II

Two Persons of More Importance, and why they went to the

Beach in October; Miss Carlisle Heth, and how she met an

unwelcome swain at Sea; how this Swain could swim enough

for one.

Mr. Heth perused the Severe Arraignment of himself about nine o'clock,

over his second cup of coffee. He perused with indignation; but, being

long since trained to keep a neat partition between downtown and uptown,

he did not divulge his sentiments to the breakfast-table, and even

carried the paper off with him to the office. By such demeanor, he

abdicates our present notice. Mrs. Heth, hours later, bought a copy of

the "Post" from a uniformed newsboy, to see what they had to say of the

Associated Charities meeting on the evening preceding, and of her

remarks in accepting the office of First Vice-President. Absorbed by

this particular piece-in-the-paper,--for so the good lady named all

journalistic efforts, from dry-goods advertisements to leading

editorials on Trouble in the Balkans,--it was past three-thirty o'clock,

post-meridian, or well after luncheon, before her eye chanced to alight

on the Dabney House's winged words.

At this hour the ladies sat at ease in their private sitting-room on the

seventh floor of the great handsome caravansary by the sea. For to-day,

as it falls out, the House of Heth, just as we have it so firmly fixed

on Washington Street, had split and transplanted itself; all that

mattered of it, the soul and genius of the House, having flitted off

seventy miles to the Beach for an over-Sunday rest.

It was the 29th of October, which should have meant grate-fires. On the

contrary, two windows in the rented sitting-room were open, and Miss

Carlisle Heth, laying down "Pickwick Papers," by Dickens, the

well-known writer, now rose and flung wide the third.

"Whew!" said she, just as an ordinary person might have done. "It's

stifling!"

Her mother, a lifelong conservative, presently replied:

"It isn't the heat, it's the humidity."

Carlisle looked out over the sunny sea, and wondered if her mother were

never going to take her nap. She was twenty-three years old, and, Hun or

no Hun, was certainly not displeasing to the fleshly eye. Also, she much

desired to pass the time with a little sail, having already privately

engaged a catboat for that express purpose. There was no reason whatever

why she shouldn't have the sail, except that her mother was opposed on

principle to anything that looked the least bit adventurous.

"There are cinders on me yet, in spite of my bath," added Mrs. Heth,

whisking through the less interesting pieces in the "Post."... "Willie's

train arrives at four-thirty, I believe?"

Miss Heth confirmed the belief.

"I wonder, really," mused the dowager, not for the first time, "what

attraction the place can offer Mr. Canning. Men are strange in their

choice of amusement, to say the least."

"He's tired of the hermit life, and wants to let down his bars and have

a little fun."

"He could have all the fun he wants in town, Cally. He has only to make

a sign--"

"Of course!--and be snowed under with invitations which would be odious

to him, and probably roped in for something by Helen and Sue Louise

Cheriton, say. He can have fun here, without its leading to anything."

She added, with perverse merriment: "At least he thinks he can, not

knowing that two enterprising strangers are camping right across his

little trail."

Mrs. Heth frowned slightly. She was a slim, rather small lady, and her

fair face, at first sight, suggested an agreeable delicacy. To herself

she acknowledged with pleasure that she was "spirituelle." To the

observer, after a glance at her attractive upper face, the thick jaw and

neck came as a surprise: so did the hands and feet. The feet, seen

casually in a company, were apt to be taken for the belongings of some

far stouter woman, sitting near. They were Mrs. Heth's, however; and she

had also a small round birthmark on her left temple, which a deft

arrangement of the hair almost concealed, and a small dark mustache,

which was not so fortunately placed. She was sane and sound as to

judgment, and her will had raised the House of Heth as by a

steam derrick.

Miss Heth, gazing down at three or four hardy bathers, who splashed and

shouted at the hotel float, said, laughing:

"Truly, mamma, what do you suppose the Cheritons would have given Willie

for the splendid tip?"

Mrs. Heth's frown at her newspaper deepened; otherwise she made no

response. She learned with difficulty, like a Bourbon; but many years'

experience had at last convinced her that her daughter's occasional

mocking mannerism had to be put up with. Conceivably there were people

in the world who might have liked this mild cynical way of Carlisle's,

seeing in it, not indeed a good quality, but, so to say, the seamy side

of a good quality; the lingering outpost of a good quality that had been

routed; at least the headstone over the grave of a good quality that

maybe was only buried alive. But of these people, if such there were,

Mrs. Heth was positively not one....

