"Still mostly travelling, Mr. O'Donnell."
"Same firm?"
"Oh, dear no! There the interesting parallel must cease. One has to be
progressive, you know. One must keep abreast of the times." She gave
her brother-in-law a dreadful, broad wink. "What was I doing last?"
O'Donnell grinned. "I believe--wasn't it piloting tourists through
Europe?"
"Do you mean to tell me it's been as long as that since I've seen you?"
"As I recollect it--something of the sort."
"Yes, yes. So it was. But that was before the war. You knew, of course,
that I'd gone to Tahulamaji."
"You answered several of my letters," he reminded her sweetly.
"Ah, of course I did. And you should have felt highly flattered, for I
may say I made no point of keeping up any sort of correspondence at all
down there."
"I should say not!" put in Mrs. Needham, laughing.
"Oh, yes. I was flattered--flattered even if they were only postcards.
But I haven't yet got it straight what you were doing in Tahulamaji.
Was it the same sort of thing there?"
"What! Piloting tourists?" She had a hearty laugh. Her brother-in-law
started a little. One of Marjory's hearty laughs was always like an
unexpected slap on the back.
"You mean there aren't any sights to show?" asked O'Donnell meekly. "I
don't even know where Tahulamaji is, and I haven't the faintest idea
what it's like."
"Oh," she laughed, "there are plenty of sights. It's ever so much
better than Europe!"
"Then why _not_ pilot?"
"There aren't any tourists."
"Not any at all?"
"None, at least, who require piloting. You see, we haven't been
sufficiently exploited yet. For some reason we've escaped so far,
though I expect any day to hear that we've been discovered. Those who
come are bent on plain, stern business. Most of them get away again
the next day. Those who don't get off the next day, or at most the day
after that, you may depend upon it have come to stay--like me."
"So you are quite determined to go back again."
"Quite. Why not?"
They gazed quietly at each other a moment, while the minister began
dispensing dried-beef-in-cream-on-toast--a special Beachcrest dish;
French-fried potatoes. Mrs. Needham watched with quaking heart until
it was patent there would be enough to go round. Then she began pouring
the tea.
There was always, at any rate, plenty of tea. But Miss Whitcom nearly
occasioned a panic by asking for lemon. The rest took cream, if for no
better reason than that it was right there on the table. The demand
had been, like everything Miss Whitcom did, unpremeditated, and was
immediately withdrawn. She tossed her head and laughed. Wasn't it
absurd to ask for lemon in the wilderness? But Anna Needham rose to the
occasion. It was a crisis.
She tinkled the bell in a breathless yet resolute way; she so wanted to
impress her sister as being a competent housekeeper. It amounted almost
to a passion. Perhaps living so long with Alfred had rather tended to
weaken belief in her own abilities.
Eliza was gone a good while. But she triumphantly returned with the
lemon. Mr. O'Donnell looked at Miss Whitcom's tea a little wistfully.
He had already taken cream. Possibly he preferred lemon too. But it
requires real genius to ask for what one doesn't see before one in this
law-of-least-resistance world.
This slight tension removed, the Rev. Needham resumed a quiet
conversation with Barry about the affairs in the West. Everything,
it seemed, was going finely. It began to look as though they
might all grow positively rich off the desert! And it was owing
to Barry--entirely to him. Well, Barry was a fine young man--so
_completely_ satisfactory. If the Needhams had had a son, Alfred
would have wished him to be like Barry. Sure, patient, untiring,
generous--generous to a fault, yet with such solid faculties for
business! And now, here he was, about to step right into the family. It
was too good to be true. Yes, much too good. The Rev. Needham swelled
with pride and beamed with affection. He beamed on Barry, and never
noted how his daughter sat there beside this paragon, eating little,
talking almost not at all....
Hilda was another member of the party who talked little. Her
deportment, however, was quite different. Her cheeks were highly
coloured, and her eyes sparkled. Aunt Marjie, who seemed somehow
never too engrossed in anything to give good heed to everything else,
looked curiously from Hilda to Louise, to Barry, from Barry on to her
brother-in-law. Then she looked at Hilda again, recalling Leslie,
and smiled. She looked at Louise again, also, then at Barry, and her
expression grew more serious. She looked at Louise a third time, still
with Leslie in the back of her mind, and thought of the forgotten stove
burners....
