The first person he encountered in the gun-room was Quarrier, who
favoured him with an expressionless stare, then with a bow, quite
perfunctory and non-committal. It was plain enough that he had not
expected to meet Siward at Shotover House.
Kemp Ferrall, a dark, stocky, active man of forty, was in the act of
draining a glass, when, though the bottom he caught sight of Siward.
He finished in a gulp, and advanced, one muscular hand outstretched:
“Hello, Stephen! Heard you'd arrived, tried the Scotch, and bolted with
Sylvia Landis! That's all right, too, but you should have come for
the opening day. Lots of native woodcock--eh, Blinky?” turning to Lord
Alderdene; and again to Siward: “You know all these fellows--Mortimer
yonder--” There was the slightest ring in his voice; and Leroy Mortimer,
red-necked, bulky, and heavy eyed, emptied his glass and came over,
followed by Lord Alderdene blinking madly though his shooting-goggles
and showing all his teeth like a pointer with a “tic.” Captain Voucher,
a gentleman with the vivid colouring of a healthy groom on a cold day,
came up, followed by the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, who shook hands
shyly, enchanted to be on easy terms with the notorious Mr. Siward. And
last of all Tom O'Hara arrived, reeking of the saddle and clinking a
pair of trooper's spurs over the floor--relics of his bloodless Porto
Rico campaign with Squadron A.
It was patent to every man present that the Kemp Ferralls had determined
to ignore Siward's recent foolishness, which indicated that he might
reasonably expect the continued good-will of several sets, the orbits of
which intersected in the social system of his native city. Indeed, the
few qualified to snub him cared nothing about the matter, and it was not
likely that anybody else would take the initiative in being disagreeable
to a young man, the fortunes and misfortunes of whose race were part of
the history of Manhattan Island. Siwards, good or bad, were a matter of
course in New York.
So everybody in the gun-room was civil enough, and he chose Scotch
and found a seat beside Alderdene, who sat biting at a smoky pipe and
fingering a tumbler of smokier Scotch, blinking away like mad through
his shooting-goggles at everybody.
“These little brown snipe you call woodcock,” he began; “we bagged nine
brace, d'you see? But of all the damnable bogs and covers--”
“Rotten,” said Mortimer thickly; “Ferrall, you're all calf and biceps,
and it's well enough for you to go floundering into bogs--”
“Where do you expect to find native woodcock?” demanded Ferrall,
laughing.
“On the table hereafter,” growled Mortimer.
“Oh, go and pot Beverly Plank's tame pheasants,” retorted Ferrall
amiably; “Captain Voucher had a blank day, but he isn't kicking.”
“Not I,” said Voucher; “the sport is capital--if one can manage to hit
the beggars--”
“Oh, everybody misses in snap-shooting,” observed Ferrall; “that is,
everybody except Stephen Siward with his unholy left barrel. Crack!
and,” turning to Alderdene, “it's like taking money from you,
Blinky--which reminds me that we've time for a little Preference before
dressing.”
His squinting lordship declined and took an easier position in his
chair, extending a pair of little bandy legs draped in baggy tweed
knickerbockers and heather-spats. Mortimer, industriously distending his
skin with whiskey, reached for the decanter. The aromatic perfume of
the spirits aroused Siward, and he instinctively nodded his desire to a
servant.
“This salt air keeps one thirsty,” he observed to Ferrall; then
something in his host's expression arrested the glass at his lips. He
had already been using the decanter a good deal; except Mortimer, nobody
was doing that sort of thing as freely as he.
He set his glass on the table thoughtfully; a tinge of colour had crept
into his lean checks.
Ferrall, too, suddenly uncomfortable, stood up saying something about
dressing; several men arose a trifle stiffly, feeling in every joint the
result of the first day's shooting after all those idle months. Mortimer
got up with an unfeigned groan; Siward followed, leaving his glass
untouched.
One or two other men came in from the billiard-room. All greeted Siward
amiably--all excepting one who may not have seen him--an elderly, pink,
soft gentleman with white downy chop-whiskers and the profile of a
benevolent buck rabbit.
“How do you do, Major Belwether?” said Siward in a low voice without
offering his hand.
Then Major Belwether saw him, bless you! yes indeed! And though Siward
continued not to offer his hand, Major Belwether meant to have it, bless
your heart! And he fussed and fussed and beamed cordiality until he
secured it in his plump white fingers and pressed it effusively.
There was something about his soft, warm hands which had always reminded
Siward of the temperature and texture of a newly hatched bird. It had
been some time since he had shaken hands with Major Belwether; it was
apparent that the bird had not aged any.
“And now for the shooting!” said the Major with an arch smile. “Now for
the stag at bay and the winding horn--
'Where sleeps the moon On Mona's rill--'
Eh, Siward?
'And here's to the hound With his nose upon the ground--'
Eh, my boy? That reminds me of a story--” He chuckled and chuckled,
his lambent eyes suffused with mirth; and slipping his arm through the
pivot-sleeve of Lord Alderdene's shooting-jacket, hooking the other in
Siward's reluctant elbow, and driving Mortimer ahead of him, he went
garrulously away up the stairs, his lordship's bandy little legs
trotting beside him, the soaking gaiters and shoes slopping at every
step.
Mortimer, his mottled skin now sufficiently distended, greeted the story
with a yawn from ear to ear; his lordship, blinking madly, burst into
that remarkable laugh which seemed to reveal the absence of certain
vocal cords requisite to perfect harmony; and Siward smiled in his
listless, pleasant way, and turned off down his corridor, unaware
that the Sagamore pup was following close at his heels until he heard
Quarrier's even, colourless voice: “Ferrall, would you be good enough to
send Sagamore to your kennels?”
“Oh--he's your dog! I forgot,” said Siward turning around.
