“The very best,” he said, sliding feet foremost to the terrace. “Heavens, Cecile, you certainly are bewitching in those clothes!”
“It is what they were built for, brother,” she said serenely. “Good-bye; we won’t shake hands on account of my gloves.... Do be nice to Shiela. She isn’t very gay these days — I don’t know why. I believe she has rather missed you.”
Hamil tucked her into her chair, the darky pedalled off; then the young man returned to the terrace where presently a table for two was brought and luncheon announced as Shiela Cardross appeared.
Hamil displayed the healthy and undiscriminating appetite of a man who is too busy mentally and physically to notice what he eats and drinks; Shiela touched nothing except fruit. She lighted his cigarette for him before the coffee, and took one herself, turning it thoughtfully over and over between her delicately shaped fingers; but at a glance of inquiry from him:
“No, I don’t,” she said; “it burns my tongue. Besides I may some day require it as a novelty to distract me — so I’ll wait.”
She rose a moment later, and stood, distrait, looking out across the sunlit world. He at her elbow, head bent, idly watched the smoke curling upward from his cigarette.
Presently, as though moved by a common impulse, they turned together, slowly traversed the terrace and the long pergola all crimson and white with bougainvillia and jasmine, and entered the jungle road beyond the courts where carved seats of coquina glimmered at intervals along the avenue of oaks and palmettos and where stone-edged pools reflected the golden green dusk of the semi-tropical foliage above.
On the edge of one of these basins the girl seated herself; without her hat and gloves and in a gown which exposed throat and neck she always looked younger and more slender to him, the delicate modelling of the neck and its whiteness was accentuated by the silky growth of the brown hair which close to the nape and brow was softly blond like a child’s.
The frail, amber-tinted little dragon-flies of the South came hovering over the lotus bloom that edged the basin; long, narrow-shaped butterflies whose velvet-black wings were barred with brilliant stripes of canary yellow fluttered across the forest aisle; now and then a giant papilio sailed high under the arched foliage on tiger-striped wings of chrome and black, or a superb butterfly in pearl white and malachite green came flitting about the sparkle-berry bloom.
The girl nodded toward it. “That is a scarce butterfly here,” she said. “Gray would be excited. I wish we had his net here.”
“It is the Victorina, isn’t it?” he asked, watching the handsome, nervous-winged creature which did not seem inclined to settle on the white flowers.
“Yes, the Victorina steneles. Are you interested?”
“The generation I grew up with collected,” he said. “I remember my cabinet, and some of the names. But I never saw any fellows of this sort in the North.”
“Your memory is good?”
“Yes,” he said, “for what I care about” — he looked up at her— “for those I care about my memory is good, I never forget kindness — nor confidence given — nor a fault forgiven.”
She bent forward, elbows on knees, chin propped on both linked hands.
“Do you understand now,” she said, “why I could not afford the informality of our first meeting? What you have heard about me explains why I can scarcely afford to discard convention, does it not, Mr. Hamil?”
She went on, her white fingers now framing her face and softly indenting the flushed skin:
“I don’t know who has talked to you, or what you have heard; but I knew by your expression — there at the swimming-pool — that you had heard enough to embarrass you and — and hurt me very, very keenly.”
“Calypso!” he broke out impulsively; but she shook her head. “Let me tell you if it must be told, Mr. Hamil.... Father and mother are dreadfully sensitive; I have only known about it for two years; two years ago they told me — had to tell me.... Well — it still seems hazy and incredible.... I was educated in a French convent — if you know what that means. All my life I have been guarded — sheltered from knowledge of evil; I am still unprepared to comprehend — ... And I am still very ignorant; I know that.... So you see how it was with me; a girl awakened to such self-knowledge cannot grasp it entirely — cannot wholly convince herself except at moments — at night. Sometimes — when a crisis threatens — and one has lain awake long in the dark—”
She gathered her knees in her arms and stared at the patch of sunlight that lay across the hem of her gown, leaving her feet shod in gold.
