"Oh, I say," Loftus threw in. "It is not so long ago that I heard you maintaining that only imbeciles were idle, that everybody should have something to do. You are rather contradictory, don't you think?"
"No, not a bit; and for the reason that then I was speaking of the generality of people, and now of the exceptional few. The idleness of the imbecile is always imbecilic, but the dreams of a poet have spells that enthrall. Try to fancy a busy poet. You cannot. It is an anomaly at which the imagination balks. By the same token you cannot fancy a useful Venus. You cannot fancy Psyche occupied with anything but love. Love is—or rather, should be—woman's sole occupation. The perfume of Eros should be about them all."
"The perfume of Eros!" muttered Annandale, to whom the phrase appealed. "The perfume of Eros!" he repeated and helped himself to wine. "I say, Orr, what the dickens is that?"
"Only the motor force of the universe."
"What?"
"Yes, indeed. It is the sublimate of love. And love is the source of human activity. It has no other.Without it civilization would retrograde and society return to the woods. Love is the basis of tragedy, the woof of romance, the incentive of commerce, of crime too, of heroism as well."
"My!" said Marie, whom the brief deluge of words amazed. "My!"
"I must get that off," Annandale muttered. In thesotto voceof thought he added, "to Sylvia." Obviously, he had had his fill. He stood up, making an excuse, imperceptibility lurching as he did so.
It was after ten. Long since coffee had been served. Orr, too, got up. He thanked his hostess. The other men imitated him. Loftus and Marie were alone.
Loftus went to a window. Then he turned. "Put on your hat, little girl, and we will go out; though, after all, I do not see that you need bother with a hat, unless you prefer."
"I will do as you wish, dear."
Presently they were in Lexington avenue, a moment more, in Gramercy Park. Loftus, after fumbling for his key, opened one of the little gates. Within was silence. Occasionally, from the pavement without came the sound of footsteps.
Loftus and Marie seated themselves on a bench near the gate through which they had entered. Loftus was smoking. A boy passed; stopped, and sticking hisnose through the railings, called: "Hi, mister, will you give me a light?"
Loftus made no answer. The boy called again. "Will you? And a cigar with it?"
Then he laughed and passed on. The silence increased. In the air was a fragrance, the clinging odor of the honeysuckle, the clean smell of fresh turf. Beyond, the great dim houses that front the park gave the place and the hour an accent of their own.
"I like it here," said Marie, "it is so elegant."
"Never let me hear you use that word again. It is provincial, suburban and, worse, it is shopgirl."
"Yes, dear."
"This evening I saw you eat an ice with a spoon. Never do that. Use a fork."
"Yes, dear."
Appeased by this docility, Loftus condescended to agree in turn with her. He, too, liked the park. At night, when the weather was decent, always he sat there a bit quite by himself. He had done so for years. He told her this, adding confidentially, "It is a habit."
To Marie the habit seemed most poetic. She said so, explaining that she was very fond of poetry.
Loftus looked up at the stars. "The only real poetry is there. By the way, do you believe in God?"
Marie, uncertain of her lover's creeds, hesitatinglyglanced at him. "Yes—in a way. But I won't, if you object."
This self-abnegation pleased Loftus. He twisted his mustache and smiled. "But no, you little goose, I don't object in the least. On the contrary. It is right and proper that you should."
Gratified at this encouraging indulgence the girl's hand stole into his. Then for awhile they sat and talked about nothing whatever, which, of all subjects, is, perhaps, the least disagreeable. Wearying at last even of that, they got up to go.
At the gate Marie drew back. A man was passing, swaying uncertainly, arguing with himself.
"Why! it is Mr. Annandale," the girl in a frightened whisper murmured.
"I wonder where he got all that liquor?" Loftus queried. "Not at Sylvia Waldron's, I'll wager."
"Sylvia Waldron! What a sweet name," said Marie. "Who is she?"
"The girl he is engaged to."
"Is she pretty?"
"Oh, tall and dark, don't you know. Not at all my style."
But now night had swallowed Annandale. Loftus and Marie passed on.
AT noon the next day Annandale was not awake nor was he asleep. Through spaces in which memories met, entangled and sank, he was groping in search of himself. In these spaces there were things, some formless, others half-formed, that got between consciousness and interfered with the search.
These things pulled at him, tripped him, shoved him down to the memories that were sinking below. The spaces themselves were very dark. But, in the deeper depths, where memories swooned, the darkness was punctuated by slender flames the size of pins. They burned him.
Up and away he tried to rise. When he nearly succeeded, the things above, the things half-formed and formless that were waiting there, pushed him back. Again he tried. But the darkness was thick, thedepths were thunderous, the things above pounded on his head, the thin flames lapped at him.
A force took and lifted him high, very high, and suddenly dropped him. In the abrupt descent he clutched at the things, but he was whirled through them to receding plains and up again, higher, still higher. There a ray filtered, in the light of which a memory staggered. He saw himself drinking in the rooms of that girl of Loftus. From there he passed into blankness at the end of which stood Sylvia, her face white and drawn. The vision vanished. Then it seemed to him that he was drinking with a fat man who had prominent teeth which he took from his mouth and changed into dice. But where? In hell, perhaps. Annandale was uncertain. He knew merely that he had been beastly drunk and that his head was simply splitting.
It continued to split. Hours later, sedatives and his servant aiding, the splitting ceased. But the blanks did not fill and though behind them he could not look, yet the subconscious self that registers and retains everything we do and hear and say prompted him dumbly that behind the blanks there lurked the dismal and, perhaps, the dire.