Quarrier looked at him, pausing a moment.
“Yes,” he said coldly, “he's my dog.”
For a fraction of a second the two men's eyes encountered; then Siward
glanced at the dog, and turned on his heel with the slightest shrug.
And that is all there was to the incident--an anxious, perplexed puppy
lugged off by a servant, turning, jerking, twisting, resisting, looking
piteously back as his unwilling feet slid over the polished floor.
So Siward walked on alone through the long eastern wing to his room
overlooking the sea. He sat down on the edge of his bed, glancing at
the clothing laid out for him. He felt tired and disinclined for the
exertion of undressing. The shades were up; night quicksilvered the
window-panes so that they were like a dark mirror reflecting his
face. He inspected his darkened features curiously; the blurred and
sombre-tinted visage returned the stare.
“Not a man at all--the shadow of a man,” he said aloud--“with no will,
no courage--always putting off the battle, always avoiding conclusions,
always skulking. What chance is there for a man like that?”
As one who raises a glass to drink wine and unexpectedly finds water,
he shrugged his shoulders disgustedly and got up. A bath followed; he
dressed leisurely, and was pacing the room, fussing with his collar,
when Ferrall knocked and entered, finding a seat on the bed.
“Stephen,” he said bluntly, “I haven't seen you since that break of
yours at the club.”
“Rotten, wasn't it?” commented Siward, tying his tie.
“Perfectly. Of course it doesn't make any difference to Grace or to me,
but I fancy you've already heard from it.”
“Oh, yes. All I care about is how my mother took it.”
“Of course; she was cut up I suppose?”
“Yes, you know how she would look at a thing of that sort; not that any
of the nine and seventy jarring sets would care, but those few thousands
invading the edges, butting in--half or three-quarters inside--are the
people who can't afford to overlook the victim of a fashionable club's
displeasure--those, and a woman like my mother, and several other
decent-minded people who happen to count in town.”
Ferrall, his legs swinging busily, thought again; then: “Who was the
girl, Stephen?”
“I don't think the papers mentioned her name,” said Siward gravely.
“Oh--I beg your pardon; I thought she was some notorious
actress--everybody said so. … Who were those callow fools who put you
up to it? … Never mind if you don't care to tell. But it strikes me they
are candidates for club discipline as well as you. It was up to them to
face the governors I think--”
“No, I think not.”
Ferrall, legs swinging busily, considered him.
“Too bad,” he mused; “they need not have dropped you--”
“Oh, they had to. But as long as the Lenox takes no action I can live
that down.”
Ferrall nodded: “I came in to say something--a message from
Grace--confound it! what was it? Oh--could you--before dinner--now--just
sit down and with that infernal facility of yours make a sketch of a man
chasing a gun-shy dog?”
“Why yes--if Mrs. Ferrall wishes--”
He walked over to the desk in his shirt-sleeves, sat down, drew a blank
sheet of paper toward him, and, dipping his pen, drew carelessly a
gun-shy setter dog rushing frantically across the stubble, and after
him, bare-headed, gun in hand, the maddest of men.
“Put a Vandyke beard on him,” grinned Ferrall over his shoulder. “There!
O Lord! but you have hit it! Put a ticked saddle on the cur--there!”
“Who is this supposed to be?” began Siward, looking up. But “Wait!”
chuckled his host, seizing the still wet sketch, and made for the door.
Siward strolled into the bath-room, washed a spot or two of ink from
his fingers, returned and buttoned his waistcoat, then, completing an
unhurried toilet, went out and down the stairway to the big living-room.
There were two or three people there--Mrs. Leroy Mortimer, very fetching
with her Japanese-like colouring, black hair and eyes that slanted just
enough; Rena Bonnesdel, smooth, violet-eyed, blonde, and rather stunning
in a peculiarly innocent way; Miss Caithness, very pale and slimly
attractive; and the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, delightfully shy and
interested, and having a splendid time with any woman who could afford
the intellectual leisure.
Siward spoke pleasantly to them all. Other people drifted down--Marion
Page who looked like a school-marm and rode like a demon; Eileen
Shannon, pink and white as a thorn blossom, with the deuce to pay
lurking in her grey eyes; Kathryn Tassel and Mrs. Vendenning whom he did
not know, and finally his hostess Grace Ferrall with her piquant,
almost boyish, freckled face and sweet frank eyes and the figure of an
adolescent.
She gave Siward one pretty sun-browned hand and laid the other above
his, holding it a moment in her light clasp.
“Stephen! Stephen!” she said under her breath, “it's because I've a few
things to scold you about that I've asked you to Shotover.”
“I suppose I know,” he said.
“I should hope you do. I've a letter to-night from your mother.”
“From my mother?”
“I want you to go over it--with me--if we can find a minute after
dinner.” She released his hand, turning partly around: “Kemp, dinner's
been announced, so cut that dog story in two! Will you give me your arm
Major Belwether? Howard!”--to her cousin, Mr. Quarrier, who turned from
Miss Landis to listen--“will you please try to recollect whom you are
to take in--and do it?” And, as she passed Siward, in a low voice,
mischievous and slangy: “Sylvia Landis for yours--as she says she didn't
have enough of you on the cliffs.”
The others appeared to know how to pair according to some previous
notice. Siward turned to Sylvia Landis with the pleasure of his good
fortune so plainly visible in his face, that her own brightened in
response.
“You see,” she said gaily, “you cannot escape me. There is no use in
looking wildly at Agatha Caithness”--he wasn't--“or pretending you're
pleased,” slipping her rounded, bare arm through the arm he offered.
“You can't guess what I've done to-night--nobody can guess except Grace
Ferrall and one other person. And if you try to look happy beside me,
I may tell you--somewhere between sherry and cognac--Oh, yes; I've done
two things: I have your dog for you!”
