Chapter 9. The Invasion

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_ CHAPTER IX. THE INVASION

They went together in a double chair, spinning noiselessly over the shell road which wound through oleander and hibiscus hedges. Great orange and sulphur-tinted butterflies kept pace with them as they travelled swiftly southward; the long, slim shadows of palms gridironed the sunny road, for the sun was in the west, and already a bird here and there had ventured on a note or two as prelude to the evening song, and over the ocean wild ducks were rising in clouds, swinging and drifting and settling again as though in short rehearsal for their sunset flight.

"Your hostess is Mrs. Tom O'Hara," said the girl; "when you have enough of it look at me and I'll understand. And if you try to hide in a corner with some soulful girl I'll look at you--if it bores me too much. So don't sit still with an infatuated smile, as Cecile does, when she sees that I wish to make my adieux."

"I'm so likely to," he said, "when escape means that I'll have you to myself again."

There was a trifle more significance in the unconsidered speech than he had intended. The girl looked absently straight in front of her; he sat motionless, uncomfortable at his own words, but too wise to attempt to modify them by more words.

Other chairs passed them now along the road--there were nods of recognition, gay salutes, an intimate word or two as the light-wheeled vehicles flashed past; and in a moment more the tall coquina gate posts and iron grille of Mrs. Tom O'Hara's villa, Tsana Lahni, glimmered under an avenue of superb royal palms.

The avenue was crowded with the slender-wheeled basket-bodied chairs gay with the plumage of pretty women; the scene on the lawns beyond was charming where an orange and white pavilion was pitched against the intense green of the foliage, and the pelouse was all dotted and streaked with vivid colours of sunshades and gowns.

"Ulysses among the sirens," she whispered as they made their way toward their hostess, exchanging recognition with people everywhere in the throngs. "Here they are--all of them--and there's Miss Suydam,--too unconscious of us. How hath the House of Hamil fallen!--"

"If you talk that way I won't leave you for one second while we're here!" he said under his breath.

"Nonsense; it only hurts me, not my pride. And half a cup of unforbidden tea will drown the memory of that insolence--"

She bent forward with smiling composure to shake hands with Mrs. Tom O'Hara, a tall, olive-tinted, black-haired beauty; presented Hamil to his hostess, and left him planted, to exchange impulsive amenities with little Mrs. Ascott.

Mrs. Tom O'Hara, a delicate living Gainsborough in black and white, was probably the handsomest woman in the South. She dressed with that perfection of simplicity which only a few can afford; she wore only a single jewel at a time, but the gem was always matchless.

Warm-hearted, generous, and restless, she loved the character of Lady Bountiful; and, naively convinced of her own unassailable supremacy, played very picturesquely the role of graciousness and patronage to the tenants of her great estates and of her social and intellectual world alike. Hence, although she went where many of her less fashionable guests might not have been asked to go, she herself paid self-confident homage to intellect as she understood it, and in her own house her entourage was as mixed as her notions of a "salon" permitted.

She was gracious to Hamil on account of his aunt, his profession, and himself. Also her instinct was to be nice to everybody. As hostess she had but a moment to accord him, but during that moment she contrived to speak reassuringly of the Suydam genealogy, the art of landscape architecture, and impart a little special knowledge from her inexhaustible reserve, informing him that the name of her villa, Tsa-na Lah-ni, was Seminole, and meant "Yellow Butterfly." And then she passed him sweetly along into a crush of bright-eyed young things who attempted to pour tea into him and be agreeable in various artless ways; and presently he found himself in a back-water where fashion and intellect were conscientiously doing their best to mix. But the mixture was a thin solution--thinner than Swizzles and Caravan, and the experience of the very young girl beside him who talked herself out in thirty seconds from pure nervousness and remained eternally grateful to him for giving her a kindly opportunity to escape to cover among the feather-brained and frivolous.

Then, close to him, a girl spoke of the "purple perfume of petunias," and a man used the phrases, "body politic," and "the gaiety of nations."

So he knew he was among the elect, redundant, and truly precious. A chinless young man turned to him and said:

"There is nobody to-day who writes as Bernard Haw writes."

"Does anybody want to?" asked Hamil pleasantly.

"You mean that this is an age of trumpery romance?" demanded a heavy gentleman in dull disdain. "William Dean has erased all romance from modern life with one smear of his honest thumb!"

"The honest thumb that persistently and patiently rubs the scales from sapphire and golden wings in order to be certain that the vination of the Ornithoptera is still underneath, is not the digit of inspiration," suggested Hamil.

The disciple turned a dull brick-colour; but he betrayed neither his master nor himself.

"What, in God's name," he asked heavily, "is an ornithoptera?"

A very thin author, who had been listening and twisting himself into a number of shapes, thrust his neck forward into the arena and considered Hamil with the pale grimace of challenge.

"Henry Haynes?" he inquired--"your appreciation in one phrase, Mr. Hamil."

