Chapter 15

Squirrels came in troops; she fed the little, fat scamps to repletion, and the green lawn was dotted with squirrels all busily burying peanuts for future consumption. A brilliant peacock appeared, picking his way towards them, followed by a covey of imbecile peafowl. She fed them until their crops protruded.

The sun glittered on the upper windows of the clubs and hotels along Fifth Avenue; the west turned gold, then pink. Clouds of tiny moths came hovering among the wistaria blossoms; and high in the sky the metallic note of a nighthawk rang, repeating in querulous cadence the cries of water-fowl on the lake, where mallard and widgeon were restlessly preparing for an evening flight.

"You know," she said, gravely, "a woman who over-steps convention always suffers; a man, never. I have done something I never expected to do--never supposed was in me to do. And now that I have gone so far, it is perhaps better for me to go farther." She looked at him steadily. "Your studio is a perfect sounding-board. You have an astonishingly frank habit of talking to yourself; and every word is perfectly audible to me when my window is raised. When you chose to apostrophize me as a 'white-faced, dark-eyed little thing,' and when you remarked to yourself that there were 'thousands like me in New York,' I was perfectly indignant."

He sat staring at her, utterly incapable of uttering a sound.

"It costs a great deal for me to say this," she went on. "But I am obliged to because it is not fair to let you go on communing aloud with yourself--and I cannot close my window in warm weather. It costs more than you know for me to say this; for it is an admission that I heard you say that you were coming to the wistaria arbor--"

She bent her crimsoned face; the silence of evening fell over the arbor.

"I don't know why I came," she said--"whether with a vague idea of giving you the chance to speak, and so seizing the opportunity to warn you that your soliloquies were audible to me--whether to tempt you to speak and make it plain to you that I am not one of the thousand shop-girls you have observed after the shops close--"

"Don't," he said, hoarsely. "I'm miserable enough."

"I don't wish you to feel miserable," she said. "I have a very exalted idea of you. I--I understand artists."

"They're fools," he said. "Say anything you like before I go. I had--hoped for--perhaps for your friendship. But a woman can't respect a fool."

He rose in his humiliation.

"I can ask no privileges," he said, "but I must say one thing before I go. You have a book there which bears the signature of an artist named Marlitt. I am very anxious for his address; I think I have important news for him--good news. That is why I ask it."

The girl looked at him quietly.

"What news have you for him?"

"I suppose you have a right to ask," he said, "or you would not ask. I do not know Marlitt. I liked his work. Mr. Calvert suggested that Marlitt should return to resume work--"

"No," said the girl, "_you_ suggested it."

He was staggered. "Did you even hear that!" he gasped.

"You were standing by your window," she said. "Mr. Tennant, I think that was the real reason why I came to the wistaria arbor--to thank you for what you have done. You see--you see, I am Marlitt."

He sank down on the seat opposite.

"Everything has gone wrong," she said. "I came to thank you--and everything turned out so differently--and I was dreadfully rude to you--"

She covered her face with her hands.

"Then _you_ wrote me that letter," he said, slowly. In the silence of the gathering dusk the electric lamps snapped alight, flooding the arbor with silvery radiance. He said:

"If a man had written me that letter I should have desired his friendship and offered mine."

She dropped her hands and looked at him. "Thank you for speaking to Calvert," she said, rising hastily; "I have been desperately in need of work. My pride is quite dead, you see--one or the other of us had to die."

She looked down with a gay little smile. "If it wouldn't spoil you I should tell you what I think of you. Meanwhile, as servitude becomes man, you may tie my shoe for me--Marlitt's shoe that pinched you.... Tie it tightly, so that I shall not lose it again.... Thank you."

As he rose, their eyes met once more; and the perilous sweetness in hers fascinated him.

She drew a deep, unsteady breath. "Will you take me home?" she asked.

PASQUE FLORIDA

The steady flicker of lightning in the southwest continued; the wind freshened, blowing in cooler streaks across acres of rattling rushes and dead marsh-grass. A dull light grew through the scudding clouds, then faded as the mid-day sun went out in the smother, leaving an ominous red smear overhead.

Gun in hand, Haltren stood up among the reeds and inspected the landscape. Already the fish-crows and egrets were flying inland, the pelicans had left the sandbar, the eagles were gone from beach and dune. High in the thickening sky wild ducks passed over Flyover Point and dropped into the sheltered marshes among the cypress.

