t: SSIN Pr*. ESTHER ^> LUCIA -CHAMBERLAINf MRS. ESSINGTON UNIV. OF CAtlF. LIBRARY. LOS k - MRS. TON Th -party Mrs. Essington MRS. ESSINGTON The Romance of a House-party BY. ESTHER AND LUCIA CHAMBERLAIN WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HENRY HUTT NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1905 Copyright, 1905, by THE CENTURY Co. Published May, laoj THE DE VINNE PRESS CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE i THE HOUSE-PARTY EXPLAINS ITSELF, AND GETS INTO A FOG 3 ii JULIA STEPS OUT OF IT, AND ANSWERS A QUES- TION 24 in MRS. ESSINGTON RUNS AWAY FROM HERSELF 44 IV LONGACRE RUNS AFTER 54 v THE PURSUER is CAPTURED 77 vi THAIR PUTS IN HIS FINGER; CISSY HER FOOT 101 vn THE HOUSE- PARTY IN THE STORM . . . .118 vin LONGACRE TRAPS HIMSELF 139 ix MRS. ESSINGTON SAYS "No" 162 x THE MAD RIDING 171 xi THE WHITE DARKNESS 190 xn MRS. ESSINGTON SAYS "YES" 205 xin THAIR CONGRATULATES 229 xiv THE QUEEN'S COURTESY 236 2126188 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Mrs. Essington Frontispiece FACING PAGE ' Oh, it 's been wretched! ' " . . . ... . 92 Her skirts held high above her pretty, preposter- ous shoes" 116 ' For God's sake don't cry ! ' " 154 < Are you ready ?'" 174 Such a strange Julia !" 232 MRS. ESSINGTON MRS. ESSINGTON CHAPTER I THE HOUSE-PARTY EXPLAINS ITSELF, AND GETS INTO A FOG SPILL, I don't reconcile you with that lot," the young man broke out, after a silence that had lasted long enough to be intimate. He leaned toward her across the space between the two chairs, lifting his voice a little to be heard above the racket of the car-wheels. The woman did not directly reply, unless there was an answer in the small profile smile she gave him. She had sat for the past ten minutes admirably still, her face turned from 3 MRS. ESSINGTON him, her eyes on the flat blue-green of onion- fields interminably wheeling past the window. " I mean," he presently went on in his easy fashion, "they 're hardly your sort. Oh, good people, but dullish, you know ; the kind you never put up with unless you have to." She gave him again the flitting, profile smile, with an added twinkle, from which his face seemed to catch illumination ; and, for a moment, they smiled together with the hint of some common reminiscence. " At all events," he came back again, " I can't see why you, of all people, would be going to the Budds ! " She moved at last, turning a full look upon him. The supple bend of her long throat, and the cool gray light of her eyes in the warm shadow of their lashes, touched him like a harmony in music. The beauty and eloquence of her movements had always appealed to him as her special charm. His 4 THE HOUSE-PARTY eyes followed the flowing lines of her attitude more attentively than his ears followed the first part of her reply. "No, they 're not our sort," she spoke with slight emphasis on the pronoun, " and " the subtle modelings around her mouth sha- dowed a smile " we '11 probably bore them horribly. But I 'm going for the same reason that you are. You know I have never met Julia Budd." " But I have," said Fox Longacre, flushing a little, his blue eyes steadily meeting her bright gaze. " Which comes, does n't it, to the same thing? Are n't we both going to 'Mira- mar ' to see Miss Budd ? " " She 's lovely to look at," he admitted. " And not in other ways *? " He seemed to ponder this, his clever young face puckered with an exaggeration of gravity. He gave it up with a puzzled laugh. 5 MRS. ESSINGTON " Ton my word, I don't know ! That 's what I 'm going for." " To find out ? " "Oh, whether she is perfectly charming, or just the other thing." It struck her that his manner was more offhand than the occasion required that the alternative he had just so gaily admitted troubled him more than he wished her to know. But Florence Essington knew, in spite of him, more than she looked, and much more than she said. She felt that she at least fore- saw so much that to spare herself the train of thought she answered him in quite another vein. " You know, Tony," she said, with that little, settling movement women use to begin a gossip, " what really amuses me is that we have n't at least I have n't the slightest idea, not a glimmer, what people Mrs. Budd will be asking down. She hardly knows me, 6 THE HOUSE-PARTY has n't seen me since I left school for Paris don't you dare to mention how long ago! And yet she fairly threatened me into it, eyes popping and every hair a-quiver. I quite got the feeling that she wants something of me." "Of course," he grinned cheerfully, "they always do." " But something special." " Letters of introduction *? " he hazarded. " It 's quite on the cards. They '11 be going to London next season, if she does n't but, of course, you know what she 's after/' "Not, at any rate,jy ick ;i h? gave her swallowed her tears, fancies they engendered. *," he said, *' you 've been always ae. You never think of getting, even take what belongs to you he opera, and whatever I may do wiy, years ago you gave me all 1 it, and you refused it on my \ said ! What a reason ! " He re- yith a fierce head-shake. " When ving your brain, your strength, hy won't you ' Much 'Oh, it's been wretched!'" THE PURSUER IS CAPTURED but the blood, mounting to his face, only gave him a more headlong impetuousness. His answer was as direct as Holden could have made : " Is that yes ? " " Why not ? " she faltered, her eyes full upon him. " Good Lord ! " his voice was thick " then there need be no end to anything ! " He stooped with that incalculable impulse of his. She swayed away from him. Her black fan seemed to brush him back. " 'Sh ! " her warning hand was on his. Tall, slightly stooping, Charlie Thair stood between the potted palms, blinking at them out of his narrow eyes. One could not know how much they had seen. They seemed to have seen simply nothing. " I have," he murmured, " constituted my- self a relief expedition. You did very well," he said to Longacre. " I have spent three quarters of a waltz hunting." " I did the best I could." Longacre's 93 MRS. ESSINGTON cheerful impudence covered the situation. " You ought to give up sooner, old man." Florence felt half shocked, half relieved, to hear them talking thus, as they would have talked if there had been no situation. But she left the responsibility with Longacre. She nodded casually enough to him as she went away with Thair. But, for all her light- ness, she could not conceal the evidences of what had happened to her. She dared not give her eyes all the light they knew, and still Thair wondered at their brightness. She could not keep the caress out of her voice. Her laugh lay too near her lips. Her breast heaved too high. She saw that Thair noticed it, but she felt it no longer mattered. Whom she danced with, what she said, she hardly knew. "Is that yes?" she heard Longacre saying, and then her answer : " Why not?" Why not ? Had she thought herself old? Her pulse was a girl's, her color inconstant, 94 THE PURSUER IS CAPTURED her heart quick and irregular. She saw him across the crowd a look. It was like a hand laid in her own. Was she beginning - to live over again ? Had he, for what she had given him, repaid her with youth ? She was splendid in the flower of her mood. She saw Julia Budd amid the crowd, dis- tinct from it, yet somehow less vital a colorful, restless-eyed ghost. Among the dis- persing dancers with the carriages at the door, and the morning faint yellow through the banana leaves Julia passed her with the others, a dimly disturbing spirit. There was something searching, seeking, baffled in the look she gave Longacre as he helped her into the carryall. He was so vital, so alive, that he seemed to have taken from Julia some of her gorgeous magnetism. But Florence knew it was from another source the vitality had sprung. She was flushed and warm and sparkling with the thought of it. It kept her brilliant through^ 95 MRS. ESSINGTON the long ride back in the cold sea wind toward the cold saffron east. She was a whirl of feeling. She rushed along with her sensations as if she dared not think. The spin of the automobile helped her. But when the rapid motion in the sharp half-light had changed for the long upward house-stair ; when Longacre's good night was but the memory of a hand-clasp around her fingers, then she hurried to escape what was crowding on her elation. She shut the door of her room. She locked it ; but the shadow that threatened had been too quick for her. The four walls closed it in. She turned up all the lights in the room. In their glare the shadow was fainter. She drew the curtains over the windows. She shut herself away from the growing light. She saw an image in her glass, a woman who loved, and was loved again, bright-eyed, hectic. The room was too small to hold her. The walls weighed down upon her. r 96 THE PURSUER IS CAPTURED Her heart was too small to hold her happi- ness. Was it for that reason it ached, that it lay lead in her breast ? And the fullness in her throat tears of