He's left his flocks, his fields, his kine,He's left his folk and friends and all,He's off to watch the cold sea shine,To brew for aye the salt sea brine,The mermaid hath Sir Hugh in thrall.Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.
He's left his flocks, his fields, his kine,He's left his folk and friends and all,He's off to watch the cold sea shine,To brew for aye the salt sea brine,The mermaid hath Sir Hugh in thrall.
He's left his flocks, his fields, his kine,He's left his folk and friends and all,He's off to watch the cold sea shine,To brew for aye the salt sea brine,The mermaid hath Sir Hugh in thrall.
Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.
I flung myself down on the beach behind a big rock, so that I was completely cut off from the cottage, and stared at the sun rising, though it might as well have been the moon for all my appreciation of it. So this was it! No wonder he wanted a parson—it was high time, I thought virtuously. It cut me that he had never hinted this to me; that we, who had had no secrets from each other for so many years (as I thought) had really been divided by this, for what I inferred had been a long time. And yet a moment's consideration brought home to me the almost certainty that it couldn't have been so very long, after all. There had been, especially in the last year, weeks and even months when Roger and I had not been separated for eight hours at a stretch. He chose to work hard in the typical American fashion; I was obliged to. And I knew his attitude toward the sort ofliaisonwe both despised. He had laboured enough and disgustedly enough at dragging a weak-kneed cousin of his (the black sheep that few large families dispense with) out of a connection of that kind. And anyhow, I knew that people who wore when they were together the look I had seen on those two visions of the mist could never be contented apart!
Well, well, it was a bad quarter of an hour for me, and I had to get over it as best I could, alone. Women are usually credited with a practical monopoly of jealousy of their own sex, but wrongly, I am sure. We learn earlier to conceal it and, better still, realise the necessity for keeping quiet about it and getting over it. The clock continues to strike, andone's friends continue to marry, and one continues to present silver mugs to one's god-children—voilà tout!
I suppose the worry and strain of it all, the hot, stuffy, sleepless night and the sudden shock at the last had tired me, for as I lay on the beach, sheltered by the rock, with just enough of the warm sun at my back for comfort, I went off into a doze and lost myself completely. I may have slept two hours, and woke with that perfectly definite sensation of some one's being by and staring at me that disturbs one's deepest dreams.
Sitting Turk fashion on the sand near me was a beautiful young woman with great deep set grey eyes and two braids of long dark hair, one falling over either shoulder. Her skin was dark, nearly olive, and her mouth was of that deep, dark red that has always seemed to me so much more alluring than all the coral lips of poetry and convention. She was oddly attired in a short, faded blue serge skirt and a dull red jacket of the sort called at that sartorial epoch a "jersey." Tied around the neck of this was a black silk handkerchief. Black stockings, generously displayed, and worn white tennis shoes completed her costume—a trying one, certainly, and, one would have supposed, sufficiently prejudicial in my eyes, who have always had a confessed preference for the charm of well-selected clothes, and a certain critical judgment in that direction, I am told.
But Margarita would have moulded a suit of chain-armour, I believe, to her personality. It was quite obvious that she wore no corset, for the tight jersey clung to her round, firm bust and long, supple waist like a glove. Her shoulders were, perhaps, a little shade squared, which only added to the boyishness of the enchanting pose of her head, and the loose handkerchief gave the last touch to the daintily hardy fisher girl she seemed to have chosen for her masquerade. For there was nothing of the peasant about her; race showed in every feature, and the dim, toned colours of her faded clothes appeared the last touch of realistic art.
"You must wake, now," she said gravely, "and tell me if you are Jerry—are you?"
"Yes," I said, "I am. And you are——?"
"I am Margarita," she said. "Did you bring some one who knows how to marry people? Roger said you would."
"I brought him—he's out there," I answered, pointing to the ocean generally.
She followed my arm with interest in her eyes. "Oh! Is that where he will do it?" she asked. "Roger did not tell me that. Is he swimming?"
"I think not," I answered seriously, "I think he is in a boat."
"I am glad of that," she remarked, "because I cannot swim, myself. And I must be with Roger, you know, when we are being married."
"It is usual," I admitted. I was really only half aware of the extraordinary character of our conversation. Every one became primitive in talking with Margarita and fell, more or less, into her style of discourse.
"Have you been married?" she asked placidly, her grave, lovely eyes full on mine. She sat quite motionless, her hands loose in her lap, neither twiddling them aimlessly nor pretending to employ them in the hundred nervous ways common to her sex.
"No."
