I [107]
"EVERY man, once in his lifetime," gloated Jaffrey Bretton, "has
craved the adventurous experience of being marooned on a coral
island with a beautiful lady!"
From eyes that brooded only too soberly on the bright tropic
scene all around her, Daphne shot back a faintly amused and
frankly deprecatory smile.
"Oh, of course I meant an unrelated 'beautiful lady,'" murmured
her father.
As swiftly as it had come the faint smile vanished again.
Shrugging the hot salt and sand from his blue-jersied shoulders
her father gathered his bare brown knees into the curve of his
bare brown arms and surveyed her suddenly with a most ferocious
frown.
"Daphne," he ordered, "never inhale your smile! Nicotine itself
is no more injurious to one's 'in'ards than is an inhaled smile." [108]
With a sweep of the hand he seemed in that single moment to
include the whole shining universe in the measure of his reproach.
"Even with all--this," he demanded, "can't you be happy--_any_?"
Certainly no one could have denied that it was a shining universe!
Like a cake of white soap splashing in a pan of bluing, the
little island gleamed in the Gulf! Whiteness beyond your wildest
dreams of whiteness! Blueness beyond your wildest dreams of
blueness! Pearl, azure, indigo, turquoise, ultramarine--all
sizzling together in the merciless sun!
Green there was too, of course--the vivid, clattering green of
majestic cocoanut palms, the virescent flare of beech-grass, the
crisp fan of scrub palmetto, and always the great, glossy
mangrove trees rearing like giant laurel bushes in the dark,
dustless splendor. But green in the Gulf, somehow, always seems
like man's idea, or woman's--a sheer after-thought, as it were,
of shade or trimmings. All the blue gulf wants is glare--and
the eternal chance to grind pale rain bow-tinted shells into
white sand! [109]
Cuddled to the white sand but hiding from the glare, Jaffrey
Bretton lolled in the pale shadow of an old wreck, staring out
into the radiance. Half a rod away from him in a slim blue
swimming suit that exactly matched his own, Daphne lay basking
in her own sand nest.
Nothing else on land or sea dozed or dallied because of the heat.
"Slam--Bang--_Bang_" for a glistening mile the big billows
boomed and roared on the beach. Fantastic as a shadow with a
shine to it, the gray sharks slashed and reslashed through the
churning tide! High overhead in inestimable thousands white
gulls furled and feathered in ecstatic maneuver! Far on the
outer reef bright Spanish mackerel leaped in the sun! And
startlingly outlined across the horizon, as though in deliberate
mockery of all man's futile efforts to walk on the water, a
gigantic kite-shaped whipperee went reeling tipsily from wave to
wave!
With a gasp of almost pagan joy Jaffrey Bretton repeated his question.
"Even with all this," he insisted, "can't you be happy--any?" [110]
"Oh, Old-Dad," shivered Daphne, "you know just as well as I do
that I would be perfectly happy if only I could forget!"
"Forget what?" said her father.
"Forget the hideous thing the President called me!" quivered Daphne.
"Forget that--that awful letter my room-mate's mother wrote me! . . .
Forget the newspapers! . . . Forget--forget--_everything_!"
With a shrug of his shoulders, Jaffrey Bretton gestured back to
the camp fire at the edge of the cactus thicket where, crouched
before the fragrant coffee pot in a scarecrow suit of gay-colored
ginghams, a weirdly majestic looking old man with long scraggly
hair and sharply aquiline features added the one tragic note to
the scene.
"Lost Man has--'forgotten everything,'" he confided, a bit dryly.
"Forgotten everything?" repeated Daphne.
"Everything except how to make coffee," said her father, "or fry
a bit of fish now and then! Forgotten who he is, I mean! Forgotten
who he was! Forgotten even who he intends to be! That's rather the
trouble, it seems, with this forgetting business! When [111] you
once start out to 'forget' there doesn't seem to be any special
discrimination about it! Your father's name, the location of
your banker, the price of turnips, the esthetic value of brushing
your hair all wiped out of existence by a single slop of the same
sponge!"
"Yes, but Old-Dad----" parried Daphne.
With a smile that was almost caressing her father narrowed his
gaze once more to the tragic old figure.
"Hanged if I don't think the old chap would die for me!" he
attested. "But nothing on earth, it seems, could make him
remember me! Seventy years old and seventy miles from a fish
hook and seventy times battier than batty! That's the way I
found him five or six years ago!"
"Yes, but where did you find him?" wakened Daphne. "How ever did
you happen to find him?"
"Well, if the truth must be told," said her father, "I was
hunting rather zealously at the moment for a pink curlew. It is
against the law, I believe, to be hunting overzealously for a
pink curlew. Way up one of those tortuous green waterways it
was! An absolute [112] maze of mangrove islands! No conceivable
footing, you understand, except that great bare fretwork of
mangrove roots clawing down into the water! And every separate
way you stared was just another dank green tunnel! Glossy leaves
slapping along the sides of your canoe, dove-gray curlews
blocking out the sky, alligators guzzling in every slimy bog
hole! Had a little chunk of dry land, the old chap did, just
about the size and substantiality of a crumpled-up newspaper,
and a wigwam thatched like a cannibal hut with palm leaf fans!
And there he lay in the damp and the heat and the buzz, too weak
any longer to raise his head, but swearing like a trooper
because in some inexplicable way he had missed the trading boat
that chugged along his coast line every three months or so. For
days and days, I suppose, he had rowed laboriously down to the
mouth of the pass and leaned on his oars from dawn to dusk
raking that blue horizon line for rice and 'white bacon' and
coffee and matches and--life. It wasn't just that he was fastidious,
you know! Raw curlew or raw jewfish would have tasted like pudding
to him by then! [113] But something seemed to have happened to his
shotgun and his last fish hook--rot, I suppose. Anyway, from
grass floor to peak of that rattling palm-leaf hut there wasn't
a single thing left but damp and heat and buzz! Yet somewhere
up in the North, I suppose, or the East or the West, there's a
baffled little family group still arguing round the evening lamp
or over the morning porridge: 'Whatever in the world became of
Father?' Wrecked by a typhoon or a bank defalcation, swerved from
some perfectly sober path by the phantasia of a headache powder,
driven to frenzy by the pattern of his dining-room wall paper
'Whatever in the world became of Father?'"
"Well, whatever did?" quickened Daphne.
"Oh, we chucked him into our canoe," said Jaffrey Bretton, "and
took him back to the yacht, and from the yacht in due time to this
same little coral island. And every quarter now, when the trading
boat skirts the coast, it rather plans, I think, to throw a box of
fodder ashore at the entrance to Lost Man's pass--whether Lost Man
himself is in sight or not. And usually in the winter when I [114]
come down I send a Seminole Indian back into that mad green maze
to find him. No one but an Indian could find him, I imagine. And
always, without the slightest question or demur, Lost Man comes and
cooks for me. Yet never once, I think, has he shown a flicker of
recognition beyond staring up bewilderedly through every first brew
of camp coffee to inquire, 'Say, boss,--have--I--ever--cooked for
you before?'"
"Oh, but Old-Dad!" cried Daphne. "Don't you think we ought to
try and take him home?"
"Home to what?" frowned her father. With a sudden glance of a
lover his eyes reswept the turquoise-colored tide. "Wouldn't any
man," he questioned, "rather die on the Spanish Main--than live
in an asylum? Also, incidentally," he murmured, "when a man has
once formed the Seminole Indian sort of habit of living in a gay
gingham jumper with or without trousers he doesn't slip over-easily,
you understand, into linen collars again."
"Yes, but what about his family?" protested [115] Daphne, "and the
awful tragedy of being lost?"
