“Let me conduct your marvelous majesty to a seat beside the wheel.” Hal
offered his hands with a motion of exaggerated gallantry. He caught
Marjorie’s hands in his own and half swung her down from the little pier
and into the motor boat.
“Thank you, gallant and distinguished skipper,” was Marjorie’s blithe
response as she sat down on the small cushioned bench nearest the wheel,
guided by Hal’s devoted arm.
“I had no idea you appreciated me so highly.” He managed to keep up the
light, bantering tone he had first used. It was not easy. What he longed
to say to her as she turned her vivid, sparkling face toward him was: “I
love you. I love you.”
“Why shouldn’t I appreciate you?” Marjorie merrily insisted. She was
relieved at Hal’s apparently light mood. She hoped it would continue for
at least the greater part of the ride. She preferred to ward off the
dreaded talk as long as she could. She had agreed with her captain that
Hal had the right to be heard; that it was not fair to him to evade
longer an understanding with him.
“I don’t know. Why should you?” countered Hal.
“For two splendid reasons. You’re taking me for a ride in the Oriole.
Besides, you called me ‘marvelous majesty,’ which is a most flattering
title. Oh, Hal Macy!” Marjorie exclaimed with animated irrelevancy;
“isn’t this the most heavenly blue and white and gold day? Blue sea,
blue sky, white clouds and golden sun!”
“It’s a peach of a day,” he tersely agreed. Marjorie’s declared
appreciation of himself brought a half ironical smile to his lips. As
usual, it was like that of a child, grateful for benefits. “What port?”
he inquired briefly of her as he started the Oriole away from the pier.
“No port,” was Marjorie’s prompt choice; “just a little run out to sea.”
“Right-o.” Hal obediently headed the Oriole seaward. “Look at the
crowd!” He indicated with a sweep of an arm the flock of white-winged
sail boats and motor launches which thickly dotted the dimpling water.
“Every fellow at the beach who owns a boat seems to be out with it
today.”
“It’s an ideal day for boating,” Marjorie found herself tritely echoing
Hal’s opinion of the weather. Still she could not on the instant think
of anything else to say. Her usual fund of gay, amusing conversation had
deserted her. She was too honest of spirit to pretend that which she did
not feel.
“There’s no danger of a sudden squall, either.” Hal’s interest in the
weather appeared to deepen. “This day is what I’d call an old reliable.
Storms hardly ever blow up out of such honest-to-goodness blue skies as
these.”
“That’s true.” Marjorie inwardly derided herself for being such an utter
stupid. She tried to make herself believe that it was only Hal, her boy
chum, with whom she was out boating. She could not. The young man at the
wheel whose familiar handsome features were touched with an intensity of
purpose quite foreign to them was all but a stranger to her. In the past
she had had only rare, disquieting glimpses of the intense side Hal was
showing today.
A flat, uncomfortable silence suddenly drifted down upon them. Hal’s
courteous attempt to talk trivialities, simple because he knew that was
what Marjorie preferred him to do was a failure. He had come to the
place where he could no longer continue to hide his heart from her.
The silence between them continued; deepened. Both had begun to feel the
tensity of the situation. Both had tried to talk pleasantries and both
had failed. Hal occupied himself with sending the Oriole scudding
cleverly in and out among the numerous pleasure craft, large and small
which dotted the course he was steadily taking toward quieter more aloof
waters.
Now and again they were briskly hailed by the occupants of other passing
boats. Hal lightened momentarily as he answered the merry salutations,
then relapsed into somber gravity.
“What a lot of people you know at Severn Beach, Hal.” Marjorie was glad
to find her voice again. Hal was waving an acknowledgment to a noisy,
rollicking crew of young men in a passing power launch who had sent out
a ringing hail to him.
“I only know a bunch of yachtsmen and a few other fellows.” Hal
disclaimed popularity with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “The Clipper,
my racing sailboat, is better known along this coast than I am. Oh, but
she’s a winner!” Hal brightened with pride of ownership. “She won every
race I entered her for last summer. She’s won two this season, and she’s
entered in a spiffy race the yacht club is going to pull off in a couple
of weeks. You’d better stay at the beach and see it. I’ll take you
aboard for the race, if you’ll stay.” Half laughingly, half pleadingly
he offered this bribe.
“That would be glorious; to be in a real race!” Marjorie looked her
regret. “You’re always so good to me, Hal; always planning some
perfectly dandy stunt just to please me. But you know how it is about
Hamilton. I feel it truly a sacred obligation; my work there, I mean. I
couldn’t allow personal pleasure to come before it.”
“No; nor love, either,” Hal burst forth with a hurt vehemence which
brought the hot blood to Marjorie’s cheeks. “I beg your pardon,
Marjorie,” he said almost immediately afterward. “I spoke on impulse.