"Neither have I. Neither has Roger. But many people have. It cannot be hard."
"Oh, no! I believe it is the simplest thing in the world," I said, eyeing her narrowly. Was she teasing me? I wondered.
"So Roger says," she agreed with obvious relief. "It is only talking. I cannot see why Roger could not learn to do it himself. Can you not do it, either?"
I shook my head. I was trying to believe that she was not quite sane, but it was impossible. Her mind, I could have sworn, was as vigorous as my own, though there was adifference, evidently. The precise, beautiful articulation of her English gave me a new direction. She must be a foreigner—Italian, for choice, in spite of her English eyes.
"Marrying people is a business like any other, Miss—I did not hear your last name?" I ventured.
"I have none," she said. "I mean," correcting herself, "Roger says that I must have one, of course, but I do not happen to have heard it," she added calmly.
"Ah, well," I said coldly, "it is a mere detail."
I was seriously vexed with Roger. This young woman passed belief. I decided that she was an actress of the first water and resented being imposed upon.
"It is the same with my age—how old I am," she continued. "Roger thinks I am twenty years of age. Do you? He is going to ask you."
"Really, I can't say," I returned shortly, "I am a poor judge of women's ages—or characters," I added pointedly.
She did not blush nor move. Only her eyes widened slightly and darkened.
"Roger will ask you," she repeated and I felt, unreasonably, as it seemed to me then, that my tone had hurt her, as one's tone, utterly incomprehensible as the words it utters may be, will hurt a child.
She sat in silence for a moment, and I, curiously eager for her next remark and conscious suddenly of that strange, muffled excitement that had oppressed me a few hours before, watched her closely, gathering handfuls of sand and spilling them over my knee.
"Did you ever go to Broadway?" she began again.
"I have, yes."
"I did, too," she assured me eagerly. "I think it is beautiful. I should like to live there, should not you? Perhaps," hopefully, "you do live there?"
"No," I said, still on my guard and uncomfortable, "I don't. Are you planning to live there after you are married?" She shook her head regretfully.
"I am afraid not," she said, and her voice dropped a full third and coloured with a most absurd and exquisite sombre quality, as Duse's used to inLa Dame aux Camellias. "Roger would not want to. He will not want me to walk there very much, either. And that is very strange, because there is where I first saw him. But there are places I shall like quite as well, he says, and he will take me there. Will you come, too?"
"I am afraid," I replied drily, "that I might be a littlede trop, perhaps. Roger might not care for my society under those circumstances."
Again she answered my tone rather than my words.
"Roger loves you," she said simply.
"He used to," I returned—inexcusably. Oh, yes! utterly inexcusably.
Again her eyes widened and grew dark, and this time the corners of her mouth curved down pitifully, and I felt a strange heaviness at my heart.
"You do not love me, do you, Jerry?" she said, and now her voice dropped a good fifth and thrilled like the plucked string of a violoncello, and my nerves vibrated to it and tingled in my wrists.
"Roger said you would, and I thought you would—and you do not," she said sadly.
I clenched a handful of the moist sand and leaned toward her, my heart pounding furiously.
"Are you sorry?" I muttered unsteadily, fixing my eyes on hers.
She met them fully. Like great grey pools they were, her eyes, honest as mountain springs, clear as rain. They caught me and held me and drenched me in their innocent, warm sweetness; there was not one thought in her head, not one corner in her heart that I was not free to know. Those eyes had never held a secret since they opened into a world that had never, to her knowledge, deceived her. They swam in light, and oh, the depths on depths of love that one couldsound there! My last hateful anchor broke clean off and my heart slipped from the stupid rocks of suspicion and self-protection and jealousy, and floated away on the bosom of that sweet, disturbing flood. I forgot Roger, I forgot what had been myself; in that instant, in the utter surrender of her innocent eyes, she became for me all at once the vision I had seen in the mist again, the thing we mean when we say woman—but now she was one single special woman, the vision and the flesh-and-blood reality together.
"Are you sorry?" I said again, and my voice was not my own.
She smiled at me till I caught my breath. "Not now, Jerry," she said softly, "because you do love me, now."
The sand fell, a tightly moulded shape, out of my hand, and I wrenched my eyes away from her. They smarted and stung, but the pain relieved me and cleared my brain, and I knew suddenly what I have known ever since and shall know till I die. There on the beach, before I had so much as touched her hand, I had fallen senselessly and hopelessly and everlastingly in love with Margarita.