"In a Henry Haynes phrase?" asked Hamil good-humouredly.

"The same old calumny?" said the thin author, writhing almost off his chair.

"I'm afraid so; and the remedy a daily dose of verbifuge--until he gets back to the suffocated fount of inspiration. I am very sorry if I seem to differ from everybody, but everybody seems to differ from me, so I can't help it."

A Swami, unctuous and fat, and furious at the lack of feminine attention, said something suavely outrageous about modern women. He was immediately surrounded by several mature examples who adored to be safely smitten by the gelatinous and esoteric.

A little flabby, featureless, but very fashionable portrait painter muttered to Hamil: "Orient and Occident! the molluskular and the muscular. Mr. Hamil, do you realise _what_ the Occident is?"

"Geographically?" inquired Hamil wearily.

"No, symbolically. It is that!" explained the painter, doubling his meagre biceps and punching at the infinite, with a flattened thumb. "That," he repeated, "is America. Do you comprehend?"

The wan young girl who had spoken of the purple perfume of petunias said that _she_ understood. It may be that she did; she reviewed literature for the _Tribune_.

Harried and restless, Hamil looked for Shiela and saw Portlaw, very hot and uncomfortable in his best raiment, shooting his cuffs and looking dully about for some avenue of escape; and Hamil, exasperated with purple perfumes and thumbs, meanly snared him and left him to confront a rather ample and demonstrative young girl who believed that all human thought was precious--even sinful thought--of which she knew as much as a newly hatched caterpillar. However, Portlaw was able to enlighten her if he cared to.

Again and again Hamil, wandering in circles, looked across the wilderness of women's hats at Shiela Cardross, but a dozen men surrounded her, and among them he noticed the graceful figure of Malcourt directly in front of her, blocking any signal he might have given.

Somebody was saying something about Mrs. Ascott. He recollected that he hadn't met her; so he found somebody to present him.

"And _you_ are the man?" exclaimed Mrs. Ascott softly, considering him with her head on one side. "Shiela Cardross wrote to me in New York about you, but I've wanted to inspect you for my own information."

"Are you doing it now?" he asked, amused.

"It's done! Do you imagine you are complex? I've heard various tales about you from three sources, to-day; from an old friend, Louis Malcourt--from another, Virginia Suydam--and steadily during the last month--including to-day--from Shiela Cardross. But I couldn't find a true verdict until the accused appeared personally before me. Tell me, Mr. Hamil, do you plead guilty to being as amiable as the somewhat contradictory evidence indicates?"

"Parole me in custody of this court and let me convince your Honor," said Hamil, looking into the captivatingly cool and humourous face upturned to his.

Mrs. Ascott was small, and finely moulded; something of the miniature grande dame in porcelain. The poise of her head, the lifted chin, every detail in the polished and delicately tinted surface reflected cool experience of the world and of men. Yet the eyes were young, and there was no hardness in them, and the mouth seemed curiously unfashioned for worldly badinage--a very wistful, full-lipped mouth that must have been disciplined in some sad school to lose its cheerfulness in repose.

"I am wondering," she said, "why Mr. Portlaw does not come and talk to me. We are neighbors in the country, you know; I live at Pride's Fall. I don't think it's particularly civil of him to avoid me."

"I can't imagine anybody, including Portlaw, avoiding you," he said.

"We were such good friends--I don't know--he behaved very badly to me last autumn."

They chatted together for a moment or two in the same inconsequential vein, then, other people being presented, she nodded an amiable dismissal; and, as he stepped aside, held out her hand.

"There are a lot of things I'd like to ask you some day; one is about a park for me at Pride's Fall--oh, the tiniest sort of a park, only it should be quite formal in all its miniature details. Will you let Shiela bring you for a little conference? _Soon_?"

He promised and took his leave, elated at the chances of a new commission, hunting through the constantly arriving and departing throngs for Shiela. And presently he encountered his aunt.

"You certainly do neglect me," she said with her engaging and care-free laugh. "Where have you been for a week?"

"In the flat-woods. And, by the way, don't worry about any snakes. Virginia said you were anxious."

"Nonsense," said his aunt, amused, "Virginia is trying to plague you! I said nothing about snakes to her."

"Didn't you say there were snakes in my district?"

"No. I _did_ say there were _girls_ in your district, but it didn't worry me."

His face was so serious that the smile died out on her own.

"Why, Garret," she said, "surely you are not offended, are you?"

"Not with you--Virginia has apparently taken her cue from that unspeakable Mrs. Van Dieman, and is acting like the deuce toward Shiela Cardross. Couldn't you find an opportunity to discourage that sort of behaviour? It's astonishingly underbred."

His aunt's eyelids flickered as she regarded him.

"Come to see me to-night and explain a little more fully what Virginia has done, dear. Colonel Vetchen is hunting for me and I'm going to let him find me now. Why don't you come back with us if you are not looking for anybody in particular."

"I'm looking for Shiela Cardross," he said.