"God knows!" said her father. "But the awful tragedy of being
lost is considerably less sometimes, I fancy, than the awful
tragedy of being found! Every human catastrophe makes a lot of
new problems of course--but it cancels, I imagine, just as many
old ones. By land or sea there never was any smash-up yet, I
suppose, that didn't release some poor soul with the cry, 'Now,
I'll never have to tell! Now, they'll never need to know! Now,
we'll never have to pay!' People who wondered how they could
meet the coming day just didn't have to, that's all! And lads
like our old friend here, Kiddie, are pretty apt to represent
somebody's canceled problem. And anyway" (for comedy instead of
tragedy he restaged his whole face suddenly by the shift of a
single eyebrow), "and anyway, Kiddie," he laughed, "it must
simplify life pretty considerably to forget everything in it
except how to cook the one thing you like best! In your own case,
for instance, what will you choose? Guava jelly? Or fudge?" [116]
"Guava jelly and fudge _nothing_!" flared Daphne. In another
instant she was on her feet and speeding toward Lost Man.
"Whatever you do--don't start him swearing!" shouted her father.
"Truly, I couldn't advise it!"
But heedless of everything except the intolerable mystery,
Daphne was already at the camp fire poised like a slim wand of
blue larkspur over the old man's crouching hulk.
"Must at least have been a Northerner once!" called her father,
"or he'd never stand the shock of that bathing suit!"
Shrugging the raillery aside Daphne clutched out with desperate
intensity at the old man's multicolored shoulder.
"Lost Man!" she flamed, "it's perfectly absurd for you to
remember a silly little thing like how to make coffee and forget
a great big important one like who you are! It doesn't make
sense, I tell you? You must remember who you are! You must! You
_must_! Lost Man, what is your name?"
"'Lost Man,'" answered the old chap, as though it had been
Smith. [117]
"Yes, but where do you live?" cried Daphne.
"Here," said Lost Man.
"Yes, but after you leave here where do you go?" persisted Daphne.
"There," said Lost Man.
With a little wail of despair Daphne pointed back toward her father.
"What is that man's name?" she demanded.
"It doesn't matter," said Lost Man. "He has such a good face."
"Yes, but what's my name?" giggled Daphne.
As though just a little bit wearied by the catechism Lost Man resumed
his coffee drinking.
"Everything is all the same," he said.
"But I tell you I won't be an 'All the Same!'" cried Daphne. "My name
is Daphne! D-a-p-h-n-e! _Daphne_! Remember it now!" she admonished
him. "You've simply got to remember something! . . . Daphne! Daphne!
Daphne!"
With a curious little chuckle and a sudden cock of his head as
though trying to locate the source of so unfamiliar a sound,
Lost Man [118] reached out for the great long-handled camp spider
and began quite unexpectedly to thrum it like a banjo, as, shaking
his shaggy mane out of his eyes, he burst into song:
"Diaphenia, like a daffadown dilly,
White as the sun, fair as the lily,
Heigho--Heigho----"
With a tiny scream Daphne swung back to ward her father.
"Why, Old-Dad!" she cried. "He's calling me 'Diaphenia'! It's an
old, old song! Oh, an awfully old, old English song! It's in the
Golden Treasury! You learn it in college! You never in the world
would know it if you hadn't been to college!"
"Well, switch him back to the swearing if you'd like it better!"
called her father. But already, with a leap and a run, he was on
his way to prove the phenomenon with his own ears and eyes.
Quaveringly, but with determinate gallantry, Lost Man's guttural
old voice carried the tuneful memory.
"Diaphenia like to all things blessed,
When all thy praises are expressed,
Heigh-o--Heigh-o." [119]
The scream that Daphne gave now scared even Lost Man out of his
next line.
"Oh, I've thought of something perfectly wonderful!" she cried,
and speeding into her tent returned with a large shining mirror
clasped close in her arms. "Oh, you thought I was silly to bring
it!" she admonished her father, "but maybe I wasn't so silly,
after all! Maybe I'm going to work a miracle with it! Maybe this
is the psychological moment!" Still with the mirrored surface
gleaming from her like a bright breastplate she advanced slowly
toward Lost Man till every inch of the quicksilver had taken its
merciless toll of the scarecrow figure before it. "Now, Lost
Man!" she triumphed, "look close! Look close! . . . _Who are
you_?"
As indifferently as an animal Lost Man gazed into the mirror for an
instant. Then, quite suddenly, with his neck yanked oddly forward,
he stared direct into the reflection and staggered to his feet. Dumb
with some inexplicable emotion he stood staring for a breathless
moment from Jaffrey Bretton's utterly expressionless face to Daphne's
excited eyes. Then, very deliberately the tip [120] of his tongue crept
out to moisten his sun-parched lips.
"Do I look like _that_?" he pointed.
"Yes, I'm afraid you do," admitted Daphne in all honesty.
With a gasp like the gasp of a person strangling, Lost Man
raised his arms to heaven. "My God! My God!" he cried, "I
thought I was _young_!" And swinging sharply around he ran madly
down the white beach into the white surf and out through the
white surf into the blue churn and chop beyond, as though the
horizon line itself was his ultimate goal. Outward through the
indigo depths in long, slow, fiercely powerful strokes,
floundering half erect through azure-colored shoals, merging for
interminable seconds with the wild eddy and roar of far outlying
breakers, silhouetted for one brief fantastic moment standing
ankle-deep on the crest of a hidden sand bar with white gulls
circling in a living halo around his head he passed, half
whipperee, half miracle-man--into the unfathomable glare.
"Oh, Old-Dad!" gasped Daphne, "won't he be drowned?" [121]
More shaken than he liked to show, Jaffrey Bretton stooped for
an instant to brush a tickle of imaginary sand from his instep.
"Not in a thousand years," he said, "but at least he will
be--washed."
At some unfamiliar timbre of the voice Daphne crept timidly to
him.
"Oh, Old-Dad," she faltered, "you don't really suppose, do you,
that he's been lost ever since he was--young?"
"God knows," said Jaffrey Bretton. "Only, next time you have a
wonderful idea, Kiddie,--keep it muzzled for a day or two until
you make sure it won't bite."
"Oh, but Old-Dad!" quivered Daphne, "I--I didn't mean to hurt
him! Truly, I didn't! I----"
"You didn't hurt him," said her father. "Like all merciful
executions, he never knew what hit him!" With a gesture frankly
rompish he reached out and grabbed Daphne by her wrist. "Come
on, Kiddie!" he challenged, "let's have a race up the beach!"
By the time the race was over there wasn't enough breath left in
either of them to talk about anything. Merged in the sand again,
[122] scorched by the sun, fanned by a great clattery clump of scrub
palmetto, they curled up in half a shadow and fell asleep.
It was Jaffrey Bretton who woke first.
"Poor--devil," was the first phrase on his lips.
"Who?" yawned Daphne.
"I!" said her father quite quickly. "I was worrying about my dog."
"O--h," yawned Daphne.
"Oh--yourself!" yawned her father.
It was Daphne who woke first the next time, and she woke with
her fingers clutching hard into her father's startled shoulder.
"Oh, Old-Dad!" she cried. "There's a lady walking on my beach!"
Heavy with sleep, Jaffrey Bretton struggled laboriously upward
and shook his white hair from his eyes just in time to face the
intruder as she rounded the nearest cactus thicket.
"Why--why--good afternoon, Lady-Walking-on-our-Beach!" he said.
The scream that the lady gave, though distinctly shrill was yet
quite unmistakably a [123] khaki scream, the scream, as it were,
of a sportswoman, a mere matter of atavism only.
"_Oh_! How you startled me!" she cried.
It was at least very becoming to the lady to be startled, though
all around the edges of the frank confession her lips showed
still their stark, atavic pallor, and the clever gray eyes that
searched the two blue-jersied figures before her were rather
extravagantly dilated.
"Is--is this Martha's Island?" she questioned just a little bit
abruptly.
"It is not!" said Jaffrey Bretton with some coldness. "Martha is
a crazy lady. Do we look to you like crazy ladies?"
"Oh, no--of course not," flushed the intruder. "Only--only it is
so awfully hard sometimes to place people without their clothes."