I don't know how long we sat silent on the beach. Such silence was never embarrassing to her, because it seemed perfectly normal and usual, and I was too busy with my thoughts to feel any sense of restraint. And yet they were hardly thoughts: my head whirled in a confusion of regret and desire, and one moment my blood ran warm with the joy of my discovery, and the next a horrid chill crept over me as I saw my empty years—for if she might not fill them, no one else should. At last I drew a long breath.
"Are you hungry?" Margarita asked pleasantly. "When I am hungry I do that very often. If you will come now, we will have our breakfast."
She sprang to her feet with the lithe ease of a boy and held out her hand to me. I took it and we walked thus across the beach to the cottage, and during that walk, with her firm, warm hand fast in mine and her clean, elastic step beside me, I swore to myself that neither she nor Roger should ever regret what she had done to me, nor know it, if I could keep the knowledge from them. The last part of this vow was impossible of fulfillment, finally, but the first, thank God! has never been broken, or even for a moment strained, and I like to hope that this may count a little to my credit, in the ultimate auditing, for she was terribly alluring, this Margarita, and I am no more a stock or a stone than other men, I fancy.
We walked around to the shore side of the cottage and there stood Roger on its weather-beaten veranda, his handheld out to me eagerly, an anxious, an almost wistful look in his honest blue eyes. He was unusually but not unbecomingly dressed in faded blue serge trousers, too tight for the dictates of fashion, but quite telling in their revelation of his magnificent thighs, tucked into very high wading boots and topped by a grey flannel blouse open at the neck for comfort, with a twisted dull green handkerchief by way of a collar. It was really quite picturesque altogether, and suited him excellently, as all rough-and-ready, notably masculine attire has always done. Curiously enough, he combines with this, when in evening clothes, the least resemblance to a head-waiter I have ever observed in an American; the price they pay, I suppose, for being quite the best dressed business and professional men in the world.
I took all this in, of course, in a fraction of the time it takes to write it, and also the fact that old Roger looked ten years younger than when I had last seen him. He had always been a steady, responsible fellow, you see, one of the men people put things on, and not particularly youthful for his age: a great help to him as a budding young lawyer.
But now I saw the eyes we used to see on the football field in New Haven, and even, it seemed to me for a moment, the little worried yet patient intentness I knew so well at school when some one of those tiny climaxes (that seemed so terrible then!) depended on him for a fair solution. They used to say so clearly, those honest eyes, that he hoped you agreed with him and that you felt his way was the best way, but that whether or not you agreed, he would have to do it, all the same.
He had, as I say, his hand out, and I quickly put mine into it, somehow or other not losing Margarita's at the same time. As unconsciously as a child she reached out her other hand to him and we stood like boys and girls in a ring-game, Roger and I looking deep into each other's eyes and holding Margarita tightly.
"Is it all right, Jerry?" he asked me earnestly.
"It's all right if you say so, Roger," I answered promptly. All our friendship was packed into that question and answer, and I like to think that I never asked any explanations and that he never thought of giving any till they were more or less unnecessary, the matter being settled.
"You're not alone, I hope?" he said as we moved, one each side of Margarita, into the house. I dropped her hand abruptly. Up to that moment I had completely forgotten my sensible parson.
"Not unless he's given me up and rowed back to the town," I assured him contritely, "and I hope to heaven you know who he is, for I don't! He's a thoroughly good fellow, anyhow, and he knows us, and from what I've seen of him he strikes me as just about the man we want."
"Thank you for that 'we,' Jerry," said Roger soberly, putting his arm over my shoulder, and I realised suddenly and completely that I had taken the jump and cleared my last ditch: Roger's interest in to-day's event, for good or bad, was mine.
"I'll run and call him," I began, "and mind you mention his name directly, for it's a bit awkward for me all this while." Something struck me and I turned back.
"By the way," I tried to say easily, "do you want me to—to begin any explanations?"
He laughed shortly.
"Good old Jerry!" he said affectionately. "No, I'll manage that when I find out who he is. Hurry him along, for breakfast is ready."
I dashed off to the landing and hailed the boat, now plainly visible on the bright, clear moving sea. She flew in like a swallow, the oarsman coat off and dripping, and evidently royally content.
"Has Roger got a change for me?" he called as he reached the landing. "I won't keep him ten minutes longer, but I'd like to go over the side here, tremendously."
I, too, had begun to be conscious of a wrinkled, cinder-coated feeling, and Roger, who had followed me at a distance, turned at my shout and ran back to the cottage, returning with a white armful of linen and towels just as we had slipped into the blue, cold water. I shall never forget his expression of mingled relief, real pleasure and amusement as he recognised my companion's face, bobbing upon the surface.
