
Upstairs and down, in, around, and about he drifted, quiet as a cat, avoiding only his wife's bedroom. He had never entered it since their marriage; he did not care to do so now, though the door stood wide. And, indifferent, he turned without even a glance, and traversing the hall, descended the stairs to the library.
For a while he sat there, legs crossed, drumming thoughtfully on his boot with his riding-crop; and after a while he dragged the chair forward and picked up a pen.
"Why not?" he said aloud; "it will save railroad fare—and she'll need it all."
So, to his lawyer in New York he wrote:
"I won't come to town after all. You have my letter and you know what I want done. Nobody is likely to dispute the matter, and it won't require a will to make my wife carry out the essence of the thing."
And signed his name.
When he had sealed and directed the letter he could find no stamp; so he left it on the table.
"That's the usual way they find such letters," he said, smiling to himself as the thought struck him. "It certainly is hard to be original.... But then I'm not ambitious."
He found another sheet of paper and wrote to Hamil:
"All the same you are wrong; I have always been your friend. My father comes first, as always; you second. There is no third."
This note, signed, sealed, and addressed, he left with the other.
"Certainly I am not original in the least," he said, beginning another note.
"DOLLY DEAR:
"You have made good. Continuez, chère énfant—and if you don't know what that means your French lessons are in vain. Now the usual few words: don't let any man who is not married to you lay the weight of his little finger on you! Don't ignore convention unless there is a good reason—and then don't! When you're tired of behaving yourself go to sleep; and if you can't sleep, sleep some more; and then some. Men are exactly like women until they differ from them; there is no real mystery about either outside of popular novels.
"I am very, very glad that I have known you, Dolly. Don't tint yourself, except for the footlights. There are other things, but I can't think of them; and so,
"LOUIS MALCOURT"
This letter he sealed and laid with the others; it was the last. There was nothing more to do, except to open the table drawer and drop something into the side pocket of his coat.
Malcourt had no favourite spots in the woods and fields around him; one trail resembled another; he cared as much for one patch of woods, one wild meadow, one tumbling brook as he did for the next—which was not very much.
But there was one place where the sun-bronzed moss was deep and level; where, on the edge of a leafy ravine, the last rays of the sinking sun always lingered after all else lay in shadow.
Here he sat down, thoughtfully; and for a little while remained in his listening attitude. Then, smiling, he lay back, pillowing his head on his left arm; and drew something from the side pocket of his coat.
The world had grown silent; across the ravine a deer among the trees watched him, motionless.
Suddenly the deer leaped in an ecstasy of terror and went crashing away into obscurity. But Malcourt lay very, very still.
His hat was off; the cliff breeze played with his dark curly hair, lifting it at the temples, stirring the one obstinate strand that never lay quite flat on the crown of his head.
A moment later the sun set.
CHAPTER XXVIII
HAMIL IS SILENT
Late in the autumn his aunt wrote Hamil from Sapphire Springs:
"There seems to be a favourable change in Shiela. Her aversion to people is certainly modified. Yesterday on my way to the hot springs I met her with her trained nurse, Miss Lester, face to face, and of course meant to pass on as usual, apparently without seeing her; but to my surprise she turned and spoke my name very quietly; and I said, as though we had parted the day before—'I hope you are better'; and she said, 'I think I am'—very slowly and precisely like a person who strives to speak correctly in a foreign tongue. Garry, dear, it was too pathetic; she is so changed—beautiful, even more beautiful than before; but the last childish softness has fled from the delicate and almost undecided features you remember, and her face has settled into a nobler mould. Do you recollect in the Munich Museum an antique marble, by some unknown Greek sculptor, called 'Head of a Young Amazon'? You must recall it because you have spoken to me of its noble and almost immortal loveliness. Dear, it resembles Shiela as she is now—with that mysterious and almost imperceptible hint of sorrow in the tenderly youthful dignity of the features.
"We exchanged only the words I have written you; she passed her way leaning on Miss Lester's arm; I went for a mud bath as a precaution to our inherited enemy. If rheumatism gets me at last it will not be the fault of your aged and timorous aunt.
"So that was all, yesterday. But to-day as I was standing on the leafy path above the bath-houses, listening to the chattering of some excited birds recently arrived from the North in the first batch of migrants, Miss Lester came up to me and said that Shiela would like to see me, and that the doctors said there was no harm in her talking to anybody if she desired to do so.