"Without their clothes?" flared Daphne. "Why these are our
clothes! Our very own clothes!" As though in indisputable proof
of the assertion she edged even closer to her father's side and
began to stroke such shoulder and such sleeve as her father's
swimming suit boasted.
But, gentle as the gesture was, it only served [124] somehow to
increase the Intruding Lady's nervousness.
"Why--of course--I--I didn't mean that," she stammered. "It's
only that that running on you so suddenly the way I did, I----"
With a gesture of sheer helplessness she threw out her hands.
"Well, there _are_ so many queer people down here!" she cried.
"Fanatics and fruit growers and runaway people--and--and
fanatics!" In an access of bewilderment her glance swept out
across Daphne's slim, nymph-like loveliness to the wild island
scene all around them, and back again to Jaffrey Bretton's
distinctly sophistcated eyes. "For all I know," she affirmed
with a palpable effort at lightness, "_you_ may be fugitives
from justice!"
"Call us rather--fugitives from injustice," bowed Jaffrey
Bretton, with the faintest possible smile.
Tugging at the brim of her brown khaki hat, fumbling at the
collar of her brown khaki shirt, patting at the flare of her
brown khaki skirt, the Intruding Lady began very suddenly to
tinker with her personal appearance. [125]
"Now, isn't that funny?" jerked Daphne. "Whenever my father
smiles, smiles like that, I mean--so faint, so twinkly--every
woman in sight except myself begins to straighten her hat and----"
"Hush such nonsense!" ordered her father.
But the Intruding Lady, without showing an atom of resentment,
wilted right down in the hot sands and began to laugh. It was a
clever laugh, too, though still just a little bit wobbly round
its edges.
"Please excuse me for being so hysterical," she begged. "But
it's been such a queer day! And I've just had such a dreadful
fright I hardly know who's crazy and who isn't!"
"A fright?" deprecated Jaffrey Bretton with increasing
formality.
"Yes! Coming ashore just now," cried the Intruding Lady, "I
thought I saw a man walking on the water! Way out in the Gulf it
was! Almost a mile I should think! But when I looked again it
was a fish!" very faintly, but none the less palpably her teeth
began to chatter. "But when I looked _again_ it was a man! It
_was_!"
"Nothing at all to be alarmed about," [126] interposed Jaffrey
Bretton quickly; "it was just our butler doing his calisthenics."
"Your--butler?" stammered the Intruding Lady.
"Yes--you have probably noticed that the water is exceedingly
thin in spots" then with a precipitate return of his manners
Jaffrey Bretton waved her toward the green-shadowed sand nest
which he had just vacated.
"Have a shade, madam!" he begged her. "You seem quite out of
breath! And as though you had been running!"
"Running?" rallied the lady. "I have been galloping!" Rather
cautiously, but none the less gratefully, she edged her way into
the wavy green shadow. "And even after I got ashore," she
confided, "I met such queer things on the beach! Oh, pelicans, I
mean," she added hastily, "and fiddler crabs! Crowds and crowds
of----"
"We shall have to have a traffic cop," mused Jaffrey Bretton.
But even as he mused he stood with one hand shading his eyes
while he raked the vacant horizon line for some thing that
seemed to perplex him.
"When you spoke of coming ashore just [127] now," he turned and asked
the lady quite abruptly, "just what, may I ask, were you on?"
"I was on a--on a honeymoon," said the lady.
"A honeymoon?" jumped Daphne.
"And being inexpressibly bored," said the lady, "I----"
"You are frank, to say the least," murmured Jaffrey Bretton.
"'Frank?'" said the lady. "I was desperate! So when the others
took all the launches to go off and hunt for some kind of a
fish, a sail fish I think it was, I pretended that I had a
headache and stayed behind in my cabin, and the first moment
even the engineer was out of sight I just slipped into the canoe
and paddled ashore. Having heard, you see," explained the lady,
"about all the queer people hidden away on some of these
islands--it just occurred to me, you see, that----"
"All of which is very interesting, of course," said Jaffrey
Bretton, "but honor compels me to advance a few little
observations of my own. Yonder, through that maze of gulls," he
pointed, "I note the only smoke on [128] the horizon which leads
me to infer that, having camouflaged your absence not only wisely
but too well, the yacht and bridegroom in question are already
steaming southward at a very reasonable mileage. For the
Caribbean, doubtless? Always have I understood that the
Caribbean was a really rather remarkable place for honeymoons!"
But already, with a little choking gasp, the Intruding Lady was
on her feet staring frantically in every direction. Her face was
horridly white.
"Quick!" she cried. "We must get the canoe and try to catch
them!"
"Your knowledge of nautical matters is charming," bowed Jaffrey
Bretton. "But though one may often put to sea in a canoe he does
not readily put to Gulf. The unfortunate typhoonish treachery of
these waters, the peculiarly hoydenish habits of sharks, the----"
"We--must--get--the--canoe!" insisted the lady.
"Why, how silly!" roused Daphne. "Why, it would take weeks and
weeks!"
"And in this impetuous climate," deprecated [129] her father,
"how dispiriting to arrive at last only to find that the recreant
bride groom had already taken unto himself another bride."
"Your levity is quite uncalled for," frowned the lady. "When I
think of the anxiety I have caused my party the commotion there
will be on board the yacht as soon as my absence is discovered,
the----"
"Oh, of course we could advertise," suggested Jaffrey Bretton
cheerfully, "stating the latitude and longitude, and the more
explicit directions that it's the island that almost always has
eleven pelicans sitting on the sand bar. And we could train our
butler, I suppose, to swim out from time to time to the passing
yachts and houseboats with a placard in his mouth saying, Found:
'A Brown Khaki Lady'. But unless we have a little more definite
identification--" he turned and addressed the lady with some
incisiveness.
In spite of herself and quite inexplainably the lady began to
smile. Simultaneously with the smile she unwound the brown veil
from her brown hat, and snatching off the hat itself bared her
bright head to the breeze. [130]
"Just mention that I have red hair," she said. "Names are
altogether too easily assumed to be practical for identification
purposes."
"Yet more ladies, I suppose," murmured Jaffrey Bretton, "travel
under assumed hair than under assumed names."
"Why, Old-Dad!" protested Daphne. In a sudden flare of interest
her whole attention focused on the lady. "My! but your hair _is_
red!" she cried. "And such heaps of it! Why, goodness!" she
stammered, "you're almost as young as I am!"
"It's delightful of you to think so," smiled the lady. "But even
you, I'm afraid, will never rate me as young as this--this--your
father, was it, you said?"
"I don't quite understand what you mean?" sobered Daphne.
"People almost never understand what ladies mean," said her
father. "But the inference is, of course, that this one refers
at the moment to my somewhat callow conversation. However," he
continued, perfectly blithely, "I see no reason why we shouldn't
all be very happy together--until such time at least as my own [131]
launch returns with its remodeled engine. But meanwhile when did
you eat last?" he turned abruptly to ask the lady with sincere
concern.
"Last night," conceded the lady. "Truly I did have a bit of a
headache."
"Our grapefruit are not iced," mused Jaffrey Bretton, "and we
pour our butter from a pitcher--which is not the custom, of
course, on Gulf-going yachts but as camp food goes----" With a
little swift smile he reached out his hand to Daphne and drew
her to her feet. "Dinner is served, ladies!" he said, and
started up the beach.
Still holding tightly to one hand Daphne followed half a step
behind him.
"The sun's so hot and--the sand's so thick--and the shells are
so sharp," she called back cordially to the Intruding Lady,
"you'd find it heaps easier, too, if you'd take Old-Dad's other
hand!"
"No, I thank you!" said the Intruding Lady, but plowed along
valiantly after them.
The sun was hot! The sand was thick! The shells were very sharp!
No shade for almost a mile except the occasional lattice-like [132]
flicker of a sea gull's flight! But close at their side the Blue
Gulf pounded and splashed in ecstatic spray. And towering high
above the sallow glare of beach-grass and cactus thicket the
bright green cocoanut palms clattered and fanned with at least
the sound of coolness!
