“You dear little thing!” said the girl, impulsively. “I wish I had a bonbon for you! Have you anything in the world to give this half-starved squirrel, Mr. Tennant?”
“Nothing but a cigarette,” muttered Tennant. “I’ll go out to the gate if you—” He hesitated. “They generally sell peanuts out there,” he added, vaguely.
“Squirrels adore peanuts,” she murmured, caressing the squirrel, who had begun fearlessly snooping into her lap.
Tennant, enchanted at the tacit commission, started off at a pace that brought him to the gate and back again before he could arrange his own disordered thoughts.
She was reading when he returned, and she cooled his enthusiasm with a stare of surprise.
“The squirrel? Oh, I’m sure I don’t know where that squirrel has gone. Did you really go all the way to the gate for peanuts to stuff that overfed squirrel?”
He looked at the four paper bags, opened one of them, and stirred the nuts with his hand.
“What shall I do with them?” he asked.
Then, and neither ever knew exactly why, she began to laugh. The first laugh was brief; an oppressive silence followed — then she laughed again; and as he grew redder and redder, she laughed the most deliciously fresh peal of laughter he had ever heard.
“This is dreadful!” she said. “I should never have come alone to the Park! You should never have dared to speak to me. All we need to do now is to eat those peanuts, and you have all the material for a picture of courtship below-stairs! Oh, dear, and the worst part of it all is that I laugh!”
“If you’d let me sit down,” he said, “I’d complete the picture and eat peanuts.”
“You dare not!”
He seated himself, opened a paper bag, and deliberately cracked and ate a nut.
“Horrors! and disillusion! The idol of the public — munching peanuts!”
“You ought to try one,” he said.
She stood it for a while; but the saving grace of humour warned her of her peril, and she ate a peanut.
“To save my face,” she explained. “But I didn’t suppose you were capable of it.”
“As a matter of fact,” he said, tranquilly, “a man can do anything in this world if he only does it thoroughly and appears to enjoy himself. I’ve seen the Prince Regent of Boznovia sitting at the window of the Crown Regiment barracks arrayed in his shirt-sleeves and absorbing beer and pretzels.”
“But he was the Prince Regent!”
“And I’m Tennant.”
“According to that philosophy you are at liberty to eat fish with your knife.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“But suppose you did want to?”
“That is neither philosophy nor logic,” he insisted; “that is speculation. May I offer you a stick of old-fashioned circus candy flavored with wintergreen?”
“You may,” she said, accepting it. “If there is any lower depth I may attain, I’m sure you will suggest it.”
“I’ll try,” he said. Their eyes met for an instant; then hers were lowered.
Squirrels came in troops; she fed the little, fat scamps to repletion, and the green lawn was dotted with squirrels all busily burying peanuts for future consumption. A brilliant peacock appeared, picking his way towards them, followed by a covey of imbecile peafowl. She fed them until their crops protruded.
The sun glittered on the upper windows of the clubs and hotels along Fifth Avenue; the west turned gold, then pink. Clouds of tiny moths came hovering among the wistaria blossoms; and high in the sky the metallic note of a nighthawk rang, repeating in querulous cadence the cries of water-fowl on the lake, where mallard and widgeon were restlessly preparing for an evening flight.
“You know,” she said, gravely, “a woman who over-steps convention always suffers; a man, never. I have done something I never expected to do — never supposed was in me to do. And now that I have gone so far, it is perhaps better for me to go farther.” She looked at him steadily. “Your studio is a perfect sounding-board. You have an astonishingly frank habit of talking to yourself; and every word is perfectly audible to me when my window is raised. When you chose to apostrophize me as a ‘white-faced, dark-eyed little thing,’ and when you remarked to yourself that there were ‘thousands like me in New York,’ I was perfectly indignant.”
He sat staring at her, utterly incapable of uttering a sound.
“It costs a great deal for me to say this,” she went on. “But I am obliged to because it is not fair to let you go on communing aloud with yourself — and I cannot close my window in warm weather. It costs more than you know for me to say this; for it is an admission that I heard you say that you were coming to the wistaria arbor—”
She bent her crimsoned face; the silence of evening fell over the arbor.
