THE FUGITIVE
Like the skillful general who covers his retreat by an unexpected show
of strength, Olga Tcherny had retired in good order, with colors
flying. She had struck hard, spent some ammunition and endangered her
line of communications, but she had reached the cover of the tall
timbers, where for the moment it was safe to go into camp, repair
damages and take account of injuries.
At the beginning of their acquaintance her interest in Markham had not
been unlike that of the motherly hen in the doings of the newly
hatched duckling with which she differed as to the practical utility
of duckponds. She had been intensely interested in his work and in
his career which during the winter in Paris had been definitely shaped
as a painter of successful portraits. She had liked the man from the
first, liked him well enough to be as genuine as he was, and found
delight in a companionship which led her down pleasant lanes of
thought--which terminated, as they had begun, in quiet satisfaction.
He neither lied to her nor flattered her; his speech had the simple
directness of a child's, and while she frequently reproved him for his
rusticity, in secret she adored it. She had been used all her life to
the polish of Europe, satiated with its compliments, glutted with its
hypocrisy, courted by men with manner and no manners, whom she had met
with their own weapons. She had never known a real friendship in
man--or woman--had not even sought friendship, because life had taught
her that, for her, such things did not exist. In Markham she had
found the myth without searching, and once found she had grappled it
to her soul with hoops of steel. His friendship it was that she had
loved--not Markham. He was her own discovery, her very own, and she
followed her first sober impulse, calmly, giving him the best of her,
scorning the arts which she had been accustomed to employ on other men
with so much success.
A born coquette is much like the hunter who hunts for the love of
hunting and has no appetite for game upon his own table. Olga Tcherny
had hunted in all the covers of sportive Europe with an appetite which
always ended with the chase. Markham had not been marked as game. He
was simply a delicious accident and she had accepted him as such,
grateful for the new appetite which was as healthy as it was unusual.
But it was very natural that his indifference should pique her vanity.
Markham did not care for women. That was all the more a reason why he
should learn to care for her. The love of being loved was habit,
ingrained, and she could not dismiss it with a word. But she gave him
her friendship, and having given it would not recant from her secret
vow to be honest with it and with him.
There had been moments of uncertainty, moments of ennui, but never of
danger--until to-night, when she had fallen from grace and yielded to
an impulse, once ignoble, but now ignoble no longer, to bring Markham
at all hazards to her feet. It was no longer their friendship that she
loved, but Markham. She loved fervently as coquettes will at last,
placing in one ship the cargo that had fared forth in so many vessels.
It was the coquette in her that had mocked and tantalized him, the
coquette even whom he had kissed--but it was the woman who had struck
and now suffered the pains of her imprudence.
Olga dismissed the unfortunate Georgette when she came to brush her
hair and threw herself on the bed, both hands supporting her chin,
staring at vacancy. He had guessed the truth-the agony of it! She
had wept--real tears, the tears of subjection. She had begun--a
coquette, trusting to her skill in dissimulation, but her heart had
betrayed her. She had wept and Markham had seen her tears. Even a
less sophisticated man than he would have known that women of her type
only weep when they are stirred to the lees. Had she deceived him in
the end? The doubt still assailed her. She had cut him deeply, hurt
his _amour propre_ and left him scowling in Arcadian resentment.
Would the lesson last? Or must she seek further means to convince him
of her indifference? Why had she provoked him? A whim--the dormant
devil in her--to whom her better self must now pay in the loss of his
friendship.
The old relation between them was dead. She had nailed it in its
coffin. He did not love her, but she knew, that had she wished, she
could have made him think he was, coaxed lies from his lips which both
of them would have lived to regret.
The future? Had she one? Happiness? It must come soon. She had
reached the beginning of wrinkles and cheekbones and her wrists were
squarer than they used to be. Thirty!--a year older than Markham!
Roses grown in hothouses are quick to fade. Would she fade, too,
quickly?
