CYNTHIA'S BIRTHDAY
Cynthia woke on the eighth of January to the knowledge that a
thrilling day for her had just begun. She looked out beneath the sun
blinds across the Daventry estancia. Not a hand-breadth of cloud was
visible. The brown earth baked under a blinding sun and the sky fitted
down-upon it like a cap of brass. Inside the room, however, there was
neither glare nor heat; and Cynthia stood with her expectations of the
day fluttering about her like a shower of rose leaves. She was
seventeen this morning, and the pride of it set her heart dancing.
There would be letters downstairs from her friends, she hoped. There
was a string of pearls, she knew. It had been bought that winter in
Buenos Ayres with so elaborate a secrecy, and after so much furtive
discussion as to whether it was good enough, that she could not but
know of it. Moreover, there was a most important telegram to be
despatched immediately after breakfast; a telegram of so much
consequence that no hand but hers must write it out and send it off.
So Cynthia was quick this morning. She dressed herself in a cool white
frock, her white shoes and stockings, and ran lightly down the stairs
into that room where years before a chandelier had of its own accord
swung to and fro.
Valparaiso had long since been rebuilt, but Robert and Joan Daventry
still kept house in Buenos Ayres through the winter, and made the
estancia their summer home. The years, however, had brought their
changes. Robert and Joan were frankly an old couple nowadays; a young
Englishman was sitting at the breakfast table; he undertook the whole
burden of management; and, finally, there was Cynthia. The "other
plan," so often debated and so often shelved, had been adopted, after
all; the experiment from which Robert Daventry had so shrunk had been
risked; and Cynthia was the triumphant flower of it.
She greeted the old couple tenderly, shook hands with Richard Walton,
the young manager, and received his good wishes with a pretty
assumption of great dignity. But her eyes strayed to the table, where
her place was piled high with parcels and letters, and her dignity
vanished in her delight.
"I have many friends," she cried, with a sort of wonder in her voice
very taking to those who looked on her while she spoke. For she could
not but have friends, it seemed. So frank a wish to please and so
sweet a modesty were linked to so much beauty. It was not the beauty
of Argentina, though a rhapsodist might have maintained that some of
its sunlight was held prisoner in the heavy ripples of her hair. But
the hair was light brown in color, where the gold did not shine, and
the rose was in her cheeks. A broad forehead, eyebrows thick and
brown, curving across a fair skin above great eyes of a deep blue set
rather wide apart, gave to her face a curious distinction. And her
eyes looked out from so dark a wealth of lashes that they seemed
unfathomable with mysteries--until she spoke. Then kindliness and a
fresh joy in life lit them with soft fires. For the rest, she was
neither short nor remarkable for height, the nose and the nostrils
delicate, the chin small, but a definite chin. As for her mouth, it
was not a rosebud, nor again was it a letter-box. It suited her and
she could afford to smile. One granted her, at a glance, health and a
look of race.
She began to open her letters and her presents. "Yes, I have many
friends," she repeated.
"It may be surprising," said Robert Daventry. "But it seems to be
true. In fact, I am not quite sure that I have not some small token
about me that Joan and I don't dislike you altogether."
He fumbled first in one pocket, then in another.
"Really?" cried Cynthia. She leaned toward him, all eagerness and
curiosity. Her lips were parted in a smile. She followed the movements
of his hands with an air of suspense. She knew very well that half the
pleasure of the givers would be spoilt if she betrayed any knowledge
of the gift.
"What can it be?" Her whole attitude asked, while Robert Daventry
slapped himself and looked under the table in a great fluster lest he
should have mislaid the present. His concern was sheer farce; she,
with a subtle skill of comedy, played her little part of happy
impatience.
"Ah!" cried Robert Daventry at last. "It is not lost;" and he took out
from his breast pocket a narrow case of green leather and from the
white satin lining of the case the expected string of pearls. She
stood up while Robert Daventry clasped it about her throat, and, as
she took her seat again, she said in a low voice:
"You are both extraordinarily kind to me. I often wonder what would
have become of me but for you--where I should be now."