As Haltren stood undecided, watching the ruddy play of lightning, which came no nearer than the horizon, a squall struck the lagoon. Then, amid the immense solitude of marsh and water, a deep sound grew--the roar of the wind in the wilderness. The solemn paeon swelled and died away as thunder dies, leaving the air tremulous.

"I'd better get out of this," said Haltren to himself. He felt for the breech of his gun, unloaded both barrels, and slowly pocketed the cartridges.

Eastward, between the vast salt river and the ocean, the dunes were smoking like wind-lashed breakers; a heron, laboring heavily, flapped inland, broad pinions buffeting the gale.

"Something's due to happen," said Haltren, reflectively, closing the breech of his gun. He had hauled his boat up an alligator-slide; now he shoved it off the same way, and pulling up his hip-boots, waded out, laid his gun in the stern, threw cartridge-sack and a dozen dead ducks after it, and embarked among the raft of wind-tossed wooden decoys.

There were twoscore decoys bobbing and tugging at their anchor-cords outside the point. Before he had fished up a dozen on the blade of his oar a heavier squall struck the lagoon, blowing the boat out into the river. He had managed to paddle back and had secured another brace of decoys, when a violent gale caught him broadside, almost capsizing him.

"If I don't get those decoys now I never shall!" he muttered, doggedly jabbing about with extended oar. But he never got them; for at that moment a tropical hurricane, still in its infancy, began to develop, and when, blinded with spray, he managed to jam the oars into the oar-locks, his boat was half a mile out and still driving.

For a week the wind had piled the lagoons and lakes south of the Matanzas full of water, and now the waves sprang up, bursting into menacing shapes, knocking the boat about viciously. Haltren turned his unquiet eyes towards a streak of green water ahead.

"I don't suppose this catspaw is really trying to drive me out of Coquina Inlet!" he said, peevishly; "I don't suppose I'm being blown out to sea."

It was a stormy end for a day's pleasure--yet curiously appropriate, too, for it was the fourth anniversary of his wedding-day; and the storm that followed had blown him out into the waste corners of the world.

Perhaps something of this idea came into his head; he laughed a disagreeable laugh and fell to rowing.

The red lightning still darted along the southern horizon, no nearer; the wilderness of water, of palm forests, of jungle, of dune, was bathed in a sickly light; overhead oceans of clouds tore through a sombre sky.

After a while he understood that he was making no headway; then he saw that the storm was shaping his course. He dug his oars into the thick, gray waves; the wind tore the cap from his head, caught the boat and wrestled with it.

Somehow or other he must get the boat ashore before he came abreast of the inlet; otherwise--

He turned his head and stared at the whitecaps tumbling along the deadly raceway; and he almost dropped his oars in astonishment to see a gasoline-launch battling for safety just north of the storm-swept channel. What was a launch doing in this forsaken end of the earth? And the next instant developed the answer. Out at sea, beyond the outer bar, a yacht, wallowing like a white whale, was staggering towards the open ocean.

He saw all this in a flash--saw the gray-green maelstrom between the dunes, the launch struggling across the inlet, the yacht plunging seaward. Then in the endless palm forests the roar deepened. Flash! Bang! lightning and thunder were simultaneous.

"That's better," said Haltren, hanging to his oars; "there's a fighting chance now."

The rain came, beating the waves down, seemingly, for a moment, beating out the wind itself. In the partial silence the sharp explosions of the gasoline-engine echoed like volleys of pistol-shots; and Haltren half rose in his pitching boat, and shouted: "Launch ahoy! Run under the lee shore. There's a hurricane coming! You haven't a second to lose!"

He heard somebody aboard the launch say, distinctly, "There's a Florida cracker alongside who says a hurricane is about due." The shrill roar of the rain drowned the voice. Haltren bent to his oars again. Then a young man in dripping white flannels looked out of the wheel-house and hailed him. "We've grounded on the meadows twice. If you know the channel you'd better come aboard and take the wheel."

Haltren, already north of the inlet and within the zone of safety, rested on his oars a second and looked back, listening. Very far away he heard the deep whisper of death.

On board the launch the young man at the wheel heard it, too; and he hailed Haltren in a shaky voice: "I wouldn't ask you to come back, but there are women aboard. Can't you help us?"

