CHAPTER XVII
ECHOES
Some minutes later, on the northward speeding train, he left Portlaw playing solitaire in their own compartment, and, crossing the swaying corridor, entered the state-room opposite. Miss Wilming was there, reading a novel, an enormous bunch of roses, a box of bonbons, and a tiny kitten on the table before her. The kitten was so young that it was shaky on its legs, and it wore very wide eyes and a blue bow.
"Hello, Dolly," he said pleasantly. She answered rather faintly.
"What a voice—like the peep of an infant sparrow! Are you worrying?"
"A little."
"You needn't be. Alphonse will make a noise, of course, but you needn't mind that. The main thing in life is to know what you want to do and do it. Which I've never yet done in my life. Zut! Zut!!—as our late Count Alphonse might say. And he'll say other remarks when he finds you've gone, Dolly." And Malcourt, who was a mimic, shrugged and raised his arms in Gallic appeal to the gods of wrath, until he mouthed his face into a startling resemblance to that of the bereft nobleman.
Then he laughed a little—not very heartily; then, in a more familiar rôle, he sat down opposite the girl and held up one finger of admonition and consolation.
"The main thing, Dolly, was to get clear of him—and all that silly business. Yes? No? Bon!… And now everything is cleared up between us, and I've told you what I'd do—if you really wanted a chance. I believe in chances for people."
The girl, who was young, buried her delicate face in the roses and looked at him. The kitten, balanced on tiny, wavering legs, stared hard at him, too. He looked from girl to kitten, conscious of the resemblance, and managed to smother a smile.
"You said," he repeated severely, "that you wanted a chance. I told you what I could and would do; see that you live and dress decently, stand for your musical, dramatic, athletic, and terpsichorean education and drilling—but not for one atom of nonsense. Is that clear?"
She nodded.
"Not one break; not one escapade, Dolly. It's up to you."
"I know it."
"All right, then. What's passed doesn't count. You start in and see what you can do. They say they drag one about by the hair at those dramatic schools. If they do, you've got to let 'em. Anyway, things ought to come easier to you than to some, for you've got a corking education, and you don't drink sloe-gin, and you don't smoke."
"And I can cook," added the girl gravely, looking at her childish ringless hands. The rings and a number of other details had been left behind addressed to the count.
"The trouble will be," said Malcourt, "that you will miss the brightness and frivolity of things. That kitten won't compensate."
"Do you think so? I haven't had very much of anything—even kittens," she said, picking up the soft ball of fur and holding it under her chin.
"You missed the frivolous in life even before you had it. You'll miss it again, too."
"But I've had it now."
"That doesn't count. The capacity for frivolity is always there. You are reconciled just now to other things; that man is a beast all right. Oh, yes; this is reaction, Dolly. The idea is to hang on to this conservatism when it becomes stupid and irksome; when you're tired and discouraged, and when you want to be amused and be in bright, attractive places; and when you're lonesome—"
"Lonesome?"
"Certainly you'll be lonesome if you're good."
"Am I not to see you?"
"I'll be in the backwoods working for a living—"
"Yes, but when you come to New York?"
"Sure thing."
"Often?"
"As often as it's advisable," he said pleasantly. "I want you to make friends at school; I want you to have lots of them. A bachelor girl has got to have 'em.... It's on your account and theirs that I don't intend to have anybody make any mistake about me.... Therefore, I'll come to see you when you've a friend or two present. It's fairer to you. Now do you understand me, Dolly?"
"Yes."
"Is it agreeable?"
"Y-es." And, flushing: "But I did not mistake you, Louis; and there is no reason not to come, even if I am alone."
He laughed, lighted a cigarette, and stroked the kitten.
"It's an amusing experiment, anyway," he said.
"Have you never tried it before?"
"Oh, yes, several times."
"Were the several times successes?"
"Not one!" he said, laughing. "It's up to you, Dolly, to prove me a bigger ass than I have been yet—or the reverse."
"It lies with me?" she asked.
"Certainly. Have I ever made love to you?"
"No."
