1
The Rev. Needham awoke from his siesta wonderfully refreshed. These
benign afternoon snoozes had a peculiar and sometimes quite poignant
effect. The minister dimly felt it must have something to do with
psychology. For he always awoke feeling so spiritual, so calm and
strong. Today, of course, there was particularly traceable cause: he
had gone to sleep, one must remember, in a miraculously resolute, yes,
a truly masterful, mood. Did we call it Nietzschean? Well, perhaps it
really was almost that. At any rate, waking was delicious. There was
a largeness, a breadth about life which made one want to square one's
shoulders, step out proudly. Before the dresser mirror, in the act
of resuming collar and tie, the Rev. Needham actually did square his
shoulders a little. He even threw out his chest somewhat. Oh, it is
sweet to be master of one's own destiny!
Out on the porch he found his wife, rocking there all by herself and
looking a little vacantly off at the shrubs and trees.
"Ah, Anna," he said; then perched himself in a nonchalant, really an
almost rakish manner, on the railing, throwing one leg over the other,
and folding his arms. He yawned a little audibly, concluding that
function with a kind of masterful, contented smacking of the lips--even
whistled a few bars of a gay secular tune.
"Did you sleep well, Alf?" Anna Needham spoke calmly, rocked calmly.
She still eyed the shrubs and trees in a spirit of almost hypnotized
calm.
"I had a magnificent nap," he assured her.
Anna rocked more slowly. "Alf," she hesitated.
"Yes, Anna?"
"Alf, I wonder if I can be getting old ...?"
"Old, Anna?" He was really quite shocked at the suggestion.
"Yes--I don't know. Sometimes...."
"Nonsense!"
"I don't know ..." she continued dreamily.
"But why should you ever think such a thing?"
"Well, lately there've been times when I've felt so kind of still. I
don't know, but I thought--I thought it might be...."
"Why, Anna ...!" he cried in vaguely frightened tones.
"I don't know, Alf." Her manner retained its essential dreaminess.
"Sometimes when I sit alone rocking, I feel so kind of still...."
The minister laughed, then, with even an attempt at something like
boisterousness; but it was plain something of his earlier flamboyancy
had vanished. Abruptly, right in the heyday of his most glorious mood,
the shortness of life struck him with uncanny force. Life's shortness,
and, though he indignantly repudiated the insinuation, its relative
futility, after all. Where had one come from in the beginning; just
what was it one was up to now; and where was it one would go when
the breath of life ceased flowing? Oh, what a piece of work is man!
These were the secret inner workings. With a thrill of genuine horror
the minister found himself asking what he knew, as a fact, after all
these years of preaching it, about the immortality of the soul. It was
terrible, _terrible_! Oh, that he should be afflicted with such doubts!
And not ten minutes ago the Rev. Needham had squared his shoulders and
flashed so grand a defiance at his own reflection....
Curiously enough, this sudden unpleasant sense of renewed insecurity
was augmented, at the moment when it was most acute, by the rippling
laughter of his approaching sister-in-law. Miss Whitcom and her friend
were returning from their tête-à-tête in the bower. The laugh, whatever
it might mean to the minister, signified that the lady was not, so
easily, to be carried off her feet, and that, however thrillingly she
might talk about not being a pioneer any longer, no mere travelling man
was to capture her without at least a concluding scramble.
Barrett O'Donnell knew quite well what the laugh signified. But it
didn't, for all that, very greatly disturb him. Lord, he'd waited
twenty years: he could wait twenty more, if necessary. There is
not that hot impetuosity in the affection of souls matured which
characterizes youth; not that fever, that restless, exquisite rush of
heady devotion. Still, there is perhaps something in being quite sure
your love isn't misplaced. Yes, in a way, to be sure may be even better
than to possess.
The return of Miss Whitcom and Mr. O'Donnell from one direction fell
simultaneously with the return of Louise and Lynndal Barry from
another. The porch became a very lively place, all at once, where a
few moments before it had been so quiet, with only the minister's wife
there, rocking.... Louise was greatly relieved that it should be so.
To have returned to a silent and deserted house after what had passed
between herself and Lynndal on the beach must have proved next to
unbearable. As it was, the frantic difficulty of the situation would be
lightened, if only temporarily.
