The portières between the dining room and the living room at Beachcrest are carefully drawn. The whole company is assembled, waiting. It is one o'clock, the vitriolic Dutch timepiece on the mantel having just snapped out the hungry truth.
The clock, with its quenchless petulance and spite, is lord of the mantel. And what an entourage of vessels! Close up against it huddles a bottle of peroxide. Then, although disposed in some semblance of neatness and order, one discovers a fish stringer, an old pipe, several empty cigar boxes, heaps of old letters, a book opened and turned down, a number of rumpled handkerchiefs, some camera films, a bottle of red ink. There are two odd candlesticks, without any candles, a metal dish containing a vast miscellany of pins, collar buttons, rubber bands, and who knows what? Lo, on the other side of the clock loiter a curious pebble, a laundry list, a box of candy, some loose change and a little paper money, a pocket flash which no longer works, matches in a broken crockery receiver, perfumes, sandpaper, a writing tablet and some yellowing envelopes. And one glimpses, emerging from chaos, the frayed handle of a whisk broom which has seenimmeasurably better days. Some woven grass baskets, too. Anything else? Yes, yonder is a box of tacks, and beside it a little pile of the Rev. Needham's socks, nicely darned. Also, strewn here and there, are various rail and steamship timetables, most of which bear the dates of seasons long gone by. An immortal miscellany! Oh, and one must not miss that curious creature squatting in a dim corner and peering ever alertly around with his little beady eyes: yes, a sad and much dilapidated Teddy Bear.
One o'clock!
There is a tendency on the part of every pair of eyes—even those of the Rev. Needham, or perhaps especially those—to direct from time to time a wholly unconscious glance of hope mingled with mild anxiety toward the tantalizing green portières, beyond which Eliza moves about with maddening deliberateness.
One o'clock, snapping like a dry forest twig under the tread of some wild creature. Then an angrytick-tock,tick-tock. On and on and on, forever.
Out in the kitchen Eliza was prodding the kettle of soup. She was dreamily thinking of the porter at the hotel in Beulah. Would he get over this evening? Oh, love is so wonderful! Eliza was quite gauche and unlettered; yet love, for her, was a thing which could rouse brilliant orgies of the imagination. Love, even for her, was something which transcended all the ineffable promised glories of Heaven itself. Yes, it was better than the streets of pearl and thegates of amethyst—or was it the gates of pearl and the streets of gold?
When the soup was ready she served it, then thrust asunder the portières. "Lunch is served, ma'am," she announced, with a degree of majesty which would simply have terrorized the Beulah porter.
They responded promptly—not exactly crowding ahead of each other, but stepping along with irreproachable briskness. Appetites beside the sea are like munition factories in wartime.
There was a cheerful rattle of chairs and much scraping of feet under the table. Then a solemn silence, while the minister prayed. The Rev. Needham, of course, sat at the head of the table. Mrs. Needham sat opposite him at the foot. To the minister's right was Miss Whitcom, who found herself delightfully sandwiched in between a knight of the church and a knight of the grip. Needless to say, the latter was Mr. O'Donnell, looking his very nicest and smelling of soap like the Brushwood Boy. Next came Hilda, who flashed quite dazzling smiles across at her sister, smiles more subdued and shy at Mr. Barry. There was a flurry of conversation at first, while the paper napkins were being opened up and disposed where they would afford the most protection—not a great deal, it is to be feared, at best. And then—well, then there was almost no talk at all until after the soup. As they say in theatre programs: "The curtain will be lowered one minute to denote a lapse of time."
Miss Whitcom and Mr. O'Donnell had employed quite as little formality in their meeting as the latter had prophesied during the trip up to Beulah. She hadn't, as a matter of fact, referred to the wall paper in the throne room of the Queen's palace. Instead she had remarked: "You know, it's curious. I was just dropping you a note. Yes. I wanted, for one thing, to express my regret over the unlikelihood of our seeing each other this trip, since you see I'm going right back. Jolly you should have happened along like this—and a postage stamp saved into the bargain!" While he, swallowing his disappointment over the prospect of her immediate return to Tahulamaji, had replied in like spirit: "How fortunate—about the stamp, I mean. Ithasbeen a long while, hasn't it?"
And now they were sitting side by side at the table, rather monopolizing the conversation—having a beautiful time, yet never quite descending from that characteristic, mutually assumed tone of banter.
"I suppose you're still travelling, Mr. O'Donnell?"
"Still travelling, Miss Whitcom."
"Same firm?"
"Same firm."
It had been the same firm almost as far back as memory went. It always would be the same firm. There was little of change and perhaps nothing at all of adventure in this destiny. But there was a rather substantial balance in the bank, which, after all, is a kind of adventure, too.
"Babbit & Babbit," she mused.
"Members of the O. A. of C."
"True. I'm afraid I'd forgotten the letters at the end."
He nibbled at his celery. "And you, Miss Whitcom?"
"Still mostly travelling, Mr. O'Donnell."
"Same firm?"
"Oh, dear no! There the interesting parallel must cease. One has to be progressive, you know. One must keep abreast of the times." She gave her brother-in-law a dreadful, broad wink. "What was I doing last?"
O'Donnell grinned. "I believe—wasn't it piloting tourists through Europe?"
"Do you mean to tell me it's been as long as that since I've seen you?"
"As I recollect it—something of the sort."
"Yes, yes. So it was. But that was before the war. You knew, of course, that I'd gone to Tahulamaji."
"You answered several of my letters," he reminded her sweetly.
"Ah, of course I did. And you should have felt highly flattered, for I may say I made no point of keeping up any sort of correspondence at all down there."
"I should say not!" put in Mrs. Needham, laughing.
"Oh, yes. I was flattered—flattered even if theywere only postcards. But I haven't yet got it straight what you were doing in Tahulamaji. Was it the same sort of thing there?"
"What! Piloting tourists?" She had a hearty laugh. Her brother-in-law started a little. One of Marjory's hearty laughs was always like an unexpected slap on the back.
"You mean there aren't any sights to show?" asked O'Donnell meekly. "I don't even know where Tahulamaji is, and I haven't the faintest idea what it's like."
"Oh," she laughed, "there are plenty of sights. It's ever so much better than Europe!"
"Then whynotpilot?"
"There aren't any tourists."
"Not any at all?"
"None, at least, who require piloting. You see, we haven't been sufficiently exploited yet. For some reason we've escaped so far, though I expect any day to hear that we've been discovered. Those who come are bent on plain, stern business. Most of them get away again the next day. Those who don't get off the next day, or at most the day after that, you may depend upon it have come to stay—like me."
"So you are quite determined to go back again."
"Quite. Why not?"