"All right," said Haltren.

A horrible white glare broke out through the haze; the solid vertical torrent of rain swayed, then slanted eastward.

A wave threw him alongside the launch; he scrambled over the low rail and ran forward, deafened by the din. A woman in oilskins hung to the companion-rail; he saw her white face as he passed. Haggard, staggering, he entered the wheel-house, where the young man in dripping flannels seized his arm, calling him by name. Haltren pushed him aside.

"Give me that wheel, Darrow," he said, hoarsely. "Ring full speed ahead! Now stand clear--"

Like an explosion the white tornado burst, burying deck and wheel-house in foam; a bellowing fury of tumbling waters enveloped the launch. Haltren hung to the wheel one second, two, five, ten; and at last through the howling chaos his stunned ears caught the faint staccato spat! puff! spat! of the exhaust. Thirty seconds more--if the engines could stand it--if they only could stand it!

They stood it for thirty-three seconds and went to smash. A terrific squall, partly deflected from the forest, hurled the launch into the swamp, now all boiling in shallow foam; and there she stuck in the good, thick mud, heeled over and all awash like a stranded razor-back after a freshet.

Twenty minutes later the sun came out; the waters of the lagoon turned sky blue; a delicate breeze from the southeast stirred the palmetto fronds.

Presently a cardinal-bird began singing in the sunshine.

* * * * *

Haltren, standing in the wrecked wheel-house, raised his dazed eyes as Darrow entered and looked around.

"So that was a white tornado! I've heard of them--but--good God!" He turned a bloodless visage to Haltren, who, dripping, bareheaded and silent, stood with eyes closed leaning heavily against the wheel.

"Are you hurt?"

Haltren shook his head. Darrow regarded him stupidly.

"How did you happen to be in this part of the world?"

Haltren opened his eyes. "Oh, I'm likely to be anywhere," he said, vaguely, passing a shaking hand across his face. There was a moment's silence; then he said:

"Darrow, is my wife aboard this boat?"

"Yes," said Darrow, under his breath. "Isn't that the limit?"

Through the silence the cardinal sang steadily.

"Isn't that the limit?" repeated Darrow. "We came on the yacht--that was Brent's yacht, the _Dione_, you saw at sea. You know the people aboard. Brent, Mrs. Castle, your wife, and I left the others and took the launch to explore the lagoons.... And here we are. Isn't it funny?" he added, with a nerveless laugh.

Haltren stood there slowly passing his hand over his face.

"It is funnier than you know, Darrow," he said. "Kathleen and I--this is our wedding-day."

"Well, that _is_ the limit," muttered Darrow, as Haltren turned a stunned face to the sunshine where the little cardinal sang with might and main.

"Come below," he added. "You are going to speak to her, of course?"

"If she cared to have me--"

"Speak to her anyway. Haltren; I"--he hesitated--"I never knew why you and Kathleen separated. I only knew what everybody knows. You and she are four years older now; and if there's a ghost of a chance-- Do you understand?"

Haltren nodded.

"Then we'll go below," began Darrow. But Major Brent appeared at that moment, apoplectic eyes popping from his purple face as he waddled forward to survey the dismantled launch.

Without noticing either Haltren or Darrow, he tested the slippery angle of the deck, almost slid off into the lagoon, clutched the rail with both pudgy hands, and glared at the water.

"I suppose," he said, peevishly, "that there are alligators in that water. I know there are!"

He turned his inflamed eyes on Haltren, but made no sign of recognition.

"Major," said Darrow, sharply, "you remember Dick Haltren--"

"Eh?" snapped the major. "Where the deuce did you come from, Haltren?"

"He was the man who hailed us. He took the wheel," said Darrow, meaningly.

"Nice mess you made of it between you," retorted the major, scowling his acknowledgments at Haltren.

Darrow, disgusted, turned on his heel; Haltren laughed. The sound of his own laugh amused him, and he laughed again.

"I don't see the humor," said the major. "The _Dione_ is blown half-way to the Bermudas by this time." He added, with a tragic gesture of his fat arms; "Are you aware that Mrs. Jack Onderdonk is aboard?"

The possible fate of Manhattan's queen regent so horrified Major Brent that his congested features assumed the expression of an alarmed tadpole.