joy? It was very near to anguish. She tried to recall Longacre's face when he questioned, " Is that yes ? " But she only saw the confused distraction with which he had answered Julia's seeking look. She knew he belonged to her as never before. But she felt guilty, uneasy, criminal. She was suffering. She pressed her hands on her smarting eyes, with her old impulse for reason crying, " Why ? " What had she done? Whom had she robbed? She had only taken what was hers. Rather, it had been given freely, freely, she told herself in- sistently. Surely they belonged to each other, herself and the man she loved. What had the other people to do with it ? Whom had she wronged? She flung herself on her bed. The tumult 97 MRS. ESSINGTON of brain and soul ran out in tears. Triumph, strength, color, hope, were flowing from her ; but the figures of the dark spelled out words before her closed, unsleeping eyes motives that she had obscured, meanings that had been dim. Whom had she wronged? One figure filled her inturned sight. The man she loved stood there, accusing her. The wrong she had done was between the two of them. To him she must answer, " What had she done ? " the poor ghost seemed to ask. She had made him. For what? That question stared at her horribly. " For him- self," she tried to answer. It had been true in past years, but now it was inexplicably false. For herself, now. She would have hidden from the truth, but it was too quick for her. She lay still, seeing it all, flinching, but looking it in the face. She had had much to give him ; and she 98 THE PURSUER IS CAPTURED had given it. She had helped him over his hard road a road which, without her, he might have found too steep and narrow. Now she had come to the end. How did she know she broke in pas- sionately upon her reason that if he wanted her, he no longer needed her? But some- thing deeper than reason, deeper than pas- sion, assured her of the dreary truth. The very years sundered them, and each succeed- ing year would widen the breach. She, in her prime, in the full power of her faculties and charm ten years would find her old, years that would leave him young. After what was there after that"? If she could do no more, if she loved him, must she let him go ? That was the bitter- est ! To step out of the way. To make her- self forgotten ! When she rose the east shone palely bright through her windows. She turned out the sickly lights, thrust back the curtains, and 99 MRS. ESSINGTON let the sharp, merciless morning fill the room. Seeing her reflection in the mirror, she seemed to face her actual self. Her cheeks were white, the shadows under her eyes blu- ish; from nostril to mouth the lines were long and hard. But it was easier to look this self in the face than the other of the night before. Here there was nothing hid- den, no unknown horror at her back, no shadow to engulf her. Everything was clearly defined. Now that she was in the midst of the shadow, it was less black than gray ; but she wondered whether fire would not have been a relief from that interminably dreary hue that infinitely surrounded her. 100 CHAPTER VI THAIR PUTS IN HIS FINGER; CISSY HER FOOT lounging down to breakfast the morning after the dance, found Cissy Fitz Hugh alone over a demoralized table. She gave him a nod that was cousinly in its curtness, shoved the muffins a little way toward him, and relapsed into an unwonted obliviousness. Reminiscently smiling, Thair watched her a moment before baiting her gently. " My good Cicely, you 're not very fit this morning," he presently brought out with family frankness. She twitched the ruffles of her morning- 101 MRS. ESSINGTON gown, drew a plump hand up the sweep of her back hair, and launched at him : " Well, I 'd like to know who is after last night! Emma Budd is simply twittering. That great girl of hers is more dreadful than ever ! It simply gets on my nerves. They 're all in such a state ! " " Except " he blinked at her. " I 'm sure Mrs. Essington looks the worst of the lot." " Who mentioned Mrs. Essington ? " His eyebrows were exclamation-points. " Well, then who are you talking about ? I do wish, Charlie, you would sometimes say what you mean ! " "Oh, why, so long as 7, at least, mean what I say." " Oh, well, if you 're going to be hateful ! You were horrid enough last night ! " Cissy whined. " It was with the best intentions," he as- sured her. 102 THAIR . . . AND CISSY " Of course ! I 've noticed if any one ever does a thoroughly stupid thing, it 's always with the best intentions ! And your bundling that girl into the back seat with me, when I 'd asked you, and was so counting on Mr. Longacre when you promised " " Oh, why not promise ? " His tone was gentle resignation, a wicked consciousness in his half-shut eyes. "Well, you are a beast!" Cissy gasped. It was outrageous, such outspoken depravity ! " Oh, let me have my finger in the pie," he pleaded. " I wanted your Longacre some- where else. If he must make love to some one, why not to Julia *? It would be so awfully convenient for me, you know." "Well, he did n't!" said Cissy, trium- phantly. " No, he did not," Thair admitted grace- fully. "Nor to you. We all go into the same ditch." " I don't know what you mean." In their 103 MRS. ESSINGTON conversations this was the chronic state of Cissy's intelligence. Thair smiled pleasantly. But her next move brought him up roundly. " Who are you talking about ? " " Whom ? " He was imperturbably vague about her personal application. " Who did he make love to"? " On this, Thair's air of being delicately shocked was maddening. " My good Cicely, how should I know ? If you knew," he pursued with an air of mam- moth secrecy, " what I was up to " But his diplomacy was outstripped by her sharpness. " Well, I do know. So far as any one could see, you spent the evening hunting for " her flash of revelation snapped the situation like a trap " Mrs. Essington ! " She leaned across the table, flushed, gaping a little in eagerness. " Well, and you found her ! " She threw it straight at him. " Charlie, you do know something ! " 104 THAIR . ... AND CISSY " Flattered, Cicely ; properly flattered." His look was over her shoulder toward the windows. " One good turn deserves another," he said. " Mrs. Essington is now hunting for us." Cissy's startled turn gave her, through the expanse of glass, the glimpse of a passing profile, pale against a parasol of rose. This fleeting profile had seemed to Thair rarely luminous, lighted with a delicate life of its own, an atmosphere excluding the crowd of them. But when she stood in the door he was startled. She was the sharpest, palest, unhappiest substance of the vision. That false radiance of hers was furled in her hand just an arrangement of silk and sun! Poor dear ! Cissy's shot was, after all, nearer the mark. She did look "the worst of the lot." Vibrating through her house with a roving eye to the agreeable disposition of her guests 105 MRS. ESSINGTON tucked away among remote book-shelves, and in angles of the veranda, Mrs. Budd had more than ever the air of a great, impulsive girl suddenly smitten with middle age, and trying to make the best of it. She was younger far than Florence Essington, younger than Cissy Fitz Hugh, younger even than her own daughter, whom she presently came upon, teasing the dachshunds on the grass- plot beside the "glass room." The girl was on her knees. Each separate thread of her gorgeous bush of hair glisten- ing in the dazzle of the late morning sun, her flushing cheeks, her somber brows, her hot, bright eyes, were all a part of the ripple of color and motion she made in the dead, warm greenness. The two long, wriggling dogs threw themselves upon her with yelps and scramblings. She tossed them back, rolled them off their feet, tousled and worried them with gurgles of joy and foolish, tender mutterings. 