They gazed quietly at each other a moment, while the minister began dispensing dried-beef-in-cream-on-toast—a special Beachcrest dish; French-fried potatoes. Mrs. Needham watched with quaking heartuntil it was patent there would be enough to go round. Then she began pouring the tea.
There was always, at any rate, plenty of tea. But Miss Whitcom nearly occasioned a panic by asking for lemon. The rest took cream, if for no better reason than that it was right there on the table. The demand had been, like everything Miss Whitcom did, unpremeditated, and was immediately withdrawn. She tossed her head and laughed. Wasn't it absurd to ask for lemon in the wilderness? But Anna Needham rose to the occasion. It was a crisis.
She tinkled the bell in a breathless yet resolute way; she so wanted to impress her sister as being a competent housekeeper. It amounted almost to a passion. Perhaps living so long with Alfred had rather tended to weaken belief in her own abilities.
Eliza was gone a good while. But she triumphantly returned with the lemon. Mr. O'Donnell looked at Miss Whitcom's tea a little wistfully. He had already taken cream. Possibly he preferred lemon too. But it requires real genius to ask for what one doesn't see before one in this law-of-least-resistance world.
This slight tension removed, the Rev. Needham resumed a quiet conversation with Barry about the affairs in the West. Everything, it seemed, was going finely. It began to look as though they might all grow positively rich off the desert! And it was owing to Barry—entirely to him. Well, Barry was a fine young man—socompletelysatisfactory. If theNeedhams had had a son, Alfred would have wished him to be like Barry. Sure, patient, untiring, generous—generous to a fault, yet with such solid faculties for business! And now, here he was, about to step right into the family. It was too good to be true. Yes, much too good. The Rev. Needham swelled with pride and beamed with affection. He beamed on Barry, and never noted how his daughter sat there beside this paragon, eating little, talking almost not at all....
Hilda was another member of the party who talked little. Her deportment, however, was quite different. Her cheeks were highly coloured, and her eyes sparkled. Aunt Marjie, who seemed somehow never too engrossed in anything to give good heed to everything else, looked curiously from Hilda to Louise, to Barry, from Barry on to her brother-in-law. Then she looked at Hilda again, recalling Leslie, and smiled. She looked at Louise again, also, then at Barry, and her expression grew more serious. She looked at Louise a third time, still with Leslie in the back of her mind, and thought of the forgotten stove burners....
Why was it, she asked herself, that men had to make such baffling differences in women's lives?
After luncheon the company broke up. The Rev. Needham announced, just a little stiffly (for he felt the upsetting gaze of his sister-in-law) that it was customary at Beachcrest to spend a quiet hour, at this point of the day's span, napping. He wanted to create an easy home atmosphere, and the most effective way seemed to be to impress outsiders with the fact that everything was really running along just as though none but the immediate family was present.
Miss Whitcom yawned at once. "Good gracious!" she exclaimed. "I'mhorriblysleepy. Never would have dreamed what was the matter with me, Alfred, if you hadn't come to the rescue. Iamgrateful!"
And then—and then the Rev. Needham did a tremendous, a revolutionary, a gigantic and unforgettable thing. He simply overwhelmed himself and everybody else by making an almost low bow!
Mrs. Needham uttered a tiny gasp—she really couldn't help it. What had gotten into Alfred? Then she laughed, a little too shrilly, as by way of heralding to all the Point the glorious, glad tidings that there was, at last, a genuine, wholesome, jolly home atmosphere established.
Yes, the bow was inspired. There was no other way of looking at it. The bow was an inspired bow.
And what had come over the Rev. Needham was this: He had suddenly, in a sort of buoyant flare, determined that Marjory's manner would have to be played up to! It was simply ridiculous—scandalous—to allow himself to be disturbed and even secretly harassed by his wife's own sister. Yes, it was little short of a scandal! And now, rather tardily, it may be admitted, the Rev. Needham had attained salvation. It was simply to make a low bow. How clever—and how exquisitely subtle! He laughed aloud with the rest. His feet were squarely on the ground, after all. Of course they were. And splendidly, magnificently he defied the prickly feeling to come again into his heels!
The Rev. Needham was, in truth, privately so captivated with this curious and unforeseen twist in his fortunes that he forgot all about his own customary fatigue: forgot that this was the hour of quiet at Beachcrest—rendered so by immemorial precedent. He swaggered a little, without, of course, quite losing the ministerial poise; and spoke up, as his wife afterward phrased it, "real brisk and hearty." Cigars were passed to Barry and O'Donnell. The Rev. Needham bit into one himself. It is altogether possible he might, under the influence of this new heroic emotion, have distributed cigarettes, had there been anything so devilish on the premises.
As the box went blithely back on to the mantel, MissWhitcom, who was greatly enjoying what she perfectly fathomed, perceived an irresistible obligation to suggest that he had gone only half way around. The Rev. Needham looked perhaps just a shade startled. Could he bow again? And if not, how else was her manner to be played up to? Had he already struck a snag? Obviously it would be going a little too far to take her at her word and offer her a cigar.
"One wants to be sociable, you know," she said, her eyes sparkling.
"I know of a lady poet in the East who smokes cigars," volunteered O'Donnell.
He spoke quite easily, as though for Miss Whitcom's special benefit, and to convey the impression that he had quite grown accustomed or reconciled to such dainty feminine indulgence. Indeed, he looked at her with shy sprightliness.
"Oh, yes," she replied, "and, if you remember, a lady novelist started the custom."
He didn't remember, but he chuckled. And she went on: "As a matter of fact, and just amongst ourselves, why shouldn't women smoke if they want to? And why shouldn't theywantto? Isn't it perfectly natural they should? I'm not, strictly speaking, championing the habit, for it's expensive and rather silly. But if half the human race wants to turn itself into portable smoke stacks, then by all means let the other half follow suit. So you see, Alfred, you'd really better let me have one. For you hear for yourself, Mr. O'Donnell knows of a poet whosmokes. Of course," she admitted, "I'm not a poet."
But O'Donnell was certainly in a romantic mood today. He wouldn't let her admission stand. "Yes, you are," he began, with an odd impulsiveness, adding in a quieter though quite as fervent tone: "—a kind of poet...."
They eyed each other steadily a moment, as they had done once or twice before, that day. It was surely another O'Donnell than the O'Donnell of long ago—the O'Donnell, for instance, who had eased up at the finish and let her win the race. Was she, also, in a way, another Marjory? A Marjory, after all, rather less insistent upon, or who had grown just a tiny bit weary of, doing things simply to be independent—simply for the joy of doing them gloriously and daringly alone?
