Part 19

"Listen, Brownie. That man has made me come all the way down to earth. That man has taken everything from me,--pride and scorn and shallowness, the desire to experiment, the impatience of possession, and put there instead something that makes me want to go and sit down at the side of women with children and hold their hands. That man has brought me up to truth and reason. He has made me human and humble and jealous and eager for his touch. He has made me love him and need him and want to serve him. Look at me, Brownie, look at me and see it for yourself!"

She held up her lovely, tear-stained face, the face that Malcolm had described, the picture of which was locked up in his heart. And Mrs. Keene, speechless, looked and saw and wondered.

And suddenly the golden head was crushed against the childless bosom. "Brownie, Brownie, he doesn't love me, he doesn't love me, and I wish I were dead."

Could this be Beatrix,--this?

*XXXVI*

Finding that Franklin had left the bedroom that had been allotted to him after washing and changing his clothes,--the others had been flung about the barrack-like room,--Malcolm went downstairs and out to the veranda. Ida Larpent was sitting in front of a tea-table like Patience on a monument, dodging mosquitoes.

"Where's Pelham?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.

"I was going to ask you."

"And Beatrix?"

"In with Mrs. Keene, I think."

Mrs. Larpent heaved a little sigh. "Poor old thing! She'll get well now, and we, I take it, can go our ways in peace. I don't ever want to go through this experience again."

Malcolm laughed. "Well, I've rather enjoyed it," he said, "apart, of course, from the fact that Mrs. Keene has suffered."

"Enjoyed it?" There was a note of anger in Mrs. Larpent's clear voice. "Such food, such beds, such cockroaches, such service, such an appalling place?"

"I've been studying the beautiful unselfishness of the mother hen," said Malcolm. "It's a revelation to me."

Mrs. Larpent shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "I've known one or two other poets in my time," she said, "but I've never been able to make out whether their childishness was a pose or mere stupidity. It requires no study to know that the mother hen is not unselfish. Like other mothers she is the creature of overwhelming circumstances, the slave of nature. However, what's the news? What is to happen next? Is the _Galatea_ to deliver us back to New York or do we find our own way back?"

"Don't ask me," said Malcolm, who wouldn't have said anything else if he had known it. Mrs. Larpent was one of the few women of his acquaintance whom he really disliked. He found her hard and without an ounce of idealism or imagination. She believed in nothing that didn't carry a certificate of proof, in no one who was not duly entered in "Who's Who," looked upon faith as a sort of patent medicine, hope as a form of mental weakness and charity as a sharp way of getting rid of people who either made street noises or had pathetic stories to tell. He and she had not got on at all well.

To the great relief of both Franklin came up. "We're waiting tea for you," said Mrs. Larpent.

"I'm so sorry. I've been along to the post-office. I thought I'd better wire this address to the Vanderdykes as we shall be here till the _Galatea_ lies off. They had our next place of call for letters." He sat down rather heavily. "Yes, tea's a good idea."

There was nothing of happiness about this man, Mrs. Larpent told herself in a spirit of self-congratulation. He had obviously gained nothing by carrying off Beatrix except a little line between his eyebrows. Serve him right. She was glad to see it. She could have made him happy if the party had continued on the yacht.

Tea came but no Beatrix. Mrs. Larpent poured out, and as she did so her spirits rose. Things looked good. She had never been able to find a reason for their sham honeymoon, puzzle as she might. It remained an inscrutable mystery, and all her cunning endeavors to trick Mrs. Keene and Malcolm into confession had failed. She argued that they knew,--Malcolm because he brought Beatrix to the yacht and Mrs. Keene because of her extraordinary nervous breakdown. In any case that business failed to be of interest now. The point was how much, if at all, was Franklin in love with or physically attracted by Beatrix. If he was in love with her and had been turned down,--his whole appearance and attitude proved that,--her opportunity to catch him on the rebound was most excellent. In her large experience men committed matrimony or undertook obligations immediately after being refused. If he had been physically attracted merely, and had met with no success,--which was patent,--the same argument applied. How glad she was that she had seen the wisdom of staying in that abominable shack, ostensibly to look after the woman who got so completely on her nerves. Her room was next to Franklin's, too. Could luck have been kinder?