106 THAIR . . . AND CISSY Her mother's shadow, falling across her, brought up her eyes in a quick flash of rec- ognition. " Oh, mama, the darlings ! Look ! The angels ! See him snap ! Do look now, mama ! Oh, you did n't look quick enough ! " Mrs. Budd's eyes absently took in the en- circling shrubbery, the walk to their right, thinly veiled with straggling fennel, and came back to her daughter's lovely face with a sort of puzzled helplessness. " Yes, pettie, yes ; they 're very nice. But what a way to spend the morning ! " Julia sat back on her heels. Her great brows, curved to a peak, spelled innocent in- terrogation. " For mercy's sake, why not, mama ? " "Well, I 'm sure I don't know," Mrs. Budd began with a gush, trailing off dimly " but with so many people about people to be pleasant to why should n't you just be pleasant ? " 107 MRS. ESSINGTON " Pleasant ? Am I not pleasant, mama ? To whom ? " "Why, everybody, dearie; and Mr. Thair!" "But I am pleasant to Charlie Thair, mama. I 'm very, very pleasant." " Yes, yes, pet, you are. Only how shall one tell the child? not quite, dearie, so pleasant as if you cared " Mrs. Budd stopped short, a little flustered with her own indelicacy, finishing the sentence with eyes and hands. In all her talks with Julia she had not before come quite so near to put- ting it plainly. Of the two, Julia, looking gravely into her mother's face, was the least embarrassed. " But I don't," she said simply. " But try, pettie ; try to ! " Mrs. Budd's voice was anxious, pleading. "Mother wishes it so much." Julia bowed her head over the nearest dachshund, turned his collar with deliberate 108 THAIR . . . AND CISSY fingers. She was frankly gaining time, cast- ing about for some likely means to put off her own realization of the subject that made the air fairly electric between them. This she seemed to find in the young man who stepped out of the glass room upon the lawn, a little dazed in the noon glare. Her appeal was a sweet, ringing cry. " Oh, Mr. Longacre ! " Seeing them together, he stood a minute, seemed to hesitate, then came toward them over the grass; hatless in the sunshine, he looked fair, and a little dreamy. His finger kept the place in his book. Mrs. Budd surveyed him with a solicitude amounting to annoyance. She turned on her daughter, her mouth shaped for speech, but his quick approach gave her no time. It was Julia who took up the snapped thread of talk in a fluttering sentence : " It 's my dogs Mr. Longacre I I 109 MRS. ESSINGTON wanted you to see them." She was flushed, forehead to chin. " Oh ! " He seemed to just arrive at what was expected of him. " They 're very nice ones." The flatness of it left all three stranded in uncomfortable silence. The thought in each mind of how much might be said, were one of the others away, kept them from saying anything through an interminable moment that merged unexpectedly into a common in- terest. It centered in a single figure loung- ing across the lawn from the breakfast-room. Thair came slowly, his chin in the air, a dead cigarette in his fingers. Julia frowned. Mrs. Budd rustled. Thair strolled, stopping to pluck an oleander, then tossing it away. Mrs. Budd struggled with the situation. She half turned to Longacre. Her eyes fol- lowed the fennel path. Again she opened her lips, with the odd effect of making her seem- ingly the author of Thair's dilatory drawl. 1 10 THAIR . . . AND CISSY " I am an agitator," he announced at large, " a disturber of the existing state of affairs." His amused eyes lingered a moment on Julia's anticipatory stare, on Longacre's air of ready- for-anything. He addressed himself exclu- sively to Mrs. Budd. " Mrs. Essington has been wondering whether this was the morning you were going to show her whatever it was about the Japanese chrys- anthemum." " Oh ! " Mrs. Budd clapped her hand to her cheek. It was a gesture she had when suddenly remembering. "That 's all I know what she said." Thair was deliberate. " She was coming out, but I appointed myself ambassador." " Oh, why, I " Mrs. Budd began. The good lady was fairly cornered. "Oh, then," she said, with a last hope, "I '11 leave you three young people here together." "But," Thair protested, " I am curious my- 111 MRS. ESSINGTON self to know what it is about the what 's-its- name chrysanthemum." She was already in full retreat for the house hair, skirts, sleeves all a-flutter. The look she gave him over her shoulder was despair ; but he, imperturbable, dropped into her wake, tossing his dead cigarette into the oleanders. The quality of the silence these two left behind them was of a different sort from the triangular uneasiness of the moment before. It was one with the life of the hot, green circle of garden. Something inarticulate, more simple than thought, seemed to pass between the two. The girl, still on her knees, but drawn erect, head lifted, eyes blank, looked, listening. Even thus, what height she had, what length of line ! What strength in that flat white wrist, what vital color in her face, what daring in the back fling of the head ! Longacre thought he had never seen her more splendid. Yet why was she grown , 112 THAIR . . . AND CISSY suddenly little to him, helpless, and protect- able? He looked down at the sun on her dark head. There rioted in him a reasonless desire to put his arms around it to comfort her, to hold her ! To hold her ! Why, what was this *? When had he ever ? Florence ! The whole of the evening before came over him. That was all so sure and right ! This ? He was sick with himself. He was torn with a divided sense of reparation to Florence and, somehow, in some way, reparation here ! Some of the stress of it, in his face looking down, met her lifted eyes. She seemed to absorb, without comprehending, his trouble. She was only suddenly conscious and uncom- fortable. She got to her feet without the help of his hand, laughing nervously, biting her lips. " Oh, how how stupid of me, Mr. Long- acre when I called you over to put my pups through their paces. We '11 do it now ! " She was eagerly rolling her handkerchief MRS. ESSINGTON into a ball. She poised it for throwing, and looked about a trifle blankly. " Why, where are they ? They 're gone ! Stars! Stripes! Here, boys!" She whistled. She frowned. " Oh, no, no ; never mind," Longacre be- gan earnestly ; " really, I 'd rather " She cut him short. " Then come and look at the oleanders. We 've all sorts. Mama loves them. They are lovely, but not sweet, you know. / don't love them." She led across the open lawn toward the thicket of blazing color that hedged it on the house side. Longacre followed a pace behind, the word " sweet " repeating itself aimlessly in his head. He was vexed by the confusion of this end- ing to their perfect moment. He stood list- lessly beside her, inattentive to her naming over the varieties, watching the quick turns, from side to side, of the long line of her throat. 114 THAIR . . . AND CISSY If such were to be his feelings, better to be away! In this position, with their backs to the garden, without seeing, they were seen by two turning the crook in the fennel walk, and thus quite innocently had the effect of check- ing the flow of extraordinarily amiable chat with which these two had, for the last five minutes, beguiled the time while waiting for Mrs. Budd and Thair. Cissy stopped short, peering through the feathery green. Florence knew that the other two there in the sun were the logical result of what she had sent Thair to accomplish, what through the night she had made out was due to Long- acre his chance to be sure of himself, to see just where he stood. Did he ? Had he ? If not, he must have more time. In giving him that, she would have done what she could. He must see it through his own eyes. She could n't, with straight words, let him MRS. ESSINGTON go. But she could help him to seeing ; she could let him alone. She turned to go on, but Cissy had assured herself, through her peep-hole, of the identity of the person she sought. "There 's dear Julia," she tinkled. "I have n't seen her this morning. I must I really must speak to her ! " She made a preliminary movement toward an opening in the fennel, her skirts held high above her pretty, preposterous shoes. " Oh, would you ? " Something in the tone made Cissy feel ridiculous. She hesitated, hating to meet the other woman's look. She raised her voice. " I 'm sure I don't see why not ! " Florence saw Longacre turn as Cissy flounced through the hedge ; then she went quickly up the path without looking back. Her eyes took in the sudden flight of a linnet out of a cypress bough, the flickering shad- ows of the fennel blurring the walk, and the 116 .jViA ^< ) on, gh her j>crson she Krnt toward 5 held high Cissy feel to me< ic went i linne' sha.- " Her skirts held high above her pretty, preposterous shoes' THAIR . . . AND CISSY white glass-room door at the end. Her ears heard a hurrying tread behind her. She felt the urge of pursuit, a keen joy that he still would, though he should not ! Her whiteness flickered among the shad- ows as she fled ; and he followed. He caught her in the sun, at the door of the glass room. " Oh, you ! " he said, a little breathless, and laughing up at her from the steps below. She looked at him silently, still of a mind for flight, her hand on the door. It opened suddenly inward, and presented them, face to face, with Holden, who stood, hands jammed into the bulging pockets of his old shooting- coat. " You folks don't care much for your com- plexions, out there in the hot sun," he said. But he looked at Florence. CHAPTER VII THE HOUSE-PARTY IN THE STORM THE breeze, which at noon had barely rustled the chrysanthe- mums, an hour later was tossing the pampas plumes across the lawn, and whipping the great sapphire of the sea into broken green and white. There was something ruffling to temper in the dry, beating breath. Hammocks were empty, the garden deserted. The hardiest of the house-party huddled on the veranda behind the Samoan blinds that snapped in the heavy wind. It was not the " trade " blowing in from sea salt and dreamy with far going but a land wind driving down through the mountains, stinging