"Ever even kissed you?"
"No."
"Ever been a brute?"
"No.... You are not very careful in speaking to me sometimes. Once—at the Club—when Mr. Hamil—"
"I was brutal. I know it. Do you want my respect?"
"Y-es."
"Earn it," he said drily.
The girl leaned back in her corner, flushed, silent, thoughtful; and sometimes her eyes were fixed on vacancy, sometimes on him where he sat in the opposite seat staring out into the blurred darkness at the red eye of the beacon on Jupiter Light which turned flaring, turned again, dwindling to a spark, and went out.
"Of what are you thinking?" she asked, noticing his frown.
He did not reply; he was thinking of Shiela Cardross. And, frowning, he picked up the kitten, very gently, and flattered it until it purred.
"It's about as big as a minute," said the girl, softly touching the tiny head.
"There are minutes as big as elephants, too," he said, amused. "Nice pussy!" The kitten, concurring in these sentiments, purred with pleasure.
A little later he sauntered back to his own compartment, and, taking out a memorandum, made some figures.
"Is that girl aboard?" asked Portlaw, looking up from the table, his fat hands full of cards.
"Yes, I believe so."
"Well, that's a deuce of a thing to do."
"What?"—absently.
"What! Why, to travel about the country with the nucleus of a theatrical troupe on your hands—"
"She wanted another chance. Few get it."
"Very well, son, if you think you can afford to endow a home for the frivolously erring!—And the chances are she'll turn on you and scratch."
"Yes—the chances favour that."
"She won't understand it; that sort never understands decency in a man."
"Do you think it might damage my reputation to be misunderstood?" sneered Malcourt. "I've taken a notion to give her a chance and I'm going to do it."
Portlaw spread out his first row of cards. "You know what everybody will think, I suppose."
Malcourt yawned.
Presently Portlaw began in a babyish-irritated voice: "I've buried the deuce and trey of diamonds, and blocked myself—"
"Oh, shut up!" said Malcourt, who was hastily scribbling a letter to Virginia Suydam.
He did not post it, however, until he reached New York, being very forgetful and busy in taking money away from the exasperated Portlaw through the medium of double dummy. Also he had a girl, a kitten, and other details to look after, and several matters to think over. So Virginia's letter waited.
Virginia waited, too. She had several headaches to keep inquiring friends at a distance, for her eyes were inclined to redness in those days, and she developed a pronounced taste for the solitude of the chapel and churchly things.
So when at length the letter arrived, Miss Suydam evaded Constance and made for the beach; for it was her natural instinct to be alone with Malcourt, and the instinct unconsciously included even his memory.
Her maid was packing; Constance Palliser's maid was also up to her chin in lingerie, and Constance hovered in the vicinity. So there was no privacy there, and that was the reason Virginia evaded them, side-stepped Gussie Vetchen at the desk, eluded old Classon in the palm room, and fled like a ghost through the empty corridors as though the deuce were at her heels instead of in her heart.
The heart of Virginia was cutting up. Alone in the corridors she furtively glanced at the letter, kissed the edge of the envelope, rolled and tucked it away in her glove, and continued her flight in search of solitude.
The vast hotel seemed lonely enough, but it evidently was too populous to suit Miss Suydam. Yet few guests remained, and the larger caravansary was scheduled to close in another day or two, the residue population to be transferred to "The Breakers."
The day was piping hot but magnificent; corridor, piazza, colonnade, and garden were empty of life, except for a listless negro servant dawdling here and there. Virginia managed to find a wheel-chair under the colonnade and a fat black boy at the control to propel it; and with her letter hidden in her glove, and her heart racing, she seated herself, parasol tilted, chin in the air, and the chair rolled noiselessly away through the dazzling sunshine of the gardens.
On the beach some barelegged children were wading in the surf's bubbling ebb, hunting for king-crabs; an old black mammy, wearing apron and scarlet turban, sat luxuriously in the burning sand watching her thin-legged charges, and cooking the "misery" out of her aged bones. Virginia could see nobody else, except a distant swimmer beyond the raft, capped with a scarlet kerchief. This was not solitude, but it must do.