"Have you sent any tea up to Beatrix?" asked Franklin, suddenly.

"No," said Mrs. Larpent. "She'll order it herself if she wants any, don't you think so?"

Franklin got up. "Excuse me," he said, and stalked into the hotel, asked the comatose clerk the number of Mrs. Keene's room, waved away a gymnastic colored boy who volunteered to show him and went upstairs two at a time. Sooner or later he would be obliged, he had come to the conclusion, either to put as many thousand miles between himself and Beatrix as the map of the earth allowed or treat her as a sister. All the day's thinking had proved this to him, who knew so little about women.

He knocked on the door, waited and knocked again.

It was opened by Beatrix, who was still in her dust-covered clothes and hat. He saw at once that she had been crying and resented it as much as though he had seen her arm in a splint.

"Have you had tea?" he asked bluntly, because he wanted to kiss her beyond description and hadn't the right.

"No," said Beatrix.

"Shall I send some up?"

"Will you? I'd love it. I'm so tired."

"Yes, of course you are. Why didn't you ring and make this rotten hotel run about?"

"I forgot. It's awfully nice of you to have bothered about me."

Franklin swallowed a rush of words, nodded, made small work of the echoing stairs and stood in front of the unoffending clerk with eyes black with unexplainable anger. "Why the devil haven't you sent tea up to Mrs. Franklin? Don't argue. Get it done at once or I'll pull this barn down board by board. For two, with hot buttered toast. Quick!"

Two colored boys who had overheard these words and caught the clerk's eyes went off like demented athletes. Left standing, the clerk pulled himself together. He felt as though a cart load of bricks had fallen on his head. What was the matter with this man? Anyone would think he'd bought the darned earth!

Ida Larpent and Malcolm did most of the talking while Franklin drank three cups of tea and ate all the toast. Malcolm knew that before long he would be marched off somewhere to listen to his old pal's troubles and so he waited with his characteristic patience and all his sympathy on the boil, determined not to permit his curiosity to lead his imagination into any further maze. It seemed to him to be disloyal. Ida Larpent concentrated her strategic knowledge upon a plan of action to be carried into effect during the night. She must act quickly because Franklin, like Beatrix, went off at sudden tangents. He might take it into his head to leave the place at a moment's notice and she might not see him again for months.

"How are you going to kill time until the so-called dinner?" she asked, looking at Franklin. "Can I suggest anything?"

"No, thanks," he replied. "Malcolm and I are going to explore the quay, if there is such a thing."

She laughed softly. He could do what he liked with all the hours till midnight. The others at the beginning of a new day would be hers, if she knew anything of men and life. She opened a book.

Franklin got up, pushed the table away, dragged up a chair for Mrs. Larpent's feet, made a mental note of the fact that she was a good sort and took Malcolm's arm.

"Come on, old son," he said. "Let's get out of this."

Turkey and chickens made way for these tall creatures, the two drummers at the other end of the veranda concentrated a united gaze on Mrs. Larpent's ankles, a Ford went off with a harsh rattle carrying two men in their shirt sleeves, and a ragamuffinly kitten gave a marvelous imitation of a bucking horse and bolted up a tree.

As they faced the Atlantic Franklin squared his shoulders and drew in a long, grateful breath. The line went out of his forehead and his mouth relaxed. Here at any rate was an element that he understood in all its moods, rough and smooth.

"Malcolm, will you come to Europe with me?"

"Any time," said Malcolm.

"Right. To-morrow night, then. I wish to God I had an aeroplane. We'd get away sooner."