This foreboding he attributed to his nerves. As a matter of fact they were rather shaky. But inactionwas intolerable. He tried to write a note to Sylvia, but his hand was insufficiently steady. Failing in that he told Harris to get some flowers, take them to Miss Waldron, and say that he would call that evening. When later the man returned he brought no answer to the message.
"Was Miss Waldron out?" Annandale asked.
"I could not say, sir. I gave the flowers to the maid, and said as how you would call this evening, sir. The maid came back and said Miss Waldron would not be at 'ome."
At this Annandale flushed. It is true he was flushed already. But the affront was a little more than he could stand. Was he not engaged to her? What did she mean? Yet, then, too, what had he done? He wished to the devil he could tell. Try, though, as he might, he could not recall a thing except a vision of the girl's face, white, drawn and angered. The rest was not blurred, it was blank. It was extremely unfortunate, and Annandale decided that he was both unhappy and misused.
These meditations Harris interrupted.
"Mr. Orr, sir."
Annandale, who had been far away, looked up. Then he nodded.
A moment and Orr entered, eying Annandale curiously as he came.
"What a deuce of a chap you are," he began.
"Who? I? Why? Why do you say that?"
Orr looked about the room, contemplated a wide lounge of black leather, selected a straight-backed chair instead and seated himself, his hat and stick in his hand.
"You know well enough," he answered. "But there," he added at a protest from Annandale, "I don't propose to scold you. My visit is purely official. Sylvia has asked me to inform you that the engagement is at an end."
Had any little dog which Annandale did not possess run out from nowhere and bit him fiercely on the leg, he could not have started more. He stared at Orr, who stared at him.
"But! It is impossible! What have I done?"
"It would be more to the point," Orr cheerfully replied, "to ask what you have not done. Though just what you did do Sylvia omitted to state. She said she could not."
"Could not tell you?"
"Could not or would not."
"Then I can't," said Annandale helplessly. "I went there last evening, I remember that. I remember, too,that she was angry. But why I do not know. Though, to be candid, she had cause to be. I was drunk."
"You seemed all right at the Arundel," Orr objected.
"At all events, drunk or sober, I cannot recall a thing. I have tried. I have tried hard. It has gone."
"Does it happen to you often?"
"What?"
"To forget like that?"
Annandale shook his head. He stood up and stalked about. Orr eyed him. He saw he was not shamming.
"You know, Annandale," he said at last, "you could not get many to accept that. But I can and do. I have seen cases of the kind before. Will you permit me to advise you?"
"Advise me? I wish to God you would."
"Littré, who was the wisest and ugliest of men, stated that Hippocrates recommended everybody to get tight once a month, asserting that it was hygienic, good for the system, that it relaxed the nerves. Littré must have known what he was talking about. He put Hippocrates in French, into ten volumes at that! But what is good for everybody is bad for you. Don't drink, Annandale. It will get you into mischief."
"As if it had not? Look at the box I am in. But could you not get Sylvia to reconsider the matter? If she will, I pledge my word never to touch another drop. Of course, I apologize for everything I did. I am only too anxious to. You must understand that I am profoundly humiliated at the idea that I could have done anything she did not like. Certainly I did not intend to. Won't you say that to her?"
"Oh, I appreciate your position," said Orr. "To me the essence of crime is the intent. But, then, you see, I am a man. Now girls are different, and my cousin is very different even from most girls. Her views are very strict. Even otherwise, to any decent girl, a man in his cups is not agreeable. But then, you know, it is not merely a question of that. It is a question of matrimony. Matrimony generally means children. It is on them that the sins of the father are visited. There is the rub. Sylvia, I have not a doubt, will in the end forgive you, but were she to marry you and her children have your sins visited on them, never would she forgive herself. That I am sure you can realize. Anyway, for the moment argument with her would be futile. Besides, she has gone from town."
"Gone?"
"Yes, she left for Newport today. If I were youI would not attempt to follow. But I will write. I will tell her what you say, and I will tell you her reply."
Orr stood up. As he did so Annandale sat down. He cared for Sylvia Waldron, absolutely, uniquely. He felt, too, that she had cared for him. But while Orr had been speaking he told himself that her caring had ceased. Had any affection remained she could not have gone. It was his fault, though. He had shocked it out of existence. At the thought of that he felt unutterably miserable. What he felt he looked.
Orr saw his dejection. "Annandale," he said, "I hardly suppose that it will console you now to have me tell you that nothing earthly is of any consequence, but, if you let the idea permeate you, ultimately perhaps it may. By the way, that is a new man you have, isn't it?"
In the wreckage amid which Annandale was floundering the question was like a rope; he caught at it and swam up.
"Who? Harris? Yes, the other poor devil I had was run over and died in an ambulance."
Orr tapped at his foot with his stick. "I may be in error," he said, "but I think I have seen him before."
"Then it must have been in London. He has been here only a short time. He tells me he used to be with Catty."
Catty was a relative of Annandale, a New York girl who had married the Duke of Kincardine.
"Possibly," said Orr. "Well," he added, reverting to the episode that had brought him there, "I am sorry for all this. I know you are. I will write to Sylvia and tell her so."
"Please do."
Annandale stood up and accompanied him to the door. When he turned life seemed blank as the blanks of the night.