But Haltren, the unaccustomed taste of mirth in his throat once more, stood there, dripping, dishevelled, and laughing. For four years he had missed the life he had been bred to; he had missed even what he despised in it, and his life at moments had become a hell of isolation. Time dulled the edges of his loneliness; solitude, if it hurts, sometimes cures too. But he was not yet cured of longing for that self-forbidden city in the North. He desired it--he desired the arid wilderness of its treeless streets, its incessant sounds, its restless energy; he desired its pleasures, its frivolous days and nights, its satiated security, its ennui. Its life had been his life, its people his people, and he longed for it with a desire that racked him.

"What the devil are you laughing at, Haltren?" asked the major, tartly.

"Was I laughing?" said the young man. "Well--now I will say good-bye, Major Brent. Your yacht will steam in before night and send a boat for you; and I shall have my lagoons to myself again.... I have been here a long time.... I don't know why I laughed just now. There was, indeed, no reason." He turned and looked at the cabin skylights. "It's hard to realize that you and Darrow and--others--are here, and that there's a whole yacht-load of fellow-creatures--and Mrs. Van Onderdonk--wobbling about the Atlantic near by. Fashionable people have never before come here--even intelligent people rarely penetrate this wilderness.... I--I have a plantation a few miles below--oranges and things, you know." He hesitated, almost wistfully. "I don't suppose you and your guests would care to stop there for a few hours, if your yacht is late."

"No," said the major, "we don't care to."

"Perhaps Haltren will stay aboard the wreck with us until the _Dione_ comes in," suggested Darrow.

"I dare say you have a camp hereabouts," said the major, staring at Haltren; "no doubt you'd be more comfortable there."

"Thanks," said Haltren, pleasantly; "I have my camp a mile below." He offered his hand to Darrow, who, too angry to speak, nodded violently towards the cabin.

"How can I?" asked Haltren. "Good-bye. And I'll say good-bye to you, major--"

"Good-bye," muttered the major, attempting to clasp his fat little hands behind his back.

Haltren, who had no idea of offering his hand, stood still a moment, glancing at the cabin skylights; then, with a final nod to Darrow, he deliberately slid over-board and waded away, knee-deep, towards the palm-fringed shore.

Darrow could not contain himself. "Major Brent," he said, "I suppose you don't realize that Haltren saved the lives of every soul aboard this launch."

The major's inflamed eyes popped out.

"Eh? What's that?"

"More than that," said Darrow, "he came back from safety to risk his life. As it was he lost his boat and his gun--"

"Damnation!" broke out the major; "you don't expect me to ask him to stay and meet the wife he deserted four years ago!"

And he waddled off to the engine-room, where the engineer and his assistant were tinkering at the wrecked engine.

Darrow went down into the sloppy cabin, where, on a couch, Mrs. Castle lay, ill from the shock of the recent catastrophe; and beside her stood an attractive girl stirring sweet spirits of ammonia in a tumbler.

Her eyes were fixed on the open port-hole. Through that port-hole the lagoon was visible; so was Haltren, wading shoreward, a solitary figure against the fringed rampart of the wilderness.

"Is Mrs. Castle better?" asked Darrow.

"I think so; I think she is asleep," said the girl, calmly.

There was a pause; then Darrow took the tumbler and stirred the contents.

"Do you know who it was that got us out of that pickle?"

"Yes," she said; "my husband."

"I suppose you could hear what we said on deck."

There was no answer.

"Could you, Kathleen?"

"Yes."

Darrow stared into the tumbler, tasted the medicine, and frowned.

"Isn't there--isn't there a chance--a ghost of a chance?" he asked.

"I think not," she answered--"I am sure not. I shall never see him again."

"I meant for myself," said Darrow, deliberately, looking her full in the face.

She crimsoned to her temples, then her eyes flashed violet fire.

"Not the slightest," she said.

"Thanks," said Darrow, flippantly; "I only wanted to know."

"You know now, don't you?" she asked, a trifle excited, yet realizing instinctively that somehow she had been tricked. And yet, until that moment, she had believed Darrow to be her slave. He had been and was still; but she was not longer certain, and her uncertainty confused her.

"Do you mean to say that you have any human feeling left for that vagabond?" demanded Darrow. So earnest was he that his tanned face grew tense and white.

