The younger girl sat wide-eyed, silent; the elder’s gaze was upon her, but her thoughts, remote, centred on the hapless mother of such a son.
“Such indulgence was once fashionable; moderation is the present fashion. Perhaps he will fall into line,” said Mrs. Ferrall thoughtfully. “The main thing is to keep him among people, not to drop him. The gregarious may be shamed, but if anything, any incident, happens to drive him outside by himself, if he should become solitary, there’s not a chance in the world for him.... It’s a pity. I know he meant to make himself the exception to the rule — and look! Already one carouse of his has landed him in the daily papers!”
Sylvia flushed and looked up: “Grace, may I ask you a plain question?”
“Yes, child,” she answered absently.
“Has it occurred to you that what you have said about this boy touches me very closely?”
Mrs. Ferrall’s wits returned nimbly from woolgathering, and she shot a startled, inquiring glance at the girl beside her.
“You — you mean the matter of heredity, Sylvia?”
“Yes. I think my uncle Major Belwether chose you as his august mouthpiece for that little sermon on the dangers of heredity — the danger of being ignorant concerning what women of my race had done — before I came into the world they found so amusing.”
“I told you several things,” returned Mrs. Ferrall composedly. “Your uncle thought it best for you to know.”
“Yes. The marriage vows sat lightly upon some of my ancestors, I gather. In fact,” she added coolly, “where the women of my race loved they usually found the way — rather unconventionally. There was, if I understood you, enough of divorce, of general indiscretion and irregularity to seriously complicate any family tree and coat of arms I might care to claim—”
“Sylvia!”
The girl lifted her pretty bare shoulders. “I’m sorry, but could I help it? Very well; all I can do is to prove a decent exception. Very well; I’m doing it, am I not? — practically scared into the first solidly suitable marriage offered — seizing the unfortunate Howard with both hands for fear he’d get away and leave me alone with only a queer family record for company! Very well! Now then, I want to ask you why everybody, in my case, didn’t go about with sanctimonious faces and dolorous mien repeating: ‘Her grand-mother eloped! Her mother ran away. Poor child, she’s doomed! doomed!’”
“Sylvia, I—”
“Yes — why didn’t they? That’s the way they talk about that boy out there!” She swept a rounded arm toward the veranda.
“Yes, but he has already broken loose, while you—”
“So did I — nearly! Had it not been for you, you know well enough I might have run away with that dreadful Englishman at Newport! For I adored him — I did! I did! and you know it. And look at my endless escapes from compromising myself! Can you count them? — all those indiscretions when mere living seemed to intoxicate me that first winter — and only my uncle and you to break me in!”
“In other words,” said Mrs. Ferrall slowly, “you don’t think Mr. Siward is getting what is known as a square deal?”
“No, I don’t. Major Belwether has already hinted — no, not even that — but has somehow managed to dampen my pleasure in Mr. Siward.”
Mrs. Ferrall considered the girl beside her — now very lovely and flushed in her suppressed excitement.
“After all,” she said, “you are going to marry somebody else. So why become quite so animated about a man you may never again see?”
“I shall see him if I desire to!”
“Oh!”
“I am not taking the black veil, am I?” asked the girl hotly.
“Only the wedding veil, dear. But after all your husband ought to have something to suggest concerning a common visiting list—”
“He may suggest — certainly. In the meantime I shall be loyal to my own friends — and afterward, too,” she murmured to herself, as her hostess rose, calmly dropping care like a mantle from her shoulders.
“Go and be good to this poor young man then; I adore rows — and you’ll have a few on your hands I’ll warrant. Let me remind you that your uncle can make it unpleasant for you yet, and that your amiable fiancé has a will of his own under his pompadour and silky beard.”
“What a pity to have it clash with mine,” said the girl serenely.