"Oh, she's over there on the terrace holding her fascinating court--with Louis Malcourt at her heels as usual."

"I didn't know that Malcourt was usually at her heels," he said almost irritably. It was the second time he had heard that comment, and he found it unaccountably distasteful.

His aunt looked up, smiling.

"Can't we dine together, Garry?"

"Yes."

"Thank you, dear"--faintly ironical. "So now if you'll go I'll reveal myself to Gussie Vetchen. Stand aside, my condescending friend."

He said, smiling: "You're the prettiest revelation here. I'll be at the hotel at eight."

And with that they parted just as the happy little Vetchen, catching sight of them, came bustling up with all the fuss and demonstration of a long-lost terrier.

A few minutes later Hamil found Shiela Cardross surrounded by her inevitable entourage--a jolly, animated circle hemming her in with Malcourt at her left and Van Tassel Cuyp on her right; and he halted on the circle's edge to look and listen, glancing askance at Malcourt with a curiosity unaccustomed.

That young man with his well-made graceful figure, his dark hair and vivid tints, had never particularly impressed Hamil. He had accepted him at his face value, lacking the interest to appraise him; and the acquaintance had always been as casual and agreeable as mutual good-humour permitted. But now Malcourt, as a type, attracted his attention; and for a moment he contrasted this rather florid example with the specimens of young men around him. Then he looked at Shiela Cardross. Her delicately noble head was bent a trifle as she listened with the others to Malcourt's fluent humour; and it remained so, though at moments she lifted her eyes in that straight, questioning gaze which left the brows level.

And now she was replying to Malcourt; and Hamil watched her and listened to her with newer interest, noting the poise, the subtle reserve under the gayest provocation of badinage--the melody of her rare laughter, the unaffected sweetness of her voice, and its satisfying sincerity--satisfying as the clear regard from her lifted eyes.

Small wonder men were attracted; Hamil could understand what drew them--the instinctive recognition of a fibre finer and a metal purer than was often found under the surface of such loveliness.

And now, as he watched her, the merriment broke out again around her, and she laughed, lifting her face to his in all its youthfully bewildering beauty, and saw him standing near her for the first time.

Without apparent reason a dull colour rose to his face; and, as though answering fire with fire, her fainter signal in response tinted lip and cheek.

It was scarcely the signal agreed upon for their departure; and for a moment longer, amid the laughing tumult, she sat looking at him as though confused. Malcourt bent forward saying something to her, but she rose while he was speaking, as though she had not heard him; and Hamil walked through the circle to where she stood. A number of very young men looked around at him with hostile eyes; Malcourt's brows lifted a trifle; then he shot an ironical glance at Shiela and, as the circle about her disintegrated, sauntered up, bland, debonair, to accept his conge.

His bow, a shade exaggerated, and the narrowed mockery of his eyes escaped her; and even what he said made no impression as she stood, brightly inattentive, looking across the little throng at Hamil. And Malcourt's smile became flickering and uncertain when she left the terrace with Hamil, moving very slowly side by side across the lawn.

"Such lots of pretty women," commented Shiela. "Have you been passably amused?"

"Passably," he replied in a slightly sullen tone.

"Oh, only passably? I rather hoped that unawakened heart of yours might be aroused to-day."

"It has been."

"_Not_ Mrs. Ascott!" she exclaimed, halting.

"Not Mrs. Ascott."

"Mrs. Tom O'Hara! Is it? Every man promptly goes to smash when Mrs. Tom looks sideways."

"O Lord!" he said with a shrug.

"That is not nice of you, Mr. Hamil. If it is not with her you have fallen in love there is a more civil way of denying it."

"Did you take what I said seriously?" he asked--"about falling in love?"

"Were you not serious?"

"I could be if you were," he said in a tone which slightly startled her. She looked up at him questioningly; he said:

"I've had a stupid time without you. The little I've seen of you has spoiled other women for me. And I've just found it out. Do you mind my saying so?"

"Are you not a little over-emphatic in your loyalty to me? I like it, but not at the expense of others, please."

They moved on together, slowly and in step. His head was bent, face sullen and uncomfortably flushed. Again she felt the curiously unaccountable glow in her own cheeks responding in pink fire once more; and annoyed and confused she halted and looked up at him with that frank confidence characteristic of her.

"Something has gone wrong," she said. "Tell me."

"I will. I'm telling myself now." She laughed, stole a glance at him, then her face fell.

"I certainly don't know what you mean, and I'm not very sure that you know."

She was right; he did not yet know. Strange, swift pulses were beating in temple and throat; strange tumults and confusion were threatening his common sense, paralyzing will-power. A slow, resistless intoxication had enveloped him, through which instinctively persisted one warning ray of reason. In the light of that single ray he strove to think clearly. They walked to the pavilion together, he silent, sombre-eyed, taking a mechanical leave of his hostess, fulfilling conventions while scarcely aware of the routine or of the people around him; she composed, sweet, conventionally faultless--and a trifle pale as they turned away together across the lawn.

