Chapter 12

However, audacious as her vagrant thoughts might be, she was entirely unprepared to see a human head, made sleek by sea water, emerge from the floating weeds almost at her feet.

"Goodness," she said faintly, and attempted to rise. But her fish tail fettered her.

"Are you real!" gasped Kingsbury.

"Y-yes.... Are you?"

"Great James!" he half shouted, half sobbed, "are you _human?_"

"V-very. Are _you?_"

He clutched at the weedy rock and dragged himself up. For a moment he lay breathing fast, water dripping from his soaked clothing. Once he feebly touched the glittering fish tail that lay on the rock beside him. It quivered, but needle and thread had been at work there; he drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again she was looking about for a likely place to launch herself into the bay; in fact, she had already started to glide toward the water; the scraping of the scales aroused him, and he sat up.

"I heard singing," he said dreamily, "and I climbed a tree and saw--you! Do you blame me for trying to corroborate a thing like _you?_"

"You thought I was a _real_ one?"

"I thought that I thought I saw a real one."

She looked at him hopefully.

"Tell me, _did_ my singing compel you to swim out here?"

"I don't know what compelled me."

"But--you _were_ compelled?"

"I--it seems so----"

"O-h!" Flushed, excited, laughing, she clasped her hands under her chin and gazed at him.

"To think," she said softly, "that you believed me to be a real siren, and that my beauty and my singing actually did lure you to my rock! Isn't it exciting?"

He looked at her, then turned red:

"Yes, it is," he said.

Hands still clasped together tightly beneath her rounded chin, she surveyed him with intense interest. He was at a disadvantage; the sleek, half-drowned appearance which a man has who emerges from a swim does not exhibit him at his best.

But he had a deeper interest for Flavilla; her melody and loveliness had actually lured him across the water to the peril of her rocks; this human being, this man creature, seemed to be, in a sense, hers.

"Please fix your hair," she said, handing him her comb and mirror.

"My hair?"

"Certainly. I want to look at you."

He thought her request rather extraordinary, but he sat up and with the aid of the mirror, scraped away at his wet hair, parting it in the middle and combing it deftly into two gay little Mercury wings. Then, fishing in the soaked pockets of his knickerbockers, he produced a pair of smart pince-nez, which he put on, and then gazed up at her.

"Oh!" she said, with a quick, indrawn breath, "you _are_ attractive!"

At that he turned becomingly scarlet.

Leaning on one lovely, bare arm, burnished hair clustering against her cheeks, she continued to survey him in delighted approval which sometimes made him squirm inwardly, sometimes almost intoxicated him.

"To think," she murmured, "that _I_ lured _you_ out here!"

"I _am_ thinking about it," he said.

She laid her head on one side, inspecting him with frankest approval.

"I wonder," she said, "what your name is. I am Flavilla Carr."

"Not one of the Carr triplets!"

"Yes--but," she added quickly, "I'm not married. Are you?"

"Oh, no, no, no!" he said hastily. "I'm Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point, Northport----"

"Master and owner of the beautiful but uncertain _Sappho?_ Oh, tell me, _are_ you the man who has tipped over so many times in Long Island Sound? Because I--I adore a man who has the pluck to continue to capsize every day or two."

"Then," he said, "you can safely adore me, for I am that yachtsman who has fallen off the _Sappho_ more times than the White Knight fell off his horse."

"I--I _do_ adore you!" she exclaimed impulsively.

"Of course, you d-d-don't mean that," he stammered, striving to smile.

"Yes--almost. Tell me, you--I know you are not like other men! _You_ never have had anything to do with a Destyn-Carr machine, have you?"

"Never!"

"Neither have I.... And so you are not in love--are you?"

"No."

"Neither am I. Oh, I am so glad that you and I have waited, and not become engaged to somebody by machinery.... I wonder whom you are destined for."

"Nobody--by machinery."

She clapped her hands. "Neither am I. It is too stupid, isn't it? I _don't_ want to marry the man I ought to marry. I'd rather take chances with a man who attracts me and who is attracted by me.... There was, in the old days--before everybody married by machinery--something not altogether unworthy in being a siren, wasn't there?... It's perfectly delightful to think of your seeing me out here on the rocks, and then instantly plunging into the waves and tearing a foaming right of way to what might have been destruction!"

Her flushed, excited face between its clustering curls looked straight into his.

"It _was_ destruction," he said. His own voice sounded odd to him. "Utter destruction to my peace of mind," he said again.

"You--don't think that you love me, do you?" she asked. "That would be too--too perfect a climax.... _Do_ you?" she asked curiously.

"I--think so."

"Do--do you _know_ it?" He gazed bravely at her: "Yes."

She flung up both arms joyously, then laughed aloud:

"Oh, the wonder of it! It is too perfect, too beautiful! You really love me? Do you? Are you _sure_?"

