"We came, you see, to be very quiet. And we were never so frightfully
noisy in our lives."
He smiled; made his small distinguished bow.
"You've reason to feel annoyed on all scores then. At any rate, it's
charming to find you as our fellow guest."
And his eyes flitted from her toward Kerr, and then turned briefly upon
mamma, and her strange little downy mustache.
Carlisle now perceived the disinterestedness, if not the faint
weariness, in Mr. Canning's manner; she saw that he had forgotten the
five minutes at the Country Club. The strong probability was, moreover,
that he thought the worse of her for allowing herself to be nearly
drowned in so vulgarly public a way. However, she was untroubled; she
thought him, for her part, adorable to look at and of a splendid manner
and conceit; and aloud she inquired, with her air of shining
indifference, if Mr. Canning was not delighted with the Beach
in October.
"Well, you know, I think I've been here before"--he said _bean_, most
deliciously--"only I can't be quite sure. It seems to me a most
agreeable place. Only, if it isn't indiscreet to inquire, what does one
do in the evening?"
"Usually, I believe, one goes to bed directly after dinner. If one does
this, and dines extremely late, the evening slips by quite nicely,
we find."
"But the afternoons? Wouldn't they perhaps loom a thought long at times,
waiting on for dinner?"
"There's napping provided for the afternoon, you see. And many other
diversions, such as reading, walking, and thinking."
"Perhaps one should arrange to spend only afternoons at the Beach. You
make them sound simply uproarious."
"We're a simple people here, Mr. Canning, with simple joys and sorrows,
easily amused."
Mr. Canning looked down at her. However, Carlisle did not meet his gaze.
Having already, in a quiet way, given him two looks where they would do
the most good, she was now glancing maidenly at mamma, who conversed
vice-presidentially of her Associated Charities policies.
"They must be brought to help themselves!" Mrs. Heth was saying.
"Wholesale, thoughtless generosity is demoralizing to poverty. It is
sheer ruination to their moral fibre."
"Promiscuous charity!--ruination! Just what I always say," chirped
Willie. "Look at ancient Rome, ma'am. Began giving away corn to the
poor, and, by gad!--she fell!"...
"Delightful! I see I shall like it here," Mr. Canning was observing--and
was there perceptible the slightest thawing in his somewhat formidable
manner?... "I too," said he, "have dwelt in Arcady."
The girl looked over the spaces, a little smile in her eyes.
"Ah, then you didn't need to be told that the sandman comes early
there."
"But not, I think, when the moon shines bright--and the simple
amusements you speak of seem to be waiting? Surely games in the evening
are not altogether forbidden, or does my memory of the place
deceive me?"
"You seem to remember it perfectly. But I thought your complaint was
that there was nothing at all amusing to do in Arcady."
"Ah," said Mr. Canning, "but I'm having my second thoughts now."
She had given him a third, uptilting look with her speech; and now it
was as if the great eligible had seen her for the first time. If the
gaze of his handsome eyes became somewhat frank, this girl had been
fashioned to stand all scrutiny victoriously. A mode which defined the
figure with some truthfulness held no terrors for her; rather the
contrary. Her skin was fine and fair as a lily, with an undertone of
warmth, dawn pink on the cheek; the whiteness of her neck showed an
engaging tracery of blue. Her mass of hair, of an ashy dull gold, would
have been too showy above a plain face; but the case was otherwise with
her. Her mouth, which was not quite flawless but something better, in
especial allured the gaze; so did her eyes, of a dusky blue, oddly
shaped, and fringed with the gayest lashes ...
"Besides," added the man, looking down at her with a certain lightening
in his gaze, "as I remember, I did not say that there was nothing
amusing to do. I merely, as a stranger, came to you begging some
guidance on the point."
"I see. But I very much doubt my ability to guide you in that way, Mr.
Canning--"
"I can only observe that you've thrown out a number of perfectly ripping
suggestions already--walking on the piazza, for example. Mightn't we
steal that diversion from afternoon temporarily, don't you think?
Perhaps Mrs. Heth would agree to pursue the missing breeze so far?"
"That would be nice," said Carlisle.
You could distinctly hear his thundering feet now....
Strolling for four was agreed upon, and that simple afternoon amusement
started. But, arriving at the piazza, the dowager discovered that, after
all, the night air was just a little cool for her, and turned back, not
without some beaming. She mentioned the Blue Parlor as her port of call,
where smoking was forbidden. Willie, doing his duty as he saw it,
dropped his cigar into a brass repository. He had faults like the rest
of us, had Willie, but his deathless loyalty deserved a monument in
a park.
