“The Canucks had stopped, for the time being. Besides, Braybridge was
rather ashamed, and he thought if they went straight on they would be
sure to come out somewhere. But that was where he made a mistake. They
couldn't go on straight; they went round and round, and came on their
own footsteps--or hers, which he recognized from the narrow tread and
the dint of the little heels in the damp places.”
Wanhope roused himself with a kindling eye. “That is very interesting,
the movement in a circle of people who have lost their way. It has often
been observed, but I don't know that it has ever been explained.
Sometimes the circle is smaller, sometimes it is larger; but I believe
it is always a circle.”
“Isn't it,” I queried, “like any other error in life? We go round and
round; and commit the old sins over again.”
“That is very interesting,” Wanhope allowed.
“But do lost people really always walk in a vicious circle?” Minver
asked.
Rulledge would not let Wanhope answer. “Go on, Halson,” he said.
Halson roused himself from the reverie in which he was sitting with
glazed eyes. “Well, what made it a little more anxious was that he had
heard of bears on that mountain, and the green afternoon light among the
trees was perceptibly paling. He suggested shouting, but she wouldn't
let him; she said it would be ridiculous, if the others heard them, and
useless if they didn't. So they tramped on till--till the accident
happened.”
“The accident!” Rulledge exclaimed in the voice of our joint emotion.
“He stepped on a loose stone and turned his foot,” Halson explained. “It
wasn't a sprain, luckily, but it hurt enough. He turned so white that
she noticed it, and asked him what was the matter. Of course that shut
his mouth the closer, but it morally doubled his motive, and he kept
himself from crying out till the sudden pain of the wrench was over. He
said merely that he thought he had heard something, and he had--an awful
ringing in his ears; but he didn't mean that, and he started on again.
The worst was trying to walk without limping, and to talk cheerfully and
encouragingly, with that agony tearing at him. But he managed somehow,
and he was congratulating himself on his success, when he tumbled down
in a dead faint.”
“Oh, come, now!” Minver protested.
“It _is_ like an old-fashioned story, where things are operated by
accident instead of motive, isn't it?” Halson smiled with radiant
recognition.
“Fact will always imitate fiction, if you give her time enough,” I said.
“Had they got back to the other picnickers?” Rulledge asked with a tense
voice.
“In sound, but not in sight of them. She wasn't going to bring him into
camp in that state; besides she couldn't. She got some water out of the
trout-brook they'd been fishing--more water than trout in it--and
sprinkled his face, and he came to, and got on his legs, just in time to
pull on to the others, who were organizing a search-party to go after
them. From that point on, she dropped Braybridge like a hot coal, and as
there was nothing of the flirt in her, she simply kept with the women,
the older girls, and the tabbies, and left Braybridge to worry along
with the secret of his turned ankle. He doesn't know how he ever got
home alive; but he did somehow manage to reach the wagons that had
brought them to the edge of the woods, and then he was all right till
they got to the house. But still she said nothing about his accident,
and he couldn't; and he pleaded an early start for town the next
morning, and got off to bed, as soon as he could.”
“I shouldn't have thought he could have stirred in the morning,”
Rulledge employed Halson's pause to say.
“Well, this beaver _had_ to,” Halson said. “He was not the only early
riser. He found Miss Hazelwood at the station before him.”
“What!” Rulledge shouted. I confess the fact rather roused me, too; and
Wanhope's eyes kindled with a scientific pleasure.
“She came right towards him. 'Mr. Braybridge,' says she, 'I couldn't let
you go without explaining my very strange behavior. I didn't choose to
have these people laughing at the notion of _my_ having played the part
of your preserver. It was bad enough being lost with you; I couldn't
bring you into ridicule with them by the disproportion they'd have felt
in my efforts for you after you turned your foot. So I simply had to
ignore the incident. Don't you see?' Braybridge glanced at her, and he
had never felt so big and bulky before, or seen her so slender and
little. He said, 'It _would_ have seemed rather absurd,' and he broke
out and laughed, while she broke down and cried, and asked him to
forgive her, and whether it had hurt him very much; and said she knew he
could bear to keep it from the others by the way he had kept it from her
till he fainted. She implied that he was morally as well as physically
gigantic, and it was as much as he could do to keep from taking her in
his arms on the spot.”
“It would have been edifying to the groom that had driven her to the
station,” Minver cynically suggested.