with sharp odors of 118 IN THE STORM dust and dry leaves the very dregs of summer. The sun went down through a wrack of broken clouds into a thundering ocean. To the party gathered around the hall hearth, and straggling up to the first turn of the stair, the garden appeared a writhing, twist- ing thing, crowded upon, and threatened by the raw, gray twilight. Bowed trees and lashing vines were the more piteous that there was no storm but the ceaseless wind stream- ing by, roaring across the roof, shaking the window-casings, beating the flowers flat. The wild night offered to those about the fire the opportunity of drawing together; but the uneasiness, the inexplicable, mutual distrust of people aware of strong cross-cur- rents under the surface of living, separated them. Their common isolation, even their common shelter, failed to unite them. The curiosity, careless or eager, with which they had met one another on the first even- 119 MRS. ESSINGTON ing the interest for inexperienced person- alities had been replaced by a sharp, per- sonal thread in the web propinquity weaves. Each was no longer a watcher of, but an actor in, a drama, and each more or less dis- satisfied with the part assigned him. Their undermined sociability was apparent in wandering eyes, shifting groups, flurries of talk running into blind alleys. Who could have helped through the interminable evening, would not. Julia refused to sing. Thair read. Longacre intrenched himself with round-cheeked Bessie Lewis against the fear of being asked to play. He was bored with his predicament, and puzzled as to why Florence had chosen to sit with Cissy and Holden. Florence, irresolute, wretchedly at odds with herself, hated the sight of this collection of people. She was glad to get away to her room. The great sound of the wind, surg- ing by the windows, helped to lull her strug- 120 IN THE STORM gling motives ; and waking in the night to a gush of roaring rain, she felt singularly at peace, consoled by the unhesitating strength of the storm. But the dull face of the next morning was a depressing outlook. The gray sheet of the storm blotted out dunes and sea. The close damp of the first rains, imperfectly dispersed' by too lately kindled fires, filled the rooms with its vague discomfort. The house-party displayed the hectic amia- bility of people whose breeding does not per- mit them to betray their disgust at being, for a number of days, cooped up together be- tween the same four walls. The youngsters' ill-humor deplored the postponed hunting. The elders hopelessly cited instances of October rains that had cleared with the first sunset. Mrs. Budd apologized for the weather as she would have for an overdone entree. Her guests re- sponded in scattering chorus. 121 MRS. ESSINGTON It was "jolly" "a lark" "just the thing for a quiet day ! " a round of depre- cation that failed to leave them otherwise than chilly and damp. It was not an at- mosphere that clung to them, but rather one they exhaled one that existed in the face of the most flourishing of fires, that clouded the most amiable game of billiards, that sharp- ened the most friendly exchange of opinion. The out-of-doors that had offered such excel- lent opportunities for escaping themselves, or one another, was denied them. They were forced to face conditions that two days had created conditions of which all understood too much to. be unconcerned ; of which no one knew the whole. Even Florence, who perhaps understood most, was bewildered completely on one point. But that was not Longacre's place in the web. His figure to her was clear in the foreground. His be- wilderment in her sudden change; his en- deavor to bridge this distance she had so 122 IN THE STORM suddenly forced between them, to win back what had been given and then so tacitly, so inexplicably withdrawn, made her suffer. That first day was little less than a battle be- tween their two wills. At what effort she maintained toward him the kindness of her smile, the quiescence of her feeling, the resolution not to avoid him, she did not realize herself. It impressed her that he sought her out more than usual. Formerly they had avoided marked associa- tion in a crowd. Now, was he avoiding some one else ? Irritable, moody, he seemed most at ease with her, yet, otherwise than his wont, had little to say; and his eyes were more often away from her, following another's coming and going. That tall Julia carried the shadow of the storm in her face. She looked cloudy. She was pale. Then, feeling a certain pair of eyes upon her, out flashed the color like a suddenly blossomed flower. All at once she 123 MRS. ESSINGTON seemed to mean something more than youth and beauty. She was less intent upon herself, more sensitive to who came and went; and sometimes her glance was backward across her shoulder, as if aware of one behind her. Whose those fancied footsteps were, Florence had no doubt. But this was the knot she could not unravel: just what did Longacre mean to Julia ? How much could she be to him? A consciousness in her bearing toward him made it never twice the same now imperi- ous, now timid ; now making advances, now repelling ; but indifferent never. More often Florence thought she looked bewildered, as though something infallible had failed her. And though at times she filled the room with her rich voice speaking, laughing, singing at times she stilled and drew away from the others, and bent her black brows on the storm outside in a passionate brooding, as if, by her very desire for release, she would es- 124 IN THE STORM cape the confining house, and pierce the clouds, and find the sun. To Florence the house was nothing else than a shelter from herself. In its restrained atmosphere, hemmed in by the monotonous, dripping rain, it was easier to lose emotion, to keep a quiet pulse; easier also to perceive in what direction these people, forced into constant conjunction of contradictory motives, would turn circumstance. However strongly she herself desired to mold it, she felt that now she must leave it alone. Even the fact of Cissy Fitz Hugh's persistent hovering in Julia's vicinity, mischievous as it looked, might only serve to shape events the faster. Undoubtedly Cissy meant mischief, and though in sticking herself so fast to Julia she was more adroit than Florence had thought possible, her lack of imagination limited her. She annoyed the girl like a buzzing insect. Julia tried to shake her off. But Cissy had intrenched herself in a cast-iron sweetness 125 MRS. ESSINGTON that no impatience could ruffle, no rebuff shatter. She had a very sharp eye on her cousin Thair. She suspected him. She could n't get at him. That illuminating talk of theirs over the breakfast-table had given her a clue. Longacre did have a fancy for Florence Es- sington ! Cissy imagined every man had a fancy for herself until it was proved other- wise. Well, now it was proved otherwise ; but as long as a man was within reach she felt him securable. But Thair had suggested Julia. This was troublesome ! Julia was a beauty. Julia must be kept off, dragged off, until she could finally be scared away. It was only while strolling in the conser- vatory with her arm around Julia's waist, or playing Julia's accompaniments an office Longacre uneasily avoided that Cissy felt at all safe. She was dropping hints all round the margin of what she wanted to say. But Julia was too absorbed in new, mysterious 126 IN THE STORM emotions ,to regard her manoeuvers. She simply did n't see them. Her abstraction was exasperating to Cissy, who was afraid to go too far. She had once seen Julia angry. She realized that the right hint, properly dropped, would comfortably bridge her dif- ficulty. But having it, how to get neatly across ? That was the point. As usual, she fell in with a splash. Toward the end of the second afternoon of storm, with the rain clattering on the west front of the glass room, she followed in Julia's wake up and down among the fragile ferns. The girl's eyes were earnestly on the flowers, but Cissy's were everywhere toward the window, as if expecting to see some one in the garden; prying through the curtain chinks; then, with a quick peer of curiosity, following a shadow that through the half- open door she saw crossing the library floor. Then the piano answered to compelling fingers. It had sounded much through the past 127 MRS. ESSINGTON two days, but now it spoke. Julia lifted her head as if it had spoken to her. She did not look over her shoulder, but frowned out into the rain, and presently went on trimming her plants. Cissy, peeping between the spikes of a dwarf palm saw through the glass the out- line of a man seated, of a woman standing, her hand poised at the music-sheet on the rack. Presently she began singing, but sing- ing with a half-voice, as if she listened, fol- lowing him like an accompaniment. There was something accustomed, attuned, in their relative positions, as if they had fallen into them naturally through long habit. The sig- nificance of this touched even Cissy's thick sensibility, but only as being the very thing she wanted. " How absorbed those people are ! " she observed, with a casual nod toward the glass doors behind her. Julia gave a glance that seemed not to have noticed them before. 