Carlisle and Mr. Canning strolled on alone. She walked outwardly serene
as the high-riding moon, but inwardly with a quickening sense of
triumph, hardly clouded at all now. As she and mamma had planned it, so
it had fallen out....
Many eyes had followed this shining pair as they quitted the common
gathering-place. She, as we have seen, was inviting as a spectacle. He,
to the nobodies, was simply one of the sights of the place, like the
Fort. And his distinguished House was still a small one, at that, not
yet arrived where another generation would unfailingly put it. If the
grandfather of Hugo Canning had founded the family, financially
speaking, it was his renowned father who had raised it so fast and far,
doubling and redoubling the Canning fortune with a velocity by no means
unprecedented in the eighties and nineties. To-day there were not many
names better known in the world of affairs, in the rarer social
altitudes, even in the shore-hotels of the provinces....
And the son and heir of the name and fortune, who now trod the Beach
piazza with Miss Carlisle Heth, was obviously more than many sons of
wealth, much more than a mere trousered incident to millions. This one
saw in the first glance at his Olympian bearing; but Carlisle Heth knew
more than that. Upon this young man the enterprising vehicles of modern
history had, long since, conferred an individual celebrity. Often had
the Sunday editors told their "public" of his exploits in the sporting
and social realms, as they called them; not rarely had journals of a
more gossipy character paragraphed him smartly, using their asterisks to
remove all doubt as to who was meant. Before such an evening as this had
ever crossed her maiden's dreams, Carlisle Heth had read of Hugo
Canning....
It was a bad throat, a God-given touch of bronchitis or whatnot, that
had sent the great young man south. This was known through Willie Kerr,
and other private sources. Also, that he would remain with his Payne
cousins through the following week; and in December might possibly
return from the Carolinas or Florida for a few days' riding with the
Hunt Club. Meantime he was here: and it was but Saturday, mid-evening,
and a whole beautiful Sunday lay ahead....
From the piazza, after a turn or two, Miss Heth and Mr. Canning
sauntered on to a little summer-house, which stood on the hotel
front-lawn, not far from the piazza end. She had hesitated when he
commended the pretty bower; but it was really the discreetest spot
imaginable, under the public eye in all directions, and undoubtedly
commanding a perfect view of the moonlight on the water, precisely as he
pointed out.
In this retreat, "What a heavenly night!" exclaimed Miss Heth.
Canning, still standing, looked abroad upon a scene of dim beauty,
gentle airs, and faint bright light. "Now that you say it," he replied,
"it is. But depend on it, I should never have admitted it quarter of an
hour ago."
"Oh! But isn't it rather tedious to deny what's so beautifully plain?"
"Should you say that tedious is the word? A better man than I denied his
Lord."
"Yes," said Carlisle, not absolutely dead-sure of the allusion, "but he
was frightened, wasn't he, or something?"
"And I was lonely. Loneliness beats fear hollow for making the world
look out of whack."
"Doesn't it? And is there a lonesomer place on the globe than a summer
resort out of season?"
"But we were speaking of fifteen minutes ago, were we not?" said
Canning, and sat down beside her on the rustic bench.
The walls of this little summer-house were largely myth, and lattice for
the rest. Through the interstices the dim brightness of the moon misted
in, and the multitudinous rays from the hotel. There reached them the
murmur of voices, the languorous lap of water. A serene and reassuring
scene it surely was; there was no menace in the night's silvern
calmness, no shadow of stalking trouble....
Carlisle imagined Mr. Canning to be capable of a rapid advance at his
desire, and was opposed on principle to such a course of events. Still,
she was saying, a moment or two later:
"And in the Payne fort on the Three Winds Road--I suppose you never feel
lonely there?"
"Why fort, if one might know?"
"I've been told that you were awfully well barricaded there, prepared to
stand any sort of siege."
Canning seemed quite amused. He declared, on the contrary, that neglect
and unpopularity were his portion in a strange land.
"I'm an invalid on sick-leave," said he, "and my orders are to go to
bed. Please don't smile, for it's all quite true ..."
He appeared to develop a certain interest in the moonlit talk. He
proceeded in a voice and manner no longer purely civil:
"And, to bare my soul to you, I'm no fonder of being lonely than another
man.... Do you know that, but for Kerr, you're my one acquaintance in
all this part of the world? What shall we say of that? I sit at dinner,
consumed by blue devils. I emerge, and behold, you walk across the
lobby. Haven't I some right to feel that the gods are with me even at
the Beach?"
Perchance she might have given him some information there, but instead
she laughed musically.
"The god of the pretty speeches, at any rate! Must I tell you that you
didn't look quite overjoyed when dear Willie came dragging you up?"
