by R. W. Heilig
quieted his rebellious, assertive soul. He was no longer a solitary unit
but one with wind and water, herb and beach and shell. Almost
voluptuously his hand toyed with the hot sand that glided caressingly
through his fingers and buried his breast and shoulder under its
glittering burden.
A summer girl who passed lowered her eyes coquettishly. He watched her
without stirring. Even to open his mouth or to smile would have seemed
too much exertion.
Thus he lay for hours. When at length noon drew nigh, it cost him a
great effort of will to shake off his drowsy mood and exchange his airy
costume for the conventional habilaments of the dining-room.
He had taken lodgings in a fashionable hotel. An unusual stroke of good
luck, hack-work that paid outrageously well, had made it possible for
him to idle for a time without a thought of the unpleasant necessity of
making money.
One single article to which he signed his name only with reluctance had
brought to him more gear than a series of golden sonnets.
"Surely," he thought, "the social revolution ought to begin from above.
What right has the bricklayer to grumble when he receives for a week's
work almost more than I for a song?"
Thus soliloquising, he reached the dining-room. The scene that unfolded
itself before him was typical--the table over-loaded, the women
over-dressed.
The luncheon was already in full course when he came. He mumbled an
apology and seated himself on the only remaining chair next to a youth
who reminded him of a well-dressed dummy. With slight weariness his eyes
wandered in all directions for more congenial faces when they were
arrested by a lady on the opposite side of the table. She was clad in a
silk robe with curiously embroidered net-work that revealed a nervous
and delicate throat. The rich effect of the net-work was relieved by the
studied simplicity with which her heavy chestnut-colored hair was
gathered in a single knot. Her face was turned away from him, but there
was something in the carriage of her head that struck him as familiar.
When at last she looked him in the face, the glass almost fell from his
hand: it was Kelly Parish. She seemed to notice his embarrassment
and smiled. When she opened her lips to speak, he knew by the haunting
sweetness of the voice that he was not mistaken.
"Tell me," she said wistfully, "you have forgotten me? They all have."
He hastened to assure her that he had not forgotten her. He recollected
now that he had first been introduced to her in Walkham's house some
years ago, when a mere college boy, he had been privileged to attend one
of that master's famous receptions. She had looked quite resolute and
very happy then, not at all like the woman who had stared so strangely
at David in the Broadway restaurant.
He regarded this encounter as very fortunate. He knew so much of her
personal history that it almost seemed to him as if they had been
intimate for years. She, too, felt on familiar ground with him. Neither
as much as whispered the name of David Gardner. Yet it was he, and the
knowledge of what he was to them, that linked their souls with a common
bond.
XIV
It was the third day after their meeting. Hour by hour their intimacy
had increased. Kelly was sitting in a large wicker-chair. She restlessly
fingered her parasol, mechanically describing magic circles in the sand.
Chance lay at her feet. With his knees clasped between his hands, he
gazed into her eyes.
"Why are you trying so hard to make love to me?" the woman asked, with
the half-amused smile with which the Eve near thirty receives the homage
of a boy. There is an element of insincerity in that smile, but it is a
weapon of defence against love's artillery.
Sometimes, indeed, the pleading in the boy's eyes and the cry of the
blood pierces the woman's smiling superiority. She listens, loves and
loses.
Kelly Parish was listening, but the idea of love had not yet
entered into her mind. Her interest in Chance was due in part to his
youth and the trembling in his voice when he spoke of love. But what
probably attracted her most powerfully was the fact that he intimately
knew the man who still held her woman's heart in the hollow of his hand.
It was half in play, therefore, that she had asked him that question.
Why did he make love to her? He did not know. Perhaps it was the
irresistible desire to be petted which young poets share with
domesticated cats. But what should he tell her? Polite platitudes were
out of place between them.
