Chapter 17. In Which Fear Walks In A Storm

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_ CHAPTER XVII. In Which Fear Walks in a Storm

THE "Mermaid," having swept like a bird out of the harbor, stopped at Coney Island. Marie-Louise wanted her fortune told. Eve wanted peanuts and pop-corn. "It will make me seem a little girl again."

Marie-Louise, cool in her buff coat, shrugged her shoulders. "I was never allowed to be that kind of a little girl," she said, "but I think I'd like to try it for a day."

Eve and Marie-Louise got on very well together. They spoke the same language. And if Marie-Louise was more artificial in some ways, she was more open than Eve.

"You'd better tell Dr. Brooks," she told the older girl, as the two of them walked ahead of Richard and Pip on the pier. Tony and Winifred had elected to stay on board.

"Tell him what?"

"That you are keeping the big man in reserve."

Eve flushed. "Marie-Louise, you're horrid."

"I am honest," was the calm response.

Pip bought them unlimited peanuts and pop-corn, and Marie-Louise piloted them to the tent of a fat Armenian who told fortunes.

In spite of his fatness, however, he was immaculate in European clothing; he charged exorbitantly and achieved extraordinary results.

"He said the last time that I should marry a poet," Marie-Louise informed them, "which isn't true. I am not going to be married at all. But it amuses me to hear him."

The black eyes of the fat Armenian twinkled. "There will be a time when you will not be amused. You will be married."

He pulled out a chair for her. "Will your friends stay while I tell you the rest?"

"No, they are children; they want to buy peanuts and pop-corn--they want to play."

The others laughed. But the fat Armenian did not laugh. "Your soul is old!"

"You see," she asked the others, "what I mean? He says things like that to me. He told me once that in a former incarnation I had walked beside the Nile and had loved a king."

"A king-poet," the man corrected.

"Will you tell mine?" Eve asked suddenly.

"Certainly, madam."

"I am mademoiselle. You go first, Marie-Louise."

But Marie-Louise insisted on yielding to her. "We will come back for you."

Coming back, they found Eve in an irritable temper. "He told me--nothing."

"I told you what you did not want to hear. But I told you the truth."

"I don't believe in such things." Eve was lofty. Her cold eyes challenged the Oriental. "I don't believe you know anything about it."

"If Mademoiselle will write it down----" He was fat and puffy, but he had a sort of large dignity which ignored her rudeness. "If Mademoiselle will write it down, she will not say--next year--'I do not believe.'"

She shivered. "I wish I hadn't come. Dicky boy, let's go and play. Pip and Marie-Louise can stay if they like it. I don't."

When Marie-Louise had had her imagination once more fed on poets, kings, and previous incarnations, she and Pip went forth to seek the others.

"I wonder what he told Eve?" Pip speculated.

Marie-Louise spoke with shrewdness. "He probably told her that she would marry you--only he wouldn't put it that way. He would say that in reaching for a star she would stumble on a diamond."

"And is Brooks the star?"

She nodded, grinning. "And you are the diamond. It is what she wants--diamonds."

"She wants more than that"--tenderness crept into his voice--"she wants love--and I can give it."

"She wants Dr. Brooks. 'Most any woman would," said Marie-Louise cruelly. "We all know he is different. You know it, and I know it, and Eve knows it. He is bigger in some ways, and better!"

They found Eve and Richard in a pavilion dancing in strange company, to raucous music. Later the four of them rode on a merry-go-round, with Marie-Louise on a dolphin and Eve on a swan, with the two men mounted on twin dragons. They ate chowder and broiled lobster in a restaurant high in a fantastic tower. They swept up painted Alpine slopes in reckless cars, they drifted through dark tunnels in gorgeous gondolas. Eve took her pleasures with a sort of feverish enthusiasm, Marie-Louise with the air of a skeptic trying out a new thing.

"Mother would faint and fade away if she knew I was here," Marie-Louise told Richard as she sat next to him in a movie show, "and so would Dad. He would object to the germs and she would object to the crowd. Mother is like a flower in a sunlighted garden. She can't imagine that a lily could grow with its feet in the mud. But they do. And Dad knows it. But he likes to have mother stay in the sunlighted garden. He would never have fallen in love with her if her roots had been in the mud."

She was murmuring this into Richard's ear. Eve was on the other side of him, with Pip beyond.

"I've never had a day like this," Marie-Louise further confided, "and I am not sure that I like it. It seems so far away from--Pan--and the trees--and the river."

Her voice dropped into silence, and Richard sat there beside her like a stone, seeing nothing of the pictures thrown on the screen. He saw a road which led between spired cedars, he saw an old house with a wide porch. He saw a golden-lighted table, and his mother's face across the candles. He saw a girl in a brown coat scattering food for the birds with a kind little hand--he heard the sound of a bell!