"I've no doubt I looked all sorts of ways, for I'd never felt more unfit
for any society, including my own. The more is my debt to you for
chasing my devils away.... But perhaps I owe you no thanks after all, as
one guesses that you do these little services for others without any
particular effort."
Carlisle glanced at him, smiling a little from her dusky eyes.
"Your experience is that most people find it a great effort to speak
pleasantly to you, I suppose?"
"Again I point out to you that our talk is not of most people, but of
you."
"Oh! And is there something particularly original about me? This grows
exciting."
"I, for one, think that beauty is always original," said Canning, with
sufficient impersonality, but no more.... "Still, we know, of course,
that unaided it cannot drive the blues of others very far."
"After the sugar-coating comes the pill. Tell me in what way I have been
deficient."
"Ah, that's yet to learn. To be charming by habit is an agreeable thing;
but you haven't convinced me yet, you know, that you know how to
be kind."
Her lashes fell before his masculine gaze; she did not answer. About
them was the sweet hush of the night. She was aware that he had moved
nearer upon their bench; aware, too, of a faster beating of her heart.
And then, quite suddenly, a new voice spoke, so close that both started
sharply; a rather shy voice, yet one possessed of a certain vivid
quality of life.
"I beg your pardon--but _is_ this Miss Heth?"
They turned as upon one string. At the door of the summer-house stood
the blurred figure of a man, bareheaded and tall. The light being
chiefly behind him, he showed only in thin silhouette, undistinguishable
as to age, character, and personal pulchritude. Stares passed between
the dim trio.
"I am Miss Heth."
"Could you possibly let me speak to you--for a moment, Miss Heth? I
realize, of course, that it's a great intrusion but--"
Canning started up, annoyed. Carlisle, without knowing why, was
instantly conscious of a subtle sinking of the heart: some deep instinct
rang a warning in the recesses of her being, as if crying out: "This man
means trouble." She glanced at Mr. Canning with a kind of little shrug,
suggesting doubt, and some helplessness; and he, taking this for
sufficient authority, assumed forthwith the male's protectorship.
"Yes? What is it that you wish?"
The tall stranger was observed to bow slightly.
"As I say, I beg the favor of speaking to Miss Heth a few
moments--privately. Of course I shouldn't venture to trespass so, if the
matter weren't vitally important--"
"Who are you?" demanded the great young man with rather more impatience
than seemed necessary. "And what do you wish to speak to her about?
Speak plainly, I beg, and be brief!"
The two men stood facing each other in the faint light. Ten feet of
summer-house floor was between them, yet something in their position was
indefinably suggestive of a conflict.
"I should explain," said the intruder, dim in the doorway, "that
I come as a friend of poor Dalhousie--the boy who got into all
the trouble ... Ah...."
The involuntary ejaculation, briefly arresting his speech, was his
perfect tribute to the girl's beauty now suddenly revealed to him. For
Carlisle had unconsciously leaned forward out of the shadows of the
bench just then, a cold hand laid along her heart.
"This afternoon," the man recovered, with a somewhat embarrassed rush.
"I--I appreciate, I needn't say, that it seems a great liberty, to--"
"Liberty is scarcely the word," said Hugo Canning, fighting the lady's
battle with lordly assurance. "Miss Heth declines to hear...."
But the stranger's vivid voice bore him down: "_Do you, Miss Heth?_...
The situation is terribly serious, you see. I don't want to alarm you
unnecessarily, but--I--I'm afraid he may take matters into his
own hands--"
Canning took an impatient step forward.
"Nevertheless, it's pure impudence for him to send to this lady,
sneaking for favors now. Let's--"
"Mr. Canning, I--I'm afraid I _ought_ to speak to him!"
"_What?_" said Mr. Canning, wheeling at the voice, as if stung.
"_Oh!... That's kind of you!_"
Carlisle felt, under Mr. Canning's incredulous gaze, that this sudden
upwhirl of misfortune was the further refinement of cruelty. She hardly
knew what to do. Scarcely thinkable as it was to dismiss Hugo Canning
from her presence, it seemed even more impossible to pack off this
nameless intruder. Inconceivable malignity of chance, indeed! Only one
doubt of its all being settled and blown over had lingered on to trouble
her; and now without warning this doubt rose and rushed upon her in the
person of the sudden stranger--and before Mr. Canning, too. It occurred
to her, with ominous sinkings of the heart, that she had relied
mistakenly upon Dalhousie's gentlemanliness. What horrid intention was
concealed behind these strange words about his taking matters into his
own hands? And suppose she refused to see the emissary alone, and he
then said: "Well, then, I'll just have to speak before your friend."...
What would Mr. Canning think of her then? What was he going to think of
her anyway?