128 IN THE STORM " Mrs. Essington plays very well herself," she threw out carelessly. " Oh, no! " Cissy assured her. " Only a very little. But she 's so awfully interested in his work such an inspiration to him in every way ! " " Yes? " Julia snipped off the head of a cyclamen. Cissy was angry at what seemed to her obtuseness. " The only wonder is," she said a little acidly, " considering what she is to him, that he does n't marry her ! " Julia raised her head from the asparagus- fern and gave Cissy a straight look. "What are you talking about?" she flashed. Her blush was to the roots of her hair. Cissy gave a little scream of mingled sur- prise and horror. " What can you think I mean ! " She reached her arm around Julia. " Of course it 's a perfectly straight affair. He 's simply waiting for her answer." 9 129 MRS. ESSINGTON She felt the girl fairly quiver under her touch. She took one step too far. " Of course she 's years older than he, but he 's just the sort of a man to like that." Julia removed Cissy's arm from her waist much as she might have plucked offa spider, gathered up her little watering-pot and shears, and left the conservatory without a word. She crossed the library without glancing at the two by the piano. Cissy looked rather stunned. She looked curiously at the arm Julia had discarded. " Upon my word," she thought, " one would suppose I was dirty ! " She settled her combs in her sleek hair, and presently took the course Julia had fol- lowed. She did not join Florence and Long- acre, because the more she saw of Florence the more she was afraid of her. Besides, she felt a childish excitement in her cheap little role of intrigante. And there was another person upon whom she could practise it 130 IN THE STORM without fear : Mrs. Budd, more unsuspicious than her daughter, and as credulous. Poor woman ! Her outspoken, objective nature had been sorely tried by these days with so little doing on the surface of things, and so much on the under side. Her mind was a blur of conjecture over what Thair was going to do. Longacre was a disturbing ele- ment she had not named. It was Cissy who clapped on the appellation. It was Cissy who helped her to a conclusion. It all came out so casually, on the side, with the things they discussed over their lace- making in the wide-windowed upper living- room. Then it was Longacre (according to Cissy) who had kept Thair extremely sensitive at a distance : Longacre, charming, a dear but, well fond of being about married women. Cissy had had her little experience with him, and of course (magnanimously) there must be others. MRS. ESSINGTON " But if you knew: this about him and let me take such a man into my house when I have a young girl ! " But, oh, Cissy was horrified. No ! not such an attitude to Julia! Never! The point was, Did Mrs. Budd want Julia to marry such a man *? " Marry Julia ! " This was appalling. Cissy felt much satisfaction. Her inten- tion was far from cruel. She merely wanted something very much, and was trying to get it. Gaging their feelings by her own, it never occurred to her that she had more than vexed and annoyed her hostess and her hostess's daughter. And this she preferred to being vexed and annoyed herself. But the circumstances, upon which she had laid such bold hands, burst from her grasp and rushed past her. Yet Cissy was not aware of their progress. It was Florence Essington who first felt their precipitation. She foreboded a crisis. 132 IN THE STORM With the waning afternoon the veil of the rain lifted and showed the long hook of the coast edged with leaping breakers, and a hurly-burly of high clouds tearing across the sky. The sun went down with streamers of yellow through the breaking storm. But the voice of the ocean grew louder with the wilder wind, until by fall of night its pulse was in the very timbers of the house. Its tumult assailed the very doors. The house-party met over the tea-cups with such a sense of excitement as they might have felt aboard ship in a gale, an exhilara- tion that, by its feverishness, was the reaction from the depression of their immurement It was the last of the rain, Holden pre- dicted ; and the expectation of release dashed them all into high spirits. Julia was gorgeous. If she had not been so beautiful she might have seemed over- done. She was alluring; she laughed and murmured toThair until he was overwhelmed 133 MRS. ESSINGTON by the beauty of it. If he looked at her with all the admiration he gave to Gainsborough's lovely, pictured ladies and coveted her to frame and hang in his gallery there was no reason Mrs. Budd should not imagine he coveted her to decorate the foot of his table. The memory of Cissy's uncomfortable sug- gestions were confused with what seemed the near consummation of her hopes; but for the first time in forty-eight hours she beamed. Longacre was talking pointedly and exclu- sively to Florence. Cissy once or twice tried to throw in a word. She got a glance, an assent without the obstinate head turning in her direction. It was stupendous rudeness, but he was oblivious to everything but his need of Florence. He wanted her respon- siveness, her sympathy, to help him escape his tormenting self. He talked rapidly. He seemed eager. He was angry that her cold- ness left him keenly aware of the palpitating 134 IN THE STORM presence of the girl who flashed her dark eyes so hotly around the room. But Florence read in his eagerness its double element. Her throat ached with the fullness of tears. Weeks, months ago, when she had first felt the subtle change in him, so slight that she had resolutely called it fancy, that terri- ble possibility of another woman had given her some sleepless nights ; but she had hoped, as her knowledge grew, that it was a nega- tive fate one of the slow changes time brings about in mind and body that was drawing the man she loved away from her. She had made herself ready to meet such a fatality, but the calamity that came was un- expected. It had her by surprise; and at the outset she had failed of everything she had determined on. She was not a jealous woman, but she had not realized how it would seem to have him love another woman. 135 MRS. ESSINGTON And what was this woman? Beautiful overwhelmingly, unquestionably to be reck- oned with, but ignorant a child! What was she going to be ? What could she be to him? A spur or a clog 1 ? Florence knew the man too well to suppose he would shake off the latter. He would endure, and grow less. It seemed bitter to her, then, that he was a man who could be made or marred by a woman, and she not that woman. " What is the matter ? " she heard him saying. The face he turned to her showed his irritation. Would n't he yet face it that he loved the girl? It was proof to Florence of what power she had with him. " Do you know," he went on in a murmur so inarticulate that only her ears, that knew his voice as they knew her own, could catch it, "we 've been miserable every moment since we 've been in this place. Let 's get out ! For heaven's sake, come up to town 136 IN THE STORM to-morrow, and we '11 be married, and get away to the other side of the earth ! " She had a hysterical desire to laugh. "Oh, Tony, you 're the only man in the world who could say a thing like that, in a situation like this." He grumbled, "Why not? I mean it." She knew he meant it. She suffered in the temptation to say yes, to end everything like that, to take what consequences followed when he should some day know, and hate her for it. She looked at Julia. Not alone the beauty of her, but some suggestion in its generous richness of a like nature, made the rest of them seem cheap. Florence felt faded as she looked. What a woman for a man to lose ! Longacre's eyes followed the direction Florence's had taken. He made an impa- tient movement. If he stayed a few days longer under the girl's spell, he would find out himself how MRS. ESSINGTON hard matters were with him. But before that happened he must be free of her. It came to Florence all at once that this man would not free himself. What a loyalty to lose ! And to put it away with her own hands ! " Florence ! " he persisted. She meant to say that she had something to tell him later that would answer his question, but her tongue tricked her into a gay evasion. She put him off. Because she saw the end must come, soon or late, she put it off. She would tell him to-morrow. 