BESIDE THE SUMMER SEA: AN INTERLUDE
If I had been at my wits' end before, I was now beyond it, in such a
chaos of puzzled anger that I could not even think reasonably, much less
come to sensible conclusions. The Italian sailor with his impossible
charge against Mr. Tabor's own impossible charge against me, were new
elements which might or might not work into the situation; but at least
I could not place them now; nor, for want of a motive that would bear
dissection, was I ready to confess my own desire to stay on the ground
until I had seen the matter through. I would go away to the sanity of
the seaside, and give the vexations of the last few days time to clear.
The whole experience had been so strange that I must have more
perspective through which to view it clearly; and I could see nothing to
gain by haste. For all that, I was perfectly clear that at length
everything must come out right. Not that I could define to myself
exactly what "coming out right" would mean, except making Mr. Tabor
admit himself outrageously mistaken, and his daughter--but it was better
not to think about his daughter; unless I was ready to risk thinking too
much about her. The very memory of her vivid face in the car-window, of
her quizzical impertinences on the way, the sight of her lying
motionless in the unnatural meadow, and most poignant of all, her
distressed and shrouded beauty in the dim hall, lit up the last few
hours as with the glamour of a dream broken suddenly by a nightmare
monstrous and unconvincing. She must be put aside if possible with the
rest until I could see clearly. Bob Ainslie and Mrs. Bob, boating,
bathing, golf, and tennis, should be my devouring interests for the next
week. After that--we should see.
For a couple of miles my car traveled through open country; then with
the Sound on its left, passed through small wooded patches that gave way
continually to open glades where lawns from little cottages and great
ran down to the water's edge. My destined hostelry, I remembered,
flourished under the original name of "Bellevue." I did not especially
pine for it, with its green-lined matting, white enameled furniture, and
chattering piazzas; but it had the unquestionable advantage of being
only a couple of hundred yards from the Ainslies' cottage. There I
hurried into my flannels and set forth in search of Bob, whom I found
playing the gentle game of croquet with himself, the pink ball against
the green. When he saw me, he gave a viking whoop that brought Mrs.
Ainslie from her chair upon the veranda, while he executed a solemn
war-dance around me.
"Where, O where are the Hebrew children?" he chanted, "Safe now in the
promised land--where's your bag?"
"Why, how do you do, Mr. Crosby?" said Mrs. Ainslie. "Bob, what on earth
will the neighbors think of you? And Mr. Crosby will hardly like being
called a Hebrew--not that I have anything against the Hebrews. They are
really a very fine people, but--"
"But, my dear, you are talking nonsense. Laurie, where is that bag? Or
Heaven grant it be a trunk."
"It's a bag," I said, "and I left it in my room at the Bellevue, and a
very good room it is."
"Bellefiddlesticks," Bob snorted. "You go back to that whited
caravansary and wrest away your belongings and come over here. We are
going to house-party in a couple of days, and we need you in our
business. Your room is now southeast corner second floor, beautiful view
of the Sound or within sound of the view--whichever you please."
"You are an idiot, but I love you," said I. "Nevertheless, I'm going to
stay where I am. Can't be bothered with house parties. I came down here
for some exercise."
"I think you look tired," Mrs. Ainslie put in thoughtfully.
"He looks sulky to me," said Bob. "All right, stay where you are until
you feel the need of a decent bed. Bet I can beat you at croquet and
give you two wickets."
"You are a fattening, indolent person," I said. "What I want, and what
you stand in crying need of, is exercise," and I dragged him off to the
hotel tennis-courts.
I was very sure in my own mind that I wanted the scuffling solitude of a
hotel. My temper felt unsettled, and the last people in the world I
wanted to meet were a lot of conversational visitors. Bob had a hard
future cut out for him, and indeed for three days I led him a life that
must have nearly killed him. Perhaps he may have scented some trouble
behind my unusual energy, for he stuck to me like a man losing to me at
tennis, beating me in long games of golf, bathing with me in the
morning, and taking an oar as we rowed Mrs. Bob about in the evening.
Miss Tabor had spoken of a coming visit; but of course after the
disturbances in her home she would have abandoned all plans. And I
certainly did not care to start the bantering flood of questions which I
knew Bob could not restrain should I show even the mildest curiosity
about her coming. And yet she came. I had come over prepared to drag Bob
to the altar of another strenuous day, and I found her sitting alone on
the veranda as quietly at ease as though nothing had happened. I was not
even sure that she looked tired; certainly she looked serene. She stood
up and shook hands with me smilingly. I thought the blue veins throbbed
a trifle in her throat, but her manner was frankly free from
embarrassment.
