THE BEGINNING OF THE EBB
Spring has come and gone. The lilacs and crocuses, the tulips and
buttercups, have bloomed and faded; the lawn has had its sprinkling of
dandelions, and the duff of their blossoms has drifted past the
hemlocks and over the tree-tops. The grass has had its first cutting;
the roses have burst their buds and hang in clusters over the arbors;
warm winds blow in from the sea laden with perfumes from beach and
salt-marsh; the skies are steely blue and the cloud puffs drift lazily.
It is summer-time--the season of joy and gladness, the season of
out-of-doors.
All the windows at Yardley are open; the porch has donned an
awning--its first--colored white and green, shading big rocking-chairs
and straw tables resting on Turkish rugs. Lucy had wondered why in all
the years that Jane had lived alone at Yardley she had never once
thought of the possibilities of this porch. Jane had agreed with her,
and so, under Lucy's direction, the awnings had been put up and the
other comforts inaugurated. Beneath its shade Lucy sits and reads or
embroiders or answers her constantly increasing correspondence.
The porch serves too as a reception-room, the vines being thick and the
occupants completely hidden from view. Here Lucy often spreads a small
table, especially when Max Feilding drives over in his London drag from
Beach Haven on Barnegat beach. On these occasions, if the weather is
warm, she refreshes him with delicate sandwiches and some of her late
father's rare Scotch whiskey (shelved in the cellar for thirty years)
or with the more common brands of cognac served in the old family
decanters.
Of late Max had become a constant visitor. His own ancestors had made
honorable records in the preceding century, and were friends of the
earlier Cobdens during the Revolution. This, together with the fact
that he had visited Yardley when Lucy was a girl--on his first return
from Paris, in fact--and that the acquaintance had been kept up while
he was a student abroad, was reason enough for his coming with such
frequency.
His drag, moreover, as it whirled into Yardley's gate, gave a certain
air of eclat to the Manor House that it had not known since the days of
the old colonel. Nothing was lacking that money and taste could
furnish. The grays were high-steppers and smooth as satin, the polished
chains rattled and clanked about the pole; the body was red and the
wheels yellow, the lap-robe blue, with a monogram; and the diminutive
boy studded with silver buttons bearing the crest of the Feilding
family was as smart as the tailor could make him.
And the owner himself, in his whity-brown driving-coat with big pearl
buttons, yellow gloves, and gray hat, looked every inch the person to
hold the ribbons. Altogether it was a most fashionable equipage, owned
and driven by a most fashionable man.
As for the older residents of Warehold, they had only words of praise
for the turnout. Uncle Ephraim declared that it was a "Jim Dandy,"
which not only showed his taste, but which also proved how much broader
that good-natured cynic had become in later years. Billy Tatham gazed
at it with staring eyes as it trundled down the highway and turned into
the gate, and at once determined to paint two of his hacks bright
yellow and give each driver a lap-robe with the letter "T" worked in
high relief.
The inmates of Yardley were not quite so enthusiastic. Martha was glad
that her bairn was having such a good time, and she would often stand
on the porch with little Ellen's hand in hers and wave to Max and Lucy
as they dashed down the garden road and out through the gate, the tiger
behind; but Jane, with that quick instinct which some women possess,
recognized something in Feilding's manner which she could not put into
words, and so held her peace. She had nothing against Max, but she did
not like him. Although he was most considerate of her feelings and
always deferred to her, she felt that any opposition on her part to
their outings would have made no difference to either one of them. He
asked her permission, of course, and she recognized the courtesy, but
nothing that he ever did or said overcame her dislike of him.
Doctor John's personal attitude and bearing toward Feilding was an
enigma not only to Jane, but to others who saw it. He invariably
greeted him, whenever they met, with marked, almost impressive
cordiality, but it never passed a certain limit of reserve; a certain
dignity of manner which Max had recognized the first day he shook hands
with him. It recalled to Feilding some of his earlier days, when he was
a student in Paris. There had been a supper in Max's room that ended at
daylight--no worse in its features than dozens of others in the
Quartier--to which an intimate friend of the doctor's had been invited,
and upon which, as Max heard afterward, the doctor had commented rather
severely.
