“Yes — only Leroy was always a pig.”
As they turned their horses toward the high-road Mrs. Ferrall said: “Do you know why Sylvia isn’t shooting with Howard?”
“No,” replied her husband indifferently; “do you?”
“No.” She looked out across the sunlit ocean, grave grey eyes brightening with suppressed mischief. “But I half suspect.”
“What?”
“Oh, all sorts of things, Kemp.”
“What’s one of ‘em?” asked Ferrall, looking around at her; but his wife only laughed.
“You don’t mean she’s throwing her flies at Siward — now that you’ve hooked Quarrier for her! I thought she’d played him to the gaff—”
“Please don’t be coarse, Kemp,” said Mrs. Ferrall, sending her horse forward. Her husband spurred to her side, and without turning her head she continued: “Of course Sylvia won’t be foolish. If they were only safely married; but Howard is such a pill—”
“What does Sylvia expect with Howard’s millions? A man?”
Grace Ferrall drew bridle. “The curious thing is, Kemp, that she liked him.”
“Likes him?”
“No, liked him. I saw how it was; she took his silences for intellectual meditation, his gallery, his library, his smatterings for expressions of a cultivated personality. Then she remembered how close she came to running off with that cashiered Englishman, and that scared her into clutching the substantial in the shape of Howard.... Still, I wish I hadn’t meddled.”
“Meddled how?”
“Oh, I told her to do it. We had talks until daylight.... She may marry him — I don’t know — but if you think any live woman could be contented with a muff like that!”
“That’s immoral.”
“Kemp, I’m not. She’d be mad not to marry him; but I don’t know what I’d do to a man like that, if I were his wife. And you know what a terrific capacity for mischief there is in Sylvia. Some day she’s going to love somebody. And it isn’t likely to be Howard. And, oh, Kemp! I do grow so tired of that sort of thing. Do you suppose anybody will ever make decency a fashion?”
“You’re doing your best,” said Ferrall, laughing at his wife’s pretty, boyish face turned back toward him over her shoulder; “you’re presenting your cousin and his millions to a girl who can dress the part—”
“Don’t, Kemp! I don’t know why I meddled!... I wish I hadn’t—”
“I do. You can’t let Howard alone! You’re perfectly possessed to plague him when he’s with you, and now you’ve arranged for another woman to keep it up for the rest of his lifetime. What does Sylvia want with a man who possesses the instincts and intellect of a coachman? She is asked everywhere, she has her own money. Why not let her alone? Or is it too late?”
“You mean let her make a fool of herself with Stephen Siward? That is where she is drifting.”
“Do you think—”
“Yes, I do. She has a perfect genius for selecting the wrong man; and she’s already sorry for this one. I’m sorry for Stephen, too; but it’s safe for me to be.”
“She might make something of him.”
“You know perfectly well no woman ever did make anything of a doomed man. He’d kill her — I mean it, Kemp! He would literally kill her with grief. She isn’t like Leila Mortimer; she isn’t like most girls of her sort. You men think her a rather stunning, highly tempered, unreasonable young girl, with a reserve of sufficiently trained intelligence to marry the best our market offers — and close her eyes; — a thoroughbred with the caprices of one, but also with the grafted instinct for proper mating.”
“Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?” asked Ferrall. “That’s the way I size her up. Isn’t it correct?”
“Yes, in a way. She has all the expensive training of the thoroughbred — and all the ignorance, too. She is cold-blooded because wholesome; a trifle sceptical because so absolutely unawakened. She never experienced a deep emotion. Impulses have intoxicated her once or twice — as when she asked my opinion about running off with Cavendish, and that boy and girl escapade with Rivington; nothing at all except high mettle, the innocent daring lurking in all thoroughbreds, and a great deal of very red blood racing through that superb young body. But,” Ferrall reined in to listen, “but if ever a man awakens her — I don’t care who he is — you’ll see a girl you never knew, a brand-new creature emerge with the last rags and laces of conventionality dropping from her; a woman, Kemp, heiress to every generous impulse, every emotion, every vice, every virtue of all that brilliant race of hers.”