Still, that’s the way I feel about your going back to Hamilton next fall
when I love you so dearly and want you to marry me. I wish you cared
even half as much for me as you do for your work at Hamilton. But you
don’t care at all.”
“I do care for you, Hal, as one of the best friends I have,” Marjorie
protested, raising her brown eyes sorrowfully to Hal’s clouded face.
“I know,” Hal rejoined a shade less forcefully. “I value your
friendship, Marjorie, more highly than I can say. But friendship’s not
what I want from you, dear girl. I love you, truly and forever. I’ve
loved you since first you came to Sanford to live. I’d have told you so
long ago but you never gave me an opportunity.” Hal paused. He regarded
Marjorie wistfully; questioningly.
“I—I know it, Hal,” she admitted reluctantly, but with her usual
honesty. “I—I haven’t wished you to talk of love to me. There were times
last winter”—she stopped in confusion—“when I thought you cared—a
little. I—I wasn’t sure.”
“Be very sure of it, now.” Hal’s reply was a mixture of tenderness and
dejection.
“I don’t want you to love me, Hal,” Marjorie cried out almost sharply in
her desire to be emphatic. “Last night, after what you said to me on the
beach, I couldn’t help but be sure. I—I told Captain of it. I always
tell her everything. Captain is sorry I don’t love you. She and General
are fond of you. They’d be happy if we were—if we were—to become
engaged.” Marjorie spoke the last words hesitatingly.
“I’m glad you told your mother. You know how fine I think both General
and Captain are.” Hal fought back the hurt look that threatened to
invade his face. He gripped the wheel until his knuckles stood out
whitely against the sun-tanned brown of his hands.
Marjorie caught a glimpse of the unhappiness which sprang straight from
her old comrade’s sore heart and into his eyes.
“There; I’ve hurt you, Hal! Truly I never meant to!” she exclaimed in
quick contrition.
“Never mind me.” Hal made a gesture of self-depreciation. “It isn’t your
fault because you can’t find it in your heart to love me.” He forced a
smile, proudly trying to conceal his own desolation of spirit.
Her eyes remorsefully fixed on him the smile did not deceive Marjorie.
Hal’s tensity of feature informed her of the weight of the blow she had
just dealt him.
“Please, please, Hal, forgive me!” she begged with a sudden excess of
pained humility.
“Forgive you? For what?” Hal bent a fond questioning glance on
Marjorie’s troubled face.
“For—for—not loving you,” she faltered. “It hurts me dreadfully to know
that I must be the one to make you unhappy. Forgive me for seeming to be
so hard and unsympathetic about love. I’ve never thought of it for
myself. It has always seemed vague and far away; like something not a
part of my life. I know the love between Connie and Laurie is wonderful.
I can appreciate their devotion to each other. I have the greatest
impersonal reverence for love and lovers. But for me life means endeavor
and the glory of achievement.”
The voice of ambitious, inspirited youth sang in her tones, half
appealing though they were. Came an embarrassed stillness between them.
Hal’s face, strong, even stern in its self-repression was turned partly
away from her. The bleakness of his suffering young soul peered forth
from his deep blue eyes as he stared steadily across the dimpling
sun-touched waves.
“Nothing matters in life but love. To love and to be loved in return,”
he said slowly, but with a kind of fatalistic decision. “You’ll love
someone, someday, even though you can’t love me.” The shadow on
Marjorie’s face deepened as she listened. It was almost as though in a
flash of second sight Hal were telling her a fortune she did not care to
hear. “When love truly comes to you, then you’ll understand what you
can’t understand now,” he ended.
“I don’t want love to come to me. I don’t wish to understand it,”
Marjorie made sad protest. “Since it isn’t in my heart to love you, I
should never wish to love any one else. You’re the finest, gentlest,
truest boy _I’ve_ ever known, Hal, or ever expect to know.”
Hal’s half averted face was suddenly turned toward Marjorie. Across it
flashed a rare sweet smile which lived long afterward in her memory.
“It’s as I told you last night, Marjorie Dean. You haven’t grown up.”
Tender amusement had mercifully broken into and lightened his gloom.
“You only think you have,” he said. Marjorie’s naive avowal had brought
with it a faint stirring of new hope.
“Yes, Hal, I’ve grown up,” Marjorie began seriously. “It’s not——”
“You’ll never really grow up until love finds the way to your heart,”
Hal interrupted with gentle positiveness. “I hope when it does it will
be love for me. I can’t give you up, dear. I’m going to call you ‘dear’
this once. I’d rather have your friendship than the love of any other
girl in the world. I’m going to wait for you to grow up.”