38 CHAPTER VIII LONGACRE TRAPS HIMSELF ** M TOMORROW'S " sun rose on a miraculous world that dripped and steamed, and breathed a -^^- thousand sweet scents into a cloudless sky. The coast road, white for five months with flying dust, was black, with flashing pools of water among the trees. Their leaves, so long powdered pale with summer, were glistening green, shaking in the wind that was subsiding slowly. The breakers still bellowed up the little beaches and battered the rocky promontories; but they were sapphire-blue till their crests curled over, no longer tattered by the wind, but breaking, far as eye could follow 139 MRS. ESSINGTON around the coast, in long white semicircles of foam. " Miramar " was flung wide to this morn- ing of " latter spring," and the multitudinous sharp odors of the garden poured through open doors and windows. The house was unpeopled. All were abroad in the garden, strolling down the spongy paths, shaking cataracts of drops from dahlia and chrysan- themum in their passing; whistling up the dogs across the terraces; calling to one an- other scattering and rallying. Theirs was a high, animal pulse such relish and excitement of living as a runner has who pulls himself together for a leap. Those purposes and emotions that had had their growth in the thick atmosphere of the storm were quickened, pressing against cir- cumstance, ready to burst out. They boded a crisis. Julia Budd's face alone was assurance of happenings as she came across the lawn with 140 LONGACRE TRAPS HIMSELF her long, free step, her skirts picked high, her dachshunds in leash. Eyes lowering, mouth smiling, she looked neither at Bessie Lewis on her right, nor Thair on her left, but talked rapidly, apparently for any ears that cared to listen. Now she quickened her pace, took the path border in a leap, and had a hand on Holden's arm. " Mr. Thair says it 's too heavy going for the hunt ! " She threw it out, less a plea than a flat statement. " Good heavens, young woman ! " Hold- en's eye ran over the dripping terraces. "They won't have the dogs out to-day ! " " M'm," she nodded emphatically. " I rang up the club before breakfast, and the M. F. H. says, ' Yes.' " Holden grunted. " They '11 mire in a minute." She thrust out her shoe, damp but unmud- died, with a laugh. She called out his broadest smile. 141 MRS. ESSINGTON " It 's another thing down there." He in- dicated the " sea meadows " with a back mo- tion of the head. " If we fellows break our necks it does n't matter; but you ladies wait till next week ! " " I can't wait ! " " It may dry off enough by afternoon," Holden said, admiring her spirit. " Will you go with me, then ? " Her foot drummed the ground. As he hesitated, she flashed round at Thair. " Will you *? " "My dear young madam " he pro- tested. " I '11 go ! " said Longacre, across the group. It looked so obviously a gallantry to res- cue a lost cause ! For an instant it seemed she hated him. Then she laughed. " Why, I 'm not afraid to go alone ! " " Nor I," said Longacre. " That 's not why I asked you to let me come." Julia looked at him in confusion. This 142 LONGACRE TRAPS HIMSELF sudden sally out of his aloofness touched her, and left her at a loss. Florence Essington bowed her face to the yellow mass of chrysanthemums held it there a moment. When she looked up, Longacre was kneeling to unfasten the dachs- hunds' leash, the girl standing straight, with quick-rising bosom, but a composed face averted from him, looking down the terraces. As the unleashed dogs capered up around her, she began tossing twigs and pebbles down the slope, the dogs scuttling back and forth in an ecstasy of barking. / Longacre saw the deepening color of her cheek.' As they stood, hers was not so far from his own. The look with which she had answered his proffer of escort the look so out of proportion to the moment, so given in spite of herself had stirred in him some- thing equally ill-governed and inconsequent ; had called out in him something at once more natural, and more spiritual, than he 143 MRS. ESSINGTON had imagined the existence of; something more powerful than he had ever expected to reckon with. This, then, was the intangible thing he had been dodging. How easily he was slipping into this dazzling emotion ! The past seemed dropping away from him ; the future was nebulous. He brought him- self up short, angry that a man might so lightly become a cad. He had never liked the way this girl affected him. What place had this overpowering alien thing in his life, he wondered savagely. Yet he looked at Julia. Silent as she was, helpless, and not a little awkward, her very nearness elated him. When she turned to go he felt deserted. He snatched at any excuse to keep beside her. " May I walk to the house with you ? " He knew that had been the wrong thing to say. "Of course," she answered. Her lips 144 LONGACRE TRAPS HIMSELF trembled around the words. She had for- gotten Cissy's communication. Strange that a fact could be so unstable in the face of a personality ! But in that moment her world was a short, green walk between fennel bor- ders to a glass door. They drank in the overwhelming sweet of heliotrope. He walked stiffly beside her, looking straight before. She looked sidelong at him, and wondered what he thought of her. If he did n't like it, why had he asked to walk with her? The gap in the hedge, the oleanders flaming beyond, brought back to her that morning she had called him across the grass. She wondered at herself. She could never have done it if she had known he was going to be so dreadful. Had she betrayed herself to this equivocal mystery ? No, he was n't like any one else. She had always known it; and she was shocked at herself that just the look of him, when he was so disagreeable, should make her so 145 MRS. ESSINGTON happy. She wanted to keep him with her, and the glass door took on the aspect of in- exorable fate. The gap in the hedge was the only loop-hole. She turned toward it with the fine assurance that carried her over her doubts. He stopped, blank at this unexpected manceuver. Did she want to get rid of him ? He had believed that he wished himself out of it, but the thought of going away was un- endurable. Standing among the dancing greens, she looked back at him. The wind blew her clear pink skirts fluttering toward him. Her gentle " Are n't you coming ? " saved him ; but the sort of smile she gave, threatened seemed diabolic. But she had seen, in his moment of unhappy hesitation, that he feared to lose her ; and her spirits leaped, her eyes lighted, her mouth flowered in that sudden bewildering smile. Down on the slopes of the hot, wet lawns they heard the cicadas 146 LONGACRE TRAPS HIMSELF singing. The full green tops of trees moved on a melting sky. This riotous out-of-doors conspired with her against him. He felt, if she went on smiling like that, she would have him. "For a moment I thought you were n't coming ! " she called. " I 'm not," he said. The color fluttered into her face, but " Not coming ? " she bravely mocked at him. He stood resolute, but his hard, long look at her made her heart beat strongly. " I thought you were going in," he said. He expected to see her flare away from him through the oleanders, but, instead, she came toward him, dragging her steps like an unhappy child. That he should be the one to make her look like that ! He was fierce with himself. " You know I want to come ! " he said angrily. " I 'd come anywhere with you ! " He caught himself desperately. He had a H7 MRS. ESSINGTON feeling that he must save them. " But but you said you were going in. I think we 'd better." He clutched for banalities. " Let 's have a game of billiards. Let 's ring up the club about the meet. Let 's "he seized upon the next idea with relief " I 've never heard you sing since that first night." She looked up in bewilderment, fretted by the trivialities. " But you said you did n't like it that I had no feeling ! " He winced, knowing this was just his reason. He had remembered how the emp- tiness of her lovely voice had seemed to es- trange them. The sound of it in the dead boundary of walls might break the live en- chantment of her presence. " Oh, give me another chance ! " He tried to take it lightly. -But their consciousness read into his words multiple meanings. They came to the glass door in silence. He fol- lowed her through the glass room, where she plucked a tuberose whose sweet scent pur- 148 LONGACRE TRAPS HIMSELF sued him at once to vex and delight him. She seemed to gather more beauty by that perfume. In her ignorance she was reckless with her power. In her unconscious beguile- ment she was perilous to be near. He hoped she would sing badly off key anything to help him escape her. She took a sheet of music, a modern ar- rangement of an old song. The first notes startled him. Did her pliant voice take color from the music, or had it found a tenderness of its own*? It came at first uncertainly. The deep tones drew out tremulous, the high notes quivering with too keen intensity: but it lived; it interpreted; it was signifi- cant. " Beautiful, beautiful ! " some chord within him seemed repeating. The sweetness, the pure passion of that voice, singing up from him, away from him, in sublime ignorance of the birth of its being and the danger of its flight ! He would not look at her; but in this 149 MRS. ESSINGTON