The Firing Line. Chambers Robert William

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СКАЧАТЬ with a gesture and the slightest shrug, she turned away toward the white road outside. He was at her elbow in two steps.

      "Oh, yes—the irony of formality."

      She nodded. "Good night, then, Mr. Hamil. If circumstances permitted it would have been delightful—this putting off the cloak of convention and donning motley for a little unconventional misbehaviour with you.... But as it is, it worries me—slightly—as much as the episode and your opinion are worth."

      "I am wondering," he said, "why this little tincture of bitterness flavours what you say to me?"

      "Because I've misbehaved; and so have you. Anyway, now that it's done, there's scarcely anything I could do to make the situation more flagrant or less flippant—"

      "You don't really think—"

      "Certainly. After all is said and done, we don't know each other; here we are, shamelessly sauntering side by side under the jasmine, Paul-and-Virginia-like, exchanging subtleties blindfolded. You are you; I am I; formally, millions of miles apart—temporarily and informally close together, paralleling each other's course through life for the span of half an hour—here under the Southern stars.... O Ulysses, truly that island was inhabited by one, Calypso; but your thrall is to be briefer than your prototype's. See, now; here is the road; and I release you to that not impossible she—"

      "There is none—"

      "There will be. You are very young. Good-bye."

      "The confusing part of it to me," he said, smiling, "is to see you so—so physically youthful with even a hint of almost childish immaturity!—and then to hear you as you are—witty, experienced, nicely cynical, maturely sure of yourself and—"

      "You think me experienced?"

      "Yes."

      "Sure of myself?"

      "Of course; with your cool, amused poise, your absolute self-possession—and the half-disdainful sword-play of your wit—at my expense—"

      She halted beside the sea-wall, adorably mocking in her exaggerated gravity.

      "At your expense?" she repeated. "Why not? You have cost me something."

      "You said—"

      "I know what I said: I said that we might become friends. But even so, you have already cost me something. Tell me"—he began to listen for this little trick of speech—"how many men do you know who would not misunderstand what I have done this evening? And—do you understand it, Mr. Hamil?"

      "I think—"

      "If you do you are cleverer than I," she said almost listlessly, moving on again under the royal palms.

      "Do you mean that—"

      "Yes; that I myself don't entirely understand it. Here, under this Southern sun, we of the North are in danger of acquiring a sort of insouciant directness almost primitive. There comes, after a while, a certain mental as well as physical luxury in relaxation of rule and precept, permitting us a simplicity which sometimes, I think, becomes something less harmless. There is luxury in letting go of that live wire which keeps us all keyed to one conventional monotone in the North. I let go—for a moment—to-night. You let go when you said 'Calypso.' You couldn't have said it in New York; I couldn't have heard you, there.... Alas, Ulysses, I should not have heard you anywhere. But I did; and I answered.... Say good night to me, now; won't you? We have not been very wicked, I think."

      She offered her hand; smooth and cool it lay for a second in his.

      "I can't let you return alone," he ventured.

      "If you please, how am I to explain you to—the others?"

      And as he said nothing:

      "If I were—different—I'd simply tell them the truth. I could afford to. Besides we'll all know you before very long. Then we'll see—oh, yes, both of us—whether we have been foolishly wise to become companions in our indiscretion, or—otherwise.... And don't worry about my home-arrival. That's my lawn—there where that enormous rubber-banyan tree straddles across the stars.... Is it not quaint—the tangle of shrubbery all over jasmine?—and those are royal poincianas, if you please—and there's a great garden beyond and most delectable orange groves where you and I and the family and Alonzo will wander and eat pine-oranges and king-oranges and mandarins and—oh, well! Are you going to call on Mr. Cardross to-morrow?"

      "Yes," he said, "I'll have to see Mr. Cardross at once. And after that, what am I to do to meet you?"

      "I will consider the matter," she said; and bending slightly toward him: "Am I to be disappointed in you? I don't know, and you can't tell me." Then, impulsively: "Be generous to me. You are right; I am not very old, yet. Be nice to me in your thoughts. I have never before done such a thing as this: I never could again. It is not very dreadful—is it? Will you think nicely of me?"

      He said gaily: "Now you speak as you look, not like a world-worn woman of thirty wearing the soft, fresh mask of nineteen."

      "You have not answered me," she said quietly.

      "Answered you, Calypso?"

      "Yes; I ask you to be very gentle and fastidious with me in your thoughts; not even to call me Calypso—in your thoughts."

      "What you ask I had given you the first moment we met."

      "Then you may call me Calypso—in your thoughts."

      "Calypso," he pleaded, "won't you tell me where to find you?"

      "Yes; in the house of—Mr. Cardross. This is his house."

      She turned and stepped onto the lawn. A mass of scarlet hibiscus hid her, then she reappeared, a pale shape in the dusk of the oleander-bordered path.

      He listened; the perfume of the oleanders enveloped him; high under the stars the fronds of a royal palm hung motionless. Then, through the stillness, very far away, he heard the southern ocean murmuring in its slumber under a million stars.

      CHAPTER IV

      RECONNAISSANCE

      Hamil awoke early: long before breakfast he was shaved, dressed, and hungry; but in the hotel late rising appeared to be fashionable, and through the bewildering maze of halls and corridors nobody was yet astir except a few children and their maids.

      So he sauntered about the acres of floor space from rotunda to music room, from desk to sun parlour, through the endless carpeted tunnel leading to the station, and back again, taking his bearings in this wilderness of runways so profusely embowered with palms and furniture.

      In one wide corridor, lined like a street with shops, clerks were rearranging show windows; and Hamil strolled from the jewellers to the brilliant but dubious display of an Armenian rug dealer; from a New York milliner's exhibition, where one or two blond, sleepy-eyed young women moved languidly about, to an exasperating show of shells, curiosities, and local photographs which quenched further curiosity.

      However, beyond the shops, at the distant end of an Axminster vista flanked by cabbage-palms and masterpieces from Grand Rapids, he saw sunshine and the green tops of trees; and he made toward the oasis, coming out along a white colonnade overlooking the hotel gardens.

      It СКАЧАТЬ