"This is mighty good of you, Elder," he said simply, and reached down from the slippery stone to shake the dripping hand held out to him.
Then it came to me in a flash. Tip Elder, of course! He was supposed to have been christened Tyler, but was never known by any other name than Tippecanoe, for reasons clearer in those days than these, the old political war cry in connection with his boating fame having proved too temptingly obvious to the rest of his class crew. He was in Roger's class; I remembered how, even then, he had dragged Roger down to some boys' club of his to give a boxing lesson once to some of his protégés. He and Russell Dodge had a notable and historic quarrel once because Tip had refused to break an engagement in order to take one of Russell's many feminine incumbrances to a dance. Tip had steadily refused to accept the obligation, and had endured very patiently a vast amount of hectoring from Russell, who was then as now a trifle snobbish and unsteady; but had finally been forced (or so we regarded it, at that hot and touchy period) to accept what was practically a challenge, and we were actually on tiptoe for a duel. Feeling ran high about it, and there might have been a very disagreeable scandal had not Tip's clear common sense and persuasive oratory burst out at the last possible minute from this murky thunder-cloud and effectively swept the whole business out of the way.
But none of his prayer meetings, nor the trip to the Holy Land that he made in one long vacation ever deceived anyone who knew the fellow into thinking him a prig. He neverpretended that his ideals of practical conduct were a bit higher than those of scores of the men who had none of these interests of his. So marked was this absence of the goody-goody in Tip that I, though I recalled his face and vaguely connected him with something or other in the athletic line, never remembered these other characteristics of his until, at Roger's warm greeting, the years rolled back and Tip Elder, oarsman and philanthropist, took his proper place in my memory again.
We scrambled up the rough landing steps, rubbed down quickly and got into the fresh linen Roger had brought us, talking curt commonplaces, not even embarrassed, in the glow and vigour of that strengthening dip, and I noticed that the underwear, though of the best linen, was somehow a little unfamiliar in its fashion, indescribably antiquated in cut.
"We'll talk at breakfast," said Roger, as we hurried toward the cottage. "I know you're hungry."
He pushed open the door, and we entered, gazing curiously around us. We stood in a large, square room, evidently a dining and living-room, washed with a greyish plaster, at once warm and cool. There was a deep, wide hearth of faded red brick on one side, and an old oak dresser covered with a very good service of gold-rimmed white china and several pieces of handsome Sheffield plate. The few chairs and settees and the one large table in the centre were all of that solid yet graceful Georgian style that our ancestors brought with them; the bare clean floor and the home-made rugs, taken with this furniture, gave an effect more usual now in a summer cottage than it was then. On the walls were eight or ten water-colour sketches framed in rustic wood; a worn wickerchaise-longuewith patchwork cushions, struck a curiously exotic note; two spinning-wheels, a large and a small, flanked the fire and bore every evidence of use, not æstheticism; a silver bowl of unmistakable Queen Anne date, beautifully chased, filled with fiery nasturtiums, stoodin strange neighbourliness to a cheap American alarum clock; a lovely, tarnished oval mirror reflected a hideous floral calendar, the advertisement of some seedsman. The room turned in a small ell, and this, which was evidently the kitchen corner of it, could be completely hidden from the rest by a quaint screen, very broad and high, of home manufacture, the body of which was composed of several calfskins beautifully marked and adroitly fitted together. This last gave a touch of quaint antiquity, a hint of the bold and primitive that was deliciously satisfying. I thought it then and still think it a room in ten thousand. It had no other door nor any window opening on the beach, and this produced a softened dimness, a richness, so to speak, of lighting and gloom, a sinking into shadow of the hearth and spinning-wheels, a lightness of the dresser and the polished settle near it that struck the eye with the same contented shock one gets from a mellow Dutch interior—the same impression of previous acquaintance, of a once familiar, only half forgotten home.
I have since tried to analyse the charm of that room, its inevitable hold upon every one privileged to enter it (and I suppose few rooms in America have held a greater number of really select souls), and I have decided that its spell consisted in its deeply impersonal character; its utter lack of the characteristics, the idiosyncrasies, the imbecilities, even the fascinations of other, no matter how attractive dwelling places. It had the restful aloofness of a studio, with none of its professional limitations; the domesticity of a home, with none of its fatiguing clutter; the freedom of an inn, with none of its stale sense of over-use. And above and through all this ran the note of almost ascetic cleanliness, a purity fairly conventual. Like most men, I have a concealed passion for perfect cleanliness—concealed, because to the sex so ironically intrusted with the duty of domestic lustration cleanliness appears to mean frightful and devastating upheavals resulting in a nauseating odour of soap and furniturepolish. When you shall have learned, dear ladies, tokeepyour domains clean without so furiouslygettingthem clean, you will have earned, in our eyes, your somewhat dubious title of housekeepers. Meanwhile, continue, in heaven's name, to think us the contentedly dirty sex!
