As they took their seats at the table reserved for them, a conflict of
emotions made difficulty of conversation for two members of the trio.
Their prefatory talk ran along those lines of commonplace question and
answer in which the wide gap between their last meeting and the present
was bridged.
This, reflected Eben, was a part of the play designed to create and
foster the impression that they had really been as completely out of
touch as they pretended.
"And so you left us, an unknown, and return a celebrity!" Conscience's
voice and eyes held a hint of raillery which made Stuart say to himself:
"Thank God she has not let the fog make her colorless."--"When I saw you
last you were starting up the ladder of the law toward the Supreme
Court--and now you reappear, crowned with literary distinction."
A thought of those days when he had closed his law books and his house
in Virginia to begin looking out on the roofs and chimney pots of old
Greenwich village, rose to the Virginian's mind. It had all been an
effort to forget. But he smiled as he answered.
"I'm afraid it's a little early to claim celebrity. To-morrow morning I
may read in the Providence papers that I'm only notorious."
"You must tell me all about the play. You feel confident, of course?"
she eagerly demanded. "It seems incredible that you were having your
première here to-night and that I knew nothing of it--until now."
It not only seemed incredible, mused Eben: It _was_ incredible. He was
speculating upon what would have happened had he really been as blind as
he was choosing to appear.
"They say," smiled Stuart, "that every playwright is confident at his
first opening--and never afterwards."
It was hard for him to carry on a censored conversation, sitting here at
the table with his thoughts falling into an insistent refrain. He had
always known Conscience Williams and this was Conscience Tollman. He had
told himself through years that he had succeeded ill in his determined
effort of forgetting her; yet now he found her as truly a revelation in
the vividness of her charm and the radiance of her beauty as though he
had brought faint memories--or none--to the meeting. His blood was
tingling in his arteries with a rediscovery which substituted for the
old sense of loss a new and more poignant realization. It would have
been better had he been brusque, even discourteous, replying to the
morning's invitation that he was too busy to accept. But he had come and
except for that first moment of astonishment Conscience had been gay and
untroubled. She at least was safe from the perils which this reunion
held for him. So, as he chatted, he kept before his thoughts like a
standard seen fitfully through the smoke of battle the reminder, "She
must feel, as she wishes to feel, that it has left me unscathed."
"But, Stuart," exclaimed Conscience suddenly, "all these night-long
rehearsals and frantic sessions of rewriting must be positive deadly.
You look completely fagged out."
Farquaharson nodded. His weariness, which excitement had momentarily
mitigated had returned with a heavy sense of dreariness. He was being
called upon now not to rehearse a company in the interpreting of his
three-act comedy, but to act himself, without rehearsal, in a drama to
which no last act could bring a happy ending.
"I _am_ tired," he admitted. "But to-night tells the story. Whichever
way it goes I'll have done all I can do about it. Then I mean to run
away somewhere and rest. After all fatigue is not fatal."
But Mrs. Tollman was looking at the ringed and shadowed eyes and they
challenged her ready sympathy. This was not the splendidly fit physical
specimen she had known.
"Yes, you must do that," she commanded gravely, then added in a lighter
voice: "I'd always thought of the first night of a new play as a time of
keen exhilaration and promise for both author and star."
"Our star is probably indulging in plain and fancy hysterics at this
moment," he said with a memory of the last glimpse he had had of that
illustrious lady's face. "And as for the author, he is dreaming chiefly
of some quiet spot where one can lie stretched on the beach whenever he
isn't lying in his bed." He paused, then added irrelevently, "I was
thinking this morning of the way the breakers roll in across the bay
from Chatham."
Eben had been the listener, a rôle into which he usually fell when
conversation became general, but now he assumed a more active
participation.
"Chatham is quite a distance from us, Mr. Farquaharson," he suggested,
"but it's only about two hundred yards from our terrace to the float in
the cove. However, you know that cove yourself."
Into Farquaharson's face came the light of keen remembrance. Yes, he
knew that cove. He and Conscience had often been swimming there. He
wondered if, on a clear day, one could still see the schools of tiny
fishes twelve feet below in water translucently blue.
