IN this annual _Rainy Week_ drama of ours, one of the very best
parts I "double" in, is with the chambermaid, making beds!
Once having warned my guests of this occasional domestic necessity,
I ought, I suppose, to feel absolutely relieved of any embarrassing
sense of intrusion incidental to the task. But there is always,
somehow, such an unwarrantable sense of spiritual rather than
material intimacy connected with the sight of a just deserted
guest-room. Particularly so, I think, in a sea-shore guest-room. A
beach makes such big babies of us all!
Country-house hostesses have never mentioned it as far as I can
remember. Mountains evidently do not recover for us that particular
kind of lost rapture. Nor even green pine woods revive the innocent
lusts of the little. But in a sea-shore guest-room, every fresh
morning of the world, as long as time lasts, you will find on
bureau-top desk or table, mixed up with chiffons and rouges,
crowding the tennis rackets or base balls, blurring the open
sophisticate page of the latest French novel, that dear, absurd,
ever-increasing little hoard of childish treasures! The round,
shining pebbles, the fluted clam shell, the wopse of dried
sea-weed, a feather perhaps from a gull's wing! Things common as
time itself, repetitive as sand! Yet irresistibly covetable! How do
you explain it?
Who in the world, for instance, would expect to find a cunningly
contrived toy-boat on Rollins's bureau with two star-fish listed as
the only passengers! Or Paul Brenswick's candle thrust into a
copperas-tinted knot of water-logged cedar? In the snug confines of
a small cigar box on a lovely dank bed of maroon and gray sea-weed
Victoria Brenswick had nested her treasure-trove. Certainly the
quaint garnet necklace could hardly have found a more romantic and
ship-wrecky sort of a setting. Even Allan John had started a little
procession of sand-dollars across his mantelpiece. But there was no
silver whistle figuring as the band, I noticed.
What would Victoria Brenswick have said, I wondered, what would
Allan John have thought if they had even so much as dreamed that
these precious "ship-wreck treasures" of theirs had been purchased
brand new in Boston Town within a week and "planted" most carefully
by my Husband with all those other pseudo mysteries in the old
trunk in the sand? But goodness me, one's got to "start" something
on the first day of even the most ordinary house-party!
With so much to watch outside the window, figures still moving
eagerly up and down the edge of the cliff, and so much to think
about inside, all the little personal whims and fancies betrayed by
the various hoards, the bed-making industry I'm afraid was somewhat
slighted on this particular morning. Was my Husband still standing
at that down-stairs window, I wondered, speculating about that
bungalow on the rocks even as I stood at the window just above him
speculating on the same subject? Why did he think that Ann Woltor
would be the one to get there first? What had Ann Woltor left there
the day before that made her specially anxious to get there first?
Truly this _Rainy Week_ experiment develops some rather unique
puzzles. Maybe if I tried, I thought, I could add a little puzzle
of my own invention! Just for sheer restiveness I turned and made
another round of the guest-rooms. Now that I remembered it there
was a bit more sand oozing from the Bride's necklace box to the
mahogany bureau-top than was really necessary.
The rest of the morning passed without special interest. But the
luncheon hour developed a most extraordinary interest in the
principles of physical geography which beginning with all sorts of
valuable observations concerning the weight of the atmosphere or
the conformation of mountains or the law of tides, ended invariably
with the one direct question: "At just what hour this evening, for
instance, will the tide be low again?"
My Husband was almost beside himself with concealed delight.
"Oh, but you don't think for a moment, do you--" I implored him in
a single whisper of privacy snatched behind the refilling of the
coffee urn. "You don't think for a moment that anybody would be
rash enough to try and make the trip in the big dory?"
"Well--hardly," laughed my Husband. "If you'd seen where I've
hidden the oars!"
The oars apparently were not the only things hidden at the moment
from mortal ken. Claude Kennilworth and Ego still persisted quite
brutally in withholding their charms from us. Rollins had retreated
to the sacristy of his own room to complete his convalescence. And
even Allan John seemed to have wandered for the time being beyond
the call of either voice or luncheon bell. Allan John's deflection
worried the May Girl a little I think, but not unduly. It didn't
worry the men at all.
"When a chap wants to be alone he wants to be alone!" explained
Paul Brenswick with unassailable conciseness.
"It's a darned good sign," agreed my Husband, "that he's ready to
be alone! It's the first time, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's all right, of course," conceded the May Girl amiably,
"if you're quite sure that he was dressed right for it."
"Maybe a hike on the beach at just this moment, whether he's
dressed right for it or not," asserted George Keets, "is just the
one thing the poor devil needs to sweep the last cobweb out of his
brain."
"I agree with you perfectly," said Victoria Brenswick.