"So I took my book to a rustic seat under the trees, and presently our little Shiela came by, leaning on Miss Lester's arm; and Miss Lester walked on, leaving her seated beside me.
"For quite five minutes she neither spoke nor even looked at me, and I was very careful to leave the quiet unbroken.
"The noise of the birds—they were not singing, only chattering to each other about their trip—seemed to attract her notice, and she laid her hand on mine to direct my attention. Her hand remained there—she has the same soft little hands, as dazzlingly white as ever, only thinner.
"She said, not looking at me: 'I have been ill. You understand that.'
"'Yes,' I said, 'but it is all over now, isn't it?'
"She nodded listlessly: 'I think so.'
"Again, but not looking at me she spoke of her illness as dating from a shock received long ago. She is a little confused about the lapse of time, vague as to dates. You see it is four months since Louis—did what he did. She said nothing more, and in a few minutes Miss Lester came back for her.
"Now as to her mental condition: I have had a thorough understanding with the physicians and one and all assure me that there is absolutely nothing the matter with her except the physical consequences of the shock; and those are wearing off.
"What she did, what she lived through with him—the dreadful tension, the endless insomnia—all this—and then, when the searching party was out all night long in the rain and all the next day—and then, Garry, to have her stumble on him at dusk—that young girl, all alone, nerves strung to the breaking point—and to find him, that way! Was it not enough to account for this nervous demoralisation? The wonder is that it has not permanently injured her.
"But it has not; she is certainly recovering. The dread of seeing a familiar face is less poignant; her father was here to-day with Gray and she saw them both.
"Now, dear, as for your coming here, it will not do. I can see that. She has not yet spoken of you, nor have I ventured to. What her attitude toward you may be I cannot guess from her speech or manner.
"Miss Lester told me that at first, in the complete nervous prostration, she seemed to have a morbid idea that you had been unkind to her, neglected and deserted her—left her to face some endless horror all alone. The shock to her mind had been terrible, Garry; everything was grotesquely twisted—she had some fever, you know—and Miss Lester told me that it was too pitiful to hear her talk of you and mix up everything with military jargon about outpost duty and the firing line, and some comrade who had deserted her under fire.
"All of which I mention, dear, so that you may, in a measure, comprehend how very ill she has been; and that she is not yet well by any means, and perhaps will not be for a long time to come.
"To-night I had a very straight talk with Mr. Cardross. One has to talk straight when one talks to him. There is not in my mind the slightest doubt that he knows exactly now what misguided impulse drove Shiela to that distressing sacrifice of herself and you. And at first I was afraid that what she had done from a mistaken sense of duty might have hastened poor Louis' end; but Mr. Cardross told me that from the day of his father's death he had determined to follow in the same fashion; and had told Mr. Cardross of his intention more than once.
"So you see it was in him—in the blood. See what his own sister did to herself within a month of Louis' death!
"A strange family; an utterly incomprehensible race. And Mr. Cardross says that it happened to his father's father; and his father before him died by his own hand!
"Now there is little more news to write you—little more that could interest you because you care only to hear about Shiela, and that is perfectly reasonable."
"However, what there is of news I will write you as faithfully as I have done ever since I came here on your service under pretence of fighting gout which, Heaven be praised, has never yet waylaid me!—unberufen!"
"So, to continue: the faithful three, Messieurs Classon, Cuyp, and Vetchen, do valiantly escort me on my mountain rides and drives. They are dears, all three, Garry, and it does not become you to shrug your shoulders. When I go to Palm Beach in January they, as usual, are going too. I don't know what I should do without them, Virginia having decided to remain in Europe this winter.
"Yes, to answer your question, Mr. Wayward expects to cruise as far South as Palm Beach in January. I happen to have a note from him here on my desk in which he asks me whether he may invite you to go with him. Isn't it a tactful way of finding out whether you would care to be at Palm Beach this winter?
"So I shall write him that I think you would like to be asked. Because, Garry, I do believe that it is all turning out naturally, inevitably, as it was meant to turn out from the first, and that, some time this winter, there can be no reason why you should not see Shiela again.
"I know this, that Mr. Cardross is very fond of you—that Mrs. Cardross is also—that every member of that most wholesome family cares a great deal about you.
"As for their not being very fashionable people, their amiable freedom from social pretension, their very simple origin—all that, in their case, affects me not at all—where any happiness of yours is concerned.