When they took their places side by side in the chair she was saying something perfunctory concerning the fete and Mrs. Ascott. And as he offered no comment: "Don't you think her very charming and sincere.... Are you listening to me, Mr. Hamil?"

"Yes," he said. "Everybody was very jolly. Yes, indeed."

"And--the girl who adores the purple perfume of petunias?" she asked mischievously. "I think that same purple perfume has made you drowsy, my uncivil friend."

He turned. "Oh, you heard _that_?"

"Yes; I thought it best to keep a sisterly eye on you."

He forced a smile.

"You were very much amused, I suppose--to see me sitting bras-dessus-bras-dessous with the high-browed and precious."

"Not amused; no. I was worried; you appeared to be so hopelessly captivated by her of the purple perfumery. Still, knowing you to be a man normally innocent of sentiment, I hoped for Mrs. Ascott and the best."

"Did I once tell you that there was no sentiment in me, Calypso? I believe I did."

"You certainly did, brother," she replied with cheerful satisfaction.

"Well, I--"

"--And," she interrupted calmly, "I believed you. I am particularly happy now in believing you." A pause--and she glanced at him. "In fact, speaking seriously, it is the nicest thing about you--the most attractive to me, I think." She looked sideways at him, "Because, there is no more sentiment in me than there is in you.... Which is, of course, very agreeable--to us both."

He said nothing more; the chair sped on homeward. Above them the sky was salmon-colour; patches of late sunlight burned red on the tree trunks; over the lagoon against the slowly kindling west clouds of wild-fowl whirled, swung, and spread out into endless lengthening streaks like drifting bands of smoke.

From time to time the girl cast a furtive glance toward him; but he was looking straight ahead with a darkly set face; and an ache, dull, scarcely perceptible, grew in her heart as they flew on along the glimmering road.

"Of what are you thinking, brother?" she asked persuasively.

"Of something I am going to do; as soon as I reach home; I mean _your_ home."

"I wish it were yours, too," she said, smiling frankly; "you are such a safe, sound, satisfactory substitute for another brother." ... And as he made no response: "What is this thing which you are going to do when you reach home?"

"I am going to ask your mother a question."

Unquiet she turned toward him, but his face was doggedly set forward as the chair circled through the gates and swept up to the terrace.

He sprang out; and as he aided her to descend she felt his hand trembling under hers. A blind thrill of premonition halted her; then she bit her lip, turned, and mounted the steps with him. At the door he stood aside for her to pass; but again she paused and turned to Hamil, irresolute, confused, not even daring to analyse what sheer instinct was clamouring; what intuition was reading even now in his face, what her ears divined in his unsteady voice uttering some commonplace to thank her for the day spent with him.

"What is it that you are going to say to my mother?" she asked again.

And at the same instant she knew from his eyes--gazing into them in dread and dismay.

"Don't!" she said breathlessly; "I cannot let--" The mounting wave of colour swept her: "Don't go to her!--don't ask such a--a thing. I am--"

She faltered, looking up at him with terrified eyes, and laid one hand on his arm.

The frightened wordless appeal stunned him as they stood there, confronting one another. Suddenly hope came surging up within her; her hand fell from his arm; she lifted her eyes in flushed silence--only to find hopeless confirmation of all she dreaded in his set and colourless face.

"Mr. Hamil," she said tremulously, "I never dreamed--"

"No, you didn't. I did. It is all right, Shiela."

"Oh--I--I never, never dreamed of it!"--shocked and pitifully incredulous still.

"I know you didn't. Don't worry." His voice was very gentle, but he was not looking at her.

"Is it my--fault, Mr. Hamil?"

"Your fault?" he repeated, surprised. "What have _you_ done?"

"I--don't know."

He stood gazing absently out into the flaming west; and, speaking as though unaware: "From the first--I realise it now--even from the first moment when you sprang into my life out of the fog and the sea--Shiela! Shiela!--I--"

"Don't!" she whispered, "don't say it." She swayed back against the wall; her hand covered her eyes an instant--and dropped helpless, hopeless.

They faced each other.

"Believe that I am--sorry," she whispered. "Will you believe it? I did not know; I did not dream of it."

His face changed as though something within him was being darkly aroused.

"After all," he said, "no man ever lived who could kill hope."

"There is no hope to kill--"

"No chance, Shiela?"

"There has never been any chance--" She was trembling; he took both her hands. They were ice cold.

He straightened up, squaring his shoulders. "This won't do," he said. "I'm not going to distress you--frighten you again." The smile he forced was certainly a credit to him.

"Shiela, you'd love me if you could, wouldn't you?"

"Y-yes," with a shiver.

"Then it's all right and you mustn't worry.... Can't we get back to the old footing again?"

"N-no; it's gone."

"Then we'll find even firmer ground."

"Yes--firmer ground, Mr. Hamil."