It was really astonishing in a single morning how many things
George Keets and the Bride had discovered that they agreed on
perfectly. It teased the Bridegroom a little I think. But anyone
could have seen that it actually puzzled the Bride. And women, when
they are puzzled, I've noticed, are pretty apt to insist upon
tracing the puzzle to its source. So that when George Keets
suggested a further exploration of the dunes as the most plausible
diversion for the afternoon, it wouldn't have surprised me at all
if Victoria Brenswick had not only acquiesced in the suggestion for
herself and her Bridegroom but exacted its immediate fulfillment.
She did not, however. Quite peremptorily, in fact, she announced
instead her own and her Bridegroom's unalterable intent to remain
at home in the big warm library by the apple-wood fire.
It was the May Girl who insisted on forging forth alone with George
Keets into the storm.
"Why, I shall perish," dimpled the May Girl, "if I don't get some
more exercise to-day!--Weather like this--why--why it's so
glorious!" she thrilled. "So maddeningly glorious!--I--I wish I was
a seagull so I could breast right off into the foam and blast of
it! I wish--I wish----!" But what page is long enough to record the
wishes of Eighteen?
My Husband evidently had no wish in the world except to pursue the
cataloging of shells in Rollins's crafty company.
Ann Woltor confessed quite frankly that her whole human interest in
the afternoon centred solely on the matter of sleep.
Hyacinths, of course, are my own unfailing diversion.
Tracking me just a little bit self-consciously to my hyacinth lair,
the Bride seemed rather inclined to dally a moment, I noticed,
before returning to her Bridegroom and the library fire. Her eyes
were very interesting. What bride's are not? Particularly that
Bride whose intellect parallels even her emotions.
"Maybe," she essayed quite abruptly, "Maybe it was a trifle funny
of me not to tramp this afternoon. But the bridge-building work
begins again next week, you know. It's pretty strenuous, everybody
says. Men come home very tired from it. Not specially sociable. So
I just made up my mind," she said, in a voice that though playfully
lowered was yet rather curiously intense. "So I just made up my
mind that I would stay at home this afternoon and get acquainted
with my Husband." Half-proud, half-shamed, her puzzled eyes lifted
to mine. "Because it's dawned on me very suddenly," she laughed,
"that I don't know my Husband's opinion on one solitary subject in
the world except--just me!" With a rather amusing little flush she
stooped down and smothered her face in a pot of blue hyacinths.
"Oh--hyacinths!" she murmured. "And May rain! The smell of them!
Will I ever forget the fragrance of this week--while Time
lasts?" But the eyes that lifted to mine again were still puzzled.
"Now--that Mr. Keets," she faltered. "Why in just an hour or two
this morning, why in just the little time that luncheon takes, I
know his religion and his Mother's first name. I know his
philosophies, and just why he adores Buskin and disagrees with
Bernard Shaw. I know where he usually stays when he's in Amsterdam
and just what hotel we both like best in Paris. Why I know even
where he buys his boots, and why. And I buy mine at the same place
and for just exactly the same reason. But my Husband." Quite in
spite of herself a little laugh slipped from her lips. "Why--I
don't even know how my Husband votes!" she gasped. In some magic,
excitative flash of memory her breath began to quicken. "It--It was
at college, you know, that we met--Paul and I," she explained. "At
a dance the night before my graduation." Once again her face flamed
like a rose. "Why, we were engaged, you know, within a week! And
then Paul went to China!--Oh, of course, we wrote," she said, "and
almost every day, too. But----"
"But lovers, of course, don't write a great deal about buying
boots," I acquiesced, "nor even so specially much about Buskin nor
even their mothers."
In the square of the library doorway a man's figure loomed a bit
suddenly.
"Vic! Aren't you ever coming?" fretted her impatient Bridegroom.
Like a homing bird she turned and sped to her mate!
Yet an hour later, when I passed the library door, I saw Paul
Brenswick lying fast asleep in the depth of his big leather chair.
Fire wasted--books neglected--Chance itself forgotten or ignored!
But the Bride was nowhere to be seen.
I was quite right though when I thought that I should find her in
her room. Just as I expected, too, she was standing by the window
staring somewhat blankly out at the Dunes.
But the eyes that she lifted to me this time were not merely
puzzled--they were suffering. If Paul Brenswick could have seen his
beloved at this moment and even so much as hoped that there was a
God, he would have gone down on his knees then and there and prayed
that for Love's sake the very real shock which he had just given
her would end in laughter rather than tears. Yet her speech, when
it came at last, was perfectly casual.
"He--he wouldn't talk," she said.