WHAT Sylvia replied to Orr's communication, whether indeed she replied at all, Annandale was not informed. He himself wrote to her. The letter was long; it was also abject. But he got no answer. He wrote again. The result was the same.
Then both at her and at himself he rebelled. He had supped on humiliations. He had no appetite for more. With some bravery, yet without bravado, he tore a leaf from his life and on it wrote Finis. The epitaph was figurative, but he thought it final. He thought that he could dictate to Fate. It is a mistake that many make.
Presently it surprised him to find how laborious is the task of putting people out of your life. If you have cared for them they will come back. In the pages of a book, in the pauses of speech, suddenly you behold them. In sleep they will not let you be. Whenyou awake, there they are. However detestable their behavior may have been, in dream they visit and caress you. It takes time and vigilance; it takes more, it takes other faces to disperse them.
In spite of the Finis, Sylvia Waldron declined to be dismissed. She haunted Annandale. To memories of her he could not always show the door. Sometimes they were masked. Occasionally they reproached him. Again they seemed to say that did he but find out how, all might yet be well between them. But usually they came and stood gazing at him in love and grief eternal.
Then he would start. But what could he do? Besides, there was the Finis.
June meanwhile had come and gone. Summer with a frenzy quasi-maniacal had battened on the town. It is said that the hottest place in the world is a port on the Persian Gulf. But it is wrong to believe everything we hear. When New York decides to be hot, the temperature of the Persian port must be agreeable by comparison.
One fetid noon Annandale fled. When he stopped it was at Narragansett.
Before August comes and with it the mob, Narragansett is charming. There is a mile of empty hotels, a stretch of sand fine as face powder, a heaving,heavenly desert of blue and an atmosphere charged with ozone and desire.
In August the hotels are packed. The stretch of sand is a stage. Every day a ballet is given there. The coryphées are the prettiest girls in the world—girls from Baltimore, girls from Philadelphia, girls from everywhere, girls with the Occident in their eyes and lips that say "Drink me."
At high noon, from the greenroom of the bath-houses, Sweet-and-twenty floats down, clasps the sea to the hum of harps, breasts the waves to the laugh of brass and re-emerges to the sound of trumpets.
After the dip, other diversions. Primarily flirtations on the lawns; later, polo at the Country Club; at night, dancing in the ballrooms, more flirtations on the galleries of the Casino, supper on the terrace below.
The terrace resembles, or, more exactly, on this particular summer did resemble, a roof garden on the ground floor. From a kiosk a band of Hungarians distributed selections of popular rot, sometimes their own delirious czardas. There, circled by variegated lights, fanned by the violins, girls and men sat beneath the high, wide, flowerful umbrellas of Japan.
Sometimes some of them, wearying of that, wanderedinto silences and shadows and lingered there, occupied with the crops, with strikes and other subjects of national interest which young people always discuss when holding hands in the dark.
To Newport, which squats disdainfully over the way, this is all too free and easy. To Annandale, it was distressing. Everywhere there was love, yet none for him. He had come to the Pier, as Narragansett is locally termed, because of Newport's propinquity. If Sylvia so much as signaled he could join her at once.
As yet no signaling was apparent. In its place was an influx of a reflection of fashion. The influx made Annandale swear. He hated to be seen stalking moodily about. He hated still more to have the rupture of his engagement discussed. The ballet on the beach irritated him. He told himself that he had come to the wrong shop. One day he thought of joining friends in Canada. The next he thought of joining friends who had gone abroad. The day after he thought that still he might be signaled.
In these uncertainties he loitered, annoyed but sober. Since the visit from Orr he had not touched a drop. Then, it so fell about that one evening he looked in at a dance at the Casino. Madness was in the air. The savors of the sea, the tonic of thedip, the stare of the harvest moon, go to the head, stir the heart, excite the pulse in a manner really Boccaccian.
Madness is contagious. It seemed particularly catching that night. The hall was filled, the gallery flushed. On a stage, at the end of the ballroom, musicians were tossing out in trailing rhythm the sorcery of "Il Bacio," the invitation of the "Cent Vierges," the muffled riot of "El Capitan."
To these incentives couples turned. Beneath the gallery where Annandale stood there was a vision of white arms, bare necks, slender waists circled by the blackness of men's sleeves. Three hundred girls and men were waltzing together, interchanging partners, clasping hands, gazing into each other's eyes.
Behind Annandale a group had gathered. They were talking, yet of what he did not heed. But, presently, into the conversation filtered the freshness of another voice.
"I quite believe, you know," the voice was saying, "that a girl who stops here this summer will stop at nothing next."
At the jest Annandale turned. There, pretty as a peach but rather more amusing, stood Fanny Price.
"Hamlet!" she exclaimed.
Annandale resembled the Dane as little as he didthe devil. He was fully aware of that. But he was equally aware that he must seem blue. He straightened himself and smiled. Then at once it occurred to him that Fanny might be a signal bearer.
"How do you do?" he said. "Don't you want to come and sit on the terrace? When did you get here?"
"Just now. I am over from Newport. They told me there that I ought to come in disguise. They call it slumming."
"Yes," Annandale inanely and eagerly replied. Of the little speech he had caught but one word—Newport.
"Now, if I go with you, will you give me something pink, something with raspberries in it?"
Fanny, as she spoke, disengaged herself from the people with whom she had come.
"You saw Sylvia, didn't you?" he asked, when at last through coils of girls and men they reached the terrace below.