“Groom nothing!” Halson returned with spirit. “She paddled herself
across the lake, and walked from the boat-landing to the station.”
“Jove!” Rulledge exploded in uncontrollable enthusiasm.
“She turned round as soon as she had got through with her hymn of
praise--it made Braybridge feel awfully flat--and ran back through the
bushes to the boat-landing, and--that was the last he saw of her till he
met her in town this fall.”
“And when--and when--did he offer himself?” Rulledge entreated
breathlessly. “How--”
“Yes, that's the point, Halson,” Minver interposed. “Your story is all
very well, as far as it goes; but Rulledge here has been insinuating
that it was Miss Hazelwood who made the offer, and he wants you to bear
him out.”
Rulledge winced at the outrage, but he would not stay Halson's answer
even for the sake of righting himself.
“I _have_ heard,” Minver went on, “that Braybridge insisted on paddling
the canoe back to the other shore for her, and that it was on the way
that he offered himself.” We others stared at Minver in astonishment.
Halson glanced covertly toward him with his gay eyes. “Then that wasn't
true?”
“How did you hear it?” Halson asked.
“Oh, never mind. Is it true?”
“Well, I know there's that version,” Halson said evasively. “The
engagement is only just out, as you know. As to the offer--the when and
the how--I don't know that I'm exactly at liberty to say.”
“I don't see why,” Minver urged. “You might stretch a point for
Rulledge's sake.”
Halson looked down, and then he glanced at Minver after a furtive
passage of his eye over Rulledge's intense face. “There was something
rather nice happened after--But really, now!”
“Oh, go on!” Minver called out in contempt of his scruple.
“I haven't the right--Well, I suppose I'm on safe ground here? It won't
go any farther, of course; and it _was_ so pretty! After she had pushed
off in her canoe, you know, Braybridge--he'd followed her down to the
shore of the lake--found her handkerchief in a bush where it had caught,
and he held it up, and called out to her. She looked round and saw it,
and called back: 'Never mind. I can't return for it, now.' Then
Braybridge plucked up his courage, and asked if he might keep it, and
she said 'Yes,' over her shoulder, and then she stopped paddling, and
said 'No, no, you mustn't, you mustn't! You can send it to me.' He asked
where, and she said, 'In New York--in the fall--at the Walholland.'
Braybridge never knew how he dared, but he shouted after her--she was
paddling on again--'May I _bring_ it?' and she called over her shoulder
again, without fully facing him, but her profile was enough, 'If you
can't get any one to bring it for you.' The words barely reached him,
but he'd have caught them if they'd been whispered; and he watched her
across the lake, and into the bushes, and then broke for his train. He
was just in time.”
Halson beamed for pleasure upon us, and even Minver said, “Yes, that's
rather nice.” After a moment he added, “Rulledge thinks she put it
there.”
“You're too bad, Minver,” Halson protested. “The charm of the whole
thing was her perfect innocence. She isn't capable of the slightest
finesse. I've known her from a child, and I know what I say.”
“That innocence of girlhood,” Wanhope said, “is very interesting. It's
astonishing how much experience it survives. Some women carry it into
old age with them. It's never been scientifically studied--”
“Yes,” Minver allowed. “There would be a fortune for the novelist who
could work a type of innocence for all it was worth. Here's Acton always
dealing with the most rancid flirtatiousness, and missing the sweetness
and beauty of a girlhood which does the cheekiest things without knowing
what it's about, and fetches down its game whenever it shuts its eyes
and fires at nothing. But I don't see how all this touches the point
that Rulledge makes, or decides which finally made the offer.”
“Well, hadn't the offer already been made?”
“But how?”
“Oh, in the usual way.”
“What is the usual way?”
“I thought everybody knew _that_. Of course, it was _from_ Braybridge
finally, but I suppose it's always six of one and half a dozen of the
other in these cases, isn't it? I dare say he couldn't get any one to
take her the handkerchief. My dinner?” Halson looked up at the silent
waiter who had stolen upon us and was bowing toward him.
“Look here, Halson,” Minver detained him, “how is it none of the rest of
us have heard all those details?”
“_I_ don't know where you've been, Minver. Everybody knows the main
facts,” Halson said, escaping.