Marjory pounced at once upon the westerner, turning from her ancient
suitor with a careless alacrity which seemed saying: "After all, I am
free, quite superbly free!" And O'Donnell muttered an "Ah!" scarce
audibly; and what he meant by it was this: "I know you'll come back
to me. You always have and you always will. We are not _quite_ free,
either of us, in one sense of the word." One glorious, indomitable
sense of the word.
Marjory wanted to know more about the dam in Arizona, and especially
she wanted to get at the other side of this tragic love affair--this
bit of high tragedy in humble setting. In art, she thought, tragedy
has a way of being generally treated nobly and loftily; but in life,
somehow, it often seems almost absurd. Yes, first it was the dam. But
she did not really care two straws about the dam. She had got beyond
all such things as dams in her pilgrimage.
The Rev. Needham opened up a conversation about the Point with
O'Donnell. But he kept eyeing his daughter, who leaned against the
railing of the porch, her hands clasped before her. Alfred, despite his
calling, was a wretched reader of souls. The look in one's eyes or the
line of one's lips meant next to nothing, definitely--if only because
these things might mean so bafflingly _much_.... If you actually shed
tears, then he would be reasonably sure you must be unhappy. Hearty
laughter signified, of course, a state of hilarity. However, the Rev.
Needham's spirit, with Milton's, took, really, no middle course. There
lay an almost blank chasm between tears and laughter--although, alas,
the fact of its being a chasm did not make it any less conducive to
prickles in one's suspended heels.
"There's only one thing," O'Donnell was observing, "--only one thing
I've got against this place."
"What's that?" asked the minister.
"There are so many signs!"
It took the Rev. Needham just a moment to comprehend what was meant.
"You mean the Assembly notices?"
"I suppose that's what they are. If you'll pardon my saying so, it
seems sometimes as though there's a sign on every tree. One says you
mustn't peel the birch bark, and the next one announces a lecture on
such and such a day."
"I'm afraid they have multiplied the last few seasons," admitted
the minister. "We don't seem to notice--so used to them, I suppose.
There are picnickers, you know--come from other parts--and we have
to look out for the natural beauty or it will be all spoiled. As for
the lecture announcements," he concluded, "the--the church, you know,
has to keep pace, nowadays. Yes, it--it has to advertise a little!"
He spoke almost glibly, and sighed; but quite brightly, indeed almost
chirpily.
Miss Whitcom caught the confession. And she hopped down at once off Mr.
Barry's fine Arizona dam--which diverted water into a huge reservoir,
thus keeping off the Needham wolf--and administered what might vulgarly
be termed a knock-out.
"I should say it does have to advertise! Oh, yes, the church must
_indeed_ hustle to keep pace! Even so, I hear the attendance is
dropping off."
"Marjory?" began her brother-in-law with unhappy and interrogative
vehemence. The low bow, alas, would do no good at all here. This woman
was unspeakable. She struck him as almost a monster! Not that this was
manifest, of course; it was merely the way she struck his invisible
soul.
"Oh, gracious, Alfred, I don't mean _your_ attendance. I'm not
referring to your particular church. I speak as a sociologist--a
biologist!" She laughed. "Yes, I always try to consider these things in
the broadest sense. And I don't see why you should look so shocked, for
after all I'm only agreeing with you. Don't you see I am? The church
_does_ have to advertise. Has to stir up public controversies for the
sake of getting itself discussed--always biologically speaking, Alfred.
It has to get itself recognized as a social force. That's the word: a
social force! It must be a little sensational even, sometimes, to match
the growing sensationalism of life. What more natural? An atmosphere
of spry colloquialism. Yes, the modern church must compete. Why _not_
introduce the movies into Sunday School--?"
"We haven't yet done any of these things, Marjory," declared the Rev.
Needham earnestly, a trifle coolly. He seemed really to insist upon
receiving all her shafts personally.
"Some churches do though," volunteered O'Donnell--and laughed a little
nervously.
Mrs. Needham had been following the conversation, glancing first at
one speaker then at another; now she spoke: "Marjory, how do you ever
manage to keep track of everything that's going on here in America?"
It was not the first time since her arrival amongst them that Anna's
sister had amazed her with a grasp of home affairs--often with flashes
of vision which had been closed to her before.
"Oh," replied Marjory with pleasant lightness, "but you see such
demonstrations as these exude an influence--it's a little like the
wireless. One feels their thrill all around the earth."
"Besides," interposed O'Donnell quite seriously, "you know Tahulamaji's
awfully advanced."