She went to the dressing-table and examined her face in a hand-mirror
with assiduous care. Yes, crow's feet--three of them at each eye, and
two tiny wrinkles leading into her dimples. She was positively
haggard to-night. It did not do for the woman of thirty to cry. Her
hair--another gray one--she plucked it out viciously. She _would not_
grow old. Age was a disease which could be prevented by the use of
proper precautions. She must stop playing cards so late, get up
earlier, take long walks in the air, play tennis as Hermia did--
She put the mirror down and lay back in her chair, her gaze fixed upon
the wall beside her which bore a photograph of her young hostess
astride her favorite hunter. Hermia's youth and her own knowledge of
the world--what would she not give for that indomitable combination!
She was glad in a way that Markham had decided to postpone the
painting of Hermia's portrait. She wasn't quite certain about Hermia.
It was never wise to be certain about any girl--especially if that
girl was seven years younger than you were and quite as pretty. And
what on earth did Hermia mean by scrubbing John Markham's floor? In
her present mood it seemed a symbol--was it prophetic? Markham was
candid in his likes and dislikes and he made no bones now of the
pleasure in Hermia's society. Hermia was a surprising person. Her
love of mischief was increasing with her years, her capacity for
making it only limited by the end of opportunity.
She was not surprised when she came downstairs rather late the next
morning to learn that Markham had returned to the island. This meant
that he was still angry--which was healthful. She needed a little
time for reconstruction, too, and Markham's anger was a more pleasant
thought for contemplation than his repentance, apology or sentiment,
all of which he would have offered as sops to her pride, and none of
which could have been genuine. His departure without seeing her meant
that he had believed her spoken word rather than that which had been
written in silence, the testimony of her drooping figure and her
unlucky tears.
A walk refreshed her. By the time she returned to "Wake-Robin" all
doubts had been cleared from her mind. She would wait. He would come
to her. Time would mend his wounds.
On the way to the house she passed the hangar where her hostess,
Reggie Armistead and Salignac were tinkering with the machines. She
stopped and watched them for a moment, when Hermia joined her and they
walked toward the house together.
"I'm awfully sorry, Olga--" Hermia paused.
"About what?"
"Last night. How could _I_ have known that the pergola was occupied!"
"Oh, it didn't matter in the least," she said coolly. "Markham was
making love to me, that's all. Pity--isn't it?"
"Yes, it is," said Hermia slowly, "a great pity--you're no respecter of
persons, Olga."
Olga shrugged effectively.
"How should _I_ have known?"
"You have had time enough to study him, I should say. Why couldn't you
let him be? When there are so many other men--"
"Hear the child! One might think that I had brought him to my knees,
_malice propense_. I didn't. _Mon Dieu_, one can't always prevent the
unexpected."
Hermia laughed dryly. "One doesn't plan the unexpected _quite_ so
carefully as you do, Olga, dear."
It was beneath Olga's dignity to reply.
"At any rate," continued Hermia, "you've driven him away from
'Wake-Robin'."
"Oh, he'll come back," said Olga lightly.
"Do you think so?"
"Of course."
"We shall see," said the girl.
At the end of three days the Countess Olga realized that for the first
time in her life she had made a mistake in judgment; for Mr. Markham
did not return to "Wake-Robin." And when she went to the island in
the launch to make her peace with him she found the cabin deserted.
It was not until some days later that she received a letter from him
dated in New York, and sent on the eve of his sailing for Europe.
My Dear Olga:
It is to laugh! But you can be sure that I was angry for a day or
two. What is the use? I have forgotten my misadventure and will
consider it a warning against rose gardens. I'll not venture into a
rose garden by moonlight again unless quite alone. It's
dangerous--even with a sworn friend. It wasn't altogether your fault
or mine, and you served me quite properly in cutting my self-esteem to
ribbons. But it hurt, Olga. You know the least of us mortals thinks
he's a heart-breaker, if he tries to be. You've put me back upon my
shelf among the cobwebs and there I shall remain. I'm hopeless
material to work with socially and deserve no better fate than to be
laid away and forgotten. People must take me as I am or not at all.
I don't mind rubbing elbows with the great unwashed. They're human
somehow. But your world of dissatisfied women and unsatisfied men!
It gets on my nerves, and so I've cut it and run.