“You seem to know,” he said, amused and curious.
“I know. Major Belwether told me that he had thought of Howard as an anchor for her. It seemed a pity — Howard with all his cold, heavy negative inertia.... I said I’d do it. I did. And now I don’t know; I wish, almost wish I hadn’t.”
“What has changed your ideas?”
“I don’t know. Howard is safer than Stephen Siward, already in the first clutches of his master-vice. Would you mate what she inherits from her mother and her mother’s mother, with what is that poor boy’s heritage from the Siwards?”
“After all,” observed Ferrall dryly, “we’re not in the angel-breeding business.”
“We ought to be. Every decent person ought to be. If they were, inherited vice would be as rare in this country as smallpox!”
“People don’t inherit smallpox, dear.”
“Never mind! You know what I mean. In our stock farms and kennels, we weed out, destroy, exterminate hereditary weakness in everything. We pay the greatest attention to the production of all offspring except our own. Look at Stephen! How dared his parents bring him into the world? Look at Sylvia! And now, suppose they marry!”
“Dearest,” said Ferrall, “my head is a whirl and my wits are spinning like five toy tops. Your theories are all right; but unless you and I are prepared to abandon several business enterprises and take to the lecture platform, I’m afraid people are going to be wicked enough to marry whom they like, and the human race will he run as usual with money the favourite, and love a case of ‘also-ran.’... By the way, how dared you marry me, knowing the sort of demon I am?”
The gathering frown on Mrs. Ferrall’s brow faded; she raised her clear grey eyes and met her husband’s gaze, gay, humourous, and with a hint of tenderness — enough to bring the colour into her pretty face.
“You know I’m right, Kemp.”
“Always, dear. And now that we have the world off our hands for a few minutes, suppose we gallop?”
But she held her horse to a walk, riding forward, grave, thoughtful, preoccupied with a new problem, only part of which she had told her husband.
For that night she had been awakened in her bed to find standing beside her a white, wide-eyed figure, shivering, limbs a-chill beneath her clinging lace. She had taken the pallid visitor to her arms and warmed her and soothed her and whispered to her, murmuring the thousand little words and sounds, the breathing magic mothers use with children. And Sylvia lay there, chilled, nerveless, silent, ignorant why her sleeplessness had turned to restlessness, to loneliness, to an awakening perception of what she lacked and needed and began to desire. For that sad void, peopled at intervals through her brief years with a vague mother-phantom, had, in the new crisis of her career, become suddenly an empty desolation, frightening her with her own utter isolation. Fill it now she could not, now that she needed that ghost of child-comfort, that shadowy refuge, that sweet shape she had fashioned out of dreams to symbolise a mother she had never known.
Driven she knew not why, she had crept from her room in search of the still, warm, fragrant nest and the whispered reassurance and the caress she had never before endured. Yes, now she craved it, invited it, longed for safe arms around her, the hovering hand on her hair. Was this Sylvia?
And Grace Ferrall, clearing her sleepy eyes, amazed, incredulous of the cold, child-like hands upon her shoulders, caught her in her arms with a little laugh and
sob and drew her to her breast, to soothe and caress and reassure, to make up to her all she could of what is every child’s just heritage.
And for a long while Sylvia, lying there, told her nothing — because she did not know how — merely a word, a restless question half ashamed, barely enough to shadow forth the something stirring her toward an awakening in a new world, where with new eyes she might catch glimpses of those dim and splendidly misty visions that float through sunlit silences when a young girl dreams awake.
And at length, gravely, innocently, she spoke of her engagement, and the worldly possibilities before her; of the man she was to marry, and her new and unexpected sense of loneliness in his presence, now that she had seen him again after months.
She spoke, presently, of Siward — a fugitive question or two, offered indifferently at first, then with shy persistence and curiosity, knowing nothing of the senseless form flung face downward across the sheets in a room close by. And thereafter the murmured burden of the theme was Siward, until one, heavy eyed, turned from the white dawn silvering the windows, sighed, and fell asleep; and one lay silent, head half buried in its tangled gold, wide awake, thinking vague thoughts that had no ending, no beginning. And at last a rosy bar of light fell across the wall, and the warm shadows faded from corner and curtain; and, turning on the pillow, her face nestled in her hair, she fell asleep.