“Not Sagamore?” he said incredulously as he was seating her.
“Certainly Sagamore. I said to Mr. Quarrier, 'I want Sagamore,' and when
he tried to give him to me, I made him take my cheque. Now you may
draw another for me at your leisure, Mr. Siward. Tell me, are you
pleased?”--for she was looking for the troubled hesitation in his face
and she saw it dawning.
“Mr. Quarrier doesn't like me, you know--”
“But I do,” she said coolly. “I told him how much pleasure it would give
me. That is sufficient--is it not?--for everybody concerned.”
“He knew that you meant to--”
“No, that concerns only you and me. Are you trying to spoil my pleasure
in what I have done?”
“I can't take the dog, Miss Landis--”
“Oh,” she said, vexed; “I had no idea you were vindictive--”
There was a silence; he bent forward a trifle, gravely scrutinising a
“hand-painted” name card, though it might not have astonished him to
learn that somebody's foot had held the brush. Somewhere in the vicinity
Grace Ferrall had discovered a woman who supported dozens of relatives
by painting that sort of thing for the summer residents at Vermillion
Point down the coast. So being charitable she left an order, and being
thrifty, insisted on using the cards, spite of her husband's gibes.
People were now inspecting them with more or less curiosity; Siward
found his “hand-painting” so unattractive that he had just tipped it
over to avoid seeing it, when a burst of laughter from Lord Alderdene
made everybody turn. Mrs. Vendenning was laughing; so was Rena Bonnesdel
looking over Quarrier's shoulder at a card he was holding--not one of
the “hand-decorated,” but a sheet of note-paper containing a drawing of
a man rushing after a gun-shy dog.
The extraordinary cackling laughter of his lordship obliterated other
sounds for a while; Rena Bonnesdel possessed herself of the drawing and
held it up amid a shout of laughter. And, to his excessive annoyance,
Siward saw that, unconsciously, he had caricatured Quarrier--Ferrall's
malicious request for a Vandyke beard making the caricature dreadfully
apparent.
Quarrier had at first flushed up; then he forced a smile; but his
symmetrical features were never cordial when he smiled.
“Who on earth did that?” whispered Sylvia Landis apprehensively. “Mr.
Quarrier dislikes that sort of thing--but of course he'll take it well.”
“Did he ever chase his own dog?” asked Siward, biting his lip.
“Yes--so Blinky says--in the Carolinas last season. It's Blinky!--that's
his notion of humour. Did you ever hear such a laugh? No wonder Mr.
Quarrier is annoyed.”
The gay uproar had partly subsided, renewed here and there as the sketch
was passed along, and finally, making the circle, returned like a bad
penny to Quarrier. He smiled again, symmetrically, as he received it,
nodding his compliments to Alderdene.
“Oh, no,” cackled his lordship; “I didn't draw it, old chap!”
“Nor I! I only wish I could,” added Captain Voucher.
“Nor I--nor I--who did it?” ran the chorus along the table.
“I didn't do it!” said Sylvia gravely, looking across at Quarrier. And
suddenly Quarrier's large, handsome eyes met Siward's for the briefest
fraction of a second, then were averted. But into his face there crept
an expressionless pallor that did not escape Siward--no, nor Sylvia
Landis.
Presently under cover of a rapid fire of chatter she said: “Did you draw
that?”
“Yes; I had no idea it was meant for him. You may imagine how likely I'd
be to take any liberty with a man who already dislikes me.”
“But it resembles him--in a very dreadful way.”
“I know it. You must take my word for what I have told you.”
She looked up at him: “I do.” Then: “It's a pity; Mr. Quarrier does not
consider such things humourous. He--he is very sensitive. … Oh, I wish
that fool Englishman had been in Ballyhoo!”
“But he didn't do it!”
“No, but he put you up to it--or Grace Ferrall did. I wish Grace would
let Mr. Quarrier alone; she has always been perfectly possessed to
plague him; she seems unable to take him seriously and he simply hates
it. I don't think he'd tolerate her if she were not his cousin.
“I'm awfully sorry,” was all Siward said; and for a while he gloomily
busied himself with whatever was brought to him.
“Don't look that way,” came a low voice beside him.
“Do I show everything as plainly as that?” he asked, curiously.
“I seem to read you--sometimes.”
“It's very nice of you,” he said.
“Nice?”
“To look at me--now and then.”
“Oh,” she cried resentfully, “don't be grateful.”
“I--really am not you know,” he said laughing.
“That,” she rejoined slowly, “is the truth. You say conventional things
in a manner--in an agreeably personal manner that interests women. But
you are not grateful to anybody for anything; you are indifferent, and
you can't help being nice to people, so--some day--some girl will think
you are grateful, and will have a miserable time of it.”
“Miserable time?”
“Waiting for you to say what never will enter your head to say.”
“You mean I--I--”
“Flirt? No, I mean that you don't flirt; that you are always dreamily
occupied with your own affairs, from which listlessly congenial
occupation, when drawn, you are so unexpectedly nice that a girl
immediately desires to see how nice you can be.”
“What a charming indictment you draw!” he said, amused.
“It's a grave one I assure you. I've been talking about you to Grace
Ferrall; I asked to be placed beside you at dinner; I told her I hadn't
had half enough of you on the cliff. Now what do you think of yourself
for being too nice to a susceptible girl? I think it's immoral.”
They both were laughing now; several people glanced at them, smiling
in sympathy. Alderdene took that opportunity to revert to the sketch,
furnishing a specimen of his own inimitable laughter as a running
accompaniment to the story of Quarrier and his dog in North Carolina,
until he had everybody, as usual, laughing, not at the story but at him.