“I don’t know why I came,” she said— “whether with a vague idea of giving you the chance to speak, and so seizing the opportunity to warn you that your soliloquies were audible to me — whether to tempt you to speak and make it plain to you that I am not one of the thousand shop-girls you have observed after the shops close—”
“Don’t,” he said, hoarsely. “I’m miserable enough.”
“I don’t wish you to feel miserable,” she said. “I have a very exalted idea of you. I — I understand artists.”
“They’re fools,” he said. “Say anything you like before I go. I had — hoped for — perhaps for your friendship. But a woman can’t respect a fool.”
He rose in his humiliation.
“I can ask no privileges,” he said, “but I must say one thing before I go. You have a book there which bears the signature of an artist named Marlitt. I am very anxious for his address; I think I have important news for him — good news. That is why I ask it.”
The girl looked at him quietly.
“What news have you for him?”
“I suppose you have a right to ask,” he said, “or you would not ask. I do not know Marlitt. I liked his work. Mr. Calvert suggested that Marlitt should return to resume work—”
“No,” said the girl, “you suggested it.”
He was staggered. “Did you even hear that!” he gasped.
“You were standing by your window,” she said. “Mr. Tennant, I think that was the real reason why I came to the wistaria arbor — to thank you for what you have done. You see — you see, I am Marlitt.”
He sank down on the seat opposite.
“Everything has gone wrong,” she said. “I came to thank you — and everything turned out so differently — and I was dreadfully rude to you—”
She covered her face with her hands.
“Then you wrote me that letter,” he said, slowly. In the silence of the gathering dusk the electric lamps snapped alight, flooding the arbor with silvery radiance. He said:
“If a man had written me that letter I should have desired his friendship and offered mine.”
She dropped her hands and looked at him. “Thank you for speaking to Calvert,” she said, rising hastily; “I have been desperately in need of work. My pride is quite dead, you see — one or the other of us had to die.”
She looked down with a gay little smile. “If it wouldn’t spoil you I should tell you what I think of you. Meanwhile, as servitude becomes man, you may tie my shoe for me — Marlitt’s shoe that pinched you.… Tie it tightly, so that I shall not lose it again.… Thank you.”
As he rose, their eyes met once more; and the perilous sweetness in hers fascinated him.
She drew a deep, unsteady breath. “Will you take me home?” she asked.
Contents
PASQUE FLORIDA
THE steady flicker of lightning in the southwest continued; the wind freshened, blowing in cooler streaks across acres of rattling rushes and dead marsh-grass. A dull light grew through the scudding clouds, then faded as the mid-day sun went out in the smother, leaving an ominous red smear overhead.
Gun in hand, Haltren stood up among the reeds and inspected the landsc
ape. Already the fish-crows and egrets were flying inland, the pelicans had left the sandbar, the eagles were gone from beach and dune. High in the thickening sky wild ducks passed over Flyover Point and dropped into the sheltered marshes among the cypress.
As Haltren stood undecided, watching the ruddy play of lightning, which came no nearer than the horizon, a squall struck the lagoon. Then, amid the immense solitude of marsh and water, a deep sound grew — the roar of the wind in the wilderness. The solemn pæon swelled and died away as thunder dies, leaving the air tremulous.
“I’d better get out of this,” said Haltren to himself. He felt for the breech of his gun, unloaded both barrels, and slowly pocketed the cartridges.
Eastward, between the vast salt river and the ocean, the dunes were smoking like wind-lashed breakers; a heron, laboring heavily, flapped inland, broad pinions buffeting the gale.
“Something’s due to happen,” said Haltren, reflectively, closing the breech of his gun. He had hauled his boat up an alligator-slide; now he shoved it off the same way, and pulling up his hip-boots, waded out, laid his gun in the stern, threw cartridge-sack and a dozen dead ducks after it, and embarked among the raft of wind-tossed wooden decoys.