"You are getting a very seaside color, Mr. Crosby," she said. "Your
vacation must be agreeing with you."
I could not answer for a moment; then, as she drew her hand from mine,
"What have I done?" I stammered. "What was it all about? Did you too
really believe--"
I stopped, for she was looking coldly past me, her face blank and her
eyebrows raised.
"I beg your pardon," I said, taken utterly aback. Her silence seemed to
strike across me like a blow. "I beg your pardon, Miss Tabor," and I
swung upon my heel.
When I reached the steps, she called after me.
"Mr. Crosby!" I turned. "Bob wants to know why we shouldn't all play
tennis together. He thinks that he and Mary can beat us."
I stood amazed. She was looking at me gaily, almost provokingly, every
trace of coldness gone from the eyes that looked frankly into mine. She
moved mentally too fast for me. I could read nothing but the end of our
friendship in her look of a moment ago; and now she spoke as if no
shadow of mystery or misunderstanding had ever fallen between us. Of
course, the surface of it was that I had blundered, and that she had
taken the only way of showing me that my memories of her trouble must be
really forgotten. The last few days were never to have been.
The Ainslies came out of the door together. "And you never told us that
you had met Miss Tabor last Christmas," said Bob. "I call that rather
cool. I just mentioned you last night, and she asked all sorts of
questions about how long you had been here and how long you expected to
stay. For my part, I think you must have made quite an impression."
"Indeed he has," laughed Miss Tabor. "Do you know, Mary, Mr. Crosby is
the only thoroughly frivolous institution of learning I ever saw. He
never spoke a word all Christmas that added to the party's fund of
information, except to tell us of a new and a more indigestible way to
make Welsh rarebit."
Evidently Christmas was to be the last and only time that we had met. I
thanked fate and my own discomfiture that I had let fall no word to the
Ainslies and we went off to our tennis. We won our game rather easily.
Miss Tabor played a shade better than the average woman, covering her
court with a forethoughtful ease that did the work without wasting
exertion. She seemed not athletic, but to do outdoor things as some
other woman might move through a ball-room. When we had finished
playing, Bob was a dripping ruin, and Mrs. Ainslie and I vigorously
hot; but Miss Tabor, who had done no less than her share, laid aside her
racquet as coolly as she had taken it up.
All the way down to the beach she kept the three of us in such a shout
of laughter that staider people glanced aside at us. I made the change
into a bathing-suit with abandoned haste, yet I found her waiting. The
sea was evidently a passion with her as it was with me. Her eyes were
shining with excitement, her head thrown a little back, and all her slim
body, tender in every graceful line, was vibrant with the thrill of the
salt air. She gave me her hand as a child might have done, and we turned
up the beach, running lightly until the voices of the bathers died
behind us.
Suddenly she stopped. "Do you feel that way about it, too?" she asked.
"What way? As if the first plunge of the year were a sort of sacred
rite?"
"Yes," she answered. "There is something about it--you feel as if it
were such a splendid thing that after all your waiting for it--now, when
the water is there before you, you must wait a little sacrificial
moment. I didn't feel like going in just at the first among all those
people. Do you understand what I mean? I suppose it's because on the
first day I have always gone in alone early in the morning."
I nodded, for that had been my custom also. Without a word we turned
together and went slowly down into the water. When it reached her waist,
she threw her hands above her head and dived, swimming under water with
long easy strokes. I looked after her a moment, then followed. We came
to the surface together, drawing our breath deep and shaking the salt
water from our eyes. We swam slowly back to the more crowded beach,
mutually glorying in our pagan rite of baptism.
We stretched out lazily in the hot sand, leaning back against a battered
and upturned dory. Lady had shaken down her hair, which her bathing cap
had failed to keep altogether dry; and spread it lustrously dark upon
the clean, sun-bleached planking.
"I think I understand you now a little better, Mr. Crosby," she said.
"Why?" I asked.
"I suppose because of the solemn rite of the first plunge. It somehow
makes you clearer. If that is what you mean by romance, why I can agree
with you."