"I do like old-time folk, and lineage smacking of New Amsterdam; but even my harmless snobbishness is now so completely out of fashion that nobody cares. You are modern enough to laugh at it; I am not; and I still continue faithful to my Classons and Cuyps and Vetchens and Suydams; and to all that they stand for in Manhattan—the rusty vestiges of by-gone pomp and fussy circumstance—the memories that cling to the early lords of the manors, the old Patroons, and titled refugees—all this I still cling to—even to their shabbiness and stupidity and bad manners.
"Don't be too bitter in your amusement, for after all, you are kin to us; don't be too severe on us; for we are passing, Garry, the descendants of Patroon and refugee alike—the Cuyps, the Classons, the Van Diemans, the Vetchens, the Suydams—and James Wayward is the last of his race, and I am the last of the French refugees, and the Malcourts are already ended. Pax!
"True it begins to look as if the gentleman adventurer stock which terminates in the Ascotts and Portlaws might be revived to struggle on for another generation; but, Garry, we all, who intermarry, are doomed.
"Louis Malcourt was right; we are destined to perish; Still we have left our marks on the nation I care for no other epitaph than the names of counties, cities, streets which we have named with our names.
"But you, dear, you are wise in your generation and fortunate to love as you love. For, God willing, your race will begin the welding of the old and new, the youngest and best of the nation. And at the feet of such a race the whole world lies."
These letters from Constance Palliser to her nephew continued during the autumn and early winter while he was at work on that series of public parks provided for by the metropolis on Long Island.
Once he was obliged to return to Pride's Hall to inspect the progress of work for Mrs. Ascott; and it happened during his brief stay there that her engagement was announced.
"I tell you what, Hamil," said Portlaw confidentailly over their cigars, "I never thought I could win her, never in the world. Besides poor Louis was opposed to it; but you know when I make up my mind—"
"I know," said Hamil.
"That's it! First, a man must have a mind to make up; then he must have enough intelligence to make it up."
"Certainly," nodded Hamil.
"I'm glad you understand me," said Portlaw, gratified. "Alida understands me; why, do you know that, somehow, everything I think of she seems to agree to; in fact, sometimes—on one or two unimportant matters, I actually believe that Mrs. Ascott thought of what I thought of, a few seconds before I thought of it," he ended generously; "but," and his expression became slyly portentous, "it would never do to have her suspect it. I intend to be Caesar in my own house!"
"Exactly," said Hamil solemnly; "and Caesar's wife must have no suspicions."
It was early November before he returned to town. His new suite of offices in Broad Street hummed with activity, although the lingering aftermath of the business depression prevented for the time being any hope of new commissions from private sources.
But fortunately he had enough public work to keep the office busy, and his dogged personal supervision of it during the racking suspense of Shiela's illness was his salvation.
Twice a week his aunt wrote him from Sapphire Springs; every day he went to his outdoor work on Long Island and forced himself to a minute personal supervision of every detail, never allowing himself a moment's brooding, never permitting himself to become panic-stricken at the outlook which varied from one letter to another. For as yet, according to these same letters, the woman he loved had never once mentioned his name.
He found little leisure for amusement, even had he been inclined that way. Night found him very tired; morning brought a hundred self-imposed and complicated tasks to be accomplished before the advent of another night.
He lived at his club and wrote to his aunt from there. Sundays were more difficult to negotiate; he went to St. George's in the morning, read in the club library until afternoon permitted him to maintain some semblance of those social duties which no man has a right to entirely neglect.
Now and then he dined out; once he went to the opera with the O'Haras; but it nearly did for him, for they sang "Madame Butterfly," and Farrar's matchless voice and acting tore him to shreds. Only the happy can endure such tragedy.
And one Sunday, having pondered long that afternoon over the last letter Malcourt had ever written him, he put on hat and overcoat and went to Greenlawn Cemetery—a tedious journey through strange avenues and unknown suburbs, under a wet sky from which occasionally a flake or two of snow fell through the fine-spun drizzle.
In the cemetery the oaks still bore leaves which were growing while Malcourt was alive; here and there a beech-tree remained in full autumn foliage and the grass on the graves was intensely green; but the few flowers that lifted their stalks were discoloured and shabby; bare branches interlaced overhead; dead leaves, wet and flattened, stuck to slab and headstone or left their stained imprints on the tarnished marble.