And Carlisle's next remark was: "What would you wear to-night, for the

occasion?... Oh, there's a big motor-boat going by like the wind."

For though she might sometimes jeer aloud over processes, the daughter

was known to be quite as serious at heart as her mother, over the great

matters of life. Otherwise, look you, she might not have been at the

Beach at all to-day. The fact was that she and mamma had not

_positively_ decided on this recuperative excursion (though they had

_practically_ decided) until after the arrival of Cousin Willie Kerr's

notelet at breakfast: in which notelet Willie mentioned laconically that

he and Mr. Canning were themselves going Beachward by the three o'clock

train, and concluded his few lines with _verbum sap_, which is a Latin

quotation.

Standing idly at the window, the girl had indeed been thinking of Mr.

Canning before her mother spoke; and thinking with most pleasurable

speculations. Truly he was worth a thought, was Mr. Canning, proud

stranger within the gates--"house-guest," as the society column prefers

it--for whom, if reports were true, many ladies fair had sighed,

sickened, and died. And she, alone in her maidenly coterie, had already

met the too exclusive metropolitan--four days ago, by the lucky fluke of

turning in at the Country Club at an out-of-the-way morning moment, when

she might have motored straight on home, and had been within an ace of

doing so. An omen, wasn't it? Five minutes she and Mr. Canning had

talked, over so-called horses' necks provided by his sedate host, and

before the end of that time she had perceived an interest dawning in the

young man's somewhat ironic eyes. With the usual of his sex one could

have counted pretty definitely on the thing's being followed up.

However, Mr. Canning, the difficult, had merely saluted her

fascinatingly, and retired to re-maroon himself in the rural villa of

his kinsmen, the Allison Paynes, where he halted for a week or two on

his health-seeking progress southward.

It looked like a parting forever, but wasn't, owing to that help which

comes ever to those who help themselves....

To the sensible query, Mrs. Heth, lightening, replied: "Of course, the

gray crêpe-de-chine."

"I think so, too. Only there's a rip at the bottom. I'm sure Flora

hasn't touched it since Mr. Avery put his large foot straight

through it."

Having turned from the window, Carlisle yawned and glanced at the clock.

The two ladies conversed desultorily of draped effects, charmeuse, and

why Mattie Allen imagined that she could wear pink. Mrs. Heth ran on

through the "Post." Carlisle put up "Pickwick," by Dickens, sticking in

a box of safety matches to keep the place. Then she examined herself in

the mirror over the mantel, and became intensely interested in a tiny

redness over her left eyebrow. She thought that rubbing in a little

powder, and then rubbing it right off, would help the redness, and

it did.

"I asked Mattie why she said such long prayers in the mornings. That was

what made me late for breakfast. Her feelings were quite hurt. Isn't her

devoutness quaint, though?"

"She uses my house," murmured Mrs. Heth, "like a hotel. One would think

it might occur to her that if she _must_ mummer like a deacon she ought

to get up--"

She broke off, her wandering eye having just then fallen upon the

Arraignment.

"She didn't like our packing her off right after breakfast a bit

either.... I'm devoted to her," said Carlisle, gently rubbing off the

powder, "but there's no denying there's a great deal of the cat

in Mats."

"Hmph!... Why, this is outrageous! I never read such a thing!"

"What is it?" said the daughter, not turning, clearly not interested.

"Here's a man saying he visited the Works with the Labor Commissioner,

and that conditions there are _homicidal!_ I never! Mmm-m-m. Here! 'I

speak particularly of the Heth Cheroot Works, but all four stand almost

equally as burning blots upon the conscience of this community'--"

Carlisle's attention was not diverted from her eyebrow. "The Works! He's

crazy.... Who is the man?"

"A piece in the paper here--let me see. Yes, here's his name. Vivian.

_V. Vivian_! There's no such man!..."

"Oh," said the girl, absently, "it's only some notoriety-seeking

nobody.... Like the man who threw the brick at papa that

election night."

"But nobodies haven't any right to publish such untruths!" said Mrs.

