A GRATEFUL CARTHAGINIAN
Arnold Smith put another lump of sugar on his saucer, poured out
a very liberal allowance of rum into his tea, and reached for a
sandwich, balancing the cup and saucer with a deftness out of keeping
with his long, ungraceful loose-jointedness. He remarked in an
indifferent tone to Sylvia, back of the exquisitely appointed
tea-tray: "I don't say anything because I haven't the least idea what
you are talking about. Who _was_ Capua, anyhow?"
Sylvia broke into a peal of laughter which rang like a silver
chime through the vine-shaded, airy spaces of the pergola. Old Mr.
Sommerville, nosing about in his usual five-o'clock quest, heard
her and came across the stretch of sunny lawn to investigate.
"Oh, _here's_ tea!" he remarked on seeing Arnold, lounging,
white-flanneled, over his cup. He spoke earnestly, as was his custom
when eating was in question, and Sylvia served him earnestly and
carefully, with an instant harmonious response to his mood, putting
in exactly the right amount of rum and sugar to suit his taste, and
turning the slim-legged "curate's assistant" so that his favorite
sandwiches were nearest him.
"You spoil the old gentlemen, Sylvia," commented Arnold, evidently
caring very little whether she did or not.
"She spoils everybody," returned Mr. Sommerville, tasting his tea
complacently; "'_c'est son métier._' She has an uncanny instinct for
suiting everybody's taste."
Sylvia smiled brightly at him, exactly the brilliant smile which
suited her brilliant, frank face and clear, wide-open eyes. Under her
smile she was saying to herself, "If that's so, I wonder--not that I
care at all--but I really wonder why you don't like me."
Sylvia was encountering for the first time this summer a society
guided by tradition and formula, but she was not without excellent
preparation for almost any contact with her fellow-beings, a
preparation which in some ways served her better than that more
conscious preparation of young ladies bred up from childhood to
sit behind tea-tables and say the right things to tea-drinkers.
Association with the crude, outspoken youth at the State University
had been an education in human nature, especially masculine nature,
for her acute mind. Her unvarnished association with the other sex in
classroom and campus had taught her, by means of certain rough knocks
which more sheltered boarding-school girls never get, an accuracy
of estimate as to the actual feeling of men towards the women they
profess to admire unreservedly which (had he been able to conceive of
it) old Mr. Sommerville would have thought nothing less than cynical.
But he did not conceive of it, and now sat, mellowed by the
rightness of his tea, white-haired, smooth-shaven, pink-gilled,
white-waistcoated, the picture of old age at its best, as he smiled
gallantly at the extremely pretty girl behind the table. Unlike Sylvia
he knew exactly why he did not like her and he wasted no time in
thinking about it. "What were you laughing about, so delightfully, as
I came in, eh?" he asked, after the irretrievable first moment of joy
in gratified appetite had gone.
Sylvia had not the slightest backwardness about explaining. In fact
she always took the greatest pains to be explicit with old Mr.
Sommerville about the pit from which she had been digged. "Why, this
visit to Aunt Victoria is like stepping into another world for me.
Everything is so different from my home-life. I was just thinking, as
I sat there behind all this glorious clutter," she waved a slim hand
over the silver and porcelain of the tea-table, "what a change it
was from setting the table one's self and washing up the dishes
afterwards. That's what we always do at home. I hated it and I said
to Arnold, 'I've reached Capua at last!' and he said," she stopped to
laugh again, heartily, full-throated, the not-to-be-imitated laugh of
genuine amusement, "he said, 'Who is Capua, anyhow?'"
Mr. Sommerville laughed, but grudgingly, with an impatient shake of
his white head and an uneasy look in his eyes. For several reasons he
did not like to hear Sylvia laugh at Arnold. He distrusted a young
lady with too keen a sense of humor, especially when it was directed
towards the cultural deficiencies of a perfectly eligible young man.
To an old inhabitant of the world, with Mr. Sommerville's views as to
the ambitions of a moneyless young person, enjoying a single, brief
fling in the world of young men with fortunes, it seemed certain that
Sylvia's lack of tactful reticence about Arnold's ignorance could only
be based on a feeling that Arnold's fortune was not big enough. She
was simply, he thought with dismay, reserving her tact and reticence
for a not-impossible bigger. His apprehensions about the fate of a
bigger of his acquaintance if its owner ever fell into the hands of
this altogether too well-informed young person rose to a degree which
almost induced him to cry out, "Really, you rapacious young creature,
Arnold's is all any girl need ask, ample, well-invested, solid...."