He released her chilled hands, swung around, and took a thoughtful step or two.

"Firmer, safer ground," he repeated. "Once you said to me, 'Let us each enjoy our own griefs unmolested.'" He laughed. "Didn't you say that--years ago?"

"Yes."

"And I replied--years ago--that I had no griefs to enjoy. Didn't I? Well, then, if this is grief, Shiela, I wouldn't exchange it for another man's happiness. So, if you please, I'll follow your advice and enjoy it in my own fashion.... Shiela, you don't smile very often, but I wish you would now."

But the ghost of a smile left her pallor unchanged. She moved toward the stairs, wearily, stopped and turned.

"It cannot end this way," she said; "I want you to know how--to know--to know that I--am--sensible of w-what honour you have done me. Wait! I--I can't let you think that I--do not--care, Mr. Hamil. Believe that I do!--oh, deeply. And forgive me--" She stretched out one hand. He took it, holding it between both of his for a moment, lightly.

"Is all clear between us, Calypso dear?"

"It will be--when I have courage to tell you."

"Then all's well with the world--if it's still under-foot--or somewhere in the vicinity. I'll find it again; you'll be good enough to point it out to me, Shiela.... I've an engagement to improve a few square miles of it.... That's what I need--plenty of work--don't I, Shiela?"

The clear mellow horn of a motor sounded from the twilit lawn; the others were arriving. He dropped her hand; she gathered her filmy skirts and swiftly mounted the great stairs, leaving him to greet her father and Gray on the terrace.

"Hello, Hamil!" called out Cardross, senior, from the lawn, "are you game for a crack at the ducks to-morrow? My men report Ruffle Lake full of coots and blue-bills, and there'll be bigger duck in the West Lagoons."

"I'm going too," said Gray, "also Shiela if she wants to--and four guides and that Seminole, Little Tiger."

Hamil glanced restlessly at the forest where his work lay. And he needed it now. But he said pleasantly, "I'll go if you say so."

"Of course I say so," exclaimed Cardross heartily. "Gray, does Louis Malcourt still wish to go?"

"He spoke of it last week."

"Well, if he hasn't changed his rather volatile mind telephone for Adams, We'll require a guide apiece. And he can have that buckskin horse; and tell him to pick out his own gun." And to Hamil, cordially: "Shiela and Louis and Gray will probably wander about together and you and I will do the real shooting. But Shiela is a shot--if she chooses. Gray would rather capture a scarce jungle butterfly. Hello, here's Louis now! Are you glad we're going at last?"

"Very," replied Hamil as Malcourt strolled up and airily signified his intention of making one of the party. But as soon as he learned that they might remain away three days or more he laughingly demurred.

The four men lingered for a few minutes in the hall discussing guns, dogs, and guides; then Hamil mounted the stairs, and Malcourt went with him, talking all the while in that easy, fluent, amusing manner which, if he chose, could be as agreeably graceful as every attitude and movement of his lithe body. His voice, too, had that engagingly caressing quality characteristic of him when in good-humour; he really had little to say to Hamil, but being on such excellent terms with himself he said a great deal about nothing in particular; and as he persistently lingered by Hamil's door the latter invited him in.

There Malcourt lit a cigarette, seated lazily astride a chair, arms folded across the back, aimlessly humourous in recounting his adventures at the Ascott function, while Hamil stood with his back to the darkening window, twisting his unlighted cigarette into minute shreds and waiting for him to go.

"Rather jolly to meet Miss Suydam again," observed Malcourt. "We were great friends at Portlaw's camp together two years ago. I believe that you and Miss Suydam are cousins after a fashion."

"After a fashion, I believe."

"She's tremendously attractive, Hamil."

"What? Oh, yes, very."

"Evidently no sentiment lost between you," laughed the other.

"No, of course not; no sentiment."

Malcourt said carelessly: "I'm riding with Miss Suydam to-morrow. That's one reason I'm not going on this duck-hunt."

Hamil nodded.

"Another reason," he continued, intent on the glowing end of his cigarette, "is that I'm rather fortunate at the Club just now--and I don't care to disturb any run of luck that seems inclined to drift my way. Would you give your luck the double cross?"

"I suppose not," said Hamil vaguely--"if I ever had any."

"That's the way I feel. And it's all kinds of luck that's chasing me. _All_ kinds, Hamil. One kind, for example, wears hair that matches my cuff-links. Odd, isn't it?" he added, examining the golden links with a smile.

Hamil nodded inattentively.

"I am about seven thousand dollars ahead on the other sort of luck," observed Malcourt. "If it holds to-night I'll inaugurate a killing that will astonish the brothers B. yonder. By the way, now that you have your club ticket why don't you use it?--one way or another."

"Perhaps," replied Hamil listlessly.

A few minutes later Malcourt, becoming bored, genially took his leave; and Hamil turned on an electric jet and began to undo his collar and tie.