"Is it?" asked Mrs. Needham guilelessly, turning towards him.
"Oh, tremendously," he assured her. "As I make it out Queen Tess was
one of the most advanced women of her time. I tell you, things move in
Tahulamaji!"
Mrs. Needham had not hitherto felt, as she indefinitely put it to
herself, very well acquainted with this travelling man friend of her
sister's. Suddenly she found herself holding the centre of the stage
with him. It amounted to a little thrill.
"I suppose, after all, things aren't so different there--conditions,
should I say?"
"Well," hedged O'Donnell, beginning to perceive that he had entered
somewhat dangerous waters. He glanced at Miss Whitcom, who merely
shrugged her shoulders, which seemed equivalent to an assurance that,
having involved himself unnecessarily in her behalf, he might just
flounder along, so far as she was concerned, until kingdom come.
"Maybe," suggested the minister's wife with a dart of genuine
brilliance, "the churches do all those things in Tahulamaji!" Would it
not seem to explain Marjory's being so uncannily well informed?
The Rev. Needham inwardly fidgeted. He felt he ought to be in the
forefront of the discussion, defending his cloth. But suddenly he
seemed, within, sadly and impotently, to have nothing to say. There
were times when he felt he didn't possess a single honest prejudice any
more, or hold one single irrefragable opinion. What a fortunate thing
for the soul is its kind bulwark of flesh!
Anna's suggestion at length stirred Miss Whitcom, however. "Oh, no,"
she said quietly, "they don't."
"Still," O'Donnell objected, "you told me the Queen was incorrigibly
modern, and you said she adored the movies."
"Oh, we're modern," replied Marjory with an ungodly smirk. "Yes, we're
modern enough in Tahulamaji. I may say we're quite in the van of
civilization. We're so modern that we _haven't_ any churches. So how
_could_ we advertise?"
"No churches, Marjory?" queried her brother-in-law. "But you seem to
forget--"
"Well, at least nothing you'd call a church, I'm sure, Alfred--outside
of what the foreigners have imported, that is. A few little rude native
altars.... That's all. You know, 'when two or three are gathered
together'.... It's--well, I've sometimes felt it's the _spirit_
that counts in Tahulamaji, when it comes to matters of religion.
Everything's very, very simple. We really haven't time to do it the
grand way, even if we knew how."
They hadn't time for church in Tahulamaji! The awful question which now
wracked the soul of the minister was: If they hadn't time for church,
what _had_ they time for? A dimly terrifying curiosity assailed him.
The Rev. Needham had read vague things about the people of the tropics.
And a flush overspread his lined, worried face.
Yes, Marjory was an odd sheep, if not a black one. Perhaps she could
hardly be called a _black_ one, though there were certainly times
when the Rev. Needham saw her as through smoked glasses. Anyway, an
odd sheep she certainly was. She did not seem to belong in the herd
at all--let alone the family! The rest were all quiet, sensible,
orthodox. But about everything Marjory said or did there was something
unorthodox, something wickedly theatrical. What a past she had had!
Just think of it! Just think, for instance, of spending five whole
years of one's life in a place like Tahulamaji! Well, the ways of
God were unsearchable. So, it seemed, were the ways of His satanic
opponent. The reason she seemed different from themselves must be,
fundamentally, that she had had a past. But why had she had a past?
Yes, the minister's speculations always must terminate with the
knottiest question raised and unanswered. It seemed a part of his
destiny.
And meanwhile, there stood Louise and Lynndal, not six feet apart, yet
never meeting each other's look; never speaking. How unpremeditated and
tragic! He had come all the way from Arizona, and now they had nothing
to say to each other. Louise, leaning wretchedly against the railing,
seemed, just now, able to realize nothing clearly. The episode on the
beach had confused her. She felt herself baffled.
As for Barry's state of mind, that, also, was considerably cloudy. It
had happened--the inconceivable, the impossible--and it was now over.
Yet was it really over? In just a swift moment like this had _all_ his
dreams been broken? It seemed incredible: he could not believe it. He
tried to reassure himself, endeavoured to keep hope alight. Something
wise and still, deep in his heart, counseled patience. It might be she
was only confused: it seemed strange to her, having suddenly a reality
like this in place of her dreams. Louise was a dreamer--he knew that.
And what might be going on inside her wayward little head, who could
guess? So far Barry had only distinguished himself as a wizard of the
burning sands. He was a man who could make deserts bloom like the rose.