Heth, more grammatical than she sounded. "They ought to be punished,

imprisoned for it. 'Public opinion is the grandfather of statute-book

law.' Where's the sense in that?..."

"It's probably one of those Socialistic things.... They said the man who

threw the brick at papa was a Socialist."

"'Shameless egoists of industry--grow rich by homicide!' I'm greatly

surprised at Mr. West for printing such fanatical stuff. I trust your

father did not see this. He gave forty dollars to the tuberculosis fund,

and this is his reward."

She fumed and interjected awhile further, but her daughter's thought

had dreamed far away. From her childhood days she had carried a

mind's-eye picture of the dominant fourth member of the family, the

great Works, lord and giver of her higher life, which completely refuted

these occasional assaults from socialists and failures. Their malicious

bricks flew high over her girlish head. Presently Mrs. Heth rose,

looking about for her novel, which was a glittering new one, frankly for

entertainment only, and not half-cultural like "Pickwick." The two

ladies moved together for the bedrooms.

"You had better get a little nap, too," said Mrs. Heth, "to be fresh for

the evening."

"It's so early now. Perhaps I may stroll down for a few minutes first."

"Well--it's so quiet I feel as if we had the place to ourselves. But

come up in plenty of time for a nap before dinner.... You're here to get

two days of good rest."

"I'll shut the door between," said Carlisle.

Before long, from the mother's side of the door so shut, certain sounds

arose indicating that after the morning's fitful fever she slept well.

Carlisle, on her own side, quickly donned a white boating-dress, a blue

fillet for her hair, and white doeskin shoes with rubber soles. That

done, she went out through the sitting-room, shot down in the lift,

traversed the forsaken lobby, and emerged upon the long empty boating

pavilion which ran from the hotel's side-entrance well out over

the water.

"The bell-boy gave you my message, Mr. Wedge?" said she, to the

weather-tanned renter of boats. "How do you do? I'm late. How's the

little Lady Jane?"

"How you, Miss Heth? Glad to see you back again, Miss. Lady Jane's trim

as ever. Yes'm. And there's a little sou' breeze coming up--puffy, but

just suit her."

"Bring her up a little more."

"Yes'm--there now! Feels most like summer, don't it?"

"But it doesn't _look_ like it!" smiled Miss Heth, and glanced about at

the emptiness of things.

"You'd ought to of seen her afore the hot spell," replied Mr. Wedge,

with artificial hilarity....

Then the light air took the little sail and Carlisle slid away with the

sunshine on her hair.

For half a week the breath of summer had confounded October, mid-autumn

plucking a leaf from July's best book. Now, with the half-holiday at

hand and a Sabbath to follow, a few others beside the Heths and the

Willie Kerr select party had deemed it worth while to go down to the sea

where the breezes blow. Only a few, though: the desolate quiet of a

summer place out of season yet clung and hung over all. In a solitary

corner of the vast piazza four coatless men sat idly drinking the

rickeys of summer. These, indeed, watched the embarkation of the girl

with interest, and when she stood a moment to get a knot out of the

sheet, revealing the figure of the Huntswoman (though she was by no

means one of your great Amazons), one of them might have been heard

to say:

"Well, she can have _me_ any time.... And, by crackey, she can _sail_!"

The remark betrayed the hypnotic influence: for she really could not

sail very well. No athlete this lady; she had even let her saddle-horse

go after the purchase of the second car; the sail now stood as her sole

sporting activity, and that but lately taken up. However, she handled

her bark with a tolerable efficiency. Keeping prudently inshore, yet

feeling delightfully venturesome, she skimmed along by the row of

shut-up cottages, and was soon lost to the stare of the rickey-drinkers,

of whose interest she had been quite unaware, or, let us say,

practically unaware....

Not for the eyes of anonymous transients or liberal-minded drummers had

Carlisle Heth donned this charming boat-dress and put out upon the

bounding blue. Not just to break the tedium of the afternoon, either;

not even exclusively for the vast exhilaration of sailing, though

undoubtedly she thrilled to that. But the interesting coincidence,

giving a peculiar point to it all, was that the three o'clock train from

town was due within the half-hour, and her present course lay dead

across the line of the street from the station.