"Couldn't, you mean!" I contradicted her quite sharply. "Husbands
can't, you know! Marriage seems to do something queer to their
vocal chords."
"Your husband talks," smiled the Bride very faintly.
"Oh--beautifully," I admitted. "But not to me! It doesn't seem to
be quite compatible with established romance somehow, this talking
business, between husbands and wives."
"Romance?" rallied the Bride. "Would you call Mr. Delville
ex--exactly romantic!"
"Oh--very!" I boasted. "But not conversationally."
"But I wanted to talk," said the Bride, very slowly.
"Why, of course, you did, you dear darling!" I cried out
impulsively. "Most brides do! You wanted to discuss and decide in
about thirty minutes every imaginable issue that is yet to develop
in all the long glad years you hope to have together! The friends
you are going to build. Why you haven't even glimpsed a child's
picture in a magazine, this the first week of your marriage,
without staying awake half the night to wonder what your children's
children's names will be."
"How do you know?" asked the Bride, a bit incisively.
"Because once I was a Bride myself," I said. "But this Paul of
yours," I insisted. "This Paul of yours, you see, hasn't finished
wondering yet about just you----!"
"For Heaven's sake," called my own husband through the half open
doorway, "what's all this pow-wow about?"
"About husbands," I answered, quite frankly. "An argument in fact
as to whether taken all in all a husband is ever very specially
amusing to talk to."
"Amusing to talk to?" hooted my Husband. "Never! The most that any
poor husband can hope for is to prove amusing to talk about!"
"Who said Paul?" called that young person himself from the further
shadows of the hallway.
"No one has," I laughed, "for as much as two minutes."
A trifle flushed from his nap, and most becomingly dishevelled as
to hair, the Bridegroom stepped into the light. I heard his Bride
give a little sharp catch of her breath.
"I--I think I must have been asleep," said the Bridegroom.
Twice the Bride swallowed very hard before she spoke.
"I--I think you must have, you rascal!" she said. It was a real
victory!
Really my Husband and I would have been banged in the door if we
hadn't jumped out as fast as we did!
George Keets and the May Girl came in from their walk just before
supper. Judging from their personal appearances it had at least
been a long walk if not a serene one. George Keets indeed seemed
quite unnecessarily intent in the vestibule on taking the May Girl
to task for what he evidently considered her somewhat careless
method of storing away her afternoon's accumulation of pebble and
shell. Every accent of his voice, every carefully enunciated
syllable reminded me only too absurdly of what the May Girl had
confided to me about "boys always trying to make her feel small."
He was urging her now, I inferred, to stop and sort out her
specimens according to some careful cotton-batting plan which he
suggested.
"Whatever is worth doing at all, you know, Miss Davies," he said,
"is worth doing well."
The May Girl's voice sounded very tired, not irritable, but very
tired.
"Oh, if there's anything in the world that I hate," I heard her cry
out, "it's that proverb! What people really mean by it," she
protested, "is, 'Whatever's worth doing at all is worth doing
_Swell_.' And it isn't either! I tell you I like simple things
best! All I ever want to do with my shells tonight is just to chuck
'em behind the door!"
Truly if Claude Kennilworth hadn't turned up for supper all in
white flannels and looking like a young god, I don't know just what
I should have done. Everybody seemed either so tired or so
distrait.
The tide would be low at ten o'clock. It was eight when we sat down
to supper.
Ann Woltor I'm sure never took her eyes from the clock.
But to be perfectly frank everybody else at the table except the
May Girl seemed to be diverting such attention as he or she
retained to the personal appearance of Claude Kennilworth. Truly it
wasn't right that anyone who had been so hateful all day long
should be able to look so perfectly glorious in the evening.
"Where did you get the suit?" said Rollins. "Is it your own?"
"And the permanent wave?" questioned the Bride. "I think you and
the ocean must patronize the same hair dresser."
"Dark men always do look so fine in white flannels," whispered Ann
Woltor to my Husband.
"Personally," beamed Paul Brenswick, "you look to me like a person
who had imported his own Turkish bath."
"Turkish?" scoffed George Keets. "Nobody works up a shine like that
by being washed only in one language! Russian, too, it must be!
Flemish----"
"Flemish are rabbits," observed the May Girl gravely. But even with
this observation she did not lift her eyes from her plate. Whether
she was consciously and determmingly ignoring Claude Kennilworth's
only too palpable efforts to impress her with the fact that now at
last he was ready to forgive her and subjugate her, or whether she
really hadn't noticed him, I couldn't quite make out. And then
quite suddenly at the end of her first course she put down her
knife and fork and folded her hands in her lap. "Where is Allan
John?" she demanded.
"Why, yes, that's so! Where is Allan John!" questioned everybody
all at once.