Why was it, she asked herself, that men had to make such baffling
differences in women's lives?
6
After luncheon the company broke up. The Rev. Needham announced, just
a little stiffly (for he felt the upsetting gaze of his sister-in-law)
that it was customary at Beachcrest to spend a quiet hour, at this
point of the day's span, napping. He wanted to create an easy home
atmosphere, and the most effective way seemed to be to impress
outsiders with the fact that everything was really running along just
as though none but the immediate family was present.
Miss Whitcom yawned at once. "Good gracious!" she exclaimed. "I'm
_horribly_ sleepy. Never would have dreamed what was the matter with
me, Alfred, if you hadn't come to the rescue. I _am_ grateful!"
And then--and then the Rev. Needham did a tremendous, a revolutionary,
a gigantic and unforgettable thing. He simply overwhelmed himself and
everybody else by making an almost low bow!
Mrs. Needham uttered a tiny gasp--she really couldn't help it. What had
gotten into Alfred? Then she laughed, a little too shrilly, as by way
of heralding to all the Point the glorious, glad tidings that there
was, at last, a genuine, wholesome, jolly home atmosphere established.
Yes, the bow was inspired. There was no other way of looking at it. The
bow was an inspired bow.
And what had come over the Rev. Needham was this: He had suddenly, in a
sort of buoyant flare, determined that Marjory's manner would have to
be played up to! It was simply ridiculous--scandalous--to allow himself
to be disturbed and even secretly harassed by his wife's own sister.
Yes, it was little short of a scandal! And now, rather tardily, it may
be admitted, the Rev. Needham had attained salvation. It was simply
to make a low bow. How clever--and how exquisitely subtle! He laughed
aloud with the rest. His feet were squarely on the ground, after all.
Of course they were. And splendidly, magnificently he defied the
prickly feeling to come again into his heels!
The Rev. Needham was, in truth, privately so captivated with this
curious and unforeseen twist in his fortunes that he forgot all about
his own customary fatigue: forgot that this was the hour of quiet at
Beachcrest--rendered so by immemorial precedent. He swaggered a little,
without, of course, quite losing the ministerial poise; and spoke up,
as his wife afterward phrased it, "real brisk and hearty." Cigars were
passed to Barry and O'Donnell. The Rev. Needham bit into one himself.
It is altogether possible he might, under the influence of this new
heroic emotion, have distributed cigarettes, had there been anything so
devilish on the premises.
As the box went blithely back on to the mantel, Miss Whitcom, who was
greatly enjoying what she perfectly fathomed, perceived an irresistible
obligation to suggest that he had gone only half way around. The Rev.
Needham looked perhaps just a shade startled. Could he bow again? And
if not, how else was her manner to be played up to? Had he already
struck a snag? Obviously it would be going a little too far to take her
at her word and offer her a cigar.
"One wants to be sociable, you know," she said, her eyes sparkling.
"I know of a lady poet in the East who smokes cigars," volunteered
O'Donnell.
He spoke quite easily, as though for Miss Whitcom's special benefit,
and to convey the impression that he had quite grown accustomed or
reconciled to such dainty feminine indulgence. Indeed, he looked at her
with shy sprightliness.
"Oh, yes," she replied, "and, if you remember, a lady novelist started
the custom."
He didn't remember, but he chuckled. And she went on: "As a matter of
fact, and just amongst ourselves, why shouldn't women smoke if they
want to? And why shouldn't they _want_ to? Isn't it perfectly natural
they should? I'm not, strictly speaking, championing the habit, for
it's expensive and rather silly. But if half the human race wants to
turn itself into portable smoke stacks, then by all means let the other
half follow suit. So you see, Alfred, you'd really better let me have
one. For you hear for yourself, Mr. O'Donnell knows of a poet who
smokes. Of course," she admitted, "I'm not a poet."
But O'Donnell was certainly in a romantic mood today. He wouldn't
let her admission stand. "Yes, you are," he began, with an odd
impulsiveness, adding in a quieter though quite as fervent tone: "--a
kind of poet...."