When the gentlemen had repaired to the porch to smoke and to discuss, as is the custom at such times, matters too deep to be grasped by the feminine intellect, Miss Whitcom succeeded in confronting Louise.
"Now," she said, with a warm, inviting firmness which brought a flash of tears to the girl's eyes.
She laid an arm around Louise's shoulders, and they stood thus together a few moments in the middle of the cottage living room. Could the Rev. Needham have looked in upon this affecting picture, and could those small eager ears of his have partaken ofthe subsequent talk which passed between them, the cigar of confidence and authority would have dropped from his fingers, its brave spark dimmed forever. Yes, he would have forgotten completely the brilliant bow which had seemed to smooth away all of life's snarls by giving him, marvellously, in an instant, a positive, almost Nietzschean philosophy. But for the present he was safe.
"How could things have gone so far without your realizing?"
"I don't know."
"But you must know how you feel toward him!" Louise shook her head miserably. "I thought I cared.... Perhaps I still do."
"But aren't you sure?"
"I—I don't believe I know. I don't seem sure of anything."
"But, my dear child—"
"IthoughtI was sure."
"And all those letters—"
"Yes, yes," cried Louise tensely. "You see it was all letters, Aunt Marjie. And when I came suddenly to see him again...."
"Oh, come, child, we don't fall in love with men's hats and the twist of their profiles. You must still love whatever it was you loved all those long months you were apart. Isn't it reasonable?"
"I—I...." Oh, what was the use of asking her to be reasonable? What has a heart full of ghosts to do with reason? And Leslie....
She felt like crying. She began looking upon herself as almost a person who has been somehow wronged. Her emotion grew thicker. She drew shyly away.
Aunt Marjie, as she let her go from her, realizing that words just now would get them nowhere, was thinking that in the midst of a universe full of souls and wheeling planets, one poor heartache was like a grain of dust. Well, perhaps shewasa kind of poet. But in a moment the impersonal millions, both of souls and of stars, vanished away, and this girl's problem ascended to a position of tremendous importance, if not quite of majesty.
At length, after he had smoked his cigar, the Rev. Needham did retire to the couch of his wonted siesta, leaving the household, as he thought, pleasantly and profitably disposed.
Of course, the fact that the host proposed to take a nap did not mean that all the others had to follow suit. It was just part of the device for making every one feel that nothing was being upset because of "company." It did not mean that O'Donnell, for instance, would have to subject himself to the rather embarrassing alternative of curling up on the short living room sofa. Miss Whitcom and Mr. O'Donnell happily repaired to the rustic bower. Hilda skipped off singing into the woods. Mrs. Needham—well, Mrs. Needham was still in the kitchen with Eliza. The latter was stolidly eating her luncheonof left-overs on the very table to which Louise and Leslie had sat down at dawn. Mrs. Needham stood solemnly before Eliza as she ate, her hands on her hips, her face growing flushed again, talking endlessly—about dinner. Louise and Lynndal Barry were on the porch. Lovers were so brazen, nowadays, they didn't mind at all if the partitions between their embraces and the outside world were mere mosquito gauze. The Rev. Needham, slyly recognizing this great truth, chuckled over it, in his new mood of sublime assurance, all the way upstairs. Each step cracked, and all the way up he was telling himself contentedly: "A fine young man—one of God's own noblemen!" And as gentle slumber wafted his soul into a peace which, especially on a full stomach, so often passeth understanding, he whispered dreamily: "Coming right into the family...."
Thank God the Western interests were forever safeguarded!
But meanwhile, out on the porch, the situation grew from moment to moment more poignant.
Louise seemed suddenly to be sparring for time. She had decided—as well as her giddy little brain was capable, just now, of deciding anything at all—that the whole crux of the matter was her disappointment over the way Lynndal had turned out.... But what Aunt Marjie had said about not loving his hat and the twist of his profile anyhow had ratherupset her again. Once she almost flung herself into his arms with a great, comfortable, forgiving, beseeching, surrendering cry. What a haven his arms might seem! But something in her heart, she imagined, warned her: "You cannot yet! Dare you? Remember—it would be irrevocable!"
Time, time! There was obviously an issue to be faced. But with all the vital eloquence of desperation Louise reasoned that bitterness deferred might somehow lose a degree of its sting. Feeble logic, and logic not very profound; but she was scarcely in a frame of mind to evolve, at the present moment, any logic more substantial. Her problem was delicate, tenuous, like the sheen on the wings of a butterfly. Her tragedy was a thing of shades and of shadows—a thing wellnigh ungraspable. But it was none the less real. Oh, it was very real to her! In an orgy of the mañana spirit she abandoned herself to eventualities as they should develop. Her fate—whatever it was going to prove—would rush on and overtake her; she would not go out to meet it half way. Dared not.
"I'm afraid you'll think me not very cordial," she said desperately, "but I have a headache, Lynndal, and I'm going to ask if you'd mind if I went up to my room for a little while...."
"Oh," he cried, in real and honest distress, "I'm so sorry! Why didn't you tell me before? Perhaps the smoke has been annoying you?"
"Oh, it's nothing," she answered, smiling in thewan way common to invalids for whom the end is in sight. "These headaches come on, quite suddenly sometimes. If I lie down for an hour, it will be gone, I think."
"I'm sorry, dear," he repeated, touching her elbow as she turned to leave him. The contact emboldened him and he slipped an arm round her waist and bent over her a little as he walked with her toward the door. "You shouldn't have tried to meet me this morning, dear. It was too much."
"I wanted to," she murmured huskily.
"Will you come out again later?" he pleaded, content, under the circumstances, that she should leave him now.
Louise nodded and passed into the cottage.
"Couldn't we take a little walk on the beach later, if your head is better? Later on, when the sun isn't quite so hot?"
She turned and murmured: "Yes." There was another impulse to throw herself into his arms; she longed to go to him and cry against his heart. But at the same moment she remembered Leslie—how close he had held her in the morning, how they had kissed.... The impulse was stifled.
When she was gone from him, Barry sat down again on the porch to finish his cigar. It was the cigar which the Rev. Needham had given him after luncheon. It was a good cigar, for the Rev. Needham knew what was what, despite his intense holiness.
Barry was one of those rare individuals who have never really loved before. Curiously, the insatiable god Eros had passed him largely by till now. But ah—the tardy fevers! They may be more virulent than those of timelier visitation.... His eye swept the curve of the white beach, ablaze with the mid-day sun. Later they would be strolling there together, he and she. He would be walking out there beside this dear girl whose love had thrilled to the dull roots of his bachelordom. And then he would tell her how he adored her; would open the little box and slip the ring on her finger....
It was so wonderful, after dwelling in the desert all his life!
She really did have a very little headache; though this was the least of her troubles.
