IN THE CIRCLE OF CEDARS
Brent reached Arden behind a sweaty horse. The meeting with Hewlet was
filling him more and more with an agonizing unrest. He wanted to be
alone, and he wanted not to be alone. He wanted to think, and he wanted
not to think. At least, he could not face the Colonel and the others
just now, so turning past the house to the most secluded spot the lawn
afforded, he brushed through the screen of cedar branches, felt his way
across the tanbark to a seat, and sank into it with a low curse.
Jane had heard the quick approaching steps, and now, because her eyes
were accustomed to the shadowy gloom, she recognized at once, not only
the man but a measure of his agitation by the way he breathed and jammed
one fist into the palm of his other hand. Yet, in a spirit of fun, she
remained motionless, wondering how soon he would detect her. Then a deep
groan burst from his lips. It was a sound of poignant suffering that
went to the depths of her nature. Purposeless as seemed his life, she
still felt that it could not be altogether bad. The very charm of his
presence, which had a way of stamping him a gentleman born even when in
his khaki working clothes, stood for some defense; and, in spite of his
laziness, she rather guessed that a generous fund of masculine strength
lay within that frame--and of mental strength, if directed toward things
of his desire. She knew him to be a dreamer, a scoffer; but had not
accredited him with a capacity of worry or grief. The evidence of it now
perplexed as much as it stirred her. In the stillness of the place it
seemed almost as though she could hear his heart crying beneath its
breath in the grip of some remorseless sorrow. At once she was all pity,
and slowly, with her eyes resting on his bent head, asked:
"What has happened?"
He sprang up, peered at her, and then tried to laugh.
"You must forgive me," he bowed, "for bringing the dramatic club into
your sanctum. I'd no idea anyone was here."
"I know that," she said. Then asked again: "What has happened?"
"You're a bully fellow," he exclaimed in a tone of sincerity, but not
entirely free from the false echo of his laugh, "and I'd love to tell
you were you not certain to be bored stiff with it. Let me ask you,
instead, what you're thinking about in this charmed circle?"
"I'm sure you'd be bored stiff," she drily answered.
He waited a moment. Then:
"It wasn't very courteous of me, I know; but, as a matter of fact, I was
just having something out with myself. I've--I haven't been fair to
someone; and I'm sorry. So I can't tell you lest I betray."
She sat more erect with a shade of her former sympathy, asking as though
it had been a debatable point:
"Then you have a conscience?"
"I have a sense of proportion," he answered. "That's more logical than a
conscience."
"Will you ever exercise it for those poor mountain people of mine, who
are starving for civilization?"
"I already do--all sorts of ways."
He had himself in hand now, and, crossing over, sat down by her.
"I think you'll be more comfortable on the bench," she suggested, and he
returned to the rustic seat.
The pause was rather awkward, and she continued:
"I didn't mean to pry into your--sense of proportion, but thought you
might have had bad news. That's why I asked. In a place like this, you
know, where people are more or less detached from the usual worldly
interests, they sometimes feel as though they might help each other
without committing an unpardonable affront. That's all. Have you many
more rights of way to secure before the road can go ahead?"
"I should like to think, Miss Jane," he replied, passing the matter of
railroads, "that I really could turn to you for help sometimes. If
there's a fellow in all the world who needs it, and who abominably hates
to let people see he needs it, it's the luckless devil before you."
"If the world is to be kept in ignorance," she smiled, "you mustn't come
into dark places and begin swearing unless you know they're uninhabited.
It's romantic, but dangerous."
"Romantic things are always dangerous; ever think of that?"
"I haven't, but it isn't true," she answered.
"I can prove it without any trouble, but--" he arose, feeling his
pockets, "my--er--cigarettes! Will you wait a few minutes?"
She bowed, and he went out; not for the cigarettes, but to a side window
of the house where he beckoned Zack and told him to build, without
delay, a toddy. For Brent had been considerably unstrung by the
suddenness with which events moved across his stage since sunset, and he
turned to this concoction for temporary steadiness. Then he lighted a
cigarette and walked back to her in a more composed frame of mind.