Nothing of this had Mrs. Ferrall told her husband.
For the first time in her life had Sylvia suffered the caresses most women invite or naturally lavish; for the first time had she attempted confidences, failing because she did not know how, but curiously contented with the older woman’s arms around her.
There was a change in Sylvia, a great change stealing in upon her as she lay there, breathing like a child, flushed lips scarcely parted. Through the early slanting sunlight the elder woman, leaning on one arm, looked down at her, grey eyes very grave and tender — wise, sweet eyes that divined with their pure clairvoyance all that might happen or might fail to come to pass in this great change stealing over Sylvia.
Nothing of this could her husband understand had she words to convey it. There was nothing he need understand except that his wife, meaning well, had meddled and regretted.
And now, turning in her saddle with a pretty gesture of her shoulders:
“I meddle no more! Those who need me may come to me. Now laugh at my tardy wisdom, Kemp!”
“It’s no laughing matter,” he said, “if you’re going to stand back and let this abandoned world spin itself madly to the bow-wows—”
“Don’t be horrid. I repent. The mischief take Howard Quarrier!”
“Amen! Come on, Grace.”
She gathered bridle. “Do you suppose Stephen Siward is going to make trouble?”
“How can he unless she helps him? Nonsense! All’s well with Siward and Sylvia. Shall we gallop?”
All was very well with Siward and Sylvia. They had passed the rabbit-brier country scathless, with two black mallard, a jack-snipe, and a rabbit to the credit of their score, and were now advancing through that dimly lit enchanted land of tall grey alders where, in the sudden twilight of the leaves, woodcock after woodcock fluttered upward twittering, only to stop and drop, transformed at the vicious crack of Siward’s gun to fluffy balls of feather whirling earthward from mid-air.
Sagamore came galloping back with a soft, unsoiled mass of chestnut and brown feathers in his mouth. Siward took the dead cock, passed it back to the keeper who followed them, patted the beautiful eager dog and signalled him forward once more.
“You should have fired that time,” he said to Sylvia— “that is, if you care to kill anything.”
“But I don’t seem to be able to,” she said. “It isn’t a bit like shooting at clay targets. The twittering whirr takes me by surprise — it’s all so charmingly sudden — and my heart seems to stop in one beat, and I look and look and then — whisk! the woodcock is gone, leaving me breathless—”
Her voice ceased; the white setter, cutting up his ground ahead, had stopped, rigid, one leg raised, jaws quivering and locking alternately.
“Isn’t that a stunning picture!” said Siward in a low voice. “What a beauty he is — like a statue in white and blue-veined marble. You may talk, Miss Landis; woodcock don’t flush at the sound of the human voice as grouse do.”
“See his brown eyes roll back at us! He wonders why we don’t do something!” whispered the girl. “Look, Mr. Siward! Now his head is moving — oh so gradually to the left!”
“The bird is moving on the ground,” nodded Siward; “now the bird has stopped.”
“I do wish I could see a woodcock on the ground,” she breathed. “Do you think we might by any chance?”
Siward noiselessly sank to his knees and crouched, keen eyes minutely busy among the shadowy browns and greys of wet earth and withered leaf. And after a while, cautiously, he signalled the girl to kneel beside him, and stretched out one arm, forefinger extended.
“Sight straight along my arm,” he said, “as though it were a rifle barrel.”
Her soft cheek rested against his shoulder; a stray strand of shining hair brushing his face.
“Under that bunch of fern,” he whispered; “just the colour of the dead leaves. Do you see?... Don’t you see that big woodcock squatted flat, bill pointed straight out and resting on the leaves?”
After a long while she saw, suddenly, and an exquisite little shock tightened her fingers on Siward’s extended arm.