When they reached the yacht, Winifred was dressed for dinner, and Eve and Marie-Louise scurried below to change. They dined on the upper deck by moonlight, and sat late enjoying the still warmth of the night. There was no wind and they seemed to sail through silver waters.

Marie-Louise sang for them. Strange little songs for which she had composed both words and music. They had haunting cadences, and Pip told her "For Heaven's sake, kiddie, cheer up. You are making us cry."

She laughed, and gave them a group of old nursery rhymes. Most of them had to do with things to eat. There was the Dame who baked her pies "on Christmas day in the morning," and the Queen who made the tarts, and Jenny Wren and her currant wine.

"They are what I call appetizing," she said quaintly. "When I was a tiny tot Dad kept me on a diet. I was never allowed to eat pies or tarts or puddings. So I used to feast vicariously on my nursery rhymes."

They laughed, as she had meant they should, and Pip said, "Give us another," so she chanted with increasing dramatic effect the story of King Arthur.

"A bag pudding the king did make,
And stuffed it well with plums,
And in it put great hunks of fat,
As big as my two thumbs----"

"Think of the effect of those hunks of fat," she explained amid their roars of laughter, "on my dieted mind."

"I hate to think of things to eat," Eve said. "And I can't imagine myself cooking--in a kitchen."

"Where else would you cook?" Marie-Louise demanded practically. "I'd like it. I went once with my nurse to her mother's house, and she was cooking ham and frying eggs and we sat down to a table with a red cloth and had the ham and eggs with great slices of bread and strong tea. My nurse let me eat all I wanted, because her mother said it wouldn't hurt me, and it didn't. But my mother never knew. And always after that I liked to think of Lucy's mother and that warm nice kitchen, and the plump, pleasant woman and the ham and eggs and tea."

She was very serious, but they roared again. She was so far away from anything that was homely and housewifely, with her red hair peaked up to a high knot, her thick white coat with its black animal skin enveloping her shoulders, the gleam of silver slippers.

"Dicky," Eve said, "I hope you are not expecting me to cook in Arcadia."

"I don't expect anything."

"Every man expects something," Winifred interposed; "subconsciously he wants a hearth-woman. That's the primitive."

"I don't want a hearth-woman," Pip announced.

Dutton Ames chuckled. "You're a stone-age man, Meade. You'd like to woo with a club, and carry the day's kill to the woman in your tent."

A quick fire lighted Pip's eyes. "Jove, it wouldn't be bad, would it? What do you think, Eve?"

"I like your yacht better, and your chef and your alligator pears, and caviar."

An hour later Eve and Richard were alone on deck. The others had gone down. The lovers had preferred the moonlight.

"Eve, old lady," Richard said, "you know that even with Austin's help I'm not going to be a Croesus. There won't be yachts--and chefs--and alligator pears."

"Jealous, Dicky?"

"No. But you've always had these things, Eve."

"I shall still have them. Aunt Maude won't let us suffer. She's a good old soul."

"Do you think I shall care to partake of Aunt Maude's bounty?"

"Perhaps not. But I am not so stiff-necked. Oh, Ducky Dick, do you think that I am going to let you keep on being poor and priggish and steady-minded?"

"Am I that, Eve?"

"You know you are."

Her laughing eyes challenged him. He would have been less than a man if he had not responded to the appeal of her youth and beauty. "Dicky," she said, "when we are married I am going to give you the time of your young life. All work and no play will make you a dull boy, Dicky."

In the night the clouds came up over the moon, and when the late and lazy party appeared on deck for luncheon, Marie-Louise complained. "I hate it this way. There's going to be a storm."

There was a storm before night. It blew up tearingly from the south and there was menace in it and madness.

Winifred and Eve were good sailors. But Marie-Louise went to pieces. She was frantic with fear, and as the night wore on, Richard found himself much concerned for her.

She insisted on staying on deck. "I feel like a rat in a trap when I am inside. I want to face it."

The wind was roaring about them. The sea was black and the sky was black, a thick velvety black that turned to copper when the lightning came.

"Aren't you afraid?" Marie-Louise demanded; "aren't you?"

"No."

"Why shouldn't you be? Why shouldn't anybody be?"

"My nerves are strong, Marie-Louise."

"It isn't nerves. It's faith. You believe that the boat won't go down, and you believe that if it did go down your soul wouldn't die."

Her white face was close to him. "I wish I could believe like that," she said in a high, sharp voice. Then she screamed as the little ship seemed caught up into the air and flung down again.

"Hush," Richard told her; "hush, Marie-Louise."

She was shaking and shivering. "I hate it," she sobbed.