"Now," he said, entering the cedars, "with your permission, why are
romantic things dangerous?"
"That happened to be your observation, and not interesting," she
answered. "You found your cigarettes?"
"You see I'm smoking," he smiled.
"And temporizing," she drily observed. "Really, Mr. McElroy, the truth
is not in you!"
"I beg your pardon?" he stiffened slightly.
"I am saying the truth is not in you," she directly answered. "When you
first came here tonight, you took a cigarette from your case and lighted
it."
"I should never have been so careless if something weren't on my mind,"
he laughed now. "The truth--the true truth--is that I needed a drink of
wicked whiskey. Forgive me?"
"I might not find it so difficult to forgive if, in the future, you
either stop trying to deceive me or talking to me; I really don't care
which!"
"I say!" he looked up in surprise. "That's pretty straight talk! But it
may be a worth-while thing for you to remember that a place does exist
where men can't answer every question put to them, and I very much doubt
your right to assume so much simply because I choose to keep a few of my
affairs to myself. When I first came in here you asked what had
happened. That was sympathetic, and I appreciated it; but it was
something I couldn't answer, and told you so. You may remember that you
seemed to resent that. Your manner was an invitation for me to make up
some sort of a fairy-tale to appease your curiosity; and if I had, and
you'd found it out, you would just as readily have called me a
what's-his-name. You're illogical. You don't seem to share my sense of
proportion, at any rate. I wanted a drink--I needed a drink; and I had
every right in the world to take it, providing I didn't offend anyone.
But it would have offended you--so why announce my intention? If I'm put
in a position where some sort of explanation is demanded, and the truth
can't in fairness be told, I'm thrown back on the resort which your own
sex has taught me--that delectable sex of sweet poisons and silent
stilettoes, versatile in the art of lying; queens of the art,
indeed--though innocent in it. And here's another plain truth: I'd love
to be frank with you, and tell you everything in the world I can,
because I think you are square with lots of things which most women
side-step. I can't just express it, but you're broadminded and
charitable, and smash right out from the shoulder at a thing as if you
didn't have skirts on. I don't put it very well, but you know what I
mean!"
She thought he did not put it very well, but she knew he put it
sincerely, and her reply held a vein of banter which he might not have
been expecting just then:
"Perhaps you'll begin by telling about your mysterious dryad in the
Forest of Arden!"
"Suspicion," he peered through the gloom at her reprovingly, "is the
solvent which disintegrates happiness; and happiness, reduced to its
component parts, is trash. Withdraw your question!"
"Happiness cannot be reduced to its component parts," she laughed,
"because its ingredients have strayed to us from the four corners of the
universe, and cannot ever be returned. I insist upon your answer!"
"You are drawing a long bow," he said more soberly. "You employ
femininity's imperfect warrant to shoot at random and trust her gods to
put something in the way of getting hit. It's a satire on honesty."
"Never mind about honesty," she laughed again. "Did my gods fail me?"
He puffed a few times at his cigarette, finally taking a deep inhalation
and blowing it slowly on the lighted end until the outlines of his face
became softly visible in the glow. She saw how serious it seemed, and
guessed he was purposely making it so.
"Since you insist--!" he began very carefully. "My dryad in this
enchanted wood is the most enticing spirit ever clothed in the graces
of woman. That's all."
Again he turned to his cigarette. Again the red glow and the serious
face. Again her accurate suspicion.
"If that is all, you're not playing fair. Does she live in a tree?"
"No. She lives in a big white house with big white columns; by night she
haunts me, but by day she holds school for mortals in a shady grove."
"I thought you were more original than that," she said, in an
expressionless voice. "So we're not to talk any more, are we!"
"But I swear--" he began.
"So do I," she interrupted him, "that you bore me to extinction with
things like that, Brent; honestly you do! If you can't be just a little
bit sincere, I can't be interested in you."
They had known each other for more than two months; two months of almost
daily, unconventional contact, but this was the first time she had
called him Brent. It came now as a master-stroke for true understanding,
and he threw back his head and laughed.