"I--I suppose I'll have to keep the lady in _my_ tent,"
whispered Daphne.
"Your supposition is perfectly correct," said her father.
"She's got rather nice eyes, I think," whispered Daphne. "And
the cutest hair!"
"Has she really?" said her father.
At the sudden sharp wince in the little hand that had nestled so
confidently in his own he glanced back just in time to catch the
look he so dreaded in her eyes.
"I--I suppose I ought to tell her," suffered Daphne.
"Tell her--what?" snapped her father.
"Why--my--my story," stammered Daphne. "It wouldn't be quite
honorable not to, would it?" Desperately the young lips tried to
recapture some kind of a humorous smile. "Tell--her I mean--quite
frankly, you [133] know--that I'm more or less of a notorious
character." In a single quiver the young mouth stripped itself
of even this futile attempt at mirth. "No decent woman would
ever _choose_ to associate with me again, the President said."
In an outburst of quite irrelevant temper, Jaffrey Bretton swung
around to wait for the Intruding Lady.
"Is this a tortoise race?" he demanded accusingly. "Are we to
die here in our tracks of hunger and thirst?" Without so much as
a "By your leave" he snatched the Intruding Lady's hand in his
spare one and plunged onward again. As they raced across the
spongy, tide-swept sand bar just ahead of a huge blue wave and
sighted the white tents at last, he tossed back his head with a
whoop of extravagant mirth. "Whatever in the world have I done,"
he demanded of earth, air, sky, sea, "that I should be marooned
on a coral island with _two_ beautiful ladies--one of whom is my
daughter and the other the bride of another man?"
"S-s-h!" warned Daphne with a twitch of the hand. "There's a
stranger at the camp [134] fire!" Dropping her father's fingers and
quite ignoring the other lady she ran swiftly ahead, and dodging
into a thick clump of beach-grass crouched down like a young
Indian to study out the mystery. "Oh, Old-Dad!" she signaled
back with her finger on her lips, "it's the--sissiest-looking
man! Such queer little narrow shoulders! And the mooniest eyes!
And a beard like a silk hand kerchief!"
"Must be the Outlaw," said her father
"The Outlaw?" protested Daphne. "Oh, dear me!" she cried
suddenly. "He's seen me! And he's skulking off through the grass
with a great roll of furs or something under his arm! Quick!
Maybe we're robbed!" Darting out into full view on the beach she
stood poised for a single uncertain instant while the Outlaw, as
though by magic, vanished from sight.
"Robbed! Oh no," laughed her father. "It's your bathing suit!
Next to being the honestest man I know this particular Outlaw
happens to be also the most squeamishly modest. Creep around the
back way by the [135] palmettos," he ordered, "and put on a skirt!
I want to see him!"
Dropping the Brown Khaki Lady's fingers he cupped his hands to
his mouth and began to halloo across the little distance.
"Hi there, Alliman!" he called.
"How-do, Mr. Bretton!" came the soft-voiced answer very cautiously,
then, from the thicket the man himself emerged with the roll of
wildcat skins still clutched in his arms. Daphne certainly had
not exaggerated the gentleness of him, nor the narrow shoulders,
nor the silky old-fashioned brown beard, nor the bland eyes.
"Come to trade me those cat skins for some pipe tobacco and
oranges?" smiled Jaffrey Bretton.
"I--don't--mind," drawled the Outlaw.
As one to whom Time meant nothing nor ever would again, he sat
down on the edge of the old wreck and drew his empty pipe from
his pocket.
"Just behind that broken spar there you'll find a tobacco tin, I
guess," said Jaffrey Bretton. "I rather plan to cache more or less of
it around on such shelf-room as the island [136] affords. . . . It's
such a blamed nuisance to get way off up the beach somewhere and
find you've forgotten your 'baccy'. That's the only conceivable
fault I could find with this island," he mused. "There's so little
closet room and practically no shelves!"
"Puff, puff, puff," without a flicker of expression the Outlaw
sucked at his pipe. "Puff, puff--puff--puff, puff."
With a gesture toward the tents, a nod toward the retreating back
of the Brown Khaki Lady, Jaffrey Bretton essayed to re-crank the
conversation.
"My ladies," he confided, "have been swimming--wading--running
not to say--yachting!"
"Pretty ladies!" blushed the Outlaw.
"Thank you," bowed Jaffrey Bretton.
"Puff, puff, puff, puff, puff," sighed the Outlaw's pipe.
Very deftly Jaffrey Bretton reached round behind the broken spar
for a smoke of his own.
"Any special news this last year?" he asked.
Thoughtfully, from the long monotonous months of heat and glare
and squalor and [137] privation and almost absolute isolation, the
Outlaw extracted as a sheer gift the one comely fact.
"I--seen--a whole bunch of pink--curlew," he said.
"The deuce you did!" brightened Jaffrey Bretton.
"Any news--up--your way?" droned the Outlaw.
From Europe, Asia, Africa--from the courts of kings and the
gossip of queens, from a hundred adventures, from a hundred
glittering memories Jaffrey Bretton traded gift for gift.
"I saw the World's Series," he confided. "I saw Frank Baker make
his two home-runs."
"N--o?" shivered the Outlaw. Very slowly he removed the pipe from
his mouth. For an instant only, a muscle twitched like a sob in
his grizzled throat. As though suddenly consumed with bashfulness,
he began to shuffle his bare toes in the sand. "Got--got the same
President as usual?" he ventured at last.
"As far as I know," said Bretton. "I was in Washington three
weeks ago." [138]
"Orange crop good up-state?" persisted the listless voice.
"Good enough, I guess," acquiesced Bretton.
"Anything--special--in the papers these days about Alabamy?"
mumbled the pipe-clenched lips.
"Alabama's still on the map," admitted Bretton.
"Puff--puff--puff," mused the Outlaw. Then very limply he
struggled to his feet. "Say, Martha wants you," he said.
"Martha?" puzzled Jaffrey Bretton. "Wants _me_? . . . What for?"
"She don't say," said the Outlaw, "but she wants you--quick."
"Quick?" gibed Jaffrey Bretton.
"She sure wants you quick," repeated the Outlaw.
"Oh, all right, we'll go now," acquiesced Jaffrey Bretton, "just
as soon as I can jump into my khakis! Why, I wouldn't fail
Martha for anything in the world! Why, that time the catfish
stung me she----" Quite precipitate his face darkened, and then
cheered again. "Oh, of course I haven't my [139] launch here," he
acknowledged, "but we can go in yours!"
"Oh--no," protested the Outlaw gently. "It'll be night coming back,
and I don't calculate on going nowheres in the dark. . . . It
ain't healthy to travel in the dark. . . . My mother back home,
she always say it ain't healthy no ways to travel in the dark."
"Oh, nonsense!" said Jaffrey Bretton. "Why, Martha may be ill!"
"She sure has got something," sighed the Outlaw, "but it ain't a
dyingness. To-morrow'll do."
"It certainly won't do--if Martha's in trouble!" cried Jaffrey
Bretton. "We'll go this minute! . . . Wait till I tell the
ladies, and we'll all be along just as soon as we can grab up a
bite to eat!"
Like a man smitten in his tracks, the Outlaw stopped short and
began to twirl his battered slouch hat in his hands.
"Oh--not the ladies!" he protested wanly.
"Sure, we'll take the ladies!" insisted Bretton. "It will be
quite an adventure for them."
Dumbly the Outlaw stared for a [140] moment from the Gulf to the sky
and back to Jaffrey Bretton's smile again.
"You ain't forgotten Martha's little peculiarity, has you?" he
whispered, "about red?" In frankly abject misery he began to
retwirl his hat. "One of them ladies had red hair, I notices,"
he said.
With a whoop of joy, Jaffrey Bretton tossed back his own white
head.
"I guess we could muffle it," he laughed.
But the Outlaw recognized no mirth in any thing at the moment.
"It ain't so easy to muffle ladies," he said.