There were twoscore decoys bobbing and tugging at their anchor-cords outside the point. Before he had fished up a dozen on the blade of his oar a heavier squall struck the lagoon, blowing the boat out into the river. He had managed to paddle back and had secured another brace of decoys, when a violent gale caught him broadside, almost capsizing him.
“If I don’t get those decoys now I never shall!” he muttered, doggedly jabbing about with extended oar. But he never got them; for at that moment a tropical hurricane, still in its infancy, began to develop, and when, blinded with spray, he managed to jam the oars into the oar-locks, his boat was half a mile out and still driving.
For a week the wind had piled the lagoons and lakes south of the Matanzas full of water, and now the waves sprang up, bursting into menacing shapes, knocking the boat about viciously. Haltren turned his unquiet eyes towards a streak of green water ahead.
“I don’t suppose this catspaw is really trying to drive me out of Coquina Inlet!” he said, peevishly; “I don’t suppose I’m being blown out to sea.”
It was a stormy end for a day’s pleasure — yet curiously appropriate, too, for it was the fourth anniversary of his wedding-day; and the storm that followed had blown him out into the waste corners of the world.
Perhaps something of this idea came into his head; he laughed a disagreeable laugh and fell to rowing.
The red lightning still darted along the southern horizon, no nearer; the wilderness of water, of palm forests, of jungle, of dune, was bathed in a sickly light; overhead oceans of clouds tore through a sombre sky.
After a while he understood that he was making no headway; then he saw that the storm was shaping his course. He dug his oars into the thick, gray waves; the wind tore the cap from his head, caught the boat and wrestled with it.
Somehow or other he must get the boat ashore before he came abreast of the inlet; otherwise —
He turned his head and stared at the whitecaps tumbling along the deadly raceway; and he almost dropped his oars in astonishment to see a gasoline-launch battling for safety just north of the storm-swept channel. What was a launch doing in this forsaken end of the earth? And the next instant developed the answer. Out at sea, beyond the outer bar, a yacht, wallowing like a white whale, was staggering towards the open ocean.
He saw all this in a flash — saw the gray-green maelstrom between the dunes, the launch struggling across the inlet, the yacht plunging seaward. Then in the endless palm forests the roar deepened. Flash! Bang! lightning and thunder were simultaneous.
“That’s better,” said Haltren, hanging to his oars; “there’s a fighting chance now.”
The rain came, beating the waves down, seemingly, for a moment, beating out the wind itself. In the partial silence the sharp explosions of the gasoline-engine echoed like volleys of pistol-shots; and Haltren half rose in his pitching boat, and shouted: “Launch ahoy! Run under the lee shore. There’s a hurricane coming! You haven’t a second to lose!”
He heard somebody aboard the launch say, distinctly, “There’s a Florida cracker alongside who says a hurricane is about due.” The shrill roar of the rain drowned the voice. Haltren bent to his oars again. Then a young man in dripping white flannels looked out of the wheel-house and hailed him. “We’ve grounded on the meadows twice. If you know the channel you’d better come aboard and take the wheel.”
Haltren, already north of the inlet and within the zone of safety, rested on his oars a second and looked back, listening. Very far away he heard the deep whisper of death.
On board the launch the young man at the wheel heard it, too; and he hailed Haltren in a shaky voice: “I wouldn’t ask you to come back, but there are women aboard. Can’t you help us?”
“All right,” said Haltren.
A horrible white glare broke out through the haze; the solid vertical torrent of rain swayed, then slanted eastward.
A wave threw him alongside the launch; he scrambled over the low rail and ran forward, deafened by the din. A woman in oilskins hung to the companion-rail; he saw her white face as he passed. Haggard, staggering, he entered the wheel-house, where the young man in dripping flannels seized his arm, calling him by name. Haltren pushed him aside.
“Give me that wheel, Darrow,” he said, hoarsely. “Ring full speed ahead! Now stand clear—”
Like an explosion the white tornado burst, burying deck and wheel-house in foam; a bellowing fury of tumbling waters enveloped the launch. Haltren hung to the wheel one second, two, five, ten; and at last through the howling chaos his stunned ears caught the faint staccato spat! puff! spat! of the exhaust. Thirty seconds more — if the engines could stand it — if they only could stand it!
