“Is this Bohemianism, Stephen? If it is, I rather like it. Don’t you? You are going to smoke now, aren’t you? Ah, that is delightful!” daintily sniffing the aroma from his cigarette. “It always reminds me of you — there on the cliffs, that first day. Do you remember? — the smoke from your cigarette whirling up in my face?... You say you remember. ...Oh, of course there’s nothing else to say when a girl asks you... is there? Oh, I won’t argue with you, if you insist that you do remember. You will not be like any other man if you do, that’s all.... The little things that women remember!... And believe that men remember! It is pitiful in a way. There! I am not going to spill over, and I don’t care a copper penny whether you really do remember or not!... Yes, I do care! ...Oh, all women care. It is their first disappointment to learn how much a man can forget and still remember to care for them — a little!... Stephen, I said a little; and that is all that you are permitted to care for me; isn’t it?... Please, don’t. You are deliberately beginning to say things!... Stephen, you silly! you are making love to me!”
In the darkness his hand encountered hers on the wooden rail, and the tremor of the contact silenced her. She freed one finger, then let it rest with its slender fellow-prisoners. There was no use in trying to speak just then — utterly useless her voice in the soft, rounded throat imprisoned by the swelling pulses that tightened and hammered and tightened.
Years seemed to fall away from her, slipping back, back into girlhood, into childhood, drawing not her alone on the gliding tide, but carrying him with her. An exquisite languor held her. Through it vague hints of those splendid visions of her lonely childhood rose, shaping themselves in the starry darkness — the old mystery of dreams, the old, innocent desires, the old simplicity of clairvoyance wherein right was right and wrong, wrong — in all the conventional significance of right and wrong, in all the old-fashioned, undisturbed faith of childhood.
Drifting deliciously, her eyes sometimes meeting his, sometimes lost in the magic of her reverie, she lay there in her chair, her unresisting fingers locked in his.
Odd little thoughts came hovering into her reverie — thoughts that seemed distantly familiar, the direct, unconscious impulses of a child. To feel was once more the only motive for expression; to think fearlessly was once more inherent; to desire was to demand — unlock her lips, naively, and ask for what she wished.
Under the spell, she turned her blue gaze on him, and her lips parted without a tremor:
“What do you offer for what you ask? And do you still ask it? Is it me you are asking me for? Because you love me? And what do you give — love?”
“Weigh it with the — other,” he said.
“I have — often — every moment since I have known you. And what a winter!” Her voice was almost inaudible. “What a winter — without you!”
“That hell is ended for me, too. Sylvia, I know what I ask. And I ask. I know what I offer. Will you take it?”
“Yes,” she said.
He rose, blindly. She stood up, pale, wide-eyed, confronting him, stammering out the bargain:
“I take all — all! every virtue, every vice of you. I give all — all! all I have been, all I am, all I shall be! Is that enough? Oh, if there were only more to give! Stephen, if there were only more!”
Her hands had fallen into his, and they looked each other in the eyes.
Suddenly, through the hush of the enchanted moment, a sullen sound broke — the sound of a voice they knew, threateningly raised, louder and louder, growling, profanely menacing.
Aghast, they turned in the darkness, peering toward the lighted space beyond. Leroy Mortimer, his face shockingly congested, stood unsteadily balancing there, confronting his wife, who sat staring at him in horror. At the same instant Plank rose and laid a hand on Mortimer’s shoulder, but Mortimer shook him off with a warning oath.
“You and I will settle with each other to-morrow!” he said thickly, pointing a puffy finger at Plank. “You’ll find me at the Algonquin Trust. Do you hear? That’s where you’ll settle this matter — in the president’s office!” He stood swaying and leering at Plank, repeating loudly: “In Quarrier’s office! Understand? That’s where you’ll settle up! See?”
Leila, white face quivering, shrank as though he had struck her, and he turned on her again, grinning: “As for you, you come home! And that’ll be about all for yours.”
“Are you insane, to make a scene like this?” whispered Plank.
But Mortimer swung on him insultingly: “That’s about all from you, too!” he said. “Leila, are you coming?”
