FATE SPREADS AN ISLAND FEAST
I don't know how long we sat silent on the beach. Such silence was
never embarrassing to her, because it seemed perfectly normal and
usual, and I was too busy with my thoughts to feel any sense of
restraint. And yet they were hardly thoughts: my head whirled in a
confusion of regret and desire, and one moment my blood ran warm with
the joy of my discovery, and the next a horrid chill crept over me as
I saw my empty years--for if she might not fill them, no one else
should. At last I drew a long breath.
"Are you hungry?" Margarita asked pleasantly. "When I am hungry I do
that very often. If you will come now, we will have our breakfast."
She sprang to her feet with the lithe ease of a boy and held out her
hand to me. I took it and we walked thus across the beach to the
cottage, and during that walk, with her firm, warm hand fast in mine
and her clean, elastic step beside me, I swore to myself that neither
she nor Roger should ever regret what she had done to me, nor know it,
if I could keep the knowledge from them. The last part of this vow was
impossible of fulfillment, finally, but the first, thank God! has
never been broken, or even for a moment strained, and I like to hope
that this may count a little to my credit, in the ultimate auditing,
for she was terribly alluring, this Margarita, and I am no more a
stock or a stone than other men, I fancy.
We walked around to the shore side of the cottage and there stood
Roger on its weather-beaten veranda, his hand held out to me eagerly,
an anxious, an almost wistful look in his honest blue eyes. He was
unusually but not unbecomingly dressed in faded blue serge trousers,
too tight for the dictates of fashion, but quite telling in their
revelation of his magnificent thighs, tucked into very high wading
boots and topped by a grey flannel blouse open at the neck for
comfort, with a twisted dull green handkerchief by way of a collar. It
was really quite picturesque altogether, and suited him excellently,
as all rough-and-ready, notably masculine attire has always done.
Curiously enough, he combines with this, when in evening clothes, the
least resemblance to a head-waiter I have ever observed in an
American; the price they pay, I suppose, for being quite the best
dressed business and professional men in the world.
I took all this in, of course, in a fraction of the time it takes to
write it, and also the fact that old Roger looked ten years younger
than when I had last seen him. He had always been a steady,
responsible fellow, you see, one of the men people put things on, and
not particularly youthful for his age: a great help to him as a
budding young lawyer.
But now I saw the eyes we used to see on the football field in New
Haven, and even, it seemed to me for a moment, the little worried yet
patient intentness I knew so well at school when some one of those
tiny climaxes (that seemed so terrible then!) depended on him for a
fair solution. They used to say so clearly, those honest eyes, that he
hoped you agreed with him and that you felt his way was the best way,
but that whether or not you agreed, he would have to do it, all the
same.
He had, as I say, his hand out, and I quickly put mine into it,
somehow or other not losing Margarita's at the same time. As
unconsciously as a child she reached out her other hand to him and we
stood like boys and girls in a ring-game, Roger and I looking deep
into each other's eyes and holding Margarita tightly.
"Is it all right, Jerry?" he asked me earnestly.
"It's all right if you say so, Roger," I answered promptly. All our
friendship was packed into that question and answer, and I like to
think that I never asked any explanations and that he never thought of
giving any till they were more or less unnecessary, the matter being
settled.
"You're not alone, I hope?" he said as we moved, one each side of
Margarita, into the house. I dropped her hand abruptly. Up to that
moment I had completely forgotten my sensible parson.
"Not unless he's given me up and rowed back to the town," I assured
him contritely, "and I hope to heaven you know who he is, for I don't!
He's a thoroughly good fellow, anyhow, and he knows us, and from what
I've seen of him he strikes me as just about the man we want."
"Thank you for that 'we,' Jerry," said Roger soberly, putting his arm
over my shoulder, and I realised suddenly and completely that I had
taken the jump and cleared my last ditch: Roger's interest in to-day's
event, for good or bad, was mine.
"I'll run and call him," I began, "and mind you mention his name
directly, for it's a bit awkward for me all this while." Something
struck me and I turned back.
"By the way," I tried to say easily, "do you want me to--to begin any
explanations?"
He laughed shortly.
"Good old Jerry!" he said affectionately. "No, I'll manage that when I
find out who he is. Hurry him along, for breakfast is ready."
I dashed off to the landing and hailed the boat, now plainly visible
on the bright, clear moving sea. She flew in like a swallow, the
oarsman coat off and dripping, and evidently royally content.
"Has Roger got a change for me?" he called as he reached the landing.
"I won't keep him ten minutes longer, but I'd like to go over the side
here, tremendously."
I, too, had begun to be conscious of a wrinkled, cinder-coated
feeling, and Roger, who had followed me at a distance, turned at my
shout and ran back to the cottage, returning with a white armful of
linen and towels just as we had slipped into the blue, cold water. I
shall never forget his expression of mingled relief, real pleasure and
amusement as he recognised my companion's face, bobbing upon the
surface.
"This is mighty good of you, Elder," he said simply, and reached down
from the slippery stone to shake the dripping hand held out to him.
Then it came to me in a flash. Tip Elder, of course! He was supposed
to have been christened Tyler, but was never known by any other name
than Tippecanoe, for reasons clearer in those days than these, the old
political war cry in connection with his boating fame having proved
too temptingly obvious to the rest of his class crew. He was in
Roger's class; I remembered how, even then, he had dragged Roger down
to some boys' club of his to give a boxing lesson once to some of his
proteges. He and Russell Dodge had a notable and historic quarrel once
because Tip had refused to break an engagement in order to take one of
Russell's many feminine incumbrances to a dance. Tip had steadily
refused to accept the obligation, and had endured very patiently a
vast amount of hectoring from Russell, who was then as now a trifle
snobbish and unsteady; but had finally been forced (or so we regarded
it, at that hot and touchy period) to accept what was practically a
challenge, and we were actually on tiptoe for a duel. Feeling ran high
about it, and there might have been a very disagreeable scandal had
not Tip's clear common sense and persuasive oratory burst out at the
last possible minute from this murky thunder-cloud and effectively
swept the whole business out of the way.