Carlisle, having risen, answered her protector's gaze with a look of
appealing sweetness, and said in a low, perturbed voice:
"I'm so dreadfully sorry. But I don't quite see how I could refuse just
to--to hear what he has to say. Under the circumstances, would
it--wouldn't it be simply unkind?"
Canning said, with small lightening of his restrained displeasure: "Ah!
I'm to understand, then, that you wish to give this--gentleman an
audience alone?"
It was, of course, the last thing on earth she desired, but God clearly
was out of his heaven to-day, and Mr. Canning would like her better in
the long run if he stepped aside for a space now. She said, with a
restraint which did her credit:
"_Could_ you forgive me--for five minutes? You must know how I--dislike
this. But _oughtn't_ I--"
The great parti gave an ironic little laugh.
"As you please, of course. I shall await your pleasure on the piazza."
And he stamped out and away into the moonlight, passing the silent
intruder with a look which said loudly that he would have kicked him if
it had promised to be worth the trouble.
The silver cord was loosed. The village-clock, quarter of a mile away,
struck nine, and all's well. Hugo Canning's stately back receded.
Coincidently the shabby-looking stranger who had displaced him stepped
forward into the summer-house. The first thing Carlisle noticed about
him was that he was lame.
V
Dialogue between V. Vivian, of the Slums, and Mr. Heth's
Daughter (or his Niece); what the lovely Hun saw in the Mr.
Vivian's eyes, just before he asked God to pity her.
Dalhousie's tall friend advanced with a limp, in silence. He halted at a
courteous distance; it was seen that one hand held a soft hat, crushed
against his side. A faint wave of the ethereal light immersed the man
now, and Carlisle dimly descried his face. She observed at once that it
did not seem to be a menacing face at all; no, rather was it kindly
disposed and even somewhat trustful in its look. It was the second thing
that she noticed about him.
Perhaps no girl in the world was less like the popular portrait of a fat
horse-leech's daughter than this girl, Carlisle Heth. Surely no advance
ever less resembled the charge of a hating prophet upon a Hun than this
man's advance. Carlisle, to be sure, was never one to think in
historical or Biblical terminology. But she did note the man's manner of
approach upon her, and his general appearance, with an instant lifting
of the heart. The whole matter seemed desperately serious to her, full
of alarming possibilities, a matter for a determined fight. And she felt
more confidence at once, the moment she had seen how the emissary
looked, how he looked at her.
Chiefly for strategic reasons, she had sat down on the bench again, well
back in the shadows. She did not speak; had no intention of speaking
till speech might gain something. And the stranger, silent also, wore an
air of hesitancy or confusion which was puzzling to her and yet quite
reassuring, too. If he had come to say that Dalhousie would talk unless
she did, would he be this sort of looking person at all?...
The man began abruptly; clearly nothing plotted out in advance.
"He's quite crushed.... I--I've just come from him...."
And then, hurriedly running his fingers through his hair, he retraced
his steps for a better start.
"I should first say how kind it is of you to receive a--a stranger, in
this way. I need hardly say that I appreciate it, greatly.... And I
bring his hope that you can be merciful, and forgive him for what he
did. He is badly broken, that I promise you.... It's all so curiously
confused. But it doesn't seem that he can be quite so bad as they're
saying here to-night...."
The stranger hesitated; he was gazing down with grave intentness.
"Miss Heth, Dal swears he can't remember the boat's upsetting at all."
His tone expressed, oddly, not so much a contradiction of anybody as a
somewhat ingenuous hope for corroboration: Carlisle's ear caught that
note at once. She was observing Jack Dalhousie's shabby friend as a
determined adversary observes. He had moved a little nearer, or else the
pale light better accustomed itself to him. And she saw that his face,
though manifestly young, had an old-fashioned sort of look which seemed
to go with his worn clothes; a quaint face, as she regarded it,
odd-looking in some elusive way about the eyes, but, she felt surer and
surer, not dangerous at all.
Now her gaze, shifting, had fastened upon his tie, which was undeniably
quaint; a very large four-in-hand showing pictorially, as it seemed, a
black sea holding for life a school of fat white fish. And then there
came a lovely voice from the shadows--lovely, but did it sound just a
little hard?...
"Perhaps you had better begin at the beginning, and tell me who you are,
and what it is you want."
"Yes, yes! Quite so!" agreed the author of the Severe Arraignment,
rather hastily....
A little easier said than done, no doubt. Yet it may be that one of the
young man's inner selves still hovered over the belief that this girl
must be Mr. Heth's (of the Works) niece, or haply a yet more distant
relative....
"I mentioned that," said he, "because it was naturally uppermost in my
mind. I--ah.... But to begin at the beginning, as you say.... I got a
telegram in town, telling me that Jack Dalhousie was in serious trouble.