Max realized, therefore, but too well that the distinguished
physician--known now over half the State--understood him, and his
habits, and his kind as thoroughly as he did his own ease of
instruments. He realized, too, that there was nothing about his present
appearance or surroundings or daily life that could lead so thoughtful
a man of the world as Dr. John Cavendish, of Barnegat, to conclude that
he had changed in any way for the better.
And yet this young gentleman could never have been accused of burning
his candle at both ends. He had no flagrant vices really--none whose
posters were pasted on the victim's face. Neither cards nor any other
form of play interested him, nor did the wine tempt him when it was
red--or of any other color, for that matter, nor did he haunt the
dressing-rooms of chorus girls and favorites of the hour. His innate
refinement and good taste prevented any such uses of his spare time.
His weakness--for it could hardly be called a vice--was narrowed down
to one infirmity, and one only: this was his inability to be happy
without the exclusive society of some one woman.
Who the woman might be depended very largely on whom he might be thrown
with. In the first ten years of his majority--his days of poverty when
a student--it had been some girl in exile, like himself. During the
last ten years--since his father's death and his inheritance--it had
been a loose end picked out of the great floating drift--that social
flotsam and jetsam which eddies in and out of the casinos of Nice and
Monte Carlo, flows into Aix and Trouville in summer and back again to
Rome and Cairo in winter--a discontented wife perhaps; or an unmarried
woman of thirty-five or forty, with means enough to live where she
pleased; or it might be some self-exiled Russian countess or
English-woman of quality who had a month off, and who meant to make the
most of it. All most respectable people, of course, without a breath of
scandal attaching to their names--Max was too careful for that--and yet
each and every one on the lookout for precisely the type of man that
Max represented: one never happy or even contented when outside the
radius of a waving fan or away from the flutter of a silken skirt.
It was in one of these resorts of the idle, a couple of years before,
while Lucy's husband and little Ellen were home in Geneva, that Max had
met her, and where he had renewed the acquaintance of their
childhood--an acquaintance which soon ripened into the closest
friendship.
Hence his London drag and appointments; hence the yacht and a
four-in-hand--then a great novelty--all of which he had promised her
should she decide to join him at home. Hence, too, his luxuriously
fitted-up bachelor quarters in Philadelphia, and his own comfortable
apartments in his late father's house, where his sister Sue lived; and
hence, too, his cosey rooms in the best corner of the Beach Haven
hotel, with a view overlooking Barnegat Light and the sea.
None of these things indicated in the smallest degree that this noble
gentleman contemplated finally settling down in a mansion commensurate
with his large means, where he and the pretty widow could enjoy their
married life together; nothing was further from his mind--nothing could
be--he loved his freedom too much. What he wanted, and what he intended
to have, was her undivided companionship--at least for the summer; a
companionship without any of the uncomfortable complications which
would have arisen had he selected an unmarried woman or the wife of
some friend to share his leisure and wealth.
The woman he picked out for the coming season suited him exactly. She
was blonde, with eyes, mouth, teeth, and figure to his liking (he had
become critical in forty odd years--twenty passed as an expert);
dressed in perfect taste, and wore her clothes to perfection; had a
Continental training that made her mistress of every situation,
receiving with equal ease and graciousness anybody, from a postman to a
prince, sending them away charmed and delighted; possessed money enough
of her own not to be too much of a drag upon him; and--best of all (and
this was most important to the heir of Walnut Hill)--had the best blood
of the State circling in her veins. Whether this intimacy might drift
into something closer, compelling him to take a reef in his sails,
never troubled him. It was not the first time that he had steered his
craft between the Scylla of matrimony and the Charybdis of scandal, and
he had not the slightest doubt of his being able to do it again.
As for Lucy, she had many plans in view. One was to get all the fun
possible out of the situation; another was to provide for her future.