"My, but you're a corker--beg pardon--I mean a live wire!"
"Overwhelming flattery in either case," she smiled, "and that's the
second sincere thing you've said."
"The second! Well, I like that! Perhaps when you begin thinking less
about yourself, you'll be able to see more virtues in other people!"
"No one has ever accused me of thinking particularly about myself," she
righteously flushed.
"No one has to," he replied, teasingly. "Being a teacher--although a
very young and charming one--presupposes egotism."
"Your analysis is shrewd tonight," she coolly observed.
"Not at all," he affably continued. "An egoist, and a woman whose dress
is unhooked in the back, are always blissfully unconscious that the
world is seeing more of them than they normally would permit."
Her hand stole to the back of her waist. He saw this and again began to
laugh, saying:
"I fancy that part is all right. And you know how far I am from meaning
the other, too!"
"I'm probably different from most of your friends," she spoke rather
quickly, "because I'd rather tell an unpleasant truth than a
conventional falsehood. Truth, to me, is the bravest and most beautiful
thing in life. And one reason," she added, leaning imperceptibly nearer
to see his face, "that women so love it in a man is because it makes of
him a sort of restful harbor she can steer to from gathering worries. No
man can possibly know how comforting it is for a girl's course to be
laid within easy running distance of a safe harbor. He may know of
wrecks which occur without them, but seldom considers how easily many of
these might have been averted."
"Men sometimes feel that way about girls," he suggested. "Only, in
girls, they ask for tenderness."
She took the rebuke, simply adding:
"Girls feel tenderness for shelter, not for a destroying sea."
They were quiet then. The hum of night life was about them, and from the
house came faintly the mellow notes of a piano, where the Colonel and
Bob were watching out of shadow the enraptured light in Dale's face as
Ann introduced him for the first time in his life to that type of
instrumental music.
As though this were in some way made known to her, Jane broke the
silence.
"A man with an honest purpose in life," she gently said, "with a duty to
perform, who sticks to it through thick and thin, admitting no defeat,
hammering upon stubborn places, finds in good womankind an ever-ready
tenderness. It is the feminine answer to masculine courage."
"There are two kinds of courage," he replied after a polite pause, "just
as there are two kinds of duty, and two kinds of pride--each so closely
resembling its other self that men, and particularly women, are often
misled. When fear tugs at a fellow's heart (and without fear there would
be no courage) he is courageous who walks resolutely into every
uncertainty if duty chances to be there calling. I think you will agree
with me. But what is duty? There's your stumbling block! A false
conception of this--a belief that he sees ahead of him what there is
not--may cause him to be sacrificed as ignominiously as a bone tossed to
a dog; his life would be gobbled up for no better purpose. That's bad
business. Humanity would be bankrupt at such a rate. So, if a man of
courage be not also a man of foresight--"
"You mean that he would have no excuse for keeping out of danger," she
laughed. "That when he saw a duty, or heard its call, he would not be
able to justify himself in sitting calmly down to consider if the
sacrifice were worth while! Then, indeed, would the world be a sorry
place! Personally, I'd rather see fat dogs stalking over the earth than
just bones!"
"I hope you are deliberately misconstruing what I have said," he flushed
furiously. "Fear of physical and mental pains are just the same,
requiring the same courage to go through." He stopped, as though
weighing the wisdom of continuing. "Oh, I don't care," he moved
uneasily, "I want to tell you nearer what I mean. Once, a long time
ago--maybe three years or four--there was a girl for whom I'd have
suffered anything and thanked God for the pain. That's loving some! And
there was another chap, a sort of friend of mine, and a right decent
sort; steady, always at work, and people said she'd make a great mistake
by taking me. They saw him only when he was making money by his own
grinding, you know, and saw me only when I was spending my allowance. He
wanted her, too; and it was a pretty nice race between us, with a
foregone conclusion that she'd take one or the other. She didn't pay any
attention to what the people said, but one day I picked up some kind of
a self-righteous, courageous microbe, and decided the proper way for
her--I stepped aside."