All of which demonstration was bitterly offensive to Quarrier. He turned
his eyes once on Miss Landis and on Siward, then dropped them.
The hostess arose; a rustle and flurry of silk and lace and the scraping
of chairs, a lingering word or laugh, and the colour vanished from the
room leaving a circle of men in black standing around the table.
Here and there a man, lighting a cigarette, bolted his coffee and cognac
and strolled out to the gun-room. Ferrall, gesticulating vigorously,
resumed his preprandial dog story to Captain Voucher; Belwether
buttonholed Alderdene and bored him with an interminably facetious
tale until that nobleman, threatened with maxillary dislocation, fairly
wrenched himself loose and came over to Siward, squinting furiously.
“Old ass!” he muttered; “his chop whiskers look like the chops of a
Southdown ram--and he's got the wits of one. Look here, Stephen, I hear
you fell into no end of a scrape in town--”
“Tu quoque, Blinky? Oh, read the newspapers and let it go at that!”
“Just as you like old chap!” returned his lordship unabashed. “All I
meant was--anything Voucher and I can do--of course--”
“You're very good. I'm not dead you know.”
“'Not dead, you know',” repeated Major Belwether coming up behind them
with his sprightly step; “that reminds me of a good one--” He sat down
and lighted a cigar, then, vainly attempting to control his countenance
as though roguishly anticipating the treat awaiting them, he began
another endless story.
Tradition had hallowed the popular notion that Major Belwether was a
wit. The sycophant of the outer world seldom even awaited his first word
before bursting into premature mirth. Besides he was very wealthy.
Siward watched him with mixed emotions; the lambent-eyed, sheepy
expression had given place to the buck rabbit; his smooth baby-pink skin
and downy white side whiskers quivered in premature sympathy with his
listener's overwhelming hilarity.
The Page boys, very callow, very much delighted, and a little in awe of
such a celebrated personage, laughed heartily. And altogether there was
sufficient attention and sufficient laughter to make a very respectable
noise. This, being the major's cue for an exit, he rose, one sleek hand
raised in sprightly protest as though to shield the invisible ladies, to
whose bournes he was bound, from an uproar too masculine and mighty for
the ears of such a sex.
“Ass!” muttered Alderdene, getting up and pattering about the room in
his big, shiny pumps. “Give me a peg--somebody!”
Mortimer swallowed his brandy, lingered, lifted the decanter,
mechanically considering its remaining contents and his own capacity;
then:
“Bridge, Captain?”
“Certainly,” said Captain Voucher briskly.
“I'll go and shoo the major into the gun-room,” observed
Ferrall--“unless--” looking questioningly at Siward.
“I've a date with your wife,” observed that young man, strolling toward
the hall.
The Page boys, Rena Bonnesdel, and Eileen Shannon were seated at a card
table together, very much engaged with one another, the sealed pack
lying neglected on the green cloth, a vast pink box of bon-bons beside
it, not neglected.
O'Hara and Quarrier with Marion Page and Mrs. Mortimer were immersed in
the game, already stony faced and oblivious to outer sounds.
About the rooms were distributed girls en tête-à-tête, girls eating
bon-bons and watching the cards--among them Sylvia Landis, hands loosely
clasped behind her, standing at Quarrier's elbow to observe and profit
by an expert performance.
As Siward strolled in she raised her dainty head for an instant, smiled
in silence, and resumed a study of her fiancé's game.
A moment later, when Quarrier had emerged brilliantly from the mêlée,
she looked up again, triumphantly, supposing Siward was lingering
somewhere waiting to join her. And she was just a trifle surprised and
disappointed to find him nowhere in sight. She had wished him to observe
the brilliancy of Mr. Quarrier's game.
But Siward, outside on the veranda, was saying at that moment to his
hostess: “I shall be very glad to read my mother's letter at any time
you choose.”
“It must be later, Stephen. I'm to cut in when Kemp sends for me. He has
a lot of letters to attend to. … Tell me, what do you think of Sylvia
Landis?”
“I like her, of course,” he replied pleasantly.
Grace Ferrall stood thinking a moment: “That sketch you made proved a
great success, didn't it?” And she laughed under her breath.
“Did it? I thought Mr. Quarrier seemed annoyed--”
“Really? What a muff that cousin of mine is. He's such a muff, you know,
that the very sight of his pointed beard and pompadour hair and his
complacency sets me in fidgets to stir him up.”
“I don't think you'd best use me for the stick next time,” said Siward.
“He's not my cousin you know.”
Mrs. Ferrall shrugged her boyish shoulders: “By the way”--she said
curiously--“who was that girl?”
“What girl,” he asked coolly, looking at his hostess, now the very
incarnation of delicate mockery with her pretty laughing mouth, her
boyish sunburn and freckles.
“You won't tell me I suppose?”
“I'm sorry--”
“Was she pretty, Stephen?”
“Yes,” he said sulkily; “I wish you wouldn't--”
“Nonsense! Do you think I'm going to let you off without some sort of
confession? If I had time now--but I haven't. Kemp has business letters:
he'll be furious; so I've got to take his cards or we won't have any
pennies to buy gasoline for our adored and shrieking Mercedes.”
She retreated backward with a gay nod of malice, turned to enter the
house, and met Sylvia Landis face to face in the hallway.
“You minx!” she whispered; “aren't you ashamed?”
“Very much, dear. What for?” And catching sight of Siward outside in the
starlight, divined perhaps something of her hostess' meaning, for she
laughed uneasily, like a child who winces under a stern eye.
“You don't suppose for a moment,” she began, “that I have--”
“Yes I do. You always do.”
“Not with that sort of man,” she returned naïvely; “he won't.”