"Yes," he acknowledged, "I haven't forgotten the cove. It opens through
a narrow channel into the lesser bay and there used to be an eel pot
near the opening. Is that eel pot still there?"
Eben Tollman smiled. His manner was frankly gracious, while it escaped
effusiveness.
"Well, now, Mr. Farquaharson," he suggested, "I can't say as to that,
but why don't you come and investigate for yourself? You can leave by
the noon train to-morrow and be with us in a little over two hours--I
wish we could wait and see your play this evening, but I'm afraid I must
get back to-day."
An instinctive sense of courtesy alone prevented Stuart's jaw from
dropping in amazement. He remembered Eben Tollman as a dour and
illiberal bigot whom the community called mean and whom no man called
gracious. Had Conscience, by the sunlight of her spontaneity and love
wrought this miracle of change? If so she was more wonderful than even
he had admitted.
"It's good of you, Mr. Tollman," he found himself murmuring, "but I'm
afraid that's hardly possible."
"Hardly possible? Nonsense!" Tollman laughed aloud this time. "Why,
you've just been telling us that you were on the verge of running away
somewhere to rest--and that the only undecided point was a choice of
destination."
Stuart glanced hurriedly toward Conscience as if for assistance, but her
averted and tranquil face told him nothing. Yet under her unruffled
composure swirled a whirlpool of agitation and apprehension, greater
than his own.
In a spirit of amazement, she had heard her husband tender his
invitation.
Now as Stuart sat across the table, she was rediscovering many little
tricks of individuality which had endeared him as a lover, or perhaps
been dear because he was her lover, and in the sum of these tremendous
trifles lay a terrific danger which she did not underestimate. His
presence would mean comparison; contrast between drab reality and
rainbow longings.
But how could she hint any of these things to the husband who, by his
very invitation, was proving his complete trust, or the lover to whom
she must seem the confidently happy wife?
"I'm sure Conscience joins me in insisting that you come," went on Mr.
Tollman persuasively. "You can wear a flannel shirt and do as you like
because we are informal folk--and you would be a member of the family."
That was rather a long speech for Eben Tollman, and as he finished
Conscience felt the glances of both men upon her, awaiting her
confirmation.
She smiled and Stuart detected no flaw in the seeming genuineness of her
cordiality.
"We _know_ he likes the place," she announced in tones of whimsical
bantering, "and if he refuses it must mean that he doesn't think much of
the people."
Stuart was so entirely beguiled that his reply came with instant
repudiation of such a construction.
"When to-morrow's train arrives," he declared, "I will be a passenger,
unless an indignant audience lynches me to-night."
They had meant to meet surreptitiously, mused Eben Tollman, and being
thwarted, they had juggled their conversation into an exaggeration of
innocence. Conscience's face during that first unguarded moment in the
dining-room had mirrored a terror which could have had no other origin
than a guilty love. His own course of conduct was clear. He must, no
matter how it tried his soul, conceal every intimation of suspicion. The
geniality which had astonished them both must continue with a convincing
semblance of genuineness. Out of a pathetic blindness of attitude he
must see, eagle-eyed.
But Conscience, as they drove homeward, was reflecting upon the frequent
miscarriage of kindness. Her husband had planned for her a delightful
surprise and his well-meaning gift had been--a crisis.
Stuart sat that night in the gallery of the Garrick theater with
emotions strangely confused.
Below him and about him was such an audience as characterizes those
towns which are frequently used as experimental stations for the drama.
It regarded itself as sophisticated in matters theatrical and was keenly
alive to the fact that it sat as a jury which must not be too
provincially ready of praise.
Yet the author, hiding there beyond reach of the genial Grady, and the
possibility of a curtain call, was not thinking solely of his play.
Stones had been rolled to-day from tombs in which he had sought to bury
many ghosts of the past. With the resurrection came undeniable fears and
equally undeniable flashes of instinctive elation. He was seeing
Conscience, not across an interval of years but of hours--and to-morrow
he was to see her again.