I had to be honest. "No, that's not all I mean--only part. I want
things to happen to me, not merely sensations. I'm always foolishly
expecting some tilt with fortune at the next turn of the road. I suppose
you were right that nothing much has happened to me, or I shouldn't hunt
so for the physical uplift of the unexpected. I don't want to be merely
selfish--I want to help in the world, not to harm. I know that sounds
crudely sentimental, but it's hard to say. I mean, for instance, that I
don't want distress to prove myself against, but I do want the shock of
battle where distress exists."
"Then people must seem to you merely means to an end."
[Illustration: "I suppose it must look that way to you"]
"I suppose it must look that way to you," I said uncomfortably. "I'm
getting tangled, but I want you to understand--" I hesitated. "When I
asked questions in the hurry of the other night, it wasn't any desire to
force my way into things that didn't concern me, to make an adventure of
what distressed you--you mustn't think that. But it seemed to me that
you were in trouble, and I wanted--"
I stopped, for her face had clouded as I spoke until now I dared speak
no more, blaming myself that the perplexities that possessed me had
again blundered across her pain. Her eyes were upon the ground where
her fingers burrowed absently in the sand. When she raised them to mine
there were tears in them; but they were tears unshed, and eyes that
looked at me kindly.
"Please don't," she said. "I do understand. I would like to let you
help, but--there is nothing you can help about, nothing that I can ask
or tell."
"Forgive me," I said, and looked away from her.
I think that from that morning we were better friends. Neither of us
again made any allusion to the night of alarm; but it was as if both now
felt a share in it, a kind of blindfold sympathy not altogether
comfortless. Once when we were making a long tour of woods and beaches,
she said suddenly: "You don't talk much about yourself, Mr. Crosby."
"Don't I?" I answered. "Well, I don't suppose that what I am or have
done in the world would be particularly interesting. You were right the
other day, after all: nothing much has happened to me, or I shouldn't be
so hungry for adventures."
"Oh, but you must have had some adventure; everybody has."
I launched into a tale of a green parrot confiscated from an itinerant
vendor and sold at auction in a candy store. I stopped suddenly. Was
this her way of verifying her father's opinion of me? She read my
half-formed suspicion like a flash.
"Listen," she said with quick seriousness. "If I had, or could have, the
faintest belief in anything really bad about you, don't you see that I
shouldn't be here? I want you to remember that."
"I ought to have known," I replied. "I'm very sorry."
With that she swung back into gaiety, demanding the conclusion of the
tale; but I was for the moment too deeply touched to follow. We were on
our way home; and before us where the path took a little turn about a
tree larger than its neighbors, a man stepped into our sight. He was
walking fast, covering the ground in long nervous strides. He carried a
bit of stick with which he switched smartly at the bushes along the
path. For a moment we were both silent, then Lady caught her breath in a
long sigh. It was the man we had met at the gate. He saw us then, and
took off his hat.
"Why, Walter," Lady cried; "when did you come?"
"Just now," he said, "just now. Ainslie told me where to look for you.
Good fellow, Ainslie. Said you and Mr. What's-his-name--beg pardon, I
never can remember names--said you had gone for a walk."
She flushed a little. "Mr. Crosby, let me introduce Doctor Reid. His
memory never can catch up with him, but you mustn't mind that. Walter,
Mr. Crosby was a classmate of Bob Ainslie's, you know."
"So he said; so he said." Doctor Reid jerked out the words, frowning and
biting his forefinger. "Excuse me, Lady, but--hold on a second. Got to
go back next car, twelve forty-five." He looked at his watch. "Twelve
seven now. Beg your pardon, Mr.--Mr. Crosby. Beg your pardon."
They spoke together for a moment, and we continued our walk
uncomfortably. Miss Tabor seemed uneasy, and I thought that Doctor Reid
restrained himself to our slower pace as if he resented having to wait
and thought ill of me for my very existence. I caught him frowning
sidelong at me once or twice, and shooting little anxious glances at
Lady that angered me unreasonably.
I left them at the Ainslies' and went on to a hurried luncheon made
tasteless by irritation. Who in Heaven's name was the man? A family
physician would hardly go running about the country in the daughter's
wake--for I could not doubt that it was she that had brought him here.
Why on earth should he be rude to me? I had never met the man. What
business had he to behave as if he resented my being with her--or for
that matter, to resent anything she did? We had planned a game of tennis
for the afternoon, and Doctor Reid, I reflected, with savage
satisfaction, could hardly be expected to make a third.
Bob met me at the door. "Hello, old man," he said, "we have had a bitter
loss; Doctor Reid has carried Lady off with him to his distant lair."