He had bought some flowers—violets and lilies—at a florist's near the cemetery gates. These he laid, awkwardly, at the base of the white slab from which Malcourt's newly cut name stared at him.
Louis Malcourt lay, as he had wished, next to his father. Also, as he had desired, a freshly planted tree, bereft now of foliage, rose, spindling, to balance an older one on the other corner of the plot. His sister's recently shaped grave lay just beyond. As yet, Bertie had provided no headstone for the late Lady Tressilvain.
Hamil stood inspecting Malcourt's name, finding it impossible to realise that he was dead—or for that matter, unable to comprehend death at all. The newly chiselled letters seemed vaguely instinct with something of Malcourt's own clean-cut irony; they appeared to challenge him with their mocking legend of death, daring him, with sly malice, to credit the inscription.
To look at them became almost an effort, so white and clear they stared back at him—as though the pallid face of the dead himself, set for ever in raillery, was on the watch to detect false sentiment and delight in it. And Hamil's eyes fell uneasily upon the flowers, then lifted. And he said aloud, unconsciously:
"You are right; it's too late, Malcourt."
There was a shabby, neglected grave in the adjoining plot; he bent over, gathered up his flowers, and laid them on the slab of somebody aged ninety-three whose name was blotted out by wet dead leaves. Then he slowly returned to face Malcourt, and stood musing, gloved hands deep in his overcoat pockets.
"If I could have understood you—" he began, under his breath, then fell silent. A few moments later he uncovered.
It was snowing heavily when he turned to leave; and he stood back and aside, hat in hand, to permit a young woman to pass the iron gateway—a slim figure in black, heavy veil drawn, arms piled high with lilies. He knew her at once and she knew him.
"I think you are Mr. Hamil," she said timidly.
"You are Miss Wilming?" he said in his naturally pleasant voice, which brought old memories crowding upon her and a pale flush to her cheeks.
There was a moment's silence; she dropped some flowers and he recovered them for her. Then she knelt down in the sleet, unconscious of it, and laid the flowers on the mound, arranging them with great care, while the thickening snow pelted her and began to veil the white blossoms on the grave.
Hamil hesitated after the girl had risen, and, presently, as she did not stir, he quietly asked if he might be of any use to her.
At first she made no reply, and her gaze remained remote; then, turning:
"Was he your friend?" she asked wistfully.
"I think he meant to be."
"You quarrelled—down there—in the South"—she made a vague gesture toward the gray horizon. "Do you remember that night, Mr. Hamil?"
"Yes."
"Did you ever become friends again?"
"No.... I think he meant to be.... The fault was probably mine. I misunderstood."
She said: "I know he cared a great deal for you."
The man was silent.
She turned directly toward him, pale, clear-eyed, and in the poise of her head a faint touch of pride.
"Please do not misunderstand his friendship for me, then. If you were his friend I would not need to say this. He was very kind to me, Mr. Hamil."
"I do not doubt it," said Hamil gravely.
"And you do not mistake, what I say?"
He looked her in the eyes, curious—and, in a moment, convinced.
"No," he said gently.... And, offering his hand: "Men are very ignorant concerning one another. Women are wiser, I think."
He took the slender black-gloved hand in his.
"Can I be of the least use to you?" he asked.
"You have been," she sighed, "if what I said has taught you to know him a little better."
A week later when the curtain fell on the second act of the new musical comedy, "The Inca," critics preparing to leave questioned each other with considerable curiosity concerning this newcomer, Dorothy Wilming, who had sung so intelligently and made so much out of a subordinate part.
Nobody seemed to know very much about her; several nice-looking young girls and exceedingly respectable young men sent her flowers. Afterward they gathered at the stage entrance, evidently expecting to meet and congratulate her; but she had slipped away. And while they hunted high and low, and the last figurante had trotted off under the lamp-lights, Dolly lay in her own dark room, face among the pillows, sobbing her heart out for a dead man who had been kind to her for nothing.
And, at the same hour, across an ocean, another woman awoke to take up the ravelled threadings of her life again and, through another day, remember Louis Malcourt and all that he had left undone for kindness' sake.
There were others, too, who were not likely to forget him, particularly those who had received, with some astonishment, a legacy apiece of one small Chinese gilded idol—images all of the Pa-hsien or of Kwan-Yin, who rescues souls from hell with the mystic lotus-prayer, "Om mane padme hum."