Wanhope observed musingly: “I suppose he's quite right about the
reciprocality of the offer, as we call it. There's probably, in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a perfect understanding before
there's an explanation. In many cases the offer and the acceptance must
really be tacit.”
“Yes,” I ventured, “and I don't know why we're so severe with women when
they seem to take the initiative. It's merely, after all, the call of
the maiden bird, and there's nothing lovelier or more endearing in
nature than that.”
“Maiden bird is good, Acton,” Minver approved. “Why don't you institute
a class of fiction, where the love-making is all done by the maiden
birds, as you call them--or the widow birds? It would be tremendously
popular with both sexes. It would lift a tremendous responsibility off
the birds who've been expected to shoulder it heretofore if it could be
introduced into real life.”
Rulledge fetched a long, simple-hearted sigh. “Well, it's a charming
story. How well he told it!”
The waiter came again, and this time signalled to Minver.
“Yes,” he said, as he rose. “What a pity you can't believe a word Halson
says.”
“Do you mean--” we began simultaneously.
“That he built the whole thing from the ground up, with the start that
we had given him. Why, you poor things! Who could have told him how it
all happened? Braybridge? Or the girl? As Wanhope began by saying,
people don't speak of their love-making, even when they distinctly
remember it.”
“Yes, but see here, Minver!” Rulledge said with a dazed look. “If it's
all a fake of his, how came _you_ to have heard of Braybridge paddling
the canoe back for her?”
“That was the fake that tested the fake. When he adopted it, I _knew_ he
was lying, because I was lying myself. And then the cheapness of the
whole thing! I wonder that didn't strike you. It's the stuff that a
thousand summer-girl stories have been spun out of. Acton might have
thought he was writing it!”
He went away, leaving us to a blank silence, till Wanhope managed to
say: “That inventive habit of mind is very curious. It would be
interesting to know just how far it imposes on the inventor himself--how
much he believes of his own fiction.”
“I don't see,” Rulledge said gloomily, “why they're so long with my
dinner.” Then he burst out, “I believe every word Halson said. If
there's any fake in the thing, it's the fake that Minver owned to.”
THE RUBAIYAT AND THE LINER
ELIA W. PEATTIE
“Chug-chug, chug-chug!”
That was the liner, and it had been saying the same thing for two nights
and two days. Therefore nobody paid any attention to it--except Chalmers
Payne, the moodiest of the passengers, who noticed it and said to
himself that, for his part, it did as well as any other sound, and was
much better than most persons' conversation.
It will be guessed that Mr. Chalmers Payne was in an irritable frame of
mind. He was even retaliative, and to the liner's continued iteration of
its innocent remark he retorted in the words of old Omar:
“Perplext no more with Human or Divine,
To-morrow's tangle to the winds resign,
And lose your fingers in the tresses of
The cypress-slender Minister of Wine.
“And if the wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in what All begins and ends in--Yes;
Think then you are To-day what Yesterday
You were--To-morrow you shall not be less.
“So when the Angel of the Darker Drink
At last shall find you by the River-brink,
And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your Lips to quaff--you shall not shrink.”
To these melancholy mutterings, the liner, insouciant, and not caring a
peg for any philosophy--save that of the open road--shouldered along
through jewel-green waves, and remarked, “Chug-chug, chug-chug!”
Mr. Payne was inclined to quarrel with the Tent-Maker on one score only.
He did not think that he was to-day what he was yesterday.
Yesterday--figuratively speaking--he had hope. He was conscious of his
youth. A fine, buoyant egotism sustained him, and he believed that he
was about to be crowned with a beautiful joy.
He had sauntered up to his joy, so to speak, cocksure, hands in pockets,
and as he smiled with easy assurance, behold the joy turned into a
sorrow. The face of the dryad smiling through the young grape leaves was
that of a withered hag, and the leaves of the vine were dead and flapped
on sapless stems!
Well, well, there was always a sorry fatalism to comfort one in joy's
despite.
“Then to the rolling Heav'n itself, I cried,
Asking, 'What Lamp had Destiny to guide
Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?'”
The answer was old as patience--as old as courage. But to theorize about
it was really superfluous! Why think at all? Why not say chug-chug like
the liner?
