He was not given much to reading, but when Martin left the cottage and
stood out in the liquid silver of the moon under the vast dome which
dazzled with stars, and he caught the flash of fireflies among the
undergrowth that were like the lanterns of the fairies a line came into
his mind that he liked and repeated several times, rather whimsically
pleased with himself for having found it at exactly the right moment.
It was "the witching hour of night."
He remained on top of the incline for a little while, moved to that
spirit of the realization of God which touches the souls of sensitive
men when they are awed by the wonder and the beauty of the earth. He
stood quite still, disembodied for the moment, uplifted, stirred, with
all the scents and all the whisperings about him, humble, childlike,
able, in that brief flight of ecstasy, to understand the language of
another world.
And then the stillness was suddenly cut by a scream of vacuous
laughter, probably that of an exuberant Irish maid-servant, to whom
silences are made to break, carrying on, most likely, a rough
flirtation with a chauffeur.
It brought Martin back to earth like the stick of a rocket. But he
didn't go down immediately to the water. He sat there and nursed his
knees and began to think. Whether it was Howard's unexpected talk of
Plattsburg and of being made something of or not he didn't know. What
he did know was that he was suddenly filled with a sort of fright....
"Good God," he said to himself, "time's rushing away, and I'm nearly
twenty-six. I'm as old as some men who have done things and made things
and are planted on their feet. What have I done? What am I fit to do?
Nearly twenty-six and I'm still playing games like a schoolboy!...
What's my father saying? 'We count it death to falter not to die' ...
I've been faltering--and before I know anything about it I shall be
thirty--half-time.... This can't go on. This waiting for Joan is
faltering. If she's not coming to me I must go to her. If it's not
coming right it must end and I must get mended and begin again. I can't
stand in father's shoes with all he worked to make in my hands like
ripe plums. It isn't fair, or straight. I must push up a rung and carry
things on for him. Could I look him in the face having slacked? My God,
I wish I'd watched the time rush by! I'm nearly twenty-six ...
Joan--to-morrow. That's the thing to do." He got up and strode quickly
down to the water. "If she's going to be my wife, that's a good step
on. And she can help me like no one but my father. And then I'll make
something of myself. If not ... if not,--no faltering, Gray,--then I'll
do it alone for both their sakes."
He chucked his sweater into the dingey, shoved it off the beach and
sprang in and rowed strongly towards the yawl. Somehow he felt broader
of back and harder of muscle for this summing up of things, this audit
of his account. He was nearly twenty-six and nothing was done. That was
the report he had to make to his conscience, that was what he had to
say to the man who smiled down upon him from his place in the New York
house.... Good Lord, it was about time that he pulled himself together.
The yawl was lying alone, aloof from the other small craft anchored
near the pier. Her mast seemed taller and her lines more graceful
silhouetted against the sky, silvered by the moon. It was indeed the
witching hour of night.
He got aboard and tied up the dingey, cast a look round to see that
everything was shipshape, took in a deep breath and went into the
cabin. He was not tired and never felt less like sleep. His brain was
clear as though a fog had risen from it, and energy beat in him like a
running engine. He would light the lamp, get into his pajamas and think
about to-morrow and Joan. He was mighty glad to have come to a decision.
Stooping, he lit the lamp, turned and gave a gasp of surprise.
There, curled up like a water sprite on the unmade bunk lay Tootles in
bathing clothes, holding a rubber cap in her hand, her head, with its
golden bobbed hair, dented into a cushion.
For a moment she pretended to be asleep, but anxiety to see how Martin
was looking was too much for her. Also her clothes were wet and not
very comfortable. She opened her eyes and sat up.
"My dear Tootles!" said Martin, "what's the idea? You said you were
going home to bed." She would rather that he had been angry than
amused. "It was the night," she said, "and something in the air. I just
had to bathe and swam out here. I didn't think you'd be coming yet. I
suppose you think I'm bug-house."
"No, I don't. If I hadn't taken my bathing suit to the cottage to be
mended I'd have a dip myself. Cigarette?" He held one out.