He stepped heavily toward her; but Plank’s sudden crushing grip was on his fat arm above the elbow, and he emitted a roar of surprise and pain.
“Don’t touch him! Don’t, in Heaven’s name!” stammered Leila, as Plank, releasing him, stepped back beside her chair. “Can’t you see that I must go with him! I — I must go.” She cast one terrified glance around her, where scores of strange faces met hers; and at every table people were standing up to see better.
Plank, who had dropped Mortimer’s arm as the latter emitted his bellow of amazement, stepped toward him again, dropping his voice as he spoke:
“You go! Do you hear?” he said quietly. “I’ll do what you ask me, to-morrow! I will do what you ask, if you’ll go now!”
“You come — do you hear!” snarled Mortimer, turning on his wife, who had already risen. “If you don’t I’ll make a row here that you’ll never hear the end of as long as you live! And there’ll be nothing to talk over in Quarrier’s office, if I do.”
Leila looked at Plank, rose, and moved swiftly toward the veranda steps, her head resolutely lowered, the burning shame flaming in her face. Mortimer cast one triumphant glance at Plank, then waddled unsteadily after his wife.
“Hold on,” he growled; “I’ve a Mercedes here! I’ll drive you back — wait! Here it is! Here we are!” And to Quarrier’s machinist he said: “You get into the tonneau. I want to show Mrs. Mortimer what night-driving is. Do you hear? I tell you I’m going to drive this machine and show you how!”
Leila scarcely heard him. She obeyed the impulse of his hand on her arm, and mounted to the seat, staring straight ahead of her with dazed and straining eyes that saw nothing.
Then Mortimer clambered to his seat, and, without an instant’s warning, opened up and seized the wheel.
Unprepared, the machinist attempted to swing aboard, missed his footing in the uncertain light, and fell sprawling on the gravel. Plank saw him from the veranda and instantly vaulted the rail to the lawn below.
“You damn fool!” yelled Mortimer, looking around, “what in hell do you think you’ll do?” And he clapped on full speed as Plank made a leap for the car and missed.
Mortimer laughed, and turned his head to look back, and the next instant something seemed to wrench the steering-wheel from its roots. There was a blinding glare of light, a scream, and the great machine bounded into the air full length, turned completely over, and lay across a flower-bed, partly on one side.
Something was afire, too. Men were rushing from the verandas, women screamed, and stood up wringing their hands; a mounted policeman came galloping through the darkness; people shouted: “Throw sand on it! Get shovels, for God’s sake! Lift that tonneau! There’s a woman under it.”
But they were mistaken, for Leila lay at the foot of the slope, one little bloody hand clutching the dead grass; and Plank knelt beside her, giving his orders quietly to those who came running down the hill from the roadway above, which was now fiercely illuminated by burning gasoline. At last they got sand enough to quench the fire and men sufficient to lift the weight from the dead man’s neck, and drag what was left of him onto the grass.
“Don’t look,” whispered Siward, drawing Sylvia back.
He and she both had put their shoulders to the tonneau along with the others; and now they stood there together in the shifting lantern-light, sickened, shivering under the summer stars, staring at the gathering crowd a
round that shapeless lump on the grass.
Plank passed them, walking beside an improvised stretcher, calm, almost smiling, as Sylvia sprang forward with a little sob of inquiry.
“There’s the doctor, over there; that man is a doctor; he knows,” repeated Plank with studied deliberation, looking down at Leila’s deathly face. “He says it’s all right; he says he’ll get a candle, and that he can tell by the flame’s effect on the pupils of the eyes what exactly is the matter. No,” to Siward beside him, pressing forward through the crowd which eddied from the dead man to the stretcher; “no, there is not a bone broken. She is stunned, that’s all; she fell in the shrubbery. We’ll have an ambulance here pretty quick. Stephen,” using his first name unconsciously, “won’t you look out for Sylvia? I’m going back on the ambulance. If you’ll find somebody to drive my machine, I wish you would take Sylvia back. No, I don’t want you to drive, Stephen — if you don’t mind. Get that machinist, please. I’m rattled, and I don’t want you to drive.”