He was in no hurry; at times he suspended operations to pace aimlessly to and fro; and after a while, half undressed, he dropped into an arm-chair, clinched hands supporting his temples.

Presently he said aloud to himself: "It's absolutely impossible. It can't happen this way. How can it?"

His heavy pulse answered the question; a tense strain, irksome as an ache, dragged steadily at something within him which resisted; dulling reason and thought.

For a long time he sat there inert, listening for the sound of her voice which echoed at moments through the stunned silence within him. And at last he stumbled to his feet like a stricken man on the firing line, stupefied that the thing had happened to _him_; and stood unsteadily, looking around. Then he went heavily about his dressing.

Later, when he was ready to leave his room, he heard Malcourt walking through the corridor outside--a leisurely and lightly stepping Malcourt, whistling a lively air. And, when Malcourt had passed came Cecile rustling from the western corridor, gay, quick-stepping, her enchanting laughter passing through the corridor like a fresh breeze as she joined Mrs. Carrick on the stairs. Then silence; and he opened his door. And Shiela Cardross, passing noiselessly, turned at the sound.

His face must have been easy to read for her own promptly lost its colour, and with an involuntary recoil she stepped back against the wall, staring at him in pallid silence.

"What is the matter?" he asked, scarcely recognising his own voice. And striving to shake off the unreality of it all with a laugh: "You look like some pretty ghost from dreamland--with your white gown and arms and face. Shall we descend into the waking world together?"

They stood for a moment motionless, looking straight at one another; then the smile died out on his face, but he still strove to speak lightly, using effort, like a man with a dream dark upon him: "I am waiting for your pretty ghostship."

Her lips moved in reply; no sound came from them.

"Are you afraid of me?" he said.

"Yes."

"Of _me_, Shiela?"

"Of us both. You don't know--you don't know!"

"Know what, Shiela?"

"What I am--what I have done. And I've got to tell you." Her mouth quivered suddenly, and she faced him fighting for self-control. "I've got to tell you. Things cannot be left in this way between us. I thought they could, but they can't."

He crossed the corridor, slowly; she straightened up at his approach, white, rigid, breathless.

"What is it that has frightened you?" he said.

"What you--said--to me."

"That I love you?"

"Yes; that."

"Why should it frighten you?"

"Must I tell you?"

"If it will help you."

"I am past help. But it will end you're caring for me. And from making me--care--for you. I must do it; this cannot go on--"

"Shiela!"

She faced him, white as death, looking at him blindly.

"I am trying to think of you--because you love me--"

Fright chilled her blood, killing pulse and colour. "I am trying to be kind--because I care for you--and we must end this before it ends us.... Listen to my miserable, pitiful, little secret, Mr. Hamil. I--I have--I am not--free."

"Not _free_!"

"I was married two years ago--when I was eighteen years old. Three people in the world know it: you, I, and--the man I married."

"Married!" he repeated, stupefied.

She looked at him steadily a moment.

"I think your love has been done to death, Mr. Hamil. My own danger was greater than you knew; but it was for your sake--because you loved me. Good night."

Stunned, he saw her pass him and descend the stairs, stood for a space alone, then scarce knowing what he did he went down into the great living-room to take his leave of the family gathered there before dinner had been announced. They all seemed to be there; he was indifferently conscious of hearing his own words like a man who listens to an unfamiliar voice in a distant room.

The rapid soundless night ride to the hotel seemed unreal; the lights in the cafe, the noise and movement, the pretty face of his aunt with the pink reflection from the candle shades on her cheeks--all seemed as unconvincing as himself and this thing that he could not grasp--could not understand--could not realise had befallen him--and her.

If Miss Palliser was sensible of any change in him or his voice or manner she did not betray it. Wayward came over to speak to them, limping very slightly, tall, straight, ruddy, the gray silvering his temples and edging his moustache.

And after a while Hamil found himself sitting silent, a partly burnt cigar between his fingers, watching Wayward and his youthful aunt in half-intimate, half-formal badinage, elbow to elbow on the cloth. For they had known one another a long time, and through many phases of Fate and Destiny.

"That little Cardross girl is playing the devil with the callow hereabout," Wayward said; "Malcourt, house-broken, runs to heel with the rest. And when I see her I feel like joining the pack. Only--I was never broken, you know--"

"She is a real beauty," said Miss Palliser warmly; "I don't see why you don't enlist, James."

"I may at that. Garry, are you also involved?"

Hamil said, "Yes--yes, of course," and smiled meaninglessly at Wayward.

For a fraction of a second his aunt hesitated, then said: "Garry is naturally among the devoted--when he's not dog-tired from a day in the cypress-swamps. Have you been out to see the work, James? Oh, you should go; everybody goes; it's one of the things to do here. And I'm very proud when I hear people say, 'There's that brilliant young fellow, Hamil,' or, in a tone which expresses profound respect, 'Hamil designed it, you know'; and I smile and think, 'That's my boy Garry!' James, it is a very comfortable sensation for an old lady to experience." And she looked at Wayward out of her lovely golden eyes, sweet as a maid of twenty.