“We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go--”
Dinner! Was it possible? The day had been a blur! Well, probably all the
rest of life would be a blur. Anyway, one could still dine, and he
recollected that the purée of tomatoes at last night's dinner had been
rather to his liking. He seated himself deliberately at the board,
congratulating himself that he would be allowed to go through the duty
of eating without interruption. The place at his right had been vacant
ever since they left Southampton. At his left was a gentleman of
uncertain hearing and a bullet-proof frown.
As the seat at his right had been vacant so long, he took the liberty of
laying it his gloves, his sea-glass, a book with uncut leaves, and a
crimson silk neck-scarf.
“I beg your pardon,” said the waiter, “but the lady who is to sit here
is coming, sir.”
“The devil she is!” thought Payne. “Will the creature expect me to talk?
Will she require me to look after her in the matter of pepper and salt?
Why couldn't I have been left in peace?”
He gathered up his possessions, and arose gravely with an automatic
courtesy, and lifted eyes with a wooden expression to stare at the
intruder.
He faced the one person in the world whom it was most of pain and
happiness to meet--the woman between whom and himself he meant to put a
good half of the round world; and he read in her troubled gray eyes the
confession that if there was anything or anybody from which she would
willingly have been protected it was he--Chalmers Payne.
Conscious of their neighbors, they bowed. Payne saw her comfortably
seated. He sat down and slowly emptied his glass of ice-water. He
preserved his wooden expression of countenance and turned towards her.
“The old man on my right is deaf,” he said.
“So am I,” she retorted.
“Not so deaf, I hope, that you won't hear me explain that I had no more
notion of your being on this ship than of Sappho being here!”
“You refer to--the Greek Sappho, Mr. Payne?”
“Assuredly. You told me--'fore Heaven, why are women so
inconsistent?--you told me you were going anywhere rather than to
America--that you were at the beginning of your journeyings--that you
had an engagement with some Mahatmas on the top of the Himal--”
“And you--you were going to South Africa.”
“I said nothing of the sort. I--”
“Well, I couldn't go about another day. No matter whether I was
consistent or inconsistent! I was worn out and ill. I've been seeing too
much--”
“You told me you could never see enough!”
“Well, never mind all that. I acted impulsively, I confess. My aunt was
shocked. She thought I was ungrateful--particularly when I openly
rejoiced that she was not able to find a chaperon for me.”
“It's none of my business, anyway. I was stupid to show my surprise. I
ought never to be surprised at anything you do, I know that. As for me,
I'm tired of imitating the Wandering Jew. Besides, my father's old
partner--mine he is now, I suppose, though I can't get used to that
idea--wants me to come home. He says I'm needed. So I'm rolling up my
sleeves, figuratively speaking. But I should certainly have delayed my
journey if I had guessed you were to be on this boat.”
“It's very annoying altogether,” she said, with open vexation. “It looks
so silly! What will my aunt say?”
“I don't think she'll say anything. You are on an Atlantic liner, with
nine hundred and ninety-nine souls who are nothing to you, and one who
is less than nothing. I believe that was the expression you used the
other day--less than nothing?”
The girl's delicate face flushed hotly.
“I'm not so strong,” she murmured. “It's true that I am worn out, and my
voyage has done nothing so far towards restoring me. On the contrary, I
have been suffering. I fainted again and again yesterday, and it took a
great deal of courage for me to venture out to-day. So you must be
merciful for a little while. Your enemy is down, you see.”
“My enemy!” He gave the words an accent at once bitter and humorous.
“I'll not say another personal word,” he murmured, contritely. “Tell me
if you feel faint at any moment, and let me help you. Please treat me as
if I were your--your uncle!”
She smiled faintly.
“You are asking a great deal,” she couldn't help saying, somewhat
coquettishly, and then he remembered how he had seen her hanging about
her uncle's neck, and he flushed too.
There was quite a long silence. She picked at her food delicately, and
Payne suggested some claret. Her face showed that she would have
preferred not to accept any favor from him, no matter how trifling, but
she evidently considered it puerile to refuse.
“It _is_ mighty awkward for you!” he burst out, suddenly, “my being
here. I suppose you actually find it hard to believe that it was an
accident--”
“I haven't the least occasion to doubt your word, Mr. Payne. Have I ever
done anything to make you suppose that I didn't respect you?”
“Oh, I didn't mean that! Heavens! what a cad you must think me! I have a
faculty for being stupid when you are around, you know. It's my
misfortune. But--behold my generosity!--I shall have a talk with the
purser, Miss Curtis, and get him to change my place for me. Some
good-natured person will consent to make the alteration.”