They eyed each other steadily a moment, as they had done once or twice
before, that day. It was surely another O'Donnell than the O'Donnell of
long ago--the O'Donnell, for instance, who had eased up at the finish
and let her win the race. Was she, also, in a way, another Marjory? A
Marjory, after all, rather less insistent upon, or who had grown just
a tiny bit weary of, doing things simply to be independent--simply for
the joy of doing them gloriously and daringly alone?
When the gentlemen had repaired to the porch to smoke and to discuss,
as is the custom at such times, matters too deep to be grasped by the
feminine intellect, Miss Whitcom succeeded in confronting Louise.
"Now," she said, with a warm, inviting firmness which brought a flash
of tears to the girl's eyes.
She laid an arm around Louise's shoulders, and they stood thus together
a few moments in the middle of the cottage living room. Could the Rev.
Needham have looked in upon this affecting picture, and could those
small eager ears of his have partaken of the subsequent talk which
passed between them, the cigar of confidence and authority would have
dropped from his fingers, its brave spark dimmed forever. Yes, he would
have forgotten completely the brilliant bow which had seemed to smooth
away all of life's snarls by giving him, marvellously, in an instant,
a positive, almost Nietzschean philosophy. But for the present he was
safe.
"How could things have gone so far without your realizing?"
"I don't know."
"But you must know how you feel toward him!" Louise shook her head
miserably. "I thought I cared.... Perhaps I still do."
"But aren't you sure?"
"I--I don't believe I know. I don't seem sure of anything."
"But, my dear child--"
"I _thought_ I was sure."
"And all those letters--"
"Yes, yes," cried Louise tensely. "You see it was all letters, Aunt
Marjie. And when I came suddenly to see him again...."
"Oh, come, child, we don't fall in love with men's hats and the twist
of their profiles. You must still love whatever it was you loved all
those long months you were apart. Isn't it reasonable?"
"I--I...." Oh, what was the use of asking her to be reasonable? What
has a heart full of ghosts to do with reason? And Leslie....
She felt like crying. She began looking upon herself as almost a person
who has been somehow wronged. Her emotion grew thicker. She drew shyly
away.
Aunt Marjie, as she let her go from her, realizing that words just now
would get them nowhere, was thinking that in the midst of a universe
full of souls and wheeling planets, one poor heartache was like a grain
of dust. Well, perhaps she _was_ a kind of poet. But in a moment the
impersonal millions, both of souls and of stars, vanished away, and
this girl's problem ascended to a position of tremendous importance, if
not quite of majesty.
At length, after he had smoked his cigar, the Rev. Needham did retire
to the couch of his wonted siesta, leaving the household, as he
thought, pleasantly and profitably disposed.
Of course, the fact that the host proposed to take a nap did not mean
that all the others had to follow suit. It was just part of the device
for making every one feel that nothing was being upset because of
"company." It did not mean that O'Donnell, for instance, would have to
subject himself to the rather embarrassing alternative of curling up
on the short living room sofa. Miss Whitcom and Mr. O'Donnell happily
repaired to the rustic bower. Hilda skipped off singing into the woods.
Mrs. Needham--well, Mrs. Needham was still in the kitchen with Eliza.
The latter was stolidly eating her luncheon of left-overs on the very
table to which Louise and Leslie had sat down at dawn. Mrs. Needham
stood solemnly before Eliza as she ate, her hands on her hips, her
face growing flushed again, talking endlessly--about dinner. Louise
and Lynndal Barry were on the porch. Lovers were so brazen, nowadays,
they didn't mind at all if the partitions between their embraces and
the outside world were mere mosquito gauze. The Rev. Needham, slyly
recognizing this great truth, chuckled over it, in his new mood of
sublime assurance, all the way upstairs. Each step cracked, and all the
way up he was telling himself contentedly: "A fine young man--one of
God's own noblemen!" And as gentle slumber wafted his soul into a peace
which, especially on a full stomach, so often passeth understanding, he
whispered dreamily: "Coming right into the family...."
Thank God the Western interests were forever safeguarded!