It was from Hofheim, a fellow, a sort of druggist, who happened to know
that I was one of his best friends. So I caught the six-ten train and
Hofheim met me at the station. _My_ name's Vivian...."
He stopped short, with an odd air of not having intended to stop at this
point at all. So bystanders have watched the learning bicycle rider,
irresistibly drawn to his doom against the only fixed object in miles.
However, no association of ideas woke in the mind of the silent girl
upon the bench. Not easily at any time did brick-throwing Socialists
gain foothold there; and this day had been a disruptive one for her,
beyond any in her experience.
"The name," hastily continued the young man, with an intake of breath,
"probably conveys nothing to you. I--I merely mention it.... Well,
Hofheim, this sort of--fellow, wasn't in the hotel when the--the
occurrence took place, but he told me what everybody was saying, as we
came up in the 'bus together. I feel very sure you can have no idea....
Shall I repeat his story? I don't, of course, want to trouble you
needlessly."
"Do."
So bidden, he swiftly epitomized the narrative told him by the fellow
Hofheim, who had got it at fifth or sixth hand after Mrs. Heth's
striking of the right note. The Hofheim rendering seemed to include such
details as that Dalhousie (being an entire stranger to Miss Heth) had
overthrown her boat with homicidal hands, and that, as he swam away, he
had laughed repeatedly and maniacally over his shoulder at the girl's
agonized screams.
"They don't say that he struck you--with an oar," the man concluded, sad
and satirical. "I believe that's the only detail of the sort they
omit.... As a matter of fact, Miss Heth, Dal says he never heard you
scream at all."
Then he clearly paused for a reply, perhaps a reassuring burst; but
there was only silence. The harried girl on the bench was thinking,
intently but with some bewilderment. Somewhat aghast as she was (truth
to tell) at the way in which the minor variations had been maliciously
distorted, her attention had been closely engaged by the curious way in
which Mr. Dalhousie's friend was going at things. Why did he sound less
like a challenge and a threat than like somebody whistling hopefully to
keep up his courage?
The question irresistibly emerged. Carlisle's slim fingers furled and
unfurled the end of her mermaiden's scarf, and she looked up at the tall
stranger in the dusk and sweetly spoke for the third time.
"But I don't understand. If he has told you all about it, I--I don't see
why you have come to me at all."
Then the man appeared to recollect that he had omitted the most
important part of his narrative--of course she didn't understand, no
wonder!--and spoke with some eagerness.
"I should have explained that in the beginning!--only of course I don't
like to trespass too far on your time.... You see--unfortunately--Dal's
hardly in position to speak about the matter at all. I--"
He paused, as if seeking how to put it, and then spoke these
doubt-destroying words:
"It is very perplexing, but the truth is--he says so himself--he doesn't
know at all what took place."
"Oh!... _He doesn't know_!"
"I don't wonder you're astonished at his saying so," said the young man,
in quite a gentle way. "And yet I do believe him absolutely...."
He now explained, in well-selected phrases, that Jack Dalhousie had been
very drunk when he boarded the boat, having taken a running start on the
evening preceding. Though he might have seemed normal enough, through
long experience in control, he was actually quite irresponsible; and
drink had played strange tricks with his mind before now. The boy could
remember getting into the boat, it seemed; remember that--ah--that she
had objected (very properly) to his presence; remember standing up in
the boat, very angry, and the wind blowing in his face. The next thing
he remembered was being in the water, swimming away. And then, when he
landed, a man standing there on shore cursed him and struck him in the
face.... Then he had looked out over the water; he saw the upset
sailboat and the boatman rowing out, and the people, and it rushed over
him what he must have done. Till then, he said, he had never dreamed
that anything had happened. He could hardly believe it, even with the
evidence of his own eyes. Then later Hofheim, the sort of fellow, had
gone up to see him, and told him what people were saying, which so much
more than confirmed his worst suspicions. Hofheim was a stranger, but he
meant well....
Dalhousie, in short, was in the singular position of having to implore
others to assure him that he hadn't done all these terrible things. And
it appeared that Miss Carlisle Heth was the one person in the world who
could possibly give him that assurance.
So spoke the stranger. That he had scattered lifelines, that all his
oratory had come agrapple with nature's first law, evidently did not
cross his mind. He gazed down at the girl's dimly limned face, and his
gaze seemed full of an unconquerable hopefulness.
"The boy's behavior has been inexcusable in any case," he said. "And be
sure he's been punished, and will be punished severely. But ... it must
be that either the--the trouble didn't happen at all as this story says
it did, or if--at the worst--it did happen that way, Dalhousie was
simply out of his mind, quite insane, and didn't know what he was doing.