"Yes.... Will you try to love me?"

"Well, you know that sirens don't care for people.... I've already been engaged two or three times.... I don't mind being engaged to you."

"Couldn't you care for me, Flavilla?"

"Why, yes. I do.... Please don't touch me; I'd rather not. Of course, you know, I couldn't really love you so quickly unless I'd been subjected to one of those Destyn-Carr machines. You know that, don't you? But," she added frankly, "I wouldn't like to have you get away from me. I--I feel like a tender-hearted person in the street who is followed by a lost cat----"

"What!"

"Oh, I _didn't_ mean anything unpleasant--truly I didn't. You know how tenderly one feels when a poor stray cat comes trotting after one----"

He got up, mad all through.

"_Are_ you offended?" she asked sorrowfully. "When I didn't mean anything except that my heart--which is rather impressionable--feels very warmly and tenderly toward the man who swam after me.... Won't you understand, please? Listen, we have been engaged only a minute, and here already is our first quarrel. You can see for yourself what would happen if we ever married."

"It wouldn't be machine-made bliss, anyway," he said.

That seemed to interest her; she inspected him earnestly.

"Also," he added, "I thought you desired to take a sportsman's chances?"

"I--do."

"And I thought you didn't want to marry the man you ought to marry."

"That is--true."

"Then you certainly ought not to marry me--but, will you?"

"How can I when I don't--love you."

"You don't love me because you ought not to on such brief acquaintance.... But _will_ you love me, Flavilla?"

She looked at him in silence, sitting very still, the bright hair veiling her cheeks, the fish's tail curled up against her side.

"_Will_ you?"

"I don't know," she said faintly.

"Try."

"I--am."

"Shall I help you?"

Evidently she had gazed at him long enough; her eyes fell; her white fingers picked at the seaweed pods. His arm closed around her; nothing stirred but her heart.

"Shall I help you to love me?" he breathed.

"No--I am--past help." She raised her head.

"This is all so--so wrong," she faltered, "that I think it must be right.... Do you truly love me?... Don't kiss me if you do.... Now I believe you.... Lift me; I can't walk in this fish's tail.... Now set me afloat, please."

He lifted her, walked to the water's edge, bent and placed her in the sea. In an instant she had darted from his arms out into the waves, flashing, turning like a silvery salmon.

"Are you coming?" she called back to him.

He did not stir. She swam in a circle and came up beside the rock. After a long, long silence, she lifted up both arms; he bent over. Then, very slowly, she drew him down into the water.

* * * * *

"I am quite sure," she said, as they sat together at luncheon on the sandspit which divides Northport Bay from the s.w. of Oyster Bay, "that you and I are destined for much trouble when we marry; but I love you so dearly that I don't care."

"Neither do I," he said; "will you have another sandwich?"

And, being young and healthy, she took it, and biting into it, smiled adorably at her lover.

OTHER BOOKS BY

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

It was Mr. Chambers himself who wrote of the caprices of the Mystic Three--Fate, Chance, and Destiny--and how it frequently happened that a young man "tripped over the maliciously extended foot of Fate and fell plump into the open arms of Destiny." Perhaps it was due to one of the pranks of the mystic sisters that Mr. Chambers himself should lay down his brush and palette and take up the pen. Mr. Chambers studied art in Paris for seven years. At twenty-four his paintings were accepted at the Salon; at twenty-eight he had returned to New York and was busy as an illustrator for _Life, Truth_, and other periodicals. But already the desire to write was coursing through him. The Latin Quarter of Paris, where he had studied so long, seemed to haunt him; he wanted to tell its story. So he did write the story and, in 1893, published it under the title of "In the Quarter." The same year he published another book, "The King in Yellow," a grewsome tale, but remarkably successful. The easel was pushed aside; the painter had become writer.

Writing of Mr. Chambers's novel of last fall

THE DANGER MARK

in _The Bookman_, Dr. Frederic Taber Cooper said, "In this last field (the society novel) it would seem as though Mr. Chambers had, at length, found himself; and the fact that the last of the four books is the best and most sustained and most honest piece of work he has yet done affords solid ground for the belief that he has still better and maturer volumes yet to come. There is no valid reason why Mr. Chambers should not ultimately be remembered as the novelist who left behind him a comprehensive human comedy of New York."

This is another novel of society life like "The Fighting Chance" and "The Firing Line." The chief characters in the story are a boy and a girl, inheritors of a vast fortune, whose parents are dead, and who have been left in the guardianship of a large Trust Company. They are brought up with no companions of their own age and are a unique pair when turned out, on coming of age, into New York society--two children educated by a great machine, possessors of fabulous wealth, with every inherited instinct for good and evil set free for the first time. The fact that the girl has acquired the habit of dropping a little cologne on a lump of sugar and nibbling it when tired or depressed gives an indication of the struggle that the children have before them, a struggle of their own, in the midst of their luxurious surroundings, more vital, more real, perhaps, than any that Mr. Chambers has yet depicted. It is a tense, powerful, highly dramatic story, handling a delicate subject without offense to the taste or the judgment of the most critical reader.