Yet who could say but perhaps he knew a little, too, about the subtler
bloom of a woman's heart? Patience, he argued within himself. It might
be she was only puzzled, and that she still loved him in spite of the
thing that had happened. He would be patient a little while. If it
turned out at last that there was no hope, why, then he would go back
to the desert again. That was all.
2
It was nearly five o'clock when Leslie and Hilda emerged from the woods
with their supply of roasting sticks. They had gone about their task
in the most leisurely fashion, mutually animated by a curious half
complacent acceptance of each other's presence. Merely being together
had become such a complete yet informal delight that neither of them
stopped to analyse it at all. And yet, if their hands chanced to brush,
or, as happened once when a bee threatened, she laid her hand a little
clutchingly on his shoulder, the emotion quickened. They hadn't much
to say to each other, although a good deal of talk, such as it was,
passed between them. Neither could remember afterward anything that was
said. And all they had intrinsically to show for their afternoon was an
armful of roasting sticks.
"Where shall we keep them until it's time?" asked Hilda, as they
tramped through the sand and up to the screened porch.
He gazed dreamily off to sea.
"Les?" she repeated, quaintly drawling.
"Hm?"
"What shall we do with the sticks? Leave them here? Or do you want to
take them down where the fire's going to be?"
"Oh," he said at last, "I don't care." And he let himself down slowly
on to the steps. "I feel so dreamy I can hardly move. Did you ever feel
like that, Hilda?"
"Yes, many times," she replied, sitting down one step above him and
clasping her knees. Her canvas hat was tossed aside, and the hair on
her forehead was a little damp. There ensued a long, drowsy silence. At
length she said: "I hope we cut enough, Les."
He was still gazing off across the sea, which the declining sun was
making flash in a splendid and quite dazzling way. It was merely a
warm, hypnotic stare, and he really saw nothing at all; yet he was
faintly conscious of things--above all, he was conscious of a feeling
of simple young happiness.
"Les?"
"Hm?"
"You do think we cut enough, don't you?"
"Sure, I guess so."
"It would be so funny," she laughed, "if there didn't happen to be
enough to go round and some had to just sit and watch the others eat!"
"Most of them do that anyway, don't they?" he murmured. "I mean they
sit there and watch you work like a slave, and then swallow everything
that's poked in front of their mouths. I guess all roasts are alike."
"Well, anyhow, _we_ won't feed any of the lazybones tonight, Les. We'll
eat our own! I'll feed you, and you feed me. Will you?"
He glanced up at her and smiled. Then he slid down a step and lay back,
resting his head against the step on which she sat, a little to one
side.
"You look quite different upside down," he volunteered.
"How, Les?"
"Oh--I don't know. Your eyes look so funny!"
"Yours do, too!"
He thrust a sun-browned arm over his eyes and crossed his legs. It was
she who now gazed off over the blazing waves. Not exactly a classic
tableau. You would never mistake them for Romeo and Juliet. And yet
our little ubiquitous friend Eros viewed the picture not without a
smouldering, an incipient satisfaction.
Louise came out of the living room door on to the porch. She could see
Hilda's head and shoulders, and she crossed over to the screen door at
the top of the flight. Hilda looked round quickly.
"Oh, hello, Lou!"
Louise nodded, and made motions of salutation with her lips. There was
no sound, however. She cleared her throat--tried to smile.
Leslie drew himself hurriedly into a more dignified posture. "Hello,"
he smiled, rising a trifle uneasily.
"Just see how many we got!" cried Hilda, jumping up and gathering the
roasting sticks in her arms.
Louise stood there looking down through the screen door. "You certainly
got enough!" she exclaimed, a little shrilly--the result of her trying
so desperately to be perfectly natural.
"Well," Hilda went on, "you see I kept finding little trees so straight
we simply couldn't pass them by. And Leslie just kept cutting. See how
sharp they are?"
Leslie, as though availing himself of the invitation (regardless of its
not having been exactly addressed to him) placed a finger on one of the
smoothly whittled points and withdrew it with a small, oddly juvenile
howl of mock distress. The wounded finger went into his mouth. Leslie
was certainly _not_ at his ease.
Suddenly Hilda ran up close to her sister and asked, in a very low
voice: "Have you been crying?"
Louise's heart jumped. "Why, no," she replied.
"It must be the sun in your eyes," said Hilda.