But instead he said, "Humph! Rather a derogatory remark about your
surroundings, eh?"
Arnold did not understand, did not even hear, leaning back, long,
relaxed, apathetic, in his great wicker-chair and rolling a cigarette
with a detached air, as though his hands were not a part of him.
But Sylvia heard, and understood, even to the hostility in the old
gentleman's well-bred voice. "Being in Capua usually referring to the
fact that the Carthaginians went to pieces that winter?" she asked.
"Oh yes, of course I know that. Good gracious! I was brought up on the
idea of the dangers of being in Capua. Perhaps that's why I always
thought it would be such fun to get there." She spoke rebelliously.
"They got everlastingly beaten by the Romans," advanced Mr.
Sommerville.
"Yes, but they had had one grand good time before! The Romans couldn't
take _that_ away from them! I think the Carthaginians got the best of
it!" Provocative, light-hearted malice was in her sparkling face. She
was thinking to herself with the reckless bravado of youth, "Well,
since he insists, I'll _give_ him some ground for distrusting my
character!"
Arnold suddenly emitted a great puff of smoke and a great shout of
"Help! help! Molly to the rescue!" and when a little white-clad
creature flitting past the door turned and brought into that quiet
spot of leafy shadow the dazzling quickness of her smile, her eyes,
her golden hair, he said to her nonchalantly: "Just in time to head
them off. Sylvia and your grandfather were being so high-brow I was
beginning to feel faint,"
Molly laughed flashingly. "Did Grandfather keep his end up? I bet he
couldn't!"
Arnold professed an entire ignorance of the relative status. "Oh, I
fell off so far back I don't know who got in first. Who _was_ this man
Capua, anyhow? I'm a graduate of Harvard University and I never heard
of him."
"I'm a graduate of Miss Braddon's Mountain School for Girls," said
Molly, "and _I_ think it's a river."
Mr. Sommerville groaned out, exaggerating a real qualm, "What my
mother would have said to such ignorance, prefaced by 'I bet!' from
the lips of a young lady!"
"Your mother," said Molly, "would be my great-grandmother!" She
disposed of him conclusively by this statement and went on: "And I'm
not a young lady. Nobody is nowadays."
"What _are_ you, if a mere grandfather may venture to inquire?" asked
Mr. Sommerville deferentially.
"I'm a _femme watt-man"_ said Molly, biting a large piece from a
sandwich.
Arnold explained to the others: "That's Parisian for a lady
motor-driver; some name!"
"Well, you won't be that, or anything else alive, if you go on driving
your car at the rate I saw it going past the house this morning,"
said her grandfather. He spoke with an assumption of grandfatherly
severity, but his eyes rested on her with a grandfather's adoration.
"Oh, I'd die if I went under thirty-five," observed Miss Sommerville
negligently.
"Why, Mr. Sommerville," Arnold backed up his generation. "You can't
call thirty-five per hour dangerous, not for a girl who can drive like
Molly."
"Oh, I'm as safe as if I were in a church," continued Molly. "I keep
my mind on it. If I ever climb a telegraph-pole you can be sure it'll
be because I wanted to. I never take my eye off the road, never once."
"How you must enjoy the landscape," commented her grandfather.
"Heavens! I don't drive a car to look at the landscape!" cried Molly,
highly amused at the idea, apparently quite new to her.
"Will you gratify the curiosity of the older generation once more, and
tell me what you _do_ drive a car for?" inquired old Mr. Sommerville,
looking fondly at the girl's lovely face, like a pink-flushed pearl.
"Why, I drive to see how fast I can go, of course," explained Molly.
"The fun of it is to watch the road eaten up."
"It _is_ fascinating," Sylvia gave the other girl an unexpected
reinforcement. "I've driven with Molly, and I've been actually
hypnotized seeing the road vanish under the wheels."
"Oh, children, children! When you reach my age," groaned Arnold, "and
have eaten up as many thousand miles as I, you'll stay at home."