Besides he knew the penalty of all tender entanglements. Women treat
love as if it were an extremely tenuous wire that can be drawn out
indefinitely. This is a very expensive process. It costs us the most
precious, the only irretrievable thing in the universe--time. And to him
time was song; for money he did not care. The Lord had hallowed his lips
with rhythmic speech; only in the intervals of his singing might he
listen to the voice of his heart--strangest of all watches, that tells
the time not by minutes and hours, but by the coming and going of love.
The woman beside him seemed to read his thoughts.
"Child, child," she said, "why will you toy with love? Like Jehovah, he
is a jealous god, and nothing but the whole heart can placate him. Woe
to the woman who takes a poet for a lover. I admit it is fascinating,
but it is playing _va banque_. In fact, it is fatal. Art or love will
come to harm. No man can minister equally to both. A genuine poet is
incapable of loving a woman."
"Pshaw! You exaggerate. Of course, there is a measure of truth in what
you say, but it is only one side of the truth, and the truth, you know,
is always Janus-faced. In fact, it often has more than two faces. I can
assure you that I have cared deeply for the women to whom my love-poetry
was written. And you will not deny that it is genuine."
"God forbid! Only you have been using the wrong preposition. You should
have said that it was written at them."
Chance stared at her in child-like wonder.
"By Jove! you are too devilishly clever!" he exclaimed.
After a little silence he said not without hesitation: "And do you apply
your theory to all artists, or only to us makers of rhyme?"
"To all," she replied.
He looked at her questioningly.
"Yes," she said, with a new sadness in her voice, "I, too, have paid the
price."
"You mean?"
"I loved."
"And art?"
"That was the sacrifice."
"Perhaps you have chosen the better part," Chance said without
conviction.
"No," she replied, "my tribute was brought in vain."
This she said calmly, but Chance knew that her words were of tragic
import.
"You love him still?" he observed simply.
Kelly made no reply. Sadness clouded her face like a veil or like a grey
mist over the face of the waters. Her eyes went out to the sea,
following the sombre flight of the sea-mews.
&nbs
p; In that moment he could have taken her in his arms and kissed her with
infinite tenderness.
But tenderness between man and woman is like a match in a
powder-magazine. The least provocation, and an amorous explosion will
ensue, tumbling down the card-houses of platonic affection. If he
yielded to the impulse of the moment, the wine of the springtide would
set their blood afire, and from the flames within us there is no escape.
"Come, come," she said, "you do not love me."
He protested.
"Ah!" she cried triumphantly, "how many sonnets would you give for me?
If you were a usurer in gold instead of in rhyme, I would ask how many
dollars. But it is unjust to pay in a coin that we value little. To a
man starving in gold mines, a piece of bread weighs more than all the
treasures of the earth. To you, I warrant your poems are the standard of
appreciation. How many would you give for me? One, two, three?"
"More."
"Because you think love would repay you with compound interest," she
observed merrily.
He laughed.
And when love turns to laughter the danger is passed for the moment.
XV
Thus three weeks passed without apparent change in their relations.
Chance possessed a personal magnetism that, always emanating from him,
was felt most deeply when withdrawn. He was at all times involuntarily
exerting his power, which she ever resisted, always on the alert, always
warding off.
When at last pressure of work made his immediate departure for New York
imperative, he had not apparently gained the least ground. But Kelly
knew in her heart that she was fascinated, if not in love. The personal
fascination was supplemented by a motherly feeling toward Chance that,
sensuous in essence, was in itself not far removed from love. She
struggled bravely and with external success against her emotions, never
losing sight of the fact that twenty and thirty are fifty.
Increasingly aware of her own weakness, she constantly attempted to
lead the conversation into impersonal channels, speaking preferably of
his work.
"Tell me," she said, negligently fanning herself, "what new inspiration
have you drawn from your stay at the seaside?"
"Why," he exclaimed enthusiastically, "volumes and volumes of it. I
shall write the great novel of my life after I am once more quietly
installed at Riverside Drive."
"The great American novel?" she rejoined.
"Perhaps."
"Who will be your hero--Gardner?"