Leila lay on the stretcher, her bloodless face upturned to the stars. Beyond, under a blanket, something else lay very still on the lawn.
Plank beckoned a policeman, and whispered to him.
Then, far away in the darkness, a distant clamour grew on the night air, nearer, nearer.
Plank, standing beside the stretcher, raised his head, listening to the ambulance arriving at full speed.
CHAPTER XV THE ENEMY LISTENS
In September, her marriage to Siward excitingly imminent, Sylvia had been seized with a passion for wholesale renunciation and rigid self-chastisement. All that had been so materially desirable to her in life, all that she had heretofore worshipped, in and belonging to her own world, she now denied. Down went the miniature golden calf from the altar in her private shrine, its tiny crashing fall making considerable racket throughout her world, and the planets and satellites adjacent to that section of the social system which she had long been expected to dominate.
The spectacle of their youthful ruler-elect in sackcloth as the future bride of a business man had more than disconcerted them. The amazing announcement of Quarrier’s engagement to Agatha Caithness stupefied the elect, rendering in one harrowing instant null and void the thousand petty plans and plots, intrigues and schemes, upon which future social constructions on the social structure had been based.
The grief and amazement of Major Belwether, already distracted by his non-participation, through his own fault, in Plank’s consolidation of Amalgamated with Inter-County, was pitiable to the verge of the unpleasant. Like panic-stricken rabbits, his thoughts ran in circles, and he skipped in their wake, scurrying from Quarrier to Harrington, from Harrington to Plank, from Plank to Siward, in distracted hope of recovering his equilibrium and squatting safely somewhere in somebody’s luxuriantly perpetual cabbage-patch. He even squeezed under the fence and hopped humbly about old Peter Caithness, who suddenly assumed monumental proportions among those who had so long tolerated him.
But Quarrier coldly drove him away and the increasing crowds besieging poor, bewildered old Peter Caithness trod upon the major, and there was nothing for him to do but to scuttle back to his own brush-heap and huddle there, squeaking pitifully.
As for Grace Ferrall, she lost no time in tears, but took Agatha publicly to her bosom, turned furiously on Quarrier in private, and for the first time in her life permitted herself the luxury of telling him exactly what she thought of him.
“You had your chance,” she said; “but you are all surface! There’s nothing to you but soft beard and manicuring, and the reticence of stupidity! The one girl for you — and you couldn’t hold on to her! The one chance of your life — and it’s escaped you, leaving a tuft of pompadour hair and a pair of woman’s eyes protruding from the golden dust-heap your father buried you in. Now you’d better sit there and let it cover your mouth, and try to breathe through your nose. Agatha is looking for a new sensation; she’s tried everything, now she’s going to try you, that’s all. She will be an invaluable leader, Howard, and we shall not yawn, I assure you. But, oh! the chance you’ve lost, for lack of a drop of red blood, and a barber to give you the beard of a man!”
Which merely deepened the fear and hatred which Quarrier had entertained for his pretty cousin from the depths of his silk-wadded cradle. As for Kemp Ferrall, now third vice-president of Inter-County, he only laughed with the tolerance of a man in safety; and, looking at Quarrier through the pickets of the financial fence, not only forgot how close his escape had been, but, being a busy and progressive young man, began to consider how he might ultimately extract a little profit from the expensive tenant of the enclosure.
Grace made the journey to town to express herself freely for Sylvia’s benefit; but when she saw Sylvia, the girl’s radiant beauty checked her, and all she could say was: “My dear! my dear, I knew you would do it! I knew you would fling him on his head. It’s in your blood, you little jade! you little jilt! you mix of a baggage! I knew you’d behave like all the women of your race!”
Sylvia held Mrs. Ferrall’s pretty face impressed between both her hands, and looking her mischievously in the eyes, she whispered:
“‘Comme vous, maman, faut-il faire? — Eh! mes petits-enfants, pourquoi, Quand j’ai fait comme ma grand’ mère, Ne feriez-vous pas comme moi?’”