Fanny nodded. "Suppose we sit here," she said, indicating a table from which grew a big parasol.
"Did she say anything?"
Fanny sat down. Annandale seated himself by her. "You know? Don't you——?"
"Oh, yes," Fanny interrupted. "But then——"
"Then what?"
"Nothing. Only it is so much better so, don't you think?"
"Better!" Annandale fiercely repeated.
"Why, yes. You and Sylvia were totally unsuited for each other. She is the best and dearest girl in the world. But—here is the waiter. Will you tell him to fetch me a lemon squash?"
Annandale gave the order.
"With raspberries in it," Fanny called at the waiter's retreating back. "Aren't you going to take anything?"
In deep gloom Annandale shook his head.
Fanny laughed. "Drink delights you not; no, nor woman either."
"You see——"
"Yes, yes, yes. Of course I see. But why cannot you? Why can't you see that you and Sylvia stood as much chance of hitting it off as though you both spoke a different language? A break was bound to come."
But now the man appeared with the squash. Fanny looked at it. "Only two raspberries," she cried. "And such little ones."
"Bring a dish of them," said Annandale. "I suppose," he resumed as the waiter again retreated, "Isuppose she will find somebody with whom she can hit it off."
"Yes, of course. There is me and there are other girls. But the men will be few. They will be elderly, I think, and I think, too, tame enough to eat out of her hand."
"You think, then, that I am out of the running?"
Fanny did not answer. She was drinking the squash. When she put it down she put with it the subject. It bored her.
"Are you going to be here long?" she asked. Until a moment before Annandale had been wavering. But now his mind was made up. Or he thought it was.
"No. I am off tomorrow."
"Where to?"
"The North Woods, perhaps. I am not sure."
"If you are not sure, you cannot be in any very tearing haste. Why not stop a day or two longer and take me about?"
Annandale looked at her. In the look was surprise; inquiry, too.
"Yes. Why not?"
Annandale's look deepened into a stare.
"Now, don't be stupid," said Fanny, to whom such stares were familiar. "I am not trying to get up aflirtation with you. But I must have someone to talk to."
"I like to hear you talk."
"Yes; men always like nonsense."
"Only from a pretty girl, though."
"Do you know," said Fanny, rising from beneath the big parasol, "the waiter didn't bring the raspberries. No matter now, though. I must go and find mother. This is no place for her to be out alone."
FROM a back gallery of the Casino a narrow stair leads to a tower. Up that stair Annandale one afternoon invited Fanny Price.
A fortnight had gone, two weeks of dressing and undressing, of dinners, dances and dips; a succession of mellow mornings; long, green afternoons, dusks stabbed by sudden stars and nights lit by a moon that painted the ocean, penetrated the shadows, checkered the underbrush with silver spots.
But now, though the mornings were as mellow and the afternoons as green, though in the air the same madness subsisted and the nights were as languid as before, verandas were emptying, there were wide spaces where once were thick crowds. The end of the season had come.
In the procession of these things Annandale had put the North Woods from him; he had put, too,the thought of journeying abroad. With them he had put also any hope that Sylvia would signal him back.
For awhile the hope had persisted, as the light of a candle persists. Then it had dwindled, flickered and sunk. That is the way with hope. Though sometimes it is snuffed. You are in darkness. But through that darkness occasionally another light will be upheld. It may not, perhaps, be intended for you, but it may enable you to see.
Aided by another light, Annandale had begun to discern his way. He should, of course, have remained in darkness. To darkness, were this fiction, he would be condemned. But this is not fiction. The drama with which these pages deal is documented from life. It was Fanny who held the light.
During the month that had gone he had been almost constantly at her side. The fact that one light may be replaced by another had not at first occurred to him. Presently the ease with which such substitution can be effected had mystified him very much. He was not prepared for anything of the kind. He had arranged to be a gloomy, disappointed man. He kept telling himself that if Sylvia had stuck to him he would have been true to her his whole life through. But she had not stuck to him, and the withdrawalof herself had left existence so empty that, unknown even to him, Nature had been filling the vacuum which she abhors.
In this, Nature had been greatly aided. Fanny Price was a remarkably fetching young girl. To a man out of court and consequently out of sorts the companionship of a pocket Venus is tonifying in the extreme. It is not merely that, it is recuperative. It banishes the blues. It establishes a new court, and with it a new code of its own.
The censorious allege that this is all wrong. It may be that they are right. But Nature is not censorious. Nature is not even ethical. She has no standards of right, no canons of wrong. What she does have is her way. A saint may defy her. Annandale was not that by a long shot. He was simply a human being, one that had been punished, and, as he thought, unjustly punished, for that which might have been condoned. Injustice humiliates. Saints may welcome humiliation, but human beings resent it.
Over the emptiness which Sylvia had created there brooded therefore two things. One was darkness, the other pique. In the light which Fanny upheld it seemed to Annandale that they might be dispersed. This idea, which he regarded as his very own, and consequently as highly original, was not his in theleast. It was Nature prompting him to fill the vacuum which she so dislikes.
Instigated by her, Annandale invited Fanny up a stair and into a tower, a place remote, aloof, furnished with seats for just two.
Fanny had not been there before. She had heard, though, of its aloofness; it was regarded as a dangerous spot. But Fanny was a brave girl. Besides, Annandale was at his worst, and even at his best was not very alarming.
The ascent effected, Fanny peeped from a casement. "Why," she exclaimed, "you can see everywhere!" She looked about. "But no one can see you."