Travel-worn young men; desolate Beach; chagrin at coming; and then,

presto, upon the jaded vision:--blue, sunny water, white-sailed boat,

beautiful nymph. Great heavens, what a tableau!...

We well know how resistlessly the male of humankind is drawn to the

female, at the mere glimpse of her flinging aside the tools of his

trade, whatever it may be, and furiously pursuing to the ends of the

earth. And we know, too (for the true poets of all ages have told us),

how the female of our species goes her innocent ways full of artless

fancies and sweet girlish imaginings, all unaware that an opposite and

uproarious sex is in headlong pursuit. And how she springs up startled

from her other-worldly dreams, to hear the thundering feet behind....

Yet we do know also of cases everywhere which make familiar principles

not merely out of place, but fairly grotesque. You are hardly to

conceive Miss Heth's pretty tableau as staged for, her prospecting

journey to the Beach as concerned with, some ordinary male, of whom one

could expect that he would pursue even extraordinary maids in an

ordinary way....

The nymph sailed gayly, stimulated by agreeable anticipations. The

minutes danced by with the skipping waves. A gust of wind slapped the

solitary little canvas, and Carlisle's small but not incapable hand

tightened upon the sheet. Her eye went dreamily over water and strand.

Far down the shore, boys were swimming with faint yells, but the hotel

bathers had tired and gone in. She seemed to have the great Atlantic to

herself, and the fact seemed nice to her, and refined....

The years had passed since Carlisle Heth had formulated the careering

importance, even the nobility, of marrying high above her. Aspiration,

not your ditchwater cynicism, was the mainspring of her real being, as

her mother well knew; and this supreme fulfilment had long glittered

ahead as the ultimate crown, not of triumph only, but of happiness

consummate. A little too long, perhaps: waiting princesses grow

discontented. Vague dissatisfactions possessed the girl at times, for

all her large blessings; mild symptoms stewed and simmered from her

which surprised her in reflective moments, and her mother at all

moments. These things, she knew well, came all from a single want. Her

reach far exceeded her grasp. Her sighs were Alexander's.

Now, in the smiling and anticipatory afternoon, a limpid brook of

girlish imaginings beguiled her with enchanting music, while realer

water lapped her shallop, and the substantial breeze whipped her

glorious hair about her yet more glorious face. This face, it is time to

say plainly, attracted more than rickey-drinkers. Good men might here

read their dearest dreams come true; had so read them. The fact deserves

capitals, being enormously important. With one half the world only, as

all know, is character destiny: the rest is bent and twisted, glorified

or smashed, by Physiognomy, the great potter.

And this girl's destiny was obviously magnificent. Experience had long

since convinced her, personally, of that. Hoarse testimonials from the

pursuing sex she had had in superabundance from her fifteenth year. Yet,

while these were duly valued as indicating the strong demand, she had

waited, stanch to her destiny. Were not Alexandrine sighs her right? One

so endowed could hardly be asked to rest content with the youth of the

vicinage....

The cottage row was now well astern; the long string of empty bathhouses

slid by, water foamed under the swelling sail. Gliding with the bark,

dreamy retrospect met and joined hands with solider prospect. Carlisle

threw round a measuring eye, and perceived that she had covered more

distance than she had thought; had passed the limits of the board-walk

and the beach, which was quite far enough, considering. She luffed

cleverly, having a splendid blowy time of it, and put about. This done,

she permitted herself to glance for the second time over the purview.

No cloud of smoke stood upon the horizon stationward, no human being

appeared within such view of the strand as the cottages and bath-houses

left to her. The train, evidently, was late. Well, as far as that went,

there was no special hurry about getting back to the hotel. Mamma could

only scold a little, as usual.

Carlisle smiled to herself, rather tickled by the thought of the

brilliant march she and mamma had stolen upon the world. In five

minutes, under stiff Mr. Payne's eye at that, she had indubitably

interested Mr. Canning. And now, thanks chiefly to Willie Kerr's loyal

enterprise, ...

Her returning eye fell upon a bobbing object in the water, very near

her, and her heart missed a beat. Her lips moved soundlessly. _Jack

Dalhousie!_...