new voice of hers for the first time he seemed to see the soul, more beautiful than her beauty as desirable as life ; and he had no right to think of her ! The chords went to pieces. His hands fell jangling upon the keys. He saw her, the half-sung note dying away between her parted lips still parted in amazement. It made him desperate, that look of innocence that could n't help him ! " It 's such rot ! " he said grimly at the music-sheet, and ran his hands in a thunder of discords down the keys. " You sang it well enough. If you understood it, I dare say you 'd do it badly." Her mouth grieved. Her eyes flashed, re- sentful; she was bewildered by his rapid changes. " First you say I sing without feeling, and then you tell me I should feel more and sing badly ! I think you are hard to please." " No ; art is acting. I am complimenting 150 LONGACRE TRAPS HIMSELF you on yours." He denied to her what was too plain to himself; but the tone of his voice, that intimate coldness, seemed to draw them forcibly nearer. "Now we 11 have something better," he said. This thing must stop here, he determined. It should never happen again. But he must hear her voice just once again, her voice in his music. It would make her his for a mo- ment. He took up a piece of manuscript music. " I don't know it," she protested sul- lenly. " All the better," he said brusquely, and began the prelude. He ran over the melody with phrases his fingers seemed to linger in and love unex- pected intervals, elusive rhythms and gave her a look that said, "Come." She had to stoop to see the words. These, too, were strange to her: MRS. ESSINGTON " Never seek to tell thy love Love that never told can be! For the gentle wind doth move Silently, invisibly." After all, it was too much. He dared not give himself up to it. He forced himself to technicalities. He stopped her. " Listen to the time," he said, and played it over. She sang it after him without the accom- paniment, and faltered at an unaccustomed interval. He played it again with the patience given a child's stupidity. She sang, hating him with her every note : "I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart, Trembling, pale, in ghastly fears Ah, she did depart!" He broke off in the middle. "Can't you keep with the accompani- ment?" 152 LONGACRE TRAPS HIMSELF She raged inwardly flushing face, bril- liant eyes. "Is n't the accompaniment to keep with the singer *? " "No; with the song. And since you don't know that, listen to what I 'm doing. Hurry those eighths, and hold the ' G.' That phrase is ' pensieroso.' Don't sing it like a drinking-song." " There is nothing to say so ! How do you know *? " Her angry red mouth made him savage. " I say so ! It 's mine!" She gasped, suddenly in a panic. " I don't want to sing it ! I don't know it! I I don't like it!" Her helpless confusion shook him to ten- derness. "Try this last verse with me," he plead- ingly insisted. She began, as though she could not help herself, in an uncertain voice : MRS. ESSINGTON " Soon after she was gone from me A traveler came by Silently, invisibly. He took her with a sigh! " Her voice fluttered on the last word forsook the note. He looked up to see her, large-eyed, pale, staring at him. The signifi- cance in the words had seized her. Had he told her flatly that she loved him, he could not have had her more by surprise. " I you " she stammered. The blood rushed back to her face. The tears were too many for her eyes. He sprang up. "For God's sake don't cry ! " He took her in his arms, and kissed her over-brimmed eyes as if she were a child. She might well have been, so pliant she was to his touch, so comforted with his lips on her eyes and forehead. An instant before, antagonists; now their pulses had the throb of one. It was a miracle wonderful! He kissed her on the mouth. 1 54 ii the last word forsook He looked up to see her, largc-oy- ng at him. The signifi- cance .- r?>e words had seized her. Had he ' icved him, he nor . nirprise. " she stammered. The blood rush ice. The tears were too i I " For God's sake don't cry " her now" he said. His usually smooth voice sounded uneven. " She 's done for ! " At this the lines in her forehead grew d " If one could only make it easier for her' Jt is dreadful! But did n't you see, jusl now* it was the only thing to do ! " v Dear girl," he earnestly assured her, 4t th:if you think so is enough for me! But you .how it to her, poor lady ! " "Such a strange Julia!" THAIR CONGRATULATES " I ? " He was blank. " If she thought if she knew that some other hope she may have had for Julia was could n't you make her know?" At this he fixed her with his old diabolical glint. "You mean I could congratulate her heartily?" Her answering smile was wan. She left it to him. He looked back at her once as he went down the stair. She held herself still until he was out of hearing. Then, on tiptoe, she stole down the hall to the door, and hesitated with beat- ing heart. There was nothing in the world she so dreaded, nothing she so much wanted, as to see Longacre, to hear his voice. She slipped into the room, expecting to find it somehow extraordinarily changed, revolu- tionized. There was a change. It was in the man who lay upon the bed. 2 33 MRS. ESSINGTON He lay, eyes closed, face quiet. But, ah, asleep ! The strong structure of the face came out startling in its emaciation. She looked at that face, dwelt upon it, saw in the salient lines something she had been seeking since she had known it. Dared she think this had come through her the last thing she had given him ! She waited to see those obstinate lids unclose. She had come so lightly he had not heard her. She would not for the world have spoken, but if she looked at him he must know she was looking at him ! Then, as he lay so still, not a muscle of the sensitive mouth moving, breathing lightly, regularly, it came upon her that he wished her to suppose him asleep. A faint, cold breath ran in the nerves of her body. She turned her head quickly away, as though, through their closed lids, his waking eyes could spy on her. She had thought, child-blind, not of friend- THAIR CONGRATULATES ship, not of recognition for what she had spent, but of just that last bitter-sweet confi- dence when he would tell her, show her with- out words, perhaps, how much this new hap- piness would be to him. And he hid it from her! Well, he was right. How impossible any- thing else was ! There were barriers of grat- itude yes, and higher yet than those barriers she herself had reared between them ! She stood, hands limply dropped, head bent. She saw shadows of jessamine leaves moving like fine, gray fingers on the sunny floor. She had no more right in that room than the veriest stranger. CHAPTER XIV THE QUEEN'S COURTESY I -^L. cart drew up at the station with a bounce. Before it had fairly stopped, a large man in the clothes of a working citi- zen, with the umbrella and bag of a traveler, sprang out and made a rush for the door of the ticket-office. A lean, brown fellow in riding-trousers, who was dawdling on the platform, stared and laughed. " Holden, what 's the rush *? " " Good Lord, have I missed it ? " gasped the other. "The train?" Thair yawned. "Twenty minutes early." 236 THE QUEEN'S COURTESY " They told me I 'd barely make it ! " Holden stared resentfully at the vacant rails. "H'm. Del Monte," Thair smiled. " Even the clocks are fast ! " He squinted at the sky, soft sapphire-blue. " Why go up to-day ? Wait over, and I '11 show you a bit of a cross-country run." " Thanks," grunted Holden ; " I 've had my money's worth." The grunt ended in a grin. Thair chuckled. "Well," Holden demanded impatiently, " how is it over at the house ? " " We-e-ell," Thair drawled out the word interminably, while amused recollection crossed his face, "the rains fell, and the winds blew ! / stayed at the club through the worst of it. I was sorry for the women the young madam and Mrs. Essington. They had to stick it out." " You mean Mrs. Budd was so annoyed ? " Holden was a little puzzled. 