He looked round impatiently. The so-called quay might have been made away back before the Great Wind and carelessly patched together after it. It ran out into a small bay for the use of perhaps a dozen cat-boats, a couple of nice yawls, a very spruce shoal-draught sloop just in, a well put together lark and a number of dirty little power boats belonging to the negro fishermen. Several bankrupt-looking sheds added to the general neglected appearance of the whole scene, which was heightened by three carcasses of dead dories with all their ribs sticking out lying up on the beach and all among dry seaweed and rubbish.

"What's the particular hurry?" asked Malcolm.

Franklin turned upon him. "I'm sick of myself, sick of life, sick of the whole blessed show," he said. "I want to get right away. I want to put all the sea there is between myself and Beatrix. If anybody had told me before I went to the Vanderdykes that a bit of a girl was going to turn me into a first-class fool I'd have called him a sentimental crank."

"I know," said Malcolm. "It all depends on the girl, though. All wise men, all men who fathom the fact in time that life means nothing if it's selfish, fall over each other to be made first-class fools of by the right girl. Besides, who says you've been turned into a first-class fool? You love Beatrix without success. So do I. That doesn't make us fools, either of us. I hold that we have to thank our stars to have met her. The fool part of it would be in not having loved her. That's my view of it. And look here, Pel, old man, don't be quite so ready to call people sentimental cranks who talk about love. What are we here for? What's the use of living without it? Clubs are built for men who have missed the one good thing there is to win in this queer little interlude between something we can't remember and something we're not intended to know."

Franklin listened to this unexpected outburst with a sort of boyish gravity. Malcolm had the knack of saying things that were true, and this that he had just said, with uncharacteristic heat, was dead true. Franklin knew that. Moreover he had the honesty and the courage to say so.

"Quite right, old son. I was talking through my hat as usual. But the difference between you and me is this. You're a poet and when you're turned down you have the safety valve of verse. You can write about it. I'm only a common or garden sporting cove who has to grin and bear it. And when you've got a girl like Beatrix in your blood there isn't much grinning, believe me. Come on. Let's walk and I'll put you up to date."

And away they went arm in arm along the shore while the sun went down.

And up in her bare bedroom Beatrix gave herself eagerly into the hands of her maid. "If I look my best," she thought, "perhaps----"

Men and women and history,--repetition, that's all!

*XXXVII*

Dinner was fairly good. The word had been taken to the kitchen that Franklin might stalk in and kill the chef. That dark mass of humanity outdid himself in consequence. Life was very dear to him.

One of the waiters at Franklin's table had been fifteen years in the hotel. The other twelve. They mutually agreed behind the screen that there had never been two such beautiful ladies in its dining-room in their time. They too were on their mettle.

Beatrix played up. She had bathed and slept a little and poured out her heart to Brownie and felt better from the fact that her presence had done her old friend so much good. Besides, she had grit and the courage of a thoroughbred. She was not going to let anyone see that there was a pain in her heart if she died for it. And so she set the ball rolling and kept the table merry. It was well done.

Malcolm did his share and brought tears of laughter from everybody by describing a scandal-mongering conversation between two turkeys. The younger of the two waiters nearly had a fit. Ida Larpent was in excellent spirits and Franklin as cheery as he could always be when he tried.

Afterwards they adjourned to a ludicrously-furnished room called the drawing-room decorated with tortured wood and chairs which had obviously been designed by plumbers. Everything in it was the color of Virginia tobacco,--the epitome of biliousness. Here they played Bridge while the proprietor's over-plump daughter with a huge white bow on the top of her head giggled and whispered to several girl friends in the sun parlor and presently set a Victrola going. Between the tunes, which were redolent of Broadway, the click of billiard balls could be heard. Frogs in a nearby pond croaked their inevitable chorus.

At the end of the third rubber Beatrix rose. "I can't go on," she said. "There are so many distractions. It's almost like being in a railway accident. Take me down to look at the sea, Pelham."

Franklin led the way. He would have liked it better if she had been angry with him and there had been an excuse for quarreling. He might then have had a reason for blazing at her and losing his self-control. To be treated like a brother,--it was better than nothing, he supposed, but it made him feel like a man with his arms roped to his sides.