“O Lord!” said Mrs. Ferrall, “I’ll never meddle again — and the entire world may marry and take the consequences!” Then she drove to the Santa Regina, where Marion was to join her in her return to Shotover; and she was already trying to make up her disturbed mind as to which might prove the more suitable for Marion — Captain Voucher, gloomily recovering from his defeat by Quarrier, or Billy Fleetwood, who didn’t want to marry anybody.
In the meanwhile, Siward’s new duties as second vice-president of Inter-County had given him scant leisure for open-air convalescence. He was busy with Plank; he was also busy with the private investigation stirred up at the Patroons’ Club and the Lenox, and which was slowly but inevitably resulting in clearing him, so that his restoration to good standing and full membership remained now only a matter of formal procedure.
So Siward was becoming a very busy man among men; and Plank, still carrying on his broad shoulders burdens unbearable by any man save such a man as he, shook his heavy head, and ordered Siward into the open. And Siward, who had learned to obey, obeyed.
But September had nearly ended, when Leila, in Plank’s private car, attended by Siward and Sylvia and two trained nurses, arrived at the Fells. The nurses — Plank’s idea — were a surprise to Leila; and the day after her arrival at the Fells she dismissed them, got out of bed, and dressed and came downstairs all alone, on a pair of sound though faltering legs.
Sylvia and Siward were in the music-room, very busily figuring out the probable cost of a house in that section of the city east of Park Avenue, where the newly married imprudent are forming colonies — a just punishment for those reckless brides who marry for love, and are obliged to drive over two car-tracks to reach their wealthy friends and relatives of the Golden Zone.
And Leila, in her pretty invalid’s gown of lace, stood silently at the music-room door, watching them. Her thick, dark hair was braided, and looped up under a black bow behind; and she looked like a curious and impertinent schoolgirl peeping at them there through the crack of the door, bending forward, her joined hands flattened between her knees.
“Oh,” she said at length, in a frankly disappointed voice, “is that all you do when your chaperone is abed?”
“Angel!” cried Sylvia, springing up, “how in the world did you ever manage to come downstairs?”
“On the usual number of feet. If you think it’s very gay up there—” She laid her hands in Sylvia’s, and looked at Siward with all the old mockery in her eyes — eyes which slanted a little at the corners, Japanese-wise: “Stephen, you are growing positively plump. You’d better not do that until Sylvia marries you. Look at him, dear! He’s getting all smooth in the cheek
s, like a horrid undergraduate boy!”
She released one hand and greeted Siward. “Thank you,” she said serenely, replying to his inquiry, “I am perfectly well. You pay me no compliment when you ask me, after you have seen me.” And to Sylvia, looking at her white flannels: “What have you been playing? What do you find to do with yourself, Sylvia, with that plump sun-burned boy at your heels all day long? Are there no men about?”
“One’s coming to-day,” said Sylvia, laughing; and slipping her arm around Leila’s waist, she strolled with her out through the tall glass doors to the terrace, with a backward glance of airy dismissal for Siward.
Plank had wired from New York, the night before, that he was coming; in another hour he would be there. Leila knew it perfectly well, and she looked into the wickedly expressive young face of the girl beside her, eyes soft but unsmiling.
“Child, child,” she murmured, “you do not know how much of a man a man can be!”
“Yes, I do!” said Sylvia hotly.
Leila smiled. “Hush, you little silly! I’ve talked Stephen and praised Stephen to you for days and days, and the moment I dare mention another man you fly at me, hair on end!”
“Oh, Leila, I know it! I’m perfectly mad about him, that’s all. But don’t you think he is looking like himself again? And, Leila, isn’t he strangely attractive? — I don’t mean just because I happen to be in love with him, but give me a perfectly cold and unbiassed opinion, dear, because there is simply no use in a girl’s blinding herself to facts, or in ignoring certain fixed laws of symmetry, which it is perfectly obvious that Mr. Siward fulfils in those well-known and established proportions which—”
“Sylvia!”
“What?” she asked, startled.
“Nothing. Only for two solid weeks—”
“Of course, if you are not interested—”
“But I am, child — I am! desperately interested! He is handsome! I knew him before you did, and I thought so then!”
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