"I've driven for three years now," asserted Molly, "and every time I
buy a new car I get the craze all over again. This one I have now is
a peach of an eight. I never want to drive a six again,--never! I can
bring it up from a creep to--to fast enough to scare Grandfather into
a fit, without changing gears at all--just on the throttle--" She
broke off to ask, as at a sudden recollection, "What was it about
Capua, anyhow?" She went to sit beside Sylvia, and put her arm around
her shoulder in a caressing gesture, evidently familiar to her.
"It wasn't about Capua at all," explained Sylvia indulgently, patting
the lovely cheek, as though the other girl had been a child. "It was
your grandfather finding out what a bad character I am, and how I
wallow in luxury, now I have the chance."
"Luxury?" inquired Molly, looking about her rather blankly.
Sylvia laughed, this time with a little veiled, pensive note of
melancholy, lost on the others but which she herself found very
touching. "There, you see you're so used to it, you don't even know
what I'm talking about!"
"Never mind, Molly," Arnold reassured her. "Neither do I! Don't try to
follow; let it float by, the way I do!"
Miss Sommerville did not smile. She thrust out her red lips in a
wistful pout, and looking down into the sugar-bowl intently, she
remarked, her voice as pensive as Sylvia's own: "I wish I _did_! I
wish I understood! I wish I were as clever as Sylvia!"
As if in answer to this remark, another searcher after tea announced
himself from the door--a tall, distinguished, ugly, graceful man,
who took a very fine Panama hat from a very fine head of brown hair,
slightly graying, and said in a rich, cultivated voice: "Am I too late
for tea? I don't mind at all if it's strong."
"Oh!" said Molly Sommerville, flushing and drawing away from Sylvia;
"_Lord_!" muttered Arnold under his breath; and "Not at all. I'll make
some fresh. I haven't had mine yet," said Sylvia, busying herself with
the alcohol flame.
"How're you, Morrison?" said Mr. Sommerville with no enthusiasm,
holding out a well-kept old hand for the other to shake.
Arnold stood up, reached under his chair, and pulled out a tennis
racquet. "Excuse me, Morrison, won't you, if I run along?" he said.
"It's not because you've come. I want a set of tennis before dinner
if I can find somebody to play with me. Here, Molly, you've got your
tennis shoes on already. Come along."
The little beauty shook her head violently. "No ... goodness no! It's
too hot. And anyhow, I don't ever want to play again, since I've seen
Sylvia's game." She turned to the other girl, breathing quickly.
"_You_ go, Sylvia dear. _I'll_ make Mr. Morrison's tea for him."
Sylvia hesitated a barely perceptible instant, until she saw old Mr.
Sommerville's eyes fixed speculatively on her. Then she stood up with
an instant, cheerful alacrity. "That's _awfully_ good of you, Molly
darling! _You_ won't mind, will you, Mr. Morrison!" She nodded
brightly to the old gentleman, to the girl who had slipped into her
place, to the other man, and was off.
The man she had left looked after her, as she trod with her long,
light step beside the young man, and murmured, "_Et vera incessu
patuit dea._"
Molly moved a plate on the table with some vehemence. "I suppose
Sylvia would understand that language."
"She would, my dear Molly, and what's more, she would scorn me for
using such a hackneyed quotation." To Mr. Sommerville he added,
laughing, "Isn't it the quaintest combination--such radiant girlhood
and her absurd book-learning!"
Mr. Sommerville gave his assent to the quaintness by silence, as he
rose and prepared to retreat.
"_Good_-bye, Grandfather," said Molly with enthusiasm.
* * * * *
As they walked along, Arnold was saying to Sylvia with a listless
appreciation: "You certainly know the last word of the game, don't
you, Sylvia? I bet Morrison hasn't had a jolt like that for years."
"What are you _talking_ about?" asked Sylvia, perhaps slightly
overdoing her ignorance of his meaning.
"Why, it's a new thing for _him_, let me tell you, to have a girl jump
up as soon as he comes in and delightedly leave him to another girl.
And then to thank the other girl for being willing to take him off
your hands,--that's more than knowing the rules,--that's art!" He
laughed faintly at the recollection. "It's a new one for Morrison to
meet a girl who doesn't kowtow. He's a very great personage in
his line, and he can't help knowing it. The very last word on
Lord-knows-what-all in the art business is what one Felix Morrison
says about it. He's an eight-cylinder fascinator too, into the
bargain. Mostly he makes me sore, but when I think about him straight,
I wonder how he manages to keep on being as decent as he is--he's
really a good enough sort!--with all the high-powered petticoats in
New York burning incense. It's enough to turn the head of a hydrant.