He isn't, of course, a ruffian or a coward. Won't you help to make them
understand that?"
The girl raised her eyes, which in the twilight were darker than the
'depth of water stilled at even.'
"I don't see the necessity for that," she said, in a firm voice. "I--I'm
afraid I can't consent to be involved in it any further."
Over the little summer-house hung the sweet beauties of the serene
night. About it stretched the calm lawn in chequers of large faint
brightness and gigantic shadows. Within it stood the tall stranger,
rooted in his tracks. Then it seemed to occur to him that there was some
misunderstanding; that at least, in his anxiety about his friend, he
hadn't allowed sufficiently for the properly outraged feelings of the
lady--this so unreasonable-looking daughter of Mr. Heth of the Works, or
his niece....
"It's all tremendously trying for you, I know," he said, with the same
sort of gentleness. "I assure you the situation has distressed me
greatly--from every aspect. And I think it's most kind and--and generous
of you to let me speak with you when you must feel that you've been so
badly treated.... But you see--as it stands, you are involved in it,
really, more than any one else. I'm sorry, but in fact the whole issue
is in your hands."
"I can't see that. He has given you his--his version of what took place.
No one will prevent him from saying the same thing to whomever
he wishes."
"But who will believe him?"
Carlisle perceived a rhetorical question, though she didn't know it
under that name; she made no reply. She would really have preferred no
more questions of any sort--what was the use of them? In her, as in all
the Maker's creatures, the instinct for self-preservation was planted to
work resistlessly. Small wonder, indeed, if, in the unexpected discovery
that dependence on Dalhousie's dubious gentlemanliness was unnecessary,
the uprush of relief should have swept away all lesser considerations,
flooded down all doubts. All was settled again in a trice, as by a
miracle: the miraculous agent here being, not the Deity (as she vaguely
suspected), but only the Demon Rum, he who had taught the frail lad
Dalhousie to be so mistrustful of himself ...
She had had a harassing day, including three momentous _tête-à-têtes_
with three different and widely variegated men, mostly comparative
strangers: Jack Dalhousie, Mr. Canning, and now this Mr. Vivian. She was
very tired of being dogged and nagged at and interfered with, and she
wanted very much to terminate this interview, which she saw now had been
extorted from her by a pretty sharp piece of deception. And through her
mind there skipped a beckoning thought of Mr. Canning, conceived as
feverishly pacing the piazza ...
"You see, his defence," Mr. Vivian was saying, with some signs of
nervousness, "is merely his own word that he had no idea you were upset.
I believe him absolutely, because I know he wouldn't lie, and he admits,
to his own disadvantage, that his memory isn't at all clear. But--it's
all so muddled and confused somehow--I'm afraid everybody else will
think that a rather silly fabrication, invented by a desperate man to
put himself in the best light possible. That is--unless his word is
corroborated."
His inflection invited remarks, nay, urged them, but there was only
silence.
And then within V. Vivian, M.D., there woke a cold doubt, and gnawed
him.
"Miss Heth--I must ask--for the whole moral question hangs on this ...
_Did he know that you were upset_?"
Miss Heth cleared her throat, preparatory to rising. She saw now that
she ought never to have consented to talk with this strange man at all.
Mamma would have known that in advance.
"It is--rather absurd--for me to be asked to decide what _he_ knew. He
has assured you that--"
"But--I don't make myself clear, I see--the fact is that yours is the
only assurance that will carry the smallest weight on that point.... He
wasn't--may I ask?--actually _in_ the boat when it went over, was he?"
"N-no. As to that--I believe he had just got out, but--"
"Did you think at the time that he knew you were upset?"
"Unfortunately, I am not a mind reader," she began with dignity,
objecting seriously to these obstacles in the way of ending the
interview. "Thrown without warning into the water, I could not look into
his thoughts and see--"
"Quite so. But did he show in any way that he knew you were upset?"
A kind of chill had crept into the stranger's voice. The two young
people gazed at each other. The man had strange eyes (they were the
third thing she had noticed about him), gray, she thought, and gifted
with an odd sort of translucence, singular and speaking.
"Let me see. No, he did not. That is what I said at the time--that he
didn't take the slightest notice of me--"
"He swears he never dreamed anything was wrong till he landed. Don't you
feel that that's quite possible, at least? Or.... did you scream out
for his help, so loudly that he _must_ have heard you, if he'd
been himself?"
"The--the first few minutes in the water were very confusing. I can't
pretend to say exactly what I did or didn't do. I had to think about
saving my life--"
"Of course. But if you'd screamed a number of times in saving your life,
you would be likely to remember it, wouldn't you?"
"Really I can't acknowledge your right to--"
"Miss Heth--_why didn't you scream_?"