Assured of that, she produced a little gold box. On the back were her initials in jewels. She opened it, took a cigarette and lit it. "Will you have one?" she asked.
"This is a deuced nice case," said Annandale.
Fanny puffed and smiled.
"A present, I suppose."
"Yes. But you must not ask from whom."
Annandale looked out at the landscape, then in at the girl. "There is something else I want to ask."
So grave was his tone that Fanny deployed for action.
"Will you marry me?"
Though Fanny had deployed, the shot bowled her over. Into one of the chairs she dropped. Already Annandale had captured the other.
"Will you?"
But Fanny was recovering. With an air of vexation in which there was amusement, she puffed at her cigarette and then at him.
"Now, honestly, have I ever given you the slightest encouragement to ask me that?" She hesitated a moment, puffed again and added: "We have been friends, I think; let us remain so."
Annandale, who was in loose white flannels, contemplated his tight white shoes. Then his eyes sought hers. "Are you interested in Loftus?"
"That is none of your business," Fanny proudly and promptly replied. As she spoke she got from her seat, approached the casement, gazed out and away.
"I do not believe you are," Annandale announced to her slender waist. "But if I am wrong, it is hardly disloyalty to him to say that he is not good enough for you."
Beneath the tower was a tennis court. Fanny made a face at it. But the face must have been insufficient. Looking over her shoulder at Annandale, she showed her teeth.
"Do you fancy a girl cares for a man because he is or is not good enough? When a girl cares she cares because she cannot help herself."
"I know that is the way with a man, or at least with me. I cannot help caring for you."
"Nor could you help caring for Sylvia."
"She is so different."
"Yes," said Fanny dreamily, "and so are you." Though to whom she referred she did not say, nor did Annandale ask. She gave him no chance. "Next month you will not be able to help caring for some other girl."
"Not if you would take me."
"But, you see, I don't care for you."
"But couldn't you?" Annandale persisted. "Couldn't you if you tried? Of course, in saying that Loftus is not good enough for you I don't mean that I am. But if you could try I would."
At this program Fanny laughed. "We should be a pair of Christian Endeavorers, shouldn't we?"
To the levity of that Annandale found no immediate reply. Yet presently, with an irrelevance more obvious than real, he threw out: "He has gone abroad, you know."
"Who? Loftus?"
"Yes, for a year, I believe."
Fanny turned to the tennis court again. It was, though, not that which she saw, but a hope that was slipping away, sinking away, sinking down into death dishonored. For a moment she was very still. A movement of Annandale's aroused her.
"Come," she said. "It is hot here. Let us go."
Gathering a fold of her skirt, Fanny descended the stair. Annandale filed after. On a balcony below a lady with faded hair and gimlet eyes pounced at her.
"I have been hunting for you everywhere," the lady exclaimed. "Aren't you going to dress?" Then she nodded to Annandale.
Annandale touched his cap. "How do you do, Mrs. Price?"
He would have lingered, but Fanny dismissed him.
"Good-bye," she said. "I may see you this evening."
As he ambled off Mrs. Price returned to the charge. "Where have you been?"
Fanny patted a yawn. "Listening to sweet nothings."
"From him? Why, he hasn't anything, has he? What did you do?"
Fanny patted another yawn or else another sigh. "I fell on his neck and sobbed for joy."
"Nonsense. Has he anything, tell me?"
"Not enough to entertain on. Twenty-five thousand a year, I think."
"The impertinence of it!" said the lady.
Had her daughter been an heiress a duke would hardly have satisfied her. As things were, or more exactly, since the girl began to grow in beauty she had dreamed for her but one dream—a brilliant match. To Mrs. Price there could be no brilliance if the party of the second part had a dollar less than ten million.
"You might have had Loftus," she declared at last. "Where is he, do you know?"
"Abroad, I hear."
"With that creature?"
Mrs. Price in common with many others had heard of Marie Leroy. But though others in hearing had not heeded, Mrs. Price took it as a personal affront.
"Then it is your fault," she snarled. "You could have had him if you had wanted. Don't tell me. He was in love with you. I could see it."
Fanny was looking at the ocean. A white sail was fainting in the distance. Like it, a hope she had had was fading away. She watched it go. It had been very fair, very dear, more dear and fair than any she had known. But it was going. It was out ofreach and now out of sight. She could not beckon to it.
"What are you staring at?" Mrs. Price asked.
"A sail out there," the girl answered.
Then presently mother and daughter passed into an adjoining corridor where they had rooms.
FANNY did not appear that evening. In search of her Annandale prowled vainly around. But on the morrow he ran into her on the beach.
It was still as fine as powder. To have found elbow room there a few days previous you would have had to go out to sea. Now, in and on it children were making hillocks and holes. Near them a few groups of older people loitered. But the coryphées that had danced there were migrating. Already the Rockingham, a big hotel which faced the beach, had closed. Sweet-and-twenty was packing her trunk.
The morning itself was of the quality which Lowell has catalogued as from the Gulf adrift. In the air was a caress. Fanny, in a frock the color of pale pastel pink, a wide hat in which that color was repeated, her eyes blue as the sea and bluer, added to its charm.
As Annandale approached she smiled and gave hima finger. But at once the smile fell from her. With the finger which he had released she pointed at the big hotel. Annandale turned. Other people were turning. Some were running. A child that had been at play in the sand jumped and clapped his hands. About one side of the hotel a sheet of flame was climbing, crackling in and out. A cry of "Fire!" caught up and renewed, mounted in the crystalline air.