But the true Catholicism, which perplexed the eighteen legatees lay in the paradox of the Mohammedan inscriptions across each lotus written in Malcourt's hand:
"I direct my face unto Him who hath created.
"Who maketh His messengers with two and three and four pairs of wings.
"And thou shall see them going in procession.
"This is what ye are promised: 'For the last hour will surely come; there is no doubt thereof; but the greater part of men believe it not.'
"Thus, facing the stars, I go out among them into darkness.
"Say not for me the Sobhat with the ninety-nine; for the hundredth pearl is the Iman—pearl beyond praise, pearl of the five-score names in one, more precious than mercy, more priceless than compassion—Iman! Iman! thy splendid name is Death!"
So lingered the living memory of Malcourt among men—a little while—longer among women—then faded as shadows die at dusk when the mala is told for the soul that waits the Rosary of a Thousand Beads.
In January the Ariani sailed with her owner aboard; but Hamil was not with him.
In February Constance Palliser wrote Hamil from Palm Beach:
"It is too beautiful here and you must come.
"As for Shiela, I do not even pretend to understand her. I see her every day; to-day I lunched with Mrs. Cardross, and Shiela was there, apparently perfectly well and entirely her former lovely self. Yet she has never yet spoken of you to me; and, I learn from Mrs. Cardross, never to anybody as far as she knows.
"She seems to be in splendid health; I have seen her swimming, galloping, playing tennis madly. The usual swarm of devoted youth and smitten middle-age is in attendance. She wears neither black nor colours; only white; nor does she go to any sort of functions. At times, to me, she resembles a scarcely grown girl just freed from school and playing hard every minute with every atom of heart and soul in her play.
"Gray has an apology for a polo field and a string of ponies, and Shiela plays with the men—a crazy, reckless, headlong game, in which every minute my heart is in my mouth for fear somebody will cannon into her, or some dreadful swing of a mallet will injure her for life.
"But everybody is so sweet to her—and it is delightful to see her with her own family—their pride and tenderness for her, and her devotion to them.
"Mrs. Cardross asked me to-day what I thought might be the effect on Shiela if you came. And, dear, I could not answer. Mr. Cardross joined us, divining the subject of our furtive confab in the patio, and he seemed to think that you ought to come.
"There is no reason to hesitate in saying that the family would be very glad to count you as one of them. Even a little snob like myself can see that there is, in this desire of theirs, no motive except affection for you and for Shiela; and, in a way, it's rather humiliating to recognise that they don't care a fig for the social advantage that must, automatically, accrue to the House of Cardross through such connections.
"I never thought that I should so earnestly hope for such an alliance for you; but I do, Garry. They are such simple folk with all their riches—simple as gentle folk—kind, sincere, utterly without self-consciousness, untainted by the sordid social ambitions which make so many of the wealthy abhorrent. There is no pretence about them, nothing of that uncertainty of self mingled with vanity which grows into arrogance or servility as the social weather-vane veers with the breeze of fashion. Rather flowery that, for an old-fashioned spinster.
"But, dear, there are other flowers than those of speech eloquent in the soft Southern air—flowers everywhere outside my open window where I sit writing you.
"I miss Virginia, but Shiela compensates when she can find time from her breathless pleasure chase to give me an hour or two at tea-time.
"And Cecile, too, is very charming, and I know she likes me. Such a coquette! She has her own court among the younger set; and from her very severe treatment of young Gatewood on all occasions I fancy she may be kinder to him one day.
"Mrs. Carrick is not here this winter, her new baby keeping her in town; and Acton, of course, is only too happy to remain with her.
"As for Gray, he is a nice boy—a little slow, a trifle shy and retiring and over-studious; but his devotion to Shiela makes me love him. And he, too, ventured to ask me whether you were not coming down this winter to hunt along the Everglades with him and Little Tiger.
"So, dear, I think perhaps you had better come. It really frightens me to give you this advice. I could not endure it if anything went wrong—if your coming proved premature.
"For it is true, Garry, that I love our little Shiela with all my aged, priggish, and prejudiced heart, and I should simply expire if your happiness, which is bound up in her, were threatened by any meddling of mine.
"Jim Wayward and I discuss the matter every day; I don't know what he thinks—he's so obstinate some days—and sometimes he is irritable when Gussie Vetchen and Cuyp talk too inanely—bless their hearts! I really don't know what I shall do with James Wayward. What would you suggest?"
On the heels of this letter went another.