From the kitchen ell delicious odours proceeded, and as we sat down around the shining old table with its fine, much-darned linen, and its delicate china eked out where necessary by cheap, coarse, village crockery, a heavy-faced fellow with dull eyes under a shock of hair served us with what, upon mature consideration, I believe to have been the finest breakfast I have ever eaten. A great fresh fish, broiled with bacon, plenty of those delicious corn-meal muffins (I believe they are locally and truly known as "gems") mealy potatoes fried in bacon fat, and a sort of tart jam or marmalade made of wild plums to top off with, the whole washed down with strong coffee and rich cream, melted before our keen-edged appetites like dew before the hungry sun, and we hardly spoke as we filled ourselves.
Much combined to give a flavour to the meal: the long, worried night, the short, cool plunge, the excitement of our adventure, the mystery of this empty house (for neither Margarita nor any other hostess was present) and in my own case the wild, heady consciousness of that absurd, incredible thing that had just happened to me: the confused yet certain sense that it could never be quite the same with me as it had been before I met that extraordinary girl in the faded red jersey. It was too soon to think about it, I was still stupid from the shock of it, but my blood ran very sweetly through my veins, the delicious, strong air of the beach was in my nostrils and the food was fit for the hunger of the gods.
At last even we could eat no more, and Roger pulled out an old pipe that I had never seen before, pushed a jar of fragrant tobacco toward us, brought us pipes from the chimney-piece and crossed his legs definitely.
"I suppose, Tip," he said, "you're wondering why you're here, eh?"
"A little," said Tip comfortably, "but not too much. To tell you the truth, fellows, I haven't had such a thoroughly good time for—oh, for ten years, I should say! Somehow I feel as if everything but just this actual moment—this breakfast, this pipe, this queer old room—was a sort of dream and these were the only things that mattered."
"I know," Roger answered quietly, "that's the way one feels here. The place is bewitched, I think. Well, Tip, I want to get married, and I'd rather you'd be the one to do the business than any man I know."
"I rather suspected it," Tip said, "and I'll be mighty glad to do it for you, Roger. Who is she?"
There was quite a pause here, and Roger puffed slowly and thoughtfully at the old pipe and looked out of the open door toward the little bay. By and by he spoke, and the concise clearness of what he said was most characteristic of him.
"Of course I needn't go into all this at all," he began, "unless I wanted to. In fact, my original idea was to have a perfect stranger (as I somehow thought Jerry would bring) marry us without his being any the wiser. But the minute I saw you, Tip, I felt that I'd like you to know. But I'd rather you kept it to yourself."
He paused a moment, and Tip nodded gravely.
"Of course you have my word for that," he said.
"The woman I'm going to marry," Roger went on, in his quiet, practical voice, "was born and brought up on this little peninsula. She has never left it but once in her life. Her mother died when she was a baby, her father a few weeks ago, I should say. She does not know her father's name, nor, consequently, her own. It is evident from this house, the furnishings and the books, that he was a gentleman and an educated one. For as long as she can remember they were served and looked after in every way by a woman called Hester Prynne and this half-witted fellow called Caliban. Of course I have no idea what their real names were. The woman died very recently and the girl was left alone. There was a big chest fairly well filled with money under her father's bed, but not a line or word in it to give any clue. Either her father or mother must have been Italian, I should think, both from her name and her general type, but she knows no Italian whatever—only a simple childish sort of French. She is the only woman I should ever marry if I lived a hundred years, and I want you to do it to-day. Will you?"
I drew the long breath I had been holding during this speech and felt a great relief. It was all so simple, after all! I hoped Tip wouldn't spoil it, but I was afraid he would. He wasn't at all what one would call a man of the world: he had always felt a terrible responsibility for other people's actions, and this particular action was, to put it mildly, certainly rather unusual. But I had under-estimated both Tip's keenness and the effect of Roger's big, quiet personality. For Tip stared hard at his pipe a moment, then at Roger, then back at the pipe, and said:
"Surely I will, Roger. And be glad to." And there's Tip Elder for you!