They went along the sandy road lined with curious stunted trees to the quay. A full moon dominated a sky that blazed with stars. There was not even the tail-end of a cloud. The lazy sea plopped heavily against the stanchions and made the small craft wobble from side to side. Ropes creaked and quivered. There was hardly any wind. On the tip of the quay a girl was sitting with her head on a man's shoulder. One of his arms was round her waist. Their legs dangled over the edge. It was a night for love.

Beatrix said nothing for several minutes. She stood hatless, with her hands behind her back and her shoulders square. She looked dangerously young, Franklin thought, and far too precious to be unguarded. But with another look he corrected himself,--so young that her confidence was a better guard than an armed man. He wondered what she was thinking about.

"You've never had a sister, have you?" she asked suddenly.

"No," said Franklin.

"What a pity."

"Why?"

"She would have been a lucky girl."

"There you are," thought Franklin. "Nothing but a brother, you see."

She faced him unexpectedly. "What are you going to do with me now?"

He knew his answer but he made it, "What do you want me to do with you?"

And she made hers, "Something must be done."

He stood looking at her. He had no inkling that they were at cross purposes because he was not a woman's man. Also because he was entirely without conceit. It was only when he dreamed and a miracle happened, that Beatrix returned his love. In her new state, which was so new that she felt almost a stranger in the world, Beatrix was without conceit too. She believed that Franklin, because she had seen the nobility of his character out there in that strange mist, had outgrown the attraction of her sex and had become brotherly. Some big moment was needed to startle these two young people who were so much alike into the truth,--these two who had always been handicapped by excessive wealth and whose lives had touched in a manner that was so bizarre and accidental. What if the big moment never came? Big moments are not put in the way of everybody and even if they are, go by unrecognized in so many instances.

"Yes," said Franklin, "we can't go on like this."

"You still think that the only way out is marriage?"

"I'm afraid so."

"And then divorce?"

"Yes."

Beatrix heaved a deep sigh. "I've asked so much of you. I couldn't ask you for that."

"You don't have to ask me. It's my suggestion."

"You certainly are a sportsman," she said. And then she gave a little gasp. "Good Heavens, what must I have been made of to have done that thing? It seems incredible as I look at it now."

He spoke wistfully, eagerly. "Does it? Why? You're the same Beatrix. You haven't changed."

"Are you the same Pelham Franklin? Haven't you changed? Let's be honest out here to-night. This is the hour for honesty with the moon so plain and the stars so gleaming and the sky so transparent. Besides, I can't tell you why, but I have a sort of premonition that you and I are going to be required to face another crisis. I got the feeling this afternoon, when I was lying down. A bird was singing outside my window, a curious, jerky little song, and it seemed to tell me that I must meet something squarely and with courage."

"Courage?" said Franklin. "You have that."

"You think so?"

"I don't know it if you haven't got it."

"That's the first really nice thing you've ever said to me, Pelham."

It was a pity that she couldn't see the queer thing that happened to his eyes. "I don't say everything I think," he said, with a sort of laugh.

"That's nothing to be proud of. There's lots of room for silence in the grave. Let's go back." She was impatient again. She couldn't understand why things were not going as she would have them go. They always had.

He stopped her. "No, not yet. I want to tell you something, kiddie."

Tears came into her eyes somehow when he called her that.

"Listen. If anything _is_ on the way to us,--and if you think so I expect there is,--most probably it will send me one way over the earth and you another because this way has failed. When I'm out of sight I want you to remember one thing."

"I shall remember it all," she said.

"But especially one thing. I set out to break you."

"You've done that," she said.

"No, please don't rot me,--not to-night, out here. If ever my name flicks across your memory at any time remember my idiotic attempt to give you the spurs."

"Why especially that?"

"Because you beat me,--beat me to a frazzle and that's the only good thing about this episode."

"You're very generous," she said, and held out her hand. She had an insane desire to sit down on those dirty boards and cry. Everything he did and said made her love him more and more. What was the matter with her that she had turned him into a brother? Life had appeared to be so easy to arrange. It had become so difficult.