But none of his prayer meetings, nor the trip to the Holy Land that he
made in one long vacation ever deceived anyone who knew the fellow
into thinking him a prig. He never pretended that his ideals of
practical conduct were a bit higher than those of scores of the men
who had none of these interests of his. So marked was this absence of
the goody-goody in Tip that I, though I recalled his face and vaguely
connected him with something or other in the athletic line, never
remembered these other characteristics of his until, at Roger's warm
greeting, the years rolled back and Tip Elder, oarsman and
philanthropist, took his proper place in my memory again.
We scrambled up the rough landing steps, rubbed down quickly and got
into the fresh linen Roger had brought us, talking curt commonplaces,
not even embarrassed, in the glow and vigour of that strengthening
dip, and I noticed that the underwear, though of the best linen, was
somehow a little unfamiliar in its fashion, indescribably antiquated
in cut.
"We'll talk at breakfast," said Roger, as we hurried toward the
cottage. "I know you're hungry."
He pushed open the door, and we entered, gazing curiously around us.
We stood in a large, square room, evidently a dining and living-room,
washed with a greyish plaster, at once warm and cool. There was a
deep, wide hearth of faded red brick on one side, and an old oak
dresser covered with a very good service of gold-rimmed white china
and several pieces of handsome Sheffield plate. The few chairs and
settees and the one large table in the centre were all of that solid
yet graceful Georgian style that our ancestors brought with them; the
bare clean floor and the home-made rugs, taken with this furniture,
gave an effect more usual now in a summer cottage than it was then. On
the walls were eight or ten water-colour sketches framed in rustic
wood; a worn wicker _chaise-longue_ with patchwork cushions, struck a
curiously exotic note; two spinning-wheels, a large and a small,
flanked the fire and bore every evidence of use, not aestheticism; a
silver bowl of unmistakable Queen Anne date, beautifully chased,
filled with fiery nasturtiums, stood in strange neighbourliness to a
cheap American alarum clock; a lovely, tarnished oval mirror reflected
a hideous floral calendar, the advertisement of some seedsman. The
room turned in a small ell, and this, which was evidently the kitchen
corner of it, could be completely hidden from the rest by a quaint
screen, very broad and high, of home manufacture, the body of which
was composed of several calfskins beautifully marked and adroitly
fitted together. This last gave a touch of quaint antiquity, a hint of
the bold and primitive that was deliciously satisfying. I thought it
then and still think it a room in ten thousand. It had no other door
nor any window opening on the beach, and this produced a softened
dimness, a richness, so to speak, of lighting and gloom, a sinking
into shadow of the hearth and spinning-wheels, a lightness of the
dresser and the polished settle near it that struck the eye with the
same contented shock one gets from a mellow Dutch interior--the same
impression of previous acquaintance, of a once familiar, only half
forgotten home.
I have since tried to analyse the charm of that room, its inevitable
hold upon every one privileged to enter it (and I suppose few rooms in
America have held a greater number of really select souls), and I have
decided that its spell consisted in its deeply impersonal character;
its utter lack of the characteristics, the idiosyncrasies, the
imbecilities, even the fascinations of other, no matter how attractive
dwelling places. It had the restful aloofness of a studio, with none
of its professional limitations; the domesticity of a home, with none
of its fatiguing clutter; the freedom of an inn, with none of its
stale sense of over-use. And above and through all this ran the note
of almost ascetic cleanliness, a purity fairly conventual. Like most
men, I have a concealed passion for perfect cleanliness--concealed,
because to the sex so ironically intrusted with the duty of domestic
lustration cleanliness appears to mean frightful and devastating
upheavals resulting in a nauseating odour of soap and furniture
polish. When you shall have learned, dear ladies, to _keep_ your
domains clean without so furiously _getting_ them clean, you will have
earned, in our eyes, your somewhat dubious title of housekeepers.
Meanwhile, continue, in heaven's name, to think us the contentedly
dirty sex!
From the kitchen ell delicious odours proceeded, and as we sat down
around the shining old table with its fine, much-darned linen, and its
delicate china eked out where necessary by cheap, coarse, village
crockery, a heavy-faced fellow with dull eyes under a shock of hair
served us with what, upon mature consideration, I believe to have been
the finest breakfast I have ever eaten. A great fresh fish, broiled
with bacon, plenty of those delicious corn-meal muffins (I believe
they are locally and truly known as "gems") mealy potatoes fried in
bacon fat, and a sort of tart jam or marmalade made of wild plums to
top off with, the whole washed down with strong coffee and rich cream,
melted before our keen-edged appetites like dew before the hungry sun,
and we hardly spoke as we filled ourselves.
Much combined to give a flavour to the meal: the long, worried night,
the short, cool plunge, the excitement of our adventure, the mystery
of this empty house (for neither Margarita nor any other hostess was
present) and in my own case the wild, heady consciousness of that
absurd, incredible thing that had just happened to me: the confused
yet certain sense that it could never be quite the same with me as it
had been before I met that extraordinary girl in the faded red jersey.
It was too soon to think about it, I was still stupid from the shock
of it, but my blood ran very sweetly through my veins, the delicious,
strong air of the beach was in my nostrils and the food was fit for
the hunger of the gods.