The bobbing object, in fact, was the head of a man of the sea; a

youthful swimmer who had come up on her unseen--behind her till she had

put about. The lad was swimming rapidly, though with a curious waste of

motive power, and was so close that Miss Heth seemed to herself to be

staring full into his face. His course was laid dead across her bows;

for other reasons, too, his piratical intentions were instantly obvious

to the girl in the boat.

How did he dare!--after all these months ...

For an exciting second she plotted escape by flight, but the impulse was

all but still-born. He would be on her before she could put about. The

girl sat entirely still, regarding the swimmer in a kind of fascinated

silence. The irony of fate, indeed, that, at a moment when her whole

mind and heart were toward the rose-pink future, this scapegrace ghost

from her only "past" should have risen out of the sea upon her. To dream

of a Canning, and be entrapped by a Dalhousie!...

The youth sloshed alongside, laid hold of the boat's nose, and

methodically and with some difficulty pulled himself in. The weight of

his ingress tipped the gunwale to the water's edge, but Carlisle made no

outcry. She was clear of head; and the heart of her desire was to be

free of this misadventure without attracting attention from the shore.

She said in a sharp, clear voice: "Mr. Dalhousie, are you perfectly

crazy?"

Dalhousie, in his swimmer's suit, sat stiffly forward, sluicing water

into the bottom. He was a big and well-built boy, with a face that had

no viciousness; but his dark eyes, with their heavy silken lashes, were

hardly meant for a man. Neither was his mouth, for all that he sought to

set it so firmly now.

"Mr. Dalhousie," he repeated with elaborate distinctness. "When d'

I--draw that--title?"

The girl sat eyeing him with frosty calm: a look which covered rage

within, not unmingled with perturbation....

He was a neighbor of hers, this audacious youth, though not of

Washington Street; impecunious, and hence negligible; moreover somewhat

notorious of late for a too vivid behavior: the distant bowing

acquaintance of many years. This till the moment of indiscretion last

May; when, encountering his dashing attractions in the boredom of a dull

resort, far from her mother's restrictive eye, she had for an idle

fortnight allowed the relation between them to become undeniably

changed. Foolish indeed; but really she had thought--or now really

thought she had thought--that the impossible youth took it all no more

seriously than she. Not till her return home last month had he revealed

his complete untrustworthiness: presuming, as she termed it, making

claims and advances, putting her to trouble to keep her vernal unwisdom

from her mother. Still, she _had_ thought she had disposed of him

at last....

Now there sat the unwelcome swain, her boarder, so close that she could

have touched him. And her gaze upon him was like arctic snowblink: an

odd look in pretty young eyes.

"You've no right to force yourself upon me in this way," said she. "You

must get out of my boat at once."

"Oh, no, I mustn't, Carlisle. That's where you make--mistake. You've put

me off--too often. Now--the time's come."

"You must be out of your senses. This is outrageous. I insist--I demand

that you get out of my boat _immediately_."

"When d' ju--listen when I--demanded?"

His heavy resoluteness reduced her suddenly to the weakness of saying:

"A gentleman wouldn't do such a thing.... You will regret this."

"Man," said Dalhousie, with the same labored slowness, "comes before

gen'leman. An' the regrets--will be yours. I've come--to have a talk."

In the momentary silence, the drip, drip from his bathing-suit became

very audible. The lad leaked like a sieve, all over her boat. Miss Heth

glanced swiftly and vexedly from him, over the unchanged panorama. Empty

water lapping empty beach; no one watching. Only now, in the sky over

the station, there hung a haze of train-smoke....

Her eyes came back: and now she observed with some girlish anxiety the

young man's unwonted solemnity, the strange brilliance of his eyes. A

certain nervousness began to show through her cold calm: her unconscious

hand wound the taut sheet round and round the tiller, an injudicious

business in view of the gusty breeze. How to be rid most quickly of the

interloper?... She might, of course, put ashore with him: but she

particularly did not care to do that, and have all the piazza loungers

and gossips see her in his somewhat too gay company. Most particularly

she did not care to have her mother glance out of her upstairs window

and be stunned by the same sight, with apoplectic cross-examination to

follow ...

"Jack," said Carlisle Heth, hurriedly, in rather a coaxing sort of

voice, "if you will leave me now, I will--I promise to see you in town

next week."