That's the hold Madrina has on him. She doesn't burn any incense. She
wants all the incense there is being burned, for herself; and it keeps
old Felix down in his place--keeps him hanging around too. You stick
to the same method if you want to make a go of it."
"I thought he wrote. I thought he did aesthetic criticisms and
essays," said Sylvia, laughing aloud at Arnold's quaint advice.
"Oh, he does. I guess he's chief medicine-man in his tribe all right.
It's not only women who kowtow; when old man Merriman wants to know
for sure whether to pay a million for a cracked Chinese vase, he
always calls in Felix Morrison. Chief adviser to the predatory rich,
that's one of his jobs! So you see," he came back to his first point,
"it must be some jolt for the sacred F.M. to have a young lady, _just
a young lady_, refuse to bow at the shrine. You couldn't have done a
smarter trick, by heck! I've been watching you all those weeks, just
too tickled for words. And I've been watching Morrison. It's been as
good as a play! He can't stick it out much longer, unless I miss my
guess, and I've known him ever since I was a kid. He's just waiting
for a good chance to turn on the faucet and hand you a full cup of his
irresistible fascination." He added carelessly, bouncing a ball up and
down on the tense catgut of his racquet: "What all you girls see in
that old wolf-hound, to lose your heads over! It gets me!"
"Why in the world 'wolf-hound'?" asked Sylvia.
"Oh, just as to his looks. He has that sort of tired, dignified,
deep-eyed look a big dog has. I bet his eyes would be phosphorescent
at night too. They are that kind; don't you know, when you strike a
match in the evening, how a dog's eyes glow? It's what makes 'em look
so soft and deep in the daytime. But as to his innards--no, Lord
no! Whatever else Morrison is he's not a bit like any dog that ever
lived--first cousin to a fish, I should say."
Sylvia laughed. "Why not make it grizzly bear, to take in the rest of
the animal kingdom?"
"No," persisted Arnold. "Now I've thought of it, I _mean_ fish, a
great big, wise old fellow, who lives in a deep pool and won't rise to
any ordinary fly." He made a brain-jolting change of metaphor and went
on: "The plain truth, and it's not so low-down as it seems, is that a
big fat check-book is admission to the grandstand with Felix. It _has_
to be that way! He hasn't got much of his own, and his tastes are
some--"
"Molly must be sitting in the front row, then," commented Sylvia
indifferently, as though tired of the subject. They were now at the
tennis-court. "Run over to the summer-house and get my racquet, will
you? It's on the bench."
"Yes, Molly's got plenty of _money_," Arnold admitted as he came
back, his accent implying some other lack which he forgot to mention,
absorbed as he at once became in coping with his adversary's strong,
swift serve.
The change in him, as he began seriously to play, was startling,
miraculous. His slack loose-jointedness stiffened into quick,
flexible accuracy, his lounging, flaccid air disappeared in a glow
of concentrated vigorous effort. The bored good-nature in his eyes
vanished, burned out by a stern, purposeful intensity. He was
literally and visibly another person. Sylvia played her best, which
was excellent, far better than that of any other girl in the summer
colony. She had been well trained by her father and her gymnasium
instructor, and played with an economy of effort delightful to see;
but she was soon driven by her opponent's tiger-like quickness into
putting out at once her every resource. There, in the slowly fading
light of the long mountain afternoon, the two young Anglo-Saxons
poured out their souls in a game with the immemorial instinct of their
race, fierce, grim, intent, every capacity of body and will-power
brought into play, everything else in the world forgotten....
For some time they were on almost equal terms, and then Sylvia became
aware that her adversary was getting the upper hand of her. She had,
however, no idea what the effort was costing him, until after a
blazing fire of impossibly rapid volleys under which she went down
to defeat, she stopped, called out, "Game _and_ set!" and added in a
generous tribute, "Say, you can _play_!" Then she saw that his face
was almost purple, his eyes bloodshot, and his breath came in short,
gasping pants. "Good gracious, what's the matter!" she cried, running
towards him in alarm. She was deeply flushed herself, but her eyes
were as clear as clear water, and she ran with her usual fawn-like
swiftness. Arnold dropped on the bench, waving her a speechless
reassurance. With his first breath he said, "Gee! but you can hit it
up, for a girl!"