How this was to be accomplished she had not yet determined. Her plans
were laid, but some of them she knew from past experience might go
astray. On one point she had made up her mind--not to be in a hurry. In
furtherance of these schemes she had for some days--some months, in
fact--been making preparations for an important move. She knew that its
bare announcement would come as a surprise to Jane and Martha and,
perhaps, as a shock, but that did not shake her purpose. She
furthermore expected more or less opposition when they fully grasped
her meaning. This she intended to overcome. Neither Jane nor Martha,
she said to herself, could be angry with her for long, and a few kisses
and an additional flow of good-humor would soon set them to laughing
again.
To guard against the possibility of a too prolonged interview with
Jane, ending, perhaps, in a disagreeable scene--one beyond her
control--she had selected a sunny summer morning for the stage setting
of her little comedy and an hour when Feilding was expected to call for
her in his drag. She and Max were to make a joint inspection that day
of his new apartment at Beach Haven, into which he had just moved, as
well as the stable containing the three extra vehicles and equine
impedimenta, which were to add to their combined comfort and enjoyment.
Lucy had been walking in the garden looking at the rose-beds, her arm
about her sister's slender waist, her ears open to the sound of every
passing vehicle--Max was expected at any moment--when she began her
lines.
"You won't mind, Jane, dear, will you, if I get together a few things
and move over to Beach Haven for a while?" she remarked simply, just as
she might have done had she asked permission to go upstairs to take a
nap. "I think we should all encourage a new enterprise like the hotel,
especially old families like ours. And then the sea air always does me
so much good. Nothing like Trouville air, my dear husband used to tell
me, when I came back in the autumn. You don't mind, do you?"
"For how long, Lucy?" asked Jane, with a tone of disappointment in her
voice, as she placed her foot on the top step of the porch.
"Oh, I can't tell. Depends very much on how I like it." As she spoke
she drew up an easy-chair for Jane and settled herself in another. Then
she added carelessly: "Oh, perhaps a month--perhaps two."
"Two months!" exclaimed Jane in astonishment, dropping into her seat.
"Why, what do you want to leave Yardley for? O Lucy, don't--please
don't go!"
"But you can come over, and I can come here," rejoined Lucy in a
coaxing tone.
"Yes; but I don't want to come over. I want you at home. And it's so
lovely here. I have never seen the garden look so beautiful; and you
have your own room, and this little porch is so cosey. The hotel is a
new building, and the doctor says a very damp one, with everything
freshly plastered. He won't let any of his patients go there for some
weeks, he tells me. Why should you want to go? I really couldn't think
of it, dear. I'd miss you dreadfully."
"You dear old sister," answered Lucy, laying her parasol on the small
table beside her, "you are so old-fashioned. Habit, if nothing else,
would make me go. I have hardly passed a summer in Paris or Geneva
since I left you; and you know how delightful my visits to Biarritz
used to be years ago. Since my marriage I have never stayed in any one
place so long as this. I must have the sea air."
"But the salt water is right here, Lucy, within a short walk of our
gate, and the air is the same." Jane's face wore a troubled look, and
there was an anxious, almost frightened tone in her voice.
"No, it is not exactly the same," Lucy answered positively, as if she
had made a life-long study of climate; "and if it were, the life is
very different. I love Warehold, of course; but you must admit that it
is half-asleep all the time. The hotel will be some change; there will
be new people and something to see from the piazzas. And I need it,
dear. I get tired of one thing all the time--I always have."
"But you will be just as lonely there." Jane in her astonishment was
like a blind man feeling about for a protecting wall.
"No; Max and his sister will be at Beach Haven, and lots of others I
know. No, I won't be lonely," and an amused expression twinkled in her
eyes.
Jane sat quite still. Some of Captain Holt's blunt, outspoken
criticisms floated through her brain.
"Have you any reason for wanting to leave here?" she asked, raising her
eyes and looking straight at Lucy.
"No, certainly not. How foolish, dear, to ask me! I'm never so happy as
when I am with you."