"Oh, shucks!" persisted Jaffrey Bretton. "Trot along."
Reluctantly the Outlaw turned and started for his boat.
"My engine ain't running any too good," he confided plaintively.
"They never do," said Jaffrey Bretton.
"'Tain't near likely there's enough gas," deprecated the Outlaw.
"There never is," said Jaffrey Bretton.
With a gesture of sheer weariness the Outlaw submitted to his fate.
"Oh, very well this time," he said, "but I'm [141] going to move.
I likes you fine, Mr. Bretton, but I sure am a-going further off.
What with Lost Man and Martha this here Gulf is getting too crowded."
Cocking his head abruptly toward the sound of metal ringing on
metal, Jaffrey Bretton gestured toward the mangrove-shadowed cove.
"There's good old Lost Man now," he said, "tinkering with your
engine."
"Oh--Lost Man's all right," admitted the Outlaw, "only he ain't
got any tact."
"Oh, shucks!" repeated Jaffrey Bretton. "_Trot_ along, I say!
. . . But go over to the food tent first and pick out your
trade for the cat skins. Whatever's fair, you know? Anything you
please. . . . Strawberries, asparagus, chili con carne--anything,
you know, except caviar."
"Yes--I know," rallied the Outlaw. With the slightest possible
accentuation of his pace he started up the beach.
Still laughing to himself Jaffrey Bretton bolted for his tent
and his khakis.
"Hurry up--hurry up--hurry up!" he called across to the tent
that sheltered Daphne [142] and the Intruding Lady. "We're going
on an adventure! Heaven knows what it is but something is the matter
with Martha. . . . Be sure and bring your sweater--we're liable
to be out all night!"
In an incredibly short space of time he reappeared on the "tote
path" hurrying back and forth between the camp and the launch
with a great jug of drinking water, a khaki-colored blanket or
two, and indeterminate tins of coffee and milk and meat.
Very frankly bewildered, but conscientiously determined to be a
good sport, the Brown Khaki Lady hurried to help him.
Deflected by some sudden adolescent dreaminess, Daphne was the
last to emerge from her tent. In her white shoes and stockings,
her short white skirt, her simple little white middy-blouse and
severe white tam, all her wild, nymphlike beauty of the surf
and the beach seemed to have reverted into sheer childish
loveliness and austerity. Craving a yellow cactus bloom to stick
in her belt, she plunged off first into the nearest thicket.
Chasing a bright blue butterfly, she decided just as impulsively
to explore the farther [143] palmetto. Then altogether contritely
she started out to find her own way back to the waiting launch and
her companions.
Green and dank and lacelike as the vegetation of an aquarium the
great trees traced their leaves and branches against the sky.
Close in a little bush a storm-blown scarlet bird twittered and
preened in its temporary sacristry. High over all throbbed the
ecstasy of the surf.
"Oh--_beautifulness_!" gasped Daphne. "In all the world," she
thought, "is there any word this moment except just _beautifulness_?"
Then quite suddenly from the green maze just beyond her she
heard a word that some other person evidently seemed to consider
the biggest word of the moment, and that word was "Jaffrey!"
_Jaffrey_? . . . Of all things!
With a lurch of her heart she darted forward just in time to see
her father and the Brown Khaki Lady standing like the picture of
the Huguenot lovers, with their hands on each other's shoulders.
. . . And there was a laugh on the Brown Khaki Lady's lips! But
there were tears in her eyes! [144]
"Jaffrey!" cried the Brown Khaki Lady, "since--when have you
boasted a daughter?"
Stricken with astonishment and resentment at the deception which
had been practised upon her, Daphne dashed out into the open
only to find that at some shriller cry than hers both her father
and the lady were speeding madly toward the beach, where, huddled
somewhat conglomerately in the bow of the launch, the Outlaw was
holding Lost Man at bay with a distinctly businesslike-looking gun.
"What in thunder's the matter?" shouted Jaffrey Bretton.
For a single relaxing instant the Outlaw glanced back across his
narrow shoulder.
"This-here Lost Man ain't got any tact," he sighed.
"Put that gun down!" cried Bretton. "Why, the poor old chap's
twice your age!"
"And--twice my size," confided the Out law. But he lowered the
gun at least an inch.
"But what's it all about?" insisted Bretton.
Very gloweringly Lost Man essayed to be the real explainer. [145]
"He was silly about a crab," glowered Lost Man.
"'Tweren't, either, silly," argued the Outlaw. "He stepped on a
crab and hurted it. There ain't no call to hurt nothing, I say."
"Nice one to talk, you are!" snarled Lost Man. "You--you man-killer,
you!"
Quicker than a flash the Outlaw raised his gun again.
"I ain't no man-killer," he droned. "I ain't never in my life
killed no man. What I killed was two men--both coming at me
double. There ain't no man living, I tells you, more peaceful
than me. . . . But when I'm moonshining"--in an instant the
flaccid lips had tightened into a single merciless line--"but
when I'm moonshining I don't stand no monkeyshining!"
"Oh, cut it out!" said Jaffrey Bretton. "Here come the ladies!"
"I forgot the ladies!" collapsed the Outlaw. Blushing like a
schoolboy he tucked his gun back in his belt, and began to
tinker with the engine.
But the ladies, it seemed, were not over-quick about coming. [146]
A little impatiently Jaffrey Bretton turned back to meet them.
The Brown Khaki Lady was frankly scared. But Daphne, though
white as a sheet, admitted no trepidation.
"Oh, don't you think he's too dangerous to go with?" shivered
the Brown Khaki Lady.
"Nonsense!" laughed Jaffrey Bretton. "He's as gentle as a lamb."
"If you handle him right," supplemented the Brown Khaki Lady.
"Isn't most everything dangerous," laughed Jaffrey Bretton, "if
you don't handle it right? A fifth-story window? A knife and
fork? A blank sheet of paper? The buttons on your coat? Yet only
a fool jumps through the fifth-story window, or tries to cram
the sheet of paper into his eye, or--" With a gasp of apprehension
he turned suddenly on Daphne. "You _are_ white!" he said.
Who was this woman--what was she to her father?
Twice Daphne opened her lips to cry out the question--the
accusation, the bewilderment that was consuming her. Then, with
a really heroic effort, she swung in her tracks and ran off at
full speed toward the launch. [147]
"Hurry up, you--you slow-pokes!" she turned and called back when
neither the quiver of her lips nor the blur of her eyes could be
gleaned through the distance.
In another five minutes, with a great churn of water, a great
chug of engine, a great stench of gasoline, the little old
rickety launch was on its way.
It was still very bright, very hot; but already, as though for
sheer weight and wiltedness, the huge sun lolled in its orbit,
and like a turbulent bed smoothed out at last for the night the
green mangrove-pillow and white sand-sheet of the fast-receding
shore gleamed soft and cool at last above the taut blue blanket
of the Gulf.
Perched high in the bow of the launch Daphne sat staring back at her
traveling companions--the puny Outlaw, the gigantic Lost Man, her
own most distinguished-looking father, and the mysterious lady. Like
a crippled phonograph record her mind seemed to catch suddenly on
that phrase "her most distinguished-looking father and the mysterious
lady--the mysterious lady." . . . And they were all bound somewhere
on a mysterious [148] errand--an all-night mysterious errand
concerning some mad woman who didn't like red and--and----Quite
alarmingly her heart began to pound and pound and pound! "And a
month ago," she thought, "I was getting up when bells rang, and
going to bed when bells rang, and thinking when bells rang, and
stopping thinking when bells rang!" In a curious little shiver
she looked up suddenly to find Lost Man's eyes fixed on hers with
a distinctly benign and apostolic smile, but even as he smiled he
hunched his shoulders up, clapped his hands together and burst once
more into the old English song:
"Diaphenia, like the daffadowndilly,
White as the sun, fair as the lily. . . ."
With a single outcry, Daphne tossed back her head and shrieked
her nerves into space.