There sounded a whistle outside. In the midst of her wretchedness, Louise lifted her head and listened. Low and sustained, it had saluted her ear when dawn's pink flush was in the sky; but now it seemed far more eager; it seemed to glint through the sunshine.
Springing to her window, Louise crouched there. The historical novel lay on the sill, where she had left it. Her fingers closed tensely about it, although she did not at first realize what it was she was clutching. Leslie was outside. She could see him coming on through the forest, and caught her breath in a little hysterical gasp of joy. Leslie! She couldn't let him go! She loved him! She had never, she felt, loved anybody as she loved Leslie. Oh, the injustice of it! That he must be denied her, though it was he she loved the best! But theremustbe a way. Somehow, somehow she must contrive.... She must contrive, whatever it might cost, to keep him.... But she faltered. Wasn't it too late?
His hands were in his pockets; his face was richly animated; his eyes were full of light. Leslie wasalmost handsome—ah, strangely more beautiful now than when she had wanted to be his friend. His brightness dazzled her; and she looked out at him through her perplexed tears.
He had held her for a moment in his arms as they stood, so deeply enthralled, on that dappled forest road. Would he ever hold her in his arms again?
"Leslie!" she murmured.
He halted, looking quickly about.
"I'm here," she continued, in the same unhappy tone, "—up here!" They were the very words Lynndal had used when he stood above her on the deck of the steamer.
And it was plain, too painfully plain, Leslie had not been searching her window. At first he appeared a little embarrassed. An indefinite numbness closed about her heart. It seemed, all at once, as though retrospect embodied no mutual past for these two. Intimate strangers! For all at once Leslie seemed as essentially unknown and aloof from her destiny as Lynndal had seemed during that first curious, bewildering moment when his steamer was coming in. Leslie—merely a lad passing by outside, under her window. And she blushed at the thought of having dared to speak to him....
"Do you know where Hilda is?" he enquired, trying to throw a great deal of carelessness into both tone and posture.
Louise miserably shook her head.
"I was to meet her," Leslie explained simply. And, smiling, he turned with abruptness and began strolling off. He could be cool enough when it pleased him.
"Leslie!" she cried out, though discreetly. For she dared not let Lynndal hear her. In volume her voice by no means matched its almost terrible intensity.
The tone arrested him. "What?" And he stopped and looked bluntly back at the window.
"Wait, Leslie, I think I know where Hilda is."
"Where?"
"Wait just a minute. I'm coming down. Will you come around to the back door?"
He nodded, too indifferent to voice the curiosity he might normally be expected to feel over her desire to emerge from the back rather than from the front door of the cottage.
As she flew, a sudden determination swayed her. Both men, she argued, were strangers again.She must win Leslie back!
When she stole out to him a moment later, he was loitering casually in the vicinity of a little shed where driftwood was kept. The Rev. Needham always made a point of talking about the rare quality of surf-wood blazes. The Rev. Needham had constructed this shed also with his own hands, just as he had constructed the remarkable rustic bench; only the shed had taken another summer, of course. This shed was really a Beachcrest institution; so waslikewise the perennial lugging up of driftwood for storage therein recognized to be an almost religious adjunct of Point life. There was an informal rule—of ancient standing, playfully enough conceived, and of course playfully laid down—that no one should come in from the beach without at least one piece of driftwood. Much preferably, of course, a respectable, staggering armful. The rulewaswholly playful; and yet, should several days pass with no contribution at all to the shed, Mrs. Needham and the girls would be troubled, and perhaps even a trifle frightened, to behold the minister himself tottering in with a colossal load. He would cast reproachful glances their way. And it would sometimes be a long while before he regained any sort of serenity. Yet it was a favourite maxim with the Rev. Needham that they came up here to the cottage for sheer relaxation and amusement.
Leslie had selected from the shed a smooth splinter, once part of a ship's spar. He had taken out his knife and was busy whittling. And he kept at this self-imposed task quite doggedly, seeming to find in it a certain sanctuary. His eyes scrupulously followed the slashings of the blade. Thus they avoided hers—for the most part without too deliberately seeming to do so. Louise was herself dimly grateful for the distraction.
"What do you think I found in Frankfort this morning?" she demanded, trying to smile with something of the old bewitchment. The historical novelwas clasped behind her. She had certainly not meant to show it to him; yet here it was.
"I giveup," he replied, accentuating the final word with a particularly telling stroke on the spar splinter.
Then she drew the book slowly round into sight and half extended it, as though it were an offering that might effect a return, somehow, to that golden relationship which Lynndal's coming had broken off.
"A book?" He went on whittling.
"You haven't even read the title!" she cried, half pleadingly.
"Something new?"
"Why, Les...."
Glancing back at the book, he merely muttered: "Oh."
"You remember you were telling me about it. I happened to see it in a window." She spoke a little hysterically, and began wishing she had not come down. "Only think—in a town like Frankfort, of all places! I was so surprised that I walked right in and bought it! I—I expect to enjoy it very much," she ended miserably.
Leslie whittled, still stubbornly taciturn. If he would ask about Lynndal—if he would only showsomekind of emotion: anything would be better than this awful silence. Finally, since he thus forced her hand, Louise reminded him that she had previously intimated a knowledge of her sister's whereabouts.
"Doyou know where she is?" he looked at her with a furtive flash of interest.
"I think she's gone to the tree-house."
"Alone?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Long ago?"
"No, not so very long."
Leslie began humming, and shifted restlessly.
"I think you'd find her there, Les, if you wanted to find her. But if...." She left it dumbly in the air.
Still the boy hummed, his eyes never leaving the spar.
"Are you two going for a hike, or something?"
He stirred and looked up quickly at a little red squirrel chattering on a bough above them. "We're going to cut sticks for the roast tonight."
"Is there to be a roast?"
"The mid-summer Assembly Roast," he explained, a little pointedly. There seemed no reason for one's forgetting so important an event as the Assembly Roast.
"Oh, yes," she replied. "I'd forgotten all about it, for the moment. Will it be over beyond the lighthouse?"
"Yes, clear around the Point."
"Sticks, you mean, for marshmallows?" How obvious it all sounded!
"Marshmallows and wienies," he told her."There will have to be at least three dozen sticks, so I guess I'd better...."
The little squirrel chattered brazenly on above them. A locust was shrilling somewhere across the dazzling sand. She told herself she had given him every chance.
"You mustn't let me keep you, Les."
"Oh, that's all right."
She had given him every chance. He did not care, after all. She had been deceived in him. Oh, the injustice of it all!
"I must go find Mr. Barry," she said. "He'll wonder what's become of me!" And she forced a brief little laugh. "It will be lots of fun. I'd forgotten all about the mid-summer roast! I'll—we'll see you there...."