For a moment both of the old people looked startled. Then Robert
Daventry hastened to protest.
"My dear," he cried in a flurry, "you are, after all, of my flesh and
blood. And flesh and blood has its claims."
Joan's quiet voice came to his help:
"Besides, the debt is not all on one side, Cynthia. We were not very
contented until you came to us, were we Robert?"
"No, we weren't," he replied with relief, like a man floundering who
finds solid ground under his feet. "We had lived hard and had done a
great deal of work, and we were beginning to ask ourselves why. The
heat and the ardor were over, you see. Our lives were cooling down. We
had come to a time when one is apt to sit at night over the fire and
wonder regretfully, now that no change is possible, whether we hadn't
aimed at the wrong things and got less than we might have got out of
our lives. We had piled up, and were still piling up, a great deal
more money than we had any use for. We had made Daventry out of a
plain as bare as the palm of my hand, and we had no one very dear to
us to whom we could leave it. There didn't seem to be much use in
things. Next week was going to be like this week, and the week after
like next week, and life altogether nothing more than a succession of
dull things. We were very nearly abandoning the estancia and retiring
to England when my brother died."
"And left me to you," said Cynthia.
Robert Daventry nodded.
"And then our discontent vanished," said he.
Cynthia shook her head.
"I don't remember very much of those days, but I remember enough to be
sure that I gave you a good deal of trouble." She spoke lightly to
hide the emotion which the kindness of these friends had stirred in
her.
Joan Daventry smiled.
"Yes, you gave us trouble, Cynthia," she said. "We are frightened by
it still, at times. We are growing old and there is no other young
spirit in the house, and it is possible that you might find your life
rather dull, just as we did before you came to us."
"Dull?" cried Cynthia. "With you two dear people?" She held a hand
lovingly to each, and now was hiding nothing of what she felt.
"Besides, I have my friends. I meet them in Buenos Ayres. They come
here to visit me. You gave them to me, as you have given me
everything. Look at the number of them!" and she proudly pointed to
her letters. She read them through and she breakfasted, and at the end
of the meal gathered them in her hands.
"I must send some telegrams," she said. "I will drive to the railway
station."
"Now?" Joan Daventry asked anxiously. "Can't they be sent later, in
the afternoon, Cynthia?"
"No, mother," Cynthia replied. "Some might wait, but there's one which
must go off now."
Joan Daventry looked at Richard Walton. The blinds were down and the
window closed; so that the room was dark and cool. But a glance at her
manager's face told her sufficiently what the heat was like outside.
He had been abroad since daybreak and he was the color of a ripe
mulberry. Joan Daventry looked to him for assistance. But, though his
eyes were fixed with a momentary intentness upon Cynthia, he did not
give it. He spoke on another subject.
"If you go, Miss Cynthia, I hope you will leave at home the pearls you
are wearing round your throat. We are cutting the corn to-day and
there are a good many men about of whom I know nothing at all. More
hands came in last night than we had use for. It's all right, of
course, but I shouldn't wear those pearls."
"Of course not," said Cynthia. "I will put them away."
"And you will take a man with you," said Robert Daventry. Neither he
nor Joan had been brought up in cotton-wool; nor did they ever think
to cloister Cynthia. She was left her liberty; and so half an hour
afterward, with a big straw hat shading her face from the sun, she
drove in her cart along the avenue to the railway station. She sent
off the messages of thanks and then wrote out the important telegram
which was to mark the day for her. She wrote it out without an
alteration. For her thoughts had run fastidiously on the wording of it
all through breakfast-time. She addressed it to:
Captain Rames, R. N.,
_S.S. Perhaps_,
Tilbury Docks,
London.
And she handed it to the operator with a certain trepidation like one
who does some daring and irrevocable deed. The operator, however, was
quite unmoved. The important message to which so much consideration
had been given, wore to him quite a commonplace look. It amounted,
indeed, to no more than this:
"Every heart-felt wish for a triumphant journey, from an unknown
friend in South America."