"Good!" said her father. "Now you'll feel better!" [149]
II
IT was dark when they sighted the yellow lantern light on
Martha's Island. Darkness drops down so suddenly in the far
south! It's rather spooky! Rather a nice spooky, though, if you
happen to be a reasonably innocent Northerner looking for
thrills. It's only poor souls like Lost Man and the Outlaw, and
perhaps even Martha herself, to whom Darkness symbolizes a stab
in the back, a shot from ambush, or God knows what!
To Daphne, this night, the darkness was all a-tingle with magic
and pain. High overhead in ineffable crispness the blue-black
dome of the sky seemed fairly crackling with stars. Close around
her in murky mystery the great Gulf chuckled and prattled of
coral and pearl. From the dark, huddled group in the stern of
the boat not a face or a feature flared familiarly to hers. And
drowned in the shuddering gasp and throb of the engine [150] her
father's deep-voiced raillery, even the Brown Khaki Lady's light
laughter, sounded like something from another world.
It was Daphne's own little world that concerned her most at that
moment, a world in chaos!
"My father is false to me!" mutinied her wild little heart. "He
has deceived me! And about a lady!" woke jealousy. "We didn't
_need_ another lady! And what earthly reason could two people
have for pretending to be strangers when they really were
lovers? But how could two people possibly be lovers," she
questioned suddenly with an entirely new stab of bewilderment
and pain, "if one of them was already married to somebody else?
If one of them indeed was actually on a honeymoon? Even though
at the particular moment she might have run away from her
honeymoon? Marriage was marriage, people said! You had to play
it fair! Everybody had to play it fair! It was like a game! Even
people who cheated in business wouldn't think of cheating in
games! It wasn't good sportsmanship! It wasn't----" Feverishly
her fancy quickened and raged at all its [151] pulses. "If my
father isn't good," she tortured, "who is good? If my father
isn't good, what is good? If my father isn't good--what's the
use of anybody being good?"
Defiantly she lifted her eyes to the stars. And the stars
laughed at her! Distractedly she turned her ear to the Gulf and
heard the Gulf nudging the poor old launch in its ribs!
Then like the bumpy end of a dream, infinitely alarming,
irresistibly awakening, the little launch snubbed its nose into
wood in stead of a wave, and the voyage was over!
Gracing the upper step of a peculiarly water-logged and dilapidated
looking pier the yellow lantern flared down its wan welcome to
the voyagers' eyes. There was not a soul in sight, nor any sign
of human habitation except the lantern and the ruined pier.
"Truly it must be very lonesome for a lantern--living all alone
like this," observed the Brown Khaki Lady's faintly mocking
voice.
Then suddenly out of the further shadows where pier and land
presumably met, creeping low on its belly, and whimpering with [152]
excitement, emerged a little dark body edging frenziedly toward
them.
"Why--what the dickens?" cried Jaffrey Bretton. "Why, how in
thunder? Well, I should think Martha _had_ 'got something'! Why
it's Creep-Mouse!" he shouted, and jumped ashore.
Scramblingly the Brown Khaki Lady followed after him.
"Here! Wait for me!" she begged.
As he swung round to help her a single phrase passed his lips.
"Pull down your hat-brim!" he ordered. "In this light your hair
looks almost crimson!"
Then man, and woman, and dog faded into the shadow.
With a grunt of indifference, Lost Man and the Outlaw resumed
their eternal job of tinkering with the engine. Shadows working
on shadows!
"Oh, a lot anybody seems to care what be comes of me!" quivered Daphne.
"Even Old-Dad didn't say 'Good-bye'. Even Creep-Mouse--didn't say
Howdy! What's it all about?" she questioned tartly. "What's--what's
[153] anything all about?" With a swift experimental impulse she slid
over to the edge of the fore-deck and tested the shallow tide with
one slender foot and ankle. In an other instant while the two men
wrangled she had slipped over into the water and was speeding up
the unknown beach. "I'll go find something of my own!" raged her
wild little heart. "Something that _will_ say 'Good-bye' to me!
Something that _will_ say 'Howdy!' Good--bad--living or
dying--something all my own!"
Indifferent to the clogging sand, impervious to the scratch and
snag, stumbling over wreckage, dodging through palmetto,
unconscious of her breathlessness, unhampered by her loneliness,
fired only by a strange sort of exhilaration, a weird new sense
of emancipation, she sped on through the excitant dark, till
tripping suddenly on some horrid slimy thing like the dead body of
a shark she pitched over head-first into a tangle of beach-grass,
and crawling out on all fours into the clean, sweet sand again,
crawled into the spurting flash of a revolver shot whose bullet
just barely grazed the wincing lobe of her ear. [154]
Tight as a vise a man's arms closed around her!
"My God!" gasped a man's voice, "I thought you were a panther
or a bear--or something!"
Struggling to free herself Daphne snatched her small flash-light
from her pocket and flamed it full on the man's face.
"Why--what the--the dickens?" she babbled hysterically. "Why--how
in the world?" she rallied desperately. "Well--I should think
Martha _had_ 'got something!' Why--why, it's the--the Kissing
Man!" she cried.
With widening eyes and a dropped jaw the man returned the stare.
"Y--you?" he stammered.
Fumbling round through the sand for his own larger lantern he
flashed a steadier flare of light upon the scene.
"What--are--you--doing here--and crawling on your hands and
knees?" he asked. His face was ashy gray.
"Why, I'm running away!" glowed Daphne. Her eyes were like stars,
the flush in her cheeks flaunting and flaming like a rose-colored
flag. [155]
"Running away?" quickened the man. "From what?"
"I don't know!" laughed Daphne.
"To--what?" questioned the man.
"I don't care!" laughed Daphne.
With another perceptible start the young man turned upon her.
"Don't you know it's not safe for you to be alone like this?" he
stormed. "Don't you know how wild this country is? Don't you know
there are bears and panthers and wild cats and snakes and----. And
I almost shot you," he repeated dully. "Except for this--this
infernal tremor in my right hand that everybody is trying to cure
me of--I should probably have killed you."
"Do you really mean," cried Daphne with a fresh shock of
excitement, "that except for just one little chance I might be
lying here dead this very minute? Dead and all over, I mean?
Tennis and parties and new hats and everything all over and done
with? As dead and all over as--as Noah?" she gasped.
"Yes," acknowledged the man.
Solemnly for a moment in the poignant awe of it all the jaded
worldly-wise face and the [156] eager ingenuous young face measured
this matter of life or death in the depths of each other's eyes.
Then for sheer woman-nature the girl edged a little bit nearer to
the poor man who had almost killed her. And for sheer man-nature
the man put his arm around the poor girl whom he had almost
killed. It was sheer Nature's nature though that blew a strand
of the girl's bright, fragrant hair across the man's lips.
With a sound like a snarl the man edged off again.
"Whew, but my nerves are jumpy!" he said. In the flare of the
lantern light the scar on his face showed suddenly with
extraordinary plainness, and as though a bit conscious of the
livid streak he brushed his hand casually across his mouth and
cheek bone. "Tell a fellow again," he said, "about this running
away business. What's the game?"
"It isn't a game at all," flared Daphne. "I tell you I'm running
away!" [157]
"But what about that stern parent of yours?" grinned the man.
"My father is more interested in another lady!" cried Daphne.
"He's all but forgotten my existence. Oh, of course I don't mean
he's deserted me," she explained with hysterical humor. "It's
merely that for the time being and for all time to come," she
quickened suddenly, "I've _got_ to have a life of my own!"
"It's an original idea," said the man.
At the faint tinge of mockery in the words all the hot,
unreasoning anger surged back into Daphne's heart again.
"Oh, you needn't make fun of me!" she cried. "And you needn't
try to stop me! I'm a Bretton, you know! And all the Brettons
are wild! Oh, awfully wild! I read it in the paper! And I--I'm
going to be the wildest of them all!"
"Just exactly--how wild--are you planning to be?" asked the man.