“You mean you will put some one else here in your place beside me?”
“It's the least I can do, isn't it? Now, whom would you suggest? Pick
out somebody. There's that motherly-looking German woman over there.
She's a baroness--”
“She? She'll tell me twice every meal that American girls are not
brought up with a knowledge of cooking. She will tell me how she has met
them at Kaffeeklatsches, and how they confessed that they didn't cook!
No, no; you must try another one!”
“Well, if you object to her, there's that quiet gentleman who is eating
his ice with the aid of two pairs of spectacles. That gentleman is a
specialist in bacilli. He has little steel-bound bottles in his room
which, if you were to break them among this ship-load of passengers,
would depopulate the ship. I think he is taking home the bacilli of the
bubonic plague as a present to our country. Remember, if you got on the
right side of him, that you would have a vengeance beyond the dreams of
the Borgias at your command!”
“Oh, the terrible creature! Mr. Payne, how could you mention him? What
if he were to take me for a guinea-pig or a rabbit? No, I prefer the
English-looking mummy over there.”
“Who? Miss Hull? She's not half bad. She's a great traveller. She has
been almost everywhere, and is now hastening to make it everywhere. She
carries her own tea with her, and steeps it at five exactly every
afternoon. She tells me that once, being shipwrecked, she grasped her
tea-caddy, her alcohol-stove, and a large bottle of alcohol, and
prepared for the worst. They drifted four days on a raft, and she made
five-o'clock tea every day, to the great encouragement of the
unfortunates. Miss Hull is an English spinster, who has a fortune and no
household, and who is going about to see how other folks keep
house--Feejee-Islanders, and Tagals, and Kafirs. She likes them all, I
believe. Indeed, she says she likes everything--except the snug English
village where she was brought up. She says that when she lived there she
did exactly the same thing between sunup and sundown for eight years.
For example, she had the curate to tea every Wednesday evening during
that entire time, and when possible she had periwinkles.”
“And nothing came of it?”
“Oh yes, an enormous consumption of tea-biscuits-nothing more. Then it
occurred to her to travel. So she went to the next shire, and liked it
so well that she plunged off to London, then to the Hebrides. After that
there was no stopping her. She likes the islands better than the
continents, and is collecting hats made of sea-grass. She already has
five hundred and forty-two varieties. Really, you would not find her
half so bad.”
Helen Curtis finished her coffee, and laid her napkin beside her plate.
“Oh, if it comes to the negative virtues, you haven't been so
disagreeable yourself to-day as you might have been. I'm under
obligations to you. It _was_ rather nice to meet an old acquaintance.”
The tone was formal, and put Payne ten thousand leagues away from her.
“Thank you,” he said, with mock gratitude. “_I'm_ under obligations for
your courtesy, madam.” She dropped her handkerchief as she arose, and he
picked up the trifle and gave it to her. Their fingers met, and he
withdrew his hand with a quick gesture.
“You must allow me to see you safely to your room,” he urged. “Or else
to your deck chair.”
“Thank you. I'll go on deck, I think, and you may call the boy to go for
my rug.”
He put her on the lee side, and wrapped her in a McCallum plaid, and
brought her some magazines from his own stateroom. Then he stood erect
and saluted.
“Madam, have I the honor to be dismissed?”
She looked up and gave a friendly smile in spite of herself.
“You are very good,” she said. “I am always remembering that you are
good, and the thought annoys me.”
“Oh, it needn't,” he responded, in a philosophic tone, looking off
towards the jagged line of the horizon, where the purple waves showed
their changing outline. “If you are wondering why it is that you dislike
me when you find nothing of which to disapprove in my conduct, don't let
that puzzle you any longer. Regard does not depend upon character. The
mystery of attraction has never been solved. Now, I've seen women more
beautiful than you; I know many who are more learned; as for a sense of
justice and fairness, why, I don't think you understand the first
principles. Yet you are the one woman, in the world for me. Now that
you've taken love out of my life, this world is nothing more to me than
a workshop. I shall get up every morning and put myself at my bench, so
to speak, and work till nightfall. Then I shall sleep. It is dull, but
it doesn't matter. I have been at some trouble to convince myself of the
fact that it doesn't matter, and I value the conviction. Life isn't as
disheartening as it would be if it lasted longer.