But she shook her head. How frightfully natural and brotherly this boy
was, she thought. Was her last desperate card to be as useless as all
the rest of the pack? How could it be! They might as well be on a
desert island out there on the water and she the only woman on it.
"Feel a bit chilly? You'd better put on this sweater."
She took it from him but laid it aside. "No. The air's too warm," she
said. "Oh, ho, I'm so sleepy," and she stretched herself out again with
her hands under her head.
"I'm not," said Martin. "I'm tremendously awake. Let's talk if you're
not in a hurry to get back."
"I'm very happy here," she answered. "But must we have that lamp? It
glares and makes the cabin hot."
"The moon's better than all the lamps," said Martin, and put it out. He
sat on his bunk and the gleam of his cigarette came and went. It was
like a big firefly in the half dark cabin. "To-morrow," he said to
himself, with a tingle running through his blood, "to-morrow--and Joan."
Tootles waited for him to speak. She might as well have been miles away
for all that she affected him. He seemed to have forgotten that she was
alive.
He had. And there was a long silence.
"To-morrow,--and Joan. That's it. I'll go over to Easthampton and take
her away from that house and talk to her. This time I'll break
everything down and tell her what she means to me. I've never told her
that."
"He doesn't care," thought Tootles. "I'm no more than an old shoe to
him."
"If I'd told her it might have made a difference. Even if she had
laughed at me she would have had something to catch hold of if she
wanted it. By Jove, I wish I'd had the pluck to tell her."
"He even looks at me and doesn't see me," she went on thinking, her
hopes withering like cut flowers, her eagerness petering out and a
great humiliation creeping over her. "What's the matter with me? Some
people think I'm pretty. Irene does ... and last night, when I kissed
him there was an answer.... Has that girl come between us again?"
And so they went on, these two, divided by a thousand miles, each
absorbed in individual thought, and there was a long queer silence.
But she was there to fight, and having learned one side of men during
her sordid pilgrimage and having an ally in Nature, she got up and sat
down on the bunk at his side, snuggling close.
"You are cold, Tootles," he said, and put his arm round her.
And hope revived, like a dying fire licked by a sudden breeze, and she
put her bobbed head on his broad shoulder.
But he was away again, miles and miles away, thinking back, unfolding
all the moments of his first companionship with Joan and looking at
them wistfully to try and find some tenderness; thinking forward, with
the picture of Joan's face before him and wondering what would come
into her eyes when he laid his heart bare for her gaze.
Waiting and waiting, on the steady rise and fall of his chest,--poor
little starved Tootles, poor little devil,--tears began to gather,
tears as hot as blood, and at last they broke and burst in an awful
torrent, and she flung herself face down upon the other bunk, crying
incoherently to God to let her die.
And once more the boy's spirit, wandering high in pure air, fell like
the stick of a rocket, and he sprang up and bent over the pitiful
little form,--not understanding because Joan held his heart and kept it
clean.
"Tootles," he cried out. "Dear old Tootles. What is it? What's
happened?"
But there was only brotherliness in his kind touch, only the same
solicitude that he had shown her all along. Nothing else. Not a thing.
And she knew it, at last, definitely. This boy was too different, too
much the other girl's--curse her for having all the luck.
For an instant, for one final desperate instant, she was urged to try
again, to fling aside control and restraint and with her trembling body
pressed close and her eager arms clasped about his neck, pour out her
love and make a passionate stammering plea for something,--just
something to put into her memory, her empty loveless memory,--but
suddenly, like the gleam of a lamp in a tunnel, her pride lit up, the
little streak of pride which had taken her unprofaned through all her
sordid life, and she sat up, choked back her sobs, and dried her face
with the skirt of her bathing dress.
"Don't mind me," she said. "It's the night or something. It got on my
nerves, I suppose, like--like the throb of an organ. I dunno. I'm all
right now, anyway." And she stood in front of him bravely, with her
chin up, but her heart breaking, and her attempt to make a laugh must
surely have been entered in the book of human courage.
But before Martin could say anything, she slipped into the cockpit,
balanced herself on the ledge of the cabin house, said "Good night, old
dear," and waved her hand, dived into the silver water and swam
strongly towards the beach.