His swift cross-examination touched the quick of her spirit; and she
came to her feet, trembling a little, and feeling rather white.
"I will not allow you to catechise me in this way. I will not...."
Dr. Vivian, from the Dabney House, over the Gulf, stood still, quite
silenced....
The thought had struck V. Vivian, and shot him down, that this girl was
lying, deliberately suppressing the truth that meant more than life to
Dal. She hadn't screamed. Dal hadn't known she was upset.... Yet was it
thinkable? In the fiercest denouncing of the yellowest Huns, who had
ever dreamed anything so base of them as this? _Lying?_ With that face
like all the angels, that voice like a heavenly choir?...
The tall doctor saw that his suspicion was unworthy and absurd. His was
no simple choice between his friend's shameful cowardice, and this
girl's criminal falsehood. No, Dal was crazy-drunk at the time, and
himself cried out in his misery that the worst that they said of him was
probably true. And even supposing that this girl was no more than a
fiend in seraphic shape, what conceivable reason could she have for such
infamous suppression? Motive was unimaginable.... No, the fault must be
his own. He had pressed too hard, pried too tactlessly and
inquisitively, not made her understand sufficiently the dire swiftness
of the poor boy's need....
These two stood face to face. Carlisle saw that Jack Dalhousie's friend
was becoming excited; but then, so was she. The man spoke first, in a
low, hurried voice:
"I don't mean to catechise--indeed, I don't. You must try to forgive me
for the liberties I seem to be taking.... The thing's so serious, so
pitiful. This story already flying around back in town--making him a
base coward--he'll never live it down. And it's to-night or never, a--a
misstatement travels so fast and far, and has so long a life--"
"You should have reminded him of all this," said Carlisle, her rounded
breast rising and falling, "before he got into my boat."
"Oh, you have a right to say that! He's been wrong, insanely wrong! But
does he deserve disgrace--ostracism--ruin? You alone stand between
him and--"
"I don't feel that it--it's right for me to be brought into it further.
I've explained that. And I must ask--"
"But you _are_ in it already, you see. Whatever anybody does or leaves
undone, now and for the future--_you are in it_...."
The enemy paused, gazing at her; and then suddenly, before she could
make just the right opening to go past him, he abandoned restraint, and
flung himself upon entreaties.
"Couldn't you make a statement--just a little statement--saying that you
feel certain he didn't know the boat was upset? that perhaps in the
excitement you forgot to scream?--that you know he wouldn't have left
you if he'd understood you were in trouble? Couldn't you at least give
him the benefit of the doubt?--say or do something to show you've no
bitter feeling toward him?--"
"Did he show any regard for my feelings? I must ins--"
"All the finer is your opportunity--_don't you see_?... Even strain the
truth a little for him, if that's necessary. God," said the shabby young
man, quite passionately, "would count it a virtue, I know, for it's now
or never to save a man.... Couldn't you do that? I promise you you won't
be bothered any more about it. I know how awfully hard it's all been for
you. Couldn't you say _something_ to help him a little?"
Miss Heth, facing him, imperceptibly hesitated.
For a second, offended though she was by his religious reference (she
never heard the name of God mentioned in polite society), this quaint
begging Mr. Vivian had her upon the balance. Her flying thoughts swept
down the parting of the ways. But they flew swiftly back, stabbing all
hesitancies....
She wished as much as any one that it had all been started differently,
as it might have been had she been perfectly certain in advance that no
one would dare say anything the least bit horrid about her. It was not
her fault that gossip was so notoriously unreliable. And now it was
simply impossible to rake up the whole subject again, just when it was
all settled, and go through another long explanation with mamma. Of
course she didn't believe all this about Dalhousie's being ruined and
disgraced forever: that was just the man's way of working on her
feelings and trying to frighten her. She knew very well that the whole
thing would blow over in a few days, if just quietly left to itself.
And what use, whispered the returning thoughts, would the unknown make
of the "little statement" he begged so for? What would mamma say, for
instance, to a black-typed piece-in-the-paper in the "Post" to-morrow?
And what of Mr. Canning--nudged the wise thoughts--the happiness symbol
on the piazza, whose princely feet were so plainly twitching to thunder
behind?...
No; clearly the only sensible thing to do was to end all the talk and
quibbling at once, definitely. Carlisle took a step forward over the dim
chequered floor, resolute as her mother.
"I can't add anything to what I've already said. I cannot let you detain
me any longer."
Her advance had brought her fully into what light there was, falling
mistily through lattice and door. And at the look in her eyes, young Dr.