2 37 MRS. ESSINGTON " Annoyed ! Oh, Lord, that 's not the word ! Cis says * upset.' That 's nearer, only seventeen times more upset than usual ! Poor woman, she feels that Julia owes the man some reparation for * breaking his neck/ but marriage seems to her extreme." " But what 's the objection ? He seems a decent sort of chap." "He is; the decentest of his sort; but it 's not the sort madam had hoped for Julia. Money, y' know, and well, composers seem a bit out of the way to her. But the girl has too much blood to take " he smiled quizzically " what was the ' correct thing.' " "I 've had an idea that this would come about from the first," said Holden, compla- cently. " M'm ? " Thair mused, interrogative. " Mrs. Essington 's been immensely inter- ested in those two young people. Should n't wonder " 238 THE QUEEN'S COURTESY Thair bit off a smile. "Remarkable woman, Mrs. Essington," he observed. " That damned train J s spending the night on the switch," growled Holden. He did n't look down the track, but over his shoulder at the " Miramar " runabout that had just come into sight around the turn of the drive. The lady who sat so erect beside the groom was Florence Essington. Holden looked relieved. Thair indulged in what might be called a mental whistle. He gave one sharp glance at Holden, whose attention was engrossed by the approaching vehicle ; then a frank smile and a wave of the hand toward the lady a salute she re- turned in kind. The approaching train hur- ried their greetings and farewells, but in that short time he got an impression of a more obvious sophistication, a more pronounced worldliness in her than he had recalled. Her gown, black with dashes of white, suggested the last and finest flight of fashion; 2 39 MRS. ESSINGTON her manner, the latest, most charming impor- tation; her very movement, a consciousness of the keen eye of the world. While he pondered whether these differ- ences did not merely enhance the beauty of her shadowed eyes, her black and white glimmered through the door of the car. Holden waved his hand from the step and followed her. Thair wandered down the platform toward where the groom held his uneasy mount. " That 's a match," he muttered. " She '11 take him. That 's what she means. She 's wise. Great woman ! If a man were fool enough h'm, h'm ! " He nodded to the groom. Holden, having established his bags in a seat near the door, took the chair next Florence. She was merry, full of twisted phrases, making him laugh in spite of his impatience. " I believe," he told her, half in earnest, 240 THE QUEEN'S COURTESY " it 's because you 've fetched that engage- ment you 're in such spirits." " Oh, do you think me a match-maker *? " she laughed. " Well, I wish you 'd be one for yourself," he said bluntly. Florence bit her lip. She was hating to face what she knew she finally must. " Don't you remember," he went on," a few days ago you said you would have something to tell me on our way back to town ? " A few days ago ! Could it be possible ! She looked out of the window. Past rushed a stream of black oaks pricked through with flashes of sea. She knew what she would answer. She had turned it over for twenty-four hours. She had not dreamed how hard it would be to utter. His kindly eyes were bent upon her with a steady patience, but his blunt fingers drummed the arm of her chair. " I tried then to make you see," she began, 16 241 MRS. ESSINGTON "that I was n't merely putting you off. I did n't know then just what I could say how much I was fit for what you ask of me." She supported his look. " Now I am sure I am not." He waved away her objection with his large, open hand. "Are you the judge of that?" " Who else ? Do you think I could take without giving ? If I loved you it would be different." " Yes. Well I hardly hoped that, after what you said the other day," he answered sturdily ; " but we are no longer children ; I would not ask too much of you. You are a woman of wide interests, and my life takes me so much among people, manipulations of men as well as things, you might " She took it up. " Yes, if I could give your interests all my interest, all my energy, my thought, as I might have done once, as I would now, gladly, if I could. But I can't. 242 THE QUEEN'S COURTESY I have used up such power as I had. I 've done all I can do in other people's interests. Now my interests will be scattered. My ways are already fixed. You offer me an active life in the world, but I am through my activities." "Good Heaven!" he broke out; "why, you talk as if you were old you, with the best of your life before you ! " Her smile was tight. "Perhaps I have lived through things too quickly. But I know I like you too much to cheat you, which I should do if I married you. I can't can't do it! Believe me, I would like to give you what you ask, but I have n't it." " Is this the last word ? " he said, half risen. She nodded, her eyes full of tears. He saw them, and touched her arm. "Don't, don't ! " he said gently. " I suppose you know what is best for you ! " The accent fell on the last word sadly. He rose; she saw him, a dim bulk on the light window- 243 MRS. ESSINGTON square as he stooped to gather up bags and umbrella; saw him passing her. The door closed behind him. Florence, with a shiver, relaxed from her tension, leaning back in her chair a little weakly. Her eyes closed. All the glitter she had shown them on the platform had fallen away from her; and thus, with shut eyes, her unlighted face showed exhaustion so deep that peace seemed the next thing to it. The noise of the train swam heavily in her head. She had no thoughts, only as now and again she opened her eyes a vague noticing of small things ; and then at sight of green onion-fields wheeling past the window, a sad stab of memory. She shut her eyes, lest some other sight remind her too cruelly of what was left behind. She did not sleep. She was unconscious of time in her deep, complete lethargy of soul and brain. When she opened her eyes again the lights were swinging down the middle of the car, and 244 THE QUEEN'S COURTESY through the windows she looked out over water, beautiful violet-blue in a softly gath- ering dark. The train was puffing slower, and now a glimmering succession of windows shut out the water. The dark tunnel of the ferry-house encom- passed her, but the memory of the purple flash of sea lingered with a vivid pleasure more vivid that the glimpse had been so short as she followed the rush out of the car door. The cool, soft wind on her face, the crowd tearing to and fro, roused her. The "overland" was just pulling out; a string of electric lights, white jackets jump- ing to the platforms, faces peering from the windows, it passed her. She felt a queer throb, a wish to be going with it somewhere, outward bound. What had she to hold her anywhere ? But even with the thought the sense of poignant personal loss would not rise up before her. Her lethargy was lost, but her consciousness, no longer concen- 245 MRS. ESSINGTON trated upon herself, was relaxed to a keener perception of her surroundings of the high, dusky-vaulted ferry-house, echoing full of voices and footsteps; of the fitful play of light on the foam churning through the tall piles of the ferry-slip; of the crowd she moved among, streaming down the ferry gangway, a succession of faces glimmering past, each stamped with its headlong per- sonal object. They were still spurred and ridden by it, while she . . . The salt breath of the sea rushed up to meet her, with sug- gestion of the immensities of oceans. She found an outside seat forward. It was an evening clear, moonless, with a marvelous purple over water and sky. Every light of the ships in harbor was reflected, a trailing glory, in the glassy bay; and the ferry was plowing through them, with its dull, monotonous pulse like the beat of a heart. The white bulk of a steamer moved directly before its course, white lights, green, 246 THE QUEEN'S COURTESY red lights the Nippon Maru outward bound. Florence's eyes followed it. And there stirred faintly in her the passion she had always cherished for the mysterious other side of the world Japan, and that great continent beyond it. And as the immensity unrolled before her the thousands of miles, the millions of people with passions identi- cal, with ideals unintelligible to hers, but in the great sum of existence as necessary the vast, varied face of the world diminished, dwarfed her own identity. She had one of those fortunate moments when, the body being very weary, the spirit takes its opportunity and mounts beyond the body's demands. If she had put it to her- self, she would have said she had "got out- side of things." It floated before her, more like an impression than a thought, that to have had one's happiness was what counted, though it passed like the glimpse of purple sea. And the eye of the soul that could catch 2 47 MRS. ESSINGTON it, could treasure it up to carry into some dim, empty, echoing time-to-come. The time of activity, of struggle for what was most de- sirable, most beautiful, or most necessary to life the delights, the sufferings, the defeat- ing, the half successes this time inevitably was ended. Sometimes the change life made was death, sometimes only another face of life, as now it came to her a time of waiting, of watching, of trying to perceive and understand, from the passionate, personal motives acting themselves out around her, the great intention of the whole. Before her the lights of the city were all alive, trailing around the water-front, march- ing over the hills, ringing them with fire, and trembling away into the large stars of the low, soft sky. Her hand was on the rail, and she dropped her chin upon it, look- ing longingly, searchingly into the heart of the glittering tangle, as if it were the verita- ble tangle of life. 248 University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. OCTl J A 000 052 081 7 University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. u