"Yes," he answered.
Their eyes suddenly met. She flushed, and her throat ached. He turned slowly away.
"Good-bye, Les."
"Good-bye," he answered.
Louise reëntered the cottage by the back door. Eliza was singing over her work at the sink. And Leslie, smiling in a kind of baffling way, strolled off, still whittling the broken spar.
And Eros skipped beside him. Eros knew well enough where the tree-house was. He didn't have to be shown, for as a matter of fact he had helped construct it, up in the crotch of a giant oak: had subsequently climbed nimbly to the tiny empire of itsseclusion in the interest of many a summer twain. Yes, Eros knew the way quite well. However, for the sheer sake of companionship, he chose to skip along by the side of a lad who was whittling a broken spar and smiling in a kind of baffling way.
"The Queen of Tahulamaji," admitted Miss Whitcom, "was really a most amazing creature."
"I should think it likely."
They were sitting together on the rustic bench. At first he had been on the rustic bench alone. She had flung herself in the hammock. But the interest of their talk had brought her first to a sitting posture, then to a standing posture, and finally to a rustic bench posture.
"Ah, but you mustn't think just because she was amazing that she wasn't also perfectly human—sometimes almost desperately so, O'Donnell!"
"Yes, I suppose so. I can somehow picture her—especially the desperate times."
"Well, of course she did have her eccentricities. For instance, her temper. To the last it remained most alarmingly and deliciously undependable."
"To the last?"
"Ah, yes—poor Tessie!"
"Tessie?"
"I always called her that. It wasn't strictly Tahulamajian, but she adored the name."
"So the Queen is dead?"
"Yes, Queen Tess died early in the spring. She was terribly old, but game right up to the last minute. You never saw such gameness. The funeral was immensely impressive."
"Whole populace turned out, of course?"
"Rather. Ostracism threatened against any who stayed away without a valid excuse! And they carried her along, all dressed up in her robes of state, and even with a crown on. Poor, dear Tessie! How often she used to say to me in private, when the mats were all snug over the doors: 'You know there are times,' she'd say, 'when I have my doubts about all this sovereign divinity business. It's down in the state books that I'm one of the direct line, descended from Mentise-huhu and the gods of the Sea Foam. But there are times when I have my doubts,' she used to say. 'There are times when I seem to be just Tessie, and between you and me, I'm coming to suspect that there never were any gods of the Sea Foam at all!'"
O'Donnell smiled at her look of momentary abstraction. What a life Marjory's had been—what a life! Here he found her, at last, in the heart of a religious colony. But at one time she had sold bonds in Wall Street; she had been an agent for a Pacific steamship line; she had been a political organizer in the North-west; and she had once served as associate editor of a newspaper. Yes, she had always struck O'Donnell—himself so simple and homely of nature—as most violently revolutionary.He remembered how, in the early days, she used to march in suffrage parades. She had taken up Socialism and dropped it; had smoked; and he distinctly recalled her having used, in her time, quite sporty language. Once she had had something to do with the races, and had worn a derby. And yet....
"Well," he mused, "after all it's the same Marjory."
"You think so?" She was amused.
"Yes, the same old Marjory. I wonder if there ever was a time when you weren't 'advanced.'"
"You callmeadvanced? My dear fellow, I must refer you—"
"I know, I know," he protested. "You forget I've come to know them all. Perhaps," he added slyly, "I'm growing just a little advanced myself!"
"You?"
"Can you imagine?"
"Oh, well—"
"In my old age—fancy that!"
"True, I'd forgotten the poet."
"Well," he admitted, "one lives and learns."
"We all do that, you know."
"Oh, yes."
"Well, but do you mean we've nothing left to quarrel about? Has it really come tosucha pass?"
"I do." He spoke almost solemnly. It was a little like the "I do" of the marriage rite.
"Barrett! Good heavens! What's the world coming to?"
"I don't know," he replied naïvely. "I only know there are no grounds left. I've capitulated, you see, at every point."
"Tut, tut!"
"Every point!" he insisted. No compromise would do. It might amaze her, might snatch the ground from under her feet; he would admit, at last, no compromise.
She grew whimsical, then a new earnestness creeping into her voice: "You know," she said, "I've come to suspect some of this talk of being 'advanced.' I mean"—for she felt his enquiring gaze—"I've come at length to suspect that in just going ahead.... Barrett, for heaven's sake help me out!" For once in her life—and it was surely a portentous symptom—Miss Whitcom was groping.
"Well," she went on at last, still speaking earnestly, if fumblingly, "I'm not sure Icanexpress at all what I feel. It's what I've been coming to feel more and more—no doubt a gradual development up out of the cocksure attitude of one's—Barrett, I've begun using a dreadful and ruthless word—one's immaturity ...!" She tossed her head. "It doesn't mean I don't still believe in all the fine, big movements. You know"—her voice for a moment grew almost tender—"I always looked upon myself as one of the first of the 'new' women. I wasn't going at things blindly. I was always following an ideal,Barrett, even when the things I did seemed most wild and inexplicable. But as I look back I seem to have been following strange roads in an effort to reach it! How strange! And now—yes, only fancy, as you say: in one's old age!—I'm afraid I see in a way that 'progress' can be overdone. That is, I've come to see that progress is something you can'tforce. Yet there have to be pioneers in the world, don't there, Barrett? People who are reckless, and pay the price, and aren't afraid of going too far.... Yes, I realize that, as I've always realized it. But oh, Barrett, Barrett—I'm afraid I'm getting to be very, very selfish. I've been a pioneer so long, and after all I don't quite want to be a pioneer to the very end of my days. I—I somehow feel I want to stop being one before—oh, Barrett, before it's quite toolate...!"
"I think," said O'Donnell slowly, his voice just a little shaken, "if the time has come for plain speaking like this, you'd better let me hold your hand. Do you mind?"
"Listen to him!" she said, in one of her richest tones of banter.
All the same, she let him have it.
While these important events were proceeding, Louise, who had not gone to find Mr. Barry, after all, but who had returned to her room instead, slept a little. She was unused to such early rising, and she had been through a great deal since dawn.
She slept, and had a dream. She dreamed that she and Leslie were to be married. She seemed to be very much excited, and to be surrounded by a crowd of indefinite persons, some of them friends she now possessed, and some of them friends she had known in her early girlhood. And all the while she was happily arguing: "I know I'm a little bit older, but we love each other so much that just a mere couple of years don't count."