So she dismissed her chair-boy and strolled out under the pier. And, as nobody was there to interrupt her she sat down in the sand and opened her letter with fingers that seemed absurdly helpless and unsteady.
"On the train near Jupiter Light," it was headed; and presently continued:
"I am trying to be unselfishly honest with you to see how it feels. First—about my loving anybody. I never have; I have on several occasions been prepared to bestow heart and hand—been capable of doing it—and something happened every time. On one of these receptive occasions the thing that happened put me permanently out of business. I'll tell you about that later.
"What I want to say is that the reason I don't love you is not because I can't, but because I won't! You don't understand that. Let me try to explain. I've always had the capacity for really loving some woman. I was more or less lonely and shy as a child and had few playmates—very few girls of my age. I adored those I knew—but—well, I was not considered to be a very desirable playmate by those parents who knew the Malcourt history.
"One family was nice to me—some of them. I usually cared a great deal for anybody who was nice to me.
"The point of all this biography is that I'm usually somewhat absurdly touched by the friendship of an attractive woman of my own sort—or, rather, of the sort I might have been. That is my attitude toward you; you are amiable to me; I like you.
"Now, why am I not in love with you? I've told you that it's because I will not let myself be in love with you. Why?
"Dear—it's just because you have been nice to me. Do you understand? No, you don't. Then—to go back to what I spoke of—I am not free to marry. I am married. Now you know. And there's no way out of it that I can see.
"If I were in love with you I'd simply take you. I am only your friend—and I can't do you that injury. Curious, isn't it, how such a blackguard as I am can be so fastidious!
"But that's the truth. And that, too, may explain a number of other matters.
"So you see how it is, dear. The world is full of a number of things. One of them signs himself your friend,
"LOUIS MALCOURT."
Virginia's eyes remained on the written page long after she had finished reading. They closed once or twice, opened again, blue-green, expressionless. Looking aloft after a while she tried to comprehend that the sky was still overhead; but it seemed to be a tricky, unsteady, unfamiliar sky, wavering, crawling across space like the wrinkled sea beneath it. Confused, she turned, peering about; the beach, too, was becoming unstable; and, through the sudden rushing darkness that obscured things, she tried to rise, then dropped full length along the sand.
A few seconds later—or perhaps minutes, or perhaps hours—she found herself seated perfectly conscious, mechanically drying the sea-water from her wet face; while beside her knelt a red-capped figure in wet bathing-dress, both hands brimming with sea-water which ran slowly between the delicate fingers and fell, sparkling.
"Do you feel better?" asked Shiela gently.
"Yes," she said, perfectly conscious and vaguely surprised. Presently she looked down at her skirts, groped about, turned, searching with outstretched fingers. Then her eyes fell on the letter. It lay on the sand beside her sunshade, carefully weighted with a shell.
Neither she nor the girl beside her spoke. Virginia adjusted her hat and veil, sat motionless for a few moments, then picked up the water-stained letter and, rolling it, placed it in her wet glove. A slow flame burned in her pallid cheeks; her eyes remained downcast.
Shiela said with quick sympathy: "I never fainted in my life. Is it painful?"
"No—it's only rather horrid.... I had been walking in the sun. It is very hot on the beach, I think; don't you?"
"Very," said the girl gravely.
Virginia, head still bent, was touching her wet lace waist with her wetter gloves.
"It was very good of you," she said, in a low voice—"and quite stupid of me."
Shiela straightened to her full height and stood gravely watching the sea-water trickle from her joined palms. When the last shining drop had fallen she looked questioningly at Miss Suydam.
"I'm a little tired, that is all," said Virginia. She rose rather unsteadily and took advantage of Shiela's firm young arm, which, as they progressed, finally slipped around Miss Suydam's waist.
Very slowly they crossed the burning sands together, scarcely exchanging a word until they reached the Cardross pavilion.
"If you'll wait until I have my shower I'll take you back in my chair," said Shiela. "Come into my own dressing-room; there's a lounge."