Vivian's hands fell dead without a struggle at his sides. His tall
figure seemed mysteriously to shrink and collapse inside his clothes. He
said, oddly, nothing whatever. Yet an hour's oration could not have
conveyed more convincingly his sense of irreparable disaster.
The instantaneous cessation of his verbal flow curiously piqued the
girl's attention. Face to face as they stood, she was struck quite
sharply with an elusive something that seemed to cling to this man's
look, a subtle enveloping wistfulness which she had vaguely noticed
about him before, which somehow seemed, indeed, only the sum of all that
she had noticed about him before. It may have been this look that
briefly checked her withdrawal. An odd desire to justify herself
somewhat more clearly fluttered and stirred within her. Or--who can
say?--perhaps this was no more than the beautiful woman's undying desire
to appear at advantage before every man, however far beneath her.
"You--you must not think me unfeeling," she said in a sweet hurried
voice. "I want to be as considerate as possible. I am terribly sorry for
him--terribly--and you must tell him so, from me. But I--I am in a
peculiar position. I am not free to--"
"I see. I understand now."
His strange tone fell upon her ears as a challenge, quiet though it was;
and it was a challenge which Carlisle, though instantly regretting her
generosity (when she might just have walked away), saw no entirely
dignified way of avoiding.
"You see what?" she said, faltering a little. "I don't know what you
mean."
The man replied slowly, almost as if he were thinking of something else,
and the thought rather hurt him:
"I see your only thought is to gain some point for yourself--you alone
know what--no matter what pain your silence may give to others.... Ah,
that's sad...."
Angry and a little frightened, too, Carlisle Heth drew her gossamer
shawl more closely about her shoulders, with a movement that also wore
the air of plucking together her somewhat wavering hauteur.
"You are at liberty to think and say what you please," she said,
distantly, and with a slight inclination of her head started past him.
But he did not seem to hear the dismissal order; stood unmoving,
blocking her progress; and looking up with now tremulous indignation,
Carlisle ran once more full on the battery of his speaking eyes....
Perhaps it was not difficult to guess what John the Baptist would have
said, in such a case as this: but then the young man V.V. was not
thinking of John the Baptist now. He was not feeling grim at all at this
moment; not fierce at all. So in his look there was to be seen nothing
of the whiplash, not one thing reminiscent of the abhorring fanatic on
the outskirts of the city. His eyes were filled, indeed, with a sudden
compassion; a compassion overflowing, unmistakable, and poignant. And
from that look the richly dressed girl with the seraph's face instantly
averted her gaze.
She heard a voice: the lame stranger speaking as if to himself.
"All that beauty without, and nothing at all within.... So lovely to the
eye, and empty where the heart should be.... God pity you, poor little
thing...."
And then Carlisle passed him quickly and went out of the summer-house
upon the lawn. The escape, this time, presented no difficulties. For the
last syllable had hardly died on the young man's lip before
self-consciousness appeared to return upon him, staggering him, it may
be, at the words of his mouth. He turned, abruptly, and fled in the
other direction.
So the audience in the moonlit summer-house concluded precipitately,
with the simultaneous departure of both parties from opposite exits.
Carlisle Heth went hurrying across the lawn. Within her, there was a
tumult; but her will was not feeble, and her sense of decorum and the
eternally fitting hardly less tenacious. Strongly she ruled her spirit
for the revivifying remeeting that awaited her just ahead....
But it was not Mr. Canning's voice which greeted her as she stepped up
on the hotel piazza. It was the low, angry challenge of her
soldier-mother, nipped in the act of charging upon the summer-house.
"_Carlisle_!... In heaven's name, what have you been doing?"
Facing mamma on the deserted piazza-end, Carlisle explained in a hurried
sentence that Mr. Dalhousie had sent a pleading friend to her, whom she
had felt obliged to see....
"Are you _mad_ to say such a thing? Was it for wild antics of this sort
that I threw everything to the winds to bring you down here?"
"Oh, mamma--please!" said Carlisle, her breath coming fast. "I've had
about enough.... I--I couldn't run the risk of his starting heaven knows
what scandalous story. Where is Mr. Canning?"
Mamma looked as if she wanted to shake her.
"You may well ask," she said, savagely, and turned away.
"I do ask," said Carlisle, with returning spirit. "Where is he?"
Mrs. Heth wheeled on her.
"Did you suppose he would hang about kicking his heels for hours while
you hobnobbed with low men in dark summer-houses? He just excused
himself on the ground of a cold caught on the piazza, and has retired
for the night. You shall do the same. Come with me."
Carlisle went with her.
* * * * *
And next morning, Sunday, the very first news that greeted the two
ladies, upon their appearance for a late breakfast, was that Mr. Canning
and Mr. Kerr had left the Beach for town by the nine-twenty-two train.