"Damn!" said Annandale. "If that goes——"
Fanny said nothing. Her eyes widened. Through the windows that front the beach more flames were leaping. From the side the first flames passed to shops over the way, passed back with fresh ones created and joined the others beyond. Above was smoke. Higher yet the tender blue of the sky. But below was a whirlwind of ochre, scarlet and gamboge, a fierce yet compact tornado of oscillant hues, shot with green and shuttled with black. Then suddenly, with a roar, the tornado doubled, the roof had fallen. The child that had jumped and clapped his hands, feebly now was beginning to cry.
"It is glorious," said Fanny.
"I am afraid—" Annandale muttered.
Fanny glanced at him. Yet at once she understood. On the other side of the hotel, across the road, theCasino stood. Her mother, of course, would be safe. But her clothes! At thought of them her hand went to her throat.
"Do you think the Casino will catch?" she gasped.
Annandale nodded.
"Oh," she continued, "I shan't have a stitch, not one."
"Yes, you shall," Annandale heroically retorted. "I will see to them. But I must run. Find your mother if you can and take her to the Inn."
The Inn, a hotel half a mile away, was where Annandale lodged. At once he was off. Shortly, by a detour, he got to the other side of the fire. As he swung about he saw that the Casino's ballroom had caught. But that part of the place was of wood. The other end, where Fanny lodged, was of wood also, but it was also partly of stone. To this part as yet the flames had not reached.
As Annandale ran he told himself that he would have time to get in and get out, but he told himself too that it was a ridiculous job. Fanny's clothes a stroke of his pen could replace. But now the crowd impeded him. Lines had formed. Buckets were being passed. There were throngs of natives and resorters. Through them he pushed.
At the further entrance to the Casino, above whichhe knew the Prices lodged, a fat policeman stood, blocking the way. Annandale shoved him aside, sprang up the stairs, reached the room, fumbled with the door. It was locked.
Annandale swore deeply, tried the door with his shoulder, kicked at it till it cracked, kicked again, throwing himself against it with all his weight, then, not the door, but the fastenings of the lock broke and he went sprawling in. Through the open window he could see the flames, he could hear them, he could hear too the cries of the crowd. But he had no time to waste. He tore around the room.
In one corner was a deep closet, full of clothes. He took them and threw them in armfuls on the bed. In another corner was a bureau, the drawers packed with scented lingerie. These on the bed he emptied also. What else did women wear? he wondered. Oh, yes, he remembered; hats certainly and probably shoes. Around the room he tore again. But already the bed was mountainous. He turned it all over on the floor, gathered up as much as the coverlid would hold and made a hasty bundle of it. Beneath was a blanket; he filled that, made a bundle of it also, repeated the operation with a sheet. Into another sheet he threw hats which meanwhile had loomed in boxes on a shelf, and dragging a curtain down filled that with shoeswhich also he had found, changed his mind and stuffed them into a pillow case, tossing in after them articles from a dressing-table, brushes and combs, odds and ends, helter skelter.
But in dragging the curtain from the window he had noticed a writing-desk. After he had finished with the pillow case he returned to it. Like the door it was locked. He kicked at it, kicked it open, discovered in it loose money and trinkets, stuck them in his pockets, grabbed at the bundles and dashed from the room just as with a roar the flames leaped in.
In the corridor he tripped, but he was up again with the tightly tied bundles and down the stair before the flames and the smoke of them could catch him. Once on the road without he turned to look, but the flames pirouetting in increasing size made it too hot to linger. Down the road he went, not overweighted but impeded by the awkward bundles, and staggered first into an engulfing, shouting crowd, then into a convenient hack, in which he reached the Inn, minus his cap and perspiring profusely.
The Prices as yet had not turned up. Annandale secured rooms for them, had the bundles taken there, went to his own quarters, re-emerged shortly fresh as paint, hungry as a wolf.
It was high noon. From beyond drifted the soundof cries, the smell of smoke, the commotion of flight. The Rockingham had gone, the adjacent shops and bath houses with it; the Casino had fallen. Hurrying to the railway station beyond came people with handbags, wagons with trunks. From the air the caress had passed. There was panic in it.
But presently the flames showed less voluminous. After devouring all that they conveniently could they were subsiding. It was apparent that the worst was over. Then at last Fanny and her mother drove up.
From the veranda where he stood Annandale ran down to meet them. "I have your things," he cried. "I have rooms for you also."
"Hobson is not in it with you," said Fanny, when the tale of the bundles had been told. "I could kiss you. I would if mamma were not here."
For that, ordinarily, Fanny would have been promptly sat upon. But here was the exceptional. Mrs. Price recognized it or appeared to. Instead of rebuking the girl and snubbing the man, Mrs. Price condescended to tell Annandale that he was "too good."
This was very nice. Annandale felt over-rewarded. Then, shortly, the midday meal ensuing, he conducted mother and daughter to the restaurant, sat with them at table, ordered Ruinart cup and assumed family airs.Later, in a motor, he took Fanny to view the ruins, hummed her over the country and later still procured for her a lemon squash with plenty of raspberries in it, which she consumed on the porch, to the sound of the waves, by the light of the stars.
Meanwhile she had changed her pastel frock for another, which, if a bit rumpled in transit, became her wonderfully well.