We smoked awhile longer in silence. Finally Tip began again in a casual sort of way, as if, the main question havingbeen settled, this were a mere detail, but one that he might as well mention.
"How about the name, Roger?" he asked. "Won't that be a little awkward? At home, you know. I suppose you couldn't wait till you found it out?"
Roger threw his jaw forward a bit and pursed his mouth, a trick he had when he was bothered but couldn't see any way out of it.
"No, I couldn't," he said thoughtfully. "In the first place, to tell you the truth, I don't much believe there's any chance of finding it out except by pure accident. There's not a scrap of evidence about the place, and it is undoubtedly intentional. I've opened every book in her father's room and there are no collections of old litter in any closet—there's no attic—and not a letter or bill in the house. A doctor came here once or twice, but he never mentioned her father's name in her hearing, and this Hester told her he came from New York. Caliban did the marketing and paid cash for everything. The telegraph operator, who is the only one I've spoken with in the town, represents the attitude of everybody there, probably, and he thinks, evidently, that an eccentric recluse lives here, and that his housekeeper is pretty close-mouthed and 'unsociable,' as he put it. It's rather strange that they aren't more curious, but she must have known how to deal with them, for whatever interest anybody may have felt died out long ago. They know the man had a daughter and that she's grown now, but this fellow told me that he'd heard she went barefoot most of the time, and there was a half rumour that she was feeble-minded, and that was why they kept so close. He thinks I'm boarding here, apparently. I suppose that any curious boys or tramps that might have been tempted over here were frightened off by the dogs—there used to be a pair of them."
He paused to fill his pipe again and Tip nodded comprehendingly.
"I see," he said, "it's an extraordinary situation, isn't it?"
Another pause, and he added with his eyes carefully off Roger's face:
"This housekeeper, now—you don't think it's possible——"
"No, I don't," Roger interrupted shortly. "Both she and the father have told Margarita that she resembled her mother, and that her mother was very good and very beautiful, but that she was not named after her. She died when the child was born, and Hester was with them then. Besides, her father used to correct her for using expressions of Hester's and forbade her to hold her knife and fork as Hester did, and things of that sort. She never ate with them, either. Margarita says that Hester loved her father but was always afraid of him."
Caliban had the table cleared now, and Tip and I stared into our reflections in the beautiful, shining mahogany where our plates had been. I suppose the same thing was in both our minds. What a strange marriage for a Bradley! What an incongruous effect, in steady old Roger's life! When one considered all the Jacksons and Searses and Cabots he might have married—there was one particular red-cheeked, big-waisted Cabot girl that old Madam Bradley had long and openly favoured—one could but gasp at the present situation. A surnameless Miranda, whose only possessions were a chest of money, a few pieces of old mahogany and a brindled hound!
"I haven't seen the young lady yet, you know, Roger," Tip reminded him gently at last, and Roger, coming out of his abstraction with a quick smile, stepped to the foot of the stairs and called, "Margarita! Margarita!Viens, chérie!"
She came, hesitating from stair to stair as a child does, and I caught my breath when I saw her—as I have always done whenever she appeared in a new and different dress. For she had taken off the faded jersey and put on a longer, more womanly frock of some sort of clear blue print. It was faded, too, and much washed, evidently, but its dull,soft tone and simple, scant lines only threw out the more strongly her rich colouring and strong, supple figure. The body of it crossed on itself simply in front, like an old-time kerchief, leaving her throat bare to the little hollow at the base of it; around her waist was a belt of square silver plates heavily chased, linked together with delicate silver links. Her long braids were bound around her beautiful round head, and this fashion of hair-dressing, with its classic parting, brought out the purity of her features and the coin-like regularity of them. I saw at once that she was older than I had thought her on the beach: I had not given her twenty then.
Roger took her hand and led her into the room.
"This is Margarita," he said simply, but his face told all he did not say, and I thanked heaven that neither Elder nor I had been foolish enough to attempt what we should probably have called reasoning with him.
"Is this the man that will marry us?" she inquired gravely, taking his offered hand with a lovely, free gesture.
"Roger is going to give me the pleasure of making him so happy, yes," said Tip, very cordially, I thought, and with more grace than I had believed him capable of. But she did not even smile at him, and it was rather startling, because she had smiled at me, and I hadn't known her long enough to understand that she had absolutely none of the perfunctory motions of lips and eyes that we learn so soon and so unconsciously in this cynical old world. When Margarita didn't feel moved to smile, she didn't, that was all, just as she didn't pretend to look grave at the death of the only woman she had ever known in her life. She had never learned the game, you see.