“Oh, the feathered miracle!” she whispered; “the wonder of its cleverness to hide like that! You look and look and stare, seeing it all the while and not knowing that you see it. Then in a flash it is there, motionless, a brown-shaped shadow among shadows.... The dear little thing!... Mr. Siward, do you think — are you going to—”
“No, I won’t shoot it.”
“Thank you.... Might I sit here a moment to watch it?”
She seated herself soundlessly among the dead leaves; he sank into place beside her, laying his gun aside.
“Rather rough on the dog,” he said with a grimace.
“I know. It is very good of you, Mr. Siward to do this for my pleasure. Oh — h! Do you see! Oh, the little beauty!”
The woodcock had risen, plumage puffed out, strutting with wings bowed and tail spread, facing the dog. The sudden pigmy defiance thrilled her. “Brave! Brave!” she exclaimed, enraptured; but at the sound of her voice the bird crouched like a flash, large dark liquid eyes shining, long bill pointed straight toward them.
“He’ll fly the way his bill points,” said Siward. “Watch!”
He rose; she sprang lightly to her feet; there came a whirring flutter, a twittering shower of sweet notes, soft wings beating almost in their very faces, a distant shadow against the sky, and the woodcock was gone.
Quieting the astounded dog, gun cradled in the hollow of his left arm, he turned to the girl beside him: “That sort of thing wins no cups,” he said.
“It wins something else, Mr. Siward, — my very warm regard for you.”
“There is no choice between that and the Shotover Cup,” he admitted, considering her.
“I — do you mean it?”
“Of course I do, vigorously!”
“Then you are much nicer than I thought you.... And after all, if the price of a cup is the life of that brave little bird, I had rather shoot clay pigeons. Now you will scorn me I suppose. Begin!”
“My ideal woman has never been a life-taker,” he said coolly. “Once, when I was a boy, there was a girl — very lovely — my first sweetheart. I saw her at the traps once, just after she had killed her seventh pigeon straight, ‘pulling it down’ from overhead, you know — very clever — the little thing was breathing on the grass, and it made sounds—” He shrugged and walked on. “She killed her twenty-first bird straight; it was a handsome cup, too.”
And after a silence, “So you didn’t love her any more, Mr. Siward?” — mockingly sweet.
&n
bsp; They laughed, and at the sound of laughter the tall-stemmed alders echoed with the rushing roar of a cock-grouse thundering skyward. Crack! Crack! Whirling over and over through a cloud of floating feathers, a heavy weight struck the springy earth. There lay the big mottled bird, splendid silky ruffs spread, dead eyes closing, a single tiny crimson bead twinkling like a ruby on the gaping beak.
“Dead!” said Siward to the dog who had dropped to shot; “Fetch!” And, signalling the boy behind, he relieved the dog of his burden and tossed the dead weight of ruffled plumage toward him. Then he broke his gun, and, as the empty shells flew rattling backward, slipped in fresh cartridges, locked the barrels, and walked forward, the flush of excitement still staining his sunburnt face.
“You deal death mercifully,” said the girl in a low voice. “I wonder what your ci-devant sweetheart would think of you.”
“A bungler had better stick to the traps,” he assented, ignoring the badinage.
“I am wondering,” she said thoughtfully, “what I think of men who kill.”
He turned sharply, hesitated, shrugged. “Wild things’ lives are brief at best — fox or flying-tick, wet nests or mink, owl, hawk, weasel or man. But the death man deals is the most merciful. Besides,” he added, laughing, “ours is not a case of sweethearts.”
“My argument is purely in the abstract, Mr. Siward. I am asking you whether the death men deal is more justifiable than a woman’s gift of death?”
“Oh, well, life-taking, the giving of life — there can be only one answer to the mystery; and I don’t know it,” he replied smiling.
“I do.”
“Tell me then,” he said, still amused.
They had passed swale after swale of silver birches waist deep in perfumed fern and brake; the big timber lay before them. She moved forward, light gun swung easily across her leather-padded shoulder; and on the wood’s sunny edge she seated herself, straight young back against a giant pine, gun balanced across her flattened knees.
“You are feeling the pace a little,” he said, coming up and standing in front of her.
“The pace? No, Mr. Siward.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 286