"Well, why then should you want to give up your home and all the
comforts you need--your flowers, garden, and everything you love, and
this porch, which you have just made so charming, to go to a damp,
half-completed hotel, without a shrub about it--only a stretch of
desolate sand with the tide going in and out?" There was a tone of
suspicion in Jane's voice that Lucy had never heard from her sister's
lips--never, in all her life.
"Oh, because I love the tides, if nothing else," she answered with a
sentimental note in her voice. "Every six hours they bring me a new
message. I could spend whole mornings watching the tides come and go.
During my long exile you don't know how I dreamed every night of the
dear tides of Barnegat. If you had been away from all you love as many
years as I have, you would understand how I could revel in the sound of
the old breakers."
For some moments Jane did not answer. She knew from the tones of Lucy's
voice and from the way she spoke that she did not mean it. She had
heard her talk that way to some of the villagers when she wanted to
impress them, but she had never spoken in the same way to her.
"You have some other reason, Lucy. Is it Max?" she asked in a strained
tone.
Lucy colored. She had not given her sister credit for so keen an
insight into the situation. Jane's mind was evidently working in a new
direction. She determined to face the suspicion squarely; the truth
under some conditions is better than a lie.
"Yes," she replied, with an assumed humility and with a tone as if she
had been detected in a fault and wanted to make a clean breast of it.
"Yes--now that you have guessed it--it IS Max."
"Don't you think it would be better to see him here instead of at the
hotel?" exclaimed Jane, her eyes still boring into Lucy's.
"Perhaps"--the answer came in a helpless way--"but that won't do much
good. I want to keep my promise to him if I can."
"What was your promise?" Jane's eyes lost their searching look for an
instant, but the tone of suspicion still vibrated.
Lucy hesitated and began playing with the trimming on her dress.
"Well, to tell you the truth, dear, a few days ago in a burst of
generosity I got myself into something of a scrape. Max wants his
sister Sue to spend the summer with him, and I very foolishly promised
to chaperon her. She is delighted over the prospect, for she must have
somebody, and I haven't the heart to disappoint her. Max has been so
kind to me that I hate now to tell him I can't go. That's all, dear. I
don't like to speak of obligations of this sort, and so at first I only
told you half the truth."
"You should always keep your promise, dear," Jane answered thoughtfully
and with a certain relieved tone. (Sue was nearly thirty, but that did
not occur to Jane.) "But this time I wish you had not promised. I am
sorry, too, for little Ellen. She will miss her little garden and
everything she loves here; and then again, Archie will miss her, and so
will Captain Holt and Martha. You know as well as I do that a hotel is
no place for a child."
"I am glad to hear you say so. That's why I shall not take her with
me." As she spoke she shot an inquiring glance from the corner of her
eyes at the anxious face of her sister. These last lines just before
the curtain fell were the ones she had dreaded most.
Jane half rose from her seat. Her deep eyes were wide open, gazing in
astonishment at Lucy. For an instant she felt as if her heart had
stopped beating.
"And you--you--are not going to take Ellen with you!" she gasped.
"No, of course not." She saw her sister's agitation, but she did not
intend to notice it. Besides, her expectant ear had caught the sound of
Max's drag as it whirled through the gate. "I always left her with her
grandmother when she was much younger than she is now. She is very
happy here and I wouldn't be so cruel as to take her away from all her
pleasures. Then she loves old people. See how fond she is of the
Captain and Martha! No, you are right. I wouldn't think of taking her
away."
Jane was standing now, her eyes blazing, her lips quivering.
"You mean, Lucy, that you would leave your child here and spend two
months away from her?"
The wheels were crunching the gravel within a rod of the porch. Max had
already lifted his hat.
"But, sister, you don't understand--" The drag stopped and Max, with
uncovered head, sprang out and extended his hand to Jane.
Before he could offer his salutations Lucy's joyous tones rang out.
"Just in the nick of time, Max," she cried. "I've just been telling my
dear sister that I'm going to move over to Beach Haven to-morrow, bag
and baggage, and she is delighted at the news. Isn't it just like her?"