I'm painting an antiquated countess in Havre, and then I'm off for the
open country with a thumb box, a toothbrush and a smile, and with this
equipment I have all that the world can offer. I shall live upon the
fat of the land at forty sous a day--_ripaille_--under the trees--a
sound red wine to wash the dust from one's throat--and an appetite and
a thirst such as Westport will never know.
_Au revoir, chère_ Olga. I could wish you with me, but I shall
be many honest kilometers from a limousine, which is not your idea of
a state of being.
With affectionate regards,
Faithfully,
J.M.
In the same mail was a note to Hermia:
My Dear Miss Challoner:
Your kindness deserves a better return than my abrupt and rather
churlish departure from "Wake Robin," and, if it isn't already too
late to restore myself to your graces, I hope you will accept my
regrets and apologies, and the sketch from Thimble Island, which goes
to you by express. I hope you will like it. I do. That's why I've
giving it to you. But it's hardly complete without the wrecked
monoplane and the small person who came with it. Perhaps some day
you'll "drop in" on me again somewhere and I can finish it. Meanwhile
please think seriously about the portrait. I don't believe I'm just
the man to do it. I can't seem to see you somehow. My business is to
portray the social anachronism. That is easy--a matter of clothes.
But how shall a mere mortal define in terms of paint the dwellers of
the air? You have me guessing, dear lady. Imagine _Ariel_ in the
conventional broadcloth of commerce. It's preposterous. I can't lend
myself to any such deception.
The rest of the letter was more formal and finished with a message of
congratulation to Mr. Armistead and a word of thanks for her own
hospitality. And he hoped to remain very cordially "John Markham."
Hermia smiled as she finished it and then read it over again. The
letter with its mixture of the formal and whimsical both pleased and
reassured her. It represented more the Markham of Thimble Island, a
person whose identity had lost something of its definiteness since her
talks with Olga in the days that had followed his departure from
"Wake-Robin." She had been aware of a sense of doubt and
disappointment in him and she had not been quite so sure that she
liked him now. Of course, if he chose to make a fool of himself over
Olga it was none of her affair, and she had been obliged to admit that
her discovery had taken from him some of the charm of originality.
She did not know what had passed between her guests before her abrupt
descent through the pergola, but she was quite certain she had fallen
into the middle of a psychological moment. Whose moment was it,
Olga's or his? She couldn't help wondering. Olga had intimated that
Markham was in love with her. Hermia now doubted. Indeed a suspicion
was growing in her mind that it was Olga who was in love with Markham.
Hermia smiled and put the letter away in her desk. It didn't matter
to her, of course, only interested her a great deal, but she couldn't
help wondering why, if Markham was so deeply under the spell of Olga's
worldliness, he had not come back to her when she had wanted him.
A northeaster had set in along the coast, and the guests of "Wake
Robin" were driven indoors. Olga, when she wasn't playing auction,
wandered from window to window, looking out at the dreary skies,
venting her ennui on anyone within earshot. Archie Westcott, who was
losing more money than he could afford to lose, now lacked the buoyant
spirits which carried him so blithely along the crest of the social
wave and scowled gloomily at his cards which persisted in favoring his
opponents. Crosby Downs, whose waistband had again reached its
fullest tension, sought the tall grasses of the smoking-room and
refused to be dislodged. Without the shadows of her hat and veil
Mrs. Renshaw showed her age to a day, and that didn't improve her
temper. Beatrice Coddington had an attack of the megrims and remained
in her room.
Hermia played bottle pool and pinochle with Reggie Armistead until they
began discussing the exact terms of Hermia's promise when there began a
quarrel which lasted the entire afternoon and ended in Reggie's going
out into the pouring rain and swearing that he would never come back.
But he did come back just in time for dinner, through which he sat
pretending that he was interested in Phyllis Van Vorst and casting
gloomy looks in the direction of the oblivious Hermia. At the end of
three days there were no more than two people in the house on terms of
civility, and most of Hermia's guests had departed.
Olga Tcherny, after an afternoon alone in her room, came downstairs at
the last extremity of fatigue.
"I can't stand it another hour, Hermia. I'm off in the morning."
"Off? Where?" asked Hermia.
"Oh, I don't know. Anywhere. New York first and then--"
"Normandy?" queried Hermia impertinently.
Olga only smiled.