A flicker touched Dalhousie's eyelid; but he said huskily, after a

pause: "Promise? What's your promise worth? You've promised me before.

You said--you loved--"

"I can't talk now. But on Monday afternoon--in the park--or at my

house--whichever you prefer ... I--I'll explain. I give you my word

of honor--"

"No! You've done that before--too. Explain! Howc'n you explain? Go on.

Try now. Why've you--refused to see me? Why--"

Red stained the girl's cheeks.

"Then you'll force me to put in immediately," she said, with an angry

reversal of tactics,--"and subject me to the humiliation of being seen

with you. What a coward!"

"Humiliation!" Dalhousie repeated, flushing vividly. "You say that?"

"Can't you understand that it would be? Are you really so stupid?

Haven't you learned yet that I don't ever want anything more to do

with you?..."

Such remarks brought action and reaction. The lad's look must have

warned Miss Heth that all this went rather far. In fact, she began a

sort of retraction, a hurried little soothing away of her impolitic and

fairly conclusive remarks. But Dalhousie interrupted her, rising

unsteadily in the boat, his young face quite strange and wild.

Who would scrutinize the dying flickers of last summer's flirtation? All

that mattered was only too well seen from the shore.

It was the smallest of the rickey-drinkers who bruited the mishap

abroad, his eye having happened to stray through a slit between a

cottage-side and a boat-house. At this time, with the approach of

evening coolness, the hotel piazza was filling up a little; and at the

man's word, the place was instantly in a turmoil.

There started, in fact, all the horrid rigors of amateur rescue work: of

which the least said the soonest mended. It was presently noted by some

coolhead that the renter of boats, having seen the disaster first, had

already put out for the scene of trouble, rowing lustily. Nobody could

beat him to his garlands now; that was clear; clear, too, that there

really wasn't much peril, after all. So the motley gathering of idlers

became content to stand upon the edge of the boat pavilion, gazing most

eagerly, gossiping not a little....

The bystander, like the Athenian, ever desires to see or to hear some

new thing. And really this spectacle was new enough to satisfy the

most exacting.

Perhaps a mile over the water, a hundred yards or so from shore, the

little boat Lady Jane lay side up on the sea. To it clung a young girl,

well above water; near her appeared the head of a young man, a swimmer.

So far, so good. But there was something wrong about this swimmer,

something grossly discordant in his position in the picture. It

developed upon close examination that the interval between him and the

overturned boat was not decreasing. It was widening indeed; widening

quite steadily.... Yes, there it was; unfortunately no longer open to

doubt. The man was pulling for the shore and safety, leaving the girl to

sink or swim as she preferred.

The sight was a strange one, resembling a defiance of established law.

It staggered the eye, like the sight of water running uphill. People had

seen the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and kissed the Pope's toe; but they

had never seen anything like this.

A nasal, hawk-nosed individual in eye-glasses voiced the sentiments of

all: "If that's your Southern chivalry, Warlow, the less I see of it

the better."

Another spoke more sympathetically, yet with unchanged point: "Poor

Dalhousie--born to trouble! Rye whiskey an' marryin' cousins--that's

what's killed him."

A third, an elderly woman, with a rich voice, said: "I wonder what there

was between those two...."

The actual rescue proved a tame affair. Suddenly attention was diverted

from it by the cry of a certain winsome young thing, who, when the alarm

was raised, had been among the first to scream.

"Oh, _look_ at that little man. He _hit_ him!"

"Where?--Who?--Oh!"

"Serves him ri--Ah-h!"

It proved as the screamer said. The smallest rickey-drinker, not content

with sounding the alarm, had gone brilliantly bolting down the beach.

Taking his stand there at a given point, he had flung himself upon the

youth who had so ably saved his own skin, as the latter waded ashore,

and struck him savagely in the face. It was observed that the man from

the sea seemed surprised by this attack. He stared at his small

assailant in a confused sort of way; and then with passionate swiftness

plucked hold of him by two favorite points of vantage, and threw him

bodily into the water. This movement, as it chanced, turned his gaze

seaward. The youth was seen to stand an instant, rigid as a bather in

marble, staring out over the water he had traversed ...

Then he turned, heedless of the brandishings of the little man behind

him, and went away toward his bath-house in the manner that is best

described as a slink.