But meanwhile, out on the porch, the situation grew from moment to
moment more poignant.
Louise seemed suddenly to be sparring for time. She had decided--as
well as her giddy little brain was capable, just now, of deciding
anything at all--that the whole crux of the matter was her
disappointment over the way Lynndal had turned out.... But what Aunt
Marjie had said about not loving his hat and the twist of his profile
anyhow had rather upset her again. Once she almost flung herself into
his arms with a great, comfortable, forgiving, beseeching, surrendering
cry. What a haven his arms might seem! But something in her heart, she
imagined, warned her: "You cannot yet! Dare you? Remember--it would be
irrevocable!"
Time, time! There was obviously an issue to be faced. But with all
the vital eloquence of desperation Louise reasoned that bitterness
deferred might somehow lose a degree of its sting. Feeble logic, and
logic not very profound; but she was scarcely in a frame of mind to
evolve, at the present moment, any logic more substantial. Her problem
was delicate, tenuous, like the sheen on the wings of a butterfly.
Her tragedy was a thing of shades and of shadows--a thing wellnigh
ungraspable. But it was none the less real. Oh, it was very real
to her! In an orgy of the mañana spirit she abandoned herself to
eventualities as they should develop. Her fate--whatever it was going
to prove--would rush on and overtake her; she would not go out to meet
it half way. Dared not.
"I'm afraid you'll think me not very cordial," she said desperately,
"but I have a headache, Lynndal, and I'm going to ask if you'd mind if
I went up to my room for a little while...."
"Oh," he cried, in real and honest distress, "I'm so sorry! Why didn't
you tell me before? Perhaps the smoke has been annoying you?"
"Oh, it's nothing," she answered, smiling in the wan way common to
invalids for whom the end is in sight. "These headaches come on, quite
suddenly sometimes. If I lie down for an hour, it will be gone, I
think."
"I'm sorry, dear," he repeated, touching her elbow as she turned to
leave him. The contact emboldened him and he slipped an arm round her
waist and bent over her a little as he walked with her toward the door.
"You shouldn't have tried to meet me this morning, dear. It was too
much."
"I wanted to," she murmured huskily.
"Will you come out again later?" he pleaded, content, under the
circumstances, that she should leave him now.
Louise nodded and passed into the cottage.
"Couldn't we take a little walk on the beach later, if your head is
better? Later on, when the sun isn't quite so hot?"
She turned and murmured: "Yes." There was another impulse to throw
herself into his arms; she longed to go to him and cry against his
heart. But at the same moment she remembered Leslie--how close he
had held her in the morning, how they had kissed.... The impulse was
stifled.
When she was gone from him, Barry sat down again on the porch to finish
his cigar. It was the cigar which the Rev. Needham had given him after
luncheon. It was a good cigar, for the Rev. Needham knew what was what,
despite his intense holiness.
Barry was one of those rare individuals who have never really loved
before. Curiously, the insatiable god Eros had passed him largely by
till now. But ah--the tardy fevers! They may be more virulent than
those of timelier visitation.... His eye swept the curve of the white
beach, ablaze with the mid-day sun. Later they would be strolling there
together, he and she. He would be walking out there beside this dear
girl whose love had thrilled to the dull roots of his bachelordom. And
then he would tell her how he adored her; would open the little box and
slip the ring on her finger....
It was so wonderful, after dwelling in the desert all his life!
7
She really did have a very little headache; though this was the least
of her troubles.
There sounded a whistle outside. In the midst of her wretchedness,
Louise lifted her head and listened. Low and sustained, it had saluted
her ear when dawn's pink flush was in the sky; but now it seemed far
more eager; it seemed to glint through the sunshine.
Springing to her window, Louise crouched there. The historical novel
lay on the sill, where she had left it. Her fingers closed tensely
about it, although she did not at first realize what it was she was
clutching. Leslie was outside. She could see him coming on through
the forest, and caught her breath in a little hysterical gasp of joy.
Leslie! She couldn't let him go! She loved him! She had never, she
felt, loved anybody as she loved Leslie. Oh, the injustice of it!
That he must be denied her, though it was he she loved the best! But
there _must_ be a way. Somehow, somehow she must contrive.... She must
contrive, whatever it might cost, to keep him.... But she faltered.