Waking with a start to problems more sinister than merely that involving a conventional disagreement of ages, Louise perceived that it had drawn to the golden midst of afternoon. Lynndal was waiting for her. As the curious, almost hypnotic quality of the dream wore off, she responded to another flash of new purpose. The dream still haunted and oppressed her; at first it had made her sad; but as it faded into a renewed appreciation of that humiliating conversation beside the driftwood shed, a mood of rebellion came upon her.
She tossed her head haughtily: Leslie should be allowed to make no further difference to her. She would thrust him entirely out of her life. He ought never really to have entered it. No, she shouldn't have given herself to Leslie, even temporarily. It had produced an unpleasant situation, and afforded him an opportunity now to fling all her kindness back in her face. He had, indeed, treated her shamefully—not at all as he had treated her earlier in the day. At dawn.... But she murmuredangrily: "This is the return one gets for trying to be nice to a man!"
The new mood inclined her, in a subtle way, toward Lynndal—as abruptly as it had hardened her heart against Leslie. The emotion of the moment illuminated the former in an almost rosy manner. She began thinking of Lynndal warmly and romantically—as she had thought of him during those long months when they were far apart. Her attitude again became the attitude she had maintained throughout the period of their increasingly affectionate correspondence. And the sense of his nearness seemed no longer to distract or terrify her. Excitement stirred in her breast. It leapt to her eyes and trembled upon her lips. She had never loved Lynndal so almost tempestuously. Strong emotion of this sort always had a beautifying effect upon Miss Needham. Her face glowed as she encouraged the rekindling passion. She fanned the flame of her love for Lynndal, and at the same time a soft sense of steadfastness and assurance snuffed out the dismal quandary which had wracked and tortured her soul from the moment she saw him up on the deck of the steamer. Some mad whim, she argued feverishly, had filled her with a panic of indecision and dread; but that was gone now. She whipped the purging passion into new and fantastic fervour. Her laugh had a touch of wildness in it. Even Richard had never moved her like this!
Suddenly, a little chill seized her heart. What if already it were too late? What if, by her coldness and aloofness, she had already created in Lynndal's heart a havoc which could not be rescinded? Was it not wholly conceivable that she had killed his love for her? Had she not shown herself perverse, cruel, and irredeemably fickle? Perhaps now the tables would be turned, and he would draw away from her, even as she had shrunk from him. The thought had a maddening influence: she felt momentarily faint and distracted. Then a new energy of determination blazed in her eyes. It mustnotbe too late. Shemustwin him back, however far her wretched conduct may have driven him.
Louise dressed with elaborate care, giving heed to every eloquent detail of her toilette. She tore off the brooch Richard had given her and flung it into her jewel box with a gesture of gay scorn. No more toying and trifling! She was ready now to give herself completely and for all time—the more ready because of that uneasy little tremor of doubt lest she had killed his love. Yes, it was a wonderful moment—a moment so packed with the frenzy of giving that there remained no other thought at all in her mind. She lived for the moment alone. She made herself radiant for Lynndal, the emotion which swayed her growing more and more riotous. She surrendered herself to it. He was waiting for her. And she went down to him hopefully, wistfully, yet withal triumphantly.
"Which way?" asked Lynndal as they descended the short bluff and reached the hard, surf-packed shore.
"I don't care," she laughed up at him. "Shall we go this way?"
It didn't matter to Barry. All ways were equal to him, since he was really and truly in love and spent no great amount of attention upon the scenery. He looked at her adoringly. His quiet eyes were dazzled.
They strolled along close beside the little waves. It was rather a picture. She was charmingly gowned, and carried a small plum parasol.
"Let me take your coat, dear," he suggested.
She gave him the light silk wrap, and he carried it on his arm, crooked almost pathetically for the purpose.
"I don't wonder you like it up here," he said, looking off over the sparkling water. "If we had this in the centre of the desert...."
"I suppose it would make a difference." All at once she pictured the desert. She pictured herself living in the midst of the desert with Lynndal.
Then the dry-farming expert went on to explain, at some length, just what would happen were this sea to be transported to the parched heart of Arizona. The words began falling a little dully on her ears. She was vaguely troubled. But she could not tell just why it should be so.
There was a silence. They walked along slowlyside by side. A wave of happiness stole upon the man; his hand, encountering hers, closed over it tenderly.
She caught her breath a little. "Lynndal," she cautioned, "you mustn't...."
But he clung to her hand. He had come so far! And again she seemed to hear those terrible words booming in her ears: "You are mine, all mine!"
Slowly his arm crept round her waist. There was nothing overwhelming about the action: Barry was not an overwhelming man, and had not an overwhelming way with him. His was, rather, a kind of gentle, furtive passion, which displayed itself in a very slight trembling, an occasional queer huskiness of voice.
All at once Louise grew alarmed. It seemed to her that a terrible and inevitable moment had come. She wasn't entirely prepared.She must have more time ...!
"Please take your arm away, Lynndal," she said tensely.
"But why, dear?"
"Please! The cottagers...."
"But Louise, dear, there isn't a cottage in sight." They had, indeed, proceeded by this time well around the Point. "There's no one to see, and besides...."
She glanced up shyly. His face was kind. His eyes were pleading and full of quiet reassurance. Did he suspect a little the turmoil within her? Therewas no reason why his arm shouldn't be about her; yet her mind went on groping. It was like being in a thick wood. Could she give herself to him entirely? Could she give herself toanyoneentirely?
"Louise, I love you," he murmured, bending down so that his lips were close to her cheek.
She trembled. But she told herself that he had come to her out of the desert; that he was her lover; and that she must give herself to him without any more restraint. Why had she led him on and on if she didn't intend to give herself fully at last?
"Louise, dearest.... Louise!"
"Yes, Lynndal...."
"I love you so much!"
The old panic surged again, but she fought it back. "For ever and ever—nobody but me...." Yet there were so many others.... Chaos again enveloped the girl.
"Won't you kiss me?"
His arms were adoringly about her. His lips came close to hers. It was time, now, to give herself. She raised her lips.
They kissed.
But a great cry was in her heart: "Ican't!" It was almost as though he had heard it, for he let her slip way; and she stood there before him, her head lowered, her hands desperately covering her face.
Louise thought blindly of Richard—what theirfirst kiss had been like ...! And then she remembered how, afterward, she had longed for death. With what completeness the situation now was reversed! Now she was loved, and it was she who would break her lover's heart. Yet still the same swift longing for death....
They walked on slowly. Barry's head was lowered. Finally he asked thickly: "Don't you love me, then?"
She bent her head lower and could not answer. The fault was her own, and he must suffer for it. Yet stealthy colour crept back into her cheeks; her mood grew muddy and subtly defiant. Was not he makinghersuffer?
It wasn't, she blindly felt, so much that she didn't love him, as that, strangely and tragically, he must be all to her—and she could not face it.