Mrs. Ferrall regarded her suspiciously: “You always pick out exactly the
wrong man to play with--”
They had moved back side by side into the hall, the hostess' arm linked
in the arm of the younger girl.
“The wrong man?” repeated Sylvia, instinctively freeing her arm, her
straight brows beginning to bend inward.
“I didn't mean that--exactly. You know how much I care for his
mother--and for him.” The obstinate downward trend of the brows, the
narrowing blue gaze signalled mutiny to the woman who knew her so well.
“What is so wrong with Mr. Siward?” she asked.
“Nothing. There was an affair--”
“This spring in town. I know it. Is that all?”
“Yes--for the present,” replied Grace Ferrall uncomfortably; then: “For
goodness' sake, Sylvia, don't cross examine me that way! I care a great
deal for that boy--”
“So do I. I've made him take my dog.”
There was an abrupt pause, and presently Mrs. Ferrall began to laugh.
“I mean it--really,” said Sylvia quietly; “I like him immensely.”
“Dearest, you mean it generously--with your usual exaggeration. You have
heard that he has been foolish, and because he's so young, so likable,
every instinct, every impulse in you is aroused to--to be nice to him--”
“And if that were--”
“There is no harm, dear--” Mrs. Ferrall hesitated, her grey eyes
softening to a graver revery. Then looking up: “It's rather pathetic,”
she said in a low voice. “Kemp thinks he's foredoomed--like all the
Siwards. It's an hereditary failing with him,--no, it's hereditary
damnation. Siward after Siward, generation after generation you know--”
She bit her lip, thinking a moment. “His grandfather was a friend of
my grand-parents, brilliant, handsome, generous, and--doomed! His own
father was found dying in a dreadful resort in London where he had
wandered when stupefied--a Siward! Think of it! So you see what that
outbreak of Stephen's means to those whose families have been New
Yorkers since New York was. It is ominous, it is more than ominous--it
means that the master-vice has seized on one more Siward. But I shall
never, never admit it to his mother.”
The younger girl sat wide-eyed, silent; the elder's gaze was upon her,
but her thoughts, remote, centred on the hapless mother of such a son.
“Such indulgence was once fashionable; moderation is the present
fashion. Perhaps he will fall into line,” said Mrs. Ferrall
thoughtfully. “The main thing is to keep him among people, not to
drop him. The gregarious may be shamed, but if anything, any incident,
happens to drive him outside by himself, if he should become solitary,
there's not a chance in the world for him. … It's a pity. I know he
meant to make himself the exception to the rule--and look! Already one
carouse of his has landed him in the daily papers!”
Sylvia flushed and looked up: “Grace, may I ask you a plain question?”
“Yes, child,” she answered absently.
“Has it occurred to you that what you have said about this boy touches
me very closely?”
Mrs. Ferrall's wits returned nimbly from woolgathering, and she shot a
startled, inquiring glance at the girl beside her.
“You--you mean the matter of heredity, Sylvia?”
“Yes. I think my uncle Major Belwether chose you as his august
mouthpiece for that little sermon on the dangers of heredity--the danger
of being ignorant concerning what women of my race had done--before I
came into the world they found so amusing.”
“I told you several things,” returned Mrs. Ferrall composedly. “Your
uncle thought it best for you to know.”
“Yes. The marriage vows sat lightly upon some of my ancestors, I gather.
In fact,” she added coolly, “where the women of my race loved they
usually found the way--rather unconventionally. There was, if I
understood you, enough of divorce, of general indiscretion and
irregularity to seriously complicate any family tree and coat of arms I
might care to claim--”
“Sylvia!”
The girl lifted her pretty bare shoulders. “I'm sorry, but could I help
it? Very well; all I can do is to prove a decent exception. Very well;
I'm doing it, am I not?--practically scared into the first solidly
suitable marriage offered--seizing the unfortunate Howard with both
hands for fear he'd get away and leave me alone with only a queer
family record for company! Very well! Now then, I want to ask you why
everybody, in my case, didn't go about with sanctimonious faces and
dolorous mien repeating: 'Her grand-mother eloped! Her mother ran away.
Poor child, she's doomed! doomed!'”
“Sylvia, I--”
“Yes--why didn't they? That's the way they talk about that boy out
there!” She swept a rounded arm toward the veranda.
“Yes, but he has already broken loose, while you--”
“So did I--nearly! Had it not been for you, you know well enough I might
have run away with that dreadful Englishman at Newport! For I adored
him--I did! I did! and you know it. And look at my endless escapes from
compromising myself! Can you count them?--all those indiscretions when
mere living seemed to intoxicate me that first winter--and only my uncle
and you to break me in!”
“In other words,” said Mrs. Ferrall slowly, “you don't think Mr. Siward
is getting what is known as a square deal?”
“No, I don't. Major Belwether has already hinted--no, not even that--but
has somehow managed to dampen my pleasure in Mr. Siward.”
Mrs. Ferrall considered the girl beside her--now very lovely and flushed
in her suppressed excitement.
“After all,” she said, “you are going to marry somebody else. So why
become quite so animated about a man you may never again see?”
“I shall see him if I desire to!”
“Oh!”
“I am not taking the black veil, am I?” asked the girl hotly.
“Only the wedding veil, dear. But after all your husband ought to have
something to suggest concerning a common visiting list--”
“He may suggest--certainly. In the meantime I shall be loyal to my own
friends--and afterward, too,” she murmured to herself, as her hostess
rose, calmly dropping care like a mantle from her shoulders.
“Go and be good to this poor young man then; I adore rows--and you'll
have a few on your hands I'll warrant. Let me remind you that your uncle
can make it unpleasant for you yet, and that your amiable fiancé has a
will of his own under his pompadour and silky beard.”
“What a pity to have it clash with mine,” said the girl serenely.