"And?" she asked, when he did not continue.
"My courage was there, but my point of view was warped; I was out of
focus on duty," he quietly asserted. "She married the other fellow, and
it developed too late that his life was a shabby muss. Now her eyes are
heavy with an endless sorrow. I think that was when I tried--well, when
I began drinking some."
"Wouldn't you have done that anyway?" she asked.
"Perhaps," he slowly answered.
"If he had not married her, and she were here now, would you?"
"Not since you are here," he debonairly smiled.
She might not have heard this from the way she sat, looking down and
thinking.
"I suppose," she said at last, "that all men's lives are shabby musses.
You may think me unkind, but without a shadow of doubt you would have
made her unhappy, too. You are that type."
"I'm very much obliged to you," he murmured. "It seems that I've come to
a friend, and found a judge; that my search for sympathy has brought me
to a sentence. You're most encouraging, Jane. Perhaps it would be
interesting to know how you've found all this out!"
"Oh, I can't say just how," she answered, feeling that his rebuke held
more than a share of justice. "It comes from so many small things,
which, apart, might be immaterial, but, together, speak volumes and make
you quite an impossible quantity in the scheme of domesticity. For
instance, the other day, when you had someone's gun in your hands, you
deliberately fired at an overflying woodpecker to test your skill. The
dead bird was useless. That showed the instinct of a wanton destroyer,
and a wanton destroyer, my friend, is not just the safest place for a
girl's happiness."
"How do you know I wasn't keeping in practice, in order to become a good
protector?" he murmured, but she was not in the mood for flippancy, and
continued:
"You shirk responsibilities, and have that dear old Colonel drinking
more than he has done in years; while your own hedonism is shocking."
"Well, why not?" he looked up suddenly. "If pleasure's my god, whose
business is it?"
"Pride's," she softly answered. "It's the business of Pride, that makes
all male human beings men. Girls know, without having to reason, that a
man who is lacking in pride is lacking in self respect, and is unworthy
of himself; which means he is unworthy of anyone else. That may not be
very clear, but it's what I mean. If Dale, now, had the surveying of
your road, we could feel certain of it; or if you had more self control
like him--though I suppose he was born with it!"
He frowned, and she saw his teeth press hard upon his lower lip. Perhaps
that was why she added:
"See what a dependable man he is going to be!--what strength of
character!"
He looked away. Realizing how impossible it would be for her to say this
about himself, a feeling of rebellion began to stir against the
mountaineer. But he indignantly choked it with a ruthless hand, knowing
that her comparison, not Dale, must be held responsible. Then for a
moment he took a swift glance into the future, wondering how long it
might be before he could come abreast of this mountaineer's supposed
dependability--and, perhaps, pass on ahead of it! But Brent was not in
the habit of gazing future-ward, and he could not hold the focus for
long at a time. Now, quietly, he spoke to her, though without interest:
"I'm afraid your three little observations are illogical. In the first
place, self control is not a proof of dependability; in the second
place, Dale has no more self control than a kitten in a fit; and in the
third place, people are not born with self control. Is there anything
else you'd like to talk about?"
She flushed, but looked across at him smilingly:
"I want to talk about that!"
"Then let's get rid of Dale first. If I read the signs, you've got in
that chap a creature of limitless self indulgence. He's crazy to learn,
and I've no doubt that already he is studying like a steam engine; but
when he wants to do other things he'll do 'em with the same zeal. I
gather from the Colonel that he doesn't give a rap for anybody or
anything just so he gets to a book. Self control? He doesn't know any
more about it than water coming down a rain pipe!"
"Don't you think the desire to study is commendable?"
"Certainly, but it requires no self control. He studies just as he would
scratch his hand if it itched. I should call it natural, rather than
commendable; or fortunate, if you choose. Jane," he now looked her fully
and seriously in the eyes, "there are lots of people who go through life
with tense lines about their mouths, saying nothing, never getting into
devilment, and the world tiptoes behind them whispering: 'What
wonderful self control!' It's all rot! Self control is a thing we
unconsciously cultivate from the moment our minds begin to coordinate.