Mrs. Ferrall looked at her: “Mercy on us! Howard’s pompadour would stick up straight with horror if he could hear you! Don’t be silly; don’t for an impulse, for a caprice, break off anything desirable on account of a man for whom you really care nothing — whose amiable exterior and prospective misfortune merely enlist a very natural and generous sympathy in you.”
“Do you suppose that I shall endure interference from anybody? — from my uncle, from Howard?”
“Dear, you are making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Don’t be emotional; don’t let loose impulses that you and I know about, knew about in our school years, know all about now, and which you and I have decided must be eliminated—”
“You mean subdued; they’ll always be there.”
“Very well; who cares, as long as you have them in leash?”
Looking at one another, the excited colour cooling in the younger girl’s cheeks, they laughed, one with relief, the other a little ashamed.
“Kemp will be furious; I simply must cut in!” said Mrs. Ferrall, hastily turning toward the gun-room. Miss Landis looked after her, subdued, vaguely repentant, the consciousness dawning upon her that she had probably made considerable conversation about nothing.
“It’s been so all day,” she thought impatiently; “I’ve exaggerated; I’ve worked up a scene about a man whose habits are not the slightest concern of mine. Besides that I’ve neglected Howard shamefully!” She was walking slowly, her thoughts outstripping her errant feet, but it seemed that neither her thoughts nor her steps were leading her toward the neglected gentleman within; for presently she found herself at the breezy veranda door, looking rather fixedly at the stars.
The stars, shining impartially upon the just and the unjust, illuminated the person of Siward, who sat alone, rather limply, one knee crossed above the other. He looked up by chance, and, seeing her star-gazing in the doorway, straightened out and rose to his feet.
Aware of him apparently for the first time, she stepped across the threshold meeting his advance half-way.
“Would you care to go down to the rocks?” he asked. “The surf is terrific.”
“No — I don’t think I care—”
They stood listening a moment to the stupendous roar.
“A storm somewhere at sea,” he concluded.
“Is it very fine — the surf?”
“Very fine — and very relentless—” he laughed; “it is an unfriendly creature, the sea, you know.”
She had begun to move toward the cliffs, he fell into step beside her; they spoke little, a word now and then.
The perfume of the mounting sea saturated the night with wild fragrance; dew lay heavy on the lawns; she lifted her skirts enough to clear the grass, heedless that her silk-shod feet were now soaking. Then at the cliffs’ edge, as she looked down into the white fury of the surf, the stunning crash of the ocean saluted her.
For a long while they watched in silence; once she leaned a trifle too far over the star-lit gulf and, recoiling, involuntarily steadied herself on his arm.
“I suppose,” she said, “no swimmer could endure that battering.”
“Not long.”
“Would there be no chance?”
“Not one.”
She bent farther outward, fascinated, stirred, by the splendid frenzy of the breakers.
“I — think — ,” he began quietly; then a firm hand fell over her left hand; and, half encircled by his arm she found herself drawn back. Neither spoke; two things she was coolly aware of, that, urged, drawn by something subtly irresistible she had leaned too far out from the cliff, and would have leaned farther had he not take
n matters into his own keeping without apology. Another thing; the pressure of his hand over hers remained a sensation still — a strong, steady, masterful imprint lacking hesitation or vacillation. She was as conscious of it as though her hand still tightened under his — and she was conscious, too, that nothing of his touch had offended; that there had arisen in her no tremor of instinctive recoil. For never before had she touched or suffered a touch from a man, even a gloved greeting, that had not in some measure subtly repelled her, nor, for that matter, a caress from a woman without a reaction of faint discomfort.
“Was I in any actual danger?” she asked curiously.
“I think not. But it was too much responsibility for me.”
“I see. Any time I wish to break my neck I am to please do it alone in future.”
“Exactly — if you don’t mind,” he said smiling.
They turned, shoulder to shoulder, walking back through the drenched herbage.
“That,” she said impulsively, “is not what I said a few moments ago to a woman.”