Virginia, white and haggard, seated herself, leaning back languidly against the wall and closing her heavy eyes. They opened again when Shiela came back from the shower, knotting in the girdle of her snowy bath-robe, and seated herself while her maid unloosed the thick hair and rubbed it till the brown-gold lustre came out like little gleams of sunlight, and the ends of the burnished tresses crisped and curled up on the smooth shoulders of snow and rose.
Virginia's lips began to quiver; she was fairly flinching now under the pitiless contrast, fascinated yet shrinking from the splendid young creature before her, resting there aglow in all the vigourous beauty of untainted health.
And from the mirror reflected, the clear eyes smiled back at her, seeming to sear her very soul with their untarnished loveliness.
"Suppose you come and lunch with me?" said Shiela. "I happen to be quite alone. My maid is very glad to do anything for you. Will you come?"
"Yes," said Virginia faintly.
An hour later they had luncheon together in the jasmine arbour; and after that Virginia lay in the hammock under the orange-trees, very still, very tired, glad of the silence, and of the soft cool hand which covered hers so lightly, and, at rare intervals, pressed hers more lightly still.
Shiela, elbow on knee, one arm across the hammock's edge, chin cupped in her other palm, sat staring at vacancy beside the hammock where Virginia lay. And sometimes her partly doubled fingers indented her red lower lip, sometimes they half framed the oval face, as she sat lost in thought beside the hammock where Virginia lay so pale and still.
Musing there in the dappled light, already linked together by that subtle sympathy which lies in silence and in a common need of it, they scarcely stirred save when Shiela's fingers closed almost imperceptibly on Virginia's hand, and Virginia's eyelids quivered in vague response.
In youth, sadness and silence are near akin. That was the only kinship they could claim—this slim, pale scion of a worn-out line, and the nameless, parentless girl beside her. This kinship was their only bond—unadmitted, uncomprehended by themselves; kinship in love, and the sadness of it; in love, and the loneliness of it; love—and the long hours of waiting; night, and the tears of it.
The sun hung low behind the scented orange grove before Virginia moved, laying her thin cheek on Shiela's hand.
"Did you see—that letter—in the sand?" she whispered.
"Yes."
"The writing—you knew it?… Answer me, Shiela."
"Yes, I knew it."
Virginia lay very still for a while, then covered her face with both hands.
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" breathed Shiela, bending close beside her.
Virginia lay motionless for a moment, then uncovered her face.
"It is strange," she said, in a colourless, almost inaudible voice. "You see I am simply helpless—dependent on your mercy.... Because a woman does not faint over—nothing."
The deep distress in Shiela's eyes held her silent for a space. She looked back at her, then her brooding gaze shifted to the laden branches overhead, to the leafy vistas beyond, to the ground where the golden fruit lay burning in the red, level rays of the western sun.
"I did not know he was married," she said vacantly.
Swift anger burned in Shiela's cheeks.
"He was a coward not to tell you—"
"He was honourable about it," said Virginia, in the same monotonous voice. "Do you think I am shameless to admit it? Perhaps I am, but it is fairer to him. As you know this much, you should know the truth. And the truth is that he has never said he loved me."
Her face had become pinched and ghastly, but her mouth never quivered under this final humiliation.
"Did you ever look upon a more brazen and defenceless woman—" she began—and then very quietly and tearlessly broke down in Shiela's tender arms, face hidden on the young girl's breast.
And Shiela's heart responded passionately; but all she could find to say was: "Dear—I know—indeed, indeed I know—believe me I know and understand!" And all she could do was to gather the humbled woman into her arms until, her grief dry-spent, Virginia raised her head and looked at Shiela with strange, quenched, tearless eyes.
"We women are very helpless, very ignorant," she said, "even the worst of us. And I doubt if in all our lives we are capable of the harm that one man refrains from doing for an hour.... And that, I think, is our only compensation.... What theirs may be I do not know.... Dear, I am perfectly able to go, now.... I think I see your mother coming."