“I don’t know how much difference it really makes to the world. I suppose I shall learn — if people are to discuss me. How much difference does it make, Mr. Hamil?”
“It makes none to me—”
“The world extends beyond your pleasant comradeship,” she said. “How does the world regard a woman of no origin — whose very name is a charity—”
“Shiela!”
“W-what?” she said, trying to smile; and then slowly laid her head in her hands, covering her face.
She had given way, very silently, for as he bent close to her he felt the tearful aroma of her uneven breath — the feverish flush on cheek and hand, the almost imperceptible tremor of her slender body — rather close to him now.
When she had regained her composure, and her voice was under command, she straightened up, face averted.
“You are quite perfect, Mr. Hamil; you have not hurt me with one misguided and well-intended word. That is exactly as it should be between us — must always be.”
“Of course,” he said slowly.
She nodded, still looking away from him. “Let us each enjoy our own griefs unmolested. You have yours?”
“No, Shiela, I haven’t any griefs.”
“Come to me when you have; I shall not humiliate you with words to shame your intelligence and my own. If you suffer you suffer; but it is well to be near a friend — not too near, Mr. Hamil.”
“Not too near,” he repeated.
“No; that is unendurable. The counter-irritant to grief is sanity, not emotion. When a woman is a little frightened the presence of the unafraid is what steadies her.”
She looked over her shoulder into the water, reached down, broke off a blossom of wild hyacinth, and, turning, drew it through the button-hole of his coat.
“You certainly are very sweet to me,” she said quietly. And, laughing a little: “The entire family adores you with pills — and I’ve now decorated you with the lovely curse of our Southern rivers. But — there are no such things as weeds; a weed is only a miracle in the wrong place.... Well — shall we walk and moralise or remain here and make cat-cradle conversation?... You are looking at me very solemnly.”
“I was thinking—”
“What?”
“That, perhaps, I never before knew a girl as well as I know you.”
“Not even Miss Suydam?”
“Lord, no! I never dreamed of knowing her — I mean her real self. You understand, she and I have always taken each other for granted — never with any genuine intimacy.”
“Oh! And — this — ours — is genuine intimacy?”
“Is it not?”
For a moment her teeth worried the bright velvet of her lip, then meeting his gaze:
“I mean to be — honest — with you,” she said with a tremor in her voice; but her regard wavered under his. “I mean to be,” she repeated so low he scarcely heard her. Then with a sudden animation a little strained: “When this winter has become a memory let it be a happy one for you and me. And by the same token you and I had better think about dressing. You don’t mind, do you, if I take you to meet Mrs. Ascott? — she was Countess de Caldelis; it’s taken her years to secure her divorce.”
Hamil remembered the little dough-faced, shrimp-limbed count when he first came over with the object of permitting somebody to support him indefinitely so that later, in France, he could in turn support his mistresses in the style to whic
h they earnestly desired to become accustomed.
And now the American girl who had been a countess was back, a little wiser, a little harder, and more cynical, with some of the bloom rubbed off, yet much of her superficial beauty remaining.
“Alida Ascott,” murmured Shiela. “Jessie was a bridesmaid. Poor little girl! — I’m glad she’s free. There were no children,” she said, looking up at Hamil; “in that case a decent girl is justified! Don’t you think so?”
“Yes, I do,” he said, smiling; “I’m not one of those who believe that such separations threaten us with social disintegration.”
“Nor I. Almost every normal woman desires to live decently. She has a right to. All young girls are ignorant. If they begin with a dreadful but innocent mistake does the safety of society require of them the horror of lifelong degradation? Then the safety of such a society is not worth the sacrifice. That is my opinion.”
“That settles a long-vexed problem,” he said, laughing at her earnestness.
But she looked at him, unsmiling, while he spoke, hands clasped in her lap, the fingers twisting and tightening till the rose-tinted nails whitened.