Mr. Chambers's third novel of society life is

THE FIRING LINE

Its scenes are laid principally at Palm Beach, and no more distinct yet delicately tinted picture of an American fashionable resort, in the full blossom of its brief, recurrent glory, has ever been drawn. In this book, Mr. Chambers's purpose is to show that the salvation of society lies in the constant injection of new blood into its veins. His heroine, the captivating Shiela Cardross, of unknown parentage, yet reared in luxury, suddenly finds herself on life's firing line, battling with one of the most portentous problems a young girl ever had to face. Only a master writer could handle her story; Mr. Chambers does it most successfully.

THE YOUNGER SET

is the second of Mr. Chambers's society novels. It takes the reader into the swirling society life of fashionable New York, there to wrestle with that ever-increasing evil, the divorce question. As a student of life, Mr. Chambers is thorough; he knows society; his pictures are so accurate that he enables the reader to imbibe the same atmosphere as if he had been born and brought up in it. Moreover, no matter how intricate the plot may be or how great the lesson to be taught, the romance in the story is always foremost. For "The Younger Set," Mr. Chambers has provided a hero with a rigid code of honor and the grit to stick to it, even though it be unfashionable and out of date. He is a man whom everyone would seek to emulate.

The earliest of Mr. Chambers's society novels is

THE FIGHTING CHANCE

It is the story of a young man who has inherited with his wealth a craving for liquor, and a girl who has inherited a certain rebelliousness and a tendency toward dangerous caprice. The two, meeting on the brink of ruin, fight out their battles--two weaknesses joined with love to make a strength.

It is sufficient to say of this novel that more than five million people have read it. It has taken a permanent place among the best fiction of the period.

SPECIAL MESSENGER

is the title of Mr. Chambers's novel just preceding "The Danger Mark." It is the romance of a young woman spy and scout in the Civil War. As a special messenger in the Union service, she is led into a maze of critical situations, but her coolness and bravery and winsome personality always carry her on to victory. The story is crowded with dramatic incident, the roar of battle, the grim realities of war; and, at times, in sharp contrast, comes the tenderest of romance. It is written with an understanding and sympathy for the viewpoint of the partisans on both sides of the conflict.

THE RECKONING

is a novel of the Revolutionary War. It is the fourth, chronologically, of a series of which "Cardigan" and "The Maid-at-Arms" were the first two. The third has not yet been written. These novels of New York in the Revolutionary days are another striking example of the enthusiasm which Mr. Chambers puts into his work. To write an accurate and successful historical novel, one must be a historian as well as a romancer. Mr. Chambers is an authority on New York State history during the Colonial period. And, if the hours spent in poring over old maps and reading up old records and journals do not show, the result is always apparent. The facts are not obtrusive, but they are there, interwoven in the gauzy woof of the artist's imagination. That is why these romances carry conviction always, why we breathe the very air of the period as we read them.

IOLE

Another splendid example of the author's versatility is this farcical, humorous satire on the _art nouveau_ of to-day, Mr. Chambers, with all his knowledge of the artistic jargon, has in this little novel created a pious fraud of a father, who brings up his eight lovely daughters in the Adirondacks, where they wear pink pajamas and eat nuts and fruit, and listen to him while he lectures them and everybody else on art. It is easy to imagine what happens when several rich and practical young New Yorkers stumble upon this group. Everybody is happy in the end.

One might run on for twenty books more, but there is not space enough more than to mention "The Tracer of Lost Persons," "The Tree of Heaven," "Some Ladies in Haste," and Mr. Chambers's delightful nature books for children, telling how _Geraldine_ and _Peter_ go wandering through "Outdoor-Land," "Mountain-Land," "Orchard-Land," "River-Land," "Forest- Land," and "Garden-Land." They, in turn, are as different from his novels in fancy and conception as each of his novels from the other.

Mr. Chambers is a born optimist. The labor of writing is a natural enjoyment to him. In reading anything he has written, one is at once impressed with the ease with which it moves along. There is no straining after effects, no affectations, no hysteria; but always there is a personality, an individuality that appeals to the best side of the reader's nature and somehow builds up a personal relation between him and the author. Perhaps it is this consummate skill, this remarkable ability to win the reader that has enabled Mr. Chambers to increase his audience year after year, until it now numbers millions; and it is only just that critics should, as they frequently do, proclaim him "the most popular writer in the country."