Thus, the very words were conventional and the sentiment no great
matter to make a fuss about. But this was not Cynthia's point of view.
She had spoken the truth at the breakfast table when she had told Joan
and Robert Daventry that she did not find her life dull. But they were
old people, and, in spite of her many friends, she was, to be sure,
much alone with them. She was reticent of her feelings in their
presence, not through any habit of concealment, but from modesty and
the disparity of years. On the other side it was Joan's theory that
youth should be trusted rather than pried upon. Cynthia was thus
thrown back a good deal upon herself, and if she did not find life
dull, it was, perhaps, because with life she had very little to do.
She was seventeen, a girl of clear eyes and health and silver
thoughts; and romance had its way with her. All that loving care could
imagine for the clean and delicate training of mind and body had been
lavished on her; and little by little she had fashioned for herself a
wonderland of dreams and beautiful things. The only ugly thing about
it was the iron turnstile in the wall by which you gained admittance.
But that could not be helped. Its ugliness was recognized. The
turnstile had been there from the beginning--why, Cynthia could not
have told you. It was indeed itself the beginning. It was there in her
dreams and her fancies, offering admission to somewhere, before the
somewhere was explored, and found to be the wonderland.
In this world, then, she moved amidst a very goodly company. She was
careful about her company, choosing it from the world at large. She
claimed the best of all the nations for her friends, yet with a pretty
shyness which often enough set her blushing and laughing at her own
pretension. She had a test. Unless you answered to it, there was no
admission, the turnstile did not revolve. Coronets went for nothing,
even brave deeds did not suffice. He who entered--and, by the way, it
must regretfully be admitted that "he" does accurately represent the
sex of those who were allowed to enter. For it had never occurred to
Cynthia at all to let another woman into her world. She was modest,
but her modesty had its limits. He who entered, then, must have given
proofs that he was possessed with a definite idea, that his life moved
to the tune of it.
The population of Cynthia's private enclosure was consequently
strictly limited; and, since she only knew her heroes through the
newspaper and books, some even of those who were admitted came in
under false pretences, and had summarily to be ejected. She was thus
on the lookout for recruits. Captain Rames was the latest of them, and
Cynthia knew less of him even than of the others. She had seen a
blurred portrait of him in a daily paper; she knew that he was an
officer in the navy, aged thirty-four, and it seemed to her that he
had passed her test. For, this very afternoon, in command of a Dundee
whaler, he was off southward into seas where no ship yet had sailed.
The clerk stamped her telegram and took it behind the partition into
his office. Cynthia climbed back into her cart.
"I will drive back across the farm," she said. "I want to see the
reaping."
At the end of the short, wide street of one-storied huts and houses
she turned through a gate in a wire fence onto a wide plain of brown
grass. A mile across the plain, separated by no fence or hedge, the
glistening acres of wheat began, and at the edge Cynthia could see
little men seated on reaping-machines drawn by little horses like
toys. She drove toward them thinking of the telegram, and, with a
blush under her straw hat, of its reception. As a matter of fact,
Captain Rames was rather busy that day, and anonymous telegrams did
not receive from him the attention which was no doubt their due. In
three hours' time, she thought, Captain Rames might be wondering what
his unknown friend was like, with a heart full of gratitude for her
unknown friendship. Meanwhile, she was driving nearer and nearer to
the little toys at the edge of the wheat-field. The little toys were
growing larger and larger. Cynthia came out of her rose-mist.
"There are some new machines," she said, with interest, to the man who
was with her. He was an old half-breed who had long been on the
estate.
"Yes, Senorita," he answered. He pointed to one longer than the rest
and drawn by six horses. "It does everything. It cuts, it ties in
sheaves."
The whirring of the machinery came louder and louder to their ears.
The young horse which she was driving cocked its ears and became
restive. She gave the reins to the servant.
"I will walk forward," she said. "You can wait here." She descended to
the ground. She walked forward toward the edge of the wheat. There
realities awaited her.