Wayward smiled, then absently bent his gaze on his wine-glass, lying back in his chair. Through his spectacles his eyes seemed very intent on the frail crystal stem of his glass.

"What are you going to do for the rest of the winter?" she asked, watching him.

"What I am doing," he replied with smiling bitterness. "The _Ariani_ is yonder when I can't stand the shore.... What else is there for me to do--until I snuff out!"

"Build that house you were going to build--when we were rather younger, Jim."

"I did; and it fell," he said quietly; but, as though she had not heard. "--Build that house," she repeated, "and line it with books--the kind of books that were written and read before the machine-made sort supplanted them. One picture to a room--do you remember, Jim?--or two if you find it better; the kind men painted before Rembrandt died.... Do you remember your plan?--the plans you drew for me to look at in our front parlour--when New York houses had parlours? You were twenty and I fourteen.... Garry, yonder, was not.... And the rugs, you recollect?--one or two in a room, Shiraz, Ispahan--nothing as obvious as Sehna and Saraband--nothing but Moresque and pure Persian--and one agedly perfect gem of Asia Minor, and one Tekke, so old and flawless that only the pigeon-blood fire remained under the violet bloom.... Do you remember?"

Wayward's shoulders straightened with a jerk. For twenty years he had not remembered these things; and she had not only remembered but was now reciting the strange, quaint, resurrected words in their forgotten sequence; the words he had uttered as he--or what he had once been--sat in the old-time parlour in the mellow half light of faded brocades and rosewood, repeating to a child the programme of his future. Lofty aim and high ideal, the cultivated endeavour of good citizenship, loyalty to aspiration, courage, self-respect, and the noble living of life; they had also spoken of these things together--there in the golden gloom of the old-time parlour when she was fourteen and he master of his fate and twenty.

But there came into his life a brilliant woman who stayed a year and left his name a mockery: Malcourt's only sister, now Lady Tressilvain, doubtfully conspicuous with her loutish British husband, among those continentals where titles serve rather to obscure than enlighten inquiry.

The wretched affair dragged its full offensive length through the international press; leaving him with his divorce signed and a future endurable only when his senses had been sufficiently drugged. In sober intervals he now had neuritis and a limp to distract his mind; also his former brother-in-law with professions of esteem and respect and a tendency to borrow. And drunk or sober he had the _Ariani_. But the house that Youth had built in the tinted obscurity of an old New York parlour--no, he didn't have that; and even memory of it were wellnigh gone had not Constance Palliser spoken from the shadows of the past.

He lifted his glass unsteadily and replaced it. Then slowly he raised his head and looked full at Constance Palliser.

"It's too late," he said; "but I wish I had known that you remembered."

"Would you have built it, Jim?"

He looked at her again, then shook his head: "For whom am I to build, Constance?"

She leaned forward, glancing at the unconscious Hamil, then dropped her voice: "Build it for the Boy that Was, Jim."

"A headstone would be fitter--and less expensive."

"I am not asking you to build in memory of the dead. The Boy who Was is only asleep. If you could let him wake, suddenly, in that house--"

A clear flush of surprise stained his skin to the hair. It had been many years since a woman had hinted at any belief in him.

"Don't you know that I couldn't endure the four walls of a house, Constance?"

"You have not tried this house."

"Men--such men as I--cannot go back to the House of Youth."

"Try, Jim."

His hand was shaking as he lifted it to adjust his spectacles; and impulsively she laid her hand on his twitching arm:

"Jim, build it!--and see what happens."

"I cannot."

"Build it. You will not be alone and sad in it if you remember the boy and the child in the parlour. They--they will be good company--if you wish."

He rested his elbows on the table, head bent between his sea-burned hands.

"If I could only, only do something," she whispered. "The boy has merely been asleep, Jim. I have always known it. But it has taken many years for me to bring myself to this moment."

"Do you think a man can come back through such wreckage and mire--do you think he wants to come back? What do you know about it?--with your white skin and bright hair--and that child's mouth of yours--What do you know about it?"

"Once you were the oracle, Jim. May I not have my turn?"

"Yes--but what in God's name do you care?"

"Will you build?"

He looked at her dumbly, hopelessly; then his arm twitched and he relieved the wrist from the weight of his head, sitting upright, his eyes still bent on her.

"Because--in that old parlour--the child expected it of the boy," she said. "And expects it yet."

Hamil, who, chair pushed back, had been listlessly watching the orchestra, roused himself and turned to his aunt and Wayward.

"You want to go, Garry?" said Constance calmly. "I'll walk a little with James before I compose my aged bones to slumber.... Good night, dear. Will you come again soon?"

He said he would and took his leave of them in the long corridor, traversing it without noticing which direction he took until, awaking from abstraction, he found himself at the head of a flight of steps and saw the portico of the railroad station below him and the signal lamps, green and red and white, burning between the glistening rails.