"Yes, it must be." And she turned away from them and sat in the same
chair her mother had occupied when she had demanded of Alfred if he
thought she might be growing old. Louise rocked slowly, just as her
mother had rocked. Yet her thoughts rushed madly to and fro. There was
a battle of ghosts in her heart.
Aunt Marjie came out breezily, accompanied by Mr. O'Donnell, who was
about to take his departure. The parent Needhams stood side by side in
the cottage doorway, hospitably bowing, but seeming to realize, with a
kind of fineness, that they should come no further, and that the very
last rites must be performed by the lady for whose sake he had been
asked.
Mr. O'Donnell extended a hand of farewell to Louise, who rose.
"Oh, are you going?" she asked.
"Yes--simply have to. They'll decide at the Elmbrook that I'm lost,
strayed, or stolen and will have a search party out!"
"Good-bye, Mr. O'Donnell," said Hilda, prettily holding out her hand.
She was deliciously unspoiled.
He held her hand a moment, looked from her over to Leslie, then at the
bunch of sharpened sticks. And he brazenly winked at Miss Whitcom, who,
glancing discreetly in the direction of her elder niece, remarked that
there was likely to be a gorgeous sunset.
O'Donnell and Leslie shook hands. "See you again tonight?" asked the
boy politely.
"Yes, indeed!" Mrs. Needham called out. "He's coming over to the roast."
"You'll have a devil--I mean, it's very dark in the woods," said
Leslie. He was quite horrified at the slip, and hurried on, expressing
quick generosity by way of gaining cover--a generosity more generous,
no doubt, than he had at first contemplated. "You'd better let me come
and light you through."
O'Donnell patted the lad's shoulder in a very kindly manner, just as he
might pat an obliging bellhop in one of the hotels on his route, who
volunteered to get him up for a five o'clock train.
"Oh, no," he said. "Don't you bother."
"No bother at all," replied Leslie, suddenly seeming to grow quite
enthusiastic over the idea of lighting Mr. O'Donnell through from
Crystalia. His eye encountered Hilda's. It was finally agreed, and
O'Donnell departed, in the very best sort of spirits.
When he had disappeared, the Rev. and Mrs. Needham strolled out on to
the porch. The Rev. Needham was slowly gaining back his ruffled poise.
He and O'Donnell had been smoking some more of the good cigars, and
Marjory hadn't ventured anything so very revolutionary since the remark
about not having time for church. He slipped an arm, just a tiny bit
stiffly, about his wife's waist. He didn't exactly cuddle her; still,
thus fortified, he looked across at his sister-in-law with an inner
mild defiance.
"Well, I must run along," said Leslie, drawing a deep and very
leisurely breath.
"Do you _have_ to go so soon?" Hilda stepped down toward him.
He nodded, thrust his hands into his pockets, drew them out again, was
painfully conscious that Louise was sitting up there on the porch.
Hilda came down another step and stood close to him. "It's awfully
early, Les." Then a brilliant idea sent her unexpectedly scurrying up
the steps and on to the porch. She whispered something in her mother's
ear, upon which Mrs. Needham looked somewhat startled and shook her
head. She and Eliza had planned so carefully. Leslie seemed almost like
one of the family; but what if there shouldn't be enough?
Hilda tossed it off gallantly. She tripped back down the steps and said
she would go with Leslie as far as the choke-cherry tree.
"Good-bye," said Leslie politely to the porch.
"Good-bye, Leslie," said the Rev. and Mrs. Needham in unison.
And it never occurred to them as odd that their younger should be
accompanying Leslie as far as the choke-cherry tree. Oh, the incredible
blindness of parents! Oh, what strangers one's children really are,
after all! And yet, how could it be otherwise? Quaint souls--perhaps
they did not even remember, now Lynndal had come, that it was to the
choke-cherry tree their elder had been wont to go....
Louise called out: "'Bye, Les." She was rocking more vigorously. Her
hands were clasped behind her head and her cheeks were flushed. There
was a curious wild look in her eyes. Aunt Marjie thought her actually
handsome just then.
At the choke-cherry tree Leslie and Hilda indulged in a very desultory
leave-taking. Yet their talk was utterly devoid of anything either
poetic or romantic.
"You'll get your shoe all full of sand, Les." He was scuffing it
mechanically back and forth in the dust of the roadway.
"I don't care."
"I hate to have sand in my shoes."