It's like building a dam across our hidden river of tendency; and a hit
or miss sort of structure it is, too. In one man the current of this
tendency may be like a trickling stream, and a handful of materials are
enough to keep it in check. In another, it may be a raging torrent, and
he may slave night and day, gathering stone and sand, and sealing them
with his very blood. But suppose in the end the torrent gets away from
him! He fails, you say. Yet is he weaker after that herculean task than
the other chap who dammed up his stream of tendency with the side of his
boot? He publicly goes under,--yes! But may he not still be finer than
his two-by-four brother whose temperament ran only from the ice-box to
family prayers and back to the ice-box? I want to tell you," he
concluded in the same low, even voice, "that in the Big Summing Up, the
Celestial Clearing House will show many a poor gutter-runner more
entitled to wear medals for having made a game fight for respectability
than some of his anemic superiors who all their days walked slowly, and
were called by their fellows examples of great character. Don't be too
quick to size up a chap's pace, Lady Jane, until you know how red his
blood is, and how much weight he's carrying. I must go now!"
While he had been speaking, the moon, full and mellow, climbed high
above the house and shed a mere suggestion of light--a sort of luminous
radiance--into the thickly sheltered circle. He stood up quickly with
the air of one who had said too much, reached for a cigarette, and then
for a match which he could not at once find. She saw that his face was
very white and drawn in this ghost-like gloaming.
"I wish you wouldn't," she hesitated. "I like to talk to you tonight."
He turned and looked down at her, as she added:
"You're a curious make-up;--and have some really fine things in you!"
"That starts out well," he laughed, lighting the cigarette and sinking
back on the bench.
"Do you ever ask women's permission before smoking?" she asked, a shade
offended by the persistent way he ignored her in this regard.
"I didn't think it was quite necessary out doors;--and you might say
no!"
"Then you haven't the diplomacy of a true Kentucky gentleman. I'll tell
you what one of the most true and gallant of them once told me, and he
would be an example for you to follow--in more than one particular. He
was over ninety years old, and smoking a pipe--a dear old pipe he was
seldom without--when I came up to him. Holding it toward me, he said: 'I
shall not ask if I may smoke in your presence! A long time ago that
request once met with a denial, so thereafter I merely implored the
ladies' permission to burn a little incense to their lovely charms. Nor
do I recall,' he smiled, 'one single refusal in the seventy-five years
which have passed since then!' This," Jane added, her voice tender with
the memory, "was General Simon Bolivar Buckner."
"Well, you've cut a notch too high for me," he answered seriously.
"Those few 'fine things' you just accused me of are nothing more than
fireflies flashing in a skull compared to that grand old man. How d'you
like the simile, by the way? Pretty good, isn't it?"
"A striking picture of you, Brent! I would recognize it anywhere!"
A ripple of good humor played about her mouth which made her dangerously
attractive, and, oddly enough, this was caused by that look of
seriousness she had seen in him--a look which she had not the slightest
doubt portrayed some mental suffering. To anyone else she would have
held out her hand and said: "Let me help--I know I can!" But now she
could only feel somehow glad to find that he was big enough, and fine
enough to suffer. She had not suspected it, and it threw a new light
about him. It sent, too, a riot of something pleasant tingling through
her blood--as she had felt sometimes at the lookout point above her
father's cabin, where she watched for spies while he "mashed" the corn,
and the white moonshine dripped, dripped from the rusty worm of his
home-made still; when, crouched beneath the stars, her quick ears had
caught some faint, suspicious sounds. Ruinous though they might turn out
to be, she used to love those tingle-giving sounds. The same sort of
thrill now reached past the culture-clothed sentinels around her heart
and gave it an honest shake for old time's sake. Slowly she began to
smile, and, seeing this, he moodily asked:
"Why are you smiling?"
"I don't know, Brent. I just want to smile, that's all." Then she arose,
murmured good night, and went out.