Mrs. Ferrall looked at her: “Mercy on us! Howard's pompadour would stick
up straight with horror if he could hear you! Don't be silly; don't for
an impulse, for a caprice, break off anything desirable on account of
a man for whom you really care nothing--whose amiable exterior and
prospective misfortune merely enlist a very natural and generous
sympathy in you.”
“Do you suppose that I shall endure interference from anybody?--from my
uncle, from Howard?”
“Dear, you are making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Don't be emotional;
don't let loose impulses that you and I know about, knew about in our
school years, know all about now, and which you and I have decided must
be eliminated--”
“You mean subdued; they'll always be there.”
“Very well; who cares, as long as you have them in leash?”
Looking at one another, the excited colour cooling in the younger girl's
cheeks, they laughed, one with relief, the other a little ashamed.
“Kemp will be furious; I simply must cut in!” said Mrs. Ferrall, hastily
turning toward the gun-room. Miss Landis looked after her, subdued,
vaguely repentant, the consciousness dawning upon her that she had
probably made considerable conversation about nothing.
“It's been so all day,” she thought impatiently; “I've exaggerated; I've
worked up a scene about a man whose habits are not the slightest concern
of mine. Besides that I've neglected Howard shamefully!” She was walking
slowly, her thoughts outstripping her errant feet, but it seemed that
neither her thoughts nor her steps were leading her toward the neglected
gentleman within; for presently she found herself at the breezy veranda
door, looking rather fixedly at the stars.
The stars, shining impartially upon the just and the unjust, illuminated
the person of Siward, who sat alone, rather limply, one knee crossed
above the other. He looked up by chance, and, seeing her star-gazing in
the doorway, straightened out and rose to his feet.
Aware of him apparently for the first time, she stepped across the
threshold meeting his advance half-way.
“Would you care to go down to the rocks?” he asked. “The surf is
terrific.”
“No--I don't think I care--”
They stood listening a moment to the stupendous roar.
“A storm somewhere at sea,” he concluded.
“Is it very fine--the surf?”
“Very fine--and very relentless--” he laughed; “it is an unfriendly
creature, the sea, you know.”
She had begun to move toward the cliffs, he fell into step beside her;
they spoke little, a word now and then.
The perfume of the mounting sea saturated the night with wild fragrance;
dew lay heavy on the lawns; she lifted her skirts enough to clear the
grass, heedless that her silk-shod feet were now soaking. Then at the
cliffs' edge, as she looked down into the white fury of the surf, the
stunning crash of the ocean saluted her.
For a long while they watched in silence; once she leaned a trifle
too far over the star-lit gulf and, recoiling, involuntarily steadied
herself on his arm.
“I suppose,” she said, “no swimmer could endure that battering.”
“Not long.”
“Would there be no chance?”
“Not one.”
She bent farther outward, fascinated, stirred, by the splendid frenzy of
the breakers.
“I--think--,” he began quietly; then a firm hand fell over her left
hand; and, half encircled by his arm she found herself drawn back.
Neither spoke; two things she was coolly aware of, that, urged, drawn by
something subtly irresistible she had leaned too far out from the cliff,
and would have leaned farther had he not taken matters into his own
keeping without apology. Another thing; the pressure of his hand over
hers remained a sensation still--a strong, steady, masterful imprint
lacking hesitation or vacillation. She was as conscious of it as though
her hand still tightened under his--and she was conscious, too, that
nothing of his touch had offended; that there had arisen in her no
tremor of instinctive recoil. For never before had she touched or
suffered a touch from a man, even a gloved greeting, that had not in
some measure subtly repelled her, nor, for that matter, a caress from a
woman without a reaction of faint discomfort.
“Was I in any actual danger?” she asked curiously.
“I think not. But it was too much responsibility for me.”
“I see. Any time I wish to break my neck I am to please do it alone in
future.”
“Exactly--if you don't mind,” he said smiling.
They turned, shoulder to shoulder, walking back through the drenched
herbage.
“That,” she said impulsively, “is not what I said a few moments ago to a
woman.”
“What did you say a few moments ago to a woman?”
“I said, Mr. Siward, that I would not leave a--a certain man to go to
the devil alone!”
“Do you know any man who is going to the devil?”
“Do you?” she asked, letting herself go swinging out upon a tide of
intimacy she had never dreamed of risking--nor had she the slightest
idea whither the current would carry her.
They had stopped on the lawn, ankle deep in wet grass, the stars
overhead sparkling magnificently, and in their ears the outcrash of the
sea.
“You mean me,” he concluded.
“Do I?”
He looked up into the lovely face; her eyes were very sweet, very
clear--clear with excitement--but very friendly.
“Let us sit here on the steps a little while, will you?” she asked.
So he found a place beside her, one step lower, and she leaned forward,
elbows on knees, rounded white chin in her palms, the starlight giving
her bare arms and shoulders a marble lustre and tinting her eyes a
deeper amethyst.
And now, innocently untethered, mission and all, she laid her heart
quite bare--one chapter of it. And, like other women-errant who believe
in the influence of their sex individually and collectively, she began
wrong by telling him of her engagement--perhaps to emphasise her pure
disinterestedness in a crusade for principle only. Which naturally
dampened in him any nascent enthusiasm for being ministered to, and so
preoccupied him that he turned deaf ears to some very sweet platitudes
which might otherwise have impressed him as discoveries in philosophy.
Officially her creed was the fashionable one in town; privately she had
her own religion, lacking some details truly enough, but shaped upon
youthful notions of right and wrong. As she had not read very widely,
she supposed that she had discovered this religion for herself; she was
not aware that everybody else had passed that way--it being the first
immature moult in young people after rejecting dogma.
And the ripened fruit of all this philosophy she helpfully dispensed for
Siward's benefit as bearing directly on his case.