They stood it for thirty-three seconds and went to smash. A terrific squall, partly deflected from the forest, hurled the launch into the swamp, now all boiling in shallow foam; and there she stuck in the good, thick mud, heeled over and all awash like a stranded razor-back after a freshet.
Twenty minutes later the sun came out; the waters of the lagoon turned sky blue; a delicate breeze from the southeast stirred the palmetto fronds.
Presently a cardinal-bird began singing in the sunshine.
Haltren, standing in the wrecked wheel-house, raised his dazed eyes as Darrow entered and looked around.
“So that was a white tornado! I’ve heard of them — but — good God!” He turned a bloodless visage to Haltren, who, dripping, bareheaded and silent, stood with eyes closed leaning heavily against the wheel.
“Are you hurt?”
Haltren shook his head. Darrow regarded him stupidly.
“How did you happen to be in this part of the world?”
Haltren opened his eyes. “Oh, I’m likely to be anywhere,” he said, vaguely, passing a shaking hand across his face. There was a moment’s silence; then he said:
“Darrow, is my wife aboard this boat?”
“Yes,” said Darrow, under his breath. “Isn’t that the limit?”
Through the silence the cardinal sang steadily.
“Isn’t that the limit?” repeated Darrow. “We came on the yacht — that was Brent’s yacht, the Dione, you saw at sea. You know the people aboard. Brent, Mrs. Castle, your wife, and I left the others and took the launch to explore the lagoons.… And here we are. Isn’t it funny?” he added, with a nerveless laugh.
Haltren stood there slowly passing his hand over his face.
“It is funnier than you know, Darrow,” he said. “Kathleen and I — this is our wedding-day.”
“Well, that is the limit,” muttered Darrow, as Haltren turned a stunned face to the sunshine where the little cardinal sang with might and main.
“Come below,” he added. “You are going to speak to her, of course?”
“If she cared to have me—”
>
“Speak to her anyway. Haltren; I” — he hesitated— “I never knew why you and Kathleen separated. I only knew what everybody knows. You and she are four years older now; and if there’s a ghost of a chance — Do you understand?”
Haltren nodded.
“Then we’ll go below,” began Darrow. But Major Brent appeared at that moment, apoplectic eyes popping from his purple face as he waddled forward to survey the dismantled launch.
Without noticing either Haltren or Darrow, he tested the slippery angle of the deck, almost slid off into the lagoon, clutched the rail with both pudgy hands, and glared at the water.
“I suppose,” he said, peevishly, “that there are alligators in that water. I know there are!”
He turned his inflamed eyes on Haltren, but made no sign of recognition.
“Major,” said Darrow, sharply, “you remember Dick Haltren—”
“Eh?” snapped the major. “Where the deuce did you come from, Haltren?”
“He was the man who hailed us. He took the wheel,” said Darrow, meaningly.
“Nice mess you made of it between you,” retorted the major, scowling his acknowledgments at Haltren.
Darrow, disgusted, turned on his heel; Haltren laughed. The sound of his own laugh amused him, and he laughed again.
“I don’t see the humor,” said the major. “The Dione is blown half-way to the Bermudas by this time.” He added, with a tragic gesture of his fat arms; “Are you aware that Mrs. Jack Onderdonk is aboard?”
The possible fate of Manhattan’s queen regent so horrified Major Brent that his congested features assumed the expression of an alarmed tadpole.
But Haltren, the unaccustomed taste of mirth in his throat once more, stood there, dripping, dishevelled, and laughing. For four years he had missed the life he had been bred to; he had missed even what he despised in it, and his life at moments had become a hell of isolation. Time dulled the edges of his loneliness; solitude, if it hurts, sometimes cures too. But he was not yet cured of longing for that self-forbidden city in the North. He desired it — he desired the arid wilderness of its treeless streets, its incessant sounds, its restless energy; he desired its pleasures, its frivolous days and nights, its satiated security, its ennui. Its life had been his life, its people his people, and he longed for it with a desire that racked him.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1136