Wasn't it too late?
His hands were in his pockets; his face was richly animated; his eyes
were full of light. Leslie was almost handsome--ah, strangely more
beautiful now than when she had wanted to be his friend. His brightness
dazzled her; and she looked out at him through her perplexed tears.
He had held her for a moment in his arms as they stood, so deeply
enthralled, on that dappled forest road. Would he ever hold her in his
arms again?
"Leslie!" she murmured.
He halted, looking quickly about.
"I'm here," she continued, in the same unhappy tone, "--up here!" They
were the very words Lynndal had used when he stood above her on the
deck of the steamer.
And it was plain, too painfully plain, Leslie had not been searching
her window. At first he appeared a little embarrassed. An indefinite
numbness closed about her heart. It seemed, all at once, as though
retrospect embodied no mutual past for these two. Intimate strangers!
For all at once Leslie seemed as essentially unknown and aloof from her
destiny as Lynndal had seemed during that first curious, bewildering
moment when his steamer was coming in. Leslie--merely a lad passing by
outside, under her window. And she blushed at the thought of having
dared to speak to him....
"Do you know where Hilda is?" he enquired, trying to throw a great deal
of carelessness into both tone and posture.
Louise miserably shook her head.
"I was to meet her," Leslie explained simply. And, smiling, he turned
with abruptness and began strolling off. He could be cool enough when
it pleased him.
"Leslie!" she cried out, though discreetly. For she dared not let
Lynndal hear her. In volume her voice by no means matched its almost
terrible intensity.
The tone arrested him. "What?" And he stopped and looked bluntly back
at the window.
"Wait, Leslie, I think I know where Hilda is."
"Where?"
"Wait just a minute. I'm coming down. Will you come around to the back
door?"
He nodded, too indifferent to voice the curiosity he might normally be
expected to feel over her desire to emerge from the back rather than
from the front door of the cottage.
As she flew, a sudden determination swayed her. Both men, she argued,
were strangers again. _She must win Leslie back!_
When she stole out to him a moment later, he was loitering casually
in the vicinity of a little shed where driftwood was kept. The Rev.
Needham always made a point of talking about the rare quality of
surf-wood blazes. The Rev. Needham had constructed this shed also with
his own hands, just as he had constructed the remarkable rustic bench;
only the shed had taken another summer, of course. This shed was really
a Beachcrest institution; so was likewise the perennial lugging up
of driftwood for storage therein recognized to be an almost religious
adjunct of Point life. There was an informal rule--of ancient standing,
playfully enough conceived, and of course playfully laid down--that
no one should come in from the beach without at least one piece of
driftwood. Much preferably, of course, a respectable, staggering
armful. The rule _was_ wholly playful; and yet, should several days
pass with no contribution at all to the shed, Mrs. Needham and the
girls would be troubled, and perhaps even a trifle frightened, to
behold the minister himself tottering in with a colossal load. He would
cast reproachful glances their way. And it would sometimes be a long
while before he regained any sort of serenity. Yet it was a favourite
maxim with the Rev. Needham that they came up here to the cottage for
sheer relaxation and amusement.
Leslie had selected from the shed a smooth splinter, once part of a
ship's spar. He had taken out his knife and was busy whittling. And
he kept at this self-imposed task quite doggedly, seeming to find in
it a certain sanctuary. His eyes scrupulously followed the slashings
of the blade. Thus they avoided hers--for the most part without too
deliberately seeming to do so. Louise was herself dimly grateful for
the distraction.
"What do you think I found in Frankfort this morning?" she demanded,
trying to smile with something of the old bewitchment. The historical
novel was clasped behind her. She had certainly not meant to show it
to him; yet here it was.
"I give _up_," he replied, accentuating the final word with a
particularly telling stroke on the spar splinter.
Then she drew the book slowly round into sight and half extended it, as
though it were an offering that might effect a return, somehow, to that
golden relationship which Lynndal's coming had broken off.
"A book?" He went on whittling.
"You haven't even read the title!" she cried, half pleadingly.
"Something new?"
"Why, Les...."