Without much caring where he went, but not desiring to retrace his steps over half a mile or so of carpet, he went out into the open air and along the picket fence toward the lake front.

As he came to the track crossing he glanced across at the Beach Club where lights sparkled discreetly amid a tropical thicket and flowers lay in pale carpets under the stars.

Portlaw had sent him a member's card; he took it out now and scanned it with faint curiosity. His name was written on the round-cornered brown card signed by a "vice-president" and a "secretary," under the engraved notice: "To be shown when requested."

But when he ascended the winding walk among the palms and orange blossoms, this "suicide's tag," as Malcourt called it, was not demanded of him at the door.

The restaurant seemed to be gay and rather noisy, the women vivacious, sometimes beautiful, and often respectable. A reek of cigarette smoke, wine, and orange blossoms hung about the corridors; the tiny glittering rotunda with its gaming-tables in a circle was thronged.

He watched them lose and win and lose again. Under the soft tumult of voices the cool tones of the house attaches sounded monotonously, the ball rattled, the wheels spun. But curiosity had already died out within him; gain, loss, chance, Fate--and the tense white concentration of the man beside him no longer interested him; nor did a sweet-faced young girl in the corridor who looked a second too long at him; nor the handsome over-flushed youth who was with her and who cried out in loud recognition: "Gad, Hamil; why didn't you tell me you were coming? There's somebody here who wants to meet you, but Portlaw's got her--somewhere. You'll take supper with us anyway! We'll find you a fair impenitent."

Hamil stared at him coolly. He was on no such terms with Malcourt, drunk or sober. But everybody was Malcourt's friend just then, and he went on recklessly:

"You've got to stay; hasn't he, Dolly?--Oh, I forgot--Miss Wilming, Mr. Hamil, who's doing the new park, you know. All kinds of genius buzzes in his head--roulette wheels buzz in mine. Hamil, you remember Miss Wilming in the 'Motor Girl.' She was one of the acetylenes. Come on; we'll all light up later. Make him come, Dolly."

Hamil turned to speak to her. She seemed to be, at a casual glance, the sort of young girl who usually has a mother somewhere within ear-shot. Upon inspection, however, her bright hair was a little too perfectly rippled, and her mouth a trifle fuller and redder than a normal circulation might account for. But there remained in the eyes something as yet unquenched. And looking at her, he felt a sense of impatience and regret that the delicate youth of her should be wasted in the flare and shadow of the lesser world--burning to a spectre here on the crumbling edge of things--here with Malcourt leering at her through the disordered brilliancy of that false dawn which heralds only night.

They spoke together, smilingly formal. He had quietly turned his back on Malcourt.

She hoped he would remain and join them; and her as yet unspoiled voice clashed with her tinted lips and hair.

He was sorry--politely so--thanking her with the natural and unconscious gentleness so agreeable to all women. And as in his manner there was not the slightest hint of that half-amused, half-cynical freedom characteristic of the worldly wise whom she was now accustoming herself to meet, she looked up at him with a faint flush of appreciation.

Malcourt all the while was pulling Hamil by the elbow and talking on at random almost boisterously, checking himself at intervals to exchange familiar greetings with new-comers passing the crowded corridor. His face was puffy and red; so were his lips; and there seemed to be a shiny quality to hair and skin prophetic of future coarsening toward a type, individuals of which swarmed like sleek flies around the gaming-tables beyond.

As Hamil glanced from the young girl to Malcourt, who was still noisily importuning him, a sudden contempt for the man arose within him. So unreasoningly abrupt was the sensation of absolute distrust and dislike that it cut his leave-taking to a curt word of refusal, and he turned on his heel.

"What's the matter with you? Aren't you coming with us?" asked Malcourt, reddening.

"No," said Hamil. "Good-bye, Miss Wilming. Thank you for asking me."

She held out her hand, uncertainly; he took it with a manner so gentle and considerate that she ventured, hesitatingly, something about seeing him again. To which he replied, pleasantly conventional, and started toward the door.

"See here, Hamil," said Malcourt sharply, "is there any reason for your sudden and deliberate rudeness to me?"

"Is there any reason for your sudden and deliberate familiarity with me?" retorted Hamil in a low voice. "You're drunk!"

Malcourt's visage crimsoned: "O hell!" he said, "if your morals are as lofty as your mincing manners--"

Hamil stared him into silence, hesitated, then passed in front of him and out of the door.

Vicious with irritation, Malcourt laid his hand on the girl's arm: "Take it from me, Dolly, that's the sort of citizen who'll sneak around to call on your sort Saturday evenings."

She flushed painfully, but said nothing. "As for me," added Malcourt, "I don't think I've quite finished with this nice young man."

But Dolly Wilming stood silent, head bent, slender fingers worrying her lips, which seemed inclined to quiver. _

Read next: Chapter 10. Terra Incognita

Read previous: Chapter 8. Manoeuvering

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