"I should like it better if you did it," she said to me, and an idiotic joy filled every crease of my heart.
"He can't do it, dear," Roger said gently, "only Mr. Elder can," and the look of appeal he turned on Tip would have touched a harder heart than that dear fellow's.
"You see, old man," he murmured apologetically, "she says just exactly what she thinks, with no frills—she doesn't understand yet...."
And good old Tip smiled back at him and said he understood, if Margarita didn't, and perhaps she would be willing to make his acquaintance a little and walk out on the beach with him?
"I want to be your friend, too, Miss Margarita, as well as Roger's," he ended.
"I will walk with you if Jerry comes too," she said placidly, and so we all laughed—I somewhat unsteadily—and Tip and I took her for a walk.
And right here I must stop and mention a very interesting thing. Though she saw him often after that, for the intimacy renewed there after so many years never has waned since, and he has woven himself strangely and wholesomely into all our lives, Margarita never cared for Tip. For a long time I did not see why, and always attributed his extraordinary invulnerability to her charm to her lack of interest in him, but suddenly one day it came to me (in my bath, I remember; I squeezed a lot of soap into my eye till I thought I should go blind) and I realised all at once what a fool I had been. She did not care for him justbecausehe did not surrender to her. He was the only man but one that ever had anything to do with her, so far as I know, who was not, in one degree or another, in love with her. He admitted her beauty and charm, he admired her talent, he respected her frankness—but he never was the least little bit in love with her, and except for J—n S——t, who failed to make a great picture of her, for the same reason, I believe, he is the only man I know who ever had the opportunity, of whom that can be said.
And from the moment their eyes met, Margarita saw this (or felt it, rather, for she had not had sufficient practice in reading people at that time to be able to see it) and—he simply did not exist for her.
For I must admit it: it was her own particular fault, that. And I must hasten to add that I loved her the more for it. Shewasheartless in a situation of that sort. It would be folly to deny it. It was as much a part of her enchanting personality, and as little a defect in my indulgent eyes, as the three tiny moles under her chin (truegrains de beauté) or her utter refusal to affect an interest in people's affairs or to eat the insides of her rolls and bread-slices. All faults, doubtless—but who would have or love a faultless woman? Not I, at any rate, for I loved her and love her and shall love her till my heart is a handful of dust, and she was far from faultless, my Margarita.
And yet, characteristically enough, it was to Tip that she turned in what was without any doubt the great decision of her life, and Tip that influenced her to it. She knew whom to go to well enough, and she knew that he was the one person qualified to give her absolutely unprejudiced counsel. Oh, yes! she knew. Just as the beasts make for the root or herb or flower that will cure them, she went to him, with an instinct as true as theirs. And I, God forgive me, was a tiny bit jealous of him for that! Men are made of curious clay, my masters, and it's a mad world indeed.
After we came back from our walk, during which she and I talked, and Tip listened quietly, he moved toward Roger and I left Margarita fondling the dog and joined him.
"She is a lovely creature, Roger," he said thoughtfully. "I don't want for a moment to meddle, but on the chance that you haven't thought of it, may I suggest one thing?"
"Fire ahead," said Roger. He had changed his clothes, and appeared in his accustomed business suit; its neat creases and quiet colour made him again the responsible, unromantic lawyer I had known, and took away the last vestige of dramatic oddity from the situation. It all seemed natural and sober enough.
"Had you thought of taking her to your mother and marrying her there, Roger?" Tip went on quietly. "Supposingshe were to adopt her, even—you could arrange all that easily—then there would be no awkwardness. As it is, it might be made a little uncomfortable ... it isn't as if you were a nobody, you know, old man, and you don't know her name, you see, and ..."
I will own that this struck me as an extremely practical plan for a moment, and I looked hopefully at Roger. But he shook his head.
"I see what you mean, Tip," said he, "but it's impossible. I wish it weren't. I thought of it, of course. But there are reasons why it won't do. I won't attempt to deny that this will be a blow to my mother. I know her too well to consider for a moment the possibility of her helping me in this way. She—she is very proud and—and she has her own ideas.... My cousin, too—Oh, Lord!" he concluded suddenly, "Jerry'll tell you it wouldn't work."