Had he not been immersed in the unexpected proposition of her impending
matrimony, he might have been impressed, for the spell of her beauty
counted something, and besides, he had recently formulated for himself
a code of ethics, tinctured with Omar, and slightly resembling her own
discoveries in that dog-eared science.
So it was, when she was most eloquent, most earnestly inspired--nay in
the very middle of a plea for sweetness and light and simple living,
that his reasonings found voice in the material comment:
“I never imagined you were engaged!”
“Is that what you have been thinking about?” she asked, innocently
astonished.
“Yes. Why not? I never for one instant supposed--”
“But, Mr. Siward, why should you have concerned yourself with supposing
anything? Why indulge in any speculation of that sort about me?”
“I don't know, but I didn't,” he said.
“Of course you didn't; you'd known me for about three hours--there on
the cliff--”
“But--Quarrier--!”
Over his youthful face a sullen shadow had fallen--flickering, not yet
settled. He would not for anything on earth have talked freely to the
woman destined to be Quarrier's wife. He had talked too much anyway.
Something in her, something about her had loosened his tongue. He had
made a plain ass of himself--that was all,--a garrulous ass. And truly
it seemed that the girl beside him, even in the starlight, could follow
and divine what he had scarcely expressed to himself; or her instincts
had taken a shorter cut to forestall his own conclusion.
“Don't think the things you are thinking!” she said in a fierce little
voice, leaning toward him.
“What do you mean?” he asked, taken aback.
“You know! Don't! It is unfair--it is--is faithless--to me. I am your
friend; why not? Does it make any difference to you whom I marry? Cannot
two people remain in accord anyway? Their friendship concerns each other
and--nobody else!” She was letting herself go now; she was conscious of
it, conscious that impulse and emotion were the currents unloosed
and hurrying her onward. And with it all came exhilaration, a faint
intoxication, a delicate delight in daring to let go all and trust to
impulse and emotions.
“Why should you feel hurt because for a moment you let me see--gave me
a glimpse of yourself--of life's battle as you foresee it? What if
there is always a reaction from all confidences exchanged? What if that
miserable French cynic did say that never was he more alone than after
confessing to a friend? He died crazy anyhow. Is not a rare moment of
confidence worth the reaction--the subsidence into the armored shell of
self? Tell me truly, Mr. Siward, isn't it?”
Breathless, confused, exhilarated by her own rapid voice she bent her
face, brilliant with colour, and very sweet; and he looked up into it,
expectant, uncertain.
“If such a friendship as ours is to become worth anything to you--to me,
why should it trouble you that I know--and am thinking of things that
concern you? Is it because the confidence is one-sided? Is it because
you have given and I have listened and given nothing in return to
balance the account? I do give--interest, deep interest, sympathy if you
ask it; I give confidence in return--if you desire it!”
“What can a girl like you need of sympathy?” he said smiling.
“You don't know! you don't know! If heredity is a dark vista, and if
you must stare through it all your life, sword in hand, always on your
guard, do you think you are the only one?”
“Are you--one?” he said incredulously.
“Yes”--with an involuntary shudder--“not that way. It is easier for me;
I think it is--I know it is. But there are things to combat--impulses,
a recklessness, perhaps something almost ruthless. What else I do not
know, for I have never experienced violent emotions of any sort--never
even deep emotion.”
“You are in love!”
“Yes, thoroughly,” she added with conviction, “but not violently. I--”
she hesitated, stopped short, leaning forward, peering at him through
the dusk; and: “Mr. Siward! are you laughing?” She rose and he stood up
instantly.
There was lightning in her darkening eyes now; in his something that
glimmered and danced. She watched it, fascinated, then of a sudden the
storm broke and they were both laughing convulsively, face to face there
under the stars.
“Mr. Siward,” she breathed, “I don't know what I am laughing at; do you?
Is it at you? At myself? At my poor philosophy in shreds and tatters? Is
it some infernal mirth that you seem to be able to kindle in me--for I
never knew a man like you before?”
“You don't know what you were laughing at?” he repeated. “It was
something about love--”
“No I don't know why I laughed! I--I don't wish to, Mr. Siward. I do
not desire to laugh at anything you have made me say--anything you may
infer--”
“I don't infer--”
“You do! You made me say something--about my being ignorant of deep,
of violent emotion, when I had just informed you that I am thoroughly,
thoroughly in love--”
“Did I make you say all that, Miss Landis?”
“You did. Then you laughed and made me laugh too. Then you--”
“What did I do then?” he asked, far too humbly.
“You--you infer that I am either not in love or incapable of it, or too
ignorant of it to know what I'm talking about. That, Mr. Siward, is what
you have done to me to-night.”
“I--I'm sorry--”
“Are you?”
“I ought to be anyway,” he said.
It was unfortunate; an utterly inexcusable laughter seemed to bewitch
them, hovering always close to his lips and hers.
“How can you laugh!” she said. “How dare you! I don't care for you
nearly as violently as I did, Mr. Siward. A friendship between us would
not be at all good for me. Things pass too swiftly--too intimately.
There is too much mockery in you--” She ceased suddenly, watching
the sombre alteration of his face; and, “Have I hurt you?” she asked
penitently.
“No.”
“Have I, Mr. Siward? I did not mean it.” The attitude, the words,
slackening to a trailing sweetness, and then the moment's silence,
stirred him.
“I'm rather ignorant myself of violent emotion,” he said. “I suspect
normal people are. You know better than I do whether love is usually a
sedative.”
“Am I normal--after what I have confessed?” she asked. “Can't love be
well-bred?”
“Perfectly I should say--only perhaps you are not an expert--”
“In what?”
“In self-analysis, for example.”
There was a vague meaning in the gaze they exchanged.