“What did you say a few moments ago to a woman?”
“I said, Mr. Siward, that I would not leave a — a certain man to go to the devil alone!”
“Do you know any man who is going to the devil?”
“Do you?” she asked, letting herself go swinging out upon a tide of intimacy she had never dreamed of risking — nor had she the slightest idea whither the current would carry her.
They had stopped on the lawn, ankle deep in wet grass, the stars overhead sparkling magnificently, and in their ears the outcrash of the sea.
“You mean me,” he concluded.
“Do I?”
He looked up into the lovely face; her eyes were very sweet, very clear — clear with excitement — but very friendly.
“Let us sit here on the steps a little while, will you?” she asked.
So he found a place beside her, one step lower, and she leaned forward, elbows on knees, rounded white chin in her palms, the starlight giving her bare arms and shoulders a marble lustre and tinting her eyes a deeper amethyst.
And now, innocently untethered, mission and all, she laid her heart quite bare — one chapter of it. And, like other women-errant who believe in the influence of their sex individually and collectively, she began wrong by telling him of her engagement — perhaps to emphasise her pure disinterestedness in a crusade for principle only. Which naturally dampened in him any nascent enthusiasm for being ministered to, and so preoccupied him that he turned deaf ears to some very sweet platitudes which might otherwise have impressed him as discoveries in philosophy.
Officially her creed was the fashionable one in town; privately she had her own religion, lacking some details truly enough, but shaped upon youthful notions of right and wrong. As she had not read very widely, she supposed that she had discovered this religion for herself; she was not aware that everybody else had passed that way — it being the first immature moult in young people after rejecting dogma.
And the ripened fruit of all this philosophy she helpfully dispensed for Siward’s benefit as bearing directly on his case.
Had he not been immersed in the unexpected proposition of her impending matrimony, he might have been impressed, for the spell of her beauty counted something, and besides, he had recently formulated for himself a code of ethics, tinctured with Omar, and slightly resembling her own discoveries in that dog-eared science.
So it was, when she was most eloquent, most earnestly inspired — nay in the very middle of a plea for sweetness and light and simple living, that his reasonings found voice in the material comment:
“I never imagined you were engaged!”
“Is that what you have been thinking about?” she asked, innocently astonished.
“Yes. Why not? I never for one instant supposed—”
“But, Mr. Siward, why should you have concerned yourself with supposing anything? Why indulge in any speculation of that sort about me?”
“I don’t know, but I didn’t,” he said.
“Of course you didn’t; you’d known me for about three hours — there on the cliff—”
“But — Quarrier — !”
Over his youthful face a sullen shadow had fallen — flickering, not yet settled. He would not for anything on earth have talked freely to the woman destined to be Quarrier’s wife. He had talked too much anyway. Something in her, something about her had loosened his tongue. He had made a plain ass of himself — that was all, — a garrulous ass. And truly it seemed that the girl beside him, even in the starlight, could follow and divine what he had scarcely expressed to himself; or her instincts had taken a shorter cut to forestall his own conclusion.
“Don’t think the things you are thinking!” she said in a fierce little voice, leaning toward him.
“What do you mean?” he asked, taken aback.
“You know! Don’t! It is unfair — it is — is faithless — to me. I am your friend; why not? Does it make any difference to you whom I marry? Cannot two people remain in accord anyway? Their friendship concerns each other and — nobody else!” She was letting herself go now; she was conscious of it, conscious that impulse and emotion were the currents unloosed and hurrying her onward. And with it all came exhilaration, a faint intoxication, a delicate delight in daring to let go all and trust to impulse and emotions.
“Why should you feel hurt because for a moment you let me see — gave me a glimpse of yourself — of life’s battle as you foresee it? What if there is always a reaction from all confidences exchanged? What if that miserable French cynic did say that never was he more alone than after confessing to a friend? He died crazy anyhow. Is not a rare moment of confidence worth the reaction — the subsidence into the armored shell of self? Tell me truly, Mr. Siward, isn’t it?”