Simultaneously with the question he lifted the lantern and flashed
it like a spot-light on the girl's elfish beauty, the damp skirt
moulding her slender limbs, the bright disheveled hair slipping
[158] out from the prim little tarn, the sailor-collared blouse
dragged down just a little bit too far from the eager, unconscious
young throat! "Just exactly--how wild--are you planning to be?"
"Oh, as wild as _wild_!" gloated Daphne. "I'm going to have an
aeroplane! I'm going to have a--a----"
With an odd little laugh the man jumped to his feet, and held
out his hand to Daphne.
"Where I live," he chuckled, "aeroplanes grow on trees. You're
just the little girl I'm looking for! Come along!"
"Come along where?" laughed Daphne, with her hand already in his.
"Oh, just 'along--along!'" urged the young man with a laugh that
almost exactly duplicated her own. "For Heaven's sake never
spoil a good start by worrying about a poor finish!"
"You talk just a little bit like my father," winced Daphne.
"Maybe I talk like him," laughed the young man, "but I don't
walk like him! No more straight and narrow for me! You're
perfectly right, little girl, about this game of [159] being
good! I've tried it a whole month now--and believe me,
there's--nothing in it! Why, even the gods don't intend you to
be good!" he laughed. "When they proffer you sweets on a golden
plate they certainly can't expect you to refuse 'em!"
"I never ate from a golden plate!" laughed Daphne, as snatching
her little hand loose she jumped across the edge of a wave.
"Oh, please don't run away from _me! _" entreated the young man.
"Whoever you run away from--oh, please don't run away from _me_!
It isn't exactly fair, you know! It isn't----" Flashing his
lantern aloft he stood for a single instant with his slender,
fastidiously flanneled figure silhouetted incongruously against
the wild, primitive background of cactus and wreckage. Then in a
faint paroxysm of coughing, light and figure faded out.
"Oh, I forgot," cried Daphne. "Why, of course we mustn't run!"
All the excitement in her turned suddenly to tears. "After all,"
she confided impetuously, "running away on an island isn't so
awfully satisfying! No matter how far you ran it would always be
just [160] 'round and round!'" Compassionately she turned back
towards him.
"Oh, I don't know!" snapped the young man. "Some islands, you
know, aren't quite as round and round as others! This one for
instance----" With a spring he was at her side, his queer,
fascinating face thrust close to hers, his vibrant hands
thrilling her shoulders. "You--little--blessed baby!" he cried,
"if you're really looking for an adventure--let's make one! But
while we're about it--for Heaven's sake let's make it a whopper!
Let's--let's pretend that you are a beggar maid!" he laughed
excitedly, "and that I am a fairy prince!" Once again he flashed
his lantern across her lovely disheveledness. "'Pon my soul," he
exulted, "you look heaps more like a beggar maid than I do like
a fairy prince! But if I could prove that I was _your_ fairy
prince----"
"Yes--if you could prove that you were my fairy prince----" laughed
Daphne.
"Pumpkin coach--and all?" cried the man. His hands on her
shoulders were like electric shocks.
"Pumpkin coach and all!" whispered [161] Daphne. To save her soul
she could not have told just why she whispered.
With an odd little smile the young man released his hold on her
shoulders and snatched her hand again.
"Then come quick!" he cried.
Maybe it wasn't "running," but it was very much like it! Zig-zag
across the beach, up through the palmetto thicket, clattering
across an unexpected pile of old tin cans, out into the soft
sand again of a sheltered cove, a coral harbor, where blazing
with lights like a Christmas tree a big house-boat lay at its
moorings.
"There!" cried the young man, "the pumpkin coach!"
"Why--wherever in the world did it come from?" gasped Daphne.
Her heart was beating so that she could scarcely speak.
"Wherever--in the world?"
Swaying a little on her feet her shoulder brushed ever so
slightly against her companion's, and she turned to find herself
snatched into the steel-sinewed arms, the relentless dove-voiced
urgency of the first passion she had ever seen! This was no
hoydenish [162] tussle with an unnerved man who thought you were
a panther! This was no snub-nosed smother against the breast of a
boy who was trying to keep you from screaming! This was no idyl
of the Class Room, no airy persiflage of the poets! But Passion
itself! Raw Passion, too! A thing tender, terrifying, beyond her
wildest dreams of tenderness of terror! The desperate, determinate,
all but irresistible pleading of a man who was fighting if not
for life itself, at least for the last joy that his life would
ever know!
"Oh, little girl!" he pleaded, "I'm mad about you! Do you doubt
it? Absolutely mad!" His question marks were kisses, his
exclamation points, more kisses. "Ever since that night, only
six weeks ago, was it, when I stumbled on you in the hotel? I
was drunk then, wasn't I? Well, I'm sober enough now! But drunk
or sober there hasn't been a minute since, day or night, when I
haven't been trying to follow you! Give me your lips!"
"I won't!" said Daphne.
"I tell you I can't live without you," urged the man. "I won't
live without you! Your father's quite right, I haven't got a
whole lot [163] of time, but think how we'd pack it! Hawaii,
Japan, the moon if you'd crave it! 'Eat, drink and be merry'--and
to-morrow you still live! It's only I that have got to die! You
shall love me, I say! You _shall_! Merciful God! Am I to live
like a spoiled child all my days and be robbed at this last of
the only real thing I ever wanted?"
"My--my father----" struggled Daphne. It was a struggle of soul
as well as body.
"Your father is a real man," conceded the vibrant, compelling
voice, "but he's only a real man, and with a real man's needs.
There's bound to be another woman sometime. There's another
woman even now you say? What place then is left for you? But
come with me, I say, and as long as there's breath left in my
body you shall be first, last and only! And after that----" he
shivered ever so slightly, "Mrs. Sheridan Kaire won't have to
worry, I guess, overmuch about anything. Oh, I've been a devil,
I know! I don't deny it! I----"
"You--you mean you've kissed other women?" cried Daphne,
"Like--this?"
"Yes--several--other--women," winced [164] the insatiate lips,
"but not like this! Or this! Or _this_!"
"I won't give you _my_ lips," said Daphne.
"You little spit-fire!" exulted the man. "You--you young
panther! _You blessed little pal_! You and I together--and the
world well lost!"
With a catch of his breath that was almost a sob he tilted her
chin towards the light and stared deep into her young unfathomable
eyes. His own eyes were hot with tears, and the scar across his
cheek twitched oddly at the dimple.
"Wanted--to--be as wild as an aeroplane, did you?" he questioned
with extraordinary gentleness. "And they crucified you for a
wanton in the Halls of Learning! Also in the Sunday supplement
next to the Comic Section!" At the answering shiver of her body
something keener than tears glinted suddenly in his eyes. But
his voice never lifted from its gentleness. "And they always
will crucify you, little girl," he said, "in this fuddy-duddy
boarding school world you've been living in! As long as you
live, little girl, some prude will be mincing forward [165] from
time to time to see if the nails are holding the cross itself still
in the full glare. But the bunch I run with, little girl, would
rate you as a saint! Call it a wild bunch if you want to, but
wouldn't you rather be laughed at for a saint than spat at for a
devil?"
"Y-e-s," quivered Daphne.
"Then come!" said the man.
Daphne did not stir.
Once again the vibrant fingers stroked along her pulsing wrist.
"What you need," crooned the persuasive voice, "for what
ails--you, is to whoop things up a bit, not whoop 'em down. Which
statement," he grinned, "though it may not spell righteousness,
remains at least the truth. So come!" he quickened. "And if you
want to go wild, we'll go wild! And if you want to go tame,
we'll go tame! Heaven or hell, I don't care--as long as it's
together!"
From the glittering house-boat in the little bay a bell tolled
out its resonant news that the hour was eight o'clock.
"Hurry up!" urged the man with the faintest possible rasp of
anxiety in his voice. "For Heaven's sake if we're going let's go
while [166] the going is good! No bungling! No fiasco! All I want
from you," he turned and confided with sudden intensity, "is your
promise that if we do start you'll see the thing through! My
honor not to make a fool of you pledged against your honor not
to make a fool of me! Girls are so unreliable."