They walked together to the terrace where Mrs. Cardross had just arrived in the motor; and Shiela, herself shaken, wondered at the serene poise with which Virginia sustained ten minutes of commonplaces and then made her final adieux, saying that she was leaving on the morning train.
"May we not see each other in town?" she added amiably; and, to Shiela: "You will let me know when you come North? I shall miss you until you come."
Mrs. Cardross sent her back in the motor, a trifle surprised at any intimacy between Shiela and Virginia. She asked a frank question or two and then retired to write to Mrs. Carrick, who, uneasy, had at last gone North to find out what financial troubles were keeping both her husband and her father so long away from this southland that they loved so well.
Hamil, who was to leave for the North with his aunt and Virginia early next morning, returned from the forest about sundown, reeking as usual of the saddle, and rested a moment against the terrace balustrade watching Mrs. Cardross and Shiela over their tea.
"That boy is actually ill," said the sympathetic matron. "Why don't you give him some tea, Shiela? Or would you rather have a little wine and a biscuit, Garret—?"
"And a few pills," added Shiela gravely. "I found a box of odds and ends—powders, pills, tablets, which he might as well finish—"
"Shiela! Garret is ill!"
Hamil, busy with his Madeira and biscuit, laughed. He could not realise he was on the eve of leaving, nor could Shiela.
"Never," said he to the anxious lady, "have I felt better in my life; and I'm sure it is due to your medicines. It's all very well for Shiela to laugh at quinine; mosquitoes don't sting her. But I'd probably be an item in one of those phosphate beds by this time if you hadn't taken care of me."
Shiela laughed; Hamil in excellent humour went off to dress. Everybody seemed to be in particularly good spirits that evening, but later, after dinner, Gray spoke complainingly of the continued absence of his father.
"As for Acton Carrick, he's the limit," added Gray disgustedly. "He hasn't been here this winter except for a day or two, and then he took the train from Miami straight through to New York. I say, Hamil, you'll look him up and write us about him, won't you?"
Shiela looked at Hamil.
"Do you understand anything about financial troubles?" she asked in a bantering voice.
"I've had some experience with my own," he said.
"Well, then, what is the matter with the market?"
"Shall I whisper it?"
"If you are prepared to rhyme it. I dare you!"
It was the rule of the house that anybody was privileged to whisper at table provided they put what they had to communicate into rhyme.
So he thought busily a moment, then leaned over very gravely and whispered close to her ear:
"Tis money makes the market go;
When money's high the market's low;
When money's low the market's right,
And speculators sleep at night.
But, dear, there is another mart,
Where ticks the ticker called my heart;
And there exhaustless funds await,
To back my bankrupt trust in Fate;
For you will find, as I have found,
The old, old logic yet is sound,
And love still makes the world go round."
"I always knew it," said Shiela contemptuously.
"Knew what, dear?" asked her mother, amused.
"That Mr. Hamil writes those sickening mottoes for Christmas crackers."
"There are pretty ones in them—sometimes," said Cecile, reminiscently spearing a big red strawberry which resembled the popular and conventional conception of a fat human heart.
Gray, still serious, said: "Unless we are outside of the danger zone I think father ought to teach me something about business."
"If we blow up," observed Cecile, "I'll do clever monologues and support everybody. I'd like that. And Shiela already writes poetry—"
"Nonsense!" said Shiela, very pink.
"Shiela! You do!"
"I did in school—" turning pinker under Hamil's tormenting gaze.
"And you do yet! I found an attempt on the floor—in your flowing penmanship," continued the pitiless younger sister. "What is there to blush about? Of course Phil and I were not low enough to read it, but I'll bet it was about somebody we all know! Do you want to bet—Garry?"
"Cecile!" said her mother mildly.
"Yes, mother—I forgot that I'm not allowed to bet, but if I was—"
Shiela, exasperated, looked at her mother, who shook her head and rose from the table, taking Hamil's arm.
"You little imp!" breathed Shiela fiercely to Cecile, "if you plague me again I'll inform Mr. Hamil of what happened to you this morning."