But the branches were still swaying where she had passed when he heard a
quick cry of surprise.
"Brent!"
He was beside her in a second, looking over her outstretched arm that
pointed toward the thickest portion of the grounds.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I don't know," she whispered. "Someone must have been here, and ran in
there!"
He dashed after whatever it was, plunging through the shrubbery and
threshing about for several minutes. Once she thought she heard a low
cry, or voice, and for awhile he was so quiet that she grew more uneasy;
but again the crackling sounds proclaimed him to be on the search, and
finally he emerged.
"It's nothing," he said, coming up. "Maybe a dog."
"It couldn't have been a dog. Let's go to the house--it makes me
creepy!"
They turned, crossing the little patches of moonlight filtered through
the trees upon the violet sprinkled ground. It was a wonderfully
seductive spot on a night like this! The mellow tinkle of the piano,
arising from Ann's nimble touch, floated out to them;--they might have
been walking in an enchanted fairy-land but for the turmoil about his
heart and the unrest in her own. Impulsively she faced him:
"What do you think that could have been?"
He was taken unawares, and had of course no suspicion of her cause for
nervousness.
"Brent," she said again, "I must know who was there!"
He stood humbly before her with his head bowed. When he spoke his voice
was absolutely sincere.
"I can't tell you, Jane."
This magnified her fears, for she thought he was trying mercifully to
spare her.
"You must tell me," she urged, betraying her terror by grasping his arm.
In his own preoccupation he did not notice this. "You must tell me," she
was pleading. "Oh, Brent, if we are ever to be friends, here, tell me!
There's a vital reason why I must know at once!"
"But, Jane, I can't," he earnestly replied to her. "It was someone to
see me!"
"You are cruel to try to spare me this way," she gasped, and the tears
in her voice turned him to a being of great tenderness. "Can't you see
I'm desperate?--that your evasions are torturing me? Who was that man?"
"Man?" he stared at her. "It wasn't a man!"
"Oh," she said, loosing his arm and stepping back with a half earnest,
half hysterical little laugh. "Oh," she repeated, "I--you must forgive
me! I thought it was someone--I thought it might be someone who touched
me very closely, Brent!"
He stood looking down at her. How could he know she had been fearful of
Potter?
"It seems," he slowly mused, "that we've nearly stumbled on each
other's secrets. I didn't suspect you were waiting for anyone, or I
shouldn't have stayed."
"But I wasn't," she quickly retorted.
"Certainly," he drily agreed with her. "Very stupid of me to suggest
it."
She stepped around in front of him, saying frankly:
"I give you my word of honor that I did not dream anyone would come
there, nor is there a man--"
"This isn't necessary," he smiled. "I quite agree with you; and it was
nothing that could have touched you at all closely."
She flushed, then turned and started slowly on, saying in a tremulous
whisper:
"Very well, you needn't believe me." But just before reaching the house
she again turned and faced him. "It hurts, Brent," she faltered, "to
know you are thinking unkind things of me! Your own worldliness makes
you utterly unsparing!"
"I would rather not have you persist in this," he said gently. "It seems
to be one of those cases where you can't tell the truth, so why should
you go to the other extreme unnecessarily? I'm not asking you 'what is
the matter?' or if you found your cigarettes! Please dismiss it! If you
want Dale to meet you in that charmed circle, I'm sure it's a harmless
pastime."
She wheeled and left him, quickly running up the steps and into the
house; but an echo of the pleading in her voice remained, and now gently
pushed aside his ill humor which, in turn, was succeeded by a feeling of
joyous relief;--because, hidden in the rhododendron thicket, a girl had
whispered for him to have no fear--that Tom Hewlet would not threaten
his peace again. In his surprise he had caught her arm and asked why she
had come, but she drew back, whispering: "That blind girl! And, Brent,
take this!" What had she meant again by the blind girl? And why had she
thrust into his hand the little garnet pendant he had given her?
For another minute he pondered over the strange complexity of girls,
then sighed and smiled, and by a side door reached his room.