How strange it was! How unpremeditated and utterly tragic! In his pocket huddling against the little box with its precious prisoner, was a letter in which the amplest and most ardent affection was expressed. It was a letter which expressed an earnest desire for his coming—so eager. Barry was bewildered. What did such lightning-swift changes of heart signify? Had she onlyimaginedherself in love? What was this that had come to him? Had he come out of the desert for nothing after all? Was all the promise of new life sheer illusion?
They walked on a little way and then turned slowly back.
The Rev. Needham awoke from his siesta wonderfully refreshed. These benign afternoon snoozes had a peculiar and sometimes quite poignant effect. The minister dimly felt it must have something to do with psychology. For he always awoke feeling so spiritual, so calm and strong. Today, of course, there was particularly traceable cause: he had gone to sleep, one must remember, in a miraculously resolute, yes, a truly masterful, mood. Did we call it Nietzschean? Well, perhaps it really was almost that. At any rate, waking was delicious. There was a largeness, a breadth about life which made one want to square one's shoulders, step out proudly. Before the dresser mirror, in the act of resuming collar and tie, the Rev. Needham actually did square his shoulders a little. He even threw out his chest somewhat. Oh, it is sweet to be master of one's own destiny!
Out on the porch he found his wife, rocking there all by herself and looking a little vacantly off at the shrubs and trees.
"Ah, Anna," he said; then perched himself in a nonchalant, really an almost rakish manner, on therailing, throwing one leg over the other, and folding his arms. He yawned a little audibly, concluding that function with a kind of masterful, contented smacking of the lips—even whistled a few bars of a gay secular tune.
"Did you sleep well, Alf?" Anna Needham spoke calmly, rocked calmly. She still eyed the shrubs and trees in a spirit of almost hypnotized calm.
"I had a magnificent nap," he assured her.
Anna rocked more slowly. "Alf," she hesitated.
"Yes, Anna?"
"Alf, I wonder if I can be getting old ...?"
"Old, Anna?" He was really quite shocked at the suggestion.
"Yes—I don't know. Sometimes...."
"Nonsense!"
"I don't know ..." she continued dreamily.
"But why should you ever think such a thing?"
"Well, lately there've been times when I've felt so kind of still. I don't know, but I thought—I thought it might be...."
"Why, Anna ...!" he cried in vaguely frightened tones.
"I don't know, Alf." Her manner retained its essential dreaminess. "Sometimes when I sit alone rocking, I feel so kind of still...."
The minister laughed, then, with even an attempt at something like boisterousness; but it was plain something of his earlier flamboyancy had vanished.Abruptly, right in the heyday of his most glorious mood, the shortness of life struck him with uncanny force. Life's shortness, and, though he indignantly repudiated the insinuation, its relative futility, after all. Where had one come from in the beginning; just what was it one was up to now; and where was it one would go when the breath of life ceased flowing? Oh, what a piece of work is man! These were the secret inner workings. With a thrill of genuine horror the minister found himself asking what he knew, as a fact, after all these years of preaching it, about the immortality of the soul. It was terrible,terrible! Oh, that he should be afflicted with such doubts! And not ten minutes ago the Rev. Needham had squared his shoulders and flashed so grand a defiance at his own reflection....
Curiously enough, this sudden unpleasant sense of renewed insecurity was augmented, at the moment when it was most acute, by the rippling laughter of his approaching sister-in-law. Miss Whitcom and her friend were returning from their tête-à-tête in the bower. The laugh, whatever it might mean to the minister, signified that the lady was not, so easily, to be carried off her feet, and that, however thrillingly she might talk about not being a pioneer any longer, no mere travelling man was to capture her without at least a concluding scramble.
Barrett O'Donnell knew quite well what the laugh signified. But it didn't, for all that, very greatly disturb him. Lord, he'd waited twenty years: hecould wait twenty more, if necessary. There is not that hot impetuosity in the affection of souls matured which characterizes youth; not that fever, that restless, exquisite rush of heady devotion. Still, there is perhaps something in being quite sure your love isn't misplaced. Yes, in a way, to be sure may be even better than to possess.
The return of Miss Whitcom and Mr. O'Donnell from one direction fell simultaneously with the return of Louise and Lynndal Barry from another. The porch became a very lively place, all at once, where a few moments before it had been so quiet, with only the minister's wife there, rocking.... Louise was greatly relieved that it should be so. To have returned to a silent and deserted house after what had passed between herself and Lynndal on the beach must have proved next to unbearable. As it was, the frantic difficulty of the situation would be lightened, if only temporarily.
Marjory pounced at once upon the westerner, turning from her ancient suitor with a careless alacrity which seemed saying: "After all, I am free, quite superbly free!" And O'Donnell muttered an "Ah!" scarce audibly; and what he meant by it was this: "I know you'll come back to me. You always have and you always will. We are notquitefree, either of us, in one sense of the word." One glorious, indomitable sense of the word.
Marjory wanted to know more about the dam in Arizona, and especially she wanted to get at theother side of this tragic love affair—this bit of high tragedy in humble setting. In art, she thought, tragedy has a way of being generally treated nobly and loftily; but in life, somehow, it often seems almost absurd. Yes, first it was the dam. But she did not really care two straws about the dam. She had got beyond all such things as dams in her pilgrimage.
The Rev. Needham opened up a conversation about the Point with O'Donnell. But he kept eyeing his daughter, who leaned against the railing of the porch, her hands clasped before her. Alfred, despite his calling, was a wretched reader of souls. The look in one's eyes or the line of one's lips meant next to nothing, definitely—if only because these things might mean so bafflinglymuch.... If you actually shed tears, then he would be reasonably sure you must be unhappy. Hearty laughter signified, of course, a state of hilarity. However, the Rev. Needham's spirit, with Milton's, took, really, no middle course. There lay an almost blank chasm between tears and laughter—although, alas, the fact of its being a chasm did not make it any less conducive to prickles in one's suspended heels.
"There's only one thing," O'Donnell was observing, "—only one thing I've got against this place."
"What's that?" asked the minister.
"There are so many signs!"
It took the Rev. Needham just a moment to comprehend what was meant. "You mean the Assembly notices?"
"I suppose that's what they are. If you'll pardon my saying so, it seems sometimes as though there's a sign on every tree. One says you mustn't peel the birch bark, and the next one announces a lecture on such and such a day."
"I'm afraid they have multiplied the last few seasons," admitted the minister. "We don't seem to notice—so used to them, I suppose. There are picnickers, you know—come from other parts—and we have to look out for the natural beauty or it will be all spoiled. As for the lecture announcements," he concluded, "the—the church, you know, has to keep pace, nowadays. Yes, it—it has to advertise a little!" He spoke almost glibly, and sighed; but quite brightly, indeed almost chirpily.