"Some walk he's taking," reflected Paul Brenswick.
"Not too long I hope," worried my Husband very faintly.
"Hang it all, I do like that lad," acknowledged George Keets.
"Who wouldn't?" said Young Kennilworth.
"Yes, but why?" demanded Keets.
"It's his eyes," said the Bride.
"Eyes nothing!" scoffed young Kennilworth. "It's the way he came
out of his fuss without fussing! To make a fool of yourself but
never a fuss--that's my idea of a fellow being a good sport!"
"It was his tragedy that I was thinking of," said George Keets very
quietly.
"Yes, where in the world," questioned my Husband with quite
unwonted emotion, "would you have found another chap in the same
harrowing circumstances, even among your own friends, I mean, a
chum, a pal, who could have dropped in here the way he has, without
putting a damper on everything? Not intentionally, of course, but
just in the inevitable human nature of things. But I don't get the
slightest sense somehow of Allan John being a damper!"
"'Damper?'" said the Bride. "Why he's like a sick man basking in
the sun. Hasn't a word to say himself, not a single prance in his
own feet. But I'd as soon think of shutting out the sun from a sick
man as shutting out a laugh from Allan John. Why, Allan John needs
us!" attested the Bride, "and Allan John knows that he needs us!"
With a sideways glance at the vacant chair George Keets's thin lips
parted into a really sweet smile.
"Where in creation is the boy!" he insisted. "Frankly I think we
rather need him."
"All of which being the case," conceded my Husband, "it behooves me
even once more, I should say, to tell Allan John that the next time
he speaks about moving on I shall hide his clothes. Certainly I
haven't trusted him yet with even a quarter. He's so
extraordinarily fussy about thinking that he ought to clear out."
It was just at that moment that the telephone rang. I decided to
answer it myself, for some reason, from the instrument upstairs in
my own room, rather than from the library. A minute's delay, and I
held the transmitter to my lips.
"Yes," I called.
"Is this Mrs. Jack Delville?" queried the voice.
"Yes. Who's speaking?"
"It's Allan John," said the voice.
"Why, Allan John!" I laughed. "Of course it would be you! We were
just speaking about you, and that's always the funny way that
things happen. But wherever in the world are you? We'd begun to
worry a bit!"
"I'm in town," said Allan John.
"In town," I cried. "Town! How did you get there?"
In Allan John's voice suddenly it was as though tone itself was
fashion. "That's what I want to tell you," said Allan John. "I've
done a horrid thing, a regular kid college-boy sort of thing. I've
taken something from your house, that silver salt cellar you know
that I forgot to give back, and left it with a man in the village
as security for the price of a railroad ticket to town, and a
telegram to my brother and this phone message. I didn't have a cent
you know. But the instant I hear from my brother----"
"Why, you silly!" I cried. "Why didn't you speak to my Husband?"
"Oh, your Husband," said Allan John, just a bit drily, "would have
given me the whole house. But he wouldn't let me leave it! And it
was quite time I was leaving," the voice quickened sharply. "I had
to leave some time you know. And all of a sudden I--I had to leave
at once! Rollins, you know! His break about the little girl. After
young Kennilworth's cubbishness I simply couldn't put another
slight on that lovely little girl. But--" His voice was all gray
and again spent, like ashes. "But I just couldn't play," he said.
"Not that!"
"Why of course you couldn't play," I cried. "Nobody expected you
to! Rollins is a--a horror!"
"Oh, Rollins is all right enough," said Allan John. "It's life that
is the horror."
"Yes, but Allan John--!" I parried.
"You people have been angels to me," he interrupted me sharply. "I
shall never forget it. Nor the lovely little girl. I'm going back
to Montana to see how my ranch looks. I can't talk now. Not to
anybody. For God's sake don't call anybody. But if I get
straightened out again, ever, you'll hear from me. And if I don't----"
"But, Allan John," I protested. "Everybody will be desolated, your
going off like this! Why, you're not even equipped in the simplest
way! Not a single bit of baggage! Not a personal possession!"
Across the buzzing wires it seemed suddenly as though I could
actually hear Allan John making one last really desperate effort to
smile.
"I've got my little silver whistle," said Allan John. As though in
confirmation of the fact he lifted the silver bauble to his lips
and blew a single flutey note across the sixty miles.
"Goodbye!" he said.
Before I had fairly dropped the receiver back into its place, the
May Girl was at my elbow. Her lovely childish eyes were strangely
alert, her radiant head cocked ever so slightly to one side as
though she held a shell to her listening ear. But there was no
shell in her hand.
"What was that?" cried the May Girl. "I thought I heard Allan
John's whistle!"