Breathless, confused, exhilarated by her own rapid voice she bent her face, brilliant with colour, and very sweet; and he looked up into it, expectant, uncertain.
“If such a friendship as ours is to become worth anything to you — to me, why should it trouble you that I know — and am thinking of things that concern you? Is it because the confidence is one-sided? Is it because you have given and I have listened and given nothing in return to balance the account? I do give — interest, deep interest, sympathy if you ask it; I give confidence in return — if you desire it!”
“What can a girl like you need of sympathy?” he said smiling.
“You don’t know! you don’t know! If heredity is a dark vista, and if you must stare through it all your life, sword in hand, always on your guard, do you think you are the only one?”
“Are you — one?” he said incredulously.
“Yes” — with an involuntary shudder— “not that way. It is easier for me; I think it is — I know it is. But there are things to combat — impulses, a recklessness, perhaps something almost ruthless. What else I do not know, for I have never experienced violent emotions of any sort — never even deep emotion.”
“You are in love!”
“Yes, thoroughly,” she added with conviction, “but not violently. I—” she hesitated, stopped short, leaning forward, peering at him through the dusk; and: “Mr. Siward! are you laughing?” She rose and he stood up instantly.
There was lightning in her darkening eyes now; in his something that glimmered and danced. She watched it, fascinated, then of a sudden the storm broke and they were both laughing convulsively, face to face there under the stars.
“Mr. Siward,” she breathed, “I don’t know what I am laughing at; do you? Is it at you? At myself? At my poor philosophy in shreds and tatters? Is it some infernal mirth that you seem to be able to kindle in me — for I never knew a man like you before?”
“You don’t know what you were laughing at?” he repeated. “It was something about love—”
“No I don’t know why I laughed! I — I don’t wish to, Mr. Siward. I do not desire to laugh at anything you have made me say — anything you may infer—”
“I don’t infer—”
“You do! You made me say something — about my being ignorant of deep, of violent emotion, when I had just informed you that I am thoroughly, thoroughly in love—”
“Did I make you say all that, Miss Landis?”
“You did. Then you laughed and made me laugh too. Then you—”
“What did I do then?” he asked, far too humbly.
“You — you infer that I am either not in love or incapable of it, or too ignorant of it to know what I’m talking about. That, Mr. Siward, is what you have done to me to-night.”
“I — I’m sorry—”
“Are you?”
“I ought to be anyway,” he said.
It was unfortunate; an utterly inexcusable laughter seemed to bewitch them, hovering always close to his lips and hers.
“How can you laugh!” she said. “How dare you! I don’t care for you nearly as violently as I did, Mr. Siward. A friendship between us would not be at all good for me. Things pass too swiftly — too intimately. There is too much mockery in you—” She ceased suddenly, watching the sombre alteration of his face; and, “Have I hurt you?” she asked penitently.
“No.”
“Have I, Mr. Siward? I did not mean it.” The attitude, the words, slackening to a trailing sweetness, and then the moment’s silence, stirred him.
“I’m rather ignorant myself of violent emotion,” he said. “I suspect normal people are. You know better than I do whether love is usually a sedative.”
“Am I normal — after what I have confessed?” she asked. “Can’t love be well-bred?”
“Perfectly I should say — only perhaps you are not an expert—”
“In what?”
“In self-analysis, for example.”
There was a vague meaning in the gaze they exchanged.
“As for our friendship, we’ll do the best we can for it, no matter what occurs,” he added, thinking of Quarrier. And, thinking of him, glanced up to see him within ear-shot and moving straight toward them from the veranda above.
There was a short silence; a tentative civil word from Siward; then Miss Landis took command of something that had a grotesque resemblance to a situation. A few minutes later they returned slowly to the house, the girl walking serenely between Siward and her preoccupied affianced.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 284