Annandale commented on it. "By the way," he suddenly interrupted himself to remark, "I have more of your things. I stuffed them in my pocket and forgot them entirely. I will go and fetch them now."
"Don't bother. Tomorrow will do. What are they, do you remember?"
"Money and jewelry. Rings and pins, I think. I am sure there were pins. One of them stuck in me."
"Any clothes?"
"Clothes!" Annandale echoed in surprise. "Why, no, are any missing?"
"My mother's. They were in the room next to mine."
"The Lord forgive me, I never thought of it."
"It does not really matter. Only we will have to go to town tomorrow. Mamma has not a stitch."
"The devil!" muttered Annandale in fierce self-reprobation. "Hang my stupidity. I am a fool."
"You are nothing of the kind. If it were not for you I would not have a stitch either."
"That is all very well. But I have bungled matters dreadfully. I don't know what your mother can think of me. I do know, though, that I wish she would let me replace the things which she has lost through my fault."
In the sky a star was falling, swiftly, silently, like a drop of water on a window-pane. Fanny watched it. She had been lolling back in a chair. But at Annandale's suggestion she sat up. "That is absurd," she announced.
"Well, then, it would be only nice and fair of you to put me in a position where, without offense, I could do so."
But Fanny was rising. "It is late," she announced. "I must go."
Annandale caught at her. "Say 'Yes,'" he implored. "Or at least don't say 'No.' Say something."
"Something, then. There, let me be."
At that Annandale, who still held her, held her yet tighter. "You are the dearest girl in all the world."
Fanny gave him a little shove. "Don't do that, anyone might see you."
"Yes, and see too that you belong to me."
"I am not so sure."
"You shan't go then till you are." Annandale, as he spoke, planted himself uncircuitously before her.
"Oh," said Fanny, in a little sugary, demure voice, "if you are going to use brute force——"
"I am."
"Then I give in."
"For keeps?"
"Don't, there's my mother."
In the doorway beyond, Mrs. Price had loomed. Fanny joined her. Annandale followed, denouncing himself to the lady for the oversight that noon. Yet, whether because of that oversight of his or because of some foresight of her own, so grim was Mrs. Price that Annandale, concluding that it would be more cheerful elsewhere, turned tail, ambled out to the road and across it to the sea wall, where he sat and kicked his heels and told himself that he was engaged.
In the telling he lost himself in impossibilities and wondered how it would fare with him and how with Sylvia could the past be mended and the old plans mature. For though Fanny allured, Sylvia enchained. Fanny was delicious. But he fancied that other men had found her so. He fancied that her heart had been an inn, and he knew that Sylvia's was a home. Yetfrom that he was barred. To those that lack homes hotels are convenient.
Across the way meanwhile Mrs. Price was very busy. In looming on the veranda it had seemed to her that her daughter and that man were occupied with certain ceremonies. Regarding them she attacked the girl at once.
"You have not taken him?" she began by way of reconnaissance.
That afternoon Fanny had visited ruins. There were others more personal that she was viewing then, the ruins of fair things not dead but destroyed.
"Answer me," Mrs. Price commanded.
The girl started. But she had been far away—in that lovely land where dreams come true and then, it may be, turn into nightmares. Through the dreams hand in hand with Loftus she had been strolling. Now she must put them all away.
"Answer me," Mrs. Price repeated.
"I am afraid so."
Into a misty and deserted parlor of the Inn Mrs. Price pulled the girl and there let fire.
"Afraid! You ought to be! What will your father say?"
The father here projected was a gentleman whoresided abroad and who seldom opened his mouth except to put something in it.
"And Fred!"
Fred was Fanny's brother, a young chap whose opinions were of no value to anyone, himself included.
"And everybody!"
Everybody was the upper current of social life.
"And Sylvia!"
The earlier shots had not inflicted any visible damage, but this must have told.
"I shall have to write to her," Fanny with unusual meekness replied.
"Yes, do. Do by all means. Tell her you have taken her leavings. And why? Merciful heavens, why? If you were as staid and stiff as she I could understand. But a girl like you, with your tastes, your extravagances, a girl with a national reputation for beauty, to go and accept twenty-five thousand a year is—is—sinful, that's what it is. Your own father has that, and on it we are out at elbows. It is just about enough for you to dress on. Oh, Fanny, Fanny!"
Hysterically the old lady waved her hands. "Oh, Fanny, I have so prayed that you would make a brilliant match. I have scrimped and saved that youmight, and you go and take a blond beast of a pauper. It is too cruel!"
Fanny winced. It was cruel. But the cruelty was not hers. It was Fate's. She too had hoped for the very marriage her mother had so ardently desired. But Loftus had not cared. Occupied elsewhere he had sailed away. As well then Annandale as another.
"You see, you know," she said in a wretched effort at smoothing things over, "he is quite a hero."
But this was too much. Mrs. Price shook her head like a battle horse and fairly neighed.
"Because he saved your clothes? If it had been your life and you had said 'Thank you' it would have been ample. But your clothes! Not mine; the beast had not sense enough for that, but yours! I do hope you will give that as an excuse to Sylvia!"
SYLVIA had gone from Newport. She was then at Lenox. It was there the previous autumn that her interest in Annandale had begun. The interest had so deepened that she gave him her heart. Never before had she given that to anyone. Annandale had taken it and then, one night, he had so bruised it that she thought it broken. He had written that he had not meant to. His letter had been full of regrets, of protestations, of bad grammar. Such things may palliate, but they do not cure. Only time can do that.