"I'll tell you," she said, breathlessly, "that from this moment I have no human feeling left for you! And I never had! I know it now; never! never! I had rather be the divorced wife of Jack Haltren than the wife of any man alive!"

The angry beauty of her young face was his reward; he turned away and climbed the companion. And in the shattered wheel-house he faced his own trouble, muttering: "I've done my best; I've tried to show the pluck he showed. He's got his chance now!" And he leaned heavily on the wheel, covering his eyes with his hands; for he was fiercely in love, and he had destroyed for a friend's sake all that he had ever hoped for.

But there was more to be done; he aroused himself presently and wandered around to the engine-room, where the major was prowling about, fussing and fuming and bullying his engineer.

"Major," said Darrow, guilelessly, "do you suppose Haltren's appearance has upset his wife?"

"Eh?" said the major. "No, I don't! I refuse to believe that a woman of Mrs. Haltren's sense and personal dignity could be upset by such a man! By gad! sir, if I thought it--for one instant, sir--for one second--I'd reason with her. I'd presume so far as to express my personal opinion of this fellow Haltren!"

"Perhaps I'd better speak to her," began Darrow.

"No, sir! Why the devil should you assume that liberty?" demanded Major Brent. "Allow me, sir; allow me! Mrs. Haltren is my guest!"

The major's long-latent jealousy of Darrow was now fully ablaze; purple, pop-eyed, and puffing, he toddled down the companion on his errand of consolation. Darrow watched him go. "That settles him!" he said. Then he called the engineer over and bade him rig up and launch the portable canoe.

"Put one paddle in it, Johnson, and say to Mrs. Haltren that she had better paddle north, because a mile below there is a camp belonging to a man whom Major Brent and I do not wish to have her meet."

The grimy engineer hauled out the packet which, when put together, was warranted to become a full-fledged canoe.

"Lord! how she'll hate us all, even poor Johnson," murmured Darrow. "I don't know much about Kathleen Haltren, but if she doesn't paddle south I'll eat cotton-waste with oil-dressing for dinner!"

At that moment the major reappeared, toddling excitedly towards the stern.

"What on earth is the trouble?" asked Darrow. "Is there a pizen sarpint aboard?"

"Trouble!" stammered the major. "Who said there was any trouble? Don't be an ass, sir! Don't even look like an ass, sir! Damnation!"

And he trotted furiously into the engine-room.

Darrow climbed to the wheel-house once more, fished out a pair of binoculars, and fixed them on the inlet and the strip of Atlantic beyond.

"If the _Dione_ isn't in by three o'clock, Haltren will have his chance," he murmured.

He was still inspecting the ocean and his watch alternately when Mrs. Haltren came on deck.

"Did you send me the canoe?" she asked, with cool unconcern.

"It's for anybody," he said, morosely. "Somebody ought to take a snap-shot of the scene of our disaster. If you don't want the canoe, I'll take it."

She had her camera in her hand; it was possible he had noticed it, although he appeared to be very busy with his binoculars.

He was also rude enough to turn his back. She hesitated, looked up the lagoon and down the lagoon. She could only see half a mile south, because Flyover Point blocked the view.

"If Mrs. Castle is nervous you will be near the cabin?" she asked, coldly.

"I'll be here," he said.

"And you may say to Major Brent," she added, "that he need not send me further orders by his engineer, and that I shall paddle wherever caprice invites me."

A few moments later a portable canoe glided out from under the stern of the launch. In it, lazily wielding the polished paddle, sat young Mrs. Haltren, bareheaded, barearmed, singing as sweetly as the little cardinal, who paused in sheer surprise at the loveliness of song and singer. Like a homing pigeon the canoe circled to take its bearings once, then glided away due _south_.

Blue was the sky and water; her eyes were bluer; white as the sands her bare arms glimmered. Was it a sunbeam caught entangled in her burnished hair, or a stray strand, that burned far on the water.

Darrow dropped his eyes; and when again he looked, the canoe had vanished behind the rushes of Flyover Point, and there was nothing moving on the water far as the eye could see.

* * * * *

About three o'clock that afternoon, the pigeon-toed Seminole Indian who followed Haltren, as a silent, dangerous dog follows its master, laid down the heavy pink cedar log which he had brought to the fire, and stood perfectly silent, nose up, slitted eyes almost closed.

Haltren's glance was a question. "Paddl'um boat," said the Indian, sullenly.