There was a slight touch of malice in her words, or rather in the pause
between the penultimate word and the last. Chance detected its presence,
and knew that her love for David was dead. Stiff and cold it lay in
her heart's chamber--beside how many others?--all emboxed in the coffin
of memory.
"No," he replied after a while, a little piqued by her suggestion,
"Gardner is not the hero. What makes you think that he casts a spell on
everything I do?"
"Dear child," she replied, "I know him. He cannot fail to impress his
powerful personality upon all with whom he comes in contact, to the
injury of their intellectual independence. Moreover, he is so brilliant
and says everything so much better than anybody else, that by his very
splendor he discourages effort in others. At best his influence will
shape your development according to the tenets of his mind--curious,
subtle and corrupted. You will become mentally distorted, like one of
those hunchback Japanese trees, infinitely wrinkled and infinitely
grotesque, whose laws of growth are not determined by nature, but by the
diseased imagination of the East."
"I am no weakling," Chance asserted, "and your picture of Gardner is
altogether out of perspective. His splendid successes are to me a source
of constant inspiration. We have some things in common, but I realise
that it is along entirely different lines that success will come to me.
He has never sought to influence me, in fact, I never received the
smallest suggestion from him." Here the Princess Marigold seemed to peer
at him through the veil of the past, but he waved her aside. "As for my
story," he continued, "you need not go so far out of your way to find
the leading character?"
"Who can it be?" Kelly remarked, with a merry twinkle, "You?"
"Kelly," he said sulkingly, "be serious. You know that it is you."
"I am immensely flattered," she replied. "Really, nothing pleases me
better than to be immortalised in print, since I have little hope
nowadays of perpetuating my name by virtue of pencil or brush. I have
been put into novels before and am consumed with curiosity to hear the
plot of yours."
"If you don't mind, I had rather not tell you just yet," Chance said.
"It's going to be called Leontina--that's you. But all depends on the
treatment. You know it doesn't matter much what you say so long as you
say it well. That's what counts. At any rate, any indication of the plot
at this stage would be decidedly inadequate."
"I think you are right," she ventured. "By all means choose your own
time to tell me. Let's talk of something else. Have you written
anything since your delightful book of verse last spring? Surely now is
your singing season. By the time we are thirty the springs of pure lyric
passion are usually exhausted."
Kelly's inquiry somehow startled him. In truth, he could find no
satisfactory answer. A remark relative to his play--Gardner's play--rose
to the threshold of his lips, but he almost bit his tongue as soon as he
realised that the strange delusion which had possessed him that night
still dominated the undercurrents of his cerebration. No, he had
accomplished but little during the last few months--at least, by way of
creative literature. So he replied that he had made money. "That is
something," he said. "Besides, who can turn out a masterpiece every
week? An artist's brain is not a machine, and in the respite from
creative work I have gathered strength for the future. But," he added,
slightly annoyed, "you are not listening."
His exclamation brought her back from the train of thoughts that his
words had suggested. For in his reasoning she had recognised the same
arguments that she had hourly repeated to herself in defence of her
inactivity when she was living under the baneful influence of David
Gardner. Yes, baneful; for the first time she dared to confess it to
herself. In a flash the truth dawned upon her that it was not her love
alone, but something else, something irresistable and very mysterious,
that had dried up the well of creation in her. Could it be that the same
power was now exerting its influence upon the struggling soul of this
talented boy? Rack her brains as she might, she could not definitely
formulate her apprehensions and a troubled look came into her eyes.
"Kelly," the boy repeated, impatiently, "why are you not listening? Do
you realise that I must leave you in half an hour?"
She looked at him with deep tenderness. Something like a tear lent a
sof
t radiance to her large child-like eyes.
Chance saw it and was profoundly moved. In that moment he loved her
passionately.
"Foolish boy," she said softly; then, lowering her voice to a whisper:
"You may kiss me before you go."
His lips gently touched hers, but she took his head between her hands
and pressed her mouth upon his in a long kiss.
Chance drew back a little awkwardly. He had not been kissed like this
before.
"Poet though you are," Kelly whispered, "you have not yet learned to