"What's the _matter_ with you?" Sylvia asked again, sitting down
beside him.
"Nothing! Nothing!" he panted. "My wind! It's confoundedly short."
He added a moment later, "It's tobacco--this is the sort of time the
cigarettes get back at you, you know!" The twilight dropped slowly
about them like a thin, clear veil. He thrust out his feet, shapely in
their well-made white shoes, surveyed them with dissatisfaction, and
added with moody indifference: "And cocktails too. They play the
dickens with a fellow's wind."
Sylvia said nothing for a moment, looking at him by no means
admiringly. Her life in the State University had brought her into such
incessant contact with young men that the mere fact of sitting
beside one in the twilight left her unmoved to a degree which Mr.
Sommerville's mother would have found impossible to imagine. When she
spoke, it was with an impatient scorn of his weakness, which might
have been felt by a fellow-athlete: "What in the world makes you do
it, then?"
"Why not?" he said challengingly.
"You've just said why not--it spoils your tennis. It must spoil your
polo. Was that what spoiled your baseball in college? You'd be twice
the man if you wouldn't."
"Oh, what's the use?" he said, an immense weariness in his voice.
"What's the use of anything, if you are going to use _that_ argument?"
said Sylvia, putting him down conclusively.
He spoke with a sudden heartfelt simplicity, "Damn 'f I _know_,
Sylvia." For the first time in all the afternoon, his voice lost its
tonelessness, and rang out with the resonance of sincerity.
She showed an unflattering surprise. "Why, I didn't know you ever
thought about such things."
He looked at her askance, dimly amused. "High opinion you have of me!"
She looked annoyed at herself and said with a genuine good-will in her
voice, "Why, Arnold, you _know_ I've always liked you."
"You like me, but you don't think much of me," he diagnosed her, "and
you show your good sense." He looked up at the picturesque white
house, spreading its well-proportioned bulk on the top of the terraced
hillside before them. "I hope Madrina is looking out of a window and
sees us here, our heads together in the twilight. You've guessed, I
suppose, that she had you come on here for my benefit. She thinks
she's tried everything else,--now it's her idea to get me safely
married. She'd have one surprise, wouldn't she, if she could hear what
we're saying!"
"Well, it _would_ be a good thing for you," remarked Sylvia, as
entirely without self-consciousness as though they were discussing the
tennis game.
He was tickled by her coolness. "Well, Madrina sure made a mistake
when she figured on _you_!" he commented ironically. And then, not
having been subjected to the cool, hardy conditions which caused
Sylvia's present clear-headedness, he felt his blood stirred to feel
her there, so close, so alive, so young, so beautiful in the twilight.
He leaned towards her and spoke in a husky voice, "See here, Sylvia,
why _don't_ you try it!"
"Oh, nonsense!" said the girl, not raising her voice at all, not
stirring. "You don't care a bit for me."
"Yes, I do! I've _always_ liked you!" he said, not perceiving till
after the words were out of his mouth that he had repeated her own
phrase.
She laughed to hear it, and he drew back, his faint stirring of warmth
dashed, extinguished. "The fact is, Sylvia," he said, "you're too nice
a girl to fall in love with."
"What a horrid thing to say!" she exclaimed.
"About _you_?" he defended himself. "I mean it as a compliment."
"About falling in love," she said.
"Oh!" he said blankly, evidently not at all following her meaning.
"What time is it?" she now inquired, and on hearing the hour, "Oh,
we'll be late to dress for dinner," she said in concern, rising and
ascending the marble steps to the terrace next above them.
He came after her, long, loose-jointed, ungraceful. He was laughing.
"Do you realize that I've proposed marriage to you and you've turned
me down?" he said.
"No such a thing!" she said, as lightly as he.
"It's the nearest _I_ ever came to it!" he averred.
She continued to flit up the terraces before him, her voice rippling
with amusement dropping down on him through the dusk. "Well, you'll
have to come nearer than that, if you ever want to make a go of
it!" she called over her shoulder. Upon which note this very modern
conversation ended.