Men have only a vague idea of women’s ignorance; how naturally they are inclined to respond to a man; how the dominating egotism of a man and his confident professions and his demands confuse them; how deeply his appeals for his own happiness stir them to pity.... They have heard of love — and they do not know. If they ever dream of it it is not what they have imagined when a man suddenly comes crashing through the barriers of friendship and stuns them with an incoherent recital of his own desires. And yet, in spite of the shock, it is with them instinctive to be kind. No woman can endure an appeal unmoved; except for them there would be no beggars; their charity is not a creed: it is the essence of them, the beginning of all things for them — and the end.
The bantering smile had died out in Hamil’s face; he sat very still, interested, disturbed, and then wondering when his eyes caught the restless manoeuvres of the little hands, constantly in motion, interlacing, eloquent of the tension of self-suppression.
He thought: “It is a cowardly thing for an egotist with an egotist’s early and lively knowledge of the world and of himself to come clamouring to a girl for charity. It is true that almost any man can make a young girl think she loves him if he is selfish enough to do it. Is her ignorance a fault? All her training deprecates any acquisition of worldly knowledge: it is not for her: her value is in her ignorance. Then when she naturally makes some revolting mistake and attempts to escape to decency and freedom once more there is a hue and a cry from good folk and clergy. Divorce? It is a good thing — as the last resort. And a woman need feel no responsibility for the sort of society that would deprive a woman of the last refuge she has!”
He raised his eyes, curiously, in time to intercept hers.
“So — you did not know me after all, it seems,” she said with a faint smile. “You never suspected in me a Vierge Rouge, militant, champion of her downtrodden sex, haranguing whomsoever would pay her the fee of his attention. Did you?”
And as he made no reply: “Your inference is that I have had some unhappy love affair — some perilously close escape from — unhappy matrimony.” She shrugged. “As though a girl could plead only a cause which concerned herself.... Tell me what you are thinking?”
She had risen, and he stood up before her, fascinated.
“Tell me!” she insisted; “I shall not let you go until you do!”
“I was thinking about you.”
“Please don’t!... Are you doing it yet?” closely confronting him, hands behind her.
“Yes, I am,” he said, unable to keep his eyes from her, all her beauty and youth and freshness troubling him, closing in upon him like subtle fragrance in the golden forest dusk.
“Are you still thinking about me?”
“Yes.”
The rare sweet laughter edged her lips, for an instant; then something in his eyes checked her. Colour and laughter died out, leaving a pale confused smile; and the straight gaze wavered, grew less direct, yet lost not a shade of his expression which also had changed.
Neither spoke; and after a moment they turned away, walking not very near together toward the house.
The sunshine and the open somehow brought relief and the delicate constraint between them relaxed as they sauntered slowly into the house where Shiela presently went away to dress for the Ascott function, and Hamil sat down on the veranda for a while, then retired to undertake the embellishment of his own person.
CHAPTER IX
THE INVASION
They went together in a double chair, spinning noiselessly over the shell road which wound through oleander and hibiscus hedges. Great orange and sulphur-tinted butterflies kept pace with them as they travelled swiftly southward; the long, slim shadows of palms gridironed the sunny road, for the sun was in the west, and already a bird here and there had ventured on a note or two as prelude to the evening song, and over the ocean wild ducks were rising in clouds, swinging and drifting and settling again as though in short rehearsal for their sunset flight.
“Your hostess is Mrs. Tom O’Hara,” said the girl; “when you have enough of it look at me and I’ll understand. And if you try to hide in a corner with some soulful girl I’ll look at you — if it bores me too much. So don’t sit still with an infatuated smile, as Cecile does, when she sees that I wish to make my adieux.”
“I’m so likely to,” he said, “when escape means that I’ll have you to myself again.”