Time is a strange emollient. In its mysterious potency it softens without our knowledge. Suddenly a whisper, a breeze that passes, shows that it has done its work. With Sylvia time was having its will. Furtively she had found herself wondering, as Annandale had wondered, how it should fare with her, and how with him, could the past be effaced and the olddays renewed. But those days were gone, she decided. Though into that decision a doubt would creep, not indeed concerning the departure, but concerning her attitude and the justice of it.
Annandale had sinned. He had sinned wantonly, grievously. From an atmosphere of vice—an atmosphere from which, under pain of her displeasure, she had distinctly warned him—he had staggered to her, its pollution about him, reeking with drink, talking abundantly about nothing imaginable, and at her just remonstrance had become instantly irritable, refusing almost to leave the house.
So had his condition and the spectacle of it shocked her that, for awhile, memory of him and of it was repellent. In her own eyes she felt degraded. That men drank, she knew. But in her sphere of life they drank either moderately or else in haunts invisible to her. And it was precisely from such a haunt he had come, a shameless haunt, one that sullied her even to know of.
Yes, he had sinned, wantonly, grievously, almost unforgivably. Almost, she reflected, but perhaps not quite. In his letter of protest and regret he had told her that he remembered nothing, nothing whatever, absolutely nothing at all, save one vague, brief vision of herself. The rest, the beginning, the end, the inter-spaceswere, he assured her, blank. At first she had thought that sheer nonsense. But, later, the earnest way in which it was put impressed her. Then on the heels of that communication there had followed one from Orr, indorsing what Annandale said, declaring that it was all quite possible, adding that, in certain temperaments, memory when influenced by toxics will play tricks stranger than the average mind can comfortably credit.
These letters she had not answered. Logically she could not admit the validity of the statements which they contained. But the heart has logic which logic does not know. Then, too, is there not that within us that prompts us to believe less what we should than what we wish? Sylvia's reason, guided by her inexperience, refused at first to accept the idea that any sane man could act as Annandale had and afterward be oblivious of it. That remorse there should be was only natural, but that there should be no memory of anything whatever seemed to her absurd.
But there was her cousin's assurance to the contrary. Then imperceptibly, little by little, that assurance, filtering through the saddened girl, took possession of her, insisting on recognition, telling her that, though her lover had erred, yet, in erring, he was more to be pitied than condemned. Dominated bydrink, which, Orr added, he had promised to renounce, he had gone to that haunt and, contaminated there, knew not what he did. But she, instead of realizing that, she who was to have been his in sickness and health, for better, for worse, she, in her pride, had dismissed him.
He had erred, Sylvia told herself, deeply, grievously, but so, too, had she. She had condemned when she should have condoned; she had spurned him when it was her solicitude that he needed.
At the sure cognition of that, it was as though from her eyes a bandage had fallen. Then at once in her tender conscience she beheld herself, detestable in pride, a girl without a heart, one of whom he, no doubt, was well rid of.
It was during the process of this awakening that the conflagration at Narragansett Pier occurred. Sylvia read of it. She read, too, of certain prowesses which the dismissed had displayed.
The account, very inexact as such accounts always are, was also highly colored, spun out for space purposes for much more than the space was worth. Had you not known better you would have taken it for granted that the heroism of Annandale was on a par with that of Leonidas at Thermopylæ and even of Roosevelt at San Juan. It quite stirred you.
It stirred Sylvia. The paper fell from her. But the past returned. At once it seemed to her that it might be mended and the old days renewed. The hero of whom the paper told she knew now that she had wholly loved, and she knew, too, that wholly she still loved him.
Time had done its work ridiculously, inopportunely, yet effectively at last. But the gates of life are double. On one stands written "Too Soon." On the other "Too Late." It is unfortunate to get wedged between them. Of that fact Sylvia became rapidly aware. On the morrow she began a letter to Annandale. Before it was finished there came one from Fanny, announcing that she was to be Annandale's wife.
In certain crises of the emotions there is a certain sense of unreality. Even as Sylvia read what Fanny said she could not grasp it. When presently she did, she could not believe it. But there it was. Then immediately she experienced the agony which comes when we battle in dream with the intangible and the dread, when we know it is dream and yet feel it is death.
"It is all my fault," she cried. She found but that. At the moment she was in that condition which precedes the great commotion of tears, when the strangulationof agony is subsiding and contracted nerves distend. But the tears did not come. The pain was infinite. There was a weight which she felt not without but within, a weight so heavy that she thought she could not bear it. It racked her. Only her mind was active. "It is my fault," she repeated. Then she added, "And my cross."
From a crisis such as this, in a nature such as hers, the soul issues as from an orgy. It has supped on sorrow. It is fed. It ceases to look back. It looks forward, marveling indeed that it should look at all, yet looking. Life's burdens are more bearable than the despairful think. Until the eyes are closed and the heart no longer beats, in some way, somehow, they can be carried.
Sylvia took up her cross. It was leaden. But in the effort she was aided. Pride helped her. The assistance of pride may be poor, yet is it not better than none? To Sylvia it was useful. It enabled her to answer Fanny's letter.
"You have my congratulations, Fanny dear," she wrote, "all of them, my best and warmest, and so has Arthur too. Please say so to him and tell him that, in marrying by dearest friend, he and I must be dear friends also."
Then the tears did come, swiftly, like the ripple of the rain. On the table where she sat she put her head down and sobbed, paroxysmally, as sobs a child.