He took her hand and held it tight. "I'm not generous," he said, scoffing. "Don't let any man try the breaking business. Remain as you are. Be the spoilt girl all the rest of your life, kiddie. You're all right. Now come in and go to bed and sleep hard. That thing you got just now may find us in the morning."

And they turned their backs to the moon and to love and walked away without another word.

Malcolm and Ida Larpent had gone to bed. And the fat girl with the big bow and her young friends had disappeared. The Victrola was silent. There were no lights in the drawing-room or the sun parlor, but the click of billiard balls came into the foyer and the reek of cheap cigars. Two colored bell boys on the verge of sleep sat near the desk. Outside the frogs were still at work on their endless ensemble.

Beatrix nodded and smiled and went upstairs. She had left her key in Mrs. Keene's room. Franklin hung about aimlessly for ten minutes reading the railroad timetables with no interest and the printed notices to visitors and looking at the colored advertisements of steamships and whisky and magazines, without taking them in. Yes, the episode had failed. He was beat,--beat to a frazzle. What was going to happen next?

Ida Larpent heard him stride along the passage, go into his room and shut the door. Through the thin walls she could hear him shunt a chair and do something to his windows and move about.

She wore a curious smile and an almost transparent nightgown. Her black hair was all about her shoulders and in her eyes there was a strange eagerness.

For half an hour she sat as still as a statue watching the hands of her little diamond-studded watch. Her opportunity had come. She was going to seize it. She knew men, no one better. This one needed love and she, yes, she of all women would give it to him.

In that long, peculiar half hour during which her body was without movement, her brain worked and her heart raced. She loved and would make a sacrifice for love. That was the burden of her inward song. Not of the future, not of freedom from money worries, not of mercenary things,--love, her first great love and its fulfilment. Of that she thought, smiling, and thanking her stars.

And when the half hour was up she rose, put on a peignoir, slipped out of her room on the tips of her little pink slippers and tapped at Franklin's door. He called out "Come" and she went in.

He was sitting in a dressing gown in a cane chair, under the electric lamp that hung from the middle of the ceiling, with a pipe in his mouth and a book in his hand and his feet on a cranky table. There was a cloud of good tobacco smoke round his head.

He sprang to his feet at the sight of her. Although there was nothing of the frightened woman about her, the only thing that occurred to him was that she needed his help. A thief after her rings, probably.

"What's the matter?" instinctively lowering his voice. "Anyone in your room?"

She shut the door and smiled at him. After all she rather liked his naive assumption that she had not gone to his room for anything but his assistance in some emergency. It was very charming and boyish and clean and all that. It made things just a little difficult to explain though. "I see you're not in a hurry to go to bed," she said, "so may I sit down and have a cigarette? I've lots to say to you and there has been no other opportunity to-day."

"Of course," he said. "Please do. I hate reading, and sleep is miles away." He placed his chair for her, the only more or less comfortable one in the room, and got a cigarette and lit it. "Awfully nice of you to come in. Well, what's the news?"

He drew up a stiff-backed chair and sat straddle with his arms on the back of it. A good sort, Ida Larpent, he told himself, and extraordinarily picturesque. He couldn't make out why she didn't marry again. She could take her pick.

"Please may I have a pillow? I can feel every rib of cane. It hurts a little. I'm sorry to be fussy."

"Not a bit." He placed one of his pillows behind her back. "How's that?"

"Much better, thanks."

He went back to his chair and sat looking at her with a most friendly and admiring smile.

She liked the last part of it but not the first. It was all more than a little disconcerting. She knew men but not of his type. It would perhaps have been better for men, to say nothing of herself, if she had known one or two. Give a dog a bad name and hang him. She was conscious of looking extremely alluring in her geranium pink peignoir and slippers and her silk nightgown cut very low and her thick, black hair, which fluffed out over her shoulders, rather like that of a Russian prima ballerina.