Pip, like a yellow specter in oilskins, came up to them. "Eve wants you, Brooks," he shouted above the clamor of wind and wave.

"Shall we go in, Marie-Louise?"

"No, no." She cowered against his arm.

Over her head Richard said to Pip, "I shall come as soon as I can."

So Pip went down, and the two were left alone in the tumult and blackness of the night.

As Marie-Louise lay for a moment quiet against his arm, Richard bent down to her. "Are you still afraid?"

"Yes, oh, yes. I keep thinking--if I should die. And I am afraid to die."

"You are not going to die. And if you were there would be nothing to fear. Death is just--falling asleep. Rarely any terror. We doctors know, who see people die. I know it, and your father knows it."

By the light of a blinding flash he saw her white face with its wet red hair.

"Dad doesn't know it as you know," she said, chokingly. "He couldn't say it as you--say it."

"Why not?"

"He's like I am. _Dad's afraid._"

The storm swept on, leaving the waves rough behind it, and Richard at last put Marie-Louise to bed with a sleeping powder. Then he went to hunt up Eve. He was very tired and it was very late. The night had passed, and the dawn would soon be coming up over the horizon. He found Pip in the smoking room. Eve had gone to bed. Everybody had gone to bed. It had been a terrible storm.

Richard agreed that it had been terrible. He was glad that Eve could sleep. He couldn't understand why Austin had allowed Marie-Louise to take such a trip. Her fear of storms was evidently quite uncontrollable. And she was at all times hysterical and high-strung.

Pip was not interested in Marie-Louise. "Eve lost her nerve at the last."

Richard was solicitous. "I'm sorry. I wanted to come down, but I couldn't leave Marie-Louise. Eve's normal, and she'll be all right as soon as the storm stops. But Marie-Louise may suffer for days. The sooner she gets on shore the better."

He went on deck, and looked out upon a gray wind-swept world.

Then the sun came up, and there was a great light upon the waters.

All the next day Marie-Louise lay in a long chair. "Dad told me not to come," she confessed to Richard. "I've been this way before. But I wouldn't listen."

"If I had been your father," Richard said, "you would have listened, and you would have stayed at home."

She grinned. "You can't be sure. Nobody can be sure. I don't like to take orders."

"Until you learn to take orders you aren't going to amount to much, Marie-Louise."

"I amount to a great deal. And your ideas are--old-fashioned; that's what your Eve says, Dr. Dicky."

She looked at him through her long eyelashes. "What's the matter with your Eve?"

"What do you mean?"

"She is punishing you, but you don't know it. She is down-stairs playing bridge with Pip and Tony and Win, and leaving you alone to meditate on your sins. And you aren't meditating. You are talking to me. I am going to write a poem about a Laggard Lover. I'll make you a shepherd boy who sits on the hills and watches his sheep. And when the girl who loves him calls to him, he refuses to go--he still watches--his sheep."

He looked puzzled. "I don't know in the least what you are talking about."

"You are the shepherd. Your work is the sheep--Eve is the girl. Your work will always be more to you than the woman. Dad's work isn't. He never forgets mother for a minute."

"And you think that I'll forget Eve?"

"Yes. And she'll hate that."

There was a spark in his eye.

"I think that we won't discuss Eve, Marie-Louise."

"Then I'll discuss her in a poem. Lend me a pencil, please."

He gave her the pencil and a prescription pad, and she set to work. She read snatches to him as she progressed. It was remarkably clever, with a constantly recurring refrain.

"_Let me watch my sheep," said the lover, "my sheep on the hills._"

The verses went on to relate that the girl, finding her shepherd dilatory, turned her attention to another swain, and at last she flouts the shepherd.

"_Go watch your sheep, laggard lover, your sheep on the hills._"

She laid the verses aside as Tony and Win joined them.

"Three rubbers, and Pip and Eve are ahead."

"Isn't Eve coming?"

"She said she was coming up soon."

But she did not come, and Pip did not come. Marie-Louise, with a great rug spread over her, slept in her chair. Dutton Ames read aloud to his wife. Richard rose and went to look for Eve.

There was a little room which Pip called "The Skipper's own." It was furnished in a man's way as a den, with green leather and carved oak and plenty of books. Its windows gave a forward view of sky and water.

It was here that the four of them had been playing auction. Eve was now shuffling the cards for Solitaire.

Pip, watching her, caught suddenly at her left hand. "Why didn't Brooks give you a better ring?"

"I like my ring. Let go of my hand, Pip."

"I won't. What's the matter with the man that he should dare dream of tying you down to what he can give you? It seems to me that he lacks pride."

"He doesn't lack anything. Let go of my hand, Pip."

But he still held it. "How he could have the courage to ask--until he had made a name for himself."