Miss Whitcom caught the confession. And she hopped down at once off Mr. Barry's fine Arizona dam—which diverted water into a huge reservoir, thus keeping off the Needham wolf—and administered what might vulgarly be termed a knock-out.
"I should say it does have to advertise! Oh, yes, the church mustindeedhustle to keep pace! Even so, I hear the attendance is dropping off."
"Marjory?" began her brother-in-law with unhappy and interrogative vehemence. The low bow, alas, would do no good at all here. This woman was unspeakable. She struck him as almost a monster! Not that this was manifest, of course; it was merely the way she struck his invisible soul.
"Oh, gracious, Alfred, I don't meanyourattendance. I'm not referring to your particular church. I speak as a sociologist—a biologist!" She laughed. "Yes, I always try to consider these things in the broadest sense. And I don't see why you should look so shocked, for after all I'm only agreeing with you. Don't you see I am? The churchdoeshave to advertise. Has to stir up public controversies for the sake of getting itself discussed—always biologically speaking, Alfred. It has to get itself recognized as a social force. That's the word: a social force! It must be a little sensational even, sometimes, to match the growing sensationalism of life. What more natural? An atmosphere of spry colloquialism. Yes, the modern church must compete. Whynotintroduce the movies into Sunday School—?"
"We haven't yet done any of these things, Marjory," declared the Rev. Needham earnestly, a trifle coolly. He seemed really to insist upon receiving all her shafts personally.
"Some churches do though," volunteered O'Donnell—and laughed a little nervously.
Mrs. Needham had been following the conversation, glancing first at one speaker then at another; now she spoke: "Marjory, how do you ever manage to keep track of everything that's going on here in America?" It was not the first time since her arrival amongst them that Anna's sister had amazed her with a grasp of home affairs—often with flashes of vision which had been closed to her before.
"Oh," replied Marjory with pleasant lightness, "butyou see such demonstrations as these exude an influence—it's a little like the wireless. One feels their thrill all around the earth."
"Besides," interposed O'Donnell quite seriously, "you know Tahulamaji's awfully advanced."
"Is it?" asked Mrs. Needham guilelessly, turning towards him.
"Oh, tremendously," he assured her. "As I make it out Queen Tess was one of the most advanced women of her time. I tell you, things move in Tahulamaji!"
Mrs. Needham had not hitherto felt, as she indefinitely put it to herself, very well acquainted with this travelling man friend of her sister's. Suddenly she found herself holding the centre of the stage with him. It amounted to a little thrill.
"I suppose, after all, things aren't so different there—conditions, should I say?"
"Well," hedged O'Donnell, beginning to perceive that he had entered somewhat dangerous waters. He glanced at Miss Whitcom, who merely shrugged her shoulders, which seemed equivalent to an assurance that, having involved himself unnecessarily in her behalf, he might just flounder along, so far as she was concerned, until kingdom come.
"Maybe," suggested the minister's wife with a dart of genuine brilliance, "the churches do all those things in Tahulamaji!" Would it not seem to explain Marjory's being so uncannily well informed?
The Rev. Needham inwardly fidgeted. He felt heought to be in the forefront of the discussion, defending his cloth. But suddenly he seemed, within, sadly and impotently, to have nothing to say. There were times when he felt he didn't possess a single honest prejudice any more, or hold one single irrefragable opinion. What a fortunate thing for the soul is its kind bulwark of flesh!
Anna's suggestion at length stirred Miss Whitcom, however. "Oh, no," she said quietly, "they don't."
"Still," O'Donnell objected, "you told me the Queen was incorrigibly modern, and you said she adored the movies."
"Oh, we're modern," replied Marjory with an ungodly smirk. "Yes, we're modern enough in Tahulamaji. I may say we're quite in the van of civilization. We're so modern that wehaven'tany churches. So howcouldwe advertise?"
"No churches, Marjory?" queried her brother-in-law. "But you seem to forget—"
"Well, at least nothing you'd call a church, I'm sure, Alfred—outside of what the foreigners have imported, that is. A few little rude native altars.... That's all. You know, 'when two or three are gathered together'.... It's—well, I've sometimes felt it's thespiritthat counts in Tahulamaji, when it comes to matters of religion. Everything's very, very simple. We really haven't time to do it the grand way, even if we knew how."
They hadn't time for church in Tahulamaji! The awful question which now wracked the soul of theminister was: If they hadn't time for church, whathadthey time for? A dimly terrifying curiosity assailed him. The Rev. Needham had read vague things about the people of the tropics. And a flush overspread his lined, worried face.
Yes, Marjory was an odd sheep, if not a black one. Perhaps she could hardly be called ablackone, though there were certainly times when the Rev. Needham saw her as through smoked glasses. Anyway, an odd sheep she certainly was. She did not seem to belong in the herd at all—let alone the family! The rest were all quiet, sensible, orthodox. But about everything Marjory said or did there was something unorthodox, something wickedly theatrical. What a past she had had! Just think of it! Just think, for instance, of spending five whole years of one's life in a place like Tahulamaji! Well, the ways of God were unsearchable. So, it seemed, were the ways of His satanic opponent. The reason she seemed different from themselves must be, fundamentally, that she had had a past. But why had she had a past? Yes, the minister's speculations always must terminate with the knottiest question raised and unanswered. It seemed a part of his destiny.
And meanwhile, there stood Louise and Lynndal, not six feet apart, yet never meeting each other's look; never speaking. How unpremeditated and tragic! He had come all the way from Arizona, and now they had nothing to say to each other. Louise, leaning wretchedly against the railing, seemed, justnow, able to realize nothing clearly. The episode on the beach had confused her. She felt herself baffled.
As for Barry's state of mind, that, also, was considerably cloudy. It had happened—the inconceivable, the impossible—and it was now over. Yet was it really over? In just a swift moment like this hadallhis dreams been broken? It seemed incredible: he could not believe it. He tried to reassure himself, endeavoured to keep hope alight. Something wise and still, deep in his heart, counseled patience. It might be she was only confused: it seemed strange to her, having suddenly a reality like this in place of her dreams. Louise was a dreamer—he knew that. And what might be going on inside her wayward little head, who could guess? So far Barry had only distinguished himself as a wizard of the burning sands. He was a man who could make deserts bloom like the rose. Yet who could say but perhaps he knew a little, too, about the subtler bloom of a woman's heart? Patience, he argued within himself. It might be she was only puzzled, and that she still loved him in spite of the thing that had happened. He would be patient a little while. If it turned out at last that there was no hope, why, then he would go back to the desert again. That was all.