“As for our friendship, we'll do the best we can for it, no matter what
occurs,” he added, thinking of Quarrier. And, thinking of him, glanced
up to see him within ear-shot and moving straight toward them from the
veranda above.
There was a short silence; a tentative civil word from Siward; then Miss
Landis took command of something that had a grotesque resemblance to a
situation. A few minutes later they returned slowly to the house, the
girl walking serenely between Siward and her preoccupied affianced.
“If your shoes are as wet as my skirts and slippers you had better
change, Mr. Siward,” she said, pausing at the foot of the staircase.
So he took his congé, leaving her standing there with Quarrier, and
mounted to his room.
In the corridor he passed Ferrall, who had finished his business
correspondence and was returning to the card-room.
“Here's a letter that Grace wants you to see,” he said. “Read it before
you turn in, Stephen.”
“All right; but I'll be down later,” replied Siward passing on, the
letter in his hand. Entering his room he kicked off his wet pumps and
found dry ones. Then moved about, whistling a gay air from some recent
vaudeville, busy with rough towels and silken foot-gear, until, reshod
and dry, he was ready to descend once more.
The encounter, the suddenly informal acquaintance with this young girl
had stirred him agreeably, leaving a slight exhilaration. Even her
engagement to Quarrier added a tinge of malice to his interest. Besides
he was young enough to feel the flattery of her concern for him--of
her rebuke, of her imprudence, her generous emotional and childish
philosophy.
Perhaps, as like recognises like, he recognised in her the instincts of
the born drifter, momentarily at anchor--the temporary inertia of the
opportunist, the latent capacity of an unformed character for all things
and anything. Add to these her few years, her beauty, and the
wholesome ignorance so confidently acknowledged, what man could remain
unconcerned, uninterested in the development of such possibilities? Not
Siward, amused by her sagacious and impulsive prudence, worldliness, and
innocence in accepting Quarrier; and touched by her profitless, frank,
and unworldly friendliness for himself.
Not that he objected to her marrying Quarrier; he rather admired her for
being able to do it, considering the general scramble for Quarrier. But
let that take care of itself; meanwhile, their sudden and capricious
intimacy had aroused him from the morbid reaction consequent upon the
cheap notoriety which he had brought upon himself. Let him sponge his
slate clean and begin again a better record, flattered by the solicitude
she had so prettily displayed.
Whistling under his breath the same gay, empty melody, he opened the top
drawer of his dresser, dropped in his mother's letter, and locking the
drawer, pocketed the key. He would have time enough to read the letter
when he went to bed; he did not just now feel exactly like skimming
through the fond, foolish sermon which he knew had been preached at him
through his mother's favourite missionary, Grace Ferrall. What was
the use of dragging in the sad old questions again--of repeating his
assurances of good behaviour, of reiterating his promises of moderation
and watchfulness, of explaining his own self-confidence? Better that the
letter await his bed time--his prayers would be the sincerer the fresher
the impression; for he was old-fashioned enough to say the prayers that
an immature philosophy proved superfluous. For, he thought, if prayer is
any use, it takes only a few minutes to be on the safe side.
So he went down-stairs leisurely, prepared to acquiesce in any
suggestion from anybody, but rather hoping to saunter across Sylvia
Landis' path before being committed.
She was standing beside the fire with Quarrier, one foot on the fender,
apparently too preoccupied to notice him; so he strolled into the
gun-room, which was blue with tobacco smoke and aromatic with the
volatile odours from decanters.
There were a few women there, and the majority of the men. Lord
Alderdene, Major Belwether, and Mortimer were at a table by themselves;
stacks of ivory chips and five cards spread in the centre of the green
explained the nature of their game; and Mortimer, raising his heavy
inflamed eyes and seeing Siward unoccupied, said wheezily: “Cut out that
'widow,' and give Siward his stack! Anything above two pairs for a jack
triples the ante. Come on, Siward, there's a decent chap!”
So he seated himself for a sacrifice to the blind goddess balanced upon
her winged wheel; and the cards ran high--so high that stacks dwindled
or toppled within the half-hour, and Mortimer grew redder and redder,
and Major Belwether blander and blander, and Alderdene's face wore a
continual nervous snicker, showing every white hound's tooth, and the
ice in the tall glasses clinked ceaselessly.
It was late when Quarrier “sat in,” with an expressionless
acknowledgment of Siward's presence, and an emotionless raid upon
his neighbour's resources with the first hand dealt, in which he
participated without drawing a card.
And always Siward, eyes on his cards, seemed to see Quarrier before him,
his overmanicured fingers caressing his silky beard, the symmetrical
pompadour dark and thick as the winter fur on a rat, tufting his smooth
blank forehead.
It was very late when Siward first began to be aware of his increasing
deafness, the difficulty, too, that he had in making people hear, the
annoying contempt in Quarrier's woman-like eyes. He felt that he was
making a fool of himself, very noiselessly somehow--but with more racket
than he expected when he miscalculated the distance between his hand and
a decanter.
It was time for him to go--unless he chose to ask Quarrier for an
explanation of that sneer which he found distasteful. But there was too
much noise, too much laughter.
Besides he had a matter to attend to--the careful perusal of his
mother's letter to Mrs. Ferrall.
Very white, he rose. After an indeterminate interval he found himself
entering his room.
The letter was in the dresser; several things seemed to fall and
break, but he got the letter, sank down on the bed's edge and strove to
read,--set his teeth grimly, forcing his blurred eyes to a focus. But he
could make nothing of it--nor of his toilet either, nor of Ferrall, who
came in on his way to bed having noticed the electricity still in full
glare over the open transom, and who straightened out matters for the
stunned man lying face downward across the bed, his mother's letter
crushed in his nerveless hand.