"I don't care; Garry is part of the family," retorted Cecile, flushed but defiant and not exactly daring to add: "or will be soon." Then she put both arms around Shiela, and holding her imprisoned:
"Are you in love?—you darling!" she whispered persuasively. "Oh, don't commit yourself if you feel that way!… And, O Shiela, you should have seen Phil Gatewood following me in love-smitten hops when I wouldn't listen! My dear, the creature managed to plant both feet on my gown as I fled, and the parquet is so slippery and the gown so flimsy and, oh, there was a dreadful ripping sound and we both went down—"
Shiela was laughing now, holding her sister's gesticulating hands, as she rattled on excitedly:
"I got to my feet in a blaze of fury, holding my gown on with both hands—"
"Cissy!"
"And he gave one horror-stricken look and ran—"
Swaying there together in the deserted dining-room, they gave way to uncontrolled laughter. Laughter rang out from the living-room, too, where Gray was informing Mrs. Cardross and Hamil of the untoward climax to a spring-time wooing; and when Shiela and Cecile came in the latter looked suspiciously at Hamil, requesting to know the reason of his mirth.
"Somebody will have to whisper it to you in rhyme," said Hamil; "it's not fit for prose, Cissy."
Mrs. Cardross retired early. Gray went for a spin in his motor. Cecile, mischievously persuaded that Hamil desired to have Shiela to himself for half an hour, stifled her yawns and bedward inclinations and remained primly near them until Gray returned.
Then the four played innocuous Bridge whist until Cecile's yawns could no longer be disguised; and finally Gray rose in disgust when she ignored the heart-convention and led him an unlovely spade.
"How many kinds of a chump can you be in one day?" asked her wrathful brother.
"Pons longa, vita brevis," observed Hamil, intensely amused. "Don't sit on her, Gray."
"O dear! O dear!" said Cecile calmly, "I'd rather be stepped on again than sat on like that!"
"You're a sweet little thing anyway," said Hamil, "even if you do fall down in Bridge as well as otherwise—"
"Shiela! You told Garret!"
"Cunning child," said Hamil; "make her dance the baby-dance, Shiela!" And he and her sister and brother seized her unwilling hands and compelled her to turn round and round, while they chanted in unison:
"Cissy's Bridge is falling down,
Falling down,
Falling down,
Cissy's gown is falling down,
My
Fair
Lady!"
"Garry, stop it!… It's only an excuse to hold Shiela's hand—"
But Shiela recited very gravely:
"Father's in Manhattan town,
Hunting up our money;
Philip's in the music-room,
Calling Cis his honey;
Cissy's sprinting through the hall,
Trying to be funny—"
"I won't dance!" cried Cecile. But they sang insultingly:
"Rock-a-by Cissy!
Philip will slop!
Cissy is angry,
For Philip won't stop."
"If dresses are stepped upon,
Something will fall,
Down will come petticoat, Cissy, and all!"
"O Garry, how can you!"
"Because you've been too gay lately; you're marked for discipline, young lady!"
"Who told you? Shiela?—and it was my newest, dearest, duck of a gown!… The situation was perfectly horrid, too. What elephants men are!"
"You know, I'd accept him if I were you—just to teach him the value of gowns," suggested Hamil.
But Shiela said seriously: "Phil Gatewood is a nice boy. We all knew that he was going to ask you. You acted like a ninny, Cis."
"With my gown half off!—what would you have done?" demanded the girl hotly.
"Destroyed him," admitted Shiela, "in one way or another, dear. And now I am going to bed—if everybody has had enough of Cissy's Bridge—"
"Me for the hay," observed Gray emphatically.
So they all went up the stairway together, lingering a few moments on the landing to say good night.
Cecile retired first, bewailing the humiliation of not having a maid of her own and requesting Shiela to send hers as she was too sleepy to undress.
Gray caught sight of a moth fluttering around the electric lights and made considerable noise securing the specimen. After which he also retired, cyanide jar containing the victim tucked under his arm.