There was a trifle more significance in the unconsidered speech than he had intended. The girl looked absently straight in front of her; he sat motionless, uncomfortable at his own words, but too wise to attempt to modify them by more words.
Other chairs passed them now along the road — there were nods of recognition, gay salutes, an intimate word or two as the light-wheeled vehicles flashed past; and in a moment more the tall coquina gate posts and iron grille of Mrs. Tom O’Hara’s villa, Tsana Lahni, glimmered under an avenue of superb royal palms.
The avenue was crowded with the slender-wheeled basket-bodied chairs gay with the plumage of pretty women; the scene on the lawns beyond was charming where an orange and white pavilion was pitched against the intense green of the foliage, and the pelouse was all dotted and streaked with vivid colours of sunshades and gowns.
“Ulysses among the sirens,” she whispered as they made their way toward their hostess, exchanging recognition with people everywhere in the throngs. “Here they are — all of them — and there’s Miss Suydam, — too unconscious of us. How hath the House of Hamil fallen!—”
“If you talk that way I won’t leave you for one second while we’re here!” he said under his breath.
“Nonsense; it only hurts me, not my pride. And half a cup of unforbidden tea will drown the memory of that insolence—”
She bent forward with smiling composure to shake hands with Mrs. Tom O’Hara, a tall, olive-tinted, black-haired beauty; presented Hamil to his hostess, and left him planted, to exchange impulsive amenities with little Mrs. Ascott.
Mrs. Tom O’Hara, a delicate living Gainsborough in black and white, was probably the handsomest woman in the South. She dressed with that perfection of simplicity which only a few can afford; she wore only a single jewel at a time, but the gem was always matchless.
Warm-hearted, generous, and restless, she loved the character of Lady Bountiful; and, naïvely convinced of her own unassailable supremacy, played very picturesquely the rôle of graciousness and patronage to the tenants of her great estates and of her social and intellectual world alike. Hence, although she went where many of her less fashionable guests might not have been asked to go, she herself paid self-confident homage to intellect as she understood it, and in her own house her entourage was as mixed as her notions of a “salon” permitted.
She was gracious to Hamil on account of his aunt, his profession, and himself. Also her instinct was to be nice to
everybody. As hostess she had but a moment to accord him, but during that moment she contrived to speak reassuringly of the Suydam genealogy, the art of landscape architecture, and impart a little special knowledge from her inexhaustible reserve, informing him that the name of her villa, Tsa-na Lah-ni, was Seminole, and meant “Yellow Butterfly.” And then she passed him sweetly along into a crush of bright-eyed young things who attempted to pour tea into him and be agreeable in various artless ways; and presently he found himself in a back-water where fashion and intellect were conscientiously doing their best to mix. But the mixture was a thin solution — thinner than Swizzles and Caravan, and the experience of the very young girl beside him who talked herself out in thirty seconds from pure nervousness and remained eternally grateful to him for giving her a kindly opportunity to escape to cover among the feather-brained and frivolous.
Then, close to him, a girl spoke of the “purple perfume of petunias,” and a man used the phrases, “body politic,” and “the gaiety of nations.”
So he knew he was among the elect, redundant, and truly precious. A chinless young man turned to him and said:
“There is nobody to-day who writes as Bernard Haw writes.”
“Does anybody want to?” asked Hamil pleasantly.
“You mean that this is an age of trumpery romance?” demanded a heavy gentleman in dull disdain. “William Dean has erased all romance from modern life with one smear of his honest thumb!”
“The honest thumb that persistently and patiently rubs the scales from sapphire and golden wings in order to be certain that the vination of the Ornithoptera is still underneath, is not the digit of inspiration,” suggested Hamil.
The disciple turned a dull brick-colour; but he betrayed neither his master nor himself.
“What, in God’s name,” he asked heavily, “is an ornithoptera?”
A very thin author, who had been listening and twisting himself into a number of shapes, thrust his neck forward into the arena and considered Hamil with the pale grimace of challenge.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 375