Of course it wouldn't. In one flash I saw that dark, determined house on the Back Bay, Madam Bradley's cold, bloodless face and Sarah's malicious eyes probing, probing Margarita's crystal unconsciousness. It seemed to me suddenly that Roger's mother might not, and that Sarah certainly would not, forgive this business. I saw his mother in a series of retrospective flashes, as I had been seeing her for twenty-five years: each time a little more impersonal, a little more withdrawn, a little less tolerant. I remembered the quiet, bitter quarrel with the president of the university to which he would naturally have gone, and its result of sending him to Yale, the first of his name to desert Harvard, to the amazement and horror of his kinsfolk. I remembered the cold resentment that followed his decision to go to work in New York, based very sensibly, I thought, on the impossibility of submission to his uncle's great firm—the head of the family—and the inadvisability of working in Boston under his disfavour. I remembered the banishment of his younger sister on her displeasing marriage (the old lady actually read her out of the family with bell and book) and the poorwoman's subsequent social death and bitter decline of health and spirit. I remembered the sad death of his second sister, and the stony philosophy of her impenetrable mother. I remembered the eldest daughter, a brilliant beauty, whose career might have brushed the skirts of actual royalty, and whose mysterious renouncement of every triumph and joy possible to woman (one would suppose) and sudden conversion and retirement to a Roman Catholic order convulsed Boston for a long nine days and broke Madam Bradley's heart so that she never smiled again—and never, it was whispered, forgave the God who had allowed such a shipwreck. That she loved Roger, I must believe; that she was proud of him and looked upon him with a sort of stern, fanatical loyalty as the head of her family, I knew. But I could not see her adopting, or even tolerating, Margarita with the unknown name. No, it wouldn't do. And I told Tip so very decidedly.
"But if you wanted to take her to my mother, Roger," I ventured, seeing, in fancy, the dear woman cooing over Roger's mysterious, romantic beauty (she adored him and would, moreover, have adopted a chambermaid if I had begged her to), "it could be arranged, I know...."
"Thank you, Jerry," he interrupted shortly, "but it must be now. I can't have anything happen. Any slip——" I saw his hands clench, and I knew why. Whether Tip knew, I couldn't tell; he never indicated it, then or ever after, good fellow. But he wasn't a fool. "Mêlez-vous de c'qui vous regarde!" as we used to say at Vevay, and Tip minded his business well.
"That's all right," he said quickly, "I only thought I'd mention it. How about the license in this state?"
They talked a little in low tones, and I looked at Margarita and thought of the odd chances of life, and how we are hurried past this and that and stranded on the other, and skim the rapids sometimes, to be wrecked later in clear shallows, perhaps.
"If you are ready, then?" said Tip, and we all moved across the beach and found ourselves standing on a great, smooth rock that would be cut off in a full high tide, with Caliban, clean and quiet and pathetically attentive, behind us, and with him a curiously familiar stranger, very neatly dressed, with tired eyes. As we grouped ourselves there and Tip pulled a tiny book from his pocket I recollected this stranger's face—it was the telegraph operator! Roger, who forgot nothing, had brought him over for the other witness.
"Dearly beloved," said Tip in a clear, deep voice, and I woke with a start and realised that old Roger was being married. Margarita, in her graceful, faded blue gown, gazed curiously at him, one hand in Roger's; the noon sun streamed down on us from a cloudless, turquoise sky; the little waves ran up the points of rocks, broke, and fell away musically.
To appreciate those quaint sentences of the marriage service, you must hear them out under the heavens, alone, with no bridesmaids, no voice that breathed o'er Eden, no flowers but the great handful of flaming nasturtiums Roger had put in her hands (no maiden lilies grew on that rock!) and a quiet man dressed just as other men are dressed, with only the consciousness of his calling to separate him from the rest of us. They held their own, those quaint old phrases, I assure you! But it was then I learned to respect them.
Nevertheless, Rogerhadforgotten something.
"Where's the ring?" the telegraph operator motioned to me with his lips. His tired eyes expressed a mild interest. I saw Roger's lips purse; for a moment his eyes left Margarita's face and I knew that he had just remembered it. I looked down vaguely, and my eyes fell upon the worn, thin band on my little finger—my mother's mother's wedding-ring. In one of those lightning flashes of memory I saw myself, a lad again, starting for college, and my mother putting it on my finger.
"She was the best woman, I believe, that ever lived, Jerry—I took it when she died. I want you to wear it, and perhaps you will think—oh, my darling! I know it is hard to be a good man, but will you try?"
My dear, dear mother! I think I tried—I hope so.
I slipped it from my finger—I had taken it off sometimes, but never for so good a reason—and pressed it into Roger's hand. He accepted it as unconsciously as if it had come from heaven—and it was my ring that married Margarita.