"'Girls?'" winced Daphne.
From the glittering house-boat a woman's laugh rang out with
curious congruity.
But when Daphne winced this time, she was in a lover's arms
again, encompassed by a lover's tenderness, coaxed by a lover's
voice.
"Oh, I don't pretend for a moment," crooned the persuasive
voice, "that I've got just the crowd on board that I would have
chosen for this particular sort of get-away. Nevertheless----"
With a chuckle that would have been brutal if it had not been so
exultant he bent down and brushed his lips across Daphne's
throbbing temple. "Nevertheless," he chuckled, "of all the
crowds that ever crowded anybody, this one represents perhaps
the one most ready to eat from my hand. I haven't got much
sense, it seems, nor yet a long life, but what I have got," he
[167] laughed out suddenly, "I've got for fair! And that's money!"
In a silence that was almost sinister he stood for an instant
staring off at the house-boat's gay-lanterned outline against
the dark fluttery palms. "Thought they'd yank me back from all
this did they?" he questioned hotly. "Back to an old Board
Meeting in a New York snow-storm? Not much! 'If you want your
damned old library,' I wired 'em, 'come ahead down here and
thrash it out where a fellow can argue without frost biting his
tongue, and be catching a tarpon or two on the side at the same
time.' Wired 'em tickets and everything, the whole damned
outfit, architect and all! Heap-sight easier though than going
back to New York! But if I don't want to give 'em the library,"
he grinned with sudden malice, "I don't have to, you know--even
now! There's nothing in my father's will, I mean, that compels
me to give it. My father's will merely suggests that I give it,
advises me to give it, 'with such subsequent moneys,' he quoted
mockingly, 'as may comprise my estate' at the time I cash in.
But of all the big stiffs," he shuddered, "that I ever saw, [168]
Claudia Merriwayne leads them all, not even excepting her new
Dean or her Oldest Trustee!"
"Claudia--Merriwayne?" gasped Daphne.
"Oh, of course, in my day," persisted Kaire, "I have had grace
at my table, and some disgrace now and then! But Greek? And
Latin? and Doric columns? And the 'influence of concrete on
young character?' _Why where are you_?" he turned and called
suddenly through the darkness. Gropingly his arms reached out
and snatched her to him again, and for the first time she
yielded limply, and lay like a bruised rose against his breast.
"Why, I can't even hear you breathing!" he cried. "Why, you
might be dead, you are so still! And your little hands are like
ice! And----"
"Did--you--say--that--that Miss Claudia Merriwayne--was on that
boat out there--with you?" faltered Daphne.
"Why, yes," shrugged the man, "I think that's the lady's name.
Why--why, shouldn't she be there? All the colleges are closed
now, aren't they, for the Christmas holidays? Why, surely you
don't mean that you care?" he [169] laughed. "That you don't
like my having the dame?"
"_Care_?" hooted Daphne. Like a wraith suddenly electrified all
the fire, the nerve, the sparkle, the recklessness came surging
back to her!
Through every quiver of his overwrought nerves he sensed the
strange almost psychic change come over her, a brighter gold to
the hair, a deeper blue to the eyes, a quicker pulse in the
slender throat. Every tender line of her thrown suddenly into
italics, every minor chord crashing into crescendo! If she had
been beautiful in the rompish escapade of the beach, and the
single wistful silence of the moment before, her beauty was
absolutely maddening to him now.
With a little quick cry that was almost like a challenge she
reached up and touched him on the shoulder. It was her first
caress.
"Oh, all right! I'll go with you!" she cried excitedly. "But on
one condition only!"
"A hundred conditions!" quickened the man, "so long as you make
them before we start!"
"It's about our 'start' that I'm making this [170] one!" cried
Daphne. Her flesh was flaming with blushes but neither her heart
nor her mind knew just why she blushed. "It's--it's about your
drunkenness!" she flamed. "After we're man and wife, with my
faults as well as yours, we'll have to do the best we can, think
it out, fight it out, maybe we can get somebody to help us! But
until we're man and wife, I must not be embarrassed--or
humiliated! Badness that knows that it's badness, that's one
thing! But silliness that doesn't know it's silliness, I just
couldn't stand it, that's all!" Shrewdly her young eyes narrowed
to his. "You're--you're quite right what you said on the beach
just now! No one can guarantee his ending! But it's an awful
goose, Sheridan Kaire, who doesn't guarantee his start! So if I
pledge you, Sheridan Kaire," flamed the proud little face, "that
once started I _will_ see the whole thing through, it is pledged
on the understanding that you will protect the--the dignity of
that start?"
Across the man's impatient face a dark unhappy flush showed
suddenly. [171]
"I get you!" he said. "I will be very careful about my drinking."
"But as to a pledge from you," cried Daphne, "that you wouldn't
back out and make a fool of _me_--why, it just never would have
occurred to me to ask it! It doesn't occur to me even now! Why--why
should you make a fool of me?" she questioned. "Why, how could you
make a fool of me? You love me, don't you?" she triumphed.
"I--love--you," said the man.
"Oh, all right, then!" cried Daphne. "'Nuff said! Let's go!"
Snatching a silver whistle from his white flannel pocket the man
blew sharply once--twice--three times. Simultaneously with the
signal a slight commotion was visible on the house-boat.
"They'll be over for us right away," said the man. "Just as soon
as they can get the little boat launched."
With her small hand slipped into his, Daphne stood pawing the
sand like a pony while she watched the operations.
"Will it be--_my_ house-boat?" she thrilled. [172]
"It will be your house-boat," smiled the man.
"And my gay lanterns?" danced Daphne.
"And your gay lanterns," smiled the man.
"And my money?" cried Daphne. "And my library?"
"And your _everything_," smiled the man.
With an absolutely elfish cry Daphne threw back her head and
began to laugh.
"Oh, I'm not a bit afraid to go with you!" she laughed. "Maybe I
ought to be! But I'm not! I'm not! Maybe it's because I'm too
excited to be afraid! Maybe it's because," she flamed, "I am never
going to be afraid of anything--ever any more! Oh, I'm an--awful
kid," she paled and flamed again, "I don't even know just what
marriage is! But--" Wild as the humor of nymph or faun the queer
little cry burst from her lips again. "But I know I must never
deceive you!" she cried. "I know that much at least! So--so
maybe you won't want to take me," she cried, "when I tell you
that Miss Claudia Merriwayne was the President who expelled me
from college!"
"_What_?" snapped Sheridan Kaire. "The [173] devil you say!
_What_? Oh, so that's why you were willing to come? Just to get
even? Just to----Now I must have been some thick," he frowned,
"not to have sized up that that was the bunch who expelled you
from college. Thicker even than I thought I was! Seeing only your
picture in the paper, sizing up only your name!" Then quite
suddenly he put back his head and began to laugh. "Of all the
comic operas!" he hooted. "Of all the Heaven-sent situations!
We'll give them their old library or not just as you say," he
hooted. "Well----" Then with a gesture that seemed to be all
ardor and no gentleness he reached out and drew her back to him.
"I don't care why you come," he cried, "as long as you come!"
"Oh, won't it be glorious," danced Daphne, "to surprise them so!
I'm going to pull my hair way down over my face like this and
this," she illustrated with eager fingers, "so that they won't
know me at all until I'm ready--I'll look so wild!"
"Everything's going to be glorious!" said the man. "H-st! Here
comes the launch!"
Like an excited child Daphne ran to meet [174] it. Close at her
shoulder followed the man. Glancing back at him swiftly through
the bright maze of her hair, a single challenge, half mischievous,
half defiant, flashed from her lips and eyes.
"Glorious! Glorious! _Glorious_!" she laughed. "But I will--never
give you my lips!"
All defiance and no mischief, the man's laugh answered the challenge.
"I sha'n't--care what--you give me," he said, "when I'm once
fixed so that I can take what I want!"
With a swish of keel and sand the little launch landed at their
feet.