When the first act ended the man who had written the comedy became
conscious that he had followed its progress with an incomplete
absorption, and when the curtain fell, to a flattering salvo of
applause, he came, with a start, back from thoughts foreign to the
theater.
The conclusion of the second act, with its repeated curtain calls and
its cries of "Author, Author!" assured him that his effort was not a
failure, and when at last it was all over and he stood in the wings
congratulating the members of his company, the wine of assured success
tingled in his veins--and his thoughts were for the moment of that
alone.
"They don't hate us quite so much now," said Mr. Grady as he clapped a
hand on Stuart's shoulder. "The thing is a hit--and for once I've got a
piece that I can take into town without tearing it to pieces and doing
it over."
Yet in his room afterward he paced the floor restively for a long while
before he sought his bed.
He was balancing up the sheets of his life to date. On the credit side
were such successes as most men would covet, but on the debit side stood
one item which offset the gratification and left a heavy balance.
This visit of to-morrow was a foolish thing. It might be wiser to
telegraph Tollman that unexpected matters had developed, necessitating a
change of plan.
It is a rash courage which courts disaster. From the small writing desk
near his bed he took a telegraph blank, but when he had written, torn up
and rewritten the message he halted and stood dubiously considering the
matter. The hand which had been lifted to ring for a bell-boy fell at
his side.
After all this was simply a running away from the forms of danger while
the danger itself remained. Into such action Conscience must read his
fear to trust himself near her--and he had undertaken to make her feel
secure in her own contentment. It was too late to draw back now. He must
go through with it--but he would make his stay brief and every moment
must be guarded.
At noon the next day he dropped, clad in flannels, from the train at the
station. It had been a hot trip, but even with a cooler temperature he
might not have escaped that slight moisture which excitement and doubt
had brought to his temples and his palms.
These miles of railway travel since he had reached the Cape had been so
many separate reminders of the past and he had not arrived unshaken.
But there on the platform stood Conscience Tollman, with a serene smile
of welcome on her lips, and as the chauffeur took his bags she led him
to the waiting car.
"Come on," she said, as though there had been no lapse of years since
they had stood here before, "there's just time to get into our bathing
suits and have a swim before luncheon."
The main street of the village with the shade of its elms and silver
oaks, and the white of tidy houses, setting among flowers, was a page
out of a book long closed; a book in which had been written the most
unforgettable things of life. Besides well-remembered features, there
were details which had been forgotten and which now set free currents of
reminiscence--such as the battered figurehead of an old schooner raised
on high over a front door and a wind-mill as antique of pattern as those
to which Don Quixote gave battle.
And when the winding street ran out into a sandy country road Stuart
found himself amid surroundings that teemed with the spirit of the past.
But over all the bruising comparisons of past and present, the peace of
the sky was like a benediction, and his weariness yielded to its calming
influence. He had been away and had come back tired, and for the
present, it was better to ignore all the revolutionary changes that lay
between then and now.
They talked about trivial things, along the way, with a lightness of
manner, which was none the less as delicately cautious as the footsteps
of a cat walking on a shelf of fragile china. Each felt the challenge
and response of natures keyed to the same pitch of life's tuning fork.
"Why are all the Cape Cod wagons painted blue and all the barn doors
green?" asked the man, and Conscience demanded in return, "Why does
everything that man controls in New England follow a fixed color of
thought?"
When the car drew up before the house which he remembered as a miser's
abode, his astonishment was freshly stirred. Here was a place
transformed, with a dignified beauty of residence and grounds which
could scarcely be bettered.
"How did the play go?" demanded Tollman from the doorway, with an
interest that seemed as surprising as that of a Trappist Abbot for a
matter of worldliness. "The papers came on the train with you, so we
haven't had the verdict, yet."
And then while Stuart was answering Conscience enjoined him that, if
they were to swim before lunch, time was scant and these amenities must
wait.
"Aren't you going in?" demanded the visitor and the host shook his head
with an indulgent smile.
"No," he answered. "That's for you youngsters. I may drop down to the
float later, but, barring accident, I stay out of salt water."