She blazed. "He didn't ask. I asked him, Pip. I cared enough for that."

He dropped her hand as if it had stung him. "You cared--as much as that?"

She faced him bravely. "As much as that--it pleased me to say what it was my right to say."

"Oh! It was the queen, then, and the--beggar man. _Eve_, come back."

She was at the door, but she turned. "I'll come back if you will beg my pardon. Richard is not a beggar, and I am not the queen. How hateful you are, Pip."

"I won't beg your pardon. And let's have this out right now, Eve."

"Have what out?"

"Sit down, and I'll tell you."

Once more they were seated with the table between them. Pip's back was to the window, but Eve faced the broad expanse of sky and sea. A faint pink flush was on the waters: a silver star hung at the edge of a crescent moon. There was no sound but the purr of machinery and the mewing of gulls in the distance.

Eve was in pink--a straight linen frock with a low white collar. It gave her an air of simplicity quite unlike her usual elegance. Pip feasted his eyes on her.

"You've got to face it. Brooks doesn't care."

"He does care."

"He didn't care enough to come down last night when you were afraid--and wanted him. And you turned to me, just for one little minute, Eve. Do you think I shall ever forget the thrill of the thought that you turned to me?"

She was staring straight out at the little moon. "Marie-Louise was his patient--he had to stay with her."

"You are saying that to me, but in your heart you know you are resenting the fact that he didn't come when you called. Aren't you, Eve? Aren't you resenting it?"

She told him the truth. "Yes. But I know that when I am his wife, I shall have to let him think about his patients. I ought to be big enough for that."

"You are big enough for anything. But you are not always going to be content with crumbs from the king's table. And that's what you are getting from Brooks. And I have a feast ready. Eve, can't you see that I would give, give, give, and he will take, take, take? Eve, can't you see?"

She did see, and for the moment she was swayed by the force of his passionate eloquence.

She leaned toward him a little. "Pip, dear, I wish--sometimes--that it might have been--you."

It needed only this. He swept the card table aside with his strong arms. He was on his knees begging for love, for life. Her hair swept his cheek.

The little moon shone clear in the quiet sky. There was not much light, but there was enough for a man standing in the door to see two dark figures outlined against the silver space beyond.

And Richard was standing in the door!

Eve saw him first. "Go away, Pip," she said, and stood up. "I--I think I can make him understand."

When they were alone she said to Richard in a strained voice, "It was my fault, Dicky."

"Do you mean that you--let him, Eve?"

"No. But I let him talk about his love for me--and--and--he cares very much."

"He knows that you are engaged to me."

"Yes. But last night when you stayed on deck when I needed you and asked for you, Pip knew that you wouldn't come--and he was sorry for me."

"And he was sorry again this afternoon?"

"Yes."

"And he showed it by making love to you?"

"He thinks I won't be happy with you. He thinks that you don't care. He thinks----"

"I don't care what Meade thinks. I want to know what you think, Eve."

Their voices had come out of the darkness. She pulled the little chain of a wall bracket, and the room was enveloped in a warm wave of light. "I don't know what I think. But I hated to have you with Marie-Louise."

"She was very ill. You knew that. Eve, if we can't trust each other, what possible happiness can there be ahead?"

She had no answer ready.

"Of course I can't stay on Meade's boat after this," he went on; "I'll get them to run in here somewhere and drop me."

She sank back in the chair from which she had risen when Philip left them. His troubled eyes resting upon her saw a blur of pink and gold out of which emerged her white face.

"But I want you to stay."

"You shouldn't want me to stay, Eve. I can't accept his hospitality, after this, and call myself--a man."

"Oh, Dicky--I detest heroics."

She was startled by the tone in which he said, "If that is the way you feel about it, we might as well end it here."

"Dicky----"

"I mean it, Eve. The whole thing is based on the fact that I stayed with a patient when you wanted me. Well, I shall always be staying with patients after we are married, and if you are unable to see why I must do the thing I did last night, then you will never be able to see it. And a doctor's wife must see it."

She came up to him, and in the darkness laid her cheek against his arm. "Dicky, don't joke about a thing like that. I can't stand it. And I'm sorry about--Pip. Dicky, I shall die if you don't forgive me."

He forgave her. He even made himself believe that Pip might be forgiven. He exerted himself to seem at his ease at dinner. He said nothing more about leaving at the next landing.

But late that night he sat alone on deck in the darkness. He was a plain man, and he saw things straight. And this thing was crooked. The hot honor of his youth revolted against the situation in which he saw himself. He felt hurt and ashamed. It was as if the dreams of his boyhood had been dragged in the dust. _

Read next: Chapter 18. In Which We Hear Once More Of A Sandalwood Fan

Read previous: Chapter 16. In Which Pan Pipes To The Stars

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